Banner of the Damned (81 page)

“Talk to me about Tdiran,” Lasva said the next day, when our cavalcade—slow because of the wagons of wounded—set out for Yvanavar. “What did you observe when we visited Yvanavar before the battle with Olavair?”

“What little I saw, Tdiran was civil,” I said.

“Put it in our terms.”

It was strange. Though my thinking was still in Kifelian, applying courtly language to this situation felt a lot like putting on a pair of shoes that I’d worn too long, and then cast off.

“Lily Gate,” I said.

“Yes, yes. That matches my impression. The determined formality, yet when she spoke it was always to the others, and to me, only politesse. Did you see her when Ivandred was present?”

“She did not look at him, except to speak to.”

“Except once. Before our departure. The Garden Arch, when he left the room. Oh, Emras.” But she did not follow that with an observation.

So we fell silent. She reached down a hand, stroking absently the square, thick book she was halfway through reading, until she said, “I think I know what to do.”

By the time we reached Yvanavar, I had worked it out in my head. My duty lay with Lasva, who was adamantly against war. She had also made
oaths to Ivandred and his kingdom. So. Perhaps I could please everyone if I invented something that would fit his requirements yet make death-dealing more difficult.

I had two ideas. Both had to do with shifting water, something I’d learned a bit about while working the purification spells. If, for example, I could raise minute bits of water to seep into arrow wood, then they could not be used. And what if I could raise water from the ground into vapors to hide armies from one another?

I would bring these up with the Herskalt on our next tutoring session.

The Yvanavar castle was built alongside a curve in a river, surrounded by a ring of hills with a beautiful road topping them. Silhouetted horse riders appeared and vanished down into valleys as we rode, passed on by dipped flags and hand signals.

The castle itself was built out of stone the color of honey in sunlight, rare in the east, and almost ubiquitous at this end. As with most Marloven castles, you could not just ride up to the front door. There were angled sweeps of stairs to either side, making frontal assault difficult. The doors were massive, iron-reinforced. The one at Darchelde was beautiful with carvings. This one was plain.

The jarl and jarlan both came to the door, as was proper for welcoming someone of superior rank.

The tensed lower eyelids and the tightened jaw betrayed anger in Danrid Yvanavar’s handsome, smiling face. I watched Lasva’s quick gaze assess him as she returned the greetings, and how her attention turned solely to the man’s wife, the jarlan Tdiran, a tall woman, at least as beautiful as her husband. They made a mythic pair, like songs and stories, standing side by side, but the subtleties of muscle, angle of head, the flicker of an eye provided a stream of impressions, not quite clues.

Two things I was sure of: that the woman had far better self-control than the man did. She was impossible to read. The other thing I saw was that he watched his wife as closely as he watched Lasva.

It was clearly understood by the formal words of greeting that they acknowledged the honor of the gunvaer’s having personally brought the treaty, but no tone or demeanor betrayed the gratitude you would expect of someone so honored.

I was motioned forward (my role now being scribe and herald rather than mage) as Keeper of the Treaty. I unrolled the thing to display it and
watched Danrid’s light blue eyes brush indifferently over it. He then turned to his wife. Tdiran’s gaze moved from side to side—she read at least half of it, then began uttering the conventional offer of hospitality.

We staff were bustled off to be entertained and effectively shut up for safekeeping. The wounded were escorted to the barracks lazaretto, and Lasva was conducted inside, the jarl at her right, the jarlan at her left.

The first break in the fog of formality was the next morning. As first runner, I had the freedom of Lasva’s suite. Thus I was able to signal when the jarlan came to greet her. On Lasva’s orders, we arranged for Tdiran to find her in the middle of the Altan fan form.

As Lasva had surmised, Tdiran had too much respect for drill—even a type of drill completely foreign—to interrupt, thus she witnessed the spectacle of the fan she had seen dangling apparently uselessly at Lasva’s waist circling with its pair, faster and faster, until they slashed the fabric that I had fastened in the collapsible easel that we had carried along with us. Lasva was so good by now that the slash was a loud, effective rip.

