Treason's Shore (9 page)

The subject made Tdor uneasy. She was just getting used to the idea of being a wife. “So where is my office?”

“Over in my territory. It’s not
that
far!” Hadand grinned. “Queen Wisthia, a dear and I’ll always treasure her memory, wasted so much space when she was queen. Imagine a breakfast room, a music room, a sewing room, a morning room, in addition to the formal dining room and the study room we knew so well! Why can’t you do all that in one or two rooms at most?”

Because she was caged here,
Tdor remembered Fareas-Iofre saying after her single visit to the royal castle.
Queen Wisthia made an Adrani world within our Marlovan world, and found meaningful work, which probably made her feel less a hostage.

Noise issued up from the stairway leading down to the guard compound, and a door banged open behind them. Evred and Inda entered.

“And here’s where you live,” Evred said. “Your main room is this one. Private rooms behind all those doors.”

Everyone watched Inda as he turned around, taking in the stone walls of the oddly shaped room with its single slant of light coming down the narrow corridor with the inset window, the plain flagged floor. The only furnishings were a low raptor-footed table, a neat stack of old mats covered with crimson wool, and a bench between a couple of the doors. Signi, lingering at the back, thought she’d seen more comfortable prisons.

But Inda grinned as he turned around a second time, his coat skirts flaring out. “All this space! Hey-o, Tdor, come up in this alcove—there’s a bench built into it. We can sit here and look out at the parade court.”

“During your many watches of free time,” Hadand said, and laughed.

Inda shrugged, hands out. “I’d be fine with a hammock and enough air to swing it in.”

Only Inda was oblivious to the subtle reactions in his auditors. He marched to the main bedroom, peered at the inset window, and turned around to exclaim, “We can see the academy roofs from here, too.”

Hadand opened the double doors to the hallway. “The mulled wine will get cold soon.”

Hadand had glimpsed Signi waiting purposefully just behind Evred, so she slid her hands round Tdor’s and Inda’s arms and marched them off, leaving the question of work, Tdor, Signi, and who would sleep where back in the Harskialdna suite.

Evred checked at the sight of Signi the Venn waiting not two steps away, her face raised expectantly. Until now she’d deferred so expertly he’d scarcely noted her presence.

He suppressed a pang of irritation, a reaction that had grown far milder since the first day she’d been forced into his life. “You wish to speak to me?”

“Yes, Harvaldar-Dal.” Her accent was almost gone now. “With your permission, I would like to make a journey around your kingdom. Renew the bridge and water spells.”

Gratitude flicked into suspicion. No. It was possible she would send observation reports to her homeland, but she could do that anyway. She was a mage. He could send an army after her, but they could catch her only if she willed it. And she had done nothing to indicate she was a spy.

He waited until the reaction had cooled. “Did Inda request this service of you?”

She turned to study him. In a way her wide gaze, so infrequently encountered, almost hurt as much as Inda’s, but for different reasons. But he sustained it as she said, “He did not. Perhaps you remember that I once explained how Inda found me: I was to go to Sartor for a greater purpose.”

“To reveal the Venn system of navigation. I remember that. Has this changed?”

Her hand passed across her face; she did not hide her perplexity. “I don’t think so. But I don’t know. The last I heard, Dag Erkric was preventing our access to Sartor, or rather, having it warded. Until I know for certain that I will not walk into a magical trap if I go, I await more definite orders. Until then, I perceive there is work needed, and it is the kind of work that I have the training to do.”

Evred let out his breath. One of the first and most pressing of the demands on him as king was to try to negotiate a return of the mages that the Magic Council of Sartor had seen fit to deny Iasca Leror. Then he would have had to find some way to pay them. “Thank you, Dag Signi. Thank you. And yes, you have my permission to travel through my kingdom. With my good will and my gratitude. I will write an order to that effect, but will you not stay at least for the Restday drum?”

She bowed her head in gratitude. The branches of the Tree connected to the great trunk of life, though individual leaves could not perceive their place in the whole. Here in this room had stood the only three people who carried a life passion for Inda. She would remove one of them for a time, so that the other two would the more easily discover an accommodation. In the meantime, she would do some good in the world.

Chapter Five

T
HE Venn had been gone a full month before the Idayagans finally emerged from their various retreats and poked their way tentatively into the ruined harbor below Trad Varadhe.

One of the sailors was a squint-eyed, skinny fellow in a crimson knitted hat who claimed to be from Khanerenth by way of the Nob. He dressed like an east coast sailor. When cherished pieces of scouts, cutters, and even a couple of schooners began to appear from burial in gardens, hiding places in attics and basements and caves and stables, he pitched in to help in the rebuilding.

The ships had to be finished out at sea. The harvest was in before the first schooner was ready to sail.

“Maybe the damn Marlovans will stick to their word and let us go,” the captain of the schooner said to those gathered on the dock, as out on the water his sons and nephew led the work party in rattling down the shrouds.

