P. Hodgell - Bound in Blood

On the far side of the square, Brier waved again.

“Excuse me,” Jame said, and began to work her way through the battling masses, dodging a fury of flung mudballs as she went. Farce indeed. Above, she could see the Commandant on the Map Room balcony. That was where the various teams were supposed to deliver their spoils of war.

Brier handed her the Randir flag. “The arrogant bastards hardly bothered to hide it, or to keep an adequate guard.”

Jame stuffed it into her jacket, which was now close to bursting.

“Help me get up there.”

Brier formed a cup with her big hands. Oh lord. All right. She put her foot into the proffered hoist and was flung upward. Balcony and wall whirled past. She was going to miss the opening. Suddenly the Commandant was in her way and she crashed into him. As they picked themselves up inside the room, she saw that she had planted one muddy boot firmly in his stomach and the other in his already battered face.

The monitors had assembled in the Map Room, including Torisen and Harn in the background, the latter looking sick but shakily on the mend.

Jame pulled the four flags out of her coat one by one.

Awl surveyed the Randir banner wryly, then Jame. “Do you have anything else in there?”

“Sadly, no,” said Jame, regarding her flattened chest with regret. “Oh, except for this.” She extracted Timmon’s scarf. “Someone should release him from our kitchen, unless he’s thought to climb up the chimney.”

The Commandant had been adding up points. “I make this two hundred sixty flag points captured, one hundred thirty retained, and one commander’s scarf worth ninety. Four hundred and eighty all together.”

“The Ardeth pretty much swept the Danior,” protested one monitor.

“Altogether, flag, commander, and cadets, the Danior are only worth ninety-one. True, we haven’t added up all the ten-commanders, fives, and common cadets, but do you see anything matching this?”

Some grumbling ensued, but no real protest.

“Very good,” said the Commandant. “The Knorth team wins. Excuse me while I announce it to the cadet body.”

Moments later he returned, wiping mud off his face with his scarf. “They appear to be having too much fun to attend properly. I will inform them later. Meanwhile, will someone please go and release the Ardeth Lordan from duress vile in the Knorth kitchen?”

“ . . . and when we retrieved the Ardeth Lordan from the kitchen,” Torisen was saying, “he was soot black from head to toe. Jame was right: he’d tried to climb out the chimney, but it was too narrow and hot. He looked as if he wanted to throttle her—as when haven’t we all?—but then she presented him with a carrot and he burst out laughing.”

“A carrot?”

It was late on the sixty-third of Winter, nearing dawn on the sixty-fourth. Torisen and Marc were in the Council Chamber while the Kendar waited for the latest sheet of glass to be cool enough to work.

“I gather that they first properly met in the Ardeth kitchen, of all places, and that for lack of dinner Timmon was munching on raw vegetables. I can’t make up my mind about that boy. Is he as rotten as his father, or is there hope for him yet? Jame doesn’t seem sure either. He was rather self-conscious around me, but then he said he saw why he’d mistaken me for Jame and it was my turn to retreat, discomfited.”

Marc eyed the other’s stubble, which so far merely looked as if he had given up washing his face. “So that’s why you’ve stopped shaving.”

“That’s it. Oh, but you should have seen the Commandant, spattered with mud up to the eyebrows! Every cadet below must have let loose at him at once. And both his eyes were turning black. I take it that Harn caught him with an elbow the first time and Jame with a foot the second. Still, he didn’t have to break her fall. I wonder if he or anyone else will survive my sister’s sojourn at Tentir.”

“How is Ran Harn?”

“Sleeping a lot. It’s a good thing that the college takes a break after the Winter War so that we could get him home for a while. He must have absorbed a lot of that foul forget-me-not stuff. It’s still giving him waking nightmares.” He paused, remembering what Jame had told him about the burly Kendar sobbing over his dead father.

“Now help me, boy. Take the knife, draw it just so across my wrist. Good. Now sit with me one last time and wait. It’s all right.”

What would it be like, to have loved a father that much? He could barely imagine it, but he ached for his friend’s raw pain. Some injuries only scabbed over, never truly healing.

“I could kill that wretched Graykin,” he said, “but Jame tells me it wasn’t his fault.”

Marc turned over the hourglass on the windowsill and donned his protective hood. “Is it true that she’s leaving at dawn?”

“It’s two days until the Winter Solstice. The Commandant tells me that she’s somehow gotten involved with the Merikit as the Earth Wife’s Favorite, whatever that is.”

The big Kendar paused, then slowly pulled on one glove, frowning.

“You don’t like it,” said Torisen, watching him.

“No, and not just because the Merikit slaughtered my family, apparently over a misunderstanding. They also believe that if they don’t succeed in the winter solstice rites, winter will never end.”

Torisen laughed. “Surely you don’t take that seriously.”

Marc flexed his fingers into the leather, then pulled on the second gauntlet. Trinity, but his hands were big.

“The forces that they worship are real, and dangerous,” he said. “Do I believe in their rituals? On the whole, yes. More than I sometimes believe in ours. After all, this is their world.”

“I suppose so. At least, the Commandant seemed to think it was important that she go north.”

He frowned, thinking of that last conversation with Sheth as they had drunk a stirrup cup together before his departure. The Commandant was usually inscrutable, but with two black eyes he had also looked masked, distant.

“What has Jameth told you?” he had suddenly asked.

“Precious little.” It had been hard to keep the resentment out of his voice. “Only enough to understand Harn’s condition.”

“Hmm. She honors the secrets of Tentir, as is only right. I tell you this, though, Highlord: while the circumstances that led to your uncle’s death were unusual, the challenge that he faced was not. All Knorth Lordan are tested one way or another, to see if they are fit to rule. Jameth won’t—rule, that is, of course—but someone is bound to challenge her before the end of the college year. For that reason, I initially voted to expel her at the last cull.”

“You take this threat that seriously.”

“Greshan died of it.”

Torisen stirred uneasily. Should he pull his sister from the college? Could he at this late date without insulting the randon whose ultimate judgment had been that she should stay? She was slipping out of his power, beyond his protection, into realms denied to him. Even this journey to the Merikit could be the test of which the Commandant spoke, although it was hard to see how.

Marc opened a slot in the annealing furnace, pulled out a pallet, and slid the molten glass onto the mazer. As he rolled it, it opened out and cooled to an opaque white flecked with translucent pink and gold. His sweat dripped on it. More lines emerged. When it had set, he stopped and stared down at it. Torisen looked over his shoulder. It was roughly heart-shaped, and held the ghost image of a child’s face in its flaws.