He said with regret, “Father sent me a new festival costume before Midwinter-night, and I had to leave it in the monastery when I left so suddenly. Well, it can’t be helped, this is the best I have.”
“I will cut your hair, if you like,” Romilly offered, and trimmed his curling hair to an even length, then brushed it till it shone. He laughed and told her he was not a horse to be currycombed, but he looked at himself with satisfaction in the stream.
“At least I look like a gentleman again; I hate to be shabby like a ruffian,” he said. “Mestra Jandria, will you not come with us? My father could not be angry with anyone who had been so kind to his son.”
Jandria shook her head. “There were old quarrels between Lyondri and me before you were hatched or Rakhal sought out Carolin’s throne, dear boy; I would rather not come under your father’s eye. Romilly will take you.”
“I will be glad to ride with Romilly,” said Caryl, “and I am sure my father will be grateful to her.”
“In the name of all the Gods of the Hastes, boy, I hope so,” said Jandria, and when Caryl bent over her hand in his courtly manner, she pressed it. “Adelandeyo,” she said after the manner of the hill women, “Ride on with the Gods, my boy, and may They all be with you, and with Romilly.”
Only Romilly, seeing the tensing in Janni’s jaw, the tremble in her eyes, knew that Janni was thinking, Gods protect you, girl, and may we see you again safe out of Lyondri Hastur’s hands.
Romilly clambered into her saddle. With a clarity not usual to her unless she was in rapport with her hawk and seeing all things through her laran and not her eyes, she saw the clear pale sky, the tent of the Sisterhood; heard thwacks where Mhari and Lauria were practicing with the wooden batons they used for swords, saw two other women slowly working through the careful training moves of unarmed combat, the dancelike ritual which trained their muscles to work without thought in defensive movement. She could still see smoke from the breakfast fire and felt alerted and frightened – smell of smoke when no food was cooking? – before she remembered that they were not now in the forest and there was, in this green meadow, no chance of wildfire.
She had made herself tidy, with her best cloak, the one Orain had bought for her in the Nevarsin market – though now she felt sore and raw-edged about his gift, she had nothing else nearly so good or so warm – and had borrowed the cleanest tunic she could find in the camp from one of the swordswomen. She was conscious of the still-stinging earrings in her ears, mercilessly revealed by her short hair. Well, she told herself defensively, I am what I am; a woman of the Sisterhood of the Sword – even though I am not very good with it yet – and Lyondri Hastur can just accept me as an emissary under safe-conduct; why should I worry about whether I look like a lady? What is Lyondri to me? And yet a little voice that sounded like Luciella’s was saying in her mind, with prim reproach, Romy, for shame, boots and breeches and astride like a man, what would your father say? Mercilessly she commanded the voice to be quiet.
She clucked briefly to her horse and nodded to Caryl, who drew his horse into an easy trot beside her own.
Hali was an unwalled city, with broad streets which were uncannily smooth under foot; at her puzzled look, Caryl smiled and told her they had been laid down by matrix technology, without the work of human hands. At her skeptical glance he insisted, “It’s true, Romy! Father showed me, once, how it can be done, laying the stones with the great matrix lattices under ten or twelve leroni or laranzu’in. One day I will be a sorcerer as well and work among the relays and screens!”
Romilly was still skeptical, but there was no use at all in challenging what a child’s father had told him, so she held her peace.