Banner of the Damned (103 page)

“This is Hannik, the sword master in Yvanavar.”

Ivandred’s brow lifted. “He must have a brother.” The brow furrowed. “I can’t question Danrid directly, because I cannot interfere with who the jarls hire to train their own people, or how. He might take questions as interference.”

“If Hannik is the Herskalt’s brother, it seems he would have told you.”

“The Herskalt’s never said anything about Hannik, other than a report on the fact that the man is a loyal Marloven. The Herskalt talks that way about everyone, as if he knows them. So far, what he’s said has proven to be true.”

I knew why, but I dared not tell Ivandred about the dyr, if he didn’t
already know. And he couldn’t know. As sure as I could be about anything, I was certain that Ivandred, who spent most of every year riding around inspecting his kingdom defenses and preparing for attack, would order me to produce the dyr by any means necessary, so that potential enemies’ thoughts could be listened to.

Ivandred said, “I’ll ask him. He should be here soon to see our innovations in shifting from line to column—” He seemed to see my confusion, and gave me a half smile. “He’s been advising me in methods of consolidating tactical command through inside lines without dividing my force. Our frontal assault is our best weapon, and… heh. I see you are lost. We both have our expertise, Sigradir. Would you like supper?”

He walked out, opening his hand toward the campfire, where Haldren and the other captains sat together on a log, camp plates on their laps, their faces ruddy in the reflected firelight.

I discovered that I was hungry, but stronger than the prospect of camp food was the desire to think about what I’d just heard and to do so at the ground where I’d lain after nearly burning myself to death calling fire from the bridge. The inner perimeter guards saluted me as I left the camp and walked toward the bridge.

My initial thought was that the Herskalt hadn’t used the dyr to help Ivandred on his battles, or I would have seen it at Olavair, and I am sure I would have heard about it subsequently. So Ivandred definitely did not know about its existence.

I could see why people hated mages, if they found out mages kept such vital secrets. Secrets are another form of power. What had the Herskalt said about the control of information?

The village had long since been rebuilt, the roofs replaced with tile. Stone had been fitted into the cracks where the old timber had been. It was habit by now to assess magic spells, and here were the expected protections binding the bridge supports, laid by myself during my long journey. How isolated I had felt, how afraid! But not nearly as afraid as the day of that attack, was it really ten years ago?

The residue of magic broke my thoughts. I stepped onto the bridge, sifting the layers, and caught a familiar signature below mine. The Herskalt’s. He’d been there.

I remembered the first time I heard his voice. We could not have been far away when he’d healed Retrend and Fnor. I walked closer, extending my hand. Sometimes touching a thing will bring the residue into focus, but only traces remained.

So I transferred back and got to work.

EIGHT
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L

asva mulled the problem of Kaidas. He’d brought the granddaughter of one of her cats. She felt she owed him an interview for that, but nothing she did was unobserved. For the first time, this mattered. She did not want speculation or rumor starting about someone she intended to see as little of as possible, as all it would bring would be pain. So she must interview him in circumstances too ordinary to be remarked upon.

She walked through her rooms, looking for suitably ordinary circumstances, noticed that her oldest pair of fans was missing, and went in search of Anhar. She found her consulting with the linen-draper. When Anhar interrupted herself, Lasva said, “My old fans. I hope that means you’ve begun to learn the Altan form?”

Anhar bowed. “You said once that if I wished to learn, I could borrow them. Birdy, that is, Herald Martande, holds a morning practice in the stable rec room.”

Lasva had been very proud of the three Marloven runners who’d taken up the fan form, with whom she now practiced each day. But she said, “Ah! I have long wished to practice with other Colendi, and Emras has been too busy these past few years.”

Anhar said, “She has been practicing with us most days.”

Lasva smiled. “Is there room for one more?”

When you are a queen, Lasva thought, there is only one answer to that, and she saw the effect the next morning when she walked in behind Anhar.

I was as surprised as the others to see Lasva enter. She greeted everyone with grave courtesy, giving Kaidas no more or less attention than she did the others. She took up her stance next to me in our old way and waited while everyone adjusted around her. Kaidas stayed on the other side of the room with his son, who had attracted a gaggle of small children.

It was this son who Lasva looked at, as she did not want to be observed staring at Kaidas. The boy was fair, black-eyed, with a heartrendingly familiar grin. But he did not have his father’s easy style. There was wariness in his tight shoulders, in his quick glances. He laughed at himself readily when he stumbled with fan or with the Marloven language: the other children seemed to be delighted by his accent.

In short, Vasande had already made himself popular.

As you might expect, after the time I’d spent listening to Kaidas and Lasva, I was intensely interested in their meeting now. And so, over the next couple of weeks, as I tried to master my scroll’s magic forms, I visited their thoughts with the dyr.

There wasn’t much to descry. His intense reaction to her appearance that morning was to be expected—so intense he made my head throb with his mixture of hard-reined erotic response and the sharp disappointment when she didn’t speak to him except in polite greeting. But she was there. That was all the hope he consciously permitted himself.

