“I thought I saw new ghosts.”
Her breath caught. Even in nearly thirty years of marriage, she had never quite accustomed herself to the casual ability Fulla Durasnir had to descry the mysteries. He could have been a dag, a skalt, or even a Seer, had he had the interest or training.
“If you cannot explain your concerns about Prince Rajnir, then at least tell me this before I go.” Her gaze searched his face, so familiar and so dear, furrowed more than she’d remembered, though he was nigh sixty. But his countenance was keen as ever, and his grip strong. “Is Dag Signi truly a traitor?”
Signi: a vivid mental picture of the small, plain, earnest dag who—despite being turned down at the very last before becoming one of the exalted hel dancers—moved with such amazing grace. Who, on being passed over, had been so grief-stricken that she’d turned for comfort to Fulla, whose female friendships in those younger days often flared to ardor.
This flare had occurred when Brun was struggling with the illness of her first pregnancy. Dag Signi had been one of the few of Fulla’s string of lovers to heed the old ways, and come to ask Brun’s permission to lie with him. Brun had been impressed, and ever after the affair burned itself out, brief as they all were, she’d retained a fondness for the quiet, hard-working dag.
“No,” he said. “She is not. I still don’t understand why she was there in Iasca Leror. Sea-Dag Chief Valda did not tell me, and I only saw Signi the once. She did act against Erkric’s doom-cursed meddling, in about as spectacular a way as any dag has contrived, probably for centuries. I was there, and it is known I was there, so I must witness.”
Brun signified acceptance. “Where is she now?”
Durasnir knew about Brit Valda’s great cause, but he had promised to tell no soul. That must include his wife. If Erkric thought Brun might know anything, he would find an excuse while Durasnir was gone on duty to tear her apart for information. “I don’t know,” he said. Which was true. Valda might have ordered Signi to leave the Marlovan kingdom for Sartor, or to remain there awaiting the signal that Sartor was no longer warded. But that quest was now a separate matter.
So he said, “This accusation is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. I had no idea it was coming. And I do not see what Erkric is about, but he has had months to put his plans in place—and it will be months, if not longer, before the Erama Krona’s Death Hunt will find her.”
Brun knew little about the inner workings of the Erama Krona. But one thing she had heard, they were forbidden to use magic on the Blood Hunt; they only used Destination transfers once they had secured their target. Like the hel dancers, their training was so secret, so consuming, no one—even Erkric—had yet corrupted them. They would refuse his offers of magical aid. Brun’s mother had talked of a ten-year Blood Hunt that occurred when she was a girl.
Brun looked up in doubt. “If the Blood Hunt goes through Iasca Leror to find her trail, will that not cause more trouble?”
Durasnir made a negating sign. “By the time they reach Halia they will know the language, and how to dress to blend when they must. But they move only at night; if any one of them draws notice, it brings on him severe penalty. The Marlovans don’t have our underground cities, with all the varieties of light that we do. Their kingdom is silent at night. No one will ever see the Blood Hunt—”
Three quick, light taps at his outer door. One of Erkric’s spies had been spotted. “Brun, listen and be watchful. Be prepared for anything.”
“What will you do?”
“Sit out here sulking until you forgive me.” A brief smile. “And readying my fleet. If I am right, Erkric—Rajnir—needs to keep us busy. I suspect we may be sailing to Goerael soon, to reinforce West Fleet.”
“His reasoning?” she asked swiftly as they walked into the main cabin.
“He has no reasoning.” Durasnir made the sign of warding, and then bent, and gave her the truth, though he had meant to wait on proof. He pressed his lips to her ears. “He has no mind. He has been reduced to the shadow of a man. Every word he speaks is put in his mouth by Erkric, who I suspect wants us busy and out of his way.”
Shock tingled painfully through her. But there was no time for questions. He opened the cabin’s outer door and she was forced to step outside, her heart colder than the outside air.
“Here.” Evred led the way into the series of rooms in the building perpendicular to the residence and the Great Hall. “This is where the herald-apprentices work. Each table is for the records of one Jarl, and the other old names are in the far room.”
