“Your Majesty.”
Excellent! Sin Hazar might have gloated, if he had not been so intent on keeping the boy off balance. So, Felicianda’s bastard son would address him as a king, as a liege lord. That could make things simpler. “We trust that you had an easy journey to our court. If we had known of your intention to visit your mother’s homeland, we would have prepared an escort from the harbor.”
“I – We did not know that we’d be coming until we’d already taken ship.” The boy paused, clearly waiting for Sin Hazar to say something. The king did not oblige. “We – that is, I, um, I wanted to see my homeland. I wanted to see my mother’s country.”
“The times are rough for traveling, between the approaching winter and the rebels on the open seas. We trust that you encountered no difficulty?”
“No, Your Majesty. Your men protected us all along the way.”
“Our men?” Sin Hazar raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in a study of surprise. “Do you hear that, Al-Marai? This youth apparently believes that we dispatched our soldiers to the south.”
“Impossible, Your Majesty.” Al-Marai stepped forward without hesitation, settling a hand on the sword that swung at his waist, as if to remind the trio of southerners that they were deep in enemy territory. “Sire, if we were to send armed lions into another kingdom, we could be accused of unbridled aggression.”
“So.” Sin Hazar pinned the youth again with his own steely eyes, fully aware that the boy was struggling to take in his Uncle Al-Marai’s broad chest, to comprehend the threat implied by the massive sword, by the brawny arms. Before Felicianda’s bastard could speak, Sin Hazar purred, “Are you certain they were our men?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. That is, I thought.… The guards.… They came to me in the castle, posing as new members of the royal guard. They said they came from you.”
“They said.…” Sin Hazar let the second word trail off, weaving a rainbow of meaning into the single syllable. What would the boy do with that? Demand that the king acknowledge his own men? Question the reality that was before his very eyes, in the shape of the tattoos on the soldiers’ faces?
“Yes. Er, I thought that you sent them because of my mother. Because of Queen Felicianda.”
“Ah, our poor lost sister, blessed be her name before all the Thousand Gods.” Sin Hazar made a religious sign across his chest and bit back a smile as the boy belatedly followed suit. Out of the corner of his eye, the king noted that neither of the girls saw fit to invoke a blessing on dear, dead Felicianda. “So. You claim to travel with our soldiers. And who are these delicate flowers that you bring with you?” Courtly language – neither of the girls bore the slightest resemblance to a blossom. Well, the shorter one might, the one with some meat on her bones – but at most she resembled the bloom of a thorn tree.
Bashanorandi seemed surprised by the king’s compliment. “These flowers?” He cleared his throat and made a half-bow. “May I present to Your Majesty, um, Ranita Glasswright and Mair.”
Ranita Glasswright. Sin Hazar’s spies had told him all about that one. She was the girl who had sent Felicianda’s tottering plot crashing down, disclosing the conspiracy to the old king of Morenia. Fascinating, that Bashanorandi traveled with her, with the one he must blame for his orphaning. Interesting, as well, that he named her by her guild name, when she had apparently jumped about among castes like that Jair the southerners held in such high esteem.
And Mair. Sin Hazar had not heard her name before. The single syllable told him a great deal, though. She was one of the casteless, one of the ... Touched. It was odd enough that a prince would travel with such a girl. That he would obviously dislike her so intensely.… Well, this game just might prove entertaining enough for all the long winter nights.
King Sin Hazar inclined his head, first toward the guild brat, then toward the Touched wench. “My lady Ranita. My lady Mair.” He noticed his nephew stiffen at the honorifics. Ah. Anger could have many sources – Sin Hazar was willing to bet that Bashanorandi’s was based in jealousy. The king of all Amanthia added, “We trust you’ll find all to your liking as you stay in our court.”
Ranita Glasswright glanced at Mair, as if she were seeking permission to speak, but when she stepped forward, she held her head high. “We thank you for your hospitality, Your Majesty. Nevertheless, we would be most honored if you could return us to Morenia immediately. We will only require a small escort as we journey south, and that only until we reach your border.”
