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358 M.E.
Edwin did not miss Lady Rada’s training sword. He saw it quite clearly, in fact, and he certainly felt when it hit him. So it was not true to say that he “missed” it. But that was how Sir Walter described it, safe from his seat by the brazier.
“You keep missing the sword.”
“And yet, it keeps finding me,” said Edwin, rubbing the spot where it had found him. The thick quilted jacket had taken most of the blow, but the royal backside was going to have a bruise tomorrow. Perhaps this was why thrones were so well padded. Not that Edwin had a throne. But first things first. “Let’s go again,” he said to her ladyship.
Rada saluted him with her wooden blade and then stalked toward him around the edge of the frozen pond. Her hair was still pinned neatly on her head, not falling in damp clumps over her eyes, like his was. He was willing to bet she wasn’t sweating through her quilted jacket the way he was, either. Her breath was slow and controlled, not blasting out in great, steamy gasps like his.
As she approached, Edwin heard a rider come in. A quick trot, and a sliding and skittering of hoofs as the man reined in. There was frantic conversation over at the guard shack, and Edwin turned to see a man in a dusty cloak jogging up the lawn toward the main house.
“Don’t mind him,” said Rada. “Pay attention to me. You’ll hear the news later, if it’s important.”
This time he parried her strike, and managed to drive her back, but she had tricked him. She feinted left, and he went to meet her. And once again the wooden sword found him, knocking him off balance. He would have gone into the pond, in fact, if Rada hadn’t caught him. She had on her ring, and the magy held him and lifted him above the ice.
“Easy there,” she said, smiling, as she held out a hand to pull him in. “We wouldn’t want to lose you.”
“You keep falling for the feints,” Sir Walter said, as he rose and came over. “You need to watch where she’s moving her feet. That way you’ll see where the real attack is coming.” He helped steady Edwin, and then kissed his wife. “Nicely done, dear.”
“Thank you,” said Rada, blushing. She was still so embarrassed whenever Walter kissed her, even though they had been married for six months now.
The cold air stabbed at Edwin, now that he was standing still, and when his damp undershirt touched his skin, it made him gasp. He gladly accepted the flask of wine that Walter pulled from his overcoat. It burned going down and made Edwin cough and sputter. He was trying to learn how to like wine, because grown men and ladies drank wine, but he hadn’t quite mastered it, yet.
The three of them went and sat by the brazier, and once Rada had dissected Edwin’s swordsmanship and given him a little praise to soften the blows he had already taken, they sat quietly, warming their hands and saying very little.
Through the jacaranda trees, Edwin watched the sunrise, framed between the steep walls of the Shikander Valley. The mist was rising down there, fading from gray to dark green, and off to his left, in the city of Briddobad, he could hear the golden bells calling the monks and supplicants to their prayers. Edwin loved the place, but he never let himself forget that it wasn’t home.
“Edwin? Where are you?” The voice echoed out, low and booming. The three turned to see Edwin’s Uncle Lawrence, the Earl of Hyrne, coming out the glass doors of his study. The earl’s red face bobbled this way and that as he searched the gardens of the Pradivani Palace. Then he spotted the group by the brazier, and he hurried over to meet them, carrying a message in one hand. “Look at this!” he said, holding it out. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for, my boy!”
Edwin looked, and of course it was in code—strange dots and squiggles, with a few numbers thrown in. “What does it say?” he asked.
“It’s from Duchess Flora Byrne!” said his uncle.
At this, Rada let out a little sigh, and Sir Walter muttered, “Oh, dear.”
But the earl was undaunted. “It’s from Keneburg!” he went on. “They want us to come out there and join them. They’re calling out their levies. We’re going back to war, and this time we’re going to give that blasted usurper the whipping he richly deserves.”
“You really think so?” said Edwin. He wanted to believe the news, but the last six years had not taught him to have much hope.
“Naturally!” said Uncle Lawrence. “Just think—next year, you can celebrate Seefest with your mother and little Alice again. Flora seems very optimistic about our chances.”
“Duchess Flora?” said Rada, frowning. “Sir, are you sure it would be wise to join her in Keneburg? Perhaps we could stay here a while longer, in view of her history of—”
“Nonsense,” said the earl, a bit defensively. “We do happen to have a treaty with her, you know. Speaking of which...,” he looked around the lawn again, “where is Elwyn?”
There was a nervous, shuffling sort of silence, and Rada said, “I believe she was going out riding this morning.”
“With whom?” asked the earl, raising an eyebrow.
“Um...sorry, the name escapes me,” said Sir Walter. “Anthony, is it? Or maybe Arthur?”
“Anton,” said Edwin quietly. “Anton Denisovich. I know where she is. I’ll go get her.”
His uncle said they could send a servant, but Edwin didn’t want someone outside the family to do this. He knew the sorts of things that Elwyn got up to on her morning rides. She never had the same partner for long. Some were men, some were women, but none lasted more than a few months. Edwin liked to tell himself that he didn’t care what his big sister did, but it infuriated him whenever people talked about it, or grinned, or raised their eyebrows, like the earl had done.
After he got a horse from the guard stable, Edwin rode around Bakayn Hill, skirting the whitewashed wall of the palace grounds, and then took the long switchbacks of Girahai Road down into the narrow Gulava Valley, and then out into the wider valley of the River Shikander. The trees grew thick here, so there was hardly any snow on the road, except where it had drifted in from the riverbank. At last, he rounded Gulava Hill and negotiated a maze of little gravel paths toward the famous Garam Hot Springs. Clouds of steam rolled down the hillside, freezing to the branches in weird glassy shapes, and little streams of smoking water rushed here and there under ice-covered bridges.
