The Soldier King

by Violette Malan

  Parno ducked into the room he and Dhulyn had chosen for their own and came out carrying the olive-wood box that held her vera tiles. Edmir cleared the tray holding a jug of cider and clean clay cups from the sturdy square table, as Dhulyn took the box and seated herself on one side. The others took the other seats, watching her as she spilled the tiles out on the table’s worn surface.

  “But these are vera tiles,” Zania said.

  “A little more than that.” Dhulyn picked up the tiny moleskin bag that held the one unique tile in the set, the Lens tile which was the focus of all Seeing. “You see these tiles here? They’re not found in the ordinary sets of vera tiles. You’ll recognize these symbols from the drawings of your Muse Stone, the symbols of the Mark. The eye, the line, the rectangle, and the triangle. Seer, Finder, Healer, and Mender, four of each.”

  Parno sat in the chair next to her and began turning tiles face up, and she slapped his knuckles. “Each of you find a tile to represent yourself. One of the major tiles, Tarkin, Tarkina, Mercenary, Scholar, or Priest, and pay attention also to the suit, Coins, Cups, Swords or Spears. Whichever one feels right to you. Hold it a moment in your hand and give them to me as I ask you for them.”

  Dhulyn set the Lens tile in the center of the space she had cleared by pushing the tiles to one side. She placed her own tile, the Mercenary of Swords, just above it, and a Seer’s tile above that. Edmir chose the Scholar of Cups, she noted with an inward smile. So the Lord Prince of Tegrian did not see himself as a Tarkin, or even as a Mercenary. And he did not see himself as Sword or Spear. As she expected, Parno chose the Mercenary of Spears, and Zania the Tarkina of Coins. Trying to make no conscious decision, letting her own internal Sight make the decision for her, Dhulyn placed Parno’s tile below the Lens, opposite her own, Zania’s to the right, and Edmir’s to the left. Next to Parno’s she placed a Mender’s tile, with its spearhead symbol. Next to Zania’s the straight line of the Finder, next to Edmir’s the rectangle of the Healer.

  She studied the cross formed by the tiles for the space of three heartbeats before nodding, and pushing the remaining tiles back into their box. Keeping her eyes on the tiles in front of her, she reached into the box and pulled out the first tile, setting it on top of her own. Six of Cups. For Edmir, the four of Swords; for Parno, the nine of Swords; for Zania, the three of Coins. For all of them, a Finder, the two of Spears, the seven of Spears, the Priest of Spears. No, the Mage.

  The high walls of the garden hold the moonlight like a deep bowl holds water, washing all color from the trees and flowers. The pond is a black diamond held within the setting of its stone rim. For a moment Dhulyn thinks there is someone seated on this stone edge, but it must have been a trick of the light. There is nothing there. She looks up, and there is the girl sitting in a niche created by a rough section of the garden wall and thick piece of hedge almost as tall as the wall itself. Dhulyn waves her arms; sometimes she can be seen by the others who inhabit the Visions, but not this time. The girl watches the pond, as if someone is there, but when Dhulyn looks again, there is no one.

  But there is an image in the water. Dhulyn moves closer, and the image is clearer, though still without color. It is Edmir, asleep, dreaming. He frowns and rolls over on the bed, his arm sweeping up to cover his eyes. The shadow on his palm created by his curled fingers looks like a curl of hair. . . .

  There is Edmir, again on his throne. His robes are the brilliant blue of the sky in winter, there is a circle of leaves shining gold against his dark hair. He puts aside the long two-handed sword he is holding across his lap, handing it to the armsman who stands to his right. Edmir stands and approaches the front of the dais. He raises his hands to speak, and the crowd hushes. . . .

  This is her mother, again. Her mother as a young woman, who never had the opportunity to be an old woman. She is in the garden again, dressed in her lady’s gown, her hair bound and swinging down her back. She swings a sword . . . a stave. No, it is a sword. And she fights a slim-hipped, dark-haired man who wields a very familiar sword.

