The Bandit King

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Vianne.” She would not even look at me.

  “Dawn, Baron.” And she swept from the room. Bryony pushed me back, and for once, I could not simply shove him aside. I sagged back on the cot.

  “My liege.” My father bowed as she passed, the obeisance due to royalty. There was a murmur outside; I thought I heard Adersahl di Parmecy. My father watched the entrance for a short while, a muscle in his cheek flicking. “Bryony. Leave us.”

  The hedgewitch rose. His expression changed—a warning, perhaps. It was the same look he had worn when he was sent to find me and deliver the news that the Baron wished my presence for some punishment or another. He rose slowly, and in a few moments I was alone with my father.

  I have always disliked such an event.

  He stood, arms folded, by the grate, the low glow of the fire casting his face in sharp relief. How many times had I seen an echo of his features in the mirror, and been tempted to curse my own face as a traitor? To match the rest of me, I suppose.

  “So.” My father did not move. “And so.”

  I gathered myself. The best defense against him is often an attack. “A birch lashing? Or perhaps you’re thinking of leaving me in the donjon again, until she can be induced to forget my existence?”

  “You were not left. You were to be under guard. There have been other pressing matters to attend to.” His arms loosened, and he dropped his hands. One tapped his swordhilt.

  I lacked weapons, had not even the stolen potmetal blade. I read the consideration passing over his face—swift, a momentary thought, no more.

  And yet. I began a consideration of my own, a faint sheen of copper laid against my palate. Twas not fear, simply the metallic taste of approaching action, the body readying itself to shake off lethargy and battle for its bare survival.

  “Or even worse.” I settled back on the cot, watchful. At least I was not chained—but a chain could be a weapon, especially against a blade. “Run me through? And be rid of the disappointment I have always been to you.”

  “Disappointment?” My father considered this, cocking his head. He held himself so stiffly, as if a momentary bending would shatter his very bones. “No.” A long pause. The words came, very evenly spaced, each carrying a heavy load. “Your mother. She is of the opinion that we are too alike, you and I. That our… difficulties… spring from the fact that both of us are…”

  I waited. There was no use in anything else.

  “Stubborn.” My father gazed steadily at me. “You left your cell, acquired a sword somehow, and almost killed two of her Guard.”

  Only Jierre. “Two?”

  “The Pruzian Knife.” His mouth pulled sharply against itself in distaste. “She insists.”

  “She allows the Knife to—” I levered myself up shakily. “Blessed save us! You allowed this? He was sent to kill her, or take her to d’Orlaans!”

  “I am fully aware. However, she is my liege, and she is of the opinion that she is Fridrich van Harkke’s client now. I cannot dissuade her.” He sighed heavily, and his shoulders slumped. “Di Narborre is observing another parlay. Tomorrow. You will attend her.”

  In that you are absolutely correct. I will. “Will she have me?”

  “She has no choice.” He turned on his heel, as if he could not stand to be in the room one moment longer. I heartily agreed, but his next sally drove the breath from me as I set my burned boots on the floor and assayed rising once more. “The Aryx, you see. She has informed me she requires your presence to use it effectively.”

  The breath left me in a rush. What? I could not even frame the word, and struggled again to push myself upright. There was no hint of that in the archives!

  “So, it seems, whatever cloud hangs over you, m’fils, you are necessary.” His shoulders sagged briefly. On him, it was like a shout. “I tell you this as your father, and as I am very conscious of our… difficulties. Take care.”

  “I—”

  “Take better care, I mean. Of yourself.” And with that, he was gone as well. I was left with an empty stone cube, legs that would not hold me, and a fire in a grate.

  She requires your presence to use it effectively. Now there was a mystery. What message did it aim to convey? That she still trusted me? Was this an intrigue, one my d’mselle was playing? What was its endgame? Against me, or around me?

  There was a movement at the door. I looked up, and Tinan di Rocham’s dark, boyish face appeared atop a ragamuffin’s collection of torn, ash-stained clothes. His swordhilt glinted, and his dusky eyes were ablaze with something other than his usual good humor. He studied me closely.

