The Bloodforged (32 page)

“Can I bring some ice for your eye?”

“No, thank you.” He deserved the wound. He deserved every scratch, every bruise, the crowd had dealt.

A sigh. “Speaker Syril is here.”

“Syril,” Liam repeated blankly, fingers trailing mechanically through Rudi's fur. When the name registered, he frowned. “Why is he here?”

“I'm . . . not sure, Commander.” There was an ache in Rona Brown's voice, a hint of helplessness. Liam registered that absently, as he would the colour of her clothing.

“Does he want to talk to me?”

“I presume so. Shall I send him out?”

“Okay.”

Time passed. Liam stroked Rudi's fur and watched the darkening sea. Eventually, a figure appeared at his elbow. “A difficult day.”

The sonorous voice roused Liam a little from his daze. He looked up to find Syril gazing out over the valley, hands folded behind his back. The breeze tousled his hair, played with the collar of his priestly robes.

It was only then Liam remembered that Syril had been taken away to prison—what, three days ago? It seemed a lifetime. “They let you out?”

He nodded. “After the city guard took you in, they rounded up as many dockies as they could find. Put them to the question, as the saying goes. Yet another practice the current regime shares with the old empire.”

“They confessed?”

“Not without some significant encouragement, I am told.” Syril's jaw twitched in anger. “It is a galling thing, Your Highness, to have one's freedom secured at the price of another man's pain. It does not sit well on the conscience. But then”—he gave Liam a halfway pitying look—“I suppose you know a little something about that.”

“About what? Having the blood of innocents on your hands?”

“The boy was not innocent, Your Highness. Neither were the men they tortured.”

“He was a child.”

“And they were men. None of them deserved what they got, but that does not make you responsible. Or me, though that is small comfort for either of us.”

“What are people saying?” Liam asked, so softly he almost didn't hear himself. “About the boy?”

Syril was silent for a moment, as though considering his answer. “
They
are saying a great many things. The people of Onnan are divided, Your Highness, more so than ever before. This war has brought discord to our hearts. The dockies are being called heroes by some, traitors by others. So it is with you, and what you did. Some curse you for it. Others say you had no choice.”

Liam nodded detachedly. “And you? What are the people saying about that?”

He heard a strange sound; it took him a moment to realise Syril was laughing, though without a trace of actual humour. “Today's events are only a few hours old, the ink on my release scarcely dry, and yet I have already been told by half a dozen of my colleagues what a boon this is to my prospects in next year's elections. Those who sympathise with the dockies consider me their patron; those who do not, a man who was nearly executed as a result of their shameful actions. I alone command the respect of both sides of the political divide, I am told. As though I should celebrate the fact.” He shook his head. “Once again, Your Highness, I find myself ashamed in your presence.”

Now it was Liam's turn to laugh, just as humourlessly. “I don't see why, Speaker. Seems to me you've come out of all this pretty well. I, on the other hand, have to return to my country in shame. I have to look my brother in the eye and tell him I failed.” Actually, that wasn't true; Erik would hear of his failure well before he reached Erroman. Just as well, really—that would give the king time to work out how to hide his disgust. Luckily, Erik was good at that sort of thing.

Syril sighed. “I am sorry, Your Highness. Whatever my views on the war, I have no wish to see your people suffer.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

There was a long stretch of silence. When Liam looked up,
the speaker was gone. He tugged on Rudi's ears distractedly. The wolfhound hadn't stirred when Syril arrived, or when he'd left. Liam would have been surprised by that, if he'd had the energy.

After a while, Rona came out again. “You should eat something, Commander.”

“Pretty unlikely, that.”

She stepped in front of him, blocking his view. “You've been here for hours,” she said. “You're scaring me.”

“Can't a fellow wallow in despair in peace?”

A faint smile flickered across her face. “That's better.”

“Seriously, Rona, I'd like to be alone. Sorry.”

“Can't do it, Commander. Sorry.”

Okay, now he was annoyed. It almost felt good—it was the first thing to puncture through the numbness in hours. “I appreciate the thought, really. And I know what you're going to say, how it wasn't my fault and I had no choice and so on. Can we just skip it, please?”

She dropped to her haunches before him. She had that stony look again, the one she'd used on Kar and Welin. “It wasn't your fault. You had no choice.”

