by Ellyn, Court
Leshan counted up Sorlek’s tally: a pair of falcons, a pair of swords, a crown, and a skull. Leshan shook his dice, lowered his fist so Ruthan could bless them with a slap of her fingers. He tossed them. Two moons, two falcons, a crown, and a skull. Sorlek had the higher hand. His falcons trumped Leshan’s moons, one of his swords outranked Leshan’s crown. Sorlek’s crown, trumped one of Leshan’s falcons. Only Leshan’s skull bettered Sorlek’s second sword.
“Your lady losing her touch?” his opponent asked, tossing in a handful of coins, and picked up his two falcons to roll again.
Leshan grinned in secret silence and watched the dice fall. A moon and a crown. The latter outplayed Leshan’s second falcon, and the moons canceled each other, leaving Sorlek with the advantage. “Beat that, Tírandon,” he sneered.
Leshan shook his head and was about to abstain and give up the pot, when Ruthan leaned close and whispered in his ear. He sat back and reconsidered his hand. He cast a dubious glance toward his sister, and she affirmed with a nod.
“ ‘Ey! What are you two up to?” Sorlek asked.
Leshan met his opponent’s bet, picked up his pair of moons, his two lowest dice and dropped them again. Up rolled a pair of roses. One was trumped by the moon Sorlek had just rolled, but the second outranked Sorlek’s skull and won the hand. Leshan laughed. The onlookers cheered, and Sorlek scratched his head. “How’d she do that?”
“She didn’t,” Leshan said. “But she can see into the future.”
“The hell she can. I don’t know how you’re pulling this off, Tírandon, but I’m out. Find another sucker to cheat.”
Leshan shrugged blithely, and Sorlek stalked off. The Falcons dispersed. Ruthan helped her brother scoop the coins into a leather purse. “Go put this in our hiding place with the others,” he told her. When no one was looking, she snuck into Leshan’s room, shoved the pouch into a hole in her mattress, and sat on it.
Lieutenant Lissah appeared in the doorway, fists on hips, and the barracks rang with her voice: “Falcons, fall in! Our Leanian friends snagged some shavers. They’re bringing them in.”
Ruthan made a small sound, like a bird in distress. Everything in Leshan that had thawed during the game, chilled. “Stay here,” he told Ruthan. She crawled under his bed, clutching a tattered doll to her chest.
Leshan marched into the courtyard with the others. The king appeared on a balcony, and who should be at his side but the long-lost Lord Ilswythe. Leshan tapped the lieutenant on the shoulder and gestured. “How long has he been back?”
Lissah gasped and smiled when she recognized Kelyn on the balcony with Captain Jareg, Orista, and Greggin. So she hadn’t known of his return either? “Now, why didn’t he come find you first?” Leshan asked, with every intention of stirring up trouble. He filed into line below the balcony with his brethren.
Lord Allaran rode at the head of his lucky band of outriders. The dozen Leanians surrounded eight Zhianese. They appeared to have found plenty of warm garments from the villages they had razed. One even wore an Aralorri surcoat from which he’d plucked the falcon embroidered on the chest. Two more had taken possession of Helwende uniforms; across the gold X, they had drawn their slithering serpent in charcoal. The outriders had confiscated their scimitars and the smaller Dragons they’d carried, bound their hands behind their backs, and linked them into one ugly line with a chain about their necks.
“Kneel!” Allaran ordered.
Those who refused received a kick behind their knees.
Satisfied, Allaran told the king, “I hadn’t yet rejoined my men when they brought in these scoundrels, sire. The way I understand it, the snows drove them in. But when they saw who was in charge at Bramoran, they tried to flee south and ran into this platoon. That right, sergeant?”
“Aye, sir,” said one of the outriders.
“Fine work, men,” Rhorek said. “Did they confess where they’d been raiding?”
“No, Your Majesty,” said the sergeant. “Though we suspect in the east, around Longmead.”
Too bad Morach had returned to Nathrachan with the dwarven regiment, thought Leshan. He might like to reclaim a little blood for his people.
“To the dungeon with them,” the king said. “We’ll hold them with the others in case we need another ransom.”
