There were still occasional letters from Evred, always friendly, always about kingdom affairs, for Inda never again attended Convocation. Each spring he’d say, “Next year” but by the time autumn came, there was always some important reason keeping him at home. He did travel up to witness Jarend’s Games every year, after he left Darchelde. When he reached the royal city he was immediately surrounded by his old cronies. They’d exchange news and reminisce amid much laughter. Inda never told anyone how much it always hurt, that first sight of the royal city on the horizon—he couldn’t even explain it to himself. Nothing bad ever happened . . . but the pain was still there. Just like the nightmares that had never gone away.
Inda smiled down at the letter, then shook his head. “It feels like it was a hundred years ago when we were scrubs.” Then he went inside to continue getting ready for his spring ride.
That night, Tdor woke up to the sudden sound of rain and discovered that she was alone in bed.
Her mood turned from unease to acute worry when she could not find Inda. Not in the stable, or his rooms, or Whipstick’s office, or even out in the court. Her random checks became a methodical search, bottom to top, until at last, on the western wall, she found a figure lit by one of the magically burning torches—one of the many quiet gifts Signi had left behind on her single visit to Tenthen. She ran forward, and there she found Inda kneeling on the stone in the steady rain, arms wrapped tightly around himself, body shaking with noiseless grief.
Tdor flung herself down at his side, rain thrumming in her face. “Inda. My dear one. Is there danger? What is amiss?”
He turned away. “No, no. I’m sorry. I’m just being a fool.”
“Tell me.”
Inda shook his head. “I hate to load my ghosts onto you.”
“Ghosts!”
Inda shook his head. “It’s memory ghosts, not the ones that walk around.”
“Tell me.” She added with some asperity, “As for burdens, not knowing is far worse, because then I’m left wondering.”
He blinked rain away and looked into her face. “I’m sorry, Tdor. I don’t mean to be a burden. You know I’d do anything to rid myself of nightmares. This one was worse than the usual, that’s all.”
“We share,” she said, desperate to be understood, to not tread wrong. “If you can, tell me.”
“It was Dogpiss. I saw him, so real. Falling away, and I can’t reach his hand, and his eyes—I can still see them now, and it’s been what, thirty years? He’s falling, and I can’t catch him. I didn’t catch him, and he died. The Harskialdna was right to blame me—”
“Inda. It’s just not true.”
He dug his palm-heels into his eyes. “How many people have died because of me? I cannot count them all, though I relive those battles, nightmare after nightmare. What will happen to Kenda when he goes to the academy? The other boys all fight Jarend, just because he’s my son. He doesn’t tell me, but I know.”
Tdor said slowly, “Jarend reminds me of Tanrid. He just shrugs those things off. Hadand invited him over for Restday as an excuse, after the healer reported he’d cracked a rib that first year. We didn’t tell you because it was Hastred Marlo-Vayir, the one they call Hot Rock. We didn’t want you and Buck angry with the boys, or with each other.” When she felt Inda’s slight shrug of understanding, she went on. “Jarend told her he figures he has to be tougher than the other boys if he’s going to be tough on an enemy.”
Inda sighed. “Kenda isn’t like that.”
“He will be popular because he makes everyone laugh. And Jarend will watch out for him there just as he does here. Inda, please see the truth, not your night fears. There is no more Anderle-Harskialdna, no more Venn threat. The academy runs exactly the way you yourself fashioned it. Hadand says that Evred will not consider the slightest alteration from what you did, because Gand says it’s the best it’s ever been, ever and ever.”
Inda let his breath out, and shifted, wincing. She recognized that there was pain in his joints, probably from sitting in the cold rain on the hard stone. She rose, taking his wrists and pulling him to his feet. His fingers wound tightly in hers as he said, “But don’t you see? Evred and I, we designed it all to make them ready for war. Hot Rock and Jarend fighting, they’re practicing for killing enemies. Is it true that he who spends his life getting ready finally goes looking?”
“They emphasize defense. You’ve heard Jarend when he comes home. Defense, just like you said back then. There is no plan for any wars; Hadand would have told me.”
Inda leaned his forehead against her collarbone as rain drummed on them both. She wound her long arms around him and held him against her, willing the grief away.
