Treason's Shore (12 page)

“And here I thought that explained government affairs.” Inda looked rueful.

Evred laughed, just out of happiness. Inda was here at last. They would share home and work for the rest of their lives. The intensity of his joy really did feel like fire through his veins, just as the ballads always said. “Never mind that. Here’s the truth. I need to stand up at Convocation and know everything about every agreement each Jarl family had made with the crown. Who owes what to whom, all the way back.”

The joy tempered with the ready burn of anger. Inda was here, he must understand these things. “Sooner or later they’re going to fling war damage in my teeth as an excuse for encroachment on crown rights.” His voice was on the verge of trembling. He stopped at a window and looked out, working to get his voice under control, as thin rain began to blotch and then darken the stone. “It would be easier if we had a common goal. We had the Venn for so long.”

Inda was appalled. “You want them to come back?”

“No.” Evred struck a fist on the windowsill. The pain steadied him. “No. It would have been easier only in one sense. Not in the cost of lives. I have only to think of what we saw in the Andahi Pass to remind myself of that. War is a convenient fix for government problems if it happens somewhere else. To other people.”

He turned away abruptly. “But that’s my task. I wanted you to see this project. Downstairs in the annex are the council chambers and the guild secretaries.”

Inda stared through the windows to the extreme end of the great parade court. He jerked his thumb at the government building behind him. “I used to wonder what was going on in there, when Master Starthend gave us a Restday punishment of sweeping the parade court. Remember that? Basna used to get everyone to guess how many flagstones lay in each section. Dogpiss was sure all the masters and guards snuck into those buildings to whoop it up with ale and gambling.”

Evred half raised a hand in acknowledgment, then plunged up the tower steps at a rapid pace. Inda loped to catch up as Evred said briskly, “Now to your tasks. Retraining the guard, making some sense of where our forces are and who’s left. I’ve been collecting all the reports, but there’s been no time to read and tally. I’ll give you as many King’s Runners as I can spare, but I am already short. And we have so few candidates ... To resume. By Convocation you must know who we have where and how many.”

“Good. I like knowing that.” Inda rapped his knuckles on the rough sill of an arrow slit as he passed.

Evred extended a hand toward the opening. “And finally, you and Gand have to set up the academy for next year. But before we get to that, when we rode away from Ala Larkadhe, I think we were too weary to consider what Durasnir said to us that day above the pass. But now we should begin.”

Inda stopped on the landing. “I’m not sure I remember it all. That is, I do, but it’s strange. Like someone was sitting on my shoulder, it wasn’t me at all—”

He hesitated, remembering his ghost. He hadn’t told anyone but Signi about the ghost. It was gone now, so what would be the point?

But Evred was watching. “Problem?”

Inda smacked open the door and plunged out onto the sentry walk, from merely cold air to frigid. He thrust his bare hands into his coat pockets. “No. Just, the idea of being a Harskialdna.”

Evred was surprised into a laugh. “You cannot possibly think that the entire army doesn’t want you as leader. Did you know that the survivors of the Andahi Pass defense have taken to wearing red stones affixed to their ears?”

“What? But that’s—” Inda stopped himself. It wasn’t stupid. It was wrong, backward. He’d half regretted his ruby hoops ever since he’d poke the holes into his ears, yet he knew how the symbol worked. It set people apart after they’d endured something—it was a reminder—but most of all (and the reason he’d never taken his out) it created a bond with your fellow survivors. He could not understand
why
it worked.

“. . . not many can afford rubies, so they use bloodstone, mostly, or garnet. And no hoops, as those are seen to belong to sailors. Can you tell me why? I never asked Barend.”

“If you’re shipwrecked, especially as a pirate, you can take the gold out and use it to get to a port. Or bribe someone not to send the local guard. A lot of sailors don’t wear ’em as they mean
pirate
to many. Listen, I’ve been thinking, should I teach the boys the knife fighting?”

Evred’s brows rose. “You won’t be teaching. The masters can teach the boys. That would follow tradition. My father wrote that that distance gives us consequence.”

Inda grinned. “How scared I was the first time your uncle spoke to me, right after Gand’s wedding. He and I left the hall at about the same time, and he was probably just trying to be nice, in his own way. Let me yap on and on about the Marlovar Bridge tussle, like it was a major battle.”

Inda laughed, and Evred forced himself to smile, though he strongly suspected that that meeting had not been coincidence. His uncle had never permitted coincidence: in fact, he wondered if he had hold of the missing piece of the puzzle of why his uncle had singled Inda out in the first place.

Inda thumped his hand against the stone wall, then whirled around and began to walk backward. “So, you don’t want the boys learning the double-knife fighting?”

“I thought about that. I’d rather you refine what we already use. From what I saw on the mountain, the double-knife fighting is only useful when you don’t have shield and sword, which is expected in battle. I’m thinking you could teach the King’s Runners, and we’ll see how it works out.”

Inda signified agreement, thinking,
I won’t say anything about rubies in ears. But I’m not going to pay any attention to ’em, either
.

Under racing gray clouds, a small boat smacked through the white-capped, choppy waves outside Twelve Towers Harbor. It was two weeks after the fleet’s return. Now they were sailing again, the fleet anchored beyond the Dragon’s Claw in readiness.

Vra Seigmad tended the sail and her husband leaned his strength into the tiller. He was seventy-two, she was nearly that. Either of them could have ordered young, strong ensigns or servants to take Vra Seigmad ashore after her husband’s curtailed liberty, but then they would lose this precious time alone. No witness but sea and sky.

