The Fox

by Sherwood Smith

Over the years he’d driven a wedge between the heir and Evred so that they would never ally against him. He was to be the heir’s guard and guide and future adviser. From the beginning Evred had been far too smart, prone to read the records, just like his father, and then to question. The Harskialdna had been afraid Evred would be as difficult to control (for the kingdom’s own good) as the king had turned out to be. The Marlo-Vayir boy had been obedient, big, strong, handsome, and most of all unquestioning. And the hints the Harskialdna had carefully dropped about the possibility of his being promoted to a royal connection in the future had bound the Marlo-Vayirs to him. But during the past few years that bond seemed to have eroded.

  But he couldn’t speak of that. It admitted his own gradual loss of control.

  The Sierlaef’s thoughts paralleled his uncle’s to an astonishing degree, but the days of free communication had also vanished.

  The Sierlaef’s mind shifted swiftly from image to image: Buck Marlo-Vayir in the good old academy days obeying without question, glad to be one of the elite Sier Danas, the Companions; Evred reading in two languages when his older brother couldn’t manage one; the promises his uncle had made that had turned out not to be true.

  Well, it was time to make them true. He was the future king, not his uncle! Buck had shown a tendency to argue these past few years, so this order concerning Vedrid would be a test. Meanwhile, why not have his own brother as Harskialdna after all? A scholarly, obedient brother who would take care of the boring logistics, like trade and army training and taxes, leaving his older brother full command of the army. That’s what Harvaldar meant: war king.

  The rightness of it helped steady his tongue. “Buck Marlo-Vayir.” He enunciated each word hard and distinct. “Will do what he’s told.” Or die a traitor’s death.

  The Harskialdna stared in horror across the room into the heir’s angry eyes and realized he was not addressing a wayward boy. The Sierlaef was a man now, a man who had his own plans, a man who could issue threats—do what he’s told—and had the kingdom to back him.

  The future king had decided he was going to be telling his uncle what to do, not the other way around.

  The Sierlaef said, “Father can in-fuh-fuh . . .” He forced himself to slow down, enunciating harshly. “Vest. Igate. Our people. All who know are dead. Idayagans. If they die, so? Seal our hold.”

  The Harskialdna swallowed and then, in a fair attempt to smooth over his capitulation, asked, “So what will you do now?”

  The Sierlaef grinned again, and years of pent-up resentment made that grin a nasty sight indeed. “What I want. When I want. How I want.” He pointed at his uncle. “You make it happen.”

  “Vedrid? Executed?” Buck Marlo-Vayir repeated. He was hot and irritable in his gray coat, but an unexpected visit from the royal heir’s Runner seemed to require no less.

  Nallan, the Sierlaef’s Runner captain, was familiar from the days when Buck and the Sierlaef and the rest of the Sier Danas became seniors, putting up their hair as academy horsetails. Nallan had been willing to clean boots and do the horsetails’ stable chores on the sly—anything to earn the approval of the next king. And he’d hated any new Runners whom the royal heir liked.

  Tall, blond, competent, Nallan was smirking now. He clearly loved conveying these orders from the royal heir.

  “Did the Sierlaef say why?”

  “Treachery,” Nallan said.

  “Then it will be done,” Buck stated, not asking why a charge of treachery from one of the royal family didn’t require a trial. It was obvious that once again the Sierlaef was sidestepping the rules for his own purposes as he’d done many times, though it had never before cost someone’s life.

  But he’s going to be the next king.

  Nallan smirked again. “I’m to stay until I see his body.”

  Fury flared hot and bright; however, Buck had learned during their boyhood academy days not to express anything at all around the heir or his most trusted spy. “Then take your gear down to the Runners’ rooms and settle in. I’ll give the necessary orders.”

  He waited until he’d seen Nallan cross the small courtyard to the Runners’ space adjacent the barracks; then, he ran down to the arms court, where he found his younger brother Landred—renamed Cherry-Stripe his first week at the academy—busy with the arms master.

  Cherry-Stripe was surprised to see Buck dressed formally— best riding boots, his gray war coat buttoned to the high collar, sashed at the waist, the long skirts gathering dust as he crossed the heat-shimmering stones. In this weather?