  It is Parno. When she looks closely at him, the dark wig disappears and she sees his red-and-gold Mercenary badge, with the black line of Partnership threaded through the pattern. In what possible past can this be? In what possible future? Dhulyn looks more closely at the woman she takes for her mother. No, the features are clear. Whoever this person is really, for the purposes of the Vision, she is Dhulyn’s mother. Parno is armed with his second-best sword, the one with the nick in the guard, and he is using it to defend himself against the blows of the Espadryni woman. But all he does is defend, and this makes him slow and weak. He will lose if he does not attack. He does not want to kill this woman, but she wants to kill him.

  Fight, my soul, she tries to say. Don’t let her kill you. Fight and return to me.

  In Battle, or in Death. . . .

  Zania holds a blue crystal cylinder between her hands, thick as a man’s wrist, as long as Dhulyn’s forearm. Shining blue like the deep ice that traps the glow of the stars. The Muse Stone. A drop of blood falls from Zania’s nose to the Stone. There is movement in the room behind her, but Dhulyn cannot make it out in the bright blaze of light that comes from the stone.

  Dhulyn pushed back from the table. “Hard to say whether there was anything helpful,” she said, her voice coming dry and creaking from her throat. She took the cup of water Parno gave her with a nod of thanks.

  “I Saw you on your throne, Edmir, something I’ve Seen before. And you, Zania, you were holding what appeared to be the Muse Stone in your hands, though I could not see around you.”

  “But that’s good. That means we’ll find it.” Zania’s smile was enough to add light to the room.

  “That is one of the possible futures, yes,” Dhulyn croaked. “But now you see the limitations of my Sight. How will we find it? How can we ensure that is the future we attain? What must we do—and leave undone—for that future to arrive?”

  “And are they things we can do, or are willing to do?” Parno added.

  “But we do know that it’s possible,” Edmir said. “Even if we don’t know how likely it is.”

  “True, and so we go ahead.” Dhulyn massaged the muscles around her eyes with her fingertips, lowered her hands, and looked around at them. “Perhaps there is something in your book, Zania, that may help make my Visions clearer. It has happened so in the past.”

  When they were alone in their own room, Dhulyn sat flipping through the pages of Zania’s book.

  “I Saw you fighting someone,” she said, without looking up. “It seemed to be my mother.”

  “Which is why you didn’t mention it to the youngsters.”

  She nodded. “This is becoming a nightmare,” she said, not meaning her Vision.

  “Yes, it is,” Parno agreed.

  “Sleep my soul. I will read.”

  Several hours later, her eyes gritty with her effort to concentrate on the Scholar’s shorthand in Zania’s book, Dhulyn got up, stretched the kinks out of her back, and put out the lamp she’d been reading by. In the morning she would have to find paper, something on which to make her own notes. When her eyes adjusted, she made rounds through the other rooms, checking that Zania and Edmir both were asleep and undisturbed. Edmir moved as she started to close the door of his chamber and she froze, but he only rolled over, his arm sweeping up to cover his eyes. He had left the shutter open, and there was enough moonlight to make a shadow on his palm, created by his curled fingers. It looked like a lock of hair. “Blood,” Dhulyn said.

  Thirteen

  “WHY SHOULD AN IMAGE OF Edmir appear in a pool in a garden?”

  Parno rolled over. The open shutter let in enough light to show him Dhulyn standing, fully dressed in her player’s clothing, by the window. He propped himself up on his elbow.

  “Is that what’s kept you restless all night?”

  She nodded.

  “What else was in the image?”

  She turned and moved toward him, silent as a s
hadow. “At first I thought I saw someone else there, seated by the side of the pool. But I looked again, and nothing. There was, however, a young girl, hiding, watching from some distance away.”

  Parno scratched at his mustache. “Is someone watching Edmir? I would hate to see the fires that destroyed Probic come to Luk,” he said finally.

  “By someone, you mean the Mage? All I know for certain is that I saw no one else but the girl. The image was of Edmir asleep in his bed. . . .”

  “And possibly his location cannot be discovered from that.”

