The Black Prince: Part I (5 page)

“A woman bedding her betrothed is hardly news.”

“In the South it is.”

Callas made a noncommittal sound.

“One minute they were thick as thieves and the next they were circling each other like cats.” He shook his head. “Then things were fine again. She must have found out, and worried about telling him, and—”

“But the arrival of a child is a joyous occasion.”

“Not in the South.”

They shared this acknowledgment in silence. Callas knew of Hart’s past. Was so far the only person Hart had ever met, with whom he felt comfortable admitting the hard truths of his childhood. Isla knew, because she’d been there. But they’d never discussed it.

“There is no reason for upset, unless one doubts that the child is one’s own.”

“There is, if the woman is unmarried.”

“Marriage is no magic charm, forcing a woman to lust only for her husband.”

“In the South it is.”

Callas removed the rabbits from the fire and handed Hart his portion. The flesh was scalding hot and delicious. Hart sucked the juices from his fingers, feeling himself warmed from the inside out. He’d acquired a taste for rabbit. And those in the North were fatter and sweeter besides. A tastier morsel than their scrawny, sinewy cousins in the moors.

“Perhaps the child never quickened.”

Callas referred to the fact that, whatever Isla’s state when she’d set out for Darkling Reach, she certainly wasn’t with child now. She’d been sick for a time after arriving, and spent the better part of a fortnight holed up in her room. Hart had heard the rumors, of course: that the duke had ensorcelled her somehow. That she was now, as Rose had claimed, a demon just like him. But Hart had come to visit his sister often enough and found her, while drawn, to be much herself. Whatever spell the duke might have laid on her—one of protection, perhaps—she was still fundamentally the same person. And she was certainly no necromancer.

“His Grace needs an heir.”

“What about Asher?”

Callas drank some wine, and thought. “He has yet to acknowledge the child, but this could be for political reasons.” Whatever Tristan’s reasoning—for anything—he didn’t discuss it with the likes of his guard. They were left to speculate. “Because,” Callas continued, “Maeve still claims that the child is Brandon’s and so long as the world believes this to be the case, Tristan still has a hostage.”

“It isn’t the fact of his being illegitimate?”

“He clearly favors the boy. As,” Callas added, “does your sister.”

“But could Asher inherit?”

“If he were formally recognized, then yes. The child of a man’s loins is still the child of his loins. And if Isla….” Callas trailed off, his gaze on the fire.

“If Isla what?”

But it was a long time before Callas spoke.

Because there was greater import, here, than simply the sorrows of one woman.

“It happens, sometimes, that after a woman loses a child she cannot have another.” He finished the last of his rabbit. “It was so with my sister, after her third. She and her husband took their other children in, after the woman who was supposed to be their mother abandoned them.” He stopped. The silence stretched again. He was right: Tristan needed an heir. Tristan’s brother needed an heir. The king, for all his reputed attachment to his wife, had yet to produce one—or even the rumor of one.

And the kingdom was on the brink of war.

A
sher tramped around the stableyard, feeling used.

He’d just finished his eleventh year at Solstice and here he was, still mucking around just like he had when he was a child! They wouldn’t let him use any
real
weapons, not yet. Practice swords and practice maces and other things that were stupid. He wasn’t even allowed to use his longbow without supervision. Supervision that mainly consisted of Tristan lecturing him. Or Brom. He couldn’t decide which of them was worse.

His—Tristan wanted to lecture him about
technique
. Brom wanted to lecture him about
safety
. Neither of them would actually let him
do
anything. Why did it matter if he learned how bows were made? He didn’t see how sitting through one more droning lecture was going to help him actually
use
one. And lately Tristan had been acting so
odd
. Refusing to let him go out alone. Like anyone cared what happened to him.

Well, Tristan did. And Isla did. But Tristan kept acting like—like what? An errant tribe of gnomes would magic him into the trees? He shook his head. And now he was supposed to be grooming his horse.

He stopped, staring out at the white-gray expanse of his world.

He’d spent the morning hitting another boy with a practice sword while both of them rode pick-a-back. This was supposed to help them build balance. Or something. Prepare them for fighting on horseback. So why couldn’t they just fight on horseback, then?

Brom said it was
dangerous
. Well he was still alive. And Asher was excellent on a horse, especially for his age. Everyone said so.

He was going to grow up and become a knight, and join the Order of the Dragon just like his—

“Hey, you.”

Asher turned. “Who?”

Staring at him was the boy he’d jousted with earlier: John, the son of the castellan. A castellan wasn’t noble, but he was important, and his sons could expect the same in respect to opportunities as the children of their lord. John trained with Asher, the son of the constable, and a few others. He was a large, florid-faced boy with a shock of blond hair that stood straight up. Asher hated him.

He should’ve thought of a comeback. But of course he hadn’t. He never did.

“Well I don’t see any other plug-ugly knobs around here. I must be talking to you.”

Asher knew he looked different. He was fine-boned and dark, although not short. He’d be tall, or so Isla claimed. As tall as Tristan, he hoped. But everyone around him were great, hulking ogres, with forearms like ham hocks and fingers like sausages. They called Asher a little girl and worse. That he had a southern name didn’t help. A
noble
name his—Tristan—emphasized. A Chadian name, brought from when Gideon the Conqueror swept in from across the channel.

Gideon the Conqueror, who’d also been dark.

So Asher worked ten times harder in the yard, and at his lessons. He practiced the sets of exercises Brom gave him until full dark forced him indoors, and then he ran up and down the stairs. The servants stared at him. Let them stare. Who cared what they thought, anyway. He didn’t. Not really. Brom might not let him do anything, nobody might let him do anything, but he’d show them. Show them by becoming
so good
at what they did let him do that they’d feel stupid.

