The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (22 page)

“I’m doomed.” The man’s voice was strong, even after such an injury. His arms trembled, threatening to buckle beneath his weight, but there was no strain to his words. “I killed a fellow soldier. I have to run and I can’t even stand. I won’t make it three miles.”

Bidd said, “You don’t have to run, not if you say we’re the ones who shot him. You were here to check quail permits, right? Well, research will show I don’t have one.”

“Me neither,” said Hayden. The man protested, but Bidd spoke over him.

“We would’ve had to flee soon, we’re too involved with black market spices. Just give us time to skip town before dropping our descriptions.”

Lanokas told the teenagers, “You can come with us, for a while at least.”

“Crimson League?” guessed Bidd. Lanokas nodded. “Well, any man wanted by Zalski is a friend of ours.”

Kora looked from Bidd to Hayden and back again. She thought of the ambushes she had survived: of the blow Ranler took for her, of how easily she could have sent Laskenay up in flames, of Bendelof’s bleeding head and Sedder’s bubbling, white lips.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” she said.

“Wait just a minute,” said Kansten. She stared, a hard look on her face, at the soldier and his bloodstained uniform. “How do we know you’ll give us time enough?”

“He tried to release us,” said Lanokas.

“And these two morons nearly killed him. It’s enough to change someone’s loyalties, not that I’m sure I trusted him in the first place.”

“Your friend there saved my life,” the man told Kansten. “I know what uniform I wear, but I don’t support Zalski. I made it pretty clear I don’t want him to get his hands on you. I’m just trying to put food in my son’s stomach.”

Bidd stared at Kansten with intense dislike, unable to fathom how she could suggest such treachery. He had no idea of what Kansten had seen, that was all, of what Kora herself had seen in a few short weeks.

“We trust the man or we kill him,” said Bidd. “That’s what it comes down to, and I think killing him would be pretty poor repayment for him trying to let you go.”

“Fine,” said Kansten, but she looked unhappy about it. “We could tie him up, did you think of that?”

“Enough bickering,” said Lanokas. His voice was sharp, final without excessive harshness, and he brought his face level with that of the recovering soldier. Kora had never seen the royal, the born leader in him, so clearly.

“Mention only the two locals. They’re the assassins. Not a word about the three of us, and especially not that ruby. You and your partner separated, and you came across
him as the boys were fleeing. T
hey looked to be headed south.”

The soldier looked confused. “South?”

“Just tell them south. Your shirt got stained when you tried to resuscitate the victim.”

“What about the tears in it?” asked the soldier.

             
How could so much depend on such a simple piece of magic? Kora had read the book of household spells just once, resenting that Laskenay had set the thing before her. “
Enmenda
,” she said. Then she smiled. “What tears?”

The soldier examined his shirt, nonplussed. He echoed his partner’s question to the sorceress, though with a kinder tone:

“Does Zalski know about you?”

“He doesn’t know where I slipped off to.”

“And we’d like to keep it that way,” said Lanokas, with a significant glance.

“Your lives depend on me,” said the soldier. His face had regained color, and his arms seemed less in danger of collapsing than before. “I don’t take that lightly.”

“Good. You’ll make it into town?”

“In a few hours. That should be all the time you need. I can hardly stall once I’m seen by the townsfolk.”

“I understand. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Hank. Hank Spiller. There’s identification in my pocket,” he said, before Kansten could suggest he lied. She pulled out his papers.

“He looks legit,” she announced.

“Well, I don’t recognize him,” said Bidd.

“I’m new to these parts, got transferred here a month ago from Podrar with a slash in pay. I hadn’t been arresting my quota.”

Lanokas said, “And your partner?”

“Him I know,” Bidd answered. “The baker’s brother, born and raised here. He’s been feuding with my dad for years over a cornfield, so my killing him in a panic over poaching won’t sound far-fetched. There’s no way he wouldn’t have turned me in.”

Lanokas turned to the cousins. “Please tell me you brought horses.”

“We had a feeling we might need them,” said Hayden.

“Go get them,” said Lanokas, and the boys headed off. “We’re lucky our horses didn’t break free, the arrows spooked them…. Does Zalski have elites around here?”

Hank stared at the prince. “A place this small?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I’m not exactly high-ranking. There could be elites undercover, I wouldn’t know, but it would shock me more than finding the Marked….”

