From the other side of the castle, at the city gate, the great bell clanged sourly once. That meant a runner spotted at the gallop.
Connar lowered his sword as he said to Jethren, “That has to be Braids. Come on.”
Jethren had avoided being in the usurper Anred-Olavayir’s vicinity as much as possible. It was easier to pretend he didn’t exist, until the time came when the true king rid the world of eagle clan altogether. But this was new, Connar insisting Jethren follow him up to the royal castle’s second floor, an invitation he’d cut off his right arm rather than refuse.
He tossed his blade to Moonbeam to clean and put away, and followed Connar. Sweaty as they were, with dust from falls imprinted on their clothes, they ran up to the state wing.
Jethren had never been this close to the so-called king, and was disgusted to see at first glance that the rumors about drunkenness were no exaggeration. The king’s nose was red with even more broken veins than Hauth’s. His hair was thin, sparse at the sides, turned white, and he looked like a collection of slats inside his loose clothes.
Jethren was so busy trying not to glare at Arrow that he missed the subtle stiffening of Connar’s shoulders, the brief flex of his hands at the sight of the red-haired royal runner kneeling behind the scribe table against the far wall.
“Connar,” Arrow said in greeting, then his eyes narrowed at Jethren. “Who’s this—no, you’re one of my brother’s boys, aren’t you? Tanrid sent you along?”
Sodden the false king’s brain might be, but he wasn’t oblivious. Jethren forced his hand into a proper salute, but inwardly aimed it at Connar’s back as he moved to the wall.
Lineas and Vanadei had been transcribing their shorthand notes for Noddy after the long, tiring interview with the new guild chief in charge of the stringers, or money changers, at Parayid. They exchanged glances of silent question, her heartbeat in her throat as she studiously avoided looking at Connar. Vanadei indicated the door and began to rise.
Arrow lifted a hand. “Wait. We might need to write letters, and you two are as fast as scribes, so you may as well bide tight.”
Hands to heart, they sat back, Lineas lining up her already straight pens and touching her perfectly squared blank sheets of paper that still smelled a little of the paper-press, as she did her knife drill breathing to calm her juddering heart.
Connar dropped down onto the floor beside Noddy’s mat. Arrow watched in approval as both his boys took seats on their mats opposite him. He was secretly relieved that this so far had been one of his good days. He’d been debating whether or not to admit to the irascible old healer about the occasional lapses, even what you might call blackouts. He knew what he’d hear: no more drink. But every time he tried to stop drinking altogether, he felt as if his body had been beaten by heavy rocks, and his thinking was worse than ever as the hour glass dropped a sand particle with the speed of melting snow.
He simply had to have a drink. At least one. He knew his own body best, and as for all that blather about aging, Amble Sindan had been riding the plains past eighty, and Wolf Senelaec had told him on that visit to Senelaec long ago that the old fart drank everyone under the table every New Year’s Week. Arrow wasn’t even sixty! He fisted his hands to control the tremble fluttering in the joints and turned his attention to the waiting runner, who turned out to be from Cabbage Gannan. Not Braids.
But the report was about Braids’ scouts after all.
After the man finished, “It could be nothing beyond an accident,” Noddy said hopefully.
Arrow grimaced. “Then the second scout would have reported. Two scouts vanished, a single horse, still saddled...it would take more than a brigand or two to bring down two experienced scouts. Braids wouldn’t send someone new.”
“Right,” Connar said. “I’d better ride north.” He paused, remembering those magical letter things the Sartorans had used in Feravayir. A strong desire to have instantaneous news was followed promptly by distrust. What if the enemy got hold of them, and sent false news to lure them into ambush? Runners were always best. There was nothing to be done about the wait—but an enemy would have an equal wait.
“Do it,” Arrow said. “If you’re fast, you can get whatever is going on up there done before winter sets in hard. My guess is, you’ll meet Braids Senelaec somewhere on the road. Between the two of you and young Gannan, that should settle the matter.”
Connar was mentally reviewing the map. “The more I think about it, the more I hate having Rat Noth stuck clear down at Parayid. He’s been there a year. Things are settled down there. Time to bring him up here to run shield in any direction if needed. Mouse Noth, or Dognose Eveneth, or even Pepper Marlovayir, if Rat wants to promote him, would be fine down at that harbor. Mouse grew up at Parayid with Rat. Dognose knows the coast. The Marlovayirs have a coast, though I don’t know that they do anything there.”
Arrow grunted with approval. “You could put Rat Noth in at Hesea Garrison as permanent commander. It’s time to replace old bones with new. Which places him right in the middle of the kingdom. We might have to expand that garrison, though.”
Jethren listened, doing his best to remain effectively invisible, but inside he exulted. If Rat was permanently stationed at Hesea, then that cleared the way to Connar’s right hand—
Connar turned Jethren’s way. “If we promote you to Battalion Commander of the Third Lancers, you could be at Hesea under Rat, along with his skirmisher commander. And if there was major action that didn’t require lancers, you could hold Hesea while Rat runs shield to me.”
“Good thinking,” Arrow exclaimed. “Then we could move....”
