Sasharia En Garde (28 page)

Inside they found David holding a table, to which a harried
young woman brought a loaded tray of chicken pies, cornbread and cold, frosty
ale.

Almost immediately the small boy drifted in, unnoticed by
anyone else in the tent—the conversations at the other tables being mostly
about the fleet being made up for the pirate hunt, and who’d hired on where,
and what it was doing to trade.

The boy was wearing an outsized shirt. He slid in next to
David, then said with a quiet air almost of apology, “I had to use the other
for bindings.”

Jehan realized then what he’d known instinctively, that
these four somehow spoke mind to mind. He knew now from where he recognized the
tall one, and possibly the one with the hair. They’d competed in the midsummer
games years before, always well, but previously they’d never quite stood out.

Jehan sat back. “So your roustabout was intended as a
general humiliation, or for fun?”

David looked surprised, and the fiery-eyed one grinned. “For
instruction.”

David put down his fork. “Tell me you didn’t see what we
were doing.”

Jehan shrugged a shoulder. “So you are giving me lessons in
curriculum design why?”

The mock surprise and fake air of helpfulness vanished. “Because
you will need to train ’em better,” David said. “And if I might suggest an
added course of instruction, hill warfare against occupation.”

Again the ice, burning with warning.

“Norsunder,” Jehan breathed. “What? When?” He knew now who
they were, but not why they were here.

Before he could speak again, the tall one flicked up a
scarred hand. “Don’t say anything.” He flicked one ear. “They do actually have
wards against certain names.”

Jehan studied the four faces. “But—the stories about
you—whose side are you on, anyway?”

“What’s a side?” the smallest one asked.

“The easiest would be anything or anyone that fights against
Norsunder taking land, people, life, liberty. Will and spirit,” Jehan said
deliberately.

“That would be our side,” said the boy, his gaze steady.
Meeting it felt strangely like falling and falling through the air.

“Not what I’ve heard about you.” Jehan looked away,
steadying himself with his hands flat on the table.

The one with the hair looked down, the tall one flashed his
sharp-edged grin. David said, “Is everything said about you—action,
motivation—true?”

“No.”

The small one murmured, “Some of what’s said about us is
true. But we bring no intent to harm here.”

Jehan believed that because he knew what they were capable
of.

The tall one had gone on eating. He looked up. “Damedran. Bad
bridle training. You take the reins.” He gestured, meaning qualified approval,
and returned to his meal.

Jehan let out a soundless laugh. He couldn’t quite point out
that he had no reins to hold, not with Randart hunting him in phantom form and
now, possibly in real, all because of that hasty abduction. It was only a
matter of time before he slipped and Randart penetrated the tenuous disguise.
When seen in the perspective of world politics—the sinister powers hunting the
blood of these four and the infamous figures who had trained them—his problems
seemed small.

“Everyone is going to have to pitch it together,” the one
with the hair spoke for the first time. “Everyone. To the best of their
ability. War is coming, we cannot avoid it, but we can resist if everyone works
together.”

David turned his head sharply; Jehan heard a cadenced march
above the general noise of the tent.

A search party of guards halted outside the tent. The
patrons fell silent and the harried girl ran to the canvas door and lifted it, exclaiming
in question and alarm.

Jehan turned back to warn his companions. They were gone,
the bottom of the tent reverberating as if just dropped.

He was alone at the table. Even their food was gone, leaving
him to hunch over his meal. He felt the hot, weary, exasperated gaze of the
search captain sweep past him, and then came the sounds of the searchers
marching farther up the row of tents.

Jehan sat there thinking, while he had this precious time to
think. War, imminent.
I’d better have
Tharlif stockpile those weapons she took off Randart’s fleet
.

He slipped out to make his way to the boat as the sun
vanished at last and shadows merged.

It was time to go try to make amends with Sasharia. And
despite his headache, his regrets, the new threats to his kingdom and to the
world, he looked forward to seeing her. Maybe, just maybe, he could get her to
laugh.

o0o

On the other side of the castle, while riding the last leg
of the relay without finding Prince Jehan, or anyone else, his shadow came
across four cadets making their way slowly toward the parade ground. In
amazement he recognized Wolf, nephew of the commander, and three others. All
with broken bones—a wrist, an arm, a shoulder, and Wolf with a broken leg. Each
wound thoughtfully splinted and bound up with neatly torn strips from a
boy-sized shirt.

