Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (60 page)

when he jumped down to the stable floor. I dropped off the gate and turned to leave. “I warned you,” I

said.

“You thought they’d kill him like they did the Zhid horsemaster, didn’t you?”

“Why would I think that?” I wrenched the gate latch.

“They kill everyone who gets close to you.”

I didn’t want to hear it. Not out loud. “That’s ridiculous. You’re an ignorant Drudge. What do you

know about anything?”

“I know a lot of things. I see a lot of things. Maybe I see and know more than you do.”

“It’s better to be ignorant.”

“Maybe that’s true. I wouldn’t trade places with you. You’re no better off than me, except maybe

you get more to eat.”

I pulled open the gate, but I didn’t go through it. “Did they really kill Fengara?”

“She came in every morning to train horses new in from the farms. She was mean, but she could

magic ‘em until she had ’em doing what she wanted. That morning there was somebody watching her.

She was working a big bay. Doing fine until the watcher raised up his hand. Then the horse turned on her,

and she couldn’t move to get out of his way. He trampled her flat. The watcher laughed when he walked

away.”

“What did he look like?”

“Fellow looked like a desert rat, hard and bony. Black hair cut real short, black beard, dressed fine

with rubies on his belt.”

Darzid. I kept one part of my mind fixed tight on the stable and the desert, so he wouldn’t hear what I

was thinking.

“Why do you do the things they want?”

“I have no choice. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand you quit riding Firebreather so they wouldn’t kill him. And you warned me off. At first I

thought you’d come to be just like them, that they’d made you evil, too, but they haven’t done it yet. Not

if you gave up Firebreather to save his life. You don’t have to be what they want.”

I hit him then, so hard it knocked him to the straw and made his mouth bleed. “You are stupid,

ignorant, and insolent, and if you don’t watch yourself, I’ll cut out your tongue.” I grabbed his filthy shirt

and shook him. “You don’t know anything at all. I have been evil since the day I was born. If my father

had known what I was, he would have slit my throat, and if my mother had known it, she would have had

me burned alive and drunk wine while they did it. I’ve killed people, and I’ve lashed them until they cried

for mercy, and I’ve left men in the desert until they turned black and begged for water. I’ve had a slave

killed just to heal my bruises. I am a friend of the Lords of Zhev’Na, and I’m going to become one of

them, because that’s what I was born to be. And nothing an ignorant servant says can make any

difference at all.”

I felt the Lords stirring . . . curious . . . but I kept them shut out. “Leave me alone!” I walked a long

way before going back to my house.

It was many weeks until I saw the Leiran boy again—or, rather, I saw him almost every day, but in

public places where I could pretend he didn’t exist. I didn’t want to think about him or about

Firebreather. Keeping things private from the Lords wasn’t easy. And mostly I wanted what the Lords

taught me.

I worked harder every day at my training. I told Darzid I wanted a new master of hand combat, that I

had learned all that the current one could teach me, and that only because he outweighed me by three

times could he get any advantage at all. The new master taught me how to fight with knives and axes and

other small weapons. I got better sparring partners and damaged several of them, so that I guessed they

would die. But I learned that if they were good enough, the Zhid would send a surgeon to bandage them

up. The better ones were very valuable. I would be a warrior, the best there ever was. Then we would

see how the world might be ordered.

One afternoon as I walked into the stables, I saw a Zhid warrior taking a whip to one of the stable

hands. “Perhaps a few lashes will improve your hearing,” he was saying. “At least they might improve
my

disposition.” He laid on another stroke and another. The groom was curled up in the corner of a stall with

his hands over his face, but I recognized the ragged breeches and dirty bare feet. He was cut and

bleeding all over.

“What’s he done?”

“Young Lord!” The warrior bowed. “This insolent fool ignored my command to wipe the muck off of

my boots. He acted as if he didn’t understand what boots were.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t. He’s probably never worn any, and I’ve noticed he’s a particularly ignorant

boy,” I said. “Can’t put two sensible words together.”

