SASHA WOKE EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, and did her exercises on the floor of Sofy's chambers while her sister slept on, peaceful in the wash of morning sunlight through the windows. The taka-dans woke her, however.
“I'd never thought something so deadly could look so beautiful,” Sofy said from her pillows as Sasha lowered her blade. Sofy gazed with amazement. Sasha performed the last third of the defensive elia-dan, the silver blade flashing in the sunlight, finding the perfect form of foot, wrist and shoulder. Then sheathed the sword over her shoulder in one, smooth motion.
“Da'el she'hiel alas themashel,” Sasha told her.
“Is that Saalsi?” Sofy asked, enchanted. “What does it mean?”
“Literally, ‘the beauty of danger’…only that doesn't translate well, does it? Most Saalsi doesn't. It basically means that all dangerous things are beautiful. But serrin words rarely state things so directly.”
“Oh, I'd love to learn Saalsi,” Sofy sighed, rubbing her eyes. She yawned. “Are you going for a run?”
“Always,” said Sasha, stretching her thighs. “Want to come?”
“You're crazy!” Sofy laughed. “What would people think?”
“I don't know. What would people think?”
“A princess of Lenayin does not run,” Sofy said primly. And yawned again. “Especially not so early.”
“Thank the spirits for that, then,” Sasha said cheerfully. “I'd hate to be mistaken for something I'm not.”
She collected Teriyan and Andreyis from their chambers in the southern guest quarters and walked with them along the grand halls, alongside balconies overlooking the southern courtyards and gardens. Groundsmen trimmed the bushes and swept the paths, and servants scurried about their early morning duties. Few of the guesting nobility had risen.
Their morning run took them on the road circuit within the city walls. Sasha pointed out the Soros Library, the Royal Guard barracks and the merchants’ square, now filling with traders unloading carts of fruit and vegetables, bags of grain and racks of fowl or fish. Many of the traders were Goeren-yai and gave a cheer as they saw her pass. Sasha waved cheerfully in return.
Their run completed, she sparred with Teriyan and Andreyis in the great training hall beside the Royal Guard barracks. By now the hall was filling with soldiers, and some nobles, and the trio met with men of the Falcon Guard, who greeted them warmly. The ensuing session was lively, yet Sasha refrained from making too much of a scene. Some Verenthane soldiers, and a few nobles, gave her dark looks across the floor.
“Word is the Kradyc family's right mad with you, M'Lady,” said one man-at-arms as he recovered his breathing, rubbing the bruise on his side.
“Kradyc?” Sasha asked him, lowering her stanch to a ready posture. A true svaalverd fighter was never truly resting, and the blade was always ready.
“The Ranash family. Their uncle was the adjudicator you near pulled from his horse yesterday.”
“Oh, the lagand match.” She shrugged and twirled her stanch. “The adjudicator was Ranash? No wonder he wouldn't give us a call.”
“Master Pyter Pelyn means to take the field without us,” said the grizzled corporal nearby, leaning on his stanch. He had a scar across one cheek that took half an ear and the upper side of his jaw, turning his speech to a mumble. “No Falcon Guard'll ride with the fool, not after what he did to Master Jaryd. Tyree will miss the title matches for sure.”
“First time in three Rathynals,” the man-at-arms sighed. “Probably Taneryn will win now, that'll make Lord Krayliss real happy.”
“Is Krayliss competing?” Andreyis asked.
“No,” said the corporal, “not before his trial. Might I ask when the trial is, M'Lady?”
“No idea,” said Sasha, in all honesty. No one had told her. She suspected controversy on the question of Lord Krayliss's trial. Krayliss was full of bluster and determined to pick a fight. Should the trial be closed from public view to deprive Krayliss of a podium for his grievances? Or would a closed trial make the king and his lordships appear weak?
“Any idea of where the new Lord Telgar might be, M'Lady?” the corporal pressed, raising his lock-jawed mumble to carry above the yells and clashing wood of the hall. “Given neither he nor the Hadryn have come for Rathynal?”
“I don't know why you ask me,” Sasha said a little testily. “No one tells me anything around here.”
“Something about you being the king's daughter,” Teriyan said sarcastically.
“Am I really?” Sasha gave Teriyan a warning look.
“Is it true the Hadryn are going after the Udalyn Valley?” the man-atarms wanted to know.
