Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  “It’s stuck in the bone—I can’t get a grip.”

  “Try this.”

  “It’s so small—”

  She heard the gritty sound of something being pulled from bone and a gasp from someone nearby.

  “What is that? Black—”

  A door banged, and other footsteps came closer, running. Through her closed eyelids light glowed red. “Who is it—ahhh.”

  “Paks.” That was Camwynya … and Paks was here? Here? She had been gone … a long time, Arianya thought. “We think it was an iynisin attack. I just pulled this from the bone—and look.”

  “I see. If they used what they did on me, then the only healing I know is Kuakkgani … and there’s no Kuakgan nearer than the southern mountains … perhaps in western Tsaia.”

  “Surely we can do something.”

  “We will do our best.”

  Paks leaned closer; Arianya could smell horse, leather, dust, and then as suddenly as before she slid into another place … this time not white light but green.

  A green glade, spattered with sunlight piercing the tree canopy overhead. Purple flowers gave off a fragrance spicier than violets; a bright-colored bird flew past, a winged jewel when the sunlight touched it: glittering green, red, blue, purple. Out from the forest shade came a strange cat—gray spots on a snow-white coat, eyes of palest blue. It paced up to her, rose on its hind legs and set its fore-paws gently on her shoulders, extended a pink tongue and licked her across the face.

  Across the glade, a pile of pillows and coverlets appeared, inviting her to lie down. The cat returned to four feet and butted her gently toward the pillows. She took a step, then another; the cat walked beside her, and when she faltered, she found its back under her hand, warm beneath the soft fur, a firm support.

  She sank onto the pillows; the cat lifted one paw and gently pushed her down, then drew the coverlets up. With her last sight, she saw the impossible … the purple petals of the flowers rose up and flew to her, covering her with purple. When two petals touched her eyelids, she fell asleep in that instant.

  Waking again was strange. For an instant, the forest glade overlaid the familiar room, as if the walls were draped in embroidered veils. Then the veils faded away, and she saw whitewashed walls and heard someone snoring across the room. The light coming in the window was dim, blue-gray … predawn? Near nightfall? She lay still, not wanting to wake the pain, listening to the snores. The wall seemed more distinct moment by moment; the air moving into the window carried a tinge of woodsmoke. A rooster crowed; a mule brayed. Morning, then. She moved one leg, then the other, then turned her head to see who was in the room with her. Slumped in a chair, feet up on a stool, Paks slept with one arm dangling, the other hand on her Girdish medallion.

  In the passage outside, the slap-slap of light shoes came nearer. Then a knock on the door. Paks woke at once, the way a cat wakes, and turned to the door.

  “Sib, lady. Cook says bread’ll be out in a half-glass, and porridge in less.”

  “Thank you,” Paks said. She came back into the room with a tray and met Arianya’s gaze. “You’re awake—how do you feel?”

  “What happened?” Arianya asked.

  “That’s a story with two sides,” Paks said. “I know what we tried to do; you alone know what it was like for you.”

  Arianya moved her left arm a little. Her shoulder was stiff but not painful. “It doesn’t hurt. And I—it’s clearer.”

  “Want some sib?”

  “Yes.” She tried to hitch herself up in the bed but achieved only a fingerwidth.

  Paks came to the bed. “Let me help.”

  With her help, Arianya was able to sit up against the pillows. Paks handed her a mug of sib. She sniffed—the familiar fragrance seemed even sharper than usual. She sipped; the slightly bitter, earthy flavors cleared her head.

  Paks leaned on the table, drinking from her own mug and watching. She put it down when she’d drained it. “Marshal-General, you must be careful. We are not sure we got everything.”

  “Two paladins of Gird? I’m sure you did.”

  Paks shook her head. “No. It’s like what happened to me. Whatever it is they use … well, you know about me. That must not happen to you. I think you need a Kuakgan.”

  “But I’m Girdish!”

  “Yes. But the Kuakkgani have special skills. They were never enemies of the Girdish. You surely know many Girdish in Tsaia visit Kuakkgani—”

  “They do?”

