Sasharia En Garde (27 page)

Damedran turned his puffy face Ban’s way, then flashed up
the back of his hand.

Despite the insult Ban was not angry. Not when he saw the
spasm of pain that tightened Damedran’s features.

Ban, Bowsprit, and a couple of others exchanged wry looks.
Nothing felt quite real any more; life was no longer predictable. One thing was
clear, despite his drubbing Damedran was going to carry on anyway.

The trumpet pealed, and everyone looked up.

“Teams gather here,” bawled the captain in charge of the
relay.

Damedran limped slowly to the edge of the field from which
the sprinters would take off on the first leg of the relay. Paying no attention
to the chatter around him, he said, “I’ll ride. Can’t run or canoe.” He gave
them a painful grimace that was supposed to be a smile.

Ban saw Wolfie peering intently to one side, his mouth
twisted in the smirk that meant either he’d been fighting or was going to
fight. And there was Red moseying along, looking skyward, as he passed by the
various teams assembling. He slowed near the strangers who had so unaccountably
appeared and taken all the prizes. Red stopped as the unfamiliar four talked
briefly and quietly among themselves, bent to pick something from one boot,
then he straightened up and sauntered with a bit more speed to Wolfie, and
muttered behind his hand.

Wolfie beckoned to a couple of their other followers, and
Ban suspected what was probably going to happen. He knew his guess was right
when Wolfie stepped up to Damedran and said, “The little one is doing the
ride.” He chuckled the way he always did before somebody ended up getting
scragged. “Guess they won’t win the relay.”

Damedran shook his head.

Ban said in disgust, “You’re going to drop on the littlest
one.”

Wolfie, Red, and the other two turned his way, their faces
ranging from guilty to defiant to angry.

Damedran said, surprising them all, “That’s not an . . .
an . . . a fair scrag. Dropping on a little boy, that’s just
rabbiting.”

“Fair?” Wolfie repeated derisively. For him, a scrag was a
scrag. Any excuse served to have one, because he always won.

“Fair?” Red repeated, as if he’d never heard the word.

“But you dropped Lesi Valleg,” Ban observed. It had been a
guess. He saw from Damedran’s quick grimace that he’d been right.

“That was different,” Damedran muttered, trying not to look
yet again to where the tall, thin girl with the sling-bound arm stood, her
straight brows low, watching him with unsmiling intensity. “We couldn’t win
against her. I wanted, I needed, wins in everything.” He dropped his head back,
uttering a strangled laugh.

“It isn’t different,” Ban said.

Damedran’s mouth tightened. He opened his hand. “She
wouldn’t have won anyway. Not against that little brat.”

“Who
are
they?”
asked Calan Pradiesh, Red’s cousin from the coast.

“I don’t know.” Damedran shifted with painful care to observe
the newcomers, who stood in line, the tall one grinning at something the short
one said, the fair-haired one looking pensive, the one with the wild, curly
hair watching two raptors riding the thermals high up under the flat carpet of
tiny puff clouds that promised rain. “But he used moves I’ve never seen.” He
fingered his shoulder, winced again. “Or felt.”

They all reflected on the grappling. The lazy way the tall
one moved to block, to deflect, and his whip-fast, brutal attacks. All without
breaking a sweat.

“They won’t win,” Wolfie reminded them, rubbing his hands.

Ban studied the small boy who stood there so still and
poised as he contemplated the stands where the commanders sat with the prince.
Neither of the Randarts smiled, and all the seniors knew they were angry. But
they could do nothing. The competition was open, and had been for years.

Nobody cared what Prince Jehan thought.

Ban said suddenly, privately, to Bowsprit, “I think . . .”
He shook his head.

Bowsprit turned his thin, pointy nose toward Wolfie’s huge,
muscular form, and then to the small, slender boy who was probably about nine,
if that. “I think so, too.”

“First-leg runners, line up here,” called the captain.
“Second-leg canoe, follow Captain Semmeg, third-leg mountain climbers, follow
Captain Torvic, and the horse riders for the last leg, you go with Captain
Lesstrad to your posts. We’ve got animals up there waiting for you.” The
trumpet played the signal, and a roar went up as the relay racers separated.

