Chapter 8
Durand’s friends did not arrive within the week. Marcus supposed the rains were to blame; they came swift and heavy to the heart of Elessia, just as they did every year. The city’s gutters overflowed, flooding the streets with water so fetid that even high above in his chambers, Marcus’s eyes watered from the stench. He could scarcely imagine the countryside. There, the roads would be impassible with knee-deep mud. No wonder the mysterious visitors were delayed.
The mud prevented any chance of taking the commander up on his offer. The state of affairs taxed Marcus’s nerves endlessly. He couldn’t stand it—being so close to having the answers, so close to knowing the terrible secrets his mother had kept from him.
His temper had always been his worst enemy. He couldn’t help himself; he lashed out.
Jacquelyn bore the brunt of it.
Lately, she had been trying to acquire an interest in reading. She pored over the books in his library—Lyrian and Northern mythology, histories, apologies, epics. She especially loved poetry, so much that she read him segments she thought were cute or romantic before they went to bed.
Three nights after Horace Smithson had unveiled the firelance, she made an innocent mistake: she spilled a glass of water on his desk. The water soaked not only the poetry book she had left open, but also the Meditations of Cleites—a thin booklet of verses that Marcus’s grandfather had given him for his birthday.
Annoyed, Marcus left it on the balcony to air out. Jacquelyn apologized over and over—so many times that he snapped, “Stop it. Just stop talking.” Sitting on the bed, she shrank back, chastened.
For reasons he couldn’t quite understand himself, he was seething. The book hadn’t even been that dear to him. His grandfather had died when he was four years old; the old man was only a few brief flashes in his memory. But seeing Jacquelyn roll over without a fight only amplified his anger. He wanted her to fight back, and he couldn’t explain to himself why.
He undressed, aggravated, and joined the girl on his bed. She tried to meet his eyes without success. He yanked the covers over himself and turned away.
An hour went by. His anger fermented, keeping him awake against his will. He could sense she wasn’t sleeping either.
“Marcus?” Her fingertips brushed his elbow. He pulled it away—but she didn’t take the hint. “Are you angry at me?” she asked in a small voice.
He didn’t answer.
“Please don’t be angry… I said I was sorry.” She waited in vain for his reply. “I just wanted to make love and cuddle and go to sleep. I don’t know why you’re still angry.”
Neither did he, and not knowing only made him angrier. “You’re annoying me.” The words only just escaped him, but once they did, he couldn’t stop. He shifted onto his other side, facing her now. “You think I don’t like spending a night alone every once in a while? Well I can’t. You’re always here. The least you could let me do is sleep a fucking wink. How’s that sound? Leaving me alone?”
She sat up. She wiped her eyes, fighting down a sob. “You want me to go?”
Marcus lay back, rubbing his brows. “Elessa…”
Jacquelyn sniffled. She would be in tears soon if he didn’t say anything.
He glared. By now, the fury was running on sheer principle. Hatred coursed through him like lethal poison. He wanted to find Jaspar and pummel him into red paste. He wanted to bellow into Kaelyn’s face until she wept. As for Jacquelyn—he didn’t know anymore. He just wanted to be angry at her, and still, he had no clue why.
He got out of bed, strode across the room, and dunked his head in the wash basin. It was tinged brown, and the salt of their cleansed sweat clung to his lips. The mildly-rank water seeped into his upended nostrils, and it hurt—but it was good.
He pulled his head out of the water, gasping and coughing. Through his drenched eyes, he saw Jacquelyn looking at him, all hurt and confused. He pressed the water out of his hair and went over.
She flinched as he sat beside her.
He stared at the floor. “I’m—” He came that close to saying it, but he stopped just short. “Just… just hit me when I get like that.”
It was quiet for a moment, then, “Marcus.” Just as he turned his head, she slapped him hard across the face. “Oh God! Oh God I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard!”
But he was laughing. He ignored her apologies and pulled her up against him. That felt good, too. He was himself again. “It’s fine. Just don’t wear it out.”
“I won’t.” There was a smile in her voice.
They did make love that night—well, he supposed they were making love, but that was just a polite name for what they did. He’d always heard it was the best after making up with a girl. There was certainly truth to that bit of men’s wisdom, as he found out over the next half hour or so.
The fight ended, the night passed, and still, the visitors did not arrive. Marcus waited. He did his best to be patient, and when that became too difficult, he retreated to the practice fields and fought to exhaustion. Jacquelyn knew the warning signs now; she didn’t follow him there. She gave him a night of solitude, just as his malicious self had demanded, before going back to the usual routine. One night they went out to a salon with Vernon and drank until they couldn’t speak straight anymore, and deeply regretted the decision the next morning, but went out again anyway that same night.