  “Yes. Some ills the farm wife treats with sweetherb, some with tongue-bite, some with fever-bark. So with Marshals and Kuakkgani: Marshals have their skills, and the Kuakkgani have other skills. I am no less Gird’s because Master Oakhallow knew how to draw iynisin poison from my flesh and my spirit.”

  “We should learn that,” Arianya said.

  “If we could, yes. I suspect it would take a lifetime and maybe more to learn all the green blood can teach. You know the stories about how they become Kuakkgani …”

  Yes, she knew the stories. She did not believe the stories, but then, she had never met a Kuakgan, only the occasional remote family who declared they were Kuakgannir. Simpletons, she thought them. Had thought them until she heard Paksenarrion’s story, and even now … “Are there any Kuakkgani in Fintha?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I know there are some in Tsaia. If you ask for that help, I can bring one.”

  Marshal-Generals should not need help from anyone but Gird. Something in her head snorted derision. Abruptly, she remembered the conversation she’d had with … someone.

  Someone?

  She looked at Paks, and Paks looked back at her—that same friendly face, that same apparent naivete. Yet Paks had seen, had experienced, the worst of both mortal and immortal viciousness. If Paks thought she needed a Kuakgan’s care … then it would be stupid to refuse it.

  She pushed herself higher against her pillows, and this time her body responded almost normally. Surely, then, she was normal and needed no healing … yet Paks had thought the same.

  “You think I should …” she began.

  Paks interrupted. “I can’t forget how it was for me. That must not happen to you, Marshal-General, or anyone else if I can prevent it. I’m not a Kuakgan; their powers come from the health of living things. Even the touch of iynisin blood can be fatal; their malice infuses it with evil. King Kieri, remember, had but a scratch … and it was a Kuakgan who healed him.”

  Arianya took a deep breath and nodded. “Well, then. If I need a Kuakgan, I’d best find one.” She pushed away from the pillow and swung her legs over the side of the bed; dizziness blurred her vision. Paks’s arm steadied her.

  “Not you—one of us. You lost more blood than you know.”

  By the next day, Arianya was back at work, accompanied always by a High Marshal or one of the paladins, while somewhere—she did not know where—someone, almost certainly Paks, sought a Kuakgan willing to help her. She felt better, though still weak, and dug through the paperwork that had accumulated during her illness. Arvid had organized it for her and explained his reasons when she asked.

  “I never expected a thief-assassin to be this good at organization,” she said on the third day, leaning back and shaking out a hand cramp.

  Arvid ducked his head. “If I were good at organization, I would be head of the Guild in Vérella,” he said.

  Arianya looked at him. “Do you wish you were?”

  “No … not now. But it still gripes me that I was fooled—”

  “And it gripes me that I was fool enough not to anticipate the attack that left me flat for hands of days. I must let that go—and so must you.”

  “Speaking as the Marshal-General,” he said, this time with a tinge of humor.

  “Yes. Precisely. Arvid, you’re now in the Fellowship of Gird, and though we value your knowledge of the Guild, we value you—you as a yeoman of Gird—more. If I fix my mind on my failure … I will fail again. The same with you.”

  “I am we
ll rebuked,” Arvid said, though the glint in his eye left her in doubt about the depth of his contrition. “But I prefer not to fail.”

  “I, also. You do realize that you have gone far beyond your duties as one of the scribes?”

  “Yes, Marshal-General.”

  “In another quarter-year—no, it’s less now—your candidate year will be completed. Have you thought what you will do when you are no longer a yeoman-candidate and under your Marshal’s direct command? You have not missed a drill night but one; isn’t that right?”

  “Saving the time on the journey north, Marshal-General.”

  “And honest as well. Arvid … Gird speaks to you. You have some purpose here, more than just one letter in a page of writing. Has Gird given you any hints lately?”

  Arvid scowled, staring at the floor, and rocked backward and forward on his heels. “Marshal-General, Gird is … hard to understand sometimes. There are hints … but I do not know how to interpret them.”

