Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (9 page)

“I ought to dismiss this nonsense
out of hand,” said the Regent, laying the petition aside. Her fingers steepled
under her chin, and suddenly Laral felt like a rat paralyzed by a serpent’s gaze.
“Lady Brengarra is very young, obviously too young to decide wisely whom to
marry. Tell me how you met. The chancellor and I can only assume it was after
the battle that took place there two years ago.”

“Yes, Highness. During the battle,
actually. Wren … Lady Brengarra was attacked by a pair of squires. I stopped
them and kept her safe until the battle was over.”

“Ah. Hard to resist a savior.”
Somehow, the statement made one of Laral’s most cherished memories seem silly
and soiled. “You present a most interesting situation, son of Lander. I am
forced to consider what might have been and what is. Had my brother succeeded
in unifying the Brother Realms, he would have forced marriages such as the one
Lady Brengarra proposes. Fieran lords marrying Aralorri daughters. Aralorr’s
sons, of course, would have been hanged on the gallows.” Ki’eva’s grin sent icy
fingers skittering across Laral’s shoulders. “But those are hardly present
circumstances. I suppose you expect Fiera to feel honored that an Aralorri
would deign to marry one of its daughters.”

“That’s not—”

Ki’eva stood abruptly. Laral leapt
up, head bowed, and watched the hem of her gown whisk past. “I cannot allow
your marriage to proceed, son of Lander.” She stopped before a window
overlooking a garden. Old boxwoods shaped a maze, and Laral felt as if he had
run into a dead end. She turned to face him. “Unless.” A graceful hand beckoned
him closer. It took everything in him to swallow his panic, his anger, his
heartbreak and join her near the casement. She waited, daring him to avoid her
gaze. When he met it, she added, “Unless you swear your fealty to me and to my
brother’s heir.”

Swear fealty to Nathryk? He who
showed neither wisdom nor humility, but only hatred and hostility toward his
Aralorri captors? Would Laral have behaved differently if he had fallen into
Fieran hands? He hoped so.

Ki’eva shifted so close that Laral
could smell gardenias in her hair and see that the butterflies were real, dead,
dipped in silver, but real. She purred, “Are you truly prepared to turn your
back on your forefathers and the Black Falcon?”

“No.”

Ki’eva leaned away again, eyes a
fraction wider.

“But neither can I forsake Lady
Brengarra. As her chosen, it will be my duty to promote peace between our
peoples.”

The Regent considered him in
silence, longer than made Laral comfortable. A smile gradually turned the
corner of her shiny dyed mouth. “And if peace should be impossible?”

A challenge was it? Very well. “Do
you have plans to see peace undone?”

Ki’eva’s eyebrow peeked. “It is not
your place to question me in that regard. Of course, I don’t. But my nephew is
another matter. He’s a boy yet, but he’s sworn vengeance on Aralorr for what
your people did to his.

“I do not doubt it.”

“When he inherits, what then? Do
you imagine he will leave you in peace?”

Laral shrugged a shoulder. “I
imagine I have a few years to prove my worth, if a man’s worth matters to him
at all. I’ll worry about the rest when it happens.”

Ki’eva seemed uncertain what to say
to that. She paced, whirled, regarded him as if he spoke a foreign language and
required a translator. “Where did you learn this sense of honesty, this, dare I
say, honor? Not from Lander, I’d wager.”

“I was squire to both Lords
Ilswythe.”

She masked her face against
surprise. “Rhorek’s War Commanders? Interesting.” She sank into the nearest
chair and drummed her fingers on the arm, slowly, gaze turned inward, calculating.

Drys was right. The Princess Regent
was the most terrifying person he’d ever encountered. “You were at the peace
talks, then?”

“Yes, Highness. I served you wine.”

Those bejeweled fingers resumed
their drumming. “You … love … Lady Brengarra very much, don’t you?”

Where was this line of questioning
headed? “Yes, Highness.”

“Yes, there’s no question of that.
You wouldn’t dare answer my summons, otherwise. Or you’re a fool, but I doubt
that. The young War Commander was feverish with wounds at the talks, if I
recall.”

“Yes, Highness, but he recovered.”

“His brother is the avedra who
killed my brother, yes?”

Laral gulped, throat painfully dry.
“Yes.”

“You know them well, these
illustrious brothers.”

“They are my foster-brothers.”

“Are you privy, then, to Aralorr’s
recovery, in a military sense?”

Ah, here it was. Laral’s careful
journey through the maze brought him at last to the kernel of her curiosity. Could
he find his way out again alive? “Not anymore, Highness.”

“But you could find out?” How sweet
and innocent she looked, as if she’d asked him to tea.

“No, Highness, I could not.”

The innocence turned brittle. “How
am I to trust your oath of fealty?”

