Parrien swore, careful to keep the flare of the afterdeck lantern behind him. ‘Have some respect for his Grace’s dignity.’ In trust his two mercenaries would keep station at his heels, he jostled forward, hooded head aimed toward the companionway to the stern cabin. ‘Dakar’s in there?’
The desertman’s teeth flashed in the blood orange glow of the lamp. ‘Asleep. I think you speak lies. Except once with Cattrick, his Grace has shunned too much drink since the day the shed blood soaked the shores at the Havens.’
‘You don’t know that for certain.’ Parrien tapped his foot. ‘You weren’t there to mother him. And anyway, Shandian wine’s too smooth and sweet to bring on terrors and nightmares. Do please move aside. Or else go rouse Dakar before I get upset and dump Rathain’s prince in an unconscious heap at your feet.’
‘You wake up Dakar,’ the desertman snapped. ‘Let you be the one to clean up the sheets when your drinking guests render their gorge.’ Sly in contempt, he sidled ahead and flicked up the latch. As the ship’s mild roll swung the door wide, Parrien’s party invaded the sanctum of the Khetienn’s stern cabin.
The interior was black. Dakar had always eschewed light with his hangovers, and, obliging, the vindictive little steward had left the lamps dark at sundown.
‘Sithaer’s plaguing furies!’ Parrien resisted the instinctive urge to shove back the hood masking the bashed state of his own features. ‘Can’t see a damn thing.’ Two steps behind, his mercenaries groped a bumping course past lockers and unfamiliar furnishings. ‘Somebody, dig out an Ath-forsaken light.’
They purloined the burned-down stub from the chart desk. A lump of flint from a pocket and the blade of a dagger struck the necessary spark. New flame wavered over the quill pens, the dividers, the leather-stamped covers of the brigantine’s logbook, and the scrupulous rolled ends of her charts. A glass-paneled cabinet held the priceless lyranthe inherited at Halliron Masterbard’s death. An adjacent empty peg showed where the lesser instrument with the cutoff tassels had hung. The green baize cushions and blankets on the quarterberth were neatly brushed and untenanted.
‘Dakar’s about somewhere.’ Parrien glared at the unhelpful desertman, then rattled terse orders to his mercenaries. ‘Search the port and starboard quarters, by force if need be.’ The ache of his bruises and a swelling cut on his lip made even simple speech onerous.
‘He’s in here,’ came the call from the depths of another darkened doorway.
‘Take the candle,’ Parrien said to the guard captain at his elbow. Still bearing Rathain’s prince, he followed the slip of yellow flame into the aft cabin, then slammed the door shut before the inquisitive steward could decide on an afterthought to trail him.
Dakar lay wadded like a kicked hedgehog in a wallow of crumpled blankets. His exhaled air reeked of metabolized alcohol. The lingering, sweetish reek of cheap brandy wafted from the irregular stains soaked into his collar. A ruthless shaking by Parrien’s mercenaries eventually rattled a tortured groan out of him. He shot a wild fist at the candle thrust in his face, then growled something obscene a man could try with his bollocks, a basin, and a rock.
‘Dakar, you’re needed,’ Parrien said in succinct and irritable urgency.
The Mad Prophet plowed his head under a pillow. Unintelligible grumbles emerged through the muffling goose down.
‘Is there a bucket to douse him?’ the mercenary captain asked his subordinate.
That threat caused Dakar to shed bedclothes and sit up. His hair was rubbed into a rat’s nest of spikes, and a flustered moment passed as he unsnarled his beard from his shirt buttons. ‘No water, I’d lose it,’ he said clearly. He had time to register the hatchet visage of Parrien’s field captain before vertigo overcame him. Folded in half with his forehead resting on his knees, he said to the laddered socks on his ankles, ‘Why are you back here?’
‘Not to play nursemaid!’ The duke’s brother lost patience. ‘Damn you, sit up. Your prince has need of your services.’
Dakar rolled his neck. An indignant brown eye turned upward. ‘I’ll have to use the privy first.’
For answer, Parrien flipped back the blanket that covered his burden. A quick signal moved his men, who hauled the Mad Prophet bodily erect to confront the gist of the crisis.
The blood, the puffed scrapes, and the slack jaw of unconsciousness swam in the flickering flood of the candle.
