Ventdor flung up his hand. “Stop.”
“I told you,” the boy muttered.
“You. Quiet,” Ventdor said. “You’re not helping.”
Silence.
“Now. First, who are you.”
“I’m Jam—Ndara Kiff—and he’s my brother Retren,” Jam said grittily. “From the Castle Inn. On Main Square.”
“I know the place. Go on.”
“I was serving that Yvanavayir woman and Lored from the Three Sails when I heard her, I heard her, every word, telling him all about Tlen Castle’s defense!”
Retren said miserably, “Jam just didn’t like her because she made extra demands and never offered vails.” His dearest wish was to be accepted into the army once he turned sixteen, and he was terrified that Jam was about to get them all condemned, or worse.
Jam turned on him. “That’s why I spied on her. Because I hated her.” She swung around to face the commander. “But I’m telling the truth.”
Ventdor’s two daughters were both grown, one on the road somewhere as a runner, and the other a scribe in the royal city, but it wasn’t all that long ago they’d been this age. He remembered what they were like when they were playing around, and he didn’t get that sense from this child. He met Jam’s earnest gaze, thinking that either she was the best liar in the kingdom, or she absolutely believed what she said.
“Slow down,” he said. “Start at the beginning, and tell me everything.”
Jam sent a sour look her brother’s way, loosened her grip on the door, and began with Pony Yvanavayir’s first appearance at the Castle Inn.
“...and then she started meeting that Lored, who all the big girls like because he’s so haaaaandsome,” she declared with all the disgust of thirteen, “although he does leave good vails. I started spying to avoid her so she couldn’t load more work on me, which she never tipped for. This one night, when they were together, she got up to go look out at the lake, and I was carrying some dishes, and I looked over to make sure I didn’t go near them, and I saw him put some powder in her glass. And I thought, I hope it’s itching powder, or something to make her barf. I’ll laugh if she does. And I stayed around after she got back to see her drink it and barf and she said no she was right it’s not raining anymore, not even a cloud, and she drank it right down.”
Jam paused for a breath, noticed no one interrupting, and proceeded a little more slowly. “She didn’t barf. All she did was blab and blab about how stupid the Tlens are. How they could run their horse training better, and when he asked if they defend their castle as badly as they train horses, she said no, they’re good at that—wouldn’t she know, she had to drill morning noon and night when she lived with them. And he asked all these questions about their holding, and how they defend it, and she talked on and on. I had to clear all the tables in the room and when I came back she was still blabbing, until she fell asleep, right there at the table, practically with her face in her plate, and I hoped she’d fall into the plate, which had some old corn chowder, but Lored left and Ma came along and helped her up to bed.”
With a glare at her brother, “And we have plenty of customers who don’t leave vails, and I hate them, too, but I don’t make things up—”
Jam was so relieved that at last people were listening to her, she was about to embroider this theme when she saw that every man in that room was not only listening, but bent slightly toward her. With these terrible intent looks on their faces.
The commander said, “Jam, tell us again what happened that night. From when the foreigner Lored put the powder in Fareas Yvanavayir’s drink. I want to hear the details of what he said, and what she said. Every detail you can remember. And if you don’t remember, you tell us. Don’t make anything up.”
“I don’t make things up.” Jam’s scrawny chest swelled as she took a deep breath, and out it all came again. In a different order, with a lot more side-comments, but the same in all essentials.
“That’s...treason,” one of the captains said on an interrogative note, when she was done.
“Isn’t treason selling information to the enemy?”
“Treachery, definitely that,” another said.
Ventdor cut through the talk and addressed one of his aides. “Find that man.”
Retren spoke up in his adolescent honk. “Ah, Commander, if you mean Lored, or Larid, the way the Marlovans say it, he left the Three Sails.”
“When did he leave?”
The siblings exchanged a look, both disturbed at the intensity in the commander’s face. “Not sure. Maybe two weeks back, maybe three. I remember because Tolvik over there said he left all his clothes,” Ret said, and Jam opened her hand in corroboration.
