Chapter I 
Chapter I
The Muster
Gothregor: Summer I
I
It had rained hard overnight and well into the morning. By mid-afternoon, however, puddles reflected white canvas and blue sky even though tent lines still dripped. The camp at the foot of Gothregor had been churned into mud since the previous night when each of the nine houses had hosted its own party, however damp, and cadets had passed from one enclave to the next to greet old friends, to share news of the past year. If some had drunk too much hard cider in the process, well, what else were such gatherings for? That, at least, and for gossip.
Three years ago, some eight hundred of them had entered the randon college at Tentir—as mere children, it seemed to them now. Since then the best had spent their second year at Kothifir with the Southern Host where they had faced the Karnid invasion and lost some of their number. Throughout, they had been subjected to tests and culls. In their final, third year, each had been tasked to learn what he or she most needed to know. What that was, however, had not always been made clear, nor whether in the end they had passed. Now all anxiously awaited judgment, in hopes that by the end of Summer’s Day they would be promoted to an officer’s collar.
In the meantime, they were dimly aware that this was no ordinary muster. For one thing, far more of the senior staff were present than usual, including the entire Randon Council of Nine. Even the current Tentir commandant was there, although the college had its own ceremonies on this day which he would be missing. What were they all doing here, and why did they gather by twos or threes or fours to talk so seriously, in such low tones?
“They’re worried about the summer campaign,” a Danior cadet wisely told a Brandan, who with half a dozen others had gathered outside the Knorth tents, unconsciously mimicking their superiors. “Now that Kothifir says it can’t afford us anymore, we have to go back to the Central Lands to find paymasters to get us through the winter.”
A Coman snorted. “Everyone knows that. I hear that we have your precious lordan to thank.”
“Jameth lost us King Krothen?” said the Danior scornfully. “Don’t be silly.”
The Coman flushed. “She went into the Wastes with a caravan, didn’t she? And how many came out? After that, there were no more trade missions or goods, ever. Kothifir’s wealth was cut off, just like that. What did she do anyway, destroy an entire city?”
Others laughed, but with a nervous edge. They had noted before that the Knorth lordan often brought about results beyond her intentions.
Indeed, another point of nerves was the presence of three lordan in the graduating class—Jamethiel, Gorbel, and Timmon: Knorth, Caineron, and Ardeth. On one hand, they were rivals by house and by blood; on the other, they were also friends, bound by their shared experiences at the randon college and Kothifir. How would that all sort out, and what would it mean for the rest of the Kencyrath?
“Anyway,” said the Brandan, “it isn’t as if we’ve never dealt with the Seven Kings before. Most of the time we’ve been on Rathillien, we’ve been in their service. They gave us the Riverland.”
“Yes, and then we found out that it couldn’t support itself.”
“Well, there is that. After the White Hills, though . . . ”
For a moment, no one spoke. They were all remembering the stories they had heard about that dire battle.
“Fell he came from the slaughter,
Red his women on the floor.
Rage he swore ’gainst the slayers,
Madness, he chose the wrong foe.”
The Jaran cadet’s quiet voice hung over them, a lament, an indictment. Ganth Graylord and the White Hills had nearly shattered the Kencyrath. A powerful Shanir could possess his followers that way, not that Ganth had ever recognized himself as such. The Shadow Guild, not the Seven Kings, had slain the Knorth women—Kinzi, Telarien, Aerulan, and those other few of an already nearly extinct house. Many still wondered who had bought the assassins’ services and why.
However, the cadets’ own concerns turned continually back to the day at hand. If this was the last cull, who had passed, and what had they been tested for, anyway?
“I never could master the kantirs of wind-blowing,” said the Danior, looking nervous. “My Senethari said that I was too scatterbrained.”
“I can’t maneuver troops out of an ambush without losing half of them,” said the Coman. “And, mind you, this is still only in practice.”
“Me, I’m hopeless with heights.”
The others laughed; the Caineron were notoriously bad at such. The cadet from Restormir blushed and turned to the Knorth.
“What about you, Char? Did you ever learn how to obey orders?”
Char glowered. He had had to repeat his third year, mostly because at Kothifir he hadn’t been able to accept the Knorth lordan (then a second year) as his superior. Since, he had spent a year under her command at Tagmeth.
“Ask Ten,” he said.
The group turned as Brier Iron-thorn emerged from the tent, closing its flaps behind her. A lance of sunlight kindled the smoldering red in her hair. She regarded them out of the teak brown face of a born Southron as if out of a mask.
“Well?” she said.
Several cadets fell back a step.
“Nothing,” they muttered, and scattered.
“You’ll have to tell someone sooner or later,” said Char. “Gorbel and Timmon have already asked.”
“And what should I tell them?”
That was it: their lady and one-hundred commander, Jame, had disappeared seven nights ago, without a word. She had known how close the muster was and how much depended on it for her newly established keep. Without her, would her brother Torisen be able to support Tagmeth’s claim to legitimacy? Yet she had gone. Where, and why?
Betrayal, said Brier’s unblinking malachite eyes, without speech. How like a Highborn.
Char met her glare and countered it. He hadn’t trusted Jame either at first. Did he now? She had set him to herding cattle, as his father had done before him—he, a randon cadet, who had hoped never to step in a cow-pie again. Yet he missed the familiarity of the herd, especially that lumbering, affectionate yack-calf Malign. And he missed Tagmeth. A year had changed much for him. Now he felt as if he had stepped off the edge of the world.
A murmur spread through the camp and heads turned. Then a cry arose:
“The weapons-master is here!”
Cadets streamed between the tent lines, their boots sucking in the mud, splashing in puddles. Over the past few days Randiroc had been sighted at odd moments, in odd places, whenever he let his guard down. For someone who had spent years on the run, in the wilderness, he must have found the teeming muster a trial. Worse, whenever he appeared, someone challenged him. His evasions, thus, had taken on the inadvertent air of hide-and-seek.
He now stood in a cleared circle surrounded by a growing mob of eager cadets. As usual, he wore green-mottled hunting leathers with a hood pulled down to protect his eyes from the strengthening light. White braids hung to his waist. His shoulders fluttered with the flexing wings of jewel-jaws which, being the breed known as crown jewels, had changed their color from azure to match their more somber perch. He waited for whatever might come next, his rueful smile somewhat askew.
