Queenslayer

by Sebastien de Castell

  The warrior’s sword whipped out and nearly took my eye right out of its socket, but I rolled to the other side of the carriage roof and got away with just a scratch on my shoulder. He came around again. I took a second to aim and then threw another card. Some local whisper spirit must’ve smiled on me, because as I landed hard on the roof of the carriage, one of my cards bit into the meat of my opponent’s sword hand and the other caught him in the thigh.

  Even as his weapon dropped to the ground, the Zhuban warrior was reaching for a second scabbard strapped to the back of his saddle. His horse picked up speed, coming up on our left side again. “Your ladyship, open the door now!”

  Surprisingly, given how uninterested she’d seemed in my suggestions thus far, she kicked the carriage door open, swinging it wide just as the horse came up alongside. In a better world, the beast would’ve panicked and thrown its rider, but Zhuban warhorses are the best trained on the continent. The animal kept its cool, and its rider drew his second blade.

  I tried tossing three more cards, but my luck had run out and not one of them found their target.

  “Erras!” I called out. “Toss me one of those knives.”

  “Toss you a knife?” he shouted back as he struggled to keep our own horses steady. “What if I miss?”

  “Then toss the other one.”

  The old man’s first throw did, in fact, go wide, sending the long-bladed knife over the side. He didn’t hesitate though, and a moment later the second one was spinning in an arc over my head. One good thing that comes from spending your entire childhood obsessively practising somatic shapes for spells that, as it turns out, you’ll never get to cast is that you develop real fast hands. I snatched the knife out of the air just in time to parry a slash from the Zhuban warrior’s second sword. To say the guy was stronger than me would be an understatement, and the force of the blow nearly knocked me off the carriage roof. He brought his weapon back for a second try, only to have a lithe leg appear from the open carriage door as her ladyship, Countess Mariadne, tried to boot his two-thousand-pound warhorse out of the way. The warrior grinned, and said something which I hoped was Zhubanese for, “You show great courage, and thus we are no longer enemies.” Unfortunately, the way he was bringing up his sword in line to chop off her foot made me question my translation.

  “Mariadne, watch out!”

  She pulled her leg back just in time to avoid losing it. The horseman nudged his horse forward, and I knew then he’d tired of playing with us and was now going to kill Erras before driving our own horses over the ridge.

  Guess I never should’ve cheated old Merrel of Betrian at cards. With his knife in hand, I leaped from the carriage, slamming into the Zhuban warrior’s side and very nearly taking the two of us—along with the horse—to ground. The beast careened back to the right, slamming into the side of the carriage. The impact made my leg go numb. I hoped it might have the same effect on the Zhuban, but he didn’t look troubled at all.

  This man was big, and masterful in keeping control of his mount. I slid behind him and jabbed my knife into his back over and over, as fast as I could. The Zhuban wear a type of armour made of tough leather straps that can withstand just about anything. The trick is to stab enough times that your point goes between two of the straps. I felt the tip sink into soft flesh and jammed it in as hard as I could. All I got for my troubles was a grunt from the warrior and his left elbow coming around to jab me in the ribs.

  I ignored the pain and just kept mindlessly stabbing at his side, taking whatever blows he dished back at me even as we lost pace with the remaining warrior and the carriage. It was an awkward, cowardly way to fight, but it was perfectly suited to my temperament. Pretty soon we were both spattered with his blood.

  At last my opponent slumped over his horse and I pushed him out of the saddle. A hundred feet ahead of me I could see the carriage pulling to a stop. I heard a scream. The last soldier had managed to force himself partway in through the carriage window.

  “Hyah!” I shouted, kicking the horse’s sides, but he ignored me and came to a stop. Zhuban mounts are trained to respond only to their master’s instructions. I leaped off the horse and ran to the carriage, but I knew I was already too late. The carriage had halted and Erras was struggling to make his way down to try to fight off the last warrior.

  “Stop!” I screamed—one of the few words I knew in Zhubanese—but the warrior ignored me. I knew then that I’d been irrelevant to their mission. They had come here with one purpose: to murder Countess Mariadne.

