Sasharia En Garde (17 page)

“Mighty good.” I sipped again, then realized they were all
more or less watching me. So I lifted my glass to the table. “Great job,
peeps!”

The
peeps
came out
in English, but no one seemed to care. They gave another cheer. In such a small
space, their enthusiasm hurt the ears.

I gulped down more punch, feeling hot and a little dizzy as
everyone started talking, the adrenaline-comedown sort of chatter I remembered
from my competition days. “Didya see. . . ?” “. . . and
then I took my sword and . . .” “He was goin’ for Sage, so I
grabbed up a stool and . . .”

Everyone wanted to air their own bit, to praise the others
and be praised, and—as the punch loosened tongues—more of the compliments came
my way.

I smiled and saluted and returned compliments about
skirmishes I couldn’t possibly have seen, because the flushed, smiling faces
and bright eyes surrounding me so plainly expected it. And deserved it, too.
They’d won. We were safe.

But as the talk got wilder, the compliments sent my way took
on a certain familiarity of expression. “Thought you’d finally take action,”
the cook said, giving me a friendly nudge with a powerful arm. I nearly fell
face-first into the tureen.

“Knew you’d come out fer yer Dad,” the forecastle captain
boomed from the other side of the table. “He never forgot us that haven’t any
titles, no he did not.”

And after a general (though less energetic) “Hear him, hear
him!” one of the top hands thumped her mug onto the table.

Then red-haired Robin declared, “When you raise your banner,
Princess, we’ll be right behind you.”

I tried to force a smile, and shot a suspicious look at
Zathdar. He had been watching me. He gave his head the smallest shake, turning
his thumbs outward, and I knew he hadn’t said anything to the crew.

They didn’t act like people ordered to drop hints about my
princessly obligations, and anyway, it was all coming back to me, how people
thought here. When you were born to a title, you had a responsibility along
with the title. Your job was politics.

I left as soon as I could, aware of Elva’s unhappy face over
at a side table, where she sat with Zathdar’s navigator and bosun. She followed
me in silence.

I tramped wearily to my cabin, Elva behind me, wincing as
she flexed her fingers. Titles—expectations—obligations—politics chased round
in my head like dizzy mice.

A long drink of water, then I lay down, shut my eyes and
firmly told myself that answers were my dad’s job. I just had to find him.

While Atanial was on her way with her royal escort to the
royal castle at Vadnais, back at the Ebans’ home Marka, at last free of her
bonds, crept downstairs. She’d wriggled safely under her bed by the time she
heard the smashings and bangings of searchers in the lower rooms. She hadn’t
known who was searching the house, but those words the tall, beautiful woman
with the accent had said echoed over and over in her mind,
Living a lie
.

Then the tromping feet came upstairs. Two pairs appeared in
her doorway, and one pair kicked roughly at her trunk. A young man said in a
bored voice, “Here’s the room with the signal. But the girl is gone.”

“As well,” someone else said.

As well. She knew what that meant. They’d had orders to kill
her.

Tromp, tromp, tromp. The heavy boots clattered down the
stairs. The crashes and bangs below ended. The door slammed on a silent house.

Wondering if she would ever stop crying, Marka resumed
working steadily at the knots.

Dawn painted the world in dreary blue streaks when she
finally passed through the ruined rooms. She paused in the kitchen to grab some
of the spilled food, drink from the water barrel, and then eased out into the
vegetable garden, where cold air promised rain. Cold air chilled her newly bare
neck, and fresh tears rolled down her cheeks at the thought of her shorn
hair—and Tam bearing it away. Maybe flinging it with disgust into a fire.
Stop it. Get home, warn Mama and the others
.

She thought of Mistress Eban’s absent kindness. She thought
of Tam, his grin, his hands. His kisses. Her beautiful hair that he used to run
his fingers through, calling it ribbon-silk . . .

Her chest ached with the sobs that boiled up, but she
couldn’t let them escape. At least she had never told the king’s man Tam’s
name, or anything about him. She could be glad of that. She would have to be
glad of that.

She crossed the boot-trampled vegetable garden and scurried
up the trail through the orchard, leaving barely a rustle.

o0o

Atanial slept through the next few days, only rising to
drink some healer’s tea she found waiting (the smell had woken her up), eat the
meals she found on a tray, and go right back to sleep. Each time she woke she
rediscovered that she lay in a room, not a cell. The bed was clean and
comfortable. Everything else could wait.