In a way, he was the fourth lordan present at the muster, sometimes known as the Lost Heir, although he had been cast out of his house and was pursued by it through no fault of his own. Merely, he had stood between Rawneth’s son Kenan and lordship. Also, he had developed into an undeniable Shanir who could only live on blood and shunned daylight. Beyond that, those few who had met him declared him to be quiet and rather shy. Also, he was a randon.
“Did you hear what he did in the storage room?” one cadet eagerly asked another. “Several Kendar surprised him there. He flailed one half silly with a half-sack of potatoes, blinded another by slapping him across the face with a salted herring, and pinned a third to the wall with assorted cutlery, including spoons.”
“That’s nothing. Did you hear that explosion? On the way out, he filled the air with flour from a slit bag and set a spark to it. Then there was the wet noodle fight in the kitchen.”
“Why do I get the feeling that he might just be hungry?”
A nervous cadet stepped out of the crowd, holding his jacket wrapped tightly around him.
“That’s Gari, a Coman,” Char said to Brier as they stood watching from the crowd’s edge, as if Brier didn’t know. “He binds insects. Now what . . . ”
Gari opened his coat. Out flew an emerald swarm of locusts.
The jewel-jaws launched to meet it. Wings whirred and fluttered; legs tangled in mid-air. The ’jaws dropped, wrapped around their prey in struggling bundles. Then they fed. Their wings turned bright green, veined with milky white. What they left, when they rose, were tiny chitinous casings as intricate as toys, sucked dry. Gari sighed and closed his coat.
“What can we learn from that?” one cadet asked another.
“Never bring a bug to a jewel-jaw fight?”
Randiroc turned to go, but paused when a slight cadet emerged from the crowd, nervously wringing her token scarf as if about to choke herself with it.
“Please, ran, my aunt won’t come out of the closet. May she have her mask back?”
The weapons-master smiled. Reaching into the shadow of his hood, he withdrew a lacy visor that he apparently had been wearing.
“Oh, thank you!” said the cadet, receiving it.
As her peers craned to see what she held and to wonder at it, Randiroc slipped through their ranks in a flurry of changing wings. A thin, dark girl followed him, her outline also seeming subtly to shift.
“Shade,” commented Char. She was their classmate and Lord Randir’s daughter, but she was also half Kendar and as such casually dismissed by her house.
“Their mistake,” Jamethiel had once said.
It had been well known at Tentir that Shade would have sworn herself to her cousin Randiroc if he had permitted it but how, living as he did, could he support a follower?
“This is the first time that the Heir has been seen in the camp,” said Char. “I wonder if he came to visit our guest. Maybe they were at Tentir together.”
“Huh,” said Brier. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Did you stake out his mount in the picket line?”
“See for yourself.”
One horse loomed above all others at a good twenty-two hands, a chestnut gelding with blonde mane and tail. As they watched, he ducked his head to snuffle at a snowy, heavily feathered fetlock above an enormous hoof.
“Big,” remarked Char. “Not one of our remount herd.”
Brier grunted again. “He was at Tentir. She”—no need to say who that was—“rode him into the wilderness one summer solstice but came back without him. ‘Chumley’ is his name.”
The crowd broke up before an approaching senior randon. This individual stopped in front of Brier and attempted to look down his nose at her—not easy, given that she was half a head taller than he.
“The Randon Council requires your attendance. Immediately.”
“Well then, ran,” said Brier. “I suppose I should go.”
II
The Knorth cadets had been quartered at the foot of Gothregor in the mud to demonstrate that they were shown no special favor at the muster. The Council, however, had been given lodgings in the keep itself, on the second floor of the northern barracks, with a common room in which to meet.
Brier hesitated just short of the threshold. Voices spoke within, although from this angle she could only see the Caineron war-leader Sheth Sharp-tongue as he leaned against the wall by the door, an elegant figure in a long coat of black brocade. He glanced at her sideways and flicked a white finger:
Wait.
“Why is he here at all?” demanded a peevish voice, surely belonging to the Coman, currently the commandant of Tentir by rotation. “No one invited him.”
“Need they have?” That sounded like the Brandan—Lady Brenwyr’s choice, some said, as if there had to be an excuse to choose a woman war-leader. “He’s a randon officer too, like you or me, and this is a meeting of family. Everyone who could come, has.”
“Surely you don’t believe what some say, that this may be the last muster. Things aren’t that bad.”
“Yet.”
“Is Randiroc truly one of us, though?”
This voice was smooth, with a smile in it.
The world is so amusing, it seemed to hint, for those of us clever enough to appreciate it.
Brier hadn’t heard her speak before, but guessed that this was the new Randir war-commander. The old one, Awl, had died at Urakarn and was sorely missed. No need to wonder if Rawneth had chosen her replacement.
“His collar was bestowed in his absence,” that light, mocking voice continued. “Why, he didn’t even attend his own graduation.”
“Huh.” A rough grunt from the Knorth Harn Grip-hard. “He was on the run by then, chased by the Shadow Guild, and well you know it.”
“He threatened his lord.”
“You mean that his existence threatened your lady, Rawneth. He was and still is the true Randir heir. Anyway, politics don’t affect his randon status, or shouldn’t. Then some fool put out the rumor that after so long away he had to prove himself. Now the cadets won’t leave him alone.”
The Edirr laughed. “Not just the cadets. Did you see that sargent, stripped naked and re-inserted into his clothes backwards, who keeps falling over? No one will help him with his buttons. They just laugh. Then there was that officer suspended by his boot-straps from the catwalk. And the lady who tried to seduce Randiroc, or so I hear. Funny, how all of those were Randir.”
“And they were all armed to kill,” Sheth added mildly. “Yes, even the lady. With a razor-edged fan. I understand that he disarmed her and shoved her into a closet.”
“It’s not amusing!” the Coman burst out. “You Edirr think that everything is a joke. Yes, even raiding our lands, if only for the fun of it! How long before someone gets killed?”
“Now, now,” murmured others.
The Coman and the Edirr had been at odds recently more than usual, the latter seeing fit to tweak their neighbors’ stuffy noses. Kendar on both sides had hoped that as they matured the Edirr twin lords would settle down. If anything, however, they had grown more outrageous.
From the sound of it, Harn was stomping back and forth over groaning floorboards.
“You fools!” he roared. “Can’t you see? Whatever our house politics, we randon are supposed to stand together. What have we to do with politics, especially when dealing with each other?”
The Randir spoke almost gently, as if to soothe an agitated stallion. “Now, now. When has that ever truly been the case, whatever pretty words we preach at Tentir?”
