Well of Sorrows (38 page)

Colin’s attention shifted to the town. Larger than Portstown— larger even than Colin’s memories of Trent back in Andover— Corsair stretched out across both sides of the inlet. Warehouses, taverns, and shops crowded the docks on the northern side, a haphazard mass of roads, alleys, and buildings that sloped upward from the water to the ridge of land stretching across the horizon, leading out to the promontory where the palace and Needle stood. Like Portstown, the buildings were mostly wooden, although nearly all of the churches and what Colin assumed were mercantiles were stone. The artchitecture was again utilitarian, plain and simple, unlike the varied and more artistic structures he remembered from Trent. The distinction between the rebellious Provinces and their original homeland in Andover was clear. The streets were thronged with people, horses, carts, and wagons, the greatest activity on the docks, the raucous sounds and smells of the wharf reminding him of Trent. The city had spilled over to the southern part of the inlet as well, the buildings newer and only trailing halfway up the rocky shore.

Turning back, Colin heard Aeren say in Andovan, “Tell them, Dharel.”

Dharel sent Aeren a questioning look, looking askance at Colin. He began to speak in Alvritshai, but Aeren cut him off, saying, “Consider him Rhyssal-aein.”

Colin frowned as he felt a sudden shift in all of the Alvritshai present, Eraeth included. Before, on the ship and the dock, they’d treated him as if he were an extra set of baggage, including the guards. Now, he could feel their attention on him. The Phalanx had become
aware
of him, not as something to be stepped over or around but as a physical presence.

Dharel frowned but drew himself upright. “Ten days ago, a group of ships from Andover arrived, four ships in all, only three of them traders. The fourth carried representatives from the Andovan Court. Four days after they arrived, during a meeting with the King, Stephan had them all escorted out of the audience chambers by the Legion. They were confined to their rooms within the Needle under constant watch after that. Word reached the Andovan ships docked at the wharf the next day, and a riot broke out in the shipyards that night, begun by a confrontation between members of the Legion and the Andovan Armory in one of the taverns. Tensions escalated. The Armory warned all the Andovan citizens in the port to be ready to leave the city on short notice. Another riot broke out on the docks as everyone from across the Arduon Ocean tried to find passage on any available ship headed in that direction. The Armory blockaded the docks where the traders were berthed, and the Legion was called in to quell the riot. Somehow, in the confusion, fighting broke out between the Armory and Legion. Thirty people were killed, and each side is blaming the other.”

“I don’t see any ships flying Andovan colors in the harbor,” Eraeth said.

Dharel nodded grimly. “After the second riot, the King went to speak to the Andovan representatives, but he came out of their chambers in a rage and ordered the Legion to escort them down to their ships. He then gave anyone from Andover one day to find passage back to Andover or face arrest.”

“On what charge?”

“Spying. Most of the Andovan ships at port—including the envoy from the Court—left at the next tide, holds packed with passengers. The next day, King Stephan had any remaining Andovan ships at the docks boarded, the crews arrested, and everything in their holds confiscated.” Dharel hesitated, then added, “All the captains of the ships were hung, their ships taken into the middle of the inlet and burned.”

A few of the Alvritshai nodded in respect. Colin remembered Eraeth’s demand that they kill the men he’d caught in the street and the obvious Alvritshai disdain for the human concept of a judge. He didn’t know what all of the factors at play here were, but he shuddered at the image of the gallows that appeared in his head, complete with the gut-wrenching stench of piss and shit.

“What did the Andovans say to the King?” Aeren asked. “What set off all of this . . . rage?”

Dharel grimaced. “They want the Provinces back. They want to reclaim the land they lost while they were fighting their Feud for the last sixty years. The representatives on the ships were here to demand that the King hand those lands back to the Court. Immediately.”

Aeren didn’t move. His expression remained flat and unreadable.

Eraeth frowned. “What does this mean?”

Aeren paced slowly away from them, then turned back, a troubled look flickering through his eyes, there and then gone. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it means for what I intend, and I don’t know what it means for the Alvritshai. I have never been able to predict the human Kings, even after nearly sixty years of careful study.”

He turned to Colin. “What do you think it means? What do you think the King will do?”

Colin almost snorted, then thought about Portstown and Leanto, about the tensions that existed even then between Andover and the group of conscripts, criminals, and guildsmen that would become the Provinces. “He’ll fight them to keep the coast. And the Legion will back him up. I think the entire coast will back him.”

Eraeth swore in Alvritshai under his breath. “It seems this coast is made for war,” he said to Aeren.

“The plains as well,” the lord answered.

Colin shifted. “What are you here for? Why did you come to Corsair?”

Eraeth stiffened, glaring at him, but Aeren moved back toward the group. “For the last sixty years, there has been nothing but conflict on the plains between the Alvritshai, the dwarren, and the Provinces. That conflict escalated, until the confrontation at the Escarpment. It should have ended there. A pact had been made to end it. But a . . . mistake was made, a flawed decision, one that led to a misunderstanding, and the pact was broken. The conflict remained. It has simmered for the past thirty years. Thirty years of stifled trade, of petty bickering and skirmishes across all borders. Thousands have died because of it, including my family—my father, followed by both of my elder brothers. I am the last of my House. Aureon, my brother, died at the battle at the Escarpment. I held his body in my arms. His blood stained my skin for days afterward.” Eraeth’s jaw clenched as his lord spoke, his hand tightening on the pommel of his sword, and the surrounding guards stirred.

Aeren looked up into Colin’s eyes, and he saw the Alvritshai’s pain there.“I want this conflict to end. I want to finally be able to wash my brother’s blood clean from my hands.”

Silence stretched, until the tension in Aeren’s shoulders finally eased. “It has to stop. The plains have drunk too much blood. It needs to end.”

