The Fox
The king said, “Until I can settle with the Adranis there is the problem of finding mages to come here, then of finding money to pay them. It requires compromise, and money that we do not have, not with so much of it going to the north for supply and rebuilding.”
“As for the communication problem, there should be news from the coast soon. Maybe today,” the Harskialdna said, shifting the subject. “The last messenger from our southernmost harbor reported a mass migration of pirates toward the Narrows, and everyone there was talking of a possible ship battle.”
Tlennen said, “When they come, interrupt me in whatever I am doing. I need to know what happened.”
Anderle-Harskialdna was relieved. But then the king added, “I also want to know if the rumors about the commander of the sea defense being the Algara-Vayir boy are true.”
The words were like a punch to the Harskialdna’s gut. He’d exerted himself to keep those rumors—not that he believed a word—from being voiced here. How could Tlennen know? Jealousy spurted its familiar and caustic acid into the roiling pit inside the Harskialdna: his brother’s accursed mate Sindan had not been home for over a year, staying in Ala Larkadhe to protect Evred, and the Harskialdna himself opened every dispatch brought by Runner to the king. Including Sindan’s.
“I believe those rumors are false,” the Harskialdna stated, all the more firmly because of his doubts. “Mere rumor, spread by those whose ambitions have been thwarted, by the disaffected—” He stopped there, knowing his brother would want to discuss why Marlovan Jarls who had recently sworn their year’s oaths would be disaffected.
“I was weak,” Tlennen said, so low his brother almost didn’t hear it. “Too weak to face what I did not want to see.” He retreated into his room and closed the door.
What did that mean? The Harskialdna had reached his own rooms when one of the young Runners-in-training dashed in, panting from his run the length of the castle. “Heir’s back. At the gallop.”
Indeed, there it was, the sound of horns. War horns, faint and far away. Why would the Sierlaef be blowing war horns? Many horns—signaling an entire wing—
The Harskialdna paused long enough to thrust his fighting knife through his sash and then started down toward the stables, meeting the Sierlaef halfway. “Those horns— not you?”
The heir was muddy to the hip and white-faced with emotion. “They’re coming for blood,” he said, clearer than he’d ever spoken. “Coming for me. Yvana-Vayir, Marlo-Vayir. Wing. At least.” His mouth twisted with threat. “You. M-m-make it r-r-right.”
War horns again, louder, and a young Runner dashed in, stumbled to a stop, and thumped his fist to his chest. “It’s Yvana-Vayir and Marlo-Vayir, with war banners,” he announced breathlessly, more excited than afraid. “Three columns, looks like three flights—”
The heir pulled his knife. “Vedrid lives. Blabbed.”
“Go to your rooms,” the Harskialdna commanded, and he waited long enough to see the heir retreat. His heart thumped against his ribs, and ideas—words—plans tumbled through his mind. He knew Mad Gallop and Hasta, had known them since they were ten-year-old boys down there in the academy scrub barracks. If he could soothe whatever it was that got them hot, it would renew his hold on the heir. All this sped through his mind as he ran to the listening chamber above the great hall; he’d decide on his strategy after hearing what they were saying. They’d come through the great hall first, if they were waving war banners around. He could calm them down by prolonging the ridiculous formal palaver of their ancestors—
“Empty! The coward! Probably lurking over in his office at the guard barracks. You, take your riding upstairs, and find the traitor Aldren-Sierlaef. You to the guard barracks, and you upstairs, find the Harskialdna and kill him!” That was Mad Gallop. His next words stunned the Harskialdna. “Strike the traitor down. You, find the king—”
“Wait.” That was Hasta, hoarse with pain. “Hold hard! You never said anything about assassination. Only justice, and not against the king! He hasn’t—”
“Justice demands a new king,” Mad Gallop replied. “And who better than my son, who is also son of a princess?”
“But the king hasn’t—”
The Harskialdna didn’t stay to hear the argument. A wing of warriors against the depleted Guard, and most of those not at their post, but heading toward the barracks to sleep? He knew in bone and nerve and viscera that his life was over. He who thought and planned ahead had been taken completely by surprise, and not by the pirates, or Idayagans, or even the Venn, but by conspiracy where he had not watched for it.