Laral clenched his hands behind his
back and stared at the wall just past her right ear. “Trust that I will never
do anything to incite conflict between your people and mine, and let that be
your proof. But I will not spy for you—or for Rhorek—and I will forget you
asked if of me.”

Her lovely mouth pinched. “You
overstep your place.”

“No, Highness, you overstep yours.
I am not the man to spy for you, but nor am I your enemy.”

Those serpent’s eyes narrowed;
Laral didn’t dare meet them. “We shall see, son of Lander. Disobedience is the
same thing as treason.”

“Is it? Then can obedience be the
same as dishonor?”

Her hand slashed between them. “You
may go. Before you leave Brynduvh, you will give your oath, or you will leave
Fiera and your Lady Brengarra forever.”

 Laral bowed and retreated toward
the door. Ki’eva’s voice pursued him like a tentacle coiling around his neck: “If
I summon you again, be prepared to give me the information I require.”

~~~~

W
hen the andyr trees began
to flare burgundy, the households of Tírandon and Brengarra met upon the bridge
below Nathrachan. Laral and Bethyn were married over the gliding copper waters
of the Bryna, beneath the archway where the arms of the Black Falcon and the
White met back to back. The symbol of the chosen venue was lost on no one. In
days to come, many an Aralorri and Fieran would recall that ceremony and the
hope it displayed for the people of the Brother Realms.

~~~~

… for strife
of the future is sewn during days of peace.

—Lyric
12, “Crossroads,”

Songs
of Dan Ora’as

“G
et down, get down!”
Kethlyn ordered his soldiers. He crouched low inside the doorway of the
falconer’s barn. His platoon of six ducked down behind him. Sawdust and fine
feathers drifted on the still air; Kethlyn had threatened his men with their
lives if they sneezed. “He’ll be by any moment.”

“When do we attack, Commander?”
asked Braeson, the smith’s youngest son. He had contributed the pouch of soot
that the rest had used to paint their faces. Kethlyn had to be careful not to
get any on his red state doublet.

“After he passes this doorway. Then
we attack. We’ll get him this time for sure.”

Ilswythe’s grounds were always
packed during Assembly, and for that one week Da’s castle resembled the
bustling piers and streets of Windhaven. The Assembly of 985 was no exception.
Clusters of highborns ambled across the lawn and along the gravel paths, unhurried.
Most discussed their entries for the horse races and harassed each other for
wagers. Falcon Guards, soldiers of the garrison, servants, and villagers passed
at a quicker pace, bound on one assignment or another. Kethlyn found it easier
to hide among this shifting morass of people and noise.

Eliad lingered near the well,
chatting with Lord Garrs of Helwende. The latter howled mocking laughter and declared
something about “taking Eliad up on it.” Looking smug, Eliad jotted a note in a
little black book he whipped from a pocket. At sixteen, he meant to win the
squires’ race; he had lost last year to Garrs’s squire and swore he wouldn’t be
embarrassed two years in a row. Besides, King Rhorek always had an extra
special prize for the winner of the squires’ race. Kethlyn couldn’t wait till
he was old enough to enter the races.

In the meantime, he and his troop
continued to play their War Games. Ilswythe’s artisans, grooms, servants and
stewards permitted their children to play with Kethlyn, but only on the understanding
that they never get familiar with him:  they had to call him ‘lord’ and treat
him as such. Kethlyn carried a blunt wooden sword; the rest wielded four-foot-long
pikes. Sticks, really, that they had sharpened against the stone wall. They
called him War Commander, and he issued the orders. The commoners’ children
accepted this arrangement without question. These things just were. And so,
under Kethlyn’s leadership, his platoon had become the terror of Ilswythe. Many
a matron bent over her laundry felt the stinging bite of a slingshot’s slug and
spun to catch the children snickering and racing away.

Captain Maegeth was always a good
sport; she encouraged Kethlyn’s War Games by teaching him and his soldiers how better
to handle their weapons. But Eliad proved the best playmate. He prenticed
Kethlyn in the arts of stealth and ambush. “Test me whenever you can, m’ lord,”
he requested. “The day I’m taken unaware by a kid half my age is the day I
resign my position and scrub pots at Bramoran.”

“I think he knows we’re here,” said
Eula, the undercook’s granddaughter. She was proud of her rusted
colander-turned-helm.

Eliad shook his head in firm denial
of the taunts made by Lord Garrs’s squire. Then as he listed the qualities of
his new gray racer, his glance darted toward the falconer’s barn.

“Back!” Kethlyn ordered. His
soldiers retreated deeper into the shadows. Peeking over the windowsill, he saw
that Eliad had drifted closer—and his back was turned. “See? He has no idea.
Get ready, men.”

