Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

She spied a footman carrying a dusting cloth to the formal rooms and asked, “Where are the silvertails?”

  The man bowed, not hiding his surprise. “We were told it was your orders to put them in the cellar until your return.”

  “It was not my orders. Lack of sunlight makes them ill. Restore their cage at once.”

  Carola whirled and marched to the ducal suite, flung open the doors, and there was the private parlor with the furniture every which way and no sign of any of the lovely things she had ordered for Kaidas. Carola surprised two servants in the wardrobe, amid shimmering piles of Tatia’s favorite pinks and mauves and lavenders.

  Fury ignited in Carola as she strode into her own bedchamber—her own room, where she and Kaidas slept—and there was Tatia in the great bed, like a skinny worm in the heart of a—

  “What are you doing in here?” Carola demanded.

  Tatia sat up, flushed, then put her hands on her hips. “I did not know you were coming home, cousin,” she retorted, flinging her hair out of her eyes. She seemed to see Carola’s anger, for she mooed in her usual caressing tones, “If you had sent a messenger, everything would have been just as you like it.”

  “Why was it not left the way I like it?”

  Tatia said, “But surely… as I serve as your voice, and after all, I am your heir….”

  The quiet clink of something set down reminded Carola of the servants in the wardrobe behind. She smiled, preserving her melende as she said in her sweetest voice, “Yes, quite true. You are my heir. I have ordered breakfast for the Hour of the Deer. The queen is honoring Alarcansa by beginning her progress here, and there is much to be done.”

  Carola walked out, hearing the satisfying sounds of hasty dismantling behind her. She did not have to lower herself to giving orders for all to be restored. She walked back down the stairs, and out through the vestibule and then the side garden to the court, where she discovered her duke surrounded by the garden and stable staff.

  At her appearance they all bowed. “Please finish,” she said, and waited.

  Kaidas said, “That’s enough for a beginning, don’t you think?”

  Everyone bowed again and hastened away.

  Carola walked with him to the foot of the lily pond, which still had few plants and fish. She was too weary and too heart-sore to feel the fierce enjoyment she’d gotten from seeing the rose garden ripped out and this canal dug. She forced her attention to Kaidas, to be surprised by a smile. A grin. “I have an idea,” he said. “I am quite certain that Hatahra is using this progress to beggar this province. Do you agree?”

  “I have come to the conclusion that you are right,” Carola said, wondering at his startling change in mood.

  He said, “The queen duels with wit, so let’s choose the same weapon. We’ll start a new fashion by bringing back an old. We will have everything redone, but from the period of artistic austerity. She’s expecting to be showered with gifts, and so shall she be—but music. Poetry. Plays. She won’t be able to walk ten steps without having verses quoted at her. When she ventures into the garden, every bush will hide a flute player, and every tree a harpist. Meals will be in high art mode—”

  “From the period of austerity, when plates were largely empty, save lightly dressed garden produce, all arranged to appeal to the eye.” Carola was surprised by her own laughter. It banished enough of her anger to enable her to broach her own new idea: “I have a notion of my own. I believe we should consider an heir.”

  FOUR

  OF THE MERCILESS MELODY

  R

  emalna is one of many small kingdoms bounded by intersecting rivers along the northeast coast of the Sartoran Sea, above the enormous delta where the Mardgar River empties into the very east-most point of the sea. We transferred from barge to a wide-bottomed ship. The journey to Remalna only took a day through quiet waters, but even so, Ivandred spent all of it at the rail, along with several others. It was astounding to me to witness those black-coated Marlovens exhibiting human weakness, as more than one of them leaned foreheads against horses’ necks, hands gripped in manes in their struggle against seasickness.

  The ship wallowed into a small natural harbor. At the end of the pier we were met by the king and his soon-to-be queen, along with a host of servants liveried in pale violet and white. The king, princes, princesses, and lords sped up a paved road in fast carriages. The rest of us waited for the horses to be coaxed down the ramp to the pier—a job Birdy helped with, exchanging brief and easy remarks with the Marloven servants. After that we had to fetch all the baggage.

