"I know, I know. And so far I've been precious little good at providing for you. Well, see what else you can find out, about anything, and watch out of the Caineron. Caldane can't be happy that the Knorth have snatched both you and Brier Iron-thorn away from him."
II
With Rue gone and Graykin departed to nose out more secrets, Jame went looking for Briar.
She found the big Southron and five of her ten-command in the third story common room opposite the lordan's apartment. They were all bare foot, polishing a seemingly endless row of boots.
"For tonight," said Brier. "And yes, these are every pair in the Knorth barracks except for yours and Rue's, who appears to have run off in hers. On your orders, I take it."
"On my business, anyway. She seems to have appointed herself my servant."
"Good," said Brier, giving her a sharp look. "You need one." Better yet, a keeper, her tone said.
"But all these boots . . . why you?"
"Vant's orders."
"Huh. Vant's revenge, more likely. How much did you outrank him in the trials?"
"Fifteen to thirty-six!" chorused the other cadets, grinning.
At least Vant's petty tyranny seemed to have brought the squad squarely behind their new Five. But two faces were missing. Mint, Dar, Quill, Erim, Killy . . .
"Where are Kest and . . . and . . ." Damn. She hadn't learned the last cadet's name.
"Yel failed. And Kest left last night. The rope test broke him. He didn't even wait to hear his score."
"Oh," said Jame, blankly. She had been so relieved at breakfast to hear that she had qualified that she hadn't noticed who had not.
"The Knorth lost ten candidates in all," said Briar dispassionately, examining a scuffed toe. "That takes us down to ninety cadets, nearly a one-hundred command. Not bad. One of our provisional squads will be broken up to provide replacements to the others."
That reminded Jame that she was not only ten-commander of this particular group but—nominally, at least—master ten of the entire barracks.
"Wait a minute. Why is Vant giving you orders?"
"Of the ten-commanders, his score was the highest, so he stands second to you in authority. He will expect to have the day to day running of the barracks."
Damn. Jame would much rather have had Brier, and would have, too, if the Southron hadn't been demoted for breaking college rules on her behalf. She scowled at the formidable array of boots.
"I can countermand Vant."
"Don't," said Brier. "At least not until you've given your scarf to the Commandant and received it back from him through the hands of a Knorth senior randon. You aren't officially part of Tentir until then. None of us are, however some choose to act."
"Oh," said Jame, taken aback. She hadn't known.
"Anyway," the Southron added, following Jame's line of thought regarding her demotion, "the cadet body as a whole wouldn't have welcomed an outsider in charge over them."
"Well, they'll have to lump it, won't they? After all, they've got me."
Brier gave her another look, this one askance under the fringe of her dark red hair. Sunlight flooding in through the room's many windows gave her a fiery halo. "Sorry I knocked out your tooth," she said gruffly.
"Oh, it could as easily have been yours as mine. I think. A risk of the game. But that move you used against me . . . I've never seen anything like it before. Will you teach me how to fight Kothifir style?"
Brier looked up, startled. "Why?"
"It was effective, and it caught me totally off guard. I'd rather not have that happen again." She hesitated. "Just out of curiosity, were you trying to kill me?"
"Trinity, no. I'd never fought a Highborn before, much less a lady. I had no idea you were so fragile."
Jame blinked. Fragile? It had never occurred to her that she was. True, most of her adversaries in the past had been much stronger than she was, but untrained. She had usually beaten them easily. Here, that would no longer be the case.
"I've been a fool," she said, thoughtfully. "An arrogant one, at that. Thank you, Brier Iron-thorn. You've already taught me an invaluable lesson, and cheap at the price." She fingered her sore jaw. "Just the same, I've never had a tooth knocked out before. How long does it usually take to grow a new one?"
"About three weeks," said the Kendar. She picked up another boot—Vant's, perhaps—spat on it, and began to polish. "Find a twig to chew on or the teething itch will drive you crazy."
III
In another part of the barracks, Vant could be heard ordering someone else around. If she wasn't going to interfere, Jame didn't want to listen. She and Jorin slipped out the front door into the covered arcade, into the bright summer morning.
New Tentir was laid out in the same order as the house banners in the great hall: Randir, Coman, and Caineron from east to west along the north wing; Jaran, Knorth, and Ardeth along the west; Danior, Edirr and Brandan from west to east along the south. By chance or design, this arrangement grouped allies and enemies, with a scattering of neutrals between them. Jame turned southward.
For the first time, she seriously considered the physical dangers she faced at Tentir. The randon were the deadliest fighters on Rathillien, and she didn't know what rules bound them beyond the increasingly slippery concept of honor. These were her superiors, not her peers, except among the rawest recruits. Moreover, among them were bitter enemies of her house. Had she been a fool to come here? It had hardly been a considered decision, rather a spur-of-the-moment escape from an intolerable situation.
