by Kate Elliott
As the chief strolled down the line the rest of the work gang tried to keep eyes forward, as they’d been trained. “Follow them if you’re for the naphtha fields. As for the other, glory and honor come with a complete kit and three rations a day. You’ll be treated as men instead of the worthless shit you are now. After three years’ service you’ll be released. Now’s the one chance you have in your sorry lives to improve your lot.”
No one moved.
“All for glory and honor, then. You won’t regret it.”
A bark of command broke over the feasting soldiers, shouted by one of their officers. They formed up into neat ranks, four by four. Having so little else to think about on the long journey, Gil had studied their organization. They marched, ate, and slept in squads of sixteen overseen by a subchief. Four squads constituted a cadre, commanded by a chief. Four chiefs and their 256 men came under the command of a captain and his three aides, with a support staff of twelve who arranged the cooking and supply although the soldiers themselves did all their own laundry and repair.
The riders Gil had noted before approached in an orderly formation. They wore field gear: scale armor, leather boots, spears in hand, and swords in practical sheaths rather than the jeweled cases beloved of courtiers in the palace. Most had rectangular banners affixed to their backs, white with a gold lion’s head. They looked cursed impressive as they trotted up, wove a great circle, and came to a halt so the four men at the front of the company had a good view of the infantry in formation. The hungry work gang did their best to stand in a straight line and look glorious and honorable.
One man rode forward, his hair in a simple topknot, his clothing exactly like everyone else’s. He surveyed the ranks of the soldiers. “The last company of Fourth Cohort. Excellent! You bring strength to our cause.”
The soldiers bent to one knee as eager supplicants.
He trotted over to the work gang. “Chief Roni, here you are again, and just in time. How many of this work gang will serve?”
“All of them, Your Highness. It is a strong group, although they need fattening up. Just two for the naphtha fields…”
“Prince Farihosh?” said Gil, too loudly, because the shock of seeing a familiar face overwhelmed his hard-earned caution.
The prince looked their way, said something to the captain, and rode over.
“Lord Gilaras? Lord Tyras.” His gaze flicked between the two of them, and he drew a whip from his belt and tapped it against his armored thigh speculatively. “How are you come here, bearing the work gang mark?”
Ty stepped on Gil’s foot.
Gil elbowed him away. “Your Highness, I can explain everything. Either my uncle Lord Vanas still seeks revenge on my branch of the family because we still have more balls than him and his sons even after everything my brothers lost. Or your mother, the honored queen, wants my Ri Amarah bride’s fortune and had to get rid of me. So here I am.”
The sun in his eyes gave him a headache as he awaited the prince’s answer. The chief stalked over with whip in hand, but the prince extended his own whip so its tip flicked the chief’s chest lightly but in warning.
“I want these two cleaned up and sent to my camp.”
“But Your Highness, I have particular orders—”
“And now you have my orders, Chief.” The prince dangled the whip, swishing it just enough to get a whistling sound as it cut the air. “Is that a problem?”
During his three years engaged in endlessly pathetic attempts to roil the waters of the court with ridiculous pranks and stunts, Gil had never once seen Prince Farihosh lose his cool, not like Tavahosh whose pompous arrogance could so amusingly be riled into sputtering anger. Nor did Farihosh look the least discomposed now.
“I didn’t hear you, Chief.”
“As you command, Your Highness.”
Given how irritated and worried the chief looked, why not press the advantage?
Gil stepped forward. “Your Highness, you have my deepest thanks and most profound gratitude for your intervention. May I ask that I be allowed to bring along my retinue as well?”
“Your retinue?”
“Every grandson of the legendary General Sengel must have a martial retinue, must he not?”
“Oh indeed I do believe he must. Which among these stalwart fellows do you count as your retinue, Lord Gilaras?”
Gil nodded at Adiki and the other five, then grinned. “Those six in particular. But I will welcome any who choose to stand with me, Your Highness.”
“I think you more properly mean to say, any who choose to stand with me. You may choose one man to attend you now and the rest can join you tomorrow.”