“I’ve a mind to string him up and lay the flesh off of him to strengthen my arm. He’s no good for

anything else.”

“I think he could serve a better purpose, more suited to his calling,” I said. “That horse Zigget is a

vicious beast. Look at the walls of his stall and you’ll see; I’m worried he’ll damage his legs kicking holes

in them. Maybe he needs something softer to kick. String up this boy in Zigget’s stall for a night. It will

either bring some sense into his head, or remove his head where we don’t have to worry about it any

more.”

The warrior took the Leiran boy to Firebreather’s box and tied him to the wall as I watched. The

Leiran boy was woozy from his beating and bleeding from the lashes. Firebreather snorted and tossed his

head.

“I’ll come scrape what’s left off the walls in the morning, young Lord.”

“Perhaps I’ll come to watch. Make sure my horse doesn’t have indigestion.”

The warrior closed the gate behind us, and we walked away laughing.

You find an interesting way to amuse yourself, my young Lord
, whispered Ziddari in my head.

“The warriors enjoy such things. I don’t like it myself.” I had to say that. The Lords could read me so

easily that it was hard to lie to them.

Shall we amuse ourselves in other ways tonight
? asked Notole, as I went to collect my horse.

“No. No lessons tonight. I’ll be riding late, and then I’m going to bed. You’ve had all you’re going to

get out of me today.”

As you wish. Tomorrow, then.

For two hours I practiced tight maneuvers, a tedious and boring exercise. At sunset I told the

horsemaster that I was going to ride into the desert for a while to cool off. I did so, forcing myself to be

patient and not return before all the grooms were asleep. He’d be all right. If he woke up, he could calm

Firebreather easily. If he woke up ...

When I got back to the stable, I heard a terrible racket from Firebreather’s stall. I shoved my horse

into a vacant box, grabbed the lamp from its hook, and threw open the gate. Firebreather had done a

thorough job of destroying the walls of the horse box. Though his head was drooping and his eyes

swollen half shut, the Leiran boy was murmuring, “Once more. Another lick, and he’ll bring you oats

when he comes. Oats for Firebreather. Another nice wallop. Good. It’ll make you strong. Don’t let him

down.” The hooves never touched the boy.

“Are you having fun?”

His head lifted a bit. “A barrel of it.”

He drained half the contents of my waterskin. Then I untied the ropes that held him to the rear wall

and helped him down to the straw, taking a quick inventory of the bloody stripes on his arms and legs.

“I’m not going to clean you up. None of this looks too serious.”

“Crackin‘ uncomfortable though.” He stretched out and groaned.

“Why did you disobey a warrior? Of all the idiotic things. Would it have killed you to wipe the

fellow’s boots? You’ve done worse. You love horse muck.”

He grinned, which, with his face all purple and swollen, looked pretty horrible. “Damn. Was it his

boots? I couldn’t figure it out. Thought he was telling me to wipe the shit off his
door
.”

“You didn’t know the word for boots? You mean I was right?”

“Is that a rock in your stew or what?”

I hadn’t laughed in so long I’d almost forgotten how, but we both took off with that, until he rolled

onto his side holding his ribs, and said, “Oh, damn, you’ve got to stop. Yell at me or something. This

hurts too much.”

“Here. I should have thought. Show me where it hurts the most.”

He pointed to a tender, swollen bruise on his left side below the ribs, and I traced my finger around it

to make it numb. I did the same to a couple of other places that looked particularly bad. “This won’t fix

them, only stop the hurting for a while.”

“It’s a deal better. Are you . . . are you coming to be a Healer, then?” He said it almost with

reverence.

The thought nauseated me. “No. I could never do that.”

“Whenever you need to go, just put me back on the wall. Firebreather will take care of me.”

“Nobody’s expecting me tonight. I arranged it.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“You won’t. Do you want something to eat? I’ve got some things in my cloak.”