Then I stepped aside to watch the jarlan’s reaction as Lasva set down her fan and assumed her overrobe. Thus I saw Tdiran’s gaze go from the slashed cloth to the fans, then down Lasva’s form to rest on her bare toes. Then her lips parted, and her teeth bit into her soft lower lip, her expression impossible for me to define.

So I transferred my gaze to Lasva’s feet, to find nothing out of the ordinary. Her feet, like the rest of her, were beautiful, and beautifully tended. Was it the silver polish, or the neatness of her trimmed nails, the absence of callus or rough cuticle? Or was it the delicate gold ring on her middle toe, carved with minute blossoms?

Marlovens did not color their nails. From their raggedness, especially toenails as seen in the baths, I had wondered if they cut them with knives. Then Tdiran came forward, her tone betraying a cautious interest as she greeted Lasva.

Later, Lasva said, “What did you see?”

I explained, and Lasva’s brows went up. “I observe surprise,” she said.

“I am very surprised. I do not see the connection.”

Lasva chuckled under her breath, and kicked out her neatly booted foot. Then she looked at me askance. “Emras, I forget your age, except that you are younger, but surely you are far past the age of interest. Do you have a lover?”

“I do not,” and then felt obliged to say, “So far I am
elor
.”

“Ah.” She signed Understanding then said, “Then I will confine myself
to observing that it is not my feet that draw her attention, it is the thought of my feet in proximity to Ivandred’s. The fans show that the peacock has teeth, if you will permit a very awkward metaphor. The feet… there is a question about what a Colendi can do for a Marloven within the intimacy of the bedchamber. I am trying to understand how it all fits together.”

The watch bell rang and we parted, she to join the jarl and jarlan for a meal.

The night after we left Yvanavar, Lasva bade me walk with her out into the twilit field that smelled heavily of wet grass and moist soil. When we had paced side by side a distance from camp, halfway between the silhouettes against the fire’s glow and the barely perceived silhouettes of the perimeter riders, she put out a hand to stop me.

“Tdiran talked. A great deal. So did I, though I revealed very little. She revealed three things,” she said, holding up her fingers. “First, since the days of Hadand-Gunvaer, Marloven history has been hard on the women, who can’t always match men in physical strength but can in wit. The laws have varied wildly, it seems, and I mean to read up on them. One of the absurdities Tdiran spoke of is called the Time of Daughters, when families could only have one son. As a result, many boys were dressed and raised as girls, as the girls also trained in war.”

“Yedi!” I exclaimed. “Did they identify as both, then?”

“I asked her that, and she said that such a question is impossible to answer, except that ballads from that time will switch gender pronouns in what will seem a careless way, but isn’t. She also talked about old politics and how the Olavairs would bribe their supporters by promising lands belonging to those they did not favor.” Lasva signed Thorn Gate. “Oh Emras. I cannot tell you how my heart chilled when she said, ‘We are cruel to our enemies, many say, but we are crueler to ourselves.’”

I made The Peace.

Lasva signed with the second finger. “Next. She cannot explain what happens to them in the Academy. Part is an oath that they don’t break, but some is an experience that is impossible to explain unless you’ve shared it. She offered me an example. She said that when he was growing up, Danrid was always first. But in the academy, he was supplanted by Ivandred, who had once looked up to him. Emulated him. Loved him with the passion of youth.”

Her voice dropped, low and rough. “The day that Haldren was flogged. I looked away, at the others, so that I could avoid making a memory I could not rid myself of. And I saw Danrid tight against the seam.”

Cold shock through every nerve and muscle made me shiver, then came the inward revulsion of disgust.

“Yes.” Lasva’s face lifted. I stood with my back to the distant campfire, so its light fell full on her face, where I saw a cold anger tightening her features. For a moment we stood thus, she so still she might have been a statue of her Dei ancestors. “That, I will never forget.”

“This is the man Tdiran Marlovair chose over Ivandred,” I observed, too amazed to remain circumspect.

