by Sonia Lyris
Innel could imagine the stories that would follow this: not only had Innel slain his brother, but the very day the king let him walk away from that, he had tried to kill his own sister in the hallway outside his mother’s apartment.
It wouldn’t matter that the king had ordered these guards, or that Innel had not drawn a blade; rumor had a way of following blood.
Untrained, unarmed, and half his weight, Cahlen was scarcely more dangerous to him than one of her messenger birds. But the guards were plenty dangerous; if she were seized by another tantrum now and came at him, they would take her down and hurt her, regardless of what Innel said or did.
He searched her face as she came close. Was she still angry?
Close enough to hit. Close enough to kiss. She did neither, standing scant inches from him, looking up at him, blinking rapidly.
“Cahlen?” he asked gently.
“Brother.” She gulped for air. She seemed upset, almost about to weep. He had not seen her cry since she was a baby. But this was not a typical day.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I need to fix the east tower dovecote,” she said, voice low. “The birds are too crowded. They don’t fly well. Will you ask for me? The king, the ministers, whoever it is that you must ask.”
When Innel and Pohut, five and seven, had been taken into the Cohort, the group had numbered nearly forty children, ten of them girls. Cahlen had been brought in two years later, but in weeks was sent back to live with their mother. Between the strange moods, insensible responses, and a tendency to become overly violent when confused, she was deemed unsuited.
Over the years Cahlen showed a strong talent with animals. Now she was an assistant bird-keeper, living in the tower-shaped dovecote, breeding doves, training them to carry messages back to the palace.
In this moment, her fury at their brother’s death mysteriously dissipated, all she demanded from him was a favor.
“I will,” he told her earnestly.
With that she turned wordlessly away, walking down the hall, only a small limp in her step to indicate anything had transpired besides conversation. As she went, she brushed her hand through her thick, short mass of hair. A bit of birdseed dropped onto the wooden flooring.
And now to Cern.
He waited a few days to let her fury ease, then visited her suites. Sachare came into the hallway to meet him.
Most of the girls of the Cohort had left early, somewhat less motivated by the often brutal competitions that so often comprised so much of Cohort life. Of those who had finished, Taba was now a navy ship’s captain and Larmna had been put in charge of House Nital’s amardide forests in the Kathorn province. Sachare had become Cern’s chamberlain.
His Cohort sister was a tall woman, her hands tucked into the pockets of her red robes trimmed in dark pinks and gold, marking her as one of the princess’s staff. A magenta sapphire glinted in her right ear. Cern’s color.
“No,” Sachare said, simply and clearly.
He hadn’t expected Cern to let him in easily, and it was no surprise to have Sachare sent to stand in his way, but he had thought to get into the antechamber, at least. Not to have the conversation in the hallway, in front of a tencount of royal guards who had no reason to keep it to themselves.
“Her words or yours?” he asked.
“Mine are less polite.”
“Oh?” He stepped toward her, too close, just short of what might have been considered threatening, a line his Cohort brothers and sisters knew well. “What would yours be?”
From her changing expression, he could see that she was weighing various answers. She shook her head.
“Again: no.”
“He was a traitor, Sachare.”
“So we’ve heard.” A small, bitter smile. “In any case, it’s not me you have to convince.”
“Then let me in.”
“She hasn’t given a new answer since I told you a moment ago.”
“I can change her mind. You know that.”
“You may not enter, Innel.”
That was clear enough. Cern would need more time.
Still he hesitated, wondering if he should give Sachare the gift he’d brought for Cern, a small book he’d been holding in reserve for such a need. Full-color drawings of birds of prey, their silhouettes, descriptions of their calls and hunting habits. The sort of thing that would appeal to the princess. Expensive.
“He was a good man,” Sachare said softly.
This caught Innel off guard. He looked away, the words echoing in his head. When he had his feelings again in hand, he looked back, meeting her stare. “So am I.”
“As you say.” A hard tone.
He held out the book to Sachare. “Give her this for me.”
Wordlessly she took it from him and returned to the princess’s rooms, the sound of the door shutting behind her echoing in the corridor. Her guards watched him silently.
A gentle touch, his brother would have said of Cern now, so furious. Close but not too close.
Like the rope game they’d all played in the Cohort, each holding an end to try to pull each other off-stance with sudden yanks and misdirection.
Hold solid to the rope. Keep the line alive, not too slack, not too tight.
And never look away.
Weeks went by. Cern kept a stony silence. When he approached she looked away, rebuffing him openly, and he knew better than to come close enough that she might signal her guards to intercept.
Appearances mattered. When rejected, he made sure to seem pained and conflicted, like a hurt lover pretending not to care. He set his gaze to linger on her when she was carefully not looking in his direction. He passed by her suites daily, slowing as he did.
When he and his brother used to fish together, they would find the underwater creature’s location from the eddies and ripples it caused across the surface. The palace was like a lake; even if Cern did not see his longing looks directly, the ripples would get back to her. He had to be patient.
