Supper that night was painful.
Throbbing head and aching muscle aside, it didn't help that cadets kept darting incredulous looks at Jame—except for Brier Iron-thorn, who wouldn't meet her eyes at all.
"What a farce!" Vant proclaimed from the next table, making no effort to lower his voice. "For two ten-commands to rig a contest like that . . . well, how else d'you explain the final ranking? I tell you, it's a shame upon us all."
Rue bristled. "If you mean the last test, Ten, I took a fall from the lordan that taught me more than a dozen Senethari could have, and no holding back, either."
Vant laughed. "With you, Shortie, I believe it."
"Well then, d'you think Five pulled any strikes? Trinity, man, isn't m'lady's blood on the ground to prove it, aye, and her front tooth as well?"
Jame gave up trying to chew the hunk of bread that she had wedged into the back of her mouth. It kept snagging on the raw gap in her teeth. She was too tired to eat anyway.
"Oh, yes, our esteemed Five, hot from the Southern Wastes. So that's how they fight in the back alleys of Kothifir, is it? Rough and dirty. I guess you showed us untaught cubs something, Iron-thorn, didn't you?"
Brier got up without a word and left the hall. Vant laughed again, echoed by several other cadets.
"Let her go," said Jame to Rue, who had half-risen in protest. "Was that why she lost the last set? She used Kothifir street-fighting?"
Just as I lost for my Tastigon knife style, she thought, as Rue nodded. Idiots. In a fight, what works, works.
"Seriously, lady, who taught you?" asked another of her ten, leaning forward and dropping his voice. "The randon are wild to know."
Jame didn't answer. Of course they were. Someone had broken their precious rule that highborn women should not know how to defend themselves, Tirandys be damned—as, of course, they believed him to be.
Ah, Senethari, she thought gingerly sipping cider, wincing at its sting. If the randon flinch at a few unorthodox moves, what would they make of me, your last pupil, who loved you?
"At any rate," Vant was saying, with a smug sidelong glance at her, "it doesn't matter."
And it didn't, any of it: Despite her first place in the Senethar, she had come in one hundred thirty two over all in the tests. She had failed Tentir.
Soon after, Jame went up to the attic to bed.
However, exhausted as she was, sleep wouldn't come, nor could she bear to make plans for the morrow. The moon had fallen into the dark, she noted, staring up through the hole in the roof. Wonderful. Perhaps, if she was lucky, the world would end before morning.
Jorin grumbled at her restless tossing and finally stalked off to find a more peaceful bed.
At some point Graykin slipped in. From the noise he made, clearing his throat, deliberately tripping over things or dropping them, she guessed that he wanted to rub in the news of her failure. Finally he subsided fretfully into his corner and soon began to snore.
At last Jame also fell into a fitful sleep. In her dreams, she was dancing the Senetha with Timmon. "I know a better dance than this," he murmured, brushing her face with his fingertips, sliding them through her hair. "Stay with me. Stay."
She leaned her cheek against his warm touch. Perhaps, after all, life as a woman wouldn't be so bad. No cares, no responsibility except to please one's lord, no more knocked out front teeth . . . .
A roughness in the texture of his hand made her pull back. She saw the white lacework of scars, and then her brother's face as he recoiled from her. They stared at each other, frozen in the figures of the dance.
Somewhere, nowhere, a tiny disgruntled voice was muttering, ". . . not the way it's supposed to be. This has never happened before."
But Jame was distracted by the ruddy faced Kendar tugging at her sleeve.
"I am the Highlord's man!" he cried, his face fading in patches with distress. Through the holes she glimpsed the shadowy death banner hall at Gothregor. "In the morning, he will send me away to guard his wolver friends, but if I go, what if he forgets me forever? Oh please, lady, I served your father in the White Hills and would have followed him into exile if he hadn't driven me back in the passes of the Ebonbane, as he did so many others. Forty long years and more I waited for his return, and then came his son. Now am I to be cast off again? Lady, for pity's sake, remember me!"
But without his name, how could she? As far as she knew, they had never met. He melted in her grasp, crying, crying, as if at the loss of his very soul. She could have wept herself in frustration and distress.
Damn our blood anyway, and god-damn our god, who cursed us with it. Oh, Tori, between us what have we done?
"What is love, Jamie? What is honor?"
"Ah, Tirandys, Senethari. . ."
