Banner of the Damned (77 page)

My companionable young herald gripped his lower lip between his teeth, then whispered hastily, “Danrid insisted on full adoption. She is legally Yvanavar. So our king could do it.” And, almost inaudibly, “I wish he had.”

“… crown of black steel, symbol of justice… our vows under law.” Danrid’s speech ended with emphasis on the last four words.

Ivandred said clearly, “Justice shall be carried out according to law.”

Danrid saluted, mock-solemn, his voice rising. “Then I have nothing more to ask.”

And so we all ended up in the great square between the castle and
one side of the high academy walls, breath clouding, as, with deliberate ritual, Haldren Marlovair was chained to a post and flogged.

I shut my eyes, but the sound made me ill, and I could feel Lasva shiver as her side was pressed against mine. At that moment, if anyone had offered me a transfer token home, I would have gone.

When it finally ended, a murmuring and a rustle went through the gathering, and Ivandred walked down to take a stance beside the blood-soaked figure hanging by the wrists, knees buckled. Ivandred lifted his voice.

“Haldren Marlovair disobeyed orders, and justice has been served. That was my first order as king.”

I glanced Danrid’s way. His mocking grin made me hate him.

Then Ivandred said, “My second order is to raise Haldren Marlovair to Commander of the First Lancers. He and the First Lancers will accompany me on a ride to the northern border.”

A gasp, and then a huge shout echoed off the castle walls and back again. Danrid’s smile had frozen into a rictus of fury. In the tumult that followed, everyone talking to his or her neighbor, Lasva flicked her fingers to me, and we threaded our way through the crowds.

We entered the castle, and as soon as we reached the relative quiet of a hallway, Lasva said, “Ivandred told me last night. We will be leaving as soon as the last one of the jarls is out the gates. Yes, I am going, and so are you—Ivandred specifically asked for you, in your capacity as mage.”

“Why should we go anywhere? Do kings here have Progresses, like at home?”

She gave me a tight smile at the slip about home but lifted a hand toward Thorn Gate. “Their version of a Progress. Did you not notice the Jarl of Olavair’s absence at the coronation? Everyone else did, and they all know it means nothing short of a declaration of war.”

EIGHT
O
F THE
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OX
B
ANNER
U
NFURLING

T

he staff stood before Lasva, and she studied us with that intent look. Marnda, of course, was exempt from travel due to seniority, unless she wished to go. She didn’t. Nifta had recently been assigned to oversee the import of Colendi silks, which promised to be a lucrative trade. She would stay behind as well. I had never seen her happier.

Marloven female runners would accompany us but, of the Colendi, aside from Lasva and myself, there was only Pelis and Anhar. One would join us to care for whatever niceties would be possible. I was riding as a mage.

Pelis clasped her hands pleadingly, for we were to travel with the First Lancers, and she had not seen Lnand for weeks. Anhar waited quietly, head bowed. I was in the self-effacing scribe pose, but I felt Lasva’s questioning gaze as I stared at Anhar, strong in my ambivalence.

Lasva must have seen something in my demeanor, for she said, “Anhar, you will go with us this time.” And when Pelis could not hide her dismay, Lasva added kindly, “Next journey, Pelis will accompany me.”

Anhar bowed, her expression closed, and we were dismissed to pack.

We left early the next day.

I was so pleased with my ability to stay on a horse that for a short time I mistook the Marlovens’ occasional smiles in my direction for friendliness or encouragement. Finally I saw the mirth.

When we camped that night, Anhar sent a speculative glance at the distant camp, only visible as tent silhouettes outlined by a ruddy glow.

“Why aren’t the lancers riding with us?” I asked as we began clearing the ground of little stones and tufts of grass that could be felt under the bedroll.

“Pelis told me before we left that Lnand told her that they will keep their distance until Haldren can sit a horse.”

“I do not understand their notions of honor,” I muttered.

Anhar shrugged, and began to shake out the fine-woven sheets that had recently arrived from Colend. She fluttered her fingers toward Ivandred’s tent, visible through the open flap. “Think he’ll come in here or she’ll go in with him?”

“Won’t they sleep apart?” I said. “I don’t think she likes tents now any more than she did last winter.”