  “Di Rocham.” I gave up trying to make my legs work. Strength would return as my body realized I was still its master. “You look terrible.”

  His grin was a balm, and the shadow of manhood on him fled. “No more than you, Captain. I’m to guard you. But I would wager you’d take a bath and fresh clothes, and your word of honor you won’t stray can be your surety.”

  You are too trusting, and if I meant harm you would be foolish to offer me an opening. “Straying is the last thing on my mind, di Rocham.” I considered him, taking stock of my strength—or the lack of it—one final time. “But you will have to help me stand.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Tis a wonder what a shave and fresh garments will do for a man. Still, it may have been the six hours or so of sleeping like the dead, while the gods spun all our fates on a wheel and decided what to do next with us. I was shaken into wakefulness by di Rocham, who also looked much better for the application of hot water and clean cloth.

  The city was quiet, the streets cleared and the fires merely smoke now. Despite last night’s chaos, the damage appeared moderate—as such things went. Di Rocham rode beside me, and any questioning produced the same piece of information: He had been told to take me to the stables, collect Arran and his own Guard gray, and convey me to the Main Gate. He must not have known more, and I saw Vianne’s hand in this particular fillip.

  The sun beat down, late afternoon turning the white stone of Arcenne to soft tawny and the red tiles to sienna both burnt and raw; the clopping of hooves almost soporific as Tinan took a wandering route designed to avoid damaged streets. The mince pies the boy had brought me, swallowed quickly just after waking, sat uneasily behind my breastbone.

  I teased out the implications of what I knew. Di Narborre and a parlay, perhaps not the first of such. How would they bring him or his envoy inside the walls? Who would his envoy be? And what plan was lodged in my Queen’s nimble brain?

  She requires your presence to use it effectively.

  There were stories of the Aryx, of course, but even in the secret archives the exact method of its usage was not put to paper. It was simply given from one monarch to the next—but the Seal had been sleeping since the time of Queen Toriane’s death.

  The archives had much to say about King Fairlaine’s following madness and eventual suicide, but none of it concerned the Great Seal. Their son and Heir, Tiberius the Great, managed to keep the Seal’s slumber from common knowledge. Tiberius’s Left Hand was integral to that quasi-deception; it was his crafty assassinations of a few key Damarsene nobles that created enough confusion that Tiberius could wriggle out of war at the price of tribute paid to Damar. Which bled Arquitaine, true, but at least it kept her borders safe. Since the Angoulême had arrived with his army and the New Blessed to marry the Old, none had invaded.

  At least, not with any success, the Blood Years notwithstanding. Those had been dark times, Damar and Hesse vying with the merchant princes of Tiberia’s fracturing principalities and Navarre’s glory-hungry Queen Ysabeau I and her cursed Consort to take bites from the apple of Arquitaine. Not to mention Arquitaine’s own nobles seeking to displace or marry the widowed Queen Jeliane. Di Halier had shepherded his Queen through those dark times, and sometimes I suspected that her Heir, King Henri I, who my own dead King had been named for, was di Halier’s instead of her Consort’s.

  Di Halier had nev
er written as much overtly, but…

  History did not matter. What mattered was that Vianne, somehow, had wakened the Seal from its slumber. I did not think even she knew what she had done. The Seal frightened her, and well it should—she remarked once or twice that she did not use it, it simply worked through her. Being so used did not strike me as a comfortable event, especially when I saw her afterward, blank-faced, pale, needing careful chivvying to wake and warm her.

  And to remind her of who she was.

  My head was down as we rode, peripheral vision serving to keep me aware while I thought as deeply as I dared. Tinan hummed a courtsong, taking at face value my promise not to stray. Of course, I was the Captain. His habit of treating me as such had not yet eroded. What did the Guard know, and how could I turn that knowledge to my favor? Jierre, of course, might be lost; Vianne had no doubt worked her will thoroughly there and meant to use him as a balance to my own influence. And yet—

  The square behind the Main Gate opened around us, and I looked up.

  “Dear gods,” I breathed. Is she mad?

