by Janny Wurts
Commander Taskin had no words. His arid glance pricked to a wicked spark of irony, he had eyes only for the man in the plain cloak just ushered through the privy chamber door. The hood he tossed back unmasked his dark skin, the honesty a tactical embarrassment. Yet his brazen pride was not invulnerable. The soft, limping step—worse than Taskin remembered—was strategically eclipsed behind the taller bulk of Collain Herald.
That court worthy trundled to an awkward stop. Scarlet-faced, he delivered the requisite bows to honour vested sovereign and heir apparent. Blindingly resplendent in his formal tabard with its border of gold ribbons, and Sessalie’s falcon blazon stitched in jewelled wire, Collain announced the person the king’s word had summoned.
‘Attend! In his Majesty’s name, I present Mysh kael, Captain of the Garrison.’
II. Audience
AS THE COURT HERALD STRAIGHTENED FROM HIS BOW AND STEPPED ASIDE, MYKKAEL RECEIVED HIS FIRST CLEAR VIEW OF THE COURT FIGURES seated on the dais. They, in turn, measured him, while his tactician’s survey noted the Prince of Devall’s suppressed flinch. Apparently the princess’s suitor had not expected dark colouring, a commonplace reaction in the north. Mykkael gathered his own cursory impression: of smouldering good looks and tasteful, rich clothing, marred by a fine-drawn impatience. The proposed bridegroom seemed genuinely upset by her Grace’s disappearance. His statesman’s bearing showed signs of chafed poise as he paid deference to the reigning king of Sessalie.
As Mykkael must, also, though his war-trained awareness rankled for the fact Commander Taskin slipped away from his post and took position a half-step from his back. Mykkael had witnessed politics and intrigues aplenty, and court appointments far richer than Sessalie’s. Yet where the close proximity of wealth and power seldom ruffled his nerves, the senior guardsman’s presence raised his hackles. He felt newborn naked to be bladeless. Few kings, and fewer statesmen could size up his attributes with that trained killer’s astute eye.
A pinned mouse beneath the commander’s aggressive scrutiny, the garrison captain bowed. Foreigner though he was, his manners were accomplished enough to honour the crowned presence of royalty. Even when that worthy seemed a shrunken, dry armature, clothed over in marten and velvet. Sessalie’s failing monarch might appear weak, might seem as though his jewelled circlet bound the skull of a man with one foot in the grave. Yet tonight, the palsied jut of his chin suggested an aware determination. The eyes Mykkael recalled from his oath-taking were dulled with age, but not blank.
The garrison captain met the king’s wakened wits with the sharp respect he once granted to his war-bond employers. He assumed a patient, listening quiet, prepared to field the caprice of crown authority. Past experience left him wary. A ruler’s bidding could cast his lot on the wrong side of fate, and get every man in his company killed.
The king drew a laboured breath, too infirm to waste time with state language. ‘Captain. You are aware? My daughter, Princess Anja, is nowhere to be found.’
Mykkael inclined his head. ‘Your Majesty,’ he opened, his diction without accent, ‘until now, I had heard only rumours.’
‘You might wish to speak louder,’ the High Prince of Devall suggested with hushed compassion. ‘Of course, you would have tracked down the source of such talk.’
Mykkael paused. The king’s alert posture suggested he had heard very well. Rather than break protocol, the captain settled for a polite nod as acknowledgement that Devall’s heir apparent had addressed him.
Taskin smoothed the awkward moment. ‘This is Sessalie, where the commons have been content for generations. If Captain Mysh kael pursued every snippet of gossip, half the city matrons would be found guilty of treasonous words. His sleep might be broken five times a night, quelling false declarations that King Isendon was laid out on his death bier.’
The old monarch smiled and patted the prince’s elegant wrist. ‘My herald was forbidden from forthright speech.’ A sly, white eyebrow cocked up, while the clouded gaze regarded the officer summoned in for audience. ‘Even if Collain had broken faith, the crown’s bidding left no opening to launch an investigation. Is this so, Captain? You may answer.’
