King's Shield (24 page)

Evred did not smile, but a hint of humor was there in the deepened corners of his mouth. “In fact you have decided to entrust him to me—for now?”

Jeje blushed. “Inda can take care of himself. And I know I’m being a busybody. Just, we didn’t know what he’d find, coming to land,” she admitted. “And I can’t help worrying.”

“Then how about this?” Evred lifted his hand, that same gesture Inda had used, which they could never quite figure out. “All I can offer is my word. Not as a king, but as a person. If I ever get angry enough with Inda to want to throw a kingdom at him, I promise I will halt long enough to summon you from wherever you are to defend him first. How is that?”

She scrutinized him in suspicion, suspecting facetiousness. But he’d never spoken facetiously, and there was no smirk now. Then she wanted to reject his words as the useless words of a king, except wasn’t that a kind of reverse swagger? She could just hear Tau!
Oh, you say kings are just people who happen to have power, but when they speak as just people, you won’t believe them because they are kings?

She gave a curt nod. “All right. I’ll take you at your word.”

Evred opened a hand in agreement, then started back. Once again Jeje tramped through the mud past the row of smelly horses, this time not in companionship but next to a stranger she thought of as a waiting thunderstorm in human form.

But she’d been given the sign for clear sailing. She’d already readied her gear. The king walked out beyond the tents to where his captains and the rest were doing their best to follow one of Inda’s and Fox’s knife drills, and she had to admit they were doing really well.

She watched Inda striding back and forth, and listened to the sound of his voice. His countenance was so different from what they’d thought normal. This lifted face, the easy laughter, the quick, broad smile that brought out long dimples in his cheeks—this was his normal face. This observation left her with a heartsick sense that she didn’t really know him.

Well, Tau would say whatever needed to be said.

She reclaimed the horse that had been assigned to her, and during the rush to break camp and get breakfast she rode away, unnoticed except by Tau, who did not trouble her with any unnecessary words, and by the vigilant sentries on their perimeter patrols, and finally by Evred, who felt a strong sense of relief that one of his many minor problems had so neatly solved itself.

Chapter Twenty-two

TAU sat on his mat near Inda and Signi, across from Evred. They had their own campfire, pleasant under a sky full of stars. The golden haze of the men’s campfires outlined the jutting skyline of tents surrounding them. The air smelled of the supper Runners brought in wooden bowls, cheese-sprinkled rice-and-cabbage balls cooked in pressed olives.

Before Inda and the king could begin another of the endless iterations of past battles, often blow-by-blow, Tau said, “Jeje’s gone.”

“She’s gone?” Inda asked, slewing around as if searching for her. “I thought she just rode off exploring.”

Signi sustained one of those painful heart constrictions: she felt she had failed Jeje. Two women alone, and one had inadvertently so shut the other out that she departed unnoticed. She pressed her hands over her face, her head bowed forward. Sitting there in Inda’s shadow, she was unnoticed by everyone except Evred.

Tau said, “I think she went home. There wasn’t really a place for her here.”
Or for me either.
He would have gone with Jeje if she’d asked, but she’d been very clear about going alone.

Evred said nothing, which Tau found interesting as he’d glimpsed him talking with Jeje shortly before she rode off.

Inda rubbed his jaw. “Well, then, we’ll know where to find her. And she’ll know where to find us.”

“Where was her home? Do you know?” Signi asked, raising her head.

“Just below Lindeth,” Tau replied. “Though she had relations in Parayid.”

The fire snapped, whirling sparks into the air; a shout of laughter rose from a campfire fifty paces away. Neither Evred nor Inda noticed. They’d withdrawn into reverie.

The day Inda arrived Evred found himself in another condition of being. Words like
happiness
or
desire
or
pain
lost their meaning the same way
red
or
blue
or
green
weakened in hue in the midday summer sun.

Pain and enchantment whipsawed Evred. The moments of enchantment were brief, and deeply concealed: he cherished Inda’s manner of eating, unchanged from his ten-year-old self. Either Inda bent over and ate fast, laughing, talking, or listening, or he sat motionless—as now—spoon suspended above his dish, gazing beyond the world.