  Athanarel was a long crenellated castle made over into a palace by the addition of marble inside, sunstone outside, and widened windows. It was fashioned in squares around carefully pruned formal gardens, readied for winter.

  The Remalnan version of Sartoran sounded strange to us but comprehensible. As soon as we were shown to our quarters, I left Marnda and Pelis not quite arguing over the low platform all the way around the chamber. They spoke in the enforced polite tone of ill-hidden irritation as they attempted to determine whether people sat on the cushions on the platform, or was it storage, and they sat in the middle of the room, like normal people? Marnda had plenty of servants at hand, and I had the queen’s orders to think about, so I slipped away in search of a bath.

  A hot bath! Clean skin! Dry clothing! Oh, the sweetness of rediscovering things I had always taken for granted.

  After my bath, I approached a passing attendant and was directed to the central portion of the palace, upstairs.

  The archive was a large, airy room with windows on one wall overlooking an enormous open garden, unlike our discreetly walled Colendi gardens. The shelves were knee to eye height, very comfortable for walking along, containing the expected mixture of scrolls and books. Most of the section on Sartoran history was not only familiar, the books and scrolls were from the Sartoran Twelve Towers, which gave me hopes of finding something about magic.

  My search along the shelves brought me three quarters of the way around the room to an archway covered by a tapestry instead of a door—as were most entrances in that palace. The tapestry was pulled halfway up and pinned by a hook, so that I could look in. And I found myself face to face with Greveas, my fellow scribe student from Sartor.

  “Emras,” she exclaimed.

  “Greveas?”

  “I’m here to replace a scribe who strained her arm,” she said, answering a question that I had not asked. She indicated the desks. “We were hired by the new king to translate the—”

  Her greeting, the quick gestures, and the sense that she was offering an excuse, rather than information, formed into a new idea. I said, “You expected me.”

  She flushed to her hairline, the two different shades of red startling. “I am a messenger.” She took a step closer to me, moving from polite to private space.

  “Messenger to whom?”

  “To you. I work as a scribe, yes, but my true vocation is field mediator for the Mage Council.”

  “The… the Sartoran Mage Council?” Then a new surprise bloomed, and I said, “My brother Olnar. He knew your name. Is that why he wouldn’t visit the guild? Because you were there?”

  “It’s not what you think.” She grinned. “We studied together in Bereth Ferian, in the far north, and it’s hard to pretend you don’t know someone when you’ve shared the same table for three years. Listen, Emras. This is my first assignment on my own, and it’s very important. See, I was to talk you into being a messenger, too, since we’ve already met. They said I could explain as much or as little as I thought best, and I’d so rather tell you everything.”

  “Please.”

  “We must find out if the Marlovens are dealing with Norsunder. There have been disturbing… no, I won’t tell you that. You might go looking for what might not be there. You know how human nature is.”

  I touched my fingertips in assent.

  “All we ask is this. I am to offer you a ring. If you find sign of Norsunder, you use the
ring in a simple spell. It will let us know. You need do nothing else.”

  “A ring,” I repeated.

  “Not to be worn on your hand,” she said quickly. “I know that you Colendi see symbols in everything you wear, and someone might ask why if they saw a ring on your hand. But if you were to wear it on your toe, well, the only person who might see it is a lover, and I understand that you Colendi have different customs for intimate things.”

  So many questions crowded my mind I couldn’t lay tongue to one.

  A sweet sound caught my ear, silvery, bright. At first I could not determine what made it, then I recognized it as a silverflute, a musical instrument I’d only heard in Sartor. It was not popular at court in Colend, as blowing a wind instrument distorts the face. Another flute with a deeper range joined it, and a third much higher, then more as three separate melodies wound in a roundelay.

  “Practicing for tonight’s banquet,” Greveas said, gesturing.

  “It’s so beautiful!”

  “Emras, listen to me, not to the octet.”