“What, my lady? You’ve scarcely arrived in our fair city. You must take some time to appreciate the riches of our northern realm.”
“Begging your pardon, Your Majesty.” The guild refugee ducked her head in a charming, rustic bow. “We are honored by your promise of hospitality, but we must insist upon returning to King Halaravilli. We traveled here against our wills, Your Majesty, even at great personal pain to my companion, to Mair.”
Sin Hazar slitted his eyes as he glared at Bashanorandi. The boy might only be a bastard prince, but he should have better control over his subjects than that. How could he stand by and let this girl tell her tales? Even if they were true, a guildsman should have enough fear of a prince to keep her mouth shut.
Bashanorandi might have been thinking the same thing, but he held his tongue. Instead of replying, of defending himself, he glared at Mair. So. The guild-girl spoke, but the Touched wench was blamed. Fairly? Or because Bashanorandi hated her? So much fun Sin Hazar might have.… “Cousin? What say you to these accusations?”
“Please, um, Your Majesty. I brought Ranita and Mair here for their own safety. They had raised steel against me, against my men. Your men, that is. They knew that I rode willingly with your soldiers, Your Majesty, yet they sought to stop me. I had no choice but to bring them.”
“One always has a choice,” Sin Hazar purred, watching as his nephew took his meaning, as the boy blanched.
“If I had slain them,” Bashanorandi replied after a long pause, “then Hal would have chased after us with all the men at his disposal.”
Hal. How intriguing. The boy called his brother by a Touched name. Or a god. Or nothing more than a childhood nickname.… Sin Hazar almost smiled. His spies had brought him tales of the deep valley of hatred between the southern boys, hatred that could so easily be harnessed in support of Amanthia’s cause. “And so you stole these ladies?”
“It was more like ... borrowing, Your Majesty.” The prince was earnest in his reply.
“And if we choose to kill them now?”
“Your Majesty?” Bashanorandi barely whispered the words.
“If we choose to execute them? If we choose to label them enemies. Traitors. Spies.”
“Then I would be forced to challenge Your Majesty to combat. These women are under my protection.”
Brave words, Sin Hazar thought. Brave words when the speaker was little more than a child, surrounded by well-fed, well-rested men-at-arms in a court leagues and leagues from so-called home. Perhaps there was more to this prince than Sin Hazar had thought at first. Perhaps Felicianda’s whelp could be used wisely.
The king kept his steady gaze on the boy, knowing that his own dark eyes frightened men. Sin Hazar was blessed with the ability to delay blinking, a childhood skill well-harnessed against fighting men. The effect, he knew, was to make him seem like a cat, like a ferocious predator who could stare down an enemy for as long as that action took.
The boy stood up to the attention better than Sin Hazar had expected. For nearly a full minute he gazed at his uncle, and then he maneuvered his hand to rest on the hilt of his sword. When he spoke, his voice was deadly still. “Your Majesty, I came to you because you are my kin. I came because I believed the stories that I heard at my mother’s knee. I expected you to welcome flesh and blood. If I was mistaken, then you should not hold that against my companions, against Ranita Glasswright and Mair.”
Sin Hazar startled all three of the southerners by clapping his hands loudly, again and again.
“A fine speech, cousin! Fine words! You speak bravely.” Sin Hazar watched as his compliments lent steel to the boy’s spine. “Your mother would be proud of you, son!” The endearment made the boy’s eyes shoot toward Sin Hazar’s face, searching the king’s gaze for some inner meaning. Sin Hazar let his own features relax into a smile. “It must have been very hard getting the ladies here, to Amanthia, if they did not even understand the danger they were in down south. If they did not even know enough to protect themselves.”
“Your Majesty –” Ranita Glasswright leaped to the bait, eager to clarify the record.
“We were speaking to our nephew, Lady Ranita.”
“But you weren’t –”
“We were not addressing you.”
“Your Majesty –”
“Really, we don’t know what insubordination Halaravilli suffers in his kingdom, but we can assure you that we do not permit guildsmen to tell us how to rule. In Amanthia it is customary to wait until your king has asked for your advice before you offer it.”