“Commandant, say something!”
Harn had turned to Sheth.
“I command the college now.” That was the Coman, taking umbrage. Brier realized that he was jealous of both Sheth and Harn, whose reputations so much over-shadowed his own. Would anyone address him by the honorific of commandant after his tenure at the college? Probably not. Nonetheless, he blundered on. “Who should speak for Tentir but me?”
“Then speak,” said Sheth blandly.
The Coman stuttered. “W-we tell the cadets that the randon are one family to keep them from killing each other. You know how the young Kendar of all houses fight when first thrown together. It’s instinctive. There must be discipline.”
“Are you saying that we lie to them?”
“No! That is, not exactly.”
“‘Not exactly,’” mused the Randir, and she could be heard to smile again as if to say, How naïve some people are. “Honor and lies. Lies and honor. Sharp-tongue, what is this we hear about your lord going back on two of his three contracts in the Central Lands? We expected to see your troops in the Transweald and the Midlands as well as in Karkinor.”
Brier had heard rumors of this upset and had wondered about it as others obviously also did. A contract was one’s sworn word, based on one’s honor. How could Caldane renege?
Sheth shrugged. “Who am I to speak for my lord? We must have misunderstood the arrangements.”
“Did we also misunderstand your lord’s comments at the last High Council meeting about his new contracts?” That was the Jaran Jurien, speaking sharply. “Has he truly left out the hidden clause?”
“The what?” asked the Danior, confused.
“Ah, you are too young to know. In the old days, before the White Hills, we always included a clause that forbad the Kings from ordering us to kill each other. There were accidental deaths, of course, and bloodshed, but no mass slaughters. Our scrollsmen saw to that.”
“I’ve always heard that the Kings were free with blood not their own. They agreed to this?”
Jurien laughed. “Mount Alban buried the clause deep in a forest of verbiage. It was different each year, and for each house. The Kings knew it was there, somewhere, but rarely found it until they stumbled across it in practice. A game of wits, if you will. Also, they didn’t like to admit that they had been fooled, again, and so were less free with certain demands. That was when we still had some leverage with them.”
“And this is what Caldane referred to as a trifle? Why would he leave it out now?”
“Presumably he has his reasons. Mostly, at the Council meeting, he seemed to be striking out at you, Commandant.”
Sheth shrugged again, dismissive. “He and I tend to disagree. I must confess, it puzzles me somewhat that I am still his war-leader.”
“The bigger the foe, the greater the fall,” said the Randir flippantly.
“Perhaps. We are gathered here, however, to discuss another matter, namely the qualifications of the Knorth lordan.”
“She isn’t here,” said a new voice, older, mellow, dismissive. That was the Ardeth Conillion. “What else is there to say?”
“Much, I hope, and here is someone to tell us.”
Sheth gestured for Brier to enter. She did, aware that her face had frozen even beyond its usual wooden expression. Her salute to her assembled superiors was stiff and wary.
“Ten-commander Iron-thorn, you have spent a year at Tagmeth under the command of the Knorth Lordan Jamethiel, whom her house sent to learn leadership. What can you tell us?”
Brier felt her mouth go dry. What could she say?
Harn lurched up to her and glowered into her face. They were of similar height, but he was twice her width and he loomed. “Speak! You and a one-hundred-command were sent into the wilderness, to survive on your own for a year in a half-ruined keep. Did you?”
“Yes, ran, with only a few casualties.”
“Well, go on. Obviously, you found food.”
Thankfully he didn’t ask her how as that would have involved the gates, those portals into different parts of Rathillien. Torisen knew about them. Brier suspected, though, that he didn’t want that knowledge to spread, nor did Jame. Her sense was that neither quite knew what to do with them yet.
“There was a yackcarn stampede,” she said. “That hunt gave us enough meat to last the winter. The Merikit helped.”
“You had dealings with the hill-tribes?” asked the Jaran Jurien, clearly fascinated, his home keep being closer to the hills than any house except the Caineron.
Brier realized that this must be the first most of the Council had heard about Tagmeth except perhaps for vague stories. No wonder they were interested.
“Yes. Jamethiel established a relationship with them.”
Sweet Trinity, she had established an entire new family complete with a wife and child, but Brier didn’t mention that, not yet being sure what she thought about it herself.
“Marc Long-shanks was with you,” said the Danior, a young woman from an old but diminished house, with an equally young lord. “The Merikit slaughtered his entire family at Kithorn. How did he feel about that?”
“He and the Merikit queen made peace.”
The Ardeth fastidiously brushed straight his embroidered sleeves. “The Merikit, after all, are mere savages. Did Jameth maintain discipline?”
“We obeyed her,” said Brier, but the thought lurked: Most of the time.
What leaped into her mind was her own rebellion about the gates. After all, she had gone off through one of them into the Western Lands on her own, nearly getting her ten-command killed in the process. Jame had saved them. Brier remembered turning on her when they were back at Tagmeth, furious that she had risked herself, being slapped back by that flare of cold berserker rage.
“There are some things that only I can do,” Jame had said, almost purring. Brier’s spine prickled at the memory. “Remember the old songs. Think of yourself living the worst of them. Certain people stand between you and that fate. I am one of them. Be glad of us.”
“Has she learned to delegate responsibilities?”
Had the Ardeth picked up on her hesitation? Brier suddenly felt cold. She could say enough, if she wasn’t careful, to damn Jame and ruin Tagmeth. That, especially the latter, was the last thing that she wanted. But she must also be truthful, as a lie was the death of honor.
“She sometimes takes more on herself than she should. Must one always lead from behind?”
“We have often debated that,” said Sheth. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Did she foster a sense of belonging among her people?”
Autumn’s Eve. The Tagmeth garrison had gathered for the annual feast to remember the dead. It had always been a somber affair, but more so in this place so far from home, facing possible starvation in the season to come. Why were they here, anyway? So that the Highlord’s sister could prove herself with their lives? Then Jame had entered, dusting snow from her sleeves. She had looked thoughtfully around the room, meeting their wary eyes with the twitch of a wry smile.
“She remembered all of our names.”
And that had won them.
“Did she lead by example?”
That startled a laugh out of the cadet. “To do so, we would have had to be like her. Instead, she let us be ourselves.”
“Has she your loyalty?”
Brier’s anger returned in a rush. Betrayal. If her face could have, it would have darkened. Perhaps it did anyway; they were all staring at her.
