Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (8 page)

Laral glared at the son, his hopes
crashing down around him. Falyr flicked a lock of yellow hair from his face
with a toss of his head. There was something supremely imperious about the
gesture. He had the upper hand, and he knew it. Laral understood long ago that
his chances of hearing his wren sing to him for the rest of his life were slim,
but losing her to this conceited son of a bitch? “I doubt I’m the only one to
blame.”

“Listen here,” Falyr said, his
finger a spear aimed at Laral. “Brengarra stays in
our
family. We have
been the only family to hold it since the time of King Fiernan. We will not see
it in your hands, Aralorri. Take yourselves from the premises, or we remove
you, and I cannot vouch for the condition you’ll be in.” A trammel of feet
announced the garrison lining up on the walls above.

Laral was hardly able to stand
upright; the anguish coursing through this veins took the mettle right out of
his legs. “I beg your leave to speak with her, for just a moment—”

“Certainly not!” Falyr declared.

“—to make certain we are not
enemies, if we cannot be friends.”

“Bethyn belongs to me!”

Lord Fe’olan waved his son to
silence. “In any case, young Tírandon, my niece is not well enough to receive
visitors today. Or tomorrow.”

Wrong excuse to give. It stripped
away Laral’s grief in an instant. “Not well?” he demanded. “Why is Bethyn not
well?”

“Mind yourself, young man.” Fe’olan’s
eyes darted between his guests and the garrison. One wrong move and he was sure
to give the order to attack. “Her condition is not serious, nor does it merit—”

“Not serious! She is not well
enough to receive visitors, but her condition is not serious? Drys!” he called
over his shoulder. “Is it safe, do you think, for me to call this man a liar?”

Drys grinned. “I call him liar if
you don’t.”

“Now, stop right there,” Fe’olan
began, round belly puffing up like that of a startled toad.

“I’ll flay your hides,” growled Falyr,
even as he retreated a step toward the keep.

A sudden hammering on a windowpane turned
all their heads. A small white hand slapped at the glass on the third floor,
and a blurred, pale face appeared. “
Laral!
” The shriek was indistinct
through the thick pane. “Laral, I’m here!”

“Ride from Brengarra now,” Fe’olan bellowed,
“and all will live.”

Kalla winced, Drys snorted, and
Laral charged. Long legs ate up the steps before Fe’olan could flee into the
keep. Laral’s arm hooked the old man around the neck, and the point of the
diamond dagger teased his ribs. His companions bared their swords and slowly
advanced up the steps, keeping wary eyes on the walls and on Falyr.

The latter lunged to aid his
father. Laral spun from the reach of his sword, dragging Lord Fe’olan with him.
Drys’s fist shattered Falyr’s teeth. Squealing, he sank to the steps, blood and
tooth fragments streaming from his mouth.

“Loose!” Fe’olan choked out. The
creak of two dozen bows drawing taut brought Drys and Kalla back to back, but their
shields hung from their saddles outside the gate.

Laral didn’t hear the bows, only
the blood thundering inside his ears and Bethyn pounding, pounding on the
glass.

A bow lowered. “Stand down, men.”
The man’s elaborate helm denoted him as the castellan. Laral remembered that
bushy white beard from the last time he dared enter Brengarra’s walls.

“No—kill—” Fe’olan grunted. Laral’s
arm tightened.

The commander called down from the
wall, “Her Ladyship told us you would come, Tírandon. I, for one, did not
believe her. She regards you highly. Free her without spilling more blood, and
you have our aid. The stairwell to the left, third floor.” He motioned for a
squad of ten to accompany Laral and his companions into the keep. Half a dozen
others surrounded Falyr, who writhed and vomited on the steps.

Laral sheathed his dagger and hauled
Lord Fe’olan into the keep by the scruff of his neck. “I will not endure this
indignity!” he cried, sweat seeping under Laral’s fingers.

“Keep quiet, or I might forget the
castellan’s invitation.”

Servants and staff, who had crowded
into the foyer to investigate the shouts, now scattered from the Aralorri
incursion. The squad of soldiers cleared the way through the dark, ancient
expanse of the old Lord’s Hall and up the stairs to a new wing. Here the stone shined
pale silver in the light of wrought-iron lamps. Ornate doors lined a long
corridor. “Which room, damn it?” Laral said, giving Fe’olan a shove. “Wren!”

