Warrior (52 page)

“That’s what you get for listening to a demon.”

“I learned that the hard way,” Rorin laughed. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, I told the princess about my family and thought nothing more about it. I found out later that Princess Marla used her connections in Ruxton Tirstone’s spice network to contact them. She let them know I was fine and she asked if they needed anything. And then she helped them out.”

“Helped them out how?”

“Princess Marla bought my father a river barge and Luciena arranged a shipping contract with her trading company. He and my uncles have their own boat now. They trade between Talabar and the ports along the Glass River in Medalon. Mostly wool, I think, and the odd pagan fleeing the Defenders.

My father’s doing very well for himself these days. They helped my cousin, too. She has her own shop now. Selling spices she gets from Ruxton’s suppliers.”

“Have you been able to see your father?”

Rorin shook his head. “No, but we write. It’s easy enough to get a letter to him through the trading company. So you see, there’s no need to fear my loyalty to the Wolfblades, Wrayan. Even if I wasn’t related by marriage to them, my whole family owes them their livelihood. The debt I owe you for rescuing me can’t easily be repaid, either. Or what I owe Princess Shananara.”

Wrayan felt his heart clench with longing, the mere mention of her name still enough to make him want her, even after all this time. “You remember her, then?”

He nodded. “A little. It seems like a dream most of the time.”

“What’s it feel like?” Wrayan had always wanted to ask Rorin that. Although he’d been to Sanctuary, been taught to use his own power by the Harshini, Rorin had learned to use his power the way the Harshini were taught. Shananara had linked with his mind and deposited all the knowledge he needed in one fell swoop.

“It’s hard to describe. It’s just
there
. . . I think about it, and I
know
.” The young man shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I wouldn’t get too excited about it, Wrayan. I really don’t have that much power compared to the Harshini. Not even as much as you, I suspect. Did
you
ever link with Shananara?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But she wasn’t teaching me anything . . . well, that’s not entirely true, she taught me . . . we were . . .” He threw his hands up, a little embarrassed. “Oh, never mind.”

Rorin smiled and seemed to understand. Wrayan was never quite sure what else Shananara had planted in the young man’s mind, but he didn’t seem curious. Wrayan wished he could tell if Rorin was just being polite or he knew that Wrayan and Shananara had once—and only once—been lovers. There was no point in trying to read the young magician’s mind. The shield Shananara had placed on Rorin’s mind to prevent Alija learning his secret was immune to even Wrayan’s casual penetration.

“So, what happens now you’ve graduated?” he asked.

“Kalan’s decided the Sorcerers’ Collective should be more involved in charitable works,” Rorin explained. “Because it meant us leaving Greenharbour for a while, not surprisingly Alija went along with her noble suggestion and even agreed to fund it. We were in Nalinbar in northern Pentamor when the plague hit the city, helping to set up a refuge for ailing slaves whose owners can’t support them any longer.”

“This was
Kalan’s
idea?” Wrayan asked, a little sceptically.

“I think it was Princess Marla’s idea, actually.” Rorin smiled wryly. “You know these people, Wrayan. They don’t draw breath without thinking how it’s going to affect Damin’s accession to the throne.”

“What’s that got to do with Kalan?”

“Think about it. The next High Prince’s selfless little sister getting her hands dirty among the poor and hopeless—how many votes is that going to be worth in the Convocation of the Warlords some day?”

“I see you’ve managed to maintain a healthy dose of cynicism about it all,” Wrayan remarked.

“It’s a survival tactic,” Rorin laughed. “I’d go crazy otherwise.”

“I see. So what about you and Kalan?”

“What about me and Kalan?” the young sorcerer asked with a puzzled look.

“Are you two . . . ?”

Rorin laughed aloud at Wrayan’s unsubtle suggestion. “No. Why?”

“Starros thought you might be.”

“Then Starros doesn’t know Kalan as well as he thinks. Or me. Anyway, even if she weren’t my best friend, I still wouldn’t go there. I have no intention of being one of young Lady Hawksword’s castoff lovers, thank you, and believe me, there’s a growing list.”

Wrayan shook his head, uncomfortable with the very idea. “Don’t tell me that. Not about Kalan.

