King's Shield (79 page)

Evred had not moved, save to fling his arms out in a loose curve round his head, which lay on one side, face to the wall.

He could not know that Tau heard his mood in his breathing, and smiled crookedly as he dug with the heels of his palms deep into the muscles supporting the trunk, knowing full well the effect it had. Tau laughed inwardly, aware of the danger he was playing with, but that was exactly the attraction. He could sympathize with the heart-wounded, be kind to the hopelessly devoted, hold off with cool reserve the hungrily possessive, but complexity and danger, yes, and power, were a constant allure.

He also knew that prolonged isolation did not make one sane.

And so, not knowing what to expect, he finished working to the extremity of hands and feet. And when Evred slowly, reluctantly propped himself on his elbows, head down, face hidden, Tau leaned down and placed on the back of that pale, exposed neck a loud, mocking kiss.

Evred’s violent recoil surprised a laugh out of Tau. Who sat back on his heels and watched those angry, wary green eyes take in the locked door, the room, Tau. Who matched him in size, and strength, and mood.

Tau smiled, a rare smile: mocking, his upper lip curled just enough to show his white canines, unexpectedly sharp. “I think you’re afraid of me,” he drawled. “Prove that you’re not.”

Evred doubled up his fist and slugged Tau.

 

 

 

“So you’re saying you won’t do it?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Barend kicked the toe of his moc against a cabinet.

The banging on the door redoubled into thunder. “Go somewhere else! This is our room!” someone roared.

Inda turned his head. “Go away! This is important state business!”

Barend snorted, and as voices mumbled outside the door—the only distinct one saying, “It is? No it’s not, why would he lock himself in our closet?”—he said, “You shouldn’t have done that. You know they’ll be waiting when we open the door.”

Inda turned his palm up. “Why not? There’s no privacy anywhere else, why not an important conference here?”

“Because no one will believe it’s a conference,” Barend said with a wheezy laugh.

Inda’s brows shot up, then he grinned like a scrub. “Good. Far fewer questions that way. Want to make some noises, help them along?”

“I do not.” Barend straightened up. “All right. It’ll take some time, mind you, because I’m going to be turning that treasure of yours into ships. Trade. I’ll see if I can find wood anywhere, though we’re bound to be paying triple the price.”

“Whatever it takes. That treasure is just sitting there. Someone has to use it, may as well be us. Rescue a kingdom.”

“I’m gonna laugh if we arrive and it’s not there. Meantime, what do we tell Evred?”

“Nothing about the treasure,” Inda said firmly. “If we actually get it, then let it be a surprise. He could use a good surprise. As for why you’re going east, well, let’s tell him you’re going to contact Chim’s fleet to negotiate the possibility of trade. Which has the advantage of being true.”

“We’ll tell him in the morning, right before I leave with Ndand for the pass. He’s sure to like the idea of trade negotiations, not to mention a possible fleet.”

“That’s what I had in mind.” Inda smacked the bar up and yanked the door open.

Three identical expressions of amazement greeted him and Barend as they walked out. Inda made it about five steps before he succumbed to snickers.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“INDA

The whisper was more insistent, woven into the sound of the wind through snapping sails; when it repeated next to Inda’s ear, the dream washed over and past him, leaving him lying in bed. He started up, hands flailing.

Signi sat up as well, a stray beam of departing moonlight shining in her wide eyes.

“Sorry to wake you, Dag Signi.” It was Tau. “I need Inda for just a moment.”

“In the middle of the night?” Inda protested. “I just shut my eyes.”

“It’s a couple of glass-turns before the dawn watch. Come outside?”

Inda muttered curses as he fumbled around for his trousers. He stuck his feet in, hopping as he pulled them on and followed Tau out of the room. Inda had been given an actual room, one with a real bed. Too bad he’d only gotten this half watch to sleep in it, he thought irritably as Tau shut the door behind them.

Then he recognized Tau’s blue coat and his gear slung over one shoulder. Inda sniffed. There was the faint, distinct trace of herbs in the soap that Tau had bought at great expense from Colend, and had hoarded ever since he’d left Bren. Tau was not only bathed, dressed, and ready for the day, he was leaving.

