Law of the Broken Earth (46 page)

“It’s a pity your lord cousin is stuck away up in Tihannad and won’t be waiting to scold us for our adventures and send for healers and hot soup and warm blankets,” Tan said, having evidently guessed the trend of Mienthe’s thoughts.

“You don’t suppose… you don’t think…”

“Never in life, Mie. Even if he’s settled whatever difficulty it is with the griffins, he’d never be so lost to sense as to take the Sierhanan road.”

Somehow this reassurance seemed more decisive and solid when Tan said it aloud than when Mienthe only whispered it to herself. She nodded, feeling happier, and then at last they came around the curve of the road and the woodlands fell away to wet pasturelands and unplowed muddy fields and scattered farmhouses. Farther on, the farms gave way to the outermost sprawl of the town, and beyond that they could just make out the city proper, all washed slate and painted cypress and gleaming cobbles. It took a surprising effort for Mienthe to suppress the strong urge she felt to lift her horse into a canter and race down the center of the road, straight for the great house.

That wild ride might almost have been safe. There was no sign of any Linularinan force. It occurred to Mienthe only after some moments that of course the Arobern had known the road was clear; he had scouts of his own way out, after all. She said tentatively to Tan, “Do you suppose the Linularinan soldiers have all gone back across the bridge?”

Tan flashed her a smile that was only a little strained. “We shall hope so.”

He almost hoped they hadn’t, Mienthe understood.
Of them all, Tan was the least eager to arrive, while no one but she seemed to feel this driving need for haste. But…
Trust your gift and yourself
, Tan had said to her, and though Mienthe thought she was probably foolishly impatient, she looked for the Arobern so she could ask whether they might press their pace to something a little less deliberate.

“We’ll make haste, yes, but slowly,” the Arobern told her. His tone was absent, but kind. He looked past her as he spoke, watching the road, watching the empty farmlands, studying the town they were approaching. “I thought they might get out and away across the river, but now I think they are there in the town, those Linularinan enemies of ours, you see? This country”—he made a broad gesture that encompassed the woods behind them and the cleared land near Tiefenauer and the town itself—“it is too empty. This is not peace we ride into, but a silence of waiting—ah. Do you see? Now we will find out what is there.”

A small group of men had come warily up to the edge of the road to meet them. Farmers, Mienthe thought, and maybe a tradesman or two from the town. They stared at the banners, especially the Delta oak. And they looked at her, as the Arobern drew his horse up and waved a broad hand, signaling Mienthe to put herself in the forefront of the company. She was a little surprised, but only momentarily, for the militia companies were clearly pleased by his gesture and the waiting men as clearly reassured by it. The militia dipped their banners to her. Mienthe hoped she did not blush.

The men stepped up on the road to meet her, nodding respectfully and glancing warily past her at the Arobern,
waiting beneath the blue-and-purple Casmantian banner. Mienthe thought they would not recognize her, that they might not trust her, but instead one of the townsmen came forward another half step and said, “Lady Mienthe, you won’t remember me, I suppose. I’m Jeseth son of Tamanes. A glazier. I did the windows of the solar up at the great house for your cousin. That was some years ago—”

“I do remember!” Mienthe exclaimed. She did. She recognized the man’s broad, weathered face and kindly eyes and short grizzled beard; seeing him here was like a promise of homecoming. She said, “You fixed my window, too, when I broke it.” She had been fourteen, and bent on rescuing a fledgling green jay that had got its foot tangled in the flowering vines outside her room. The poor creature had dangled helplessly upside down, cheeping piteously, but Mienthe had freed it easily. She hadn’t slipped and broken the window until its frantic parents had startled her, diving to protect their young one.

“I did,” said the glazier, smiling at her. “You showed me the little bird, which the esteemed Iriene had just fixed its leg. You had a scratch on your cheek where its mama had pecked you, and lucky she hadn’t got your eye.”

Mienthe blushed.

“It’s good to see you safe,” said the glazier. His gaze went past her, to the Casmantian banner. “You
are
safe, are you, lady?”

Mienthe blushed again, but nodded firmly.

“Well, and it’s a strong ally you’ve brought trailing home at your heel. Which that is an ally, is it?”

