Authors: R. A. MacAvoy
ponies by being less round and regular and by having a longer stride. I did not find these prints, nor anything that looked much like them. Each evening I returned to one establishment, that of a poulterer who raised rabbits for their skins and flesh, and I chopped next year’s wood in exchange for oats so I might abuse my poor cavalry horse further. I think I did not eat during those three days, and if I remember correctly I was not at all hungry.
On the evening of the third day I began to believe that I had chosen the wrong style of hunt: that Arlin had returned to the king’s procession as soon as he felt himself (or she felt herself) out of danger from loss of blood. In that case it was I who was missing, and it was possible Arlin would start out again after me and make of this entire emergency a great tangle.
I let the horse rest that night, fed him all the oats I had earned, and pointed him north. Such was the difference between the progress of three hundred men and wagons and the progress of one man mounted that I had found the king’s men by midafternoon.
My friend had not been found; neither had he returned on his own. I remember that as the field marshal gave me that news—gravely enough and without his usual rancor—I had a distinct presentiment of death. Arlin’s, my own, I could not discern, and indeed it seemed to me there would be little difference between the two.
I don’t know what there was about knowing that he was actually she that turned a year’s bickering and uneasy camaraderie into something as deep as the roots of my life. It was not that I was amorous; in the past year I had had brief, enjoyable affairs with three women, all of whom were older than I, all of whom were warm and good company. Arlin I did not imagine approaching sexually, even in daydreams, for she was still too much of he in my perception, and besides, he/she had said she was very picky about the men she appreciated. I might wind up spitted on a dagger.
And yet he called me his “ideal of the true knight and
gentleman.” Had he not been serious in those words, the thing would have been a joke. Had he
not been a cheating gambler who said it, it would have been mere triteness. Had she not been a
person of such solitary purity and courage as to stand alone and unaided against this bloody world
for years, I could not have valued the words. As it was, and with her deathly injured, the accolade
meant more than my life to me.
Forgive me, sir, my erratic pronouns. Their gender is out of my control.
We had come back to the northern downs, where the hills were sweeter and dotted with trees. Here, almost fifty miles from the border, we would be troubled by no more bands of Rezhmian raiders, and among the slow, grinding wagons the humility of having lost comrades and the gratitude for having survived danger had given way to the boisterous arrogance of having won a battle. I heard the story of the assault and of the king’s glorious petard repeated half a dozen times in the public room of the inn—the same inn where I had stopped on my way south, but now glorified by an air bright with narcissus and thyme.
The landlady remembered me and all our talk of blond slaves and southern cities. Since I had no enthusiasm for talk of battle (nor any talk), I sat myself first before the bar and then behind it, helping draw the tap. I also found myself—out of habit, perhaps—evicting those of the royal company who showed excessive energy in their amusements.
The woman had no husband and was kind enough to offer me a great deal of hospitality, most of which I declined as politely as I knew how. I was very disheartened and at a loss for what to do next. I neither saw the king nor asked for audience with him, but the next morning he sent for me.
King Rudof, as a change from his grand and rickety pavilion, had set himself up at the better inn of the town. It was amusing to see the innkeeper himself, parked with his family at the saddler’s across the way, staring out goggle-eyed at the glory that had descended on his property. He did not appear to feel abused, however, and his children danced delightedly backward in circles with knees locked together (a local specialty) for the edification of the officers.
Of course, the king had the family’s own small suite of rooms, but the paternal bed had been stood on end against one wall and the king’s own bed hauled up the stairs and put in its stead. As I came to him, the king was sitting alone in the room with windows yawning wide, making tentative shots from a nomad’s lacquered bow into the innkeeper’s mattress. Again the king’s easy charm struck me, heavy as a blow.
“Nazhuret,” he said, “I have to admit these toys are an improvement over our own weapons. Why do you suppose they have never caught on in Velonya? Oh, and do pull those quarrels from the ticking for me as you come by.” I returned the little arrows to him, “They are laminated with fish glues, sir. It could be that the cold and wet of our climate are too much for them.”
The king looked straight at me without words for some time. His red hair fell into his face, and one eyebrow rose slowly, like the sun. “You have a speaking countenance, Nazhuret. Odd in a man of your attainments: almost childlike. It is obvious you have not found your friend and that you are distraught about it.”
“It is true I have not found… him, sir. I had hoped he would be with you by now.”
The king took the time to shoot another quarrel. “By now? You left us in the morning three days ago. If the fellow denned up somewhere to heal…”
I listened, feeling very stupid. I had counted three days since the morning after my ambiguous miracle, which would make the time of my absence a minimum of four days.
As though reading my thoughts, the king continued, “But you yourself have done a stalwart job of recovery, lad. Truth to tell, I had more fears of your survival, with your broken ears and staggers, than I had of your card-playing friend. I had thought to stop you for your own good, except that I didn’t want to lose that many men while still in peril of the Red Whips.”
The breeze through the windows was seductive, the air sweetly bright, and this conversation made no sense. I put my face in my hands and screwed my thoughts together. “Sir, I count at least four days since I left your camp. On the first of these I met with kind people who took me in and cured me. I was not sure but that I had spent added days there asleep. Now you tell me what my reason cannot follow…”
He slouched to his feet, gracelessly graceful in the manner of very tall men, and leaned over to a table under the broad window. He threw a bound book at me. “Here’s our calendar. Let your reason ponder that, and while you’re at it, Nazhuret, note that we are nine days behind on this patrol.”
Patrol. The thought of this multicolored, creaking royal progress as a military patrol took me aback, but I tried not to let my speaking countenance speak. I turned my attention to the calendar, and after a minute of confusion I put it down. “I see. I see but I don’t understand, I will not delay you longer, sir,” I said, and turned to go.
