No, of course not. Evred had known the old man all his life; the oldest son had volunteered as a Rider during Tlennen-Harvaldar’s first call for war. What was wrong with them? Or was he thinking about it all wrong? House on the river—on the water—northeast corner of the river, just inside the eastern wall . . .
Water. If you looked at the map and substituted the river for, say, the strait, then the brothers’ saddlery was located approximately in the same place as Ymar. Or the Port of Jaro.
Evred set the letter down. Why was the Port of Jaro important? Yes. The winter before last, Barend had sent him a note after delivering the gold to Queen Wisthia. He’d added a single line that the Fox Banner Fleet was sailing with a newly-formed alliance to turf the Venn out of Jaro. Evred had not heard directly from Barend since. He knew his cousin was safe, as Barend had sent a verbal message by some traders to Cama last year, with two items of news: his locket was lost, but they’d won their sea battle.
All right, then let the saddlery stand for Ymar.
Evred turned back to the letter.
. . . Celebrations lasted until the first snow. Since then there have been messages crossing the river in all directions. Since your mother’s folk have no horse in this race, their coast being the playground of Sartoran wastrels, your mother’s domicile is deemed neutral territory. I sit around like “stage furniture—palace scene” and listen sympathetically to every envoy, toff, and Idayagan poet who comes here to drink our spiced punch and complain about the others, each waiting to see who tries to build a new bakery on the river. Everyone agrees that it ought to be done.
The new Ymaran master baker feels that as his shop was chief victim in the fires several years ago, he should form a River Eatery, with workers supplied by everyone else. Paid for by everyone else. His neighbor to the north feels they should head it, as their buckets were principal in putting out the most recent fire. (Though the gossip is that Cousin Barend and his band of wastrels carried the most water.) The locals believe that their position in the middle of the river makes them the best choice—but suddenly there are new players in the game, the envoys from the old tower, now that they’ve given up the pickle trade. And of course the dish-makers want everything.
So. I stand ready to represent you in the seeking of the perfect food, but what is your preference?
If “dish-makers” was a crude swipe at the platter-faced Chwahir, then Evred understood it well enough: every government along the strait wanted it patrolled but didn’t trust the others and didn’t want to pay for the force necessary for patrol. Meanwhile, rumors had it the Venn were going to return.
He walked to his open window, stared down at the academy. Clashes, clangs, and boys’ voices echoed from the distant practice yards. He thought he caught Inda’s laugh among those braying teenage honks. That sharp bark was Honeyboy Tya-Vayir. Inda had said, “I’m going to make Honeyboy captain on a game. He’ll never be Cama, but he’s not Horsebutt, either. Let him have his chance.”
Evred rejoiced at Inda’s every success, but each reflection brought him hard against the fact that everyone, men and boys, was loyal to Inda. He did not resent it. He couldn’t. Call it wariness, left over from boyhood. The familiar wariness lay inside Evred like a curled fist; what Evred resented was his own readiness for that fist to tighten to rage. He made himself breathe slowly until it loosened while he contemplated how Inda had never in his life tried to command loyalty. People just turned to him to lead them. And all his own loyalty was given to Evred. There was no king in the world who had a better shield arm.
Insane, Taumad had said once. Evred counted breaths again. He was not insane. He could not let himself become insane; he did not have that comfort.
Six days later Evred received a locket note from the Runner who had replaced Nightingale Toraca at the Nob. The first bit of news was the report from fishers sighting the massing of Venn warships at Nathur, the southernmost Venn base on Drael.
The second piece of news: A woman we believe is Signi the Venn landed at the Nob from a trade ship. She set out alone down the south road.
Over the following days, as Signi jolted and swayed in a coffee wagon along the narrow Olaran coastal road leading to Lindeth Harbor, Evred considered his response. His first reaction had been anger: the massing of the Venn above Halia and her reappearance could not be coincidence.
But that did not mean she returned as a spy. He owed Signi the Venn the opportunity to explain herself. So he sent Kened to meet her with a mount. If she was not going to transfer by magic, but intended to travel overland to the royal city for some reason, at least she would not have to walk all the way south.
