Heart of Steel

by Samantha M. Derr

  Anyway, given what Isi understood of Skellan tradition, a bastard could no more be considered a lady than a foreigner could be a knight.

  Of course, Tom didn't hold much stock in tradition.

  As if given to mind-reading, Tom kicked at Isi's chair. "Sir Isi. Shall you pledge yourself to my Annie as her lordly love?"

  And without warning, the warm buzz of intoxication gave way to cold panic. It always seemed to swell at such moments, though Isi could never pinpoint precisely what the fear indicated. Was he afraid of being marked out as different, or merely afraid of being seen at all?

  He was saved, in a manner of speaking, by a grumble from a nearby table. "You'd give two of your sisters into the hands of the Claymen?" A snort. "And what will be left for the rest of us?"

  Claymen. A pejorative term, not yet thirty years old, coined because Mheztil meant literally men of the clay, and because most Skellans still used their dark skin as an easy excuse to disparage Mheztil men.

  Never mind that Isi was not actually Mheztil. He was close enough for fools.

  Tom's jovial mood snuffed out like a wick. His feet hit the floor with a thud, and though he still lounged back in his chair, his demeanor now radiated threat.

  "Alan Lyme, perhaps my head is fuzzy tonight, but I must confess confusion. Are you disparaging my sisters, Skel's allies, or my newly invested Heartless Knight?"

  "Only questioning, your grace. What will be left for the good Skellan families if you fritter away all of our treasures on the dogs of the west?"

  Isi could hardly breathe as Tom erupted, purple-faced and furious. "If you think that you would ever be permitted to touch any of my sisters in a world where the Mheztil had never come, you are sorely mistaken, Lyme. Your sniveling, inbred lineage does not serve to grant you a claim. Now, hold your tongue."

  Instead, Lyme slammed he hands against the table. "You are a puppet of the Kingless foreigners."

  The crowd fell very quiet. Tom shifted in his seat.

  "And yet you sit in my favorite inn, drinking my foster-mother's ale, in order to cling to the edges of my company," he said, deceptively light.

  "I do not come here to watch you waste your favors on foreigners and fools."

  "No? Then why do you come?"

  "It is my right as a free citizen."

  "To patronize a place you so obviously feel is beneath you, amongst company you despise? How odd."

  Isi couldn't figure out what Tom was trying to achieve, provoking the petty nobleman like that. There were a lot in Lyme's camp, men who resented the Mheztil, wanted Skel to return to some fabled, nonexistent past of isolationism and prosperity. Men like Lyme were all talk, but there could be no good in baiting them.

  "You embarrass yourself," Lyme sneered. "And one day, your recklessness will have its due."

  Tom feigned outrage. "Do I hear you right? Is that a threat? Why, I should bring you up to the courts."

  "Only an observation. Any man in Skel might speak the truth as he sees it."

  "Any man might drink elsewhere as the price for insulting the children of the Living King. I am done with you—go away." He waved dismissively, returning to his drink.

  A harsh screech heralded Alan Lyme pushing back his chair, leaping to his feet as if ready for a common brawl. "You are unworthy of your birth and you are driving this country to ruin."

  Isi held his breath. Alan Lyme might be all talk, but that talk had just turned dangerous.

  Yet Tom kept his tone light. "Tonight is a celebration, and I am in a lenient mood. So I will pretend that I did not hear that. But I will not suffer your presence any longer. Sirs, get him out of my sight before I decide to take out his tongue."

  His body obeying while his mind was still far afield, Isi lurched to his feet along with Emery, Walter, and Sol. For they were the prince's Court of Four, and they acted at his pleasure.

  It did not seem particularly valiant that his first official act as a knight was pushing an entitled idiot out into the street for ill-thought insults. Isi didn't much believe in valor, or hold to the tales that Skellans spun of courageous knighthood to while away their long winter nights. Still, this seemed beneath them. But it must be done.

  Lyme began to shout and tried to resist as they herded him towards the door. When Isi touched his bare skin, Lyme reared back as if he had been tossed in sewage.

  And people wondered why Isi did not enjoy touch.

