Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (8 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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With a last twist of strength, she finished binding the wound and withdrew. The riverbank came coldly back into focus. For a moment her body trembled, as if a fever had taken her.
Tullier’s head had rolled back, exposing his throat. Gaultry tilted his face to a more natural angle. Though he was deeply unconscious, his lips were twisted in a disturbing smile, as though he was very far from his earlier pain.
“How is he?” Martin stumbled down the bank, Tullier’s dog at his heels.
“He’ll live.” Gaultry covered the boy’s face with her palm, hiding his expression from Martin, and shakily laid him on the ground. The edges of his wound bulged with inheld blood, but she knew he would not die. Not this time. The dog whined and pressed its body against Tullier’s legs. “Who did this?” she asked angrily. “Who set those men on us?”
“I don’t know,” Martin said. “But every man of them was Bissanty born.”
“The spell on the bridge was Tielmaran magic,” Gaultry told him. “Why Bissanty men if it was Tielmaran magic?”
“I don’t know,” Martin said. “But the Bissanties at least were waiting for us. It wasn’t chance that launched that attack—they knew you and me both. That from a man before I had to kill him.”
“Eliante in me!” Gaultry invoked the Huntress and made her sign, peevish and frightened together. “I thought we were supposed to be safe now we were home in Tielmark.” She was crying now, delayed reaction from all the danger. “You don’t know what I had to do to keep Tullier alive. They almost killed him. I had to raise my Glamour, and he the Goddess-blood!”
Martin, disconcerted, yanked Gaultry up and away from the boy’s unconscious form. “This can’t go on,” he said angrily, shielding her for a moment against the warmth of his body. “You must stop sharing your power with him. You’re forgetting what he is, and who you are. His fate lies in Bissanty—yours is here in Tielmark.”
Gaultry struggled free of him, feeling obscurely guilty. “Don’t you think I know that? What would you have me do? He would have died without me.”
“A habit he seems unwilling to break,” Martin replied hotly. “For all it brings you close to him.”
“He’s just a boy!”
Martin raised his hand to the smooth curve of her cheek. “With this magic, he has trespassed too far inside you. Gaultry—consider what you have shared with him already.”
She thrust his hand away. “Don’t touch me. Not right now.”
The expression on Martin’s face shifted from anger to ice. He withdrew, and gave her a mock salute. “As my lady pleases. As I myself have trespassed, I am sorry. But my rudeness doesn’t alter what I’ve said. You must stop sharing your power with him. For Tielmark’s sake, if not for mine.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She sounded childish now—she knew it, and he knew it too.
“You got your swim,” he said, derisive, as he stood away from her. “I hope getting your way is enough to make you happy.”
In the confusion after the wounded and the bodies had been dragged
out of the water, the sentiment among the marketgoers left stranded on the river’s banks was not weighted in the travelers’ favor. Martin had killed three men, and the fourth man had taken his own life. With one side slaughtered, unable to be questioned for their side of the story, no one could agree what had precipitated the violence.
As the corpses were laid on the bank, the mood of the crowd grew ugly. The market crowd knew nothing of Bissanty conspiracies; all they had seen was four men attempt to stop some queue-jumpers, an act for which they had paid with their lives.
One woman had broken her ankle escaping the bridge’s collapse; others suffered bruises. Many of those trapped on both banks carried perishable goods. A few responded constructively. Three carpenters who had been traveling to Soiscroix went down into the water to salvage the scrap lumber, and, with many hands helping, it was not long before they had rigged up a narrow plank bridge. But anyone who had goods in a cart or wagon was seriously out of luck.
As much as the chaos and violence, the animated vine had frightened them. As work progressed on making the temporary bridge secure, some men began to systematically destroy what remained of the vine, building a fire and laying bedraggled garlands of leaves upon it. The garlands steamed as the flames touched them, casting off foul-smelling smoke.
Others still turned to mete justice on the queue-jumpers.
The bridgekeeper, who should have been able to vouch for them,
was too timid to take charge and quell the mob’s rage. Fierce questions revealed he’d been approached, days before, by one of the dead men, and asked questions regarding certain travelers—travelers who matched Gaultry, Martin, and Tullier’s description. But the bridgekeeper was so slowwitted—or unwilling to risk the ire of the crowd—that he could not name the day the exchange occurred, or other useful information.
The crowd was mutinously angry, and Tullier and the Sharif were in no state to be quickly moved. Gaultry, still fussing over Tullier’s wound, did not want to leave his side. “Martin.” She cast him an apologetic look, in the hope that he would temporarily put aside their argument. “Please do something.”
Martin, who had recovered two of their horses and then gone into the water to dispatch the unfortunate animal with the broken leg, shot her a tired look.
“They’ll listen to you,” she said, encouraging. “You know if I try they’ll only get angrier.”