Yes, she told herself, but think of the other risks she had blithely taken in the past—the streets of Tai-tastigon, where she had stalked gods and in turn been stalked by them; the carnivorous hills of the Anarchies, where she had granted an aging rathorn mare her death wish and so gained the hatred of her death's-head foal; the Master's House itself, with its layers of corrupt history, all the fallen worlds stacked one on top of the other—all undertaken with a child's careless arrogance.
If she had known what she was doing, would she have done it? Was she growing more cautious with age, or more cowardly?
And on top of that, she had just been handed responsibility for an entire barracks, containing all her brother's precious cadets. A loner by nature, what did she know about command? Should she—could she leave everything to Vant?
The arcade took her by the broad facade of the Ardeth, then turned a corner to head eastward toward Old Tentir. Jame noted that the Ardeth had appropriated not only the southwestern corner but a length of the south wing. Poor little Danior with its thirty cadets was so pinched by its larger neighbor that one half expected the building to squeak. The Edirr faired only slightly better, under pressure on the other side from the Brandan.
In front of the latter, Captain Hawthorn leaned on the arcade rail tranquilly smoking a long-stemmed, clay pipe. She raised a scar-broken eyebrow as Jame approached.
"We'd heard that you were gone, lady," she said. "Seemingly, you didn't sleep in your quarters last night, or at least not in the lordan's apartment."
Someone must have checked, thought Jame. Someone who didn't know she had shifted lodgings upward, into the attic. Vant. No wonder he had been surprised to see her at breakfast.
"Well, here I am." She sniffed her sleeve, which retained the stale reek of Greshan's jacket. "Like a bad smell, I linger."
The randon grinned. "So I perceive."
"Speaking of the lordan's suite, how is it that we can afford to leave it empty, given how full the college is? For that matter, we Knorth seem to have almost more space than we need."
"Hush, or your neighbors will hear. Actually, you can thank them, specifically your allies the Ardeth and the Jaran, that you have any quarters here at all." The randon drew on her pipe and exhaled a meditative plume of smoke. "I can remember when the Knorth barracks were nearly as full as our own. That was before your lord father fell, and nearly brought his house down with him. For more than thirty years, those rooms stood as empty
as the Highlord's seat, for no one dared to seize either."
Jame gazed, frowning, back across the square at the Knorth façade. Vant could be seen intermittently as he paced the second floor, harrying a ten-command as it scrubbed the dormitory floor. Briar sat tranquilly on a third story window ledge polishing yet another boot. Heights didn't seem to bother her. Poor Kest. The Caineron barracks looming on the north side of the square were broad, five stories tall, and virtually windowless. Perhaps Lord Caldane's height-sickness ran throughout his house.
"So," said Jame, pulling her mind back to the matter at hand, "there have only been Knorth cadets at Tentir since my brother came to power? That was just three years ago."
"Aye." The randon puffed again. "Barely time for the first class to graduate, and many of those died at the Cataracts. You've much rebuilding yet to do, if your enemies give you time. Take care, lordan. Your brother can't protect you here."
Jame leaned against the rail as memory swept her back to a conversation with the Brandan Matriarch Brenwyr not long ago:
"Kinzi and the Randir Matriarch Rawneth . . . they quarreled."
"So? Are you saying that I've inherited an undeclared blood feud, and no one saw fit to tell me?"
"There was no need. Anyway, it never came to blows."
"Let me guess. Before anything so unladylike could happen, the Shadow Assassins slaughtered every Knorth woman at Gothregor except Tieri . . . and no one ever knew why."
It was still only a guess that Rawneth had been behind the Knorth massacre. Even if she was, Jame had no idea what quarrel could have led to such deadly consequences, yet she herself must still be part of it or the Shadow Assassins wouldn't have come for her that last night in Gothregor.
Huh. More unfinished business.
"Who are my enemies?" she asked Hawthorn.
The randon frowned, troubled. "I shouldn't have spoken. Not until you're a proper cadet under Tentir's protection, such as it is, and even then you should be told by a member of your own house. In a few hours, we will tell you all we know." She straightened and knocked out her pipe against the rail. "In the meantime, you'll be safe among your own people. Wait a minute while I tell my folk where I'm going and then, lady, I'll escort you back to your quarters."
When she returned, however, the Knorth was gone.
IV
The great hall of Old Tentir hummed with activity. Kendar scoured the flagstones while others polished the randon collars hanging against the upper walls. Beams were being dusted and retouched with gold paint by those presumably least prone to height-sickness. The rope from the trials had been removed. Delicious smells drifted up from the fire timber hall below, where whole oxen were being slowly roasted over charcoal pits for the feast that would follow the cadets' initiation into Tentir.
Jame's stomach rumbled as she and Jorin stood in the shadows, watching. With luck, by evening, she would be able to chew again, if cautiously.
