Lhind the Spy by Sherwood Smith
“I don’t think I know how to read your script,” I said. “Is it different from that used in the Kherval?”
Her fingertips pressed to her lips on the word “Kherval” as if I’d spoken a forbidden word, but she only said (with the usual bow) “It would be my pleasure to read anything the Imperial Princess desires to hear.”
I was ready to venture forth, but apparently it was not suitable to my prestige to go haring off in the middle of the night to the archive, so one of the hapless maids was presumably hauled out of bed to fetch a suitable book and read it to me.
As a storm battered the bank of windows I listened to the ornate language rolling forth. If I hadn’t spent those months at Erev-li-Erval I probably would have accepted the words as truth, or at least truth in the eyes of the Djurans: that Vandarus Andis had united the countless islands together under the Dragon banner, creating unity and peace at last.
He caused Icecrest to be built atop the ruins of the former Sveranji royal palace on Skyreach Mountain, symbol of order for all the united peoples to see, and there he dwelt in majesty, dispensing justice as he established the imperial line, and so on and so on.
In other words, courtly talk is lying? I’d said to Thianra one morning not long after my arrival in Erev-li-Erval, after listening to a courtly history recited at a function.
Thianra had replied seriously, Courtly flattery, which my mother abominates, is lying. Court flatterers say what they think the empress wants to hear in order to get something.
And these poets with all their pomposities about tradition and greatness?
She’d explained that the court poets and archivists did present the facts the way the monarch wanted them to be understood. Some were better at it than others, and Hlanan’s father, an archivist by calling, had pointed out that nobody much reread the most blatant ones, but sought the records that hewed closer to the truth. And those were the types of records Aranu Crown gave her imprimatur.
Thianra had gone on to say, Governments exist as long as they do when they represent order in the eyes of those governed. There are two faces to order.
“I know,” I’d said. “Rules and laws.”
Well, everyone knowing what to expect from one another. But underlying that is the sense that order is rooted and secure, and that means tradition. That is a very powerful word, tradition.
Hot anger boiled inside me whenever I thought of Aranu Crown, but then I’d smack into memory of Hlanan or Thianra and fall into a morass of doubt and guilt.
The truth? Whenever I thought of Thianra I began to doubt myself. And I hated that. I’m my only ally, I’d say internally, and force my attention outward again.
In this case, from the long, poetic lacework of flattery I picked out the impression that Vandarus Andis had conquered Sveranji and plopped this gigantic palace on the highest mountain as a reminder to any who might have forgotten for a heartbeat who held the steel.
Or the fais, I thought, and waited until a pause in the flow of praise for his puissance to ask, “Was he the inventor of these things?” I touched my fais.
“We have always had fais, Imperial Princess,” she said proudly.
The first chiming bell of the day rang. I flinched, half-expecting the summons of evil. Tired as I was, I dreaded it with a surge of boiling hatred inside me that killed my appetite for breakfast.
I bathed and dressed and fled, though I knew he could find me wherever I was. Once again I found myself at the music chamber. I stood for a time, my eyelids burning with exhaustion, and listened to the silence. Until that moment I had never thought about the quality of silence in different circumstances. Though no living thing besides myself walked in that room, it did not sound empty; I knew it for a fancy but it seemed to me that music lay just beyond hearing, or as if all that had been played in this room had soaked into the walls, the way sunlight soaks into cloth and brightens it.
I dwelt against my will in the palace of an enemy, but this one room felt . . . I did not want to frame the word “safe.” There was no safety until I got that fais off me and my self far from Sveran Djur.
But the music room seemed a pool of tranquility.
So why not play the harp?
I was too tired to resist. Sit, lean, lift and flex the hands. And once again my spirit bathed in the lovely shimmer of sound, perfectly tuned. My fingers moved nimbly the way they never had in Erev-li-Erval, but now seemed so right, so comforting as I began to pick out that plaintive melody that ran up and down the scales like the laughter of children.
