Honor's Paradox-ARC (18 page)

“Oh, that wasn’t an official challenge, just one of M’lord Caldane’s little tricks to humiliate us both.”

She sensed her brother’s dismay, even as his voice began to fade.

“Then you’ve got to get out of there. Listen, Jame, I can’t protect you. Not at Tentir. Much less so far away at Kothifir. I can’t let you go.”

“If the randon will it, you can’t stop me.”

“Who can’t?” said a new voice, attached to a pair of large, surprisingly gentle hands. “What have you done to yourself this time?”

Jame blinked up at Brier. She needn’t turn to know that Tori was gone.

“Clary came back to camp with the Commandant’s coat, but without you. What happened?”

Jame almost giggled. “I think he hardboiled his eggs.”

Brier’s big hand was full of shell shards plucked from Jame’s clothing. Among them lay a blood-stained rock.

“Not this hard,” she said grimly. “And with the power of a sling behind it . . .”

“Never mind.” Jame pushed her aside and wobbled to her feet, remembering the Coman’s expression. “Fash had him confused.”

Behind them they heard shouts, laughter, and splashes: the losers were paying their forfeit in the Burley’s frigid waters. Jame wiped her forehead with her sleeve and decided not to bother. There was little enough blood. Besides, her team had won. Somehow, though, she didn’t think that Clary would revel in that victory.

They walked back to Tentir where, it transpired, the merchants and Graykin had already left, having found few customers among the canny randon.

Rue had bought a length of shimmering white samite, however, which she presented almost defiantly to Jame.

“It was dead cheap,” she said, “and I think I may know how to keep it from fading away.”

“Good luck to you, then,” said Jame, and thought no more of it.

On impulse, she went to Bear’s den and sat down outside of it.

“How does one manage?” she asked him through the grate. “Brothers and sisters . . . how can Tori and I talk when to do so freely both of us have to be either asleep or concussed? How do you communicate with the Commandant with so few words in common? Yet I’ll swear that he loves you, and you, him.”

She considered Sheth’s guilt. He had followed his lord’s orders that Bear be either confined or killed. Who could have guessed, all those years ago, that the torment would go on so long?

Control: Caldane over Sheth, Sheth over Bear, Tori over her. Command aside, how did one let go when love was the bond?

“Tori will stop me if he can, for my own good. Ha. And yet he gave me this.” She fingered the carven cat with its snapped-off hind leg, the maimed symbol of their past. “Did we ever really share everything?”

Mine, mine! No, mine!

“He trusts me, yet he doesn’t. Do I trust him?”

Bear snuffled in the dark behind his door. Huge, ivory nails protruded through the grate, groping. On impulse, Jame gave him the carving. More snuffling, then a sharp snap: he had broken off the cat’s other hind leg.

Jame sighed.

I will stop you.

Not if I can help it,
she thought.

II

Hours ago, Kindrie had seen the merchants pack up their wares and leave the training square, with Graykin in his gaudy finery rushing to join them at the last minute. The healer had meant to travel south with them from Tentir as far as Gothregor, but that clearly was not to be. The Southron had glanced up at the second-story common room window where he stood, then had flinched away. Kindrie wondered if Graykin had even told Jame that her cousin had arrived and was waiting for her in her quarters.

The barracks were deserted, everyone out attending class. Life hummed all around him, echoing in the empty rooms as if in a seashell’s chambers. He had grown used to the constant stir of Mount Alban and his place in it. This reminded him of his isolation in the Priests’ College at Wilden, where no one spoke to him except in abuse. The best he had hoped for there was to be left alone, free to retreat into the Moon Garden that was his soul-image, where no one could hurt him.

Why had he never met his mother there, except as a pattern of moss and lichen against a stone wall? That blurred face had watched silently over his childhood and he had never recognized it until it had come to claim him, a terrible thing of cords and hunger . . .

But life was different now. He had a family. He had friends.

So he told himself. At the moment, though, he felt alone, and cold, and hungry.

Who are you, that anyone should take notice of you?
whispered the ghosts of his past.

Plates clattered in the dining hall two floors below and the smell of cooking rose. Cadets were returning from their lessons, talking, laughing. Footsteps sounded on the stair. A slim figure entered the apartment, speaking to someone over her shoulder. Then she turned and saw him.

