“As for you, Edmir,” Zania said, making sure she emphasized his name. “There’s no point in hiding Parno and Dhulyn if you’re left undisguised. What do you think? I’ve a powder here that will lighten your hair.”
“I could pierce my ears,” Edmir said. He took the packet of powder from her, wrinkling his nose as he took a sniff. “I’ve always refused to do it because everyone at court had it done—Kera thought it would seem ordinary. So if I did it now . . .”
“People would feel sure it wasn’t you, though they might not know why. Yes, that’s a good idea.” Zania’s smile felt forced and hollow. She had always thought she’d make a good planner, but to have these people go along with her ideas and suggestions felt . . . She’d often imagined herself in charge of her own troupe, but not at this price. Not at the price of everything—and everyone—else that mattered to her. Belatedly she realized the expression on Edmir’s face had changed. She spun around . . . and froze.
Dhulyn, a slight frown on her face, had gone to inspect the clothing Zania had left out for her. After sorting through each piece she had turned her back and pulled her tunic off over her head. Her shirt had come with it, leaving her in just the wrap of silk she used as a breastband.
And a crisscross patterning of scars across her back.
Edmir made a sound in his throat. “The Mercenary Schools are much stricter than I’d thought,” he said.
They both stood watching as the scars were covered by a short sleeved blouse with a tight, low-cut bodice, blue as a meadow flower. Dhulyn then stepped into a bright saffron-colored skirt, full and reaching almost to the ankles, covered over with embroidery: black, green, and a blue that matched the blouse. The wig she had caught up carelessly into a knot, letting it frame her face softly.
“Do we have to wear skirts all the time?” she asked, lifting the offending item out from under her feet as she rejoined them.
“It’s a wonderful disguise for you,” Parno said. “Better even than the wig.”
“How beautiful you are.” Zania stepped forward, surprise leading her to speak more bluntly than she normally would have.
“Thank the Moon and Stars, my lifelong ambition has been fulfilled.” Dhulyn Wolfshead put the back of her hand to her forehead and sighed. Then she dropped the hand and smiled at Zania, letting the small scar curl her lip back. She laughed aloud when Zania took a step back.
“I shall have to be careful, with that, won’t I,” she said. “It would completely undo the effect of the Two Hearts Shora.”
Flustered at having shown her fear so plainly, Zania had stepped in closer than courtesy usually allowed and peered at the scar. “Was it from a knife?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” Dhulyn said, laughing. “The tip of a whip flicked ’round and caught me—luckily as it happened. It spoiled my looks for my owner and he sold me. It was while I was in the hands of the slavers that Dorian the Black took their ship and rescued me.”
“You don’t normally think of it as a ‘rescue’ when you’re taken by pirates,” Edmir said.
“You do when the pirates are Mercenary Brothers.”
“You’ll have to use some of Edmir’s powder on your eyebrows.” Parno frowned, scrutinizing Dhulyn’s face. “Lighten them up a bit.”
Slavers? Pirates? Zania looked from one to the other, but there was nothing on their faces to show that they were joking. And Dhulyn did have those scars.
It didn’t taken long to find clothing distinctive enough to make Parno and Edmir look less like soldiers and more like a couple of traveling players, but the last thing they’d done before repacking and hitching up the horses had been to pierce Edmir’s ears. Dhulyn producedtwo silver-colored wires from the small braids she’d cut off before shaving her head.
“Let me just heat these in the fire and let them cool,” she’d said.
“Whatever for?” Edmir said.
“It will help the wounds keep clean and heal faster,” Parno said. “All the Knives in the Mercenary Brotherhood do their surgeries with tools heated this way.”
“Or soaked in very strong spirits.” Dhulyn cut the wires to the length of her forefingers and stood up. “Ready when you are.”
The two Mercenaries made Edmir sit down on one of their saddlebags and Dhulyn brushed the curls—not so black now that Zania’s powders had been used—back from his face to expose his ears.
“You’ll want to wear your hair brushed back now,” she said. “No point in wearing earrings that no one can see.”
