King's Shield by Sherwood Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

bows and arrows.
    Cherry-Stripe led the laughter, and launched into boyhood memories of stings—safe territory. Or so it seemed at first.
    “Remember that first call over? We thought Gand was going to thump us right there!”
    “The first flag run?”
    “The first overnight? The horsetails stuck us with cook drudge!”
    The cider, well laced with distilled rye, had caused their speech to slow, making it easier for Tau and Jeje, if not for Signi, to follow. For the first time in the nine years they had known Inda, they were hearing his boyhood memories—explored with the boys who had shared them.
    Inda laughed, and laughed again to rediscover laughter. At the sight of Inda’s shaking merriment, Cama and Cherry-Stripe batted reminiscence between them; by now all that was required were a few words.
    “The horse piss in the bunks?”
    “Th-the bread pills?”
    “Spying out the pigtails when they tried to—”
    “—shoeing at the Games—”
    “Oh! Oh! When Basna took bets on beetle races?”
    “How he howled when Gand measured his shoulder blades with King Willow,” Cama exclaimed, flipping up his eye patch to mop his eyes with his sleeve; Jeje quickly looked away from the purple scarring round the bad one.
    Inda whooped for breath. “Basna squawking gambling? That’s gambling? Nobody ever told me that! None of the beaks believed him.”
    “That’s Basna all over.” Cherry-Stripe thumped the table again. “Invents gambling just to get himself dusted and gated.”
    “Remember when Flash—”
    “—Fijirad and Tuft had that fight over—”
    “—tried to get Noddy to laugh?”
    As the memories slid past those first two years into the summers after Inda had gone, Fnor kept smothering yawn after yawn of boredom. But she was Jarlan now—Buck and Cherry-Stripe’s mother had moved back to live with her own mother, and while Fnor knew little (and cared less) about the minutiae of the fellows’ academy history, manners were manners. The Algara-Vayir name required that, as did the presence of outland guests—a rarity, after all these years of pirate and Venn-enforced embargo. Not that Tau and Jeje were strictly outlanders. Both said they had been born on the coast of Iasca Leror, one in the north and one in the south, but to the inland Marlovans they may as well as been as foreign as . . . where was the sandy-haired woman from? Fnor smothered another yawn, longing for bed. Her day always began well before sunup.
    “Remember the shearing, when you got us a month’s gag?” Inda leaned toward Cherry-Stripe.
    “Ah, I’d forgotten. It was fun, wasn’t it, until Lassad made it sour? D’ya know he’s a hero now?”
    “Smartlip Lassad? You set him and the rest onto us,” Inda said, pointing at Buck. “We always thought the Sierlaef was behind it.”
    “Of course he was. We thought he wanted Sponge toughened up.” Buck Marlo-Vayir scratched his nose. “It was fun, watching our little brothers busy shying rocks and scragging beds and the like, all of ’em dead serious. You scrubs were better than anything for laughs. We didn’t think it really meant anything. Nothing did. Except winning.”
    Mran sat beside Cama, her hazel eyes wide, wondering when she could break into the old memories and ask Inda to go back to talking about the sea. She wanted to hear what it was like, being on the ocean that she’d glimpsed just once.
    Jeje listened at first, but couldn’t make sense of much. Her interest shifted, as did Tau’s, to the astonishing change in Inda as he ranged freely among these old memories, to which he had never once referred during all their nine years together. He looked like a ship rat again, despite the scars—younger than his twenty years. Do you remember ever hearing Inda laugh? He laughed now, more than she had ever seen.
    “—and our very first Restday, and Dogpiss’ story about the Egg Dance?” Cherry-Stripe wiped his eyes, thinking Dogpiss, everything was funnier with Dogpiss —and