“I choose to think lucky.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “For you.”
She was the one with a stable and steady marriage, one that only improved with the years. As for Gracia…. Kora was the last person who should ever speak to Rexson about his queen. Even what she had told him the day before, suggesting he respect Gracia’s error as the act of a mother trying to protect her family, she regretted. That had not been her place. It hadn’t. She could only hope her intention of showing Rexson’s wife to him in a more positive light would not cast herself in one instead. Rexson would appreciate, heartily, what she’d attempted to do.
Kora brought the conversation back around to what had brought her to Herezoth in the first place.
“I’m fighting beside my brother,” she told him. “Beside my sons. I won’t sit in this room while they’re risking their lives. I’ll change my appearance to look younger and keep my ruby hidden.”
Rexson looked her in the eye from his chair, as she still stood before him. That signaled he would be blunt in his response, parts of which, if not all, Kora wouldn’t like.
“I suppose that’s your decision. I’d prefer you go home, to your husband and daughters. You know what I’ll have to do if you’re found out. If Linstrom and his men take you prisoner and turn you over to me, which they would. They’d take great joy in forcing me to kill you for them.”
She would hang for violating her banishment, in a little-used execution chamber in Podrar’s prison. The king could not, and would not, make an exception for her. Neither Vane nor her brother could intercede on her behalf. For them to free her would mean their own lives, were they ever caught and extradited from Traigland. Herezoth would never be safe for them again.
The king voiced his request as a simple question, with a tone that gave it no more significance than if he wondered whether she could pass the water pitcher. “Would you really make me kill you?”
“I don’t intend for things to come to that, now do I?”
“You very well know they could.”
“I’ll see they don’t. I’m not leaving Zacry and my boys. You left the choice to me, and that’s what I choose.” Kora quailed before the prospect of what she must say next, but she forced herself to speak after a steadying breath. “You never called me here. I still hold you should have, rather than send Vane to Linstrom, but you didn’t. I came on my own. I stay of my own volition. And if Linstrom does somehow take me prisoner and turns me over to your guards, I understand that’s the result of my actions. I wouldn’t hold you responsible for the consequences, and neither must you.”
The change in Rexson was as sudden as it was revolting. He rose from his chair so quickly he might have been manipulated by a spring. Kora had seen such insulted anger on his face only once, and then it had been feigned: when he’d banished her. That sneer on his mouth and the suspicion in his narrowed eyes still haunted her, and this time…. This time they revealed his heart. Before, at least, she had known them a sham. Now he tore from her the only consolation she had when she looked back on the worst memory of her life. She no longer could think him incapable of feeling all that scathing stare implied.
“Damn it, Kora, you know what it would do to me to hang you. You need to go home. Home! Oh, you can stay here if you want. I know you’ll do just that. But it won’t be with some false sense of comfort, thinking you’ve addressed or eased the pain you’d cause me in forcing your blood upon my hands. Do you think I could eat a full meal again, once I’d not only ordered but had to witness your death? Could sleep a night in my life, even after I quell the riots your presence rains on me? You can name me guiltless all you like, but you’ll take no peace from it. I could never feel guiltless in that situation, and you damn well know it. You will not hide from that.”
At his first storming step toward the door she jumped back, away from him. “Lanokas!” she called. She could not tell which held more power, her hurt or her fear, a fear that all her memories of him would now be fouled by this ugly encounter. “Lan….”
He whirled back to face her, barely avoiding a snarl.
“I’m not your fellow soldier now. I’m Rexson. I’m the king. It’ll fall upon my conscience and no one else’s when they slip a noose around your neck for high treason.”
Kora stammered, “You need my help. My sons, you said you need my sons, didn’t you?”
“I won’t have to kill your sons if the enemy so much as guesses at their names.”
“Linstrom would have to do more than guess my name to….”
