Banner of the Damned (49 page)

Belimas, in her hatred of the journey, was not content to stop there. She and Anhar quarreled interminably in short, hissing whispers. At first I did not hear any particulars, but one night, I was there when Belimas scolded Anhar, calling her a moon-faced hummer and an oaf for deliberate shadow-trespasses.

Anhar? My incredulity caused me to look her way, and I saw in her tight lips, her downward gaze, that this accusation was not new. But there were none of the angry little signs of someone who has been caught doing wrong. Just the opposite.

I said, “I believe the campfire is at fault.” When Belimas turned my way, looking as surprised as if a tree had spoken, I addressed her. “As you can see, the shadows are uneven. Anyone might find a shadow forming
after
she placed her foot.” I made The Peace.

Belimas flushed, but she returned The Peace in a stiff manner.

After that I was listening, and as the miserable journey wheeled its way west, I became aware that Anhar tried to keep a distance from Belimas, but there was no distance to be kept. And Belimas was always on the watch — the way Anhar folded her bedding, or offered to trudge through the mud to take meals to the stable hands who could not leave the horses for long, or even the way she climbed into the carriage — as though by catching Anhar in error she could justify her own wretchedness.

These accusations seemed to drive invisible wedges between everyone, and they angered me sufficiently that if I overheard one, I began to offer excuses that were less justifiable, until the day I offered one that was outright preposterous—“I believe a bird flew over the sun”—causing the second dresser, Pelis, to snort with laughter.

Thereafter Belimas would not speak when I was around. I expected that. I was glad not to be the recipient of her complaints. The thing I did not expect was how Pelis began sitting next to me in the coach, and sometimes she turned my way when offering observations, even joking.

Marnda’s instructions became more frequent and longer as she endeavored by force of will and attention to the tiniest detail, to impose order on the messiness of nature. She followed Lasva about, straightening things with angry little twitches and shakes almost as soon as the princess set them down.

Lasva reacted by closing herself inside her skull, leaving us with a polite, pleasant, utterly blank simulacrum.

Life did not halt behind us.

King Jurac wished it would. For a time, he wished the entire world blasted to splinters by Norsunder. Nothing could be worse than the humiliation of defeat. If only he hadn’t gone himself! But he’d had to. Nothing else showed her sufficient honor.

And that Marloven prince had come himself. The problem was, he’d succeeded. Why was that? Because he had better information, from no less than the queen’s consort.

Jurac transferred to his capital, leaving his defeated men to travel the mountains home. The first thing he did was rid himself of the Colendi, except for the ambassador, who was the necessary link to that vital trade.

Kivic had figured out within heartbeats after the disaster that the blame was going to fall squarely on him, probably sooner than later. On the long, wearying journey, he put in useful time forming friendships with the guards, expertly teasing out those most responsive to “us” against “them” thinking.

When they arrived back at Narad, the king ordered the guards to fling Kivic into prison, citing Colendi demands. Everyone knew it was for form’s sake. The spy protested his innocence all the way, but that, too, was just for form’s sake. A few weeks later he was summoned before an unsmiling, remote king, to be told, “In accordance with my agreement with Queen Hatahra of Colend, you will be remanded to their custody to make restitution according to their laws, since you committed murder of their people on their ground.”

The ambassador bowed and withdrew. Before Kivic was led away, Jurac said, “It was a
stupid
idea, Kivic. That should have been me, on the horse, coming to the rescue.”

Kivic didn’t bother to say that the wretched woman had done her best to rescue herself—that if there’d been no Marlovens, and Jurac
had
gotten her back to Narad, his life would have been reduced to a misery.
You don’t tell a king that the princess in question didn’t want him as a man or as a king; that she’d wanted the other fellow. So he kept silence as he paced past all the guards, until he came abreast of his man. “Fun ahead.” He breathed out a laugh.

“That’s it,” the Duke of Alarcansa said, and the tailor stepped back, his mouth an unhappy line.

Kaidas made an experimental turn. Once again the damned sword thumped his side. And the folds of his robe covered the hilt again; he glanced in the mirror. Yes, the line was ruined. Now he understood why those Marlovens wore their coats so tight to the waist—though they hadn’t worn their swords. Maybe they did at home. In the salon? In the dining room? In the bedroom?

“It will have to do,” he said, glancing at the sandglass. He must not be late for his interview with the queen. Who wanted him wearing a sword.

It thumped and rattled against his side as he crossed the palace from the wing hastily given over to the new military arm. It tried to tangle in his legs when he mounted the curving stairway, and when he kicked it impatiently, it did its best to spin, nearly tripping him. He caught himself on the balustrade, glanced around to see who had witnessed his near fall, and caught the gaze of an armed herald at the top of the stair—
her
sword decently hidden behind a panel of her new livery. The corners of her mouth tightened. Yes, she was laughing, but he sensed from the angle of her brows the sympathy of one who had been in the same ridiculous position.

