A Game of Three Hands

by Tim Stead

  A whole month of drinking nothing but Blaye’s royal vintages had probably spoiled her for life. She did not doubt now what others had always proclaimed – that the royal vineyards produced the world’s best wine. But Samara was still home, and Calaine longed for the unexotic, for plain food and familiar smells.

  The first thing she saw was the hard line of the cliff above Morningside. Although the sky was an unrelenting blue and the air sharp and fresh, there was a haze about the shoreline. It was almost an hour after that before she could pick out the yellow stone walls of the citadel.

  Home.

  Seeing home and stepping back to land were separated by yet another hour. The Sword of Samara carved across the bay, sailors rushing about the decks, hauling on ropes. It was as if the ship undressed itself, sail after sail falling to reveal the bare limbs of her masts and spars. The ship, too, was home.

  Boats rowed out from the shore, but unlike Blaye they passed ropes up to the crew, and the ship was hauled into its citadel berth by her own capstans.

  There was a party waiting on shore.

  Calaine could see an extraordinary number of guards lining the walkway up to the citadel gate that faced the sea, and they were the king’s men. On the dock she recognised General Grand and Ella Saine. She waved. Ella waved back, but the general just stood and frowned. As soon as the plank was down she was across it onto the weathered stone of the dock.

  “So the threat is real,” she said.

  Darius bowed. “Welcome back to Samara, Do-Regana,” he said. “And yes. The threat is real.”

  “Is my father safe?”

  “The king is quite safe,” Darius reassured her. “But we didn’t want him exposed on the dock. A crossbow in Gulltown has the range to hurt us, even here. Please follow me.”

  He turned and strode up towards the citadel and Calaine followed. Ella fell in beside her.

  “How was Blaye?” she asked.

  “A delight to all my senses,” Calaine replied. “I’m very glad to be home.”

  “And Bren?”

  Calaine sighed. “He is a perfect gentleman,” she said. “He is kind and patient, his people love him – they really do. He walks among them with no more than a few unarmoured retainers and they shower him with gifts, pay him compliments, wish him a long life. He’s handsome, too, skilled with weapons, sits a horse well.”

  “And?”

  “”Ella, he doesn’t make me laugh. He doesn’t mock me when I get too pompous or prideful. He smothers me with… softness.”

  “You will get used to it,” Ella said. But Calaine wasn’t at all sure that she would. She was used to a life where politeness got you pushed aside, where skill with a sword got you more than a kind word.

  The guards on the dock followed after them as they walked, so that they strolled up to the citadel inside a walking iron box.

  Ella didn’t reply. Calaine thought she knew why. Both of them understood that Calaine’s duty had overruled her heart. Her choice, if she had been permitted one, would have been Ella’s brother, Corban. He was the one that made her laugh, that mocked her, that told her openly when he thought she was wrong, or foolish, or arrogant. She had come to rely on his judgement, and she had missed that when she had agreed to a state marriage. Corban had withdrawn.

  Once through the gate the soldiers dispersed. Calaine turned to the general. “What now?” she asked.

  Darius frowned again. “I cannot command you, Do-Regana,” he said. “But it would greatly please your father if you stayed within the walls of the citadel for the time being.”

  “A prisoner in my own home?”

  “Calaine,” Darius rarely used her given name. “We cannot afford to lose you. Think of it as your duty to stay alive – for the city, for your father.”

  Calaine bristled. “Too much duty, lately,” she said. “Not enough life. How long?”

  Darius shook his head. “I do not know.”

  “I will consider your advice,” she said. She stared at him until he executed a polite bow and left. Alone with Ella, she lowered her voice. “I want to see Corban. Will you send him to me?”

  “I do not think he will come,” Ella replied.

  “And if I command it?”

  “You would do that, Calaine?”

  She looked at her boots. “No. But ask him. Plead for me, Ella. I must see him before the betrothal.”

  “It will not serve either of you,” Ella said.

  “Nevertheless…”

  Ella nodded. “I will ask. Of course I will.”

  “And you will bring me his answer?”

  “I will.”

  Calaine put her hand on Ella’s. “You have always been a dear friend, Ella, and a friend to this city. I do not doubt you. I will not hold you, or Corban, in any less esteem if he says, ‘No’. But I cannot deny my heart this one last breath of freedom. Forgive me if it seems selfish.”

  She squeezed her friend’s hand once and turned, walking across the dusty courtyard of the citadel towards her private quarters, knowing that there was no comfort there. It seemed that the world was closing doors all around her, and soon there would be no choices left, no freedom at all.

  *

  Sometimes life and death do not seem so far apart.

  Calaine sorted through her things. She pulled out a gambeson and laced it around her body. On top of that she donned a light mail hauberk that hung half way to the knee. She shook her body to ensure that it hung free, then picked up a cuirass. It was already buckled on the left, and she closed it around her body, reaching around with her left hand to tighten the straps on the right side. Usually she would have an armourer to help with this, but she had done it often enough on her own that it was no great trial.