Small fists poised pikes and little
bodies grew taut for the charge. Eula straightened her helm, knocked it once
with her knuckles for luck, and Stevryn, a groom’s boy, loaded his slingshot
with one of the pebbles he had carefully polished himself.

Kethlyn opened his mouth to give
the order, but someone tugged his sleeve. Whirling, he found his little sister.
“Aw, Carah, how’d you get in here? Go away. And stop sucking your thumb.”

“I wanna p’ay,” she mumbled around
her thumb. Carah was only four, far too young to take part in the War Games. Kethlyn’s
new rule was that a soldier had to be at least five, but no older than eight. Carah’s
dark hair, bound in crisp periwinkle bows, bounced in ringlets. The hem of her
dress dragged through the sawdust, hardly an apt uniform for a soldier. How
could she scare anybody, dressed like that? Her blue eyes gawked at him,
hopeful and eager.

“You can’t play, you tagtail. This
is serious. You’re gonna mess up everything.” He jerked her hand from her mouth
and shoved her toward the backdoor.

Carah stuck out her lower lip, but
Kethlyn ignored her. He and his soldiers drew up a new plan in the sawdust.
Carah stomped her foot; her silk slipper sent up puffs of dust and feathers.
When that didn’t work, she tried to summon the tears for a really loud fit.

Let us out
, she heard
.

Carah’s head cocked to one side.
The barn was quiet, the older children silent as they split up and recalculated
their attack. Only the falcons chattered, clinging to pinewood perches while
they ruffled their feathers and preened their breasts. Carah tip-toed toward
the cage. A pair of beady black eyes peered through the mesh at her.
Free
us. Let us fly
.

How unhappy they looked, all cooped
up. Carah would be nice to the pretty birds. She rose on her toes and stretched
her arm, but she was too short to reach the latch. She hopped up and down,
grunted and whined, but the latch was still too high. An empty wooden box lay
in one corner. With her face scrunched up and red with effort, she scooted the
box through the sawdust and into position below the cage. Yes, this would work.
Just high enough. She climbed onto the box, hooked pudgy fingers through the
wire mesh. She was lucky there were only four birds, because she’d only learned
to count to five. Shiny, sharp eyes glinted from sleek, black helmets. Their
talons looked as long as daggers protruding from bony yellow toes. The nearest falcon
shifted feet, leaned side to side, dancing excitedly.

“Where will you fly?” Carah whispered.

The falcon chattered again, and
Carah heard in her head,
In high mountains, where light rises. Home.

How sad that Master Urlen wouldn’t
let them go home. Carah turned the latch, flipped back the brass bar, and swung
wide the door.

The hinges squeaked, alerting her
brother where he crouched on the threshold. “Carah, no!” He dashed forward to
slam the door shut, but the falcons exploded from the mews in clouds of
feathers. Their wings beat furiously; their talons curled menacingly. Carah
screamed, arms shielding her face, and toppled off the crate. She landed on her
back in the sawdust. The falcons flew for the doorway shining with open sky,
but two shadows, come to investigate the screams, blocked their way. A talon
lashed out. Eliad roared, threw a hand over his cheek, and shoved Garrs out of
the barn. The falcons raced for the clouds and vanished over the eastern wall.

“What have you brats done?” Eliad
shouted.

“It wasn’t us,” Kethlyn retorted,
gawking at the blood seeping between Eliad’s fingers. “It was my stupid
sister.”

Carah pushed herself to her feet,
brushed the sawdust off her starched pinafore, and raised a satisfied smile.

“Did you, Carah?” asked Eliad. Why
did he look so sad?

She planted her fists on her hips. “They
wanted me to. They want to go home.”

“You little liar!” Kethlyn shouted.

“I am not—”

Master Urlen burst through the
doorway. “My birds!” he exclaimed. “You wicked children, get out! Get out! His
Lordship is going to skin you alive for losing his birds.” With irate sweeps of
his arms, he routed the troops.

Eliad nudged Kethlyn after them.
“Better go tell your da—if he’s not too busy.” Kethlyn raced away through the
crowd that had gathered into one large, curious heap outside the mews. Inside,
Eliad dropped to one knee and examined Carah front and back. “They didn’t hurt
you then?”

She shook her head, and her
ringlets bobbed. The sunlight glistened on the blood that dripped onto Eliad’s
shoulder, staining the blue velvet black. Fear sank into her eyes. “Did
they
do that?”

“Nearly tore my eye out!”

She shrank from his anger and whispered,
“They thought you were trying to catch them.” Her thumb strayed to her mouth,
paused, then her little hand reached toward the ugly gashes.

Eliad clasped her fingers before
they got blood on them. With a helpless, lovesick sigh, he scooped her up. “C’mon,
m’ lady. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Did I do something wrong, Eliad?”

