Camaris frowned slightly, as if what the prince said made him uneasy.
Isgrimnur nodded. “Camaris is right. Haste with dignity.”
“But dignity does not allow us to plunder inhabited lands,” Josua said. “That is not the way to gain the people’s hearts.”
Isgrimnur shrugged; again, he thought the prince was cutting the point too fine. “Our people are hungry, Josua. They have been cast out, some of them living in the wildlands for almost two years. When we reach Nabban, how will you tell them not to take the food they see growing from the ground, the sheep they see grazing the hills?”
The prince squinted wearily at the map. “I have no more answers. We will all do our best, and may God bless us.”
“May God have mercy on us,” Camaris corrected him in a hollow voice. The old man was again staring at the rising smoke.
Night had fallen. Three shapes sat in a copse of trees overlooking the valley. The music of the river rose up to them, muted and fragile. They had no fire, but a blue-white stone that lay between them glowed faintly, only a little brighter than the moon. Its azure light painted their pale, long-boned faces as they spoke quietly in the hissing tongue of Stormspike.
“Tonight?” asked the one named Born-Beneath-Tzaaihta’s-Stone.
Vein-of-Silverfire made a finger-gesture of negation. She laid her hand on the blue stone for a long moment and sat in unmoving silence. At last, she let out a long-held breath. “Tomorrow, when Mezhumeyru hides in the clouds. Tonight, in this new place, the mortals will be watchful. Tomorrow night.” She looked meaningfully at Born-Beneath-Tzaaihta’s-Stone. He was the youngest, and had never before left the deep caverns below Nakkiga. She could tell by the tautness in his long, slender fingers, the gleam in his purple eyes, that he would bear watching. But he was brave, of that there was no doubt. Anyone who had survived the endless apprenticeship in the Cavern of Rending would fear nothing except the displeasure of their silver-masked mistress. Over-eagerness, though, could be as harmful as cowardice.
“Look at them,” said Called-by-the-Voices. She was staring raptly at the few human figures visible in the encampment below. “They are like rockworms, always wriggling, always squirming.”
“If your life were but a few seasons,” Vein-of-Silverfire replied, “perhaps you, too, would feel that you could never pause.” She stared down at the twinkling constellation of fires. “You are right, though—they are like rockworms.” The line of her mouth hardened minutely. “They have dug and eaten and laid waste. Now we will help put an end to them.”
“By this one thing?” Called-by-the-Voices asked.
Vein-of-Silverfire looked at her, face cold and hard as ivory. “Do you question?”
There was a moment of tight-stretched silence before Called-by-the-Voices bared her teeth. “I seek only to do as She wishes. I want only to do what will serve Her best.”
Born-Beneath-Tzaiihta’s-Stone made a musical sound of pleasure. The moon reflected tombstone-white in his eyes. “She wishes a death … a special death,” he said. “That is our gift to Her.”
“Yes.” Vein-of-Silverfire picked up the stone and placed it inside her raven-black shirt, next to her cool skin. “That is the gift of the Talons. And tomorrow night, we will give it to Her.”
They fell silent, and did not speak again through the long night.
“You are still thinking too much of yourself, Seoman.” Aditu leaned forward and pushed the polished stones into a crescent that spanned the shore of the Gray Coast. The shent-stones winked dully in the light of one of Aditu’s crystalline globes, which sat on a tripod of carved wood. A little more light, this from the afternoon sun, leaked in through the flap of Simon’s tent.
“What does that mean? I don’t understand.”
Aditu looked from the board to Simon, her eyes suggesting a deep-hidden amusement. “You are too much in yourself, that is what I mean. You are not thinking about what your partner is thinking. Shent is a game played by two.”
“It’s hard enough to try to remember the rules without having to think as well,” Simon complained. “Besides, how am I supposed to know what you’re thinking about while we’re playing? I never know what you’re thinking about!”
Aditu seemed poised to make one of her sly remarks, but instead she paused and laid her hand flat over her stones. “You are upset, Seoman. I have seen it in your play—you play well enough now that your moods carry over to the House of Shent.”