“They never sleep apart,” Anhar stated and then flashed a grin. “You’re in that nice room away at the other end, where you lie at your ease of a morning—”

Lie at my ease! Then I recognized her tone. She was making game of Marnda. “Ah-yedi! So tell me this, you who knows what the Marlovens say and think. Why are they smiling at me?”

Anhar made the formal Peace, in the mode of one who divorces herself from an unpalatable truth and said, “It’s not you, it’s the way you ride. I overheard one of them when they set up the tent. He said…” She repeated a Marloven phrase that means,
the hop of a bean on a frying pan.

So! From dancing peacock to bouncing bean. I had to admit to myself that though we Colendi move much more gracefully on foot, Marloven riding was grace in action.

Anhar and I shared a tent. That night, she wrote a quick note by candle light. I felt her glance before she closed her scrollcase.

Also that night, Lasva invited Ivandred to her tent.

Like Colendi royal progresses, Marloven ones require hospitality from the governor of any land the ruler crosses. We stayed at Marlovair for two days. Everyone understood it was to permit Haldren to recover, though absolutely nothing was said. Instead, the king was fêted, we were fêted, there was an atmosphere of vitality and purpose that I saw in every single face, right down to the dogs running about. It was extraordinary, how deeply felt was Haldren’s honor as the new Commander of the First
Lancers, yet how nothing whatsoever was said about what he had suffered. If, that is, you overlook the spitting whenever “Yvanavar” was named.

“What has Yvanavar to do with Olavair attacking?” I asked Anhar when we left Marlovair at last. I’d had to attend Lasva, which meant all I heard was genial talk about unfamiliar people.

Anhar, however, had been able to mingle with the staff and so heard all the gossip. “Everyone knows Yvanavar’s looking the other way while Olavair invades Khanivar, which Olavair claims is
his
,” she said with the light tone of one who enjoys having the information. “I still don’t really understand, but it goes something like this: everyone except Olavair, who is by all accounts a pompous rooster, knows that Olavair cannot possibly win against Ivandred.”

“That much I have already gathered.”

“But there are two things that Ivandred can do which might weaken his new kingship. The first, he can wait and call up the warriors each jarl owes. It’s called a levy.”

“They all swore that, did they not? Why should it weaken him?”

“They say that the kingdom should not be raised unless there is real invasion.”

“This is not real?”

She opened her hands. “How do I know what kind of invasion is real or not real? I heard that it would take half the summer to get the messages out, and to assemble everyone at the extreme northern border. And there are political consequences when this is done, having to do with trade and what we at home call taxes, but they call royal dues. Or, he can order the First Lancers to ride against Olavair, even though they are not a large force, and they will be led by poor Haldren, who is…yedi!” She signed Thorn Gate. “You know what happened to him. Everyone chirps that Yvanavar is seeking a way to claim the throne.”

“Why doesn’t he call all the rest of the King’s Lancers? The Second and Third and Fourth?”

“He could, but then we all wait around for weeks—months—until they can get here. They are at the borders of the kingdom.” She waved a hand in a circle, then went on in a low whisper. “I heard one of the woman guards in the bath saying that if Ivandred chases Olavair all the way back to his capital to force peace, then he is effectively cut off from the rest of the kingdom—because he will have to return through Khanivar and Yvanavar, which adjoin.”

“And so these two jarls, who just spoke oaths that we all witnessed, will betray him?”

“The runners say that they wouldn’t dare revolt outright. Until they gain more support, they will pretend to be loyal, but if they can keep him cut off from the rest of the King’s Lancers, they could perhaps pressure him into granting their demands, and weaken him as a king.”

“So Ivandred will be a hostage in his own kingdom?” My thought was,
we
would be the hostages. “But aren’t we heading for Yvanavar?”

“Yes. It’s deliberate, a challenge, everyone says. And they predict that the Jarl of Yvanavar would not dare do anything now, fresh from the coronation. He will wait until after Ivandred has this battle with Olavair. And when we reach Yvanavar, they will obey the laws of hospitality strictly but not offer an oat or a blade of grass more.”

She was right.

Our stay at Yvanavar weeks later was rigidly correct, from Danrid to his wife Tdiran, whose attitude toward Lasva was distant but polite. Though I was there when the baby was brought out, and Lasva’s exclamation of delight over the beauty of their son (who looked exactly like any other infant) caused a faint smile in the mother, so quickly smoothed I knew it was inadvertent.

