No Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  Olena sighed. It seemed her father’s illness would also force her daughter forward into new responsibility. “Have her sent to my quarters. I’ll tell her myself while I change.” Her hand on the door, she paused. “I want to see His Grace when he returns to the palace.”

  “I’ll have him informed, Highness.”

  * * * *

  Uncertain of what to expect when she entered the royal bedchamber, Liene swept her gaze over healer, consort, and king.

  The Healer, Jokubas i’Brigita a’Jokubas, looked too young for the critical position he held—although honesty forced Liene to admit that, of late, everyone looked too young. Standing by the head of the bed, one thin hand resting lightly on Theron’s shoulder so that he could constantly monitor the king’s condition, his expression was far too serene to give anything away.

  Light diagnostic trance, Liene noted as she approached.

  Llyana, sitting close against the bed and holding one of Theron’s hands in hers, could not maintain a mask over her emotions. Fear, grief, fear, love, fear—they chased each other around her face. Her grip suggested that if the turning of the Circle intended to take the king from her, it would have to pry him loose one finger at a time.

  The king himself was a pleasant surprise. Propped up on a pile of pillows, his face had regained its normal color, and, although he looked very tired, his eyes were clear.

  “You’re to tell Annice she’s to stay right where she is.”

  Not entirely finished bowing, Liene frowned. “Majesty?”

  Theron snorted. “I know my sister, Captain. Her daughter is racing toward an insane bard in the company of an assassin and I’ve been confined to my bed. One such incident alone would have been enough to bring her here, the two together surely will.” Theron sipped at the mug he held and grimaced. “Willow bark tea. Apparently, I’ve got to drink a cup of this swill every day for the rest of my life.”

  “It will help you live a good long time, Majesty,” Jokubas murmured.

  Theron swallowed and his upper lip curled. “I’m so thrilled.”

  Llyana leaned forward—fear, grief, fear, love, fear making another circuit. “The Bardic Captain will have to leave if you grow excited,” she warned.

  He pulled his fingers free and patted her hand. “You want to see excited? Dealing with Annice, that would excite me. Captain, see that she stays right where she is. King Rajmund’s not quite as ambitious as his mother but I don’t trust him not to try and take advantage of the situation when he hears I’m laid up. The last thing we need is a war with Cemandia, so Annice must stay on top of the situation at the pass. Tell her that and make sure she listens.”

  “Majesty,” Liene sighed, thankful she was no longer strong enough to Sing a kigh all the way to the border and that the Song would fall to Kovar, “if you have a way to make Annice listen, I’d love to hear it.”

  * * * *

  “Nees?” Sitting on a stump at the edge of the creek, Stasya watched Annice pace, more than a little worried by how quiet she’d grown. They’d spent the night Singing for Jazep at the small Center in the village, had shared memories of him with Pjerin and the others who’d been touched by his Song, and had been walking alone together with their grief when the kigh carrying Kovar’s message had found them. “Nees, are you all right?”

  Annice started, pulled out of her reverie. Her eyes were red and puffy and she moved back and forth along the path as though movement kept dark possibilities at bay. “I will be when we hear that Maggi’s safe,” she said, although she didn’t sound convinced.

  “We should tell Pjerin …”

  That stopped the pacing. “We tell Pjerin nothing until we know Maggi’s okay. We don’t want him charging off after her like a hero out of a bad ballad.”

  Stasya, who considered Magda to be hers as much as Annice’s or Pjerin’s, and who’d Sung a kigh in pursuit immediately upon hearing Kovar’s message while Annice still stared openmouthed and disbelieving into the air, dropped her gaze to the muddy toes of her boots and forced herself to ask, “And if Maggi isn’t okay?”

  “She is.” Annice lifted her head and a muscle jumped in her jaw. “She has to be. Kovar wouldn’t lie to us about something like that.” Her tone made the words very nearly a warning.

  “And His Majesty?”

  “He seems to want me to stay here.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I don’t know.” Ignoring the damp, she sank cross-legged to the ground and picked up a double handful of earth. “First Jazep’s killed, then Maggi runs off, then Theron’s heart tries to quit—I feel as if someone’s been smashing at my head with a … with a …”

  “Nees?”

