The Fox

by Sherwood Smith

  He looked around, saw questions in some faces.

  “May we ask your plans?” asked the old guildmistress.

  Inda knew distrust when he saw it. And so, to whom would they pass any answer? “Whatever I do will be far away from here.”

  Exchanges of looks. Inda turned to leave.

  A tall, black-haired young man, who had lounged against the side wall during the whole interview, watching from under lazy eyelids, straightened up and stepped in Inda’s path. He said in flat-accented Marlovan, “We know who you are.” The words were Marlovan, but the verb endings Iascan.

  Inda gave him no more than a glance, stepped around him, and walked out. Tau got up and followed—or began to.

  The lounger’s hand shot out and gripped his arm. “Is he really Elgar the Fox? The son of the Prince of Choraed Elgaer? ”

  Tau looked down at the fingers gripping his arm, waiting until they loosened and then dropped. The man backed up a step, hands held up in mocking apology.

  “Ask him,” Tau replied, and closed the door behind him.

  The harbormaster looked up wryly. “Well, Mardric?”

  Mardric shrugged. Obviously whoever that scar-faced pirate and his pretty companion were or were not, Elgar the Fox hadn’t the remotest knowledge of or interest in the Resistance against the Marlovan conquerors. Except that that short young fellow—he’d swear he was even younger than the princeling up at Ala Larkadhe—was not the tall, red-haired commander clad in black that the traders he’d visited in secret at midnight had all insisted was in command of the flagship that defeated the red sails.

  During the time the pirates had been kept waiting Mardric had slipped out once to hear from the spies he’d sent to observe the two at the pier and then on the main road, where the gray-coated Marlovan sentries patrolled. Elgar and his golden-haired mate had made no attempt to speak to any of them. They had also walked by the Marlovans without the latter betraying any sign of recognition. He was certain it would be the same on the way back.

  “I’d call that a waste of breath,” the harbormaster added.

  Mardric laughed. Indeed. So much for his plan to try to hire or lure these pirates—especially if led by an exiled Marlovan—to do some fighting against the Marlovans for Olara! But he never admitted defeat—out loud.

  He said, “I’d call it a good try.”

  The harbormaster turned his head. “Well, Mistress Pim? You’re the only one who has seen their Lord Indevan Algara-Vayir. Was one of those men he?”

  From a side room came a straight-browed young woman. “Yes,” she said. “The short, ugly one. He hasn’t changed much since I found him in that pirate harbor in the east, except to get uglier.” She touched her jawline.

  “Ugly? Not at all,” Mardric drawled. “Perhaps not as finished as his golden-haired mate, but pretty enough, despite the scars.” He was thoroughly enjoying the unspoken disgust in Ryala Pim’s face, the revulsion in the guildmistress’: their firm stance on the moral high ground obviously did not include the possibility of pirates being attractive.

  Sure enough, the guild mistress said in her precise, disdainful voice, “But we still don’t know if he’s Elgar the Fox.”

  The harbormaster nodded. “Anyone might wear black, but neither of them is red-haired.”

  Ryala Pim said with disgust, “That Lord Indevun called himself Elgar when he hired on our ships. He is a Marlovan and a pirate. You can’t tell me he paid for that black raffee out there, nor did he earn what he sent to repay me.”

  “Ah, so you spurn the pirate but not his money, eh?” Mardric retorted.

  Ryala Pim flushed. “My mother says money is money. It has no wish or will. And we were owed.” Several nodded silently from the background.

  Mardric dropped his voice, affecting seriousness. “Whoever he is, if we can’t make use of him, he’s better out in the ocean drawing the Venn out there than drawing them here.”

  “True,” said the guild mistress. “We have enough of both, pirates and Venn. And Marlovans.”

  “We do owe him a debt,” the harbormaster stated. “I mean the coastal harbors.”

  “We won’t forget that,” the guildmistress said. “But that doesn’t mean we owe any of them allegiance.” She pointed through the tightly closed window, past which a pair of Marlovan guards rode by on their ceaseless patrol. “I say, don’t tell them anything about the pirates, whoever they are.”

  And everyone agreed.

