Sasharia en Garde

  “Come,” a voice said directly above Damedran, as a wine goblet was pressed into his hand. “Come sit down. You’ve had a rough day. I know. I’ve been through much the same.”

  Damedran looked up uncomprehending into Prince Jehan’s face.

  “I was hoping to talk to you,” the sheep went on, not sounding like a sheep at all, though it was exactly the same calm, vague voice. “We really need some changes to the training, and who better to help me figure those out than you?”

  “Who worse,” Damedran said. Or he tried to say it. His voice was too hoarse.

  “Now, now. One thing I learned in Marloven Hess was, you plan better after a thumping than if you win. And I had enough thumpings to prove it. Let’s get some food and drink into you, first. Come into the cabin.”

  Damedran heard his uncle’s voice, his forced joviality as he asked to be introduced to the crew, and followed the sheep down into the cabin, gulping wine as he did so. Life had turned into a dream. No, a nightmare. A place where suddenly nothing made sense.

  o0o

  First thing Jehan had said was, “Hide that hair!” before he sped away to make ready, and Zel had taken him at his word.

  The floppy hat had vanished unnoticed, and my braids were frizzing like the Bride of Frankenstein, after the time in the quilt, followed by my salt-water conditioning treatment.

  First I changed out of Jehan’s clothes and into her husband’s cooking outfit. At least Kaelande’s clothes were roomy, as he was a stocky man. Over them I wore his apron. While I sat on an upturned bucket, Zel’s small fingers undid all my braids with lightning speed. She twisted my hair (which would make the most flagrant neo-pre-Raphaelite maiden look bald) into a knot, skewered it with a sail-making tool of some kind, then yanked Jehan’s knit sailor cap over it all. It hurt my scalp enough to make my head throb, but it held.

  Jehan appeared at the galley door. I straightened up—carefully, as my topknot brushed the ceiling—and his face changed expression. It was the most serious I’d ever seen him.

  “What? What?” Zel and I exclaimed together.

  “You look just like Mathias.” And before anyone could speak, Jehan yanked open one of the cupboards, pulled out a wooden container, lifted the lid. He grabbed a handful of flour and threw it in my face.

  I gasped, coughing.

  “They’re here,” Owl’s voice had carried softly from the deck.

  “Don’t touch it,” Jehan flung over his shoulder at me. To Kaelande, “She’s drunk. Make it look real.” He grabbed Zel’s hand and the two of them scrambled up the companionway and ducked down low, almost crawling into the cabin as I stood there blinking ground wheat off my eyelashes.

  And while the Randarts were busy hooking on, their boats thudding against the Dolphin’s hull, their boots loud as they clambered up, Kaelande explained in a running whisper what everything was in the galley, and where the food was stored, his hands gesturing so fast I retained maybe one thing in six.

  Meanwhile he splashed wine lightly down my—his—summer shirt of blue cotton and more on the apron. He filled two goblets, and pushed one into my hand. “Drink! We need wine breath.”

  We each took a good swallow, then stood at either side of the galley door and peered up through the hatch.

  The war commander tromped past, followed by half a dozen hulking guards. Though I’d never seen any of the Randarts close up before, I recognized them immediately: huge guys, buff as all get-out, bony faces with tough-guy cheekbones. Thick black hair. The commander’s was streaked with gray in a way that any Hollywood hairdresser would charge a thousand bucks to arrange. As for his expression, his armed-to-the-teeth, I’m-in-command-here walk, sinister? That I remembered.

  Damedran looked like a high-school-aged edition of his uncle, with long and glossy hair. But he wasn’t moving like his uncle, at least not now. I knew what had happened to him, but it was quite shocking to see his blackened eye, bruised jaw, one swollen ear, and his slow, painful step. He might strut all over the academy like Mr. I’m-Too-Sexy-For-My-War-Tunic, but right now he looked like he longed for a week’s R and R—a thousand miles away.

  A touch on my shoulder. “Let’s get some listerblossom into that one,” Kaelande murmured, and spoke the soft words that made fire flare up on the little galley stove.

  He set a kettle over that to boil and pointed at a cupboard to my right.

