Sasharia En Garde (54 page)

He sent a sharp look at his son, half expecting one of
Math’s idiotic replies about ideals and loyalty and oaths, but Jehan just
squinted up at the sky, admiring a flight of birds flying north for winter.
Canardan sat back, wondering irritably why he was thinking of Math, of all
people. Maybe he shouldn’t eat so many smackerberry tartlets on hot mornings.

At first things began exactly as Canardan predicted.

Jehan stood behind his father’s cushioned chair on a hastily
made dais as guild masters and mistresses unloosed long, carefully written
speeches that were almost comical, how constrained they were to be complimentary
to the king and yet make their demands clear.

Another person might have laughed at how the plump,
red-cheeked Wood Guild Master bowed every time he made a demand, followed by
half a dozen effusive compliments. “As your majesty well knows, your loyal
populace appreciates your condescension in . . .”
hoola-loola-loo. “But.” Bow. “We feel that if we are truly to move past the sad
events of two decades ago, as you have often said so gracefully in your Oath
Day speeches, then perhaps it might be deemed wise to forgive the, ah, assumed
transgressions of these unfortunates in custody . . .” Bow.

Jehan did not laugh. Nor did he find the thin,
tremble-voiced Hatters Guild Mistress funny when her good shoes, worn once a
year, squeaked as she walked to the front. Her speech had been signed by all
the people involved in hat making. As if the king cared for any of those named,
but Jehan could imagine the courage it had taken to tramp the hot streets
during this unconscionably hot autumn weather, collecting these names,
believing that the number of them would impress the king.

Jehan sustained a brief but intense memory of Prince Math’s
face. He would care. He would listen. Jehan knew it. He could almost see Math
listening to the frightened old woman, his head tilted at an encouraging angle.

Pity conflicted with resentment for his father’s faint air
of endurance, of boredom, the little smile that indicated the king was far off
in thought. These people with their wretched speeches so full of clumsy
hyperbole were not laughable at all. They were simply out of their realm of
experience, but that was evidence of their courage. Wasn’t it?

That image of Prince Math nodded emphatically, frizzy hair
lifting like a sun corona round his head.

When the Hatters had had their say, they were followed by
the Bricklayers and Stonemasons, the Silversmiths, the Ironmongers, the Millers
and Bakers and Toymakers and Brewers and Vintners.

After the Coopers’ Guild Master hoarsely whispered through
his speech, the sea-related guilds were yet to come. Canardan raised a hand,
and the old Cooper hastened to his seat as though he feared the sword on the
spot.

“Good people.” Canardan smiled, lifting his voice so all
could hear. “I did say that each of you would have a chance to speak, and I keep
my word. Khanerenth’s tradition grants that all have access to the king. In
turn, the king has access to all. We will not hasten into any decision, be
assured, before all you are heard. This has been our civil
law . . .”

A flash of warning tightened along Jehan’s nerves. He
remembered his father’s words earlier about whittling down and realized what
was coming next.

A moment later Canardan said, “. . . as for
military matters, we all know that those are conducted separately.”

He’s going to cut out
Silvag and Folgothan first
. Jehan remembered his father’s conversation with
Randart, and his careless promise to deal with the matter “later.” Apparently
later meant now.

Canardan paused for the expected agreement, and of course he
got it. He’d spoken no more than the truth. They could also feel the threat
coming as Canardan said, “. . . and so we can agree that
military matters can be effectively overseen by War Commander Randart—”

There was the name, and the implied judgment flitting toward
the future, bearing those men’s lives, impossible to retrieve.

“—who is, as we all know, a follower of the law.” Jehan
stood, heart hammering. His gaze slid past his astonished father, to the
people.

Canardan stared at Jehan. Once again, this time more
distinctly, there was the impulse to laugh. These good people looked so
surprised, as if the unlit chandelier had begun to spout poetry. Or more to the
point, if a sheep had trotted in from a nearby field and raised up its voice to
discourse on law.

He waved a hand to invite Jehan to speak, wondering what the
boy could possibly have to say.

