Warrior (6 page)

Slipping through the gate at the bottom of the garden, Kalan headed down the gravel path at a run, thinking the only thing that could ruin her day now was finding out that her brothers had been sent inside to study.

Despite the forty laps of the training yard Almodavar had insisted her brother run for not killing him last night, Damin looked to be in high spirits when Kalan climbed the fence to watch him and their stepbrother, Rodja Tirstone, go through their paces with quarterstaffs under the watchful eye of Raek Harlen. The air was dusty where the boys had scuffed the loose dirt during their bout, and it hung over the training yards like a dry, brown mist. A few feet away, Kalan’s twin brother, Narvell, was locked in a similar bout with Rodja’s younger brother, Adham. Beyond them were her foster-brother, Starros, and her cousin, Travin Taranger. The last pair was being watched over by another Raider, who stopped the boys occasionally to correct their technique.

Tall, dark-haired, and very handsome to Kalan’s eye, at nineteen, Travin seemed all grown up now. Six years as a fosterling in her grandfather’s household in Byamor had changed her cousin beyond recognition—not that she remembered him much from before; Kalan was only four when Travin left Krakandar and her contact with him since then had been sporadic at best. But he was home now and he had lots of stories about Grandpa Charel’s court and didn’t seem to mind Kalan asking him about it, so she figured he was just about the most perfect boy she’d ever met (not counting Wrayan Lightfinger).

If she’d been the type who wanted to get married, Travin would have been her first choice. If not Travin, then his younger brother, Xanda, might do just as well. Kalan missed Xanda since he’d left for Greenharbour and she wondered if her mother would allow him to come home for a visit when she returned this year.

The problem of marriage bothered Kalan a great deal more than it did most ten-year-old girls.

She knew these things were arranged well in advance. She also knew alliances sealed by marriage were more than just social arrangements. Travin would one day inherit his father’s title as the Earl of Walsark and be a lord in his own right. He would be a vassal of Krakandar, which her brother, Damin, would one day inherit, so it seemed perfectly logical to keep it all in the family, except Damin was going to be High Prince one day, too, and she wasn’t sure quite how that worked, because if Uncle Lernen died, then Damin would have to go to Greenharbour.
How could he be Warlord of Krakandar if he was living at the
other end of the country?

Thinking about it gave Kalan a headache. Anyway, Uncle Mahkas was always saying how Leila would probably marry Damin when they both grew up.
They
were cousins, so it didn’t seem in the least bit strange that if Kalan was going to be forced to marry somebody, she couldn’t have the cousin of her choice, too.

Of course, the entire issue was moot, Kalan reminded herself, because she wasn’t going to get married. She had decided this some time ago. All she needed now was to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, a problem that was looming larger every day as she realised how limited her career options were.

The captain spotted Kalan at the same time as the boys did and frowned at her disapprovingly.

“Are you supposed to be down here in the yards, my lady?”

“Lirena didn’t say I
couldn’t
come, Captain Harlen,” Kalan replied truthfully, lifting her skirts as she climbed over to sit on the top rail. “Who’s winning?”

“Who do you think?” Rodja asked, sucking on his bleeding knuckles. The boys were practising with weapons scaled to their height. Although Damin was two years younger than Rodja, there was little difference in their size. If anything, Damin was a little taller. And he was almost unbeatable. Certainly her stepbrothers, Rodja and Adham, rarely got the better of him. She’d even seen Damin give Xanda a run for his money before he left, and Xanda was five years older than Damin. Being perhaps the smartest of the boys, Starros simply refused to fight him any more.

“You’re letting Damin win,” Raek Harlen told Rodja unsympathetically. “Instead of striking at his shoulder, you could have changed your grip on your own weapon and taken a strike at Damin’s neck.”

Rodja rolled his eyes. “Now why didn’t
I
think of that?”

“Because you fight like a girl,” Kalan told him with a laugh.

“
I
fight like a girl?” he asked, turning to her with a wounded look. “I’d like to see you do any better, Kalan Hawksword. And does anybody actually
care
that I’m bleeding?” When nobody answered him immediately, he threw his hands up in disgust. “Apparently not.”

“A few bloodied knuckles won’t kill you, Rodja,” Damin assured him with a friendly poke of his staff. “Again?”

