“It would be fairly simple to climb up this wall,” Parno remarked.
“Oh, certainly,” Gun agreed. “For a Mercenary Brother. I don’t think we need to worry about anyone else.”
“Come now.” Dhulyn sat down. “What is it you have to tell us that we must be so careful no one overhears? Evidently not merely what brings you to Uraklios?”
The two looked at each other, and when some signal had passed, Mar spoke.
“No, though I will have to tell you something of that, to explain how we learned what . . . what’s troubling us now.” She placed her hands on the edge of the makeshift table and hoisted herself up. Gun leaned on the table next to her, and she put her hand on his shoulder.
Parno looked at Dhulyn and lifted his right eyebrow. She blinked twice. There was no one outside of the Brotherhood itself—no land-based people in any case, he amended, that he and Dhulyn would trust more than Gundaron of Valdomar and Mar-eMar Tenebro. And he would have thought that they felt the same. What, then, was making them so hesitant to speak?
“We first came almost seven moons ago,” Mar began. Perhaps, after all, she had only been ordering her thoughts. “There’s no Library here in Menoin,” she said, referring to the strongholds of the Scholars. “But there are Scholars, and one of them came across a reference in one of the ancient books belonging to the Tarkinate that seemed to indicate that the Caid ruins just north of Uraklios, on the other side of those hills,” she gestured out the window, “were once a major city. Valdomar petitioned for the right to investigate and, if possible, excavate the site.”
“The elders at Valdomar have been sending me on this type of investigation,” Gun said. “Ever since I revealed my Mark, they’ve found it useful.” He grimaced. “No pun intended.”
“So I take it you Found this Caid city?” Dhulyn said.
“Here, let me show you.” Gun unrolled a map and laid it out on the table, which it covered like a cloth. “Here, you see? That’s the pass through the hills. Here’s the site of the old city.” He looked up. “At one time it was probably the main city, and the ancient equivalent of Uraklios was merely its harbor.”
“What’s this,” Parno said, laying his finger on an odd design on the map. “It looks like a maze.”
Gun nodded. “A part of one, certainly, though we can’t tell what it was supposed to defend. It’s just to the west of the Caid ruins and may even overlap them somewhat, it’s hard to say.” He fell into silent contemplation of the map.
“Gun.” Dhulyn’s rough silk voice was gentle. “Just tell us.”
He looked at her, lips pressed together, the corners of his mouth turned down. “It was here,” he said, laying his ink-stained finger on a spot very close to the design he’d labeled the labyrinth. “It was here that we found the body.”
Dhulyn frowned, her blood-red brows drawn into a vee. “A shepherd?” she suggested.
Gun and Mar both shook their heads. “How much have you heard about the death of the old Tarkin, Falcos’ father?”
“The old Tarkin? It was his body you found?” Parno gave a silent whistle. “We’d been told a sudden illness, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of the kind of sudden illness that can cut a man into pieces and leave strange marks carved into his skin.”
“You sure it was the Tarkin?” Dhulyn said.
“They pretended it wasn’t, and we pretended to believe them,” Mar said. “What else could we do? But it’s not as though we didn’t recognize the body. We’d seen Tarkin Petrion several times by that point. And besides ...” Mar swallowed.
“Besides,” Gun said, “we could recognize what was left of the clothing. It was later that day the Tarkin’s illness was announced, and two days later his death.”
Dhulyn leaned back in her chair. She braided the fingers of her right hand in the sign against ill luck. She looked from Gun to Mar and back again before glancing at Parno. He shrugged one shoulder.
“There’s more,” she said. “Isn’t there? Even if the Tarkin was murdered—however gruesomely—and his people covered it up, that in itself would not send you looking for Mercenary Brothers.” Parno could hear the unspoken question that tightened his Partner’s voice. Where were the Brothers they had come looking for?
“Tell us,” Dhulyn said.
