Senrid

by Sherwood Smith

  Some frustrated feeling about, fumbling, and pressure—and the ancient mechanism sprung, the door swung open, and she eased out.

  A quick look—no guards in sight. Only the flaring torches as the stale air stirred slowly. So she hopped quickly up to the next cell and picked the lock—an easier job from the front.

  “Hey!” she said softly, easing inside the door. She was afraid to open it wide. She knew that these old dungeon doors could graunch and groan.

  “You little fox,” 713 exclaimed in admiration. “How’d—”

  “Toldya I could floob the lock,” Faline said, grinning at the surprise in 713’s wheezy laugh. “Now, where are you? My cell is like daylight compared to this’ee. Ah.” She sat down beside 713 to wait until her eyes had adjusted a bit more; his cell was farther from that hallway wall torch, and barely caught any light at all.

  “Nice to see you again,” she said. “That is, if I could see you.”

  “Glad you can’t see me,” he said ruefully.

  “Oh, don’t gloom. We won’t croak. Now, I’ll get some water, and—”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “You said we won’t die. Why?”

  “Cuzz we’re allies of white magic,” Faline stated. “Well, I think you are, you didn’t know it.”

  “I don’t know anything,” 713 said. She could hear the shrug in his tone. “I never thought. Ever. When I was little I wanted to go for a warrior, like all my friends. Never even thought I’d be good enough for cavalry, foot warrior was all right. I could be with my friends, have the good life.”

  “War is a good life?”

  “Drill’s fun,” he said. “Wargames fun too. Talk, regular meals. I liked it fine. Guard duty is boring—you know what happened because of that.” He laughed again, that rueful laugh.

  Faline stirred. “I guess I can’t see it as fun. Fun is what we girls do. Losing your home, your name, your—your place in the world is fun?”

  “I don’t come from any family with a rep. I gave up my name without a second thought when the Regent started the number system. All we wanted was rank, see, and you get rank through war, and since no one attacks us, we were all rarin’ to try out our skills elsewheres. But, like the king said, when I was tryin’ to explain, attack in the abstract… Still not sure what he meant. But sounds right.” His voice faded.

  Faline struggled to follow the slow, fever-wheezy dialog. “D’you mean you didn’t think your enemy had a face?” She remembered that being something Clair had said once, after reading an old record.

  “That’s it,” 713 said.

  Faline sighed, deciding she’d think about what all that meant some time later. Like when they weren’t in a dungeon, awaiting execution.

  “Well,” she said. “CJ says the only white-magic people who die young are great and noble heroes, or martyrs, and so far it’s been true, because we girls are not noble, or heroes, we like pie-fights and pocalubes too much. And we’re all still alive! My jokes are much too rotten for me to make a great martyr, and you’re not sure whose side you’re on, so you can’t be one either. Therefore we will escape, we just don’t know how yet.”

  “I like your way o’ thinking,” 713 said, and wheezed another laugh. He was sounding awfully tired.

  “I think I’ll get the water now,” Faline whispered, and let herself out again.

  She locked herself back in the cell, shed her jacket and kicked it into a corner. “Hey! You guards! You ugly, pop-eyed globules, cummere!” She kicked and banged on the door.

  A few seconds later a key clanked in the lock and two huge guards stood there glowering, one holding a torch.

  She blinked against the sudden light. “Don’t we get any grub?” she asked forlornly.

  “No.”

  “How about clean water? And while you’re at it, a nice big roomy warm shirt or somethin’? I’m real cold—and if I get cold I get sick, and if I get real sick I might croak before tomorry, and then where’ll you be? Eh? Short one execution victim, that’s what!”

  The two guards turned away without speaking and locked the door.

  Faline looked back up at the air holes as if to reassure herself. If she’d gauged Senrid right, she oughta get some kind of answer soon…

  She’d sung to herself a dozen verses of one of her favorite anti-villain insult songs (making up two new verses, one for Senrid and one for his uncle) when the door clattered and clanked open again, and two objects were set on the stone ground: a good-sized bowl of water, and a thick folded square of cotton-wool cloth.