His voice came from somewhere behind her, at least as far away as the eastern window although it might have been farther still. The predawn glimmer cast his faint, attenuated shadow on the steep inner pitch of the roof. Her own darker shadow huddled, shapeless, at its feet. Try as she might, however, she could neither rise to embrace him nor even turn her head to see once again that beloved face, now lost forever.
Then she remembered what poor use she had made of his training.
"Tentir has rejected me. I have failed you, my teacher, my mother's half-brother, you who damned himself for her love and for mine."
"Ah, not so." On the wall, the shadow bent down. Jame could almost feel the phantom touch of his hand, stroking her hair, and her eyes stung with unshed tears. "Where I failed, you need not, nor have you yet. But oh, child, you may."
"Senethari, how? Please tell me!"
He laughed, and it was a sound to break the heart. "Who am I to judge you, child—I, whom honor's paradox destroyed? There is only this: Keep faith with those who keep faith with you. And beware: our house has failed in this before now. Already, your brother is in danger of failing again, however good his intentions. How can he not, as long as he denies his true nature? And you, who have long guessed what you may become, beware as well. Great power brings greater responsibility, and the greatest abuses. This place has unfinished business with those of our blood. I only tell you what you have already guessed. Some dreams do no more than that."
His voice faded as he spoke into a faint crackle as if of dried leaves or of fire. "Oh child, remember me."
"Senethari, wait!"
Jame struggled, hardly knowing if she wished to wake up or to sink deeper into sleep, even into death, if by doing so she could follow him, the only person who had ever accepted her knowing fully what she was.
His shadow faded as the light on the wall grew. He was returning to his pyre. Oh, not again the heat and stench and bitter taste of ashes on the wind . . .
Jame threw aside her blanket and jumped up, only to trip and fall over something that yelped. For a moment, struggling in folds of bedding that seemed to fight back, she was confused: Which changer is burning? Whose beauty have I stolen? What am I becoming?
Then her claws hooked on the cloth and ripped it away. Light blinded her. As she stood there panting, she realized that she was staring not into the flames of a pyre but directly into the newly risen sun.
"Do you mind?" said the roll of blankets at her feet. Graykin emerged from it, tousled and indignant. "The next time you have a nightmare, kindly leave me out of it."
Outside, the morning's ram's horn blared and in the dormitory two floors below, feet hit the floor.
Jame dressed quickly and went down the stair into the hall. Only when she met Vant's astonished gaze did she remember: she no longer belonged at Tentir. She sat down, feeling suddenly numb, and stared without seeing it at the bowl of porridge that a cadet thumped down before her.
Rootless and roofless. . .
So the Brandan Maledight Brenwyr had cursed her at Gothregor, within her family's own stronghold and under the eyes of its unforgiving dead.
Blood and bone. . .
She couldn't help what she was. Perhaps she couldn't live with it either.
Cursed be and cast out. . . .
But where did one go from here?
Dully, she became aware of a buzz spreading through the hall. Rue nudged her. "Lady, d'you hear? The Randon Council has finally set the mark!"
"Well, what is it?" others exclaimed eagerly, craning to hear.
"One hundred and forty!"
Jame looked up sharply. Around her, a few faces had blanched, but over all a sigh of relief echoed through the room.
I'm in, she thought blankly. Brenwyr's curse has failed, at least for the minute. Then she wondered, Why am I in?
They could easily have stuck to one hundred thirty and been rid of her. Everyone knew that the cut-off score was fluid, and she had missed the original mark by mere points. Perhaps, after all, Tentir was going to treat her like any other cadet-candidate, which was all she had asked, and more than she had hoped for.
Suddenly ravenous, she wolfed down the congealing porridge, and thought it the best thing she had ever tasted.
In the evening, the candidates would be initiated into the randon college as cadets. Until then, they were free to prepare.
Breakfast and morning assembly done, Rue hauled Jame up to the third story lordan's quarters in search of suitable clothing for her to wear for the ceremony. While the straw-haired cadet rummaged through the chests, Jame sat in shirtsleeves on the wide, raised hearth with needle and white thread, trying to knot stitch the rathorn emblem into her black token scarf.
Graykin prowled about the apartment waiting for Rue to leave, palpably jealous that she had claimed Jame's attention first. Jorin followed him, pouncing at a ribbon snagged and trailing unnoted from his boot.