I also saw her gaze rest on Lasva, who did nothing to hide the thickening of her waist when her open robe gapped.

We stayed over one night, then rode west instead of north, a direction whose significance was utterly lost on me, though not on the First Lancers. To me it seemed as if the tension underlying Yvanavar’s strict attention to protocol traveled with us, for gone were the songs and the hilarity. The morning practices were longer, and the columns tighter. Everyone who had weapons wore them in easy reach.

The second day, when we camped, the drums came out again: it was Midsummer’s Night. Lasva rode mostly by Ivandred’s side, so I had seen relatively little of her, and our only conversations had been about travel things.

This night I caught her walking around the perimeter of the campfire, her silhouetted profile somber in the firelight, as Marlovens drummed and heel-danced and leaped around the flames in spite of the night’s warmth.

Then it came back to me, what had happened last year at this time. Or, rather, what had not happened—the elopement of Lasva and Kaidas. But she was not going to share what she felt.

Marlovens on the road did not celebrate long into the night, because they rose so early. As the celebration wound down I retreated to the tent I shared with Anhar, and I caught her finishing her nightly note. I did not
try to read it but could see that it was only two or three lines. Endearments? A report? Did he write back each night?

I, too, had corresponded with him, long letters each way, too long for every day. One week often stretched to two. Both of us were busy and had little free time.

Again, I’d assumed that the trip meant I could not continue my studies until I remembered that I could transfer to Darchelde. But I thought it better to obtain leave, so one night, I walked out in hopes that I might find Lasva or Ivandred. I asked one of the runners and he pointed. There was the crunch of boots in soil, and here he was, limned by ochre glow of the dying fire. That wreath coronet was gone—the Marlovens seldom wore ornaments, except when riding into war.

“Emras-Sigradir,” he said.

I still could not quite believe the title, but I performed the proper deference, hand to heart.

He said, “This is excellent, for I had thought to speak to you on the morrow, and here you are. I have a task for you.”

“More transfer tokens, Ivandred-Harvaldar?” I asked in surprise.

“I have yet eight.” He grunted. “Twice in a week is about as much as I can bear for any distance longer than half a day’s ride. Twice in a day gives me a headache for two days afterward.” He looked at me with interest. “But you find it easier?”

“Not at all,” I said. “However, I hold hopes of learning to mitigate the effect, for I’ve seen little reaction in the Herskalt. At first I thought he was transferring from one room to another.”

“Above the library at Darchelde?” he asked. “No, there is no other room.”

He was so formidable, I was a little afraid of him and certainly wary. But there was also the knowledge that we had the Herskalt in common, so I dared a question: “May I ask his background?”

Ivandred lifted a shoulder as he glanced around the orderly camp. In the distance someone tapped a hand drum, and voices rose and fell in a ballad with the characteristic galloping beat. “We know little about him. He arrived when my aunt sought a tutor for Thar and me. This was when we were young. My father sent us to Darchelde for summers—I was sent as a warning that I could be replaced as heir. He had no idea how much I liked to be there. Anyway, the Herskalt did not come from Sartor, which was important to my father. He said his homeland was somewhere west. Across the water. Hin, or Han, it began with.”

I once had to memorize the world map. For the first time, the litany
of names did not come easily to my tongue, which disturbing realization I would cope with later. I concentrated and brought to mind the drawing I had made and colored with my own hand. “Hanivah, on the continent Goerael?”

“Could be.” Ivandred’s disinterest was plain. “Here is my question. I need magic to aid me in warfare.”

“Warfare,” I repeated, shocked. “Is that not—” Diplomacy caused me to hesitate, but the ring on my toe, the voices of many teachers, forced the words out. “Is that not the purview of Norsunder?”

Ivandred made that impatient gesture, as if swatting something aside. “Norsundrian mages—if we’re to believe they still exist—rip souls from your living body. Maybe smite hundreds to death. I want something that will aid my front line.” He must have seen something in my expression, though I tried to mask it, because he said, “You know little of war, I see. If it’s going to happen—and it will—I want a fast, hard attack that will be so fast, and so hard, that the other side loses their taste for battle.”