Lhind the Spy by Sherwood Smith

He smiled and shook his head. “We are not being constrained here. We’ll talk on the road.”

  To my surprise, that’s what happened. None of the empress’s company were in sight. The Blues helped us so assiduously, down to providing an extra pack of excellent fodder for the horses, that even I could see a message in their helpfulness. The only thing I wasn’t certain of was the message: either “We are on your side” or “Don’t let the door hit your heels.”

  I expected Hlanan to call a stop once we got out of sight of the castle, but we moved at a trot through the quiet town. When we got to the road beyond—cleared by magic by someone else—it was Geric who whistled his mount into a gallop, ours following.

  When the horses tired we slowed to a less breakneck pace. Now that I wasn’t clutching the mane (despite those lessons from Oflan Nath, my old bad habits still persisted) I could look around at the gently undulating landscape in its hundreds of shades of white, silver, soft gray, and pale blue.

  Brittle, frozen reeds and weeds and bow-shouldered willows with clumps of hibernating shrubs jutted from the icy riverbank like angry pen strokes. I forced my mental wall to strengthen, though I longed to spread my awareness out to catch the playful otters in their winter cozes, the little salamanders deep underground, and all the other creatures of water, land, and edge. It would have kept me from remembering that somewhere out beyond where the slate-gray sky met the ground moved that army.

  Obviously we had to get to Thann first. Then what?

  I resigned myself to a wait as the air got steadily colder, a nasty wind rising. Even Nill looked subdued, his head bent over his horse’s neck and his knit hat pulled almost down to his eyes.

  The cold caused my fuzz to fluff and my spine to stiffen my hair into a kind of cloak around me, rippling in the wind. As long as I didn’t get wet I’d be all right, but some day I was going to have to get some more clothes.

  We rode until the color began fading from the land. The sun had been invisible since midday. Hlanan looked anxious, and the animals had slowed to a walk, but Geric was the one who insisted irritably that we keep going, until he swayed in the saddle and nearly dumped himself into the ice forming across the top of the snow.

  Hlanan took over at that point. As hooves crackled at each step, he turned us around to the riverside village we’d recently passed.

  It was a bit larger than most of the tiny places we’d passed, being built where the river forked. Soon we sat by a fire, our clothes steaming gently. Even I was glad of the warmth.

  Once we got hot food and drink into us Geric seemed to revive.

  I said, “Why are we running so fast?”

  Geric raised his head as Hlanan said calmly, “We want to reach Thann first.”

  I sighed. “Won’t the empire warriors be a good thing if that army is coming? Why don’t you want them with us?”

  Geric glared out of eyes circled with dark, bruised looking flesh, the contrast making the blue of his irises look feverish, almost mad. “Because, you Hrethan twit, Thann is an independent duchy. It has struggled and connived and negotiated successfully to remain independent for four centuries. But if yon empire flunkey takes it over with the excuse of warding an army how soon do you think we will be able to evict them?”

  I glared back at him, remembering what some of that conniving consisted of. His beautiful duchess Morith had hired out assassins to fund her plot to make herself queen of Namas Ilan. “So I’m a Hrethan, and I guess they don’t understand land politics any more than I do. That much we have in common. But! I do remember how much your duchess lied to her own people. And they weren’t the only ones she lied to,” I added meaningfully.

  A pause, during which some bird high overhead squawked, answered by Tir.

  Then, “If Thann is to swear allegiance to the Kherval,” Geric said in a tired voice, “it is better if we do it on our own terms. And no one wants their city, or land, to become a battleground.”

  I opened my mouth to ask how he thought he was going to stop them, but caught Hlanan’s eye. He gave a tiny shake of his head.

  Geric sat there looking like he barely possessed the strength to fall into bed, so I relented. Baiting him was much more fun when he was strong enough to tromp around flinging threats and insults right and left for me to laugh at.

  We parted after agreeing that unless we woke to a blizzard, we would be gone at first light. Nill went off to help Geric with his bandages and then to check on the horses, as some inns had better stable help than others. I used this opportunity to get Hlanan alone.