Discipline, she told herself, and took a deep breath.
To be fair, she didn’t know why Jame had left. There might even have been a good reason (Sweet Trinity, though, what?). There were so many reasons why she should trust her lady, and would have, if only she hadn’t been a Highborn.
That thought brought her up short. She had considered such things before, but then had shrugged them off. Now, they returned. Was that all there was to it? Was she simply prejudiced?
“She has earned my loyalty,” she heard herself say through stiff lips. “She is loyal to Tagmeth. If she is confirmed as a randon, her brother has promised to let her bind more of us to her service.”
A ripple ran through her audience. Backs straightened. Eyes sharpened.
“I told you things would become serious,” the Ardeth said, with a disdainful sniff. “We have played this game long enough.”
“Is Tentir a game?” barked Harn. “Are our traditions child’s play to be out-grown? You agreed to accept this girl as a cadet, female, Highborn, and Shanir though she be. You cast the stones that made her one of us. Would you go back on that now?”
“She is also the Knorth lordan,” said the Jaran Jurien. “I support her as such.”
“You would,” said the Coman with a sneer. “Your house is on the brink of accepting Kirien as your liege-lady. Pardon us if we hesitate to follow your example.”
“You can’t stop us,” said Jurien, unusually blunt for one who, besides being a randon, was also a scrollsman. “You can’t stop the Highlord either, if such is his will.”
“Besides,” said the Danior, waxing pugnacious, “you ask what the Knorth lordan has learned over the past year. What about the Caineron and Ardeth? Gorbel has gotten fat out of sheer boredom. Timmon was given a pretty uniform to serve as a palace guard.”
The Ardeth rose, shaking out his sleeves. Perfume puffed from them. “Does either house really expect one of them to become its lord? We have Dari. For that matter, we still have Adric. You Caineron, answer for yourselves. But neither of them is the Highlord’s potential heir.”
The Edirr stifled a laugh. “Have you considered what will happen if we don’t graduate this girl? What can Torisen do but drop her back into the Women’s Halls? The Matriarchs barely survived her the first time.”
“That,” said the Ardeth, “will then be their problem. In the meantime, we need to speak to Torisen. Agreed?”
A mutter answered him, more of a reluctant growl from some. They filed past Brier, out of the room.
Sheth touched her sleeve in passing. “Nice job,” he murmured with the glint of a crooked smile. “At least they didn’t ask where your lady is.”
III
Brier gave the Council time to get ahead of her, then followed. At the door they turned left and walked purposefully in twos and threes around the inner ward toward the old keep that housed Torisen’s quarters. Did they really expect to find him there on such a day as this? At least they skirted the newly planted vegetable garden that the ward had become. Gothregor also had its worries about the coming winter.
Brier turned right and started back toward the campground, not really paying attention. She was still shaken by the discovery of her blind prejudice. Ancestors knew, though, it had been there all this time, her constant companion. How could she not have noticed? Brier Iron-thorn didn’t consider herself clever, but she also didn’t think that she was stupid. How could an emotion twine itself so deeply into her being that it had remained virtually invisible? Had she been duped by mere feelings?
Then too, it was the Caineron who had abused her for most of her life, not the Knorth. Torisen had offered her an escape. Jame had offered a home. Now, perhaps—oh, bitter thought—she had thrown both away.
A familiar figure emerged from the western barracks—short for a Kendar, tow-headed, clad in a cadet’s coat.
Brier cut across the garden without even noticing it and grabbed Rue by the jacket.
“Where is she? Where have you been?”
Rue blinked up at the Southron. Her face was wan, her eyes bruised with exhaustion. “We went. We came back. Can’t tell you where, ten. She will, if she wants to.”
Brier barely restrained herself from shaking the girl. “Where is she now?”
“In the old barracks. We slipped in before dawn. She’s barely slept in six days, or has it been seven? Don’t wake her.”
Brier looked hard at Rue, who appeared to be half-asleep herself. “What about you?”
“Oh, I slept some, but not since we left Tagmeth—was that just yesterday? It was a wild ride through the folds in the land, over two hundred miles in a night.” Rue shuddered, eyes momentarily unfocussed, then shook herself. “Must see to my post pony. Death’s-head is around somewhere, probably terrorizing the local poultry.”
With that, she wobbled off.
What old barracks? Oh, of course, where Jame’s ten-command had been quartered last year, from whose door Rue had just emerged.
Brier stormed in. On the ground floor were the rows of empty beds (what, they couldn’t have slept here instead of in the mud?). At the end of hall was a room, sectioned off.
Brier stopped short in the doorway.
Jame lay curled up on the bed. She was fully clothed and shod, boots shedding mud on top of the blanket. Her stiff garments looked as if they had molded, wet, to her form, and there had partly dried. Black hair straggled across her pale face, its fringe stirred by the deep breath of dwar sleep. Other than that, never before had she appeared so unnaturally still.
Brier stared down at her. Hands opened, hands closed.
Suddenly she became aware that Torisen was sitting on a chair next to the bed, watching her. He also looked exhausted.
“Neither of us could sleep,” he said, speaking very softly. “Long days, longer nights. But I am more experienced at this game than she is.”
“Do you know . . . ”
“I don’t. She will tell me—us—when she is ready. Will you trust her?”
Hands shut. Hands opened.
“Yes,” said her gruff, grudging voice.
“Good.”
Brier cleared her throat. “The Randon Council is looking for you. They heard that you mean to let her bind more Kendar.”
He rubbed his eyes. Despite the white threading his hair and beard, he looked very young, very vulnerable.
“Oh. That is . . . unfortunate. I should meet them, I suppose.” He started to rise, faltered, and sank back. “But maybe not quite yet.”
Brier left them both fallen again into sleep, breathing as one.
As she paused on the barrack’s threshold, she saw the Randon Council coming back from the keep. It hadn’t taken them long, it seemed, to discover that the Highlord wasn’t in his quarters. Where would they look next? Then, as one, they paused. Someone had emerged from the gatehouse onto the verge of the inner ward. He was stocky, but not as tall as a Kendar. Moreover, his coat was finer than most that Kendar wore. He saw the Council, and his face split into a wide, white-toothed grin that identified him: Tiggeri, Lord Caineron’s youngest established son, last seen by Brier when he had besieged Tagmeth, and after that at an improbable breakfast.