Not deaf, or a fool, King Isendon, despite the clack of public opinion; Mykkael chose honesty. ‘No need to investigate. I witnessed the source of the rumour myself in the course of a routine patrol.’ At the king’s insistence, he elaborated. ‘One of the flower girls is in love with the driver of a slop cart. She went to have her fortune told, hoping for a forecast, or a simple to bind her affection. The mad seer who lives in the alley by the Falls Gate mutters nonsense when she’s drunk. Her cant tonight said the princess was missing, but then, her talk is often inflammatory. Few people take her seriously’
Taskin stirred sharply, and received the king’s nod of leave. ‘You think her words carry weight?’
‘Sometimes her malice takes a purposeful bent.’ Mykkael hesitated, misliking the prompt of his instinct. Yet Taskin’s steely competence warned against trying to shade his explanation with avoidance. ‘I’ve seen her prick holes in folks’ overblown ambitions, or cause ill-suited lovers to quarrel. Occasionally, she’ll expose the shady dealings of a craftsman. Mostly, her ranting is groundless rubbish. But one watches the flotsam cast up by the tide.’
‘You will question this woman,’ commanded the king.
Mykkael raised his eyebrows, moved to tacit chagrin. ‘Majesty I’ll try. Until morning, the old dame will be senseless on gin. Cold sober, she can’t remember the names of her family. I’ll find the slop taker’s sweetheart, if I can, and see whether she recalls something useful.’
The king regarded him, probing for insolence, perhaps. Mykkael thought as much, until some quality to the trembling, lifted chin made him revise that presumption. Those fogged eyes were measuring him with shrewd intellect. Mykkael keenly sensed the authority in that regard, and more keenly still, that of Devall’s heir apparent, edged and growing jagged with concern.
Then Isendon mustered his meagre strength and spoke. ‘Captain, you are the arm of crown law below the Highgate. My daughter has vanished. By my orders, you will do all in your power. Find her. Secure her safety.’
Mykkael bowed, arms crossed at his chest in the eastern style, that gesture of respect an intuitive statement more binding than any verbal promise. He straightened, bristled by a sudden movement at his shoulder.
The Commander of the Guard now flanked his stance at close quarters, no doubt mistaking such silence, perhaps even questioning his professional sincerity. Taskin’s whisper was direct. ‘You will answer to me, on your findings.’
The garrison captain inclined his head, not smiling. He waited until the King of Sessalie granted leave with the gesture of a skeletal hand. The dismissal closed the audience. Yet the gaze of the lowcountry prince did not shift, or soften from burning intensity.
Mykkael had time to notice that the man’s hands were no longer clasped, but tucked out of sight beneath the tabletop. No chance was given to pursue deeper insight, or gauge the Prince of Devall’s altered mood.
Taskin demanded his attention forthwith. ‘We need to talk, Captain.’
Mykkael paid his respects to crowned royalty. As he turned from the dais, his words came fast and low, and without thought. ‘Don’t leave him alone.’
The commander stiffened. Only Mykkael stood near enough to catch that slight recoil. Taskin’s hooded eyes glinted, hard as polished steel rivets. Clearly, he required no foreigner’s advice. ‘We have to talk,’ he repeated, never asking which of the two royals had prompted the spontaneous warning.
That moment, the carved doors of the chamber burst open. A flurry among the guards bespoke someone’s imperious entry. Then a female voice cut like edged glass through the upset. ‘Her Grace isn’t hiding. Not in any bolt hole she used as a child, I already checked. Taskin! You can call your oafish officers to heel. They won’t find anything useful tossing through everyone’s closets.’
Belatedly Collain Herald announced, ‘
Court worthies, your Majesty, the Lady Bertarra.’
‘The late queen’s niece,’ Taskin murmured, for the garrison captain’s benefit. ‘A shrew, and intelligent. She’s worth a spy’s insights and ten berserk soldiers, and the guards I have posted at the king’s doorway are loyal as mountain bedrock.’
Mykkael regarded the paragon in question, a plump, beringed matron who bore down upon the royal dais, her intrepid form hung with jewellery and a self-righteous billow of ribbon and saffron taffeta.
‘Best we beat a tactical retreat,’ Taskin suggested.
Mykkael almost smiled. ‘Her flaying tongue’s a menace?’
Taskin returned the barest shrug of straitlaced shoulders. ‘I’d have the report on the closets from my duty sergeant without the shrill opinion and abuse.’
But withdrawal came too late. The matron surged abreast, and rocked to a glittering stop in a scented cloud of mint. Mykkael received the close-up impression of a round suet face, coils of pale hair pinned with jade combs, and blue eyes sharp and bright as the point on an awl.
