Blade of dream, p.28
Blade of Dream, page 28
“What are Ausai’s books?” She hadn’t meant to ask, and knew as soon as she’d said it that she’d gone too far. Her father’s sudden smile was like watching a door close. He ruffled her hair with his hand the way he had when she was younger.
“Nothing you need to worry about. The oddity of an odd man. My uncle was stranger than I knew. That’s all. I should… I have…”
He stood, smoothing down his robe with his hands. He smiled at the window with the same mask-steady indulgence he’d pointed at her. Then the fire. Then the wall. He walked out without finishing his thought. Elaine swallowed twice to make the tightness in her throat release. The meal that she’d meant to eat seemed unappealing now. There wasn’t enough space in her for bread and alarm both.
Outside, the sky was low and troubled. There was no rain, only a thin, gritty mist as much ice as water. The paving stones in the courtyard were slick and dark. Her carriage was waiting, the coachman rubbing down the horses on his team and cooing at them as he did. Elaine paused and looked back, half hoping to see her father coming after her. She only waited a moment.
“Some weather coming in,” the coachman said.
“More snow,” Elaine agreed.
“Rain, I’d guess, but that’ll be bad enough. The old man never let us go down Oldgate when it was like this. We always had to take the long way around.”
She heard the question in what he said, but it wasn’t what caught her attention. “You knew Prince Ausai?”
“We all did,” the coachman said. “He was the prince.”
“What did you think of him?”
“I didn’t. I did what I was told.”
And what were you told? she thought, but there was no reason to give it voice. She squinted through the freezing mist at the dark shapes of the walls as if looking closely enough would reveal her great-uncle in their lines and corners. The old sense of the palace itself looking back passed through her, and she shivered. Everyone there, very nearly, from the lowest maid to the captain of the palace guard and the court historian, had served Ausai before they served her father. How strange that it had taken her until now to understand that serving one prince might not mean serving the next. How long could a man live someplace before that place—walls, windows, doors, gardens, and galleries—became an extension of him? How much of him could still live in that when the man himself was gone?
“Miss?”
“We can take Oldgate,” she said.
“To the Temple?”
“No,” she said. “The other place.”
There were strategies to a decision by the magistrates. The arguments in a disagreement were heard in public with parties of interest—people, guilds, officers of the city—allowed to speak as the magistrates saw fit. It was also a kind of theater piece. Who was cheered and who was mocked wasn’t supposed to have any influence over the law, but magistrates were human, and humans swayed. Who attended a judgment, how many allies and dependents and patrons they could muster up, how enthusiastically they voiced their support of an argument or derided the opponent’s view was critical information for the officials of law. It spoke to the mood of the city, the stakes of the ruling, and how to know the path that led to peace from the one that led to riot.
Because of that, the practice of taking a full household to attend the judgment—from the head of the house to the newest servant—was so common that a whole genre of jokes existed about it. Garreth knew that with so much depending on the winter caravan’s legitimacy, Father would have brought everyone he could. Everyone but Garreth.
He slipped over the garden wall and opened the servants’ door with the same trick he’d been using since he was a boy. Inside, the house was quiet. The subtle scent of the lemon oil that Serria had the maids all use brought back floods of memories he hadn’t realized were locked away until that moment. Being no taller than a table, stretched out on the floor while his mother hummed to herself in the next room. The one maid—Kayyla? Kavva?—who’d worked for them the summer Garreth turned fourteen and the doomed longing he’d developed for her. The sound of Vasch clopping down the hallways pretending to be a general leading a great army into battle in the lesser hall while he and a younger Kannish and Maur had tried to ignore him.
That the moments were lost made them sweet. Even things which had been annoying or unpleasant or even enraging took on a patina of melancholy because they could never happen again. There had been a last time for Vasch to interrupt Garreth’s older, more sophisticated games, and it had already gone without anyone knowing that time had been the last. The boy who rested in the sunlight and his mother’s unconscious song was gone. The maid with the sweet laugh and the little underbite who he’d tried not to stare at had some other work in some other house and likely a husband and children of her own by now.