“Sure haven’t smelled them on the wind,” one of the other captains joked, which brought the expected guffaws and some spitting over the rail.

“The One-Eyed Jarl is gone down south,” someone else reported in a knowing voice, though Camarend Tya-Vayir’s departure had hardly been a secret, and the subsequently increased patrols of his seemingly endless men underscored what would happen if Idayago tried any trouble while he was gone.

“Well, I’m for Bren,” the captain declared, looking at those who’d brought their gear to the dock in hopes of being picked for the first ship out of harbor. “See what the rest of the world has been doing since the pirates tied us down. Right now there’s enough north in that east wind that we should raise the Bren Harbor by New Year’s if we sail on the tide. Now, who’s volunteering? Because there ain’t no pay this trip out.”

No, but everyone with a hand up was hoping to make instant money buying long-needed goods and bringing them back to sell.

The captain chose first among those who had helped work on the ship, one of whom was the squint-eyed fellow whose broad forehead and pointed chin reminded one of a rodent. He’d worked hard but kept to himself.

They launched without the least trouble—not a whiff of a horse-tailed warrior or his mount riding down from the ruined castle or thundering over the hills above the harbor.

As the ship beat out into the open sea, the captain went through his new crew himself, learning names and skills.

When he came to the squint-eyed one, he said, “Don’t tell me. You’re a shipmaster. I saw the way you were runnin’ that crew with the standing rigging. So you want to take the deck o’ nights?”

“Suits me fine.”

“Name?”

“Rat,” said Barend. “Everyone always calls me Rat.”

Inda woke to the echo of a shout. Warning?

He sat up, breathing hard. The room was cold. No, he was wet—salt spray?

“Inda.” Tdor’s voice was hoarse, and he had a vague sense of repetition. “You are here, in the royal city. There are no pirates. There is nobody named Rig. Inda? Hear me?”

“Tdor?” He caught himself before exclaiming, “What are you doing here?” He clawed a hand through his sweaty, tangled hair and mumbled, “Thought I was on Walic’s ship again.”

“Go back to sleep. Dawn will be here soon enough.”

He flopped back and after a time his breathing slowed. He was asleep. Tdor lay awake, wondering if he was missing Signi more than he admitted—maybe more than he knew.

She hated the jealous feelings these questions stirred.
Poor Signi is gone, probably because of me, and here I am putting her between Inda and me in spirit
. She rolled out of bed; if her mind insisted on worrying at things it couldn’t fix, it might as well concentrate on real work.

When Inda woke next it was from a vivid dream, so intense—the details so sharp, down to the color of the morning light stippling the stone walls of his room, and the smell of his green-dyed linsey-woolsey quilt when it first came out of the cedar chest in autumn—he believed he was in his bed at Tenthen. But the shapes and shadows in the lifting darkness confused him. He lurched toward what he thought was the stair to the baths below, slammed into a door he’d forgotten was there, and reeled back, a hand to his throbbing nose. He hadn’t had that dream about Tanrid since he was on board the Pim ships. And wasn’t there a worse one earlier?

Before she left, Signi had renewed the glowglobes. He clapped, and there was his enormous bedroom with nothing in it but the bed, behind him two doors, and another door on the adjacent wall. Three days here, and he still wasn’t used to it yet!

He scowled at each door. The first led down to the baths, the one next to it to the next room, and the adjacent door to the main room. He had to get accustomed to this. His life had changed again, but it was a good change, full of honor.
He
was Harskialdna, not Sponge’s uncle, and Sponge was the king.

So why would he have dreams like these? He wrestled into his clothes, ran down to morning drill, then to the baths. When he emerged he discovered new clothes waiting for him. He was still wearing the boots Cherry-Stripe Marlo-Vayir had grown out of, though they’d probably be replaced soon, too. He was supposed to dress correctly now, something he hadn’t thought about since the days he was a scrub in the academy, lining up for inspection.

The academy! His mood lightened. Evred had said they would talk about the academy today.

While he walked rapidly down the hall, eating his breakfast on the way, Tdor found Hadand on the sentry walk above the court where the women did their own morning warmups.

Mistress Gand, wife of the academy headmaster, conducted the women’s drill in the mornings. This job she looked forward to resigning into Tdor’s hands as soon as the new Harandviar was ready.

“Why aren’t we down there?” Tdor asked.

“I wanted you to see how I conducted drills, when I had to do it. Mistress Gand thinks it looks pompous to drill ’em from up here,” Hadand said as the women whirled and leaped and posed below, knives glinting ruddy in the firelight. “But I like it up here. I see more. You being a Harandviar, you can be here, too, if you like.”

“I’m used to drilling in your mother’s style,” Tdor admitted, watching the women sheath their knives and pick up their bows and thumb guards. “First in line, down in the court.”