Banner of the Damned (69 page)

“People would laugh at me. And perhaps Queen Hatahra would summon me to explain myself.”

“Yet it was no different when Martande Lirendi dealt with the Chwahir threat, then looked around and decided that since he was doing the work of a king anyway, why should it all go to Sartor’s glory? Why not to his own? Most of his friends lauded the idea and dedicated themselves to making it happen. It is said that the smartest and most ambitious persons in Sartor’s court followed him and became dukes and barons.”

I pressed my hands together, not certain how to answer. My instinct rebelled at this airy dismissal of our great, visionary king, then I thought,
This is a test
.

The Herskalt touched the book I had brought back, and it vanished with a glint of light and a brief stirring of air.

“It’s the same with anything,” he went on in his reasonable tone. “A poet declares his work will be lauded universally. If others like it, they laud it. If they don’t, they despise him for his temerity, they defame his poem, and he’s forgotten as soon as the laughter dies away.”

“How do you know people’s motivations?” I said. “Do you use that magical object? I should like to master that,” I said, referring to the disc that had allowed me to inhabit others’ perspectives.

His chin lifted as though he was mildly pleased. “You need far more discipline before you can use the dyr to look at the past through others’ eyes.”

“Dye-r-r-r, dy-re,” I repeated, trying to get the “eye” sound matched to the “r” at the back of the throat in a single syllable, the way he articulated it. I wanted to split the “eye” into two syllables,
die-ur
. “That is what the thing is called?”

“It’s the traditional term. So: have you a subject you wish to study, or shall I assign you one?”

“Ivandred wishes me to make him transfer tokens.”

The Herskalt’s brows lifted. “Ah, excellent plan. He never seems to have time to practice much less complete exacting projects such as transfer tokens. So. How would you begin?”

I told him what I’d been thinking, and he taught me a way that was
far better than the laborious method I’d put together. I learned more about the connections between spells in the doing, and then I used one of my own tokens to transfer, as I was not certain of my strength after all that work.

I’d set the Destination for the narrow hallway outside my room, which was rarely used by anyone but me. As soon as the transfer reaction faded I was aware that something was wrong. I turned around in a circle, then noticed that all the doors were open, including my own. I went into my room and hid the two transfer tokens I had made under my bedding. Then I went out. I heard Lasva’s voice through the open door to her outer chamber.

“… can’t find her? Where could she possibly be?”

I stopped in the doorway and made a full bow. “You sought me, your highness?” I said in our home language, though she preferred us to speak in Marloven.

Lasva whirled around, her hands out in that tense Bird on the Wing. “There you are! Where did you go?”

My body flashed with heat as I offered her a lie. “I went out to learn my way around, as I am always lost. But I lost myself yet again.”

Lasva clasped her hands together. “They have no street signs here. To confuse an invader, I am told.”

“I crave your pardon, your highness.”

“Ah-ye! You are here, and today is Restday, and I did say you had it free. It’s just that the king desires us all to join him at noon for the ceremony. I wanted to make sure we all knew that.”

She turned around again, her blue gaze going from Marnda to me and back. “I also have another question: Where is my scrollcase? I could not find it in view upon your desk, Emras.”

I glanced Marnda’s way. The seneschal clasped her hands in the Peace. “I requested she give it to me upon her arrival, your highness, so that I might deal myself with the correspondence.”

“So there has been correspondence?” Lasva asked. “But why have
you
dealt with it, Marnda?”

“It was on the orders of her majesty, your royal sister,” Marnda said, making a full bow over her crossed arms. She spoke from that position. “Your royal sister instructed me to do what I could to turn your eyes west as soon as might be.”

“So there were letters? I ask because Darva did promise to write. Whatever the others might have said, I relied upon her, at least.” Lasva lifted her head. Her eyes were wide, so wide I could see light reflected
in her pupils though I stood some distance away. Her color was high, her mouth tight—a new expression, difficult to define, it was so different from the Lasva I knew. “Though I never asked, did I, Emras? I gave you my scrollcase, and then I never asked.”

Another turn, and she clasped her hands. “I should have liked to have made that decision for myself. Were the letters answered or just disposed of?”

I said, “I answered them, until my arrival here.”

“I answered the New Year’s letters,” Marnda said.

“Did you save them?” Lasva’s gaze switched between us.

This direct question forced the probability of a blunt negative. I could see it disturbed Marnda as much as it did me.

Even so, neither of us could bring ourselves to say “no” to our princess. “I believed it was according to the queen’s will to burn them, lest they fall into…” Marnda halted there.
Into the wrong hands
was an absurdity she could not speak. What would be the wrong hands for Lasva’s letters from people in faraway Colend, about the trivialities of court?

“I would like to hear what you remember of them.” Lasva turned my way. “You, I know, can be trusted to recall those that passed under your eyes, as well as the words you wrote in response over my name.”

Marnda and I both made the full court obeisance, though she’d asked us to use Marloven custom. The event demanded no less.

“We shall begin with Emras, then, as she had the scrollcase the longest. Until the king’s summons.” She paused. “Emras, I understand that you were under my sister’s orders. But why did you not tell me? I would have agreed. You must know I would have agreed.”

The intensity of her unwavering gaze unnerved me, and I bowed my head. “You sailed the river below Willow Gate. I could not bear to hurt you the more.”

