Lady Cherusay's Daughter, Book I: The People

Kahan’s pealing laughter echoed still in her thoughts. She glanced at the door. He should be here soon, to show her the way to supper. She was back in the frescoed chamber of the morning, which she now knew as the Silver Novitiates Hall, that housed the girls who were to be Runedaur sorceresses. Her unknown roommate had been in during the day: the bedclothes were rumpled, and a scroll tossed carelessly upon the chair. Rothesay wished she would come in. Other than her own reflection in the horses’ watering trough, she had not seen a feminine face all day. Kahan was pretty enough, but girl-talk did not come easily while the other person was juggling knives.

She had spent the rest of the afternoon with the Arms-master, learning chiefly that giant strength did not mean giant endurance; and that Master Leoff’s patience was of a uniquely diabolical magnitude. She would have been glad to collapse, frustrated and exhausted, early on, but such was Leoff’s courtesy, and bottomless tolerance of the stupidest errors, that she could not bear to disappoint him. Time and again she gathered herself for one more effort she had not known she could make; thrust and parry, she fought for that fleet lightning in his dark eyes that betrayed his approval. And sweetest of all, Dav watched throughout. She hoped he noted well what results a little civility could have!

It was he, in fact, who called an end to the session, when she lay crumpled and gasping on the cold flags and Leoff, himself unruffled, awaited her composure. “Call it, Lee. I’ve seen enough.”

She had been too occupied with her heaving lungs to wonder what he had meant, and later, here on her bed, had been too grateful to collapse for a while. She wondered now. He’d seen enough? Whose session was it?

She rubbed her arms and shoulders in their silken black sleeves, relishing the rich softness of the fabric, and determined to get a grip on herself. Up till now, she had lived at the beck and whim of events—mostly, she realized, out of loyalty to, and faith in, Padriag. And while that loyalty and faith was unchanged, its object was far away, no likely guide in this shifting black and silver maze. Time she was looking out for herself.

A laudable ambition, doubtlessly; however, she had small idea just what it entailed. This wholly preoccupied her for a time, till presently she was startled by a soft thud on the black oak door. Kahan! There was an ally. He had offered her warning about letting others think for her; neither should she let him do so, but she felt she could trust him as a sounding board. She bounded softly to the door and flung it open for him.

And Dav laughed at the feelings fleeting unconcealed over her face.

“I am desolated to disappoint you so, chit! Ah—may one ask whom it was you so blithely anticipated?”

Never lie, Rory said. She might refuse to answer; yet—“Kahan said he would take me to supper,” she said coolly, meeting his eye, more briefly than she had intended. She cast a quick, hopeful look down the hall, and back.

Dav’s eyes glittered strangely. “Ah! It would be, of course.” His shark’s smile broadened. “Perhaps I should Challenge him, to lay bare to you all his devices for commanding your, ah, enthusiasm—without losing it thereby. Know that it is Kahan’s intent, chit, and no accident, that you anticipate him so.”

He started down the hall and she pattered after, startled. No! One could not contrive to be that likable—not that consistently, for that long, at any rate. Maybe the threatened Challenge was designed to force Kahan to discover his own ‘devices’; she would certainly learn something if he had to share them with her. “Will you?” she ventured to ask.

“No. He could. I shall have to think of something else.”

“Like telling Rory to abduct the Earl of Maldan’s mistress?”

Dav snorted. “That sounds like one of Leoff’s games. Mistress, hey? I wonder what he wants with Sunny? —And he never said abduct, chit.”

“‘Steal.’”

Dav shrugged coyly. “There are thefts and thefts! We shall see what the boy devises. You, now: is Kahan in any way responsible for that other light I saw in your face?”

“What light?” she blinked, trying to recall.

“Did I not know better, I should have called it battle lust. Care to tell me about it?”

“Why?”

His mouth quirked. “I’m the teacher.”

That took her aback. Padriag had instilled in her a great joy of learning, which carried, in her mind at least, implicit acceptance of the teacher. But she had just determined to think for herself. . . . She wavered. Should she lay this project before him—her teacher?

