The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) (3 page)

Tressa said,
“You don’t mind?”

“It’s not
like I’ll be here to stop you two. Leave my things alone, that’s all I ask.”

Kansten’s
brothers approached her then. They were taller than Kansten, with their
father’s thin nose. Walten, the older of the two, sported a thin beard because
he finally could grow one, and gave Kansten a hug. “You’ll do great with that
architect. I’m excited for you, Kans.”

Wilhem,
sixteen and smooth-chinned, added, “Me too. I know how much this means to you.”

The younger
brother looked much like Walten, except for his hair; Wilhem had his mother’s
curls, unmanageable ones. Walt’s hair was straight like Kansten’s, though cut
so that it barely reached an inch in length. Kansten told the boys, “You could
visit sometime. You could see Podrar, or Yangerton. You know Dad’s from
Yangerton. One of the good things about you two apprenticing with him is he’d
let you off from the smithy for a few days…. ”

Walten
protested, “I’m not interested in Herezoth. I’m a sorcerer, Kansten. So is Wil.
You think Herezoth would be interested in us?”

His sister
could only admit, “It wouldn’t. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go.”

Wilhem shot,
“Would you, if you were a sorceress?”

Images of
Vane bleeding out from a stab wound flashed across Kansten’s mind. She mumbled,
“Maybe not,” and dropped the subject. Her brothers each flashed her a gracious
smile.

The Cason
family finished its farewells. Vane went for Kansten’s bags, and then, as Kora
tried to hide that she wiped a stray tear from her cheek, the duke grabbed
Kansten’s hand to transport. Her father told her, “Do us proud over there.”

Kansten
nodded, afraid her voice might crack if she tried to speak. “Ready?” Vane
asked. The aspiring architect responded with another bob of her head. They were
about to leave, courtesy of an incantation cast by the duke, when Kansten
recognized her uncle rushing up as she gazed through the open parlor window.
The moon shone brightly that night, bright enough to throw him in relief
against the grass.

“My brother
and his timing,” Kora muttered. She shook her head, but she looked pleased.
Kansten hadn’t expected Zacry to see her off, because she’d eaten dinner with
his family the night before. He waved to his niece and let himself in.

Zacry Porteg
looked to have lived some thirty years, though his actual age of thirty-six put
him closer to forty. He was neither barrel-chested nor slight of frame. His
hair was darker than his sister’s chestnut curls, and straighter, clipped close
to his head, while his beard was thicker than Walten’s but just as short. He
told Kansten:

“Glad I
caught you. I should tell you to watch out for Herezoth and all that, I
suppose. Honestly, it’s more likely the place needs a warning about you. Podrar
has no idea what’s about to befall it.”

Kansten had
always looked up to her uncle. Zacry Porteg was an academic, and Kansten had
read every essay to his name, though she struggled to comprehend the complexity
of his arguments about the politics of magic. She considered him a second
father, and found that his presence heartened her as she took him in a bear
hug.

“I wouldn’t
call Podrar ill-prepared,” she said. “You’ve spent quite a bit of time there
these last few years, Mr. Councilor. That’s enough to give Herezoth fair
warning.”

Kora
laughed, her wet eyes sparkling. “The girl’s got a point,” she told Zacry. She
was always saying Kansten was just like him, in all the bad ways. That she only
knew how to handle her daughter from having dealt with her brother his whole
life. Kora’s words made Zacry scowl, an exaggerated, juvenile reaction that
renewed the woman’s chuckle, and Kansten realized he had come more for his
sister than for her.

“Ready?”
Vane asked again, retaking Kansten’s hand and the bags he’d set down to greet
her uncle. Kansten said she was, and after some last goodbyes the duke
transported her to a deserted section of a beach, one she had never seen.

Shells, not
sand, littered the shore. They would have cut Kansten’s feet had the soles of
her sandals been thinner. Her heart raced as though she’d been running for a
good hour, and her breath came in pants. The sky was lighter than at home,
where all was dark; dusk looked only about to fall here.

