by Sonia Lyris
Innel made sure bread was passed out to the watching crowds to help them understand that they now ate by the king’s mercy.
What had taken the most time had been restructuring the town’s governance. The old council had stood firm in their insistence that this should be a negotiation rather than a surrender, finally retreating with their families into the mayor’s house, where Innel explained that they were wrong by burning it to the ground. The ashes didn’t argue.
His nights had been spent crafting these missives to flatter and intrigue the king, working in repetition to cover for the one or two in ten messenger birds that weather or predation would prevent returning home to the palace.
Cahlen had assured him that all these birds would return. Every last one of them. She had come to his rooms early the morning he had left, a cowed-looking assistant in tow carrying cages of noisy and annoyed birds.
“My best,” Cahlen had told Innel. “No hawks or bad weather will stop these.” Her eyes were bright and too wide. “Don’t put your hands on them. They bite.” Innel glanced at the assistant handler’s heavy leather gloves.
“They bite?” Before Cahlen, messenger birds were not known for their temper.
“Make sure you feed them,” she had said, her tone cross, as though he had already forgotten.
He took the soap Srel offered him, and began to scrub.
“What was the bird count?” he asked, dunking his head, feeling months of tension and dirt come off in the hot water.
“Eleven.”
He made a surprised sound. Cahlen had been right: every bird had returned. He must remember to tell her so. With luck, she would take it as a compliment.
When he toweled off, taking clean clothes from Srel, he asked: “Who should I see first?”
The smaller man dug into a pocket and held out something to Innel.
An earring. A magenta sapphire.
Cern it was, then.
“Took you long enough.” Her first words were softened a little by her hand on his face. She gathered his fingers in her own and drew him into her room. He hid his relief that she was glad to see him.
When, much later, she called for a plate of food and drink, the food came arrayed like a miniature garden, cheese and olives cleverly cut into the shape of flowers, and surrounded by hedges of herbed breads.
This, he realized, was wealth. Great wealth. Not the mere substance of the food, which was by itself rare and extraordinary, as befitted a princess, but the presentation itself. For a moment he simply stared at the miniature landscape so painstakingly prepared, laid across a lace-cut red ceramic platter that sat atop a table polished to a deep mahogany sheen. Around the edge of the table, inlaid in ebony and cherrywood, was the star, moon, pickax, and sword of the Anandynar sigil.
“The earring is a nice touch,” she said to him with a wry half-smile.
The irony of this struck him; the sapphire in his ear was worth a tiny fraction of what was arrayed before him, but it was his gesture that mattered to her.
I thought of you every moment I was away.
No, she wouldn’t like that. Something more pragmatic.
He smiled. “Let no one wonder where my loyalty lies.”
To his surprise, rather than be pleased, as he had expected, her gaze swept away across the room, her half-smile gone. A spike of anxiety went through him.
“What excitement have I missed?” he asked lightly, pretending not to have noticed her ill ease.
Her lengthening silence did nothing to reassure him. She was, he realized, trying to figure out how to tell him something.
That by itself was impressive: the heir-apparent to the Arunkel throne was struggling with how to say something to him, the mutt. Flattering, to be sure, but it could not mean good news. He watched closely as she put on a grimace that meant she felt she had no choice.
And that meant it was about her father.
Dread slowly trickled down his spine. She could certainly take him to bed for entertainment and marry someone else if she chose. Had he been cast aside, after all? What had happened while he had been away?
She glanced at him, and he gave her yet another easy smile, the work of years of practice, hoping to calm her. Or himself.
At last she cleared her throat and gave a forced laugh. “How would you like to be the lord commander?”
Lord Commander? The highest rank in the military?
“Of the Host of Arunkel?” he asked, incredulous, his careful presentation of equanimity swept away.
“Yes,” she said, tone suddenly dry, “that would be the one.”
Could the king have decided to elevate him that far, that fast? Surely it was not possible.
But then, perhaps it was.
He could not suppress a smile of elation. “How would I like it?” He asked. “It . . .”
This was as far from bad news as possible, to be made the commander of the empire’s armies. It made sense, now that he thought about it; coming as he did from outside the palace and far below the Houses, Innel could well imagine Restarn deciding such a rank would appropriately elevate him to marry his daughter.
Innel would need to get the generals on his side, and quickly. Lismar, the king’s sister, first and foremost. Make a point of showing great humility. Have it known he was only complying with the king’s direct command.
A tricky prospect, politically. It would take a not insignificant amount of effort to arrange. But it could be done.
Cern was watching him, waiting for an answer.
“It would be my great honor to serve the crown,” he finished.
“Yes,” she agreed, shortly, but she did not sound happy.
“What is it, my lady?” he asked, unable to contain his tension at this unexpected reaction. “Do you think it is a bad decision?”
It wasn’t. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that it was a good outcome. A far better one than to promote him to colonel or even general. He was, after all, marrying the heir to the throne.
She stood, her hands waving about aimlessly, a motion that signified frustration. She turned away, took a bite of a smoked cheese flower and chewed slowly.
