Boris nodded at the paper. "What news?"
The knights eyed each other, none wanting to speak the ill words aloud.
Cyril sighed. "Prince Yaroslav sends word from the north. Your father has succumbed to his illness, and your brother now sits upon the throne."
Grief caught Boris's heart in its mailed fist. "My father is dead?"
"It seems so, Your Highness. Your brother Sviatopolk is king now."
Boris started in surprise. "Sviatopolk? But I thought…"
Boris had never truly thought about which of his father's sons would take the throne upon his father's death, but for his father to name his bastard son Sviatopolk as his heir over any of his legitimate offspring seemed more than a little strange. As the oldest legitimate son, coming home from a successful military campaign, surely Boris himself would be the better choice.
Not that he wanted a throne. No, he wanted his father on the throne, so he could tell him about the campaign.
Now that tale would go untold.
"Your brother Yaroslav sent you a gift, the fruit of a successful hunt in the far north. A small token of his affection and loyalty, he says." Cyril gestured, and one of his men held out a bulky package.
Boris had no choice but to take it, and, with all eyes upon him, open it, too.
Creamy white fur spilled out, lined with lambswool. It was at once the most beautiful and the most impractical cloak Boris had ever seen. In battle, it would turn from white to red in a day, and then to black and rust after that. This was a cloak for court.
"Prince Yaroslav is coming south, to join his forces with yours so that he might set the rightful king upon the throne," Cyril said.
The rightful king was the heir his father had chosen.
Had Father really chosen Sviatopolk to be king?
"We will fight beside you, Your Majesty," Sir Cyril said, dropping to one knee. The other knights did the same.
Boris shook his head and gestured for them to get up. "I'm your prince, not your king. I will not go to war against my brother, if he is my father's chosen heir. My father was a good and wise king, and he would have made his choice with as much wisdom and forethought as any other decision he made. I must ride for Prislav immediately, to see my new king and offer him my allegiance."
"We will ride with you, Your Highness," Cyril said.
Once again, Boris shook his head. "I shall go alone. King or not, Sviatopolk is my brother. We are family. If my father chose him as king, then I am honour-bound to serve him as I served my father. As are we all. I have no need of an army at my back to speak to my brother, even if he is now my king."
"Your Highness…" Cyril was too loyal a man to say the words, but his expression said he had grave misgivings about this course of action.
Bur Boris was decided. "Send the men home to their families. We will not campaign again before spring, unless the king orders otherwise."
"Yes, Your Highness."
The knights dispersed, leaving Boris to shake his head and sigh. He'd hoped for more than a night in Vica's arms – perhaps enough nights to sire a son – but it was not to be. He was a prince first, and a husband second. First he must serve his king and his kingdom, and then he might spend a quiet winter with his wife and daughter.
Home would still be here when he returned from court.
Nodding to himself, Boris trudged home to don his travelling clothes once more.
Chapter 4
"Ready?" Father asked.
Rossa nodded sharply. "How many targets today?" She would get them all this time, she swore. Without missing a single one.
Father tilted his head to the side, as though he needed to consider for a moment before he said, "Twelve."
Another nod, and she was off.
She caught sight of the first one, half-hidden behind a tree. She slipped around the other side of the thick trunk, then plunged her dagger into the target's neck, or where it would have been, had the target been a man and not a stuffed sack. An ambush like this one usually had more than one, in line of sight of each other…
Rossa pressed against the straw corpse, scanning the trees for his accomplice. Ah, there it was.
Carefully, she strung her bow, and took aim at the painted acorn, set high in the fork of a tree on the other side of the path. When she loosed her arrow, she didn't wait to watch it hit its target, as she knew it would. Instead, she shifted to a new position and scanned the forest for other targets.
High, low, behind trees and rocks, she took out her targets, disarming two traps and springing a third, rendering it harmless, until her count reached eleven.
One more to go.
She followed the game trail in a long loop, back to where they'd started, but she didn't see a hint of a target anywhere.
Had she missed one on her way, which now lay behind her, or had her father placed it at their meeting point, ready to ambush her when she thought she was safe?
While there were many who wished to engage the services of an assassin, hired killers were not well-liked, and their heads often fetched as high a price as the people they killed. So, her father would definitely have placed a target where it might shoot her in the back, when she reached the meeting point.
Rossa skirted the clearing, selecting a tree that would give her a good view across the dell where she knew her father waited, while its branches would hide her from the sight of anyone who might hope to catch her unawares.
Zoticus sat on a rock in the sun, calmly slicing up an apple with his dagger, before popping the slices in his mouth, one by one. The loud crunching sounds surely would have alerted any would-be assassins to his presence, and made him an easy target, but Father had so many magical protections, even Rossa wasn't sure she could fight him and win.
The twelfth target would be somewhere that gave it a clear view of the clearing, and the path Rossa would have taken, if she hadn't chosen to climb a tree. She scanned the clearing, then the treeline, then did it all again.
It had to be there. The twelfth one had to…there! Just as she saw a hint of red paint, it vanished. Yet something was there, moving along the tree branch…
She nocked an arrow to her bow, sighting along it as she exhaled. Her arrow flew across the clearing, sinking into its target before tumbling off into the undergrowth.