  Everything was beautifully fitted together like the most complicated puzzle box ever invented. The cupboard door slid up revealing a row of tiny boxes, each neatly labeled with the name of an herb. He touched the listerblossom, and indicated the tea strainer.

  Light from the lantern hanging over the companionway ladder was blocked. We turned around to face Randart himself.

  He was tall, husky, and absolutely exuded menace, at least standing there in the galley door, a naked knife stuck through his sash, a sword at his side and his eyes narrow slits of suspicion.

  It seemed to me he gave Kaelande the briefest of glances and focused all his attention on me.

  I heard the sound of the water change to a boil. Yes! It gave me something to do, and maybe even within my limited cooking ability. With shaking fingers, I tried to pinch my listerblossom into the tea strainer—the yacht lurched—I dropped some of the listerblossom. Kaelande’s fingers twitched as if to take over, but he reached for his wine instead, and I took the hint, swooped up my goblet, took a swig.

  With burning eyes, I finished measuring out the tea and poured the water.

  Randart watched all this without speaking.

  From behind came Jehan’s voice. “Do I smell healer tea?”

  I thought of my American accent, and faked a pitiful cough as I cudgeled my brain for any kind of accent. Kaelande was from Colend—this was a prince’s yacht—special chef—special accent? But I had no idea how to reproduce that lovely singsong characteristic of the Colendi, which was about as opposite of my plain L.A. accent as you could get.

  Well, when in doubt, there is always Pepé Le Pew-style fake French.

  Using that, I drawled, “Ze healer brew, it is for ze young mastaire.”

  Jehan’s expression did not alter a whit. “Ah, excellent thought, Lasva.”

  Lasva, one of the most common names from Sartor to Colend.

  Jehan took the tea. “We would like dinner. Is it possible? You seem to have begun your off-duty libations a trifle early. Please serve in the cabin. Kaelande, will you stay on as galley aid?”

  Kaelande bowed, and belatedly I bowed, too, the forgotten goblet tipping in my hand. The last of the wine sloshed onto the deck. Kaelande and I reached for the cloth on the little hook over the cleaning bucket, and our heads bumped together. Kaelande laughed, and kissed my shoulder, which made me whoop with surprise.

  Randart turned away, rolling his eyes in disgust. From the companionway came his voice, “I don’t suppose you have a reason for keeping on hire a drunken cook?”

  “Ah, but she is an artist. In all ways, the kitchen and in—”

  Randart retorted in a voice of acute revulsion, “Spare me. I’m surprised your entire crew is not made up of women. Pardon, your highness, artists.”

  “Do not think I have not tried to achieve that very thing! But they get bored, they move on to something else. I cannot seem to get them to stay.”

  “My sympathies,” Randart’s voice diminished, “I find are entirely with the women. So you’ve had that cook for a while? Didn’t your father mention he’d hired a man, a Colendi?”

  Their voices were mere mumbles now, drowned by the lapping of the sea against the hull, and the creaking wood.

  While I listened, Kaelande swiped up the rest of the flour as well as the wine, and dunked the cloth into the bucket. The snap and flare of magic restored the cleaning cloth, which he hung up to dry. Then he gestured me into the corner, out of the way while he swiftly retrieved ingredients from this or that cupboard, his hands moving so fast they were almost a blur to my tired eyes.

  ??
?Can you cook?” he whispered.

  “Mac cheese, tuna melts and PBJs,” I muttered. “Uh, all those require boxes, cans, microwaves. You may as well call it magic.”

  “You’ll have to serve. I think he remembers me.” Kaelande drew a wicked knife from a nifty holder fitted above his cutting board and began chopping onions and olives. “What you are going to make is a Colendi dish called the Duchess Changes Her Mind—” He named it in Colendi, explaining that the words held two meanings. (Since it was Colendi, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had six meanings. Think French style of the Ancien Regime, except with the age and sophistication of the Imperial Chinese Court.)

  Then he opened the spice-and-herb cupboard again, and carefully removed a single sprig of a pungent spice.

  As he began mincing it with swift chops, the fresh scent threw me back in memory to my childhood.

  It’s so strange, how smell can be even more powerful at evoking memory than all the other senses. Even sight. Though we always think first of sight.

