“And Emnis might worry and fuss,” Erich said comfortably. “So she might. I will go with you. Wait a little and I will get a plate of sweet rolls. Nobody would be surprised if you brought the spy some rolls.” His voice was deeper and somehow grittier than it had been even last year, which was when his voice had finally broken.
His slight accent seemed to have become a little more pronounced with that change.
“He’s probably still asleep—”
“If he’s woken up, he will no doubt be glad of the rolls,” Erich said, shrugging. “I don’t mind going to look. If he’s still asleep,
I
will be glad of the rolls. You eat that one, Mie. You’re too thin.” He turned and disappeared back into the kitchens, coming back almost at once with a generous plateful of rolls.
Tan was still asleep, but Captain Geroen, sitting in his room with his legs stretched out and a glower on his coarse-featured face, was glad to see the sweet rolls and didn’t question Mienthe’s right to look in on the spy.
“I never thought a legist could wear himself out with a quill like a soldier on a forced march,” the captain said. “Makes me glad to be a speaker and not a legist. Even aside from liking crows better than just their feathers.” He gave the bed a disgusted scowl.
“You think he’s all right, though?” Mienthe asked. She trusted her cousin’s judgment, but she wasn’t certain she liked the guard captain. He frightened her a little. Erich didn’t seem frightened, but then he wouldn’t. He leaned in the doorway and ate another roll himself.
“I should think so, lady. Just exhausted.” The captain gave the bed another disgusted look, but this time Mienthe thought she could see concern hiding behind his grim features. “With more than the effort of lifting a quill, to be fair, from what he said of his past days. No, he’ll be up and about—”
Tan shifted, moved a hand, made a wordless mutter of protest, opened his eyes, tried to sit up, and groaned.
Captain Geroen wiped honey off his fingers with the cloth that had been draped over the plate, stalked over to the bed, and put a surprisingly gentle hand under Tan’s elbow to help him sit up. Then he poured some water into a glass, set it on the bed table, stepped back and glowered at the spy, fists on his hips. “Stiff, are you?”
Tan glanced past the captain to take in Mienthe’s presence, and Erich’s beyond her. He seemed half amused and half dismayed to find his room so crowded. But he nodded thanks for the water and said to Geroen, with a deliberate good humor that had more than a slight edge of mockery to it, “Well, I see Bertaud—forgive me, let us by all means be respectful, I mean to say
Lord
Bertaud—didn’t flog the flesh off your bones. What astonishing leniency!”
The captain looked embarrassed, an expression that sat oddly on his heavy features. “He’s not much for the post and the whip, is our lord. But I did think he might dismiss me.”
“After the shocking example you set for your pure-minded naive young guardsmen? I should hardly be astonished he found a more suitable penalty.”
“Hah. He told you about that, did he?”
“He did. I admit I’m surprised to find you here watching me sleep. Flattering though it is to be the focus of your personal attention, I should imagine the new captain of the entire city guard might have one or two other matters of almost equal consequence to absorb his attention.”
When he put it that way, Mienthe was surprised, too. But Geroen only lifted a heavy eyebrow at Tan. “I have been attending to them, as happens. And then I came back
to look in on you. Just how long do you think you’ve been out?”
Tan leaned back against the pillows, looking faintly disturbed. “I see. How long, then?”
Mienthe said anxiously, “You worked right through that whole day and collapsed well after dark. That was fifty hours ago, more or less.”
“So a good morning to you, esteemed sir!” said Captain Geroen drily. “We were beginning to wonder whether you’d ever wake again or just sleep till you turned to stone, and the bed linens around you.”
“Ah.” Tan seemed slightly stunned. “One would think I’d had to write out all eighteen copies myself. No wonder I’m so—” He turned his head toward the plate of rolls Mienthe still held and finished plaintively, “So close to collapsing a second time for want of sustenance. Lady Mienthe, are any of those, by chance, for me?”
