The Returning (23 page)

Cam was promoted to the barracks, with five men under his command. Gyaar stood with the Guard Captain on the top of the gatehouse and watched his Downlander train them, watched them creeping, climbing, sneaking up on one another.

“Good,” said Urasu, quietly, to himself. And to Gyaar: “Proving me right, My Lord, he is.”

 

NOW THAT FATHER'S lands were too large for the bimonthly Hearings, he instead made the circuit by moving the household four times yearly: winter in the City; summer at home, at Ryuu; spring and autumn in the new keep to the south. The winter Hearings in the City were coming due, and Father rode north to the City at month's end with Mother and Shi-karu, their retinue of one hundred and twenty that they needed to ensure their comfort, and the guard that numbered in the hundreds, for their safety during the journey north.

“I do not like to leave Dorn-Lannet,” Father said. “While it remains so restless.” He was saddling his horse himself, as he always did. They walked the length of the stable, to the bailey, Cam a pace behind them.

“You have entrusted it to me, Father. Do you not have faith in your decision?”

Father stopped to look straight at Cam, where he stood at Gyaar's back. He mounted, reined the horse about, and rode out without further word for Gyaar. As the bailey emptied, Gyaar felt a lifting of his spirits: happiness.

With Father gone, Gyaar had less time to spend with Cam.
The town remains unquiet
, he wrote to Father.
This despite the reduced taxes and the preparations for the Winter Festival.
He looked across at Father's empty seat, knowing what Father would do, and knowing as surely that he, Gyaar, would turn from it: Father would choose no sides, he would strike at all who had been caught up in the conflict—innocent and guilty alike—and crush them, merciless, brutal.

Laying down his brush, he stared at the cold white walls of the council chamber. Empty, it was not just chilly, it was lonely. He went to the barracks.

Cam had set up a table with a brazier beneath it and a blanket over the top, and was sitting like an old grandmother, blanket tucked about him. He had papers and brushes and inkstones spread before him. “Curse all the great gods, it's cold. How does it go, being Lord of Dorn-Lannet?”

“I have put it aside for the night.”

Cam grinned, and Gyaar could not help but smile back.

“I can put my alphabet aside for the night. Let's go,” said Cam. “And get warm.”

Gyaar reckoned up three things, not to say them, but just to know them: that he had never been to a tavern; that he had never been drunk; and that he must know why this Downlander, so like to his brother, had sought him out. What he said was, “Let us.”

They went afoot into the town, walked all the way through it. “Where do you take me?”

“Ah,” said Cam. “I thought we should work up our thirst.”

There were young men and boys weaving the streets, in bands. Nearing one group, Gyaar felt the skin on his back prick. He looked at Cam, who was watching the group approach. The youths were drunk, but that was not it. It was the knives and truncheons they had stuck into their belts. It was the swagger they walked with.

“I liked that not at all,” said Cam once they were well past them.

Gyaar nudged him. “I suppose we're not the only ones looking to shake the winter chill.”

Cam did not answer, only nodded.

“Where did you say you were taking me?”

It was the White Mule. If the innkeeper was confounded by Gyaar guesting there, she did not show it. Gyaar wondered if Cam knew her role in his coming into Ryuu service, and decided that it did not matter.

They staggered out of the yard as the sun was rising. Still, Gyaar did not know what drew Cam to him.

 

FROST DUSTED THE branches of the vines, the gravel. In the witch-light of the early dusk it glowed silver. Gyaar wriggled his toes in his boots; they were numb. Two abreast, he and Cam walked the length of the arbor.

“My father comes here with his mistresses.”

“I hope not at this time of year.”

Gyaar laughed aloud.

At the end of the arbor stood the three-walled shelter that was the tea pavilion. Gyaar set the fire in its bed of sand, went about the business of making tea, Cam watching all of it.

“You're as bad as my mam for fussing, warming the pot and adding a leaf or two, as if it mattered.”

“It matters.” Gyaar put the tea bowls on the tray, the tray between them. “No, like this. Hold the cup like this.” Gyaar watched Cam move his fingers on the bowl. “Better.”

They drank the first cup in silence. On the second, Gyaar broke the quiet between them. “How goes your reading and writing?”

