Sky of Swords

by Dave Duncan

  “King,” Marlon muttered. “Kid’s dying. Wants you. Gotta come.” He shook himself and made an effort to focus. “Roland and Snake are in the Bastion.”

  Malinda convened a council in the solar soon after. Yesterday, she recalled, Dog had wakened her early and she had seen the last silver sliver of Eighthmoon above the sunrise. The spring tides were running.

  The solar was a small room in the lower house and misnamed, although its windows might have seemed large when it was built, two hundred years ago. Trees and shrubs had buried it in greenery long since. It was private; she normally used it as a writing room, and it seemed as good a place as any to plan an escape, if that was what she must now do. Amby dying! Wanting her! To leap on a horse now might be suicidal. Could the summons be a trap? She would be defying the Council’s warrant the moment she set foot on the mainland. Even if she found a way past Mouse Rampant, she could be arrested on the steps of Beaufort.

  She had all four of her Guard here, plus Marlon and Dian and the diminutive Sister Moment, who looked acutely uncomfortable at being so close to so many Blades. The rest of Kingstead was still asleep.

  Marlon was recovering already, although he made the room smell powerfully of horse. He had gulped down two flagons of ale and was now tearing at a meat bone like a ravenous dog. He had set out the previous night with Oak and Fitzroy and ridden from Beaufort to Ness Royal without a stop. All three had managed to escape through the cordon around the palace, but he had outstripped the other two on the road. Ominously, they had been the second team Dominic had sent. Reynard, Fury, and Alandale had left the night before. Where were they?

  Despite Malinda’s unwritten agreement with Souris that they would each keep to their own, Audley held the bridge under constant surveillance—a Blade by night and lesser men by day. The Riders were known to keep watch on their side lest the prisoner try to escape, but Abel insisted there had been no alarms before Marlon’s horse came staggering across the Bathtub. That might mean that Marshal Souris had not yet heard the news of the King’s sickness, but Granville must know of it and might be setting up ambushes even now. Three days ago he had thrown Roland in the Bastion, with Snake and several other Old Blades, as if laying the groundwork for a coup.

  Malinda had already discarded some of her wilder ideas. Marlon was really Marlon—Sister Moment had been fetched out of bed to testify that the only enchantment on him was the unmistakable taint of an Ironhall binding.

  “Give me your counsel?” Malinda said. “Dian?”

  “Wait for Mother,” Dian said quickly. Widow de Fait had been summoned.

  “Very well. Sister Moment?”

  Moment was huddled in the corner of a divan like an errant child, easily the smallest person present. Now she grinned and shook her head, a move that always seemed certain to dislodge her high white conical hat but never did. “I cannot advise you on politics, my lady, only…. You have clung here like a barnacle all summer…do you feel that the time is now ripe to leave?”

  “Certainly I do.”

  “Then trust your instinct in this. May chance favor you.”

  “Sir Abel?”

  Abel, too, grinned eagerly. “Spring tides! Let’s sneak across at low water and be gone before the Butcher even knows it.”

  And where would they obtain horses? “Sir Dog?”

  “Marlon got in,” Dog growled. “If we go now, we can get out before they’re properly awake; we can ride right past the turds and be gone. Or fight our way through if we must.”

  Sweet he was, but not a great thinker. “Sir Winter?”

  Winter was chewing his nails again, ignoring Dian’s glares. “Sneak out, Your Highness. Forgive this, but we could make you look like a youth…cut your hair…put you on a wagon beside the driver and you’d slip out past the garrison without a second glance. They’re sloppy sentries. Marlon got in.”

  Yes he had, and Winter ought to have seen the implications.

  “Sir Audley?”

  Audley looked ready to chew some fingers himself. Reluctantly he said, “Wait, Your Grace. Send a message to Brinton. If the Duke came and escorted—”

  “No! My brother is dying and wants me. Delay is not an option. I just want to know how best to get past the Gatehouse alive, and with you all alive too, because I know you must come with me. Dian, I can’t wait any longer for your mother.” She headed over to the escritoire.

  “Beg pardon, my lady,” Audley said, “but why Mistress de Fait?”

