“Then you must go. You may all go. Gulien Madalin, I still hope to give you a year. It is better to allow your secondary identity to settle. When it comes time to establish your affinity and take up your aspect, I will summon you. But I shall hope to give you that year.”
Gulien shook Oressa slightly to stop her from demanding explanations or assurances. “Yes,” he said, acknowledging the Kieba’s claim. “A year, to see to Carastind’s safety and prosperity.” That had been the bargain, generous on her part, and he would not protest now, even with the splinters of foreign memory pressing on the back of his mind. He wanted, very badly, to get out of this mountain, out into the hot sunlight, and deal with ordinary problems and ordinary men.
The Kieba glanced around. “Kephalos?”
“Yes,” it said, and across the room the window blurred and reshaped itself into a door.
CHAPTER 17
Oressa’s first thought on seeing the new, taller wall was: Well, that’s a statement. Then she saw the gap where her brother had, so Gulien explained, touched it and made it crumble to dust. She wondered if the Kieba had done that, or the kephalos, or if the wall’s compliance with his wishes came from having crystal dissolved in his blood. She gave her brother a sideways glance, but he looked no different to her. Except for fine-drawn exhaustion. Was that the result of having crystal in his blood? She felt exhausted herself, and surely she didn’t have . . . She stared down at her own hands suspiciously, but if anything had dissolved into her blood and flesh, she couldn’t tell. Looking up again, she caught Prince Gajdosik’s eyes on her face and knew that he knew what she’d been thinking. The weary, wry twist of his mouth might have been meant as a reassuring smile. He was tired, too. Though as far as she knew, he didn’t have anything dissolved in his blood. She looked anxiously at Gulien, but he still looked just the same: tired, older, worried, but himself.
But the Kieba was going to summon him back to her in a year. So he could establish his affinity and take up his aspect. Oressa should have made the Kieba explain what that meant. She should get Gulien to explain it now, except he looked so tired. And she was fairly sure he wouldn’t tell her any of the Kieba’s secrets anyway, in case it was dangerous for her to know . . . whatever.
At least Gajdosik’s people didn’t seem to have fought with her brother’s men. That would have been just one thing too many, when everyone was tired and worried and scared already.
From up here on the slope on the Kieba’s side of the wall, Oressa could see Laasat standing beside a guard captain she knew slightly, a Captain Aran—a good man, though young for his rank. Oressa approved.
Kelian stood with Aran and Laasat. That was reassuring, too. Of the three men, Laasat looked by far the most tired and tight-drawn. Oressa certainly understood that. She waved discreetly at them all, but particularly at Laasat, to assure him that his prince was all right. Some of the strain in his face and stance eased, as though he trusted her reassurance.
The rest of the Tamaristan company was standing in orderly ranks near the wall. Nobody was actually guarding them, but they weren’t armed—Laasat wasn’t armed either, Oressa saw. The Tamaristans had clearly yielded to the Carastindin guardsmen. Laasat came forward a step when he saw them, but he stopped when Aran put out a forbidding hand.
Gulien led the way to the gap in the wall and stood back to let the others pass through before him, with a murmured warning about the shards of glass. Prince Gajdosik, expressionless, stepped through the gap first, brushing some of the sand and glass out of the way with his boot. Then, still without expression, he turned to offer Oressa his hand. She had refused his help over the wall on the way up the mountain, she recalled. That seemed like a very long time ago. This time she took his hand, even though she did not need his help. She touched the wall when she stepped through it, wonderingly. It felt like ordinary sandstone to her. It certainly didn’t crumble away beneath her fingers.
Gulien came through last. Oressa half expected the wall to rebuild itself behind him, but nothing happened. Perhaps later. She did not feel very much inclined to stay here and watch.