“You really do think this is fun, don’t you?” Rodja said, blowing on his stinging hand before turning back to face Damin and resuming a fighting stance.

Waiting for Rodja to attack, Damin assumed a similar pose, but for him it seemed natural, whereas Rodja had to consciously think about it. As Rodja moved to strike, Damin grinned at his stepbrother. “Don’t
you
think it’s fun?”

In reply, Rodja struck hard, his left leg forward and his left hand at the centre of the staff. As soon as he moved, Damin, with his right hand placed between the centre and the butt-end of the staff, rotated his weapon too fast for Rodja to counter and brought it up with a whack on his stepbrother’s already bruised and bloodied knuckles.

Rodja yelped with pain, dropped his staff and jumped back out of Damin’s reach. “Right! That’s it! I’ve had enough of this! You did that on purpose!”

“No!
Really
?” Damin asked with a laugh.

“Always hit a man in his weakest spot,” Kalan added cheerily. “Isn’t that what Almodavar’s always telling you?”

Rodja didn’t appreciate the reminder. He nursed his sore hand against his chest and glared at his stepbrother. “That’s all right for you, your
highness
. You’re going to be High Prince some day. I don’t need to know how to fight. I’m planning a nice safe career as a spice importer like my pa.”

“And you think ‘always hit a man in his weakest spot’ isn’t the first bit of advice your father’s going to give you when it comes to dealing with the competition in the spice trade?” Raek asked, picking up Rodja’s discarded staff. “Mercenaries and merchants have more in common than you imagine, lad.

Here, let me look at it.”

Reluctantly, Rodja held out his hand for Raek’s inspection. The captain studied it for a moment and then nodded. “Perhaps you should get Lady Bylinda to dress it for you.”

“
Thank
you,” he said impatiently, snatching his hand back.

“You still fight like a girl, Rodja Tirstone!” Kalan called after him, as her stepbrother turned and headed for the gate. He didn’t reply, but he did make a rude gesture at her with his bloody finger, which made Kalan laugh. If Lirena or Aunt Bylinda caught any of the children making a gesture like that around the palace, they’d be on bread and water for a week, but down here in the training yards, things were much more relaxed.

“You shouldn’t taunt him, my lady,” Raek warned. “Rodja’s actually not that bad. And Damin did hurt him.”

“I know,” she shrugged. “But he gets all red in the face when you tease him. Haven’t you ever noticed that?”

“It’s still not very nice, Lady Kalan.”

Kalan cocked her head to one side curiously. “Captain, don’t you think it a little odd to be lecturing me about being nice while you’re teaching my brothers to hit each other with big sticks?”

Damin laughed. He could see the irony, but Raek Harlen wasn’t nearly so impressed. He opened his mouth to say something; but fortunately Damin came to her rescue before the captain could order her from the yard. “Am I finished for the day, Raek?” he asked. “Now I don’t have a sparring partner?”

“I’ll spar with you!” Kalan volunteered.

Damin laughed outright at the suggestion. “Why do you need to know anything about a quarterstaff, Kal?”

“Because the quarterstaff is an extremely useful weapon,” she quoted smugly. Kalan had a good memory for stuff like this. She could overhear something once and repeat it back, even months later, verbatim. “A staff can be used any way a man—or
woman
—wants to use it. You can strike like a sword, or hit like an axe. Or you can thrust it like a spear and you can do it from either side of the body and you can change quickly from side to side, which makes it very difficult for your opponent to respond to an attack.”

Damin recognised the speech. He shook his head at his sister. “It’s creepy the way you can do that, Kalan.”

Raek relented a little. He smiled at her. “And even if you
can
quote Captain Almodavar word for precious word, there’s more chance of a Fardohnyan invasion this afternoon, young lady, than me letting you spar with your brother and a couple of quarterstaffs.”

“Are you afraid I’ll hurt him?”

“Yes,” Raek agreed, taking the staff Damin held out to him. “That must be it.”

Kalan glared at the captain, then crossed her arms across her body with a scowl. “I hate being a girl.”

“Some day you might find you like it,” Raek suggested.

