King's Shield (5 page)

Tau was puzzled by her flush. Anger? Her voice, so deep—she’d had the deepest voice of all until the boys crossed the threshold of puberty—was like the rough, chesty growl of a big feline.

He laughed. “Jeje, you are impossible to understand at times. Will you, or will you not, permit me to use some of my trained trickery on you? Inda has asked me often enough, when his wounds trouble him. I believe we survived the encounters.”

Jeje flumped over, her arms stiff at her sides. She knew her shift was awry, her drawers twisted, but she wouldn’t fumble at her clothes. Wouldn’t move.

Fingers traced lightly along her back muscles, leaving tiny trails of warm prickles. She shut her eyes and clenched her teeth harder. Tau’s fingers expertly found the knots and kneaded deeply, a rhythmic, soothing sensation that really did ease the aches gathered all along her lower back—aches she hadn’t even been aware of because of the worse ones down below.

Despite her control her breathing eased as the pain faded, leaving the warmth of . . . no. No! But when his fingers moved to her legs, and he worked his way along her pain-stiffened thigh muscles, the easement, and the attendant crescendo of building desire, made her unable to resist when he gently tugged at her to turn over. She kept her eyes shut, but her flesh and nerves tingled with expectancy.

“Ah,” Tau breathed. “Ah.” And his hands drifted up her body, so gently, so softly, she didn’t even realize he’d lifted her shift until the cold morning air touched her charged flesh.

He chuckled, the sound sending another flare of insistence through her.

She opened her dark brown eyes. He gazed down, enjoying very much the confusion he saw in her usually capable, closed face. Jeje the wise, the considerate, the cool hand with bow and arrow who sailed through the worst fire-fights, and there were two, no, three, arrow scars to prove it. Not that she had ever complained, or even let anyone see them.

He saw them now, and bent to kiss each. Long, soft kisses, and he sniffed her warm, slightly salty scent, and then bent to kiss her brow, and when her breathing altered, the tip of her nose, and then her parted lips.

She growled, the jagged purr of a mountain cat.

Now thoroughly enchanted, Tau pressed soft kisses on her collarbones, and she lay with her hands open, eyelashes fluttering on her cheeks as he, with infinite care, moved downward—

A thud on the door startled them.

“Sunup! You awake?” Inda yelled through the flimsy wood.

“No,” Tau called, and grinned down at Jeje, a laughing grin that brought an even deeper flush to her cheeks, and her own rare, endearing grin in return. “We’re busy.”

“Well, hurry up!” And, diminishing down the hall, Inda’s plaintive addition, “Why didn’t they think of that last night?”

“Should we go?” Jeje asked.

Tau was delighted to see his own want reflected in her steady dark eyes. “Let them linger over their breakfast,” he suggested, and she laughed.

Chapter Four

CHERRY-STRIPE Marlo-Vayir and his brother, Buck, watched from the dining chamber windows as their father limped across the courtyard below toward the stable. When old Hasta was out of sight, his thin gray-white horsetail flopping on his broad back, Cherry-Stripe elbowed Buck. “See that? He’s like a boy again.”

Their father had returned for a short time from the enormous horse stud the Marlo-Vayirs maintained in their plains, a day’s ride to the north. He had begun this past winter brooding and quiet. Though no one referred to it, they could not forget that shortly after the previous New Year’s Convocation, Hasta had been drawn into Mad Gallop Yvana-Vayir’s conspiracy, which had led to a royal bloodbath.

When it came time to depart for the royal city for this winter’s Convocation, as all Jarls had to do each New Year’s in order to renew their oaths, Hasta had insisted on his elder son going to make his vows to the king as the new Jarl of Marlo-Vayir. “Young kings need young Jarls,” he had said. His son obeyed—but he’d been afraid he’d return and find his father dead.

Instead, old Hasta had retired to the horse stud, where he seemed happier than he’d been for years. He came back only to consult with Buck about the crop rotation and arrange for some supplies, then he was off again.

Buck shook his head in silent amazement, then grabbed a last bread roll from the plate on the table. “Cama up yet?”

“I don’t think so,” Cherry-Stripe replied, rolling his eyes as he dropped down onto his seating mat before the long, low table his ancestors had had put in generations ago, when Marlovans had first taken over the Iascan castles.

Buck snickered. “Mran?”

Cherry-Stripe groaned. “Wailing like balladeers.”

