The Fox

  Vedrid shook his head. “I ate.”

  “Is it difficult to get through the passes?”

  “Not this time. I hired out at Bren Harbor as a courier, and there was so much business I had my pick of what to bring here. But it will be, if the Adranis turn against us. The old king died and the new one wants to end the treaties, using the blockade as an excuse.”

  Evred leaned forward. “Did you find Indevan-Laef?”

  “No. That is, I never saw him. But he’s not dead. In fact his name has been removed from the capital list. At Guild Fleet headquarters I found out that the original accusation had been rescinded.” Vedrid pushed his short, pale hair impatiently back; he hated hair on his forehead and ears. “Rumor says he’s a pirate preying on the Brotherhood of Blood under the name of Elgar the Fox.”

  “A pirate preying on pirates? To fight against them—or to gain influence over them?”

  Vedrid spread his hands. “All I know is that pirates who join the Brotherhood to attack and loot us have been given letters of marque by the Venn. They are permitted to resupply in the harbors on the north side of the strait as long as they keep their attacks confined to our coast.”

  “What proof is there that Indevan-Laef is Elgar the Fox?”

  “None outside of Ryala Pim’s accusations. But there were rumors of him being a lord, about his liking to use screamer arrows instead of flags for signals. In one place I learned that Elgar’s first name is Inda.”

  Evred felt a cramp in his hand; he was gripping the pen hard. He dropped it on the table and sat back. “Where was he seen most recently?”

  “Sartor Sea, hunting the Brotherhood there.”

  “Sartor Sea.” Then he’s coming home.

  A bugle chord echoed off the walls. Clash! Clang! Evred paced to the window and glanced out at the sword drill below. Snow whirled into a manic dance; Evred saw Tanrid’s face as he died, lips distorted in his effort to speak, how he relaxed only after Evred promised to find Inda. “Indevan-Laef must be given word about the death of his brother. He does not know that he is the heir to Choraed Elgaer.”

  “You want me to find him and tell him?”

  “No, I want you to find him and bring him to me. It is I who must present him to the king. Who can present him to his father with the old problems declared resolved.” He frowned. “That reminds me. You are now my sworn man, so my brother can no longer require silence.”

  Vedrid flicked fingers to heart, his puzzlement plain.

  Evred said, “When you took Idayago did my brother ride off on a murder spree? Against girls?”

  Vedrid’s jaw dropped. In his honest and unhidden bewilderment Evred had his answer, but he listened as Vedrid said, “No! I was with him the entire time—even when we split off before the Ghael Hills battle. Oh.” His face changed. “The first ruse.”

  Evred frowned. “What was that?”

  Vedrid said, surprised, “You didn’t know? I thought everyone in the royal castle knew—oh. You were still an academy boy, were you not? Perhaps they kept it all from you.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “Isn’t much to tell, and that little is shameful enough. On the road—this was just before the attack—the Sierlaef and his Sier-Danas were met by young women who invited them back, promised wine and fun.” Vedrid made the crude gesture for a romp in bed. “I wasn’t there to see or hear it all, you understand—I had tent duty that day—but Tanrid-Laef Algara-Vayir suspected a ruse, so they all sent a man in their place. Wearing House livery.”

  Evred whistled under his breath. “No wonder we never heard about it.”

  “I couldn’t go, but Nallan and my cousin both wanted to go. My cousin had night duty, so the Sierlaef sent him.” Vedrid grimaced. “The Sier-Danas hid in the garden. As Tanrid-Laef had surmised, the assassins came, but by the time the Sier-Danas had broken in they were heartbeats too late: the women had drugged the wine, and all our people were stabbed right there with their pants off. The Sier-Danas killed everyone in the house. Fired the house in memoriam— and then, well, we rode south into the Idayagan trap.”

  “That was all? No other women, ruses, whatever?”

  “Not a one. After the battle we rode the rest of the way inside three perimeters of guards, on orders of the Harskialdna, who was afraid there’d be another try for the Sierlaef. There were no more rides alone—ever.”

  Evred drummed his fingers on the table. “Sometimes I go out anonymously, and twice I have overheard references to killing sprees across the kingdom, led by the Sierlaef, against unarmed women.” He let out his breath as he sat back. “So that’s the truth—yet whom to tell? How to be believed?”