“Kindrie! Have you been here all this time? That wretch Graykin, not to have told me!”

She advanced and took his hands, hers warm within their black gloves, his cold in her grasp, while her hunting ounce Jorin sniffed his legs.

“What happened to your face?”

She touched a darkening bruise and laughed. “The children here play rough, but they haven’t yet driven me out.”

No, thought Kindrie, they wouldn’t. One of them at least must be a slow learner not to have realized that by now. He envied her cheerful toughness, so unexpected in one seemingly so fragile.

She turned and called down the stair. “Rue, bring food up here. Tonight I dine with my cousin. And set a fire. It’s going to be a chilly evening.”

The towheaded cadet brought up bowls of thick soup, fresh bread, and a pitcher of ale. While they ate, the ounce begging them impartially for scraps, Rue piled kindling under the large bronze basin and set it on fire. Slowly, the chill left Kindrie’s bones and his spirit.

“It doubles as a bathtub,” said Jame, referring to the basin, “but you know that from the last time you were here. Would you like it to be filled? No? Then what’s this about Kinzi’s letter being translated?”

Kindrie explained.

Jame swore, rose, and began to pace. Jorin scrambled out of her way.

“I should have paid more attention,” she said. “After Lyra swallowed half of it, though, and I couldn’t read what was left . . . Trishien’s translation is certainly suggestive and in line with my own suspicions, but what can we do? Kirien is right: this isn’t proof. I don’t know what would be, short of a confession from Rawneth herself.”

“Will she get away with it, then?” The thought closed Kindrie’s throat. So many dead, all the women of his family except his mother and she left in lonely exile . . .

“The Bitch of Wilden has kept her secret for decades so far. And to use Kinzi’s letter would be to betray the ladies’ precious knot code.”

“Does that matter?”

“Not much. The winter I spent in the gentle care of the Women’s World was almost as bad as yours in the Priests’ College at Wilden. I owe them nothing. But there are three of us now. One of us is bound to stop her, somehow.”

“Probably you.”

Jame smiled with a flash of white, barred teeth. “Oh, I would like that very much.”

Kindrie regarded her as she paced. Her clenched hands drove nails into her palms and her eyes flashed silver in the firelight. A shiver passed through the soulscape. It occurred to him suddenly that she had just fought down an incipient berserker flare. Her control frightened him almost as much as her potential violence.

“You
are
dangerous, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes, very much so. Others, I trip over my own feet. But you can tell Kirien this to add into the mix: the night of the fire when your contract was signed, the darkling changer Keral was there posing as Rawneth’s servant.”

Kindrie stared at her. “How do you know that?”

Jame made a face. “It’s a bit hard to explain. Sometimes I see visions, as if various places are trying to show me things. Autumn’s Eve in the death banner hall and in the Moon Garden, I glimpsed a lot that still confuses me. But Keral was definitely there. Moreover, I don’t think Rawneth had any idea who or what he was. She isn’t the sort to pay much attention to servants.”

“So that would mean,” said Kindrie slowly, working it out, “that Keral is probably Lord Randir’s father.”

“And Shade’s grandfather, which is how she inherited her dose of darkling blood. What we don’t know for sure is what face Keral showed Rawneth as they made love.”

“Wouldn’t it have been Greshan’s?” Kindrie asked, confused.

“No. She thought he was Greshan at first, but then he changed, and not back into Keral. Kinzi said that Rawneth was pleased. I don’t see her happy to have been tricked into congress with a lackey.”

“Who, then? Gerraint?”

“No. At a guess, your own father, Gerridon.”

“But the Master isn’t a changer, is he?”

“No. My dear uncle Gerridon has had as little to do with the shadows as possible. Others pay for his seeming immortality. But Rawneth wouldn’t know that. I always thought that M’lord Kenan reminded me of someone. Now I know whom: Keral.”

“So Kenan is also a changer?”

“That I don’t know. Maybe it skipped a generation, but as secretive as the Randir are, how would we know unless he loses control and betrays himself? Rawneth is or was watching Shade through her serpent Addy, presumably to see if she starts to show her bloodlines, which she has. Some cadets of her house are already after her, but not for that.”