“Is this
Herezoth?” she asked. Vane, his breath as labored as Kansten’s, said it was. He
dropped her bags.

“The eastern
coast. We crossed the ocean. Give it a minute, and we’ll go to Podrar.”

Herezoth.
The air on the coast was as salty as in Triflag Bay, but those shells…. Kansten
had never seen such shells, some the size and shape of her sisters’ dollhouse
bowls, others conchs, as large as her palm. Most were broken, and Kansten bent
to collect a large, curved piece.

After so
much longing, so much wondering about the place, Kansten was in Herezoth. A
minute ago she had been at home, surrounded by her family like every night of
her life until that point, and now, as Vane had said, she stood on the opposite
end of an ocean. Her pulse and the shell in her hand told her she had indeed
moved far. Her parents and siblings were a month’s journey away by boat.

Her
siblings…. She already missed them. Kansten’s sisters were too young to
contemplate politics, but Kansten’s heart ached to think her brothers would
spend their entire lives casting spells, and yet felt no obligation to cross
the sea as she’d just done. The boys were old enough to know Traigland was
enough for them. They routinely changed the subject when Kansten tried to
discuss Herezoth: when she asked what they imagined it might be like to live
there, or which of its cities they most wanted to see.

“Yangerton,
I guess,” Walten had once replied. “It’s the largest, isn’t it?” And that was
the extent of his response. Wilhem couldn’t understand why his sister had any
desire to go to Herezoth in the first place. He was jealous of Walt’s “beard,”
but not of Kansten’s travels.

Kansten
gazed down the shore; to the right she glimpsed a pier with fishing boats, and
beyond, the first scattered buildings of a town. Cottages of some kind.

“Is this
Carphead?” The Magic Council’s school was in Carphead. Kansten had heard much
about the village from Vane and her uncle.

“No,
Carphead’s farther south. Much farther. We’re near Trouton here, even with
Podrar.” Vane paused. “I imagine this is where your mother and uncle left from,
when they sailed for Traigland. At least, Zacry brought me here once. He could
only have done that if he’d been here before.”

“Is that how
transporting works?” Kansten asked. Then she paused, feeling stupid, and
explained, “My mother doesn’t speak much about magic.”

“I know,”
said Vane. “You can ask your uncle about spells, if you’re curious. Or me.”

“I think
about asking sometimes. All the time, really, but then I decide I don’t want to
know. What good would it do me? I can’t use incantations.”

Kansten’s
voice had turned bitter, and Vane asked, “How old were you when you discovered
you couldn’t do magic? Ten?”

“Something
like that.”

“I would
have given anything at that age not to be a sorcerer. To just be normal. I’d
never cast a single spell, and never thought I would. I determined not to learn
magic.”

“Really?”
said Kansten. “What changed your mind?”

“The king.
When I was a few years older, he suggested I reserve judgment until I met your
family. I refused to travel that far, but agreed to read the first of your
uncle’s essays. It seemed a small enough concession. That was enough to
convince me.”

“To learn
some spells?”

“At least to
meet Zacry: to speak with him, as the king urged. When I turned fourteen, I
went to Traigland. The king brought me himself.”

“You’ve
known Rexson Phinnean forever, haven’t you? What’s he like?”

“You can
find out for yourself, if you want to.”

“What?”

“He said
he’d like to meet you, when I told him you were coming to Oakdowns. Told me to
bring you by the Palace.” Vane’s obnoxious grin, one of the things Kansten
loved best about him because it usually meant a surprise, and a good one,
spread across his face. “I might have forgotten to tell you before now. And
that might have been on purpose. Your mother, I’m not sure how she’d feel about
this.”

Kansten’s
heart had just slowed to its normal pace, and now it set off once more, so
quickly that it pained her. “He said to bring me by the Palace?
Inside
the…?”

“Shall we
go? He’s free this evening.”

