The Song of Andiene (17 page)

Andiene looked around her with cool appraisal, judging the barren coast. “Where are we?”

“This is sea wasteland,” he said. “I think we are south of Oreja. If we strike inland, we should find a village soon.”

“A village … ” she said slowly.

Seeing her troubled look, he reassured her. “Do not worry, they will never have heard of you. And I have heard that in all these places their creed is to welcome strangers, to treat them as if they were their own kin.”

Her face brightened, and he knew that he had read her thoughts rightly. Strange that one who was strong and powerful, frighteningly so, could be so like a shy child. She had told him nothing of her life; he did not know how she had spent those seven years away from the paths of men. But he saw her power in little things, the lighting of fires, the current that had brought them to shore. He had never before seen the working of sorcery. In his heart, he gave credence to all the wild tales that he had ever heard.

Together they walked inland along a narrow trail that wound through the brush. There was no sign of a forest near, though lanara trees were scattered along the way. Instead, here and there, the brush thinned into patches of blaggorn stripped of its seeds, another sign that a village was near.

Andiene pulled fibers from the lanara bark, and braided them into a cord, as they walked along. When it was long and strong enough, she strung her ring on it, and knotted it around her neck, hiding it under her tunic. “I lost it once; I’ll not lose it again,” she said.

Syresh thought of the kingdom waiting for her, so many leagues to the north. She would need no ring to prove her royal birth. The very stones of the city would cry out to answer her claim. The bells would ring to answer her. But the gates were guarded well by Nahil’s men. “You need followers,” he said. “You should find warriors and counselors to defend you and advise you.”

“You have a sword,” she replied.

That silenced him. He had robbed the dead. His friend’s sword swung from his belt. It had been his first act done contrary to his will, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. True, no one weighed down the dead with iron, but still, he had taken the sword as a murderer would steal from his victim. Liegeman and lord are equal in guilt, said the proverb. But in all the songs, to take such a vow of fealty was a thing of glory.
Where will my honor lead me?

For the moment, it led him quietly after her. As they neared the village, the shouting was clear to be heard, the shrill sound of a woman screaming in anger, not in fear.

Syresh hung back and looked at Andiene questioningly. “Shall we turn aside? There will be other villages.”

“This one will serve me well enough. Come.” She had forgotten her timidity. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity.

The village was large, almost a town with its several flagstoned streets, but the noise led them easily to the central square, where a young woman stood tied to a post, glaring at the children who threw pebbles and clods of dirt at her, her eyes spitting fire at the townspeople who watched her and laughed. Her light-brown hair was braided and pinned around her head like a helmet. She wore the tunic and trousers of any traveler, man or woman.

The prisoner was fairer than the people in the square, fairer-skinned than Syresh or Andiene, of mixed southern blood, no doubt, pretty for her kind. A trickle of blood ran down her forehead. A lute and a traveler’s pack lay on the ground near her.

One of the townsmen crossed the square to speak to her. Whatever his words, he spoke them softly. Not so, her reply. Her discussion of his habits and character could have been heard five streets away.

The man’s face reddened like a slice of rare meat, and he scuttled away. Andiene listened wide-eyed. Syresh chuckled appreciatively and turned to a stocky plain-faced woman standing nearby. “What has she done?”

The woman eyed him up and down, and gave Andiene a suspicious stare. “A stranger like you. Came here and said she was a minstrel. Hit her lute strings, and croaked out a few tunes, and stole everything there was to steal. Stole my man’s trousers!” Her voice was filled with outrage. Then, seeing Syresh’s smirk, she added hastily, “Stole them off the drying tree. But after she took our headman’s gold chain—we caught her then. In her pack, she had something from every house in the town.”

“What will you do with her?” asked Andiene.

“She stays there all day, then a few cuts with the whip, and her hair tarred down to her head, and she’ll be chased on her way.” The woman’s thin lips tightened. “I thought it should have been branding—what they would do in the city—but my man was one of the fools that said ‘no’. Men are weak.”

The sentence seemed light to Syresh, too, but luckily it was none of his concern. The prisoner shouted an insult at the woman he was speaking to, a foul-mouthed comment on both her and her husband.

