Jame woke in Tentir's infirmary and, to her great annoyance, was forced to spend another seven days there. She had never been flat on her back for so long before, nor was this usual for the fast-healing Kencyr.
"You should be glad you aren't dead," said Kindrie, who had been summoned to treat the wounded of the rathorn hunt and had stayed to keep an eye on her. "Soul-walking is dangerous, even when you aren't bled nearly dry."
Her slashed wrists had all but healed, settling into a random pattern of thin, white lines which, hopefully, would soon also disappear. She had to admit that Tori's scars were much more esthetically pleasing, but then his had been the work of Karnid fanatics, to whom everything formed a pattern.
More to the point, she was missing vital training. All too soon after midsummer would come the autumn cull both of unworthy cadets and of beasts unlikely to survive the coming winter. For herself, Jame would rather be salted for the larder than sent back to the Women's Halls at Gothregor. The sound of cadets at practice outside in the square made her fidget under the Earth Wife's thick, mossy blanket. So did the blanket itself, which tickled. Besides scratchy lichen, she suspected that it harbored a hidden population of woodlice, if not spiders and centipedes, but so far none had been fool enough to bite her. Then too, the moss was cool and comforting on this hot summer day.
"It would help if you ate something." Rue presented her latest offering. "Look, here's a nice bowl of gruel."
"Yum, yum," muttered Graykin from the far corner where he was pretending to be invisible.
"I wish," said Jame, exasperated, "that all of you would stop treating me like a moron."
"Then stop acting like one." Kindrie took the bowl and offered her a spoonful.
The Scrollsmen's College must agree with him, Jame thought, unconsciously drawing back from the dripping, gray gunk.
(Toad eggs, dog vomit . . .)
When she had first met her cousin that spring, he had seemed to have all the backbone of an angle-worm and a beaten air that had made her long to hit him. Of course, at the time, he had just escaped from what must have been a nightmare winter in the Priests' College at Wilden, in Lady Rawneth's shadow and under her thumb.
"You won't regain your strength if you don't eat," he said patiently.
"I'm not hungry."
(Maggot larvae, cow drool. . .)
Food had seldom been more than a necessary evil in her life, given her early acquaintance with the shrieking carrots and oozing onions of the Haunted Lands. Now the very thought of it nauseated her. Marc might have coaxed her into eating. However, after assuring himself that she was out of danger, or at least as much so as she ever was, he had gone back to tend an unpredictable glass furnace at Gothregor.
"If it decides to blow up," he had said, not too comfortingly, "I should be there."
Harn Grip-hard had gone with him, to prepare for the Minor Harvest. Tomorrow, Midsummer's Day, all cadets would go home to help with the haying.
Kindrie put down the bowl. "Very well. You can serve a rathorn rabbit, but you can't make him eat it. Before I forget, my lady Kirien sends her congratulations."
"For what?"
"Not being dead yet, I suppose. Also, Index says he's going up into the hills with you for the summer solstice."
"Damn that man. How often do I have to tell him that I'm not going at all?"
"Every day from now until then, I suppose. The solstice comes, what, six days after our Midsummer? You'd think our ancestors would have paid more attention to Rathillien's calendar, but we always have tried to impose our own systems on any threshold world where we happen to land. Anyway, you can hardly blame Index. Herbs are only his practical job. The Merikit were his field of study before your friend Marc wiped out a score of them, avenging Kithorn."
"For what it's worth, that winter killed Marc's taste for bloodshed for the rest of his life, which for a professional warrior is awkward."
"It also closed the hills to all Kencyr except, apparently, you."
"That wasn't my idea."
"No. A lot of things aren't, but they still happen."
"Oh, bugger this." Jame threw off the Earth Wife's gift, tripped over Jorin, and fell flat on her face. Rue returned her to bed while Graykin modestly averted his eyes.
"What is this thing?" asked the cadet, regarding the fibrous mat suspiciously.
"A reminder." Not that she was likely to forget, Index notwithstanding. What would the Merikit do on the solstice without the legitimate Favorite? Oh well. That was their problem.
