Aerin raised her head. He could command her to explain it, and knew that she knew he could so command her. “I would gladly teach any who ... gladly would learn it,” and as she recognized that he did not command her, he recognized that she said gladly would learn from me, the witchwoman’s daughter; for he knew, for all that it had never been spoken in his ears, what his second wife had been called.
“I would learn.” He reached for the sack of ointment that Aerin had left lying on his table, took a little of the yellow grease on his fingertips, and rubbed thumb and forefinger together. He sniffed. “I suppose this explains the tales of the first sol’s suddenly frequent visits to the apothecaries.”
Aerin gulped and nodded. “I would—would be honored to show you the making of the kenet, sir.”
Arlbeth stood up and came over to hug his daughter, and left his arm around her shoulders, mindless of the sleek fur of his sleeve and the condition of her leather tunic. “Look, you silly young fool. I understand why you have behaved as you have done, and I sympathize, and I am also tremendously proud of you. But kindly don’t go around risking your life to prove any more points, will you? Come talk to me about it first at least.
“Now go away, and let me get back to what I was doing. I had a long afternoon’s work still ahead of me before you interrupted.”
Aerin fled.
A week later, when she finally dared face her father at breakfast again, which meant sitting down at the table and risking such conversational gambits as he might choose to begin, Arlbeth said, “I was beginning to feel ogreish. I’m glad you’ve crept out of hiding.” Tor, who was there too, laughed, and so Aerin learned that Tor knew the dragon story as well. She blushed hotly; but as the first rush of embarrassment subsided she had to admit to herself that there was probably no one in the City who did not know the story by now.
Breakfast was got through without any further uncomfortable moments, but as Aerin rose to slink away—she still wasn’t recovered quite enough for the receiving-hall, and had been spending her days mending her gear and riding Talat—Arlbeth said, “Wait just a moment. I have some things for you, but I gave up bringing them to breakfast several days ago.”
Tor got up and disappeared from the room, and Arlbeth deliberately poured himself another cup of malak. Tor returned swiftly, although the moments were long for Aerin, and he was carrying two spears and her small plain sword, which he must have gone to her room to fetch from its peg on the wall by her bed. Tor formally offered them to the king, kneeling, his body bowed so that the outstretched arms that held the weapons were as high as his head; and Aerin shivered, for the first sola should give such honor to nobody. Arlbeth seemed to agree, for he said, “Enough, Tor, we already know how you feel about it,” and Tor straightened up with a trace of a smile on his face.
Arlbeth stood up and turned to Aerin, who stood up too, wide-eyed. “First, I give you your sword,” and he held it out to her with his hands one just below the hilt and one two-thirds down the scabbarded blade, and she cupped her hands around his. He dropped the sword into her hands, and then cupped his fingers around her closed fingers. “Thus you receive your first sword from your king,” he said, and let go; and Aerin dropped her arms slowly to her sides, the sword pressing against her thighs. She carried the sword of the king now; and so the king could call upon it and her whenever he had need—to do, or not to do, at his bidding. The color came and went in her face, and she swallowed.
“And now,” Arlbeth said cheerfully, “as you have received your sword officially by my hand I can officially reprimand you with it.” He reached for the hilt as Aerin stood dumbly holding it by the scabbard, and pulled the blade clear. He whipped it through the air, and it looked small in his hands; then he brought the blade to a halt just before Aerin’s nose. “Thus,”, he said, and slapped her cheek hard with the flat of it, “and thus,” and he slapped her other cheek with the opposite flat, and Aerin blinked, for the blows brought tears to her eyes. Arlbeth stood looking at her till her vision cleared, and said gravely, “I am taking this very seriously, my dear, and if I catch you riding off again without speaking to me first, I may treat you as a traitor.”
Aerin nodded.
“But since you are officially a sword-bearer and since we take pride in officially praising your recently demonstrated dragon-slaying skills,” he said, and turned and picked up the spears Tor still held, “these are yours,” Aerin held out her arms, the scabbard strap hitched up hastily to dangle from one shoulder. “These are from my days as a dragon-hunter,” Arlbeth said. Aerin looked up sharply. “Yes; I hunted dragons when I was barely older than you are now, and I have a few scars to prove it.” He smiled reminiscently. “But heirs to the throne are quickly discouraged from doing anything so dangerous and unadmirable as dragon-hunting, so I only used these a few times before I had to lay them aside for good. It’s sheer stubbornness that I’ve kept them so long.” Aerin smiled down at her armful.
“I can tell you at least that they are tough and strong and fly straight from the hand.
“I can also tell you that there’s another report of a dragon come in—yesterday morning it was. I told the man I’d have his answer by this morning; he’s coming to the morning court. Will you go back with him?”
Aerin and her father looked at each other. For the first time she had official position in his court; she had not merely been permitted her place, as she had grudgingly been permitted her undeniable place at his side as his daughter, but she had won it. She carried the king’s sword, and thus was, however irregularly, a member of his armies and his loyal sworn servant as well as his daughter. She had a place of her own—both taken and granted. Aerin clutched the spears to her breast, painfully banging her knee with the sword scabbard in the process. She nodded.
“Good. If you had remained hidden, I would have sent Gebeth again—and think of the honor you would have lost.”
Aerin, who seemed to have lost her voice instead, nodded again.
“Another lesson for you, my dear. Royalty isn’t allowed to hide—at least not once it has declared itself.”
A little of her power of speech came back to her, and she croaked, “I have hidden all my life.”
Something like a smile glimmered in Arlbeth’s eyes. “Do I not know this? I have thought more and more often of what I must do if you did not stand forth of your own accord. But you have—if not quite in the manner I might have wished—and I shall take every advantage of it.”