A week passed. Then, just as Marcus was starting to get comfortable, the visitors arrived.
“Tiffanie de Fonte, of all girls!”
“Tiffanie, eh?”
“Aye, Tiffanie! I’ll never know how he got her, the bugger,” Vernon said wistfully. “But I’m telling you, Talbot isn’t ready for that girl. Doesn’t have the bloody heart. Hell, girl like that, she’ll knock him over and keep right on walking.”
Marcus shrugged. “I reckon he’ll do fine. It’s confidence, is all.”
“Aye, that’s what I’m getting at! He doesn’t think highly enough of himself to keep that girl interested. Where’s the confidence supposed come from?”
“From experience. You want me to start listing all the girls who put you down, back before you learned how to win them properly? He’ll do fine. By the way,” he held up a hand, successfully intercepting Vernon’s next argument, “how’re things with Eliza?”
The passage came to an end, and the pair emerged into the Atrium. There was a crowd today; Marcus guessed the overcast skies had something to do with it.
“Shitty,” Vernon said dejectedly. “All of a sudden she’s got this idea into her head that she’s giving it up too easy. Least I think that’s the way it is. I’m getting all this nonsense like, ‘Can’t we go somewhere nice?’ or ‘I’m sore, maybe tomorrow.’ If she keeps up much longer, I swear, my fruits’ll turn to raisins.”
“When did all that start?”
“Yesterday!”
Marcus gave his friend a consoling pat on the shoulder. By then, he had noticed that the court-goers’ echoing conversation had a strange tone to it—more like a hiss than a drone, as if someone had just hit a beehive with a rock. The people around whispered to each other, sullen-faced. Their eyes were uniformly pointed in one direction: toward the main entry.
Vernon would have been blind not to notice, either. “Wonder what’s crammed up their asses this time,” he muttered.
Marcus lifted his hands. “Let’s find out.”
The crowd wasn’t as thick as the noise made it out to be, and the courtiers and courtesans parted with little urging. Marcus caught snippets of conversation as he passed.
“…no right at all…”
“…ought to send them away…”
“…inbred rats…”
Vernon smothered a laugh. “Bet you a trice the end-timers tried to preach on the steps again.”
Smirking, Marcus shook his hand. “More silver for me.”
The crowd thickened toward the far columns, so that the two young men had to push and pardon their way t
hrough. Nobles moved aside with indignant looks, gradually clearing the way until they were on the inside of the ring of spectators.
“I win,” Marcus said to himself—but the victory, like all the others he had recently won, was like salt on his tongue.
He hadn’t been sure who he expected Durand’s visitors to be. He had taken it for granted that they would be Elessian—and now, suddenly, he was forced to confront the error of that assumption.
“Kydonians.” Vernon all but spat the word, and truthfully, Marcus sympathized.
There were three in all, standing in an orderly row in front of the petitions desk. They wore long coats, open at the front to reveal loose-fitting tunics that dropped to their ankles, and fur-topped leather boots. They covered their hair with queer round caps, rimmed with thick cloth. They were a drab bunch; only the eldest of them wore any color at all, and that was deep red lining his coat. His younger companions—one about Marcus’s age, the other perhaps a decade older—wore the cheaper hues of brown and green.
Facing them from behind the desk, a thin clerk was explaining, “I’ve told you, sir, to obtain a petition, you must meet several requirements.” From his harried tone, this was not even close to the first time he had repeated himself. “First, you must be of noble birth, or have a letter of sponsorship from one of noble birth. Second, you must purchase a Writ of Audience from this desk, and fill it accordingly with your precise business, for which you are seeking an audience with Parliament. Third…”
The oldest of the Kydonians accepted the explanation impassively—which wasn’t exactly difficult; the man had a hard, expressionless face, with cold eyes to match.
The clerk was growing visibly nervous under his gaze. He stuttered over a few more requirements before finishing, “Have you accomplished any of these things?”
“No.” That one syllable alone was laden with the distinct rolling Kydonian accent, which grew more pronounced as the man went on, “Why must we do this?” Strange, how they turned w into v. “We ambassadors.”
“Representing whom?”
“Kydona,” he said very matter-of-factly. That got the spectators talking, while Marcus and Vernon raised their brows at each other.
Meanwhile, the clerk scrubbed his jaw in exasperation. “Sir, Kydona is an established province of Elessia. It has been for over fourteen years. Surely you know that.”
