Treason's Shore (27 page)

“It doesn’t matter.” Skip, twirl, and back again. “Because his don’t. Part of the ring vow is accepting each other’s boundaries.”

“I enjoy excellent wine—”

At least he plays fair, and didn’t say porridge,
she thought, a laugh bubbling inside her chest.

“—but I wouldn’t make a diet of it.”

The obvious response to such an obvious comment was to point out that he’d never tasted the wine of marriage, but surely he knew all that. Besides, the dance was ending and she wanted this discussion over before they parted; she’d discovered that prolonging intimate conversations in public was often taken as a signal for dalliance.
Time for Marlovan bluntness
. “I enjoy flirting, but I made a vow. I intend to keep it.” There, that felt good—though she had to laugh at herself, knowing from childhood that the moral high ground always felt good.

But only if your auditor recognized you up there above them.

“What about family necessity?” he asked, and she tumbled down.

“Necessity?” she repeated, stung. Surprised to discover herself stung.

Have I come to expect everyone’s devotion as my due?
“Well at least you don’t chatter about love,” she said, trying for balance.

“Love.” He exhaled the word, short and sharp. “Acquit me of the tedium of hope-driven self-destruction.”

The words were soft, quickly spoken. Her heart knocked against her ribs.

For a single thumping heartbeat she saw past his smiling mask to the tangle of anger and pain he hid behind it. The next heartbeat brought the conviction that she was not the cause, but neither was she the anodyne: his mask was in place again.

His gaze met hers during the three remaining encounters of the dance, clasp, turn, step, and bow. She sensed challenge.

The dance ended. At random she accepted the next partner who asked, and so the evening lurched along until at last Prince Valdon had finished his round of the older folks, answering questions and smoothing political ripples. He joined his wife for the last dance of the evening.

“We need to talk,” she murmured as they bowed.

He waited until they were doing hands round, then it was his turn for covert commentary, “Please don’t kill him in a duel. Would cause such a diplomatic mess.”

She choked on a laugh. He smiled at her, aware of the court seeing her laughter, and set himself to enjoy the remainder of the dance.

At last it was over. They said their farewells to the duke and duchess, whose house was being unpacked by an army of servants as the tired guests drifted out; by the next evening the ducal pair would be on the road to their castle in the north.

“Shall we walk?” Valdon asked. “Or are your feet tired? You’ve been dancing all evening.”

She chuckled. “That’s not tiring. A full day and night of castle war games is tiring.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t have fun doing those war games.” He waved to his carriage driver, who lifted his hand in salute then drove away from the best spot in front of the front steps; though the last to arrive, he always had precedence. He grinned, liking the royal pair and loving his job.

“War games were great fun.” She laced her fingers with Valdon’s, swinging their hands as they walked past the drivers and footmen in their various liveries standing about in small groups, chatting and drinking from flasks. One noticed them and hastily bowed, followed by the others, like wheat in the wind. Valdon waved a casual hand and they returned to their conversations.

The two paced to the end of the road then started up the hill that curved around behind the ducal manse. Valdon gazed upward in pleasure at the sight of the peaceful stars overhead. Then he smiled at Joret, but her head was bowed, her attention on the bricks of the road. “You wanted to talk.”

Her head lifted, her eyes a dense blue in the faint light from the top windows of the Elsaraens’ manse, which was now just below the level of their feet. “I liked flirting with Yaska. I thought it was the same with him. But I had the sense he wanted more. He saved his question all these days, until you were watching. And I found myself disappointed by his motivations.”

“Sex,” he said, “is rarely easy, or simple, unless all concerned are agreed that it will be. Would you have that with Yaska?”

“No. And he didn’t want that, either. That is, his goal wasn’t just seduction.”

“Do you know what he really wanted?”

“To compete with you, in part, and also, oh, a family thing. I hardly know how to explain.”

“To preserve the Dei beauty and mystique by uniting with you just long enough to produce a child?”

“You knew?”

Valdon’s smile turned wry. “Everyone talks about the Deis, you should know that.”

“I’d always thought that a family secret. It sounded sensible when I grew up: from every second generation one child is picked to mate with a descendant of one of the other branches of the family. I knew about it, but never gave it a thought. My life was to be lived as Tanrid’s wife. When I went on my home visits, that tradition of mating between the families was rarely ever discussed.”

“So now we know what Yaska wanted, to bypass some Marlovan cousin of yours in favor of you. And you were disappointed?”

“I was disappointed that he really did not want me, in particular. Any Dei would do, and he was more interested in tweaking you than in having me. What a salutary lesson! Is that human nature, or just the arrogance of Joret Dei? Here’s a fellow I don’t want, but I want him to want me. Dos that make sense?”

Valdon laughed. “Human nature.”

“Well! Why don’t I feel better? Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about is what happened right after I turned him down.”

He gripped her hand, listening.

“One day when I was small,” she said in a slow, contemplative voice, as their hands swung between them. They made another turning, passing an old tower house. Through an arched window just below the upward curve of the road a young scribe was perfectly framed, sitting at a high desk, bent over copy work. A lock of his hair lay against his cheek, tangled with the fingers supporting his head as he stippled a brilliantly colored drawing.

He passed from view, and Joret resumed. “It was the height of summer. After a week of storm. The weather turned hot. We girls went out to the river. I waded out in the rushing water, so fast it tumbled I could barely stand. The cold water pressing against me, the warmth of the sun on my face, its light splashing over the water, all gave me intense pleasure. I liked resisting the water, in not falling backward to drown, in feeling the warmth of the sun on my eyelids without opening my eyes to the sun.”

