“Your own?”
“I hope so. I told Arcolin to take a contract if he could—troops are expensive to keep idle—and at least one and maybe two cohorts of mine should be on the road to Aarenis right now. Besides, I would not bring my—my former—cohorts here except in an emergency. They’re not Lyonyan. They’re foreign, just like Golden Company or Clarts or any of them.”
They looked at one another, avoiding Sier Halveric’s gaze until he spoke. “It’s like a gift to my family,” he said. “Let me provision them—as a gift to the Crown.”
“That is generous indeed, Sier Halveric,” Kieri said. “But too much burden for one family. Suppose you half provision them, and let me know if you run short for your own people.”
“Thank you, Sir King. It will be an honor to serve the Crown.” Halveric looked around, challenging the others. One by one they assented to asking Aliam Halveric to hire out his company to the Crown, for use in the north.
“Sier Galvary, if you will draft a formal request from the Crown, I will sign it and it can be sent tomorrow.”
One by one the invited foreigners came to pay their respects before leaving; the lady of Pargun, uninvited, also came and made the briefest of farewells. Kieri interrupted Kirgan Marrakai’s obviously memorized speech to ask him about the night of the assassinations.
“I hear you were actually there, Juris. Dine with me, if you are not leaving until morning; this is something I should know.”
“If you will, Sir King.” The young man scowled briefly, then looked up. “It was a dirty business.”
Alone with the kirgan that evening at dinner, Kieri let the young man tell the tale as he would. Like most Marrakaien, Juris told a story well. Kieri could feel the prince’s shock at the news of Verrakai treachery, the young men’s eagerness to do something decisive, the older men’s steadying influence.
“They kept wanting us—Mikeli and me—to sit down, think things through. And we finally did. Roly had gone to bring maps so we could see where they might attack the palace. And then Verrakai came in—” Juris took a breath. “No one knew he could change appearance. I thought for a moment it was my father—and before I realized the truth, in that moment he had us all, silent and motionless as stones.” Another pause. “We could do nothing. We had to watch, Mikeli and I, while he took a sword out of the Knight-Commander’s rack and killed him where he sat, and then the Marshal-Judicar, and still we could not move. He told us he would kill Mikeli next, then me, and put the sword wet with Mikeli’s blood in my hand. If it hadn’t been for Roly—” He told the rest in a rush, down to the death of Verrakai’s brother in the stableyard. “I didn’t see that, but I heard.” He paused again. “It wasn’t anything like it is in the tales.”
Kieri managed not to chuckle at that; Juris deserved better. “It never is,” he said. “And you never forget your first serious fight, even if it doesn’t go badly.”
“I always thought—we all did—we’d do better. We’re trained from childhood—”
“You’re alive,” Kieri said. “You and the prince, and your enemy is dead. Yes, you lost friends, but you did well.”
“My father said that. It doesn’t feel right, though.”
“No, and it never will,” Kieri said. “That’s part of being the kind of man you are—you’re Girdish and that means just winning is never enough.”
“How did you deal with it?”
A Marrakai approach—direct as a sword thrust. Kieri answered as the question deserved. “Looking back, I was an arrogant idiot for half a year or so, trying to pretend it didn’t bother me; Aliam took me out back of the camp one day and chewed me up one side and down the other. Said not admitting what I felt was as bad as dragging around long-faced as some did.”
“It bothered you less, in time?”
“Yes, or I could not have stayed in soldiering,” Kieri said. “But still—if someone I care for dies, it hurts. It’s supposed to hurt.”
“The others—our friends who weren’t there—they don’t seem to understand—”
“They will when they’ve been where you’ve been, and gods grant that it’s not exactly the same. Be patient with them. You and Mikeli and your friend Roly will always have a bond they do not have, but don’t rub it in.”
“No, Sir King. I won’t. Thank you.”
As the days passed, more applicants for King’s Squire service came in from outlying areas. Kieri had them all assessed and then, as time allowed, interviewed them one by one. All who had been rangers were hardy and skilled, but some found they did not like the prospect of living in a city or palace. They preferred the green aisles and solitudes of the forest. Those whose training came from other sources varied in their abilities; some humans were not fluent enough in elvish, and others, trained in weaponry only at home, lacked the fighting skills Kieri knew his Squires might need. A few were too quick of temper.
At last Kieri had four hands of applicants who had passed every test he devised, and who all—to his mind—would serve equally well. With the other Squires who did not wish to leave his service, that made five hands and one. Most had been rangers, as the rangers had provided the only part-elf applicants.
Organizing the Squires’ service might have taken longer if Garris, the eldest, had not offered to take over that task. “I’m getting a bit old for the rest of it,” he said to Kieri. “You can dismiss me, if you want, but I do have experience, and I can save a clerk’s wages doing the paperwork for you.”
Kieri had been wondering how to suggest that Garris might want to retire; this was the perfect solution.
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s a weight off my shoulders. I suppose we need a ceremony.”
“Of course,” Garris said. “Pledging an oath to the king—that’s when we get the gold bands. I’ll organize that, when I find out how long it will take the tailors to make up the uniforms.”
Kieri took the list of names off to the office he’d now established, and stared at it, reminding himself which faces went with which names. He was amused to find that he remembered the women’s faces best; everyone’s hints about marriage and heirs must be affecting him. But these women were too young, like Paksenarrion, like the young women trailed past him at his coronation. As Tammarion would be, if she came to him now as he had known her first. He tried to imagine Tamar as she might be now if she had lived: there would have been silver in that golden hair, though in memory she was always young.
That thought hardened his resolve to find someone older to marry; it was not fair for someone like him—his age, his experience—to marry a woman scarcely out of girlhood. In the ceremony a hand of days later, he was pleased to find that he remembered all the names and faces, male and female, and that he could look on his Squires as he had once looked on first-year soldiers.
Shortly after that, Paks bade him farewell and rode away, this time eastward. He knew better than to ask why—she would not know, herself, until she reached whatever goal the gods had given her. His new Squires, mixed with the experienced few, began their new duties. He sent couriers to Tsaia—one to Verrakai lands to find out how Dorrin was faring, one to Vérella, with messages both for the prince and to send on south to Arcolin, and one to his former stronghold.
26
Aliam’s response, when it arrived some hands of days later, was the first contingent of troops, a half-cohort with Talgan, one of his junior captains, at its head. The palace steward brought Kieri Aliam’s letter and Talgan’s word that they planned to camp in the river meadow near the palace.
Kieri unfolded the stiff parchment. Aliam’s handwriting, he noted, had not improved with a year off fighting.