Here was the end. But he would not die alone.
He ran to the door of the one he hated most, whose secrets and plans had always eluded him. He kicked open the door to his wife’s rooms and saw her seated, hair wet, her bathrobe draped around her. She was in the act of writing on a little square of paper. “Conspiracy!” he snarled, advancing. “And you’re at the center of it!”
“Center of what?” she snapped as she backed to the wall.
When he saw her fling the little square of paper into the fire he released that lifelong hoard of anger in an inarticulate roar.
Her hands brushed over her wrists—to find them bare. Her weapons lay in her room with her clothing. Rannet, her personal Runner, was weeks away.
She was alone and unarmed, her other Runners busy on duty.
“You never. Lay with me. In life.” He reached for her, she dodged in an expert, flowing move, but her hair, usually neatly confined, swung out in long wet ribbons. He caught a lock and yanked viciously, and she fell to one knee.
He wound his hand in her hair, then, with his other hand pulled out his knife and stabbed her again and again.
Her arms rose, white hot shards of pain shooting through her as she warded the killing steel with bare flesh. “You,” he snarled, stabbing furiously as he tried to reach her neck, her heart, her gut. “Will. Lie. With. Me. In death.”
Shock—pain—the swift flow of hot blood made her head reel. She kept her arms up as she struggled to free herself. The last word—death—rang in her ears as the cruel knife lacerated her, scraping on bone, until a single thought jetted upward through the rising black tide: Barend.
I must protect Barend.
Purpose pushed back the billowing blackness. Old lessons guided her failing body. She ceased trying to regain her feet, but sagged suddenly, and his hand loosened its grip on her hair—
Ah, there! His boot knife. She fell forward, closed her bloody hand round the hilt. She was beyond question, beyond hearing: as the Harskialdna straightened up, his body tensing at the clatter of footsteps rapidly approaching, she gathered her remaining strength, though by now the roaring in her ears deafened her and flowering black spots as well as blood blinded her eyes.
But instinct fortified by years of hatred and honed by the ritual of drill drove her steel up between his ribs and straight into his heart.
The door slammed open then, and nine men ran in, each determined to be the one to earn his name in the ballads for dispatching the traitor. They hacked at Anderle-Harskialdna, whose hands scrabbled feebly at the knife in his ribs; it was only when they finished that they noticed the woman lying nearby—but she was already dead.
The noise of screams and clashing steel terrorized Kialen, Evred’s betrothed, who had been passing softly along the hall to take embroidery silk to the queen’s rooms.
Hadand appeared from somewhere and shook her. “Kialen! I heard shouting. Who was it? Where?”
Kialen could only point, her cold fingers trembling.
Hadand turned her head at the distant shouts of men. Trouble, that much was clear. She gazed desperately into Kialen’s frail, heart-shaped face, took in the terror rounding her eyes, the tense high brow, and forced her voice to soft urgency. “You must go hide in the secret chamber. Now! I have to protect the queen. Kialen, do you hear?”
Kialen’s thin hand groped, closing around Hadand’s wrist. Her frail body
trembled violently as she assented, always obedient, for did not obedience make the shadows go away?
“Go now, little sister.” Hadand bent and pressed a maternal kiss on those slender fingers, and waited until the weird, distant focus in Kialen’s enormous pupils altered to awareness. To comprehension. “I’ll be with you as soon as the queen is safe.”
Kialen seemed to hear, her brow smoothed, and she began to glide away, so strange and childish, though they were the same age. But Kialen—so unlike her Cassad cousins—had never seemed to age past her tenth birthday; she just got stranger.
When she vanished around the corner, her steps soundless, Hadand hurried away.
Kialen drifted silently to an alcove, but stopped again and backed against a wall at the iron-shod clatter of running men. She closed her eyes and shrank into the shadows as five Yvana-Vayir riders in yellow and blue tramped down the hall.
