His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (5 page)

“I can speak,” he said. There was a mocking edge to his
voice when he added, belatedly, “My lord.”

“The prayer angered you.”

The Cesino turned his face away again. He didn’t say anything.

Tyren said, “You think they’ve something to fear from
me?”

“It was a foolish thing to do regardless.”

“You don’t share their beliefs?”

“Superstition,” the Cesino said. “I find it foolish
a man would speak some words over his bread and call it bravery—that
he’d risk his family for it.”

He said it with a shrug, carelessly, but his mouth was tight and his
gray eyes had gone dull and flat. Tyren looked at him and said
nothing. Began to understand a little. The Cesino had lost his own
family in this way, maybe.

Neither of them spoke again.

* * *

In the morning he was up in the gray pre-dawn. He didn’t want
to stay here any longer than was necessary; it had been a mistake to
come here in the first place. But the Cesino slave was still sleeping
and Tyren decided against immediately waking him. He gathered up his
things and went out to saddle the horses himself. Risun held out his
head over the door of his stall when Tyren went into the stable and
Tyren spent some time just running a hand across the smooth dappled
coat, stroking the black nose, speaking to him quietly and watching
the black-tipped ears swivel forward as he spoke. He saddled him and
left him tethered to the thick oak post of the stall door and went to
ready the black colt. While he was working with the colt the Cesino
slave came in.

“Are the family awake?” Tyren said, without looking up.

“Yes, my lord,” the Cesino said.

He finished with the girth-strap of the colt’s saddle and took
a handful of eagles from his wallet and put the money into the
Cesino’s hand.

“Give it to the woman,” he said. “And my thanks.
I’ll wait for you at the road.”

The rain had gone and the dawn was a blood-red smear above the tops
of the trees in the east when they set out again. He judged they were
maybe twenty miles from Rien: the road was slanting more to the west
now and over miles and miles of that same black pine you could see
the mountains. They were little more than low green hills at this
point; they’d get higher and snow-clad if you went further
north or south, away from the wide pass into Varen. So they’d
be in Rien by mid-afternoon, provided his estimations were accurate.
That would be enough; he didn’t see trying to go any further
today. They could get a good night’s rest in the city and start
into the mountains tomorrow.

* * *

He’d been in Rien before. He’d gone with his father and
Tore to the villa of the Marri a few years ago now, when Lucho Marro
had given a banquet in Torien Risto’s honor. The banquet had
been a symbolic thing only, a display of Marro’s good faith,
because Torien Risto was still governor of Cesin province and Marro
nothing but a county governor, even if Marro had the Emperor’s
favor now in Choiro. It was the year before Tyren had gone to Choiro
for his training, and Luchian Marro, Lucho’s younger son, had
been in Rien still, because they were of an age, and even then
Luchian had been loud-mouthed and insolent and of course the thing
had come up between them about Chæla. That was the first time
Tyren had ever fought, but not the last, and Luchian had rather
soundly beaten him, and that had galled him far more than the other
sound beating he’d received later, from his father. His own
rivalry with Luchian had begun there. It had continued, of course, in
Choiro, and in more serious ways than boyish fistfights. But it had
begun in Rien.

Like the other big cities in Cesin Rien was more Vareno-looking than
Cesino-looking. The common buildings, the houses and places of
business, were square, storied buildings made of brick-faced
concrete. The government buildings and the villas of the patricians
were made of smooth white marble, great slabs of stone quarried in
the north of Varen and brought painstakingly to Cesin by those rich
enough to afford its transport over the pass. The roofs were clay
tile and some of the great buildings had domes and the city was set
out very neatly along a grid pattern, divided up by straight cobbled
streets, rather than thrown together haphazardly along mud streets in
the manner of the Cesino farm villages. There was even an aqueduct
bringing down spring water from the mountains, and there were baths
in the city; that was a luxury in Cesin. A fairly young city, Rien,
built after the war was won. It had been nothing but a fort
originally, when there was still considerable threat of a unified
Cesino uprising, but that threat had dwindled and died long before
Tyren’s time and the fort here was more ceremonial now than
anything else.