“Go home, Kora. You’ve done your part. We know Linstrom’s change of plans. You need to go home.” With that, the king stormed from the room. He slammed the door behind him so that it shook.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Preparing Oakdowns
Vane found Lottie pacing her floral-themed parlor in a near hysteria. She had not changed clothes since last they spoke, and turned with wild eyes to stare at him when she sensed he’d appeared. He nearly dove to the floor, to avoid any spells she might instinctively send at him. She took note, though, of his identity and let out a sigh, more of discomfort than relief.
Lottie’s voice tumbled from her lips, one explanation following another. Vane’s head ached as he tried to keep pace with her.
“He interrupted me. When I was going through those plans you mentioned were in his office. I got out but had to leave them in plain view.”
“I know.”
“You told me I could see the proof for myself. That’s all I was doing. I didn’t mean to call his attention, didn’t betray my word to you….”
“I know,” Vane repeated. There lay the source of her panic: she thought he might view her rotten luck as an attempt to warn Linstrom.
“He’ll know someone was there. Know the king’s on to him.”
“That’s why I’m here this early.”
“How could you possibly have known all that? I suspected you might, Your Grace. You knew so much that was private when you came to me last night, but how? What kind of magic…?”
She had ventured into that topic before with Vane, and he made certain she gained as little for her efforts this time as she had previously. He ignored her prompt. “Linstrom will act rashly now. He suspects I was behind your raid, and he’ll attack me at Oakdowns with the bulk of his supporters. Tonight. The king needs you to aid our stand there.”
Reluctance was written plain on Lottie’s brow, but Vane could imagine how she weighed her options. Oakdowns, she judged, had not a chance to withstand Linstrom’s onslaught. Lottie could die fighting the man who had abused her heart and used her for her magic, or she could die of disgrace within prison walls. She assured the Duke of Ingleton, “His Majesty has my aid.”
“We’ll go to the manor now. Linstrom will notice you’re gone, but that won’t dissuade him from his plans or convince him to rush them. This evening will arrive soon enough: too soon, I’d say. His men have studied in the Hall’s library, Lottie, and you with them. You’ll have to brief us on what to expect.”
The faintest note of hope was in Lottie’s voice. “And who is us?” she asked.
“More sorcerers than you’d expect. The king’s guard, and probably his general with them. Rexson Phinnean’s not leaving us to fend for ourselves.”
“His offer of amnesty stands?” she pressed. “If we defeat Linstrom, I’ll be free to make what life I can for myself?”
“You’ll be free to do what you will,” Vane told her. He thought to add, “As long as that doesn’t include any mention of how close Linstrom came to attacking the Central Plaza. You understand why the public mustn’t learn of that?”
Lottie qualified, “I understand why you’d keep the truth hidden. That might not be up to us, Your Grace. If Oakdowns falls, there’s no stopping him. He could go straight to that Plaza or continue destroying Podrar this very night. There’d be next to no one to resist him, not with his band of sorcerers.”
“We’ll stop him,” Vane said. “We will, Lo
ttie. We must.”
Lottie seemed far from convinced of success, but she allowed Vane to transport her to Oakdowns. That, at least, was something to appreciate. He couldn’t say how he would have responded, had she refused to leave with him.
He took her to a pebbled walk that led to a back entrance from the gardens. There would be no transporting into Oakdowns again. That thought was a strange one, and Vane’s feelings about the matter were conflicted; for years he had transported in and out of the manor at will.
Vane directed his new ally to the main parlor, where his parents’ portrait had hung; August had already seen it removed. He had Lottie walk before him through his spacious and carpeted halls, for he still did not trust her enough to expose his back. He expected a small gathering in the room, but was shocked at how quickly the king had amassed his forces. He must have utilized Zacry’s magic.
Zacry and the king were there. A scowl marred Rexson’s face as he and the sorcerer held a conversation as privately as possible near a far wall. Zacry, too, seemed put out about something, and was shaking his head.
Wilhem and Walten were speaking with three other youths, some three or four years older than they were. Jane Trand’s students. One young woman, with a frame decidedly feminine but an angular face and strong jaw, seemed interested in whatever Walten was telling her. Her hair was a muddy brown, but she had braided it in a single plait all the way to the small of her back. Her eyes looked somewhat sunken.