  For the bracing behind the Gate had been cleared, and there was my Vianne, cloaked, on the same docile white palfrey. Adersahl di Parmecy beside her on his gray, and on a dark gelding to her right a familiar bruised face sat atop a stiff body. Fridrich van Harkke sat his horse like a nobleman and glowered at the Gate. Even a hedgewitch charming could not erase the damage I’d done to his face.

  Serves you well. You were between me and my Queen, assassin. It was twice I had worsted him. The next time, gods willing, I would kill. He was far too dangerous to be allowed so close to her.

  The other figure was a Messenger—Divris di Tatancourt, dark curls, a nobleman’s carriage, and his uniform freshly laundered. The killspell laid on him had not found its target, thanks to my Vianne, and he would no doubt be gratefully loyal. Or at least, so she obviously hoped.

  My father was there too, on an ill-tempered black charger. The slim figure on my mother’s horse bent toward him, a last-minute conference.

  Garonne di Narborre would not be entering the city.

  She intended to sally forth to meet him.

  * * *

  “Do not trouble yourself, Baron.” Vianne’s face was set and remote. She did not seem to have slept, if the bruised circles of flesh under her eyes were any indication. The blue silk she wore bore the marks of my mother’s dressmaker, and her hair was braided simply.

  Still, she was every inch the royal. Perhaps being locked underground had given me fresh eyes. Where had she acquired this look of brittle grace, this air of command? The woman I had married was an unwilling Queen at best. This d’mselle, her set, pale face as fine-carved as a classic Tiberian statue, was… something else.

  My hands tightened on Arran’s reins. He tensed before I could master myself, and I let out a long slow breath.

  “The more I think on it, the more I think it unwise—” My father’s objection was merely brushed aside. She raised one gloved hand, and the novel sight of Perseval d’Arcenne swallowing his words fair threatened to lay me flat with surprise.

  “I told you not to trouble yourself, Baron. All will go well, especially if…” She broke off as we approached.

  “I brought him!” Tinan di Rocham announced. Adersahl sighed, but twas the Pruzian I watched.

  Fridrich van Harkke paid no attention to my presence. He gazed at the Gate with surpassing intensity, and with a jolt I realized he considered it the greater danger.

  Though it rankled me to be counted less, it did not matter. A distracted man was easier to overpower. Let him, with a Pruzian’s arrogance, think me soft.

  Though I would have thought I had taught him the truth of the matter earlier, before tossing him in the oublietta.

  Vianne’s smile was a ghost of its old unworried self, but it held a depth of affection altogether too profound to be wasted on a mere boy. “So you did. My thanks, chivalier. Now, be so kind as to accompany the Baron and Chivalier di Tatancourt to the Keep. Watch over them well, Tinan, for I need their services. Baron, take care.” She turned away, handling the palfrey’s reins with Court grace. “Raise the Gate.” Her tone sliced the honeyed afternoon glare.

  “My liege—” My father made one faint attempt at dissuading her, but it came to naught. He retreated with Tinan and the Messenger as the levers and counterweights began to move, the Gate creaking and moaning heavily. Lifting, steam hissing up as layers of charm and countercharm spilled along its pitted, dark-oiled surface.

  “Vianne.” My gray nudged Adersahl’s aside, and he allowed it. “This is madness. Why not let di Narborre come to you?”

  “Because I do not wish it.” Each word cut short, without the laughing accent of the Princesse’s ladies. The Pruzian clicked at his horse, which ambled forward; Adersahl’s stepped to the side. In short order Vianne rode through the still-opening Gate, Arran and I hastened after.

  The wind rose, ruffling the edges of her cloak, swirling dust and soot in odd whorls. The white palfrey lifted her head, stepping very prettily, and the Road unreeled before her hooves. Vianne rode, straight-backed, the Pruzian Knife before her like a herald, into the jaws of Garonne di Narborre’s army.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was some faint courtesy, at least, though they sent no herald or honor-guard. The great half-fan siege-shields had been pulled aside from the Road’s shattered surface, and we were not swarmed. Campfires burned, the besiegers at rest, the smell of men packed together too closely for too long, the foreignness of Damarsene cooking.

