Land of the Burning Sands (35 page)

But what she had not expected was to find her brother in that common room when she came down for supper.

Lord Bertaud was not yet in evidence. But her brother, Sicheir, had already laid claim to a long table to one side. He did not look surprised in the least to see his sister, but only stood up and politely drew her chair out for her.

Tehre cast her gaze upward. “Fareine wrote more letters than just to my father, I surmise. Sicheir—”

“Tehre.” Her brother came to take her hands, giving her an anxious up-and-down glance. “Fareine wrote, yes. You should have sent me word yourself. Are you well? Are you sure? I think I got a tolerably complete account—is it true the Arobern didn’t seem inclined to blame you, us? It
is
still true that Lord Fellesteden’s heirs aren’t trying to charge you legally somehow? Did you leave someone looking out for our interests in Breidechboden, besides the estimable Fareine?”

“Fareine will contact a good legist if there’s difficulty,” Tehre assured him. “The Arobern already ruled against Lord Fellesteden’s estate when he gave Gereint to his mage, so the precedent is set our way. Maybe the heirs are glad he’s gone: He was a terrible man. Fareine must have told you what he tried to do.”

“And I’m very glad she did,” Sicheir said firmly, drawing her toward the table. “Come sit down, do, and give me a more complete account. I think perhaps you were wise to leave the city, though I don’t want anyone thinking our family would run from a threat or entanglement. I thought of going to Breidechboden myself, taking up residence, being a visible presence.” A solid, aggressive, male presence, he did not say. But that’s what he meant.

Tehre glared at him. “
I
could have stayed just as well. I didn’t leave Breidechboden because I was afraid of Fellesteden’s heirs!”

“Of course not,” said her brother, meaning that maybe she should have. “Though you should have sent for me. Tell me everything, will you? And about this foreign lord—especially about the foreign lord. What’s he want in the north, do you even know? Or at least, what reason did he give you? You’ve no reason to trust a word he said, you know, foreign as he is! You know, the Arobern may not be very happy with you agreeing to escort this Feierabianden lord into the north—likely he’s a spy, did you think of that?”

Tehre blinked. “He can’t be. Spies sneak, don’t they? They’re unobtrusive, you know, they get into things and you never know it. Lord Bertaud is about as conspicuous as anybody could be. He can’t sneak about, how could he? Anybody can see he’s foreign!”

“Tehre, sometimes a spy doesn’t have to tiptoe. This man—”

“He belongs to the Safiad. It’s no secret; everybody knows it. Anyway, it doesn’t make any sense, him leaving Breidechboden for the north, except just for the reason he said, because he wants to see what problem there is with the griffins. It’s only natural he’d want to know about that, don’t you think?”

“And only natural the Arobern wouldn’t care to have him strolling up north to look, especially if there’s something to see—”

“He said plainly the Arobern can’t tell him where to come or go—”

“All the more reason not to be seen in his company, when he waves his untouchable defiance at the Arobern! Tehre, you’ve got to leave him. I’m here now. I brought a few men with me, we don’t need the foreigner’s men, least of all do we need
them
! We’ll go back to Breidechboden, or if you insist we can go on north, but just you and I and our people, decidedly not in some foreign lord’s dubious company!”

Tehre hesitated. In a way, this even made sense. But she said slowly, “It’s obvious why he wanted to travel with me. He made no secret of that, you know. The company of a Casmantian, especially a Casmantian lady, eases his way through our country. I told him I would travel with him, Sicheir. I told him he could visit our father’s house. I can’t now say I changed my mind—”

“Of course you can!”

“—and just leave him on the road. It wouldn’t be right!”

“Tehre…”

“And it’s
not necessary
. You’re far too concerned about appearances, but I don’t think anything looks as bad as you think. Sicheir, maybe you’d better tell me now what you’ve heard. Just what did Fareine put in that letter?”

