Treason's Shore (24 page)

Evred knew why he wanted his men learning the two-knife style: because it had been developed by Fox Montredavan-An. Evred could not believe a Marlovan would design a fighting style superior to that taught at home and waste it solely on pirates. If Savarend “Fox” Montredavan-An came back with a force seeking to redress what he imagined to be the wrongs of his family, Evred wanted a force to meet them with equivalent training.

But he couldn’t find a way to bring that up and not sound like his uncle, looking for conspiracies everywhere.

Hadand and Tdor waited, Hadand watching Evred’s tense profile, Tdor’s attention on Inda, who just hunched over his bowl, spooning up his tomato-and-cheese soup as if nothing was amiss.

Maybe nothing
was
amiss. Evred ceased tapping, then said, “Volunteers, then. And see how it goes. Open it to any who wish to learn. Will you begin it soon?”

“Sure.” Inda’s spoon waved in a circle. “Then I get someone to practice with.” He grinned.

Tdor said, “What about us?”

Inda looked her way blankly.

“Women.” She tapped her chest. “That fighting style is based on our Odni. Some of your improvements aren’t any use to us, using men’s different balance points, but a lot of it would improve our own performance. Does ‘any who wish to learn’ include us?”

“Why not?” Inda answered, before Evred could speak. “Everyone learns it on my ships. My former ships.” Inda dropped the spoon into his bowl. “I know it’s not custom for the men and women to train together, but why not begin? No harm in it that I saw when I was at sea.”

Tap, tap, tap.
Eyes turned toward the king.

“Run it as you will,” Evred said, and they turned their attention to the rapidly cooling meal.

The next morning, the half-watch before dawn, Tdor walked down to the inner court set aside for the new lessons. The air was bitter; the cold leached through the soles of her winter boots and two pairs of the thickest wool socks. She was the only woman there, though all the King’s Runners and a sizable number of the guard had turned out despite Inda’s uncompromising insistence on the extra early time.

Tdor turned her back on the men. She was the Harandviar, and she knew no one would say anything to her. But she felt all those eyes. Most were curious, many were affronted: men learned attack, women defended. If women were here, was this new style really just fancy door-guarding?

Inda began the warm-ups without any ceremony. Most of these exercises were easy because they were designed for balance as well as strength. They were also meant to get their arms working as a unit, the way the women used their knives in the Odni. Tdor cast a glance at the torchlit lines of men when she whirled and kicked, arms in the first Wind defense. She was startled to see how difficult it was for the men to use their left hands. Most jerked the left forearm back into the habitual shield position.

When Inda motioned her to a place in the middle as demonstrator, there was no sound of protest.

And so it went for the next few days.

After a week, Inda did not just have Tdor demonstrate warm-ups, he asked her to show them proper form in sparring exercises. The first time was so disconcerting she almost stumbled, flushing furiously, but Inda’s hands were steady and firm, his smile just for her. “Pretend I’m Jeje,” he whispered, and she laughed, remembering the dark-browed young woman she’d liked instantly. And had missed when Inda returned without her.

By the end of the first month, more women appeared, though they kept to one side of the parade ground, the men ceding them the space wordlessly. Fewer men were there as well, as Inda had predicted, though all the King’s Runners remained, from the boys in training to the older ones who mostly confined themselves to keeping records. He never said anything about who came or went, just taught whoever was there. Once in a while he’d choose someone out of the crowd and he wouldn’t go easy and slow. He’d set aside his knives and use only his hands, becoming a whirl of gray coat skirts until the fellow was lying on the ice-cold stones, the side of Inda’s stiffened fingers against the beating veins in his neck.

Tdor could not see what Inda saw revealed in these fellows’ movements; the men looked uniformly awkward to her, as they tried with varying success to force long-trained muscles into new patterns. She suspected some kind of challenge from the ones he picked out, which Inda answered equally wordlessly.

By the end of two months, Mistress Gand and the female teachers at the queen’s training had begun to join Tdor each morning. Hadand had ridden to Nelkereth on her promised trip to interview people for the coveted northern post or she would have been there as well. The Runners she hadn’t taken were all there.

One morning they finished just as snow began to fall in earnest. Tdor walked away with Mistress Gand, who whacked her hands against her sides. “Fingers gone numb,” she said. “Tdor, I’m seeing some adaptations we can make. The men seem to have learned that real power comes from the belly, but they still drive it through the shoulders.”

Tdor had tucked her hands into her armpits. “Yes! I’ve been thinking the same, there’s too much upper body in their version of the Leaps, they don’t see how to use their hips—”

The women ahead parted wordlessly. Tdor broke off just as Evred strode down the passage toward them. He was rarely here for the drills—he trained with Vedrid and Kened, his First Runners.

“Carry on, everyone.” Evred touched his chest in response to the thumps of fists against thick coats. “Where’s Inda? I’ve a question.”

“Went to guard side—” Tdor began, then remembered that magic ring Evred wore, and so did Inda. She wondered if he asked out of courtesy. This thought gave her that inward prickle of worry.

Evred made a polite gesture of thanks and walked on with hasty step.

Mistress Gand was believed to be tougher than her husband by the girls under her exacting eye. Few of them saw the humor in her sun-bleached brows and lined face. “Venn on their way back?” she commented.

“I’ll order lunch,” Tdor returned. “I heard they like pickles.”

Mistress Gand hooted a laugh. They parted, Mistress Gand to drill the women and Tdor to run upstairs to Hadand’s office to attack that pile first.

So she was surprised when Inda appeared not long after, and kicked the door shut so hard the slam echoed in a sharp clap off the stone walls.

