Chapter II 
Chapter II
Departure
Spring 60—Summer 15
I
AS THEY TRUDGED ACROSS the muddy former garden, Jame glanced up at the keep, oldest of Gothregor’s structures, which stood between the inner ward and the forecourt of the Women’s Halls. Light streamed through the surviving stained-glass windows of the third-floor Council Chamber. Tori must be entertaining the Karkinoran emissaries. A dark silhouette stood framed by the central panel that depicted the Knorth’s rathorn crest. Jame knew instinctively that it was her brother. Was he watching them pass below, hungry and tired, driven out of his hall? She almost called out to him, but choked back the words. He seemed to wait a moment, then turned and retreated into the chamber’s interior.
Feeling miserable, she plodded on. Ever since she had returned to Rathillien, fleeing the Master’s House and Perimal Darkling, her one goal had been to rejoin her twin brother. They belonged together. Even as squabbling children, she had known that, and thought that he did too. Since her return, however, he had pushed her away again and again, and Kindrie too: She had learned that the Shanir healer was still at Mount Alban, apparently in no hurry to return.
Someone’s stomach growled. The others chuckled, but Jame knew they must all feel just as hungry. What kind of a leader was she, who couldn’t keep her own troops fed?
Their quarters were located in the thickness of the outer wall, a long, narrow chamber with cots lining one wall and windows the other, overlooking the inner ward. As they entered, Jorin’s ears pricked. Jame’s quarters were at the far end of the hall, set off by a wooden partition. The ounce disappeared through its doorway. When Jame caught up with him, he was under her bed, all but for the tip of his twitching tail. From beneath the frame came a muffled shriek.
Brier moved quickly past her, with Damson a pace behind her. Picking up the bed by its head and foot, they swung it away from the wall. All the cadets stood in the doorway, staring at the figure curled up on the floor, trying to fend off the ounce’s inquisitive nose and dabbing paw.
“Jorin, back.”
Jame helped the girl to her feet. She was dressed, or rather almost undressed, in a welter of white ribbons, the fashionable sleeping attire of a young Highborn lady. A lacy mask shadowed rather than concealed her face.
“Why, Lyra, I didn’t know that you were at Gothregor.”
Caldane’s young daughter surged forward, tripped over a stray ribbon, and fell into Jame’s arms, jolting her sore shoulder and almost knocking her over. As she steadied them both, she nodded to Brier over the girl’s shoulder. The Southron cadet withdrew from the tiny room and discreetly shut the door after her. Jame sank down on the displaced bed, still holding Lyra.
The young Highborn was almost in tears.
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” she cried. “Everything has been so dull here, until now. I’ve been in the Women’s Halls all spring. Kallystine says I must learn how to be a proper lady, but I want to be like you and have adventures!”
Kallystine had once been Torisen’s limited-term consort, before one of her potions had backfired and withered her face. Jame hadn’t heard anything more about her over the past two years.
“Great-grandma Cattila is ill,” explained Lyra, looking suddenly doleful. “Sister Kallystine has taken over her duties until she’s better.”
The Caineron Matriarch was possibly the oldest woman Jame had ever met, short of the Earth Wife herself, who sometimes acted as Cattila’s spy, or Ear. At her age, she might well be dying. Kallystine must be back in her father’s favor to have claimed the matriarch’s role, even temporarily.
“That still doesn’t explain why you were hiding under my bed,” she said.
Lyra’s expression changed again, stricken by sudden recollection. She gripped Jame’s arms, making her wince. “They’re coming! They’re coming! Oh, please don’t let them take me away! I was so miserable there, until you rescued me, with only Gricki for company. The Prince was kind, but I hardly ever saw him. And then he changed.”
Jame sorted this out. “Gricki” had been Lyra’s half-breed servant in the palace at Karkinaroth, before she, Jame, had accidentally bound him and given him a new name. Graykin was still in Kothifir, acting as her spy-master. The hapless prince had been Odalian, whose place the changer Tirandys had taken before the battle at the Cataracts.
“You’re afraid that the new prince’s agents mean to take you back to Karkinaroth.”
“Why else are they here? When they came through before, going north, they brought me all sorts of pretty trinkets, but they talked over my head to the Matriarchs as if I were a child or an idiot. How Karidia smirked and simpered. Everything must be just as dear Kallystine desires. Oh, she made me so mad!”
The Coman lord was part Caineron. Karidia, the Coman Matriarch, clearly believed that any additional alliance or favor done to that powerful house reflected some of its glory onto tiny Kraggen Keep, her own home. She was about as annoying a person as Jame had ever met, like a small dog that wouldn’t stop yapping.
“Have you heard from your father that he’s made a new contract for you?”
Lyra sniffled. “Why would he tell me? You know how Highborn ladies get passed around, like sweets after dinner. It shouldn’t be that way, should it?”
“Of course not. Still, there’s something odd about all of this.”