The Kydonian’s perpetual frown grew deeper still. “As you say.”
“Then you do not qualify as an ambassador. Perhaps you carry a grievance in the name of your local lord?”
“No.”
“Then you must obtain a noble sponsor. Until you do, I cannot legally grant you a petition. Good day, sir.”
The self-named ambassador started to say something else, but the clerk motioned for a guard. One promptly appeared and guided the Kydonian off with a gentle but firm hand—emphasizing the firm part with a hand on his sword’s pommel. Scowling, the Kydonian allowed himself to be led away. His companions cast angry looks back at the petitions desk as they followed, but the clerk was already preparing to receive his next victim.
In matters of bureaucracy, one need not be foreign to get trampled over.
“Good riddance,” said more than one onlooker. Murmuring in satisfaction, the crowd dispersed, leaving Marcus and Vernon more or less to themselves.
“Hell,” Vernon said. He craned his neck at the entrance, though the Kydonians had disappeared between the columns. “I can’t remember the last time I saw an Ivan.”
“Me neither. I’d reckon before the war.”
“Aye. There were a lot more of them back then, too.”
Marcus nodded. He thought of the Battle of Slain Kings, where the tsar had so nearly broken the back of King Basil’s army—only for Prince Audric de Pilars to sweep in from behind and crush him. The poets sang of Phor’s pristine waters turned to crimson, spoiled by the rivers of Kydonian blood. Historians wrote that half a generation lay butchered on the lakeside, with the tsar among them. The ensuing campaign for their eastern homeland had been short but no less bloody, and it had seen the remnants of their army hunted down and slaughtered. Even now, chevaliers returning from the province claimed that there was not a man over twenty to be found.
Well, Marcus thought wryly, they’d missed one. “Right then,” he said, shrugging the thought away, “where was it we were going?”
“Swimming with the girls. Shit on that, though, you see that sky?”
“Aye,” he grinned, “you’ll have to find some other way to get my clothes off.”
“Oh, I’ve got my ways, don’t you worry.”
They spent the rest of the morning playing dringuets, a sort of combination of dice and checkers. Marcus had little talent for it; he quickly lost his winnings from the bet, then two whole silvers more. Vernon won so consistently that he quickly figured out how his best mate always seemed to have a surplus of coin. Luckily, Jacquelyn turned up after an hour or so, with Eliza in tow.
Once their men-at-arms had departed, Eliza asked, “Who were those men standing outside? The queerly-dressed ones?”
Vernon eagerly recounted the story. Afterward, Marcus followed with a question of his own. “What were they doing, exactly?”
“They were just standing there,” Jacquelyn said. Indeed they were, as Marcus discovered on their way out. The Kydonians were shoulder-to-shoulder off to one side at the bottom of the grand steps—the limit to which the palace guards could force them. By their braced legs and the grim set of their faces, they were expecting a long wait.
Marcus snorted at the observation. They could stay there until the Aspects returned, for all he cared. Whatever Durand said, he had no need for friends like them.
He chatted with the others as they walked past the Kydonians, pure indifference. There were more pressing matters to attend to—like which salon would entertain them at such short notice.
As it turned out, there were plenty of salons available, all filled with young nobles and pliant courtesans, and all more than capable of keeping them occupied. The rest of the day was a never-ending scene of drunken debauchery. Night fell, and the four of them procured a carriage for the ride back to the palace. Though he was seeing two of everything, Marcus was pleased to notice that self-proclaimed ambassadors had vanished. Later on, safe in his chambers with his friends, he gave a hearty toast to the foreigners for disappearing so conveniently.
But the next morning, they were right back at the bottom of the palace steps, waiting with infuriating patience. They were there the next day as well—then the next, and the next after that. The three men stood there with sobriety that would have made even the old Stoic philosophers envious. They disdained all food and drink, at least during the day when Marcus saw them. Likely, they gorged themselves at the inn where they were staying—but still, he had to respect their stubborn fortitude.
Unfortunately for the Kydonians, he was their only admirer, and an unwilling one at that. The constables harassed them from time to time—often at the height of the day, when the heat was at its worst and the men’s tempers were more likely to slip—just hoping for an excuse to arrest them. Children incorporated them into their games; they skipped around them, jabbering and jeering, pausing only to throw bits of pigeon dung at them. But for the most part, passersby simply ignored the men.
Nine days passed. In that time, Marcus had not once admitted that he had even noticed the Kydonians—but he saw how Jacquelyn bit her lip whenever they passed them. So when she at last broke, it was a small surprise.