It wasn’t quite the seventeenth hour when they came to the
northern gate of the city; the late-afternoon sun was still hanging
above the heads of the mountains to the west. There was a soldiers’
club on the Gate Street, designated by a banner bearing the blazing
golden sun on an indigo field, the insignia of the Imperial military.
Lodging was free for officers at the clubs, and it would be better
than a common inn. He took the colt into the stable-yard.

It was early yet and the stables were mostly empty. A stable-boy came
to take the horses and walk them out and the Cesino slave took
Tyren’s saddlebags and came along behind while an orderly
showed Tyren up to the rooms. The rooms were plain, serviceable: a
small study with a desk and a narrow window overlooking the yard, and
the bedchamber adjoining the study through a low doorway—cot
and wash basin and a bare wooden shelf on the wall. The Cesino put
down Tyren’s bags on the cot and Tyren peeled off his gloves
and unfastened his cape and hung it up by the doorway.

“I can show your slave his lodging, sir,” the orderly
said.

“Thank you,” Tyren said.

“The meal will be ready shortly, sir,” the orderly said.
He stood aside so the Cesino could walk stiffly past him. “I’ll
bring you word.”

“Thank you,” Tyren said again, absently.

When the orderly and the Cesino had gone he unbuckled his sword and
took off the cuirass and cleaned up at the wash basin. Afterward he
wandered over to the window and rested his forehead against the cool
stone of the window frame and looked out over the city. He watched
the traffic-choked streets a while and then he raised his eyes to the
mountains climbing up in the west, fifty miles or more beyond the
city’s western gate, across the sea of black Cesino pine.
Souvin was there, somewhere, deep in that wild timber country. Two
days’ ride from Rien in summertime when the weather was good—it
didn’t seem so far when you said it like that, when you made
detached calculations, but looking at it now, from the comfort and
familiarity of the city, it seemed terribly remote, terribly
isolated. It was an exile, this commission. Anything might happen out
there in that mountain country and it would be four days at the
earliest before Rien could react to it, four days at the very
earliest. Luchian had done his work well.

The orderly came back at length to let him know the meal was ready.
He went down to the mess. The hall was fairly empty at first and he
sat alone at the end of one of the long common trestle tables to eat.
Simple food, but good: cheese and olives and smoked pork sausage,
thick-crusted bread with oil and herbs, a dark red wine that was
pleasantly warm going down. The hall filled up slowly, more men
coming in at intervals from the stable-yard. He kept his head down.
These were Rien soldiers for the most part, men on their leave from
the fort—privileged ones, like him, the younger sons of noble
families, in the army because of custom and expectation, nothing
else. No doubt some of them would recognize him and he didn’t
relish the idea of explaining to them he was headed to a frontier
garrison—not to a post in Choiro or here in Rien, as befitted a
Risto, but to Souvin. He concentrated on his food.

“Risto,” someone said, suddenly.

He didn’t have to turn and look to the doorway to see who’d
come in. He knew the voice at once. But he couldn’t ignore it
and so he turned anyway, putting down his wine bowl.

He looked at Luchian Marro and tried not to show his surprise. He
didn’t know why Luchian would be here, in this place; surely
the villa of the Marri, in the upper city, could afford him better
accommodation. But that wasn’t the only reason for surprise.
Luchian was wearing the black-lacquered harness of the Imperial
Guard, the knee-length black wool cape, the silver Guard commander’s
braid glittering proudly on his left shoulder, and the sandy-haired
man standing close at his side was an officer of the Guard, too.

He hadn’t heard Luchian had been picked for the Guard.

Not that it was really all that remarkable, he supposed. In fact he
wasn’t sure why he hadn’t considered the possibility
before. Certainly Luchian had all the skill and zeal and ambition to
be chosen for the Guard—the elites, the pure-blooded and
fiercely loyal arm of the Imperial military, personally sworn, on a
blood oath, to the Emperor himself.

“Marro,” he said.

He recognized the sandy-haired Guardsman now, too: Recho Seian,
Luchian’s kin through the marriage of a sister. Tyren
remembered him from Vione. He’d never been far from Luchian
there, either. Fitting they should have made the Guard together. They
were cut of the same cloth.

