Sing the Four Quarters (51 page)

How did this happen?" One hand made the sign against the kigh, the other hovered over the hilt of the skinning knife he had shoved through the wrapped ties of his bloodstained, bullhide apron.

Gaze locked on Nikulas a'Tynek, Pjerin set Gerek on the ground and turned him to face across the court. "Go to Annice," he said shortly.

"But…"

"Just go."

Gerek sighed deeply but trotted across to where the two bards still stood in the open doorway.

"Gerek, are you all right?" one of the new arrivals called as Annice drew the child in against her legs.

"'Course I am." The weary indignation in his voice clearly added,
how many times do I have to tell you
. "I just went to find Papa."

"We thought the bard took you…"

"And murdered you!"

"My brother is dead and a dead man is alive!" Nikulas roared, rising to his feet. "Tell me what is going on!"

Tersely, Pjerin explained again how Olina had made him appear an oathbreaker in order to gain control of the pass.

How she'd used Lukas and, finally, how Lukas had died.

"He fell?" Nikulas snorted. "And am I to believe you didn't push him?"

"Shame, Nikulas! Shame!"

"… saw His Grace fight to save your brother with every right to let him fall!"

"Lukas would have dropped the boy…"

"… accident…"

"… shame!"

Breathing heavily, Nikulas backed away a step. With no one supporting his accusation, not even those members of the family scattered amid the group still standing just inside the gate, the last thing he wanted was a one on one confrontation with the due. "Still more questions than answers," he muttered.

"I have a question!" Vencel pushed his way forward. "Now that you've returned, Your Grace, where do you stand? Are we in Ohrid to continue as forgotten vassals of the King of Shkoder, valued only for our willingness to stupidly throw our live between him and conquest? Or will you lead us to victory?"

"Articulate farmers in these parts," Stasya murmured for Annice's hearing alone.

Annice nodded. "He's going to lose his tongue if Pjerin loses his temper."

"Lead you to what victory?" Pjerin demanded.

"In throwing off the yoke of Shkoder!"

"And replacing it with the yoke of Cemandia?" His voice had taken on a dangerous edge.

Vencel ignored it. "We were promised change!" he declared, punching the air. "A chance to be more!"

Several people muttered in agreement and a wave of movement traced a restless shift in position.

"You believed those promises?" The edge in Pjerin's voice had become a sneer.

"Cemandia gave us trade!"

"It was what you wanted, Your Grace."

"It was what Olina wanted," Pjerin bellowed, his grip on his temper slipping. "Those were not my words! The Cemandians will grind you under their boot heels! Take away your freedoms!"

"We want our chance!" Vencel yelled.

The court erupted in a cacophony of shouting.

"Let it be." Stasya grabbed Gerek with one hand and Annice with the other. "Olina has played these people against themselves, fears against desires for nearly two quarters. Their due was dead. Now he's alive. Cemandia's bad.

Cemandia's good. Cemandia's bad again. No one knows what or who to believe. Can't you feel it? This storm
has
to break."

"Someone's going to get hurt, Stas."

Still holding Gerek, Stasya let Annice go and gestured at the seething mass. It was no longer possible to determine who had been originally at the keep and who had come up from the village. "How," she asked, "do you suggest we stop it?"

"Lukas a'Tynek was a superstitious fool!" Pjerin's voice rose above the din. "Olina used him! She used you!"

"Kigh lover!"

The first blow occurred simultaneously in a number of places.

Gerek clutched at Annice's shift. "Is my papa gong to get hurt?"

"I don't think so, sweetheart." Annice added her grip to Stasya's. The last thing they wanted was for Gerek to plunge into the fray. "No one's hitting him. He's trying to stop the fighting."

"Why doesn't he just tell them to stop?"

"Nobody's listening."

It was one thing to agree to capture a foreign king, convinced he was the overlord who kept Ohrid isolated and poor, but it was another thing entirely to physically strike the hereditary due—the man who was Ohrid. The blows Pjerin took were accidental as he waded into the battle pulling men and women apart.

A knife flashed in an upraised fist. Pjerin smashed his forearm into the snarling face below it. The knife went flying, clattered against the cobblestones, and was lost amidst the dance of scuffling feet.