  Vedrid thought over the bitter invective he’d overheard while traveling in his anonymous clothes. “The Idayagans want to believe the worst of us,” he stated.

  “And so they will. I don’t know what to do about that— another thing to consult with my father about when I can speak with him eye to eye.” He shook his head, then said, “You had better ride before the weather worsens. Nightingale will get you mounted and supply you with funds.”

  Vedrid struck his chest with his fist and left.

  Evred looked at Pim’s letter, then cast it into the fire as the steady clash of steel echoed up the tower walls.

  Vedrid felt better than he had for a year. Even telling that sordid story made him feel better, because Evred listened, did not threaten. Vedrid had thought his honor gone with his hair and blue coat, but that was not true. Even anonymous he had honorable purpose because his orders were honorable.

  He felt so much better that he ran down the stairs, his mind dashing ahead to plan his route, so involved in tomorrow and the succeeding days that he forgot wariness in the now. He leaped down three steps to the landing, turned, and there he was, face-to-face with Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir, whose footsteps he ought to have heard coming up from below.

  Hawkeye’s mind was also far away. He’d handed off morning drill to Flash Arveas so he could get an early start on his ride home. But first he had to take leave of young Evred, do it all proper.

  So when he nearly ran headlong into a tall, blond fellow he frowned in impatience. Short pale hair, Idayagan dress: a civilian. He raised an arm to push the fellow aside, then paused, because he knew that face.

  He knew that face! He stared into Vedrid’s eyes, saw them widen in surprise and then narrow to wariness.

  “Why did the Sierlaef make you cut your hair?” he asked.

  Vedrid licked his lips, shifted, his gaze lowered—and out came a lie. “So the Idayagans won’t recognize me.”

  Hawkeye, not known for sensitivity, could feel the Runner lying.

  Hawkeye suppressed the urge to slam Vedrid against the wall and demand the truth. He’d always liked Vedrid. If he had been Nallan, who’d been nosing around half the summer, watching, listening, smirking at everyone in that bootlicking way the Sier-Danas had all loathed for years, he would have done it. But Nallan—who’d been spying, and everyone knew he was spying, he’d asked so many nosy questions—had never once dressed civ. Always wore Runner blue with the crown over the heart. And here was Vedrid dressed not just civ, but foreign.

  Hawkeye gauged the situation, his need to ride, and what he could do. Then he remembered the windowless chamber off the barracks, laughed, and clapped Vedrid on the back.

  “Come,” he said, knowing that his rank, and Vedrid’s habit of obedience, would force the Runner at least that far. “I have not seen you for a long time, nor any of the Sier-Danas save Tlen, who came up during the summer as reinforcement, but you know that. I want the news of everyone else, and you can take our news south when you ride.”

  His personal armsmen waited at the bottom of the stairs, ready to ride. Both looked at Hawkeye and Vedrid in mute surprise. All he had to do was flick his eyelids up and tilt his head, and they fell in behind. Good fellows, friends since he was a scrub and his father felt he (as the son of a princess) required them for his prestige. They understood one anothe
r with a minimum of words.

  The four moved down and down, past the weird white stuff (no joins in the stone? Unnatural!) and into the much newer granite barracks.

  “Here. Sit,” he said, riding hard over Vedrid’s polite attempts to extricate himself. “Let me get you some hot drink. I could do with some myself. It’s cold as damnation outside.”

  A nod to the armsmen to keep him there; the moment he was outside the door shut, followed by the thump of shoulders against it. He was chuckling under his breath when he moved to the nook where a magic-made fire, probably a century or more old, burned low and steady under a grating on which the captains kept hot dishes and drinks on the simmer.

  He poured out two cups of the mulled wine, then hurried to the cupboard where the interrogators kept the clay pot with the ground-up white kinthus. Hawkeye had thought it strange at first that Evred-Varlaef would insist questioning be done with costly herbs when beating the lies out of these stinking Idayagan sneaks had seemed a far better reminder of who gripped the reins. But Evred had been insistent—and they did get the complete truth. What’s more, the locals knew it. The number of false accusations had diminished this past year.