Half a year passed. Iasca Leror was too busy with everyday pursuits to notice until once again the long autumn twilight layered over the sky in bands of color. Harvest time was here. It was Restday when Dauvid Tya-Vayir reached home after his long journey from the academy.
Uncle Stalgrid seemed shorter, somehow, his jowls more fleshy, his brow more pinched as he shouted orders at the men laying the new roof on the stable. On their approach he turned sharply, his face tightening into suspicion.
All along the journey Dauvid had envisioned telling his uncle how he’d commanded two cub overnights, but the words dried up at the sight of that suspicion. No welcome, just suspicion. It was as if the world split somehow, and Honeyboy fell out of one world, becoming Dauvid in his uncle’s smaller world, where everything that happened was somebody’s fault if Uncle Stalgrid hadn’t ordered it. Where everyone was a claphair or a coward or a slacker or a spy.
And so when his uncle said, “Well? Don’t just stand there. We have work to do. Give me your report. What did they do to you this year?” Dauvid said, “Nothing.”
“As well.” Stalgrid Tya-Vayir snorted. “Lick their boots, get through the seven years. Then they’ll leave us alone, until I’m forced to send the boy.” And when Dauvid did not answer, Stalgrid motioned impatiently. “Get up there. Next time it will be your task to reset the roof, until such time as that idiot Montrei-Vayir in the royal city is willing to pay out for a mage as he promised.”
It was not until much later that Dauvid trod wearily into the castle. Everyone worked on Restday in Tya-Vayir if Uncle Stalgrid was in one of his moods.
Aunt Hibern, Aunt Imand’s mate, was waiting for Dauvid. She greeted him kindly, asked if he was hungry, then brought him to his aunt. She was down at the summer bake house on the hill above the lakeshore. They’d rebuilt it that summer, Dauvid saw. She gave him a quick smile, and a searching gaze as she said, “We’re still trying to learn its ways.”
Dauvid opened his hand. His mother was now Head Baker, and his earliest chores had been kneading, before he got so big Uncle put him to train with the Riders, then chose him to be the new Randael.
“What did you learn this year?” Aunt Imand asked.
“I learned . . .” He hadn’t meant to say, but Aunt Imand had never slapped him for saying the wrong thing. He’d discovered at the academy that nobody except Inda-Harskialdna wanted to hear what he was thinking. He got along better with the boys when he was quiet, and he had figured out why. It was because of all that time he’d spent trying to force the other boys see the world the way Uncle saw it.
So the words burst out of him. “If there’s a young horse, Uncle sees the old nag it might be. There’s a man, and Uncle sees a coward or a claphair. Everybody is, um, oh, smaller, for Uncle Stalgrid.” He looked up, not having said that much to anyone since the last time he was sent to the Harskialdna in trouble—and he had only got in trouble once, early in spring.
“Go on,” Aunt Imand said.
It felt good to talk. “I had a good year, and Uncle wants me to have a bad year, because he didn’t order it. Because he doesn’t like Headmaster Gand or the Harskialdna-Dal or the king. But I like being Honeyboy now.” He groped, reaching into air as if he’d find the right words to grip onto. “When I’m Honeyboy, I’m there. And I led the cubs. Twice! It was good.”
&nbs
p; “When you’re Honeyboy, you see the world everyone else sees. Welcome to it.” Imand brushed a strand of hair off his forehead.
“What do I do?” he cried. “Try to change Uncle? Am I a coward to stay silent?”
“No. We all tried to change him, but he wants the world to be his way. The way his father and grandfather tried to force it to be.”
“Why?”
Imand shook her braids back and wiped her brow. “I don’t know. I grew up with them all, and I—well, here’s something I learned. Your great-great-grandfather was a powerful warrior. It says so not just in our songs, but in all the songs. But a good warrior isn’t always a good man. See?”
Dauvid shifted from foot to foot. “So what do I do?”
