The Brazen Gambit (21 page)

"Someone had to. He didn't belong here. Never could, never would. I kept waiting. Every day I waited for
Grandmother to say he wouldn't be coming back, that the guardian and her grove had taken him-"

"So you decided you'd be the guardian instead?"

He didn't answers, only twisted the hem of his tunic around his forefinger until the entire garment was tight
across his chest and he looked a larger version of the boy Ghazala had abandoned years ago. But this time there could
be no taking him in her arms or drying his tears.

"No one has the guardian's rights. It's murder, Ru. Pure, simple, and planned. Murder, not justice-"

"He was the real poison!" Ruari sputtered, barely in control of his rage and fear. "It was bad enough when
Grandmother took him to her grove, every day. I thought... I thought maybe, maybe she was peeling his mind back,
extracting his templar secrets before she put him in the ground. But today... Kashi, you took him to your grove. All
day. Wind and fire, Kashi-a templar! I asked myself: what were you thinking-and I knew the answer: He'd poisoned
Grandmother's mind and yours. He was making you do foolish things-"

"You're the fool, Ru."

"Pyreen protect us if I'm the fool, Kashi." Ruari's voice was low and even. Rage had gotten the upper hand in his
emotions, and despite herself, she took a step backward. "I saw you coming back today: all talking, all smiles, your hair
all damp, your dress. I saw it, Kashi. The only thing I regret is that I waited a day too long to kill him!"

It came to her then, with the suddenness of lightning, that Ruari was jealous. He cared for her, not as she cared
for him-a tag-along orphan, a temperamental younger brother who needed an older sister's unquestioning affection
until he learned the manners to return it-but in the way Telhami had feared she'd cared for Pavek.

If the air hadn't been so charged with betrayal, she would have laughed. Even so, she couldn't keep a smile from
ghosting across her face as she reached for his arm. "Pavek hasn't poisoned my mind, Ru. And there's
nothing-nothing at all-between us. He's afraid of the water, afraid of the grass, can hardly smile or laugh. He's just a
man completely out of his element. Just-" She caught herself before she completed her thought, completed the
comparison her mind had accidentally made between a hapless, sullen Pavek standing at the edge of her pool and
Ruari himself not many years ago.

"Just what?" he demanded, an ugly sneer curling his lips. "Just another raping, murdering, yellow-robe templar!
I'm glad he's dead, hear me. I'll swear an oath in Grandmother's grove. I'm not afraid: I killed him and I'm glad. I'll show
the guardian what's in my mind: the way he looks at me-'cause I'm wise to his templar games, the way he looked at you
when we were in Urik, the way he looked at you today-"

"The way-" Akashia began to say The way he saved your life in the storm, but that would only feeding a futile
argument. "Pavek's not dead," she said instead. "We saved him, Grandmother and I-"

Ruari lashed out with his fist, freeing himself from her hand and striking her across the chin in the same
movement. She'd never been hit before, never in anger. The pain lasted an instant; the shock echoed in the depths of
her being. Her hands flew to her face-all Yohan's self-defense instructions forgotten.

"Why? Why, if he's nothing to you?"

Ruari's fist rose to shoulder level, but whether for another blow or mindlessly, as her own hands had risen, no
one would ever know. A muscular shape surged between them: Yohan coming to her rescue. Yohan, who'd followed
her as he followed Pavek, on Telhami's orders. Yohan who had, undoubtedly, heard everything. He easily lifted the
half-elf and hurled him against the nearest hut, where he slid to the ground and held still: eyes open, conscious,
thinking, scared. The dwarf folded his massive arms over his barrel-ribbed chest, fairly daring Ruari to move.

"You've got to leave, now," she pleaded. "You've crossed the line. Go-before it's too late. Leave. Pavek's alive;
no one will stop you. The guardian won't stop you. But you intended murder. You can't stay here any longer.
Renounce your grove, Ru-it's the only way."

"Renounce it... so a damned templar can trample through it?" Ruari challenged, defiant even in defeat.

The sound of stumbling and staggering intruded before she shaped an answer. Yohan raised a finger to his lips
and dropped into a crouch. Another few heavy, flat-footed steps and a seedy-looking Pavek was among them.

"Trample through what?" he demanded, steadying himself against the wall above Ruari's head, looking down
and making it clear that only Ruari could give him a satisfactory answer.

Which Ruari would not do.

"This is no concern of yours, Pavek," she said into the lengthening silence, trying to sound confident and in
command. "Ruari's done wrong. He-he's the one who tried to murder you with poison. He's got to leave Quraite. He's
got to leave now, before-"

"Before Telhami starts asking questions?" Pavek asked- seedy or not, he was the one in command of the
situation. Grandmother must have suspected Ruari and shared her suspicions with her patient. Yohan, apparently,
approved, because he straightened his legs and folded his arms over his chest again.
"Druids don't murder," she said, feeling that she was the one under attack. "Quraite doesn't shelter murderers.
The guardian won't tolerate it."

