Honor's Paradox-ARC (10 page)

“Oh,” the former said to Timmon with his wide, white grin, “I didn’t mean you, Lordan. Your cousin Dari, now . . .”

Timmon drew himself up, projecting more strength than Jame had yet seen in him.

“That is house business, Caineron. Butt out.”

Fash actually recoiled a step, but no more. His grin, having flickered, came back. “And you, M’lady Kirien. Don’t you think that the High Council deserves the truth?”

Kirien answered, still serene. “D’you think I’ve hidden anything from any of them? They see what they expect to see. Unlike you, I hide little.”

Fash flushed, but his retort stuck in his throat. He knew better than to challenge a Shanir like Kirien whose power lay in being able to compel the truth. What was his game anyway, trying to pick one fight after another with his superiors? Gorbel would have stopped him, but Obidin just stood there, radiating mild interest. She wondered if, like a certain late, unlamented Randir, Fash’s own talent lay in temptation.

Would you tempt the destroyer in me, Caineron?

As if he had heard her thought, he turned his white teeth on her.

“I see that you shun the flatteries of fashion, Lordan. How . . . modest of you. But that’s not quite correct: you may wear your cadet jacket—very dashingly, I might add—but you dress your hair Merikit style. Let’s see: smooth on the right but, oh my, twenty braids on the left, all twisted into one down the back. Have you really killed twenty hillmen?”

The simple answer to that was “no.” Jame had no idea how many Noyat she had personally slain during their raid on the Merikit village, but the Merikit women had credited her with all of their kills as well and Gran Cyd herself had first braided the record of the enemy dead into Jame’s hair, slathered with their blood. Why had she worn it into Gothregor? Perhaps to compensate for her plain coat, or perhaps in defiance because other cadets had started to gossip about her adventures among the so-called savages. Only now did it occur to her that those rumors might have been started by Fash, one of the few at Tentir who would know what those braids signified.

“What happens in the hills is no business of yours,” she told him coldly.

Satisfaction glinted in his eyes. He knew that he had drawn blood.

“Ah, but then hillmen die so easily,” he said, “like the dumb brutes that they are.”

“That’s all they are to you, isn’t it? Mere animals.”

Kirien touched her arm. “Gently, gently . . .”

The pook dashed past again, followed by Danior’s son shrieking, “Doggie, doggie, doggie!” followed by a panting Gorbel.

“That’s right,” said Fash, answering Jame, flashing an even wider smile at her that was more like the bearing of teeth. “Pilfering vermin, to be exact. A waste of skin.”

Jame remembered the tattooed Merikit hides strewn like rugs about Lord Caineron’s quarters. Fash and his ilk had supplied those. She thought of Prid’s tawny mane or Gran Cyd’s auburn braids spread across the floor under Caldane’s slippered feet. Dark anger stirred in her.

“Half hill and half hall,” mused Fash, eyeing her slyly askance. “How many classes d’you reckon you’ve missed, playing savage in the wilds?”

“Do you think me ill-learned? Yet I am still at the college, after two culls.”

“As am I. The randon, Trinity bless them, who are they to deny a lord’s heir?”

“Now listen here . . .” began Timmon ominously.

“Oh, no one questions you, m’lord.”

“But you imply that they do me.” Jame was too angry now for caution, although part of her mind noted the Caineron’s manipulations and urged her back. But this . . . this beast had put his knife to decent Merikit skin and had lived to laugh about it.

“Challenge me,” she heard herself say, “anytime, anywhere, and we will see.”

Fash bowed himself away. “Oh yes. We undoubtedly will.”

“That,” said Kirien, “was not wise.”

Jame sighed, letting the rage flow out of her taut limbs and her nails resheathe. “No, it wasn’t. But one has to take a stand somewhere.”

IV

At last the summons came and the lordans trooped up to the Council Chamber. There the lords sat around the table in coats of brocade, silk, and embroidery heavy with gold, far more resplendent even than their heirs.

Torisen stood framed by the empty window with his hands clasped behind him, a figure of slim, simple elegance in black and silver.