Someone tapped on the door. “Ten, Five says that there’s a bunch of people headed this way,” said Erim, outside, keeping his voice low. “She thinks one of them is the Coman Matriarch.”
Lyra gave a little shriek. “Oh, she knows I’m here! I thought I was so clever, sneaking out, but I must have been seen. Don’t let her have me! Oh, please!”
Jame held her, thinking. She couldn’t deny that Lyra was here—that would be a lie, the death of honor. There wasn’t a back way to smuggle her out, either. Refuse to hand her over? The Coman had no right to a Caineron, whatever Karidia thought, but then neither did a Knorth. At the least, it would cause a fracas, and then Tori would have to get involved. She didn’t want to meet her brother again under such conditions.
Someone knocked on the dormitory’s outer door. Then came a pause, then a barrage of petulant rapping, then Brier’s steady, courteous voice.
“Matriarch. To what do we owe this honor?”
“I know that chit is here. Produce her at once!”
“What chit?”
“Lyra Lack-wit, as if you didn’t know!”
“Why should a Caineron be in the Knorth barracks?”
“Because she idolizes that hoyden your lord has been fool enough to make his lordan. A disgrace to all Highborn ladies, that wretched girl. Everyone knows that all Knorth are mad, and you were fool enough to desert the Caineron for them. For shame, you turn-collar! Now let me pass!”
Yap, yap, yap.
Jame could almost see the Coman Matriarch stomping an impatient foot on the threshold—something not so easily done given her tight underskirt. With luck, she would fall over.
Lyra was clinging to her. “Don’t let her take me. Oh please, don’t! Something bad is going to happen tonight. I just know it!”
Jame made up her mind.
“Lyra, be quiet,” she said, giving the girl a shake. “Listen. This is what we’re going to do.”
II
BRIER HELD HER POSITION, patiently blocking the door while the plump little matriarch shouted up into her face. Over Karidia’s head, she regarded the Coman guards who had accompanied her from the Women’s Halls. They were all female, of course, and singularly blank of expression. What would they do if their mistress ordered them to invade the Knorth barracks? Brier knew what she would do if they tried and silently told them so, eye to eye.
A rustle of cloth made her look over her shoulder just as a slim figure muffled in a hooded cloak slipped forward between the watching cadets. Gloved hands held the garment shut. White ribbons fluttered around its hem.
Brier raised an eyebrow, but stepped politely out of the way.
Karidia pounced upon her prey and led her away with a tight grip on her arm, scolding incessantly.
III
“. . . AND STAY THERE!”
The bedroom door closed, the lock clicked. Karidia yapped some more through the keyhole, then went away.
Jame let the cloak drop to the floor. She was fairly sure that Lyra’s bed clothes shouldn’t be wrapped so haphazardly around her or tied with such hasty, clumsy knots, but there hadn’t been much time for finesse. Doubtless Lyra had maids to help her in such matters of dress, but Karidia had sent them all away, leaving only a few candles lit against the coming night. Jame tugged at a loop, which came apart in her hand. She felt like a badly wrapped package, and more naked than if she had been stripped to the skin.
Lyra’s quarters were full of expensive trinkets and luxurious appointments, as one would expect for the daughter of a rich house. Jame wandered about it, examining a handful of gems casually scattered across the top of a dressing table, a golden bird that ruffled metallic feathers as she passed, and a bent silver flute. Lyra would appear to be an impatient student of music. Likewise, a pack of gen cards with simpering images had been thrown into one corner and dismembered clothes into another—attempts, it seemed, to transform court dresses into divided skirts such as the Brandan Matriarch wore, to the chagrin of her colleagues.
Jame wondered what she was doing here. Short of turning Lyra over to Karidia, it was the only solution that had come immediately to mind. True, in the morning the ruse would be exposed unless she escaped during the night, but that would only postpone the hunt.
More than that, though, she felt that there was something odd about Lyra’s sudden contract, if indeed there was one. Surely Karidia would have mentioned it. A prospective bride hiding under a bed should have provoked some comment, assuming that the matriarch was sharp enough to see the irony.
However, if Lyra was right . . .
The curse of the girl’s position in the Women’s Halls was that there was no Caineron Matriarch to protect her, even less so if Cattila was sick at home and the reins had fallen to Kallystine. The Matriarchs collaborated on some things, but each was primarily out to profit her own house. When Jame had been an inmate of the halls over that terrible winter three years ago, of course there had been no Knorth Matriarch nor even any other Knorth ladies to support her. She had been put entirely in Kallystine’s power with the aim, she guessed, that she be baited into showing the worst of her nature. The sudden appearance of a mysterious Highborn Knorth must have alarmed the Matriarchs, given what the Kencyrath had suffered from that house during her father’s reign as highlord.
In the end, though, it was Kallystine who had betrayed herself.
