Banner of the Damned (34 page)

A good portion of Alarcansa lay on the southern slopes below the eastern pass, where the vineyards that formed their greatest trade asset basked in the late-summer sun.

Tatia fought against impatience. The Chwahir did sound like a problem, but Queen Hatahra had more than enough mages and counselors to address the matter of wards, whatever those were.

No, there was something else disturbing her cousin. When Carola acted like this, her fan or forefinger snapping and tapping like the twitch of a cat’s tail, Tatia knew it had to do with
Her
, Princess Lasthavais, the person Carola hated worse than damnation. Or else it had to do with her new duke, the person Tatia hated worse than damnation.

How to get closer to the real subject? Tatia reached to stroke the bird—knowing what would happen—as she said soothingly, “The mages know what to do. Also, you have a duke now to obey the Oath Summons. You do not have to lower yourself to such tedious duty.” And she saw by the slight jut of Carola’s perfect chin and the tightening of her smooth cheeks, that she’d hit close.

Time to humble herself, lest Carola’s temper snap. Tatia reached again to stroke the parrot, which squawked, raised its wings in alarm, and
snapped its beak at her finger. Tatia squeaked and jumped back. Carola laughed.

But the reassurance that the parrot loved her, and only her, did not smooth her mood as it usually did. “Come,” Carola said. “Let us see if there is something to trouble me.” And she scudded up the other side of the staircase, Tatia following with a growing sense of dread.

Carola ignored her cousin and the bird riding obediently on her wrist as she sorted through memories of what she’d believed until recently had been a superlatively happy month—ever since her wedding day. She now had everything just as she had always planned, or almost everything. There remained one tiny thing, a tiny round porcelain thing, or rather, not the thing itself—she could buy better ones with a single command—but what it symbolized. So maybe two small things, both of which shared the same meaning.

She let her breath out slowly, counting the triumphs. She and her beautiful Kaidas spent each morning completely alone in her handsome suite, redecorated with his colors as a surprise for him before the wedding. They breakfasted together on the terrace above the herb garden, and then he attended her while she did business, with the idea that he would one day take his share, especially of the vineyards. Not yet, of course. He had to learn how she wanted things, as she had spent years learning from her father.

They rode around together, so that he would know Alarcansa, and Alarcansa could know their new duke.

And in the evenings, there was always entertainment— either musicians, or parties. Twice she’d given expensive masquerade balls for the baronial families who owed her fealty, because she’d overheard Kaidas, during her first spring at court, say that he loved masked balls. And after that, to bed, together, where she gave him all her attention. He, in turn, was skillful and attentive, just as she required.

And every morning, before that intimate breakfast, she dismissed her maid and his new valet, and with her own hands she tied back his beautiful hair with a fresh white ribbon.

Tatia had sentimentally informed her that the household considered that romantic. Carola calmly acknowledged the tribute, not telling anyone that the act gave her as exquisite a flame of pleasure in her vitals as did the touch of his hands where she wanted them, each night.

More, truth to tell.

More, because the pleasure of sex with the one she desired most was heightened by the triumphant reminder that he was hers, and by the
mental image of Lasva waking in her empty bed. How she lingered in the aftermath of bliss, imagining Lasva distraught with the same pain that Carola had once felt when the eyes of the man Carola had chosen—the most desired man in Colend’s court—had dared to drift indifferently past her to that damned princess, and then smile.

Kaidas was hers, all hers. She was munificent with love-gifts; each day for the two weeks after they were married, and now every time he did something she asked. He would learn that she was generous when he bent his mind to pleasing her: clothes, rings, a racing carriage, two fine new race horses that she’d ordered all the way from Sarendan.

She turned her head as she passed a window, dissatisfied with her elaborate coif, the white ribbon bound artfully into her pearl-braided coronet. She would wear her hair as simply as a peasant girl if the ribbon were tied by his hands. Surely even a man would one day waken with the idea of making his own romantic gesture and bind up her hair. However, he was too careless about such things; she suspected that if she did not perform that sweet office, he would never remember to tie up his own hair. He certainly never looked in the mirror after she’d tied it for him.

