Quill forced his mind away from the current problem to the older one surrounding the intentions of the Jarlan of Feravayir.
“So the Nyidri boys are back for good?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Full of Sartoran sayings, fashions, music, food. Rules for duels. Both are collecting admirers, especially Demeos, the eldest and heir. Everyone treats him as a prince, especially his mother. He acts like a prince—they both do, the younger one using his Sartoran name, Ryu, as he professes to despise Evred as a barbarian name. So Camerend has me here, watching from a distance.”
Lnand handed the sketch back to Quill, who accepted that Camerend had placed Lnand in the best spot to observe the ambitious jarlan and her two sons. It was up to Quill to investigate the multiplying questions up north. “I think I’d better find the connection between Elsarion and what happened in Tlen. If there is one.”
“Well, Ivandred is still up at the northern pass, as far as I know,” Lnand said. “Still counting traders going back and forth, until the king decides to bring him home. Surely he would have spotted any companies of armed Adranis riding down.”
“Yes,” Quill said. “I’ll begin with him, after I reach Ku Halir.”
He braced himself for the transfer back to his outpost room.
Pony Yvanavayir enjoyed being the only woman surrounded by men for about as long as it took to ride from the new castle’s stable yard down the main street along the lakeshore.
People on the street turned to stare. To glare. Her escort, instead of paying attention to her, treated her as if she were invisible. Except that they rode close enough so that she couldn’t get past them, and if she tried, they scowled like she stank.
As they set out down the southern road, she considered forcing the issue, relying on her status as daughter, now the sister of a jarl. Then she caught a hateful look from a mere boy who couldn’t be more than eighteen—like the beard spell was still a year off. Insolent puppy! And yet, young as he was, he topped her by at least a head, arms and chest shaped by muscle.
She was not about to risk a brawl unless she was sure of winning. And she didn’t even have her knives. When they’d burst so suddenly into the inn to haul her off with no explanation, they’d searched her things without so much as a by-your-leave, and took away her mother’s knives.
As they skirted the hills that marked Senelaec’s eastern border, sometimes sleeping outside in the warm, aromatic breezes of ripening summer, and other times at posting houses (where she was locked into rooms—once a closet!) that impression never changed. When they had to look at her, or address her, it was coldly, or with averted glances. It was...insulting.
Then unsettling.
By the time they spotted the royal city on the horizon, the sense of insult was long past, and unsettling had congealed into disturbing. Equally disturbing was the way they left her in complete silence, until a contingent of royal guards surrounded her and took her to a part of the royal castle that she’d never been in: the garrison. Where she was led to a cell, and left with nothing but a jug of water, and a cot covered by a rough wool blanket that some apprentice weaver had obviously made while learning. It smelled of mildew, reminding her of home.
Her gear bag—without her knives—was tossed in with her, the door slammed and locked.
She crossed her arms. “This is ridiculous,” she said to the stone walls. Her voice trembled.
Upstairs, Arrow stood in Danet’s room, the door shut, the runners sent out.
“That Yvanavayir horseapple again,” Danet said, pacing the room as she tried to shed irritation. “Do you know that I nearly had to intervene three times.” She held up three fingers. “Three! Inspired by that snot and her stupid stunt abducting the Fath boy. Even though it didn’t work, those two wild Sindan cousins snatched boys they wanted. And the younger Jevayir girl also ran a raid on her current lover of two. Whole. Weeks.” This time Danet held up two condemnatory fingers.
Arrow had been scowling at the report, but he looked up at Danet, briefly distracted. “Sounds like the bride raids in the bad old days, except this time it’s the brides doing the raiding. You didn’t tell me about any blood feuds, duels, or the like.”
