Read Banner of the Damned Online
Authors: Sherwood Smith
Banner of the Damned (76 page)
Oh, I could hear Birdy’s voice reading the words, which caused my throat to hurt. I could not prevent myself from wondering what he wrote to Anhar and if he wrote as much. Or maybe he wrote less, but revealed his inner self more?
… and then he indicated my stable-worn hands and said, “Your mission was obviously quite fraught. We can amend that, at least.”
I found myself in the bath alcove, sitting side by side with him as our nails were tended, and I don’t mean the quick trim and buff expected of us servants. We had the entire course, beginning with hot water with citrus blossoms, oils, and oh how good it felt to have the knots smoothed from my hands and feet, as we conversed.
He asked for my experience, and I told him, including the inexplicable ending to my career as a royal herald.
“No more inexplicable than my glorious career,” he said.
Have you ever heard the man speak? He’s a master of cordial irony.
“How,” I began, “if I may be permitted to ask—”
“Ask as you will,” he said, signing shadow-pardon for the interruption. “The queen apparently liked my style in my total failure to rescue the princess last summer, but not enough to keep me in Alsais over winter. She was here not quite three weeks on her progress. Heh! She was not best pleased with a supper of a single olive served on a five-hundred year old plate, surrounded by a wreath of lettuce, and poetry for dessert. The duchess and I extolled the art of austerity, wearing the same unadorned clothing for two weeks running. On her way out, the queen left orders for me to present myself again on Flower Day. So, what color is it to be?”
By then, you will infer, we were nearly finished, and there was only the nail polish to consider.
I signed deference, saying, “I know not how I leave this room, whether as free man, postilion, or herald.”
He laughed again. “I like you—you don’t mince and whisper like a damned spying scribe. Herald it shall be, though we never had any at Lassiter, so far as I am aware. If there is a family archive, I never saw it. The Definians have a full staff, but they will fit you in if I will it.”
And so my nails were painted with a gloss suitable for heralds while his were tipped with gold for court. We put our slippers on (you can imagine how good it feels to wear slippers again, after half a year confined in blackweave boots), and he walked with me to the Alarcansa heralds’ chambers.
I have yet to meet the principle members of the household. The duchess is indisposed (Kaidas’s man told me on Day Five that she’s not sick, merely recovering from the recent birth of a child, but she seems to believe the world would not recover from the spectacle of a Definian whose waist is not spanned by a man’s two hands together) and the other Definian, the one everyone used to call Tittermouse, was sent last fall to Alsais as lady-in-waiting to the royal princess.
So far, life is pleasant. The duke remembered my name when he saw me next—always a good sign—and said he wishes to hear more about my experiences. Whether he does or not, I appreciate him saying it. Last of all, I will describe how they celebrate Flower Day in Alarcansa, which was merry. I haven’t danced so much in my life.
Flower Day, the great spring celebration. Marlovens, needless to say, didn’t bother with such frivol. We’d made our own celebration, Nifta finding flowers somewhere (for Marlovens did not have flower gardens). I had begged the kitchen to let me bake some lily breads. The assistant baker seemed intrigued, following me closely as I worked.
Then we sang songs until we were so homesick that I don’t think anyone enjoyed it, though we pretended for one another’s sake.
I say “we,” but Lasva was not there.
The memory hurt as I skimmed Birdy’s description, then my eye caught on Anhar’s name. He asked about her, hoping things were better for her with Belimas gone. He finished:
Right now my labors are largely make-work—gathering the weekly reports from provincial guilds from the scribe on the transfer desk, sorting and recording the information. It’s a job a prentice could do, but there is no prentice at present, and I do not mind the labor. I will learn more about Alarcansa, if this is to be my home.
When Ivandred departed on his journeys, Lasva and I sat through long, quiet evenings, as she struggled with Hadand-Gunvaer’s letters, and I studied. Some experiments I could do in the castle, but because of the wards, sometimes I had to make my way outside the gates of the city.
The structure was a messy tangle. I would have to find a way to address the illogical, patchwork layers of the recent years—desperate measures ordered by a king who feared shadows—before I could delve to the mysteries beneath.
At the Marloven Convocation, New Year’s Week, the jarls repeat their oaths as given on their appointment. That is strictly according to law. Then, on the fourth day, the jarls can bring judgments against one another, on behalf of their people or themselves. The people can also bring judgments against their nobles, though apparently very few take advantage of this.
At the Marloven coronation, there is a reversal. Each jarl brings grievances and demands to the new king, from which they work out the new oath that will be repeated at every New Year’s Convocation of this king’s rule. Once their new oaths are sworn, there is much feasting and singing and martial demonstration, then all go home.
And, just as in Colend, any noble can be replaced.
As the jarls began appearing with their cavalcades (they were permitted two ridings, eighteen armed attendants, plus servants) the castle took on an atmosphere of tension at least as great as the worst day under the dead king. The staff did their best to relieve tension with wry comments about the guests. One cook told me, when I carried the breakfast dishes down, that everyone was flying about seeing to far too many tasks. Then she added, “At least one thing, it’s not at midnight anymore.”
One of the female guards cracked a laugh. “My grandma told me they used to talk of scraping resin off the stone for months after, so many torches. What a stink it must have raised!”
Midnight for a coronation?
I thought as I fled.
I will never get used to this place
.
The jarls who had little to dispute were the earliest arrivals. Also early were those allied with more powerful jarls. Once a jarl had settled his, or her oaths, they gathered each day to witness the interviews of the newcomers, and to see justice or judgments carried out. There were three jarlans besides Ingrid-Jarlan of Darchelde: a short, tough old woman from Sindan-An and two around my mother’s age, from Zheirban and Torac.
