“And who could kill an elf?” Kieri asked. “We must find out.”
“I thought Pargunese, sir king. If some were still running wild in the woods—”
“No,” Kieri said. “Not Pargunese. They’d have taken the horse; they’re great horse breeders and riders.” He turned to Arian. “Take Deriya inside, to my office, and let no one else talk to him until I come back. I’ll see Orlith’s body laid in honor and safety in the salle. I must find out what his wounds tell me, and then—”
“You must tell the elves,” Arian said. “He may have relatives—friends—”
“First I must know more,” Kieri said. “And why do they not know already? Do they not sense where each other are? Would this not have disturbed the taig? Why didn’t the Lady know? She was just here.”
Arian felt chilled by more than the storm. All around swirled dangers she had not imagined; she looked at Kieri. In that storm-dimmed afternoon, he almost blazed, it seemed—his hair, his anger at Orlith’s murder, his stark determination. The cold receded in her heart as well as her body. “Come,” she said to Deriya. “The king will take care of Orlith, and we will take care of you.”
Within the palace, light and warmth ruled. The steward had servants waiting with fur-lined slippers. Arian felt the warmth, the comfort, as she had not before, as a home welcoming her, caring for her—she had been so concentrated on Kieri, or before on her duties as Squire, that she had only begun to relax into her new role. Even at that moment—and wondering that she could feel it at such a time—she looked at the carpets, the wall hangings, the hall itself, as she led the courier through it to Kieri’s office. It is real, she thought. And I belong here. It is mine as well as his, and it will be our son’s.
The presence of her own Squires beside her no longer fretted her spirit.
Kieri followed the servants who carried Orlith’s body into the salle. Siger and Carlion were training a group of palace guards in the middle range; they stopped and stared.
“It’s Orlith,” Kieri said. “Murdered. I needed a place to lay him.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out,” Kieri said. “A courier found the body two days ago—his horse was dead nearby.”
“Sir king, should I call for Captain Lornyan?” one of the guards asked.
Kieri remembered that this was the city militia officer who dealt with the occasional crimes in Chaya. “I would say yes but for this storm.”
“I know where he lives,” the guard said. He was young, full of eagerness. “And I could go to that inn the elves favor—”
“Not that,” Kieri said. “Not yet. But Captain Lornyan, yes, if you think you and he can make it back. Two of you go.”
When they had left, he had Orlith’s body laid on the stone floor and unwrapped the cloak. Orlith’s familiar gray winter tunic, piped in green, was marked not only with rents the weapons had made but with his blood. Kieri had wondered before if elven blood still held silver in death, and now he saw it did—a faint sparkle on the stains as he moved the body a little to see better. Kieri touched his finger to one of the stains and sniffed.
It smelled like human blood, or near enough that he could not distinguish it. “Siger, come and look.”
Carlion and Siger both knelt beside him. Siger grunted as he looked at the wounds. “These are from arrows—and the shafts pulled free.” Together he and Kieri rolled Orlith’s body on its side.
“Longbow arrows?” Kieri asked. “There’s no penetration to the back—could they have been crossbows?”
“Not one of our blackwood bows,” Carlion said. “So certainly not a ranger or Royal Archer. Nor crossbow bolts—the Pargunese bolts make a different wound. But the elves—” He swallowed and went on slowly. “The elves, lord king, use a smaller bow sometimes, and slenderer shafts. The wood—they won’t say what it is.”
“And these wounds are from a blade,” Siger went on, pointing to the slashes in the tunic. “Someone wanted him dead for certain.”
“And the taig didn’t warn him,” Kieri said. “Wouldn’t it? He had taig-sense enough.”
“I don’t know if it would,” Siger said. “The taig has its own ways.”
“If it was elves,” Carlion said. “This looks … this looks like rage to me. Some quarrel among the elvenkind.”
