P. Hodgell - Honor's Paradox

Would you tempt the destroyer in me, Caineron?

As if he had heard her thought, he turned his white teeth on her.

“I see that you shun the flatteries of fashion, Lordan. How . . . modest of you. But that’s not quite correct: you may wear your cadet jacket—very dashingly, I might add—but you dress your hair Merikit style. Let’s see: smooth on the right but, oh my, twenty braids on the left, all twisted into one down the back. Have you really killed twenty hillmen?”

The simple answer to that was “no.” Jame had no idea how many Noyat she had personally slain during their raid on the Merikit village, but the Merikit women had credited her with all of their kills as well and Gran Cyd herself had first braided the record of the enemy dead into Jame’s hair, slathered with their blood. Why had she worn it into Gothregor? Perhaps to compensate for her plain coat, or perhaps in defiance because other cadets had started to gossip about her adventures among the so-called savages. Only now did it occur to her that those rumors might have been started by Fash, one of the few at Tentir who would know what those braids signified.

“What happens in the hills is no business of yours,” she told him coldly.

Satisfaction glinted in his eyes. He knew that he had drawn blood.

“Ah, but then hillmen die so easily,” he said, “like the dumb brutes that they are.”

“That’s all they are to you, isn’t it? Mere animals.”

Kirien touched her arm. “Gently, gently . . .”

The pook dashed past again, followed by Danior’s son shrieking, “Doggie, doggie, doggie!” followed by a panting Gorbel.

“That’s right,” said Fash, answering Jame, flashing an even wider smile at her that was more like the bearing of teeth. “Pilfering vermin, to be exact. A waste of skin.”

Jame remembered the tattooed Merikit hides strewn like rugs about Lord Caineron’s quarters. Fash and his ilk had supplied those. She thought of Prid’s tawny mane or Gran Cyd’s auburn braids spread across the floor under Caldane’s slippered feet. Dark anger stirred in her.

“Half hill and half hall,” mused Fash, eyeing her slyly askance. “How many classes d’you reckon you’ve missed, playing savage in the wilds?”

“Do you think me ill-learned? Yet I am still at the college, after two culls.”

“As am I. The randon, Trinity bless them, who are they to deny a lord’s heir?”

“Now listen here . . .” began Timmon ominously.

“Oh, no one questions you, m’lord.”

“But you imply that they do me.” Jame was too angry now for caution, although part of her mind noted the Caineron’s manipulations and urged her back. But this . . . this beast had put his knife to decent Merikit skin and had lived to laugh about it.

“Challenge me,” she heard herself say, “anytime, anywhere, and we will see.”

Fash bowed himself away. “Oh yes. We undoubtedly will.”

“That,” said Kirien, “was not wise.”

Jame sighed, letting the rage flow out of her taut limbs and her nails resheathe. “No, it wasn’t. But one has to take a stand somewhere.”

At last the summons came and the lordans trooped up to the Council Chamber. There the lords sat around the table in coats of brocade, silk, and embroidery heavy with gold, far more resplendent even than their heirs.

Torisen stood framed by the empty window with his hands clasped behind him, a figure of slim, simple elegance in black and silver.

His beard startled Jame, who hadn’t seen him since the Winter Wars. She wondered if he had grown it to disguise the hollows of his cheeks. Nothing dire that she knew about was going on. The job of Highlord was apparently wearing enough in itself when taken seriously as, of course, Torisen would. She wished that she could make him laugh. Even more, she wished that they could simply meet as the equals that they first had been. After all, they were twins even if Tori was a good ten years older than she.

But she was also a Highborn female, less than any lord, more and yet somehow simultaneously less than just about everyone else. Then too, she was also a randon cadet and her brother’s heir, an anomaly anyway anyone cared to look at it.

She could feel the lords’ eyes seek her out, some disapproving, some speculative. Caldane, Lord Caineron, glowered, but with a hint of eagerness in his stance, like a cat that has spotted its prey. His pudgy, beringed fingers drummed the table, stilled, and drummed again. Only Brandan and Cousin Holly looked at all friendly, the former nodding to her as she entered the room, the latter raising a finger in greeting.

“Before we start the business for which we are gathered,” said the Highlord, “it is customary for us to present our heirs to the full Council and for me to give a token of approval to each. Lord Brandan, I understand that your nephew is absent on official business.”

“Yes.” Torisen’s closest neighbor leaned forward, his face nearly as dark as Adric’s and more seamed, although he was a much younger man. Not for Brant, the well-kept smoothness of the Ardeth lord; summer and winter, he worked beside his Kendar in the fields and in the Southern Wastes. “I left Boden in Kothifir, ready to finalize our troop contracts according to the decisions made here today.”

“Lord Randir . . .”

Kenan, Lord Randir, leaned back nonchalantly in his chair. As usual, his haughty features reminded Jame of something, or someone, but she couldn’t quite pin it down. Could she be thinking of Shade, his only child? “I have decades yet to rule my house. Ask for my choice of lordan fifty years from now.”

“Very well.” Torisen dipped his long, scar-laced fingers into a leather sack, drew out a chunky piece of glass, and glanced at the emblem stamped on it.

“Coman.”

The Coman Lordan came forward, with a slight air of truculence: his house hadn’t yet decided if it supported the Knorth or the Caineron. The Edirr twins came trying to look serious but failing. Danior’s little son made almost everyone smile as he dashed up in his red coat crying, “Cousin Tori! Cousin Tori!” Timmon approached to soft applause from his beaming grandfather and a murderous look from his cousin Dari.

Torisen paused, looking troubled.

“Do you swear to uphold the honor of your house, to put its interests always before your own?”

Timmon blinked. No one else had been asked such a question. He glanced at Adric who was mouthing, “Go on, Pereden!” then back at the Highlord.

“Honor break me, darkness take me, I do.”

“Then I entrust you with this. After all, it’s primarily the business of your house. Do with it as you will.” Instead of a glass token, he reached into a pocket, drew out something wrapped in linen, and handed it to the Ardeth Lordan.

Timmon retreated, looking confused. His bewilderment only grew when he examined the contents of the packet. Jame wanted to see too, but then Torisen called out, “Knorth.”

A restive stir passed among the lords. Caldane gave it voice:

“Do you really mean to uphold this travesty? She may be your sister, but what kind of a fool picks a lady for his lordan?”

“As for her right to wear that coat,” added the Randir, lazily fingering his wine glass, “what lord sends a lady to become a randon cadet?

They’ve planned this, Jame thought as a murmur rose from the table, and most of the Council agree.

“It’s not even as if she can properly defend herself,” Caldane continued, leaning forward like a bulldog on a short leash, lower jaw thrust forward. “Put it to the test if you doubt me.”

Torisen’s troubled gaze sought her out. Can you deal with this challenge? his eyes asked her.