She had not asked what was bothering him. Simon guessed that even if a companion showed up with a leg missing, Aditu or any other Sitha might wait while several seasons passed without asking what had happened. This evidence of what he thought of as her Sithi-ness irritated him, but he was also flattered that she thought he was becoming good at shent—although she probably only meant “good for a mortal,” and since he was the only mortal he’d ever heard of who played, that was a rather lackluster compliment.
“I’m not upset.” He glared down at the shent board. “Maybe I am,” he said at last. “But it’s nothing you could tell me anything about.”
Aditu said nothing, but leaned back on her elbows and stretched her long neck in her oddly-jointed way, then shook her head. Pale hair fell loose from the pin that held it and gathered around her shoulders like fog, one thin braid coiling in front of her ear.
“I don’t understand women,” he said suddenly, then set his mouth in a scowl as though Aditu might contradict him. Evidently she agreed that he didn’t, for she still said nothing. “I just don’t understand them.”
“What do you mean, Seoman? Surely you understand some things. I often say I do not understand mortals, but I know what they look like and how long they live, and I can speak a few of their languages.”
Simon looked at her in irritation. Was she playing with him again? “I suppose it’s not all women,” he said grudgingly. “I don’t understand Miriamele. The princess.”
“The thin one with the yellow hair?”
She was playing with him. “If you like. But I can see it’s stupid to talk to you about it.”
Aditu leaned forward and touched his arm. “I am sorry, Seoman. I have made you angry. Tell me what is bothering you, if you would like. Perhaps even if I know little about mortals, speaking will make you feel happier.”
He shrugged, embarrassed that he had brought it up. “I don’t know. She’s kind to me sometimes. Then, other times, she acts as if she hardly knows me. Sometimes she looks at me like I frighten her. Me!” He laughed bitterly. “I saved her life! Why should she be frightened of me?”
“If you saved her life, that is one possible reason.” Aditu was serious. “Ask my brother. Having your life saved by someone is a very great responsibility.”
“But Jiriki doesn’t act like he hates me!”
“My brother is of an old and reserved race—although among the Zida’ya, he and I are thought to be quite youthfully impulsive and dangerously unpredictable.” She gifted him with a catlike smile; there might as well have been a mouse tail-tip protruding from the corner of her pretty mouth. “And no, he does not hate you—Jiriki thinks very highly of you, Seoman Snowlock. He would never have brought you to Jao é-Tinukai’i otherwise, which confirmed in the minds of many of our folk that he is not entirely trustworthy. But your Miriamele is a mortal girl, and very young. There are fish in the river outside that have lived longer than she has. Do not be surprised that she finds owing someone her life to be a difficult burden.”
Simon stared at her. He had expected more teasing, but Aditu was talking sensibly about Miriamele—and she was telling him things about the Sithi he had never heard her say. He was torn between two fascinating subjects.
“That’s not all. At least, I don’t think it is. I … I don’t know how to be with her,” he said finally. “With Princess Miriamele. I mean, I think about her all the time. But who am I to think about a princess?”
Aditu laughed, a sparkling sound like falling water. “You are Seoman the Bold. Yo
u saw the Yásira. You met First Grandmother. What other young mortal can say that?”
He felt himself blushing. “But that’s not the point. She’s a princess, Aditu—the High King’s daughter!”
“The daughter of your enemy? Is that why you are troubled?” She seemed honestly puzzled.
“No.” He shook his head. “No, no, no.” He looked around wildly, trying to think of a way to make her see. “You are the daughter of the king and queen of the Zida’ya, aren’t you?”
“That is more or less how it would be said in your speech. I am of the Year-Dancing House, yes.”
“Well, what if someone who was from, I don’t know, an unimportant family—a bad house or something like that—wanted to marry you?”
“A … bad house?” Aditu looked at him carefully. “Do you ask whether I would consider another of my folk to be beneath me? We have long been too few for that, Seoman. And why must you marry her? Do your people never make love without being married?”
