King's Shield (48 page)

Like I haven’t known that since we were eight!
“In the way back. Remember Ndand’s orders,” Han cautioned.

Lnand rolled her eyes. “I’ve been baking since I was smaller than Rosebud!” she retorted, and marched away, shoulders twitching with righteous indignation.

Han clamped her jaw on a retort. She loathed the way Lnand told you things you knew, except exaggerating them, making her younger, or the work harder, and hinting that you were stupid. But Lnand had been the best with the babies. When they’d started to whine for their parents, Rosebud starting the other pair of three-year-olds off, Lnand had sidetracked them by telling stories and making pretend people out of rocks. When they got bored with that, she built a pebble castle for them to smash.

Gdir appeared. She looked like she’d just come from the baths, her smock and trousers neat, her braids shiny and straight. “Sun is nearly up. It’s time for warm-ups,” she said in that if you-were-a-good-leader-you-would-have-remembered voice.

Han dug her toes so hard that one foot cramped.

“After that, what’re we going to do?” Freckles asked, turning to Han.

Gdir flushed, crossing her arms. She hated it when the others turned to Han.

“I have a new game,” Han said, though she really hadn’t yet. But she would by the end of breakfast, she vowed to herself. She could make up a new sort of training game, and—

A sharp boom cracked between the canyon walls. Han scrambled back, followed by Freckles. Gdir recoiled, then lunged forward, peering out.

“Get back,” Han snapped.

Gdir ducked, then straightened up in affront. “It’s just thunder,” she snapped back.

But she knew it wasn’t. They all knew it wasn’t.

Everyone stayed in the cave that day.

Gdir was even quiet about the brush, so Han reinforced Gdir’s insistence on everyone getting clean and changing into fresh clothes. They had to renew the water in the bucket between each child, dragging it from the stream. The older girls scrubbed the smalls down, then dunked their old clothes, and spread them on the lip of the cave in the brief sun, which shone hot and still. The smalls ran around happily in their skin, even Rosebud, who seemed better after drinking listerblossom laced with big dollops of honey, and sleeping during the long session of warm-ups and knife drills.

Just before sunset, when they were eating thick slabs of bread with cheese toasted on it, another of those loud booms echoed up the pass, quicker than the flight of a hawk.

The smalls ignored it this time, but the older girls exchanged looks. They went on with their games, just as usual. But that night, no one spread bedrolls out to be away from others, they laid their bedrolls side by side, in a clump. All three big girls made certain the smalls were in the middle.

The smalls had dropped to sleep and the older girls were each drifting on different thoughts when, faint but distinct on the strong wind from the sea, the screams began.

Chapter Six

JUST before dawn, Valda reappeared in the archive. This time she held a token flat on her palm. Signi recognized a tracer-token, warded against certain spells that Erkric might perform.

Valda took in the bookshelves extending in at an angle toward the center, the rolled up bedding on the floor, the shallow dishes neatly stacked on a tiny table by the door. Early as it was, the Marlovans had been up earlier and Signi had already eaten. “If Erkric moves, so will I,” she said, angling one of the chairs so she could see the door as well as the token resting now on her knee.

“You left me with many mysteries,” Signi said.

“I hardly know where to begin.” Valda scrubbed her hand over her frowzled gray hair. She had not combed it in days. Her insides ached from too many transfers: the human body was not made to be wrenched in and out of physical space like that.

But needs must be met. And needs had never been greater. She leaned forward, forearms on her thighs, which eased her cramping stomach. “Erkric is searching for me again. I had almost had him convinced I was dead. He believes you are dead. You were very clever to avoid the major magics while you were gone. Anyway, he’s put up formidable wards and tracers all over Ala Larkadhe and the pass, most of which I’ve spent the night removing or compromising. He’s had a very easy time with his tracers, as these people have almost no access to magic. Ulaffa says days ago Erkric was scorning your Marlovan king for using old-fashioned courting lockets for military communications. Is that true?”

“It is,” Signi said.
And I know how to restore that magic—the work of a few moments. But I dare not do magic, unless . . .
“Go on.”

