He saw Marilyn come back in the door, her eyes widening as she took a breath to shout. He heard Sylvan’s foot scrape the floor, then, using both hands, raised the Helm abruptly over his head, concave side up.
Sylvan’s blade, cutting down, slammed into the Helm. There was a sizzling sound and Leland stepped forward as he felt the Helm jerked from his hands. He turned to see Sylvan staring, horrified, at his sword.
The blade had cut halfway into the Helm and a small wisp of white smoke was rising from it.
HOW COULD YOU!
Well, you’re not immortal anymore.
IT WASN’T THAT—IT WAS THE KNOWLEDGE…
I’ll try to write things down. To Sylvan he clucked his tongue and said, “Well, if it wasn’t broken before…”
Sylvan looked murderous. He tried to shake the Helm off his sword but it was wedged. He put one booted foot on it and shoved it off.
“Give it up, Sylvan,” Leland said.
Sylvan raised his sword again. “You killed my father.” He took a step forward.
“You tell me I’m surrounded.” He took another step. His voice increased in intensity. “You tell me I can’t go home.” Another step. More volume. “You destroy the Helm, my last chance.” His voice raised to a shout. “And you expect me to quit? Tell me what I HAVE TO LOSE!” He charged Leland.
Leland froze, waiting. Sylvan closed and cut kesa, a diagonal slash down toward Leland’s neck. Leland slid forward, deep, striking in at the hilt of the sword while he turned sharply, moving away from the blade. Sylvan found himself falling forward, the sword pulling from his hands, but he twisted at the last minute and kept the sword, falling hard on his shoulder. He scrambled up, holding the sword out, pointed toward Leland.
Leland walked away from him, toward the dais. He heard Sylvan’s halting steps following him. He took the bamboo from the nook and turned again, to face Sylvan.
“Better look out,” Leland said. “I’m armed now.”
Sylvan lunged forward and cut across at Leland’s stomach. Leland slid back and the sword tip cut cleanly through his shirt, missing his skin. Almost as an afterthought, Leland struck down with the bamboo, hitting the back of Sylvan’s hand. The sword clattered down upon the floor.
Leland walked away from the sword and Sylvan. He heard metal scrape on the floor and turned to see Sylvan pick it back up. Leland stopped, then raised the bamboo over his head.
Sylvan approached more cautiously this time, his face contorted with rage. Leland moved suddenly toward him and Sylvan jerked the sword up and cut down. Leland slid just off the line and, as the blade just missed his elbow, struck Sylvan in the head with the bamboo.
Sylvan fell back, stunned. The sword clattered on the floor again. He put his hand to his hair and it came away bloody. Growling inarticulately, he reached for the sword again.
Leland’s foot reached out and kicked the sword away, which surprised him, since he hadn’t willed it.
STOP TOYING WITH HIM.
Leland screamed inside. What about MY father? What about the thousands dead in the stupid war? Shouldn’t someone pay?
THEN KILL HIM, BUT THIS…IT LACKS DIGNITY.
Leland sighed. He gestured toward Sylvan with his hand. “Marilyn, watch him.”
“Hai!” He heard her move closer, then turned back to the hostages.
The soldiers looked more frightened than before.
AND MORE DESPERATE.
“Why are you still holding weapons?” Leland asked. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Anyone who hurts a single one of them dies.”
One of the older men, probably an officer, said, “But first they’ll be dead.” He was holding an older woman by the hair and threatening her throat with a knife. “We have control here.”
There was something about the woman—
Leland heard a scuffle behind him and looked over his shoulder. Apparently Sylvan had tried something with Marilyn. His face was grinding into the floor and she was kneeling beside him, his arm locked into a Nikkyo pin by her knees and arms. Leland looked back at the officer and his hostage.
Who?
DRUZA. THE SANDAN FROM THE VILLAGE.
“Control?” Leland started laughing. He saw movement in the musicians’ gallery and thought, I could kill you with a gesture. Instead he said, “You are mistaken.” He tilted his head to the woman, Druza. “Please explain it to him.”
