Sword (13 page)

"It seemed prudent."

They sat in silence. Kyali stretched in defiance of the sense of threat all about, waiting to fall upon them.

"Well, it will be pleasant to rest at home in all this evident peace and quiet."

"You haven't lost your penchant for understatement, I see."

"You talk as little as I remember."

"And you seem to have learned a bit more about listening. That's good. Go to bed. We’ll head to the capital tomorrow after breakfast."

A second's thought told her that sleep was the wisest course. There was no possible retort to this last statement, and the general never did dally once he decided a conversation was finished. She rose, and he did, and she gathered up the bundle on the floor.

"Good rest to you, Father."

His silhouette made a mocking bow in her direction.

She found her room by memory in the dark. She would rather save her brother for morning, when she hoped to be more settled. But Devin's door, at the other end of the hall from hers, stood open, a slightly darker darkness exuding a whiff of the oil he used on his gitars. Devin himself was no more than a glitter of eyes in that shadow. She paused, and heard him sigh.

"Is it well, then?" he mumbled, half-asleep.

"Is it ever?" she quipped, grateful for the dark.

A snort. Devin turned, knocked some part of himself on the door, hissed a drowsy curse. "I missed your pancakes," he said, and shuffled back into the dark, toward his bed. Kyali leaned a moment against the threshold of her own door before slipping inside.

Her rooms stood as they had on the night she had left, two years ago. Oddly touched, she removed armor and clothing, found an old and comfortable nightgown that no longer fit, and curled gratefully under the covers.

* * *

There
was
something crawling on her nose. She was sure of it.

A review of recent events informed her that she was indeed home, and that, being home, spiders were a reasonable assumption when one awoke from a sleep in this fashion. One of her hands flew up to flick away the crawling thing. The other, grown too independent in two years of training, had her sword drawn in an instant. There was a yelp from nearby, and Kyali came fully awake in horror and pulled back.

The sword fell to the floor with a clatter and her brother scrambled back from the bed, wide-eyed with alarm, tangling himself in the chair in his haste. He fell with a much greater clatter, and a breathlessly obscene exclamation. A large barn spider skittered up the wall.

She shuddered and turned to shout at her brother—but the sight of Devin’s slipper-clad feet pointed skyward sent her into a helpless fit of laughter instead. He pulled himself to his knees and glared. She wheezed and flapped a hand at him, unable to speak.

His scowl trembled into a reluctant grin: Devin was nothing if not able to laugh at himself. He leaned against the mattress, snickering, and Kyali fell back into the pillows and threw an arm over her face, trying without success to stop laughing.

"Gods," her brother finally moaned. "I'd forgotten how quickly things take a turn for the absurd when you're in residence."

Kyali wiped her eyes. "I? It was you who ended up on the floor."

"Your memory always was uncertain. Two years have done nothing to improve it, I see. Pity."

"Oh, so that was deliberate! Was it a new dance step?"

"Hush, you starry-eyed Síog brat. What business had you defending yourself from a spider with a sword? Were you going to cut off your own nose? Though it's long enough, I'll grant you, to warrant trimming. Is that really what they taught you?"

She hugged a pillow, stung in spite of herself. Devin’s look was amused and wondering, and she remembered with weary resignation the stares of the fieldhands—the expectations of strangers. She wanted none of that from Devin, who bore the same sort of weight, but (though she could never say it) with more grace.

He was taller. And broader. His skin was sun-darkened, and there were secrets in his eyes that hadn't been there before. She imagined he was seeing more or less the same thing, in a different form.

And between them the words of a dead prophet still hung, heavier than stone.

The locket at his throat winked sunlight from the window and she suffered a sudden chill, remembering how she had stared at her own as she felt for the wound that should have killed her. It was hard to believe that was only two days ago.

"Among other things," she muttered, trying to find her balance.

Devin leaned forward, clearly expecting more. "What?" her brother gibed. "Didn't we learn the secrets of creation? I've awaited revelations by letter. Your last was uninformative, to say the least. Though pithy." His tone gentled. "I thought I ought to give you a proper welcome before we expect you to conquer the world."