"Even if you wanted to go up into the hills," said Kindrie, "I doubt if you would have the strength, especially if you carry on like this."
Jame growled at him, echoed by Jorin under the bed, nursing the paw on which she had trodden.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
The ghost of a smile flickered across his thin face. "A bit," he admitted.
"Huh." She glowered at him for a moment. "Rue, Graykin, I want to talk to my cousin alone."
Rue sketched a salute and turned to leave. Graykin tried to sidle into the shadows behind the open door, but the cadet fished him out and pushed him before her, protesting, into the hall. The door closed behind them. Kindrie sat down on the opposite cot, looking nervous.
"Have you been mucking around with my soul-image again?" Jame asked him bluntly.
That, after all, was how a healer worked. Each person, consciously or not, visualized his or her soul in a particular way. The Knorth favored architectural models. A healer might spend what felt like a year inside an injured person's soulscape, rebuilding a fallen wall, and emerge an hour later to find his patient's broken ribs well on the mend. What repairs she might need now, Jame couldn't imagine.
But Kindrie was shaking his head, the window behind him making a halo of his white hair.
"No. The last time, remember, you threw me out so hard that I cracked my skull on an inconveniently placed anvil. This time, all you needed was a solid stint of dwar sleep. That, and food. Still, battered, half-drowned, and nearly exsanguinated—a busy day, even for you. But why did you ask about your soul-image?"
"I'm not sure." She frowned, trying to recapture impressions that had hardly registered at the time. "Something about it this time was . . . different. First, I was on the edge of Tori's soulscape—no, I didn't meddle with it, although I did shout a bit. Then there was the Master's House, but I was outside of it. In fact, it came after me. What in Perimal's name was that all about?"
"I'd forgotten," said Kindrie slowly. "We haven't had a chance to talk since Summer's Eve when I tried to heal your face."
Jame touched her scarred cheek. "And I never got a chance to thank you for your work on this. I know, I know: you could have done more if I hadn't thrown you out. That wasn't deliberate. Sorry about the anvil."
She still had to fight her revulsion at his priestling background. What the Shanir were to her brother, priests were to her, with better reason. Still, she kept reminding herself, Kindrie hadn't chosen to grow up at Wilden in the Priest's College. Born after the Knorth had nearly been wiped out by Shadow Assassins, Shanir, and (worse) illegitimate, he had been dropped into the priests' laps, so to speak, as an alternative to drowning him like an unwanted pup.
She wondered what those who had thrown him away so casually would think if they could see him now. Besides having become a powerful healer, he was beginning to show the fine-drawn Knorth features that one could trace on death banners back to the Fall. There was much of his mother Tieri's gentle melancholy in his eyes, but also much of his great-grandmother Kinzi's deceptive strength in the elegant bones of his face and hands. In fact, physically, he was starting to look like a cross between Tori and herself, except for the white hair and pale blue eyes. Were they a legacy from his unknown father? Who in Perimal's name could that have been, anyway?
Of the Knorth Highborn, only three of you are left.
And those three were the Kencyrath's last chance to produce the long-awaited Tyr-ridan, through whom their god was supposed to manifest himself and do battle with that ancient enemy, Perimal Darkling.
One is still too wounded to know himself, and the other's mind is poisoned against his own nature.
If she was becoming That-Which-Destroys, Tori presumably was destined to become That-Which-Creates, if he could overcome the poison instilled by his father, if he ever got the chance to make something new out of their increasingly compromised society.
As a potential third, That-Which-Preserves, who else was there and who better than the healer Kindrie, wounded by his past but slowly recovering from it?
Except that he was a bastard, and blood still mattered.
"About your soul-image," he was saying, "I know you believe that it's the Master's Hall. I thought so at first too. When I went into the soulscape to work on your injury, all of the hall's death banners had been slashed across the face, like you, then stitched up again with coarse thread to form raised welts. I wasted a lot of time unpicking stitches before I realized that they were only a diversion."
"I'm confused. Aren't disfigured faces what you would expect to find?"