From half a pace behind, she studied him anxiously, this whiplike man. Who was Dav? Where was he from, what did he want, what ruled his life? Who would he have been, if Fate had not brought him here?

Dav glanced back at her as if she had spoken, and stopped. He looked human all of a sudden, almost as he had the night she met him, the hard veneer of a commander of men fallen away, unveiling the naked soul as bound to death as any other.

“Already?” he murmured, apparently to himself. A light dawned in the sharp face, a pale gleam of something that might be glorious should it rise in full; almost he smiled, a genuine smile of real delight. Suddenly he laughed, swung a steely arm about her shoulders and crushed her to him in a boisterous bear hug. He tousled her dark hair ungently and, laughing at the mess, swiftly unbound her braid and raked it with his fingers into a mockery of order. “That’s better.” He took a strand and turned it in the light. “Color of garnets, or wine. One of your chiefest weapons, chit, Arngas notwithstanding. You will learn how to use it, at the very least—” he cut off her budding protest, “—so as not to misuse it.” He glanced at her sternly, and burst into laughter again.

Rothesay pushed her dark, heavy curtain back behind her shoulders. “You are the oddest man!”

“But you have met so few of us!” His eyes danced. “Come on!”

He was in full run by the time his second foot met stone. Rothesay fled wildly after.

They came to a high hall and a great pair of black and silver doors: Dav flung them open and posed theatrically before a tumultuous multitude. A flying wooden dagger made a velvet snap upon his chest and rattled to the floor; and in the astonished hush, the Master toppled backward and measured his length on the stone.

A darkhaired boy of sixteen, eyes bugging, scrambled across the nearest tabletop and paused uncertainly. Dav lay open-eyed and unmoving: Rothesay, just beyond his head, could not even see that he was breathing. The boy edged off the table. The dog beneath it opened his eyes, then closed them again.

“Don’t do it, Cobry!”

“No, get him! Finish him off!”

“Wait, he didn’t say Yield!” Advice burst from other boys like quail flushed from the quivering underbrush. The rest, close to a hundred or so men, watched silently. Rothesay caught sight of Kahan, his face alight with an unholy glee of anticipation.

Cobry’s training knife lay two or three handspans from Dav’s right knee. The boy crouched and circled toward it, his eyes drinking in every detail of Dav’s pose, hunting hungrily for a betraying flicker of tension. Suddenly he dived for the weapon, a flat, skimming slide to carry him crashing into Dav’s body, blade first.

Cobry’s impact seemed to flip Dav from the floor, and he landed fighting on the boy’s back as Cobry slid to where Dav ought to have been. A tidal wave of cheers and shouting poured from the feast hall, but Cobry was already ‘dead.’ Rothesay could not tell if, knowing a contest with the Master was already lost, Cobry merely yielded at once (‘scared’ to death? she wondered), or whether Dav had ‘killed’ him instantly; but she saw the pair repeat a brief sequence, at first slowly, then swiftly, before getting up. Apparently death by Dav was educational.

Dav wrapped one arm around Cobry’s shoulders, claimed Rothesay’s waist with the other and entered into his hall, his shark’s smile spread broad and white and his blue eyes afire. The boy flushed and grinned, half abashed, half elated; Rothesay looked and looked about her.

This was not Colderwild’s great feast hall, she learned later, but it was lofty enough, and like much of the keep, carved in the likeness of deep forest; two or three boys had found perches in some of the lower stone branches. Down the center of the hall ran a fire pit twenty ells long, filled with fire tonight against the spring night’s coolth. The far end held a raised dais with a long table, and a lone occupant with her back to the bright tapestries, who did not cheer Rothesay: Carialla. Wrapped in heavy white robes over a blood-brown garment, the Lady leaned on the table, her thin jaw propped on her knuckles with a patience that made one want to hurry. Rothesay’s stride broke, and she fell out from Dav’s dancelike tread without knowing how or when she had fallen into it. She could not quite recover it.

Dav released Cobry with a companionable shove, drew Rothesay into a bound onto the dais and turned them as one to look out over the people of Colderwild.

