The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (36 page)

Carle nodded. "Alaric left a note for me – for me, not my father, which made him furious. My father found the note first, but I made him all the more furious by refusing to translate the note, and by burning it after I'd read it."
"Translate it?" I said. "You mean that it was written in a mainland language?"
"No, it was written in Emorian – you taught Alaric his letters, remember? His spelling is so dreadful, though, that my father assumed that the note was in a foreign tongue."
"What did Alaric say?" I asked as Carle picked up a lamp in the corridor and led the way to his extra chamber.
"He said that he had asked my mother for permission to marry Erlina, and that she had voiced no objection; from my mother, that's the closest one can get to a blessing. He said that it grieved him greatly that he could not likewise ask my father for his permission, but that he had dreamt during the night that a snow leopard had mauled Erlina while he stood by watching. He took this as a sign that his gods wanted him to protect Erlina against her father. He swore to me that his intentions toward Erlina were entirely honorable. And he ended the letter with a one-sentence apology to me that covered three pages. Among other things, he apologized to my future wives." As we ducked through the doorway to the chamber, Carle handed me the lamp, then went over to the other end of the room and pulled open his back-sling.
Watching as he tossed his clothing in it, I said, "It might be true. Perhaps he really does want to marry her."
"Oh, I've no doubt he intends to grant Erlina honor – whatever honor may mean on the mainland. But the idea of Erlina living the life of a barbarian . . . The only fate worse would be living with a man my father had chosen." Carle knotted the tie of the back-sling, saying, "I told my father that I would find Erlina and fetch her back only if he permitted her final say over which man she married. —No, leave that," he added as I tried to hand him the blood-stained tunic. "I won't be needing that again."
"What was his reply?" I asked as we moved back into the corridor, squeezing past curious slaves. "You said something about the court . . ."
Carle nodded as he laid his hand briefly on the arm of a slave he was passing. "Helping a woman to elope is a crime in Emor. My father threatened to request a charge against me that I'd assisted Alaric. —No, I am sorry," he said in response to a question by one of the slaves. He gave her hand a squeeze before passing on.
"I feel as though I'm leaving them to their doom," he said as we raced our way up the stairs. "There's nothing I can do for them, though, or for my mother. My presence wouldn't help them in any way."
"Carle, you said something in reply to your father's threat, something about a trip Gervais took—"
"My father's had better slaves than he deserves," said Carle as though I hadn't spoken. "Not just Fenton, who never spoke an unkind word against my father in all the time he lived here. Most of the slaves we've owned have tried to serve my father well. I remember an older slave who was my father's body-servant when I was quite young. He would take pains to provide my father with comfort only minutes after my father had smashed him to the ground." Carle swung open the door to his main bed-chamber, waited until I was inside, and barred the door.
I was already on the other side of the chamber, packing my back-sling, but I looked up as Carle, with a voice suddenly low, said, "So loyal was this slave that when my father decided, twenty years ago, to seduce the Baron of Peaktop's wife, the slave assisted in the arrangements for the seduction."
My hands stilled on the sling; I was calculating ages in my mind. Breathlessly I said, "Do you mean Myles . . . ?"
Carle nodded as he reached my side and began handing me clothing. "Gervais knows, I believe; there's no other way to account for the depth of his hatred for my father. His honor is shown by the fact that he has never spoken publicly on this matter. Nor has he taken his anger out on his wife and her son."
"Your threat was just a feint, wasn't it?" I asked anxiously.
"Naturally." Carle took from my hand the flask that I was about to pack and sipped from it briefly. "I'd cut my throat before saying anything that might reveal to Myles who his true father is. I must confess, though, that as a child I found comfort in knowing that I had a half-brother, and that he was safe from my father."
"Carle, how do you know all this? You weren't even born yet—"
"I know because my father promised to reward his body-servant's loyalty by freeing him. Several years after the affair, the slave was foolish enough to remind my father, in a tentative manner, of this promise. My father responded by selling him to the mines."
I felt my heart beat at my throat. "The mines . . ."