“This was not the first.” Gun cleared his throat and said it again. “This was not the first body found mutilated. If even half of what I have heard is true, there have been at least seven.”
Four
CLEONA OF ARDERON sat sideways in the wide window seat of the salon. Her salon. Large, and overly furnished for Cleona’s taste with prettily embroidered stools and tiny tables, it was the public room of the Tarkina of Menoin’s apartments. There was a smaller, more intimate sitting room within, where Cleona could expect to begin her day privately, with only her maids and attendants.
And perhaps her husband.
“Well, he’s certainly pretty enough,” she said aloud.
Alaria appeared at the door of one of the inner rooms. “Ah, but has he been trained in the arts to please a woman?” Her solemn face dissolved into a grin, and Cleona felt herself relax.
“I thank the gods for whatever impulse possessed you to come with me,” she said to the younger woman. “I just had a sudden image of what I would be feeling right now if it were Lavanis standing in that doorway instead of you.”
Alaria immediately raised her brows, made her eyes as round as possible, and hitched up her shoulders. She minced her way between the furniture in such as way that Cleona was already laughing by the time Alaria reached her.
“That is so perfectly Lavanis,” she said, hand against her side. “Except that all the while you should have been lecturing me on politics and chiding me for not having studied the histories of Menoin since the time of the Caids.”
“And all the while implying,” Alaria said in a nasal voice, “that she would have made a better choice than you.”
Cleona felt her smile freeze and was sorry, as the light suddenly left Alaria’s face. They both knew that Cleona had tried very hard to arrange that it should be someone else who came. But the Tarkina’s own daughters were not of an age for the marriage as it was originally planned, with the late Tarkin of Menoin, Falcos Akarion’s father. And when the circumstances changed, well, they had changed too late to make any difference to Cleona. Alaria was one of the few who had known that Cleona had been about to ask their Tarkina for permission to marry when the representatives of Menoin had arrived, asking for their ancient rights and throwing all her hopes and plans into the wind.
“Alaria, why did you come?” Cleona waited patiently as her cousin came the rest of the way across the room and lowered herself onto the closest of the backless stools scattered through the room.
“What was there for me at home?” Alaria said at last. Her tone was matter-of-fact and practical, but Cleona remembered the child she’d found weeping in the Tarkina’s garden not so many years before. “I’m the younger daughter of a small House, after all,” she pointed out. “Not quite close enough to the Royal House for any real advantage and too close to allow me to enter the Guard or choose some other profession. The best I could hope for was marriage into a daughterless family, and even there, my mother and the Tarkina would have had the last say, not me.” Alaria shook her head. “You know perfectly well I could have ended up an unpaid assistant in my mother’s—and then my sister’s—stables. Tolerated by my nieces and nephews. The landless aunt.”
“A frightening prospect indeed.” She smiled as she said it, but Cleona was very aware of how accurate Alaria’s words were. “And so you preferred exile here in Menoin?”
“Yes.” Alaria spoke simply, with her usual directness. “Though hardly exile, from my point of view. When I was little, when we did come to court, you were the only one of the cousins who became my friend, who didn’t laugh at my country clothes or—worse—look right through me as someone of no import
ance, unworthy of notice.” She was leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, staring into the middle of the room
“You? Small chance, my dear.” Cleona spoke brusquely, though again, she knew what Alaria said was true. She might easily have been in Alaria’s stirrups herself, had she not been an only child and therefore the one to inherit. “You had only to get near a horse to prove your worth to anyone. Your mother was a fool to let the order of birth constrain her.”
“Luckily, as it turned out, since it’s meant I could come with you.” Alaria looked at Cleona with her head tilted to one side. “After all, I’ll be in charge of the new line of horses here. And seriously, I had only to imagine what my life would have been like without you at court to begin packing for the journey to Menoin.”
Cleona fell silent, turning the unfamiliar rings on her fingers.
“So tell me,” Alaria said now, “what do you really think of Falcos Akarion?”
