The Fox (6 page)

Anderle-Harskialdna grinned his wolf grin at everyone, and his voice was too loud, too jovial, as he said, “No, no, Aldren. No alarms, I only carry his greetings on my way to the border to inspect the supply lines.”

His uncle—the man who had raised him—was the only person who called him Aldren. To everyone else he wasn’t even Aldren-Sierlaef, he was “the Sierlaef.”

The Harskialdna still grinned as his words were whispered outward through the crowd, and they all visibly relaxed. Only the Sierlaef recognized the signs of his uncle’s anger. The old fear swooped through him, followed hard by anger. He’d had time to think, waiting here these long weeks. Think about how, all the years he was growing up, his uncle had never quite told the truth, only what he wanted believed.

Surely the official Runners would be back by now, with word of Tanrid Algara-Vayir’s death. The problem was they inevitably stopped in the royal city first. If so, that meant his uncle knew. And here he was, instead of the Runners.

The Sierlaef’s anger cooled into apprehension, then flared again. He knew his uncle would try to interfere with his plan to make his way northwest to Choraed Elgaer, and Tenthen Castle, to claim Joret Dei now that her betrothed, Tanrid Algara-Vayir, was dead. The brat Inda was long gone. There was no one left to marry her to.

I am the future king. It is an honor for her to be chosen by me,
the Sierlaef said inside his head, where there was never any stutter.
Aldren-Harvaldar, war king
. Maybe soon; his father near seventy!

The Sierlaef was smiling by the time his uncle had gotten rid of the Jarl, his Randael, their liege men, and Runners of both houses, and they stood alone in the guest chamber set with the best furniture the family had to offer.

“They’re reading your father’s letter about Tanrid Algara-Vayir right now, so you’d better get out your black sash for the bonfire. Your father ordered bonfires at every Jarl’s house, in honor of the death of a commander appointed directly by the king.” He watched the heir narrowly, and as he’d feared, the Sierlaef showed no surprise.

“What have you done?” the Harskialdna whispered.

“I?” the Sierlaef snapped, surly and defensive.

“You know what I am talking about. I arrived in the royal city after the Runners from Idayago. Brigands killed Tanrid Algara-Vayir? Who’s going to believe that?”

“In Idayagan dress.”

The Harskialdna brought his fist down on a hand-carved wingback chair—moved for the first time in two generations to the guest chambers in honor of the royal heir. Not that he’d noticed. He’d grown up with such items all around him.

“If your father orders an investigation, how many Idayagans will die before the truth comes out and he starts questioning your men? Who won’t be able to hide under kinthus that those brigands were in fact your hires?”

Fear returned. “R-ruh-rr—”

“Runners? My men opened all the messages sent to the royal city, but they were not alone in that. Did you forget Sindan? If he figures out something was suspicious, I can’t stop him from reporting to your father. And what then?”

“But Unc—”
Uncle Sindan
the Sieralef almost said, though he hadn’t thought of his father’s lifelong mate as "uncle” for years. "S-Sindan away. At Olara. Made certain. ”

“How could you possibly forget that he has Runners all over, spying on everyone, reporting to him and not to me? There is nothing whatsoever I can do about what he learns. You
know
he pretends to defer to me, but he reports straight to your father. Olara,” the Harskialdna finished in disgust. “Aldren, if you haven’t learned it, learn it now. He’s got eyes all over the kingdom, and they are loyal only to him.”

And to Father,
the Sierlaef thought.
Not to you.

The Harskialdna sighed, then rubbed his forehead. “I hope I never have to ride like that again. I did it to save
you.
As soon as I heard about the bugle call I knew your hand lay behind it. What possessed you to have them use an academy call?”

Relief and triumph both flooded the Sierlaef. He crossed his arms, grinning. “Planned that. Horn by Tanrid.”

“Yes, so they assumed. And grief seems, at least so far, to keep them from questioning why Tanrid, whose head was always cool, would be lost enough to blow the academy war game ride-to-shoot call.”

“None of ’em know it. All dragoons. Riders. Either Sala or Trad Varadhe castles. No academy. Except your Runner.”

“Your brother knows it.”

“What?”

“Your brother,” the Harskialdna’s eyes narrowed in fury, “was there. He was so very much there he arrived at the end of the attack, barely too late to save Tanrid.”

