The Fox (41 page)

Shock, instantly suppressed. Vedrid said, “I’ll have to ride up the coast after Indevan-Laef, then, and try to catch him at Lindeth. Will you ride with me until our roads part? I can arrange mounts for us both. We had better exchange news, I believe, Barend-Dal.”

Barend agreed, and so Vedrid led the way to one of the hastily built travel houses where he had left his gear.

He was not at all a stupid man, but he was so straightforward he was unaware of Nallan watching from an adjacent building, shielded from view.

Nallan had been shadowing Vedrid for two days, ever since he saw the Runner he’d always hated arrive in one of those rickety old boats that had scudded south in the wake of the pirate fleet. He recognized Vedrid instantly despite the short hair and civilian dress. Vedrid, supposedly dead on the road to the Marlo-Vayirs! He’d seen the bloody coat himself. And what was the truth behind
that?

Something treasonous—with Vedrid at the center.

Nallan had spent the two days wavering between planning to kill Vedrid and hoping he could be caught in some capital crime, which would lead to his bleeding his cursed life out at the flogging post, Nallan rejoicing in every lash.

He cursed under his breath when a passing torch in the hands of a young girl briefly lit their faces: Vedrid was not consorting with pirates or Venn—he had found the long-missing Barend Montrei-Vayir.

Nallan could not hear their talk—the low voices of conspiracy—but in a sense it didn’t matter. He could not raise a hand against Vedrid now, not with Barend-Dal at his side. So he was left perforce with his original orders. He would ascertain the true name of this Elgar the Fox, and then he would carry that plus the news of Vedrid’s (and surely the Marlo-Vayirs’) betrayal back to the Sierlaef, who would decide what to do.

A week later, Whipstick Noth stood beside Jarend-Adaluin in Tenthen’s hall, and watched the range of reactions from Inda’s family and liege people. Barend stood beside Whipstick, also watching.

The old prince held up the Algara-Vayir war banner, tattered and ancient and sun-faded as it was, saying, “In one week’s time we shall ride to the royal city, and there I shall demand the blood price of Anderle-Harskialdna Montrei-Vayir, to be given in justice or taken in justice.”

Silence, except for the scraping of feet. Some, mostly the old folks, were angry; the tall, brawny cousin (what was his name? Branid?) looked sullen; everyone else looked somewhere between stunned and fearful.

Jarend-Adaluin held up the ring and the map. “Here is my proof of Anderle Montrei-Vayir’s treachery against us.”

Cousin Branid kept licking his lips and watching the faces around him, uncertain how to respond, wondering if he would be left in charge or if he should ride with the warriors. He wanted both, badly. Maybe he should challenge that Montrei-Vayir rat-face to a duel? He was such a skinny runt. If he slayed the rat-face, maybe people would follow him at last.

“We will make ready, and in a week we will gather here to ride to war.” The Adaluin thrust the banner into a holder in front of his judgment seat, where it would stay until he picked it up for the ride. Then he walked out, one gnarled old hand gripping his evidence, the other leaning on his wife.

With three exceptions the people in the hall were busy striving to be heard and listening to no one else, and so did not see the prince and princess sidestep into a short chamber where the Adaluin sank wearily into a chair, staring beyond the walls as he murmured, “I will have justice for the dead.”

Whipstick was the first exception. He stationed himself outside the door to the little chamber, guaranteeing them privacy as he winced inwardly.
I’m afraid you will not last out the journey, my poor liege
. He hated to remember how Jarend had wept soundlessly when Barend Montrei-Vayir stuttered and stumbled through his news after his arrival. After which the Adaluin sat up straight, his lined, weatherworn face reddening with hope as he said, “Inda is coming home?”

It was right after Barend replied, “No. He sailed for the north,” that the Adaluin seemed to age past his nearly eighty years as he whispered, “My sons are gone.” And then, after they gave him something to drink, even lower, over and over, “My Joret, my Joret”—his long-dead beloved first wife, aunt to the Joret he’d brought up to marry his son.

It was Fareas-Iofre, Whipstick knew, who had gently roused him, reminding him that only at his hands could there be justice. The word appeared to have infused him with life again—but for how long?

Barend Montrei-Vayir was the second exception. He steered between the shouted questions from Algara-Vayirs he did not know, ducked into the hallway where he’d spotted Whipstick, and joined him. “Well, that’s done.” And, when Whipstick made a sign of assent, Barend added wryly, “Now I don’t know what my part is: to go home and fight for my father, or against him. The king will have to decide.”