“Phhht.”

“You must persist. You cannot remain illiterate and attend court. You cannot remain ignorant and attend council.”

Cam set his cup down, so his hand was free to help him talk. “Gyaar, I am not your brother. I have brothers, and a sister of my own.”

“I did not say you were.”

Cam lifted his bowl and this second round was finished in silence.

“Why must we not talk, with that first cup?”

“The silence is time in which to reflect, to relax.” Gyaar broke it again. “I knew you would come back to Dorn-Lannet.”

“I don't know how, for I had no clear idea of it myself.” Cam lifted a shoulder. “I came back thinking to return to one thing, but it was like coming to another, so much was new or altered.”

Gyaar laughed softly. “Has it changed such a great deal since we took it?”

Cam did not at once answer, seemed not to have heard. He was staring at the pond, at the Koi-boi. She was prancing about the water's edge, singing, and it was that which Cam seemed to be listening to; her that his eyes were following. “Uh . . .”

Gyaar looked at him:
Go on
.

Cam turned his shoulder to the pond. “What I came back to was not what I left. And it's changed even since I returned: The troubles have gotten worse. I spent most of the spring just wandering about and there was . . . was . . .”

“Friction,” said Gyaar.

“Yes, friction, here and there, but it seems that it rubs harder. Someone is stirring this up . . .” He was gazing again at the Koi-boi, and by the pond, the Koi-boi had stilled, to stare at the teahouse. Gyaar looked from one to the other, and grinned.

 

THE MORNING AIR ceased nipping quite so much at fingers and toes. Late winter blossoms sprang from bare earth, bare branches. Father and Mother returned, Shi-karu, the court.

Council was called. Gyaar returned to his own seat, and Father once again sat on the dais at the head of the chamber. Strangely, though, Gyaar found he still ran the meeting. After the council was done and the councilors gone from the chamber, they stayed to drink tea, as they had done before the winter.

Gyaar looked down at the clean, blank page of his notebook. He picked up his brush, and could not find the right word to put there on the paper.

“So.” Father poured tea for him. “Dorn-Lannet seethes yet, Only Son?”

Gyaar set the brush back down, closed the book. Father waited in silence. Gyaar looked at Father's empty tea bowl and did not pour. “Half a year ago, Dorn-Lannet was recovering from the battle, was growing, prospering, the populace . . . content enough. It seems that someone, some body, is working on the tensions left from the war sparking them to life again.”

“Someone?” Father leaned forward on his fisted hands. “Someone, who? Some body? What body?”

“I believe a disaffected—”

“We know they are disaffected—”

“—a disaffected member of the old power here, once under the old Downlander Lord; or of one of the Uplander Houses we destroyed, as we took over the lands south of the City.”

“Yet you know not who.”

“Do not tell me how to find out, Father. I will not butcher people in the marketplace to terrify others into giving us information.”

Born for the shrine.
Gyaar waited, but Father did not say it.

What Father did next astounded him. He loosed his sash and said, “I have a happier topic for discussion.” And he passed Gyaar a small silver circle.

A miniature. A girl looked at him, a pink-and-white, pale-haired, plump Downlander girl, grass-green eyes wide and wary.

“Fenister Fort,” said Father.

Gyaar knew it, part of that ancient line of defense, southern sister to Dorn-Lannet. Knew it because it was part of Cam's world, the village he had come from. He looked up at the white walls of the chamber and saw Cam through the window, sitting under the arbor, watching the Koi-boi.
If I moved her into the women's quarters, they could wed.
It was like a chain, each thing linked to the one before and after it, all of them a thing together: Downlander to Uplander. Man to woman, friend to friend.

“If I pass Dorn-Lannet over to you, you will need to be married, for you will need heirs to . . .” Father's hand swept the room, bringing the fort and the township into it. “Heirs, to take it on after you.”

Gyaar could not speak.

“Think on it. I will not force you.” Father left him with the miniature, and no answer to make.

 

THE KOI-BREEDER STEPPED into the room, but would come no farther: not disobedience, but awe.

“Koi-Master,” said Gyaar. The man bowed, so bent he looked folded in two. “My Koi-boi. Tell me what you know of her.”

