The Silver Lake (64 page)

Tipping his head up, Danjel watched as the Godling turned and spun in the air, so close to a true form now that It resembled a fine, translucent dragonfly to almost anyone who knew how to look for It. “You’ll need a lot more of the details fleshed out to convince Kursk and Timur,” he warned.

“And to convince you?”

The other youth frowned, the green of his eyes paling to a fine, northern jade streaked with white. “With your few well chosen people I can see the stream,” he allowed, then he nodded. “Yes, I’ll help It.”

“Then let’s go place our shine, Kardos.”

Turning, Graize plunged down the hillside at once, the Godling trailing along behind him like a feathery comet. After a long, thoughtful pause, Danjel tucked the hawk fetish safely away in his belt pouch and followed them.

AT ESTAVIA-SARAYI, Usara’s Last Day dawned much as it had the year before, with a rising wind and a heavy, concealing bank of storm clouds to the west. As the first note of Havo’s Invocation filtered through the room’s latticed windows on a breath of cold wind, Brax painted the Battle God’s final protection along his right forearm and then gently wiped the brush clean before laying it across its white marble drying rack. As he turned, he caught sight of Kemal standing just inside the door holding a silk shirt draped across one arm. His brows drew down.

“I can get dressed by myself,” he said, then scowled at both the petulant tone and the poorly masked quaver of nervousness underneath it. “Everyone’s treating me like some kind of invalid.”

Behind him, a muffled snort from deep within the bed clothes made Spar’s opinion quite plain.

“Yeah, well, who asked you?” he shot back. “This is all your fault, anyway.”

“Today’s a special day,” Kemal replied as he came forward with a smile.

“That’s what everyone else keeps saying. It’s no different than any other Oath Day.”

“It’s entirely different,” Yashar noted from the doorway. “First Oaths are a time for family to celebrate together and, as you’re the only delinkos to ever take First Oaths at Estavia-Sarayi, everyone at Her temple is part of your family, and so everyone wants to celebrate with you.

“I did warn you,” he added as Brax began a new protest, “ten thousand abayon, remember?”

Brax just sighed.

He’d been up since well before dawn. Tanay herself had come to wake him, handing him a cup of hot salap before leading him into Kemal and Yashar’s bathing room. It had been crowded with junior priests of Oristo and he’d almost balked at the door, but one firm palm in the small of his back had propelled him into their midst.

An hour later, soaked, washed, shaved, trimmed, brushed, and covered in scented oils, he’d felt like a prize ram on market day. He’d said as much to Spar as he was being hustled back into their room and the younger boy’d just snickered at him before disappearing under the covers once more. Stretched across the bottom of the pallet, Jaq had lifted his head to peer reproachfully at him, then he, too, had lain back down again.

“Great. Everyone gets to sleep in except me,”
Brax had muttered.

A muffled,
“Serves you right,”
had been Spar’s only response.

Now, as Brax lifted his arms at Kemal’s gesture, he shivered slightly as the cold silk whispered across his skin, then tried, more or less successfully, not to back away as Yashar stood aside to allow half a dozen more junior priests into the room, their arms laden with armor, weapons, and, thankfully, food. He accepted a piece of dried kilic fish from a gold-painted plate, then shook his head with a snort.

“What ?” Yashar asked as he caught up a dark blue woolen tunic from one of the priests, the twin swords of Cyan Company embroidered on the front gleaming in the lamplight.

Brax just shrugged. “Nothing. I was just remembering something I told Spar a long time ago about the Warriors of Estavia.”

“Something positive, I hope.”

“Sort of. I guess. I think I missed some of it.” Lifting his arms again, Brax waited until Yashar had pulled the tunic over his head before stuffing the fish into his mouth.

“Try not to get oil on your clothes,” Kemal admonished gently.

“Sorry.” About to reach for another piece of kilic, Brax chose a hunk of bread dripping with honey instead, ignoring Kemal’s expression. He was hungry all the time these days and if people were going to shove food under his nose, he was going to eat it; he hadn’t had a moment’s peace to eat quietly in over a week. Taking a deep breath as Kemal wrapped a red linen belt around his waist; he caught a bit of honey as it dribbled toward his tunic with an expression of both guilt and annoyance equally mixed.

Once the council had decided that he would take his oaths on Usara’s Last Day, the temple had exploded in a frenzy of activity. What little time Brax had off from the training yard had been taken up by lectures from Kaptin Liel’s battle-seers on the upcoming oath-takings, a series of painful pokings and proddings by Chief Healer Samlin’s physicians, and a steady barrage of downright bullying from Tanay’s servers. Peppered into the mix had been a constant stream of handling by the temple’s resident artisan-priests of Ystazia who’d descended on him like a swarm of panicking locusts. Every square inch of his body had been measured and remeasured by weavers, leather workers, embroiderers, and armorers until he’d wanted to scream at them to get away from him, but every time, one look from Spar had brought him up short.

The younger boy had deliberately repeated his words on the battlements after Brax’s first and only bolt the day after the council’s decision.

Brax had just glared at him in resentful silence.

“So what’s the problem?”
Spar had demanded again.

The
problem
was that he still hated being stared at as much as he’d ever hated it, and he
really
hated being lectured at, poked, prodded, bullied, drawn on, pinched, and stuck with little pins.

“I feel like I’m being measured up for a really expensive shroud,”
he’d replied through gritted teeth after a half a dozen tailors had handed him over to as many metalworkers.

“So next time drag us both to
Havo-
Sarayi instead of
Estavia-
Sarayi and they’ll just measure you up for a really expensive gardening apron.”