Kieri thought immediately of Arian’s father and the Lady’s quarrel with him. But she had assigned Orlith to him; she had no quarrel with Orlith. That he knew about, at least. “The courier thought it might have been Pargunese stragglers, but the horse—that would not have been the Pargunese. And I can’t imagine Pargunese soldiers delivering enough injuries to kill him twice over …”
“Unless they thought elves were hard to kill,” Siger said. “You know how our novices were in their first battles. Wasted extra blows on a man already dying out of battle fever.”
“So you think it was humans?”
“I don’t know. With Verrakai renegades just over the border, how do we know they didn’t make it into our woods during the confusion of the war?” Kieri shook his head.
“True, sir—sir king, we don’t know. Verrakaien—they’d use crossbows, wouldn’t they? But stragglers, out in the woods—they might have to contrive a bow … but why attack Orlith if not to take the horse?”
“The horse for meat? But the wolves drove them away?” Carlion said.
“I suppose.” Kieri unfastened Orlith’s blood-soaked tunic, struggling with the frozen laces. Beneath it, the shirt showed the same rents, the same blood. On his neck, an abraded line showed dark against the pale skin. “Was he strangled as well? This makes no sense!”
“Not strangled,” Siger said. “I’ve seen this on the battlefield, and so have you, sir king. He wore a chain or thong—possibly a jewel or other pendant on it—and it was ripped off.”
“Robbers, then,” Carlion said. “Tsaian scum, no doubt—”
“No,” Kieri said. “Look, there’s his belt-purse, still fat with coins. A robber would find it easier to use coins than an elven pendant to buy himself meat and drink.” He stood. “I must go hear what the courier has to say in detail. Stay with Orlith until Captain Lornyan comes; be sure no one takes his body away, and that includes the Lady. Send to me at once if elves come and when the Captain comes.”
“Yes, sir king,” Siger said, and Carlion echoed him.
Back in the palace, Deriya had finally warmed and was halfway through a meal; he came to his feet as Kieri entered. “Finish eating,” Kieri said, and moved to his own desk, where Arian sat with pen in hand. She had covered two sheets with what he’d said. Kieri read it over her shoulder, then pulled a chair nearer the courier and sat down with his feet to the fire. The storm raged outside; the wind’s howl was audible even in here. “I will have many questions for you,” he said to the man. “Arian will keep a record.”
“Yes, sir king,” Deriya said, wiping his mouth.
“But first you need my thanks—you have done well, coming through such a storm and bringing his body as well … It could not have been easy.”
Over the next turn of the glass, Kieri led the man through finding Orlith’s body, his examination of the site—“Bootprints, yes, sir king, but I couldn’t tell whose”—what else he might have noticed, and how long it had taken him to reach Chaya. “I was lucky the wind was behind me,” the man said at the end. “It pushed me this way.”
“Did you recognize the body at once as an elf’s?”
“No, sir king; only when I got close, I could tell—those cheekbones, that shape—but when I first rode up on it and shot the wolves, I thought it was a man.”
“And after, did you realize who it was?”
“No, sir king. I never met this Orlith.”
“But you brought the body here, to the palace …”
“Tell the truth, sir, in the storm I was glad to get to a wall and turn in the first gate I could find. Someone here would know what to do, I thought.”
“Right enough,” Kieri said. He sighed. Too much in one day, as usual. Arian pregnant with their child—a great joy. His grandmother elf’s claim to be ignorant of what lay under the mount in the King’s Grove—a great puzzle and worry. Those warnings in the ossuary—a great mystery and possible threat. And now Orlith’s death. For all that he had resented Orlith in the beginning, he had come to respect the elf, even like him. Such a vicious murder—so brutal, so blatant—argued for something more dire than simple assassination. And yet something was wrong with the elves, something deeper than he had yet discovered.
“Sir king, Carlion said you asked to know when the Captain arrived. He’s looking at Orlith’s body now.” This time it was one of the palace guard.
Kieri took the inside route to the salle, with only a short dash across the little entrance court exposed to the weather. He found the Chaya militia captain crouched beside Orlith’s body.
