Valdemar 09 - [Mage Winds 01] - Winds of Fate Page 2

  The obvious answer was implied by the question. Because she was expecting this.

  And because Kerowyn was a Herald and her Companion Sayvil would never permit her to betray another, and further, because Elspeth’s own Companion Gwena was not beating down the doors of the salle to get in and help her stand off this attacker, it followed that the “assassin” was nothing of the sort.

  Her heart slowed a little, and she dared a mental touch. Nothing: her assailant was shielded. Which meant he knew how to guard his thoughts, which only another Mindspeaker could do.

  And a closer look at the bright brown eyes, and the additional clue of a curl of black hair showing outside the assailant’s hood gave her all the information she needed to identify him.

  “Skif,” she said flatly, relaxing a little.

  :Good girl,: came the voice in her mind. :I told Sayvil you ’d figure this out before it got anywhere, but she didn’t believe me.:

  She shifted her gaze over to Kerowyn, though without taking Skif out of her line of sight. “This was a setup, wasn’t it?” she asked the older woman. “You never really intended for me to fix that armor.”

  Kero shrugged, not at all discomfited. “Hell, yes, I did. And tomorrow, you will. But I also intended for you to figure out that you could,” she temporized as Skif relaxed minutely. “That’s a good thing for you to know if you’re ever in the situation I described. If you don’t know you can do something, it doesn’t occur to you as an option. But don’t relax,” her voice sharpened as Skif started to come out of his crouch and Elspeth followed suit. “Just because you’ve identified him, that doesn’t mean that the rest of the exercise is canceled. Take it up where you left off.”

  “With this?” Elspeth looked doubtfully at the tiny knife in her hand.

  “With that-and anything else you can get your hands on. There’re hundreds of things you can use in here, including that bench.” Kerowyn frowned slightly. “Anything can be a weapon, child. It’s time you learned to improvise.”

  Kerowyn did not have to outline the reasons for that statement; even if the current interkingdom situation had been full of light and harmony, there would always be the risk of someone with a grudge or grievance-or even a simple lunatic-who would be willing to risk his life to assassinate the next in line to the throne of Valdemar.

  And with at least two enemies on the borders, Hardorn and Karse, the political situation was far from harmonious.

  Still-Anything can be a weapon? What on earth is she talking about?

  But she didn’t have time to question the statement in detail. Elspeth went back on guard just in time to dodge Skif’s rush for her.

  She sidestepped him and reversed the knife, not wanting to really hurt him, and feinted for his eyes with the wooden hilt. He recognized the feint for what it was and ignored it, coming in to grapple with her. So far he hadn’t produced any weapons of his own.

  So his “orders ” must be to capture rather than to kill. That makes my job easier and his harder....

  Relatively easier. Skif had learned his hand-to-hand skills in the rough world of Haven’s slums. Even the capital of Valdemar was prone to the twin problems of crime and poverty, and young Skif had been the godchild of both. Orphaned early, he had apprenticed himself to a thieving uncle, and when that worthy was caught, set up shop on his own. Probably only being Chosen had saved him from hanging like his uncle-or death at the hands of a competitor, like his mother.

  His “style” was a mixture of disciplines—a kind of catch-all, “anything that works,” devious, dirty, and deadly. The Queen’s Own Herald, Talia, had learned quite a bit from him, but no one had ever thought to have him teach Elspeth as well. At least-not that. He had taught her knife throwing, which had saved her life and Talia‘s, but even Queen Selenay had been horrified a few short years ago at the notion of her Heir learning street-fighting. Elspeth had begged but to no avail.

  Many things had changed in those few years. Among them, the arrival of Kerowyn, who had sent one of her commandos to prove to Selenay that she and her daughter needed the kind of protection only instruction in the lowest forms of fighting could provide. Alberich undertook the Queen’s instruction; Kero and Skif got Elspeth’s. The lessons were frequently painful.

  Dirk’s taught me a thing or two since the last lesson-she told herself as she circled him warily, testing her footing as she watched his eyes. -and I bet neither of them knows that.