  Satisfied that her body was as well protected as it could be she dug out a favoured open faced basinet, one with an aventail to protect her neck, and fitted it to her head. She strapped on her sword.

  Perversely, the armour seemed to lighten her. She felt stronger wearing it, as if the spirit of war suffused her body with power.

  She looked down at the table in the middle of the room. Ella’s note lay there. There were many words on it, but she could see only one. No. Corban would not come.

  She stepped out into the corridor. She half expected to see a guard there, eyes and ears for the general, but a lamp showed her just stone floors and walls. She walked to the stairs and went down them two at a time. Stealth would not serve her. She was the heir to the throne. Her father was shut up in the Great House and nobody in the citadel had the authority to prevent her leaving.

  There were four guards at the gate. They recognised her at once. They were part of her father’s old guard, men she knew, had fought side by side with on the streets against the Ocean’s Gate guardsmen.

  “Calaine!” The man corrected himself. “Do-Regana, the general said you would be staying in the citadel.”

  “As you can see, I am leaving,” she said. “And you have been ordered to inform the general if I do so. You will wait for a count of a hundred before leaving your post.”

  “I can send two men with you,” the soldier said. “An escort. Let me do that at least.”

  “No.” Calaine wanted to be alone. “Obey your orders, sergeant.”

  “Of course, Do-Regana,” he said. The postern was opened and she stepped out onto the street. The sergeant stepped out after her. “Stay safe,” he called after her. It was what they used to say to each other in the bad times, before the fall, when they’d lost a lot of comrades-in-arms.

  The city seemed bizarrely normal. Calaine’s sense of physical danger felt out of place in the twilit streets, among the oblivious people. Someone here was trying to kill her, she reminded herself, and she quickened her steps, striding up Market Street. She crossed Yarrow Street and kept going. One or two people paused and looked at her. It was unusual to see someone so heavily armed and armoured these days.

  She turned right and trudged up one of the steep lanes into Morningside
. Servants, out in the street lighting the night lamps, stopped and stared as she clanked past them.

  It occurred to her that if there was an assassin watching for her he could not have failed to notice her passage through the city, but she preferred it this way. It would be a lucky shot that took her down armed as she was, or a close one, and a close man was one she could kill.

  Her back itched, just between the shoulder-blades.

  She came to the Saine house and beat on the gate with her fist. Standing motionless in the street she was an easy target, but the gate opened quickly, a face peering out at her. She pushed past.

  “Close the gate,” she said. When it banged shut and the great bolt was shot she felt a sense of relief. She was here. Nobody had tried to kill her.

  “Do-Regana?” The servant stood a polite step away.

  “I’m here to see Corban,” she said. “Please tell him I’m here.”

  The servant hurried away and Calaine stood in the courtyard. It was all so familiar to her. She’d lived in this house for the better part of a year – a fostering arrangement, an education, perhaps the best months of her life. She’d trained with the house militia in this courtyard, read books on the balcony that overlooked the orchard, climbed the cliffs behind the house with Corban – Corban who was strong and kind and irreverent and clever and so, so different.

  “Calaine?”

  She turned to see Ella approaching.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Calaine stuck her chin out. “I came to see Corban,” she said.

  Ella touched her on the arm. “Come inside,” she said.

  She followed her friend up the broad staircase that led into the public areas of the house. They paused in the great room. It was as familiar to Calaine as her own chambers in the Citadel. Large as it was, the room was dominated by a broad table that sat before the doors to the balcony. Those doors, she knew, were open on sunny days, and the family would sit in the light, scented air and talk of trivial things, or perhaps of important things in a trivial manner.

  But now the doors were closed, and Corban Saine sat there alone, his face lit by a dozen candles.

  Ella paused. “Corban?”

  “I’ll speak to Calaine,” he said.

  Ella nodded. She touched Calaine’s hand once more, a sisterly sharing of pain, and then left them.

  Having come to speak, Calaine found that she had no words. They stared at each other for close to a minute. Calaine took her helm off, allowing her yellow hair to spill about her shoulders. Corban looked away.

  “What do you want, Calaine?”

  “I need you,” she said.

  Corban raised an eyebrow. “You’re getting betrothed to another man in a few days,” he said. “You can’t have us both.”

  “I’m afraid that I’ll never see you again,” Calaine said.

  Corban looked down at the table. “That’s as it should be,” he said.

  “I don’t want that,” she said.

  “What do you want?” Corban had a bottle of wine on the table. He poured himself a glass and gulped half of it down.

  Calaine struggled for the right words. “I want you to be there. Always. To tell me when I’m wrong, when I go too far, when I’m too proud.”

  “I cannot,” he said. “You can learn these things yourself. You already have.”

  “Without you I am in a dark room, Corban. You are my candle, my burning lamp. You help me to see.”

  “Calaine, you have made your choice.”

  “Is that what you think? Truly? I chose you, Corban. I chose you years ago, but it does not matter. I choose and Samara sets my choice aside. I am to be Queen, and my duty is to the city, to the people. Duty is the Queen of me and duty chooses Portina. The girl you know has no more mastery of her fate than the cart over the horse that pulls it.”

