And so they arrived at the royal city at the tail end of a sleet storm, their spirits high at the prospect of being dry, warm, and given hot food they didn’t have to watch their runners struggling with in wind-battered tents.
And the royal castle complied. At the first sight of those blue clouds that morning, grizzled Tam, still reigning over the kitchen, had ordered extra spice-wine to be prepared.
Lineas, assigned to welcome duty at the stable that day, had time to reflect on how many in the castle had performed the exact same duty Convocation after Convocation, and so could predict for others what to expect. But her life, which she had thought would follow a similar linear line through the years, had bent and jinked so much that each Convocation since her arrival at age twelve had seen her at a variety of duties.
This year, she alternated with two others in directing new runners. She waited in the summer tack room, which smelled dusty, but the air was marginally warmer than that outside. When the horns for a jarl tooted, she pulled on her gloves and slipped to the stable door.
Keth Jethren had been assigned to welcome jarls. The royal castle had reports from outer perimeter riders, but welcome duty still involved waiting around for the guests to arrive. Jethren hated sitting around. At least his father had gone back to his mining town weeks before. Jethren passed the time waiting by working on double-stick fighting at the nearest court, with a young runner posted at the royal castle stable to warn him as soon as the arrivals were sighted on the horizon. He ran across the length of the castle, arriving as the horns trumpeted the chords for two jarls.
Lineas ducked back as he shot through the courtyard entrance to the tower, and ran right through the Evred ghost that he obviously couldn’t see.
Not Evred, Lineas reminded herself. At least, according to Fish, who had said someone recognized the drawing she’d made so badly. The ghost was Lanrid, another Olavayir from the old generation. That was less interesting to her than the question of light: the low clouds made everything gray and dreary, but the ghost was clear as a summer morning. Yet that ghost-light, wherever it came from, cast no shadows.
Hooves and cart wheels clattered through the gate, mud splashing everywhere.
Cabbage Gannan spotted Jethren, and leaped down from his horse. “Jethren! Thought about joining the First Lancers?” Cabbage asked, warm in his conviction that his question would be heard as the compliment he intended. “Offer still open.”
Jethren had endured a full season of Cabbage Gannan’s bragging; one day he had counted how many times the walking turd had begun a sentence with When I was in the academy. The same academy Jethren should have gone to, to train with the future king. He said neutrally, though it hurt him to the back teeth, “I’m under orders.”
Cabbage never knew when to let go—not that he, or anyone, could read Jethren. “I could speak to Connar.”
“As you will,” Jethren said, and turned away before he could drive a fist into that smug, superior face. “I’m to direct you. The jarls are here, along the first floor.” He indicated the tower behind him. “Courtyard entrance. Your Riders will be up in the southern wing, there.” He pointed along the wall to his left, to crenellations barely visible.
Cabbage glanced around. “Kendred will see to that,” he said unnecessarily, with a peremptory gesture. “Where is everyone gathered?” He could scarcely wait to see his banner bestowed in the throne room.
“They’re all over the castle. If you want something to drink, your first runner can bring it, or if you want it still hot, there’s the captains’ mess over garrison-side.”
Before Cabbage could prolong this inane conversation by asking for a list of who had arrived, Jethren turned to Wolf and snapped his fingers to his chest in salute as Wolf was eased out of his travel cart by his devoted runners, and into his push-cart.
Cabbage blinked at Jethren’s broad back, then decided of course the greeters had to make a fuss over old Wolf Senelaec, who couldn’t even stand up without help.
And so Cabbage left, as Lineas, in a quieter and much friendlier manner, was answering Cabbage’s first runner’s questions.
Kendred had immediately recognized Lineas as the skinny, freckle-faced girl who had put him down hard that day so long ago, before Cabbage’s first assignment at Lindeth. He remembered it not because of that (though he still didn’t know how she’d done it, as it certainly wasn’t superior strength, she being half his size) but because the aftermath had been so very unlike everyday life in Gannan.