Cleona smiled again. “We can hope that he’s been given training as a Tarkin,” she said. “And that he’s as useful as he is ornamental. Though that might be hard to accomplish.”
“Well, there’s always the uncle.”
“The uncle does not rule,” Cleona pointed out. “He’s the late Tarkin’s younger half brother, from a second wife. Though I imagine he makes an excellent first adviser. He is too plain to succeed with his looks alone.”
“Uncle to the Tarkin would be a good match, I imagine,” Alaria said, her chin in her hand, though Cleona knew the girl well enough to know when she was jesting. “Even if he is quite plain.”
“Shall I ask my uncle-to-be if he is wed? Perhaps you should have him?” Alaria answered Cleona’s grin, but their smiles faded sooner than their light words suggested.
Cleona made up her mind, now was the time. “Alaria. There are things I must tell you, things I was charged to keep to myself until we arrived here.” Cleona bit the inside of her lip. “About why this marriage is so important.”
“I knew there had to be something to make you change your ...” Alaria had begun in triumph, but her voice faltered as she neared the delicate subject of the plans Cleona had changed. “To make you decide as you did,” she amended.
“How much do you know of the history between our two peoples?”
Alaria frowned. “Now you’re sounding like Lavanis,” she said, her brows drawn down in a vee. “I know our horse herds are said to have come from Menoin, from here, but long ago, perhaps in the time of the Caids.”
“Not quite so far back as that, I think. The histories tell us that here in Menoin there was once a dispute about the crown between a brother and sister, twins.”
“Even so, as I understand it, the one who was born first would inherit.” Alaria got to her feet, poured out two glasses of watered wine from a pitcher on a nearby table, and returned, handing one to Cleona.
Cleona took a sip, cleared her throat and continued. “True. But there were those among the High Noble Houses who supported the old ways and insisted that, as it had been the mother who was Tarkina, the daughter should inherit.”
Alaria paused with her glass halfway to her lips. “And naturally the Houses lined up, each behind their chosen candidate. I can see where this will end,” she said, looking sideways at Cleona. “But how did they avoid civil war?”
“There is an ancient ritual of the Caids, called Walking the Path of the Sun, that usually settles such matters for the Menoins. In this case, however, both brother and sister passed the test.” Cleona leaned on the arm of her chair as she considered the thought that had just struck her. “It was as if Mother Sun were telling them to resolve the issue themselves.”
“What did they do?”
“Well, silly as it sounds, they finally decided to lay the problem in another god’s lap. They drew lots, the winner to stay and become ruler of Menoin, the loser to go and establish a separate Tarkinate in lands Menoin owned to the south.”
“And the sister drew Ships.” Alaria was looking out into the middle distance, as if she were seeing the toss of the coin, the sunlight flashing on it as it fell, spinning.
“I don’t know if they tossed a coin,” Cleona said, “but you are right, the sister lost. You have heard of her, if not of this part of her story. She was Ardera, our first Tarkina, the mother of our country. Half the Royal Stables she took with her, and many of the Houses that had supported her went with her also, or at least their younger daughters and sons.”
Alaria shrugged. “And so? We’ve prospered, have we not, each in our own way?”
“At first, yes. Despite the dispute, there was love between the siblings, and each swore they would send a child to the other, to marry the heir, and that there would be an exchange in every generation, so their lines would mingle and rule in both lands.”
Now Alaria was nodding, her tongue tapping her upper lip. “When was the oath broken?”
“Before your time and mine,” Cleona said, pleased that her cousin was so quick to understand. “During the reign of Auselios Tarkin, more than seven generations ago. The details are lost, so whether it was that Auselios had only the one child, or there was no one else close enough to the royal line to send, or whether he had another match in mind I cannot say, but Arderon sent a princess for his son and received no one in return.”
“So they broke their oaths?”
“They did, and at first all seemed well. Then their horse herds began to dwindle, until there are, as you know, only a few left with perhaps some wild ones in the hills to the north. The harvests have been worsening for generations.” She paused to give weight to her next words. “Last year a blight affected the olive groves.”