A blink, a stark moment of igniting disbelief, then the Mad Prophet slapped off the hands which slung him up by his shirtfront. ‘You fought him?’ His voice climbed into outraged disbelief. ‘Merciful Ath! The last affray in Tysan laid him low for three months. Didn’t anybody tell you? He just barely got back on his feet!’
Parrien at least had the grace to look sheepish as he pushed back his covering hood. ‘Your royal charge wasn’t knocked out from blows. Just an unholy excess of red wine.’
‘Lay him on the upper berth.’ Dakar jerked down his rucked shirt, scrubbed his face with his sleeves, then ordered the sword captain to fetch a jug of water as though he were a born servant. Then he gouged crusted eyes with his knuckles and wrestled his disjointed dismay into speech. ‘Why in fate’s name did you have to use violence?’
Parrien shed the slack prince, blotted an oozing scab on his forearm, then faced the interrogation straight on. ‘I had to stop him. Unless you wanted him sailing straight back to Avenor to intervene on behalf of Cattrick and Mearn.’ In rapid, plain words, he outlined the conspiracy arranged with the master shipwright and the scheming, wild plan set in place by his youngest brother.
‘Ath!’ Dakar stabbed stiff fingers into the shining, dough folds of his cheeks. ‘I hurt too much for this. Your cook’s brandy is evil and ought to be banned from civilized consumption for eternity.’
‘Well, my Shandian wine won’t be much more merciful.’ Parrien licked his split lip, then added, reluctant, ‘We had to dose a second flask with valerian since the first one failed to put your prince’s lights out.’
Dakar’s hands fell. He flopped back on crushed pillows, the resolve all leached out of him, except for his eyes, which stayed piercingly wide and direct. ‘Dharkaron, you’re serious. His Grace wouldn’t quit, even when he was beaten?’
Parrien was sour. ‘My best archer’s got a thumb bitten down to the bone as living proof.’
Dakar’s worry intensified. ‘His Grace only gets that difficult if he’s desperate.’
‘Or insane.’ Parrien winced at the jolt to his balance as the kick of changed tide in the inlet riffled rip currents beneath the Khetienn’s keel. ‘When I threatened to break his arm to keep him passive, he asked me point-blank to break his leg.’
‘To spare his hands for his music? Sweet Ath!’ New sweat sprang and dripped down Dakar’s temples. He laced sausage fingers into the screwed hair at his nape, his frown pinched to alarm. ‘If Arithon said that, he’s not going to be reasonable. The only way to be sure he won’t act is to follow through with your threat.’
‘That’s barbaric!’ Parrien’s square face stood wide open to shock. ‘An honorable man couldn’t.’
‘But this isn’t about honor, or decency, or pity,’ Dakar blazed back from his agonized prostration. ‘This is about keeping the Master of Shadow away from Prince Lysaer’s throat. We can’t survive another curse-driven bloodbath. Are you hearing me?’
Parrien stopped raging, his blunt hands raised in a gesture of warding disbelief. ‘You believe Mearn’s predicament provided an excuse? That the Mistwraith’s own curse could have raised this uncontrolled outburst of ferocity?’
‘I don’t know that for certain.’ Dakar rallied sick nerves and propped himself upright. ‘Except we can’t risk the possibility. All the future’s at stake if we judge this wrong.’
‘Dharkaron’s fell Chariot, you mean, break his leg?’ Parrien backstepped as if the Avenger’s Black Spear might fall dipped in fire to torment him. ‘We don’t do things like townsmen, nor cause wrongful harm to sworn friends for expediency.’
&n
bsp; Dakar said with queer dignity, ‘I wouldn’t call preventing a needless, mad slaughter anything so simple as expedience.’
Flattened to the bulkhead, Parrien weighed that terrible truth, his circling conscience trapped and raging. ‘If this happens, before Ath, we’ll answer our clan blood debt to the s’Ffalenn prince up front.’
Before Dakar could smooth down the thorns of rankled pride, Parrien beckoned to his brother’s prize captain of mercenaries. ‘Step forward, Vhandon. Dakar needs to know you’re no hireling soldier.’
In fact, the taciturn veteran was Duke Bransian’s oathsworn commander at arms, bearing clan bloodlines back to the uprising. The spare phrases Parrien chose for introduction gave too little recognition for the man’s impressive record on the field. ‘Tell me, Vhandon,’ Parrien finished, his depth of stark weariness struck through his bearing, and his eyes like the heads of iron nails. ‘Is Talvish there your most steadfast man?’