  I flushed, bowing with my hands open in Pardon.

  Greveas leaned toward me. “I don’t know if we can speak again like this. It is generally believed that the most dangerous man in Marloven Hesea is their king. And he is dangerous, everyone says. You had better walk soft and look around every corner twice, as we Sartorans say. But your real danger has to be Sigradir Andaun, the king’s mage. We think he’s the one treating with Norsunder.”

  “But that sounds like spying,” I protested. “You are asking me to spy on behalf of the Sartoran Mage Council?”

  I could just hear Queen Hatahra’s response to that.

  Greveas looked affronted, and I said quickly, “We had a spy in the palace. A Chwahir spy. He killed two of the princess’s staff.”

  “You would not be a spy in that sense—an agent of some monarch, intending harm to another. You certainly aren’t going to harm anyone. All you do is live your life.” Greveas brought her hands together in a clasp. “You are not pretending to be anything other than Princess Lasthavais’s scribe, and you will see and hear many things because you know how invisible we scribes are.”

  “First Rule.”

  “Exactly. And you won’t break the First Rule, because all you will do is listen. And if you find out that Norsunder is invoked, or involved, or gives Sigradir Andaun power or even just spells, you take off the ring, say the spell, and it vanishes. Then you are done.”

  Here is one of those crossroads we reach in life.

  I had come to the archive seeking information about magic, so that I could understand Tiflis’s book, now lodged in my head and repeated every morning to keep the memorization fresh. I considered confessing to Greveas.

  But I heard again her own words, You are not pretending to be anything, and I heard the queen’s words about Sartorans and their interference, and all during my student days I’d heard about how jealous mages were of their training and skills. If she told her superiors about the book in my head, would the mages demand that I be removed from my position? What would be the repercussions?

  Traveling in isolation had made such questions seem distant. Now the questions were as close as Greveas’s watchful eyes.

  And I still had my orders. “I will do it on one condition.”

  Greveas gripped her fingers tightly. “Which is?”

  “If I am to recognize magic, any kind of magic, I need to hear it done.”

  “Is that all?” Her eyes closed and her jaw softened in relief. Then she smiled at me. “Of course. Nothing easier. Here. See the flames?”

  She pointed to the fire stick burning on the grate. “I will borrow a bit of the fire to light a candle. We seldom do such a spell. It takes as much effort to get a paper-twist and light it in the fireplace, then touch the flame to the candle, as it does to expend magic. Summoning fire from far away is exponentially harder, as you may surmise.”

  She uttered some of the gibble-gabble. My heart thudded when I recognized the syllables, but she said them fast, and her fingers flickered as if winding yarn and pulling, then she leaned over the candle sitting on a sideboard, opened her hand, and a flame sparked into being on the wick. And burned steadily.

  “Magic will sound like that. If it’s a complicated layer of spells, what we call an enchantment, there will be a lot of it. Norsunder’s magic is destructive. You won’t be able to miss it, as there is a terrible feel, as if the world has been scorched. And it will do something terrible… I don’t know how they use it, though most certainly to conduct wars. The Marlovens always seem to be involved in wars.”

  I thanked her, accepted the ring, and departed, nearly running into a familiar round face framed by blue-black hair.

  “Anhar?” I rocked back on my heels.

  She flushed. “The staff has a hair dresser here, who restored my natural color.”

  The glossy hair framed her round face, highlighting how light her skin was by nature, for there had been no time in recent months to sit outside in the sun in order to gain color. The black hair emphasized how large were her black eyes, yet it wasn’t just the hair. Her gaze was more direct, her chin up as I took in the truth: Anhar was definitely Chwahir.

  Out loud I said, “It is flattering.” Which it was. I am aware of how abominable it will make me, and by extension, the rest of us Colendi sound, but I had never before considered that there could be any beauty to the Chwahir in person or culture. Anhar, in her quiet way, was beautiful.

  The carefully planned dinner began as an anxious ordeal for Tharais and as a bore for Macael.

