The Fox

  Inda’s mind returned to the present when the boat bumped up against the floating dock. He and Tau tied the boat up, then looked at one of the barnacle-stippled pilings to check the flow of the tide, mentally gauging how long they could stay ashore.

  Tau climbed up the seaweed-wrapped stairs to the pier. Inda stamped on the new planks of wood to get the feel of land under his feet again; he tried to envision the old harbor and the Pims’ hiring table, but too much had changed.

  Home. He was on Iascan soil again, though briefly. And not under his name, so he was not strictly breaking Captain Sindan’s orders, but oh, the familiar smells, even in winter, cast him right back again to that terrible summer day when they first arrived here . . .

  Inda had been silent too long. A glance showed Tau that Inda’s gaze had already gone distant. So Tau led the way up the dock toward the jumble of small houses patched together with wood and stone, their rows of windows, some dark and fire-marked, jagged teeth of glass still thrusting up or down, others alive with a dim golden glow.

  Inda, blinded by the stream of images and emotions of the past, did not see the transformed harbor, much less individuals in the present, but Tau—on the watch for the king’s gray-coated warriors—measured each pair of eyes he encountered, then moved on when he saw no threat. There was no threat, for example, in the steady hazel gaze watching them from the shadow of one of the archways. Tau glanced at the red-haired young man long enough to note and then dismiss the plain coat of Runner blue; then they were past.

  That hazel gaze belonged to Evred, who’d recognized Inda instantly, though in that broad-shouldered young man in the loose-sleeved heavy linen shirt and long brown rough-woven winter vest there remained little of the eleven-year-old boy he knew. Inda had not grown very tall, but he was at least as broad through the chest as Evred, his face scarred, his hands big, his walk a rolling stride that set his long brown queue swinging, his golden hoops dancing at his ears, rubies winking with bloodred light. But the expression of those wide-set brown eyes was the same guileless inward gaze of the eleven-year-old boy, and Evred hesitated; in the space of a single breath the world fractured into starbursts that whirled and spun and then locked together into a new pattern that left Inda limned in invisible white fire.

  He shook away the reaction, meeting the wary gaze of the tall, golden-haired young man at Inda’s side. Evred half-raised a hand, then he too was overwhelmed by memory: Tanrid’s dying voice, Find Inda, and his own promise, I will.

  In that moment Inda and Tau turned the makeshift corner at the newly built Sailor’s Rope Inn, its freshly painted sign swinging above the door, and followed the lane between the half-repaired houses that they’d been told would lead to the guild mistress.

  So when Evred dropped his hand and said, “Inda?” there were only incurious Idayagans to hear; traffic moved along on the high street beyond the stone archway but Inda and his companion had vanished.

  Furious with himself for being a fool, Evred dashed up the street toward the harbormaster’s, for of course they would go there.

  The vagaries of wind, weather, roads, and horses had thus brought Yvana-Vayir’s four assassins to Ala Larkadhe on the very day that their lord attacked the royal city, though neither party could have foreseen such timing.

  And so, while the assassins were dismounting below the weird white tower, far south in the royal city Tlennen-Harvaldar emerged from his rooms to the sound of shouting and the clash of swords. He thought: Pirates attacking the castle? No, for those are Marlovan horns . . .

  He ran to his son’s rooms. Shock stopped his breath in his throat when he saw the bloodstains and shattered furnishings. On the floor lay four blood-covered bodies. Little lights sparkled across Tlennen’s vision when he recognized the yellow-blue livery on the dead.

  He stepped around them to the bedroom beyond and there his son lay sprawled on the crimson rug on the floor, fingers gripping a fallen cavalry sword.

  Three swift steps and he knelt by his son, whose face was peaceful in death as it never had been in life. Tlennen touched the long lashes resting on Aldren’s lean cheeks, the brow almost smoothed of the faint creases of frustration that had shadowed his son’s efforts to communicate all his days, and anguish ripped through him. For an excruciating time he could not breathe. Tears of horror, of anger, most of all of the bitterest regret welled up through years and years of anxious waiting, and watching, and standing aside because custom demanded it, exigencies of kingship required it, and his brother’s platitudes and talk of duty made it easier to postpone another struggling conversation in which he and Aldren shared so very little.