Her old classmates were twins. Vane remembered their applications to the Carphead Academy, for they were the school’s only set. Mick and Mart Wolding had eyes of sapphire blue, distinct from the pale shade Vane’s children bore. Their noses were broad, and they wore their stringy black hair clipped above their ears and close to their heads. Their deep olive complexion spoke to Traiglandian blood, though that blood was not pure, for their sorcery could only come from roots in Herezoth. They were taller than Kora’s sons and the girl, and a bulk to their arms, one reminiscent of Kora’s husband, made Vane guess they might be smiths.
Lottie was unimpressed by the youths. The girl with the plaited hair and the beardless Wilhem, in particular, evoked an expression of mixed dismissal and pity when she looked at them. Vane admitted, “I can’t speak for that young woman, but I know the boy. You shouldn’t underestimate him, or any of that group.”
“Tell me they’re sorcerers,” Lottie whispered. Vane said they were.
The woman the Magic Council had hired to give sorcery lessons at its Academy sat on the settee across from the hearth, with a spellbook in her lap. She seemed oblivious to the chatter that surrounded her. Jane Trand had forty or so years behind her and grooves on her face to mark them: crow’s feet much more prominent than Kora’s and a wrinkle in her brow that Kora lacked. Her skin was pale, and her hair, the color of straw, likely shared straw’s texture too. She was small in body—compact, even—but no one could look at her and confuse that lack of bulk with weakness. She had boundless energy, and her eyes shone with a feverish ferocity; she moved a finger along the page as she read.
Behind Jane Trand, to the right of the fireplace, a stocky, uniformed Gratton wore a gray military cap to match his hair and uniform. His sword swung at his side, and if he still felt as uneasy about magic as in years past, he kept his reluctance to battle sorcerers to himself. He spoke with Rexson’s general.
Vane had met Gerr Bruan before. A soldier’s soldier, his movements were controlled and his body well conditioned for a man of forty-five, despite his balding. A cratered scar that ran from his left ear to above his left eye ruined his face, and was rumored to be the result of an altercation with fellow soldiers in his youth. Though his dark eyes were pensive, they lacked true coldness. An air of command was strong about him; Vane would gladly cede the details of Oakdowns’s defense to the man.
When the king saw that Vane had entered, and with whom, he extricated himself from conversation with Zacry. The dourness left his expression, which remained every bit as solemn as before as he carved a path to the doorway. Rexson wore no robe of office, so Vane whispered to Lottie, “That’s the king,” and she sunk into a jerky, graceless bow when Rexson stood before her.
Rexson’s tone was gruff, but Vane suspected he meant a kindness when he told Lottie, “That’s not needed,” and added, “I appreciate your help.”
Lottie rose stiffly and said, “I appreciate you reaching out to me. You needn’t have.”
“You’re not to attend Linstrom’s gathering tonight, at the Hall. That’s too dangerous. Let him suspect what he will in regards to your absence. It shouldn’t change his decision to attack here.”
Something smoldered within Lottie’s face, tinting her thick cheeks rosy. She demanded, though quietly, “How do you know he intends this attack, Your Majesty?”
Rexson replied, “That’s my concern. Lottie, you’re to stay within sight of Zacry Porteg at all times.” He pointed the man out for her. “You’ll spend the day assisting him, because Ingleton will be too busy to watch over you. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but….”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I won’t wager lives upon your loyalty, not before it’s proven. If we’re going to stop Linstrom, he can’t know we’re privy to his plans. That we expect him.”
Lottie’s tone held such repulsion Vane imagined it would have raised the hackles on Hune’s hounds, had they been present. “I no more want that man moving on from this place to attack civilians than you do, Your Majesty.”
Whether she directed her contempt at the king or at Linstrom, Vane couldn’t say. Perhaps at both. At any rate, the king gave her spite no reaction. He responded to nothing more than the meaning of her words.
“You’ll make sure, then, that we have some idea of what to expect from his sorcerers. What kinds of spells you studied at the Hall with them.”
