Petrodor atobas-2

by Joel Shepherd

  Princess Sofy had given him these rings. A dying man had pressed them into her hand on the battlefield. But a warrior's decorations belonged in battle, and so she'd granted the rings to Jaryd in turn. He wore them now on a chain around his neck. There was no expectation of such decorations amongst Goeren-yai-Teriyan himself, as fiercely proud a Goeren-yai warrior as one could meet, wore neither rings nor tattoos. Yet somehow, Jaryd felt like a fraud, that he could not put the rings in his ear. It was one thing to declare oneself Goeren-yai, and to throw the Verenthane medallion to the floor before his king. But to come here and live amongst the Goeren-yai themselves, to feel their gaze upon him, watching his every move, considering his every foreignness, his every misunderstanding…

  Andreyis pressed a cup into his hand, and he drank. The wine reminded him once more of Sofy. Princess Sofy, he corrected himself. One did not abandon that formality as one abandoned the Verenthane gods, for the Goeren-yai loved the youngest Princess of Lenayin as much or more than the Verenthanes. In the two days after Sashandra's parley with her father, Sofy and Jaryd had shared wine and talked. What they had talked of, he could no longer remember. Probably, he realised, he'd not been lively conversation. In the battle, he'd wished for death. That denied him, he had only revenge left. But Sofy had evidently not found his morbidity too off-putting. She'd granted him the rings, had sipped wine that no Verenthane princess was supposed to sip, and had wished him luck.

  Then Sashandra had come and told him that, since she and Kessligh would be absent from the ranch, there was a place available for someone prepared to work hard. A place amongst townfolk accustomed to controversial outsiders in their midst. A place, no doubt, where they could keep an eye on him. His old resentment resurfaced, dark and brooding.

  He looked up and found Aeryl watching him from the chair opposite, a cup in hand. Aeryl managed another faint smile. “Your hair is growing,” he observed. “Perhaps soon you'll have to tie it in braids.”

  Jaryd sipped his wine and took a deep breath. “Enough with the small talk. What did they send you here to tell me? What threats?”

  “I did not attend Rathynal because my sister was ill,” Aeryl said quietly. “She died, Jaryd. I played no part in the great gathering of provinces, nor the events that befell you there. I had my own grieving to attend to.”

  “I'm sorry.” Jaryd stared into the fire. He did not want to look at his old “friend.” Amongst those people he had once called his own, he had no friends.

  “Your brother Wyndal has been adopted by Family Arastyn,” Aeryl offered. “He is most well. He sends his regards.”

  “Did he send word that he wished me to surrender myself?”

  Aeryl paused for a brief moment. “No,” he said, then carefully, “no, he did not.”

  “Good. Because then I'd be forced to kill my own brother for a traitor.”

  Jaryd sipped his wine again. Aeryl stared for a moment. “Galyndry's marriage preparations are nearly complete,” he tried again. “Family Iryani are pleased. Your sister Dalya sends word that she would like you to be there.”

  “I bet she does,” Jaryd muttered. “Just so long as her precious banquets and dances are not disturbed, I'm sure her little brother's murder won't bother her a bit.”

  “Will you attend?” Aeryl was nothing if not persistent. He'd assisted Jaryd with his studies, when the words and symbols had refused to make sense. The fifth son of Family Daery, he'd always been quiet and studious, excelling in studies, while having much less interest in Jaryd's passions of swordplay and horsemanship. In all their studying together, he'd never voiced exasperation or contempt at Jaryd's complete inability with letters. He'd just made him repeat the same phrases, again, and again, and again. Jaryd had found his attention span with such tedious things astonishing.

  “No,” he answered. “I've no interest in seeing the last of Family Nyvar abolished before my eyes.”

  “And so you mean to live out your days here?” Aeryl looked about. “A fair place…but something of a fall, wouldn't you say?”

  “It was enough for a Lenay princess. Besides, I'm not planning to sit here for long.”

  “You plan revenge,” Aeryl said flatly. Andreyis came from the kitchen and sat beside Aeryl, placing a plate of sliced bread and a bowl of hashal on the table between the chairs.

  “I mean to kill them all,” Jaryd said darkly.

  “That's real smart, that is,” Andreyis announced, dipping some bread in the bean paste. “Tell them all about your plans. That'll improve your chances no end.”