  Eyes locked on the soil dribbling out from between her fingers, Annice murmured, “Stas, something’s wrong.”

  “Center it, Annice! Stop saying that!” Exhausted by a night of grieving and the morning’s news, Stasya had reached her limit. She leaped to her feet and, breathing heavily, glared down at Annice. “Either tell me exactly what’s wrong, or shut up about it!”

  “The dead are walking, Stas. I can feel the earth recoil from their tread. Life flees before them. Sorrow travels by their side.”

  “Annice, stop it!” Arms wrapped around her body, Stasya shivered as the sun disappeared behind the tattered edges of a gray cloudbank. “You’re scaring me!”

  Blinking in the dull light, feeling as though she’d just been granted a glimpse of the horror that existed in shadows beyond the safe enclosure of the Circle, Annice wiped her shaking hands against her thighs. “I’m not surprised; I’m scaring me.” She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, searching for strength. “There’s more.”

  “More? More what? More dead?”

  “Jazep …”

  Stasya squatted down and brushed a strand of hair back off Annice’s face. “Nees, we know Jazep is dead,” she said gently. “Don’t you remember? The kigh brought the news last night.”

  “An air kigh brought the news.” Annice caught up the other woman’s hand in hers and stared up into the dark eyes. “But Jazep Sang only earth. I have to do something, Stas. I can’t just sit here and let this go on.”

  “But His Majesty said …”

  “His Majesty said what?” Annice snapped sounding more like herself. “That I wasn’t to go to Elbasan?” She stood, hauling Stasya up with her. “He doesn’t want me by his sickbed, fine.” Her tone suggested it wasn’t fine at all. Stasya winced. “As it happens, I have no intention of going to Elbasan.”

  * * * *

  Wakened by the clash and clatter of a procession going up Hill Street toward the Citadel, Gerek dragged himself out of bed and stumbled naked to the window, cracking the shutter just enough to peer outside. The flags and pennants flying above the crowd told him everything he needed to know.

  Looks like Prince Otavas arrived safely. Realizing that his mouth tasted like the inside of a boot, he turned and tried to remember what he was doing in what was obviously the best room in a less than quality inn.

  He’d left Maggi at the Healers’ Hall and gone to the service the bards were holding for Jazep at the Center—where it had finally hit him that the man who’d brought him an orphaned fox cub tucked down inside his vest, was dead. He’d gone out and gotten drunk. Very drunk. After that, things became a little less clear.

  Crossing over to the washstand, he sniffed the water in the chipped pitcher and drank the lot, ignoring the handleless mug.

  “Better,” he husked, wincing as the cheering outside momentarily increased in volume. He didn’t see why the prince couldn’t travel through the city just a little more quietly.

  His pants were under the bed and as he dragged them out, a brass button spun across the floor. Teeth gritted, he bent and picked it up. Stamped with the crowned ship of Shkoder, it seemed to have been torn from the uniform of His Majesty’s navy.

  Gerek sighed as the memories returned. He didn’t feel any better about Jazep being dead but, all things being
enclosed, he’d gained new respect for the navy. As the young woman he’d spent the latter part of the night with had long since left—he vaguely remembered her explaining she had to be back on board ship at dawn—he dressed and headed downstairs to pay the reckoning.

  Not feeling up to either the crowd on the street or the chaos Prince Otavas would be causing at the Citadel, he spent an hour in the common room remembering Jazep over biscuits and sausage gravy. When he finally stepped outside, a wind blew up in the harbor and nearly knocked him over.

  He recognized Annice’s touch. For the last seventeen years, ever since Maggi’s mother had come to live in Ohrid, breezes that blew where breezes had no business blowing had pushed him around.

  Fear quickly took the place of his initial irritation. As far as he knew, Annice was still in Ohrid—as far from Elbasan as possible while remaining in Shkoder. In order for her to be sending the kigh after him instead of just sending a message through one of the bards at the Hall, something had to be wrong. Very wrong. More wrong than Jazep’s death alone could account for.

