Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Read Free Page B

hopes
that when the cold passed Didian would again bring His rains and Kanet the
wholesomeness of the soil.  And as she had, year upon year since she took her
oath, she’d stood at his side, battle armor polished, swords gleaming, Brannagh
mantle about her shoulders.
    So little had changed, and yet...
    In the slightest motion, her hand brushed over her hip and
found no sword there.  No swordbelt, no comfortable, familiar armor with its
dented peplum…only the strange, perfect pleats of her skirts.  Brocades, laces,
silks, she sighed, the first bindings of a noblewoman.  There were more.  Three
hours she had spent this morning, not moving, not breathing, not thinking,
while her mother’s maids twisted and pinned her stubborn auburn hair—hair which
had always obeyed the discipline of the helmet—into a fragile objet d’art.
    Such things made no sense, not in the world she’d known. 
“Not tactical,” as Sir Saramore would say.  Bound as she was in so many layers
of silk and lace, she felt strangely naked and helpless, just as she had for
the last two years.
    For a moment, she felt a peculiar sense of vertigo: she was
crude and out of place, a stranger in her own family castle, a knight in masque
as a noblewoman.
    In the silence of the great galleries and corridors, she
could still hear the snap of the great almost liquid arc of power that had
lashed out over the battlefield and cracked against the stone and mortar of
Kadak’s stronghold, blasting through the last of the castle’s protections, the
sudden implosion of the castle wall, and then the thunderous cheers of her men
as they ran for the glowing fiery breach over the bodies of the dead…
    “Fades, it does.”  Her squire’s Bremondine burr lilted
quietly over the stones of the library floor.  After six years, it was as
familiar in Renda’s ear as her own voice, though the sudden sound made her draw
a sharp breath.  “Takes some time is all.”
    Even without looking back, Renda could picture Gikka of
Graymonde at the table behind her.  As always, Gikka’s brown hair flowed in
mannish style, uncoifed in scandalous loose waves that fell over her gray-green
riding tunic, and she sat with her thin leather boots kicked up onto the table,
irreverently close to the priceless scrolls and quartos.  Her arms rested calm
and strong across her chest, never more than inches from a weapon even within
the castle walls.  Renda smiled sadly.  Even for Gikka, old habits died hard.
    Behind her, patient stacks of parchments sprawled over the
tables, Renda’s strange new weapons for this strange new world.  Some were
carefully powdered and rolled into carved bone cases, others leafed flat and
bound between thick wooden covers.  In these writings were laws and judgments,
records of harvests, settlements of disputes, declarations of war, peace
treaties…every dreary point of Syonese law for the last thousand years, many in
strange languages and centuries-old scripts.  Above these, in shelves and cases
lining the walls, were another scant three millennia of bickerings and
squabblings going right back to the Liberation.
    “The farmers,” Renda murmured.  “They whine like spoiled
children, Gikka.”
    “The farmers.”  The squire cocked her brow.  “The farmers
have you staring out the window, do they?”
    “These are men who spilled blood together, men who buried
the dead together, and now they've all gone mad with their selfishness.”  She
rubbed her forehead in frustration.  “They come to blows over who owns a
newborn goat or the lay of a fence, one foot this way or that.  I’ve no head
for this, to speak softly beneath their bickering.  Were it my decision, I should
give them all swords, and let them decide it themselves.”
    “Sounds sensible to me,” Gikka studied her hands, squinting
at the edges of the unusually long nails of her smallest fingers.  “Such answer
certainly befits our lady of the battlefield and might knock some sense