Sasharia en Garde

  “If he accepts these tasks, I further order him to ride immediately to Castle Cheslan to lead the army back to Ellir for winter quarters. There, he will preside over a smooth change of command as he sees fit.”

  I was astonished, but the relief in Jehan’s face made it plain to see that this was exactly the right thing to do. He bowed low to my father, setting off a group bow that rustled (with a few creaking and crackling of joints here and there) through the crowd.

  After that they sent up a huge cheer.

  Jehan said something to Dad. I couldn’t catch the words. He turned a twisted smile to me that was so much a mix of unhappiness and desire my throat ached. Then he strode away through the crowd, his white hair floating on the cold autumn breeze, and vanished in the direction of the stable.

  “I never got to talk to him,” I said, hardly aware of speaking.

  Mom squeezed my hand. “Let him get some space. Let people see him trusted by your father.”

  Space. Yes. I’d asked it of him when I left the yacht, though it had hurt me terribly. I had to give him the same chance. So I bowed my head and followed my mother toward the castle looming over us.

  Mom stopped in her tracks. “Where is everyone going to stay?” She stared up at those towers with (I suddenly realized) somewhat wrinkled Zhavalieshin firebird banners hanging down.

  Dad looked over at her, brows lifted mildly. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

  Mom gave a short nod. “I may as well go right back up to my rooms, and you come with me, dear. In about five minutes you and I are going to be in that bath. I can think of plenty of things to do.”

  Though I felt closer to tears, I laughed. “Mom. There are about thirty people earing in.”

  “I’d invite them to join us, but the fashion for hot tubs doesn’t seem to have reached this part of the world yet. I’ll fix that.” She patted my hand and turned around. “Well! Since we have quite a crowd, why don’t we get those with nothing to do started on cleaning up this castle?”

  She began handing out jobs. Those who didn’t backpedal fast enough got assigned to broom and scrub squads. The surprising thing is, most of them actually went out and did the assigned jobs. A lot of them were castle servants hoping not to be fired, it turned out. Having work to do was a good thing, it helped establish a semblance or normality.

  Mom then turned on me. “And you, my dear, are going to have an appointment with the royal seamstress. You have to start dressing like a princess.”

  “Nooo,” I howled, hovering in that unsteady state between laughter and a flood of tears. “Not a big dress!”

  “If I can get used to it, you can.”

  o0o

  Despite her determination to polish me up before Jehan returned, when he did arrive, I wasn’t in any of my new gowns. (Which I have to admit were stylish and easy to wear.) I was out in the court doing weapons practice with the guards, wearing my workout clothes, when one of Steward Eban’s nieces came to fetch me. “Prince Jehan is here!” she cried, grinning with excitement.

  I ran inside and straight to the side parlor that Dad and Mom had taken over as our central HQ. Dad had insisted that the servants not disturb Canardan’s rooms, and Mom couldn’t bear to go near them. They had agreed to let Jehan decide what to do about his father’s things.

  Jehan arrived just after I reached the parlor. He still wore his brown tunic uniform, now dusty from the road. He bowed to Dad and Mom, and turned to me. He no longer wore that look of pain that had so wrenched my heart on the long, awful ride. I grinned at him.

  He flashed a subdued version of his old smile before turning to Dad. “Sire, would you like my report?”

  Dad waved a hand. “Sit, Jehan. I sent for something to eat and drink.”

  Jehan dropped down next to me. Our shoulders touched; I held out my hand. His face relaxed, and his fingers gripped mine.

  “Did Orthan Randart assist you as I required?” Dad asked.

  “He did.” Jehan’s tone was grim.

  Servants came in, bringing hot food and drinks. The slanting rays of late autumn touched the table where we all kept our own stacks of to-do things, striking into gold the tea as it was poured into the fine blue porcelain cups.

  Kreki Eban had gone straight from the dungeon to the steward’s chambers. Mom and I had been trying to figure out how to help Kreki Eban reorganize the staff, for a lot of Canardan’s servants had quit. Some had vanished when the news of Canardan’s death reached the city, along with a sizable amount of silver, plate and other valuables, Chas in the lead—ahead of a pack of guards who badly wanted to scrag him.