The first time I’d ever seen Lasva’s impassive female guards express emotion was when Fnor returned. The smiles, even chatter, surprised me. Yet again I saw that celebrative mood when Ingrid-Jarlan arrived. Not only that, but the quick exchanges of personal talk made it clear that there had been frequent communication.
The jarlan walked everywhere with Lasva, who seemed to float along the stone corridors next to the free-striding jarlan, both dressed in black robes over linen under robes dyed goldenrod. Lasva wore one of those worked chain belts on her hips, but she refused to attach a knife, even when the jarlan suggested it. “It is important to us,” she said. “Ivandred has given us our dignity back, in permitting us once again to wear our knives.”
“Until I can use them the way you do, I would rather wear my fan,” Lasva said. At her belt hung a fine black and gold Altan fan.
The day that Danrid-Jarl arrived with his enormous cavalcade of servants behind his eighteen riders, we watched their approach from the upper windows. “Can he really need so many servants?” Lasva asked Ingrid-Jarlan.
I was astonished, thinking that even the Duke of Gaszin had not traveled with so many attendants.
“They are most certainly warriors garbed as household runners and servants. I think I see three in cooks’ aprons,” the jarlan stated, and she uttered a crack of laughter. “Three! He does have a sense of humor, arrogant young soul-eater.”
Lasva touched her fingers together in The Peace. “Does that mean we are to expect an attack?”
“Not here!” The jarlan gave another laugh. “If they were mad enough to break the truce that everyone understands is in force at Convocation or a coronation, they’d be dead before they reached the first stairwell, and well they know it. It is as close to a challenge as he dares to come. Don’t the Colendi know of challenges?”
Her amusement irked me, but Lasva said only, “We do. There is the shadow trespass, and in court, there are many, such as the moth kiss. I am thinking that perhaps this gesture here is the Marloven equivalent of a moth kiss, if this Danrid does not intend a battle, yet brings them anyway.”
“Shadow trespass, as in walking in someone’s shadow?” the jarlan asked, brows crimped. “Terrifying.”
“It is an affront,” Lasva said. “A challenge.”
The jarlan’s chin lifted in a small jerk, reminding me of Ivandred. A
family trait? “I see,” she said slowly. “Very… hm. You must see your place in a room differently, and how you stand in relation to others. Is everyone watching for where light is placed?”
“Customarily we light all four corners of a room. But that can change.”
The jarlan was thoughtful. “I wonder if this is akin to standing to someone’s left when you are not shield brethren. It is presumptuous. Or standing within sword reach of the right hand, in challenge.” The jarlan gave a deep chuckle. “As for these below, if I know my nephew, they will shortly discover themselves housed with the sweepers and scrubbers at the back of the castle and offered work there, until their jarl leaves. I hope they may enjoy it.”
She inclined her head. The yard filled with fully armed guards, everyone orderly, as that mass of “servants” was deftly cut out and marched toward the east side of the castle. The surprise was how many of the guards and supposed guards suppressed laughter, as if all conspired in some obscure jest.
But though Danrid Yvanavar arrived making an expensive, elaborate challenge in jest, his late arrival was also understood as a different gesture: by arriving last, he was assured that everyone of import in the kingdom was there to see justice carried out.
Lasva had found me a place in the gallery to witness Danrid’s interview, for the throne room was packed, the silence so tense it almost rung. I fully expecting to be elbowed to the back by burly Marloven retainers, but one of the heralds appeared and drew me into their own gallery. This was the first time they acknowledged my existence. As I was introduced around so swiftly that faces and names were a blur of similarities, I thought,
And so their loyalty to the old king shifts to the new
. Whatever they privately thought of the old king or the new, they were patently welcoming me as scribe to the new queen.
The heralds’ gallery ran below the clerestory windows all around the walls except above the throne. (Later I learned that the gallery doubled as a defensive platform for shooting arrows through the tall narrow windows.) Two gray-haired herald-scribes were on duty at the rail, with an unimpeded view of the throne daïs below, pens busy as one recorded the king’s words and the other the petitioners’. I wedged in between the stone rail and a pillar. Danrid would be next. For now, Ivandred stood
still as a statue below the few, shallow steps of the daïs, head bent, concentrated on the jarl standing before him.
But for the rest of us, Ivandred was the center of attention, tall in his black and gold, the thin circlet wrought of black steel making his hair look gold in contrast. When he moved, glints along it highlighted the edges of interlocked leaves in a stylized wreath.
Danrid waited a few paces behind. He also stood out, so tall, his sun-yellow silken tunic so bright against the black of those on the black marble daïs. Venn knots in white silk glinted with subtle threads, to hint at princely silver.
The young jarl from Tlen along with Khanivar’s heir—the oldest son and older brother to the Lan who had died at the bridge—stood at Danrid’s left, in the position of shield brethren. Ingrid-Jarlan, as governor of Darchelde, stood a scarce step from his right, the old jarlan from Sindan-An firmly at her side.
The vows finished, and Ivandred lifted his head.
Danrid stepped forward with confident stride. Instead of barking angrily, as he had when the old king first collapsed, Danrid was almost friendly and addressed Ivandred jovially, except his laughter carried a note that caused my shoulder blades to tighten, my heart to thump in wariness. All I heard were the words “fathers” and “oath” as a young herald—he looked no older than I had been when I was first assigned to Lasva—whispered to me, “The king did not invite Tdiran Marlovair.”
“Why should she be invited or not?” I breathed.
“If he had invited her, everyone would know she was to replace Danrid as Jarlan of Yvanavar.”
“But she was not born there,” I whispered, as below, Danrid was saying in ringing tones, “… salute the valiant… defend the nation, from holding to stronghold…”
