Connar and Stick Tyavayir rode side by side, the heir’s eagle banners carried on lances behind them, the company bristling with arms as they rode at a sedate walk. There could not be more contrast between them in their sashed coats, their helms, the tear-shaped shields slung at the saddles with swords and bows, and the ragged prisoners shuffling along, many shivering. They clumped together for warmth, and because they did not like the grim looks cast their way by these stone-faced Marlovans who kept them moving.
Everything changed when they reached a bend in the river with a sheltered ledge curving around a broad beach dotted with pebbles. Here they halted, and at Stick’s command, the scouts set up firesticks to build a fire. At first the prisoners made motions to draw close to the warmth, but swords ripped from sheaths, keeping them back.
And when some of them saw irons laid in the fire, whispers ran through them, and covert grumbling changed to apprehension.
Presently Stick said, “Ready.” And hefted a glowing iron, his light gaze steady with cold anger under his expressive brows.
Connar crunched through the gravel to face the prisoners. He figured at least one might speak Marlovan, not that he cared if they translated or not. They’d soon figure it out.
“We’ll honor my brother’s decision, though I don’t believe in your oaths. So I’m going to send you off with a mark that will alert anyone who sees you if you’re ever seen on these shores again. This pain will be nothing to what we’ll do then.”
As he spoke, two of Stick’s men—both of them nearly killed on that road that day—yanked a burly man to his feet and held his arms as Stick leveled the burning iron at the man’s forehead.
NINE
Of course word got back to Larkadhe, after the stumbling, half-frozen prisoners were marched to the dock, each with a blistered red line on his face.
Nothing was said between the brothers. Noddy regretted having let Connar and Stick take them, but at least they were alive. Connar shrugged it off. What was there to say?
So the subject, not quite a question, lay between them, neither wishing to push it into being something else, as days flitted by and winter arrived early, with dramatic suddenness for those unused to the mountainous north.
Lineas was still writing to Quill every night, warming her fingers over her candles in her cold room that got dark so early. The sun now shone overhead for only a few hours in the middle of the day before vanishing behind the northwest mountains.
She couldn’t bear to write about any of the turmoil in her heart.
‘Justice.’ She knew that Ghost Fath, a smiling, pleasant young man she saw often, agreed with what Connar and Stick Tyavayir had done. They considered their action justice, and she could understand some of their emotions, for she’d helped in the lazaretto in those early days.
She’d grieved over those broken young men, and she grieved now over Oba and his cousin, and the others, even the ones who had looked at her with resentment and fear. She would resent being locked in a barren cell for months, too, every day expecting to be taken out to a painful end.
Her days were empty now: there was no reason to rush to the kitchen from the baths, and after the day’s labors in Yvana Hall, there was no reason to go to the garrison side of the mess hall.
She spent her evenings in her room, either reading or writing to Quill about customs, and harp songs, and anything she could think of to distract herself. And he always answered as fast as he could, sometimes writing on his thigh as his horse drank at a stream while he was running messages.
Therefore on Connar’s return, he didn’t see Lineas at all, for he spent those first few days either at the garrison, or riding restlessly around the city and its environs to learn the terrain. Restless days meant broken nights, and all the old turmoil.
He lay awake three nights running, staring upward in the darkness. Sport sex only gave him an hour or two of sleep; otherwise he glared restlessly at the hidden ceiling, hating that room, hating Larkadhe, and especially hating that horrible moaning sound coming down out of the mountains, with the wind whistling around the towers in an eerie counterpoint. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but tell that to your mind when all is dark, your body is exhausted, but your mind will not let you sleep.
The next night, after supper, he climbed the stairs to the tower, and surprised Lineas reading an old scroll. She only had to see him standing there, the bones of his face sharply etched in the candlelight, sooty eyelashes framing ice blue eyes. “Why don’t you have a fire?” he asked. “There’s a fire place.” He pointed.
