by Ellyn, Court
“No,” Nathryk drawled, emerging from the corridor. Arryk slid back into the chair, a cold certainty seeping through him.
Nathryk peered over his shoulder to see if he’d been followed. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead, and his breathing came short and fast, as if he’d run all the way.
“Is it my turn now?” Arryk asked.
A dazed, excited gleam glinted in Nathryk’s black eyes, like light on a razor’s edge.
Arryk’s teeth chattered he shook so hard. “I ex-expected assassins in-instead.”
Nathryk glided between the shelves. “Did I send assassins for Bhodryk?”
“No, brother.” Will it hurt? Please, Goddess, don’t let it hurt.
“Both of them,” Nathryk mused, pausing only four feet from the desk, a wistful smile on his face. “So beautiful, bodies twisted and broken.” Was he reveling in that image? Yes, taking deep pleasure in it.
It has to sting, Istra had said. Arryk nodded to himself and casually dropped his left hand into his lap, felt for the dagger. The sheath was empty!
Nathryk saw the surprise on his face and grinned. “Is this what you’re looking for?” He pulled the dagger from his belt, flipped it in agile fingers. “I found others, too. How many more have you planted? Tsk, tsk.”
Arryk panted, all his efforts to rein in his terror withering fast. “Is that how you killed Aunt Ki’eva?” The idea of her striking the stones while still alive was too much to bear. But she had screamed, hadn’t she. Arryk gained his feet, slowly, so lightheaded he felt as if he floated out of the chair.
Nathryk pretended to be offended by the question. “Aunt Ki’eva jumped. Couldn’t handle the rigors of office, you know.” He snickered. “And you? No one will even miss you.”
Arryk sprang around the desk, twisting from his brother’s reaching hand, and raced for the door. Nathryk’s voice pursued him, so close: “I had other plans for you, but never mind.” A grip on the back of Arryk’s shirt stopped him, and he spun to the side. The blade meant for his spine bit deep across his ribs. He howled and muscled an elbow into Nathryk’s face. Bone cracked, and Nathryk dropped the dagger to grasp his broken nose. Arryk dived for the blade, but Nathryk’s knee thudded into his side, sending him sprawling. “Come here, you little fucker.” His fist closed about Arryk’s shirt front and lifted him off the ground. A quick glimpse showed Arryk the blood oozing from Nathryk’s nose, but those strong arms spun him about, wrapped him up tightly, and lugged him toward the open window. Sunset hues and the outer wall swam sickeningly near. Bellowing a refusal, Arryk flung out his feet, braced them on each side of the window casement, and shoved back with every ounce of terror he possessed. The brothers collapsed in a heap. Arryk rolled free, saw the dagger just out of arm’s reach and scrambled for it. Nathryk’s hands were only inches behind, reaching, clawing. He seized Arryk around the nape, smashed his face to the floor just as Arryk’s hand closed on the leather haft. He flailed madly, tasting blood and dust, and hoping the blade would catch something, anything, and convince Nathryk to let him go. Goddess, his neck was going to snap.
The blade bit. Nathryk swore. The pressure of his hand let up just enough to let Arryk turn and jab again. Nathryk leapt aside, ran for the library door, but stumbled sideways into a bookshelf. Books and scrolls rained down around him.
Coughing and gasping, Arryk pushed himself to his knees, dagger poised, but Nathryk clutched his own throat. Blood spurted between his fingers. Black eyes grew wide with denial, and a hand reached out, frantic. Arryk dropped the dagger and rushed to him. His hands worked vainly to stop the flow. Nathryk tried to shove him away, but Arryk persisted. Blood pumped through his fingers. “Stop!” he shrieked, but the blood kept coming. “I didn’t mean to!”
“Arryk!” Heavy boots pounded along the corridor, and Rance barged into the library. Master Graidyn followed, gasping and flushed. They gaped in horror at the spectacle of both princes drenched in blood.
“Help us!” Arryk cried.
Rance dived to his knees beside them, but what could he do? Graidyn’s face wrinkled up with a smirk, and he took a step back.
A gurgling sound escaped Nathryk’s lips as he tried to draw breath. He expelled a mouthful of blood, and his eyes glazed over. The fight ebbed from his body, and he slumped to the floor. His lifeblood spread in a dark mirror around him.