"You should clean all of this out and move in." He glared at the walls of boxes blocking either end of the room. "There have got to be apartments behind all that junk. A master bedroom. Servants' quarters. Real beds."
"I like the attic," said Jame, frowning over her stitches. "It's airy."
"Oh, it's that, all right. The wind blows in one end and out the other. You just wait until winter. Sweet Trinity, part of it doesn't even have a roof."
Rootless and roofless . . .
"I don't like being confined, and I don't like this place." She sneezed into her scarf but, at a glare from Graykin, forbore wiping her nose with it. "It smells. Besides, it gives me bad dreams. Who lived here anyway?"
"Your uncle, lady. The last Knorth Lordan."
"Ouch." Jame had stuck the needle into her thumb. "And who was that?"
Rue had turned aside to examine the shreds of a silk shirt. She didn't want to say the name, Jame realized. Interesting.
"Who?" she prompted, removing the needle.
The cadet tossed away the ruined shirt, and the name of its former owner with it. "Greshan, nick-named Greed-heart at least among his Kendar."
"Did you know how our father came to power?" Tori had asked Jame in the ruins of Kithorn. "His older brother, the Knorth Lordan, was killed in training at Tentir."
Something very bad had happened in this airless, windowless room. Jame regarded a large stain on the wooden floor. It was barely a shadow now, sunk deep into the grain, but someone had bled here, perhaps to death. She remembered her dream that first night at Tentir and shivered.
Dear little Gangrene.
Ugh.
In the past her sleep had sometimes been troubled, but rarely by dire visions. Tori was the far-seer, not her. Yet that last winter at Gothregor she had dreamed truly that Graykin had fallen into Caldane's hands and that Bane was on his way to the Riverland. It was less remarkable that she and Tori had shared certain dreams; as children, they had done so constantly, thinking nothing of it. Perhaps rejoining her people was waking dormant powers in her. If so, she didn't much care for them.
Graykin turned up his nose at the pile of clothes that Rue had set aside as potentially salvageable, the plainest and most practical among all that spoiled finery.
"You should at least dress according to your rank. How about this?"
He had picked up the embroidered jacket.
Rue stared. "Why, that must be the Lordan's Coat."
"What, my uncle's?"
"Not just his, lady. Every Knorth heir for generations has worn it, and generations of Knorth Kendar have mended it."
"Here," said Jame. "Let me see that."
Graykin gave it to her, reluctantly, and she spread it out on her knees.
Although dimmed by a half century of dust, the needlework was exquisite. Tiny stitches covered every inch of the surface in shades from the autumn gold of a birch leaf to the phantom blue of a shadow on snow, from the sharp green of spring grass to the deep crimson of heart's desire. Lines swooped and curved. Fantasies of shape and color swirled, blending into each other. Half-seen images came and went with every shift of light.
"Careful!" said Graykin sharply as threads snapped at her touch.
If the coat was truly as old as Tentir, Jame thought, gingerly turning it over, probably little of its original fabric remained. The earliest records must long since either have been repaired or stitched over, as with the house banners in the great hall. Nearly fifty years of neglect hadn't helped. Without thinking, she tugged at a hair caught in the threads, and jumped as the coat writhed on her knees as if in pain.
"Sweet Trinity. What's this?"
Rue bent to look. "Well, they do say that every lordan since the beginning has worn this coat, and that each of them has added something . . . er . . . personal to it."
"You mean," said Graykin, with a queasy smirk, "that this is not only an heirloom but also a 'hair-loom'?"
All three regarded the strand in question. It was short, coarse, and irrepressibly curly.
Rue clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
Graykin blushed.
"Hmm," said Jame, with a raised eyebrow. "The Kendar really hated my dear uncle, didn't they? I wonder why."
"I wonder . . ." began Rue, then stopped.
"What?"
"Well, just before your uncle died, the White Lady disappeared."
"Who?"
"The Knorth Matriarch's Whinno-hir mare, Bel-tairi, sister to Lord Ardeth's Brithany. She left Valentir, where she was visiting a new great-grand-foal among the herd, but she never reached Gothregor. There are rumors that m'lord Greshan met her in the wilderness and . . . well, did something to her. He and Lady Kinzi weren't on very good terms at the time. Then news came that the lordan was dead, and his father the Highlord soon after him. The whole thing was a right mess, by all accounts."
