The Hero and the Crown (2 page)

but she kept her own eyes fixed on her father.

“Treat?” said her father. “If we go, we go with an army to witness the treaty.” A

little of the smile crept into his eyes after all. “You are picking up courtly

language, my dear. Yes, we go to ‘treat’ with Nyrlol.”

Tor said, “We have some hope of catching the mischief-one did not say demon

aloud if one could help it—”and bottling it up, and sending it back where it came

from. Even now we have that hope. It won’t stop the trouble, but it will stop it

getting worse. If Nyrlol isn’t being pricked and pinched by it, he may subside into

the subtle and charming Nyrlol we all know and revere.” Tor’s mouth twisted up

into a wry smile.

She looked at him and her own mouth twitched at the corners. It was like Tor

to answer her as if she were a real part of the court, even a member of the official

deliberations, instead of an interruption and a disturbance. Tor might even have

let her go with them; he wasn’t old enough yet to care so much for his people’s

good opinion as Arlbeth did; and furthermore, Tor was stubborn. But it was not

Tor’s decision. She turned back to her father.

“When you go—may I come with you?” Her voice was little more than a

squeak, and she wished she were near a wall or a door she could lean on, instead

of in the great empty middle of the dining-hall, with her knees trying to fold up

under her like an hour-old foal’s.

The silence went suddenly tight, and the men she faced went rigid: or Arlbeth

did, and those behind him, for she kept her face resolutely away from Tor. She

thought that she could not bear it if her one loyal friend forsook her too; and she

had never tried to discover the extent of Tor’s stubbornness. Then the silence was

broken by Perlith’s high-pitched laughter.

“Well, and what did you expect from letting her go as she would these last

years? It’s all very well to have her occupied and out from underfoot, but you

should have thought the price you paid to be rid of her might prove a little high.

What did you expect when our honored first sola gives her lessons in swordplay

and she tears around on that three-legged horse like a peasant boy from the Hills,

with never a gainsay but a scold from that old shrew that serves as her maid?

Might you not have thought of the reckoning to come? She needed slaps, not

encouragement, years ago—she needs a few slaps now, I think. Perhaps it is not

too late.”

“Enough.” Tor’s voice, a growl.

Her legs were trembling now so badly that she had to move her feet, shuffle in

her place, to keep the joints locked to hold her up. She felt the blood mounting to

her face at Perlith’s words, but she would not let him drive her away without an

answer. “Father?”

“Father,” mimicked Perlith. “It’s true a king’s daughter might be of some use in

facing what the North has sent us; a king’s daughter who had true royal blood in

her veins ....”

Arlbeth, in a very unkinglike manner, reached out and grabbed Tor before

anyone found out what the first sola’s sudden move in Perlith’s direction might

result in. “Perlith, you betray the honor of the second sola’s place in speaking

thus.”

Tor said in a strangled voice, “He will apologize, or I’ll give him a lesson in

swordplay he will not like at all.”

“Tor, don’t be a—” she began, outraged, but the king’s voice cut across hers.

“Perlith, there is justice in the first sola’s demand.”

There was a long pause while she hated everyone impartially: Tor for behaving

like a farmer’s son whose pet chicken has just been insulted; her father, for being

so immovably kingly; and Perlith for being Perlith. This was even worse than she

had anticipated; at this point she would be grateful just for escape, but it was too

late.

Perlith said at last, “I apologize, Aerin-sol. For speaking the truth,” he added

venomously, and turned on his heel and strode across the hall. At the doorway he

paused and turned to shout back at them, “Go slay a dragon, lady! Lady Aerin,

Dragon-Killer!”

“Aerin—” Arlbeth began.

The gentleness of his voice told her all she needed to know, and she turned

away and walked toward the other end of the hall, opposite the door which

Perlith had taken. She was conscious of the length of the way she had to take

because Perlith had taken the shorter way, and she hated him all the more for it;

she was conscious of all the eyes on her, and conscious of the fact that her legs

still trembled, and that the line she walked was not a straight one. Her father did

not call her back. Neither did Tor. As she reached the doorway at last, Perlith’s

words still rang in her ears, “A king’s daughter who had true royal blood in her

veins ... Lady Aerin, Dragon-Killer.” It was as though his words were hunting dogs

that tracked her and nipped at her heels.

HER HEAD ACHED. The scene was still so vividly before her that the door of her

bedroom was half open before she heard it. She spun round, but it was only Teka,

bearing a tray; Teka glanced once at her scowling face and averted her eyes. She

was probably first chosen for my maid for her skill at averting her eyes, Aerin

thought sourly; but then she noticed the tray, and the smell of the steam that

rose from it, and the worried mark between Teka’s eyebrows. Her own face

softened.

“You can’t not eat,” Teka said.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Aerin replied, realizing this was true.

“You shouldn’t sulk,” Teka then said, “and forget about eating.” She looked

sharply at her young charge, and the worried mark deepened.

“Sulking,” said Aerin stiffly.

Teka sighed. “Hiding. Brooding. Whatever you like. It’s not good for you.”

“Or for you,” Aerin suggested.

A smile touched the corners of the worry. “Or for me.”

“I will try to sulk less if you will try to worry less.”

Teka set the tray down on a table and began lifting napkins off of plates. “Talat

missed you today.”

“He told you so, of course.” Teka’s fear of anything larger than the smallest

pony, and therefore the fact that she gave a very wide berth to the stables and

pastures beyond them, was well known to Aerin. “I’ll go down after dark.” She

turned back to the window. There were more comings and goings across the

stretch of courtyard that her bedroom overlooked; she saw more messengers,

and two men racing by on foot in the uniform of the king’s army, with the red

divisional slash on their left forearms which meant they were members of the

supply corps. Equipping the king’s company for its march west was proceeding at

a pace presently headlong and increasing toward panicky. Under normal

circumstances Aerin saw no one from her bedroom window but the occasional

idling courtier.

