Limits of Power (19 page)

The king turned to one of his escort. “Go tell Armsmaster Fralorn that I'm in the salle with Queen Arian and ask him to attend.”

When the man had left, the king turned to his friends. “Do not get me in trouble with Fralorn. The rules are rules for all. Quickly now; fetch bandas for us.”

By the time Fralorn arrived, the entire party, including Arian's Squires, had donned bandas.

Fralorn was a tall, lean man with thinning dark hair and a gray mustache. He wore clothes Arian had not seen before: short full breeches over stockings, thin slippers of gray kid, and a close-fitting gray tunic embroidered with the royal arms in rose and crimson. “Sir king,” he said, bowing. His gaze swept the room and snagged momentarily on the swords lying on the bench where Rothlin had been sitting. “How may I serve?”

“Milady,” the king said, “may I present Armsmaster Fralorn.” Fralorn bowed. “And this is Queen Arian of Lyonya,” the king said. “Queen Arian asked if it would be possible for her to practice in the salle daily.”

Fralorn smiled and bowed again. “My honor, milady queen, would be to have you share this space. May one ask what time of day the queen prefers to drill?”

“King Kieri and I drill before breakfast,” Arian said. “It improves the appetite.”

“Indeed, milady, so it would, and the swordplay as well. And would that be with your own escort, or would you wish to drill with others?”

“Either would suit me,” Arian said. “I wish to cause no more work for my hosts than necessary.”

“Never mind that,” Fralorn said. “Perhaps—I see you are wearing a banda—you would enjoy a brief session this evening? Then, should you wish other partners, I will know which might suit you best.”

“Yes, indeed,” Arian said.

“Perhaps you would like to work with your own escort first,” he said.

“Certainly.” Arian turned to Garrion. “Shall we?” He nodded and she led the way to the center of the salle.

Fralorn turned to the others for a moment, his tone crisp and commanding as he said, “Kirgan Marrakai, Nigan Serrostin, I see you laid your blades ready; you two and the king may warm up with footwork exercises on the targes at that end. Sequence five from Mathalion's Classics. Remember to keep time accurately.”

“Yes, Armsmaster,” they said, meek as mice. Arian laughed to herself. They knew they were caught.

“Now, milady, if you permit, a brief warm-up. Keeping distance; I will call the pattern for your escort. Will that suit?”

“Excellently,” Arian said. Garrion followed the armsmaster's instructions; Arian inverted them, and after a very short time Fralorn nodded. She and Garrion squared off, beginning with one of their standard drills. They had sparred many times; they knew each other's tricks and rarely got a touch on each other on level ground.

“Hold, please,” Fralorn said. “Milady queen, you are the equal of any blade in the kingdom, and so is your escort. Have you ever instructed?” His voice held no flattery, only a professional assessment.

“Yes, but not recently.”

“Would you consider crossing blades with me someday?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“At the moment I believe the young gentlemen need an instructor's eye on them. The king should accompany
you,
of course…” Fralorn approached the three, who were keeping a reasonably good tempo and distance in what Arian saw was a complicated footwork pattern.

“Sir king, your guest would appreciate your guidance. I am certain, however, that Kirgans Marrakai and Mahieran and Nigan Serrostin would enjoy continuing their exercise with me. Perhaps Marshal-Judicar Oktar would care to join us?”

Arian stifled another laugh. The young men looked anything but eager for the exercise, but they bowed and said, “Yes, Armsmaster.”

The king led the way out of earshot of the salle and then turned to Arian with a mischievous grin. “They will regret they broke the rules,” he said. “I myself would not dare to drill without him or one of the approved auditors present. Not now, anyway. I did that with Juris once when I was a boy Cam's age, and it didn't end with a footwork drill. I had bruises through the banda.”

“At Falk's Hall, we students tried to get in some practice time when the instructors weren't hanging over us. Punishment was footwork drills while holding a pike overhead.”

“You broke rules?” He sounded disbelieving.

“Not very often,” Arian said. “But enough to know what would happen when I did.”

“I'm surprised at Juris and Roly; I suppose they thought everyone would be busy with your visit.”

“Perhaps they learned something new while Rothlin was away and wanted to show him.”

“Still, they shouldn't. They're dukes' sons; they should set an example.”
If I have to,
that meant. Arian reminded herself that this king was very young, had lost both his parents early, and only the year before had been nearly killed in his own palace. He went on in a different tone, “Though if I set them a better example, maybe they wouldn't do things like that.”

“Do they often?”

“No. That's why I was so surprised. We're going to the grange-hall for the Bells now—it's the other place you could practice. The Knight-Commander would need to know you were coming—it's the training hall for the Knights of the Bells, and sometimes it's full.”

“I understand,” Arian said.

The Knight-Commander was in his office when they arrived, writing in a ledger. “Sir king,” he said, rising and bowing. “Milady queen.” Juris Kostvan was a man of the king's height with light blue eyes and honey-colored hair. He wore a long blue surcoat with the symbols of the Knights of the Bells embroidered in silver on the breast. He was new to this post, Arian knew; one of the king's uncles had been the previous Knight-Commander, killed the same night as the previous Marshal-Judicar.