She’s still a little girl in my mind.”

“Take a
really
close look when she gets here, Wrayan,” Rorin said, as voices in the hall told Wrayan it wouldn’t be long before he had the opportunity to do as the young man suggested. “She’s not a little girl any longer.”

Wrayan wasn’t pleased at all with Rorin’s attitude. “Shouldn’t you be protecting her from that sort of thing?”

“I promised to keep her safe from any magical harm, Wrayan. I can’t do much about who she takes to her bed.”

No sooner had he finished talking than the rest of the family burst into the dining room. Damin was in the lead and had obviously come straight from the training yard. He was wearing muddy trousers, but his shirt was clean, and he was sporting a fresh cut over his left eye and a bruise on his chin that looked quite painful. His hair was damp but he looked fit and healthy and in fine spirits. There was a young woman with him, laughing over something the prince had said, whom Wrayan mistook for Leila initially. She was slender and fair, dressed in a pale blue robe with dark blue sleeves. But it wasn’t Leila.

This young woman only came up to Damin’s shoulder . . .

“Kalan?”

As Leila and Starros followed them into the dining room, the young woman turned and looked at him, her face lighting up when she realised who he was.

“Wrayan!” she screeched in a most unladylike fashion. She pushed past her brother and ran around the table. Wrayan rose to greet her and Kalan threw herself at him, almost knocking him off balance, hugging him so tightly he could barely breathe.

Damin watched the entire spectacle with a shake of his head. “Don’t hold back on us now, Kalan. Tell us how you
really
feel.”

“Shut up, you fool!” Kalan ordered her brother, without taking her eyes off Wrayan. She released her death grip on him and leaned back in his arms, her eyes alight with pleasure at the sight of him. “You look exactly the same, Wrayan. I swear you haven’t aged a day since the first time we met. Is that because you’re part Harshini?”

“Should you be saying that out loud?” Leila gasped, glancing at the slaves.

“Everybody here knows the truth, Leila,” Kalan shrugged, and then she turned her beaming smile on Wrayan again. “You’ll stay for a while, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Then let’s have some breakfast. Or is it lunchtime already? I’m starving.”

“Who won the fight?” he asked as he resumed his seat, Kalan taking the chair on his left.

“Damin, of course,” Leila informed him, as Starros held her chair out for her. “Naturally, Almodavar claims he let him win.”

“Well, by the look of Damin, the old man gave a good account of himself.”

Damin grinned as he took his seat and the slaves began to pile his plate with food. “He says that to save face. Almodavar hasn’t been able to get the better of me for years. I only let him land the odd blow now and then to make him feel better. I’ll give him one thing, though,” he added, fingering his bruised jaw gingerly. “The old bastard can hit hard.” The prince glanced at Starros, his smile fading as he spied the young man heading for the door. “Where are you going? Aren’t you joining us?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t be an idiot! You’ve been up since before dawn. Come and eat something.”

Starros bowed and shook his head. “Assistant chief stewards don’t eat with the family, your highness, you should know that.”

“You are
part
of this family, Starros,” Damin replied, suddenly serious.

Starros smiled wistfully. “Not any more. So, if you will excuse me . . . ?” He bowed again and walked briskly from the room, leaving them watching after him in an uncomfortable silence.

Wrayan glanced at the young prince curiously, wondering why Damin hadn’t realised how difficult it must for a bastard fosterling to find a place in a world so clearly divided by birthright and bloodlines. Then again, Damin being Damin, maybe he hadn’t thought about it at all. Wrayan glanced around the table at the others. Rorin, protected from his common-born status by his black sorcerer’s robes, seemed unsurprised that Starros had departed, while Kalan looked down at her plate uncomfortably.

It was Leila, Wrayan noted, who inexplicably jumped to her feet and fled the room, leaving her cousins staring after her in confusion.

“What’s wrong with her?” Kalan asked.

“Nothing,” Damin replied shortly.

“But why—?”

“Stay out of it, Kalan.”

He knows
, Wrayan thought in surprise, watching the prince turn his attention to his meal, ignoring the puzzled look his sister gave him.
He knows about Leila and Starros. How the hell did he find
out so quickly? Did Leila tell him? Did Starros?