Spar had turned an impatient glare in his direction.
“Look, it isn’t all about you, all right? But it has to seem like it is on the surface. I told you things were happening, big things, scary things, things we might not want to happen. And if the people making them happen figure out that we’re on to them, they’ll make them happen someplace else where we’re not ready for them. But everyone’s ready for them here ‘cause they’ve all come together
here
for your oaths.”

Brax had cocked his head to one side.
“If that’s your first attempt at cryptic seer talk,”
he’d noted,
“it needs work.”

Spar had glared at him.
“Fine. You want it simple? You’re the distraction, I’m the lifter, everyone else is the mark.”

“Your pretty little outfit not all covered in blood,
Warrior of Estavia.”

His expression had dared Brax to make another joke, but after a moment, the older boy had just shrugged.
“Fair enough.”

Now as Kemal held up a small iron-studded leather cuirass, he noted that at least the one benefit of all this attention was that everything he was about to put on fit him like a second skin. If the rest of Her warriors were treated with even half so much deference as this, it was no wonder they all carried themselves with so much pride. The cuirass settled across his shoulders with an ancient familiarity that made the breath catch in his throat and he closed his eyes, feeling the lightest whisper of a warm caress across his mind. When he opened them again, Yashar was smiling at him in understanding. He held up a pair of new sandals.

“If you like, you can put these on yourself,” he offered graciously.

Brax accepted them with a grimace.

After he’d straightened, noting sourly that Yashar might have mentioned how hard it was to reach your feet while wearing a cuirass—and after Yashar had stopped laughing—his abayon together fitted the finely etched bronze greaves and vambraces onto his arms and legs, then Yashar wrapped a second old and worn leather belt around his waist as Kemal unwrapped a fine iron sword from a piece of heavily embroidered blue cloth. Brax raised an eyebrow at it as he slipped it into the plain leather scabbard that matched the belt.

“Your village or home garrison provides your weapons when you go to your first posting,” Kemal explained. “This was the first sword I ever wore in Her temple when I was sixteen. It was Bayard’s before that. The scabbard, too. I thought you might be able to make some use of it.”

“And speaking of home garrisons,” Yashar interrupted, digging Kemal in the ribs before Brax could answer. “The cloak pin.”

“Ah, yes.” Accepting a heavy blue woolen cloak from a junior priest, Kemal draped it across Brax’s shoulders with a smile. “The traditional First Oath gift, given to all delinkon by their families to symbolize the underpinning of the future by the past, is a cloak pin fashioned to represent your home village or home garrison. We debated over the form it should take for a long time...”

“Argued about it is more accurate,” Yashar interjected. “Kemal hated all of my
very
reasonable suggestions.”

“As you’ve seen,”
Kemal continued, pointedly ignoring the interruption, “Yashar’s is fashioned in the shape of a boat for Caliskan-Koy, mine is a sheep for Serin-Koy. The Anavatanon garrisons are all affiliated with one gatehouse tower or another, so their pins are usually in that shape...”

“But we didn’t think that would suit you, given your history with the city guard.” Yashar said dryly. “I thought about a pickpocket’s dip,” he added with a grin, “but you said you never used them.”

“I said
Spar
never used them,” Brax pointed out mildly.

“Ah, well, it’s too late to change it now.”

“Finally,” Kemal said firmly, “the God Herself gave us the answer.” He held out his hand to reveal a silver, rectangle-shaped pin fashioned to resemble a section of wall. “Defend my barrier. Wasn’t that what She told you?”

The final protection on his arm feeling as warm as his face, Brax ducked his head, suddenly unable to speak as Kemal fastened the pin to his cloak.

“Your past: the city itself; and your future: its defense in Her name. And now...” Taking him by the shoulders, he turned him toward a heavy, gilt-framed mirror held by two of Oristo’s delinkon. “You’d hardly recognize the delon who faced down Estavia’s council a full year ago, would you?” he asked as Brax stared at his reflection in wonder.

An unfamiliar, armored youth of medium height, with long, thick, black hair woven with strands of silver and gold and wide, dark eyes stared back at him with far more maturity and confidence than he really felt. He glanced up and down, noting how the cuirass widened his shoulders and how his right hand automatically reached down to rest on the pommel of his sword. With the cloak pin at his throat gleaming as if it were made from the waters of Gol-Beyaz itself, he looked ... he swallowed... he looked like a Warrior of Estavia. Feeling the warm, internal caress once again, he glanced up at his abayon. Both men were grinning widely at him.

“So what happens now?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.

Kemal made an innocent gesture in the direction of the door. “Now we go to breakfast.”

“Dressed like this?”

“It’s your Oath Day. You’ll be dressed like that until after dusk.”

“But breakfast. I thought...” Brax tipped his head at the plates of food.

“That’s just to keep you going through dressing. You’ll find there’ll be a lot of eating today Eating and celebrating.”

“But only if Spar will haul his lazy carcass out of bed sometime this morning,” Yashar added loudly.

Sharing a piece of halva with Jaq and Tanay who’d just rejoined them, Spar gave his older abayos an exaggerated salute with the last of it before sliding off the pallet. A few moments later, dressed in his usual blue training tunic and sandals, he fell into step beside Brax, nodding in satisfaction as he caught sight of the brown bead hanging from the older boy’s neck. As their abayon led them from the room, he reached up and tucked it under his tunic. Brax glanced over at him curiously.

“Most of the temple’s Oristo-priests know it’s there,” he noted.

Laying his hand over the bead woven into Jaq’s collar, Spar shrugged. “Just humor me,” he ordered.

Behind them, Tanay chuckled to herself.