“Huh. A nice thought, next washing day.”
Hidden in the shadows, Damson watched them go. Just for fun, she gave Rue a mental nudge that made the cadet stumble. She might be clumsy herself, but at least she could let others know how it felt. This time, it had been particularly satisfying. She paused for one last glance at the pit where her tormentor lay wrapped in flames, then followed the others out.
Jame sighed. It was cold and boring, sitting here on the floor in Greshan’s quarters, her back to the chest containing Beauty’s cocoon. Was she really going to be stuck here all day? How long had it been so far? Probably only an hour, but it felt like forever.
“Have I ever sat still this long before in my life?” she asked Jorin.
Jorin was curled up on the purring chest with his chin on her shoulder. He batted an ear as if to say, What’s the problem? Catnap whenever you can.
Jame reflected that she was more likely to go for days on end at a dead run, and be damned if that wasn’t less tiring than this enforced inactivity.
“If this goes on much longer,” she told the ounce. “I have got to learn how to knit.”
Since they were supposed to be in full view, the two flags were spread out on the floor. After their initial placement, unlike in a game of Gen, they could move, but always in plain sight. Of course, that wasn’t quite true now with the door as shut as it was going to get. Surely by now Timmon had discovered his loss. If he guessed that his banner was here, however, it was in a near perfect hiding place. No one would look for it in another house’s barracks, and he could collect both it and hers before the end of play.
There was, of course, the small matter that he had cheated by jumping her prematurely.
Jame hadn’t been able to figure out how strict the rules were. The randon insisted on them, of course, but there was a definite sense among the cadets that if they could get away with something uncaught, they would. After all, things didn’t necessarily go according to plan in a real battle. The monitors were going to have a busy time riding herd on that mob.
At a whisper of sound, Jorin’s head jerked up, ears pricked. The rumbling coming from him now was not a purr but a growl.
“Well, well, well. Sitting this one out?”
Jame’s heart skipped a beat. She knew that loathed drawl. Scrambling to her feet, she lurched a bit on legs that had gone to sleep. Greshan stood behind her half in shadow. Bars of light cast through cracks in the shutters slanted across the roiling colors of the Lordan’s Coat. Vermillion and azure stitches inched away from the glare like disturbed whipworms. The discolored shirt beneath seethed.
“Graykin.” Her voice emerged as a croak. “I know you’re in there somewhere. Come out. Please.”
“Oh no. Your precious sneak has crept back to me to hide and I hold him close. No one else ever has.”
“I would have, but . . . ”
“It was inconvenient. And his neediness annoyed you, after all he has suffered in your service.”
That was only too true. She remembered Graykin dangling by hot wires threaded through his skin, made to dance to Caldane’s tune for changing his alliance to her. A winter’s agony . . .
“You speak fine words to others about responsibility and honor,” crooned that hateful voice, “but how well do you live up to them yourself?”
“I try.”
“You fail, and you know it.”
“Whereas, Uncle, you never tried at all.”
“I didn’t need to. What is honor if not that which is born in the blood? Therefore how can honor betray itself? So my father taught me when he gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted. So I believed, then and now. I had so much. I deserved so much more. Now all I have is hunger.”
His hand—Graykin’s thin hand, with grubby nails—groped at his rustling shirtfront. Out of it he drew a fistful of squirming maggots and munched on them as he spoke indistinctly through their mangled remains.
“Always hungry. Never had enough. Always wanted more. Ah.” He swallowed. “They took it all away from me, your precious randon, all but my hunger. Now see what I’ve become.”
“I see, but I don’t understand. You supposedly died in a hunting accident and your body was given to the pyre at Gothregor. No death banner hangs there for you now, not even a token one.”
“Ha!” His laugh sprayed maggot fragments. Some he apparently inhaled because he began to cough and grabbed a chairback to support himself.
Graykin’s face, suffused and gasping, lifted toward her. “Mistress, help me!”
She took a step toward him, but already Greshan had slid his mask back over those wraith-thin, wretched features.
“Help?” he wheezed, then hawked and spat. “What, will you wear the Lordan’s Coat at last and submit yourself to my will? Foolish child, do you expect never to bow to anyone?”
“Did you?”
He straightened and wiped his mouth, withdrawing again into the shadows. “Only to death, and that most unwillingly. But you aren’t me. No, not by half, and a weak, mewling hypocrite to boot. So much for your responsibility and your precious honor! No, little girl, such a one as you will never keep me from my revenge.”
“Against whom?” she asked, confused. “Hallick Hard-hand is long since dead, if it was he who struck you down. I never did quite believe in the story of an accident.”
He laughed, a harsh, jeering sound, almost a sob. “Clever, clever, clever, but still so ignorant. Oh, what a bloody-handed house we are. Do you suppose that even your dear brother’s hands are clean?”
“What, in your death?”
“Now, did I say that? So many have died, over time, and wander the Gray Lands unburnt, muttering. The dead know what concerns the dead. But I waste time here. They took everything from me. Now I will take everything from them. I already have Harn Grip-hard’s wits. You should see how he stumbles and babbles. The past has him by the throat, with the help of this.”
He threw down a black cake of compressed herbs.
“Try it yourself, if you want to find him again, if you dare.”
With that he stepped back into the shadows and was gone.
Jame picked up the cake and sniffed it. Such a strong bouquet of flowers . . .
For a moment, the room swam around her and settled into golden morning light. Greshan, in life, was donning gilded hunting leathers. “Such a fuss,” he was saying, “about a wounded Whinno-hir. Honestly, you’d think that I had branded someone’s maiden aunt. Still, the hunt should be fun.”
Jame sneezed, and the vision passed.
She had no doubt that Greshan was going after Harn, having first rendered him helpless. But how could she leave this room to help him? Without her scarf, however falsely obtained, she was considered among the dead. Still, the dead could roam. What was more important anyway, compliance to a mere game or Harn’s life? Put that way, the choice was clear.
But she couldn’t give up the war altogether.
“Jorin, go and listen for me.”
It was a game they had practiced often in the Falconer’s class in the days leading up to the war. Mouse had proved best at it, sending out one companion and keeping the other to receive reports; but Jorin hadn’t done badly when, catlike, he was in the mood. Maybe she couldn’t (or shouldn’t) use her claws, but she could use her other Shanir attributes to keep abreast of events.
Leaving the flags where they lay as a token gesture, she slipped out of the room and ran for the looming bulk of Old Tentir.
“This damn war is only two hours old, and already it’s a damned mess.”
So Berrimint of the Brandan declared, running a hand distractedly through her short hair and dolefully surveying the double plank table set out in the Knorth barracks’ common room. Sketched on it in chalk was a rough map of the college with blocks of painted wood scattered about its surface. Scouts arrived every few minutes with new information, and an intent cadet shifted the blocks.