Law of the Broken Earth(21)

Erich rolled his eyes, but Tan grinned. “All the girls in Teramondian read them, too: high birth or low, court ladies or merchants’ daughters. Their mothers pretend indifference, but I’ve noticed even quite elderly matrons will correct your smallest errors if you refer to even the most recent epics.”

And Tan had actually tested that, Mienthe guessed, just to amuse himself or purely out of habit. She didn’t know whether that was entertaining or a bit frightening.

“But anyone from Linularinum will go beyond the popular epics. Especially in the court, people would rather quote something flowery and obscure—especially obscure—than simply say anything right out.”

“Oh.” Mienthe tried to imagine this.

“It’s true they’re secretive and love to be clever, but half the time when they’re sneaking around trying to outmaneuver someone, they’re actually arranging something kind for a friend. They like to surprise people, and they don’t brag about it when they’ve been generous.”

He almost made her admire secrecy, though it had never before occurred to her that that might be an admirable quality. “Are they kinder and more generous than we are, then?”

“Oh… no, I don’t think so. But much less straightforward about both friendships and enmities. It’s true what they say, that no one smiles in Linularinum without first calculating which way fortune is tending. But it’s also true—this is a Linularinan saying—that the politest smile still contains teeth. You can’t guess whether a man is your friend or not by whether he smiles at you.”

“They sound very different from us,” Mienthe said doubtfully. She wondered if this could actually be true. Though she’d heard that saying.

“In some ways. And in other ways, that perhaps matter more, they aren’t different at all.”

Mienthe nodded. She was even more certain now that he had loved Linularinum. She looked for something to say that might ease his sense of loss, but couldn’t think of anything. Probably a Linularinan woman would be able to think of something subtle and obscure and, what had he said? Flowery. Something subtle and obscure and flowery to make him feel better. She didn’t seem to be as clever as a Linularinan woman. She said merely, which was true but neither subtle nor clever, “I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t suppose you’ll have a chance to go back to Teramondian now.”

Tan said after a moment, “It was bound to come to this eventually. That it was that day, right then, when all the pieces suddenly fell into order… Well, the years do shatter in our hands, and cut us to the bone if we try to hold them.”

Mienthe could not imagine wanting to hold on to the past. Then she thought of Tef, and after all understood exactly what Tan meant. Erich, too, nodded.

“So tell me how I came to be so fortunate as to find Iaor here before me,” Tan said to him, deliberately breaking the moment.

Erich shrugged. “His Majesty,” he said with some emphasis, “likes to see his country. And he likes to leave the cold heights and come down to the Delta before the heat of summer.”

“Eminently sensible,” murmured Tan, with a quirk of one eyebrow.

“I’ve always thought so,” Erich agreed with a grin. “We chase the spring, and by the time we reach Tiearanan, we find the ice gone from the mountains and the flowers blooming.”

“Yes, but it’s more than that,” Mienthe put in, “because they say His Majesty never guested in the Delta until Bertaud came back. Everything—” She stopped abruptly, having come surprisingly close to adding, Everything changed when my cousin came home. How strange that she should have begun to say something so personal.

“The Fox never leaves Teramondian, I think. I think perhaps I prefer His Majesty’s”—and here Tan lifted a wry eyebrow at Erich, who grinned back—“inclination to see the whole of his country.”

Mienthe nodded. “From here, King Iaor takes his household along the coast to Terabiand, then back north along the Nejeied River to the summer court in Tiearanan.”

“Lingering in Terabiand if there are any reports of late snows in the mountains,” put in Erich.

“Yes, so the whole progress takes about two months, sometimes more, doesn’t it, Erich? I’ve always wanted to go along… My cousin doesn’t want to spend so long away from the Delta, I suppose,” Mienthe added a little doubtfully.

“He doesn’t care to travel?”

“Oh, before, he went everywhere in Feierabiand, I think,” she said. “And to—” Casmantium, she had meant to say, but that had been after Casmantium had tried to annex part of Feierabiand, when her cousin had escorted Erich from his father’s court to Iaor’s and she didn’t want to say that. She said instead, “I think he likes to stay closer to home, now.”