She told Kindrie about the attempt to drown Shade in the Randir basement during the Day of Misrule.

“This is very confusing,” said Kindrie, running a hand through his white hair, leaving it in unruly cowlicks. “You say that the cadets who tried to kill Shade aren’t bound to her grandmother? Then to whom?”

“Not to Randiroc, maybe not even to Kenan. You know the Randir better than I do. Who else is there?”

Kindrie thought back to his time at Wilden, most of which had been spent in the Priests’ College. “Some Randir Highborn only serve Rawneth because they fear her. There are also Randir Shanir in the college, not all there willingly. Some of them may be able to bind.”

“Huh. No wonder the Randir cadets are so confused, except for those bound directly to Rawneth. The whole thing is as murky as dirt soup. I’m obliged to you for bringing me news, however. Was that the only reason you dropped by Tentir?”

“No. I was on my way to Gothregor, to give Torisen this.” He rummaged in his pack and brought forth a leather cylinder containing a roll of parchment. They spread it out on the floor where Jorin tried to sprawl on it, but was chased off. Names covered every inch of it, some with miniature ink portraits beside them, faces deftly caught in a few flicks of the brush.

“This is wonderful,” said Jame, examining it. “Everyone bound to Tori must be here.”

“Very nearly,” Kindrie admitted, glad that the firelight hid his blush of pride. “I started with the names we collected last fall and went on from there. The Knorth scrollsmen were a great help.”

“Tori will be very glad of this.” Her voice warmed him. At last, he had done something of value for his newfound family—enough for his cousin to forgive him for being a Shanir? That remained to be seen.

“You’ll have to wait to show it to him, though. Your merchant escort is gone, and I don’t think anyone here is free to go south with you just now.”

Kindrie’s disappointment surprised him. After all, Torisen didn’t immediately need the list, but he had so looked forward to giving it to him.

Still trying to prove yourself, aren’t you?
he thought with some scorn.
What, do you want so much for him to clasp you to his bosom?
Dammit, yes.

Rue cleared the dishes and brought out a sleeping mat for Kindrie. He settled onto the latter and drowsily watched his cousin strip for bed. Her fair skin seemed a patchwork of multicolored bruises, old and new—the common lot of any cadet, he supposed. From his last experience with her soul-image, he knew better than to offer his healing touch, not wanting to be knocked through the nearest wall. After all, she couldn’t help what she was any more than he could. So near, so far, and yet family.

“G’night, cousin.”

“Good night.”

In the morning Kindrie rose with the cadets and shared their breakfast. Jame waved him off from the door of the great hall, then disappeared back into Old Tentir bound for her first class of the day.

Kindrie gained the New Road and hesitated. It would be far wiser to turn north, back to Mount Alban. His hand stole down to touch the leather canister. Oh, but he had so wanted to show his work to Torisen. How dangerous could it be, really, especially if he kept to the west bank? He could stop that night in the safety of Shadow Rock which, after all, was held by his bone cousin, Holly, Lord Danior. Would either Jame or Tori hesitate? No. That settled in his mind, he turned right and rode southward, toward Gothregor and all that lay in between.

CHAPTER X
Spring Equinox

Spring 37

The vernal equinox fell on the thirty-seventh of spring, another example of the Kencyrath not quite getting things right on their new world, nor bothering to change it over the three millennia or so that they had been there.

It was also the free, seventh day of the week at Tentir, hence Jame felt no guilt about slipping out in the early morning to find and saddle Death’s-head. Mindful of her late arrival on the solstice, she started before the college was stirring, also before Fash could taunt her about her frolics with the native “savages,” as if they were anything of the sort.

As usual, she set her destination in mind and gave the rathorn his head. Much good it would have done her to try to guide him with a bitless bridle and his contrary attitude, even if she had known the way. Better to trust him and the folds in the land: the New Road would have taken much too long as it was a good one hundred miles north to Kithorn.

Besides, on it she would have risked overtaking the Commandant and Gorbel, who had both been summoned by their lord to Restormir.

“In the middle of a school year? What for?” she had asked Gorbel.