“What? He-he—”

“Was supposed to be building harbor walls, yes,” the Harskialdna said with savage sarcasm. “But he tangled with some local hustler, had a tiff, and dusted off to cry on Tanrid’s shoulder. A fellow, by the by. D’you think Tanrid—”

The royal heir flung up a hand and cut him off. His brother’s and Tanrid’s sex lives were irrelevant; even in the extreme unlikelihood that Evred and Tanrid had discovered a sudden mutual passion, Tanrid was dead, and his passions no longer mattered to anyone. As for the Sierlaef’s brother Evred—not seen in years and whom his servants knew better than to mention—the Sierlaef still envisioned his younger brother as the clumsy, awkward poetry-spouter of six years ago. He knew his uncle’s penchant for worming out secrets, just from curiosity if not to use them to enforce obedience; this secret, if it even was one, was already worthless. “Evred said?”

“He hasn’t said anything. That I know. He did write off to the Algara-Vayirs as well as your father, but I saw those messages. Evred’s letter was quite correct. The usual wine-sauce about Tanrid’s valor, plus he added some poetry in obsolete language, probably as a sop to the women, very much in your brother’s usual style.” The Harskialdna shifted his attack. “So you intended your ‘brigands’ all to die?”

The Sierlaef grinned. “Made sure. Expected reward.”

“And your assassin? What’s to prevent him from talking, since he saw the reward his party got?”

The Sierlaef laughed, though he endured the familiar twinge of regret at the necessity of killing his Runner Vedrid, who was fast and smart. However, there was a kingdom full of fast, smart fellows who wanted to be Runners to the future king.

“Well?” the Harskialdna demanded, his harshness motivated by a wave of fear that he’d lost control, that he would be implicated, and what the king would do.

The Sierlaef looked up, angry enough to get out what for him was a very long speech with a minimum of stutter. “Thought of that, too. He didn’t know the plan. Different orders. Any ‘brigands’ left alive, kill them. After, sent him to Buck Marlo-Vayir. Said meet me there. Sent message, kill him. Said he’d betrayed me.”

“What?” His uncle’s voice cracked. “You brought in someone else?”

The Sierlaef felt the words piling up, and his tongue and lips already started that hated flutter.

He glared at his uncle. That glare, once considered sullen, had become frightening in its intensity, expressing so many years of frustration and rage.

"Y-you. Wanted Buck. As n-next Harskialdna,” the Sierlaef whispered, because whispers sometimes damped the stutter. He had no idea how sinister it sounded.

The Harskialdna flung out his hands. Anger, confusion, most of all a sense of lack of control—he hated that more than anything or anyone in a long list of hatreds—struck him silent.

Over the years he’d driven a wedge between the heir and Evred so that they would never ally against him.
He
was to be the heir’s guard and guide and future adviser. From the beginning Evred had been far too smart, prone to read the records, just like his father, and then to question. The Harskialdna had been afraid Evred would be as difficult to control (for the kingdom’s own good) as the king had turned out to be. The Marlo-Vayir boy had been obedient, big, strong, handsome, and most of all unquestioning. And the hints the Harskialdna had carefully dropped about the possibility of his being promoted to a royal connection in the future had bound the Marlo-Vayirs to him. But during the past few years that bond seemed to have eroded.

But he couldn’t speak of that. It admitted his own gradual loss of control.

The Sierlaef’s thoughts paralleled his uncle’s to an astonishing degree, but the days of free communication had also vanished.

The Sierlaef’s mind shifted swiftly from image to image: Buck Marlo-Vayir in the good old academy days obeying without question, glad to be one of the elite Sier Danas, the Companions; Evred reading in two languages when his older brother couldn’t manage one; the promises his uncle had made that had turned out not to be true.

Well, it was time to make them true.
He
was the future king, not his uncle! Buck had shown a tendency to argue these past few years, so this order concerning Vedrid would be a test. Meanwhile, why not have his own brother as Harskialdna after all? A scholarly, obedient brother who would take care of the boring logistics, like trade and army training and taxes, leaving his older brother full command of the army. That’s what Harvaldar meant:
war king
.

