King's Shield (27 page)

“Maybe he deems it better for you not to know. But you must ask him, my prince. I know nothing either. You’ll remember I was dispatched to sea soon after that wretched business.”

Rajnir sighed. “And you have much to do, yes, I hear it in your voice. Just tell me this. Am I a coward to be so concerned? I find my mind full of questions during the day, and confusing dreams at night.”

Durasnir said, “In my experience, the only people who use such words as cowardice are those who do not understand the weight of time, and anticipation, before battle. It is like the advent of thunder, only in the soul. We all feel it, from commander to the smallest horse boy. Yet we will all be in our place, though our heartbeats drum in our ears, when the time comes to face the enemy. I believe that the most fearful man is the bravest because his struggle to be faithful to his Drenskar oaths is the hardest. On him shines the golden light of the Tree.”

“The golden light of the Tree,” Rajnir repeated, his eyes wide as he rested his hand on the candle-tree. “Ydrasal. I must remember Ydrasal,” he whispered, and Durasnir’s neck prickled. These words were not for him, they carried the undertone of a private oath. But then Rajnir looked his way, and his gaze was sane. He smiled and gestured in peace mode. “Go prepare, then, Uncle Fulla. Bring us victory. The Venn need it. I need it.”

Durasnir stared into Rajnir’s young, troubled face. Was this young man he had loved like a son what good kings were made of? The thought made Durasnir uneasy. The question it seemed to be leading to was far too close to treason.

So he would not give it time to form. He had sworn his own oath. Behind all the sonorous words was a simple idea: you are trusted to be where you are ordered to be, doing what you are ordered to do. That was Drenskar. To disobey that oath was to betray the trust of the king, and therefore the trust of the entire kingdom. The good of the kingdom was Ydrasal.

Someday—if he lived—if he were to be called home at last—as a Hyarl he would be choosing a king. That would be the proper time to contemplate the question of what makes a good king.

He saluted, stepped onto the Destination tile, and vanished.

Chapter Twenty-four

IN Lindeth Harbor, five people cursed the sudden spring downpour as they eased along the otherwise mostly empty early morning streets.

Lindeth Harbor was in the process of being rebuilt. Sheets of rain rumbled over raw-planed boards and plin kled against new glass as two of the five splashed from opposite ends up the narrow alley between the dark shells of River’s Edge, the part of town that dealt with the inland river trade.

In many parts of Lindeth people lived crammed in what once were their basements, or stables, or storage sheds as their houses went back up, stone by stone, and then room by room inside. River’s Edge had twice been the entry point for pirate attack (its unofficial name was Pirates’ Bunghole, which the locals, who wanted their new streets and buildings to be stylish, unsuccessfully tried to stamp out) so no one lived there until it was finished, lit, and patrolled.

Occasionally lights were seen, mostly at the old cartographer’s. As the wind sheered, moaning along new roof poles and under bare eaves and around corners of fine stone, one of the two figures surged through the puddles with angry determination, her gaunt body bent into the wind, arms pressed close.

She looked around only twice, each time getting a face full of cold rain. She cursed the rain, cold, her old bones, and the necessity that forced her out into this weather.

She edged closer to the stone wall of what would be the cartographer’s drawing chamber, with its bank of high arched west windows. This cartographer was the best sky-liner—that is, mapmaker who drew in skylines for the traveler to recognize—on the northwest coast.

She slipped into the newly built stable behind the cartographer’s. Justly famed as well as rich, the cartographer had made certain that his house was going up first. Well, she was earning extra money, too. And her house (though small and unpretentious) was done. Meetings had been held there when they did not want the harbormaster interfering in guild business.

But this meeting was no one’s business.

The stable was just boards inside with a tile roof overhead. No new wood had come for two seasons, so a lot of building had come to a halt.

She shook herself off, staring through the open stable door at the back wall of the house, complete to Sartoran sun-circles under the gabled roof-trees. All Lindeth was going to have Sartoran-style architecture—and at the expense of those damn Marlovans.

The doorway darkened. “Guild mistress,” came a familiar voice from inside a shrouding cloak.