Everything rose and was lost. Every decision ended the other paths that a different choice would have opened. Including all the lives in which this might still be Garreth’s home.
He walked upstairs, noticing all the small changes. Someone—Yrith? Serria?—had installed little vases that hung from the walls with sprigs of pine and rosemary in them. The little tapestry that hung in the hall outside his parents’ private rooms was gone, and a painting of a horse had taken its place. There was a scratch in the door to his old room that hadn’t been there when he left.
His bed was still where it had been. His little desk. Someone had painted the walls with flowers. The room seemed larger now that he’d spent a few months sharing a barracks. The idea of so much privacy was almost ridiculously luxurious. But the air smelled like rain and dust. The scent of a room that wasn’t lived in.
The winter shutters were up, inner frames covered by paper to let in light but keep the cold air at bay. He opened them, and the familiar view was less familiar now. Palace Hill was gone, smothered in cloud. The world felt small and heavy, the city hunkered down before the threat of the storm like a man braced against attack. The last time he’d stood there, he’d never killed anyone.
He heard her footsteps and closed the inner frames. The room grew only a little darker. She opened the door and paused before she stepped in. Her cloak was dark, and the gown beneath it pale. It made her seem thinner than she was, like the world had lessened her since Tenth Night. Her smile was complicated in ways he didn’t understand.
“I wasn’t sure you’d…” he began.
She stepped in like the words had broken a spell, closed the door behind her, and slipped off her cloak and let it fall to the floor.
“Well, thank the gods you’re here. Otherwise I’d just be breaking into houses.” The laughter in her voice was hard.
Garreth tried to gather his thoughts, but she crossed to him before he could, and then it was very hard to think.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t find how to see you sooner than—” he began.
“Don’t,” she said. Her hand was a fist at the base of his spine, his shirt twisted into her fingers. She yanked the cloth up. The air was cold against his back. He started to speak, but she pressed her mouth to his. Her hair was damp against his palm as he tilted her face up to his, the muscles in her neck like ropes. Her hands fumbled at his belt. She found the sword at his hip and went still.
Some alarm within him, shrill as a whistle, found its way through the animal response of his body. He kept the embrace lightly and held himself back, waiting. The shudder that passed through her had nothing to do with desire.
“Can we…?” she said. “Do we have to…?”
“We’re us. We don’t have to do anything.”
She stepped back. Her mouth was hard and joyless. Her eyes shifted like she was searching for something as she paced the room. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This is humiliating. I thought that… It’s not that I don’t want to—”
“It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.”
She met his gaze with her eyebrows raised, glanced down, then back up again. He considered himself and shrugged.
“That happens all the time,” he said. “It doesn’t mean as much as you think.”
“Flattering.”
“I’m just trying to—” He raised his hands. “I don’t understand what’s happening here.”
She sat at the edge of the bed. “I saw my father today. I asked him to tell me what was going on. I asked him about the books, and he wouldn’t tell me. Karsen knows everything, and I’m kept out.” Her voice sang like a violin string, clear and high and beautiful, but taut with pain. “I hate the palace. I hate the princedom. I’m more than halfway to hating the city.”
“I understand.”
“How? How could you possibly understand when I’m the one going through it, and I barely understand it for myself? You mean you want me to feel better and be reassured. That’s sweet. Really. But it isn’t understanding.”
“All right, I don’t understand, but I’m trying to. And I’m trying to have your back. I’ll help if I can.”
“How charitable. Or is it loyal? Or worshipful? I don’t know what word fits. What is it I’m supposed to expect from you?”
“Kindness and respect would be welcome,” he said. “I mean, if you can bring yourself to them.”
She closed her eyes. It looked like regret, but he wasn’t certain. “I’m not… I’m not doing this well.”
“You’re carrying a heavy load,” Garreth said.
“God, you’re so fucking helpful and understanding and perfect. Do you ever get angry?”
“Oh, I’m angry.”
“With me?”