  “Tell me.” When he said nothing, she waited until finally his head came up and he met her gaze. She nodded.

  “It cannot be … what I understood,” Arvid said. “I am not shy of my past, Marshal-General, as you know. I was what I was; it made me what I am; it is … real. But it is not the life that leads … anywhere … in the Fellowship, I mean.”

  “Gird was a peasant,” Arianya said. “Luap was a bastard, and I know your opinion of him. So what impediment is there for you in any position Gird might suggest?”

  “I’m starting late,” Arvid said.

  She sighed.

  Daughter, do not waver.

  “Arvid, you have done all you could to become a good yeoman … you have observed the duties, you have said the words. By that measure, you are a good yeoman. But I cannot see you working the rest of your life among the scribes, copying out one document after another. You are not that kind of man—you know that.”

  Now it was his turn to sigh. “I cannot leave my son,” he said. “Until he is grown—”

  “He fares well,” Arianya said, “Both in the grange and with his fellow junior yeomen. He is happy—or so the yeoman-marshal for juniors reports.”

  Arvid nodded. “He is indeed happy and healthy, and I intend to keep him so.”

  “So do we all,” Arianya said. His eyes widened briefly, then narrowed.

  “You would take me from him?”

  “No. You are his father. But you need to know, and accept, that you are not the only one wishing him well and happy. Should you fall—and that may happen to anyone by a strike of lightning from the sky, by a fall, by someone’s carelessness with a horse and cart, as well as by malice—you should know that others will care for your son.”

  His eyes glistened. “So Marshal Steralt said in Valdaire. But I—he is my son.”

  “Yes. But what is it Gird has said to you that you think rises above your abilities?”

  “Not exactly my abilities,” Arvid said with a touch of his old arrogance. “But my due—”

  “Just say it, Arvid!”

  He flushed, then answered. “It’s the Code, Marshal-General. It’s … what we know now of what Luap wrote means that the Code itself should be changed. You’ve already said that—”

  “And what has that to do with you? Come, Arvid; you’re shying around the matter like a colt afraid of a saddle on the ground in a training pen.”

  “Gird … thinks I should … speak out about such things.”

  “And so you should. And—?”

  “And … not just as a very junior yeoman or scribe. As …”

  “A judicar?” His jaw dropped; Arianya could not help laughing. “Come, Arvid; that makes sense. Someone who has been outside the law sees the law more clearly—and yes—” She held up her hand to forestall him. “Yes, I know you consider the Thieves’ Guild to have had a law of its own. So you are doubly qualified, are you not? And you learned something of southern law in Vérella and military law from your time with Fox Company.”

  “Um … judicar, yes, Marshal-General, but also … um …”

  “Gird’s right arm, Arvid, just tell me what he said. Marshal-Judicar of Gird, was it?” She tossed it out like a jest.

  For a moment she thought he would literally fall over even as her own thought caught up to the idea seriously. A thief as a Marshal? A Marshal-Judicar? Well … why not?

  “I can’t—I haven’t—I don’t let myself—”

  “You’d better,” Arianya said, her voice now steady. “Because if Gird has that in mind for you—or anything else, including heading the Fellowship—then you’d best be about learning what you need to know to do a good job of it.” He still said nothing, breathing too fast. “You don’t want someone like you, two hundred winters from now, saying you were a second Luap, do you?”

  “I’m not!” That in a voice absolutely devoid of jest, boast, or anything but determination.

  “Indeed, you are not anything like the Luap we now know. You are a far better man, in my estimation, and that’s a judgment I made before the attack.” She gave him a long, considering look. “It will be a difficult trail to follow, Arvid, and would have been so even without this turmoil over magery. But if this is Gird’s charge to you—and I think it is—then we need you. I need you.”

  He nodded finally, a decisive nod. “So—now what?”

  “Now I will have one of the senior judicars review your knowledge of the Code as it is. Then we will see.” She called in the guard at the door and sent word to the head scribe and the Judicariate that she requested a conference.