“From that am I to understand Kaidas was frequently mentioned in those letters? Especially if Ananda troubled herself to write. I admit that I lived at Willow Gate for much of the autumn, so… yes, I think I can understand your dilemma, Emras. I think I can here.” She touched her forehead. “But not here.” She touched her heart. “I told you when we first met. I want there to be truth between us. So tell me now. Are there any other secrets that you keep from me for my own good?”

If I told her the queen’s orders, then I must tell her the rest—that I studied magic. This knowledge would have to be hidden from the king who so distrusted his own son that Ivandred was, in his turn, made to hide his own knowledge.

The desire to protect her was as strong as my hunger to gain more knowledge. And so, yet again, I lied. “You have them all,” I said. After the rude words left my lips, I recognized how much time had passed between her question and my response. I had taken too long to consider my answer, and she knew it.

Lasva said, “Then please begin. We can practice the while.”

Memorization being long habit, I recited all the letters. I even tried to match a little of the voice of the individual correspondents, if I knew them. I strove to please her, to entertain, to demonstrate that my loyalties were true, even if my word had not been.

She listened without speaking as we performed the Altan fan form side by side, her profile giving no clue to her thoughts. I’d reached the letters received during our ship journey when the summons came, and we had to put away our fans.

Though it was Restday, and though she’d said she would try to spare me the tedium of those long attendances on the king by relying on her Marloven runners who were used to him, she did not lift her hand to dismiss me. Nor did she summon anyone else as we walked out of her chambers and down the long hall to where the king sat on his cushion, hemming and huffing against whatever disturbed his breathing passages.

She gracefully laid hand to heart.

“Well, here you are,” the king said, coughing. “Now. The jarls are gone, and many were the fair words about your hosting. What are you going to do with your time, eh? Eh?”

She addressed the king by his full title, using Colend’s court accent to make a caress of his name. “Should you like a tapestry to be made? I note many places where one might grace your walls.”

“Tapestry? Hah! What d’you think my people would make of a big cloth full of ribbon dancers and flowers, or whatever it is you put in your art?”

Lasva made the gesture of Harmony. “I thought I might make one celebrating your ancestor, the one who first united your kingdom.”

“Hah!” He coughed horribly. “Old Savarend! You won’t show him being stabbed in the back, I dare swear.” He cackled, then coughed.

“I would surround him with representatives of all the jarl families.”

“I like that. I like that. Put my old friends, my most loyal friends, up close in front.”

Lasva hesitated a heartbeat, then assented gracefully.

“So. How far did you get with your map, eh, girl? Start at the top.”

“Olavair is the farthest north, bounded by Fath, Tiv Evair, and Khanivar.”

“When was Fath created?”

“At the Treaty of the Rivers.”

“Year?”

“4094.”

“And south of it?”

“Tiv Evair.”

“Why do they hold out with two names?”

“An internal treaty, between the jarl family, whose name Tya became Tiv under King Senrid in the year 4285, and the federation of free cities…”

On and on it went—names and dates without the reasons why one should remember them, until the king summoned his subordinates for the Restday sharing of wine and bread.

Perhaps Lasva wanted me to learn them, too. She would know that I only had to hear it to remember it all, but if so, she could have said so. I was being punished, and I accepted the rebuke with sorrow. She might guess that whatever I withheld was on orders, was intended for her benefit—but she knew I was lying.

He sent Lasva away with scarcely more respect than he’d dismiss a runner, and we were free.

All the way back to her chambers I formulated possible responses. I even considered kneeling down to offer full confession. I wanted her forgiveness, the flow of converse which I had lost once, on the way to Sartor. It had taken this long to recover it, only to lose it again? No!

But when we reached Lasva’s chambers, she said briskly, “I believe he expects the tapestry to be set in the contemporary mode, and here I was ready to order you to discover the oldest families and their traditional clothes. Well! I must ponder. Who would have thought that my idea, meant to keep my day filled with unexceptionable activity, would already be so fraught. The rest of the day is yours, Emras.”

In sorrow I made The Peace. I had been dismissed.

Confession would have to wait.

I had to go outside the castle to make transfer tokens. I found a secluded path between the boundary of the kitchen garden and the yards where
flax was turned into linen. One yard abutted the end of the garrison where the women guards lived.

To secure an excuse to be over there, I’d taken on the task of running messages back and forth from the guardswomen’s captain to Lasva, an extra task the runners were happy to relinquish to me. I had to choose a time when no one would notice how long it took me, so I went directly after bathing, before the time when Lasva liked doing the Altan fans but after her breakfast with Ivandred—when he was there.

After I delivered messages, I would retreat to my hideaway and pull from my pocket a selection of carved wood shank buttons. The Herskalt had said that the material did not matter, and I could not requisition the usual metal discs without raising questions.

I worked my spells. By the time I reached the last button I was bent over, my teeth clenched. The spell kept dissipating on me, like trying to catch and hold water.

When at last it was done, I sat down with my back to the fence to recover. It was getting easier each time.

THREE
O
F
R
EGRET AND
R
EMEMBERED
B
ELLS

O

ne morning, when I emerged from the women’s side of the baths in the sub-basement, I chanced on Birdy and Anhar, who were coming from the area where genders mixed, a wide room furnished with nothing but stone benches. As a place to congregate it offered nothing but the dank smell of wet stone, yet people strolled about in the warm, humid air, talking, flirting, exchanging news.

They saw me at the same time. Birdy grinned. “Em!” He looked younger, with his hair wet and slicked back off his clean, shining face, his long body clad in a shapeless robe. He approached within a step of me, then halted abruptly, an awkward halt that described an invisible boundary around me. “I have seen so little of you. What has the princess got you doing?”