Fish, having stood on the street the entire time Connar was with the singer, frowned back at the crowded street. This was the worst sort of terrain with only one person on guard: shadowy except for the rings of golden light, broken here and there by colors from dyed lanterns. Thick crowds moving in and out of the shadows. Was he being followed, or was that just his imagination? It might even be one of Stick Tyavayir’s scouts, thinking the same thing Fish had. If only he could see better!
He brushed his fingers reassuringly over the knife at his belt, remembered the ones in his boots, then stopped short; Connar had halted in the middle of an intersection, heedless of arm-linked, tipsy dancers staggering in one direction, and in another some apprentice-aged girls stalking snickering boys, while all around people strolled, talked, laughed, and commented over the wares, the stars overhead, the lanterns hanging from ship-spars out at sea.
Connar, an island in an ocean of movement, stood very still, staring up at a painted sign:
Lindeth-Hije Shipping
SIX
Hije. Where had Connar heard that before? Then he remembered. Hije was the founder’s name of the company his birth mother had come from.
He glared at the arched, golden windows of the store. He had ended up a prince, amid people who loved him. He loved them back. And he wouldn’t want to become a shopkeeper, or shipkeeper, or whatever “shipping” meant.
And yet right here, in this building, lived the people who had thrown him away.
He walked through the open door, his lambent gaze lancing straight to a fellow leaning on a display table, but when the fellow looked up, the awkward knot in his throat bobbing and his mouth open, Connar recognized this was a gangling snot of no more than sixteen.
Behind the counter stood a girl about the same age, dressed like Connar’s musician in filmy layers of green with yellow ribbons tying the sleeves and bunched all down the front.
The only other people in the shop were a pair of old women, ogling some long, curved porcelain vases that had to have come from overseas.
The pair of teens stared at Connar.
“May I help you?” the girl asked. “Are you lost?”
Connar uttered a sharp laugh. Lost. Good one. “Who runs this place? I want to talk to him.”
“Her,” the teen corrected politely. “I’ll fetch my mother.” She shot a glance at the boy, who lifted his hands and walked out, casting a quick, uneasy glance back at Connar.
The girl whisked herself behind a hanging curtain woven in patterns of orange blossoms and pale blue birds, then came out again, followed by a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who stumbled to a stop when she saw Connar.
He stared back. The woman, whose hair was shot with white, had his winged brows, which rose nearly to her hairline.
“Well,” she said, and swallowed audibly. “Please. Come back to the private room. Sese, bring some wine punch and shipcakes.” Seh-seh, she’d said, an Iascan name.
“I don’t want any,” Connar said curtly.
“Well, I do,” the woman retorted frankly. “The wine, anyway.”
There was no heat in her voice, only a slight tremor.
Connar’s mood shifted from anger to wariness as he followed the woman down a short hall with crates stacked on either side, to a small room fitted out with tapestries of a kind he had never seen before—no battles or heroes, but patterns of stylized shapes that drew the eye.
He wrenched his gaze away, as she sank down on the other side of an exquisite bluewood table carved along the edges with intertwined laurel leaves. She gestured toward the guest mat on the other side as she said, “You have to be Fini’s son.”
He stood before her, arms crossed, ignoring the implied question. “And you are?”
“Hije sa Vaka. Fini’s sister. We shared a mother.” Hee-jeh. More Iascan.
“Not a father?” Connar asked.
“No.” She shook her head, a gesture that looked odd to Connar, until he realized she wasn’t shaking something loose, but emphasizing the negation. “Fini’s father was a ship captain. Some said privateer, some said pirate. He trades in luxuries. Mother met him in Brenn, where she lives, running our fleet there.”
Connar brought his gaze back. “Where is he now?”
“I guess at sea. We haven’t seen him for twenty years.” She lifted a hand that trembled a little; she made a fist and dropped it. “Your blue eyes come from him.”