Mienthe nodded again and found her voice. “He is, and he will be—I was afraid to come back, afraid I would
find Linularinan soldiers in Tiefenauer and Linularinan officers in the great house—”

“So you will, and so we came up to warn you, seeing as you might want recent word of the town and the river,” said the glazier. He’d brought his gaze back to her face. “We’ve not known what to do, what with your lord cousin gone to Tihannad. Earth and stone, even if Lord Bertaud’s trying to get back here right this minute, who knows what he might have run into? We’ve no word from him and none from the king, and every one of your uncles pulling in a different direction. Arguing like a pack of fighting dogs with one bone, they are, and not one as will give way to the rest. And now here
you
are, lady, cutting straight past that whole lot and bringing a
Casmantian
lord home with you! That’ll make those Linularinan bastards sit up on their hind legs and take notice, and at the same time save a great lot of arguing among our Delta lords.” He gave Mienthe an approving nod.

“That’s Brechen Glansent Arobern himself,” Mienthe said. She raised her voice and said to all the silent little group of listening men, “This is the Arobern himself, come as a friend to our king and to my cousin and to the Delta. He’ll push all those Linularinan troops back across the river, whether they’ve got the bridge decked or have to swim, and too bad for them if all this rain’s got the river up!”

The men cheered and laughed, nodding approvingly. One farmer called out, “The bridge isn’t decked even yet, and let the lot of them be swept right out to sea on the salt tide!” and they cheered again.

Mienthe nodded and smiled, but she also said, “Well, all the Delta will have to help. Neither the Arobern nor
his men know the marshes or our town, and assuredly we want to clear out the Linularinan troops as quick as we may, so we can polish up Tiefenauer and present it properly to my lord cousin when he comes back!”

“That’s right!” said one man, and another, “Hear the lady!”

“So tell our ally your news, and we’ll see what we have to do,” Mienthe concluded, and waved up the Arobern, who gave her an approving nod, swung down from his horse, and strode up on foot to speak to the men. He was bareheaded and informal, speaking quickly in his rough, accented Terheien, making farmers and townsmen alike forget he was a king and nodding now and then, respectfully, toward Mienthe.

All along the column there was a general easing, men passing along flasks of watered wine and pieces of hard cracker. “We can do better than that by you,” one of the Delta farmers broke off to say, and spoke to one of the Arobern’s officers, after which a half dozen Casmantian soldiers and a good many Delta men went off down the farm lane.

Soon after that there were loaves of good bread, and cold roasted mutton, and baskets of fried chicken and hot buttered muffins, brought by the farmers’ wives and by boys too young for the militia but eager to touch the vicious heads of real Casmantian spears. “Which we had word of your banners long since,” said one woman cheerfully. “And then my Tamed brought word of yourself, lady, and glad we were to hear
that
word!
You’ll
teach those Linularinan bastards they can’t take us so light, begging your pardon, lady.”

Mienthe smiled and nodded and murmured whatever
seemed appropriate and cast longing glances down the road. “Can’t we get
on
?” she begged the Arobern at last. The sun stood nearly directly overhead, and she found herself fretting like a caged bird with all the bright sky above calling out to her to
fly
.

“We don’t want to rush the Arobern past what he thinks is wise,” murmured Tan, which sentiment collected approving nods from the Casmantian officers.

“We might wish to heed the lady’s sense of urgency,” said Gereint Enseichen, winning a grateful smile from Mienthe.

“I think we can,” said the Arobern. He looked sternly at Tan and then transferred that heavy frown to Mienthe. “We shall expect some resistance; we shall expect some fighting. You will both assure me that you will stay close by the honored mage, do you hear? You will not ride ahead, no matter this
sense of urgency
. You will not fall behind no matter that you feel you have cause for alarm. Yes?”

“Yes!” declared Mienthe, trying to press the king and the whole company into motion with sheer willpower. Her grip tightened on her reins; her horse jigged sideways and spun in an impatient circle when she checked him. She longed to let the animal go, kick him into a gallop, fling him straight ahead at the town that lay so quietly before them.

“Yes,” muttered Tan, his eyes on the damp road, steaming now in the sun. He swung reluctantly into the saddle. When Gereint took a step toward him, he flinched and backed his horse several steps.

