The Fox (50 page)

“What happened to him?”

“From the beginning? He was taken by pirates. He was with Inda when they found out about your uncle’s betrayal of the Algara-Vayirs. Barend can tell you all that. Your brother apparently sicced Nallan onto him, along with two others.”

“To murder him, I take it?”

“Yes. But the Sierlaef made a mistake, it seems, in sending only Nallan and two of his own spy hirelings against someone who has been fighting against pirates for ages.”

“Nallan,” Evred repeated with distaste. “As well he’s dead. I would hate to sit in judgment over him—to labor to be fair when I have always despised him.”

Hadand said, “Well, Barend killed all three of them. But in his hurry to get here he traded his steady old mare that Tdor and Whipstick had wisely given him, tried galloping over ice, and he and the mare fell. Barend’s leg was shattered, arm broken. The horse did much better, merely bruised knees. Somehow he managed to get home. Poor Barend,” she added. “He wanted so badly to ride for the north to rejoin Inda at some harbor. The stairs defeated him—he tried to leave, and we found him in a faint outside the stable. The only other good thing I can claim to my credit is my thinking of Aunt Ndara’s Runner Ranet to nurse him. She returned a couple of days after the deaths, and when she discovered what had happened—she had not been here to defend Aunt Ndara—I was afraid she would take her own life as a kind of expiation, even though she probably could not have saved her. Even though she was sent on some mission by Ndara herself.”

Evred gave a faint grimace. “But they have been like sisters since Ranet was assigned to be her Runner when they were small.”

“Yes, and Barend loved Ranet like an aunt. So I assigned her to nurse him. We were already desperately overreached anyway. And she has recovered enough to find purpose in life, I think. But Barend, well, he could use some cheering.”

“Yes,” Evred promised, his heartbeat quickening. Barend was alive. Here. And he had been with Inda.

Hadand brushed shaky fingers over her brow, pressing as if to hold in a headache, but then her hand dropped. “At least dear Aunt Ndara had the joy of knowing Barend was alive, even though she never did get to see him.”

“Good.”

“Let me show you the king’s rooms, which are untouched. I left your father’s and uncle’s papers for you. Evred, Iasca Leror is in trouble. Mage spells weakening, no mages from the Adranis, tax money flowing north or to the coast and leaving things undone here. It’s not going to be easy to hold the kingdom, especially if we face more war. You know that the pirates were defeated, but the Venn sailed away. They were apparently not in the battle, just the pirates. The Venn are untouched. Surely they plan something else.”

“Yes, but that can wait. We’ve enough to consider here. One more task before we face the others.”

She fell silent and Evred walked with her to the royal chambers. There she waited in the doorway while he wandered about, avoiding all the bloodstains on the floor, where the king’s own Runners had died defending an empty room as the king had been in his son’s chambers. He examined little things: a hairbrush laid aside, a robe tossed over the back of a chair for later. His father’s house slippers by his bed. Everything in readiness for another day, one that would never come.

Finally they walked into the king’s bedroom, where a magic fire burned quietly in the grate, untended for a month. The room was warm, unlike all the others, plain, the few furnishings old and well-kept. There Evred turned to face Hadand, and pulled from his pocket the silken square. She remained silent as he unwrapped it. “Sindan wouldn’t die until he gave me this.”

She drew in a slow, audible breath. “So you know, then.” “Know what?”

He watched her color change.

“About the magic lockets.”

“No. Tell me,” he added, thinking,
Yet another secret
.

She searched his eyes, which had gone remote, and sensed the change in his mood. “I did not know that the king and Captain Sindan had a pair,” she said. “The only pair I knew about was that belonging to Aunt Ndara and Ranet. It was Aunt Ndara’s secret,” Hadand added, emphasizing the words. “I was sworn never to tell anyone. The lockets transfer messages. Your mother brought them as gifts for her and your uncle when she first came to this kingdom as a bride—she did not know our marriage customs. Your uncle, of course, despised the idea of ‘lovers’ lockets.’ But I found this on your father and set it aside for you. Somehow he got a pair as well.” She crossed to a carved cedar-wood casket on the mantel. “It holds the twin to Sindan’s locket.”