“You knew him?” Lornyan said.
“Yes. He was my tutor in elven magery,” Kieri said. Anticipating the next questions, he went on. “I had not seen him but two or three times since just before Midwinter. He had not given me formal lessons since the Pargunese invasion, and I understood him to be busy with the other elves, healing the scathefire damage.”
“So his being away a tenday or two did not concern you?”
“No. Besides that, I myself have been busy and distracted since Midwinter and my betrothal.”
The man smiled and nodded. “Understandable, sir king. And you say someone found this body two days ago?”
“Yes, and can probably find the place again when the storm’s over, though I’m sure all sign will have been erased.” Kieri told him what he now knew of the courier’s movements and findings. “I’m sure the armsmasters have told you about our speculations earlier: whether this could be a Verrakai stray from Tsaia, or a Pargunese, or … or who else would kill like this, so messily?”
“Was he bound to the tree where he was found?”
“The courier didn’t mention that—I’m sure he would have. You will want to ask him yourself, perhaps.”
“Indeed,” the man said. “I’m sure you, sir king, have seen more dead men than I, in your years at war. We have few acts of violence here; the elves, as you know, abhor conflict, let alone violence.”
“And yet the Lady brought them to my need, before I arrived, and they fought then.” Kieri scowled, trying to remember. He had seen that line of elven warriors coming down on the foe … but he could not remember how they had fought. Odd. He hadn’t thought of it in all this time … the length and shape of their blades—or did they have blades?—the kind of bows—or did they have bows? He remembered the elf-light, the splendor of the Lady on her silvery horse … tumult … and then kneeling before her …
“I have never seen them fight,” the man said. “But they carry blades much like any other person who bears arms.”
“Orlith didn’t,” Kieri said. “He had a dagger …” He looked at the body. No dagger, just an empty sheath.
“With your permission, sir king, I will unclothe him now.”
“Certainly.” Kieri watched as the man, with the armsmaster’s help, removed Orlith’s shirt. Three arrow wounds, he thought, and at least five slashes and stabs with a blade. One of the thrusts had transfixed Orlith’s body. “No marks on his trousers,” Kieri commented. “He was wounded only on the upper body.”
“There’s blood.” Carlion pointed to a stain.
“But no rent in the cloth. It’s from these wounds.”
“I don’t understand it at all,” the captain said, rocking back onto his heels. “The arrows would have killed him—not instantly, but soon enough, especially when drawn out. Why then hack at him, stab him? He could not have been able to fight.”
“How are you sure the arrows came first?” Kieri asked.
“I’m not, but it makes sense. Arrows—he falls off his horse—wait—was the horse shot?”
“The courier didn’t mention that. You can ask him.”
“It may have stopped—but something killed it. But if he was shot and he fell off his horse, he’d be helpless.”
“Duke Verrakai found one of her squires bound to a tree, crippled and left in the cold. Could that have been the plan?”
“But then why the bladework?”
“I don’t know,” Kieri said. “If this were a battlefield—” He hoped with all his heart that it would not become one ever again. “If it were,” he said again, “I would think this an act of frenzy … vengeance against an enemy, anger, hatred, something like that.”
“And the elves—they will want him laid in the woods,” Lornyan said.
“Yes. But I remind you that his death—and such a death as this—should have disturbed the taig when it befell him. And yet the Lady herself visited this morning and said nothing of it.”
“Did you ask her?”
“I didn’t know yet.”
“Did she say why she had come?”
“Yes. Arian is with child, and she had felt that in the taig, she said.”
Lornyan’s face lit up. “Oh, my lord—sir king—what joy!”
“Yes, it is,” Kieri said, grinning. “But surely she would have—should have—known of Orlith’s death.”
“Perhaps she didn’t mention it at such a happy time, not to disturb you.”
“Perhaps.” Kieri sighed. “I wonder that I myself didn’t feel something. Orlith helped me develop my taig-sense … though I never had been able to feel him through it, come to think of it.” He looked down at Orlith’s body. “We can at least clean that up and wrap him decently before the elves see him.”