The old woman took the wrist holding the knife and backed under his knife arm, twisting her hips while she applied Sankyo to his wrist. Despite his hold on her hair, the knife and his wrist twisted back into him and he had to jump back, both to avoid the point of the knife and to relieve the sudden pressure on his wrist.
Druza cut down, bending the man over, then cut down into his elbow with her free hand. She did the standing pin, pressing the palm of his twisted wrist against her knee and leaning in. He screamed and the knife dropped onto his back.
Druza picked up the knife with her other hand and held it briefly to the back of the pinned man’s neck. She said dryly, “Control is an illusion.” She threw the knife into the fireplace, gave the wrist one more twist, then dropped the arm.
The officer yelled again, then lay there, groaning. Madame Druza stepped to the next hostage in line and pushed her out into the room, away from her guard, then the next, and the next. The guards looked confused and Leland tensed, ready to point two fingers at any of them who threatened violence, but Druza’s matter-of-fact manner seemed to calm them, and the hostages were soon standing on the other side of the room from the guards.
“Put down your weapons now,” Leland said.
Some of them looked stubborn and Leland pointed his two fingers at his father’s chair on the dais. Two arrows buried themselves in the back of the chair, the impacts so close together they made one longer sound. He held the two fingers up again, pointed at the ceiling. “The weapons?”
The swords clattered to the ground, followed by daggers.
“Go sit against that wall,” Leland said, pointing to a spot away from the swords but within sight of the balcony.
He turned back to Sylvan and Marilyn. Sylvan was groaning. Leland raised his eyebrows.
Marilyn shrugged. “He keeps trying. He’s going to damage his elbow or shoulder, I think.”
Leland nodded. “Let him up?”
“I guess.” She took Sylvan’s wrist and pressed it down against his back as she stood and slid away.
Sylvan tried to scramble up, but it took him a minute because his arm still wasn’t working right. His face was bloody from the scalp wound and his eyes were wide, showing white all around the iris.
“You!” He lunged at Leland again, his good arm extended to grab.
Leland sighed, then dropped the bamboo and entered, sweeping Sylvan’s arm down and around, cutting into the back of Sylvan’s shoulder as he dropped and pivoted.
Sylvan ended up facedown, his own arm a crowbar forcing him down. Leland reached across Sylvan’s head and cupped his chin.
THAT’S THE TECHNIQUE I USED TO KILL BAUER.
I know. He paused a long moment thinking about his father, the thousands of dead, including his oldest brother, Dillan.
WILL IT BRING BACK ANY OF THEM?
Leland transferred his left hand from Sylvan’s chin to his nose, pinched it, and said, “BEEEEEEEEEP.”
From somewhere down the hall came the distant wail of a newborn baby.
Marilyn, sitting exhausted on the bench above her hiding place, watched the troops enter the Station from the library window. Leland, opposite her, glanced at the soldiers, smiled when he saw Gahnfeld ride past the Floating Stone, then looked back at her.
Still looking at the window, she said, “You’re doing it still.”
Leland laughed. “Sue me. It makes me happy to look at you. Is that so terrible?” Marilyn looked back at him. “I don’t know.” She shook her head and looked out beyond the walls. “I see my sister’s banner and de Gant’s. Father won’t be far behind. It’s
going to be crazy.”
Leland sighed. “Yes. We could always hide.” He tapped the bench beneath him.
Marilyn smiled slightly and shook her head, then frowned suddenly as she remembered. “No. I’ve got to talk to Zanna about Father. Quick, before they get here: Why did you destroy the Helm? Because it’s so dangerous?”
“I didn’t destroy it—Sylvan did.”
Marilyn tilted her head to one side. “Don’t feed me that! You made that decision. When you blocked with the Helm it was as deliberate as any other move you made.”
Leland closed his eyes. “Okay, okay. Yes, the Helm was dangerous—look how close Siegfried came. But really, I destroyed it because it’s time. Time we went on.”
“Is that what your father wanted?”
Leland opened his eyes again. “My father? My father? He never used the Helm the way it should’ve been used. He used it in the other meaning, to steer…to steer, to, well, guide. But he never took all that knowledge and disseminated it, did he? He hoarded it like a miser.”
