Hadand came a step closer. “Yes. I thought I was the only one who saw that. How they both . . .” She made a gesture. “But there’s something else you should remember. Inda has broken two promises in his life. The orders for the strait was the second one.”
Evred looked up sharply.
“When he taught you the Odni. And I broke a promise to teach you when he was gone. Should we regret those things?”
Evred sat back. Hadand waited.
“Except a couple of scuffles from those fools at Ala Larkadhe I never did have to defend myself,” he said finally. “Others have always defended me.” He looked up.
“Go on,” she said.
He dropped the ring, and laid his hands flat on the table, still and tense. “Those lessons . . . from you both. First made me see that change was possible. It took me a long time to understand that.”
She leaned down and covered his hand with hers. “I was never going to tell you,” she said, “but I’ve changed my mind. I am in love with you, Evred Montrei-Vayir, in all the ways known to human beings. I never wanted to tell you because I didn’t want you to feel my love as a burden. But at the same time, I saw that you loved my brother in all the ways known to human beings.”
His fingers stirred, but she held them in her warm, firm grip. “No. Hear me. Then if you like we will never discuss it again. I tell you because I do not want you to feel alone. We both know what it is to have the love we love most not love us the same way in return. Just in the way they can.”
Chapter Thirty-four
THE courtyard at Tenthen was deserted, unswept. Inda and Tdor looked around warily. As they dismounted Whipstick Noth emerged from the stable doors, his old coat sun-bleached and worn. “You’ve sailed home? Or is this a liberty stop?” he asked Inda.
From behind stable hands emerged, looking up at Inda and Tdor with ambivalent faces.
Inda’s question about the lack of perimeter riders died. He lifted Jarend down from Tdor’s arms so Tdor could dismount. Then he and Tdor followed Whipstick inside, as the Twins (both of whom had chosen to stay with Inda, and Evred had granted permission) took charge of the cavalcade. Inda was disturbed at how worn and neglected everything seemed.
Whipstick waved them into the watch command office adjacent to the Rider barracks.
Inda shut the door, then set his brown-haired little son down. “This is young Jarend. The next one,” he added, “will be Kendred.”
Whipstick’s hard face creased as he knelt down. For a moment he and the child studied one another, Jarend sucking his thumb, Whipstick smiling. Then he looked up. “Your boy’s Shield Arm will be named for my brother?”
Inda opened his hand. “I just hope he won’t put eggs in the Riders’ shoes. Now, I know what happened—Branid’s dead, something to do with pirates—but I don’t know the details.”
“We had Toaran pirates nosing up the coast out of The Narrows, so the king ordered us to reinforce the harbors from our own Riders. Some pirates tried a run at Parayid, came as far as Piwum. My dad and his dragoons drove ’em off. I’d been doing the border rides, but at the prospect of action, Branid insisted on taking command.” Whipstick grimaced, then looked over both shoulders to make sure no one overheard. “My dad ignored him. Branid’s orders didn’t make sense once things got hot down at the wharf one night, when they tried to land in secret. But. Well. You can see the official report, but if you want to know what I think, I think the men scragged him,” he said in a low voice. “Not those pirates, who were drunken fools. Looking for easy pickings, rumor probably still out that we have no water defense. Dad and I thought it better, all things considered, not to investigate closely. You might feel different, I know.”
Inda gestured vaguely, his face pained. Then he looked around. “Why is the house so deserted?”
“It’s because She’s still here.”
“Dannor?”
Whipstick’s weather-lined face soured.
“Tell us,” Tdor said.
Whipstick’s bony shoulders lifted. “For a while it was all right. Branid did his best, by his lights. Then the fights began, when they started giving clashing orders. She was so high-handed and contradictory people started going to your mother to get orders, or to complain. When She found out, they’d get punished, or She’d get back at ’em some way.”
Tdor said to Inda, “That’s why Hadand invited Fareas-Iofre to the royal city. But she didn’t tell me the truth—she didn’t want me worrying about Tenthen. Your mother finally did, before she left for Fera-Vayir.”
