Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "No good, Skif," Elspeth said to his belt. "The Companions have you boxed in."

  "Well, then I'll have to abort and follow my secondary orders," he replied, "Sorry, little kitten, you're dead."

  He put her down on her feet, and she dusted herself off. "Crap," she said sourly. "I could do better than that. I wish I'd had my knives." She couldn't resist a resentful glance at Kero, who had made her take them off when she entered the salle.

  "Well," Kero told her. "You didn't do as badly as I had expected. But I told you to get rid of those little toys of yours for a reason. They aren't a secret anymore; everybody knows you carry them in arm-sheaths. And you've begun to depend on them; you passed up at least a half dozen potential weapons."

  Elspeth's heart sank as Skif nodded to confirm Kerowyn's assessment. "Like what?" she demanded. She didn't—quite—growl. It was ironic that a room devoted to weaponswork should be so barren of weaponry. There was nothing in the room; at least, nothing that could be used against an enemy. The salle's sanded wooden floor stood empty of everything but the bench she sat on and the pile of discarded armor. There were a few implements for mending the armor that she'd brought in from the back room. There were no windows that she could reach; they were all set in the walls near the edge of the ceiling. Even the walls were bare of practice weapons, just the empty racks along one wall and the expensive—but necessary—mirrors on the other.

  "The bench," Skif said promptly. "You were within range to kick it into my path."

  "You should have grabbed that leather corselet when you went off the bench," Kero added.

  "Any of the mirrors—break one and you've got a pile of razor shards."

  "The sunlight—maneuver him so that it's in his eyes."

  "The mirrors again; distract me with my own reflection."

  " The leather-needles—"

  "The pot of leather-oil—"

  " Your belt—"

  "All right!" Elspeth cried, plopping down heavily on the bench, defeated by their logic. "What's the point?"

  "Something that you can learn, but I can't teach in simple lessons," Kerowyn told her soberly. "An attitude. A state of awareness, one where you size everyone up as a potential enemy, and everything as a potential weapon. And I mean everyone and everything. From the stranger walking toward you, to your mother—from the halberd on the wall to your underwear."

  "I can't live like that," she protested. "Nobody can." But at Kero's raised eyebrow, she added doubtfully, "Can they?"

  Kero shrugged. "Personally, I think no royalty can afford to live without an outlook like that. And I've managed, for most of my life."

  "So have I," Skif seconded. "It doesn't have to poison you or your life, just make you more aware of things going on around you."

  "That's why we've started the program here," Kerowyn finished. "A salle is a pretty empty room even with repair stuff scattered all over it; that makes your job easier. Now," she fixed Elspeth with a stern blue-green eye, "before you leave, you're going to figure out one way everything in here could be used against an assailant."

  Elspeth sighed, bade farewell to her free afternoon, and began pummeling her brain for answers.

  Eventually Kero left for other tasks, putting Skif in charge of the lesson. Elspeth breathed a little easier when she was gone; Skif was nowhere near the taskmaster that Kerowyn could be when the mood was on her. Heraldic trainees at the Collegium used to complain of Alberich's lessons; now they moaned about Kerowyn's as well, and it was an open question as to which of the two was considered the worst. Elspeth had once heard a young girl complain that it was bad enough that the Weaponsmaster refused to grow old and retire, but now he'd cursed them with a female double and it wasn't fair!

  But then again, she had thought at the time, what is? Skif grilled her for a little longer, then took pity on her, and turned the lesson from one on "attitude" to simply a rough-and-tumble knife-fighting lesson. Elspeth found the latter much easier on the nerves, if not on the body. Skif might be inclined to go easy on her when it came to the abstract "lessons," but when it came to the physical he could be as remorseless as any of the instructors when he chose.

  Finally, when both were tired enough that they were missing elementary moves, he called a halt.

  In fact, she thought wearily, as he waved her off guard and stepped off the salle floor, I doubt I could be a match for a novice right now.