To hold the king’s gaze required a visible effort from Lottie, but she assented, “Yes, Your Majesty. Ingleton had mentioned that.”
The king called everyone to order and explained their task of protecting Oakdowns. He warned what their failure would cost others, as a way to motivate them. He said Bruan would provide as many soldiers as they wished, but none could be visible on the grounds; the sight would provoke Linstrom to choose a more public and less guarded target. That was the last thing anyone wanted.
Then Rexson explained that Lottie, as a spy, could inform them of Linstrom’s army. Of that army’s magic. At that, Jane Trand’s wrinkles diminished as she unfurrowed her brow, and her female student stopped fingering her long plait of hair. They seemed reassured, but Wilhem—the youngest in the room—turned gray at the king’s words. Kora’s son would prefer not to know what was coming. Vane could sympathize, and was glad to see Walten give his brother a supportive jab on the shoulder. The king noticed as well, and guilt shone in his eyes as he turned to Vane.
“You know Oakdowns better than anyone. Have you anything to say? Anything we should know?”
“My wife’s taken the objects we feel any attachment to. In God’s name, use whatever you can find to aid you. I don’t care what’s destroyed. Use settees for defense, tables as barricades. Launch vases or chairs as projectiles without a thought of the condition you leave them in. General, I can show you the plans for the manor, so you have a better idea of what we’re working with.”
The general nodded. His voice held a gravelly quality that lent his words an authoritative edge. “I know you’ve protected your home with magic. It’s just as well, for this place wasn’t built to be a fortress. Made of simple brick. Stone would be better, Ingleton. As things stand, every window’s a point of entry. You have no towers or parapets to repel a siege.”
Vane reminded him, “We can’t attack them on the grounds. They can transport away from there. We’ll need to lure them in, and once we do, keep them here. If we can guard the exits, they’re ours.”
Bruan observed, “That means we’ll need soldiers near every ground floor window. Preferably
with a sorcerer.”
Walten and Wilhem shared an uncomfortable glance. The tall, dark-skinned twins stared at Vane with a respect and a trust that turned the duke’s stomach, while the girl with the angular face took up her braid again. He had to admit—for he couldn’t expose Kora—“Every sorcerer to our name is in this room.”
They numbered nine. Only nine: Zacry, Lottie, Vane himself, Kora’s two sons, and Jane and her three students. They were half what Linstrom possessed in terms of sorcerers, and if Linstrom brought all his followers…. Two hundred, each with some power. Vane could only hope Bruan’s soldiers might offset Oakdowns’s disadvantage.
Vane was contemplating the army’s skill when the parlor doors swung wide and Hune Phinnean tromped in with five hounds in tow. He held a bow, a good, sturdy one, and had slung a quiver of arrows to lie at an angle across his back. To begin, he addressed his father and his father alone.
“Valkin says a sorcerer came for General Bruan and Gratton. At your orders. I know what’s going on, and I’m helping. I won’t have it said we left Oakdowns for Vane and the army to defend while we went on without a care in the Palace. Valkin must run your kingdom. He needs Neslan. Their place is elsewhere, and not for reasons of cowardice. That means mine is among your troops. I’m more than a fair outdoorsman, and a trained archer. As for these dogs, they’ve been bred from generations of the most apt and able hounds in Podrar. They’ll defend me and those with me better than any man could.”
Hune paused as he noticed the crowd behind his father for the first time. He told the king, “You’ve had much on your mind this morning, I’m sure. You must have forgotten to summon me here, but no matter. I’ve come.”
Rexson’s mouth became a taut line, but he nodded at his son. Vane sensed the king needed someone to take command, to restore order, so he offered, “I’ll have Hayden Grissner sent for.” Another archer, commonborn but now the Duke of Crescenton. One of the king and Kora’s companions in the days of the Crimson League. “We can post him and Hune at the stairwells with guards at their backs. I’ll send for Thad Greller too. We can use his sword. He’ll fight beside me. I’d like the rest of the sorcerers in pairs. Zacry and Lottie. Wil and Walten. The Wolding twins. Jane and….”
The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) Page 27