They went on out the innyard gate, walking fast, and Gar turned to Ciare, who was sobbing on Coll’s shoulder. She looked up at Dirk and Gar through her tears. “Thank you, my protectors! I could not have borne it if it had happened again! ”
“Again?” Coll went rigid, but managed to hold back the questions and only hold her, resting his cheek upon her hair, waiting for the sobs to pass—and slowly, the tension bled out of him.
When Ciare’s sobs slackened, she turned a tear-streaked face to Gar and said, “I cannot thank you enough, Sir Gar, for having saved us from spilled blood.”
“I’m not sure I would have minded doing a little spilling,” Coll grated.
“Oh, I know, my brave one!” Ciare pressed a hand against his chest, looking up into his eyes. “I was so frightened that you might strike to defend me, and be spitted on the young nobleman’s sword!”
Coll stiffened, but forced a smile and touched her cheek gently. “I don’t think I would have been the one struck down.”
“Even worse! For then they would have fallen upon you in a pack and beaten you senseless! And when you waked and found yourself in irons, they would have tortured you before they hanged you! Oh, I could not have borne losing you! Please, oh please, my brave one,” she implored him, “vent your anger on me if you wish, not on a man whose only real fault was that he was misguided! You heard what he said to your friend, even now! He didn’t know!”
Coll drew a sharp breath. “What a generous spirit you have, to be able to forgive so easily!”
“But rightly,” Gar said. “The young lord does have some sense of noblesse oblige, after all; he only needed his obligations made clear to him.”
“And you did so with great skill and gentleness!” Ciare turned back to Gar. “Oh, thank you, thank you, for holding them away with words, not with blows!”
“It was my pleasure,” Gar said gravely, “but it imposes an obligation on you, lass, one which I’m sure you have already fulfilled—to never say ‘no’ if you don’t mean it, or at least aren’t yet sure you mean ‘yes.’ ”
She stared at him, breathing, “I never have!”
“Nor did I think you had, as I have said,” Gar assured her, “but there are many women who aren’t willing to accept that responsibility. Of course, they will never really be women grown then, will they?”
Ciare frowned. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“That’s all right,” Dirk said. “Neither does he.”
“Lord Dandre is really a good young man, but misguided,” Gar told them. “If he tells what he has learned to other young lords, we may see the wars ended out of sheer duty.” He turned to Coll. “Is there a chance of it?”
Coll’s smile was sour. “I’d like to believe it, Master Gar, but there have been young lords of good heart before, many times before.”
Gar frowned. “What happened to them?”
“Their fathers died,” Coll said simply, “and they became lords in their own right. Then they changed, as I have told you.” He shrugged. “A lord is a lord, Master Gar. Maybe it’s the coronets they wear that infect their brains.”
“Perhaps,” Gar said darkly, “or perhaps it’s the power.” Coll shrugged again. “Coronet or power, what can be done about it?”
“Leave them the coronets,” Gar told him, “but take away the power.”
Coll stared, feeling fear chill him at the mere thought. What kind of man was this, who could speak so easily of curbing the lords?
They performed once more the next afternoon, but the innyard wasn’t quite so fully packed as it had been the day before, and the innkeeper told Androv several of his courtyard rooms had gone unrented. Androv knew the signs, so he thanked the man and told his players to pack. They took down the stage, filled the carts, spent one more luxurious night sleeping in real beds and had one more breakfast cooked in a kitchen, then rolled out of the innyard and onto the high road when the sun was scarcely above the horizon. As they passed the outskirts of the town, Kostya and Chester veered away from the carts and went jogging off the road through a screen of bushes. Coll was very curious, but he knew better than to ask.
Half an hour later, Coll was getting worried. “Look,” he told Ciare, “we’d better tell Androv that two of his players are missing.”
“He knows,” Ciare assured him.
“Yes, you all know each other’s business, don’t you?” Dicea said acidly.
“Always,” Ciare said, amused. “We’re like a big family, in a way.”
“And I’ve noticed how well the brothers and sisters get along,” Dicea said darkly.
Ciare laughed outright. “Or fail to, you mean? Yes, we have our rivalries—and yes again, we’re very much like two children vying for their parents’ favor.”
“Or two sisters vying for the same suitor,” Gar said. Both women gave him a glare, but he only asked, “You know the song, don’t you?”
That took them by surprise, and both stared at him. “Which song?”
“The song of the two sisters,” Gar said, and sang them the tale of the woman who pushed her younger sister into a river so that she might win the younger’s lover for herself. They listened enthralled; Gar gave them the nicer version, in which the miller tried to save the girl and buried her when she died, but her breastbone rose to the surface, and a minstrel made a harp of it—a harp which, when he played it in her father’s hall, sang the story of the elder sister’s treachery for all to hear.
As Gar was finishing, two figures darted from a grove just ahead of them—Kostya and Chester, each with a fat chicken under one arm, the other holding the beak shut. They leaped up, and friendly hands hauled them aboard the carts, where they burrowed under the cloth and among the trunks to disappear.
Coll stared, scandalized, and Dirk asked, “Just what have you two been up to?”
“It’s a crime to let a stray chicken wander off to become the prey of a fox,” answered a voice from the interior of the cart.
“The fox should know,” Gar said, amused. “Are you certain those chickens were strays?”
“Quite certain,” the other voice assured him. “We made sure of it ourselves.”
“You just couldn’t stand to see them penned up and fretting to have a nice walk outside their coop, eh?”
“Who should know better than those who love the freedom of the open road?” Kostya’s voice countered.
“Then let us hope you continue to enjoy that freedom, boys,” Androv said, and shook the reins. “Gee-up, you! Go a little faster, there!”
“You shall indeed, Your Grace,” the castellan agreed. “However, this proud stripling now has most of Earl Insol’s soldiers to drive before his own.”
“What matter? I shall have more! There’s not a one of us ten dukes who doesn’t know how vital it is to teach a new monarch his place! Send heralds to each of the other nine, Sir Lochran, and tell them the news, then tell them that Trangray says we must band together to teach this strutting peacock chick a lesson straightaway, or he will take it into his head to try to conquer us one by one!”
11
The Duke of Trangray erupted when he heard the news. “That arrogant child! That overweening princeling! How dare he assault one of his elders!”
The spy who had brought the news knew better than to try to answer. Trembling, he crouched, hoping it would pass as a bow, and backed toward the door half a step at a time.
“How dare you bring such atrocious tidings!” The Duke stepped up and backhanded the man across the face. He flew toward the wall, but one of the guards put out a hand and caught him. “Pay the man and send him back to learn more!” the duke snarled, and his seneschal nodded and took the spy aside.