He held his fisted hand out and slowly opened it. “It’s time to let go. I’ll do my best to document what I’ve gotten from the Helm, to teach, but it’s time we sent that knowledge out into the world, to be used in ways we never anticipated, never even thought of.”
Marilyn tilted her head to one side. “You didn’t do it just to spite your father?”
Leland shrugged. “Maybe. Or to spite Michaela.”
Marilyn straightened on the bench. “So, you’re two years younger than I am, you have a four-hundred-year-old woman in your head, your attraction to me is artificially reinforced, and you want me to get involved with you?”
Leland’s smile dropped. “What I want is to marry you. But I’ll settle for just being near you. Following you around on the street, sleeping on your doorstep, annoying you at parties, sending notes, serenading your balc—”
“Stop it!” she said. A tear slid down her cheek. She looked back out the window, up the mountain road, and wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “My father’s banner.”
There were running footsteps on the stairway, still several floors down, but climbing. She stood abruptly and started to walk away.
Leland held up his hand, to stay her. “What can I expect?”
She looked down at the floor, refusing to meet his eyes. “How can I answer you I don’t know myself.”
Arthur walked down the hall with a smile on his face. So the family of Laal still existed and the looting he’d expected hadn’t been carried out. Dulan was still dead and he was getting used to the role of rescuing hero. True, that brat, Leland, was getting the lion’s credit, but there was plenty to go around.
He pushed open the door of the study and the smile dropped from his face.
“What’s this?” he demanded.
Zanna, Marilyn, Marshall de Gant, Leland, Dexter, and Anthony de Laal, and Leonid Koss were standing in a semicircle around a solitary chair.
Zanna’s and Marilyn’s eyes were red. Dexter and Anthony looked furious. The rest of them were impassive.
Marilyn spoke. “Please sit down, Father.”
They know. He looked for weapons. Koss, Anthony, and Dexter were armed.
The rest weren’t. From what he’d heard of Leland, he didn’t need weapons. An even more terrible thought entered his head. Neither do my daughters.
“It would be rude of me to sit when there’s only one chair.”
Zanna said, “Sit. Down. Father.”
He sat, trying to do it as naturally as possible, as if it were his choice. He crossed his legs. “What is all this? A trial?”
Marilyn stepped slightly forward. “The trial is over, Father. This…this is the sentencing.”
“And the accused?” Arthur said lightly.
“DON’T!” said Anthony. “Don’t even pretend! Do you want me to drag Sylvan up here and have him say it to your face?”
Arthur flinched. “I really don’t kno—” Zanna started crying openly.
Marilyn said, “Father, that you conspired with Siegfried to betray Laal is not in question here. The evidence has been heard. The orders you gave to your signal staff. Sylvan’s admissions while he still thought Cotswold was winning. Your orders to de Gant keeping the Laal contingent from coming to Laal’s aid. Don’t make it harder.”
Arthur sagged. It was Zanna’s tears, more than anything, that broke him. I just wanted to be looked up to.
He croaked, “What do you want?”
Marilyn continued. “Your abdication.”
He glared back. “Never!”
Dexter started to draw his sword. “Fine. I didn’t want to do it like this, anyway!”
Leland stepped between Dexter and Arthur, pushing Dexter’s sword back into its sheath. “Wait,” he said to both of them. Then, to Arthur: “My brother wants you dead and I can’t blame him. However, we Laals had our own traitor, but she’s dead and it’s unclear which of you did the most damage.
“If you stay on the throne we will make sure that all Noram knows of your role and Noram, as a country, will cease to exist. The center will not hold—who’ll trust you? Laal will certainly not stay a part of a Noram that you rule, and I’m sure several other stewardships will secede. We’d rather trust Roland than depend on you.”
Arthur was white now.
Anthony spat out, “If our troops find out what you did, you won’t live to see the border.”
Leland held up his hand before Anthony and gestured to Marilyn with the other. She took over. “But if you abdicate in favor of Zanna, no one outside of this room will know of your role in the invasion and you can retire to your estate in Merida with some dignity.”
