Fugitive Prince (4 page)

Yet before he could draw the audience to an end, the royal steward flung wide the door. A tightly bunched cadre of trade ministers filed in, their clothes trimmed in furs and jewelled braids. Costly, dyed plumes cascaded from their hat brims; their hands flashed, expressive with rings.

The prince had staged his private meeting to converge with the ambassador’s presence. Eldir’s delegate settled back on his seat, out-maneuvered by the forms of diplomacy. While the trade worthies vied like rustling peacocks for the places close to the dais, he waited in guarded resignation for the play of Lysaer’s strategy.

This would be a volatile, partisan gathering to judge by the seals of high office displayed by the men who attended. Trade background let the ambassador identify at least a dozen of Tysan’s ruling mayors, united in their distrust of Arithon. Other delegates with complaints against the Shadow Master had been summoned from extreme long distance, as shown by the black-and-gold lion of Jaelot emblazoned on a dignitary’s tabard.

Another who wore plain broadcloth and boots seemed displaced, all fidgety with nerves as he moved through the trappings of wealth and the suave, mannered men of high power. The table filled, then the seats arranged by the side walls. The liverish governor of the Western League of Headhunters hunched uncommunicative beside two stolid commanders at arms with the broad, southcoast vowels of Shand. These would have suffered direct losses on the field, or borne firsthand witness to the devastating sorceries wrought from illusion and shadow.

Rathain’s foremost headhunter, Skannt, sauntered in with his gleaming collection of knives. He chose to stay standing, arms folded, in the cranny by the gallery landing. At his shoulder, companionable and stout chested, Lord Commander Harradene chuckled over some pleasantry. To him fell the captaincy of the disheartened remnants of Etarra’s decimated field troops. The chair left vacant by Lord Diegan’s death stayed unclaimed to Lysaer’s right hand. As yet no replacement had been named to command Avenor’s elite garrison. Nearest to the prince, faced bristling across four feet of oak table, a muscled, tight-lipped mercenary traded glares with Mearn s’Brydion, youngest brother of a clanborn duke from the eastshore kingdom of Melhalla. The scruffy little cleric in scholar’s robes placed between them stared through the window, oblivious to the smoldering hatreds entrenched through five centuries of bloodshed.

The men Lysaer s’Ilessid had drawn to his cause were of disparate backgrounds and loyalties, too fresh in alliance to mingle in comfort,
and too volatile a mix to leave standing too long without war to harness their interests. They crowded the small chamber like rival wolves, the martial devices of the field captains’ surcoats bold as game pieces beside the padded silk pourpoints of city ministers.

Lysaer called the meeting to order. He might wear no coronet of royal office, yet the absent trappings of rank stole no force at all from his majesty. His opening phrase slashed the crosscurrents of ambition and froze them forcefully silent. “We are gathered this hour to resolve my claim to the powers of crown rule, offered to me by legitimate blood descent, and sealed into edict by Tysan’s independent city councils.” His hand, bare of rings, moved, reached, and lifted a heavy document weighted with state seals and ribbons.

All eyes in the room swung and trained on the parchment. Against the expectant, stalled quiet, something creaked in the gallery, behind and above the seated audience.

A snap of air flicked across a taut bowstring, then the whine of an arrow, descending.

Its humming flight scored through Captain Skannt’s scream of warning, and above these, the shout of the archer, in sheared, clanborn accents, “Such claim is unlawful!”

A sharp crack of impact; the four-bladed point impaled the parchment and skewered it to the table. The chink of shattered wax became lost in the noise as the dignitaries chorused in panic, “Barbarian! Assassin!”

Pandemonium rocked through the room. Scribes bolted for cover. Overdressed trade magnates and timid mayors ducked, trembling and frightened to paralysis. Entangled and cursing, war-hardened commanders surged erect and charged, bowling over spilled hats and cowering figures. They heaved empty benches before them as shields and pounded for the stair to the gallery.

“I want him alive!” Lysaer cried through the clamor. Uncowed and looking upward, he wrested the arrow from the tabletop. The lacquered red shaft gleamed like a line of new blood against his stainless white tabard. The hen fletching also was scarlet, the cock feather alone left the muted, barred browns of a raptor’s primary.