As the two exchanged names of captains, commanders, and companies, Jethren sat as still as ice.
All year the image of that army, riding in perfect order, as seen from the walls of Artolei’s winter palace, had been gnawing at him. That and his father’s words, Mathren’s first lesson in strategy warns of anyone else being able to whistle up an army....
But it seemed Rat Noth could do anything. No one blinked an eye at his being able to summon an entire army, as if he were the king’s commander. No one thought anything of Braids Senelaec effectively running his own academy at Senelaec. And here was Jethren, about to be relegated to the midlands, maybe for the rest of his life—forever under the command of Rat Noth?
They’re untouchable, he thought. Because they were in the academy. Braids wasn’t even in it that long. But it seemed that all it took was a year.
“...right?”
Jethren glanced up, to find Connar looking at him expectantly. He reached for the context, and vaguely recollected the previous few words, but we’ll have to postpone promotions for now.
“Right,” Jethren said, and saluted for good measure, fist to heart—then panic closed his throat when he saw himself facing Connar with that telltale fist there.
“Good,” the false king declared. “Go to it, boys,” he said, and Jethren let out a shaky breath. The old drunk hadn’t even noticed.
Jethren walked out in a daze, his mind only able to grasp one thing: he had this new action, whatever it turned out to be, to prove himself. Vaguely aware that drill was over, he wandered in the direction of the garrison.
And so for once he was not shadowing Connar’s steps—which left Connar free. For he’d noticed Noddy pulling Vanadei aside for some task with their piles of papers, as Lineas slipped out the old, rarely used servants’ side door.
So that was how she managed to vanish all the time.
But he knew all those old ways. He and Noddy had explored them all when they were small.
He turned to Arrow. “I’ll give the orders to ride out in the morning,” which his Da accepted with a smile of approval.
Connar exited and headed for the back stair.
His calculation of relative speed was precise. He emerged from a deep-inset archway just as the old wooden door to the servants’ entry creaked open, and there was Lineas, her freckles stark against her blanched fac
e. Eyes wide and black.
Connar cast a fast glance around. They were alone, with stacks of barrels and a shed full of garden tools waiting for spring.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.
Lineas looked up. “You seemed so very angry with me,” she said, almost too low to hear. “I...don’t deal well with anger. I think I hurt you, when I, how I....”
“Lineas, I’m not made of glass,” Connar said impatiently. “I thought we were good, then all of a sudden we weren’t. You should have told me long before that you were running with someone else.”
He’d forgotten how straightforward, how honest her gaze was. Never angry, accusatory, or worse, haughty, pretend-cold and coy. He’d seen the entire range in all his various encounters, but rarely had he met with the tranquility that was inherently Lineas. He didn’t even have a name for it, only that she was like a summer stream.
“You were my first,” she said. “So much I didn’t understand. Still don’t, really. I’m sorry—”
A thin rain began falling. He was distracted by tiny beads of water dotting her high forehead; she was aware of him standing before her, tall, so very well made. All the features she had once loved, had caressed, were still as fine. Finer. And the heat was still there, but underneath a complexity of layers more important.
“I didn’t come here for that,” he said, still impatient. “I want to know what I did wrong. Why you hate me.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “And I don’t hate you. How could I? I don’t hate people, though many frighten me. You...I still care about you.”
“If that’s true, come back to me.” He held out his palm.
She opened her hand in a gesture part negation but part plea. The gold glinted on her heart finger. “I can’t.”
“Once,” he said, low as a whisper. “Once, and then it’s goodbye. If you insist. If you do really still care about me.”
Lineas looked down at her palms, wet with rain, then up. “I’ll talk to you any time, and gladly. I’ll sit by you if you have a nightmare. But we will never share a bed again. That part of me—I made a promise.”
His eyes narrowed, which seemed somehow to make them bluer. “So this care of yours, it’s really pity.”
She had gone over their last conversation so many times it had almost become threadbare in her mind, devoid of color and texture because she mulled so many possibilities. But this much she was sure of: they had parted after that same word, pity.
“Not pity,” she said quickly. “If you’re hearing that as some sort of judgment. How could I judge you? I would do as much for anyone who asked, but for you there’s all that we shared.” She put her hands to her heart. “I’d like to be your friend, your helper, but I can’t be your lover—”
Her reasonable explanation died on her lips when she saw his face tighten.
Exasperation eddied through her. “Connar, you can’t possibly find me better looking than Ranet, much less all your other lovers, and as for sex, I’m sure you have better every day. You were my first. I had no experience. If you think all the friendship and care and empathy I have to offer you is merely pity, what do you really want from me?”
“I don’t know,” he said, but not loud enough for her to hear as he turned abruptly and left.
She stood where she was, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she stared at the rain-washed stones where he had stood, until the sick sensation clogging the back of her throat eased.
She forced herself to examine the conversation. Perhaps it was impossible to have handled it better.
While she stood there, up on the third floor, Quill oversaw the daily flow of duties, but he was aware that something had happened. Camerend had taught him how to evaluate the flow of life in the castle. He had heard the bell, and knew that the king had been sitting with the heir in the state wing, which meant that Connar would go there. He knew Lineas attended most days on Noddy, which meant that Connar and Lineas would come face to face, after she had put herself to great trouble to avoid him.
