Warrior (79 page)

“By making it irrelevant.”

“I don’t follow you.”

He shrugged. “We’ll just change the age of majority to twenty-five.”

Wrayan stared at him in shock. “Just like
that
. . . change the age of majority?”

“Works for me.”

Wrayan was silent for a moment as he thought about what it would mean to the whole nation if Marla was able to get Lernen to make such a radical change in the structure of Hythrun society. He shook his head, flabbergasted by the very notion. “It would throw the whole country into turmoil.”

“Only for a little while. And in case you haven’t noticed, Hythria’s already in a fair bit of turmoil now. A little more will hardly be noticed in the general scheme of things.”

“But think of what it means . . . there are provinces—”

“Currently under the control of the Sorcerers’ Collective—like Izcomdar and Pentamor—with living heirs capable of taking charge, that will suddenly find themselves with a Warlord again,” Damin finished for him with a smug little grin.

“And no longer under Alija’s control. You really are a lot smarter than you look, Damin.”

“Well, I’m quite happy for Marla to get the credit for this one. I just want the control such a change will give me over our troops. If we’re going to face Hablet across a battlefield, we can’t do it with one hand tied behind our backs.” Damin glanced up through the canopy of trees and frowned. “It’s getting late. We should be getting back, I suppose.”

Without waiting for a reply, Damin headed along the path back towards the gate that led up to the palace. Wrayan watched the young prince leave, a little dumbstruck. He’d always suspected Damin was brighter than he pretended, but the proof far exceeded his expectations. Even Marla would have been hard-pressed to come up with such a drastic and surprisingly workable solution.

And then another thought occurred to Wrayan, which turned his faint smile into a deep frown.

“Damin!” he called.

The prince stopped and turned to look at him. “Yes?”

“I don’t suppose it escaped your notice that if Marla manages to convince Lernen to lower the age of majority, in a few months you’ll be able to inherit Krakandar.”

“No, it didn’t escape my notice.”

“Don’t you think Mahkas might have something to say about that?”

“Go pay him a visit, Wrayan,” Damin suggested coldly. “I think you’ll find Mahkas Damaran is going to have a bit of trouble saying anything to anybody from now on.”

Without waiting for Wrayan to answer, the young prince turned and continued to walk back along the path towards the palace.

It was only then that Wrayan understood what Damin meant when he spoke of his previously unsuspected capacity for being a callous bastard.

If Alija Eaglespike thought the information she had accidentally gleaned from Ruxton Tirstone’s dying mind was shocking, what she learned from Tarkyn Lye’s meeting with the dwarf left her breathless.

Tarkyn brought her the information supplied by Elezaar several hours after she had dispatched him to Venira’s Emporium to collect Crysander, and a week later she was still trying to digest it all.

Standing on the balcony of her bedroom as the sun set in the west, painting the white city pink and gold, Alija smiled at the irony.

The Fool really was a fool, after all.

A slight breeze blew in off the harbour, cooling the perspiration on her skin and making her shiver. She pulled her robe a little closer and glanced across at the bed where her latest lover lay sprawled across the covers, his breathing deep and even as he slept. Younger than Alija by a good ten years, his name was Galon Miar. He was a recent widower, his wife having fallen victim to the plague in the first wave some months ago. He was a commoner, too—a quaint little habit Alija had picked up from Marla. But he was a powerful man in his own right, despite his common birth. On his right hand, he wore a gold ring worked in the shape of a raven. The ring of the Assassins’ Guild.

His advantage to Alija—besides the obvious sexual attraction of a handsome and athletic younger man—was the rumour rife in Greenharbour that Galon Miar would be the next Raven. With the head of the Assassins’ Guild in her bed—quite literally—Alija didn’t anticipate much resistance to anything she wanted to do, once her lover took over the guild.

It warmed her soul, simply thinking of the possibilities.

She was under no illusions about Galon. There was no love involved in this affair. Alija was almost fifty and it was dye and a lavish and expensive daily routine of cosmetics that kept the more obvious signs of ageing at bay. She didn’t kid herself that Galon had taken her as a lover because he desired Alija more than he might a younger woman. He found her attractive (she’d been in his mind, so she knew that for certain), but what really attracted him wasn’t her body, it was her power. He was in her bed because he was just as determined to have the Sorcerers’ Collective in his pocket when he ruled his guild as she was to have him in hers.