“There is nothing I can do when our king is determined to send our people against these Marlovans, and they are equally determined to resist.” Valda touched her fingertips together. “But I am busy extirpating in any way I can magical interference in their battle.”

“Ah,” Signi said.

“Erkric has forced Ulaffa and the dags into it by getting Prince Rajnir to issue the orders.” Valda’s smile was thin. “I have not heard these orders. As our first oath is to the greater good of Ydrasal, my conviction that the intent of such orders owes more to Venn aspirations of power than to Ydrasal’s harmony gives me leave, in good conscience, to act as if I never heard
of
them.” She glanced down at her token. “I do not know how long I have, so to specifics. But first. Before I go on, why are you here? With these Marlovans? Are you helping them against us?”

“No. I am doing nothing. I am asked to do nothing.” Signi flattened her hand and extended her fingers in neutral intent. “The war I cannot stop, not when our people and theirs are so determined upon it. You do not stand in the way of the river’s flood, even when you know it will sweep away the seedlings.” A pause, as Valda’s steady gaze did not waver. “Valda, the truth is, the enchantment I labor under is that of the heart, and yes, I examine my reasons every moment, not just waking but in dreams. Aside from my connection to this young man, I know that somehow I yet see the Golden Tree, the greater cause. After all, you yourself removed me from this war to devote myself to that greater cause.”

Valda leaned back, exhaling slowly. “It’s good you did not make it to Sartor. I think they know about Erkric and Norsunder, for they have adamantly refused to treat with us. And Erkric has his trusted followers watching as many of our movements as they can.”

“Then our plan is abandoned?”

“No, postponed only.” Valda’s arms tensed slightly, cuing Signi to brace for the technique of emotional provocation. Valda loathed using emotional provocation, Signi knew, but it was often the only way to surprise the truth out of their formidably masked colleagues. “Why did you permit yourself to form a tenderness for Indevan Algara-Vayir? You know that, apart from Durasnir, whose opinions are necessarily shaped by someone’s fitness for war, everyone believes he is the epitome of evil. He betrayed young Wafri and destroyed his home, causing terrible turmoil in Ymar. That’s aside from all his bloody ship battles, burning people to death, and so on.”

“He was Wafri’s prisoner. Wafri was torturing him, did you know that?” Signi said.

“No.” Valda’s brows rose. “I did not. There were odd rumors. But that incident was so far removed from our concerns, I did not investigate further. Did Indevan tell you that?”

“No. He’s never talked about it at all. But he wakes up in dreams shouting Wafri’s name, or arguing with him and his—his—” She tried to find a term outside of the specifics of Hel dancing, which was so acutely observant of muscle expression. “His body,” she said finally. “The scars of torture are evident not just in the pain he feels in his joints, but in the way he moves, sometimes in his voice. That is not what forced me from the old path onto a new. He shines, so.” She flickered her fingers upward, miming the swirling rise of sparks.

“Ah.” Valda looked skeptical. “A blood-handed battle leader shines with the light of the Golden Tree? I had not known the tree bloomed crimson for you as well as for Erkric.”

Signi lifted her expressive hands, as if taking a precious gift. “I know I deserve this rebuke.” Her fingers opened, like petals. “Yet that is not how I perceive him.”

Valda sat back. Jazsha Signi Sofar was a woman of complexity, one who had trained at all the levels but one of one of the highest disciplines known to the Venn, the Hel dancing. And then she had become a mage, mastering in years what most took a couple of decades to even perceive. She was no child to mistake the sentiments of desire for anything but that.

“I think, desperate as I am for time I don’t have, I must ask. Ydrasal has brought us here, you and me. Flows the crimson river of Rainorec between us? Or is it possible we perceive different branches of the Great Tree? You must know that what I see is a lover of the very enemy about to lead his people against us, because I have seen your Inda riding next to the Marlovan king.” Valda rocked again, forearms against her middle, the token winking on her knee. “He is so young,” she said in a casual voice. “As I have grown older I find myself enchanted by the way the young have only to catch one’s eye, to smile, to offer smooth limbs with the unconscious beauty of youth, and they are instantly ready for the happiness of love, however tired, or worried, or stressed.” She smiled. “It is most precious of all forms of wealth, youth.”

