Once a Princess

by Sherwood Smith

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  The tall one grinned, but did not speak.

  “Not really,” another one murmured, and when Jehan looked his way his breath caught. He was about to exclaim, “Senrid?” when he realized that this fellow was not Senrid Montredaun-An, King of Mrloven Hess and head of the academy to which Jehan had gone to learn war skills so long ago.

  The resemblance stubbornly persisted, though Senrid never wore this sort of thoughtful almost scholarly expression, nor had he grown as tall. Most tellingly this fellow’s eyes were brown, an ordinary light brown, and King Senrid’s were grayish blue.

  “I’m David,” the fellow said, pronouncing it not Sartoran DAUF-ed but marlovan-style DAY-vid. David gestured at the three others. “we’re her to play in your games.”

  Jehan took in the two unfamiliar ones. First, a tallish thin fellow with a dreamy expression, wide-set brown eyes and an unkempt mat of curly light brown hair that brought Prince Math instantly and forcibly to mind. The last was a mere boy, scarcely cadet age from the looks of him. He seemed an everyday small boy, dressed in homespun shirt and riding trousers brown hair clipped back from a high brow, though Jehan almost immediately began observing subtle anomalies, beginning with his stillness, and the steady observant hazel gaze that seemed far older than you ever saw in any child’s face.

  “And the rest of you are?” he suspected he would not get a real answer.

  Nor did he. “Competitors,” David said, and then with an air of absent courtesy, “You have no objection to a little roustabout perhaps?”

  “Whats that supposed to mean?” Jehan recognized that they knew who he was. Where had he seen that tall one before? Now it seemed important.

  “Nothing untoward,” David soothe. “Shall we meet after the day’s entertainment?”

  “I suspect” Jehan eyed the tall one again “that I will want very much to do that. Where have I seen you before?”

  “Here and there.” The tall one grinned briefly, no more that a flash of teeth. His voice was lower than you’d expect from someone that lean. Low , husky and again familiar.

  Sweat trickled down Jehan’s forehead. The morning air had gone from warm to hot, and the sun was still low. “Go on. Sign up. So whatever it is you’re going to do.” Things could hardly get worse.

  The tall one laughed softly as they passed on by.

  The small one was last. As he drew near Jehan he said in Sartoran, “Stay your path.”

  He dashed after his companions and they vanished around the mossy old wall of the ruined castle, reappearing halfway up the trail at a dead run.

  Jehan veered between amusement and annoyance at some urchin advising him how to get to his own academy. As if was likely to stray of the path. In Sartoran. He listened to the words again, thinkin in Sartoran instead of just mentally translating the words.

  Stay your path.

  In Sartoran the connotation was closer to You’re doing the right thing.

  Now that was strange. He paused to peer upwards against the rising sun as the four mystery visitors vanished over the top of the hill toward the public path. He forgot about the heat, his headache even his hunger, and began to lope up the trail toward the back way into the old abandodned storage rooms where he usually left his change of clothes. Maybe the day that had promised a long stretch of annoyance might yield some surprises after all.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Lesi Velleg wept for joy, shaking her head impatiently so her vision would not blur. She stood with a cluster of seniors at the sideline of the archery butts, and watched the little boy in homespun lift his bow, pull back and aim in the same fluid motion so he was one line form thumb to the back elbow, and when he let fly his arm snapped out so his arms were a straight line, thumb to thumb. And then down, as smooth and unthinking as the folding wings of a swan.

  It was effortless, graceful and the best shot of the day, despite his age, despite the distance and oh, oh, oh despite Damedran leaning against the wall on the other side of the butts, his bruised face expressionless.

  “See that? Arm all the way back,” she muttered, wiping her eyes. “it really does make a difference.” And the other seniors standing near her, instead of rolling their eyes or sneering or wayning as they always had in the past, agreed with mutters of wonder.

  Once prince Jehan had told her that this was the way he’d been taught to shoot by that academy on the other side of the continent. But that fact had only earned scoffing. Every cadet knew he was a cloud brain. And everyone knows Marlovens were mere horse riders, they didn’t train on water as well as land.

