Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  The battle rage buoys me up like a piece of flotsam in a storm. Both my sword and my arm flare blue light as the runes catch and fire, and I run into the enemy, laughing that high-edged lunatic laughter that is the true mark of Ires’s Chosen. Faced with the sight of me, the men hesitate and break, trying to run, but too late. I take them one by one, hewing into them as if I’m clearing a path.

  The first one dies when my sword slices across his throat. Blood gushes out in a fountain. The man next to him slips in the old leaves, and I take him with a diagonal cut into his neck that sends him flopping to the ground. The next man gets the point of my blade in his gut, and then I whirl to take the fourth with a cut across his hamstrings, leaving him writhing in the dirt, unable to walk.

  Eventually, some of the men conquer their fear of me. I can’t figure the odds, except that the men I kill seem to be replaced as soon as I kill them. I smash a man in the face with the knuckles of my right hand. Chips of bone jut up through his skin, and a fine spray of blood leaves its salt tang on my lips.

  I lick the blood away, and my arm burns. The only way to relieve that sort of pain is to swing it, so I do.

  But my blade meets more metal than flesh, and I look up wildly for Arsenault, breaking my trance.

  A hilt slams into my stomach; the rage falters as I buckle over, still clutching my sword. Another hilt comes slamming down into the back of my head, and light sparks bright and hot. I lash out with my sword before I lose my grip on it and—

  “Arsenault!” I call.

  “Never here when you need him, is he, dove?”

  The sword lies in front of me. I’m on my knees in the dirt. I can’t see for the pain, but maybe my eyes are closed. I end up looking at boots, blurry around the edges.

  I tilt my head up, and a face swims in my vision. Blue-black hair, dark eyes, a raven’s profile… Surely, I’m dreaming.

  “Lobardin?” I say.

  He squats in front of me so I can look at him eye to eye. “I took a liking to your father’s estates,” he whispers.

  He wears a blue armband. I struggle to push myself forward, to close my metal fingers around the hilt of my sword, but Lobardin grabs my wrist and holds it up before I can.

  “So, the stories are true?”

  I snatch my hand back. “Where is Arsenault?”

  The crack of a gunshot takes me by surprise. The squeal of a horse and the thud of its body hitting the ground.

  Lobardin winces, but then he grins. “There he is, dove. Just there.”

  “Gods curse you, Lobardin—”

  I yank one of the hatpins from my hair and throw myself at him. But he steps away from me with a quick, languid step, and his sword is out and coming down toward my head, hilt-first, in a blow that is going to slam me into the dirt.

  I drive the pin into his forearm, but too late.

  I am in the dirt, part of the dirt, swept over by blackness.

  I keep going down, down, down for a long time.

  Chapter 28

  “Fetch more water!” a man shouts. “That can’t all be her blood, can it?”

  Lobardin. I groan and open my eyes.

  I’m looking up at a cloudless blue sky punctuated by the spearheads of cypress trees. I must be on the road, on the other side of Murderer’s Ridge.

  I try to sit up and ropes pull taut at my wrists and ankles. I’m on a pallet. I blink my eyes to clear my vision, but the blur remains.

  My head is one heavy, lumbering mass of pain.

  “Lobardin!”

  My voice comes out weak, and a pain lances through my left temple. I close my eyes against it. The wind pushes beneath my loosened bodice. The folds of my dress cling wetly to me where they’ve tried to wash me. I pull at my ropes, but the movement just makes sick waves in my head.

  I open my eyes again and Lobardin’s face takes the place of the sky.

  “So, you are alive. I was beginning to wonder. I thought I might have to flee the country yet again, take up another commission.”

  “How did Geoffre catch you this time?”

  He laughs. “You think I’m working for Geoffre? You always did think so little of me, didn’t you?”

  You give me no cause not to.

  “Kyrra.”

  I try to focus again, and he leans closer, looking concerned. A white rag is wrapped around his forearm, but there’s no other indication that I managed to hurt him.

  “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard, in truth.”

  I laugh. Weak laughter, but it’s mine, not the magic’s. Still the wrong response, to judge by Lobardin’s frown and the way he pulls back.

