Treason's Shore (36 page)

“Sleepweed, you think?” Gillor asked. And on Dasta’s nod, “Why would he swallow that?”

“Because I don’t think he did. Not by himself. Fox did it to him. Fox is gone,” Dasta added.

Chapter Twenty-three

I
NDA began climbing up into the stands around the parade court, for this was the first day of the Summer Games. The middle section of the middle stone bench was not marked off in any way, but everyone left that space empty. That was where the royal family sat, and everybody knew it.

Half a dozen steps up Inda paused, one foot resting on the next stair. People stopped behind him until there was a line of impatiently shuffling spectators. A quick, covert whisper “The Harskialdna” riffled back down the line. No one yelled or elbowed; one, then two people eased around him, and when he just stared witlessly up at that empty bench, people flowed around in twos and threes, filling the rest of the stands.

Inda had been caught by the memory of his watching that bench when he was ten: how looming and inscrutable the king and his brother seemed, seated with a thin woman with a triangular face Inda barely recalled. She was Barend’s mother, the Harandviar. Tdor’s title. Following hard was a flood of memories: the dust, the snapping banners, the excitement of a shared secret tempered by the frequent and heavy-handed warnings from brothers not to expect any audience, or praise, and definitely no accolade, assuming the Royal Shield Arm was even there. Tanrid’s brown eyes as he shaded his eyes against the sun.
Father almost never comes the year he has to ride back for Convocation. Last Games he didn’t even come though it was alter-year
. At the time Inda had thought Tanrid said it so Inda wouldn’t get unrealistic expectations, but now he wondered how much hurt had been there.

If only he could talk to Tanrid!

The intense longing jolted him back into the here and now. He started up the steps. All spring and summer seemed like an unending stream of reminders of expectations that had turned out to be impossible. Everyone said that the academy was running fine. It didn’t feel fine. He knew he could command battle. He made a plan, he led from the front and used all his wits and strength until not an enemy stood around him.

Teaching boys?

Inda reached the royal family seat, remembering that the Royal Shield Arm, as head of the academy, was the one to decide if the boys would get the accolade. How had he managed to forget that? No. He had not forgotten. He had just never thought about what it meant.

He dropped down beside Hadand and Tdor, who were talking in low voices.

Evred arrived then, causing a stir among the Runners waiting with the trumpets and the boys impatiently nudging and wriggling beyond the corral gates. Evred sat down next to his wife, his profile tense.

Inda leaned across the women and punched Evred in the arm. “Evred. Hadand. You’re going to have to tip me the signal if you think they’ll get the accolade.”

Evred rubbed his jaw. “Better not than too often.”

Inda sighed. What was too often? But Evred had his wall-face on again, he stared straight ahead, fists on his knees.

Hadand realized something she’d been peripherally aware of for half a year: Inda was the only person who crossed in and out of that invisible space Evred surrounded himself with. Inda didn’t even seem to be aware of it. But Hadand could not imagine anyone else daring to hit Evred on the arm.

She shook away the thought. “Remember to listen to the crowd around you. If they really expect it, they are usually right.”

Inda leaned against Tdor and muttered in a whisper, “I want to give the brats the back of my hand.”

Tdor stifled the impulse to remind him that the stands were filled with families of the boys. “They think it was a great year,” she said. “You have to have seen that at the banquet last night!”

She’d had to attend the Summer Games banquet for the Jarl families the years she was here for training. The tense atmosphere of those long ago banquets and the geniality of the previous night’s could not have been more different.

Even Evred had seemed more relaxed while chatting with Horseshoe Jaya-Vayir, here for his last Summer Game: his son and nephew would go to the guard for their two years once the game was over.

“It wasn’t a good year,” Inda said under his breath, gaze beyond the waiting Runner with the horn. “Fox would’ve had them all trained.”

“Fox,” Tdor retorted, “would just get rid of the Honeyboys and the rest of the troublemakers. You have to take Jarls’ sons, whatever they’re like.”

“Inda. Fist up,” Hadand said out of the corner of her mouth. Inda hastily raised his fist to signal the official start to the games.

The boys cheered, some drumming on the temporary railings set up for the horses. It felt so strange, after all those years of wishing he was down there with the boys. What a laugh on himself!

Tdor gave him a mockingly severe look. “So you’ll have to revise your methods for next year.”

“Had to everyday.”

“So did I,” she reminded him, as below, the seniors took down the makeshift gate and began to bring out the horses for the scrub shoeing.

Inda watched some of the senior boys execute riding tricks on the horses’ backs. “But your girls aren’t brats.”

“Some of them are,” she countered. How to express the truth? “I think you expected the boys to be like you. If you’re not going to beat them into instant obedience, then you have to expect they’ll have their own motivations. Ideal training might be ideal for ideal people.” A shout went up as a senior did a handspring from a horse’s back to the next horse, and she raised her voice slightly. “Hadand and I were talking about that this morning just before inspection.”

The shout died away as the seniors ceased showing off and tied the animals to the rail.

Inda drummed lightly on his knee, sighing as the scrubs ran out and lined up squirming and nudging. “Yeah, they’re good when I’m there, but when I’m not, Honeyboy was slanging everyone, including me. Keth got into fights all spring. The horsetails scragged the ponytails. I keep trying to be Gand, but it doesn’t work.” He nodded at the waiting bugler, who played the call.

The scrubs promptly started struggling, scrapping, shoving, shrieking, as people in the stands laughed or shouted encouragement.

Hadand said, “Inda, where are your wits? Those boys love you. They will do anything for you!”

