“. . . until Tentir took over that duty. The Highlord tests himself . . . so far with limited success . . . but at least he recognizes the need.”
Somewhere nearby, someone stifled a sneeze. Ashe stepped into the shadows and out again hauling Graykin by the scuff of his neck, over his furious protests.
“So . . . the gray sneak.”
The Southron bared his teeth at them both and jerked his robe out of the singer’s grasp. “My lady’s sneak, if you please.”
“And what will you tell her . . . this time?”
“Everything, or at least as much as I could hear, which wasn’t much. She doesn’t need either one of you. She has me.”
“She also needs whatever I can discover for her,” said Kindrie mildly.
“Not if I find it out first.”
“You were listening outside the herb shed.”
“Of course I was, not that Index made much sense. Seas turning from fresh to salt to sand—bah.”
“Listen . . . little rat. Your mistress does need to know . . . but the whole truth, not just such crumbs . . . as you manage to gather.”
Graykin drew himself up. “Then tell me, if it’s so important. I’m likely to see her before you do.”
“Ashe?” Kindrie looked at the singer for guidance.
Thinking, Ashe chewed her lip. Part of it ripped off and was absently spat over the wall. “No,” she said at last. “This is a story . . . for the three of you. You . . . will see your cousin soon enough. And you, little man . . . consider the danger of passing along incomplete information.”
“Graykin.” Kindrie touched his shoulder, and looked into the raging eyes of the scruffy cur that was the Southron’s soul-image. For a moment, he thought that the beast would lunge for his throat. However, he also recognized the dazed emptiness behind that fury. “You must leave some things to others. Jame has taken you into her service, but the harder you clutch at her, the more she will push you away.”
The shoulder under his hand stiffened, then slumped. “Yes. All right. I know that she never wanted to bind me in the first place. It just happened.”
With that, he turned and shuffled off.
Ashe regarded Kindrie with death-glazed eyes in which something yet glimmered. “I see . . . that you can convince . . . without hurting. Such is not . . . my talent.”
The healer sighed. “I saw myself in his eyes. We Knorth seem to be lonely perforce, with no home but each other. Have you finished testing me?”
“For the moment.”
“Good,” said Kindrie, and left.
CHAPTER VII
The Day of Misrule
Between Winter 120 and Spring 1
I
Jame woke to a familiar sense of heaviness on her chest. The blanket there stirred with more than her own breath. Lifting up a corner of it, she found herself nose to nose with a triangular head and a flickering, black, forked tongue. Golden coils shifted sleepily between her bare breasts. At least the swamp adder’s eyes were their normal fiery orange; when they turned black, Jame suspected that the Witch of Wilden was peering through them.
“Rue,” she called, keeping her voice calm and low. “Is this a practical joke?”
Her towheaded servant came to an abrupt, wary stop in the doorway.
“It’s no joke of mine, lady. Hadn’t you, er, better get rid of it?”
“Not until I find out why Addy is here.”
Either Timmon’s jealous Narsa was getting repetitious, or Shade was in trouble.
She slid her hands under the serpent’s coils, feeling muscles ripple beneath the warm, gilded skin, and shifted Addy to the bed beside her.
“No one should come after you here.” Rue sounded indignant. “In your own quarters, you’re out of the game.”
Last night had been Spring’s Eve. Tomorrow was Spring’s Day. Between them lay a span of time unmarked on any calendar, separating the old year from the new. In Tai-tastigon, it was called the Feast of Fools, when the gods were mocked to their servants’ content. Here at the randon college, authority suffered a similar fate. Possibly similar upsets occurred all over Rathillien.
“You are going to stay here, aren’t you?” Rue demanded. “If not, I have to call up your ten-command to act as your bodyguard so that no one scalps you.”
Jame smiled. Mindful of her lordan’s dignity which Rue associated with her own, the cadet didn’t want her pulled into any foolery. From what she had heard about Tentir’s Day of Misrule, Jame didn’t especially want to participate either. She had intended to wait until Rue left and then slip out the window to spend the day training with Death’s-head. Now she had to find Shade. Damnation.
