Rat turned up his gloved hand. “I expect the same news you got. Those two shits I no longer have to pretend are my stepbrothers are back.”
Connar said, “So Ivandred Noth and Lavais Nyidri parted?”
“Yes. Right after Demeos’s conspiracy.”
“Why’d he marry her in the first place?”
Rat huffed out a sharp sigh, sending a cloud of vapor outward. “My brother’n me used to wonder. Asked Da, finally. Said she lured him into it after the jarl died. He thinks she wanted to get him to go her way. You know, sheer off the south, so she could be queen of Perideth. Shit, how I hate that word, Perideth. When Demeos and Ryu—he was still going by Evred back then—when they sicced their toadies onto Mouse and me, they were always on about how they were princes of Perideth, and we were nothing but a couple of Marlovan horseapples, not fit to wand out the stables.”
Connar had never heard so long a speech from Rat in his life.
Rat snapped his hand out. “Anyway. Da said, he figured out she was a lying liar, but he decided to stay close to watch what she was doing. Ended it when she nearly outmaneuvered him. And still lied.” He sighed again, then added, “We all know the jarlan has spies in the royal city, though I was never able to find out who they are. Don’t really know how to find spies. Though I tried. My point here is, the Nyidris surely know we’re on the way.”
Connar paused, and looked at him with brows raised. “You think they’ll give us trouble?”
“If they think they can win,” Rat stated without hesitation. “So I was thinking about that after you and I parted, and I thought maybe I ought to send someone ahead. Found a couple of royal runners at liberty. I also sent one of my runners—a cousin—to carry word to the local Noths. Said, if they want, they might run some wargames in the south, or find some other excuse to roam the Feravayir border. They could turn into backup fairly fast.”
Connar laughed inwardly at the idea of a bunch of Rat’s cousins riding up—but then, they would be well trained, and certainly useful. And he’d never turn down reinforcements, especially riding into unfamiliar and potentially hostile territory. “What’s your da say to this news?”
“Don’t know. Latest dispatch is waiting for you up in the tower here.”
“Excellent,” Connar said, and smiled with anticipation as he led the way inside the tower stair. They both stamped snow from their boots and whacked at clothes and hair as they started up the stairs. Then Connar paused halfway up to flick a look behind him. “Where did you collect royal runners? Which ones?”
“I rode through Darchelde, where I found Quill. And Lineas, who made the grass run at Ku Halir. I don’t think even my cousin Flax is faster,” Rat said.
Connar straightened around, annoyed by the shock along the nerves at hearing Lineas’s name. “You rode to Darchelde?” he repeated, to cover his reaction.
Jethren, following a step behind Rat Noth, flicked his gaze from one to the other and back as Rat shrugged.
“The king lifted the border patrol years ago,” Rat stated what they both knew—to him it was reasonable. “My brother and I were going through Darchelde soon’s we started riding to the academy on our own. Saved us at least couple of weeks each way, and who’s going to sleep in mud and sleet if they don’t have to?”
“True.” Connar laughed. “I expect I’d have done the same. Though why did you send two royal runners?”
“Because Da always likes to send one to sniff around, and keep the other to run hot with his report. Figured he’d want the same.”
“Makes sense,” Connar said as they reached the landing below the watchtower, and headed into the alcove where the command desk was kept. The space was crowded, but warm from the fireplace directly behind the desk. Connar picked up the sealed note, and the others waited as he read it.
“The Nyidris are making a progress with a Sartoran princess they brought back.” He looked up. “What’s a progress?”
“I can answer that,” Rat said grimly. “It being something royals do. Or those claiming to be royals. It’s halfway between an inspection and a visit to a jarl. Same purpose as a king riding to a jarl—who has to host all the king’s company for as long as the king wishes to stay. Only in this situation, I suspect she and my two former brothers are trying to impress this princess, as part of courtship.”