Delighted that he would ask, she said, “No extra firesticks. And I was too bad at magic to make my own. It’s all right. I don’t mind—I’m used to it.” As she spoke, sorrow harrowed her at the marks of tiredness under his eyes.
He didn’t speak. Just held out his hand in appeal, and all the old feelings rushed into her heart.
Connar smiled to see the sudden, dawning smile on her face.
And with her by his side, warm and sweet-smelling, he slept.
So she went back to spending her nights in Connar’s warm bedchamber, but she kept her golden notecase in her room, behind the trunk, as usual.
Quill knew something had happened to the Bar Regren prisoners when Lineas abruptly stopped writing about their language and customs, reverting to the windharp’s winter song, and how people of the city seemed to spend more time in the underground caves. She seldom wrote about anything she was thinking, but now there was no sign of Lineas in her letters, only the world she found herself in.
Enlightenment arrived when Vana got his day of liberty, and could sit down and write it all out.
Quill was furious—all the more because he could do nothing. Back from his latest run, he went about his training duties with what he thought was his customary demeanor. He was too practiced to let his expression betray his thoughts, but his students, and peers, were aware that all the humor everyone thought an integral part of him had vanished, and there was a snap in his Fox drills that communicated itself to the fledges, resulting in more effort put in.
Three weeks passed as the fastest long riders relayed Noddy’s latest report to Arrow. He brought it immediately to Danet. Neither dismissed their runners as they read and discussed it, so word spread among the royal runners.
Quill came upstairs from a long, hard scrap in the practice yard to find Mnar standing in the middle of the hall at the top of the landing, hands cupping her elbows tight against her body, head bent.
As he’d been expecting the news daily, he said in Old Sartoran, “So you heard about our new form of justice?”
Mnar’s chin jerked up. “You knew? And said naught?” It had been years since she’d actually read Old Sartoran. This past decade or two she mostly used it in conversations such as these.
“What could be said?” And then his pent-up feelings sought escape, as he switched back to Marlovan. “Why don’t you bring Lineas back? Why is she even there? They have trained staff in the north, surely!”
“She’s there,” a tart voice startled them both, “because I want her there.”
Mnar and Quill jerked around as Danet mounted the last couple of steps.
Their hands slapped their chests in salute.
When she saw their distraught expressions, she relented. Of course they’d think of tender Lineas, who was so unfailingly kind, who shied away from violence. “I want her there,” she repeated, more gently.
She could see Quill yearning to ask why, but that conversation she was not ready to hold. She might never be. So she turned, saying, “I’ll come back later—I can see you’re busy.” She framed the words so they were not quite orders, but kept them on the other side of that invisible line that they did not cross.
Which was why she trusted them, she thought as she descended to the second floor again. But there were some thoughts she wasn’t sharing with anyone.
When she got back to her suite, she found Arrow standing impatiently. “Not another report?” she aske
d. She needed time to think about what Noddy had written—not the facts, which were grim enough—but what he wasn’t saying.
“Yes—no. That is, nothing new. Rat Noth just rode down from Ku Halir. He’s downstairs yakking about horses with Bunny right this moment. His report corroborated what the runners say—all summer the east was the quiet again, third year running. Whoever they are, Adranis or not, they’ve given up.”
“If that’s true, I salute them for their wisdom,” Danet said.
Arrow grinned. “Yeah, but I believe our boys are disappointed. They had so much fun four years ago, following those two companies of armed bravos around, wargaming and drilling where the foreigners couldn’t fail to see ‘em.”
“Just as well,” Danet said shortly.
Arrow spun around, coat skirts flaring. He knew better than to admit to Danet that his army was eager for action, after all that training. “Anyway. Young Noth’s been promoted to captain, but he’s still not got a wife, since Yvanavayir’s girl gave him the back of the hand. There have to be some second daughters or cousins to jarl daughters or daughters to captains who didn’t get matched at birth?”