He gave Arian a tour: the armory with its racks of swords of different styles, the polearms, the battle-axes and maces, the crossbows hanging from hooks, the longbows on racks. “And now the grange-hall,” he said. This hall was much larger than the royal salle, with ranks of seats along one side. “We hold the trials of arms here—so we needed more space for witnesses.”

Arian started to ask a polite question, but as he moved forward, the light from his torch picked out a faint incised pattern on the floor, a pattern she recognized. It pulled at her less strongly than the one in Chaya, but she felt it nonetheless. “What is that?” she asked, bending to touch it. Her fingers tingled.

He looked embarrassed. “I don't know,” he said. “Some knight-candidates have asked, but it must be accidental, some flaw in the stone. The surface is smooth, as you felt, and it's all one block of stone—you can see the joints to the next.”

Her heart sped. How could they think that, when to her vision the pattern grew clearer every moment, colors beginning to show through the stone's own pale gray. “Interesting,” she managed to say. Kieri had been very specific: if the pattern existed in the Tsaian palace, the king must be told—but discreetly. She thought back to that conversation. This man was a Konhalt and supposedly loyal to the Crown, but some Konhalts had not been. She would have to tell the king when they were alone.

The king led her back to the corridor off which her suite opened and bowed to her there. “As we are to meet early at the salle, I will leave you now. You must surely be fatigued.” He bowed again.

“Sir king,” Arian said before he could turn away. “I have a message from Kieri that I must give you now.”

“Now?” His brows went up.

“Yes.” She looked up and down the corridor. Only her own Squires and two of his palace guard. “It is of utmost importance.”

“Well, then…” He looked around him and motioned his guards to move away. “Can you tell me here?”

“Yes.” In courtesy, she gestured for her Squires to move away, and when they had retreated to the same distance as the king's guards, she spoke. “That pattern in the Bells' hall—that your Knight-Commander thinks is natural to the stone—is instead a pattern of elven devising, permitting those who know its use to travel from one pattern to another. Have you heard how such patterns were used for the Girdish to travel from Fin Panir to the far west and back?”

“It cannot—are you
certain
?”

“Yes. It is by such patterns that elves traveled to our palace in Chaya, and the iynisin who attacked and killed the Lady came through one in Kieri's own office. He suspected one might be here and asked me to look for one and tell you—but privily—if I found it.”

“And humans can use them,” the king said, scowling.

“Yes, if they know how. But more dangerous, the iynisin use them—the kuaknomi,” she added, since he did not react to the elven term.

“Could there be more than one?”

“There were in our palace, sir king. They can be blocked, the elves told us, with a reversal pattern that prevents entry. I brought a drawing of such a design with me, for your use.”

“Does my uncle know about this?”

“That such patterns exist, yes, and can be used by kuaknomi, yes. But not more than that.”

“You could have waited until tomorrow—”

“No one knows when another attack might come,” Arian said.

His lips tightened for a moment. Then he bowed again. “You are right, milady queen. Thank you. I will have a guard set this night, and we will speak more of this another time.”

W
hen Arian entered her suite, she told all the Squires what she'd seen. “I told the king; he says he will set a guard.”

“One of the palace secretaries came by with a tentative schedule for tomorrow just after you had left to meet the king,” Darvol said. He handed it to her. “We also received a note from Armsmaster Fralorn, who said he'd be pleased to open the salle for you at dawn.”

“I met him,” Arian said. “We will drill as usual.” She looked at the paperwork they handed her, including their own rotation. “This will do,” she said. “And if we're meeting the armsmaster for drill at dawn, we should retire now.”

Arian found it hard to sleep at first; the heavy scent of rose petals and lack of air movement stifled her. She woke to the sound of tapping on her door. “Come in,” she said. Maelis entered with a candle and a tray.

“Thought you might like sib before drill,” Maelis said.

Arian and her Squires arrived at the salle just as Armsmaster Fralorn pulled the door open. He smiled. “You're very welcome this morning,” he said. “The young men you met yesterday evening will join us, as will the king. Just let me light the lamps.”

Arian began her stretches while her Squires helped Fralorn light lamps and lay out bandas. Soon the king appeared with his escort of guards and his friends. Fralorn called for all to line up for footwork drills.

“If it please you, Queen Arian,” he said.

“Certainly,” she said. No one, she'd been taught, could spend too much time on footwork, the foundation of effective swordplay.

Fralorn proved as exacting as Carlion or Siger: position of the foot, length of a half pace or full pace, all the other details. Before it became tedious, he called for seven of the group to do point-control drills on the pells at one end of the salle and the other six to pair up: Arian with Rothlin, two of her Squires with the king and one of his escorts.

Practice did not last as long as in Chaya; Arian's schedule for the day did not permit it even with so early a start.

K
ieri had described the chamber where the Tsaian Royal Council met. Now Arian faced them, recognizing only the king, Duke Mahieran, and Marshal-Judicar Oktar.

King Mikeli introduced her and then said, “If you would, the Council would hear your account of the recent war and any information you can give us about the current state of Pargun.”

Arian knew Kieri had sent letters to Mikeli giving details of the war but gave a quick review. “The last I know for certain,” she said finally, “is that Torfinn, their king, survived his brother's attempt to take the throne and kill him. He did not order the invasion, and we no longer consider him a threat. His daughter Elis, the elder of his surviving children, is at Falk's Hall, in training for knighthood. She is also his ambassador to our court.”