At first he’d feared that the food and things waiting outside his tent when he woke so painfully were some kind of threat, or maybe a reminder who’d gotten the best of that fight, but there had been no follow-through. Even stranger, no one else seemed to know about it. He’d waited for the expected chaffing about being dropped by a girl built like a twig. But nobody seemed to know what had happened, and right about the time he could walk without pain, the strange gifts had ceased.
After reaching Lindeth, he’d forgotten her as he got used to a very different life—but she’d come to his notice again not long ago, when runners’ gossip brought word of the Lineas with sponge-colored hair whose grass run had brought Rat Noth to Ku Halir just before disaster. There were plenty of Lineases—his grandmother was one—but not with that red hair.
Here she was again, much the same, except that hair had darkened to the color of iron rust. His single question—Where do I go—turned into a flood in the face of her easy manner and clear explanation, until one of Braids’ runners punched him in the arm, saying, “Come along! I’ll show you our digs.”
She watched him go, wondering what in her responses had changed him from that tight, wary face and almost surly tone to something like friendliness.
She still wasn’t certain what ‘friends’ meant. That is, she knew what they were. She saw people pair and group so naturally they seemed to have some sense she didn’t. Neit was a friend. She had said so. Was it picking people? Neit had picked her.
As she walked alone back inside the stable to finish out the watch, she wondered what people saw when she walked through the world. She’d begun assuming she was mostly invisible, especially when that pairing off happened. Perhaps it was because she forgot she was a ‘me’ moving through the world, rather than the ‘me’ observing everyone else and reporting it in detail in her journal, in hopes of understanding.
Another thing she and Quill could talk about—though they never seemed to catch up with all they wanted to say. At least she didn’t. And she could ask Neit, when they next saw one another....
In later years no one remembered that Convocation as anything out of the ordinary. Lineas’s usual stream of observations did not include anything she found alarming or even remarkable.
Convocation was a list of unending jobs for her, as well as for the other royal runners. Now that Quill was back, Mnar Milnari relinquished the burden of running both training and the constant demand of Convocation. Danet observed with approval the way her daughters-by-marriage helped with second-floor demands. From her perspective, the royal castle hummed with good will as well as order; Arrow whisked Ivandred Noth and those of the jarls he liked up to his rooms, where he could drink as much as he liked.
He and Wolf Senelaec ended up alone on the last day of the year. Well lubricated by spiced wine, Wolf gave Arrow a grim, detailed account of the battle of Ku Halir, until Wolf broke down entirely, and Arrow with him, reflecting that no parent should ever have to lose a child. They drank themselves into insensibility, and woke up to thundering headaches.
Both moved with wincing care through New Year’s Firstday as the jarls gathered, Arrow finding the Jarl of Gannan’s loud, accusatory voice nearly unbearable. At least Gannan didn’t yap as much as usual. He lost his breath fast, for which everyone, even his followers, were grateful.
Cabbage Gannan had expected a warm welcome from Noddy, but he was surprised and delighted to find an equal welcome from Tanrid Olavayir, first of the jarls—who liked anyone Nodd
y liked. On entering the throne room earlier that Firstday, he gestured, saying, “Come sit with me. I’ll be glad to explain anything that’s new to you.”
With Noddy looking on with a beaming smile, and Arrow indifferent to how the jarls sorted themselves, Cabbage found himself lofted to second place in the hierarchy. The older jarls and their riding captains accepted this as his due as Commander of the First Lancers as well as jarl of one of the largest territories, whatever it was called.
The two new jarls gave their first oaths. Arrow’s speech went over well, ending as it did with his much-hailed promise to drop the king’s tax back to the usual fifth, now that they had peace. In high moods, they all left the frigid throne room in search of warmth and refreshment. The younger jarls and their first runners or riding-captains-to-be discovered that Cabbage, in a good mood, liked spending freely, which meant convivial evenings in town at which they didn’t have to disburse a tinklet.
And so the week passed.
