Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [135]
“You’ll have to take the Company south again, Father,” Cal said.
“I might let you take it,” Aliam said. “There’ll be enough work here to keep me busy.”
Cal glanced at him and went back to turning over rubble. “You feel up to it?”
“King’s touch, Cal. I’m healed. And Kieri has no one in Lyonya who knows war the way I do. He should have someone here to depend on. Though he hasn’t said yes yet.” He looked at Kieri.
Kieri mopped the sweat off his brow. “If war comes, you are the commander I’d want in the field, Aliam. But I’m hoping it doesn’t come. And it might be good for you to go back to Aarenis, recover—”
“I’m recovered enough to think clearly, Kieri. Look it in the face. Is the king of Pargun happy that his daughter did not return and is not your wife? Or the king of Kostandan?”
“It’s not my job to send wild girls back to fathers who treated them badly.”
Aliam put down the iron bar he’d been using to shift rocks. “Just what did their fathers do, but send them to the best man I know?”
“They didn’t know that. Elis at least had sisters who wanted to come. I wouldn’t have married them, either, but at least I would have felt better sending them home.”
“What did you do with them?”
“Sent them to the Knights of Falk. Where Elis really belongs, I think, is with a Kuakgan. She reminds me a lot of Kolya Ministierra.”
Aliam snorted. “The Lady would like that—I think not.”
“Not like what?” the Lady asked, appearing beside them. “Your pardon, Sir King, but Estil asks for Aliam. She thinks they’ve found the token of the Halveric founder.”
“The wardskull!” Aliam said, eyes alight.
“A head-bone, yes,” the Lady said, with obvious distaste. Before Kieri could say anything, she spread her hands. “It is a human thing, I know, but it is alien to me. Kieri, grandson, let Aliam go and tell me what you were speaking of.”
“He asked about the Pargunese and Kostandanyan princesses,” Kieri said. “I did not want to marry them—”
“Wise,” she said. “Neither one is right for you. And you sent them away, did you not?”
“Yes, but not home, since neither wished to return. I sent them to train as Knights of Falk.”
“And you think one should be with a Kuakgan, and not with elves?”
“She is Pargunese,” Kieri said. “She wants to live amid forests and breed horses, she says, but mostly she wants not to marry.”
“There are other ways not to marry than cutting off an arm and grafting a tree onto your shoulder,” the Lady said, her expression grim.
“What?”
“Did you not know that is what they do? Every Kuakgan, red blood with green, a tree with a limb once human, and the Kuakgan with an arm once tree. They thrive and die together.”
“I did not. How—?”
“We know, because the trees tell us. If some men knew, they would cut down every tree, to kill the Kuakkgannir.” She stalked off. Kieri looked after her; her abrupt changes of mood bothered him the same way her disappearances bothered him. All his experience told him rule required self-control, steadiness of purpose. He glanced around to see Amrothlin also watching the Lady, his expression guarded.
“Is she all right?” Kieri asked.
“She is … the Lady,” Amrothlin said. “What were you speaking of?”
Kieri did not want to talk about tree-shepherds, or even princesses; he went back to Aliam. “I have another good word. You must decide how good.”
“Yes?”
“Andressat told me he met Arcolin in Aarenis, and Arcolin had recovered Cal’s sword. He’s sending it to me, to give to you. There should be no more relics of Cal’s ordeal down there.”
Aliam blinked. “I had almost forgotten. We never found it, and we searched. Where did Arcolin get it?”
“Andressat didn’t say. Arcolin will tell us, I’m sure. The bad news is that Stammel’s been blinded—I don’t know how, as I’ve had no word from Arcolin since early in the summer.”
“That’s bad. He was a good man.”
“He’s still a good man, but … I know Arcolin will take care of him.”
“Kieri, I want to take your offer—Estil would rather I stayed this side of the mountains, I can tell, and you already have a cohort of mine—but I can