There. Mission complete.
Rossa slid down the tree trunk and skipped into the clearing. "I'm done, Father," she announced. She couldn't keep the pride out of her voice.
"How many did you take down?"
"All twelve."
"Ah, but you missed one," he said, rising.
On the rock he'd been sitting on, a patterned sack came into view.
Rossa knew better than to argue. He'd said twelve and she'd hit twelve, but here was a thirteenth to taunt her.
She drew her dagger and flung it at the cloth. The blade struck the centre of the target, then tipped over onto the ground, taking the sack with it.
"All thirteen," she said.
"And now you're a blade short, with only half a quiver of arrows, going to meet the contact who sent you on your quest. Not all men are honourable, and those who would hire one assassin to kill for them aren't above hiring others, so that they don't have to pay the first," Father said, drawing both daggers.
Rossa swallowed. She had one knife in easy reach, but to draw any of the others, she'd need to take her gaze off her opponent, which would be a costly mistake.
Perhaps if she could reach the sack and the knife she'd thrown…
She edged away from her father, hoping to put the stone between them before he advanced.
A shrill scream rose from the trees behind her.
"What in heaven's name – " she began.
Before she could finish, she found herself flat on her back, without the breath to say another word.
The screaming had stopped.
"This is what happens when you kill an innocent, and leave them to suffer," her father said, holding up one of her arrows
, which impaled both a painted acorn and a squirrel who had tried to steal it. The limp squirrel would never scream again.
Rossa shuddered and sat up. She dragged in a breath, then said, "But it was a thief, stealing my acorn!"
"Thieves are beneath an assassin's notice. So is anyone except the target who deserves to die. Unless you are hired to kill a thief, or the thief threatens your life, he is nothing to you. Justice will find him, without your help." Father slid the squirrel's body off the arrow, and tossed it into the trees. "And you never hurt innocents."
"Thieving squirrels aren't innocent. The monks up at the castle swear about them all the time," Rossa protested.
Father just frowned. "Collect your things, then we'll return home. A good assassin…"
"Never leaves a trace," Rossa finished for him, sighing. Her father might have finished arguing with her, but she knew she hadn't won. No one could beat her father, in a fight or an argument. Least of all her.
Father inclined his head. "You have learned so much, Rossa. If I'd only known half what you do now when I was your age…" Now it was his turn not to finish his sentence. Instead, he sighed.
There was darkness in his past, from long before he met Mother, Rossa knew, but he never talked about it. She'd asked Mother, who'd told her that everyone had regrets, and her father's were for the people he could not save, which is why he had chosen his line of work in the first place.
He trained her so hard so that when her time came to exact justice, she would have no such regrets – she'd save those who needed it.
But after today's debacle, her time wouldn't be for a while yet.
Rossa sighed and tramped back along the game trail to retrieve her arrows.
Chapter 5
Dusk smudged the sky when Boris trudged up the steps to the throne room in Prislav, not pausing to take off the white fur cloak. The usual crowd of courtiers and petitioners was gone, so the king had finished hearings for the day. But the route to the royal apartments lay through the throne room, so he crossed the empty hall and kept going.
As Sviatopolk was a bastard, he'd had much more modest chambers in the palace than those given to Boris and his legitimate brothers, so it didn't surprise Boris at all to find his brother had already moved to the king's apartments.
What did surprise him was that his brother sat alone, his head and shoulders bowed with the weight of the kingdom he now carried.
"Is the crown so heavy, brother?" Boris asked.
Sviatopolk lifted his head. "Boris? Oh, you do not know how good it is to see you, brother!"
The two men embraced, and as Sviatopolk leaned against him for just that moment, Boris wondered if it was the weight of kingship he felt, a burden that was far more than one man could bear.
"How fared you in the campaign against the Bisseni?" Sviatopolk asked eagerly. "Father talked of little else in his final days. He made me swear I would not hinder you in your work, preserving our borders against those cowardly raiders. His greatest regret was not leaving a peaceful kingdom for his people."
Boris forced a smile. "The campaign ended in victory, or I should still be out there fighting them. What few Bisseni that were left fled into the mountains. They will not trouble us again for a while. And surely that cannot be all our father spoke of in his final moments. He named his heir, did he not?"
Sviatopolk shook his head.
What? A flash of triumph sparked in Boris's breast. He knew Father had not chosen Sviatopolk as his successor.
"I fear Father was too ill to know what he said at the end, for I scarcely believe it myself. In between his constant talk of you and your campaign, he made me swear to take the throne so you could stay in the field and fight. When the kingdom needs a king to make war on one front and another to sit on the throne and keep the peace with our neighbours, he had to choose, he said. So he said I should take the throne, so that you could command our armies. His final act was to declare the legitimacy of my birth, so that I might be crowned upon his death. I protested that you would make a better king, but he ordered me to be silent unless I wanted to go to war in your place. Heaven knows I am no warrior." Sviatopolk laughed.