"He meant to murder you. It's the same thing."

The ex-templar smiled, a cold and frightening smile. "Not where I come from. Seems to me a druid wouldn't make
foolish mistakes measuring out his poisons. If some druid wanted me dead, some druid would have used enough
poison so some other druid couldn't haul me back from death's door long before it swung shut. Some half-wit druid,
with a grove where everyone knew he kept kivits and collected their musk, couldn't have been so foolish. So, some
half-wit druid must have known what he was doing, must have been sending me a warning. That's what I think. That's
what I'd swear-"

"Mind your words," Yohan interjected, deep-throated and meaningful.

"That's what I'd swear before a Urik court. My word against his. My warning against his murder. And my word
would prevail, because there's been warning, but no murder. In Urik, by King Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy, what a man

does is all that matters. What he thinks is spit in the wind-or every man, woman, and child would die each sundown
for what he'd intended to do each sunrise. It's a sorry state, I think, when the Beast of Urik has more mercy than a
Quraite druid."

Akashia laced her fingers together. She could see now, for the first time, what Ruari saw when he looked at that
scarred face, and she couldn't imagine why Grandmother had shared her suspicions with him, as she must have done.

Pavek was shaking. Vomit stained his tunic; the stench reached her nostrils five paces away. He was crude and
disgusting, and he wore both traits like armor. Pavek was broken, all right. He was a templar to the very bone.

And, once again, this templar was giving Ruari's life back to him.

"Ru-?"

The coppery face swiveled up toward Pavek, not her. "I intended murder. My only mistake was that I failed."

"Your word against mine, scum," Pavek replied, as cold as a human voice could be. "I heard a warning. You won't
get a second chance."

The ground between the guarded Quraite groves was as hard as any of Urik's cobblestone streets. Pavek's
sandals made a reassuringly familiar sound as he walked) quick-pace, toward the distant stand of tall trees that was
Telhami's grove. He was grateful for the cool wind that continued to blow from that grove-or Akashia's grove when he
was determined to go there, the two druids having decided that they would conduct his lessons on alternating days-
but he no longer relied upon the wind to guide him.

Hard as the ground was, generations of druid feet marching from village to grove and back again had left their
mark on it. With nothing better to do as he walked, he'd learned to see the difference in color and texture that defined a
path through the wilderness. He could even distinguish the more subtle distinctions that marked the lesser paths
between the groves themselves. His lessons hadn't progressed beyond tiny, fast-evaporating spheres of conjured
water or fire spells that were more smoke than flame, but he'd begun to build himself a map of Quraite in his mind: the
village at the absolute center, surrounded by its cultivated fields and the wilderness between the village and the Sun's
Fist, which was studded with groves-at least twenty of them, if he'd correctly identified the high-rank, grove-tending
druids at supper.

And he'd done it all without asking questions. Some habits were harder to break than others. Pavek was getting
used to the looser routines of Quraite life. He no longer flinched when someone greeted him with a smile. But he was
still a templar in his heart, and templars didn't ask unnecessary questions because answers, especially honest answers,
created debts.

Which was why, though he progressed toward his goal of druid mastery in a day with Akashia-there had been
another pair of them since that first day when she'd challenged him to a race through her blind-grass meadow-he
preferred a day in Telhami's grove. The old woman seldom asked questions, never personal ones, but Akashia, try as
she might, couldn't contain her curiosity about the city, about templar life, about his own life, and-worst of all-about
the differences between the lessons she gave him and those he received from Telhami.

As if a low-rank templar would ever venture an opinion about one superior to another!

Of course, both women insisted there was no hierarchy in Quraite. Share and share alike, they said. Speak your
mind, they said: We value your thoughts, Pavek. Don't hesitate to tell us what you think.

Did they think he was a gith's-thumb fool? He could see that everyone bowed and scraped at Telhami's feet.
They smiled and called her Grandmother, and she smiled back and said thank-you....

All very polite and civil.

Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy! He'd seen a hundred Urik festivals where children laid bouquets of flowers at the
sorcerer-king's feet, and he smiled, and he said thank-you, and no one had a moment's delusion where the power lay or
who had the will to use it, politely, civilly, and utterly without remorse or conscience.

Day after day they told him to send his mind into Quraite's heart, seeking the guardian. Did they think he hadn't
found the bones beneath the trees? Did they think he hadn't guessed the fate of those who'd tried and failed?

Don't hesitate to tell us what you think, they said.

It would have to rain for a hundred days and a hundred nights before he'd stick his head into that trap. A
thousand days!
Or so he vowed to himself as he marched across the hard ground.