Jame touched her cheek. Through Lyra’s dainty mask she would feel the scar left by Kallystine’s razor-ring. There had been fears, at the time, that such a vicious, unprovoked attack would lead to a blood feud between the Knorth and the Caineron, but subsequent events had over-shadowed the injury. Jame herself seldom thought about it. She had never been nor expected to be a beauty, so why fret?
But Lyra was so young, so innocent, so vulnerable, and no favorite of her older half-sister.
Well, she would sort things out in the morning. Perhaps the Jaran Matriarch Trishien would tell her what was going on, or even the Brandan Brenwyr, if she was in residence.
Jame tried Lyra’s bed, but it was so soft that she felt swallowed by it. Instead, she chose a white bear skin on the hearth and curled up on it under her cloak.
Uneasy sleep led to dreams. Someone lay under the cloak with her, back to back. Tori, she thought. They had always fitted together, whatever posture they took. Her long, black hair flowed over her shoulders and down his chest, now as it had then when as a child Tori had sometimes wrapped himself in it. Shifting tension on her scalp told her that he was fingering its ends. It felt as if they had been arguing for hours, in circles.
“. . . what do you know of leadership?” he was saying. “You may be a randon cadet, but whenever you can, you’ve handed over your duties to someone else—Brier Iron-thorn at Tentir, Marigold Onyx-eyed at Kothifir. You’ve missed many lessons, once twenty days of them at a time. You’re always running off, Perimal only knows where, leaving your ten-command, your entire house, to fend for themselves. No wonder the randon question your competence, or at least your commitment.”
They did? With a sinking heart, she remembered that tomorrow was Summer’s Day, when her fate for the next year would be decided. When Tori would decide it.
“You had Tentir. I would have given anything for that. And you threw it away.”
Tug.
“I did not! Anyway, there are other things besides lessons and barracks duties.” She tried not to sound defensive, wanting to turn the conversation. “And I seem to be the only one doing anything about them. ‘Fear the One, await the Three, seek the Four,’ or so the Arrin-ken say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tug.
Had she explained this to him before? He had so much power over her, but knowledge was power too, and she hadn’t shared everything she knew or guessed. Perhaps, if she did, she could break through this new, strange barrier between them.
“You know the Four,” she said, “or at least you saw the Burnt Man once, at Kithorn, and you met the Earth Wife in her lodge. She was the one hanging by her feet from the rafters while I tried to jar her molten fat back into place. The other two are the Falling Man and the Eaten One. The Arrin-ken went looking for them. The Dark Judge has some sort of an alliance with the Burnt Man, Mother Ragga is friends with the Caineron Matriarch, and Timmon’s half-brother Drie got swallowed by his lover, the Eaten One. I’ve encountered all four, but don’t really have an understanding with any of them. To them, the Kencyrath is as much an invader as Perimal Darkling. They speak for Rathillien, but in a confused way. Each was an individual who found him- or herself cast into one of these roles according to the nature of their imminent deaths when our temples activated on this world.”
“Are you saying that we created them?”
He sounded dubious, and a bit scornful. Jame began to regret telling him anything.
Tug.
“Ow. Tori, stop it. In a sense we did, the way that the uncontrolled power of our temples made the New Pantheon gods possible, except that the Four rose out of the Old Pantheon, the gods worshipped on Rathillien before we came.”
“This is getting complicated. I imagine that the Three are the Tyr-ridan, who speak for our own wretched god, or will when they deign to show up.”
Jame gulped. “Tori, there are three of us Knorth now. I—I think I’m a potential nemesis, about to become Destruction incarnate.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all. Then who, pray tell, is the One?”
She noted that he skipped over the other two potential Tyr-ridan, Creation and Preservation. However, a nervous tremor ran through him. That was unusual, as she knew from their childhood when they had often shared a bed. This was a dream. They had often shared those as well. Something more was going on this time, though, and that made her increasingly uneasy.
“The One is the Voice of Perimal Darkling, which Gerridon is under pressure to become,” she said, all the time testing the link between them. They were currently in the dreamscape. Dared she probe beneath that to the soulscape? The thought made her shudder. Just keep talking. “You see, the Master is running out of Kencyr souls to maintain the immortality he gained by betraying us all during the Fall. Perimal Darkling will sustain his eternal life if he agrees to speak for it, but that also means being consumed by the shadows.”
Torisen twitched again. In her mind, his voice began to take on a peculiar undertone, as if someone sought to speak with or through him. “The randon say he led the Karnids against Kothifir. Why is he still fighting for Perimal Darkling if he doesn’t want to serve it?”
“It isn’t quite like that. He will do anything to avoid paying for the Fall. You talked to him when you were a boy serving in Kothifir, didn’t you? You know he has no honor or conscience. He wants Rathillien and the Kencyrath for himself, to make a stand against the shadows. He will sacrifice anything and anyone to obtain that goal.”
“Then there are three forces: the Three-faced God, Perimal Darkling, and Rathillien. Each is seeking its own voice, its own manifestations.”