So, though the white ribbons gave her pleasure, she was not certain that their symbolism was
true
. The real proof that she at last possessed his heart was the single thing she could not ask for. The idea must be his alone: to paint for her a lover’s cup. One? She wanted the palace full of them, one to each room. But the first one was yet to come. She’d ordered a room fitted up for painters, complete to an astonishing array of expensive colors ordered from all around the world. She’d instructed her servants to discover who the best porcelain-makers were, especially of cups, and she’d paid a crushing sum to have an entire case of them delivered.

But as yet he had not set foot in that room, past the day she’d taken him there as a surprise.

Well, it was early days yet. There had been so many other things to do. Like that damned herald from the queen four days previous.

She considered that moment yet again.

They’d begun hearing petitioners when her steward cleared the crowd, saying, over and over, “Message from the queen. Make way for the messenger from the queen.”

The herald said, “Her majesty, having received word of the border being breeched by the Chwahir, requires your oath-stipulated defense force to be raised at once and sent north to the pass, there to await command from the consort Lord Davaud.”

Carola remembered her own disgust. It meant a great to-do, assembling people who were far better employed at the grape harvest. In specific, it meant horses, strong and sturdy young men and women, swords, mud, sweat. Surely she would not be required to preside over something so dreary. But now she had an active man at her side who had spent time riding the eastern border with his Thora-Dei cousins, patrolling against incursions from Khanerenth troublemakers. What could be more perfect?

So she’d turned to her duke, saying, “I believe this charge of the queen’s must fall to you.”

And his face had changed. For a heartbeat only. She might have missed it had she not watched him constantly in her hunger to know his secret mind. She thought she knew all the range of his expressions, but she had never seen that lifting of the eyelids, the sudden, unguarded deep breath of… of joy?

She reached the round windows above the east court, where the stables circled what long ago had been a garrison. Now those buildings were storage: old furniture, the best of the silk, the best wine.

It was in some wise a garrison again, some of the rooms having been hastily cleared out against the fifty expected young people, mostly men, as she had guessed. Lower servants and commoners stood down there with him now, in their shirt sleeves despite the cool air, swinging their swords round and back and up in a kind of rhythm that Kaidas must have learned with his Thora-Dei cousins.

“Again!” she heard him shout. “I want tighter circles and convincing blocks. Then we’ll get out the wooden swords for some bouts.”

“Hurrah!” some of the younger ones shouted, dancing about with glee.

“Now! One! Two! Three!” Kaidas barked in a voice she’d never heard from him, and his little army hastily took up their positions again, swinging their weapons.

Trailing her cousin, Tatia looked down. Sword-swinging meant nothing to her. As for the duke, the fool was clearly having fun, but he was a man, and they were notorious for liking to get sweaty and bruised up with such hummery.

What was Carola sulking about now?

Stroke, stroke went the forefinger along the parrot’s head.

Tatia said, “What is amiss? Are you thinking of the labor gone to waste when those lackeys ride off to the mountains?”

“I only have to provide fifty of my own people, and I have distributed the remainder of the numbers through all my Definian holdings, so we’ll
have enough laborers to pick grapes when they are ready. The Oath only stipulates two hundred for this kind of summons. I don’t intend to go over that number by one single lout. Unless, of course, this turns out to be a real alarm.”

“Is that why you frown?”

“I frown,” Carola said, abruptly turning away, “because I don’t like the timing.” Though that was not her real reason. She would not speak of her duke’s sudden smile.

Tatia looked surprised. “Chwahir invasions can’t possibly have anything to do with
Her
. Why, she’s not even in Colend for the next couple of weeks.”

Anger burned through Carola, but she mastered it.