‘None finer.’ Always grudging with words, Vhandon shot an appraising glance at Talvish, then added, ‘He’s a man for tight corners with the sword.’ His eyes remained calm, the color of rubbed jade under the ash-colored jut of his eyebrows. The wrinkles at the corners looked quarried in granite as he held his fighting stance, feet braced against the ship’s roll.
Parrien nodded, satisfied. ‘Very well. Hear my orders as if they come from your duke, for his name and family honor are now yours to keep. You and Talvish will break Prince Arithon’s right leg. Make a clean job. I don’t want him lamed. Then you will stand by him, through convalescence and beyond. For s’Brydion good faith, you will swear this spellbinder a blood oath to serve him. Then defend him, life and limb, for as long as you are fit to bear arms or until the curse of the Mistwraith is broken.’
Dakar jerked erect, mouth opened in protest. ‘You can’t do this. These men have ties, surely. What of their families left in Alestron?’
But Parrien shouted him down. ‘No! Don’t speak. Compensation is fitting. Who else could your liege ask to take Caolle’s place now?’
Into stunned silence, Vhandon’s deep voice added emotionless support. ‘My sons are grown, my one daughter married.’ He tipped a nod to the tall, blond swordsman in the corner. ‘Talvish is unattached, yet, and Earl Jieret’s clans have no able lives left to spare, not since their best fell to their liege’s defense by Tal Quorin. Someone must stay who has enough muscle to keep your Shadow Master flat until the affray with the Riverton shipyard reaches quittance.’
‘Fine, then,’ Dakar snarled. ‘What if Talvish objects?’
The younger man leaned at ease against the closed doorway, his spidery hands quiet and his air of lithe stillness unruffled. ‘For the s’Brydion good name, I’ll serve Prince Arithon as if he were my bloodborn charge.’
‘And get your thumbs bitten, too?’ Dakar countered, too much in pain not to vent his distress. ‘A viper’s less volatile. Don’t weep to me when you discover his needling temper.’ Since threats and appeal gained him no satisfaction, he accosted Parrien again. ‘Dharkaron wept! We’re beleaguered enough by patrols and sunwheel galleys, we risk death each time this vessel takes on provisions, and his Grace himself’s a damned killing nuisance, convalescent. If I’ve got to live through this when he wakes up, one Ath-forsaken leg won’t be enough to hold him back.’
When Vhandon looked irate, Dakar explained, his round face a misery of apprehension. ‘His crew will act for him. More than half were redeemed from slave labor at the oar by his active intervention. If Arithon asked for Fate’s Wheel to be stopped on its axis, his officers would die in the attempt. For the sake of the peace, we might have to bind and gag him for the duration.’
Parrien looked doubtful as a dog about to slip its collar and run amok. ‘His crew would support a curse-driven intent to stir up fresh mayhem in Tysan?’
‘His crew would see us gutted the moment they found out we’d compromised Arithon’s free will.’ Dakar cracked back. ‘I thought that’s the disaster your outright gift of guardsmen was being offered to prevent. You don’t want to discover how your innards might look strung over the Khetienn’s topsail yardarm? Then blindside that wretched little desertman and shuffle your arse back into your longboat. Pull your duke’s galley out with the tide, and don’t even think to look back.’
* * *
In the black hour before dawn, Prince Arithon began his muddled return to full consciousness. Dakar, poised by the berth on silent vigil, read the first warning sign in the slight, taut flex of his lips. The green eyes were masked behind damp cloths to ease contusions and swelling. But the fingers, once smoothed in relaxation on the blanket, clamped closed in the dawning awareness that the brigantine’s hull tossed in motion. No longer did the Khetienn ride placid at her anchorage behind the barrier isles at Sanpashir. The thundering draw of full canvas aloft bespoke someone’s treasonous order to effect an immediate departure.
Dakar was ready for the first, surging thrust as Arithon pushed himself erect.
‘Don’t,’ he murmured gently, then caught with both hands in support.
A terrible stopped breath, to choke back the scream as the body discovered its wracked agony, and convulsed in an outraged spasm of reaction. Face turned away, Arithon allowed Dakar’s careful strength to lower him back against the pillows piled up for a sickbed.
‘Your three ships are bound offshore. The worst has been done.’ The Mad Prophet plowed on out of mulish need to stamp down his knifing remorse. ‘If you lie still, I’ll bring something for the pain.’