  As I reached the carriage the door opened, carrying the warrior’s body with it. His legs dangled in the air and I caught sight of his face just as the last of life’s colour drained from it. The weight of his body strained the door’s hinges, and his head lolled to the side. From his throat protruded a short knife. The countess slipped out of the carriage, her whole body shaking with a mixture of shock, fury and grim satisfaction.

  “My lady!” Erras said, his voice full of terror at the sight of her.

  “I’m… I’m all right, Erras.” She looked down at the blood on her dress. “I mean, I think I’m all right. I don’t think he cut me. The carriage jolted and one of his blades fell from his cuirass. I grabbed it and… I’m not sure if I stabbed him or he fell into me or—”

  “It’s over now, my lady,” Erras said gently, his arm around her shoulder.

  “Best get a blanket on her,” I said to the old man. I offered my arm to Mariadne for support. “That the first Zhuban cavalry you’ve killed, your ladyship?”

  Her eyes were wet, but defiant. “I live near the borderlands, Mister Kellen. We know how to defend ourselves.”

  But why had this raiding party been targeting Mariadne’s carriage in the first place? I couldn’t believe some Zhuban philosopher warlord cared enough about a Daroman countess to send assassins after her. A thought occurred to me and I went back to the man hanging off the carriage door. Though the Zhuban live in the north, they tend towards a dark skin tone. This man was deeply tanned, but he could just as easily hail from the southern reaches of Darome. His weapons and armour could have come from captured raiders. What if these men weren’t Zhuban at all?

  “We’ve got more troubles, Kellen!” Reichis shouted.

  I looked back to find him racing towards us, a cloud of dust following behind. I reached into my holsters and carefully pulled more powder out, hoping enough life had returned to my fingertips to do the spell again.

  “You’re gonna need a lot more powder,” Reichis said as he reached us.

  Out of the dust cloud rode almost forty men. But these weren’t Zhuban; they were Daroman soldiers, steel helmets shining in the sunlight as the brace of short plumes on top flicked in the wind.

  Within moments they had surrounded us, like hungry foxes cornering a trio of fat rabbits. A moment later the soldiers parted and their leader came forward. Major Leonidas dismounted and walked towards us, a freshly polished sword in hand.

  21

  The Unwanted Rescue

  Reichis’s hackles went up and his fur turned black with red stripes. He gets like that when he’s angry, but also when he’s nervous. Much as he loves a good fight, he can’t stand being surrounded. I didn’t blame him. My fingertips already stung from holding on to the powders too long, but I needed to be ready to fire the spell.

  “My lady,” Leonidas said as he jammed the tip of his blade into the ground in front of her.

  “Major Leonidas,” she said, voice flat, back straight as the major’s sword. “What brings you here?”

  Leonidas’s eyes went to the blood on her dress. I really think that someone staring at blood clinging to a woman’s dress shouldn’t look so… aroused. “We had word of Zhubanese outriders crossing the border nearby. I knew your carriage was coming this way and feared for your safety. Despite your harsh words for me at court, I hope you know I crave nothing so much as your well-being—” he spread his arms wide, looking passably beatific—“and your happiness.
”

  Mariadne stepped back to avoid his embrace. “I am fine, major. You are too generous with your concern.”

  “Generous?” Leonidas smiled, a big arrogant grin filled with shiny white teeth that made me want to reach for a big rock. “Genrerous indeed, my lady, for I’ve brought you a gift.” Leonidas motioned to one of his soldiers, who handed him a brown sack. He stuck his hand in and withdrew the bloody wreck of a man’s head. “I have slain your enemies for you.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. “You’ve slain her enemies? You mean the only guy left—the one who fell off his horse?”

  Leonidas’s head spun towards me. “The others weren’t all dead. Merely wounded. I dispatched them myself.”

  “And then had time to polish your sword?” I muttered.

  You’d have to work long and hard to come across more guilty than the major did right then. And yet, would someone so blatant and clumsy really have risen so high in the ranks of the Daroman army? Had Leonidas set this whole thing up, wouldn’t he have simply picked up one of the Zhubanese swords and stabbed Mariadne then and there? There were more than enough corpses to make it look as if the raiders had killed us before the major’s troops had prevailed.