  “Bring water,” he says to someone as he stands. “Make sure you wash that wound well.”

  What wound?

  Cypress trees swing crazily as I try to lift myself up off the pallet, then fall back, retching.

  Where is Arsenault? I want to shout. But the pain is too much. Darkness falls on me like a stone.

  I’m in a coach. Eagles cry outside, but all I can see is rose-colored velvet. I’m lying on my stomach, on a bench cushion. The velvet crushes against my cheek, soft and warm.

  My arms are bound behind me, and my ankles are bound too.

  Some of the pain is gone, but not all. I smell less like blood and vomit, but there’s another familiar smell in the coach with me.

  Kacin smoke.

  A man sighs and the other seat creaks. Smoke tickles my nose, cloying and sweet. I hold my breath so I won’t breathe it in, but my need for air betrays me.

  I cough and booted feet thump down on the floor. In an instant, someone pulls my head up by my hair, and I’m staring at Lobardin again. His pupils are so large and black, they almost swallow the color of his eyes. He puts his face too close to mine and breathes the over-sweet scent of kacin onto me.

  I cough again and try to twist away, but the movement makes my head hammer.

  “Kyrra,” he says, smiling. Then he leans back from me hesitantly. “Are you going to vomit any more?”

  “If you blow your smoke in my face. Gods, Lobardin.”

  He chuckles. I hear a clack when he picks up his pipe again, smoke still swirling out of it. He draws on it deeply, swaying with the motion of the coach, then blows the smoke out above my head.

  “Where’s Arsenault?”

  “Behind the wagon. I wouldn’t have recognized him if you hadn’t called his name. A master of disguises, our Arsenault.”

  “He should have killed you while he had the chance.”

  Lobardin grins. “His mistake, eh?”

  “Where’s Mikelo?”

  “Mmm. Mikelo.” Lobardin’s eyes are so glazed, I’m amazed he can even speak. It’s hard to gauge the emotions running over his face. “Mikelo is riding in front. Best keep him alive and well for the moment.”

  I try to remember who Lobardin said he was working for, but can’t.

  “Geoffre will want him whole.”

  Lobardin snorts. He’s turning something that glints in the light over in his hands, and I realize it’s my other hatpin. Metal gleams on the seat beside him, and I think it’s the knife I was keeping in my stays. The familiar feel of all my other hidden knives is gone, too, as well as the gun. But it was useless without shot.

  “Geoffre wants the world handed to him on a platter,” he says. “Let him try after it. He’s made a mistake this time, and I hope he knows it. His son’s finally gotten some balls.”

  Which son? I wish Lobardin’s tongue was just a little looser. He takes another pull from the pipe, and I shift my head so I can look around better.

  A plush carriage, a bit fragile for the mountain roads, even if they are Eterean-laid in this part of the foothills. No colors or symbols hang in its interior to tell me whose coach it is. The curtains are velvet, like the cushions, but aside from that, the interior is devoid of the trappings one might expect.

  “Devid put you up to this, did he? He wanted Mikelo?”

  Lobardin opens his mouth. The words seem read
y to slide out, then he clamps his lips shut and squints at me.

  “I don’t think I should divulge that information right now. Why don’t you go back to being comatose?”

  “You’d have to hit me again for that.”

  He puts the hatpin down and it rolls into the crack of the seat against the side of the carriage and then slides off onto the floor. Lobardin, his senses smoothed by kacin, doesn’t notice. Instead, he leans toward me again, reaching out for my head. I jerk away and pain slams me, leaving me gasping for breath.

  I lie as still as I can while his fingers probe the back of my head. Finally, they rest on a tender spot.

  “Gods,” I wheeze. “Gods, gods.”

  “The chirurgeon assures me you’ll heal. But you need to rest. You’ll need your strength.”

  “Where are we going?” I gasp.

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  Then he grasps me by my hair and shoves his pipe in my mouth.

  The pipe feels like it’s going down my throat. He pinches my nose. I gag and struggle, pain battering me like swords on a battlefield.

  “Breathe. Kyrra, damn you, breathe,” Lobardin mutters over and over again, and gods save me, but I can’t help breathing.

