I went out into the bright light and the wind to relieve myself. Since my training with Powl, I cannot piss on the dirt inside a building, even if the cows do. I saw Timet springing over the snow, swinging each leg out to spare the snowshoe. He stood close to me and bent his head to my ear. “We will meet the army at Norwess Palace, tomorrow before dark.”
I stared around us. There was nothing in sight but a low fence and the snow-capped mound that was the cowman’s cabin, abandoned and boarded over. “What here told you this, lad? No shadow of a track except yours and ours. I heard nothing.”
Again he whispered, “Nothing told me. I knew it already. We retreated to the palace when this cold hit, and Navvie and I… your daughter Nahvah, I mean to say…”
“Say anything you like, Tim, but you should have said it to the king, whom it concerns most closely. Do you think I’m leading him into a trap?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what you are doing, Nazhuret. You never said.”
I must be getting like Powl, I thought.
We went in and I told Benar that Timet’s best guess was that we would find the army at the palace the next day. For a minute he did not say anything, but even in the dim light I saw his face grow taut and his eyes age. Then he said, offhandedly, “I wish we could make some extra miles today. It seems a shame to waste so much light.”
I said I couldn’t be sure of finding another shelter before nightfall. The king looked not at me but at Timet, who had remained standing in Benar’s presence, though from respect or mistrust I could not tell. “Well, boy, is there another shelter?”
“No, sir,” he replied. He stood attentively until certain that the king was finished with him, and then he faded back to the stall where Navvie had made her neat camp.
I guessed that Benar and Timet were nearly of an age, as Benar’s father had been with me. For a few years Rudof had been in the habit of calling me “boy.” I wondered how Timet felt about it.
That night I slept in front of one of the byre’s two doors, hating the draft, while Timet guarded the other. I remember that Dinaos came over and prodded me to move so he could get out. When he returned to the byre, he sat down beside my bivouac.
For a while nothing was said, and then I thought it best to remind this reckless man that we were going into danger, and that his nationality and his connections were likely to prove unpopular. He replied smugly that he did not anticipate any danger. He was still sitting there when I closed my eyes, his lean profile lit by the snow-shine coming through a crack between doorboards. Just before I fell asleep it occurred to me that I still had not told Timet what I was doing with the king and an enemy count on the slopes of Norwess. How arrogant. How like Powl. No doubt his opinion of me would rise.
I did not sleep well because of the cold, and found myself shrinking unconsciously away from the door I had promised to guard. Sometime in the middle of the night I gave up and sat cross-legged on one of my blankets, wrapping the other over me, and spent the rest of the night in the belly of the wolf, the practice that seemed to be causing so much grief and misunderstanding to Velonya. I felt steeped in betrayal, though whether it was my betrayal of my country, my practice’s betrayal of me, or any other passing betrayal I cannot tell. With the first light I was glad to be out. As I opened the byre door, a shaft of daylight slid over the floor, ending on the form of Timet of Norwess, who turned and opened his eyes. I left before I wakened the others.
I could see only one good end to this confrontation today, and that was like one fine thread in a tangle: hard to find, easily broken. If the king would not bend, it would likely end with all of us dead before nightfall. If the duke of Norwess would not accept rule of king and parliament, the same would occur. Perhaps Navvie and Timet might be spared from butchery, and Sieben considered no more than a servant, but no, Sieben would not likely abandon his master, nor would Navvie abandon her papa.
I worried more about my daughter that morning than I had when she was miles away and missing. I spoke my heart to Arlin about it.
“I like her with that boy,” I said. “Perhaps it is desperation on my part, or self-love (because he carries my name), but if I could be assured that she had someone who meant something to her, I could go through with this political charade with much better heart.”
I heard no answer in my head. I was trudging through cold and powdery snow, which reached half up to my knees and made little sparkling clouds in the still, dawn air. Ahead was a copse of second-growth osier, pollarded, with seats and a well in the middle. I saw the dark hair and a glimpse of the face, and wondered how Navvie had gotten past me in the dark. Doubtless she had left by Tim’s door. I was glad I had not been near enough for her to hear me throwing her name and her future about out loud, and as I entered the copse, I tried to imagine who or what had been the Navvie-shaped lump in her blankets in the stall that the light had caught for me just that one instant as I was leaving the byre.