No one spoke as he helped them back to the academy.

The last of the day’s light glowed deep blue on the
western horizon behind him when Jehan reached the yacht. He’d left orders for a
single lantern at the stern rather than running lights, so he was surprised to
see lanterns swinging and winking as silhouettes crossed back and forth, the
sort of movement you expected to see during work aboard a ship.

What work? The sails were furled, the yacht riding at single
anchor on the out-flowing tide. He smothered his lantern and waited, oars at
rest, until his eyes adjusted enough to determine that the yacht was not being
attacked. He’d first seen climbing figures. Now the crew was at the falls and
tackle, bringing up the second boat.

There could only be one reason it had been let down. He
uncovered his lantern, once again shielding it from the shore side, and pulled
hard on his oars, occasionally peering over his shoulder until he could make
out a shivering figure with long dripping braids huddled in a blanket on deck
as the other crew members finished stowing the second boat.

“
Dolphin
,” he
called.

“
Dolphin
ho. Falls
ready,” came Owl’s wry voice.

Jehan climbed up the side and crossed to the captain’s deck.
As he passed Sasharia, she lifted her chin, her face pale and defiant when she
recognized him.

“I would have tried it, too,” he said.

She laughed, and his breath caught. “You. W-would. Have.
G-gotten. Away.” Her teeth chattered so hard she almost couldn’t speak.

A step nearer, and he saw her blue lips. Angry, he turned
his head. “Where is something hot—”

“Right away. Gave the orders when we got back.” Owl worked
in tandem with the other crew, pulling up Jehan’s boat.

“Here I am,” came the accented voice of Kaelande, the cook,
and a heartbeat later he appeared with a tray of hot coffee, which he set on
the capstan. “Dinner,” he added after an inscrutable glance at them all, “will
be ready anon.” He vanished back down to his galley, a tall, stocky man who had
been trained in Alsais’s royal palace, the most exclusive cooking school in the
entire southern hemisphere.

Owl turned a slant-browed, assessing look Jehan’s way, and
then toward Sasharia. “Looks to me like we could all use it.”

Sasharia took her mug, her eyes closing as she cherished its
warmth. She carried it toward the guest cabin in the forecastle, and Owl
followed Jehan down into the main cabin. They sank onto the fine-carved chairs
bolted to the deck, and Owl sighed. “I didn’t think she’d try a swim for shore
from out here.”

“I didn’t either. We were wrong. But that’s one more tot in
the day’s total.” Jehan tried to shut out the image of Sasha’s tall, strong
body in that wet clothing. His life was complicated enough, and he knew she
didn’t want any part of him. But there she was, somehow larger than life in all
the ways that were good, with a sudden smile like the sun on the world’s first
day.

He pressed his thumbs into his eyelids, trying to shutter
away Sasha’s image. “Randart will probably have a search team out here by
morning, soon as he can figure an excuse.”

“He’s onto us?”

“I think he suspects. And I’m coming to believe, despite his
former friendliness, that he would like any excuse to help me suffer a fatal
accident. But that’s not our biggest problem. Not nearly.”

Owl grimaced. “If there’s something worse, I’d rather get a
meal in me first.”

“We’ll all do that.”

Owl jerked his thumb toward the front of the ship in
question.

Jehan said, “Invite her. Then I don’t have to explain
twice.”

Owl waited, but Jehan’s gaze had gone diffuse the way it did
when he was evolving plans, and so he left.

o0o

I stood in the cabin while my core temperature gradually
achieved something resembling human levels, rather than penguin, and stared
into the coffee.

I hate coffee. That is, I love the smell but find it bitter
to drink unless I doctor it with honey and milk. Lots and lots of milk. But I
wasn’t going to complain about it now. First of all because I needed the
warmth, and second because they very definitely had the high moral ground.

