Windhaven - Страница 54

“The puff,” Evan said, pleased. “Children often recover from it, but not adults, never.”

“I—I didn’t notice,” Maris said.

“No,” Evan said. “You didn’t.”

They walked on in silence, Bari skipping along happily, Maris feeling inordinately tired.

There was the faintest breath of spring in the air.

Maris felt her spirits lift as she walked through the clean dawn air with Evan. The Landsman’s grim keep waited at the end of the journey, but the sun was out, the air was fresh, and the breeze felt almost caressing through the cloak she wore. Red, blue, and yellow flowers gleamed like jewels amid the gray-green moss and dark humus alongside the road. Birds, like quick glimpses of flame or sky, flew through the trees and sang. It was a day when being alive and moving was a pleasure in itself.

Beside her, Evan was silent. Maris knew he was puzzling over the message that had brought them out. They had been awakened before it was light by a pounding at the door. One of the Landsman’s runners, out of breath, had blurted out the need for a healer at the keep. He could say no more, knew no more—just that someone was injured and needed aid.

Evan, warm and bemused from bed, his white hair standing up like a bird’s ruffled feathers, was not eager to go anywhere.

“Everyone knows the Landsman keeps his own healer by him for his family and servants,” he objected. “Why can’t he deal with this emergency?”

The runner, who obviously knew no more than he had been told, looked confused. “The healer, Reni, has lately been confined for treason, suspected treason,” he said in his soft, breathless voice.

Evan swore. “Treason! That’s madness. Rent would not—oh, very well, stop chewing your lip, boy. We’ll come, my assistant and I, and see about this injury.”

All too soon they reached the narrow valley and saw the Landsman’s massive stone keep looming ahead of them. Maris pulled her cloak, which she had worn loosely open, more tightly around her. The air was colder here: spring had not ventured past the mountain wall. There were no flowers or bright tendrils of ivy to relieve the dull-colored rock and lichen, and the only birds that sounded were the harsh-voiced scavenger gulls.

An elderly, scar-faced landsguard with a knife in her belt and a bow strapped to her back met them before they had advanced more than a few feet into the valley. She questioned them closely, searched them, and took charge of Evan’s surgical kit, before escorting them past two checkpoints and through the gate into the keep. Maris noticed that there were even more landsguard patrolling the high, wide walls than on her last visit, and saw a new fierceness, a repressed excitement, in the drilling troops within the courtyard.

The Landsman met them in an outer hall, alone except for his omnipresent guards five steps behind him. His face darkened when he saw Maris, and he addressed Evan harshly.

“I sent for you, healer, and not for this wingless flyer.”

“Maris is my assistant now,” Evan said calmly. “As you yourself should know very well, she is not a flyer.”

“Once a flyer, always a flyer,” growled the Landsman. “She has flyer friends, and we do not need her here. The security—”

“She is a healer’s apprentice,” Evan said, interrupting. “I vouch for her. The code that binds me will also bind her. We will not gossip of anything we learn here.”

The Landsman still frowned. Maris was rigid with fury—how could he speak of her like that, ignoring her as if she were not even present?

Finally the Landsman said, grudgingly, “I do not trust this ‘apprenticeship,’ but I will take your word on her behalf, healer. But bear in mind, if she should carry tales of what she sees here today, both of you will hang.”

“We made haste to get here,” Evan said coldly. “But I judge by your manner that there is no cause for hurry.”

The Landsman turned aside without replying and sent for another brace of landsguard. Then, without a backward glance, he left them.

The landsguard, both young and heavily armed, escorted Evan and Maris down steep stone steps into a tunnel carved out of the solid rock of the mountain, far below the living quarters of the fortress. Tapers burned smokily on the walls at wide intervals, providing a shifting, uncertain light. The air in the narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel smelled of mold and of acrid smoke. Maris felt a sudden wave of claustrophobia and clutched Evan’s hand.

At last they came to a branching corridor, set with heavy wooden doors. At one of these doors they stopped, and the guards removed the heavy bars that locked it. Inside was a small stone cell with a rough pallet on the floor and one high, round window. Leaning against the wall was a young woman with long, pale blond hair. Her lips were swollen, one eye blackened, and there were bloodstains on her clothes. It took Maris a few moments to recognize her.

