Valdemar 06 - [Exile 01] - Exile’s Honor

by Mercedes Lackey

  Jadus’ eyes had that half-focused look of someone powerfully drugged; Alberich was surprised he could speak at all. “The saying should be, better the leg than the life.”

  He shouldn’t have said that; he knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Too late. “Better mine than his,” Jadus replied, voice thick with sorrow. “But I didn’t get to make a choice.”

  “Seldom does anyone.” Alberich reached across and put one hand on Jadus’ arm. He didn’t have the words of comfort he wanted, not even in his own language, but Jadus seemed to understand that he meant to offer whatever support he had without words.

  “Thank you,” Jadus told him, in a tone that said he meant the words. “You know—they just dosed me. I believe I need to sleep . . . now. . . .”

  His eyelids dropped, and in a moment, he was asleep.

  “Poor man. I hope we can find something he can teach at the Collegium—” Myste began, but Alberich interrupted her.

  “Bah! A sad day indeed it will be, the day a Herald needs two legs to do his duty!” He would not hear of it, a healthy man, certainly no older than the late King, being given makework, just because he lacked half a limb. “And of legs speaking—”

  He looked down at hers; one of them was in a rather odd boot. A very thick boot. “I note that you manage, having not quite a whole leg. Unless a phalanx of slave boys you have, to carry you a litter upon.”

  She smiled faintly. “Yes, I broke my ankle. No, I’m not letting it stop me, though let me tell you, it still hurts like seven hells, and it’s only because the Healers are very good that I’m not screaming now. Between their off-and-on magics and some truly vile concoctions, even if it hurts, I tend not to care, if that makes sense. And this plaster boot they’ve granted me lets me get around.” She looked wistful for a moment. “Though, come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind a squad of litter-carrying slave boys . . . ah, never mind. I’m supposed to tell you that Selenay sent me for you.”

  “Me?” He stared at her; he wasn’t certain he’d heard her correctly. One of his last thoughts before he passed out, after all, was how long she would hate him—

  “Of course, you. You saved her life, she knows that. Everyone knows that. You did it twice over, in fact, once by keeping her from following Sendar, and again, when that lot of infiltrators popped up.” She spoke matter-of-factly, in such a way that he could not doubt her. “And you did more than that, although there aren’t too many who know it was you that caused Sendar to send the reinforcements out to save the countryside. Ah—” She hesitated. “Just so you know, Selenay wants to keep it that way, except for those of us who were there.”

  He didn’t feel up to stumbling his way through Valdemaran anymore, and reverted to Karsite. “Myste, I have no objection to that. He might just as well have had the visions as I; what did or could I do about them? I just blurted them out to you, and not even in a tongue he could understand. He understood what they meant, and in his greatheartedness, elected to save his land rather than his own life. He charged the front line, knowing what he was doing, and knowing full well that he had less chance of surviving that charge than a rabbit charging a pack of foxes. Let his people think whatever they want; he deserves all of it.”

  “I told her you’d feel that way.” She nodded. “Anyway, Selenay did indeed send me this morning to stay here with you until you woke, and tell you to come to her when you did. A bit melodramatic, that, passing out at her feet, wasn’t it?”

  He winced. “I hope I was discreet about it.”

  “You weren’t, but I don’t think anybody cared; actually, those of us who were still able to think were trying to figure out if we’d have to get Crathach to mind-blast you to get you to stop being so infernally noble and self-sacrificing.” She lifted an eyebrow at him. “You saved us from that by neatly falling over.”

  Well, he was cleaned up, at least; someone had done him that tremendous favor, and left him to sleep off his exhaustion in a clean white shirt and trews. The rest of his Whites were beside him on a chair. He started to reach for them—

  “No,” he said aloud. “I put them on for Sendar, but I do not think I will wear Whites again. Not unless there is a pressing reason.”

  Myste pursed her lips, but looked curiously satisfied, as if she thought she had been particularly clever. “I thought you might say that. So I stopped by your tent, and brought these.”

