King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  “Tau. Are you coming to the royal city with me? You don’t have to be a Runner if you don’t want to. I can keep those two King’s Runners Vedrid assigned me. Turns out Fiam, who was supposed to be my Runner, didn’t like the knife training, and he’s going to be the house steward.”

  “Yes, I taught him something about scent packets, and a few tricks for protecting old linens, like ribbon hems to make them last. It amuses me how many of my mother’s lessons—all deeply resented as worthless, you understand—I’ve been teaching people hither and yon.” Tau worked the muscle at the base of Inda’s skull as he considered what to say about the royal city.

  “I think—I think you did Evred some good. Back in Ala Larkadhe. You’re right about him being taut as a bowstring.” Inda breathed deeply, half ready to fall asleep.

  Tau smiled at the thought of Evred taut as a bowstring. Tau knew his response to Evred was complicated, and could be dangerous—but oh, the temptation to . . . civilize a king was devastatingly seductive.

  He thumped Inda lightly. “There goes the summons bell.”

  The wedding was held in the great hall, as rain was falling hard by noon. Below the family banners hung garlands made of ribbon-tied blossoms, all bound with ivy. Tau’s contribution was bunches of fragrant herbs.

  The best beeswax candles—also dipped with herbs—glowed warmly over everyone’s House robes and tunics, hiding threadbare patches and striking highlights in silver embroidery. In that warm, golden, faintly glistening light everyone and everything looked its best.

  Inda and Tdor stood side-by-side and made their vows before all their dependents, the chief men and women of the closest trade towns, and as many Fera-Vayir cousins as could make it in time. Standing just behind her supposed old friend Tdor was Dannor Tya-Vayir. It so happened that her place as guest put her next to Branid Algara-Vayir in his green-and-silver House tunic, the silver owl clasp binding up his hair. She smiled at him every time he happened to glance sideways.

  He glanced a lot.

  The vows were the solemn part. Tdor dug her nails into her palm once, trying to make a memory. She was afraid the entire day would vanish like a dream, it seemed so unreal.

  That was until she reminded herself she had to leave. She would be taking up duties as defender of the royal castle. It was good work . . .

  But it was not Castle Tenthen. It was not home.

  She closed that acknowledgment away, keeping the hurt private. No one must ever know—to all, including Fareas-Iofre, she was full of pride and expectation. Any other woman would trade places with her in a heartbeat. She would now be the most important woman in the kingdom next to the queen, beside whom she’d been raised as a sister.

  Inda also felt unreal. The last Marlovan wedding he’d attended had been when he was eleven, when their academy tutor, Master Gand, married and moved away as Randael to a northern castle. He remembered being aghast that a master would marry. He had known even less about politics than he had about sex in those days.

  As the Runners carried the trays in, and the hand drums came out, Inda remembered himself and the other children running round the perimeter of the room, trying to pinch extra lemon cakes. Just as at that wedding, the adults passed from hand to hand the flat open-flower wine cups full of hot spiced wine. One after another they called out toasts and drank, most speaking the ancient witticisms that were pointless to children but carried double meaning so funny to the teens.

  Then: “Dance, dance!”

  Flushing—almost unrecognizable—Tdor moved out in her new green-and-silver over-robe, flowers bound on her head, and took her place in the center of the inner ring of married women, the outer ring of single girls and women.

  Drums and cymbals started the thump and ching in counterpoint, and people sang “Green Grows the Ivy” as the women wound round and round, Tdor leading.

  Then it was the men’s turn. Inda grinned stupidly, wondering why he’d forgotten to practice, but then the men’s circle dances were so easy, variations on the sword dance: Stamp stamp, whirl, kick, whirl, clap clap, leap. High smack of the opposite man’s hand against yours. And then onward, as the drums raced through the gallop, gradually picking up the tempo until men began to stumble, trip, or just bow out. Incomprehensible until just a few years ago was the old saying, “Married man who lasts out the Ivy Dance lasts out the night!” It was silly—everyone knew that—but Inda did his best, until only he and Tau and two of the younger Riders from the outer ring were dancing, and when Inda stumbled, Tau pretended to trip, and sat down with Inda, laughing.

