The Shadow's Heir

by K J Taylor

  She put off returning to the cabin as long as she could, but eventually everyone else had gone to bed except for the sailors who were on watch, and Oeka was becoming impatient.

  Drunk and exhausted, Laela stumbled back into the cabin. Arenadd was in his hammock, apparently asleep, and she pulled her boots off and flopped onto the bed, her head spinning. Oeka curled up beside her as usual, and went to sleep.

  Laela couldn’t sleep.

  She lay awake for most of the night, not wanting to close her eyes. Whenever she did, images of dead children would flash behind her eyelids, and her addled brain convinced her that if she went to sleep, they would follow her.

  Her head flopped sideways on the pillow, and she stared at the vague shape that was Arenadd. He wasn’t moving at all, and she imagined him sleeping peacefully, without any nightmares. How could anyone rest that well when he’d done what he had—and liked it?

  The memory rose up again. “Pretty maid, dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss a fellow. By mistake she kissed a snake . . .” Laela murmured the words to herself several times, trying to remember how the rhyme ended.

  She couldn’t remember.

  Arenadd stirred and sighed in his sleep.

  By mistake she kissed a snake, Laela thought, and rolled over.

  She had been lying like that for some time before she realised she was hearing something strange. She stilled and concentrated, her heart beating faster.

  It sounded like a voice.

  Laela rolled over again and sat up, tense now. The voice was coming from somewhere to her right, and she relaxed very slightly when she realised what it was—it was Arenadd, talking in his sleep. The words were mumbled and difficult to make out, but Laela listened intently, wondering what someone like him would say in his sleep.

  When she finally did realise just what he was saying, she flinched and put a hand to her mouth.

  “. . . help me . . .”

  Laela shivered.

  “Help me,” Arenadd repeated. “Please, someone let me out, please . . . help . . .”

  Laela put her head under the pillow and fought to make herself sleep.

  22

  Amoran

  Two days after the slaughter of the pirates, the Seabreath came within sight of Amoran. Arenadd, to the silent horror of everyone on board, put his robe back on before spending half a day grooming in his cabin. Laela, still trying to stay out of his way, found herself hustled back into their quarters shortly before they were due to reach land.

  “What do yeh want?” she asked, unable to hide her unease around him.

  Whatever new energy Arenadd had gained from his killing frenzy had worn off by now, and he looked grim and solemn, but businesslike. “We’re going to follow the river from here, and we should dock in Instabahn tonight.”

  “So?”

  Arenadd rolled his eyes. “Laela, can you just for one moment forget your utter inability to stand on ceremony and take it into your head that the Emperor and his entire court are going to be waiting for us there?”

  Laela blanched. “What’m I gonna have to do?”

  “Look respectable for once,” Arenadd said shortly. “I’ve got an outfit picked out for you. But first we’re going to do something about that hair.”

  Instinctively, she clutched at it. “What’s wrong with . . . ?”

  Arenadd prodded her curls. “What’s wrong with them? They’re a tangled mess, that’s what’s wrong with them. When was the last time you even combed? Dear gods, girl, curly hair takes looking after! Take it from someone who spends most of his private time trying to stop his from turning into a rat’s nest! Now come here, and I’ll show you a few things that can help . . .”

  Laela trundled after him and listened with vague hopelessness as he showed her various bottles of lotion and different combs and brushes, and explained how they should be used and in what order. Outwardly, she looked bored and irritated, but inwardly she was fighting against her own confusion. He killed so many people yesterday, she told herself. He cut a baby to pieces. He looked me in the eye an’ told me he loved doin’ it. He . . .

  But she couldn’t keep reminding herself of that while that same man was waving a bottle of softening conditioner in her face and proudly extolling its detangling virtues.

  All of a sudden, she had to stop herself from laughing. This was insane.

  “. . . have you got all of that?”

  Laela pulled herself together. “Er, yeah, I think so . . .”

  “Good, then I’ll leave this by the tub for you—there’s already plenty of water in there. Now, time to show you your outfit. I think you’ll like it.”