Inda thumbed his jaw scar.
Whipstick said, “When Fareas-Iofre left us—and I don’t blame her—most of our best people packed off, saying they’d as soon work the fields, if Fera-Vayir would take them. We’ve barely got enough left to take care of the animals and work the land. We don’t have enough Riders. Which is why I’m here. When spring came, I sent a Runner around to everyone. Said if there was a problem, send a message to me. I’ve been waiting for Evred-Harvaldar to make a decision about who he wanted as Adaluin.”
Tdor’s arms were crossed, her fingertips just touching her knife hilts. “So Dannor has been in command?”
Whipstick turned out his hands. “She’s got rank. No one to say her nay.”
“Until now.” Inda turned to Tdor. “You want to do it or shall I?”
Tdor smiled. “This part of house defense,” she said, “is mine.”
The men laughed. Young Jarend laughed, too, just because the adults laughed, and he waved his much-gnawed carved wooden horse.
Inda took Whipstick’s thin, strong shoulders between his hands. “I’m home for good.”
Whipstick did not answer, but his sudden smile was sufficient. And he began to give his report on the state of Choraed Elgaer.
Presently a clatter echoed up the stone walls of the courtyard. Inda and Whipstick halted in the middle of their discussion of the castle horses and leaped to the window. A golden lamp lay on the flagstones. Then from above a golden tray arced out. Clang!
“No, you listen to me,” came Tdor’s furious voice, clear on the summer air. Neither Inda nor Whipstick had ever heard her angry before. “Gold trays? Gold trays when the stable looks worse than horse shit waiting for a wand? Silk hangings, with the garden overgrown? No, Dannor, there is no excuse! I am the Iofre now. This place is going to be clean, and orderly, and drilled, by Restday. And you are going to lead every single work party. Either that, or you can go home to Tya-Vayir.”
Upstairs in the enormous prince’s suite—what once had been the Adaluin’s rooms in the olden days—the two women faced one another. Dannor flushed, fingers fumbling at her bare wrists. She’d stopped wearing her knives ages ago.
Tdor flicked hers out. “You really want to fight me?” she asked with interest. “Oh, please do. I’ll wait. Get your knives.”
Dannor had not drilled for at least two years, and it showed. Tdor looked fit, tough, and the long face Dannor had always thought boring and bovine was slashed by a very angry grin.
“I hate this place anyway. It couldn’t be more dull,” Dannor snapped and whirled around. “Go on, it’s all yours to sweep and mop. It’ll take me a few days to ready my things—”
Tdor still had that grin of rage, her thin cheeks pale except for two flushed spots below her eyes, making them seem unnaturally bright. “Here, I’ll help.” She reached for the nearest table, swept up its decorative items, marched to the open window, and flung them out.
Dannor gasped as Tdor stalked around the room, picking up and throwing all the gold and silver candlesticks, plates, cups, treasure boxes, straight out the window. Her arm was strong and her aim true.
When she reached for the first ceramic vase, Dannor waved her hands. “No! No! I’ll get my clothes ready. We’ll ride out today, if you’ll just send the rest.”
“Fair enough.”
Tdor marched out, and each servant she saw got a list of orders.
Inda and Whipstick moved to the outer
door in happy expectancly. Before long Dannor appeared, golden braids disheveled, robe crooked. She sent a brooding look behind her as she clutched two baskets from which colored silk draggled. Her First Runner carried an enormous woven basket stacked high with small inlaid jewelry boxes.
Within a short time the two reappeared on horseback, and the former Iofre and her servant vanished up the north road, to be followed very soon by two or three of her own toadies, whom the castle people promptly turned on and drove out.
Tdor walked across the courtyard toward the men, the flush of triumph fading into regret and even guilt.
“I should not have flung her things out the window,” she admitted. “We could have worked something out—if she’d done anything. Even her tapestry is unfinished. It looks like she abandoned it years ago.”
“She did. The day she hooked Branid into marriage,” Whipstick said.