Someone emerged to stand unsteadily behind him, surreptitiously raising a cider jug to drink as he did so. Fash had been a randon cadet but had given it up on the eve of his promotion to serve a new master—one, he thought, who could offer him more. Now, it seemed, he had made it to the muster after all.
But what was either Highborn doing at Gothregor on this of all days? Traditionally, those who weren’t randon stayed away out of respect except for the Highlord, who acted as host.
“Hello, hello!” Tiggeri cried, with a cheerful wave.
The Council awaited his coming drawn up in stiff, unresponsive ranks.
IV
Afternoon dwindled toward evening.
Clatter and cheerful talk arose from the kitchen as cooks set about preparing for that night’s feast. Even with all available hands at work, though, Gothregor could never have fed everyone. These days it strained to supply its own garrison augmented as it was by those troops returning from service at Kothifir. And now the keep hosted some one thousand extra guests. Most of the other houses had sent supplies with their randon to be prepared in mobile kitchens for daily use. Tonight, however, would be a communal feast for which both the keep and the camp made ready. Moreover, there were spaces to prepare in the empty, half-ruined halls behind the old keep, behind the Women’s World, which in better days had housed a much more prosperous Knorth. Fire now bloomed there in pits, and haunches of meat began to turn—beef, pork, venison, yackcarn. The savor of roasting wafted over broken walls, into the ward, down the hill. Cadets below sniffed, then continued to wander about the camp, nervously chatting.
They wouldn’t know until that night whether they had graduated or not. Most did, they reassured each other, but there were occasional exceptions.
“I hear that this time our houses decide who passes and who doesn’t,” a Brandan remarked to an Ardeth. “Well, it makes sense. We have to be useful to our lords. Presumably they’ve had their eyes on us all of this time.”
They both glanced side-ways at the Ardeth lordan, Timmon, as he passed by in a cloud of glory made visible by a glimmering coat of silver and gold thread.
“Would your lord deny him?” asked the Brandan.
The Ardeth turned up his nose.
“D’you mean Adric or his grandson Dari?” asked the Caineron, looking snide. “They say that Adric has gone as soft as a rotten peach. Dari rules in all but name. What time d’you think he has for his precious, fancy-pants cousin?”
“For all of that,” said the Brandan, “Timmon is one of us. He proved himself at Kothifir during the Karnid invasion. For that matter, what of Gorbel?”
The Caineron turned huffy. “He proved himself there too, even if his lord father can’t stand the sight of him. The Commandant likes him, though.”
He meant Sheth Sharp-tongue. Even the cadets tended to overlook their current Coman superior, which infuriated him.
“But then Sheth also favors the Knorth lordan,” said the Ardeth, “and where is she? His credit is at stake here too.”
The sun set. Cadets began to drift up the steep stair to the keep, drawn by tantalizing smells. Surely it was the first watch of the night by now, which began at sunset, but no signal had yet been given. Where were their officers? Had the feast started without them? Was this another test, as if to say “Are you too stupid to find your next meal?” They filed onto the walks surrounding the garden that was the inner ward. Here were the gates on either side of the old keep that opened onto the Women’s World. No man was said to be welcome there and, besides, what dire sorceries might brew within? But how else did one pass into the empty halls beyond?
“You go first, lordan.”
“No, you. It’s your keep, after all, and you’re female.”
“How nice of you to notice.”
That was Timmon speaking to the Knorth Mint, with whom he had absentmindedly been flirting, to the distress of her partner Dar.
“Oh, for Ancestors’ sake,” said the Knorth cadet Damson, and stumped through the gate.
Small masked faces peered down at her from the classroom windows above like a school of guppies. Such young girls, brought here from eight houses to be molded into proper ladies. Jame, the sole surviving female of the ninth house, was said to have given them collective fits.
“Well?” said Damson, glaring up at them.
They withdrew. A face, or rather an eyeless mask, seemed to float up out of the gloom within as if out of dark water. Hands rose in welcome, gesturing her forward. Damson took it to be a general invitation.
“Come on,” she said to the others. They edged in on her heels, by instinct forming into defensive ten-commands as they passed.
Beyond the maintained halls, the watching eyes, was a wilderness of roofless ruins. Could there ever really have been so many Knorth? Yes, although all who had lived here had been Kendar. Then nearly every lady had been slain by Shadow Assassins in the north-eastern mural quarters now called the Ghost Walks and their lords had gone to their deaths in the White Hills. Some cadets found this open desolation unsettling. Others were reassured that Torisen Blacklord felt strong enough to display his family’s weakness.
Here was an inner courtyard surrounded by flaring torches with three trestle tables set up down its length and one at the far end, across its eastern head. No one yet sat.
Opening off of it were nine roofless halls within which firepits blazed, each tended by the randon of a different house with choice provisions brought from home, each trying to out-do the others. They were laid out according to the barracks at Tentir, three by three by three, also according to the old keep’s High Council chamber, or so said those who had seen it: Randir, Coman, and Caineron to the north; Jaran, Knorth, and Ardeth to the west; Brandan, Edirr, and Danior to the south. Cadets scattered each to their own house’s fire where their officers waited.
Timmon and Gorbel hesitated on the yard’s threshold.
“Well,” said the former to the latter. “Here we are, already divided.”
“Huh. Be reasonable. There are over seven hundred of us in this class alone. Did you think the Council would call us up one at a time to collect our collars?”
“How many d’you think will be assigned to the Central Lands?”
“A lot. The Seven Kings are setting up a mill fit to grind us all to pieces.”
Timmon shuffled uneasily. “You say such things, but do you know? Does anyone?”
“Call it a hunch.”
Someone cleared her throat behind them. They turned to face a slim young woman with hair ornately braided in the Merikit style, wearing a white, lacy court coat into which a diary of her days at Tentir had been stitched, except for the ugly repair of a weld in the back where Killy had tried to stab her. Not all of her college memories were pleasant.
“What have I missed?” asked Jame.
V
“You look awful,” Gorbel said, peering at her.
“Such kind words. Not as bad as I must have merited a few hours ago, though. Dwar sleep is a wonderful thing. And no, I won’t tell you where I’ve been.”
Timmon grinned. “You’re here now. That’s the main thing.”
Jame regarded him thoughtfully. He seemed more relieved to see her than she would have expected. Timmon had always been haphazard in his attention to duty, putting his pleasure first, but since she had known him he had started to pay more attention. It hadn’t previously occurred to her that he might be taking his cue from her, and maybe in part from Gorbel. At least, her absence seemed to have rattled him.