He gave her an uncertain
half-smile. “I don’t know, kid. Just have to see what your da says.”

~~~~

P
rince Valryk watched the
falcons fly. Their wings flapped desperately, carrying them in a wide
semicircle over the heads of the highborns, past the royal suite on the third
floor of Ilswythe’s keep, and on toward the noontime sun. They vanished in the
white glare. When Valryk’s eyes stopped watering, he saw them flying so high
that they were nothing more than indistinct black dashes racing northward.
Through large windows that overlooked the crowded bailey and the curtain wall,
Valryk glimpsed the knife-sharp summit of Mount Drenéleth glinting bright with
snow. So that’s where the falcons lived…

Below, the gathering of children
scattered from the falconer’s barn. They carried long sticks like staves, and a
little girl dropped an odd-looking hat. She turned back for it, then raced
after the others. Had they set the falcons free? Valryk wanted to run and hide
with them, the thrill of danger twisting in his belly.

Should he bother asking for
permission? In the dressing room, Queen Briéllyn was crying. Her handmaid cooed
and fussed over her. Valryk crept toward the door, pressed himself against the
wall, but it was so hard to be quiet when he wanted to scream and run and
giggle.

“Do you think her ghost is haunting
me?” the queen said, and Valryk’s ears pricked up.

“I don’t think that’s possible,
ma’am,” said Lady Endhal. “You’re doing yourself a great deal of hurt.”

“I saw that cat again. The big gray
one.”

Ah, now Valryk understood. He’d
heard that Bramoran’s North Tower, where political prisoners were kept, was
haunted by the ghost of a crazy woman who had jumped to her death. The gray cat
had been her only friend. Valryk had seen the huge animal with his own eyes,
prowling around the kitchens. Mean, it looked, all scarred and tattered. The
scullery maids had thrown scraps at it to drive it away. Mother sounded as
frightened of the animal as the maids were. “It was crying in the rose garden, Agga,
the night before we left Bramoran, as if it were looking for her. I sent two
crossbowmen after it, but it vanished.”

“Oh, ma’am, don’t fret over a mangy
old cat. I told you and His Majesty both that it was too soon, that you weren’t
recovered yet, but neither of you had the wisdom to listen to me. It’s the loss
of the baby that’s brought on this melancholy. It will pass, and those
nightmares will cease troubling you. You’ll see. Let’s get you dressed now.”

When Mother came out of the
dressing room in stiff green silk, Valryk was sitting in an oversized chair,
swinging his legs and twiddling his thumbs. All the furniture in the royal
castle was pretty but hard and cold; here at Ilswythe chairs were squishy and
comfortable. Valryk decided that as soon as
he
was the Black Falcon, he
would replace a few things at home.

Briéllyn turned before a
full-length mirror, smoothed a few wrinkles from her skirt. Her face was
flushed, and she tried to smear away the signs that she’d been crying. She
looked at her son in the mirror. Their eyes met. Valryk looked down at his
knees. His eyes were hazel like his father’s, but his hair was a darker auburn
than his mother’s, and he shared her delicate, long-limbed frame.

“Stand up,” she said. “Are you
wrinkled?”

He obeyed, slowly, grudgingly, and
she stooped down to straighten his lace collar and make sure all his buttons
were fastened. She frowned and fussed, as if a prince’s buttons were a matter
of state importance. “Wrinkled already,” she muttered. “All this traveling.
Your father ought to hold the Assembly at Bramoran. The people
should
come to
us
. I don’t understand some people’s traditions.”

“Jewelry, ma’am,” said Lady Endhal.
Mother stopped fussing over Valryk’s clothes and sat down at the vanity. Her
handmaid lowered a velvet-lined tray from which Mother selected large pearls
for her ears and a strand of tiny emeralds for her throat. “Is it too much for
silly horse races?”

“You look stunning, ma’am.”

She did, indeed. Mother drew back
her shoulders, raised her chin, and smoothed her expression. From one instant
to the next, she ceased being Mother and became the queen.

“My hair, quickly. Mustn’t keep the
horses waiting.”

Now that her tears were dry, maybe
Valryk could make his appeal. “Can I go play with them, Mother?”

“Play? With whom?”

“Kethlyn’s in the bailey. He has
friends. I don’t have friends.”

“Your cousin and his friends will
be at the races, as you will be. You may sit with them.”

“But I want to
play
!”

“Absolutely not!” she snapped.
“This is not a week for play. It’s intolerable, that’s what it is, and I won’t
have you show up downstairs filthy and mussed. Understood?” She whisked an
emerald hairpin from the tray and stabbed it into the coils of her auburn hair.

“You
never
let me play,” he
muttered, returning to the window. He hoped she saw him moping and took pity.