“Caught her hiding in back there, My Lord.” The Koi-Master turned in a stiff semicircle and pointed through the wall, toward the nursery compound. “Kick her out but what do I find? Eh? Eh?” He leaned forward. “Get back to my room at noon and she's cleaned it, and got my noon meal ready—and it was just what I always have, bowl of cold rice and curd and salt.”

“So she stayed.”

“Huh, guess so, My Lord. Put her to work with the fish, once I hear her sing. She sings real sweet.”

“She may remain your Koi-boi, if she wishes it, but she no longer . . . keeps house for you. She has been given a room in the women's quarters, and she is now under the care of my mother, Lady Ryuu.”

“My Lord.” The old man bowed and unfolded himself with difficulty. Just as he was stepping out the door, he paused. “I'm happy for her, it isn't that I grudge her, My Lord, but I tell you this: If not for me, she'd'a been working a tavern back room.”

Gyaar said nothing, and after a moment the Koi-Master shambled away.

 

“YOUR ACCENT IS fading,” said Gyaar.

Cam didn't respond, worked the strap through the buckle.

Gyaar leaned on the saddle-bow and yawned. “You think one arm is an excuse to take forever to saddle your mount?”

Cam grinned.

Gyaar rode knee to knee with Cam. A breeze beat, vigorous and constant, on Gyaar's right cheek. “Of all of the Ryuu homes, it is Dorn-Lannet I am fondest of.” He gazed at the keep, its white walls and gabled tower, elegant, formidable. “It may be that fighting in the South gave me a liking for this country.”

Gyaar reached into his pocket, handed Cam what he had pulled from it. “She is one of yours.”

Cam looked at the miniature, drew his gray to a halt. “Graceful Fenister? You are betrothed to Graceful Fenister?”

“You know her. I thought you must.”

“Yes, I do.”

“It is . . . That is . . . She is mine to wed, I know that, but . . .” But.

“Yours to wed.” Cam said something more in his own tongue. He passed the miniature back.

Gyaar ran his thumb over the image, put it in his pocket. “The final touch, a marriage between Up- and Downlander. This might still the last unrest in town.”

Cam abruptly steered Geyard aside, so that they now rode far enough apart to make talk difficult. Gyaar closed the gap. “There is a thing I would offer you.” He fished around in his mind, trying to find the right words to explain that he understood about the Koi-boi, that he wished to see Cam wed, if that was what Cam wished—

Cam turned his head aside and spat, then wheeled his mount about. Gyaar halted, shaken, then pushed across his path. “What have I said to so offend you, Cam?”

“Excuse me, My Lord.”

“Get down, we will talk.” Backing off a space, Gyaar swung down from the saddle. Cam put his horse between them and regarded Gyaar over the saddle. The gray was fidgeting, Cam's upset showing itself through the horse.

“What other news do you have of Kayforl, My Lord?”

“I . . .” Gyaar shook his head and spread both hands. “I don't know what you are asking of me.” He tried again, setting his hand on the gray horse's mane. Cam let go his grip on the saddle and made a single backward step, awkward, clumsy.

“You and I . . .” Gyaar folded his hands together, and held them up. “We are Up- and Downlander. And now a marriage between us, North and South. And I thought . . . the Koi-boi—”

“You leave her out of this.”

They rode back, stiff with each other. Gyaar reined in, halting them before they should reach the gates.

“It was no intention of mine to hurt you, Cam. Can you not see that it is something to celebrate?”

Cam said, stiffer yet, formal, “I would see you home, My Lord, and then I have work I must attend to.”

“Bah.” Gyaar left him there and rode under the gate alone.

 

GYAAR STOOD ON the bridge. The evenings were longer, and soon he would go with Father to Fenister Fort, to meet his bride. When Gyaar thought of Cam, it hurt, a physical pain. In sudden decision, he tapped his knuckles upon the parapet and strode across the lawn to the barracks. Cam was playing some kind of gambling game involving chicken bones. He bowed, formal, then sat silent, waiting for Gyaar to go. Gyaar swept the chicken bones aside and sat on the table before him. “I have a fancy to visit the tavern.”