Among the Silvering Herd Read online

  The pulvers took up the stone spheres from the edges of the pool, throwing them in a complicated, deadly game of catch. They tossed them overhand, snatched them out of thin air, whirled to give each toss more momentum. It was a friendly business at first, the participants shouting encouragement across the water, occasionally letting out a collective “Ho!” or “Ah!” on the high throws. The stones whizzed past the bound figure in the center of the pool, some coming close, none quite striking him. He bore it with no apparent sign of fear. As the players began to sweat and pant, the sense of play gave way to a deadly, businesslike mien.

  With a final huff, each of the pulvers caught a sphere and flung it up, nearly straight overhead. The stones rose to the chamber roof, curling in simultaneous parabolas to the floor, plunging into the bargepool close to the bound man, obscuring him with a crash of water. The noise was loud enough to drown out any cry he might have made.

  As the waves settled the man—a boy, really, and drenched now—was bleeding, his white robe marked with small trickles of crimson.

  Parrish had half-risen from his chair.

  “Don’t worry, Bendi’s safe.” Sapira stroked his arm. “The collision of the stones sends a few chips of rock flying. The blood is required for the inscription—“

  Gale forced herself to unclench her fists.

  A long cry from the eldest pulver interrupted her. He faced the soaked and bleeding form, then raised a massive curl of leather…

  The inscription that bestowed his strength, Gale guessed. Scripped on…rhinoceros flesh, perhaps? Unfurling it, he whipped the leather back and forth like a flag in heavy wind, circling the pool, making a blur of its text, luminous, carefully lettered spellscrip. It snapped and whuffed at the air, rippling the pool.

  With the faintest of bows to Agate, he tore it.

  The effect was obvious. The man shrank within his armor, bowed under by its weight. Nobody helped him as he strained, groaning, to lift off his breastplate. He was both shaking and weeping as he dropped it at the edge of the pond, for his shivering, bound successor.

  “What happens to the retiring pulver?” Gale asked.

  Agate gestured at a cluster of eager-looking people waiting on the fringes. “Pensioned back to his family.”

  The pulver tossed away the torn inscription. He stumbled eagerly to his family as his former fellows turned their backs on him.

  A spellscribe stepped forward with a fresh sheet of rhino leather. Facing the bound figure, she washed her inscription tools in the blood-tinged pool.

  Agate pointed out a female pulver. “Valette there is eldest now. She takes the new fellow under her wing.”

  Parrish chose that moment to skitter sideways out of Sapira’s grasp.

  “Sapira Majesta, croo vel appartri!” Agate hissed. Then, as if nothing had happened, she said: “Shall we play another round of board and bones? It’ll be hours before that inscription’s done and young Bendi breaks the chains binding him to that column.”

  After the ceremony, Gale changed to a black tunic and slacks that passed for pajamas. The garments covered her from neck to toe, constituting modest wear almost everywhere in the world. Lurking jammies, Sloot called them. They were warm, convenient for sneaking about, climbing walls…even fighting, if it was called for.

  But this was no court full of spies and assassins, just a small country with a knotty contractual burden. She wrapped a lurid yellow and blue bathrobe around herself and stretched, easing out the knots from her hours on horseback.

  A yelp in the hallway: one of the girls.

  She cracked open the door. Teale was on the floor in the corridor. Parrish bent over her, apologizing. Smiling, determined, the girl reached up, catching him by his belt, yanking herself upright by hauling him down.

  That looked to be her intention, anyway. Parrish held his balance, lifting her upright with balletic grace.

  Gale stepped into the hallway. “Parrish. Where’ve you been?”

  “Ah. Kir Feliachild, I…apologize for the delay.” He handed Teale something, bowing hastily. The girl reddened, thwarted, as Parrish trotted into Gale’s room.

  “That wasn’t what it looked like,” he said, standing at attention as she shut the door.

  “No?”

  “The Blossom asked me to help her unfasten a bracelet. The catch is quite small and she was struggling.”

  “I see.”

  “It fell, I bent to retrieve it, and we got entangled…”

  “I bet you did.”

  Those full lips of his quirked: was he hiding a smile? “You don’t want an explanation.”

