The Warrior's Bond (Einarinn 4) (12 page)

“I haven’t heard.” Charoleia shrugged.

I’d have to go and soothe Casuel’s ruffled feathers, I realised with irritation. I needed a wizard to bespeak Usara and get me some news.

“Are you taking the armring with you?” Charoleia nodded at the battered box.

I hesitated, like a dog seeing a bone in the hearth but remembering a burned mouth.

“It should be safe enough locked in the box,” said Charoleia softly. “But I’ll send Eadit with you to carry it, if you prefer. Livak told me that you’d been used against your will by enchantments woven round such things.”

I set my jaw against her sympathy. Used against my will scarcely began to describe being held captive inside my own head, unable to resist as some other intelligence used my body for its own purposes. My stomach heaved at the memory.

“No, I’ll take it.” I took the accursed thing from her, my hands slippery with sweat against the scuffed wood. Nothing happened. No frustrated consciousness came scratching round my sanity, no desperate voice howled in the darkest recesses of my head, and I let slip an unguarded sigh of relief. “I’ll take my leave then, and I won’t forget about the dance card.”

Charoleia rang a little silver bell and I realised she was nearly as relieved as me. That was understandable; she’d hardly want a man-at-arms losing his wits in her elegant boudoir. “Call yourself. You’ll always be welcome.”

The maid opened the door and I wondered how much she’d heard from her post at the hinges. Her serene face gave no hint as she showed me down to the street door where the lad playing watchdog was desultorily polishing his sword.

I tucked the box under one arm as I stepped out into the heat of the day now building to its peak. The sun rode high in the cloudless bowl of the sky, glare striking back from whitewashed walls of new brick repairing ancient, broken stone. Sweat soon beaded my face, soaking my shirt as I took the circular road that skirts the shallow bowl of the lower city, keeping an eye out for broken slabs or curbstones that might trip me into the path of the heavy wagons and heedless drays lumbering along. I hurried past genteel merchant houses and between ambitious traders’ yards, ignoring the rise and fall of the land over the hills that ring the bay for the sake of the quickest route back to the D’Olbriot residence.

Paved roads branched off the stone flagged highway and led up to the higher ground where the Houses had built anew in search of clean water and cool breezes in the peace of the Leoril era. A conduit house stood in the corner where the route to the D’Olbriot residence joined the high road. The stream running beside the road sparkled in brief freedom between the spring behind the D’Olbriot residence and the conduit house diverting it into the myriad channels and sluices serving the lower city and giving D’Olbriot tenants one more good reason to pay their rents on time. But the Sieur still maintains the public fountains and wells for the indigent, and one stood here, an eight-sided pillar rising high above me, each spout guarded by god or goddess in their niche above a basin.

I dipped grateful hands into the clear water, splashing my head and face and feeling the heat leaching from my body. I drank deeply and then looked up at the blue marble likeness of Dastennin, impassive beneath his crown of seaweed as he poured water from a vast shell, gathering storm clouds looming behind him. You spared D’Alsennin’s life in Bremilayne, Lord of the Sea, I thought impulsively. Let him achieve something with it. Help us release those people still sleeping in that cave. Turning to the gods seemed in keeping with a tale of enchantments from a time of myth.

“If you’re done, friend—” A groom in Den Haurient livery was waiting, the horse he was exercising gulping from the trough for thirsty beasts.

“Of course.” I walked more slowly up towards the D’Olbriot residence. The usual stifling stillness hung over the ever narrowing strip of parkland clinging to the bottom reaches of the hill and tiny black flies danced in swirling balls beneath fringed leaves. But the shade trees offered welcome respite from the heat, and as I reached the top of the rise a breeze freshened the air. A well-tended highway winds between the spacious preserves of the upper city. No cracked slabs are allowed to trip the privilege of the oldest noble Houses—Den Haurient, Tor Kanselin, Den Leshayre, Tor Bezaemar. I walked past tall walls protecting extensive gardens surrounding spacious dwellings served by more lowly lodgings clustered close by. At this time of day there was little traffic, the only cart already nearly out of sight as it headed for some distant House built in more recent generations to escape the ever increasing pressures of the lower city.

