Treason's Shore (18 page)

Evred was distracted by the guards they passed. They all deferred and saluted, but many of them altered subtly when they met Inda’s eyes: faint smiles, twitches of shoulders. Like they wanted—expected—to be noticed. “Ruby earrings? But Cama and Cherry-Stripe do not wear them.”

“I know. I asked Cama about that. He said only those on the floor of the pass are worthy, and everyone agrees. Tuft wears two, since he led. Hawkeye and Noddy would have as well.” Inda tipped his head. “Though I can’t see Noddy wearing earrings.” He sighed.

They paced the length of the entire east wall before Inda finally said, “They were on the strut without actually being on the strut. Everyone else acted like they were, d’you see?”

“Moral ascendance.”

“That’s it. I’d forgotten the term, though I used to know it even in Old Sartoran. Sponge, sometimes I think my brains are leaking out. Saw moral ascendance in Tuft’s dad, and Tlen. Cassad. Everyone who was at the Venn battle or had a son there.”

Evred dismissed Inda’s comment about brains as a joke. He watched as Inda lifted a hand in salute to the sentries who had backed to the battlements to let them pass.

Mentally Inda named them, and a fact or two about each. He just about had them all by memory now. Good fellows. Now that Convocation was over, he could go back to hoisting an occasional ale with them on a watch change. “So?” he prompted, when Evred hadn’t spoken. “Your turn.”

“Here’s what I saw,” Evred said. “Horsebutt held his tongue because he was aware that the older Jarls resented his brother’s promotion. In their eyes, Tya-Vayir got boosted ahead of everyone else, though officially they are now two families. Why weren’t their sons given a command?”

“But the younger fellows didn’t hold promotion against Cama,” Inda protested. “I think I would have seen that.”

“No, they all thought Cama’s promotion was his just due, because he was a Sier Danas returned in triumph from battle. Because of all he did in the north. None of them resented Nightingale becoming Randael for Khani-Vayir, same reason. Horsebutt saw this division between young and old as a division between possible allies. He also stepped back when I announced after the oaths that there was a mage circling the kingdom to do the renewal spells. I hadn’t realized until I said it just how much Dag Signi’s generous offer would enhance my prestige.” Evred finished with that rare tone of self-mockery that always brought Fox to mind. Fox and—

Signi
. Inda grimaced at the surge of longing every mention of her name, every reminder, caused. He glanced down into the torchlit courtyard where the evening watch perimeter patrol was just riding in, snow clinging to boots, horse gear. The night patrol’s hooves diminished on the clean-swept stones of the silent main street as they rode toward the main gate, then out. “That surprised ’em,” Inda agreed, forcing his mind back to Evred’s words. “So what are you expecting next? From the Jarls, I mean. Not the Sier Danas.”

“That they will wait. There was a lot of ‘Sigun’ this year. Whether it lasts or not . . . I think Horsebutt is going to be the weathervane. ‘Sigun’ gave me a summer wind this year. Maybe next Convocation will bring the east wind, especially if Barend cannot get us trade. I have to be ready. You don’t see it yet, but all that about pasturage and who gets the foals is testing the battleground. If Tya-Vayir wins next year over Marlo-Vayir, then they can all start elbowing for more concessions.”

“Why does Horsebutt need more of anything?” Inda stopped, smacking the wall with impatience. Snow flurried up into the air, and began to drift down; he turned away from that to search Evred’s face. “He’s got a good home. No money needs. None of the inland Jarls have coastal cities to rebuild, and you’re doing all that anyway, right?”

Evred had turned away and began to walk, head down, torchlight flickering over his absorbed profile. When they reached the shadow of the bell tower, he said, “The Tya-Vayirs have hated the Montrei-Vayirs since the very beginning. That they have the smallest Jarlate was deliberate, I think, though no one set so direct a thought down in words. This I do know. Horsebutt will teach his son to hate mine.” His breath hissed in. “And his young second-cousin who will join the scrubs this year to become his future Randael, since Cama is now promoted, will probably bring that hatred to the academy. The trouble will never end, and it’s all because of a long-ago grudge.”