She said instead, glancing from Gulien to Gajdosik and back again, “I think Laasat and some of our people should leave now, at once, to find Prince Gajdosik’s other people.” She looked around and added, pleased, “Oh, Sergeant Mattin can go—he’s very sensible—and his squad. That’s plenty enough to make sure there isn’t any trouble. And I think the rest of us should start back for Caras immediately. I mean, there’s no reason to linger here, is there? At least,” she added, studying her brother anxiously. “Do you need to rest, Gulien? Gaj—Your Highness, do you think you could ride immediately? Because I think we need to get back to Caras right away, and get the Kieba’s artifact from Father as soon as possible.” She didn’t add a warning that Gulien should probably watch out in case that, too, should “get into his blood.” That didn’t seem like a helpful thing to dwell on, even if she couldn’t seem to help but dwell on it herself.
“I agree,” her brother said, glancing at Gajdosik.
“I would far rather ride immediately than linger in the shadow of this mountain,” the Tamaristan prince said. He spoke quietly but with considerable force. “Prince Gulien, into your hands I give my men. We shall not dispute your orders.”
Oressa wondered how long that would last. She said prudently, with a meaningful look at Gulien, “Prince Gajdosik, you won’t regret your trust in my brother.”
“We shall endeavor to assure so,” Gulien agreed, and turned to Captain Aran. The lieutenant had come up to hover anxiously, trailing Kelian and Laasat and half a dozen other men. “We will ride at once. The Tamaristans as well.”
Nevertheless, it turned out they couldn’t really start back immediately, because although Gulien and Gajdosik both insisted on courteous behavior from their respective men, the lingering dislike and suspicion slowed everything down. Gulien hesitated over whether to rearm the Tamaristan soldiers. Aran and Kelian both expressed horror at the possibility, but Gulien impatiently asked who exactly was going to carry that many extra swords and other weapons. Gajdosik politely refused to press him on the matter. Everything seemed to drag on and on. Oressa tried to push everyone along with the pure force of her own impatience, not very effectively.
But she, already mounted and hovering around the edges of the company, was the one who spotted the Carastindin messenger arrive. She saw the dust first: a plume of red dust over the road, so she knew someone was riding fast, and she might not be used to the desert, but even she knew that nobody would race his horse in the heat of the day without a very good reason. She called to Gulien and pointed, and everyone else turned, too, so everyone was waiting when the messenger rode out of the hot light of the lowering sun, crossed the river without letting his exhausted horse pause, and came toward Gulien, who had stepped out in front of the company.
It was Fellin, a man Oressa knew: a palace guardsman, no longer young, reasonably honest, sensible unless he was too far in his cups. He swung down from the saddle, staggering before he managed a bow. His horse dropped its head and blew, nostrils wide and red. Gulien waved impatiently for someone to come care for the animal and said, “Well, man? What’s happened?” But Fellin was coughing from the dust and couldn’t answer immediately. Gulien put his hand out and someone put a water flask into it, which he held out to the stricken man.
Oressa thought she already knew what news Fellin carried: Gulien had left Caras, and of course their father had immediately taken the throne back himself. Of course he had. She waited in dread to hear the man say so, and it was almost worse because she had known all the time that Father—
“Scorpion,” Fellin said in a hoarse voice, and coughed, bent over, his hands on his knees.
Oressa blinked, baffled, but Prince Gajdosik, standing behind Gulien, brought his head up sharply.
“Ships,” Fellin added. He drank from the flask, coughed, drank again, and straightened at last. Then he stared from Gulien to Gajdosik, seemin
g at last to notice the Tamaristan prince. He turned back to Gulien, clearly uncertain.
“Go on! We’re all friends here!” said Oressa, who had swung down from her own horse and come to join them.
Gulien gave her a quelling glance, but nodded to Fellin.
“Your Highness,” the man said. “Ships, Your Highness, Tamaristan ships, five of ’em. They came into the harbor almost as soon as you rode out, banners out bold as you please, a black scorpion on a green ground.”
“Bherijda,” Gajdosik said quietly to Gulien. “My brother Bherijda. That is his banner. He is not a man you would wish to hold power over your people.”
