The Councillor

by E. J. Beaton

  Below them, Jale entered the ring, his armor sending beams of gold up to the tiers. He was clad in a breastplate over a shirt of mail, while on the lower half he wore a skirt-like garment and a pair of sandals with sapphires in the heels. All of it blazed with gold, including his smallsword, which he whipped around.

  “He’s no fighter,” she heard one of the commoners below her mutter.

  “Go back to Lyria!” a woman shouted, pointing south. “Kill the spearfish!”

  This last was presumably directed to the mercenary who was walking across the sand: a man carrying a smallsword to match Jale’s but far exceeding him in stature. His horned helm gave him the aspect of a demon. Some of the crowd applauded him, throwing tiny bronze rackets at him as he swaggered forward. Jale was busy waving to someone in the box.

  Lysande’s stomach roiled. “Perhaps we should call off the bout,” she said, turning to Derset. “What if Prince Chamboise is killed?”

  “It would be a circumstance to be lamented, I am sure, but the rules cannot be changed once the tournament begins. The fighting code is—”

  “Axium law.” She nodded, glumly. “The Legilium should allow mercy.” She knew it better than almost anyone. Did she not still recall how the slap of her boots had reverberated through the stones of the eastern corridor as she hurried to the library, and how she had flipped through the illuminated manuscript, on the day that Sarelin had asked her to copy out the book of laws? She had not anticipated the transcriptions of other legal documents that would follow, nor the access to rare political tracts, nor, indeed, her growing skepticism.

  Below, Jale gave a deep bow to a group of Valderrans who were shouting insults at him.

  “If I were you, Prior, I’d be betting on Jale Chamboise,” Luca said into her ear. “Surely you know that he was trained in the style of his mother, one of the most famous fighters in Lyrian history.”

  “He looks scarcely of age.”

  “Appearances can be false friends. You, of all people, should know that.”

  She had no time to query his meaning. Flocke raised her arm and the roar of the crowd swept over them again as the horned man advanced toward Jale, swinging his sword loosely. Lysande watched as the mercenary raised his blade and lunged. Jale stepped backward, as gracefully as if he were dancing. As the man swung again, Jale’s legs wove behind each other to sidestep the man’s thrust.

  His opponent was left hacking at empty air. Some of the crowd shouted in anger, but a few were cheering the prince. “He has agility,” Derset said, shaking his head.

  “Prince Chamboise could slay the best fighters in the realm, in the southern style. Trained himself to meet his mother’s standard.” Dante drew himself up proudly. “No soldier in Lyria can match him.”

  Lysande’s concerns about her head pains were soon forgotten. She was curious about the First Sword’s tone, which sat at odds with that of the other northerners. As they watched the southern prince, the rest of the Valderrans looked close to snarling. Dante ignored them, a smile burgeoning on his face as he watched the ring.

  Lysande remembered how Jale had watched Dante at the banquet, as if he had needed to drink in the sight of him. She fancied that something of the sort was happening now, with the roles reversed.

  Jale moved with such speed that the horned man was forced to pivot dumbly, trying to keep up. The young prince circled around, then changed directions, darting left and right. The mercenary seemed encouraged by this display, for he charged after Jale, lumbering.

  Only when the man was almost upon him did Jale move, ducking under his sword arm, weaving around and leaping into the air, a blur of gold, clinging to the man’s back and wrapping his legs around his waist. It would be the work of a moment to press the tip of his sword to the big man’s neck, Lysande thought, but Jale did not drive it in. He was saying something. Within seconds, Jale climbed off, and the big man fell to his knees and groveled.

  “A yield!” Flocke declared.

  Jale dusted off the sides of his armor and grinned at the crowd. A stunned silence had fallen over the Arena. For a few seconds, no one moved in the tiers; then Dante stood up and began to clap.

  Behind him, the Valderrans rose and joined the applause. The sound brought the rest of the audience to their senses, and they rose too, breaking into a roar so loud that Litany’s cheers were drowned out, her mouth seeming to move like a puppet in a show. Lysande felt a wave of relief.