  I fight for breath, and with it comes a rush of the purest kacin smoke I’ve ever tasted, sweeping down my throat.

  When he takes the pipe away, I shout at him, “I hope you rot, Lobardin!”

  He tries to jam the pipe in my mouth again. I roll away, but he catches me and shoves it in. “Just be quiet, Kyrra,” he says. “Would you? For both our sakes.”

  The kacin unpins me. I rise in its arms like a bird.

  “The eagles will eat you, Lobardin,” I hear myself whisper.

  He starts to laugh, but it’s a mad laugh. Like mine.

  “Let them,” he says.

  The slamming of the coach door wakes me up. It’s night. I flop around, disoriented, before another face peers down at me. A man’s face. Mikelo.

  Metal flashes—Lobardin holding Arsenault’s sword at Mikelo’s back. The runes stand out in the moonlight.

  “They let me see you,” Mikelo says. “Just for a moment. Are you all right?”

  I try to nod, but it makes me queasy. Kacin dreams can turn about on you, and I’ve not had good ones. Battle mostly, and Erelf’s ravens circling around the eagles.

  “Did they hurt you?” I ask. My voice is raspy from the smoke and my throat hurts.

  “Not much.”

  “Have you seen Arsenault?”

  Mikelo starts to answer, but Lobardin lays the blade against Mikelo’s back. “I said you could see her. I didn’t say you could have a conversation with her.”

  Mikelo glares at Lobardin. “This is ridiculous. If my uncle sent you—”

  “He didn’t,” I say quickly, somehow, finally, making the connections. “Cassis did. Didn’t he?”

  Mikelo looks at me, startled, and Lobardin grabs him by the collar and yanks him away.

  “I was wondering when you’d figure that out,” Lobardin says, still pressing the blade against Mikelo’s back. His teeth glint in the moonlight as he smiles.

  “Cassis?” Mikelo says. “How could he know—”

  Lobardin’s grin grows wider. “He heard it from a raven.”

  I go cold. “Jon told him, didn’t he?”

  “Do you still want to see Arsenault?” Lobardin asks.

  The hatpin still gleams on the floor. It’s rolled toward the door now.

  I shove off with my toes against the side of the couch and shoot forward, off the bench. I land on top of the hatpin, jerk myself forward until I can grab it with my hands, and launch myself into Mikelo and Lobardin. And then—

  Everything’s a muddle. Cursing and pain, a tangle of arms and legs under me, I stab into flesh with the hatpin as hard as I can and hope to all the heavens I’ve hit Lobardin. He swears, loudly, in pain, and all of a sudden, I’m heaved up by my hair and Mikelo hits the side of the coach with a heavy thud. Lobardin takes his foot away from Mikelo’s ribs, and my hands spasm open with the pain that shoots through my head and I drop the hatpin.

  Mikelo makes a wheezy sound as he tries to breathe. Lobardin yanks my head back and rests the sword against my throat. Blood drips dark through the white bandage on his arm, but it doesn’t seem to affect him much.

  “That’s Arsenault’s sword,” I gasp, through the red wash of anger and pain.

  “And if you ever want to see him again, you’ll be still. If Jon hadn’t pleaded their case, they’d be dead by now. It’s you Cassis wants, and it’s you who’s going to be keeping those two alive. All right?”

  I’m trembling. The blade presses cold and hard against the skin of my throat, and the runes flash light in my eyes.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “There, now,” Lobardin says. “That’s a good girl.” He shoves me down on the bench again. I bite my lip and it bleeds. The blood tastes like salt and copper.

  “Geoffre won’t stand for it,” Mikelo says.

  Lobardin shrugs and sheathes the sword. “Geoffre may not have a choice. Now up and out.”

  Mikelo glowers at him for a moment, but we’re surrounded by a detachment of guards. Finally, he gets up and Lobardin begins to lead him away.

  “How many men did I kill?” I call out to Lobardin on impulse.

  Lobardin stops and turns his head slightly but not enough to look back at me.

  “Seven,” he says. “And wounded three.”

