Raven's Strike rd-2

by Patricia Briggs

  “They’ll stand twelve-hour shifts,” said Toarsen. Phoran noticed he didn’t argue with Gerant’s assessment. “And Kissel and I will rotate with them.”

  Gerant shook his head. “The shifts are too long. And, by picking only a few, you’re telling the rest they’re not good enough. Pair them up—one trustworthy with another less so. Rotating three-hour shifts. Any longer than three hours, and a guard’s not as effective.”

  One of the benefits, Phoran thought, of having these men was that they so often took care of the arguing so he could see around it to the real problem.

  “Have them guard me in here,” said Phoran.

  Gerant raised an eyebrow.

  “They’re all noblemen,” Phoran said with a faint smile. “Raised in noble households. They know which fork to eat with—and are probably more likely to do so than I am. Of course they make lousy door guards because that’s not what they are. They aren’t servants or castle guards. They’ll come in and keep company with me, and we’ll put castle guards at the door. Surely we can find a few castle guards who won’t stab me in the back for having their captain hung. Find the ones he disciplined most often.”

  Avar snorted. “That’ll be good. Pick out the worst of the castle guards to keep the Emperor safe.”

  “That’s it,” Gerant said suddenly. Phoran deduced that he was agreeing with Phoran rather than Avar. “That’s what we’ve missed. We’ll make the Emperor’s Own something different from a guardsmen troop or an army. They’re not suited to the kind of service a guardsman gives.”

  “I’m noble born.” said Toarsen. “If someone gave me a uniform and expected me to disappear except when they barked out orders, I’d resent it.” He grinned, and this time his eyes lit up, too. “Come to think of it, that’s how the Raptors treated us, and look what it got them.”

  “That doesn’t mean we’ll let discipline go,” Phoran told Avar, who was looking unhappy, “quite the opposite, I think. Tier said there isn’t a man among them who isn’t a decent swordsman. We’ll find more experts, though, and teach them knives, staves, fighting dirty, and anything else we can think of. Tier said that they needed to be valued.” He knew how that felt. He knew these young men who were looking for a purpose; he’d been one until very recently.

  “So you make them think they are valued,” said Kissel. “And then they become loyal.”

  Phoran shook his head. “I do need them, Kissel. All I have to do is show them that. They don’t replace the castle guard—hopefully that won’t be necessary, but if it is, I can find replacements elsewhere. I need them to be my eyes and ears, my hands and feet.” He started to get enthusiastic. “Look how much trouble the city guards have with the wealthier merchants and lesser nobles. Let them appeal to the Emperor’s Own—noblemen, gentlemen, men of rank who are listened to and respected.”

  “Noblemen,” said Avar dryly, “who were thieves and vandals until just recently. I hope. Of whom your captains can find only what—fourteen trustworthy men?”

  “Ten,” said Kissel. “Including Toarsen and me.”

  “Noblemen who serve an emperor who was a drunkard and a screwup,” said Phoran. “I certainly hope it is possible to change—and if you don’t, you’d better pretend you do, or you might offend Us.”

  Avar grinned. “All right. But you need to keep at least one of them who is on the captains’ shortlist of trustworthy souls near you.”

  Gerant chuckled. “They’ll work out. Phoran’s hit upon it, I think. That’s what happens when people are around Tier for too long. They start expecting miracles—and usually get them.”

  “Before you came here, my lord,” said Kissel, “you hadn’t seen Tier since the Fahlarn War. Do you always answer summonses from commoners who served in your command two decades ago?”

  Gerant smiled and ran a finger over his moustache to smooth it. “I answered a summons from my emperor, lad. Make no mistake.”

  Phoran tilted his goblet toward Gerant. “And they say you don’t know how to play politics.”

  Gerant let out one of his soft chuckles. “No. What they say is that I don’t like politics.” To Kissel he said, “I do understand your question, though. Tier and I haven’t seen each other since the war, but we’ve exchanged letters two or three times a year for twenty years and…” He shook his head. “You’ve met Tier. I’d trust his judgment before I’d trust my own—and I’ve done so. I expect that if I’d not heard from him since he left Gerant, I’d still come running if he asked.”