Mienthe laughed. “All of them, if you like! And we can send to the kitchens if you’d like something else.” She handed the tray to Captain Geroen to put on the bed table, where Tan could reach them. “We should go—I’m sure you want to eat and wash and dress, and I should tell my cousin you’re awake—”
Tan waved a sweet roll at her. “Lady Mienthe, you are a jewel among women. Sit, please, and tell me all that has happened in the past two days—or at least, if anything important has happened, perhaps you might mention it to me? Any official protests from Linularinum? Alarms in the night? Has Istierinan presented himself to Iaor with a demand for my return?”
Mienthe couldn’t help but laugh again. “No!”
“Good,” said Tan, and bit with enthusiasm into the roll.
“I’ll go,” Geroen said. “I should report.” He gave Erich a significant look.
Erich gestured acknowledgment. “I’ll stay,” he assured the captain.
“Good to have that settled,” Tan said cheerfully.
He wasn’t at all as Mienthe had expected. Bertaud had told her that spywork was hard and dangerous, and that good spies saved a lot of soldiers and should be respected. And Erich had pointed out that everyone knew Linularinum had lots of spies in Feierabiand, so really it was only fair that Feierabiand have some in Linularinum.
Mienthe supposed that spywork must be frightening and dangerous and difficult. It must be hard to find out secrets and sneak away with them—Mienthe had a vague idea that spies slipped through darkened rooms and found secret ledgers in locked desks, and thought she would die of fright if she tried to sneak around that way. But worse than that would be making somebody trust you when you knew all the time you were going to betray their trust.
That
would be hard. Unless you really didn’t like the person you were betraying, but then pretending you did would be worse still. She had wondered what the kind of man who would do that might be like. Tan wasn’t at all what she had imagined.
“Tan…” Mienthe said curiously, wanting to hear him speak again, to see whether she could hear any deceit in his voice.
“Esteemed lady?”
Mienthe asked, “Do you never tell anybody the rest of your name?”
“Not often,” Tan said mildly. He didn’t seem in the least offended or embarrassed, and there was nothing
secretive or deceitful in his manner, even when he was explaining straight out that he kept secrets. He said, “I’ve offended people, you know. There are plenty of people I’d prefer not know my mother’s name.”
“Oh. Of course.” Mienthe was embarrassed that he’d needed to explain that, and embarrassed again because he’d said he didn’t want to give his
mother’s
name. She guessed his father must have been careless. She didn’t know what to say.
Erich said, rescuing her, “His Majesty said he doesn’t think he’s ever had a confidential agent bring him such a coup, and for all the difficulty it will cause him, he is glad to have a way to set the Fox of Linularinum at a disadvantage.”
Tan gave Erich a thoughtful look. “I’m sure that’s so, Prince Erichstaben. Yes, I suppose now he has a considerable advantage over both his neighbors.”
That
was barbed, but Erich didn’t seem offended. He only said mildly, “I don’t mind. Anyway, I’m going back to Casmantium in two years.”
“Are you?” Tan said, with just the faintest edge of doubt in his tone.
Mienthe started to say something sharp, she didn’t know what, but Erich said, his tone still mild, “You’ve been in Linularinum too long, maybe.”
After a moment, Tan laughed. “Perhaps.”
Mienthe looked at him, puzzled.
“Ah, well,” Tan said to her. “You’d think Feierabiand would be closely allied to Linularinum, wouldn’t you? We share a common history and a common language, which you’d think would make us far more like one another than either of us is like Casmantium, and there’s quite a lot of
shared blood along the river and down here in the Delta.” He gave Erich a little nod and went on, “But in some ways, I think Casmantium is far more Feierabiand’s natural ally. We’re alike in our straightforwardness and love of honesty, which aren’t qualities Linularinum admires.”
There was an odd, wistful tone to his voice when he said that last. Mienthe said, “But you loved Linularinum, didn’t you? And then you had to leave it. I’m sorry.”