“Ah. Their route has to be west to east, doesn’t it? As Parayid is as far west as one can get in all of Marlovan Iasca.” Connar squinted, trying to recollect the southern end of the map. All in all, he was very glad Rat was with them.
“Yes.”
“In that case, let’s run our inspection east to west.” He grinned broadly. “And meet them on the way.”
As Lineas walked behind a runner to the stable, she felt naked in a horrible way that had little to do with clothing. The Nyidris dressed their servants in unfamiliar garb: undyed, lesser-quality linen undertunic and long winter knickers not meant to be seen, and over it all a long garment of linsey-woolsey dyed a soft gray-green, belted at the waist. It was narrow, but slit to the knees on the sides. Both males and females wore them.
The nakedness had to do with the absence of not only her journal, but her notecase. Before they parted, Quill had said, “We’ll both send our personal things to my desk in Darchelde. Each of us is heading somewhere we’ll no doubt be searched to the skin. There will be no communicating, except through Commander Noth’s runners.”
Her throat was still tight, not so much from surrendering her things. It was remembering the unsmiling tension in Quill’s eyes. But he hadn’t said anything. She knew how much he hated her going into danger. She felt exactly the same way about him.
However she was the only one who could pretend to be that much-valued item, a deaf scribe also trained to serve. It was not merely a matter of knowing Hand as well as speech, or pretending not to hear. There would of course be tests.
And there were.
Only Quill knew about her first few years, how she had first lived as a deaf person, though she could hear. Now she found it necessary to recover that view of the world, in which sound became irrelevant. So even if someone tried to sneak up and bang a sword against a shield directly behind her head, she reacted only to the vibration.
And so she was on her way—not riding on a horse in the fresh air, but riding backwards in a stuffy carriage for the first time in her life—to the royal household to replace a servant Lavais Nyidri had begun to suspect might be her ex-husband’s spy, and who thus had come to a short, sharp end.
She caught up at the next stop, at the castle of one of Lavais Nyidri’s supporters. She was attacked by noise twice, once by a vicious whisper to which she remained oblivious, and then by being sent out to fetch something from the pottery at the back, where servants leaped out at her, hammering various metal objects and screaming.
She signed, “Is this a cleaning process, like beating rugs? Should I be doing it, too?”
Her mild bewilderment was duly reported to Lavais Nyidri by her chief maid, “She can’t hear a thing. And she’s stupid as well. But she writes an excellent hand.”
“She’ll do.”
And so Lineas joined the long train of servants brought along to see to the comfort of four people.
SIX
Quill left his royal runner’s robe in Parayid Garrison. He rode for the Jayad as an anonymous man. He had studied Ivandred Noth’s map to see where the Tax Gang had struck recently, and worked out the area to ride from that.
He didn’t think he’d be able to find them. He was certain that they would find him, if he asked about them in enough places.
He was right.
He crossed the east-west river late one afternoon, a bank of clouds bringing the darkness before he quite reached the promised village where two main roads crossed. Gentle flakes of snow drifted down when the road rounded a hill, revealing the golden lights of the small town.
The road branched. He remained on the main road, bisected by wagon tracks. As his
borrowed horse ambled toward the promising smells of barns and other horses, Quill’s relief shifted to heightened awareness. Even in winter, it was odd, to be completely alone so early. The sun had barely set. People should be closing up shops, walking to the local gathering places, feeding animals.
As he rode past a couple of houses on the outskirts, quiet and shut up save for golden light in windows, the back of his neck gripped, and his mind was thrown back to that summer’s day when he entered a northern town under similar circumstances, to discover assassins converging on Connar—
And here they were.
His leg had slipped over the saddle and he slid to the ground before his mind shifted from memory to the present. His ears twitched as he assessed the approach: four, from different directions. Not hiding their footfalls.
He slipped his knives from his sleeves, aware of every tiny sound. Such as the slight check between one step and another at his left, when he pulled his knives. He shifted his grip, holding them up his forearm, blades out, and waited, balancing; he nudged the horse sharply with his shoulder, and it ambled away.