The young man she only knew as Rider shook out his cloak, laid it over a beam, then lowered his lanky form to the edge of the new trough, fists on his knees, elbows out.

She did not like him. He reminded her of a human stork with mud-splashed legs and a nest on its head. Even soaked with rain, his short pale hair stuck out in shocks. But there was nothing comical about his steady blue gaze nor, for that matter, was there anything comical about her own tall, meager form, her thin braid of gray hair wound tightly on her head, the grooves in her face worn by decades of pursing her lips.

She had preferred her old contact, a very young woman whose understanding and sympathy had been beyond her years. Rider despised this spy duty, forced on the army since the mage spies had begun vanishing, and he despised this miserly old woman who sold out her own people for a handful of gold pieces. He did little to hide his contempt.

But they needed each other, so they got right to business. “What have you for me?” he asked.

“Two pieces of news,” she said, thinking of her new parlor floor and the fine etched glass she would have upstairs in her own Sartoran sun-circle. “Brought yesterday with a caravan out of the south. One, that Elgar the Fox is a Marlovan, and two, that he not only landed in Iasca Leror, but was seen at one of their Jarl castles. It was called
Marlo-Vayir.
I remember that because it sounds so much like
Marlovan.
”

“How many mouths from the truth?” he asked, not moving.

She said, “Three, including me.”

“For that I need to know exactly who spoke to whom,” he said. He much preferred news that she overheard herself.

“I was told yesterday in conversation with the caravan guide who accompanied the millwheel maker just arrived to help set up our new mill.” She added stiffly, “He’s my sister’s boy’s mate, been running caravans for ten years. He dropped off the millwheeler up at Dockside Circle, to begin working on the kingpin today. The millwheeler saw Elgar himself. He described him clearly enough for me to be certain that he’s the same one who was here two years ago: short, scarred face, brown hair. Rubies in hoops through his earlobes, pirate style. The Jarl family all used his real name, not Elgar. He’s a Marlovan, all right. Probably a murderer, just like they all said years ago.”

She let her voice show her affront. Selling information she might be doing, but it was for the greater cause, and so what if it also netted her money? After the last few years, a person had a right to tuck some extra behind a brick for the next time either Marlovans or pirates burned the harbor down to the ground, and this Elgar fellow was both.

Rider said nothing, just handed her the amount for thirdhand news. Then he picked up his cloak, shook it out, and swirled it around him as he stepped out into the rain.

Her shoulders twitched with ill-humor as she tucked her coins into her belt purse. She began counting to one hundred. They must never be seen walking together, and there was plenty of time yet before the Marlovan patrollers would be this way.

A thump and a thud against the outer wall startled the guild mistress out of her count, but she shrugged, figuring Rider had slipped on the stones and caught himself against the wall. After all, there had never been the slightest problem in the eight years she’d been meeting these . . . riders.

She stamped her shoes well to rid them of mud before she started toward the door, beyond which rain sheeted steadily.

She started violently as three tall figures loomed in the doorway.

She backed inside the stable. The foremost figure strolled in at a languid pace, removed his cloak with an elegant air, and tossed it, dripping, over the bare frame of a loose box.

“Mardric.” Fear gave way to exasperation. She loathed Skandar Mardric, head of the Idayagan and Olaran Resistance. “What are
you
doing here?”

With him was a tall, massive Olaran ironmonger, who rarely spoke but often attended Mardric when he met with harbor leaders. The other was a young rope maker, big ears standing out from his tangled curly hair. She knew he ran messages. Together they seemed oddly . . . purposeful.

Mardric lounged against a roof support.

“Well?” she demanded, perching primly on the edge of the trough where Rider had sat, her rigid posture expressive of indignation. “I am very busy. By the first bell I am expected to meet with the harbormaster.”

Mardric said, “You have been complaining about me.” His heavy-lidded eyes, usually so mocking and sleepy-looking, were wide and direct.