“Yes. It will come down to individuals acting for greater powers. Oh, Tori, don’t you see? It all seemed so far away, so long in coming, but come it will, soon, and we aren’t ready!”
He laughed, with a sob caught on his voice.
The undernote swelled into a throaty, avid whisper.
“Foolish, foolish child. As if it were given to you of all people to know the truth. Oh!”
And Tori’s voice returned, half strangled.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up! What good is that, or anything else, if the Kencyrath falls apart first? It needs a strong leader. Now. Father says . . . Father says . . . you will destroy me if you can. Destruction begins with love. I love . . . I love . . . no! I refuse to be driven mad or to harm my sister. I refuse to listen.”
“What? Tori, stop it! You’re hurting me!” He had wrenched at her hair, jerking her head back. She clutched it to ease the strain.
“The door is shut, the door is shut!” he cried, pulling harder.
They twisted face to face. His hands were knotted in her hair; she barely restrained hers from clawing through his beard, into his eyes. Wake up, wake up, wake up . . .
And so abruptly she did, alone, tangled in the cloak, cold with sweat.
IV
THE ROOM WAS DARK, the candles burned out. It took Jame a moment to remember where she was. Parts of the dream were already beginning to fade, as tightly as she tried to hold on to them. Something important had happened—hadn’t it?—but what? Oh, schist.
“A dream,” she muttered. “It was only a dream.”
But something had woken her. A sound. The soft click of a key in a lock.
The air currents in the room changed. Feet shuffled. Several muffled figures had entered the apartment and now loomed over her.
“Come, little lady,” one of them murmured in a voice thick with a Southron accent. “We will take you to your prince.”
And hands reached down.
So Lyra had been right, thought Jame as she allowed her kidnappers to hustle her down the steps, bundled up in her cloak, and out of the Caineron compound. Something bad was happening tonight. Still, the situation baffled her. Did the Karkinorans think that they could escape the Riverland with their captive, fifty miles past three keeps? For that matter, how did they even mean to get out of the Women’s Halls?
They hurried her down the northern arm of the gallery that lined the forecourt, under the shadow of the old keep. Ahead was the gate that gave access to the inner ward, but where were its guards?
The bulk of the Women’s Halls lay to the south, housing the Edirr, Danior, Ardeth, Randir, Jaran and Coman. Some commotion was going on there, shrill voices raised in alarm or protest. No doubt the gate-wards had gone to investigate.
The gate swung open. A dozen figures waited with saddled horses at the head of the ramp leading down to the subterranean stable. Close by was the northern gate, which gave access through the thickness of the wall to the ravaged apple orchard.
Jame had gone as far as she intended to go with her would-be abductors. She drew a deep breath and unleashed the rathorn battle-cry of her house, a shattering scream that sank to a bone-rattling roar. The men holding her flinched. She slipped out of their grasp, reversing a wrist lock on one of them. When she twisted it, he flipped over its fulcrum of pain. The other scrabbled to regain his hold. She stomped on his toes—a less effective move than if she had been shod—then drove her elbow into his stomach and met his chin with her fist as it jerked down.
Warning shouts sounded as dark figures ran down the gallery and across the forecourt, the guards returning to their posts. Outside the gate, horses shrilled and reared. On both sides of the wall, Kencyr scythed through the intruders, leaving them on the ground still or groaning.
Jame had retreated down the arcade. She had wrenched her barely healed shoulder, and it hurt. For once, let someone else have all the fun.
A parcel of matriarchs arrived in a flurry of skirts, following their house-guards. Jame imagined that the windows above must be full of curious eyes, not that the girls there could see through the gallery’s tin roof. Some of the brawl had spilled out into the forecourt, though, no doubt to their delight.
Karidia arrived, scolding. Jame noted that she was fully dressed, unlike her colleagues in their flowing nightgowns. Ribbons, apparently, were reserved for the very young, and tight underskirts for daytime wear.
The crowd of ladies on the arcade parted and the Ardeth Matriarch Adiraina passed through it, supported by the Danior Matriarch Dianthe. Adiraina walked carefully, running her free hand along the gallery rail. Her sleeping mask was embroidered with shut eyelids. Pearls like tears hung in a fringe from long, silken lashes. She turned her blind face toward the battleground, where only Kencyr now stood.
“What is the meaning of this disgrace?”
Karidia stepped forward, blustering. “It’s only that Prince Uthecon’s emissaries have come to fetch his bride. This unpleasantness would not have been necessary if Lord Caineron had been more reasonable.”
“Caldane did not approve of his daughter’s proposed contract, did he?”
“Humph. We of the Women’s World should have the say in such matters.”
“But we do not, not since the Fall. Was this Kallystine’s idea?”
Karidia huffed. “I’m sure that dear Kallystine acted in the best interests of her house.”
“No doubt,” said Dianthe dryly, “in exchange for a magnificent bribe.”
“So they gave her gifts, as is only proper.”