They were a brightly colored lot, in red linens and green silks gold-laced and jewel-sprinkled. Only she and the boys, and Dav, sported the legendary black. A ripple of silver caught her eye, and slowly she realized that there were women in the throng, a dozen or so, besides Carialla and herself. One, a pretty lady in her thirties, maybe, held an infant on her lap; and a number of small children darted, climbed, even crawled about, not obviously attached to any given adult. More dogs lounged about, waiting for suppertime treats.

Dav grinned out over his people. “Who recalls the story of Arngas?” he challenged abruptly. Several black-swathed arms shot up; Dav nodded at one. A round-faced boy, an immature thirteen, perhaps, stood up. His thin voice echoed on the quiet stone.

“Arngas went on Quest for the Lady Dere, and recovered the Moon Bow from the giant Arach. For this deed the Lady bestowed on him the greatest power of his enemy, which was his strength, and granted him a wish besides. And Arngas wished that his strength and his sword-skill would endure forever unchanged. He was the greatest swordsman of his age.”

“Succinct!” Dav acknowledged with approval. “Who believes this tale?”

A rustle like wind in the grass passed through the room. Then against the middle of the wall to Rothesay’s right, one bare brawny arm sprang up and Caltern, redhaired Master of Horse, unleashed his rolling laughter.

“Cal, you believe everything,” said Dav scornfully. Caltern only laughed again, and did not lower his arm. Dav turned to Rothesay, but spoke for the room to hear. “Chit, if your brother Alrulf found a fine house and plow with no owner, should he let them lie idle, spoil and rust, because he did not buy them?”

“Er—no. . . .”

“If you had only your own thumb with which to write in the dirt, and one day you found quill, ink, and paper, should you refuse to use them because you had not thought of them nor made them yourself?”

Rothesay decided on the moment’s spur that it was better to die for a little spirit than waste slowly away under the wilting stare of a hundred bored people.

“Better to learn calligraphy, I should think.”

Dav’s shark’s smile spread wide, and he bowed. “I wish you joy of your art, chit.” And such was Rothesay‘s distracted state of mind that only then did she perceive Dav’s trap for her. He seemed about to turn away without further comment, then turned and stabbed a finger at her. “Rothesay,” he announced to the crowd, and fingered a fold of her black sleeve meaningfully. “Yes.” He looked at her and raised a lean eyebrow as if satisfied of something. “Welcome to Colderwild,” he finished softly, and waved invitingly at the hall.

Boyish cries of invitation to sit here, no, here, broke out as Dav turned to Carialla. Louder than them all, the silent wave of Caltern’s beckoning arm drew her. As she made her way toward the genial Horsemaster’s table, she caught sight of Kahan, who waved her cheerfully on, but manifestly meant to join her: lightly he leaped up on the nearest of the tables ranged in long rows paralleling the fire pit, and, gathering himself hugely, flung himself into the air, somersaulting across the blazing gap.

Rothesay’s heart skipped. The Runedaur community paused briefly, casually respectful of the move, and went back to talk, or combat, as Kahan landed acrobatically on the table beyond. He waved again at her and went on to Caltern, table by table, like steppingstones. He stepped politely around people, and they politely leaned or lifted their beers to let him pass, and Rothesay laughed aloud, thinking of more than one child in Harrowater who would revel in table manners like these.

Dav’s introduction of her had been cryptic enough, but no one pressed for explanation. The men among whom she picked her way were knights proper, she supposed. A few seemed to be Dav’s age, rarely younger, mostly older though no one approached Nessian’s venerable sixty. She wondered what made these proud, violent men follow a young man, and shivered involuntarily. She did not know if Dav were indeed best suited to lead this lot, but she wanted no part of his overthrow, if only because of her squeamishness for blood and pain. Uneasily she looked into the faces raised in greeting, hunting for hint of intrigue, as if she would know it if she saw it.

Few were handsome; none, not even the one scarred as if by fire, truly ugly; all of them, lean or broad, bearded or clean, wrinkled, smooth, or battle-scarred, compellingly interesting. And though they openly appraised her physical form with pleasure as she passed, often nodding as if to the artist behind this creation, the welcome she felt was warm, without leer or slyness. By the time she reached Caltern’s table Rothesay felt, for the first time in her adolescence, like an appealing person rather than a succulent pork.