And they struck.
He knew immediately within two blocked blows that they weren’t aiming to kill him. Yet. He shifted his grip again, and used the backs of the blades to score across the first attacker’s neck as he blocked, whirled between a pair, and stabbed right and left in The Tree Falls. But he pulled at the last moment, using the knife handles to punch low on one assailant and higher on the second.
“Halt.”
The silent attackers backed off instantly. Quill’s hands dropped to his sides. But he still held his knives as he tried to quiet his breathing.
For a terrible moment it seemed one of Lineas’s ghosts emerged from the darkness—except she’d always said that they were actually luminous, as if made of moonstone, lit from within. The brightest still with hair and clothing colors.
This slender figure separated from the darkness only at his approach. Thin and narrow-shouldered, he wore unrelieved black, his face equally muffled by scarves except for the eyes. Same with the others.
“You sought us. You found us.” The voice was much younger than he expected, tenor.
“Colt Cassad?” he asked.
“Who wants to know?” another, deeper, voice asked.
Quill had intended to be entirely anonymous. That had sufficed to get him across Feravayir, but the heightened suspicion around him caused him to change his mind. “My name is Senrid Montredavan-An of Darchelde.” There was a certain amount of satisfaction in admitting that, he discovered. “Everyone calls me Quill.”
“Well, Quill, get ready to ride.”
A horse, already saddled, was brought forward.
“What about my mount?” he began.
“Get your gear. The horse will be well taken care of. You’re half a day’s ride from one of the best of the Jayad horse studs.”
Quill did as told, slung his saddlebag over the fresh mount, and swung up onto the animal’s back.
“You can talk as we ride. Begin with what caused you to seek us so brashly across Feravayir?”
“I knew I couldn’t find you,” Quill said, trying to evaluate the air of challenge that still surrounded him. “So I hoped you’d find me.”
“Because?”
“Connar-Laef is riding south to Feravayir, and the jarlan demands that he eradicate you and your group. But there are many who don’t want that to happen.”
Silence prevailed, as the snow began to fall more rapidly.
Finally, Cassad said, “Ride. We’ll talk later.”
Quill rode. The darkness and snowfall made it impossible for him to see much, but his escort seemed to know where they were going. Even so, they reached a point at which they stopped, and someone nudged a horse alongside Quill’s. “You’ll ride the rest of the way blindfolded.”
It wasn’t a question.
Quill submitted to having the cloth tied around his head. He considered the manner in which it was done, the person tying it running a finger inside the knot, and then around, to make certain it was not too tight, and yet still snug. Quill could see nothing.
And so a long ride, with a change of horses. He’d had little to do but think of what to say and how to say it, but he reassessed all that, based on his experiences so far.
Eventually they halted, and the blindfold was removed. He found himself in a barn. Dawn had begun to turn the world blue-gray, snow falling fast. The barn was only slightly less cold than the air outside, warmed by the sweet, humid breath of cows.
Cassad’s company and their horses had crowded in, and someone built a fire with two firesticks. Quill brushed clumps of snow off his clothes and his woolen cap, then sat on a milking stool that someone placed near the fire.
“So you are saying someone knows my identity, and yet you will not tell me who they are?”
“Correct.”
“Why not?”
“Because even though that person feels that your efforts are in some measure justified, you’re still running outside the law. My message is to warn you that Connar-Laef will probably be exhorted to send a company after you. He’ll probably be obliged to do so.” And he might even take pleasure in it, was the unspoken thought.
Cassad sat a little ways away, forearms on knees, head slightly bowed. Though his gloves looked sodden, he had not removed them, though most of the rest had, including Quill.
Cassad glanced over. “Darchelde,” he said. “Good enough. We’ll talk it over.”
“What about Darchelde makes my words good enough?”
Cassad turned his gloved palm flat. And when Quill’s expression reflected his incredulity, Cassad flashed a mirthless smile. “I won’t answer that because you are running inside the law.”