After a time, “You know what Evred wrote to me?” Inda lifted his head, and it was clear he was quoting exactly. “
You remember your first day back, when you took me to Daggers Drawn? There is a new tradition. I had not known until Hastred brought it to my attention. That table you and I sat at is now reserved for the horsetail commander who wins the Banner Game flag, along with his riding captains. The honor the boys perceive there is not mine, but yours . . .
”
Inda leaned his head on her shoulder. “I know he meant it well. But I can’t stop thinking of Dogpiss, and I wonder why we measure glory by the pain of death.”
Tdor said, “Come, Inda. Come inside and rest. Our boys are safe. They will not ride to war, because the kingdom is at peace. Jarend and Hot Rock are not enemies. Kenda will make friends with the other sons at the academy, friends for life. We have raised them well, to be fair, to value what is good in one another, to respect hard work of any kind. There is peace, Inda. You brought it. Evred keeps it. Come. Come inside, where it’s warm.”
Inda came obediently, and they walked inside, where it was quiet, smelling of herb-candles, and down past the nursery rooms where once they had slept and now the children were sleeping.
On the landing Inda paused, looking at Jarend’s room, once his brother’s, and he said, his expression uneasy, “When trouble does come, it will rise first at the academy. We all thought the Fox banner stood for glory, but what if glory is just another word for damnation?”
He was rocking again. Tdor’s throat hurt with grief. “Inda, never forget that you gave us peace when it would have been so easy to go on fighting, on and on. Come to bed.”
They reached the bedroom, and Inda sighed, massaging his shoulder. Tdor’s eyes stung as she helped him out of his wet clothing and into dry, and then made him sit down so she could towel the wet out of his hair and comb it smooth again. She brushed slowly, gently, and her reward was to see the tension slowly smooth from his brow, and he ceased shivering.
“Ah, beloved,” he murmured, his fingers caressing the faint lines in her brow, tracing the shadows at the sides of her lips. “How beautiful you are.”
She couldn’t help a chortle.
Inda heard the unsteadiness in her attempt at laughter, the disbelief, and beneath it, question.
“Joret was never beautiful to me,” he said. “Not ugly, either. She was just Joret. Pleased the eye, but beauty, it strikes you right here.” He closed a fist lightly and thumped it against his breast bone. “Joret was art. Tau was art. But to me, you were always beautiful. Before I really knew what beauty was. It was your face I saw when I was away. Awake and in dreams.”
She laughed again, even more unsteadily, but he heard the genuine humor there, then she wound her fingers in his wet hair, bumped up against him, and said, “Prove it.”
And he did. They loved with passion and with tenderness and with laughter, and when they were too tired to love again, he lay beside her, listening to her breathing, and said, “You make me happy. Don’t say I do that for you, not when I yelp at night, and whine about my arm, and any beauty I ever had was long lost with all these scars. Do I do anything for you?”
“Everybody is beautiful. Life is beauty. Especially the young. But you?” She grinned, and nipped him on the ear. “You make me burn.”
He grinned like a boy again and hugged her tight.
Presently he fell asleep, and this time stayed that way; his face looked peaceful, outlined by the soft golden glow from the torchlight on the walls. His grip on her had loosened.
So she slipped from the bed, ignoring the cold air, and knelt down by her trunk.
I cannot take away our painful memories,
she thought as she unsheathed her knife.
And maybe we humans need to remember the pain, to help us learn not to cause it. But there are things I can give to Inda. Each day’s small triumphs, moments of laughter. Little stories shared, they will add up and up, into a life of contentment. His greatness was in knowing when to empty his hands of steel and death. Mine shall be in filling his hands with life
.
She carved another notch to honor her vow.
Afterward The King Who Was an Emperor
I
N the days between Hadand’s sudden death after her horse slipped on black ice, and the magnificent memorial bonfire attended by what appeared to be the entire royal city, all bearing torches, Evred made a decision.
Directly after the bonfire, he walked between his sons from the parade ground, which had not been big enough to hold all who wished to be there. The wintry air glowed with a fiery river of torches, creating a semblance of day as people streamed back through the tunnel and the castle courtyard to the city, many still singing.