“I like your coat,” she said, brushing the gold and silver threadwork with gloved fingertips. “Gorbel, you seem to decorate with gravy stains.”
The Caineron slapped his bulging belly. “Too much food, too little work. An end to that soon, eh? Well, see you at the feast, assuming we all make the cut.”
He tramped off, turning left toward the Caineron’s designated hall where Sheth waited for him on the threshold.
“Conillion should be as glad to greet me,” said Timmon with a wry smile. “See you later, I hope.”
Jame turned right along the court’s western side toward her own house’s temporary camp.
Within the ruined hall, firelight flared against stark walls pierced with darkening, empty windows. There was the pit, there cadets throwing logs under a huge, dripping carcass. Yackcarn. Again. Tagmeth had lived on the spoils of that hunt all winter, preserved by the Merikit queen’s little bag of spices. It would be a novelty here, though. There were also roasting vegetables and fresh sliced fruit, totally out of season for the Riverland. Brier had brought a good assortment from the gates, more than Jame might have risked. She wondered, yet again, how the Kencyrath could best make use of such bounty. It had served Tagmeth well, but come winter other keeps might lack even the basics. She and Torisen needed to talk.
The Tagmeth cadets gathered around her, their relief evident. Rue was there too, still looking dazed. Something stirred a tremor of unease deep in Jame’s heart, something to do with water, but she shoved it away as others from Tentir also approached if a bit more hesitantly. They hadn’t seen Jame in a year. Some had begun to question their college experiences as stories had grown about them.
Brier loomed up against the flames.
“You came,” she said gruffly.
“As you see. Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re here now,” said the Kendar, in grudging acceptance, unconsciously echoing Timmon. “That’s all that matters.”
Jame felt her eyebrows rise. If Brier had really brought herself to believe that . . .
“We have an unexpected guest,” the Kendar said, gesturing aside.
Turning, Jame first saw the shambling bulk of Harn, then someone behind him even larger.
“Bear? He came with you?”
“Yes. On Chumley. From just south of Tagmeth. This muster has drawn all sorts of people. Randiroc is here too.”
Grease spattered on coals. Trenchers baked, steaming, on flat rocks around the firepit. Jame heard her stomach growl. She couldn’t remember when she had last eaten. Oh yes: in the saddle, before . . . before . . .
Harn clapped his hands. “Time to get started. Gather around.”
Beside him was a rack thick with silver collars reflecting red firelight, enough to have kept Knorth craftsmen busy all winter. From most hung a small enameled plaque representing graduation from the randon college at Tentir. Others in addition sported a pendant for service at Kothifir. There were more emblems as well related to individual third year cadets, including one for Tagmeth. All were modest affairs, as befitted newly minted officers. Harn himself wore a heavy collar densely hung with the honors of a lifetime, all chiming together as he moved.
One by one, he called forward the cadets, lifted the appropriate award, and clamped it around each neck while their mates cheered and craned, looking for their own among what remained. There seemed to be no order to these presentations, no way to tell if one’s place had been bypassed ignobly without comment.
Rue was called forth. So were stone-faced Brier and a flushed Char.
The last cadets watched with growing apprehension, including Jame, until only one collar remained. Harn picked it up.
That must be mine, thought Jame, surprised at how dry her mouth had gone. If so, three years of hard work had gone into this moment.
“This,” said Harn, “is for our one-hundred commander and lordan, with thanks for not getting us all killed.”
The ranks answered with applause and nervous laughter, some clearly asking themselves, What, we came so close?
“Jamethiel Priest’s-bane, stand forth.”
The shadows behind him moved. Bear emerged also to grip the collar with the tips of his massive claws. Four big hands fumbled over the slender silver band. Would they shatter it between them? Jame touched Harn’s arm.
“Please, ran, this is my Senethari. Let him.”
Harn scowled down at her, nodded grudgingly, and let go.
“You taught me the Arrin-thar,” she said, looking up into Bear’s hirsute face, “and that claws don’t make a monster.”
He stood there turning the collar over in his hands, inspecting it. Firelight tinged his gray hair as it tumbled down into the crevasse in his skull left by an axe in the White Hills. They had put him on the pyre. Then his younger brother Sheth had seen him move in the flames and had pulled him out. Jame remembered first meeting him in his cramped, noisome quarters at Tentir where he had become known to generations of cadets as the Monster in the Maze, then again later in the Pit where he had taught her how to use the Shanir attribute of which, for so long, she had been ashamed. At length he had escaped and come to Tagmeth which, bemused, had taken him in.
He fumbled with the collar’s clasp. Like Torisen’s Kenthiar, the circlet was hinged on one side. Belatedly Jame wondered if, like that other dire collar, it would defend itself against the unworthy. The snap closed around her neck. Bear grunted.
“My heart,” he said, then roughly cleared a throat unaccustomed to speech and spoke again. “My heart is full.”
He backed up in a stunned silence, turned, and shambled away.
Jame stared after him. Was she dreaming, or had the cleft in his skull begun to close?
He had ridden in on Chumley. Did that mean that he had met the Earth Wife, to whom she had given that enormous beast? Mother Ragga was many things. A healer too, perhaps?
The tension snapped. Former cadets, with a cheer, broke for the food and carried heaping trenchers out into the courtyard. The Danior already waited, seated at the middle table, and greeted their Knorth cousins boisterously.
Not long afterward the Coman and the Edirr emerged. These went to the northern and southern extremes of the yard, glowering across it at each other. The Jaran joined the middle.
Then there was a pause. No one felt like starting without the others, however hungry they were, especially with the high table still empty.
The Brandan went to the middle; the Randir, to the Coman. The Ardeth, drawn by Timmon, drifted toward the Knorth. Finally, the last and largest house appeared, Gorbel first, wearing his new collar. He joined Jame and Timmon. His house, however, split, some backing their lordan, others edging uncertainly toward the Randir and Coman. Now that, thought Jame, was about as clear a picture of Riverland politics as one was likely to get, their college bond be dammed.
Randiroc slipped into a seat at the foot of the middle table, Shade a ghost on his heels. Everyone ignored them both.
Finally, just in time to avert rebellion among the hungry cadets, the Randon Council took their seats at the high table. Besides the nine there were two guests—the Highlord and Tiggeri, with Fash standing in attendance behind the latter. Last to appear, to the chagrin of many, was Bear. His brother made room for him so that he settled with a grunt between Sheth and Tiggeri, shoving them both farther apart. Tiggeri did not look pleased, but he also didn’t flinch.