  “Then you wed against your heart?”

  “Queens can have no hearts, Corban, as girls may.”

  Corban stood and crossed the room. He took Calaine in his arms as he had never done before. It had always been fencing, she supposed, a dance of hints and smiles, of hidden lights and vague shadows.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  They shared silence for a moment.

  “Will you stand by me,” Calaine asked. “Will you advise me?”

  “You ask a hard thing,” he said. “To stand beside you, to love you, and watch you wed to another man.”

  “I will never betray Bren Portina,” she said.

  “So what will I be?” he asked.

  “My friend, my confidant, my brother…”

  “You would put a starving man in a room full of food and sew his mouth shut,” he said.

  “I ask too much of you,” she said.

  “And you, how will it be for you? If you feel as I feel then this will add weight to your sorrow.”

  “My sorrow is already complete, Corban. I have made my sacrifice, or shall do when I am betrothed. Any part of you will lighten my burden. Nobody else will be so fearlessly honest, and no-one knows me as well as you. I trust your judgement. I need you. Samara needs you.”

  Corban stepped away from her. He walked over to the door that led out onto the darkened balcony and stared out into the night. Calaine watched him. For once she had no idea what he was thinking. Her mind contained only a perfect balance of hope and despair, awaiting the fall of a feather.

  “I love Samara,” he said. “I love it as my father loves it, with a pound of affection and an ounce of ownership, but I would not do this for Samara. I cannot say how I will fare, but I will try to do as you ask – for you. I will be your brother, your friend, for as long as I can. But do not blame me if the task is too great. I may fail you, Calaine. I am not made of stone.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. In truth she could not have borne it. A world without Corban seemed devoid of meaning to her, and while it could not be said that his presence would be easy to bear she knew that in her darkest moments she could draw strength from him, from knowing that he was there, that he still cared.

  It was, she knew, a selfish thing. She had put her own survival above his happiness. Corban could have found another woman to love, could have had a family, enjoyed everything that he so richly deserved. She had denied him that until he walked away from her, and she did not think he ever would.

  She walked over to where he stood and put her arms around him. “Tonight, perhaps…”

  Corban gripped her shoulders and eased her away, just far enough that their bodies did not touch.

  “I could not live with the memory,” he said.

  Calaine looked him in the eye. “Already you advise me,” she said. “You see?”

  Corban smiled a sad and crooked smile. He shook his head. “You risked your life to come here,” he said. “And now we must see you home.” He led her down to the gate. The servant who had opened the door for her was still waiting by the postern, a timid figure in the ochre lamplight.

  Calaine put her helm back on her head.

  “I should send you back in a coach,” Corban said.

  “And have everyone know where I’ve been?” Calaine shook her head. “I went to some pains to conceal that. I will be safe. Nobody followed me here.”

  Corban nodded to the servant and he drew the bolt, pushed the postern open. Corban stepped through and looked up and down the street. It was empty, and the night still and quiet. Enough lamps burned outside the great houses of Morningside that there were few shadows. Somewhere a night bird called.

  “It seems clear,” he said. “Send for me when you need me.”

  Calaine paused. She looked into Corban’s dark eyes. “Thank you,” she said. She squeezed his forearm, turned and stepped out through the gate.

  The arrow hit her square in the chest. She was knocked backwards by the force of it and struck the side of the postern, falling half in and half out of the gate. She felt strong hands seize the top of her cuirass behind her neck and drag her back into the courtyard.
A sharp pain in her leg made her cry out. She heard the postern crash into its frame, the heavy thud of the bolt driving home again.

  “Calaine!”

  42 The King of Blaye

  It was perfectly evident that something was wrong. Bren Portina stood on the wheel deck of the Western Sun and looked across the water at Samara. The ship had anchored in the bay, and Portina watched as a long, sleek boat rowed out to meet them, propelled by four sets of long oars, flying the Samaran royal standard from the stern. A figure stood easy in the belly of the boat.

  Beyond the boat the citadel looked like the heart of a city at war. Armed men lined the path up to the gate, tall shields on their arms so that they formed a kind of wall. Above them the battlements were thronged with men in steel.

  Portina thought he recognised the passenger, and as the boat drew alongside he was certain.

  “Darius,” he called. “It’s been a long time.”

  The General clambered up the side and brushed himself down. “Lord King,” he said. “You are welcome to Samara.” They shook hands.

  Portina nodded at the citadel. “An impressive display,” he said.

  “Not without reason,” Darius said. “The Do-Regana was attacked last night.”

  The King of Blaye felt his gut clench. “Is she all right?” he asked.

  “Injured,” Darius said. “Not fatally. She was armoured fit for a mêlée. I swear she’s the most headstrong woman in Samara. I asked her to stay in the citadel, but she insisted on shaking off her guard and visiting friends.”

  Portina allowed himself to smile. He would have expected nothing less from his bride to be. She was as fiercely independent as she was stunningly beautiful. “But she’s all right?” he asked.

  “Arrow in the leg,” Darius said. “Hit in the chest, but the armour stopped that... all but. She’ll limp for a few weeks.”