“I feel so bad for them,” she said quietly as she picked at her dinner.
By contrast, Marcus was all but annihilating his. “You have to at least try the lamb,” he insisted, his voice muffled by a fresh mouthful. Martha had cooked it to perfection; she’d added some kind of lemon and caper sauce that sent shivers down his spine with each new bite. “If you don’t eat it, I swear, I’ll do it for you.”
Frowning, Jacquelyn pushed her plate across t
he table to him. She watched him spear her cutlet and dump it on his plate. “Can you please just talk to them, Marcus?”
“Talk to who?”
“The Kydonians.”
He swallowed hard, annoyance settling in. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” she dallied.
“Come on, just say it,” he sneered. “Give me a good reason to put them out of their misery, and I just might do it.”
“Well I mean, they must have something important to say, don’t they? They’ve been outside all day every day for more than a week!”
“Some courtesans have two-year waiting lists,” Marcus pointed out.
“I know but—”
“What’s more, whatever they have to say, it might seem a lot more important to them than Parliament. Maybe they want some kind of trade agreement. They look like they could use some spare coin. Might not be a waste of their time, but it’d be a waste of everyone else’s.”
“But—”
“And what gives them the right to call themselves ambassadors? Who do they even represent? Ambassadors don’t speak for nations, they speak for rulers. That means we should be hearing from a provincial lord, not a pack of disgruntled peasants.”
“Will you please be quiet and listen to me?” Jacquelyn snapped. That put Marcus into an amused silence. She’d grown some bones since their fight. “They might be nobodies or frauds or whatever, but there’s still a chance they have something important to say. Maybe they are representing someone. It just seems stupid to just… dismiss them. You should at least find out what they’re about.”
Marcus took another bite of lamb. He chewed thoughtfully. “That’s a valid point,” he admitted. Jacquelyn looked delighted, but her face fell when he observed, “But you already said you feel sorry for them.”
“I do.” She rubbed her arm. “I just hate seeing everyone treating them so badly.”
“You do realize these are Kydonians you’re pitying, don’t you? These are the people who took a simple dispute over borders and trade rights, and turned it into a full-scale war. They rode across the border, they burned three villages to the ground, slaughtered everyone who lived there, and from what we found out, they basically did it just for spite.”
“I know what happened,” she said, but there was no fight in her voice.
His voice calmed. Soothingly, he said, “Look, Jacquelyn. I’m not yelling at you. I’m just trying to tell you, there’s a reason those men aren’t allowed to speak to Parliament. They sacrificed their right to be their own nation when they murdered their way into Elessia. We decide what’s best for them now. They’re better off for it, and so are we. And someday, we won’t even think of them as Kydonian. They’ll be Elessians like us.”
She nodded but at the same time murmured, “That’ll take a long time.”
†††
These days, they called it Old Granite. Marcus often wondered when the city folk had deigned to name the tree—certainly not when it was a sapling, nor when it was four heads tall, one granite oak among a thousand. Regardless, the tree was enormous now. Its great leafy canopy was wider than the already-large hill that it sat on, and had it grown just three miles eastward, Marcus had no doubt its trunk would dwarf any of the battlement towers—in both height and breadth.
As the legend went, Ancel himself had rested beneath this very tree, taking shelter from the scorching sun. Once the heat passed, he repaid the still-young oak’s kindness with a drink from his hip flask. It had flourished ever since.
Eight hundred years later, Old Granite was playing host to a horde of Ancellonians—here not for shade or shelter, but spectacle. The gentle hills around the tree were dotted with people, hundreds of them, of all walks of life. All eyes were pointed skyward.
Marcus shielded his eyes on instinct as he looked up at the sun, but there was no need. Just two hours from setting, the semi-bright orb was a warm yellow as it hovered over Old Granite’s leafy top. “Look at that,” he told the others, pointing. “There’s a bite on the top right.” There it was—the moon, just starting to slowly edge into the sun’s way.
“That’s bloody amazing, mate, now where’d you put the flask?”
“It is amazing!” Jacquelyn said as Marcus passed the flask over—not before taking his own swig, naturally. “I’ve never seen one of these before!”
Lord Smelding grinned maniacally at her. “Indeed, young lady, it is quite the sight! Frightening to some, perhaps—yes, in ancient times, events such as this caused much strife, for they have long been considered bad omens. But we live in an enlightened age, and now we can appreciate this for what it is: a natural occurrence, completely explainable, and quite easy to predict! You see…”
Jacquelyn gave Marcus a pleading look but he just grinned back. Watching Lord Smelding melt people’s minds with his intellectual talk was always entertaining, so long as you didn’t get trapped yourself. Still smirking, he turned away and left the girl to her fate.