As I drew closer to home I saw sentries walking slowly along the parapets of the walls. The watchtowers added in the uncertain days under T’Aleonne were fully manned and the D’Olbriot standard flew from every cornice. All customary pomp was displayed for Festival, to remind any visitors just which House they were dealing with and to bolster far-flung family members with pride in their Name.

“Ryshad!” The man sitting in the gatehouse hailed me, a thick-set, shaven-headed warrior with a much broken nose. He’d trained me in wrestling when I’d first come to D’Olbriot service.

“Olas!” I waved an acknowledging hand but didn’t stop or turn up the stairs to my new room. Elevated rank warranted privacy and that meant I was sleeping in the gatehouse rather than the barracks that filled one corner of the enclosure. Though I’d found privilege could have a sour aftertaste. With so many of the D’Olbriot Name arriving for the Festival, the noise of the gate opening and closing late into the night had disturbed me far more than the familiar bustle of the watch changing at midnight in the barracks. Still, with any luck most of the family would have arrived by now.

Turning sharply on to the gravelled path I hurried towards the tall house at the heart of the precisely delineated patterns of hedges and flowers. Temar had this reception to attend and I wanted to show him some small progress towards our shared goal before he left. Then I reckoned I’d earned half a chime out of the merciless sun for a meal and more than one long, cold drink before I went to see what I could discover from the Names on his list.

Leaving the grand reception rooms behind me, where the ladies of the House were catching up on half a season’s gossip by the sound of it, I passed lackeys bringing laden trays of refreshments up from the lower levels. I hurried up the first flight of stairs leading to the private salons reserved for the Sieur and Esquires of the Name. They were as busy talking as the women, open doors revealing older men deep in serious conversation, sons and nephews in attentive attendance, news and promises for later discussions exchanged on every side.

I bowed my way down the hallways and gained the second storey, where the corridors became narrower, with softer carpets underfoot and the intricate painted patterns on the walls giving way to plain plaster sparely stencilled with leaves and garlands to complement the ornate tapestries. Visiting servants were busy with trunks and coffers, some calmly hanging dresses and setting out favourite possessions while others went flustered in search of some missing chest. Resident maids and lackeys went steadily about their business with arms of lavender-scented linen and vases of flowers to make ready rooms for unexpected arrivals who’d changed their minds and accepted the Sieur’s invitation at the last moment.

I turned down a side passage to see a page was sitting on a cross-framed chair by the door at the end. He jumped up but I waved the child back to his hornbook. He’d spend enough of his day on his feet without me insisting on due deference and I could knock on a door myself. “I’m here to see Esquire D’Alsennin.”

“Enter.” Temar answered my knock at once and I opened the door. The Sieur had decreed Temar was to be treated with Imperial courtesy and thus warranted the finest, coolest quarters available. Windows broadened when this northern façade had been rebuilt filled the room with light and Temar was standing by one, arms folded crossly over his creased shirt and looking distinctly mutinous.

“Good day to you, Chosen Tathel.” Demoiselle Tor Arrial sat on a gilt-wood stool upholstered with damask that matched the curtains of the old-fashioned bed dominating one half of the room.

“Demoiselle.” I made a low bow, mindful of her Imperial heritage.

Her bark of laughter made me look up. “I am in no mood to be flattered by a title more suited to those coveys of maidens cluttering up the place. Avila will suffice.”

“As you wish,” I said cautiously. Informality was allowable on the road, but I wasn’t going to call her by her given name in Messire’s hearing. “Are you fully recovered from the journey?” She’d looked fit for her pyre the previous day, every year of her age weighing heavy on her head.

“I am quite restored,” she assured me. “A good night’s sleep works its own Artifice.”

“Ryshad, I really should come with you this afternoon,” Temar appealed to me. “This is my responsibility and my Name will lend weight to our requests.”

“How so, when no one knows your face?” demanded Avila acidly. “You need to assert the dignity of your House with these lately come nobles before you can claim the right to speak for Kel Ar’Ayen. That means exchanging the usual courtesies, just as Festival always demanded.”

“I was never any good at such things,” the youth objected.