  Outside Inda and Tau dropped into their boat and caught the last of the tidal flow. They were carried out to their waiting ships, which soon set sail for the unknown waters of the northwest and the legendary Ghost Isles.

  Chapter Thirty

  STONE, cold stone, all around. Does it see? Does it hear? Does it remember? Kialen pressed back against the gritty wall, terrified by screams, shouts, clangs of steel, until the sounds drowned in the rising and falling melody of “Alandais Lament.” It was old, older than the stone. So old and so secret Mistress Resvaes, who had come all the way from Sartor a couple of years before, would have been shocked to hear it echoing down the darkened hallways— not that it could be heard by any in this world.

  Kialen shivered beside the wall until the only sounds beside the distant voices were the bells. No longer the terrible slow tolls of emergency lockdown, but the dang-dang, dang-dang, dang-dang of Daylast.

  Night had fallen. She could move again, unseen. Safe from killing steel.

  Her hands and feet had gone numb. Slowly she glided away, a wraith in the deepening shadows. Her own thin voice joined in the song.

  “. . . and the gates did open, and there was a new world, radiant with beauty and peace.

  “And after the humans came, bringing sickness and greed, hunger and pain, the elder kind did sing: O human women, is sorrow borne in your seed?

  “No, elder kind, the women answered. We love, we laugh, we spin, we make, but we need plenty for peace. And they gave the women plenty. We need magic for peace. And they gave the women magic.”

  Her sweet, breathy voice keening like a reed in the winter wind, Kialen left the silent stone and drifted from room to room, where glowglobes had lit in response to the fading of day. There lay the Sierlaef, darkening blood splotches against the bright crimson rug, surrounded by those he had slain. Near him the king, so still, face toward his son. She laid upon each desecrated breast a single white lily, unseen by any in this world, and then passed out of the room, singing.

  “. . . and elder kind said: We have given you magic, we have given you plenty. Yet human kind spreads terror and pain, and we ask again, O human women, is sorrow borne in your seed?”

  Through Aunt Ndara’s room.

  “. . . and so the women turned their hand against men who burned with desire for children.”

  There was Aunt Ndara, lying next to the Evil One.

  “They turned their hand against men who mated with the weak by force.”

  Kialen straightened Ndara’s arms, so terribly slashed and slashed again. She pressed a kiss upon her cold brow, then resumed the lament.

  “And last they vowed to turn their hand against those who make war . . .”

  Kialen unfastened the locket round Ndara’s neck, obedient to a promise made long ago. She laid a last lily down in her aunt’s quiet hands and bore away the locket, still singing, as she stepped into Hadand’s silent rooms.

  “. . . when Norsunder came, with promises of life and power and an end to the silent war of time.”

  There she laid the locket down, and then she retreated to her own bower, full of lilies, bright as spring, gleaming in a sun from very long ago.

  “. . . and we strove, and they strove, until all the singing disirad stilled, and the sky wept and the sun shone no more on human make.”

  She took from a secret casket a vial of the dream-flower.

  “And the elder came yet again, and sang to those who were left, O human women, we shared with you our world, and you have nearly unmade it, tell us the tru
th at last: Is sorrow borne in your seed?”

  Still singing, she paused only long enough to gulp down the sweet liquor in the vial, and then lay upon her bed. She sang softly now, lilies gathered in her hands, until the ancient melody was joined by other voices, sweet voices, high and clear and good, voices bearing her away on a sighing tide, as her breast rose and fell one last time.

  “Is sorrow borne in your seed?”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  EVRED was met two days outside of Ala Larkadhe by Noddy’s Runners, who had been dispatched the day that Cama reached Noddy. They were the first to alert Evred that there might be trouble in the royal city.

  He commanded his host to hasten.

  They were met more than halfway home by an impressive cavalcade of armsmen belonging to three houses, led by Noddy Toraca himself, Tuft Sindan-An, and Cherry-Stripe Marlo-Vayir, who had insisted at the last moment on accompanying Noddy. Tuft had joined with a flight of his father’s men when Noddy and Cherry-Stripe passed through his family land.