  But I no sooner sniffed that herb than I was right back at the palace in Vadnais, a little kid again, looking up at Canary’s big grin, his dashing long hair and heroic stature. Canary . . . my mother laughing at something he said . . .

  My mother. A prisoner in Vadnais.

  My mother’s voice, The thing about Canary was, he always had to be the rescuer, the solver, the good guy. He might even have believed what he said—

  Good guy. Canary.

  There was some important thought here, but I was distracted by Kaelande, who started explaining how to cook his dish, which was a kind of very, very light crepe, into which wine-and-oil sautéed onions, tomatoes and olives were wrapped. Over it some of that crumbly, delicious cheese was sprinkled.

  “Now. You must cook this together,” he murmured, dashing wine and the spice over the olives and onions in a shallow pan. He added the tomatoes last, murmured something, gestured, and the flame lowered. He set the shallow pan over it, and I wedged my way in to his left. We stood there shoulder to shoulder, and I reflected on how we were definitely inside each other’s personal space, but there was no sense of a boundary crossed. No intimate space. With Jehan, I felt like we were in intimate space when he stood twenty feet away.

  Kaelande didn’t seem to feel anything either. No furtive looks, and his touch was neutral. Yet I supposed from the galley door we looked like a lovey-dovey pair, so close together. Now, if Jehan had been in here—

  Just the idea of being pressed up against him in this tiny galley sent heat from my cheeks to my chitlins.

  Concentrate! I began to sauté the mixture, frowning down at the gently sizzling ingredients as I sniffed the scent.

  Canary. What was happening to Mom? Canary wouldn’t throw her into a dungeon. That wouldn’t be the action of a supposed good guy—

  That inward tug again, something important, some connection I was missing. Canary, my mother. That wasn’t it, though it was related.

  Boots clattered back and forth across the deck a few inches above my head. I stirred the ingredients, glaring down at them while Kaelande fashioned perfect crepes with what seemed like preternatural speed, his arm jostling mine, his breath a soft whistle on a plaintive series of three or four notes. No one disturbed us. Every so often Kaelande wiped something on my apron, and even splashed me once or twice, and I remembered I was drunk. I flicked a few drops to my face for artistic verisimilitude, catching a brief grin from Kaelande.

  I turned my thoughts inward, considering Canary and my mom, what she’d told me over the years. All the little incidents added up to this: he tried to get her on his side.

  Closer, closer. Okay, there was some insight here, instinct insisted.

  So keep thinking. Canary was attractive. He was attracted to Mom. He hadn’t been faking it. Her so-called free-love hippie days had taught her the difference. He liked her, was attracted . . . needed to be the good guy . . .

  Why is this important? Argh! I stirred vigorously. Instinct was poinking and prodding at me now. But why? I wished I had not drunk that wine.

  All right, think it through again. Canary, pretending to be the good guy. Canary, attracted to my mother. Wanting her on his side, and so he used her attraction. Heck, he used his own attraction. He used his looks, his charm, said what people wanted to hear, did everything he could to try to get people to buy into his plans, and see him as the good guy . . . Almost there—

  Canary and Mom. And here I was with his son. Who was doing his best to get me to buy into his plans. Meanwhile lying to everyone. Even his pirates didn’t know the truth about him.

  So the question now is, how much is he lying to me?

  That was it. I grimaced down at the golden onions in my shallow pan. That was a nasty one. So face it. How much is Jehan Jervaes Merindar using my own attraction—and his to me—to seduce me if not into his bed, into his plans?

  “It looks like it’s done,” Kaelande whispered.

  I started. I’d been standing there with the wooden spatula in the air, and hastily gave the mixture a guilty stir. Luckily the flame had been too low for it to burn.

  He took the pan, dashed an even portion of the mixture onto each crepe, wrapped them with nimble fingers, laid out the crepes on plates (lined up along a narrow board that folded down, so he could do six at once), poured in the filling, rolled the crepes, and added a spray of the tiny grapes. “Can you serve?”

  I grinned. “I can’t cook, but boy howdy can I serve.” As his eyes widened, I stashed the plates up my arm in classic waitress carry, hooked four wine goblets with the fingers of the other hand, and with my thumb grabbed up the square wine bottle.

