The Gates of Tagmeth (Chronicles of the Kencyrath Book 8)

by P. C. Hodgell

  Rowan joined her.

  “I won’t say that you can’t see him tonight, of course, but I would prefer that you didn’t. Burr is up there now, trying to get him to sleep.”

  “How bad is he?”

  Rowan shrugged. “I’ve seen him worse. In some ways, on some topics, he’s surprisingly sensible, when he can keep his mind fixed. If he doesn’t sleep, though . . .”

  “How long has he been awake this time?”

  “Ten days. Again, I’ve known worse, but still. . .”

  It was, Jame thought, quite bad enough, even without the morrow to think of.

  “I’ll leave him in peace, then,” she said. “In the meantime, I have something for you, or rather for the kitchen.”

  She led Rowan back to the barracks and presented her with the packhorses’ burden, reduced to enough sacks nearly to fill her small bedroom. Rowan stared at the puckered orange placed in her hand.

  “There are lemons, tangerines, and papayas too,” said Jame, smiling at her expression, or rather at the lack of it. “Also dried figs. Pears and apples, unfortunately, are out of season, and the strawberries aren’t ripe yet. There’s also smoked yackcarn.”

  “Where did you get all of this?”

  “Tori knows. It would be better if you didn’t, though, and certainly no one else. Will they be useful?”

  “Oh,” breathed the steward. “We were so worried that we couldn’t provide the lords with anything special. It’s been a lean winter here. With all of this, though . . . I’m no cook, but I wager our kitchen can turn this bounty into a feast the Council will never forget.”

  V

  THE NEXT DAY DAWNED clear and bright.

  Jame dressed and stood before Rue, who would have to act as her mirror.

  “Well?”

  The tow-headed cadet regarded her judiciously. “Going to war, are we? Just the same, it’s impressive. We’ll set them on their heels this time, for sure.”

  Jame laughed. Two years ago, Rue had been chagrined at her commonplace garments. It was something, at least, to please one’s servant.

  She found the other lordan gathered in the inner ward, wearing a rainbow of court coats. Timmon approached her, his golden hair shining above a jacket of ochre and bronze embroidery.

  “What,” he said, “is that?”

  Jame turned before him, despising herself for still feeling anxious. “What do you think?”

  “Well, the inner coat is the rathorn scale-armor byrnie. I remember it from our stand outside Kothifir against the Karnids. Good luck for you that blood doesn’t stain either rathorn ivory or rhi-sar leather. A wealth on your back, my girl, enough to buy a quarter of this keep. The outer coat, though . . .”

  “That you might not recognize. Cadets embroidered it at Tentir onto unsanctioned Kothifiran silk, which didn’t survive, except where the stitches held it down.”

  “It looks like words floating on lace,” said Timmon, leaning closer to stare. “‘Then the rathorn colt surprised her at the swimming hole.’ Oh, I remember that. To get away, you dived under a cloud-of-thorns thicket, naked, and came out the other side looking like a flayed rabbit.”

  “Kindly stop reading my chest.”

  Movement at the ward’s edge caught the corner of her eye. The randon had gathered there, several hundred of them from up and down the Silver. Whatever the Commandant feared, so did they, hence their presence here, so they mingled regardless of house, quietly talking. What had been that jerk of motion, though, ducking out of sight behind them? Could that scarecrow have been Killy?

  Kirien and Kindrie approached, followed by Gorbel. The latter wore a gorgeous, if snug, coat depicting the Snowthorns at sunrise, all smoky blue and gold fretted with the suggestion of autumn leaves. Kirien, as usual, looked trim and neat in dove gray while Kindrie sported a new coat the color of spring grass.

  “So, here we are in all of our finery,” said the Jaran scrollswoman lightly. “I like yours. It’s refreshingly simple in hue but complex in design.”

  “Now, that makes me blush.”

  “Really? The truth shouldn’t.”

  Gorbel squinted at her collar, breathing down the back of her neck. “‘The Caineron Corrudin asked her to do the unspeakable. She told him to back off and he did, out a window.’ He hasn’t forgotten that, by the way, nor stopped backing up.”

  “I’m beginning to regret this.”

  Boom. Boom. Boom, boom, boom.