“Where are you going?” Inda asked in dismay. “Why? What happened?”

“To answer the first question is why I’m here. As for the second—” Tau checked the silent hall. The doors were all closed, behind which the remaining Sier Danas slept. “Come out on the wall,” he said abruptly.

They walked through the empty stairwell to the sentry walk. The only posted guards were women as lookouts on the four towers: with an entire army cramming the city, Evred had declared the walls did not require sentries, and had issued general liberty.

Faint blue smeared the eastern horizon. The air was soft. It would be a very hot day for a ride. But they were no longer in a hurry.

Inda shook his head to get the fog out of it. The woman at the top of the east tower recognized him, touched fingers to chest, then turned away.

Tau said, “I need you to send me on an errand. Something a Runner would do.”

Inda thumped his fist on a stone battlement. “What’s going on, Tau?”

“I had a tangle with your Evred.”

“You what?” Inda rubbed his thumbs across his eyelids. When he peered more closely at Tau in the torchlight, there was a mark on one cheekbone, and dark roughness across his knuckles. “You didn’t get into a fight with him,” he exclaimed in dismay.

“It was fun,” Tau retorted, with a quick grin. “It was fun for us both. I don’t think he’s permitted himself to just have fun for far too long,” he added reflectively, his tone odd enough to send warning prickles through Inda’s nerves. Inda shook his head violently, trying to wake up as Tau went on, “He’s had storm sail set too long. I gave him an eye in the storm. I’d better be gone before the winds hit from the other direction.”

Inda leaned his arms on the battlement. “Tau,” he said, exasperated. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Let me try it this way. One reason Evred’s so taut is that he doesn’t trust people easily. He doesn’t trust emotions at all.”

Inda said, “He’s been—” He rubbed his eyes again. “Don’t know how to describe it. Shut away, sometimes. All the time since Noddy died.”

It started when he first laid eyes on you, is my guess. Or maybe it started when he was born.
But Tau only said, “I used scrapping to seduce him. And he enjoyed it as much as I did, I made sure of that.”

Maybe even more, because Evred so very rarely permitted anyone to breach the ringed ice-walls of his reserve. But the powerful effect of that breach had gone both ways. Tau had always known that sex and fighting were dangerously parallel desires in some people; he was drawn that way himself. But that did not explain the compelling, almost overwhelming lucency of Evred lying there wrist-lax and utterly undone.

Tau knew two things: that no one had ever seen Evred so exposed, and that Evred would waken to equivalent suspicion-impelled anger.

Tau became aware of Inda’s confusion. “By the time Evred comes to breakfast he’ll most likely have talked himself into thinking I’m as vile as Coco. People like Coco happen too often to those in power. It’ll be better for everyone if I’m not there.”

“Right. I get it now.” Inda almost rubbed his eyes again, but dropped his hand. “If you’re gone, and there isn’t any bragging or any demands like Coco made, then everything goes back to normal. Huh. Since we already sent the Runners with the personal letters to Khani-Vayir and Yvana-Vayir, how’s this? You go all the way south to Choraed Elgaer. Remember Tdor? See, after this triumph in Tya-Vayir, I’m to go home, get married. I did write Tdor a quick note, but I haven’t had time for a letter about everything. That way, it’s understandable orders.”

“Perfect.” Tau grinned. “I’ll see you at your wedding, then.” He gave Inda an ironic salute and vanished into the tower stairwell.

Wedding.
What a strange sound that had. Inda had expected all his early life to marry Tdor, and had longed for a return to that life all the years he was at sea. And now it was time to do it. But it felt strange. No stranger than being a Harskialdna, though. He laughed inwardly as he let himself back into the room.

Signi had kindled a light, and dressed. She sat neatly, hands folded. “Is there trouble?”

“No. Tau needed an errand, and I gave him one. Sent him to tell Tdor to get ready for my wedding.”

Signi smiled. “She will be glad of good news.”

Inda dropped down and squashed her in a tight hug. “I wish I could marry you, too,” he said huskily, his face pressed into her hair. “You hardly got to talk to her, but I know you’d like her. Everyone likes Tdor. I think she’d like you, too.”