“What we all do. Say what he wants to hear, because he’s the Jarl. And he works hard for Tya-Vayir, in his way. But we do what must be done in our own way.”
Dauvid thumped his hand to his chest, and took more confident steps into this new world, which included other worlds, made by other people. And later, when Aunt Imand asked him to help Little Stalgrid with his first riding lessons, he went to do his best to teach that big world, the one that included everyone, to the little boy.
Evred sat back at his desk, wondering if he should risk a Fire Stick or just pull on his winter gloves when someone tapped at the door. Relieved at the interruption, he opened it himself, to discover Tesar, Hadand’s personal Runner outside. Tesar’s broad face was superficially impassive, but the corners of her mouth and the glisten of her eyes belied suppressed emotion.
“Hadand-Edli requests an interview,” she said.
Hadand never interrupted him unless there was cause. He locked away Tau’s last letter, then rushed down the long hall to the queen’s suite.
The bow women on guard all grinned as they saluted.
Evred’s heart thumped. He found Tdor and Hadand standing by the window in Hadand’s bedchamber. “Hadand?”
Her eyes widened as she laid a hand over her belly. “It’s been three weeks past when I ought to have had the monthly course,” she said. “And there are other changes in my body, but I never thought—I didn’t dare to—I ignored them. The healer says that I should stop drinking gerda.” She gave an unsteady laugh. “Which is as well because as soon as I make myself choke it down, up it comes again. Evred, we will be parents next summer.”
Later he was not certain what he said, or even how he got out of the room. Elation was so fierce he couldn’t breathe for a time, so he retreated to his office, where he stood at the window staring sightlessly over the academy roofs.
Change.
He was going to be a father. Maybe a girl, the one he’d promised to Cama. A son, a future king? Joy twisted into dread. Do not be like me, my son. Or my brother. Or my uncle. Maybe I should stay distant after all, leave you to Inda. Except I want you to be as much like my father as is possible. He was a great king.
The next day, he faced his Guild Council.
They faced him. After six years of struggle to maintain a semblance of order despite what had seemed unending threat and disaster, the more observant of the guild leaders had learned to recognize the king’s mood by little signs. Evred-Harvaldar was at all times reserved, even austere, far more than his father at the same age, the oldest maintained.
But today there was that about the set of his shoulders, the lift to his eyelids that made his eyes seem very green, the way he used his hands instead of hiding them, that caused the council to sit up a little straighter, or lean forward. The atmosphere, usually businesslike, sometimes tense, was now charged with expectation.
“I have established an envoy in Bren. He and my mother, who is ambassador for my Adrani cousin, have begun to form trade contacts.”
Some cautious nods. None of this was new. The oldest sat still, waiting.
“I’ve been advised to open the way for you to exchange communication with your particular guilds in Bren, and through them, the rest of the world. This is a break with Marlovan tradition—”
His words were lost in the exclamations that no one could hold back. The council recovered themselves very quickly, but that was enough. Evred had his answer.
As soon as he was free again he wrote a short letter to Tau, reporting the gist of the council meeting. What else should he write? He hesitated over his news. No, he would wait for appearance of the child.
So he folded the paper, put it in the case, spoke the magic words. When he opened the case again, the note was gone: gone in an instant, and not carried step by step overland, to reach Bren in half a year.
Change.
The next morning, Tdor kissed Inda and sent him off to his weekly drill with the Runners-in-Training. She wasn’t certain why she wanted to be alone for what she was about to do, but it felt right. Maybe because most every other woman who drank gerda seemed to take it in stride, or laugh a little then got on with their lives.
But Tdor had always wanted to know what was coming next, she liked to prepare, and though even her closest companions had sometimes teased her a little, she loved little rituals.
Noren entered the bedroom, bearing a tray with a steaming red clay pot. Noren knew what was about to happen—she and Tdor knew everything about each other. That was why Tdor wrote unnecessary letters to Fareas-Iofre during winter and summer, sending them back via Noren just so Noren could see Whipstick.