“We get it,” said Kora. Petroc might have forced her to admit the truth to herself, but she saw no reason she had to listen to it from other people. “No elites.”

“What are you three doing here? There’s nothing….”

“Your late friend guessed it,” Kora told him. “We’re passing through.”

“Ah,” said Hank. He smiled feebly, the barest trace of an innocent, yet devilish light in his eye. “On your way south.”

Lanokas clapped him on the shoulder. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“Not much goes on here. We—the volunteers for pay—mostly do what we can to let petty criminals slip off. We’ve had orders to go after poachers.”

“I’m sure poaching’s considered theft?” said Kora. The soldier said it was.

People were losing their lives because they could not afford a hunting license. The disproportion of the sentence made Kora think of six-year-old Hunt, and she gritted her teeth. Then she healed her fellow Leaguesmen.

No one said anything else in the quarter hour Bidd and Hayden took to return. The rising sun, more than halfway up the sky, had dispelled the night mist completely, but the woods were no nicer by daylight than in the dark and drear. The black, flaky coating that was devouring a clump of outlying birches had begun its assault on many more. Ill-boding spots of various sizes speckled the trunks, and Kora, anxious to leave the place, moved with haste to mount her horse. Bidd, she saw, had two quail tied by the feet to his saddlebag.

“Did you kill those?”

Hayden said, “They take our village from us. We take their birds.”

Lanokas nodded in approbation. Even Kansten smiled; she had taken to the fair-haired boy more than to his cousin, and rose to her horse’s back with much less grace than Lanokas, catching her foot in the stirrup.

The group of five left Hank and went straight to the road, riding for two hours. Then the Leaguesmen had to let their horses graze. They had chosen the clearing where they passed the night for space, not vegetation, and the animals had been forced to fast. Kansten pointed out a meadow west of the narrowing road, which fell into greater and greater disrepair the farther north they went. Kora stood watching her gelding as it ate until Lanokas approached her, and her heart filled with dread.

He wore a strange expression, a mix of reluctance to speak and determination to have his questions answered. His voice was brusque, much more like his brother’s than usual, each of his seven words an accusation.

“You were supposed to be on guard.”

“I was on guard.”

“That means staying awake.”

“I didn’t fall asleep!”

The exasperation in her voice carried. Kansten, a few yards away, inched closer to listen. “So what happened?” Lanokas demanded.

“Petroc happened. Petroc, all right? Do you think I could have slept through being gagged? He summoned me back to the Hall, and that spell, it puts me in some kind of trance. I couldn’t tell the man it was my watch, he would have known I had company.”

“But you got out of there quickly?”

Kora’s face grew hot. “I didn’t think anyone was near. Petroc is Hansrelto’s descendant, so I asked him what he knew about the
Librette
, if any story passed down through his family could explain why Zalski….”

“We know why Zalski wants the
Librette
!” Lanokas was almost shaking. “You risked our lives for one of Neslan’s half-cocked theories? Why wouldn’t Zalski want the greatest collection of dark spells ever written?”

Bidd and Hayden backed away, looking awkward and confused. Kansten, on the other hand, planted herself by Kora.

“Neslan’s theory makes sense. If Zalski does want a specific spell, don’t you want to have an idea which one? And why?”

“All right,” said Lanokas. “Fine. We shouldn’t discuss this in front of strangers.” With that the teens walked up, and Hayden said:

“We don’t want to be strangers. We want to go back with you when you’ve done what you’re going north for. Back to Podrar, to wherever.”

Kora told him, “You should go to a safehouse.”

“A safehouse?” said Bidd. He looked as though Kora had slapped him in the face. “What bleeding good is that? I’m a week away from being of age. Hayden has three months. We want to do something useful.”

Kora said, “So you’re turning sixteen. So what? You can’t fathom what it’s like. I thought coming in that it couldn’t be worse than I imagined, but it is, it’s fifty times worse.”

“No one tried to shake your resolve, though,” said Lanokas. “No one pushed you away.”

“Maybe someone should have! I just want these boys to think before….”

“We
have
thought,” said Bidd. “We want to be involved.”

Kansten offered, “They’re no younger than you, Kora.”

“Two years! Almost two years!”

“All right, so they’re two years younger. They can make this decision for themselves.”

Bidd looked at the sorceress. His eyes darted to her covered forehead, then away, then back. He seemed to be considering something. “You were dragged into this, weren’t you? What about you two?” he asked the others. “I don’t even know your names.”