  “Amazing!” she cried, standing up too. “Power and mercy!”

  “Well, he’s beaten Dante’s time, that’s for sure,” Luca said. “Best news of the day.” Yet Dante was cheering as loudly as any of them, beaming.

  “How noble of the First Sword to applaud,” Litany said as they sat down again.

  “Noble, or foolish.” Cassia leaned across from her other side. “An ice-bear should eat a fish, not befriend it. But alliances have made fools of wiser leaders. When a northerner and a southerner let tales of romance be peddled . . . well, they sew up their own shrouds.”

  Halfway to questioning her meaning, Lysande looked into Cassia’s face. In that moment, she became keenly aware of things she had never touched: the cool metal of throne-arms, the glimmering weave of cloth-of-gold, and the impracticably heavy hilt of a gem-studded sword. Instinct held her back. If you had lived as copper or brass, you could not pitch yourself into the world of silver lineage; you could not speak with the thoughtless confidence of those who shone.

  “Everyone knows the story about how the First Sword of Valderos saved Jale Chamboise from a blizzard on his first trip north. They have been as sworn brothers since,” Cassia added, sniffing, as if the idea of fraternity were risible. “All pageantry.”

  Jale returned to the box just as Cassia finished speaking, and Dante strode over to greet him, clapping him on the back. Lysande could not share the Irriqi’s judgment; she felt that there was something genuinely warm about the bond between the two princes, expressed in that embrace. Dante’s hand lingered on Jale’s shoulder for a few seconds longer than a customary royal greeting, and as Dante whispered something to Jale, he leaned in slightly closer than was usual among those of high rank, almost touching his lips to Jale’s ear.

  “I hear the wolves that you Axiumites put out to fight afterward are extremely savage,” Cassia said, leaning over again.

  “Well, I should hope they aren’t too violent—”

  “My guards have been looking forward to it all week. They want to see if the beasts in this part of Elira draw blood like ours do, you know? From the jugular.” Cassia tapped her neck. “I hope your baiter can shake that banner hard.”

  Lysande could not find a suitable reply. Her eyes settled on a young man in a shirt that had seen better years, let alone better days, standing beside the cage.

  “That must be my signal,” Cassia said, looking down at the ring. “You will excuse me, Lysande.”

  “Good luck, Irriqi.”

  “Perhaps we will share a bottle of Pyrrhan white when this tournament is over. You saved my life, after all.” Cassia was smiling, as much as she seemed capable. She departed to receive her armor, and Lysande tried to keep her face impassive, despite the frothing of pride and honor inside her.

  Lysande. It was best to focus on Cassia’s use of her first name; not to dwell on the word jugular, nor on the threadbare young man by the cage, holding a bolt of cloth.

  Dante and Jale had settled down side by side, she could not help noticing; Jale’s hair was rumpled, his cheeks slightly flushed, and he looked pleased and flustered in equal amounts. Dante was whispering something to him again.

  Cries of “western scum” followed the Irriqi as she descended into the ring, but Cassia did not respond, striding across to the center. She moved in her bronze armor as if it were featherweight. Upon reaching Flocke, she waved a weapon in a curved sheath at the Keeper.

  “She can�
��t fight with a Pyrrhan sword,” Jale said, sounding more than a little smug. “No mercenary will know how to use one.”

  As they watched, Cassia gave her hooked sword to a waiting attendant with a glare and exchanged it for an ordinary blade.

  “She’ll do something clever with it anyway,” Luca remarked. “If you’ve usurped the Qamaras, you can fight with a lot more than just brute force.”

  Flocke raised her hand, and the whole box leaned forward. Lysande was aware of hard ropes of tension in her shoulders, the same ropes she had felt pulling inside her many times since Sarelin’s death. Derset’s words from the crypt echoed in her head: Beautiful, yes, but more than that. They can all kill.

  The fighters raised their swords. Cassia took a few paces to the left, watching her opponent. The mercenary wore a spiked helm fashioned of thick bronze, its points honed so that it was practically a weapon itself, and he advanced on Cassia with his blade high. The Irriqi swatted the man away. There was a certain thrill in watching her move.