“I imagine that the Commandant is going to keep to his quarters.”
“Certainly. Why would anyone want to play silly tricks on him, or he to spoil anyone’s fun? Mind you, it did happen once, with Ardeth’s war-leader Aden.”
Jame remembered the haughty Highborn from his visit earlier that spring and from the last cull when he had served on the Randon Council. Nothing, not even redeeming the Shame of Tentir, made a Highborn girl worthy in his eyes to be a randon cadet. “What happened?”
“He was commandant here then and not at all popular. Didn’t think that the randon were strict enough, that they coddled us all rotten, that nothing was as good as in his day. That sort of nonsense. Well, the cadets rounded up a troop of captured sargents to serenade him and when he stuck his nose out to complain about the noise, somebody grabbed his scarf. They made him serve everyone at the day’s end feast out of his own hoard of delicacies. It got messy, a proper food fight as I hear tell. He’s never forgiven the college.”
Good enough reason, Jame thought, for the less popular officers to make themselves scarce. She had heard that others, better natured, often participated, assuming that roving bands of cadets caught them and managed to nab their scarves, thus ensuring their obedience. Sargents and master-tens would also be fair game for anyone below those ranks.
A light knock on the door heralded Brier’s arrival with a sheaf of papers. Jame tossed the blanket over Addy and rose to dress.
“The duty roster for next week,” said her acting master-ten when she was admitted, and handed it over.
Jame scanned it, noting dozens of spelling errors but not commenting on them. “This looks good.”
The big Southron relaxed marginally.
“So what are your plans for the day, Brier?”
“I’ve more paperwork to do. Let the children play.”
“Hey!” Rue protested. “I’m no child.”
“Close enough.” Jame could see that her servant was fretting to get away. “What mischief are you up to, Rue?”
The towhead grinned. “We’ve set a guard on the strategy instructor’s quarters—you know, the one who always throws his wooden hand at us to keep our attention. If he comes out, let’s see how he likes being on the receiving end.”
“Don’t hurt him,” said Jame sharply.
“Of course not. That wouldn’t be playing the game right. What we’ve gathered to throw is a lot softer than his hand but less sweet smelling.”
“I thought you had a whiff of the stable about you.”
She was about to send Rue on her way when the door burst open. Timmon plunged through and slammed it after him in the face of an Ardeth hunting party.
“They’ve got a list of chores as long as your arm,” he gasped, leaning against the door. “All the household duties I’ve avoided since last summer. They’ve actually been keeping score! Can you believe it?”
“Easily,” muttered Rue as Jame, laughing softly, pulled on her boots.
“Given that,” she said, rising to stomp them home, “why are you here?”
He flopped onto her bed. “I was on my way down to breakfast, half asleep on my feet, and clean forgot what day it was. Before I knew it, they’d cut me off from my quarters. Eek!”
Addy had emerged and was crawling across his hand.
“Will it bite me?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Just hold still. Rue, go and have fun. Brier, if you don’t want to play, at least take the day off. Don’t worry about me.”
Rue grinned and slipped outside where she could be heard indignantly driving Timmon’s pursuers out of the Knorth barracks. With a stiff nod to Jame, Brier followed her.
Meanwhile, the snake had achieved Timmon’s lap and was poking around there, curiously, to the Ardeth’s rigid discomfort. Jame scooped Addy up and draped her around her neck.
“You can stay here if you want.”
“Will you stay with me?” he asked hopefully.
“Sorry, no. I have something to do.”
First, she went in search of Jorin and found him curled up on the chest on Greshan’s quarters that contained the hibernating wyrm. The ounce seemed to be spending more and more time there, as if on watch. The last time Jame had opened the box to check, she had seen movement inside an increasingly transparent chrysalis. Soon it would hatch . . . into what? No one knew anything about the life cycle of a darkling crawler. Not for the first time, she questioned the wisdom of keeping such a thing around, but then in its caterpillar phase it had played with Jorin and purred. “Darkling,” as she well knew, was a relative term.