Arryk crab-crawled away, leapt to his feet. “I didn’t mean to! He was going to throw me out the window!” He turned in circles, bellowing wordlessly, until Rance grabbed him and held him close.
Over Rance’s shoulder, Arryk saw Graidyn staring at Nathryk’s body, his mouth moving in silent calculation. At last he nodded and said, “Rance, your sword.”
Rance turned, hand going for the pommel. “What about it?”
Graidyn tapped his belly. “Drive it here.”
“What? No!”
The tutor’s smile was peculiar as he turned to Arryk. “You will not be blamed for these deaths, Highness. You will be king unblemished.”
Understanding dawned in Rance’s face. He unsheathed his sword.
“No!” Arryk cried.
Rance lunged. Master Graidyn crumpled forward into his arms. Sickened, eyes welling, he lowered his old tutor to the floor. When Graidyn’s gasps stopped in his throat, Rance closed his eyes and reached for the dagger.
“What are you doing?” Arryk’s throat was raw with screaming.
“What’s best, Highness.” With tenderness, he wrapped Graidyn’s knotted fingers around the dagger’s haft, then glanced up at Arryk and insisted, “Graidyn killed your aunt and your brother both, do you understand? He hated them both and killed them. Nod if you hear me, Arryk.”
Arryk nodded. His teeth were chattering again.
Feet, many this time, hammered up the stairs at the far end of the corridor. Istra’s golden head rose into view. Her father followed, barking, “Find them!”
Lady Eritha and half a dozen of the Princess Regent’s guard started to disperse into the rooms to each side, but they stopped when they saw Arryk standing on the library threshold. Eritha’s hand flew to her mouth at the sight of the blood soaking his shirtfront. Istra ran.
Rance stepped over the bodies and hurried to intercept his sister and the others. He mumbled many lies.
“But Nathryk, I saw him!” Istra declared.
“No, you didn’t,” her brother insisted. “It was Master Graidyn you saw in the window, and that’s the end of it.” No one else argued.
No one but Arryk. I killed him, he thought, staring at his hands. He wiped them on his pant legs, but blood clung to the creases of his knuckles and palms.
A great rustle echoed under the vaulted ceiling as Lady Eritha, her son and grandchildren and all six guardsmen descended to their knees. “All hail the White Falcon,” said Eritha.
No! Arryk wanted to shout. Get up! But he had no more shouting left in him. He looked to Istra for help; she was smiling at him and gave him a tiny, brisk nod.
He clamped his jaw to make his teeth stop chattering, swept the fear and sorrow and horror from his face, and thought of his father. Standing over the bodies of his brother and his beloved tutor, he raised his chin, and his subjects lowered theirs.
~~~~
7
“Gold trickles down from the mountains in streams alongside rivers of dwarven blood.”
—Brugge, Master Thyrvael,
Assembly, 987 A.E.
Kelyn no longer indulged in wine, but with the debris of Assembly strewn throughout the keep and across the grounds, and with the sudden silence ringing in his ears, he was sorely tempted. The household staff drifted about the corridors and rooms, stiff and dull-eyed, collecting stray tea services, gathering sheets for washing and sweeping up random riffraff left by hundreds of careless highborns. The last of them had ridden out by noon, kicking up long trails of dust on the King’s Highway, but it always took Ilswythe several days to recover and pick up its routine again.
“This is
always the sweetest part of Assembly,” Rhoslyn said, pouring herself a glass of brandy. She spoke softly, no more wishing to disturb the silence than Kelyn did. “Sure you don’t want one?”
She poised the bottle over a second glass. Kelyn sank deeper into his chair, feeling as beaten and weary as his horse-breakers after a long day with a new stallion, and held his thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. Rhoslyn handed him the glass; it had more than a smidgeon of brandy in the bottom.
Kelyn gulped, grateful, then laid his head back, closed his eyes, and basked. The windows lining the solar had been opened to let in the freshening spring air. The breeze stirred the scents of rosemary and lavender, thyme and chamomile from Alovi’s shelves of herbs.
Rhoslyn’s voice broke the stillness. “Need something, Eliad? Looks like you could use a drink, too.”
Raising his head, Kelyn found his former squire lurking on the threshold. Indeed, he looked lost and shaken. “What’s wrong?”