On their entry everyone paused, saluting. Evred laid his hand over his heart. Belatedly Inda did as well. He had to remember these things, he reminded himself, as Evred opened his hand in the signal freeing everyone to return to work.
Inda took in the neat stacks of old papers and scrolls on each desk. “What work?”
“Didn’t I say? There’s so much to discuss! Hadand and I resolved to verify Convocation oaths after last winter. Going through all the records is turning up all kinds of surprises. And not only from the recent generations, while my family has ruled. No one’s ever read everything all the way back.” Evred touched a battered scroll waiting beside others on a tray. “I mean to familiarize myself with every record back to before Savarend Montredavan-An’s day.”
“I thought none of that was written down,” Inda exclaimed.
“Not here,” Evred said, smiling. “There was no ‘here’ yet. This city wasn’t ours. You Algara-Vayirs have early records from the days when you were just Algaras courting the Tenthens. The Cassads have the oldest records of all. Hadand discovered that the Cassadas queen who established the library—that is, she was a Dei, and only a Cassadas by marriage-adoption. Anyway, one of her projects was to send people to the old Marlovan skalts to write down the language, and what they sang to her to be written were the oath-songs. Since our forefathers had no script, that record is written in some kind of Sartoran dialect that was apparently adapted for communicating with the Venn over on Toar centuries ago. Ironic, yes?”
He touched the scroll again, then turned his thumb toward several fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls from the queen’s training who worked at a table by themselves, a carefully opened age-darkened scroll between them. “The girls are much faster at deciphering that, so Hadand and I decided to abandon tradition and let the girls loose on it. If they like it, and haven’t a rank that requires them to go home, there’s no reason why we can’t go back to the old Iascan custom of having female and male heralds. It was my own ancestor, Anderle, who forbade female heralds, probably as a jab at the Cassads. All those quarrels are long gone and forgotten.”
When he and Inda had regained the tower that connected the government building, the Great Hall, and the residence, Inda said, “Buck and Cherry-Stripe told me about Horsebutt and the guild taxes.”
Evred snorted. “That’s just covering arrows before the charge. Horsebutt knows very well he won’t get anything revoked.”
“And here I thought that explained government affairs.” Inda looked rueful.
Evred laughed, just out of happiness. Inda was here at last. They would share home and work for the rest of their lives. The intensity of his joy really did feel like fire through his veins, just as the ballads always said. “Never mind that. Here’s the truth. I need to stand up at Convocation and know everything about every agreement each Jarl family had made with the crown. Who owes what to whom, all the way back.”
The joy tempered with the ready burn of anger. Inda was here, he must understand these things. “Sooner or later they’re going to fling war damage in my teeth as an excuse for encroachment on crown rights.” His voice was on the verge of trembling. He stopped at a window and looked out, working to get his voice under control, as thin rain began to blotch and then darken the stone. “It would be easier if we had a common goal. We had the Venn for so long.”
Inda was appalled. “You want them to come back?”
“No.” Evred
struck a fist on the windowsill. The pain steadied him. “No. It would have been easier only in one sense. Not in the cost of lives. I have only to think of what we saw in the Andahi Pass to remind myself of that. War is a convenient fix for government problems if it happens somewhere else. To other people.”
He turned away abruptly. “But that’s my task. I wanted you to see this project. Downstairs in the annex are the council chambers and the guild secretaries.”
Inda stared through the windows to the extreme end of the great parade court. He jerked his thumb at the government building behind him. “I used to wonder what was going on in there, when Master Starthend gave us a Restday punishment of sweeping the parade court. Remember that? Basna used to get everyone to guess how many flagstones lay in each section. Dogpiss was sure all the masters and guards snuck into those buildings to whoop it up with ale and gambling.”
Evred half raised a hand in acknowledgment, then plunged up the tower steps at a rapid pace. Inda loped to catch up as Evred said briskly, “Now to your tasks. Retraining the guard, making some sense of where our forces are and who’s left. I’ve been collecting all the reports, but there’s been no time to read and tally. I’ll give you as many King’s Runners as I can spare, but I am already short. And we have so few candidates ... To resume. By Convocation you must know who we have where and how many.”