  "That's... enough," he panted, throwing himself down on the floor beside the bench, as she slumped down on the seat and then sprawled along the length of it, shoving the forgotten leather armor to the floor. The angle of the sunlight coming in through the high clerestory windows had changed; there was no longer a broad patch of sunlight on the floor. It was starting to climb up the whitewashed wall. Not yet dinnertime, but certainly late afternoon.

  "I have to get back to drilling the little ones in a bit," he continued. "Besides, if I spend too much more time in your unchaperoned company, the rumors are going to start again, and I don't feel like dealing with them."

  Elspeth grimaced and wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. The last time rumors had started about a romance between her and Skif, she'd had to placate half the Council, and endure the knowing looks of half the Heralds. She wasn't sure which group was worse.

  Now I know how Mother and Stepfather felt when they were my age. Every time someone gets interested—or interesting—most of the time they're frightened off by the matchmakers. You'd think people would have more important things to worry about.

  But it was too bad poor Skif had to pay the price of her rank. There ought to be something she could do about that, but right now her weary mind was not supplying the answer.

  "I'll see you later, then," she said instead. "I've got a few things of my own I'd like to do before dinner—if you're satisfied with my progress, that is."

  "You're getting there," he told her, getting up with an effort, his sweat-damp hair curled even tighter. "I was making more mistakes than you were, toward the end. What's the closest weapon to your right hand?"

  "The bench I'm on," she replied without thinking. "I roll off it and kick it in your direction."

  "I was thinking of the shears on the floor there, but that'll do," he said with a tired chuckle. "See you at dinner?"

  "Not tonight. There's some delegation from Rethwellan here to see Father. That means all meals with the Court until they're gone." She levered herself up on her elbows and smiled apologetically. "I guess they won't believe I'm not plotting against the rest of the family unless they see us all together."

  Skif was too polite to say anything, but they both knew why that suspicion of treason might occur to a delegation from Rethwellan. Elspeth's blood-father, a prince of Rethwellan, had plotted to overthrow his own wife and consort, Queen Selenay—and in the end, had attempted to assassinate her himself.

  Not the best way to handle foreign relations....

  As it happened, though, no one in Rethwellan had any idea he might attempt such a thing—certainly there was no one in the royal family who had backed him. In fact, there been no love lost between him and his two brothers, and there had been no repercussions from Rethwellan at the news that he had not survived that assassination attempt. The Queen quietly accepted King Faramentha's horrified apologies and disclaimers, and there the matter had rested for many years.

  But then war and the redemption of a promise made to Selenay's grandfather had brought one of those brothers, Prince Daren, to the aid of the Queen of Valdemar, and the unexpected result of that first meeting had been not only love, but a lifebonding. Rethwellan lost its Lord-Martial, and Valdemar gained a co-ruler, for Daren, like Kerowyn, had been Chosen, literally on the battlefield.

  Whether the bedding had followed or preceded the wedding was moot; the result had been twins, nine months to the day after the ceremony.

  Which left the titular Heir, Elspeth, with two unexpected rivals for her position. Elspeth, whose father had tried to murder the Q
ueen and steal her throne.... And there were the inevitable whispers of "bad blood."

  King Faram, the current king of Rethwellan and brother to both her father and stepfather, held no such doubts about her, but occasionally some of his advisors required a reminder that treason was not a heritable trait. Elspeth slipped out of her musings and stretched protesting muscles.

  "I wish—" she began, and stopped.

  "You wish what, kitten?" Skif prompted.

  "Never mind," she said, dragging herself to her feet. "It doesn't matter. I'll catch up with you tomorrow, after Council. Assuming Kerowyn doesn't have me mucking out the stables or something equally virtuous and valuable."

  He chuckled and left the salle, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

  She cleaned up the scattered equipment from their lesson while the sweat of her exertion cooled and dried, and took herself out before her erstwhile mentor could return and find her "idle."