“Tya,” she said, wondering.

The landsguard left them, bolting the door behind them, with the assurance they would be right outside if anything was needed.

While Maris still stared, uncomprehending, Evan went to Tya’s side. “What happened?” he asked.

“The Landsman’s bullies were none too gentle about arresting me,” Tya said in her cool, ironic voice. She might have been speaking about someone else. “Or maybe it was my mistake to fight them.”

“Where are you hurt?” Evan asked.

Tya grimaced. “From the feel of it, they broke my collarbone. And chipped a tooth. That’s all—just bruises, otherwise. All that blood came from my lips.”

“Maris, my kit,” said Evan.

Maris carried it to his side. She looked at Tya. “How could he arrest a flyer? Why?”

“The charge is treason,” Tya said. Then she gasped as Evan’s fingers probed around her neck.

“Sit,” said Evan, helping her down. “It will be better.”

“He must be mad,” Maris said. The word called up the ghost of the Mad Landsman of Kennehut. In grief, hearing of his son’s death in a far-off land, he had murdered the messenger who flew the unwelcome news. The flyers had shunned him afterward, until proud, rich Kennehut became a desolation, ruined and empty, its very name a synonym for madness and despair. No Landsman since would dream of harming a flyer. Until now.

Maris shook her head, gazing at Tya but not really seeing her. “Has he lost his reason so far as to imagine that the messages you carry from his enemies come from your own heart? To call it treason is wrong in itself. The man must be mad. You aren’t subject to him—he knows that flyers are above petty local laws. As his equal, how could you do anything treasonous? What does he say you did?”

“Oh, he knows what I did,” Tya said. “I don’t claim I was arrested on false pretenses. I simply didn’t expect him to find out. I’m still not sure how he knew, when I thought I’d been so careful.” She winced. “But now it’s all for nothing. There will be war, just as fierce and bloody as if I’d stayed out of it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tya grinned at her. Her black eyes were still sharp and aware despite her bruises and her obvious pain. “No? I’ve heard that some old-time flyers could carry messages without knowing what they said. But I always knew—each belligerent threat, each tempting promise, each potential alliance for war. I learned things I had no intention of saying. I changed the messages. Slightly, at first, making them a little more diplomatic. And returned with responses that would delay or sidestep the war he was after. It was working—until he found out about my deception.”

“All right, Tya,” Evan said. “No more talking just now. I’m going to set your collarbone, and it will hurt. Can you hold still, or do you want Maris to help hold you down?”

“I’ll be good, healer,” Tya said. She took a deep breath.

Maris stared blankly at Tya, hardly believing what she had just heard. Tya had done the unthinkable—she had altered a message entrusted to her. She had meddled in land-bound politics, instead of staying above them as a flyer always did. The mad act of jailing a flyer no longer seemed so mad—what else could the Landsman have done? No wonder he had been so disturbed by Maris’ presence. When word reached other flyers…

“What does the Landsman plan to do with you?” Maris asked.

For the first time, Tya looked somber. “The usual punishment for treason is death.”

“He wouldn’t dare!”

“I wonder. I was afraid that he planned to bury me here, kill me secretly and silence the landsguard who had arrested me. Then I would simply vanish, and be presumed lost at sea. But now that you have been here, Maris, I don’t think he can. You would denounce him.”

“And then we would both hang, as treasonous liars,” said Evan. His tone was light. More seriously, he added, “No, I think you are right, Tya. The Landsman would not have sent for me if he meant to kill you in secret. Much easier just to let you die. The more people who know of your arrest, the greater the danger to himself.”

“There’s flyer’s law—the Landsman has no right to judge a flyer,” Maris said. “He’ll simply have to turn you over to the flyers. A court will be called, and you’ll be stripped of your wings. Oh, Tya. I never heard of a flyer doing such a thing.”

“I’ve shocked you, Maris, haven’t I?” Tya smiled. “You can’t see beyond the horror of breaking tradition—not even you? I told you you were no one-wing.”

“Do you think it makes a difference?” Maris asked quietly. “Do you expect that the one-wings will flock to your side, and applaud this crime? That somehow you’ll be allowed to keep your wings? What Landsman would have you?”