The Assassin King (24 page)

The titan held the scale in his hand, gazing out of the balcony window. A moment later he turned to the Emperor Presumptive and nodded mutely.

Talquist broke into a wide smile. “Good,” he said. “Very good.”

He stood and watched as dusk faded to night, the stars twinkling bright in the vast sky overarching Jierna'sid.

Haguefort, Navarne

Ashe had hoped that in the course of the preparations for war, in all of the noise and hubbub of getting ready for the arrival of the Council of Dukes, and the chaos that was ensuing as the household of Haguefort made ready to move a good piece of itself to the fortification at Highmeadow, he would be able to retain his sanity as long as possible. Distraction was good, he reasoned, and with any luck the aching absence he felt for his wife and child the moment they had left his sphere of influence, had stepped outside the comforting boundaries of his dragon sense, would be filled up by the clamor and infighting, the thousands of details and decisions to be made, and a host of other diversions that would keep the dragon in his blood busy.

It had only taken a few moments, long enough for the sound of the horses' hooves to die away into the night. Then within his consciousness he felt rather than heard a deep caterwaul, the keening of a beast that had had something stolen from its hoard. Even deeper within, he could feel the tearing of his soul, in the fairly recently mended place where it had been sewn back together again when he was reunited with Rhapsody.

When the first night without her fell, Ashe took comfort in sitting before the fire that reminded him of his wife and looking back over the haze of time to a different world, a place where he had been happy. It was a time before the War, before the Cataclysm, even before the two Bolg who saw Rhapsody as belonging originally to them, and viewed him as an interloper by virtue of his marriage to her.

When he closed his eyes, he could still see her as she had been then, on the night before her fourteenth birthday, dressed in a simple velvet gown, her breast adorned by a corsage of simple flowers her father had given her. She had been thin then and slight, with long straight hair that hung down her back like a silken wave. Ashe smiled, remembering his first sight of her, crouched behind a row of barrels in the dark outside the fore-harvest dance, an event where the people of her human father's farming community had held a marriage lottery, the traditional selection of marriage for the young people of their village.

How he had come to be in that place he still did not know, even millennia later. He had been but fourteen himself, an awkward adolescent boy walking to town on a fine morning on the other side of Time, almost fifteen hundred years after Rhapsody's birth. What had transpired was still unclear; the wind had been fresh, the morning birds had been in full song, the day had been beautiful. A day like any other day.

And then, the world had shifted.

Ashe could almost still recall the exact sensation of nausea and weakness that swept over him as he was plucked from the place he had been and deposited in the afternoon sun in a farmer's pasture in the village of Merryfield, a simple farming town in the center of the Wide Meadows, in the eastern lands of the Island of Serendair. Raised in the presence of magic and beings with ancient powers, he had recovered his composure fairly quickly, and managed to discover approximately where he was in time, if not how he had come to be there.

All of this had led him to the foreharvest dance, and to the side of the girl hiding in an alleyway, wistfully listening to the music as it played within the lighted grange hall, resisting every attempt to marry her off in the traditional ceremonies. He had fallen in love with her from the moment he'd seen her, not just because she was fair and because all the chemicals of his young body had begun to hum with life upon beholding her, but because there was something so ethical, so independent and intelligent in her resistance to being used as chattel that he could not help but respect her, even without having been introduced.

Eventually he'd worked up his courage enough to tap her on the shoulder, to ask her to dance in the light reflecting from the hall, to walk with her to her family's fields where the willow tree she had loved stood guard over a valley stream. Ashe closed his eyes more tightly, listening to the music of the water in his head. The extravagant capability of detail bequeathed to him by his dragon nature allowed him a heightened sense of memory; in many ways it was like reliving that night again, feeling the coolness of the breeze, sensing the brightness of the stars, physically recalling the way her hair smelled like morning, the glow in her eyes that sparkled brighter as she talked about things that excited her, unrealistic dreams of escaping the marriage lottery and traveling the world, seeing the ocean that her grandfather had plied as a sailor, something that she longed for but never had done. And above all, he remembered the way she talked about her dreams, of stars falling from the sky into her hands, holding them fast until one day she could hold no longer, and instead they dropped through her open palms into the meadow stream, glimmering up at her, beyond her reach in the depths.

