Sasharia en Garde

by Sherwood Smith

  He sent a sharp look at his son, half expecting one of Math’s idiotic replies about ideals and loyalty and oaths, but Jehan just squinted up at the sky, admiring a flight of birds flying north for winter. Canardan sat back, wondering irritably why he was thinking of Math, of all people. Maybe he shouldn’t eat so many smackerberry tartlets on hot mornings.

  At first things began exactly as Canardan predicted.

  Jehan stood behind his father’s cushioned chair on a hastily made dais as guild masters and mistresses unloosed long, carefully written speeches that were almost comical, how constrained they were to be complimentary to the king and yet make their demands clear.

  Another person might have laughed at how the plump, red-cheeked Wood Guild Master bowed every time he made a demand, followed by half a dozen effusive compliments. “As your majesty well knows, your loyal populace appreciates your condescension in . . .” hoola-loola-loo. “But.” Bow. “We feel that if we are truly to move past the sad events of two decades ago, as you have often said so gracefully in your Oath Day speeches, then perhaps it might be deemed wise to forgive the, ah, assumed transgressions of these unfortunates in custody . . .” Bow.

  Jehan did not laugh. Nor did he find the thin, tremble-voiced Hatters Guild Mistress funny when her good shoes, worn once a year, squeaked as she walked to the front. Her speech had been signed by all the people involved in hat making. As if the king cared for any of those named, but Jehan could imagine the courage it had taken to tramp the hot streets during this unconscionably hot autumn weather, collecting these names, believing that the number of them would impress the king.

  Jehan sustained a brief but intense memory of Prince Math’s face. He would care. He would listen. Jehan knew it. He could almost see Math listening to the frightened old woman, his head tilted at an encouraging angle.

  Pity conflicted with resentment for his father’s faint air of endurance, of boredom, the little smile that indicated the king was far off in thought. These people with their wretched speeches so full of clumsy hyperbole were not laughable at all. They were simply out of their realm of experience, but that was evidence of their courage. Wasn’t it?

  That image of Prince Math nodded emphatically, frizzy hair lifting like a sun corona round his head.

  When the Hatters had had their say, they were followed by the Bricklayers and Stonemasons, the Silversmiths, the Ironmongers, the Millers and Bakers and Toymakers and Brewers and Vintners.

  After the Coopers’ Guild Master hoarsely whispered through his speech, the sea-related guilds were yet to come. Canardan raised a hand, and the old Cooper hastened to his seat as though he feared the sword on the spot.

  “Good people.” Canardan smiled, lifting his voice so all could hear. “I did say that each of you would have a chance to speak, and I keep my word. Khanerenth’s tradition grants that all have access to the king. In turn, the king has access to all. We will not hasten into any decision, be assured, before all you are heard. This has been our civil law . . .”

  A flash of warning tightened along Jehan’s nerves. He remembered his father’s words earlier about whittling down and realized what was coming next.

  A moment later Canardan said, “. . . as for military matters, we all know that those are conducted separately.”

  He’s going to cut out Silvag and Folgothan first. Jehan remembered his father’s conversation with Randart, and his careless promise to deal with the matter “later.” Apparently later meant now.

  Canardan paused for the expected agreement, and of course he got it. He’d spoken no more than the truth. They could also feel the threat coming as Canardan said, “. . . and so we can agree that military matters can be effectively overseen by War Commander Randart—”

  There was the name, and the implied judgment flitting toward the future, bearing those men’s lives, impossible to retrieve.

  “—who is, as we all know, a follower of the law.” Jehan stood, heart hammering. His gaze slid past his astonished father, to the people.

  Canardan stared at Jehan. Once again, this time more distinctly, there was the impulse to laugh. These good people looked so surprised, as if the unlit chandelier had begun to spout poetry. Or more to the point, if a sheep had trotted in from a nearby field and raised up its voice to discourse on law.

  He waved a hand to invite Jehan to speak, wondering what the boy could possibly have to say.

