Banner of the Damned (73 page)

Haldren whispered, “I am not a coward.”

“Everyone knows that. Danrid looks like a coward to accuse you.”

“Then… do what you will. Shoot me. But not a coward’s punishment.”

I had frozen in place outside the cell, so I saw every detail and heard every word. I knew I shouldn’t disturb them, and yet I had news that was too important not to impart.

“It was the king’s will, Hal. We both know Danrid hears what he wants to hear, but Len was on door duty, and he assures me that it was clear enough spoken that everyone in the throne room heard it. You know the importance of heeding the king’s last command, sorry as it is, until he can rescind it. And I will get him to rescind it as soon as he wakens, I promise you that.”

Haldren whispered something too low for me to hear, after which Ivandred said, “If we both survive this day, you will ride at the head of the First Lancers as commander, whatever happens. You have my oath, brother in shared blood.”

In shared blood
was in Marloven a compound word that I had not heard before, and I did not understand its import then. I knew only that I was not meant to witness this conversation.

Haldren lifted his voice. “My honor is in your hands.”

I had begun step by step to back away. But my movement must have stirred the air, or maybe it was their eternal wariness, for both heads turned.

For a heartbeat two pairs of shock-rounded eyes stared at me from faces taut with strain. Then Ivandred’s eyes narrowed in a twitch of anger at my trespass. He straightened up, his jaw hardening.

Haldren’s eyes closed as the prince let him go, and he sank back against the wall.

“The princess sent me to tell you that the king is dead,” I said, falling into old habit: I gave him the words in Lasva’s intonations and accent.

His eyelids flashed up in brief surprise. “Where is she now?”

“She stayed with your father,” I said.

“Danrid Yvanavar?” he asked.

“He left ahead of me,” I said. “But I do not know what was his destination.”

“It matters little.” Ivandred’s mouth creased in a brief, bleak smile as he gazed down at Haldren. “He will have discovered by now that I have the castle secure.” He did not wait for Marlovair to respond. “Come, Scribe,” he said to me. “There is much to be done.” And in a low voice, “Bide. Remember my oath.”

He walked out, me scurrying at his heels. I heard the runner shut those iron-reinforced doors behind us, one, two, and three—leaving Haldren still in prison.

“Can you remember orders?” he asked over his shoulder as he sped through the garrison, everyone in sight standing still, fists to hearts, eyes tracking us.

“I can,” I said.

He issued a stream of orders that are immaterial to list here. They were mostly summons, or curt sets of words to be spoken to this or that person. We parted at the foot of the stairway to the king’s rooms, and then I began to make up for my long day of standing by running all over the castle.

Every person I spoke to listened to me with exquisite intensity, indicating that although I was in the center of great events I barely comprehended how great.

The watch change in the middle of the night was the first time I sat down. Marnda had left a meal waiting in our staff sitting room, along with a candle. The precious summer steep had gone cold, its surface oily. I ate the bread and butter, then pillowed my head on my arms. I’d meant to rest only my eyes, but I woke when my legs had gone numb.

I heard singing. The room was dark. The candle had gone out.

The rise and fall of voices was faint but gradually swelled in volume as more voices joined, and then slowly passed as I rubbed at the painful needle-pricks in my legs. I couldn’t yet stand.

The singing faded away again as Pelis came in, bearing a tray with food and a candle on it. In the wavering light she set it down and swiftly set out the fresh bread, some oat slurry, and more of our precious steep, from the refreshing smell. My eyes prickled at the scent of home.

“The singing is them bearing the king away.” Pelis’s brown hair blended with the shadows. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dark as she whispered, “Lnand told me all the guards are on readiness alert.”

A rustle behind her, and Lasva joined us. “There you are, Emras,” she said. “I looked in your room. Thank you, Pelis.”

Pelis gave a faint sigh as she made The Peace and withdrew.

Lasva moved into the light, her eyes marked with exhaustion. She sipped from a cup she carried. “What did you see in the king’s chamber, Emras? Ah-ye, I misspeak.” She raised two fingers. “There was so very much to see. What was your impression when Danrid gave you that order to taste the cup?”