  “I want you to get some rest. We have another full day on horseback tomorrow.”

  A tiny slump. “Sapira’s in my room.”

  Sloot, what am I to do with this boy? “At least Sapira’s near your age.”

  “She’s…the women here, they’re…formidable.”

  “Not my problem.” She settled by the fire.

  “Not that the women of your homeland aren’t—“

  “Relax, cub. I’m not offended.” She settled by the fire, thinking. “Sapira is impressive, isn’t she?”

  “It’s like summer sunshine, when she looks at you.”

  “They must be holding back a few horns, for charisma inscriptions.”

  “Would they risk it? You’d be sure to find out and tell the Sylvanners.”

  “Would I?”

  “Of course.”

  Oh my. Not one devious bone. She added “lack of guile” to her growing list of Parrish’s deficiencies.

  She drifted off, making bets with herself as to whether she’d find the boy curled up on her floor come dawn. But when the servant came—early—to wake her, he was gone. Either he’d braved his room or gone elsewhere.

  She found him in the great receiving chamber with all three Blossoms Majestic. The dock had been restored; the barge awaited. Sapira, dressed for riding, offered a frosty nod. Teale was deep in a sulk.

  “Refreshment, Kir?” A servant offered a tray of breakfast dainties: maize cakes, dates, small boiled eggs studded with sliver-like maddenflur thorns that had, no doubt, been pickled out of their toxicity.

  Agate twinkled at Gale over the youngsters’ heads. Amused by her girls’ failed attempts to entrap Parrish? “Morning, Kir. I heard you like to get an early start.”

  “It supposed to rain or something?” One of the benefits of being an Awful Woman was you didn’t have to play coy guessing games.

  “One of the Sylvanner delegates hared off from the court party. He’s been sighted on the highland switchbacks. Coming to pay his respects, I’m sure.”

  “If we’re here when he arrives, we’ll have to invite him up the mountain with us?”

  “Just so.”

  She had no wish to fence with her Sylvanner counterpart. “Feed yourself, Parrish, we’re going.”

  Breakfast in hand—he refused the eggs, she noted—they climbed aboard the barge, riding through the waterfall to the waiting horses and trail guides.

  The sky was just brightening, the Kingsilver hidden under a cushion of mist. A pack of small canines had caught one of the goats, and were at the opposite edge of the ridge, worrying at the carcass. One alternated mournful howls with gut-wrenching heaves, bringing up the meat.

  “The goats’ flesh must be tainted by maddenflur,” Parrish said.

  “The wolfets can sometimes keep it down,” Sapira said. “In another month they’ll be hunting greystag calves, but this late in the winter, they get desperate.”

  The trail was snowy in places. Twice the pulvers had to dig out drifts that had blocked the trail. The rivers churned with mobile, glassine slush, melt from higher altitudes.

  The sun was breaking over the peaks when Gale saw her first greystag.

  It was the biggest deer she had ever seen: the crown of its head rose almost as high as hers, and her mount was a tall one. In the morning light, the greystag’s flanks shimmered like molten silver. Winter fluff was coming ou
t of its shoulders in tufts.

  The stag had wedged one curved horn between the branches of a tree. It wasn’t ready to come away yet, apparently, and the animal was trapped.

  “Help him,” Sapira ordered. The newly initiated pulver and his mentor stepped forward. Valette, the elder, put her arms up on the beast’s chest, reaching up in a loose hug, her face against its neck, murmuring and clucking. It strained against her grip, then calmed. The new pulver, Bendi, laid his hands on the base of the horns, exploring.

  “Ointment,” advised Valette. Bendi fumbled out some reddish wax, inadvertently crushing its container with his magically strengthened hand. He smeared his fingertips and rubbed the animal’s forehead, around the shedding horns. Flowery perfume crowded out the scent of their horses.

  For ten minutes they worked at loosening the horns, easing them loose like a tooth from a child’s gum. The buck stepped out of Valette’s embrace. It locked eyes with Sapira, tossing its newly lightened head.

  “Well?” Sapira asked.

  “It’s long enough, Blossom, but he chipped it trying to take it off.”