  He brought the clay pot to the nook, where he found Jasid Tlen—wet-haired, tired, scruffy from night patrol— ladling some of the lemon soup into a cup. Since it was Tlen, one of the old Sier-Danas, he didn’t retreat, but spooned a couple of generous plops of the white kinthus into one of the cups.

  Tlen’s pale gray eyes took in the claypot and then widened. “What are you doing?”

  “Some truth gathering.” In a few low-voiced words, Hawkeye told Tlen what had happened.

  They both looked around. The hallway was empty, the barracks silent.

  Tlen shook his head. “He’ll know what you did when it wears off, and what d’you think the Sierlaef’s going to say?”

  “He’s dressed like that, and lying to me. It means there’s another damn plot on,” Hawkeye stated.

  They both glanced upstairs, each considering.

  Tlen shook his head. “Not Evred. Not a plotter.”

  “True. So why did Vedrid lie to me? I’m sure he was lying.” Hawkeye stepped closer, so close he could smell the wet wool of Tlen’s coat, the mingled scent of horse and human sweat. “I don’t know books, and I don’t know politics, but I do know men. He was lying.”

  Tlen frowned in apprehension.

  Hawkeye grabbed his arm. “Listen. If the Sierlaef does have a plot going, well, we’d better know about it. Because his not telling us means it stinks like shit in shoes.”

  Put that way it made perfect sense to Tlen. “Carry on. I’ll ride shield.” A last spurt of regret. “May ’s well not have everyone in the castle walking in on us committing a capital crime.”

  Interfering with a royal Runner could net you a nasty day at the posts getting your back flayed, but to counterbalance it there was their long experience with the Sierlaef. If he was hatching another plot, something worse than bending the rules so he could chase after someone else’s wife-to-be without any invitation from the female in question, they’d better get prepared. An order from him might come, forcing them to obey whether they liked it or not; something or other had happened that way to Buck, though as yet none of the Marlo-Vayirs were talking.

  In fact, Buck’s not talking was in itself a kind of warning.

  Hawkeye carried the cups in, set the drugged one down before Vedrid. There was no choice for him but to drink it.

  The kinthus was so strong it made him gasp when he took his first sip. But he blamed himself for not being alert when he nearly ran into the arms of one of the old Sier-Danas. If the knife was to come now, so be it.

  Blissful peace dampened his worries and regrets; his mind separated from his body, floating somewhere out of sight. No worries. No problems. No future, just the endless, glittering string of memories stretching out behind him, as remote as stones.

  “Why are you dressed civ and with your hair cut?”

  “I had to disguise myself.”

  “Why?”

  “So I would not be recognized—”

  People under kinthus would tell you everything they knew, but only if you asked the right questions. Hawkeye frowned as Vedrid rambled dreamily about how he’d gone about putting together his disguise, then said, “Tell me everything the Sierlaef ordered you to do—” He ignored the uneasy shiftings of the armsmen. “Especially if it has to do with this here disguise.”

  That worked. Out came the entire story.

  When he got to his assassination of the last two brigands, Hawkeye stopped Vedrid midsentence and brought Tlen in. The heirs and armsmen listened in stunned silence as the faraway voice went on to the Marlo-Vayirs’ ruse, meeting Evred-Varlaef after the fight, his words about no proof, his command about Indevan Algara-Vayir.

  Inda. Hawkeye felt old guilt stirring because his was the hand that struck down that scrub Dogpiss Noth. He’d meant it to be just a swat to a scrub breaking bounds when he was stuck on guard. But he’d been drinking (liquor supplied by the Sierlaef) and hit too hard; Dogpiss had slipped, and then, well.

  Obviously Evred-Varlaef remembered it, too. They’d called it “the summer with no banner,” because nobody really understood the scandal that somehow started with Dogpiss’ death. Unlike everybody else, Evred seemed to be doing something about it, even if it was six years late. But he was no longer a boy under his brother’s thumb, he was a commander in his own right, next in line to become Harskialdna.

  Hawkeye only listened to half of Vedrid’s subsequent report. The stuff about pirates and Inda was interesting, and later on he’d be impressed that Evred-Varlaef was trying to right an old wrong—this was the sort of behavior he was coming to expect from him—but more important was the implication that Tanrid’s death had been caused not by the enemy, but by the heir to the throne. And the Sierlaef’d gotten away with it.