Tdor was aware of Evred listening silently. “Your mother told me something before I left. Since I was about to be training girls I don’t know, unlike at ho—at Castle Tenthen, where I’ve known everyone all my life. She said unless there’s immediate danger, two things motivate the young: competition and desire for attention.”

Evred joined the conversation, though he did not look away from the scrambling boys on the field. Inda was surprised Evred could hear over the noise around them. “There are worse motivations than game wins and stings.”

Hadand leaned past Tdor. “Here’s another thing, Inda. The boys act out because they want your attention. They never wanted Gand’s. They’re too scared of him.”

Inda made a skeptical face. “They’re not afraid of me, yet everyone keeps saying I have a rep for being rough and tough?”

“You’re rough and tough on the battlefield.” Tdor chuckled. “Their fathers and uncles and relatives have told them that. You never scrag anyone just to strut, and also, they can tell you like them. Gand grew up perfecting that dragoon disdain. You just never think about what your face says.”

Inda waggled his fingers. “Maybe we need a mirror in our rooms so I can practice. What’s a Gand face, anyway? How about this?” He slitted his eyes, twisted his mouth into a sneer, and stuck out his jaw.

Hadand waved at him in amused disgust, then turned her attention to the field.

“Looks like you got burrs in your drawers.” Tdor elbowed him. “Pay attention.”

The little boys were halfway through the shoeing. They were busy competing each for himself, just like the boys had been doing for generations. And yes, it
was
really funny to watch as they rammed into one another, dropped shoes.
Splash!
Honeyboy Tya-Vayir pushed Harstad Tvei into the closest horse trough, and laughter rose up from the audience. Inda did not see a hint of shock or disappointment that these ten-year-olds weren’t fast and competent.

“I guess I expected more out of them. I guess . . . I don’t know, somehow it feels like me being judged down there, that if they laugh it’s at me.”

“Boys,” Tdor stated, “are going to laugh. And so do the girls. If children can’t laugh at their elders, how can they expect to do better? We laughed before things got dangerous. I missed the laughter afterward.”

Inda found no answer, but the boys’ fooling around disturbed him.
This is why the Harskialdna stays distant,
Inda told himself, sitting back and trying to look serious.
Next year will be different—I won’t teach ’em anything they can use on each other
.

The day rolled toward its end, the boys’ skills neither demonstratively better or worse than any of the other years Evred had sat in these stands or watched from the gates. But the general atmosphere carried a qualitative difference, less sharpness, less of the old undertone of anger. As far as he could see, he was the only one aware of it.

Evred tested his observation over the next few days, without discussing it with anyone.

By the last day of the games, he knew that Inda was at the center of the new atmosphere, though Inda himself was not aware of it.

It was clearest at the siege, the most popular event of all, during which the queen’s girls defended a ramshackle building hammered together for the horsetails to attack. The boys mounted a clever enough attack, a three-pronged assault in which the feint was unclear, sending the girls running back and forth.

But the girls’ running was to a purpose, not just frenzied dashing about. On a whistled signal the girls leaped out, each with her target, and the big horsetails hadn’t a hope of defending against the practiced Odni sweeps and falls.

One, two, three, the boy captains of each group were sat upon, wriggling and cursing in futility, and the boy commander was surrounded by determined girls ready to treat him likewise. Seeing his forces thoroughly routed, he raised his hand in surrender, and the packed stands cheered wildly.

Hadand and Tdor grinned at one another. As the four walked toward the residence to change for the last banquet for Jarls and their offspring, Tdor said to Inda, “I think that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Hadand leaned over. “Showed the boys just how useful those drills are.”

“Too late,” Inda said. “They aren’t getting ’em next year. What a bunch of pugs!”

Hadand stopped, and put a hand on her brother’s chest to halt him. “Inda, those boys have been killing themselves to master their double-stick and lance and arrow-shooting from horseback, just to impress you. They can’t use any of that on these sieges.”

“But they could have learned to be fast with their hands,” Inda retorted. “They never took the Fox drills seriously.”

Tdor and Hadand exchanged looks. For generations the women had kept the Odni from the men because the purpose of it was to be able to take a bigger, stronger man by surprise.

Well, things had changed, and men were learning it.

“New things take time,” Hadand said.

“But old things—like competition between boys and girls—make changes go faster.” Tdor smiled as the girls departed, hooting, calling insults, and laughing. The boys eyed the girls, some uncertain, flushed and grumpy at their total defeat. Others pretended affront as an excuse to tease and flirt. “You watch. They’ll be more serious next year. Not because anyone that age sees how the new ways might be a help in the future, but because next year, the girls won’t be able to laugh at them, ha ha.”

Hadand chuckled as Inda rolled his eyes.

Evred slipped away, leaving the others to the fathers who, in praising the year’s games, were all really fishing for praise for their boys and girls. That was now Inda’s and Tdor’s job. Evred had only to preside at the last banquet, then the noise and interruptions of the Summer Games would be over.

He was surrounded by people demanding his attention, from whom he detached himself with the privilege of his rank. His head ached with the unexpected impact of memory. He’d been watching the Summer Games for years, but somehow, sitting there with Inda an arm’s length away had brought their own year so vividly to mind: Dogpiss, laughing in the sunlight . . . Noddy slouching along, cooing to the horses as he led them to Mouse Marth-Davan . . . Flash’s laughter. The horsetails, looking so old then, but so horribly young, all lined up at the corral rail: Hawkeye, Manther, Buck. His own brother. All either dead or horribly maimed. How sharp was the knife of memory! His head throbbed with it.

He had to be alone before he could trust his public face again.