“That's just a rumour, lad,” the corporal said gruffly. “We shouldn't be bothering M'Lady Sashandra with rumours. Besides, Lord Usyn wouldn't dare. I'm no Goeren-yai, but I serve with plenty, and they'd never stand for it.” He gave Teriyan a wizened stare.
Teriyan shrugged broadly. “We'd have to make a unified stand to stop it,” he said. “Just in my part of Valhanan alone, we've got villages that have barely spoken or traded with each other for centuries, and others that still skirmish to this day, despite the king's law forbidding it. How is that rabble going to stop the lordships from doing anything?”
“You sound just like a Verenthane bigot!” Andreyis retorted angrily.
“I'm Goeren-yai, I'm allowed to,” said Teriyan, putting his stanch across his broad shoulders and hooking his arms onto the ends. “I just speak the truth, lad. To find the solution, first we must recognise the problem. Otherwise we're like a man with a broken leg who refuses splints or crutches to save his pride and ends up a cripple for life.” He glanced at Sasha. “That's what Kessligh always said, anyway.”
“Kessligh said a lot of things,” Sasha said quietly.
“Aye,” said Teriyan, “he always told a person what he thought, whether it was what they wanted to hear or not. I always liked that about him. He wasn't always right, but he always tried to make a person think. Lots of Goeren-yai never liked what he had to say about them—folks never do like being told their own worst flaws, most especially when they're true. But being scared to face the truth is cowardice, I reckon. And no Goeren-yai likes a coward.”
Sasha left Teriyan and Andreyis to their sparring and headed back to merchant's square—Andreyis needed as much practice as possible, and she herself found sparring against non-svaalverd fighters only so helpful. It exercised her eye, reflexes and muscles, but she knew she'd achieve more for her technique by practising taka-dans alone.
As she walked along a cobbled road through morning crowds, she thought on what Teriyan had said. “To find the solution, first we must recognise the problem.” It was Nasi-Keth thinking, through and through. Teriyan was a well-read man, and had accumulated many books, a rare thing for a rural Goeren-yai. He was also one of the proudest Goeren-yai she'd ever met. Surely he was angry, and frustrated, to be saying such things at such a time. Sasha knew he had friends about the land, contacts with whom he kept in touch, as Kessligh did with his Nasi-Keth friends in Petrodor. He would be talking now with Goeren-yai soldiers and others attending Rathynal, with all these events and rumours afoot. Suddenly she was worried for him. She hoped he wouldn't do anything stupid, or get drunk and start a fight with that big, loud mouth of his.
She headed to the Garrison Barracks, where Jaryd was quartered with the Falcon Guard. It was a broad, grey stone building with several wings about a central courtyard, all teeming with Falcon Guardsmen and men of the Black Hammers of southern Rayen province.
All the provincial companies of Lenayin were required to serve six months garrison duty in Baen-Tar at one time or other…all save the northern companies, who were on constant watch against the Cherrovan threat and could not be spared. Such rotations helped the unity of Lenayin, it was said. What was not said (or at least not as often) was that it also underlined how little true power the Lenay king held. The Royal Guard were his—nearly a thousand men, drawn from all over Lenayin. But they were rarely used away from Baen-Tar, lest the capital be left undefended. The Lenay throne, ultimately, had only as much power and protection as the great lords wished it to have. The great lords allowed the king to rule because the archbishop said the king was the gods’ chosen representative in Lenayin and, more to the point, because it was better to tolerate a king in Baen-Tar than the awful, bloody squabble that would surely erupt if he were removed and the provinces fought for power amongst themselves as they once had.
Even Sasha, uninterested in the affairs of nobility as she typically was, could see that it was an imperfect arrangement at best. Such were the compromises that her great-grandfather Soros had been forced to make in order to sell the fractious peoples of Lenayin on the new, central power of Baen-Tar. So far, successive Lenayin kings had refrained from spending any more of the royal tax revenue on building royal armies—King Soros had known that a powerful king with enormous armies would have been opposed tooth and nail by the provinces whatever their newfound Verenthane fervour. The alternative would have been for the great lords to raise those royal taxes themselves…but considering the purposes to which they would wish to put such taxes, there was no way the Goeren-yai were about to wear that, either. And so, what remained was a shaky agreement between the great lords and the king that if the provinces did not cause trouble, the king would not raise armies, and would instead continue to spend the royal tax on things the people needed…or at least were thought to need, on the rare occasion they were actually asked.