  They bring their own spices, the hounds of Damar, when they come baying in a foreign land.

  Infantry-heavy. Well, what else to siege with? And many engineers. Their flags are high, morale is good. All from border provinces; those are devices from the Reikmarken Charl. My belly was curiously cold. I had felt this chill before, riding into an armed camp, hoping my disguise would hold—but I wore no disguise here. And there was Vianne, slender and so vulnerable, the cloak and hood not masking her grace or her fragility. The Aryx on her chest sang, a thrill through the blood of every d’Arquitaine who could hear it—what did they think, those among di Narborre’s dogs who watched her ride past?

  Adersahl’s horse moved beside hers, and he made a low remark. Her answering laugh rang clear but false—it was the merry biting sound she used when she was not truly amused, but had to appear so. Others would think it lighthearted, but I had watched her too long to be misled. The breeze showered us with dust, and from the commander’s tent in the distance came a commotion.

  They know we have arrived.

  My hands loosened on Arran’s reins. He was taut with readiness, sensing my unease in the way my knees tightened, my palm aching for a swordhilt. I had not been given steel.

  And why should I have been, if she expected me to slide it twixt her ribs? Who had my sword now? Jierre, most likely. I had stabbed him in the right shoulder, gauging the blow to leave him alive; it was not beyond Bryony’s skill to mend such an injury. My lieutenant would ache in the winter there, did he grow much older.

  Di Yspres would seek an accounting for that, one way or another. That was a problem for another day.

  Wait. Watch.

  The siege camp’s layout was standard. No surprises. Guards and challenge-patterns, the Damarsene leaving their tents to see this tiny group come to treat with them, a murmur running through their ranks.

  Vianne’s head lifted. She looked about with interest, hopefully noting the mangonels, the machines capable of flinging the Graecan fire. The vats of bubbling tarry stuff the fire would be made from, each with a hedgewitch or a Damarsene sorcerer—they, as the Pruzians, call them Hekzmeizten—standing watchful, to make certain it did not overheat and explode, doing the enemy’s work. I saw only a flash of her chin, a slice of her cheek.

  If they surround us, the only hope is to kill a few and drag her onto Arran’s back. The Pruzian may hold some of them, but di Narborre was his client—or his client’s
lundsman—to begin with. Adersahl is a canny Court sorcerer, but against so many… Sickness took me by surprise, a wedge of bile rising to my throat.

  The mince pies were sitting most uncomfortably. And the thought of Vianne before me in the saddle, as she had ridden through half of Arquitaine during our escape, did not help.

  The commander’s tent was a monstrosity of dark fabric, dust and smoke hazing its sides. It flew the new device of d’Orlaans—the crowned serpent over a rising sun. The swan of the Tirecian-Trimestin family, being his murdered brother’s sign, perhaps gave him an uneasy conscience.

  You know better. The man has no conscience. Be ready to exercise a similar lack.

  The stamped-down space in front of the commander’s tent was a strategic nightmare. It would take so little to make Vianne a prisoner, and then I would be faced with terrible choices.

  Calm, Tristan. Watch. Wait, and plan.

  It was Adersahl who lifted her down from the saddle, and though his hands did not linger at her waist a bolt of something hot and nasty speared me. Twas not the mince pies.

  Van Harkke took her horse, murmured something to her. Another laugh, this one truly amused, from her throat as I dismounted, not liking to leave Arran behind but unwilling to let Vianne wander farther alone.

  There was no party to meet us at the entrance to the tent—an insult, to be sure. Vianne did not seem to mind. She took a deep breath, shoulders squaring, and glanced once more at the Pruzian Knife.

  He nodded slightly, and she looked to Adersahl next. He nodded as well, the crimson feather in his cap waving finely.

  I waited for her gaze, but it did not turn to me. Instead, she arranged her skirts and stalked for the tent. The song of the Aryx rose, its melody developing a counterpoint, and familiar fire raced along my nerves. I did not wonder at it—the Aryx is the fount of Court sorcery and a mark of the ruler’s legitimacy.