The music flowed so easily, bringing up half-formed glimpses of delight—a butterfly—lilacs—the softness of fabric in the silvery blue of ice at dawn—a soft kiss on the tip of my nose—
I was an infant again. Elenderi, my darling child.
I recoiled so fast I did not even know I was out of the room until I found myself standing in the hall, shivering.
What evil attack is this? I thought desolately. Yet another insidious attempt to control my mind the way he could control my movements?
Mind locked down tighter than ever, I perforce returned to “my” suite. Where else had I to go?
As soon as I walked in I discovered the entire circle of servants, who spread apart and bowed low.
Kal said, “If it pleases the Imperial Princess, a communication has just arrived from the Noble Pelan with an invitation to join her and her sister, the Noble Ingras, at their float.” And a gesture toward the bank of windows.
I blinked, wondering what I was supposed to see in that broad expanse through which bright sunlight could be seen—oh. Sunshine! I was beginning to see how rare it was, but not what that meant.
My first thought was: Escape.
My second was: It can’t be that easy.
But I would go anyway. The farther I got away from Dhes-Andis, the better I’d feel, even if it was a temporary respite.
One of the servants led me to the other side of the building, same floor. I guessed I was near the Garden Chamber with its balcony over that parade court, the way the morning sun blazed in through the tall windows and the dome overhead, almost blinding.
I shaded my eyes. Two heavily cloaked, hatted figures flowed toward me as if they rolled on wheels. They had to be Pelan and her sister Ingras, though the Chosen still all looked alike to me. The sisters performed bows so identical the sense of their being pressed from the same baking shape increased, and belatedly I remembered my own bow.
The shorter of the two gestured in a slow arc so that her sleeve barely shifted, and I turned to my left. My jaw dropped.
Beyond the archway the balcony extended in a hexagonal shape with some kind of platform or perch beneath it, on which three pairs of gryphs rested. Coach-baskets rested on the platform below the rail of the terrace, two very small, plain ones, harnessed to gray gryphs, and one elaborate coach-basket with fine gilding in graceful shapes, painted a cerulean blue to match the summer sky.
Imperial guards tended to the plain ones: tall, imposing warriors carrying wooden staves in baldrics in place of swords.
The sisters flowed in that peculiar scudding walk toward the fancy one, towing me along. Then everyone hitched to a stop as a wing-spread shadow passed between us and the sun; an immense gryph with iridescent violet feathers down its body glided down toward the perch before coming to rest and folding its wings.
A tall man slid off a fine gilt-edged pad on the bird’s back, attached to the fais-like harness around its neck. The bird, though perched so that its back was level with our platform, still towered over our heads—taller than the two brown gryphs harnessed to the sisters’ basket, or float, as they’d called it.
The bird turned a great dark eye in my direction. When my gaze met its unwinking gaze, my vision blurred and I wobbled as if the ground had shifted.
It was only an instant. And no one noticed because the sisters were busy bowing to the Chosen lord who’d ridden astride the great gryph. He wore fitted and quilted black riding clothes, actual trous
He sent one glance my way from slanted eyes under brows so extravagantly steep his gaze seemed permanently ironic. His lips twitched in what might have been a smile, as he bowed elaborately in my direction, his long, shiny blue-black braid sliding over his shoulder briefly. Then he graced the sisters with a lesser bow.
And he walked away, no one having spoken.
“If Your Imperial Serenity will grace our float by choosing a place?” Ingras spoke, her high voice sweet and singsong.
I stepped in to find cushioned seats all around the float. I planted my imperial backside on a cushion at the far side of the basket so that I sat facing the birds. I curled my tail around me as the sisters entered and chose places across from me with their backs to the gryphs.
Pelan said, “If Your Imperial Serenity will pardon a trespass, would you care to wear a hat, or a thicker coat or cloak?”
“I don’t get cold. Are hats required for a reason?”