  Cherry-Stripe cast a puzzled glance at his brother’s tight-lipped, brow-furrowed face. Buck leaned up against a hitching post and crossed his arms, so Cherry-Stripe turned back to the waiting arms master and finished his bout.

  When it was done Buck made the old academy “behind the barracks” sign with a briefly turned thumb, so Cherry-Stripe said to the arms master, “I’m going to get something to eat, and then I’ll be over to look at the two-year-olds.”

  The man flicked his fingers to his heart and walked to the other end of the court to observe the off-patrol Riders galloping past a post and hacking at it with swords.

  The brothers ran through the drifting dust to an older part of the castle, moldering and mossy, and clambered up to their favorite perch from which they could watch, unseen, through ancient arrow slits.

  “Nallan is here.” Buck grimaced in disgust as he undid the wooden buttons of his coat, eased out of it, and laid it carefully beside him. Air ruffled over his sweat-damp shirt, briefly cooling him, and he sighed. “Orders. From him. We’re to kill Vedrid on sight.”

  Cherry-Stripe gasped. “Vedrid? Why?”

  “Treachery. Supposedly. Nallan stays until it’s done. So he wants an eyewitness. Can’t imagine what Vedrid’s done. Or how to move against him. He being a friend, almost kin.”

  “But Vedrid’s already here.”

  “What?”

  “Mran told me at breakfast,” Cherry-Stripe explained, referring to his betrothed, little Mran Cassad. Like all the Cassads she was small and rat-faced. Cherry-Stripe had grown up with her, and they were allies as well as betrothed. She always knew everything going on in and around the castle. “Fnor told her. Sheep-house,” he added with a roll of the eyes.

  Buck snorted a laugh. He’d forgotten that his own intended wife, Fnor Sindan-An, had begun a hot romance with Vedrid during the Sierlaef’s long stay a couple of years past. Apparently time and distance hadn’t diminished that romance, which wouldn’t matter to him one way or another: Fnor and he had made a pact when they reached the age of interest that they would not sleep with one another until they were married, so they’d have something to look forward to. Until then they expected one another to dally with whomever they liked—and get in plenty of practice.

  What was far more serious was the fact that Vedrid was related to a goodly number of the older Marlo-Vayir armsmen and Runners; there had been several marriages between the liege folk of various Tlen clans and the Marlo-Vayirs.

  “We better go talk to him,” Buck stated, picking up his coat.

  They clambered down again, from long habit splitting off. By mutual consent they avoided their father and uncle. They knew what their father would say, as he always said. If it’s a royal order, you obey. That’s the oath you swear. If it’s a stupid order and there’s trouble someday, at least you kept your end of the oath and the family’s honor. And Uncle Scrapper, Father’s Randael—as Cherry-Stripe would one day be Buck’s Randael—would silently nod.

  Their father had said the same sort of thing a lot over the past ten years. Buck had come to realize Dad had not approved of the Harskialdna’s old plan to replace the king’s second son with him, but he’d obeyed, because it was his place to obey. Buck sensed his wily old dad was as relieved as he was that the never-explained plan had apparently been forgotten.

  One brother grabbed some bread and cheese, while the other ran down to the stable to inspect the horses, saying
casually that he and Cherry-Stripe wanted to take a pair out and check their paces.

  No one questioned that. Buck slipped inside long enough to give his own Runner a whispered “Keep Nallan busy.” Then they were off.

  The abandoned shepherd’s hut the young people used for assignations lay up beyond the hills that rose like sloping shoulders eastward behind the castle. The grasses were golden tipped from the summer sun and birds chirped as they rode by. Once they saw the grasses move as some animal raced northward, intent on its own affairs.

  When they saw the hut, Buck gave a single academy fox yip by way of polite warning. Cherry-Stripe snickered, hoping to catch Fnor looking disheveled and silly; she had gotten frosty of late ever since his mother had taken to staying away for long periods, nursing her own mother far away.

  But the two who appeared at the door were fully dressed, she in the summer over-robe and voluminous riding trousers that the women habitually wore, he in his Runner-blue coat. The wry look that Fnor sent the brothers made it clear that whatever they were doing, it wasn’t in bed.

  Vedrid looked sick. His face was gaunt, his pale hair straggly.

