Idisio's jaw loosened. The streets of Bright Bay called those two families dangerous. Darden had a reputation for ruthlessness and the Aerthraim raised caution from mystery. And they were supposedly as amicable with one another as fire and oil.
“After Lord Regav died,” Scratha said, smiling slightly at Idisio's stunned expression, “Azni decided that she'd had enough of living in the deep desert and moved here. I've stayed with her often in recent years. She's one of the few people I trust.” His expression darkened. “I've always been careful to keep that secret, to avoid drawing danger down on her.”
“I can take care of myself,” the lady in question said as she came back into the room. “Really, Cafad, after all I've taught you, don't you know any better than that?”
Idisio's master bent his head and said nothing.
“You need to rest, Cafad,” Azni said. “Go get some sleep. I'll bore your boy here back to his own rest, and teach him a few things he'll need to know if he's to play at taking care of you.” She smiled at Idisio.
“He hasn't slept at all,” she added in a loud whisper. “Worried over you, no doubt.”
Raising his head, Scratha rolled his eyes and heaved himself to his feet. “I had a lot to talk to you about, Azni,” he said. “Don't make it sound something it wasn't. This boy doesn't need any help with his ego.”
“Of course,” she said, tone bland, eyes bright with mischief.
He shook his head and snorted. “We leave in the morning,” he said, and left the room.
Azni smiled as she watched the tall man walk away, then turned to Idisio with a brisk motion. “Now, tell me about yourself. Everything. I know Cafad didn't even bother asking your name; typical of him. I tore him raw over that. Even servants deserve respect, especially if they have to put up with someone like Cafad.”
“That's all right, s'a,” Idisio said, feeling clumsy and awkward. Ancient as she seemed, she still had a graceful and cool demeanor that he'd never been faced with before. “I mean, I'm used to not accounting for much.”
He wished he hadn't said it as soon as the words were out; her gaze sharpened instantly, like a blacktail hawk about to drop on a mouse.
“Cafad said he caught you trying to steal from him,” she said. “You're a street-thief, then?”
Idisio nodded, feeling the color rising to his face again. He couldn't stand to meet her stare any longer. “I never knew my parents. Some beggar-thieves raised me, but they never pretended to be related. They were always clear they'd found me as an abandoned infant.”
He bit his lip at the prickling pain of that—and at the recurring vision of a pair of wild grey eyes staring into his. Why had that been so vivid an image? And why did he feel it was important? He shrugged and turned his attention to talking.
“The street thieves waved me around, when I was a baby, to get sympathy and coin from the nobles; when I grew too old for that I took up thieving myself. I've been living the streets my whole life.” He grimaced, wondering why he was babbling so much to a near-stranger, then knew: to avoid thinking about those haunted grey eyes.
She said nothing for a while. He could feel that intent stare burning into him. At last she said, “You've been used for more than sympathy.”
“I grew up on the streets, whaddya think?” he started to say, intending it as a hard-edged warning to back off; found his voice choking off into unexpected hoarseness and then silence halfway through. He shut his eyes, tears prickling against his eyelids; biting his tongue hard held them back.
“Yeah,” he husked after a moment.
“Idisio,” Azni said, “I'm not prying, and I'm not offering pity. Life is what it is, ugly and bitter and sweet and fine all together. I've been through my own rough times, and so has Cafad. But we probably had more support than you ever dreamed of knowing. You surviving this long means you have more strength, in some ways, than many people. Keep that in mind, if Cafad ever tries to intimidate you. And remember this, too: he's not as hard-hearted as he tries to act.”
She drew a breath, lightened her tone, and began to talk of less serious things. Idisio, relieved, let himself be drawn back out into conversation and even shared some of the funnier stories from his life on the streets.
They talked for what the remainder of the day, until a fire had to be set in the stove and bowls of stew ladled out of the large pot. They talked by candlelight as they ate, as she cleaned up, and by the time Idisio dropped back to sleep on his pallet, his head spun from the things he'd learned. Politics and family ties, blood oaths and noble secrets and gossip, and, woven in here and there, casual comments on the best way to mend clothes, cook food, and ride a horse.
A few words from her had explained more about that than hours of his master's cursing and admonitions. He also had a better idea of what it had meant for Scratha to change his name and take to the road, with his true name in official disgrace and his true person in the king's service. If he'd simply gone traveling as Lord Cafad Scratha, with his desert holding empty and unprotected, desert law would have given rights to any who chose to occupy it for a year's time. He could have come home to find himself homeless. But by placing his land in the king's hands and his true name in temporary public disgrace, the king himself had to keep the holding open for Scratha, whether this journey took months or years.
As even a temporary holder of a desert fortress, whatever the legal fiction involved, the king had just acquired certain rights and the other desert families certain obligations. The traditional independence of the desert families from the actual kingdom had just developed a small but significant political vulnerability.