He returned a sullen shrug. “Now that I’m knighted, what do I do? Laral got to return home to Tírandon and get a wife after his knighting. I can’t very well ride to Bramoran and train for an inheritance, can I?”
Kelyn set aside his brandy glass and exchanged a grin with Rhoslyn. “Well—”
Eliad’s rant wasn’t finished, however. “And there’s no bloody war to jump into and prove myself. The only option I can think of is hiring myself out as a mercenary in some foreign mess that I don’t care about anyway. What was it for, all that ceremony yesterday? A stupid waste of time, all those years of training.” He plopped himself down on a footstool, pouting as no proper knight would admit to doing.
“I thought you wanted to be one of the Falcon Guard,” Kelyn prodded. All his life, Eliad longed to rise above the cold, hard fact that he’d been born eleventh of the king’s twelve bastards. His father had shown him unwarranted favor by granted him a position as Kelyn’s squire. Eliad had trained hard, determined to earn a knighthood and the respect of men.
Kelyn’s reminder, however, only made things worse. “My father has to choose me, hasn’t he? Just like he chose you once upon a time. But that was after you had plenty of chances to prove yourself.”
“Well, go start a war, if that’s the way you feel. There’s always some ambitious idiot willing to fight on the other side.”
“Kelyn,” hissed Rhoslyn. She pushed herself from her chair to pour Eliad a drink. Lowering it into his hand, she said, “There must be many ways to prove yourself to the king.”
“My thanks, Your Grace. But being stuck in the Falcon Guard isn’t what I want anymore. I wouldn’t live at court, surrounded by all that hoopla, if my life depended on it. I don’t know what I want. Well, I do, sort of, but that’s the problem.” The common malaise after achieving one’s dreams was finding another to aspire to. Eliad watched the brandy swirl in the bowl of the glass. “I’ve saved every copper of my allowance, did you know that?”
Kelyn knew that Rhorek bestowed a small annual allowance upon each of his illegitimate children, but he never asked what Eliad did with it, just assumed he squandered it, as all boys do, on sweets and temporary amusements in town. But come to think of it, he’d never seen Eliad with any of those things.
“Every copper?”
“I’m a rich man, Kelyn, and what for? You even gave me a warhorse, so I have even less to spend it on.”
“I can take the horse back, if that will please you.”
“No!” Eliad exclaimed, then shook his head, abashed. “I didn’t mean to sound—”
“Stop toying with him,” Rhoslyn scolded.
Kelyn chuckled and dragged himself from the coziness of the armchair. “I’m sure we can think of something for you to do with your vast fortune, noble knight. Come with me.” Leading Eliad across the courtyard, Kelyn added, “I spoke with your father this week. He’s watched you more closely, I think, than you’re aware.”
Eliad glowered, doubting it. Those hazel eyes and broad cheekbones were all Rhorek’s.
“He told me how proud he was that he knighted you this week, of all the squires. So when I asked him for a certain favor, he didn’t fuss.” Kelyn entered the gatehouse and climbed the tower, around and around, and emerged atop the battlements.
“What favor? Aw, Kelyn, c’mon.”
How delightful to see Eliad whine over something worth whining about. Kelyn held his silence while he ambled along the crenels and came at last to the northeastern tower. With a gesture, he dismissed the sentry stationed there. Below, the meadows, rich with sheep and kine, stretched away to the tumbling white waters of the Avidan River. There on the distant hill was the stand of trees that he, Kieryn, and Rhoslyn had raced to when the world was still a safe, unsullied place. Farther north, the Silver Mountains reared up purple shoulders, and to the east, the snow-cloaked chain of the Drakhans marched, rank upon rank, farther than the eye could see. At last, Kelyn said, “I asked him for the privilege of retaining you as my vassal.”
Eliad barked incredulous laughter. “Privilege?”
“Aye, you’ve never failed me. Always seen to my needs as duty called, and in return, I intend to take care of you.” He swept an arm in an arc that encompassed his lands. “Choose.”
Eliad stared. “A landed lord? Me?”
Kelyn grinned, pleased at his power to shock. “I’m giving you any tract of land you desire. Preferably one near the border, way over there, so I don’t have to listen to your whining every day.”
