Sasharia En Garde (30 page)

Prince Jehan waved a hand around, then indicated the woman
at his side. “Artist, paints fans. Needed one, it’s so hot. Decided to buy one
for my stepmother. Aren’t we going back to Vadnais now that the games are done?
I want to take a present to Queen Ananda.”

There was Randart’s cue. “I am going to sea. The king wanted
you to stay put. Remember, your highness? I did tell you the king’s wishes.
Directly after the games.”

“Of course. I remember. But we’re in the harbor. Not going
anywhere. I thought I might pick out a nice fan, return to shore on the morning
tide. Be ready for my father’s summons. Have a gift for Queen Ananda.
Everything in order.”

It actually indicated a thought process.

Randart turned his head, summoned his personal aide with a
glance, and flicked his gaze fore and aft. The man sketched a salute, beckoned
to his handpicked searchers, and they began strolling the length of the yacht,
not quite making their search obvious.

Jehan lifted a hand. “Come! Have a drink. Hungry?”

Randart remembered that he had not eaten since morning. And
the Fool, for all his lack of brains, did supposedly have good taste in food,
wine, and comforts. “Yes. As it happens, I am. Damedran?” He turned to his
nephew.

Damedran stood there on the deck glowering. He ached from
skull to heels. His gut was indeed empty because why? Because by the time he’d
limped his way into the mess hall after the day’s disaster otherwise known as
the games, there’d been the summons to come up to the command tower and repeat
everything the seniors had said about Prince Jehan’s attempted arrest of the
cutpurse the day before.

He hadn’t remembered anything but the barest fact that it
had happened, and so, by the time they’d sent someone to fetch Ban—being the
most serious and trustworthy of the seniors in his group—and by the time he’d
stood by while his uncle and father had asked Ban about a million stupid
questions about what he’d seen (and from above! Why not ask people who’d
actually been there?) it was already late. Then came the astonishing news that
Wolfie, Red, and the other two were all in the lazaretto. Wolfie, the strongest
boy in the entire academy, had a broken leg. Given to him when he’d tried to
jump a nine-year-old.

Damedran had been trying to reconcile those broken bones
with his own experience when he became aware of his uncle ranting on about the
fact that Prince Jehan was missing, as was the royal boat from the dock.

Come on
, his uncle
had said.
If it’s necessary to act, you
are going to need to be there.

Well, here they were. So what kind of “act” was expected of
someone who probably couldn’t even grip a sword? Damedran tried to flex his
stiff hands.

For all his uncle complained about the sheep’s stupidity,
Damedran had discovered during a private challenge a couple of years ago that
the training the idiot had gotten out west was very effective even for idiots.
Damedran knew he wasn’t going to win any duel, no matter what his uncle wanted.
He could barely walk.

“Come,” a voice said directly above Damedran, as a wine
goblet was pressed into his hand. “Come sit down. You’ve had a rough day. I
know. I’ve been through much the same.”

Damedran looked up uncomprehending into Prince Jehan’s face.

“I was hoping to talk to you,” the sheep went on, not
sounding like a sheep at all, though it was exactly the same calm, vague voice.
“We really need some changes to the training, and who better to help me figure
those out than you?”

“Who worse,” Damedran said. Or he tried to say it. His voice
was too hoarse.

“Now, now. One thing I learned in Marloven Hess was, you
plan better after a thumping than if you win. And I had enough thumpings to
prove it. Let’s get some food and drink into you, first. Come into the cabin.”

Damedran heard his uncle’s voice, his forced joviality as he
asked to be introduced to the crew, and followed the sheep down into the cabin,
gulping wine as he did so. Life had turned into a dream. No, a nightmare. A
place where suddenly nothing made sense.

o0o

First thing Jehan had said was, “Hide that hair!” before
he sped away to make ready, and Zel had taken him at his word.

The floppy hat had vanished unnoticed, and my braids were frizzing
like the Bride of Frankenstein, after the time in the quilt, followed by my
salt-water conditioning treatment.

