by Amy Bai
Arlen ducked his head and heaved a sigh, then looked into his face with a wry expression. "No, you're clearly not. Neither are we—but we're only men, as you are, fighting off the dark with whatever tools we have to hand."
It wasn't truth, but it was such a vivid description of what his night had been like that he was rendered speechless. Arlen stood. Devin did, too—he could hardly sit on the ground and speak to this man.
"Kyali," he said stubbornly. "Taireasa."
"Safe," Arlen shot back. "My word on it, they escaped. They will be leaving the castle soon, coming to us. We'll be making ready for them."
"You don't know they'll come here, sir."
"Where else could they go?"
That was a point.
These were his father's allies. And Kyali had lived with these people for two years.
And there really would be nowhere else safe, not once the Western troops started crossing the border in numbers, which they had no way to prevent now.
"You're sure?" Devin said weakly.
"Yes. They won't be more than a few days before leaving. Your sister… has something to do first."
The wooden mask of the man's face thinned on that last statement, showing something far less hard and far more hurt underneath. Oddly, it did more toward convincing him to trust the Fraonir than any of their words. Devin knotted his hands into fists in helpless tension and nodded once.
Peydan turned toward the fires and the men without a word. They could hear his shouted orders echo back through the trees, and then the sound of weary soldiers making ready to travel.
"You'd better be right," Devin said quietly.
"I am. We do have scouts. Just head north by northeast and keep a watch out," Arlen said. "They are there. It shouldn't take you more than two days to find them if you ride hard."
Peydan returned, bringing torches and also Savvys, saddled and huffing at having his rest interrupted. Devin mounted, heart thudding, half panicked at the thought of riding farther away from Kyali and Taireasa—but there was something pulling in his guts again, and the direction was not down the mountain; it was north. He trusted it blindly, shaken and terrified that this would all go wrong.
Arlen laid a hand on his ankle and passed something heavy and awkward up to him. Devin had it in his hands before he realized he was holding a harp case. He pried it open, bewildered—it was odd timing, to put it mildly—and sucked in a startled gasp at the sight of the shining wood, the silver insets, the arc of the neck. The strings hummed softly as he shifted. He brushed one finger reverently over them and gasped again as the pulling feeling in his middle bloomed, for a flicker of an instant, into something potent and far too sure of itself.
"Dear gods," he whispered.
"Song you are," Arlen said, looking gravely up at him. "Song you shall be. Fare well, Devin Corwynall."
Devin closed the case before anything else could happen and settled the thick leather strap carefully over his shoulder. The weight of the harp felt disturbingly right against his spine.
"What do I tell these foreigners to convince them to come back with me?" he asked, having little hope of an answer. Answers were not easily come by here, it seemed. But Arlen surprised him again.
"Tell them," he said, “that they are welcome to shelter in our mountains. Tell them the Fraonir Clans offer aid."
CHAPTER 11
The stones were trembling.
Taireasa raised her head off an old cloak serving as a pillow and met High Chancellor—former High Chancellor Maldyn's worried gaze across the room. His tired eyes glittered in the dim candlelight. Beside her, Marta sat up, searching after a knife tucked in her skirts. All around, folk rose silently, guards straightening from a weary slump against the walls, servants and shopkeepers pulling themselves up from an exhausted sprawl on the dusty stones of the abandoned passageways.
Above their heads, shaking the very floors, was the sound of many booted feet.
"’At's another one, then," one of the villagers pronounced in a low, certain voice.
"Shh," a woman hissed. "Herself is thinking us a way out o’ here. Be still."
Herself wasn't, though. Herself had spent nearly two days under the noses of the enemy, hiding in the very walls of the castle she'd grown up in, and Herself was no closer to a plan to take back her capital than she had been the night she'd lost it.
She wished her father were here. She wished the Lord General were here.
She wished most of all that Kyali were here.