  If you want to shoot you need first to learn form. Aim will then come, she remembered her old teacher saying. It wouldn’t do to remind everyone. She’d be accused of swagger. And anyway, that boy had carried off the silver cup. She didn’t need to remind them.

  She followed the crowd, hoping she could talk to him. She wanted to tell him it was a pleasure to watch him. It would have been a pleasure to shoot against him, no matter who won, if only her arm hadn’t been broken.

  But the trumpet blew the signal to change events and most of the competitors, locals as well as cadets, swarmed to the tables to get some water before lining up for the last and favourite vent of the land games: the relay race, which took all afternoon.

  “You don’t have to go,” Ban said to Damedran as they followed more slowly. He regretted his earlier triumph when Damedran was summarily thumped in the last grappling match, though he’d enjoyed it thoroughly(and privately) at the same time.

  Damedran turned his puffy face Ban’s way, then flashed up the back of his hand.

  Despite the insult Ban was not angry. Not when he saw the spasm of pain that tightened Damedran’s features.

  Ban, Bowsprit and a couple of others exchanged wry looks. Nothing felt quite real anymore; life was no longer predictable. One thing was clear, despite his drubbing Damedran was going to carry on anyway.

  The trumpet pealed and everyone looked up.

  “Teams gather here,” bawled the captain in charge of the relay.

  Damedran limped slowly to the edge of the field from which the sprinters would take off on the first leg of the relay. Paying no attention to the chatter around him, he said, “I’ll ride. Can’t run or canoe.” He gave them a painful grimace that was supposed to be a smile.

  Ban saw Wolfie peering intently to one side, his mouth twisted in the smirk that meant either he’d been fighting or was going to fight. And there was Red moseying along, looking skyward, as he passed by the various teams assembling. He slowed near the strangers who had so unaccountably appeared and taken all the prized. Red stopped as the unfamiliar four talked briefly and quietly among themselves, bend to pick something from one boot, then he straightened up and sauntered with a bit more speed to Wolfie, and muttered behind his hand.

  Wolfie beckoned to a couple of their other followers, and Ban suspected what was probably going to happen. He knew his guess was right when Wolfie stepped up to Damedran and said, “the little one is doing the ride.” He chuckled the way he always did before somebody ended up getting scagged. “Guess they won’t win the relay.”

  Damedran shook his head.

  Ban said in disgust, “You’re going to drop on the littlest one.”

  Wolfie, Red and the other two turned his way, their faces ranging from guilty to defiant to angry.

  Damedran said, surprising them all, “That’s not an...an.. a fair scrag. Dropping on a little boy, that’s just rabbiting.”

  “Fair?” Red repeated, as if he’d never heard the word.

  “But you dropped Lesi Velleg,” Ban observed. It had been a guess. He saw from Damedran’s quick grimace that he’d been right.

  “That was different,” Damedran muttered, trying not to look yet again to where the tall, thin girl with the sling-bound arm stood, her straight brows low, watching him with unsmiling intensity. “we couldn’t win against her. I wanted, I needed, wins in everything.” He dropp
ed his head back, uttering a strangled laugh.

  “It isn’t different,” Ban said.

  Damedran’s mouth tightened. He opened his hand. “She wouldn’t have won anyway. Not against that little brat.”

  “Who are they?” asked Calan Prdiesh, Red’s cousin from the coast.

  “I don’t know.” Damedran shifted with painful care to observe the newcomers, who stood in line, the tall one grining at something the short one said, the fair-haired one looking pensive, the one with the curly hair watching two raptors riding the thermals high up under the flat carpet of tiny puff-clouds that promised rain. “but he uses moves I’ve never seen.” He fingered his shoulder, winced again. “Or felt.”

  They all reflected on the grappling. The lazy way the tall one moved to block, to deflect, and his whip-fast brutal attacks. All without breaking a sweat.

  “They won’t win,” Wolfie reminded them, rubbing his hands.