  The next slash came at her ribs, and Cassia pushed the mercenary back with a parry. The mercenary retreated, sword raised. Lysande recognized the quarter-beat maneuver, traced the positions of Cassia’s steps, as if she were following the diagram in ink again. The movement created the impression of being out of reach: she had studied it, among other tactics, in a book of tournament advice, a tangent from many hours of attempting to learn battle strategies, the fruits of which she had added to her own political treatise.

  Cassia was illustrating the theory, as if teaching everyone how to keep an eye on your opponent from a vantage point. You could sense the skill of attack even when it was not being used, Lysande thought. The essence of it seeped into your skin, your hair, the spit beneath your tongue.

  “She has no stomach for a fight,” Jale declared.

  “I think she’s waiting for something,” Lysande said, watching Cassia circle.

  As the mercenary lunged at Cassia a third time, both hands on his sword, the Irriqi’s arm dropped low. With a flick of her wrist, she sent the sword slicing through the air, flying toward the man’s legs, quick and bright in the sun.

  “You can’t throw a sword!” Jale cried.

  But as they watched, the blade landed swiftly in the mercenary’s right thigh. He bent over, screaming.

  “Apparently, you can,” Luca said.

  The mercenary made a hopeless lurch at Cassia. Cassia did not bother to finish the man off; only deflected his clumsy blow and shouted at him. The mercenary knelt on one leg.

  The crowd exploded with noise, this time not pausing to confer. Some of them applauded, while others were jeering Cassia and calling out insults. “That was at least a minute faster than you,” Dante shouted at Jale above the roar, grinning.

  “Oh, wonderful,” Jale said. “She’ll be so gracious about it, I know.”

  As Cassia climbed back up, the Pyrrhans maintained a furor of clapping and shouting. Watching Cassia move with sure steps, leopard-fierce, reminded Lysande of the woman she had admired most. No wonder she felt an affinity for the Irriqi. She could not help but find sketchwork everywhere when she held Sarelin’s portrait in her mind.

  The Keeper was waving from the sand. Luca got to his feet.

  “I believe that is my cue,” he said.

  He had been sitting beside her for so long that she had almost forgotten he would be competing. Her gaze returned to his throat. It lingered too long, she realized.

  Looking up again, she found him watching her and saw not the repulsion she expected, but a faint hint of interest in his features—not quite concealed—and then it was gone. Had he seen the direction of her gaze? Or was he just wondering why she was staring, curious about her attitude?

  “Tread with care, Your Highness,” she said.

  “I always tread with care around people in helms.”

  “You seem very confident. Are you aware that your opponent could cut your throat?”

  “I grew up in the court of Rhime, Prior. Throat-cutting is commonplace before repast, along with backstabbing and shooting through the neck. We salt our bread with conspiracy.”

  They looked at each other for a moment. The single ruby at the collar of his cloak glistened in the light.

  “Tell me, did you really kill your brother, Fontaine, or is that just a rumor?”

  He smiled, but with no mirth this time. “The most dangerous rumors are fashioned out of truth. Or so Volerus wrote. You should know.”

  I should know? She wanted to echo the remark. But he was still watching her closely.

  “I was forgetting. I am just an inkflower.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you are just anything, Prior.”

  He left the box and made to join the Rhimese party. Lysande did not notice the movement beside her until she found Derset standing at her shoulder.

  It was a relief to have him beside her again. Taking her cue to sit, Derset settled himself and looked from side to side. The others were all occupied with chatting or pointing at people in the crowd, but he hesitated; his glance searched her face, and she had the impression that he knew exactly why she had changed their entertainment.

  “Whoever killed Queen Sarelin is clever . . . and careful,” Derset said.

  Lysande looked out at the stone tiers for a moment. If there was anyone to ask, it was her advisor, who had served her with nothing but faithfulness. She caught the thought as it landed. As she examined her reasoning, she felt the touch of the hand of grief, and knew that it was not only Derset’s encouragement that had bought her trust but the things he had not said—that welling of emotion she had detected in his features every time she spoke of Sarelin.

