Inda (49 page)

“. . . and so they fired three of ’em right on the water, but they took the biggest, and a fine, sweet vessel it is, fast and clean, danced even with the wind on the for’ard quarter.”

He set the bottles down, and saw an efficient brown hand reach from behind and snag one of the last four pastries.

Dasta watched, mouth open; his disgust at the mid’s fashionable clothes had changed to respect for so adroit a master thief.

The mid stuffed the pastry into his mouth just a moment before Kodl looked up. “Are you hungry, boy?” he asked with somewhat heavy irony.

Inda said quickly, “You might want to go up and see to it your barge crew has a harness handy for your mate.”

The mid bobbed, grateful, his cheeks bulging, and dashed out. Kodl sent an expressive look at Inda, Yan, and Dasta. Dirbin might have a rep as tight-fisted with her crew, but if her mids ate like that one, it was a wonder she could keep her ship in provisions.

The dinner finished up with mutual expressions of good will, and Beagar saw his guest up the ladder. Two big sailors appeared and in practiced silence hoisted the drunken mate—who hadn’t spoken once—up after the captains, while Dasta and Inda hastily gobbled down the remaining apple tarts, splitting the last one before the cook’s mates could get there.

Captain Dirbin was seen over the side and into her barge as she began singing in her cheery crow’s squawk of a voice a ditty enumerating the adventuresome, if unlikely, sexual exploits of a sailor girl’s first night on the shore. Inda returned to duty, which was better than trying to make sense out of that patchwork of rumors about home.

Not home.

Chapter Eight

T
DOR’S first impression of the royal city was of noise. Carts, voices, horses, dogs, a constant clatter and hubbub magnified by the stone walls all around. Her second was alarm when the fast triplets of war horns sounded from the gates she’d just passed through.

A Runner, a young man in mud-splashed blue, galloped in on a foam-flecked horse. Everyone gave way, even a riding of guards trotting out for a perimeter patrol.

“Has to be news from the front,” said her escort. The man was Liet’s father, familiar to Tdor since she first came to Tenthen—the older Rider captains often stood as uncles to the girls brought in so young by marriage treaties.

The Runner vanished among the jumble of carts, wagons, armsmen, city idlers talking, flirting, watching. There were sellers hawking fresh rye muffins, in short streets of close-set buildings running perpendicular to the city walls, most with a tree in the center around which people from the surrounding houses seemed to gather to chat, and children to play. Crossing these were the great streets that ringed the royal castle, streets so long she could not see the ends as they curved round the hills. It was a city, a real city, her first, filled with more people than she’d ever seen in her entire life.

Nor was she invisible. People glanced her way, and she watched the progress of their thoughts in the progression of their glances: first the owl pennants and livery on her escort, then to her, at the front right of the bearers: another future Jarlan or Randviar, here for the Queen’s Training. No further interest.

They passed beneath the heavy wall built over the main castle gate, waved on by the watchful sentries—male ones looking outward, female inward, at least in theory. Just like at home at Tenthen. Tdor was excited at the prospect of seeing Hadand again after two long years, and Joret, who had stayed an extra year on an invitation from the queen—an invitation she couldn’t refuse.
Maybe I’ll even see the king,
Tdor thought.
At the Games, if nothing else.

They rode into a vast stable yard and dismounted. A moment later a young woman in gray robes appeared before her.

“This way, Tdor-Edli.” The woman indicated a door, then said to Noren, standing at Tdor’s right and just a little behind, “Bring her gear and follow.”

Tdor glanced at Liet’s father, who gave her an encouraging nod and a salute, which she returned, and that was the last she saw of her escort.

Tdor and Noren followed the servant, a girl Tdor’s own age. Noren was watching everything intently, her changeable face a tolerable mirror to her thoughts. When an especially attractive young guard passed by on his patrol, his yellow horsetail swinging, Noren gave Tdor a covert grin, her brows raised; the servant leading them never glanced aside.

Immense arched doorways with heavy iron-studded doors led to shadowy passageways, stairs, and divided courts. From the courts Tdor and Noren glimpsed such a complexity of towers and higher walls that they wondered if they’d ever learn. Tenthen Castle seemed tiny by comparison.