  Inda could see how popular Tau had become, but he could also see from Tau’s smile, his flow of witty jokes, that once again, Tau was playing a part. Tenthen wasn’t his home. It was another stage for his life’s play.

  The unmarried girls danced a ring dance next, many eyeing the young fellows speculatively. And vice versa when the unmarried fellows took their turn.

  The men brought out the swords next, to general acclaim, and this time the drums rumbled in the 5/4 rhythm as men leaped, clashed, posed, whirled. Leaped, and clash, clash, ring!

  Signi watched it all from a corner seat. Fareas-Iofre had meant to look out for her, but she was far too busy acting as hostess, and because no one knew Signi, she was left to herself.

  It was Tdor who noticed her sitting alone at the very end table where the children had been. At the other end of the room, Inda was deep in conversation with Whipstick and Branid. I thought Inda’s ring was something he shared with her, and so I made myself jealous. The most unworthy, useless, and painful emotion there is. And totally unnecessary, Tdor thought, and crossed the room to join Signi.

  “I remember you were trained in dance,” Tdor said. “Are our dances pleasing to the eye, or just strange?”

  “Ah, all dance is good.” Signi smiled up at her.

  Tdor dropped down on the mat beside Signi and pulled off her flower garland, which had begun to itch her scalp mercilessly. She turned it around and around in her hands. “But Venn court dance is very different, is it not? Hadand looked it up and wrote to me about it. It’s a lot like a play, she said. Each gesture holds meaning. Levels of meaning, even. I’m afraid ours must seem fairly simple.”

  “No, all dance tells a story.” Signi extended a hand toward the young girls. “See? They tell the story of courtship, of hope. They may not have great skill, but their youth gives them beauty.”

  Tdor leaned back with her elbows on the low table, watching robes swirling against shapely young bodies, laughing looks cast backward, neatly booted feet tapping, flower-tucked braids swinging. “And the men?”

  “Ah, theirs is so different. Some is courtship and desire, some—” She pursed her lips.

  “The sword dances aren’t.”

  “They are challenges, to one another. They play war. Sometimes they play sex and war.”

  “And they don’t up north?”

  “Yes, they do there too, though perhaps in different ways.” Signi looked troubled.

  Across the room, Inda—flushed and laughing the way they saw so rarely—said, “Come on, Tau!”

  “Not here—”

  “Someone has to uphold sailors’ honor. Can’t be me. I always fumble the steps!”

  Tdor had it on her lips to ask about the battlefield—-if Signi truly saw ghosts—but the melancholy quirk to the woman’s eyes, her pensive almost smile, made her hesitant.

  The men shouted approval, and most of the women took it up. The drums tapped a new rhythm, and Signi smiled. “Ah! You must watch. Tau will dance a sailor dance. He is quite good. His dance story is to seduce every watcher by making them feel beautiful and desirable.”

  Taumad moved out to the center, laughing back at Inda, and put one hand up, one at his waist, to begin an old Sartoran step-dance that had become popular on the decks of ships all over the south, mostly because you could do it in a small space. Many of the girls grabbed up drums and rumbled up a stirring counterpoint, trying to catch his eye. He mana
ged to flirt with every single one of them before he twirled to a graceful finish amid laughter and clapping.

  Signi chuckled. “He will not sleep alone tonight, that one.”

  Tdor did not hear. Her ear, always sensitive to the atmosphere, caught Dannor’s light, cruel laugh. Liet—who could be bossy—and a couple of newly married Riders’ wives were flushed and uncertain, Dannor smirking in the way Tdor had hated ever since she was fifteen.

  Tdor said, of a sudden, “Will you dance for me?”

  Signi turned her head, searching Tdor’s face, and Tdor waited, holding her breath, afraid she had trespassed.

  But whatever the mage saw did not affront her, and she said, “I will.”

  Tdor got to her feet. “Silence,” she said, turning around, but her gaze rested on Dannor. “Our guest from foreign lands is going to dance for us. Dag Signi, do you need a beat?”

  “No drums.” Signi moved to the center of the room.

