“You look well, Jessamy. Doma Ganea will take charge of you for the evening until I return from the feast.”
“Doma Ganea says many soldiers march with their families. Why couldn’t we have gone with you, Father?”
“I would not have made your mother endure it.”
“Being apart from you for months and years at a time was better? This doesn’t look so bad!”
“Jessamy, the women who march with the army are tough and brave.”
“Mother is tough and brave!”
“If a man dies in battle, especially in a foreign land, then the woman and the possessions he leaves behind are vulnerable.” His stern expression extinguishes my indignation. His tone makes me feel so naïve. “She may be forced to attach herself to a man she likes less in order to protect herself from predatory men. I would never have subjected your mother to such a life. Especially because she is Efean and thus some men would not feel any need to ask her permission for that which they might wish to take from her. Girls like you and your sisters are particularly vulnerable. You have yourself seen fit to remind me that you are seen as lesser than the Saroese, while many Efeans regard you with suspicion. This is what I have protected you from your whole life, Jessamy.”
I think of Dusty and his stories of being beaten up in his village. I think of the soldiers threatening me and how Kalliarkos got them to see me as a sign of good fortune instead.
“Yes, Father,” I whisper.
Father’s voice drops so low I can barely catch his words. “No one who conversed with your mother could come away doubting her intelligence and her dignity. She is more of a queen than any woman who parades in finery and jewels. You are her daughters, and my daughters, and I will allow no one to treat you with disrespect. While you are in this camp you will sleep in a camp bed in my tent attended by Doma Ganea, you will walk outside only with an escort appropriate to the status of a general’s daughter and attended by Doma Ganea, you will dine with me or with Doma Ganea. And. You. Will. Obey. Me. Is that clear, Jessamy?”
Before I can answer Haredas hurries in. “The delegation from Port Selene has arrived at Prince Nikonos’s tent, General.”
“Very good.” Father gives me a last long warning look, and I am about to say something placating, to assure him that I do understand the world is more complicated than the quiet life we lived for so long, when Kal walks in bathed and dressed like a prince in a gold keldi tied and pleated in the front and wearing an embroidered gold jacket with his captain’s cape flowing down behind. His short hair sets off his fine features but it is his eyes I notice because they halt on me and grow wide.
No one could mistake the blush that reddens his cheeks.
Father taps his command whip against his leg. “Jessamy will take supper here with Doma Ganea.”
“Isn’t she coming with us?” says Kalliarkos.
“Of course she is not!”
“But why not, General?” Kal’s amiable smile pokes like a stick into a nest of ants. “You are General Esladas, commander of the Royal Army of Efea. Why would you not bring your daughter to a supper to be introduced to the local notables?”
“Kal,” I mutter, but he has his stubborn face on.
“Surely you are not ashamed of her?” Kal adds slyly.
“Of course I am not, but she is Efean—”
“She is as much Saroese as she is Efean,” interrupts Kal. “Everyone knows that General Esladas has four mule daughters—”
Father stiffens. “I pray you, my lord, do not use that term.”
“Yet if the commander of the army refuses to bring his daughter to a supper he is himself invited to, then isn’t he as good as admitting that he thinks of her as a mule? If you will not invite her, then I will. And you cannot say no to me if I insist.”
Silence follows this threat. I should say I don’t want to go. But when Kal looks at me with that warm and admiring gaze, I can’t.
A veteran soldier knows when to retreat. “Very well, my lord. Jessamy, you will speak only when spoken to and you will sit beside me.”
With stewards and guards in attendance we process to the sprawling tent of Prince Nikonos, which is lit by a hundred lamps, an expensive waste of oil. In a curtained chamber the distinguished visitors are all standing because Prince Nikonos has not yet arrived. To my relief the introductions go smoothly as Father makes me known to Lords Bucestos and Rokomon, and to Ladies Petreia and Ranise, both of whom have the sleek, confident look of successful businesswomen although Lady Petreia has the complexion of a woman who gets a lot of sun. All I have to do is answer with polite phrases and not glance too often at Kal, who has a smug little smile on his face as, with his polished court manners, he sets the visitors at ease. He’s so much more confident here than on the Fives court.
