King’s Wrath

by Fiona McIntosh

  “I don’t know what that means. Do I use strange powers to heal? I suppose so. I don’t imagine it’s everywhere someone who was stabbed and lost so much blood that her heart was about to stop can look as healthy as Valya does right now.” Evie had her cool surgeon’s air pulled around her now. Corbel could tell she was unhappy at being challenged like this.

  He didn’t like the sound of where this was headed. “You demanded her help.”

  “But . . .”

  Valya gave a sly smirk toward Corbel. “What she’s struggling to tell you—although I’m surprised you don’t know this—is that the Mother is now obliged to report you to General Strack—”

  “General Stracker can kiss my arse if you think we’re going to let you turn my lady over to him,” Barro interrupted.

  His vulgarity prompted a brief, somewhat shocked pause, before Evie helplessly smiled.

  “Let me get this right,” she said, holding up a hand to prevent anyone interrupting or speaking for her. “You feel obliged to turn me in to the authorities—that is, Emperor Loethar—for using ‘magic,’ ” and she loaded the word as she said it. “And in return I should feel equally obliged to inform the same authority that his daughter, believed dead, is alive and well and secreted away in the convent where he imprisoned his grieving wife, bereft of her child and husband. That’s about the sum of it, am I right, Mother?” Her words were said so dryly that Corbel, despite being shocked at learning of the daughter’s survival, broke out in a wide smile. This was Evie at her best, her mind as sharp as the scalpel she wielded with equal dexterity.

  “No!” Valya yelled.

  The Abbess looked horrified. “You told them about Ciara?” she asked, aghast.

  “We guessed,” Evie said. “I heard the baby crying, so did Barro.”

  Corbel couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Loethar thinks his daughter is dead but you are keeping the truth from him? Why?”

  “He might have named her but he didn’t even want to see her,” Valya snarled. “He was happy for her to die; he never gave her a chance and if you want the truth, everyone gave up on her—even the midwives, the physic. I suckled her and kept her going, only me. Where is she?” she demanded.

  “She is safe, Valya,” the Mother promised. “I’ve sent her with the woman you trust—Dilys—to the scriptorium.”

  “Oh not to that girl!”

  “She has a rare ability to calm Ciara. And the little mite needed calming. We couldn’t think straight for her crying, poor little thing.”

  “She needs to be fed, comforted.”

  “The wet nurse went with Dilys. If feeding is all that’s required, that’s good. She was terrified by the noise and disturbance.”

  Corbel had tolerated enough discussion about wet nurses and calming scriptorium workers. “Abbess,” he said, “we need to talk.”

  He noticed Valya blanch. “Lo save us! Mother, this is the son of Regor de Vis. Look at him!”

  Corbel flinched.

  “And this,” she said, struggling with her bonds, jutting her chin toward Evie, “is the Valisar daughter everyone believed dead.”

  Corbel closed his eyes. He hated Valya. Why couldn’t she have been generous and just died!

  Silence descended on the room and lengthened uncomfortably as the Abbess considered what she’d just heard.

  “Is it true?” she finally asked Evie.

  Evie shrugged. “Forgive me, Mother, for sounding repetitive but I have no idea.” She theatrically pinched herself. “Apparently I’m here. But you know as much as I do.”

  The Abbess turned to Corbel.

  “You are one of the de Vis sons, aren’t you?”

  There was no point in denying it any longer. Corbel nodded. “I am Corbel de Vis.”

  The older woman sucked in air and shook her head. He thought he saw tears.

  “Why did you lie?”

  “I have been lying since my youth, Mother,” he admitted sadly. “All for the Valisar cause.”

  “And the man who was here recently, also called Regor?”

  “My twin brother, Gavriel, according to the Qirin.”

  Valya made a hissing sound.

  “So what is going on?” the Mother asked. “Is something afoot?”

  “Can’t you tell, Mother? They plan to steal my child’s throne and put this girl on it!”

  Corbel flung up his hands. “Forgive me but this woman is beneath my contempt. She may call herself empress and may have once been a Drostean princess but now she is nothing more than a barbarian’s whore. I refuse to discuss anything more with her spewing her poison around me. She is a prisoner of her own empire and now she’s a criminal and should be treated as such.”

  “How dare you—” Valya raged.

  “He’s right that I gave my word to the emperor to contain you, Valya, and it seemed to me that you were prepared to throw all our generosity to the wind in order make some sort of escape with your child and Evie here,” the Abbess cautioned. “I would suggest you go to the misericord and say some prayers, consider your situation, have some quiet time.”

  “Mother, I—”

  “Take Valya away, please.” She motioned to two of her helpers. “Master Barro, as I’m sure Master de Vis will insist, you may keep guard of the empress but this is to be a silent guard and an invisible one. You are not to look her in the eye to taunt her, neither are you to so much as utter a sound to her to bait her. Is that clear?”

  “It is.”

  “Then please help escort Valya to the chapel and take those cuffs off her.”

  “Mother, I must insist—” Valya began.

  “On nothing, my dear. You have no rights, other than what I grant you and until I hear all that my guests have to say, you are granted none . . . other than your infant, who will be brought to you soon enough. Now go.”

