Winter of Ice and Iron

by Rachel Neumeier

  She had doubted the alliance between Raëhemaiëth and Eänetaìsarè. She couldn’t doubt it any longer. She had been unable to feel her tie to Raëhemaiëth until she came to the Wolf Duke’s house, and now it ran like a thread of light through her mind and heart. When the duke had been injured, she had found it so easy to call on Raëhemaiëth to help calm the Eänetén Power, coax it around to support the duke rather than fight him. She didn’t understand that, either.

  Nor did she understand what the duke intended, giving her Tageiny and Luad, as though he were handing a gift to a child during the Golden Hinge of the year, when all the world celebrated the turning of spring into summer.

  Heris Tageiny had moved right to the middle of Kehera’s sitting room and stood now at a kind of relaxed attention, his gaze fixed on nothing in particular. Luad stood at his shoulder, watching Kehera with unconcealed interest.

  “You took service with me because you were afraid of what other employment the duke would find for you if you refused,” Kehera told Tageiny. “If it comes to it, you’ll spy for him and take his orders over mine. Right?”

  The big man met her eyes without any sign of surprise. “I remember your original offer just fine. That’s why I took the job. One reason why. Though you’re not wrong about me being scared of the duke. But spying on you or taking his orders over yours would count as betraying you. You’ve thought of that, too, I expect.”

  “You think the Wolf Duke will find that a persuasive argument, the first time he wants something from you and you refuse?”

  “We’ll see, won’t we? Or I suppose we can hope it won’t come to that.” Tageiny didn’t sound like he found this hope very persuasive. “You’re a prisoner here.”

  “Yes.”

  The man glanced around the room, and by implication the entire suite. “Nice accommodations. Right next to the duke’s. You’re Harivin, of course. That’s why Roh Pass. But you’re important to His Grace, who doesn’t seem inclined to let you go.”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. You’re so important he wants you guarded by men who aren’t from Eäneté, men whose loyalties won’t be divided, no matter who they’re scared of.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Mine won’t be divided.” Tageiny glanced at Luad. “Ours. You want us to swear to it? Or can you just see who’s telling the truth?” He gave her a shrewd look. “You’ve a tie. More so than most. You’re someone’s heir, maybe a second daughter, but you’re in someone’s bloodline. I’m guessing. But I think so.”

  Kehera found herself smiling. “Yes. You are certainly not stupid. How in the world did that Sochar person hook you into his service?”

  “I was overconfident. That’s worse than stupid sometimes. It’s not likely to happen again, under the circumstances.”

  Kehera suspected this was true. She nodded to Luad. “He’s not stupid, either, I assume.”

  Finding himself suddenly the center of attention, Luad blinked and flushed slightly, and looked quickly at Tageiny. Tageiny only said mildly, “He’s not used to dukes and ladies, but no, he’s not stupid. Taking down an enemy who’s done it to you first is a job recommendation, in certain circles. But you guessed that, I think. You were kind to ask for him as well as for me, and I thank you.”

  “Oh,” said Kehera, reminded, and went quickly to retrieve her pearls. “I don’t have much money right now. But I have these.” She held two of the pearls out, and said when Tageiny hesitated, “I said I would hire you, and I will. You’re free men, not slaves. So take these. I doubt His Grace will allow me to leave this house, but I expect you can go into town and get what you need. Swords, whatever you need. Better clothing.”

  “Well,” said Tageiny, sounding for once nonplussed. “This should certainly be enough. Call it a quarter’s pay plus a signing bonus.” This seemed to amuse him, though Kehera didn’t understand why. But he took the pearls and gave one to Luad. She felt better then, as though these indeed were her men and she actually had hired them.

  And Tageiny had said he remembered the terms she had first offered, when she had said she needed help to get through Roh Pass. For the first time since the Eänetén duke had recognized her, she felt that might truly be possible. Or, at least, if these men took her pearls and went to town and then actually came back . . . yes. Then maybe the pass would be possible.