Tdor swerved on her mat, staring. She’d seen Evred angry several times since they’d come to the royal castle. He was frightening when angry, the way he turned to stone, his voice so soft you shouldn’t be able to hear it, but you did, because of the precision of his consonants.

Since his return, she’d never seen Inda angry. Inda’s anger startled Tdor into a laugh, though the impulse was less humorous than a weird thrill of uneasiness.

A glint of gold flickered across the office like a captured ray of sunlight.
Clank!
Inda’s magical golden case hit the dull knife Hadand kept as an opener for sealed letters.

“Inda?”

He slammed his fist against the door. “Evred just got a note from Barend. You know, that locket thing they have.” He smacked his chest. “Barend doesn’t have one of these
damn
things.”

“Should he have?”

“Evred didn’t want him taking one. If he had, I could make even bigger mistakes,” Inda exclaimed, and kicked the door frame. “Damn. Damn! I
knew
Fox hated us—that is, Marlovans—but I thought we’d resolved it all. I thought if I trusted him, then it would—oh, shit. It doesn’t matter, I was just stupid.” He booted a small stool, which skittered across the bare stone floor and clattered into one of the chests containing old orders and letters.

Tdor rose, her heart beating fast. “You’re here, Inda. You must want me for something besides watching you kick apart my office.”

Inda flushed red to the ears and stumbled to a stop. “I’m sorry, Tdor.” He dropped onto the other mat.

Tdor sat down next to him as he clawed back loosened strands of hair with a shaking hand. “Barend wanted to know if I’d ordered Fox to Bren with the
Death
and the others. Of course I didn’t!”

“Fox Montredavan-An is in Bren?”

“With my fleet! It’s my fault. I told him about my secret plan—”

“What secret plan?”

“Oh, there’s no use in explaining now. When I think how
close
we came to fixing all the problems . . . Damnation!” With his left hand he picked up the gold case and flung it with all his strength into the fireplace, where it clattered down directly onto the Fire Sticks. “What use is that thing anyway? No one writes to me, not even Tau anymore. Why did he stop overnight like that? Because I bored him? Jeje never wrote to me, not once. The only thing I brought about with these damn things was getting Noddy killed, and setting Fox onto Barend—”

“Inda. Inda, tell me what happened.” She got up and used a wrist knife to poke the case off the fire. It had already begun to twist in the heat.

Inda stared at the ceiling, breathing hard until he got a grip on himself. “Barend’s in Bren. Says Fox and the fleet showed up. So I wrote to Fox just now. Asked him why he went to Bren. Asked him what he intended to do there.”

He tended to keep his right hand close to his side, especially after practice. Now it opened, and there lay a crumbled strip of paper. Tdor bent over Inda’s palm and read the slanting letters:

I have yet to decide
.

Chapter Fourteen

T
HE docks in Bren Harbor were deserted except for the roaming patrols of guards, all fully armed. On every single rooftop along the quay—warehouses, stores, taverns—guards roosted in the cold, snowy weather, bows to hand and a cache of arrows apiece.

Behind windows, people watched. They speculated to no purpose, worried, cursed, laughed, laid bets. Others threw up their hands and went on with their lives, some with a pirate-thumping weapon ready to hand, just in case.

The sinister black pirate trysail floated in the middle of the harbor, its consorts at either side, crews (at least a hundred spyglasses made certain) ready to flash sail at word or sign from the lone red-haired figure, dressed all in black, lounging on the captain’s deck.

Through an entire day the spyglasses stayed trained on that ship. Not long after nightfall, a stir at the main dock brought word relayed up to the watch commander: “Woman wants to hire a boat to take her out to the pirate.”

“What? This I have to witness.”

Jeje never saw Barend. As soon as she returned from her interview, she skinned out of the fancy clothes, rolled them up into a ball (with some regret at treating silk with so little respect), and shoved them into her bag. She got into her sailor gear, pulled on the shapeless wool hat hanging by the door for everyone to use when going into the vegetable garden. Always scrupulous (according to her lights) Jeje left her old knit sock cap—too obviously a sailor’s cap—in its place. Then she hefted her new gear bag and under cover of darkness slipped through the garden, over the back fence, through another garden, and into the street, walking anonymously past the patrolling guards.

She spent the night at Chim’s, as the weather had turned too rough for rowing out into the harbor. Then there was the matter of the King’s Guard having the entire harbor locked down. Chim sent word to a couple of his more trusty watermen to be standing by when Jeje reached the first perimeter.

“Who are you? Where are you going?” the sentry captain asked.

“I want to hire a boat.” Jeje poked a thumb toward the hire craft floating at the dock. “Get back on board.”

“On board what?”

“My ship.”

“Which would be?”

By now she was surrounded. In the lantern light, naked swords gleamed. Not the time to be mouthy. “My ship’s out there on the water—”

“Look at this,” one interrupted, pointing under the terrible hat, where her ruby glittered in the lantern light. “She’s gotta be the pirate Jeje. I think you better get the commander.”

“I’m not a pirate.” At the various shufflings, shiftings, and snortings of disbelief, Jeje sighed. “Look, no one wants any trouble. I just want to get back on deck. Princess Kliessin already interviewed me yesterday,” she added.

The mention of the princess caused more looks and shuffles, then someone sent someone else loping off into the darkness as the warriors closed in around her, standing within sword length.

They stood like that, no one talking (Jeje wondering if she’d start a war if she asked the one who’d been eating fried onions not to stand on her toes) until the approach of running feet broke the circle. A tall, strong man with grizzled hair marched up. This just had to be the watch commander.

“You belong to yon pirate?” he asked.

“Yes.” That was simplest. “I’ve been acting as envoy,” Jeje said. “Saw the princess yesterday. Now I’m supposed to report back.” She jerked her mittened thumb toward the
Death
.