Inda (35 page)

“No, you don’t,” Dogpiss said, waving a hand. “You two are not going to start blabbing about history first day we’re here. Save it for the beaks.”

Cama looked relieved, Rattooth disappointed, but no one was surprised. Inda gave a one-shoulder shrug that promised private talk later, and Sponge sat down to watch the game.

Before the current round was finished and he could be dealt in, they heard the quick tap of boot heels on the wooden floor outside the door, and looked up in time to see Tanrid Algara-Vayir stride in, resplendent in House coat, fringed formal sash, his best dagger, and highly polished boots.

“Get to the baths,” he said briefly. “Clean up. Meet at the great court at the bell-change.”

“What?” the boys cried, but Tanrid whirled and stalked out, his long brown ponytail flapping on his shoulder blades.

Inda turned to Sponge, who said somewhat diffidently, for he hated displaying inside knowledge, “I think it might be that we’re all to attend Master Gand’s wedding. Since we’re here.”

“Wedding!”

“Master Gand?”

“Masters can’t be married!”

Sponge shook his head. “I’ll explain as we get ready.”

They raced off to the baths. As it happened, only Rattooth Cassad and Inda were interested enough to listen as Sponge said, “It has to do with those ships that sank. Treaties. Master Gand and his wife will be Shield Arm and Randviar in the north.”

Cassad looked amazed. “Gand? Married?”

Inda splashed them. “Seems strange. Something’s missing.”

Sponge thought of the things he could say, and what he ought not to say, and kept silent as he splashed back.

Weddings were pretty much the same all over the kingdom, Inda thought later, after stuffing himself with lemon cakes. Even when held in the vast Guard Hall instead of a castle, the long tables exactly like the boys’ mess tables in the academy pushed against the walls, the stone floor swept clean, wreaths of fir fashioned round sconces for decoration, filling the air with a sharp scent of pine. Standing around clean and neat while the two people getting married, equally clean and neat in their wedding clothes, gabble the vows about fealty you’ve heard all your life, but afterward they share the wine and the cakes, and then comes the drumming and dancing.

Men’s dances, women’s dances, men’s, women’s, the children weaving in and around them, either dancing in silly competitions or else playing tag games, or cramming more sweetcakes into their mouths. The youths watched one another dance, and the older adults watched the youths watching one another, and on the perimeter, the ranking guests sat at the plain wooden plank tables and held up wine cups to one another, talking in quiet voices, testing or redefining alliances.

It seemed strange to Inda to see the academy masters in a wedding setting, especially strange to see hard-faced Captain Gand in a wedding shirt with a silken sash round his waist, all made by his new wife. But he smiled, and seemed pleased, and the boys were pleased for him—at a respectful distance.

The king even came, but he didn’t stay, at least. Not that the boys minded the king being there, except for the fact that they all had to behave like they were on parade.

Afterward it was fun, trying to sneak wine and cracking a continual stream of jokes. Dogpiss’ face was crimson with laughter when at last the signal went round for the boys to retreat to the academy.

The walk wasn’t long, of course. No one left in any kind of order. Inda looked around for Sponge, but not finding him, he started off, pausing in the doorway when he saw a tall man standing just outside, talking to two masters and blocking the way. The light from behind Inda shone on a familiar face: the Sierandael, Royal Shield Arm and overseer of the academy.

Inda was not about to shoulder past the masters, much less the Royal Shield Arm, so he waited. The two masters presently saluted, fists to chest, and walked off speaking a last cheery wish for a good evening, and Inda, expecting the Sierandael to follow them, lifted a foot, ready to sprint for the academy.

But then the Sierandael glanced over his shoulder, and his brows lifted when he saw Inda. Not just saw, but recognized.

They had never spoken. Inda would hardly expect so exalted a figure to take notice of a scrub. In fact, he wouldn’t want that to happen, because far too often “taking notice” was just another definition of trouble. He mentally reviewed his behavior that evening. But that assessing look, that wasn’t puzzlement, that was definitely recognition.