Pain . . . was more complicated, the sharper because Inda had not returned alone, but with this woman at his side, hands so gracefully composed as she listened, or talked inanities with Taumad. There was nothing offensive in her voice, her presence, or her manner. It had taken Evred only a day to observe how hard she worked to keep it so. Not that her effort showed. It was the opposite. Only someone who has learned habitual wariness can recognize another who never ceases vigilance.

She was as plain as a woman could be; what figure she had was entirely hidden by the old smocks she’d apparently gotten from the Marlo-Vayir women, the worn riding trousers and riding boots cast off by one of the castle girls. From a distance Dag Signi resembled one of the half-grown runners-in-training whom Vedrid had as part of his staff, only she was shorter than those boys, her shoulders rounder. When she wore the old hooded cloak one of the Runners had given her, she was indistinguishable from the boys. What could Inda see in her?

Inda had said that he was in love with her, but what exactly did “in love” mean? The definition changed from person to person. Inda did not follow her with his eyes the way her eyes followed him, but he sat close to her, some part of them touching, when at rest. And during the first night on the road, when Inda had cried out in some kind of nightmare, it had been her voice that soothed him into sleep. Evred had waited through the night for another cry, and in the morning for explanation, but Inda appeared to have forgotten, and the mage moved about in her courteous way as if nothing had happened.

The matter remained: she was a Venn. One who was aware that men had been detailed to guard her. She never strayed far, and sometimes even paused for them to keep her in sight. As if she knew they would be flogged if even once they lost sight of her.

Evred had seen how his Runners and staff walked around her as if she did not exist, not knowing how else to react to so puzzling an anomaly in their midst.

She is not just a Venn, but a mage.
So far she had done no spells that he was aware of, and more important, had not asked for paper or pen, so she could not have sent off spy reports.

Perhaps it was time to examine the subject further. “I have some questions,” he said.

No response. Inda’s brown eyes did not even blink as they reflected the fires he stared beyond.

“Inda! Wake up.” Tau leaned forward.

Clack! The spoon dropped. Inda looked around with an air of surprise. “It’s the smells,” he said, as if continuing a conversation—one that had never taken place.

Puzzled, Evred sniffed the air. “Smells?”

“Home smells. Horse. Grass. Rye—”

“Rye? What do they eat, elsewhere in the world?”

“Seldom rye. Someone is burning rye biscuits.” He waved in the direction of one of the distant campfires, and everyone sniffed the breeze, now aware of the distinct aroma of singed bread. “Like they did on our last night all together, that spring, on the ride to the royal city. When I was eleven.” He shook himself. “Never mind. Did I miss something?”

“The Venn,” Evred said. “We postponed discussion of them. Now perhaps is the time. I want to know more about Prince Rajnir. And his commanders.” He turned to Signi, his manner polite, formal. “I do not ask you to betray any military information that you possess. I would like to understand the individuals—especially this Dag Erkric, whose intention to use magic to ensorcel my will is part of what brought you here.”

Her face did not change, but her shoulder tensed against Inda’s arm. “You must understand that I am a sea dag. I know nothing about land war.”

Inda flashed a grin. “She was right there in the sea battle off Chwahirsland. Remember when we were small, and heard about it? But the sea dags navigate, and do some ship repair, and healer spells. They don’t fight.”

“Understood,” Evred said.

Inda was sensitive to voices; a subtle flatness to Evred’s tone indicated some kind of conflict, or ambivalence. Yet he’d started this conversation.

Make it easy for them, talk about what she’s told you,
Inda thought. And, to Signi, “You said that Rajnir’s commanders are a lot older than he is.” On her nod, “I noticed when I was in Ymar that the army was war-gaming far from the coast. If I was planning an invasion in the next year, I would have army and navy together, practicing landing and launching an attack over and over on a coast with as similar a terrain as possible. Why didn’t Rajnir order them to drill together?”

“He cannot.” Signi laid her palms together, fingertips pointing outward. Evred had seen her do that before, and again wondered at its significance. “That is, he could. He is the prince, though his position as deposed heir is anomalous. But then the heirship itself, for the first time in centuries, is anomalous.”