“With you.” The words hung in the air like smoke because they were true. “This much I do understand, whether you believe me or don’t. You’re not even vaguely who you were even this time last year. You’re swimming in fast water, and it’s too deep to stand. It’s the same for me.”
“Nothing is the same for us. It can’t be. We aren’t the same.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know,” she said, and there was sorrow in the words. She put a hand out. Her fingertips on his skin were an apology. He took a step toward her. “I know,” she said again, more softly.
A whisper came, as unmistakable as it was out of place. A girl’s voice, and close outside his door. Elaine looked up. She’d heard it too.
“What’s that?” Garreth said. He had time to draw his sword.
The door burst open. The two thugs who boiled in had weapons drawn. A Hansch knifeman with close-cut, greasy dark hair and a sword he held like he knew the use of it. An Inlisc girl with a lead-tipped club and teeth bared like a rat. Garreth felt a distance and calm falling into him. A roar came into his ears and the clear, animal need to kill both intruders before they could hurt Elaine.
The Hansch boy lunged, wrist-whipping his blade toward Garreth’s ribs. It was an easy parry, and Garreth let the momentum carry him forward the way Beren had drilled him, taking him inside the enemy’s guard. He had to end this quickly. Two against one was hard. If it had only been him, he could have looked for weaknesses in their defense. Elaine was the weakness in his.
Elaine stood off the bed, an expression of outrage on her face like the violence was less an affront than the interruption. The Inlisc girl swung her club, and there was no way to stop the blow. The impact had the sound of splintering bone. Elaine staggered and fell.
Garreth felt himself call out, wordless, as the Hansch knife tried to back out into proper range. Garreth wanted to go to Elaine, but the best protection was the fewest enemies, and so he was going to kill this one, and now. Then the Inlisc girl, and then anyone else in the house, or the city, or the world. His swing was tight and curving. If the Hansch man hadn’t pulled back, it would have taken a slice from his side like carving a ham. Even as it was, Garreth felt the bite.
The eyes under the greasy hair took on a soberness. To Garreth’s right, the Inlisc girl brought the club up, ready to crush Elaine’s skull, but when the blow fell, Elaine was up and moving. The Hansch man’s gaze flickered toward her, and Garreth thrust toward his face, pushing him back. If he could put the man to the wall where he couldn’t jump back, it would be over.
“That’s her. Don’t let her get away!” the Hansch man shouted, but Elaine was almost at the door. The Inlisc girl tried to grab her and pull her back, but Elaine broke free. She was gone, and the Inlisc thug after her, shrieking as she went. Garreth swung hard and fast, five hard blows, his sword fluttering against the other man’s guard. The fifth one got through. Blood soaked the man’s side and bloomed on his shoulder. There was a glimmer of fear in his eyes now.
“You should go,” the Hansch man said. “Before she splatters your girl’s brains on the tile. You don’t have time for me.”
Garreth knew not to hesitate, but he did anyway. The other man thrust low, trying to cut his foot or his shin. Garreth danced back. He knew he’d been hit, but he didn’t feel it yet.
“I’ll do you a favor. Let you go,” the man said. “She’s dead if you stay.”
Elaine’s left arm was wrong. She reached the narrow stairs that led down, and the girl barreled into her. They fell down the wooden steps in a jumble, and pain bloomed through her shoulder and neck like lightning in a storm cloud. She landed on the stone floor of the hallway. When, by instinct, she tried to reach up and steady herself, bone ground against bone. She stumbled to her feet, sprinting for the back garden and the wall and the street and anyone who could help.
The Inlisc girl was close as a shadow and grunting with effort. They reached the kitchen garden with its bare earth and filthy snow. The low point in the stone was like seeing the surface of the river from below. Safety, breath, air almost within reach. Elaine dove for it, only flinching back at the last second by instinct. The Inlisc girl’s club broke the stone where Elaine’s back would have been. Elaine stumbled in retreat. Her arm was limp now, the burning in her shoulder and neck like a fire without the flame. A man’s voice shrieked behind them, and an image of Garreth with a blade in his neck flashed before her like a vision from hell. The Inlisc girl took a grip on her club and waited. They looked at each other. The girl was young. Four, maybe five years younger than Elaine. Not an adult. Barely adolescent. She looked frightened.