  “You’ve got it, too,” observed Phoran. “That something that makes people want to do as you say. I don’t know what it is, exactly. Avar has it upon occasion, but you and Tier carry it about your shoulders like a mantle of authority.”

  Gerant bowed his head. “Thank you. I’ve had to work at it. Tier was like that when he was a snot-nosed boy leading around men twice his age and experience and not a one of them thought to question it.”

  Toarsen laughed. “The Path didn’t know what they were doing when they threw him down among us, did they, Kissel? I think they expected us to cow him or torment him like we did that poor Traveler bastard who was there before him. But instead Tier took us and made us into a weapon for the Emperor.” He nodded at Phoran, who raised his goblet in acknowledgment.

  “See that you serve him well,” said Avar.

  “Speaking of service,” said Phoran, changing the subject. “I need an heir.”

  Avar grinned at him. “Do you have a lady in mind?”

  Phoran rolled his eyes. “Please don’t be stupid, Avar. Any wife I can contract right now is as likely to kill me in my sleep as anything. A blood heir will have to wait until I have a few more allies than those who are now present. Besides, a child would be of no use anyway. Too vulnerable.”

  He sipped at his drink and let them roll the idea around in silence a while, then said, “If I have a legal heir, an adult heir, the first thought in my enemy’s mind won’t be—if Phoran could just take a fall off his horse… or down the stairs, then I wouldn’t have to worry about him.”

  Avar got it, but Phoran could see that Kissel and Toarsen were still working through it.

  “It’s not so much that I’m less vulnerable with an heir,” he explained. “It’s that there is less to be gained by my assassination—especially if my heir is likely to be more trouble than I am.”

  “It won’t help with Gorrish or anyone else with a personal grudge,” said Avar. “And, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, you’ve gone out of your way to offend a lot of people, Phoran. But political enemies will be less likely to consider assassination as a solution. Do you have an heir in mind?”

  “You,” he said, and could have laughed at Avar’s blank face. Avar wasn’t stupid, but sometimes you had to grab him by the shoulders and make him look before he saw the wild boar charging him. “Come now, who else would it be? Your mother and mine were first cousins or some rot—which is how your father took over as regent when my uncle died. You’re as close to family as I’ve got—you and Toarsen.”

  “I don’t want to become Phoran the Twenty-Seventh,” Avar said in dead seriousness.

  “Don’t then.” Phoran leaned back and took the last swallow from his goblet. “Follow my tradition and include the first Phoran. You can be Phoran the Twenty-Eighth instead. Or, as far as I’m concerned, since I presume I’ll be dead if you inherit, you can be Avar the First.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Avar said impatiently. “You know it isn’t. I don’t want your place.”

  “No,” said Phoran. “Which is the best reason for me to name you heir. Come, it’s all right. Hopefully, you’ll be deposed by the child of whatever poor lady someone eventually forces to marry me. But until then, I need an heir, and you are it.”

  Avar’s handsome chin set firmly. “I won’t, and you can’t make me.”

  Toarsen grinned and raised his goblet at Phoran. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him sound like a spoiled brat. Thank you for that—it�
�s hard growing up with a big brother who is perfect.”

  “Come, Avar,” coaxed Phoran. “The weight of the Empire is a heavy one, twenty-seven emperors deep. Since the first Phoran We have protected and served Our people. Who else’s strong right arm am I to trust to keep the Empire safe and whole?”

  “Gerant,” said Avar.

  Even as Gerant shook his head, Phoran said, “Gerant is no relative of mine, not even if you search back ten generations. The Council could overthrow the appointment even before it was announced.”

  “Come, my lord,” said Gerant gently. “It is for every man to serve his emperor and the Empire as best he can.”

  “All right,” he said, but he didn’t sound happy about it.

  Deciding it was best to get the business over with before he had to argue Avar around again, Phoran bounced to his feet. “Come then, all of you, let’s go see if my scribe has the papers drawn up yet. We’ll need witnesses.”