With that he moved away, and was swallowed in the gloom beyond the circle of the fire.
Suddenly Quill was awake. He remembered where he was, and with whom, and lay still, eyes still closed, as he listened for whatever had brought him so abruptly out of sleep.
“...do with him?”
He slitted one eye, and made out silhouettes hunched around the campfire. They were discussing him. Must have been mention of his name that woke him.
“Make him come with us? I’m not saying he’s lying. But it could be a setup.”
Two grunts of assent, and one, “Nah, I don’t believe it.”
Cassad spoke, a soft tenor. “I confess I’d like to see more of that fighting style.”
“Me, too,” a lower voice spoke. “I’m not saying we wouldn’t have taken him if that fight had gone red, but he would have done for at least one of us, maybe even more.”
No one disagreed, then a high, female voice put in, “It’s not the Odni.”
“No,” several agreed.
An older voice spoke up for the first time. “I think what we saw was whatever is left of the shipboard fighting style his ancestor taught, the Fox of the Fox Banner. With Inda the Harskialdna.”
“You’re right!”
“Yes—let’s keep him. He can train us.”
Cassad said, “He won’t. You heard that, about us being outlaws.”
“Laws,” someone spoke derisively, and there came the sound of a juicy spit, and the sudden hiss of the fire.
Who can say how different history might have been had not Lineas been utterly ignorant of the intricacies of Sartoran custom?
Her introduction into the complexities of the Nyidri household was an exercise in humiliation.
She did not know how to wash silk.
She could not repair a fan.
She knew nothing of coach etiquette, or how to tie a ribbon.
Because they believed she couldn’t hear instructions, some of those tasked to teach her took out their frustrations by pushing her roughly, yanking her back, and of course there was the continuous commentary on her lack of brains, her ugly freckles, and so on.
As a child, she’d been briefly bullied, an endless period while she was living it. Sh
e withdrew into her still-remembered defensive habit, turning a stolid face to tormentor and would-be friend alike, remaining as isolated as if she truly were unhearing in a mostly hearing world. Only when she was dismissed at the end of very long days did she let herself weep soundlessly into her pillow.
But each morning she rose determined to master each new task, while resuming her old skills at effacing herself. Awful as it was to have gained a reputation for stupidity—deemed useless except for her excellent writing, her ability to sew and to clean—she worked to preserve that, knowing that it might give her more freedom in that atmosphere of sharply delineated social boundaries, gossip, and innuendo.
Assuming she was not just deaf but a dolt, the household stewards assigned her most often to serve in the various chambers their careless superiors spent most of their time while in company. Servants in Nyidri households were the equivalent of furniture. If the family ever noticed you, it was never a good thing. So it meant a lot of standing around in silence, until given an order.
Lineas soon became effectively invisible: the freckles, frizzy red hair, pale skin, and thin body could not catch the idle eyes of Lavais’s sons, who only bestowed their attentions on beauty; as far as they and their mother were concerned, the fans, shoes, ribbons, lace, books, hair ornaments, and other items dropped carelessly on every surface or on the floor magically vanished into their proper places, each miraculously cleaned and mended.
Seonrei, whom Lineas saw rarely and only in company (there was no use in placing a deaf servant among the Sartorans), paid her no heed as well, assuming that all Nyidri servants were ordered to report everything she did or said, if they weren’t outright spies in the guise of servants.
Like Iaeth.
And so the dreary days passed, some in motion as the progress progressed, others endured hour after hour as hosts and guests dueled with word and gesture. The horrible, stuffy coaches, desperately overcrowded (servants were crammed in, their laps piled with impedimenta) were in their way as tedious as the long days of picking up after silk-dressed nobles. The one bright spot was Plix, the kitchen steward. They could not speak together in front of the other servants, but the older woman’s smiles of approval bolstered Lineas’s flagging spirits.
Time of Daughters II Page 57