  She pulled a basket out from under his cot—and there were his form of the Heraldic uniform; the dark gray leathers he had worn up until they had left Haven.

  “Are you certain you are not an Empath?” he asked,

  “No, I’m a Herald with work to do, and now that you’ve been informed that Her Majesty wants you, I need to go do it.” She softened her words with a slight smile, then suddenly reached out and took his hand.

  “But I won’t always have work to do,” she said, giving it a slight squeeze. “And I find you excellent company because I don’t have to pretend or mince words around you.”

  Then she picked up a crutch from beside her stool, stood up, and hobbled off.

  He stared after her with bemusement.

  :You really don’t know what to do with a woman who isn’t either untouchable or a whore, do you?: said that familiar, faintly mocking voice in his mind.

  :Well, why don’t you teach me?: he shot back, stung, and reached for his familiar gray leathers.

  :I might. But you’ll have to ask me nicely.:

  His ears burned.

  Changing swiftly, he headed out of the tent, intending to pause only long enough to tell one of the Healers that he would not be needing that cot beside Jadus anymore.

  But the first Healer he ran into was a very familiar face, and one he had not expected to see tending to the wounded.

  “Crathach!” he exclaimed, and seized the man’s arms, grasping him by the elbows with both hands. “But—Talamir—”

  “Come see for yourself,” the Healer said, taking him by the elbow. Crathach led him out of the ranks of the Healers’ tents, and into the ring of command tents. Alberich could not help but notice some gaps, where tents had been—and felt a stab in his heart.

  But one tent still stood. Crathach led him to it. As with many tents used by Heralds, it was fully large enough for a Companion to fit inside, for Heralds sometimes preferred to know that their partners were as comfortable as they were. Inside, Talamir lay quietly in his cot, and lying beside him on a worn, rag rug was a Companion.

  For one moment, Alberich’s heart stopped. There was only one Companion that had that special look, that faint aura of otherworldliness—

  Taver?

  He stopped himself from blurting it just in time. The Companion lifted his noble head, and looked into his eyes.

  :Not Taver, Weaponsmaster. I am Rolan.:

  “Your pardon,” Alberich murmured, a little unnerved.

  The Queen’s Own’s new Companion nodded his acceptance of the apology. :It was a natural thought, and no harm was done. I am pleased to see you. We will probably be seeing a great deal of each other in the future, but if you will forgive me, I have my charge to tend for now.: The Companion turned his gaze back toward the quiet figure on the cot.

  Talamir no longer looked like a corpse, but he had aged, and aged greatly, in—what? Less than two days? He had looked no older than Sendar, middle-aged at worst, before the battle; now he looked old, thin and worn-out with long struggle, his face etched with lines of pain. And he looked fragile. Alberich felt his heart wring with pity, and wondered if, perhaps, it would have been better for him if he’d been allowed to die.

  But that was not his decision to make—

  Vkandis be thanked.

  Crathach tugged at his sleeve, and they left the tent to the Companion and his charge. “He did what I could not,” Crathach said. “How he got here in so little time—well, I can’t guess. But he did what I couldn’t. I could only hold him just out of reach of death’s gate; Rolan dragged him back to life, then f
ull awareness, and made him stay.”

  “He has awakened, then?” Alberich asked, still in a murmur, with a glance back at the tent.

  “Several times. He’s quite sane, now, and he doesn’t seem to want to die, but he’s fragile, Alberich, very fragile. I’ve told the Queen that he’s not to do much for a while, and she agrees.” Crathach tilted his head to one side, and gave him a penetrating look.

  “Hmph.” Alberich traded him look for look. “Then, until you say, so shall I sit upon him, if need be.”

  “I knew I could count on you.” Crathach slapped him on the back. “Now, I think the Queen wants you.”

  “So I believe, and I shall my leave take of you.” He hoped Crathach would say something that might give him a clue to the Queen’s mood.

  But Crathach didn’t seem to have any more idea than he did. “Ever since Rolan arrived, I’ve been too busy to go near the command tent,” he replied and sighed. “And at the moment, my services as a Healer are in far more demand than those as a bodyguard.”