Human nature, or maybe it’s my own nature, has mule-kick
stubbornness beat hollow. If they’d yelled at me for my stupid act, I would
have been planning another try. But they’d been nice about it, so I felt
guilty. Guilty for simply trying my best to get away, on my own, until I
figured out what was right? No, guilty because they’d gone to a terrible amount
of trouble to search me out in the ocean, their faces worried sick when they
found me about two nanoseconds before my numb body was about to give up.

I felt guilty and cold and waterlogged. All my gear was
soaked as well, for the gear bag was not waterproof, and I’d thrown away the
horrible basket-weave. Owl had put me through the cleaning frame as soon as I
got on board, so the salt sting was gone, but that did not dry anything.

For a short time I stood there staring haplessly down at the
soggy firebird coverlet and my other outfit. I let them drop to the deck with a
squelch.

A knock a moment later. “Will you join us for dinner?” That
was Owl. I knew Owl’s voice very well by now. First he’d been on the other side
of that hot quilt the day before. Today he’d been calling to me, calling to me,
as they sought for me in the boat despite the darkness, as I was about to sink . . .

“No clothes.” My lips were numb, my jaw shuddering. “W-wet.”

No answer.

I was pressing the cup against my face when the knock came
again. “Jehan offers these with his compliments.”

I fumbled with still-numb fingers at the cabin door. It
opened. Owl handed me folded cloth. “He apologizes for the colors, but says
they went through the cleaning frame. If you give me yours, I’ll put ’em
through the frame and spread ’em near the galley fire.”

I silently handed him the cloth things from the gear bag,
then shut the door and shucked my tunic and trousers. My undies were wet, too,
but no help for those. At least they were clean.

I turned to the clothes.
Jehan
’s
clothes. The idea whopped me right behind the ribs. I held up a fine linen
shirt, the lacing another of those long braided silk things with a tiny gold
leaf at the end. Under that, some black riding trousers. Last, a long velvet
tunic somewhat like a battle tunic, except obviously not made to be fought in.
Brown, with the cup stitched on in real silver—the royal colors. Hence the
apology.

I was too numb to care. The shirt was roomy and only
slightly large, but the pants, tailored to a very different body, were way
tight where it counted most. My wet underwear threatened to make the wedgie of
the century, so I took the trousers off again, and slipped on the tunic. Its
hem fell below my knees, except for the slits on the sides, but the shirt was
long enough to cover me to mid-thigh. Hardly immodest, even here, when during
summer many rolled their deck trousers to their knees, especially when working
with water.

Still. I felt off-balance, intensely aware of a sense of
intimacy in the wearing of Jehan’s clothes. The cleaning frame had removed any
trace of him, so they smelled like clean cloth, but that curious electricity lingered,
the sensory evidence of attraction. I ran my hand down the tunic, which was cut
to fit a man—the shoulders hanging over my upper arms, the front reshaped by
me. The slim line of the tunic hugged my hips, which are built on the Valkyrie
model. If there was a mirror in that cabin, I had not found it. Not that I’d
really searched, for earlier in the day I’d only had escape on my mind.

No help for it. I looked the way I looked.

I grabbed up my wet clothes and marched out.

The yacht currently had only four crew members besides Owl:
the cook, his wife, and two men, one young, one older. Only one of those was in
my line of sight, on watch at the helm. He gazed out to sea.

Owl and Jehan stood near the smooth, elegantly curved stern
rail. When the cabin door shut behind me they turned their heads and watched me
walk up the half a dozen shallow steps to the deck, the lantern light from the
binnacle shining on their faces.

Is that stare universal among het males? Their gazes swept
down my body, stopped twice—once north of the equator and once south—then
dropped down to my feet and away. Both faces wearing inadvertent grins, a mix
of appreciative and slightly embarrassed grins civilized guys show when they
get caught staring.

Here’s the girl part of that particular embarrassment. If
one likes one of the guys, it’s not annoying, it makes one feel outlined in
light. Well, I do, anyway.

“The pants were too tight,” I said curtly, and as soon as
the words were out I knew they made everything ten times worse.