The Black Wolves

  He walked back to the balcony and stared for the longest time at the splendid view across the fields and orchards beyond the river. His shoulders were taut but at length they dropped, and he turned and came back in. “I must put the welfare of the Hundred above the life of one man.”

  “He is your kinsman!”

  “So are the other claimants my kinsmen. If I involve myself and your son does not succeed, then whichever prince becomes emperor will have an excuse to punish or annex the Hundred.”

  “With your help my son will not fail! His supporters in the empire cannot proclaim themselves if he has no army behind him.”

  “How do you think the barons and lords and generals of the empire will receive an army from the Hundred? I have a claim to the imperial throne, too, however distant it may be. The nobles may believe I am moving in on my own behalf.”

  She laughed. “No claimant from the scrap of land that is the Hundred could ever hope to conquer the empire.”

  “True enough, which is why I cannot embroil myself in the empire’s troubles. It is too risky.”

  His argument seemed prudent to Dannarah. Just as she opened her mouth to agree with him, Sadah spoke.

  “Has your wife Chorannah already chosen the claimant she intends you to support, Jehosh?”

  He looked away.

  “Chorannah?” Dannarah murmured. “That cow-witted girl?”

  “Cow-witted?” Sadah grasped the couch and pushed up to her feet, grunting with the effort. “Queen Chorannah has a better grasp of the situation than you do, Dannarah. She certainly knows more than you do.”

  Jehosh turned back. “I cannot help you, Aunt Sadah. My hands are tied.”

  “You are ruled by a woman!”

  “I am ruled by necessity.”

  Sadah gave him a scornful look, and this time he did not look away. “Do you mean to send me to my death by throwing me back into the empire? The red hounds will tear me limb from limb after they have forced me to watch my son die.”

  “You need not return to the empire. I am not ungenerous. Coin can be secretly delivered to you if you need it. But you and your son must leave the Hundred, Aunt Sadah, and make a new life in a foreign land. If my agents discover you are still here in a month’s time I will have no choice but to hand you over to the red hounds. I must protect the Hundred.”

  “The hells,” murmured Dannarah, but neither of them looked at her. They were engaged in their own struggle, Sadah stiff with desperation and Jehosh intransigent.

  Sadah reached under her shawl and wiped tears from her cheeks. “So you have spoken, King Jehosh. Or perhaps it is not you who have spoken. Perhaps you speak the words Chorannah has set on your tongue.”

  He said nothing.

  “Where do you mean to go?” asked Dannarah.

  Sadah waved her away. “You left my life years ago, Dannarah. Do not think I need you now.”

  Jehosh took a step toward her. “Aunt Sadah, what of my offer to aid you in making your way to a refuge in another land, far from here?”

  “I am not a beggar. I will depart as I arrived, without your help.”

  She walked to the secret door and opened it by a mechanism Dannarah could not see. Seen from behind she appeared only as cloth, a stranger concealed by the weight of the years they had lived apart. The gloomy stairwell swallowed her, the guardsman treading behind. The wall closed.

  “What does she mean about Chorannah? Are you ruled by her? What happened to the king’s daughter from Ithik Eldim you kidnapped? I always suspected you started the first Eldim war because of that girl. When you hear of four Sirniakan queens fighting over whose son will claim the Sirniakan throne, do you pause to ask yourself if your two queens also see themselves at odds over whose son will succeed you in the Hundred?”

  Jehosh gave her a hard, measuring look, then deliberately turned his back and walked out onto the balcony, now half in shadow as the sun sank toward the western horizon with its clouds and misty haze. He placed himself in a band of sun. Strands of white streaked his hair. Impossible to think of the boy she had seen take his first toddling steps become a man beginning the long descent into old age. When she had been his age she had felt old, yet he looked young to her now.

  “What news, Aunt Dannarah?” he asked without moving. “What brings you to visit me after so many years?”

  “So you mean not to answer my questions?”

  “I have questions of my own. Come see the sunset.”