  As soon as the door was shut, I took his hands—a gesture that still felt off-balance, tentative. Two seasons ago I never would have dared touch someone I liked. It hurt too much. Then came Hlanan, and for a time, whenever we were alone we couldn’t keep ourselves apart.

  But that was at the imperial palace. It hurt now when he pressed my hands then let me go, his gaze distant. Clearly no hugging or kissing was going to happen, not with him in this strange, nervy mood. “Lhind, ask your questions, but then I want to look at the innkeeper’s maps. I promised I’d be back down, and I don’t want to risk making him wait too long before he puts them away and retires.”

  “Why do you have to look at the maps at all? Don’t we follow the river upstream? One of its branches comes down out of Thann, right?”

  “Yes, but the river branches meander all over. If there is a straighter road to Thann, I intend to find it.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I don’t see why we should interfere. Your brother made it real clear what he thought of your help.”

  “Please. I know we’re alone, but please don’t get into the habit of calling him anything but by his earned title. You know our situation.”

  “Captain Dalcasta commands a lot of military people. Isn’t that what you want if you’ve got an invading army on the loose?”

  “No!” He took a turn around the small chamber, which looked pretty much like all the ones we’d stayed in so far. “No,” he said again more quietly, but his gaze met mine, wide and intense. “Don’t you see? If Justeon has his way there will be a fine battle, which he is almost bound to win. If his reinforcements get here in time. He goes back to Erev-li-Erval a hero wearing his triumphant laurels, confidently expecting the empress to make him heir.”

  I stared in shock.

  “And she might,” Hlanan said softly, making another turn. “She just might. Nothing is set until she decides so.”

  “So . . . this is a contest between you and him?” I stared at Hlanan in disbelief.

  “Yes—” He met my gaze, then his own expression changed to dismay and he reddened to the ears. “No! That is, not in a personal sense. As if we were rivals in a contest or a duel.”

  He took another turn as he threw his head back. “My first thought is of lives. There has to be a way to avoid a war. I don’t have military training, but I’ve spent time around people who do, and those who lust for war are few—that is, among those who have to actually wage it. Commanders who sit in palaces and send others to their deaths are more common.”

  “Is Captain Dalcasta one of those?”

  “Yes. No. Oh, I believe he’s willing to risk his personal safety. Though he would not lead from the front, because you see nothing except the next weapon coming at you from the front. He thinks about strategy and tactics in abstract terms, and will find some hill from which he can see the most because he needs to see the battle in the abstract.”

  Hlanan whirled and began pacing the other way. “When battle is distant—abstract—it is easier to pay the price in lives. Everything I’ve read of our ancestors’ private records convinces me of that. He sees my position as weak. I see his as oblivious to the real cost, but I believe we both mean to do well by the Kherval. Does that make more sense?”

  “Yes,” I said, and under my breath, “But I still think he’s a strutting peacock.”

  Hlanan had gone on talking as he paced. “Lhind, I have to find a way to avoid a war altogether. Or I’m not
good enough to become an emperor no matter who else wants to be one. Do you see that?” He stopped and faced me, hands out wide. “That’s the contest. Not a squabble with my brother, who thinks his way is the right way.”

  “I think you’re setting yourself up for an impossible task,” I said slowly.

  “But that’s what ruling is, in essence. Good ruling! Thinking out solutions at a level that involves principalities and groups and armies and conflicting interests. Persuading people in power to think of the welfare of all. You make the impossible possible!” He swooped on his bag and dug out a pen, an inkwell, and his battered old magic book.

  As I watched he balanced the pen on the inkwell, stuck the nib end under the edge of the book, and pressed his smallest finger on the pen so that the book lifted.

