Lhind the Spy by Sherwood Smith
I didn’t know if their employers realized how much the scribes learned from lips. My only concern had been to hide in their attic that winter—I’d been very small—and sneak down to lift food. They couldn’t hear me, but they were very quick with other senses, and I’d been discovered by smell.
I’d remembered that later, when using smell to keep nosy people at a distance.
Anyway, as that day stretched into two, then three, rather than letting my mind inside its mental wall carom uselessly between unanswerable questions, I began watching the brief exchanges between Oflan and the other Gray Wolves, wondering if I might recognize some of the signals. One of the talents I’d been born with, that I had never questioned, was the ability to understand any language once I’d heard it.
After a few days, I began to perceive the meanings in the hand-signals. Words appeared to be organized differently, but the meanings behind them had all the variations and subtlety of any other kind of language, spoken or written. For added sarcasm or joke, you added expression!
At night, my dreams rambled in the usual mishmash. That was a relief, tired as I was, and still healing. Though I wouldn’t have said I dreaded the appearance of the Blue Lady (mother or not) in my dreams, I always woke with an unsettled feeling of longing, or as if I’d missed something important.
But those dreams rarely occurred when I was anywhere in the lowlands.
Four days in, a storm caught up with us. Before it struck, the scouts returned at the gallop to report an abandoned courier way-station on an old road.
We reached it barely in time, and during the resulting disorganized swarm resulting, I sidled up to Hlanan.
“Do you really believe him?” I muttered.
Hlanan cast a quick look to the side, where Pandoc, the curly-haired scout, stood between Oflan and the impatient prince, alternately talking and signing.
“The situation in Idaron Pass is so potent a danger, I believe I need to be there to see it myself.”
“But what about that rotter Maita?” I asked, hopping from foot to foot in my pent-up desire to witness the full wrath of Aranu Crown falling on that mage with all the force of imperial justice. “Where’s your magical notecase thing, for sending messages?”
“Maita got it when she captured and searched us. She’ll have to wait.”
“But she tried to kill us! She tried to kill you! She might be trying that spell again, right now!”
Hlanan cast me a brief smile, then checked on Geric, who stood with Pandoc and Oflan Nath, the latter looking tight-lipped as the prince talked low-voiced with lazy gestures eastward.
“Thanks to your efforts, Maita will not get far in her experiments,” Hlanan reminded me.
“But what if she made copies of that blood spell?”
He sighed. “Lhind, I want to see justice, too. I hate thinking about how long this traitor has been practicing dark magic of a kind strictly forbidden, right on our border, while trusted by the Mage Council and the empress both. But what I want and what the empire needs are not always the same.” He rubbed the scabs on his wrists where his efforts to escape the chains had scored his flesh.
“How do you know what the empire needs?” I whispered fiercely.
“I don’t. For certain. But assembling a category of needs in order of priority is a lesson we all learned young—in fact, it was this lesson that decided my sister against the heirship, though our mother wanted it for her. For Thianra, music must always be first.”
“You should come first in this horrid situation,” I retorted. “That mage tried to kill you, and she’s flapping around free as a bird.”
“Lhind.” He laughed on an exhaled breath.
“Flames of Rue!” I burst out. “It seems to me that the only one who gets to decide what an empire needs is the empress! Otherwise, everyone is either guessing what they think she thinks the empire needs, or sneaking around, doing what they want.”
“Lhind—”
“What does ‘the good of the empire’ really mean, anyway?”
“That those living under the symbol of the twined laurels have the freedom to safely live as they choose.”
“Doesn’t that mean your safety, too? And I can see you drawing breath to answer, but if you try on some piffling stinkrot about how great power brings great risk, I’m going to crown you with a bucket of fish guts. Because I don’t see how you have any power. But I’ve seen you risking your life aplenty.”
He looked at me, lips parted, brows lifted, but before he could answer the slush-slush of boots in the mud caused us to fall silent.
“You aren’t actually listening to her lies, are you, scribe?” Geric said, indicating me with a dismissive wave of his hand. And when Hlanan turned away, Geric laughed, snapping a pair of riding gloves against his palm as he eyed me. “As for you, spare your breath and your efforts. You are going to Idaron Pass, at which time I will find a way to return you to Dhes-Andis. I believe he’s well-equipped enough to handle even a slippery thief. After which I will consider myself quits on all scores.”
He walked away, his long, neatly combed hair lifting in the rising breeze. I scowled after him, longing to fling mud at his head. I stayed my hand, having learnt to bide my time; did he really believe I couldn’t escape any time I wanted to?
Two reasons why I hadn’t. One, I wasn’t about to abandon Hlanan, and two, I had nowhere to go.
I turned my head to find Hlanan regarding me, his expression impossible to interpret—a pucker of his high brow, a tentative smile at the corners of his mouth. That kissable mouth.
I forced out my ire in a sharp breath. “I feel like we’re talking in the same words, but not the same language. Or maybe the other way around.”
Hlanan’s smile turned rueful. “Then we should keep trying to find the right words, should we not?”
Somehow that made me feel better. “Yes. That’s right.”
