Inda (26 page)

But she was still outside the mood that gripped them all, still an observer, as the trumpets called the end of the gymkhana and the girls began to flow onto the field to the roar of the off-duty females of the Guard and the women of the city. She was still an observer as the horsetails vanished to hand off their foaming, sweat-streaked mounts to the younger boys and dash water onto their heads and down their parched mouths as they readied themselves for the next phase, everyone’s favorite phase, girls against boys.

In the beginning, it was just a weapons competition.

Hadand was the youngest of the girls. This was her first year as participant, watched by everyone because one day she would be queen. Despite the years of personal training, her attitude with the big girls had always been circumspection, cooperation, deference.
Listen,
her mother taught her.
You learn more being last than first,
Ndara had told her.
First will come soon enough, with all its responsibilities.

But those inward voices stilled, replaced by pride and triumph as Tanrid, last off the court, looked back straight into his sister’s eyes, mouth twisted in a faint smile of challenge.

I dare you to win,
the thought came, through the shimmer of heat and the fine white dust the horses had kicked up, through the roar of approval from the watchers.

Done,
she cried in her mind, even though he was now getting water poured on him by shouting boys, even though she knew such thoughts never got past the thin bone wall of her skull.

But there is a kind of call that echoes from spirit to spirit at such times, transmitted not in words, but in smiles and posture and in the meeting of eyes; she felt the impact of her answer in her brother, a rare moment of communication—of kinship—that surprised her. Maybe the only one they would ever share.
Make it good,
she called, and he called back,
Oh, we’ll make it good.

And so all caution fell away, all the distance of the trained observer who tries to plan ahead to avoid disaster, who defers to diplomatic necessity, even in games—skills her mother had taught her since she was very small. She was young and strong, and the single thing she shared with Tanrid was the intensity of focus that could be terrifying to those who did not know them, yet thought they did.

The boys watched at first in careless amusement, then a shared wild joy as Tanrid won game after game in the boys’ eliminations, and the girls watched with surprise (and some of the older ones, who were superb, gracefully deferred) as Hadand won game after game, beating girls older than she with her strong arm and steady eye and remorseless aim, until the rest of the boys and girls seemed to recede into the distance, leaving the two Algara-Vayir siblings in a smiling, challenging duel of skill.

At the end of the afternoon the two Algara-Vayirs, each champion for their sex, faced one another alone for the last game. The sun had set, a smoldering ball of fire, on the distant walls, and torchlight cast its uneasy, ruddy glow over the parade court when the last target appeared, the painted man, the weapon the thin-bladed double-edged dagger that both men and women wore in bristling multiplicity during times of war.

The rhythmic stamping in the stands, the hands drumming war tattoos on fence and bench, the sight of the scrubs screaming themselves hoarse—Sponge and Inda among them—intoxicated Hadand with triumph, with the same recklessness that had goaded her brother to break his wall of indifference and strive to win.

And so she jammed the knives in her sash crosswise, turned her back, held her hands out, empty, palms up. Some of the girls gasped. They knew what was coming. The older girls only performed this sort of sport for themselves. But Hadand whirled around, both hands pulling the knives in a blur of speed and hurling them to thud in the heart of the target.

A shout of joy exploded skyward. In the stands, the king sent a mildly questioning look at his sister-in-law, but she did not see it. She stared down in horror.

The Sierandael saw her pop-eyed dismay, and thought,
She has no control over those girls.
Out loud he said, “A mockery.”

Ndara heard and clasped her hands, bone squeezing bone.

She could not answer, but the king could. “No,” he said. “A display of skill. And the exuberance of youth.”

Ndara looked up quickly, to meet his encouraging smile.

The Sierandael grunted. He was used to the boys’ capers, and the masters had orders when the boys got out of hand. So girls cut capers as well! He’d never seen them, but then he only went over to witness their training twice a year. They were always strictly behaved, displaying drills in rigid formation.

From the shock in his wife’s face, it was clear she had no idea what the girls were doing when she wasn’t there supervising them.