  There were some tasks you could not delegate. One problem had been weighing on her mind since that day in the royal suite, but Sarelin’s dying words had been entrusted to her alone, and whatever the sympathies of your advisor, Lysande thought, you could not weigh the words of those you loved, parceling them out with paper and twine; you could not spread the burden to others. If she had found no trace of the Shadows in any book in the library, then it was a warning to search harder.

  “I wish I could say we had pinned her down by now.” Derset’s voice was soft. Lysande found herself going over a previous exchange in her head—doves sent to his contacts in the Periclean States—no credible hint of Mea Tacitus’ location. She remembered how they had brainstormed, clutching cups of sweet red tea as they leaned over their papers in the Oval, crossing out ideas. Derset’s posture had relaxed more with each minute they spent together. He had even spoken about Sarelin without blushing, twice.

  “What of our neighbors, my lord?”

  “Captain Hartleigh is investigating the sinking of one of our ships. Apparently, the reports of a Bastillonian captain attacking our vessel persist.”

  She thought of the shape of the Three Lands on the map, with Elira squeezed in the middle between Royam and Bastillón, yet unmolested. “They lack our climates, they lack our peoples, and so they lack our goods. Sarelin said that to me, once, about the Bastillonians. Most of all, she told me, the easterners lack steel and tempero. Why would they risk a trade war now?”

  “I know not how they mean to benefit by this.”

  She could not help frowning. “And then there is the tactical outlook. All wrong.”

  “My lady?”

  “The Bastillonians are subtle. The Royamese are direct. Two hundred years of historical and political records attest to the fact.” She was aware that she sounded irritable. “Yet we are supposed to absorb that the Bastillonians are attacking us on the open seas, without provocation.” When words in scrolls and books did not match envoys’ claims, the whole situation felt dangerous.

  Derset was looking at her with an interest she had begun to like. She could not ignore her propensity to indulge it, to feel the glow of his respect and admiration whenever she
explained her reasoning, yet she was sensible of the dangers of this new egotism: of its allure.

  “Here comes the prince,” Litany interjected, leaning toward them.

  Luca wore a black suit of armor with a few silver cobras on the arm-guards; like his robe, Lysande thought, the plates set off his hair and eyes, lending him a startling beauty. But when he moved, he slipped between definitions, something beyond a prince or a man; his body became a river, each step flowing into the next, unmaking itself, yet promising a flood.

  All around the stone tiers, women and men went quiet. There were no jibes or curses this time, nor applause. The prince carried a bow in his hands, a sleek, silver instrument, and his quiver boasted arrows with stems far longer than any Lysande had seen; their ends looked sharp enough to cut diamonds.

  “The crowd must like him,” Litany said, turning to Lysande. “They seem quiet.”

  Silence in an arena meant something different than silence in a courtroom, Lysande observed. She stared at the figure on the sand. There was no chance of thinking of their neighbors, now.

  Luca examined his arrows, running a finger along the edge of one shaft. He did not spare a single glance for the crowd, nor for his opponent, a hulk of a woman, bigger than all of the other three opponents so far; the mercenary was nearly bursting out of her armor, and she wore a helm with thick horns. If the two ever got close enough to drop their bows and trade blows, Lysande did not like the prince of Rhime’s chances.

  Yet something about Luca’s movement warned her that he was looking ahead, into moves and counter-moves, seeing all the shifting possibilities and readying himself to shift around them. Lysande guessed that he knew the exact shape and condition of the arrow he was holding. Taking his time, he gave the impression that he had not even noticed the huge mercenary standing opposite him.

  The Rhimese fight with their intellect. Sarelin’s tone had not been complimentary when she said that, crouched next to a wounded Axium captain.

  “In Lyria, we say a bow is a coward’s weapon,” Jale said, looking over at Lysande. “You just stand back at twenty paces, and—thwing!”