“I haven’t any earrings—ow!” Edmir snatched his hand back from Parno. While Dhulyn had been fussing with Edmir’s hair, her Partner had taken the prince’s right hand and folded his fingers sharply in toward the palm.
“That hurt,” Edmir said, shaking out his hand. “What did you do that for?”
“So that you wouldn’t notice your ear being pierced.” Dhulyn produced a small pair of metal pincers. “Now hold still while I bend the wire.”
“You didn’t need to hurt my hand,” Edmir grumbled as Parno held the prince’s tilted head and Dhulyn worked the wire around into a circle.
“Oh, yes, we did.”
“Tell you what,” Parno had said, releasing Edmir’s head. “I’ll let her do the other one without distracting you, and then you can tell us which you prefer.”
“That won’t be much use—ow!”
“There, all done.”
Dhulyn took the first turn at the reins with Zania to tell her the way, while Edmir spent the first hour or so they were on the road whistling a new tune until Parno was satisfied he had it. When they’d stopped to eat, Edmir had taught Zania herself the dance that went with it.
“It’s the latest at the Queen’s Court,” he said. “Usually it would take months for it to filter down to these country Holdings. They’ll love it.”
And he was right, Zania had to acknowledge. She’d half expected their performance to be canceled, but the Vedneryshi had very quickly overcome the shock of the news from Probic.
“How can they be so calm,” Zania had asked Dhulyn Wolfshead, even as she mentally stored the expressions on the faces of the Ved-nerysho and his spouse.
“So near the border,” Dhulyn had replied, speaking in that most quiet of whispers. “They become accustomed to this type of news and alarm. And let’s not forget the Blue Mage; since his coming, everyone in Tegrian is less fearful and less cautious than they once were. As for what we’ve told them of Probic’s destruction, I would wager my second-best sword that they think our account greatly exaggerated.”
Now as Zania sat down with Edmir after performing the dance, the family seemed completely recovered from the news. The son of the Holding, whose naming day was the reason for the performance, made the Lionsmane—Parno, Zania reminded herself—made Parno promise to teach him the tune, and Zania could see that the Lady Vednerysh was already imagining herself leading the way in the next Harvest Festival.
Once the young lordling was able to whistle the entire tune himself, Parno had taken the drones off his pipes and accompanied with chanter only the three songs Zania knew best, the ones that really showed off her range and breath control. Dhulyn had joined them for one song by clapping her hands in a complicated rhythm that somehow made the song more exciting, and set toes tapping.
Now Dhulyn herself was rounding up the evening’s entertainment by reciting an old poem she said had been written by Tarlyn. She wore her blonde wig loose, and dressed in a simple dark gown that had been Aunt Ester’s, with a chain metal belt painted gold. The cut of the gown made her seem much more shapely than her old clothes had. Her voice was good, Zania thought, and her gestures well-timed, if a little wooden. The Vedneryshi would think well enough of the performance, but Dhulyn would have to do better than this if they were to have any real acting in a more discerning House.
The material itself helped, of course. Zania knew Tarlyn as a playwright, but this poem was a wonderful one about a soldier king cominghome after long years away at a war,
only to find himself declared dead, and his house full of suitors trying to marry his queen and become guardian of his young children.
“You’re sure Tarlyn didn’t do this as a play?” Edmir whispered to her, as they joined in Dhulyn’s applause. His breath made the curls of her chestnut wig tickle her neck.
Zania had been surprised that of the three outsiders, Edmir had turned out to be the most comfortable in front of an audience. On the other hand, he’s probably used to people staring at him, she thought now, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He’d have no fear of it, that’s for certain. But how was it he should be so ready to pretend to be someone else? Usually the rich and important were quite happy to be who they were.
“Don’t you see Dhulyn as the queen, Parno as the returning soldier king? You and I could, in turn, play the suitors, the children, or the servants, as we were needed.”
Zania raised her eyebrows in a conscious effort not to frown where it could be taken as a comment on the performance. But why would he see Dhulyn as queen?