And also so he could defend himself.

He faced John. “Well?”

“Brom sent me to help you with that nag. Probably because, without a proper man to supervise you, you’d put its hair in plaits.”

“I don’t see any men here.” Proper or otherwise. And George was
not
a nag.

John shook his head. “You’re not batting on a full wicket and no mistake.”

Asher turned and vanished into the stable.

John followed him into the long, low building, which was warm and smelled of horse. Or warm enough; compared to the frigid Hel outside a rat hole would seem like an oasis. The residents watched them with disinterest as they tramped down the center aisle, secure in their blankets. Most had feed bags. The grooms did good work.

Asher stopped at George’s stall. George nuzzled him, curious to see if there was a treat. Asher returned the greeting for a moment, before pushing George away. “I need to groom you now,” he said, as though George could understand him. “Even though your actual caretakers do a much better job. A knight,” he quoted, “should know how to care for his mount.”

Grooming, or so Brom liked to lecture him, was vital for horses because it cleaned their coats, added beauty to the appearance of said coats, and also promoted healthy emotional bonding between horse and master. Developing trust and blah blah blah. Asher led George out of the stall and toward the grooming area. All the tack hung from pegs on the wall, each piece to its appropriate peg and woe to the man—or boy—who put a single brush back incorrectly. Or, even worse, forgot to put it back at all. The brushes had to go in a
certain order
. Even though Asher was fairly certain that he could still tell which brush was used first. And certain too that George didn’t care one bit.

He tied George to one of the posts, using a quick release knot. He heard Brom’s voice in his head, reminding him that should something spook George and he decide to bolt—for example, if he saw a mouse—a regular knot might break his neck. George hated mice.

Asher knelt down to pick George’s hooves.
Start at the heel and pick toward the toe
, came the unbidden reminder. If he did this every afternoon, soon each individual step of the process would cease to be a conscious step and be, rather, intuitive.

Squinting in concentration, he flicked a small pebble out from under George’s heel. He knew he also had to clean the grooves on either side of the frog. And then—

“Why are you doing his feet first?”

“Because,” Asher recited, “you’re more likely to notice lameness.”

“Yeah, but fuck Brom.” John leaned back against the wall. He was sitting on a hay bale.

Straightening, Asher went to the wall and picked up the curry comb: a wide-toothed thing that was used to loosen up mud, flecks of bark, and other detritus from a horse’s coat before the brushing in earnest. Using small circular motions, he began to work from George’s neck to his rump. He avoided George’s spine and legs.

“You’re doing it wrong.”

Asher didn’t look up. “No I’m not. You’re supposed to brush against the direction of the hair growth. That’s what pulls up loose hairs, along with everything else.” Otherwise, they’d just sit there and get matted in. Gods, but John was an idiot.

“You should let me help.”

“No.” Asher swapped the curry comb for the next tool, a dandy brush. That was to actually remove the junk brought out by the curry comb. “I don’t need your help.” Or his incompetence. John was a useless git who hated animals and treated them even worse than people. Asher wouldn’t let him near a broken down nag that was about to be slaughtered for glue, let alone his own George. George, whom he’d been given for the previous Solstice.

“I’ll get in trouble if I don’t.”

“I thought you didn’t care about Brom.” Asher made a point of concentrating on his work.

“I care about not getting thrashed.”

Asher looked up. His eyes narrowed. “He’s my horse.”

“No he’s not.”

Asher felt a hot spike of—something surge through him. Anger? Humiliation? He swallowed. He’d learned self-control early on and he wouldn’t unlearn it now. But things around here could be hard. So hard. The insinuations. The sidelong glances. The outright comments. The fact that vermin like John looked down on him, and rightly, because they had a name and he didn’t.

Because they had a father who acknowledged them.

He went back to work.

Oh, Asher knew who he was supposed to be. And for a long time, he hadn’t questioned. Why should he have? How many children looked at their married parents and did? But then the chaos had come and people whose motives he didn’t understand wanted things of him and he was thrust into their hands and their schemes and eventually he’d found himself on the banks of Ullswater Ford.

He remembered thinking that he should feel something, watching that man die. He’d still believed Brandon to be his father then, but Brandon hadn’t been a good father. Or a good man. He’d hit Asher and belittled him, the kind of casual cruelty bestowed by people who don’t believe that other people truly exist.

He couldn’t even remember being scared. Only…empty. And then he’d gone to live with Tristan.

He ran his hand over George’s coat, concentrating. Dandy brush, then soft brush, then clean the horse’s face with a soft rag. Brush out the mane and tail. He could lose himself in his work, and then he wouldn’t feel the scalding prick of tears at the backs of his eyes. Wouldn’t unman himself before this most hated of enemies. Who even now watched him with a low, piggish fascination.

Asher wanted to kill him, but lacked the courage.

It was at times like this, especially, that he desperately wished he were older.

Asher had come to live at Caer Addanc and for awhile there had been no rumors. No conversations that stilled when he entered the room. And then, one morning, he’d just come into the stables when he overheard two of the grooms talking. He’d pressed himself against the wall, holding in his breath, terrified of being discovered. Not because he thought he’d get in trouble but because he might not hear the end of the conversation.

Which consisted of the two men debating Asher’s parentage. Tristan, one pointed out, was no celibate. Who wanted a lord that was? And if one—or more—of his near legendary conquests had produced a by-blow then what of it? Tristan was unmarried at the time and so far had produced no heir. A dangerous thing for a man in his position, to leave his inheritance open. The other groom, in response, questioned whether a necromancer was capable of producing a child. Tristan’s devotion to the art of death had…changed him. To which the first groom had responded, as though stating the most obvious thing in the world to the stupidest person in it,
look at Asher
.