Sword (6 page)

Taireasa laughed and let him lead her, though they both knew he had no idea where he was going. “I believe that violates at least a few laws, not to mention the fact that they may not vote for
me
, and you well know it.”

“Of course they will,” Devin scoffed. “Look what their other choices are. They’re hardly going to choose me or Kyali to rule the kingdom. Can you imagine? You’re the king’s daughter, you’re sensible and wise and, most importantly, you’re not a sword-brandishing, war-mad Corwynall.”

"You're not particularly war-mad, Devin," Taireasa said dryly.

"Well. By association. Which will be more than enough to put the barons off me."

"Fair point," she sighed, and freed her arm to go peer down a branch of passage that looked darker than night, but smelled faintly of bread. She set the lantern down. "This one."

"Does it lead straight into the kitchens?"

There was a flash of teeth in the dimness. "Closer to the wine cellars."

"Marry me
now
," Devin begged, and she giggled, sounding much more like herself, thank the gods. "I never knew you were carrying such useful secrets. Where else do they go?"

"Oh, everywhere. Perhaps I'll spend the next few years here, creeping out to steal food after night falls."

"Gods, Taireasa, surely you told him no."

"My father did."

"And?" He felt like he was missing something and pulled her around to look her in the face. “So?”

"This is the second time he's asked," Taireasa said in a small voice.

"Tell him no again! Say it until he hears it. If he's fool enough to think—"

"You don't
know
! You've no idea how—" She waved his words away with an angry sweep, then paced off to glare at the floor, hands on her hips. The lanternlight threw her shadow over the tunnel in pieces. "We've gotten letters from all the other barons of the West and most of the lesser Western lords supporting it. Baron Cyrnic suggested that the vote would go more smoothly if I were
settled
, Walderan said that relations with the whole West would improve… they said that I would be a better… a better…
oh
."

Taireasa put her hands to her head and breathed carefully, every line of her shouting misery and hurt. “They said I would be a better queen if I had someone with experience in matters of state to guide me.”

The anger he’d gotten mostly under control leapt out of his grasp and the lantern slid a full handspan sideways and tottered, but thankfully didn't tip over. Taireasa flung it a startled glance, then him a wary one. Devin barely noticed.

"Gods damn them, then! Taireasa, you aren't considering this. Tell me you're not. King Farrell would never stand for it—and your mother would burn Sevassis to the ground first."

“But what if they’re
right
?”

There was no response to that she’d hear right now, so he gave her the only one he could: he pulled her into the circle of his arms and held tight. They didn’t embrace often—he might think of her as a sister, but she was still the daughter of another House, and royal, and beautiful, and rumors bred like rabbits in these halls—and she stiffened in his hold before heaving a sigh and slumping to lean on him. They stood that way for a few moments, until they were both a little uncomfortable, and then separated. Taireasa wiped her face on her sleeve.

"They're not," Devin said firmly. "They're wrong and you know it, just as you know they're only doing this to stir up trouble and get some concession or other. Why King Farrell doesn't just raise the trade tariffs on their wine, or levy some new 'contentious bastard' tax on anyone who holds a landed title, I don't know; it would shut them all up for years, I swear."

She put a hand to her face and leaned against the crumbling wall, her shoulders shaking. It took him a moment to realize it was laughter—prudently silent, but so hard she wheezed, and flapped her free hand at him.

"
Gods
, you are your father's son," she gasped.

"Oh, come now, he'd never suggest anything so silly."

"He'd suggest it and
mean
it," Taireasa contradicted him merrily. "I take it back. You
are
a war-mad Corwynall, to the very core. Oh, dear gods, that's wonderful. Thank you, Devin."

He was still stuck on the notion of his father making such a suggestion, whether in jest or seriousness. It was hard to picture. He followed her, content to be quiet now that she had composed herself, and held the lantern when she crouched to get her ear close to another of the odd little doors that led to the rest of the castle.

He was definitely going to remember about these tunnels. Escaping Emayn would be so much easier now.