She let another week go by while she avoided the king’s
messengers, either pretending to be asleep, or claiming she still was unwell,
as she recovered her strength and wondered what to do.

o0o

Then came the morning that Commander Randart entered the
king’s outer chamber, pushed past the scribes and runners, and scowled at the
crowd around the king.

Canardan bustled his bureaucrats through the immediate
business, and dismissed the rest with a laugh and a joke.

When the last had departed, the king motioned for Randart to
shut the door. He sighed inwardly at his old friend’s scowl. “What now?”

“Courier from Ellir.” Randart sank into one of the cushioned
interview chairs. “Zathdar seems to have slipped inside the blockade.”

Canardan slammed a hand down on his desk. “Damn! How does a
pirate ship
‘slip’ inside a blockade?”

“My scouts think he might have mingled in with the fishing
fleet coming back from northern waters. Though no one reported any vessels
standing out or otherwise drawing attention.”

Canardan sat back, his breath hissing. “What else?”

“Zathdar reappeared on the other side of Mais Island.”

Canardan pressed his hands to his eyes. “No. Don’t tell me.”

Randart waited, smiling grimly while the silence lengthened.

“All right.” Canardan sighed, flinging his hands outward.
“Tell me.”

“The report is sketchy. Just arrived by transfer note.” Only
small pieces of paper fit into the magical notecases, which made for very short
reports. “But he seems to have cut out the
Skate
.
Took it just long enough for his rabble to strip it of supplies while he tried
to pry details of the mission from Bragail.”

Canardan laughed somewhat bitterly. “I wish him joy for his
efforts. Bragail has too many secrets buried to hand any pirate a shovel.”

“Except, if I read this aright . . .” Randart
held up a folded bit of paper. “Zathdar began by flinging at least a couple of
those secrets in his teeth.”

Canardan leaned forward, hand out. “Let me see that.” He
frowned down at the paper . . .
The pirate said 2 words, “Chwahir” & “Glathan,” so the cptn.
endorsed Z’s order to leave them alone in t/cabin. We went below, under swords
of pirates.
“Glathan. I suspect we will never cease to regret that.”

Randart shrugged. “Only way to deal with mages.”

Canardan rubbed his eyes, trying to press back the pangs of
a burgeoning headache. The kingdom was unraveling under his fingers. It would
take a grand gesture of kingly proportion to wrest triumph out of disaster. One
possible gesture lay sequestered upstairs, having been left until her blistered
feet had healed enough for her to walk.

Giving Canardan time to consider what to say when they did
meet again. He’d been reflecting on those blistered feet from a cross-country
run that everyone in the castle—the kingdom—apparently knew about before he
did.

Bringing him to the present. “What about my son? No message
from him?” Canardan flicked his solid-gold notecase.

“Yes, the courier had word about him as well. He sent one of
his runners straight to Ellir, promising that the prince would be back by the
beginning of the midsummer games.” Randart added wryly, “You haven’t heard from
him directly because he seems to have been caught napping by some highway
robbers along his path in the south, and he was robbed of everything, including
his notecase.”

Canardan groaned. The headache was worsening with every word
he heard.

“Well, he did send his guard to the World Gate tower, so he
cannot be blamed for a shortage of personal protection,” Randart offered,
inwardly despising that absurd order about not killing the enemy until they
killed first. For Randart, there was no consideration for fellow countrymen,
much less pirates or brigands. If you stood against him, you were an enemy.
Enemies deserve death. Clear and simple.

Canardan snorted. “No, he can be blamed for being an idiot
who cannot defend himself against a couple of bush skulkers. But he will be a
married idiot as soon as we lay hands on Math’s girl. We’ll make it a grand
festival, with public pardons handed out like roses.”

Randart did not hide his surprise, or his displeasure.

“Carefully chosen ones,” Canardan said swiftly, mistaking
the direction of Randart’s ire. “Anyway, as soon as Jehan shows up in Ellir,
we’ll know where he is. Send a message to him to stay put for the midsummer
games. He can wine and dine the winning cadets, he can hold musical parties, he
can visit every poet and painter in the city, but he is to
stay put
.”