Kansten looked uncomfortable. She tapped her foot and plopped down on the grass, though no one else was sitting. “Call me Kansten. As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t got a family name.”

“Rexson Dalen Lanokas.”

The name made Hayden’s jaw drop. He stared at the prince, sputtering in a manner almost comical. His cousin handled the shock with a bit more flair, asking, “Rexson Phinnean?”

“Second middle name Lanokas. That’s what I go by now.”

“We thought you were dead,” said Bidd. “People assumed….”

“The assumptions make moving around easier. My brother and I are both aliv
e. A
t least, he was when I left him.”

“Don’t talk like that,” said Kora. Since leaving Podrar she had tried not to think about the people she left behind.

Hayden closed his gaping mouth. “So how did you escape the coup?” he asked. “You couldn’t have known….”

“Of course we didn’t know what was coming.”

How had Kora never asked that question? She had never thought to, but now she burned for the story, and looked encouragingly at the prince, even followed Kansten’s lead and sat down. The cousins joined her on the grass, Bidd edging away from Kansten with enough discreetness that Kora hardly noticed. Lanokas peered down at four expectant faces. He joined them.

445

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lanokas’s Story

“That day started out quiet. My father had a meeting with advisers in the morning, nothing unusual. He had something dull to talk over, road repair, or finding a better way to transport crops…. This was Zalski’s first session, though his own father was always at the Palace for consultations. Menikas should have attended too.”

“Who?” asked Bidd.

“The crown prince,” Kansten said, waving her arm to quiet him.

“My brother should have attended, but he fell ill the night before. That was one thing Zalski hadn’t planned for, Menikas being elsewhere. He’d intended to bring down the court with one fell blow. From what I gathered later, Zalski broke up the proceedings with a manifesto about the ongoing persecution of the magick
ed. He never raised his voice, as theatrics don’t appeal to him. H
e’s more the pragmatic type. He presented his case. He called for the guilty to be punished. Then he locked the doors magically, so no one could escape. He cast a sound barrier so no one could listen outside and spread a warning. He killed two men outright, my father and his own. He considered his family traitors to their calling, to their gift: they were all sorcerers. Well, not his mother, but the rest of them, his father’s side. The other men he offered their lives, if they swore allegiance to his rule. Most did. He killed the handful that refused, including an uncle of mine.”

Lanokas spoke so matter-of-factly Kora’s blood curdled, but she soon suspected he had to distance himself to be able to speak at all. He wanted no sympathy, that was plain, and she strove to keep her voice free of pity when she asked how he had learned all this.

“Neslan’s father swore allegiance, with the aim of fighting back later. He got word to us of how the coup proceeded long before Zalski found him out. And I admit, Zalski’s schemes were well formed and better executed, at least to this point. He destroyed the king and court without anyone being the wiser. I was in the library on the other side of the Palace with a friend: that would be the Neslan I mentioned,” Lanokas told the cousins. “He was researching an essay about the evolution of poetic standards. The room had books floor to ceiling, I think he’d cleared two shelves worth. I was so bored I started a chess match against mysel
f. I nearly went to the meeting, to tell the truth. T
he sole reason I didn’t was that a specific duke would be in attendance, and I couldn’t stand the man. He always talked circles around himself. He took seventeen minutes to propose something anyone else could explain in two. He….” Lanokas sighed. “He was one of the loyal ones, it turned out. Since I couldn’t be bothered with him, I played chess. Neslan mentioned something about his throat being dry. I was thirsty as well, so I left for a pitcher of water.”

Bidd appeared skeptical. “You didn’t call a servant?” Kansten, by now, had realized her attempts to stop interruptions only held Lanokas up longer. She glared feebly at the boy, but did not hush him.

“I was that bored,” said the prince. “And I’d be dead if I hadn’t been. By that time, Zalski’d left what remained of the court sealed in the meeting room. He went out to give what members of the palace guard he’d blackmailed or bribed the cue to sweep the building. I had just turned the corner when Zalski’s brother-in-law ran smack into me.”

Kora leaned in; Lanokas was talking about Laskenay’s late husband.

