“Will she get away with it, then?” The thought closed Kindrie’s throat. So many dead, all the women of his family except his mother and she left in lonely exile . . .
“The Bitch of Wilden has kept her secret for decades so far. And to use Kinzi’s letter would be to betray the ladies’ precious knot code.”
“Does that matter?”
“Not much. The winter I spent in the gentle care of the Women’s World was almost as bad as yours in the Priests’ College at Wilden. I owe them nothing. But there are three of us now. One of us is bound to stop her, somehow.”
“Probably you.”
Jame smiled with a flash of white, barred teeth. “Oh, I would like that very much.”
Kindrie regarded her as she paced. Her clenched hands drove nails into her palms and her eyes flashed silver in the firelight. A shiver passed through the soulscape. It occurred to him suddenly that she had just fought down an incipient berserker flare. Her control frightened him almost as much as her potential violence.
“You are dangerous, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes, very much so. Others, I trip over my own feet. But you can tell Kirien this to add into the mix: the night of the fire when your contract was signed, the darkling changer Keral was there posing as Rawneth’s servant.”
Kindrie stared at her. “How do you know that?”
Jame made a face. “It’s a bit hard to explain. Sometimes I see visions, as if various places are trying to show me things. Autumn’s Eve in the death banner hall and in the Moon Garden, I glimpsed a lot that still confuses me. But Keral was definitely there. Moreover, I don’t think Rawneth had any idea who or what he was. She isn’t the sort to pay much attention to servants.”
“So that would mean,” said Kindrie slowly, working it out, “that Keral is probably Lord Randir’s father.”
“And Shade’s grandfather, which is how she inherited her dose of darkling blood. What we don’t know for sure is what face Keral showed Rawneth as they made love.”
“Wouldn’t it have been Greshan’s?” Kindrie asked, confused.
“No. She thought he was Greshan at first, but then he changed, and not back into Keral. Kinzi said that Rawneth was pleased. I don’t see her happy to have been tricked into congress with a lackey.”
“Who, then? Gerraint?”
“No. At a guess, your own father, Gerridon.”
“But the Master isn’t a changer, is he?”
“No. My dear uncle Gerridon has had as little to do with the shadows as possible. Others pay for his seeming immortality. But Rawneth wouldn’t know that. I always thought that M’lord Kenan reminded me of someone. Now I know whom: Keral.”
“So Kenan is also a changer?”
“That I don’t know. Maybe it skipped a generation, but as secretive as the Randir are, how would we know unless he loses control and betrays himself? Rawneth is or was watching Shade through her serpent Addy, presumably to see if she starts to show her bloodlines, which she has. Some cadets of her house are already after her, but not for that.”
She told Kindrie about the attempt to drown Shade in the Randir basement during the Day of Misrule.
“This is very confusing,” said Kindrie, running a hand through his white hair, leaving it in unruly cowlicks. “You say that the cadets who tried to kill Shade aren’t bound to her grandmother? Then to whom?”
“Not to Randiroc, maybe not even to Kenan. You know the Randir better than I do. Who else is there?”
Kindrie thought back to his time at Wilden, most of which had been spent in the Priests’ College. “Some Randir Highborn only serve Rawneth because they fear her. There are also Randir Shanir in the college, not all there willingly. Some of them may be able to bind.”
“Huh. No wonder the Randir cadets are so confused, except for those bound directly to Rawneth. The whole thing is as murky as dirt soup. I’m obliged to you for bringing me news, however. Was that the only reason you dropped by Tentir?”
“No. I was on my way to Gothregor, to give Torisen this.” He rummaged in his pack and brought forth a leather cylinder containing a roll of parchment. They spread it out on the floor where Jorin tried to sprawl on it, but was chased off. Names covered every inch of it, some with miniature ink portraits beside them, faces deftly caught in a few flicks of the brush.
“This is wonderful,” said Jame, examining it. “Everyone bound to Tori must be here.”
“Very nearly,” Kindrie admitted, glad that the firelight hid his blush of pride. “I started with the names we collected last fall and went on from there. The Knorth scrollsmen were a great help.”
“Tori will be very glad of this.” Her voice warmed him. At last, he had done something of value for his newfound family—enough for his cousin to forgive him for being a Shanir? That remained to be seen.
“You’ll have to wait to show it to him, though. Your merchant escort is gone, and I don’t think anyone here is free to go south with you just now.”
Kindrie’s disappointment surprised him. After all, Torisen didn’t immediately need the list, but he had so looked forward to giving it to him.
Still trying to prove yourself, aren’t you? he thought with some scorn. What, do you want so much for him to clasp you to his bosom? Dammit, yes.
Rue cleared the dishes and brought out a sleeping mat for Kindrie. He settled onto the latter and drowsily watched his cousin strip for bed. Her fair skin seemed a patchwork of multicolored bruises, old and new—the common lot of any cadet, he supposed. From his last experience with her soul-image, he knew better than to offer his healing touch, not wanting to be knocked through the nearest wall. After all, she couldn’t help what she was any more than he could. So near, so far, and yet family.
“G’night, cousin.”
“Good night.”
In the morning Kindrie rose with the cadets and shared their breakfast. Jame waved him off from the door of the great hall, then disappeared back into Old Tentir bound for her first class of the day.
Kindrie gained the New Road and hesitated. It would be far wiser to turn north, back to Mount Alban. His hand stole down to touch the leather canister. Oh, but he had so wanted to show his work to Torisen. How dangerous could it be, really, especially if he kept to the west bank? He could stop that night in the safety of Shadow Rock which, after all, was held by his bone cousin, Holly, Lord Danior. Would either Jame or Tori hesitate? No. That settled in his mind, he turned right and rode southward, toward Gothregor and all that lay in between.
X
Spring Equinox
The vernal equinox fell on the thirty-seventh of spring, another example of the Kencyrath not quite getting things right on their new world, nor bothering to change it over the three millennia or so that they had been there.
It was also the free, seventh day of the week at Tentir, hence Jame felt no guilt about slipping out in the early morning to find and saddle Death’s-head. Mindful of her late arrival on the solstice, she started before the college was stirring, also before Fash could taunt her about her frolics with the native “savages,” as if they were anything of the sort.
As usual, she set her destination in mind and gave the rathorn his head. Much good it would have done her to try to guide him with a bitless bridle and his contrary attitude, even if she had known the way. Better to trust him and the folds in the land: the New Road would have taken much too long as it was a good one hundred miles north to Kithorn.
Besides, on it she would have risked overtaking the Commandant and Gorbel, who had both been summoned by their lord to Restormir.
“In the middle of a school year? What for?” she had asked Gorbel.
He had grunted. “My father is fussed. By his reckoning, you should long since had been sent packing from Tentir. What he means to do about it, though, I have no idea.”