  “You are requested by the king not to mention this to the Regent,” one guard said in a flat voice.

  Faline grinned, saying (in Mearsiean) “I bet you were ‘requested’ too!” In their language, she said, “Tell ‘im thanks.”

  The cell door slammed shut.

  So—she’d been right. Senrid did feel sorry for her. Not enough to stop the execution. But to make things bearable beforehand.

  Faline picked up the cloth thing, to discover a fray-cuffed, bag-elbowed tunic much like the black-and-tan ones the warriors wore. It was a bit too small for 713, but it’d do. And the water would take care of whatever wounds he had, after the Regent’s two days of ‘recreation.’

  Pocalubing the Regent, Senrid, dungeons, and her own squeamishness, Faline quietly unlocked the door again. She slipped out, carrying her booty, and let herself in next door to do what she could for poor old 713.

  Possible escape could be thought about later—right now the poor slob had to be able to move.

  Clair, Leander, Ndand and I had to be done by mid-evening, because that would be midnight in Vasande Leror and Marloven Hess. By the end of that time (seemed like a year) my head felt like someone had stuffed it full of rocks. A week’s practice might have made this kind of masquerade thing easier. A very tense session from early to mid-evening made me feel like I was living in a nightmare.

  Two nightmares, mine and poor Ndand’s.

  “All right, that’s it,” Clair whispered finally. Her voice completely gone. “We’re out of time. CJ, you and Diana deserve medals—or better, chocolate pie and ice cream.”

  “Just have it ready,” I said, trying to subdue my boiling guts. Truth was, I don’t think I could have eaten anything, even chocolate pie, if I’d tried. I turned to Leander. “I wish you could go with me.”

  “I do too,” Leander said. “But if something goes wrong, it won’t be much good for both of us to be stuck in Senrid’s capital.”

  His part was going to be tough in a different way. Because of complicated border wards, Leander had to sneak into Marloven Hess inside the border somewhere as a transfer designation for me to focus on, since my transfer was going to be difficult enough without picturing a destination I didn’t know, and planning for wards no one was sure of.

  To send Faline and Kitty to a person would be much easier. But Leander would have to sit and wait until either I got the others to him, then transferred myself—or the Marlovens did, if I flubbed up. If I did manage, and we all made it, then we could both concentrate on avoiding whatever border tracers they had, and get ourselves out a short distance. Short distances always being far easier for magic transfer, especially when you are ‘carrying’ others. And if I flubbed, he’d have to figure out what to do, probably with one second’s notice.

  We went over the plan one more time, though we all knew our parts. It was kind of reassuring to say, “Yes, and then I do the transfer to you…” and to hear the corresponding, “And after that you get Kitty and Faline to me, and if I haven’t broken his ward spell by then and can’t get us out, we’ll cross the border on foot…”

  When that was done, Leander stepped beside me. My insides really churned now.

  Clair sneezed, said, “Fare well. I’m gonna sleep. Tomorrow I’ll get a start on removing the enchantments from Ndand.”

  I looked over at Ndand. She sat there staring into space. I shivered inside, then turned to Leander, who nodd
ed, took hold of my shoulder, and said the transfer spell.

  FOUR

  We splatooned into the courtyard of a castle. I caught a glimpse of wide glass windows and lots of green ivy rendering light gray stone somewhat less grim. When the transfer daze had unfogged a bit, I said, “This your place?”

  “Yes,” Leander said, leading the way inside and straight up some stone stairs. “And I hope to give you a full tour when we celebrate the success of our plan. Okay?” He added the last as if tasting the word.

  I grinned, thinking of how much slang from Earth I’d spread over this world so far, and jammed a pair of spectacles over my nose as I followed him down a long hall to a wooden door. The glasses were twin to Ndand’s. They were just glass, but with an illusion spell laid over them to resemble the grind of Ndand’s lenses, or else there’d be no distortion of my eyes to others. This meant I had to see the world distorted. I looked through them, and a vice seemed to squeeze my skull as the world blurred around me. “I hate these things—I can’t see.”