  While Lyme shouted rubbish about going off to the law courts, calling on true Skellans to rise up against the invaders and the blasphemers in the royal ranks, Sol laughed. Lyme spat at him, landing wide of the mark, and Isi had to be the one to pull Sol back, to keep him from attacking the unarmed man. Together, they all pushed Lyme out into the dark and barred the door at his back. And then they returned to the celebration, where they were greeted with a cheer.

  But apparently Isi's wasn't the only mood that had soured during the outburst. Emery Pin was not altogether happy with their prince.

  "His tongue, Tom? I'm not sure it's wise to antagonize that man with threats of mutilation."

  "What's an oaf like Alan Lyme going to do? Run crying to the king about how I said mean things to him? You know what that sort are like, Em. I've got to be clear that I won't take their insolence."

  "I'd bet he'll run off to Percy Gelhorn, and that won't look well for you."

  "You, old friend, think too much. Stop worrying." At Emery's dubious look, Tom started snapping his fingers for the serving girl. "Posey! This man is not drunk enough. Another round, quickly. On the house, of course."

  Emery snorted. "You mean it's on the treasury."

  "Well, and why not? Drink—and play—tonight, for tomorrow we may well be food for the vultures."

  "The king won't care a jot for the money," Ames pointed out. "Gelhorn, though."

  Tom sputtered and waved off the thought. "Oh, Percy. Can we please stop talking about that sycophant? He can take that enormous stick out of his ass long enough to pay for one night of celebration, and then he and Lyme can drown in the river for all I care. Drink up, my friends."

  Everyone else seemed able to get back into the spirit, but for Isi the night was spoiled. His skin itched where he and Lyme had touched. And the after-burn of panic still shivered through his insides, impossible to calm.

  *~*~*

  How easy it was to fall, for emotions to go from the highest of heights to lowest of depths. There was always someone out there like Alan Lyme, ready to drag Isi down. He knew that he shouldn't let them, that he shouldn't let panic get the better of him, but it did. The higher he was, the faster he fell. And this morning—had it only been this morning?—was perhaps the highest Isi had ever gotten.

  He had stood on the brightly polished marble floor in the Court of Four Kings while Tom invested him with a new name, and he had been happy.

  Sir Isi Mheztil, the Heartless Knight.

  Throughout his life, he'd had many names, and this one was going to take some getting used to. But Tom had given it to him, and that was the thing that mattered. The title, which signified elite status to the Skellans. The surname, which signified elite status to his former masters. He kept saying it under his breath, to give it life. Sir Isi Mheztil.

  Of course, he wasn't Mheztil at all. His tribe was Maupe, and they did not bow to the Empire stretched out at their back. But it didn't matter how often he tried to explain this; nobody in Skel cared, or would have been able to tell the difference.

  Before today's investiture, he had for years been called Isi Choazquel. This was a portmanteau term, meaning Northern slave.

  Before that, he had been Luesaisi Tok Loe.

  He didn't remember what the name meant. He didn't remember anything else of his mother tongue, even in his dreams. It had been crowded out of his head by every other language he'd ever heard, every syllabary he'd studied, every obscure saying or song he sought to memorize. Mheztil Common, the Uqe and Emish languages spoken by the higher ranking slaves in his master's house
, the Priest Tongue, Skellan, Neydelese.

  But he did remember that name.

  Luesaisi Tok Loe.

  No one in Skel knew that name. He wasn't sure he could even speak it anymore without his tongue tripping over the syllables. Anyway, he was content enough to be called Isi, in place of clayman, or foreign dog, or slave. It was enough of a name for him.

  But Sir Isi. That was something he was still trying to figure out.

  The straight-laced Skellan nobles, with their pale skin and bright clothing, had murmured through clenched jaws as Tom lowered the sword, designating Isi as a member of his elite Court of Four. The vacant marble eyes of the statue of the Heartless King, one of Skel's four principle deities, felt heavy on Isi's back. Walter was paired with the Sightless King, Emery with the Silent King, and Sol with the Wild King. But Isi had to wonder. How was it that Tom had chosen him for alignment with the Heartless King, when Tom didn't even know the truth?

