“You wanted to be in the academy.” Tdor remembered how scared she was on Inda’s behalf, especially after all Hadand’s dire warnings about Evred’s horrible uncle. How true they were, too.
“Yes, I wanted to be there. Well, but Kepa wanted to be there, too, so that horse won’t run.”
“You know you can’t reduce everyone to a single motivation.”
“I know. Speaking of idiots, some of the horsetails are single-minded rock brains, but Lassad’s gonna run ’em hard on the game. Knock some of the strut out.” He threw his head back. “Never been happier except for a couple of things. You know this problem.” He pointed ahead, toward the annex.
They’d walked briskly along the sentry route, saluting men on the outer walls and women on the inner. When they reached the annex perpendicular to the Residence Wing, they paused and looked into the open window, golden-lit, on the opposite side of a private courtyard. The third floor was the long recreation and study room shared by the King’s Runners and those training to be scribes and heralds.
There sat little Han Tlen, alone as always. From their vantage, Inda and Tdor could see her busy translating from a scroll. The ruby in her ear winked bloodred.
That end of the room was crowded with King’s Runner boys studying, wrestling—Inda and Tdor recognized moves from the Fox drills—gathered around something on a table. One boy sat cross-legged on another table, practicing his drumming. They could hear the counterpoint called “second gallop” through the open window; the King’s Runners-in-Training played counterpoint to the Guard drummer for Restday.
No one went near the isolated little girl.
At the other end, the scribes, boys and girls, were busy with their own pursuits. Mostly they stayed with their own gender, except for a couple of study groups, and one big, fast, noisy game of cards’n’shards.
“Hadand says she never complains,” Tdor said with a sigh.
“I know. I ask Evred about her every week.” Inda turned his back on the windows. “I think I hate these earrings,” he said suddenly, so low she had to lean down to hear him. “I hate them because I don’t understand why people look at them and see glory. I see a . . .” He gestured vaguely. “A glory-shaped hole. In the hole is death. Noddy. Rig. Dogpiss, even. Death, and that stink up in the pass. The only worse thing than that was the stench off Boruin’s burning ship. Why can’t I see glory? Why can’t I feel it? Everybody says I’m at the center of it, but . . .” He jerked his head up, grimacing. “Tdor, am I whining?”
“No.” Chill wrung down through her nerves, and her voice turned husky. She cleared her throat. “I don’t know why they don’t remember the terrible things the way you do, but I think the way they see the earrings has something to do with leadership. They look to you to keep them safe. You don’t have that comfort.”
“I think sometimes glory has something to do with sex.” His head was low now, his voice embarrassed. “Fighting to win.”
“You find pleasure in killing?”
Tdor tried to hide her horror, but Inda heard it in her voice. He began walking fast. “It’s more the fighting. You don’t hold back. You risk everything, so it feels good to be the strongest and fastest, to win. The burn is the hottest in the worst battle.”
“Could it be a proportionate relief that you are alive so far?” she asked, working hard to comprehend.
“And sex.” Inda huffed out a sigh as they dashed through a tower sentry station. “I don’t always feel that way. A few times. Last one, on the cliff above the pass, though there’s still something wrong with my memory. I felt like two men, because Dun was there. No. Three. Like somebody crowded my mind aside and took over my arm.” He flexed his right hand, and winced.
“Inda, that’s horrible.”
He stopped, right there in the middle of the sentry walk. “The mind thing? Or the sex thing?” He peered anxiously into her torch-lit face, then looked away. “I know the sex feeling when you’re fighting . . . killing . . . is wrong. But it’s there. Not just me. Seen it in battle. Not everybody. Some are just scared. Angry. Determined.”
Tdor hesitated, the words of rejection, of horror shaping lips and tongue. She felt herself poised on the edge of some new idea—maybe important—but it would not come, and she was so afraid to hurt Inda with the wrong words. She said slowly, “I won’t claim that women don’t feel desire with fighting. Maybe some do. I just don’t know any. Haven’t read of any, though I have read accounts where the anger to defend, to get revenge, felt good after something they’d otherwise think sickening, coming on it cold.”
