Honor's Paradox-ARC (31 page)

But don’t get too comfortable,
she told herself.
Whenever you use them, especially in anger, you draw closer to the Third Face of God.

So the Arrin-ken had warned her, and she felt it to be true. The last time she had nearly flayed Vant alive, something of which she was far from proud. But to use them rationally, naturally, in self-defense—that ought to be different.

Here was the Pit, as desolate as ever with its splintered walls and lingering aura of spilt blood. A shadow passed before the torches in the observation room above. So. The Commandant had once again come to watch her train with his brother.

The opposite door opened and Bear shambled in, prodded from behind. He wheeled to confront his keepers, but they shut the door in his face. He wedged his massive claws into the crack, gouging out new splinters but failing to wrench it open, then turned to scan the room. Jame donned the mesh helmet and saluted. He ignored her. Firelight flared on the crevasse in his skull through the tumble of gray hair. Had it closed further? Jame couldn’t tell. His clothes were more unkempt than ever, his aspect both more aware and more desperate. He saw his brother in the balcony and mouthed at him. One word broke through the babble of sound: “Why?”

Jame dropped her salute and, after a moment, removed the helmet. She touched his arm. He swung around, gigantic in the flickering light, looming over her.

“Why what?” she asked him.

He struggled with articulation, mangling words, then thrust her aside in frustration. She fell back against the wall, rapping her head sharply against the panels.

Bear raised his fists, not against her but against the silent, still figure above.

“Why? Why? Why?”

His voice cracked, then broke into a roar. In answer, the lower door opened and sargents swarmed in to subdue him. He flung them about as if their padded armor were tenantless until Jame got in his way again. She put her hands on his broad chest, ignoring the frightful sweep of his claws as they slashed the air around her head. Though he surged back and forth, he didn’t again strike her and she managed to stay with him as if in some uncouth dance, her agile feet against his lumbering ones. At last he stopped, panting, leaning into her until her knees nearly buckled.

“Why?” he asked his brother again, almost plaintively.

Why am I a captive? Why doesn’t my mind work properly? Why have you done this to me?

Sheth didn’t answer. What could he say?

Bear’s shoulders slumped. He allowed himself to be herded out of the room without a backward glance.

Jame and the Commandant were left regarding each other. After a moment, Jame tendered him a sober salute which he acknowledged with a slight nod. Then she left the Pit by the opposite door.

V

It had been a disturbing incident and Jame thought a great deal about it, without reaching any solution. It especially bothered her that she was about to leave Tentir, one way or another, while Bear remained a prisoner within it. Still, what could she do?

In a dream that night, she found herself arguing with her brother.

“Where is honor in all of this?” she demanded of him or rather of his back as he paced, long black coat swishing, hands clasped behind him. “Bear was a great randon before he fell in battle. His condition isn’t his fault.”

“You’ve seen how dangerous he can be,” said Torisen over his shoulder. “We owe our cadets, our people, protection.”

“Of course he’s dangerous,” she answered, exasperated, also beginning in her agitation to pace. “He always has been. With those claws, he’s clearly aligned to That-Which-Destroys. Would you lock away all such Kencyr?”

“Such Kencyr are Shanir.”

“So are those who create and preserve,” said Kindrie, passing them with his white-thatched head bowed in deep thought. “Should they also be cast aside, as I was?”

“I can’t answer for them,” Torisen snapped. “Don’t you see? I can barely answer for myself.”

“And who are you?”

“Highlord of the Kencyrath, guardian of a flawed society.”

“Then let me smash the flaws out of it.”

“What else might you destroy, eh?”

“I won’t know until you trust me to try.”

“Yet there is good,” mused Kindrie. “Honor’s Paradox can break us, or make us stronger while honor itself is our strength. And we are strong, despite everything.”

So they argued back and forth as their paths crossed and recrossed, never quite bringing them face to face.

Jame woke with some unanswerable retort on the tip of her tongue, and lost it to returning consciousness.

Her quarters were dark and quiet except for Jorin’s gentle snore on the pallet beside her.

Where is honor?
she thought again.