“Can you describe this man?” the commander asked. “I can get one of our sketch people in here, and—”
This time it was Jam’s turn to interrupt. “Why not ask Var over at the weavers’?” And with the intolerance of thirteen, “She kept sneaking around drawing a million sketches of him, to put into a tapestry for her journeymaster work, and all the big girls always wanted to see them. Ugh!”
Ventdor said to a runner, “Find that journey-weaver and her sketches.” And to another, “And take Fareas Yvanavayir into custody. I’ll question her first, but prepare an escort to ride for the royal city. Questions about treason,” he added, not without a sense of relief, “are a royal affair.”
Two days of tracking later, though Henad Tlennen was certain she knew the route, Braids’ company nearly missed the enemy. It was the leftmost rider who spotted the weather-smoothed pocks made by many horse hooves running at an angle almost perpendicular to their own, skirting the borderland of Sindan-An and heading straight into the Nelkereth.
She signaled wildly, and the rest broke formation and raced to see what she had found. “Rain’s all but ruined them. Can’t tell if those are our horse shoes or not,” someone muttered.
Braids struggled against the urgency boiling in the pit of his stomach. Going off wrong would be terrible—as terrible as being too late.
“Let’s follow ‘em,” he decided. “If they’re ours, we can help ‘em laugh at us. But let’s not let them see us until we see them,” he added, turning to his three captains.
A quick consultation between them and three experienced scouts were chosen to ride ahead.
Urgency gripped them all by the end of their third day, when the hoof prints had sharpened enough for everyone to recognize a mixture of Marlovan and foreign horse shoes, confusing for a sickening heartbeat or two until someone said practically, “This is no alliance party, riding in pairs. It’s them riding Tlen horses, no order.”
Braids felt stupid for missing the obvious. I’m no captain, he thought miserably. Out loud, “We’re almost on them. Let’s pick up our pace. Scouts, go ahead. In pairs, left and right of the prints. As far apart as you can get while still in line of sight.” That much, at least, was usual practice.
The sky had begun to streak with gray clouds when one of the scouts came racing back. “Battle,” she said. “It’s too wet for dust—heard before we saw.”
“If you weren’t seen, then we can take ‘em by surprise,” Braids stated confidently, speaking from the experience of a solid three years of wargaming. “How many?”
She grimaced. “Lots. Lots and lots.”
“More than us?” he asked, after a moment, when it was clear that estimation of numbers in the throes of fighting was not a skill she knew.
“Oh, yes.”
Braids remembered the total confusion of all-academy wargames, and doubted he could make any better assessment. Regret gripped him. He was so very far out of his experience.
Well, when in doubt, try what you know. “We’re not going to attack head on,” he said. “There are only three of us with swords. So let’s do what we do best. We’ll run the edge, one shot, one enemy. At your fastest. Remember, they might be fighting the Tlens, so pick your target. Every arrow to an enemy—no wild shooting.”
The hor
ses tensed under them before the humans could hear the battle. That tension traveled through the animals’ muscles to their riders, hearts thundering, breath coming fast, hands sweaty and maybe a little trembly, but they kept the mounts in a steady canter. They all knew that to gallop like thunder now would be to arrive with their horses blown.
They followed a slight ridge of land running adjacent to the battle they could hear, and when Braids saw his first scout, half-hidden in a copse of scrub oak, she pointed.
Braids looked back, kicked his mount into the gallop, and charged, screaming “Yip-yip-yip!”
The girls hesitated a beat, for that was the army’s cry, but several of them felt it rise to their throats. Why not? They were now part of the army—riding to the defense of the kingdom.
They shrieked the fox yip on a high, shrill, angry note, and to the attackers, it seemed that Braids’ company rose out of the ground and flew at them a hundred strong as they fought to both kill off the stubborn defenders and to corral the massive herd of horses.