  Alberich grimaced. “Wish I could, that otherwise it were.”

  Crathach nodded. “And I. It is good to be able to use one’s Gifts, but—” He could only shrug helplessly.

  They parted then, but having seen Talamir alive, if not exactly well, Alberich’s heart felt a little lighter.

  But now it was time to face the Queen. And he was not looking forward to that. For no matter what Myste said, he was not at all sanguine about his reception. Surely Selenay would never want to see his face again, after what he’d done to her. If nothing else, she would never forgive him from keeping her away from her father’s side, and who could blame her?

  Probably she wanted to see him only so that she could tell him she wanted him to return immediately to Haven and confine himself to the salle from now on. . . .

  It was in this mood that he presented himself at the command tent.

  The guards—his choice, he saw, with pride—let him past. He tried to slip in unnoticed, but Keren spotted him, and bent down to whisper in Selenay’s ear. She looked up sharply.

  “Herald Alberich—” she said.

  Silence descended like a warhammer.

  He cleared his throat awkwardly. “You summoned me, Majesty.”

  “I did. Come here, Herald Alberich.” Queens did not say “if you please.” Queens issued orders, and their subjects obeyed. As did he. He made his way between two ranks of officials and highborn who parted to let him pass, thanking his luck that the tent was not all that large, for to have to pass a gauntlet of only a double-handful of watchers was bad enough. She was sitting in her father’s chair, at his table, and she watched him with a measuring gaze as he approached.

  “Don’t kneel,” she said sharply, as he started to bend. “And look at me.” She tilted her head to one side and looked him up and down. “You’ve gone back to your shadow-Grays, I see. Good; if you’ve no objection, except when we need you in Whites for—ah—formal occasions, I should like you to keep to them. It will serve very well to make it clear that while you are taking Talamir’s place for some little while, you are not the Queen’s Own.”

  He blinked. Surely he had not heard that correctly. “Majesty?” he faltered. “I am—what?”

  “Crathach tells me that Talamir will not be fit for duty for a while. Until he is, I wish you to take his place, here, at my side.” She smiled wanly. “At least until you resume your duties at the Collegium, that is. Crathach thinks Talamir will be ready by the time we reach Haven. I should like Keren to go back to what she does best in my bodyguard; meanwhile I need someone here beside me in the capacity of adviser as well as guard, someone with a level head who knows when his Queen needs to be dragged out of her saddle and sat upon.”

  “Yes, Majesty,” he managed, and changed places with Keren, who looked only too happy to relinquish her position.

  She resumed the business that he had interrupted, which seemed to concern those enemy fighters who had thrown down their weapons and scattered. Some of them, it was thought, had come north rather than south, and were trying to hide themselves in Valdemar.

  There were several arguments ongoing as to the best way to hunt them down; brutal, savage plans, most of them. Apparently it was not enough that the entire command structure had been wiped out. There were plenty who wanted every single person who had so much as carried a bucket for the Tedrels hunted out and strung up on the nearest branch high enough to haul them off the ground, and the corpses left to hang there until they rotted away.

  Selenay listened impassively until the various angry speeches had been made, then looked at Alberich.

  “Well?” she asked. “Have you any suggestions?”

  He supposed that, by all rights, he should have been just as full of righteous anger, but he wasn’t. He was just—tired. Tired of death, sick of the stench of it in his nostrils. He didn’t want any more deaths, not if he could help it.

  “Real Tedrels—if any live—dare not the Border to cross,” he said slowly. “And I think the Sunpriests a most—unpleasant—fate will accord them, should they foolish enough be, in Karse for to stay, for heretics by the measurement of the Sunpriests the Tedrels most surely are. Say I would, that their welcome will not be warm, except, of course, that it rather too warm will be.”

  It took a moment for the others to realize what he had said, and more to figure out what he had meant. The Fires, of course; there wasn’t a chance that any real Tedrels would be spared the Fires. Someone in the back snickered, although he had not meant it as a joke.