“I see.” He raised her hand and kissed it.

“But I am not yet done. Then a root caught at my ankle, and nearly pulled me under. I had to fight to keep my breath, to keep from being dragged under. I won, and flung myself onto the bank, and that’s when the clean air, the bright sun, the rushing water were sweetest, because I’d won the fight. For just a moment, Yaska let me see him for real. He was far more attractive in that moment, but I still would have said no. Knowing that was winning the fight. Now I know my strength. It makes my vows with you the sweeter. Now do you see?”

And he did. They passed quietly beneath the mossy stone archway that had been built over the road to join two of the old towers. Lights glowed in the arched windows of the chambers above them. Just beyond, a gap piled high with dismantled stone marked where another old tower had been taken down, to be rebuilt into a large, airy manse.

Valdon said slowly, “My attractions have always been fleeting. Until I met you I could walk away from any dalliance with mild regret, and no sense of risk, making me suspect that I will only love once. That makes my vow of fidelity to you easy to keep. But I have been preparing myself for the fact that one day, yours to me might . . . not be worth keeping.” His voice was light, but she felt his intensity in the grip of his hand.

“It won’t happen.” She gripped his hand tightly. “Because now I know what to watch for in myself, and I will not let my foot catch in the root. As for Yaska, he doesn’t even know what love is. I cherish my memories of Cama Tya-Vayir, but even were I to see him again, I know the tumbling stream now, and the undercurrent, and the sun in the sky. You and I have made our house by that stream, and that’s where I want to live.”

He stopped, and right there in the street, between the tiled rooftops of one row of aristocratic houses and the closed doors of those on the slope above, he kissed her. A soft laugh from above, a hastily drawn curtain over a tiny window in an attic, revealed that they’d been seen, but neither cared.

They began walking uphill again; the palace spires were visible two switchbacks up.

“I had a talk with my father today.” His voice lightened. “He agrees with what I did down south.”

“The harbor guilds versus the trade?” she asked. Now that sea trade was starting up again, it seemed everyone had new ideas on how things should work from now on.

“Right. Joret, here’s what he said. As soon as Queen Servitude dies—assuming of course she doesn’t live to be five hundred, just to spite everyone—he wants to retire to our house in Eidervaen. Maybe tour other lands, like he did as a boy. Mother never got to see Sartor; she wants to go, too. That means you and I are going to be wearing the crowns. Figuratively speaking. I hate crowns. Do your Marlovans wear crowns?”

“Never saw one until I came here.” She chuckled again.

“Back to the south.” He grinned. “There was one more item of business. Ever since I met you, I’ve tried a new thing. I hadn’t spoken of it before because I was not sure of the wisdom of it—the first time I mentioned it to my father he reacted in horror.”

“Go on.”

“It was your riding around with Gdand that caused me to think of it.

When I go myself to see to these problems, I’ve begun leaving the carriage and livery and outriders. They proceed as before, but the carriage is empty, driven by one of the younger fellows. I put on plain clothes and take to horse with just my own driver, who is a deedy hand with a quarterstaff.”

She laughed inside, enjoying this discovery; if their love was a house, he kept showing her more doors to open.

“I ride around, and I see people I wouldn’t otherwise. I see
things
I wouldn’t have. I spent a night in an old inn. When I woke up early and wandered, I discovered a barn where people were spinning glass. Did you know that that wavery glass that you find in the countryside is spun in plates? That’s where the wave comes in. I used to love looking at the world through that glass.”

Joret smiled. “We made both kinds. Some actually prefer that glass, when the window just opens onto stone. It can throw more splinters of light inside.”

“I did not know. Well, anyway, speaking of your family. It seems another of your relations has just crossed the border. I wore my plain clothes and spent a little time observing your relation while deciding what to do. Unlike your decorative cousin Yaska, he exhibited no tendency to lead a crowd of fast-riding, hard-drinking courtiers in making trouble just to assuage their boredom. Before I left, he took a job.”

Joret knew exactly whom he meant. “I take it you had him followed? Surely not arrested.”

“Not unless he decides to raise an army.”

Joret clasped his hands. “We both know where he’s going, and why. Will you let me handle this matter discreetly?” Joret mentally rearranged her morning, knowing that the duchess they’d just left, though equally tired and about to embark on a long journey, would not deny her if she called in private.

“I would like nothing better,” he said with obvious relief, and kissed her. “I leave it to you.”

The week after New Year’s, when every hand aboard Tau’s trader had been on deck through a day dark as night and a night made brighter than day by almost constant lightning, they were finally released in small groups to the waterlogged cabins to rest, as the ship sped through the spume and sea wrack of a departing monstrous storm. When they eased their fatigue-sodden limbs below they discovered that the mighty waves washing down the deck had broken both hatches. Water had poured in as the massive waves crashed down, then spewed out as they rode up the next wave. Most of their belongings had thus been swept out to sea—including Tau’s golden case, which he’d carefully left in his hammock, along with his gear, in case the working of the ship’s timbers let in water.

Just as the bitter east winds were beginning to weaken toward spring, they reached the northernmost bay of Anaeran-Adrani, where the captain and some of the crew had kin whom they had not seen or communicated with for years.

Tau thanked everyone, wished them a good journey, stepped ashore, and vanished into the harbor crowd. By day’s end he had a job.

By the end of a week he’d earned enough money to travel. He bought a map and set out for the north.