Sese came in then with fine porcelain in what looked to Connar like tiny, narrow-mouthed cups. He was used to the wide, shallow wine cups that Marlovans used, that required two hands. Harder to cut throats when both hands are busy, Da had said to Connar and Noddy once, laughing.
The girl set down the tray, and Hije began to pour out wine into two cups. As she lifted one to her lips, Connar said, “So you know who I am.”
The cup lowered. “The moment you walked through the door,” Hije said. “Though your bones are different. They must belong to the father I never met. Your coloring is my sister’s.”
“Tell me about her.” Connar began to prowl the perimeter of the room as he took in the objects. A feast for the eyes, every one.
Hije said. “Very well. But you have to realize first that I hated Fini. Really hated her, though we are related by blood. So regard what I say in the light of that. She was older than I by two years. Grandmother spoiled her rotten when she was small. So did Mother, on her rare visits from Brenn. Until she was about fourteen, Fini’s father used to sail in every year or two, bring her fabulous gifts—that golden cup up there, with the swans etched on the side is one of them—and tell her she was born to be a princess. She was careless about lessons, but she certainly stuck to that.”
Hije drank some wine, then lowered the cup. “Remember I warned you about my dislike. Do you want me to go on?”
“Go on.”
“Fini knew how to coo and simper—but as soon as Mother or Grandmother were out of sight, she’d pinch and slap me into doing all her work as well as my own. Enough?”
“Is there more?” Connar asked.
“She was smart. Sang like a bird, and played the tiranthe. But as soon as she got old enough to catch the eyes of the boys, she threw those aside and went after them. She liked making them fight over her. After she caused trouble up at the Marlovan garrison, Grandmother sent her to Nevree. She was supposed to be learning the business. But she wanted to marry someone with a title, as high a one as she could find.” Hije’s voice husked, and she drank off her wine. “Fini wanted someone to make her a princess.”
Connar turned around, and in a sudden movement dropped down onto the guest mat. Hije hid a sigh of relief. She still felt that back-of-the-neck grip of threat, but there was a matter of family justice here. He had a right to ask, and she owed him the answers.
She forced herself to meet that unwavering blue gaze. “I was a year younger than Sese out there when you were born, right after your father was killed, and everyone expected there to be war as a result. Either from the Idegans coming down here to destroy us after burning Larkadhe, everyone said, or from the Marlovans. We were all scared. Some ships refused to land, and prices....”
She saw the tightening of impatience in his expressive brow and waved a hand. “Well. Anyway. I was running both shops, young as I was, Lindeth and Nevree, which is where all our Marlovan trade is handled—I had to ride twice a week, because Fini refused to help me. Then she had you. Grandmother was very old, and knew her time was coming. Sending you to the Marlovan capital was one of the last things she did.”
Hije paused, and wiped a strand of hair off her damp forehead. “There was no way I could raise a child, much less a boy. All our boys go to sea, and we hadn’t anyone to take you in to train up. But there were all those mighty Olavayirs at Nevree. Grandmother thought, surely there’d be a place for you, but they said there was political trouble, and there was no marriage. Before he was killed, the father was supposed to marry someone else, and they also said the old jarl had just died, and
the family grieved. Grandmother knew the truth, that they all hated Fini, and so she sent you to them at the capital.”
Connar said, “You didn’t tell me why she abandoned me.”
Hije looked away. “It was shameful. It still is, really. She had you, threw a tantrum that you weren’t a girl, which meant she couldn’t secure the heirship away from me. She gave you a king’s name, said you deserved a king for a father, but any time you cried, she left you to me and my cousin, who was thirteen at the time. One day she put you in a basket in the front room right out there, told the new apprentice that she was going to find a better nanny goat for milk, took the best gems, and never came back. We don’t know if she’s a princess somewhere—in which case she would probably invent the sort of family a princess would have—or if she’s dead.”
Hije took another sip of wine, then said in a cautious voice, “Were they good to you, the Olavayirs?”