They lifted their eyelids in brief surprise. “It is just that the winds can tangle one’s hair to a painful degree.” Ingras bowed with an air of faint apology, and I wondered if my question had been deemed uncouth.
“My hair doesn’t tangle,” I said, lifting it and snapping it before letting it settle around me. I had to laugh inside—my first, and too brief, bit of humor since my captivity—as their eyes lifted and watched, again in unnervingly matched echo.
They settled themselves with tiny twitches and pats to their thick cloaks, tugging their peaked hats securely. Delicate filigree netting at the back covered their long braided tails of hair.
One of them then flexed her gloved fingers in a gesture I would learn was part of their fais commands, touched what I’d assumed to be a decorative jewel on the rim of the basket between them and the birds, and I stared in surprise as magic flashed with scintillating green and the float slid gently off the platform into the air.
Even with the fais blurring my magic sense, I could feel powerful magic surging around me. Then the birds stretched out their necks, lifted their great wings, and leaped into the air. The silken cord neatly coiled at either side of the basket began to straighten, and on the second flap, pulled taut.
The float slid upward with a slight tug. The sisters looked at me expectantly and I wondered if they were waiting for me to speak. I remembered the pretense of my superior rank (which made me wonder if they knew I was a prisoner), and said the first thing in my head that I figured would not get me into trouble if You Know Who was listening: “That fellow riding gryph-back. Do you ride the purple ones, and harness these brown or gray ones to the floats?”
“The great gryphs, the males with the violet feathers, are much rarer,” Pelan said. “Their education presents a great challenge. Our brown hens, nearly as large, are quieter. The grays, smaller still, have like the browns long been egg-civilized. The great gryphs often do not survive past the first year in harness, in spite of very great care.”
“The Most Noble Raifas caught and civilized his great gryph,” Ingras finished. “And those are the rarest of all. When caught half-grown in the wild, they are faster even than the grays, and can fly longer distances. But they cannot fly in tandem.”
By then the float had slid up the air until we glided away from the platform below.
Raifas had disappeared inside the building. “I don’t remember him meeting him at the reception,” I said, though I wasn’t certain. They had all looked alike to me in a group; maybe those eyebrows weren’t distinctive when surrounded by copies all more or less the same.
“He was not there. He surely had responsibilities at Ardam Pennon,” Pelan said in that drifting voice.
“A pennon?” I asked. “Is that not a flag on a pole?” I turned my attention outward, aware that I did not like the sensation of being in the air without wings and a bird body. My stomach dropped in a peculiarly unpleasant way, and I gulped, hair and tail flashing outward to balance me. The sisters looked startled.
Then Pelan began to describe the empire in the same sort of cadence the servant had read that record, high-sounding language with a lot of greatness and so forth thrown in.
While she spoke I forced myself to look down. I knew the float was safe, or they wouldn’t be sitting there so decorously. It swung very slowly and steadily, and I could feel the magic keeping it afloat as the gryphs drew it along.
We had progressed outward far enough so that I could see the whole of Icecrest Palace. Arches connected the towers of white marble in groups of three, suggesting a spiral upward. The highest tower flew a long banner with the dragon on it. The slanted roof was made in beautiful patterned tiles and dotted with small glass domes. These domes and the many lancet-arch windows threw back the sunlight in a glory of scintillation: they looked like cut gems from a distance. The palace’s beauty and arrogance, crowning the rocky promontory, commanded the eye, a reminder of power.
Meanwhile, I listened to Pelan’s soft, pleasing voice, sifting for the sense in all the courtly palaver. Pennons seems to be what anywhere else would be provinces, or dukedoms, or principalities, etc. I’d already learned from the Kherval that size did not always dictate rank. History had ways of creating kingdoms the size of a pimple, and baronies that took a week to ride across. And that didn’t count the free cities that belonged to no one or the territories no one could claim.
So Sveran Djur was divided into pennons, and Nobles strove to attain the governance of these, becoming Most Nobles. The best of them got to inherit home pennons—apparently direct descent through families was desirable—but that wasn’t guaranteed.