“Yeah, okay, that's very witty—”

“You're a soldier, and so was the boy, after a fashion. He chose to fight for what he believed in—or at least, someone chose for him. You did what you had to, what any of us would have done. And as for the fleet—”

“Rona, please—”

“—as for the fleet, there was nothing you could have done to stop it. Gir lost the confidence of his men before you ever got here. That much is obvious, or they wouldn't have been sending death threats behind his back. The dockies had made up their minds to burn those ships, and there were hundreds of them to get it done. Even if you'd stopped the boy, however you'd stopped him, all that would have accomplished would be to rob them of their big symbolic gesture. They'd have done it an hour later, or a day, or a week. You never had a chance, Commander.”

The longer she spoke, the coarser the lump in his throat became, until it was all he could do to force words past it. “If I never had a chance, then I didn't need to kill the boy.”

“It wasn't your fault,” she said again, and for some reason, there were tears in
her
eyes, as though she were the one who'd killed a child, who'd allowed the fledgling Onnani fleet to be burned to ashes.

“How am I going to tell him, Rona? Dear gods, how am I going to tell
her
?”

Rona's head dropped. He couldn't see her face now, just the top of the long braid woven across her scalp. She stayed like that for a long time, head down, face hidden, silent. In the fading light, Liam saw a tear fall onto the balcony.

He tried to think of something to say, something to make either of them feel better, but he came up short. As always.

When she looked up at last, her eyes were clear. She drew a deep, steadying breath. “You can tell them, Liam, because they love you. And that's all that matters.” She stood, touched his shoulder. And then she was gone, leaving Liam with his dog and his failure and the smell of smoke on the wind.

“I
recognise that one,” Alix said, pointing at the horizon. “The villagers call it the Bull.”

Kerta squinted. “Oh, yes, I see it. The peaks on either side look like horns.”

“Call that a day's ride, another to the border. Maybe a bit more if we get more rain.”

“Two days. We've made good time.” Smiling, Kerta twisted in her saddle to look at Erik. “That's encouraging, isn't it, sire?”

He gazed at her mutely, blue eyes dull and distant, just as he had every other time she'd tried to coax him into speaking.

Kerta's smile fell away like a withered bud from a branch. “Well, we should get going.”

They continued down into the valley. The slopes were gentler here, and greener, even where a few patches of snow remained.
Almost through
, Alix told herself for the hundredth time.
Almost home.

There was relief in the thought, but not as much as there should have been. Returning to Alden would seal their failure in Harram. For now, the consequences of that failure seemed remote, abstract. So long as they remained on foreign soil, it would stay that way, as though the rest of the world hung in suspension. The moment they crossed the border, however, the world would waken. The timeglass would turn, and the sand would begin to trickle through, counting down to their doom.

Kerta drew up her horse about halfway down, gazing up at the ugly blotch of clouds gathering in the sky. “Looks like we'll be getting that rain after all.”

“Thunderstorm,” Alix agreed absently. Unusual for this time of year, but she was past remarking on their ill luck. It had been the way of things since they set foot in this cursed country; there was no reason it should change now. “Looks like there are some shallow caves over there,” she said, pointing. “We'd better dig in. These things can come on fast in the mountains.”

They weren't caves so much as crevasses in the rock, but they would serve. Alix lowered herself onto her belly, wriggling back until the heels of her boots met resistance. That left a good three feet of overhang in front of her; hopefully it would be enough to keep them dry. “We should be able to sleep here,” she said, crawling back out.

“The poor horses, though,” Kerta said.

“They're Harrami,” Alix said, patting her mount's neck. “They've got thick hides. Now, let's make a fire while we still can.”

Erik sat cross-legged on the ledge, inert, while Alix and Kerta gathered wood and moss. He watched the flames as they grew, stared through them as they flickered and danced. He ignored the dried meat Alix held out to him. “At least take the water,” she said, unable to keep the edge off her voice. He acquiesced silently.

Kerta shot her a concerned look, one of countless such glances over the past few days. She didn't even bother trying to hide them anymore. But neither could she abide social awkwardness, so as
usual, she tried to make conversation. “Do you think our escort will still be there? We're awfully overdue.”