Something on the tray rattled abruptly, and there was a sigh. “Aerin—”

“Whatever you’re going to say I’ve thought of already,” Aerin said without

turning around.

Silence. Aerin finally looked round at Teka, standing with head and shoulders

bowed, staring at the tray. The plates were heavy earthenware, handsome and

elegant, but easily replaced if Aerin managed to break one, as she often did; and

she had not the small Gift to mend them. She stared at the plates. Tor had

mended her breakages when she was a baby, but she was too proud to ask now

she was far past the age when she should have been able to fit the bits together,

glower at them with the curious royal Gifted look, and have them grow whole

again. It did not now help her peace of mind or her temper either that she had

been an unusually large and awkward child who seemed able to break things

simply by being in the same room with them; as if fate, having denied her

something that should have been her birthright, wanted her never to forget it.

Aerin was not a particularly clumsy young woman, but she was by now so

convinced of her lack of coordination that she still broke things occasionally out of

sheer dread.

“I’d hang myself first,” spat Aerin, “and then I’d come back and haunt you till

you were haggard with fear and lost all your looks and people pointed at you in

the streets—”

At this point Galanna slapped her, which was a tactical error. In the first place,

it needed only such an excuse for Aerin to jump on her and roll her over on the

floor, bruise one eye, and rip most of the lace off her extremely ornate afternoon

dress—somehow both the court members and the hafor witness to this scene

were a little slow in dragging Aerin off her—and in the second place, both the slap

and its result quite ruined Galanna’s attempted role of great lady dealing with

contemptible urchin. It was generally considered—Galanna was no favorite—that

Aerin had won that round. Of the three serving girls, one was taken back, one was

given a job in the stables, which she much preferred, and one, declaring that she

wouldn’t have any more to do with the royal house if saying so got her beheaded

for treason, went home to her own village, far from the City.

Aerin sighed. Life had been easier when her ultimate goal had been murdering

Galanna with her bare hands. She had continued to use the finer ware when she

ate with the court, of course; when she was younger she had rarely been

compelled to do so, fortunately, since she never got much to eat, but sat rigidly

and on her guard (Galanna’s basilisk glare from farther down the high table

helped) for the entire evening. But at least she didn’t break anything either, and

Teka could always be persuaded to bring her a late supper as necessary. On

earthenware plates.

She lifted her eyes to Teka, who was still standing motionless behind the tray.

“Teka, I’m sorry I’m so tiresome. I can’t seem to help it. It’s in my blood, like being

clumsy is—like everything else isn’t.” She walked over and gave the older woman

a hug, and Teka looked up and half smiled.

“I hate to see you ... fighting everything so.”

Aerin’s eyes rose involuntarily to the old plain sword hanging at the head of her

tall curtained bed.

“You know Perlith and Galanna are horrid because they’re horrid themselves-”

“Yes,” said Aerin slowly. “And because I’m the only daughter of the witch

woman who enspelled the king into marrying her, and I’m such a desperately easy

butt. Teka,” she said before the other had a chance to break in, “do you suppose

it was Galanna who first told me that story? I’ve been trying to remember when I

first heard it.’’

“Story?” said Teka, carefully neutral. She was always carefully neutral about

Aerin’s mother, which was one of the reasons Aerin kept asking about her. “Yes.

That my mother enspelled my father to get an heir that would rule Damar, and

that she turned her face to the wall and died of despair when she found she had

borne a daughter instead of a son, since they usually find a way to avoid letting

daughters inherit.”

Teka shook her head impatiently.

“She did die, “Aerin said.

“Women die in childbed.”

“Not witches, often.”

“She was not a witch.”

Aerin sighed, and looked at her big hands, striped with callus and scarred with

old blisters from sword and shield and pulling her way through the forest tangles

after her dragons—Dragon-Killer—and from falling off the faithful Talat. “You

would certainly think she wasn’t from the way her daughter goes on. If he was

going to turn out like me, it wouldn’t have done my poor mother any good to

have had a son.” She paused, brooding over her last burn scar, where a dragon

had licked her and the ointment hadn’t gone on quite evenly. “What was my

mother like?”

“Do you think she enspelled my father?”

Teka looked at her, frowning. “Why do you ask so silly a question?”

“I like to hear you tell stories.”

Teka laughed involuntarily. “Well. No, I don’t think she enspelled your father—

not the way Galanna and her lot mean, anyway. She fell in love with him, and he

with her; that’s a spell if you like.”

They had had this conversation before; many times since Aerin was old enough

to talk and ask questions. But over the years Teka sometimes let fall one more

phrase, one more adjective, as Aerin asked the same questions, and so Aerin kept

on asking. That there was a mystery she had no doubt. Her father wouldn’t

discuss her mother with her at all, beyond telling her that he still missed her,

which Aerin did find reassuring as far as it went. But whether the truth behind the

mystery was known to everyone but her and was too terrible to speak of,

particularly to the mystery’s daughter, or whether it was a mystery that no one

knew and therefore everyone blamed her for endlessly reminding them of, she

had never been able to make up her mind. On the whole she inclined to the

latter; she couldn’t imagine anything so awful that Galanna would recoil from

using it against her. And if there were something quite that awful, then Perlith

wouldn’t be able to resist ceasing to ignore her long enough to explain it.

Teka had turned back to the tray and poured a cup of hot malak, and handed it

to Aerin, who settled down cross-legged on her bed, the hanging scabbard just

brushing the back of her neck. “I brought mik-bars too, for Talat, so you need not