Kaidas had
not
gone to Sartor with
Her,
and everything was as it ought to be. Carola had seen every letter sent to Kaidas since the wedding, and Tatia, under the pretext of showing his manservant where to put his personal things, had searched every single item of his, leaving out not the smallest paint brush or inkpot. Carola herself had gotten up their very first night and searched all through his clothes, right to the seams, finding no sign of any of those horrid magical scrollcases or any mementos that could be attributed to
Her
.

Everything indeed was as it should be.

But. There was that smile….

“What should I do?” she addressed the bird.

Tatia suppressed a flash of irritation at Carola’s asking the bird for advice. But then, she reflected, Carola wanted to be told what she wanted to hear.

“Definian in
melende
,” said the parrot, giving the sounds that got the most treats.

“Smart darling,” Carola cooed. “Yes. I must think of duty above comfort. I believe I shall ride with him. I believe we will raise more volunteers if I am seen.”

Tatia’s head turned, and she pursed her lips. “You will go outside the palace, in a possible war situation?”

“It is only to circle Alarcansa. Why shouldn’t I go?” Carola paused when she caught sight of her reflection in the window, with that thin white line braided into her hair by her maid. “Perhaps it is not a good idea to leave my steward in charge as I do when I go to court, for she’s old and doesn’t like change, but why don’t I leave you? Until I have a child you’re my heir—they all know you. And you know how I like things done.”

Tatia turned to hide her hot rush of triumph from her cousin’s quick eyes—triumph followed by fear and dismay.
Until I have a child
. “Of course,” she said, in her meekest voice. “If it is your desire.” She cooed at the parrot, “Smart birdie,” and once again reached and once again avoided the snap of its beak.

She jumped back. Her incessant giggle sounded, Carola thought irritably, exactly like the dying bleat of a mouse impaled on the claws of a cat.

But Tatia was so devoted, so obedient, just like her darling birds.

“I know exactly how you like things done,” Tatia said, putting her hands behind her back. The instinct to slap the bird into the wall was so strong, so strong. But she’d learned as a child that any pet who showed an inclination for anyone but Carola didn’t last long. “Every command will be as you would wish.”
Every command
. What sweet words!

I

The innkeeper gazed uneasily up at the fair-haired young man in black. There had been no harsh words, no threats uttered. But that black coat, so unlike anything anyone wore, the knife hilts in plain evidence, the slightly curved sword in the saddle-sheath instead of the usual rapier decently shrouded in a baldric and half-covered by robes, even the fellow’s accent—all added up to potential trouble.

The innkeeper tried not to look at the two lines of armed young men behind him, the horses so still, the fellows sitting straight and alert. Though they were dressed in unadorned servant gray, the cut of those coats was somehow intimidating, and the warriors sported more weapons than you’d find in the entire town of Binnam.

The innkeeper said, “Well, if you want to find—” He groped in the air, as if swinging a sword. “The duke’s peace patrol, you’d go to see the duke. But if rumor is right, they might be in Alsais. Everyone’s talking about how there might be some kind of trouble. Hmhmhmh.” The man hummed tunelessly, then made a rude gesture toward the northern mountains.

Ivandred had heard several versions of this hum coupled with vague references to rumors of trouble from the north.

“I don’t want the duke or a peace patrol,” he said, trying to be exact in this exasperating language so rich with inexactitude. “All I want is a map of the roads of Colend, so I can make my way to your royal city.”

The innkeeper’s forehead cleared. “Oh, is that all! You don’t need a map. Stay on the royal roads. The ones marked with a crown all lead to Alsais. You must have seen the sign stones.”

Ivandred had seen the waist-high plinths indeed, some of them marked with a crown at the top and an arrow. Below the crowns were local town names, and more arrows, pointing off toward various roads. “So that was a king’s road, then?” Ivandred asked.

The innkeeper spread his hands, and all the people by now gathered around with their baskets and bright clothing, nodded at one another. A young boy said, “We have
good
roads here in Colend. All paved. Didn’t you see?”