"Yes, but there were too many of them, and they were laughing at me. Then I saw something white on the hearth. It was you, the real you, asleep, wearing partial rathorn armor, with a bleeding crack across the cheek. That's what I was trying to close when you woke up and threw me out."
"Oh."
Jame considered this, rather blankly. Perhaps she had worn the ivory armor in the soulscape before borrowing it this last time, as it were, off the colt's back. On that level, just as different versions of the Moon Garden might shelter more than one soul, so armor might shield whoever needed it, and she already had close links both personal and familial with those horned beasts of madness.
"I think," said Kindrie, "that it means you've begun to protect yourself against your past, like growing a callus, only in you it takes the form of an outbreak of ivory. Sleep could be another defense, if a passive one. There, they couldn't get at you. But now you're awake and out. Of the hall. Of the Master's House."
Jame snorted. "Into the Haunted Lands. Back among the dead. Not quite like my brother, though."
"No. For some reason he's still confined to that awful keep where you both grew up. You, though, seem to be free in the soulscape, though travel there is perilous and I'll thank you to remember that it just nearly killed you."
"At least Tori has the keep, and you have the Moon Garden. Will I ever have a true home or must I always wander, armored and perhaps armed, but roofless and rootless?"
The question burst from her with a force that surprised them both.
"That's what you really want? A home?"
"More than anything." Until she said it, she didn't realize how painfully true it was. What had her life been so far but a desperate search for a place where she belonged? Brenwyr hadn't needed to curse her, although it probably hadn't helped; she was the eternal outsider, the arch-iconoclast. Given her nature, what else could she be?
"I'm sorry," said Kindrie, seeing that she was upset. "Still, soul-images do change as we grow. You're only—what, nineteen years old? Twenty? More?"
There was no answer to this: thanks to the slower, erratic passage of time in Perimal Darkling, Jame didn't know. She felt ancient.
"I should tell you," said the Shanir, this time not meeting her eyes. "In the soulscape, your servant Graykin was guarding you in the shape of a half-starved mongrel dog, chained to the hearth. He's intensely jealous of anyone who gets close to you. That's his soul-image, and it's a pretty miserable one. It's not my business, but you should consider more carefully how you treat him."
Jame brushed this aside. Graykin was the least of her worries.
"Has Tori accepted you as a Knorth?" she asked abruptly.
"No." Again Kindrie looked away, biting his lip. "He tried, but . . . do you know how psychic bonding works? Most of the lords don't really understand, but when they bind a follower they give that person a small piece of their soul image, or maybe they give him or her a niche in their own soulscape, or maybe both. It's hard to explain, but there's definitely an element of give, whereas with blood binding it's all take, like . . . like . . ."
"Rape versus love?" Jame suggested, deliberately probing her own sense of guilt over the colt.
"In a way. When the Highlord offered me a place in his house, I was overjoyed." He looked at her askance through a fringe of white hair. "I'm looking for a place to belong too, you know, and I am Knorth, if only by bastard blood. That wouldn't matter to Torisen, but you know how he feels about the Shanir."
"He hates and fears us," said Jame flatly. "Father taught him that."
"Just the same, he tried. You know what his soulscape is like. Well, he gave me his hand, and there I was in that desolate keep. At the back of the hall was a door. Something was on the other side. Something that muttered and cursed and shook the handle."
Jame remembered being in her brother's soul-image and slamming that door against their father's madness, to save Tori's sanity, to give him peace.
The bolt is shot.
"Well," said Kindrie, taking a deep breath, "what he offered me was the lock on that door. I couldn't accept it. He isn't ready."
"Little man," said Jame, impressed, "you've grown."
His pale face flushed. It took Jame a moment to realize that he was angry. "I couldn't hurt him. You know that. But since then I've wondered: is it good for him to have part of his soul-image locked off? That was your doing, wasn't it? I nearly caught you at it. Perhaps it seemed like a good idea at the time, but somehow it's weakened him. I've heard rumors. He's having trouble remembering his people's names."
This struck cold. "But if he can't remember . . ."
"The bond breaks. One Kendar has already killed himself because of it."
