“Why don’t we check the files in the morning?” she suggested. ”He brought letters, of course . . . and my notes. Just look at that wretched Ithinoy girl! How could her grandmother ever dream of allowing her to wear puce, with her coloring?”
“Ekka?” Kadolan said sharply.
Ekka sighed. “You should have suggested him sooner. We could have invited him to the ball.”
“He is probably not available. He told Inos that he was leaving on some romantic mission of honor and danger. He has not written. She does not write to him.”
The two ladies exchanged puzzled glances.
“But why leave?” Ekka said. “If that’s what he was? If that was what he wanted?”
“If that was what he wanted, then he succeeded. She has not looked seriously at anyone else.”
“He did not . . .” Ekka paused. Even with a very old friend, there are some questions . . .
“No! I’m quite sure. One can always tell. But he certainly could have done, had he wanted. She was very innocent, remember. Now she is perhaps a little wiser, but he knew every trick in the box. I fancy I know most of them, but that young man could have sidestepped me with no trouble, had he wished.”
From Kade that was an astonishing confession. In her years at Kinvale, even before their respective husbands had died, she had been Ekka’s pupil and partner in matrimonial machinations. Anything the Princess Kadolan did not know about chaperoning and the wiles of swains should not be worth knowing.
Still, Ekka was relieved. Three juvenile domestics had been dismissed soon after Sir Andor’s departure, and probably several others had been more fortunate in their follies.
“So what was he after, I wonder? The crown?”
“Then why leave?” It was very unlike Kade to let worry show on her face. “What business could possibly be more important?”
“Perhaps he went off to take a look at Krasnegar?”
That remark provoked loud, unladylike guffaws from both of them.
The gallopade had ended. Angilki went by, leading the Yyloringy woman, breathing much too heavily and still half asleep with boredom.
“Well,” Kade said cheerfully. “There would seem to be no use worrying about the Andor man. Inos does not know where he is, and if she doesn’t, then I assume that no one does. We’ll just have to keep the parade going and hope that she takes to someone else.”
“Or until he chooses to return?”
“Exactly.”
“And if he brings a proposal?”
“Oh, Inos would accept with her next breath. He bewitched her. And I have my orders. Unless I have very-very-good reasons, she is to be allowed to make her own choice.” She sighed wistfully. “I can’t blame her. He certainly did sparkle. Grim old Krasnegar would be a merrier place with him around.”
But . . .
Ekka nodded as the music began again for the gavotte. If Inosolan did not succeed, who would? How soon was Holindam going to die? She had been thinking in terms of years, and now it sounded like perhaps months. There was a title involved. There was a kingdom. More than that, there was almost certainly a word, part of the Inisso inheritance.
Ekka decided to keep her own options open. She would summon Angilki and inform him that he need not propose to the Yyloringy woman this evening after all.
2
Two days before Winterfest, a fencing lesson ended when Andor’s wooden sword thunked across Rap’s armored abdomen hard enough to split the leather, spill the peat-moss padding, and force an agonized “Ooof!” out of the victim.
“That will do for today, I fancy.” Andor’s amusement was evident even in a voice muffled by a fencing mask.
“Not fair!” Rap protested, straightening up with difficulty.
“You said—”
Andor pulled off his mask and laughed. “I said that the point was almost always better than the edge, yes. But I did not say that one should never use the edge, my friend. That’s why swords have edges! And you left yourself wide open for that one. Let’s go and have a drink.”
Ruefully Rap noticed that Andor’s hair was barely ruffled after almost two hours’ vigorous exercise.
They put away the protective garments, the masks, and foils; they washed themselves at the communal trough; they prepared to depart. There were no other fencers in the garrison’s gym. Krasnegar was preparing for Winterfest.
“A beer at the Beached Whale would soften the tissues pleasantly,” Andor suggested, expertly snuffing candles. He was carrying a large and unexplained bundle of furs, which Rap was trying not to worry about.
“I’ll keep you company for a while.” Rap thought glumly of the lonely attic to which he must return, the long hours until the evening meal, and the longer hours after that until he could expect to sleep. Foronod’s affairs were shut down now for Winterfest, so Rap would have nothing to do for days. Yet he had no great longing to linger in the crowded, ill-lighted Beached Whale with its thick fug of beery odor and oil fumes and reek of unwashed bodies. The gaming would stop as soon as a seer entered; sometimes women would ostentatiously depart. For Andor’s sake he would be tolerated—briefly—but he was not the most popular of customers. He never stayed for long.
“On second thought,” said Andor, who always seemed to know what a man was thinking, “let’s go straight to your place. I have something private to discuss.”
They stepped out into one of the covered stairways of the palace and picked their way carefully down toward the light of a distant torch sizzling in its sconce.
“How’m I doing, Andor?” Rap asked. “In fencing?”
Andor frowned in the darkness . . . Rap thought he frowned.
“Well, you’re still growing like a sorcerer’s sunflowers, and that throws a man’s coordination off. You’ll soon be over that, which will help. Otherwise—you’re average. Thosolin would be happy enough to take you on now. The Tenth Legion would not.”
After a moment of echoing footsteps he added, “It’s a pity you only have farsight and not some foresight as well; they often go together. Foresight makes deadly swordsmen, unbeatable. Even so, you should have known that carpet-beater was coming just now. It was not exactly a subtle stroke.”
Rap snarled. “Damn farsight! I still won’t believe it! I don’t see anything.”
“It’s a name, that’s all. And a precious gift. Stop fighting it!” They went through a door and crossed a courtyard between high snowbanks, spectral in the starlight. The sky was a black crystal bowl, clear and bitter and infinitely deep. Soon the moon would come to dull the stars, but the sun was a brief visitor to Krasnegar at Winterfest. The air was deadly as steel. It could kill a man in minutes.
Then came more ill-lighted stairs and corridors. Starlight glimmered but faintly on the windows, yet Rap led the way without hesitation, his companion following closely. The final stair was black as a closed grave, but Rap hurried up it to his room. He went to the flint and candle on the shelf. He struck a spark and light danced over the floor. “There!”
“Most people keep their candles by the door,” Andor said dryly.
Rap swore under his breath. He went out again and hurried along to the drivers’ office to borrow a couple of chairs. There was no light at all, but he put his hands on them without hesitation. He told himself that he was doing nothing out of the ordinary—he had put the chairs back there after Andor left the last time, and no one came near that office for six months at a stretch, so he had known exactly where they would be. But as he carried them to his room, he knew that Andor’s comment was valid—he did wander around in the dark. He had nothing to trip over in his little attic, only his bed and one small box, but he could always put his hand on anything he wanted. The thought troubled him. He was slipping, starting to make use of an ability that he refused to recognize or accept.
By the time he arrived with the seats, Andor had extracted the wine bottle from his mysterious bundle and was standing under the candle on its high shelf, fiddling with the seal. The bundle lay on the bed, a cushion shape of obviously fine-quality white fur, bound with a ribbon. Rap looked away from it quickly and told himself that it was not what he feared it was.
It was, though.
Andor glanced around for goblets, shrugged, and held out the bottle. ”You first! Merry Winterfest!” He grinned. “Merry Winterfest,” Rap echoed obediently. He did not care much for wine on principle, but he took the bottle and swallowed a mouthful. He did not like the taste much, even. He tried to return the bottle, but it was refused.
“You are not your father. You have a word! People who know words of power do not have nasty accidents like he did.” Andor did not usually discuss such personal matters, and Rap was surprised that he knew the story. He took a long swig and collapsed into coughing and gagging.