Simon was speechless for a moment. Make love to the king’s daughter without a thought of marrying her? “I am a knight,” he said stiffly. “I have to be honorable.”
“Loving someone is not honorable?” She shook her head, mocking smile now returned. “And you say you do not understand me, Seoman!”
Simon rested his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. “You mean that your people don’t care who marries who? I don’t believe it.”
“That is what tore asunder the Zida’ya and Hikeda’ya,” she said. When he looked up, her gold-flecked gaze had become hard. “We have learned from that terrible lesson.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was the death of Drukhi, the son of Utuk’ku and her husband Ekimeniso Blackstaff, that drove the families apart. Drukhi loved and married Nenais’u, the Nightingale’s daughter.” She raised her hand and made a gesture like a book being closed. “She was killed by mortals in the years before Tumet’ai was swallowed by the ice. It was an accident. She was dancing in the forest when a mortal huntsman was drawn to the glimmer of her bright dress. Thinking he saw a bird’s plumage, he loosed an arrow. When her husband Drukhi found her, he went mad.” Aditu bent her head, as though it had happened only a short while before.
After she had gone some moments without speaking, Simon asked: “But how did that drive the families apart? And what does that have to do with marrying whoever you want?”
“It is a very long story, Seoman—perhaps the longest that our people tell, excepting only the flight from the Garden and our coming across the black seas to this land.” She pushed at one of the shent-stones with her finger. “At that time, Utuk’ku and her husband ruled all the Gardenborn—they were the keepers of the Year-Dancing groves. When their son fell in love with Nenais’u, daughter of Jenjiyana and her mate Initri, Utuk’ku furiously opposed it. Nenais’u’s parents were of our Zida’ya clan—although it had a different name in those long-ago days. They were also of the belief that the mortals, who had come to this land after the Gardenborn had arrived, should be permitted to live as they would, as long as they did not make war on our people.”
She made another, more intricate arrangement of the stones on the board before her. “Utuk’ku and her clan felt that the mortals should be pushed back across the ocean, and that those who would not leave should be killed, as some mortal farmers crush the insects they find on their crops. But since the two great clans and the other smaller clans allied with one or the other were so evenly divided, even Utuk’ku’s position as Mistress of Year-Dancing House did not permit her to force her will on the rest. You see, Seoman, we have never had ‘kings’ and ‘queens’ as you mortals have.
“In any case, Utuk’ku and her husband were fiercely angry that their son had married a woman of what they considered to be the traitorous, mortal-loving clan that opposed them. When Nenais’u was slain, Drukhi went mad and swore that he would kill every mortal he could find. The men of Nenais’u’s clan restrained him, although they were, in their own way, as bitterly angry and horrified as he. When the Yásira was called, the Gardenborn could come to no decision, but enough feared what might happen if Drukhi was free that they decided he must be confined—something that had never happened this side of the Ocean.” He sighed. “It was too much for him, too much for his madness, to be held prisoner by his own people while those he deemed his wife’s murderers went free. Drukhi made himself die.”
Simon was fascinated, although he could tell from Aditu’s expression how sad the story was to her. “Do you mean he killed himself?”
“Not as you think of it, Seoman. No, rather Drukhi just … stopped living. When he was found lying dead in the Si’injan’dre Cave, Utuk’ku and Ekimeniso took their clan and went north, swearing that they would never again live with Jenjiyana’s people.”
“But first everyone went to Sesuad’ra,” he said. “They went to Leavetaking House and they made their pact. What I saw during my vigil in the Observatory.”
She nodded. “From what you have said, I believe you had a true vision of the past, yes.”
“And that is why Utuk’ku and the Norns hate mortals?” he asked.
“Yes. But they also went to war with some of the first mortals in Hernystir, back long before Hern gave it the name. In that fighting, Ekimeniso and many of the other Hikeda’ya lost their lives. So they have other grudges to nurse, as well.”
