by Kirby Crow
Alexyin stood just below the dais. He shot Liall a look of caution as the chamber buzzed like a kicked beehive.
Liall rapped his knuckles on the wood of the dais for quiet.
“You should have put a sword through every living thing in Magur!” a man shouted. “Spit them like mad dogs! Hang them from the trees and put the entire city to the torch!”
“And then shall I command my army to spit infants on lances like Ramung did in the black years?” Liall scorned. The man wore the purple colors of Tebet, but Liall did not recognize his face. “I am not Ramung. So long as I am king we will not butcher women and children for the crime of being in the wrong place, or having the wrong fathers or husbands. And the city was put to the torch. Khatai Jarek assures me that every man who bore arms against us was killed in battle, incinerated, or executed afterward.”
“Every man,” the Tebeti stressed. “Not every male. Was it Queen Nadiushka who spared the young boys and allowed the animals to take root and flourish in our midst, or was it you, sire?”
Liall looked down on him. The man had a sharp face and a reddish tint to the thin, pointed beard he sported. Liall fancied he had the look of a young Baron Ressanda. “Who are you, ser?”
“Jarad Hallin, of Tebet.”
Hallin meant drover. It was a new name, not claimed by any of the noble houses of Rshan. From the look of Hallin, he had Morturii blood somewhere in his ancestry. No few did these days, especially in Tebet.
“Ser Hallin,” Liall said with an edge of mockery in his voice. There were scattered titters throughout the room, and for once the customary prejudice of his people was something he could make use of. Few nobles would want to be seen allying with the political views of a peasant. “It is true that Jarek pardoned the youths who joined their fathers in revolt, so long as they swore an oath never to take up arms against the crown again. Those who would not swear—and there were no few—were beheaded.”
“Their word,” Hallin sneered. “And what good is the word of a fatherless rebel bastard?”
“Almost as good as the word of a cow-herder,” Liall replied.
Hallin’s expression turned sullen as chuckles scurried through the hall like a nasty rumor, and Liall knew he had won. A distasteful victory, but he would take it.
“The men of Magur have paid,” he said, raising his voice one more. “When the battle was lost, the Ava Thule fled like the cowards they, but not to the Tribelands. They are still here.”
While the crowd erupted into shouts and calls, Alexyin moved quickly to join him on the dais. Alexyin shot a look at the lacquered chest, only now seeming to notice the brilliant blue of the varnish, and the royal badge of stars set in diamond on the lid. Liall saw that Alexyin knew what it meant, and that he was not pleased.
“Sire,” Alexyin said into Liall’s ear, “you will lose the advantage if you reveal everything now.”
“I don’t agree,” Liall answered, keeping his head down and his face turned into Alexyin’s shoulder in case there were lip-readers in the chamber. He chooses this moment to have an opinion? he thought. His mentor had been painfully distant on the matter of the proposed war, close-mouthed to the point of insolence at times. Now Alexyin wanted to be heard. Why now?
“This information would be useful as bait,” Alexyin argued.
“Some secrets are more damaging if they’re kept, and ultimately a member of my family is responsible for this invasion,” Liall said. “Dead or not, it makes no difference. I am Camira-Druz and the blame will fall to me.”
“I could watch to see who lets this secret slip. How else would they know unless they were allied with them? The death of your enemies is better than the goodwill of your friends.”
An astute observation, but one that led to a ruthless path. Liall shook his head. “I will not be that kind of ruler. We’ll need more than friends to drive the Ava Thule out of our lands for good. We’ll need the whole kingdom.”
“I don’t agree.”
“It’s not your decision.”
Alexyin pursed his mouth crossly and rapped his fist on the table. The noise died down. “The king shall speak!”
Liall scanned the faces of the crowd, meeting an attentive eye here, a dagger-look there. He had many friends, he saw, but there were many more he could not read. Currents ran around him like the rushing of a stream. It will become a river soon enough, and much will be swept away. Time for the king’s famous speech, where he stirs the soldiers to courage before the battle, except this is a Rshani battle, and nothing ever goes like in the stories.
