Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (49 page)

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“What would you expect? Of course he agreed,” Rashan
answered. “It would only be prudent, in the aftermath of his father’s death, to
try to solidify his standing in the Circle. What could he possibly hope to gain
by antagonizing me by refusing an offer of marriage to my son. The merits of
the arrangement itself aside, he would be a fool not to leap at the opportunity
to get in my good graces.”

“But why Juliana Archon, of all the unwed girls in the
Empire?” Brannis demanded.

He suspected that Rashan might be intentionally
goading him. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Brannis knew he had slipped
just past the line where rational arguments resided, and was now practicing a
somewhat suspect alchemy of optimism and paranoia:
Maybe he just wants to
see if I was still intending to follow through on our betrothal; maybe he was
actually talking to Shador on my behalf and wanted to dangle Iridan’s name in
the way to tease me; maybe … maybe …

“You overestimate the number of candidates, I think,”
Rashan replied, picking up a hefty volume from his desk and waving it in front
of Brannis. “This book has records of all the eligible sorceresses in Kadrin—as
well as many who have since been married off. There were perhaps three or four
who might have been suitable, perhaps as many as six if I were willing to wait
on girls who are still at the Academy. Juliana Archon has the best pedigree of
any of them, though. You should be flattered Brannis; it was why you were
matched with her yourself.”

“How is that flattering, considering how it has turned
out?” Brannis shot back. “If my ‘pedigree’ is so good, why should I not marry
her? It was all approved, and I have never actually seen anything that says
otherwise. Everyone just seems to have assumed it was all nullified when I left
the Academy.”

“Would you like me to make a proclamation, Brannis?
Shall I gather the Inner Circle and make sure everyone sees that we have
followed protocol? By the winds, Brannis! They did it to spare your dignity,
and your family’s. I have yet to unravel all the political nonsense the Inner
Circle has engaged in, but I strongly suspect your father would have held up
any new betrothal for Juliana Archon due to the embarrassment of having to
admit you were deemed unsuitable.

“Now get hold of yourself, Brannis. Whatever this girl
meant to you, it was nine winters ago and you need to put it past you. From
everything Iridan has told me, you have no trouble finding women to share your
bed, and why not? You have everything in your favor. Heroic young knight, just
given command of the Imperial Army, good family, have the ear of the warlock.
Take your pick of any woman in Kadrin and she would be yours. What nobleman
would refuse you his daughter’s hand? What commoner would not be swept off her
feet? Find some foreign princess to wed, and secure allies for the Empire.
Choose a sorceress from an emergent bloodline if you wish; I assure you her
family would be ecstatic to mix with Solaran blood, hoping your talent merely
skipped a generation. But the ones in this book …” Rashan shook the
genealogist’s tome for emphasis. “… are not for you.

“Kadrin has kept itself strong for thousands of
summers by maintaining the strength of the Imperial Circle. I cannot allow the
best of our young blood to be diluted. Strength begets strength. If I looked
back through enough of these books, I could trace my own lineage back past the
Founding.”

“I could do the same,” Brannis said. “A few
generations back, it is even the same ancestors.”

“Brannis, there are a thousand others you can have,
and a paltry handful denied to you. Why must you insist on being difficult? Do
you wish to know why?” Rashan set down the book he had been holding and took
another like it from the desk. He flipped through it to the last portion that
had been filled in—leaving numerous blank pages in the yet unfinished
volume—and flipped back a few pages. “Here. This is your reason.”

The entry stood out immediately:
“Brannis Solaran.
(F) Maruk Solaran, (M) Lyphaela Solaran (Sharniss),”
the whole of which had
been crossed out with a double line, accompanied by a notation in a different
handwriting—
“UNSUITABLE.”
Brannis felt a chill in his gut and suddenly
felt not quite well. He had known his status among the Circle had changed completely
when he left the Academy, but somehow he had never fully accepted that he was
forever cut out of their plans for the continuation of the bloodlines. The
finality of those two thin lines passing through his name was like an iron door
slamming shut and blocking off that part of his past.

Neither Brannis nor Rashan spoke for what seemed like
hours, as Brannis stared numbly at the birthing records. He saw the names that
shared the page with his; he recognized them all. They were his classmates, his
friends, the girls he had once flirted with and the boys he had wrestled in the
Academy’s courtyards. In the eyes of the Circle, they were valuable to the
Empire, and he no longer was. What he had turned out to be, they had no use for
and wanted no more of.

Rashan finally reached over and closed the book. “Now
go prepare for your departure. Expect to leave in the morning. I have many
preparations to make, not the least of which is selecting sorcerers to
accompany you. Be at the palace at sunset for a late dinner, and I will gather
everyone involved to discuss our plans. I would suggest you find a room at the
palace for the night as well, so that you might leave as early as possible. The
steward will be expecting you and ought to be able to manage something for you
as for accommodations.”

“Why send sorcerers? Raynesdark will have a few of
their own that can handle reinforcing wards and preparing fortifications. I
would expect that in battle, any other sorcerers would be as much a hindrance
to you as they would be an asset.”

“Because I do not intend to accompany you. If I meant
to lead every battle for the Empire, I would have little need of you, Brannis.
Because I have you, I feel I can trust that the battle will be well conducted
without requiring my presence. In the meantime, I have much to do in getting
the Empire back under control. I doubt what is said to my face bears much
similarity to what they say behind warded doors. I will spend my time
unraveling the knotted tangle of lies that obscures Kadrin politics these days.

“In truth, I think I would much enjoy the slaughter I
am sending you off to commit in my place. If there were another who could run
the Empire without causing further chaos, I would not hesitate to go. What I
have done is bad enough, though, without handing the reins of the Circle and
the regency over to yet another usurper.”