  Aeryl looked incredulous. “Jaryd…there are a hundred and seventeen noble families in Tyree alone. They have allies and family through marriage with many other provinces. All have accepted Great Lord Arastyn. How can you possibly think to best them all?”

  Jaryd said nothing, and stared at the flames.

  “He has a death wish, that's what,” said Lynette, coming from the kitchen with bowls of grapes and plums. She pulled up another chair. “He's too damn stubborn to imagine an alternative.”

  “If I killed you,” Jaryd said, “would your father be any different?”

  Lynette snorted, tossing her wild hair back. “If you killed me, most of Baerlyn would chase you to the ends of the world. But you're all alone. No one came with you, Jaryd. You've no allies, no support, no army. You'll die, it'll be messy, and it'll be a great waste.”

  “I used to hear all these great stories from the men in the Falcon Guard,” Jaryd muttered. “Stories of Goeren-yai heroism. Now I arrive here, I find they're all cowards.”

  “I'd think twice before using that word around here.” Andreyis said warily.

  “What else would you call a people who dissuaded me from taking revenge against those who murdered my eleven-year-old brother!” Jaryd shouted.

  “Your honour is your own,” Andreyis said. “What you choose to do with it is your concern. No man in Baerlyn will stop you should you choose to continue this path. But neither will we assist or approve if you give us no cause to.”

  “Listen to your friends, Jaryd,” Aeryl pleaded. “They're young, but they speak with great wisdom.”

  “Growing up in Kessligh's shadow will do that,” said Andreyis. Lynette rolled her eyes a little. Now that Andreyis was a warrior, blooded in battle and successful in his Wakening, she thought him far too big for his boots.

  “Jaryd,” Aeryl tried once more, “Great Lord Arastyn does not want your head. He's willing to grant you a pardon, if only-”

  “The only reason he no longer wants my head is that he's not entitled under the king's law to punish a Goeren-yai who has in turn challenged him to a duel,” Jaryd snarled. “My challenge stands, and so long as it stands, his claim and my claim cancel each other. It shall stand until either he accepts, or one of us dies.”

  “For you to challenge a Verenthane great lord to a duel will require a lord of similar stature to endorse your challenge!” exclaimed Aeryl. “Not just anyone can challenge a great lord, Jaryd, and you might not have noticed, but you're no longer the heir to Tyree!”

  “I noticed. My brother died in a pool of blood that made me notice. Princess Sashandra will support my claim.”

  “Aye, no doubt she would, but she's not here, is she?”

  “So will Kessligh Cronenverdt,” Jaryd said stubbornly, although he felt less certain of that.

  “And he's not here either. Very good, Jaryd, you've named two people who can't possibly speak on your behalf…and Kessligh, although a very heroic figure, has no actual noble pedigree whatsoever, and is in fact well known to be in opposition to the very concept.”

  Prince Damon, Jaryd nearly said, but didn't. Prince Damon was in trouble enough, being perceived to have had some sympathy with the rebellion led by his sister Sashandra. Endorsements from Jaryd Nyvar would do him no favours at all.

  “Princess Sofy,” he said, with a glare. “Princess Sofy will support my claim.”

  Aeryl blinked. “Princess Sofy? Do you honestly think she would pub
licly support your right to chop the Great Lord of Tyree into very small pieces?”

  “She said she would.” Actually she hadn't. But it had been implicit, he thought.

  Aeryl took a deep breath and looked elsewhere for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Well, Princess Sofy is a woman, so I don't know…”

  “She's nobility. No, she's far more than nobility, she's royalty. Her claim would stand.”

  “She's about to be married to the heir of the Regent of all the Bacosh, Jaryd-”

  “And she's not happy about it.” That was common enough knowledge, and Aeryl didn't contradict him. “Or she wasn't. She's suddenly the most important woman in all Lenayin. Maybe even the most important royal. Without her, there's no marriage, no alliance and no war. She can say what she likes, no one will dare touch her.”

  “I am quite certain, Jaryd,” Aeryl said with the beginnings of impatience, “that if Princess Sofy were here, she would counsel you against this foolishness, and tell you not to throw your life away so cheaply!”

  “It won't be cheap, I can promise you that.”