“Good. I like knowing that.” Inda rapped his knuckles on the rough sill of an arrow slit as he passed.
Evred extended a hand toward the opening. “And finally, you and Gand have to set up the academy for next year. But before we get to that, when we rode away from Ala Larkadhe, I think we were too weary to consider what Durasnir said to us that day above the pass. But now we should begin.”
Inda stopped on the landing. “I’m not sure I remember it all. That is, I do, but it’s strange. Like someone was sitting on my shoulder, it wasn’t me at all—”
He hesitated, remembering his ghost. He hadn’t told anyone but Signi about the ghost. It was gone now, so what would be the point?
But Evred was watching. “Problem?”
Inda smacked open the door and plunged out onto the sentry walk, from merely cold air to frigid. He thrust his bare hands into his coat pockets. “No. Just, the idea of being a Harskialdna.”
Evred was surprised into a laugh. “You cannot possibly think that the entire army doesn’t want you as leader. Did you know that the survivors of the Andahi Pass defense have taken to wearing red stones affixed to their ears?”
“What? But that’s—” Inda stopped himself. It wasn’t stupid. It was wrong, backward. He’d half regretted his ruby hoops ever since he’d poke the holes into his ears, yet he knew how the symbol worked. It set people apart after they’d endured something—it was a reminder—but most of all (and the reason he’d never taken his out) it created a bond with your fellow survivors. He could not understand why it worked.
“. . . not many can afford rubies, so they use bloodstone, mostly, or garnet. And no hoops, as those are seen to belong to sailors. Can you tell me why? I never asked Barend.”
“If you’re shipwrecked, especially as a pirate, you can take the gold out and use it to get to a port. Or bribe someone not to send the local guard. A lot of sailors don’t wear ’em as they mean pirate to many. Listen, I’ve been thinking, should I teach the boys the knife fighting?”
Evred’s brows rose. “You won’t be teaching. The masters can teach the boys. That would follow tradition. My father wrote that that distance gives us consequence.”
Inda grinned. “How scared I was the first time your uncle spoke to me, right after Gand’s wedding. He and I left the hall at about the same time, and he was probably just trying to be nice, in his own way. Let me yap on and on about the Marlovar Bridge tussle, like it was a major battle.”
Inda laughed, and Evred forced himself to smile, though he strongly suspected that that meeting had not been coincidence. His uncle had never permitted coincidence: in fact, he wondered if he had hold of the missing piece of the puzzle of why his uncle had singled Inda out in the first place.
Inda thumped his hand against the stone wall, then whirled around and began to walk backward. “So, you don’t want the boys learning the double-knife fighting?”
“I thought about that. I’d rather you refine what we already use. From what I saw on the mountain, the double-knife fighting is only useful when you don’t have shield and sword, which is expected in battle. I’m thinking you could teach the King’s Runners, and we’ll see how it works out.”
Inda signified agreement, thinking, I won’t say anything about rubies in ears. But I’m not going to pay any attention to ’em, either.
Under racing gray clouds, a small boat smacked through the white-capped, choppy waves outside Twelve Towers Harbor. It was two weeks after the fleet’s return. Now they were sailing again, the fleet anchored beyond the Dragon’s Claw in readiness.
Vra Seigmad tended the sail and her husband leaned his strength into the tiller. He was seventy-two, she was nearly that. Either of them could have ordered young, strong ensigns or servants to take Vra Seigmad ashore after her husband’s curtailed liberty, but then they would lose this precious time alone. No witness but sea and sky.
They bumped and rolled through the splashing waves until they were midway between Seigmad’s warship and the outer finger of Dragon’s Claw, at which time she spilled wind from the sail, and he eased the tiller.
“Seigmad.” She slowly worked her shoulders, wincing at the thin ice-shard protests of old bones. “Last night I thought I’d pee myself trying not to laugh when Fulla Durasnir ranted like a mad skalt. ‘My captains and I have explained ourselves before the Frasadeng. We should not have to defend ourselves to our wives.’ Heh!”