Cabbage avoided his father so assiduously he never heard the praise the jarl heaped on his second son, referring often to hereditary Gannan bravery. The Jarl of Gannan—once he got over the shock of his second son being promoted almost over his head—had come realize how much prestige there was in Cabbage’s reputation, and the fact that the royal heir favored him.
That bragging irritated Connar, who already found Convocation useless. He avoided the jarls as much as he could, which made it more difficult to find Braids Senelaec, until he finally sent Jethren for him on Fifthday night.
Jethren located Braids, a slight figure a head shorter than he. Braids and a few riding captains were clowning around in one of the courtyards, Braids sitting on their backs as they did pushups and bet on the number before they collapsed laughing on the icy cobblestones.
Braids was perfectly ready to come at a summons, reminding Jethren of their first meeting, before the trip over Skytalon Peak, when Braids greeted him—then said with obvious regret, “Oh, sorry, sorry, I keep forgetting to salute. I was only at the academy a couple of years. Before that I was a girl. I still don’t remember saluting.”
In Jethren’s mind, Braids’ brief academy tenure separated him out from the invisible chain binding Connar together with those academy captains he’d grown up with, a chain he had yet to link himself into.
The two walked up to Connar’s suite, where Fish had hot spice wine, last year’s darkest ale, and freshly scalded coffee waiting. Braids asked, “Was it your boys doing that lance evolutions exhibition today? My dad said that alone was worth jolting over every pothole in the kingdom, just to see that.”
“Half,” Jethren said, amused. “The other half were last year’s seniors, on fire to impress Nadran-Sierlaef and the Commander of the First Lancers. I take it you don’t do lance evolutions over there in Senelaec?”
“Look at me,” Braids said, hands out. “Most of us are too light for the lances. Heh, I wanted so badly to try ‘em I could taste it, when I got to the academy that year. Until my first practice, when I got knocked clean out of the saddle. And it never got much better,” Braids said as Connar indicated with a flick of his eyes for Fish to come forward.
“What’ll you have?” Connar asked.
“Whatever everyone else is drinking.” Braids flung his hands wide. His cheeks glowed from the two cups of spiced wine he’d already taken aboard. “Me and Pepper Marlovayir, and a couple of others, were pretty much the same as the straw targets after that. I don’t think I actually held a lance twice more. We were too valuable being whacked right and left by you heavies. You missed that fun,” he added, indicating Jethren. “Though I suspect you had plenty of fun over there at Olavayir.”
“Being knocked out of the saddle by Tanrid-Jarl—in those days, Tanrid-Laef,” Jethren said with a brief grin as he lifted his tankard of dark ale.
Braids remembered the massive young man sitting at Noddy’s right hand at the Firstnight banquet. Someone had pointed him out as the new jarl of Olavayir. “He was never sent to the academy?”
“Uncle Jarend wanted him at home,” Connar said, and leaned forward. “Tell me about these rumors up north.”
“That’s just it. Rumors. Mostly of mercenaries hired by Elsarion, who ran north. Could be real, could be the usual sort of blather. I sent a pair of good scouts up there to poke around. Between ‘em they speak several tongues. Including Idegan.”
Connar’s brows shot up. “You think it’s Idegans causing trouble?”
“Nah.” Braids put his tankard down. “Why would they? What I told the scouts to find out is first, what’s going on. And if there really are organized raids in the far north, who’s the target. And do the Idegans know about it.”
“That’s the north end of Yvana—of Stalgoreth,” Connar commented. “Up above the river?”
“Well, even beyond there, actually,” Braids said. “The flatlands are definitely Stalgoreth. But north of that, Stalgoreth’s borderland, it’s rocky and hilly, and there are all kinds of wild legends about those high mountains—winged people—caves with jewels that talk. Whether or not any of that is true, one thing’s for sure, the people are stubborn up there. Keep themselves to themselves. Have their own lingo, barely understandable if you know Iascan. They insist the border starts below their hills, and they don’t owe allegiance to anyone.”