“Because nothing came of any of them,” Danet retorted. “The Marec boy went willingly—in fact I think he was in on it—and the family patched it over. They found a cousin to marry the Faral Noth girl in his place. The Sindans yanked the younger girl back and put her to work in the stable for a solid year, and the Toraca boy—too handsome for his own good—married Ndand Monadan, as he was supposed to, so I didn’t have to intervene. And the Jevayirs solved theirs before my runner got there with my threats. Turned out the boy had moved on, and she hadn’t, so she took ‘Pony’ as her model.” Danet spat the word Pony. “I’d thought I’d never have to hear Fareas Yvanavayir’s name again, but here she is, and this time they’re talking treason.”
“Treason,” Arrow repeated, grimacing. “My da once said as soon as people hear the word, they pass judgment before hearing anything else.”
“The answer is clear enough,” Danet stated. “You listen to everything the witnesses have to say. Both of them, the child and Fareas Yvanavayir. Everyone else can be ignored.”
“And then?” He threw his hands wide. “I know what they all expect. They want me to pin the slaughter at Tlen on her. As if that does the Tlens any good. And what a death!” He began stamping around the room. “I had to stand there while they flogged those shits who did in Kendred. Do you know long that took? The noises they made, before they finally died? I kept thinking I was going to puke. I swore I’d never sit through that again.”
Danet said, “It sounds to me as if you’ve already passed judgment, too.”
He swung around to glare at her. She stood there arms crossed, gazing back. His angry flush died down, and he passed a hand over his thinning hair. She did not like to see the puffiness around his eyes, but she wasn’t going to say anything about how much he’d been drinking ever since the first report. He wasn’t drunk. That was what was important.
“Listen to them both,” Danet repeated. “Deciding, either way, comes after.”
“Either way,” he repeated, and then scowled. “I want you there. And don’t say this is a military matter. You’re in the military now whether you like it or not, sending those girls under Braids. And, from the sound of it, they were excellent. Rat Noth’s report, I can show you it, says he couldn’t have done better.”
“Just as well,” Danet muttered, hating the situation, but finding no argument to Arrow’s words. So she vented an old complaint. “Just as well that Senelaec boy has turned out to be adequate. At least someone is in that family.”
Arrow hissed out an irritated sigh. “Are you moaning about the seed again?”
“Four times out of six, the Senelaecs—alone out of everyone—need royal storage. It’s as if they alone get famine and drought,” she stated.
“That’s what it’s there for. It doesn’t last forever,” Arrow said with a wave of his hand. “Forget the seed. I need you listening with me.”
Danet frowned. She’d been present for little Jam’s testimony the day previous, so she couldn’t pretend not to know what he knew about the entire sorry mess.
Arrow wiped his hand over his face, yanked open the door, and said to the waiting runners, “Bring Fareas Yvanavayir in.”
Pony had had plenty of time to think. As soon as she faced the king and queen, she flung back her braids and put her hands on her hips. “When my father was jarl, he said that anyone accused had the right to face their accuser.”
Arrow shot a glance Danet’s way. Danet wore her steely face, and he knew she was reminding herself that the stakes were too high to let emotion run judgment.
“Very well.” Danet glanced at the armed sentry. “Send for the child.”
Word passed downstairs to the courtyard, where Jam strolled about with a pair of fledges who had been strictly ordered not to discuss the situation with Jam, but t
o remember anything she said about it on her own.
Jam was too intimidated to talk much. Her emotions swooped between wonder at actually being in the Marlovan royal city, which was bigger and scarier than she had imagined, and terror at having to actually be in the same room with the king and queen again. But Ma had said, Tell the truth. Everything else is not your affair. Telling the truth is.
Pony stared in surprise, then fury, when instead of some grim-faced warrior being escorted it, it was merely that brat who had been so snotty in Ku Halir. She glared at Jam, who glared back, then turned away—to meet the gaze of the Marlovan queen. Those eyes seemed to see right through her to the wall behind. Jam hunched a little, reminded herself of what Ma had said, and tried to straighten her back.
“Fareas Yvanavayir,” said the king, “claims the right to hear her accuser. Go ahead and tell your story, what was your name? Ndara, that was it, right?”