Dexter, his hand still on his sword hilt, said, “Let’s be clear about this. Your choice isn’t between abdication and staying in the high stewardship. Your choice is between abdication and death.”
It was reflexive, really, his subsequent protests, but in the end, he agreed.
They buried Siegfried in the Laal family cemetery, in the central court. It was Leland who’d pointed out that “If you put him in a town plot his gravestone will be desecrated daily.”
They put Siegfried next to Carmen’s grave. All Carmen’s plot held were some random ashes collected from the remnants of the Blue Whale. A similar grave, ashes only, was next to hers, for Ricard.
The story of his death had come from one of the Cotswold soldiers. When Leland contemplated the tenuous chain of events that kept Siegfried from success, he shuddered.
Bartholomew supervised the Cotswold prisoners who did the excavation, a massive effort in the frozen soil, and it was Bartholomew who read the rites of the dead. Sylvan was there, in chains, and some of Siegfried’s officers, but, besides the guards, Leland was the only Laal in attendance.
THANK YOU.
You wouldn’t have given me any peace otherwise, right?
DAMN RIGHT.
Leland left when the dirt was mounded high above the grave, despite internal protests.
Late that night he awoke, bare feet on packed snow, shivering, standing before the grave, alone beneath frozen stars. He shook his head and beat his arms, then, fully awake, realization hit.
Damn it! What are you doing?
SAYING GOOD-BYE.
What you’re doing is giving me frostbite!
IT’S OKAY. WE CAN GO NOW. I’M DONE.
It took him an hour, huddled before a fire under blankets, to warm up.
It was Michaela’s memories that supplied the phrase. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”
Dexter shook his head. “Really—you should take the stewardship. Dillan was the one trained for it, but he’s dead. I never thought I’d have to. Besides, you’re the one who wore the Helm.”
Leland searched for words.
Anthony, sitting silently in the corner, stirred. Lillian, fresh come from the mountain, and the three brothers were in their father’s study trying to separate his papers from Siegfried’s. Antho
ny spoke. “He’s right, you know. I think Father even intended it, after you wore the Helm. What else was all that business with the sticks for, if not to toughen you up—get you ready?”
Leland shook his head violently. “I will die before I sit in that man’s chair. I don’t care what he intended, I’m going off to Noram to study and teach.”
“Laal needs you,” said Dexter. “None of us wore the Helm.”
“And no one ever will again. Get used to it.” Leland pointed his finger. “Laal needs you. And Anthony. And Lillian, for that matter. It needs time to recover from this invasion. It needs time to heal and rebuild and—” His voice caught and he looked away for a moment before saying, “Grieve. Time to grieve.”
Leland rubbed at his eyes fiercely. “I’ll do what I can.” He gritted his teeth. “Zanna’s asked me to serve on the council and I’ll look out for Laal’s interests in the city, but that is where I’ll be. Not here.
“None of us expected to wear these shoes. Maybe they’ll chafe for a while, but we’ll break them in…in time.”
He left abruptly, before they could muster more arguments.
Eventually he found Marilyn, walking with Zanna in one of the upper courtyards, their heads wreathed in ice fog.
“Am I interrupting?”
Zanna shook her head. “No. We’re just…well, just trying to make sense of things.”
Marilyn had shadows under her eyes and looked at Leland gravely, without reaction.
Leland froze, holding his breath.
After a long moment, she stepped up to Leland and pulled him close, laying her face against his shoulder as he hugged her back. He saw the worried look on Zanna’s face drop briefly as she smiled at them.
“Marilyn tells me you’re looking for an apartment near the dojo.”
Marilyn swung around to face her sister but kept an arm around Leland’s waist.
He soaked up her warmth and felt pure contentment. “Yes,” he said to Zanna. “Do you know of something?”
She nodded. “Yes, I do. I’m going to have to live in Noram House so Charly is going to have to move.” At Leland’s look she said, “She may be my sensei, but I’m her steward. It’s a double-check. Besides, we belong to each other. She can go to the dojo all day, but at night—” She turned her head to the northwest briefly. When she turned back to face them again, she said, “I’m sure Charly would want you and Marilyn to use the townhouse. You can’t get closer to the dojo than that.”