But Kyali had vanished from what Taireasa had been sure was her deathbed almost two days ago. Vanished with her terrible wounds, her sword and her daggers, and not a word. And three Western barons had died since then, killed in their bedrooms. Only Cyrnic remained—guarded, it was said, by ten men who went with him everywhere.
They had deserved it. She remembered their faces out of a stolen nightmare of agony and clenched her fists in the rough wool of her makeshift pillow.
They had deserved far worse, for what they had done.
But cold, calculated killing was not a thing she had ever known Kyali was capable of.
"Be easy," she said, realizing she had worried her audience of soldiers and servants with her silence. "If they had found us, it would not be a company of Western guards we'd hear overhead. Our enemy would be in the passages, and far quieter."
That statement was considerably less comforting than she'd planned.
"Aric," Taireasa said, to forestall panic; he was one of the steadiest of her newer guards, young and shadow-eyed with a bandaged wound on his arm. He came to kneel by her. "How many of the guard do we have with us now?"
"Three hundred eighty at last count, Majesty."
Majesty.
They all called her that. It was her father's title.
Her father was dead. Her mother was dead. Devin was somewhere else.
And Kyali was… absent. By choice, it seemed. She was all that was left: one lonely, terrified new queen completely inadequate to the task of saving herself, let alone saving a kingdom.
"And the stables?" she asked, for they had been trying to gain a foothold in that place. She suspected they were going to need horses very soon.
Aric leaned closer, murmuring in her ear, "We've men there now, m'lady. The bastards—’scuse me, Majesty. They aren't well guarded, the stables. We might take them."
She couldn't imagine what they would do with the stables if they did take them. There was no way to take the castle, or the town. Their scant reports suggested thousands from the Western armies were camped about both, and without the now-scattered battalions that lived at House Corwynall, they had no hope. It was said that those barons of the East that survived had fled to their own holds, which meant that there was truly no help coming. They were alone, she and some five hundred refugees, hiding under the enemy's nose and stealing food from the kitchens like mice.
They had to leave this place. But where could they go?
Devin, Taireasa sent out into the dark, shutting her eyes and hoping her mad idea would work, and got back a sense of immense weariness and the uneven swaying of a horse. It made her dizzy. This new awareness of her longtime friend was bewildering, and she got the sense that Devin was just as confused by it. Their Gifts were both waking, in some strange new way no court wizard had ever warned her they might.
The thought frightened her.
Devin was doing something—she thought he was trying to tell her what, and she could almost get the sense of it. She received a baffling flicker of impressions, images of forest and mountain, the exhausted faces of soldiers. She probed at it like a sore tooth, sensing that Devin was doing the same with her. It was awkward being this close. But it was comfort, too, far past what Marta or Maldyn or any of the others here could offer. It told her that things were happening beyond the stone she was hidden in, things that might eventually allow her to take back her father’s throne. Her throne. It told her that not all she loved had died.
But the bond s
he had briefly shared with Kyali was as absent as Kyali herself was.
"Do nothing tonight," Taireasa said, struggling to keep her mind in the present, for Devin's anguished resolve surged over her, making it hard to remember where she was for a moment. "But," she added, seeing Aric's disappointment, "I want more men stationed there. As many as we can keep secret. Tomorrow we move. We cannot stay here forever."
"Tomorrow," Aric echoed, looking thoughtful.
There was a murmur as the people around heard her and passed her words to their neighbors. She so hoped Kyali would arrive before then. The idea of leaving without her was unbearable. Taireasa fought down the swelling ache in her throat and set her jaw. They couldn't see her hesitate.
"Where shall we go, Majesty?" Maldyn asked, standing and coming close. Even in the faint light of their two candles, she could see the worry in his eyes. "We are many, and not easily moved in secret."
His words caused a hush. Taireasa sent an irritated look his way: he meant well, but she had enough to do, trying to hold five hundred refugees together, without her father's old chancellor questioning her judgment in front of them. "To the mountains," she said, and was startled at how certain she sounded. The idea was new, but she was as sure of its necessity as if she had spent days thinking it through. "To the Fraonir."