Leaving the cat on sleepy guard, she went out the window and climbed to New Tentir’s roof.
Even though crusts of snow still lingered under some of the denser evergreens, it was a fine, crisp day with spring in the air like the warm hint of wild clover. Early flowers freckled the training fields. Wispy clouds floated overhead, chasing their shadows northward up the Riverland’s valley floor.
Noise below caught her attention.
In the square, a squad of sargents was being drilled and getting thoroughly mixed up as they tried to follow the contradictory orders shouted at them by gleeful cadets.
Meanwhile, one of the more unpopular ten-commanders thundered around the arcade in a punishment run.
And off to one side, a solitary randon officer wobbled as if drunk through a game of hopscotch, surrounded by a crowd of jeering cadets. One of them was Damson, from Jame’s own ten-command. She remembered now that this particular randon had often made fun of Damson’s weight and stocky build, just as Vant had done. That in turn reminded her of how Vant was said to have stumbled into the fire pit as if pushed. Glancing up, Damson caught her eye, flinched, and slid back into the crowd. Sometime soon, Jame thought, she needed to have a word with that cadet.
First, though, she had to find Shade.
Sliding a hand under the serpent’s head, she looked at her eye to eye. “Where is your mistress?” The black tongue flicked the tip of her nose, but she got no other response.
Jame wasn’t sure how smart the adder was—enough to find her, but not enough to lead her back to Shade? That was odd. Then again, while Jorin had alerted her barracks that she was in trouble when the Randir had kidnapped her and thrust her into Bear’s den, the cat hadn’t been able to convey anything but his distress. Of course, no one of the Falconer’s class had been present, which might or might not have made a difference. Perhaps a dog would do better. That in turn reminded her of Gorbel’s pook Twizzle. From here, she could see the tall, semiblind Caineron barracks. Well, why not ask?
Gorbel looked around as she swung in through his bedroom window. “Don’t you ever use the door?”
“You know how I would be greeted below. Fash has a score to settle with me.”
“Huh. Since the Council meeting, yes, not that he didn’t deserve what he got.”
The Caineron Lordan was setting his boar spears in order, his armor with its cuirass and skirt of braided leather nearby ready to be donned.
“I’m not about to waste a good hunting day playing silly buggers with a bunch of retarded brats,” he said, seeing her glance at his gear. “Twizzle stays here, though. For one thing, it’s too dangerous. For another, he makes tracking almost too easy.”
“I was just about to ask if I could borrow him.”
She explained.
Gorbel grunted. “So that’s why you’re wearing the Randir’s snake like a damned torque. What, no note tied to her neck, or should that be to her tail?”
“I’m serious, Gorbel. Something is wrong.”
“There always is, when you’re around. All right. Take Twizzle. He can’t follow a normal trail worth scat, but if you fix your mind on what you want, he should take you to it sooner or later.”
He dumped the pook into her arms. She reversed him. Dog and snake regarded each other with what seemed like wary recognition.
On the way down, Jame made the mistake of taking the stairs. On the landing, she met Higbert.
“Just the person Fash wants to see,” he said and made a grab for her scarf, only to recoil as Addy reared back to hiss at him.
“All right, all right, go! We’ll catch up with you soon enough and that precious Brier of yours, too.”
Jame wondered, on the way down, what the Caineron had in mind for her five-commander. Few escaped Caldane’s clutches, but Brier had, to take service with her brother. Gorbel might not mind; clearly others did. However, Brier was also a seasoned warrior who had come up through the ranks. Surely she could take care of herself.
On the arcade, she was almost knocked over by the master-ten compelled to the punishment run and saw that it was Reef of the Randir.
“Run, run, RUN!” shouted her cadets.
Not popular, huh? thought Jame, watching her go. Surprise, surprise.
Two more approaching cadets made her hesitate, but they were only Gari of the Coman and Mouse of the Edirr, both students in the Falconer’s class.