Ban took off behind Captain Torvic, along with the five
other members of cadet teams, two members of the royal fleet, and the blond
foreigner with the pensive face, the one who had won every single sword match.

Ban loped in the fellow’s direction, questions forming in
his mind, but the other cadets reached the unknown first.

“Where you from?” piped a ten-year-old.

“Oh, here and there, you might say,” was the answer, with a
faint trace of accent. “Never really settled in one place.”

“Where’d you learn your sword work?”

The fellow smiled. “Various teachers. They tend to be hard
on mistakes, so, you know, we learn to make as few as possible.”

“How hard?” asked a fourteen-year-old girl with the
squint-eyed distrust of the middle teens.

“Let’s say . . . they broke us of bad
habits.”

Everyone, even the ten-year-old, heard the humorous
ambiguity behind “broke.”

“Belay the chatter and hurry up there,” called Captain
Torvic.

That ended the talk until they reached the site for their
leg of the relay. While they waited, the newcomer prowled around looking down
at the road, up at the cliffs, at the distant sea, at the sky, and though Ban
watched him steadily, he never turned Ban’s way.

The newcomer with the frizzy hair was first to their post,
and the blond one took off. One of their own group was next, crimson faced with
effort, and Ban sprinted up the mountain, hoping he would not see Wolfie or
Red, but afraid he knew where they were.

When he reached the last leg, gasping with effort, the
little boy was gone, and the blond fellow sat on the grass, smiling at the sky.
Ban almost said something, but shook his head and started back down the trail
to the academy.

It was a long, hot, gloomy walk. He took the horse trail
anyway, but didn’t see anyone.

When he reached the academy, it was to find out that the
newcomers had won. The small boy rode bareback into the center of the parade
ground on a high-spirited charger, his hands not even on the reins.

Prince Jehan was the first to applaud, and then the others
joined, but not with any spirit. The river-rush of voices all talking and
exclaiming was almost louder than the clapping.

Bowsprit and Ban, having hoped the boy would escape being
scragged by Wolfie, Red, and their chosen few senior cadets, said nothing at
all as they followed the glum seniors to the parade ground for the distribution
of the prizes.

Up in the stands, Dannath Randart was so angry he felt his
blood boiling in a drumbeat through his head. But he schooled himself to sit
without moving, fists on his knees, as he stared down at the shambles of his
plan.

Plans could be remade. He knew that. He glowered at his
nephew, who limped from the horse picket across to the senior line. Why did the
idiot have to ride in the relay when he could barely sit his horse, just to
lose yet again? Now Randart had to consider ways to wrench some kind of victory
from the distasteful, no, the
shameful
exhibition.

The blame would go squarely on the shoulders of the
staggeringly stupid white-haired fatwit sitting to his right, who was now
getting up and flicking dust from his faultless velvet in order to go down to
the field to hand out the prizes.

Randart glared at Jehan. “Those newcomers. I want them.” And
at the shocked look on Orthan’s face, he forced a semblance of civility into
his tone. “I believe the king would want to hear about their training. Please,
your highness, request them to honor us for a celebratory glass up in the
command tower.”

Jehan, as always, was oblivious to the sudden change of
tone—

Jehan. Prisoners. Market Street—cadets—

Randart put out a hand, remembering again what had bothered
him when he woke up. He’d been bothered enough to go down to the lockup and ask
a few questions, despite the loaded schedule. “You arrested a cutpurse in
Market Street yesterday?”

Jehan’s thin brows lifted. “I did?”

“Damedran saw you. That is, the boys saw you from the senior
barracks. But the only thief in the lockup is the pickpocket brought in by the
pier patrol on the morning rotation.”

Jehan sighed, looking apologetic. “Well. I did try. But my
miscreant got away.”

So he
didn’t
have
any of his followers in the king’s guard with him. “Why didn’t you call up the
guard? There’s always a patrol within earshot.”

“I thought they were off duty,” Jehan said vaguely. “I did
not like to disturb them.”

Randart sat back in disgust. He marshaled himself enough to
say with forced politeness, “I believe they are waiting on their prizes, your
highness. Forgive me for detaining you.”