Who could have predicted that little buck-toothed Mran, Cherry-Stripe’s practical, quiet, efficient twig of a wife, a daughter of the ancient and efficient Cassads, would conceive the grandest of passions for the handsome one-eyed Camarend Tya-Vayir? No, that was to be expected. All the females seemed to lust after Cama. What was strange was that he—the handsomest man in the kingdom and once the lover of the handsomest woman, Joret Dei—had fallen for Mran just as passionately.

Buck found the absurdity hugely entertaining. He laughed as he loped down the stairs to begin the day. But Cherry-Stripe lounged on his mat, one elbow on the table as he slurped down a last cup of steeped mountain-leaf. He scowled at the prospect of facing the icy air. Wasn’t winter supposed to end
some
day?

His sour mood received an unexpected diversion, the quick step of his First Runner. The man ran in, amazement widening his eyes. “Word from the outer perimeter Riders.”

“Attack?” Cherry-Stripe leaped to his feet.

“No. They encountered a party on the west road at sunset, about to camp. Two men, two women, all dressed in outlandish garb. Four horses from the south—river lending stock. One of the men says to tell you, and the words are these.” His expression smoothed into the studied neutrality of formal mode, approximating the tone of the verbal message as close as was humanly possible, “Tell Cherry-Stripe Inda is here.”

“Inda,” Cherry-Stripe repeated, at first thinking of his old academy mate Noddy’s newborn baby, and then he grabbed the Runner by the tunic laces and yelped, “
Inda
?”

The man’s head rocked. “Yes,” he wheezed, eyes bulging.

Cherry-Stripe let go, threw back his head, and yipped the ancient cry of Marlovans on the charge.

From far below came his brother’s voice,
Yip! Yip! Yip!
And then from the guest rooms above came a faint answer:
Yip! Yip! Yip!

All over the castle servants, Runners, armsmen, bakers, brewers, weavers stopped what they were doing and exchanged wondering glances.

 

 

 

It was inevitable the first one they noticed was Tau.

Buck, Cama, and Cherry-Stripe drew rein on a grassy bluff above the curve of the road. As the newcomers rode sedately around the bend below, accompanied by a pair of Marlo-Vayir perimeter riders, the three surveyed them: two men, two women, all in outlandish garb. One, a scar-faced fellow, medium height and broad through the chest and shoulders, the other fellow, tall, fair-haired, and striking.

Cherry-Stripe muttered in amazement, “Is
that
Inda?”

“Nooo,” Cama drew the word out, expressive of disgust. His breath clouded in the cold air. “Inda wouldn’t ride like an old sack of bran.”

Buck smothered a crack of laughter, and they studied the party more closely, bypassing the short, solid woman with the chin-length, flyaway dark hair and a glittering ruby at one ear. The tall man wore one as well. The other woman was even more nondescript. No earring. The husky scar-faced fellow wore a long brown sailor braid down his back. Same outlandish attire—his long shirt-tunic was sashed with pirate purple, old and stained as it was. And he wore
two
rubies, one in each of the gold hoops in his ears. But at least—unlike the others—he knew how to sit a horse. He rode easily, his head bent as he listened to one of the others jabbering—and when he turned his thumb up, that gesture resonated down nine years of memory.

“Inda?” Cherry-Stripe said in disbelief, and then howled, “Inda!”

Who jerked his head up, hands snapping to the knives strapped to his forearms inside his loose sleeves. He peered up at the three silhouettes on the hill. The diffuse sunlight glared from behind them, but he could make out some details: two blonds and a black-haired young man with an eye patch.

Inda’s heart drummed when he saw that eye patch. “Cama?” Then one of those blond men had to be—“Cherry-Stripe!”

Signi flinched as the three on the hill uttered high, harsh cries like some predatory beast on the run. Their horses seemed to leap down the hill, raising a spectacular cloud of dust. The rising wind sent it swirling as the three circled Inda, laughing and shouting questions that no one could listen to because they all spoke at once.

Then Cherry-Stripe yelled in a field-command voice, “Weather’s on the way! Come on, let’s ride for home!”

Buck yipped again, taking the lead. Cama and Cherry-Stripe were after him like arrows from a bow. Inda started to follow, then kneed his horse to a prancing, snorting stop as he called over his shoulder, “Come on, Tau, Jeje. Signi?”

Tau waved. “Ride on, we’ll catch up.”