  “As for the rest—” he shrugged. “The worst of mercenaries, and the most foolish of fortune hunters they are. Perhaps some are here, in Valdemar. The first—will swiftly run afoul of constables and Guards, or even of farm folk, and in trouble they soon will be, and have them you will. Now, how to tell are we which are those that fought here, and which mere outlanders? Arrest all, who with an accent speak?” He raised his eyebrow. “Then, without acting Queen’s Own you will be—”

  She blinked, but nodded, and some of the muttering stopped. He had to say this much for most of the people she had about her now, they weren’t stupid.

  “What is Valdemar if not just?” he asked rhetorically. “Leave some Guards, perhaps, to deal with them as found they are, but I think you need not hunt them. Live off the land, they cannot; when their swords they cannot hire out, leave they shall, or break the law, and so you have them, as lawbreakers, which can be proved. The second, either a lesson will have learned, or will not, and thus also—” He spread his hands.

  “So you’re saying we shouldn’t track them down?” Lord Orthallen asked smoothly, as if the question was of no matter to him. “Just leave them as a menace to the countryside?”

  “I say find them you will, without hunting. Hide, they cannot, and with nothing more than what on their bodies they have, little have they to live on, and only one trade they know.”

  “But what if they try and pass themselves off as laborers?” someone asked angrily.

  Alberich raised an eyebrow. “To escape labor it was, that most turned to sell-swording. Wish them joy of it, I do—and find may they, only the hardhearted as masters.”

  “Please,” said Selenay in an exasperated tone of voice, “Do think this through! Do any of you want to keep this army together, spending the treasury dry to feed them and keep them in wages, just to frighten the locals by riding over their fields and interrogating anyone who looks the least bit out of place? And how do you propose to tell one of these Tedrels from—oh, say a hillman out of Rethwellan looking for work? Or a poor brute of a Karsite who’s taken advantage of this to cross into Valdemar for sanctuary? Or are you actually proposing, as Alberich said, to string up every man with a foreign accent from the nearest tree?”

  “I repeat, begin with me, you would have to,” Alberich pointed out gently.

  There were some embarrassed coughs.

  “I won’t even begin to point out how my father would have responded to
such an idea,” she continued, looking at all of them and making a point of staring each in the eyes until he either dropped his gaze or met hers with agreement. “It is so totally foreign to everything Valdemar has always stood for! I agree with Alberich; if anyone has crossed to our side of the Border, the likeliest thing is that they’ll try to get over to Rethwellan and be of no concern to us. If any stay, they will either settle and fit in, or not and break the law, and we can deal with them on that basis.”

  “Well, Majesty—” Lord Orthallen began.

  But he was interrupted.

  “Dammit, I will see Her Majesty!” snapped a querulous, aged, female voice that he knew and had not expected to hear. And a moment later, the owner of that voice, someone he knew—as well as he knew himself—

  —pushed her way in past everyone.

  He should know Herald Laika, though he’d last seen her just before she left to infiltrate the Tedrels in her guise of an old washerwoman. After all, he’d helped form half of the “memories” that now made her what she was.

  :And given that fact, you shouldn’t be surprised that she’s as stubborn as a mule and as intractable as a goat,: Kantor put in, as she bullied her way right past the Lord Marshal, made a pretense at a courtly curtsy, then stood glaring at Selenay with her hands on her hips.

  Selenay stared at her blankly and without recognition; well, she wouldn’t recognize Laika, though she might know the name, for as far as Alberich knew, neither she nor Caryo would have seen Laika before.

  “Herald Laika, Majesty,” Alberich said carefully. “One of our four Herald-agents, behind Tedrel lines, she was. Within the camp; infiltrated, was she, as a washerwoman. And very valuable.”

  “Damn right,” the old woman grunted. “And that’s why I’m here. I want to know what the hell you’re going to do about the children?”

  Selenay blinked. “I beg your pardon, Herald Laika, but we do already have people—Healers and others—out trying to find the children whose parents were killed by the Tedrel cav—”