Jehan bowed, a court bow and highly inappropriate here, but
that was as usual. Everything was as usual, so why did he feel something
crucial was missing from that testimony?

I’m seeing
conspiracies everywhere
, Randart thought. But just the same, before the
prince reached the end of the platform and was about to step down into the
regular stands to descend to the field, he called, “Remember, after we speak to
the winners, the king requires you to remain with us. Your highness.”

Once again a court bow, hand gracefully at his heart, and
Jehan ran lightly down the steps to the field, where the captains had the cadets
lined up in field order. While the seniors looked around for Wolfie and Red and
their two cronies, Randart said to his brother, “I want the prince followed.
Say it’s for his safety. But put someone discreet on it.”

Startled, Orthan leaned over to speak to the aide on duty,
who hustled along the back of the platform to the hidden doorway leading down
to the guardroom.

The brothers turned their attention back to the field, where
Jehan stood next to the four small cadets who so carefully held the prizes.
Both forgot the prince when they saw why the ceremonies had not begun. It was
not Jehan getting himself lost counting butterflies, it was because the
recipients were nowhere in sight.

Randart gripped the edge of his seat. “The little one was
just there, riding that horse. Where did he go? Find them. I want them.
Whatever excuse it takes. I want to know who they are. Why they were here, if
it wasn’t to compete to get into our training.”

Orthan got up. After a glance at his brother’s face, he
hustled after his own underling.

On the field, Jehan spoke a few graceful words that few
listened to, then gave the signal for the captains to dismiss the contestants.
The cadets surged toward the mess hall, everyone voicing his or her opinion, or
putting questions to the air. Comments and questions mirrored in the watchers
in the stands, who filed out the other way and back down the long zigzagging
steps into the harbor city below.

As Jehan traversed the halls between the guard barracks and
the academy, the morvende part of his hearing, developed for generations to
sift human sound from wind and water rushing along stone tunnels and caverns,
registered footsteps matching his pace.

He paused at the guard room to get a drink of water after
the long, hot afternoon in the sun, nodded pleasantly when the guards on duty
leaped to their feet and saluted, and waved them lazily back to their seats. No
one entered after him.

He left. Moseyed slowly to the mess hall, hot as it was and
smelling of fish simmered in herbs and tomato. Below that he detected the
distinct odor of summer-afternoon adolescent sweat. Jehan stepped into the
kitchen, nipped a biscuit from one of the trays being pulled from the oven, and
exited through the opposite door as he tossed the hot biscuit from hand to hand.

Still there, same distance back.

Down to the cadet stable, which was built into the oldest
part of the castle. There he asked about some of his favorite mounts and
ordered Clover to be saddled up. “I want to ride back along the relay trails,”
he said clearly. “I hope our mysterious visitors did not get lost somewhere
along the way.”

While the duty cadets and the shadow busied themselves with
horse saddling, Jehan slipped through the tack room into the old storage room,
which smelled of mildew and stone. He slid the bolt, then keyed the entrance to
a passageway that Prince Math had shown him when he was a boy, the single time
they had been there together.

When he emerged at the other end, he was dressed again in
the blue outfit, a fisherman’s stocking cap on his head hiding his hair, his
brown velvet hanging in a net bag over his shoulder. He made his way through
the rotting barrels that hid the door to the passage, slipped into the alley
behind the old row of shops, and from there he strolled into Market Street as
the low sun slanted ochre shafts between buildings.

Jehan didn’t trouble to look around. The shadow would be
riding as fast as he could for the relay trail, which was sure to keep him or
her busy for a while. Jehan suspected that David and his three friends, who had
indicated they would speak to him after the competition, would find him if they
wanted him.

He was right. A crowd of sailors strolled by, talking and
laughing; out of their number appeared two figures who flanked Jehan. The tall
black-haired one grinned. “Nice sidestep.”

He meant it as a compliment. They were aware of the shadow,
and how Jehan had slipped the shadow’s vigilance. Prickles of invisible ice
cooled his neck and the backs of his arms, as the thin one flicked a hand
toward one of the more modest tents.