The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (9 page)

King Sergei felt a sudden wave of compassion wash over him. He pushed it away. “What are you telling me, my lady?”

Lady Lisa stepped over a bed of violets, one slippered foot mucky. “Either you let your bloodthirsty sister have her way or you rule Athesia. Please do not turn this into another war. The people of this land have suffered enough.”

“And what about you?”

She spread her arms. “I’ve made my peace a long time ago. I understand the price and pain of sacrifice. Do not mistake me for a heartless woman. I mourn my daughter’s disappearance and probable death. You should do the same. Let Vlad rest.”

Sergei swallowed. His fingers twitched. “So what am I doing in this city?”

She approached him and laid her own hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps you’re after revenge. That’s what men do. Or perhaps you can churn the thousands of deaths you’ve caused into something meaningful.” Her stare was piercing. “Do you know why I do not flee or fight you, Your Highness? It’s because I have a mission. I want to see Athesia flourish. It was my husband’s dream, a free land for all people. Ideas do not die when a body is laid to rest. You came here thinking death would make you whole. But it didn’t. It’s something else. Think about it.”

Sergei was thinking about it. But the answer eluded him. All he could see now was his regret fighting with his pain. Let it all slide? Forget Vlad’s death? He could not. He just could not.

“Thank you, my lady,” he said. His chest hurt, but it was good pain. He needed it.

“Some people take after their fathers. Some take after their mothers. Think about it.”

He did not want to think about his mother right now. He did not want to think at all. He was not sure why he had come here.

“Thank you,” he murmured and left. His future had never seemed more blurred and painful than today.

CHAPTER 6

A
year spent among the Borei had taught Bart something: nobility was obsolete. People mistook wealth for dignity, class for sophistication, style for intelligence. Looking at his peers, the proud members of the uncertain Privy Council, Bart saw nothing but foolishness.

The Borei might be crude and way uglier than the average Eracian, he thought, and it was so easy to dismiss them as foreign primitives. He almost had. But his new acquaintance had taught him a different truth. A humbler kind of truth.

Count Bart still marveled at the sheer luck his comrades had. They had escaped death, every one of them. The yearlong siege, the attacks on the city, the sack, they had fleeted through unscathed. Bored and grown fat, and with Caytorean friends, but without any scars or injuries or traumas. A yearlong stay at another palace. Not a great change from Somar or their own estates.

Their experience had not made them better people. They were still as arrogant, as vain as they had been the day Monarch Leopold had sent them to gloat over Adam’s dead body. Dignitaries to a parade of shame. Only they had ignored the lesson.

Staying with the mercenaries, Bart had learned about having fun for the sake of it, without protocol and tradition weighing down on him, without any fear of embarrassment or political implications. At first, he had been frightened, then overwhelmed by the liberating simplicity of it. You could still be a monarch’s envoy, even if you talked to people who did not hail from ancient families of lords. Birthright didn’t make you better or smarter. On the contrary, it suffocated you, made you stiff and blind.

His spiritual rebirth did not lessen his anger. After a year as the monarch’s envoy, he was no longer in charge. Power, well, that was another matter.

He had come to Athesia on a mission. He had not failed. His mission had simply become irrelevant. He had arrived with the intention of keeping peace between Eracia and Athesia. Both realms no longer existed as they were. Athesia was a princedom now, ruled by the Parusites. Eracia was burning, a land without a ruler, and with a horde of hungry contenders.

Bart wished the hostage situation had ended somewhat differently.

King Sergei had decided he wanted peace with his neighbors, so he had released them all without any preconditions. Bart had been surprised as much as the dignitaries, who had expected to remain locked in Roalas for a very long time, used for ransom and negotiations. Instead, they had been freed. The Caytoreans had gone to their cities and families, armed with fresh knowledge of their rivals. The full extent of the damage would not become apparent for many years, he knew. The Eracians, well, they had stayed because they had nowhere to go.

Throughout the siege, Bart had been in charge. He had never enjoyed power for the sake of it, never cared for his title,
never cared for gaining more favor with the monarch, not like his wife did. But he had grown used to his status, to his responsibility. Not quite liked it, but accepted it as his burden as a man who held the fate of the realms in his hands.

Now, his role was gone, and he was outranked by his comrades. He had become the lowliest member of the Privy Council once again.

It would have mattered less if he thought his friends knew what to do. Watching them race horses for the sake of it, however, shattered any slightest hope of that ever happening. Eracia was being raped by the nomads; the Privy Council spent their time betting who would win the next sprint.

Yes, he wished the hostages had not been so lucky.

It was amazing how the landscape had changed in the past three months. The devastated fields around Roalas were slowly recovering. You could still see dark dapples of empty ground where tents and siege machines had lain. Around the city’s perimeter, there was an ashen circle of barren earth. The Inferno fires had fused the ground to a glass-like sheet, and it would not let the rain or the sun crack it. Maybe the next winter snows would break the black crust and heal the soil.

A beached rib cage of a scuttled ship rested by the riverbank, crowded with birds. Fishermen paddled their small barges round the curve of the city. A lone cargo ship was slugging through the silty water, edging toward the mucky bank where a hundred people with nets full of crabs were waiting with their catch. Women mostly, with skirts hiked up, bare legs sleeved in mud almost like boots. Children were playing hide-and-seek around old, discarded picket lines and catapult leftovers.

Farther out, away from the common life, two dozen Eracian nobles were cheering four of their colleagues as they
galloped in circles in front of the city’s south wall. Bored sentries at the walls watched them, too.