  Ban studied the small bow who stood there so still and poised as he contemplated the stands where the commanders sat with the prince. Neither of the Randarts smiled, and all the seniors knew they were angry. But they could do nothing. The completion was open, had been for years.

  Nobody cared what prince Jehan thought.

  Ban said suddenly privately to Bowsprit, “I think...” he shook his head.

  Bowsprit turned his thin pointy nose toward Wolfie’s huge, muscular form, and then to the small slender boy who was probably about nine, if that. “I think so too.”

  “First leg runners, line up here,” called the captain. “Second-leg canoe, follow captain Semmeg, third leg mountain climbers follow captain Torvic, and the horse riders for the last leg you go with captain Lesstrad to our posts. We’ve got animals up there waiting for you.” The trumpet played the signal, and a roar went up as the relay racers separated.

  Ban took off behind Captain Torvic, along with the other five members of cadet teams, two members of the royal fleet, and the blond foreigner with the pensive face, the one who had won every single sword match.

  Ban loped in the fellow’s direction, questions forming in his mind, but the other cadets were there first. An usual the youngest came right out with nosy questions of the sort Ban might have ventured only after a couple of ales.

  “Where are you from?” piped a ten year old.

  “Oh here and there you might say,” was the answer with a faint trace of accent. “Never really settled in one place.”

  “Where’d you learn sword work?”

  The fellow smiled. “Various teachers. They tend to be hard on mistakes, so you know you learn to make as few as possible.”

  “How hard?” aksed a fourteen year old girl with the squint eyed distrust of the middle teens.

  “Let’s say ... they broke us of bad habits.”

  Everyone even the ten year old heard the humorous ambiguity behind “broke”.

  “Belay the chatter and hurry up there,” called Captain Torvic.

  That ended the talk until they reached the site for their leg of the relay. While they waited, the newcomer prowled around looking down at the road, up at the cliffs, at the distant sea, at the sky, and though Ban watched him steadily, he never turned Ban’s way.

  The newcomer with the frizzy hair was first to their post, and the blonde one took off. One of their own group was next, crimson faced with effort, and Ban sprinted up the mountain, hoping he would not see Wolfie or Red, but afraid he knew where they were.

  When he reached the last leg, gasping with effort the little boy was gone, and the blond fellow sat on the grass, smiling at the sky. Ban almost said something but shook his head and started back down the trail to the academy.

  It was a long hot gloomy walk. He took the horse trail anyway, but didn’t see anyone.

  When he reached the academy, it was to find out that the newcomers had one. The small boy rode bareback into the center of the parade ground on a high-spirited charger, his hands not even on the reins.

  Prince Jehan was the first to applaud, and then the others joined, but not with any spirit. The river rush of voices all talking and exclaiming was almost louder than the clapping.

  Bowsprit and Ban having hoped the boy would escape being scagged by Wolfie and Red and a few of the boys, said nothing at all as they followed the glum senior cadets to the parade ground for the distribution of the prizes.

  Up in the stands Dannath Randart was so angry he felt his blood boiling in a drumbeat through his head. But he schooled himself to sit without moving, fists on his knees, as he stared down at the shambles of his plan.

  Plans could be remade. He knew that. He glowered at his nephew who limped from the horse picket across to the senior line. Why did the idiot have to ride in the relay when he could barely sit a horse, just to lose yet again? Now Randart had to consider ways to wrench some kind of victory form the distasteful, no, the shameful exhibition.

  The blame would go squarely on the shoulders of the staggeringly stupid whitehaird fatwit sitting to his right, who was now getting up and flicking dust from his faultless velvet, in order to go down to the field to hand out the prizes.

  Randart glared at Jehan. “those newcomers. I want them.” And at the shocked look on Orthan’s face he forced a semblance of civility into his tone, “I believe the king would want to hear about their training. Please your highness request them to honour us for a celebratory glass up in the command tower.”

  Jehan as always was oblivious to the sudden change of tone...Jehan. Prisoners. Market Street...Cadets...Randart put out a hand remembering again what had bothered him when he woke up. He’d been bothered enough to go down to the lockup and ask a few questions, despite the loaded schedule. “you arrested a cutpurse in market street yesterday?”