Kyali grinned. "Proper it was. I've been dreaming of your damned spiders ever since I left." Devin gave her a more sober smile and she frowned, remembering his letter. "Why are you here? You were in Orin, terrorizing harmless old men—"

"—And scores of farmgirls, yes, yes." He rubbed his brow, looking puzzled; the gesture was their father's, and it fit him so well it rendered her speechless. "I don't know, exactly. It just… seemed I should be here." He darted a shrewd look at her. "You returned a bit earlier than expected yourself."

"I grew bored." Devin gave her the disgusted stare that deserved. "Well. I thought
I
ought to be here."

That answer sounded silly even to her. She wondered if Devin had felt the same undeniable pull to come home, but that seemed impossible. They might be Gifted and of the same House, but Gifts didn't tie people together like that. And the pulling had faded as she had entered Faestan; it eased to almost nothing in her brother’s presence. So perhaps it was just a—a warning.

She wished, wearily, that Saraid and Arlen could have come with her. She was already certain she was going to regret not reading that book.

"To do what?" her brother demanded and Kyali blinked, trying to gather up the thread of the conversation.

"Whatever needs doing?"

Devin's Corwynall-brown eyes narrowed, reading more of her than she liked. "Perhaps you can frighten the Western barons into an early move. Or was that your plan all along?" he asked. "No, then," he judged from whatever expression made it onto her face, folding his arms. "Don’t you have a plan at all, sister swordmistress?"

"
Don't
call me that
."

The chair on the floor flipped suddenly onto its side. Devin twitched away, wide-eyed.

Kyali drew a calming breath, and found nothing else to say. Two years of hard study, and her brother still found his way past her guard and under her skin in a matter of minutes.

At least she hadn't set the room on fire.

Devin cleared his throat after a moment. "Well—" He cleared his throat again. “Well. One question answered. Is it my turn to tell you to be prudent? I hesitate to provoke you further, but I should point out
that
will in no way reassure the court that you are harmless."

"When have they ever thought so? I doubt I could manage to be well-mannered long enough to make them think so."

"Well, wight, at least you know it."

Her heart was pounding.

Down here, her choices seemed even more limited than among the Clans. She clung to the certainty she'd had not a day ago, to the decisions she'd made for herself, and hoped she'd lose nothing else of her time in the mountains. Already the Fraonir seemed like a dream. What she had now was the maneuverings and endless little betrayals of the court, and that seemed, still, like a nightmare.

But she also had her House, and—she hoped—Taireasa. She could keep Taireasa safe, and that was what mattered.

"I don’t want them to think me harmless," Kyali said slowly.

Devin’s eyes locked on hers. He opened his mouth, then shut it again with a considering look. "Good," he said finally. "As harmless is one thing you're not, sister. Neither are the Western barons, though I doubt you need reminding of that fact. They've been busy. You can hardly challenge them all to duels at sunrise."

It was an appealing notion. She tipped her head and contemplated it for a moment, smiling faintly, and her brother grinned. "All right, perhaps you can," he amended, and Kyali snorted.

"Wouldn't that be lovely. King Farrell would have my head."

"He'd just marry you off to some moon-eyed poet in revenge."

"I'd rather lose my head." She grimaced and plucked her sword off the floor, gripping the leather-wrapped hilt, wondering if she'd still be holding it the same way and for the same reasons a decade from now. It was a lonely thought. "Perhaps I shall try to appear meek and harmless after all."

Devin confounded her expectations and declined to ask what looked to be a spate of questions darkening his eyes. "Fools aplenty there are in the court, little sister," he said instead; the words immediately made her feel childlike and small. "But few have made the mistake of believing
you
meek and mild. You've done too much to convince them otherwise." He got to his feet. "Hells, I learned better before you were eight."

Gods help her, that was almost a compliment.

