Law of the Broken Earth (15 page)

The queen, followed by a scattering of staff and servants, came out the open doors at just that moment. She stood for a moment, staring at them. Then she came down the steps and made her way over to the cart. The queen took Mienthe’s hand, to her immense relief seeming not so furious after all. Her pretty mouth set as her glance encompassed Tan’s pale, pain-drawn face.

“A smashed knee,” Geroen said briefly, not quite meeting the queen’s eyes.

“I’d never have lived through the night if not for this rescue,” Tan managed in his thread of a voice. Mienthe hoped the queen would remember to mention
that
to her husband, as well as the rest.

“I asked for your staff to send for a mage skilled in healing as soon as I understood where you’d gone,” Queen Niethe told Mienthe. She touched Tan’s throat, then his forehead. She frowned down at him. “Already fevered—well, the mage will see you right, and for that I’m truly grateful.” She turned to wave at the hovering servants.

Iriene was the only mage in Tiefenauer skilled in healing, and she was in fact skilled at no other kind of
magecraft. But she was a very skillful healer indeed. Folk came from all over the Delta to see her. Mienthe had seen Iriene repair a terribly broken elbow once when one of the upper-house maids’ child had fallen out of a window; she could surely fix Tan’s knee. And the queen had already sent for her. A tension Mienthe hadn’t quite realized she’d felt eased.

Tan, closing his eyes again, whispered, “A mage is better than a miser when health is more valued than gold,” which sounded like a quote, though Mienthe didn’t recognize the source.

“That’s the only injury?” Niethe asked, looking searchingly at Mienthe. “You’re well?”

“Yes—”

“Well, good! But there’s no credit to your guard captain for that,” the queen said, and stared at Geroen, who lowered his eyes wordlessly. Not in the least appeased, Queen Niethe said in an unforgiving tone, “You took
Bertaud’s little cousin
across the river into Linularinum, risking who knows what mayhem
and
a cross-border incident? I can’t imagine what Iaor will say! And you, Mienthe! What
can
you have been thinking? I would hardly credit it, save you standing here covered in swamp mud!”

Geroen could hardly answer this, so Mienthe did. “Your Majesty, Captain Geroen didn’t take me across the river,” she said, trying not to let her voice tremble. She made herself meet the queen’s eyes. “
I
took
him
. And I’m sorry if His Majesty will be angry, but I’m the Lady of the Delta while my cousin is away, so how could I let Linularinan agents kidnap people right out of the great house? And we did get Tan back.”

The queen stared at her, taken very much aback.

Mienthe knew she’d flushed. Her heart was beating too fast. Despite her brave words, she knew the king, and probably Bertaud, would indeed be angry. And she knew she was the one who deserved their anger—she’d taken Bertaud’s authority on herself, and whatever he’d
said
, she wasn’t at all certain she’d had the right, not really.

She also knew that none of the risks they’d taken would have been necessary if she’d only kept Tan safer to begin with, or moved faster to get him back—she’d known where he was from the moment he’d been taken, and they’d
still
had to go into Linularinum to get him? If she’d only been faster, not only would they have avoided any potential trouble with Linularinum, but Tan wouldn’t have gotten hurt.

“Well,” Niethe said, now sounding a little doubtful, “if you stopped those sly Linularinan agents from doing their malicious work on this side of the river, that’s well done, at least.” She smiled suddenly. “I won’t scold you, Mienthe. Maybe you’re right. I imagine your cousin will have one or two things to say when he returns, however!”

Mienthe imagined so, too, more vividly than Niethe could. She tried to smile.

Behind the queen, the mage Iriene came out onto the porch, took in the crowd with one comprehensive, unimpressed glance, and said sharply, “Why are you all dithering about in the damp? Get this injured man somewhere clean and warm, and everyone else get out of the way, if you please! Do we have a litter? Well, what are we all standing about for, then? You”—she stabbed a finger at some of the queen’s attendants—“get a litter and get that man inside. Jump!”

In all the Delta, Iriene daughter of Iriene was not only
the mage most skilled with healing magic but also the one least impressed by rank, wealth, or authority. Only learning impressed her, so Bertaud had told Mienthe, and only if it had to do with healing. She paid so little attention to anything else that Mienthe suspected she might not even know who Niethe was. If she knew, it wasn’t stopping her commanding the queen’s own guardsmen, who, after only the quickest glance at Niethe, were indeed jumping to obey the mage.