"The senior randon call her 'The Shame of Tentir,' " said Graykin. "Why, I don't know. So I listen," he added crossly, seeing Rue's expression. "Is it my fault that they talk and I hear things? They also say that she has unfinished business with the Knorth and that having you here as lordan may be stirring things up."
"Unfinished business," murmured Jame, turning over the coat. So Tirandys had said: I only tell you what you have already guessed. It seemed, since she had rejoined her people, that she kept stepping into one ancient mess after another. Trinity, didn't her family ever clean up after itself? Then too, what was she to make of the pale lady who had called her Kinzi-kin and vanished like a ghost, leaving hoof-prints in the turf? Unfinished business indeed, and here in her hands, perhaps, was another piece of it.
The coat's peacock blue silk lining had at some point been soaked with a dark fluid. It was also ripped.
"A knife in the back?" Jame asked, only half joking. However, the tear seemed too ragged, its edges frayed, and she found no corresponding slit in the outer fabric.
Rue added the coat to her armload of saved clothing. "At least we know now why it stinks. I'll try to clean these, m'lady, and hope they dry by tonight. In the fire-timber hall, they might. Then we'll see about cutting them down to your size and repairing the coat. After all," she added, seeing Jame's expression, "it's a piece of history."
"And, in its way, a masterpiece. All right, all right. As for the rest, I have mended my own clothes before, you know."
Being waited on made her nervous. In the Women's Halls of Gothregor, the petty tyranny of servants had made her feel ignorant and stupid. Now it was happening again.
"Oh." She ruefully regarded the scarf. Her attempt at the rathorn crest looked like an upside-down boot with two spikes growing out of its sole; and, as usual, she had managed to sew her gloved fingertips together.
Rue left, grinning.
"If you ever want a lock of my hair," Jame called after her, "just ask! And don't forget your own scarf."
The cadet had done her needlework the night before, and a very fine job of it too, but someone had stolen it. Jame hoped the barrack wasn't going to be plagued with a petty thief.
Graykin watched Rue's departure wistfully. "Smelly or not," he said, "there goes a royal coat."
His tone reminded Jame that, as Caldane's son, he was half Highborn. However, his illegitimacy and his mother's Southron blood barred him from even the trappings of that rank. She didn't think that he was missing much. Graykin, however, clearly felt otherwise.
"How you look and act reflects on the dignity of your house," he said stubbornly, with a discontented glance at her battered face and the purple bruises on her wrists where Harn had gripped them, all affronts to his own dignity as well. Fortunately, he had come in too late the night before to see what the rest of her looked like.
"Enough small talk," she said, gingerly biting off tangled threads, wincing as they caught on the raw gap in her front teeth. "Report."
As she had suspected, he had spent the past three days exploring the secret passages of Old Tentir, eavesdropping whenever possible.
"I would have told you last night that you'd qualified," he said with a sniff, "but you were pretending to be asleep. Anyway, the Randon Council set the mark at one hundred and forty, then waited for the Commandant to take them off the hook. But he didn't. Now they've got their breeches in a twist trying to decide how to deal with you. The Caineron claim that you've been kept on for the amusement of their lordan—his name is Gorbel, by the way."
"Gorbelly?"
"Close enough. Fun and games aside, they mean to humiliate your brother through you—and remember, the Highlord can't do anything about it short of jerking you out of here."
The college has its own rules, Torisen had told her at Kithorn. If you're hurt there, I can't even demand your blood-price.
"And that," Graykin was saying, "would be a victory for just about everyone except the Knorth. The general belief is that by admitting Gorbel without testing him, Sheth is tacitly saying that his master's son can get away with anything. The other randon aren't happy about that. They think it damages the college's integrity; but these are intensely political times."
"I have noticed," said Jame dryly.
"By the same token, although he let you in, they don't think Sheth will let you stay to the end. He's covering his ass with both lords, as it were, giving the Highlord's sister a chance but at the same time turning a blind eye to the Caineron lordan."
Sheth Sharp-tongue must be under intense pressure, Jame thought, to accept his lord's belief that honor meant nothing but obedience. Honor's Paradox had destroyed Tirandys. If Caineron could corrupt Tentir through its commander, what chance did the rest of the Kencyrath have?
"The consensus, though, is that you won't last. What Highborn girl could? The Randir called you a freak."