He almost smiled. “I can’t argue with you there.” A man bumped him aggressively as he spoke. Martin answered with a hard shove. “Stand away.” He loosened his sword in its scabbard. “Stand away, in the Prince’s name, or you’ll meet more trouble than you’ll know how to answer.”
Before the man could recoup, Martin pushed past and sprang up into his saddle, a movement shocking in its trained grace and speed. He deftly used the animal’s body to open up ground in front of the wounded, forcing the crowd back. “Quiet down!” he called. “In the name of Benet and Tielmark, be quiet! Settle this matter by Benet’s laws, and we will gladly yield to you! We have wounded to be tended and bodies lie here, unshriven and begging consecration to the gods; we recognize that we cannot leave until these matters are well-shifted. I hear angry voices raised against us. But if the dead have no voice to speak their case, no one here can speak for them either. This matter must be referred to the local justice for fair hearing.” He swung around to the bridgekeeper. “Who is the Justice for this shire?”
The bridgekeeper, cowed, did not answer, but Martin’s appeal to the right of law swayed some in the crowd toward him. “It’s Jumery Ingoleur,” one of the men tending the vine fire offered. “Aye, bring them to Sieur Jumery!” another man called out. “He’ll see justice done!”
The justice’s name was an invocation that distinctly changed the crowd’s mood. For an odd moment it was almost as though Sieur Jumery’s name had frightened them. Martin, unsettled by the reaction, glared and
touched again the hilt of his sword. “Where does this Jumery Ingoleur reside?”
“A matter of two miles hence,” the fire tender said, throwing a fresh heap of vines on the flames.
“Organize a cart for the dead and the wounded.” Martin settled his gaze on the fire tender, who squared his shoulders, then nodded assent. “And we must have an escort, to ensure that we arrive in good time and health for this man’s judgment.”
To Gaultry’s astonishment, the crowd complied. They were not overjoyed to assign their spare hands to form the escort—a carter’s extra handler, the husband of a woman bringing woven goods to market, and four others. A farmer headed westward was particularly aggrieved when one of his carts was appropriated, even when it was pointed out that he would not be able to pass on until the bridge was more stoutly rebuilt. But taken as a whole, relief that Martin had laid down a palatable course of action was the strongest sentiment. Muttering surrounded them as the corpses were loaded, but the crowd’s impulse for rough judgment had faded.
Tullier’s limp form was laid by the corpse of the man who had taken his own life. Those two shuttered faces were unpleasantly alike. Only the boy’s lips, flushed a seemingly unnatural crimson against his pallid skin, separated his color from that of the dead.
The Sharif climbed up next, assisted by two women. Where Tullier was pale, the Sharif’s face was unhealthily flushed. The horses had dislocated both her shoulders. One of her arms had been rotated back into place by those who had pulled her from the water, but the other, after several crude tries to right it, had been left to dangle. The women who made a place for her among the corpses propped her body so that the still-dislocated arm was supported against one of the dead.
Tullier’s pup whined at the back of the cart until he too was lifted in. Then, just as they were setting forward, the tamarin ran up, soaking wet, and vaulted into the cart. The little creature settled into the Sharif’s lap, chittering to itself and combing its wet fur. A rumbling from the crowd suggested that they did not like the look of its strange pointed snout and brightly striped fur.
The graceful grey monkey which had traveled with them all the way from Bissanty had been lost to the river. Gaultry was almost too deep in shock at her companions’ injuries to miss it.
“What are you doing?” Martin asked, as she reached for the cart’s back rail and put one foot on its wooden step-up bar.
“I’m going to ride with Tullier and the Sharif.”
“Not a chance,” Martin said. “You’re able-bodied and you’ll ride at my side.”
“They need me.”
“I need you more,” Martin hissed. “Don’t imagine that we’ve been forgiven for this fracas yet. You’re going to ride with me and put on a good face and show them we’re not guilty of breaking their damn bridge. So swing yourself up into that saddle and try to look a little less tragic.”
“Tullier was almost killed!” Gaultry seethed back at him. “He needs someone close by him.”
“Allegrios mine, I just slaughtered three men. Do you think what I did was nothing to me? You can’t do anything for him now—he’s stable. I’m the one who needs you, so get moving!” His tone made the words a command, not a supplication.
Gaultry swung mechanically up on the Sharif’s horse, somewhere between numb and furious—at what, she hardly knew. Martin Stalker had renounced his name, his title, and the property, rights, and even the family that went with it. But he could never strip himself of the authority he had earned in more than a decade of leading men into battle. Sitting high on his horse, he only needed to scowl and give orders for anyone—herself included—to follow.
“Sorceress!” The ugly wrath in that shout turned her head. A black-haired man raised his fist, far at the back of the crowd. He pointed toward the bodies in the cart. “That man killed himself for you! Do you really believe the gods will forgive such a trespass?”