“Gently, there!” exclaimed Iriene, hovering over Tan as he was transferred from cart to litter. She scowled ferociously down at him, waving a sharp hand through the air as though trying to brush away a cloud of gnats. “Well,
that’s
strange—” she began, but then her breath puffed out in exasperation as someone staggered and jolted the litter. Instead of finishing her thought, she reached out with one hand and laid her fingers on Tan’s leg above the knee. Tan gasped and then sagged all over as the pain abruptly eased.

“So that’s in hand,” Niethe said as the mage and her party passed indoors. She turned her head, frowning. “Very well. Captain… Geroen, isn’t it?”

Geroen ducked his head. “Your Majesty.”

“I trust you’ll be able to keep hold of him this time? I’m quite certain that Iaor would not approve of a repetition of this night’s exercise.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. No, indeed. I’ll go see to that, then.” The guard captain hesitated fractionally, glancing at Mienthe. “If I’ve your leave to do so.”

“Yes,” Mienthe said, surprised. “Of course. Go on.”

Geroen gave her a curt bow and followed Iriene and her retinue of litter-bearers.

“Mienthe… you’re well, truly?” Niethe gave her a searching look. “I see you are. This”—the queen visibly edited any number of phrases such as
harebrained
and
madly foolish
out of her speech—“night’s, um, work, was truly your idea? Just what
did
you all do? And how?”

“Captain Geroen would probably explain everything better,” Mienthe said humbly. Everything seemed to blur together in her mind. Especially all that horrible ride back toward the river.

The queen smiled. “Well, you can tell me all about it
after
you’ve cleaned up and warmed up and had a chance to rest, Mienthe, lest you catch the ague and require Iriene’s skills on your own account! Perhaps you’ll join me for breakfast in the brown room, in, say, an hour? Two hours?”

Appalled at the idea that the queen might wait for
her
, Mienthe assured Niethe that an hour would be wonderful, ample, more than generous. Then she fled hastily to her room. She wanted a long, hot bath with lots of fragrant soap, and she wanted to wash her hair at least twice—she was sure there was swamp mud in it as well as on her clothing, she could smell the reek wafting around her every time she shook her head—and she wanted to wrap herself in warm towels in front of a roaring fire and let her maids comb out her clean hair. Then she wanted her warmest, softest robe and a cup of hot tea and a sweet roll with jam, and
then
she wanted to fall into her bed and sleep for about three days.

She thought she might at least manage a very quick bath and her hair.

“Your clothes! Your hair!” Karin, the youngest of her maids, exclaimed. The girl stared at Mienthe, laughing
through her horror. “Let me call Emnis—do you want me to call her?” Emnis was Mienthe’s senior maid. Mienthe started to answer, but Karin went on without waiting, “No, of course you don’t; if she sees you like that, she’ll never help find boy’s things for you again
ever
. Did you know the queen was looking for you?”

“I saw her—”

“The
queen
saw you like that?”

Mienthe couldn’t help but laugh at Karin’s expression. “I think everyone was a little distracted by other things. I’m supposed to go join Her Majesty for a decent breakfast in an hour, or I’d be begging you to run down to the kitchens for me—even the bath could wait. Briefly. Did you hear we got Tan back?”

“Everyone’s heard that, and that he’s hurt.” Karin rolled her eyes, her voice tart on her answer. “Half the household staff has him dying before another nightfall, and the other half thinks he’ll be up dancing before dusk, but I don’t think even the esteemed Iriene is quite
that
good a healer. But they
all
think he’s terribly romantic! The injured hero, right out of an epic. You’d think
he’d
rescued
you
and not the other way around!”

Mienthe laughed again. “Oh, that would fit into an epic much better! What has Iriene said, have you heard?”

“She’s still working on him, they say, so I guess he won’t be dancing at dusk because she wouldn’t take so long for anything simple! Let me help you off with that. There’s hot water—I had them bring it as soon as we heard you’d come back—” The girl’s voice trembled on that last and she fell abruptly silent.