"Huh. They should talk. These passages in the old fortress must be giving you lots of chances to spy."
"I am your faithful sneak, mistress," he said with a mocking cringe.
"Don't call either of us that," she said sharply. "The Mistress was a different Jamethiel, and you're my . . . my loyal servant. Damn. That doesn't sound right either."
"Pretty titles, dirty hands."
His hands, she noticed, were remarkably dirty.
"Pick out some new clothes for yourself, while we're at it," she told him. "You look as if you've been dragged up a chimney backwards."
"Hand-me-downs," he said with disgust, kicking at a pile of moldy finery.
"I seldom wear anything else. These passages . . . what are they like?"
"Dark, narrow, filthy."
He wanted to keep them to himself, she thought. Knowledge was power, and the Caineron Bastard had precious little of either. Neither did she. "Once you said you would never deceive me, although there were many ways you could within the bounds of honor."
He glared at her, caught by his own pledge.
"All right, all right! From what I've seen so far, the hidden ways are much more direct than the public ones. I'll show you if you like," he added ungraciously. "I may . . . er . . . even have found the brat's hidden room. At least I thought, once, that something was keeping pace with me all down one wall, on the other side. I could hear it muttering and clawing at the stones. Then it started to pound on them. Whatever-it-is was big. And strong. The stones shook. And I'll tell you this too: The kitchen staff lays aside raw joints of meat for it. I saw them do it when I was . . . ah . . . borrowing some food. I have to eat too, you know."
"I know, I know. And so far I've been precious little good at providing for you. Well, see what else you can find out, about anything, and watch out of the Caineron. Caldane can't be happy that the Knorth have snatched both you and Brier Iron-thorn away from him."
With Rue gone and Graykin departed to nose out more secrets, Jame went looking for Briar.
She found the big Southron and five of her ten-command in the third story common room opposite the lordan's apartment. They were all bare foot, polishing a seemingly endless row of boots.
"For tonight," said Brier. "And yes, these are every pair in the Knorth barracks except for yours and Rue's, who appears to have run off in hers. On your orders, I take it."
"On my business, anyway. She seems to have appointed herself my servant."
"Good," said Brier, giving her a sharp look. "You need one." Better yet, a keeper, her tone said.
"But all these boots . . . why you?"
"Vant's orders."
"Huh. Vant's revenge, more likely. How much did you outrank him in the trials?"
"Fifteen to thirty-six!" chorused the other cadets, grinning.
At least Vant's petty tyranny seemed to have brought the squad squarely behind their new Five. But two faces were missing. Mint, Dar, Quill, Erim, Killy . . .
"Where are Kest and . . . and . . ." Damn. She hadn't learned the last cadet's name.
"Yel failed. And Kest left last night. The rope test broke him. He didn't even wait to hear his score."
"Oh," said Jame, blankly. She had been so relieved at breakfast to hear that she had qualified that she hadn't noticed who had not.
"The Knorth lost ten candidates in all," said Briar dispassionately, examining a scuffed toe. "That takes us down to ninety cadets, nearly a one-hundred command. Not bad. One of our provisional squads will be broken up to provide replacements to the others."
That reminded Jame that she was not only ten-commander of this particular group but—nominally, at least—master ten of the entire barracks.
"Wait a minute. Why is Vant giving you orders?"
"Of the ten-commanders, his score was the highest, so he stands second to you in authority. He will expect to have the day to day running of the barracks."
Damn. Jame would much rather have had Brier, and would have, too, if the Southron hadn't been demoted for breaking college rules on her behalf. She scowled at the formidable array of boots.
"I can countermand Vant."
"Don't," said Brier. "At least not until you've given your scarf to the Commandant and received it back from him through the hands of a Knorth senior randon. You aren't officially part of Tentir until then. None of us are, however some choose to act."
"Oh," said Jame, taken aback. She hadn't known.
"Anyway," the Southron added, following Jame's line of thought regarding her demotion, "the cadet body as a whole wouldn't have welcomed an outsider in charge over them."
"Well, they'll have to lump it, won't they? After all, they've got me."
Brier gave her another look, this one askance under the fringe of her dark red hair. Sunlight flooding in through the room's many windows gave her a fiery halo. "Sorry I knocked out your tooth," she said gruffly.