He had resolved in that moment to fulfill those dreams for her, to marry her, with her excited consent, and to take her from the farmlands off to see the world. His reason for that was twofold. Whether or not he could ever get back his own time was of little interest to him; rather, he had determined that whatever force had brought him over the waves of time to be by her side had placed him in the time before the Cataclysm, just as the war that would tear the Island of Serendair asunder was beginning to erupt. If for no other reason, they had to go away in haste, lest his newly-found soulmate become nothing more than one more victim in two of history's greatest tragedies. She had called him Sam, the common appellation by which unknown young men were addressed in her town. He had never been given the chance to tell her his real one; it was an endearment she still used. Her voice resounded clear in his memory.

Sam?

Yes?

Do you think we might see the ocean? Someday, I mean.

He had promised her they would, had promised to take her wherever she wished to go, but before they could put their plans in place he was torn back to his own time by whatever unseen hands had placed him there to begin with.

Ashe winced in the flickering heat of the flames. The hollow pain of loss was with him still, even after four years of having her back, even having joined their souls together again.

Even knowing that she loved him eternally.

Even sharing a child with her, a son he loved beyond measure and had barely been given a chance to know. That loss was one he consciously struggled not to think about, because his draconic nature was unpredictable enough, and suffering enough, that he could not risk it.

In the back of his mind a tune was playing. It was a song that Rhapsody had often sung to him on their evenings alone together, a tale of a wanderer that her seafaring grandfather had taught her when she was a child. When she had met up with him again in the new world, he had been solitary, in pain and alone, just such a wanderer, so it had reminded her of him, and of the tree they had fallen in love beneath. Ashe pictured her before him, her harp or concertina in hand, singing the melodious tune in the voice that haunted his dreams.

I was born beneath this willow,

Where my sire the earth did farm Had

the green grass as my pillow The east

wind as a blanket warm.

But away! away! called the wind from the west

And in answer I did run Seeking glory and

adventure Promised by the rising sun.

I found love beneath this willow, As true a

love as life could hold, Pledged my heart

and swore my fealty Sealed with a kiss and

a band of gold.

But to arms! to arms! called the wind from the west

In faithful answer I did run Marching forth for

king and country In battles 'neath the midday sun.

Oft I dreamt of that fair willow

As the seven seas I plied And

the girl who I left waiting

Longing to be at her side.

But about! about! called the wind from the west As

once again my ship did run Down the coast, about

the wide world Flying sails in the setting sun.

Now I lie beneath the willow Now at last

no more to roam, My bride and earth so

tightly hold me In their arms I'm finally

home.

While away! away! calls the wind from the west

Beyond the grave my spirit, free Will chase the sun

into the morning Beyond the sky, beyond the sea.

His dragon sense roared to life at the presence of a tickling sensation. He opened his eyes.

His wife was sitting before the fire, her song finished, smiling warmly at him. His heightened senses could feel the physical presence of her in the room, a bending of the currents of air around a form that was heavy, real, unlike the dreams and fantasies in which she was nothing more than a picture in his head, a phantasm that vanished with the morning light. There was heft to this vision, a realness that never had been there before. Her scent, the simple odor of vanilla and soap, sweet meadow flowers and wood smoke, filled his nostrils, causing the blood to pound in his head, and his hands to shake.

Rhapsody smiled, her green eyes sparkling, backlit by the fire.

Ashe sat straighter in his chair. There was no question she was real, no figment of his imagination or dragon sense playing tricks of the mind on him; the energy of her life force rippled over him like waves in the sea.

Rhapsody, he whispered, almost afraid to shatter what was either a miraculous moment or an illusion of a slipping mind. You're here.

Her smile grew brighter in the firelight. Yes. I'm here.