  But Kreki had unearthed a lot of the old servants, who were quite eager to have their old jobs back.

  Mom sighed, rubbing her temples. “Zhavic searched Randart’s office down in the garrison at Math’s request. He didn’t find any wards or anything.”

  Jehan dropped his biscuit onto his plate. “I searched his office at Ellir, as you required, sire. I didn’t expect to find anything like ‘Future King Plans’ but Orthan, who really seemed to want to cooperate, kept telling me his brother was fond of lists. Randart had had his own section of the academy archive room. We opened those chests and found the files scrupulously neat, arranged according to year, supplies, reports on personnel and exercises, for the entire army. He even noted down interrogations and the type of, um, coercion, let’s call it, that was most effective for that person.”

  “Yuk!” Mom and I said together.

  “I burned that one.” Jehan grimaced. “Research I’d as soon no one ever uses. For the rest, we had to go through it all, but in the end it was worthwhile. He kept two kinds of open lists, we finally figured out: immediate goals and long-term goals.”

  “Ah.” Mom leaned forward and pushed the biscuit back into Jehan’s free hand, for his other still held mine tightly. He obediently took a bite.

  Mom smiled fondly at him. “Let me guess. Long-term goals would get shifted to immediate and when accomplished, were filed as done.”

  “Exactly. The outstanding ones were mostly various contingency plans, but there was one single sheet, and from the looks of it quite old, on which he’d written hypotheticals. All of them expressed as ideas. But if you read them mentally prefacing each with If I were king, they changed in meaning. It looks, from that paper and some other hints, as if he’d first considered the idea of assassinating my father within the past two or three years, if he didn’t get rid of me. He was only waiting for Damedran to leave the academy and gain some sort of military triumph before acting.”

  “So his killing Canardan wasn’t impulse so much as a long-term plan inadvertently carried out too soon,” Mom said.

  Jehan said, “I really believe the intention had always been there. Instinct took over.”

  “And he hadn’t shared it with his family?”

  Jehan shook his head. “Damedran made that clear enough back at Ivory Mountain. And his father was equally appalled. Almost tearfully so. I believe he was afraid he would be summarily condemned for a family conspiracy that hadn’t actually existed. The invasion, yes. But Orthan and Damedran had really thought that the king would then be convinced to set me aside as heir, appoint Damedran in my place, and everyone would carry on happily ever after. Except for me,” he finished wryly. “But even then, I’d no doubt run off chasing artists and bards.”

  “You did well.” Dad rose. “No. Sit there and eat. I have to get back to the mages and see if I can get them sorted out.” He winked at me, and left.

  Mom leaped up, rustled over in her long blue skirts and cupped her hands round his face. She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “So glad you are back, dear boy.”

  She whirled around, the fresh herbal scent from her skirts wafting through the air, and she was gone.

  “She seems happy,” Jehan said as the door closed quietly on us.

  “She’s happy with Dad.” I hesitated, then shook my head—which set our hands to swinging.

  Jehan gave me a brief g
rin. “Promise me. Don’t hide things. Spit ’em out. I will, too.”

  “Promise.” I turned his hand over and rubbed my thumb over his rough, callused palm. His skin so warm. “Mom is happy when she’s with Dad, but that’s not nearly often enough. She was happy, oh, the first day or so here, but the talk about Norsunder and possible war worries her. A lot. She likes being social, when everyone gets along.”

  Jehan drank off his tea. “I sensed that, when we were here in the summer.”

  “Speaking of the past. I never saw your father with her, but I’m wondering if she had a kind of weird love-hate thing going with him.”

  “I saw them together. That’s pretty much it,” Jehan responded.

  I nodded. “Dad won’t say anything at all, but he looks worried sometimes, when he watches her, and he doesn’t think anyone is looking. Not about her feelings for Canary—Canardan, sorry.” I sighed. “But about these future threats, and how that relates to the queen gig.”

  “Gig,” Jehan breathed, smiling at last. That smile, so pensive, so sweet, melted me right down to the socks I wasn’t wearing.