He dashed through the tower entry and out the opposite door, speaking in a running undertone. “When we were boys I had no power. How I hated seeing injustice that I could not fix! Now I have power. Responsibility, too. I’m not afraid of hard work, it keeps me from—” He flexed his hands, then flung them behind his back.

From?
Inda thought, jogging to keep pace.

“The truth is, I like power. I like walking into a room and seeing Horsebutt and that snake Hali-Vayir shut up and salute. And I really like knowing that I could order a full wing to scrag Horsebutt and they’d do it. But sometimes . . . I find myself looking for excuses . . .” He sighed sharply, his breath a faintly glowing cloud that vanished in the wind.

Evred stopped, and Inda caught himself against the wall, his boot heels almost skidding out from under him.

Evred stared westward over the academy rooftops, then said in a low voice, just audible above the icy wind, “There are two kinds of power. There’s the obvious one of force, when you use your guards’ swords to enforce your will on people. But the other kind is the power that people give you. It happened to me when I came home after my father and brother were assassinated. I did not try to take it, Inda. I rode home, I walked into the castle. The people were all gathered, and they gave it to me. With eyes, with fists here.” He struck his own fist lightly against his heart. “They waited for orders, and when I spoke the orders, they obeyed. I did not have to use force.”

The wind moaned, and Evred said, “You have to help me to remember that difference.”

Chapter Ten

J
EJE had been in a sour mood ever since she’d left Anaeran-Adrani, but this particular day made her previous gloom seem positively summery.

She hated this journey she’d set herself on. She could have stayed in Anaeran-Adrani, but wouldn’t, nor would she tell anyone why. She’d been met with such kindness it just made everything worse. She couldn’t even accept the magical transport token she’d been offered so generously because the only Destination near Freedom Island was in Khanerenth, and Jeje was sure she was doubly notorious there by now.

So here she was, trudging through mud, which she hated, in mountains, which she hated. The horse she’d been given had been stolen during a night she’d slept in the woods beside a road to spare money, though she loathed dripping trees. Great savings that turned out to be.

Now she was on the long winding road between Anaeran-Adrani and Bren, forced to hurry because some stupid outriders had galloped ahead to warn people that the hostel up at the top of the next plateau was going to be all taken up by a traveling royal.

Jeje had been ready to deliver her opinion of royals to the outriders when she remembered from hard experience that merchants could be even sniffier. It was rich people she hated, especially when they slung around gold pieces in order to boot hapless travelers out of an inn or hostel just so they wouldn’t have to listen to strangers slurp their soup.

“I suppose this royal would drop dead if a single female traveler asked for a bed,” Jeje retorted in what she considered an attempt at compromise.

The first outrider was a skinny fellow barely of age. “Not drop dead, maybe. But we need forty-one beds, and the hostel says they can only make up thirty.”

“So the rest of us are forced to sleep in the mud,” Jeje snarled.

“You can ride on—”

“Do
you
see a horse?”

The second outrider just laughed, clicked to his mount and rode back down the muddy trail, but the first one gave Jeje a not-unsympathetic smile. “Been like this ever since the ships stopped going round. People have to travel with us.” He slapped his sword. “Hostelries don’t have enough beds, so we take our tents along. My advice? Get a job as an outrider. You get your horses free, and all you do is ride around wearing livery. You might have to sleep in a tent during the winter, but you get paid for it. And bandits don’t dare attack big parties anymore. Not since the two biggest gangs took each other on and most of ’em either died or ran.”

Jeje gritted her teeth. She knew she was being unfair—the fellow was just being friendly while carrying out orders—so she just lifted a hand in salute. The outrider returned a casual wave and galloped back down the road.