Devin was worried. She couldn't remember seeing that pinched look around his eyes before. He had grown, and knew things she didn't, and thought things she hadn't. He had always been first, being older, if not necessarily wiser. But still: years passed, and they were more separate than they had been. Kyali curled under the blankets, feeling smaller than ever, and wondered in a quiet panic if the same had happened with Taireasa.

"I‘ve done my morning duty, have I not? You're awake."

The level stare Devin aimed at her gave the words too much weight. She could only nod, and try to reckon where this older and cleverer brother fit in the pattern she was only beginning to perceive.

* * *

The morning hearings were done. Taireasa sat stiffly next to her lady mother on the dais, wishing for perhaps the thousandth time that there were some way to place a cushion on her throne without compromising royal dignity. Since she'd begun to take part in these judgments, she'd learned far more about the tensions within the city and also, to her dismay, about the precise contours of this wretched chair. She gripped its arms gently.

Her heart was in her throat, and the sharp angles of her throne had nothing to do with it.

In the hall, footmen swept the lesser earls and ladies out the doors. They lingered at the edges of the room in hope of catching some piece of gossip to take with them. Today was a day for barons and duchesses and lords, for great affairs of state, where her people would choose, once and for all, who would one day sit on the throne after her father.

She wasn't altogether sure she
wanted
it to be her. She was far surer that it wouldn't be Kyali or Devin. But it remained to be seen what the barons of the West had in mind.

For as long as there had been a kingdom, this had been the way of things: nine provinces, two royal Houses, and a single throne on which any one of the heirs might one day sit… as long as he or she was chosen by at least six of the nine provinces. There were whole books detailing the process. Taireasa had been required to read most of them. There were, so far as she could tell, no books that detailed
why
it must be so: it was so old a tradition nobody questioned it. Every generation a vote was held, a new heir was chosen, and the world continued on its slow, calm course.

Every generation for the last ten, a Marsadron had sat where her father did. It didn't seem likely that was going to change today—the Western barons had
something
planned, but voting one of House Corwynall's notorious children into the rule of the kingdom would hardly serve them well. Nevertheless, the way they had always eyed Kyali and Devin made her nervous. Unhappy with their more arid lands, their desert-covered coasts, and especially their taxes, the Western provinces had been a problem during her great-grandmother's rule, and to nobody's surprise, they were the biggest problem in her father's. It was an unlovely inheritance to look forward to.

A movement drew her out of her reverie. Baron Walderan stalked the corners of the room, his son by his side. His false smile made her want to fling something at him. Taireasa smiled back, watching his eyes narrow. He'd left his pompously large escort of guards outside the city walls this morning, as had his fellow barons. They'd done it with no objection at all. Her father took this as a sign of improving relations. Taireasa took it as a sign that they had something else planned.

She couldn't shake the feeling that something somewhere was badly out of joint.

The king stood, and all talk fell to silence. "Well," he said, loud enough to carry. "We have the matter of the succession before us. The heirs of House Corwynall are
both
present for this gathering. We will hold the vote this morning."

There was no shock at the announcement of the vote, but Kyali's presence today was not common knowledge. There was a rising murmur of interest from the lords. In the midst of it, before anyone had time to form a question, the doors opened and three figures strode through. The Lord General wore his armor, an appropriate choice. Devin, on his right, flashed her half a grin. And on the general's left swung that long red braid that was in her earliest memories.

Kyali walked with soft-footed, wary grace—and wore the trousers and tunic of the Fraonir Clans instead of a court dress.

The murmur grew into a roar of surprise. Kyali's face was as smooth and indifferent as stone, but Taireasa could see the pulse jumping in her throat and ached for her. Court had never been very kind to her strange friend. It would be far less kind today.

House Corwynall came to the foot of the dais. Kyali carried a bundle, which must be her sword—surely she had earned it. She couldn't imagine Kyali failing. Taireasa held herself utterly still. Kyali looked up, her face both familiar and changed—with time and sun and any number of events she knew nothing of—and a telltale fleck of gold flashed in that gaze as their eyes met.