  “I admire the war commander second to none.” Jehan turned in a slow circle, meeting everyone’s eyes in turn. “You all will remember how well he reorganized the academy. The new regulations were strict, but all the old favoritism and slackness disappeared. He is an example to us all in how he obeys regulations from dawn to dusk, the same as the smallest cadet and the oldest guard captain.”

  He paused for breath, got an encouraging nod from his father, and went on in his blandest voice. “So I just know he’ll remind us that the two guardsmen are in fact ex-guardsmen, hmm, and though I don’t always pay attention the way I should, it seems to me that they might be termed, ah—”

  “Civilians, if I may beg your highness’s pardon,” the guild master said, rising with more haste than dignity. He bowed to Jehan and to the king. “Former guardsmen Silvag and Folgothan are civilians.” His voice was reedy with relief. Now he was on sure ground: civilian law.

  “That is true,” the Heralds’ Guild representative said, raising a quill. “They have not been under orders for twenty years—”

  “Their oaths were refused,” exclaimed a voice from the back, and in the susurrus of quiet’s and shhh’s that followed, the Scribe Guild’s representative said in her soft, mild voice, “If they have not received pay in twenty years, and that is easy to check in the paymaster’s books, they are civilians in all points of law.”

  Someone in the back snarled, “I will not be silent! I’m related to the Folgothans, and I know they didn’t do a thing, just talked. Are we all to be arrested for just talking, that is what I want to know!”

  Everyone started asking questions and putting demands across one another, with many anxious glances sent toward the king.

  Jehan sat down again, affecting boredom as his father sighed loudly. Couldn’t he see how anxious people were for reassurance? Couldn’t he understand how much they longed to hear the king promise that their way of life would be protected?

  Canardan rose to his feet, the guard moving to flank him. The crowd fell silent, everyone there hot and tired, and despite his dismissive words, not there for pleasure. Canardan began to speak, using his humorous voice. He cracked a couple of jokes about the heat and heated comment, and then set out to soothe them.

  But underneath every sentence his father uttered, Jehan heard the promise of the invasion. The kingdom would “soon” have land and wealth. There “would be” prestige “soon” for the warriors, the crown, the nobles. And that meant “prosperity” for every single artisan.

  As for the promised trial, he assured them that there was no hurry, he granted more time for negotiation, and yes, the conspirators would be kept perfectly safe.

  As he spoke, Jehan saw glances returning his way. Thoughtful glances. Jehan suspected his remarks would be repeated in private, maybe discussed, and passed along. The quickest ones had recognized what he had done.

  It would have to be enough for now. He knew that this would be his last appearance in public, and not just because his father was annoyed at what he seemed to be choosing to regard as a typically cloud-minded blunder.

  The time for all guises to be ripped away was nigh. Damedran Randart was hot on Sasharia Zhavalieshin’s trail, and if he caught up with her, the final confrontation would be forced on them all.

  “Let’s go.” Canardan sat back in the carriage, arms crossed, his profile disgusted.

  Once again Jehan had slipped just ahead of disaster. Not because of his own ability, he thought as the carriage rattled along the brick-patterned main street, but because his father did not want to see disaster.

 
As for Jehan himself, his own sense of honor required one last attempt to reach his father. Jehan was not loyal to his father’s politics, and never would be, but he remained loyal to the good memories of childhood, the interest, care, and kindness exhibited in their private moments, when matters of state had not divided them. He believed in the possibility of good intention underneath all the vagaries, the series of ambivalent decisions that had slowly led to worse ones.

  And he would exert himself to try, even at the risk of his own life, to bridge that chasm of lies between them: to get his father to admit that he was about to break a treaty and throw the kingdom into war.

  As the days dragged on, full of noisy parties with too much food, too many people and far too many empty words chattered in his ears, he became aware that his father was increasingly restless.

  Though Randart reported daily via magic to the king, as far as Jehan could determine, there was no mention whatsoever of Damedran’s secret mission.