“Where am I going, Your Highness?”
“You and Lord Tyras will join me for supper in my tent. Given your clan’s impoverished condition, I am curious to hear every detail about this unexpected Silver bride and her fortune, since it all seems to have played out after I left court.”
He rejoined his horsemen. They rode past the brickworks onto a wide level ground where they began to drill on horseback despite the heat and chaff. The soldiers moved in the direction the riders had come from. When the chief snapped his whip the work gang hustled after the soldiers. As soon as they came around the corner of the shrine they saw a far larger walled compound in the distance, their destination.
Tyras stumped along in his usual bleak mood, but Gil assured each of his companions in turn that he would not forget them if good fortune fell his way. “Obviously if bad fortune falls my way, you’ll do best to pretend you never knew me.”
Last he walked beside Adiki. “You’ll attend us. Try to be polite, and don’t challenge anyone to a fight.”
“Surely you’re not afraid I’ll lose?”
“No, I’m afraid you’ll win.”
Adiki angled his elbow to catch Gil in the ribs. “Can your good friend Prince Farihosh help me find my brother?”
“For all I know he’s invited me to supper in order to poison me. Does it seem as strange to you as it does to me that yonder compound looks like an army camp and is vastly larger than the unfinished shrine?”
They entered a walled compound about three times the size of the shrine, with an annex that was obviously a reeve hall. A forge smoked in the distance, closer to the water. Inside the walls spun a hive of activity. Soldiers drilled with spears and swords on a parade ground, kicking dust up into a row of barred cages where about ten prisoners sat slumped on the ground including four women wearing reeve leathers.
In the shade of open storehouses, laborers built wagons while elsewhere folk laced together leather scales to make armored coats. The kitchens boiled with workers, and the smells made Gil’s mouth hurt. Most of the work gang was driven off in one direction but the chief himself escorted Gil, Tyras, and Adiki to a back corner. Here, in a walled-off garden with only a few sapling trees, two troughs of sunbright, and a dry pool, stood the prince’s tent flanked by guards. The chief turned them over to a steward.
“The prince wants them washed and dressed for supper.”
“Is there anything else I need to know about these men?” asked the startled steward.
The chief had already lost interest. “They’re no longer my business, ver.”
The steward led them past the tent and its guards and through an archway into a baths complex. Men with the long hair of soldiers wearing the loose trousers and jackets common to palace residents waited in line for their turn to bathe. Gil, Tyras, and Adiki were taken to the head of the line and handed over to the men who ran the baths.
They weren’t proper baths, not like the ones in Toskala with ample water piped in and hot pools for relaxation after you were clean. Here, on planks raised up off the ground, they rinsed off the worst of the grime with salt water from the landlocked sea, then scrubbed their skin with sand, rinsed clean with scoops of water from a bucket, and last were given a razor and a mirror to shave. To Gil’s relief Tyras didn’t try to cut his own throat with the razor although he spen
t a disturbingly long time staring at the reflection of his thin face and sad cap of short hair.
“Your beautiful hair will grow back,” Gil said.
Ty set down the mirror and turned his back on him.
“Do you know what I find strange?” Adiki said as he scraped the beard off his chin. Gil had forgotten the other man had an ugly scar along his jaw. “Besides those four caged reeves, and the women drying fish on the shoreline back where we camped, I haven’t seen a single woman. Don’t you find it a little odd to not have any women around? Like they’ve all vanished, or are in hiding?”
“Everything about this is a little odd,” said Gil.
“Shut up, someone’s coming,” said Tyras.
A steward brought palace garb, trousers, jacket, sashes, and sandals, and a sachet of herbs to rub over their skin to freshen their scent. Gil felt quite born new as he sauntered past the curious guards and a pair of watchful reeves into Farihosh’s spacious tent. Inside four military men stood chatting by a table covered with maps. An older man whose cheek bore the mark of the work gang sat cross-legged on a cushion, sewing up a rip in a tabard. Prince Farihosh stood at a basin washing his hands and face as a lad dressed in white and gold stood to one side holding a towel in readiness.
