By the Sword (23 page)

Daren blinked stupidly at the rock; undoubtedly he recognized it, too, but he didn't say anything. So far as Kero was concerned, this only confirmed her suspicion of last night, that Kethry had cast some kind of glamour over the area that wouldn't lift until they cooperated.

Well, they were cooperating now.

She caught Daren's eye; he nodded. They got themselves as straightened up as possible, then dragged themselves back to the Tower, figurative tails between their legs. Kero wasn't sure what Daren was thinking—and saw no reason to try and find out—but she had to admit that they'd pretty much brought this whole mess on themselves.

And she had a shrewd guess as to what was going to be awaiting them.

She was right. Daren preceded her; he stopped for a moment behind the outcropping that hid the entrance, said something too low for Kero to hear, then went on in. She followed, with the relative warmth of the stable closing around her like a cozy blanket. Tarma stood impassively just inside the stable door, leaning against the rock wall as if she had been there all night and was prepared to go on waiting.

She looked them both up and down, face unreadable.

“There's food in your rooms,” she said. “Get a hot bath and feed yourselves, then get your rumps back down here. I'll be waiting in the practice ring.”

After the bath and the food, Kero felt a little closer to human. Today wasn't going to be pleasant, but as she climbed stiffly into warm—dry!—clothing, she had to admit that she'd spent worse.

She closed the door of her room behind her, and ran into Daren on the staircase down. Daren was bewildered, she could read it in his face—and resentful; she could read
that
in the way he carried his shoulders, stiff and hunched.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

He looked over his shoulder at her, as if he halfway expected her to ridicule him. “If I was home,” he said hesitantly, “after something like last night, I'd have been, well, fussed over. They'd have sent servants up with my favorite food, gotten someone to massage me, probably sent me to bed—”

He stopped, and she realized her expression had probably betrayed some of her disgust. She made herself think about what he was saying, and realized that he wasn't to blame for the way other people had treated a prince of the blood.

“Look,” she said, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “Do you think that's what would happen in battle conditions? You're going to be in worse shape than
that
at the end of each day if there's ever a war fought.”

He
obviously took the effort to think about what she had just said, in his turn, and stopped on the staircase. “I guess you're right,” he replied. “There wouldn't even be any hot baths, much less all the rest. We'd probably be sleeping in half-armor, and eating whatever the bugs and rats left us.”

“Exactly. If this had been a foray during a war, we'd have been lucky to get the food and dry clothes.” She looked at him in the dim light, and shrugged.

“I guess—I guess if I'm supposed to be learning how to command armies, maybe I'd better start getting used to a couple of hardships now and again.”

There was the sound of sardonic applause from below them, as the light from the landing was blotted out. Tarma stood for a moment on the first step, still clapping slowly, then took the stairs up toward them at a very leisurely pace.

“It's about time you finally figured out why you're here, young man,” she said, one comer of her mouth turned up in something that was not quite a smile. “Now, I have a bit of news for you both. Your day is only beginning.”

The exercises she set them were harder than anything she'd given them before, and any resentment or residual anger Kero had felt was lost in the general exhaustion. Daren was in worse shape than she was, since his bruises were deeper and more extensive.

By the time she crawled—literally—up the stairs to her room, she was quite ready to fall into her bed and sleep for a week.

But her day wasn't over yet.

She was as tired as she'd ever been in her life, including when the entire Keep, staff and family, had gone out to get the tenants' harvest in to save it from a storm. Given a choice, she'd have gone straight to bed, stopping just long enough to eat something and drink enough wine so that she didn't ache quite so much.

But she knew she didn't have a choice; another hot bath would do more good for her bruises and stiff muscles than all the sleep in the world, and unless she wanted to wake up aching a lot more than when she'd gone to sleep, she was going to have to take the time for another bath.

She'd just eased herself down into that bath when she had a visitor. Not two-legged this time, but four.

She didn't even realize he was there; when he wanted to he could move as silently as a shadow. She was lying back in the tub with her eyes closed when he MindSpoke her, startling her so that she jumped.

“Me?” she spluttered. “I was the one playing by the rules! He-”

:By the letter, perhaps. Not the spirit.:
The
kyree
sat like a great gray wolf just out of range of any stray splashes.
: You knew very well that I'm not simply some kind of well-trained performing animal. Why didn't you tell Daren that?:

“Do you think for a moment he would have believed me?” she asked angrily. “Up until last night he didn't think
I
had a mind, so why should he credit you with one?”

:It was your job to convince him,:
Warrl said coldly.
:That is what teamwork is about. If you have knowledge your fellow does not, you are obliged to enlighten him.:

“Why?” she retorted. “It would have wasted time. I knew what you were, that was enough.”

“Me? I—” The accusation was as unfair as anything else that had happened in the last day. She was trapped between anger and tears, and the tears themselves were half caused by anger.

He continued to sit, and stare, an immovable icon of conscience. :
You finally get in a position where you have the upper hand, and you misuse your opportunity. You could have found a way to convince him that you knew what you were talking about, and you could have done it in such a way that he would have felt surprised and grateful. After that, he would have been much more attentive to any suggestions you made. Instead you jeopardized him, yourself, and the mission, all out of pique.:

“No, I couldn‘t! I—” She was completely unable to continue; she tried, and choked up.