All Quraite loved her, but no one loved her more than Ruari-to which she, for all her bright curiosity, seemed
oblivious. He wasn't. He'd eavesdropped on his neighbors' conversations at supper, learning bits and pieces of the
half-elf's story. If their paths had crossed-if he hadn't been a boy himself when it happened-he'd've killed the templar
who ravished the boy's mother; he'd done as much for the beast who ravished Dovanne and for the same simple
reason he'd kill vermin or Elabon Escrissar: They were diseased and had to be eliminated before their disease spread.

It had already spread to Ruari. The half-wit scum saw the world through his scars, real and imagined; there was
no use talking to him or trying to make peace. No matter what Akashia hoped or said-and she'd said more than Pavek
wanted to hear, blind as she was to Ruari's adoration-they couldn't be brothers to each other. She saw herself as the
boy's sister.

Everybody was blind to something. Akashia was blind to Ruari.

But leave him and the scum alone and they might be able to steer clear of each other. He knew he'd be content to
ignore Ruari-but for the poison. He'd known exactly what he was doing when he confronted them; would have figured
it out without Telhami's help, though not so quickly.

His gut still ached. Whether from the poison itself or the healing afterward he couldn't be sure-he didn't ask
questions. The sight of food still made him nauseous, and he had to stop now and again as he walked to catch his
breath.

Once the sun came up, as it had a short while ago, the only useful shade between the village and the groves
came from the brim of a borrowed straw hat. There was no point to leaving the path to rest; when he got tired, he just
sat down where he was, back to the east, where the sun was climbing, and making the most of what the hat and his
shoulders gave him. With his eyes closed and his mind as empty as only a veteran templar could make it, he waited for
his pulse and gut to settle.

They did, and before the hat got hot enough to burst into flames. He rubbed his eyes, got to his feet and,
because he was a templar and was accustomed to having enemies, spun slowly on his heels, scanning his
surroundings for anything that didn't belong. Nothing man-shaped-Ruari-shaped-had appeared, but there was
something new, something to make him squint into the shimmering heat-bands along the southern horizon, the Urik
horizon.

A fist-sized dust plume billowed there, raised-if he could believe his eyes-by a horde of black dots beneath it.

His first self-centered thought put Elabon Escrissar's name on one of those fast-moving dots, and he'd started
back toward the village before common sense regained a foothold in his mind. He knew the whole story of Quraite,
zameeka, Ral's Breath, and Laq, and how he, himself, had gotten bound up in it. But, there was no reason-no reason at
all-for anyone in Urik to think a third-rank templar with a forty-gold-piece price on his head had found refuge at a
distant druid oasis. There was no reason to think anyone in Urik knew Quraite's name and every reason to believe that
Telhami and the guardian kept its precise location a well-secured secret.

So he turned about-face, retraced a hundred paces, and stopped again.

Something was on the salt plain. Maybe it would skirt the guarded land; he wasn't at all certain how Quraite's
protective magic worked. But, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe the druids would know the instant a stranger set foot in their,
private wilderness. But, maybe they wouldn't. There were trees everywhere, trees as high as the walls of Urik, without
battlements and watchtowers.

Regulators patrolled the Urik walls sometimes, when King Hamanu dragged the war bureau off on campaign. It
was light duty with clear-cut orders: Report what you see, within the walls or outside them. Do your duty and let
superiors make the decisions.

Pavek spun around again and headed for the village.

The broad green crown of village trees loomed in front of him, distinct from the dust plume, which had not grown
noticeably. Another black dot had appeared between him and the village. It was moving, growing, coming toward him,
resolving itself into a dwarf's stocky silhouette.

Yohan, and immensely relieved that he wasn't going to have to trek all the way to Telhami's grove to deliver his
message. The dwarf spoke first: "The elves are coming, they'll be here by midday. Grandmother and the others are
waiting for them in the village. No lessons today."

"Elves?" Pavek stared at the dust cloud, asking himself if that was what he saw.

"Moonracers. The whole tribe of them, and their herd. And a barrel or two of honey-ale."

The dwarf came close and clapped him across the back, as casual a gesture as they'd exchanged, but his
thoughts were still on the elves.

"Moonracers-Ruari's kin, aren't they? Trouble?"

Yohan let his arm fall. "Maybe," he conceded. "You've seen him at his worst, Pavek. His age and his breed, they
take things too hard, too personally. Ghazala didn't have a choice, not really. Moonracers-they're a fast-moving lot, no
place for outsiders who can't keep the pace."

"Or remind them of things they'd rather forget?"

"That, too." Yohan cupped a hand around his beardless chin and shook his head. "The boy doesn't understand.
When the Moonracers show up, he's all strut and brawl to prove that he's as good as any elf. When they're gone, he

"Not since I heaved into sight," Pavek corrected.