Taireasa pressed on a clever iron latch hidden in a seam and the door cracked open in total silence. She peered out, ducked quickly back in, and then peeped out again after a long moment. She tugged the handle of the lantern out of his fingers and blew it out, then set it far to the side of the door.

"Come on," she whispered, and leapt out like a cat, letting in a flicker of daylight as the tapestry covering the door flapped around her. Devin threw himself after her, then quickly leaned out of the way as she pushed past him to pull the door shut with a grunt of effort. For a moment they stood together under the tapestry, stained by the sunlight shining through its colors, dust hovering thickly between them, both of them flush with success and the hilarity of a trick accomplished well and without consequence. Devin felt a fleeting envy for Kyali, who had done this so many more times, and who probably knew so many more secrets. He'd had their cousins, childhood friends and rivals and co-conspirators in a thousand mad plots, but what his little sister had with Taireasa was something else altogether, precious and uncompromising.

No wonder Taireasa was so wounded by Kyali's leaving.

He was getting maudlin. He flapped the tapestry up and ducked out from under it, then immediately started brushing himself off, because with the daylight shining on his clothes, he could see that he looked like a sculpture of himself, made of dust and old mortar.

Taireasa strode to the end of their little hall and looked around the corner. "Let's go, then," she sighed, tucking her hand in his elbow as he joined her. "We ought to cross the kitchens, but there'll be serving staff everywhere. Much as I'd rather not, we'll have to cross the main corridor."

"Just walk like you belong," Devin suggested. This should be interesting. Her eyes were still puffy, and he looked like he'd rolled in some strange pale dirt. He hoped Brisham heard about them walking the halls this way: that would give the old bastard something to worry over.

"I always do," Taireasa said, her voice cool and amused, her court smile fixed firmly in place as they entered the main corridor and met the first of many shocked stares. "I always do."

C
HAPTER
4

M
ornings were the worst.

Kyali had never thought of herself as a slugabed—her father had the household up as soon as the sun rose, a habit that had taken root in her, if not in Devin—but the Clans were up well before dawn even during the long bright days of summer. She rolled off her mat with a sigh, having grown accustomed to this over the last year, if not accepting of it, and fumbled in the dark for a comb. Her hair seemed to have wrapped itself about her face in the night. Her arms were stiff and sore—a state they had been in since the first day she'd arrived in the mountains to learn the Fraonir way of the sword—but they weren't as bad as they had been a week ago. She stretched them carefully. Around her, at a small distance, she could hear Clansfolk rising: the soft murmur of greetings, a rattle of metal, the crackle of a fire being brought back to life.

An impatient scratch at the canvas wall of her tent.

Arlen had beaten her again; he did every morning. One day, she promised herself, she was going to wake earlier than her teacher, and perhaps on that day she might even get through her lessons without doing something that made her look like an idiot.

"I'm awake," she called, pulling on her boots, trying to make that statement true.

"Not so long as you're in there and I'm out here, you're not," Arlen said dourly, sounding as though he were standing right over her. Kyali finished securing lacings, pulled her hair hurriedly into a braid, straightened her trousers out, and pushed the flap of the tent back, trying not to scowl. It was hard not to believe, like some superstitious villager, that her sword teacher could see in the dark… among other things. Arlen always seemed to suspect what was in her head, no matter what she put on her face.

Which was still better than Saraid, her teacher in the Gift, who actually
did
know what was in her head.

It had been a long year.

"Yes, I can be awake even when you can't see me," she retorted, unable to keep the edge from her voice. There was a grunt from Arlen that might have been laughter. He was a tall, broad shadow in the faint pink light of a false dawn, arms folded, the long line of a sword arching over one shoulder. Kyali smothered a yawn and bowed, one hand in a fist over her heart, the other on the hilt of her sword, which was belted at her side.

"
Landanar
," she murmured, the title of respect for a Fraonir master of the sword.

"Student," her teacher replied. "Since you're so awake, girl, you can start with the Forms, I'm sure. All of the Forms."

Oh gods
. She felt her shoulders trying to slump, and stopped that.

