The Dagger's Path

by Glenda Larke

  He ignored her words and picked up a piece of parchment from his lap. “This letter arrived from my ambassador to Ardrone. It contains news which might be of interest to you, but I was debating whether it is fit for your ears.”

  She blinked in surprise. Rarely did Vilmar mention his correspondence to her. “Not ill news, I trust.” Her heart thumped uncomfortably fast as she seated herself in the second chair at the table, glancing at the open bottle of wine and his empty goblet.

  “Judge it as you will.” He looked down at the sheet of parchment he held. “It seems the King and his heir have had a falling out of considerable consequence. Prince Ryce blinded his sire and then fled to his northern estates.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She blurted the words without thinking. “Prince Ryce would never do any such thing.”

  Vilmar snorted. “Of course, you would defend your family. However, my ambassadors are not in the habit of lying to their liege lord.”

  “No. No, of course not, Your Grace.” She tried to appear contrite rather than stunned, but it was difficult. The idea was ludicrous. “Has–has he lost his wits then, Your Grace?”

  “It seems that way.”

  She had no idea what could have happened in Throssel, but she was certain the ambassador had been deceived. Still, I can make the most of this. She flapped a hand in front of her face, panting. “Oh, my heart is jumping so! I think perhaps a glass of wine…” She reached for the open bottle on the table, but there was no clean glass. “Might I use your goblet?” she murmured.

  He waved a hand in assent, so she filled his empty wineglass, sipped a little and then sat with her head dropping, holding the goblet below the level of the table where he could not see it. She leaned over, her hair flopping forward to further block his view. With one hand she pulled the bottle of sleeping drops out of her pocket and poured a generous amount into the wine. She stoppered the phial once more and slipped it back.

  “Prince Ryce is the fool I thought him to be,” the Regal was saying, his smug satisfaction obvious. “And Ardrone is finished as a rival to our wealth and power.”

  She swallowed her anger and smiled wanly. “I’m sure you’re right, my liege. I am deeply ashamed of my own blood. That my brother should behave so badly–it is inconceivable!” She stood up and placed the glass in front of him. “I think this wine will go to my head. Let me massage your shoulders, and we perhaps can turn our thoughts to more pleasurable things…?” She moved behind him and started to rub his shoulders with gentle fingers. “Sip your wine and relax.”

  He almost fell asleep in the chair after finishing only half the glass. Hurriedly, she urged him into bed. He was asleep the moment he laid his head on the pillow. She tried to wake him, but he was gently snoring. She flung what remained of the wine in the glass out of the window then returned to the bed, looking down at him.

  Once he might have been a strong man; now he just looked pathetic, with sunken eyes and shrunken thighs, his hair thin and patchy, his shanks spindly, his dry skin sagging on his frame. She put on his bed socks and nightcap, then pulled up the bedclothes. He didn’t stir.

  She picked up the ambassador’s letter and read it all. There was some more detail about the argument between her brother and her father, and an attack on Ryce during a hunt, but no detail that explained how the King had been blinded or why Ryce was blamed. She frowned over it, but try as she might, it all seemed nonsensical. At least the ambassador made it clear where Ryce was; he’d gone to his own estates in the north. That in itself was odd–his southern properties were much more congenial. His castle in the north was fortified, a cold and bleak place by all reports. The kind of place a man might go to if he feared for his life.

  She dropped the letter back on the table, shivering, then walked to the door into the dressing room, where Torjen was nodding off in one of the chairs, waiting for permission to go to bed.

  “The Regal sleeps,” she said. “Please draw the bed curtains and dampen the fire. Then you may go to bed.”

  She didn’t wait for him, but left the door open and retreated to the stair with her candle. Quickly, before Torjen had entered the bedchamber, she picked up the grout in its wrapping and rammed it inside the well of the lock in the door jamb. When she pulled the door closed, the thin cambric ends were flattened between the door and jamb. The deadlock on the door was unable to click into place, but she knew that if Torjen looked at it, he would think it properly closed.