The head turned, and it was not Navvie but Arlin looking at me. All in black except her white face, and perfectly clear in the daylight. “It’s enough, Zhurrie,” she said. “I want you to stop talking to me now. I am dead. Let me be.” And she was gone.
I thought I was going to weep loudly, but no sound came out. This was not self-control, but lack of strength. I stared with dry eyes at the sparkling surface of the bench, where the shade had left no imprint, and I choked repeatedly: blank inside, blank outside. I heard a shuffling sound behind me and someone dropped a blanket over my shoulders. I thought it was Navvie, but it was Timet. He moved in front and began to lower himself to the bench.
“Don’t sit there,” I said, but as he glanced from me to the snowy bench and back, I shook my head and swept the snow away for him. “I’m sorry, lad. Do sit down. What I said made no sense. It’s the living who need the furniture, eh?”
He did sit. He had his own blanket wrapped around him, so that only the pale hair stuck out the top, floating and snapping in the dry air. “Who… do you want to tell me who it was, Nazhuret?”
“No. It doesn’t matter anymore.” As I spoke, it really didn’t matter; I felt able to go on. I met the young man’s eyes, glad at least that I had not screwed my face up in tears. A man of fifty-five crying is an unsettling sight. “Do you see them, Timet of Norwess? Ghosts?”
He winced. “Please don’t call me that. It sounds too much like a title, and I’m common as dirt. But I have seen them, and spoken with them. It always hurts… I saw my father.”
This was interesting. “So did I, once. My father, I mean. He looked like you.”
Timet winced again. “Mine didn’t. No matter. They are gone. We are here.” He got up and strode off on his snowshoes with some dignity, and I was sorry I had ever teased the boy.
Most of the day four of us rode, while the ones with snowshoes padded on ahead and waited for us to catch up. My heart thudded with work and altitude. My frozen breath made breaking-glass sounds in my ears.
It was discovered that Count Dinaos and Timet shared boot sizes and before many minutes had passed, the count had convinced the young rebel to exchange the awkward baskets for his horse. It seemed odd, when Timet showed such a cold reserve before the Velonyan king, that he warmed so early to the aristocrat of Lowcanton. But Dinaos, when he so chose, could exert an enormous charm.
Navvie was forced to spend the next hour shepherding Count Dinaos, and pulling him out of drifts. She giggled frequently, and so did the count. Timet, for his part, rode well and seemingly with enjoyment. He kept his stirrups short, Rezhmian style.
I let them play, for I felt this might be the last enjoyment any of us were to have, but I could not join in. I felt as empty and as cold as the sky, and even in the privacy of my mind I did not dare to speak. The king was as somber as I, and Sieben—well, the pirate did not appear to own a facial expression.
We passed tidy empty farms, and then we passed ones where the snow was churned with animal waste and human effort. The turns were sharp left and shar
p right, one every few miles, and we did not stop. The snow receded to a covering no thicker than a feather quilt, and the road in many places was clear. The heavy, long-needled pines informed me when we were in that region anciently known as Norwess before Norwess was part of Velonya, or Velonya as such existed at all.
The king caught up with me. “I won’t be able to talk,” he said. “We will get there and at the important moment I will open my mouth and emit only frogs and toads,”
“It’s the altitude,” I said. “I don’t like it, either. You have to be born to it. Raised to it, I mean,” I added; remembering that I had been born in the very house which was our destination.
A few minutes later, we passed a farm at the end of a long drive. I begged money from the king, trotted down, and came back balancing a heavy sack of corn over the pommel. Our spent horses were revived with good food and a half-hour’s rest, and I gave the king the hide bottle I had bought from the farmer’s wife. “For your throat,” I said. “One sip now, and more when we near the palace.”
He sprayed the brandy into his mouth and nearly gagged.
I told him it was good: that it contained herbs and honey as well as the refining of the grape. I explained myself so well he sprayed his throat again, heavily, and I had to wonder whether I should have kept the bottle.
