The Fox (44 page)

Vedrid obeyed. Evred gripped the rough stone of the archway as he watched the oars dipping and rising, dipping and rising, the green breakers surging around the boat in a way that made him feel unbalanced and a little sick.

That same surging gray-green sea was a calm swell to Inda and Tau as they rowed in toward shore.

Tau said, now that they were away from the ship and all the listening ears, “You’re really lifting anchor to sail north?”

Inda sighed. “Taumad. The man said ‘Meet me at Halfmoon Harbor above Ghost Island.’ If I don’t go there, he’ll hunt me down. And where would I go?”

“Anywhere else in the world, for a start.”

“Will that really get me away from someone who can rip a hole in the sky and sail right out? Probably with the wind ordered to blow right behind him?”

Tau uttered a vile curse; Inda, surprised, grinned as he leaned into the oars. His shoulder still pulled, but it was healing. By the time he reached the Ghost Isles he should be back at his old speed and strength. He shifted his thoughts from that to Tau’s first question. “The Brotherhood is effectively gone. But we’re going to have to face the Venn, who set them against our land. You know they were watching. They are watching still. I can feel them on the horizon.”

“If,” Tau said with rare acerbity, “you ‘feel’ anything, it’s too many bashes on the head. We did what we set out to do. Let others clean up the remaining pirates and take on the Venn.”

“Who?”

“Well, it seems to me that that would be a job for kings, who do have the money and ships for that sort of game.”

Inda retorted, “So while the Venn are hunting me down, I do what? Or don’t you believe they’ll be hunting me down?” As Tau sighed, Inda almost added,
Go home if you like,
but that would be cruel. Though Tau had said nothing at all, Inda knew from Jeje’s private report the day before, when the
Vixen
caught up with them, that Tau’s mother’s pleasure house in Parayid Harbor had been reduced to snow-covered ash, and his mother was gone—apparently abducted by pirates. Tau had no home to go to.

He did not speak, but Tau guessed the direction of his thoughts, and cursed again.

Chapter Twenty-seven

IN one of those unnerving coincidences of history, the same day—the same watch—that Vedrid and Evred-Varlaef rode down into Lindeth Harbor, back in the royal city the Harskialdna prowled outside his own rooms, brooding.

Still no sign of the Sierlaef. The night of the Sierlaef’s thunderbolt appearance and disappearance the Harskialdna had confronted Hadand, but she said only, “Ask him when he returns. He ordered me not to speak, and is he not the future king?”

Another evasion from another conspiring woman, damn them all—

“Brother.”

Anderle-Harskialdna whirled around. There stood Tlennen-Harvaldar, the king. His face was difficult to distinguish in the fading winter light. “It has been several days, and I have not seen you.”

“No. I spent most of the day with the armory master.”

“My son apparently arrived the day after I saw you last and took half the Royal Guard away again. Why have you not reported this to me?”

The Harskialdna forced a smile. “I’ve been waiting to find out the reason first. It seems he was here and gone while you were in that trade meeting with the Adranis and I was overseeing the royal stud. Since I had no more than that to report, I did not want to interrupt you when you were shut up with the guild leaders the other day, and yesterday with the tax men. So I have been attending to my own tasks while I await either him or a message from him.”

The king laid his hand on the doorframe outside his personal chamber. “We need money for our defense and mages back for spell renewal,” he said, his expression bleak. “The Adranis are claiming that war negates our old treaty.”

The Harskialdna scowled. The army already complained about the rain-resistance on their coats fading; there were signs of other spells beginning to lose their potency. At first he’d dismissed the subject, but as time wore on and they could not get messengers in or out of the kingdom, it began to become clear how many little spells they had previously taken for granted.

The king said, “Until I can settle with the Adranis there is the problem of finding mages to come here, then of finding money to pay them. It requires compromise, and money that we do not have, not with so much of it going to the north for supply and rebuilding.”

“As for the communication problem, there should be news from the coast soon. Maybe today,” the Harskialdna said, shifting the subject. “The last messenger from our southernmost harbor reported a mass migration of pirates toward the Narrows, and everyone there was talking of a possible ship battle.”