"Oh. Poor man. And poor Tori. Kindrie, this is awful. Can't we do something about it?"
He shook his head, frustrated. "I've thought and thought. He has to come to terms with what's behind that door, and he has to do it by himself. I think. At any rate, the way things stand right now, neither of us can get close enough to him to help."
Silence fell between them. The room was falling into shadow, the sounds outside of the day's last class fading as cadets dispersed for their free period before the Midsummer Eve's feast.
"So," said Jame at last, "that's why you're at Mount Alban instead of at Gothregor."
"Yes. The Scrollsmen's College has taken me in and the Jaran Lordan, Kirien, has been very kind. Of course," he added with a twist to his smile, "she's pleased to have a healer on hand. For a community mostly of aging scholars, the scrollsmen and the singers get into as many squabbles with each other as a bunch of children. Academia seems to have that effect on some people. I'm also helping Index put his herb shed back in order after the weirdingstrom."
Index, who knew where every bit of information could be found, be it in some ancient scroll or in a colleague's capacious memory. Besides supplying medicines, in its organization the herb shed was a mnemonic device—Index's index, as it were. Jame wondered if Kindrie had discovered that yet. She herself had only found out by accident.
"Well, he's not going to talk me into going up-river for some blasted fertility rite, and so you may tell him. I just want to go back to being a normal cadet."
"That," said a rough voice, "you'll never be."
Gorbel limped into the infirmary and dropped heavily into a chair. "Still here, are you?" he said to Kindrie. "Good. Do something about this damned foot of mine. Now."
"You'll have to excuse him," said Jame. "The Caineron consider good manners a weakness. Gorbel, this is Kindrie Soul-walker, my cousin and blood-kin to the Highlord."
"The Knorth Bastard, eh? Well, don't just stand there, man. This hurts!"
The Shanir gave Jame an unreadable look, then knelt to pull off the Caineron's boot. This took some effort: the foot within was badly swollen, with green lines radiating out from a central, raw puncture.
Kindrie sat back on his heels, staring. "I thought I'd dealt with this. All right. Let's see what's going on." He cupped Gorbel's broad, dirty foot in his long, delicate hands and bent over it.
"One of your blasted willow saplings sank a root into me," Gorbel explained to Jame, then flinched. "Trinity damn it, man, be careful! Anyway, the surgeon dug it out like a splinter, which hurt like Perimal. Now this."
"Gently, gently . . ." said the healer, and Gorbel's stubby toes slowly unclenched. He sagged in the chair, small eyes losing their focus and toad face relaxing.
"It's a forest in here," Kindrie murmured, deep in the other's soul-image. "Strange. He doesn't know what he is yet, hunter or prey. At the moment, he's trying to be a tree."
"Perhaps because trees don't feel pain, although I'm not so sure about that anymore. What about the willow?"
"That's the problem. I couldn't help while he had a physical object jammed through his foot—how would you like to be healed with an arrow still sticking out of you?—but the sapling's rootlets are loose now in his soulscape and, I suppose, in his blood. Damn. Have you ever tried to uproot a particularly persistent weed? Just when you think you've gotten it all, it springs up again on the other side of the garden. This is going to take awhile."
"Am I interrupting anything?" asked a voice at the door, and there stood Timmon with an armful of daises, beaming over them like a particularly self-satisfied sun. "You're awake at last. Good!"
"What are those for?" Jame asked as he appropriated a water jug for his bouquet.
"Why, hasn't anyone ever given you flowers before?"
"No. Once picked, they just die. What's the point?"
"You're suppose to admire them," murmured Kindrie, "and be grateful to the donor."
"So this is about you, Timmon, not about me or an armload of wilting greenery, however pretty. Does your girlfriend admire flowers too?"
"Everything is always about me," said the Ardeth cheerfully. "What girlfriend? Oh. The Kendar. Narsa. It's a nuisance how possessive some females get, especially when the fun is over. You'll be more sensible, of course. Actually, that Coman cadet Gari picked these flowers, but he asked me to bring them because he's come down with an infestation of termites."