“That’s a clan signal arrow. Its colors are symbolic, a formal declaration of protest.” The speaker was Skannt, the headhunter from Etarra, his lidded eyes bright in his weasel-thin face, and his interest dispassionate as ice water. “In my opinion, the archer struck what he aimed at.”

Lysaer fingered the mangled parchment, slit through its ribbons and the artful, inked lines of state language. He said nothing to
Skannt’s observation. Motionless before his rumpled courtiers who crowded beneath the shelter of tables and chairs, he awaited the outcome of the fracas in the gallery. Five heavyset war captains rushed the archer, who stood, his weapon still strung. He wore nondescript leathers, a belt with no scabbard, and soft-soled deerhide shoes. In fact, he was unarmed beyond the recurve, which was useless. He carried no second arrow in reserve. As his attackers closed in to take him, he fought.

He was clanborn, and insolent, and knew those combatants who brandished knives bore small scruple against drawing blood to subdue him.

Fast as he was, and clever when cornered, sheer numbers at length prevailed. A vindictive, brief struggle saw him crushed flat and pinioned.

“Bring him down,” Lysaer said, the incriminating arrow fisted between his stilled hands.

Scuffed, bleeding, his sturdy leathers dragged awry, the clansman was bundled down the stairs. He was of middle years, whipcord fit, and athletic enough not to miss his footing. Space cleared for the men who frog-marched him up to the dais. He stayed nonplussed. Through swelling and bruises, and the twist of fallen hair ripped loose from his braid, his forthright gaze fixed on the prince. He seemed careless, unimpressed. Before that overwhelming, sovereign presence, his indifference felt like contempt.

Through the interval while rumpled dignitaries unbent from their panic, to primp their bent hats and mussed cuffs and jewelled collars, his captors lashed his wrists with a leather cincture borrowed from somebody’s surcoat. The clansman never blinked. He behaved as though the indignity of bonds was too slight to merit his attention.

“Slinking barbarian,” a man muttered from one side.

Another snapped a snide comment concerning the habits of clan women in rut.

No reaction; the offender held quiet, his breath fast but even. His patience was granite. The royalty he had affronted was forced to be first to respond.

“If you wanted a hearing, you have leave to speak,” Lysaer s’Ilessid said, forthright. “Consider yourself privileged to be given such liberty.” A tilt of his head signaled a scribe to snap straight, find his pens, and smooth a fresh parchment in readiness for dictation. “Set this on record,” Lysaer resumed. “To bear arms in the presence of royal authority carries a charge of treason.”

“Your authority, royal or otherwise, does not exist,” the clansman
replied in his clear, antique phrasing, too incisive to be mistaken for town dialect. “Since my arrow isn’t struck through your heart, you have proof. I haven’t come for your death.” He lifted his grazed chin. “Instead I bring formal protest. This writ signed by townsmen to grant sovereign power in Tysan is invalid by first kingdom law. The tenets of this realm’s founding charter hold my act as no crime. Your claim to crown rule is in flagrant breach of due process.”

“I need no sanction from Fellowship Sorcerers.” Lysaer laid down the arrow, unruffled. Winter sun through the casement spanned the stilled air and exposed him; even so, he gave back no shadow of duplicity. For a prince who had lost untold lives to clan tactics, then his best friend and commander to covert barbarian marksmen, this unconditional equilibrium seemed inspired. His reproof held a sorrow to raise shame as he qualified, “I must point out, your complaint as it stands is presumptuous and premature. This writ from Tysan’s mayors has not been sealed into law. I have not yet accepted the mantle of kingship.”

To the stir of surprise from disparate city mayors, the murmured dismay from trade factions, and the outright, riveted astonishment of King Eldir’s ambassador, Lysaer gave scant attention. “As for treason, let this be your trial.” He gestured past the clansman bound before him. “The men assembled here will act as your jurors. No worthier circle could be asked to pass judgment. You stand before the highest officials of this realm, and the uninvolved delegates from five kingdoms. Nor are we without a strong voice from the clans. Mearn s’Brydion, youngest brother of Alestron’s reigning duke, may serve as your voice in defense.”