  A warm summer wind whipped her hair out of its knot at the back of her neck, and dried her sweat-soaked shirt as she left the salle door. She made a hasty check for possible watchers, trotted around the side of the salle, and didn't slow until she reached the edge of the formal gardens and the relative shelter of the tall hedges. The path she took, from the formal garden and the maze to the herb and kitchen gardens of the Palace, was one normally used only by the Palace's husbandmen. It ran along the back of a row of hedges that concealed a line of storage buildings and potting sheds. She wasn't surprised that there was no one on it, since there was nothing to recommend it but its relative isolation, a commodity in short supply at the Palace/Collegium complex.

  Not the sort of route that anyone would expect to find her taking. Nor was her destination what anyone who didn't know her well would expect. It was a simple potting shed, a nondescript little building distinguished from its fellows only by the stovepipe, a stone kiln, and the small, glazed window high up on one side. And even then, there was no reason to assume it was special; the kiln had been there for years, and had been used to fire terra-cotta pots for seedlings and winter herbs.

  Which made it all the more valuable to Elspeth.

  She opened the door and closed it behind her with a feeling of having dropped a tremendous weight from her shoulders. This unprepossessing kingdom was hers, and hers alone, by unspoken agreement. So long as she did not neglect her duties, no one would bother her here, not unless the situation were direst emergency.

  A tiny enough kingdom; one bench in the middle with a stool beside it, one sink and hand pump, one potter's wheel, boxes of clay ready for working, shelves, and a stove to heat the place in the winter and double as a small bisque-firing kiln in the rear. But not one implement here reminded her of the Heir or the Heir's duties. This was the one place where Elspeth could be just Elspeth, and nothing more. A proper kingdom as far as she was concerned; she'd been having second thoughts about ruling anything larger for some time now.

  Up on the highest shelf were the finished products—which was to say the ones, to her critical eye, worth keeping—of her own two hands. They began with her first perfectly thrown pots and bowls, ranged through more complicated projects, and ended with some of the results of her current efforts—poured-slip pieces cast from molds that had in turn been made from her own work.

  The twins were going through a competitive stage at the moment—and any time one of them got something, the other had to have something just like it. But different.

  If Kris got a toy horse, Lyra had to have a toy horse—same size, shape, length of tail, and equipage. But if Kris' horse was chestnut, hers had to be bay, dapple-gray, or roan. If he got a toy fort, she had to have a toy village; same size, number of buildings, number of toy inhabitants as his fort. And so on. The only thing they agreed on was toy Companions; they had to be twins, like the twins themselves.

  Not that they need "toy" Companions, Elspeth thought with amusement. They have the real thing following them around by the nose every time Mother takes them with her into the Field. No doubts there about whether or not they'll be Chosen!

  In fact, Gwena had remarked more than once that the only question involved would be which Companion did the Choosing. There were apparently a number in the running. :Mark my words,: she'd said with amusement. :There are going to be fights over this in a couple of years.:

  But that made gift giving both harder and easier. Trying to find—or make—absolutely identical presents in differing colors had been driving Elspeth (and everyone else) to distraction. They were able to pick out the most amazing discrepancies and turn them into points of contention over whose present was "better." Finally, though, she'd hit on the notion of making a mold and copying a successful piece. Her first effort had been a pair of dragon-lamps, or rather, night-lights; comical, roly-poly fellows who gently burned lamp-oil at a wick in their open mouths. Those had been such a hit that Elspeth had decided to try dolls, specifically, dolls that looked as much like the twins themselves as she—who was not exactly a portrait sculptor—could manage.

  It's a good thing that they're in that vague sort of "child-shaped" stage, she thought wryly, as she surveyed the row of greenware heads waiting to be cleaned of mold-marks and sorted for discards. I doubt if I could produce anything more detailed than that.