“I’ll send a dispatch as soon as we’re done.”

“We’re done. Go yourself. Hunt down that pirate. I don’t
care if you use the entire fleet. The Chwahir plan is a disaster, blockading
doesn’t work, and we can’t even get our trade protected, so you, my friend, are
going pirate hunting, and when you do find them, kill them all. Make certain
not one is left alive to come back here and blab all over about our villainy.
Against
pirates
.”

Each considered how unfair that was.

“The only one I want left alive is the girl, and you bring
her directly to me,” the king ordered.

“Consider it done.” Randart got up and left.

o0o

That night, Atanial awoke abruptly, aware someone was in
her room.

If that’s Canary, I
will scream so loud they’ll hear me in Sartor
. She sat bolt upright in bed
and yanked the covers to her neck.

A shape passed before the faint starlight glowing in her
window, a female shape. Stout, with an ill-confined cloud of frizzy hair.

“Ananda?” she whispered, astonished.

“Yes,” came the queen’s soft voice. “No, do not light a
candle. I am believed to be sleepwalking. It’s part of my madness.”

Atanial gave her eyes a vigorous rub, then she patted the
bed, which was large enough to sleep a family comfortably. “Come. Talk to me.
I’m glad you’re still alive.”

“Oh, he would never dare touch me,” Queen Ananda said dryly.
“After all, it’s my name that brought him the crown, even if he put his
Merindar chalice on all the shields and carriages. He’s no Zhavalieshin.
Neither is his boy. Though I wouldn’t mind if Jehan were,” she added in a
reflective voice.

“Jehan?” Atanial prompted as the bed shifted and the queen
settled, hands clasped around her knees. “Tell me about him.”

The two women regarded one another in the pale starlight.
The queen knew she was unprepossessing, but then she’d always been
unprepossessing: short, plump, her hands broad, her nose a hawk beak, her hair
an uncontrollable frizzy mat of yellow. Her brother Mathias was the tall,
well-made version of frizz and nose who’d gone away and come back with this
stunning beauty from another world.

“I know him little. What I do know, I shall tell you anon.”

Atanial heard the hesitation in her voice and misconstrued
the reason. She exclaimed impulsively, “First I want to say this. I never saw
you after your father’s memorial. This is
years
of your time too late, but I apologize if I ever made you suffer.”

“No,” the queen murmured. “You didn’t. I knew what Canardan
was after when he flirted with you. I only fooled myself once, when I believed
his blandishments during our courtship. But I didn’t know what real love was
until I saw you with Math.”

Atanial bowed her head until her brow rested on her knees,
which she’d brought up under the covers. Her voice was muffled. “Then my
flirtation with Canary must have looked doubly bad to you.”

“I could see you keeping it light and merry.”

“Yes. And no. He is amazingly attractive, or at least was.”
Atanial sighed. “So flirting with him was fun. Dancing close to the fire. I
thought you didn’t care, I thought you didn’t notice, I thought I could in some
way help Math. And oh, I have to admit I liked the danger. But he burned me
good, right along with Math.”

The queen nodded. “I know that, and I have my own confession
to make. I believe it is my fault that you and Math had to run. You see, I told
Canardan the night my father died that I was going to renounce the crown in
favor of Math.”

“You did? We never heard that!”

“Of course not. You only suffered the results. I thought I
could deflect Canardan from taking power, but I had misjudged everything.
Including his reasons for marrying me.”

“Oh, Ananda. I’m so sorry. So that’s behind the mad-queen
story?”

“When he said I went mad with grief over my father’s death
and my brother’s treachery, for five years he made sure I saw no one in order
to deny it. I did not have the wit or ability to resist. So life went on,
passing me by. I became a nonentity.” The queen shrugged, her voice briefly
caustic, reminding Atanial momentarily of Math. “Maybe I deserved it a little,
though I never asked to be born to a title. But I finally realized that the
guise of madness was a convenience for us both. He gets the power he wanted,
and I have my freedom within these walls. However, taking power has not proved
easy for Canardan. Things have gone wrong for him, especially in the past few
years. Ever since Jehan came back. Canardan’s become very determined as a
result.”