  The brothers slid off their horses, leaving them hampered only by the quilted saddle pads and reined halters. The mounts trotted downhill to the delicious grass beside the stream. Inside, Cherry-Stripe kicked the door shut and thumped his shoulders against it; Buck dropped onto the weatherworn feedbox someone had put under the single window as a makeshift table and leaned back so he could see the pathway to the castle.

  Vedrid said, “Tanrid-Laef Algara-Vayir is dead.”

  The other three reacted as he expected: Cherry-Stripe startled, Buck wary, and Fnor pursing her lips, her hands in her sleeves.

  “You’ll hear it through the king or the Harskialdna soon,” Vedrid went on. He looked up, his mouth long with repressed pain. “He’s dead, and I think I was part of it.”

  Buck said, “I got orders from Nallan to kill you. For treason. ”

  Fnor jerked her chin up, her lips parting, but she did not speak.

  “Do it.” Vedrid shook his head once, then threw his head back, and the brothers saw the sheen of unshed tears in his eyes. “Fnor’s spent the morning trying to talk me out of doing it for you. I’d rather it be by your hand. Then I don’t die a coward in addition to being a traitor.”

  “Wait. Wait.” Cherry-Stripe smacked his hand against the wooden lintel. He coughed impatiently at the dust he raised, then demanded, “What happened?”

  “What I think, or what I know?”

  “Both,” the brothers said together. But no one laughed.

  Fnor gave Vedrid’s arm a gentle tug and he sank down onto the narrow bunk, with Fnor perched next to him, arm thrown round his thin shoulders in silent support.

  He sighed. “The Sierlaef sent me north, saying he’d discovered a plot against Tanrid-Laef and there was not enough time to summon the men necessary to stop it. That the assassins were sent by someone so high he dare not write any real orders lest it touch off civil war. I thought he meant the Idayagan king, plotting against us. They can’t face us in the field, so they plot. That much I had heard from the Harskialdna, so I believed it. The Sierlaef gave me what I know now were false orders, supposedly to cover me against the attention of Idayagan spies. I rode straight north, nearly killing the last three horses.”

  Buck grimaced and Cherry-Stripe cursed under his breath. Fnor flushed with anger. They all loved horses, sometimes more than people, and they also knew what kind of ride that had to have been.

  “I arrived at the castle right before it happened—out in the woods, half a watch’s ride away. I didn’t know I was too late until I saw Tanrid’s body brought in. I was tired, desperately so, but I did not speak to anyone because I thought myself surrounded by spies. I waited until night, sent false orders to the guards, and slit the throats of the two they did capture. Glad to do it, too. Or at least the first one. They were dressed like Idayagans, but when I’d killed the first, the second started cursing me in Marlovan! At first I thought he was dishonoring our tongue, but after he was dead it occurred to me he spoke it too well to be a foreigner.”

  Buck and Cherry-Stripe exchanged sour glances. Yes, this affair stank of the Sierlaef’s above-the-law attitude, all right.

  Vedrid gazed sightlessly at the warped wooden walls, rubbing his hands over the worn blue fabric covering his knees. “The Sierlaef told me if I was too late to prevent Tanrid-Laef’s death, to come here after I’d finished the assassins and await orders. So I started down south, but slower. I had time to think. They weren’t Idayagans hired by their king, not if they spoke Marlovan, so who sent them? And how did the Sierlaef know about this conspiracy anyway? Why didn’t he send the army against the conspirators? He could do it and not break the treaty, not if the Idayagans had already broken it with their plot.” He looked up at Buck. “If he really wanted to save Tanrid-Laef’s life, why did he send only me?”

  “So you think the Sierlaef was behind it?” Cherry-Stripe asked, astonished. “Why?”

  “Joret Dei, of course,” his brother said impatiently. “He wanted Tanrid out of the way because Joret wouldn’t dally with anyone but her betrothed.”

  Cherry-Stripe said, “I thought that was only the hots.”

  “You never saw him around her.”

  Fnor shook her head, remembering what she’d seen during her days in the queen’s training, when the heir had spied on Joret, had made any excuse to see her, talk to her, no matter how hard she tried to avoid him. “It’s more of a craze,” she said to Cherry-Stripe. “All the old folk used to laugh, saying how the Montrei-Vayirs were known for lifelong crazes back in the old days.”