She knew that Hawthorn was right. It was foolish to take chances, but damned if she was going to be delivered back to the Knorth barracks like some willful, wandering child. In a minute, she would make her own way home. Now, she had to be sure of herself. That she hadn't lost her nerve. That she would take whatever risks she must to succeed at the college, while never forgetting that this was a dangerous place, full of dangerous people.
Jorin growled.
"Good morning," said the Randir Tempter, beside her. "Or perhaps I should say 'good afternoon.' "
"We . . . I didn't hear you, ran."
"Ah." The other smiled. "It occurred to us that you and the ounce might be bound. You are, of course, Shanir."
"As are you." Jame listened intently. The other didn't seem to be using her under-voice, but then it had slipped past her guard before. As for physical violence, "Never touch me again," she had told this woman from the depths of her Shanir nature, and she suddenly knew that the Randir never would nor could. However, Jorin was still growling, which distracted her.
"Hush," she said to him.
"There are many Shanir here," said the Randir, "a few Highborn like you and the Ardeth brat, but mostly Kendar with a touch of the Old Blood. What is it, I wonder, that draws Highborn men to Kendar women? One rarely hears of the reverse. Among our own kind, we can control conception as well—or ill—as Highborn ladies. But not with Highborn lovers. They take us and use us and cast off our children as the whim takes them. They should not, for we are many and we are proud."
What a strange conversation, thought Jame.
She knew that the Randir was toying with her, deliberately holding her attention, but why? It was on the tip of her tongue to ask straight out what quarrel the Randir had with the Knorth, but Jorin's growl had risen to a singing whine.
As she turned to quiet him, a movement caught the corner of her eye. There was someone behind her . . . and a sudden blow fell on the back of her neck.
"Blood for blood, Knorth," she thought she heard the Randir Tempter say as she fell. Then darkness swallowed her.
Chapter VII: In the Bear's Den
Summer 5
I
Jame woke, still in darkness, to a savage headache. She thought at first, dazed, that she had lost her sight, but then realized that she was only blindfolded. And gagged. And bound hand and foot. This, on the whole, was not good. But where was she, besides on the floor?
Her other senses began, reluctantly, to function.
She could feel the coarse grain of wood under her cheek. It was damp, with a curiously heady tang. Other smells, less appealing, lurked behind it: unwashed flesh, rotting meat, human urine and feces. Unlike the ancient miasma of the lordan's apartment, this reek was fresh, a living stink. She had caught whiffs of it through Jorin's senses when they had been searching Old Tentir for the Knorth guest quarters.
Trinity. Jorin. Where was he? If they had hurt her cat, she would kill them.
Close behind her, something large stirred and groaned. Leather creaked. Something muttered, then began to breathe deeply again, with the hint of a snore.
So.
At a guess, she was in the lair of the mysterious monster who ate little children for lunch and raw joints of meat for dinner.
Also, it drank strong wine. She was lying in a spilt puddle of it. Perhaps its keepers periodically drugged it when they came to clean out its den—and they must, or the stench would be much worse. Her captors had apparently taken advantage of this to dump her here.
"Blood for blood," the Randir had said, but not on her hands.
Perhaps they expected the beast to rip her apart. All the more reason not to be here when it woke up. Besides, if its head hurt half as much as hers did, it would be in a truly foul mood.
Her hands were bound behind her. She curled into a tight ball and began to work them down her back. Cramped muscles threatened to spasm in revolt. Halfway through, she got stuck and lay panting around the gag, trying not to panic.
This was no good. Try again.
Suddenly her hands shot up over her bent knees and hit her in the nose. She fumbled at the blindfold with fingers numb for lack of blood, then at the gag. The former, she saw, was her own token scarf. The latter was Rue's. This had been planned well in advance. The Randir must have been waiting for her to stumble into their hands, and so she had. No one would accuse poor Rue of plotting her death, but the presence of two Knorth scarves would suggest that this was a house matter, best dealt with internally by its lord. Ancestors only knew what Tori would make of such a mess.
By now, her eyes had adjusted to the dim light, most of which came from a fireplace where embers winked and tinkled in the grate. It was very hot. Opposite the hearth was a heavy door, undoubtedly locked, with a narrow, hinged panel at the bottom. There were no windows, thus no way to tell how long she had been unconscious. Damnation. If they made her miss the evening ceremony as they almost had the final test . . . however, that seemed to be the Randir style: traps within traps within traps.
Another deep sigh behind
her. Craning painfully to look over her shoulder, she saw a low bed with a large form huddled on it. The breathing had changed. He would wake soon. And her fingers were too numb to untie her ankles, much less her hands.
The rest of the apartment was comfortably furnished, but much disordered. A chair slumped before the fireplace, its arms and back hanging in flayed strips. In the corner, a gutted bookcase spilled its contents onto the carpet. The shredded fragments of books and scrolls littered the floor.
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