The Bandit King

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Timrothe d’Orlaans flatters himself that he fears no man.

  That waiting had ended with Vianne’s voice in the darkness. Captain? Are you there?

  Would this one end with her voice in the dark as well? My d’mselle was too soft to kill me—but someone else, perhaps di Cinfiliet, might not be.

  The chains clashed. I had reached their limit and stood facing the bars. I heard footsteps, and the soft brush of a woman’s skirts.

  Vianne. Please. Come, hear my tale. I have woven tales for you before. Fine ones, simple ones, and ones to ease your pain.

  Instead, appearing in the arc of witchlight, I beheld the worst that could befall me yet.

  My father, Baron d’Arcenne himself, his blue eyes alight and his face set with particular displeasure. And beside him, her dark eyes grave, holding to my father’s right arm with a hand whose knuckles had turned pale, was my mother.

  More shame, hot and acrid, eating the last bit of hunger in my belly. I had not supped, and neither had Vianne before the ride to the temple.

  My father stood, staring through the bars. Other footsteps halted—a Guard, of course, probably one of my men. As family to a traitor, and the hosts of the Keep where the Queen did reside, they would not be left here alone.

  I could have laughed and told Vianne she need not have worried. The quality of my father’s spine would not let him free a son from a prison cell, even an innocent one.

  I learned as much when I was nine years old and accused of stealing apples.

  My father, straight and unbending, gray feathering at his temples. I met his gaze with an unflinching stare of my own.

  “Perseval,” my mother said in her softest and most inflexible tone. “Greet our son.”

  The blue of his eyes was so like mine. I wondered, with the resemblance between us so marked, how I could have become what I did.

  “That is no son of mine,” my father replied. But quietly, to keep this a private matter.

  My mother’s hand tightened. She dug her fingers into his arm and pulled, leaning, her dark gaze fixed past me to the wall. Of course, she would not like the look of iron bars. “Perseval.” A world of meaning in those three syllables, accented sharply at the beginning to make them not a question or a demand, but a simple reminder.

  “M’fils.” My father nodded, shortly, as someone stopped past my arc of vision. A gloved hand—a man’s hand—presented a key to my father.

  I retreated. The chains sang their unlovely music. “Père,” I greeted him in turn, without a nod. But it satisfied my mother, whose grasp on my father’s arm eased slightly.

  It was my mother who took the key and unlocked the barred door, and my mother who swept through, leaving it ajar. My father stayed outside, stiffly, his gaze turned flat and inward.

  “Mère.” I accorded her a nod, an approximation of a bow, accompanied by metal sliding and rubbing. You should not leave the door so. You are careless as Vianne, ma Mère.

  “Oh, Tris.” And she took me in her arms, ignoring my father’s disapproval, expressed only in a clearing of his throat. He was right—she could have passed me the key, slipped something into my sherte, committed a treachery of her own. “My dear, my own. What happened?”

  Of all the things that could disarm me… “Vianne,” I said into my mother’s hair. Her perfume was light, a mix of floral water and sunshine, a smell remembered from childhood as safety and softness. “Is she hale? Is she well-guarded?”

  “Better guarded than ever.” My father pushed the door open farther, took two steps into the cell. Now it was crowded, three bodies instead of one, and the chains a fourth body. And his rage, taking whatever space was left. “My own son. My own son.”

  “She says you must be called to account for the papers. That there must be an explanation, and you will be called to give it before the Cabinet.” My mother pressed her soft cheek to my unshaven one, and kept herself between Perseval d’Arcenne and me.

  I suddenly felt smaller than I was accustomed to, as if I were much younger. But does she weep? Is she well?

  “Sílvie.” My father made a restless movement. “I would speak with my son.”

  She let loose of me and half-turned, spreading her arms slightly to bar his passage. “Your son, now? Ah, yes. I carried him inside me, Perseval, and had the birthing of him as well. Until your suffering can match that, he is our son, and I shall thank you not to forget it. And I shall not let you speak until your tone takes on some kindness.”

