As Jame and Brier entered the ward, Rue made an unhappy sound behind them when she saw the others’ brave display. Clearly, she thought that her own lordan could have outshone them all with the Lordan’s Coat, but Jame had burned that haunted garment, relic of her detested uncle Greshan, earlier that winter—a necessary deed considering that his soul had been trapped in it, ready to possess whoever wore it. Nothing else in Greshan’s adopted wardrobe matched its splendor, nor had there been a chance yet to spend any of Jame’s new allowance on suitable finery. Jame had said that she didn’t care as long as her cadet jacket was clean and not too obviously patched. Now, however, she felt plain and out of place, a crow among peacocks.
Speaking of peacocks, there was Gorbel in a bright blue coat trimmed with lumps of coral and silver filigree, flanked by his five-commander Obidin and Fash.
“I had to bring him,” he had told Jame earlier, speaking of the latter. “Father ordered it.”
Jame wondered, not for the first time, what Lord Caineron was planning. He had made it clear that he wasn’t happy with Gorbel’s progress in discrediting her—enough to replace him? Now would be a suitably dramatic time.
To one side, two identical boys dressed in sunlit wheat gold were teasing a sullen third in storm gray flecked with opal lightning.
“The Edirr and Coman Lordans,” Rue whispered in Jame’s ear. Although a border brat, the cadet liked to show off her secondhand knowledge of Riverland politics, which might or might not be accurate.
“Do the Edirr always do everything in twos?” asked Jame, thinking of the Lords Essien and Essiar who shared power in their house.
“More often than not. The Edirr produce so many twins that it saves trouble.”
A little boy, perhaps four years old, pelted shrieking between them, pursued by a harried Kendar.
“Danior’s son and heir,” said Rue wisely.
Meanwhile Jame had spotted a familiar face across the ward and went to greet Kirien. White-haired Kindrie was with her.
“I came to see the show,” he told his cousin, smiling.
Jame thought that she had never seen him look better, a long way from the tattered scarecrow he had been when they had first met. Perhaps Kirien was to thank for that. The Jaran Lordan smiled, as tranquil and handsome as ever. She too wore a dress coat, dove-gray with silver trim. With her dark, cropped hair and slender build, it wasn’t at all obvious that she was female, not that she dressed so as to disguise the fact; these were simply a more elegant version of her working clothes as a scrollswoman of Mount Alban, who hadn’t been overly pleased to be chosen lordan by the rest of her house. Few of the lords had guessed her sex. What they would say when they found out didn’t bear thinking about.
“You’ve sent us an avid scholar,” she said.
“Who?”
“Your servant Graykin. He’s been reading everything he can find and questioning every scrollsman or singer he can catch about the history of the Southern Wastes.”
Jame was taken aback. After the trauma inflicted on him by Greshan’s coat, she had only hoped to keep Gray busy until the weather made travel to Kothifir safe, always assuming that she graduated to follow him.
“How is he getting them to cooperate?” she asked, remembering that most scrollsmen operated on a barter system when it came to sharing information.
“I’ve been able to help a bit there,” said Kindrie. “Y’see, Index has been plagued with joint pains recently, beyond the help of his herb shed to cure.”
Index, who had gotten his nickname because he knew where every arcane scrap of information was stored, be it in scroll, scholar, or singer. Index, whose knowledge had allowed him to amass a fabulous store of barter points.
“So you’ve been trading him points for your help as a healer. I appreciate that.”
Kindrie’s ears turned faintly pink. “Consider it recompense for helping me to escape from the Priests’ College.”
Jame felt like blushing herself when she remembered how harshly she had treated him on the journey to Restormir to rescue Gray, all because she hadn’t been able to stomach his hieratic background, never mind that it had been involuntary. That prejudice at least seemed to have faded, at least where Kindrie was concerned. Would that Tori could say as much about his feelings toward the Shanir.
Timmon emerged from the keep, looking shaken.
“This is awful,” he said to Jame, hardly seeming to care who else heard. “Grandfather is convinced that I’m Pereden. Dari keeps trying to tell him differently, and he keeps insisting that ‘blood and bone, a father knows.’ You should have seen Dari glare. He spat a rotten tooth at me.”
Fash had drifted within earshot. “Gone soft, has he? Poor old man. Now everyone will feel free to take advantage of him.”
Timmon bridled. “If you mean me . . .”
“Fash,” said Gorbel. “Shut up.”
Holly’s small son rushed past again, this time in pursuit of Gorbel’s pook, shrieking, “Doggie!”
“Here now, stop that,” snapped the Caineron Lordan, and hurried off to his pet’s rescue.
Fash and Obidin stayed.
“Oh,” the former said to Timmon with his wide, white grin, “I didn’t mean you, Lordan. Your cousin Dari, now . . .”
Timmon drew himself up, projecting more strength than Jame had yet seen in him.
“That is house business, Caineron. Butt out.”
Fash actually recoiled a step, but no more. His grin, having flickered, came back. “And you, M’lady Kirien. Don’t you think that the High Council deserves the truth?”
Kirien answered, still serene. “D’you think I’ve hidden anything from any of them? They see what they expect to see. Unlike you, I hide little.”
Fash flushed, but his retort stuck in his throat. He knew better than to challenge a Shanir like Kirien whose power lay in being able to compel the truth. What was his game anyway, trying to pick one fight after another with his superiors? Gorbel would have stopped him, but Obidin just stood there, radiating mild interest. She wondered if, like a certain late, unlamented Randir, Fash’s own talent lay in temptation.
Would you tempt the destroyer in me, Caineron?
As if he had heard her thought, he turned his white teeth on her.
“I see that you shun the flatteries of fashion, Lordan. How . . . modest of you. But that’s not quite correct: you may wear your cadet jacket—very dashingly, I might add—but you dress your hair Merikit style. Let’s see: smooth on the right but, oh my, twenty braids on the left, all twisted into one down the back. Have you really killed twenty hillmen?”
The simple answer to that was “no.” Jame had no idea how many Noyat she had personally slain during their raid on the Merikit village, but the Merikit women had credited her with all of their kills as well and Gran Cyd herself had first braided the record of the enemy dead into Jame’s hair, slathered with their blood. Why had she worn it into Gothregor? Perhaps to compensate for her plain coat, or perhaps in defiance because other cadets had started to gossip about her adventures among the so-called savages. Only now did it occur to her that those rumors might have been started by Fash, one of the few at Tentir who would know what those braids signified.
“What happens in the hills is no business of yours,” she told him coldly.
Satisfaction glinted in his eyes. He knew that he had drawn blood.
“Ah, but then hillmen die so easily,” he said, “like the dumb brutes that they are.”
“That’s all they are to you, isn’t it? Mere animals.”
Kirien touched her arm. “Gently, gently . . .”
The pook dashed past again, followed by Danior’s son shrieking, “Doggie, doggie, doggie!” followed by a panting Gorbel.
“That’s right,” said Fash, answering Jame, flashing an even wider smile at her that was more like the bearing of teeth. “Pilfering vermin, to be exact. A waste of skin.”