  Laela had expected a new dress. What she found instead was something she recognised but had never thought she would wear herself.

  “Dear gods, is that . . . ?”

  “Of course,” said Arenadd. “I had my tailors make it. You’re entitled to wear it.”

  It was a griffiner’s ceremonial outfit. It looked as if the tailor who’d made it had started with a fairly ordinary gown made from a rich brown-gold fabric, before they’d added a patch of brown fur attached to a long “tail” that reached almost to the ground, and had sewn hundreds of small feathers onto the bodice until it was as fluffy as a bird’s chest. The shoulders and sleeves had been decorated with more feathers, but these were definitely griffin feathers—huge, long, strong wing feathers that formed a kind of cape. They were brown, too.

  “Not Oeka’s,” Arenadd told her. “Normally, she’d have to donate the feathers, but she’s too young for hers to be long enough, so we found a griffin who was about her colour and collected some from his nest.”

  Laela fingered the outfit, noting the green gems sewn into the fabric and the embroidered vine designs. “This is . . .”

  “How do you like it?” said Arenadd.

  Laela caved in. “I can’t wear this! This is . . .”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s magnificent,” said Laela. “I can’t wear somethin’ like this! I’m just a—”

  “You’re a griffiner,” said Arenadd. “You have to wear it. I’ll be wearing mine.”

  “I s’pose so.” In fact, Laela was dying to try it on.

  “Clean yourself up first,” Arenadd advised.

  After he’d left, and she had some privacy, Laela bathed and washed her hair—following his instructions as well as she could remember. She was surprised to find that the lotions worked as well as Arenadd had claimed, and after using them and the various combs he’d left, her hair was clean and neater than it had ever been.

  Once she was dry, she put on the ceremonial outfit. It made her feel so important that she didn’t even notice how hot it was. She walked around the cabin, trying to get used to the feeling of the feathers on her shoulders.

  Oeka darted excitedly around her. “A true griffiner at last!” she chirped. “We will be an impressive sight to the Amoranis.”

  Laela understood her well enough to catch the gist of it, and she grinned. “Griffins are impressive, an’ now I’m dressed up like one.” She fingered the patch of feathers on the front of her gown, and wondered how long it must have taken someone to sew them all on. And Arenadd had had it all prepared, just to surprise her.

  A chill disturbed her good mood. Not for the first time, she wondered helplessly how someone could be so kind and generous one moment, and so utterly depraved the next. The man was a walking contradiction.

  As if reading her mind, Arenadd appeared at that moment. “How d’you like it?”

  “It’s amazin’,” said Laela. “Perfect fit.”

  Arenadd looked her up and down. “Well, I never. You actually look like a lady now. Who would have thought it?”

  Laela grinned and shoved him. “Yeah, well, I’m still waitin’ for the part where you start lookin’ like a King.”

  “You don’t think I do?” he asked, unexpectedly serious.

  “Not really,” said Laela. “I s’pose I think of yeh as
a man first an’ a King second.”

  Arenadd’s face creased into a smile. “And that’s why I like you so much.”

  Laela smiled back without thinking. Somewhere inside at that moment, she realised that no matter what he’d done, she couldn’t hate him.

  “Something on your mind?” Arenadd inquired.

  “Nah, just wonderin’ how long it’ll be till we’re there,” said Laela. “How long’s it been since we left home, anyway? I lost track.”

  “Just over four months,” said Arenadd. “We made pretty good time. Now, I’d better go and talk to our fellow griffiners and make sure everyone knows how they’re expected to conduct themselves. The Amorani have different expectations than we do, you know.”

  Laela did know. During the voyage, she’d spent some time listening to Vander describe how she would be expected to conduct herself in Amoran. Their laws and customs sometimes sounded weird to her, but at their root they weren’t that much different than the ones she knew.

  “Ain’t this excitin’?” she said to Oeka. “Amoran, at last!”