That she was not looking at him was not a good sign. With effort he said nothing, knowing better than to press.
“I’m to offer it to you,” she said at last.
“You? Forgive me, my lady, but you are not—”
A sharp gesture cut him off. “I know, Innel. I’m quite aware I’m not queen. I’m not an idiot.”
“Of course not, my lady.”
“Of course not, my lady,” she echoed, mockingly. “Because he told me to, is why,” she spat.
The king.
“But—”
“Shut up, Innel. I know perfectly well what you’re going to say. But here it is: you can have the lord commandership from my hand, or you can petition him for a colonelship.”
Petition? That’s what his hard, bloody work these last months had gained him? He would be allowed to petition?
Tempted as he was to reply, he had already opened his mouth once without thinking, and with Cern in this mood, that was a misstep. He clamped his mouth shut and considered.
He could not take the Lord Commandership from Cern. It would put him in a weak position and spark controversy, but to refuse it from her hand would be an insult to her, which he could afford even less.
A typical Restarn move, to force him into an impossible situation with no good choices.
He also could not push the decision back on her, tempting as that was; her faith in him was based in large part on his ability to navigate challenges like this one.
She watched him as he thought.
He desperately wanted to ask her to relate the conversation she had had with her father that had led to this outcome, to gain clues as to what was in the monarch’s mind, but that would underscore her weak position with her father, doing little to reassure in this difficult time. Cern’s confidence was already a thin thread.
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br /> It would be best to get through the wedding and coronation. Then any decisions she had made, like promoting Innel to the highest military position in the empire, would be far harder to question.
But here and now, what to do?
Well, he was wearing her colors. He had laid everything he had at her feet. Really, he could not refuse.
“It would be my great honor to serve you in this capacity, my lady.”
After a time he convinced Cern to wait to name him as lord commander until at least after the wedding. It would seem a more obvious move then, he explained.
And she would be one step closer to the throne, all her pronouncements carrying considerably more weight.
“Whatever you think best, Innel,” was all she had said. She was relying on him to make sense of the tangled political forces at play, a challenge she seemed to care little for. A challenge he had been studying his whole life.
She had been tinkering with one of her collapsible in-air creations, a set of wooden rods with twine and chain between them, some pulled tight, others balanced delicately on top of each other. In the years since she had shown him these works, he’d seen her use stiffened fabric, small lengths of metal and wood, and even straw.
This particular set was suspended from the ceiling, in an equilibrium of many parts. As she touched it on one end, the pieces of wood at the other clinked against each other, making an almost musical sound.
Collapsible so that they could be taken down and hidden quickly when her father came into her rooms without warning, as he used to do often.
From their conversations, Innel knew her father had not confided in her his embarrassment at her marrying a captain, as he had to Innel.
So be it. Innel would petition no one. Let Restarn decide how much embarrassment he could stomach.
Regardless, once they were wed, Innel would no longer be the mutt who had somehow survived the Cohort. He would be princess-consort.
The thought sent a chill through him. For a split second, he found himself thinking he must find his brother and tell him.
“I’m busy,” Innel responded to Mulack, putting a snap into the words, even though it was a good idea; it had been too long since he’d felt out his support in the Cohort.
He was truly busy; the king had called him back into service, and he now faced interminable council meetings that required summary reports, ongoing House contract negotiations with high-stakes outcomes, and again the near-daily work of sitting in the steam-filled royal bath to hear the king complain.
In a way it was reassuring that the king had not forgotten him, but it rankled that he had not yet made good on his promise to promote him, either.
Nor had he petitioned. Still a captain. But, as the saying went, not all captains had the same rank.
“Taba is in port,” Mulack insisted. “A good sign.”
“It’s no sign at all. She was scheduled to be here.”
Mulack waved this away. “We must celebrate your victorious return.” He managed to keep his mocking tone to a bare hint of derision. “You’re a hero, after all.” He clapped him on the shoulder.
Innel looked down at the shorter, thicker man he had, for excellent reasons, not liked since early childhood. “I have a report to prepare for the king.”
“Oh, come on, Innel. Give us a chance to spend too much money on you.”
Too much money? Was this Mulack’s way of saying he knew about Tok’s investment and might be offering similar backing? He couldn’t tell, which was how Mulack liked it.
“How can I refuse, when you phrase it so seductively?” Innel said dryly, acting as if lack of coin meant nothing to him, as he and his brother had always tried to do.
Mulack probably knew better; he had a nose for money. Despite everything—the promotion to captain, Innel’s proximity to Cern, the assumption of wedlock to come, and even Tok’s support—with all the gifts Innel was giving to everyone from guards to maids to stablehands to keep rumors flowing toward himself instead of away, Innel continued barely short of poor.
A strange state in which to live, in-palace.
He hid it as well as possible, of course; only Srel knew how bad his finances really were.
Mulack, on the other hand, was House Murice’s eparch-heir and swimming in the coin of the House of Dye. With Murice’s multitudinous contracts for textiles and amardide, anyone who wore sanctioned clothes had paid to swell Murice’s holdings.