I said, “He was about to insist? Perhaps, might have used force? There was the tensing here and here.” I touched my shoulder and my jaw.

Lasva laced her fingers together around her cup. “Yes. I think… there is only a pretense of regarding me as Ivandred’s equal in their chain of command.”

The word “barbarians” shaped my lips, but she forestalled me with a forefinger. “As we treated King Jurac of the Chwahir. A semblance of respect, but if Jurac had given orders as the queen does, no one would have obeyed, at least, not without her corroboration.”

“The Colendi are loyal to Queen Hatahra,” I said. “No one feels loyalty to the Chwahir king.”

“I have been pondering the ephemera of hierarchy,” she said, setting the cup down, “and of my own place, if I am truly to be an aid to Ivandred and not just a decoration. Either I request Ivandred to order these people to obey me, or I find a way to inspire loyalty on my own.”

Loyalty
.

Here,
at last
, was my opportunity.

I stood up, so that I could make the full Peace, and then I dropped to my knees before her. “O Princess Lasthavais,” I said, my words tumbling out. “Now that the king is dead, I must unburden my heart and confess the secret I was ordered by the queen your sister to withhold from you: I have begun to learn magic.”

My heart was so full of remorse and sorrow that I misstated the queen’s orders, which as you have seen, were not about learning magic but about discerning whether Norsundrian magic was at work in Marloven Hesea—something the Sartoran Mage Council, through Greveas, also wanted to know. But what I told Lasva was what I now believed, and so I explained about the book I’d arranged to get from my cousin, and my secret studies. I told her about the spell I did at the bridge, and how I discovered Ivandred’s teacher, the Herskalt.

But did I tell her everything?

No.

When do you keep secrets from those you love most? When the knowledge of them would cause nothing but hurt. So I reasoned as I approached the Herskalt’s disc, the dyr, and its lessons. As I neared the subject and saw how taken aback she was when I told her about my being able to send Ivandred to her on New Year’s, I thought for the first time, would she have granted me permission to experience her secret thoughts had I asked? Though I had not chosen to do so, I had participated
as a learning exercise. Yet my learning exercise had been through her memories, never willingly shared. And so I did not mention the dyr.

The blue light of dawn painted us with shadow, turning the candle light to dirty smudges, when I finished.

Lasva said, “I asked you once for personal loyalty, but now I wonder if I asked too much.” As I moved to protest—to implore, to explain—I even considered, for a reckless moment, the relief of confiding everything, including the dyr, but then she raised her hand. “Ah-yedi! I hear your good intentions in every breath. Yet is true fidelity possible? My sister issuing orders to my own staff that I was not to know about. Not just you and Marnda, but this Herald Martande, whom I do not even know.”

Is she doubting my loyalty?
I thought in despair when the prince’s step approached. “There you are,” he said to me. “Have you explained? Yes, I can see. Good. I am in desperate need of more transfer tokens, and Andaun is gone.”

Lasva said, “I take it you would like Emras to continue her duties with magery?”

Ivandred said, “She could be of immeasurable value. The Herskalt—my tutor, I told you about him. He has cautioned me for years to spend more time at my studies, but I can seldom get the time. This scribe could take up where I left off.”

“So shall it be,” Lasva said. “Emras, so shall it be.”

I bowed, forgetting my Marloven salute in my overwhelming relief. Ivandred then dismissed me to rest before I began the hard work of making those tokens. As I retreated at last to my room, I wondered two things: where Sigradir Andaun was, and if he knew about the dyr.

W

Did anyone mourn? Though I would never find that castle beautiful, it seemed less oppressive as I walked into the familiar rooms, knowing I would never again hear that disgusting rheumy cough or fear the threat of royal whim.