The course was marked in spears, with scarves tied to the heads. It was a simple oval track, nothing too demanding for those trained to ride for pleasure and not war. The hooves hammered on the beaten dirt and grass, clots flying. Men were shouting, clapping, cursing, laughing. A ragged crowd of Red Caps and Borei stood a little farther apart, making their own bets and guesses. No Borei would ever miss a good gamble.

Bart stood in between the two crowds, a man of his own belief. He was one of the Eracians, a noble, a count, a rich man, but he didn’t think the people of the south, or the city folk sloshing through the muddy bank, any lesser than him. It was an astounding realization.

Count Thomas won this round. He raised his arms in victory, but then quickly clamped them down on the reins. Bart watched sadly. Eracia was a country under invasion, and all his peers did was waste time. Cowards.

From the corner of his eye, Bart saw someone approach. Junner. The mahout had been unemployed ever since his olifaunt died in one of the attacks. Unemployed meant he spent his time peddling anything he could find and making good money selling his virgins and arranging animal fights.

“Lord Count,” the Borei said.

Not a primitive
, Bart thought, that mixed elation and anger thudding in his temples.
Just a man from a different land, a different culture. As smart as any one of us
. “Junner, my friend.”

The mercenary grinned widely, a dangerous sign. Bart was glad he had no money on his person. But Junner was good for letters of credit, a solemn word, anything. “Not enjoying the race, eh?”

Bart suppressed a flood of dark thoughts—envy, disappointment, resentment, pure rage, slight worry, indifference he felt for the unknown fate of his wife. “Not really.”

Junner stepped close, smelling of garlic. “I have a new virgin for you, if you want.”

The count smiled. It had become a standing joke between them. The sort of thing you savored when the moment was right, but left you wondering how you could ever consider it funny when you went away and the intimacy of comradeship evaporated. “No, thank you.”

The former mahout wagged a finger. “You’ve grown very wise with your gold, Lord Count.”

Ahead of him, Thomas had dismounted and was shaking hands with his fans. Some thumped him playfully on the shoulder or the back. The defeated men were counting their coins into a large hat.

They didn’t even own their horses, Bart thought. King Sergei had loaned the animals as a gesture of pity.

Junner seemed to realize Bart was in a sour mood. He knew there would be no money for him. “No matter, Lord Count. You can find me by the West Gate. I like them women with their mud on their feet when they come back. I love Athesian women’s feet. Small and dainty. Our women got them like eagles’ claws.”

Bart watched the Borei retreat. As expected, Junner did not go back to the city. He burrowed into the crowd of spectators, working his crude, dangerous magic. The count looked away. It all looked surreal. You could almost forget there had been a war here. The peasants and farmers went about their business as far as the eye could see. The roads were dotted with carts and travelers. Parusite soldiers were repairing the damaged section of the curtain wall, digging a defensive moat nearby from a
river inlet. Life went on as usual. Only several weeks away to the north and west, his realm bled.

Monarch Leopold was dead, they said. His family too.

Most of the people who had attended the stupid alliance had been killed. Among them, most likely, Countess Sonya of Barrin, his harpy of a wife.

A man should feel something for his partner, he thought. He tried to force himself to feel concerned. But there was just a bleak fog of emotion. This worried him more than Sonya’s fate.

He had been cast aside. No longer in charge of saving anyone, no longer in charge of preventing a war, no longer inspired to be a silent, peaceful hero. There was nothing left for him here. King Sergei had chosen peace and reconciliation. Amalia was most likely dead. The Athesians had quickly turned their hearts to this new ruler who offered protection and bread. Kneeling for a few hushed words of prayer in the morning and before dinner was a small price to pay.

What Bart had was a handful of disappointments, and he could not even wipe his arse with them.

As the most senior member of the Privy Council, Duke Vincent was in charge of the freed delegation now. The old fool had assembled an ill-named war council and was trying to rally support around him. Perhaps the man believed the council would elect him as the new monarch once the war was concluded with an Eracian victory. Only he had no army, just a bunch of useless aristocrats who preferred to drink and whore and race and lose loaned money.

The army was in Yovarc and Decar and Spoith, maybe, locked down in their garrisons, waiting, trying to form up. They might try to liberate Somar, but not without support from the surviving nobles. And so far, there wasn’t a single unified decision about what should be done. Duke Vincent
wanted to charge into the city at any cost. Most others wanted to try to make themselves the favored candidate for monarchy before making any other decision. Which meant bickering, backstabbing, lies, stalling, and wasting more time.

A few sane minds pushed for sending envoys to the isolated north, trying to rally support there. Others wanted to parley with King Sergei for military support, forgetting that another suggestion of an alliance had made their realm burn and bleed. All Bart could see was the Eracian strength slipping, their presence in the Safe Territories dwindling, their chance of retaking Somar becoming lesser every day.

The Southern Army divisions were reasonably strong, but without leadership and surrounded by hostile forces. King Sergei showed no inclination of moving his Athesian forces anywhere, but you just could not know what he might do. He also had Amalia’s alleged half brother to deal with. And that could drive him to some harsh decisions.

On its own, the army might be able to challenge the nomads, but not with the Parusites behind them. One wrong move, and they would be obliterated. Before too long, Eracia would be reduced to its northern ranges. Bart could find no reason why the Parusite king might not choose the Kataji over a decimated Eracian exile. The Parusites had always striven to make the Territories theirs, what they had almost completely done ever since the Great Desertion. The Eracians retained only a small foothold around Talmath and farther north, in the Borean Woods. Sergei could expel them, crush the Southern Army using the nomad forces as the anvil to his hammer, then make peace. Afterward, circle back and defeat the last pockets of defense in the north of his young princedom. He would become the new Pyotr when it came to the extent and success of his campaign.