And now . . . well, with what she now knew about the goings-on in the Wolfblade household, there was nothing standing in her way.

It was luck, or perhaps divine intervention, that had finally provided Alija with the edge she needed to bring the Wolfblades down. She had been at Venira’s, looking for house slaves when she spied the old slave named Crysander. Normally, the High Arrion wouldn’t have gone to anywhere as exorbitant as Venira’s for simple house slaves, but with the markets closed, and her own staff depleted, she had no choice. Besides, with his slaves protected and isolated from the general population, they were much less likely to have been exposed to the plague.

Venira really had been planning to toss the slave onto the streets and let him starve when Alija first saw him. It was a comment the slaver made in passing about Crysander being a waste of food that made Alija stop and take a second look.

“What did you call him?”

“Crysander,” Venira had told her with a shrug.

“I had a
court’esa
once,” she said. “His name was Crysander, too.”

“I remember him,” Venira had replied, with the distant look of a man reminiscing about a large amount of money. “He was the Fool’s brother, wasn’t he? Didn’t he die in that awful massacre at Ronan Dell’s palace?”

Alija’s eyes narrowed. “I paid you rather a lot of money, Venira, to make certain our transactions that day remained confidential.”

The fat man had smiled obsequiously. “Trust me, my lady. Your coin purchased my total amnesia on the subject.”

“Show him to me,” she ordered, curious to see if this Crysander was anything like the slender, handsome young man she remembered. As it turned out, he wasn’t. Wizened and old, bent almost double by a lifetime of cruel physical labour, the slave was a walking human ruin.

Then Alija noticed the scar, thinking it strange that he would bear such a mark in almost exactly the same place her Crysander was stabbed. And he
had
been stabbed. She’d made certain of that; demanding they bring the
court’esa
’s body back to her. Alija wanted proof the slave was silenced, and nothing short of his dead body lying at her feet would have satisfied her.

“How did you get that mark on your belly?” she asked the old slave curiously.

“A plough blade, my lady,” the slave replied in his hoarse, rasping voice. “I slipped and fell on it when I was a boy.”

“You’re lucky to have survived,” she remarked.

“So they tell me, my lady,” the slave replied.

“Ironic, don’t you think,” Venira chortled beside her, his multiple chins wobbling with mirth.

“Your Crysander would be almost this age by now, too, had he survived.”

Alija had thought no more about the man, until she’d woken up from the stupor brought on from being caught in Ruxton’s dying mind and realised that she now possessed the information to make this poor imitation of Crysander the
court’esa
into a reasonable facsimile of the real thing.

Among the recollections she discovered in Ruxton Tirstone’s thoughts were images of him and Marla’s dwarf sitting in a dimly lit kitchen late at night (she supposed it was the kitchens at Marla’s townhouse). Apparently, the two men shared ale quite often. Ruxton had been a common man, after all, and for all his outward veneer of civilisation, there were some things from his youth he’d still enjoyed, and a good dark ale was among them. The memory was so sharp, Alija actually found herself craving a tankard on occasion.

But more importantly, among the memories of those quiet ales shared in the small hours of the night were the stories the two men swapped, mostly about their younger days, when neither of them imagined they would one day find themselves living under the roof of the High Prince’s sister, either as her husband or her slave. The memories in themselves were insignificant—just the idle ramblings of a couple of drunken fools—but they recalled intimate, tiny details of both men’s lives that Alija would never have been able to discover on her own, even if she’d had an army of investigators searching for clues.

It had been a simple matter, really, to join her mind to the old slave’s and fill it with those stolen memories. It was a risk, of course, but the chances were good Elezaar would require proof this slave was his brother. In his place, Alija would have demanded an answer to a question only the two of them might know. Perhaps, she reasoned, lost somewhere in those quiet, late-night conversations with Ruxton Tirstone, was the answer to whatever question the dwarf decided to pose.

It cost a great deal to purchase Venira’s assistance—the Fool would never deal with Tarkyn directly, Alija knew. Elezaar had to be convinced this offer came from someone unconnected with the High Arrion, in the beginning at least.

