Inda (75 page)

Inwardly he thought:
It is time to be Evred.
It seemed right.

“I gave the orders for all your things to be readied, including a mail coat, so the rest of your day is free,” she went on, walking with quick steps to the old ornament casket that sat unused in a wall niche. Evred had had it all his life but in her hands, now, it looked unfamiliar, a box so old the corners were worn, the color dull, the carving of overlaid raptor wings crude, as if carved in the field with a belt knife, which it was. As he watched, wondering what she was about, she opened the casket and pulled out the engraved gold hair clasp that had lain there for all these years, the one worn by his grandfather’s Harskialdna. She laid the clasp into his hand, replaced the casket, and walked to the doorway. “Be sure to put up your hair. And send for the ar morer, to fit you with proper wrist guards.” Then she was gone.

He fingered the heavy gold clasp, the motions empty of intent; what needed to be done was being done by more experienced hands. The day’s liberty stretched out long and long before him, and so he tossed the clasp onto his table, gave in to impulse, and sent for Dyalen.

Dyalen. He had always understood that it was better to observe than to ask. As summer had faded into the chill of autumn he came to understand that if he expected her to come when he summoned, then he must not just pay for the time but to contribute to her support; he discovered that somehow everyone knew about her, that he was envied by the other boys for having a favorite. Envied, and admired. Not resented. They accepted it as the prerogative of a prince.

And because she was a female from outside the exclusively male confines of the academy, there was no speculation, no competition to become a favorite, which he knew would have happened if Dyalen had been a male.

In his room, they were always alone, and so the servants did not know what happened there. Sometimes they only talked, for he’d discovered that sex was impossible without the distance that wine created between his thoughts and his body’s own desires, and sometimes he could not afford the luxury of waking up with an aching head. They talked about men and women, and her observations, within her view of the world, were acute. They did not talk about war, they did not talk about the future, and though he sometimes wished to ask if she cared about him at all, he didn’t, and after a time he realized that she came only when he summoned her, that on her free time she did not; and so he accepted that theirs was a relationship of need, one for sex and companionship, the other for a living. At his request—in case Kialen would, on their marriage, invite him to her bed, though he could not imagine that happening—she taught him how to give pleasure to women. There would be no other woman, he knew by now, unless it be his wife, in his own bed.

Dyalen arrived, wearing her boy’s riding clothes, her hair short and free on her neck, like a city boy. When she sat she dropped down like a boy, knees apart, hands on her knees, head to one side. She always smelled of sage, of wind, and a pleasant hint of hay and horse. Smells he loved.

“I am being sent to the north,” he said.

“Ah,” she said.

He gave her a bag of gold. “Here’s for you.”

She tipped her head the other way. “I was told that after a long association, it’s not so easy, at the end.”

He shook his head. “The rules. They govern the physical intimacy. But not that of . . .” He couldn’t say “love.” The word, misused, could be so sickening.

“Of spirit, of heart,” she finished, her eyes steady. “We’ve shared a kind of binding, the kind that comes of pleasure shared, and I think yours is also a bond that comes of gratitude. I know mine is, for you’ve been generous and kind. I hope you find what you seek.”

“Thank you.”

Desire was impossible. She saw, as she always did, and departed. Time returned to its heavy tread. He endured it alone.

 

 

 

Two weeks later Evred was jarred from reverie—he was still thinking over that last interview with Dyalen—by a sudden squawk. A flight of ducks launched from a nearby pond, their fat bodies stretching into the unexpectedly elegant arrowlike shape they took in flight. The beat of their wings diminished in the breeze, and Evred looked around. The plains were unchanged, showing the green tufts of early spring, pools of melted snow below dripping trees sending out slow rings that intersected and vanished.

He rode at the front, two banners flapping just ahead of him. The horses were restless, he realized; his own sidled, her head plunging up and down. One of the horses behind him farted, causing a muffled snicker, and farther back down the line Tanrid Algara-Vayir spoke in a low, soothing voice to a young scout dog who obviously thought it was time to run and investigate whatever it was he smelled on the wind.