Leshan grit his teeth. Just give them back? So they can return and keep burning and raping? No chance. Not this time.
Before the Leanians could get the Zhianese to their feet, Leshan darted from the line, dagger in hand. He drove the blade into one throat, spun and swept it across a second.
Captain Jareg shout an order. Leshan buried the blade to the hilt in a third Zhiani’s chest. Lissah and two other Falcons engulfed him and tried to pull him down, but Leshan managed one last attack with his steel-toed boot, crushing a fourth Zhiani’s jaw before he collapsed beneath the weight of his comrades. Someone pinned his arms behind his back, two more sat on his legs, and another pressed his face to the flagstones. Through the arms of his captors, Leshan glared at the dying men. His hands were slick with their lifeblood.
The other four prisoners were being led away. Leshan roared and lurched, sending two of his comrades sprawling, but they sprang back, pouncing him hard, and the shavers escaped.
“Get off him!” a voice cried. Straining as far as the Falcons let him, Leshan saw Laral running from the crowd of astonished soldiers and household servants. He dived onto the Falcons who restrained his brother and began pummeling them. “Let him go! Get off him!” Laral’s fists weren’t so small anymore. The Falcons backed away. Laral stopped flailing and stood over his brother while Leshan picked himself off the flags. Blood from a split brow dripped into his eye.
“Arrest him,” Rhorek said.
“No!” Laral cried.
Leshan wrapped an arm about his little brother and whispered in his ear, “Don’t disgrace yourself, too.”
A detail of Falcons led him away.
~~~~
In the Audience Chamber, the wide table that Rhorek preferred had been moved aside. The Black Falcon climbed the seven steps to the silver throne and sat. A rare occurrence for the king to occupy the least comfortable seat in the realm. That he took the throne to pass judgment on Leshan was lost on no one, not the Falcons positioned along the walls, nor the attending highborns, nor Leshan himself. Standing in the center of the Chamber, his only thought was Who will take care of Ruthan?
Below the dais, Captain Jareg and Lord Lander looked grave after their conference with the king. To Leshan’s right, Ruthan occupied one of the fancy blue velvet chairs that rarely saw use; her face was neutral. He couldn’t tell if she had foreseen the end of the next few moments or not. He cast her a discreet wave and a smile. She waved back. Laral stood at her side, a protective hand on the back of her chair.
At last, Rhorek called, “Leshan of Tírandon, you stand guilty of the murder of three prisoners of war, and the maiming of a fourth—”
Ruthan giggled. The sound of her laughter echoed across the Chamber. Laral knelt beside her, shushing her.
Rhorek resumed. “After painful deliberation, we have decided on an unconventional course for you.”
So Leshan was to keep his head, was he? How much begging had Father had to do? Should he be grateful? For Ruthan’s sake, he supposed so.
“Forcing you to remain in this volatile environment is no longer in our best interest. You have become too volatile yourself. Therefore, you will be reassigned.”
Shame and exile, then. Shit.
“We have confidence that no one will carry out this commission with the same dedication and love as you will. With the burning of Tírandon, your father’s people have nowhere now to turn for refuge, and our borders are missing the backbone of their defense. Your task, Leshan, is to rebuild her.”
Leshan’s face flushed. From humiliation, sorrow, joy, all of them at once.
“We will write to Dagni, Thyrvael’s steward, and inform her to provide you with whatever funds we can
spare. Tírandon will be yours one day. Mold her to please your own heart.”
This was no punishment, but a dream. Banishment veiled in grace, but a dream come true, nonetheless. For a moment, Leshan almost smiled. “Am I to return the black surcoat and the blue stallion?”
Rhorek waved a hand. “Keep them, use them. This is not dismissal from the Guard. But you are not made for war. We have talked of that, you and I. Forcing you to partake in this ugly business has nearly ruined everything in you that I once admired. The only requisite is that you leave behind your weapons and be beyond Bramoran’s walls by dawn tomorrow.”
Ruthan ran to him, flung her arms about his waist.
“Yes, dearheart,” Lander said, “you will go with your brother.”
“Back to that place?” Leshan exclaimed. “Are you mad?”
