Treason's Shore (73 page)

She stretched up her arms, whirled as light as a wind-scudding leaf, and leaped. She danced to the sweet-voiced threnody on the bare stage in an empty horse barn, twirling and flitting in and out of the sunbeams and dust. First she saluted those unknown women who had given life and blood, though the battle had been against her own people, who had also given their life and blood. People who all should have been alive today, smiling at spring growth, watching children grow. But love and loyalty had demanded this sacrifice, each on the steel of the other.

What creatures we are,
she thought and leaped high, twisting her body to express wonder and torment; the aches, the shortened steps, the gnarled pull where once she’d moved without effort were her own minor mode, because oh, the sharpness of paradox!
We make poems and music to celebrate beauty, and we train to kill, and call it art
.

Though dance provided no answers, she could gain peace in expressing the questions with each leap and turn and step, until the midday sun shone directly onto the stage. The unseen women ended their song, one by one, until only a single voice remained, light and tremulous as a bird call. Signi whirled, her hands fluttering upward until she stopped in the center of the beam of light, face and hands lifted toward the warmth of the sun.

A caught breath was the first sign that her reverie had not been private after all. She opened her eyes, but her vision was dazzled by the sun. All she could see were shadows.

She stepped out of the sunbeam to discover a crowd of Marlovans pressed against the back wall. All remained silent, no one quite sure what to do next.

She had been taught that dance was a gift, and so she gave her audience a tentative smile as she slid her feet back into her shoes. She discovered from the cold on her face that she’d been weeping, so she slipped between the people, who parted to let her pass.

Just before she reached the street, she heard a man say, “Who
is
she? Where do you learn
that?
”

And a girl stated with the assurance of the young, “Oh, she’s obviously sent by Taumad the Runner. That’s how they dance in Colend. Everyone knows
that
.”

Signi laughed to herself, and ran back to the castle to bathe and change her clothes.

When she reached the Harskialdna suite, she stopped in the doorway, her nerves wringing coldly.

While everyone had been busy in the queen’s rooms, someone had laid before the door of Signi’s bedchamber a sprig of milkweed.

The first sign
.

Chapter Nine

G
RADUALLY over that long winter Evred began writing to Tau occasionally, at first strictly about guild matters. As the winter extended into spring, keeping most people inside—including the academy boys and the girls of the queen’s training—Evred found himself with more free time.

So he wrote cautious letters, not only reporting on Inda’s and Gand’s invention of lessons to be done indoors (the throne room resounding to the clickety-clack of double-stick fighting, the Great Hall set up for lance evolutions) but asking questions about the etiquette of foreign courts. Tau exerted himself to be entertaining, passing on current gossip about people in high places.

Then summer arrived abruptly. Gand and Inda vanished with all the boys on an extended banner game.

The day after the Summer Games, Evred returned from a council meeting to get ready for the departure banquet for the Jarls who’d come to see their girls and boys compete. As had become habitual, he checked the scroll-case and found another letter from Tau:

Evred ripped the letter across, twisted it up, and dropped it onto the hearth. He bent, struck a flame on the old sparker, and waited until the note was ash, then walked out of the government office, past his surprised Runners and herald-scribes. The king had never done that before.

They shrugged and returned to work.

Evred checked his ring. Inda was over on the guard side with Gand, supervising the shift of horsetails to their two years of guard duty. Through a bank of open windows Evred glimpsed yellow clouds of sun-powdered dust as the boys lugged their gear over the sun-baked ground to their new barracks. The heavy, humid air carried the nasal crack of teenage laughter.

Evred stopped outside the Harskialdna suite. A female Runner on duty at the door indicated Tdor, at least, was inside.

Evred said, “Is Tdor ill?”

The young woman struck fist to heart. “Stomach.”

Evred considered. “Has she left instructions not to be disturbed?”

“
You
can go in, Harvaldar-Dal,” the Runner replied, eyes round. The king had never entered the suite before, as far as she knew. “I’m just keeping out the girls coming to complain.”

Evred went in. The bedroom door was open, and Tdor’s pale, strained face turned his way. He trod quietly to the door and assessed the slightly greenish cast to her pallid cheeks. “Child-sickness, do you think?” he asked.

Tdor swallowed, her eyes closing. “I think so. I’ve stopped thinking it too many of those old almonds after supper or a peach past freshness.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“About three weeks. Not bad at first, but in the past few days . . .” She swallowed, and winced. “Hadand will preside at the banquet.” Her face flooded with color. “The healer said to stop drinking gerda. Good. I can’t keep it down.”