Signi held him away and looked earnestly into his face. “Ah. I was going to say, there are places where you can marry whom you like, and there is no limit in number. It’s just a matter of degree—”

“Don’t tell me: Colend.”

She chuckled. “Yes. Among other places. I am honored, dear Inda. But you know, even if Tdor was not waiting, and no family expecting you to take your place, I could never marry in this country.”

Inda’s joy faded. “I guess I see that.”

It was her turn to hug him. “I beg your pardon, dear Inda. You give love with both hands, without calculation. I take the joy of that, and we will not worry ourselves about what marriage means.”

He played with her fingers absently, his brow puckered. “I never thought about
that
at all. I just knew, oh, I liked the idea of being married to Tdor. You too,” he added uncomfortably, then grinned. “Just supposing we could marry anyone we wanted? If she’s got a favorite, would that mean four people get married? I hope it’s Whipstick. Not Branid.” Inda remembered what Tau had told him, and laughed. “Whipstick. Huh. He was fourteen when I left. We thought him so old and tough! All he thought about were fart jokes and stings and winning scraps. Do you have to sleep with everybody you marry, in those other lands? I just can’t see hopping under the covers with his skinny, hairy arms and legs, and then he cracks some joke about bran gas.”

Signi chuckled, a quiet sound.

Inda said, “Though he probably wouldn’t want me, either.” His sudden grin reminded her how young he was.

She wiped her eyes, tenderness hollowing all around her heart. “Marriage and love have so many meanings.” Her voice softened to huskiness. “Marriage cannot build walls to keep love inside. Marriage can give a structure to the family.”

“To the castle.” Inda jerked his thumb toward the walls. “The people of the castle.”

“You Marlovans marry your place and your duty as well as a person.” She made one of her complicated hand gestures. “Oh, it is the same with us: the meaning of marriage lies mostly in our place among our fellows. But love is free as air.”

Inda swung his arm round, thinking that over. She caressed his cheek and then left to go down to the baths.

She’s going to leave me,
he thought, sobered. Then rubbed his shoulder absently.
But not now.

He got up and sat at the little table, shoved aside the royal order book that he’d taken to look at before sleeping, pulled out one of the scraps of paper he’d sliced before, and wrote:

On the other side of the world, as the sun began to set, Mutt vented his sour mood by uttering a stream of curse-punctuated, unfair observations of Fox. If he and his mates had been stupid enough to think that the wind dying to calm would mean an easy day or two, Fox must have stayed up for nights figuring out so many ways to prove them wrong.

They’d begun by replacing winter-worn rope and changing to summer sail. As for free time before the afternoon drill? No! They boomed planks over the sides so they could sand and repaint the sleek, low hull of the
Death.
True, its fine black paint had worn streaky over the winter. But why paint it now, when there was every chance they were sailing straight into battle? Why not
after
the battle, when they weren’t already drilling for two solid watches, making arrows with the wood and feathers they’d scrounged off the Fog Islands, and resharpening all their steel weapons?

They wanted to ask. Well, they each wanted the others to ask. Nobody wanted to risk getting flayed by Fox’s sarcasm. He’d been in a nasty mood for days, either lurking in his cabin, or prowling around when least expected—or wanted.

The entire fleet knew Fox was in a temper.

All the other captains had remained prudently on their stations, their activities matching the flagship’s. “Cowards,” Mutt snarled, whacking his paintbrush against the stern-post. Naturally the ship gave a lurch, he nearly fell backward, and the paintbrush splattered back into his face.

And just as naturally, everybody was watching.

Out of the howls and comments came Pilvig’s voice, “He’s on the move!”

At once they fell silent, everybody sedulously painting, except those at the booms, attentive to the ropes.

Mutt peered over the rail. Fox looked exactly as wicked as always. Except—was that squint a laugh, or just an eye-tightening against the brightness of the sun?

“Who’s on flags? I want all captains. Fangras as well.” He paused, leaning down. “Less chatter and more work might get that done today,” he added as several glares were shot at Mutt.