Elaine’s mind skipped and stuttered. The injury was worse than she’d thought. She’d seen hunting dogs accidentally trampled by horses, the way they tried to stand even with spines crushed. She felt like that now. If she turned her back, the girl would kill her, and the way forward was blocked. It was like a puzzle she couldn’t quite solve. Thunder rumbled like a god clearing its throat.
The fear—was it fear?—in the Inlisc girl shifted, settled, became some resolve that Elaine couldn’t fathom. The heavy leaden head of the club sank toward the ground. The girl stepped aside. The way to the street was clear.
When the girl spoke, her voice had the hard, percussive accent of Longhill. “Why are you waiting? Run!”
Elaine didn’t need a second invitation. She ran.
The street seemed too normal to be real. Carts and mules. A man in a red shirt with unfashionably long hair pulled back in a braid. Elaine tried to hold her arm as if she were whole, and she walked. The coach was at the stables. The same one she’d gone to that morning in some other lifetime with Garreth’s uncle and a cloud of disapproval. If she could just get there…
That’s her.
She stumbled, caught herself. The man in the red shirt glanced at her with dim curiosity. She looked away.
The thug with the sword. He’d said That’s her. Don’t let her get away. They hadn’t been sneaking into the house to steal. They’d come for her. They’d known she would be there. The coachman who’d brought her knew where she was, or close to it. Could he have told someone? Sold her to… someone? Or only been loyal to whatever mystery was on the other side of Prince Ausai’s library?
The horror of the thought cleared her mind a little. She turned back, found a corner, and took it. Part of her wanted to go back to Garreth or call for the guard. Could someone in the guard be part of it? Had Garreth told any of them—some friend or confidant—where she would be, and when? The pain was turning to a numbness that was worse. She had to find someplace safe. No place was safe. She walked through the streets of her city, her father’s city, her great-uncle’s city, like a refugee in a foreign town.
A tap sounded on the stone beside her, sharp and sudden. A dark spot on the pavement. Then another. The rainstorm was here. It was going to soak her. Worse, it would make her conspicuous. A broken girl in an expensive gown and no cloak wandering through the streets like a ghost.
She had to do something. She didn’t know what.
“She’s dead if you stay.”
Garreth shifted to the left, his blade trained on the enemy. Long smears of blood marked the floor. The dark-haired man quirked up a smile.
“If it’s any comfort, the day’s turned out poorly for me too. Go. I’ll wait here until you’re gone, sneak away, and get myself sewn up. We all live to fight another day. Even her. Fair?”
Garreth turned to the door, images of Elaine filling his head like smoke from a fire. He’d taken two steps when the Hansch man rushed at him. He turned in time to push the blade away, less a parry than a rough shove. The Hansch man’s shoulder took him in the ribs, and they crashed into the wall together, both of their swords skittering away on the floorboards. A knife appeared in the other man’s hand, driving toward Garreth’s throat, but he caught the man’s wrist, turning it. Breathing hurt. The other man’s half-rueful smile had turned to the bared teeth of an animal fighting for its life. Garreth tried to remember what Beren had taught him, what Captain Senit had trained him in. The hours on the dirt outside the barracks had vanished from his mind.
His body remembered, though.
He twisted the man’s wrist, pulling it straight and locking the elbow. When Garreth turned, the man had to go with him or break his arm. Either would have been fine, but the man turned with a cry of pain and despair and stumbled against the scholar’s desk. Garreth kicked the side of his knee, the blow landing with a satisfying grinding sensation. The man tried to pull his knife arm free, wriggling like a fish. Garreth slipped in the blood. If he hadn’t had his attention on the man, the knife, he might have kept his feet. All he could do was hold tight and bring the enemy down with him.