  She sensed the pile of armor behind her, and tried to remember what was topmost. Was it something she could throw over his head to temporarily blind him?

  “Pick up the pace, boy,” Kerowyn said. “Take some chances. You only have a few more moments before she either calls for help herself with Mindspeech, or her Companion brings the cavalry.”

  Skif lunged just as she made a grab for the nearest piece of junk, a leather gambeson. He waited until she moved, then struck like a coiled snake. He caught her in the act of bending over sideways and tackled her, both of them flying over the pile and landing in a heap on the other side of it. Her knife went skidding across the floor as her cheek hit the gritty floor, all the breath knocked out of her.

  She writhed in his grip and grabbed the edge of his hood and tried to pull it down over his eyes, but it was too tightly wrapped. She struggled to get her knee up into his stomach, clawed at the wrappings around his head with no effect, and kicked ineffectually at the back of his legs. He simply pinned her with his greater weight, and slapped the side of her head at the same time, calling out “Disable!”

  Damn. She obediently went limp. He scrambled to his feet, heaved her up like a sack of grain, slung her over his shoulder and started for the door. She watched the floor and his boots, and wondered what her Companion was supposed to be doing while the “assassin” was carrying her off.

  :Not that way,: Gwena said calmly in her mind, right on cue. :I’ve got the front door blocked, and Sayvil has the rear. The only way out is by way of the roof.:

  “No good, Skif,” Elspeth said to his belt. “The Companions have you boxed in.”

  “Well, then I’ll have to abort and follow my secondary orders,” he replied, “Sorry, little kitten, you’re dead.”

  He put her down on her feet, and she dusted herself off. “Crap,” she said sourly. “I could do better than that. I wish I’d had my knives.” She couldn’t resist a resentful glance at Kero, who had made her take them off when she entered the salle.

  “Well,” Kero told her. “You didn’t do as badly as I had expected. But I told you to get rid of those little toys of yours for a reason. They aren’t a secret anymore; everybody knows you carry them in arm-sheaths. And you’ve begun to depend on them; you passed up at least a half dozen potential weapons.”

  Elspeth’s heart sank as Skif nodded to confirm Kerowyn’s assessment. “Like what?” she demanded. She didn‘t-quite-growl. It was ironic that a room devoted to weaponswork should be so barren of weaponry. There was nothing in the room; at least, nothing that could be used against an enemy. The salle’s sanded wooden floor stood empty of everything but the bench she sat on and the pile of discarded armor. There were a few implements for mending the armor that she’d brought in from the back room. There were no windows that she could reach; they were all set in the walls near the edge of the ceiling. Even the walls were bare of practice weapons, just the empty racks along one wall and the expensive-but necessary-mirrors on the other.

  “The bench,” Skif said promptly. “You were within range to kick it into my path.”

  “You should have grabbed that leather corselet when you went off the bench,” Kero added.

  “Any of the mirrors-break one and you’ve got a pile of razor shards.”

  “The sunlight—maneuver him so that it’s in his eyes.”

  “The mirrors again; distract me with my own reflection.”

  “The leather-needles—”

  “The pot of leather-oil-

  “Your belt-”

  “All right!�
� Elspeth cried, plopping down heavily on the bench, defeated by their logic. “What’s the point?”

  “Something that you can learn, but I can’t teach in simple lessons,” Kerowyn told her soberly. “An attitude. A state of awareness, one where you size everyone up as a potential enemy, and everything as a potential weapon. And I mean everyone and everything. From the stranger walking toward you, to your mother—from the halberd on the wall to your underwear.”

  “I can’t live like that,” she protested. “Nobody can.” But at Kero’s raised eyebrow, she added doubtfully, “Can they?”

  Kero shrugged. “Personally, I think no royalty can afford to live without an outlook like that. And I’ve managed, for most of my life.”

  “So have I,” Skif seconded. “It doesn’t have to poison you or your life, just make you more aware of things going on around you.”

