The Sea of Time (28 page)

CHAPTER XIV

Winter Solstice

Winter 65

THE WINTER SOLSTICE occurred five days later. The Kencyrath didn’t pay much attention to it, trusting rather to its own imposed dates such as Midwinter, but Kothifir seethed as it prepared for the year’s longest night and the turn toward spring.

Jame took a lift cage Overcliff close to midnight when the festivities were due to start. It was very dark with an overcast sky and no moon. Lightning flickered behind the mountains over the Wastes, answered by the fizz and pop of fireworks set off at random from the Overcliff.

Once there, she wandered about the main avenue, munching on a paper cone full of grilled garlic snails and observing the scurry of townsfolk. Many wore elaborate costumes and masks reminiscent of the Old Pantheon gods whom she had seen Undercliff on the summer solstice. A few had on giant heads that required support or waved oversized hands that tried to swat the children who swarmed around them, jeering. Others, all but naked, were painted red or blue or green, touched here and there with luminous dust from the caves below. Imps, she thought, most of them guild apprentices and journeymen. Did that mean that their masters were under those more elaborate costumes? Firelight washed over all, regardless of their rank, from torches and bonfires, and the windows and balconies above were full of spectators, who threw down trinkets to encourage the capering hoard below.

“Come to watch us at play?” asked a nasal voice behind Jame. She turned to find Kroaky looming over her with Fang close at his side, clinging possessively to his arm.

“Your festivals interest me,” she said. “I’m puzzled, though: since when are the elder gods welcome above ground?”

Kroaky made a face. “They aren’t. These are only guild mummers and this is nothing but playacting. D’you think that King Krothen needs such competition? Still, the people want their games.”

And now would be a bad time to disappoint them, Jame thought, as she wished the pair a happy solstice and passed on.

Underneath all the fun ran a thickening seam of discontent. Needham, Master Silk Purse, continued to harangue his followers against Lord Merchandy while Prince Ton and his mother stirred up the nobility. Even those not directly affected by the failed trade mission felt its sting in lost jobs and diminished income. The sense lingered that Kothifir had become vulnerable to enemies within and without.

A scuffle broke out in an alley as she passed. Drawn to it, Jame found Dar sitting on one of Amberley’s ten-command, pummeling her.

“Dar, stop it!”

She grabbed his fist. He almost turned on her before he caught sight of her face. The Caineron took advantage of his start to throw him off, jump up, and dart back into the crowd.

“What in Perimal’s name are you doing,” Jame demanded, helping him to his feet, “and what happened to your face?”

“Two of them jumped me,” he said, wiping a bloody nose. “I got away, then came across this one lurking in the shadows. We heard that Amberley’s command was on patrol tonight. Five told us it was a private matter, but how could we forget what they did to her during the games? All of us except Five are out tonight, hunting them, and now they’re after us too.”

“You should have listened to Brier. If the Caineron are on duty, they have the right to be here. Do you?”

Dar grimaced and tugged at his jacket. He wasn’t in uniform. “Well, no.”

Even those cadets who had formerly shunned her had been outraged by Amberley’s attack on Brier Iron-thorn during the recent contests. Every time Jame saw the healing marks on her five-commander’s face, she sympathized with the Southron’s sudden legion of Knorth supporters. In her more cynical moments, she thought that it was the best thing that could have happened to the former Caineron in terms of gaining support with her new house.

However, Brier’s battered face bothered her too. She had always considered the Kendar to be morally superior to the Highborn, yet here they were trying to bash each other to a pulp. Would they if their lords weren’t also subtly at war? She didn’t think so, and that thought soothed her—for a while. But she herself was one of said Highborn.

“If Amberley’s people catch you here without orders, fighting, they’ll put you on report,” she said. “Harn will have to punish you, and I won’t be able to say a word in your defense.”

Dar looked suddenly sheepish. “I’d forgotten. If we get into trouble, that reflects on you, and ever since you stopped the hazing the Knorth third-year cadets have been looking for excuses to vote against you come next Summer’s Eve.”

Jame had also forgotten that the cadets would be picking their presumptive leader at year’s end. It might only amount to a popularity contest, but still it meant something.

Leave, and never return,
Char had written.

“Ah, well,” she said. “Never mind that now. We have to find the rest of my command and stop this foolishness.”

Horns sounded toward the city center and gilded figures turned to answer them. Jame and Dar joined the flow, looking about as they went both for their own ten-command and for Amberley’s. The performers entered the plaza under arcs of flame spat by fire-eaters to a roar of greeting from the packed crowd.

Their welcome was noticeably cooler to the three guild lords who stood on the Rose Tower’s stair. Jame couldn’t hear a word of their address. When it was over, the crowd turned from them, roaring anew.

The guilds had built elaborate stages all around the perimeter on which the mummers would play out the evolving story in which spring defeated winter. The first stage, spangled with glittering snow, provided the setting for the Spring Maid’s birth as a golden crocus. Jame wondered if Kothifir ever actually saw snow falling from the sky. These banks of it had been carted in from the upper reaches of the Apollynes under heaped hides to insulate it. From their expressions, the mummers hadn’t expected to find it so cold. Other early flowers—girls in glittering costumes—broke through the crust to form Spring’s court, but Winter with his charcoal smeared face and bleak robes lurked in the background. He approached Spring. She fled to the next stage and the massed audience shifted with her, slowly, sunwise. Drums beat like feverish hearts. Horns blared.