  “You’ve already had them drawn up?”

  Phoran grinned at Avar. “I know you, my friend. Duty has never been a burden you’ve shunned.”

  Phoran had a new scribe. His previous scribe, whose duties had been far lighter than the scribe of a proper emperor ought to have been, was, nonetheless, one of the gentlemen due to lose his life by hanging in the market square sometime in the next week or so.

  Phoran had found his new scribe himself via his archive keeper, who was not happy about losing his most promising journeyman. He’d given him several rooms in an underused wing with a secret passage to the libraries, where the young man worked during the day. It was after hours, and in any case, Phoran had requested this business be secret until he had the papers signed and witnessed.

  As he led the way to the scribe’s apartment, Phoran found himself wondering, not for the first time, what his ancestors had been thinking when they put the palace together. Small civilizations could flourish in unused rooms, and no one would be the wiser. Since the palace had been built over many generations, there was no pattern to how it was laid out.

  He led his cohorts up three stories, over two halls, then down a floor, through several small doorways, the last of which led to a gallery where one could look down over waist-high rails to a pond three stories below. A raised section in the middle had obviously been a fountain, though the stone fishes’ mouths were dry.

  The whole pool—which was deeper than the pole Phoran had once pushed into it and large enough to swim a small whale—was covered with scum giving the whole gallery an unpleasantly fishy smell despite the fresh air that came from having no ceiling over the gallery.

  “You put your scribe here?” asked Avar. “What did he do to you?”

  “This is the shortest way,” explained Phoran. “If you’d all quit gawking, we’ll be there in no time.”

  “I think this might be why they keep getting pigeons in the art gallery.” Kissel had his hand propped to shade his eyes from the bright sun that made quite a change from the dim halls they’d been wandering through.

  “I haven’t seen this before,” said Toarsen, leaning over the rails. “I’ve been exploring this place for years. How could I not have seen this? Have you looked into fixing that fountain?”

  “Fall over, and you won’t have to worry about the fountain. Phoran has all the maps to the palace somewhere,” said his brother. “He knows all sorts of odd places.”

  “Not all the maps, by any means,” said Phoran. “Or if they are all the maps, then they leave out a great deal.”

  Irrepressible, Toarsen twisted until his back rested on the rail rather than his belly and looked up. “Three stories up? What does the outside of this look like Phoran? Are we in the North Central section or—”

  The sound of a door thwacking against the wall pulled Phoran’s eyes away from Toarsen in time to see armed men boiling out of the doorway.

  He had a moment to wonder, stupidly, what they were doing here, wearing masks and waving swords, then Gerant shouted, “Assassins.”

  Avar bellowed out Phoran’s battle cry twice to alert anyone who might be within hearing range that they were under attack. But rescue was a faint hope at best—in all the times Phoran had traveled this way in the last few weeks, he’d never seen anyone else here. Even if someone heard, the chances of their joining in on Phoran’s side rather than his attackers was something less than fifty-fifty.

  Kissel and Toarsen had their swords out, but none of the rest of them were armed with anything more lethal than eating knives. Which was stupid in retrospect, Phoran thought, as he ducked beneath a sword and set his hip behind his attacker’s. A quick push and the man fell over backward just as Gerant had promised when he’d demonstrated the move the day before yesterday at morning practice.

  It worked, but Phoran couldn’t follow up his advantage because he was too busy avoiding another sword. Phoran wasn’t able to wrest the sword from the man before he had to give up the attack or be hewn down.

  A gleaming blade came from nowhere and slid toward his belly with snakelike swiftness. Phoran watched it with an odd detachment that had overcome him as soon as he realized that there was no way out, no rescue coming. He knew that he was dead and that this sword made him so.

  The blade was touching Phoran’s tunic when it jerked back and fell to the floor, along with the man who held it. Standing behind the fallen man was a familiar dark shape Phoran had hoped he’d never see again.

  In a bewildering mixture of relief and horror, Phoran stared at the Memory, so much more solid than the last time he’d seen it. It returned his stare—or so he imagined, because it had no eyes he could see. Then it continued its hunt.