Tdor wondered where the academy was. How it hurt, that chain of thought: academy, Inda, their last meeting.

Stop that. Watch and learn.
They reached an intersection at the same moment a pair of female guards crossed from the adjacent passages. They saluted one another, and Tdor heard the taller woman say, “What’s new?”

“Nothing in my basket, that’s for sure.”

Tdor, who’d heard that expression for years without thinking of anything but a nice woven carryall, blushed. She’d recently discovered what those women really meant.

“Here’s the girls’ barracks,” their guide said, paying no attention to the guards. She indicated the building beyond the last court. “This is where you will stay, Tdor-Edli. Runner—”

“Noren.”

“Runner Noren, come with me.”

Tdor was left in a plain wood-walled room furnished with nothing but wooden benches. From an open window she heard the echo of girls’ voices in drill.

A tall woman in the queen’s livery—gray robes edged with crimson—entered. “Tdor-Edli?”

Tdor saluted, hand to heart.

“Please come this way. I will introduce you to your bunkmate, who will show you around and explain. You will not be expected to attend drills until tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Tdor said, and followed the woman down clean plank-floored halls, past empty barracks rooms. They reached the last, which was close to a door opening onto a court.

Inside was a single occupant, busy sanding down a bow. She looked up, and then smiled; Tdor studied the girl, who was short, slight, with a square face and curling pale hair escaping her braids.

“Tdor-Edli, Shendan-Edli,” the woman said, and then she left without another word.

Shendan Montredavan-An. Fareas-Iofre had said to Tdor,
Your daughter will marry the Montredavan-An heir, and his sister will help raise your firstborn daughter, as their girls cannot marry out. Become her friend, if you can. It will make the loss more bearable one day.

And on the last day of her last visit with her own mother, she had been given the same advice. Tdor felt peculiar at the idea of having a daughter; the idea seemed weird, even absurd. Mostly she was interested in this new person whose family had such a long, fascinating history. And now were exiles on their own land.

“Hullo,” Shendan said in a cheery voice. “Long ride?”

“Somewhat,” Tdor said, tentatively.

“Well, you’ll be able to hit the pillow early tonight. Take it! Tomorrow it’s up before dawn, and whack, whack, whack.” Shendan grimaced. “I’ll show you what’s where. And don’t think you have to know all of it at once. I certainly didn’t.”

The girl never stopped talking as they moved down the row of barracks and out into the practice courts. It was all quick talk, identifying both people and places, punctuated with laughing comments about mistakes Shendan had made.

Tdor walked slowly, watching the young women who all seemed tall and competent, fighting with wooden knives, with short staffs, with bows, and many, of course, were busy training horses.

Shendan was friendly and funny, but Tdor was wondering if she might also be a little scatterbrained when they stopped in a vast, empty parade court, and she pointed up at the castle.

“The archive is just behind that set of windows, over there,” Shendan said, squinting against the high summer sun. “Next to the tower, which is where the king’s rooms start.” She turned to Tdor, the expression in her wide-set eyes speculative. “Are you going to join the readings on the history of magic, then?”

Tdor drew in a deep breath. “I-I didn’t know—”
That we could mention that out loud right in the open,
she meant to say, but she stopped because it sounded so stupid. They were here in the middle of this mighty parade ground, with no one even remotely in earshot.

Shendan laughed silently. “Surely you knew the Montredavan-Ans are part of it?”

Tdor turned to Shendan, saw a sardonic quirk to those watchful dark eyes, and blushed. “I didn’t mean that. I only meant—I thought we were not to talk about it, well, so soon.”

“I don’t, unless it’s safe. Which is why we are here on our tour. I don’t know what you’ve been told, but my family is actually the center of this quest, for we began it, and Fareas-Iofre became a part before she was taken away from us and made to marry Jarend-Adaluin. As you might be made to marry Whipstick Noth.”

Tdor drew in a sharp breath. “No one has said that.”

“No. They won’t, until the women negotiate, the men negotiate, and they finally negotiate with one another. Then both you and Whipstick will be told what to do.”

Tdor flexed her hands, thinking of Whipstick, the tall, taciturn son of Captain Noth. He was even quieter than Tanrid, but he was even-tempered, and at first had even been a little shy around the girls. They’d all known his reputation at the academy, yet when he arrived he did not thrash anyone, not even Branid, who on the arrival of the Noths had, as usual, made himself unpleasant. Whipstick was the best of the boys in everything, earning their respect.