  Oeka clicked her beak. “Soon, we shall meet a mighty ruler indeed.”

  “Yeah,” said Laela. “An Emperor, eh? Fancy that.”

  “And his human, of course,” Oeka conceded. “Now, I think that while we have time, you should fulfil your duty as my own human.”

  Laela guessed what she was getting at quickly enough—this “duty” was one Arenadd had taught her about, and she’d practised it several times. She went into the cabin and fetched the brush and the talon-cleaning tools. When she returned, she found several adult griffins already on deck, being groomed by their humans.

  “Little room for us,” said Oeka. “Others will take their place once these have done. We shall go back into our nest.”

  Laela nodded and retreated, not wanting to be around that many large griffins anyway. In the cabin, she spent a good chunk of time brushing Oeka’s furred hindquarters, going over each patch until the fur was smooth and glossy. After that, she had to go through her feathers, looking for parasites and removing any dead or damaged feathers. Oeka didn’t like that much, and hissed warningly once or twice, but she kept still and let her finish before obligingly lifting her forepaws one by one so that Laela could clean the talons.

  Once that was done, Laela took a bottle of very expensive scented oil and rubbed some into Oeka’s beak—making it shine as if it had been polished.

  After that, she could rest and have something to eat, while the griffin groomed her wings herself.

  When she was fairly sure the grooming up on deck was over (she waited until the ship had stopped rocking so much), she went back outside. Sure enough, only one or two were left, and the rest were in the air, following the ship as it drifted up the mighty River Erech.

  From the deck, Laela could see the faint lights of buildings on the riverbank, and her heart began to flutter. She was seeing the first tiny parts of Amoran—a country that, among their party, only Vander had ever seen, one so far away that most Cymrians believed it didn’t even exist except in legends.

  Oeka, of course, looked completely unflustered. “Amorani griffins are smaller than us,” she remarked. “I shall feel very much at home, I think.”

  “Yeah.” Laela was finding her partner easier to understand all the time.

  There didn’t seem to be much more to say after that, and girl and griffin stood together in silence on the stern, watching as the lights of Instabahn came into view at last.

  Laela knew they were there when the griffiners assembled on deck. All of them were wearing their ceremonial outfits. Laela, sweating horribly in hers, went to join them.

  Arenadd was there, also, and he, too, was in his ceremonial clothing. His, however, rather than being a tunic enhanced with feathers and fur, was based on a robe. It looked more or less like one of his customary black robes, but the area over his chest was covered in Skandar’s silver feathers, and the wing feathers on his shoulders and sleeves were a mix of silver, black, and white. The patch of fur below the feathers on the chest was white, and the end of the “tail” had been decorated with a fan of more feathers in imitation of a griffin’s own.

  He was wearing the crown, too.

  “Okay,” said Laela, coming to stand beside him as he’d beckoned her to. “Now yeh look like a King.”

  “A King ready to meet an Emperor,” Arenadd murmured. “Now, remember your manners, Laela. I’d rather you didn’t embarrass me.”

  Laela nodded sternly and stood a little taller.

  Instabahn’s harbour came in sight. The ship angled toward it and came to a sedate halt as the sailors dropped the anchor and threw ropes to the waiting Amoranis.

  A few moments later, the sailors had thrown down a wide ramp, and Arenadd walked down it with Oeka and Laela in step beside him. She had been aboard ship for so long that she stumbled a little, and her head spun before she managed to recover herself.

  The moment Arenadd set foot on solid ground—the Mighty Skandar came down to land by his side as if from nowhere. He, too, had been groomed, and his gleaming feathers and fur only made him look more magnificent.

  Arenadd walked on without missing a step, ignoring the other griffins, who landed as their own humans stepped off the ramp.

  Ahead, the great court of Instabahn was waiting for them—dozens of men and women, dressed in their strange finery, most with griffins beside them.

  At their head was a bald man of indeterminate age, wearing nothing but a yellow-and-blue-striped kilt, a pair of sandals, and a heavy collar decorated with dozens of tear-shaped jewels.