“Wouldn’t the audience have to know the whole story?” she whispered back. Though Dhulyn was not up to the role, it was a good idea—one she should have thought of herself. She was the leader of this troupe. Once again her heart caught in her chest. Not this way, she pushed the thought away. I didn’t want it this way. She cleared her throat. “Because for a play,” she continued, “we would have to begin as the soldier king arrives home. That’s where the action begins.”
Edmir waved away this objection. “We could tell them the first part of the story in a prologue.” His eyes grew distant. “We’d have to change it a bit, I think. If we made the wife queen, the children could be older and still not inherit. It would give us more opportunities with the characters of the suitors. Some of the suitors would want her only for her position.”
“But some would want her for her beauty.” Even to her own ears Zania’s voice sounded flat.
“Oh, yes, some would.”
Zania pressed her lips together and stifled a snort. Fortunately with the applause finishing, she could step forward to join Dhulyn and Parno on the cleared floor space serving as their stage, not caring whether the prince joined them for their bows or not. Edmir’s eyes had been fixed on Dhulyn when he spoke, just as if she was the only woman in the world. He’d been mooning at her like that since Dhulyn had mesmerized him that morning. Who would have thought it took so little to impress the Lord Prince of Tegrian? Or perhaps he was the kind who liked women who could kill him?
After all, his mother was queen.
The Blue Mage’s garden was still cool, the sky just beginning to lighten. Dew was forming, settling onto Kera’s clothing as she sat on her perch in the hollow made by a forsythia bush and the rough portion of the wall where the repair had been made. This had been a favorite spot of hers when she was a little girl—and still was, though she barely fit into the space any longer. The perch was sheltered, and raised enough above the ground that she could look down on almost the whole garden without being seen.
Even Kera’s new awareness of the caution she had to take with Avylos could not change the feelings of peace and calm that the garden still gave her. Strange that she felt closer to Edmir here than she did anywhere else, even his own chambers—or perhaps it wasn’t so strange. They’d played here as children, accompanying their father as he helped Avylos plan the garden, turning an old, disused laundry space into the Blue Mage’s private retreat.
Kera hadn’t thought of those times for a long while, but reading Edmir’s journals was bringing so much of her childhood back to her— though, of course, Edmir didn’t remember everything in precisely the same way Kera did herself. There was that time he’d had three of her gowns shortened, switched them while she slept, and made her think she’d grown a handspan overnight. She didn’t remember it as quite so funny.
But what Kera valued most in Edmir’s journals was his stories. Many of them were ones she remembered him telling, like the one about the seven enchanted princes. Some she’d forgotten, and only reading them now had brought them back to her. She’d never known that Edmir had been writing his stories down. She wondered now why he’d never told her.
At the noise of the door opening, Kera pressed back against the cold stone and froze to the spot. Footsteps crunched on the gravel of the paths and Avylos brushed past the taller plants, making his way to the edge of the pool. He stopped by the topiary, the one that needed trimming, the mountain cat almost shaggy enough to qualify as a northern lion. It needed seeing to, but Kera knew that Avylos was reluctant to let anyone into the garden to do it. Absently, his eyes still focused on the pond, he moved his hand in the air as he always did when he performed one of his magics, and the ends of the branches shivered, shrinking. He startled, as if just realizing what he’d done, and made a gesture of impatience, but Kera was no longer watching him.
The mountain cat was perfect, its haunches smooth. The branches were not merely trimmed shorter, she realized—he had actually reversed the growth. The plant was now as it had been some weeks before.
“Blooded fool,” Avylos cursed, as he sat down on the rim of the pool. It took a moment for Kera to realize he wasn’t speaking to her, and for her heart to resume beating. Her hands were pressed over her mouth, stifling the cry that had almost escaped when she saw what had happened to the topiary. Could he do that to her? Turn her back into a young child? A baby?
Was that what he was doing to her mother?