"How uncomfortable for him."
"Oh, he's all right, as long as he keeps moving. Otherwise, the floor collapses under him. The master-ten of his house has him sleeping outside. Hello, what have we here?" He wandered over to regard Gorbel, who blinked slowly at him.
"A ssslight case," said the Caineron, slurring his words, "of ingrown tree." He made a sound like a small explosion that turned out to be a laugh. "That tickles," he informed Kindrie.
"My. I had no idea the infirmary was so entertaining."
"Nodd from where I'm sittin'. Want to change places?"
Jame propped herself up on an elbow, then surprised herself by modestly pulling up the moss. A spider scrambled down between her small breasts, diving for cover. "Timmon, you can't treat people that way, especially not Kendar. They're too vulnerable to the Highborn as it is."
Kindrie shot her a look: remember Graykin.
"Ah, you sound like Grandfather," said Timmon, pouting. "Now, my father Pereden amused himself however he pleased and he . . ."
". . . was a great man. So you've said. Repeatedly."
"There." Kindrie sat back on his heels with a sigh. "I hope I got it all. The swelling should go down soon. If it doesn't, or comes back, we'll try again."
"Come on," said Timmon, pulling Gorbel to his feet and scooping up the boot. "Let's get you back to your quarters. Good evening, my lady. Sweet dreams."
As they lurched out, one supporting the other, Kindrie turned to a rank of bottles on an infirmary shelf and took down a blue-tinted vial.
"Lord Ardeth's favorite," he said, uncorking it and pouring a small amount into a glass of water. "Tincture of hemlock. This will help you sleep."
Jame took the glass and sniffed it. "Ugh. Distillation of dead mouse, more likely."
"Now, now. If you're a good girl, maybe we'll let you go back to the Knorth barracks tomorrow."
She glowered at him, and drank. "You're enjoying all of this far, far too much."
Kindrie smiled, lit a thick candle with the hours of the night marked on it by bars, and left her alone.
By now, it was early evening. The day's last light flooded through the infirmary windows and shadows crept after it up the walls. Below, cheerful, muted chatter spilled into the square from the barracks' dining halls.
Jame floated on the light, then sank into shadow. The hemlock began to take effect almost immediately on her empty stomach. It was a little like being drunk, as far as she could remember from her one experience, but with an unpleasant tingling of her limbs as if they were falling asleep. She drifted in and out of consciousness fitfully, not quite trusting herself to the drug. That was too much like losing control. The candle flame seemed to expand and contract as it flickered in the breeze through the open window. Light and dark, dark and light . . .
Fleetingly, someone touched her, leaving a slight, supple weight on her chest that had not been there before.
Jame blinked. The candle had burned down two rings. The college would be settling for the night and soon she would be only one sleeper out of hundreds, as was proper. She sighed and let go.
A low growl roused her, followed by a soft hiss.
"Can't you let the dead rest in peace?" she muttered, and with difficulty pried open her eyes.
Jorin had his forepaws on the edge of the cot and was leaning forward over it, every hair a bristle. Moonlight reflected in his wide, blind eyes. He growled again like distant thunder.
A hiss answered him, and the weight on her chest stirred. Whatever it was, it was so close that she had to stare cross-eyed at it to focus. A coil of molten gold had settled into the mossy blanket. Above it, weaving to and fro, rose a triangular head with glittering eyes. The gilded swamp adder hissed again, showing wicked white fangs and a flickering black tongue.
"For this you woke me up?" said Jame, hearing the hemlock slur in her voice, "Settle down, both of you. Jorin, here." The ounce slunk onto the bed and settled by her feet, still glaring. Bit by bit, his eyes closed.
Serpent and girl regarded each other.
Candle light gleamed off the zigzag pattern running down the adder's back, ochre at the top, shading to rich gold with a ridge of gilt at the bottom. Scales rustled softly as it breathed. Its throat and belly were the color of pale honey, its eyes a fiery orange.
"Oh, you beauty," Jame murmured and stroked its gleaming throat with a fingertip. It flowed over her hand and up her arm in a ripple of muscles to settle in a band of gold around her throat. Its tongue tickled her ear.