“You are not my king!”
“You are on our soil, in our castle, surrounded by our men at arms!” Sin Hazar let a little of his true rage leak into his words. The child was insufferable! Not only did she think that she knew better than her elders, but she somehow thought she had free license to say whatever came into her mind! Sin Hazar jutted his chin toward Al-Marai. “General, if this one speaks another word before we leave this chamber, you are to have her gagged, bound, and thrown into our dungeons.”
Ranita Glasswright drew breath to protest but clearly thought better of her rebellion when Al-Marai stepped forward with a simple bow, inclining his head and resting his hand on his sword. The king waited for a long moment, testing her, measuring her stupidity. When the brat remained silent for several heartbeats, Sin Hazar softened his gaze and permitted his nephew the scantest of smiles. “You have traveled long and hard. Let us offer you the meats of our table, cousin, and when you have filled your belly, a bed in our house.” The king set a hand on the boy’s shoulder and felt the young flesh quiver, like a hound trembling beneath its master’s touch.
“Your Majesty!” It was the other girl who spoke, the one whose arm was in its awkward sling. “We have asked for your protection. We have asked that you return us to Morenia.”
The king bit off his annoyance. He had not forbade that casteless wench to speak. “All in good time, Lady Mair. All in good time.” Sin Hazar took a couple of steps toward the doorway of the stone chamber, driving his nephew forward with the weight of his hand. He let it seem an afterthought that turned him back to the two girls. “In the meantime, you should make yourselves comfortable in our castle. We will send women to you, to tend to your needs. Guards! Al-Marai, attend me.”
Sin Hazar left the two girls in the stone chamber, surrounded by the toys of war and a handful of soldiers in royal livery. The king would be true to his word. He would send women to look after Lady Ranita and Lady Mair. But that would be after he broke bread with his nephew.
After he began to explore the benefits of his three new hostages.
Halaravilli, King of Morenia, stood in the drafty entrance of a ramshackle hut, cursing himself for not grabbing a warmer cloak. Nearly three months had passed since he’d last masqueraded as a Touched youth, slipping out of the palace through the secret corridor that Dalarati had shown him so long ago. Three months ago, the summer sun had beat down on Hal’s head as he made his way through the City streets, worming into the narrow byways of the no-man’s-land between the quarters.
Now, a chill wind blew through those same streets. A promise of snow teased the air, and Hal would not even have considered leaving the palace compound if he had not found the slip of parchment lurking beneath his morning cup of mulled wine. Even as he unfolded the message, he knew what it would say. There was no need to question his manservant about the parchment’s provenance. Even though Hal was only seventeen years old, he had lived long enough to know that the servant would have no idea how the message had appeared on the tray. The Fellowship of Jair wanted things that way.
And the Fellowship had certainly lost no time in summoning him. Hal had only taken his stand against Tasuntimanu in the council room the morning before. The earl must have run directly to the Fellowship’s hierarchy. Hal, sipping his mulled wine, had nodded as he read the neat words: “The Pilgrim Jair watches over all his children, even from the darkened hallway, even as the sun draws nigh to noon.”
Hal knew from earlier cryptic messages that the Fellowship had moved its safe house only a fortnight before. The newest meeting place was a tiny hut in a nondescript street. Hal just hoped that whoever he was supposed to meet would show up promptly at noon. The streets would be even colder when the sun began its early trip to the west.
Blowing on his fingers to warm them, Hal could not help but think of the tales Rani had told him about the Brotherhood of Justice. She had witnessed some of their meetings in similar ramshackle huts; she knew how members of secret cabals could be betrayed in the dark passages where Hal’s own soldiers did not patrol.
A chill crept down the king’s spine as he thought of the conniving traitors that Rani had almost joined, of the headman’s axe that had closed their tale. What would Hal’s loyal councillors do if they discovered their king skulking in dark alleys, making deals with shadowy forces? How quickly would they have him imprisoned, executed?