They ignored what they took to be a child cowering in the corner. They spread out, swords at the ready as they began kicking open doors. The first suite, across from Hadand’s empty chambers, belonged to Aldren-Sierlaef.
He was there, alone. His hazel eyes narrowed when he saw the Yvana-Vayir colors instead of the Marlo-Vayirs’ but he did not speak. Just drew his knife.
The men exchanged uncertain glances, each waiting for a sign from the others. To kill a prince! They knew the penalty if their lord lost, but if they won, it would mean promotion, maybe even land of their own—and perhaps their names mentioned in the songs that would be written about their Jarl for future drums.
Still they waited for one another to move. The Sierlaef, for all the bad gossip about him, never had anything said against his courage.
They studied him now. He was tall and strong and all five remembered those stories about his winning a battle against overwhelmingly superior numbers of Idayagans when he was barely out of the academy.
“Now,” said one, with a sideways glance, and they charged.
Even charging they waited for one another to be the first to strike and so the Sierlaef ripped his knife across the lead man’s throat and on the backswing opened the belly of a second one.
The remaining three shouted and lunged at him. Two, each now determined to be the first to strike, fouled one another’s blades. Aldren-Sierlaef backed up, hoping to get to the doorway so they couldn’t come at him from the side.
The last man wheeled and blocked the door as the other two found their footing and attacked more efficiently.
And so, though the heir fought hard, he took more wounds than he gave. He managed to strike one himself and shove another into his companion’s downswung blade, but by then he was dizzy from blood loss. The first assailant dropped hard, kicking senselessly. The second folded to the floor in a faint. The Sierlaef slashed the man’s throat to finish him, then stumbled back through the doorway to his bedchamber. The last man, who had stood in the outer door to block it, now charged after him and arrived before the Sierlaef, who was breathing harshly, faint with pain and rapid blood loss, could get the door closed. The man whipped his cavalry sword in a vicious uppercut and buried the point in the king’s son’s heart.
The noises the Sierlaef made, the way he fell to his knees onto the carpet and then half rose again, groping with his knife, thoroughly unnerved the man. He did not see the promise of reward so much as the flogging post if he were caught here, and so he flung down the sword and ran.
The Sierlaef lay on the crimson carpet his grandmother had given him, where when he was small he’d loved to work his toes after a long bath. It was soft under his cheek, and so he lay there, his gaze on that cavalry sword gleaming dully so far away. Aware of only pain and thirst, of anger, because he knew why they had come. The king had a right! But slowly the world began to diminish, all meaning narrowing to that sword. If he could just reach it—
Ah. His hand touched steel, and he gripped it until all pain, anger, and question washed away in the coolness of night.
Kialen watched the man with the blood-stained blue-and-yellow tunic run by, looking neither to the right nor the left. Terror kept her there in the welcoming shadows, where comforting voices whispered from far away.
If she waited, still and quiet, maybe they would sing.
Hadand had sent Tesar the shortest way to the arms mistress; they met outside the queen’s rooms. “Fighting,” Hadand said, breathing fast. “Why doesn’t my aunt order the city bells to lockdown?”
The arms mistress said, “Not invaders. Yvana-Vayir, Marlo-Vayir. And one of our own scouts just arrived with the word that Choraed Elgaer is coming.”
Was this screaming and fighting related to the news about Barend that her mother’s Runner had brought from Choraed Elgaer? No time to find out—these warriors were here. In the castle itself. Hadand pressed her knuckles into her eyes. The women trained for generations for these moments. “My place is to guard the queen. Until we get orders from either Ndara-Harandviar or the king, you defend yourselves only if attacked. Otherwise, remind them that to draw weapons in the king’s house is to be forsworn.”
“If they fight?” the arms mistress asked, her emotions betrayed only by the sharpening of her voice.
“Since these are Marlovans, try to disarm and disable, not to kill, unless they try to kill you. Then strike swiftly. Take no commands from any one of them, no matter what rank.”
The arms mistress agreed, gripping her knife handle.