Simon sat back, wrapping his arms about his knees. “I didn’t know. Morgenes or Binabik or someone told me that the battle of the Knock was the first time that mortals had killed Sithi.”
“Sithi, yes—the Zida’ya. But Utuk’ku’s people clashed with mortals several times before the shipmen came from over the western sea and changed everything.” She lowered her head. “So you can see,” Aditu finished, “why we of the Dawn Children are careful not to say that someone is above someone else. Those are words that mean tragedy to us.”
He nodded. “I think I understand. But things are different with us, Aditu. There are rules about who can marry who … and a princess can’t marry a landless knight, especially one who used to be a kitchen boy.”
“You have seen these rules? Are they kept in one of your holy places?”
He made a face. “You know what I mean. You should hear Camaris if you want to find out how things work. He knows everything—who bows to who, who gets to wear which colors on what day …” Simon laughed ruefully. “If I ever asked him about someone like me marrying the princess, I think he’d cut my head off. But nicely. And he wouldn’t enjoy doing it.”
“Ah, yes, Camaris.” Aditu seemed to be about to say something significant. “He is a … strange man. He has seen many things, I think.”
Simon looked at her carefully but could not discern any particular meaning behind her words. “He has. And I think he means to teach them all to me before we reach Nabban. Still, that’s nothing to complain about.” He stood up. “As a matter of fact, it’s going to be dark before too long, so I should go and see him. There was something he wanted to show me about using a shield …” Simon paused. “Thank you for talking to me, Aditu.”
She nodded. “I do not think I have said anything to help you, but I hope you will not be so sad, Seoman.”
He shrugged as he swept his cloak up from the floor.
“Hold,” she said, rising. “I will come with you.”
“To see Camaris?”
“No. I have another errand. But I will walk with you down to where our paths part.”
She followed him out through the tent flap. Untouched, the crystal globe flickered and dimmed, then went dark.
“So?” asked Duchess Gutrun. Miriamele could clearly hear the fear beneath her impatient tone.
Geloë stood. She squeezed Vorzheva’s hand for a moment, then set it down atop the blanket. “It is nothing too bad,” the witch woman said. “A little blood, that is all, and stopped now. You have had your own children, Gutrun, and grandmothered many more. You should know better than
to fret her this way.”
The duchess set her chin defiantly. “I have had and raised my own children, yes, which is more than some can say.” When Geloë did not even raise an eyebrow at this sally, Gutrun continued with only a little less heat. “But I never bore any of my children on horseback, and I swear that is what her husband means for her to do!” She looked to Miriamele as though for support, but her would-be ally only shrugged. There was little point in arguing now—the deed was done. The prince had chosen to go to Nabban.
“I can ride in the wagon,” Vorzheva said. “By the Grass-Thunderer, Gutrun, the women of my clan ride on horses sometimes until their last moon!”
“Then the other women of your clan are fools,” Geloë said dryly, “even if you are not. Yes, you can ride in a wagon. That should not be too bad on open grassland.” She turned to Gutrun. “As for Josua, you know he is doing what seems best. I agree with him. It is harsh, but he cannot halt everybody for a hundred days so his wife can bear their child in peace and quiet.”
“Then there should be some other way to do things. I told Isgrimnur that it was cruelty, and I meant it. I told him to tell Prince Josua as well. I don’t care what the prince thinks of me, I can’t bear to see Vorzheva suffer this way.”
Geloë’s smile was grim. “I am sure your husband listened to you carefully, Gutrun, but I doubt that Josua will ever hear it.”
“What do you mean?” the duchess demanded.
Before the forest woman could reply—although Miriamele thought she looked in no hurry to do so—there was a soft noise at the door of the tent. The flap slid back, revealing for the merest instant a spatter of stars, then Aditu’s lithe form slipped through and the cloth fell back into place.
“Do I intrude?” the Sitha asked. Oddly, Miriamele thought that she sounded as though she meant it. To a young woman raised on the false politeness of her father’s court, it was strange to hear someone asking that as though they wanted an answer. “I heard you were ill, Vorzheva.”