Despite the storm and Orlith’s death, the mood that night at dinner was joyful. No one had been able to leave the palace, so the table was filled—Council members, Squires, the courier, Captain Lornyan—when Kieri and Arian came in. A cheer went up; Kieri grinned. The steward had spread dried rose petals on the tablecloth; the room smelled of roses and fresh herbs before the food came in.
He had not expected such a feast, but clearly his staff felt the announcement of an heir deserved celebration. Dish after dish appeared—clear soups and cream soups, roast fowl, haunch of venison, ham, winter vegetables in every combination of spice and sauce.
Kieri could not help thinking where he had been the year before. In a palace, yes, but in Vérella’s glittering pink and gray granite edifice, under suspicion in the Regency Council, thanks to the Verrakaien influence. As Duke Kieri Phelan, he had expected to spend the rest of his life in Tsaia when not campaigning in the south … a widower who would never, he had decided that winter, remarry … a peer with no heir of the body.
Was it this day, or the day before or after, that Paks had arrived to tell him that the sword he had given Tammarion was in fact a relic of the Lyonyan royal house—the sword made for him by elves at his mother’s behest, found by Aliam Halveric, who had not known its history. He had paid little attention to half-Eveners then; he had held himself aloof from the common celebrations of the year. And yet that day had brought him to the second great change of his life … from a life as a man with no family, no past, to the inheritance he now held.
For the first time in a season, he thought of his former domain: the hills, the streams, the little towns he had founded, the stronghold itself … the people. Would he ever see them again? What would he feel if he did? He pushed that away—his place was here, now, with these people. No king could ask for better … and what had he brought them but war, invasion, after all those lifetimes of peace?
“Kieri?” The touch of Arian’s hand on his brought him out of that bittersweet reverie.
“I’m fine,” he said. “But trying to remember if it was this day or one very near it last year when Paks arrived in Vérella with the sword.”
“And your life changed,” Arian said. “A very busy year for you, whichever day it was.”
“Indeed. And a change I could not have imagined. Including you. Including our son
.” He addressed himself to his food then and finished a serving of roast goose with brambleberry sauce. The feast went on; he had eaten almost all he could before the dessert came in, custard tarts topped with sugared fruits. By then it was dark, and the snow continued pummeling the windows.
“It has to stop sometime,” Sier Halveric said. He had been one of the Council members trapped in the palace by the storm. “Perhaps by morning?”
“Half-Evener storm,” Sier Davonin said. “Remember last year? The king was dead, that paladin had gone off with the sword—been gone a long time, it seemed—and we all sat here wondering if the storm was an ill omen. Blew three days, it did, and then we’d hardly got the snow all cleared away, seemed like, when the air softened, and next we knew here came the king riding in with spring all around him.”
“A big change,” Sier Halveric said. To Kieri he said, “I’m sorry, sir king, you never got to meet him—he was not a bad king, just not strong, and without taig-sense.”
“I’d like to have known them all,” Kieri said. “But now that dinner’s over, I’d like to meet with those of you on the Council—and you, Captain. A turn of the glass, and we’ll use the small dining room.”
He went to the kitchens next to thank the cooks for the feast and then went to his office. Arian was there, waiting for him. “Do you want to come to the meeting, love, or would you rather rest?”
“I was thinking I might go see Orlith’s body,” Arian said. “It bothers me that neither of us felt any disturbance when he was killed. If he had just died peacefully—not that elves do die that way—it would not surprise me. We are not of his family, after all. But for such violence to go on—I should have felt something.”
“And the Lady?”
“Of course. And my father.” She paused, brow furrowed, then went on. “Though … it was close to the scathefire track, was it not? The taig is still wounded there; I can feel that. It’s possible that overwhelmed the other … as one does not notice a scratch when hit by a sword stroke.”
“A good thought,” Kieri said.
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