Treason's Shore by Sherwood Smith

He jerked his thumb at the government building behind him. “I used to wonder what was going on in there, when Master Starthend gave us a Restday punishment of sweeping the parade court. Remember that? Basna used to get everyone to guess how many flagstones lay in each section. Dogpiss was sure all the masters and guards snuck into those buildings to whoop it up with ale and gambling.”
    Evred half raised a hand in acknowledgment, then plunged up the tower steps at a rapid pace. Inda loped to catch up as Evred said briskly, “Now to your tasks. Retraining the guard, making some sense of where our forces are and who’s left. I’ve been collecting all the reports, but there’s been no time to read and tally. I’ll give you as many King’s Runners as I can spare, but I am already short. And we have so few candidates ... To resume. By Convocation you must know who we have where and how many.”
    “Good. I like knowing that.” Inda rapped his knuckles on the rough sill of an arrow slit as he passed.
    Evred extended a hand toward the opening. “And finally, you and Gand have to set up the academy for next year. But before we get to that, when we rode away from Ala Larkadhe, I think we were too weary to consider what Durasnir said to us that day above the pass. But now we should begin.”
    Inda stopped on the landing. “I’m not sure I remember it all. That is, I do, but it’s strange. Like someone was sitting on my shoulder, it wasn’t me at all—”
    He hesitated, remembering his ghost. He hadn’t told anyone but Signi about the ghost. It was gone now, so what would be the point?
    But Evred was watching. “Problem?”
    Inda smacked open the door and plunged out onto the sentry walk, from merely cold air to frigid. He thrust his bare hands into his coat pockets. “No. Just, the idea of being a Harskialdna.”
    Evred was surprised into a laugh. “You cannot possibly think that the entire army doesn’t want you as leader. Did you know that the survivors of the Andahi Pass defense have taken to wearing red stones affixed to their ears?”
    “What? But that’s—” Inda stopped himself. It wasn’t stupid. It was wrong, backward. He’d half regretted his ruby hoops ever since he’d poke the holes into his ears, yet he knew how the symbol worked. It set people apart after they’d endured something—it was a reminder—but most of all (and the reason he’d never taken his out) it created a bond with your fellow survivors. He could not understand why it worked.
    “. . . not many can afford rubies, so they use bloodstone, mostly, or garnet. And no hoops, as those are seen to belong to sailors. Can you tell me why? I never asked Barend.”
    “If you’re shipwrecked, especially as a pirate, you can take the gold out and use it to get to a port. Or bribe someone not to send the local guard. A lot of sailors don’t wear ’em as they mean pirate to many. Listen, I’ve been thinking, should I teach the boys the knife fighting?”
    Evred’s brows rose. “You won’t be teaching. The masters can teach the boys. That would follow tradition. My father wrote that that distance gives us consequence.”
    Inda grinned. “How scared I was the first time your uncle spoke to me, right after Gand’s wedding. He and I left the hall at about the same time, and he was probably just trying to be nice, in his own way. Let me yap on and on about the Marlovar Bridge tussle, like it was a major battle.”
    Inda laughed, and Evred forced himself to smile, though he strongly suspected that that meeting had not been coincidence. His uncle had never permitted coincidence: in fact, he wondered if he had hold of the missing piece of the puzzle of why his uncle had singled Inda out in the first place.
    Inda thumped his hand against the stone wall, then whirled around and began to walk backward. “So, you don’t want the boys learning the double-knife fighting?”
    “I thought about that. I’d rather you refine what we already use.