It didn’t really matter, Wrayan supposed. If Damin Wolfblade knew about the affair, then the damage was already done.

The question now is
, the thief mused silently, reaching for his teacup as he surreptitiously studied Damin out of the corner of his eye,
what’s he going to do about it?

Wrayan got no chance to worry about it further, however, because at that moment Orleon opened the dining room doors rather dramatically to announce that Lady Lionsclaw of Sunrise Province, fleeing reports of the plague as far north as Izcomdar, had arrived unexpectedly, along with her four young children, and was seeking sanctuary in Krakandar.

It was strange, Alija Eaglespike decided, how quickly a potential disaster could turn into an advantage. Take this unfortunate plague, for instance. To the casual observer, it was a human disaster on an unprecedented scale. And yet, even though Alija’s intended target had escaped infection, there was a bright side.

Her husband, Barnardo Eaglespike, had been one of the first to fall victim to it.

Being a widow suited Alija. With rank of her own as High Arrion of the Sorcerers’ Collective, unlike Marla she had no need to take another husband to protect her interests. And the gods had been kind, too, by waiting until her eldest son came of age before they took his father away. The transition of power had been seamless after Barnardo died. Although the Convocation had yet to confirm Cyrus as his father’s heir because of the plague, it was just a formality. In the meantime, Cyrus was safe back in Dregian Castle with his wife and daughter, ruling his province with skill and wisdom, proving to everyone who mattered that when it came to the question of the next High Prince, there was really only one viable contender.

Fortunately, nobody was sure where the plague that was ravaging Hythria had originated. She felt no guilt about any part she might have played in its spread. The Denikan sailor blamed for starting the plague was roaming the streets of Greenharbour for days before Tarkyn found him. All Alija had done was give the poor man directions.

Still, it was fortunate the population had a focus for their anger.
There’s always the need to
blame someone. And always a need to exact revenge, even when it really wasn’t anybody’s fault
.

If anything, the more helpless the victims felt, the more they hungered for vengeance, as if in the act of seeking retribution, they would somehow regain control over their lives.

That was what had happened here in Greenharbour as soon as the full realisation of the scope of the deadly disaster had become clear. The people had driven the few Denikans brave enough to venture from their homeland into the streets, as if spilling their blood might wash away the disease.

Some were killed outright, others driven through the city by angry mobs until they fell—either from exhaustion or fear—and were beaten to death, their crime nothing more sinister than the colour of their skin and being born somewhere other than Hythria. Aware that Marla had been making noises prior to the plague about making some sort of treaty with the Denikans, Alija had waited until most of them were dead before she ordered the Sorcerers’ Collective Guard to put down the riot. Of course, by then it was too late to save anyone. By the time the Collective soldiers had arrived, there wasn’t a Denikan left alive in the city and any hopes Marla had for a peaceful treaty with the distant southern continent lay in ruins.

But the disease remained, and death was everywhere. Alija had heard of whole families taken by the sickness; of mothers abandoning their children. Tales of healers barricading themselves in their own houses, for fear of catching the disease they had no way of treating. The few in the Sorcerers’

Collective who hadn’t escaped back to their own provinces were the only ones left to care for the sick—

because Alija insisted on it. But even that small and ultimately futile effort had stopped now. One too many of her people had caught the disease themselves and the few remaining members of the Sorcerers’ Collective still resident in the city were holed up in the Sorcerers’ Palace, refusing to go out into the streets at all. The palaces and townhouses of the rich stood deserted, too, as their occupants either fled the city or were stricken by the disease.

The sickness struck with terrible speed. It killed so swiftly there was a cynical saying around the city:
Breakfast with your descendants—dinner with your ancestors
. And it was only going to get worse before the plague ran its course. It was still winter—such that it was in the warm, muggy climes of Greenharbour. When the weather warmed up, it was going to be much harder to control.

The plague had no respect for rank or birthright. Bodies were left in empty houses, rich and poor, because there was no one willing to give them a decent burial. At a meeting to discuss the crisis last week, Marla had talked of having the bodies loaded onto ships and setting them afire in the harbour, a sacrilege that Alija would have thought incomprehensible only a few weeks ago.