  She walked out to him. Above she saw the Assizes Tower still painted with light, but the barred windows and a few broken tiles on the roof gave the lie to its bright promise: It was abandoned, for a demon’s coil lay at its heart, and demons, above all things in this land, must always be sealed away.

  “You have always been my favorite relative, Aunt Dannarah.”

  “Not your grandfather Anjihosh? Or your grandmother Zayrah?”

  He shrugged. “I barely remember him. And I found her rather boring, if you want to know the truth. I always knew it was my father she cared for most in all the world.”

  “And you wanted it to be you that people cared for most?”

  He clapped hands to his chest as if he’d been struck. “I’ve missed you, Aunt Dannarah. You and your little daggers of insinuation.”

  “Obviously you missed me so much you could never be bothered to request my presence at the palace. Or even visit me as you could easily do if you had bothered to travel about the Hundred visiting the assizes and meeting with local town councils as your father and grandfather did. Instead you keep running off to the north time and again at every chance of a skirmish to fight in.”

  “I’m a good leader.” He lifted his chin to give himself a noble profile, resembling the portrait of Jehosh the Triumphant in the audience hall.

  “A good leader at war. I am not so sure you have been a good leader in peace. Consider Sadah. A king who concerned himself intimately with the news from the empire might have heard of Emperor Faruchalihosh’s death before his sequestered aunt brought him the news.”

  “Are you rebuking me?” He seemed amused more than annoyed. They had fallen easily back into the teasing relationship they’d enjoyed when he was a lad.

  “I am merely remarking in the course of the conversation. You are wise to refuse to get involved in civil war in the empire. What will happen to Sadah now?”

  “I expect she and her attendants will go to the harbor, there to return to the vessel that brought them.”

  “Which is?”

  “No one is quite sure as her arrival was entirely unanticipated. Ulyar’s agents will track her when she leaves.”

  “And then what? Will you betray her for a price? Did you reject her plea because of some plot your meek little wife has in hand?”

  He snorted. “You labor under a misapprehension. Chorannah is not meek. Furthermore what she knows she assuredly does not confide in me. Surely you recall that Queen Janassah is Chorannah’s elder sister.”

  “I had forgotten, if you must know.”

  He braced himself on the railing, tapped restlessly with his fingers, then turned to regard her with a frown. “You are correct, Aunt Dannarah.”

  The unexpected comment made her laugh. “Not that I doubt you, but how do you mean?”

  “I have spent too much time in the north. I have allowed myself to be seduced away by border skirmishes and minor rebellions that my military governor in Ithik Eldim could easily have handled without my intervention. It’s just…”

  His sigh might have moved mountains to tears.

  “It’s just … what?” she prompted.

  “I feel more at home with the army out in the field than I ever have in the palace, among the officials and clerks. I like Ithik Eldim. I like winning, and we have won there time and time again.”

  “Maybe so, but consider how much of the Hundred’s coin you must have spent across three wars and twenty-two years with our forces acting as foreign military governors over a hostile population. H
as it been worth it?”

  “I suspect you have no idea how much money we gather through taxes, tithes, and licenses imposed on the people of Ithik Eldim at a higher rate than we impose here in the Hundred. Taxes collected at the main port alone, Gyre Port, finance our entire military administration there.”

  When she thought of Lord Vanas’s glossy confidence, it all made sense.

  “Ithik Eldim remains important to us,” Jehosh said, looking into the distance with the expression of a man who expects his garden of flowers to bloom all at once. “The north is meant to be my gift to Kasad, but Dia refuses to send Kasad there to become the military governor even though he is twenty-one, old enough to take on such a responsibility. She even refuses to go back herself no matter how many times I offer to accompany her. I think…”

  She waited out his silence, sensing the opening of a door long closed between them.