He was not looking forward to that part.
“On my lady mother’s command, soldiers under Khatai Jarek were sent to garrison Magur after the battle, but the soldiers will not remain there. They will be recalled to Starhold.” Liall looked quickly around the room to see who understood and who did not, and was pleased to see that many men in attendance were no fools. He nodded. “For centuries, the Ava Thule have attacked from the shadows, killing our men, stealing our women, kidnapping our children into their twisted litters to corrupt their hearts. We will rout these vermin from their holes and drag them into the sun to die on our pikes.” His gaze raked the crowd. “They have taken the hills beneath Ged Fanorl.”
Ged Fanorl. The sacred mountain of the Shining Ones, forbidden to men.
The previous noise was nothing to the roar that spilled out of the chamber and into the halls. Shouts of derision, fear, excitement, and accusation echoed around him:
“Blasphemy! Kill the defilers!”
“All lies! There is no threat!”
“Magur was sacrificed for the warmongers!”
“The filthy tribesmen will be slaughtering us on the streets of Sul next! They will fire the ships in the harbor and feast on our flesh!”
Liall closed his ears to the ruckus. It reminded him of the same paranoia and disbelief over Scarlet’s magic: that it was either a myth or it existed only to destroy them. Months had passed and the prophesied Hilurin Doom had not come. Instead, Scarlet’s beauty, wit, and bravery had gained him dozens of admirers.
With time and a little luck, Scarlet might even begin to think of Rshan as his home.
The king remained on the dais with Alexyin and let the chamber thrash it out. By custom, he had no voice when they argued among themselves, and the usual court etiquette was ignored. If a man was invited to council, he was allowed to say what was on his mind, even to the king. Creative insults were not uncommon. Scarlet would have been greatly shocked.
Liall crossed his arms. “In Byzantur,” he said aside to Alexyin, “no commoner is allowed to look on the face of the Flower Prince. And in Morturii, they revere their king so deeply that no man, common or noble, is permitted to raise their voice to him.”
“We could use a bit of that today,” Alexyin grumbled at the noisy crowd. “They’re like a brood of clucking hens spying a fox.”
“If they don’t stop, fetch a bucket of water.”
Alexyin grunted. “A few spears would serve better.”
“None of that,” Liall warned. “We have foxes aplenty among us, but the nobles are more useful alive than dead. Any man—indeed every man—can be forced to agree, but we want to win minds here, not just swords. If I wanted the barons dead, that’s done easily enough. I need the full support of the nobles, in spirit as well as word, and my kingdom needs to be free of this endless dissent and fear. I was raised with royal plotting and treachery, but I do not intend to live the rest of my life that way.”
“Dead foxes can still be put to use. My neck is better warmed by a collar of fur.”
Astute and ruthless again, and he’s not entirely wrong. “I wonder if it is not the color that entices you.”
Alexyin lifted a snow-white eyebrow and his mouth curved. “A red fox?” He chuckled with real humor.
Ressanda had declined to attend the council. Instead, the baron had sent the ill-bred Jarad Hallin as emissary, an insult if Liall ever saw one.
Liall pro
mised himself that he would fully attend to the matter of Ressanda soon, so that many other worries could be laid to rest. Ressanda wanted a royal husband for his daughter, but Cestimir’s body was long cold. The baron looked now to more promising prospects.
I fear he will not take no for an answer. But how can I break Scarlet’s heart to honor a promise only half made?
“My lord! My lord king!” A courtier waved his arms from the crowd, vying with many others in the sea of voices.
“I will not speak to a mob, ser,” Liall answered, pitching his voice to be heard.
Theor’s beard quivered as he clenched his lantern jaw. “Silence! Can’t you see the king is waiting? Stop your wailing! Shut it, ya squeaking bastards!” His booming voice crashed over the heads of the petty nobles like a thunderclap. He leaned easily on his axe and nodded at Liall. “The king wants to talk.”
“We will not tolerate this blasphemy,” Liall said. “I have sent Khatai Jarek to Sul, there to conscript new recruits and to forage and supply for a campaign.”