Just as that thought crossed her mind, she met the Horsemaster’s eyes, and Caltern’s laughter boomed out again. Of all Kahan’s alleged mind-readers, surely the Masters were the best, but she did not mind, not Caltern at any rate, whose high good humor implied a fair measure of human charity. She plunked happily down on the bench beside him, all thought of uprisings forgotten as she discovered that the loincloth was no more: apart from his jewelry, the Horsemaster was entirely unclothed. Rothesay suffered an instant’s shock, sucked air—and released it along with any expectations of normality. Whatever else this Order of Death was about, predictability was no part of it. Possibly that was apposite.

“Good girl,” Caltern rumbled, and handed her a wooden trencher.

Kahan oiled in beside her. “How does it feel to sit next to one of the most dangerous men in all the Dragon Sea Kingdoms?” he laughed, indicating Caltern with a playful toss of his head.

Rothesay shrugged. “Oh, well—! After bathing with the most dangerous one—!” She broke off.

Too late: she had already the attention of everyone in earshot, silence spreading like a ripple in a pool from her unfortunate revelation. The boy setting out tankards of some fragrant drink froze with one poised above the table. Caltern glowered balefully.

“Think I couldn’t break that little cock’s comb like a dead branch?” he growled low in his throat.

Rothesay quashed a fleeting hope that he was not serious, and wondered if it were even possible to apologize. She herself could probably break the little cock’s comb—providing he couldn’t move—but the thought did not cheer her.

“Break him? You couldn’t even touch him!” Kahan grinned, comfortably indignant.

Caltern’s scowl melted to mirth. “Need to trust your gut, girl.” He held up an educational finger. “You knew I was joking. Then you thought better of it. You think too much. Order’ll fix that.” He poked the tip of her nose gently, laughed, and turned to scrutinize his mug. The server, released by Kahan’s light challenge, had laid out his burden and gone on; Caltern glanced after him, and took Rothesay’s.

Kahan took Caltern’s. A stiletto appeared magically in his hand and he stirred the drink with it, stabbed the depths, and brought up a small dark bean. “Artist!” he accused the absent assassin, and showed Rothesay the Death’s glyph carved painstakingly on the tiny flat of the bean. “Cooked, so as not to rattle in the cup,” he added, and ate it. “Go ahead, take a drink. The trap’s sprung—it only counts if you don’t find the ‘poison’ before you drink much, and it doesn’t count for you tonight anyway.”

“That’s nice.” Rothesay tried her drink, gingerly, then delightedly. It was a cold tea, flowery and spicy, sweet enough in its own way that she declined the pot of honey offered by the grizzled knight across the table, but Caltern took a huge dollop. This was so popular a drink with the Colderwild residents that a large vat was kept by the kitchen doors, ready for the dipping and exempted from being poisoned.

“Unless you count contact poison on the dipper itself,” Kahan amended. “Or on the handle of the vat lid.”

“There were some interesting booby traps under the lid last winter,” said a knight, a young one newly belted, perhaps, in his mid-twenties or so. Kahan introduced him as Garrod.

“Weren’t there!” Kahan agreed ruefully, rubbing his breastbone tenderly. “And at least one packed a mean wallop!”

“Who set them? I left for Rose House about then, but I never did see anyone claim his ghost—though I saw a good half-dozen kills.”

Kahan’s face blazed with a sudden maniacal light, like sleepy coals spurting a jet of fire, startling Rothesay already accustomed to his languid, dreamy manner. “It was the Runt!”

“Flick?” Garrod howled with laughter.

“And he didn’t collect his ghosts, he was happier keeping everyone mystified. Inventive, that boy! We should send him to be Móriad-trained. Watch your step, my friend: he hasn’t stopped at vat lids.”

Garrod grinned, nodding thanks for the warning, and he and Kahan as one sipped a tiny amount of tea and savored it.

