“Why, Peri?”
“What else had you left me to do? Damn.” His nose had started to bleed. Torisen gave him a handkerchief. Pereden began to pace, he and a bewildered Timmon both, overlapping, caught in the same dream of a memory that was Torisen’s. “Taking my rightful place as commander of the Southern Host, turning my father against me . . . You lied to him!”
Behind Pereden’s fury, his son’s bafflement and interest grew. Jame knew from a previous dream where this conversation would end, if not what went before. Timmon mustn’t know, even if to stop now was to thwart her own curiosity. Why had Torisen broken not just Pereden’s nose but his neck, then sent his body to burn on the common pyre?
No more of this. No more. Wake up, wake up, wake up—
And she did, to find Rue hovering anxiously over her.
“You were having a nightmare, lady.”
“You’re telling me.”
Jame threw back the furs. Her slim, naked body steamed with sweat while the cold air raised goosebumps down her arms.
“Damn and blast that Timmon,” she said thickly, rubbing her face. “He’s gotten into my dreams again and between us we’ve ensnared Tori. But who else’s dream was I in? That finger, that ring . . . ah, never mind,” she added, seeing Rue’s confused, concerned expression. “Fetch me something to drink, please.”
The Ardeth Lordan was a charmer, a dream-stalker, and a would-be seducer, except every time he tried to entangle her in one of his erotic fantasies, between them they seemed to open the door to her brother’s sleeping mind which, while fascinating, was hardly fair to Tori.
As for that last dream . . .
Timmon had adored his father and still tried to imitate him. Jame suspected that therein lay the source of half the Ardeth Lordan’s personality flaws, not that Timmon saw them as such.
“Damn him,” she muttered again, accepting a cup of cold water from Rue. In so many other ways, he was almost worthwhile.
As it happened, their first class was together.
Timmon arrived with his ten-command, looking aggrieved, with dark smudges under his eyes.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “I try to arrange some harmless fun on a fur rug in front of a cheerful fireplace, and you drag me from one immolation to another.”
“Good morning to you too. Sorry about that, but I did warn you to keep out of my dreams.”
“If I were Torisen, you wouldn’t fight me so hard,” he muttered. It was a sore point that, despite herself, Jame found her brother more interesting than she did him. “And what about that last bit? My father called your brother a liar!”
“I have no more idea than you do what that was about. Of all people, you should know that dreams don’t always make sense.”
Seeing that he was about to argue, she abruptly changed the topic.
“For that matter, I’ve a bone to pick with you. Why did you tackle me in Greshan’s quarters before the Winter War even started?”
“I didn’t think you’d let me do it afterward.”
“Let you? Huh. And how did Torisen get my scarf back from you?”
At this, Timmon looked distinctly sheepish. “If he hasn’t told you, I’m not going to.”
“Could it be . . . oh no!” She burst out laughing. “You tackled him in the Knorth kitchen thinking he was me. He took the scarf and locked you in!”
With that, Jame stifling mirth and Timmon very red in the face, they reached their destination: a room in Old Tentir with rush mats strewn about the floor. Timmon stopped on the threshold.
“Oh no. Not the Senethar this early in the morning. I’m for my bed again.”
“Not so fast.” The randon instructor entered behind them.
Timmon smiled, all dimples with the trace of a pout. “I didn’t sleep well last night, Ran. Really, I’d rather not.”
The randon, an Ardeth, smiled back with more teeth than humor. “Like it or not, young Lordan, you’ll learn your lesson. Everyone, coats off and take your places for the fire-leaping kantirs.”
“Losing your charm, Timmon?” Jame asked.
“I don’t understand. Usually the only one who denies me is you. What’s gotten into the randon of my house lately?”
Still grumbling, he and Jame dutifully squared up as their ten-commands followed suit. Fire-leaping Senethar consisted of a series of kicks and blows. Its kantirs could be practiced alone but when in class two opponents mirrored each other, starting slow, getting faster, not seeking to connect. Jame’s fist brushed past Timmon’s ear, and his past hers. Simultaneous kicks pivoted them away from each other, then back. So far, properly speaking, they were engaged in the Senetha, the Senethar’s dance form. The pace quickened. Each focused on a point just short of the other. Timmon’s booted foot stopped close enough for her to smell its fine leather and to see, cross-eyed, the dirt engrained in its sole. Hers brushed the tip of his nose.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
You broke my nose, Pereden had said to Torisen. When and why?
. . . two figures in the Heart of the Wood at the Cataracts, fighting. The one in black drove the other’s nasal guard back into his face with the hilt of his sword. The one in dusty blue dropped. Then the changers came . . .
Turn, back kick. A thud as two other opponents misjudged and fouled each other. The randon’s measured rebuke. Closer now, one arm scooping around the other’s neck. An extended foot sweep that would have brought both of them down if it had connected.
Tori broke Pereden’s neck.
“Why did you do it, Peri?”
Do what? If that had been Pereden in blue armor, why had he and Torisen been fighting at all while the greater battle with the Waster Horde raged around them?
Someone came to the door and spoke to the instructor.
“Your lucky day,” he said, turning to Timmon. “There’s a lady to see you. I think it’s your mother.”
“You call that luck? Now can I leave?”
“Go. But you still owe me three kantirs. The rest of you, mind your manners: Ran Aden is with her.”
“Who?” Jame asked the cadet next to her.
“Lord Ardeth’s war-leader, also his younger brother, also a former commandant of Tentir . . .”
“And therefore a member of the Randon Council,” Jame concluded.
So that was the name of the Ardeth who had watched her with such cold disapproval during the last cull and then voted against her. Around him she would certainly watch her step.
The lesson continued, with Drie as Jame’s new partner. At their first move, he slid past her in water-flowing, nearly causing her to fall as she anticipated a different maneuver.
“Drie, that’s the wrong kantir,” she hissed at him. “Wake up!”
Timmon’s servant smiled at her dreamily and continued to drift through the forms. Water-flowing was often used to counter fire-leaping as it channeled aside any attack. They were moving fast now, Jame on the offense, Drie on the defense, and others were making room for them. The instructor watched without comment. Drie moved beautifully, fully poised as little as he seemed to be paying attention, tempting Jame to step up her assault. Spin, kick, strike—except for the whisper of contact she might have faced wind-blowing, that most difficult of forms. He slid backward, water over stones, tempting her into an unwisely extended move. In the moment that she wavered, off balance, the Kendar calmly tapped her on the forehead and landed her flat on her back on a rush mat in a billow of dust. Rue looked startled; Brier raised an eyebrow: Jame rarely lost at the Senethar. The class, both Ardeth and Knorth, applauded. So did Jame after a moment of surprise, slapping the floor with an appreciative hand.