“We have heard the Abessu-Denorru’s request, and we shall ponder.” Tegestu said. “Whelkran Cascan, you shall inform me of any changes in the city.”
The small, agile chief of spies bowed.
Tegestu’s eyes slid over the gathering. “Are there any questions, ban-demmini?” he asked. “Does everyone comprehend the Abessu-Denorru’s request?” There were bows, a discrete rattle of armor, and no questions.
“You are dismissed. Ban-demmin Grendis, I would be obliged if you would accompany me.”
“Aye, bro-demmin.”
Tegestu rose from his stool, the other Brodaini and their Classini servants rose from their own places and began to file out of the chamber. Taking the arm of Grendis, his wife, Tegestu walked from the room to his own apartments and accepted the salute of the armored cathruni at the door.
Inside, his dog Yellowtooth rose from his bed to welcome him. As Tegestu bent low to greet the animal his rheumatic joints jabbed him with their delicate needles of pain. Yellowtooth was an old animal, twelve years now. His muzzle was grey with age; his eyes showed the milky white of cataract. Too old now for the hunting and chasing that had once been the hound’s purpose, Yellowtooth had been moved into Tegestu’s quarters and genteel retirement. Yet he scarcely showed his age at the moment, romping and frisking with Tegestu and Grendis as if he were a pup.
Tegestu straightened, shuddering to another shaft of pain in his joints. Yellowtooth followed as he and Grendis moved to their bedchamber, where Grendis silently helped him to disarm. It was a part of Brodaini formality to appear armed on all public occasions; only the ill and very elderly were excepted. Tegestu was seventy-one and the burden of the armor wearied him, but he was not willing to proclaim himself elderly just yet. He exercised daily to keep fit; he could still handle a weapon, and only he, and perhaps Grendis, knew how much his rheumatic body pained him, and how far the lifetime of warfare, the accumulation of scars and broken limbs, the constant campaigning in bad weather and sleeping on the ground, had advanced in its progress to drag him down.
Husband and wife disarmed, placing their armor on the mannequins that stood in the alcove devoted to personal weaponry. Dressed in tunic, trousers, and slippers they called for tea, and Tegestu stretched out on his mattress, face down, letting relief swim slowly into his limbs. Yellowtooth, with a grateful wheeze, lay down at his feet. Grendis reached out to touch with practiced fingers the back of his neck, massaging the tense muscles, the callused tissue that only partly protected the flesh that bore the weight of the armor straps. Tegestu sighed as he felt the fingers releasing his muscles, the tension draining away. Grendis knew his body well.
They were of an age, Tegestu and his wife; they had been betrothed at the age of nine, married at fifteen — that had been in the old keep at Remolina. The turrets had been decked with flags, Brodaini in gleaming white armor had marshaled in their ranks to celebrate the wedding of a young Brodainu of kamliss Pranoth to a Brodainu of kamliss Dantu, a middle-level marriage of two promising offspring who, in time, might become whelkrani, commanders of at least a hundred soldiers — or, if they were lucky and survived to an old and honored age, might be elected to the aldran, the body of elders who governed the clans. No one had expected, on that summery day with the elite of two kamlissi gathered in their numbers, that twenty winters hence Remolina would be wasted, the curtain walls razed and the keep torn open to the sky; that Tegestu and Grendis, born to the middle ranks, would have become senior commanders as those ranked higher were slain; that they would each be elected to the aldran before they were thirty-five; or that Tegestu, before he was forty, would be elected drandor, the head of kamliss Pranoth in exile. In another generation the very name of Remolina would be forgotten except as a footnote in some Brodaini history, a speck on some moldering map that had once marked a provincial capital sacked and burned by the winning side in a continent-wide civil war.
There was little that had not changed for the young man and woman who had been married that day fifty-six years before. They had shared much: campaigns, wounds, the loss of four children who had died in their youth of accidents and battles on land and sea, the loss of another child, a girl, wounded in the head and made simple until she died later, absently drowning herself in a well. Yes, Grendis’ fingers had learned his body welclass="underline" here was the scar along his ribs from the time when he’d been unhorsed in a swarm of spearmen; here the knot on his shoulder from the mace of the warrior she had in turn pierced with her sword; here was the silvery, puckered scar of the assassin’s arrow that had drilled through his lung and almost ended his life. She had nursed him through the subsequent fever, the wasting; she had cooked the food on which he’d regained his strength and stood over his mattress to make certain he ate it. He’d been lucky that time, and in more ways than one: the assassination attempt had come during a winter truce; otherwise he would probably have been out in the field and Grendis would have been unable to supervise his recovery.
Grendis’ hand slid down his lower back. There had been an injury there once, a riding accident, and sometimes the muscles knotted as if to guard against another sprain. He felt them relax. The body was scarred, but still in service; it was good for another five years, if war or assassination or illness didn’t cut him short.
The tea arrived, carried by Thesau, Tegestu’s Classanu servant, a companion of forty years and more. Thesau bowed to place the tray on the table by the bed and turned to Tegestu with an expression of concern on his kindly face. “Bro-demmin,” he asked, “shall I send for the masseurs?”
“Nay, ilean Thesau,” said Tegestu. “Ban-demmin Grendis knows these lean bones better than the masseurs. You may call for musicians to play in the next room.’’
“Aye, bro-demmin,” Thesau bowed and left the apartment. In a few moments there was a rustle of drapery in the next chamber, followed by quiet tuning; then the throb of the bohau and the strum of the tedec began to filter into the room. Tegestu began to smell the warm aroma of fragrant tea. One of their house cats came to join him on his mattress, curling up near his head and accompanying the instruments with its purrs.
Tegestu sighed, then rolled upright on the bed, crossing his legs. Grendis put her hand on his arm; there was a lazy, contented smile on her face. He kissed her and then served her a glass of tea, highly sweetened as she preferred it. Another little moment of peace, snatched from the encompassing arms of duty and war, one of a thousand such moments they had shared and learned to cherish, moments seized during the breaks of marches, in the predawn quiet before battle, in the lulls between official duties. Grendis sipped her tea calmly; Tegestu poured the steaming beverage into his own glass and drank as the tea’s aroma tickling his nose.
The music gently infiltrated from the next room. Tegestu reached out to take her hand; she smiled at his touch and clasped the scarred fingers. Tegestu remembered a poem she had written him once, and given to him just before he’d ridden from Connu Keep, his own tower on the edge of the sea. She’d been carrying their third child, but even so had been delegated to hold their home against any attack; the lines she’d written were direct in the manner of Brodaini speech, yet with a formal elegance and an eloquent sentiment.
I
shall seek your shadow before distant watchfires
As I gaze into the hearthfires of home;
Your far-off footfalls, your remote voice
Shall I hear in the wind that sighs in the crenels.
I shall ward your back from danger;