The woman gasped and tossed her head and stalked forward, the light of battle in her eyes. The girl spat at her, baring her teeth like a fighting courser.

“Look,” Syresh whispered. “See her claws? Those wide bracelets. Have you ever seen that?”

Andiene shook her head.

“When she closes her fist, the claws spring out between her fingers. They weld on each bracelet—so no one can take her weapons from her. Catlens, they call them, the wandering minstrels. The villagers must have bound her cunningly, so her claws cannot cut the ropes.” Then he was silent, watching and listening.

The village wife had no great command of words, but the minstrel had been stung by what she said. Insults flowed to her lips in return, describing the village woman’s appearance, health, habits, husband, children, parents, village, and race. Some of the things that she described were extremely unlikely to have ever taken place in a quiet country town. To judge by the woman’s face, full of bewilderment as well as outrage, she had never heard of some of the habits, customs, and attributes.

Syresh listened, and his grin grew still wider. She was nimbler with mind and tongue than any he had ever heard.

The village woman was overmatched. Tongue-tied and red with fury, she looked about her. No stones within reach. She snatched up the lute and contemptuously snapped its neck across her knee. Then she flung the shell onto the ground and stamped on it. Her foot went through it easily, but she had to snap the ribs, one by one, to free herself. Then, apparently satisfied, she limped back into the crowd.

That silenced the minstrel. Her head drooped. Andiene had been standing quietly at Syresh’s side. Now she stepped forward.

“Stay out of this,” Syresh said in sudden alarm. “Don’t meddle in their business.” He caught at her sleeve.

She shook his hand off impatiently. “Remember who is servant here,” she said as she walked forward, out into the open square.

Before any of the crowd could move, or say one word, she had drawn her dagger and cut the ropes that bound the minstrel. Then she turned and faced the people with a little smile, the secretive smile that Syresh had seen earlier.

The villagers murmured, and shuffled about, but to Syresh’s amazement, they did not challenge her. His hand was at his sword hilt, ready to defend her, but there was no need. She held the eyes of the crowd for a long quiet moment; then she turned, beckoned to Syresh, and walked away. The minstrel gave one grieving look to the fragments of her lute, quickly picked up her empty pack, and hurried after them. The crowd made no move to follow.

Syresh glanced back as they walked between the houses, following the lanes that led out of town. The minstrel-girl walked ten paces behind them, keeping her distance, but able to run and catch up to them if she wished to.

“Was that magic?” Syresh whispered.

Andiene’s smile was more human and youthful than it had been before. “No magic, or even the threat of it. I acted more confident than I felt. You with your sword and look of a mighty warrior were more of a threat.”

Syresh glanced at his sea-worn finery, still all that he had, and knew that she mocked him, though it was gentle mockery. And for all that she could say, he thought that there had been more magic in her facing-down of the townspeople than she was willing to acknowledge.

An hour before nightfall, they stopped and gathered blaggorn grain that grew by the roadside. It had not been harvested by the townspeople, for they had kept well to the law. “We will not gather the grain that lies within five paces of the roadside, for it belongs to the wayfarer.” In some places, they measured their paces with a short-legged child, but here they had left plenty for all who might pass.

Syresh killed a grasskit with a lucky stone-throw. He and Andiene stripped off a good meal’s worth of the flinty sea-coast blaggorn, though he did not know how they could cook it. Too hard to chew, and he could find no stones to grind it. The minstrel stood and watched them as if waiting to be invited closer. Syresh was careful not to glance in her direction. Finally, she stepped forward, grown weary of waiting.

“I have a kettle in my pack, if you would want to cook a stew?”

Syresh looked directly at her for the first time. “Was it one that none of the villagers could recognize as their own?”

She did not take offense. Indeed, her face lit up with amusement. “No, no, they took everything I had. What they did not recognize, they blamed on their own memories. As for the kettle, you almost tripped over it on the way out of town. Some careful housewife had set it outside to be scrubbed with sand.” She saw his look of annoyance, and laughed. “My name is Lenane.” Syresh looked at her and turned away.

“We would be glad to have you share our meal,” Andiene said, with courtesy enough for the two of them.