“We aren’t after you,” they assured her, “just out to see the fun. What are you doing with Addy? Where’s Shade?”
“I don’t know. In trouble somewhere. I’ve got to find her.”
The two exchanged looks. “Then we’ll round up the rest of the Falconeers to help.”
“Here.” Mouse detached one of the twin albino mice from her hair and handed it to Jame. “If you find Shade first, tell Mick and Mack will tell me. If we find her before you do, Mick will start squeaking. Just follow the direction in which he’s loudest.”
Jame accepted the mouse and let it nestle on the crown of her head, tiny pink paws nervously gripping her braids. A rap on the nose diverted Addy from what would normally have been her dinner.
Gari eyed the diminutive Twizzle. “Maybe he’s a great tracker, maybe not. We’ll see if we can find Tarn and Torvi.”
They left.
Jame checked that Addy wasn’t about to have Mick for a snack, put Twizzle down, and followed his flouncing progress along the arcade.
In the great hall, cadets had stretched a rope from one second-story balcony to the other and were making a captured randon cross it. Jame recognized Bran from her special weapons’ class. He wobbled wildly, causing her to catch her breath. Then he noted her in the shadows and winked, or seemed to—with only one good eye, it was hard to tell.
The pook led her down the stairs into the subterranean stable where she found the horse-master mucking out stalls.
“Some fool cadet thought it would be funny to set me at this work,” he said, pausing to wipe his bald head with a sleeve. “As if I didn’t do it every day anyway, assistants notwithstanding. Have I seen Shade? No. She comes here as little as possible; the horses don’t like her pet—which I see that you’ve got. Also a mouse, also a pook. What is this, a field day at the zoo?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, you’re to go on down. One of your cadets passed by and asked that I send you on if you followed her.”
Now what? wondered Jame, descending into the sullen light and steaming heat of the fire timber hall.
Damson stood near the edge of a fire pit. Jame came up beside her.
“This is where Vant fell?”
“Yes, lady.”
“And that was your doing. How?”
“I can make small changes in peop
le’s heads. Make them dizzy. Make them stumble. Make them feel what it’s like to be fat and clumsy.”
“Now I remember. When Timmon, Gorbel and I were standing at attention in the snow, something made me fall over.”
Damson shuffled, not meeting her eyes. “Vant kept whispering in my ear: ‘Do it, do it, do it, you fat little sow.’ And so I did.”
Jame reflected that she had been lucky only to have lost her balance, and that into nothing worse than snow. A few small changes in the head . . . ! How much did it take to cause seizures or even death? Damson appeared to be a Shanir linked to That-Which-Destroys, her power an inversion of a healer’s in that it allowed her to hurt without touching, apparently without even much thought. God’s claws, how dangerous.
“Don’t do it again,” she told the cadet. “If you strike me, I may strike you back. Hard.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t hurt you. You’re nothing like Vant. I like you. There. Do you see him?”
The hall with its smoldering timbers cast few shadows, but one seemed to stand against the charred bark of an ancient tree on the far side of the pit. Fire laced its flaking skin and its eyes glowed . . . or was that only a trick of the light?
Damson snickered. “How he glares! Where’s his high and mighty pride now?”
By the smirk on the cadet’s plump face, Jame suddenly realized that Damson didn’t regret her deed. On the contrary, she had come back because the memory of it gave her pleasure.
“Now see here: you can’t kill people just because they’re unpleasant to you.”
“No?” Damson seemed puzzled. “Why do I have this ability, if not to use it?”
Trinity. Was the girl ignorant or insane? Jame herself tended to take responsibility for things genuinely not her fault, like Vant, hence the Burning Ones and the Dark Judge who came sniffing after her—or was it Damson they were after? But this cadet seemed to have no sense of responsibility at all, and precious little conscience. Was she like a hole in the air to them? How did one judge such an anomaly as a Kencyr with no inborn sense of honor?
“Think,” she said, a little desperately. “There has to be a balance. What Vant did to you was nasty, but was it worth his life?”
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