The Bandit King

by Lilith Saintcrow

  The roar of battle was much more pronounced. I hauled myself out and lay on the gallery’s dust-choked floor, breathing heavily and staring at the lavender sky through tall narrow windows shielded by rotting wooden eaves.

  When my lungs finally bore more resemblance to flesh than leather bellows, I dragged myself upright and crossed the gallery, shuffling through a thick carpet of dust. None of the windows were broken—this face of the tower was relatively sheltered—but a few were cracked, and all were dirty. It took much careful peering and polishing before I fully grasped what I saw.

  Below, the other towers of the Keep jutted like white spears. The city of Arcenne huddled, a thicket of burning inside its confining walls. The Quartier Gieron blazed. The eastron half was all a-smolder, and the strip of di Roncail’s Orchard—so it was called, though there had not been a Roncail alive for a good fifty years—along the wall was aflame with fire instead of blossom. The East Tower, its angle providing enfilade fire with the battlements and its back to a high-shouldered cliff, flew a tattered red flag proudly, the mountain-pard of Arcenne clawing defiantly as the pennant flapped. The West Tower, more vulnerable because of the fields at its foot and the wall connecting it to a similar rock-face rising to cradle the city, flew our colors as well. The siege engines were not so numerous there, because there was merely a postern instead of a great gate piercing the stone wall. Still, rick, cot, and tree between the westron wall and the edge of the Alpeis in the distance were ablaze. Their owners might be inside the walls, but the damage would be immense, and the winter a lean one.

  A pall of smoke hung over the market district; I knew the wells were deep and the summer had not been dry, but a long, fiery siege would not help. Food would be the most acute concern, then disease.

  All the more reason to find Vianne and take her from this place, no matter what she thought of my trustworthiness.

  The attackers had not breached the city yet, but the siege engines—mangonels and the like—lobbed Graecan fire in high crimson-orange arcs. Sorcery sparked, rising from the walls in thin veils—Court sorcery and some leaf-green traceries of hedgewitchery, though most of the hedgewitches would be tending wounded and damping the fires inside the city.

  There. On the walls over the main gate, a shifting globe of silvery witchlight, clearly visible even at this distance.

  Of course she would be there. In absolutely the most vulnerable place in the entire gods-be-damned city. It was my father’s place to be at the walls, but of course my d’mselle would not listen to reason.

  I almost, almost sent my filthy fist through a pane of ancient, rippling, dusty glass. Control reasserted itself, and I took a deep breath.

  Weapons. And a means of moving undetected. Though likely none will pay attention to you, not with an army at the gates and fire everywhere. Why not simply steal a horse and force your way to her side?

  I considered this, my fevered forehead pressed against the pane. Grit and the coolness of glass, and my pulse a frantic tattoo in my throat and wrists.

  Why not indeed.

  * * *

  Night in a besieged city is rather like the Damarsene underworld, especially when the attackers possess sorcery. Flames rose, screams echoed, horses added their own cries, dogs howled. The men had been called to the walls; women, children, and old men either hid or were called to fire duty. Smoke and the reek of fear in every corner, but twas not as bad as I’d feared, seeing it from above.

  The walls were holding. There was no chance to gather news; I was occupied enough in avoiding the fires and working my way toward the Gates. No street in Arcenne is straight; they are a jumbled patchwork, an additional defense for the Keep. Where Vianne should have been, watching the battle from afar. It should have been my father on the walls, braving death and rallying the defense.

  The silvery shield-globe of witchfire was a thing spoken of in old scrolls and dusty books locked in secret archives—the Aryx, the great Seal of Arquitaine, protecting its chosen holder on a battlefield.

  So she had discovered how to unlock that portion of the Seal’s powers. Good.

  Yet it was not a guarantee of safety. Chance could still kill her. Not only that, but each time she used the Seal, she surfaced terrified and disoriented. Who else knew what she faced as the Aryx worked through her? Who else had she turned to for comfort afterward?