The squelch of horse hooves in mud distracted us both. It was time to ride.
o0o
Each day I woke with less pain in my shoulder. But each day also brought us lower, so though I knew I could get away, there would be no convenient flying.
Gradually I became aware of a sense of someone’s scrutiny, but whenever I checked on Geric, he was either far ahead, or talking to someone else. A quick sweep of the Gray Wolves was equally fruitless. Maybe it was a result of my watching everyone else, I decided, and went back to brooding.
My pout broke briefly at midday when we paused to change to the remounts and to pass around some trail biscuits stuffed with cheese. Hlanan walked a little way, gazing intently to the west, before he was joined by Geric.
I turned to see what he looked at, surprised to discover an undulating purple line of distant mountains revealed in the clear, cold wind chasing the last of the storm away to the north. A distinct notch bisected the mountains midway along: the Idaron Pass.
We had left behind the meadows, marshes, and occasional woods of the plain and entered gently rolling farmland, stubble rows brown against the mud, thick evergreen hedgerows of juniper marking borders.
We had already come halfway.
I felt somewhat better when we mounted up again, though I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the prospect of an end to this ride.
Later that day, a new storm nearly sneaked up on us from behind. A fitful wind bringing the sharp scent of juniper, and the horses’ ears flicking back and forth, were the first warnings. For the first time we urged the horses up to a canter in hopes of reaching some kind of shelter before the storm broke.
We’d barely established the new rhythm when we met Pandoc and his partner riding from the other direction.
“This way, Your Grace,” Pandoc shouted, waving a gloved hand over his shoulder.
The animals galloped the remainder of the short distance to where the scouts had taken over the biggest building in a tiny village. It looked like a market, with stalls for people to bring their goods to sell. The family who owned the place stood again
In quick, well-trained order a bunch of the Wolves saw to the horses, another bunch set about making camp, and the third went out to establish a guard perimeter.
I found Hlanan and grumbled, “I hope snail-faced Geric isn’t going to slay them outright after taking over this household.”
Hlanan’s smile flickered. “We are well into Namas Ilan—which is again an imperial protectorate. The householders will be given full value, never fear.” So if Prince Geric Lendan did not want gossip racing ahead of him, he must abide by the empire’s laws of travel.
As Hlanan straightened cramped limbs and looked about him, I caught sight of the white-bearded head of the household holding up stiff fingers as one of the Gray Wolves counted coins carefully into his other palm.
The householder gave a satisfied nod and waved at his family, who promptly dispersed, leaving us to fend for ourselves.
I now knew roughly where we were: we had indeed started from the Anadhan Mountains, somewhere south of Erev-li-Erval, and descended into the Unclaimed Lands west of Namas Ilan. Now we rode across the kingdom belonging to one of Rajanas’s sort-of allies, as Namas Ilan had lately been changing governments the way courtiers changed their dress.
Apparently the Gray Wolves had also negotiated for basic supplies. I watched hungrily as the young man in charge of the cookery carefully pressed some withered olives to a hot sheet of metal laid over the open stove fire, then tossed rounds of corn meal with sweet pepper, purple shallots, and shaved garlic mixed in. When one side had browned, he flipped them and dropped crumbled dark-yellow cheese onto them to melt into bubbling deliciousness.
I retired with my share as he turned to the meat being cranked over a spit. By the time my corn cakes had cooled enough for me to eat we all sat in a rough circle around the fire, Prince Geric and Hlanan on the same bench. Not out of any friendship—a single glance at the sharp angles of their shoulders, the tautness of their bodies made that clear—but the prince was obviously not letting Hlanan out of his sight, and Hlanan had his own reasons for complying.
Sitting opposite, thoroughly ignored by all, I contemplated them. Strange that I could compare them feature by feature, and though Prince Geric was handsome by most human standards, the sight of his silky copper-colored hair, the graceful line from shoulder to slim waist, and thence straight to his elegantly booted heel, the blue of his eyes above the cut of his cheekbones left me completely unmoved, while an errant strand of plain brown hair against Hlanan’s collarbones hollowed my heart and weakened my knees, and the sound of his breathing made me want to press up against him.
How could it be love if we didn’t understand one another? The songs all said that desire hit like a boulder smashing on one’s head. That had never happened to me with Hlanan. When I first met him, I found him plain to look at and annoying in his curiosity and determined fairness and friendliness.
The desire to draw close had been so gradual that I had not noticed it until I stood face to face with Hlanan after we took that evil book from the Duchess of Thann, and suddenly I wanted to kiss him.
My reverie broke at the noise of a new arrival, a scout with a message. Some of the Gray Wolves went to check on the animals, and others to lay out bedrolls. Hlanan was finally alone. I slunk up next to him.
“Do you think Geric loved the horrible Morith?” I asked Hlanan in a whisper.
Geric stood on the opposite side of the big room, one foot propped on one of the benches that had been shifted against the walls to make space for all of us, as he bent over a small sheet of paper and read by the light of a flickering candle.
Hlanan gave a soft, surprised laugh, then lifted his head to cast a glance toward Geric before turning to me. “Whatever made you think of that?”