That shaky arrangement, Sasha could see more clearly of late than ever, was now being tested. It had lasted roughly a century now, a period of unprecedented peace and stability in Lenayin. Kessligh, for one, had voiced amazement that it had even lasted that long. A great wind, he'd said, would break a brittle tree. And at some point, the king would have to decide whether his own relative powerlessness was a worthwhile price to pay for stability…
A Falcon Guardsman admitted her to the commander's chambers with a friendly greeting, and she found Jaryd seated upright in his wide bed, dressed in a plain shirt with the sheets pulled to his middle, his left arm in a sling across the chest. A boy of perhaps ten, with sandy hair and freckles, sat on Jaryd's bedside, talking animatedly.
“M'Lady Sashandra!” Jaryd exclaimed cheerfully as Sasha entered. “Have you met my little brother Tarryn?”
“I have not had the honour,” said Sasha. The boy twisted about to stare at her. “Master Tarryn, I'm very pleased to meet you. I hope you're better at staying on your horse than your brother.”
Jaryd laughed.
“He was knocked off!” Tarryn said indignantly. “Pyter Pelyn did it, he never plays fair. I was just telling Jaryd, Pyter Pelyn's son Garret cheats at four-sticks! He's in some of my classes here, I never liked him.”
“I'm not surprised,” said Sasha and bounced onto the end of Jaryd's bed. Tarryn stared at that most unladylike act. “How's the arm?” she asked Jaryd, kneeling.
“It's not so bad,” said Jaryd. His face was pale and his brown hair hung lank and unwashed, but the confidence in his tone made Sasha believe it. “The healer says it's just a small break of the forearm, he didn't need to use the knife. He bound it and put in splints for support, but it should heal clean in less than a month. The elbow and shoulder are all swollen, but that should heal too, he said.”
“That's wonderful!” Sasha exclaimed with feeling. “The way you came off, I was certain you'd smashed something good!”
“He says it doesn't hurt,” Tarryn said eagerly, with a mischievous smile. “He always says it doesn't hurt. He fell down some stairs once and split his head open, there was blood everywhere. Our house healer had to clean the wound with boiled wine, and Jaryd said that didn't hurt either.”
“Nothing hurts after you faint,” Sasha said wryly. There was a wine pitcher on the bedside table and a bowl of something that smelled strongly of crushed herbs. Sasha knew well that even with such remedies, Jaryd's arm would hurt like hell. But few Lenay men would show pain in a woman's vicinity…and even less so to a younger brother.
“I never did,” Jaryd said mildly. “This is my third break, I've never yet fainted.”
“You're pretty,” said Tarryn.
Sasha blinked at him in surprise. And grinned. “Thank you very much!”
“Fenyl Harys said you were really ugly,” Tarryn continued. “He said you were an ogre, and that you had a moustache and warts.”
“I shaved off the moustache just this morning,” Sasha admitted.
“You did not!” Tarryn laughed. “Are you really as good a fighter as Kessligh Cronenverdt?”
“Who said I was?”
“Jaryd,” said Tarryn. “He said you were the best fighter he'd ever seen.” Sasha raised an eyebrow at Jaryd, who shrugged.
“But Jaryd's never seen Kessligh fight,” Sasha told Tarryn. “Not really. Kessligh's better than me, but I'm close.” Close…well, that was maybe stretching things a bit, but she wasn't about to throw away her good reputation entirely.
Sasha sat on the bed and talked with Jaryd and Tarryn for a while. Jaryd seemed pleased of the company and Sasha wondered if he'd had any other visitors, besides his guardsmen. Tarryn and the Great Lord of Nyvar were the only members of Jaryd's immediate family presently in Baen-Tar, Sasha had gathered, but for Rathynal there were cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces and family allies aplenty. Tyree was a prominent province and Jaryd was possibly just a few months from the great lordship. There should have been a queue of well-wishers, friends and assorted sycophants crowding about the bed. Instead, the broad flagstone floor remained sparse and empty.
The hour bell rang to ten from the courtyard and Jaryd firmly informed Tarryn that he'd best attend to his studies. “I wish our sisters were more like you,” Tarryn told Sasha as he reluctantly got up to leave. “You're fun. They're never fun.”
“I'm sure your sisters are wonderful,” Sasha said diplomatically, but crawled on the bed to give him a big kiss on the cheek anyway. Tarryn squirmed, and grinned, and ran off to his lessons with a wave. “He's a darling!” Sasha exclaimed once he'd left.
