Inda (79 page)

“Inda.” Tanrid’s eyes eased, though his teeth were clenched against pain. Then he forced in a deep breath, an effort that Evred felt in his own guts. “Bring him back.” Tanrid’s bloody hand left his side, and clutched at Evred, his long dark hair, loosened by a blow to the head, falling down over his arms. “Promise. Bring. Him. Back.”

Evred hesitated, bitter memory forcing him to hear his own voice promising Inda justice, a justice he couldn’t possibly give.

Tanrid wheezed. “Bring . . .”

“I will.” Evred’s eyes stung, blurred, as Tanrid’s grip loosened, and he fell back, his red-stained lips moving. Did he whisper “the Sierlaef”? Evred bent nearer, but all he could hear was the labored breathing.

Tanrid’s eyes remained open, looking up into Evred’s face, even after his breathing went shallow, then stopped. Evred knelt there for a long time, staring down, scarcely hearing the long, nerve-prickling mourning howl of the wounded scout dog, until Bavas came back and said, “Evred-Varlaef. We have the two who ran. The others are all dead.”

Two prisoners. Trial, execution, retribution. Except there was no real retribution. The Idayagans would only become more righteous, the Marlovans more cruel. But it must be done. It would be done.

Evred picked up the fine silver hair clasp that lay gleaming a stride or two away, and pocketed it. Then he forced himself to rise, to act. He had to witness, they all had to witness, had to Disappear the bodies of the attackers, and so he walked around, counting them all where they lay, and reconstructed what must have occurred. One of them men tended gently to the wounded dog, who lay patiently under the bandaging, but once it was done, once again lifted muzzle to the sky, and howled long and low and hoarse.

Evred found what he expected to find: five dragoons with Tanrid. Against them had been twelve, all wearing shabby local garb. It was so easily construed that he almost missed the horn, lying not by Tanrid, or even by one of the dragoons, but by an attacker.

Evred pulled it up, and stood there, turning it over in his hands, and then he looked around again. Two dragoons lay near the brigand who’d had the horn, and all three were across the camp from Tanrid.

Think! He knew the horn was important. He looked down again, hearing that academy signal. Dragoons, none of them academy trained. Only their officers came from the academy and learned its signals; among themselves they used whistler arrows, not horns.

Neither Tanrid nor his dragoons had blown that horn.

Ambush.
Tanrid had heard that horn signal, which could have summoned targets to attackers who were combing the woods just as easily as it could summon rescuers.

And Tanrid would know the fighting style whatever clothes the enemy wore.

Evred whirled around to face the two prisoners, held in the grip of the Runners, both badly wounded, hands bound behind them. In the firelight he could see their rough north country garb: long, shapeless tunics, woolen trousers, moccasins. They were dressed as Idayagans.

He said in Marlovan, “Did you really believe you would escape?”

One stood stolidly, the other’s eyes flickered toward the fire and back. They all heard it then, the rescue, riding far too late to the sound of a distant horn. Evred saw the plan: brave Tanrid, set about by brigands, blowing for aid, which came at the gallop, but too late. It would have worked, too, except for Evred being there to catch the “brigands” and to hear the horn signal and identify it.

The question was: who had set this ambush?

No one moved, until Evred faced the two prisoners, and said in Marlovan, “Whatever you were told about safety or reward was a lie. You’re going to die, and it’s going to be slow.”

Neither spoke, but the one’s eyes flickered again.

The sound of horse hooves approached, at least a riding. Evred flung back his head, wondering for a moment if this, too, would be part of the attack. No, it didn’t make sense. These would be genuine rescue, and sure enough, he recognized the commander from Trad Varadhe, who halted near him, saluted fist to chest, and said, “A Runner came to us on road patrol. Said he heard a horn signal.”

Evred opened his hand. The man looked about, horror and disbelief lengthening his face when he saw Tanrid.

Evred said, with a glance at the prisoners, “Take these back for questioning. I will supervise it myself.”

The ride back was silent. When they reached the castle the wounded dog was carried to the kennel to recover, and the prisoners were jerked off their horses and shoved toward the prison, their treatment testament to Tanrid’s reputation and esteem, short as his stay here had been.