  It was only a ridiculous fancy that made the statue feel alive at his back. He didn't believe in any deity, much less the Four Kings of Skellan tradition. Still, beneath those eyes he felt marked. Known. Stripped bare.

  Tom would have laughed if Isi told him as much. He didn't believe in the Four Kings, either, and he'd designed his Court of Four specifically to scandalize what he called the pious frauds of the Skellan nobility. He'd given little thought to which of his knights would correspond to each king. And Isi wasn't even his most controversial choice.

  If the gossips were to be credited, they were the most disreputable lot to hold the titles in five hundred years.

  Walter Ames was the most conventional at first glance: the quintessential image of a Skellan knight with his broad shoulders and lantern chin and ready laugh. But he did not come from a noble family, which was a heavy mark against him in the eyes of conservatives such as Percy Gelhorn and Alan Lyme.

  Emery Pin, as son of the viceroy, made up for Ames's low birth, and he was an autodidact who was smarter than any of the rest of them combined, but he did not match the physical ideal. He was spindly, and pockmarked from a childhood bout of the Red Ruin. Skellans put great stock in luck, and Emery was a defiant symbol of ill-luck, who many would have preferred to ignore.

  And then there was Sol Bright. Sol was a twin.

  Skellans had a great fear of twins, deeming them both unlucky and immoral, and that Tom would dare to keep Sol and his identical brother in his circle of influence was even more daring, more shocking, than the idea of raising his foreign pet to knighthood.

  Of course, Tom would have preferred the scandal of having both twins in his Court, but Simon Bright had sensibly and politely declined.

  Thus, Tom had turned to Isi.

  Isi had first met Tom through Anne, when they were all still children. They'd taken to each other instantly, though few outside understood or even recognized the depth of their friendship. When he'd decided to stay in Skel—when Tom had given him the ability to make that decision—Isi had known that, no matter what, their fates would forever be linked. Still, he hadn't expected this. An official title from his borrowed land. A new name.

  He had taken it, without hesitation.

  The Mheztil delegation had by now renamed Isi Naquel, traitor-slave. But what loyalty could he really be said to owe to the men who had torn him from his mother's side, who had enslaved him, who had dragged him across the great ocean in an open boat on a journey so terrifying that he had begged daily for death?

  The Mheztil hated him. The Skellans were disgusted by him. But none of that mattered. As long as he had Tom's favor, Isi promised himself that he would be content.

  And he did have Tom's favor. The trouble was, he wasn't sure that he could keep it, if Tom ever found out the truth of him.

  *~*~*

  The celebration was winding down, now, and the others had all started making moon eyes at the women who clustered around their corner. Isi knew that this part was coming; it happened almost every night, on the town with Tom. That didn't make it any easier to bear.

  Walter slipped off first with the blonde he'd been hanging all over, to go show off his big sword. Emery was flirting shamelessly with Twopenny Kate, who was not bothered in the least by his scars. Tom had his pick out of a passel of fawning girls, and even Sol was not so unlucky tonight as to be shunned female attention, whether because of his new title or because his brother Simon had begged off the evening early and was thus not present to remind anyone of Sol's unfortunate twinhood, Isi couldn't be sure.

  In any case, Isi was about to be left alone.

  It was his own fault. He wasn't even trying.

  He didn't want to try. Not tonight.

  Seeing something in his expression, Anne attempted a valiant rescue. She said something dripping with innuendo, crooked a finger in his direction. The others dutifully egged Isi on, though he noted that Tom frowned a bit at the suggestion. No matter what he might have said about it, he didn't want Isi pursing his favorite sister in any carnal fashion.

  But he did not need to worry. Anne knew Isi better than almost anyone in this land did, and she knew that this was all a smokescreen, a game they sometimes played. He did not have an interest in women, but he could fake it with her. She allowed it, for reasons of her own.