  Two of the Daroman soldiers walked to the carriage and hauled off the corpse hanging from the door before dragging it away. Leonidas made a show of supervising their bloody work.

  “Kellen, tell those guys to leave our kills alone,” Reichis growled. “Or at least save me the eyeballs.”

  Leonidas looked down at the squirrel cat. Other than the queen, I’ve never met anyone else who could understand Reichis’s actual words, but his tone has a way of conveying his meaning that occasionally bypasses the need for language.

  “Would someone get rid of that weasel? Its braying offends me.”

  I was about to point out that weasels don’t bray when one of his soldiers stepped forward and pulled a short sword from its sheath. I pressed my ring and little fingers into my palms and aimed my fore and middle fingers at the soldier as I addressed Leonidas. “Tell your lackey to back off or you’ll be writing a very sad letter to his wife.”

  The soldier froze. Spellslinging isn’t very common, but enough people had probably run across Jan’Tep exiles to know we had a few tricks up our sleeves. The major pulled his sword out of the ground.

  “Major! Leonidas, please,” Mariadne protested, rushing to him and pressing her palms against his broad chest. “This man saved my life!”

  Leonidas looked at me with a hunger in his eyes I usually only find in my own people. Nobody likes spellslingers all that much, but military men have a particular hatred for us. I guess firing bolts of red death from your fingertips must look like cheating to someone who’s spent a lifetime practising hand-to-hand combat. “He threatened a Daroman soldier in the conduct of his duty.”

  “Please,” the countess repeated. “Leave him be. Look at him, barely more than a boy. He is of no consequence to the two of us, my lord.”

  That “two of us” seemed to please Leonidas mightily. The way Mariadne’s eyes gazed up at the major, lips slightly parted, fingers tracing the ridges of the eagle adorning his steel breastplate, could easily have been interpreted as ardent desire. But I’d spent almost two years with Ferius Parfax, learning the ways of the Argosi arta precis—the talent of perception. The stiffness in Mariadne’s limbs and the tightness in her voice spoke of intense disgust. That, and fear. She’d done everything she could not to have to touch him up until now, but my little confrontation with the major had forced her to debase herself before him and his soldiers. Unfortunately for both of us, it didn’t work.

  “The wretch is a Jan’Tep shadowblack and, if the rumours are to be believed, an Argosi spy.” He pushed Mariadne aside and spun his sword in the air, catching the grip neatly in his right hand. “Do you know what we do when we find an Argosi sniffing around our borders, boy?”

  “Come on, soldier boy,” Reichis chittered, his fur turning blood red. “Try something.”

  “Shut the hell up, Reichis,” I said.

  Leonidas laughed. “Look! The boy talks at his weasel! Perhaps he was raised by one and thinks it to be his brother!”

  Forty men laughed. I suppose it’s nice having people trained to laugh at your jokes.

  “Major, we thank you for your generous assistance,” Mariadne said, taking advantage of the temporary levity. “Truly we would have been lost without you and your brave men. Now I must take my leave, for the afternoon grows late and we still have many miles to travel.”

  Leonidas smiled down at her. “Nonsense. You will be my guest tonight, Lady Mariadne. I shall have my men set up my tent for you and I myself will stand guard outside your door. I swear no man or woman shall get past me.”

  Not sure where the “woman” in question would come from. While both men and women are required to serve in Darome’s military, so far as I could tell there were only the former among the major’s troops.

  Mariadne smiled. “A most generous offer, major.”

  “Good, then—”

  “Alas,” she interrupted, “it is one I cannot accept. I have pressing business at my home in Sarrix and can afford no delay.”

  The look that crossed Leonidas’s face wasn’t pretty. “Very well,” he said at last. He sheathed his sword and started walking towards his horse. “Goodbye, rodent boy. I trust you’ll keep your weasel from peeing on the lady’s carriage.”

  “Squirrel cat,” Reichis corrected.

  “Goodbye, major,” I said. “I don’t imagine we’ll run into each other again anytime soon.”

  Leonidas mounted his horse and grinned down at me. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I have every intention of ensuring that you and I meet again exactly one more time.”