“He’s always been rash,” Azni sighed. “Rash and quicktempered and hard to reason with. He regrets afterwards, but never remembers long enough for next time. Your worst task, Idisio, will be keeping his temper under hand and him out of trouble. I don't think he really has any notion what he's done, choosing to travel as nothing more than a court researcher. He has no idea what it's like, not being treated as a noble. He thinks he does. He really, truly, doesn't.”
She shook her head slowly. They went on to other topics, and finally she declared herself too tired to talk further. She left the room with a gracious goodnight and a lit candle by his pallet; he blew it out and settled back on his cushions soon after.
Idisio stared into the darkness of a room gone quiet but for late-night insect noise and tried to think it all through. He didn't get far before the darkness crawled inside him and swallowed him into sleep.
His feet didn't hurt. The throbbing, aching pain of the previous two days was completely gone. His muscles still protested the unaccustomed exercise of riding, but his feet, unswollen and unblistered, slid back into the hard black boots without complaint.
Azni gave Idisio a jar of salve. “For next time Cafad works you too hard,” she said with a smile, and pressed another onto Idisio's master with an admonition not to waste them. Scratha treated the small earthenware jar with a respect that told Idisio it was a precious gift; as if his miraculously healed feet weren't evidence enough of that.
His horse remained placid and obedient now. It snorted and shied occasionally when a sand-grouse or tizzy-lizard darted out from underfoot. Idisio, more comfortable with riding every mile that passed, held his seat and patted the side of the beast's neck until it calmed again. He noticed that his master's horse hadn't even made that slight twitch of reaction, plodding along uninterested in bird or lizard.
“He's a good rider,” Azni had told Idisio the previous night. “Better than perhaps he even realizes. He's got a gift with animals. But he's impatient with anyone who doesn't grasp a skill as quickly as he does. If it comes natural to him, then it should be easy for all; if it's hard for him, then it doesn't need doing by anyone.”
Scratha turned abruptly in the saddle and stared at him. “Where do I begin?”
“Pardon?” Idisio blinked, startled.
Scratha waved impatiently for Idisio to move forward beside him.
&n
bsp; “Where do I start?” he repeated once the two horses were abreast.
“I don't understand,” Idisio said, completely bewildered. His master's dark eyes bored into him as if expecting a better answer.
“With this stupid history!” Scratha said. “What do I write about? What do I even call it? When do I start? It's all nonsense.” He stared ahead, brooding and dark.
Idisio drew a breath slowly, holding back a grin. “You could start with Lady Azni.”
“No,” Scratha said immediately. “She's not to be mentioned at all. I want her left alone.”
“Then start with the first village we come to.”
Scratha pulled his horse to a halt and sat still. “But what do I say?”
“I don't know, my . . . Master,” Idisio said. “I can't even read.”
Scratha stared at him for a long moment, then said, “I'll have to fix that. I'll need you to be able to read soon.”
Idisio nodded, speechless. He'd always wanted to learn to read, but it was a hard skill to pick up in the streets, where reading meant time away from making money for survival. He'd always been told most lords preferred their servants illiterate.
“I'd like that,” he said.
“We'll start tonight,” Scratha said. “And you have the right idea. We'll start with the first village. There's one just outside Bright Bay, isn't there? By the marshes?”
“Ye-e-ess,” Idisio said reluctantly, “but—”
“Then we start there.” Scratha shook the reins, turned the horse’s head more south than east, and nudged into a trot.
* * *
Chapter Four
White sand, blown over the wide paving stones of the King's Road by the ever-present sea breeze, scraped under the horses' hooves. Alyea treasured the sound. The road and the alabaster sands of the coast both petered out at roughly the same time; once that grating shiss stopped, she would be in alien territory, completely dependent on the handful of advisors and guardsmen who had been sent with her. The advisors rode horses of a bloodline second only to the News-Riders' mounts; the guards walked behind.
“You need to strike a delicate balance between appearing lazy and appearing hasty,” the bony old man riding beside her said. “Both can get you killed; both will lose you respect. Four days to reach Water's End. No more hurrying than that, no less easy a pace than that. Three way-stops and we'll be in Water's End midday on the fourth.”
Lord Eredion Sessin had said something similar about respect, during their meeting with the king two nights ago.
“The desert holds its own time,” he'd told her. “You're good at the northern courtesies, but those won't do you any good in the south. We're a slow folk, but far from stupid; in the time northerns rattle off five wrong answers to a question, we've thought through twenty and only say the right response. Hurrying won't gain you any respect, so learn to slow down.” Shortly afterward, he'd been called away and hadn't been able to speak with her again before she left. Now she depended on Chac for the information she'd expected to get from Lord Sessin.
Chac had always been something of an enigma. He'd been close to Oruen, helping plot the overthrow of the former king, but beyond that she knew little about him; he lived just outside the Seventeen Gates, had no family, held no status she could determine, and refused all formal recognition or invitations from anyone with noble blood. But Oruen had seen fit to send Chac, along with Micru, to accompany her south, so apparently part of the old man's mysterious past included knowledge of the southlands.