First I changed out of Jehan’s clothes and into her
husband’s cooking outfit. At least Kaelande’s clothes were roomy, as he was a
stocky man. Over them I wore his apron. While I sat on an upturned bucket,
Zel’s small fingers undid all my braids with lightning speed. She twisted my
hair (which would make the most flagrant neo-pre-Raphaelite maiden look bald)
into a knot, skewered it with a sail-making tool of some kind, then yanked
Jehan’s knit sailor cap over it all. It hurt my scalp enough to make my head
throb, but it held.

Jehan appeared at the galley door. I straightened
up—carefully, as my topknot brushed the ceiling—and his face changed
expression. It was the most serious I’d ever seen him.

“What? What?” Zel and I exclaimed together.

“You look just like Mathias.” And before anyone could speak,
Jehan yanked open one of the cupboards, pulled out a wooden container, lifted
the lid. He grabbed a handful of flour and threw it in my face.

I gasped, coughing.

“They’re here,” Owl’s voice had carried softly from the
deck.

“Don’t touch it,” Jehan flung over his shoulder at me. To
Kaelande, “She’s drunk. Make it look real.” He grabbed Zel’s hand and the two
of them scrambled up the companionway and ducked down low, almost crawling into
the cabin as I stood there blinking ground wheat off my eyelashes.

And while the Randarts were busy hooking on, their boats
thudding against the
Dolphin
’s hull,
their boots loud as they clambered up, Kaelande explained in a running whisper
what everything was in the galley, and where the food was stored, his hands
gesturing so fast I retained maybe one thing in six.

Meanwhile he splashed wine lightly down my—his—summer shirt
of blue cotton and more on the apron. He filled two goblets, and pushed one
into my hand. “Drink! We need wine breath.”

We each took a good swallow, then stood at either side of
the galley door and peered up through the hatch.

The war commander tromped past, followed by half a dozen
hulking guards. Though I’d never seen any of the Randarts close up before, I
recognized them immediately: huge guys, buff as all get-out, bony faces with
tough-guy cheekbones. Thick black hair. The commander’s was streaked with gray
in a way that any Hollywood hairdresser would charge a thousand bucks to
arrange. As for his expression, his armed-to-the-teeth, I’m-in-command-here
walk, sinister?
That
I remembered.

Damedran looked like a high-school-aged edition of his uncle,
with long and glossy hair. But he wasn’t moving like his uncle, at least not
now. I knew what had happened to him, but it was quite shocking to see his
blackened eye, bruised jaw, one swollen ear, and his slow, painful step. He
might strut all over the academy like Mr. I’m-Too-Sexy-For-My-War-Tunic, but
right now he looked like he longed for a week’s R and R—a thousand miles away.

A touch on my shoulder. “Let’s get some listerblossom into
that one,” Kaelande murmured, and spoke the soft words that made fire flare up
on the little galley stove.

He set a kettle over that to boil and pointed at a cupboard
to my right.

Everything was beautifully fitted together like the most
complicated puzzle box ever invented. The cupboard door slid up revealing a row
of tiny boxes, each neatly labeled with the name of an herb. He touched the
listerblossom, and indicated the tea strainer.

Light from the lantern hanging over the companionway ladder
was blocked. We turned around to face Randart himself.

He was tall, husky, and absolutely exuded menace, at least
standing there in the galley door, a naked knife stuck through his sash, a
sword at his side and his eyes narrow slits of suspicion.

It seemed to me he gave Kaelande the briefest of glances and
focused all his attention on me.

I heard the sound of the water change to a boil. Yes! It
gave me something to do, and maybe even within my limited cooking ability. With
shaking fingers, I tried to pinch my listerblossom into the tea strainer—the
yacht lurched—I dropped some of the listerblossom. Kaelande’s fingers twitched
as if to take over, but he reached for his wine instead, and I took the hint,
swooped up my goblet, took a swig.

With burning eyes, I finished measuring out the tea and
poured the water.

Randart watched all this without speaking.

From behind came Jehan’s voice. “Do I smell healer tea?”

I thought of my American accent, and faked a pitiful cough
as I cudgeled my brain for any kind of accent. Kaelande was from Colend—this
was a prince’s yacht—special chef—special accent? But I had no idea how to
reproduce that lovely singsong characteristic of the Colendi, which was about
as opposite of my plain L.A. accent as you could get.

Well, when in doubt, there is always Pepé Le Pew-style fake
French.

