Treason's Shore (30 page)

Was that because he had never liked being indoors, not from his earliest childhood? He’d done his duty—he was like his father that way—but he’d always been happiest outside. If he were a ghost—if human perceptions of justice existed beyond the realm of the physical—then Tanrid would be riding the borders through season after season, beyond the pain of winter’s cold or summer’s heat, accompanied by his beloved and faithful horses and hounds, all forever young.

The rightness of this vision seized her with poignant regret and longing and sweetness, all impossibly jumbled but all the more intense for the mixture. Her breath caught in her chest, and tears burned her eyes. If Jarend wakened, she would tell him her vision, in case it might comfort him as well.

Jarend lay so quietly in her blurred sight. A quick, sharp tingle through her nerves caused her to scrub her eyes against her wrist. The edge of her wrist sheath banged painfully against the bridge of her nose. She shook her head, then bent over Jarend. He was no longer breathing. Sometime during her air-dreaming he had slipped free of the leash.

She laid her hand on his thin chest. There was no steady beat of heart. Emotions chased through her mind, too swift to catch. She rose, her legs trembling.

Just outside the room Jarend’s old Runner was carrying a basket of sun-freshened linens. “He’s gone.” Her voice sounded like someone else’s in her own ears.

The Runner set down his basket very slowly. Fareas held out her hand, and they gripped their fingers together, then walked back into the airy room, now empty of life, to do what must be done.

Presently Fareas walked downstairs, not quite sure where she was going. Not sure even whom to speak to. Tdor now lived with Hadand and Inda in the royal city, Joret was gone over the mountains. Branid, scarce back a month from his first Convocation, was getting ready to ride out again on his first yearly border ride. And Whipstick had ridden out that morning to the forge.

She stopped outside Tdor’s chamber, regret so intense she trembled.

Women’s voices came from the workroom, where Dannor Tya-Vayir had organized the tapestry project. Fareas paused, fingers gripping her elbows. She felt uneasy around Dannor, though she could not define why. She knew the girls had never liked her, but Dannor had been the perfect guest since the wedding: first awake in the mornings, first to drill, and she had the eye of an artist. The tapestry would be as good as anything they could have ordered from Sartor back in more affluent days, and it would mean more, woven by their own hands on a loom they built themselves with wood taken from furniture donated from every castle family.

People change,
Fareas thought as she looked across the room at the tapestry design on the wall, Inda so carefully sketched by Dannor (after plenty of advice from everyone) that even inexperienced hands at the weft would not blur those wide brown eyes.
Some change for the better. Some for the worse. Until the day comes when the last breath goes out and there is the greatest change of all
.

Feeling like some other woman controlled her body, Fareas walked into the workroom, where she discovered a volunteer crew of off-duty guardswomen stationed along the loom. Under Dannor’s direction they endeavored to hold the sturdy linen warp yarn steady as they slowly rolled it onto the top of the warp beam.

Dannor stood back, head to one side as she eyed the handfuls of yarn, and Fareas’ aching eyes slid past her to the design Dannor had made. There were the mountains of the Andahi Pass, Inda standing on a cliff with sword raised. Just below and to the right a tall blond figure knelt, laying a straight sword at the feet of a noble red-haired figure in Montrei-Vayir crimson and gold.

The women became aware of Fareas. They stepped back from the loom and saluted. Dannor whirled around, sidling a quick look right and left before she too saluted, her practiced, dimpled smile flashing.

“The Adaluin is dead.” Someone else seemed to speak with Fareas’s voice.

Exclamations—decent sorrow without much real emotion—brisk offers to see to the messages, bonfire, memorial feast, were like scattered flower petals. Fareas scarcely heeded them. Dannor’s pretty eyes rounded, and her mouth formed a sorrowful “Oh.” Her brow puckered, she pressed her hands together in a posture of surprise and sorrow. But her eyes, they were as watchful as Fareas’ own.

The dizziness Fareas had done her best to ignore began to flicker at the edges of her vision and she sat down abruptly. The last thing she heard was Dannor’s voice ordering steeped leaf, a blanket, a fan, then, for the first time in her life, Fareas-Iofre fainted.

She was unconscious only for the space of a dozen breaths, but she woke with a sickening headache. This sign of weakness from the Iofre, whose calm strength had seemed as unending as a river, upset the household as much as the long-expected death of the prince.

Dannor had been a Jarlan for several years, ever since her mother-by-marriage, the Princess Tdiran, died in a riding accident on the ice. She forced herself to keep her voice sweet, and to make her orders into questions: “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to . . . ?”

By the end of the day, the servants were willing to take her orders as the Iofre was put to bed, the funeral fire organized, the celebration feast in the process of being prepared, and messages went out in all directions.

So when Dannor went in to see Fareas-Iofre, and in her most caressing voice told the princess that Branid and she wanted to marry, she smiled and waited for her reward.

Fareas-Iofre stared up at that lovely face. She had supported Branid’s heirship because the new king had ordered it. Dannor was related to one of the oldest Jarl families. Branid must be married—on the surface everything was as it should be—so what could she say but yes?

Chapter Nineteen

A
succession of pleasant days passed in the low mountains of Elsaraen above the vineyards, during which Tau rode, danced, listened, admired artistry in many forms. Not all his mother’s company was old. There were half a dozen young people—four of them young women. All single, all aristocrats, all adept at being agreeable.

One of them Tau had met in Bren during the time he lived under the guise of a pleasure house musician named Angel. At first he’d expected affront. He’d been a hireling, if a popular one. But he had forgotten the magic of rank. She claimed him as a close acquaintance, though in Bren they’d scarcely exchanged a dozen words.

