Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

“Rap, I’m going away!”

She had not meant to mention that problem. He looked at her with surprise all over his plain pudding face, though it was a lot less pudding than it used to be.

“South,” she said quickly. “To Kinvale. To learn how to be a lady. With Aunt Kade. On the next ship.”

Inos bit her lip and stared at the distant high table. The hall had gone rather misty.

His hand tightened on hers. “How long?”

“A year.” Inos took a deep breath and made a big effort to be regal. “You see, the duke is a sort of relative—Duke Angilki of Kinvale. Aunt Kade was married to his uncle. And my great-grandfather’s sister was his… Oh, I forget. Inisso had three sons. One became king here after him, one went south and became duke of Kinvale, and one went to Nordland. Kalkor, the thane of Gark, is descended from him. But it’s much more complicated…”

She stopped, because Rap would not be interested, and it was not very nice to talk of all those ancestors when he did not have any. Well; none that he knew of, she decided. He must have had just as many as she had, only not of noble blood. Her father said that the branches of her family tree were all knotted. There were not many noble families in the north country, so they tended to intermarry every few generations, as soon as it was decent.

Inisso had had three sons. Apparently that was important.

“When you are queen of Krasnegar, then I shall be your sergeant-at-arms,” Rap said.

Oh, Rap!

“I would rather have you as master-of-horse, I think.”

“Sergeant-at-arms!” he insisted.

“Master-of-horse!”

Pause. “Both!” they said together, and laughed together.

Apparently Jalon was not going to start singing again just yet.

For a few minutes nothing more was said, and Inos realized she was sitting smiling like a dummy at Rap, and he was smiling just as stupidly back at her. Why should she be smiling at a time like this?

Go away? To-horrible Kinvale? What good was it to be a princess if you had to do things like that? And creepy old Sagorn had hinted that she might start a war if she ever fell in love with a man…

“I saw a God today.”

She had not meant to mention that, either. In fact she had promised her father that she would not.

But Rap’s solemn gray eyes were waiting for her to explain. So she did. And she told him about Doctor Sagorn and the silk and everything that had happened. She was not sure why she did, but she felt better afterward. After all, Rap could be trusted not to blabber to others, and no one was more levelheaded than Rap.

He listened carefully and then ignored the God. “Who’s this Doctor Sagorn? Is he up there?”

“No,” she said. “He was tired by his journey. Not a party man.”

“Are you sure he isn’t a sorcerer?” He was being very serious.

“Oh, of course!” she said. The idea seemed so idiotic now—she had been a fool. “He’s an old friend of my father’s.”

“Who has not seen him in many years?”

“Yes, but…” she said. This was not like Rap at all! “And even the God had said…” No, They had not said; it had been Mother Unonini who had said that Sagorn was not a sorcerer. She fell silent, worried by the look on Rap’s face.

“Tell me again what he looks like.”

“Tall, gray-haired. Big hooked nose. Deep clefts down here. Rather pale face. I expect he doesn’t go out much.”

“What’s wrong, Rap?” Lin had appeared to be toying with the cast on his arm, but he had been listening nevertheless. Lin was purebred imp—short and dark and notably nosy. He had grown, also, Inos noted; but his voice was still treble. A late developer.

Rap was scowling. “Nobody like that came in today.”

Inos’s heart jumped a beat and then carried on as if nothing had happened.

“Don’t be silly!” she said. “You must have missed him. You couldn’t possibly have seen every single person who came through the gates.”

Rap said nothing, just scowled at the floor.

“Tell her, Rap!” Lin said.

“Tell me what, Rap?”

Rap stayed silent.

Lin said hotly, “Thosolin was a pig to him, Inos. He put him on guard and made him stand there all day in the sun. In armor! Didn’t even let him go for a pee. No lunch. He does that with beginners. Testing, he calls it, but he just likes to see them faint from too much standing.”

She squeezed Rap’s hand fiercely. “Is that true?”

He nodded. “But I didn’t faint.” He turned and looked hard at her. “And your Doctor Sagorn didn’t come in the gate.”

“Rap!” Inos squealed. That was absurd! “I expect he walked in beside a wagon. I went out that way.”

“I saw you,” Rap said, without smiling. “You walked right by me. But no wagons came in today.”

“He was following me up the hill, he said. And it wasn’t very long after that that I heard him talking to Father—less than an hour.”

“He did not come in the gate,” Rap said.

His big jaw looked as stubborn as the rock of Krasnegar itself.

The wind is in the south, we shall have rain .

So Rap’s mother would have said. Probably it had been true, where she had come from, but it was not true in Krasnegar. The wind was from the south, off the land, so it was going to be another fine day. It was the north wind, from the sea, that brought rain, or snow more usually. His mother used to have many strange notions like that, Rap knew now, although he could not remember very much of her. He could hardly recall what she had looked like, but he could remember some of her strange notions.

One of those was to wash every morning. That was not always easy in Krasnegar. Sometimes in winter the ice was so thick that it had to be broken with an ax, but in summer it was pleasant to wash in the mornings, and at any time he liked the habit. It made him feel good, so he did it, although most of the other men laughed at him or called him crazy or said it was unhealthy. A few of them never seemed to wash at all, but he liked the tingle he got from water and the way it wiped the sleep off his skin. And he often thought of his mother as he did it.

That morning he had not even bothered to take a bucket of water indoors. He was standing bare-chested by the trough in the shadowy, dewy stable yard when old Hononin came marching out, pulling off his shirt. Rap felt uneasy. Being shirtless out in the fields was all right, but Krasnegarians were puritanical about dress, and he felt uncomfortable at being discovered in a state of seminudity. Seeing the old man like that was even worse, and quite unprecedented. His skin hung loose on him and a patch of gray hair in the middle of his chest looked as if it might have fallen off the bald spot on his scalp. Rap wondered if he ought to leave, but he merely moved respectfully to the far end of the trough and said nothing.

The little old hostler seemed even more gnarled and grumpish than usual and he did not speak, either, just thrust his whole head into the trough. That explained matters.

He emerged spluttering and shivering, then started cupping water with his hands and rinsing his armpits and shoulders.

“The big one’s fixed,” he growled without looking at Rap. “Want you to take it out before the next tide.”

Rap looked around to make sure there was no one behind him. There wasn’t. Well! The sunlight brightened. A wagon ride was a much more enticing thought than more sentry duty, even if Thosolin did not indulge himself in other petty testings. South to the mainland, where there was more to keep a man occupied… But Inos expected to go riding and she would not have many more chances before she left. He felt a sudden, nasty pang and told himself to grow up and be manly. There was some evil in every good, as the priests said, and a man must obey orders.