  “Possibly.”

  Parno looked at her. She knew as well as he did how many people could be killed with only a “possibly” to lead the way.

  “How long will it take you to read the book?”

  “I must have paper.”

  Parno swung his legs out from under the covers and reached for his leggings. “The Jaldeans will have some.”

  It was quiet on the steps of the caravan. Zania had been sitting out here long enough to watch the hamlet come to life for the new day. The sun was barely up, but a young girl had come from Farmer Bar’s already to bring them breakfast and see to their horses; others had gone out to the fields, and somewhere the milking was being done. This time of year, there would be hay to bring in, if nothing else. But the square itself was quiet.

  Zania had woken up sometime before dawn, and finding herself unable to go back to sleep, she’d hoped that coming out to sit somewhere familiar would help to still her racing thoughts. Last night when they’d gone to bed, everything had seemed possible. Dhulyn had Seen the Muse Stone, and even the question of how they were to achieve what the Vision had shown them—well, as Dhulyn had said to her last night, “today’s troubles today, tomorrow’s for tomorrow.”

  Somehow, when she woke alone in the dark, the questions had all come flooding back. And now it was tomorrow. Zania realized that she hadn’t really given much thought to what it meant, getting the Muse Stone back. It had been something Great-Uncle Therin was going to do, with Uncle Jovan. When she’d thought about it at all, she’d imagined a dramatic confrontation, with perhaps herself and her cousin Jovana—Jo in a minor role, of course—a denunciation of the thief, a restoration of their rightful property to enthusiastic applause. To find out now that it was the Blue Mage himself who had the Stone. The Blue Mage. Had Great-Uncle Therin suspected anything of the kind? What was she to do now? She was the only one left. . . .

  “Where is everyone?” Edmir startled her. He had a meat pastry in his hand, taken from the dish the farmer’s girl had brought them. There had been a jug of water as well as the makings for ganje.

  “If you mean Dhulyn and Parno, I saw them going across to the Jaldean Shrine a while ago.”

  “The shrine?” Edmir looked over his shoulder to where the facade of the other building caught the light from the morning sun. “Of course,” he added, nodding. “They are Mercenaries, they’re probably followers of the Sleeping God.”

  When Edmir turned back, their eyes met, and he blushed.

  Zania looked down at her hands, clasped between her knees, hoping she looked relaxed and uncaring. There had been one other subjecton her mind, other thoughts that had chased themselves around her brain all night. Edmir had said nothing about kissing her. Unless, she eyed him sidewise, unless he’d been waiting for them to be alone.

  Though it seemed Edmir wasn’t going to say anything after all. He leaned against the corner of the caravan, which put them more or less at the same height, but he was staring off to one side, frowning as if he’d heard Parno play a bad note. Zania cleared her throat.

  “Do you think Dhulyn will be able to read my book?”

  “Hmm?”

  Nervousness changed to irritation. He wasn’t even thinking about her.

  “You’re supposed to lift your left index finger if you’re writing in your head,” she said in her crispest voice. “If you’ve lost some precious words of The Soldier King, you’ve only yourself to blame.”

  Edmir turned to her and smiled. Zania felt her ears grow warm.

  “Zania,” he said.

  Something in his tone made her glance quickly away. Here it comes, she thought, her heart speeding up. Now we’ll talk about the kiss.

  “Zania, is the play good?”

  “What?” The buzzing in her ears faded, leaving a cold quiet behind it.

  “The Soldier King, is it a good play?”

  Zania was so surprised she forgot her shyness and turned on the step to face Edmir fully and frankly. His eyes were lowered again, and she could see the wrinkle in his forehead, between his bleached brows, the set look to his lips, as he braced himself for her reply. She could make an easy answer—either the quick, cutting slap down or the smooth reassurance—but neither felt right, somehow.

  Parno had said that she wanted Edmir. Zania had thought about that, and before their kiss she’d almost persuaded herself that it just wasn’t so—that she wasn’t interested in Edmir in the way a woman was interested in a man. But if she was going to be honest, there was something about him, something she’d never noticed in any other young man. Of course, he is a Lord Prince; that will set him apart from the others. But she didn’t think it was only that.