Tlennen said, “When they come, interrupt me in whatever I am doing. I need to know what happened.”

Anderle-Harskialdna was relieved. But then the king added, “I also want to know if the rumors about the commander of the sea defense being the Algara-Vayir boy are true.”

The words were like a punch to the Harskialdna’s gut. He’d exerted himself to keep those rumors—not that he believed a word—from being voiced here. How
could
Tlennen know? Jealousy spurted its familiar and caustic acid into the roiling pit inside the Harskialdna: his brother’s accursed mate Sindan had not been home for over a year, staying in Ala Larkadhe to protect Evred, and the Harskialdna himself opened every dispatch brought by Runner to the king. Including Sindan’s.

“I believe those rumors are false,” the Harskialdna stated, all the more firmly because of his doubts. “Mere rumor, spread by those whose ambitions have been thwarted, by the disaffected—” He stopped there, knowing his brother would want to discuss why Marlovan Jarls who had recently sworn their year’s oaths would be disaffected.

“I was weak,” Tlennen said, so low his brother almost didn’t hear it. “Too weak to face what I did not want to see.” He retreated into his room and closed the door.

What did
that
mean? The Harskialdna had reached his own rooms when one of the young Runners-in-training dashed in, panting from his run the length of the castle. “Heir’s back. At the gallop.”

Indeed, there it was, the sound of horns. War horns, faint and far away. Why would the Sierlaef be blowing war horns? Many horns—signaling an entire wing—

The Harskialdna paused long enough to thrust his fighting knife through his sash and then started down toward the stables, meeting the Sierlaef halfway. “Those horns— not you?”

The heir was muddy to the hip and white-faced with emotion. “They’re coming for blood,” he said, clearer than he’d ever spoken. “Coming for me. Yvana-Vayir, Marlo-Vayir. Wing. At least.” His mouth twisted with threat. “You. M-m-make it r-r-right.”

War horns again, louder, and a young Runner dashed in, stumbled to a stop, and thumped his fist to his chest. “It’s Yvana-Vayir and Marlo-Vayir, with war banners,” he announced breathlessly, more excited than afraid. “Three columns, looks like three flights—”

The heir pulled his knife. “Vedrid lives. Blabbed.”

“Go to your rooms,” the Harskialdna commanded, and he waited long enough to see the heir retreat. His heart thumped against his ribs, and ideas—words—plans tumbled through his mind. He knew Mad Gallop and Hasta, had known them since they were ten-year-old boys down there in the academy scrub barracks. If he could soothe whatever it was that got them hot, it would renew his hold on the heir. All this sped through his mind as he ran to the listening chamber above the great hall; he’d decide on his strategy after hearing what they were saying. They’d come through the great hall first, if they were waving war banners around. He could calm them down by prolonging the ridiculous formal palaver of their ancestors—

“Empty! The coward! Probably lurking over in his office at the guard barracks. You, take your riding upstairs, and find the traitor Aldren-Sierlaef. You to the guard barracks, and you upstairs, find the Harskialdna and kill him!” That was Mad Gallop. His next words stunned the Harskialdna. “Strike the traitor down. You, find the king—”

“Wait.” That was Hasta, hoarse with pain. “Hold hard! You never said anything about assassination. Only justice, and not against the king!
He
hasn’t—”

“Justice demands a new king,” Mad Gallop replied. “And who better than my son, who is also son of a princess?”

“But the king hasn’t—”

The Harskialdna didn’t stay to hear the argument. A wing of warriors against the depleted Guard, and most of those not at their post, but heading toward the barracks to sleep? He knew in bone and nerve and viscera that his life was over. He who thought and planned ahead had been taken completely by surprise, and not by the pirates, or Idayagans, or even the Venn, but by conspiracy where he had not watched for it.

Here was the end. But he would not die alone.

He ran to the door of the one he hated most, whose secrets and plans had always eluded him. He kicked open the door to his wife’s rooms and saw her seated, hair wet, her bathrobe draped around her. She was in the act of writing on a little square of paper. “Conspiracy!” he snarled, advancing. “And you’re at the center of it!”

“Center of what?” she snapped as she backed to the wall.