Jame became aware of a growing, silent crowd just outside the gate. There was Brier’s tall frame and Marc’s, which overtopped both her and everyone else. Torisen stood between them, looking as slight as a boy by comparison.
“This is all very well,” he said, with a touch of amusement, “but what does it have to do with kidnapping my sister?”
Incredulous eyes turned to Jame, who removed Lyra’s mask and stepped forward.
Karidia raised pudgy fists as if to flourish them in her face. “You . . . you . . . wretched creature! What right have you to meddle with the affairs of true ladies? Leave our halls at once! In fact, kindly leave this fortress!”
“Point of law,” said the Jaran Matriarch Trishien. She had come up quietly and stood at the edge of the throng, stray flickers of light reflecting in the lens sown into her mask. Jame wondered if she wore them night as well as day, the better to read in bed when the urge took her.
“We are the Highlord’s guests,” Trishien said. “He can order us to leave but not we him or, I think, his sister and lordan. I have reminded you of this before,” she added, sounding somewhat apologetic.
Meanwhile the Karkinorans were slowly recovering themselves, except for several who had to be lifted from the ground and supported.
“This is a most unseemly treatment of guests,” said the leader, glaring at Torisen.
“Honorable guests do not attempt to steal from their host.”
“Nonetheless, our prince will hear of this.”
“I daresay he shall. Soon. By sunset of the day now dawning, I request that you quit the Riverland.”
“What, travel fifty miles in a day?”
“Ride fast.”
They left the forecourt, some stumbling, others carried. Their horses had been caught and quieted. Mounted, the leader scowled down at Torisen.
“You may yet regret this, my lord. The time will come, soon, when you seek employment for your mercenaries in our court.”
“Be that as it may, goodbye.”
They rode out.
The ladies departed with sidelong looks at Karidia, whose face in the growing light was dark red and pop-eyed with ill-swallowed chagrin.
“See me before you go,” Trishien murmured as she passed Jame.
Go where?
The crowd outside the gate also dispersed, except for Torisen.
“Such a long night,” he said to Jame. “Still, we need to talk.”
V
UP IN THE TOWER STUDY, Burr had kindled a fire against the morning chill. Jame curled up in a chair beside it and began absentmindedly to pluck off her ribbons.
Torisen stood by the window looking out as he had on that first night, but with only a hint of that fearful flare of power around him. On the whole, he seemed to be more self-possessed than she had yet seen him, but also bone tired.
“One thing,” he said wryly over his shoulder, “life is always interesting when you are around. Where, pray tell, is that prize nitwit, Lyra?”
“In my quarters, I assume.” One by one, she flattened each ribbon and rolled it into a compact ball. “She really doesn’t want to go back to Karkinaroth.”
“Now she won’t have to, unless Caldane changes his mind. I rather think, though, that he has other plans for her. She’s something of a prize, you know, and a useful bargaining chip. Kallystine overreached herself. Do you know why?”
Jame shrugged. The cloak had slipped off her shoulders and she was glad of the fire’s warmth.
“Kallystine is ambitious and vengeful, but not very bright,” she said. “However, with Cattila ill, there will be an imbalance of power at Restormir. I think Lord Caineron both respects and fears his great-grandmother. Without her to check his behavior, however slightly, he might do anything.”
“I hope not,” said Torisen, with a shudder, “given his past behavior. Hard times are coming. That Karkinoran was right. With King Krothen cutting back on the Southern Host, less money will funnel back to the Riverland.”
Jame looked up, startled. “I thought Kroaky meant to keep his Kencyr forces intact, whatever happened.”
“So he said. Repeatedly. However, Kothifir’s glory days are over and we will all suffer for it.”
Jame thought about her journey across the Southern Wastes, back in time, to the lost city of Languidine and of its destruction in one terrible night, due to the awakening of the Kencyr temple around which part of its royal palace was built. It had all been part of Kencyr history unfolding, in an unguessed-at way. Perhaps it was appropriate that the Kencyrath of the present should also reap that bitter fruit. However, life in the Riverland had never been easy. The fields, pastures, and orchards of the river valley simply didn’t provide enough food or raw materials for the nine major houses located there. Mercenaries’ pay allowed their lords to buy needed supplies in the Central Lands.
Quill had mentioned that the Seven Kings had started to squabble again. In the past, before Ganth’s fall in the White Hills, Kencyr mercenaries had done much of their fighting for them. Not since. Now Prince Uthecon of Karkinor wanted a renewed contract with the Caineron that might extend to military support. She saw where Tori’s fear lay. Would he or any lord be forced to hire out fighters to support their Riverland keeps? And if they did, might these Kencyr be forced to meet each other on the battlefield, as had happened in the White Hills?
“I’m sorry,” she said, hardly knowing for what.
Torisen squared his shoulders. “We have suffered worse, and survived. Now, for today’s business. I have the Randon Council’s recommendations.”
Jame sat up with a jerk. After a moment, she remembered to breathe. “What of them?”