Carle nodded and handed me the flask. "That's where Fenton would have died if I hadn't been able to persuade him to flee Emor. In some households, loyal slave-servants are rewarded with money or freedom; my father has his own custom. The body-servant was to be taken swiftly from our house before he could talk, but he managed to slip away for a few minutes. He came to me and told me the story. He said that I might need it some day as a defense against my father." Carle watched as I drank from the flask; then he said, "I was six at the time, too young to understand fully what the slave was telling me. Only later did I realize that the body-servant could have used those few minutes to go to Gervais with his story. As I said, my father has owned servants more loyal than he deserves." He turned away and unbarred the door as I rushed to catch up with him.
"Carle," I said, "what did your father say at the end? Before he shouted?"
For a minute, I thought that Carle would not reply. Finally, he turned his gaze toward me and said, "We are bonded by more than wine now."
It took me a moment to determine what he meant. Then my breath drew swiftly in, like a spear meeting its mark.
Carle nodded. "He has disowned me," he said quietly. "Come, let's fetch our horses. We can do nothing more here."
The eighth day of January in the 941st year a.g.l.
We stopped at the inn on the way home, and once again Carle arranged for us to have separate sleeping chambers. This time, when I awoke to hear Carle crying out in pain, I did not even have to listen to know the name of his torturer.
He had locked the door again. I thought for a while, and then, returning to my own chamber, I checked the window. Its sill jutted out perhaps a finger's length, as did Carle's sill, which was half a spear-length from mine. His shutters, I was grateful to see, were open, and so mild was the weather so far this winter that the landlord had not yet tacked on any waxed paper, so the windows proved no barrier.
Our chambers were on the second storey, and going from his sill to mine was tricky, because the only hand-holds were the frames of the window. I expect that any border mountain patrol guard could have done it in his sleep. After half a minute, I dropped down into Carle's chamber. I had been as silent as I could, but of course he was now awake, his thigh-dagger glinting in the moonlight.
He slipped his dagger back into his thigh-pocket when he saw who his intruder was, but said nothing as I came forward. He turned his back as I reached the broad bed he slept in. I slipped under the covers, laying my hands lightly upon his scarred back. Within minutes, I had fallen asleep.
He did not cry out again during the night.
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The fourth day of August in the 941st year a.g.l.
It's a beautiful summer day, with a glowing sun and with air just the right temperature – or so it seems to me. Everyone else in the patrol is praying for the autumn cool to arrive. Levander says that if I make one more remark about how much hotter it is in Koretia at this time of year, I may find myself being accidentally thrown off a cliff.
Levander is my new patrolling partner, and he comes eagerly to me for advice. It feels odd to be an old-timer now. But of course there are very few of us old-timers left, even fewer than there were at the beginning of our leave last winter.
Hoel is retired from army service; he gave a plausible reason for his departure, but we all know that he left because of Chatwin. Teague and Sewell were placed on trial in the court of the subcommander of the Emorian army; they faced the possibility of Dismissal with High Dishonor from the Chara's armies. Teague received a lesser sentence of Dismissal with Dishonor, and Sewell was found innocent since we all testified – those of us who were left – that he was in too much pain from his broken leg to realize that Wystan's letter about the approaching snow had gone undelivered. Sewell, though, requested a transfer since he couldn't face the thought of going back to the unit where four men died because of his injury. He is serving now as Wystan's orderly.
That leaves Quentin, Carle, Devin, Payne, and me to train the new men – plus Fowler, Carle's old partner, who has returned to duty. I was initially nervous at dealing with him; I not only stabbed him, but I took away his partner. Carle hasn't been my partner, though, since we returned to the mountains in April. Quentin split up all the old partnerships so that we could be paired with the new soldiers. In the day patrol are me and Levander, Carle and Manasseh, and Payne and Nahum, while in the night patrol are Quentin and Oro, Devin and Whittlsey, and Fowler and Sacheverell. Levander holds a double title: he is also a royal messenger, and he keeps his horse here to ride to the army headquarters, should there be any need for sending an immediate message – such as that supplies are low.
All of this has delayed the training I would normally have received by now in night patrolling, so Quentin has decided to transfer me into his half of the patrol next week. I'll be paired with Fowler. That will be the true test of whether Fowler has forgiven me.