Evred had risen before dawn and now it was past midnight; he asked the hovering commander for something to drink while they sent for kinthus from a Healer. Evred needed sleep, but even more badly he required answers to his questions.

But even so short a wait, so late at night, was a mistake. When the Runner arrived, it was not to announce that they had their kinthus. “The prisoners are dead!”

Evred and the captain both ran down to the prison cells, and saw the two men lying in the farthest cell, still bound, their throats cut.

Evred turned on the commander. “Find out who did that. Now. Or my father’s men will.”

The commander blanched.

Evred trod back upstairs. His head ached, his eyes burned, but he knew he would never sleep until he found out what had happened. Before long the commander came himself. “Evred-Varlaef. It appears someone gave conflicting orders, one by one, to my guards. Sent them on various errands, in my name. All that’s known is that the orders were carried by Runner. But we don’t know who.”

The remainder of the night was spent in interrogation, tension escalating steadily as tired men tried to reconstruct what had happened, the guards insisting they had followed orders brought them by a Runner, the Runners insisting they had not carried any such orders.

The prison guards had all been handed written orders, which was common enough if you did not want prisoners hearing spoken orders; everyone remembered the stories going round about Tanrid’s death, people running back and forth, and Runner blue, yes, but not who it was who handed them the little strips of paper.

When asked for the order papers, each man said that the directions had been to put them in the fire. This, too, was accepted practice.

Evred listed all the Runners’ places and times, beginning with Farnid, the Harskialdna’s Runner, who had heard the horn signal just after he left the castle to head south with a report, and returned to alert the commander. But Farnid had spent the time between their arrival back and the news of the dead prisoners with the older dragoons, drinking and talking, seen by everyone. He could not have carried those orders.

And so Evred kept listening, posing questions first to Runners and then to stable hands and kennel keepers and orderlies, until one of the stable hands mentioned another Runner’s name: Vedrid, personal Runner to the Sierlaef, who arrived that day with a message for the commander about supplies. The other Runners all thought he left again that afternoon, except this one man.

“Midnight is when I saw him,” he reported. He smelled of fear sweat, and kept looking past Evred to his commander as if for clues, for safety, but the commander just sat, angry and grim, and the man went on somewhat hopelessly, “Took one of the Runner horses from the meadow, rather than from the stable. I-I thought Vedrid just wanted a very fresh mount. Thought no more about him. Hadn’t seen him near the castle.”

“So you never saw him hand out any order,” Evred said, forcing his voice not to show the corroding sickness he felt inside: all he could see, over and over, was Tanrid’s dying face, the blood pouring out of his mouth.

“No.” And the man saluted, his fist thumping his chest. The sound somehow underscored the truth of his conviction.

And so Evred dismissed him and continued with the questions, despite thirst, hunger, a growing headache driven by that memory that would not go away: but all for nothing.

As Vedrid’s name spread through Trad Varadhe Castle by whispered conversations, Evred came to realize the Runner’s name was like a magic spell that turned men to stone. No one would say anything, anything at all, now, because of who Vedrid was. There was no positive proof to convict him, and far too much danger in speculation—at least in open speculation.

Evred stopped the questions.

There was therefore no trial of malefactors to slake the thirst for justice, no public execution to expiate the sense of shame—it was worse, far worse, than the Idayagans. Tanrid’s betrayal and death had been ordered by one of their own.

And so there was only the torchlit gathering in the great court at dawn and the singing of the Hymn to the Fallen before Tanrid, one of his two personal Runners, his Dragoons, and the animals who died defending them were Disappeared.

And during the ceremony, Evred stood by the bier on which lay the still figure, his tunic smoothed, weapons at his sides, watched by shocked, dazed, angry, weary, shamed men, grubby and sweating and looking ill in the weak blue light. Evred held the flaming torch, thinking:
Once again justice is impossible. But if I confront my brother about what orders he gave his Runner, he will probably lie just like he did about Dogpiss the summer with no banner.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“
I
S that all you need, Elgar?”