  Back upstairs in her own bedroom, she was glad to see she was alone. Quietly so as not to wake the chambermaid, she paced back and forth across the room trying to make sense of the news from Ardrone, and failing miserably. Va, how she hated being helpless and uninformed.

  Well, that period in her life would soon be over. She’d make sure of that.

  She waited until after she’d heard the midnight tocsin, then picked up her candleholder again and returned to Vilmar’s bedchamber. When she pushed the door, it swung back open with minimum resistance. She pulled the kerchief out, and the grout came with it, leaving no sign that anyone had tampered with the lock. Leaving the door open, she placed the candleholder and the kerchief on the lowest step and crept into the room.

  It was in near darkness. There was a little moonlight filtering in through the thick glass of the window and a dim glow from the dampened fire, but that was all. If Torjen had left any candles burning, they had since guttered. The only sound was that of the Regal’s noisy breathing from behind the curtains of his bed.

  She crept over to the door to the dressing room, to find Torjen had left it ajar. Listening at the gap, she could hear him snoring in the room beyond. With infinite care, she closed the door and retreated to the stairway to collect her candle. This she took to the table between the bed and the window. She opened up the curtains around Vilmar’s bed to let in a little light and picked up one of his many pillows.

  Apparently she had not given him enough of the sleeping draught to kill him. She regarded him dispassionately as he lay on his back, mouth open, snuffling. Then, climbing up on to the bed, she knelt with a leg on either side of his body. He still did not move.

  “They say,” she said softly, “that you murdered your first wife. She was Ardronese, and royal, related to me, but you killed her because she didn’t give you any children. Well, neither did I, Vilmar Vollendorn.”

  He didn’t stir.

  She shrugged and placed the pillow over his face. Pressing it down with her hands, she lay on top of him, spreading her weight over his face and upper body to make it hard for him to move. She expected him to struggle, and prepared herself. He moved under her, trying to turn his face sideways. His legs kicked, but his movements were feeble, the faint attempts of a drugged man to escape a fate he was incapable of recognising. She maintained the pressure long past its need.

  When she lifted the pillow, he was silent, his breathing stopped. His mouth sagged open. She reached out to pick up the candle and brought it to his face. His eyes were open, and he was now staring at her with a blank, sightless gaze, quite lifeless.

  She stared back.

  “That,” she said, “was no more than you deserve, Vilmar Vollendorn. What price your Bengorth’s Law now? How many have died just to keep a Vollendorn backside on the Basalt Throne?”

  His eyes did not blink.

  She smiled at him. “Let me tell you this: the next arse that sits there has not a drop of your blood. So much for the supposed power of A’Va.” She tapped him on the nose. “You should have put your faith in Va.”

  Wriggling off the bed, she stood at his side to replace his cap on his head, rearrange the pillows and straighten the bedclothes. Then she leaned forward to close his eyelids. With one final check to make sure she had left nothing behind, not even a drop of candle grease, she closed the bed curtains.

  After padding across to reopen the door to the retiring room where Torjen still snored, she left it open just a crack, then returned to the spiral staircase. From there, she took one la
st look at the room. All appeared to be in place. She picked up the grout, pulled the door shut behind her and, smiling, made her way back to bed. No one could point the finger at her; the Regal had been asleep when Torjen drew the curtains around the bed, and the closed door to the spiral staircase meant that she could not have returned.

  She would sleep well that night.

  She woke the next morning to the news of Vilmar’s death.

  No one suspected a thing. The court was plunged into mourning and she was the only person truly ready for it. She had long since laid her plans to divide and rule the Council of Regency, and knew her success depended on her alignment with her son so that any disagreement with the Regala would also appear to be disloyalty to the Prince-regal. She had already been playing one off against another while the Regal was still alive.