  The buck, forehead smeared red, took a wary step onto the trail. Then it startled, changing direction with liquid grace and vanishing into the woods with a leap.

  “What a monster!” A dapper redheaded man rode around the curve. “Impressive, impressive beast! How’s the horns?”

  “Imperfect, I’m afraid,” Bendi said, holding one out, root-first.

  “And you are?” Sapira asked.

  “Een Semmanor, o’Sylvanna,” he said, bowing low. “At your service. Why, Kir…no, don’t tell me, it’s a Verdanii name…is it Sturma? Sturma Feliachild?”

  “Gale,” she affirmed.

  “Delightful to find you here!”

  They resumed the trail. Een had contrived to miss the pass into the keep, dodging the hours-long reception Agate would have planned for him. He’d pushed hard to catch Sapira’s party. His horse looked tired, but he showed no guilt over that.

  “You know him?” Parrish asked. They had dropped to the rear: Een was up front, chattering at Sapira, gesturing with the found horn. Playing babbling idiot to Gale’s dotty aunt.

  “We’re tentacles of opposed fighting squid,” Gale said. “Interchangeable, Parrish, but for our allegiance.”

  “He seems to remember you.”

  “I kicked his front teeth in, two years ago.”

  “He could be a danger to you.”

  “Stop looking for my assassin, cub—you’ll wear out your eyes. Worry about this: Een’s sure to notice that the Blossom’s been inscribed.”

  “She doesn’t seem concerned.”

  “No. Old contracts and their oddities…maybe they get to keep a horn now and then.”

  “Why didn’t Agate simply show you the contract?”

  “I’m here unofficially.”

  “You were sent.”

  “I got a note inviting me to visit Sapira; we met years ago.”

  “But you’re a member of the Fleet Watch, aren’t you? Just by showing up…”

  “I’m a lowly courier, Parrish, with a brief to deliver messages to a very remote place called Erstwhile. If I choose to meddle in political affairs now and then, it makes me a busybody, that’s all.”

  “But Agate asked us to—“

  “No. Agate mentioned the contract to Sapira’s eccentric friend, over a board game. She didn’t ask for anything. If it comes to court one day, she and I can truthfully swear to that.”

  “Legal mummery.”

  “Ah, you disapprove. Told you, I’m no better than Een.”

  He said, delicately, “I prefer to believe otherwise.”

  Misplaced idealism—there’s another flaw. “To answer your question, Agate would’ve arranged for me to stumble on the contract today, if we hadn’t had to rush off.”

  The trail curved and widened, rising between a gap in the crags. They could see all the way to the ocean. Gale took out a spyglass and looked at the harbor, scanning for Nightjar’s sail. The sight brought a smile to her face.

  “I wonder if he hit the markets for that new wheel he’s been after.” Sloot had been on a push to upgrade and repair the ship; he was finding fault with every rope, spar, and pump.

  “He wants Fleet grade for the wheel,” Parrish said.

  She nodded—good choice—and missed his next words. “Pardon?”

  “He wants everything squared away before he retires.”

  “Who says he’s retiring?”

  Had her voice sharpened? The boy’s face had taken on that unreadable—that suddenly infuriating—emptiness.

  “Has he said something to you, Parrish?”

  “Kir Felia—“

  “Don’t you go madaming me. What did Sloot say?”

  “I’m…” He swallowed. “You’ll have to discuss it with him.”

  “Will I?” She snapped the spyglass shut, urging her horse up the steep slope at a near canter. Een, of course, didn’t fail to notice.

  Stop it, Gale. You’re acting like those lovesick girls.

  Who does Parrish think he is? Does he expect to replace someone who’s been with me for thirty years?

  She knew what Sloot would say: Thirty’s a lifetime, Gale.

  She dismissed common sense, steeping in quiet rage.

  The stream led up into the highland plains, stretches of hill and grassland dotted with greystag herds, bucks with pregnant does and a few yearlings, groups of five, groups of thirty. Bachelor herds, in tens and twelves, kept to the fringes.

  Each hilltop was host to a peculiar work of statuary, artificial trees carved from the red stone of the mountain, dense, squarish stumps with hooked branches, thickly clad in moss. Gale opened her mouth to ask, but as she watched, a stag wedged its horn into one, working its head back and forth.