They bumped and rolled through the splashing waves until they were midway between Seigmad’s warship and the outer finger of Dragon’s Claw, at which time she spilled wind from the sail, and he eased the tiller.

“Seigmad.” She slowly worked her shoulders, wincing at the thin ice-shard protests of old bones. “Last night I thought I’d pee myself trying not to laugh when Fulla Durasnir ranted like a mad skalt. ‘My captains and I have explained ourselves before the Frasadeng. We should not have to defend ourselves to our wives.’ Heh!”

Her husband gave a chuckle. He sagged everywhere—she had braced herself against his not returning from the long southern campaign. But here he was, frost-haired, lined, but still hearty. “No buxom young Tharfan offering to marry me!” He struck his chest.

Though they laughed, they knew Parfa Tharfan wanted to father a Breseng boy, if Fulla Durasnir really would be divorced by his wife—but that was a sham. Further, a badly acted sham, to those who knew Durasnir.

She shifted impatiently. “Brun can’t talk to me, not until she knows where all the spiderwebs are. Is that all the dags do these days, make ways to spy on us?” She struck her fist on the gunwale. “And Rajnir ordering the south fleet to Goerael? Either everyone has gone mad, or I’ve gone mad from the questions in my head that go without answer.” She leaned forward. “First tell me straight what happened in the south.”

He squinted at the flagships, all hives of activity as carts rumbled down the dock, full of supplies. “If the king hadn’t died, we’d yet be on Halia. Probably sitting out in the ocean trying to plan a coastal attack in the west. The Marlovans are tough. More of ’em than we’d thought, if what Talkar reports of their trap in the pass is any indication.”

She made a noise of disgust. “So why did Brun Durasnir get us wives in black and make us into fools?”

“Didn’t you see young Dyalf Balandir?”

She spat over the side. “That for the Balandirs. Especially that boy. I never look at him, not since—”

“Never mind what he did to our boy. They’re not boys any longer. If you’d paid young Dyalf attention, as you do to a diving death bird, you would have seen how he looks from one side to the other at every gathering. Hoping Durasnir will rebel while the kingship is in question, with Rajnir shadowed by defeat. Hoping we, the Oneli, will rise in Durasnir’s name.”

“And Dyalf Balandir would join, or fight against you?”

“Whichever gains him the most power.”

She made a noise of disgust.

“Erkric is no idiot. He sees and hears all, through those spiderwebs. So he’s commanded us to go put down the revolt in our colony on Goerael, though our ships are still gutted from carrying the Hilda, and all need to be heaved down and overhauled.”

She leaned on her oars. “
Erkric’s
command? Has the Tree fallen, making a dag into a king? With my own ears I heard Rajnir’s speech before the empty throne.”

“But we think those words were put in his mouth by Dag Erkric.”

“So now tell me, what
are
these whispers about the prince? Was he a coward in the south? Did he lose the men’s allegiance?” She waved her fingers as if shooing insects. “Or was your defeat really due to the interference of some sea dag?”

“Hah! Erkric had those dags playing warrior. I don’t know the truth of what happened with Dag Signi, why Erkric would turn against her. I suppose the truth will come out when the Blood Hunt catches her. Durasnir is as talkative as stone about that. As for Rajnir, I can’t explain it. In the old days, when we first took Ymar, he used to be with us, watching reviews. Training. Looking at the maps. Discussing. Now Erkric’s got him walled by dags and magic. We never see him. Or if we do, the old soulripper is always around. And Rajnir speaks like a skalt in a hall—not just the speeches, which we expect, but all the time. Even when talking about sails, weather. Sounds practiced. We don’t know how much of Rajnir’s own thinking is in anything he does or says. Durasnir won’t act unless there is proof that all can see.” He thumped the oar against the gunwale. “So we think Erkric got the prince to order this journey so he can not only keep us busy, but to get Rajnir away from everyone’s eyes. This talk of revolt, oh, there are always uprisings over there, nothing that the northern fleet commander could not put down. Even without his three best Battlegroups being sent to hold Ymar.”

“Ymar found themselves an army?” Vra Seigmad exclaimed.

“No army. No navy. Rumor is the Chwahir and the Everoneth are talking alliance again, on their behalf. Anyway, Rajnir—Erkric—we all need the prestige of a win.” His mouth soured. “Maybe then we will settle and resume life. That’s what Fulla Durasnir says.”

Blood flowing and lives ending, either in Twelve Towers or overseas, that’s what a “win” meant. “So who leads us, if Durasnir will not? I would crawl on my knees through Thrall Gate and wear the iron torc around my neck until the Tree withers at the root, until the Great Serpent returns and swallows the world, if Abyarn Erkric is tampering with the prince’s head, and we do nothing to fight—”

She stopped.
More war, either at home or at sea, is that the answer? Who is to blame here, women for proclaiming themselves honorable to expect their men to supervise the killing of other women’s sons, or the men themselves for doing it?
So crazy a thought seemed treason, all in itself, and so she reshaped the question, “Why do we make war to keep peace?”

“I don’t know.” The furrows in his face deepened as he gripped his gnarled hands to the tiller, then he nodded up at the faint, but revealing twinkle of light up on the ramparts. “They’re watching us from Saeborc.”

She yanked the sail taut, and they sped toward shore.