Whirling, pacing, pressing his fists to his forehead, Eliad could hardly restrain himself. At last, he speared a finger toward the northeastern horizon. “I want that.” At the end of his finger, Mount Drenéleth spiraled into the sky, its wild, forested flanks teaming with game and silence.
“Lord Drenéleth? A nice ring to that. Will you have enough to spend your coin on now?”
Beaming, Eliad said, “I shall build a hunting lodge, and I expect you to visit often, m’ lord.”
Kelyn clapped him on the back. “It’s good, then.”
~~~~
Carah stuck out her tongue. “Nnnah!”
Kethlyn grit his teeth. “Stop it, brat! And stop following me!”
“You can’t make me. It’s my birthday. I can do whatever I want.”
All morning Carah had trailed her big brother from one end of the fortress to the other. There was no escaping her. He tried losing her in the towers, but she caught up to him on the wall, skipping carelessly close to the ledge. She even found him hiding among the sacks of flour in the pantries. He fled through the servants’ quarters, but she cornered him in the corridor. Now they stopped outside the nursery, and Kethlyn dug his fingernails into his palms swearing he’d waylay her.
Delicate pleats gathered between her dark eyebrows. “I told you, you should’ve taken me on the kitchen raid. That’s what I wanted for my birthday. But you left without me. You never take me on kitchen raids. Now I’m not going to leave you alone for one second.”
“You’re a nuisance!” he screamed in her face. “You don’t act like you’re six. You act like you’re still five. You should act more grown up, like me.”
“I am grown up,” she said, smug. “I have a new dress to prove it. And lots of other presents, and one day for my birthday, Mum and Da will give me Ilswythe. Mum said so yesterday. And after they give me Ilswythe, they’ll give me Windhaven.”
Kethlyn could ignore his sister’s boasting only so long; the last statement proved too much. His head snapped around, and he shouted, “Windhaven is mine! Evaronna will have only one duke, and that will be me.”
“But Mum said—”
“She didn’t say she’d give you Windhaven.” But what if she had? Was Carah telling the truth for once? He didn’t believe it. Mum took him to Windhaven every year, and Carah got to visit only sometimes, when Da brought her. Surely that meant something.
Carah shrugged, unaffected. “I’ll be Duke of Ilswythe then.”
Kethlyn groaned. “You can’t be a duke
. You’re a girl.”
“What’s Mum then, stupid?”
“Mother is a duchess. That’s how things work, dumbface. Boys are dukes. Girls are duchesses. But you’ll just be a lady. Ilswythe doesn’t have a duchess.”
Carah crossed her arms and pursed her lips, half pout, half stubborn determination. “I’m not a dumbface. And I can be a duchess if I want. It’s my birthday, so there!” Her tongue stabbed at him again.
Kethlyn dealt her a shove. She toppled onto her bottom, skirts and curls flying. But in accordance with the timeless law of sibling rivalry, Kethlyn exacted his revenge at the very moment his mother rounded the corner.
“Kethlyn! What have you done?”
He rounded on her, blue eyes flaring. “It wasn’t my fault! You didn’t hear what she said.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Mum declared, quick angry steps kicking up the hem of her skirt. “I’m sick of the ugly things you two say to one another. Just stay away from her.”
“I tried! You don’t get it. She’s a pain in the arse!”
Kethlyn clamped his mouth shut a second too late. Mum’s eyes popped wide. “From which of your father’s soldiers did you hear that?” She waved him to silence before he could choose from the dozen names that popped into his head. “Never mind. Just get to your studies. Etivva must be waiting for you by now.”
“But, Mum,” he whined, going limp in the spine and wriggling at the thought of such unbearable, unending torture.
“Move, soldier!” the duchess commanded, her finger as sharp and unyielding as a lance.
When he finally stalked off, scowling and mumbling, Rhoslyn turned to Carah. She had primly plucked herself off the tiles, and now opened her mouth to accuse her brother. Rhoslyn cut her short with a sharp jab of that finger. “And you, young lady, stop tormenting your brother. Who do you think you are?”
“But it’s my birthday.”
As if Rhoslyn could forget. Her daughter sang of this day’s approach for weeks beforehand, prizing her birthday above all other days of the year and not only because her parents had once been foolish enough to institute the no-punishment-on-your-birthday law. “We made the law, we can unmake it in the blink of an eye, my girl. I’ll swat you myself. Understand?”