P. Hodgell - Honor's Paradox

“Think about it,” she said urgently. “The way he lives, in hiding, always on the run—how could he accept a follower?”

“I could serve him at the college, in the field, anywhere.”

“He would still be responsible for you, and he can’t be. Look at all the trouble I’ve had supporting Graykin, and we’ve been under the same roof all winter.”

Shade stared at her. “That scruffy little Southron is bound to you?”

“Yes, but for Perimal’s sake don’t tell anyone. It was an accident. You said once that you didn’t need to be bound to anyone any more than I do, but you can still serve him without that. Look how useful your skills were to him tonight, and may be again in the future. Some day he and Rawneth will clash. Then he’ll need all the allies he can get. Will you consider that, and please stop bleeding?”

Shade was still for a moment. “All right,” she finally said. Her face contorted with effort. Then she sighed and removed her hands from the former wound.

Jame looked up to find that they were surrounded by a circle of silent, watchful Randir.

Two of them stepped forward and helped Shade to rise. Weak from blood loss, she sagged in their steadying grip.

“This is our business now,” said the ten-commander, “and our sister. We will care for her.”

They left, bearing Shade with them.

“I’ll send Addy home,” Jame called after them. “Shade?” But they were gone.

Jame sat back on her heels and considered her torn, blood-soaked clothes. More work for Rue, if she could even save the slowly rotting fabric. Perhaps the changer’s blood wasn’t corrosive enough yet to dissolve steel, but it had certainly ruined yet another bit of Jame’s limited wardrobe.

But oh, what had she said? Now the Randir knew that Graykin was bound to her, and no lady was supposed to bind anyone, never mind that Rawneth did. That settled it: whether he wanted to hear or not, she had to tell her brother before someone else did.

The next morning at assembly, a wan Shade appeared, in company with many battered faces and some broken bones. However, it seemed that no one wanted to report the night’s events to their house. That, thought Jame, was just as well, given their lady’s reaction the last time an assassination attempt on the Randir Heir had failed.

The days to Summer’s Eve melted away.

It was full spring now, the wind-combed grass on the hills a vivid green speckled with bluebells and dancing golden campion, the apple orchard a drift of sweet blossoms. Birds sang and bees throbbed drunkenly through the air, sometimes bouncing off inauspiciously placed tree trunks. After classes on the afternoon of the fifty-seventh, Jame walked through a high meadow beyond the northern wall, idly gathering wild flowers and watching butterflies for Jorin to chase.

With three black tokens and two white, she was failing Tentir. Only one day of potential tests remained—tomorrow—if she meant to ride north to the hills on the fifty-nineth of Spring in time for Summer’s Eve.

Moreover, she hadn’t yet been tested in the Senetha or the Sene, the two related disciplines besides the Senethar where she could hope to excel. What if they came on the last day, the most important of her college career, when she was gone?

Should she go at all? Where did her responsibility lie, in the hall or in the hills?

On the face of it, the answer was simple. Tori had placed her here against all advice, against even his own common sense, with the sole requirement that she not make fools of them both. If she failed, would anyone care why? They would say that she was and always had been unfit, also that Torisen was a fool to have proposed her in the first place. If a fight with the Randir was coming, even possibly a civil war, did she dare weaken his position in any way? She wasn’t just any Kencyr, either, as Ashe had once pointed out, but a potential Nemesis. Someday one third of the Kencyrath’s destiny might depend on her.

She considered what would happen if she did indeed fail Tentir.

The Women’s World certainly wouldn’t take her back, nor did she want to go.

Nonetheless, lords would fight for her contract, the Ardeth and Caineron hardest of all. Dari with his rotting teeth and breath of a rotten eel, Caldane himself, perhaps . . .

G’ah, think of something else.

The cool wind, the sun hot on her face, a froth of white bells at her feet, and Jorin crouching behind a tuft of grass insufficient to hide him, ears pricked to the drowsy drone of a bumblebee. His hindquarters wriggled, one paw came up, and he pounced, barely missing.

“You wouldn’t have liked the taste anyway,” she told the ounce as he plumped himself down and began to wash as if nothing had happened.

Tori could still take you as his consort. How would you like the taste of that?

Jame felt her cheeks flush.

Yes, she loved her brother, but in that way? Scraps of dreams returned to her, the sort that Timmon favored but could never control, the sort that left her abashed but tingling.

Is it so bad, after all, to be a woman?

Perhaps not, but in the context of property? For a Highborn lady, there was no other way.

Then there was Rathillien.

Ultimately, the Kencyrath’s fate might depend as much on its relationship with this world as on the coming of the Tyr-ridan. The Four had started out hostile to her people, with good reason given that they saw the Kencyrath as invaders. The Eaten One might be content with her Kencyr consort for a season, but the Burnt Man favored no one except perhaps the Dark Judge, and Mother Ragga still had doubts. Nothing would turn her against the Three People faster than Jame’s failure to attend Summer’s Eve, not to mention the consequences if Chingetai failed again to close his borders against the Noyat and other tribes farther north under the Shadows’ sway.

Maybe there had been some way for Jame to escape her northern entanglements, but if so, she hadn’t found it.

Face it, she told herself glumly. Your loyalties are divided, and you have no one to blame for that but yourself.

On top of all that, she also had to meet Gorbel’s challenge on Summer’s Day. That morning at assembly the Caineron Lordan had formally issued it before the entire cadet body while the Commandant had looked down expressionless from his balcony.

“Run away,” Fash had advised with a grin while Higbert snickered behind him. “Now.” Both obviously expected an easy fight. “D’you think you stand a chance against even one of us on horseback, much less eight?”

Jame had ignored him.

Her own house had been harder to snub. Reactions there ranged from horrified shock to a gallant if somewhat desperate defense from her own ten: the lordan had pulled off miracles before; now—somehow—she would do so again.

Brier had given her an appraising look. “Is this fight to the death?”

“Not so far as I know”—with a passing thought to her uncle Greshan’s fate. “More likely to the shame, which is quite bad enough.”

In the end, though, their anxious chatter had driven her away into the high meadows, to be alone and to gather her thoughts, so far without success.

. . . run away . . .

What if she went to the hills and failed to return in time to meet Gorbel’s challenge?

Fash would laugh and Gorbel would be disappointed in her. So would her own people and all the unlikely friends she had made during her sojourn at Tentir, the Commandant not least. Would even her brother’s honor survive such a blow? He had tacitly supported her by letting her stay at Tentir for the past year. She owed him for that . . .