  “The papers are damning,” my father hissed, leaning forward with his hand to his rapier-hilt. “I read them myself. That woman wears the Aryx, it abides by her touch, she is the Queen, and her orders are given. I counted us lucky our family had remained untainted by treachery. What else did they teach him at Court, Sílvie? Beyond how to lie to his family, his Consort, his liege?”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but my mother did before I could. I could never remember a time she took him to task without a laughing look or a simple grace that let him keep his pride, but now she turned on him with a ferocity I had scarce suspected in my gentle, ever-decorous dam.

  “You said someone had to account for the provinces at Court, best it be us, and that he was seventeen and old enough to whore, hence old enough to catch the King’s eye. Do you not recall it, sending my boy into that den of wolves they call Court?” Between us, the slim shape of my mother was a line too easily breached. She is a small woman, like Vianne, and barely reached my father’s chin.

  And yet my father retreated before her. I moved as if to put my mother aside, for it was not meet for a nobleman to hide behind a woman’s skirts, but she merely slapped my hand gently away as if I had reached for one too many scones at the chai-table. Chains rattled, and her voice rose. “Henri di Tirecian-Trimestin used our son as he saw fit. And you colluded, Perseval d’Arcenne. You sent the boy I raised, the boy I labored fifteen hours to birth, the heir you were so set on that almost killed me—you sent him there, and now you would just as easily cast him from the battlements without listening to a single word in his favor?”

  “Sílvie—” My father actually retreated again, and I could have sworn he looked ashamed.

  “I held my peace for thirteen years, Perseval. Now I shall not. And as I live and breathe, if you do not keep a civil tongue in your head when addressing our son, I shall leave you with your pride to warm your bed at night and retreat myself to Kimyan’s service, after I return your marriage-ring with a curse. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Mère—” I had never heard her speak so, and a child’s fear—that my father would strike her, though he never had in my memory—made me move restlessly, the chains rattling.

  “As for you.” She rounded on me, dark eyes flashing. “What have you to say for yourself, Tristan? Amazed you are not, and I see you have not been worrying at the cuffs to get them loose.”

  She was, as usual, correct. Had I been entirely innocent, I might have been working my wrists bloody under the cuffs, seeking to escape and return to Vianne’s side. In one stroke, my mother disarmed me.

  Silence ran through the cell like a dangerous river. What could I tell them? Whatever story I chose would have to be effective—and salted with the right leavening of truth. It would have to account for everything they had seen, and whatever Vianne suspected as well.

  “Henri was about to marry her off.” I heard the queer flatness of my tone, as if I spoke of another man’s downfall. “To a Damarsene, if the proper assassin could be found for Corax Fang of Hese-Arburg; to marry him to a bastard royal would be too much. But to a younger Damarsene, a tradesman newly noble hungering for an aristocratic bride, a Damarsene family without a connexion to the Pruzians… for any number of reasons. To secure the alliance, and end the tribute payments. Then bastard scions of the Tirecian-Trimestin royal line began dying. Once was chance, twice was coincidence, thrice and fourth conspiracy—and always, I was a step too late. There are not many who can anticipate me, or could use Court influence to
track my comings and goings more closely than was wonted.”

  “This explains nothing.” But my father had folded his arms, and his wintry gaze had fastened on me at last. It was like being nine again, and about to receive the lashing.

  Enough. Tell them what you can, what they will believe. “Twas necessary for me to enter the conspiracy to flush it out. It took time, and while that time ran, Vianne was kept at Court under close watch. My watch. I followed the conspiracy to its root, and that root was the heart of the royal House itself.”

  “D’Orlaans.” My father nodded once, sharply. “You were playing the courser to flush the hare, and this is part of it?”

  I can still salvage this. My heart gave a thin singing leap, was throttled back. If I can make them believe, tis halfway to making Vianne believe as well. “Tis. The King was dying when I arrived. I told Vianne twas poison, to ease her mind—what was I to do, describe the blood and bowel-loosening? I thought twas a gentler thing for her to think on, and well she needed it.” It sounded so reasonable.

