Treason's Shore (62 page)

Goatkick had seen a few one-legged men, but no one missing both a leg and an arm. He looked away, ashamed when Buck-Jarl twisted around like a worm on a hook in order to get down off his horse. Then his Runner was there with a wooden crutch, and Buck hopped like some kind of weird old bird, his short horsetail bobbing at each step. Goatkick followed uneasily, thinking,
He’s a hero, all right, but he doesn’t look like one.

His uneasiness stayed with him until everyone assembled for the First Day oaths. While the Jarls got into rank order (Buck hopping and clacking) they sang the “Hymn to the Beginning,” with drums in the gallery. Goatkick felt good again, reveling in Marlovan strength, courage, and victory.

But after the old song came that slow, sad one that made the skin on the back of his neck hurt. The one they called the “Lament,” about the heroes of Castle Andahi.

Some of the voices changed. Buck’s strong, not-very-tuneful baritone went husky, and Goatkick looked his way. Buck no longer sang with that lifted chin of pride, but with a sorrow like Goatkick had seen in the Jarl of Khani-Vayir’s face when he delivered Noddy’s stupid armband letter.

Well, Buck Marlo-Vayir had nothing to do with the glory of Andahi. Goatkick could barely force himself to look at the one who did—the
little child,
the
girl
—who hadn’t been sent to safety like the King’s Runners-in-Training. Oh, no. They’d given her a
command,
and let her stay right in the midst of the action! Ten years old, and Goatkick was sent home at near sixteen! And then what happened? Cama gave her a name that none of Goatkick’s friends could bring themselves to use. And Inda-Harskialdna himself gave her one of those toff earrings!

Jealousy wrenched Goatkick. He shot a glare at Han Tlen, the stinking, strutting brat, there at the end of the line where the twelve-year-olds always stood. He expected to find her smirking with pride (Goatkick knew
he
would have been, as was only right) but his hands felt icy when he saw her face squeezed like a raisin, and tears bouncing down the front of her tunic. Her skinny body jerked with her effort not to make any noise.

What?

Goatkick lifted his head, and dared a peek at the Harskialdna, whom the boys would do anything to please. The high point of their week was when Inda himself trained them in the double-knife fighting, which those strutting horsetails no longer got, ha ha! Inda-Harskialdna was a true hero, and maybe that was it, true heroes didn’t have feelings, because usually Inda just stood there with all those scars on his face, not looking happy or sad or much of anything. Goatkick and the others had talked endlessly about that day in the tent before Inda smashed half the army in a knife fight without even breaking a sweat. He’d talked about pirate fights, and wearing no chain mail in battle, and those scars like it was Restday in the city. Heroes didn’t have feelings.

But when Goatkick stood on tiptoe to peer over several heads at Inda, he was amazed. Inda had that same long upper lip and thin-pressed mouth, the same faint lines at the corner of his eyes as Buck—like he was
sick
.

What was going on here? You
did
feel the glory when you looked at Buck and Inda, and Cama One-Eye when he’d been here, tougher than steel. Your heart got a lift right inside your chest, and you yearned to be as brave, as true, to lead a victory, to
win
. But right now not a single face looked the way you expected a hero to look: proud.

“Did ya see her blubbing?” one of the boys asked later, when they met up on the roof above the bakehouse, which was their hideout in every season but summer. “Like a baby!”

In the last year or so, one boy had gone missing from these sessions: Slacker (so named because he was always the first one up in mornings) Tlen. They all knew it was because
Captain Han
was a sort of cousin, and everybody knew you didn’t rip at kin unless they’d rabbitted, or snowballed, or something deserving. The girl hadn’t broken a single rule, she never talked, much less strutted, and she hadn’t snitched during the first spring when some of them had sort of given her some of the stings that after all everybody more or less had to endure.

Sundog Tlennen jerked up a shoulder. “Well, she did lose her whole family. That song is about how they all died.”

“Arms cut off? Eyes poked out? Yeah,” someone muttered, trying to get away from the image of his own family dying like that.

Goatkick snarled, “Was only Liet-Jarlan got killed that way.”

“How d’ya
know
they all didn’t get the same? Just because Rad didn’t see it.”

“Yeah. I mean they all got killed. By the Venn. Sure none o’ the Venn said, oops, no bad death for you! Here, turn around, I’ll make it nice and quick.”

The session ended in the usual muttering about what they’d do if they ever caught any Venn, that’s for sure, and they slunk off again.

Downstairs, Branid Algara-Vayir strode through the halls looking for Inda. He’d been trying to find him for the entire week he’d been here, but Inda was always surrounded by people.

He had no idea that Inda’s own personal staff was on watch, warning Inda when Branid was around.

Inda carried on with his duties, slipping away whenever he overheard Branid’s irritating voice—too high and too loud—somehow sounding both bragging and fretful as he gave unnecessary orders to servants or tried to attach himself to the Jarls as they went off to meals.

But Branid was determined. He bullied, whined, and bribed his way into finding out Inda’s customary paths until at last he cornered him down in the stables.

“Cousin Inda!” Branid yelled, enjoying how heads turned all over. “Cousin Inda,” he said again, reveling in not having to append ‘Harski aldna’ to his name. “Heyo, you’re impossible to find. Commanding any wars?”

Inda forced himself to respond politely as he mentally sorted excuses for getting away.