As the days passed, he was aware of an increase in restlessness. This was a pleasant life, but not
his
life. He knew why Jeje had left once she’d discovered Tau’s mother in Nente, married to a duke. Jeje had surely hated Nente and its court because she hated the unearned privileges and powers of birth.

She hated
kings
.

As Tau exerted himself to be agreeable, he debated leaving. Only which way to go?

At length he became aware that his mother was expecting someone else. A woman? Matchmaking, to bind him with the ribbons of family and connection?

That night, he sensed a subtle air of triumph when they gathered for dinner. He said, “I think it’s time for me to move on.”

“Taumad.” Saris regarded him in dismay. “Why? Have I disappointed you in some way?”

“Mother, I have had a wonderful time, but I feel the need to get on with my life.”

She did not start an argument with the obvious
Cannot you make a life here?
“Please. Give me a morning of yourself, then. Just the two of us.”

It would be churlish not to agree.

And so, the next morning, Tau performed his drills in his enormous bedchamber for the last time. When he emerged, his travel gear packed, he found he found his mother waiting with a breakfast set for two in a charming room of pale yellow.

She welcomed him with genuine warmth, but he sensed intent, as with dainty grace she heaped his plate herself, giving him a generous pile of fluffy wheat cakes and pepper potatoes with cheese crumbled over them. Then golden eyes met golden eyes. “Would you like to inherit a dukedom?”

Tau dropped his gaze to the gilt-edged porcelain cup as she poured him freshly steeped Sartoran leaf. He lifted the tiny cup and breathed in the complicated scents that evoked spring fields, mountain wild flowers after a storm. Summer.

When he opened his eyes, she was still waiting for his answer. “Your duke would adopt me, old as I am?”

Your duke
. Her only acknowledgment of this clumsy hint at her motivation for her rise in rank was a faint pucker above her brows. He took that in, thinking that she was playing a role. She’d taught him that the life of art required one to live the role of the artist.

But her faint air of regret made him wonder if she did care for her duke in her butterfly way.

“Alas, no.” Her tone was cordial as she brushed her fingers over her waist. “His future duke or duchess is here. But if we present you at court, my husband’s rank, our name, and your manner and mode will bring you a range of possibility. I can name two charming single women who will inherit ancient duchies. I will admit there are few others who combine charm and wit with birth a suitable match for ours, but we could send you to Colend. You would not like Sartor now.”

“Aren’t there already enough Deis in Sartor?” Tau asked, laughing soundlessly. Then he leaned forward. “Mother, I appreciate your offer. You’ve always been generous with me.”

“I’m glad you said that.” It was almost a retort, but her tone was too pleasant, her smile too fond. He sensed he’d hurt her. “I trust you will honor me with your reasons for leaving.”

Few could manage such a request without sounding either pompous or provoking. But he did hear the challenge in her lack of question.

“You know how much difficulty I have had with expressing my true thoughts.” He frowned at his crumbled biscuit, not wanting to sound ac cusatory. He’d never minded running around naked as a small boy, but he had always hated the adults’ well meaning examinations of his every action, idea, and motivation, discussed endlessly as if he was a pet on display. He’d learned early to hide his thoughts—but all this his mother knew as well as he did.

“My reasons have to do with experience. What I’ve done. What I’ve learned.”

“Please go on,” she said.

“Thank you for bearing with me. I broke my habit of silence with Inda and Jeje. As much as I was able. But Jeje is somewhere in the world and hates writing. And Inda . . .”
Has Evred between us
.

Evred. Tau sat back, nerves tingling. He would not discuss Evred, but he could examine his impulse there. “Well, Inda’s busy being a Marlovan Harskialdna, which is about five men’s worth of work. So I’ve gone back to my old habit of talking inside my own head.”

She tipped her head, her manner attentive.

“It’s easy to say that people ought to be taken as they are, without pretence, or rank. That was why you and I fought so much when I was young. I resisted the roles we learned to play. But civilization—order—seems to be predicated on playing roles, and the more rank one has, the more levels of the pretence.”

“One might say, the greater need for privacy. But do go on.”

“There’s privacy to protect one’s true thoughts from what one says and does while among the others, what the Colendi call the court mask. Then there’s protecting one’s life.”

“Ah.”

“I think I’ve figured out social hierarchy. It’s the agreement to advance or withdraw in order of rank, because no matter where we are, we humans can’t seem to get away from rank. Somebody has to be first, so either we fight for it, or agree by other means. Face, manners, protocol are the other means.”

He looked up. Saris indicated he should continue.

“You did try to tell me, but I guess I had to learn it on my own. See it at work outside of life in Parayid. So my first experience in the world was shipboard. Rigid hierarchy. No face, but there is protocol as well as force. On board, the captain has as much power as any duke.”

“I was wrong in predicting you would return to me within half a year.”

“I almost did. After two months. But then I met Inda.” Tau shook his head. “Never mind, the subject was hierarchy, and the context my leaving your fine home, and your generous sharing of it. My first storm convinced me why the hierarchy aboard ship worked. Everyone knew what to do, and command was mostly based on experience. My next hierarchy was that of pirates. Based on speed. Skill. Above those, savagery. After that, Freedom Island, where rank was a complex net of naval successes and favor of the harbormaster. In Bren, I was back to aristocrats and entertainers. Then I was with the Marlovans, whose rank is less dependent on birth (though it is certainly present) than on military prowess.”

She had listened patiently. “Your conclusion?”

“The worst are pirates, a distortion of civilization.”

She smiled. “They are at their weakest when they assume the trappings of civilization.”