Whipstick shook his head, grimacing in sympathy.

Cousin Branid was the third exception. He lurked behind a knot of arguing relatives (his grandmother was the loudest) as he noted all the knife hilts in the rat-face’s clothing, the scars, the stance. The way he stood reminded him of Tanrid, like he was ready for a fight. Maybe it was strut—like the pirate clothes. Well, if this rat-face Barend Montrei-Vayir offered any insult, that’s when he’d challenge him to a duel. That was the plan. If he dishonored the Algara-Vayirs in any way. Otherwise, ignore him. That’s the way to treat a strutting pirate.

Barend never even noticed him.

He left Whipstick on guard and wandered the length of the hall where Inda had lived as a boy. He was wondering how he was going to tell Inda that his brother was dead, and if he should describe how his mother, after hearing about the battle, had said only, “Is Inda coming home?” And when Barend had to tell her that he was sailing for Lindeth and then the Ghost Isles, she had not responded, just looked as if someone had struck her.

A little later Whipstick met with Tdor and Fareas-Iofre, who said, “I don’t know what will happen, but this I do know: Hadand and Ndara have to be told the news. First that Barend is indeed alive. Second that the Adaluin is coming for blood. They can warn the king and the Harskialdna if they feel it’s right. Chelis, you shall ride now, and go like the wind.”

Tdor said, “As for me, I think I’d better ride for Darchelde with the news that Savarend is alive. We can’t write it in a letter, we don’t have any codes to say it right. It’s better spoken.” She paused.

Fareas-Iofre murmured agreement, knowing that toilsome as the journey would be for Tdor, news of a son’s being alive was too priceless a gift not to give to another mother.

Tdor added, “I can also warn Joret. She might want to come home.”

Everyone knows the Sierlaef is going to come here looking for Joret—or trouble,
Whipstick thought.
We’ll need allies
. But there was no time to send anyone to Fera-Vayir Harbor to ask his father, who was in command of the defense there, for advice. He had to act on his own, and now. So he ordered his personal Runner—his cousin Flatfoot Noth—to ride north to Cherry-Stripe Marlo-Vayir, who would know where Evred was and could be trusted to send someone to report to him.

Fareas-Iofre stood at her window watching Tdor’s departure, but her mind ranged far ahead as she pondered. In the next room her husband lay on his bed, falling by consent under the mind-numbing peace of sleep-weed. A whole night of reawakened grief and old rage had left him exhausted, barely able to walk.

She remembered how Barend Montrei-Vayir had stumbled and stuttered to answer her question “Is Inda coming home?” How like his mother Ndara he was, not just in looks—he had taken after the Cassad side, not the Montrei-Vayir—but his immediate and obvious wish to make things easier, even for an older woman he did not know.

But Barend’s well-intentioned, fumbling words about honor and the mysterious Ramis’ equally mysterious demands and the needs of ship repair had flowed past her. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe them, she did—insofar as Barend obviously believed them.

No, to her Inda’s actions were a kind of communication, cast in a code perhaps only mothers could decipher. He had been sent away alone, except for a guard he probably never knew about—a kindness from the king—and had returned years later at the head of a fleet to fight the pirates who had been tormenting his homeland.

So Inda sails north to Lindeth,
Fareas thought, struggling against sorrow. She must not grieve. She’d raised her son to one day bring knowledge and enlightenment to his father’s principality, but events had overrun her benign plans. Yet some lingering sense of the great works she had given him to read must have remained, because she perceived honor shining behind his actions, like the moon’s silhouette crowned by fire when it crossed the sun.

Of course he had honor. Not just the false sense that was so often in the mouths of those who meant merely precedence, or preference, or vanity, or demands. It was true honor, which was just another word for trust.

He will be back,
she thought.
I will believe he will be back when he perceives a need greater than whatever order they gave to keep him away.

Chapter Twenty-five

WHAT later became known as the Conspiracy of Hesea Spring was really a latticework of accidental encounters and impulsive decisions.

A great winter storm smashed down a glittering ice shroud over the plains, day after blinding day, as messengers crossed in all directions, unseen under the gray-white sky.