Alija’s gamble had paid off. Crysander had answered the vital question correctly. Elezaar had seen the scar—which also meant he must have witnessed his brother dying, which was another problem to be dealt with later—and to save his long-lost brother from unspeakable torture, the Fool had told Tarkyn everything he wanted to know.

Although she didn’t doubt Tarkyn’s ability to intimidate the dwarf, she was astonished at how easily he had capitulated. Once he began, it was as if a dam had burst inside him and the information couldn’t spill out fast enough.

All the vague plans and plots Alija had only glimpsed during her contact with Ruxton suddenly snapped into sharp focus. Wrayan Lightfinger was alive and well and running the Thieves’ Guild in Krakandar, Elezaar confirmed. The magical shields he had placed on the minds of Marla and her family were the result of the teaching he received from the Harshini themselves, because, according to the Fool, that was where Wrayan had disappeared to after their battle in the temple. He had been rescued, so the Fool claimed, by none other than Brakandaran the Halfbreed, who had taken him back to Sanctuary to be healed. There he had learned how to wield his power with a finesse Alija would have given her soul to achieve.

Alija might have scoffed at the tale, except she’d met Brakandaran and felt his power. She didn’t doubt for a moment that every word of it was true.

She learned that her coercion hadn’t failed, either. Luciena really
had
tried to kill Damin Wolfblade when he was just a boy. The plot remained undiscovered until the attack. Marla had ordered Wrayan to remove all traces of Alija’s interference, shielded the girl’s mind, and then chosen to let the incident go unremarked rather than tip anyone off to the fact that Marla was wise to Alija’s plan.

Even more disturbing was the news that Rorin Mariner was not just Luciena’s Fardohnyan cousin, but, like Wrayan, a genuinely gifted sorcerer and a human descendant of the magical lost race of the Harshini. He’d been taught to use his power in a Harshini mind meld—the same way they taught their own children—so the dwarf informed them, which accounted for why Alija had never suspected his ability. His skill made Wrayan look clumsy, which terrified Alija, because for twenty years she’d never detected a single mind shield Wrayan had set, and if she couldn’t detect his handiwork, how was she ever going to protect herself from him?

And then, just when she had thought she couldn’t be surprised, the Fool had shocked them all by announcing that Marla had known Alija was having an affair with Nash Hawksword twenty years ago, and that she suspected the High Arrion of being involved in the first of many attempts on her son’s life.

The list seemed endless. Every word of the dwarf’s testimony drove home, with brutal force, how dangerous Marla Wolfblade really was.

Alija cursed her own arrogance for not having seen it sooner.

And she cursed Tarkyn Lye for being a sentimental fool.

After several hours of startling revelations, Elezaar had begged a moment alone with his brother. Tarkyn, thinking a chance for further bonding would simply reinforce the power they had over the dwarf, had ordered Bekan from the alcove and taken the opportunity to relieve himself while the brothers had a moment of privacy. He wasn’t gone more than a few minutes, he promised Alija, but when he came back, the dwarf was gone and Crysander lay back against the cushions with his neck at a very strange angle.

They still hadn’t found him a week later. He wasn’t back at Marla’s townhouse. He was nowhere to be found. And that was a problem, because she knew for certain, now, that Elezaar the Fool could implicate the House of Eaglespike in the murder of Ronan Dell. Even this long after the fact, that one incident alone was enough to bring the Eaglespikes down.

She had to find the dwarf and she had to kill him.

Galon stirred on the bed. Alija looked over at him and smiled.
It shouldn’t be too difficult
, she thought, pushing off the balcony and heading back towards the bed,
for a man of Galon’s skill and
connections to find one miserable dwarf and dispose of him for me
.

After all, what was the point of having a tame assassin if you didn’t let him off the leash every now and then?

Damin took the time to bathe and change before he entered the dining room to meet with the rest of the family, mostly because he didn’t want to upset his aunt. He could imagine her reaction if she happened to bump into him walking the halls of Krakandar Palace still drenched in Leila’s blood. It gave Wrayan time, too, to fetch Kalan and Rorin from the safe house where they were watching over Starros.