The hush around them grew deeper, and for a moment, she wanted to take the words back. She was proposing a journey that would take the wounded among them many days, on terrain that would leave them exposed and vulnerable until they made the treeline high up the slopes. If the last remaining baron of the West wished to find them, she was about to make it very easy for him.
They would need the horses badly now.
"Majesty…" Maldyn said. His tone was protest enough. She raised a hand to stop him from saying whatever else he was about to say.
"We cannot stay here, Maldyn. They will find this place eventually. There is no place in this city we could hide."
"But Majesty, surely we must fight! We cannot leave Faestan in their hands…"
"Fight?" Taireasa stood to face him. Her heart was pounding, but she managed to keep her voice level. She swept a hand around at the huddled refugees, the weary, wounded soldiers: the survivors. "There are five battalions occupying the city alone, sir. We are vastly outnumbered, poorly armed, and with many wounded. What would you suggest we do?"
"But…" The old man shrank into himself, then his jaw set and he met her eyes stubbornly. Even as she cursed his timing, Taireasa couldn't help but admire his courage. "Majesty, I beg your pardon, but… you mean for us to flee? To leave the city to these traitors?"
Behind him there was a soft whisper of agreement, mainly from the soldiers, whom she had not expected to like this plan.
"I mean for us to live," Taireasa said in a fierce, low tone. "And one day we will come back many thousands strong, and then I mean for us to win." She drew a breath, intending to add to that, but cheers followed her words, stunning her. They were instantly shushed, and there were clearly still many unhappy men among the guard, but it was enough. Maldyn bowed, looking unhappy and ashamed.
"Your servant, in all things," he murmured. Taireasa set a hand on his arm and smiled at him. He did mean well.
"Difficult, Majesty, retaking this keep once we have left it," someone else said, and she turned, weary of the argument already, to meet a pair of Corwynall-brown eyes in an unshaven face. Feldan, cousin of Devin and Kyali, and a lieutenant of the guard. His cousins crowded around him, looking uneasy.
"Impossible to take it as we are now," Taireasa replied calmly. "Unless you have some suggestion to the contrary, sir?"
Feldan bowed, but did not seem convinced. "No, Majesty. I merely state that—"
Behind him, up the passageway, came a sudden commotion.
Feldan spun, a dagger in his hand in an instant. Taireasa gripped Maldyn's arm, felt the tremor go through him. All around them, villagers rose and stumbled toward the walls as the soldiers in the group came forward.
Then the commotion died into a shocked silence.
Kyali slipped through the line of armed men, her sword looming over one shoulder. Her face was as still as marble. There wasn't a single wound on her that Taireasa could see, though only a handful of days had passed since... since.
She'd been so sure Kyali would die.
Taireasa stared, frozen and flushed all at once.
"Kyali," she breathed at last, the name seeming to rise right out of her heart. Her eyes filled with tears and she dug her fingernails into her palms. She would not cry. She took a step forward. "Oh, Kyali, thank the gods."
And Kyali bowed—bowed, oh gods, like a courtier or a servant, a gesture as hurtful as a slap across the face. Taireasa straightened and halted, jagged splinters of grief twisting in her chest. "Where have you been?" she asked, catching the words she wanted to say behind her teeth, glad her voice trembled only a little. And then she winced, because of course they all knew quite well where Kyali had been, and what she had been doing.
"Gathering the guard, Majesty."
The irony stung almost as much as that title did coming from her best friend's lips. Taireasa drew an unsteady breath and forced herself to a cold calm. Kyali had never been one to speak her heart, and certainly not in front of several hundred witnesses. It might not be more than that. She tried to believe it, but the utter lack of expression in Kyali's amber eyes, that perfect calm in the face of absolute disaster, was frightening.
"I have done the same, as you see," she said. Kyali's gaze took in the soldiers and villagers crowded around. "We have nearly four hundred, here in the passageways and at the stables. How many are you?"
