King's Shield by Sherwood Smith

why not go along? He was used to playing roles. And it was clear that the personal Runners—whatever those might be—had the inside line of communication. “Yes,” he said. “I’m Inda’s First Runner.”
    And Vedrid’s brow cleared. “Please. I owe you my life. I was charged to assist you, but it would be my privilege.”
    Inside line indeed. Tau opened his hand for Vedrid to lead the way.
     
     
     
    Inda and Evred had forgotten them all.
    As they passed through the gates and into the street, Evred talked at random, even laughed, merry and free, body, mind, and heart afire with joy. Inda laughed as well, cast back in time to the happy days of boyhood: his welcome had extinguished in a heartbeat the last shadows of homesick betrayal.
    It was inevitable that the random questions would settle first on the circumstances of their last meeting. “. . . and so Cherry-Stripe told me what little they knew,” Inda was saying.
    Was that anger or a wince tightening the corner of Inda’s eye? Inda’s voice was husky as the words tumbled out. “Why didn’t the Harskialdna believe me? He had decided against me before I spoke a word. I figured that much out, sick as I was. Cherry-Stripe and Buck say it’s because of a promise made to the Kepri-Davans, but that sounds too easy.”
    “Right. Underneath that was a lifelong jealousy,” Evred said; the word jealousy taunting him with an image of that tall, golden-haired young man in the courtyard. Evred was sure he was the same one with Inda at Lindeth Harbor that terrible day.
    Inda tipped his head in question, the same way he had as a boy of ten. The gesture, so well-remembered, was curiously painful.
    “Lifelong jealousy?” Inda repeated. “Lifelong. Then you can’t just mean at the academy. Over what, my father’s first wife, Joret? I know she was as beautiful as the Joret we grew up with. Everyone seemed to want her. Did that include your uncle, then? Is that it?”
    Inda grimaced again, almost a flinch. Evred frowned, disturbed that he could not interpret Inda’s reaction.
    “Wait.” Inda flung out a hand, whirling to stand in the middle of the street, oblivious to traffic. “Your uncle was only a year older than my Uncle Indevan—ten. Aunt Joret would have been almost done with the queen’s training, and my father had to have been nineteen or twenty, because their class started a couple years late on account of the war up north. So your uncle can’t have wanted either Joret or my father. Not at ten. That dog won’t run.”
    “Not the jealousy of thwarted desire, but of my father’s notice.”
    “Huh.” Inda’s brows rose, as if such a concept was blind ingly new. “Wait!” He patted the air with his hands, neither of them aware of wagons rolling past laden with sacks of rice, a young boy hawking fresh-baked pies, a trio of stone-layers trundling by some new-shaped honey-colored stone. “Wait,” Inda said again.
    Evred braced himself for the shock of Inda’s wide brown gaze, still guileless in spite of the years and their unknown burdens.
    Then Inda made an impatient movement, flipping his fingers up, another remembered gesture. “But you can’t say ‘Oh, everything he did was because he wanted his brother’s attention.’ Too easy. Nobody acts on a single cause except in the old heroic ballads.”
    They started walking again—neither aware of it, anymore than they were aware of the unconscious pull of very old habits—in the direction of the academy.
    “Can we ever define exactly what shapes an individual’s character and perception of events?” Evred answered. It was like the old days, their endless debates in the summer sunshine while pitching hay, or tending horses, or repairing tack, or drilling over and over; he shivered inside, then coughed to clear his throat, to force his voice to normal. “My uncle wanted two things. He wanted to be first to my father and he wanted to keep the kingdom safe. How he exerted himself to get these