A rousing shout went up, but there were still many voices of dissent mingled with questions:
“What of the Ancients? Ged Fanorl belongs to them! Let the Ancients deal with them!”
“What about my lord’s holdings to the north, his lands and fields?”
“My baron had farms and flocks in Magur! What of them?”
“To hell with your fields! What about the coin we sent to lure workers back to that blasted place? Where did that go?”
Liall nodded to Theor, who bellowed again for quiet. When he had their attention, he went to the table and opened the lacquered chest. He took an object from it, holding it high for all to see, wondering how many would recognize it.
A deep hush fell over the chamber.
He turned the dagger in his fingers. It was small, no larger than his hand, with a thin blade and a rounded pommel. The blade itself was a mixture of vivid crimson and muddy black, like a fresh wound.
“Blood steel,” he said loudly, letting the power of his voice, trained from childhood to tones of command, roll over the watchers. “There is no other metal like this in all of Nemerl. Long ago, we lost the alchemy to forge it. This weapon was taken from the body of a dead Ava Thule in Magur. It comes from inside the temple mountain, from holy Ged Fanorl itself. The Ava Thule have defiled it and stolen from the Shining Ones, who are the makers of us all.” He slammed the dagger point-down into the table. The metal flared bright for an instant and sang with a metallic whine as it sheared through the hard wood, buried to the hilt.
Theor raised his axe. “DEATH!” he roared. “Death to Ava Thule!”
The call was taken up until the hall rang with a hundred voices, a sea of raised fists and open mouths shouting Death!
Alexyin flipped his long braid away from his shoulder. His eyes were hooded. “Well, you’ve got your war.”
***
Tesk was to bring the new man to Liall’s private solar. Liall sat with the table between himself and the door, a flagon of cold wine and two cups waiting.
Ged Fanorl, he thought, and wondered what the hall made of his performance. He wasn’t good at acting, or at pretending shock or outrage.
No, your lies take a different talent.
The sacred mountain had been violated long ago, even before his exile. Only a few knew that secret, and those few had high stakes in protecting the knowledge. Captain Qixa would surely be put to death, and the others...
His mouth twisted and he was busy damning himself to three different hells when the door opened and Tesk entered. A lean man shadowed him.
Liall’s first impression of Margun Rook was that the man was like the ragged remnants of a once-fine garment. He could discern the nobility in Margun’s high brows and his straight, narrow nose, and a sober intelligence in his deep-set eyes, but his muscular arms bore many scars of battle. The marks were smooth and thin, obviously made by sharp steel. Another razor-thin scar circled his left eye socket like a crescent moon, the end trailing down his cheek. A knife, Liall thought. Not by chance, either. That was done with care.
Margun’s white hair was crowned with a widow’s peak that framed his face in two streaks of smoky gray, long enough to brush his shoulders. He wore a brown, sleeveless virca with the serpent badge of a Setna on his breast.
“Thank you, Tesk,” Liall said.
“My lord.” Tesk put his hand over his heart and performed one of his elegant bows. The look he shot Margun was anything but graceful. “Remember my words,” he warned, and left them.
Unlike solariums—which were rooms constructed solely to gather and channel light—solars were rather small palace rooms with a single wall of glass. This one was a wide, airy gable with walls unrelieved by tapestries or banners. A curving wall of thick, milky glass faced the east. It was a room for seeing, and Liall liked to conduct his interviews here, where shadows could not hide.
He studied Margun for several moments as the man waited at attention, his gaze fixed straight ahead. Liall noted that his eyes were the color of blue slate, but the next moment they seemed to be darker, the color of flint.
Changeable eyes, he thought. A chameleon of a man.
“Margun Rook,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “What words did Tesk have for you?”
“Words.” Margun’s voice was low and deep, with a hint of northern lilt. “They were not precisely... words.”
Threats, then. Well done, Tesk. “You hail from noble stock. I’ve heard the tale of Margun Siran, Ramung’s chief assassin in the days of my great-grandfather.”