  Jehan’s thin brows lifted. “I did?”

  “Damedran saw you. That is the boys say you from the senior barracks. But the only thief in the lockup is the pickpocket brought in by the pier patrol on morning rotation.”

  Jehan sighed, looking apologetic. “well I did try. But my miscreant got away.”

  So he didn’t have any of his followers in the king’s guard with him. “Why didn’t you call up the guard? There’s always a patrol within earshot.”

  “I thought they were off duty,” Jehan said vaguely. “I did not like to disturb them.”

  Randart sat back in disgust. He marshalled himself enough to say with forced politeness, “I believe they are awaiting on their prizes, your highness. Forgive me for detaining you.”

  Jehan bowed, a court bow and highly inappropriate here, but that was as usual. Everything was as usual, so why did he feel something crucial was missing from that testimony?

  I’m seeing conspiracies everywhere, Randart thought. But just the same before the prince reached the end of the platform and was about to step down into the regular stands to descend to the field, he called, “Remember after we speak to the winners, the king requires you to remain with us. Your highness.”

  Once again a court bow, hand gracefully at his heart, and Jehan ran lightly down the steps to the field, where the captains had the cadets in field order, the younger boys and girls standing more or less straight lines. While the seniors looked around for Wolfie and Red and their two cronies, Randart said to his brother, “I want the prince followed say it’s for his safety. But put someone discrete on it.”

  Startled, Orthan leaned over to speak to the aide on duty, who hustled along the back of the platform to the hidden doorway leading down to the guardroom.

  The brothers turned their attention back to the field, where Jehan stood next to the four small cadets who so carefully held the prized. Both forgot the prince when they saw why the ceremonies had not begun. It was not Jehan getting himself lost counting butterflies, it was because the recipients were nowhere in sight.

  Randart gripped the edge of his seat. “The little one was just there, riding that horse. Where did he go? Find them. I want them. Whatever excuse it takes I want to know who they are, why they w
ere here.”

  Orthan got up. After a glance at his brother’s face, he hustled after his own underling.

  On the field Jehan spoke a few graceful words that few listened to, gave the signal for the captains to dismiss the contestants. The cadets surged toward the mess hall, everyone voicing his or her opinion or putting questions to the air. Comments and questions mirrored in the watchers in the stands, who filed out the other way and back down the long zigzagging steps into the harbour city below.

  As Jehan traversed the halls between the guard barrack and the academy the morvende part of his hearing developed for generations to sift human sound from wind and water rushed along stone tunnels and caverns, registered footsteps matching his pace. He paused at the guardroom to get a drink of water after the long hot afternoon in the sun, nodded pleasantly when the guards on duty leaped to their feet and saluted, and waved them lazily back to their seats. No one entered after him.

  He left. Moseyed slowly to the mess hall, hot as it was and smelling of fish simmered in herbs and tomato. Below that he detected the distinct odour of summer afternoon adolescent sweat. Jehan stepped into the kitchen nipped a biscuit from one of the trays being pulled from the oven and exited through the opposite door as he tossed the hot biscuit from hand to hand.

  Still there same distance back.

  Down to the cadet stable, which was built into the oldest part of the castle. There he asked about some of his favourite mounts and ordered clover to be saddled up. “I want to ride back along the relay trails,” he said clearly. “I hope our mysterious visitors did not get lost somewhere along the way.”

  While the duty cadets and the shadow busied themselves with horse saddling, Jehan slipped through the tack room into the old storage room, which smelled of mossy stone. He slit the bolt then keyed the entrance to a passageway that Prince Math had shown him when he was a boy, the single tiem they had been here together.

  When he emerged at the other end, he was dressed again in the blue outfit, a fisherman’s stocking cap on his head hiding his hair, his brown velvet hanging in a net bag over his shoulder. He made his way through the rotting barrels that hid the door to the passage, slipped into the alley behind the old row of shops, and from there he strolled into market street as the low sun slanted ochre shafts between buildings.