I shrugged. “Trying to figure out why she and Geric would marry. I mean, I know she was very attractive, especially to young fellows,” I added hastily, recollecting that Hlanan himself, during his student days, had been one of her victims. She had courted and flattered him, then tried to inveigle him into translating that same evil book. “But he’s old enough to know better, surely.”
Hlanan said, “There are as many reasons to marry as there are marriages, I expect. And you must consider that when power, rank, and wealth number among the reasons, love and affection might be held much lower in importance.”
Geric threw the paper into the fire then turned our way before I could move. So I sat where I was as he lounged his way toward us. “Plotting?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Give it up,” he said. “And cease your shortsightedness. Jardis Dhes-Andis lives in a fabulous palace. Surely he would not put himself to all this trouble just to fling you into some dungeon. He could as easily arrange for that to happen here. Have you ever considered that you might enjoy the visit?”
“I would rather pinch-bugs crawled into my trousers,” I retorted. “No, into your trousers.”
“It is a shame,” he drawled, “that your discourse so ill-matches your appearance.”
“The shame is all yours,” I snapped back, even less interested in his opinion of my manners than in his appreciation of my looks.
He laughed, as he always did, and moved away—but within earshot. I had to shut up.
The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. Once again Geric involved Hlanan in gossip about imperial affairs. I stayed near the window, watching the storm, and again felt that unsettling sense that someone watched me. It persisted, though I saw nothing but rain out the window. So I moved away.
In the stir later on, as the night patrol got ready to go, while the hapless patrollers stuck with guarding the place stamped and shed water and got their meal, Hlanan smoothly slid between them all. Geric was busy talk/signing with Oflan Nath and Pandoc.
Hlanan came to me. Maybe that sense of being watched was due to him trying to watch over me, as I did for him. That comforting thought sustained me for about three heartbeats. And then:
“I need you to escape,” Hlanan said softly.
FIVE
“Me? And leave you?” I said, dismayed.
His soundless laugh warmed my cheek. “I adore you for being worried, but I assure you, I can look out for myself.” The plain little ring on his finger glinted as he glanced away, and I recollected that indeed he had unexpected resources.
“I can do that, but where would I go?” I pressed against his shoulder, and his arm slid around my back. “And don’t say back to Erev-li-Erval,” I whispered fiercely. “I wouldn’t dare show up there and report that I left you a prisoner.”
“The empress would understand,” he said in an undertone.
I snorted. “I don’t care what the empress thinks of me,” I said, pulling back a little so I could see him. “It’s your sister I wouldn’t want to face.”
His lips parted, then he shook his head a little, blinked, and looked down earnestly into my face. “I told you I must see the situation at the Pass myself. Will you get away and warn Rajanas? I didn’t trust Geric’s words, but the scout’s return earlier convinces me that he told the truth, at least as he sees it.”
I was about to protest, “Will that nettle-tongued Rajanas believe me?” then I reconsidered. Rajanas and I started out heartily despising one another. Well, the heartiness was perhaps mine. Even at our worst he had never been much of an enemy. I believed he would at least give me a listen, which was more than I could say for certain arrogant, evil princes.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “It’ll give me great pleasure to escape under their noses.” My only regret would be that I couldn’t gloat in Prince Geric’s face when he discovered that I was gone.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead and at a sound from outside, slipped away.
As I retired to the opposite corner to sleep, I thought about how strange it was that all my life I had drifted along, seldom thinking past the next meal,
Purpose, was that what everyone else but me had?
It had felt so good to have a purpose when we’d hunted that evil book down. Since the book had vanished from our lives, I’d stayed in Erev-li-Erval with the intention of being with Hlanan as much as I could, and when I couldn’t, meeting the Hrethan and learning something about magic. The Hrethan had been elusive—everybody insisting they had little to do with political boundaries and governments—and the rudimentary magic lessons frustrating. Nothing I ever did was right, no matter how hard I tried, but they had all insisted that I must master the basics before learning anything else. The stifling court routine had increased my sense of futility; only Thianra’s and Hlanan’s company had kept me there.
Now I had a purpose again, I thought happily, as the wind screamed around the rafters overhead, and the candles in the lanterns lengthened and streamed. I’d get some rest, get a good meal inside me, and I’d be off.
Before dawn, the guards changed their shift, the night patrol coming in to settle down and the early morning bunch going out to check the sky, warm up their muscles, then set about seeing to the animals so that they’d be ready when everyone else rose to travel.
The night patrol settled fast, wanting to snatch some sleep before our departure. I hoped I would not have to use up my precious pack of liref, which was stronger than sleepweed. I could throw a handful of the ground herb into the room, but to put this many people out would take it all, not to mention my risk of breathing it in myself.
I waited until the breathing around me settled into deep rhythms. Relief! Before moving a muscle, I wove an illusion around the corner I’d chosen. I deepened the shadows, taking care to leave a vague form where I’d lain.
Still weaving shadows, I rose to my feet. There is no invisibility, or really any way to cloak yourself with illusions. They are trickery with light and air. I counted upon my silent movements, and on everyone else either being asleep or busy getting their morning started as I eased along the back wall.