Braids led his company in a long, tight line, twenty-six strong, nose to tail. In those first desperate breaths he couldn’t tell who was foe and who friend, until he began picking out details: no Marlovan warrior wore his hair shorn, or loose, nor did they wear bright cloaks and flapping sleeves.
He started shooting, one enemy at a time.
At the sight of Braids’ company riding to the attack, the exhausted remnants of the Tlen and Sindan roundup party took heart, and formed in a rough line to sandwich the enemy.
Fifteen of the brigands dropped nearly in as many heartbeats, then another twenty as his flight steadied their aim. Braids sought the leader. He glimpsed a huge man with long white hair flagging in the wind, with a black stripe down the top of his head. This man wheeled his horse, his red cloak swinging over his horse’s foam-streaked flanks as he yanked up a horn, and blasted a hoarse, flat note.
The brigands wheeled as one and abandoned their attack. They galloped a fast retreat, their leader’s laughter floating behind.
By then Braids had seen how many Tlens had fallen, many mere teens, hacked by swords, clubs, axes, and he knew what the survivors were going to go home to.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he breathed, and shrieked the fox yip with such fury the sound ripped from his throat as he leaped to the chase.
His flight was right on his heels, shooting as best they could at the retreating backs.
Braids was ready to chase them to the mountains until sanity returned abruptly when he reached down to discover he’d shot all his arrows. He looked belatedly to either side, to see that most of his women had also run out of arrows.
Hating the necessity as much as he’d ever regretted anything in his life, he flung up his hand as he slowed his blowing mount. The enemy (who outnumbered them by about half, and who all had swords) galloped over a ridge and vanished. He marked their direction, wondering bitterly if they would ride those stolen horses to death, then brought the company slowly to a walk so the animals could cool.
“Back,” he said dully. “They might come around again for another try when they figure out we’re not shooting. Retrieve every arrow you can,” he added unnecessarily; the younger girls had already leaped from the saddle to fetch three spent arrows.
Splats of rain hit them, increasing steadily as they returned at a more sedate pace. They found the Sindans and Tlens trying to cope with the horses and wounded. Braids turned his company over to the command of the Jarlan of Tlen, who was trying to establish order.
The rain was beginning to lift when a scout shrilled, “Look!”
Everyone turned west to see a line of mounted warriors charging. Braids’ body shocked cold—but that vanished when he recognized gray coats, and Rat in the lead.
Rat closed the distance, dispersing his company to right and left, as he said to Braids, “Report?”
“Twelve dead from the Tlens and Sindans. Nineteen bad wounds. Definitely Yenvir leading, unless there’s two with the skunk hair in reverse. They retreated north. I’d say about fifty, fifty-five.” He pointed in the direction Yenvir’s bandits had gone, then swung his hand around to indicate the center of the muddy area, where a brigand lay surrounded by grim women, arrows sticking up from his shoulder and the opposite thigh. “One of ‘em left alive.”
A corner of Rat’s mouth lifted in a mirthless smile. “Good,” he said, in a tone that promise no comfort for the brigand.
He issued orders for the prisoner to be taken back to Ku Halir (whence he’d be dispatched straight to the royal city in a very hard ride), and then he and his company set out in pursuit of the brigands.
Braids turned to Henad, whose eyes gleamed with tears under her pale brows. “I’ll tell her,” she said softly, nicking her strong, square chin toward the Jarlan of Tlen. “It might come a little easier from me.”
It wasn’t going to come easy from anyone, Braids knew, but he turned his palm up, and watched her ride toward her aunt.
THIRTEEN
Quill rode south at a more sedate pace. Every night he found a letter from Lineas waiting, which he answered before sleeping.
This easy pace lasted until he reached the western edge of Tyavayir, when he received a tightly folded note on the back of a sketch from royal runner-trained Cama Stith, serving as Ventdor’s scribe. Stith’s note outlined the triple blow of Tlen’s destruction, Pony Yvanavayir’s conversations with the mysterious Larid, and then the near miss with the Tlen spring roundup.