  “Everyone seemed to be spying on everyone else, so I thought I should fly a few birds of my own. You heard no disturbances in the night? How about the night before?” She found a piece of paper and uncapped the inkwell.

  “We can’t hear anything across the Bathtub,” Audley said. “On a clear night with a moon we can see the sentries marching, that’s about all.” He looked to the others.

  “Lights in the windows,” Dog rumbled uneasily. “More than usual. Night before this one. Around midnight. Just some drunks having a party.”

  Or had it been Fury, Reynard, and Alandale being tortured? Dog was muscle. She was more annoyed at Winter and Audley, whom she expected to think. “You’re all underestimating Marshal Souris, one of the most respected mercenary leaders in Eurania. What happened to Reynard and the others?” She paused a moment to write. “I don’t think footpads or angry peasants got them. Granville may have done so, and whether he did or not, he’s certainly had enough time to send orders. So Reynard and company probably tried to pass the Gatehouse and failed, in which case they’re dead or chained up there. Tonight Marlon comes along half-dead of exhaustion and is let through?”

  Audley barked, “Pig guts! They know?”

  Other voices muttered.

  “We must assume they know.” She put into words what they had all been thinking: “I may be lawful queen of Chivial by now. Granville may have proclaimed himself king. Most probably he wants Souris to keep me bottled up here on Ness Royal until he’s established.”

  “Or kill you!”

  “Possibly.” The most worrisome question had always been why the Lord Protector had assigned a man nicknamed the Little Butcher to guard his sister. On Ness Royal, murder had been an option many times in history and the final choice more than once.

  The Blades all tried to speak at once. She dribbled wax on the paper and pressed her signet in it.

  “I promised the Marshal I would not try to escape and I am a woman of my word. Sir Audley, I give you an hour at most. Souris is a mercenary. Go and buy him.”

  Squeak! “Go and what? I mean, Your High—”

  She had never seen Audley lose his poise like that, but she was sending a boy to deal with a man who had been waging war since before the boy was born. She had no one else to send. She handed him the paper, on which she had written at the bottom, “Done by my hand at Ness Royal this First day of Ninthmoon, in the year 369 of the House of Ranulf,” followed by her signature and seal. “Give him this. He’ll be waiting for our bid. Go and top Granville. Hurry! I’ll follow in half an hour.”

  “W-what do I offer, my lady?”

  “Accept his price. If he won’t name one, start at two hundred thousand crowns and an earldom and be prepared to go higher. I’ll make him a duke and Earl Marshal of Chivial if he wants. Buy him!” she yelled. “Buy the Black Riders. This is a queen’s ransom you’re negotiating. You must make me more valuable to him alive than dead. He’s to escort me to Beaufort and get me there by sunset tomorrow. Include any Blade prisoners in the terms. Now—”

  The door swung wide to admit the ample form of Lady Arabel, gasping for breath. “Yes!” she puffed, waddling to the nearest stool. “You’re right.”

  “Where’s Mother?” Dian demanded.

  “Can’t come…baby got colic…but girls say they had…best night in months.”

  “Right!” Malinda barked. “Sir Audley, they’re expecting you. Go! We shall follow directly.”

  As Audley ran through the doorway, Arabel wheezed out the rest
of her report: “They were packing. Some actually said good-bye.”

  “What girls?” Sir Abel demanded uneasily.

  “The ones who work the Gatehouse, of course,” Malinda snapped. Dian’s mother was privy to the locals’ secrets and the many ways royal gold could trickle down to the natives. It was not only unmarried daughters—some husbands were not overfussy about how the family income was supplemented. Malinda’s edgy temper betrayed her again. “Including, Sir Abel, at least three girls whom you have promised to marry. I thought Blades did not need to stoop to such deception.”

  Abel made choking noises.

  “Go and get the horses ready. Dian, can you organize some food? We’ll eat in the saddle.” She had a couple of letters to write first. “Yes, Sister?”

  “Just wanted to say I’m coming with you,” Moment said, with her wry little grin. “I wouldn’t miss this little piece of history for an earldom and two hundred thousand crowns.”