“Very well, then. I shall be at the army headquarters
much of the day, learning what I can of Raynesdark’s defenses before
departing,” Brannis said.

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As it turned out, Brannis’s offices at the army
headquarters were neither in the stables nor the wine cellar. They had in fact
given him a spacious suite with its own sitting room and a view overlooking
Kalak Square. It was large enough to meet with half the senior officers
stationed in Kadris at once, with a large oaken table upon which maps could be
laid out, surrounded by high-backed chairs. There was a wide, polished oak desk
over one hundred summers old that allowed its occupant to sit with his back to
the panoramic view of not only the square but much of the city as well. Being
on the uppermost floor of the building, it was high enough to see the palace
over the surrounding buildings.

Brannis had taken advantage of the planning table to
gather all the maps he could find regarding Raynesdark—or rather, that he could
have underlings find and bring to him. Brannis was still growing used to the
idea that he could give orders to literally anyone in the Imperial Army. He
suspected that it would be some time before anyone quite respected him in his
new position, but for the time being, the backing of the warlock was all the
authority he needed. No one was yet certain just how Rashan intended to oversee
the affairs of the army, or how much involvement he would have. Giving command
over to a young knight of his own blood was—in their view at least—merely the
first of many changes to come. The reputation of Rashan the Conqueror had never
been connected with long periods of peace.

Rashan’s maps were several winters old, but Brannis
worried little that the place had changed. Raynesdark had been built in the
Empire’s younger days, when gold had been found in the Cloud Wall Mountains.
Once the mines opened, the wealth it produced for the Empire allowed—and
demanded—the construction of impressive fortifications. To the north side of
the city, there had been a quarry since ages long past, providing massive stone
blocks that constituted the city’s streets, walls, and fortresses. Smaller
stones blocks were also produced, which were used in the construction of most
of the city’s buildings.

As Raynesdark had once been a key to the Empire’s
prosperity, the army had extensive diagrams of its defenses. Every tower, the
keep, and the entirety of the fortress was mapped out in admirable detail.
Brannis was torn as to whether he should have someone make copies for him but
decided that there was just not enough time for someone to do a thorough job of
it. He satisfied himself with going over them all himself and committing them
to his formidable memory. Unless they had fallen into disarray in Raynesdark,
he could reference their own records once he arrived, should he need to check
any details.

Brannis had been going over the layout of the upper
mines—once the lifeblood of the empire’s gold—when a junior officer interrupted
him with a knock at the door and entered quietly.

”Sir Brannis. You had mentioned a dinner engagement at
the palace tonight,” the officer said.

Brannis looked out the window of his new office and
saw that the sun was sinking low in the sky. The light had waned on him so
gradually that he had not noticed.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Dismissed,” Brannis replied.

He left the diagrams and maps scattered about the
table for his new underlings to deal with and made haste for the palace.

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Brannis arrived late for the dinner that Rashan had
arranged. As the steward escorted him into the grand dining hall of the palace,
he could see the other guests that Warlock Rashan had invited. Brannis had
expected to see Iridan there and was not disappointed. He was impressed with
the new uniform that had been fashioned on such short notice; it was nearly a
copy of Rashan’s own, though Brannis suspected that the materials were far less
exotic, and the epaulettes attached to his cloak were of shining steel, rather
than gold. It was clear that Rashan intended to follow through with his stated
goal of making Iridan into a warlock as well.

Iridan sat just to the right of Rashan, who was seated
just to the right of the vacant head of the table. The emperor’s place setting
was empty, likely to show that Rashan was merely regent and had no designs on
the crown. The rest of the guests consisted of the remaining members of the
Inner Circle, a small number of sorcerers he had not met: Lord Gellard Hallimere
and his lady wife Chandelle, old Duke Benklear, and Shador Archon and his
daughter, Juliana.

Brannis was fortunate that the palace’s formal dining
hall could seat hundreds for a feast, and that the single long table set out
seemed lost in the large room. It therefore took long enough for a porter to
escort Brannis to the table that he was able to compose himself after the
surprise of seeing Juliana. Had he been of a mind to try predicting the guest
list, he might have seen the logic behind most of the guests seated around the
table, but he had been rather preoccupied with military planning on his journey
from the army’s headquarters to the palace.

The seat to the left of the vacant setting for the
emperor was empty as well, and that was the seat to which the young porter
brought Brannis. He was to be seated just two seats from Juliana, with only her
father between them. As Brannis approached the table, conversations halted.

“And here he is, our new grand marshal. Brannis, I was
just explaining to Duke Benklear why you will be taking over command of the
army,” Rashan called out loudly enough for the whole table to hear as Brannis
was being seated.

“I am not in favor of it, young sir,” Duke Benklear
informed Brannis from halfway down the table.

Duke Benklear would tell anyone who cared to listen
that he had seen over seventy-four autumns and that anyone who did not wish to
hear his opinions could just wait until he died, at which point he promised to
hold his tongue. The Benklears owned much of the land surrounding Kadris, and a
fair amount of the city itself. Other than the palace itself, very little of
the Empire belonged solely to the crown.

“Sir Hurald has done just fine, I think,” Benklear
said. “Comes from as good a family as you will find among the commoners.”

“Your Grace,” Rashan said, “you will find that Sir
Brannis has one of the finest military minds. Sir Hurald may be a fine
administrator, but I do not think he will do as well by our troops in the field
as Brannis would.”

“I must admit, it seemed a bit rash to me, as well,”
Dolvaen said.

Brannis thought that it was a good sign that at least
someone in the Inner Circle was willing to voice a dissenting view—even if it
was in argument against his new position.