She kept putting off the interview. She was busy, the time was not right, too many people around. Yet she returned to fan practice each day.

As the rest of that month veered between hot days and the first intimations of autumn, Anise gained two companions, then three—for once someone adopts a cat, more of them seem to appear.

I was not surprised to be asked to make little houses for their waste like the ones Lasva had had in Alsais. I used Adamas Dei’s magic to make them, for by then I’d discovered who’d written my scroll.

Political casuistry… the universality of literature… translations… history and whose truth to trust.

Truth.

What was the truth? Again I had this sense that I was seeing pieces of a puzzle. It struck me when I reached the last section of Adamas’s text, where he talked about building a mental shield against the magic of mind-listening. The startling thing was Adamas’s wording:
It is good practice to prevent the invasion of one’s intellect by idle eyes in the Garden of the Twelve.

Idle eyes in the Garden of the Twelve. I had seen the phrase before. It was not until the next morning, when I was moving through Altan fan practice (with Lasva there, the conversations had ceased) that I recovered it: the Fox memoir, specifically the interview Inda Elgar had at Ghost Island with the strange, scar-faced Norsundrian named Ramis, who had calmly predicted his own death. Had he used a dyr? That was a disturbing idea, that Norsundrians might have access to the dyr, too.

Three weeks after Lasva joined us in Altan fan practice, the Marlovens found the gunvaer’s new area of practice sufficiently uninteresting enough to overlook. Of course the peacocks would flock together—everyone thought that a very good joke.

One rainy day, when practice was over and I’d left for my tower, Kaidas was aware of Lasva listening as he explained to Vasande and his friends how the Altan fan form was actually not Colendi at all, but far, far back in history it had come from Chwahirsland. The old stories were that Chwahirsland was great, back in the days of dragons, but that the great leaders and makers left when the dragons did.

As soon as he finished his historical lecture, the children ran off (undoubtedly shedding most of his words unheard) and he found Lasva walking next to him. She said, “Before I left Colend I gave my dear tabby Pepper to Darva. How did you come by Anise?”

“On my way out of the country I stayed with Darva, and here was the new litter. Darva asked if I might take one west.”

“What made you decide to come?”

Here was his moment at last, the one he had rehearsed all across the continent. Even dreamed about. But the Lasva in those dreams had been the young princess, tender and ardent, always on the verge of laughter, and not this woman more beautiful than marble, and about as warm.

However, he did not see the indifference his father had predicted so easily, from the comfortable summit of experience. There was that in the tightness of Lasva’s upper lip, the tilt of her chin, that hinted at emotions immured behind a wall of stone as thick as these around him.
Anguish.

So he swallowed his words of love, and did not mention how court still talked with regret about
back in
the princess’s day
, because her leaving
had somehow taken all the sunlight and music out of Alsais, leaving only false glare and civilized noise.

When you cannot say what is in your heart, what is left? “I gather Anhar did not tell you what happened New Year’s Week?”

“I never question my staff about their personal time.”

Kaidas took in her guarded expression, her hands gripping the fans, and knew he had it: talk of Colend hurt her.
Begin easy
. So he tried for a light tone. “It’s sordid enough that I felt it best to take my son on an extended tour. Very extended. Birdy made this kingdom sound interesting.”

“Interesting enough to labor in a stable?” Lasva asked.

“I may as well do it here as anywhere else,” he replied. “You’ll remember the state of Lassiter affairs. It has not changed, my father having run through both my marriage settlement and his current wife’s, and he convinced me years ago that I could never earn a living as a painter.” Kaidas hesitated, then took the greatest gamble of his life. “At some point we’ll take ship and cross over to Toar. Then onward.”

And waited with sick certainty for her to invite him to continue his trip, or ask when he was going to leave, because anguish can turn to anger, and anger to bitterness.

But she turned away—saying nothing—and he slowly drew breath. No conjectures. One hope: tomorrow he might see her again.

She had thought that proximity would be the worst, and she could endure it. But no, talking—hearing his voice—seeing the subtle changes of his expression from delight to the quick lift of brows as he mused some inner thought, then the change in the curve of his lips from rueful humor to a flash of sorrow, quickly hidden again—oh,
how
it hurt! She tightened her grip on her hands until the ring cut into her finger, following Birdy and Anhar out as she talked to Anhar about some castle business, without hearing anything said.

Ivandred and his First Lancer captains arrived at the gallop, horns blaring from tower to tower across the city. He showed up in my lair within a short time after his arrival, and, as always, asked me about the status of the wards.

“I have four levels left,” I said. “They are so interlocked. This type of magic is new to me. But I discovered that it was taught by Adamas Dei.”

Ivandred whistled softly.

“I’m having to learn it on my own, because I haven’t heard from the Herskalt at all.”

“I have,” Ivandred said as he looked around my tower, and I wondered if he was imagining the Herskalt there instead of me—a far more powerful mage, and someone who could advise on everything, from strategy to training. All I could advise on was styles in scribal writing.

But then he turned back to me. “You won’t hear from him until you finish your task, and we can all meet here in Choreid Dhelerei to plan the future.”