Here and there echoed the laughter of the young; Evred shook away irritation. They had showed their respect by their appearance despite the shocking cold so late in the season. Evred could imagine Hadand’s twisted smile, were she here. Just weeks ago she’d said, after yet another of their daughter-by-marriage’s hall-ringing tantrums as she broke with another hapless lover,
I finally figured out Fabern Ola-Vayir’s purpose in our lives. She’s living proof that though we can educate the younger generation, we can even command them, we cannot control their lives, much as we think we’d do a better job of it
.
He lifted his gaze to Hastred’s tall, dark-haired profile at one side. The ruddy torchlight made him seem older than he was. The heirs were past their wild youth, born early to their parents, a result of those desperate years when Evred was afraid there would be no more heirs left to the kingdom.
On his other side, red-haired Tanrid gave his father his lopsided smile, then made a move in the direction of the stable. He was so seldom still.
“Bide a moment,” Evred said, and his sons paused, Tanrid mid-stride. “Come with me. I’ve something to discuss.”
They walked in silence. It was a companionable silence, but still a silence. Evred had long accustomed himself to the fact that he had nothing in common with either of his sons. Tanrid could not read, though he was a dashing Sierandael—Evred thought with pride of Tanrid’s leading of the restless younger generation to Ghael, where they rid the border mountains of infestations of brigands that had begun preying on the increase in trade. But when Tanrid was at home, he stuttered as much as had the Uncle Aldren he’d never met. Tanrid’s academy name had been Jabber. Evred had hated the cruelty of that, though Tanrid never seemed to mind, except when Fabern sneered it. Hadand talked Evred out of his first impulse, which was to forbid it. By the time Tanrid was a horsetail the name had shortened to Jab, and now in the songs about the Ghael Hills routing of brigands he figured as Jab the Sword-swinger.
There were no songs about Hastred-Sierlaef, who was worthy and dutiful and hard-working. Hastred was only interested in horses during his rare leisure moments.
Evred led the way to his study, seldom used during winter any more. The kingdom had been quiet for so long that Evred had been spending more of his winter in the archives, organizing the family papers, annotating them, translating the Iascan archives into Marlovan. The days of using Marlovan only in the field were over. It was a good language, what matter that it used another tongue’s lettering? He’d learned that that was more common than not.
“Father?” Hastred said, as Tanrid shifted about restlessly.
Evred broke the reverie he hadn’t realized he’d fallen into, and said, “I have decided to lay aside the crown.”
Hastred’s straight brows were as dark as his hair. His coloring was so like his grandfather Tlennen, yet his features unlike. He did not look pleased, or angry. He knew how much work that meant, but he had always squared to whatever task he was set, with a methodical exactitude that had astounded his tutors in the schoolroom. He liked lists, and order. Ruling all of Halia would just require a bigger set of lists. Evred could almost read his thoughts as Hastred’s abstract gaze moved slowly over the crimson rug on the floor to the desk.
Tanrid whistled softly, for once standing still. His gaze shifted between them, and Evred saw his unspoken question, a need for reassurance. “I am not falling on my sword, I just think it is time. Tanrid, you have been Sierandael ever since you left the academy, so nothing will change for you, except that your orders will now come from your brother, as is proper. Hastred, you have sat beside me in council, at Convocation, and in here, since you left the academy. You will know what to do.”
“When?” Hastred asked.
“Tomorrow,” Evred said.
“Oh.” Hastred did not know what to think. His father had always seemed ageless, strong as a tree. Hastred had been content with the quiet rhythm of their lives when Fabern was elsewhere. He liked quiet, and order. The first shock of his life had been his mother’s death; here was another shock, that his father would go away. “Where will you go?”
“To the north.”
Hastred struggled to accept, to comprehend. He had grown up knowing that some things just were, you had to accept them, and live around them. Like the prospect of being married to Fabern Ola-Vayir, accomplished a few years ago.
“Vedrid is arranging things,” Evred said, watching comprehension work its way into Hastred’s expression. Comprehension and decision. First the little things, then the cascade that would build to the greater ones. He must go away, leaving Hastred the freedom to make them. “Vedrid will ride with me; the other Runners I leave to you. The Jarls would hate riding back to another Convocation in the worst winter we’ve had since I was young, so I suggest you summon them to make their vows at midsummer, like I did.” Evred caught himself.
I am no longer king
. “But do as you think best. I want to depart quietly. I would rather you tell no one until after I am gone.”