  Maybe her interest had started off that way—many a traveling troupe was sponsored by a House lord or lady who had a lover among the troupe, and what better sponsor than a Lord Prince? If anything, the kisses they had shared yesterday had shown her how easy that could be for them. But they had also shown her something else. Kisses were easy, knowledge was harder. She knew him now, and liked him for himself. Which meant she had to set aside her wounded pride and answer his question truthfully, seriously.

  “It is a good play,” she said finally. “Among the best I’ve heard, and I’ve heard many.” She took a deep breath. “But you know this, you’ve looked through the ones we have in the chest, you’ve heard enough of the pieces we’ve been practicing. You know it’s good.”

  “I’m just using Tarlyn’s poem.”

  “No. What you’re making is a good deal more than Tarlyn’s poem ever was. That’s just a story—a good one, maybe, but a story just the same. Your play is different, it’s more real somehow.”

  “Thank you. It’s not often you say something that doesn’t sound as though you were quoting a line.”

  Zania opened her mouth and shut it again. There was really nothing to say to that. She eyed him more closely. There was a different kind of frown on his face now.

  “There’s something else worrying you, isn’t there?”

  “When I think about everything that’s waiting for me when we reach Aunt Valaika’s House . . .” He shook his head, lips a thin line. He looked at her and tried to smile. “We’ll sort it out somehow. My sister says that when she’s worried about how something will turn out, she thinks about how things will be afterward, when the worrisome event is long over. What will you do when it’s all over? Take your Stone and lead your own company?”

  “Of course, I—” The words stuck in her throat. The troupe she had wanted to lead was dead in the hostel courtyard in Probic. Weeks dead. And she would never rise to be their leader. They would never vote for her in the fullness of time. That was over. Gone.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  “They’re all gone,” she whispered, sobs rising. “They’re all gone, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Edmir was appalled, frozen with horror as the girl he’d privately thought so strong and practical, rather hard, really, even if the idea of Avylos as a father had frightened her—the girl he couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to kiss—bent over, face buried in her hands, and broke into wrenching sobs. He reached out a tentative hand to her shaking shoulder, and drew it back. What was the right thing to do? Nothing growing up in the Royal House had prepared him for anything like this. There, the girls took care that he never saw them blotchy-faced and weeping.

  He chewed on his lower lip. What would he do if this was
his sister Kera? That thought released him. Gently, careful not to startle her, he put his arms around Zania, stroking her on the back and making every soothing and sympathetic noise he could think of.

  “We’ll think of something, you’ll see,” he said as the sobs finally began to die down. She hasn’t cried at all, he realized. Not at all since it happened. This reaction was long overdue, and all the stronger for being repressed. “Look at everything we’ve thought of already. A knife throwing act, a new play. Having the Muse Stone back will change everything. Who knows, maybe the Mercenaries will stay with you.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” she said, lifting her head but remaining within the circle of his arms. Her voice was a croaking echo of its normal self. She dabbed at her eyes and nose with the wide sleeve of her blouse. “They’re Mercenary Brothers, not players.”

  “And I’m a prince, not a playwright.” Edmir blinked. Those words had come out sounding much more bitter than he’d intended.

  Zania moved away enough that Edmir had to lower his arms or look like a fool. “And you’ll go back to being a prince,” she said, dabbing again at her eyes. Was it his imagination, or did she sound regretful?

  For a moment he imagined himself beside her like this for the rest of his life. Writing plays, watching her act in them. Watching their children act. Then he pulled himself together.

  “We must deal with Avylos.” His voice sounded harsh even in his own ears. How could he tell her that he had to steel himself to push her away?

  “Of course,” she said. “No use casting the parts before the play is written.”

  Edmir licked his lips. There was something else he’d like to say. . . .

  Dhulyn Wolfshead came around the corner of the caravan, her arms full.