Luchian unbuckled the chinstrap of his tall black-crested helmet and
lifted the helmet from his head and tucked it in the crook of his
left arm. He came over slowly to the end of the table where Tyren
sat, loosening his leather gloves one finger at a time, not taking
his cold blue eyes from Tyren’s face.

“I didn’t know you were in Rien, Risto,” he said.

“Only for tonight,” said Tyren.

“On your way to your new command?”

“Yes.”

“I heard about it,” Luchian said. “Souvin. Quite a
disappointment. I’d heard you were hoping for a post in the
capital—that your father was, at least.”

“Unfortunate we can’t choose where our commissions take
us,” Tyren said. He looked down into his wine bowl so Luchian
wouldn’t see anything in his face.

Luchian tossed his gloves down onto the board. “Yes,
unfortunate. May we join you?”

“It would be an honor,” Tyren said.

“I received my own commission a few days ago,” Luchian
said, as he sat.

“Is that so?”

“I’ve been given command of a Guard column here in Rien.”

“My congratulations,” said Tyren.

Luchian shrugged. “No, in truth I envy you, Risto. I get tired
of the city. There are enough useless men they can post to Choiro and
Rien. I’d rather see action.”

“You anticipate there’ll be much action in Souvin?”

Seian spoke up. “I’ve heard there’s still the
remnant of a native resistance movement in the Outland. Out-manned
and pointless, of course, but these Cesino bastards still can’t
learn their lesson. Maybe that’s why they want you there,
Risto—a commander who’ll finish the work, put down this
rebellion once for all.”

Tyren looked at Luchian. But Luchian wasn’t looking at him now.
He’d put his helmet down and was resting his wrists on the edge
of the table, looking down suddenly and intently into his hands,
pretending disinterest. Tyren could see the scar of his oath-taking
still fresh and dark across his right palm.

“Who knows, Risto?” Seian went on. He was smiling
stupidly. “Maybe this commission is your chance to prove
yourself.”

He said, in a bland voice, “To prove myself?”

“To prove yourself after Choiro.”

“I’ve nothing to prove after Choiro.”

“There are some who feel your loyalty should be called into
question. Hasty conclusions, maybe. But that’s the word going
around.”

“Foolish of me to expect a Marro might exercise some
self-control, I know that. I wasn’t aware it constituted
treachery against the Empire.”

Luchian looked up from his hands. He was oddly blank-faced. He said
nothing.

Seian said, “He was one of your own kind, wasn’t he? The
Cesino? One of your own blood, Risto?”

“You’re a fool, Seian,” said Tyren.

“I’m only trying to understand your reasoning. Because if
I were you—if I knew my father were having to beg and barter
for his friends in the capital—I might have thought twice about
demonstrating to every man at Vione that my loyalty to my Cesino kin
outweighs my loyalty to the Empire.”

Anger swept through him all at once—hot, senseless, impulsive
anger, the same as it had been that day at Choiro. He stood up and
pushed the bench back in one movement, leaning across the table to
drag Seian up by the shoulder with his left hand. He landed a blow
across Seian’s face with his closed right. Then he shoved him
back. Seian flailed, lost his balance, threw out his arms, and
Luchian caught him, snaking out a quick hand to steady him. Luchian
stood, holding Seian by the shoulders before him. The hall went
quiet. Tyren saw Luchian’s eyes travel briefly round, gauging;
it was long tradition, the hostility between Guard and regular army,
and these were mostly army men here. But the hall remained still. No
one would be eager to trade blows with a Marro here in Rien,
tradition or no. Tyren’s anger died to ashes inside him. He
felt suddenly, keenly alone.

Luchian seemed well aware of it. He brought his eyes back round and
smiled, humorlessly.

“You haven’t changed much, Risto. I’d have thought
this commission might change some things.”

“Nothing’s changed between us since Choiro, Marro,”
said Tyren.

“Settle it, Luchian,” said Seian, in a thick voice. He
spat blood onto the table and wiped it away from his mouth with the
back of one hand. “Cesino-blood son of a bitch.”

Luchian didn’t take his eyes from Tyren.