  “Jehan. Speaking of no one around. Who knows how long that will last. I have something to say.”

  Jehan gave my hand a brief, tentative squeeze. I got to my feet then pulled him up. We stood there in the golden shafts of sunlight, his white hair gleaming, pinpricks of light in his blue eyes.

  He looked into my face and grinned. “A prepared speech, eh? If it’s self-condemnation, don’t do it. But if it’s something you will feel the better having shed, well, let’s have it.”

  “We call it clearing the air.” I leaned up and kissed him. “And yes. I mean, I don’t think I’m Princess Perfect, and I want to apologize. For not trusting you. See, I wanted to trust you, oh, way too much. So I didn’t trust myself.”

  “Or Merindars,” he murmured.

  I groaned. “That sounds so awful.”

  “But it’s true.” He watched me closely. “Isn’t it? Truth is, if my father were alive, where would we all be? Would he be in prison, or halfway across the kingdom drawing as many to him as possible for a civil war? I don’t think he could have brought himself to give up being king. He probably expected, if your father really did turn up alive, that it would be Mathias who would conveniently go away with a cheery farewell. I am convinced it would have grieved your father to put him on trial, much less anything more drastic.”

  Echoing what Dad had said to Mom and me in private, two nights before: I don’t think I could have borne putting Canardan on trial, despite everything he’s done. And I know what he’s done, I’ve been inside his head a great deal this summer. Yet I also know his motives, and he was not at heart an evil man. But he was evilly educated and easily influenced to talk himself into what he wanted, and shutting his eyes to Randart’s goals.

  I said, “All true.”

  “So where does that leave me, I am beginning to wonder? There were some at the academy who did not like seeing me free and not in prison. Others assured me of their continued loyalty. I mislike the division between people that these attitudes imply. For surely, if there is so broad a range there at the academy, does it not hold it would be much the same across the kingdom?” He looked away, then met my eyes and said in a low voice, “In truth, I wonder if there is a place for me here at all.”

  What ever happened to “happily ever after”? I thought, trying not to show my dismay. “Please don’t decide anything without talking to Dad.”

  “I can’t begin to decide anything.” His gaze was steady. He’d tensed up again, and I could feel how important this conversation, this moment was. “Not until I know where I stand with you.”

  “I have been considering that. Trying to be practical. And adult. But I don’t know what to think. I mean, we have an attraction thing going on that would fuel suns. We seem to know where we are with trust. What we haven’t yet is a relationship.”

  “We have a friendship.” He gave me a whimsical smile. “Or we did. Beginning on board my ship.”

  “Oh, we got along great when I thought you were Zathdar. Soon’s I knew the truth, there was your name right there between us, like some kind of shadow. Merindar. You know, Dad asked me to do something for him. He wants me to write everything down from the beginning of the summer, when he could hear everyone’s thoughts. I hadn’t meant to tell you, but I think it important that I do.”

  “He even heard mine?” Jehan winced.

  “Yes, but he hasn’t told me any. That’s for you to do. If you want. He not only knows what happened, but why. What people were really thinking, though he can’t do it any more, and he says that what he remembers is already beginning to fade. Will you tell me your side? Maybe, I don’t know, maybe I can put it all together and understand some of what happened.”

  “I will do that.”

  “Thank you. But that’s for me. So what do you want to do?”

  Jehan let go of my hands and pulled me into his arms. “I want to begin all over again, courting you,” he murmured into my hair. “I want to spend the rest of my life courting you.”

  Whee. Even if we hadn’t gotten any convenient fairy godmothers wand-waving us into happily ever after, hearing those words came pret-ty close to making up for it all. I flung my arms round his neck and this time the kiss was long, satisfying, and didn’t end with sorrow, regret or distrust.

  So we did it again. And, oh, a few more times.

  When we did talk again, I said, “What’s next?”

  I meant it as a joke but Jehan let go and took a few steps away, as if proximity would restore rational thought. He looked over his shoulder. “Back to where we were. Which is deciding where my place is. Sasharia, what if the best thing for the kingdom is my leaving?”