Out loud she said, “I hope Inda will be back before I reach marriage age, and I won’t have to.”

“You expect justice? There isn’t any justice,” Shendan said, such words sounding very odd when spoken in that light voice, with a sidelong, merry glance. “We Montredavan-Ans are living proof of that.”

Tdor stared at Shendan in silence.

“I hope for your sake Inda returns. I met him once, did you know that? We liked him. My brother Fox liked him, and you cannot imagine how very rare that was.” Shendan waved at the archive windows. “You can do what you like during free time, but it’s good you’ll be joining the reading,” she said slowly. “Very good. What happened to us could happen to you, and might even, if the Harskialdna gets his way: you’ll lose rank and holdings, everything but the castle, the daughters can’t marry any of the Vayir families, the sons can’t fight. And so we girls ... we study magic. Or try.”

Tdor felt as if she’d stumbled into an icy stream.

Shendan gave Tdor a laughing glance. “As for now, we also have fun. This is the only time in my life I get to live among others, and I get as much fun from it as I can. Come! I’ll point you to the baths. You can get in a good long soak after that ride, and enjoy it, too. You won’t have much time there after today.”

She left Tdor at the baths, but before Tdor could shed her clothes and sink into the clean water, a tall girl in Runner blue slipped through the opposite door and beckoned.

Intrigued, and a little afraid, Tdor followed. She really needed a chance to think over what she’d heard and seen so far, but it looked like she wasn’t going to get that comfort.

Now came another long walk, then up, and up, and down a carpeted hall with frescoes of hunting beasts and raptors, and above all horses—running, rearing, standing—in shades of light gray along the walls. The hall smelled faintly of beeswax candle smoke, years’ and years’ worth, she realized, and that recalled home, but nothing else did, especially when at last, with a smile, the tall girl opened a door and stood aside for Tdor to enter.

The room was big, with a high ceiling painted with a view of the summer stars. Underfoot lay the broadest carpet Tdor had ever seen, woven gold braiding around the edges, stylized falcons worked in rows through the middle, the royal crimson as background. At the walls sat large chairs, all of them carved from fine dark woods, edged with real gold along the swept back wings and legs. Raptor chairs, old ones: at Tenthen there were only two, one in the prince’s own chamber, one in Tanrid’s. Fareas-Iofre had said that the Montredavan-Ans had even older ones.

Completing the room was a great table against the wall opposite the windows. It, too, had stylized raptor legs. On it rested a huge map, beautifully drawn; even bigger and finer than the one in Jarend-Adaluin’s chamber.

Tdor crossed her arms defensively. It was a masculine room, one filled with costly things, with a commanding view. She felt unnerved, as if she’d stumbled into a secret place, a place of power, one into which she was not entitled to step.

“It’s all right,” came a familiar voice. Tdor whirled around. There was Hadand, laughing softly as she entered through an unobtrusive side door. “This is actually the safest place in the castle right now. The few who would dare to spy here are all somewhere else.”

Tdor knew, then, without being told, that she stood in the king’s own room. She twirled around, staring. The windows looked down over a very large parade ground—that must be the one she’d stood in with Shendan, talking of magic—and the windows themselves were high, framed by heavy curtains, with wall carvings of raptors in flight above and below.

At last she turned to the short figure in the center of the room. Hadand smiled as the door latched behind her. “If we see one another in company, the same sign I taught you is the one we use here for an unsafe room.” She brushed three fingers across her palm in the lily sign.

Tdor whispered, “I remember.”

“Two years, it’s been,” Hadand said, studying her from eyes that brought Inda right back into Tdor’s mind.

“You’re in robes,” Tdor observed, then flushed at how obvious that was, how stupid it must sound. Yet it was so strange to see Hadand with Inda’s eyes, but a woman’s body. She had gotten short, somehow. Her fine soft-gray woolen robe, with its exquisite edging embroidery of intertwined silver owls, slit up the sides for riding, and her voluminous riding trousers edged with the same silver owls along their hems did not hide how wide her hips were, nor how large and shapely her bosom.