  It had been so reasonable, so natural. You should have let me have her, Henri. Safely wedded, I would have been your Hand until my death.

  And the final twist of the knife home, when he had winked broadly over my d’mselle’s head and said, He must favor you, child. Telling her a secret I had not confided, except in my one request, the only boon I begged after years of service. As a noblewoman of the sword on both sides of her family, she would have to seek Henri’s blessing to wed. If he had given me permission, I would have courted her more openly.

  My mother sighed, a sound of innocent relief more painful to me than her tears. “Then you can explain before the Council, and this will all be over.”

  “Not so quick, my dove.” My father had not taken his gaze from my features, seeking to read the stamp of truth or falsehood. “There must be a deeper reason for him to be chained here. If anything, she trusts our son to a fault. Something else has happened, and it centers on this di Cinfiliet. What of him?”

  If I could but catch him with a gallery and a sword, we would see. But it was enough to sow the seed of suspicion in my father’s mind. “Probably already gone, that canny beast. Did Jierre arrive with my letter?”

  “He did. Hard on his heels came our liege, and she took the missive from him. I was not allowed so much as a glance.” My father’s face twisted sourly.

  How it must gall you, that a woman does not bend when you frown. She has shown herself not so amenable to your ideas.

  But damn it. Had my father been able to detain di Cinfiliet, I might have been able to salvage somewhat more of this. As it stood… “He has reasons to make her doubt me.” I let my tone darken, staring at the cuffs about my wrists as if they held the solution to every riddle.

  I had not written aught incriminatory. Merely for my father to detain di Cinfiliet until I could question him, as I suspected. What I suspected I left unsaid, and my father would read it very differently than my d’mselle.

  “Tristan.” My mother searched my face. “There is summat more. There has to be. Vianne looks grave, and I would swear she has aged since you left for the Temple. She—”

  “She is serious, as befits a liege.” My father made a restless movement, reminding my mother of the guard just out of sight. It must be someone Père would at least suspect no mischief of, since he spoke so freely. But whom? “The charge is treason, the evidence is enough that I cannot protest, and your trial will be at the Queen’s leisure. You are under letire di cachet, my son, and you will receive the treatment due your rank and the charges against you.”

  I cupped my palms and held them up, indicating the cuffs. “I will not be fleeing the nest anytime soon, Père.” Send Vianne to me, drag her here if you must. I must see her. “Tell my Consort I miss her.”

  If I had known how long I was to be left, I might have said more. But my mother pressed her cheek to mine again. “Fear not,” she whispered in my ear. “I have my ways.”

  Just as she always had, when as a child I feared some reprisal. My father gave me no comforting words, merely measured me again, shook his head, and left, his heels fair threatening to strike sparks. The door clanged to, and my mother trailed behind him, exchanging some low words with the guard, who paced away as well.

  I was left to a torchlit cell, cold stone, and my own comfortless imaginings.

  * * *

  Time ceases to exist for a man imprisoned. Oh, at first one marks every breath, every swallow. One devises games to keep the mind from cutting itself into ever-smaller pieces. One counts every witchlight sputter of the torch, and looks forward to the moment a stone-faced guard will bring a meal.

  At least I wasn’t starved. The food was colorless, but there was enough of it. I merely checked it for poison as well as I could—not that I thought my d’mselle would poison me, but she was not the only player in this game—and bolted it to keep myself strong. After two days, or what I thought were two days, I exercised myself as well as I could while chained, too.

  The guards were men I did not know even by sight, grim and silent in the uniform of Arcenne. I did not bother to question them. I merely counted myself lucky that the one holding their leash did not think to soften me with violence.

  She would not do that. But then I remembered how I had tried to teach her the necessity of distasteful actions, and I wondered if she had another adviser willing to take on the duty.

  Like my father. Or Jierre.