  Breathing Magda’s name like a prayer, he raced up the hill, wishing he’d picked an inn a little farther from the harbor. When his heels hit the cobblestones, painful reverberations bounced about his skull. Breezes continued to swirl around him, completely oblivious to the direction of the actual wind. He wasn’t surprised when the bard on the gate was waiting for him.

  “What’s she want?” he panted. “What’s she trying to tell me?”

  Ziven frowned and Sang the notes that made up Annice’s name. Half a dozen kigh expanded their circle to include him then, message finally delivered, sped off in different directions—one of them twisting its ethereal body around so that it appeared to blow in one of Gerek’s ears and out the other as it left. “She says that you’re to go after your sister and then find Jazep.”

  “You mean, find Jazep’s body?”

  “That’s what I mean, but that’s not what Nees said.” Ziven blinked back tears and half shrugged. “She probably doesn’t believe it’s true. She probably doesn’t believe he’s really dead.”

  “I find it hard to believe myself,” Gerek admitted. “And what does she mean ‘go after my sister’?” He wiped the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and scowled. “What’s she talking about? When I left last night, Maggi was safely tucked in her room. Where’s she gone?”

  Glancing pointedly at the pair of guards also on duty at the gate, Ziven said, “Princess Onele wants to see you.”

  No answer could only be a bad answer. Heart pounding, Gerek stepped forward, anxiety and frustration warring against a lifetime of training. He was younger, bigger, stronger—his fingers curled to grab the bard’s tunic—he’d find out what happened to Maggi if he had to shake Ziven so hard his teeth shattered.

  Ziven made no attempt to move away. “Princess Onele,” he repeated calmly, his tone adding a quiet counterpoint of both sympathy and warning, “wants to see you.”

  * * * *

  “I asked you here to arrange for you to spend some time with His Highness.”

  Ullious, who’d met the Imperial Ambassador twice in the three years he’d been studying at the Bardic Hall—just after he’d arrived and at a court function he’d been Witnessing under supervision—stared at the man in astonishment. “Me, sir?”

  The ambassador bit back a sigh. Having been informed at the last possible moment that the king was under a healer’s care, he’d had an exhausting morning tiptoeing around the wide-eyed self-consciousness of the child they’d sent to welcome the prince. He’d been as diplomatic as he knew how, but Princess Jelena had not responded well to the formal phrasing. The highlight of his morning had involved Prince Otavas telling him to stop being such a bully and then moving to stand between him and the grateful young princess in a blatant breach of protocol.

  “Yes, you,” he said shortly. “His Highness likes bards. You’re studying to be one. It is the duty of all Imperial citizens in Shkoder to make His Highness welcome. You’re an Imperial citizen. I don’t see where there’s a problem.”

  Ullious flushed and tried to explain, using the most formal of the ambassador’s titles in order to stress the seriousness of his objection. “Imperial Voice, I was only a carter before I began training to be a bard. I’d have no idea of how to behave around an Imperial Prince.”

  This time, the ambassador allowed the sigh to expand. The people of Shkoder were raised with very clear ideas of the liberties afforded to bards. The citizens of the Empire were not. He’d always believed that this would be the hardest adjustment that the Imperial bards would have to make. “Just behave like a bard. His Highness will accept that.”

  “I beg your pardon, Imperial Voice …” There was no trace of actual apology in Ullious’ voice. “… but His Imperial Highness accepts such behavior from foreigners. Will he accept that kind of behavior from one of his own?”

  “A very good point,” the ambassador admitted, studying the ex-carter/almost-bard with increased respect. “I guess we’ll have to find that out together.”

  A cursory knock brought Tysia in from the outer office. “Begging your indulgence, Ambassador,” she murmured. “But there’s someone here I think you’d better see.” Her hand signal indicated that the matter was extremely urgent and, if he hadn’t known better, the ambassador would have sworn she was afraid.

  He stood and motioned for Ullious to remain where he was. “Wait here,” he said. “We still have a schedule to arrange.” Sweeping Tysia out of the inner office before him, he closed the door between the crisis and the bard. “What is it?”