Margun clasped his hands behind his back. “We are who we are, my lord.”
“True enough. I don’t remember your face from the campaigns, but I remember hearing your name.”
Margun did not react, and Liall was not pleased. He can’t think I’ll trust him, can he?
But Tesk had found Margun and Alexyin vouched for him. That had to mean something. Liall tried a new tack. “Tell me why you decided to betray your commander.”
Margun’s eyes flickered. “I do not believe I betrayed my oath, sire. I only held myself truer to it.”
“By refusing to follow orders, inciting your brother-soldiers to defect and lay down their arms? I spent my youth being schooled in the language of nuance, but it will take more than a clever turn of phrase to convince me that direct defiance of a superior is not insubordination.”
“It was a bad war,” Margun answered straightly. “The Tribelands were your first campaign, my lord, but not mine. What happened there was... it was not right. Conquerors should be better rulers than what was done to the north. I will do what I must to defend my family, my country, and my king, but some orders should never be given.”
“If every common soldier felt free to question the orders of their commanders, there would be no wars fought at all.”
A ghost of a smile touched the wide, hard line of Margun’s mouth. “Yes, sire. That’s quite true.”
Liall gave a short hum of thought. “You were in command of a cohort of men under Khatai Jarek. You refused a direct order to put a village to the sword, and the next month the village you so benevolently spared joined with the Ava Thule and put a third of the smallholder farms in Uzna Minor to the torch, along with the farmers. Do I have that correct? Your life was spared and you were sent to the Setna to learn better sense. Well? Have you learned anything?”
“Sixty-three years is a long time, my lord. I learned many things, among them the fact that a man must answer ultimately to himself alone. I may not have been wise in my decision to spare the village, but I was true to my conscience and their blood is not on my hands. I could not have done it and stayed myself. And yet, I failed my people and my queen when I refused to obey.” Margun shrugged. “Just as many died from my refusal as would have died from my compliance. I was not a good soldier. I was lucky to be sent to the Setna.”
“You were lucky to keep your head. I’d have taken it. If you’re a man who courts his dou
bts, please don’t doubt that one. I’d have executed you quickly, so you wouldn’t have had time to interrogate that sensitive conscience of yours.”
Margun bent his head. “I didn’t mean to offend you, sire.”
“When you offend me, you’ll know it.”
“Yes, sire.”
I keep trying to put him off-balance and it isn’t working, Liall thought. Perhaps that was a good sign. “I don’t need a mindless brute to keep my t’aishka safe. I want a man who thinks for himself, but not one who thinks so much that he ponders disobedience in favor of his own mind. I don’t know you, but Tesk does. Alexyin says you’re up to the task, and I trust his judgment.”
Margun nodded his head slowly. “But,” he said.
Liall waited. When it became apparent that Margun would speak no more, the king smiled thinly. “But trusting Alexyin is not the same as trusting you. While he believes you’d make a fine guard for Scarlet, Alexyin’s notion of what Scarlet needs and my own differ greatly. Have you ever known a Hilurin?”
Margun’s eyebrows went up. “No. None. Should I have?”
“I’ve been informed that you’ve never traveled outside of Rshan, so no. Definitely not. And there lies the problem.”
Margun frowned and shifted on his feet, his boots scuffling on the floor. “Because they are so different from us?”
“I did not say that. They are actually very like us, but how you might expect a Hilurin to act and how one might truly behave are two different things. When I first traveled south as young man, I landed in Volkovoi. I saw a few faces in the city that reminded me of home, so I stayed.” He paused. “It was one of the worst choices I ever made. Volkovoi is full of the worst sort of cutthroats, as well as thieves, pirates, smugglers, whores, and Minh. But because of those men, the ones who look like us and reminded me of home, I stayed. I learned that the city employed men of Northern blood as guards, and for good pay, too. Bravos, they’re called. I thought they might be like our own people, so I joined them.” Liall paused to sip his wine, offering Margun none. “I was wrong. Bravos are mindless thugs: brutal and filthy and unimaginably cruel. They particularly delight in causing pain, usually on the scrats.”