Danet considered how to explain the difficulty, but he didn’t leave her time. “I’ll tell him to come up here so you can fix that.” And he was off toward the state wing, his graying horsetail swinging.
He was as good as his word. A young runner appeared at the stable, where Bunny leaned her forearms on a stall, chin on her fingers as she and Rat Noth talked over the newest arrivals at the stable.
It was the same conversation they had every time he turned up at the royal castle. Nothing anyone couldn’t overhear. But Bunny knew the language of the body, and had been aware of his shy, tentative interest for at least a year. She sensed that he was more Noth than most Noths, known for being loyal lifelong. She found the idea both intimidating and attractive, and she found his long, lean body very attractive—but she was betrothed to his step-brother, the heir to Feravayir, and word was, the stepbrothers hated each other. Would a dalliance cause political problems?
When the runner appeared with the summons, Bunny couldn’t stop herself. “Come by when you have a chance, and see us work the colts.”
She watched him go off.
Upstairs, Danet settled on her cushion to await Rat Noth and consider whether or not she ought to explain the situation to him. When she’d first worked out the betrothals, everyone was just a name on paper—most of them under two years old—her motivation to break up old Mathren alliances, and to avoid matching cousins of the first or even second degree. It was a kind of equality.
But now that she had begun to know personalities, there was a different set of considerations for all these loose ends. It wasn’t just the Noth boy. Whose family would she disrupt with that spoiled Yvanavayir girl, whose sense of self-importance had deemed it a good idea to write her a long letter describing the type of heir she ought to be matched with? Not the Senelaecs. She could imagine how ill-suited in every way Pony would be for the dashing, laughing young man everyone now called Braids—who didn’t have a prospective wife, but who wasn’t the heir.
But that left her with two of Arrow’s prized young future captains without wives, which raised the question of whether Rat’s stepmother, the Jarlan of Feravayir, was going to ask for Bun. Danet still was reluctant to press. The jarlan’s second son was living in Sartor (only her stepsons had been sent to the academy), which left Starliss Cassad also waiting. Another loose end. If Danet matched Starliss with Rat Noth, then that acknowledged the jarlan’s total disregard for Danet’s plans. . . but if she sent Starliss to match with Braids, that still left Rat.
Every decision you make matters. The entire subject gave her a headache.
The rap of heels outside her open door gave her a moment before Rat Noth appeared. He saluted respectfully, then stood there before her, tall, straight as a knife, steel glinting all about him as it hadn’t occurred to him to stop and shed his weaponry, but Danet’s women had passed him along without comment. They knew who he was, and Fnor and Sage were also well aware of his visits to Bunny whenever he was in the royal city, but said nothing.
Danet took him in. He was unprepossessing to look at, a lean brown figure (much like she was herself, she knew) with narrow eyes and nose and lips.
“The king wants me to find you a wife,” she said. “Is there anyone you want to marry?” she asked.
Rat’s eyes widened, then his gaze dropped to his hands, as if he’d find a way to explain what he wanted written there on his callused palms.
Danet, seeing his difficulty, attempted to ease the situation. “There are so many of you Noth boys. You’re all good at what you do. But the king is interested in you in particular because you’ve earned his respect.”
Rat looked furtively sideways, and shifted from foot to foot. Danet smothered the urge to laugh. He looked so tough, yet his posture reminded her forcibly of the time when Noddy was about four, and had stolen tarts from the kitchen for himself and Connar.
Rat, feeling the steel of the queen’s gaze (rightly legendary, he was thinking as the back of his neck began to sweat), mumbled disjointedly, “Lots of us. Yeah. We don’t seem to get…” He froze, his throat working.
“Get?” Danet prompted.
Rat turned purple, and Danet began to intuit at least some of the problem—the word ‘get’ was akin to suggesting sex. And the idea of talking about something that (at least in his mind) was so close to sex, in front of the queen, nearly slayed him with embarrassment.