  I urged the gray gelding on. I had little compunction stealing a horse, and this sorry nag had been left a-stable. He had precious little life in him, and I spurred the beast unmercifully. Soot fell out of the sky, and the foulness of Graecan fire lay in a thick coat over Arcenne. It does not cease burning, that terrible flame, until a hedgewitch can deprive it of air and disrupt its grasping fingers. Still, the stink remains, burrowing under skin and clothes—and of all the things Graecan fire will attack, it loves to cling to hedgewitches most.

  Looping trails of smeared orange in the sky—di Cinfiliet had reported at least five of the monstrous fire-flingers, one or two wallbreakers. And Damarsene troops flying their own colors, under the Duc’s, on Arquitaine soil.

  Oh, I will revenge this. I do not care how, I will revenge this.

  Hooves clattering, iron shoes striking sparks from the cobbles, the weight of the foaming horse cutting a path through the crush at the edge of the Smallmarket, where healers’ tents stood in neat rows instead of the smallholders’ stalls. I wondered if my childhood friend Bryony was about, organizing the tending of the wounded, or at the Keep. As the chief hedgewitch physicker of the Baron’s household, his place would be with Vianne, but—

  BOOM.

  The horse foundered, queer weightlessness as I was flung from his back. A scorch-wash of liquid flame jetted past, and the gelding screamed as he became a torch. A horse made of fire, a cracking jolt all through me, and I picked myself up as avid little tongues of sorcery-fueled destruction spidered in all directions. The horse screamed afresh, a sound mercifully cut short as the flames crunched inward, squeezing.

  I staggered. More cries, running feet, a clanging handheld alarum-bell.

  Vianne.

  Her name forced me into action, ducking into an alley as a fire brigade headed by a stolid peasant woman pelted by. The dame’s skirts were hiked above her knees and her round, apple-cheeked face streaked with soot, the green scent of hedgewitchery hanging on her like a cloak. “Invernus!” she yelled, flinging out one work-roughened hand as the brigade behind her swelled forward, two junior hedgewitches adding their force to the charm and a Court sorcerer—the witchlight hanging above him spitting livid yellow sparks—making a complicated gesture, drawing air away from the borders of the fire. He was a young nobleman, the feather in his hat sadly draggled and soot-stained; the peasants and artisans behind him carried buckets of water and wet sheets, struggling with the weight.

  The Graecan fire died with one last vicious burst. The horse was merely a charred lump. Bile filled my mouth. I spat and turned away, deeper into darkness, and fled.

  Chapter Ten

  I do not like to think on the remainder of that journey. Suffice to say there were death, and fire, and scenes of terror aplenty. Closer to the Gate, none paid me any heed—I was simply another soldier, their gazes passing over me like water. None could tell, or would care, that I was holding a dead man’s sword.

  I did not kill him—a falling chunk of masonry had. It would have been foolish to leave him the steel when I needed it so badly. Never mind that the sword was inferior, a chunk of potmetal. It had an edge and a hilt, and I have worked with worse. Before, and since.

  The Gate was braced, Court sorcerers in a loose semicircle before the jumble of wood and stone. Here it was the hedgewitches who stood behind, two or three to each sorcerer, their charms tending the bodies of the noblemen and -women whose hands were outstretched, violent, showy streams of energy crackling over the pile of material bracing the Gate as they fought to keep it stable. On the other side would be a corresponding group of Court sorcerers or Damarsene Hekzen, battering
at the Gate’s sheer blank outer face, seeking entrance.

  Archers atop the wall, more Court sorcerers and hedgewitches, couriers dashing back and forth, and that silvery globe, fine crackling lightning-traceries describing a sphere in the darkness.

  More Graecan fire, arcing and screeching overhead. The globe of silver flexed, rippling with force, and the howling meteor of flame was batted away. It was not hurled back at the engines that had flung it into Arcenne. Rather, twas deflected to the side, as if she could not bear to send it back on its makers and inflict yet more death.

  She was not made for war, my hedgewitch darling.