Flesh pounded against flesh. Urmi, her nose streaming blood, kicked the legs out from under a cursing villager and followed him to the ground. A pair of cousins rolled and spat obscenities as they struggled for a hold. Vencel sucked air past a split lip as an elbow caught him in the stomach, but he recovered in time to block the next blow and return a quick flurry of his own. Someone screamed as teeth clamped down on a fold of skin. Pressed against the base of the tower near his brother's body, Nikulas, skinning knife in his hand, watched and waited for a clear shot at the Due of Ohrid's back.

His brother was dead. The due was alive. That wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Lukas'd had plans. Big plans.

Now he was dead.

Pjerin grunted as a flailing arm slammed into his wounded shoulder. He staggered back, yanked two villagers off the keep's scullion, helped the boy to his feet, and ducked a swinging fist.

Nikulas crept out from the wall. Not even the demon kigh would be able to follow the strike in this confusion. He fixed his eyes on the dirt-streaked skin just below the tangled mass of the due's hair, where the heavy muscle bulk over the ribs gave way to softer tissue. Up and under. Then away. No one would ever know. His brother would be avenged.

Only Annice and Stasya saw the first pair of guards gallop into the keep. The second and third were harder to ignore.

By the time the fourth and fifth were taking their positions, the fighting had begun to stop as people were pushed into an increasingly smaller area in the center of the court.

Recognizing his last and best chance, Nikulas lunged forward. A lance cracked down on his wrist. Crying out, he dropped the knife and cradled the swelling arm against his belly. When he tried to hide himself, he found the lance blocking his way and a smiling guard shaking her head. She might not know exactly what was going on, but the laws were clear concerning back-stabbing. Nikulas could only stand and watch as horses plunged past struggling combatants and the people of Ohrid staggered to their feet to face this new threat together.

By the time the king, his standard bearer, Tadeus, and the four nobles rode into the court, the guards were ranged around the perimeter in what became a closed circle the moment the last rider cleared the gate. Pjerin and his people stood, differences forgotten, shoulder to shoulder, wiping away blood and glaring about them at this show of force.

"Nees! I can't see!" Gerek bounced up and down on the doorstep and scowled at the pair of dusty haunches that blocked his view.

Trying very hard not to break into hysterical giggles, Annice took his hand and pushed between the two horses.

"Excuse me, Corporal Agniya." She tapped the guard lightly just above her greave. "If you wouldn't mind shuffling your mount to the left just a bit."

Corporal Agniya looked down and her jaw dropped. "You're… I mean, you…" The orders she'd been given didn't begin to cover this. Wondering just what in the Circle was going on, she did the only thing she could. She moved her horse.

"Pjerin a'Stasiek, Due of Ohrid." The sunlight blazed on each point of the crown encircling Theron's helm and threw the stern lines of his face into burnished relief. "I am pleased to see you got safely home." Although he spoke the local dialect with a strong accent, astonishment that he spoke it at all showed on most faces in the court, including Pjerin's.

As the tall man, bare torso streaked with blood, stepped forward to bow before the king, Tadeus translated Theron's words into Shkoden for the benefit of the guard and nobles. Several of the guard broke discipline enough to exchange astonished glances. The last they'd heard, Pjerin a'Stasiek, Due of Ohrid had been executed for treason.

"Although it seems," Theron continued, "that your welcome was not all you might have hoped." He scanned the crowd behind the due, noting those who moved closer to their lord and those who backed away. Finally, his gaze rested on the broken body lying a little apart. "I came to Ohrid to find the traitor who thought to sell our country out to the Cemandian horde. It appears I've come too late."

There was enough of a question in his last words that Pjerin, as confused as everyone else, opened his mouth to reply.

Before he got the chance, Vencel shook off the hands holding him and stomped forward.

"What treason is it to want a better life?" he demanded.

Theron bent his head to meet the young man's angry eyes. "None at all," he said. "But what kind of life can be gained by the betrayal of an innocent man? Not a better one."

Vencel dabbed at his mouth with the back of his hand and shot a glance at Pjerin. "But
you
killed…" His voice trailed into uncertainty as he realized what he was saying.

