Chapter Six
I was awakened the next morning by the sounds of hooves and men’s shouts echoing up the mountain trail. Looking around, I could see that the sun was well risen and Jeff gone, so I jumped up and quickly dressed. Before I left the tent, though, I unpinned the feather from my tabard and stowed it in my saddlebag. I figured I had made my point and now it was time to lie low. Very low. I slunk over to the cookfire to see if there was anything left of breakfast.
“I set aside some eggs for you, Lieutenant,” Basel said, beaming. “I’ll whip them up right quick. Got some herbs too. From my garden—I picked them fresh just before we left.”
“It’s not your garden, Basel,” I said, exasperated. “It’s the garrison’s and what’s grown there is for the officers only—” I broke off and Basel’s beam cranked up a notch.
“Yes, Lieutenant, sir. I’ll also have your water when you’re ready to shave.” After shaving and eating, I slipped in with the rest of the troop as they watched the newcomers arrive, acting like I had been there all along. As soon as I saw who had returned with the messenger, though, I scowled.
“I say, Suiden, splendid view you have here,” Captain Javes said. He had dismounted and was looking around through his quiz glass. He wore his parade dress uniform and a sword with fine filigree work on the hilt that would snap the first time he tried to use it. Captain Suiden and Lieutenant Groskin stood before him in their field uniforms, and there was no sign of Laurel.
“Look, Rabbit,” a trooper said. “A kindred spirit.”
“Rather not,” Jeff said before I could, talking through his nose. He peered at Captain Javes’ highly polished boots. “Habbs in the country? Devilish bad form.” Snorting a laugh, I scanned the complement still arriving and saw Lieutenant Slevoic sneering into the morning sun, and frowned. Slevoic was not Javes’ regular lieutenant.
“Oh, my word,” Javes continued. “I’ll be forgetting my head next.” He handed Captain Suiden a dispatch pouch that had so many seals and ribbons on it that it looked like a Festival ornament. Even Slevoic couldn’t have opened it without leaving a trace.
Captain Suiden took the pouch and made a brief speech of welcome, inviting Captain Javes to join him later for tea. After he was done, he turned and disappeared back into his tent. Lieutenant Groskin caught sight of me and headed my way. The group around me melted away.
“I guess we’re going to escort the magical,” the lieutenant said when he reached my side.
That was a safe assumption, as the packhorses kept coming up the trail. When the last one crested the ridge, I turned away and shot a look at Lieutenant Slevoic. He had dismounted and was standing with a couple of other troopers. As I watched, Ryson walked up to them and joined in their conversation. “Damn,” I muttered to myself, then glanced over at Groskin. “Uh, sir.”
Groskin grunted in agreement. “Yeah, damn is right.” He then faced me and grinned, his eyeteeth sharp. “And don’t call me ‘sir.’ Only the captains are ‘sir,’ to you.” He looked at Slevoic.”While there are some who may seem ‘untouchable’—” Untouchable? Slevoic probably didn’t have to bathe as nothing seemed to stick. “—you rank everyone here, Rabbit, and don’t let anyone say different. No matter how well they’re connected.”
I now frowned at Groskin. “Sir—I mean, connected how?”
“Politics, Rabbit. Slevoic has relatives who are close to the king. But then, so do you.” With that, he turned on his heel and went into Captain Suiden’s tent.
I turned on my own heel and headed for my tent, thinking that a nap before lunch would be good. I opened the flap and went in—and nearly bounced out again. Laurel was sitting against Jeff’s bedroll. In his hand was the feather.
“I give you good morning, Lord Rabbit,” he said.
I entered all the way and let the flap fall.
“Good morning, Laurel Faena,” I said. I sat down on my bedding and waited.
“I came in here to be out of the way until the good captain decides to introduce me to the new arrivals,” Laurel said. He held up the feather. “I knocked over your pouches by accident and it fell out.”
I remembered my speech to Captain Suiden yesterday about lies and Faena, and held my tongue. He handed the feather to me and I placed it back in my saddlebag.
“You do not wear it?”
“I’m not repudiating my obligation, Laurel Faena.” My voice was sharp and I made an effort to even it. “It’s that wearing it could be a provocation just now.”
“I see.”
I pulled off my boots (standard issue, not Habbs) and placed them by my saddlebags. I had come in to take a nap and nothing was going to stop me. I lay down on my bedding and closed my eyes.
“It is amazing how much the good captain’s eyes look like Dragoness Moraina’s, especially when she’s annoyed,” Laurel said.
My own eyes slammed open.
“And when the lieutenant smiles he reminds me of my own sire.”
I rose up on my elbows and stared at the mountain cat. At last, someone was seeing what I had.
“Where do the People come from, Lord Rabbit?” Laurel asked.
Bards prophesy through song, while to mages knowledge is power. Dragons seek the Pearl of Wisdom, elves hold their histories, lineages and swords sacred. And the Faena practice illumined questioning that leads to enlightenment, which when inflicted on me always made me want to start the cult of Ignorant Bliss.
I sat up, swallowed my bile and replied, “The Border, Laurel Faena.”
“And before that?” Laurel asked. I looked at him blank faced and he sighed. “Do you believe that we descended from a comet’s tail, or were spewed from a volcano, or sprang up complete from divinity’s head as some vicars teach?”
I shook my head.
“So where did we come from?”
We were formed from the dust. “The land.”
“Which land?”
“This one,” I said, and stopped. Damn, I’d been enlightened.
“Yes.” Laurel smiled. “The land Iversterre now rests on, its denizens living and dying in the same place that we did, our ancestors’ bones and ashes part of every bite, every drink. In the very dust they breathe.” He extended the claws on one paw and examined them. “What do you think that is doing to these denizens?”
I thought about Captain Suiden’s glowing emerald eyes and his taste for tea in fine porcelain cups, and how lightly we always stepped around him. Lieutenant Groskin’s purring and eyeteeth, and how the troop stepped lightly around him too. Damn it again, more enlightenment.
Laurel, content with the points he made, fell silent, and I lay back down on my bed, staring at the tent ceiling.
“Laurel Faena, how did the troop become lost?” I asked after a moment. Turn about, after all, was fair play.
“A good question, Lord Rabbit. Someone interfered. Now the next questions are who did so and why?”
Chapter Seven
“Smashing carpet, Suiden,” Captain Javes said as he looked at the rug down through his quiz glass.
We were gathered in Captain Suiden’s tent after lunch, Groskin once more preparing tea. I thought that Suiden might’ve scrounged up some furniture for this meeting, but we were again seated on the floor of the tent with the same fat pillows to lean back on. Not that I dared lounge.
Javes aimed his quiz glass at me. “Though I am rather surprised that this trooper is privy to our little council, what?” I tried to ignore the effect of his eye hideously magnified by his glass, glad that I had resisted buying one for myself.
“Rabbit has been field promoted to lieutenant,” Captain Suiden said. I noticed he didn’t say that it was only for the duration of the mission.