She looked sideways, studying his leathery, sun-wrinkled face for a moment, then said, “When were you last in the desert, Chac? The true desert.”
“Years,” he said, his gaze on the distant arc of the Crescent Mountains to the southwest. “Many, many years. I used to go once a year on a desert walk to clear the sludge of the city out of my veins.”
“And to look for the wife that ran away,” Micru said from Alyea's other side.
Chac's thin lips drew back from his teeth. He stared straight ahead, his hands crushing the thick leather reins, and said nothing. Alyea repressed a sigh; why Oruen had sent two men who so fiercely hated each other she couldn't understand, but the animosity had been made clear before they even passed through the southern gates of Bright Bay.
“Why did you stop going on desert walks, Chac?” she said, shooting Micru a sharp, repressive glare.
For a moment, she thought Chac might refuse to answer, too aggravated by Micru's repeated barbs to talk any longer, but at last he said, “Ninnic. That stupid Travelers' Law made it impossible. I couldn't afford the taxes; they were doubled on the south gates.”
“And the guards paid more attention to who went in and out,” Micru noted, not turning his gaze from the near-sleepy examination of the terrain ahead. Chac seemed unoffended by that comment, so either it had missed its mark or it actually hadn't been intended as an insult.
Alyea shook her head. “Gods preserve us from those days ever coming again,” she muttered, not aware she'd spoken aloud until Chac answered.
“Asking the gods to save us from that madness,” the old man said, “ignores the fact that the gods permitted it to happen in the first place.”
“The gods do as the gods do,” Micru said. “Anger at the gods is foolish and a waste of time. You ought to know that by now, Chacerly.”
Chac stiffened, a dangerous light in his eyes.
Alyea said sharply, “Stop it, both of you! We're barely clear of Bright Bay. If you're going to act like squabbling children the whole way, I'll turn around right now and ask Oruen to pick new advisors for me.”
They both turned to look at her, visibly astonished. Micru's dark eyes narrowed slightly, while Chac's almost disappeared in the wrinkles of his squint; she wondered if she'd gone too far. Sworn to protect her or not, angering one of the Hidden was stupid, and she suspected Chac could get thoroughly nasty as well.
After exchanging a brief, calculating glare in which hostilities were wordlessly suspended but not forgotten, both men turned their attention stiffly forward and fell silent. Alyea let out a long breath and wished, uselessly, that horses could grow wings and fly them all direct to Scratha Fortress.
Alyea stood on the edge of a steep drop and stared at the vast spread of the Goldensea, far below and to the west. The sun had melted into a bronze-gold puddle on the water. Small dots were moving towards the coast: probably fishing boats bringing in the day's catch. The air, darkening towards dusk, felt clear and sharp in her nose.
The erratically climbing path had already taken them higher above sea level than she'd ever been before. Sand colors had gradually shifted to white, then grey, then changed entirely to pale brown rock; the stench of a busy coastal city gave way to the sweet, thick, and earthy tones of scrub-sage and clay dust. The transformations created an entirely new landscape, one she needed to stand still and adjust to. When Chacerly went to direct the lodging arrangements in the way-stop behind her, she took the opportunity to move to a nearby overlook spot.
From the coastal lowlands of Bright Bay, the Horn climbed sharply to a near-mountain height. Jagged cliffs rose on one side of the trail; a steep drop lay on the other—and which side was the cliff might shift with no apparent transition.
Court sages liked to argue over whether the Horn was a natural place or an aberration created by the gods. It rose too high, too sharply, and the weather patterns were all wrong, said one side, while the other argued it was proof that nature was far more complex than mankind's limited mind could understand.
Alyea closed her eyes and breathed deeply, then looked out at the ocean. That water had always been close enough to dip her toes into, with less than an hour's walk; now it was close to a day's walk, if a path so short could be found across the broken ground of the Horn.
Soon it would be farther yet, and after that, gone from sight. The land past the Horn widened into another vast continent, and her path lay straight down the center. Scratha Fortress sat deep in the sands of the
true desert, a ten-day ride from the east coast, easily three times that to the west coast. To the south would be only more sand, and beyond that, the forbidden Haunted Lands and southern jungles.
She shivered. The breeze swirling up to her felt cold, misty, and unpleasant compared to the warm evening sea breezes common in Bright Bay this time of year. She turned away and headed for the inn. Way-stops in the Horn were the only places for merchants and travelers to pause overnight. At this one, indoor rooms and stables proper were reserved for important people; commoners pitched their bedrolls and sheltered their mounts in low-walled enclosures covered by heavy, waterproof canvas tents. In deference to her noble blood, Alyea had a room indoors. Chac had told her to keep her status as king's representative quiet for the moment, out of concern that someone might try to challenge her holding of Scratha Fortress before she took actual possession of the land.
She couldn't see that happening, but had to defer to Chac's judgement. Not for the first time, she wished she'd had a chance to talk with Eredion Sessin about protocols and courtesies; he'd seemed much easier to talk to than the sour old man. Certainly friendlier. Chac had barely said two words since her morning rebuke.
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