Warrl's eyes glowed, blue as ice and hard as the finest steel.
:I
advise you to think about this,: he said, after a long pause during which she wasn't even able to think coherently. He waited again, but when she didn't reply, he simply rose to his feet. So smoothly did he move that not a hair was disturbed; he could easily have been a statue brought to life by magic. He pierced her with those eyes once more, and padded out as silently as he had arrived.

She pulled the plug on the bath, too upset and tense now to relax. The water flowed out smoothly, with scarcely a gurgle as she climbed out. She seized the waiting square of cloth and jerked it from the hook beside the tub, then toweled herself dry, rubbing hard, as if to rub those unkind, untrue accusations out of her mind.

Unkind, untrue, and
unfair.
She stalked out of the bathing chamber and flung herself down on her bed, seething.
I'm not the one that went pelting up the trail, leaving tracks and traces a child could read! I'm not the one that decided he knew what was happening without bothering to consult his partner! I'm not the one that decided to divide the party—he wanted me to go downstream while he went up!

She turned over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The more she thought about Warrl's little lecture, the angrier she became.

She was still simmering when exhaustion finally caught up with her and flung her into sleep.

 

Daren appeared the next morning at the common room; breakfast was a self-serve affair she sometimes shared with Tarma and her grandmother. Daren sported sunken cheeks and enormous dark circles under his eyes. Since she didn't have a mirror, Kerowyn couldn't have said if she looked the same, but she was very much afraid that she did. It had not been a restful night, to say the least.

“Well, you look like hell,” Kero greeted him over the buffet table, handing him a piece of hot bread.

“Thank you,” he replied. “If you're curious, it's mutual. Where in hell does she get all this food? I haven't seen a single servant since I got here.”

“Magic, I suppose,” Kero replied. “Although ... you know, not that much of it has to be cooked. Just the bread and the oat porridge. Everything else could be set beside the bread ovens to warm. I've never seen the kitchen; it could be just on the other side of that wall. I have no idea how they'd vent ovens this deep in the cliff—that would be magic, but I've seen stranger things in this place.”

“Like the bathing chambers?”

“Hmm.” She eyed the table; the ham and bread would reappear at dinner, the fruit and cheese at lunch, the hard-boiled eggs would keep for quite a while, and the oat porridge would be gone at this meal. All four of them liked a good big bowl of it, laden with sugar and swimming in cream.

“One cook and two helpers could take care of all this and more, and still have time for the helpers to double at light cleaning and laundry,” she said. “We all clean our own rooms, that means the only places a servant would have to clean would be the common rooms.”

Daren blinked at her in surprise. She dished out her own bowl of porridge, loading it down with maple sugar and sweet raisins, leaving just enough for him. “How do you know all that?” he asked.

“All what? Household nonsense?” Tarma and her grandmother had evidently just finished; they were disappearing together through one of the doors that was always kept locked. Kero knew what was on the other side of that one, though—her grandmother's magic workroom. She'd visited it once, and had no desire to do so again.

Daren completed his selection and followed her to one of two small tables beside the hearth. “I thought you said you weren't interested in marriage and a family.”

“I'm not. I took care of the Keep for five years after Mother died, and for most of two years before that.” She made a face, and cut a careful bite out of her ham slice. “I hated it. But I learned it anyway. Why do you look like you spent the night tossing?”

“Because I did,” he replied. “Rotten dreams.”

She put her knife and fork down. “You, too?”

He nodded, then stopped in mid-chew to stare at her. Finally he swallowed, and asked, “Were you in the middle of some kind of battle? In a scout group? And you went off looking for something in a party of about six?”

She nodded. “And you were there, and we had an argument about something?”

“Yes. And then?” He leaned forward.

“Then—you wouldn't listen to me, or I wouldn't listen to you; I can't remember which. But the party split, and we both missed something really important, because when we got back, we'd lost half the scouts, and we discovered that the enemy had cut around behind us—”

“And everyone on our side was dead.” He sagged back in his chair, his eyes closed. “Oh, gods. I thought it was just a dream—”

“It was just a dream,” a new voice entered the conversation. Kethry's. Daren jumped, then tried to leap to his feet.

“Sit,” Kethry ordered him; she was in russet today, the color Daren's cloak used to be, but as if to underline what Kero had told him earlier, she was not wearing a gown, she was in breeches and a long tunic. “If it had been a prophetic dream, certain warnings would have been triggered, and I would have known.”

“If it wasn't prophetic,” Kero asked hesitantly, “What was it?”

Kethry smiled, as if she had expected exactly that question. “A warning,” she said. “This place—seems to trigger things like that. It's happened perhaps a dozen times since we moved here. It's not showing any possible future so far as I've been able to tell—it's showing you the general outcome of a negative behavior pattern.”

“So what we saw isn't going to happen to us?” Daren asked hopefully.

“No, not likely,” Kethry repeated. “and you won't dream it again unless you continue the pattern.”