Our own lunches were eaten side by side with those of our horses, and we were on our way just as the shadows started to grow again.
Timet had a very good power of estimation. We arrived upon the paved roads of Norwessten before the hour was up, and were in the town of white stone and white snow soon after. The young man led us, on his snowshoes once again, with my daughter scooting behind him. At my suggestion King Benar wrapped a blanket over his head. No sense, I told him, in exciting the townsfolk. Nor the many stalwarts holding their hands to the stove in the public houses or huddling in sixes and tens in the sunlight of the town square. Some of these looked dedicated and some looked like wild dogs, but I was learning to tell a rebel when I saw one.
Norwessten in snow was a dazzle to the eyes, but it is not a large town and we were soon through it. To go the three miles from the town to the palace needed no surveyman or tracker—we only followed the stream of men heading to and fro between them. Some of them were wearing the rebel “uniform,” a white rag tied about the upper arm, while some were innocent even of that. Once we passed another beggar of Timet’s sort, and they exchanged a signal with the hands that was half a salute. This was the first time I felt like laughing all day, but I restrained myself. The road was hard and dry.
The king knew that we were close also, for I heard him spraying his throat with brandy. He did not offer the bottle around, which was just as well.
I slipped off my poor mare and led her up next to Timet, who was carrying his snowshoes over his shoulder. “You have to get us in to see the duke,” I whispered. “In private. Peacefully.”
He furrowed his pink young forehead. “I don’t have ready access to nobles, Nazhuret.”
“Then you must baby-sit these here and allow me to do it, though I can’t claim to be on any closer terms.”
He glanced over his shoulder at king and company and recoiled. Like me, he had a speaking countenance. “No. I’ll do it.” He put the shoes under his arm and took off down the road at a run. For a moment I thought Navvie would follow him, but she remained with me.
We were in the parks of the palace and then we were on the avenue. “How are we doing, sir?” I called back to King Benar.
He answered with a few bars of the hymn “Velonyie,” delivered in a strong tenor. I looked back in surprise, and the young king was smiling. “I’m not drunk, Nazhuret. Or not very. Now I need only decide what I’m going to sing to them.”
Make it good, I said, but not very loudly.
As the park of Norwess Palace opened out into gardens, I began to see for the first time the rebellion’s size. The snow was trampled so heavily that the grass locked below was clearly visible through the ice of compression, which was hard and slick everywhere but on the road, where constant churning had warmed the stuff to a sticky mud. The place stank of what happens when twenty or forty thousand men are stalled together without proper latrines, and what had been in times past rose gardens, shrubberies, and plantings was now a city of shacks and tents. The air was gray with woodsmoke, and that of badly burned coal.
At my back the king said, “So this is the force that would overthrow the government?” He laughed, rather louder than I would have liked. “I wouldn’t even call them soldiers. They can’t keep their camps clean!”
I cleared my throat. “Be aware, sir, that there are twice the number of men here as you had when you wished to fling yourself at them the day before yesterday. And these are Norwessers, adapted to the altitude and to bitter cold. In fact, if they are camping in tents this month, they must be hardy as badgers. Let’s keep your hood up and get through them quietly.”
By now we were among the tents, where the stink was more of smoke than excrement. I was not happy over the change, however, for we had to squirm our way among the idle troops, mostly the hardy Norwessers I had just described, who moved out of the way of a man my size very reluctantly. Navvie, who by now must have been known among the rebels of Norwess, darted among them lightly, her own hood over her head, looking like any undersized boy of fourteen. King Benar had slipped down from his horse and was leading the animal along the “street” between the walls of canvas. I hoped he would not barge ahead of me.
Navvie led us down that street and another. At the end of the encampment was a rod of clear ground, much cut up by wagon wheels, and then the stairs of the second coach-portico of the palace. I felt Benar’s hand on my shoulder and heard Dinaos’s horse’s hooves splash up beside us. The Lowcantoner count had not dismounted and rode with bare head, as though daring any one to challenge him for a foreigner. I could neither see nor hear Sieben, but I did not doubt he was nearby.