One of the doors burst open. A
plump woman ran into the corridor, shouting at someone behind her, “You little
wretch, you wouldn’t dare!” Something large and heavy swung from inside the
parlor and missed the woman’s head by a fingerspan. With a shriek the woman
fled toward the soldiers, but as soon as she recognized her husband approaching
in a stranger’s custody, her feet stuttered to a stop. A wraith of a girl
caught up to her and swung a lute as if it were a sword. The wooden belly of
the instrument smashed across the woman’s arse and exploded into splinters. The
impact flung the woman to her knees. Howling and fighting her skirts, she
scrambled through the nearest door and slammed it shut.

Bethyn sank against the wall,
panting, her eyes closed and a hand touching a ghostly face as if she fought a
wave of dizziness. She dropped the remains of the lute. Her features, small
anyway, were grievously shrunken. The blush was gone from her cheek, and dark
circles bruised eyes that had grown too large. An ivory dressing gown blanched
her the more, and her torrent of brown hair was a neglected shambles.

Laral roared in fury, seized
Fe’olan by the collar, and hammered his into the wall. “What have you done to
her!”

The castellan intercepted before
Laral squeezed the life from his captive. “We’ll take him from here, Tírandon.”

Bethyn reached for him, took a
faltering step closer, and her knees buckled. Laral caught her up, and her arms
wrapped tight about his neck. “I had almost given up hope,” she whispered. She
felt as if she might break in his arms. So small, so fragile, like dusty
crystal falling. He’d caught her just in time.

~~~~

“T
hey wanted me to think you
had stopped writing,” Bethyn said. Propped up on pillows in her music room, she
sipped steaming broth from a mug. The household physician reached for her wrist,
measured her pulse.

“I never stopped,” Laral said. He
sat at the foot of her settee and tucked a blanket under her feet. She kept
smiling at him in such a restful way that Laral could scarcely imagine the
horror she’d endured.

“I know you didn’t. Three months
ago, Nurse—Lady Brighthill, you remember—found one of your letters before Uncle
Fe’olan did and brought it to me. Your words were full of desperation. I wrote
back to you, but Falyr caught Nurse trying to deliver it to a courier. She
disappeared the next day. My Nurse, my dear Nurse. You don’t think they killed
her, do you?”

“We’ll find out, you can be sure of
that. I’m only grateful your uncle earned the spite of the garrison.”

Even now, Drys and Kalla helped the
castellan secure Lord Downford, his wife, and son in the gatehouse dungeon.
Bethyn’s orders were explicit: “Put them in separate cells. Don’t risk their
conniving minds in the same room together. And make sure they’re hungry.”

Bethyn gulped the broth as if she
hadn’t eaten in weeks, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, an
unladylike gesture, and one that demonstrated that she couldn’t afford to care.
“My soldiers might’ve loved him, if he had given me good council instead of
taking my mantle from me. And they were swindlers, all three of them. They
claimed our treasury had run low, that we hadn’t recovered from the war, and
deducted the garrison’s pay. Pocketed the coin for themselves, of course. They
did the same across my lands. I heard the people’s complaints, but I couldn’t do
a thing to stop it. You wouldn’t do that, would you, Laral?”

He reached for her hand, squeezed
her fingers. “Do not distrust me because of their actions.”

Her smile was slow in returning.
Sadness darkened it. “I never had cause to distrust anyone before they came.”

“What will you do with them?”

“I’ll write to the Princess Regent.
Her court will decide what’s to be done.”

“Is she just?”

Bethyn looked down at her hands.
Her index finger ran around the rim of the mug. Restless hands, always needing
something to do. “I don’t know. We must also have her approval to … do you
still mean to marry me?”

“More than ever. And I don’t care
if we have Ki’eva’s approval or not.”

Bethyn’s head sank wearily into the
pillows. “Do you realize what trouble this may cause?”

Laral remembered his father’s
tirade. “Only too well. Am I worth it, Wren? Losing everything?”

“Brengarra is just stones, Laral—”

“And a proud history of honor and
loyalty.”

“—if the Princess Regent is so full
of hate that she believes marrying you, loving you, is dishonorable and
disloyal, then she can have Brengarra and everything that goes with it.”

Bent over his box of medicines, the
physician grunted in astonishment. “You must not say such things, m’ lady. Your
father—”

“My father is dead. His sense of honor
and mine may be quite different, and I am sick of the kind of hatred that killed
him and my brother both. I will not condone it within these walls as long as
they remain mine.”

The physician straightened, risked
a glance at the Aralorri, then hurriedly packed away his equipment. After he
fled the room, Laral told Bethyn, “I do not deserve you.”

“No? You fought for me. If that’s
not deserving, I don’t know what is.”

“I won’t let anything hurt you
again, Wren.”

“That may not be possible, but I
know you’d die trying.”