His beard startled Jame, who hadn’t seen him since the Winter Wars. She wondered if he had grown it to disguise the hollows of his cheeks. Nothing dire that she knew about was going on. The job of Highlord was apparently wearing enough in itself when taken seriously as, of course, Torisen would. She wished that she could make him laugh. Even more, she wished that they could simply meet as the equals that they first had been. After all, they were twins even if Tori was a good ten years older than she.

But she was also a Highborn female, less than any lord, more and yet somehow simultaneously less than just about everyone else. Then too, she was also a randon cadet and her brother’s heir, an anomaly anyway anyone cared to look at it.

She could feel the lords’ eyes seek her out, some disapproving, some speculative. Caldane, Lord Caineron, glowered, but with a hint of eagerness in his stance, like a cat that has spotted its prey. His pudgy, beringed fingers drummed the table, stilled, and drummed again. Only Brandan and Cousin Holly looked at all friendly, the former nodding to her as she entered the room, the latter raising a finger in greeting.

“Before we start the business for which we are gathered,” said the Highlord, “it is customary for us to present our heirs to the full Council and for me to give a token of approval to each. Lord Brandan, I understand that your nephew is absent on official business.”

“Yes.” Torisen’s closest neighbor leaned forward, his face nearly as dark as Adric’s and more seamed, although he was a much younger man. Not for Brant, the well-kept smoothness of the Ardeth lord; summer and winter, he worked beside his Kendar in the fields and in the Southern Wastes. “I left Boden in Kothifir, ready to finalize our troop contracts according to the decisions made here today.”

“Lord Randir . . .”

Kenan, Lord Randir, leaned back nonchalantly in his chair. As usual, his haughty features reminded Jame of something, or someone, but she couldn’t quite pin it down. Could she be thinking of Shade, his only child? “I have decades yet to rule my house. Ask for my choice of lordan fifty years from now.”

“Very well.” Torisen dipped his long, scar-laced fingers into a leather sack, drew out a chunky piece of glass, and glanced at the emblem stamped on it.

“Coman.”

The Coman Lordan came forward, with a slight air of truculence: his house hadn’t yet decided if it supported the Knorth or the Caineron. The Edirr twins came trying to look serious but failing. Danior’s little son made almost everyone smile as he dashed up in his red coat crying, “Cousin Tori! Cousin Tori!” Timmon approached to soft applause from his beaming grandfather and a murderous look from his cousin Dari.

Torisen paused, looking troubled.

“Do you swear to uphold the honor of your house, to put its interests always before your own?”

Timmon blinked. No one else had been asked such a question. He glanced at Adric who was mouthing, “Go on, Pereden!” then back at the Highlord.

“Honor break me, darkness take me, I do.”

“Then I entrust you with this. After all, it’s primarily the business of your house. Do with it as you will.” Instead of a glass token, he reached into a pocket, drew out something wrapped in linen, and handed it to the Ardeth Lordan.

Timmon retreated, looking confused. His bewilderment only grew when he examined the contents of the packet. Jame wanted to see too, but then Torisen called out, “Knorth.”

A restive stir passed among the lords. Caldane gave it voice:

“Do you really mean to uphold this travesty? She may be your sister, but what kind of a fool picks a lady for his lordan?”

“As for her right to wear that coat,” added the Randir, lazily fingering his wine glass, “what lord sends a lady to become a randon cadet?

They’ve planned this,
Jame thought as a murmur rose from the table,
and most of the Council agree.

“It’s not even as if she can properly defend herself,” Caldane continued, leaning forward like a bulldog on a short leash, lower jaw thrust forward. “Put it to the test if you doubt me.”

Torisen’s troubled gaze sought her out.
Can you deal with this challenge?
his eyes asked her.

She met his worried look steadily and gave a brief nod.
If I can’t, both of us are wasting our time.

“So be it.”

“Will I do as a challenger?” Fash ambled forward. “You did say ‘anytime, anyplace,’ ” he reminded her with an amiable smirk.

So this was why he had taunted her in the outer ward, doubtless with Caldane’s approval. She glanced at Gorbel, who had regained his errant pook and was holding it apparently upside down. If she failed, who would Lord Caineron present as his heir?

“I said it, I meant it,” she said to Fash. “Choose your weapon.”

“Swords, then.”

Oh, schist. Fash knew perfectly well that swordcraft was her weakest discipline. Still, she accepted the blade thrown to her, and found it poorly balanced.