But he did not feel patient. He lay awake past the midnight bells, mind circling around what he had done that day to draw her back to him, wondering if it was too much or too little.
Somehow he had to convince her that what he had done in Botaros made sense. The king would only wait so long before looking again at his second-best choices in the Cohort. He had given Innel an opening. He wanted Innel to win.
Innel needed to get Cern to choose him. Nothing could be more important.
Almost nothing. One afternoon, a casual comment from Restarn made it clear that Innel was expected to attend the next day’s trade council. Innel studied the trade ledgers deep into the night to arrive well-prepared, because the king did not make casual comments.
A few days later, he was woken at dawn by the unsmiling seneschal, who explained that Innel would oversee the rebuild of the burnt stable auxiliary. Yes, starting now. In his spare time, the seneschal added, Innel would provide the king an analysis of the ministerial council’s resolution on a stack of tangled and conflicting House petitions.
Without delay.
Still being tested, then. He thought he’d proved himself worthy already to the king, again and again, but apparently not.
So be it; he applied himself to every task, working as hard as ever. Before he quite realized it, he was spending hours a day with the king. At meals, answering challenges like Cohort drills, then pulled in for fast minutes between appointments to suggest courses of action. Even attending the king at his bath, where he couldn’t help but notice that the man was hale and healthy for near eighty.
And yet, near eighty he was. As the king aged, with only the one heir, who stubbornly refused to be wed—let alone impregnated—good wishes for the king’s health took on new tension. Everyone wanted to know who followed Cern on the succession list. Restarn would not say.
Traditionally, this list lived in a strongbox under the monarch’s bed and was thrice-sealed. A key, a press-trap, and one final means, unspecified,
but quietly said to be mage-lock. If the monarch should die before Cern was queen and no mage came forward to liberate the succession list, there would be chaos among the king’s siblings and their offspring, and pushback from the Great Houses and the Cohort children.
The other Cohort children. Not the mutts.
How well Innel was now passing the king’s tests was not at all clear to him. The king showed neither approval nor disapproval, quite unlike the trials of Cohort childhood, when Innel’s mistakes were made clear with beatings and missed meals.
Now that he considered that from the vantage of an adult perspective, he was not at all sure he liked this better. There was a lot to be said for clarity.
One day, without warning, Restarn tossed him a captaincy. That seemed an answer of sorts.
Best of all, it came with an increase in pay. Since the trip to Botaros, he had been chronically short of funds.
Botaros. The girl who had set him on this course. A frayed, dangling thread, one he needed to cut before it unraveled the entire garment.
At least the king hadn’t charged him rent on the horse.
Again he went to see Cern. This time he was let into the antechamber.
“She liked the book,” Sachare told him.
“Excellent. Let me see her.”
“She still says no.”
With a bit of a flourish, he held out his hand and opened his fingers, revealing a dark square. Sachare took it, sniffed it.
“She can get candy any time she likes, Innel.”
“Not from me, she can’t.”
At that Sachare chuckled a little, put the piece in her pocket, and dismissed him.
Gentle persistence, he told himself as he walked away, knowing that his repeated rejection here was the subject of palace gossip.
So be it.
As winter froze the world outside the palace, Mulack, Dil, and, to his surprise, even Sutarnan came to see him, offering pleasantries that implied support, should things go well. As if the bloody, brutal Cohort fights across the years were merely playful roughhousing.
But Innel knew better than to reveal his grudges. If he succeeded with Cern, there would be time later to address those who had supported his cause only when the winds were in his favor. And if he failed, it wouldn’t matter. He could be tossed onto the street with nothing.
Or worse yet, with his mother and sister.
One morning, these dark possibilities churning in the back of his mind while he struggled with an accounting error he’d been set to resolve, there was a pounding on the door to his small room. A set of servants streamed in, directed by the seneschal’s second. Over Innel’s objections, they picked up everything of his that they could carry. While he watched in wordless astonishment, they marched his belongings down the hallway.
He followed them, up a floor and toward the royal wing, to a double-room apartment. Stunned, he stood in the hallway, watching them array his belongings, the accounting book still under his arm.
Sutarnan stepped to his side. “Congratulations, Captain. Let’s celebrate your new quarters tonight.”
How did Sutarnan know about Innel’s new rooms before he did?
He had been too busy; he had neglected his various contacts. Sutarnan knew because he had neglected no one.
The double room, it turned out, was not entirely for Innel; the second section had six cots laid out, and, as he watched, a set of guards were making themselves at home.
“What is this?” he demanded, struggling to regain some semblance of control.
“King’s orders, sir,” said Nalas, putting his things by the cot nearest the door.
Innel puzzled over this. Guards to protect him? From what? Jealous Cohort brothers? In case he might want to leave the palace again on some wild midnight ride?
That evening, Sutarnan came with a vintner’s matrass of sweet red wine. Innel barked a loud laugh at the offering, watching as the grin fled the other man’s face in rare uncertainty.
He clasped Sutarnan’s shoulders enthusiastically.
