King's Shield

  The Jarl of Ola-Vayir had claimed the seat of honor, which irritated Evred. But if Inda had already ceded it, then it was better not to take notice. A glow of angry triumph warmed him briefly when he recalled that Ola-Vayir was not likely to get his way in much beyond that.

  Evred stepped up, and as the old man turned his way, making the usual disclaimers about honor, glory, and the like in too loud a voice, Evred reminded himself that it was not the Jarl’s fault that he’d almost been too late. He’d also lost his heir leading a defense against pirates.

  Barend elbowed Cherry-Stripe to get him to scoot over, and swung a chair next to Ndand, Flash’s wife, who sat at Tdiran-Randviar’s left, looking thin and somber. She’d arrived after everything was over, but had been of enormous help in reorganizing the castle.

  At Barend’s appearance she smiled a welcome, and they fell into low-voiced conversation.

  The room was full of civilians in bright dress, as well as all the captains. These latter rose when they saw Evred, and saluted. The merchants and guild chiefs surreptitiously eyed one another; when the tall, gaunt old man who’d been harbormaster of Lindeth for almost half a century gave a slight bow the rest followed suit.

  Evred struck his fist to his chest. The civilians could take the gesture how they wished: his salute was for the men.

  Everyone sat down. Kitchen people, male and female Runners, and some volunteer city people—mostly youngsters—came out bearing trays of food. Vedrid and Tau served the high table themselves, Tau so quietly and skillfully that the king was not, at first, aware of his presence.

  Evred frowned down at the fine bowl set before him, its edges fluted. He hated porcelain. It was impossibly fragile, the pieces often too small to fit comfortably to the hand. It broke almost willfully. His mother, an Adrani, had had porcelain dishes. But the herb-spiced tomato soup in it smelled good, waking the appetite that had slumbered for uncounted days. The soup bowl reminded him of Hawkeye’s mate, the potter.

  He caught the grim gaze of Tdiran-Randael. He tapped the bowl, and was not surprised when she lifted her chin in comprehension, and then gave her head a shake. Fala was not here, probably by choice.

  Another thing to make note of: that Hawkeye’s beloved Fala would have a home to go to if she no longer wanted to remain in Ala Larkadhe. And if Hawkeye’s twin brothers did not have a place for her—twins. Which one was to inherit? Was he to force a division between them by making one of them Jarl?

  Evred’s headache hammered harder.

  He fought off the blanketing shroud of fugue and discovered that Ola-Vayir was talking. To him. He forced his attention to the food, and to the talk, which was the expected blunder-footed hinting about royal generosity for loyalty and courage.

  Another flare of warmth at Buck’s snort, which he turned into a cough.

  Evred raised his glass to Buck and drank, then to Ola-Vayir and drank again, until his veins warmed. It was his duty to eat, to be seen enjoying the food, and to be seen smiling over their victory: there must be no reaction that Ola-Vayir, or his friends, could later name resentment, reluctance, or most of all, weakness. Then he must speak, and the praise must be as unstinting as the men’s loyal efforts had been.

  Inda kept patience until the food had been eaten, and the songs sung (many drumming on the tables with their knives, which plainly horrified the Idayagans)—old songs, mostly, though there were one or two new ones, hastily put together, but cheered with enthusiasm, especially the one that mentioned most of the captains’ names.

  Then Evred stood up and made a brief speech, naming every person at the high table and what he or she had done, to great cheering. “It has always been our tradition to award the loyal and the brave with further responsibility. I will have more to say between now and Convocation, but my first act shall be to create a new jarlate from the Niolay River in Idayago east to Ghael.” Pause for cheers. “And the Jarl shall be Camarend Tya-Vayir, his Jarlan Starand Ola-Vayir.” Pause for cheers, and a pensive smile from the Jarl of Ola-Vayir, a smile that hitched, his brows twitching, when he began to suspect the truth: that this was going to constitute the extent of family honors.

  He cheered with the rest, but inwardly cursed his daughter for insisting he raise that dust over her exile when it really had been her own fault. Everyone would say their family honor was restored, but their gain was all just words.