  Meanwhile, Atanial was gone, leaving a confusing number of rumors about where she was. At last count, she’d been seen in thirty-eight different villages around the kingdom, including a town five weeks’ journey away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The unseasonable autumn heat broke at last.

  On a bleak, rainy morning, Jehan stared sightlessly out at the rainwater gushing from a waterspout beyond his window, and vowed that whatever the result, if his father was honest with him, he’d drop all pretense and speak the truth in return. And take the consequences either way—but his instinct was that Canardan, once he got past his anger, would try to find a way to meet him.

  That was, if Randart stayed out of it.

  Not half a bell later, Jehan felt the tingle of magic. He’d taken to wearing his gold box next to his skin, waking and sleeping.

  He had been about to go down to breakfast. He signaled to Kazdi to watch the other servants and took out Owl’s note.

  Damedran’s got her. I’m following. Orders?

  Jehan flicked the note into the fire, watched it curl and burn away, snapped the box closed, and stowed it in his tunic.

  Kazdi’s young face was serious, his brow puckered in question.

  Jehan flicked his hand out, palm down. Wait here.

  He ran downstairs to meet his father.

  This is it. He wasn’t ready—too soon—such thoughts flitted through his mind, faster than he could move, leaving him tense and filled with regret.

  And so the two Merindars sat down at the table in the winter breakfast room for the first time this year. The room had been recently cleaned by the servants, potted plants moved in all around the edge of the room, tall ferny ones before the row of north-facing windows.

  To the son’s eye, the king was, as ever, big, bluff, handsome, his manner that of a king. The weak light filtering in behind the departing rain clouds shone on his long red hair and on the sides of his jaw, where jowls gradually growing more marked over the years blurred the strength there.

  To the father’s eye the son—so difficult to understand and so exasperating to control—appeared thinner than he remembered, his slim body tense. Not only that, but his entire manner was present, his blue gaze uncharacteristically acute.

  Neither spoke as the servants brought in the steaming silver dishes, and so for a time the only sounds were those of clinking metal against porcelain, the whisper of feet on the floor, and beyond the windows the soft, occasional hiss of diminishing bands of rain.

  Finally the king lifted his chin. The servants, alert to royal gestures, filed out, and Chas took up station inside the door.

  “You have something on your mind, son?” Canardan asked.

  “Several things,” Jehan replied, toying with a piece of hot biscuit. “Here is the first. I am tired of parties. I want to do something with purpose.”

  The king tapped his knife lightly against his plate, not really hearing the restless, musical clink-clink-clink. “But the parties are to a purpose.”

  “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  The king’s eyes narrowed. “Wait on what?”

  “You tell me, Father. They all talk, but around me. Past me. Knots of people of high degree and low. Innuendo, questions, secrets.”

  Canardan started eating in a mechanical fashion, frowning at the windows.

  Jehan sensed ambivalence and tried again. “What is Randart doing, Father?”

  The king set down his cup. “Presiding over the war game. You know that.”

  “Why does a war commander need to spend weeks at a war game?” Jehan countered. “Why am I not there instead, if my place is over him?”

  Canardan laughed, a forced sound. “No one is really over Dannath, you know that. To the people the king must be seen to command, and that extends to the heir as well. But Randart is far better at military matters than either of us. His eyes are the most discerning, and his report on our readiness for trouble would be more valuable than either of us riding out to camp in the mud to observe a lot of young men and women scrambling around shouting and waving wooden swords, and pretending they aren’t watching us to see where we’re looking. I’d sit there in boredom, no doubt thinking of all the work lying here undone, and as for your own boredom, you’d inevitably solve that by riding off in the middle of the night with the prettiest patrol leader who had gotten some liberty.” Another forced laugh.

  “And destroy someone’s career? Acquit me of that much stupidity. We know anyone in the army I flirted with would be broken down to the bottom rank as soon as Randart heard of it.”

  The king lifted his shoulders. “Probably true, but if so, it does attest to his high standards for officer behavior.”