“Friends, always,” he told him with just enough mockery to keep Sutarnan on edge for the entirety of the two hours they spent drinking together. He pressed Sutarnan to talk about old times, specifically to recount various events in which Sutarnan had been the agent of Innel and his brother’s difficulties. Sutarnan had left uneasy, a result Innel found both petty and satisfying.
The wine, also, had been very good.
The next day he went to the king’s seneschal and named Srel as his captain’s clerk.
“I will have to confirm this with the king,” the seneschal said.
“No, you won’t. And Srel will need a raise in pay appropriate to his new position.”
At this the seneschal’s mouth worked tightly, as if he were sucking on a dirty rock. After a moment he nodded slowly and turned away. This told Innel more than all the rumors put together.
So what was he now? Consort-apparent? He’d never heard of such a thing in his studies of monarchical history, but it seemed so.
Except that Cern still wouldn’t speak to him.
He continued his diligent attention to her, sitting near her at meals, coming to her suite daily, where he instead spoke with Sachare.
Cern would come around, he told himself. In time. Patience.
Innel ran the garrison every day, his guards following in his wake. It was important to make sure that those who carried weapons regularly in the palace grounds didn’t forget he was still one of them.
Today at the fields, a game of two-head was just beginning, the teams marked by colored bands tied around foreheads. A small audience of off-duties had gathered to watch. The two teams tossed their respective balls to each other to warm up, one black, one red.
“Who do you favor, ser?” Nalas asked him.
At this, Innel considered what he knew about the players on the field. Overhearing, they paused, looked back at him, as did the off-duty soldiers gathered around. Those who had been talking stopped to look his way.
As some thirty people suddenly fell silent and waited on his next words, Innel felt odd. He did not know what to make of this.
And then he did. The guard suddenly made sense.
Not protection. Not to keep him at the palace. It was the king’s way of setting him apart. Cern might not yet have chosen him, but the king had.
Other things now made sense as well. The apartment. The many new tasks.
The king was not testing him. Or at least not only testing. Rather he was putting Innel in the position of consort. If not by title and not by Cern’s decision, by practical measure.
A tactical error where Cern was concerned, Innel knew. He wondered how Restarn could know his own daughter so poorly. No surprise that Cern’s demeanor had chilled further. She now looked past him as if he didn’t exist at all.
During meals he approached as near to her as Sachare would allow, letting himself look pained and frustrated as Cern turned away. He must seem just the right amount of concerned.
It was never far from his mind that Cern could still say no. The king could hardly keep him in this exalted yet nebulous position if she did. Innel would be no more than a mutt wandering the palace halls. Out of place, out of support. A frog in the open sea, amidst sharks.
He must get back into her good graces.
Deep winter hit the capital all at once in a heavy snowstorm with freezing rains that coated the entire hill in slick ice, delaying delivery of the massive amount of food the palace consumed daily, ending up ripping to shreds a delicately crafted deal between Helata, Nital, and Murice to build a new fleet. The three Great Houses refused to clasp hands over the deal, and hard looks followed between their scions in the palace.
Had they been able to predict this sudden storm, the contract could have been formalized earlier, rather than as it was now, taking months more to soothe the three sides and get them back to the table. Even a day’s warning could have saved the contract, not to mention preserved the kitchens’ l
arders and hence meals for thousands.
But who could have known?
His thoughts returned to a candlelit hovel in a snow-clad village where there was a girl who could indeed predict the future.
He must act to bring the girl close by, where he could get his own answers and keep a watch on her and what she said to who. Bring the sister and baby as well to ensure her cooperation.
He could not leave and collect her himself, keenly watched as he was now. He would need someone else to do it for him. Someone competent and exceedingly discreet. That would take resources he did not yet have.
But would, when Cern came around.
Chapter Three
“You’re going out?” Amarta asked her sister. “Tonight? In this cold?”
Winter had come to the village of Botaros and settled in for what was now the fourth day of a hard freeze, with midwinter still more than a tenday away.
Dirina was changing her clothes. Putting on her good ones, Amarta saw in the dim light. Her best frock. Not so frayed, less stained, fewer mended rips.
“I won’t be long.”
Her sister went out more and more often.
As the nights grew colder, they had drawn the cot close to the stove. Amarta sat with Pas lying by her side, thickly bundled. His eyes opened and Amarta tucked the blanket around his neck to keep him warm.
How had it all gone so fast, the coins the large man in his fine cloak had left them? They’d gone to food and peat moss, of course. Repairs for the roof and cracks that were everywhere. They had one remaining falcon, saved against need, but Amarta didn’t think it would last long.
And the gold souver, so beautiful and heavy, that she’d gotten to hold for a few moments before they’d spent it, that, too, was gone. The landlord had raised his eyebrows a long moment when he saw it, his mouth falling open, but then he had shut his mouth and taken the souver, giving them five months ahead on the rent without any haggling at all.
Since that night, no one had come to ask Amarta questions. Now Dirina went out at night.
“I could come with you,” Amarta said, scrambling to her feet, looking around for her blue trimmed cloak. “I’ll carry Pas. I’ll bundle him good and—”