“Well, I put the people to work. Either they leave or get used to new orders.” Tdor wiped a damp strand of brown hair off her forehead. “I may as well pitch in. I’m not sleeping in any room that smells of her attar of roses, and my old room is full of spiderwebs. Faugh!” She whisked herself off.
Whipstick bent to pick up Jarend, who was still chewing on his wooden horse. Hoisting the boy up onto his shoulder, he said, “I’ll get him set up in the heir’s rooms, why don’t I?”
The next spring, Tdor-Iofre send a letter over the mountain to Queen Joret of Anaeran-Adrani, her foster sister.
She caught Joret up on Inda’s last Convocation, where he was confirmed as Adaluin, and granted the lifelong accolade that his father had had: he was no longer required to ride to Convocation unless he had business to present. Evred then sent Inda home with a barrel of the same root brew supplied to the academy boys’ tavern, Daggers Drawn. Evred knew that Inda would never have thought to ask the Tenthen brewer to make it, so the barrel was for him to match.
By the next year, another child was on the way, and the Algara-Vayirs and the steady trickle of returning people were busy restoring Castle Tenthen and its lands to their former state.
I also am delighted to report that Inda is finally showing some effect due to that healer that his mother’s sister sent from Sartor. She’s a strange sort, just sitting for a time, eyes, closed, finger just touching here and there, but what she said about Inda’s arm—that he must have had a badly healed break long ago and it just got worse over the years—seems to have been true. Her magic spells make her sleep for a week, and then it takes months to see any effect, but Inda drills with Whipstick and the men again, and he goes out and swings a sword with Jarend, who is already mad for dogs, horses, and steel, as are most of the boys.
Evred did not destroy the lockets. He and Barend wore the last two, so that Evred had a pair of eyes on Savarend Montredavan-An, with whom he never communicated directly.
Barend had no idea how Fox would respond when, one day, he emerged from the cabin aboard Death and walked up to Fox on the captain’s deck. “Your father is dead,” he said.
Fox squinted out to sea against the sun spangles, so still that for a long moment Barend wondered if he’d heard. He was considering whether or not to repeat himself when Fox spoke.
“Let me off near Marlovar River basin. I don’t want to be shot.”
Two months later, a crew rowed him ashore. He’d forbidden Barend to tell anyone, knowing that the change in command would little affect the routine that had adapted easily from fleet to navy. Fox loathed the idea of parties and foolish talk, he just wanted to disappear.
So it was a quiet departure. The fleet sailed away, and Fox watched them go, suspecting that Barend’s announcement would be accepted with a shrug, and maybe some muttered insults from the lazier crew on how life might get easier. He never knew how many regretted his departure in the sense that, with him, the great days of adventure had passed on.
Fox turned his back on the sea, laughed as he hitched his gear over his shoulder, and walked up the low, marshy beach toward the riverside, where he remembered the old road had been in his boyhood.
He wondered how long before perimeter riders spotted him, whether they would be Marth-Davan or King’s Riders, or if peacetime had caused them to slacken.
By noon the Riders appeared on a distant ridge, crimson banner waving. When they reached him and he identified himself, he discovered that he’d been expected. Proof of Evred Montrei-Vayir’s efficiency, Fox thought, and at last he permitted himself to turn his thoughts toward home.
He expected a welcome from his sister. The question was really Marend, whom he’d left as a bitter, angry teen. They’d just begun messing around in the way teens did, and he distinctly recalled a lot of wild talk about never having a son to echo his own meaningless life, and how angry she’d got at being reduced to part of his meaninglessness. When she’d turfed him out of her bed, he’d departed that day, cutting his leave a week short.
Such drama! And hugely funny from this distance . . . funny and sad, when he considered how long it had taken him to realize he’d been training all the girls in the Fox Banner Fleet to be Marend and Shendan.
They were all there when he arrived home at last, a welcome that befitted a Jarl, even one who had never done a stroke of work or had even communicated with them. But the same strange loyalty that brought him back had operated on them, too. He found his father’s rooms swept out, fresh linens on the bed, no trace of the maudlin, defeated stench of sour wine anywhere.