  Well, dressing the completed dolls in miniatures of the twins' favorite outfits would take care of the rest. And providing the appropriate accessories, of course. She would have to appeal for help on that. To Talia for the outfits, since she could probably bribe the Queen's Own with an offer of another doll for Talia's son Jemmie; her plain-sewing was as good as many of the seamstresses attached to the Palace staff, though her embroidery was still "enough to make a cat laugh," as she put it. To Keren for the rest. Lyra was in a horse-crazy phase at the moment, a bit young for that, perhaps, but the twins—and Jemmie—were precocious in most areas. Kris had gone mad for the Guard; half the time, when asked, he would assert that he wanted to be a Guard-Captain when he grew up (which usually made any nearby Companions snort). Tiny swords and miniature riding boots were a little out of Elspeth's line, but perhaps Keren or Sherrill, Keren's lifemate, could arrive at a solution.

  The first three heads weren't worth bothering with; bubbles in the slip had flawed the castings badly enough to crack when they were fired. The fourth was perfect; the fifth, possible, and the sixth—

  The arrangement of the window and door in the shed made it a regrettable necessity that she sit with her back to the door. That being the case, she had left the hinges unoiled. It simply was not possible to open the door, however carefully, without at least some noise, however slight.

  She froze as she heard the faintest of telltale squeaks from behind her, then continued examining the head as if she had heard nothing. A lightning-quick mental probe behind her revealed that it was Skif—again—at the door. This time his thoughts were unguarded. He assumed that she had already put this afternoon's lessons out of her mind, a little tired and careless, here in the heart of the Palace grounds.

  Not a chance, friend, she thought. And as he slipped through the door, she shifted her weight off the stool she had been using, and hooked one foot around one of the legs.

  At a moment when he was poised and unbalanced, she pulled the stool over, whirled, and kicked it under his feet, all with a single motion.

  He was hardly expecting opposition, much less that he would be on the defensive. He lost his balance as his feet got tangled up with the stool and couldn't recover. He fell over backward with a crash of splintering wood as her stool went with him, landing ingloriously on his rear. She stood over him, shaking her head, as he blinked up at her and grinned feebly.

  "Uh—"

  "Ever heard of knocking?" she asked. She picked up her stool without offering him a hand and made a face. He'd broken two of the bottom rungs and loosened all four of the legs, and it had not been that sturdy to begin with.

  "You owe me a new chair," she said, annoyed all out of proportion to the value o
f the stool. "That wasn't just a dirty trick, Skif, that was dangerous. You could have broken some of my best pieces, too."

  "Almost broke some of mine," he grumbled. "You aren't going to get an apology, if that's what you're looking for. You knew very well we'd be springing these surprise attacks on you."

  But not in the one place I can relax, she thought, seething with resentment. Not in the only place I can get away from everything and everyone.

  "You still owe me, lout," she said stubbornly, righting the stool and rocking it to check how wobbly it was going to be. She sat on it and folded her arms, making no attempt to disguise how put out she was. "You still could have broken something. I don't ask for much, Skif, and I give up a lot. I think it's only fair to be off-limits when I'm out here."

  He didn't say, Will an attacker go along with that? and he didn't give her a lecture, which mollified her a little. Instead, he grinned ingenuously and pulled himself up from the floor, dusting off his white uniform once he reached his feet. "I really have to congratulate you," he said. "You did a lot better than I expected. I deliberately came after you when I knew you were tired and likely to be careless."

  "I know," she said crisply, and watched his bushy eyebrows rise as he realized what that meant. First, that she'd detected him soon enough to make a mental test of him, and second that she'd gone ahead and read his thoughts when she knew who it was. The second was a trifle unethical; Heralds were not supposed to read other's thoughts without them being aware of the fact. But if he was going to violate her precious bit of privacy, she was going to pay him back for it. Let him wonder how much else I read while I was peeking and sweat about it a little.

  "Oh." He certainly knew better than to chide her for that breach of privacy at this point. "I'll see you later, I guess."

  "You'd better have a new stool with you," she said, as he backed hastily out the door, only now aware that she was still clutching the much-abused doll's head. She looked at it as soon as he was out of sight. Whatever shape it had been in before this, it was ruined now. She disgustedly tossed it into the discard bucket beside her bench.