  Arenadd walked straight toward him, halted, put his hands together, and bowed. Then he spoke—in Amorani.

  The bald man smiled and put his hands together and bowed before he replied in the same language.

  “An honour,” said Arenadd, using Cymrian now. “Great Khalid, Master of Amoran.”

  The bald man smiled again. “I am sorry that I do not speak your own language, Great King,” he said in very good Cymrian. “If I did, rest assured I would use it.”

  “Your courtesy is not in doubt,” said Arenadd. “I am honoured merely to meet you at last. Sacred Ruler, this is my partner, the Mighty Skandar, greatest of all griffins in my Kingdom.”

  Khalid bowed deeply to Skandar. “It is a great joy of my life that I have met such a magnificent griffin,” he said—using griffish now.

  Skandar peered at him, and snorted. “Furless human!” he declared.

  After a moment of painful silence, the Emperor burst out laughing. “Observant, indeed, Mighty Skandar!” he said.

  Arenadd smiled slightly. “My partner has a habit of saying just what he thinks, Great Emperor.”

  “So I have noticed,” said the Emperor. “Now, who is your companion, who looks so much like you?”

  Laela panicked for half a heartbeat, and then imitated Arenadd’s bow. “I am the Lady Laela,” she recited. “Master of Wisdom and chief advisor to the King. And this is Oeka, a very powerful griffin.”

  Oeka moved closer to her to show her pleasure. “We are both honoured to meet you, Sacred Ruler.”

  The Emperor looked at Laela with interest, and then he looked at Arenadd. “I see the ability to rise to great power is in your family’s blood, Great King.” He paused briefly, before his smile returned even more warmly than before. “Now, my own family and I are happy to welcome you to our home, and to invite you to come and share food and wine with us.”

  “We shall be honoured to accept, Sacred Ruler,” said Arenadd.

  The Emperor paused for a moment, and his smile became much more genuine. “My lord Vander!”

  Vander came forward, bowing low. He greeted his master in formal-sounding Amorani, but the Emperor laughed and embraced him. Vander returned the embrace while Ymazu—now heavily pregnant—looked on approvingly.

  Laela smiled to herself. Amoranis weren’t so different after all.

  After that, they were ushered away from the dock
and walked with the Emperor and his court along a paved road lined with enormous stone pillars and into a large building.

  Inside, it was warmly lit, and dozens of low tables filled the space. A hall, Laela thought.

  But while a hall in Malvern would have had wooden beams and probably some spears or hanging animal skins by way of decoration, this one was so rich it took Laela’s breath away. The walls and roof were completely smooth, as if they had been made all in one piece. The room was made all in sensual curves and elegant domes and arches, and everything had been painted. Laela saw images of brown-skinned women dancing and playing instruments, griffins using magic to cover a pillar in swirling patterns of red and green, and a massive flower opening to reveal a golden man with a serene smile.

  Flowers were everywhere, in elaborate gold holders on the walls and on the pillars that held up the ceiling. More decorated the tables—ornamental vines, lush with blooms, flowing over the wood.

  Laela realised her mouth was hanging open. She shut it again, so she could use it for a disbelieving grin.

  Even Oeka looked taken aback. “Such magnificence!” she chirped. She spread her wings and fluttered them a little, as if trying to calm herself down. “What power humans possess!”

  “What power these humans possess,” said Laela. “This place must be the most magnificent building in the country!”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” said Arenadd from behind her.

  “Argh!” Laela turned sharply. “I hate it how yer always doin’ that!”

  Arenadd grinned. “Call it a bad habit. Now, let’s mingle, shall we? I think the Emperor will want to introduce me to his daughter in a moment.”

  The other griffiners had already spread themselves around the room and were beginning to mingle with their hosts—using griffish to talk to them.

  “Everyone in Amoran speaks griffish,” said Arenadd. “It’s a sacred language to them—apparently they believe that Xanathus only listens to prayers spoken in it.”