Senrid

by Sherwood Smith

  They both fell silent, contemplating what that meant: Marloven warriors who saw their banner struck down by their own side were thus required to either fight to the death or to suicide; at least then they would escape the magic binding their souls to Norsunder.

  “I would have joined them if possible,” Senrid said. “And it may come to it yet. We will have to see to our defenses, as soon as we can.”

  Keriam looked at the distraught young face before him, the tense, intelligent brow. Senrid’s mind was already racing ahead, as he’d seen so many times, but at last the boy was not confined to circumventing his uncle’s fear-driven pettiness. He could, at last, take command. He had the will and the brains—but not the training.

  It seemed he was going to get that through necessity rather than practice.

  Keriam said, “This crisis will unite us faster than anything else. Shall I summon the captains and commanders for general reports?”

  “Do that. I have to get busy and write down all the promises I made,” Senrid said. “I don’t even know who I made them to—and I didn’t dare write anything down—but one thing for certain, they know who I am. And they’ll remember. So I’d better be ready for ‘em.”

  Keriam saluted again, and left swiftly.

  Morning turned into afternoon without Senrid noticing. At some point someone brought in food. Senrid was glad to see it and paused long enough to thank the person, but when he remembered to eat—after a long rumble from his stomach—the food had gone cold.

  He ate it anyway, and got right back to work; first he wrote down everything he’d been keeping in his head from his conversations with his people, and then he read the papers he’d found in the conference chamber off the throne room. When he was done he looked up, surprised to discover the sun had already set.

  He picked up Hibern’s book and carried it and his pile of papers downstairs to the room he’d chosen to be his study, and cast them on the table.

  Before he could reconsider, he forced himself to go to his uncle’s rooms. If the servants had destroyed it, he supposed he couldn’t blame them, but would it mean they were beyond control? Would there be riots now?

  Was he, in fact, a weak little boy unable to control a kingdom?

  The Regent’s rooms, next to the closed suite that had belonged to King Indevan, were guarded by two of Keriam’s men.

  Senrid slipped in, and spoke the word to ignite the magic torches, which shed flickering reddish light on a quiet room. Senrid stared around, frowning at the faint but sharp scent of fear-sweat on the still air. Had Tdanerend forgotten to use his cleaning frame? No. Senrid turned around slowly. No, the smell was too faint for that, too ubiquitous, as if it had sunk into the plaster on the walls. His uncle had lived in fear for years, and it had worsened recently. The room reeked of it, not only in the physical realm, but Senrid sensed it in spirit.

  He surveyed the room. Everything was neat. In the wardrobe hung uniforms, boots set below. Senrid crossed to the table beside the wardrobe, and laid his hand on the carved chest there. He lifted it, and saw, precisely organized, most of the ancient medals belonging to the family. Tdanerend’s symbols of the greatness he’d craved. Senrid shut his eyes, pictured the archive room, and transferred the chest down there.

  The rest of this stuff I’ll have burned, he thought. If Tdanerend returns, he’ll have to start all over again.

  He passed beyond, to his uncle’s private workroom, where he knew he’d find the papers of import. The papers in the conference chamber had turned out to be merely finished decrees, and copies of general commands to the army. Here, Senrid hoped to find notes on half-finished projects, especially in magic. He had not forgotten Hibern’s sickening revelation about that cheerful Faline Sherwood being an Yxubarec—a shape-changer. His uncle had intended to get rid of him, all right, there was no doubt about it now.

  The old anger and urgency seized him. With quick fingers he sorted over the papers lying on the desk, glancing at each and making two piles. One, worthless stuff, he would burn; the rest, he’d read more slowly.

  He was kneeling at the cold fireplace, striking a spark against the pile of papers laid on the stones when a scratch at the door recalled his attention.

  “Yes?”

  A servant came in—one of his own. The man smiled a grim sort of smile, tired as he was, and said, “There is a visitor to see you, Senrid-Harvaldar.”

  Harvaldar, the Marloven word for crowned king. The man had enjoyed saying that. Senrid felt it, and his face reddened.

  The fire caught. He saw it take good hold of the papers. They turned brown, withered, fell into ash before he straightened up, retucking the other pile more securely under his armpit. “Where?”

  “Throne room.”

  All the way at the other end of the castle. Senrid repressed the instinctual fear with impatient determination. He could not hide. It was now his castle, his kingdom, and he must be seen.

  So he began to walk down silent halls, past the enormous raptors and running horses, the doors that had opened and closed on so many of his ancestors, sometimes for violent purpose.

  Shall I post guards outside my doors, to prevent surprises? No Runners, yes. Not guards. I won’t start living like Tdanerend.

  He turned a corner and nearly stumbled over a party of servants busy scrubbing at walls and the slate floor, where several of Tdanerend’s spies had made their last stand. All the servants scrambled up, or back, fists to hearts.

  Fists to hearts. Senrid grinned, walking on, faster and faster, as everyone he encountered, from officers and guards to servants—all of them, without exception, saluted.

  Elation bloomed behind his ribs and he began to run. He knew smiling faces could conceal violent intentions; he knew his work was only beginning, that danger had not disappeared, it had only receded.