The prince glanced up with a smile that soothed rather than mocked. “Ah. Lord Gilaras. Lord Tyras. Too bad about your hair but otherwise you look much more like yourselves.”
“Karladas!” Adiki shoved past Gil and was halfway across the space before Farihosh drew his sword and the four men leaped between him and the prince.
“Stop, you idiot.” Gil darted forward to grab Adiki’s arm. “Take a breath. If that is your brother then he looks whole and healthy to me.”
Adiki was shaking, and Gil knew in another few breaths he would break free anyway and then a nasty fight would start, and end with Adiki’s blood on the carpet and his own besides.
“Five against one, Adiki. They have blades. You don’t. Take a breath.”
The prince looked around at the lad. “Do you know this man, Karladas?”
The lad looked about fourteen, handsome in the way of youths who have never been laid low with the sting of rebukes or scorn. “It’s my brother, Adiki. May I go to him, Your Highness?”
“You’re not his slave to have to ask permission to come and go,” snarled Adiki. Had he wanted to throw off Gil’s hand he could easily have done so. At least he had the sense to rage in place. “Have you been harmed? Handled against your will? Abused? How are you come to be in the prince’s tent? I should never have brought you to the city … Nor let you go off on your own that day just for a bit of coin to run a message…”
Farihosh gave an almost imperceptible nod.
The lad dashed over to his brother and embraced him. “Oh, no, it’s nothing like that, Adiki. It was just bad fortune I got swept up into the work gang. But I’ve not been harmed and no one has touched me. You always think the worst of people!”
“You think too well of people,” muttered Adiki. The other men stared to see a brute of a man like Adiki reduced to tears. Folk might find it surprising if they hadn’t heard how he spoke of his brother and his clan.
“It’s all worked out better than we could have hoped, Adiki. I serve Prince Farihosh now.”
Adiki’s gaze stabbed the prince, who returned his suspicion with a look of such calm that Gil truly could not tell if the prince found Adiki’s distress and defiance risible, mutinous, dull, or exemplary. “As your guardian, I refuse to give you permission to stay here.”
“But Adiki, you have a work gang mark. That means you were arrested, too. We have to follow the law.”
“We do not serve people who make laws to hook coin into their own pockets and destroy the lives of men who have done nothing wrong.”
Farihosh sheathed his sword and waved the other men to step away. “Let’s eat. We’ll make a better start with food in our stomachs and a cup of rice wine. Lord Gilaras, sit at my right, if you will. Lord Adiki, you may sit at my left hand.”
“I am no lord of the palace.”
“Call him Your Highness,” whispered Karladas in a tone of outrage that made Farihosh’s companions smile.
“You are a lord if I say you are one, Lord Adiki. I value your brother Karladas for his intelligence and diligence. My soldiers have come to see him as a token of our good fortune. I’ll let him tell you the story later.” He clapped his hands.
Stewards drew aside a curtain to reveal a table laden with food: It was no sophisticated palace feast but rather a sturdy collation of rice, grilled whitefish, and turnip stewed in sweetened rice wine and soybean brine. Tyras began by gulping down two cups of the flower wine set on the table. Gil wanted to bolt his food but he cautiously picked through both turnip and fish and filled up on rice, hoping not to upset a stomach too long accustomed to gruel.
Karladas stood at the prince’s elbow holding a glass bottle with a smoky-colored liquid reserved for the prince. No matter how many dark looks Adiki threw at his younger brother, the lad looked proud and even protective.
Farihosh affected not to notice Adiki’s glares and frowns. “I am curious to know what happened with you, Lord Gilaras. To find you and Lord Tyras in a work gang perplexes me.”
“It perplexed me, too, Your Highness. But here we are. Are you saying you knew nothing of the scheme to destroy my clan’s standing in court?”
“As I recall, I invited you to join my group of companions, but you refused me.”
“My clan encouraged me to take your generous invitation, Your Highness. I had a habit of doing the opposite of what they wanted.”
