“It isn’t enough . . . that I am dead? And if I told you . . . that I have guessed your secret? Tieri had a contract. That could only have been . . . for you . . . therefore you are legitimate. As for your father . . . the dead whisper each to each. Tieri spoke . . . to your great-grandmother Kinzi and to Aerulan . . . before her banner wore to rags with decades of exposure . . . and neglect. I could name the man . . . who sired you.”
“Don’t!”
“Would you stop me? You can . . . with one searing word.”
Kindrie struggled with the thought. Until recently, he had been as alone in his way as his mother had been in hers. What would Kirien think if she knew that his father was the greatest archtraitor in the history of the Kencyrath? He could hardly blame her if she threw him out. But to hurt instead of to heal . . .
Yet he had spoken the pyric rune before the Haunted Lands keep to prevent the dead from rising. One of them, he gathered, had been his uncle Ganth himself, not that that had apparently stopped the Gray Lord from haunting his son.
There is a locked door in Torisen’s soul, and behind that, a mad, muttering voice.
But those darklings had risen consumed with mindless hunger, not as Ashe had done, her intellect still held intact by her will alone, suspended between life and death.
“You’re testing me.”
“So I am. You are . . . potentially one of the Tyr-ridan. Are you worthy . . . that we should rest one third of our hopes . . . on you?”
“Trinity knows, I don’t feel it, but then the idea is new to me. And it may not come to pass. Are you testing Jame and Torisen as well?”
“Jame, yes . . .”
Despite himself, Kindrie was impressed; he would never have had the nerve.
“. . . until Tentir took over that duty. The Highlord tests himself . . . so far with limited success . . . but at least he recognizes the need.”
Somewhere nearby, someone stifled a sneeze. Ashe stepped into the shadows and out again hauling Graykin by the scuff of his neck, over his furious protests.
“So . . . the gray sneak.”
The Southron bared his teeth at them both and jerked his robe out of the singer’s grasp. “My lady’s sneak, if you please.”
“And what will you tell her . . . this time?”
“Everything, or at least as much as I could hear, which wasn’t much. She doesn’t need either one of you. She has me.”
“She also needs whatever I can discover for her,” said Kindrie mildly.
“Not if I find it out first.”
“You were listening outside the herb shed.”
“Of course I was, not that Index made much sense. Seas turning from fresh to salt to sand—bah.”
“Listen . . . little rat. Your mistress does need to know . . . but the whole truth, not just such crumbs . . . as you manage to gather.”
Graykin drew himself up. “Then tell me, if it’s so important. I’m likely to see her before you do.”
“Ashe?” Kindrie looked at the singer for guidance.
Thinking, Ashe chewed her lip. Part of it ripped off and was absently spat over the wall. “No,” she said at last. “This is a story . . . for the three of you. You . . . will see your cousin soon enough. And you, little man . . . consider the danger of passing along incomplete information.”
“Graykin.” Kindrie touched his shoulder, and looked into the raging eyes of the scruffy cur that was the Southron’s soul-image. For a moment, he thought that the beast would lunge for his throat. However, he also recognized the dazed emptiness behind that fury. “You must leave some things to others. Jame has taken you into her service, but the harder you clutch at her, the more she will push you away.”
The shoulder under his hand stiffened, then slumped. “Yes. All right. I know that she never wanted to bind me in the first place. It just happened.”
With that, he turned and shuffled off.
Ashe regarded Kindrie with death-glazed eyes in which something yet glimmered. “I see . . . that you can convince . . . without hurting. Such is not . . . my talent.”
The healer sighed. “I saw myself in his eyes. We Knorth seem to be lonely perforce, with no home but each other. Have you finished testing me?”
“For the moment.”
“Good,” said Kindrie, and left.
VII
The Day of Misrule
Jame woke to a familiar sense of heaviness on her chest. The blanket there stirred with more than her own breath. Lifting up a corner of it, she found herself nose to nose with a triangular head and a flickering, black, forked tongue. Golden coils shifted sleepily between her bare breasts. At least the swamp adder’s eyes were their normal fiery orange; when they turned black, Jame suspected that the Witch of Wilden was peering through them.
“Rue,” she called, keeping her voice calm and low. “Is this a practical joke?”
Her towheaded servant came to an abrupt, wary stop in the doorway.
“It’s no joke of mine, lady. Hadn’t you, er, better get rid of it?”
“Not until I find out why Addy is here.”
Either Timmon’s jealous Narsa was getting repetitious, or Shade was in trouble.
She slid her hands under the serpent’s coils, feeling muscles ripple beneath the warm, gilded skin, and shifted Addy to the bed beside her.
“No one should come after you here.” Rue sounded indignant. “In your own quarters, you’re out of the game.”
Last night had been Spring’s Eve. Tomorrow was Spring’s Day. Between them lay a span of time unmarked on any calendar, separating the old year from the new. In Tai-tastigon, it was called the Feast of Fools, when the gods were mocked to their servants’ content. Here at the randon college, authority suffered a similar fate. Possibly similar upsets occurred all over Rathillien.
“You are going to stay here, aren’t you?” Rue demanded. “If not, I have to call up your ten-command to act as your bodyguard so that no one scalps you.”
Jame smiled. Mindful of her lordan’s dignity which Rue associated with her own, the cadet didn’t want her pulled into any foolery. From what she had heard about Tentir’s Day of Misrule, Jame didn’t especially want to participate either. She had intended to wait until Rue left and then slip out the window to spend the day training with Death’s-head. Now she had to find Shade. Damnation.
“I imagine that the Commandant is going to keep to his quarters.”
“Certainly. Why would anyone want to play silly tricks on him, or he to spoil anyone’s fun? Mind you, it did happen once, with Ardeth’s war-leader Aden.”
Jame remembered the haughty Highborn from his visit earlier that spring and from the last cull when he had served on the Randon Council. Nothing, not even redeeming the Shame of Tentir, made a Highborn girl worthy in his eyes to be a randon cadet. “What happened?”
“He was commandant here then and not at all popular. Didn’t think that the randon were strict enough, that they coddled us all rotten, that nothing was as good as in his day. That sort of nonsense. Well, the cadets rounded up a troop of captured sargents to serenade him and when he stuck his nose out to complain about the noise, somebody grabbed his scarf. They made him serve everyone at the day’s end feast out of his own hoard of delicacies. It got messy, a proper food fight as I hear tell. He’s never forgiven the college.”
Good enough reason, Jame thought, for the less popular officers to make themselves scarce. She had heard that others, better natured, often participated, assuming that roving bands of cadets caught them and managed to nab their scarves, thus ensuring their obedience. Sargents and master-tens would also be fair game for anyone below those ranks.
A light knock on the door heralded Brier’s arrival with a sheaf of papers. Jame tossed the blanket over Addy and rose to dress.
“The duty roster for next week,” said her acting master-ten when she was admitted, and handed it over.