Teka had turned back to the tray and poured a cup of hot malak, and handed it to Aerin, who settled down cross-legged on her bed, the hanging scabbard just brushing the back of her neck. “I brought mik-bars too, for Talat, so you need not go to the kitchens if you don’t wish to.”
Aerin laughed. “You know me too well. After sulking, I sneak off to the stables after dark—preferably after bedtime—and talk to my horse.”
Teka smiled and sat down on the red-and-blue embroidered cushion (her embroidery, not Aerin’s) on the chair by Aerin’s bed. “I have had much of the raising of you, these long years.”
“Very long years,” agreed Aerin, reaching for a leg of turpi. “Tell me about my mother.”
Teka considered. “She came walking into the City one day. She apparently owned nothing but the long pale gown she wore; but she was kind, and good with animals, and people liked her.”
“Until the king married her.”
Teka picked up a slab of dark bread and broke it in half. “Some of them liked her even then.”
“Did you?”
“King Arlbeth would never have chosen me to nurse her daughter else.”
“Am I so like her as folk say?”
Teka stared at her, but Aerin felt it was her mother Teka looked at. “You are much like what your mother might have been had she been well and strong and without hurt. She was no beauty, but she ... caught the eye. You do too.”
Tor’s eye, thought Aerin, for which Galanna hates me even more enthusiastically than she would anyway. She is too stupid to recognize the difference between that sort of love and the love of a friend who depends on the particular friendship—or a farmer’s son’s love for his pet chicken. I wonder if Perlith hates me because his wife hoped to marry Tor, or merely for small scuttling reasons of his own. “That’s just the silly orange hair.”
“Not orange. Flame-colored.”
“Fire is orange.”
“You are hopeless.”
Aerin grinned in spite of a large mouthful of bread. “Yes. And besides, it is better to be hopeless, because—” The grin died.
Teka said anxiously: “My dear, you can’t have believed your father would let you ride in the army. Few women do so—”
“And they all have husbands, and go only by special dispensation from the king, and only if they can dance as well as they can ride. And none at all has ridden at the king’s side since Aerinha, goddess of honor and of flame, first taught men to forge their blades,” Aerin said fiercely. “You’d think Aerinha would have had better sense. If we were still using slingshots and magic songs, I suppose we’d still all be riding with them. They needed the women’s voices for the songs to work—”
“That’s only a pretty legend,” said Teka firmly. “If the singing worked, we’d still be using it.”
“Why? Maybe it got lost with the Crown. They might at least have named me Cupka or Marli or—or Galanna or something. Something to give me fair warning.”
“They named you for your mother.”
“Then she has to have been Damarian,” Aerin said. This was also an old argument. “Aerinha was Damarian.”
“Aerinha is Damarian,” said Teka, “and Aerinha is a goddess. No one knows where she first came from.”
There was a silence. Aerin stopped chewing. Then she remembered she was eating, swallowed, and took another bite of bread and turpi. “No, I don’t suppose I ever thought the king would let his only, and she somewhat substandard, daughter ride into possible battle, even though sword-handling is about the only thing she’s ever gotten remotely good at—her dancing is definitely not satisfactory.” She grunted. “Tor’s a good teacher. He taught me as patiently as if it were normal for a king’s child to have to learn every sword stroke by rote, to have to practice every maneuver till the muscles themselves know it, for there is nothing that wakes in this king’s child’s Wood to direct it.” Aerin looked, hot-eyed, at Teka, remembering again Perlith’s words as he left the hall last night. “Teka, dragons aren’t that easy to kill.”
“I would not want to have to kill one,” Teka said sincerely. Teka, maid and nurse, maker of possets and sewer of patches, scolder and comforter and friend, who saw nothing handsome in a well-balanced sword and who always wore long full skirts and aprons.
Aerin burst out laughing. “No, I am not surprised.”
Teka smiled comfortably.
Aerin ate several of the mik-bars herself before dusk fell and she could slip privately out of the castle by the narrow back staircase that no one else used, and into the largest of the royal barns where the horses of the first circle were kept. She liked to pretend that the ever observant men and women of the horse, the sofor, did not notice her every time she crept in at some odd hour to visit Talat. Anyone else of the royal blood could be sure of not being seen, had they wished to be unseen; Aerin could only tiptoe through the shadows, when there were shadows, and keep her voice down; and yet she knew she was simply recognized and permitted to pass. The sofor accepted that when she came thus quietly she wished to be left alone, and they respected her wishes; and Hornmar, the king’s own groom, was her friend. All the sofor knew what she had done for Talat, so the fact that they were being kind by ignoring her hurt her less than similar adaptations to the first sol’s deficiencies did elsewhere in the royal court.
Talat had been wondering what had become of her for almost two days, and she had to feed him the last three milk-bars before he forgave her; and then he snuffled her all over, partly to make sure she was not hiding anything else he might eat, partly to make sure she had in fact returned to him. He rubbed his cheek mournfully along her sleeve and rolled a reproachful eye.
Talat was nearly as old as she was; he had been her father’s horse when she was small. She remembered the dark grey horse with the shining black dapples on his shoulders and flanks, and the hot dark eye. The king’s trappings had looked particularly well on him: red reins and cheekpieces, a red skirt to the saddle, and a wide red breastplate with a gold leaf embroidered on it; the surka leaf, the king’s emblem, for only one of the royal blood could touch the leaves of the surka plant and not die of its sap.
He was almost white now. All that remained of his youth were a few black hairs in his mane and tail, and the black tips of his ears.