  Then he smiled sideways at me. “One finger lifts the heavy object with the right tools in the right place. The emperor, one person, sways the body of the Kherval for the good of all. That is who I must be. Or I may as well return to being a scribe, and writing about others’ efforts.”

  o0o

  When I came downstairs the next morning, I found Nill and Hlanan sitting at a small table in the common room. No bustle, no peering anxiously at the window lest the weather change.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Prince Geric,” Hlanan said, “appears to have become strong enough to endure a transfer. He’s gone.”

  The words Good riddance! began to shape my lips, but his distressed expression caused me to swallow my real reaction. “What do we do now?”

  Hlanan sighed. ”Enjoy a good breakfast?”

  Nill uttered a whoop. “I’ll go order it.” He dashed a few steps, then halted so fast he nearly fell into the closed door. Putting a hand out to stop himself, he asked over his shoulder, “Ah, did he take the coin purse?”

  Hlanan smiled as he removed a much-thinned bag from his inner pocket.

  Nill was gone a heartbeat later, his footsteps diminishing down the stairs.

  “So we’re not going to Thann?” I asked.

  “We’ll eat a leisurely breakfast and see if he returns. Or sends a message.”

  “But we don’t have one of those notecases.”

  “Oh, there are ways to send messages if you know enough magic. He does. It’s troublesome. Think of it as a transfer of a thing, not a person. The Destination still has to be precise. . . .” Hlanan’s voice drifted, and he abandoned a lesson in something he knew I had no interest in. “I think I failed him,” he admitted finally. “That was my first gamble.”

  “You failed him? Aside from the absolute backwardness of that, from what I saw, how could you fail him? He never spoke until that day we were surrounded by Captain Dalcasta’s company.”

  Hlanan sighed. “He and I talked. Late into the night sometimes. It started before we left the Pass, the first subject being how Morith had effectively used us both.”

  I grimaced. “So he didn’t talk around me.”

  “And that’s why I didn’t tell you. Most of what he said was bitterness over the many people who have betrayed him. And they did,” he added in that reflective tone, the one that had first caught my heart. “Beginning with his own parents, neither of whom wanted charge of him until he could get to an age to be of political use. Sending him away to be trained in what I gather was a fairly brutal school. He wouldn’t talk about that.”

  Hlanan shrugged. “He wouldn’t talk about where or when he met Dhes-Andis, either. So . . . we argued. Political strategy, magical strategy, ethics. Nothing I could build upon for the present purpose, but I had hopes. . . .” He shook his head and whispered something under his breath.

  I only caught one word, and I pounced. “Hlanan, you are not a failure.”

  “I said I probably have failed my second task, as well.”

  “It’s an impossible task!”

  “Anything is possible unless one fails,” he said gently. “And having failed makes me a failure.”

  This time I did walk up and put my arms around him. His breath hitched in that little way I loved, so I wound my hair around us both and imagined us floating on air currents high in the sky where the air intoxicates, and the light bathes the world in warmth. He stood taut within that circle, so taut he was on the verge of trembling, but gradually he forced himself to relax, muscle by muscle, until he rested his cheek against the top of my head.

  “How do you do that?” he whispered, his breath stirring my hair. I lifted it and swept it over his face in a caress, and I felt a tremor of laughter run through him.

  “Do what?” I said. “I’m holding you.”

  “You—” He abandoned whatever he’d been about to say as noise came from below: a hasty arrival.

  It could have been anyone. The inn was not empty and mornings in these places bustled with comers and goers. But we sprang apart, and Hlanan reached for the door a moment before it opened.

  Prince Geric Lendan stood with his hands braced in the door frame, his face gray with expended effort, fury and even a trace of horror distending his gaze. Or perhaps that was the effect of transfer magic, especially twice in a day?

  “The scouts have begun arriving ahead of the commanders,” he said hoarsely. “Thann has no defense. The army is two weeks from arrival, strung out along the road.”

  THIRTEEN

  “What are you going to do?” Hlanan asked.

  “Nothing.” Geric’s gaze shifted away. “There is nothing more I can do. I’ll have to make a life as best I can. And I shall.” He lifted his chin in an echo of the old Prince Geric dressed in velvet and gems, riding arrogantly at the head of an entourage.