He turned back to the table and tapped a long finger on a stack of unrolled scrolls held down at their corners by smooth river rocks.
“You will be glad to hear, no doubt, that all of your ten-command has passed. Dar, Mint, Niall, and Damson have been promoted to ten-commanders. Erim, Quill, Rue, and what’s-his-name, oh yes, Killy, are now five-commanders. I will make up the rest out of Kendar either stationed here or on their way back from Kothifir, with an assortment thrown in of second-year cadets who otherwise would be going south.”
“And Brier?”
“From what I hear, Iron-thorn filled the role of master-ten, second-in-command to you, both at Tentir and Kothifir. That will now be made official. Rue will remain your servant. You may wish to promote her to chamberlain.” His lips quirked. “You may find that one hard to shake off.”
“And . . . what about me?”
“A one-hundred commander. There’s a hitch, though. The randon question your competence.” He paused and gulped. “We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?”
How much of the dream did he remember? Enough, apparently, to be embarrassed, as well he should be.
“We both know that you can’t stay here, not as things are.”
What things? she wanted to ask, but the words caught in her throat. The floodgates unexpectedly opening, the horses stampeding, the mess-hall table breaking out in hives at her touch . . . Was he right to blame her for everything that had gone wrong? No, dammit. Not this time.
“You think I’m a danger to our Kendar,” she said, leaning forward. “You want me as far from them as possible. But I’m your lordan, your heir. You can’t send me off into the wilderness, say, as a ranger, or cast me off altogether without admitting to the other lords that you made a mistake.”
Torisen rubbed his temples. He was apparently getting a headache, and Jame wasn’t entirely sorry.
“You are the Highlord’s heir,” he said, “therefore more is asked of you than of other lordan. This is what I have decided. You will take your new one-hundred command and reclaim one of the Riverland’s abandoned keeps. There are six of them, three more or less intact. Chantrie is closest, just across the river. Don’t look to me for help. Survive on your own for your third year as a cadet and no one will ever question your skills as a leader again.”
Jame sat back, momentarily speechless. Life would be hard enough in the major keeps over the coming winter. How could she hope to provide for her people? It would be like her failure tonight to feed her ten-command, only a hundred times worse, quite literally a matter of life or death. Was he setting her up for failure yet again?
“As you will, my lord,” she said as she rose. Putting the ball of ribbons on his table, leaving her cloak behind, she stalked out of the tower study.
VI
THE NEXT NINE DAYS passed in a blur of preparation.
To staff the base of her new hundred-command, Jame had ten ten-commands, four under the charge of her former team mates Dar, Mint, Niall, and Damson. The fifth was that harsh-voiced Kendar Corvine, once an oath-breaker, now newly returned to the Knorth. The sixth through the ninth were new to her: cheerful Jerr, dour Talbet, as well as a pair of older identical twins except that one was fair and the other dark: Berry and Huckle.
The tenth commander came as a surprise.
Stepping out of the west wing barracks into a bright, cloudless morning, Jame glanced across the inner ward at the square tower of the old keep. She had talked to her brother several times over the past few days about setting up her soon-to-be-launched expedition. He had remained courteous and tightly controlled, his face pinched with the headache that now seemed to be his constant companion. She had heard him burst into rants against Rowan and other Kendar, only to pull himself up short and tersely apologize. Their dreams, when they crossed, left her tense and unhappy, although she couldn’t remember on waking what they had been about.
How could she help him when he shut her out so completely? If only Harn and Grimly were here, they might have broken through to him. Perhaps he talked to his servant Burr, but she doubted it, and cousin Kindrie was still at Mount Alban, not that he and Tori were completely comfortable with each other yet, as how could they be while Tori’s deeply entrenched hatred (or was it fear?) of the Shanir remained?
Someone was tramping across the newly replanted vegetable garden of the ward toward her.
“Char?” she said in surprise. “When did you get here?”
He glowered at her. “Last night. I’m reporting to you as ordered . . . ran.”
“I’m not a randon officer yet, but you should be. What happened?”
Char had been a third-year Knorth cadet at Kothifir, one of several who had tried to force Jame out of the Southern Host with challenges. He had also been at the Cataracts and, along with the rest of his surviving classmates, had been promoted on the battlefield from second to third-year status. That had probably been a mistake. Having missed most of Tentir, the jumped-ahead cadets were noted both for their arrogance and for a touch of immaturity. Nonetheless, Jame had thought, after the thwarted Karnid invasion, that she had won Char’s grudging acceptance. Now here he was, looking at her askance with loathing in his eyes.
“The Randon Council decided that I don’t yet know how to follow orders,” he said, “so they ordered me to repeat my third year. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Of course.” With a lopsided sneer, he turned to go.
“Char.” Her voice, though quiet, stopped him as if he had run into an invisible wall. “Your new command is gathering in the north barracks. You will have one of my old command, Killy, as your number five—and no, he isn’t my spy.”