While I listened I looked down. The parade court extended in a broad circle, its far end opening to hundreds of steps winding downward to a city built into the west side of the mountain. The houses appeared to be constructed of white stone, the steep roofs covered with sparkling snow. The narrow streets angled in switchbacks and curves, with occasional widened terraces circled with espaliered trees, gray and winter-bare. People moved up and down the streets, tiny colorful dots in a city that looked like it had been made of sugar.
I lifted my gaze. A short distance away, to left and right, flew our escort, imperial guards pulled by the smaller, faster gray gryphs. Beyond lay the vast ocean, dotted with islands.
Beyond the city southward lay a long, narrow peninsula spined with mountains, as though a dragon had lain down in the water, hiding its head, its body represented by that huge conical peak in the hazy distance. Was that the origin of their dragon symbol, I wondered?
The float had lifted high enough so that we could see the ocean horizon in both directions. I knew I was high enough to transform, but when I drew a breath, flexing my back muscles in the way that presaged transformation, my neck burned warningly. Dhes-Andis had told the truth about that. “I hate this thing!” I burst out, clutching at the fais with my fingers.
The sisters jumped as if I’d slapped them. Pelan looked shocked, and Ingras wary. It was the first time I’d seen any difference in them besides the higher timbre of Ingras’s voice.
“We could never exist without fais,” Pelan said in that smooth, soft voice. “It is the gift of civilization. We use it every day to the betterment of life.”
“You mean you torture people every day?” I asked. “How does that improve your life? It certainly doesn’t for your victim, that I can promise.”
Pelan paled, and Ingras blushed.
“You’re speaking of correction?” Ingras asked at last. Pelan seemed unable to speak.
“If that’s what you like to call it,” I said. “But to me, torture is torture. Even if it doesn’t leave a visible mark.”
They looked at me as if I’d spewed the vilest language ever not heard in polite company. Or I spoke another language. Or I was insane. And though I had my steel mental wall (I checked it obsessively) somehow I could feel Dhes-Andis laughi
“Never mind that,” I said grimly, and to their visible relief, added, “All I see are very high mountains. Where is the farmland? Is that in the islands further south?”
“All our islands are mountainous, some with the dragonfire spouting to the sky,” Pelan said. “As for farming, do you not see the terracing?”
Those terraces looked mighty small to be feeding cities of people, but I knew I was only seeing the extreme northern end of this island, and Sveran Djur was made up of a long archipelago here, and to the west, another cluster. And more.
“Though we have had droughts endangering our people,” Ingras said. “But once we are united with the Ndai Islands the dangers will lessen.”
“Very true.” Pelan seemed anxious to get past mention of droughts; she didn’t seem to want to say anything that wasn’t pleasant.
So I passed right on. “You said dragonfire. You mean the mountains that erupt in molten rock? Are there actual dragons inside them? The stories I’ve heard, real dragons long ago went out of the world.”
Ingras spoke. “Our oldest ballads all talk of the fire creatures dwelling between worlds, but civilized people put little stock in songs and stories for children. Reaching the age of discretion implies sifting verifiable truth from entertainment. Pelan, see to the west: weather is coming. We must turn back.”
“It was a good sunbloom,” Pelan said a little sadly.
“Sunbloom?” I asked.
“Idiom for when the sun emerges for us.”
From that I understood that the constant storms and gloom were common, and now I understood the purpose of that painted, magical sky in the Chamber of Celestial Contemplation. These Djurans scarcely ever saw the real stars.
NINETEEN
When Dhes-Andis summoned me next I assumed my Princess Elenderi mask, but defensively. He’d won the battle of wits. All I had was stealth.
I recited the history of Emperor Vandarus Andis as Chith had read it out. (I was beginning to learn the servants’ names, though it was difficult to get past all that Imperial Princess talk to find the person behind the politesse.)