  Gaining the top of the Wall was no simple matter. Fortunately, half-singed and covered in soot, I looked like any other courier, and took care to move purposefully. My heart hammered, my legs threatening to give underneath me, hunger sour in my middle—once a man sees death, he often wishes to remind himself of the business of living, with food or other satiety. Cold fear at my nape, the idea that I would be discovered at any moment making each step a pitfall. Sweat greased me under the filth of donjon, dust, soot, and the Blessed alone knew what else. I joined a flow of couriers scurrying half-bent behind the archers, the man in front of me with laden quivers he passed along to the archers, taking the empty ones in return. Every fifty paces an embrasure reared, with a slit for crossbowmen; they worked in relays to load and shoot the mankillers, their quarrels loaded with death-sorcery. Screams, the Wall rippling as sorcery eddied and swirled, looking for an entrance. They did not try the ladders yet, but sappers would be working busily below, in trenches that would grow their fingers toward the city.

  Sorcery was not the only way to bring a wall down.

  She stood above the Gate, a moon in the smoky dark. Shadows around her—there was Jierre, slim and dark, and Adersahl’s stocky figure. Other men, none of them giving a moment’s attention to me. Were I an assassin, I could have—

  A crashing impact. He hit me hard, driving me down, shouts and curses. Yelling in an unlovely foreign language, he lifted a hand full of blade-blacked knife, and my own fist flashed out, crunching into his throat.

  A lean face, dark hair clubbed at his nape with black ribbon, in night-melding clothing. A proud beak of a nose, spurting blood as I hammered at him again, I brought up a knee, striking true. It was sheer luck; I was weak from imprisonment and disuse.

  It was the Pruzian Knife, the only surviving assassin of his trio. He had tried to kill me once before. What was he doing here, so close to Vianne?

  More shouts, a sudden seething anthill with me at its center. The silvery radiance dimmed slightly, as if she was distracted, and I am certain I was wasting my breath on cursing. No, protect her, do not pay any mind to me, brace her—

  The world turned white.

  An immense globe of Graecan fire splashed against her shield of silver-threaded light, veins of green hedgewitchery spreading in complex knots as it sought to deflect. Vianne screamed, a sharp hawk-like cry, and I heaved the Pruzian away, striking him once more—again in the throat, to rob him of breath and fight—for good measure. Jierre was there, blade drawn, but I was on my feet and the knife from my boot was in my left hand as I gained my balance, the potmetal sword in my right flashing in the sudden livid glare, deflecting his strike. My knife sank into my lieutenant’s right shoulder with the unheard sound of an ax biting dry wood, the shock rising all the way up my arm, twisting and wrenching the blade free.

  He’ll live. Vianne—

  She staggered back, Adersahl’s face a picture of dismay in the glare as he spun to face me. The Graecan fire looped forward, cracking the shield and hungrily arrowing for her, its sharp, rosy fingers brightening as they scented a hedgewitch.

  The spell to snuff that hideous flame left me in a thunder of senseless effort, Court sorcery few know. I doubted it would have any teeth, for I was only one man. But the Aryx, fount of the light illusions and deadliness of Court sorcery, was close, and no doubt my effort tapped some of that wellspring.

  That is the only explanation I can give.

  No, that is a lie. I can give the truth, it will not harm.

  Vianne’s dark head had turned, and she stared at me, her countenance shining with the same radiance I had seen on a statue of Jiserah the Gentle on our wedding day. Under that gaze, I was stripped bare.

  I did not care.

  I reached her just as broken masonry showered around us, threads of Graecan fire eating into stone. The fireball had winked out of existence, leaving only its fringed edges, and my hand shot out, closed around her arm. I meant to pull her down, for in that one terrible moment I sensed how exhausted she was. Gaunt-thin under the quilted overjacket someone had bundled her into, her face pared down to bone and unutterably weary, her soot-laden skirts moving stiffly and her hair unraveling from its braids, she was still heart-stopping.

  Still mine.

  The Aryx shifted against her chest, a knot of unburning sorcerous fire writhing madly. I felt it each time she drew on the Seal’s force, pulling on every secret fiber of me. Henri had never used the Aryx thus. Of course, it had slept until she took it. Why?

  I did not know. I would have slept too, waiting for her.

  The world went white again, and my battered body finally betrayed me. I fell into darkness, my mouth still seeking to shape her name.

  Chapter Eleven

  “The fires?” She sounded so weary.

  “Largely contained.” My father, grim and equally hoarse. The gravel of exhaustion in his throat, a sound I rarely heard. “They are licking their wounds outside the walls, my liege.”