  Though now she wasn’t sure she would be doing the right thing, to run away and make her own way home, abandoning the Eänetén duke when Raëhemaiëth—or the Fortunate Gods, or both—seemed possibly to want her here so she could support him. Against Methmeir Irekaì and the Unfortunate Gods, she presumed. It was all so complicated and peculiar and she didn’t know what to do.

  She was so tired.

  There was a room in the suite that was meant for bodyguards. Gereth had pointed that out to her. It held beds that could fold up into couches, so it could serve either as a bedchamber or a second reception room. That explained why the duke’s suite and hers each had two reception chambers. Naturally, the bodyguards’ room lay between the outer door and the rest of the suite, and naturally there was no other door that led from the suite to the rest of the house. Actually, the arrangement did make her feel safer. She went to look into her own bedchamber.

  Eöté had turned down the bed and taken the chill off the linens with a heavy iron bedwarmer filled with coals and wrapped in a towel. Now the girl jumped up, bobbed a hasty little curtsy, and hurried to hold up a robe she had laid out to warm by the fire.

  Though she wanted that robe and her bed more than anything, Kehera took a moment to introduce the girl to Tageiny and Luad. Naturally Eöté was terrified of them, though she didn’t say so. Tageiny barely glanced at her, assuming a studied air of complete disinterest. Luad set himself to charm her, an attempt Kehera suspected was doomed to failure. She couldn’t find the energy to worry about it now. She left Tageiny in charge of everything and retired to her own private room.

  She was tired. She was so tired. So much had happened. But she didn’t think she would be able to sleep easily. What she wanted most desperately was solitude, time to think about . . . well, things. Everything. She settled on the window seat rather than in the warm bed. The broad glass windows reflected only the room within, as though the outside world had been packed up and put away for the night. Kehera blew out the lamps and pushed aside the heavy curtains, and the winter night leaped into existence: dark mountains against the sky. Curling up on the window ledge, she leaned her cheek against the cold glass and watched the high gibbous moon lighting the streamers of cloud.

  At this very moment, her father might be watching this same moon. She thought of him in his study, leaning back in his chair to consider some difficult problem brought to him for solution. Or perhaps he was at the border, directly confronting a problem that might in the end prove too much even for his care. What in the world was going on between her father and General Corvallis? Her father would have to deal with whatever was happening in Emmer. Tiro would be . . . at home, in the heart of Harivir, at Raëhemaiëth’s heart. At least Tiro was surely safe.

  She missed her brother so much. He would know everything about the history of Eäneté and its dukes, about Pohorir and its kings, about the maneuvering of the Immanent Powers that were bound to the earth and the Gods that had torn themselves free of the mortal world and yet sometimes tried to tilt the outcomes of human strife one way or another. . . . She wished he were here to tell her all about it. Or better, that she was there, with Eilisè, and Tiro was explaining it to both of them just because he was interested and they were patient enough to listen, not because the history of this province mattered to any of them.

  She wanted her father so badly she could taste it. If these past weeks couldn’t be turned back, then she longed to warn him. She wished she could tell him what had happened in Suriytè, and what she suspected now about Methmeir Irekaì and the Immanent Power of Irekay reaching all the way north to unseat the Suriytaiän Power.

  Pe
rhaps her father already knew. If he didn’t . . . perhaps she could send a letter. The duke would surely permit her to explain everything they knew and had guessed.

  The Wolf Duke, whose Power walked through his dreams in the shape of a wolf . . . She pressed her hand against the cold glass.

  She didn’t want to send a letter. She wanted to go home.

  A chance always comes. She was so close. And now . . . if she could trust Tageiny. She thought she could. Surely the Fortunate Gods, who must surely have guided her journey so far, would not deny her one more chance.

  Kehera let the cold of the night strike through the glass into her palm and whispered a private prayer, but she honestly did not know for what she prayed, or whether she hoped more that Fortunate Gods were listening to her or that They hadn’t noticed her at all.

  She woke suddenly, much later, confused. She sat up, gasping at the chill in the air, not knowing where she was, or what had happened to wake her. For the first seconds, recognizing nothing in the cold room with its dark wood and white plaster, in the pale light slanting in through the wide windows, she felt herself utterly adrift.