  Shared so little beyond flesh and blood. Heart of my heart, and now you lie dead, and it is forever too late to make amends. Sobs shook Aldren’s father, tears burned down his face, dripping, unheeded, onto his son’s brow. He rocked back and forth, the world narrowed to anguish, until faint sounds roused him.

  Yvana-Vayir. The old ambition.

  Evred.

  “Evred.” He whispered the name, urgency breaking the paralysis of sorrow. He rose to his feet while scanning around him, but of course there would be no pen or paper in Aldren’s rooms.

  There was always paper in his own pockets.

  He picked up the blood-smeared sword and slashed his own arm, using his own welling blood and the nail of his forefinger to scratch out the words “Protect Evred.”

  The sounds came nearer. Quick, quick.

  He jumbled the paper together and thrust it into the locket he always wore, twin to the one Jened Sindan always wore. He completed the spell as the door slammed open.

  In Ala Larkadhe Captain Sindan was finishing his personal drill with the arms master in the barracks. He felt the magic summons and brought the sword bout to a close. Still in work shirt and breeches, he stepped outside, ignoring the cold, where he retrieved the locket and pulled out the paper.

  He stared down in shock at the sticky, reddish smears until he made out the two words scratched so awkwardly: “Protect Evred.”

  It was then that a young page appeared. “Captain Sindan! Messengers from the Jarl of Yvana-Vayir. They insist on seeing Evred-Varlaef.”

  The message transfer was immediate, but no one else in the kingdom save Ndara-Harandviar had access to magic transferred messages. Any message from Yvana-Vayir, therefore, had to have been dispatched weeks ago. Logic denied any connection between this blood-smeared exhortation and the unexpected arrivals, but instinct brought Sindan upstairs at a run, the king’s message still in his hand.

  He reached the archive as a young Runner-in-training stopped outside the great carved doors, saying cheerfully to four men in Yvana-Vayir colors, “Well, since he’s not at mess or drill or his rooms he’s got to be in there reading. You can knock, and if he doesn’t come out, you can give your message to Nightingale, his Runner, who’s down at drill—”

  Sindan lifted his hand and the youth backed away. Sindan moved to the archive doors and set his back to them. “I am Sindan,” he said, knowing the Yvana-Vayir armsmen would recognize his name, if not his face. “You can give your message to me.”

  The four looked at one another, and their spokesman said, “It’s a personal message. From our lord.”

  “About treachery,” added another, licking his lips.

  Eyes, hands, manner, suggested anticipation of violence. “He cannot be disturbed,” Jened Sindan stated, crushing the bloody paper in his fist.

  “Let us knock, and he can tell us himself, king’s Runner, ” said the spokesman, who was thinking, The king must be dead by now.

  “No,” Sindan said, and tucked the paper into a pocket.

  Four swords were drawn; Sindan already held his.

  “Get out of the way,” warned one, who felt uneasy at four men in their prime facing a single old fellow of near seventy—though one with a hero’s reputation.

  “No,” Sindan said again. He gripped his sword in one hand; in a swift move he grabbed a boot knife with the other and
settled into a defensive stance.

  The four exchanged a look and charged.

  The young Runner felt at his sash. No knife, not for boys on inside castle duty. He ran for help.

  In the royal city, there was a quick tap at the queen’s door.

  Hadand motioned to her women on guard, and one called for identification. Hearing a woman’s voice outside, Hadand said, “Let her enter.”

  One of the queen’s night maids slipped in, her face twisted in terror. She ran past Hadand and flung herself down at the arm of the queen’s chair, her skirts billowing around her, and whispered.

  “Dead?” The queen started up. “My son is dead?”

  She pushed past her women, all crowding around her now, their voices shrill as they asked questions no one answered. The queen stalked to her bedroom and shut herself in.

  Her women stood outside, stricken, fearful, incapacitated by the sound of sobs, a sound the older ones had not heard since their first days in this place.

  The Sierlaef, dead?

  It’s a conspiracy, Hadand thought, and because there were no orders from Ndara-Harandviar, who would herself have come first to the queen, Hadand had to push aside questions—disbelief—and take action.