Nonsense. Hal was the king. He could hardly commit treason against himself.
He was only thinking such morbid thoughts because he was tired, because yesterday’s council meeting had worn him out. He was tired and nervous at the proposition of defending his actions to the Fellowship of Jair. Tugging at his filthy cape, Hal resisted the urge to look up and down the dingy street. The King’s Guard would throw a fit if they learned their liege lord slunk through the City in common trews and a grimy shirt, looking for all the world like a ragged Touched boy, roaming free from his troop for the first time in his life.
There was no reason, though, for the guard ever to find out. With luck, no one would come to check on Hal until well after the sun had set. The king had carefully fostered a rumor born during his days as an odd junior prince in his father’s court, a rumor that served him better now that he was seventeen than it had ever done him as a child. Hal let all around him believe that he sometimes suffered gripping headaches, pulsing agonies that left him incapable of speech, unable to gather his wits about him. His only salvation in the midst of those seizures, he lied, was sleep – uninterrupted sleep in a completely darkened chamber.
He knew that he played a dangerous game. No sane king would deliberately foster the image of himself as an invalid. But no sane king would deliberately join an underground cabal of people from all the castes, working toward some mysterious, unknown goal. Hal had had no choice, when he had made his initial decisions. He needed to guarantee that he could escape the palace when necessary. He needed freedom to fulfill his obligation to the Fellowship of Jair, to meet his debt to the brotherhood that had helped him gain his throne, that had stood by him when he was weakest and most subject to attack.
Hal owed the Fellowship. He had sworn his fidelity as a member of the shadowy coalition. The Fellowship, in turn, had sent members to watch over him, to help him, to protect him. One of those members, Dalarati, had died to further Hal’s cause, cut down in the bitter struggle with the Brotherhood of Justice.
The Fellowship might be dangerous, but it had accepted Hal when no one else would. Hal paid his debts, no matter the cost, no matter the games that he needed to play with his court, the charades of illness that he needed to create.
“Speak, Pilgrim, and enter.” The cathedral bells had just begun to toll noon when Hal finally heard the whisper at his ear, through a bolt-hole that grated open in the door of the rotting hut. He stepped forward before he could question the wisdom of disappearing, anonymous and alone, into a structure of questionable integrity with an unknown stranger.
�
��Blessed be Jair the Pilgrim, who protects the lion from the flood.” Lion. Flood. Hal was certain those were the passwords. Nevertheless, he knew a moment of heart-clenching fear that he had remembered incorrectly, that the Fellowship had changed its passwords since he had last heard. Or worse yet, that it was not the Fellowship that waited within the crumbling building. If even one of Hal’s enemies had learned of the existence of the shadowy body.…
Hal imagined a heavy sword suspended over his bare neck, a wicked Amanthian blade curving toward his blood. He should have slipped on armor beneath his Touched garb. He should have protected himself before he risked his life and his kingdom. He should have told someone – anyone – where he was going.
Where he was going. The threat was growing. His blood was flowing.
Catching his breath, Hal swallowed the blossom of panic, forcing himself to count to twenty. He had only completed half the count, though, when the door swung open. “Come, Pilgrim, and enter the house of Jair.”
House of Jair! Not likely!
Nevertheless, Hal’s relief washed over him like a wave of scorn, and he drew his cloak closer as he strode down the narrow corridor. He tried to tell himself that he pulled the filthy garment closer to protect it from the sticky walls, but he knew that he sought comfort in its woolen warmth. He may not have been waylaid by assassins this time, but there was still danger in the hut. Who knew how Tasuntimanu had twisted his story of the council meeting?
Hal was shown into a room as grim as the outside of the building. A low fire crackled on a flagged hearth, but the flue did not draw well, and smoke had stained the wall to either side of the flames. A three-legged stool crouched beside the fire, close enough that Hal expected the seat’s occupant to be flushed with heat. She wasn’t, though. She was pale, pale white, like an insect writhing under a stone in the royal garden.
Glasswrights' Progress Page 11