"Your mistress is going to be furious with you," she told it, "but never mind. Hushhhh."
And again the room was quiet.
When Jame woke again, someone tall stood over her. She blinked at the candle. It must still be an hour shy of midnight. What a long, confusing day.
"I thought," said the Commandant, "that I would check on you during last rounds. The healer makes a good report of you, except he says that you won't eat. Now why is that, I wonder?"
The answer was there, waiting, as if she had known it all along. "Ran, I've blood-bound a rathorn colt. He's very upset. I think he's trying to starve himself to death and take me with him."
"I . . . see. You Knorth do get yourselves into interesting scrapes. How will you handle this one?"
Jame frowned. "I'm not sure. Go up into the hills and find him, I suppose, when Kindrie lets me out of this bed. Between us, Bel and I should be able to do something."
"Ah." The Commandant drew up a chair and settled back in it, hawk-features receding into shadows over the glimmer of his white scarf of office. He folded his hands under his chin, stretched out his long legs, and crossed them at the ankles. "You refer to the Whinno-hir Bel-tairi. The White Lady. Recent sightings of her have been reported to me, but I dismissed them. To the best of my knowledge, she has been dead these forty years and more."
"My great-grandmother Kinzi sent her to find me."
"Ah. That explains everything, and nothing. I had believed that the last Knorth Matriarch was also dead. Have I perhaps been misinformed on that point as well?"
Jame didn't feel up to explaining, assuming that she could. Instead, she asked a question that had bothered her for a long time:
"Ran, why is Bel-tairi called 'The Shame of Tentir'? What could she have done, to deserve that?"
"It wasn't what she did but what was done to her."
"Do you mean my uncle Greshan branding her?"
A sigh answered her from the shadows. "That was only the start of it, or not quite the start."
Jame remembered her glimpse of the brutal past in that clearing on the hunt. "Greshan was courting Rawneth, but Kinzi forbade it. He took out his revenge on her Whinno-hir mare. Was that before or after my father stormed out of Tentir in the middle of the night?"
"After, by about a year. Now, where did you hear that? Have you spoken to your brother or to Harn Grip-hard?"
"Not to Tori. I don't think he knows anything about it. And when I asked Harn about the White Lady, he just roared that I should leave Tentir before it was too late. Then he stormed off."
"Did he now." The dry voice sounded amused. "My dear brother-in-arms. Always so excitable. But then we are speaking here of a very painful topic, both for your house and for Tentir. I will tell you this much: yes, your uncle the Knorth lordan put a branding iron to a Whinno-hir's face, and then he bragged about it to the whole college. That was bad. Worse followed. The Highlord, your grandfather, ordered that the entire affair be hushed up, as if that were possible. But his darling son mustn't be seen for the worthless bastard he was. Oh no. Even if it meant hunting down and killing an injured Whinno-hir. He hadn't finished the job, you see. He simply let her go, maimed as she was and weeping blood."
Silence fell for a moment. The Commandant seemed to taste again that bitter memory, holding it on his tongue like a drop of poison that must be swallowed. His voice, when he resumed, had flattened, all emotion suppressed.
"The entire Randon Council went on that grim hunt—nine in all, one from each major house and all former commandants of Tentir except for the Knorth, Hallik Hard-hand, whose turn it was to wear the white scarf. Greshan went too, all gay in his gilded leathers, but he came back slung across his saddle. A hunting accident, Hallik said. He also said that the mare must be dead. They had pursued her up a steep mountain trail and she must have fallen off into river below. The way ended in a sheer rock face, you see, with no sign of her."
He paused again, remembering. "I scaled that path as a cadet. Many of us did, afterward. It's a hard, rocky climb, even at a walk, and she was injured, running for her life. On one side, stone. On the other, far, far down, the black, roaring throat of the river. At the top . . . a curious thing. I thought at first that I saw the outline of a door in the rock wall, and the suggestion of carving around it. But the crack was barely fingernail deep and behind it, only more stone."