Inda sent an inquiring look to Signi, who understood at once that he was torn by concern for her and longing to be with the friends he had not seen since childhood. She lifted her hand toward them; he smiled, wheeled the horse, and was gone in a cloud of dust.

Jeje cocked an eye at Tau. He lifted his chin. Jeje and he parted, and with some determined knee-nudging and tugs on the reins, got their horses to jounce forward to either side of the Venn dag.

 

 

 

The storm Cherry-Stripe had seen on the horizon was sending sleet pounding against the windows as the party sat on mats in the Marlo-Vayirs’ dining room.

Since their arrival they’d been barking questions at one another. The servants coming and going stared at the exotic dress of the newcomers. None of the old academy mates noticed. Jeje stayed by Signi, who never made an unnecessary movement at any time; she seemed smaller, almost invisible again.

“I can’t hear anyone. Let’s ask questions in round,” Buck said. “Me first. Inda! D’you really command a pirate fleet?”

Cherry-Stripe leaned over the table, ignoring his brother. “Barend said it really was you, scragging those soul-sucking pirates two winters back. How’d you come to fighting pirates?”

“Didn’t Barend tell you?” Inda replied, turning from one to the other. “What’s happened to Noddy? Flash?” And to Buck, “We were building a fleet in the east, when—”

“Flash is a great man now—Flash-Laef, no, what’s his real name?”

“Tlennen.” Cama snickered. “Now Tlennen-Laef. Imagine calling Flash Tlennen.”

“His mother must.” Cherry-Stripe whacked Cama. “Quiet. Inda, Flash is now Laef of Olara, his father being Jarl. Brother died leading an attack against the damned red sails on the Idayagan coast—”

“—and Noddy married a year back, because his cousin never did get an heir, and Noddy’s dad being Randael before he died at—”

“—ho, Evred told us we all needed to marry early. On account of the war—”

Inda’s head jerked back and forth as he tried to keep up his end of the question-answer cross-shoot. “—and took his raffee, then we netted us a couple of trysails—”

“What’s a raffee?”

“—and Noddy’s wife had a baby over winter. Did you know he named him after you?”

“Barend Montrei-Vayir stopped here before he went north, and he said you were goin’ after the Venn up on the north coast—”

“What’s a raffee?”

The voices got louder and louder until Buck smacked his hand flat on the table. “Quiet! All of you!”

The guests fell silent. Cherry-Stripe made a rude noise.

“I can’t hear, and worse, no one can hear me.” Buck scowled down the table.

Cama was laughing silently; Cherry-Stripe flipped up the back of his hand at his brother, at which Buck’s wife Fnor made a scandalized hiss, tipping her head meaningfully toward the guests. Mran quietly made certain everyone got some hot cider to drink.

Buck hooked his thumbs toward his chest. “First me, since I’m the Jarl here.” And over his brother’s even louder rude noise, “What is a raffee?”

“It’s a capital ship, named after its foresail, which—”

Buck smacked his palm on the table again. “What’s a foresail?”

“On the foremast you have—”

“What’s a foremast?”

Cama was laughing so hard his face was crimson, which made Buck and his wife begin to laugh. Even Mran chuckled, a sound not unlike boiling water.

Cherry-Stripe now smacked the table, making the dishes clatter. “That’s enough with the boats. Nobody wants to hear about boats. Not until we see one, which we never will. Inda. Your turn to ask a question.”

Inda said, “How did Sponge come to be king?”

Chapter Five

THE humor vanished as quick as the sun that morning, as all three of Inda’s old academy mates reacted typically: Buck busied himself with unnecessary gestures to the servants now bringing in the meal, and waited for his brother to speak, Cherry-Stripe having been Inda’s scrub mate. Cherry-Stripe grimaced at Cama, waiting for the others to broach the subject, knowing it was craven, but sometimes he just had to rabbit out of a nasty duty. He wasn’t any good with words anyway, he told himself.

Cama, who was on the wrong side to see Cherry-Stripe’s not-so-subtle glances and surreptitious jabs of the chin in Inda’s direction, glowered down at the table through his one good eye while the food was served, thinking about how to word the bleak story.

A servant offered Inda the rice-and-cabbage balls that were so familiar from his childhood. That sight, and the long-missed aromas of the food and the fresh-baked rye biscuits made his eyes sting. He had to get used to that, how joy and pain together would fountain up inside him until it splashed out in tears. He dashed his sleeve impatiently across his eyes.