Lander raised placating hands. “Our people have cleaned it and burned our dead.”
Ah, Goddess, how long had Mother hung in that dark cell because Leshan hadn’t had the stomach to burn her himself? “In that case, I’m taking Laral, too.”
“Laral’s duty is here.”
Leshan appealed to the king: “Laral’s foster-lord is dead, the new Lord Ilswythe is not dependable, and I will not leave my brother here with Lord Lander, who abandons his lady in exchange for his own comfort.”
“No, son,” Lander said, sorrowful.
Leshan rounded on him. “You sent a rider when you should’ve sent an army. An army I gladly would’ve led in your place.”
Lander growled through clenched teeth, “There was no army but the one you led when you left your mother defenseless.”
“At your order!”
“Enough!” Rhorek bellowed. “Leshan, you have your commission. You are dismissed.”
Leshan picked up his sister and turned to his brother. “Will you come with me or not?”
The boy’s gray eyes brimmed and passed frantically between his brother and his father.
Kelyn left his place against the wall. “Sire, if I may?” Rhorek gave him the floor, and Kelyn approached his foster-brothers. He looked on Leshan as he might a stranger, and a dangerous one at that. “I’ll assume care of Laral. I will train him and foster him as my father did.”
Leshan snorted, not bothering to hide his doubt.
“I won’t abandon him.”
Leshan said to his little brother, “Don’t believe him for a moment.”
Laral sighed. “I’ll see to my duty then.”
Nodding, Leshan tenderly squeezed Laral about the nape. “I’ll rebuild it for you. For you and for Ruthan. When you see it again, you’ll never know war burned its towers and broke its gates.”
Laral swiped his sleeve across his eyes and backed away to stand alongside Kelyn. Leshan bowed his head toward the throne, about-faced, and carried Ruthan from the Audience Chamber. The rose trumps the skull, he thought. Renewal wins over death.
~~~~
Long past midnight, Kelyn’s feet throbbed. He stood outside the king’s chamber door, near the end of his second shift. Jareg had made good his promise: Kelyn was scheduled to pull double guard-duty for the next two weeks unless Fierans or the Goddess intervened first. All this stillness and silence and nothing but time to think. He had no way to escape thoughts of his good intentions gone awry, his brother’s wrath, his mother’s heartache, Leshan’s hatred. He hadn’t recognized his foster-brother today. From the balcony he had witnessed the slaughter but Leshan was the last person he expected to be reveling in it. In the Audience Chamber his eyes had looked dead, yet hostile. No laughter survived in them at all. The sight of it had hurt as badly as the accusations that spilled from Leshan’s mouth.
Though young Laral had cast no blame, he now regarded Kelyn with something akin to doubt, distrust, and Kelyn realized, standing in that dark, uneventful corridor, that Kieryn wasn’t the only brother he had to win back. And he still had to face Lissah.
By the time his relief arrived, his brain was as exhausted and sore as his feet. All he wanted to do was fall into bed. Arriving at the room set aside for him in the Falcons’ barracks, he found Eliad asleep at the foot of his bunk, but Laral sat at the small table, working on sums by calculating the trajectories of catapults.
“Bit late for lessons, isn’t it?” Kelyn whispered.
Laral shrugged. “I was about to give up. Anyway, I had a message for you. The lieutenant requires your presence.”
Kelyn groaned.
“Her rooms are at the end of the corridor on the right. Next to the captain’s, so keep it quiet.”
“Help me out of this armor first.”
“Maybe you should leave it on. It’s Lissah, after all.”
Kelyn laughed. His humor withered, however, as he made his way down the corridor. Deciding Lissah would be asleep by now, he knocked softly, then went in. A fire burned low in the small hearth. A graceful hand extended from a high-backed armchair and set a glass of red wine on a table. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said. “I thought it was our custom that I ran while you chased.”
Kelyn warned himself to forget what he had done and behave normally. His moment of silence prompted Lissah to peer around the chair. “Thought maybe I was talking to air. Does Jareg have you so worn out that you can’t spare me a proper ‘hello’?”