Kansten
hesitated to meet the king, though he was the closest thing to a father Vane
had known. He’d served as Kora’s fellow combatant in civil war, and his
banishing the sorceress had been not vindictive; it was a desperate attempt to
keep her alive when he’d reclaimed the throne and a mob had threatened her.
Kora’s daughter could only consider him a friend, but he was nonetheless, and
above all else, a royal. A monarch. Kansten had no idea why he would wish to
see her, but to go inside the Crystal Palace…. That building was so unique,
people spoke of it even in Traigland. People who had never set foot upon a
ship.

“Let’s go,”
she said, and grinned back at her host. Vane assured her the second transport
would not be strenuous like the first, and he was right. He said distance was
the factor, and Kansten took him at his word, because she found herself
breathing fine and itching to run ahead when they appeared in front of what
smelled like some kind of stables in the light of the setting sun. Apparently,
this was where Vane transported when visiting the Palace so as not to startle
the guardsmen. He set her bags against the building.

No soldiers
or stable hands stood in sight. Kansten asked Vane, “That mural…. Is there some
way we could walk around the building before we go in?”

They could
reach the wall in question through the courtyard. Vane claimed no one would
stop him, as the guardsmen knew him by sight. In the gardens and near the
colonnade this late in the day, the only people about would wear gray uniforms.

The white
stone of the Crystal Palace reared in front of Kansten. She approached from
behind, but even its back looked majestic, its stone meticulously labored. Vane
led her past the servants’ entrance (or so he said) to the courtyard and
colonnade at the building’s front. Kansten would have liked to examine the
quartz statues of the kings in depth, up close, but let them maintain their
peaceful watch beneath their arches, which had been built into the building to
house them. She scanned the Palace’s facade for its famous empty nook, and
found it toward the right.

On the other
side of a wrought iron fence, citygoers scampered past and paid Vane and the
girl no mind; neither the duke’s nor Kansten’s clothing would mark the pair as
something other than servants in street garments. Kansten realized only then
why August, Vane’s wife, had insisted on sending her patterns of the latest
style of dress in Podrar. Hems were shorter, waists higher, and sleeves a
different shape back in Traigland, but Kansten’s new dresses looked much like
those the women in the street wore. Though she preferred the Traiglandian style
objectively, she couldn’t deny Herezoth’s dresses suited her lanky frame
better.

Vane led the
way across the colonnade to a stone path that circled the building. Turning the
corner, Kora’s daughter stopped cold.

“Our mothers
did
that
?”

She meant
the question to be rhetorical, but Vane replied, “I suppose they did. I thought
it had been there much longer.”

The mural
depicting the king’s coat of arms had not faded in the twenty-five years since
its creation. Kansten was familiar with the image: a striking lion on one half,
crimson-backed, beside a lamb on a field of green beneath a cloudless sky. Even
so, she hadn’t realized the crest would cover the wall’s entire surface. The
lion’s nose was the size of her torso.

 
“Can I see it up close?”

“If you want
to, go ahead. You’ll ruin the effect, though.”

Kansten
stepped forward, and then again, as quickly as she could, though she hardly
moved at all. Such was her awe. Vane kept with her, and by the time they
approached the mural, two women were walking by on the opposite side of the
fence some ten feet away. They looked to be Kansten’s age. The taller wore
glasses and asked Vane, “You on a short break?”

The duke let
her misconception that he worked at the Palace stand. She went on, “Impressive,
isn’t it? Wanted to show my cousin. It’s her first time in the capital. You
know, I heard Kora Porteg of all people’s responsible for this.”

“The coat of
arms?” The spectacled girl’s shorter companion laughed. “I’d believe it. Guess
the sorceress is one of
those
.”

People still
knew Kora by her maiden name here, then. Kansten’s throat went dry. Vane placed
a warning hand on her shoulder, which increased her insult. What did he think,
that she was fool enough to tell two strangers at the Crystal Palace she was
Kora Porteg’s daughter? Kansten threw off Vane’s hold and demanded, “One of
what, exactly?”