“Very,” Connar said dryly, but he decided against pointing out that she could have asked any time in the past twenty-four years. Though Hauth had had nothing but disparaging words to say about this half of his birth family, Connar found this Hije far less objectionable than Hauth. Maybe she’d been afraid. She and her daughter were certainly very Iascan, right to the accent.
He swung to his feet. “If she ever turns up again, and asks for me...no, on second thought, let her show up.” His teeth showed, and his pupils, large and black, reflected the lights in a cold glitter. “Thanks,” he said, and walked out.
Hije let out a deep breath, as Sese tiptoed in, her eyes round. “Was that really him, Prince Connar?”
“Oh, yes,” Hije said.
She sipped again, deciding what to say. Though he was gone, the simmering atmosphere lingered—very like Fi’s tempers, but deeper, far more dangerous. She wasn’t certain if that sense was fancy, knowing that he’d become a prince, and so he could make worlds of trouble for them with a wave of his hand, or because he looked so martial in that tight coat with the knife in his sash. She decided safest was as little said as possible. “He wanted to know about our family, which is his right. I told him, and he left. All very polite.”
Sese went out again, a little disappointed that there hadn’t been more drama, but thrilled that she’d met a prince. At least that much she could tell everyone on the street.
Connar headed back, followed by Fish, who was now certain that someone was shadowing them. It could be Stick Tyavayir’s men, for the same reason Fish was there. If it wasn’t, the streets were reassuringly full of roaming armed guards from the garrison. He wasn’t afraid of attack, precisely, but it was unsettling to sense someone pacing him, remaining skillfully out of sight in the way that Fish had learned as a boy. It was the way they didn’t want to come forward, if for nothing else, to trade watching so he could risk getting something to eat and drink. He was desperately thirsty.
At least Connar didn’t stop moving until he reached the pavilion again.
Noddy beamed. “You’re back! Come. There’s plenty to eat here.”
“Looks good,” Connar said, hauling himself easily over the rail and dropping onto the bench beside Noddy.
Fish caught up, heart hammering. He had to report. Maybe doing it in public would deflect some of Connar’s mood.
“You were followed,” he said to Connar.
Connar’s head jerked up. “By?”
“I didn’t spot them. It was dark by the time I—”
“So you’re saying you followed me after I told you not to?”
Fish was about to point out that he’d not received orders, only a general suggestion of liberty, but he knew how that would be taken.
Then Neit, leaning on the rail, snorted. “Of course he did. He’d be first against the wall if anything happened to you, because that’s general runner orders.”
“That’s right,” Vanadei spoke up unexpectedly. He almost never talked in front of Connar, unless asked a direct question. “If Fish hadn’t done his job, I would have had to go.”
“Did you see who it was?” Connar asked, his tone a jot less hostile.
“No.”
Fala, daughter of the garrison commander, had grown up around military thinking. “It might even have been on Da’s orders. Same reason.”
Noddy opened his hand. “I’ve counted at least two patrols in sight all afternoon.”
Fish relaxed incrementally as Connar stared out at the harbor, at which time Lineas started blithering on about how beautiful the lanterns on the ships were, bright as stars reflecting in the water, yadoo laloo, and did he chance to see them?
Fish didn’t like royal runners on principle, but lifted his hand in thanks when Vanadei offered a cup of cold ale, and a bowl of rice balls and cheese crisped in cabbage leaves. As Fish wolfed these down, he wondered how Lineas could be so blind as not to notice Connar wasn’t listening to a word she said.
He was wrong.
She kept talking, filling the silence, as Connar ate a few rice balls and drank some spiced wine. There were times, especially in their early days together, when he was still healing, when she had been able to talk him into a calmer mood. She could see in his tight profile that something had disturbed him, but as she went on about how beautiful the parade of ships around the harbor had been, with all the lights up the masts and in the yards and rigging, she heard his breathing slow. If it was only her tone, or the sound of her voice that soothed him, that was all right.