He sat back, arms crossed, as down on the court Tanrid Algara-Vayir, now glistening with sweat, slammed two blades into his belt. He turned round, hands out, just like his sister; then, his fingers nipped the blades from his waist and he threw them high, whirling over and over, glittering red-gold in the firelight, until he caught them by the sharp steel tips and sent them speeding to slam to the hilts in the target’s head.

Again, the crowd shouted, a vast upwelling voice of might.

The Sierandael thought,
He must have taught his sister those tricks. Only why haven’t I seen this from him before?

Antics, for during war no one would do handsprings and then fling knives in a row down a target, nor would they toss them over their shoulders. But the audience indeed adored it. Even when the darkness, the flickering torchlight, the heat-scorched dizziness of which Tanrid and Hadand were as yet only subliminally aware, caused Hadand—younger, not as well practiced or as strong as her brother—to fling the knives more wildly, the audience no longer cared.

The king said, apparently in answer to Ndara’s face of dismay, “It seems the people approve.”

Tlennen would never trespass on his prerogatives. It was for his brother, the Royal Shield Arm, to choose to award the accolade or not. Anderle-Sierandael knew that despite the bravado, the flagrant disregard of strict rules, the two had earned it, but he hesitated, not because of the flouted rules, but because he hated being taken by surprise. A Shield Arm could not afford to ever be taken by surprise. Ever.

The Sierandael looked down at the row of horsetails along the fence. There, outlined in torchlight, sat the Sierlaef and his five friends, all of them cheering madly, even Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir, whose father, full of overweening ambition, would thrash Hawkeye bloody for not winning. The Sierlaef had never won, though the Sierandael had overseen his training himself. The boy was just as strong as the Algara-Vayir boy, just as fast, but after he’d passed his sixteenth year he seemed to have stopped caring about winning. Yet he was cheering now.

Then the Sierandael understood at last. The horsetails all cheered because Tanrid was one of them, and Hadand was the royal heir’s intended, so it was a horsetail win and a royal win.

No, it was a
Marlovan
win.

He breathed slowly, his puzzlement, his distrust, the ever-present anger, all leached away, leaving him with a conviction of the rightness of his training, of his far-seeing policy.

He thrust his fist into the air, and even the Guard on watch added their deep voices to the great shout that sent birds scolding to the far end of the city. Weapons brandished, torches waved, and boys and girls ran out onto the court, swarming around the two in the center, who stood, their mouths sticky, laughter and joy and exhaustion turning their bones to water.

The Sierandael smiled, and the king smiled to see his brother’s smile; Ndara watched Hadand through a mist of tears, and inside she wailed in fear,
Oh, daughter of my heart, what have you done?

Chapter Nineteen

T
HE night of the scrub exhibition with the shoeing, Sindan sat alone at a tiny table overlooking the great harbor at Ala Voar, listening to a pair of newly returned sailors talking to some other mariners about a sea battle.

He felt the locket hanging against his chest thump as though an invisible finger had tapped it. He knew what caused it: a little puff of air through the tiny holes on top, the sudden shift in weight from the appearance of paper.

“. . . so next thing we knew the Strait was full o’ Chwahir roundhulls, and them light-lined Everoneth war-trysails, all headin’ north-northeast, while the winds’re followin’ . . .”

Magic was a strange thing, Sindan thought, his attention divided between the sailor’s words and the golden locket. A shame they couldn’t find a way to transport people instead of little paper messages. He sipped at his fresh autumn brew and looked around the inn room. Mages in other places could transfer people. He’d learned that after the king had seen Ndara’s gift from his bride, and had in secret sent Sindan seeking more of them; the military advantage had been instantly clear.

He had also discovered on that trip the Marlovan reputation outside their own land. For a time it worsened the farther east he traveled. Mages there might have been, but they vanished like mist until he crossed the Sartoran Sea and ventured to ancient Eidervaen itself, capital city of great Sartor, where the lockets were for sale to anyone who had enough gold, and where the words “Marlovan” and “Iascan” were nearly unknown. He’d had just enough gold for three of the lockets.

