Limits of Power

  “A blade through the heart will kill even an elf,” Arian said. “You have not heard the latest, then?”

  “No—my uncle sent word that you—that poison had killed—”

  “Our child, yes,” Arian said. Here in public, she must hide the grief that even new life could not extinguish. She kept her voice steady, her face immobile. “And others’ babes as well. I hope Duke Mahieran bade you take care and have expensive spices examined for adulterants.”

  “He said it was in food, yes. We have taken precautions. More of this at the palace,” the king said, just as one of the Royal Guard said, “Ready, sir king.” Ahead of them, the king’s banner bearer moved forward, and behind him one of Arian’s Squires with her banner. Their horses stepped off in stride.

  Arian glanced at the river below. Dark, swift, with little streaks of white foam. Ahead, the streets were thronged with people and closed in by tall buildings. They passed streets leading off to her right. More buildings crowded shoulder to shoulder down all of them. She recognized Dorrin’s house by its pennant; from its upper windows one of Dorrin’s people threw down rose petals. One caught on Arian’s nose; she blew it off, and it landed on her horse’s mane. On the other side, the wall of the palace complex stood much taller than the palace wall in Chaya. The clamor of the bells stopped suddenly as they turned the corner into the wider street that led to the palace gates, but the cheering continued.

  “The bells have their own timing,” the king said without looking at her. “They always ring at noon—but also when they feel like it.”

  “You have no ringers?”

  “No. Legend says the elves installed them and told the king to leave them alone. We have no way to ring them—they are sealed into their tower.”

  Once in the palace courtyard, paved with the same pinkish stone as the ashlars of the wall, servants swarmed to take the horses and unload the pack animals. This was the courtyard Dorrin had told her of where the battle of magelords had taken place.

  Arian followed her escort through the palace to the apartment set aside for her, the former queen’s chambers. The bedroom overwhelmed with heavy furniture, all covered in rose-colored velvet under lace, velvet draperies and bed curtains, tapestries depicting flirtatious maidens and fond lovers in lush gardens, and a strong scent of dried rose petals. What had the king’s mother been like to choose such decor? The room felt stuffy and warm; Arian’s headache—born of the noise and bright sun outside—worsened.

  Servants in palace livery bustled about—maids unpacking Arian’s clothes into a closet the size of a small room, bringing in ewers of hot and cool water, filling the pink stone tub in the bathing room, scattering rose petals on the water. “Refreshments are on the way, milady queen,” one of the maids said. “You will want to refresh yourself and rest after your long journey, we know. Your ladies-in-waiting—”

  It took a moment for Arian to realize the maid meant her women Squires. “Not ladies-in-waiting,” she said. “These are my Squires, my guards. They are all Knights of Falk.”

  “Oh!” The maid looked frightened. “Beg pardon, milady queen … we thought—”

  “No matter,” Arian said. “They will not trouble you.”

  She had no idea how to get rid of these strangers without offense. Lieth, who had been to Vérella before, gently shooed the maids all the way out of the chambers and came back with an armload of towels scented heavily with herbs.

  “I’ll stay while you bathe,” Lieth said. “And Maelis can watch the door. They’re strange.” She set towels on one of the benches in the bathing room as Arian undressed.

  “Strange?” Arian stepped into the tub.

  “Yes.” Lieth put the clothes Arian had worn into a basket to one side. “They were surprised that women could be King’s Squires when we came before. Few of their women become knights.”

  Arian slid deeper into the water, savoring the feeling of travel grime coming off and muscles loosening. “What about Paksenarrion?”

  Lieth frowned. “She’s a paladin. And Girdish women do train as soldiers. But not the nobles.”

  After her bath, Arian pulled on her thinnest nightshirt, climbed the steps to the bed, and pushed aside some of the cushions. The lace coverlet looked scratchy, the velvet too hot. Maelis helped her turn back the covers to linen sheets below. Arian lay down; though she was tired, she could not relax at first: she had no connection to the taig. She had seen no trees, no grass, within the city, only stone and brick and people and their things. She lay quietly, persuading her muscles to relax one by one, and breathed carefully, imagining a cool green breeze out of the forest. She could feel the new life within her. For the moment, safe. Perhaps the moment was enough.