All this fretting had made her thirsty. As she rose to fetch a cup of water, however, her bare foot brushed something coiled on the floor that hissed in warning.

“Addy?”

She reached down and carefully picked up the swamp adder. Phantom light seeping down the smoke hole gleamed on restless, gilded scales.

“Were you sent to me for protection again?” she asked the snake. “What is Shade up to this time?”

No answer, as usual, except for a flickering black tongue and a mad, orange glare.

She settled Addy a safe distance from Jorin in the warm depression left by her body, dressed, and slipped out of her chambers. One floor down, the cadets slept in their canvas-partitioned quarters. Below, the common hall lay empty and silent. Out onto the boardwalk . . .

Jame shrank back. Against the northern side of New Tentir, the Randir barracks were stealthily astir where a number of cadets waited in the shadow of the arcade’s tin roof. The moon in its last quarter caught Master-Ten Reef’s sharp features as she turned toward a figure darting across the square. Whispers followed, and a hand pointing southward. The waiting Randir streamed out of the shadows like a pack of direhounds running mute on the trail.

Jame followed them out the southern gate. There to her relief they turned east toward the river instead of into the treacherous moraines. Downstream lay a bridge and across it to the south a woodland backed up against the toes of the Snowthorns. If the cadets hadn’t been so intent on their prey, they might have heard her following them for the wood was dark and full of snares for the hasty foot, but no one looked back. When Jame caught up with them, they were crouched behind a rank of bushes under a spreading maple newly leafed out. Jame climbed the tree and edged out onto a bough over their heads. The limb creaked under her weight. One Randir glanced up, but didn’t see her among the broad leaves. The others’ attention was fixed on the glen before them.

Moon and starlight glimmered on two figures there—a hooded man astride a pale horse and a dark, slim girl, one hand on his bridle, earnestly speaking to him. A breeze rustled through the clearing and the rider’s outline seemed to flutter. The mare’s ears pricked toward the bushes. She shook her head and mouthed her bit.

The branch creaked again and slightly gave way.

The Randir drew their bows.

“ ’Ware arrows!” Jame cried, a moment before the bough broke, dumping her and its leafy weight on top of the Randir.

Many were knocked flat. Some, however, let fly. Most of their arrows went wildly astray; others, however, streaked across the glen. The mounted figure seemed to disintegrate into a swirling cloud of jewel-jaws, moon- and shadow-hued. A sword flashed, cutting all but one of the missiles out of the air. The remaining shaft ripped through the hood between head and shoulder, snatching it away from Randiroc’s pale features and white, shaggy hair. He had swung Mirah to cover Shade. The mare danced in place for a moment, then sprang away before the Randir could notch another flight. Whatever happened, Randiroc would not fight the children of his house.

As Jame struggled out of the tangle of limbs, human and arboreal, she thought she saw the Randon Heir still standing there across the clearing. Then he turned and fled. Some Randir fought free to pursue him. They had barely sped away when a second wave of cadets barreled into those still on the ground. Rawneth’s supporters and her opponents fought fiercely, in silence, while Jame wriggled free, only to find herself in the grip of the ten-commander who had put Shade down the well.

“They’re after him,” she gasped.

The commander released her. “Then go.”

Jame ran through the trees toward the sound of fighting, to find the supposed Randir Heir in the hands of his enemies. Jame dropped two cadets with fire-leaping kicks and a third with earth-moving before they realized they were under attack. The other three turned, blades in their hands. Their prey, released, crumpled to the ground.

“This is no business of yours, Knorth,” said Reef.

Jame maneuvered for position, noting their stance and weapons as they spread out to surround her.

“You’ve struck down a fellow randon in unequal combat after an ambush,” she said. “That should concern everyone at the college.”

“Would you tell, then? Go away, little Highborn. Quickly. Before we deal with you as we have with this renegade traitor.”

The one behind her lunged at her back. Jame slid aside in a wind-blowing move, caught the other’s wrist as it shot past, and broke it. The attacker’s momentum sent her stumbling into her mate. Both went down as other Randir began to stagger to their feet. Reef feinted, then slashed, ripping Jame’s jacket as she leaped backward.

Voices called out behind them. Reef backed off, turned, and fled, followed by her companions.