  “My cousin, Barend-Dal, will ride north to carry my wishes to the new Jarl, and to help design the defense of the northern shores. For we must look to the future—and guard against the Venn coming back.”

  Oh yes, Inda thought, amazed at how Evred had just handed him a good part of his own plan for Barend.

  The stone walls rang with cheers, the tables rumbled with such enthusiastic pounding that the dishes jumped, liquids sloshing.

  Evred said, “The Tradheval and Andahi regions of Idayago shall be held in promise to Kethadrend Arveas, in honor of his father, mother, and brother. We still do not know what happened at the north end, but what evidence we have is that they sacrificed their lives to hold off the invaders. We do know from the timing of our encounter that however long they held out made all the difference.”

  A full-throated, heartfelt shout: “Arveas Sigun! Ola-Vayir Sigun!”

  And: “Evred-Harvaldar Sigun!”

  “Indevan-Harskialdna Sigun!”

  From his seat, Inda waved his empty wine cup in his left hand—his right was still giving him twinges, though a good soak in the baths had helped, and Tau’s strong hands had helped even more.

  Ola-Vayir’s smile thinned, but the Arveases had been popular long before the rumors about their tragic bravery. Evred brought both hands under the wide, shallow wine cup and lifted it high in salute as the men shouted approval, then he recklessly drank the wine off. Hah! There was nothing the Ola-Vayirs could say to that.

  Come, finish up, Inda thought, tapping the table. Cherry-Stripe, flushed with wine, glanced his way, question in his lifted brows. Inda stopped drumming and reached for the wine he didn’t want to drink, hiding his impatience in movement.

  “And so, except for those given specific patrol orders, we shall withdraw, and further announcements will be made at the Triumph to be held by the Jarl of Tya-Vayir.”

  Evred sat down amid rhythmic shouts of “Evred-Harvaldar! Evred-Harvaldar Sigun!”

  Relieved at having brought that off well enough, Evred drained his wine again. Warmth streamed through his veins, rendering voices, sounds, the outer world a pleasant blur. For a time he let it all wash past, caught by the rhythmic crash and surge of his own heartbeat in his ears.

  “You’ve got a headache?” Inda’s voice was startlingly near.

  Evred’s eyes flew open. Ola-Vayir had left. Cherry-Stripe leaned back in his chair, laughing loudly at something Barend said to Ndand.

  Inda knelt on Ola-Vayir’s vacant chair, his eyes wide and expectant.

  Evred turned his own attention to the empty glass in his hands. “Yes,” he said, because it seemed simpler.

  “I thought so.” Inda grinned. His next words broke Evred’s rigid but increasingly tenuous grip and flung him into cold air. “Tau? Would you take Evred off and do your magic on him? He’s got a headache.”

  Evred’s eyes closed. “No, don’t bestir yourselves. I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not,” Inda retorted, surprising Cherry-Stripe and Barend, because they never would have dared. They knew how prickly ol’ Sponge could be, and becoming king hadn’t exactly blunted those thorns. “You’ve been walking around like a corpse who forgot to fall down. Go on. Tau’s good at it, I tell you. I don’t know why it is, but whatever he does to my shoulder makes it work. And I can’t tell you how many headaches of mine he’s killed off.”

  Evred turned slightly, and there was Taumad standing right behind him, tall, smiling, only a healing cut on his neck indicating he’d been anywhere near a battle. “I do not want to take you from your duties,” he said, though he knew it was weak—and could
see in the smile narrowing Tau’s eyes that he knew Evred knew it.

  Tau gestured toward Inda, a courtly gesture, though none of the Marlovans recognized it as such except for Evred. “I believe I was just given an order.”

  Evred closed his eyes, listened to the rapid wash-wash of his blood through his head, and felt the beginning of the stabbing prong through the eyeballs that was inevitable, especially after he was careless enough to drink more than three glasses of wine. And what had he drunk? Five.

  “Very well,” he said, and Tau was surprised. He’d made his comment about orders as a mild joke, but the Marlovans all seemed to be reacting as if he was the only one who considered being given an order and choosing to obey it two separate acts.

  “Thank you,” Evred said. “But not here.”