  Arian woke clearheaded and refreshed. The rose-colored room, though still stuffy, was less oppressive. She dressed in one of the outfits she and Kieri had devised both for her own comfort and to lessen animosity toward Dorrin’s choice of clothes at court: dress shirt with ruffles at throat and wrists, dark green trousers with their subtle woven pattern of leaves tucked into low boots of russet leather, brocaded vest bright with multicolored flowers, open-fronted lighter green coat with the Lyonyan royal crest embroidered on the back.

  Outside in the passage, a man in a Royal Guard uniform waited. He bowed to Arian.

  “Milady, queen, the king requested that I show the way to the small dining room. I am Sir Aldan Menisor, and it is my honor to be assigned as your guide wherever you wish to go.”

  “Thank you,” Arian said.

  He started off; she moved with him; her Squires followed. Then he glanced back. “Are these coming with you?”

  “My Squires … yes. They go with me everywhere.”

  Two more Royal Guards flanked a doorway ahead of them. Sir Aldan spoke to them; one stepped inside and announced Arian: “Sir king, the right royal queen of Lyonya, Arian.”

  Arian gave her Squires a hand signal, and they let her go into the room alone. Mikeli stood beside a table laden with trays of food. “I hope you feel as refreshed as you look,” he said. His gaze lingered a little too long, she thought, but Tsaian customs might be different.

  “Your people provided every comfort, and I do indeed feel refreshed,” Arian said.

  “I thought a quiet evening for your first.” He gestured to the table.

  “Thank you,” Arian said again, and sat in the chair he indicated.

  For the rest of that meal, she was aware of the king’s youth and of his fascination with her. Though perfectly polite in speech, his expression revealed a boy half enchanted by the mere idea of meeting an elf-maid. Which she wasn’t.

  “You know I am with child,” she said finally. He blinked, and a little color came to his cheeks.

  “I—I can scarcely believe what I am told, that you are of age to bear children, let alone the king’s age.”

  “A year older, in fact,” Arian said. “Or so I was told by my mother; we half-elves do not attend as much to actual age as you do.”

  “And a wife and soon to be a mother,” he said, as if instructing himself to remember it. “When your king was a duke here, he seemed much older than you look.”

  “Because he was reared among humans and away from the elvenhome,” Arian said. “My early life was very different from his. And, my lord, he now looks younger than he did.”

  “With such a wife, of course he would.”

  An attempt at gallantry but not welcome; Arian frowned. “Not so, my lord. It is the taig and elven magery combined that have restored his body.”

  “I’m sorry.” The king flushed again. “I didn’t mean any rudeness—”

  Arian relented. “I am not offended; do not fret yourself.”

  “You sound like my aunt,” he said. “Now I can believe you are older than I.” He ate another pastry and let silence build briefly. “Do you always go armed?” the king asked suddenly. “You have your Squires to protect you.”

  “I’m a Knight of Falk,” Arian said, touching her ruby. “A
nd we, like you, have been attacked in our own palace. Are you ever far from your sword?” She had seen it hanging at his side.

  “No, but—but you’re the queen.”

  “And you’re a king, and so is Kieri. Perhaps it is not the custom here for noblewomen to bear weapons, but it is with us. Sier Davonin, who’s gone completely gray and is old enough to be my mother, trains with us as well.”

  He left that topic for another, and another, and finally invited her to take a brief tour of the palace that evening. Rather than return to the stuffy suite, Arian agreed. A chance to see the royal salle and meet the Knight-Commander of the Bells would give her an opportunity to look for the elven patterns Kieri thought she might find.

  Their path through the palace’s labyrinthine tangle of passages brought them at last to the Marshal-Judicar’s office.

  Arian wondered if this was the same place where the assassination attempt of the previous spring had taken place but did not ask. As they passed through an outer room, obviously an office, she heard, “Is that you, Mikeli?” from the next.

  “It is, Marshal-Judicar, and I’m bringing Lyonya’s queen with me.”