"Thirty within the castle. Close to four hundred have gathered from the surrounding towns, scattered from Corwynall's estate. Those men wait beyond the walls."
"We must take the horses."
"We shall, Majesty. We are. Two pastures are emptying now, and at your word we will empty the stables themselves. Many of the men there are yours."
Which was to say they were Kyali's: men trained by the Lord General, loyal to the crown, but who had called House Corwynall home all their lives. Kyali and Devin would be a great comfort to such men.
They had been working to the same purpose. It was almost heartening, but Kyali had done this without her, clearly knowing all the while where to find her, and that fact cut her to the quick. "We plan to leave tomorrow," Taireasa said. It was so hard not to grab Kyali by her broad, leather-armored shoulders and shake her until she became the girl Taireasa had known only a few days before—the girl who would have greeted her with an embrace instead of a bow and a Majesty. Tears welled in her eyes, but she clenched her teeth and refused to let them fall.
They were changed, both of them, forever. Everything was changed.
"Aye," Kyali said, not an agreement, nor approval—acknowledgment of an order received. "We should make haste, Majesty. Tonight would be better. They are left lordless above, and will have discovered it by now, but Cyrnic and Walderan’s sons will be done squabbling over the throne and on our trail soon enough. We have the cover of dark. We should leave."
"Now it must be, then," Taireasa agreed. Her hands were starting to shake. If she had needed any proof that it was Kyali behind the killings of the Western barons, she certainly had it now.
She cleared her throat, willing herself as calm as she could. "Aric. Ready the back way out to the pastures. Take Ky—take the Lady Corwynall's orders in all things. The rest of you, gather what food you have stored and make ready for a long journey. We leave now."
Around them the murmur grew. She felt such a rush of relief at the thought of escaping these stone tunnels that she could almost forgive herself for abandoning Faestan.
She could not, however, forgive herself for what Kyali had done for her. And for what it had done to Kyali.
As the folk around them began to gather their meager collections of food and clothing, she and Kyali were left staring at one another in the
faint light of the candles. Kyali's eyes held only calm. There was no hint of her heart there, or in Taireasa's seeking mind. She gazed back at Taireasa, serene and indifferent, a stranger wearing a sister's face. Taireasa wrapped her arms about herself as a shudder twisted through her.
"Kyali," she whispered, knowing she would get no answer.
Kyali was alive, but Taireasa had lost her all the same.
CHAPTER 12
There was a menacing feeling in the air, like thunder, but the skies were clear. Kinsey wheeled his horse around, forcing several of his guards to rein their own mounts back, and glared upward. The cliffs above him were empty, as they had been all day. His men muttered.
Annan was looking at him again: he could feel that cool, sardonic stare piercing right through armor and cloth, boring into the tense spot between his shoulders.
He sighed. There was nothing on the cliffs and nothing in the trees, a heavy weight of nothing he could feel pressing down on him like hundreds of watching eyes, almost worse than being in his uncle's hostile court. At least at court he had known he was being watched. Here in the mountains, running into increasingly unfamiliar land, he had nothing but his growing suspicion and several thousand trees to blame.
He met his lieutenant's eyes completely by accident while turning his horse back. Annan said nothing, only raised an eyebrow, which said everything Annan didn't.
"Tell me you don't feel it," Kinsey challenged.
Annan leaned back in the saddle, looking guilelessly at the sky like a farmer checking for rain. A young man with the sandy complexion of a marshlander and the dour look of a priest, wearing the dull black armor of the elite King's Sword regiment and playing farmer. He even held a palm up. It was a perfect act, and Kinsey felt his mouth turning up at one corner. He made himself frown instead.
"I do indeed, m'lord prince," Annan said simply. His glance bounced to the cliffs at their left and back to Kinsey, and he straightened. "I would, however, like to point out that actively searching for an ambush is an excellent way to trip one."