Jame rushed to the fallen “lordan.” Not to her surprise, the latter’s features were in painful flux back to Shade’s. The changer clasped her stomach, trying to hold back a tide of blood. Her hands and the ground beneath her glistened darkly in the moonlight. Jame held her.

“You should be changer enough to close this wound.”

“What does it matter?” Shade spoke through clenched teeth, and gasped as a spasm of pain shook her. “Ah! I would have bound myself to him, but he refused.”

“He didn’t refuse because you’re tainted. I’ve told you: you aren’t.”

“Why, then?”

Trinity, much more of this foolishness and the Randir would bleed to death through sheer stubbornness. Jame scrambled after her wits.

“Think about it,” she said urgently. “The way he lives, in hiding, always on the run—how could he accept a follower?”

“I could serve him at the college, in the field, anywhere.”

“He would still be responsible for you, and he can’t be. Look at all the trouble I’ve had supporting Graykin, and we’ve been under the same roof all winter.”

Shade stared at her. “That scruffy little Southron is bound to you?”

“Yes, but for Perimal’s sake don’t tell anyone. It was an accident. You said once that you didn’t need to be bound to anyone any more than I do, but you can still serve him without that. Look how useful your skills were to him tonight, and may be again in the future. Some day he and Rawneth will clash. Then he’ll need all the allies he can get. Will you consider that, and please stop bleeding?”

Shade was still for a moment. “All right,” she finally said. Her face contorted with effort. Then she sighed and removed her hands from the former wound.

Jame looked up to find that they were surrounded by a circle of silent, watchful Randir.

Two of them stepped forward and helped Shade to rise. Weak from blood loss, she sagged in their steadying grip.

“This is our business now,” said the ten-commander, “and our sister. We will care for her.”

They left, bearing Shade with them.

“I’ll send Addy home,” Jame called after them. “Shade?” But they were gone.

Jame sat back on her heels and considered her torn, blood-soaked clothes. More work for Rue, if she could even save the slowly rotting fabric. Perhaps the changer’s blood wasn’t corrosive enough yet to dissolve steel, but it had certainly ruined yet another bit of Jame’s limited wardrobe.

But oh, what had she said? Now the Randir knew that Graykin was bound to her, and no lady was supposed to bind anyone, never mind that Rawneth did. That settled it: whether he wanted to hear or not, she had to tell her brother before someone else did.

VI

The next morning at assembly, a wan Shade appeared, in company with many battered faces and some broken bones. However, it seemed that no one wanted to report the night’s events to their house. That, thought Jame, was just as well, given their lady’s reaction the last time an assassination attempt on the Randir Heir had failed.

CHAPTER XVII
Out of the Pit

Spring 57–58

I

The days to Summer’s Eve melted away.

It was full spring now, the wind-combed grass on the hills a vivid green speckled with bluebells and dancing golden campion, the apple orchard a drift of sweet blossoms. Birds sang and bees throbbed drunkenly through the air, sometimes bouncing off inauspiciously placed tree trunks. After classes on the afternoon of the fifty-seventh, Jame walked through a high meadow beyond the northern wall, idly gathering wild flowers and watching butterflies for Jorin to chase.

With three black tokens and two white, she was failing Tentir. Only one day of potential tests remained—tomorrow—if she meant to ride north to the hills on the fifty-nineth of Spring in time for Summer’s Eve.

Moreover, she hadn’t yet been tested in the Senetha or the Sene, the two related disciplines besides the Senethar where she could hope to excel. What if they came on the last day, the most important of her college career, when she was gone?

Should she go at all? Where did her responsibility lie, in the hall or in the hills?

On the face of it, the answer was simple. Tori had placed her here against all advice, against even his own common sense, with the sole requirement that she not make fools of them both. If she failed, would anyone care why? They would say that she was and always had been unfit, also that Torisen was a fool to have proposed her in the first place. If a fight with the Randir was coming, even possibly a civil war, did she dare weaken his position in any way? She wasn’t just any Kencyr, either, as Ashe had once pointed out, but a potential Nemesis. Someday one third of the Kencyrath’s destiny might depend on her.