  But still he ran. He ran despite tiredness, and hunger, despite worries, he felt light as a bird, the bloom inside blossoming in his heart as joy, and laughter streamed behind him.

  He ran downstairs, crossing from the residence wing to the governmental wing, and as he passed the big offices—some empty, some with scribes and academy boy messengers who stood in the doorways, curious, perhaps wondering what to do now that the great business of organizing a vast army was suspended. He flicked a salute and again they responded. Some with quick, inadvertent grins.

  He stopped, panting, outside the throne room, where two guards had taken up their accustomed position. On whose orders? Probably Keriam’s. Senrid passed through the doors, wondering if he was about to face an armed host, but in the vast, cold, eternally torchlit throne room there was only one figure, a tall thin girl with long dark hair. She was staring up at the great screaming eagle banner over the throne.

  She turned at the sound of Senrid’s step echoing up the vaulted walls.

  “Senrid. You succeeded.” She studied him gravely.

  “Hibern!” He paused, some of his joy diminishing. “So your mages have been spying on me, then?”

  She snorted. “I got a warning tracer from home. Latvian is busy destroying a lot of papers. Tsauderei, I assure you, probably thinks about affairs at this end of the continent about once a decade—if that.”

  “And the other mages?” Senrid persisted.

  Hibern’s brows lifted. “Are you suddenly seeing white spies, like your uncle saw conspirators?”

  Senrid compressed his lips against a hot retort, then said only, “Come upstairs.”

  Back through the hallways, where they encountered more cleaning parties. Hibern frowned. It was obvious enough what had happened here.

  They did not speak until they reached the room Senrid had chosen for his study. Someone had lit a lamp. He looked around and shut the door. “That was not on my orders,” he said, jerking his chin over his shoulder. “In fact I tried to stop it, but I was already too late by the time my uncle retreated to the castle wall, and then transferred away. I think they’d been planning their own coups a long time, and when he
lost control a couple days ago, they acted. Apparently they had quite a time with my uncle’s pet torturer,” he added bleakly. “Which no one told me about until it was all over.”

  Hibern drew in a long breath. “That, too, seems to be traditional with our people.” She gave a wry smile. “Do you know how long it took for certain of the mages to trust me before they’d teach me?”

  “Oh, I can imagine.” Senrid thought of the Mearsieans and their unvarnished opinion of him, then grimaced. “And you insist no one is spying on me? Who would it be but one of your busybody mages?”

  Hibern sat down in the single chair. “Tell me what makes you think someone is watching you. I still think that business off world was accidental. Your magic reached a human world-portal and propelled you through.”

  Senrid shook his head. “I’d go for that if afterward we’d all gotten propelled together right back home. But someone put me with those Mearsiean boys, someone sent Leander and Kyale home, and I presume the Mearsieans and Autumn as well. And 713 just vanished. I hope to somewhere he wanted to be. He couldn’t have come home again, not and survive a day.”

  Hibern shook her head. “It’s possible that they all thought their destinations—”

  “I thought myself into East Arland, a place I’ve never spent the space of two breaths thinking about before, landing myself with a pair of boys I’d never met?”

  Hibern lifted her hands. “I would say that the fact they were Mearsieans might be some connection—surely Faline mentioned them—but I know it’s weak. There’s something you’re leaving out. Has to be. You don’t seem to like it, either,” she added, giving him one of her acute scrutinies. “But you may as well tell me, if you want my opinion on whether or not you have been interfered with by the people who have trained me.”

  Senrid’s lip curled. “Kyale will be blabbing all over about her cursed ‘angel’. Here’s the truth.” And he gave her an exact accounting of what happened there far away with the Mearsiean boys, and then on the cliff with Detlev.

  Hibern’s eyes widened, but she did not interrupt.

  “Well?” he said finally, and perched on a table. “What do you think? White trickery? Don’t try that angel business on me.”

  Hibern shrugged. “I think it foolish to deny that there are realms between that of matter and that of the spirit, just because we, abiding in the world of matter, cannot perceive everything. If there are angels—and they do consistently show up in the rare record—they must be a being an order of magnitude outside our understanding—”

  Senrid snorted. “I think it’s poetic foolery, all of it. The stories about angels all go on far too much about powers of goodness. If only I could believe that! Of course there are vast powers outside—or inside—the universe, but good? That they make and play with worlds like children play with polished rocks, that I can believe. Innate good? No such thing.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Easier to believe the ‘Erdrael’ image was a ghost. Ghosts turn up far more consistently in records. Even some of my own ancestors saw ghosts.”

  Hibern looked at his angry face, his tense hands, and decided the subject was one he would have to explore on his own. “I don’t think Erdrael was an angel, or a ghost. From anything I’ve ever read ghosts don’t speak, or even hear when they are spoken to.”

  “Right.”

  “So, illusion, then, but who made it, and why? No one that I know would do anything like that—and for that matter, roughly the same time you were facing Detlev on that cliff, there was a conference going on at Tsauderei’s, about some—some issues recently arisen in Sartor.” Hibern frowned. “All the most powerful mages I know of were there. They couldn’t have been running an illusion that complicated at the same time, and at this distance.”