"Oh, it could as easily have been yours as mine. I think. A risk of the game. But that move you used against me . . . I've never seen anything like it before. Will you teach me how to fight Kothifir style?"
Brier looked up, startled. "Why?"
"It was effective, and it caught me totally off guard. I'd rather not have that happen again." She hesitated. "Just out of curiosity, were you trying to kill me?"
"Trinity, no. I'd never fought a Highborn before, much less a lady. I had no idea you were so fragile."
Jame blinked. Fragile? It had never occurred to her that she was. True, most of her adversaries in the past had been much stronger than she was, but untrained. She had usually beaten them easily. Here, that would no longer be the case.
"I've been a fool," she said, thoughtfully. "An arrogant one, at that. Thank you, Brier Iron-thorn. You've already taught me an invaluable lesson, and cheap at the price." She fingered her sore jaw. "Just the same, I've never had a tooth knocked out before. How long does it usually take to grow a new one?"
"About three weeks," said the Kendar. She picked up another boot—Vant's, perhaps—spat on it, and began to polish. "Find a twig to chew on or the teething itch will drive you crazy."
In another part of the barracks, Vant could be heard ordering someone else around. If she wasn't going to interfere, Jame didn't want to listen. She and Jorin slipped out the front door into the covered arcade, into the bright summer morning.
New Tentir was laid out in the same order as the house banners in the great hall: Randir, Coman, and Caineron from east to west along the north wing; Jaran, Knorth, and Ardeth along the west; Danior, Edirr and Brandan from west to east along the south. By chance or design, this arrangement grouped allies and enemies, with a scattering of neutrals between them. Jame turned southward.
For the first time, she seriously considered the physical dangers she faced at Tentir. The randon were the deadliest fighters on Rathillien, and she didn't know what rules bound them beyond the increasingly slippery concept of honor. These were her superiors, not her peers, except among the rawest recruits. Moreover, among them were bitter enemies of her house. Had she been a fool to come here? It had hardly been a considered decision, rather a spur-of-the-moment escape from an intolerable situation.
Yes, she told herself, but think of the other risks she had blithely taken in the past—the streets of Tai-tastigon, where she had stalked gods and in turn been stalked by them; the carnivorous hills of the Anarchies, where she had granted an aging rathorn mare her death wish and so gained the hatred of her death's-head foal; the Master's House itself, with its layers of corrupt history, all the fallen worlds stacked one on top of the other—all undertaken with a child's careless arrogance.
If she had known what she was doing, would she have done it? Was she growing more cautious with age, or more cowardly?
And on top of that, she had just been handed responsibility for an entire barracks, containing all her brother's precious cadets. A loner by nature, what did she know about command? Should she—could she leave everything to Vant?
The arcade took her by the broad facade of the Ardeth, then turned a corner to head eastward toward Old Tentir. Jame noted that the Ardeth had appropriated not only the southwestern corner but a length of the south wing. Poor little Danior with its thirty cadets was so pinched by its larger neighbor that one half expected the building to squeak. The Edirr faired only slightly better, under pressure on the other side from the Brandan.
In front of the latter, Captain Hawthorn leaned on the arcade rail tranquilly smoking a long-stemmed, clay pipe. She raised a scar-broken eyebrow as Jame approached.
"We'd heard that you were gone, lady," she said. "Seemingly, you didn't sleep in your quarters last night, or at least not in the lordan's apartment."
Someone must have checked, thought Jame. Someone who didn't know she had shifted lodgings upward, into the attic. Vant. No wonder he had been surprised to see her at breakfast.
"Well, here I am." She sniffed her sleeve, which retained the stale reek of Greshan's jacket. "Like a bad smell, I linger."
The randon grinned. "So I perceive."
"Speaking of the lordan's suite, how is it that we can afford to leave it empty, given how full the college is? For that matter, we Knorth seem to have almost more space than we need."
"Hush, or your neighbors will hear. Actually, you can thank them, specifically your allies the Ardeth and the Jaran, that you have any quarters here at all." The randon drew on her pipe and exhaled a meditative plume of smoke. "I can remember when the Knorth barracks were nearly as full as our own. That was before your lord father fell, and nearly brought his house down with him. For more than thirty years, those rooms stood as empty as the Highlord's seat, for no one dared to seize either."