Signi was far better trained in observation even than Valda. She could hear Valda’s physical effort just to speak, much less to sound casual, as if she were merely testing the depth of Signi’s infatuation.

You have been watching me,
she thought, as from below the open window rose the faint but distinct stamp and clash of drilling warriors.
What do you hold back?
She would not know until this part of the conversation was finished. “Life is the most precious gift,” she said, a reminder of the inner circle’s vows that transcended Venn, Marlovan, Ymaran, or any mere political or cultural polity. “Youth is—youth. If I had met Inda at sixteen, I would have scorned him for his scars. Had I met him at his own age, I would have scorned him for the lack of grace that we Hel dancers believed, in our arrogant simplemindedness, divided artists from mere barbarians. He would have been ugly to me, compared to the male dancers.”

“So define your enchantment,” Valda commanded. “Are you telling me this is a life love, root and branch?”

Signi knew the answer to that, but hesitated before saying it. To some it was not given to find that kind of love, that lasted from acorn to the last bloom, through all the seasons and storms of life. But there were other loves, and age taught one to appreciate each kind.

“No,” Signi said, reluctant because she knew that her love for Inda had rooted, while his (though he did not seem to know it) was still the green shoot of the young. “He’s like the golden fish in the river,” she said at last. “I can watch all day with pleasure, but he darts here and there, his movements as much a mystery to me as the currents of his river’s waters.”

Valda made the gesture of peace, as the rumble, zing, and clack rang up the stones from below, followed by full-throated roars in cadence.

“Then here’s what you must know now. The king lies in a strange sleep, somewhere between dream and death. He has not wakened for days.”

Signi pressed her fingers to her lips.

“The last command he made about us in the south was to bring the Marlovans back to the homeland. Those were his words,
Bring back the Marolo
—he used the old word—
into the embrace of the homeland.
”

“Which Erkric comprehends as spells to take their wills away, if we win?”

“The wit and will of their leaders. Yes.” Valda bowed her head. “His present ruse is to further delay the Marlovans from marching up the pass so that the Hilda may gain an advantageous position. I know little about such details, but Signi, here is also what you need to know: he is forcing the Yaga Krona to use magic in aid of this invasion.”

Signi’s breath hissed. “Dags—”

“Do not belong in battle lines. Everyone knows it. But the prince commanded it, calling them ‘aid,’ not ‘warriors.’ So they must obey.” She tipped her hand toward the castle. “Prince Rajnir is eager, no, desperate to win the coming battle. The Breseng is nigh, and he must return with a triumph for the Venn.”

Signi had felt the problems of the Venn homeland as a looming storm beyond the horizon. Always there, but far away. Now once again she was in the midst of the thunder.

Valda said, “The Yaga Krona is not just divided, we are fractured. Erkric knows how to shape his words to reach the deepest roots of ambition, so that each of the most untenable of these orders is given to the dag who would most find a way to see them as reasonable. There are two of his spies in this city right now.” And she named them. “There was also Mekki, up on the heights. She was not just watching for Erkric, she was killing messengers. There were two bodies directly below, one of them a Runner sent by the Jarl’s heir, and the other a girl hardly over sixteen, sent through the tunnel under the northern castle, which is hard-pressed now by our invasion force. Mekki killed messengers, not warriors, probably dispatched to apprise the Marlovans of the our invaders landing along the Idayagan coast, and attacking the castles.”

“Killed? With magic?” Signi cried softly, rocking back in horror.

“Yes.” The soft folds of Valda’s face trembled with the intensity of her emotions.

“How is it even possible? No, I don’t wish to know—”

“This atrocity will revisit your dreams, as it has mine. I want that to happen,” Valda said, low and intense. “I want every one of us to see that young man and the girl in dreams, the transfer of a stone directly into their hearts. And don’t remind me that our transfer spells make that impossible, because Dag Erkric has been given by Norsunder some spell to remove those protective wards.”

Signi hissed as if a stone had erupted into her own heart.