  He was not quite yet ready to confide his inner heart. With a shake of the head, like a horse shaking off flies, he turned to face her. “I have neglected the Hundred. Now I am home and I mean to stick here until I have visited every assizes court and town council in the land.” He had always had a sweet smile when he chose to use it. Age had not dampened its dry touch. “I will become what my father and you wished for me, Aunt. A more prudent and cautious man than in my youth. Which is why I am the most fortunate of men, having you here to consult.”

  He led her to the far end of the balcony, a wedge of planking like a dock thrust out over the air. Wind skirled around them, and she smiled into its heady currents as she leaned on the railing to look down upon the boats, as small as toys, passing on the river below.

  He stayed one step back, not as comfortable with the height. “Out here I am sure no one can overhear me.”

  “Thus causing immediate suspicion when you stand here with anyone.”

  “I bring every honored guest and supplicant to this place.”

  “The better to throw them over if they displease you?”

  “To be sure it’s been a tempting thought on more than one occasion, but then I think of what my father would have done and I stay my hand. Aunt Dannarah, I need your advice.”

  “My advice?” She laughed. “My advice is that you name me immediately as chief marshal, so I can undo the damage done under Auri’s mismanagement. You were a fool to remove me in the first place, just because you didn’t enjoy hearing the truths I told you.”

  “I would think the less of you if you did not scald me in this way. But alas, it is no joking matter.”

  “I never said it was!”

  “I need your help, Aunt Dannarah. I fear I am losing control of the palace.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Chorannah hated Dia from the moment I brought Dia to the palace twenty-two years ago.”

  “Were you that naive, Jehosh? Did you think Chorannah would be like your mother, Yevah, becoming best of friends with the lover your father kept close all those years? You are not your father to keep two women…”

  “Satisfied? I can keep more than two women satisfied!”

  “Do not try to impress me with your manful exploits. Men are never more tiresome than when they are boasting about sex. Your father kept both a wife and a lover happy because he treated them with equal respect and affection. That he was handsome did not hurt, I imagine.”

  “I am handsome!”

  “Yes, but you have to say so and he never did.”

  To her surprise he laughed.

  It was one of those moments that made her like him so much. She patted him on the elbow, even if it felt a little awkward, and when she rested the hand on his arm he accepted the touch. “Yet I can understand why you might have believed Chorannah would acquiesce quietly. She always seemed like such a mouse.”

  “A mouse with two sons. She fears I favor Dia’s son Kasad over Farihosh and Tavahosh.”

  “The woman you were required to marry and never loved compared with the woman you grabbed for yourself and adored? Why ever would she fear that?”

  “I so appreciate your sarcasm. It is true I made a few missteps that I now regret.”

  “Kidnapping Dia?”

  “Never that! But I might have handled it better when I brought her here. Mock Chorannah all you wish, for I know you never liked her. But she tried to poison Dia and her children.”

  The shock of such an accusation was like having her tongue bitten out for hypocrisy.

  She groped for words. “Have you proof?”

  “Nothing I can use. Dia lives most of the year at her estate in the country. I had to build a lower palace, down in the city, to house her when she comes to court to keep the two queens apart. Chorannah controls the upper palace entirely, except for this paltry set of chambers and my garden.”

  “Why does Queen Dia come to court at all? If her son Kasad is third-born of your sons, and she the junior queen, she can’t believe he is likely to inherit.”

  “Dia is not a mouse.”

  “But Farihosh is your heir, is he not? I met him on the road just a few days ago. I liked him.”

  “High praise from you!”

  She wondered if that sulky look was meant as humor or if he was irritated by her praise of his son. “I met Tavahosh, too, at River’s Bend when Auri died. I wasn’t as taken with him.”

  “He listens too much to the priests. Farihosh is levelheaded and intelligent but Chorannah has made sure he does not trust me. Never forget that Chorannah is empire-born and empire-bred. She favors Sirniakan ways and scorns the customs of the Hundred. She has raised her sons to do likewise despite my efforts to steer a course down the middle of the road.”

  “Are you telling me you do favor Kasad and would like to make him your heir over his older brothers?”