Vernon saw. “Rotten bastard,” he snickered. He swigged the flask and offered it.
Marcus took it. He poured a little on the ground, a tribute to Old Granite, and took a hearty gulp himself. “I’m hoping he talks the wind out of himself. Should make my request go more smoothly.”
“Which request is that?” Vernon asked politely, though the sun held his true attention. By now, it looked like a fruit with a bite out of it.
“Don’t worry about it.” He’d forgotten his best mate had no hand in the firelance. Horace Smithson had already written twice, informing him that his black powder was not as dependable as he had thought. Without further research, anyone unfortunate enough to wield a firelance more likely to obliterate himself rather than the enemy. The solution to the smith’s quandary seemed obvious; Marcus imagined Lord Smelding would jump at the opportunity to explore this new brand of peril.
He resolved to ask later. First was first, though: a solar eclipse was a rare event. Bit by bit, the black disc that was the moon worked its way in front of the sun. Though it was still mid-afternoon, the day grew noticeably darker. The spectators fell silent as they watched, mouths agape despite themselves. Even Smelding trailed off.
The sun shrunk into a golden sickle, its brightness fading with each passing second as it waned to a mere sliver. An awe-struck cry rose from every mouth on the hill as the eclipse reached its height. It was a frightening sight, almost—the mighty sun reduced to a ring of bright light, rimming a circle of utter blackness. The sky, fixed by indecision, was a color somewhere between dusk and night.
Jacquelyn took advantage of the darkness by sneaking a kiss onto Marcus’s cheek. He kissed hers back. “What do you think?”
“It’s pretty,” she smiled as the hills rang with spontaneous applause.
Then, all at once, the cheering and applause stopped. A collective gasp took their place. Suddenly, the eclipsed sun was not alone in the sky. The darkness revealed a spear of piercing light, streaking gracefully across the heavens. Marcus had just enough time to mark its faint red hue before it was joined by another, then another, until dozens of crimson stars were tumbling from the sky. He had seen star showers before—but this was far different. Never had he seen so many falling stars in one moment, never had they travelled so uniformly in the same direction, and never had they been a color quite like this—red, like droplets of blood falling in front of a black drape.
“Lord Smelding? What is this?”
Smelding licked his lips. “I… I am afraid I do not know, dear boy.” Which was a first.
The people on the hills were crying out again, pointing at the new spectacle in the sky. “A sign!” someone was yelling. “A sign from God!”
Of that, Marcus was not sure—but then, something that had even Lord Smelding lost for words was something very new. He watched the red spears plunge down, down…
As the first of them reached the horizon, Marcus’s eyes narrowed.
The eclipse was suddenly past its height. The sun slo
wly broke the moon’s grasp, and the ring of sunlight became a crescent once again. The sky began to brighten—gradually, but just enough to overpower the mysterious lights, banishing them into nonexistence once again. The people around began to chatter, astonished by what they had just seen.
Noticing Marcus’s troubled expression, Jacquelyn asked, “Marcus? What’s wrong?”
He cast a look upward again, but the spears of light were long gone. “They were moving to the east,” he said. “The eastern horizon. That’s where they fell.”
She frowned. “Oh.”
Jacquelyn didn’t seem to think much of the event, but as for Marcus, that feeling of foreboding was weighing heavy in his stomach. He had never been one for superstition, but those falling stars had been something extraordinary. He couldn’t fight the feeling that he had seen them for a reason—as if they had been put in the sky for him to see, to draw his sight eastward—toward Kydona.
He thought of Mirela, the void, and the cackling of demons.
A sign from God indeed.
He scowled and muttered up at the heavens, “Fine, you win.”
†††
“Watch where you’re going,” a man growled as he pushed past. That was all Marcus had been hearing since he got here, even though most of the time he wasn’t even moving. But the city was like that; act mean, or get walked over.
Marcus opted for the first. His sword marked him as a noble, because under the new laws, commoners were prohibited from carrying any blade longer than a dagger. Normally that would have made him a prime target for thieves and thugs, but his calm, “don’t-trifle-with-me” expression blended him back into the crowd.
Truth be told, he still disliked these parts of the city—the constant bustle, the baying mob, the all-pervading stink of sewage and body odor. But other nobles never ventured this far into the mires, which made it an ideal location for this rendezvous.
