The messages themselves ranged from simple reminders: “Remember the equinox,” to the latest, discovered the previous night: “Do you want the world to end?”
Index must, surely, be exaggerating. After all, the last time she had failed to attend a Merikit ceremony there had only been a volcanic eruption, the descent of the Burning Ones, and an ashfall that had effectively destroyed the Knorth harvest—all because the Merikit chief Chingetai had insisted on replacing Jame with a substitute Favorite and the Burnt Man had declared that he no longer intended to be fooled by such tricks. That, presumably, was still the case, but Jame expected no welcome in the hills. Damn Chingetai anyway for naming her the Earth Wife’s Favorite and his own presumptive heir, just to draw attention away from his own blunders.
Besides, she had her duties here as a randon cadet and as the master-ten of her barracks, both linked to her brother having taken Chingetai’s example and also having declared her his heir or lordan. He was covering for past mistakes too, if one counted dropping her into the Women’s World without so much as a decent dress to her name, let alone a mask. That, however, had led her through torturous ways to Tentir, so she wasn’t sorry.
So, which duty was more important, to the hills or to the hall? One responsibility mirrored the other. The failure of either could be catastrophic; but how could she fulfill them both?
G’ah, this heaping on of roles had to stop. What next, chief chicken sexer?
She kicked back the blankets, then stared down the length of her naked body. Some sound she made half roused Rue on her mat by the door.
“Huh . . . ?”
“Go back to sleep. It’s not even dawn yet.”
“Mmmm . . . ”
Someone had drawn patterns over her small breasts, across her flat stomach, and down her long legs with something that looked like blood. If it was a message, she couldn’t read it, but its mere presence was profoundly disturbing in a double sense.
Look how close to you I can get.
. . . ah, come closer still . . .
Before that moment of panic, she had felt the touch and had arched to receive it. Imagination put the brush into beautiful, scarred hands. Warm breath made her skin tingle. Ah . . .
Oh, forget it. The lines broke and flaked away as she rose, leaving no trace.
She dressed, quickly but quietly, in clothes still dank with yesterday’s sweat. Rue did her best, but the sultry weather had outpaced her. Also, it seemed that Graykin had nabbed the majority of her uncle’s cast-off finery—no loss to Jame’s mind, but it did make Rue’s job harder.
Jorin slept on his back on the window sill, all four paws in the air. His ears twitched. He yawned, stretched luxuriously, and fell off the ledge, luckily into the room and not out the window. With the ounce bounding on ahead, Jame stepped over Rue and went down the stairs past dormitories full of cadets fitfully asleep.
The weather had been unseasonably hot and humid all week, with tempers shortened and classes an unwelcome chore. Even a Southron like Brier suffered under the wet-blanket effect while those used to crisp mountain air drew every breath with effort.
Their only respite had been work in the orchard, at least one class session each day for every ten-command, harvesting the apples, pears, and plums that provided the college with its staple drinks, cider, perry, plum jerkum, and, for those really determined to get drunk, applejack. The lower hall was full of every container the cadets had been able to find, including the odd spare boot, all overflowing with fruit. Jame picked up a rosy apple and bit into it with a satisfying crunch. Sweet juice flooded her mouth. She pocketed as many more as she could and went out.
At the moment, ancestors be praised, some of the night’s relative coolness lingered. As the day’s heat grew, however, many would come the way that she did now, down through cloud-of-thorn bushes toward rushing water and clouds of mist.
It didn’t surprise Jame, therefore, to find herself not the first one at the swimming hole, despite the early hour. As she threaded through clutching brambles, she heard the sound of someone crying.
Narsa crouched, naked and dripping, on the spray-slick edge of Breakneck Rock.
At the sight of her, Jame remembered the nightmare which had woken her. She had been watching Timmon draw red patterns on a supine female body.
“Come to me. Come,” he had been whispering.
His eyes, raising, had widened as he noted her presence.
She had never before seen that young, handsome face so haggard, so wretched. The next moment he had vomited copiously over his living canvas, Narsa, who had leaped up and ran.
“I came to you,” said Jame, blankly. “Not to him.”
The Ardeth Kendar sprang to her feet and turned as if to attack, but slipped on the wet rock.
“It’s all your fault!” she wailed, clutching her bruised knee. “Without you, he would love me, me, me!”
Water and blood pooled under her. Jame saw that the latter was menstrual. At least Timmon hadn’t gotten her into that particular sort of trouble. Yet.
“What in Perimal’s name is Timmon playing at?”
“You’ve bewitched him!”
“I haven’t, but someone has. Since when do we Kencyr play at blood magic?”
The other glared at her through a fringe of dark, dripping hair. “Since forever, you . . . you idiot! We’re all bound in blood, to our god, to our lords, to each other, and none of us can get free, ever, never, ever . . . ”
With that and a hiccup, she collapsed into a sodden heap.
Jame sat on her heels, regarding her. She knew that Timmon had taken Narsa as a lover that summer in an attempt to make her, Jame, jealous and so she had been, a little; but Kendar females were so vulnerable to Highborn wiles that it was hard not to feel sorry for the girl.
Briefly, Jame wondered if it ever happened the other way around, between Highborn females and Kendar men. If any lady should so transgress, though, the Women’s World would surely never speak her name again.
“Look. If you don’t like what he’s doing to you, don’t let him do it.”
Narsa raised a tear- and snot-stained face. “D’you think it’s that easy to say ‘no’?”
Jame started to say “yes,” then hesitated. Beyond his natural charm, Timmon possessed a Shanir power that she didn’t fully understand. Probably he didn’t either. He had certainly never felt the need to take responsibility for it, any more than his father Pereden had before him.
Narsa glared at her. “It just slides off you, doesn’t it, you icy bitch? You bewitch them—ancestors know how—without trying, without wanting to, then leave them without a backward glance. You can’t or won’t be touched. He’s finding that out, and it’s driving him crazy. It’s never happened to him before. He swears it would never have happened to his father.”
Pereden again, damn him. He and Greshan seemed like two of a kind, and no less pernicious for both being dead.
“Timmon looks up to his father,” Jame said. “All his life, he’s tried to imitate him and now, suddenly, the magic won’t work, at least against me. While he goes on thinking that way, he will never be himself. Narsa, can’t you help him to break free?”
The Ardeth cadet mouthed something at her, then sprang up and fled, howling.
“I guess not,” said Jame to Jorin.
She stripped, took a running leap from the rock to avoid the submerged shelf that gave it its name, and swam in the icy water until she felt clean again and was beginning to go wrinkly around the edges.