Fellin shot another uneasy look at Gajdosik. “Bhera-something, that’s right. That’s what people said. He came in with maybe a couple thousand men, maybe more. I guess nobody’s sure, but a lot. Only His Majesty—” Fellin stumbled over the title “—that is, your father, Your Highness, he went down to the harbor—”
“Beriad let him out?” Gulien exclaimed.
“I expect it was Toen,” said Oressa. “Once he saw those banners, he’d go straight up to Father to ask for advice. Gulien, you know he would, and Father could talk him into anything.” And without Gulien there, she didn’t say, Lord Paulin obviously hadn’t been able to stop him either. Nobody had been able to stop him. Of course they hadn’t. She bit her tongue hard with the effort not to say so.
The guardsman said anxiously, “I don’t know, Your Highness. Only His Majesty went down to the harbor and met that Tamaristan prince, Bher-whatever, met him right there under a parley flag, and I guess they worked something out, ’cause we got orders to stand aside, and they went up to the palace, your father and the foreign prince. And him with all his men, which they’re lodging in barracks and in town, and we’re to stay off the streets and not quarrel with ’em, and now either the scorpion prince is your father’s guest or else your father is maybe his prisoner right in his own palace. Nobody knows which.”
“You can’t tell?” Oressa found this difficult to believe.
“Well, Your Highness, the orders to leave those scorpion soldiers free of Caras, some people are saying that means your father doesn’t dare fight them. Only other people are saying His Majesty and the scorpion prince are allies now—”
“Impossible!” snapped Kelian, who had just come up and was listening.
“It seems unlikely,” Gulien allowed.
“Certainly unfortunate, if it’s true,” muttered Gajdosik. “Bherijda has this artifact, this Tonkaïan’s Resolve. Though Bherijda is neither a pleasant nor an honorable person, if the artifact is sufficiently powerful, your father might have had no practical choice but to accommodate him.”
“Well, Father is certainly nothing if not practical,” Oressa observed bitingly. “On the other hand, Gulien, if Father didn’t give you the right artifact, then he’s still got Parian’s Thing, so if he found out about Bherijda’s artifact, he might have proposed that they work together.” He would have his own plan beyond any promise he had made, she was sure, but she knew her father could have persuaded that other Tamaristan prince of anything.
Gajdosik said in a low voice, “That is possible. Bherijda’s attention would assuredly be captured by such a suggestion, if he believed an alliance would lead to certain victory against the Keppa.”
Gulien scrubbed a hand across his face, nodding. “It might even be true. It would certainly be nice if the Kieba would now stride down from her mountain and sweep all her enemies away into the sea.”
“Why wouldn’t she, if they’re her enemies too?” Oressa said with sudden enthusiasm at this splendid picture. “We should ask her to do exactly that.” She thought about this and added prudently, “I mean, Gulien, you could ask her. You could ask her for half a dozen of those spiders, the big ones. Why wouldn’t she agree? It’s not like we’d be asking for help just for ourselves, after all.”
“No, that won’t work,” said Gulien, as automatically as though he were explaining that dropped stones fell instead of floating. “Parianasaku’s Capture blocks the kephalos, captures its influence, and prevents it from speaking to its accessories.”
“What?” Oressa said blankly.
Her brother blinked, blinked again, rubbed his shadowed eyes, and said after a moment, “I’m not . . . I don’t entirely know what I mean, actually. But I know it’s true. It’s part of why the Kieba can’t just take Parianasaku’s Capture from Father: because it works against the kephalos. Or it can.”
“It didn’t before.” Oressa objected.
“It did, though,” Gulien said. “I realize that now. I . . . remember it.” He sounded tired.
He remembered it. Oressa studied her brother uneasily, thinking about artifacts that got into someone’s blood. She wanted to ask what he meant, but at the same time she was afraid to ask.
“Also, we know the Kieba must be concerned with the city in Gontai,” Gajdosik said quietly. “Elaru.”
Gulien rubbed his face again. “It’s more than that. Worse than that. I don’t know . . .” His voice trailed off.
Gajdosik waited a moment in case he would say something else. Then he said, “For whatever reason, then, it seems unwise to depend upon assistance from that quarter.”