  Senrid sensed that the ‘issues’ were fairly sizable, but he knew he wasn’t going to hear about them. And in any case, he had enough to think about at home.

  “Well, if you don’t think one of your white-magic mages was being busy on my behalf, then I’ll have to look elsewhere. No Great Power of Good is on my side, that much I’m sure of. Here’s what I really think I saw: my kingdom and I were briefly pulled into the edge of a much larger battle, on a fantastic scale that takes centuries to prepare for, involving powers confined to this world.”

  “Yes,” Hibern said. “I can agree with that.”

  Shock, excitement, worry, and challenge zinged through Senrid.

  “What I don’t know is why.”

  “I don’t know either.” Hibern turned her palms up. “So what will you do now?”

  “Defend us. If I can. Learn what my uncle had been keeping secret about day-to-day government, as soon as I can. Keep the promises I made.”

  She smiled. “That does sound like you’ll be busy.” She rubbed her knuckles over the table lightly, saw her book lying there, and picked it up. “I suspected Kyale might have taken that, though why she would want to learn to magically bind stone vaulting and reinforce furnishing joints is beyond me.”

  “She seems to have had an idea she could brandish it under Tdanerend’s nose and make him quail in fear.”

  Hibern sighed. But she said nothing derogatory about Kyale—and Senrid, mindful of how much the girl had gone through on his behalf, didn’t either.

  “So what about my father?” Hibern asked at last, her dark eyes serious.

  Senrid said, “Hands off. But it has to be both ways.”

  “I take it I’m supposed to carry this threat to him?”

  Senrid waved impatiently. “Of course not. I’ll confront him myself. I want him to see me face to face. I’ll leave him alone if he leaves me alone. And I’ll explain that leaving me alone means leaving my kingdom alone.”

  She turned her palm up then got to her feet. “I have to return. Is there anything you would like my help with?”

  “Please,” Senrid said. “Find out where Ndand is, if you can. Or at least find out if she’s really free of my uncle’s spells, and if she’s happy. If she doesn’t want to come home, well, maybe she’s better off elsewhere. I don’t believe for a moment things are going to settle into a peaceful Golden Age here.”

  “No,” Hibern said, and sighed. “I’ll do that. And I’ll bring you any news I think you should know. How’s that?” He opened his hands—she touched fingers to heart—then transferred out.

  Cold air stirred around the room, and Senrid was alone again, thinking over what she’d said—and what she’d kept to herself. What he’d learned was that he hadn’t enough power to fight any great mages, white or Norsundrian.

  And beyond that, the first question he had to face was: Would Detlev have stopped the slaughter if he’d surrendered?

  He looked down at his hands. His fingers shook, a delayed reaction from what he’d been forced to watch on the southern cliff. He felt sick inside—and was still tired and hungry—but he had to think it out before he planned his next action, planned tomorrow, planned next week. And, if he lived, next month. Could he have stood there and watched them all die, had there been no Erdrael?

  For that matter, would Detlev have waited for it to happen? Why didn’t he strike Senrid down, or muscle him off to their base? Why did it have to be so agonizing?

  A lesson in real politics.

  He thought of the dead. Each was a person, someone’s brother, or son, or father, who’d woken up that morning eager, or determined, or bored, or tired, or maybe even sick. Live Marlovens, his own people, smashed beyond life so easily, without regret. He made an inner vow that no matter what happened, he would never surrender to Detlev. Never would he even treat with Norsunder, no matter what they offered in supposed alliance. If Detlev had designed that exercise in cruelty to terrify him into submission, it had had the opposite effect.

  He would stay free of Norsunder, even if it finally meant allying with the white mages.

  Having decided that, he looked up at the four windows letting in the weak moonlight, and from the windows he took in the rest of the room. There he�
��d put his desk. And over there the bookshelves, and another shelf for maps.

  He paced it out, finding the chore calming to the spirit.

  When he was done, he had it all organized in his mind. The room, and his first orders.

  He had to get reports from Gherdred and Keriam on where his army was.

  He had to countermand some of his uncle’s recent orders, and begin examining the laws his uncle had been making in his name…treasury…the academy…the rank system…trade?

  The unending stream of plans, demands, compromises, questions, needs, wants of the last two weeks closed in on him, but he was used to thinking ahead and ordering his actions in terms of strongest need first.

  Senrid stopped at his window and looked out at the jumble of roofs that housed the academy—where boys like him lived and learned.

  He thought of Hibern, then, her wit and strength of will. CJ Sherwood, loudmouthed and opinionated but undoubtedly courageous. Collet’s quiet skills. Faline’s cheery capability, Autumn’s amazing magic. Even Kyale, annoying as she was, had shown unexpected qualities. Crazy to keep girls out, it was the equivalent of denying his kingdom half its strength.

  So the academy would soon be full of girls and boys his own age, learning as he was learning.

  He smiled. Part of kingship was to be ready.

  He—and Marloven Hess—would get ready together.