“Because you never applied yourself and there was your grandsire to do the duty for you. You cannot escape the obligations of your rank now,” challenged Avila.

“Making yourself known will certainly smooth our path, Temar,” I interjected. Messire D’Olbriot would hardly thank me if Temar absented himself this afternoon. “And I’ve made a start on tracing the artefacts already.” I placed the box on a marble-topped table and opened it with hesitant hands to reveal the armring within.

Temar reached out an eager hand but then withdrew it.

“What is it?” Avila asked with a curious look at us both.

As one man Temar and I glanced across the room to a scabbarded blade resting on a walnut cabinet by the dressing room door. Artifice had confined Temar’s essential self within that sword through nine Imperial eras. No, he was no more about to risk handling an artefact holding a similarly imprisoned mind than I was.

“Let me.” Avila came to pick up the armring and turned it to examine an engraved device, dark lines blurred with age in the tarnished metal. “Ancel fashioned this badge when he and Letica married.”

“Maitresse Den Rannion, as was,” Temar whispered hastily to me. “Her sister, you know.”

I nodded. I’d made it my business to know all the long-dead colonists regardless, but I also seemed to have Temar’s own memories lurking in the back of my head supplying such answers. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but it was undeniably useful.

“This belongs to Jaes, the gate ward. He helped Letica plant her herb garden.” Avila ran a creased finger over the incised sea eagle’s head and tears shone briefly in her faded eyes.

“One more will be rescued from the darkness,” said Temar hoarsely.

“We can spread our efforts this afternoon,” I suggested. “I’ll take your list and try to talk to servants, men-at-arms, people like that. You make yourself known to the nobility and charm a few likely Demoiselles.”

He rubbed a hand over his hair, leaving it in unruly black spikes. “I might manage that.”

“Who is to keep this safe?” Avila put the armring back in its box and looked at us both.

I held up my hands in demur. “I’ve nowhere to keep it.”

“It is not staying in here,” said Temar hastily.

Avila gave us both a scorching glare as she got stiffly to her feet. “You would-be warriors can be remarkably chicken-hearted. Very well, I will keep it in my room. Temar, dress for this afternoon’s folderols.”

I opened the door so as to avoid her gaze but nearly betrayed myself when I saw the face Temar was pulling at her departing back. I grinned at him. “We’ll see who’s made most progress after dinner tonight.”

The D’Olbriot Residence,

Summer Solstice Festival, First Day,

Early Afternoon

Temar watched Avila and Ryshad go with some regret, then realised the page was staring hopefully at him. “I need clean clothes and I have yet to see my own luggage,” he said bluntly. “Whom do I ask?”

“I’ll get Master Dederic,” said the boy hastily and before Temar could say anything further he disappeared towards the backstairs.

Temar went back to staring out of the window, looking down on the complex interlacing of hedge and blooms that hemmed this enormous dwelling. The grounds of his grandfather’s modest hall had nourished deer and cattle, useful animals, not some empty display.

A discreet tap on the door drew him back to the present. “Enter.”

“Good day to you, Esquire.” A dapper man bowed into the room with aplomb.

“Forgive me, I do not believe we have met…” Temar apologised.

“I’m Dederic, tailor to the House.” The man clapped his hands and two liveried lackeys hurried in, arms full of garments. A hesitant youth with a ribbon pierced with pins tied round one wrist followed clutching a two-handled coffer. There must be more servants in this house than mice, Temar thought. In fact, there was probably some underling specifically dedicated to removing mice, and a separate one for the stableyard rats.

“Send the page for hot water. The Esquire will wish to shave.”

Dederic dismissed one of the lackeys before producing a length of knotted silk thread from one pocket. “I made up a few outfits for you overnight. I took measurements from your old clothing, so the fit won’t be all we might wish, but if I measure you now we can make the necessary adjustments tonight.”

The apprentice with the pins produced a small slate from his coffer and both tailors looked expectantly at Temar.

He stopped running a hand over his chin to judge for himself whether he needed to shave and stood still as Dederic moved rapidly round him. “Two fingers less in the back. If you could just raise your arms—thank you. Half a handspan long in the sleeve, Larasion help me. And your feet a little wider apart—thank you.”