  “I know,” Leander said, and opened the door to his library. “Peer over the tops, take ‘em off and polish them on your skirt or chew the ends when you have to see clearly. But she wears them—”

  “So I haveta wear them. Ugh.”

  The single toll of a midnight bell rang then, sounding to me like a funeral. Mine.

  “See you later,” he said with a sympathetic laugh. Leander was such a comfortable person, it was like we’d always known him.

  I gave him the nod, and sucked in my breath. I carefully said the transfer word that Senrid had set up to shift Ndand home, and magic seized me in a much harder, faster wrench than I was used to. I splorched to the ground outside of Choreid Dhelerei, the capital of Marloven Hess.

  Why not inside the palace? As I got shakily to my feet and waited for the dizziness to pass, I wondered if the Regent was so worried about traitors and invasion that no one could transfer in except him, and then I remembered that this transfer was Senrid’s backup spell—apparently made just to protect Ndand. If you could believe him protecting anyone. I couldn’t.

  The time was midnight, the air chilly. I was glad of the thick fabric of my gown. According to Ndand the castle was drafty and cold because the Regent didn’t like fires in any rooms until there was actually snow on the ground. He considered it weakness.

  I walked slowly onto a well-tended road, while looking around over the top of the spectacles in order to get my bearings. Mentally I reviewed my story. Ndand had fumbled when Senrid got ahold of Kitty, who’d struggled mightily. She’d backed away from Kitty’s flailing legs—right out of the range of Senrid’s initial transfer. Then she panicked, just standing there uncertain what to do until Leander found her. But that part I wasn’t going to tell Senrid. My new story was going to be that Leander and his people had run outside first, looking for enemies in the courtyard, and leaving me time to get to the library and hide until midnight, at which time I could say the activation word Senrid had set up for transfer.

  Chilly as the air was, my palms were sweaty. I had to keep my own scrawny hide intact, as well as rescue Faline and Kitty—and I had to do it well enough so that poor clod Ndand would be able to slip back into her life.

  If she wanted to, that is, when Clair was done removing all the spells her father had put on her to turn her into a clod. Clair would never force her to go back against her will. If she had any left. After Ndand told us about her father’s experimental spells, Clair did a quiet scan, and while Ndand was eating some dinner, she told Leander and me privately that there was enough nasty magic laid over that girl to distort not just her eyes but her mind. Nobody in Marlovan Hess was going to question any magic ‘feel’ coming off my illusions, not with poor Ndand radiating bad magic.

  As long as no one touched me—then looked into my face.

  The sound of horsehooves called my attention to the present. My heart thumped like crazy.

  Very shortly a neat formation of horsemen appeared over the top of a round hill and clattered to a stop when they saw me. “There she is,” one of them said, and half-heard words of surprise riffed through the patrol.

  “Are you all right?” one asked me in a cautious voice.

  “I guess,” I said in a flat voice, hoping I sounded convincing.

  No one reacted. Instead, they reformed their lines, and I realized that a ride would be ahead. Could Ndand ride? We hadn’t asked that, had we? Was I already starting to forget things?

  Then I saw a saddled horse with no rider, its reins held by someone. All right. I was expected to ride—and this patrol must have been sent by Senrid.

  One man dismounted and cupped his hands. Well, Ndand obviously was bad at mounting on her own. I moved slowly, hesitantly, looking at the starlit black-and-tan-clad warriors for clues to what they expected. Most of them were barely grown up, and all but one light-haired.

  Placing my foot in the cupped hands, I found myself expertly pitched up onto the horse’s back. Reins were tossed to me. I took them, and then—no warning—the two leaders started out at the gallop. So I let the horse follow at their pace.

  Presently we crested a hill. Beyond, stark against the brilliant night sky, was the torch-lit outline of the fortified city, built along the top of three low hills. The royal castle on the central one. It was gigantic! Gigantic, and threatening. It was also supposed to be home, so I tried to look expectant, and not afraid.

  Before we started up the road to the city gates, we were by another patrol, but as they slowed a yell halted us all.

  “Ndand!” A kid’s voice. “I thought you might have gotten lost in the dark,” the kid added. Added with meaning.