Garrod’s nostrils flared. He swiveled casually on the bench, then struck like a snake at the boy sitting behind him just before the boy could slither under the table. Holding his prisoner by a twist of hair, Garrod spat his mouthful back into his cup. “Babe, if you must use a poison with flavor, don’t put it in a familiar drink!”

The boy twisted around to stare at his intended victim in bewilderment. “But it doesn’t have a flavor!”

Garrod laughed, ruffled the hair and cuffed him. “Then you’d better improve your sense of taste! Here, take this and get me a fresh cup. A clean cup!”

“Why didn’t you just drink that, since you set off the trap?” Rothesay asked as the boy danced off.

“I don’t want to empty my guts before I’ve put anything in them,” he replied dryly.

“It was real poison?” she squeaked.

“Chorris root extract—a violent purgative, but not lethal.”

“Though you may wish it were!” Kahan murmured.

“Did you really taste it? Or did something else tip you off?”

“Yes and yes. You were facing him: you must have seen him squirm. As for taste—when you can identify the provinces of Peria by the flavor of the water in your cup, chorris root becomes relatively obvious.”

Servers moved up the aisles between the tables, bearing steaming trays and baskets of bread. Only half were boys: the others were men, including one older man in black, and two women. Rothesay saw Rory one aisle over, unloading his tray. She was about to venture a wave, when he caught sight of them, and her heart quailed at the dark fury that swept over his face. He snapped bitterly back to his work; and she had made no sign of greeting, or even recognition. Beside her, Caltern mountain rumbled pensively. Kahan swirled his tea. Garrod glanced at the three of them and shook his head.

Food came, a culinary celebration of the springtime: hot stuffed grape- and cabbage-leaves piled like logs, dark green and light; strong herbs, spinach, onion, and mustard, in a steaming soup for the winter-starved heart’s lust for lifesap; hearty young-barley meal; two kinds of mead and a cherry wine; and bread so rich the aroma alone might sustain life.

Full of the savory smells welling up to envelop her, the room hushed at no signal Rothesay could sense. The men at her table sat motionless before the feast, not looking around or at anything in particular; by the silence, no one did in all the hall. Fire crackled quietly. Rothesay bit her lip and, gazing wistfully at the soup, and awaited a drama.

Kahan leaned close to murmur in her ear, “Pass the bread?”

Slowly she complied, cringing as the slender withies of the basket creaked loudly in her fingers. Kahan helped himself to a modest chunk and plied the honey pot generously, letting the sweet gold overflow and pool silently on his plate. At her stare, his easy smile widened, and he nodded toward the front table. There Carialla sat, eyes downcast in deep thought; Dav wrenched a pepper-mill with deft, violent grace, whipped it aside, and pounced on his supper.

“He does not come here to meditate,” Kahan laughed quietly, as diners began to move again and conversation woke languidly. He displayed a bit of honeyed bread. “You must honor the death that sustains your life, be it only a stalk of grain—but no one will tell you what form your honor must take, or when. This silence is traditional and most of us enjoy it.” He paused pensively, watching his master, and nibbled a crumb. “But I think Dav does not breathe without honor.”

Rothesay scowled. That rude, evil-humored, treacherous rogue, feel honor?

Caltern rolled six stuffed leaves onto her trencher, a dozen onto his own, and shoved the platter at Kahan, who took one. Before she could speak, Caltern added a huge scoop of meal, mashed a crater in it and waved a small pitcher at her. This held a beautiful clear yellow sauce, tart and sweet at once; as she drizzled it into the crater, Caltern half-emptied the meal-bowl onto his green logs and narrowly missed her forehead in passing the remainder to Kahan. A chunk of bread dropped past her nose as the bread basket passed by above, and then Caltern was staring at her.

“Done with that?” he growled, claimed the pitcher, and flooded his plate with sauce. Sticking a huge finger in the loop of the handle, he spun it end over end and flipped it over her plate to Kahan, who speared it on his own finger, let it turn twice more around, and dripped a trace on his meal before spinning it on to Garrod. Garrod snatched it bodily from the air and set it quietly on the table. It looked unnatural.

Kahan snorted. “Knights! They’re soo stuffy!” Garrod grinned.