“And Menoin is famous for its olive oil,” Alaria said. “It’s shipped everywhere, even across the Long Ocean.”
“You may not have realized it, but there were no ships of the Long Ocean Traders in port today, nor have there been this season.”
“Sun, Moon, and Stars! That’s why you are here! And why you agreed to come. Why it had to be you and no other. You are the Tarkina’s only unmarried first cousin.” Alaria sobered. “And is that also why the people here in Uraklios were so happy to see you arrive?”
“I’ve always known you were quick,” Cleona said, patting her younger cousin on the knee. “The late Tarkin, Falcos Akarion’s father, went himself to petition the Seer’s Shrine in Delmar, and it was the Seer who told him that he was cursed, he and his land, for breaking the ancient vow. And so this marriage was arranged.” Cleona got up and refilled her glass. She held up the pitcher of wine, but Alaria shook her head.
“But why did we agree? We didn’t break the oath, we’ve prospered all along.”
“Ah, but if we now refuse, we would be the oath breakers. We had to agree. What?”
Alaria was shaking her head. “But in order for the oath to be kept, it would have had to be your child who inherited the throne, not Falcos.”
“Correct,” Cleona said. “Falcos would have been sent to Arderon, as consort for Moranna, the Tarkina’s firstborn. Now my first child with Falcos will inherit, and we will send the next available son to Arderon.”
“And if you don’t conceive fast enough? Moranna is already eight.”
“Then we will send Epion Akarion. He is the closest kin to Falcos, barring Tahlia House Listra.” Cleona shrugged. “He will be old for her, but it is his blood that is important, not his companionship.”
Alaria scrubbed at her face. “Well, better you than me, that is all I can say. To bring Menoin back to the old ways, to attract again the favor of the gods,” she shook her head. “It goes without saying that I will help you in any way I can, and not just in the stables.” Alaria reached out her hand.
Cleona took her cousin’s offered hand, leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. She drained her glass and stood, pressing her hands into the small of her back. “Ah, I am stiff with so much sitting.” She went to the window. “Our little ride from the harbor has given me the taste for exercise, and
the moon will rise early tonight.”
“When does Falcos Tarkin expect you?”
Cleona turned back into the room. “Oh, we’re excused for this evening,” she said, “since he’s greeted us already. It will make a better show, according to the Lord Epion, if we meet tomorrow in public as if for the first time.”
“And you’re going out riding? How would that show?” But Alaria was smiling and already on her feet.
“It was he who put me in the mind for it,” Cleona said. “He spoke of the good riding country just there, in those hills we can see—can you imagine, when I said I might go, he actually suggested that it would be best for me to wait until he or the Tarkin could accompany me.”
Alaria laughed. “He doesn’t know you, does he? Very well, let’s begin as you mean us to go on. Let them know what you expect in terms of your personal freedoms. Where shall we ride?”
Cleona hesitated. She knew that Alaria had to be at least as eager as she was herself to get on the back of a horse, but somehow, that did not match with the her own ideas. This would be her first ride here, and she’d seen herself alone, with nothing between her and her new land.
“Would you mind very much if I go alone?”
Alaria laughed, shaking her head and putting up her hands palms out. “Since you aren’t yet Tarkina, I can tell you that I am just as tired of looking at your face as you must be of looking at mine.”
Cleona smiled, relieved.
“Besides.” Alaria stood up and straightened her chair. “I’m sure you won’t be alone. I’ll wager one of those guards stationed at the door will feel it necessary to go with you.”
Cleona drew down her brows as she also stood. “No wager. That is an irritation I will have to learn to put up with.” She met her cousin’s eye. “I’ve agreed to be Tarkina here,” she said. “And always having an escort is the price for that.”
Alaria came suddenly closer and put her arms gently around Cleona. “Not the only price, cousin.”
Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno Page 7