  When everyone had trooped away, leaving only the three of them, the Abbess regarded Corbel and Evie sternly. “You have a lot to explain. We shall walk the cloisters together and I will expect to hear your story—your whole story—before I make a decision.”

  “On what?” Corbel asked.

  “On what to say in my message to the palace.”

  Corbel shook his head. “With all due respect, Mother—”

  “I know. You could simply walk out of here. That’s quite true but you won’t, not immediately. You will do the right thing and do me the courtesy of an explanation. Your name is de Vis and we both know what that stands for.”

  Corbel acquiesced. He nodded at Evie and they both fell in step behind the convent’s mother like scolded children.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The soldiers picked him up not long after he’d walked into the main street of Barronel’s Royal Straight. He’d only been to this realm once as a young child and remembered very little although the tall trees lining the impressive and elegant long street did prompt a memory of riding on a shiny black stallion between his parents. They had been here to meet with the royal family of Barronel.

  Now it looked very different. The Straight was still an elegant concourse but now it seemed to be a region inhabited by barbarian soldiers, mainly Reds it seemed. The truth was the once grand capital now felt like a ghost city. The soldiers he did see were few and far between.

  Two soldiers emerged from an alley and approached him. “Ho there, traveler,” said an older Red in heavily accented Denovian, stopping him in his tracks.

  Leo had to look up at him, atop his fine horse. He was glad he’d taken the precaution to hide Faeroe for fear it would be confiscated.

  “Yes?” he said, trying his best to sound deferential.

  “No civilians here,” the man said. He had clearly not made the transition easily to the Denovian language.

  “Oh?”

  “Are you Vested?”

  Leo considered this. It was really his only way into the camp. “I am. I was told to come here.”

  The Red and his companion laughed.

  “What�
�s amusing?” he asked.

  “None comes willingly.”

  “Is that so?”

  “But now you’re here,” the other soldier said, his tongue handling the colloquial Denovian much more easily, “we’d like to extend an invite for you to join your fellow Vested.”

  Leo nodded. “Fine. I have no family, no friends, no work, no income. I might as well be looked after by the state.”

  The two men smiled. “You’re a strange one,” the youngest said.

  “So I’m told,” Leo admitted.

  “I’ll take him,” the companion said to the old Red. “You go on. Take my horse.” He hopped down from the animal, retrieving his sword. “Hope I won’t be needing this,” he said to Leo, glancing at the blade.

  “You won’t. I haven’t come here to make trouble,” he lied.

  The Red nodded and took his arm. “Come with me,” he said.

  Leo hated even being touched by one of the barbarian invaders. He shook the man off. “That won’t be necessary. I have willingly offered myself.”

  “Orders,” the man warned.

  “I will walk into the camp without any trouble but don’t push me, pull me; in fact, don’t manhandle me at all.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or perhaps I’ll turn you into a rock; I told you I was Vested.”

  The man sneered.

  “Or I know, I’ll turn your tatua permanently green. How would you like that?”

  This won the soldier’s attention. “Do not touch the tatau!”

  “Then do not touch me,” Leo warned.

  The man nodded, taking him a lot more seriously now. Leo was impressed that just the mention of magic seemed to have these simpletons believing him. If he could find his aegis, he would kill this man first as an example of his power. “What’s your name?”

  “Welf,” the man replied.

  “I won’t forget it.”

  They walked in silence, veering off the seemingly haunted Royal Straight toward open fields.

  “Where are all the people?” Leo asked.

  “Which people?”

  “The Barronese,” he said, surprised.

  The man gave a careless shrug with one shoulder. “No one lives here. They left a long time ago. Our emperor made this a compass where we brought, how should I say? . . . your people. As they grow in numbers, their families expand, we can accommodate them.”

  “Keep an eye on them, you mean.”

  The man shrugged again. “Either way, now that you’re here you won’t be leaving. Let’s get you registered.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We check that you are genuinely Vested and then you are given a number, assigned accommodations. We find you work that suits your talents if you’d like, or more usually you are left alone to live as you choose.”

  Leo felt the first hole in his plan erupt. “How do you check my magic?”

  “Through your blood,” the man said, as though Leo was dim. “We have a blood taster. His name is Vulpan. He will know that you have magic.”

  Leo recalled Freath’s warning with a stab of guilt that he quickly banished. “To what end?”

  The soldier looked at him, baffled.

  “I’m not complaining—after all, I came here—but I’ve never quite understood the concentration of Vested. Why bother gathering up these people? What’s the end result?”

  “I’m a soldier. I don’t ask questions, I follow orders. But I suppose one reason is that should the empire ever be attacked, then we have, I suppose, an army of sorcerers.”

  “Army?” Leo echoed incredulously. “How many Vested are there?”

  “Here, gathered and registered, it’s getting close to three stacks.”

  Leo understood the slip into Steppes. He’d heard the term before. Three hundred Vested were here and tested for having magic. “That’s impressive,” he replied.

  The man laughed. “You’re strange,” he accused. “Come on, it’s just in here,” he said, pointing.

  They’d left the city center behind and the landscape had changed.

  Leo noticed that they were approaching a barricaded area.