Using that, I drawled, “Ze healer brew, it is for ze young
mastaire.”

Jehan’s expression did not alter a whit. “Ah, excellent
thought, Lasva.”

Lasva
, one of the
most common names from Sartor to Colend.

Jehan took the tea. “We would like dinner. Is it possible?
You seem to have begun your off-duty libations a trifle early. Please serve in
the cabin. Kaelande, will you stay on as galley aid?”

Kaelande bowed, and belatedly I bowed, too, the forgotten
goblet tipping in my hand. The last of the wine sloshed onto the deck. Kaelande
and I reached for the cloth on the little hook over the cleaning bucket, and
our heads bumped together. Kaelande laughed, and kissed my shoulder, which made
me whoop with surprise.

Randart turned away, rolling his eyes in disgust. From the
companionway came his voice, “I don’t suppose you have a reason for keeping on
hire a drunken cook?”

“Ah, but she is an artist. In all ways, the kitchen and in—”

Randart retorted in a voice of acute revulsion, “Spare me.
I’m surprised your entire crew is not made up of women. Pardon, your highness,
artists
.”

“Do not think I have not tried to achieve that very thing!
But they get bored, they move on to something else. I cannot seem to get them
to stay.”

“My sympathies,” Randart’s voice diminished, “I find are
entirely with the women. So you’ve had that cook for a while? Didn’t your
father mention he’d hired a man, a Colendi?”

Their voices were mere mumbles now, drowned by the lapping
of the sea against the hull, and the creaking wood.

While I listened, Kaelande swiped up the rest of the flour
as well as the wine, and dunked the cloth into the bucket. The snap and flare
of magic restored the cleaning cloth, which he hung up to dry. Then he gestured
me into the corner, out of the way while he swiftly retrieved ingredients from
this or that cupboard, his hands moving so fast they were almost a blur to my
tired eyes.

“Can you cook?” he whispered.

“Mac cheese, tuna melts and PBJs,” I muttered. “Uh, all
those require boxes, cans, microwaves. You may as well call it magic.”

“You’ll have to serve. I think he remembers me.” Kaelande
drew a wicked knife from a nifty holder fitted above his cutting board and
began chopping onions and olives. “What you are going to make is a Colendi dish
called the Duchess Changes Her Mind—” He named it in Colendi, explaining that
the words held two meanings. (Since it was Colendi, I wouldn’t have been
surprised if it had six meanings. Think French style of the
Ancien Regime
, except with the age and
sophistication of the Imperial Chinese Court.)

Then he opened the spice-and-herb cupboard again, and
carefully removed a single sprig of a pungent spice.

As he began mincing it with swift chops, the fresh scent
threw me back in memory to my childhood.

It’s so strange, how smell can be even more powerful at
evoking memory than all the other senses. Even sight. Though we always think
first of sight.

But I no sooner sniffed that herb than I was right back at
the palace in Vadnais, a little kid again, looking up at Canary’s big grin, his
dashing long hair and heroic stature. Canary . . . my mother
laughing at something he said . . .

My mother. A prisoner in Vadnais.

My mother’s voice,
The
thing about Canary was, he always had to be the rescuer, the solver, the good
guy. He might even have believed what he said—

Good guy. Canary.

There was some important thought here, but I was distracted
by Kaelande, who started explaining how to cook his dish, which was a kind of
very, very light crepe, into which wine-and-oil sautéed onions, tomatoes and
olives were wrapped. Over it some of that crumbly, delicious cheese was
sprinkled.

“Now. You must cook this together,” he murmured, dashing
wine and the spice over the olives and onions in a shallow pan. He added the
tomatoes last, murmured something, gestured, and the flame lowered. He set the
shallow pan over it, and I wedged my way in to his left. We stood there
shoulder to shoulder, and I reflected on how we were definitely inside each
other’s personal space, but there was no sense of a boundary crossed. No
intimate space. With Jehan, I felt like we were in intimate space when he stood
twenty feet away.

Kaelande didn’t seem to feel anything either. No furtive
looks, and his touch was neutral. Yet I supposed from the galley door we looked
like a lovey-dovey pair, so close together. Now, if Jehan had been in here—

Just the idea of being pressed up against him in this tiny
galley sent heat from my cheeks to my chitlins.