He called me back again. With the light behind him, the king looked more saturnine than boyish. His profile was sharp. “Nazhuret, we owe you much, and it annoys me that you will take no payment. Also, I want you in my service as I have rarely wanted any man, and you will not or cannot give me what I want. Therefore I am doubly annoyed. Nevertheless, I give you this freely: my promise that I will hold you free to come and go through my court and my kingdom, as far as I can stretch the law to allow. You may speak to me any time that you have need or feel that the nation does; my chamberlain will not bar or question you. This while you live.”
He said this much without looking at me. I was dumb—astonished. I had never heard of such a privilege—honor fit to be sought earnestly by sages and wizards—and offered to a creature of no greater moment than myself. I found my hand was in my mouth, which gaped in the most foolish way. “My king,” I said, “I thank you. I will try not to abuse such an honor.”
I would try to run away and never see King Rudof again; that was the way I would not abuse this privilege, which was too dangerous and deep for me. I tried to bow my way out, but again he prevented me.
“Not yet,” said King Rudof, and now he turned full to me. “I want the right to advise you in turn, Nazhuret. About this Arlin fellow, with all his perils and his lacks. I understand your concern. I do not ask you to give up your search. But…”
The word trailed off, and King Rudof rolled his weight from one boot heel to the other thoughtfully. “But don’t show to the world this desperation I see in your face. Not among these men of the court, of the army. This friend of yours may be as… different as you say, and your concern as pure as a nunnery under snowfall, but men will not see it as such. Do not be obvious.”
“Obvious about what, sir?” I asked, for at that moment I was convinced the king knew Arlin’s secret.
He gave a tight smile. “That you love him. That you have a long loyalty together.”
I changed my mind. The king was not omniscient, but instead jealous. Of me. This was more terrifying to know than words can tell. I had difficulty following all King Rudof said after that: to the effect that Arlin was neither popular among
the men nor trusted by the officers. That I was not to be smudged by the same soot as he. That I was not to grieve for him in public.
I could feel my ears burning like the side lamps of a coach. I came very close to revealing Arlin’s great secret in disappointment that the king should think ill of Arlin. Think ill of him for the wrong reasons, that is. Dirt and dishonesty were enough of a social handicap.
I had a strong notion that once the king knew Arlin was a woman escaped from a monstrous father, both his ire and his jealousy would disappear. But though it was my notion it was not my secret, so I bowed out and let him think what he would.
One more day had passed with equally tender weather, and I knew I had to leave the royal hospitality before the good and regular meats seduced me (or before the king decided to keep me on a chain), when King Rudof sent for me once again. The messenger had difficulty finding me, as I was sitting on new grass outside the town proper, stripped to my trousers alone and staring at the trunk of a beech tree. Sitting in the belly of the wolf, in fact. I had chosen to retreat there because in that state I felt myself outside the rush of time, and time was telling me that I had failed and that Arlin was dead.
I did not appreciate the disturbance, but speaking face or no, I was not such a fool as to show my resentment to the King of Velonya.
Rudof had made a quaint sort of court in the public room of his inn, with no more accoutrement than a one-yard-square gilded seal of his authority and a ladder-back chair with arms. In this setting, separated from his military accompaniment, he was dispensing high and low justice to the few territorials who dared approach him.
I found myself amid what had to be a civil case, by the way in which two well-dressed burghers were glaring at one another and by the relaxed interest shown by all but the two involved parties. The king himself had a glint of amusement in his green eyes, like that of a man having to solve a question of precedence between two sleeve dogs. But though he smiled, and though he let rise one eyebrow, still he was being the king, not to be mistaken for any other young man who had an interest in foreign travel and who shot little arrows into the bottom of his landlord’s mattress.
I was led through the assembled crowd and past the open space that the king’s authority had created around him. He gave me the sort of look one student gives another when in the presence of outsiders. “We have a boundary dispute, Nazhuret. It seems we have had it for three generations.”
I had glanced at the two disputants already: One was tall, bald, and dressed in gray woolens, and the other was shorter, heavier, and dressed with a nod toward fashion. Neither bore any stamp of Rezhmian blood. “You desire assist with translation, my king?” I asked him, making a leg as formally as I knew how.
He grinned at me. “A week with our party and already you cease talking like a normal man. No, Nazhuret, it is not translation nor even the eviction of rowdy drunks I demand of you, and certainly not the stilted speech of a chamberlain’s assistant.”
I wondered how on earth the king had learned I was a tavern bouncer. Was I watched, and if so, how had I not noticed, for I notice most things? Had there been complaints from the men?
Before I had had time to reply, the king startled me further by
adding: “It is pure wisdom I want in this case, lad. Wisdom free from the constraints of legal
precedent or political advantage. That is why I chose you.”
There was a murmur in my ears, likely of astonished voices. Or perhaps it was a growl of outrage from the king’s attendants. Or perhaps it was the blood beating in my ears. I shook my head.
“I’m not fit for such matters, sir. I have never—”
“The case is this,” said King Rudof, rising from his chair. He spoke well, as for a large audience. He sounded pleased with himself. “These gentlemen own orchards, having inherited them in tail-male through many generations. Until their grandfathers’ time, the boundary between their plantations was a small river, called the Newtabank, which also irrigated both properties. This body of water meandered as rivers will, and each year the loops of its meander cut farther and farther away from the straight. As rivers will.” The king glanced at me one of his deadly charming glances. He was deep in his
judicial role and conscious of his own immersion. He wanted me to know he was conscious of it. His attendants chuckled appreciatively, as though the glance had been for them.