“I kne
w
something was
wrong when Valkin didn’t apologize. H
e dragged me back the way I’d come. I heard distant shouts, and he told me to get away, away from the Palace. He’d been late, unable to enter the meeting or hear voices from inside. He’d walked away in utter confusion to be attacked by one of my father’s guards. ‘Your father’s own guard,’ that was how he said it. He’d managed to wrest the man’s sword away and kill him with it. I saw then he’d been cut across the shoulder, and pulled him into the library where Neslan still flipped through books, oblivious.

“Understandably, perhaps, I was too stunned to think clearly. Valkin told Neslan what he’d told me, adding Zalski’s family were sorcerers, which we had never known; that Zalski’s magic must have been behind the soundproof door; that there must be a bloodbath inside. Neslan terrified me into action by asking where my mother was.

“I had no idea. There were a handful of rooms where she normally wrote letters, or read letters from children who would write her, or saw company, some on opposite sides of the building. Her study was near my brother’s chamber, and I knew she had a letter she wanted him to see, from a girl who’d just been taken into one of the orphanages she visited.

“Then I realized no one had warned Menikas either. I sprinted out the door with no thought in my head for what could be waiting. Valkin tried to stop me, but I was too quick for him. One of Zals
ki’s henchmen proved the same. H
e ran Valkin through.”

“Oh my God,” said Kansten. After all her dirty looks, she was the one to interrupt, but Kora was so horrified by what Lanokas had said, so entranced by his steady voice and the tragedy it wove, that Kansten’s voice sounded cracked and distant, more like the chirp of a cricket than human words. The only words that meant a thing came from the royal. Kora found herself both wanting him to leave the story there and burning to know how he and Neslan had escaped.

“There was a second man in the corridor. He went for me as his companion went for Valkin, but I fought him off. I reacted without thinking and shoved him backward.”

“He must have had a sword,” came Bidd’s voice. “How…?”

Lanokas, without gusto, made Kora hover two inches above the grass. She hardly realized her crossed legs were supported by air, not vegetation, until she saw Hayden staring at her and Lanokas lowered her back to the earth.

“I knew the man. We used to tell jokes when he was off duty or bored on the job. I choose to think he acted under Zalski’s threats and not willfully, though I’ll never know for sure. I knocked him unconscious with his own weapon. The other man I killed, but there was nothing I could do for Valkin, I….” Lanokas spoke directly to Kora now. “I’ve never told Laskenay how her husband died. She’s never asked me. I don’t think she knows I was there, and I don’t know how…. How the hell do I tell her I was so determined to save my family that I destroyed hers in my damned stupidity?”

He tore a fistful of browning grass from the earth, hurled it away. If Kansten had been under
Estatua
she could not have sat more stiffly, though her eyes would have looked less uncomfortable; after nigh upon two years with the Crimson League, she had finally been told Laskenay was Zalski’s sister. Bidd and Hayden glanced at each other, wondering who this Laskenay was. Kora shut her eyelids, letting everything Lanokas had said turn somersaults around her brain, until he spoke again and the sound of his voice wiped her mind blank.

“We set off to find my mother, Neslan and I. To this day I don’t know how I reached the second floor. His keeping a cle
ar head had a lot to do with it.
I could only think how my
recklessness had killed Valkin.
I wasn’t planning any next tactic. I gave Neslan the sword I’d taken, which was lucky, since we met two guards near the stairs and I ended up needing free hands to send them over the banister. I think I broke their necks.

“My mother’s study—that was where we went—my mother’s study was deserted, though someone had searched the place. Her chair was drawn back, and my mother always,
always
, pushed her chairs in.

“Somehow, the sight of that empty room brought me back to myself. I led the way to my brother’s chambers, as they were close-by, and halfway down the corridor we heard grunts and groans. The first thing I saw when we rushed in was a man about to stab Menikas. I sent the traitor through a large round window, which I instantly regretted. I thought the explosion of glass would attract the entire wing. Menikas, on his feet with a sword he’d taken from a second guardsman, one he’d killed, was fighting a third and fourth. He bled pretty heavily and looked about to collapse.

“Neslan went after one of them, I remember that. Menikas tried to follow my lead and send the other through the window, but lacked the strength. I sent the man’s sword flying and then physically pushed him out. By that time, Neslan had killed the other guard.

“Then I saw my mother, crumpled in a corner she must have backed into when the guards burst in. The man who killed her lay in a heap beside her. There was a long, red stain across her chest.