“The healer told Hadand when she felt like you do that the best thing is sleep and the next best is ginger-steep.”

Tdor smiled. “I drank some. It did help. For a while.” Her brow puckered. “Is there something?”

“Nothing that can’t wait.”

He closed the door soundlessly, and went to Tdor’s office, empty as expected. Hadand was putting on her good robes for the banquet; the ring indicated Inda was still guard-side. Signi would be finishing her Old Sartoran tutoring session with the heralds-in-training.

Evred reached into the plain wooden chest behind the “Files and Piles” table and pulled out Inda’s battered golden case, then opened it.

These things really could not be trusted: you had to know the particular spell to send a message, but anyone could open a case. Or at least this one. Evred had been checking it every few months, ever since he’d received that golden case from Tau. He’d sought out Inda’s and opened it just to see if anyone could tamper with one.

That explained Evred’s first breach of privacy. The ones after that . . . he called them necessity. And since Inda and Tdor had both forgotten about Inda’s golden case, Evred was the only one who saw Fox’s subsequent short, pungently funny letters, written in a small, neat scribal hand on tiny squares of fine rice paper. Nothing in them was of any military or political significance. The oldest and longest letter described the battle against the Venn off The Fangs; the most recent, and shortest, listed the marriages of persons unknown to Evred, the return of another faceless stranger called Woof, and had Inda heard that the Venn were in the strait? Everyone wanted to know if Inda was coming back to sea.

Evred opened the case, and there was a new letter, shorter than any:

The date was two days ago.

Evred folded the note along its original creases and tucked it back into the case. He’d already ordered the harbor commanders to reinforce their patrols with detachments of his dragoons, so there seemed nothing more to be done as yet, as far as Iasca Leror was concerned. The rest of the continent could look after itself. It had certainly done nothing to aid Iasca Leror when it was the target, he thought as he went back to get ready for the banquet.

After Evred left her, Tdor got up wearily, worried that something was amiss. Unfortunately, opening the door to the Harskialdna suite somehow brought a whiff of the fish in braised onions that was being carried to the dining room for the banquet.

Tdor reeled back, convulsed with dry heaves, and plopped in a heap on the floor. Inda arrived moments later, to find her still sitting there with the door Runner bent worriedly over her. The Runner pushed past him, saying, “I’ll fetch more ginger-steep.”

Inda’s good mood vanished at the sight of Tdor’s drawn, pale face. “Tdor?”

“It’s a child,” she said bluntly. “Has to be. I’ve never been sick like this in my life.”

“Can you get up?”

“Every time I try, I get dizzy and the heaves.”

Inda picked her up and carried her into the bedchamber. She stretched out on the bed and sighed in relief. Then she opened her eyes and smiled at the comical look on his face. “Inda?”

“Is it all right to be happy?” he asked, scratching his head. “I mean, you’re sick. That’s bad. But . . .” He flapped a hand. “You and me? A child? It sounds so, hoo! So strange.”

Tdor laughed, then clapped her hand to her mouth. “Urp. No laughing. Oh, Inda.” She collapsed back, halfway between tears and happiness. “Go get that dust off, and be both of us at the banquet. And when you come back,
don’t
tell me about the food.”

Evred’s resolve lasted for another three months.

They’d just finished Restday drum in the guard parade ground adjacent to the women’s area. Over the quiet years Tdor, Hadand, Evred, and Inda had developed a smooth routine as they distributed bread and wine respectively to their captains. These crossed back and forth handing it out as the male and female Guards, the Runners, the castle and stable folk drummed and sang together. After that everyone except those on watch rotation got an evening of liberty, trooping off in clumps to the city pleasure houses and eateries, and the four plus Signi trod upstairs to dine together.

Tdor sniffed, and said, “Braised fish! Oh, I am so glad to have my appetite back.”

Inda said, “I still can’t get the idea of a son into my head. I just don’t think I’m old enough!” Then he made one of his sudden stops, causing everyone behind him to stumble, some muffling laughter. “How old
am
I, anyway?”

Tdor was going to tell him—she had never ceased secretly cherishing his Name Days—but Hadand chuckled. “There are plenty of fathers much younger than their midtwenties, Inda. Are you going to be like Peddler Antivad and declare that everyone else ages but you?”