She was surprised at how glad she was to see her cousin. Without her noticing it, her aversion to his priestly upbringing seemed to have faded. Then again, he had never really been a priest, having run away before they could properly get their hooks into him.
She scrambled to her feet. Both of them dodged her loose horse as it careened around the square, chased by a swearing sargent.
The Commandant also stepped back, pulling an oblivious Index with him while the old scrollsman continued fervently to argue his cause. When the Knorth Lordan went into the hills, he wanted to go with her.
“He came all the way from Mount Alban to sing that old song?”
Kindrie shrugged. “The study of the Merikit was his life before your friend Marc closed the hills to him, as to all the rest of us. Of course he wants to go back. That’s not why he’s here, though: the Commandant sent for him to coach you in your Merikit. I came along to prevent him from absentmindedly getting himself killed.”
“Granted, that would be unfortunate.”
More than that, it would be a catastrophe. Index had earned his nickname by being the only one who knew where all the college’s information was stored, in what scroll, or book, or aging memory.
“Are you still helping him in his herb shed? Has he taught you yet how to read it?”
Kindrie made a face. “You might have warned me. I only just figured out that its arrangement is his mnemonic aid. Now I’ve got to memorize the whole thing, and you know that I haven’t had the proper training.”
“You’ll manage.”
In fact, it seemed a good role for someone who Jame suspected was slowly becoming That-Which-Preserves, whether he knew it or not.
She was surprised, though, that the Commandant has sent for the old scrollsman. No one had said anything to her since the equinox about her promised trip into the hills, leading her to wonder if she would have to slip away again and risk charges of desertion.
It seemed, however, that Sheth took her mission seriously. As he inclined his head to listen to Index (who only came up to the randon’s shoulder, even standing on his tiptoes and clutching the other’s scarf), he cast a look at Jame and raised an eyebrow. Yes, she had important work to do. Since the Merikit massacre of Marc’s family at Kithorn, the hills had been closed to all Kencyr, all because of a tragic misunderstanding between two people who should have been allies against the darkness farther north, for above the Merikit lands and those of their neighbor tribes was the Barrier and beyond that, ever waiting and watchful, Perimal Darkling itself.
For the first time in decades, a Kencyr had permission to travel northward, not only as the Knorth Lordan but as the Earth Wife’s Favorite.
No one’s fool, of course the Commandant was concerned. At the very least, he didn’t want to answer to the Highlord in case his heir got herself killed through sheer ignorance.
Knowledge might get her killed too, or at least the imparting of it. For the next four days Index dogged her footsteps from class to class, drilling her on the Merikit language. To have him tug at her sleeve during fire-leaping dagger practice was distracting to say the least, and he nearly got himself trampled in the training fields during lance drill. The Falconer set his merlin on him. Caineron cadets trotted after them calling, “What’s the Merikit word for ‘bum’?” Kindrie had his hands full keeping his elderly, nearsighted charge from destruction. As for Jame, luckily she already knew some Merikit, but her head still pounded like a drum at the end of each day.
On the other hand, Index turned out to know a lot less about Merikit society in general than Jame had hoped. He had spent all his time with the shaman Tungit studying those rituals practiced by the Merikit men. Hillwomen, on the other hand, were a complete mystery to him. In this, he adopted the Highborn prejudice that women’s doings were unworthy of serious consideration and could tell Jame nothing of the Winter’s Eve ceremonies since they were conducted in the village where he had never been.
Given his attitude, Jame was surprised that he wanted so badly to go north with her for what promised to be a domestic ritual.
“I think he just wants to get his foot back in the door,” said Kindrie.
It was his fifth, last night at Tentir and, unlike Index, he had chosen to stay in Jame’s quarters. Jame, for her part, was pleased to host him. Several days in his company had shown her that he had lost most of the insecurity that she had found so annoying before. Mount Alban clearly agreed with him.
There was a sneeze within the nearest wall, followed by a bout of half-muffled coughing.
“Gray, why don’t you just come out? We’ve got a lovely fire here. Come get warm and have something to eat.”
A scornful, muffled laugh answered her. “What, sell my freedom for a bowl of porridge?”
“Actually, it’s venison sausage on a stick, among other things. We’re having a picnic of sorts. Wouldn’t you like to join us?”
For a moment, they thought he might, but then they heard him blunder away.
“He’s got to be starving,” said Jame. “Ever since he spiked that stew with flax oil and gave half the barracks galloping diarrhea, the kitchens have been guarded day and night. If another house catches him poaching, he’ll be in even more trouble.”
She had been putting food out for him in Greshan’s apartment as if for a stray cat, but was fairly sure that Jorin was eating it.
“He’s in a dark place,” said Kindrie soberly.
“I know: between two dirty walls.”
“I didn’t mean that. Unless things have changed, his soul-image is still that of a mongrel dog chained to the Master’s cold hearth.”
“Yes, but that’s not where I am anymore.”
“I know that. You’ve escaped, but you didn’t take him with you. Trapped like that, he must always feel cold and hungry.”
Jame threw a branch on the fire under the copper cauldron. “Yes, he does. Sometimes in my dreams I hear him whimpering, and I sneak away before my scent can set him howling. I never meant for him to suffer like that.”
“You never meant anything for him at all once he’d served his purpose.”
“That’s not fair. What in Perimal’s name was I supposed to do with him here at the college? I warned him when he accepted my service that I was apt to be a chancy mistress. Anyway, I have work for him now. A proper job, fit to his qualifications.”
“Yes, you mean to use him again as a sneak. I know, I know: he sees himself that way. It may be the best either of you can do. But you still have to pay for past neglect.”
Jame felt herself fire up in self-defense, but the flames were short-lived. Somewhat to her surprise, she found she accepted that Kindrie could speak to her this way, and she recognized the justice of his words.
“I’ll try,” she said with a sigh. “It’s hard to know what to do, though, with him deliberately walled up alive, to the extent that that’s his will at all. The Lordan’s quarters may stand open now, but we’re still haunted by Tentir’s past, Harn and the Commandant most of all, ancestors only know why. In the meantime, I have some unfinished business with you too.”
When she returned with the knapsack, Kindrie regarded it apprehensively, as well he might.
“What’s that?”
“Something you may or may not welcome: your inheritance.”
She drew out the scroll and gave it to him. Flecks of dried blood rattled off the coarse cloth as he unrolled it. “I don’t understand. What dead thing is this? Are these stains words? They are!”
As he read by the flickering firelight, his expression changed from bewilderment to amazement to something like horror. In the end, he looked up at her in near shock, pale blue eyes wide under his thatch of white hair.
“Is this what I think it is?”
“Yes. It’s the contract for your conception, duly signed and sealed. Congratulations. You’re legitimate.”
He looked at it again, gingerly holding it by the edges as if loathe to touch it. “I knew that my mother was Tieri, of course. You told me as much.” His face had gone nearly as pale as his hair. Jame wondered if he remembered that thing of cords and hunger in the Moon Garden that had tried to bind him in its death threads.