  With Lady Friselda, she didn’t even bother to be subtle. The first time she met the ward’s-dame after news of the Regal’s death, the old woman was pale-faced and red-eyed. Mathilda could almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

  “You’ve never liked me,” she said briskly. “And I have resented your interference between my husband and me. One thing I have admired, though,” she added after the first sentiment had time to register, “is your loyalty to my beloved husband.”

  “I always supported my cousin,” Friselda said.

  “I understand he paid you an allowance, as well as supplying you with your well-appointed solar.”

  Lady Friselda inclined her head. “That is so.”

  “In return, you acted as his spy.”

  The old lady said nothing.

  “I imagine you might find retirement from court both boring and a pecuniary embarrassment.”

  “Possibly.” The words were emotionless, but her eyes were haunted.

  “I know your loyalty will now lie with His Grace’s son. Perhaps you would therefore be willing to allow that our aims match: we both want the best for him and for his reign.”

  Friselda’s gaze sharpened with hope and Mathilda knew she was about to snare her first real ally. All one has to do, she thought, is find out what a person fears most, and what they need most… “At the moment, I can’t see any reason for you to retire from court, Lady Friselda. We have a funeral to organise. And after that, a coronation.”

  After which you will be my spy among the court women.

  28

  Returning to Javenka

  Think, Ardhi. You have to stop her. You can’t bask in the sun and expect the sakti to do it for you. You know this place. There has to be a way…

  He was standing at the helmsman’s shoulder guiding him through the tricky entrance as Golden Petrel slipped into Javenka harbour in the last hour of sunshine. He ought to have been concentrating on the task at hand; the entrance was a narrow passage between age-old forts glowering from rocky outcrops on either side, their cannon a hint that it might pay to be a courteous visitor.

  He glanced at Lord Juster fidgeting beside him. “What’s the matter, cap’n?” he asked softly. Is your reliance on a barefoot, dark-skinned lascar to negotiate a safe passage troubling you?

  “Are you sure we don’t need to ask for a local pilot?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Juster stared grimly ahead. “I came here as a cabin boy when I was twelve. We used a lead line to sound the depth then.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “How can you be sure we have enough water under the keel? You rake her bottom, and the keel-raking I mention then will be yours, not Petrel’s.”

  “I know passage.” He wasn’t about to admit his knowledge was theoretical. He’d never actually brought a ship through the entrance himself, but he had stood at the shoulder of a helmsman and watched the rocks slide by before.

  “Saker said you came here to study.” Juster’s jaw was tight, and the clasped hands behind his back were white-knuckled.

  “That’s right,” he agreed. “Helmsman, steady ahead. Two beacons on hill, one high, one low. Keep lined up, understand?”

  “Aye, aye.”

  “Dead languages, divinity and philosophy?” Juster asked.

  “Actually, navigation and pilotage, astronomy, cartography and hydrography.” Not knowing the words in Ardronese, he used the Pashali ones instead, but a blank look told him Lord Juster’s knowledge of the language did not stretch that far.

  Probably just as well.

  Think, Ardhi. How can you stop Sorrel disembarking here? You have to be clever about this.

  They passed the forts safely and the passage opened up into a large expanse of water surrounded by hills on which the city was built.

  Skies above, it’s beautiful. I was so happy here. And so ridiculously young. “Best we anchor in front of harbourmaster’s building.” He pointed it out. “They will send someone to talk to us.”

  “Why?”

  “They do this for all ships. Tax you. Want to know what you want. Maybe harbourmaster himself come. Best Lord Juster be polite.”

  “Lord Juster is always polite, Ardhi,” Juster said. “Finch, give the orders aloft.”

  Saker, who had been scanning the harbour with the ship’s spyglass, now turned to address Juster as the sailors began hauling in the sails not yet furled. “Remember what happened to Lord Denworth’s fleet here. They were held to ransom. Pashalin didn’t take kindly to the idea of merchant ships bypassing the mastodon caravan routes.”

  “I know, I know. But we aren’t a merchantman. They should be happy to see a privateer.” Juster grinned. “Our presence on the high seas encourages overland trade. Can you see any of the Lowmian fleet?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll catch up with them in our next port of call,” Juster said.

