Warrior (15 page)

“Who? Xanda Taranger?” Alija glanced over her shoulder with a smile. “Not a bad bit of advice, really. He’s a second son with few prospects of his own. She made no mention, then, of who she has in mind?”

“She said we’d discuss it after I’d met Damin.”

The High Arrion forgot about the murals and turned to stare at her. “She’s taking you to meet her son?”

Luciena nodded, wondering at Lady Alija’s sudden interest. She was far more interested in that news, in fact, than the idea Luciena’s cousin might be magically gifted. “We’re leaving for Krakandar tomorrow morning.” She waved her arm at the disorganised chaos lying around the room. “Hence the packing.”

“That’s quite a boon, Luciena,” Alija remarked with a raised brow. “Princess Marla is very protective of her children. She doesn’t usually allow strangers close to them. She fears assassins the way others fear spiders. It has something to do with a foiled attempt on Damin’s life when he was a small child, I think.”

“She had little choice in my case,” Luciena informed the High Arrion. “I have no intention of swearing allegiance to the Wolfblades without some idea of what I’m getting myself into.”

“Marla wants you to swear allegiance to her
son
?” The High Arrion’s eyes sparkled in anticipation of her answer.

“She wants me to swear allegiance to her House. She said swearing allegiance to her son before he became High Prince would be considered treason.”

“And she’d be right,” Alija agreed.

“Is that why you really came here, my lady?” Luciena asked, a little worried. “To see if I was plotting something against the High Prince?”

Alija laughed. “My dear, at any given time, half the damned country is plotting something against the High Prince. No. I came here because I thought you’d requested an audience to seek my advice about Marla’s offer.” Lady Alija took a step closer and smiled, reaching out to take both Luciena’s hands in hers. “But you seem to have made up your mind. There’s just one little favour I’d like you to do for me, my dear. When you get to Krakandar.”

Luciena nodded silently, suddenly filled with a warm sense of well-being. Still holding her hands, Lady Alija closed her eyes. The warm feeling grew and Luciena began to feel so hot she feared she might faint. Strange thoughts that seemed to belong to someone else flitted through her mind. Her mother called out to her. She saw her father sailing out of the harbour on one of his ships, heading for some unknown destination. She saw Princess Marla beckoning her towards an abyss so black it ate all the light around it, sucking the warmth from the air and life from anything foolish enough to venture too close to its edge. The thoughts swirled through her head, making her dizzy, nauseous . . .

And then the strange feelings faded away and Luciena discovered she was lying on the floor of her bedroom, Aleesha kneeling over her with concern, calling out her name as if she’d been unconscious. The High Arrion was gone, as if she’d never been there at all, and a phrase was repeating itself, over and over, in Luciena’s mind.

Welcome to the family
, it said.
Welcome to the family . . . welcome to the family
. . .

The town of Acarnipoor in central Fardohnya boasted a population of nearly five thousand people. It was a sprawling settlement that wound along the banks of the Serpentine River, the village divided in two by the narrow, fast-flowing waterway. Several footbridges, and a more substantial bridge constructed of stone, joined the two sides of the town. As evening approached and the sunset tinted the white walls of the stuccoed houses pink, Rory climbed down from the back of the wagon where he’d been hiding since Vanipoor and looked up at the sky, hoping it wasn’t going to rain.

The slowly moving wagon trundled over the stone bridge linking the two sides of the town, the driver unaware his passenger had disembarked. For that matter, the driver probably didn’t even realise he’d had a passenger. Stretching his cramped limbs, Rory looked around with relief. Acarnipoor seemed large enough that he could mingle with the townsfolk for a time and not be noticed. He’d learned the hard way, these past few weeks, that small towns easily remembered a fair-haired boy who spoke Fardohnyan like a native but looked like a Hythrun. Particularly since there seemed to be notices nailed to just about every flat surface in Fardohnya these days, offering a reward for the boy rumoured to be a Hythrun spy. The boy rumoured to be a sorcerer. The boy wanted for murder.