Char shook his head as if to clear it. “Did you hear the results of the vote?” he asked, somewhat hoarsely.
“What vote . . . oh.”
She had completely forgotten. Throughout her year at Tentir, all cadets had been tested over and over again, mostly by the randon. At Kothifir, it had been the cadets’ turn to pass judgment on their peers: Who would they most willingly follow into battle?
“We chose Brier Iron-thorn,” said Char, and walked away, stumbling a bit.
Jame considered this somewhat blankly. It made sense, of course: Brier was a born leader. And it was good that the Knorth cadets had finally accepted the former Caineron rather than seeing her as a turn-collar.
But it also felt like a slap in Jame’s face.
I still have to win their approval, she thought, dismayed, as well as Tori’s and the Randon Council’s. Would these tests never end?
Her mood lifted, however, at the sight of Marc approaching along the northern edge of the ward. He, at least, knew better than to trample newly planted crops.
“Have you changed your mind?” she asked as the big Kendar loomed over her, his thinning hair a back-lit halo in the morning sun.
“No. As I said before, there’s nothing more I can do here for the moment. I’ve filled in the map’s blank space with cullet—not satisfactory, of course, but I hope that it will hold the whole in a lead frame until I have more to work with. So I’ll go with you . . . if you still wish it.”
Jame smiled up at him. “Of course I do. I’ll need a steward, won’t I?”
He looked startled. “I’m not a randon, you know. I’ve never been anything but a common soldier.”
“There’s never been anything common about you.”
His brow creased with thought as he thumbed his bearded chin. “If I’m going to run your household, I’d better start thinking about provisions. Where are we going, by the way?”
So far, Jame hadn’t told anyone. Most assumed, as did Tori, that she was removing to Chantrie just across the river, within easy reach of help if needed, never mind that to ask for it would be to admit failure.
“Tagmeth,” she said.
Marc blinked. “That will put us north of Restormir, with the Caineron as a neighbor, in a ruin that they tried to reclaim before Caldane’s great-grandfather consolidated the family in the home keep. Why not keep going, up to Kithorn?”
“That’s Merikit territory now. I’m sorry. Of course you would like to go back to your old home.”
Marc considered this. “Well, maybe not. There are too many memories.”
Jame knew that he was thinking about his family slaughtered by the Merikit and wondered how he would feel, being so close to his old enemies again, never mind that the massacre had been the result of a misunderstanding.
“Tagmeth it is, then,” said Marc, pulling his mind back to the present and future.
Jame watched him walk off, deep in thought. After losing Kithorn, he had served as a Caineron yondri or threshold-dweller for many years before walking all the way to East Hold in search of a new lord. Turned out there, too, he had reached Tai-tastigon in despair, ready to die, only to stumble across her, an apprentice thief who was also Kencyr, also questing. In himself, he embodied the tragic fate of many Kendar under the rule of fickle lords. This whole project would be worth it if only to give her old friend the first home he had known since his boyhood.
Home.
She had told Brier that they were going there when they had left Kothifir. That had turned out not to be true, as she should have known it would. All her life, she had been searching for a place to belong. Tai-tastigon and Tentir had come closest, Gothregor and Kothifir never, much less the Haunted Lands keep where she and Tori had been born or the Master’s House in Perimal Darkling where she had grown up—a place still mercifully vague in her memory.
Home had also meant rejoining the Kencyrath, only to find that she must forge her own place there, in a society that otherwise had none bearable for her.
Most of all, home had meant Tori, a return to her other half. Well, she was working on that, despite her brother’s current strange and shifting mood.
That reminded her: the Jaran Matriarch had asked her to visit before her departure. Now was as good a time as any, while she had a moment to spare.
She found Trishien in her summer quarters on the top floor of the Jaran compound within the women’s quarters.
“The guards didn’t want to let me in,” she said.
Trishien almost slammed her book shut but restrained herself, closing it gently and resting her thin hands upon it.
“That wretched Karidia. Her order that you be banished from the Women’s Halls was supported by Adiraina, who should have known better. They can’t shut you out any more than they can your brother. I told them that.”
Jame sat down in a chair facing the matriarch. “Is it my imagination, or have there been changes in the Women’s World? Kallystine usurping Cattila’s role—that can’t be normal.”
“Nor is it. We don’t know what is going on within the Caineron, or the Randir, for that matter. I suppose the balance tipped when Rawneth more or less took over her house. Her son Kenan may officially be Lord Randir, but none of his people seem to be bound to him.”
“That was my impression, too. Kindrie says that besides Rawneth personally binding Kendar, some are bound to lesser Randir Highborn, even within the Priests’ College.”
“Ah. I had wondered.”
Trishien’s ink-stained fingers restlessly tapped the book’s cover. She put it aside with an impatient moue and picked up a loose skein of multicolored yarn from a basket at her feet. This she draped over Jame’s hands and began to wind it up.