  “Wait just a moment.” A thump as of chair legs hitting the floor, a mutter too low to understand but for the tone, which was clearly one of dismay. Then, “You should have let me know…” and the Marshal-Judicar appeared in the doorway.

  Arian had met Marshals on her trip along the River Road; Duke Mahieran had stopped at every grange. Would a Marshal-Judicar—arbiter of the Code of Gird in Tsaia—be more like a Marshal or a noble? Marshal-Judicar Oktar reminded her at first glance of Armsmaster Carlion: square-set, moving with the controlled power of a fighter. Aside from that, he was dressed like any other Marshal.

  “Lady,” he said to Arian, bowing. “You will pardon me, I hope, for not being ready to welcome you properly. I was sure you would be resting this evening after so long a journey.”

  “Readily, if you will pardon my ignorance of what a Marshal-Judicar actually does,” Arian said, smiling. “We do not have many Girdish in Lyonya, and thus few Marshals and no Marshal-Judicar.”

  “You have heard of the Code of Gird?” Oktar said.

  “Yes, but I know little of it.”

  He leaned forward a little, eyes gleaming with the joy of any expert who finds a novice to instruct, and launched into what promised to be a long lecture.

  Even as Arian reconciled herself to this, the king intervened. “Another time, please, Oktar,” he said. “I’m taking Queen Arian around the palace this evening. You’re welcome to come with us if you wish. I thought I’d show her the royal salle and the Bells’ training hall and have her meet the Knight-Commander.”

  “Certainly. Be glad to.” Oktar gave up his lecture, went to the weapons rack on one wall, and took down his sword. Over his shoulder, he said to Arian, “I saw you carried a sword and wondered if it was ornamental.”

  “No,” Arian said. She considered telling him that she’d killed with it. Instead she said, “I am a Knight of Falk.”

  “Ah. Like our Knights of Gird.”

  As they neared the salle after another confusing trip through crooked passages and stairways, the clash of blades sounded clearly down the passage. The long high room had polished mirrors on two walls and a floor whose inlaid pattern, Arian saw at once, was not the elven one, merely the Tsaian Rose.

  The two young men fencing in the center of this space had not heard the party arrive, but Arian recognized Duke Mahieran’s son Rothlin seated on a bench across the room. He came to his feet. “The king,” he said. The others grounded their blades at once and turned to the door.

  “I was hoping some of you would be here,” the king said. To Arian he said, “My closest friends. You know Rothlin, of course, but here is Juris Kirgan Marrakai—” The black-haired young man reminded Arian at once of Gwenno Marrakai. “And Rolyan Serrostin.” Rolyan had lighter hair, a ruddier complexion. To them he said, “This is Queen Arian of Lyonya. She wished to see the salle, with a view to practicing here.”

  “Honored, milady queen,” Juris Marrakai said. He and Rolyan both stared—the same wide-eyed look of wonder the king had first given her. “Rothlin told us about your royal salle. It has different levels, he said.”

  “Yes, it does,” Arian said. She looked around. “And a very fierce armsmaster whom even the king obeys—do you practice alone, then?”

  “Rothlin’s being our instructor this evening, milady queen,” Rolyan said. “He said he was too tired to fence himself, so we didn’t bother Armsmaster Fralorn.”

  “And has Rothlin been approved to supervise your practices?” the Marshal-Judicar asked. From the guilty looks on all three faces, the answer was clear, and Oktar had known it.

  The king turned to one of his escort. “Go tell Armsmaster Fralorn that I’m in the salle with Queen Arian and ask him to attend.”

  When the man had left, the king turned to his friends. “Do not get me in trouble with Fralorn. The rules are rules for all. Quickly now; fetch bandas for us.”

  By the time Fralorn arrived, the entire party, including Arian’s Squires, had donned bandas.

  Fralorn was a tall, lean man with thinning dark hair and a gray mustache. He wore clothes Arian had not seen before: short full breeches over stockings, thin slippers of gray kid, and a close-fitting gray tunic embroidered with the royal arms in rose and crimson. “Sir king,” he said, bowing. His gaze swept the room and snagged momentarily on the swords lying on the bench where Rothlin had been sitting. “How may I serve?”