The problem, as Tehre knew perfectly well, was that if she stamped her foot and cried,
I can take care of myself
, she would look like a child. If she went cold and angry, she would look like a wicked-tempered harridan, and moreover would seem to distrust her brother. Yet, though she could not shout or even complain, if she was sweet and reasonable and said anything like
Well, I’m glad you’re here
to her brother, that would make it seem that she agreed Fareine had been right to send for Sicheir, which she did
not
.

She rubbed her forehead, wondering if there might still be time to turn away the headache she felt coming on if she asked the inn staff for willowbark tea immediately. “Fareine pulled you away from your work—the work of a lifetime, and what if the Arobern’s administrators won’t permit you to come back? Sicheir, you walked away from the Arobern’s new road; are you going to be able to go back to it? Tell me you haven’t lost your chance to work on it—”

“I told the court administrator overseeing the work that I needed to see to urgent family business. He understood. Tehre—”

But Sicheir did not have an opportunity to finish his thought. At that moment, Lord Bertaud himself came down the stairs into the common room, paused for a moment, located Tehre, and noted Sicheir’s presence. The expression fell off his face instantly, replaced by the courteous, empty smile of an experienced courtier suddenly dropped into uncertain circumstances. He made his way across the room, weaving between the tables, nodded to Tehre, and turned that blank smile to Sicheir.

Tehre said, “Lord Bertaud, may I present to you my brother, Sicheir Amnachudran? Sicheir is an engineer and a builder; if you have any questions about the new road, you should ask him. Sicheir, this is Lord Bertaud—” She should say,
son of Somebody
, but what was the name he’d given her? Some soft-sounding Feierabianden name; she couldn’t remember. She said instead, “Of Feierabiand, one of the Safiad’s close advisors.” Well, he hadn’t said so, but he must be, for the king of Feierabiand to send him here. She finished, “The Safiad sent him to oversee the construction of the new road, so if you have any thoughts about that, I’m sure he’d be glad to hear them.”

“To be sure,” the foreign lord said smoothly. He answered Sicheir’s respectful bow with a little nod of his own and added, “The road is a great undertaking. I have studied the plans carefully. Only the engineers of Casmantium could build such a structure. But perhaps you could explain to me the difference between an engineer and a builder?”

Sicheir blinked, startled and disarmed by this interest. “Well, lord, the distinction is clear enough. An engineer understands the theory of building, but a builder has the gift of making. Engineers might direct the new construction, but it’s builders you want to actually lay their hands on the stone and iron. You have makers in Feierabiand, of course. Some, surely, must become builders?”

“But not like yours. It seems to me the new road will come to rival any structure ever built by the hands of men. The plans for the bridges and the buttressed roads are quite extraordinary.”

“You’re kind to say so, lord. If I may observe, you speak Prechen very well.”

“Ah—” Lord Bertaud glanced at Tehre, who did not want to try to describe her insight about language as a made structure and therefore merely gazed back with bland, innocent eyes. “Ah,” murmured the foreign lord again. “Thank you. Ah, forgive me—”

“One would say, ‘honored sir,’” Sicheir explained, apparently understanding the dilemma, which Tehre had not. “My sister has her title from our mother and her family—the title of nobility passes only from mother to daughter in a morganatic marriage such as our parents’. It’s different in Feierabiand, I believe.”

Lord Bertaud gave an ambiguous little tip of the head and made a polite little gesture of invitation, meaning they should all sit. “You are my guests,” he declared. “No, please permit me the indulgence. Tell me about the road and the experience of building, honored Sicheir. What is your part in this great project? Have you been involved with anything comparable in the past?”

Tehre sat back and watched as her brother was, despite his concerns and suspicions and more than half against his will, drawn out into a companionable discussion of the Arobern’s road. She had not precisely seen Lord Bertaud as a real court noble; he seemed too direct, too little pretentious. Now she saw that he was indeed an experienced courtier. Was charm, too, possibly a sort of making? Not even as structured as language, far less than a proper structure of stone or wood. What would the components of a courtier’s charm be? Come to that, what exactly would the finished structure be? Maybe the analogy would not stretch quite so far… Then, as Sicheir began to sketch the first of the great bridges that would span a wide chasm, she dismissed the question and leaned forward.