“You Noths don’t seem to have many girls among you,” she offered, and his shoulders relaxed incrementally.
“Right,” he said, with an apologetic swipe of a one of those sword and bow-hardened hands through the air.
“That’s fine, because other families have plenty of girls. I think it all balances out,” she said, suppressing the urge to laugh. “If you haven’t anyone in mind, there’s really no hurry. You’re young. Though the Olavayirs tend to marry young, many families wait for years. Keep the thought in mind, and let me know, all right?”
He laid his hand to his heart, then exited with a speed that looked suspiciously like escape.
New Year’s Week came and went.
Larkadhe had its own customs—such as plays—and competitions building snow and ice sculptures.
The underground caverns that housed the baths for the city became a social gathering place, complete with vendors selling spice-wine and hot snacks. The hot springs kept the caverns warm, so it wasn’t surprising to see people spending a goodly part of their recreational time down there.
Lineas was fascinated by the board games that people brought out. Cards’n’Shards she recognized in three varieties, but others she had never seen before. City as well as castle people strolled about the caverns, not just entertaining each other but also doing business. A chatty older scribe, seeing Lineas looking around the vast space in wonder, told her stories about the past, pointing out the places high overhead where great rocks had scored the ceiling during the tremendous geyser a mysterious mage had raised during the Venn war.
There were few demands for Yvana Hall in this season, and once snow and ice closed the Pass to trade, those few halved. Connar sat in a few times, as he’d promised, but he never did master the intricacies of the ritual, and so, gradually, the brothers drifted back into their accustomed spheres.
Connar soon saw why Nermand said there were no company patrols during the heart of winter: overflow streams were common and wildly dangerous, the snow in places reached over horses’ withers, and the blizzards were thick enough so that one couldn’t even see the mountains looming overhead.
He loathed Larkadhe, dreading the long months till they could leave for home; by summer he knew he’d be counting the weeks. Every clear day saw him riding out, until word came during a thaw that Tanrid and Fala had had a daughter. Connar told Noddy that he’d ride down to Nevree to congratulate them and see the new addition to the family, as
well as exchange news.
He took with him a mixture of experienced Riders and the new recruits sent as replacements for those who’d died at the Battle of Chalk Cliffs, the idea being to give them some seasoning.
It was a relief to have something to do, but Connar had a purpose, though he could not say what he expected to gain from hearing Tarvan’s story of Evred and Mathren’s death. They arrived at Nevree after floundering through fresh snowfall, and Connar smiled at the new baby, a fat little creature that looked, to him, exactly like every other baby he’d ever seen—but he listened to the fond parents praise each doughy little feature, comparing it to this or that relative. The only feature Connar recognized was the short upper lip that was characteristic in the eagle Olavayirs, though Baby Ranor’s wasn’t as pronounced as her grandfather’s.
He also was taken to admire again the square little son they’d named Jarend, for his grandfather, but whom they called Cricket. This time the child took one look at Connar, and as he did with every new face, screamed. Fala petted and soothed him, and assured Connar that Cricket was truly very good-natured; as Tanrid led Connar away, he said apologetically under his breath that Cricket was good as long as nothing interrupted his routine.
Tanrid took him off to his own rooms, which was far more bearable than pretending an interest in brats. Tanrid asked for Connar’s account of the Battle of Chalk Hills, which Connar described succinctly, leaving out his motivation for taking that route.
Tanrid listened all the way to the end, his expression mild as always, then he said, “Matches what Gannan told us. That was a good move, recommending him for promotion. He’s very popular at Lindeth.”
“He’s always been enthusiastic,” Connar said.
Tanrid grunted, then looked up. “Why were you so far north? I understand Neit was with you—didn’t she tell you that was dangerous territory?”
“Everyone was half-asleep from the festival,” Connar said. “It looked like a shorter route on the map.” And, to get away from that subject, “Thanks for sending Neit up to Noddy, by the way.”
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