Gail hocked some phlegm onto the cobbles with a wet squelch. “Almost noon,” he observed with a glance at the sky. He paused to give a passerby a baleful glare, clearly daring him to take one step closer. Instead, the man crossed the street and tripped over the gutter on his way. “They ought to be here shortly,” the man-at-arms said with satisfaction.
“Ought to. If Kydonians tell time like we do.”
“They do,” Gail said. “Only thing different is the seasons.”
“How so?”
“Summer’s terrible. Winter’s worse. And they’re both far longer than they’ve a right to be. I hope you never have to go east of the Utmar Mountains, your highness.”
Marcus nodded his understanding. He’d heard enough stories about Kydonian weather that he wondered that anyone could bear to live there. That was a question he would ask the so-called ambassadors—if they ever showed up.
For many minutes more, the pair of them stood on the street corner, braving the ever-shifting mass of commoners. Chaos surrounded Marcus. He watched an oxcart push haltingly through the throng, the driver bellowing curses between lashes of his whip. A young girl weaved gracefully between passersby with a clay jar balanced on her head. Farther down the street, a pair of cheap prostitutes lewdly displayed their charms to passing men. A beggar approached Marcus, leering and holding out his hands for coin—but Gail shoved him off. “He would’ve used anything you gave him on ale,” he explained before Marcus thought to be offended. “See how he shook?”
Marcus kept looking around, his impatience growing. Did these damned foreigners have no courtesy?
Then he saw him—the youngest of the three Kydonians, steadily moving along with the crowd. He was alone. Presently, he caught sight of Marcus and made his way toward him.
Gail unfolded his arms and tucked his thumbs into his belt loops, so that his hands were closer to his blade.
“Easy,” placated Marcus.
At last, the young Kydonian stepped onto the curb. “Greetings, lord prince.” His voice was thickly accented, and just as strange were his features—slanted eyes, a touch of the exotic on a broad and otherwise plain face. It was a hardened face, unaccustomed to expression.
He snapped his heels together and bowed, slow and deep, until his head was practically below his knees. People were slowing down to stare, but the Kydonian straightened with great dignity—especially considering his age, which couldn’t be more than a year Marcus’s senior.
“Zdrastvuytye,” the prince said with a tip of his chin.
The fellow’s face remained passive but his blue eyes lit up. “You speak Kydonian,” he observed in his own language.
“Somewhat,” said Marcus, reverting back to Elessian. “I write it better than I speak it…” he briefly debated a title, “…excellent sir.”
“Evgeny Andreyev Pronin, your highness. My father regrets that he cannot attend you. He sends me in his place.” His grammar was good, but his pronunciation was odd. He stressed the wrong vowels and stumbled over a couple in the process—marks of having learned the language on paper.
Likely, he had noticed the same of Marcus’s feeble attempt at Kydonian.
“Your father.” Marcus assumed that would be the oldest man in the party, the one who had lost the argument with the clerk. “What business does he have that’s prevented him from seeing me? The crown prince?” Then he realized the rudeness of the question; it was more of an accusation, one that Evgeny could not comfortably address. He held up a palm. “Forgive my impoliteness. Walk with me. We’ll find a more appropriate place to talk.”
“As you wish.” Evgeny took his side, his hands folded in his voluminous coat sleeves. Gail took up the front—he knew the destination—and Kelly at the back. With the four of them in a diamond, people were more inclined to get out of the way. They passed, glowering suspiciously at Evgeny, an obvious foreigner—but he stared ahead with remarkable composure. Marcus began to wonder if Kydonians were capable of expression at all.
Half-hoping to coax one out, he asked, “Have you been to Ancellon before?”
“I have not, your highness.”
“How does it compare to Kamengrad? Or any city in Kydona?”
Evgeny’s eyes flickered upward at the slapdash tenements. “It is taller,” he said carefully. It was true, but the tallest buildings—sometimes four stories—were also the shoddiest. One tenement listed so badly that Marcus imagined it would collapse on top of them any instant. He looked down just in time to step over a pile of ox manure, mashed into the cobbles by hundreds of uncaring feet. As Evgeny did the same, he added, “Apart from this, your city and mine are much the same.”
Marcus nodded. “They all are, if you look in the right spots.”
“Da. But your wonders are many. Kydona’s are few. Your square of heroes is as a sea of white stone, and your palace—the servants there are clothed as kings, and the flowers in your gardens grow no matter the season.”
He thought to inform Evgeny that the white stone was hauled from the quarries sixty miles distant, that the servants were dressed so richly because the nobles would not suffer plainness, and that the flowers grew past season thanks to mirrors that amplified sunlight and torches that warmed them by evening—but that would just prove the Kydonian’s point. “Your country will know those wonders, one day.”