“Yes,” she retorted, determined to maintain her authority. Mardric and his “resistance,” what a joke! She sat even more upright, voice tart with righteous anger. “You go behind everyone’s backs. You sleep with anyone, man or woman, in order to winnow out their secrets. But do you do anything
useful
with that information? No. We are still under the rule of the Marlovans, and you’ve accomplished precisely nothing, except collect large sums from who knows how many cities, for your ‘expenses.’ Which you have never justified, anymore than you have your actions.”

She stopped. He made a wide gesture, almost a courtly bow. “Go on.”

“Two of my neighbors
saw
you row out to talk to those pirates the winter the old Marlovan king was killed.” She squared her shoulders. “Why, to tell the truth, we all thought you were spying for the Marlovans. After all, you never did manage to kill that Prince Evred, despite everyone telling you the Ala Larkadhe castle is honeycombed with secret ways, and two people I personally spoke with said they showed your people ways in.”

“Ye-es,” Mardric drawled. “And every one of them was caught. The Marlovan prince, in his arrogance, let my own brother go free. They, it seems, don’t take us any more seriously than you do. Go on.”

“Go on? I have work to do, even if you don’t.”

“Your work right now is to defend your life,” Mardric drawled, then feigned surprise. “Oh, I didn’t say? My mistake. I thought you heard your Venn friend get his final judgment.”

He turned a hand outward in a lazy gesture. The ironmonger tromped out the stable door, then dragged someone in by his mud-covered heels. Fear flowed cold and terrible along the guild mistress’ nerves as the rest of Rider’s lanky form bumped lifelessly in, sodden cape last. The front of his tunic was dark, soaked with blood where he’d been knifed in the heart.

Mardric said, “Leave him there.”

The ironmonger dropped Rider’s heels.

Mardric laced his fingers together as he regarded the guild mistress. “It’s true that the Marlovan prince—now their king, despite all our efforts—yet lives. But that’s only because no one can get into his citadel in Choraed Hesea. If the word you yourself just sold to the Venn, or tried to—Zek, get the money, would you?—is true, no doubt he’ll soon be back up here at the head of an army. The question is,
why
did you sell that information to the Venn?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She ignored Zek’s outstretched hand and batted mud off her cape, outrage and fear evident in the twitches of her shoulders, the jiggles of the flesh at her jawline. “The only ones strong enough to fight the Marlovans are the Venn.”

Zek turned to Mardric, who made another lazy gesture as he said, “Yes. And if they win, what do we get? Yet another overlord.”

She extended her finger, saw it tremble, and tucked her hand into her armpit. “He promised that the Venn only want to defend against the Marlovans before they get strong enough to launch northward and attack across the sea. We’ve all experienced how no one can stop them. It takes military people to stop military people. The Venn live far away, so once they’ve made sure their borders are safe, they will go home again. I was
promised.
”

Mardric sighed. “Are you really that stupid, or is it just greed? Did you really believe that any great power comes to your home soil just to defend you? Without a price?”

The rain had lifted abruptly, leaving the sound of drips and splashes outside. At a gesture from Mardric, Zek left to do a perimeter prowl—something Rider and the guild mistress had neglected, he thinking she had, and she having relaxed her vigilance years ago.

The guild mistress, authority for so many years—an authority she had worked hard for, and gloried in to the extent that she hadn’t used her own name for twenty-five of those years—turned increasingly horrified eyes from Mardric to the ironmonger. The latter would not meet her gaze.

Mardric smiled. “You have been selling information to the Venn for years now. I finally tracked you down. Thought it was a pirate spy at first, or a Marlovan, or a thief or dockside rat, but it was
you.
I didn’t believe it. Had to hear it myself. Not thirdhand, not even secondhand. You, an Olaran. With pride of rank.” His teeth showed on the last word.

“I told you why. It’s so they can fight the Marlovans.” Her voice shook.

“They are going to fight the Marlovans anyway.” Mardric waved a hand to and fro. “If you had told us about your spy contact five years ago—two years ago—we could have included you in the plans.”

“You talked of big plans, but no one ever saw anything actually happen,” she retorted. “I’m not the only one who thought you were just a cheat, taking good money as an excuse to seduce those foreign boys and girls if they were young and pretty enough. I remember
quite
well, your going on about how pretty those pirates were!” She made a spitting motion to the side.