“I-I don’t know what to say,” he muttered finally, awkward and unsettled.
“You don’t have to say anything. I rode up here to Elsaraen on her invitation, and I did want to meet you. I just did not expect it to come about so suddenly. Where is the duchess, and why did she send you alone?”
“I don’t know.” Tau made a rueful gesture. “I still don’t understand why she does some things.” And then, the humor fading, “You rode all this way to meet me? I trust you don’t believe I’m here to make trouble.”
Her mouth deepened at the corners. “You haven’t met the Sartoran Deis yet, have you?”
“No. But I heard some gossip about the one my age. What was his name, Yaskandar?”
“Yaska is trouble.” She shrugged. “But then all of us are. That’s what I’ve discovered. Even when we don’t mean to be.”
Tau was about to say You weren’t, then remembered the gossip from the other Marlovan Runners about how Evred’s older brother, Alden-Sierlaef, had chased this Joret clear around the Marlovan kingdom. In a sense, the violent change of government could be laid at her door. And was, in some people’s minds. Yet she had not intended any of it.
“Is the entire family . . . like us?”
“Yaska could be your brother, though his skin is darker than yours. Not as dark as mine. His hair is almost as dark as mine as well, but your eyes are exactly the same pale brown that people call gold. My mother had your light eyes, but a long nose, and hair the color of mud. My cousins have large blue eyes, round cheeks, and button chins.”
“So we don’t all spring out as miracles of beauty.”
Her chuckle was deep, in her chest, not the least like an artful court titter. “No. Though the older generation values beauty first and fame second. You had better be prepared. Both branches of the Deis will probably come wooing you, breathing sincerity and talking up the life of art, because they want to preserve the family legend by cross-matching distant cousins.”
He wiped his arm across his brow, an instinctive gesture his mother had worked hard to train out of him when he was small. “I still don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “I went to sea to get away from art. By the time I was ten, artful had come to mean artificial.”
Joret said, “Yes. I understand. Though I wouldn’t have before I left Iasca Leror and came here to court.”
“Marlovans, I’ve discovered, are often brutal, but seldom artificial.”
She did not deny it. “What did you learn about art, and artfulness, at sea?”
He made a self-deprecating gesture. “There are few worse bores than those who go on about their past.”
She gave a short laugh. “I’m not bored.”
“Oh, it took capture by pirates to convince me that artfulness was not necessarily deceit or deviousness, and being open about one’s intent was not necessarily admirable. On the other hand, you did meet Jeje, am I right?”
Joret smiled. “Yes, when she came to Nente looking for your mother.”
“She and Inda are my proof that words, thoughts, actions can all match and yet be admirable.”
“The word is integrity.”
He sighed. “I grew up thinking that word actually meant ‘the ability to be convincing.’ ” He opened his hands. “I don’t intend to stay in this kingdom. Or is this conversation in some sense a mark of distrust aimed at my mother.” It wasn’t a question.
Joret gestured upward, toward the rest of the castle. “Your mother told me before she left Nente that politics are tedious and fatiguing, the running of a business made large. When she returns after the birth of her child, she promised me the extent of her ambition is to transform a stagnant, fractious court into something with its own style, instead of mimicking Colend. I begged her to try, because I can’t do it.”
Tau paced to the window and halted, fingering a wind chime hanging before a closed window. “I’d thought of going to meet Jeje, since she did not wait for me.”
Joret thought back, uncertain whether or not to share one of Jeje’s remarks. Though nothing had been said about confidence, it had felt like one: Tau needs to be needed.
Joret picked her words with care. “She went north, I believe. Said something about taking ship at Bren Harbor.”
Tau’s head lifted. “I wonder if that means Inda’s fleet is in the strait.” Though they had never met before this day, he was comfortable with her. It wasn’t just their shared family, he sensed that they shared similar experience. “Another discovery I made at sea was a taste for danger,” he said slowly, and sure enough, she did not bridle or mime horror. Just gave a sober nod. “But I’ve faced enough of it to want my efforts to be for a purpose. I could rejoin the fleet and fight pirates. Getting rid of pirates is a worthy goal. But anyone can do it. Pirates are predictable. They will always choose bloodshed over wit or art.” He swung around. “Do we Deis all think alike?”