Kelyn rushed to her, dropped to his knees, clasped her to him. Her hair, unbound, fell across his face in cool waves. She sat back to look at him. The smoldering fire flared in her dark eyes. His thumb brushed the soft sprinkling of pale freckles across her cheeks. “I love you, Lissah. I remember what you said before about that, but I can’t help it. I want you to believe that above everything else.”
“Well,” she muttered, breathless, “you think that will appease my anger for leaving me like you did? Without a word and … damn, I was going to yell at you.”
“Yell if you want. As long as you say I haven’t lost you.”
“Lose me?” She brushed a lock from his face. “You’re still mourning your father.”
“Aye, and … Leshan.”
She retrieved her wine, her expression reflecting her disgust. “We all tried to reach him. Nothing worked. It’s like he and Ruthan have invented their own little world where they feel safe. Here,” she added, offering him her glass. “This’ll help.”
“No,” he said, rising.
“No? You’ve never turned down a glass of Doreli red. It’ll ease your feet if nothing else.”
He forced himself to drink the last of the wine and smile as if he enjoyed it. Setting down the glass, he said, “I have to get to bed. Jareg has me on for first watch at dawn.”
A jump of Lissah’s eyebrows said, ‘You deserve everything he deals you.’ Aloud, she added, “That gives you about five hours of sleep. Four, if you include the attentions you owe me.”
Kelyn hardly had the energy for the kind of attention she meant, but he was happy to know where he was and who he was with. Afterward, he lay listening to Lissah’s deep, steady breathing while he pondered Rhorek’s words. We live with the consequences. They must strengthen us. Resolve. Virtue. Was holding Lissah this close ‘living with the consequences’? By not telling her what happened at Windhaven, he wasn’t only protecting himself, but Lissah, too. Right? Was his silence weakness or strength? Virtue or the worst kind of cowardice?
He feared he knew the answer. But how could he tell her and keep her? She wasn’t the forgiving kind. She had nearly killed him because she lost a horse race to him, for the Mother’s sake. No, all he could do was keep loving her and hope she didn’t find out. The guilt was his alone to bear.
Turning it over and over like gristle that refused to be swallowed, he didn’t sleep a damned wink.
~~~~
58
Graynor’s harbor was crowded with warships awaiting repairs. Others patrolled the waters past the harbor mouth, all their ballistae propped, cranked, and loaded. More ballistae had been rolled onto the seawall, monstrous things, half the size of the brig. “Jumpy, a
ren’t they,” Rehaan observed, standing at the rail in his red coat and fanciest shirt. Mounds of lace fluttered at his wrists and throat. Rings winked on his fingers. His cologne vainly tried to cover the stink rising from below. The regular number of unwashed sailors was bad enough, but adding one hundred twenty-odd Fieran prisoners to the hold, bound and crowded shoulder to shoulder, had made the last couple of days aboard the Aurion excessively unpleasant. At least being locked in the boatswain’s cabin, Athna and Wyllan had been able to breathe fresh air from the portal.
“Aye,” she replied. “You’ll have to treat for entry.” A galleon was hailing the Aurion with a round of colorful flags. She was the Warmaiden. Athna knew her commander well and liked him not at all. Strange to feel relief and joy at the sight of his ship.
“What the hell are they saying?” Rehaan glared at the flags through a spyglass.
“The captain bids you furl sail and drop anchor if you are friend. If not, they will loose upon you.”
“What about all the damned red banners we’re flying?” Rehaan’s mood had failed to lift, even after the prospect of earning a chest of silver.
“Don’t be dense, Captain,” Athna snapped. “You must know well the art of dressing a hostile ship in friendly clothing. Fierans—or even a pirate—might acquire the duchess’s banner.”
Rehaan growled and shouted the order to raise sail and lower anchor. Men raced up the ratlines and hauled in the canvas. Once the anchor dropped, the Warmaiden’s flags changed. “The first mate will board,” Athna translated. “No doubt to learn why we’ve come.”
“I don’t need another priss in a uniform aboard my boat,” he groused. “And you, you keep your mouth shut. Rygg! Lower the ladder for the Maiden’s mate.” Jabbing a finger at Athna, he added, “This better be worth the threat to my neck.”