Jame remembered, watching him askance, how Caldane’s son had attacked Bear at Tagmeth, alone, armed only with a boar spear. As little as she liked Tiggeri, she had to admit that he was brave.
Sheth rose. His collar, if anything, surpassed Harn’s with awards and formed a glittering breast-plate against the somber field of his black coat. It seemed wrong that the Coman and not he wore the commandant’s white scarf. Still, he ranked highest on the Council.
“Fellow randon,” he said, spreading his hands. “Welcome to these tables and to our ranks. May you serve both well.”
The former cadets laughed. Many of them were still absorbing their new rank after the uncertainties of the day. It seemed that everyone had passed after all.
“Well, we would have to, wouldn’t we?” a Danior asked a Jaran, wise in hindsight. “After all, it would embarrass the randon to fail us at this point.”
“It may be that we face dark days,” said Sheth, “but now is not the time to consider that. Eat. Drink. Rejoice. Tomorrow is another day.”
He spread his hands as if in invitation and resumed his seat. Attendants ran to supply each of the Council and their guests with the best that each house had to offer. Shade served Randiroc, who seemed bemused by the attention. The new randon officers noticed where the servers went. More than a few slipped off to gather special tidbits from neighboring fires while they lasted. The Knorth hall was soon crowded.
“Was it wise,” Gorbel asked Jame, “to be so free?”
Jame cursed herself and Rue, who had served the Caineron fresh figs during his recent visit to Tagmeth. Timmon looked blank. Could it be that he hadn’t noticed the gates’ bounty when he also had been a guest? Now everyone with any wits would be talking.
Tiggeri rose, smiling. “Ahem.”
At first, no one paid attention. Fash reached around him and smashed a glass. Before he could draw back, Bear caught him by the wrist. Fash twisted, trying to break free, failing. His master ignored him. So did Bear, except to maintain his iron grip.
“Thank you all for this hospitality,” said Tiggeri with an expansive opening of his arms as if to embrace the entire assembly. “So many bright faces. So much hope. Your lords will be proud of you, no doubt. For the first time in decades, you will be going back to the Central Lands as proud representatives of your individual houses, and I include here my own. Hello, Cainerons!”
Fash lost his balance and fell, his arm still trapped in mid-air. He thrashed about, futilely prying at Bear’s fingers.
“This will be a special time for us all,” Tiggeri continued, ignoring the commotion beside him, “and not just a series of bloodless, boring war-games. There used to be a practice of writing in a secret clause to prevent you from fully proving yourselves. This year, there was even a competition at the scrollsman’s college to write the cleverest one and a panel to judge it. I ask you, which do warriors need more, brains or bravery? My lord father didn’t think this was fair, either to your employers or to you. When he happened to find out what the clauses were, for all nine houses, he generously shared that information with the Kings and left it up to them to decide what to do with it. The White Hills showed them what we are capable of. Will they abide by such cowardly restraints now? What do you think?”
His smile had grown into a bearing of wet, white teeth and gleaming eyes. “This time, oh brave children—I mean, of course, oh brave officers—you will earn your pay.”
The Council had listened to this, appalled, but it was Torisen who spoke, quietly:
“Why would Caineron do such a thing? He puts his own troops at risk too.”
Tiggeri grinned at him. “Oh, he was well paid for it. I understand that the Kings will pay less the longer you lords mull this over. Of course, you don’t have to sign the new contracts at all.”
“Yes, and starve come winter,” growled Harn.
Tiggeri shrugged. “As you wish.”
The former cadets were murmuring. Most of them had never heard of these clauses before, and they had expected to go into a dangerous profession. Why was the Council so upset?
“Look at it this way,” said Jame. “You might die, yes, but you might also be asked to kill each other.”
Friend looked at friend, from table to table, from house to house.
“Oh,” said someone.
“You can let go now,” Sheth said to Bear.
Bear did, looking surprised to find Fash still in his grip. Fash stumbled back. He drew a knife, but the attendants on either side seized him before he could stab Bear in the back.
“You embarrass me,” said Tiggeri over his shoulder. “Come back when you have learned some manners.”
Fash floundered away. Obviously he was very drunk.
“Well, that was informative,” said Timmon. “Is that what the Commandant meant, about dark days?”
“I should think so,” Jame said. “Gorbel, I heard you and Timmon talking. You had some idea this was coming, didn’t you?”
“I do my homework. What, you don’t?”
“Tori may never have heard about these hidden articles. Remember, he came to power years after the White Hills.”
Timmon pouted. “And what chance have I had to learn? Cousin Dari doesn’t take me seriously about anything.”
Gorbel glowered at him. “You have to make him. D’you think my father confides in me? I learn what I can the hard way, like tearing flesh off a yackcarn’s sour flank.”
Fash wandered past between the tables, between worlds. He tried to look down his nose at the feasters, once his companions, but only succeeded in looking lost. No one called for him to join them, not even among his own house. Jame almost felt sorry for him, until she remembered the knife in his hand behind Bear’s back.
At the foot of the tables, Randiroc suddenly broke into a rare laugh, perhaps at something that Shade had said.
Fash jerked as if slapped, and his pale face flushed. The knife was in his hand again.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!” he screamed, and started running.
Jame found herself on her feet, close on his heels. Anger flared: The attendants had seen his state of mind. Why hadn’t they disarmed him?
Randiroc and Shade saw him coming. They rose.
The Randir Heir slipped past Fash’s charge with a wind-blowing move and stood aside, looking bemused, as his assailant stumbled past. He touched his chest, white fingertips coming away red. The blade had slashed through his hunting leathers, cutting skin. Even a master, the saying went, should fear the instability of a drunkard. Shade stood aside, a ward against interference; so she must have done all day, trusting the Heir to fight his own battles. Fash staggered, recovered himself, and came back.
Randiroc threw pepper in his face.
Fash careened into the nearest table, occupied by Caineron who scrambled out of his way. He rubbed furiously at his streaming eyes. Beyond were the Coman and the Randir, several on their feet.
“Help me!” he cried to all three houses. “This is your enemy too!”
They hesitated. Some Randir had been attacking the Heir all day, but never in the open. Now the rest faced the same choice that the Caineron had at Tagmeth when called on by Tiggeri to kill Bear, house loyalty against randon honor. No one moved.
“I don’t understand you people!” Fash cried in frustration.