“Well, anyway, it hasn’t happened since that day on the cliff. The sex burn or the mind thing. When me’n Cama had a few brushes up in Idayago, it was just work. I tried to make it fast. I guess it’s different for everybody. Fox once said that winning a fight is better than sex.” He sent her a quick look as they passed under a burning torch, and when he didn’t see revulsion, just a somber sort of puzzlement, he added, “I keep looking for answers. In the books I’ve been reading. Trying to read. I’m so slow! I read much faster when I was little. Maybe my brains have leaked out after all.” He was walking fast again.
“You used to skim,” she said, no longer trying to hide her worry. “And then you’d ask me to gloss ’em. Don’t you remember? Or you’d listen to Joret and me talking. You learned a lot by listening, and then you’d read it. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember you explaining things to me.” Inda rubbed his eyes, then flung his hands out and dashed around a corner. She lengthened her strides to keep up. “I also remember that I didn’t stop and think all the time, like I do now. Think and think, when I read something, and I look back at what happened in my life . . .”
She said carefully, “Have you asked for recommendations for your reading from Evred?”
“No. I don’t talk with anyone about the glory stuff. Well, Tau, sort of, once. Fox, a little. And now you. Nobody seems to see it the way I do. Think I’m being, eh, modest, or something. To Evred Marlovan glory is important, somehow. I think, with him, it’s all tied together with oaths and king matters.” His voice lowered more, scarcely a whisper. “It’s too important to Evred. Maybe because he’s a king.”
Tdor wondered what Inda heard in Evred’s voice. But she did not dare ask. If Inda found out about Evred’s feelings he’d struggle with remorse and obligation—two things Evred would hate. Evred already felt like a banked fire when Tdor was in his presence. Sometimes she had this disturbing fancy that Evred did not incinerate before their eyes only due to extreme exertion of will.
Inda shook himself, then plunged through a tower entrance. He flicked a salute to the duty captain, and then he burst out the opposite door, Tdor moving fast to keep up, though both knew that problems walked right along with you.
Tdor said, “Is Signi your second thing?”
“Yes. Evred called me in this morning. Said he got a Runner from Jaya-Vayir.” Inda pounded his left fist on the battlements as they passed. “Took some time because they thought at first it was brigands.”
“ ‘It’? She’s not dead?”
“No. That is, no one knows. Her body wasn’t found. There was a family. Throats cut. Everyone thought it was brigands, but ones with a weird sense of decency since the bodies were all straightened out, clothes smooth. Nothing taken, far as they could tell. Eventually someone put that together with a corner of Jaya-Vayir that never got magic renewed. The Jarl sent his best men to ride around, and they figured out Signi had been in the region around the time the people were killed.”
“They don’t blame her, I trust!”
“No, but they think her disappearance is related. Maybe brigands got the drop on her. Took her for her magic knowledge. Nobody knows. Anyway, Horseshoe’s kin got some mage apprentice from Sartor to come and finish the renewals—supposedly the Mage Council doesn’t know. Evred had to dispatch a smacking big fee—what it would have cost to do the entire south—but at least it’s done.”
&nbs
p; “Inda, I am so sorry.” Tdor felt sick.
He turned up his palm, and as sentry women approached, he said, “Here’s what we plan for this year’s Banner Game . . .”
When Dauvid Tya-Vayir got home from his academy season, Uncle Stalgrid demanded an accounting as always. As soon as Dauvid said, “Wasn’t so bad, this year. The Harskialdna says we’re almost—” Uncle Stalgrid knocked him down.
“I don’t want to hear that claphair’s damned opinions,” he roared. “Especially out of your mouth!” He punctuated with smacks all his reasons why the king and his pirate shield arm were stupid so the boy would remember who was Jarl of Tya-Vayir. There’d be no traitor like Camarend growing up here, despite that damned academy. Horsebutt would never let Dauvid go back if he dared, but he was afraid Evred would make some excuse to send dragoons to camp in Tya-Vayir as a punishment. So Dauvid had just better remember who was Jarl in Tya-Vayir, and this was the way to make sure the lesson stuck . . .
