“But I thought that was what every girl wanted,” he said, with what sounded like honest bewilderment. “My sisters all do, or at least, that’s all they talk about.”
“Not Tarma,” she reminded him. “Not Grandmother. Not your Aunt Idra. And not me. Does every man drool at the idea of going out and hacking people to bits?”
“Well,” he admitted, “No. My cousin—”
“Well, nothing,” she interrupted again. “Every man doesn’t want the same thing. Then why should every woman want the same thing? We’re not cookies, you know, all cut out of identical dough and baked to an identical brown and sprinkled with sugar so you men can devour us whenever you please.” She was rather proud of that simile, and preened a little in the dark—but the talk of cookies made her hunger all the worse.
“No,” he replied. “Some of you are crabapples.”
For once her mind was working fast enough. “At least crabapples don’t get devoured,” she snapped. Though I’d eat crabapples right now, if I could find them. She’d have turned her back on him, if she could have, but there wasn’t room in their shelter.
“It’s not any easier on a man, you know,” he said after a sullen silence broken only by the steady pattering of rain on dead, soggy leaves. “We get presented with some girl our parents have picked out for us, we have no idea what she’s like, and we’re expected to make her fall deliriously in love with us so that she goes to the altar smiling instead of crying. And then we’re supposed to live up to whatever plans our fathers have for us, whether or not we actually fit what they have in mind. I’m just lucky. Faram’s the best brother in the world, and I don’t want the crown—he thinks I’d make a good Lord Martial, and I’ve always been pretty good at strategy, so I’m not going to have to do anything I hate. And since I’m the youngest, nobody’s going to be expecting me to pick out a bride until I want one. Poor Faram’s got to choose before Midsummer, and the gods help him if there isn’t at least a sign of an heir by Winter Solstice.”
All this came out in a rush, as if he’d been holding it in for much too long. Kero realized as she listened to him that she felt oddly sorry for him.
Maybe too much power and position is as bad as too little.
“So what are they forcing you into?” she asked quietly. “There must be something.”
He sighed, and winced halfway through as the sigh moved ribs that probably hurt. “I like the idea of planning things, and I like fighting practice,“ he said. “It’s like a dance, only better, because in court dances you spend an awful lot of time not moving much. But—I’ve never—actually killed anyone—”
“I have,” she said without thinking. “It’s not like in the ballads. It’s pretty awful.”
She felt him wince again. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he confessed. “I’m afraid that—I won’t be able to—” He swallowed audibly, then seemed to realize what she’d said. “You’ve killed someone?” he said, his voice rising again,
“Well, the sword did—”
“You’re that Kerowyn?” he squeaked. She couldn’t tell from his voice if he was pleased or appalled.
“I’m what Kerowyn?” she asked. “I didn’t know there were more of me.”
“The one the song’s about, the one that rescued the bride for—” he faltered, “—for her brother—with her grandmother’s magic sword.”
“I guess I must be,” she said wearily, “since there can’t be too many Kerowyns with magic swords around. The sword did most of it. It was more like it was the fighter, and I was the weapon.”
“If I’d known you were that Kerowyn,” he began. “I wouldn’t have—”
“You see?” she said through a clenched jaw. “Why should it have made any difference in the way you treated me? Deciding that someone’s serious just because they’ve had a bloody song written about them is a pretty poor way to make judgment calls, if you ask me. Grandmother and Tarma had plenty of songs written about them, and most of them were wrong.”
“It’s just—just that when I heard the song—I wished I could meet you,” he whispered. “I thought, that’s a girl that I could talk to, she doesn’t have any stupid ideas about honor, she just knows what’s right. And then she goes and does something about it.”
“Well, you’re talking to me now,” she replied sourly, hunching herself up against the bed of leaves, wishing she could find a position that hurt a little less.
“I guess I am.” Another long silence. “So what was it really like?”
“If I hadn’t been sweating every drop of water out of me, I’d have wet myself,” she told him bluntly. “I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”
Somehow it was easy to tell him everything, including things she hadn’t told her grandmother, the anger she’d felt at Rathgar for being so stupid as to die and leave them all without protection, the same anger at Lordan for being unable to take up the rescue himself. She didn’t cry, this time; she wasn’t even particularly saddened by the losses anymore. It might all have happened to someone else, a long time ago, and not to her at all.
He told her about his father, his brothers; quite a bit about Faram, not so much about Thanel. She guessed, though, from what little he did say that Thanel was a troublemaker, a coward, and a sneak. The worst possible combination. Fortunately, their father seemed well aware of that; Kero just hoped he’d considered the possibility that Thanel might well try to arrange for an “accident” to befall his older brother. Daren didn’t say anything about that, and Kero decided that it wasn’t her business to bring it up.
They dozed off sometime during the night; for Kero it was an uneasy sleep, she woke every time he moved, and every time one of her bruises twinged. And it was hard to sleep when her stomach kept gnawing at her backbone. When the sky began to lighten, she just stayed awake. The moment it was bright enough to see, she nudged him; he must have been as awake as she was, because he pulled the cloak off them without a single word, and they both crawled out of their shelter.
The rock they’d hidden under was no longer pig-shaped; it was a very familiar castle-shaped outcropping that Kero had seen a hundred times. They were no more than a few furlongs from the Tower.
Daren blinked stupidly at the rock; undoubtedly he recognized it, too, but he didn’t say anything. So far as Kero was concerned, this only confirmed her suspicion of last night, that Kethry had cast some kind of glamour over the area that wouldn’t lift until they cooperated.
Well, they were cooperating now.
She caught Daren’s eye; he nodded. They got themselves as straightened up as possible, then dragged themselves back to the Tower, figurative tails between their legs. Kero wasn’t sure what Daren was thinking—and saw no reason to try and find out—but she had to admit that they’d pretty much brought this whole mess on themselves.
And she had a shrewd guess as to what was going to be awaiting them.
She was right. Daren preceded her; he stopped for a moment behind the outcropping that hid the entrance, said something too low for Kero to hear, then went on in. She followed, with the relative warmth of the stable closing around her like a cozy blanket. Tarma stood impassively just inside the stable door, leaning against the rock wall as if she had been there all night and was prepared to go on waiting.