  “That’s why we’ve started the program here,” Kerowyn finished. “A salle is a pretty empty room even with repair stuff scattered all over it; that makes your job easier. Now,” she fixed Elspeth with a stem blue-green eye, “before you leave, you’re going to figure out one way everything in here could be used against an assailant.”

  Elspeth sighed, bade farewell to her free afternoon, and began pummeling her brain for answers.

  Eventually Kero left for other tasks, putting Skif in charge of the lesson. Elspeth breathed a little easier when she was gone; Skif was nowhere near the taskmaster that Kerowyn could be when the mood was on her. Heraldic trainees at the Collegium used to complain of Alberich’s lessons; now they moaned about Kerowyn’s as well, and it was an open question as to which of the two was considered the worst. Elspeth had once heard a young girl complain that it was bad enough that the Weaponsmaster refused to grow old and retire, but now he’d cursed them with a female double and it wasn’t fair!

  But then again, she had thought at the time, what is?

  Skif grilled her for a little longer, then took pity on her, and turned the lesson from one on “attitude” to simply a rough-and-tumble knife-fighting lesson. Elspeth found the latter much easier on the nerves, if not on the body. Skif might be inclined to go easy on her when it came to the abstract “lessons,” but when it came to the physical he could be as remorseless as any of the instructors when he chose.

  Finally, when both were tired enough that they were missing elementary moves, he called a halt.

  In fact, she thought wearily, as he waved her off guard and stepped off the salle floor, I doubt I could be a match for a novice right now.

  “That’s ... enough,” he panted, throwing himself down on the floor beside the bench, as she slumped down on the seat and then sprawled along the length of it, shoving the forgotten leather armor to the floor. The angle of the sunlight coming in through the high clerestory windows had changed; there was no longer a broad patch of sunlight on the floor. It was starting to climb up the whitewashed wall. Not yet dinnertime, but certainly late afternoon.

  “I have to get back to drilling the little ones in a bit,” he continued. “Besides, if I spend too much more time in your unchaperoned company, the rumors are going to start again, and I don’t feel like dealing with them.”

  Elspeth grimaced and wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. The last time rumors had started about a romance between her and Skif, she’d had to placate half the Council, and endure the knowing looks of half the Heralds. She wasn’t sure which group was worse.

  Now I know how Mother and Stepfather felt when they were my age. Every time someone gets interested-or interesting-most of the time they’re frightened off by the matchmakers. You’d think people would have more important things to worry about.

  But it was too bad poor Skif had to pay the price of her rank. There ought to be something she could do about that, but right now her weary mind was not supplying the answer.

  “I’ll see you later, then,” she said instead. “I’ve got a few things of my own I’d like to do before dinner-if you’re satisfied with my progress, that is.”

  “You’re getting there,” he told her, getting up with an effort, his sweat-damp hair curled even tighter. “I was making more mistakes than you were, toward the end. What’s the closest weapon to your right hand?”

  “The bench I’m on,” she replied without thinking. “I roll off it and kick it in your direction.”

  “I was thinking of the shears on the floor there, but that’ll do,” he said with a tired chuckle. “See you at dinner?”

  “Not tonight. There’s some delegation from Rethwellan here to see Father. That means all meals with the Court until they’re gone.” She levered herself up on her elbows and smiled apologetically. “I guess they won’t believe I’m not plotting against the rest of the family unless they see us all together.”

  Skif was too polite to say anything, but they both knew why that suspicion of treason might occur to a delegation from Rethwellan. Elspeth’s blood-father, a prince of Rethwellan, had plotted to overthrow his own wife and consort, Queen Selenay-and in the end, had attempted to assassinate her himself.

  Not the best way to handle foreign relations....

  As it happened, though, no one in Rethwellan had any idea he might attempt such a thing-certainly there was no one in the royal family who had backed him. In fact, there been no love lost between him and his two brothers, and there had been no repercussions from Rethwellan at the news that he had not survived that assassination attempt. The Queen quietly accepted King Faramentha’s horrified apologies and disclaimers, and there the matter had rested for many years.