"Aye, well-" The dwarf shrugged. Muscles rippled across his bare shoulders and chest. "Their honey-ale's as
good as you'd find in Urik, and maybe the boy will sulk in his grove 'til they're gone."

Pavek didn't know about honey-ale; it wasn't the sort of rotgut Joat stocked in his Den, but where Ruari was
concerned, he expected trouble rather than a sulking absence. He kept those expectations to himself, naturally, and fell
in step beside Yohan. The dwarf's preferred pace, a bit slower than his own, got them to the village as the Moonrace
fore-runners arrived, dusted with salt from their run across the place, but otherwise unsweated and full of breath.

The Quraite farmers were wrestling a stake-and-rope perimeter around the village's fields to protect their crops
from the Moonracers" kanks. There was no point in asking the elves to confine their herd. Freedom was a virtue
among elves second only to friendship. If Quraite valued Moonracer friendship, it was the farmers' chore to enclose
the tender green plants.

Yohan grabbed a rock-headed maul and started hammering stakes into the ground. The stakes, with a burnt
opening at one end for the rope and a dirt-caked point at the other- this was clearly not the first time Quraite had
hurriedly defended its ripening fields-were bound into easily managed bundles. Pavek hesitated a moment, waiting for
someone to tell him to do the obvious, then picked up two bundles and a maul.

Ropes had been threaded through the stakes and knotted fright by the time the heart of the tribe and its herd
settled down on the scrubland beyond the village. Tall, elven women and their loose-limbed children visited the wells
to replenish their water jugs-always the first and most important task at any encampment. Other elves traded
bright-colored cloth and metalware for Quraite's surplus fruits, vegetables, and grain.

For his part, Pavek followed Yohan and the others who had worked up a thirst protecting the fields. They entered
the elven camp where, as the dwarf had promised, a barrel of honey-ale had been broached.

And while the Moonrace tribe would not confine their herd nor stoop to farmers' labor, they understood the
virtue of compromise well enough to offer the Quraiters as much ale as they cared to drink. Pavek drained his first mug
between breaths. The sweet, amber-colored brew slid easily down his throat and shot into his blood. He got a second
mug and, sipping it slowly, walked away from the barrel.

Pavek had lived without many possessions, first in the templar orphanage, then the barracks, and now the
bachelor's hut. The traders offered little that tempted him, and anyway, he had nothing to offer the elves in return, like
his templar medallion, the few coins he'd slung from his belt the day he left Urik hadn't been returned to him. Since
Ruari had the medallion, he assumed the half-wit scum had his coins, as well. More from idle curiosity than any desire
to feel the weight of his small wealth against his leg again, he glanced among the traders, looking for that unmistakable
coppery hair.

He spotted it, too, but not among the traders. Much as Yohan had predicted, Ruari had joined his elven
age-mates in their constant games of skill and daring. At least, that was what Ruari was trying to do. Tall and lithe
among the Quraiters, Ruari showed his human blood against his Moonrace kin. As Pavek watched, he lost both a
footrace and a barrel-leaping contest. The victorious elves made no secret of their contempt for a slow, clumsy,
outcast relative and would-be elf.

The elves ridiculed Ruari mercilessly. The scum issued brash challenges he couldn't hope to carry through.
Remembering his lesser moments, when he'd joined in the torment of those orphans who did not survive to become
templars, he hoped Ruari would have sense enough to back down before the mockery turned physical-though a
half-elf would have the edge, if it came to brawling.

Elves were lousy wrestlers, no match for a well-made fist. They took more than their share of bruises and broken
bones on the practice fields where he'd trained with and against every Tableland's race. A templar's training was as
thorough as his enemies were numerous; it had to be. From where Pavek stood, he could see any number of ways he, a
heavy-set human, could have bested the boasting elves. Even a few that didn't resort to cheating. With his nearly full
mug of ale clutched in his fist, he found a piece of shade with a view not only of Ruari's hapless struggle, but of most
of the village as well. The Moon-race elders with their piercing eyes and wind-carved faces had begun to assemble
near the central well. Akashia, Yohan, and several others, including several Pavek had marked as farmers, not druids,
appeared with platters of Quraite's finest fruit.

The offering was accepted and, following Akashia, the tribal patriarch led the way into Telhami's hut. Pavek
considered moving closer. The memory of Rokka slipping a handful of gold coins into a salt sack at the customhouse
had flitted across his mind's eye. He wondered what the Moon-racers might offer in trade for gold. They had the look
of true nomads who ranged over the entire Tablelands, not merely the environs of a single city-state. The sort of
elves-truth to tell-that made Urik's templars nervous when their flags appeared in the elven market, selling their
knowledge of the outside world along with ordinary contraband.