Avylos drew another symbol in the air, above the surface of the pool, and it sank into the water, making the smooth surface glow a dull orange. Kera licked her lips. It was more than curiosity that kept her quiet and still as a mouse watching a cat. She was allowed here, but she had never come here alone in the night before, and possibly her allowance did not extend to the dark hours. And she should have spoken as soon as Avylos had come into the garden, before he’d fixed the topiary, before he sat down at the edge of the pool.
If she moved now, he would think himself spied on. She would have to stay quiet, hoping he never became aware of her. Because now Kera was curious. What was it Avylos was doing with the pool at daybreak?
At that moment the glow left the surface of the water, and Kera saw a room filled with candles and torches and people dressed for supper. She started to stand up, her mouth open, her brain rejecting what her eyes saw, but she sank down again before she made a sound.
Avylos didn’t seem surprised.
At first she didn’t recognize the young man she saw wearing the fine brocaded tunic, dancing with a lithe young woman, her chestnut hair an elaborate creation of curls piled high on her head. There were thick silver hoops in his ears, giving him the rakish look of a court dandy, and his hair, an odd shade of light brown, was brushed straight back in the fashion of Imrion. And then he took a turn in the dance, kicked up his foot in a particular way, and she knew.
It was Edmir.
She couldn’t be mistaken. Kera’s hands closed tightly on the folds of her gown. She’d seen him move this way and dance a hundred times. In fact, she’d taught him that dance herself. And that little skip he’d added to the turn was a flourish of his own. Edmir, without doubt.
She waited until the pool was dark again, though she would have liked to go on watching her brother dance. She waited until Avylos left the garden. She waited until the sun was up before she finally allowed herself to move, stiff and chilled, from her perch against the garden’s inner wall.
Her brother was alive. And Avylos knew it.
Parno opened the second saddlebag and began lifting its contents onto the blanket he’d spread on the ground. He was positive he’d seen Dhulyn stash her roll of throwing knives in a saddlebag back in the Nisvean camp, and if he didn’t find them here, he had nowhere else to look.
“Once more, Dhulyn, please, and look up when you speak.” Parno looked up himself. In the two weeks since they’d left Vednerysh Holding, Edmir had been working on a dramatic version of the poe
m of the soldier king. He was walking Dhulyn through one of the earlier scenes now.
Their progress toward Jarlkevo not as quick as any of them would have liked, but unlike real players they had to spend time perfecting their disguises—and also unlike real players, they had no store of plays or scenes already learned. Both he and Dhulyn had excellent memories, and had been able to learn the lines of three short plays just from hearing Zania read them, but rehearsing the action meant stopping the caravan, and that slowed them down.
“Blessed Caids, I can’t believe it.” Zania appeared at his elbow, brows drawn down, mouth pressed to a thin line. “Her voice is so good, and her delivery is so nearly perfect, but she stands like a stick and moves like a broken frog.”
Parno mentally sighed. Much could be forgiven in someone who had recently lost their whole family, but Zania’s behavior since leaving Vednerysh Holding had become increasing difficult for him to tolerate. The little Cat seemed to alternate between treating Dhulyn Wolfshead as a long lost sister, and treating her like a useless apprentice wished on her by a doting patron.
He eyed Zania now, his hands still inside the saddlebag, and registered the look on the girl’s face. Ah. That’s where the problem is. He pursed his lips in a silent whistle.
“I would have thought your training would make it easier for her to learn new things, but it seems I’m mistaken.”
Parno put down the well-wrapped packet of road bread he had fished out of the saddlebag and gave her a hard look. “We’re not ‘trained,’ Zania Tzadeyeu. Soldiers are trained. Acrobats are trained. Dogs are trained. Mercenaries are Schooled.” He took a deep breath. “And besides, Dhulyn meant what she said before.” His hand closed on a bundle with a familiar feel and he pulled out the set of throwing knives with a satisfied grunt. “She has a natural inclination to be truthful, born into her. Slavery did not beat it out of her, and our Schooling simply reinforced it.”
“So she was a slave? She did not jest?”
The Soldier King Page 17