The captain turned to Narvell and Adham and told them they could finish up. Overhearing the order, the Raider supervising Starros and Travin signalled them to finish as well. Travin helped the Raider collect their weapons and headed back towards the armoury with Raek Harlen, leaving Kalan with her brothers. Sitting on top of the fence looking down at them all, she felt like a queen overlooking her court. The illusion lasted right up until Narvell poked her in the side jokingly and she almost lost her balance.

“You and Leila have another fight?” Starros asked with a knowing smile as he walked to the fence, tucking in his shirt.

Kalan nodded. “I was really convincing. Lirena probably won’t send anyone to look for me for hours yet. She thinks I’m in a right old sulk.”

“I can’t believe the old girl falls for it
every
time,” Adham said, wiping his dusty, sweat-stained face on his shirt. With his fair hair and slender build, he looked more like Starros’s brother than Rodja’s.

“She’s getting on a bit,” Kalan shrugged. “You’re not all going back to the palace, are you?”

The boys looked at each other questioningly. Apparently, they had no plans beyond this morning’s training session. Their more formal lessons were temporarily suspended, since their last tutor had left over a month ago claiming he couldn’t bear to work under such trying conditions. As he was the fourth tutor in as many months to quit the palace,
another
letter had been sent to Princess Marla in Greenharbour about the need for yet
another
scholar and she had written back to say she would be bringing the new tutor with her when she brought Luciena to Krakandar. That meant they had another few days before their lessons resumed. These precious moments of freedom were not to be wasted on things like history or mathematics.

Kalan looked at Damin expectantly. Although neither the eldest nor the biggest of the Krakandar children, he was their natural leader and the others would usually go along with whatever he suggested.

Except Starros. He was probably the only one among them who didn’t follow blindly wherever Damin led.

“We could go fishing,” the young prince suggested after a moment.

“Only if Uncle Mahkas doesn’t find out,” Starros warned. “He told Rodja we weren’t to go near the fens without an escort.”

“We’ll take Travin,” Kalan declared. “Then Uncle Mahkas can’t say we didn’t have an escort.”

That seemed to satisfy even Starros. The others looked at each other and nodded their agreement. Kalan jumped down off the fence with a satisfied sigh.
It’s a perfect day. I’m going fishing in
the fens with the boys and Travin is coming along as my escort
.

Life didn’t get much better than this.

In the poorer sections of Talabar, particularly among the hovels belonging to the free labourers of the city, life had plenty of room for improvement. For Rory, son of Drendik, son of Warak, life could take a turn for the better any time it was ready, as far as he was concerned.

Now would be good.

Yesterday would have been better.

Rory’s troubles all started when he began to suffer unbearable headaches, which at first both his father and grandfather had put down to hunger. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. Things had been bleak recently, work harder and harder to come by. It had something to do with the completion of a major undertaking far from Talabar, Rory knew, somewhere in the Sunrise Mountains. According to Grandpa Warak, once the construction of the Widowmaker Pass was finally completed, all the workers formerly employed on the project had suddenly flooded the market. There was a glut of able-bodied slaves available for purchase and they were going cheap. Ship owners across Fardohnya were snapping up bargains, crewing their ships—in some cases almost entirely—with slave labour. That meant free sailors like his father and uncles couldn’t find work unless they were willing to sign on as bondsmen, which was just a polite way of signing yourself into slavery.

Everyone went hungry as Rory’s father and uncles tried to scrape up enough to put food on the table for their large clan, and the headaches got worse by the day. It wasn’t unreasonable, he knew, to think the two events were connected. He even stopped complaining about them after a while. The look of despair his father wore most of the time made his own pain seem insignificant.

And then Rory’s cousin, Patria, came home one morning, after staying out all night, with enough money to feed the family for a week.

Older than Rory by three years, Patria was fifteen and Uncle Gazil’s only daughter, a pale, fair-haired, waiflike girl with a shy demeanour that hid a will of iron. She claimed the money came from working in one of the taverns along Restinghouse Street, washing tankards and cleaning up after the drunks. Rory didn’t understand why all the grown-ups had seemed so upset. To Rory and his six younger siblings, any food on the table was welcome—they weren’t too concerned where it came from. But his father, his uncles and even Grandpa Warak all wore dark looks for days afterwards and Patria cried a lot.