Ashe rose slowly from his chair and walked carefully toward the hearth. Rhapsody rose in return, and extended her arms to him in welcome.

He quickened his step, all but running to her, and scooped her up in his arms, drawing her near, pressing his face in the hollow of her neck and inhaling the scent of her skin, burying his lips in her hair, reveling in the solidity, the reainess of her, no phantom of his mind, but flesh and blood and the warmth of a beating heart within her chest, thundering against his own.

A shocked gasp rent the air.

Like the slap of an ice-cold wave, the noise rebounded off of Ashe's forehead. He loosed his grasp and took a step back, his frazzled mind trying to gauge what was wrong.

Standing before him in the shadows of the firelight, trembling like a leaf in a high autumn wind, was a young chambermaid whose name he did not remember. She was dark of hair and eye, taller than Rhapsody by half a head, and shaped nothing like her. Her face had gone white with shock, and flushed red in a combination of horror and embarrassment.

Much like Ashe's own.

Made worse by the knowledge that this was not the first time it had happened.

The tea tray she was holding a moment before clattered to the floor, the plate bearing his supper bounced on the carpet before the hearth.

Ashe felt his face freeze in a mask of shock.

“I--I--”

The chambermaid's mouth was similarly open. “M'lord,” she whispered. “No. Please.”

Ashe struggled to place the woman, remembering distantly that she had come to Haguefort from Bethany with several other servants in the company of Tristan Steward, the Lord Regent of Roland, as a gift during Rhapsody's confinement. Ashe thought perhaps the other two women were nursemaids of some sort, but this one was a servant of insignificant rank, a chambermaid, who now stood, terror in her eyes, shaking visibly.

“I—I am so very sorry,” he murmured, running his hand through his coppery hair, suddenly wet with sweat. “I—I am not feeling well. Please forgive me.”

The young woman bent quickly, as did Ashe, fumbling to gather the dishes and food that now littered the floor.

“My fault, m'lord,” she whispered nervously.

“No,” said Ashe, “no, not at all. I, as I said, am very sorry.”

He quickly turned and bolted from the room and out of the keep, into the cold night, seeking clarity. The chambermaid gathered the dishes, calming quickly, and carried them back down to the kitchen again. She stopped as she passed the window of the library, long enough to see him hurry into the courtyard and come to rest with his head against a lamppost, the candlelight catching the metallic sheen of his hair, making it glow like embers in the night.

Ashe's head was buzzing the next morning as if from the aftereffects of potent libation. After the first few hours of the headache, he began to rue refraining from imbibing the night before, knowing that even a hangover could not have caused his skull to throb more than the arrival of the dukes of Roland did. He stood on the balcony, in his hand a cup of strong plantain tea with medicinal properties that his wife had often used to bring him out of the hard repose of dragon slumber, trying to focus his eyes on each carriage as it made its way up the well-traveled road that ran east-west in front of the Hague-fort's gates. Archers stood in the recently rebuilt guard towers, providing cover for the carriages, while the Lord Cymrian mused whether or not to give the signal to open fire on some of the occupants as they emerged from the bowels of the coaches.

The first of the dukes to arrive would never have drawn his fire, he noted, as Cedric Canderre stepped, with the assistance of his footman, out of his coach. In his own state of loss, Ashe felt tremendous empathy for the elderly duke, a gentleman and friend who had always lived hospitably and with grace, and while not the most admirable of husbands, had always been a loving and devoted fattier. To have witnessed the death of his only son and heir presumptive, Andrew, on these very grounds at the winter carnival that had taken the lives of so many could only be a soul-ripping reminder of that loss. Ashe took a sip of the bad-tasting tea and winced. Had he been less distracted, he would have arranged for the meeting to take place at Highmeadow, whose halls and defenses were all but complete, and into which they would be moving any day. While the creature comforts had not yet been established in the new fortress, it was certainly furnished enough to have spared Cedric Canderre the pain he was undoubtedly undergoing as he slowly made his way up Haguefort's cobbled en-tranceway.