  For a short time she just stood in the center of the room, a small, compact figure with flyaway sandy hair, humming beneath her breath, and swaying gently, so that the hem of her blue robe brushed the tops of feet they saw were bare, her slippers placed neatly beside her mat.

  Then she turned in a slow circle, her hands rising, palms up. The robe flared, revealing the plain linen gown beneath.

  She danced in silence, at least most thought so, but the front spectators heard her humming in a soft voice that wasn’t particularly musical. It was her movements, so fluid, so flowing, like water down a mountain or widening in a pool, that became conduits to vision. You were not seeing a small, plain woman dancing alone on the great stone flags, but youth, and summer days, and the long bonds of friendship and faithfulness.

  But she was not done. She whirled and leaped across the floor in a startling change, evoking the horse and rider on the charge: the dash and valor of battle. The dread and clash of wills as well as swords and lances, and then, and then, she stood in the center again, arms raised, muscles articulating an agony of grief so expressive that throats tightened as muscles remembered private griefs. She threw back her head, mouth open as if uttering a long, wrenching howl.

  Many wept, and Tdor, wiping her eyes, thought, Oh, what have I done?

  But Signi had not finished.

  She raised her arms again, and this time leaped, light as a drifting leaf, her wrists arched and airy as she scudded in a circle with the freedom of a childhood dance. Hearts lifted with remembered joy as Signi mimed the bonds of childhood. Her arms circled, her head canted, and there was a mother holding her baby; her shoulder led as she bent, and there was a young father teaching his son to walk. And then the child grew, and with a flirt of hip and a curling of fingers she danced the entrancing magic of attraction, miming the young who look on one another with the gleaming smile of spring.

  Tau’s dance had been unabashedly sexy, but this dance celebrated love—all the forms of love, transcending the physical and emotional into the upward-yearning realm of the spirit.

  When Signi finished she bowed her head and folded her hands into peace mode, and people laughed, talked, exclaimed. Dannor smiled at Branid, who turned anxiously Inda’s way as if to get a cue to how he should be feeling. The mulling rods were then brought out, and the sweet, heady scent of warmed spiced wine filled the air as everyone shared the wedding cups.

  And at last the midnight bells rang, and Signi wasn’t there. Inda, befuddled with wine and tiredness, met Tdor’s gaze. He saw the invitation there, the faint pucker of question in her straight brow, and the profound tenderness that had overwhelmed him at the first sight of his wedding shirt seized him anew.

  “Will you come to my bed?” she asked, holding out her hand.

  Inda took her hand, and it was not the slim child’s hand he had remembered from childhood, capable and square. Her hand was nearly the size of his—not as broad, but her fingers were long, her palm rough as all Marlovan women’s were, her clasp steady.

  Her room was unchanged from what he remembered in childhood. It confused him. He looked around at the familiar objects as if all were new, and then back at Tdor, who let go of his fingers and gripped her forearms.

  He smiled and took a turn around the room. “All those years. I saw you as I left you. I even talked to you in my head. You were my guide. But you didn’t change.”

  “I grew up.” Her smile was crooked. “Same as you did.”

  “I know.” He made a helpless gesture.

  “Inda. Once before we tried to lie together. Do you remember? I think you were nine, and I was ten, almost eleven, and thought myself so wise.”

  “You were always wise,” he said, laughter smoothing his face beneath those terrible scars.

  “I was always curious. And far too bossy.” Her fingers trembled, but she stilled them as she shed her robe, and then loosened her shirt laces. “I think we might try again. And if nothing happens, well, then we’ll have a pleasant nap, just like we did that time.”

  Inda grinned. It was not the grin of a ten-year-old boy.

  The warmth of his grin tingled through her, intensifying at the sight of those broad, powerful shoulders as he carefully lifted his wedding shirt over his head.

  Sex had always been a duty for her. A sensible person saw to the needs of the body, so she had been raised. But though she had earnestly sought enlightenment in the matter of sex, she’d never felt what the songs had talked about, and she’d concluded that she wouldn’t. It was the way she was made.