  It should be gone. The Traveler healer had said once it killed the people responsible for its death, the ghost of the Raven he’d seen murdered would cease to exist. He had been so certain it was gone. He hadn’t seen it since the night it had killed the Masters of the Path, the wizards who had killed a Raven to steal his power and loosed this Raven’s Memory upon the only witness not protected against it: Phoran.

  Looking almost like a man covered in an enveloping black cloth that flowed over the top of his head to the floor, the dark thing moved from one of Phoran’s attackers to the next. It was more solid than he remembered, but no one but Phoran paid it any attention at first—but no one except for Phoran and the Travelers had ever been able to see it.

  If it were still around, why hadn’t it continued to feed off Phoran every night? And if it didn’t need to feed from him, why had it protected him?

  Phoran watched as his masked attackers fell, one after the other. A few were killed by human hands. Gerant and Avar had managed to arm themselves, and both were remarkable fighters. But many more fell to his Memory.

  His arms folded on his chest, Phoran watched as the remaining fighters, on both sides, became gradually aware there was another killer present. Several attackers tried to run, but the Memory was swifter.

  Phoran wondered what the others saw. For him the dying men were obscured, enveloped by the Memory, until they dropped bloodless to the floor. Toarsen and Kissel quit fighting the assassins altogether and flanked Phoran.

  “It’s all right,” he told them. “It won’t hurt me.” Which was almost funny, as he carried the scars of the Memory’s bites up and down his arms. But still and all, he knew it would not kill him. It couldn’t. If he died, so would it.

  The Memory turned its eyeless gaze back to Phoran.

  Even as he moved to place himself between it and Phoran, Avar said in a hushed voice, “What is that Phoran?”

  “It won’t hurt me,” Phoran said again. None of the others could see it, he thought, only Avar. He remembered the way the Memory had never come when Avar was around—was it because it knew Avar would see it?

  But the others had seen the men fall dead, they’d know it was magic. Magic connected to the Emperor.

  “I have fed this night,” the Memory said, ignoring everyone except Phoran. “I will give you an answer to one question. C
hoose.”

  Why aren’t you gone? thought Phoran. If you didn’t die when the Path fell, why have you stayed away? Why come back here now?

  But the question he asked was more important.

  “Did anyone else see this?” he asked.

  The Memory turned its attention upward, and Phoran followed its gaze. Two levels up he saw the gaze of a youngling so swaddled in rags it was difficult to tell if he were male or female. As soon as he realized they were looking at him, he took of in a scuttle of soft-shod footsteps.

  There were any number of such homeless folk who found shelter in the endless unmapped rooms in the palace. His bad luck that one had found shelter here.

  “Do I need to eliminate that one?” the Memory asked. “Does it pose danger to you?”

  Temptation. But Phoran shook his head, and lied, “There is no more danger to me. You may go.”

  The Memory bowed shallowly and dissolved into nothingness.

  When it was gone, Phoran looked at his men. No use hiding it, he thought wearily. Avar might have been the only one actually to see it—but there was no denying the bodies scattered on the floor.

  “That was what the Travelers call a Memory,” he told them. “One of their mages was killed by the Masters of the Path while I was secretly watching. The Masters had protected themselves, so it attached itself to me. It needed vengeance upon the wizards who killed the Raven, and I thought it had managed that when it killed the Masters when the Path fell; but it seems that is not the case.”

  There was an old law, immutable, written while the fell signs of the Unnamed King’s reign, empty cities and barren fields, were still visible upon in the lands of the Empire: an emperor could not be touched by magic. The days when the Emperor had to wear the Stone of Phoran visible on the circlet that displayed it on the front of the imperial forehead were long gone. But Phoran had worn it on his forehead and ridden through Taela the day before his coronation as had his father before him. If one of the Septs chose, they could request he wear it before the Council.

  He knew, because he’d tried it when the Memory first came to him, that the stone would not stay clear at his touch while he was bound to the Memory. If the Septs knew, he would be executed.