  Then she remembered. For another few seconds, she thought she must be remembering fragmentary bits of a dream—it all whipped through her mind: the snow and the wolves in the forest, Gheroïn Nomoris dead at her feet, Parren, the duke, a wolf’s yellow eyes set in the face of a man.

  It wasn’t a dream. Nothing of the past days or weeks or months was a dream. She was still in the house of the Wolf Duke, and he was not going to let her go through the pass because he wanted to . . . use her against the Power of Irekay somehow. She couldn’t even blame him. In his place, she would use anything she could lay hand to against that cold Power.

  She should get up. She was cold and stiff and still half asleep. She should get up and wash her face, call for Eöté to help her dress, and venture out of this room so she could find out what was going on. But the room was cold, and Eöté was probably not waiting for her call with a robe warmed by the fire the way Eilisè would have been. Kehera felt very much alone. She wanted nothing more than to tuck herself into the bed, pull the blankets up over her head, and pretend she had never woken up at all.

  But even so, after a moment, she threw back the blankets and sat up, shivering at the shock of cold.

  Eöté slipped in quietly as Kehera was struggling with the highest hooks of the dress she had chosen from those in the wardrobe. It was plain, a soft blue-gray with darker slate gray for the collar and the wide cuffs on the sleeves and the heavy hem. The fabric was heavy and soft and warm, and it fit well enough. But the hooks at the back were hard to reach.

  The girl did up the hooks of Kehera’s dress silently, seeming distracted, and then brought her several thin silver bangles and earrings of silver and smoky crystal. “Your hair, my lady . . .” she whispered, and Kehera smiled at her reassuringly and sat down to allow the girl to unbraid her hair and then braid it again more neatly and put it up in a figure eight. Kehera checked her reflection in the mirror the girl held and nodded. She looked . . . not as pale and frightened as she felt, at least.

  Today, she was determined, she would find out exactly what use the Wolf Duke meant to make of her. She would at the very least to learn enough to let her make a reasonable guess about what he might intend.

  And she knew how to start. She would start with Gereth Murrel, the duke’s seneschal. She told Eöté she wanted breakfast for four, served in her morning room in half an hour.

  She found Tageiny first, however. He was lounging quietly on a couch in the inner sitting room, but he immediately stood and bowed when she came in. “Good morning, my lady,” he said crisply.

  Kehera looked him up and down, astonished. He wore slate-gray trousers, a dove-gray shirt, and a russet vest. His hand rested on the hilt of a sword, and a thin knife was sheathed at his opposite wrist. He looked completely professional and not like a thug at all, despite the broken nose and crooked fingers. He gave Kehera a sense of confidence, which she knew was not justifiable: She was no less powerless in this house. But she no longer felt so dependent on the whims of strangers. It occurred to her, with a sense of surprise, that Tageiny was the first man she had ever had in her service who looked only to her; all her childhood servants and guards had been her father’s men. Tageiny was hers.

  She glanced around. “Where’s Luad?”

  The bodyguard jerked his head toward the outer part of the suite and the main house beyond. “Seeing the armorer about a sword. You have to have a weapon that suits your hand and reach, and I didn’t want both of us out last night.” He touched the hilt of his sword. “I apologize for not asking your permission before leaving you to Luad’s guard alone. You had already retired, and the duke’s men are on your door—did you know? Right. I promise you, the boy is trustworthy, my lady—and better in a fight than I am, at least at close quarters, especially if all there is to hand is a letter opener.”

  “I trust your judgment. I’m impressed you found everything you needed so late in the evening.”

  Tageiny’s eyes glinted. “I had to get the armorer out of bed. He was remarkably accommodating, eventually.”

  Kehera decided not to ask. She said instead, “I’m going to ask the duke’s seneschal for permission to go for a ride in the city. I don’t expect permission to be granted, but I expect Gereth to come in person to tell me so. One of those men outside my door can carry my request to the seneschal. I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes at once. I told Eöté I would need breakfast for four.”

  “Should have made it five, my lady. The boy eats like two. Do the duke’s people always leap to obey you?”