Evred lifted his head, peering into the haze under a pewter sky, the silvery gray reflected in the ponds, and in the old sun-bleached stubble left over from the winter. Today silver, at sunset yesterday the sedge had glowed very briefly an astonishing ruddy gold, the sun dropping beneath the layer of clouds just long enough to send out horizontal shafts of radiance, backlighting the hawks drifting over the tips of new grass blades, before sinking beyond the western sea.

Insects, birds, voles, busily went about their lives, noticed and then forgotten: humans looked about for danger, and that meant they watched for one another.

Horse hooves approached from behind, mail jingling, and there was Tanrid, narrowed brown eyes that unexpectedly brought Inda to mind. “Outriders?” he asked.

The asking was pure formality. They both knew it, but still they both scrupulously stuck to the forms. “Take what you need,” Evred said, and he watched Tanrid cut out a riding of his own armsmen, snap fingers to the delighted scout hounds, and gallop off to investigate.

The columns stayed steady, everyone watching the scouts dash ahead, mud flying, some sighing in envy. Evred gentled his mare with an absent hand, thinking about Tanrid. He’d expected to despise him. His memory of Tanrid from scrub days had been of a huge, unsmiling tough whose expertise with his fists had been evident on Inda’s skin at the beginning of both springs. He’d been one of the Sierlaef’s Sier-Danas, too, after that first year. No recommendation in Evred’s eyes.

Tanrid had proved to be not just competent but easy to ride with. He seldom talked, and it was never just chatter. He did what needed to be done without strut or indecision. The second night, when two of the older Guards got drunk while on watch, he hadn’t bothered with parade or saddle-bag searches, as Evred felt sure his uncle would have required, for it was regulation. He’d offered each of them the first hit—traditional but not regulation—after which he’d dealt out the punishment himself with no words wasted, an efficient thrashing with his own hands, not a stick, that left the two men able to ride. Just. Nothing was said, but Evred observed the silent comprehension of all, veteran and new rider. They respected him, young as he was, and all the dogs adored him.

After that there was no breaking of regulations.

The scouts returned almost immediately, their number considerably augmented. Evred recognized that leading figure, his pale yellow horsetail flying in the wind.

“Cherry-Stripe!” he shouted, and then wished he’d been silent, but Marlo-Vayir Tvei crowed, “Hey, Sponge! We got word you’d crossed into our land day before yesterday, and my dad sent me as a welcome party!” He added, sick with envy and not caring who heard, “And none of us get to go north with you? That reeks worse ’n shit!”

There was a brief whisper that echoed down the columns, obviously repeating his words; two or three laughs, and when Evred did not respond, the entire command erupted into laughter.

Evred grinned wryly. So much for worrying about protocol.

The two parties joined, Cherry-Stripe riding beside Evred. He never stopped talking. Despite his frequently expressed envy, and his plentiful insults not quite naming whoever’d seen fit to deny Sponge’s own trained Sier-Danas this prime opportunity for adventure and maybe even glory, he exhibited pride in his land.

Evred listened, noted, smiled when it seemed he ought to, and watched ceaselessly. He had not wanted to stay with the family who conspired to replace him, but those words could not be spoken out loud.

The Jarl, Hastred-Dal Marlo-Vayir, was at his castle gates as befitted one greeting a member of the royal family; his brother Camrid-Dal, behind and to the left in Shield Arm position. The Jarl limped at Evred’s halter, leading them inside the court, his face seamed by two sword slashes: one from a border skirmish, one from a duel.

As they exchanged words of greeting Evred listened to his tone. This man did not appear to be subtle. He was loud and jovial in his welcome, his light blue gaze keen but not threatening. Buck Marlo-Vayir was also there, at least long enough to speak the words of welcome. Evred expected to see, and did see, annoyance at the disturbing of their routine, which he found oddly steadying. Somehow it restored some sense to the changing world to see plain emotion in Buck’s face, instead of smiling friendliness that might conceal more subtle, and deadly, plans. In any case Buck’s mood changed for the better when he spotted Tanrid riding up the column from behind, and that, too, was easily seen.

Buck beckoned to Tanrid and they vanished inside.