  “Ah, this is your king’s innovation!” Een cried. “Clever, Sapira.”

  “The bucks seek out trees when their horns begin to itch,” the Blossom said. “The shedding posts keep them from getting trapped, and the moss protects the horns.”

  The pulvers fanned out, collecting horns that had dropped below the posts. Perfect horns—they found seven—were wrapped in thick, quilted blankets. There were thirty or more with flaws; those went into a single basket.

  This was what Gale loved—the world’s endless feast of experience: the breathtaking ingenuity of the carved shedding trees, the greystag, thick as shoals of fish on the vast emerald expanse, the small darting packs of wolfets, red-furred against the green.

  Today she felt only a gleam of interest. Sloot had sometimes mentioned going home, settling with one of his other women. Gale assumed he would wait, would see her to her prophesied violent end. That he’d take care of matters—of her.

  “Camp’s carved into this ridge.” The herds flowed around them, untroubled, as the party dismounted and unsaddled, allowing the horses to finally graze. As the trail guides filed off to fetch water, the pulvers unpacked a set of pikes, and then they climbed carved stone steps to yet another raised cave entrance.

  “Checking the shelter for wolfets or fugitives,” Sapira explained. “People take refuge here sometimes, in the fall.”

  “What sort of bandits do you get here?” asked Een.

  “Poachers. There’s illegal trade in maddenflur sap. And one-time crimes: someone kills their business partner, someone commits assault. We had a fellow two years ago who swindled three royal hunters.”

  “Escaped slaves?” Een asked silkily.

  Sapira favored him with a haughty glance. “Redcap is scrupulous in meeting all treaty obligations.”

  “Naturally.” He stretched, turned, and offered Parrish an elaborate Sylvanner bow. “I don’t think we’ve met, Kir.”

  “Garland Parrish, of the sailing vessel Nightjar.”

  Een showed his teeth. “Parrish. Mmm. Wasn’t there a Corporal Parrish who disgraced himself so badly he got drummed out of the Fleet? Cousin of yours, perhaps?”

&nbs
p; There was no visible change in Parrish, not even a tremor, and yet the air was suddenly charged with tension. “Not a cousin, Kir.”

  “You’re the fellow himself? Oh, how rude of me!”

  “I was, as you say, discharged from Service recently.”

  Which was unheard of, Gale thought.

  “But there was no disgrace,” Parrish went on. “The record, Kir, proves me out.”

  “Moral high ground, mmm? I’ve heard the view’s good from up there. Must’ve been a tremendous hardship to lose your place.” Een rubbed his hands together. “Weren’t you something of a rising star?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Now you’re sailing privately?”

  “I’m Nightjar’s first mate.”

  “Gale’s…mate?”

  It was an obvious insinuation. Gale was Verdanii, and of an age when her kinswomen often took young lovers. But Een’s barb snagged the wrong target: it was Sapira who reeled, as if she’d been slapped.

  Parrish, to her surprise, bent toward Een with a half-smile. His tone, when he spoke, was hushed, almost intimate, though his eyes were flinty. “Are you asking if I’ve had the honor of being Kir Feliachild’s lover?”

  Gale surprised herself by chuckling. This keeps up, I’ll have a duel on my hands.

  But Een knew when to retreat. “None of my business, of course. Sorry, Kir Parrish.”

  Nicely played, young man, Gale thought. She tipped him a bit of a salute before going in pursuit of the princess.

  Sapira had not gone far. She was beside the stream, with the biggest stag Gale had seen yet. It was old, its throat and flanks marked with the white lines of many healed slashes. A dent in its skull gave it a mean, faintly cross-eyed appearance and its lip had been bitten into a permanent scowl. It had already shed its horns.

  “Pal of yours?” Gale asked.

  Sapira nodded. “I didn’t think he’d live through winter.”

  The buck regarded Gale without fear. Even bareheaded, it could crush anyone it happened to charge. Gale wondered what it might see in her. She was a plain weathered woman, a well-used tool of the Fleet…but that meant nothing to this kind of king. She dropped her gaze…and found she’d clenched her fists. She held too tightly to things; she always had.