  Waves rumbled through the canyon, white birds shrieking rode the damp wind overhead, hooves clattered on the stones. Malinda let her horse take its time plodding up the track toward the Gatehouse. There was no need to tire it so early, she told herself. Audley might still be negotiating. She should have told him to take along a boy who could bring back the news. The news might be Audley dead, of course. All these thoughts were just excuses to put off her arrival as long as possible. Had Mouse Rampant already received instructions from Granville? Mercenary soldiers were notoriously bribable, but suppose she had run into one who was not? She would find herself in a cell or even at the bottom of the sea; the two women and three Blades behind her would perish with her. There might be crossbows pointed at her and her companions already. Despite all her efforts to remain calm, the horse could smell her fear, for it kept flicking its ears.

  No road could last forever. She turned her mount in through the arch and entered the yard—and gulped a great sigh of relief. Souris and Audley were waiting for her, both mounted and both smiling, although the Blade’s smile was more believable than the mercenary’s. Souris had his sword raised in salute, while behind him fifty or so armed men sat their mounts in two arrow-straight rows, easily as smart as she had ever seen the Household Yeomen. The Gatehouse itself had been transformed in the four months since she had last seen it: new thatch, walls brilliant white, shutters bright, courtyard stripped of weeds. By the eight!—most welcome of all, the four men standing back against the wall were Reynard, Fury, Alandale, and Oak. Oak and Fury sported bandages and they all looked shaky, but they wore their swords, they were smiling. She hoped Fitzroy was still on his way, just late and not the late Sir Fitzroy.

  Clad in shiny steel helmet and cuirass and mounted on a warhorse, Souris seemed much less a Mouse Rampant, but he was smiling as he sheathed his sword and rode forward with Audley.

  “Good chance, Marshal,” she said, reining in and offering a hand.

  “And may all spirits favor Your Grace.” Souris pulled up alongside and tickled her fingers with his mustache. “It is indeed an honor to serve Your Grace.”

  He told them all that.

  “It is comforting to have a force of such repute at my back, Marshal. May I ask what arrangement you reached with Commander Audley?”

  The rodent features twisted into an even toothier smile. “I admire the way Your Highness negotiates.” He handed her a roll of paper.

  Over her seal and signature it promised her “trusty and well-beloved” knight, Sir Souris of Newtown, an earldom, three hundred thousand crowns, and four baronetcies. She returned it with a nod of consent to him and one of congratulation to Audley, who breathed a deep sigh and lost some of his anxious look.

  “Of course, a good general remembers his officers,” she said. “If the tales are true, you are worth every groat, Marshal. Now, the sooner we can be on our way, the sooner I shall be in a position to pay my debts.”

  He held his ground. “There are a couple of points to settle yet, Your Grace. You understand that you may find it a great deal easier to enter Beaufort than leave it? Also, it is not humanly possible for you to reach there by sunset tomorrow. For one thing, there is no moon just now.”

  “Blades can do it in that time. Suppose we rode on with no breaks at all, except to change mounts? Could it be done then?”

  The little man frowned. “Possibly.”

  “Then I shall determine our halts and you may add their duration to the travel time. You should need no more rest than I do.”

  Souris’s glance at Audley suggested they had already held this conversation. “If the tales are true, Your Grace, I am not certain of that. But you are talking of posting. My men own their own horses and prize them highly. Even with each man leading a remount, we cannot travel like the Blades.”

  She was annoyed that she had not foreseen that. “My quest is urgent. Pick out a smaller escort to post and let the rest follow as best they can.”

  Souris uttered a harsh guffaw, a surprising roar from one of his size. “You should have been a man, my lady! It shall be done. These lads are only a quarter of the Black Riders, though. The rest are billeted at Spurston. Will you require our full strength?”

  His rapier stare conveyed both question and challenge, for by leaving Ness Royal and hiring personal troops, she was raising a banner of rebellion. Her promises on that scrap of paper were worthless at the moment, so Marshal Souris still held the option of reverting to his former loyalty and taking her into custody. Audley’s innocent smile suggested he had not worked all that out even yet. He might shortly be very surprised to find four or five arrows imbedded in his chest….