“You’re the young Algara-Vayir, are you not?”

He
was
in trouble! Dismay made Inda stiff and solemn. Should he salute? His right fist balled, ready to strike his heart. “Sierandael-Dal.”

The Sierandael, looking down into that face from which all the humor and intelligence had been studiously smoothed out, put his hands behind his back and assumed a more jovial tone. “I hear from Captain Noth you had a near miss with brigands.”

Inda worked to repress his relief. “We were disappointed, Sierandael-Dal.”

“Come along. Tell me about your end of things.”

Somewhat bewildered, Inda followed the Royal Shield Arm out into the cool night air. “Nothing really to tell. We weren’t part of the real plan—wasn’t it the king’s order?”

The Sierandael smiled, nodding. “Yes. Though you boys have the courage, you do not yet have the experience for warfare.”

“Well, we were separated off, as ordered. At dawn, we saw some riders. They looked suspicious. Dogpiss came back—he’d, ah, gone down to the river to scout—and found our guards dead, and so we had to retreat, and we did. Then Captain Noth was detailed to whisk us off here to the royal city, and we didn’t get so much as a sniff of the battle.”

The boy was unprepossessing to look at, but the Sierandael remembered the games last summer, and said with a laugh, “I would have been put out when I was your age. A swindle!”

Inda murmured agreement, thinking,
Why does he laugh?

Then the Sierandael said in the same joking tone, “So what do you think your father did, after you boys were whisked away?”

“Well. We talked about it . . .” He began doubtfully, afraid of what Tanrid called Blabbing Too Much.

“I don’t want to hear what the others thought. I want to hear what you thought,” the Sierandael said, which took Inda utterly by surprise.

A flame of gratification burned through him. No adult in his experience showed the least interest in what he thought!
So make it clear, dolt,
he told himself.

The Sierandael had fallen into step beside Inda, who gazed up at the torches on the castle walls, no longer oil-dipped as of ancient days, but kept alight by magic, painting with reddish glow the familiar wood-and-stone buildings of the academy that would comprise his world for the months ahead.

What he really saw was the map lying there on his father’s table, overlaid by the glimpse of the bridge, of the terrain as seen from the river, that the boys got before Captain Noth took them away. And again he felt that strange sensation as all the details, past experience, what he’d heard, thousand of bright pinpoints of possibility coalesced into probability. His mind floated down that fast stream of conviction and he said, “My father would be angry, and he’d use that, I think, to reverse the plan. Since we were betrayed. So . . . instead of waiting for them he’d charge right over the bridge, straight toward where he knew they were lurking. They’d think their trap closing. But if Father sent Captain Noth’s dragoons to veer round to the headland that way, down along the riverside . . .” His hands dipped like moths in the ruddy light, over the map he saw so clearly in his head. “They think they’re closing a trap, but one closes on them.” He smacked his hands together. “The dragoons dropping off to fight on foot through the marshy area, the others forcing the brigands down to the water, which is the barrier. They’d have nowhere else to go, and so the dragoons could . . .” Inda talked on.

The Sierandael felt his own palms prickle. The boy’s words were an eerie echo of the report he had received just two bells ago, from an exhausted Cassad galloper who had ridden straight from the thorough rout at the bridge, so complete, so merciless it would probably gain a name, and the king might even demand a banner for the Great Hall.

The boy could be lying for effect. He could have heard some part of Jarend-Adaluin’s orders before leaving. Maybe he’d heard them without quite realizing. But Noth had been quite definite about plucking those children out of snowmelt waters, and about the fact that the boys had been nowhere near the commanders. Jarend-Adaluin’s anxiousness for his sons, an anxiousness intensified by his having survived the murder of one family a quarter century ago, would have driven him to get them away from impending danger just as fast as possible.

Inda, realizing he was rambling, stopped, his face flushing. “Um, that’s how it works in my mind, but of course I haven’t actually seen a real battle,” he said contritely.