Flatfoot Noth reached the Marlo-Vayirs’ castle first to discover that the Marlo-Vayirs were not yet back from Convocation. Unfortunately Cherry-Stripe, though future Randael and thus traditionally left at home, had gone with the Jarl of Marlo-Vayir and Buck.

Disappointed but not surprised that his dreary trip was to be prolonged, Flatfoot downed a meal, then set out again. He followed the king’s road toward the oldest known Marlovan town, Hesea Spring, where three great roads met: the east-west, north-south, and the older Iascan road that cut from the royal city northwest to Ala Larkadhe through the plains. When the snows were bad, the old granite markers along these roads were about all the guidance you would get.

The great stone posting house at Hesea Spring was nearly as large as a castle, but single storied except over the stable, the older part of the house built in the days when Marlovans sat on mats and ate with knives off shallow wooden dishes. The most common meeting place for travelers in winter, it was built around a hot spring: this year, in fact, the Marlo-Vayir brothers had appointed it the place to meet Cama Tya-Vayir after his stay with the Yvana-Vayirs for Hawkeye’s wedding. (Cama was also a future Randael, but he was home as seldom as possible—and no one who knew his brother Horsebutt, or his equally horrible future wife Starand, questioned why.)

A few days later—the day Tdor reached Darchelde ahead of a blinding four day blizzard—Flatfoot arrived at Hesea Spring from the west not long before the Marlo-Vayirs arrived from the east. Each obscured from the other by falling snow.

Flatfoot tiredly scanned the pennons planted outside, saw the great blue and yellow eagle banner belonging to the Jarl of Yvana-Vayir, along with Hawkeye’s more unpretentious banner. The Yvana-Vayirs! Weren’t they supposed to have spent New Year’s at home for Hawkeye’s wedding? Why would they be riding south now, in this weather? For no good reason, of course.

Mad Gallop Yvana-Vayir didn’t see his marriage to the king’s sister as a step down for her, but a step up for him,
Flatfoot’s uncle, Dragoon Captain Horsepiss Noth, had said.
He’s been ambitious since our own academy days, and I wager he’ll make trouble about his half-royal boys if he can
.

Frost. That’s what they used to call it during his academy days, when someone strutted his rank. The sad thing was, Flatfoot thought as he stabled the loaner horse from the Marlo-Vayirs’ Runner stock, Hawkeye wasn’t the least full of strut, much less frost. Nor were the young twins, Hawkeye’s brothers Badger and Beaver.

He thawed himself in the common room, trying to decide whether to wait or to push on, when horns announced a cavalcade arriving.

In his rooms not far from where Flatfoot sat, the Jarl of Yvana-Vayir heard the horns as well. He had taken all the good rooms along the southern wing for himself and his sons, the rooms that overlooked the road from the royal city; he’d also filled a quarter of the barracks over the stable with the enormous Honor Guard he’d seen fit to bring.

“There’s the Marlo-Vayir blue and green,” he said, rubbing his hands as he peered out the window of his chamber into the courtyard at the modest-sized company riding in with a clattering of horse hooves and shouted orders. “The falcon banner! Means Hasta himself is here. Heh heh! Good, good.”

Hawkeye and the twins were silent. Their father had been acting strange ever since the wedding, his latest oddity being his sudden insistence on accompanying Cama Tya-Vayir when he rode south to meet the Marlo-Vayirs here at Hesea Spring. That, and his bringing two flights of warriors as an Honor Guard. One flight was usually enough for an entire family; a wing—three flights—was against the law. They were one flight away from treason.

“I must see if Hasta knows we are here,” the Jarl said.

“In case the Jarl of Marlo-Vayir was too blind to see our pennons,” Badger cracked as soon as his father was out the door.

Hawkeye had been thinking the same thing, but it did not show respect to say it aloud. He snapped his fingers and turned his thumb down. Badger sighed, and Beaver grimaced in sympathy.

After an uncomfortable silence—there’d been a lot of them on this ride—Cama said, “Guess I’ll shift my gear down to Cherry-Stripe.”

He hefted his saddle bag over one broad shoulder. Cama had grown into a very tall, powerful young man with a deep, husky voice. That, his eye patch, and his long, glossy night-black horsetail made heads turn. Badger and Beaver saw him go with some relief, for though they liked and admired him, so did everyone else, and over New Year’s Week he’d gotten all the female attention that they had anticipated for themselves.