No spirit to honey her opinions, Bertarra attacked the obvious target, first. ‘You’re a darkling southerner,’ she accused. ‘Some say you’re good. I don’t believe them. Or what would you be doing here, standing empty-handed?’ Her glance shifted, undaunted, to rake over the immaculate commander of the palace guard. A plump hand arose, tinkling with bracelets, and deployed a jabbing finger. ‘Our Anja’s no hoyden, to be sneaking into wardrobes! Shame on you, for acting as though she’s no more than a girl, and a simpleton!’
Taskin said, frigid, ‘The closets were searched at her brother the crown prince’s insistence. Do you think of his Highness as a boy, and a simpleton?’
Bertarra sniffed. ‘Since when has a title been proof of intelligence? Prince Kailen will be drunken and whoring by morning. Simplistic, male adolescent behaviour, should that earn my applause?’ Her ample chin hoisted a haughty notch higher. ‘His Highness is a layabout who thinks with the brainless, stiff prod in his breeches. All men act the same. Here, our princess has been kidnapped by enemies, and not a sword-bearing soldier among you has the guts in his belly to muster!’
‘Who’s prodding, now?’ Taskin grasped that perfumed, accusatory finger, turned it with charm, and kissed the palm with flawless diplomacy. ‘Lady Bertarra, if you think you can stand between any grown man and his pleasures, you are quite free to curb the excesses of your kin with no help from my men-at-arms.’ He bowed over her hand, his dry smile lined with teeth. ‘As to enemies of the realm, give me names. I am his Majesty’s sword. In her Grace’s defence, I will kill them.’
Yet like the horned cow, the woman seized the last word. She slipped from Taskin’s grasp and fixed again on Mykkael, silent and stilled to one side. ‘That’s why you brought this one? To sweep our sewers for two-legged rats? What did you promise for his compensation? A well-set marriage to raise his mean standing?’
Mykkael’s slow, deep laughter began in his belly, then erupted. ‘Now, that certainly would not be thinking with my man’s parts.’ His dismissive glance encompassed the jewellery, then the cascade of ruffled yellow skirt. ‘A sick shame, don’t you think, to dull a night’s lust stripping off all that useless decoration? And, from some pale Highgate woman, who’s likely to be nothing but fumbling inexperience underneath? That should require an endowment of land as incentive to shoulder the bother.’
Bertarra’s mouth opened; snapped shut. She quickly rebounded from stonewalled shock. ‘Crude creature. Prove your mettle. Find our Anja and bring her home safely’
A gusty flounce of marigold silk, and the matron moved on to upbraid someone else on the dais. Taskin resumed his interrupted course, his stride as sharp as any spoken order that the garrison captain was expected to follow. A pause at the door saw the guard rearranged. Two men-at-arms were asked to stand inside, in direct view of the royal person. The petty officer was dispatched elsewhere, bearing the commander’s instructions.
That man angled his greater size and weight to jostle past Mykkael, standing withdrawn to one side. Taskin just caught the garrison captain’s blurred move in reaction, an attack form begun, then arrested, too fast for the trained eye to follow. The ex-mercenary had already resettled his stance, when the commander’s viper-quick reach caught the tall guardsman’s wrist, and wrenched him back to a standstill.
‘You give that one distance,’ he cracked in rebuke. ‘I won’t forgive you a broken bone because you’re careless on duty.’
The huge guardsman reddened.
Taskin cut off the flood of excuses. ‘Not armed,’ he agreed. ‘Still lethal. Blowhard assumptions like that get you killed. Now carry on.’
Then, as though such a shaming display was routine, he finished his rapid instructions. ‘I want to know who comes and who goes in my absence. If Bertarra leaves, or the seneschal returns, detail someone to fetch me.’
Moved off again, Mykkael’s limp dragging after, the commander turned down a side corridor and whipped open the door to the closet chamber furnished for the king’s private audiences. ‘Sit,’ he said, brisk, then rummaged through an ivory-inlaid escritoire for a striker to brighten the sconces. ‘My man was a fool. Please accept my apology.’