~~~~

W
hen Bethyn was strong
enough to travel, she answered the Princess Regent’s summons to court. Laral accompanied
her, also at the Regent’s insistence. They towed Lord Downford and his family
along with them in a gaol wagon. They looked thin, dirty, and sullen huddled
inside the bars. Falyr cursed Laral, who rode alongside the wagon, and shouted
at passersby, “Kill this Aralorri! He has no right.” Finally Bethyn ordered a
tarp flung over the wagon. How Laral missed Drys’s fists and Kalla’s good
sense, but his friends had responsibilities of their own to attend to back
home. Without them, he felt as if he stood alone among wolves. It only took one
with the gumption to bite.

Because the peace talks had taken
place on the more neutral ground at Nathrachan, Laral had missed seeing Fiera’s
royal city. Tucked into the foothills of the Shadow Mounds, Brynduvh knew
neither straight road nor level ground. Seven grand thoroughfares lined with
silver lampposts led uphill to Royal Square. Laral marveled at the slender
white towers and steeply sloped tile roofs of the palace, its fountains and
terraced gardens. The residence of the White Falcon was like a graceful lady
out of fairytales; in comparison, Bramoran, while grand in size and strength,
brought to mind the bearded barbarian.

As soon as they were permitted
entrance to the palace, Bethyn had her double petition delivered to Princess
Ki’eva. Two days passed before a herald came to their rooms and announced, “Her
Highness will see you now.”

Bethyn set aside her lute—she had
half a dozen of them and traveled with three—and rushed about straightening her
hair and her skirts. Laral gulped down the last of his tea.

“Pardons, m’ lady, just the
Aralorri,” said the herald.

Eyes large and liquid with sudden fear,
Bethyn rushed to Laral. “It’s not about my uncle then. What will you say to
her?”

“The truth, I suppose.” He kissed
her forehead. “If she doesn’t like it, Drys will take us in.”

“Laral … be careful.”

The herald led him from the guest
suites, along one glistening corridor and the next. The floors were polished to
a mirror shine, and rank upon rank of useless, ornamental furniture lined the
walls and alcoves. Courtiers ignored him expertly, as they ignored everyone
outside their sphere of gossip, but he felt their eyes on him once his back was
turned. He expected the audience to take place in the fabled throne room where
Thorn Kingshield had cut off the White Falcon’s head, but he was admitted to a small
receiving room instead. The most beautiful woman Laral had ever seen occupied a
high-backed chair between a pair of alabaster columns carved in her likeness. At
the peace talks, he had served the high table and had occasion to lean so close
to the princess that her perfumes filled his head. But he hadn’t dared look her
in the face. This morning, she wore a gown of rose and silver jacquard.
Bejeweled butterflies glittered in her golden hair. In her hand, studded with
ruby rings, she held Bethyn’s petition of marriage. In whispers, she consulted
a councilor about its contents. The man gestured in Laral’s direction, and
Ki’eva’s green eyes rose, pinning him. Laral remembered Drys’s comment about
her merciless gaze and felt his courage flag.

“Quite the honor,” she said,
“welcoming the son of the infamous Lord Tírandon. You may approach.”

Laral found himself still standing
on the threshold and scolded himself,
Don’t let her judge you a fool, fool
.
Raising his chin, he marched up an emerald-green rug and snapped a bow as he
would for Queen Briéllyn.

“Are all of Tírandon’s sons so
tall?” Ki’eva asked, that blade-sharp gaze raking her guest. Surely she was a
match for her brother in cunning, and if Laral was any judge, surpassed him in
coldness and cruelty.

“I have outgrown them all, Your
Highness.”

Examining the petition, she absently
waved him to a chair. The councilor bowed out but left the door open. A pair of
White Mantles took up position there. Their glares bored into the regent’s
guest.