When Dauvid finally made his way to his aunt, she prepared him a meal with her own hands, as always after a beating. She stood over him until he’d drunk fresh listerblossom steep, and then, when Dauvid’s breathing was easier, asked, “How was your year?”
“Stupid,” the boy said fiercely. “Just . . . stupid.”
She said nothing more, but when he asked a day or two later if he should take his little cousin to see the pups in the kennel, she said he could later on—Young Stalgrid was spending harvest season with his grandpa to keep him out of the way of the work.
Chapter Two
DURING Convocation that year, Goatkick Noth’s certainties about the world underwent a change.
Goatkick was half a year away from promotion. He would be the first Noth to serve as royal staff, and every single year since he was twelve, he’d served the Jarls at Convocation thinking, Maybe my family will be one of them. Maybe while I’m alive, even. Because despite the old, old songs about how honor and glory were bound up in how wide and free you could ride, how many days you could gallop until you found enemies who did not bow out of your way, everybody knew real glory was in owning land. You had your own castle, and when you rode, it was your land under your horse’s hooves, not everybody else’s. You had a bench at Convocation, and you spoke for all your people. You led people instead of being people.
The second way to honor and glory was through being a hero in war.
For two and a half years he’d smoldered in silence about how Noddy Toraca had dishonored him and his fellow King’s Runners-in-Training by sending them home right on the eve of the most glorious battle of the war! Like they were all babies or cowards!
It was a terrible struggle not to spit when Toraca’s name was mentioned, especially when the king and the Harskialdna went on about what a hero Noddy Toraca had been. Goatkick and his friends ranted in private about all the ways they could have won glory, like by catching up the banner and leading the charge after Noddy and Hawkeye fell.
Goatkick had quietly dropped that one when his cousin in the horsetails had let him try riding with a lance when he went home for a visit (“home” being wherever Uncle Horsepiss was garrisoned, ever since Grandpa Noth was killed in the first big pirate attack) just before spring the year after the battle.
All right, so he wouldn’t have even been able to pick up a lance on the battlefield, much less gallop to the charge, without falling right off the horse. But he could have done something heroic! He could have run the crucial message . . . well, except that Sundog Tlennen’s uncle Hanther, who’d been up on the cliffs with Cama One-Eye’s men, had come to Convocation last year as an escort for the Jarl of Cassad. He’d told the boys that after the battle in the pass had started nobody had time for any messages until after the Venn surrendered and slunk away, the cowards.
That third Convocation brought Buck Marlo-Vayir for his first royal city visit since the battle. The senior Runners-in-Training were on duty as aides to the King’s Runners assigned to welcome all the Jarls and see to it that they got to their rooms and everything was right. Goatkick, as a new senior, was experiencing his first turn as an aide. When the trumpets announced a Jarl riding toward the gates, a lookout shouted the banner’s owner down to the alcove just off the tower, where the boys waited out of the winter wind. The aides for that Jarl scrambled down to the royal stable yard just inside the castle gate.
The first glimpse of the Marlo-Vayir banner caused a great crowd to assemble, not just from the castle folk and the guard, but the main street was lined with people cheering Buck as he rode in. He grinned at everybody, looking good in his specially made saddle with its strap across his leg stump, securing his balance.
Goatkick had seen a few one-legged men, but no one missing both a leg and an arm. He looked away, ashamed when Buck-Jarl twisted around like a worm on a hook in order to get down off his horse. Then his Runner was there with a wooden crutch, and Buck hopped like some kind of weird old bird, his short horsetail bobbing at each step. Goatkick followed uneasily, thinking, He’s a hero, all right, but he doesn’t look like one.
His uneasiness stayed with him until everyone assembled for the First Day oaths. While the Jarls got into rank order (Buck hopping and clacking) they sang the “Hymn to the Beginning,” with drums in the gallery. Goatkick felt good again, reveling in Marlovan strength, courage, and victory.
But after the old song came that slow, sad one that made the skin on the back of his neck hurt. The one they called the “Lament,” about the heroes of Castle Andahi.