  I shrugged. “If you and I get on the same page, and I think we’re going to, Mom and Dad would understand. I’m too old for them to stop me and they know it. So if you’re worried about the whole princess thing, well, it was never real to me anyway. I don’t hate it, but I’d rather be with you than wearing diamonds in my hair and making nice with duchesses. In short, if you’ve got to leave, let’s pack a hammock for two.”

  He closed the distance again, searching my face. “You mean that?”

  “Of course I do.” I laughed. “Heck, when I was a girl I never wanted to be a princess even if we did come back here. Princesses were small and dainty and neat, and I was too big. What I wanted to be—” I stopped, and felt my face redden.

  Jehan’s eyes narrowed. “Come on. Say it.”

  “You’re gonna laugh.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You will. I know it. One snicker, and I’m outa here.”

  He raised his hands, smiling.

  “All right. I wanted to be . . . a pirate!”

  How he laughed. I whirled around to march out, he caught me, we wrestled, then fell laughing onto the couch, where I kissed away his laughter.

  And when we were both breathless, he caught my hand. “I think it is time to talk to your father.”

  o0o

  The result of which was today, New Year’s Week Firstday.

  This morning dawned gray with impending snow, but despite the prospect of dreary weather, the bells of the castle, echoed by the bells of the garrison and the guildhall, all rang the rarely heard full royal wedding and coronation carillons. Bell ringers crowded into the towers, wakening the big bells and the small ones that usually hung silent. They played wonderful patterns as two carriages, drawn by pairs of white horses, rolled slowly on a circuit of the royal city.

  This was New Year’s Firstday, the day Mom and Dad would officially become king and queen, and Jehan and I would marry.

  Mom and Dad sat in the first carriage, dressed in the crimson and gold and silver of Zhavalieshin. Dad wore a fabulous tabard embroidered long ago with twined firebirds, hidden by Kreki Eban and triumphantly brought out last week. Mom’s hair was done up elaborately with pearls and beautifully cut stones that gleamed with amb
er highlights.

  In the back carriage, feeling very weird, I sat beside Jehan. I looked down at myself, wondering who was sitting there in the white brocade gown with the emerald green embroidery down the sleeves, round the neck and hem. Under the brocade I wore a green silk gown, which would only show when I moved.

  My hair had been done up by not one but two hairdressers (one joking, when she discovered the princess liked jokes, about how her arms were going to fall off, making all those little braids), each braid with a single tiny diamond fastener at the end before being looped up into a complicated coronet atop my head. Fitted against the coronet of hair, a tiara with diamonds and one single whopping emerald whose price would probably have netted me a brand new BMW, back in L.A. Nobody knew it, but I’d hauled that gem around all summer in my bag. It was left over from the bad old days.

  L.A. seems unreal now, a dream—endless hot days, cars, TV and palm trees. Reality was winter slowly closing in on days of hard work, in-between all these fittings. But the good side of reality were the evenings when the four of us would gather, tired from a day of labor, talking as we ate dinner, and relearning to laugh.

  Jehan told me his story privately, before he had to leave for his tour of inspection. Our going over all that old ground together—what did I think, what did he think—somehow cemented the bond that we’d always felt between us, even back on the very first day, when we’d fought side by side. We could say anything to the other, which helped us both get past all the bad stuff.

  He said he didn’t want to hear Dad talk about Canardan’s inner thoughts, at least not until some time had passed. So it wasn’t until he left us to ride around the kingdom inspecting castles that Dad described Canardan’s and Randart’s view of events, and I wrote it all down as you’ve seen it here.

  Then it was Mom’s turn. When she had finished and read over what I wrote, she hugged Dad and me, saying, “It’s good to get that out of my headspace. The whole thing finally feels done. Finished business.”

  Jehan had not been able to decide about his father’s effects. Mom helped the servants clear all Canardan’s things out of his rooms, so Jehan would not have to do it. The rooms were clean and empty by the time he returned, his father’s personal things put into carved chests for him to keep or sort as he wished, whenever he was ready.