She followed him past the main common hearth of the Darachim Clan, where Mathin and Marya were putting the great kettle on for porridge, to the practice clearing, which was empty and calm and filled with that soft pink light. She set her feet carefully, drew the sword, and breathed in the pattern he had shown her. Arlen came to face her at a careful distance and unsheathed his own blade.

"Begin," he said softly, and Kyali brought her arms up, muscles protesting all down her back, to trace the first of the Fraonir Forms of Sword Combat against the glassy morning sky. The point of Arlen's sword mirrored hers, barely inches away. They circled one another in slow, endless revolutions, sketching patterns in the air as they made their way through the two hundred and twelve Forms. Sweat ran into her eyes and down her neck. Her breath, coming in the rhythmic pattern that matched these movements, burned in her throat. But her mind was as clear as the perfect bowl of the sky, filled with the flash of the sword and the feel of it extending her arms.

"Enough," her teacher finally declared, looking a bit worse for wear himself. Kyali staggered backward gasping, her head humming. It took her three tries to sheathe her sword; she was trembling with exhaustion. Arlen watched, expressionless.

"Well done," he said when she had finally managed it. She looked up, certain he was mocking her sudden inability to make her wrists work, but he actually seemed pleased. "Truly," he added, seeing her disbelief. "
Well done
, Kyali. Did you think these lessons were easy? For anyone? You've mastered a great deal in one year."

Mastered?
She could barely stand. She looked at her hands, which were weathered by sun and wind, and so covered with calluses they looked like a farmer's. Like they belonged to somebody else.

Arlen tipped her chin up. "No part of it's easy," he said, sympathy plain in his voice for a rare moment. "Particularly not for you."

"I… " She shut her mouth again. She couldn't think of a thing to say to that.

"You're doing well," Arlen said then, almost too quickly, as though he didn't want this discussion to go… wherever he had thought it might go. It was one of his odder habits, completely unlike his usual methodical calm, and it always left her wondering what dread Clan secrets he feared she might learn. "We can move on to the Forms for mounted combat now, I think."

Whatever expression was on her face, it made him laugh outright. "Those lessons should go faster," her teacher added, apparently meaning it as reassurance.

For one horrible, overwhelmed moment, she was afraid she was going to either shout at him or weep. She drew a slow breath, fighting to make her face still. "How many more?" she asked carefully, after a brief pause to get a firm grip on her composure.

"Oh, just sixty more for swordcraft ahorse. Were you to learn the staff or the spear as well, we'd be at this for many more years."

"Oh," Kyali said faintly. "I don't have a horse, Arlen."

"Yes, you do—you just haven't been introduced. We brought her over from the Eanin Clan a fortnight past, and she's been waiting—impatiently, I might add; you two should be a match in temperament if nothing else—for you to finish your footwork."

This had a slightly grudging tone. The Eanin were the sister Clan to the Darachim, living on the western ridge, and while the Darachim were reputed better at fighting, nobody in the world bred horses like the Eanin did. Her father had one, long ago, and still spoke of it like it had fallen from the skies in a shaft of light.

"I…"

She was at a loss for words far too often today. She scowled, then nodded, because there was nothing else to do. She'd wondered about fighting astride, but a whole new
set
of Forms seemed excessive.

"Come on," Arlen said. "We're due a breakfast, and you're due a meeting with your horse. Rest yourself, if Saraid gives you the chance. I'm taking you out on patrol this afternoon.”

He turned back toward the camp on this startling declaration, leaving her to follow, and to swallow a number of useless questions. She had learned in the first week here that Arlen would only answer the unasked ones, only comment when a subject was no longer in her thoughts, and in most cases, preferred to let her stew and come to her own mistaken conclusions.

The camp was empty when they returned, all the Clansfolk out hunting deer or on patrol, guarding against outlaws and the occasional incursion by the Allaida on the northwest border, who sometimes climbed the mountains to raid. Only Saraid remained by the common hearth, sitting on a bench and finishing off a bowl of porridge. Her gray hair was so long she was practically sitting on it. Kyali fetched herself a bowl, then fetched another for Arlen, who wandered off with it to whatever else a Clan leader might have to do for the day. When he was out of sight, Kyali folded herself stiffly onto the ground, trying not to groan.