Evgeny hesitated for an instant too long—just enough for Marcus to know he had said something important. “One day, your highness.”
“Tell me, excellent sir: from where do you hail? You and your companions?”
“A place of no consequence,” the Kydonian said, his tone as mellow as his rough accent would allow. “I am of a very small dreryevnya—what you would call a village—in the north of my country. It was only when I and my father left that we learned it had a name.”
“Who named your dreryevnya if you didn’t?”
The young man’s eyes considered him with dour amusement. “Elessians, of course.”
By then, they had arrived at their destination: a little tavern, in no way distinct from the shabby buildings arou
nd. After a moment, he noticed Blaxley was there too, gloriously indescribable as he stood dutifully by the door. Noticing them, he started to work the lock, and when a twist of the knob didn’t persuade the door to open, a hard shoulder did. The veteran held it open with one hand, resting the other against the horn of his longbow as his colorless eyes darted over Evgeny.
Inside, Marcus’s eyes took time to adjust, but there wasn’t much to see—smoke-blackened walls, tables bleached by spilled liquor, circled by half-broken chairs. The smell of mold and stale beer offended his nose.
“Welcome to my study,” he told the Kydonian. He seated himself in a chair Kelly offered. The split-scalped veteran didn’t look at him; rather, he paid Evgeny a look of incredible disgust. Fortunately, Evgeny did not notice. Gail dropped two filled mugs on the table.
Evgeny took the other seat. He removed his cap as he did, revealing a mess of sweat-spiked blonde hair. But his face was as devoid of emotion as always. “Thank you.”
Gail grimaced a smile and retreated.
Marcus waited while Blaxley got a fire going. Before long, a yellow flame was dancing in the hearth, though it lacked heart, what with the shortage of breathable air. “Do you drink ale, excellent sir?”
Evgeny took an obliging sip. Swallowing, he said in a voice dripping with diplomacy, “I fear it is not much to my liking, your highness.”
The three men-at-arms echoed Marcus’s laughter, but he gave them a silencing look. He wanted the Kydonian intimidated into compliance, not menaced into reticence. The soldiers promptly went quiet. Thus freed, Marcus began, “Why do you imagine I’ve brought you here, excellent sir?”
Considering him for a moment, the Kydonian answered, “I am imagining you have taken me to this place for several reasons. From the presence of these guards, I come to understand that you do not trust me. From the location of this meeting, I come to understand that you desire privacy. From the tone you have taken, I come to understand that you believe me false. Thus, from all these things, I come to believe that you meet me unwillingly. You expect nothing to come of this talk.”
Marcus schooled his face to neutrality as he considered the young ambassador’s words. With the accent, his natural reaction had been to reckon the man an idiot. Now, it seemed he had come to grips with a man of formidable intelligence. And his candor carried a respectful tone that indicated he was well-accustomed to treating with his social betters. “It seems I’ve underestimated you,” he said. He steepled his fingers and smiled. “Very well, I’ll concede to you on all four counts. I must say, I’m beginning to understand why your father sent you alone.”
For the first time, Evgeny smiled—though it was a smile of poor quality. He inclined his head.
When he did, Marcus noticed something he hadn’t before: a red cut behind Evgeny’s temple, half-lost in his hairline. His cap had been covering it before. “What happened there?” he asked sternly.
Frowning—that expression came much more easily than a smile—he pressed at the cut. He checked his fingers for blood, of which there was none. “A trifling matter,” he assured.
“Not by that bruise, it isn’t. Who hit you?”
Evgeny shrugged. “It was on the street. He was a noble. A tall lad, very broad of shoulder. He confronted us as we returned to our inn. It was last night,” he added.
Marcus’s brows knit. “Broad of shoulder. Did he have blonde hair?”
“Blonde?”
“Yellow,” he clarified. “Blue eyes. Big front teeth, like a rabbit.”
“He is as you describe,” admitted Evgeny.
Marcus scrubbed his jaw, then his hair. He was furious at Jaspar’s nerve. He was a coward, fighting someone he knew couldn’t fight back. “I’ll be having words with him over this, excellent sir. You’ll be compensated.”
“There is no need,” Evgeny reassured, though that cut seemed nastier every time Marcus looked at it. “It is a matter of little consequence. But your highness, there is another boon you may grant me in its stead.”
“Parliament.”
“Parliament, da.”