Marend and his mother were pleasant but wary. Shendan kept cracking jokes as they conducted him over the castle, explaining what had been done in the stables, the gardens, the land.
Finally they ended up in the main hall, with the beautiful mosaic of the screaming eagle worked in obsidian and gold. The doors to old Savarend’s throne room were closed; that room had long been gutted, leaving only its enormous fireplace, and the enormous carved stone table with its raptor feet where once the king and his new Jarls had gathered. Irony still loured in the air.
Fox leaned against the doors, arms crossed as he regarded the three women. “Well?”
“Well what?” his mother retorted. “You’re here, you must know what’s expected of you.”
“How long do you intend to remain?” Marend asked, her brows lifted.
“Evred is not the monster his grandfather was,” Shendan said. “He’s let me in and out of their castle and pretended not to notice. But I guess you know that, you saw Inda afterward. Odd!” She laughed, and shook her head. Her hair in the lantern light was as bright as it had been in childhood; by day Fox would discover that it was sun-bleached to the color of straw. Shen often led the perimeter riders on the inside of the border. She added, “If you have a son, Hadand said he can go be a Runner. I hope you won’t get sniffy, think it some insult.”
Fox smiled. “Contrary. A King’s Runner is a way inside.”
Shendan laughed, flipped her hand, and took off. Fox was back at last, and she’d get time to pester him for tales of his adventures later, probably after she’d got some drink into him.
The Jarlan cut a glance from her son to her prospective daughter-in-law, then found something to do, leaving the two together.
They walked away, heads down, listening to the other rather than looking: they’d both become too good at masking their expressions. “And so? What’s my place?” Marend said.
“I thought that was pretty clear,” Fox said. “If nothing else was. The question from my end would be, what is my place?”
Marend said, “All right. If we marry, I’ll be the next Jarlan, which gives me my proper rank in everyone’s eyes. If we have a son, then everything carries on. I know you might not want that—”
“I was seventeen when I said what I said. I hope I can be forgiven the pugnacious wisdom of seventeen.”
Marend laughed, wrung her hands, then smiled, her first genuine smile. “This is harder than I’d expected. Well, if you are willing to carry on, then you should know this about me: I’ve a life mate. Ke
th, now the miller. We’ve got a daughter, born two years ago. We were always agreed that I’d marry you, and if need be, move back upstairs, even. But he has first place in my bed.”
Fox found these simple words unsettling. He had never expected Marend to suspend her life. Presented with the evidence, he discovered he had to redefine their relationship. But she did not seem unwilling, or even unfriendly.
“We’ll all adapt,” he said. “There’s time.”
Chapter Thirty-five
THE following spring, after the passes cleared, a Runner carried a letter to Queen Joret from Tdor:
Inda has begun making the rounds of Choraed Elgaer himself. The people seem happier to see him, and Whipstick’s life is easier, especially since Hadand gave me permission to promote Noren to be my Randviar so she and Whipstick could marry.
Inda stopped in Piwum to see the Noths, where he got news of our fleet. Barend Montrei-Vayir is now the commander, because Fox Montredavan-An—that is, Savarend-Jarl, now his father is dead—has returned to Darchelde and married Marend Jaya-Vayir.
After New Year’s Week Cherry-Stripe and Mran came south to deliver their dear little Rialden themselves. She wept for a week, and then, quite suddenly, she and my little Hadand began to babble away, as if they made up another tongue. Jarend treats them both like puppies . . .
Though Tdor remained fond of her former foster sister, it had been years since they had seen one another, and the fondness was based on memory of shared experience, rather than immediate. So Tdor did not share everything, like how relieved the castle people were when Inda decided to ride the border. Not that they didn’t love him. The problem was, they loved him too much to tell him how terrible were his attempts to work alongside them at tasks for which he was not trained—and how he got in the way when he meant to aid in the planting, based on imperfect boyhood memory of how things had been done.