  “They have so far. He . . . I . . . It’s complicated. His Grace extends to me every possible courtesy.” She seated herself on a low couch and regarded him. Tageiny, standing in front of her, looked back very soberly. “I don’t yet know what he wants from me. Or, in a way, I think I might know, but not . . . really. It’s all very strange. I think . . .” But she hesitated, not certain whether she should try to explain that everything seemed suddenly to involve Powers and Gods and kings. That it was all much bigger than one man using her as a hostage to win concessions from her father. In the end, she only shook her head wordlessly.

  Tageiny gave Kehera a look she could not interpret and stepped over to open the door. Kehera had heard nothing, but Luad was there, grinning, bouncing a little on his toes. He was dressed much like Tageiny, but besides a sword he had a knife on each wrist and another at his belt.

  “Lady,” he said to her, but still smiling. “Lots of good sh—stuff in the armory here. All kinds of knives. Got this sword, too.” He tapped its hilt. “I’m a knife man, really, though.”

  Tageiny sighed. “His heart’s in the right place,” he told Kehera, and crossed the room to lean out and tell the duke’s men that the lady wanted to go riding and could they check with the seneschal, and if someone could tell the kitchens breakfast for five, the lady would appreciate their kindness. Then he came back in, looking satisfied. “They do leap to obey you,” he told her. “That’s useful to know.”

  “Any moment, that might change.”

  “Sure. Still, good to know that’s how it is right now.”

  Kehera privately agreed.

  “Want to see my sword?” Luad asked Tageiny.

  “Later, boy . . .”

  Kehera left them to it and went to find the morning room. It wasn’t the room opposite her bedroom, though that one also had an eastern window—that one was a maid’s bedroom, though clearly Eöté hadn’t slept in it. The room after that was a tiny, comfortable library, with handsome volumes of classical poetry and histories and novels—she would like to give those a closer look, later.

  The next room was the morning room. Big eastern window, with a view of the city past the stone and forest of the mountain’s slopes. A table of cream-colored wood, with narrow legs and a carved edge, and six matching chairs. Against one wall, a sideboard and a cabinet for the
porcelain dishes, both of the same pale wood. The dishes were beautiful, glazed an unusual silvery green that Kehera had never seen before. She was still admiring them when Eöté came in to tell her Gereth Murrel requested permission to enter, and then almost at once two other girls, both carrying trays.

  Kehera went quickly out to welcome the duke’s seneschal. He looked exactly as always—kind and faintly harassed—but with a tiny hint of reserve in his manner, which she guessed meant she was not allowed to leave the house and ride into the city. She was aware of a little kick of dismay even though she had not expected otherwise. Inclining her head, she said gravely, “Good morning, Gereth. I was just preparing to break my fast. Might I persuade you to give me the pleasure of your company, if you have not yet broken yours?”

  The duke’s seneschal’s smile might have been reserved, but he pulled up a chair with alacrity, peering at the serving dishes the girls were placing on the table. “I’d be delighted, my lady. That seems like a lot—oh, of course, your, ah, staff.” He discreetly pretended not to notice as Tageiny handed one of the dishes of shelled eggs and a loaf of bread to Luad. Tageiny himself did not sit, nor take any food. He leaned his hip casually against the windowsill and crossed his arms over his chest, keeping an eye on everything.

  “I’ve been entirely too much on the move this morning,” Gereth told Kehera. “I did mean to attend you later in the day—I’ve drawn up a list concerning the disposition of the remaining slaves Parren Dihaft brought south.” The seneschal extracted it from his belt and handed it across the breakfast table, adroitly avoiding dipping his sleeve in the currant jelly. “If any of my decisions displease you, or if you wish on reflection to claim any of these people for your own household, don’t hesitate to let me know. But I think you’ll find most of my placements acceptable. The little one, Geris, can go in with the kennel girls. They’re nice girls, that lot, and little Geris took to the puppies right off. I plan to try one man on my own personal staff, an educated man, Ren Hallay. Geran Lhiyré—my senior factor—has been after me to find him someone competent with figures. Lhiyré’s always overworked, poor man, and more so now as we’ve lost two of our younger factors recently. To marriage and businesses in town,” Gereth added at Kehera’s concerned look.