  “Milady,” the king said, “may I present Armsmaster Fralorn.” Fralorn bowed. “And this is Queen Arian of Lyonya,” the king said. “Queen Arian asked if it would be possible for her to practice in the salle daily.”

  Fralorn smiled and bowed again. “My honor, milady queen, would be to have you share this space. May one ask what time of day the queen prefers to drill?”

  “King Kieri and I drill before breakfast,” Arian said. “It improves the appetite.”

  “Indeed, milady, so it would, and the swordplay as well. And would that be with your own escort, or would you wish to drill with others?”

  “Either would suit me,” Arian said. “I wish to cause no more work for my hosts than necessary.”

  “Never mind that,” Fralorn said. “Perhaps—I see you are wearing a banda—you would enjoy a brief session this evening? Then, should you wish other partners, I will know which might suit you best.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Arian said.

  “Perhaps you would like to work with your own escort first,” he said.

  “Certainly.” Arian turned to Garrion. “Shall we?” He nodded and she led the way to the center of the salle.

  Fralorn turned to the others for a moment, his tone crisp and commanding as he said, “Kirgan Marrakai, Nigan Serrostin, I see you laid your blades ready; you two and the king may warm up with footwork exercises on the targes at that end. Sequence five from Mathalion’s Classics. Remember to keep time accurately.”

  “Yes, Armsmaster,” they said, meek as mice. Arian laughed to herself. They knew they were caught.

  “Now, milady, if you permit, a brief warm-up. Keeping distance; I will call the pattern for your escort. Will that suit?”

  “Excellently,” Arian said. Garrion followed the armsmaster’s instructions; Arian inverted them, and after a very short time Fralorn nodded. She and Garrion squared off, beginning with one of their standard drills. They had sparred many times; they knew each other’s tricks and rarely got a touch on each other on level ground.

  “Hold, please,” Fralorn said. “Milady queen, you are the equal of any blade in the kingdom, and so is your escort. Have you ever instructed?” His voice held no flattery, only a professional assessment.

  “Yes, but not recently.”

  “Would you consider crossing blades with me someday?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “At the moment I believe the young gentlemen need an instruc
tor’s eye on them. The king should accompany you, of course…” Fralorn approached the three, who were keeping a reasonably good tempo and distance in what Arian saw was a complicated footwork pattern.

  “Sir king, your guest would appreciate your guidance. I am certain, however, that Kirgans Marrakai and Mahieran and Nigan Serrostin would enjoy continuing their exercise with me. Perhaps Marshal-Judicar Oktar would care to join us?”

  Arian stifled another laugh. The young men looked anything but eager for the exercise, but they bowed and said, “Yes, Armsmaster.”

  The king led the way out of earshot of the salle and then turned to Arian with a mischievous grin. “They will regret they broke the rules,” he said. “I myself would not dare to drill without him or one of the approved auditors present. Not now, anyway. I did that with Juris once when I was a boy Cam’s age, and it didn’t end with a footwork drill. I had bruises through the banda.”

  “At Falk’s Hall, we students tried to get in some practice time when the instructors weren’t hanging over us. Punishment was footwork drills while holding a pike overhead.”

  “You broke rules?” He sounded disbelieving.

  “Not very often,” Arian said. “But enough to know what would happen when I did.”

  “I’m surprised at Juris and Roly; I suppose they thought everyone would be busy with your visit.”

  “Perhaps they learned something new while Rothlin was away and wanted to show him.”

  “Still, they shouldn’t. They’re dukes’ sons; they should set an example.” If I have to, that meant. Arian reminded herself that this king was very young, had lost both his parents early, and only the year before had been nearly killed in his own palace. He went on in a different tone, “Though if I set them a better example, maybe they wouldn’t do things like that.”

  “Do they often?”

  “No. That’s why I was so surprised. We’re going to the grange-hall for the Bells now—it’s the other place you could practice. The Knight-Commander would need to know you were coming—it’s the training hall for the Knights of the Bells, and sometimes it’s full.”