  “My last act was to ward our Destination. They will have to come in the conventional way. That was the only respite I could give Thann.” He turned his shoulder, then turned back. “Half the servants were packing up their belongings, including my own people. Those born there are holding on, but the invaders, I am afraid, are going to find a mostly empty castle.”

  He walked out, shutting the door behind him. His footsteps diminished down the warped boards of the narrow hall.

  Hlanan flexed his hands, looked at me, at the door, then breathed deeply with an air of decision. “If I’m right we are only three days outside of Thann.”

  “No!” I yelped.

  “This is my chance.” Hlanan peered earnestly into my face, his gaze shifting between my eyes. His entire manner radiated conviction, determination, longing—so ardent the room seemed too small to contain him. “Stay here if you feel you should. I certainly understand.”

  I stepped closer, within touching distance; my arms ached to grab him and hold him there against doing anything crazy. I put my hands behind my back and gripped my fingers tight. “Hlanan. What can you do against an invading army?”

  “You can’t be suggesting I ought to leave those people to the mercies of either force?”

  “I don’t know.” I twisted my hands. “I hate this situation. Everything feels wrong. Even you can’t do anything against an entire army. And Geric said those servants are free to go.”

  “How free is it, really, to be driven out with no destination, no preparation, perhaps scant resources? This is why people stay when trouble comes, in hopes it passes over them. Those are the people owed protection. Not the wealthy, the strong. . . .”

  Hlanan looked from me to the window, as if he could see those people in Thann. “But didn’t you hear him? The invaders aren’t united. The army is piecemeal, strung out. . . .” He turned, his thin shoulders set with decision. “Lhind, I can see you don’t agree and so I’ll repeat, stay here. Or go free. There is nothing to stop you from doing what you feel is right for you.”

  But what about us? I wanted to ask. I couldn’t force the words out. He was on a quest to save an empire—and I wasn’t even certain there could be an us, except maybe when he had a free moment now and then. Assuming he survived whatever he was about to do.

  Again I had to face the inescapable fact that if h
e did become heir to the empire, that us was always, always, always going to be defined as him, me, and an imperial crown.

  Or should I put it this way: him, an imperial crown, and me?

  And yet there was nowhere in the world I wanted to be but by his side. “Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked.

  And watched the joy brighten his expression for one giddy heartbeat. Then came the doubt. “Are you certain? I’m not certain about anything except that I mean to go forward until I cannot any longer.”

  “What is it you want to do?” I asked. “I know you’re not going to challenge all these various commanders to duels, the way Rajanas did up in the mountains.”

  “That only worked because the Gray Wolves needed it to. Anyway, for us mortal combat to decide political questions was outlawed when the Kherval was formed.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “Not about you,” I amended quickly. “Seems to me there would be fewer wars if the commanders all had to fight each other instead of ordering their minions to do all the hard work.”

  His smile was distracted. “Anyway, I don’t think I’d need to even if I could. Look, they have recently spent two miserable seasons starving in the Pass and being shot at by the Rangers. Then they’re given orders for this long march, and if I’m right, even more strict orders not to go marauding across Keprima lest they bring down that kingdom against them. If Geric’s words are correct they are anything but unified. Mercenaries seldom are. So I’ll talk to their scouts, who might carry my words back to their captains,” he said. “Or I’ll talk to their captains and go from there. But first we have to get in.”

  “In disguise?” I asked.

  “In disguise?” Hlanan repeated.

  “Sure. You’ve always been in disguise. Oh, not like I used to be. But Geric thinks you’re a scribe. Isn’t that a disguise?”

  “I am a scribe. But I see what you mean,” Hlanan said slowly. “I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe. . . .”

  “He also said the servants are stampeding.” Smart people, I thought, then cleared my throat. “So . . . if we assume a disguise we can look around. See what’s what. I’m certainly going to need a disguise,” I said. “Hrethans probably aren’t found much in Thann.”