Colin almost asked how it could end, after going on for so long, but Aeren turned toward Dharel. “Take us to the palace.”

The door to the audience chamber in the palace at Corsair opened, and an officious man with a blunt nose entered. He stepped past the two Alvritshai guards, pointedly ignoring them, scanned the room as if looking for missing items, then finally let his gaze sweep across Eraeth, Dharel, and Colin. He gave a small frown when he saw Colin, but he turned to Aeren and said, “The King is willing to see you now.”

“Very well.”

The man spun and led them out of the room, down one of the Needle’s wide marble-floored corridors lined with huge urns and potted plants and tapestries. Servants and guardsmen passed them in the hall, and they left a wake of half-whispered comments and backward glances behind them. Colin tried to keep his attention fixed forward, but he caught glimpses through open doors into side rooms. Like the audience chamber they’d just left, they were spacious, the walls covered in polished wood, the ceilings vaulted, with niches for statues or artwork on nearly every wall. The audience chamber had held tables and chairs arranged beneath bookcases lined with books and assorted glass object and small figurines. But as they moved, Colin saw other rooms with long dining tables or walls covered in artwork and huge chandeliers. The sheer size of the rooms overwhelmed him.

When they reached the center of the building, the officious man stopped before two large, paneled, wooden doors. Legionnaires stood stiffly outside, carrying pikes and halberds, in full armor.

The man didn’t consult anyone, didn’t even turn to see if Aeren and the others were following. He shoved the heavy door open and stepped into the inner room.

Colin had seen the official meeting rooms of the Court in Trent. Wide and spacious, they were usually open to the elements, paved in slabs of white marble, with numerous thin columns supporting a lattice-worked roof that could be covered with canvas in the event of rain. Sunlight would glance off the occasional small fountain or other central piece of artwork symbolizing the Family and its power. But the focus of the meeting rooms in Trent were the raised daises, usually with three or four seats, the largest reserved for the Family’s Dom, the remaining seats for the visiting Dom or their representatives.

The meeting hall in the Needle was nothing like that.

It was long and narrow, the floor made of flagstone, the walls of intricately paneled wood and skilled carvings. Banners hung on most of the walls, framed by the carvings, and when Colin recognized the diagonally cut field of red and yellow, a shield in the center, he realized the banners represented the Provinces. He counted six altogether, three on each side, and at the far end of the hall—

Colin’s step faltered. The King waited at the far end of the hall, standing behind a large desk. Behind him, a much larger banner took up almost the entire wall, a single field of yellow, a sheaf of wheat in black in the center. Aides and guardsmen stood to either side of him, but a pace back. As they drew nearer, Colin saw the dark look on the King’s face. He was leaning slightly forward, his fingers steepled on the desk. Dressed in shirt and breeches, he still radiated a sense of power, as if he wore armor instead. Broad shouldered, eyes gray like the flagstone, he glared at them as they approached.

Aeren came to a halt before the desk, and the officious man stepped to one side. Colin’s gaze flicked over the aides, noted the papers that lay in neat stacks to either side of the space before the King, the ink bottle, the feathers of numerous quills, and the chunks of sealing wax. There were no decorative weapons, no personal mementos of any kind.

Then his gaze fell on the guards and halted on the man standing to the King’s right in full dress armor. Obviously part of the Legion, high ranking. The man eyed all of them with suspicion, his gaze traveling over the members of the Phalanx first, judging them, weighing their potential danger.

Then his gaze fell on Colin. Creases appeared in his forehead as he realized that Colin was not Alvritshai and yet wore Alvritshai clothing. Aeren had ordered Dharel to find something appropriate as they rode to the palace. It had been too late for an audience with the King the night before, but Dharel had arrived with Colin’s new clothes—in the Rhyssal House colors—that morning, before they were summoned to the audience chamber.

Now Colin’s hands tightened reflexively under the commander’s scrutiny, trying to grip the staff he almost always carried. He’d been forced to leave it back in Aeren’s appointed rooms.

Leaning forward, the commander murmured something to his King. His eyes never left Colin’s, and the King’s never left Aeren. The King’s jaw clenched as he finished and stepped back.

“I have already dealt with one group of foreign visitors this past week,” King Stephan said, the menace in his low, cold voice unmistakable. “I had not expected to deal with another. What is it that you want, Lord Aeren Goadri Rhyssal? What is it that the Alvritshai want?”

Aeren tensed . . . and then visibly forced himself to relax. “I come as an emissary. I come as a seeker of peace.”

Stephan barked laughter, pushing himself away from the desk so he could pace behind it. “As you came to my father so many years ago?” he spat. “Is that your idea of peace? To cozen us into a treaty, to dazzle us with your offers of trade and wealth and good fortune so that you can betray us on the battlefield, so that you can murder our King?” Stephan shouted the last, his voice ringing in the enclosed hall, loud enough that some of his aides winced and cringed, looking down at the floor.

Aeren didn’t react. When the echoes faded, he said, “No.” Stephan snorted, still pacing back and forth, his arms crossed over his chest. He no longer looked at Aeren but glared down at the floor.

Aeren drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I come now as a representative of the Alvritshai, to plead for the Alvritshai . . . but not at the Alvritshai’s behest. The Evant is not aware of my true purpose here on the coast. They believe I am here to forge trade agreements for my own House, attempts that they scorn as a waste of time, doomed to failure.”

Stephan halted. “And the Tamaell Fedorem?”

Aeren shook his head. “He is not aware of my true purpose either.”

Stephan shot Aeren a disconcertingly intense glare, but Aeren did not flinch. “You seem sincere. But you seemed sincere before, when you were dealing with my father.”

“I was sincere then. I am sincere now.”

“And yet you bring spies!” Stephan spat, hand jerking toward Colin.