  Silently, she handed him a square of leather stamped with a black sunburst.

  The ambassador’s gaze slid off the assassin’s calling card, traveled across the room, and locked on the slight young man standing by the window. How … interesting, he thought. Two Imperial assassins in Shkoder when assassins have never previously been allowed out of the Empire. His hand began to rise toward his throat. He forced it back to his side.

  * * * *

  Ullious would never have considered eavesdropping had the ambassador’s assistant not sounded so frightened. An Imperial citizen, he told himself as he made his way to the window, even one who’s spent years in Shkoder, would never think of asking a bard for help. Whistling softly, he sent one of the multitude of kigh that hung about the Citadel to peer into the next room and asked it to repeat everything it heard.

  * * * *

  “Unfortunately, Bannon, your sister is no longer at the Bardic Hall.”

  Bannon’s easy smile disappeared. “Where is she?”

  Rubbing his thumb over yet another gold Imperial seal, the ambassador reflected on how this was all becoming absurdly complicated. First one of the assassins that helped to rescue the kidnapped Prince Otavas, then the prince himself, and now, apparently the second of the assassins. Who’s next? “I have been informed that she disappeared some time last night.”

  “Informed by who?”

  “A reliable and discreet source whose anonymity I would prefer to maintain.” None of your business didn’t seem like the politic thing to say to an assassin looking for his sister. The hem of the ambassador’s official court robes whispered against the floor as he walked over to a high-backed chair and lowered himself into it.

  “His Imperial Majesty,” Bannon reiterated, a minor change of posture making him look imminently dangerous, “wants me to bring my sister back to the Empire.”

  “And I obey His Imperial Majesty in all things.” Steepling his fingers together, the ambassador refused to surrender to the subtle intimidation. “I will offer you every assistance I can, but destroying a contact it has taken me years to establish will not help you and will certainly not advance the Emperor’s interests in Shkoder. Your sister has left Elbasan with the king’s niece, a young healer of some rare talent. I have no idea where they are heading, but my source seems to think it has something to do with the bard who died.”

 
“What bard?”

  “A man named Jazep.” Anticipating the next question, he added, “In Bartek Springs, a small town in the principality of Somes. Tysia, if you would be so kind as to find our guest a map?”

  Tysia jerked into motion. Her attempt to walk toward a multidrawered cabinet while continuing to stare at the assassin—the attractive, dangerous, deadly assassin—was not notably successful. When, fully aware of her interest, he flashed her a charming smile, she cracked her knee on the cabinet’s corner and grunted in pain.

  Bannon made a graceful gesture of sympathy that only flustered her further, then turned his attention back to the ambassador. “If this Jazep is dead, what good’s a healer going to do?”

  “An excellent question. The young woman apparently heals the fifth kigh.” To his surprise, the assassin nodded in understanding. “There was something said about the dead walking …” Under the full force of the young man’s stare, his voice trailed off. “What is it?”

  “Is this Bartek Springs near the border? Near a pass?”

  “It’s the principal trading town by the Giant’s Cleft, the pass between Somes and the First Province. Why?”

  Shaking his head, Bannon propped a thigh on the windowsill and ran a hand through thick curls. The gold rings he wore in both ears gleamed in the sunlight, matching the gleam in gold-flecked eyes. “Do you know about what happened to the prince? To Vree and me?”

  “Essentially. Something took over your body, your sister saved you, together the three of you and a bard saved the prince. Although, to be honest, I am unable to understand any motivation but yours and your sister’s.”

  Bannon snorted. “You don’t understand hers either. The thing that took over my body didn’t die. It’s still alive and it’s in Vree. That’s why the Emperor wants her back, to destroy it.”

  “In the report, everyone involved swore it was dead.” Eyes narrowed, he studied the assassin. “Swore to the Emperor.”

  “Yeah, well I was convinced by the bards. They wanted to study it.”

  Of course they did. And the ambassador had never yet met a bard—Shkoden or Imperial—who didn’t, deep down, believe that he or she knew best.