  “Princess Sofy is a kind and gentle woman,” Aeryl persisted, “with no great love of battles and bloodshed. If you think she will support you on this blind insanity of yours, I fear you're deluded.”

  “If you're so certain, why don't you ask her?”

  Aeryl stared. Jaryd knew he had charged well beyond the bounds of common sense or caution, but he could not stop himself now. Princess Sofy was a kind and gentle woman, but she was also a just one. She had braved the battlefield and comforted the wounded and dying soldiers until she had dropped from exhaustion. Sofy had been appalled at Tarryn's fate, and infuriated by the actions of the Tyree lords, Great Lord Arastyn in particular. Surely she'd not deprive him of his justice.

  All the world wanted Jaryd dead. That suited him fine. Just so long as he could take Arastyn and a few of his rotten, scheming friends with him.

  Sasha woke the next morning to the sound of the ocean swell against the pier. Sunlight peered through the shutters of her small room.

  From the floors below came the sounds of footsteps and muffled voices. More voices on the docks, fishermen greeting the morning. On the roof above, a gull's feet scrabbled. Then a piercing cry. Another gull answered, circling nearby. The creaking of ropes, as boats strained at their moorings. The air smelled of salt, and the skin of her hands was still dry and taut from the previous day's fishing.

  Strange sounds, and strange smells. So far from Lenayin. And yet peaceful, in the strange way that dangerous, overcrowded Petrodor could sometimes spring on a person, right when she least expected it. If she relaxed on her back in the warm morning air, and listened to the rise and fall of the ocean, she could just about drift off to sleep once more…

  The door creaked open before her eyelids could close entirely. Sasha jerked awake, a hand moving fast to the knife beneath her pillow. But it was only Fara, wrapped in a towel from her morning wash and holding two mugs of tea.

  “Thanks,” said Sasha, as the other girl placed the mug on the floor beside the bed. Fara returned to her own bed and began dressing.

  Neither being a princess, nor the uma of Kessligh Cronenverdt, had been enough to gain Sasha a room of her own. She didn't mind. She and Fara shared the best upstairs room at the Velos, a crumbling little brick-walled space with floorboards that creaked, and rickety wooden shutters that let in the rain in a storm. At least they had a view of the docks-Liam and Rodery were stuck in the back room with only a dingy courtyard to look upon.

  The tea was spiced something fierce. Sasha winced as she sipped it, opening the window shutters enough for a view. Already there were small fishing boats heading out past the large ships at mooring. Men clambered over boats along the piers, tending to ropes, nets and sails. The sun glared several hands above the ocean horizon…someone had been nice to her, Sasha realised, and let her sleep in past the dawn. Quite likely some of the men would be back from their first fishing trip soon, having set out before sunrise. Others would be off to North Pier to work at the warehouses, shifting the rich families’ cargo. Another day in Petrodor.

  Serrin put something in their tea that woke a person up real fast. She sat on the floor and did her stretches. Then came the exercises, fast sit-ups and push-ups in her underclothes. Then she lifted her chin repeatedly above the crosswise ceiling beam, with relative ease.

  “You should do more exercises,” she encouraged Fara, who sat on her bed and arranged little parcels of medicines in small leather pouches, along with other implements Sasha did not recognise, and placed them carefully in a wooden carry box. “Then the boys won't beat you up at training so bad.”

  “I do enough,” said Fara. Fara was a quiet girl with long, light brown hair and eyes that never quite met a person's gaze. Her uman was a healer, skilled primarily in the serrin lore of medicines. Her uman was also a woman; and that, in Sasha's estimation, was where the problems began.

  “You could do better,” Sasha suggested, stretching her arms.

  “Not everyone has to learn to fight with swords,” Fara said with irritation, her eyes not leaving her precious medicines. “Fighting was the last of the serrin's skills the Nasi-Keth learned to do.”

  Sasha shrugged, extended her arms, and leapt for the beam once more. “The last and most important,” she added, lifting herself up and down, breathing hard.

  “Important to you, maybe. Not everyone's a muscle-bound warrior like you.” There was an edge of sarcasm to her voice.

  Sasha snorted. She completed several more lifts, then dropped to the floor and pulled off her sweaty undershirt. “Do you know your problem?” she told Fara, tossing the shirt on her bed. “You enter the Nasi-Keth, the home of all open-mindedness and learning, yet you cling to old prejudices like a child to a mother's skirts. All these serrin women, and now me as an example, and no Petrodor woman wants to admit that women can fight.”