For the Whinno-hir, Jame thought, that door would have stood open into the Earth Wife's lodge, which could be found wherever it was needed. So that was how the White Lady had come to shelter, and yet left those behind sure of her death.
Her mind began to drift again. That damn hemlock. The next time Kindrie wanted her to sleep, he would have to do it another way, say, by hitting her over the head with a rock.
"I see that I am tiring you." The Commandant rose, his tall form seeming to stretch up to the ceiling. "Anyway, there is little more to tell. Hallik killed himself with the White Knife, your grandfather Gerraint died of grief, and your father Ganth Grayling, unprepared and unworthy, became highlord, to the near destruction of us all. If you want to know more, ask Harn when he returns. After all, Hallik was his father."
"Wait," she said, as the Commandant turned to leave. Hallik Hard-hand was Harn's father? And he had killed himself over a mere hunting accident? There had to be more to the story than that, but the questions she wanted to ask roiled in her drug-numbed mind like a handful of worms, impossible to sort head from tail. "Please," she heard herself say, "return this to the Randir. She must be worried about it."
Jame didn't realize how still the Commandant had become until he moved again, bending over her and carefully pinning the swamp adder behind its wicked little head. It gave a sleepy hiss as he lifted it from her neck and by reflex coiled itself around the warmth of his arm.
"You favor strange bed-fellows," he said, in an odd voice. "How did this come to be here?"
She could only shake her head, which set everything spinning. "Someone brought it. Dunno who."
"I . . . see. Be careful what you say about this, and to whom. The lords can collect no blood-price for anything that happens here, but the college has its own forms of justice. Good night."
"G'night, Senethari."
He paused in the doorway, gave her an enigmatic look, and went out, carefully holding his lethal charge.
Several more times Jame half-woke during the night, thinking she had heard some disturbance. More likely, though, it was the echo of a dream.
Shouts, battle-cries, and then sergeants bellowing, "Run, run, run!" to the thunder of feet on the boards of the arcade . . . obviously her drug-befuddled brain had drifted back to that first day at Tentir and the punishment run.
Oddly, each time she surfaced a different member of her ten-command was in the room, on guard. This puzzled her, but not enough to ask why they were there. When she at last fully woke in the early morning, Brier Iron-thorn sat on the window-ledge.
Jame regarded that hard, strong profile, that distant, proud expression. How little she truly knew about this woman. She remembered a bloody Brier on the Ardeth stair, blocking her way to the room above where Tori fought for his soul if not for his life:
"He saved me from the Caineron. Bound me. I am his, although I trust no Highborn fool enough to trust me. I don't trust you. You will only hurt him."
Such a bitter insight, and so tangled even in the Southron's own mind.
"You haven't yet taught me how they fight in the streets of Kothifir," she said.
Brier glanced at her. "There hasn't been time, lady. Do you still want to learn?" She turned back to contemplate the empty square, across which dawn was edging. She looked tired, and her clothes were dull with dust. "The randon would hardly thank me for corrupting your classic style."
"It's only classic because it's all I know—that, and some knife tricks."
When she pushed back the blanket of woven moss, it slid to the floor and crumbled to dust. Spiders scurried off in all directions. She stood up and swayed, suddenly light-headed. When her sight cleared, she found that Brier had moved swiftly to support her.
"Thank you. Now, where did Kindrie hide my clothes?"
Jame was nearly dressed when the healer arrived.
"I'm not sure about this," he said, watching her wobble on one foot as she tried to pull on a boot, then sit down abruptly on the bed. "I hear you didn't have a restful night, which is hardly surprising under the circumstances."
"Damn. Who else knows?"
"Everyone," said Brier briefly. "The Commandant sent me word late last night about your uninvited bed-mate, and Vant overheard. He's already tackled the Randir about it."
"Trinity. Have there been fights?"
"A few. Then the sergeants stepped in and ran us all ragged. They're still keeping a thumb on the pot, hoping it won't come to a boil before the general exodus later this morning."
A sudden commotion erupted outside the infirmary door.
"No!" Rue was saying loudly. "Stay away from my lady, you . . . you . . ."