“Ladies have been known to think so of all the men in my family,” Jaryd said mildly.
Sasha grinned and leaped across to sit beside him propped on the remaining pillows. “Even with your arm in a sling, you'll still have a try, will you?”
“A true man of Tyree never rests.”
“Someone would catch us,” she suggested.
“Not if we were fast.”
“Are you always?”
Jaryd grinned. “Not always, M'Lady.”
Sasha laughed. “I'm not ‘M'Lady’, I'm Sasha.”
“Sasha,” said Jaryd, thoughtfully.
“Were you not offered chambers in the palace?” Sasha asked. “It's customary even for soldiers to take adjoining chambers at the palace when their families visit. For important nobility, anyhow.”
“My place is with my men,” Jaryd said flatly.
“I doubt your father would agree,” Sasha ventured.
Jaryd snorted. “My father doubts I can make an adequate Great Lord of Tyree. He gave me command of the Falcon Guard so that I might learn better. Well, I'm certainly learning. I'm learning a great many things.”
“Such as?”
“Who my friends are,” Jaryd said angrily. “There are men my own age, whom I grew up with and learned to spar and ride with, all here for Rathynal and yet they've barely even said hello. They have no honour, any of them.”
Sasha took a deep breath. “Jaryd…I admire your conviction, but…isn't it a little foolhardy to be picking a fight with your own father? And with all the assorted nobility of Tyree? You're going to rule these people one day, you'll need their support…”
“When I rule,” Jaryd said stubbornly, “I'll rule in my own way, according to the values I've learned. Maybe they'll learn to like it—it can't be good having no honour in your life. Besides, you'd rather I lied, and said you'd killed that bastard Reynan?”
“I can take care of myself,” Sasha said shortly.
“In a fair fight, I've no doubt,” Jaryd agreed. “But you saw Pyter Pelyn on the lagand field. These people don't fight fair, M'Lady…I mean Sasha. That's what it means to have no honour. When I'm Great Lord, that's the first thing I'll teach them.”
It was nearing midday when she emerged from Jaryd's chambers. She had not walked ten strides around a corner when a man in a pale green, lordly shirt emerged from a doorway ahead, a sword swinging at his hip. Clearly a nobleman. She glanced over her shoulder and found another man of similar appearance walking behind her. Damn.
More men emerged from the open doorway the first man had come from. One was tall with a gaunt, bony face and silver hair. He wore a cloak of red and gold—pure vanity, Sasha thought, for the air was not cool. That man had five companions all nobly attired, with swords at their sides.
Sasha stopped, her heart beating faster. Her right hand flexed, unconsciously rehearsing the fast reach to the hilt above her left shoulder. “Lord Kumaryn,” she said, attempting pleasantry. “Have you been waiting here for me all this time?” Some spy must have seen her heading to Jaryd's chambers. The Falcon Guard may have liked Jaryd, but they remained a company of Tyree and there were bound to be some spies reporting to the lords. But Kumaryn came himself?
“Did you have a pleasant meeting with your new lover?” Kumaryn asked. His voice was hoarse and reedy. His blue eyes were hard with malice. There were great lords in Lenayin whom Sasha did not like, yet could not help but respect. Kumaryn was not one of them. The man was petty and vain.
Sasha smiled. “You'd like to think so, wouldn't you? Scared I'll wed him and raise heirs of Tyree as Nasi-Keth?”
Kumaryn scowled. “You'd never dare! The lords of Tyree would never stand for it!” He thought I was being serious, Sasha realised in disbelief.
“Jaryd Nyvar would be foolish to do so, my Lord,” said a smooth voice at Kumaryn's side. “With this one, he'd have to always wonder if the child was truly his. I hear she's had half the men in Baerlyn, and some of the women too.”
The speaker was a man of short stature. He had perhaps thirty summers, with a round face and short hair. The Verenthane star hanging from his neck was twice the size of his compatriots. That, plus his northern accent, made Sasha fairly certain of his origin.
“Please, Master Stranger,” she said reasonably, “it's impolite to insult someone without first offering your name. How else will I know whom I kill?”
“If you wish to challenge,” the northerner said with a smile, “then you may challenge Yuan Martyn Ansyn. I and my sword shall be waiting for you.”
“Martyn Ansyn.” Sasha's eyes narrowed. “Heryd Ansyn's brother, yes?”