“Now what?” asked the king, and without looking at him, Navvie answered, “We wait for Timet to return. He will meet us here.”
Now Dinaos got down, wincing, from his horse. “You know,” he began, speaking Velonyie with more of an accent than usual, “I don’t care for your northern saddles. Nothing more than wood and leather. They indicate to me that you don’t expect to go very far when on horseback.”
I glanced around, but there was no one at the portico but us to hear the count admitting his Lowcantoner birth. I saw the king looking also. He replied, “One day you will tease yourself into real trouble, Uncle. In fact, that day may be today.”
I said to the count, “Velonyans pride themselves on their ability to withstand discomfort, my lord. In fact, though, their nether parts grow numb after a few miles.”
The count eased himself down on the cold steps in his brocade smalls. “And you, Nazhuret? You have been riding on these saddles all your life. Are your nether…”
Hurriedly the king trod over the count’s question with “If you feel our saddles are trying, Uncle, you should sit on one of the Rezhmian kind, with your knees up to…”
Navvie trod on his words with “He’s here.”
Timet was in the doorway, holding it open. I gave my horse to Sieben and went to him. I was stiff, too: a bad sign.
Timet did not look at us as we climbed up the marble steps and crossed to the door. Then all of us were within doors.
The warmth touched my face like loving kisses. There was baking in the air, and the smell of pickled cabbage. I felt a moment of such disgust for war, hardship, and politics that tears came to my eyes. I put my arm over my daughter’s shoulder and gave her a brief hug.
“I told him you were back and had to see him quietly. The duke, that is. It was hard to get to him alone, but I did.”
The king was staring across at Timet. “Oh, I imagine if anyone could get to a man alone, it is you, lad. In spirit, if not in body.”
Timet stared back, so astonished that I wondered whether he h
ad seen the king when the king had seen him. Then he led us down a curtained, carpeted hall and up a flight of stairs to a heavy black door, which he opened.
I had not understood the young man’s arrangements. I intended to present the king to Mackim without the presence of my daughter, or Dinaos, or Timet, or anyone who might come in the way of lead or steel. But Timet stepped through the door with Navvie after him and the rest of us following at his heels. Inside was Duke Mackim of Forney, sitting at a heavy desk before a good fire, and, leaning against the same desk, the reedy figure of Jeram Pagg.
Jeram spoke first. “Excuse me, Nazhuret. I know you wanted privacy, but I have been longing to speak with you.”
The duke was glaring at my party. “No matter, Pagg. It doesn’t seem to be a very private meeting anyway.”
I stepped in front of his scowling face. “I had hoped, my lord, for just the three of us.” The king came up beside me and slipped his hood back.
There was a moment’s silence, when it seemed events had the freedom to flow in any direction, like water. The king might bellow, or the duke call for his guards. But the duke might also go down on his knee to Benar: less likely, but possible. As it happened, Dinaos, his man, my daughter, Timet, the king, the duke, and myself all stood frozen, and it was Jeram Pagg who broke the possibilities into bits. He drew his dowhee.
“Put that down, Jer. There’s no need for weapons here,” said Nahvah, letting her heavy overcoat fall into a heap on the carpet.
Dinaos, who with his gentlemanly rapier was the only one of us to enter obviously armed, gazed full at Jeram’s beggar garments and his hedger, at me, back again at Jeram, and began to laugh. It was a sturdier laugh than his lean person seemed to allow, and it drowned out King Benar’s first words. “Call him off. I said call him off, Mackim. If I had come bent upon war I would surely make a better show of it than this.”
Duke Mackim put his hand upon Jeram’s arm and the dowhee came down, reluctantly. “I am very interested to know what it is you have come for…” I saw the duke floundering for a way to address Benar that would not admit the king’s authority but would not be shockingly rude. There was no real difficulty, however, for we in Velonya have called our king by the title of any private gentleman for over fifty years now, and so Mackim called the king “sir.” It is usual to give a little bow when “sir-ing” the king, but Mackim did not bow.
The Lens of the World Trilogy Page 74