  “I am blind. Stupid, and useless, and witless besides.” Sharp frustration, a rustling of velvet. I smelled burning, the reek of Graecan, and spice-bergaime. Green hedgewitchery. Leather, and metal. “I should have known. I should have… gods.”

  My eyes flew open. Or rather, I struggled to open them, and succeeded with rather more effort than such an operation should have cost me. The room was dark, a fire in the grate, and I had, for once, absolutely no idea where I was.

  A few moments of studying the ceiling gave me the answer. A stone cube—a room in the Keep’s infirmary, one of the smaller corners for patients who required seclusion.

  “Lie still.” Bryony was beside me. His usually merry face was solemn, his mouth pulled tight against itself. He was bruised and scorched too, soot ground into his hair, and the dark smudges under his eyes were fatigue itself. “M’dama, sieur Baron, he’s awake.”

  Savage aching in every part of me. I blinked, and over Bryony’s shoulder, Vianne appeared. She bit her lip, her hair knocked free of its braids and spilling in a glory of dark curls. My body betrayed me as I sought to rise. I had not the strength, and fury at my own weakness rose sharp and iron-tasting in my throat.

  “Be still.” Bryony had my shoulders, pushed me back down. Vianne regarded me, solemn, small white teeth worrying at her lip as if she expected to tear a piece free. Soot grimed her, but she seemed otherwise hale. “M’dama?”

  She laid her hand upon his shoulder. “Take what you need.” The Aryx glinted at her chest, rills of light moving along the finely-scaled serpents.

  I did not understand until Bryony nodded and Vianne’s eyes closed. The hedgewitch charm burst over me, a tide of cool warmth, my wrists giving one last bruised flare of pain before subsiding.

  Hedgewitchery takes its strength from free earth, sky or living things, or from the charmer him- or herself. Somehow, Vianne had found a way to make the Aryx fuel it through her own body.

  But it cost her so much to wield the Seal, and even with the Aryx’s help such a charm would take a toll on her physical frame. Vianne staggered as the hedgewitchery ceased, and I sought to rise to her aid. Bryony pushed me back down, and I swore at him with an inventiveness that surprised even myself.

  He was unaffected. “Such language. And in a d’mselle’s presence, no less.”

  Vianne sighed. Her eyes opened, and she swallowed hard. She was paper-pale,
and I did not like the way her gaze did not quite focus. Her pupils were huge in the dimness. “There is much work to be done,” she murmured. “Baron?”

  “My liege.” My father, hushed for once. “It will do no good if you collapse during negotiations.”

  Negotiations? Did he mean to have her surrender? My hands turned to fists. Caught in the lassitude of a fresh charming, twas the only protest I could offer.

  “It might almost be a relief to collapse.” A momentary flash of tired, wry wit lit her face. She turned away, not even glancing at me. Her dress rustled stiffly, and she swept at curls falling in her face, irritated. “They cannot hold the Gate for long without me. And if di Narborre breaks in—”

  “He will not. He can siege us, but he cannot overwhelm; they can and will hold the Gate without you for a time. You serve us better by regaining your strength, my liege. The only pressing matter at the moment is what to do with… my son.”

  Your son will do with himself, thank you, sieur. “Vianne.” A husk of a word, my throat full of dry burning. “Are you hale?”

  Her thin shoulders came up, as if she expected a blow. “Hale enough.” Even such a gentle lie lay uncomfortably on her tongue. “Jierre will mend, too; he has already been charmed. His shoulder aches, but will be well enough.”

  Of course she would turn my concern aside and speak of another. “I did not seek to kill him.” I pushed aside Bryony’s hands, sought to rise. “I meant to—”

  “I care little for what you meant. But at least we have acquired valuable information from that display of disobedience.” She took a single step, faltered, and her chin came up. She looked to my father, who was straight-backed, imperturbable, and, now I could see, covered in a thick layer of grime and firebreath as well. The lines graven in his angular Arcenne face were a trifle deeper, and his blue gaze was shadowed. That was all. Had he been on the walls too? Perhaps at the westron walls, for they were the weakest. “Baron. Set a guard upon him, in a comfortable room. Send for me at dawn; that is the longest I may tarry.”