Some of the voices changed. Buck’s strong, not-very-tuneful baritone went husky, and Goatkick looked his way. Buck no longer sang with that lifted chin of pride, but with a sorrow like Goatkick had seen in the Jarl of Khani-Vayir’s face when he delivered Noddy’s stupid armband letter.
Well, Buck Marlo-Vayir had nothing to do with the glory of Andahi. Goatkick could barely force himself to look at the one who did—the little child, the girl—who hadn’t been sent to safety like the King’s Runners-in-Training. Oh, no. They’d given her a command, and let her stay right in the midst of the action! Ten years old, and Goatkick was sent home at near sixteen! And then what happened? Cama gave her a name that none of Goatkick’s friends could bring themselves to use. And Inda-Harskialdna himself gave her one of those toff earrings!
Jealousy wrenched Goatkick. He shot a glare at Han Tlen, the stinking, strutting brat, there at the end of the line where the twelve-year-olds always stood. He expected to find her smirking with pride (Goatkick knew he would have been, as was only right) but his hands felt icy when he saw her face squeezed like a raisin, and tears bouncing down the front of her tunic. Her skinny body jerked with her effort not to make any noise.
What?
Goatkick lifted his head, and dared a peek at the Harskialdna, whom the boys would do anything to please. The high point of their week was when Inda himself trained them in the double-knife fighting, which those strutting horsetails no longer got, ha ha! Inda-Harskialdna was a true hero, and maybe that was it, true heroes didn’t have feelings, because usually Inda just stood there with all those scars on his face, not looking happy or sad or much of anything. Goatkick and the others had talked endlessly about that day in the tent before Inda smashed half the army in a knife fight without even breaking a sweat. He’d talked about pirate fights, and wearing no chain mail in battle, and those scars like it was Restday in the city. Heroes didn’t have feelings.
But when Goatkick stood on tiptoe to peer over several heads at Inda, he was amazed. Inda had that same long upper lip and thin-pressed mouth, the same faint lines at the corner of his eyes as Buck—like he was sick.
What was going on here? You did feel the glory when you looked at Buck and Inda, and Cama One-Eye when he’d been here, tougher than steel. Your heart got a lift right inside your chest, and you yearned to be as brave, as true, to lead a victory, to win. But right now not a single face looked the way you expected a hero to look: proud.
“Did ya see her blubbing?” one of
the boys asked later, when they met up on the roof above the bakehouse, which was their hideout in every season but summer. “Like a baby!”
In the last year or so, one boy had gone missing from these sessions: Slacker (so named because he was always the first one up in mornings) Tlen. They all knew it was because Captain Han was a sort of cousin, and everybody knew you didn’t rip at kin unless they’d rabbitted, or snowballed, or something deserving. The girl hadn’t broken a single rule, she never talked, much less strutted, and she hadn’t snitched during the first spring when some of them had sort of given her some of the stings that after all everybody more or less had to endure.
Sundog Tlennen jerked up a shoulder. “Well, she did lose her whole family. That song is about how they all died.”
“Arms cut off? Eyes poked out? Yeah,” someone muttered, trying to get away from the image of his own family dying like that.
Goatkick snarled, “Was only Liet-Jarlan got killed that way.”
“How d’ya know they all didn’t get the same? Just because Rad didn’t see it.”
“Yeah. I mean they all got killed. By the Venn. Sure none o’ the Venn said, oops, no bad death for you! Here, turn around, I’ll make it nice and quick.”
The session ended in the usual muttering about what they’d do if they ever caught any Venn, that’s for sure, and they slunk off again.
Downstairs, Branid Algara-Vayir strode through the halls looking for Inda. He’d been trying to find him for the entire week he’d been here, but Inda was always surrounded by people.
He had no idea that Inda’s own personal staff was on watch, warning Inda when Branid was around.
Inda carried on with his duties, slipping away whenever he overheard Branid’s irritating voice—too high and too loud—somehow sounding both bragging and fretful as he gave unnecessary orders to servants or tried to attach himself to the Jarls as they went off to meals.