Lenane turned to her eagerly. “I can cook.”

“That is good,” Andiene said, though Syresh frowned.

Lenane took charge of the cooking with a sure hand, spreading the blaggorn kernels to parch in the bottom of the kettle, stirring them carefully. When they were done, she poured them out on a pile of clean leaves, and set the grasskit to stewing. While it simmered, she picked leaves and seeds from the wayside plants, huge handfuls of fleshy skyglass leaves, tiny torn-up bits of wise-man’s herb, the little triangular seed-pods of star’s line, all she could find. She talked as she worked, naming the herbs, not seeming to care if any listened or not. When the grasskit was done, she added her gleanings to the stew, and stirred the half-popped and expanded blaggorn into it.

It smelled more wonderful than anything Syresh could imagine, but he managed to say sourly, “I suppose you have serving bowls in your pack, too?”

Her grin of achievement widened. “Of course.” She delved in her pack, then brought out a nest of wooden bowls. “One, two, three, four … The fourth one would be for the unexpected guest.”

Syresh was wise enough to know that he was beaten. He ate in silence, the best meal he had ever tasted.

“There’s only one way to praise a cook, and you’ve said it already,” Lenane said as he turned the kettle upside down to pour the last drops of soup into his bowl. “But you two had the look of ones who had walked long on short rations. I have some thornfruit cakes, if you would like a sweet.” Her eyes danced with mischief, and she did not wait for questioning. The joke was too good to save. “Some good housewife had left them cooling on the windowsill.”

“I thank you for the gift,” Andiene said graciously.

Syresh looked at her in outrage. She might plan to be queen, but she had no wisdom to choose her companions, no more than a child not yet at her first Naming. “When I said that you should surround yourself with warriors and counselors, this was not what I meant,” he said in a biting undertone that easily reached the minstrel’s ears.

“Is that what gnaws on you?” Andiene’s voice was amused. “I keep my own counsel. And in any case, ‘a queen needs a cook as well as a counselor.’”

She turned to Lenane. “You are welcome to travel with us,” she said.

The minstrel spoke eagerly. “My name is Lenane, Sirenfil, Avellefile. Siren Rarsfil, Lenefile. Avelle Bairfil, Yvanelefile. Rars Silmononfil, Malesefile. Lene Mikelfil, Lenanefile. Bair Kallerfil, Mikelefile. Yvannele Desirinfil, Ynisefile … ”

Andiene looked puzzled. Syresh laughed and threw up his hands. “Enough, enough! We can tell you come from the forests well enough. No need to tire our ears with your bloodlines for twenty generations back. No one is meaning to marry you!”

Lenane turned red with humiliation. “Indeed, I had no thought of marriage or any other thing. But your lady saved me a whipping and maybe much more, and I wished to introduce myself with all honorableness. I did not think to be insulted by greensick courtiers in fool’s finery and beggar’s rags!”

“You call me names?” Syresh seized her wrist. “I am of noble blood, and I have served kings.”

“How many kings? You have the look of one who changes his coat with every summer!” That angered him more than she could have dreamed. His fingers tightened on her wrist. She tried to pull away, but his grip held fast.

“Let me go!” Her hands clenched into fists, and brazen claws sprang from between her fingers. With her free hand, she raked at his face. He ducked quickly enough to save his eye, but her claws sank deep into his cheek. Stunned, he reached his hand up to the side of his face and drew it away gloved in red.

“Enough!” said Andiene, and though she did not raise her voice, her tone had such fury and command in it that he turned to stare at her, and Lenane did likewise.

“Syresh, I told you before, you will serve me, or go back and drown yourself in the sea—or lose all claim to honor, if that would suit you more. I will choose what companions I want, whether it suits your notions of properness or not. The shore is less than one day’s journey back. Now is the time to decide.”

Syresh spoke painfully. “Forgive me, lady. I will serve you.”

“And you,” she said, turning to Lenane, “know that this man is my liegeman sworn, and I sworn to protect him. He had made no move to harm you. I’ll have no quarrels among my companions. I saved you from pain and shaming, at least. If you serve the same code, then make the same choice—either obey me or go back to the village, to take what punishment they will give you.”