Rory might have been safe, nobody might ever have connected him with the man on Victory Parade who got hit by an anvil, had it not been for an incident that happened a few days after he’d followed his cousin. Until then, despite an intensive investigation that disrupted the trade on Restinghouse Street for days, nobody thought anything of the fair-haired boy seen walking in the same direction as the victim and the whore he’d singled out for a bit of fun only minutes before his body was discovered with a dent in his skull matching the anvil on the ground beside him.

The problem started when somebody pointed the finger at Patria as the whore who’d accompanied the dead man into the lane. Early one morning, several days after the incident with the anvil, the family was woken by a loud pounding on the door to their small house. Grandpa Warak had stumbled over the sleeping bodies of Rory and his brothers and opened the door just as Rory sat up, rubbing his eyes and wondering what all the racket was about. The room was suddenly filled with soldiers, but they weren’t the City Watch. These men wore the white and silver livery of King Hablet’s Palace Guard.

“Arrest the Hythrun!” the officer ordered, as they tackled the old man to the ground. “And find the girl!”

Other than to shove them out of the way, the soldiers ignored Rory and his brothers. His grandfather, however, was pushed down to the dirt floor of the hovel, a soldier’s foot on his face, as his arms were twisted savagely behind him and bound with a piece of rope. A few moments later, he heard Patria scream as the soldiers dragged her from the lean-to out back and into the house.

Rory’s head began to pound as the soldiers manhandled Patria into the room. It was his responsibility to do something, he knew. Even if he wasn’t the cause of all this trouble, his father, Drendik, and his uncles, Abel and Gazil, had got a rare day’s work last night on a lobster boat and had left before dawn to help clear the traps located on the other side of the harbour. With his grandfather under the boot heel of a Palace Guardsman—quite literally—the only one left to protect Patria and his brothers was Rory.

Scrambling to his feet, Rory hurriedly ordered his ten-year-old brother, Sinjay, to take the little ones and run to Ma Baker’s house farther down the street. The soldiers weren’t paying them any attention. If anything, they were just getting underfoot. Nobody stopped the younger children fleeing the house. They were too interested in Patria. And Rory’s grandfather.

“So! A whore and her Hythrun lover, eh?” the soldier standing in front of Patria sneered, as two other soldiers struggled to hold on to her. Patria wasn’t going anywhere without a fight.

“He’s my grandfather, you idiot!” she snapped, and then spat at him to emphasise her point. A veteran of many spitting contests with her cousins, Patria’s aim was impressive and a gob of spittle slid down the soldier’s cheek. He wiped it away angrily and then backhanded Patria across the face for her trouble.

“Leave her alone!” Rory cried, aware how useless it was to rail against these men, but feeling he must. His temples were throbbing, his eyes watering with the pain building up in his head. “She didn’t do anything!”

“Not what we’ve been told,” the Guardsman with his boot on Warak Mariner’s face replied.

“Seems your little friend here was the last one to see Horrak alive. Just before someone dropped an anvil on his head.”

“Like I could even
lift
an anvil!” Patria scoffed, still struggling against the men who held her.

“
Nobody
could lift that anvil,” the soldier holding down Rory’s grandfather agreed. “No normal man, at any rate.”

“We figured it had to have been moved by magic,” the officer Patria had spat on explained.

“And then what d’ya know? We find out poor old Horrak’s last moments in this world were spent humping some cheap little whore who just happens to share her home with an old Hythrun posing as a fisherman. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”

The soldier standing over Warak bent down and dragged the old man to his feet. “We all know the Sorcerers’ Collective will do anything to get their filthy Hythrun tentacles back into Fardohnya.”

Patria looked at the Guardsmen in shock. “You think my
grandfather
is a spy for the Sorcerers’

Collective? You’re mad!”

“Don’t worry, Patria,” her grandfather advised with a resigned sigh. “I knew they’d find me eventually. I couldn’t keep hiding forever.” He turned to the officers. “You might as well let the girl go.

She knows nothing. It’s all my doing.”

Rory felt as if his head was going to rupture.

Their minds had been made up before they’d even burst through the door, so the soldiers needed no further convincing that Warak Mariner was the sorcerer they’d been looking for. But they weren’t going to let Patria go quite so easily. As they dragged his cousin towards the door, Rory cried out.