Jeje trudged grimly onward. Fog was another hate, she thought sourly as swirls of vapor lowered slowly from the blank gray sky, obscuring the red-soil hills and patches of dense forest on either side of the road.

She toiled up the hill, head bowed, debating whether she should just give up and write to someone via the golden case. Only what would she write? Inda didn’t have magic. He couldn’t do anything from wherever he was. Fox . . . She shuddered.

Tau?

She grimaced, her spirits now about as low as her icy, mud-caked winter mocs. It had seemed such a wonderful idea, to find his mother for him. The idea had come after she’d heard what seemed to be a clue in what Inda’s betrothed, Tdor Marth-Davan, had observed.

But the longer Jeje had pursued it, the more convinced she’d become it was a bad idea. A
stupid
idea. Only her sense of fairness finally drove her to contact him, because he had the right to know. But she couldn’t bear to see what he decided to do about it, because it was too easy to picture—

A crack of a twig was all the warning she had. She looked up to find a group of shabby figures slowly ringing her, each brandishing a weapon.

“Let’s have your money,” a man snarled.

First her horse, then a decent bed, and now this.

She threw back her head. “Come and get it.”

“Hah! Mouthy, isn’t she? Let’s have some fun with this one.”

One laughed, but another cut across, saying in a weird kind of Iascan, “Stop yapping and slit her throat. We have to hide the body before those toffs get up the road.”

And they closed in.

She didn’t even count the figures looming out of the fog, just dropped her gear bag into the slush and whipped out her boot knives, sending one to land squarely into the chest of the leader and the second into the closest attacker.

The first dropped like a rock, the knife in his heart. The second one stumbled into the fellow next to him so they fell, thrashing and kicking. Jeje snapped her fighting knives out and sprang between two attackers whose sword arcs were just right to—

Clang!
Right into one another. She ducked under the blades, right hand slashing open one’s gut, the other blade high, slicing across the man’s face, which was the only visible flesh. As they recoiled she leaped past, blocked a down-swinging blade, using shoulder and leg to redirect the fellow’s force toward the next nearest attacker. Smash, block, jab, whirl—it was just like fighting with Fox and the gang except she didn’t have to control her strikes.

The jolt of danger flared into angry joy as the mountain robbers whooped, cursed, and finally yelped in dismay and stampeded off, dragging their wounded. She retrieved her boot knives, cleaned them off on the fellows’ coats, and resheathed them.

Then looked around. Again. And kicked the snow, howling curses at the sky.

They’d retreated—with her gear bag.

She was yelling so loud at first she didn’t hear the jingling and clop ping of the royal cavalcade. So the newcomers were considerably startled to come on a short young woman stamping around in a circle, waving her arms and cursing. In the muddy snow lay three bodies. Surrounding them was a confusion of fresh prints and blood sprays.

“Is that Iascan invective?” A woman’s voice.

Jeje was startled to hear her home language—with an Adrani accent. Out of the mist walked a tall woman in a beautiful yeath-fur cloak whose hood did not conceal all her elegantly arranged grayish-brown hair.

“Iascan,” Jeje repeated, arms dropping to her sides. “You’re Iascan?”

“Not quite. May I assist you?” The woman stopped.

“Too late. The robbers got my stuff.”

“But they seem to have been driven off. Where is the rest of your escort? Chasing the miscreants, I trust?”

“I’m alone.”

“Alone?”

The woman—and the guards—looked around again at the dead robbers and the blood spatters. Then the newcomer caught the faint, red gleam of a ruby at Jeje’s ear and knew who this warlike young woman was.

“May I introduce myself?” She indicated a fine, well-sprung carriage behind six horses, which were stamping their feet and snorting. “My name is Wisthia Shagal, and I’m going north as the new Adrani ambassador to Bren. I haven’t heard Iascan for a year or two, and this journey is so slow and boring. Won’t you do me the favor of joining me?”