“‘Five of them,’ Menikas gasped. He sank to the bed, and I saw a deep gash across his side. ‘There were five of them. Four came straight for me. I was on the other side of the room. I couldn’t help her.’

“Shards of colored glass blanketed the man who’d stabbed her. She’d cracked a ceramic mold of our coat of arms on his head, yanked it clear off the wall. My brother was bleeding all over his bed at this point, and I was trying not to think that my father was dead, but I knew he was. I knew by then what Zalski was doing.

“Neslan thought to rip the bedsheet, to use the strips to bandage Menikas. We didn’t quite stop the bleeding, but we kept the blood from leaving a trail when we forced my brother to his feet, which was enough.

“‘What now?’ Neslan asked. He looked to me, almost hysterical. I had never seen him like that, before or since. I thought of a passage from the Palace that led to a vault in the Temple a couple of blocks away. Neslan said Menikas would never survive the trip. I thought the same, but we had no other chance, none of us. Well,” the prince clarified, “maybe Neslan. Neslan could have sworn loyalty like his father, I suppose, but he wouldn’t have had the composure.

“We left my mother in the chamber, which you’ll probably judge me for. If she’d merely been unconscious we would have carried her all the way, but we couldn’t sacrifice the energy to take her corpse, not when we were already half-dragging Menikas. I was... relieved, when I heard Zalski’d given her a proper burial.”

“You did nothing wrong,” said Kansten, her voice oddly gentle, but she did not reassure the dead queen’s son. If anything, she made Lanokas less certain about his decision, judging by the gray tinge that zapped his face’s color.

“For good or ill we left her, just as we’d left Valkin. We crept as carefully as we could back to the corridor. I thought Menikas would pass out any second, but he held on, and no one stopped us. Our luck had changed. Eventually we entered a hallway with a tapestry on the wall, one that depicted the Palace and Temple and Great Square, a kind of layout of Podrar as it had been two centuries ago. It was there we heard footsteps, heavy ones, and Neslan froze, but I happened to know the tapestry concealed a kind of deep nook in the wall. My father showed it to me when I was five. I remember like it was yesterday. He said that if he or my brother ever yelled at me to hide, I was to go there. Being me, I used the spot to jump out and startle Menikas from time to
time. Zalski was with him once.
I didn’t realize before I leapt, but that’s a different story. Nearly twenty years later, I squeezed in the hollow with Neslan and my brother, almost bringing down the tapestry as we slipped behind it.

“Then everything happened at once. The footsteps turned the corner; I realized there were four or five pairs of feet making them, at the least; I heard Zalski’s voice, though his words weren’t clear; Menikas finally lost consciousness, but Neslan and I held him up before he fell through the tapestry. I had to muster every ounce of willpower I possessed not to rush out and disentrail Zalski then and there. Had I been alone I would have tried, but the thought of my brother kept me rooted to the wall. I wondered if Zalski would remember me leaping from this spot decades before, and half-wished he would, that he would check.

“He didn’t. He walked to the end of the corridor, flanked by his conspirators, one of whom stopped as he reached the tapestry and said maybe they should check it, it did run to the floor. Zalski responded from the other end
of the hall there wasn’t time. T
hey needed to find the queen, search her chambers. The guard ignored him and started pulling down the tapestry. Half of it fell away.”

“That couldn’t have pleased Zalski,” Kora whispered.

“No, he shouted something that sounded like a foreign tongue. His voice carried that time. I had no clue what the spell had done, but the guards fell into line without protest or murmurs and followed him away. Thank God, the tapestry still hung from one end, concealing the space where we’d crammed ourselves.

“Neslan was staring at me with horror in his eyes. I stared at him for maybe ten seconds, then reality came flooding back: Zalski was moving straight toward my brother’s chambers. In a matter of moments he would find a shattered window, the bodies of three of his henchmen on the floor, another two against the Palace’s outer wall, that of the queen crumpled in the corner…. And the rightful king missing. We pulled Menikas out to the corridor, and we found a soldier standing frozen, facing the wall, his hand outstretched to grasp the tapestry that now fell in its entirety. His skin was a, a horribly unnatural color, like stone. I didn’t dare try to touch him to see if he’d hardened like stone as well.”

“Had Zalski killed him?” Hayden asked.

“No,” said Kora. “No, I know that spell, it’s easily reversible. Zalski was making a point to the other men about challenging him, that’s all.”