The ninth day of August in the 941st year a.g.l.
I suppose that it simply took Fowler four months to get me alone so that he could reconcile us in the proper manner. It wasn't until today that he served out his insults.
We were close to the northern limits of our patrolling area, and I was concentrating all my efforts on keeping myself from sliding off the side of a mountain. Eight months have passed since I last spent an entire night on the mountains, and though we have a full moon at the moment, I am out of practice in the slide step that is required to negotiate the night-black slopes. Because of this, it took me some time to realize what Fowler was implying.
We had started with a polite conversation about the Koretian borderland, comparing it to the Emorian borderland, which Fowler has visited on a couple of occasions. Then we talked about intermarriage, and how this affects the range of skin colors that you find in both halves of the borderland, and then about the fact that Hamar had light skin, as do my sisters, since they all inherited my father's coloring.
"And what about you?" asked Fowler, grabbing me to keep me from slipping down a slope.
"Well, I look like my mother, obviously," I replied. "Oh, I could have inherited it from my father's side as well – his father was quite dark – but it's hard to say, really. I don't think my parents ever talked about it."
"No, I do not imagine that they did."
Something about Fowler's tone made me look up. We had reached a dip in the mountains and were close to the pass, so our voices were very soft, but whatever I had read in Fowler's whisper was also reflected in his face as he assiduously avoided my gaze.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, look," said Fowler. "I visited the Northern Port once – the port is located in the Daxion borderland, where the black border mountains touch the border between Daxis and Emor. It is a cosmopolitan city: you get people visiting there from Daxis, Koretia, Emor, and on up to the barbarian nations of the mainland. So naturally, the brothels there have to please all sorts of patrons, dark and light. I spent an afternoon in one of those brothels once, not for any sport of my own, but just out of curiosity to see what sort of girls the visitors picked. And after a while, I noticed a trend: nearly every light-skinned man who entered the brothel picked a light-skinned woman, and nearly every dark-skinned man who came there picked a dark-skinned woman. It was the same in reverse, too – the women were trying to attract the attention of the men who shared their color."
"But I don't understand what this has to do with—"
"Well, you see, it led me to conclude that any brown-skinned woman, given a choice, will pick a brown-skinned man. It stands to reason. Of course, she may find herself married to a light-skinned man for reasons of family matchmaking and so on, but if temptation should come her way . . . Well, who is to blame her, after all? It is in her nature."
I have been in Emor long enough now to know that, while dark-skinned is a neutral word, brown-skinned is considered offensive. It seemed to me, in the one part of me that remained calm, that Fowler need hardly have embellished his suggestion with such obvious abuse.
I placed my hand slowly upon my sword hilt and said, "Say that again."
Fowler grinned cheerfully at sight of this challenge. "Do not be so sensitive. This sort of thing happens a lot more than we would guess, I am sure. It is only in the borderland that we have proof that it occurs."
Well, I'd given him his chance. I pulled out my sword and started forward, saying, "You'll swallow those words before I'm through with you."
I stopped just short of Fowler, the reason being that he had not drawn his sword. He was looking at me with wariness and even, it appeared, astonishment, though for what reason I could not imagine; I had given him clear indication of what my intentions were if he didn't apologize. He said in a whisper that barely carried to me, "Put up your blade. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone this happened if you sheathe your sword now."
"Don't be such a coward!" Forgetting to keep my voice low, I heard my words bounce off the mountains opposite. "I gave you my challenge, and you accepted it. You can't back away now."
"Sheathe . . . your . . . sword." The intensity of Fowler's whisper puzzled me. In any case, I could hardly duel him if he were going to be such a coward as to refuse to fight. I was still trying to figure out what to do when I heard a long, high whistle from the mountain opposite us. It came from Devin, who was patrolling the area next to ours.
I whirled and was preparing to leap across the pass toward Devin, when I felt myself pulled short by Fowler, whose hand was holding me as a leash holds a dog. "Later," I said tersely. "Didn't you hear? That's the Immediate Danger whistle."