“I can safely promise that we do not. Just before he left to go yacht racing, Yaska defined love for me as ‘hope-driven self-destruction.’ ”
She was startled when Tau stilled, eyelids lifting. She went on to finish, but she wasn’t sure he even heard her words, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more alien to my thinking.”
He turned again to the west window, hands now behind him. “You once were part of Inda’s family. You must know the new king.”
“Evred?” Joret did not hide her surprise at this unexpected turn. “I saw him very little, actually. You must have seen how enormous that castle is, and the girls had their own enclave. But my first meeting with him was quite memorable.”
“What happened?” Tau undid the window latch and flung the casement wide.
Joret said, “Nothing extraordinary. He was about thirteen. Maybe fourteen. I was fifteen. I’d just arrived for the queen’s training. Sponge—that’s what they called him then—he was sitting in the tack room mending a headstall. He’d been doing that all winter. He looked just like his father, so sober and intent on his work. Older than his years. But then Hadand told him that Inda had arrived, and he leaped up, and his face changed into a boy’s face. Full of joy. I’ve never in my life seen such a transformation. He dashed out, running so fast he crashed into a wall. But he just laughed and ran on.”
Tau struck the back of a chair lightly with the flat of his hand. “Hope-driven self-destruction. You would think that a fellow with Yaska’s looks, his wealth and taste, would be at the pinnacle of happiness. But such a narrow view of the variety of emotions that we group under ‘love’—what happened to make him so angry?”
“Pain.” She opened her hand. “I saw it. For scarcely a heartbeat, but it was there.”
Tau rapped twice on the table, then turned his back to the window. “Yaska can sail around the world in an effort to outrun his anger, or he can fight a duel and find his troubles ended for him. No one else is dragged down his avalanche. But what if he were in a position of power? Would his self-destruction spread out into the world?”
Outside the open window a bird chirped, then flitted off in a quiver of wings. “I don’t quite know how to answer that,” Joret said finally.
“It’s all right.” Tau smiled. “I think I do.”
Traditionally the Marlovan academy’s first callover for the scrubs of ten or eleven years of age was held in the castle’s main parade court.
This was because some of the boys were sent by Riders who had never been to the royal city and did not know their way around the academy, which had no signs. The main parade court was easy to find, the main entrance lying beyond the massive archway between the biggest wings of the castle, housing throne room and great hall, respectively.
The traditional first callover was at noon, for the same reason.
Evred permitted himself few indulgences. One he’d anticipated for half a year was watching Inda preside over the academy’s first day. He’d organized his schedule around it, even though Inda had steadfastly refused any parade or ceremony. “I’m just going to wat
ch,” he’d said. “And only the scrubs. Big boys I’ll talk to when I go over to teach ’em.”
Evred set aside his tasks as the midday bells began to clang. He waved off his Runners, ran upstairs and down the empty hallway of the royal residence.
The jut where the new wall met the old tower just outside of Inda’s suite ended in an awkward cubby. If you pressed your face up against the uneven wall, you would discover a finger’s width of an old arrow slit, imperfectly covered. The castle children had long used it to spy down into the parade court.
Evred reached the cubby, then halted, fury lancing through him. He was not alone after all.
At the sound of his footfall the figure crouching there turned. It was Hadand. She smiled up at him. “Do you remember your first callover?” She faltered, expression changing from pleasure to question. “What’s wrong?”
The suddenness as well as the intensity of his fury unsettled him. It was his own fault for indulging emotion, which was dangerous at best, betrayal at worst.
The people who had legitimate reason to be here were Inda’s sister, his wife, his lover. Evred was none of these.
“Headache.” It was true.