Once we have all arrived, Prince Nikonos sweeps in. He’s tall and good-looking in the Patron style, and he has the air of a man who expects everyone to bend their backs so he can walk on them.
“Cousin, I am relieved to see you returned safely from your perilous expedition,” he says, acknowledging Kalliarkos with an unctuous smile that makes me want to grind his face into the sawdust of a Fives court. “General Esladas…”
The prince trails off, eyebrows rising as he sees me. “Good Goat, General, have you replaced the old concubine with a fresh young one? I cannot imagine your honored wife, Lady Menoë, will be pleased to hear that you invited your Efean mistress to your table and not just to your bed.”
“Jessamy is my daughter,” says Father in a voice so quelling that any other man would shut up.
Nikonos gives me an exaggerated double take. “So it is! The brawny adversary once linked to you, Kal. Everyone was laughing about how first she seduced you and afterward crushed you on the Fives court like the veriest fledgling. Has the general brought her here for your comfort? As a little bribe to help you find your courage? I hadn’t thought the honorable General Esladas would reel out his daughters as bait—”
It happens so fast that even my stony-faced father doesn’t anticipate it.
Kalliarkos springs past two of the visitors and slugs his royal cousin right in the mouth.
22
Nikonos staggers back, hand clapped to his mouth. Fists raised, Kalliarkos stalks after him.
“Lord Captain Kalliarkos, I pray you, stand down.” Father’s right eye is twitching, a sure sign of anger, but his voice remains calm. “Prince General Nikonos meant nothing by his jest.”
Kal opens and closes the hand he punched Nikonos with, then glances at me. Heat creeps up my cheeks but I can’t look away. He wants to know if I want him to punch Nikonos again.
I give a very slight shake of my head, but it is all I can do not to break out into a stupid, stupid grin.
“Lord Kalliarkos, if you will be seated we can begin.” Father’s boot presses on my sandaled foot to keep me standing next to him rather than running over to Kal, as if I would be so foolish!
Nikonos pats blood from his lip with a handkerchief. “You have become so impulsive, Cousin, but I forgive it by reason of your exhausting patrol. General Esladas, I do not care to be seated at the table with a mule.”
All my glee vanishes. If only I could disappear as everyone turns to look at me, and then at Father, waiting for his response. He hesitates.
Surprising everyone, Lady Petreia steps away from the table. “Shall I depart then, Your Excellency?”
Nikonos lowers the cloth. “Why should you depart, Lady Petreia? Are you also averse?”
Lady Petreia’s smile glints more brightly than a blade’s edge. “Why, then I could never sit with myself, could I, Prince Nikonos?”
He shakes his head. “You have as distinguished a lineage as any person in Port Selene, Lady Petreia.”
“Yes, I do. My great-grandfather arrived in the fleet of Kliatemnos the First. He was an honored lord who helped the royal family escape old Saro. At that time he married a rich Efean lady from this very region, and their descendants have flo
urished here ever since. Can it have escaped your observation that I am darker than most Saroese women? You made no complaint when you visited my intimate chambers for a late supper last night. So it seems odd of you to object to General Esladas’s daughter when her origins are at root no different from my own, even if my Efean ancestress is several generations removed.”
She meets my eye and offers such a kindly smile that I put a hand to my chest because of the weight of emotion her words press into me. I can’t grasp that a highborn woman like her would under any circumstances claim a connection to a girl like me.
She turns back to Nikonos with a faint tone of mockery. “Unless it is the general’s lowborn origins you object to, which are well known to all of us and yet were seen as no impediment when King Kliatemnos appointed him as commander of the army of all Efea and Princess Berenise agreed that he marry her granddaughter.”
“We do many things in the field we would not tolerate at home,” remarks Nikonos, but by the surly look in his eye I sense a storm coming.