  Kotabanta, Ardhi thought. Where he thinks he’ll get his revenge. His gut twisted. He knew that port even better than he knew Javenka. Sands, how I hate this. Your half of the world brings little but trouble to mine, Lord Juster.

  He glanced over to where Sorrel was pointing out the scenery to Piper. He doubted she’d heard a word. She was focused on the city, and there was tension in her stance and an ache in her voice that told him she was appalled by what she saw. He remembered the first time he’d laid eyes on Javenka himself, remembered the suffocating fear of knowing he was going to be alone in a place so vast, so alien.

  I have to stop her.

  No longer needed by the helmsman, he moved away from the helm to her side. “All will be good,” he said as the ship slowed and the crew prepared to drop anchor. “I promise you.”

  Her look told him what she thought of his foolish platitudes. She’d already done all she could to make her onward journey as safe as possible; he admired that. She’d spent hours each day with either him or Saker learning Pashali. She’d weaned Piper. She’d kept herself fit by practising the moves of silat, the warrior’s way, that he’d showed her, and by climbing the rigging when the weather allowed. She had muscles now, and a body that was lean and hard. The whole time she’d been on board, she’d continued to use her glamour to cover the clothes she actually wore: men’s culottes and a sailor’s cotton shirt. He wondered if she knew that he–like Saker–could see through the glamour. He was sure she never guessed how much he loved the way she looked in those men’s clothes, how much he admired the tan of sun-darkened skin, the litheness of the way she moved now, the ease with which she climbed. She stirred him the same way Lastri had stirred him, but he took special care never to show it. There was no point.

  Now, just looking at her, he knew how terrified she was, and how determined to overcome her fear. He said gently, “I don’t break promise.”

  “How can you possibly know Piper and I will be safe all the way to Vavala?” There was no mistaking her derision. “You won’t be there.”

  “You are both under protection of Chenderawasi.”

  She flicked a scornful glance his way, and it hurt. “Go away, Ardhi. I wish I’d never met you. It’s your wretched Chenderawasi sorcery that did this to me in the fir
st place.”

  Sialan! Damn it, she knew how to twist his gut with guilt. He wanted to touch her cheek, tell her he would always protect her if he could, but assurances were useless. Hiding his pain, he effaced himself.

  He climbed aloft to help furl the last of the sails as the anchor splashed into the water, wincing as his shoulder pained him. It still ached from where the shaft of splintered wood had lodged itself, chipping bone from his clavicle.

  When the other tars returned to deck, he stayed up there, swung his arm to loosen up the muscles while the dusk crept from the shadowed bay to the streets canyoned by the buildings of the city.

  Four years, more or less. Four years since he’d left Javenka and the long downward spiral had begun. He’d been happy here, full of youthful optimism, revelling in the joy of learning, in the challenges of the new. His mentor, Istanel, had called Javenka the most learned city of the civilised world; perhaps he was right.

  Certainly, by comparison, Ustgrind was drab and lacking in intellectual stimulation, while Throssel was grubby and full of inequities. But this? Javenka was the City of Glass and Learning, each quarter intimately known to him, and appreciated.

  Across the hilltops known as Javenka-on-High, the last rays of the sun glinted from oblong windows like a line of fiery hearths. The building sprawled along the crest was the Library, founded a thousand years in the past by a woman and her crippled brother.

  It was there he’d forged relationships with his teachers that had opened his mind to the world. Istanel’s words echoed in his memory: Pay attention, Ardhi; back home you might have safely paddled your canoe in the lagoon, but you need to study mathematics if you wish to explore the oceans!

  Below Javenka-on-High was Javenka-the-Midst, tumbling from the centre of learning to the flatland. Here, rows of conjoined shops and tenements were squeezed apart by tortuous winding lanes and stone stairs. Steps, so many steps, so many wild foot races, and irate citizens berating the racing students for their reckless, drunken ways.