  They took turns telling Evred everything they knew, though it took a couple of days to make sense of the splintered accounts. But before they saw the winter-bound city on the horizon he had assembled a fairly accurate picture of what he’d find.

  In the meantime he had to contend with his own emotions.

  His father was dead. Grief chilled his spirit when he thought of never seeing him in the archive poring over a text, the talks they would never have. At least he would not have to tell his father about Jened Sindan. Once or twice he considered tossing that stained locket away into the snow, but instinct stayed his hand. He had assumed that it was a love-gift of his father’s, but there had been far too much urgency in the way Sindan had hung onto his life just to say that one word.

  The last day of their journey, his entourage, knowing they would soon reach the royal city, broke out their House tunics and weapons, everything polished and shining. Evred put on his old gray academy coat.

  Noddy appeared at his tent flap, resplendent in a rich brown tunic with a crimson marmot: Khani-Vayir colors. “Gray?” His straight brows lifted. “I’m not much for strut in the ordinary way of things, but this does seem to be the time.”

  “When you left,” Evred said, “I had a crown waiting. You of all people ought to know how quickly things can change.”

  Noddy pursed his lips. “There is that. But they’d have to get past Hadand-Edli first.”

  Nobody else said anything. The earlier freedom had vanished, and everyone, from friends down to armsmen, now maintained a scrupulous distance that Evred felt almost as an invisible wall forming by universal will. He was separate now, he was a king. Their behavior invested him with the power of kingship; he had done nothing yet to grasp it.

  He was mulling the nature of power when they sighted the royal city. Armsmen were posted all along the walls: Montrei-Vayir crimson mixed with the sky blue and dark green of the Marlo-Vayirs, and the brown and crimson of Khani-Vayir. All wore black sashes. To Evred, that indicated a universal desire for order.

  The city streets were crowded, cold as it was. When he passed, cheers and fists against hearts were proof again that that mysterious act of will on the parts of people he had never met had transformed him into a king.

  They rode through the great gates of the castle to the central courtyard and stopped at the passage between the great hall and the throne room. The big iron-reinforced double doors to the throne room stood open, black-sashed guards at either side to hold back the crowds of city folk gathered there despite the freezing air. More cheers, more fists thumping chests as he and his entourage passed inside, joining all those already gathered there. Someone blew the bugle-call for the king’s arrival, and all fell silent. Evred could hear breathing, felt the weight of gazes, as he walked up the broad stone steps of the dais.

  Hadand waited at the side of the throne, dressed in Algara-Vayir green except for a black sash. At her left, in Shield Arm position, stood Cama Tya-Vayir; Evred knew it was he who had taken control of the Guard. To her right stood Buck Marlo-Vayir. Both wore formal House colors.

  Hadand greeted him with her fist against her heart.

  He held out his hands to her, met those wide-set, honest brown eyes, and felt a faint shock when she drew in a small breath and her eyelids gleamed with sudden tears. But they did not fall as she briefly touched his hands. “I have kept everything as it was,” she said so only he could hear.

  Evred opened a hand, already distracted, for every pair of eyes watched him, each face a mirror of questions, demands, exclamations held in check.

  He lifted his voice. “Let the word be spread through the kingdom: as is traditional, the coronation will be held Midsummer’s Day.”

  A tumult of voices rose, echoing off the stone to a skull-shattering roar. Evred walked off the dais through the narrow door at the side, followed by those who had awaited him there. Hadand’s Runner shut the door after the last, diminishing the noise to a distant roar.

  “Where is Jarend-Adaluin?” Evred asked, turning from one to another.

  “Went home. Declared justice given. Took his banner. And Joret,” Cama said, his voice rougher than usual. “We’ve been holding the Yvana-Vayirs in the garrison, and their Runners.” He glanced upward with his one eye on the word “their,” and Evred knew he meant the Runners of his brother and uncle. “The few left alive.”

  More mess: so the old Jarl hadn’t died of the wounds Hadand had given him. Damn. And what would he do with his brother’s Runners? His uncle’s?

  “Take me upstairs,” Evred said to Hadand. “Everything else can wait.”