“Inda’s down there, I saw him earlier. But he’s not dressed in his coat. He looks like a stable hand. Is that on purpose?”
“Yes. He doesn’t want to be noticed unless he decides he has to be.” As she obligingly knelt, giving him access to the upper portion of the spy hole, he leaned into the small space without touching his wife, whose intimacy he’d avoided since Convocation. The prospect of touching anyone—of being touched—was too much like thrusting his hand into a fire. The only solution was work.
Thirty-six small boys stood in two ragged rows, the cold east wind snapping the proudly worn smocks, some old and worn, others so new they were stiff as canvas—most castle people the kingdom over believing that the first requirement of clothing for children was sturdiness. They all wore riding boots. You could tell at a glance who had inherited from a brother or cousin by how badly the boots fit.
“Who’s the master? He’s new, isn’t he?” Hadand asked.
“Landred Askan. From Inda’s and my own class. Inda and Gand decided that the masters all had to have fighting experience, to prevent obvious trouble. Askan was at Olaran.”
“Oh, smart idea.”
On the parade court, Landred Askan stood before his first group, studying the faces. An instant’s vivid memory of Master Gand—now Headmaster Gand—surveying him and his scrub-mates made him take his time and really see those faces. Was there one like Kepa? Like Inda? Like Cherry-Stripe? Like Smartlip Lassad? He could hear Lassad in the distance, yelling at a group of newly arrived ponytails.
“Most of you know some of the rules,” Askan said, trying to gather their attention and hold it with his voice, just like Gand did.
About half straightened up. Two smirked knowingly. One stared up at the sentries on the castle walls.
“First, nobody has rank in the academy. If you’re appointed a riding captain, it’s for a single game. If you are appointed more than once, don’t assume it’s because you’re the best. Sometimes the worst get extra chances in hopes they improve.”
The two smirkers laughed. The others, hearing a laugh and no wands whistling through the air, chuckled belatedly.
Gand was right, Askan thought. Don’t watch their mouths, watch eyes and hands. He tried not to let his own gaze slip sideways to where Inda sat on a barrel next to the empty pegs for horse harnesses. Most of the boys hadn’t seen him yet, or if they had, they’d ignored him, for he wasn’t in a coat and his hair was just clubbed, like the stable hands’. But two boys had spotted those swinging earrings. Keth Arveas sent frequent peeks his way in hopes of being noticed. The other was Dauvid Tya-Vayir, who stiffened, face tight with scorn. Those scars, that has to be the Harskialdna, the one Uncle Stalgrid says is the king’s claphair.
“The second rule you know,” Askan continued in a louder voice, and felt their attention snap back to him. “Its that Ains and Tveis are now mixed. The training is the same. Now, time for your first callover, once I see two straight lines. You will call me Master Askan—” Flash of memory: Cherry-Stripe, so tall back then, piping, YOU can be Lan. The horsetails are calling ME Cherry-Stripe.
Askan shook away the image and began the callover. He knew their names of course, and had memorized the reports on the boys’ interviews when the King’s Voice gave them their invitation. Now to match description to presence.
“Arveas-Andahi.”
Keth grimaced, unused to that weird name. He stared at the ground, shuffling his feet, as all the rest of the boys turned to stare at him.
And Askan knew he’d lost them. Their attention had gone to the small boy on the end whose hair was already turning brown under the sun-bleached top layer. Two or three made noises; Askan’s fingers twitched. Already reaching for his wand? Gand had been able to control them with just his voice, and after a week just with his eyes . . . failure . . . what to say? Not a threat, not two heartbeats into their first day—
Footsteps on the flagstones. Inda had left his barrel.
A small boy in the back gasped. “That’s the Harskialdna!”
Sudden silence. Evred and Hadand were too far away to hear, but they could see from the sudden stiffening of the boys that something had happened, and then Inda strolled out to take up a stance beside Lan Askan.
“Arveas-Andahi is a new name.” Inda tried to make his face stern. He badly wanted to laugh, not at the subject, but at himself. Here. Standing over these pups like . . . like he didn’t feel just a year or so away from being a pup himself at times. “Do you know who gave it to Kethadrend?”