A scuffle, a yelp, and the door burst open. Rue tumbled into the room and rolled to her feet between Jame and the intruder. Brier instantly joined her. Peering between them, Jame saw a Randir cadet framed in the doorway.
"I did not put Addy in your bed," the Randir said.
By now, Jame had recognized her as the Shanir cadet from the Falconer's class, and had noted the rising bruise under one eye. Vant's work, probably.
"Who is Addy? Oh, I see."
Around the other's neck hung a thick, living, golden loop, which she half-steadied and half-caressed with one hand.
Slipping between the two Knorth, Jame offered her hand to the Randir's snake. Behind her, Rue yelped in alarm, but she had already welcomed the serpent as it slid, glittering, over her fingers.
"No," she said, having by now had time to think. "I don't believe you would risk Addy that way. It . . . that is, she . . . might have been killed, and you would certainly have been blamed. Besides, Highborn are almost impossible to poison, so as an assassination attempt it wasn't very bright." She didn't add that a shot of venom to the throat, in someone already weakened, might not have been all that easily shrugged off, but the Commandant wanted this incident played down, and so did she. "When did you miss her?"
"Around dinner time." The Randir regarded her with sharp mistrust. "You believe me?"
"I know what it means to be bound to a creature—human, animal, or reptile. Someone has tried to play a nasty trick on both our houses, and to take advantage of our differences. That offends me. If you find out who it is, will you let me know?"
"Agreed, if you will do the same for me."
Below in the square, the rally sounded and the barracks woke with a surly roar.
The Randir turned to leave, but Jame stopped her.
"If you'll wait a minute, I'll go down with you."
"Why?"
On her second attempt, with Rue's help, Jame managed to pull on her boot. She rose and stomped to settle the heel. "Brier tells me that there were clashes overnight. If we're seen together, that's one step toward calming things down, at least over this business. Another time, it may be different."
The Randir considered this, then gave a curt nod. "My name is Shade," she said, as if to seal this temporary truce.
"And mine is Jame."
When they entered the square, all nine houses had assembled. A ripple went through the waiting ranks and a murmur that the sergeant on duty instantly quelled. Shade joined the Randir. Jame, walking on to the Knorth, felt eyes follow her and saw marks on a dozen faces of the previous night's unrest. The Commandant stood on his balcony watching. When Jame met his hooded gaze, he gave her a slight nod: Well done.
After breakfast, Jame ran down Vant.
"It wasn't the Randir," she told him bluntly, "or at least not the snake's owner."
"She told you that, I suppose," he said, baring his teeth. Two of them had been knocked out. "Did she also happen to mention that she's the Witch's grand-daughter?"
Whoa.
"Lord Randir is her father? I didn't know that he had any children."
"Only one, begat by way of experiment before his tastes settled. Anyway, did you think that the Caineron are the only house whose Highborn make sport with their Kendar?"
He spoke with such unusual, throttled rage that Jame blinked. She hadn't realized that he felt so strongly on the subject. It also occurred to her that she knew nothing of Vant's background, except that he was presumably descended from Those-Who-Returned, Knorth Kendar driven back by her father as he had stormed into exile and forced to serve as yondri in other houses until her brother had reclaimed both power and as many of his scattered people as he could hold, perhaps overreaching in the process.
But Vant's past was a puzzle for another day.
"Shade may be half darkling changer for all I know or care. On this, I believe her. So lay off."
As Vant departed, sour-faced, to organize the cadets' departure, Jame found Rue at her elbow.
"I assume that we're all under house rather than college discipline once we leave Tentir. True? Good. Saddle me a horse, a nice, quiet one, and wait for me with it outside the north gate. No, I'm not going with you. If my brother asks, tell him that I have unfinished business in the hills."
Brier had come up to hear this last. "Is it wise to go off on your own, lady? The land is treacherous. Besides, someone has just tried to kill you."
"I suspect that he . . . or she . . . will be marching out with the others. I'll take my chances with Rathillien." She paused and gave a snort of laughter. "Besides, I'll probably have company soon enough."