And how will we three react then, to events, to each other?
Since Autumn’s Eve, she had known that there were three pure-blooded Knorth left—God’s claws, the proof lay carefully folded in the sack beneath the bench on which she sat, along with half an enigmatic scrap of linen that hinted at even more—but they must all accept their roles and grow into them before the coming of the Tyr-ridan. At the moment, the prospects of that seemed remote.
Meanwhile, Bel’s face remained savagely scarred and Hallick Hard-hand was still dead. Such evil could never be undone.
“Eat, lady,” urged Killy. “Assembly will sound any moment now.”
“Or if you’re not hungry . . . ” That, hopefully, from stocky Erim, who always was.
Thus reminded that time was short, Rue jumped up and started hastily untangling Jame’s long, black hair. After all, how their master-ten looked reflected on the whole Knorth garrison, and Jame seldom showed a decent interest in her own appearance. This time, the Gothregor Kendar had gotten her jacket off her long enough to pluck the burrs off of it; however, she simply hadn’t had time to comb out the ruins of Randiroc’s fancy braidwork, which in turn hadn’t been improved by the burdocks of the Moon Garden or a night sleeping in the rough. Why, oh why, couldn’t she keep other people out of her hair?
“Ow!” she said as the cadet jerked out strands knotted around a burr at the nape of her neck.
A cadet at Vant’s table snickered, but stopped when Rue shot him a dirty look. Obviously, the other ten-commands were listening, some cadets openly, others with their noses in their bowls.
“Sorry, lady,” said Rue.
“Will you please stop calling me that?” She raised her voice to address the room at large. “I’m Jame, or Ten or, at worst, Lordan.”
And certainly not Jameth, a corruption of her true name that always set her teeth on edge. On the other hand, how would they react if she admitted to being Jamethiel Dream-weaver’s namesake, much less her daughter? Jame hardly felt up to that just yet. Someday, though . . .
“The Randir are poison,” muttered Anise, following Rue’s line of thought. “Always have been, always will be.”
As she spoke, she cast an involuntary sidelong glare at Mint and Dar, who as usual were flirting. Jame wondered which one had aroused her jealousy. Adolescent Kendar were like wild colts, apt to tear off in all directions when not reined in hard by discipline.
“Ran Awl is all right,” said Quill judiciously, referring to the senior Randir officer and sometime commandant of Tentir. “That snake charmer Shade isn’t too bad either, from what I’ve seen, despite the company she keeps. There seem to be distinct groups within that house with different personalities, as if they aren’t all bound to the same Highborn.”
Sharp Quill. That hadn’t occurred to Jame, although she had long suspected that, contrary to every tradition, Lady Rawneth had more than her share of sworn followers.
Her hand stopped again. Trinity, what if Rawneth was a blood-binder too?
“At any rate,” Quill continued, seizing a chunk of bread and speaking indistinctly around a mouthful of it, “their barracks has been seething ever since the night that the stones were cast and their natural lord rode out with his life, back into exile. Since then it’s gotten worse. A fight sent two Randir cadets to the infirmary last night.”
“One died this morning,” said Niall, speaking up for the first time.
Jame shot a startled look at her second-in-command, curtailed by Rue’s ruthless grip on her hair. “Things are that bad?”
She wished that Brier didn’t have quite so expressionless a face, although she understood why: as a former Caineron yondri with the Southern Host, the handsome Kendar had learned early to keep her emotions to herself.
“Bad enough,” Brier said shortly.
“And we’ve got our senior randon jumping at shadows,” added Rue.
“Harn? Why?”
“Hold still.” Rue busily worried at a snarl, uprooting more strands. Jame tried not to flinch. “It started after you left for Gothregor. Apparently Ran Harn has begun to see your uncle Greshan walking the halls at night.”
“Master, Master, will you grant me my heart’s desire? Will you raise the dead to love me?”
Jame’s foot involuntarily nudged the sack, and she recoiled from it as if at the touch of a dead thing. According to the contract therein, Tieri’s price had been Greshan’s return from the dead.
“ ‘m hungry.” Words muttered through a mouthful of maggots. “Dear father, feed me . . . ”
“You have laughed at rumors that Greshan was seen walking the halls of Gothregor when he was five days dead.”
Stitches on a tattered letter, from Kinzi to Adiraina.
“Well, I saw him too.”
No, Lyra couldn’t have read that correctly. According to Adiraina, the same flames that destroyed so many bloodstained Knorth banners had also consumed both Gerraint’s and Greshan’s bodies . . .
“ . . . and the latter none too soon: he had been five days dead at the time.”
So who had gone into the Moon Garden with Lady Rawneth and there, presumably, sired on her the current Lord Randir?
As a story, it had as many holes as Kinzi’s poor, tattered-cloth letter.
“I saw Greshan too,” said Mint unexpectedly, for once without the trace of her usual mischievous smile. “Not clearly, mind you, and half in shadow.”
“Where?”
“He was standing outside the lordan’s private quarters. Then he disappeared.”
“How d’you know it was Greshan?” Anise demanded.
“Even by moonlight, the embroidered coat was unmistakable.”
“Huh.” Rue explored another tangle. “The last I saw of that slippery Southron Graykin, he was scuttling out of your new quarters carrying it.”
“I told him to help himself to Greshan’s belongings. That coat may be a masterpiece and an heirloom, but I’d be just as happy never to see it again. You didn’t chase Graykin out, did you, Rue? Whatever new quarters these are, if they’re mine, he has a right to be there too.”
An obstinate silence answered her. Rue had seen what the Southron had suffered in her service—so had the rest of the ten-command—but that didn’t make them any happier to have him around. Tentir was for the randon, cadet, sargent, and officer, not for such as he. In a way, she understood.
Anise broke in, bored by the topic or jealous of the attention Mint had drawn.
“Five, tell m’lady . . . sorry, the lordan . . . how the Caineron fared in the cull.”
“Not well, I assume,” said Jame, trying to lighten the mood and to shake her own sudden chill.
Brier gave the others a hard, jade-green stare, daring them to make the matter personal. “They lost the most of any house.”
“Well,” said Killy, ever the peacemaker, “that was to be expected. We all know how Lord Caldane overstocked his quota. With seven sons all binding Kendar, he always does. And M’lord Gorbel lost all four of his new best friends.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Dar said with a laugh echoed by the others, not that it really was.
The Caineron Lordan had arrived at Tentir with four Highborn “cronies” and their cadet servants to complete his personal ten-command, although it had quickly become clear that Gorbel himself was the only one serious about randon training.
“Remember when Lord Corrudin stopped by to teach us and M’lord Gorbel’s ten how to resist stupid commands?” Dar was still laughing and others began to grin at the memory. “He had Gorbelly order one of his Highborn friends—Kibben, wasn’t it?—to stand on his head, and he did, over and over again, until the Commandant sent him home.”
Jame remembered. It had been the first time that she realized Gorbel’s companions weren’t his friends but rather spies for his father. She willed Dar not to go on, but he did, wiping tears from his eyes.