  Removing Arvid from the scribes took only a moment. “Gird requires him elsewhere” got a bow and a respectful “Yes, Marshal-General.”

  The judicar who came, however, was a different matter, Deinar being one of those who held strictly to the Code and had argued already that magery could not be made legal. He looked at Arvid with disfavor. “This is the thief?”

  “This is the former thief,” Arianya said with all the patience she could muster. “Now a yeoman of Gird—”

  “A provisional yeoman still in his first year of service and having missed drill-night attendance at a grange for—”

  “For the time it took him to travel from Valdaire to here, as commanded by his Marshal in the south. I am aware of that, Judicar Deinar.”

  “Hmmph. And what do you want me to do, Marshal-General?”

  “Arvid has a broad background in several legal systems—”

  “Thwarting them, no doubt,” Deinar said.

  “Hear me out, Judicar.” Arianya allowed her voice to acquire a bite, and Deinar stiffened.

  “Yes, Marshal-General.”

  “Arvid will be studying the Code more deeply than his Marshal can supervise—on my behalf—and you will need to examine him and determine what his current level is. Are you able to do that, or does your bias against him prevent it?”

  “Bias? I’m a judicar; I am perfectly impartial. I adhere to the Code.” From his tone, no one could possibly doubt that.

  “We shall see,” she said. “Arvid, you will spend four glasses a day with Deinar, and Deinar, I expect a daily report from you on which parts of the Code you have covered that day and how Arvid’s understanding fares.”

  The two men glared at each other. “Yes, Marshal-General,” Arvid said barely a moment before Deinar said the same.

  “When must I start?” Deinar said.

  “Now,” Arianya said. “And Arvid, I have a few trivial questions about these papers, so check with me before you leave for home.”

  Deinar’s first daily report, delivered with a scowl that evening, was that Arvid Semminson’s knowledge and understanding of the Ten Fingers and the Ten Toes was entirely adequate.

  “Is that as far as you got?” Arianya asked. Though she felt no pain, she was tired and noticed that her voice sounded peevish. She hoped that meant nothing, that the Kuakgan Paks had gone to find would not be needed, but she would not ignore any symptom.

  “Yes, Marsha
l-General. If the foundation is not sound, the building will not stand. The thief—the yeoman must fully understand the foundations of the Code, not merely recite them as any youngling can do.”

  “Good, then,” she said. “I expect he will wish to continue the same schedule he had as a scribe, four glasses’ work in the morning and the afternoon to care for his son.”

  Deinar nodded. “He seems to care for his son, Marshal-General, more than I expected.”

  “It is a long story,” Arianya said. “And one I would rather tell another day, if you do not mind. It is my first full day of work after they took a kuaknomi blade from my bone.”

  “Of course, Marshal-General.” For just a moment his expression softened. “We in the Judicariate are most pleased you have recovered.”

  “Thank you,” she said, somewhat surprised. Given his views on magery, she would have expected him to wish her dead.

  “I disagree with you about magery,” Deinar said. “And possibly about the conversion of a lifelong thief. But I respect you as Marshal-General.”

  “Thank you,” she said again. He bowed and withdrew. Arianya leaned back in her chair and sighed. She felt bone-deep weariness and was just about to call for sib when Marshal Vesk came in with a tray heaped with dishes and mugs.

  “You don’t need to be wasting your energy going down to the kitchen for supper, since you insisted on working today.”

  Arianya opened her mouth to protest and found herself thanking him instead.

  “By your leave, Marshal-General, I’ll eat with you. I’ve got the early shift on guard in the hall, and this saves me steps, too.”

  “Suits me,” Arianya said, setting the papers aside. “Here—what are we having?”

  “Beef-barley soup for you, which is what the cooks think you need, and sausage and beans for me, which they insisted was too spicy for someone just out of bed. I could be bribed to share. Your soup smells good.”

  Arianya laughed. “They know I love that spiced sausage. Let’s both share—surely if most of what I eat is the soup, all will be well.” She picked up one of the small loaves on the tray, broke it, and he sprinkled salt on both halves.