When he saw her fling the little square of paper into the fire he released that lifelong hoard of anger in an inarticulate roar.

Her hands brushed over her wrists—to find them bare. Her weapons lay in her room with her clothing. Rannet, her personal Runner, was weeks away.

She was alone and unarmed, her other Runners busy on duty.

“You never. Lay with me. In life.” He reached for her, she dodged in an expert, flowing move, but her hair, usually neatly confined, swung out in long wet ribbons. He caught a lock and yanked viciously, and she fell to one knee.

He wound his hand in her hair, then, with his other hand pulled out his knife and stabbed her again and again.

Her arms rose, white hot shards of pain shooting through her as she warded the killing steel with bare flesh. “You,” he snarled, stabbing furiously as he tried to reach her neck, her heart, her gut. “Will. Lie. With. Me. In death.”

Shock—pain—the swift flow of hot blood made her head reel. She kept her arms up as she struggled to free herself. The last word—death—rang in her ears as the cruel knife lacerated her, scraping on bone, until a single thought jetted upward through the rising black tide: Barend.

I must protect Barend
.

Purpose pushed back the billowing blackness. Old lessons guided her failing body. She ceased trying to regain her feet, but sagged suddenly, and his hand loosened its grip on her hair—

Ah, there! His boot knife. She fell forward, closed her bloody hand round the hilt. She was beyond question, beyond hearing: as the Harskialdna straightened up, his body tensing at the clatter of footsteps rapidly approaching, she gathered her remaining strength, though by now the roaring in her ears deafened her and flowering black spots as well as blood blinded her eyes.

But instinct fortified by years of hatred and honed by the ritual of drill drove her steel up between his ribs and straight into his heart.

The door slammed open then, and nine men ran in, each determined to be the one to earn his name in the ballads for dispatching the traitor. They hacked at Anderle-Harskialdna, whose hands scrabbled feebly at the knife in his ribs; it was only when they finished that they noticed the woman lying nearby—but she was already dead.

The noise of screams and clashing steel terrorized Kialen, Evred’s betrothed, who had been passing softly along the hall to take embroidery silk to the queen’s rooms.

Hadand appeared from somewhere and shook her. “Kialen! I heard shouting. Who was it? Where?”

Kialen could only point, her cold fingers trembling.

Hadand turned her head at the distant shouts of men. Trouble, that much was clear. She gazed desperately into Kialen’s frail, heart-shaped face, took in the terror rounding her eyes, the tense high brow, and forced her voice to soft urgency. “You must go hide in the secret chamber. Now! I have to protect the queen. Kialen, do you hear?”

Kialen’s thin hand groped, closing around Hadand’s wrist. Her frail body trembled violently as she assented, always obedient, for did not obedience make the shadows go away?

“Go now, little sister.” Hadand bent and pressed a maternal kiss on those slender fingers, and waited until the weird, distant focus in Kialen’s enormous pupils altered to awareness. To comprehension. “I’ll be with you as soon as the queen is safe.”

Kialen seemed to hear, her brow smoothed, and she began to glide away, so strange and childish, though they were the same age. But Kialen—so unlike her Cassad cousins—had never seemed to age past her tenth birthday; she just got stranger.

When she vanished around the corner, her steps soundless, Hadand hurried away.

Kialen drifted silently to an alcove, but stopped again and backed against a wall at the iron-shod clatter of running men. She closed her eyes and shrank into the shadows as five Yvana-Vayir riders in yellow and blue tramped down the hall.

They ignored what they took to be a child cowering in the corner. They spread out, swords at the ready as they began kicking open doors. The first suite, across from Hadand’s empty chambers, belonged to Aldren-Sierlaef.

He was there, alone. His hazel eyes narrowed when he saw the Yvana-Vayir colors instead of the Marlo-Vayirs’ but he did not speak. Just drew his knife.

The men exchanged uncertain glances, each waiting for a sign from the others. To kill a prince! They knew the penalty if their lord lost, but if they won, it would mean promotion, maybe even land of their own—and perhaps their names mentioned in the songs that would be written about their Jarl for future drums.

Still they waited for one another to move. The Sierlaef, for all the bad gossip about him, never had anything said against his courage.