“So it wasn’t me you wanted to insult? It was them?”
“Yes, that’s right. My apologies. It really was nothing to do with you personally.”
“It is a curious thing how often we act against wisdom simply because we feel driven to do so by the peculiar nature of our family relationships.”
“Why did you invite me to become one of your companions here, Your Highness? My clan had nothing to offer you, as disgraced as it is.”
“Several of your most elaborate pranks were not just criminal and impious but clever. I admire cleverness.”
“I was not so clever as to escape this.” Gil tapped the ink on his cheek.
“Yes, you were going to tell me about your bride.”
“My clan arranged to marry me to a Ri Amarah woman and thus to her clan’s distinguished fortune. Naturally I could not say no.”
“Interesting. Yes, now and again a person finds themselves in a situation where they cannot say no.” Unlike Tyras, now working on his fourth cup of wine, and the military men quaffing wine at almost the same pace, Farihosh drank sparingly and only from the bottle Karladas held. “Therefore I am delighted to welcome you and Lord Tyras and Lord Adiki to my enterprise.”
“What if we don’t wish to join your mysterious enterprise? What if we would rather work the naphtha fields?”
Karladas shifted from foot to foot as if he really desperately wanted to speak but had been trained to wait for permission.
Farihosh raised a hand, and a steward brought in jellied bean paste, which he offered first to all the other men before bringing the last piece to the prince. “That isn’t an option. Now that you’ve seen all this, you can join me or I’ll have to kill you. If you prefer death you’ll spend the night in the cage and be executed at dawn with the other prisoners.”
Gil laughed. He waited until the other men popped the jellied dessert into their mouths before trying it, just in case it was poisoned. In fact, it was delicious, little pieces of sweet potato layered in the jelly as a moist surprise.
“In that case, I find myself quite enthusiastic about your expedition, Your Highness. Are you intending to overthrow your father the king?”
Tyras said, “Oh the fuck you’re an idiot, Gil. You don’t just ask if people intend to commit treason.”
The military men chortled.
Farihosh laugh
ed with them. “I think it better to get straight to the point and not disguise words with honeyed innuendo. Why would I want to overthrow my father?”
“A young man can die almost as easily as an older man. Your father is healthy and vigorous. He could outlive you and then you’d never have a chance to be king.”
“Or he could have plans that disinherit me,” said Farihosh.
“You think your father wants to put Kas on the throne?”
“I think he wants to please Queen Dia. It would be an unnatural mother who did not want her son to become king over another woman’s son.”
“So it’s Kas you want dead, then.”
“You mistake me. I hold no grudge against Kasad. It’s not his fault he was born, although I do find it puzzling he won’t take over the military governorship of Ithik Eldim as our father clearly wants him to do. Regardless, I have to protect myself, Lord Gilaras.”
“Thus this army?”
The prince frowned as a bell jangled at the tent’s entrance. “Something like that.”
The entrance flap was swept back. A reeve appeared, his face wind-chapped. He was chafing his hands as if they were still cold. “Your Highness, riders have been spotted, moving at speed. They fly the Banner of the Moon.”
“Sooner than I expected! There must be trouble.” Farihosh rose. “Captains, we depart at dawn. As for you, my friends, I am afraid I will have to place you under guard for the night. Please let me assure you that I intend you no harm as long as you cooperate.”
Tyras had slumped over the table, too drunk to respond.
Adiki brooded, arms crossed on his chest as he studied his smiling brother. “How are you come to be so favored, Karladas? Why do soldiers consider you their good fortune?”
The lad ducked his head quite charmingly. “I accidentally saved the prince’s life. You’ll see, Adiki. This is the best thing that could have happened to us.”
The captains went out and several guards entered to dismantle the chairs and bundle up the carpets. Farihosh himself began rolling up the maps and sliding them into leather map cases.
“Is there any chance I might send a letter to my wife, assuring her I am safe?” Gil asked, ambling over to take a look at the last map, an eight-sided city with eight main roads that cut the territory into sectors of alternating fields and habitations.