The last Midsummer game commenced with a blaring of trumpets and a shout from the crowd along the boardwalk below their stand. Out on the water, rowboats raced out to a line of ships in competition to be first to raise a banner to the highest mast. As Connar raised his head to watch the end of the race, Lineas brought her sentence to a natural close.
The boats arrived, people scrambled aboard, and a banner, too dark to see, jerked up to the top of an elegant schooner. Shrieks of triumph carried across the water like gull cries, to be taken up by the spectators.
And the festival was over—all except for the private fun.
Along the boardwalk the crowd stirred, breaking up into clumps and wandering off.
Noddy stretched, saying, “It’s late, and we have to be out of the garrison before the last night patrol gets in.” With a hopeful expression, “While you were exploring, Cabbage Gannan came by at the end of his duty patrol. He said they’ve been tied to the city for weeks, preparing for today. He gets a day free tomorrow, so early, before the heat, he’s taking his riding and anyone who wants to come from West Company out to the North Bend to run lance drills. We can come watch, he said. Or even run with them, if we like. It’s only garrison first-years, nothing official. Since we don’t have a long ride back to Larkadhe, I thought we could do that.”
Connar muttered, “You can if you want. I’ve been doing nothing but drill for the past couple months, and I don’t need to ride out of my way just to watch Gannan prancing around sniffing your tail.”
Noddy’s voice dropped a note or two in disappointment. “I don’t like to split our escort.”
They walked in silence.
It seemed to take much longer to get back, partly because the darkness, the long day, the warm sun, and the spiced wine left them all tired. But at last they spotted the torchlit towers, and soon were inside.
The princes and their first runners were conducted up to the commander’s offices, where it was clear they were to share a room. Connar was annoyed, but he knew it couldn’t be helped. He could see the castle was crowded.
Neit, who had gone off on her own at the end, reappeared and beckoned to Lineas. “You can bunk with us runners,” she said, an invitation Lineas welcomed with relief.
It seemed no sooner had she laid her head on a flat pillow than Neit was shaking her awake. “Come on, we don’t want Prince Crabby to have to wait.”
“Crabby?” Lineas whispered, aware of her dry throat. She’d obviously been snoring. Well, so had everyone else; she’d fallen asleep to the sound.
“Did I say Crabby? I meant Connar,” Neit said, laughing as she fingered her sun-bleached hair into fast braids. And then, “Don’t fret, Lineas, I poke fun at everybody. Especially when I’ve had half a watch of sleep.”
Lineas smiled back. “Do we have time for a bath?”
“Nope. But we’ll all soon be stinking of horse. The ensorcelled bucket is over there. You can plunge your head into the water, which will make your face and mouth feel clean, at least.”
Lineas did. The magic purification spell fizzed briefly over her face, mouth, tongue, and teeth, a pleasant, refreshing sense, and as she walked back, her head and yesterday’s braids dripping. she wondered if Quill’s hand had been the one to renew the spell on the bucket. She yanked on her boots, strapped on her knives, and Neit led the way out.
They had their horses saddled by the time the last of their escort crowded into the stable, most looking frowzy and crapulous, others moving with the curious, careful rigidity of apocalyptic hangovers.
As the column started out of the stable yard, Lineas turned her mount toward the back, but Neit leaned out and caught hold of her reins. “Oh, no, you don’t. You ride up front with me. I’m not going to be the only reasonable one amidst four pricks after a short night, too much drink, and no sex.”
Lineas blushed, not certain whether to laugh or apologize, but she perforce followed Neit up the column, smiling in thanks as the banner bearers prudently dropped back to make space for them.
Trumpets blared, causing at least half the escort to wince. In silence they rode through the gates and turned northward toward the hazy mountains, the pewter-colored ocean at their left.
After a time Vanadei silently produced a bag of leftovers from the night before, and broke out of line to offer food to Noddy, then Connar. In silence the princes each took something. Vanadei dropped back to share out the rest among the four runners, the escort having their own provisions furnished by the garrison.
Time of Daughters II Page 8