  “Oh, you're a wonderful example,” Fara said with gritted teeth, uncomfortable now that Sasha wore no top.

  Sasha knew that her physique made the locals edgy. Her new tattoo, even more so. Tongren had made it curl expertly about her upper bicep, three interwoven strands, like the tri-braid on the side of her head, dark like forest vines against the pale skin.

  “I'd much rather heal people, thanks.”

  “Most male healers can do both,” Sasha reasoned.

  “I'm an exception,” said Fara, testily.

  “Look, why don't you at least come on a run with me? It'll do you good, I find all my skills improve when I'm fit.”

  “Sashandra, why don't you leave me alone?” Fara retorted, looking up for the first time. Sasha could see the alarm in Fara's eyes, to observe her muscular arms, her hard stomach, her compact breasts. “I'm not a highlands warrior princess! Now why don't you go off and…and eat raw lizards, or rub sand in your hair, or whatever it is that you do in the mornings to stay so warriorlike!”

  Sasha took her towel off the end of the bed. “You think I'm uncivilised, don't you?”

  “Heavens forbid I should think such a thing,” Fara said beneath her breath, eyes down once again.

  “I've met sheep with more character,” Sasha muttered in Lenay, putting the towel around her neck and taking her sword and scabbard.

  “What was that?” Fara asked suspiciously.

  “Just a little something in barbarian-speak,” Sasha told her in Torovan once more. “Never you mind your civilised, cultured little Torovan head about it.”

  She nearly ran into Liam in the narrow hall. “Hey!” the young Nasi-Keth protested, spinning about to avert his gaze. “Sasha! For the gods’ sakes, put a shirt on!”

  “What!” Sasha snapped at him. “You don't like it either?”

  “Like it?” Liam tried to look at her, but propriety kept dragging his eyes away. He seemed caught, like a puppet with two masters each pulling in separate directions. “Sasha, you're naked!”

  Sasha laughed. “If you think this
is naked, kid, you're in for a nasty surprise on your wedding night.” And gave him a playful kick on the backside before strolling to the washroom and shutting the door.

  Sasha's morning run took her through narrow lanes until the bottom of the slope where alleys snaked up precarious stairways between crumbling walls. She ran with several local Nasi-Keth as it was always safer to move in groups, even across the lower slopes.

  The run ended in Fishnet Alley by a nondescript lane between buildings. Squeezing through, the lane opened into a broad courtyard. Within it, men wielded practice stanches in single combat and the air echoed with the sharp crack of wood on wood, and the grunting exertion of combatants.

  Sasha walked to the courtyard's north side and crouched to splash cold water from a bucket on her face. She grabbed some breakfast from a table under the awning, apologising to the lady for being late. There were doorways leading from the training courtyard into neighbouring houses, and people came and went.

  A little girl with tangled hair and a brown-cloth dress watched her shyly as she ate, seated on an old footstool. Sasha smiled at her. In Lenayin, there were no children allowed in the training hall. And no women, either…herself, the exception. Here amongst the dockfolk, everything was communal. People had no choice but to cooperate, she supposed as she chewed, watching the men fight. They all lived cheek by jowl and space had to be shared.

  Finishing breakfast, she strode to the opposite side of the courtyard, strapped on a padded banda, took up a stanch and stepped onto the pavings.

  “Rodery,” she said, interrupting the boy's taka-dan. “Your quarter-step is mistimed, I've been watching. Here, I'll show you.”

  Rodery was a big lad of nineteen summers with broad shoulders and dark freckles across his square face. He turned and frowned at her, displeased at the interruption. “Uman Torshai says my footwork's good.”

  “It is good,” Sasha agreed impatiently, taking stance opposite. “I can make it better.”

  She took him through his moves. To Rodery's credit, he watched and listened, regardless of the occasional dark stare coming from other parts of the courtyard. The svaalverd-the serrin martial art-was all about balance, technique and timing. She demonstrated Rodery's slow adjustment to a roundhouse strike, and gave him some bruises to prove the point. Then she drilled him until his feet adjusted properly, and comprehension dawned in the big lad's eyes, as he deflected her attacks with new poise and speed.