She seemed to have taken Tan by surprise. For a long moment, he only gazed wordlessly at her. But then he said slowly, “I suppose you’ve heard all your life, living on the border as you do, about Linularinan haughtiness, how the people of Linularinum look down on the people of Feierabiand as so many unlettered peasants. About how secretive and sly they are, and how they never use one word when they can fit in several dozen. And there’s some truth to that. They love poetry—”
“Oh, I know!” Mienthe exclaimed, and then blushed because she had interrupted. But Tan only lifted a curious eyebrow, so she said, “I think everyone on both sides of the bridge reads Linularinan epic romances. All the girls in the great house read them—I read them, too. All we can get, I mean. They’re wonderful fun.”
Erich rolled his eyes, but Tan grinned. “All the girls in Teramondian read them, too: high birth or low, court ladies or merchants’ daughters. Their mothers pretend indifference, but I’ve noticed even quite elderly matrons will correct your smallest errors if you refer to even the most recent epics.”
And Tan had actually tested that, Mienthe guessed, just to amuse himself or purely out of habit. She didn’t know whether that was entertaining or a bit frightening.
“But anyone from Linularinum will go beyond the popular epics. Especially in the court, people would rather quote something flowery and obscure—especially obscure—than simply say anything right out.”
“Oh.” Mienthe tried to imagine this.
“It’s true they’re secretive and love to be clever, but half the time when they’re sneaking around trying to outmaneuver someone, they’re actually arranging something kind for a friend. They like to surprise people, and they don’t brag about it when they’ve been generous.”
He almost made her admire secrecy, though it had never before occurred to her that that might be an admirable quality. “Are they kinder and more generous than we are, then?”
“Oh… no, I don’t think so. But much less straightforward about both friendships and enmities. It’s true what they say, that no one smiles in Linularinum without first calculating which way fortune is tending. But it’s also true—this is a Linularinan saying—that the politest smile still contains teeth. You can’t guess whether a man is your friend or not by whether he smiles at you.”
“They sound very different from us,” Mienthe said doubtfully. She wondered if this could actually be true. Though she’d heard that saying.
“In some ways. And in other ways, that perhaps matter more, they aren’t different at all.”
Mienthe nodded. She was even more certain now that he had loved Linularinum. She looked for something to say that might ease his sense of loss, but couldn’t think of anything. Probably a Linularinan woman would be able to think of something subtle and obscure and, what had he said? Flowery. Something subtle and obscure and
flowery to make him feel better. She didn’t seem to be as clever as a Linularinan woman. She said merely, which was true but neither subtle nor clever, “I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t suppose you’ll have a chance to go back to Teramondian now.”
Tan said after a moment, “It was bound to come to this eventually. That it was
that
day, right then, when all the pieces suddenly fell into order… Well, the years do shatter in our hands, and cut us to the bone if we try to hold them.”
Mienthe could not imagine wanting to hold on to the past. Then she thought of Tef, and after all understood exactly what Tan meant. Erich, too, nodded.
“So tell me how I came to be so fortunate as to find Iaor here before me,” Tan said to him, deliberately breaking the moment.
Erich shrugged. “
His Majesty
,” he said with some emphasis, “likes to see his country. And he likes to leave the cold heights and come down to the Delta before the heat of summer.”
“Eminently sensible,” murmured Tan, with a quirk of one eyebrow.
“I’ve always thought so,” Erich agreed with a grin. “We chase the spring, and by the time we reach Tiearanan, we find the ice gone from the mountains and the flowers blooming.”
“Yes, but it’s more than that,” Mienthe put in, “because they say His Majesty never guested in the Delta until Bertaud came back. Everything—” She stopped abruptly, having come surprisingly close to adding,
Everything changed when my cousin came home
. How strange that she should have begun to say something so personal.
“The Fox never leaves Teramondian, I think. I think perhaps I prefer His Majesty’s”—and here Tan lifted a wry eyebrow at Erich, who grinned back—“inclination to see the whole of his country.”
Mienthe nodded. “From here, King Iaor takes his household along the coast to Terabiand, then back north along the Nejeied River to the summer court in Tiearanan.”