Tor looked amused. When he looked amused she almost forgot she had decided that it was better that they weren’t such good friends any more. “Have supper with me,” he said. “I must have dinner in the hall—I suppose you are still pleading ill health and dining peacefully with Teka? But supper I may have alone in my rooms. Will you come?”
“Pleading ill health indeed,” she said. “Do you really want me to have a dizzy moment and drop a full goblet of wine in the lap of the esteemed guest at my right—or left? I’m less likely to cause civil war if I stay away.”
“A very convenient excuse. I sometimes think if I have to look at Galanna purring over the latest detail of the upcoming event I shall throw an entire cask at her. You’d think we were declaring bloody independence from a genocidal tyrant, the way she goes on about the significance of the seating of the barons’ third cousins twice removed. Did you know that Katah doesn’t want to come at all? Her husband says he may have to put a bag over her head and tie her to her horse. Katah says that she knows Galanna and he doesn’t. Will you come to supper?”
“Of course, if you’ll shut up long enough for me to accept.” She grinned at him.
He looked at her, feeling a twitch of surprise; in her smile for the first time he saw that which was going to trouble his sleep very soon; something very unlike the friendship they’d enjoyed all their lives thus far; something that would raise the barrier between them much faster than anything else could; the barrier that thus far Aerin alone saw growing.
“What’s wrong?” she said; some of the old familiarity still worked, and she saw the shadow pass over his face, although she had no clue to what caused it.
“Nothing. I’ll see you tonight, then.”
She laughed when she saw the place settings for their supper: gold. The golden goblets were fishes standing on their tails, their open mouths waiting for the wine to be poured; the plates were encircled by leaping golden deer, the head of each bowed over the quarters of the one before, and their flying tails made a scalloped edge; the spoons and knives were golden birds, their long tails forming handles. “Highly unbreakable. I can still spill the wine.”
“We’ll have to make do.”
“Where in Damar did you get these?”
Something like a flush crept up his face. “Four settings of the stuff was one of my coming-of-age gifts; it’s from a town in the west known for its metalwork. I only just brought it back, this trip.” It had been given him for his bride, the town’s chief had told him.
Aerin looked at him, trying to decide about the flush; he was brown to begin with, and copper-colored from sunburn, and it was hard to tell. “It must have been a long and gaudy ceremony, and they covered you with glory you don’t feel you’ve earned.”
Tor smiled. “Near enough.”
She didn’t spill anything that evening, and she and Tor reminded each other of the most embarrassing childhood moments they could think of, and laughed. Galanna and Perlith’s wedding was not mentioned once.
“Do you remember,” she said, “when I was very young, almost a baby still, and you were first learning to handle a sword, how you used to show me what you’d learned—”
“I remember,” he said, smiling, “that you followed me around and wheedled and wept till I was forced to show you.”
“Wheedled, yes,” she said. “Wept, never. And you started it; I didn’t ask to get put in a baby-sack while you leaped your horse over hurdles.”
“My own fault, I admit it.” He also remembered, though he said nothing of it, how their friendship had begun. He had felt sorry for his young cousin, and had sought her first out of dislike for those who wished to ostracize her, especially Galanna, but soon for her own sake: for she was wry and funny even when she could barely speak, and loved best to find things to be enthusiastic about; and did not remind him that he was to grow up to be king. He had never quite learned to believe that she was always shy in company, nor that the shyness was her best attempt at a tactful acknowledgement of her precarious place in her father’s court; nor that her defensive obstinacy was quite necessary.
It was to watch her take fire with enthusiasm that he had made a small wooden sword for her, and shown her how to hold it; and later he taught her to ride a horse, and let her ride his own tall mare when the first of her pretty, spoiled ponies had made her wish to give up riding altogether. He had shown her how to hold a bow, and to send an arrow or a spear where she wished it to go; how to skin a rabbit or an oozog, and how best to fish in running streams and quiet pools. The complete older brother, he thought now, and for the first time with a trace of bitterness.
“I can still hunt and fish and ride,” she said. “But I miss the swordplay. I know you haven’t much spare time these days—” She hesitated, calculating which approach would be likeliest to provoke the response she desired. “And I know there’s no reason for it, but—I’m big enough now I could carry one of the boys’ training swords. Would you—”
“Train you?” he said. He was afraid he knew where her thoughts were tending, although he tried to tell himself that this was no worse than teaching her to fish. He knew that even if he did grant her this it would do her no good; it didn’t matter that she was already a good rider, that she was, for whatever inbred or circumstantial reasons, less silly than any of the other court women; that he knew from teaching her other things that he could probably teach her to be a fair swordswoman. He knew that for her own sake he should not encourage her now.
The gods prevent her from asking me anything I must not give, he thought, and said aloud, “Very well.”
Their eyes met, and Aerin’s dropped first.
The lessons had to be at infrequent intervals because of Tor’s ever increasing round of duties as first sola; but lessons still Aerin had, as she wished, and after several months’ time and practice she could make her teacher pant and sweat as they danced around each other. Her lessons were only a foot soldier’s lessons; horses were not mentioned, and she was wise enough, having gained so much, not to protest.
She took pride, in a grim sort of way, in learning what Tor taught her; and he need not know the hours of drill she put in, chopping at leaves and dust motes, when he was not around. She made what she considered to be obligatory protests about the regular hiatuses in her progress when Tor was sent off somewhere, but in truth she was glad of them, for then she had the time to put in, grinding the lessons into her slow, stupid, Giftless muscles. But she was always eager for her next meeting with the first sola, and what he guessed about her private practice sessions was not discussed, any more than the fact that he had not fought unhorsed since he was a little boy and learning his first lessons in swordplay. A sola always led cavalry. Aerin knew pretty well when the time came that if she had been in real training she would have been put on a horse; but this moment too passed in silence.