The Sierandael forced another laugh, a forgiving one, an indulgent one. “Quite all right, boy. We all like to imagine what we might one day be called upon to command. No doubt you look forward to that, do you not?”

The Sierandael smiled down into that face, thinking rapidly ahead. Of course he would set the same problem for the older boys, but he already knew what he’d hear: a lot of bravado, making maybe tactical sense, as he’d expect from seven years of good grounding. But none of them, not even Tanrid Algara-Vayir, would see the solution. No one except an eleven-year-old boy.

Inda, meanwhile, was troubled by his reaction to the Sierandael, his commander while here, the king’s own brother and Shield Arm. He could not define why he felt so ill at ease.

Prodded by a stab of guilt, of perplexity, he realized that he had been asked a question, and he said more than he ordinarily would. “Oh, I do, Sierandael-Dal. Well, not at home, not really. I’ve heard enough about the burning, and how long it took for the land to recover.” Adding in a burst of feeling, “If the Venn come, like Tanrid keeps saying, well, then, if it’s when the Sierlaef becomes king, then I shall be able to fight under Sp-uh, under Evred-Varlaef’s command. I’d like that.”

The Sierandael laughed as they passed through the last stone archway between guard territory and the academy proper. Inda realized why he felt uneasy with this man, academy commander and king’s brother though he was: his was a laugh without humor, without cause. It was Kepa’s laugh, and Branid’s at home.

The Sierandael, looking down at that reserved expression, forced himself to smile and to wave a casual hand in dismissal as he said, “And so perhaps you shall. But there’s much to be learned between now and then. Go get your sleep, then learn it.”

“Yes, Sierandael-Dal.” Now Inda knew he should salute.

The Sierandael watched him run down the narrow stone corridor between the walled-off barracks courts, saw the relief in that springing step, and pursed his lips. He had had command of men and boys for enough years to recognize in Indevan Algara-Vayir the most dangerous type of all: the born commander who is utterly loyal, and as utterly without ambition.

And that loyalty had already gone to the wrong prince.

Chapter Twenty-six

SPRING slid into summer, Inda’s days resembling one another in their sameness: drill, work, never enough sleep, and occasional moments of conversation with Sponge, all the more cherished because they were so few. Their new tutor, handpicked by the Sierandael himself, saw to it that these boys were not “coddled” as they had been last year. Coddled? The boys’ surprise was immense at their first callover before Master Starthend, when with his very first words he declared just that. Coddled!

But Starthend kept his promise. Because he’d been instructed to ride them hard, and because he had his own private grudge against Captain Gand—who’d been promoted over Starthend back when they were both dragoons—he decided he’d show these boys what
real
dragoon training was.

At this year’s games, these boys would outshine everyone in the lower academy, and thus outshine Gand.

The boys, used to rough handling at home and Gand’s exacting standards the year before, adapted. Inda still forced himself to waken early three times a week in the cold, often rainy hours before dawn, in order to make it to the Great Hall for his practice in the Odni with Hadand’s arms mistress. Lessons he continued to teach Sponge every chance they got.

It was far from being a bad year. The boys loved getting training ahead of their year—they expertly judged the pigtails’ annoyance by the variety and heat of their insults about strut, frost, and stupid scrub clumsiness at mimicking dragoons, and thus the lessons Starthend had meant to be so grueling (and they were) were also secretly gratifying, though the boys knew better than to let Starthend see that.

Smartlip was tireless in his efforts to please everyone. Kepa was subdued. Mouse Marth-Davan not only spoke of his own accord, but had become riding mates with Lan Askan, who was as horse-mad as he. Cherry-Stripe was relieved when Inda, the unacknowledged leader of the barracks, made certain he was always chosen commander of ridings in scrub war games—when the boys could chose. It was an unspoken alliance that thwarted nosy brothers, and Cherry-Stripe was more grateful that Inda never seemed to expect gratitude.