Before she could complain, Fash was on her with a vicious down cut. She blocked it, and felt the weight of the blow up to her shoulder. He slashed; she ducked.

This was hopeless. Attack.

He easily foiled her advance and, with a twist of his wrist, disarmed her.

A sigh arose from the onlookers, half satisfaction, half relief, but it changed to exclamations of protest as Fash lunged for her throat.

She turned her evasion into a backward somersault, kicking him in the face as she went over. He staggered with a bloody nose, cursing. Another backflip put her temporarily out of his reach. There had to be some way to defend herself. Under a nearby bench, neatly stowed, was Marc’s glassmaking gear. She snatched out the leather apron and wrapped it around her left arm, just in time to baffle another thrust. Whatever his original intentions, to pink or merely to humiliate her, that kick to the face had infuriated the man. Now he was out for blood. Well, so was she.

Jame snapped the apron’s braided belt like a whip, slashing his forehead. It wasn’t much of a cut but it bled profusely, hindering his sight. He swung wildly. She evaded with water-flowing, channeling his blow aside. As he staggered, momentarily off balance, she stepped in and slammed the heel of her palm into his nose, this time breaking it with an audible crunch. He couldn’t see, nor could he breathe except through his mouth, and blood was streaming into that fit to choke him. Jame circled warily. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Torisen watching with tightly folded arms, as if restraining himself. Fash swung again, this time clipping her shoulder. Cloth and skin ripped. The cut wasn’t much, but Rue was in for more darning. She glimpsed the straw-headed cadet to one side, fast in Brier’s grip as if struggling to intervene.

Time to end this.

She snaked the belt around Fash’s sword hand and jerked. The blade flew free. Lords ducked. It crashed down on the table and skidded to a stop, its point facing Caldane. The Caineron lord recoiled.

“Hic!”

A look of panic turned his florid face blotchy. He grabbed the arms of his heavy chair and hung on like a drowning man.

“Hic!”

The chair started to rise, with him in it.

“HIC!”

Gorbel dropped the pook and quickly rounded the table to stand behind his father. With his hands on Caldane’s shoulders, he brought his weight to bear and forced him down. Brandan (who didn’t like wine) offered his cup of cider. Gorbel took it and poured it down his father’s throat.

“. . . hic . . .”

The chair settled.

Meanwhile Fash angrily tried to wipe the blood off his face, although both forehead and nose continued to bleed. Jame stood ready with her leather shield and the belt, which she continued to twitch experimentally, trying to master its ungainly length and balance.

“Yield?”

He sputtered, fighting to regain control of himself.

“An . . . interesting demonstration, to make use of whatever crude means one finds at hand. And we all thought that your fighting style was so pure.”

“Never assume. What works, works.”

Torisen unfolded his arms and took a deep breath.

“I believe that my lordan has proved her point. Now, if we may proceed . . .”

Jame put aside Marc’s apron and belt. The cut on her shoulder stung. Would these petty tests never end? Then again, she thought, glancing at Gorbel, not so petty after all, for either of them. As for Fash, an old friend had said it long ago: To such a man, she would always be a lure and a trap, because he would never take her seriously.

But her brother was holding out the emblem of his acceptance. She stepped forward to receive it.

“Doggie!”

The pook hurtled between them, pursued by a miniature whirlwind in red. The latter knocked the glass token out of Torisen’s hand and Jame, recoiling, stepped on it. Crunch. Both regarded the shattered remains.

“Can we share anything without breaking it?” murmured Torisen. Then he sighed. “So be it.” Reaching into a pocket he drew out a small, feline carving, and gave it to Jame.

She stared at it. “Oh. I’d forgotten all about this.”

“I didn’t.”

Jame retreated with her prize, bemused.

Torisen dipped into the sack and drew out the next-to-last piece of glass.

“Caineron.”

Caldane still clutched the arms of his chair but had stopped hiccupping. He glared at the gory, snuffling spectacle that was Fash, then turned to Gorbel. “Well, go on. It seems, after all, that you’re the best of a poor lot.”

Gorbel approached the Highlord and stolidly received his token.

“Jaran.”

Kirien had been standing thoughtfully to one side. Now she shrugged as if making up her mind, slipped off her gray coat, and approached Torisen in a discreet but still revealing white shirt.