  Then Inda had come back, both alien and dear, grown yet still so much like the boy she’d known from babyhood. For the first time, the fires within had lit for her. But he’d had to go off to war.

  He stood naked before she did. He unclasped his hair, braiding it swiftly; her heartbeat quickened as his gaze drifted down her length, a slow gaze of appreciation.

  He held out his hands.

  “You’re grown up.” His fingers caressed her cheek, and then stroked lightly down the contours of her body, his hands warm and lingering.

  Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

  “You look so strong.” He buried his face in her neck.

  “I am strong.” She gave in to impulse at last, pressing a light kiss over the scar just below the hollow of his throat. “I am very strong.” And she was. For the very first time, the strength of need and promise and desire beat power through her veins, and she laughed, and reached for him. “Come see how strong I am,” she whispered, pulling him down beside her.

  Signi was wrong about Tau. He stood up on the tower under the sentry roof, watching the torchlight gleam through the sleeting rain, and then he tried one more time with his golden case:Jeje: I am alive. Inda is alive—and married. I suspect his great day is over, and he will settle into the royal city, training boys for the possibility of glory, and that it is time for me to invent another amusement besides watching greatness in action.

  But because I’m drunk, I keep thinking. Does anyone, outside of madmen and kings, ever perceive his own greatness? What defines greatness, anyway, other than being the one who forces people and events to change whether they will or no? Inda does not see himself as a figure of history, but neither does he see himself as others see him: Fox who wishes to be him, Evred who wishes to possess him, and Signi who wishes to change him.

  Once, never mind when, I realized I have no driving purpose. Now that I am suffering under the so-called wisdom of wine fumes, I wonder if this is why I seem to be drawn to those who do have driving purposes.

  Enough, enough. You have never answered me, and I believe this shall be my last time shouting into the wind. If you are well, stay well, and smile when you think of me.

  He shoved it into the case without reading it over. He suspected that if he were sober, he’d throw it into the fire. But he was drunk, and so he tapped out the pattern that had become so familiar, and off his fool letter went into the void.

  Then he trod downstairs to fall into bed.

  But halfway down
the stairs he felt, at last, the tap of an answer. His heart thumped with joy as he sat on a stair under a sconced torch and opened the case.

  And there were the rounded, careful letters that Inda had taught Jeje to use so long ago, when they were in prison during Khanerenth’s civil war:I didn’t write before because I didn’t know if my plan would work. Or even if it was a good plan. But you’ll have to decide, because I’ve found your mother.

  Coming in August 2009

  A DAW Books Hardcover

  The Final Novel of Inda’s Epic Story:

  TREASON’S SHORE

  Sherwood Smith

  Read on for a sneak preview.

  THE docks in Bren Harbor were deserted except for the roaming patrols of guards, all fully armed. On every single rooftop along the quay—warehouses, stores, taverns—guards roosted in the cold, snowy weather, bows to hand, and a cache of arrows apiece.

  Behind windows, people watched. They speculated to no purpose, worried, cursed, laughed, laid bets. Others threw up their hands and went on with their lives, some with a pirate-thumping weapon ready to hand, just in case.

  The sinister black pirate trysail floated in the middle of the harbor, its consorts at either side, crews (at least a hundred spyglasses made certain) ready to flash sail at word or sign from the lone red-haired figure, dressed all in black, lounging on the captain’s deck.

  Through an entire day the spyglasses stayed trained on that ship. Not long after nightfall, a stir at the main dock brought word relayed up to the watch commander: “Woman wants to hire a boat to take her out to the pirate.”

  “What? This I have to witness.”

  Jeje never saw Barend. As soon as she returned from her interview, she skinned out of the fancy clothes, rolled them up into a ball (with some regret treating silk with so little respect) and shoved them into her bag. She got into her sailor gear, pulled on the shapeless wool hat hanging by the door for everyone to use when going into the small truck garden. Always scrupulous (according to her lights) Jeje left her old knit sock cap in its place—too obviously a sailor’s cap. Then she hefted her new gear bag and under cover of darkness slipped through the garden, over the back fence, through another garden, and into the street, walking anonymously past the patrolling guards.