Evred drew a slow breath. Signi regarded him in mute question, her manner tranquil.

“Go on.” Inda smiled encouragingly. She sensed his concern, and tried not to let it magnify her own as he went on, “You told me there’s rough weather between sea and land forces.”

She spread her hands, then closed them again. “Hilda—that is the land warriors. Hilda Commander Talkar is well-respected by the Oneli Commander, Hyarl Durasnir.”

“The Oneli are the sea lords,” Evred said. “Correct?”

Signi bowed her head over her steepled fingers. “Hyarl Durasnir and Hilda Commander Talkar respect one another, all attest to it. Yet all Venn grow up knowing that in the lost times, when Venn came to this world, they sailed through the sky-between-worlds aboard a
drakan,
the first Venn warship. The Oneli are the First Venn, the sea lords. They have the precedence. The kings are chosen from Oneli families. There are Hilda families, but they have precedence only over commons. Anyone may join the Hilda.”

“So they don’t work together,” Inda prompted. “Outside of orders.”

Signi considered, then bowed her head in agreement. “They will do what they are ordered to do, for that is the oath of Drenskar. The-the military oaths lie alongside our own—”

Drenskar.
Evred heard a twisted version of the Marlovan word for
honor
and knew it for the origin of their own word. “I am familiar with it. Back to the commanders, if you will.”

Signi’s fingertips touched gracefully in peace mode. “They respect one another. But each makes his own plans in order to carry out orders from the prince.”

“The prince won’t command by himself?” Evred asked. “I was told that he led the ship battle Inda just mentioned, when your people took Ymar.”

Inda flicked his hand out. “He lost. And that was after Ymar’s queen made some kind of deal with Durasnir to hand over the kingdom.”

“The Ymaran queen is believed to have died by treachery,” Signi said. “Not by our people. She was killed by one of her own relations, the young Count of Wafri.”

Inda’s hand jerked; Signi started, fingertips pressed to her mouth. Evred’s tension sharpened in question as Inda murmured under his breath to her, the tone comforting, as she shook her head, her manner remorseful.

Signi said to Evred, “Prince Rajnir means to take your kingdom for the good of the Venn, and to prove himself. The king has desired that the Marolo-Venn, the lost ones, be brought back to us, and their lands, too.”

Evred’s mouth tightened but he only inclined his head.

“Hyarl Durasnir will do his best to implement the plan from the sea and Commander Talkar the land, with the sea-trained Drenga, marines, joining the Hilda for the landing.” Signi leaned forward. “Dag Erkric serves the prince, but his own plans are different, and that is part of what brought me away from my people.”

Was it mention of this Prince Rajnir that had made Inda recoil? It wasn’t Durasnir, Evred had watched closely. He leaned forward, the firelight reflected in his eyes. “Erkric’s your chief magician, is he not? Yet you assured me that magicians are not concerned with war, that magic is confined to making and mending.”

Inda said, “Erkric is trying to get around that by dealing directly with Norsunder.”

Signi pressed her hands together again. “It is so.”

Inda pointed at Evred. “Everything is to benefit the Venn. He wants our land to feed the Venn, wants our army to fight their enemies—and he wants you as his puppet to see to it all, so that he can help Rajnir reclaim his position back in Land of the Venn.”

“Me as puppet,” Evred repeated. So it was true, then.

“Magic spells from Norsunder, to ensnare your mind.”

Now it was Evred’s turn to recoil. He snapped a gaze of cold fury at Signi. “Is that possible?”

“It is not for me.” She touched the front of her smock. “Or for anyone I know. But this is what he seeks from Norsunder. We do not know if such spells actually exist.”

The fire crackled. From outside their camp circle came normal sounds: the racket of spoons against travel dishes, the fart of a horse on the picket, followed by the snickers and chortles of young runners-in-training working their way down the line with feed bags. From another direction, the crunch of footsteps in the gravel. Men’s voices, talking quietly, an occasional laugh, and in the distance the muted thump of hand drums as voices rose in an old war ballad. Normal, familiar sounds, but not comforting.