As a bastard born of the king and a serving girl, Sviatopolk's blood had not been considered noble enough to cross swords with the other princes and young noblemen in the practice yard. Yet now he was the highest man in the land, with no sword skills to speak of. No, Sviatopolk would not have survived even his first battle against the Bisseni.
"So it is true? Father named you as his heir?" Boris pressed.
"For my sins, yes. I wish he had chosen someone better suited, but how can any son deny his father one last dying request?" Sviatopolk's eyes appeared haunted for a just a moment, before he managed a smile. "But you are here, and victorious, too, so we must have a feast to celebrate. I'll send word to the kitchens, and you shall sit at my right hand at the high table, so that we may drink to our father's memory, and the peace he did not live to see."
"I would be honoured, Your Majesty. And on the morrow, I will swear fealty to you, before the whole court," Boris said. His brother would not lie about such things. His father had chosen him to be king, with Boris as his general. Indeed, how could any dutiful son deny his father's last request?
Family did not betray family, after all.
Chapter 6
When Rossa sat down to dinner, she found her whole family present – including her half brother, Tobias, and his wife and children. Was it some important feast day, that she'd forgotten? She'd been so intent on her training, one day blended into another until even Sundays took her by surprise.
"Aren't you going to wish me a happy birthday?" Rossa's nephew, Bruno, demanded.
Ah, so that was the occasion.
Rossa shrugged. As her brother's only son and heir, Bruno was fussed over most days, so she felt little need to add to his over-inflated sense of self-importance.
"You're a terrible aunt," Bruno complained. "On my friend Peter's birthday, his spinster aunt gave him a whole new set of clothes, and new boots, with a purse of coins to hang from his new belt. And she spent a whole week before his birthday, cooking all his favourite foods."
"Peter the innkeeper's son?" Rossa asked. At Bruno's nod, she continued, "Dominique is not a spinster. She's a Rialto courtesan, who spends more money on potions from Swanhild and Raphael than the rest of Mirroten combined. Peter's new clothes were likely not new at all, but left behind by one of her clients." Rossa suspected Dominique would have quite the story to tell about the client who'd lost his clothes – she'd have to ask her to regale the tale when she next came home.
Bruno's brow creased with puzzlement. Evidently his education had not included herbalism, or the customs and courtesans of Rialto. "You're still a mean aunt," he announced, before stuffing his face with food.
Assassins were not known for their kindness, so she said, "Good," before she reached for the meat.
Bruno swallowed with difficulty. "Peter says you're going to be a spinster because no one wants to marry you. You should be married already, he says."
"Peter says, or his older brother John says?" Rossa asked sharply. Though she wouldn't have put it past either of them to be making snide comments about her, after she'd repeatedly turned down invitations from both boys for most of the spring and summer. Last year, it had just been John, but now Peter was the ripe age of fourteen, he deemed himself enough of a man to pester her, too.
"They say if you don't marry soon, no one will have you, for all the good men will be taken," Bruno said. "You spend too much time in the forest alone. You'll never be as good as Master Zoticus. Better to be a proper wife and have babies. Some of them say you can't have babies because you're a witch, an evil witch."
Oh, that part was too good. "Ah, but I am a witch," she purred, wiggling her fingers. "Want to see if I can turn you into a slug without anyone noticing?"
"Mother!" The wail that came out of Bruno sounded like it came from a boy much younger than ten.
Conversation around the table stilled.
"What is it?" Silvana asked, the edge on her tone sharp enough to cut through bone. She didn't spoil her son, though Tobias did.
"Aunt Rossa said she'd turn me into a slug!"
"What did you say to her?"
"I only said what everyone says – she should hurry up and get married!"
Silvana's lips thinned. "And?"
Rossa recognised the danger in her sister in law's tone, even if Silvana's own son didn't.
"If she doesn't pick a husband soon, she'll turn into an evil old witch!"
Silvana pointed at the door. "Lady Sara needs more kindling for the fire. Go outside and chop some for her. Now."
"But it's my birthday, and I haven't finished my dinner," Bruno whined.
"Do as your mother says, boy. Are you sure you're ten, if you haven't even learned that yet?" Father only had to look at Bruno for the boy to shrink. "What are you waiting for?"
Bruno bolted outside. Soon, Rossa could hear the sounds of an axe at work.
Silvana shook her head. "I'm sorry, Rossa, he's become impossible of late. Before the twins died, they kept him in order, but after…" She stared at Mother. "Was Tobias ever this much trouble?"
Mother laughed. "Tobias was never any trouble. He's always been his father's son, and if I hadn't been there at his birth, I'd wonder how such a placid child could have ever been mine. However, I do remember your father was quite the troublemaker. The things he used to get up to with my brothers…"
All dead now, Rossa knew.
"What the boy needs is some discipline and responsibility. Have you tried goats?" Father asked.
Mother bit back a smile, but no one else dared to laugh.
Tobias looked uncomfortable. "Since the avalanche took both his brothers, he won't go anywhere near the goats. He's terrified of them – has been since he was little, and one of them butted him so hard, he couldn't sit for a week."
Now it was Rossa's turn to smile. The boy had been taunting the goats, and she might have given the goat's horns a little magical help.
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