  He saluted wryly and I eased my way up and onto the deck, steadying myself against the rail. I was acutely aware of myself in the clothing of a man I didn’t know before yesterday. Here I was, Sasharia Zhavalieshin, pretending to be a cook, and all to support the false role of someone who might be an enemy.

  How long was I going to go along with his changing stories, I wondered, leaning my hip against the carving of laughing dolphins running along the rail.

  Until he kisses me? And then what?

  I cannot tell you how much I hated the thought that he had it all planned, that the dangerous evening would end with the hero prince grabbing the dashing princess for love’s triumphant kiss—

  He wouldn’t. Would he?

  I glared down at the plates on my arm and remembered what I was supposed to be doing. At my current rate of travel the food would be congealed into a nasty mess before I even reached the cabin.

  The deck was full of big men moving about with either covert or overt purpose, none paying the drunken cook the least heed after a disinterested glance. Dannath Randart vanished into the cabin I’d used, but my stuff was gone, the gear bag over the side (the green tunic inside it as ballast), the mementos and coins stashed in Zel’s things.

  I descended the few broad steps into the cabin. Jehan and Damedran sat with their heads together at the table, Jehan writing things down as they talked in quick, low voices.

  Damedran’s wary body language, his reluctant agreements to Jehan’s softly murmured questions, were easing as he sipped at the mug of listerblossom.

  Zel lounged on the bed like an odalisque, playing with half-circles of myriad colors. A step toward her and the half-circles resolved into open fans, laid like rare flowers against the splendid barbarity of my Zhavalieshin coverlet. Some of the fans were made of lace and thin streamers of ribbon, others a kind of rice paper, gilt in exquisite patterns, and painted. Subtle fragrances arose, carried on the gentle breeze from the open stern windows.

  She glanced up at me, then over her shoulder, pursing her lips.

  I set the wine bottle on the table, the glasses next to it.

  Jehan was saying, oh so persuasively, “. . . completely rethink the infighting—”

  “But Master Grescheg wins every competition with Obrin and those fellows from Alsais—”

  “Compe
tition. Perhaps there is a difference between hand-to-hand grappling for a medal and fighting in the street? Think about today. That tall fellow broke competition rules, didn’t he?”

  “He did. I didn’t call ’em on it because it seemed cowardice—”

  “We all saw that, and it testifies to your credit. But consider this. Would you have him at your back in the street? Or if Norsunder rode over the border in force?”

  “Norsunder?” Damedran looked doubtful.

  I’d backed up to listen, the plates still stacked on my arm.

  “It could happen. You won’t remember the Siamis days. It was just before you were born. Did anyone tell you about how frightened people were? The talk of Detlev, Siamis’s uncle? We don’t know much about him, except that those who held his leash are far worse. And if they find a way to cross into the world . . .”

  “Yes,” Damedran cut in, his brow a scowl line. “I would want them at my back in any kind of fight. The grappling, and the archery. Nobody could beat that little runt. Not even our best master.”

  The voices had risen slightly, one with the slightly nasal intonations of late adolescence, gruff with dislike and distrust, the other more tenor, controlled, with that faint humor.

  Jehan’s trying to win Damedran. What role is he playing now?

  “And you saw how he shot. The Marloven bow drill is tedious, that I grant, however the form is unbeaten throughout the world, and you saw the evidence today . . .”

  Under how many layers was the truth buried? I stared down at Zel’s fans, each a treasure. She must have seen my admiration in my face, for she smiled proudly. Then a glance past me. Her smile vanished. She lay back in a languishing pose.

  Boot heels rang on the deck, and the voices stopped. Focus shifted as Dannath Randart filled the doorway to the cabin. He took us all in with a single glance, frowning when he spied the paper before Jehan. He sat, abruptly reaching for it. His hand stopped partway, and Jehan offered it to him with a courteous air.

  Randart glanced at it for about five seconds, as I approached the table.

  Randart slewed around, watching as I dealt the plates in my very best serving manner. The narrow-eyed suspicion tightening his eyes eased a fraction more each time I snuck a peek at him. By the time I finished playing sommelier with the wine, complete down to the pouring flick of the wrist, he had clearly filed me in the “servant” category, and thereafter ignored me.