Edwin knew the spring Elwyn liked best, and even if he hadn’t, there were only two sets of hoof prints this early in the morning. Soon, he dismounted and crept forward, hating himself for interrupting his sister’s fun, and already cringing at what he might find.
“Um...Elwyn?” he said.
He heard her before he could see her—quick panting breaths, and squealing cries of some emotion Edwin didn’t know, and wasn’t sure he ever wanted to. He looked around the last tree, and though he immediately averted his eyes, he still had the image engraved in his brain, where he would never be rid of it. His sister, completely naked, lying face down on a blanket, biting into a pillow, right by the edge of the hot spring, while the big, blond Loshadnarodski fellow rammed into her from behind.
Edwin turned around and went to study the shapes of icicles on the nearby trees until he heard a low, passionate grunt, and he knew they were finished. “Um, Elwyn?” he tried again, louder this time.
“Who’s there?” she called back. Then, in a lower voice, obviously speaking to Anton, “You shouldn’t pull out so quickly, you clod. That hurt. Now hand me my towel.”
“Elwyn, it’s me.” Then, to be sure, he added, “It’s Edwin. I’m sorry, but our uncle has news from Keneburg, and he wants to see you.”
There was a long, bitter sigh. “Of course, he does. Give me a minute.” Then, in a lower voice again. “You go on, now, Anton. I’ll see you later.” A pause. “I don’t know. Wash it in the hot spring. You can’t think I’m going to wipe it off for you. Next time bring your own towel.”
After several minutes, the big Loshadnarodski merchant emerged first, with his over cloak on his arm, strutting along through the steam with a huge smile on his face. “Why, good morning, your majesty,” he said, giving Edwin a very formal bow.
Edwin was strongly tempted to push his sister’s lover into the stream. But instead, he nodded and smiled, and once the fellow was a few yards down the path, he muttered, “Good morning, yourself, you jackass.”
Another minute passed, and then Elwyn came into view, walking stiffly and awkwardly. She straightened her slim green riding dress and then started putting up her long hair with a pair of silver pins. “Thanks for being the one to come get me,” she said. “Our little secret, right?”
“Sure,” he said. Then, because sometimes he couldn’t help telling the truth, he added, “It’s not really a secret, though.”
“I know,” she said. “But let me pretend that it is, alright?”
They got to where he’d left his horse, and hers was not far away. Anton was already gone. “Let’s walk back up,” Elwyn said. “I’m in no hurry to see our dear uncle, and frankly I’m not sure I could stand being in a saddle at the moment.”
Edwin didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but he didn’t mind walking back with her. It gave him a chance to tell her about the letter that had come in from Duchess Flora. And that gave Elwyn a chance to say what she really thought about this news, before she had to see their uncle and pretend to be thrilled about it.
“Flora fucking Byrne wants us to come to Keneburg?” cried Elwyn. “Is there some reason why we should trust her?”
“Um...well....” Edwin coughed. “There’s the fact that you’re betrothed to her son, Andras.”
Elwyn gave him a withering look. She was very good at that. “You surely remember that was subterfuge, right? Andras has other interests, and so do I.”
“Yes, I know,” said Edwin, feeling his face burn. He wanted to ask her why she did that sort of thing. He had wanted to ask her for years now. In his mind, knights and their ladies were supposed to save themselves for marriage. But Elwyn hadn’t saved herself for marriage. She hadn’t even saved herself for the weekend.
Elwyn seemed to realize she had embarrassed him. In a softer voice—one he rarely heard her use anymore, she said, “I like Andras well enough. And I know you do, too. But it’s not going to happen, Edwin. Not for real. You do understand that, right?”
He nodded. He had always known it was a trick. But still, he had liked Andras, when the duchess’s second son had come out to visit them. It had all been a terrible mess, but somehow a very small part of Edwin had hoped there might have been a possibility that Andras could make Elwyn happy.
“The real trouble is Duchess Flora.” Elwyn’s voice took on its usual, harder edge again. “I don’t trust her any farther than I could throw her. Andras is alright, I suppose. But Flora....”
“You agreed to the betrothal,” Edwin reminded her. “You must think there’s a chance of a real alliance.”
“It’s not like I had much of a choice,” grumbled Elwyn. “And I wish our ally were anyone else in the world but Flora. She stabbed us in the back once, and I wouldn’t put it past her to do it again.”
Edwin had been 8 then, but he could never forget the terror of those days. The mad flight from the capital, the death and destruction. A terrible siege, and then another flight. His family torn in half. Being driven from his home to a foreign land, standing on a riverbank and looking back on the only country he’d ever known—his country. It had given him a gnawing, permanent fear that made him wake up in a panic for years afterward.
He still saw those things in his mind every day, all of them. And he knew Elwyn was right. Part of the reason those things happened was that Duchess Flora—a friend of the family for years and years—had decided to throw Edwin to the wolves and throw in her lot with the usurper in that first battle for Formacaster that had changed everything.
And yet....
“Maybe she regrets it now,” he said.
Elwyn looked at him for a second and then laughed. But it wasn’t the mean-spirited laugh she usually used. It was a warm, kind laugh that reminded him of his mother. Which was odd, since he and Elwyn didn’t share a mother.
“Let’s hope Flora regrets it now,” said Elwyn. “Or she’ll regret it later, that’s for damned sure.”