“The very one.”
Family Ansyn were Family Telgar's oldest allies in Hadryn. There was much shared blood between them, and Lord Heryd was said to have been the old Great Lord Telgar's closest friend.
“So the lords of Hadryn and Valhanan lock arms at last,” said Sasha, surveying the group before her. There were two men behind her—seven in all, including Kumaryn and Martyn. More Hadryn than Valhanan, to judge from the cut of their hair and the prominence of Verenthane symbols. And too many, even for her. “What message do you have for me that it takes seven of you hiding outside the door like common cutthroats to deliver it?”
“A reminder,” Kumaryn said coldly. “There are more of us than of you.”
Sasha laughed. “My Great Lord, you've learned to count! Your wet nurse will be so proud!”
“It's not our ability with numbers that was in question,” Yuan Martyn replied before Kumaryn could bristle his outrage. “You don't have your pagan rabble to defend you here.”
“You threaten like a coward,” Sasha retorted, her temper slipping. “If you were brave, you'd challenge. My family won't take kindly to my murder beneath their protection.”
“Oh aye,” Martyn said with a cool smile, “Prince Koenyg loves you well, I hear. The king has not called you ‘daughter’ for twelve years. The king no longer favours your pagan ways, nor your devil friends from Saalshen. You have few enough friends in Baen-Tar, girl.”
“I'm going to go and have a pleasant lunch with my sister,” Sasha said impatiently. “For the last time, say what you will and begone.”
“The trial of Lord Krayliss,” said Lord Kumaryn. “It will be soon.”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “You know, the last time we met, you were trying to arrest me for something you knew damn well I didn't do. Was this what that was about? You were trying to keep me from Lord Krayliss's trial and, since that didn't work, you now resort to threats?”
“The king wants Lord Krayliss dead,” Kumaryn continued, his bony cheeks reddening. “Prince Koenyg wants him dead. Every sane man and woman in Lenayin sees him for the rabble-rousing troublemaker he is, and…”
“All the nobility, you mean,” Sasha interrupted. “The only sane men and women in Lenayin.” Mockingly. “What'll you do once he's gone? Have the king appoint some friendly Verenthane lord to the great lordship?”
“Such would be a great boon to the people of Taneryn,” Martyn said softly.
“Did you ask them?” Sasha retorted. “I'm no friend of Lord Krayliss, but I'll not deny him a fair trial to help you fulfil your grand vision of a holy, Verenthane Lenayin with not a pagan lord in sight. You forget who the people of Lenayin truly are, so little you see of them in your Verenthane cities and castles. Best that you remember soon, or one day they'll walk into your cities and castles all together and remind you.”
Kumaryn's nostrils flared. “Now who would be making the threats, girl?”
“Not a threat, Lord Kumaryn,” Sasha said coldly. “Just seeing if you truly can count after all. They look so little from your castle towers, don't they? All the commonfolk? And so few. Like all the little streams in the hills after a winter's rain. It's only when you see them reach the valley bottom and come together that you realise what a flood looks like.”
“The little pretend princess thinks the Goeren-yai all love her,” Yuan Martyn said softly. His manner was all light-tongued menace, beside Kumaryn's blunt bluster. Sasha had no doubts which man was the more dangerous of the two. This was Princess Wyna's man, and Princess Wyna shared not only Koenyg's attention, but also his bed. Lord Kumaryn had no such advantage. “There are thousands of Goeren-yai soldiers camped before the walls for Rathynal. I hear they could barely agree on where to pitch their tents. Upslope was more fortuitous, I hear, and downslope potentially an ill omen. It nearly came to blows. Such a rabble could no more unite against the true lords of Lenayin than they united against the Cherrovan Empire. It took a lowlands Verenthane to save Lenayin from its disgrace. There is no such hero to ride to your rescue this time, little pretend princess.”
“And it took a lowlands Nasi-Keth to come and rescue the Verenthanes when the Cherrovan came back seventy years later,” Sasha retorted. Yuan Martyn's eyes flashed with anger. “Why go to such lengths to remove Lord Krayliss? If you're so unconcerned about the Goeren-yai?”
Yuan Martyn smiled. “Someone must save Lenayin from herself. The gods’ work is never easy, but it is rewarding. The gods are merciful, but their wrath is harsh upon all who would obstruct the righteous path. Remember, little pretend princess. Never forget.”