‘My leg?’ gasped Arithon, when the shocked breath in his chest unlocked enough to allow him civilized speech. The hand he raised trembled wildly as he explored the poultices which swathed his forehead and eyes. ‘For bruises, I trust?’
Dakar swallowed. ‘Your sight isn’t damaged. There’s a cut needed stitching. The herbs are to hold down the swelling.’
No dignified means existed for masking helpless relief. Beneath the soaked cloth, Arithon’s mouth thinned to bitterness. ‘Don’t ever run afoul of the s’Brydion. They keep their clan word like fell vengeance.’
A pause; then, ‘We owe them.’ The startling break moved beyond plain confession. ‘And for more than stopping my fit of insanity this evening. You wouldn’t have escaped the grasp of that crown examiner, except for Parrien’s intervention. I saw the proof in one of the letters. The man’s a sensitive to spellcraft, a true talent, if one without formal training. Lysaer’s chosen trackers are growing more dangerous. Worse than my darkest imagining.’
‘I know.’ Dakar dashed away liquid which welled from his eyes. In dogged, vain hope, he clung to the banal. ‘We can’t use that tavern to collect dispatches again.’ He fumbled, caught the bulkhead in support, then managed to grasp the cup with the elixir he had kept ready and waiting.
‘A potion won’t mend things,’ Arithon murmured. More than pain edged his impotent fury. ‘For blood at a wedding and another fleet savaged, what will be the cost this time?’
He believed they were alone. In a tactic of silenced desperation, Dakar used the cup to cut off the flooding spill of words.
But when Arithon finished, sunk back in the pillows with all of his vulnerable core stripped for the eyes of two strangers, he caught the Mad Prophet’s wrist with suffering force and added the devastating finish. ‘That’s three times, now, Dakar.’ He referred to the need to use crippling violence to deny him his willful, free choice. ‘When will it end? When I’m blinded, or broken, or witless? Caolle need not have died if I could have turned to the knife in the hour before sanity left me. Now I almost made the same misstep again. The Mistwraith’s curse is not manageable, not anymore. Tell the Fellowship when you see them, I beg their reprieve. Release their blood oath, and give back my option to abandon this life if I must.’
With one arm held prisoned in Arithon’s grasp, and the other hand clenched to the cup, Dakar bit down on his lip to choke back his howl of naked outrage and sympathy. Words forsook him. Nor would he abandon
a loyalty grown into a quandary to torture the spirit. Nothing remained except to endure through the terrible wait until the dosed wine took hold and the Shadow Master’s hard fingers slackened. Too many minutes elapsed before the ragged, tormented breathing eased into the false tranquillity of drugged sleep.
Blinded in misery, Dakar arose. Oblivious to company, he blundered into the drawn, watching presence of Parrien’s two clansmen, bound now into Arithon’s service.
Before their stricken quiet, the canker inside of him burst. ‘Well, did you think him the immoral criminal Lysaer’s Alliance is wasting the countryside to kill? He’s Athera’s own Masterbard, and he has a true heart. Just like he won Caolle, he’ll earn your deep loyalty. Nor can his Grace give you the peace he can’t win for himself. You’ll find this a desperate, difficult service before Daelion Fatemaster sets final seal on your record.’
Late Winter 5654
Resignation
Prince Lysaer returned to his fair city of Avenor as the thaws broke, the roads transformed overnight into a grabbing morass of slush. Splashed mud thrown up by the hooves of the royal cavalcade smeared the destriers to the hocks, and spattered the hems of the outriders’ surcoats. The Exalted Prince himself was not exempt from the earth’s seasonal anointing. His reentry into Avenor’s central plaza occurred under standards whose streamers displayed the only unsullied silk in his company.
In reverse irony, the revived field troops from Etarra had turned out in dress ceremony to meet him. Their appointments were flawless, their sunwheel tunics without stain. The flooding, pale brilliance of the late-season sunlight starred reflections off their polished steel helms and buffed quillons.
The Prince of the Light motioned his honor guard to a halt. He let his cream charger advance to the fore; passed his paired standard-bearers, flying the gold star on blue of Tysan, and the sunwheel pennon, each with cloth-of-gold streamers, snapping full length in the day’s brisk breeze, to his right and his left. A horse length ahead he drew rein. No smutching of mud could diminish the majestic figure he cut, tall and stately in a saddle wired with bullion trappings.