“They'll be there. Our letters will have reached Erroman by now, and they'll have sent word on to the guardsmen. By the time we reach the border, everyone will be up to date.”
Everyone will know we failed.
Alix didn't need to give voice to the thought; like Erik's silence, it spoke for itself.

“They will be so relieved to see His Majesty safe.” Kerta sealed that remark with another futile smile in Erik's direction. His lip twitched into something just short of a sneer, but that was the limit of his reaction. “I suppose there will be another council.” Gods bless her, Kerta was going to keep this conversation going if it killed her, like nursing a feeble fire in a rainstorm.

“I hadn't really thought about it,” Alix said. Hadn't dared to think about it, was more to the point. “I suppose we're going to hear a lot of
I-told-you-so
.”

“We had certainly better not!” A flash of anger lit Kerta's cheeks. “Not only would that be terribly poor breeding, it would be absolute rubbish! Coming here might have been a risk, but it was our only viable course of action. Everyone knows that.”

“They might have known it once,” Alix said, “but that doesn't mean they'll remember it. People have a convenient way of forgetting how they felt before everything unravelled. Instead they judge with the benefit of hindsight.” She shrugged gloomily. “Human nature, I guess. We all want to believe there must be a way of avoiding calamity, if only we do the right thing. It's so much more reassuring.”

“Reassuring and childish. Sometimes there are no good choices.”

“Wise words, my friend.” Alix smiled weakly. “You do come up with them now and then.”

She'd been trying for a bit of levity, but Kerta wasn't having it. “I don't think it takes any great wisdom to see the truth. It's quite simple, really. There was an opportunity to recruit Harram. We tried to seize it. We failed. So what? Are we really worse off than if we'd sat idle? We lost some good people, and that's certainly very sad, but surely it was a sacrifice worth making if there was even a tiny chance of success? This is war, after all. People lay down their lives on such gambits every day.”

It was true, every word—Alix knew it. But did Erik? He had, once, before despair had overtaken him. Alix wanted so badly for him to remember it, remember why he'd made the choices he had, but she wasn't even sure he was listening. He was too busy staring into the fire, scrying into a future written in flames.

“Anyway,” Kerta said, “I don't believe it's as grim as all that. I'm sure when we hear the news from the front, and from Onnan, things won't seem as bad as they do now.”

Erik snorted softly. So he was listening, then.

For once, Alix felt obliged to defend Kerta's relentless optimism. “That's certainly possible,” she said gamely. “We've been away for so long—even the news we had in Ost was weeks old. Who knows what might have changed since then?”
The assassination of a Trion, for example?
It was almost certainly too much to hope for—a near-impossible task, even for a spy of Saxon's skill—but at least the wheels had been set in motion. Who could say how many other schemes—Rig's, or Highmount's, or even Liam's—might also be in play?

“Very true,” Kerta said. “A week is an age in wartime.”

The wind picked up around them, sighing through the pines. A low rumble scudded across the sky.
Won't be long now
, Alix thought.

“I think Chancellor Kader is right,” Kerta went on. “The Trionate can't keep this up forever, not if the people are as weary as everyone says. Besides, I have to think that King Omaïd will reconsider his position if the Warlord actually crosses our border. After all, it's only a matter of time before—”

“For the love of all that is holy,
will you please shut up
.”

The words cracked over them like a whip. They were the first Erik had spoken in days, delivered in a voice so rough, so bitter, that Alix barely recognised it. He didn't even turn from the fire; he just glared at it as if it were the most hateful thing he had ever seen.

Kerta blanched. “I . . . I'm sorry, sire, I didn't realise—”

“Didn't realise what?” He turned his glare on her. “That I wouldn't be
delighted
to listen to endless tripe about how everything will be all right?”

“Let's just calm down, shall we?” Alix's cheeks burned, part shock, part mortification for her friend. She could see Kerta was fighting back tears. She'd probably never been spoken to like
that in her life.
Erik's probably never spoken to anyone like that in his life . . .

He didn't seem to hear. “There's a fine line between optimism and foolishness, Kerta, and you crossed it days ago.”

Alix sucked in a breath. “That's
enough
, Erik.”

His gaze snapped to her, silently furious. When she refused to look away, he shot to his feet and said, “With me.” Without waiting for a reply, he skidded down from the ledge and into the trees.