Sheth Sharp-tongue had risen at the head table. “That is evident,” he said. “Go.”
Fash bared his teeth and swung wildly on Randiroc. Jame stood in his way. As he lunged, she caught his arm and threw him. He landed in a heap and didn’t get up. It soon became clear that he had fallen on his own knife.
“I’m sorry,” said Jame, rising from his body. “I was clumsy.”
“Just as well,” growled Harn, sitting down again with a thump. “He would never have made a good randon.”
VI
“It was an accident,” Jame said later that night to Torisen in his tower study. Muffled singing came to them from the courtyard to the keep’s rear, around many corners:
“We faced the foe in classrooms dire.
On lesson fields did oft we meet.
Who stood by you in winter’s fire?
Contrarywise, who stood by me?”
“I should have pulled his arm clear of his body as he fell,” said Jame, turning a shoulder to the song. She knew very well where Fash had stood.
“‘Some things need to be broken,’” said her brother, quoting something she oft had said.
“Well, yes. Like Harn, I don’t greatly mourn him. He supplied Merikit skins to furnish Caldane’s apartments, you know. So, what happens next?”
On went the song:
“Then on we went to battles new
In southern climes or on the steppe.
The Karnids came, we battled same.
Contrarywise, who stood by you?”
Torisen restlessly stirred the message scrolls piled high on his desk. “These do mount up,” he said. “I’ve finally read through yours from the past year, though, put aside when I thought that I was dying. You suggest that the gates might help us in future. How certain is that?”
Jame adjusted herself in the visitor’s rarely used chair. “Well, the potential is there. We already have access to an oasis, orchards, and grasslands. Fish too, if we ever get the knack of building boats, or even of baiting hooks. Then there are gates not yet opened and gates within gates, not yet explored. A lot of Rathillien seems to be unoccupied. At least, that’s where the gates lead so far.”
“You haven’t met any residents?”
Jame shifted uneasily. “Every time we open a new area, we send out scouts to look for neighbors. So far we haven’t found any, which is rather odd. I wonder if the original architects somehow staked claims that nobody else has yet contested.”
“By said architects, I take it that you don’t mean our mysterious Builders.”
“Not primarily. They got the idea from Rathillien natives who came before and, frankly, did a much better job. Our Builders’ oasis colony might still help, though, moving forward, especially if they can regain control over their pet trocks.”
“What will you do if you find someone who’s since laid claim to these lands?”
“Try to make friends, I suppose, and establish trade. It could get messy, though, if we end up competing for the same resources. In short, I don’t know. What we need right now are more Kendar to develop whatever we find. These lands have lain fallow for a long time.”
“You mean, we can’t count on this for the coming winter.”
“No.”
He sighed. “Too bad. That leaves us with Caldane’s betrayal and the kings’ ultimatum.”
The song continued, plaintive now:
“New foes, new lands, now do we seek,
Our lords to please, in worth our trust.
But doubt stands forth within our ranks.
Contrarywise, who stands by us?”
“Huh,” said Jame, listening. “Good question. What will you do?”
“I’m thinking about it. At worst, I accede, send Harn, and hope that he can keep us from disaster for the coming year. Another White Hills’ debacle would shatter us. Sheth will work with him, I think, but they will be on opposite sides of the Silver. Then too, the Kings are unpredictable. As Tiggeri said, it took Ganth’s madness to show them what we were capable of. They’ve played at war through us for millennia. After thirty years of abstinence, what might they not ask?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I agree that we should develop the gates. That will take Kendar who might otherwise have gone south to earn us winter wages. It’s too early, though, to invite the other houses to participate.”
“I agree,” said Jame, who was already having nightmare visions of Tagmeth overrun by strangers. “About having me bind more Kendar . . . ”
“First, tell me what happened to Rue.”
Jame blinked. A nervous tremor returned to the core of her being.
“Who . . . what . . .” she stammered, and stopped.
Water.
“I met her before I saw you,” he said, patient, inexorable. “Before even that, there was a shudder in the bond between us. I also felt that when you bound Brier at Kothifir. This time . . . ”
“I’m beginning to remember.” Jame rose and started to pace the small room, three steps one way, three steps back, arms clasped around her. “We had ridden all night, after days awake. I was nearly done in. Death’s-head stopped halfway across a creek near Gothregor to drink. I-I groped for the food sack, and then I was in the water. I’d tumbled out of the saddle, asleep, and there I was face down, drowning, in barely a foot deep. I woke up on the bank. Rue was bending over me. She must have dragged me out.”
“That’s not so bad,” said Torisen.
“You don’t understand. In my mind, I was still drowning. I couldn’t breathe. I panicked and grabbed her. She was there. Her strength drew me. I think she expected to be bound. That, she might have welcomed. Instead, I nearly ripped out her soul. That’s what demons do. I was just in Tai-tastigon. I saw it happen.”
“You were in the Eastern Lands?”
“Yes, by way of the gates. I have friends there who were in trouble.”
“Oh. Well, that explains everything. Have you ever fed on Graykin or Brier?”
“No,” she said, glaring at him. “Have you on your own people?”
“Never. Whatever else I am, that doesn’t seem to be part of my Shanir nature.”
“But is it part of mine?”
Jame continued to pace, more and more agitated.
“Understand: Brier and Gray both came to me; so did Jorin and Death’s-head. Their need drove them, not mine. I gave. They took. This time, it would have been my choice to take. Tai-tastigon taught me that the one unforgivable sin is to prey on another’s soul. The Master does. So does Perimal Darkling itself, on the essence of entire worlds. It’s the main trait that defines a demon.”
She didn’t put into words what worried her most: Was that what she was becoming as she edged toward That-Which-Destroys, whatever her god’s intent? Had she been a demon, in embryo, all along, thanks to her tainted blood and darkling training? Trinity, think of all the times she had nearly used the Great Dance to reap a soul, but not quite. Was that what she had nearly done to Rue now?
Torisen seemed to be thinking along similar lines. “If you might hurt Kendar, there can be no question of you binding more of them voluntarily,” he said, and his voice was that of the Highlord, implacable. “They are too vulnerable. At the very least, we owe them protection.”
“I know that,” Jame snapped, then bit her tongue. After this, who was she to chide him?
He blinked, as if waking. “Of course you know,” he said, in a gentler tone. “What we both need is more sleep. At least I do. Tomorrow we will make plans.” A wry smile cracked his weary lips. “To ask questions, eh?”