“Here’s the boiled water.” Noren set the tray down.
“A pinch in the cup,” Tdor said, quoting the healer.
She picked up the little ceramic jar painted around the rim with a fairly exact replica of gerda in flower. She broke the beeswax seal and lifted the lid. A pungent smell emerged, not quite like what she’d smelled in Hadand’s chambers. It was somehow both sharper and sweeter, in a vegetable way she could not define.
She dipped her fingers into the powder and dropped the gold-green fragments into a shallow Marlovan dish. Noren poured the boiled water carefully over it. Now it began to smell familiar.
Noren glanced from the dissolving powder to Tdor and laid down the wooden stir-stick they usually used for mulled wine. Then she went out.
Tdor sniffed the aroma curling off the steep in slow writhing vapors. She stirred, and when she could see the bottom of the cup, picked it up with both hands and took a cautious sip. Sharp and tart, not sweet. The healer had said many preferred to chew the root, bitter as it was. The taste was distinctive, not particularly good, but bearable. Far better than willow-bark steep.
She drank it all down, hot as it was, ignoring the sting on tongue and mouth. She wanted to feel the warmth spreading through her body. This is how you begin to make a baby, she thought. So very, very strange an idea! From one into two. Love made you and the one you loved two in one. Friend-love made you part of twos, and threes, and fours, part of kin-circles, part of a kingdom. And now she would become a two with a tiny being inside her body.
Joy tingled through her nerves, leaving her breathless. She sat there, cup in hands, until the sensation gradually diminished into the sweet ache of tenderness, but it did not go away. When she realized it would never go away—never—this was the love Fareas-Iofre had talked about, and it was here, for her—she got up, walked into the bedroom, pulled her knife from her sleeve and made another notch on the trunk.
Then she went downstairs to work.
As harvest time passed, fitful winds veered across the plains from the snowy mountains to the east, sending dry leaves skittering through the streets of the royal city.
Inda took his sentry walk early in order to escape a dousing from the dark line of clouds sweeping down. Tdor, newly arrived from the queen’s side, joined him.
He was scarcely aware of the signal trumpet note announcing a King’s Runner returning. They’d just reached the sentry walk over main gate when Inda stopped, staring downward at a small female form riding next to Kened, one of Evred’s Runners, as they approached.
Inda drew his breath in sharply. “Signi?”
&nbs
p; He took off, running past sentries who whirled around to stare. Inda ran like a boy, skidding at corners, leaping down the stairs six at a time, his coat skirts flapping behind him. Tdor could scarcely keep up with him. It was a long run; Kened and Signi had just passed through the castle gates into the royal stable yard when Inda and Tdor clattered down the residence’s south tower.
Inda’s face flushed with joy as he flung his arms around Signi. She put her arms around him, but held her hands away from his back, gloved fingers spread. They clung together, rocking and laughing.
Tdor stood to one side, her emotions swooping and diving. A step at her shoulder brought her attention up. She was startled to discover Evred there.
Signi looked over Inda’s shoulders, straight into Evred’s eyes. This was no inscrutable mage, hiding behind her dance gestures. She looked older, and thinner, and frail, somehow, and her expression below a white scar on her forehead was troubled. He gazed back, perplexed.
How many kinds of love are there? Tdor thought. Love is all around us, free as the air. Like trust, you have to give it before you can expect it back. Her heart filled with the joy of Inda’s happiness.
Evred said to Signi, “Welcome.”
The tension smoothed from Signi’s brow, but not the pain; Tdor and Evred realized that the puckers were lines formed there since they had seen the Venn dag last.
Signi knew what it meant for Evred to come all this way himself, instead of ordering her summoned to him. “Thank you, Harvaldar-Dal.”
“I have received reports that your countrymen enter the strait,” Evred said. “I ask only if they are on their way here.”
Signi bowed her head. “I am an outcast, an exile. But I believe they sail down the strait to the east. And I am not to remain here: I await orders to carry on with the old plan, to give our navigation to Sartor. That way must be cleared by others first.”
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