  Tau turned a thumb sideways. “The servants’ old banquet station is through there. No one’s using it.”

  Evred rose, taking up his wine cup and the bottle. Not because he wanted more wine, but it gave him something to do with his hands. He followed Tau through the back entrance where the servants had brought trays from the kitchens back when the castle served as dwelling for a single family and not as a garrison. To the immediate right was a small room where there had once been tables and shelves for ease of service during banquets, and a handy place to stack dishes afterward. Now it, like so many odd places around the castle, had been fitted haphazardly with sleep mats; the tables were gone, the stone shelves held people’s gear. On the far wall the neatness of the folded clothes, the exotic colors and materials, seemed characteristic of Taumad.

  Evred turned around. Tau was watching, his expression mild. “Yes, it’s also our quarters. The other three are all on duty. You can sit here.” He placed the single chair in the middle of the room, between the mats.

  Tau shut the door, latched it and then, with a thoughtful air, removed his Runner’s coat, folded it, and set it neatly aside.

  Inda watched the door shut from across the room, then turned away. “Keep him busy as long as you can,” he’d told Tau.

  Without any politeness whatsoever, he grabbed the front of Barend’s House tunic and all but yanked Evred’s surprised, protesting cousin from his chair. “Come on, you and me are going to have a talk,” he said. To Cherry-Stripe, “It’s something good. But I don’t know if it’ll work.” To Ndand, “Were you and Keth going to ride back to Castle Andahi right away?”

  She was surprised to find herself so abruptly addressed by Inda. “Once I talk to the king about Keth and the academy. Like, how we’ll get his dispositions, when there probably isn’t a stick of furniture or a stitch of cloth left.”

  “Leave that to me.” Inda brushed his hand down the front of his crimson tunic: he was Harskialdna. “Evred and I know what the family did. You just get Keth down by spring, the rest will be fine.”

  “All right, then. I can leave anytime.” Ndand flushed.

  “Saddle up. Tell ’em the order is from me, say it’s for at once, if not sooner—and pass the word for the rest of Cama’s dragoons over at the Cassad barracks. Those fellows are going north with you.” Inda grinned. “The sooner you are there covering our butts, the better everyone will feel.”

  Ndand found herself grinning back.

  “I’ll get the horses seen to, and ask my niece to fetch young Keth from the castle children,” Tdiran-Randviar said, having listened to all this. “You go pack, Ndand. Including a full pouch of arrows,” she added with scowling distrust. “You never know if them Venn’ll come back on the sneak. Wouldn’t put it past ’em.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  EVRED set the wine bottle carefully by the chair leg, sat back, and braced himself to endure.

  He trusted his lethal mood to keep the necessary distance between his will and his physical self.

  Taumad said nothing about removing clothing, which would have been summarily rejected. Tau did not even try to disarrange Evred’s heavy crimson tunic, stiff with golden embroidery. He just placed his hands over the top of Evred’s shoulders, fingers either side of his collarbones, and thumbs on the rock-knotted muscle at the base of his neck at either side of his spine.

  And then began to knead. At first gently, so gently Evred experienced a brief—and promptly dismissed—wish that there were not two layers of clothing intervening.

  “As it happens I really can get rid of headaches,” Taumad said, his tone light, impersonal. Evred was wary, all angles and tension over and above the rigid muscle structure caused by a lifetime of slowly tightening stress. “But it takes a few moments to discover the likely physical cause.”

  He said nothing about mental or temperamental causes.

  Evred’s shoulders dropped a fraction.

  That was the right approach, then: easy, professional. The body seen as a vessel, only distantly connected to will or identity. He must talk to Evred-Harvaldar, and not to Sponge. That citadel permitted access to few, and two of them had recently died.

  Inda stopped on the stairway to what he considered the captains’ wardroom. “. . . No, we hadn’t bedded down,” someone was saying. “We nipped at the Venn all night. Come dawn we’d just pulled back to plan another run when one of the Marlo-Vayir outriders reported Ola-Vayir on the way. Buck said we should bring them up to the hills above the river. What fun that was! We charged like thunder, all in a line, and half them vinegar-stinking shits pissed their pants.”