“I’d eat your boots if I knew the word for it.”

That set us laughing again, and it was a while until I could pull the bread and cheese from the pocket

of my cloak, along with a flask of cavet that I heated up with sorcery.

After he had spent a few moments demolishing the food and drinking the cavet, he eased himself

against the wall, and said, “So what do you do here besides take horse lessons from the Zhid?”

“I learn sword fighting and hand combat and sorcery.”

“I know you’re good at wrestling. Never thought I’d have a nub shorter’n me put me down so quick.

Are you good at the other things, too?”

“I’m getting better. Swordsmanship—that’s the hardest. I improved really fast when I first came here,

but not so much lately. I don’t think I’ll ever be as good at it as I want.”

“Why is it so important?”

“I’ve debts to pay. Debts of honor.”

“Maybe I don’t understand debts of honor—being who I am and all. It would be an education if

you’d tell me.”

It was like ripping a hole in your waterskin. No matter how small the hole, everything got out

eventually. I started just to tell him about my life debt to the Lords, but ended up telling him everything

while we sat in that horse box— about how my whole life had been a lie and a betrayal, that no one had

been who they said they were, and how it was all the fault of one man. I dumped everything on an

ignorant stable Drudge who had never owned a pair of boots.

He was quiet for a long time after I was done, then shook his head slowly. “Blazes . . . that is the

damnedest story. I’ve got to think on it a while before I can even know what to think. Some of it’s clear

enough, but some . . . Why did you think this wicked prince that was really your da killed your nurse? I

didn’t see that.”

“It was obvious. It’s why Seri brought him to Comigor, to take her revenge on Lucy and Papa. And it

was his knife that did it. I saw it.”

“But that was in your dream you saw his knife. I’ve seen horses fly in dreams.”

I didn’t like him questioning me. “Your head’s in a muddle. I don’t expect you to understand. And I

don’t know why I babbled all of this to someone who doesn’t know the word for boots.”

“It’s true. I don’t got half your brains, and what brain I’ve got is full of horse muck.”

“You must be about horses like I am about sword fighting. You’d like to be the best at it, wouldn’t

you? At training them and knowing about them. I’ll bet you’d like to run a stable of the best horses there

were anywhere.”

He screwed his swollen face into a frown. “I never told nobody that. You didn’t go picking at my

head, did you?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I appreciate that. Gives me the crawlies to think on it.”

About that time a faint buzz in my head told me it was second watch, about two hours before dawn.

“Do you want to sleep for a while? I should go soon, and once I do, it’ll be harder for you.”

“No need. I can sleep anywhere. It’s an advantage when you’re born low. Go ahead and put me

back.”

I tied him back up to the wall, trying to duplicate the way the warrior had fixed him. “I can’t come in

the morning, you know,” I said.

“It’s all right. It was a better night than I expected.” He was asleep before I shut the gate.

It had been foolish for me to do what I’d done, but I felt a little better than I had in a while. When I

went to the stable the next afternoon for my riding lesson, I wandered past Firebreather’s stall. The boy

wasn’t there anymore. Two days passed before I saw him again, mucking out a stall, still bruised and

scratched, but otherwise looking no worse for the experience. I looked right through him, and he didn’t

turn his head.

CHAPTER 36

Seri

Dia and I had both been summoned to service in the Gray House. We still slept in the dormitory with

the sewing women, but instead of the sewing room, we reported to the Gray House scullery each

morning at sunrise. A sour-faced Drudge named Gar assigned us to our duties, Dia to light the fires,

prepare food for the Drudges, and deliver gray-bread to the slaves twice a day. I spent my days with a

pail and rags, scrubbing floors and railings, polishing brass, scraping candle wax, and wiping layer upon

layer of red dust from everything. It was a change from sewing, at least, and allowed me to see a great

deal of what went on in that house. I was assigned to the lower floors, while two other Drudges cleaned

in Gerick’s apartments. Just as well for the present. There was always a risk he would recognize me.