  The two of them left the anteroom, followed by their personal Runners, who shut the outer door and guarded it, as signals went from female to male guards. In concert they began conducting people out of the throne room and to the gates.

  Neither Hadand nor Evred spoke on that long journey to the upper level of the residence.

  They walked through the doors locked for more than a month and shut their Runners out to guard. A muffled thump had to be Nightingale setting his back to the door; they heard Tesar’s low murmur as she introduced herself and took up a stance beside him.

  They were now alone. In Aldren-Sierlaef’s rooms the smell of old blood hit them, and Hadand moved to open windows to the freshening flow of snow-laden air. The bodies had been Disappeared, but the blood and disarray lay untouched, unwanded, so that Evred could witness it.

  “I have reconstructed what must have happened,” Hadand said after a long pause. “Different bands of Yvana-Vayir armsmen went after your brother and uncle, probably at the same time. Aldren took down four of them before a fifth got him. Your father came in right after—but I think you know the rest.”

  Evred grimaced. “Noddy and Cherry-Stripe did not know what happened to my uncle, but assumed he was dead.”

  “Yes.” She pressed her fingers briefly against her face, her fingertips against her closed eyelids. Then she dropped her hands and opened her eyes. “I found your uncle lying in Aunt Ndara’s inner chamber. He had died of so many cuts I can only guess that an entire riding came after him, too many for him to fight. He had one of his own knives in his ribs. He fell very close to her. She too was considerably cut up, but mostly about the arms, except for a long one on her neck and several on her upper back. In short I don’t know if Ndara died by assassins’ blades, or by his hand. The Yvana-Vayir men we questioned insisted she was dead when they saw her.” Hadand hesitated, unsure whether or not to share her speculations about Ndara’s death.

  “I think I’d rather not find out the truth, since it changes nothing,” Evred said, and when she opened her hands in agreement, “Was there much fighting otherwise?”

  “Very little. I sent my women to hold the castle as soon as I discovered there was trouble.” Hadand added wryly, “As for the Guard barracks, I suspect the Marlo-Vayirs and Yvana-Vayirs did not want to fight one another any more than they wanted to fight us. Not when they’d been ri
ding together for over a week.”

  “And the Guard?”

  “My father rode up and took over. Ordered them all to stand down. Half of them were exhausted, having been riding through the snow for days with the Sierlaef. They’d just gone off duty. The others were tired from doubled watches. Nobody argued.”

  Evred could imagine their confusion, the consternation that there was no invading enemy, only Marlovans, and which colors would be the enemy? “So the Marlo-Vayirs did not know about Yvana-Vayir’s plans?”

  “Not a hint. Mad Gallop only talked of justice. The Jarl of Marlo-Vayir ordered his men to stop the Yvana-Vayirs after their Jarl gave his orders to kill. I think certain of the Yvana-Vayir captains knew the plot. Had promises of future glory. The captains give confused testimony, some saying they had an idea, some swearing they didn’t, but once the killing began, they all knew they had crossed that inward boundary between treason and what one called making history. He talked a lot about that, I gather. ‘Making history.’ It seems to be defined by killing. You will not have a pleasant task, judging them.”

  “No. So this assault took you, too, by surprise?”

  “Completely.” Her color changed again. “All I knew was that the Sierlaef had apparently—well, it no longer matters. I’d heard two days before from Chelis about Barend and the owl ring, and that my father was coming with a war banner. If he did appear and throw down a war pennant before the throne, that would be king’s business, but I’d had my women on alert. So everyone had been going about armed with their bows and we let the Guard think it was drill. Thus we were able to deploy fast.”

  “So I must first examine the Yvana-Vayirs,” Evred said, feeling a band of tension tighten around his skull. It was a familiar sensation, the one he’d felt whenever he had to sit in judgment between Marlovans and Idayagans. “Before I do, I’d like to hear your conclusions.”

  Hadand drew a shaky breath. “I believe the plot began and ended with Mad Gallop Yvana-Vayir. Hawkeye was as surprised as the Marlo-Vayirs when Mad Gallop announced his real plan—and hinted that someone was sent against you.”