“For that matter,” said Jame, obligingly tilting the skein back and forth, “everything has been in flux since Jamethiel Dream-weaver helped to cause the Fall. The balance swings one way, then the other. She had power. Then women were stripped of it. Now there’s Rawneth, Brenwyr, Cattila, and you.”
Trishien smiled. “You flatter me.”
“Not at all. Kirien values you, and she will be the next head of the Jaran, a lady instead of a lord, the first since the Fall, with her house’s consent.”
“And you . . .”
“Yes. The Highlord’s lordan. I don’t think, though, that anyone actually expects me to succeed him.”
“On the contrary, it is what some fear.”
Jame was surprised. Despite having been her brother’s declared heir for two years now, she hadn’t thought of herself as a potential political power.
“I suppose, if I survive the next year on my own . . . By the way, you’re wrapping that yarn around your fist.”
Trishien shook free her now club-like hand and ruefully regarded the resulting rainbow tangle in her lap. “You should see my attempts at knitting.”
“The Earth Wife, that is, Cattila’s sometime Ear, tried to teach me, using a half unraveled foxkin. The lesson did not go well.”
The Jaran Matriarch dumped the mangled skein back into the basket as if gladly washing her hands of it. “Your brother is struggling with his attitude toward you, as you no doubt have noticed. He gives chances, but then seems to withdraw his support.”
Jame snorted. “‘Seems’?”
“Think. He could have slapped you down, hard, any number of times. What he withholds, he does in part because the Kencyrath can only be pushed so far, so fast. I will own, though, that his current mood perplexes me.”
“About that . . . lady, I’m worried. Has he confided in you?”
“No. He used to, sometimes, but not since his return from Mount Alban after the Feast of Fools.”
“That was when he found out that I had bound Brier Iron-thorn.”
“That, no doubt, is part of it but not, I think, all. I feel . . . I feel . . .” She shook her head, helpless, baffled. “Something is wrong. Whatever it is, though, he must deal with it himself. The pressure has been building for some time between what he knows and what he cannot bring himself to admit. Whatever is going on now, it plays into that.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to slap him silly . . . or sane.”
Jame rose to leave, but paused in the doorway.
“How did you know that I wouldn’t be staying at Gothregor?”
Trishien smiled sadly. “Can destruction dwell with creation without preservation?”
“Oh,” said Jame blankly. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only to those who know how to think. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—at present, that excludes most of the Kencyrath. Fare you well, child.”
VII
MORE KENDAR returned from Kothifir to fill out the new command’s ranks, also some second-year cadets newly graduated from Tentir.
In addition to her core ten-commands, Torisen had picked out nine officers each with expertise in a particular field who would have supervision over the tens in rotation, but would hold none of their own. Brier, Rue, and Marc came first, of course. After them, there was leather-faced Corva as horse-mistress, a Southron master cook named Rackny, hunt-master Tiens, Fen the Farmer, Swar the Smith, and Torisen’s favorite herbalist, Kells. Their absence would ease some of the pressure on Gothregor as its people returned, but still these were among the fortress’s best. Perhaps Tori wanted her to succeed after all.
Nonetheless, she wondered about their loyalty since all, except Brier, were bound to her brother. Maybe the fact that she and Tori were twins would again work in her favor. As she met her new command one by one, though, she was struck by their stony response. It had been a strain for those stationed at Kothifir to be so far from their lord. Arguably, Brier’s bond to the Highlord would not have broken if she had been part of Gothregor’s garrison. Tagmeth was closer than Kothifir, but still uncomfortably far afield. Would they give her the support she needed? Could she engage their enthusiasm in establishing a keep that none of them, at least at first, would see as their home? Only time would tell.
On the fifteenth of Summer, the new one-hundred command assembled at the foot of Gothregor’s steps.
“Ready, lass?” asked Marc. Too big to ride a horse, he was prepared to walk the entire way.
Jame looked in his twinkling eyes, level with her own, mounted as she was on the delicate Whinno-hir Bel-tairi, and drew strength from them. Then she twisted in the saddle to gaze back at her people. How odd to think of them as such, except for the faces of her erstwhile ten dotted among their ranks.
“I’m not a leader,” she wanted to protest. “Who would be such a fool as to follow me?”
But that answer would not satisfy the randon. She was trapped in the expectations of her people, if not of her god-damn god.
“Forward, then,” she said.
Brier Iron-thorn raised a hand. As it fell, horses stepped out, oxen-wains rolled, and boots scuffed the stones of the River Road. The small herd of black, bad-tempered cows that were going with them raised hoarse bellows of protest, answered by the shrill chiding of caged chickens and the howl of dogs from the hunting pack. Geese honked. Sheep bleated. Swine squealed. Horses snorted.
Back in the ranks, someone began to sing:
“Oh, I have come from the far White Hills,
My home to seek, my kin to greet.
Oh, where is my lord on the gray, gray heath?
Gone, gone away, forever . . .”