  The numbers should give me some satisfaction, but they don’t. “Put Arsenault in the coach,” I say. “And keep Mikelo well. Or I start hurting myself. Who knows how much I’ll be able to take with this head wound.”

  “Kyrra!” Mikelo says. But I know what I’m doing.

  Lobardin faces me. His eyes are dark like the night so I can’t see into them. “You would,” he says after staring at me for a moment. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Death doesn’t frighten me.”

  Seven men and three wounded. I hope he takes my words for truth. The Rojornicki always did.

  He watches me a moment more. His voice wavers when he says, “If I put Arsenault in here and you try to escape, you have my word that I will gut Mikelo and string his entrails up for those eagles. I’m not beholden to Jon for anything. If Mikelo’s life means nothing to you, then I promise Arsenault will have no mercy.” His teeth flash in the darkness as he smiles.

  “And this time, I think he’ll break for good.”

  In a few moments, I hear thumping and men’s voices behind the coach, then nervous laughter. I strain to filter Arsenault’s voice from the din, but I can’t. Steel rings against the stones, and I jump, then lay still, shaking.

  In another moment, the door opens and Lobardin shoves Arsenault inside.

  He hits the floor of the coach on his shoulder, hands bound behind him. He gasps and grimaces, then opens his eyes and looks up at me.

  The tatters of his dirty shirt flutter in the breeze. He smells like blood and sweat and earth. Lobardin stands behind him, on the ground, and he hasn’t shut the door of the coach because Arsenault’s feet still hang out of it.

  “Kyrra,” Arsenault says in barely a whisper.

  I make some noise—nothing with words. Lobardin shouts, “Get in if you’re going!”, and Arsenault slowly gathers his knees underneath him and rolls sideways, drawing his feet inside the coach.

  “Help him sit up,” I tell Lobardin.

  Lobardin sighs. “Now, tell me,” he says, “who’s in charge here?”

  But he grabs the top bar of the doorway and swings himself up and into the coach, then grasps Arsenault’s arms and pulls him into a sitting position on the floor, wedging him against the other side of the coach.

  The front of Arsenault’s shirt is a mass of blood and mud.

  “Your wound,” I whisper.

  “It holds.”

  “How charming,” Lobardin says. “Such a reunion.”

  I glare at Lobardin.
“I’ll cut off your balls and feed them to you, Lobardin, I swear. Get me up.”

  “That arm hasn’t improved your disposition,” Lobardin says, but he pulls me into a sitting position. I lean back against the wall of the coach and close my eyes for a moment to get my bearings.

  The coach creaks as Lobardin sits down beside Arsenault. “Now. We’re all together again, heading back to your father’s lands. Except this is rather more the way I left it, isn’t it?”

  “My father banished you, Lobardin. You vent your anger on the wrong person.”

  Lobardin stops for a moment. Then he stretches his boots out in front of him and leans back. “Well, your father’s dead, isn’t he?”

  The knowledge makes no more than a flick of impact on his face. I wish I could see if his eyes betray any of his true thoughts. He was ever this way, and it stirs a fury in me I would do better to hold back.

  “Admit you’re working for the wrong man! Do you think Cassis will prevail against Geoffre for long? You think you’ll avoid the Prinze jaws by working for his son, on the basis of an old grudge?”

  Lobardin laughs. “I’ll take a lot from you, Kyrra, but spare me the hypocrisy. You came all this way to kill Cassis, didn’t you?”

  “It was my child and my arm. And I didn’t turn coat to my enemies because of it.”

  “And it was my life.” Lobardin’s boots thunk on the floor as he leans up. “Cassis stands against Geoffre now. You’d do well to let your own grudges go.”

  “Enough,” Arsenault says. “I don’t remember, but I think she speaks true. I never had the power to banish you. If Jon wanted you on the Aliente estate, why would I send you away?”

  “Were it not for Jon, you’d have killed me and been done with it in the first place.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Lobardin gives a short bark of laughter. “You’re not endearing yourself to your captor, Arsenault.”

  Arsenault tugs on his ropes a little. “We both know that would be impossible.”

  Lobardin smiles. There is more cruelty on his face than I ever saw before. It makes me shiver, like a wind walking up my back.