  I was about to meet Senrid.

  Again my heart started trying to escape past my ribs, except this time good old anger kept me steady.

  Starlight glowed faintly on a white shirt. I peeked over the glasses, glimpsed a running figure.

  “Senrid!” came a man’s voice, loud in reprimand.

  The white-shirted figure slowed to a sedate walk.

  Remembering what Ndand had said of their relations with Tdanerend, the Regent (and her father), I leaned forward, and when Senrid reached us, I said in an undervoice, repeating something Ndand had observed over and over again, “He hasn’t lifted that rule yet?”

  The leader of the outer-perimeter patrol had stopped a little distance away. It was he who’d yelled at Senrid. Tdanerend had given various people in his own personal guard authority to correct Senrid for his own good. Running eagerly to greet his cousin was apparently not good for kings.

  It also served to check any authority Senrid might be trying to gain, Clair had pointed out.

  Senrid turned his palm up. Even in the dark I could see irony in that sharp, tight movement. I slid off my horse; the nearest rider held out his hand, and I tossed my reins to him. It was the right move.

  So I began walking beside Senrid, since he clearly expected it. I could barely make out his features in the dark. The starlight glowed off his shirt, and in his yellow hair. He was maybe a hand taller than me. At least, I thought, he can’t see me any clearer right now than I can see him.

  Senrid set off toward the castle. The two patrols rode away, one to continue patrol and the other back to the city, leaving us alone.

  As soon as they were out of hearing, Senrid said, “Good girl. You remembered everything.”

  “Everything,” I repeated, my heart doing a chicken dance behind my ribs.

  Senrid galloped right on. Talk, talk, talk, she’d said. “And I’ve done everything he ordered. Found 713 of the 44th Foot. Grabbed Faline Sherwood from Mearsies Heili. Grabbed Kyale—we grabbed Kyale, though I think that particular plan is a waste of time. What happened? I told him you’d stayed behind for a while to spy on Leander. He liked that—that you’d choose to spy.”

  “Spy,” I said carefully. Ndand had frequently repeated the last word anyone had said, when she was agreeing.

  “And that you would report af
ter you took a walk to get rid of the mental residue of being around whites. He actually believed it! To the patrol I said you’d gotten lost again, because you can’t see. Everything as planned, and if your story matches mine, you won’t get into trouble. So what did happen to you?” he asked.

  “You didn’t see her kick me?” I talked in my flattest voice, telling the story we’d concocted.

  At the end Senrid snorted a laugh. “So Leander didn’t figure out I’d broken his wards, did he? I didn’t think he’d be that stupid.” His voice was a regular kid-voice, his manner of speaking quick, with lots of humor. Humor in a black magic wielding creep. Ugh. Unsettling. “Just as well, since now you’re safely home, and Uncle won’t gripe.” He sighed. “Says I’m not ready yet. I’m too weak. Somehow it’s my fault about 713, though I see him as another example of corruption in the training system. Very lax training. Someone pays lip service to someone else, and they scant their duty with the recruits.”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering if dealing with Senrid was always going to mean these headlong speeches. Following him—staying in Ndand’s persona—felt like I was trying to swim down a rushing river.

  “Don’t-tell,” he said, an automatic-sounding phrase, one I instantly recognized from Ndand’s flat narration: whenever the two had real talk with each other they began it with don’t-tell, meaning not to tell Tdanerend.

  Not that she’d used it much. Those experimental spells her father had been trying on her made thinking slower and harder than ever, she’d told us. And if the Regent thought they worked properly, Senrid was going to get them next.

  “Don’t-tell,” Senrid said, “but I think I’d as soon they live. Faline is funny! And she has no political ambition. Absurd to pretend she had even the remotest idea of the consequences of her actions. 713 either—he was trying to impress her with our greatness! And now he’s going to pay the price of his bad training. He should be a horse tender for some cavalry riding. A few moments of conversation and I could see that’s where his talents really lie. But he’s big, so they put weapons in his hands and gave him the most basic lessons in what to do with them.”