Before that—months ago—he had helped her to broom down the cobwebs and sweep out some of those old tunnels, the ones no longer in use because of the current patterns of movement. He’d also renewed the glowglobes in those passageways, after a brief, unsuccessful attempt to reteach her what to him was simple magic, and he saw for himself that magic seemed to cascade through her fingers rather than shaping properly.
He didn’t think she had to go to such lengths. It was a false semblance of peace of mind, to be on the watch all through the day to avoid someone. Doing that was still thinking about them. But she hadn’t asked what he thought.
So that rainy night he watched and listened, and knew by the wakes of runners when Jethren, then Connar, moved back over to garrison-side. He waited, and finally Lineas appeared, looking damp, cold, and distraught; she closed herself in her room, where, he knew, she would pull out her journal and dissect memory, emotion, and conversation in code, because she had told him so. She had never shared the actual journal—and might never.
The watch change bell rang, the day closed in, and people went off to the evening meal, but the light remained glowing under Lineas’s door, so he confined himself to his room, door open, and occupied himself with such matters as he could while he waited.
It was late when her door opened softly, and she peeked out. Seeing him beside his desk, door open, she crossed the hall, closed his door, and sat down on the bed, hands crossed over her chest to grip her shoulders. “I was always told,” she said plaintively, “there is never just one person, that love doesn’t last.”
“I was told there is not one kind of love,” he said. “But it successfully seems to require all participants sharing at least some of the varieties. Right now I love it when you come to me and talk things out.”
The stress eased from her face, and she told him what had happened.
At the end, she said, “You’re right about kinds. People say ‘love’ but what do they mean? He never once said he loved me, even today. Wait, did I? No, I don’t think I did. I said I cared for him, which of course I do. But what does he really want? I wonder if he just wants to go back to when we were young. But that doesn’t make sense. He’d had that horrible experience at the academy, and now he has everything. Everything.”
It was out before he could think, “I believe he wanted you to break your vow.”
She looked up, startled. “Really? Why? To hurt you? But he doesn’t know you.”
“I don’t think it’s me, except that I’m in his way.” Quill stopped, and thought back to some of the odd, tense exchanges he’d had with Connar. He dropped his hands to his knees. “I don’t really understand it, for I don’t understand his relationship with you, which, so far, he doesn’t seem to have reproduced with anyone else. You mattered to him in a way he might not understand any more than you do.”
“That’s so odd,” she breathed. “Most people think I’m boring. Or weird.” Her voice dropped on the last word.
“You are emphatically, entrancingly you. But what does Connar see in you? Or is there something else galling him. Making me wonder, if you broke your vow, would it enable him to break one of his own?”
“To whom? I really am confused now.”
“So am I,” he admitted. “It’s probably me seeing castles in clouds.”
SEVENTEEN
If Connar had been asked, he would have retorted that he’d never made any vows to anyone, other than his oath before the jarls when he was made commander. And he would cut out his tongue before betraying Da, or Marlovan Iasca.
His marriage with Ranet was a treaty marriage, no vow exchange either way, other than those pertaining to duty to family and kingdom. She was free to find favorites; he did his part when she came to him. It was admittedly a relief that she had not come for a while, but he assumed she was busy with the girls, who were clearly happy and healthy growing under Ma’s eye, just as he and Noddy had. His early childhood, in memor
y, was a time of endless summer days roaming about the castle having fun, and he assumed Iris and Little Hliss would be doing the same as they got older. They would even go to the academy together, as the academy girls were coming along just fine. More of the first or second years went back home than boys did, but those who remained were clearly marked for future skirmisher captains. The boys’ archery had improved noticeably from his day, in speed as well as precision. Maybe it was a matter of competition, but it worked.
As for Lineas.... Connar refused to think about her, or that exchange, until he was galloping northward, banners snapping behind him. “Pity.” She’d actually sounded affronted.
What was it about her? She was right in that it certainly wasn’t her appearance, which was nothing extraordinary, or the sex, which he could get anywhere, and much hotter. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to admit out loud that it was the nights with her curved gently against him doing nothing more than breathing that made it possible for him to sleep. And his dreams were good. The rare times they weren’t, she was right there.
That sounded pitiful put into actual words.
He simply had to keep busy and put her out of mind the way everybody else did with past lovers. That’s all she was, merely a past lover.
Castle life faded behind him and anticipation sharpened as they encountered runners posted to wait for them. And so he learned that one of the freakish ice storms that roared over the mountains in autumn had driven all living things to ground until it was over, except for the broken tree branches and a thousand streams and drips.
The next runner posted farther along detailed discovery of the abandoned bodies of the two scouts, which caused a search spiraling out until the finding of a string of valleys between two great peaks having been taken by mercenaries.
And finally, there was Braids, bringing the news that caused Connar to smile: they’d found the mercenaries themselves.
“You were fast,” Braids said, belatedly smacking his fist to his chest when he noticed the rest doing so. “We only got here six days before you.”
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