He’s the Harskialdna, the boys were thinking, with various reactions. Dressed like a stable hand, but look at those scars. Those were really pirate earrings!
Dauvid Tya-Vayir was pleased he’d guessed right and figured the next threat (because every man was either a threat or a lackey) would be Headmaster Gand. Uncle Stalgrid had said about the Headmaster, Just a coward who stayed behind to teach little boys how to ride, when his dragoon wing was fighting in the north.
Inda said, “The king gave Keth this new name because the name Arveas will be honored through history. The other new Jarl is now Camarend Idayago-Vayir. His boy will one day stand here and hear that new name at callover. See? So your scrub-mate there had no choice about having a new name. In foreign lands, names and land can be different. In Iasca Leror, the Jarl shares his name with his land. It’s a sign of responsibility.”
One of the boys was hopping up and down.
Inda said, “Yes, I know my family is the exception, but we’re also not Jarls. That’s because the Algaras made a marriage treaty with the Tenthens of Choraed Elgaer before we Marlovans moved into Iasca Leror. But my forefather put Vayir to his name because the king asked him to.”
The boy stopped hopping, looking warily convinced, and Inda wondered if among these boys there were versions of himself and Evred who would be making historical speculations during hay-pitching duty. “Arveas-Andahi is also a kind of invisible banner. Have any of you seen what a castle’s like after the Venn have been there?”
The tall boy said, “I saw a harbor. After pirates. At the Nob. M’dad’s dragoons fought ’em when they came back.”
Inda said, “This would be worse. Keth, how many of your blood family lived?”
“None.”
“How many of the Riders lived?”
“None.”
“How many of the castle women?”
“Only Aunt Ndand. Because she was sent away with me.”
“What was left when you and your aunt got back to the castle?”
“Nothing . . . blood. Smoke. Then the Idayagans attacked us.” Keth studied the ground.
The only sound was the wind snapping the pennants. The listeners wrestled with shock and envy. And scorn, on the part of Dauvid Tya-Vayir: Uncle Stalgrid said it’s all just brag. However, Aunt Iman
d had said, Believe it.
Inda said, “The Venn could come back. And it might be you on horseback, facing them. Any of you. You’re here to learn what to do about it. So let’s see two straight lines. Let’s see your attention on Master Askan.”
Hadand watched Inda gesture casually toward Askan, then the boys stiffened into two perfect lines. “How did my little brother gain that sense of authority?”
“You haven’t been watching the morning drills?”
“Boys are far, far tougher to manage,” Hadand said. “Isn’t that why your masters take sticks to them?”
Below, Lan Askan dismissed the boys for what would be their only day of liberty all year. They shot out of the court, some looking back at Inda. At the far gate, tall, gawky older brothers waited to sweep their Tveis off to Daggers Drawn, the academy boys’ own tavern, to be fed and lectured. Most of them crowded forward hoping to be noticed by the Harskialdna, and why was he there with the brats, of all people?
Dauvid walked alone, eyeing Keth, who was the center of a crowd. He hated that. I’ll scrag him first. Uncle Stalgrid said, you get respect faster when they know who’s strongest.
Inda watched them all go, then discovered tough old Gand at his shoulder. “Not bad. But you’ll get a real sense of the year tomorrow at the shearing.”
Inda grinned. “Was looking forward to that!”
Gand rubbed his jaw as they paced across the parade court in the other direction, toward the guards’ side. “You ever spent time around an apiary?” he asked presently.
“No,” Inda said. “Only thing I remember about the bees at Tenthen was that I didn’t like ’em any more than they liked us.”
“Bees and small boys don’t mix well,” Gand conceded. “Neither knows how to give way when they want to be in the same space. If you did spend time around them, you’d learn that the bees’ hum doesn’t always sound the same. Beekeepers can hear trouble in the hum. Sometimes weather, sometimes other things.”