  Gothregor’s main gate swung open. Horns sounded, and the lords entered in a grand procession.

  Caldane came first, borne on a litter by six sturdy Kendar, wearing a cloth-of-gold coat the size of a small tent. The sun glittered off it and sent spangles of light to the far corners of the ward. He seemed half of a mind to wave graciously to the assembled randon, half to ignore them.

  After him, in plainer array, came the Ardeth.

  “That’s not Adric,” said Jame.

  “No. He’s ill. Cousin Dari is taking his place.”

  Jame gave Timmon a sharp look. “Not you, his heir?”

  Timmon tried to shrug this off, but looked uneasy. “I wasn’t consulted. Mother was . . . well, you can imagine. Then again, what could I have said or done in a full Council meeting, against them?”

  “Got to make up your mind and take a stand sometime,” Gorbel grunted.

  Timmon glared. “Would you know?”

  “About some things, yes.”

  Jame glanced at him. “Gorbel, what is your father up to?”

  “If I knew . . . look. There’s the Commandant.”

  Sheth Sharp-tongue had been pacing the procession along the sidelines. Now he joined the end of his lord’s segment, calling no attention to himself. Simply by being there, though, he somehow shifted its center of gravity.

  Jame’s sense of unease grew.

  The Randir followed the Ardeth, Kenan riding on a high-spirited stallion whose mouth bled from a cruel bit, likewise his sides from crueler spurs.

  The Brandan and Jaran came on together quietly, on foot, surrounded by their Kendar. Kirien twitched. Did she belong with the lordan or among the scrollsmen following her uncle Kedan? Jame touched her sleeve. Here she was, where she must stay by her house’s will. Kirien gave her a fleeting, rueful smile.

  Tiny Coman, Edirr, and Danior brought up the rear, to no fanfare.

  “Caldane arranged this, didn’t he?” Jame asked Gorbel.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so.”

  Then time passed. Before the lords began to discuss current business, traditionally their lordan were presented to the Highlord, who acknowledged each with some paltry token. Two years ago Jame had gotten a small carving, lost since her childhood, and Timmon a ring, still on his father’s finger. Not so paltry, perhaps, after all.

  “What’s the delay?” Jame asked Rowan, who had drifted close to her as if by accident.

  “The Matriarchs have asked for an audience.”

  “Don’t they handle their own affairs?”

  “Usually. I hear that this has to do with the contested admission of a new member.”

  Kallystine, thought Jame. Then, with an unreasoned jolt of fear: What if Rawneth is there too?

  The Matriarchs, of course, would have entered by the back door abutting the inner courtyard. Jame made for the front door to the old keep. The lords had shed their retinues outside. These looked at her askance as she brushed past. The Knorth guard at the door, however, saluted and stood aside, almost with an air of relief. Kinzi regarded her anxiously from the weave of her death as she crossed the tapestry hung lower hall.

  Girl, protect your brother.

  Yes, great-grandmother. I hear you.

  Jame ran up the northwest spiral stair, past the second floor strewn with artifacts of Marc’s artistry, up into the Council Chamber.

  There she paused on the threshold, catching her breath. Hoarse panting behind her indicated that, drawn by whatever obscure impulse, Gorbel had followed her.

&nbs
p; Burr stood to one side of the door just within the room.

  A broad ebony table ran east to west down the hall and at this the lords sat, four on one side, five on the other counting the twin Lords Edirr.

  Torisen stood at the far end, under Marc’s stained-glass map. Jame had never before seen him so thin nor the shadows under his eyes so dark. He wore black with silver embroidery as before, elegant in its way, but how tightly that belt cinched his slender waist. And his now white-streaked hair was long enough to be caught by a silver clasp at the nape of his neck.

  However, he wasn’t wearing the Kenthiar. That struck Jame as a mistake, here, where he most needed to stress his status as Highlord.

  The Matriarchs were drawn up opposite with Adiraina at their head, looking small, trim, and rigid with indignation.

  Kallystine glided back and forth before them in a diaphanous blue gown spangled with sapphires that radiated out from the twin white moons of her breasts.