Innel took a look at what his Cohort brother was wearing. Boots and gauntlets tastefully trimmed in red and black—a nod to the crown—but the rest entirely Murice’s purple and white. A bit of a cacophony of color, but clear enough, as far as loyalties went. Mulack was clearly done looking for his future at the palace.
Mulack’s father, as sardonic as his annoying son, was vibrant with health. Mulack would have a long wait to become eparch. In the meantime, though, he had plenty of money.
“Tonight we celebrate,” Mulack said decisively. “I’ll tell the others.”
“So be it,” Innel said, feeling it best to make a show of reluctance to impress on Mulack how busy he was with the king’s business. “Where?”
“Pig’s ass,” Mulack said loudly, grinning. In another context this insult was one Mulack was likely to use, but now he referred to the back room at the Boar and Bull, an innocuous midcity tavern that the Cohort sometimes used when they wanted to be away from palace eyes and ears.
“I’ll see if I can clear my evening plans,” Innel said, turning away, already knowing he would. Srel would let Sachare know so that she could handle Cern should the subject of Innel’s whereabouts arise.
Cern, the entire reason for the Cohort’s existence.
Technically she was a member as well, but Innel was sure Mulack would not be inviting the princess to the pig’s ass.
“Too many times,” Taba was saying, laughing loudly. She was a broad-shouldered woman and had been so even in her teens. Her eyes were a light green, the color of the seas she had made her home, and matching the shirt she wore. A red and black surcoat marked her as belonging to the king’s navy, but under that she wore Helata’s colors, green and blue. A long tradition, that, the navy showing House colors so openly. No one in the army would dare.
Mulack was grinning as Sutarnan poured more of the strong black wine into his cup. Dil leaned back in his chair. Tok nodded slowly at Taba’s story.
It had been some time since the Cohort had gathered, even this small a number.
The last time, all the other times, his brother had been there.
Keep a watch, Innel, Pohut might have said. Stay sober.
He intended to.
Around the table was a scattering of plates of food and mugs and glass goblets. A ceramic tumbler meant it was harder to track what had been drunk and what still remained. A clear goblet gave the appearance of not hiding anything.
Everyone was drinking. Everyone had multiple cups in front of them.
It was an old game, one they had played through the years to see who could be made to slip up while tempted by various intoxicants. Across the years they had tried every substance the wealthy boys and girls of the Cohort could get their hands on.
“Incompetence in a harbormaster is inexcusable,” Mulack said from across the table, now on his third glass.
Sutarnan, who was still sipping from his first tumbler, made a disparaging sound. “Harbormasters are set for life, you know that. Supposed to keep them honest, that appointment.”
“They’re perfectly honest if you bribe them,” said Tok with a straight face, at which Sutarnan snorted.
“Truss them and toss them off the pier! Problem solved!” Mulack said loudly, downing the rest of his glass and holding it out to Sutarnan for more. Mulack was slurring slightly, but that was one of his tricks, to pretend that he was drunker than he really was, to see what he could get away with. Sometimes he walked the line too closely.
A long, loud sigh from Taba. “If only.”
“Taba, sure
ly your eparch will listen to you.” This from Dil, many steps removed from the eparchy of House Kincel but who made no secret of being perfectly happy behind the scenes, making sure his House of Stone had every connection to the palace it needed. Dressed mostly in reds and blacks, Dil was clearly planning to stay at the palace. Innel suspected he was lobbying to be Kincel’s liaison.
“If only,” Taba said again, laughing again.
“No one listens to us,” Sutarnan complained. “You’d think they would, what with all the royal education our heads are fat with, but no.”
“No one listens to you, you mean, and that’s because you won’t decide which house you belong to. Or have you finally made up your mind?” This from Tok.
Two Houses claimed Sutarnan. He was the son of a brief union between Sartor’s and Elupene’s eparchs, an unusual liaison, which—more unusually yet—the king approved. Restarn might have been distracted at the time by the second battle of Uled, some handful of years after Innel’s father had died in the first, but whatever the reasons, Sutarnan’s parents had stayed together long enough to produce him and then, after an impressive two-year-long fight during which time no armor was made in the city, managed to get a royal divorce.
“I have no plans to select one over the other. Two is better than one.” He smiled widely, then his eyes settled on Innel and the smile vanished. Innel, who had no House at all.
Which would not matter, Innel reminded himself, as soon as he married Cern.
“You really should taste this, Innel,” Dil said quickly, before the awkward moment had a chance to lengthen, pushing a small crystal bottle around the large table toward him. Taba passed it along to Tok, who, with a lopsided grin, handed it to Innel.
The room fell silent, everyone watching him expectantly.
A strange moment, this. It wasn’t long ago that none of them would much care what he thought of the wine. Or anything else.
It was hard to forget years of Cohort hostilities, schemes, broken bones, and broken agreements. Harder yet to forgive. He had one friend in all those years, one person to trust at his back. That trust, too, had been foolishly placed.