“. . . one of those neat little Delfin cutters come racing down the strait, sky-sails flying, and reported enough smoke clouds drifting over the water to look like a storm coming.”

The sailor’s audience leaned forward. No one paid Sindan the least attention. Practiced after all these years, he hauled out the locket one-handed, removed the paper, and dropped the locket back inside his shirt.

It was not from the king, who held the first locket, but from Pavlan, Sindan’s armsman, whom he had sent farther on so they could cover twice the territory in the given time.

Sindan felt his heart slam against his ribs as he read the cryptic message:
News of three.
The rest told him where to go.

He looked up, his gaze resting on the worn casement of the window, its frame carved with stylized wheat tips, an old Iascan decoration. His ears heard the sailor still going on with his account of the surprising sea-alliance between the Chwahir and the Everoneth, old enemies, bound together against the greater threat of the mighty Venn fleet; his mind considered logistics.

By midnight he was on the road.

 

 

 

Five horses a day run to lather, three meals total eaten on the road, and very little sleep brought Sindan to sunset Fourthday, while the royal city talked about the remarkable exhibition made by the future queen and her brother at the games.

The sun had just vanished into a mist moving slowly over the ocean toward the coast as Sindan rode down toward the third village above Rual Harbor, at the extreme western edge of Marlo-Vayir territory.

Exhaustion caused the light from emerging stars and gold lights in distant windows to blur ever so slightly as Sindan rode along an old trail. There, hanging from a tree, visible only from that trail, was a lantern in blue glass.

He clucked softly to the horse, which grunted up the hill to the copse. A pale blob of a face emerged and murmured, “Sindan.”

“Pavlan. More news?”

“Come now. We might even have lost him already.” Pavlan threw a wad of cloth to land across Sindan’s saddlepad. “You will have to be an herb healer, or they will not let you in.”

Pavlan, tall, thin, dark of hair and eyes, had grown up in this area, part of the reason why Sindan had sent him here.

Pavlan extinguished the lantern, relieved that Captain Sindan had been so fast, but sick with sorrow over what he would find. While they waited for their eyes to readjust to the darkness, Pavlan said, “This village is small, all Old Iascan, most folk in the sea trades. Fishers found a skiff drifting on the tides, and brought it in. Hesti is—was—on board the
Cassad.
” Pavlan looked away, then continued in a quick, dispassionate voice, “Ship’s boy. Thrown overboard with the fishing skiff before the ship sank, as far as we can make out. Been floating for days. Internal wounds. He is alive, but barely. He probably won’t last the night.” A faint ching of metal, and the third locket landed on Sindan’s leg. “There’s that.”

Sindan dropped it round his neck to join his, then wrestled into the unfamiliar clothing made mostly of cotton instead of wool, loose instead of fitted, long and narrow. It would be uncomfortable for riding. The pale color was that of unbleached cotton, except for the spring-green dye edging the front lacings of the robe.

Just as he looked up, lightning flared out over the sea.

“That storm has held off for days,” Pavlan said. “But it’s coming now. We’d better hurry.”

“I’ll need a healer’s satchel, will I not? Spell book?”

“I have all that waiting.”

Sindan thrust his rolled-up tunic into a loop on his saddlepad and mounted up. The horses’ ears flicked back and forth, and they sniffed the wind. They, too, smelled a storm about to break. But the ride was not long, and Pavlan was familiar with the old paths winding about the hills.

They dismounted at the top of a rise and led the mounts down a narrow trail between terraced gardens, the neat rows of vegetables briefly revealed in the flare of lightning out over the water. They could hear the surf booming and hissing below.

A small girl took the horses around the side of a cliff, toward what smelled like a byre for cows and chickens. Pavlan started down a narrow footpath to a round cottage, golden light glowing from its windows. Sindan followed in silence.