“I speak for myself!” the barbarian insisted over the scraping disturbance as upset chairs were rearranged, and the attendant men of government refocused their interest through the rustle of settling velvets. “Let there be no mistake. Since the murder of Maenalle s’Gannley,
caithdein
and steward of Tysan, her successor, Maenol, has appointed me spokesman before witnesses. Upon false grounds of sovereignty,
for the act by which you mustered armed force to make war for a wrongful claim of injustice,
hear warning, Lysaer s’Ilessid. Forsake your pursuit of Arithon s’Ffalenn. Or no choice remains for the good of this realm. The response from my kind must open a clan declaration of civil war.”

“I think not.” Lysaer set down the arrow. A small move, made with unemotional force; barely enough to stem the explosive outrage from the merchants who had lost profits to the Shadow Master’s wiles, and from veteran captains his tactics had broken and bloodied on the
field. Lysaer’s blue eyes remained stainless, still saddened. His regard upon the captive never wavered. “Rather, I believe your clan chieftain would resist me as an act of insurrection. His grandmother died a convicted thief on the scaffold. He will see worse, I can promise, if he persists in rash overtures of violence. Woe betide your people, should you let your clans be bound in support of a proven criminal. To abet the Master of Shadow against me is to threaten the safety of our cities.”

“This is a strict issue of sovereignty!” the clansman pealed back through the sawn and inimical silence. “Your royal inheritance has been disbarred by the Fellowship of Seven because your fitness to rule has been compromised. We serve no cause outside of our land’s founding charter! This war you pursue against Arithon of Rathain is engendered by the curse laid on you both by the Mistwraith.”

The Lady Maenalle s’Gannley had said the same words in the hour of her execution. The heavyset Mayor of Isaer might have borne witness, since she had been tried and condemned in his city, under his justiciar’s tribunal.

Havish’s ambassador himself could confirm that the statement held more than a grain of hard truth. But his king’s will kept him silent, even as the other dignitaries expressed their searing disbelief. Ill feeling already ran hot on both sides. However the thundering crosscurrents of hatred bent truth to imperil the prisoner, Havish’s representative could do naught but observe.

Lysaer’s control was not absolute. Despite his impressive majesty, no matter how staunch his self-command, distrust of old blood royalty made his claim to the throne controversial; more telling still, the question just raised against the morality of his dedicated conflict. Fresh losses still stung. Inside one year, the campaign he pursued against the Master of Shadow had seen the eastshore trade fleet sundered and burned at Minderl Bay, then the clash as the armed might of four kingdoms ended in an abattoir of spilled blood at Vastmark.

As new uncertainty threaded tension through the gathering, all eyes fixed on the prince in his tabard of flawless white and gold.

His stance held straight as an arrow nocked to the drawn bow. He perused the assembled dignitaries, nestled like plumed birds in roped pearls and winter velvets; acknowledged the military captains with their muscled impatience; then diverted, to touch last on the single man in the chamber born to a laborer’s status. One whose stiff, uneasy stillness stood apart from languid courtiers like a stake hammered upright in a lily bed.

“How I wish the threat posed by the Master of Shadow were due
only to the meddling of Desh-thiere.” A disarming regret rode Lysaer’s pause. Then, as if weariness cast a pall over desperate strength, he relinquished his advantage of height, sat down, and plunged on in bald-faced resolve. “But far worse has come to bear on this conflict than rumors of an aberrant curse. This goes beyond any issue of enmity between the Shadow Master and myself. Hard evidence lies on record in the cities of Jaelot and Alestron. Twice, unprovoked, Arithon s’Ffalenn wielded sorcery against innocents with destructive result. Now, in the course of the late war in Vastmark, a more dire accusation came to light. Since it may touch on the case here at hand, I ask this gathering’s indulgence.”

The prince beckoned for the plain-clad man to mount the stair to the dais. “Your moment has come to speak.”

The fellow arose to a scrape of rough boots, his occupation plain in his seaman’s gait and hands horned in callus from a lifetime spent hauling nets. Too diffident to ascend to the level of royalty, he chose a stance alongside the accused clansman. His embarrassed gaze remained fixed on his toes, unscuffed and shiny from a recent refurbishing at the cobbler’s.

“I was born a fisherman at Merior by the Sea,” he opened. “When Arithon’s brigantine, the
Khetienn,
was launched, I left my father’s lugger to sign on as one of her crewmen. Under command of the Master of Shadow, I bore witness to an atrocity no sane man could sanction. For that reason, I deserted, and stand here today. Word of his monstrous act at the Havens inlet must be told, that justice may come to be served.”