  “This is your new home,” the soldier said.

  Behind the barricade it was like a beehive. Everyone was going about their own tasks; shops were open, the smell of fresh bread overlay the smell of human crowding. In the distance Leo could hear the clang of the blacksmith’s and the bray from stables. Children and dogs played harmlessly.

  But while everything looked normal, there was an unnatural quiet to what to all intents was a thriving community. The air should have been filled with voices and the sounds of their endeavors, but the atmosphere was leaden with what could only be described as a unified sorrow. Even the children at play appeared curiously quiet. Each Vested was dressed in identical robes, some shabbier than others—perhaps attesting to how long they’d been held here—but with no clarification in styling between men or women.

  The single most distinctive sight, however, was the mark that everyone inside seemed to bear.

  “That symbol,” Leo murmured.

  “It’s how we would know should anyone from here escape.” Leo stared, disturbed, as the man continued. “All children of Vested are regularly tested and given tatua if they show powers.” He shrugged. “But the Vested have their own color—yellow—so they are not forced to belong to one of our tribes.”

  Leo stared, shocked.

  “Still glad you came?” the soldier said, in a slightly mocking tone.

  “Of course,” Leo replied without hesitation, resolute that his crown depended on getting inside what he now realized was a guarded compound, nothing at all like the place of endeavor the rumor mill had led most in the empire to believe.

  “A new one,” Welf called out to the guard on duty.

  “Name?” the fellow asked, entirely disinterested.

  “Cadryn,” Leo replied easily. Battle king, he translated from Ancient Set silently.

  “From where?” the bored man inquired.

  “Medhaven.”

  “You’ll find plenty of company from there,” he said, sighing and gesturing Leo through the gate. “You can take him through,” he said to Welf. “Put him in the admissions building for full registration.”

  Welf nodded and with soft pressure on his arm, Leo was ushered into a whole new world of imprisonment.

  In a quiet dwelling on the very rim of the Vested compound a young woman worked her plot. She had a way with vegetables that was nothing to do with her being Vested; she simply had an affinity for growing food. She also liked the peace of the plot; no one troubled her here and her small powers of forecasting were accepted and considered, for the most part, useless to the empire.

  If she could just see the future that would be helpful, the revolting man called Vulpan had told her when he’d finished licking his lips clean of the blood he’d sucked from the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. The action of his putting her fingers on both his cheeks so he could get at this tender spot with his tongue and lips had been clearly carnal, and the sensation of his mouth on her had repulsed her. It was true that she had never been intimate with a man through choice, but even so, this oily creature feigning tenderness and polite manners hid what she could tell was a grasping nature. And what he most tried to hide—his underlying pleasure of his own evil intention—sickened her. Thankfully he could only linger with her for so long before he put a mark by her name to say she had been “tasted.” She had read the runes to demonstrate her skill, and had predicted that Master Vulpan would suffer a toothache in the coming moon, which he had, much to her intense pleasure. Then a new mark had gone next to her name, confirming that she was indeed proven Vested, and with that came a third and final mark—this one on her forehead.

  Being pricked and pierced by the sharp needles, the wounds then being doused with colored ink, was the greatest injury of all. She could cope—even quietly accept—the loss of her freedom but the marking of her skin
was something else. She wept most nights quietly into her pillow over this degradation in her always tense but very sheltered life.

  Her garden plot was her escape and she was humming quietly to herself, not exactly happy but definitely not especially sad today, as she tended to some of the more aggressive weeds choking her new plantings. Nearly six anni she’d been here, picked up in a sleepy hamlet in Vorgaven where she’d fled to after the invasion. She’d managed to avoid attention for more than four years, working quietly in a distillery helping an old herbalist extract the liquor from various plants for his unguents and treatments. He was a popular man in Vorgaven, his preparations well known all over the former Set, even the Empress Valya swearing by his treatments for warts, apparently, although that was a closely guarded secret. She had felt safe with him, and he had treated her with just the right amount of distance combined with genuine regard for her well-being, which she was grateful for.

  He had two apprentices and while they were both male and shared accommodation, as a woman she had a private room next door to where they stayed. It was an idyllic time. The herbalist was a quiet man and noticed her propensity for silence from the outset; it encouraged him to give her more and more tasks that brought her into closer contact with the more fascinating aspects of his work.

  Now and then he would consult her about a plant and seemed impressed with her knowledge. His wife had died early and childless in their marriage and he showed no inclination to marry again, and certainly no interest in her, so this only added to the attraction of her situation.

  Once only—and it was her downfall—did she quietly admit one day to the two apprentices that she could read the runes. They begged her to do a reading. She refused but they had persisted, badgering her daily until they wore her down. She gave them none of the dark news that she saw on the horizon; one would die in his thirty-seventh anni through accident, the other, seduced by liquor and womanizing, would never actually reach his full potential. That was another reason she hated performing readings; seeing the bad events was not reward enough for giving people positive news. But as she told her two companions the good things she saw for their lives she also foresaw her own demise. One of the apprentices she knew was intensely jealous of her relationship with the herbalist. It had not occurred to her that he would tell the authorities about their harmless fun.