  Buck didn’t hear her. He looked out the little window, frowning, at the western plains under the bright blue sky, his mind running ahead. “If he issued orders to kill you,” he said at last, “it’s to shut you up.”

  Vedrid lowered his head and Fnor hugged him wordlessly against her.

  Buck fingered the sun-brassy ends of his long horsetail hanging over his shoulder nearly to his lap. “Treachery. Someone high up. It’s all true, though not the way it’s meant—just like the Sierlaef. He always bent the rules, and his uncle cheered him on the charge. When we were academy horsetails,” he added in a pained voice, “it was fun. We were the kings, the masters never stopped us, the older boys never messed with us. Rules didn’t matter, as long as we weren’t cowards or thieves. Even the first year guards deferred to us, all on account of him. Ever since we got out of the academy, the Sierlaef expects us to be his Sier-Danas, but we aren’t. Not even Hawkeye. We all knew he’d one day break rein and give us some crazy orders he’d expect us to obey, like when he sicced us on his brother and the rest of the scrubs. But that was only academy scrags. Now he’ll do it for more serious things. It’s been like . . . like saddle-galls you can’t see, waiting for the next crazy order. You can feel ’em in the horse’s gait. Know something’s wrong, and going to get wronger.”

  “Even if it’s wrong, he’s given you a direct order,” Cherry-Stripe pointed out. “You know what Father and Uncle Scrapper would say.”

  Vedrid stood up, his hands opening and closing. “If it must be done, I’d rather it be by your hand.”

  Fnor and Cherry-Stripe turned to Buck, tall, strong, handsome, his hair pulled up on the back of his head, making him look older, as the boys all looked once they gained the right to wear horsetails.

  He was not used to this kind of thinking. To carry out the heir’s direct order was his duty, and also his right, as future Jarl. As the future Harskialdna? No, he no longer believed that would happen—nor did he want it to.

  He said, slowly, “I won’t do it.”

  Cherry-Stripe sighed in relief, and though Fnor smiled, she said softly, “But he sent Vedrid here. Why not have Nallan shadow him and do it up north?”

  Cherry-Stripe pointed a finger at his brother. “Good question. And I think I know the answer. Because of that crazy busines
s about making you Harskialdna over Sponge—uh, Evred.” Though they all still called one another by their academy nicknames, somehow the king’s second son had lost his.

  “I don’t think the Sierlaef wants me anymore, not really,” Buck muttered. “Hasn’t talked to me or sent a Runner in a couple of years.”

  “Aldren,” Fnor began.

  Buck grimaced. “Don’t call me that!” He hated sharing a birth name with the Sierlaef. But she only did it when she wanted his undivided attention.

  “Then you better think,” Fnor said, her expression grim. “Does he want you or doesn’t he? I know you don’t want it, but if he doesn’t either . . .”

  Buck smacked his hands on his thighs. “It’s a test. And what if I don’t do it?”

  “Up against the wall,” Cherry-Stripe said, and then made a horrible face. “No. Worse.”

  Fnor added, “If he doesn’t order you arrested for treachery, you know the Harskialdna will.”

  Cherry-Stripe’s insides cramped with anger and apprehension. He sucked in a slow breath. “So Nallan has to see a body. His body. And won’t he gloat, too, if he thinks you’re gonna be flogged to death as a traitor!”

  Buck smacked his hand against the lintel. “He won’t if Vedrid never gets here.” He turned to the runner. “Where’s your horse?”

  “Up in the hills back behind.”

  “Who else at the castle knows you’re here?”

  “Just Mran. I reached here last night, was too tired to ride farther.” Vedrid tipped his head back toward the bed stuffed with old armor-quilting that had shaped the imprint of many young bodies. “Spent the night, and was about to go down to the castle when I saw Mran out running the pups. I think she suspected something was wrong from my manner.”

  Fnor nodded, smiling briefly. Mran would. She was observant, even for a Cassad, and they were all smart.

  Vedrid went on, “She offered to get Fnor, and I didn’t want to face your father yet, or rather face his questions, so—” He lifted his hands.

  “Good. Perfect,” Buck said. He’d been thinking rapidly while Vedrid told his story. “Mran won’t make a peep. See, everything’s bad if you’re here. So it seems to me our way out is if you never got here!”