  Jehan let that pass. “I don’t think his eyes are the most discerning. The recent fiasco with the fleet is proof enough of that. Another proof is how late the orders to ride were given, as if no one was aware of the advance of the season. A war game so close to winter? Let me ride out and observe. I promise I will have an assessment as good as anything Randart can give. And I can have them all back in their garrisons before the first snow.”

  The king set down his knife and fork and regarded his son, who gazed back with unblinking intensity.

  Finally Canardan said, slowly, “I want them where they are.”

  “Why?”

  The king’s brows furrowed, a quick, irritated reaction. “Because Dannath wants them there. Because—we can move them in any direction if need arises.”

  “What need do you foresee?”

  The king hesitated, then shook his head. “I think we are better discussing this matter when Dannath returns. With his report. We can make decisions much easier when we hear his evaluation.”

  And Jehan knew he’d lost.

  It was not a surprise. Dannath Randart and Canardan Merindar had been friends since their teens, their ambitions marching in parallel. Too far in parallel—Randart having his eye on kingship, if not for himself, for his family. But it was clear that only events would convince Canardan of that. Certainly not his son’s talk. Until now Canardan saw only unstinting hard work and unswerving loyalty in his oldest friend, plus a conveniently unflinching ability to make problems go away.

  Sharp regret tightened Jehan. He made one more attempt to part on terms of mutual good will. “Let me ride to the academy, then, and consult with Orthan Randart about reorganizing the cadet lessons next spring.”

  “That, too, can wait on Dannath’s return. I know you want to put in some of what you were taught out west, and I do like the idea of some of it. But we cannot plan without Dannath’s assessment of their skills. The games were a fluke, we decided. Our cadets got too complacent. Dannath is convinced our training is not at fault.”

  “Let me ride to the coast, then, and inspect the harbors before winter sets in.”

  The king shook his head. “Despite the defeat of the fleet, you know as well as I that Randart is familiar with shore defense. And he has adequate captains in place.” The king gave an easy laugh. He was
back on familiar ground. “You have enough flirts right here, you don’t need to be riding around your old haunts, and I don’t want to risk any gossip about possible princesses.”

  “I won’t meet any women.”

  His father shrugged, his brow furrowing impatiently. “Stay here.” Under my eye. “Those potential princesses are right here in Vadnais.”

  Jehan laid down his knife and fork. “There is only one princess for me. Permit me to ride out and find Sasharia Zhavalieshin.”

  This time Canardan’s laugh was genuine. “If I thought you could do that, you could go with my good will.”

  Jehan was about to say But I can. Risk everything on a throw and gamble that he could meet his father halfway, as he so badly wanted to do, despite experience, despite reason.

  Then the king leaned forward. “You did. Didn’t you? Randart boarded the Dolphin a few weeks ago. Before he went out to hunt that pirate. He thought you had that girl, for some reason. Did you?”

  Jehan’s heartbeat raced. “Yes.”

  Canardan shook his head slowly. “I didn’t believe it. I still half don’t. Randart was so sure you were plotting treason. But I figured even if you had her—and I didn’t believe it—you were going to bring her to me. A surprise. Show me you were doing your job. Which was it?”

  Images flitted through Jehan’s mind, faster than words. Between one thump of his heart and the next he remembered Randart’s disappointment—and heard the import behind his father’s question. He was not asking Jehan’s reason. He was saying Are you for me or against me? There was no compromise.

  Taking Sasha to free Prince Math would be seen as treason, because there was no compromise.

  The shadow of Randart stood squarely between father and son. As always, as always.

  And so, hating himself, sick with regret, Jehan said, “Bringing her to you as a surprise.”

  His father relaxed. “Knew it. I don’t mind saying Randart was disappointed. She slipped away, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  The king’s amusement was back. “And you think you could get her now? No, no, let Randart do the dirty work. He’s good at it. He likes it. Let him bring her here, and you can soothe her ruffled feathers and be the hero. You two marry in spring, everyone smiles, the problems are all solved.”