“I admire the war commander second to none.” Jehan turned in
a slow circle, meeting everyone’s eyes in turn. “You all will remember how well
he reorganized the academy. The new regulations were strict, but all the old
favoritism and slackness disappeared. He is an example to us all in how he
obeys regulations from dawn to dusk, the same as the smallest cadet and the
oldest guard captain.”

He paused for breath, got an encouraging nod from his father,
and went on in his blandest voice. “So I just know he’ll remind us that the two
guardsmen are in fact ex-guardsmen, hmm, and though I don’t always pay
attention the way I should, it seems to me that they might be termed, ah—”

“Civilians, if I may beg your highness’s pardon,” the guild
master said, rising with more haste than dignity. He bowed to Jehan and to the
king. “Former guardsmen Silvag and Folgothan are civilians.” His voice was
reedy with relief. Now he was on sure ground: civilian law.

“That is true,” the Heralds’ Guild representative said,
raising a quill. “They have not been under orders for twenty years—”

“Their oaths were refused,” exclaimed a voice from the back,
and in the susurrus of
quiet
’s and
shhh
’s that followed, the Scribe Guild’s
representative said in her soft, mild voice, “If they have not received pay in
twenty years, and that is easy to check in the paymaster’s books, they are
civilians in all points of law.”

Someone in the back snarled, “I will not be silent! I’m
related to the Folgothans, and I know they didn’t do a thing, just talked. Are
we all to be arrested for just talking, that is what I want to know!”

Everyone started asking questions and putting demands across
one another, with many anxious glances sent toward the king.

Jehan sat down again, affecting boredom as his father sighed
loudly. Couldn’t he see how anxious people were for reassurance? Couldn’t he
understand how much they longed to hear the king promise that their way of life
would be protected?

Canardan rose to his feet, the guard moving to flank him.
The crowd fell silent, everyone there hot and tired, and despite his dismissive
words, not there for pleasure. Canardan began to speak, using his humorous
voice. He cracked a couple of jokes about the heat and heated comment, and then
set out to soothe them.

But underneath every sentence his father uttered, Jehan
heard the promise of the invasion. The kingdom would “soon” have land and
wealth. There “would be” prestige “soon” for the warriors, the crown, the
nobles. And that meant “prosperity” for every single artisan.

As for the promised trial, he assured them that there was no
hurry, he granted more time for negotiation, and yes, the conspirators would be
kept perfectly safe.

As he spoke, Jehan saw glances returning his way. Thoughtful
glances. Jehan suspected his remarks would be repeated in private, maybe
discussed, and passed along. The quickest ones had recognized what he had done.

It would have to be enough for now. He knew that this would
be his last appearance in public, and not just because his father was annoyed
at what he seemed to be choosing to regard as a typically cloud-minded blunder.

The time for all guises to be ripped away was nigh. Damedran
Randart was hot on Sasharia Zhavalieshin’s trail, and if he caught up with her,
the final confrontation would be forced on them all.

“Let’s go.” Canardan sat back in the carriage, arms crossed,
his profile disgusted.

Once again Jehan had slipped just ahead of disaster. Not
because of his own ability, he thought as the carriage rattled along the
brick-patterned main street, but because his father did not want to see
disaster.

As for Jehan himself, his own sense of honor required one
last attempt to reach his father. Jehan was not loyal to his father’s politics,
and never would be, but he remained loyal to the good memories of childhood,
the interest, care, and kindness exhibited in their private moments, when
matters of state had not divided them. He believed in the possibility of good
intention underneath all the vagaries, the series of ambivalent decisions that
had slowly led to worse ones.

And he would exert himself to try, even at the risk of his
own life, to bridge that chasm of lies between them: to get his father to admit
that he was about to break a treaty and throw the kingdom into war.

As the days dragged on, full of noisy parties with too much
food, too many people and far too many empty words chattered in his ears, he
became aware that his father was increasingly restless.

Though Randart reported daily via magic to the king, as far
as Jehan could determine, there was no mention whatsoever of Damedran’s secret
mission.