Her husband gave a chuckle. He sagged everywhere—she had braced herself against his not returning from the long southern campaign. But here he was, frost-haired, lined, but still hearty. “No buxom young Tharfan offering to marry me!” He struck his chest.
Though they laughed, they knew Parfa Tharfan wanted to father a Breseng boy, if Fulla Durasnir really would be divorced by his wife—but that was a sham. Further, a badly acted sham, to those who knew Durasnir.
She shifted impatiently. “Brun can’t talk to me, not until she knows where all the spiderwebs are. Is that all the dags do these days, make ways to spy on us?” She struck her fist on the gunwale. “And Rajnir ordering the south fleet to Goerael? Either everyone has gone mad, or I’ve gone mad from the questions in my head that go without answer.” She leaned forward. “First tell me straight what happened in the south.”
He squinted at the flagships, all hives of activity as carts rumbled down the dock, full of supplies. “If the king hadn’t died, we’d yet be on Halia. Probably sitting out in the ocean trying to plan a coastal attack in the west. The Marlovans are tough. More of ’em than we’d thought, if what Talkar reports of their trap in the pass is any indication.”
She made a noise of disgust. “So why did Brun Durasnir get us wives in black and make us into fools?”
“Didn’t you see young Dyalf Balandir?”
She spat over the side. “That for the Balandirs. Especially that boy. I never look at him, not since—”
“Never mind what he did to our boy. They’re not boys any longer. If you’d paid young Dyalf attention, as you do to a diving death bird, you would have seen how he looks from one side to the other at every gathering. Hoping Durasnir will rebel while the kingship is in question, with Rajnir shadowed by defeat. Hoping we, the Oneli, will rise in Durasnir’s name.”
“And Dyalf Balandir would join, or fight against you?”
“Whichever gains him the most power.”
She made a noise of disgust.
“Erkric is no idiot. He sees and hears all, through those spiderwebs. So he’s commanded us to go put down the revolt in our colony on Goerael, though our ships are still gutted from carrying the Hilda, and all need to be heaved down and over
hauled.”
She leaned on her oars. “Erkric’s command? Has the Tree fallen, making a dag into a king? With my own ears I heard Rajnir’s speech before the empty throne.”
“But we think those words were put in his mouth by Dag Erkric.”
“So now tell me, what are these whispers about the prince? Was he a coward in the south? Did he lose the men’s allegiance?” She waved her fingers as if shooing insects. “Or was your defeat really due to the interference of some sea dag?”
“Hah! Erkric had those dags playing warrior. I don’t know the truth of what happened with Dag Signi, why Erkric would turn against her. I suppose the truth will come out when the Blood Hunt catches her. Durasnir is as talkative as stone about that. As for Rajnir, I can’t explain it. In the old days, when we first took Ymar, he used to be with us, watching reviews. Training. Looking at the maps. Discussing. Now Erkric’s got him walled by dags and magic. We never see him. Or if we do, the old soulripper is always around. And Rajnir speaks like a skalt in a hall—not just the speeches, which we expect, but all the time. Even when talking about sails, weather. Sounds practiced. We don’t know how much of Rajnir’s own thinking is in anything he does or says. Durasnir won’t act unless there is proof that all can see.” He thumped the oar against the gunwale. “So we think Erkric got the prince to order this journey so he can not only keep us busy, but to get Rajnir away from everyone’s eyes. This talk of revolt, oh, there are always uprisings over there, nothing that the northern fleet commander could not put down. Even without his three best Battlegroups being sent to hold Ymar.”
“Ymar found themselves an army?” Vra Seigmad exclaimed.
“No army. No navy. Rumor is the Chwahir and the Everoneth are talking alliance again, on their behalf. Anyway, Rajnir—Erkric—we all need the prestige of a win.” His mouth soured. “Maybe then we will settle and resume life. That’s what Fulla Durasnir says.”