That was fine with Lasva. She did not want circumspect. She wanted her own emotions mirrored, shared, reinforced. “That is the third thing,” Lasva said. “She did
not
choose him. He wanted her—she says it has much to do with the fact that Ivandred wanted her. So I said that I had seen subtle signs—the trick of gaze, the draw of breath—that in Colend would mean shared intimacy.”

“Danrid and Ivandred?” I exclaimed in disbelief. “I thought they hated one another.”

“Ivandred was the first to fall in love and the first to grow out of it. She thinks Danrid never did. Such a passion, if unrequited, can turn to anger. Even hate, which in no way lessens the desire.”

She fell silent, gazing past me to the campfire, her eyes so wide I could see tiny leaping flames reflected in her pupils. Her breathing changed as she remembered
Obliterate me
, a memory echo that Tdiran intuited and acknowledged softly with,
You understand
. And Lasva had returned,
I understand
.

She roused herself. “She was ordered to marry Danrid by none other than the king. She broke off the relationship with Ivandred, claiming it was personal, entirely to protect him, because she was afraid of what might happen if he found out. But she has now given me leave to tell him the truth.”

She paused, looked away, and I wondered if she was thinking of the Duke and Duchess of Alarcansa. Then she faced me again, her voice brisk. “So far, there is one lesson I can take from Hadand-Gunvaer. It is the nature of this net of communication with the kingdom’s women. I am going to attempt to recreate that, if I can. Emras, I want you to make a scrollcase for every jarlan in this kingdom—” She paused, studying me. “Or is there a difficulty of which I am unaware?”

I gestured apology as I said, “It would take time to lay the necessary
spells. There are a thousand repetitions or even more. And that’s after I find someone who can get the gold necessary to make the case.”

“Ah-ye! And I understand gold is rarer in this kingdom, as it must be brought from far away. Very well. I know what to do, then. My sister tendered me a substantial sum as a wedding gift, in case I should have need of such. I will use some of it to order cases, if you give me exact specifications. I want them finished before the women show up for New Year’s Week.”

I

After a meal, I transferred to Darchelde and the secret room.

Within moments the Herskalt appeared. When I told him what Ivandred wanted—and my reasoning behind supplying it—he said, “Excellent thinking, Emras. However, I see that your magical knowledge, while improving steadily, is still lacking. You cannot add water to wood by magic, not without great difficulty. Think of the difficulty of waterlogging an arrow by spooning water over it. How long would it take you? It is far easier to construct a spell that squeezes water out of the wood, for here, the specificity of the arrow works for you. I will give you the appropriate book, and you may add that to your studies, along with your work on the Choreid Dhelerei castle wards.”

“These wards,” I said. “I believe I see the entire structure more clearly now. The layers of spells are impossibly deep. Far deeper than I thought.”

He smiled. “Yes. They go back to the years the Cassadas family ruled in that city, which they built. After the Marlovens took it, they reinforced the castle both architecturally and, later, magically.”

“It’s thousands upon thousands of spells. It might take me ten years to accomplish.”

He said, “Then that will be ten years of good work.”

I suppressed my desire to sigh. “I have had another thought.” I hesitated, thought about what I had already experienced, and plunged on. “I confess, I’m not sure whether my reluctance is because of being trained not to interfere, or because there is a… a moral trespass here, but…”

He waited, neither encouraging nor scorning me.

I tried again. “You have said that Ivandred will be a great king, and most Marlovens agree, except this Danrid Yvanavar. I believe that Ivandred wants to avoid war. But from all I’ve seen, Danrid Yvanavar is quite willing to cause fighting if he can gain whatever it is that he wants. I understand that the dyr can only be used to look at past memories, but could we not use it to determine his true motivations as well as his plans?”

The Herskalt did not exhibit any consternation, repugnance, or surprise. “He is warded. But if he were not, which moment would you choose from his life from which to gain this knowledge?”

“I don’t know. But we could begin looking on the day of the coronation, perhaps. His enmity is obvious. His thinking at such times has to be germane.”