  Anne thought Isi fancied men and was secretly in love with Tom. It was a notion he'd not done much to disabuse her of, since she did not judge him for it, and he could never seem to adequately explain the truth of things. Besides, he did see men and women, aesthetically, in much the same way. He recognized beauty, and commonness, and all that fell in between. And Tom was beautiful. Sometimes, Isi wished he could love Tom.

  It would make things so much easier.

  But he could not feel what everyone else seemed to feel. The pull. The draw. The desire. The need.

  And so he let Anne have her empty flirting, to save face amongst the voracious appetites of his friends and avoid uncomfortable explanations. Sometimes, he even flirted back.

  But not tonight.

  He was exhausted tonight, and in no mood to pretend.

  "Oh, where are you going?" Tom pouted as Isi rose to take his leave.

  "Someone must be in a fit condition to protect you on the morrow."

  "Nonsense. That's what my father's guards are for. Tonight is a celebration, Is."

  "And I'm celebrated out." Isi forced himself to pat Tom companionably on the shoulder, made himself smile.

  "You let Lyme get to you, didn't you? Is, he's an impotent windbag, nothing more. Stay."

  The smile felt brittle. "I did not let Alan Lyme get to me. I'm tired, that's all."

  "Fine. Spoilsport." Tom flipped his hair in a particularly insouciant manner. There. Insouciant. One of Isi's very favorite Skellan words. It tasted like silk between his lips, even though he did not speak it aloud, and helped soothe the panicked boil in his belly.

  "I'm only trying to show up the others with my selfless dedication, you know."

  Tom snorted. "As if that will be so hard among those three louts. Go, my heartless knight. Good dreams to you."

  *~*~*

  It was very late, or very early, depending on how you reckoned the hour. Isi lingered on the vacant streets of Skelhome, the predawn chill reminding him of a time and place he could hardly conceptualize. But he was armed only with his small knife, an easy target for the sort of ruffians who got their kicks out of roughing up claymen. And so, though he felt like watching the fading stars above Skel tonight, he instead turned his tracks towards his bed.

  He'd recently been given a fine set of rooms in the central palace, thankfully very far away from the Mheztil quarters. But he was not lucky enough to find the corridors empty and quiet. Somewhere nearby, a woman was shouting.

  "I don't care if you have to drag him to me by his hair, just find him!"

  An answering murmur.

  Newly invested knights should probably avoid lurking in doorways, eavesdropping on conversations in the middle of the night.

&nbs
p; "No. He owes me this much, and he knows it. Remind him."

  Any moment now. Any moment, he would come to his senses and walk away.

  But he knew that voice. It was Princess Marian, Tom's eldest sister.

  Surely just another minute wouldn't hurt.

  "Because what I have to tell him concerns both of our nations, and I am his wife, and that should be important enough to drag him out of whatever doxy-girl's bed he's in. Or boy. Is it a boy?"

  It was only now, after lurking for some minutes, that Isi realized that the princess was speaking in Mheztil Common. Clever. She might sound harried and shrill, but anyone who happened to overhear would fail to understand her.

  Almost anyone, that was.

  "Claim all you want that he doesn't care for politics; I know that is a lie. You will convince your master to come to me, and I will waste no more time on this matter."

  Too late, Isi recognized the steps coming towards the closed door. He stumbled back, tripping over himself like the bumbling drunkard he was.

  Princess Marian was one of the most forbiddingly beautiful women Isi had ever seen. In that dim corridor, her skin pale as sun-bleached bone but her eyes red with weeping, she looked like a hell-spirit from one of the dreadful penny adventures.

  She blinked in shock on encountering him outside her door, and then her lip curled.

  "What are you looking at, cur?"

  It must be a royal skill, to make simple words drip so much venom. Tom could do it, too.

  Isi could not.

  But he was a knight, now, and no longer a slave. No one would speak to him thus any longer, not even the eldest child of Skel's Living King.

  He straightened his spine. "That's sir, your highness."

  She hadn't been at the investiture ceremony that morning. But, then, most of the royal family had been absent from that affair. It was only another one of Tom's follies, and neither his parents nor his sisters seemed to have much patience for his follies anymore. Even still, she would know his new title and she owed him the same courtesy as she would show any other man of his rank.