  “I have reason to believe an attempt to discredit and possibly murder Kasad was made two nights ago by people who believe I favor him too much.”

  “What incident might that be?”

  “The murder of a Silver coachman that the conspirators meant to pin on him. If someone is willing to murder an innocent bystander in order to destroy Kasad, then surely the next step is to murder me. Why should Farihosh wait for the father to falter and be put out to pasture? Why not just take what he wants now, if he has the support?”

  “The hells, Jehosh. This is a serious charge.”

  How hard his voice fell. “I am perfectly serious. If I don’t know who was behind the attempt on Kasad, then how can I know who to trust?”

  “Do you no longer trust your closest friends? Auri? Ulyar? Vanas? The men who have been your companions and councilors throughout your reign?”

  “What person can I trust, Aunt Dannarah?”

  She removed her hand from his arm and looked skyward, tracking an eagle gliding in a high spiral far above, coming down as the last light waned. The irony of his question made her smile and shake her head.

  “Strange you should ask me that,” she remarked drily as old memories surfaced, the ones she least wanted to recollect.

  “What do you mean?”

  She shook the past firmly away. “Never mind. What about your own mother, Queen Yevah?”

  “She never forgave me for my brothers’ deaths in the Eldim wars. Nor was she happy about Vanas taking away her only daughter. I no longer see her.”

  She sighed. “Well, then, who else did your father trust?”

  “You, first and above all.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “I mean no flattery. It is the truth. He trusted his bodyguards. Most of them died trying to save him. But Captain Kellas survived.”

  Her heart began pounding, and she flushed. “He resigned his captaincy and left the palace as soon as he recovered from his wound.”

  “Yes. He was disgraced and dishonored. He said so to me himself. Many considered him complicit in the ambush.”

  She let out a long breath, surprised at how anxiously her mind raced. “Do you suppose he is still alive? He would be seventy-four n
ow.”

  “He is alive, hale and vigorous still.”

  The words jolted her more than Sadah’s earlier declaration. Kellas! Still alive! “You know where he is?”

  “I do. He has kinsfolk here in Toskala. He grew up here.”

  “He left the palace but remained here in Toskala all this time?”

  “No. He does not live in Toskala. He visits his clan once a year when he travels here as representative for the merchant clan he now calls home.”

  “Kellas is a merchant? That is difficult to believe.”

  “I doubt if the legendary Captain Kellas hawks wares in the marketplace. I suspect he uses his skills to discover information that helps the household trade to their best benefit. They are a prosperous clan with ties all along the coast and even across the ocean.”

  Dannarah had taken and discarded lovers over the years; she did not like anyone to stay for too long because they always and eventually got on her nerves. After a childhood growing up in a suite with six little sisters and numerous girls and women in attendance, she cherished having an intimate space that was hers alone, not to be shared with a companion. After all these years she had kept tokens from three lovers only: The man she had cared for most. The man who had died before she had tired of him. And Kellas, who had once brought her a wood bracelet, a humble enough gift in its way but better than gold to an infatuated seventeen-year-old who pretended that he slept with her because he couldn’t resist her and not because he couldn’t refuse. She turned the bracelet several times, feeling the twining bitter-leaf vine carved into the wood. Something he had picked up in the province of Mar on one of his missions there, he had told her. Bitter-leaf was so tough that its vines could be used to make rope, while its sharp-flavored leaves spiced the distinctive local grain called barsh. Something like you, Dannarah, he had said, resilient and unforgettable.

  “Where is he?” she asked, and was surprised how her voice quavered.

  “Mar. In the port city of Salya.”

  “Mar!” She let go of the bracelet as a blade of unease sliced through her. Atani had gone to Mar, all those years ago when he was sixteen. She wasn’t going to confide in Jehosh about an incident Atani had never spoken of afterward, not even to her. That Kellas lived there now likely didn’t mean anything anyway. Just a coincidence. “What makes you mention Captain Kellas?”