A tray of biscuits sat on our table. I meant to eat one and then transfer to the Herskalt, but scarcely had I taken a bite when Lasva entered, her manner so like that of her younger days, my heart lifted. “There you are! Come, Emras. Let us continue our good habits. We shall begin as we mean to go on,” she exclaimed as we entered the practice chamber. “So long ago seem the days when we supped surrounded by flowers, midway through a ball!”

She shut the door so that we were alone, and lowered her voice. “While you and I endured that long deathbed wait—and Danrid Yvanavar no doubt considered whether or not to kill us—Ivandred made certain that everyone else in the castle understood there would be a lawful change of government. They know their history. The first to die after a violent change of kings have usually been the servants of the old king.”

I gasped as my nerves chilled all the way to my back teeth. “I never considered that.”

“We wouldn’t,” she whispered. “In Colend, the monarch dies, and there is an orderly progression, with dignity and grace. Sometimes with true grief and sometimes with affectation of grief over anticipation of change. But here?” She snapped a fan open. “Our weapons! You know how the patterns come in pairs, and we have practiced them side by side?”

I nodded in wonderment.

“We have never tried them face to face. Let us experiment.”

“How can a dance teach us to fight?”

“We shall try this one thing. Slowly, Emras. We will begin with the simplest movements. On my count, now.”

I fell automatically into place, my hands and arms beginning the familiar movement, but with Lasva facing me—her fan moving opposite mine—I faltered, distracted by the fact that her arm was in the way, she was too close. I fell back, confused. It felt much like learning to sing in part for the first time.

“Ah-ye,” Lasva whispered. “It’s true. Look. Do the three first steps again. Forget about me. Just do them, very slowly, as slow as the drip of honey.”

I raised my fan, stepped, swept, and there was Lasva’s arm, blocking the fan, and forcing it downward. My other hand came up in a block, and there was her fan in its pretty horizontal sweep at the level of my neck.

The next step was the twirl, which avoided her block, then the shift from one foot to the other and the side-sweep—and there she was, stepping past me—this time I blocked a sweep from her.

Amazed, I faltered again. We stared at each other. “It
is
,” she whispered, her eyes wide. “It’s a lesson not in dance, but in fighting. Come, let’s go through the entire pattern. Slow, now, on my beat.”

After so many strange events, it was another strange experience to find Lasva attacking me, and myself warding her blows. We performed the entire pattern through three times, Lasva’s forehead puckered with concentration and then puzzlement.

When we finished, she said, “Do you see it?”

“I think I do, yet in true fighting you would not know exactly what your opponent is going to do next, would you?”

“Perhaps you would, if you are experienced enough? Ivandred said something to me about how one first has to learn patterns, so that one does not have to think. Like, if I tell you to ready your pen, you know exactly what to do.”

I made The Peace, then asked, “Are we then going to commence striking one another with our fans?” I tried to keep doubt from my voice, but she laughed softly, one forearm pressed against her middle. “Right now your time is better spent with the magic lessons.”

How my heart filled with joy! “May I begin, then?”

Lasva smiled. “Go, Emras. When you return, I might ask to see you perform magic, if does not discommode you.”

I found the Herskalt waiting for me.

“The king is dead,” I said. “But you knew?”

The Herskalt gave me that wry smile. “Ivandred was here last night.”

I opened my hands. “Then why are we here? Why do we not meet in the castle?”

“There remains the matter of the wards that you have yet to penetrate. Your assignment now begins in earnest, for in those protections are built lethal wards. All on the king’s orders, I hasten to add. Do not blame poor old Andaun. But those wards must be dismantled all the way to the fundamental spells, which are a snarl and patchwork that wastes magic. You are to establish a clean structure that will be all the stronger and remove all those personal wards against people who have been dead for centuries, as well as those against us living.”

“Us? Where are these other mages?”

The Herskalt laughed silently. “The Guild Chief of Sartor, for one. The king had poor Andaun discover who the strongest mages in the world were and ward every one of them.”

“Yet my question still stands. I cannot be the only mage student. Would it not be much faster if someone with more experience attends to the task? Where are Sig—ah, Andaun-Sigradir’s own students?”

“There are none.”

“How can that be?”