  “I . . . we regret having to bring this matter before you,” she was saying, all sweet milk and honey. “Of course, you have more important business to discuss. Still, the Caineron Matriarch is dead. Someone must represent our house’s interests within the Women’s World. Who better than I?”

  The jeweled eyes sewn into Adiraina’s mask glittered. “We already told you, lady. A matriarch is expected to have experience, which you do not, except of fruitless contracts.”

  “Ridiculous!” Karidia could be heard to mutter from farther back in the throng. “When put to the test, has a Caineron lady ever been known to breed false?”

  “Well,” said Trishien, “there is a song about one soon after the Fall who bore a litter of blind puppies . . .”

  “Oh, trifles!” said Kallystine, impatiently brushing these remarks aside. “All of life is politics and power. Those I know. Was I not once consort to the Highlord himself?”

  With that she circled Torisen as if coyly to twine the trailing cloud of her skirt around him, but he drew back with a shudder.

  He’s not going to say anything, thought Jame. Will anyone?

  Around the table, the lords’ expressions ranged from stony to impatient to embarrassed.

  Kallystine stomped her foot in exasperation, as best she could while wearing such a tight underskirt.

  “Father, see here: There is business pending between the Caineron and the Randir.” She slipped among the grove of assembled Matriarchs and, with difficulty, hauled out a shrinking Lyra. “Who if not I will sanction the union between this child and Lord Kenan, whose mother quite rightly wishes him to sire an heir?”

  Caldane slapped the table with a beringed hand. Wood rang.

  “Wretched child, not even your great-grandmother would be so presumptuous! Your sanction? Yes, I have promised Lord Randir a daughter, but I didn’t say which one. Kenan, here are two. Which do you prefer?”

  Lord Randir languidly regarded them, one stiff with terror, the other with outrage. “Virgins are such a bore. What say you, lady? Shall we make a match?”

  “But . . . but . . . but . . . oh, look, damn you!”

  Kallystine ripped off her veil and bared perfect, white teeth at them through a mere hint of lips. Papery skin stretched taut over cheekbones sharp enough to cut. Her lavender eyes were still lovely, but seemed about to pop out of the skull that was her face.

  Kenan waved all of this away. “Oh, put that mask back on. Faces are boring too. At least your hips are broad enough for the purpose.”

  Caldane flipped a pudgy hand. “So be it. Daughter, you are contracted.”

  “Think of it,” said a coolly amused voice from the back on the crowd, “as the gaining of necessary experience.”

  Kallystine was led away, sputtering with incredulous fury and incoherent threats. Lyra watched her go, her mouth agape, then realized that she was being left behind and bolted after the departing Matriarchs. One only remained.

  Rawneth’s gown echoed a direhound’s coat, the body pearl white, the sleeves, mask, and hem shading from gray to black. Like Torisen, she looked painfully thin and unwell, but compact in malice. When she turned her chill smile on him under the shadow of a hood, even a tilted glimpse of it made Jame shiver.

  “Fetch the Kenthiar,” she said to Burr.

  The Kendar twitched, suddenly aware of her presence, and turned. The thin silver collar was already in his hands, its sullen gem glowing purple and blue with shifting hints of red. Jame took it, careful not to touch its inner surface, and walked down the hall to stand a pace back from her brother, to one side. She had felt the lords turn to watch her pass, but Torisen’s eyes remained locked on the Randir Matriarch.

  “Leave,” he said. “Now.”

  Rawneth fell back a step with an adder’s hiss.

  Kenan half rose. “Now see here. . .”

  “Hush, my son. Remember who speaks and judge accordingly.”

  With this cryptic utterance, she gave the assembled company the ghost of a bow, turned, and departed.

  “Now, that’s the way to handle women,” said Caldane, not looking at either Kenan or Jame. “Who are they to think they have a say in anything?”

  With that he was off on a rambling bluster to which his peers listened, bemused. The presentation of the lordan, it seemed, had been forgotten.

  The collar was very cold in Jame’s hands, numbing her fingertips. Was this another of its defenses against someone who wasn’t supposed to handle it? That limited its use to Tori, but then so she had always been given to believe. Why hadn’t he donned it when he had risked his neck so often by doing so before?