  She motioned for the inside guards to remain at the ready, then slipped out, signed for the hall guards to follow, and ran for the throne room. If indeed a conspiracy had turned into action, surely someone would end up there.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  EVRED dashed through the jumble of cottages to the harbormaster’s newly finished building at the high end of the street. Those who recognized him stopped in their tasks.

  “Prince Evred?” the harbormaster’s chief scribe asked, afraid at the intensity in the prince’s face—hectic flush, tight mouth, wide stare—when he’d always seemed so calm and remote.

  “The captain of that black ship out there. Where is he?”

  The scribe hesitated, unwilling to be the one to speak, and turned to his colleagues. Most shrugged, many of them in honest ignorance.

  The scribe wondered if the prince’s sudden appearance had anything to do with his conversation with that Guild Fleet fellow this morning—so easy to talk to, that fellow had been, so interested; the scribe had spent the day since anxious that he’d said too much, especially after the fellow vanished without talking to the harbormaster at all. “I do not know anything except that the harbormaster went to a private interview.” I won’t say too much now, he thought.

  But the chart mistress, an older woman, glanced up from her desk, brushing back a strand of gray hair. “At the guild mistress’, wasn’t it?” she asked, looking vaguely around the room. “Were they not handling those affairs there?”

  Evred flung a “Thank you,” over his shoulder and ran out. He dashed back up the hill, dodging people, horses, wagons, dogs, chickens, and mittened children.

  He was fairly certain the guild mistress lived in the jumble of half-built houses beyond the new inn with the nautical sign; if not, Evred at least knew where Inda’s boat was tied up. He’d go to the dock and wait there—all day, if need be.

  He’d reached the archway where he’d first glimpsed Inda, and was looking about for the inn with the sailor painted on it when a hand gripped his shoulder. He started violently and whipped around, a knife in his hand. A passing woman gasped and dropped her roll of cloth; a tradesman backed away hastily, almost falling under the wheels of a cart.

  But Evred did not see them. He glared at Vedrid, whose gaze flicked from the knife to the fury in the prince’s face. He backed up a step and saluted. “Evred-Varlaef. You must come at once.”

  Evred looked around, his mind floundering to find sense in the sudden whirlwind of sensation. “What?”

  Vedrid opened his hand toward Nightingale, who stood with three sweaty horses, looking pale and wide-eyed. “I was at the perimeter on watch, as you ordered, and saw him riding at the gallop,” Vedrid said in Marlovan, aware of the staring harbor folk.

  Nightingale spoke in a quick, low voice. “After you left, Captain Sindan was attacked.”

  “By—”

  A quick look. “Yellow and blue livery. He’s—” Nightingale shut his mouth and shook his head, unwilling to say the word dying, but they saw it in his manner.

  Evred closed his eyes. War, need. Duty. First the sound, then the sense. He had missed his chance—his single chance. The self-hatred caused by this inescapable realization was so intense it was physical. I let him go.

  There would be no justice yet again, and this time because he was the fool who had lost Inda.

  But he was a fool with duty before him: he would simply have to find another time, another way. He opened his eyes and became aware of curious eyes surrounding him. Including a pair of his own guards veering from sentry patrol, surprised and dismayed to find him there in Runner blue.

  “Surprise inspection,” he said. “Carry on.” And to Nightingale and Vedrid, “Let us depart at once.”

  The king knelt by the side of his dead son, unaware of the time that had passed, until a riding of men wearing Yvana-Vayir yellow and blue slammed the door open and dashed in, spreading out, swords and knives in hand. They clattered to a stop, staring at the king, at the dead heir, and one another, their purposeful movements now uncertain. The man before them was unarmed, and unhated; he was the same king they had seen at a distance a month ago, taking the yearly sworn oath of their own Jarl.

  Though they’d cut down the king’s personal Runners in his chambers, this was the king. No one wanted to be the first to strike.

  Tlennen-Harvaldar got slowly to his feet, his hands empty, and met each pair of eyes.

  “Our Jarl ordered us here, Tlennen-Harvaldar,” said the Yvana-Vayir riding captain, who had the most ambition.

  The king said, softly, “Are you forsworn?”

  Looks, uneasy stances, and then another said, his gaze midway between the king and his captain, “Not to our Jarl.”