Evred made no move toward the casket. “Do you know how they work?”

“I know how Ndara’s works. They are probably the same.”

He joined her at the fireplace, where he laid Sindan’s locket in the cedar-scented wooden box with its mate.

Hadand said, “Any other questions?”

Evred led the way out. “My mother?”

“She has not stirred from her rooms. She would like to see you,” she added, following him back into the study. “And she wants to be reassured she can go home.”

“Home,” he repeated, shaking his head. “I will see her after we are done here.”

Evred walked into her field of vision; she turned away, busying her hands with piles of papers that lay on the king’s desk, senseless stacking and patting. He was in arm’s reach, but he couldn’t see her face, only the top of her head, the neat part in her brown hair. She was quite short; not so long ago she had been the taller, the wiser, the stronger. She still was wise. And her strength was the kind he needed most.

“Hadand,” he said.

She glanced up, those eyes so very like Inda’s. The resemblance jolted him, and for a moment he lost his own trail of thought. He forced the memory away and saw Hadand’s distant, sad gaze go to the window so that her profile was outlined against the bright golden sunrays slanting in.

“Hadand, why won’t you face me? Is there something that I’ve done?” He added, “That I should’ve done, and have not?”

She shook her head, then turned away.

“Hadand, please look at me,” Evred said. “You have held the kingdom for me. Not so easy a task.”

She did not deny it. Neither did she look at him.

“Hadand, I thought about this matter during the long ride south. It might not be what either of us expected, or even what you would want, but will you marry me? If you like I shall enumerate all the reasons. But I really believe it is the best thing for the kingdom. It’s your skill, your mind, your wisdom that Iasca Leror needs. That I need.”

She had turned her back. At first he thought she was angry, but he saw the shaking of her shoulders, and he stopped, bewildered.

But then she stood up straight, her shoulders squared. “Excuse me.” Her voice was firm, if a little rough. “Just— being in these rooms. Of course I will. I do agree, it is the right thing for the kingdom.” Her voice was too brisk, too unnatural.

“It is the only thing I am sure about.” He held out his hands. “We’ve known one another all our lives,” he said, hands turning outward in a gesture of distress. “You know I would never interfere with you in personal matters. All I ask for myself is truth between us. And when the right time comes, an heir we will train so there never again is a problem like the one we face here.”

“Yes,” she said, and swiped her wrist across her eyes as she turned around. “Yes. And so shall it be.”

“We will marry Midsummer’s Day, at the coronation, for you will be Gunvaer to a Harvaldar, since it’s clear that despite any wishes of mine the war is not ending.”

She said, “I fear you are right.”

“I want to know the state of things well before then. When they all come to make their oaths, they will be demanding this and that of the Sierlaef’s awkward young brother who knows nothing of kingship, and I don’t want to give more than I get.” He looked wry. “First I must deal with the Yvana-Vayirs, though I hope if I stall long enough the old man will die. Maybe I should offer him a knife.”

“Do,” she said, her brown eyes serious. “I wish I had not stayed my hand. It would have been be so much better. But he was an old man, a Marlovan, and my instinct was to wound, not to kill. Then I couldn’t reach down and finish him off when he was on his knees before me, his weapon fallen. Not in front of the eyes of his son.”

He agreed, relieved to see the tension fade from her forehead, from her small, expressive hands.

“All right. Then let us order the royal bonfire. And I’ve got my own promises to keep. Then we’ll take a look at the trade papers while we await the last reports from the coast . . .”

And as the days turned into weeks, and he never again saw that strange torment in her expression, he grew easier in mind, deciding it had been her grief over the many deaths.

Chapter Thirty-two

THEY lived in their childhood rooms while the royal suites were refurbished, the papers from the king’s study having been moved to the old schoolroom. One by one the expected formal rituals were performed, all of them painful for different reasons.