He banished his anger and smiled, fingers flicking in Irony before he put his hand on the hilt and pressed down so that the tip of the sword angled safely behind him, which permitted him to lengthen his strides. Much better. He’d just have to march around with his hand on the hilt, feeling like a strutting rooster in a barnyard.

On the first reverberating strike of the Hour of Stone the heralds opened the door to the white-marble and slate interview room that was reserved for military matters, and as such, had not been used for years. Kaidas walked in, imagining the scurry of servants scrubbing the marble and polishing the ebony-lacquered furnishings.

The queen was there, dressed in judgment robes of dark blue and white.

“The murderer Kivic will be presented at the border arch in the middle
pass in three days,” the queen said. “You will oversee his delivery into the hands of the Judicial Masks to commence restitution for his crimes. You will take as many of your defenders as you think necessary, at crown expense.” Her fan snapped. “You will see to it that nothing interferes with justice, for I do not trust that hummer Jurac past my next breath.”

Since his marriage, Kaidas had become an expert at shuttering his emotions. He employed that skill now to hide his abhorrence. Guard duty, that was what “defenders” really meant.

He bowed, withdrew, and returned to the Alarcansa suite, where he found his wife walking back and forth in the vestibule so that no wrinkles would crush her silken panels of sheerest silver, embroidered with moon-pale pond lilies and redbirds with tiny rubies at their wingtips.

She lifted her fan upward, as if toward the bell towers, for it was not commensurate with the
melende
of a Definian to remonstrate.

He bowed, hand out in polite apology. “We will not be late to the Rising, for I was summoned to a private interview with the queen in my new capacity,” he said as he removed the exasperating baldric. The Grand Seneschal had been exact about the etiquette: when summoned to the queen on Defender affairs, he was to wear the sword. The rest of the time, the weapons ban was to be observed.

He resisted the impulse to fling baldric and sword and handed them to the waiting man in the hallway. “Tell the tailor we need more of an angle,” he said, and the man bowed and vanished.

He handed the new service robe, edged in royal blue, to another waiting servant, shrugged into a brocaded robe with rubies studding the swinging tassels at the shoulders—all without breaking a step—and offered his arm to his wife in the correct manner.

She slid her fingers over the smooth linen silk of his sleeve and smiled as he matched his pace to hers. On the surface, everything was as it should be. The new duke of Alarcansa had alone (the departed barbarians, whom she had never seen, were effectively forgotten) figured out the Chwahir king’s evil plot, and had been recognized for his foresight by the queen with his new position as Defender of the Crown. Carola herself, on arriving in Alsais, had been personally welcomed by the queen, and before all the court had been appointed Chief Lady in Waiting to the Princess Royal. And
She
was gone with the barbarians. Gone and it was to be hoped, soon forgotten.

All as it should be. But every time Carola glimpsed her duke after even a brief separation, there was the shock of that short hair.
An act of war
, was all he had said in explanation, and the strict demands of
melende
prohibited her from pressing further. Until he chose to explain, she would wait.

This lapse might have been forgotten with time had not every hothead who wanted to swing a sword cut off their hair, male and female. Carola was convinced that Lady Isari, striding off to the military practice barn each morning, had more swords than her own on her mind. But who would want her, with that ridiculous short hair flying untidily about her face?

She could not speak any of that, but
melende
permitted questions about duty. “More military matters?”

“I am sent to fetch the Chwahir murderer. Apparently the heralds’ judiciaries can’t be trusted, though they have handled restitution for generations.”

“The murderer is a Chwahir,” Carola stated, flourishing her fan in No Matter. “Of course the queen would send you.” He showed no sign of regret for his imminent departure, and once again, she could not prevent the pent-up words, “You are pleased to be going?”

Kaidas gave her a glance of surprise. “Pleased to be riding out in bad weather, with a damned sword rattling my thigh at every jog? No doubt to be kept waiting by the Chwahir, who won’t be in any hurry to spare us wind or weather. I would rather be running the Ym Hunt. I would rather be tending the two-year-olds. But we have both been honored with calls to service.”

This reminder of her own honor should have been a triumph, but it wasn’t. Within a week of her new duties, Carola’s vision of elegant and select little parties—at the queen’s expense on behalf of her daughter—as courtiers came to pay calls upon the infant, had vanished when no one seemed inclined to call upon a babe-in-arms. Carola still had evenings free, but with her freedom curtailed by her not-very-onerous duties, she felt her influence over the ever-changing eddies of court slipping.

“You will be pleased to return, then.” She recovered modulation as they approached the double doors leading to the conservatory, where everyone was gathered for the Rising—and Carola would have to follow the royal family back to the royal suite to begin her day as Chief Lady in Waiting. “I will offer you consolation with a masquerade and invite your particular friends, if you will honor me with a list before you leave.”

There was nothing like an exclusive party to tighten one’s grip on the court’s inner circle.

“H

“Ouch.” Geral picked up his goblet of spiced wine, more to warm his fingers than to drink, and sat back on the cushion they shared, ready to be entertained. “Where are they now?”