The rightness of it helped steady his tongue. “Buck Marlo-Vayir.” He enunciated each word hard and distinct. “Will do what he’s told.”
Or die a traitor’s death.

The Harskialdna stared in horror across the room into the heir’s angry eyes and realized he was not addressing a wayward boy. The Sierlaef was a man now, a man who had his own plans, a man who could issue threats—
do what he’s told
—and had the kingdom to back him.

The future king had decided he was going to be telling his uncle what to do, not the other way around.

The Sierlaef said, “Father can in-fuh-fuh . . .” He forced himself to slow down, enunciating harshly. “
Vest.
Igate. Our people. All who know are dead. Idayagans. If they die, so? Seal our hold.”

The Harskialdna swallowed and then, in a fair attempt to smooth over his capitulation, asked, “So what will you do now?”

The Sierlaef grinned again, and years of pent-up resentment made that grin a nasty sight indeed. “What I want. When I want. How I want.” He pointed at his uncle. “You make it happen.”

“Vedrid? Executed?” Buck Marlo-Vayir repeated. He was hot and irritable in his gray coat, but an unexpected visit from the royal heir’s Runner seemed to require no less.

Nallan, the Sierlaef’s Runner captain, was familiar from the days when Buck and the Sierlaef and the rest of the Sier Danas became seniors, putting up their hair as academy horsetails. Nallan had been willing to clean boots and do the horsetails’ stable chores on the sly—anything to earn the approval of the next king. And he’d hated any new Runners whom the royal heir liked.

Tall, blond, competent, Nallan was smirking now. He clearly loved conveying these orders from the royal heir.

“Did the Sierlaef say why?”

“Treachery,” Nallan said.

“Then it will be done,” Buck stated, not asking why a charge of treachery from one of the royal family didn’t require a trial. It was obvious that once again the Sierlaef was sidestepping the rules for his own purposes as he’d done many times, though it had never before cost someone’s life.

Nallan smirked again. “I’m to stay until I see his body.”

Fury flared hot and bright; however, Buck had learned during their boyhood academy days not to express anything at all around the heir or his most trusted spy. “Then take your gear down to the Runners’ rooms and settle in. I’ll give the necessary orders.”

He waited until he’d seen Nallan cross the small courtyard to the Runners’ space adjacent the barracks; then, he ran down to the arms court, where he found his younger brother Landred—renamed Cherry-Stripe his first week at the academy—busy with the arms master.

Cherry-Stripe was surprised to see Buck dressed formally— best riding boots, his gray war coat buttoned to the high collar, sashed at the waist, the long skirts gathering dust as he crossed the heat-shimmering stones. In
this
weather?

Cherry-Stripe cast a puzzled glance at his brother’s tight-lipped, brow-furrowed face. Buck leaned up against a hitching post and crossed his arms, so Cherry-Stripe turned back to the waiting arms master and finished his bout.

When it was done Buck made the old academy “behind the barracks” sign with a briefly turned thumb, so Cherry-Stripe said to the arms master, “I’m going to get something to eat, and then I’ll be over to look at the two-year-olds.”

The man flicked his fingers to his heart and walked to the other end of the court to observe the off-patrol Riders galloping past a post and hacking at it with swords.

The brothers ran through the drifting dust to an older part of the castle, moldering and mossy, and clambered up to their favorite perch from which they could watch, unseen, through ancient arrow slits.

“Nallan is here.” Buck grimaced in disgust as he undid the wooden buttons of his coat, eased out of it, and laid it carefully beside him. Air ruffled over his sweat-damp shirt, briefly cooling him, and he sighed. “Orders. From
him.
We’re to kill Vedrid on sight.”

Cherry-Stripe gasped. “Vedrid? Why?”

“Treachery. Supposedly. Nallan stays until it’s done. So
he
wants an eyewitness. Can’t imagine what Vedrid’s done. Or how to move against him. He being a friend, almost kin.”

“But Vedrid’s already here.”

“What?”

“Mran told me at breakfast,” Cherry-Stripe explained, referring to his betrothed, little Mran Cassad. Like all the Cassads she was small and rat-faced. Cherry-Stripe had grown up with her, and they were allies as well as betrothed. She always knew everything going on in and around the castle. “Fnor told her. Sheep-house,” he added with a roll of the eyes.