“Oh dear.” Lady Petreia coughs meaningfully, and the other locals smile as if they are used to and approve of her pointed wit. “I know you city folk believe that all of us who live outside of Saryenia are provincial, but we have developed our own ways of doing things and over the years they have served us well enough. Now, Prince Nikonos, I pray you, the urgent business of war presses anxiously on all our minds. Old Saro is our shared enemy. I hope we may be seated so General Esladas can tell us how many wounded need transportation by ship to Saryenia. Perhaps you mean to evacuate the entire army, General?”
“No,” says Father, his gaze on Prince Nikonos as he speaks, “we must fight on Efean soil so the old Saro alliance can march no farther into Efean territory.”
Nikonos hands the bloody linen to a steward. “What brings your daughter here to the army, General? You are famous for having kept your household matters far apart from military matters over the course of your career.”
“I had nothing to do with her arrival, my lord. For that you must apply to my lady wife’s uncle, Lord Gargaron, at whose behest my daughter travels as an adversary.”
Lady Petreia smiles graciously. “Perhaps tomorrow we can arrange a Fives trial at our lovely Fives court. Lord Bucestos is administrator and has recently refurbished the undercourt to allow for more complicated obstacles.”
“By all means, it would be most entertaining to see General Esladas’s daughter run the Fives,” says Nikonos. “My cousin Kal can be one of the adversaries running against her. Would that not amuse us all?”
Nikonos isn’t even looking at me. I am nothing to him. His barbs all fall upon Kalliarkos.
“I’m surprised you even suggest it, Cousin,” says Kalliarkos with an airy wave of a hand that cannot disguise the tense set of his shoulders. “It would scarcely be a contest, since we all know Doma Jessamy is destined for greatness at the Fives while I serve the king and queen as a humble captain of spider scouts. I wonder you can even consider such a trivial matter when our enemy marches along the coast not two days behind us.”
“Quite right, Lord Kalliarkos,” says Lady Petreia with an approving nod. “I should not have suggested a Fives trial at all. Now, Prince Nikonos, I beg you, may we not eat?”
With the precise manners of people accustomed to burying past grievances under polite smiles, we take our places, mine being the part of the general’s dutiful daughter.
“Is this your first time on campaign, Doma Jessamy?” says old Lord Bucestos with the slightly raised voice of the hard of hearing.
I glance at Father and he nods his permission that I may answer. “Yes, my lord. I have grown up quietly in Saryenia.”
“Did someone mention you are an adversary?”
“Yes, my lord. I am a Challenger.”
“Quite a success for one so young! I ran the Fives when I was your age, before I had more pressing duties—”
“Not just an adversary,” breaks in Nikonos, who, being seated at the head of the table, is far enough away that he ought to be attending to the people beside him and not to me. His tone mocks. “I hear she marched with the spider scouts. The general’s valiant daughter! Just like the famous play although not, we pray, with the same tragic outcome. How does it go? A cautionary tale about the shame of pretending to be something you are not.”
I sit with rigid control, ashamed of what must come next, remembering how Father kept us carefully sequestered. He never allowed our rare presence at social events to bother any Patrons who found our origins disturbing. Always before he would make excuses and beat a strategic retreat.
But not this time.
The man who started life as a humble baker’s youngest son in a provincial town now boldly looks the prince in the eye. His voice is firm, and his gaze steady. “Jessamy is a credit to her parents, Prince Nikonos, a daughter any father can be proud of.”
Heat flushes my cheeks. I blink back tears.
Silence falls, disturbed only by the hiss of burning oil and the drum of hurried footfalls outside. Everyone looks at Prince Nikonos. But he is like an adversary standing before Rings whose pattern he can’t untangle. It clearly puzzles him that a Patron man would unflinchingly defend the dignity and honor of a girl like me, and so Nikonos hesitates, stymied by an action beyond his comprehension.