Evred was conducted into the castle by both the Jarl and his wife, but the one who caught his eye was the tiny, long-toothed Cassad sister who would be Cherry-Stripe’s Randviar. Twice she gave him intense looks from unwavering hazel eyes, but she didn’t speak except to add her own version of polite welcome.

“Your men will have our own Riders’ campground as the weather’s good. My brother is seeing to that,” the Jarl said. “Here is your guest chamber, if you’d like to rid yourself of the road dust.”

Up old-fashioned stairs through the middle of what was once a main hall, to a second floor built, like most others in these old square castles, within the last two hundred years. Evred slowly entered a huge room clean-swept, newly made raptor chairs at either side of a clear fire, and a bed turned down, with fresh herbs strewn on the sheets.

While he stood absently unstrapping the wrist guards he’d forced himself to wear every day to make them familiar, he contemplated the strangeness of life that would bring him here as guest, when he’d assumed for the past seven years that the next time he saw Buck Marlo-Vayir would be over swords in the grand parade court, only one of them able to walk away.

In the courtyard, Buck jerked a thumb upward. “So?”

Tanrid gave his characteristic one-shouldered shrug. “He’s a Varlaef,” he said. “They seem to have figured it out at last, and now he’s riding off to try out the duties of a future Harskialdna.”

Buck brooded on that for a time, as they paced across the long courtyard between the great stable and the outer wall. A scout dog loped up, snuffing at Tanrid; Buck would have swatted the animal out of the way but Tanrid knelt, running experienced fingers over the dog’s back, chest, under the chin, while its eyes narrowed and its body stiffened in ecstasy. When Tanrid rose again Buck said, “Sponge’s good? Despite what the Sierlaef kept telling us when we were horsetails?”

Tanrid shrugged one shoulder as the dog trotted on to resume its patrol route, waving tail high. “They’re calling him Evred now. But yes, he’s good.”

Buck gave an explosive sigh. “I thought Cherry-Stripe was like a colt full of bran gas about their wins and flags.”

Tanrid flashed a brief grin.

Neither spoke as they vaulted up the worn stone steps to the wall. Sentries saw them, the last rays of the sinking sun catching in the silvery stitchery around the great owl in flight embroidered on Tanrid’s House tunic, and gave way, leaving them to stand in the cold western wind, staring down at the two great campfires below, ringed with Marlo-Vayir men and those of Evred’s new command.

Buck’s profile was dark against the campfire below. “Evred. Did you know my given name is Aldren, same’s the Sierlaef’s?” Tanrid shrugged. “For nearly ten years, I thought—” He tipped his head east toward the royal city. It was as close as he could come to saying the words that never were supposed to be said, and now couldn’t be: that the Harskialdna had promised he’d be the Sierlaef’s Shield Arm.

Tanrid grunted.

“You think all that talk in the past was just some kind o’ test for
him
?” He tipped his head back toward the guest chamber.

Tanrid opened a hand. “Doesn’t matter. What they want comes true.”

Buck then remembered that Tanrid’s own brother had somehow—no one knew how—crossed the Harskialdna’s attention and had vanished. Completely vanished. Buck stared down at the men below who were bringing out drums and drawing swords in order to begin the old campaign dances, overseen by his uncle, but he didn’t really see them. He tried to remember, and couldn’t, what exactly had happened on that banner game so long ago when they were horsetails. The details were gone, except for the sight of Whipstick Noth’s little brother lying there beside the stream, dead. The first dead person he’d ever seen, and not an enemy: one of their own. After that, he did remember Tanrid here swearing he’d find out the truth, but then one morning his brother was gone. Missing, no one knew where he was, and Smartlip Lassad and Kepa Tvei—now an heir himself, after his brother’s death at the Ghael Hills battle—swearing that the brat had been cheating.

Yes, so it seemed. Well, he loved Marlo-Vayir land, and as they’d gotten older, he’d wondered just how much he’d enjoy being Shield Arm to the Sierlaef, with his moods and his wild jaunts after some female.

He sighed, a sound barely discernable over the thunder of drums rising on the dying breeze. He realized he did not resent that solemn red-haired boy upstairs; if anything he felt sorry for him.