Dar nudged Jame. “There are Killy and Niall. The game is over,” he told the cadets when they met, having to raise his voice almost to a shout to be heard. “Ten has ordered us back to camp.”

Sensible Niall looked relieved. “I said it was a bad idea.”

“Just what was this brilliant plan anyway?” Jame asked, with a sense of foreboding.

“To get ’em alone, one on one, and give ’em a taste of what they gave Five,” said Dar. “But they’re patrolling in pairs,” he added, as if this was not playing fair.

“Not to mention that they’re older than you, bigger, and more experienced.”

In turn, the Spring Maid became a bird, a fish, and a blossom borne on frothy waters, trying to elude Winter. Her attendants and his changed each time they mounted a new stage as guild succeeded guild, each setting more elaborate than the last.

Black-clad torchbearers followed the principal players from station to station, stern figures at odds with the frivolous crowd. The tails of their
cheches
were wound about their faces leaving only a slit for dark, intent eyes. They looked like Karnids, thought Jame, but surely not, any more than the prancing half-naked apprentices were really the imps of Winter and Spring or the mummers with swollen heads the giants of ancient times. She began to catch glimpses, however, of Old Pantheon faces in the turn of a head, the angle of a jaw. There for a moment were Mother Vedia’s plump features, there a girl with catfish whiskers. And was that really charcoal on Winter’s face or charred skin?

They found Erim and Rue. Rue looked simultaneously defiant and chagrined.

“It may have been Dar’s idea, but I agreed with it,” she said, meeting Jame’s eyes askance like a pup expecting to be scolded. “Well, dammit, we had to do something!”

Thunder rolled beyond the mountains and lightning flickered in the bellies of banked clouds. The wind had turned fitful, pushing flames this way and that. People began uneasily to glance at the sky.

Winter caught Spring on a stage set with flowers, and in turn was seized by her attendants. They held him down, ripping at his garments. Soot flew. Then he sprang free, no longer withered Winter but the Earth Wife’s youthful, redheaded Favorite, raising his arms to greet the cheering crowd.

The ornate curtains behind him split. Servants rushed out, grabbed the boy, and threw him off the stage. Many hands reached to catch him, but all somehow missed, letting him sprawl facedown, dazed, on the cobblestones.

A rotund figure clad in white with red trim waddled through the drapes. He bowed to the crowd and echoed the Favorite’s gesture, inviting applause, getting only a startled silence from those close enough to see what had happened.

“Why, that’s Prince Ton,” said Jame, staring. “Does he think he can claim the Favorite’s role so easily?”

It wasn’t just that, she realized. The prince was making a political statement with his white robes, proclaiming himself Krothen’s heir, perhaps even his usurper. The audience shifted uneasily and thunder rolled, closer this time.

Quill pushed through the packed ranks. “The Caineron have Mint and Damson!”

He led the way down one of the avenues away from the plaza and into a back alley. Jame had the city center memorized by now and recognized their position as being near the base of Ruso’s tower. They came up facing Amberley’s ten on either side of a garden patch. Mint huddled against a wall between the two commands, clutching together her torn jacket. Damson stood before her, facing the blond Caineron, holding the latter at bay with her will as Amberley paced back and forth.

“She assaulted my command. She belongs to the guards.”

“Your guards tried to rape her,” said Damson, glowering, her blunt jaw set.

Amberley snorted contemptuously. “Nonsense. That one likes her fun rough. Ask anybody.”

Brier stepped out of the shadows. “Ask me.” She came to stand between Amberley and the two Knorth. “Are you all right, girl?”

Mint dashed angry tears from her eyes and nodded. Damson helped her up. Her jacket and shirt had been ripped open. Bruises darkened her ribs and small breasts.

Brier gestured at her. “Is this a story you want spread throughout the Host? Let them go.”

Amberley smiled. “Make me.”

They began to circle each other, as well matched as two panthers with heavy, certain treads and muscles flowing under sun-darkened skin. At that moment, the city seemed to revolve around them. Both ten-commands drew back.

“I said you would go soft. So the false Knorth have seduced you. ‘Oh, good dog,’ they say as they caress. ‘Good bitch.’”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Amberley.”

“Who says that you did? I know where I belong. Do you?”

They glided past each other, mirroring each other’s movements in the Senetha. Hands passed close, nearly touching. Lithe bodies slid apart and then turned back face-to-face.

“Whom do you love now, turn-collar? Not me. Not Lord Caineron who was so good to you. After all, what has the Highlord done except drop you into the randon college where no one wants you? Oh, we heard the stories, even here in the south. Poor Brier. What would your mother think?”

Brier flicked a slap at her which Amberley easily brushed off. “The Highlord saved Rose’s life at Urakarn, and she saved his. That score is settled.”

“And now you have his sister, your little lordan. Tell me, does she please you, and what have you done to please her?”

Amberley crouched and swung a leg to trip Brier. The Southron dived over it. They were fighting in earnest now, Kothifir style, with sweeping feet and acrobatic grace. Their fire-cast shadows swirled against the close-set wall of the passage, across the cadets’ watching awestruck faces.

Amberley swept Brier’s feet out from under her. Brier rolled over her shoulder back onto them.

“Do you remember your heritage, Iron-thorn? I think not.”

This was wrong, Jame thought. Kendar shouldn’t fight Kendar. She plunged between the two. “Stop it, you fools, stop it!”