The mage paused and looked at Tan for a moment without speaking. Then he went, still in silence, to mount his own tall horse.

*   *   *

Tiefenauer was not a great city, with tall mansions of fine dressed stone and wide avenues paved with tight-fitted blocks of stone. Its streets were narrow and cobbled, its buildings tight-packed and mostly of painted cypress and oak. Cheap gray paint was favored in the poorer areas of the town because it was cheap, with dark red or tawny yellow for those who were more daring; white where families could afford to have their houses painted every year. The white buildings had shutters and doors of scarlet or bright green or sunny yellow, and vines with purple or crimson or orange flowers tumbling from their balconies.

In most of the town, homes were small and mostly set above equally small shops: tailors and cobblers and dressmakers all along one long, narrow street; furniture-makers and harness-makers and metalsmiths near the horse-market; butchers and sausage-makers in the south of town and fishmongers along the river; bakers and confectioners and apothecaries and all sorts of small crafts on the north side. In the middle of town was a wonderful fountain, three levels of falling water leaping from top to bottom with hundreds of green copper fish. Beside the fountain stood a huge oak, in the wide square where twice a week the market was raised, and beyond the square the low hill with the sprawling great house atop it.

It was in the square that the bulk of the Linularinan forces were set, and in the gardens around the great house. But there were Linularinan soldiers all through the town, occupying the apartments above the shops and making free of the shops themselves.

“But not too free,” the townsmen had said, with the
grudging air of men bound despite their wishes to be fair. The glazier had added, “They’ll let anyone out of Tiefenauer who wishes to go, which is a good many. There hasn’t been much looting and less wanton pillage and no firing the buildings. While I was still there—I have a business to look after, but I sent my wife to her cousin down near Saum—but while I was still in Tiefenauer myself, I saw the Linularinan officers flog one of their men for theft and,” he said with a grim nod of satisfaction, “they hanged a man for raping a girl, as well they might.”

“A gentle occupation. They don’t want your folk to hate them for generations,” the Arobern had said, which was obvious.

“They only want that book—and Tan,” Gereint Enseichen had added. “They must know the book is there. And Lady Mienthe is right: They haven’t found it. But I can’t imagine what’s prevented them. If it’s a twentieth-part as obvious as Tan himself, a blind mage should be able to walk right to it.”

“So perhaps it isn’t a twentieth-part as obvious,” Tan had said, an edge to his tone. “Shall we stand here discussing it from one noon to the next, or shall we get on?”

They had gone on. Mienthe had no idea what the Arobern planned to do about the Linularinan soldiers in the houses or the ones in the square; she hadn’t been able to make herself pay attention. She knew that Tan was near her, but she was barely aware even of Gereint Enseichen, though the mage rode close on her other side. All her attention was focused on the great house, on the book, on the pressing need to get to it and do—something. She could picture the book clearly in her mind’s eye, but she could not picture what either she or Tan or Gereint
might
do
with it. But she could not think about anything else. Images of the book occupied nearly the whole of her mind. She could have drawn every curve and line of its decorated cover; she could have told out how many pages it contained. She felt the textures of leather and fine thick paper against her fingers. She thought if
she
had been looking for it, she would inevitably have gone straight to it, with the same certainty with which the river knew which way to go to reach the sea. And, of course, she
was
looking for it, and when she was at last permitted to go freely forward, she headed for it with exactly that certainty.

So Mienthe did not know what disposition the Arobern made with his men, or with the militia companies; she did not know what arrangements he came to with the townsmen and surrounding farmers or even whether there was fighting in the streets of the town once they arrived. She noticed vaguely that she had gone largely blind. Or not really
blind
. It was not a malady of the eyes, but of the attention. She would blink and find quite a large block of time lost. She knew they were outside the town and then that they were in it, between gray-painted buildings, in a narrow alley that smelled of warm rain and steaming cobbles and horse dung and baking bread, with the angle and quality of the light quite different. Then she blinked again and only the cobbles were the same, for the buildings were painted white and the smells did not include bread but did include the fragrance of tumbling trumpet flowers, and the shadows were long and the air much cooler. Yet she had no sense of passing time: All her sense of time seemed to have narrowed to a single pressing urgent
now
.