Confronted by a marble-top table, and gold-leafed, lion-foot chairs, Mykkael eyed the plush velvet seat he was offered. The scents he brought with him, of oiled steel, uncouth liniment, and greased leather, made strident war with the genteel perfumes of beeswax, citrus polish and patchouli. Since he saw no other option, he did as he was told; arranged his game leg, and perched.
Taskin chose a chair opposite, his squared shoulders and resplendent court appointments nothing short of imperial. His subordinate was dealt the same unflinching survey just given to his royal guards. ‘I’d heard you had studied barqui’ino, but not the name of the master who trained you.’
Mykkael seemed less relaxed than tightly coiled, under the strap of his empty shoulder scabbard. ‘There were only two living when I earned my accolade,’ he admitted, his shadowed gaze regarding his rough hands, rested loose on the table before him. ‘Both were my teachers, an awkwardness no one admits.’
‘They both disowned you?’ said Taskin, surprised.
Mykkael’s sardonic smile split his face, there and gone like midsummer lightning. ‘A northern man might say as much.’
‘A vast oversimplification,’ Taskin surmised. ‘A stickler might ask you to explain. I will not.’ With startling brevity, he cut to the chase. ‘Our princess is in trouble. What do you need?’
As close as he came to being shocked off balance, Mykkael spread his fingers, lined by the shine of old scars. He delivered the gist. ‘A boy runner, for a start, to ask my watch at the Middlegate to keep a list of who comes and goes. Next, I don’t know what her Grace looks like, up close. A view of her face, if she sat for a portrait, could be sent on loan to the barracks.’ He sucked a slow breath, then broached the unpopular subject dead last. ‘An endowment for bribes, and extra pay shares for men whose extended duties keep them from spending due time with their families.’
‘I expected you’d ask that.’ Taskin was brusquely dismissive. ‘The requisition to draw funds from the treasury is already set in motion. As to your runner, he’s not needed. My sentries at the Highgate record all traffic to and from the palace precinct. They’ll supply names until you can rearrange the Middlegate security to your satisfaction. As more thoughts arise, you’ll send me the list.’ Then, with a subject shift that rocked for its tactical perception, ‘Now, how do you think your resource can help me?’
Thinking fast, Mykkael closed his fingers. ‘If the Prince of Devall has foreigners in his retinue, I’d like permission to question them.’
Taskin sustained his stripping regard. Nothing moved, nothing showed. His aristocratic features stayed boot-leather still. ‘You want to try cowing them by intimidation? Or do you presume we’d miss some nuance of testimony out of our northern-born snobbery?’
Mykkael wa
s careful to keep his tone neutral. ‘Actually no. But I might address them in their own language.’
Taskin laughed, a rich chuckle of appreciation. ‘My background check missed that.’ He raised a callused thumb and stroked his cheek. ‘I wonder why?’
‘As a mercenary, sometimes, the pay’s better if you let your employer believe you’re brainless.’ Mykkael watched the commander absorb this, pale eyes introspective with assessment.
‘No doubt, such a pretence also helped your survival.’ Unlike the speed of that formidable mind, the question that followed was measured. ‘How many tongues do you speak, Captain?’
‘Fluently? Five,’ Mykkael lied; in fact, he had passed for native, with eight. The slight caveat distinguished that in the three Serphaidian tongues written in ideographs, he was not literate.
‘I will see, about servants.’ The commander never shifted, but a change swept his posture, like a pit viper poised for a strike. ‘If you don’t trust Devall, please say so, and why’
Mykkael softened the cranked tension in his hands, reluctant and sweating under the cloak he had not snatched the chance to remove. ‘I have no feeling, one way or the other, for her Grace’s suitor, or anyone else. Just that cold start of instinct suggesting your king should not be left unguarded by hands that you know and trust.’ A straight pause, then he added, ‘It’s battle-bred instinct. The sort of gut hunch that’s kept me alive more times than a man wants to count.’
Yet if Taskin held any opinion on what his northern tradition considered a witch thought, no bias showed as he pressed the next point. ‘My runners will keep you apprised of all pertinent facts from the palace. Whatever you find, I want to know yesterday. My duty officer will arrange for a courier’s relay. The dispatches will be verbal. No written loose ends that might fall into wrong hands. If you stumble upon something too sensitive to repeat, you’ll report back to me in person. Wherever I am, whatever the hour, the guard at the Highgate will arrange for an audience.’