He’d only meant to object, he didn’t even try to do anything else, but with his anguished cry, his headache suddenly vanished and things started flying around the room. The stools by the fireplace, the pot hanging over the coals, blankets, cutlery—anything in the room that wasn’t nailed down was suddenly a missile. Rory had no control over his gift and no chance of directing the missiles. He just stood there as the maelstrom exploded around him and everyone ducked for cover.

It was obvious, even to the soldiers, who was responsible for the attack. Warak Mariner—the man they believed a sorcerer—was cowering on the floor, just like everyone else. Rory stood untouched in the middle of the chaos, his eyes wide and completely black, their whites consumed by the power he was inadvertently channelling. It lasted only a few moments, but it was enough. As soon as they could get clear, the soldiers fled the house.

And then it stopped, as suddenly as it had started.

Rory stared in confusion at what was left of his home. Patria and his grandfather slowly climbed to their feet, gazing at him warily.

“Rorin, lad?”

He looked at his grandfather blankly.

“Let it go, lad.”

Rory wasn’t sure what his grandfather meant, but the feeling of invincibility he’d been imbued with was rapidly fading. He looked around the room, shaking his head. “Did I do this?”

Warak nodded and gently took his grandson’s shoulder, studying him closely. “Aye, lad. You did.”

“Well, at least it got rid of the soldiers,” Patria said with a shrug. She didn’t seem all that surprised. But then, she’d seen an anvil flying through a wall, so maybe a few household objects didn’t impress her.

“It’s a temporary respite,” their grandfather warned. “They’ll be back, and in greater numbers, as soon as they can gather reinforcements.”

“I’m sorry, Grandpa.”

“It’s not your fault, Rorin. You can’t help what you are.”

“What are we going to do?” Patria asked.

“Get your cousin out of the city,” Warak replied. “Right now. Before they think to seal it.”

“They wouldn’t seal the city just to stop Rory,” Patria began sceptically. And then she stopped and looked around at the devastation surrounding them. “On second thoughts . . .”

“I’ll take him to the city gate,” the old man said. “You find the rest of your cousins and make your way to over Widow Marlin’s place. She’ll hide you all until I get back.”

Rory stared at his grandfather. “But I can’t leave Talabar! What about Pa?”

“I’ll explain it to your father when I get back. Right now, you have to get out of the city, Rorin.”

“But where will I go?”

“Hythria,” the old man replied heavily. “The only safe place for you now, my lad, is Hythria.”

That had been nearly a month ago. By living on his wits and honouring the God of Thieves every chance he got, Rory had been able to stay out of the clutches of the soldiers, but it was getting harder by the day. At first, he’d kept ahead of the news that he was a wanted man, but now those damn posters were cropping up everywhere. The likeness was a poor one, but the description was accurate and his blond hair rare enough to cause comment. He was still a couple of hundred miles from Westbrook and the safety of the Hythrun border, but even then he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He had nothing more than the name of a distant cousin in Greenharbour, who might or might not be willing to aid him. He wasn’t hopeful she would. His grandfather’s letter asking for help had been ignored, or her answer had arrived after Rory left the city. There was nothing to indicate this Luciena—assuming he could find her—would be willing to lift a finger to help him.

Rory didn’t have much choice, however, and thinking about it too much gave him a headache, which frightened him, because he was starting to associate those headaches with his uncontrollable magical talent. The last thing Rory needed now was to start hurling things around again. If he was going to do that, he might as well just go and sit in the town square with a target painted on his chest and wait for them to come for him.

With a sigh, Rory shouldered his pack and headed across the bridge as darkness closed in over the Jalanar Plains. If he didn’t think about it, he wouldn’t miss home too much. If he kept focused on the need to find a way to Westbrook, he could pretend he didn’t miss his father, or his brothers, or his grandfather, or even Patria. And if he tried hard enough, sometimes he could even pretend he wasn’t frightened.

As he reached the end of the bridge, Rory stopped suddenly. There was a poster stuck to the tall square pylon there.
Wanted for murder
, it proclaimed in large black letters that had smudged and run down the page in a recent rainstorm. Much of the rest of the poster was faded and unreadable, except for the word
sorcerer
.