Jam nodded—an Iascan gesture learned from her ma—then remembered that Da’s folk, the Marlovans, didn’t bob or wag their heads. “Yes,” she said, and stated firmly, “She—Fareas Yvanavayir—told the foreigner everything about Tlen’s defenses—”
“I did not!”
“—and everybody says he was an Adrani spy!”
Fareas stared in shock, as Danet snapped her fingers. “Never mind what everybody says. Tell your part of the story.”
Pony’s heart slammed against her ribs. “But she’s lying! For one thing, the only person I talked to was a merchant, learning our language—“
The king scowled at Pony. “You listen. Then you’ll get your turn.”
Jam launched into the tale, which she’d told enough times by now she could get it out in more or less order.
Pony listened in growing affront and fury, mentally counting up the distortions and slanders as she argued mentally with each, but all the while bits of memory emerged among the vivid images of Larid’s admiring smile, his sensitive hands, his drifting hair.
Her own voice repeated in her head in a strange way, as if someone else had spoken through her. But it had been her. She remembered the triumph she felt in describing Aunt Tdan’s stupid drills, and how slow the Tlens were compared to Yvanavayir—
Jam’s voice rose, overcoming her internal argument with the words, “...and then he put a powder in her cup.”
Pony’s nerves chilled as if snow fell after a fire.
Whatever had been in that cup, that was her way out.
She counted breaths until Jam’s irritating voice halted, then she stated firmly, “There is nothing wrong with a flirtation with a tradesman from over the mountain. Nobody else ever said it was a crime. As for the rest, I don’t remember any of it. I certainly don’t remember drinking any powders.” Her voice rang with conviction. “The idea is disgusting.”
And she saw that hit the king and queen.
The king said, “So you don’t remember telling Larid about the Tlens’ castle defense?”
“No.” She resettled herself on her chair. “These are the subjects I recollect discussing with him: Marlovan ballads versus Iascan music played on strings. Dancing in Iascan style and Marlovan style. And I corrected a lot of his Marlovan, as he said he was learning it in order to have better success as a traveler. I assumed it was for his business, but as I know nothing about trade, I never asked what that was.” She had completely regained her self-assurance.
Arrow turned to Danet, who said to the sentry, “Take them out.”
Pony was on her way back to her cell, and Jam restored to her fledge companions, as Arrow and Danet faced one another. “What now?” Arrow asked. “She says doesn’t remember.”
Danet had seen the moment Pony’s expression changed from angry fear to surprise, and then a semblance of composure.
Arrow said more slowly, “Did you see that, how she turned smug soon’s little, what’s her name again? As soon as the little inn girl mentioned that powder.”
“So you saw it, too. But it doesn’t prove anything.”
“She was gloating when she said she didn’t remember. I think she’s lying.”
Danet smacked her hand on the table. “Until we know, all we can say is we don’t like her. That’s not sufficient reason for execution, unless you want to gallop down Mathren’s road. The powder was probably white kinthus. What rumor calls the truth herb, people talking against their will. I can’t think of any other type of powder that makes people talk. Sleep-herb just makes people drowsy, and other herbs, the ones for headache and stomach upset, don’t make people blab.”
Arrow scowled. “I remember how Connar was when he took that kinthus stuff. He didn’t blab, but he asked if the same would have happened to Noddy. He never said anything like that before, ever. It meant he was thinking about something...something important, or that bothered him, because he doesn’t talk like that, not really.”
“He was given the green stuff against pain,” Danet stated. “Not the white. Why bring up that disgusting situation? It doesn’t help with this disgusting situation.”
“So what do we do?” Arrow slammed his hand against the wall. “If it was a warrior, I’d know how to get the truth.”
“I’m sure Mathren said the same thing in his day,” Danet commented sourly, and Arrow flushed. “I think we ought not to decide anything now. Let Fareas Yvanavayir sit in your garrison detention for a couple days. Maybe her attitude will change when we talk to her again. Little Jam won’t take any harm of spending time with the fledges, it seems to me. And perhaps there are other reports on their way in.”