The first was the funeral bonfire for a war king and his Harskialdna and son, carried out—as Evred’s coronation would be—at midnight, the throne room lit with torches. They did nothing to warm the high-vaulted stone chamber, men’s voices rising and falling in the ancient Hymn to the Fallen, the voices of the women in the gallery echoing in an eerie descant. Evred did not sing; his throat was too tight. All he could think was,
My father. My father is dead.

Evred’s mother stood behind him, and she too was silent; at the end, she pressed his hand, her fingers trembling.

Wisthia and the others left, but Evred and Hadand walked together over to the barracks, where Runners from all across the kingdom had gathered. Once again Evred endured the heart-wrenching chant so movingly whispered, sung in wavering tones with abrupt silences and bowed heads, in memorial to Jened Sindan, Captain of the King’s Runners, who had died as he had lived, defending the king and his family.

Evred could not sing at all, his throat was still too tight; the sting in his eyes intensified, and when he heard Hadand’s muffled sob on the women’s side, his tears began to flow.

He was still standing there, eyes closed, when the Runners all withdrew. Only Hadand remained.

When at last he drew a long, audible breath, she said, “Do you want to be alone?”

“No. Thank you.”

They did not speak as they walked upstairs to their childhood rooms.

The next day he had to deal with his father’s personal possessions, and once again Hadand was at his side. It did not take long. The king, austere his entire life, had not owned much. His aesthetic pleasures had been bound up in the archives, and in ancestral furnishings and banners that would remain untouched.

His clothes, and the even more modest belongings of Captain Sindan, Evred and Hadand packed with their own hands. That night they and Barend held their own private bonfire; none of them wanted to pack away their personal belongings to some attic, as most families did, or to have them reused. Evred said he wanted to burn them all cleanly, and no one disagreed.

Barend brought his parents’ effects, and Hadand the Sierlaef’s. They and their personal Runners stood in silence watching them burn until their smoke rose and mingled, leaving only ash.

The queen did not attend this private ceremony.

That was the last private ritual; it was then time for the public displays of justice, beginning with the personal Runners of all four dead. It turned out to be easier than expected. Retren Waldan, the Harskialdna’s chief castle spy, had died by many knife wounds half a day’s journey away, which indicated two things: one, he’d abandoned his master, and two, someone had hunted him down. Probably several someones.

The Harskialdna’s surviving Runners revealed under kinthus that they had not been in on their master’s secrets. They rambled on about rumors that worried them, but their duties had been unexceptionable, carried out scrupulously, for the Harskialdna had worked others as hard as he had worked himself.

Farnid, the Harskialdna’s personal Runner, was still stunned and distraught. He barely seemed to comprehend the offer of a life pension, which was given to all the others with the exception of Ndara-Harandviar’s Ranet, whom Hadand had taken onto her own staff.

And so Evred and Hadand worked through all the rest, ending with the Runners and armsmen belonging to the so-called Conspirators of Hesea Spring. Most of them were shot. Last of all was the execution of the Jarl of Yvana-Vayir, who neither conveniently died nor accepted the opportunity of a quick, quiet suicide.

And so they had to execute him. Evred forbade the ancient tortures. The flogging was grim enough, a disgusting spectacle at which he and the Jarls, or their representatives, had to be present: he left Hawkeye in prison to spare him. Why had the old man not accepted the offered escape from this horror? Had he perhaps thought that his fellow Jarls would rise against the young king and put him, or his son, on the throne? If he did, he was disappointed. No Jarl came except for Hasta Marlo-Vayir. They all sent a representative, silent testimony to their rejection of the actions of Yvana-Vayir. If they had respected him, they would have come to watch him die, then given him the accolade of the Hymn, and songs over drums. There were no songs.

After that Evred was closeted a long time with Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir, who emerged not only with his title and holdings intact, but as the interim Royal Shield Arm, until Barend could be trained to take over.

Once that happened, he would go home at last as the Jarl of Yvana-Vayir. His father’s cousin (who had strenuously resisted and resented Yvana-Vayir’s pretensions; thus the Jarl had never included him in any of his private plans) would serve on as Randael until the twins could finish their training and take his place, leaving him to honorable retirement. The Jarls would thus see that the new king gave justice to his liege men rather than vengeance.