Alix stared after him, too stunned for words. She reached for Kerta's shoulder, squeezed it, and followed Erik down the slope.

He hadn't gone far. He waited with his arms folded, that icy look still in his eyes. “I tolerate your insolence in private, Alix, but I won't have it in front of others. You may be my sister-in-law, but I am still your king.”

A year ago—a week ago, even—those words would have pierced her like a lance. Now all they did was provoke her. “You may be my king, but you are behaving like a royal ass.” She didn't even give him time to register outrage before ploughing on. “You've been silent as the grave since we left Ost, barely eating, barely sleeping, scaring us both half to death. So no surprise if Kerta feels obliged to sing a merry tune in the hopes it will bring you round. You of all people should know a brave face when you see one. And now you attack her for it? What in the Nine Hells has got into you?”

He started to fire off a heated reply. Stopped. For a moment, it looked as though her words had sunk in. Then the scowl returned. “A bit of an asinine question, isn't it?”

“Not really. You've got every reason to be upset, but that's no excuse for lashing out at someone who's only trying to help you. It's not right, and it's not like you. Not at all . . .” Alix could feel the anger bleeding from her with every word, replaced by the confusion and fear that had stalked her ever since that awful night in Ost, the night her king had broken down in her arms. “Honestly, Erik, I don't know what to make of it anymore. It's as if . . . as if you're someone else lately. I used to know you so well, and now . . .”
And now I barely recognise you.

He raked his fingers roughly through his hair, grimacing as though he had a terrible headache. “Don't be dramatic. I just can't listen to that treacle. It's killing me. Don't you see? It's a lie, and I can't listen to it.”

“Fine, but Kerta's your friend. She's been nothing but supportive, even when—”

“Even when I disappoint? Even when I fail miserably?” The accusing look returned to his eyes, a spark threatening to take light.

“I was
going
to say, even when you're completely unresponsive. Which quite frankly is starting to look good by comparison.”

He blinked, and for a moment Alix was sure he was going to erupt again. Instead he blew out something just short of a laugh. “Good gods, woman, you're incorrigible.”

And just like that, he was smiling at her, as if nothing whatever were amiss, as if he hadn't just torn into everyone around him like a wounded panther. Alix could not have felt more disoriented if he'd gathered her up and spun her about.

“You needn't look at me like that,” he said, frosting over almost immediately. “I'll apologise to Kerta. But please, for all our sakes, take her aside and explain it to her. I simply cannot tolerate two more days of listening to her spin children's tales.”

“I'll tell her.” What else could she say?

“Good.” Erik glanced up. “We'd better get back. It's going to come down any moment.”

The first droplets had begun to spatter the rocks when Alix pulled herself up onto the ledge. Kerta had already wedged herself into the crevasse, curled up under her blanket with her face turned away. Alix shuffled in close beside her, but otherwise gave her friend what little privacy their situation afforded.

The rain approached timidly, stealing over them in a muted rush, filling the air with the fragrance of pine. Ribbons of wind darted through the trees; the horses jostled and stamped. Then came the thunder, cracking the sky open, unleashing the full fury of the clouds. Erik stared out through the storm at something only he could see. Beside him, Alix trembled against the cold stone, cheeks wet from the lashing rain, her quiet gasps of grief smothered by the deafening roar.

Aradok fingered the
trigger of the crossbow, shifted its unfamiliar contours against his body. He'd fired it a handful of
times, and it seemed simple enough. But it was one thing to practice in the quiet confines of his cell, loosing quarrels into a straw pallet, and quite another to do it for real in the vast open space of a holy temple, loosing quarrels into a Trion.

He swallowed hard against the rising bile in his throat. He'd had so little time to prepare this, so little time to consider. What he was about to do . . . It was almost beyond fathoming. Treason, regicide . . . these he could cope with. They were mortal things, inconsequential in the grand designs of the cosmos. True, this act could plunge his country into chaos. The Priest had already been slain, and his underlings were still bickering among themselves for the right to succeed him. Losing a second Trion would be a terrible blow, unprecedented in the history of the Trionate. But Aradok cared little for that. Like many of his countrymen, he had come to disapprove of the Trionate's endless hunger for conquest. If a crisis was what it took to put them back on the path of righteousness, so be it.