  Tharais found Lasthavais Lirendi to be as stunning as reputed. She looked and moved like a portrait, with her smooth gold-threaded dark hair, her wide blue eyes framed by the longest lashes Tharais had ever seen. Her stillness, her slightly breathy voice, her fascinating singsong Colendi accent. Lasva mirrored everything Tharais did, to eating the same food and drinking the same amount of liquid. She praised everything she’d seen. Her manners were so exquisite they were exhausting, like the first time Tharais saw Macael’s palace, so full of colored marble and carvings and art that she could not determine where the doors were.

  Tharais avoided Macael’s ironic gaze after a relentlessly polite conversation about travel, and made the private sign for the musicians earlier than she’d planned. And Macael avoided Tharais’s, so he was watching Lasva when Tharais signaled the first of the carefully chosen Colendi airs her octet had rehearsed in honor of their illustrious guest.

  Flute, horn, and there was that lilting melody called “Laughing Fountain,” brought straight from Alsais’s court, everyone said.

  Lasva stilled, every muscle taut. Her eyelids flashed up then shuttered, her face blanched with pain, as if she’d been struck. Macael was so surprised he leaned forward. Her face smoothed out a heartbeat later, no sign of any emotion, like a lake closing over a rock that briefly broke its surface.

  He was alone in seeing it. Ivandred was reassuring Tharais that the Colendi all seemed fond of music. Tharais divided her attention between her brother and Geral, whose attention was solely on her.

  For the remainder of the concert, Macael watched Lasva, his boredom gone. There was no return of that expression—what was it? Sorrow? Grief. Not what you’d expect from a witless princess. He was aware of the intensity of his interest, and laughed inwardly at himself. Why was human nature so absurd, that this beautiful woman would bore him mercilessly, but the first sign of inner pain made her interesting?

  By the end of the evening when he saw in his cousin’s taut focus on Lasva, and in her heightened color, that the long-postponed wedding night was about to be shared, he discovered not only regret but the sting of jealousy. If he stayed, he would get himself into trouble.

  And so he informed one of his dallying lords that he had an urgent message from home, and they would depart at first light.

  Tharais suggested an early retirement, and no one demurred. She watched anxiously as Van took Lasva’s ha
nd, and the Colendi princess showed all the passion of marble as the pair vanished into the guest suite.

  At first, all Lasva could think about was the relief at being clean again, chafed skin soothed with herbal balm, hands and feet properly attended to, the knots of travel smoothed from grateful muscles.

  It was so very good to be in civilization again, and Ivandred’s sister so friendly, that Lasva was the more unguarded, which made the pain of that song all the worse. It took all her strength to hide her reaction. Her head was throbbing when at last it was time to retire. She could feel anticipation in Ivandred’s touch and hear it in his breathing. And so when they reach their suite, she whispered, “I will return after I bathe.”

  He uttered a surprised laugh. “Did you not bathe before this meal?”

  “Will you indulge my Colendi habits?”

  He saw only her beauty and her poise, but he was sensitive to pain in others. Puzzled, wary, he stepped away, and she vanished with those gliding steps that made it seem like she floated.

  Lasva summoned Anhar to knead the strain out of her neck and shoulders, then soaked in aromatic water. The ache lessened, as it does. Life would go on with all its vagaries and little mysteries. Like, why did Anhar appear with this black hair? It was surprisingly flattering, but it made her look… was it possible that Anhar had Chwahir somewhere in her family? Lasva frowned at the bathwater. Had she ever employed the term “hum” around Anhar? Probably. Everyone used it—meant nothing by it—I must never say it again.

  Lasva rose from the bath, found Anhar and complimented her on her hair color, then went in to dress. It was good to wear silk next to her skin again.

  But when she reached the bedroom and found Ivandred waiting, she made a discovery: that Marlovens did not wear wrappers, at least while traveling. He, too, had bathed, his light hair lying loose, and she knew that he had done so for her. He wore a fresh shirt and trousers, and there was no sign of weapons anywhere.