  “‘Cursèd be and cast out,’” murmured her brother, as if answering her question, and maybe he was. “‘Blood and bone, you are no son of mine.’ By what right, therefore, do I claim my father’s rights? A voice in my mind whispers that the true Highlord has yet to come, or is that he has yet to return? I stand in his way. Do my people suffer thereby?”

  “Tori.” She poked him with an elbow. “Be quiet.”

  He jerked as if waking. “I refuse to hurt. . . Jame. What are you doing here?”

  “You sent for me. Remember?”

  “Oh.”

  “. . . and that is why individual houses should have the last word in such matters,” Caldane was saying. “Moreover, the strongest house should have the loudest voice. I speak for over twelve thousand Kencyr, the Randir for only some eight thousand.”

  “Eighty-five hundred,” murmured Kenan.

  Caldane gave him a gracious nod that made his many chins bunch. “Granted. But Kallystine is also my daughter; therefore, I spoke first in this matter, and the Highlord not at all.”

  Torisen did in fact have the right to interfere in any contract, although he rarely used it. His continued silence now, though, was allowing the others to ignore him.

  “Say something,” she hissed, forgetting that she had just told him to shut up.

  “What?”

  “Anything!”

  The flicker of a smile crossed his tired face. “I just did.”

  Ill or not—and she could see that he was—damn this abstraction of his. She had felt unexpected power stir when he had ordered Rawneth out, but now he was in a fog again, listening to voices she could not hear.

  “It would be foolish, would it not,” Caldane continued, “to let such lesser houses as the Danior, the Edirr, and the Coman have a say in such matters. Why, even the Knorth number only a paltry two thousand.”

  The others stirred uneasily.

  “One house, one vote,” said Holly, planting his elbows on the table and leaning forward.

  “Ah, tradition.” Caldane sketched a gesture as if to wave this away. “See how well it has served us in the past.”

  “So, how about one lord, one vote?”

  “Hush,” said Kedan, touching Holly’s sleeve. “We tamper with such arrangements at our peril.”

  Caldane appeared to be doing sums on his fingers. The Randir and Coman for the Caineron. The Ardeth, Brandan, Jaran, and Dan
ior for the Knorth. The Edirr? Who knew or cared?

  “No. It has to be by garrison. Some twenty-four thousand on my side, some fifteen thousand on yours. There. That works.”

  “Only if we change the rules,” said Brant. “I for one vote that we do no such thing.”

  “And I.” “And I.” “And I.” “And I.”

  Brant leaned forward. “Torisen? What say you?”

  The time had come. Jame stepped forward and raised the Kenthiar, its hinged jaws open. It snapped shut around Torisen’s neck, neatly severing his gathered fall of hair and the clasp that held it.

  “Ah,” he said, blinking, then giving himself a shake. “Now, what were we discussing? Oh yes. Why would I remove myself from power, especially with four houses behind me?”

  “Five,” said Essien and Essiar, the twin Lords Edirr.

  “There you have it, then.”

  Caldane glared. “This isn’t right. This isn’t fair. And it doesn’t matter anyway. We are gathered here to establish whose mercenary troops go where to fight in the spring. Well, I already know the destination of mine. I have leased a company to Prince Uthecon of Karkinaroth, another to King Ostrepi, and a third to Duke Pugnanos.”

  “But,” said Brant, clearly distressed, “the first two are fierce rivals, with lands abutting each other, and Pugnanos is across the Silver, a blood-enemy to them both.”

  “So?”

  “Have you at least written the contracts so that Kencyr won’t face Kencyr?”

  “Trifles, as my dear daughter would say. I leave it up to my war-leader, Sheth Sharp-tongue, to stand between them.” Caldane snickered. “Oh, he thinks himself so superior. All randon do. We mere Highborn don’t know the meaning of honor as well as they, oh no. We will see. Be it on his head if he fails his precious code.”

  Jame edged back from Torisen. She could feel his anger growing, and the strength of it astonished her.

  “Do I understand,” he said, beginning to pace slowly down the table’s length, “that you have put in place no other safeguards? These are your people. Would you have them slaughter each other?”

  “As in the White Hills?” Caldane laughed again, but now he looked nervous. “That was the trick your father played.”