“Is that to scale? Then it’s all wrong. Masonry’s too heavy for that width,” she commented. “You have to have too much rise for that run. It could be done if you had a series of arches, but you can’t put in a series if there’s too much fall under the bridge, and I’m sure there is. No, Sicheir, not only will this design be very difficult to build, it’ll be thoroughly unsound. Who designed this?”

“Tirechkeir.”

“Yes, it’s just like Emnon Tirechkeir to design something that looks like a radical departure but that really draws on a long tradition of design that doesn’t actually apply to the situation at hand. The first problem is a wrong choice of materials. I really don’t think masonry is the proper material to span such a long distance.”

“It’s available. We can get any quantity of good stone out of those mountains. That’s a big asset, Tehre.”

“However easy it is to get, it’s far too heavy for this use. You’ll never get it anchored properly, or if you do, it’ll be because it’s too steep to be practical.” Tehre looked around absently for paper. Someone pushed a whole stack of good-quality draftsman’s paper across the table to her—oh, Lord Bertaud, how clever of him to see what she wanted—she took the quill out of her brother’s hand and began to sketch. “Now something like this would be much lighter and far easier to build. See, you can make
very
steep arches, as long as you hang the bridge
from
the arches rather than making the arches the footing of the actual bridge itself. You’d cast these arches of iron, you can do that in Ehre, there’s no need to try to do it in place. Then just lift them into place from either side. Then use wrought-iron chains and suspend a timber bridge from the arches—”

Sicheir picked up the sketch and stared at it.

“It will work,” Tehre insisted. “The theory is perfectly sound. Just because no one’s used this kind of structure before doesn’t mean it’s not sound. Here, look, let me show you how the mathematics work out. I know the mathematics can be misleading, there’s something missing from our understanding of the equations…” She tapped the quill absently against her lips, thinking about missing quantities and concepts.

Sicheir interrupted her abstraction with practiced emphasis. “Oh, I believe you. It’s not that I don’t believe you. Tehre, you ought to come back to Ehre with me; you should help me present this to Prince Bestreieten himself.” He saw her baffled expression and said patiently, “The Arobern’s brother is overseeing the whole project, Tehre, you knew that, surely! He’d be interested in this—and if no one else has ever built a bridge this way, he’ll only be more interested: He knows very well his brother would love to have special, unique bridges for his road. If you come—”

“I can’t,” Tehre said, surprised. “You know I’m going north.” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “You
do
know I’m going north. Sicheir, that isn’t kind, pretending you want me to come to Ehre when really you simply don’t want me going north with Lord Bertaud.”

Everyone stopped, looking at the foreign lord.

Lord Bertaud leaned back in his chair, tilted his head quizzically to one side, and regarded Sicheir with raised-eyebrow curiosity.

Sicheir flushed. So did Tehre, realizing for the first time that she had, once again, managed to say something desperately tactless. She should have let Fareine come after all; Fareine would have known how to interrupt her, or what to say now to smooth the moment…

“Honored lady, your honored brother undoubtedly
did
come find you to ask your advice about the bridges,” Meierin said in her quiet little voice. “It will be much harder for him to ask you about things like this,” she tapped the sketches they’d been drawing, “once you are so far away in your father’s house.”

Then the girl turned gracefully to Lord Bertaud and went on, sweetly reasonable, “Of course the honored Sicheir Amnachudran is grateful for your offer to escort Lady Tehre to her father’s house, Lord Bertaud. It was so kind of you. You’ve seen how skilled a maker the honored lady is; perhaps you will be kind again and forgive the honored Sicheir his attempt to persuade his honored sister to go west with him now? Of course”—with an understanding nod for Tehre—“she will not go. You should know”—with a reproving look at Sicheir—“that when Lady Tehre says she means to visit your honored parents, she will not change her mind for anything.”

Tehre stared at the girl. “You sound just like Fareine!”

Meierin lowered her eyes modestly. “Thank you, honored lady. I hope I have profited from the honored Fareine’s instruction.”