"Killed him?" Theron asked gently. He very much doubted the boy was even as old as Onele. An easy age to lead with confusion and anger.

"What about the kigh?" Beneath the king's steady gaze, Vencel fell back on the one thing everyone kept shouting about. "You listen to the kigh!"

"No." Theron shook his head an Annice was surprised to hear an undertone of disappointment in his voice. "I cannot hear the kigh. But I do listen to those who can. Don't you think it's important that we're aware of the world around us?"

"But the kigh are outside the Circle!"

"All things are within the Circle. That is the very Center of what we believe. If all things are not enclosed, then there is no Circle."

"But the Cemandians believe…"

"The Cemandians are afraid."

Vencel stiffened, resenting the implication.
I'm not afraid of anything
, his posture declared and others around the court mirrored it. "We were promised that the world would come to Ohrid."

"Who promised this?"

The only sound came from the horses as Vencel turned toward the corpse of Lukas a'Tynek.

Theron straightened and his voice filled the court. "I am Theron, King of Shkoder, High Captain of the Broken Islands, Lord over the Mountain Principalities of Sibiu, Ohrid, Adjud, Bicaz, and Somes." Above his head, a breeze spread the royal standard so that the crowned ship sailed over the keep. "Acknowledging the claims of your due, 7 have come to you to see that the promises made to Ohrid by the crown are kept. I will bring the world to Ohrid if you but let me."

Shaking her head, Annice couldn't help but admire how Theron had taken control through sheer force of personality.

He was king. Without doubt. Without question. And by speaking in the local dialect he'd explicitly said, I
am king
here. Even Vencel was beginning to look impressed.

Tucked in behind her shoulder, Stasya murmured, "Practically bardic."

Annice smiled but concentrated on separating out individual statements from the muttering of the crowd.

"… means something coming from the actual king…"

"… kings can break promises as easily as traders…"

"… here, isn't he?"

"We mean enough to him, that he came here…"

Brows drawn into a dark vee, Pjerin raised his hand and gradually silence returned. Obviously, there were layers upon layers upon layers of understanding involved here but this was not the time to find out who knew what and when. The king no longer believed him forsworn and that would do for now. "Majesty, I regret to inform you that we have not actually dealt with the treason in Ohrid."

Around him, faces paled, as people remembered suddenly that they had agreed to turn this king over to a Cemandian army.

"Lukas a'Tynek…" Pjerin gestured at the body, "… was only a tool for my father's sister, Olina i'Katica."

"And where is your father's sister now?" Theron asked.

A muscle jumped in Pjerin's jaw. "Probably Cemandia. When she discovered I was alive, she ran."

"Let her run." Theron smiled and his voice rang against the stones. "And let the Cemandian army come. The keep of Ohrid holds the pass!"

As the bruised and bleeding people in the court began to cheer and Tadeus had to practically Sing his translation in order to be heard, Annice had to admit she'd never really appreciated her brother's power as king before.

When the cheer died, Theron spoke again. "There is, however, still a treason that must be dealt with." Then he turned his head and looked straight at Annice.

Annice felt her heart stop.
How could I have forgotten
. She tried to back up, but Stasya blocked the way.

"He's seen you, Nees. You've got to face him."

"But…"

"Nees." Stasya laid a gentle kiss on the top of the other woman's ear. "If you can't trust him, trust me. Go. I'll be right behind you."

Gerek squirmed out of her hands. "Nees, why is everyone staring at you?"

Stasya reached forward, grabbed his shoulder and pushed him toward his nurse. "I'll explain everything later, Gerek."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

He looked mutinous, but he went.

Annice thought she was used to people staring at her. She was a bard. People always stared at bards. But the weight of speculation, concern, astonishment, pity dragged at her, and she wouldn't have made the last few feet had Pjerin not reached out and pulled her to his side.

"Your Majesty," he began, switching to Shkoden.

"Your Grace." Theron cut him off in the same language. "Be quiet." He sighed, and pulled off his helm, resting it in front of him on the saddle. "Did you honestly believe," he asked sadly, running one hand through sweat-flattened curls,

"that I would have you put to death for bearing a child?"