  From the doorway came Mad Gallop’s voice, “Kill him!”

  Yvana-Vayir’s men stepped forward, but no one raised a weapon. Mad Gallop bawled, “Anderle, my son!”

  Hawkeye joined him, grimacing at the name he hated. Tlennen-Harvaldar looked old, his gray hair disheveled, a golden locket hanging against his robes. Old, and he was the king.

  The Jarl’s gaze moved back and forth. “You ignored your brother’s treachery, Tlennen,” he said, every word loud, as if loudness made it more true. “You always protected him. Even when he was wrong. That’s the weakness of family sentiment. The times demand strength. Strength of will. Starting here.”

  Tlennen shook his head slightly. “If you take the crown, Yvana-Vayir, I hope you are wise enough to see before I did that its weight warps will. And strength. And vision. So that what seems right can be the wrong decision, and you are left forever making amends—or compounding your errors.”

  “Hear that?” Mad Gallop demanded, glaring at his hesitant men. “Hear him admit he’s wrong? In a king, is that not treason against our forefathers?” And when the king said nothing, the Jarl turned to his heir. “Execute justice, Anderle,” his father ordered. “Kill him!”

  Hawkeye gripped his sword, looking past his father to the king, whose face was still wet with tears of grief, and he shook his head. “He did not betray us.”

  “I will have you, king!” Mad Gallop shouted, drops of spittle dotting Hawkeye’s grimy coat.

  “No,” Hawkeye said again. “He’s the king. It was the Sierlaef who—” He stopped at a familiar sound from outside.

  War horns reverberated, echo after echo.

  A shout came from somewhere below: “Algara-Vayir green!”

  Mad Gallop bellowed in rage; Hawkeye stared at the king, at his father, at the men, recognizing his own reluctance in them. They were waiting for him to act.

  So either he disobeyed his father, or he committed a far greater wrong and obeyed him by killing the king.

  Nothing he could do here was rig
ht—except getting help.

  So he turned his back on them all and ran.

  He didn’t get far. On the first landing he nearly ran down Buck Marlo-Vayir and hound-faced Noddy Toraca, who had been brought by Cama. They had been racing up the stairs as fast as he’d been descending. Hawkeye stumbled to a stop.

  Before anyone could speak, Cama and Cherry-Stripe clattered down the hallway, having come up the main staircase. Cherry-Stripe had his sword in hand.

  Noddy said, “Hawkeye’s in it?”

  Cherry-Stripe pointed his sword. “You attacked the king?”

  Hawkeye, sick almost to the point of dizziness, shook his head. “No. It’s my father’s plot. Look, he’s got the king in the Sierlaef’s rooms right now. The Sierlaef’s already dead. I think the Harskialdna might be, too, or he’d be here. My father sent an entire riding after him. I swear—on my honor—I did not know what he meant to do.” His voice broke at the end. “I can’t stop him—he ordered me to . . . I don’t know what to do.”

  They stood there, questions in all their faces as Hawkeye struggled to command his emotions.

  Buck jabbed his sword toward Cama and Noddy, who had arrived from the north moments after the big cavalcade, having ridden in their muddy trail most of the way. “You didn’t go north?”

  Cama said briefly, “Noddy sent Runners. Faster—they know their trails. We thought we might be needed here.”

  Buck turned to Hawkeye, then looked away from the tears in his old academy mate’s eyes. He hefted his sword. “To the king.”

  He and his brother ran upstairs, followed by their own Runners. Cama remained, his one good eye narrowed in cold anger, Noddy next to him. Both with swords drawn and ready.

  Hawkeye cast down the weapon he realized was still gripped in his hand. “It’s my father’s plot. Not mine.” He squeezed his eyes shut, wrenched by guilt and remorse. I never should have told him.

  Noddy sighed, leaning on his sword. It seemed it was his job to guard Hawkeye, though no one was giving orders. “Truth is, I don’t know what to believe. Rousted out of bed by Cama here the very morning I get home from Convocation, my own Runners sent at the gallop—not even a change of clothes—northward to Sponge, us riding day and night. Blood all down the hall that way.” He jerked a thumb up and backward, his long, jowly face wry. “Has the world gone mad?”