Quill read while riding, then examined the drawing, which had been taken from a tapestry maker. It was quite clear—definitely distinctive enough for Quill to determine that he’d never met the handsome, smiling young man depicted there. But familiar? No...yes. No.
Damnation. Something nagged at him. He hated this sense that he’d left something undone, or had forgotten something important. Commander Ventdor and the King’s Army were more than capable of taking care of even as infamous a brigand as Yenvir, he reasoned. There was nothing he could do when all he had was this cloudy sense of...what?
As night began to fall, he halted at an outpost on the river that divided Tyavayir from Senelaec—his first night sleeping in a clean bed since he’d left Larkadhe. His body sank gratefully into the soft bed as his mind drowsed about Larid, Lored, why did that sound familiar?
Midway through the night he jerked awake. He had it. Lored was too close to the Adrani Alored.
From there it was easy to leap to Mathias Alored Elsarion, younger brother to the Elsarion duchas. They were descendants of an Adrani duchas on one side, and the famous (some say infamous) Deis on the other.
He knew better than to take assumptions as truth. There were any number of young men named Alored living in Anaeran Adrani. And those half-familiar features belonged to several cousins—there might even be those who would recognize some of them in himself, especially about the eyes and eyebrows.
And even if this sketch was Mathias Alored Elsarion, and for some reason the wealthy young noble decided to go covert in Ku Halir, it was difficult to imagine a connection between him and a notorious horse thief like Yenvir the Skunk.
But the question would not let him sleep. He thought longingly of the days when Camerend was responsible for such problems, but Quill’s father was in Darchelde now. Mnar Milnari was royal runner chief until Quill could take over; she had insisted that her duties remain with running education and royal commands, which was plenty. This situation was what Shendan had trained Camerend, and Quill himself, for: investigation for the good of the kingdom.
It was therefore Quill’s responsibility.
And here he sat, in a private room. He loathed the thought of doing transfer magic while he was tired, but he knew he would not rest until he answered at least some of the questions buzzing through his head like an angry bee. So he wrote a letter to Lnand, one of the royal runners’ best ferrets, half-hoping he’d get no answer. Or get a negative answer.
She responded almost immediately—clearly sh
e slept with her notecase in reach as well as he did. She gave him a Destination pattern.
So he set two coins on the floor and chalked a letter between them to form an easy return Destination, then performed the spell. Magic ripped him out of the world and flung him back with shocking violence. He staggered as transfer reaction wrung through him, then looked about a moonlit chamber considerably colder than the Tyavayir posting house.
Lnand, who had been a senior when he was a fledge, pulled a night robe closer about her, and indicated a guest mat in her rented room above a boarding house. Quill sank down, aware of the day’s long ride clinging to him with its various pungent aromas. “You might want to open the window,” he said.
Lnand’s facial planes shifted in the pale blue moonlight. “You sound exactly like your father. He always used to say the same when he’d been in the saddle all day, and morning baths were still a long way off. I’ll live. To answer your question, yes, I remember quite well what Thias Elsarion looks like. He was a singularly beautiful boy—no, really I have to call him a young man, by now, your age. Popular along the southern pass.”
Quill handed over Cama Stith’s note, with a sketch enclosed. Lnand tipped it up to the window, saying, “That’s Thias, all right. This artist even caught his expression, the one he wears when listening to music.”
“All right, so we can assume we’ve identified the mysterious Larid. Next question, why.” He looked up. “I was traveling when the king sent companies to chase those riders in the plains. Camerend said there was little result.”
“Correct. The invaders retreated up the southern pass, where there are new castle outposts funded by the Elsarions. I visited them all, and heard the same thing: the outposts are guarding against brigands. No invaders came down for the next couple of seasons, so it was assumed that the brigandage had ended. The king recalled me. After which Camerend sent me here to Parayid Harbor, once he discovered that Demeos and Evred Nyidri were both back from Sartor.” She glanced out the window at the path of liquid light on the quiet ocean waters of the bay.
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