  Raucous laughter rose. Inda sent Barend a glance, brows raised in question.

  Barend turned his thumb down. “Fought just as hard as we did.” Inda shrugged; he’d learned after overhearing tavern talk following some of his pirate battles that they’d killed ten or twenty or fifty times more pirates than had been in both fleets.

  They passed down the rest of the narrow stone hallway, and stopped. Barend checked to make certain they were alone. They were, though voices echoed up the stairways at both ends of the hall. “Here’s what I didn’t tell you and Evred in front of the others. Buck said he’d ride to Norsunder before he’d let Ola-Vayir lead the charge.” He opened a hand. “His heir was the academy bully when Buck was a scrub.”

  Inda said, “So leading the charge shows the son up? I thought the son was dead!”

  “Is.”

  “So Buck nearly gets himself killed?” Inda threw his arms out wide, then resumed his fast walk. “Maybe that will make sense someday. Here.” They’d reached one of the cubbyholes that, from the looks of the contents, had been a wood repair station. A couple of sleeping mats lay on the floor, a reminder of how cramped space was. “Barend, I want you to go north with Ndand and the men, because I think I have a way to fill that treasury. Like, with treasure. Pirate treasure. What could be better?”

  “Pirate treasure?” Barend’s eyes widened for a moment, reflecting the light of the candle Inda lit from the torch in the sconce outside. As Inda shoved the candle into a lamp hanging on a wall hook, Barend demanded, “Inda, what exactly happened at Ghost Island?”

  “We found the treasure.” Inda spread his hands. “There really was one. More like fifty treasures. Well, not that I know how big a treasure is supposed to be. It lies in a cavern bigger than that feasting hall. Mounds as tall as a man, and that’s just the stuff above the waterline. I read the Brotherhood Book—it really was written in blood, and remind me to tell you what Ramis said about that—but it was generations of treasure.”

  “Ramis,” Barend repeated. “The one who made the rift to Norsunder and shoved Marshig through?”

  “Along with five other capital ships. Yes, that Ramis. And yes, I know what you’re going to say about believing, so belay it. I was there, the treasure is there.”

  “Right.”

  “So here’s what I want you to do. Go to Bren, talk to Fleet Master Chim. He can tell you who’s trustworthy. Take a fleet of ships. Bring the treasure to the north shore here, where we can rely on Cama to take charge and—what?” This last word Inda barked when he saw Barend’s expression of skepticism.
r />   “Inda, do you have any idea what problems a bunch of jewels and so forth will cause?”

  “It’s also Sartoran coinage, the big twelve-siders as well as six, all gold. But what problems? Evred says the treasury is empty. Won’t that fill it?”

  Barend rubbed his nose. “Treasury isn’t treasure,” he said finally. “Oh, I thought it was. Evred did too when we were in the schoolroom, he told me. Said he used to slide his finger past all mentions of money in search of more battles, when he was reading. I don’t know how much of that is true and how much was him trying to keep me from feeling stupid. Because I know Uncle Tlennen was a master hand with the ins and outs of trade and so forth, and taught Sponge some.” Another vigorous rub.

  Inda said, “Evred said we have no treasury. I want to bring that treasure in as a surprise for Sponge. That’s why this secrecy. I don’t want him worrying about that, too, d’you see it?”

  Barend held out his hands. “No, no, I agree. You’re right. Less to worry him, the better. Things are bad enough. But . . . Inda, as for the rest . . . I don’t know where to start.”

  Laughing voices neared.

  “Start with what’s in the treasury, if it’s not treasure.” Inda kicked the door shut and crossed his arms.

  The tingle in Evred’s muscles intensified to an itch. It was the strangest sensation—not exactly unpleasant, very faint but distinct. It bothered him enough to force him to stand, pull off his tunic, and set it neatly behind him over the back of the chair.

  Tau said nothing. When Evred sat down again, he increased the pressure incrementally, following the contour of Evred’s muscles under the fine linen shirt.

  Tau controlled the impulse to let his fingers drift over those contours, and shifted to using his knuckles for a slow increase in pressure at certain points, then releasing. Much less personal—less dangerous for a person so taut.