  He kicked his horse and headed down the road away from us, and I briefly wondered if it might not be worth trying to shoot him in the back.

  22

  Bathwater

  We stopped at one of those small travellers’ inns that litter the northern countryside, with their badly thatched roofs, freezing cold breeze-inviting stone walls and watered-down beer. Erras rented one room for the lady and a second that he, Reichis and I shared. Part of me worried that Leonidas might come find us here. The other part felt fairly sure he wouldn’t notice a place like this even if his horse ran right into it. “I thought she wanted to make Sarrix by nightfall,” I said as I sat on the bed in a towel and began scrubbing the remaining blood off my shirt.

  Erras had allowed me first use of the bath since he’d avoided most of the blood spatter in the attack. I was grateful, and a bit surprised, since it meant he would have to bathe in dirty water. Reichis had dipped a paw in after I’d finished and decided it was still too hot, which saved me a prolonged, bite-filled argument over why the “useless old skinbag” was getting to bathe before the “noble squirrel cat who saved everybody’s lives by single-pawedly taking down fifty Zhuban Elites.”

  “Wouldn’t do much good to arrive in town this late,” the old man said, craning his head back in the bath as the steam gathered around his face. “The marshals won’t let us into the jail to see Tasia until tomorrow.” He sighed, but not from contentment. “If they let the countess in at all.”

  “What happens if they refuse?”

  Erras raised an eyebrow. “My lady will quite possibly do something you and I will both regret.” He nodded towards the powder holsters sitting on my bed. “Don’t suppose you could just blow a hole in the jail the way you did with those Zhuban, could you?”

  I dried my hands on a towel before checking the holsters. “I used up most of what I had on the Zhuban. Besides, the powders don’t like it much when you use them on things other than people.” That wasn’t exactly strictly true, but I preferred not to share more than necessary about the weapon I most rely on to keep Reichis and myself alive.

  “Mind if I enquire as to what those powders are made from, Mister Kellen?” Erras asked.

  I tapped the left holster.
“The red powder is crow’s root and ground-up sparkrock, mixed in with a few ingredients I like to keep to myself.”

  “And the other?”

  “Dead man’s tongue, mostly.”

  Erras stared back at me, likely trying to see if I was having fun with him, then said, “So you rob a lot of graves then, I take it?”

  I shook my head. “In a pinch any corpse will do, but it works best if it comes from someone whose death is connected to me somehow.”

  “Then why didn’t you collect some from the Zhuban you killed?”

  “Believe me, I wish I had, now. But desecrating the dead is a crime in Darome. Leonidas would’ve used the excuse to set his men on me, which would have been… inconvenient.”

  Erras nodded. “The major is nothing if not inconvenient.”

  He stood up out of the bath, old and skinny and shrivelled in all the ways you would expect, but without a lick of embarrassment.

  I tossed him a towel and resumed cleaning my shirt when a thought occurred to me. “Countess Mariadne told Leonidas we needed to be in Sarrix tonight. She lied to him.”

  Erras grew a grim little smile. “My lady makes something of a career of it.”

  Reichis grabbed at my shirt. I put it down and he hopped up on my lap so I could brush his fur. He’s not fastidious by nature, but he does like to have his coat brushed now and then. “If Mariadne can’t stand him, why doesn’t she just tell him to bugger off?” I asked.

  Erras sighed. “There are times that I wish she would, you can be sure of that, Mister Kellen, but Leonidas commands the north-east border. Zhuban raiders come across every other week lately, and when they do, the countess’s domain is the first place they strike. If the queen’s soldiers don’t come in time, well, we lose people.”

  “So Leonidas…”

  “Major Leonidas is someone that my lady must, shall we say, humour when possible.”

  “And Tasia? Could Mariadne have ordered her to…?”

  The retainer shook his head. “My lady would never do such a thing. In fact, she commanded Tasia be kept away from Leonidas and his men. Tasia’s been with her since they were children. When Arafas died…” The old man sighed. “A bad business, that. Poor boy. He and Mariadne were just seventeen when they wed. She loved him like… well, I’m no poet. She just loved him, that’s all. Plain and true.”