Meanwhile, Atanial was gone, leaving a confusing number of
rumors about where she was. At last count, she’d been seen in thirty-eight
different villages around the kingdom, including a town five weeks’ journey
away.

The unseasonable autumn heat broke at last.

On a bleak, rainy morning, Jehan stared sightlessly out at
the rainwater gushing from a waterspout beyond his window, and vowed that
whatever the result, if his father was honest with him, he’d drop all pretense
and speak the truth in return. And take the consequences either way—but his
instinct was that Canardan, once he got past his anger, would try to find a way
to meet him.

That was, if Randart stayed out of it.

Not half a bell later, Jehan felt the tingle of magic. He’d
taken to wearing his gold box next to his skin, waking and sleeping.

He had been about to go down to breakfast. He signaled to
Kazdi to watch the other servants and took out Owl’s note.

Damedran’s got her.
I’m following. Orders?

Jehan flicked the note into the fire, watched it curl and
burn away, snapped the box closed, and stowed it in his tunic.

Kazdi’s young face was serious, his brow puckered in question.

Jehan flicked his hand out, palm down.
Wait here.

He ran downstairs to meet his father.

This is it
. He
wasn’t ready—too soon—such thoughts flitted through his mind, faster than he
could move, leaving him tense and filled with regret.

And so the two Merindars sat down at the table in the winter
breakfast room for the first time this year. The room had been recently cleaned
by the servants, potted plants moved in all around the edge of the room, tall
ferny ones before the row of north-facing windows.

To the son’s eye, the king was, as ever, big, bluff,
handsome, his manner that of a king. The weak light filtering in behind the
departing rain clouds shone on his long red hair and on the sides of his jaw,
where jowls gradually growing more marked over the years blurred the strength
there.

To the father’s eye the son—so difficult to understand and
so exasperating to control—appeared thinner than he remembered, his slim body
tense. Not only that, but his entire manner was
present
, his blue gaze uncharacteristically acute.

Neither spoke as the servants brought in the steaming silver
dishes, and so for a time the only sounds were those of clinking metal against
porcelain, the whisper of feet on the floor, and beyond the windows the soft,
occasional hiss of diminishing bands of rain.

Finally the king lifted his chin. The servants, alert to
royal gestures, filed out, and Chas took up station inside the door.

“You have something on your mind, son?” Canardan asked.

“Several things,” Jehan replied, toying with a piece of hot
biscuit. “Here is the first. I am tired of parties. I want to do something with
purpose.”

The king tapped his knife lightly against his plate, not
really hearing the restless, musical clink-clink-clink. “But the parties are to
a purpose.”

“Nothing that can’t wait.”

The king’s eyes narrowed. “Wait on what?”

“You tell me, Father. They all talk, but around me. Past me.
Knots of people of high degree and low. Innuendo, questions, secrets.”

Canardan started eating in a mechanical fashion, frowning at
the windows.

Jehan sensed ambivalence and tried again. “What is Randart
doing, Father?”

The king set down his cup. “Presiding over the war game. You
know that.”

“Why does a war commander need to spend weeks at a war
game?” Jehan countered. “Why am I not there instead, if my place is over him?”

Canardan laughed, a forced sound. “No one is really over
Dannath, you know that. To the people the king must be seen to command, and
that extends to the heir as well. But Randart is far better at military matters
than either of us. His eyes are the most discerning, and his report on our
readiness for trouble would be more valuable than either of us riding out to
camp in the mud to observe a lot of young men and women scrambling around
shouting and waving wooden swords, and pretending they aren’t watching us to
see where we’re looking. I’d sit there in boredom, no doubt thinking of all the
work lying here undone, and as for your own boredom, you’d inevitably solve
that by riding off in the middle of the night with the prettiest patrol leader
who had gotten some liberty.” Another forced laugh.

“And destroy someone’s career? Acquit me of that much
stupidity. We know anyone in the army I flirted with would be broken down to
the bottom rank as soon as Randart heard of it.”