She stared back, astonished by the man’s vehemence. Could he really believe she had the power to force a man to cut out his own guts? Beneath her flat, expressionless gaze, the man silenced and withdrew.
After that, she raised her chin, dug her heels into the horse’s sides, and pushed her way to the place at Martin’s side.
“I’m here for you,” she told him. He was so strong, so able to maintain a steady face, that sometimes it was difficult to know when he really needed her. “You’re right. Tullier will keep, and this crowd will not.”
Their watchful escort circled, and got them moving.
“Don’t look back,” Martin warned her, as she half-turned her head to a last catcall.
She risked a glance at him instead. “Do you think this Sieur Jumery will give us a fair hearing?”
“He should. With luck, I’ll know him from my court days, and that will go a long way to explaining.” He paused. “The name sounds familiar. Did I fight a summer campaign, along with one of his sons? I can’t quite place it.”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
He nodded.
T
he disagreeable, hemmed-in ride ended at an ancient, half-ramshackle manor a few miles out of Soiscroix, tucked back from the road behind overgrown hedges. It had once been a beautiful building, with two gracious stuccoed wings flanking the ancient stone keep at its center. Now, the building’s western wing was shuttered, its roof dangerously bowed, and even the inhabited wing was overrun with wisteria that had run riot and cracked the stucco cladding.
Gaultry, exhausted from the backlash of the energy she had used to disperse the green magic, had fallen into a torpor. She roused only as her horse passed the manor’s gate. Half of the men who had accompanied them reined up at the cut in the hedge rather than crowding into the manor’s shabby court. Despite the estate’s obvious decline, it was evident that their escort regarded its owner with great deference. Agitated murmurs revealed that interrupting the justice at home was beginning to concern them more than presenting him with supposed bridge-breakers.
The cart creaked to a halt outside the faded grandeur of the manor’s entry. A boy was sent to bring notice of their arrival.
“Why is everyone nervous?” Gaultry whispered to Martin.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “It could be anything. Just hope that whatever it is isn’t bad news for us.”
They and their escort had a long awkward wait before the house’s master shuffled into view. At first glance, Gaultry could not help but wonder what it was in him that their escort so feared.
Sieur Jumery Ingoleur was old. Old and decrepit, with a frail-looking neck and staring, nearsighted eyes. His justice’s robe trailed duskily behind him, giving the appearance that he had lost height since the garment was first cut. The Prince’s orb, a polished blue sphere with silver inlay, bobbled in his hand, as though its weight was uncomfortable in his aged
fingers, an impression confirmed when, immediately following his acknowledgment of the little crowd, the old man pressed this heavy stone symbol into the hands of the attentive body-servant who accompanied him. “I trust that there is a good reason for this disturbance?” his old man’s voice quavered. “Why aren’t you all headed to market? Isn’t Midsummer busy enough without bringing me into it?”
“Sieur Ingoleur.” The foreman of their escort, coming forward to catch the Justice’s attention, made a respectful bow. “We bring frightful news from Sizor’s Bridge. Men have died, Sieur, and the bridge itself is broken in pieces. These people here are the cause of it.”
“We claim otherwise,” Martin interjected. “But we will cede first telling to this gentleman.”
The foreman gave Martin an unhappy glance, sensing that the tall warrior’s courteous words dampened the dramatic effect of his own. But when Sieur Jumery indicated that he should go on, he rallied, and briefly outlined his version. It started out more fairly than Gaultry expected, though she winced as the man described Martin’s short but brutal dispatch of their attackers, an action which she had been too busy in the water to witness.
What she had not expected was his perception of her own role in the affray. “She was a terror,” the man said, casting her a nervous glance. “She controlled wind, water, and a man’s own hand. Elianté and Emiera both! This I swear is true: She shattered the bridge with one touch of her hand, and the one poor man who tried to stand against her drew his sword and killed himself, the moment she touched him with her gaze.”
“That’s not true!” Gaultry protested, then realized that she did not want to explain what really had happened—at least, she did not want to explain about Tullier’s blood-heritage. “Someone had set an offensive spell on that bridge before ever I set foot upon it. It collapsed around me when the men attacked! Besides—by your own account, it flung me helpless into the water. Why would I have brought the bridge down under my own feet, even if I had the power to do it?”
The old man turned to Gaultry. She was still on her horse, a little back from Martin and the foreman. It was as if he was seeing her for the first time. His nearsighted gaze focused, and a look of something like recognition flickered over his features. His pale eyes went unfriendly. “You are a sorceress,” he said. “Or is that too something you deny?”
His expression, so inexplicably hostile, chilled her. “I have some
power,” she admitted. “But it is pledged to my sworn sovereign, Benet, and I did not use it to attack anyone today.”

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