“Of course not,” Oressa said, resigned. That would be too easy, of course. She asked Fellin, “But so far there hasn’t actually been battle in Caras?”
The guardsman lifted his hands in an uncertain shrug. “Well, Your Highness, not as when I rode out. We don’t any of us exactly know what it is with His Majesty and the scorpion prince, see, but His Highness brought the Kieba in on our side before, didn’t you? So I said I’d come after you and tell you how it is.”
“Yes,” said Gulien. “Well done. Very well done, and I promise you, I won’t forget it.” He rested a hand on the guardsman’s shoulder for a moment, then beckoned for someone to bring another water flask. “Rest,” he told the man. “I’m not quite certain what we shall do, but we may have questions. Sit here, in the shade, and catch your breath.”
“We don’t know anything, not really. That’s the problem, Your Highness,” Kelian said to Gulien, ignoring Fellin, who stepped aside gratefully to sink down in the shade of a cottonwood. “We don’t know what Prince Bherijda intends or what your father’s thinking. If he’s possibly already managing things with this Prince Bherijda, we don’t want to get in his way—”
Oressa stared at the guard captain. “But you heard what Prince Gajdosik said! Bherijda’s not honorable. What if he’s fooled him”—that didn’t seem likely—“or what if he’s actually keeping Father prisoner and using him as a puppet to keep the city quiet? Should we get in his way, do you think? Or what if they’ve made common cause to attack the Kieba?”
“Your Highness, if your father is possibly in close negotiation with a foreign enemy, this must be a dangerous time to complicate matters! You can’t doubt your father’s cleverness or strength of will, and the Kieba can’t be trusted to come to our aid. We all agree on that! She’ll do what suits her, and never mind Carastind! Look how she refused to defend us against Prince Gajdosik, just out of pique because the king wouldn’t give up that artifact, one that’s belonged to the Madalin kings for hundreds of years!”
“It’s not like that,” Oressa began.
“It’s exactly like that!” said Kelian condescendingly, as though he spoke to a child.
“We all know at least that her priorities aren’t the same as ours,” Gulien put in hastily.
“Exactly, Your Highness, and since that’s so, much better to make peace with your father either way!” declared Kelian. “If the king has indeed reached some accommodation with Prince Bherijda, we can even take advantage of that—”
“What, you think we should look around for a Carastindin princess for Bherijda to marry?” Oressa asked him.
“Your Highness!” Kelian exclaimed, embarrassed now, and angry.
Gulien made a conciliatory calm-down gesture. “Oressa, no one’s sugge
sting—”
“No woman of honor would consent to such a marriage; nor would any brother wish such a match on his sister,” said Gajdosik with some force. “But in a city filled with confusion, where no one knows ally from enemy, a small force, effectively used, might accomplish a great deal.” He was not quite looking at any of them, but went on in a quieter tone. “It is in fact quite possible that no matter who’s in control of the city at the moment, we could retake the palace, capture both my brother and your father, and reclaim control of Caras.” Though he didn’t raise his voice, he spoke with such certainty that his words fell like shards of ice into the heated confusion.
This time the silence lingered.
“We couldn’t,” Gulien said at last, but not with conviction.
“If Prince Gajdosik says we could, then I’m sure we could!” Oressa declared. “Gulien, do you really want to gamble that Father’s still in control, and not Bherijda? If we don’t do anything, we might be handing everything to Bherijda, but if you come back and throw Bherijda’s scorpion soldiers back into the sea, nobody will want any other king but you and we’ll be able to depose Father again, permanently this time, get the Kieba’s artifact back for her, and get rid of Bherijda all at once! Gulien, Father doesn’t have to have everything his way! Not this time!”
Kelian said, “Oressa—Your Highness—”
Prince Gajdosik said flatly, “Her Highness’s judgment is, as always, acute. I consider it extremely unlikely that Osir Madalin retains control of Caras. The telling detail is not the presence of my brother’s soldiers in the city, but the orders issued to your own to stay off the streets. That is not an order given by a king who is free to act as he will.”
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