  Vedrid smiled with wistful regret when he finished, the dreams closing in. His eyes rolled and his head drooped, and then he slid to the floor, his breathing slow. If he had not been young and strong—and deeply motivated by his new-found sense of honor—his mind would have slipped away on that dark tide, leaving the physical realm altogether.

  “I think the dose was too strong,” Tlen said, scratching his jaw. “Just smelling it is putting me half to sleep.”

  “Well, then, you take him, stash him somewhere where he won’t be seen, let ’m sleep it off, then send ’m on his way.”

  "What do I tell him?” Tlen rubbed his eyes and yawned.

  Neither was used to plotting. Action, now, that was clear. Fighting an enemy you knew was an enemy—that made sense. When the enemy turns out to be wearing your coat, speaking your language—

  Hawkeye grimaced. “Tell him it was a loyalty test, and he’s a loyal man, right enough, and to carry on with Evred-Varlaef’s orders, fast. Give him money. He’s not going to blab about what we did, not after all that he told us.”

  Tlen opened a hand, his manner uneasy.

  “I’ve got to get riding for home,” Hawkeye said. “Don’t know what the weather will do, and I want one week of freedom before my own wedding.” What he was really thinking was, Wait until my father hears.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE First Day of New Year’s Week dawned bitterly cold. The sun arced far in the north, a ball of pale yellow casting long shadows before vanishing altogether behind the ice-topped mountains of the Andahi Pass high above Ala Larkadhe.

  Evred-Varlaef rose from the narrow camp bed he’d set in the highest tower room. And while the two scout dogs who’d slept curled up on either side of him stretched, muzzles pointing toward the ceiling, he glanced out the window at the snow-covered city below, then reached for his clothes.

  Inda stands on the deck of his flagship, riding huge green-gray waves under the lowering storm clouds that always seem to be just forming at the mouth of the Sartoran Sea.

  Fox leans on the rail next to him, glass steadied
in both gloved hands, smiling as he counts out the masts nicking the bleak skyline. “We’ll strike them in the flank,” Inda says.

  Fox smiles wider as he lowers the glass, the wind whipping the long silky fringes of his fighting scarf against his shoulder. “Yes. But we have not taken them by surprise. Look. Fighting sail on every one, and all of ’em in offensive wedge. They just need to tack south-southwest.”

  The wind is against the pirates, but Inda and Fox know it is a fool who trusts the wind. And the pirates know it, too.

  As Evred approached the long curving staircase leading down, he listened. There! Underneath the wind keening around the stone towers, that eerie sound again. It was clearest from the towers; from below, it was hard to make out.

  The storm winds skimmed over the icy peaks to rake the little city below, shrieking around the lower buildings, worrying at cracks, drumming at windows, making the sound. Evred paused on the tower stairs, listening for that eerie hum, deep and steady below the wail of the wind. He lost his sense of time in that still tower; as most were gone on liberty or watch, a solitary day stretched ahead.

  Inda drops down into the Vixen, mind racing as he watches his forces closing with the pirates.

  All in line—steady on—watch for the signal—

  I can set the plan—I can drill and drill and drill, but . . .

  Make it real, Fox. Make it real, Dasta—

  Glass. Here they come—tight lines? Breaks there . . . and there . . .

  “Fox?”

  “I see it!”

  “Put Death right through the middle—”

  Evred descended the last steps and shouldered open the iron-reinforced door as the dogs raced past him into the small court. Evred followed, tightening his sash as the wind pounced, needling whatever flesh it could find. The scout dogs sniffed, lifted their legs, let out steaming streams.

  Dogpiss. A sudden reminder still hurt.

  When the dogs had finished, Evred picked up the waiting wand from its stone shelf, waved it over the yellow stain and the droppings without pausing as he usually did to witness the flicker of magic. He dropped the wand onto the shelf, then hurried with the dogs to the opposite door. They trod through the silent gray stone halls to the mess hall, which was mostly empty; the dogs, well-trained, scampered to the alcove adjacent the kitchen where their food was kept.