Inda tried witlessly to make sense of the question while not staring at the rounded neck of the clerk’s cotton blouse. He looked up at the rough-hewn ceiling, at the smoke-stained fireplace, at the west windows, as though the answer lay out there in the harbor.

She chuckled, a soft, attractive sound.

Heat flooded his face, rushing down to what was already painful enough. He winced, leaning against the counter. “Seizings.” His voice squeaked, compounding his wretchedness.

The clerk took pity on him and turned away. “Seizings it is. You’ll want enough for the gaff o’ the cutter, then, and an extra set or two? Looks like it got mighty chewed up in that storm that brought you in.”

He scarcely heard the well-meant chatter. From the back she was just as round, her worn skirt molded to the shape of her hips, and when she reached, that blouse pulled tight against the swell of her breasts—

“Glarg.” His tongue caught somewhere in his throat.

She glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes dark, merry, and knowing. “I’ll send the cordage over to the slip, shall I? Thog isn’t on board now, is she?”

“Thog.” That almost sounded human. “Send. Thanks.”

She turned away again, deliberately, for she was past twenty, and had brothers besides. Though she was amused, she had the kindness to hide it. Inda managed to get himself out of the cordage shop and into the open air of Freeport Harbor. It was a cool summer day, everyone busy, for after a miserable month of pounding storms the first clear weather had brought in fleets of sail. He walked with a kind of painful care, but at least no one paid any attention to him—

“Inda! Caught your bowsprit in the shrouds?”

Tau’s cheery voice caused Inda to sit down abruptly on a convenient pile of canvas rolls outside a sail shop, forearms over his lap. He looked up, his face a peculiar blend of misery and sheepish grin that caused Tau to hoot in delight. He looked back at the cordage shop, and comprehended immediately. “That Lorenda, gets you tight against the seam even if you’re blind. I heard she’s walking out with no fewer than three, besides Kodl—”

Inda groaned. “She knew. I—”

Tau’s smile turned pensive. “Inda, how long have you been getting torch without fire?”

Every morning for months,
Inda thought gloomily, about the time the others suddenly twitted him for face fuzz, making him hunt up a Healer for the Beard Spell. And he’d finally gone and bought a made shirt, because his old one had ripped seams during practice within the space of four weeks, after he’d reseamed it twice.

He grimaced, recalling that morning’s dream, a jumble of images involving one of the women at Lark Ascendant, an older and much differently shaped Thog, and for some weird reason a grown version of Liet from back home. Only they’d been speaking in Marlovan, which made him feel homesick. “Dunno,” he mumbled, since Tau seemed to be waiting for an answer.

Tau’s sympathy turned to impatience. “If today isn’t the first time, why haven’t you gone upstairs in the Lark?”

Inda hunched and looked away at the forest of masts, glimpsed through the narrow opening between two weather-beaten buildings. He wished he were out there, preferably under water. “We’re low on money,” he mumbled. “Kodl just saying it a week ago. And Scalis keeps going up anyway.”

“For an old geezer he’s sure hot at hand,” Tau agreed. “But he’s doing all their wood repair, so he’s square.”

“Mrfle.”

Over the past day or two Tau had been exchanging speculative glances with a hip-rolling young first mate who’d recently landed from Sartor. She was tall, handsome, red-haired, and from a successful privateer crew. And here she was, damn, having just spotted him.

He forced his attention back to Inda; the red-haired first mate, in the mood for dalliance with the prettiest man on the island, saw his attention stray to the knot-limbed clod-pole hunched there on the sails, and so she passed by, thinking,
Oh, what a waste!

“Inda. I can see you being circumspect on board ship—I am myself—but why on shore? Girls here not—?” He hesitated on
not good enough,
frowning down at Inda’s averted face.

When did a joke become a jibe? When there might be truth in it. Tau sorted through memory with the swiftness of habit. Though Kodl and Testhy had scrupulously kept their secret, Tau had very soon—once winter began and they were all holed up together—perceived subtle differences in their attitude toward Inda, and once he’d noticed, he tracked unerringly back through memory to the day it had changed.