Lady Petreia leaps into the game. “General Esladas, I hope when you come to my town house tomorrow morning to discuss how many ships you need that you will bring your lovely daughter to meet my own girls.”
“You honor us, my lady,” says Father in a hoarse voice I scarcely recognize. Beneath the table his hand squeezes mine as he smiles without looking at me, and my heart opens as I see him, the man whom no fierce attack can rattle, taken aback by this gentle act of kindness and respect.
A royal steward appears.
“My lord prince, Lord Gargaron has arrived.”
“My dear friend Gar!” Nikonos laughs as at the merriest joke. “Send him in at once!”
Father stands, as the lowborn must when a lord enters any chamber where they are seated. I hastily rise beside him, although in my shock I have to steady myself against the table. Nikonos doesn’t look one bit surprised as Gargaron strides in wearing the exhausted and travel-stained look of a man who has journeyed too far too fast. He stops short, sketches a cursory and almost insulting obeisance to Prince Nikonos, and looks at me for an unpleasant interlude in which several disturbing expressions flash across his face.
“Lord Gargaron,” says Father. “Did the scouts under the command of Sergeant Oras find you?”
“We met them on the road. I am filthy and starving. May I wash my hands and face before I sit down to partake in this delightful repast? As you can imagine, under the circumstances I have traveled at speed with a very small group. General Esladas, I wonder if you could go and settle my soldiers and household in. I will seat myself in your place.”
“I’ll come with you, Father,” I say in a low voice for now I am imagining the disaster that is Father discovering Amaya after I have gone to such trouble not to mention her situation to him, not to mention Bettany.
Gargaron begins washing his hands at a basin brought by a steward. “No, no, Spider, you will stay and entertain us with the tale I have heard of how you saved a spider from the attack at Crags Fort and then marched here in the company of veteran scouts, keeping up just as I would expect from an adversary of your skill and determination. Why, Kalliarkos, here you are. I have heard some trifling praise of you as well, I am glad to note.”
“Jessamy,” Father whispers, like a question.
“It’s fine. I can manage.”
Because I can manage. Gargaron thinks he knows me, and maybe he does know the part of me that is a little like him. With a last warning look Father departs, as he must, and when Lord Gargaron sits beside me, shedding sand and smelling of days on the road, I put on my game face. Father is right. We choose our allies as we must.
Gargaron regales the table wit
h the story of the attack on Crags Fort and how the attackers grabbed the supplies and departed immediately.
“Across the desert?” Kalliarkos asks in disbelief.
“We heard some shouted argument before they rode off,” says Gargaron. “Evidently they were to rendezvous with a cavalry company that never arrived.”
“We dealt with that group,” says Kalliarkos with a glint of satisfaction.
Gargaron sets hands flat on the table. “They killed thirteen of my guards and my best Fives trainer. Bastards.”
“Tana?” My vision goes white. I lose all sensation in my limbs.
The next thing I know Kalliarkos is holding my shoulders and offering me a drink of wine while Gargaron studies the two of us with a thoughtful expression I cannot like.
“Yes, I fear that everyone caught outside the citadel was killed except for the spiders who escaped.”
It takes me three tries to get out words. “Mis and Dusty…”
He looks puzzled. He doesn’t know their names.
“…the other two adversaries…”
“Take a sip,” says Kal, his hands firm on my arms.
I can’t drink. I’m shaking so hard, sobs that I can’t release caught in my chest. I had hoped by some chance they might have survived. I didn’t really believe it. But I had hoped.
“Ah, yes. The attackers took the lad with them. I suppose they saw a strong youth like him as a good mule to carry their burdens and do work around camp, but they cut down Tana because of her missing hand. What a cursed waste of an excellent trainer! The girl adversary is small enough that she was able to squeeze inside one of the traps on the Fives court and escape detection. She is with the rest of the household. We rode at a bruising pace since we could not assure ourselves that we might not be attacked again.” He raises a hand to beckon to a steward. “Bring me more of the beef.”
I choke down a sob.