“Go now to secure all the public halls. Don’t let any Marlo-Vayir or Yvana-Vayir men cut any building off.” And to her own women, “Guard the hall outside the queen’s chamber—bows as well as knives. Let no one in. Let no one near.” Back to the arms mistress, “And you’d better send a girl to ring the bells for city lockdown. My aunt can always countermand, but having the city quiet seems a good idea.”
Everyone agreed—the city knew that lockdown meant Get behind your doors and lock them. Anyone out could, and would, be struck down without question.
The arms mistress loped off, issuing orders to the women who had assembled in stairs and archways, waiting in silence.
Hadand glanced back but saw no sign of Kialen, and hoped she was safe in the hidden chamber. I should have brought her, Hadand thought, but then she shook her head and opened the door, smoothing down her gown. Kialen’s mind was slowly drifting to a place none of them knew, far from the real world. Any violence she witnessed might shred the last few threads of her hold on sanity. And what if these attackers came to kill the queen?
On Hadand’s entrance, Queen Wisthia felt some of her terror ease, only to be replaced by a rush of anger. She too had heard the war horns, the shouts, the running feet. “What is it?” she demanded.
“I do not know. But with your permission I will find out. My women are on guard—”
Wisthia rose to her feet, a tall, elegant woman who even after nearly thirty years of marriage to a Marlovan still moved, dressed, and especially thought like an Adrani. “Don’t leave!” she commanded. Her own women stared, shocked and frightened. “Don’t leave me alone with these barbarians. I always knew they would turn on one another like wolves in the wild. Worse, because wolves do not train their young with steel.”
The low, venomous voice went on and on, releasing decades of pent-up emotion. The Adrani women who had followed their mistress into her long exile forced themselves to sit silently, stitching with exquisite care the butterflies on sashes, the new fashion from home, each stitch counted out in heartbeats, as if order could be restored by will alone.
Hadand sat motionless, trying not to hear the trembling voice whispering invective against her people, as she wondered where Ndara was—and the king.
Taumad and Inda lifted the oars, rode a wave, then back-watered the boat to the newly-repaired dock. They shipped their oars.
Captain Ramis had been right about Lindeth offering anything they needed by way of repairs, either free or at bargain prices, once they heard the news. Not that they’d believed Inda’s people. Several boats
had sailed with them for protection, southern traders known in Lindeth Harbor, and it was to them that the Lindeth people had listened.
Inda had seen during the very first exchange that their gratitude for the defeat of the pirates was tempered by fear. The harbormaster himself had visited each of the fleet of traders that had followed Inda north. Some had lowered boats, just to boom them up again after the harbormaster’s gig rowed away.
When at last the harbormaster was brought to Death, the harbor folk’s upturned faces were pale but determined as the harbormaster stated that Elgar send one person ashore—not himself—to negotiate. He could only come ashore to pay just before his departure and none of his crew was permitted ashore at any time.
“We’ve had too much destruction here,” the old harbormaster said, his gaze shifting uneasily from Fox to Inda. “Don’t want more, so we’re not telling anyone who you are, and we won’t let those traders that came in on your stern come ashore until you’re gone.”
Inda wondered who he thought would attack and then realized with a sick sense the harbormaster was afraid of the Marlovans that Inda had glimpsed on patrol through his glass.
Inda did not want to tell them why he himself felt obliged to avoid the Marlovans, so he just agreed.
He’d sent Dasta to negotiate, as he’d been raised by beekeepers a little farther down the coast. Dasta—wearing a sashed sailor’s smock and deck trousers, his sun-browned features unremarkable, his manner slow and easy except on the deck of an enemy—seemed the least piratical of the crew.
When Dasta returned, leading a fleet of supply boats and carpenters, he had reported, “When we’re done loading you’ll deal with the guild mistress. They are all afraid of you.”
“I gathered that.”
“As for news, no one knows anything of interest to us. They don’t communicate with the Marlovans except if they have to. The pirate attacks have kept them fairly isolated. They were full of questions about the Brotherhood’s defeat.”