  “You know the answer better than I do, Marshal,” she said as icily as she could. “You are better acquainted with the Lord Protector. You say you can get me into Beaufort—will you need your full strength to get me out again?”

  “That and then some, I should think, my lady.”

  With a mouth suddenly dry, she said, “Then pray have the Black Riders muster at Beaufort.” She would be rebel and outlaw and very likely at Granville’s mercy. “If my brother dies, I shall claim the throne. If he does not, I shall demand that Parliament set aside my father’s will and name me his regent.”

  “As Your Grace commands,” Souris said, apparently satisfied just to know that she understood the stakes. “Nothing can end before it begins, but the Black Riders would be honored if you would inspect them.” He turned his horse to face the rows of statues. It was traditional to let such troops see their current employer. “Then we can be on our way directly.”

  “I must first thank those men for their efforts on my behalf,” she said, pointing to the watching men of the Royal Guard. “After that I shall be happy to inspect my loyal and gallant force. I also have here a couple of letters I wish delivered.”

  The last troops she had inspected had been Baelish pirates. Would men prepared to die for the highest bidder be any more trustworthy?

  30

  Know when to set an anchor watch and when to ride the storm.

  RADGAR ÆLEDING, THE ART OF PIRACY

  The ensuing journey was certainly historic, as Sister Moment had been the first to suggest. It might even have been the stuff of legend, which was one of Dian’s less scurrilous descriptions, but “a blur of pain” would have adequately described Malinda’s recollections. She spent a few hours in a feather bed at Valglorious, but that was the only significant break she took. Dian and Moment gave up there and stayed behind when she left, as did three of her Black Rider escort. Another two disappeared somewhere en route.

  It was not very long after noon when Souris called a halt to let the horses drink where the track forded a scummy stream. “We are here, Your Grace. You have outridden the Black Riders, and I thought no man could do that, let alone a woman.”

  Malinda blinked herself out of a stupor of exhaustion and looked over her companions—four Blades, Mouse Rampant, and only one of his men. They were all clad in the sort of anonymous, shabby leathers any traveler might wear on
the king’s highway; their faces were gray with dust and fatigue. Even Audley was not his usual glamorous self when his eyes were bloodshot holes in a mask of dirt. Horses snorted and jingled their harness, slurping and splashing.

  The mercenary leader gestured to a cluster of tumbledown hovels on the far bank. “That is Beaufort. The palace is over there.” He indicated a coronet of cypress trees and chimneys a mile or so beyond. The land was flat as spilt milk, golden with ripe grain, which the inhabitants were harvesting with scythes and sickles, carts and horses. She wondered if their backbreaking work made them any more weary at the end of the day than a princess felt after such a ride.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “Tactics, my lady! From what we have heard, the palace is cordoned off by Household Yeomen and the Lord Protector’s personal cavalry. You are not supposed to be here and neither am I. It will be wisest to keep our agreement out of sight for the time being.”

  She nodded stupidly, flogging a brain that still seemed to be cantering madly down a road, hours behind her, trying to catch up.

  “Commander,” Souris said, “I never appreciated you Blades before. My congratulations.”

  Audley managed a smile, although it seemed somewhat forced. “I don’t think I did, either. And what a ward we have!”

  The mercenary flashed a glance at Malinda. “Goes without saying. If you need to get word to me, Commander, send a man to the Beaufort smithy with the password ‘Rainbow.’ If I send to you, it will be from ‘Thundershower.’”

  “Argh!” Dog uttered a bestial roar and whipped out his broadsword like a rapier. “He is going to betray you!” Winter and Abel sent their mounts plunging forward to intercept him, and Malinda bellowed at him to behave himself. Reluctantly he obeyed orders and sheathed that enormous blade.

  Nothing like a near murder to waken a girl up. “My apologies, Marshal. Sir Dog is motivated only by loyalty.” Of course his instincts were probably accurate. It was more than likely that the mercenary had been instructed to bring his prisoner south and she had made his task easy by volunteering.