Arrow’s brow cleared. “Right. Right! We’ll give it some time. Who knows? Maybe Nermand has laid that Larid by the heels. Then we’ll know something.” He clapped his hands, rubbed them, and walked out.
No runners appeared the next day, which was full of early summer rain on and off, but the following day saw an armed flight gallop in, horses steaming. Two burly guards muscled a wounded prisoner straight to the detention cells.
A runner sought out Arrow over in the state wing, and reported the capture of one of the attackers on Tlen’s horse roundup, finishing, “Captain Noth asked if we should try the truth herb on him.”
“Do it,” Arrow said.
A short time later, Commander Noth was summoned to the detention wing, along with the garrison healer’s assistant.
“We tried to use the white kinthus we had in garrison storage, but the prisoner keeps retching,” the grizzled captain he’d put in charge of the interrogation said.
The healer’s assistant uncapped the tiny pot of white kinthus, then sneezed violently. “Tchah! How old is that stuff?” she asked, lips compressed at an irritated slant. “A century?”
The captain and his aide exchanged glances. “I don’t know. Thirty years, maybe,” one said, and as the healer assistant’s black brows drew down, “we haven’t been ordered to use it! In Mathren’s day he wanted the truth beaten out of prisoners.”
“That’s as may be, but would you eat an egg that’s been sitting around for thirty years? I didn’t think so. What makes you think an herb, especially one that is very difficult to grind and to keep, wouldn’t go bad? After two years, all we use it for is to harrow out the system when people eat badly. And the result is using the Waste Spell ten times in a day.” She thumped her arms across her chest.
Commander Noth ventured a question. “Do you have some fresh?”
“You are aware, I trust, that white kinthus is dangerous? Two doses over an entire lifetime can kill someone—you’ve all surely heard about how Inda Harskialdna died....” She looked from one hard face to the next, saw the unspoken answer in their rigid expressions, then said in a stiff, borderline-affronted tone, “I’ll fetch the healer chief. I think it best if he administers it.”
As soon as the prisoner understood that they were giving him not the green kinthus that killed pain—both his wounds were infected, driving him mad with throbbing and itching—but the legendary white stuff, he fought as hard as he could. It took t
hree big men to hold him down and attempt to pour the liquid down his throat.
He choked and gagged as the old healer watched, lips pinched, until at last he said, “I believe that’s enough.”
They waited as the prisoner, blood-crusted rags tied around arm and thigh, slowly blinked around the bare chamber, his expression smoothing to a vagueness that revealed his young age.
“Go ahead,” the healer said. “Be precise in your questions. You are still going to get everything.”
Commander Noth said, “What is your name?”
The prisoner looked up, confused. Noth tried again in coastal Iascan.
“My name is Barnut, son of Aiv Third Gardener. Your accent is hard to understand, sounds like mush in your mouth—”
“Did you attack the Jarl of Tlen?’
“I don’t know that name,” Barnut said dreamily.
Commander Noth exchanged glances with his two captains, who just stared back. He glanced at the healer, whose wooden expression was no help.
He said, “Why did you attack the castle?”
Barnut said, “Chief Jendas said the deal was, if we took the castle, then got the location of the rest of ‘em, we’d come out with all their horses, every man a herd of his own.”
“Deal?” Commander Noth repeated. “Was this deal between him and you?”
Barnut said equably, “No. With us he promised each man our own herd. I know where I can get a hundred six-sider gold for trained, fifty for—”
“He made the deal with who?”
“That foreigner.”
“What foreigner?”
“Chief Jendas calls him Prettyboy.”
“What does Prettyboy get in this deal?’
Barnut said dreamily, “Chief Jendas said he’s running an attack once we make our feint. Chief Jendas said a feint that makes us rich isn’t a feint but if the Prettyboy wanted to call it a feint—”
Noth turned to the captain nearest the door. “I think you’d better get the king.”
The healer warned, “He’ll only get wilder until he falls unconscious.”
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