The chair teetered dangerously as Marcus settled back into it. He drank from his mug and winced. “You were right, this ale really isn’t very good. Now.” He set the mug back on the table. “You’re obviously a man of sharp wit, Evgeny. May I call you that?”
“As you wish, your highness. If I may say so, I prefer that you call me thus.”
Marcus chuckled. “Alright, Evgeny. Being sharp as you are, you must know that I’m not a popular man these days.” Evgeny nodded blandly. “So you’ll understand my skepticism. Why would I hurt my standing still more by acting as your sponsor? What do you have to tell me that would possibly be worth that price?”
“Your highness, by refusing us, the price would be higher still.”
Marcus’s smirk wilted into a scowl. “That sounds suspiciously like a threat.”
“No. Our presence in your capital is a gesture of good will, your highness. We wish only peace between your country and ours.”
“There is peace,” Marcus objected. “There has been for a long time now.”
Evgeny shook his head, his face even grimmer than usual. “No,” he repeated, vehemently.
“What makes you say that?”
The Kydonian’s jaw twitched. “You say there is peace. Yet as we rode through our country to yours, the only Elessians we saw were soldiers. There were many of them.”
“Keeping the peace,” Marcus pressed. “You would know better than any how many lives each uprising has cost.”
“I know this. I know also that when the barbars ride out of the north, they burn our villages, murder our men, steal our women and our children. Your soldiers do nothing.”
“Why do you think we waged a campaign against the Glats this past year? We lost many good men there, Evgeny, and they died to protect our soil. Our soil.”
“It is not enough,” said Evgeny, with firmness.
Marcus sat forward. “On whose behalf are you here?” he demanded.
“Kydona’s.”
“No, whose?”
Evgeny stared at him, his face passive but his blue eyes afire.
When it was obvious he wouldn’t answer, Marcus sighed and slumped back again. “You aren’t making this easy for me, are you?” He didn’t reply to that, either. “Alright. If you won’t tell me who sent you here, tell me this: what do you aim to accomplish by speaking to Parliament?”
“Terms.” By the finality of his tone, Evgeny was unwilling to say much else.
But Marcus twirled his wrist, demanding more.
“My father alone knows the terms.”
“And he sent you to talk to me,” Marcus said slowly, his voice colored by doubt, “the son of the king, without telling you the exact purpose of your… visit?”
“Da.”
Again, he ran his fingers through his hair.
“This is angering,” Evgeny conceded. “Perhaps, though, I have impressed upon you the importance of our task. We must speak to Parliament, your highness.”
“I need to know the terms.”
“I can say no more.”
For the next half hour, Marcus plied the young ambassador with questions, but it was quickly obvious that even if Evgeny knew his father’s precise business, he was not going to divulge it. It seemed that even Kydonians—who could read Elessian but barely speak it—understood how little real power the crown prince commanded. He could speak with as much authority as he wanted, but he had no legal power to back it. All he could do was provide these ambassadors with the Pilars family seal. He was a means to an end, and both he and Evgeny knew it.
At last, he gave it up as hopeless. “Very well, Evgeny. It seems our business is coming to an end.”
“So it seems, your highness.” Once again, the Kydonian was pure impartiality. Had he not known better, Marcus would have sworn Evgeny didn’t even care if he had accomplished nothing. But he did know better. “You’re no fool. But I assure yo
u, neither am I.” He was holding something back, Marcus knew it, and he started to make it clear that he did. “I will consider what we’ve discussed, excellent sir,” he said at last, reverting to the earlier honorific. “If you decide you have more to disclose, send a dispatch and I will accommodate you.”
Evgeny was wise enough to know when he was dismissed. He stood. “Thank you for your time, your highness.” He donned his cap, obscuring the ugly cut once again, and saw himself out. It would be a long walk back to the palace for him, if only to spend the remainder of the day futilely standing at the bottom of the palace steps.
As for Marcus, he propped his legs up on the table. Some of Evgeny’s bad ale splashed out and started seeping toward his trouser leg, but Gail was there with a rag to intercept it.
“What do you reckon on that, your highness?”
Marcus sighed. “Not much. There’re more questions than answers, now.” In truth, he had learned only two things: that Kydona was bursting at the seams once again, and that whoever was pulling the strings this time, they didn’t think him important enough to treat with. It hurt his pride to think on that, but then he remembered the Blind Chamber where he performed his only real duty, and knew that the ambassadors were right.
Gail held up a pitcher. “Afraid it’s a bit warm.”
“Bit nasty.”
“Get you drunk, though.”
Sighing, Marcus signaled for another pour.