“I’m sorry you were frightened,” Mienthe told her gently.

“I’m never frightened. I’m just jealous because you got to go off on romantic adventures and I didn’t.” Karin effectively stifled any response Mienthe could make by pulling her shift suddenly over her head.

The water in the copper basin was still hot, for which Mienthe was grateful. Karin helped Mienthe take down her hair and step into the steaming bath.

“What do you want to wear? If Her Majesty will be at breakfast… Do you think the blue dress?”

Mienthe hesitated. “The queen has such lovely things even when she’s traveling. And all her ladies… maybe the green?”

Karin laughed. “Oh, the green, then, by all means! I’ll lay it out for you. Oh—here’s Emnis, after all!” She kicked Mienthe’s discarded clothing out of sight behind the door, handed Mienthe the soap, and slipped out toward the wardrobe, adding over her shoulder, “Maybe you could tell me, later, all the parts you leave out for Her Majesty?” She meant, after Emnis was no longer around to be horrified.

Mienthe’s senior maid appeared in the doorway, clucking with mild disapproval over the state of Mienthe’s hair, looking so perfectly ordinary that Mienthe found she could almost believe that nothing unusual had ever happened or ever would.

Emnis had been Mienthe’s maid almost since she’d come to live in the great house. She wasn’t especially pretty or at all clever, and she worried if Mienthe got mud on her skirts or under her fingernails, but she was kind and cheerful. She murmured all the time she was helping Mienthe wash her hair, a low-voiced sound as pleasant and almost as meaningless as the babble of a stream. Did
Mienthe want the green dress again, or the white one with the flowers on it, and did she expect to go out in the gardens today, because then certainly not the white. Did she want those new slippers with the pretty stitching on the toes? Here, now, careful stepping out of the bath. Now, couldn’t Mienthe please settle down just for a moment so Emnis could dry her hair a bit before she braided it and put it up, and no, there wasn’t a trace of swamp-smell left, for a mercy; earth and iron, you’d think Mienthe had been swimming right through the swamps all night. Here, perhaps a touch of this rose oil under her ears, just to be sure.

No
, Mienthe thought.
Of the whole household, Emnis was probably the one person who had the least curiosity about recent events and the least inclination to gather and pass on rumors.
It was restful. She let Karin bring her the slippers with the stitching on the toes, then stood for a moment looking at her maids and at the comfortable rooms around her and thinking, really for the first time, that she might honestly have lost everything on last night’s adventure. If there had been a whole troop of Linularinan soldiers at that barn… or if they’d met trouble on the ride home… If there had been a mage with the Linularinan spymaster, as it seemed there must have been, well, they hadn’t had a mage of their own—unless Mienthe herself—well, that seemed just silly. But… anything might have happened. She’d known that, but somehow she hadn’t really
known
it until this moment after everything was over and everyone was safe. She shivered.

“You’re cold?” Emnis asked anxiously and patted Mienthe’s hand. “Your hands are cold!” she exclaimed,
and went to get a long scarf of dark green and gold that would go with Mienthe’s dress.

Mienthe started to explain that she wasn’t cold, exactly, only shocked in retrospect by how… well, how thoughtless and, really, she had to admit, how foolish she’d been. But then she didn’t try to explain after all. She just accepted the scarf and swirled it around her neck, took a deep breath, and went to find the queen and breakfast.

Breakfast was soft-scrambled eggs and sweet rolls and cold thin-sliced beef and ham and plenty of last fall’s cider, hot and spiced and served in enormous earthenware mugs. Mienthe was glad to see all of it, but especially happy to see the cider, which warmed the last of the chill from her bones. Already the long night seemed to have happened a long time ago, or maybe to be the fragile echo of a dream. But the queen was waiting for her to explain what she’d done, and why, and how. The
how
seemed particularly obscure, now.

“Just begin somewhere and tell it in any order,” Niethe advised her, smiling. The queen must have allowed her ladies to breakfast earlier and then sent them away, because she was the only person present at breakfast aside from Mienthe and the captain of her royal guard, whose name, Mienthe knew, was Temnan.
He
was not smiling. He was a stodgy man in his fifties, not at all the sort of person who would agree to make a spontaneous raid across the river on the spur of the moment.