  I kept track of time as well as I could, counting meals as the swelling in my jaw subsided bit by bit, covered over with stubble. I have seen the results of isolation and imprisonment, men forgetting their own names, reduced to groveling worms. There is only so much one can do.

  On what I thought was the fourth day, a familiar face appeared at the bars.

  Adersahl halted, touching the new growth of his mustache. Soon it would be its old, magnificently waxed self again. He looked into the cell, and his lip did not curl.

  I had settled myself on the lone cot, where I lay when it seemed to me sleep was possible. The chains had rubbed weeping sores on my wrists, and a simple charm would rid me of the risk of infection.

  It was not, however, a charm I possessed. What need, when there were hedgewitch healers in every town and army? What need, when my own sweet Vianne was a hedgewitch herself?

  My magic was only of the sort that would kill a man, or conceal a death. The rest of Court sorcery is illusion made of light and air, beautiful and useless. Spectacles are wrought at Festivals and fêtes, and during a duel the birthright of nobles is used to dizzy, distract, steal the breath, cut as steel. But to heal requires peasant hedgewitchery or Tiberian physicker’s training.

  “Captain?” It was not like Adersahl to sound so uncertain.

  Is it treason to name me thus? I decided against waving a languid hand and making the chains clash. Instead, I watched him through slitted eyelids, my jaw aching ever so slightly under the itch.

  “I bethought myself that you would wish to know.” The slight hissing of witchlight underscored his words. “The army has arrived. Damarsene troops, and Arquitaine units as well. Some thousands, all flying d’Orlaans’s colors. With siege engines.”

  My helplessness caught in my throat.

  “The d’mselle is well, though she is working herself to the bone and spending every night in the Temple praying. Your father has prepared a defense for the city.”

  I did not move. If he saw my face now, he might well regret carrying the tale.

  “Di Narborre is at the gates. He is sending an emissary in the morning under a parlay flag.” Adersahl paused. “The Queen intends something, but just what I cannot tell. She closeted herself with your father this morning, and even now rides to the Temple with Jierre and some few of the Guard. The city is in a ferment.”

  With an army at the walls? I should think so. I almost opened my mouth to ask questions, decided not to, again. You are best served by muteness here, Left Hand. Silence unnerves.
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  “I came to see if you needed aught.” Adersahl paused. “Or if you wished me to take a message…”

  What message could I send to her? She has not even come to my cell to spit upon me. I bit at the inside of my cheek to keep the words from spilling free. No, I thank you, my loyal Guard, but it is best for you to hear no word of mine.

  I still had my stiletto. And there was the knife in my boot. Did I wish to kill the man who would bring me my supper?

  Was it time yet?

  “D’Arcenne.” Adersahl hissed out the sibilant in the middle of my surname. “Tristan.”

  Here in the bowels of the Keep, there were none to hear a scream or a struggle. I knew this pile of stone well; I’d spent my boyhood hiding in its passages before I was sent to Court and learned the terrain of the Palais D’Arquitaine and the Citté’s broad tangle.

  Yet what would I do after I eased myself free of the cell?

  You need a plan.

  Had not all plans brought me here, no matter how well constructed?

  Why had she not come? Did she think me so faithless? Was she afraid?

  Adersahl sighed, the sound of a man with a heavy burden. He turned, the scrape of his heel punctuating the movement.

  “Adersahl.” My throat was so dry it turned the word into a harsh croak.

  “Captain?” Damn the man; he sounded so hopeful.

  “Tell her I long to see her.” I sounded raw, unhappy. No wonder. I closed my eyes fully, the darkness spilling unkind into my brain.

  “Is that all?” Softly, cajoling. Had he been sent to receive a confession? There was no confession I would give secondhand. If she wanted much else from me, she could come herself.

  I did not reply. Let him make of it what he would. Let her.

  “I shall, then.” A slight creak—was he bowing? To me, as I took my ease on a prison cot? Wonders did not cease in the wide world.

  He left me, his steps receding down the long hall under the hissing of witchlight torches, and I touched the stiletto’s thin hilt. Escape was possible while I still had the strength.