Jame gazed, frowning, back across the square at the Knorth façade. Vant could be seen intermittently as he paced the second floor, harrying a ten-command as it scrubbed the dormitory floor. Briar sat tranquilly on a third story window ledge polishing yet another boot. Heights didn't seem to bother her. Poor Kest. The Caineron barracks looming on the north side of the square were broad, five stories tall, and virtually windowless. Perhaps Lord Caldane's height-sickness ran throughout his house.
"So," said Jame, pulling her mind back to the matter at hand, "there have only been Knorth cadets at Tentir since my brother came to power? That was just three years ago."
"Aye." The randon puffed again. "Barely time for the first class to graduate, and many of those died at the Cataracts. You've much rebuilding yet to do, if your enemies give you time. Take care, lordan. Your brother can't protect you here."
Jame leaned against the rail as memory swept her back to a conversation with the Brandan Matriarch Brenwyr not long ago:
"Kinzi and the Randir Matriarch Rawneth . . . they quarreled."
"So? Are you saying that I've inherited an undeclared blood feud, and no one saw fit to tell me?"
"There was no need. Anyway, it never came to blows."
"Let me guess. Before anything so unladylike could happen, the Shadow Assassins slaughtered every Knorth woman at Gothregor except Tieri . . . and no one ever knew why."
It was still only a guess that Rawneth had been behind the Knorth massacre. Even if she was, Jame had no idea what quarrel could have led to such deadly consequences, yet she herself must still be part of it or the Shadow Assassins wouldn't have come for her that last night in Gothregor.
Huh. More unfinished business.
"Who are my enemies?" she asked Hawthorn.
The randon frowned, troubled. "I shouldn't have spoken. Not until you're a proper cadet under Tentir's protection, such as it is, and even then you should be told by a member of your own house. In a few hours, we will tell you all we know." She straightened and knocked out her pipe against the rail. "In the meantime, you'll be safe among your own people. Wait a minute while I tell my folk where I'm going and then, lady, I'll escort you back to your quarters."
When she returned, however, the Knorth was gone.
The great hall of Old Tentir hummed with activity. Kendar scoured the flagstones while others polished the randon collars hanging against the upper walls. Beams were being dusted and retouched with gold paint by those presumably least prone to height-sickness. The rope from the trials had been removed. Delicious smells drifted up from the fire timber hall below, where whole oxen were being slowly roasted over charcoal pits for the feast that would follow the cadets' initiation into Tentir.
Jame's stomach rumbled as she and Jorin stood in the shadows, watching. With luck, by evening, she would be able to chew again, if cautiously.
She knew that Hawthorn was right. It was foolish to take chances, but damned if she was going to be delivered back to the Knorth barracks like some willful, wandering child. In a minute, she would make her own way home. Now, she had to be sure of herself. That she hadn't lost her nerve. That she would take whatever risks she must to succeed at the college, while never forgetting that this was a dangerous place, full of dangerous people.
Jorin growled.
"Good morning," said the Randir Tempter, beside her. "Or perhaps I should say 'good afternoon.' "
"We . . . I didn't hear you, ran."
"Ah." The other smiled. "It occurred to us that you and the ounce might be bound. You are, of course, Shanir."
"As are you." Jame listened intently. The other didn't seem to be using her under-voice, but then it had slipped past her guard before. As for physical violence, "Never touch me again," she had told this woman from the depths of her Shanir nature, and she suddenly knew that the Randir never would nor could. However, Jorin was still growling, which distracted her.
"Hush," she said to him.
"There are many Shanir here," said the Randir, "a few Highborn like you and the Ardeth brat, but mostly Kendar with a touch of the Old Blood. What is it, I wonder, that draws Highborn men to Kendar women? One rarely hears of the reverse. Among our own kind, we can control conception as well—or ill—as Highborn ladies. But not with Highborn lovers. They take us and use us and cast off our children as the whim takes them. They should not, for we are many and we are proud."
What a strange conversation, thought Jame.
She knew that the Randir was toying with her, deliberately holding her attention, but why? It was on the tip of her tongue to ask straight out what quarrel the Randir had with the Knorth, but Jorin's growl had risen to a singing whine.
As she turned to quiet him, a movement caught the corner of her eye. There was someone behind her . . . and a sudden blow fell on the back of her neck.
"Blood for blood, Knorth," she thought she heard the Randir Tempter say as she fell. Then darkness swallowed her.