“Then it’s not our problem.” Connar sat back, arms crossed to hide his visceral reaction to ”high mountains.” Even starving to death watch after watch was preferable to the repetition of the Skytalon trek.
“Stick Tyavayir said the same.”
No surprise there. Connar caught a glance from Jethren, whose mouth had thinned. Yeah, they all felt the same.
Braids turned his palm in the direction of the throne room. “I told the king what Stick said, and he said, if raiders smash them and set up housekeeping, then it becomes our problem. But there’s nothing more than rumor right now. Which brings me to our idea, that is, my Da and me, well, we’ve begun training at Senelaec—”
A knock at the door, and Vanadei poked his head in. “King sent me with a summons,” he said. “He’s with the Jarl of Feravayir. Wants you there to talk about garrison assignments.”
Connar rose, but said to Braids, “Report whatever you find out about the north. If there’s a threat to our land, you’ll be a part of whatever expedition is necessary.”
Braids lifted his tankard, then realized belatedly he’d just received an order. The clay vessel sloshed as he switched hands and saluted.
Connar walked out, and the door shut on Jethren’s bark of a laugh. “You really don’t salute, do you.”
Braids mopped ineffectually at his good crimson and black House tunic, smearing ale all over. “Half my company is girls, and the queen never required saluting. Neither does anyone in the Eastern Alliance. And most of my boys were never in the academy. You hear an order, you go do it. I understand the necessity,” he added hastily. “It’s just, remembering.”
Jethren accepted that. It was much the same in Olavayir. He’d had to train himself to remember ordinary saluting. The fist to the true king had been a different matter.
Braids leaned forward. “What I started to tell him was this. Da has this idea, since we’re the first line of defense against the eastern border, we ought have our own training. Not just riding and shooting as individuals.”
Jethren’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ll train your own captains?”
“No! The academy does that. There’s Connar-Laef, come up through the academy with Rat Noth riding shield for him, Stick Tyavayir and Ghost Fath behind them. Even though I was only around them one year before they were promoted on to the garrisons, I could see they’d been worked into a chain of command we’ll have for the rest of our lives.”
Jethren’s eyes narrowed, and Braids wondered if he was explaining wrong. “What we’re doing at Senelaec is drilling the ridings to be commanded. Everybody who can’t go to the academy can come to us. Everyone says my da is a great teacher. And
it’s something he can do, now that he can’t ride himself.”
For the rest of our lives echoed in Jethren’s mind. But he rallied. Braids Senelaec did not give orders any more than people came to him for predictions. This was merely drunk talk, enthusiastic drunk talk. “Will your da train lancers?” he asked, reaching for the easy mood of earlier.
“Nah.” Braids flat-handed that idea away. “I expect Noddy, that is, Nadran-Sierlaef, will send them all to Stalgoreth for that. The way they did with you.”
Jethren understood then, cold running along his nerves. This babbling skirmisher spoke for them all. In their minds, no matter how hard he worked, he was just another lancer under Cabbage Gannan, because he had never been at the academy. The captains Connar-Laef turned to were those he’d been raised with.
The realization lay in his chest like a stone of ice.
He fought aside the reaction as Braids talked on. “...big boys get snapped up by everyone else. We go for the fastest, not the strongest. Girls and boys, now that the queen is putting the best of her girls in training as skirmishers at the garrisons.”
When Braids stopped for breath, Jethren said, “Time to turn in. I’ve got duty come morning. I don’t know about you.”
Braids sat upright. “Oh! I think we’re riding out.” He got up slowly, his head swimming, and made his way out, memory of the conversation fading with the effects of drink.
Jethren followed him, hearing an echo of Braids’ voice, the chain of command we’ll have for the rest of our lives.
Then his mind emptied when he saw the door to the opposite suite open. He slowed, stealing a look inside—and there she was, Connar’s wife, perfect in face and form. The rightness of the true king having so perfect a gunvaer...he tried to make that his conscious thought, but desire overwhelmed him, his hot gaze following every curve that Connar’s hands had caressed, until she, sensing it, turned and caught it.
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