  But then war and the redemption of a promise made to Selenay’s grandfather had brought one of those brothers, Prince Daren, to the aid of the Queen of Valdemar, and the unexpected result of that first meeting had been not only love, but a lifebonding. Rethwellan lost its Lord-Martial, and Valdemar gained a co-ruler, for Daren, like Kerowyn, had been Chosen, literally on the battlefield.

  Whether the bedding had followed or preceded the wedding was moot; the result had been twins, nine months to the day after the ceremony.

  Which left the titular Heir, Elspeth, with two unexpected rivals for her position. Elspeth, whose father had tried to murder the Queen and steal her throne.... And there were the inevitable whispers of “bad blood.”

  King Faram, the current king of Rethwellan and brother to both her father and stepfather, held no such doubts about her, but occasionally some of his advisors required a reminder that treason was not a heritable trait. Elspeth slipped out of her musings and stretched protesting muscles.

  “I wish—” she began, and stopped.

  “You wish what, kitten?” Skif prompted.

  “Never mind,” she said, dragging herself to her feet. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow, after Council. Assuming Kerowyn doesn’t have me mucking out the stables or something equally virtuous and valuable.”

  He chuckled and left the salle, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

  She cleaned up the scattered equipment from their lesson while the sweat of her exertion cooled and dried, and took herself out before her erstwhile mentor could return and find her “idle.”

  A warm summer wind whipped her hair out of its knot at the back of her neck, and dried her sweat-soaked shirt as she left the salle door. She made a hasty check for possible watchers, trotted around the side of the salle, and didn’t slow until she reached the edge of the formal gardens and the relative shelter of the tall hedges. The path she took, from the formal garden and the maze to the herb and kitchen gardens of the Palace, was one normally used only by the Palace’s husbandmen. It ran along the back of a row of hedges that concealed a line of storage buildings and potting sheds. She wasn’t surprised that there was no one on it, since there was nothing to recommend it but its relative isolation, a commodity in short supply at the Palace/Collegium complex.

  Not the sort of route that anyone would expect to find her taking. Nor was her destination what anyone who didn’t
know her well would expect. It was a simple potting shed, a nondescript little building distinguished from its fellows only by the stovepipe, a stone kiln, and the small, glazed window high up on one side. And even then, there was no reason to assume it was special; the kiln had been there for years, and had been used to fire terra-cotta pots for seedlings and winter herbs.

  Which made it all the more valuable to Elspeth.

  She opened the door and closed it behind her with a feeling of having dropped a tremendous weight from her shoulders. This unprepossessing kingdom was hers, and hers alone, by unspoken agreement. So long as she did not neglect her duties, no one would bother her here, not unless the situation were direst emergency.

  A tiny enough kingdom; one bench in the middle with a stool beside it, one sink and hand pump, one potter’s wheel, boxes of clay ready for working, shelves, and a stove to heat the place in the winter and double as a small bisque-firing kiln in the rear. But not one implement here reminded her of the Heir or the Heir’s duties. This was the one place where Elspeth could be just Elspeth, and nothing more. A proper kingdom as far as she was concerned ; she’d been having second thoughts about ruling anything larger for some time now.

  Up on the highest shelf were the finished products—which was to say the ones, to her critical eye, worth keeping-of her own two hands. They began with her first perfectly thrown pots and bowls, ranged through more complicated projects, and ended with some of the results of her current efforts-poured-slip pieces cast from molds that had in turn been made from her own work.

  The twins were going through a competitive stage at the moment-and any time one of them got something, the other had to have something just like it. But different.

  If Kris got a toy horse, Lyra had to have a toy horse-same size, shape, length of tail, and equipage. But if Kris’ horse was chestnut, hers had to be bay, dapple-gray, or roan. If he got a toy fort, she had to have a toy village; same size, number of buildings, number of toy inhabitants as his fort. And so on. The only thing they agreed on was toy Companions; they had to be twins, like the twins themselves.