Branid sidled a look around. “I need to talk to you privately.”

Inda gave up. “Come on, let’s go see the academy. No one will be there and we can talk without ears.”

Branid turned out his hands in a semblance of indifference, trying to hide his intense curiosity about the place he’d heard about but had never set foot in.

Within a hundred paces beyond the first arch Inda got that sick-gut sense that he’d made a mistake. Branid looked around with his lip curled, his voice full of scorn. “Look how worn those buildings are! I’d thrash the house staff with my own hand for that kind of neglect at home, I assure you. Are those willow toys in that barrel really practice weapons? Why, we were using steel at home, remember?”

Only on the sneak,
Inda thought, but he resisted saying it. Why should he have to defend the academy to Branid? He finally cut through it all. “What did you want to say?”

But now that he’d been offered his chance, Branid hesitated, his shoulders coming up in the familiar slinking hunch that made Inda grit his teeth.

Would it really have made any difference if Cousin Branid had come to the academy to be trained? Inda had only been there two years. Maybe Branid would have found friends. Or allies . . . Inda sensed that Branid would have joined up with Kepa and Lassad. Would
that
have been any improvement?

Inda stopped, gazing around at the weather-and-boy battered equipment, the plain buildings.
Maybe Branid would have thought so. Mates . . . friends . . . allies. It’s here that men make their true alliances, not at home.
Uneasy—he knew he needed to think about that—he said, “Well, shabby as it is, I assure you your son will learn to love it.”

Branid scowled. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Dannor made me promise. She won’t have children unless they can inherit. What good is it to send my son here if he’s not a laef? Dannor says a prince and princess can’t have their sons be mere Rider or dragoon captains, it insults our rank. And I’m supposed to remind you that if
your
son is raised here, how’s he ever going to know anything about Choraed Elgaer?”

Inda thought he’d reached the limit of discomfort, but this question stabbed even harder. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Same way men appointed to new positions get accustomed. It’s the king’s will, d’you see? If you want a change, you must talk to him.”

They walked back in silence.

Goatkick was still ruminating on rank, heroes, and ruby earrings when he went to Piwum Harbor for his home visit just before spring.

He was never quite sure how it happened, but somehow he got singled out from the tumble of cousins by Ma Noth herself. She sat him down in the alcove where she worked on hand-smoothing a new bow, and said, “Talk.”

Out it all came, in a disjointed morass of self-serving excuses, empty threats, and a headlong cry, “Why did they put that girl in with us?”

Ma Noth pointed a calloused, gnarled finger at him. “Why not? Ye know she earned it, or the queen wouldn’ta put her there. And they need good Runners. Ye know too many died.”

“But a girl!”

“So? Ye don’t think she’s tough enough? After what she did up north? And, I wager my chitlins, being fed a steady helpin’ o’horse-apple biscuits by y’ young hounds ever since, what ye call ‘stings.’ But she seems to be sticking to the saddle.”

“What if they start making
us
stay on the walls, and send girls out to ride?” When his aunt cackled so hard she dropped her bow, he said defensively, “They could, you know!” And, in a grumble, “I hate change.”

She cackled again. “If there wasn’t change, I’d be scrapin’ fish scales off me granny’s fisher. And you’d be scrapin’ out stalls! It’s ‘change’ only when ye didn’t want it, but ‘bettering’ if you do.” She attacked her bow.

He was still fuming over that a month later, as spring shoots fuzzed the plains below the royal castle. During the past couple of weeks the cold winds still blowing out of the east had stopped freezing his nose and ears to ache at first blast, and the air even felt almost warm once the sun was up. Goatkick had decided that Auntie Noth was wrong, though she meant well. Change was good when you’d
earned
it. Like a promotion.

The problem there was, he couldn’t find any reason to say that Han Tlen hadn’t earned her place next to the hawk-nosed Fera-Vayir brat (named Pirate-Prow because of his connection to Inda-Harskialdna’s mother) as second-year Runners-in-Training.

That morning he was on duty as third Runner outside the king’s government office; only staff was allowed inside, hearing the king’s business. But the Runners-in-Training were responsible for greeting any newcomers who made it this far and sorting out their business, often directing them to the guilds or heralds or guards.

A mud-splashed foreigner in a shaggy coat appeared at the top of the stairs, yawned gapingly, then plunged forward, a husky boy of sixteen walking just behind. The boy was clearly sweat-sticky with nerves, big as he was.

The first two duty Runners were gone. Goatkick was the senior Runner-in-Training over fourteen-year-old Pirate-Prow and Han Tlen. He’d been talking to Pirate-Prow so he didn’t have to talk to the girl.

“You have business with the Harvaldar?” he said to the newcomers.

Of course they did, or they wouldn’t have been passed by the sentries at the gate, or the lower level Runners. But Goatkick and his mates were the last gate to the king and many was the privately expressed hope that they might discover an assassin among the few foreigners ever sent this far.

“Message from Queen Wisthia,” the stranger with the shaggy wool coat said in careful Iascan. Then a jerk of a mittened thumb toward the boy just behind him. “Man along the border given me room and board if I bring his son to your King’s Shield.”

The boy wrenched his hands together, then muttered in Marlovan, “Harskialdna told my dad. At Lindeth. To send me when I turned sixteen.” In a lower voice, tremulous with his awareness of his own temerity, “I want to go for a guard.”