by Anne Leonard
Liko stumbled backward, almost falling into the chair as though he had forgotten it. What the hell? Alric caught him hard about the arm and forced him to stand. With his foot he pulled back the chair. It fell over with a loud crash.
Corin took a step. The man shrank away from him. Alric moved his sword. Corin shook his head and motioned the guard back. “What just happened, Liko?” he asked softly.
“Nothing, my lord, I swear it.”
“If your drinking has gotten bad enough to give you the rats, you’re no use to me.”
“It’s not that bad.” He held his arm out. It trembled no more than anyone’s would.
“Then stop lying. Tell me what you saw.”
Liko swallowed. “Just—the shadow. A trick of light. That’s all. It startled me.”
That was a lie too. Something had frightened the man, but he did not know what. A trick of the light. Corin had the uneasy feeling that it was something he had done himself, something he should have recognized. He glanced at Bron again for reassurance and was not reassured at all by the look of unease on the captain’s face. Had Bron seen something too?
Then he put that thought aside, as he was well trained to do. The trick of the light had pushed whatever else Liko lied about deeper within him. There would be no quick way of getting it out now. It could be anything. Doubtless Liko had his own elaborate sets of plans that would be easily upset if Corin or his men poked around the docks too much. It seemed useless to press any further at the moment.
“Keep your eyes open. Someone besides Cade is putting his nose where it doesn’t belong. He’ll be down here eventually,” he said. “And you had damn well better answer the questions of anyone else I send.”
Liko made a bow that just escaped being mockery. Corin glared warningly at him and went out.
The rain seemed wonderfully cleansing. He spat. Without a word Bron handed him a flask. Water. “Thank you,” he said, returning it.
“You got more out of him than I thought you would,” Bron said.
In other circumstances Corin might have responded with a wry remark. This time all he said was, “It was adequate. Do you believe it?”
“Yes, sir, mostly. But I still don’t trust him. He may be honest, but I don’t think he’s reliable.”
Corin had one foot in the stirrup. He stopped. “Why not?”
“He’s frightened. When people are frightened they make mistakes.”
“You’re right there,” Corin said. He had thought he might be doing that very thing himself. He mounted and leaned over to address Bron. “Are you afraid of the other world, Bron?”
“You mean all that rubbish about the dead, sir? There’s enough to worry about in this world. But—” He went silent.
“But what? Go ahead.”
“It’s the same kind of stories people were telling in the north. I don’t like it.”
“Nor I. Any guess as to why he didn’t want to tell me?”
Bron shook his head, then said, “I think he believes it more than he’s let on. Something’s got to him.”
“Sarians?” Corin asked.
“He knows better than that, even drunk.”
That was a fair assessment. No, whatever Liko was afraid of, it was less tangible than a fire weapon. Bad things are going to happen, Corin. Don’t let them take you unaware. He was convinced now that Aram had been talking about something besides war. Something that put a cold grip around his heart and held on while the world spun away into the dark. Something more suited to hexes and visions. You’ll need them later, Joce said about the wizards. Later seemed to be approaching far too quickly. He should question Joce. Question his father, damn it. But when he tried to frame a question even here, the words would not come.
It was not worth thinking about in a downpour. He picked up the reins. His horse lifted its head. “What do you think of what he said about Cade?”
Bron didn’t answer immediately. He mounted his own horse and looked around. He sidled his horse closer to Corin’s and said in words hard to hear above the slap of rain, “Whatever Cade was doing smells worse than this place, sir.”
Corin had already come to the same conclusion. “I’m afraid you’re right,” he said to Bron. “We’ve work to do.” He kneed his horse into motion.
The rest of the evening unfolded before him: long discussions with his father, with Gerod, more bad news exchanged, piling tasks on everyone, and sometime well after midnight a cold, solitary bed. It didn’t have to be, of course. Other women besides Seana would come quite happily to him. A prince need never be in want of lovers. That bold woman at dinner would require only a wink.
He thought of Tam and was stunned at how quickly the desire for her filled him. She seemed a decent, honorable woman. She would never come into his bed, so why was he taunting himself by pretending there was a chance at it? He should try to forget about her. She was too beautiful not to have formed an attachment to someone already. It was unreasonable to think she would break it for him, when he could give her nothing.
But now that he had called up the image of her, those eyes, he could not banish it. Hell. What was he getting himself into? Worse, what was he going to drag her into, through, that she did not deserve? Why did it matter to him what happened to her?
He swore aloud. No one heard.
They were crossing a narrow street in a silent shop district when the attack happened. Riders came at them from either side. What he remembered most afterward were the splashes of water from the horses’ hooves and the reflection of the streetlight on the wet blade of his sword. The guards went into a circle around him before it became obvious to everyone that it was at least two to one against, even with him, and that it was an ill-affordable luxury for him not to fight.
It was loud. The clang of sword blades, the grunts and breaths of the men, the whickers of the horses, the creaking wet leather, the rain. He had his hood back to see, and it was not long before the cloak itself became too hot as he sweated. Strike, parry, thrust, block, again and again. His wrist began to ache, although he was strong enough to keep his arm steady. There were two men against him, one on either side, the water running down their skin in little rivulets. He was taller, with a longer reach, and lither. He was also much the better rider, which was all that gave him the time to hold off both of them.
One of them leaned forward. Corin saw at once that it was too far. He lowered his point, then swung around in a half circle to the man’s inside and caught him with a fast clean thrust to the heart before the man could reengage. The man slid forward and fell as Corin pulled the point free. He thwacked the horse with the flat of the blade to get it to move and ducked the other man’s swing at the same time. He came up, swung himself, and clashed his blade against the other’s, which did not waver.
Brute strength was not going to save him. He had to find some other way to win. He stopped resisting and used the second when the man rebalanced to step the horse back. They paused a moment, both breathing hard. Corin risked a quick look and saw that all the other men were occupied with one another. No one was coming either to his rescue or his opponent’s. He wiped the water out of his eyes.
He kneed his horse forward and leaned over for a two-handed blow at his opponent’s elbow. The man raised his sword quickly, but not quickly enough, and Corin cut neatly through cloth and muscle to the bone. The man’s hand unclasped as the nerves and tendons let go, and blood fountained everywhere. He screamed, a terrible animal sound of pain. His sword fell, the hilt striking Corin’s leg on its way to the ground, but the man, amazingly, stayed seated.
It would be murder to kill him, defenseless, though he would likely die of the wound. Corin watched from somewhere else as his sword rose and fell. At the last second he found the will to twist it so that the blow came with the flat. That was enough to knock the man from his horse. The horse ran without urging.
Corin wiped his eyes again and smelled the blood on his hands. He looked around him at the fighting. The fight was much more even in numbers now, which meant the guards had the advantage. He realized several more soldiers had come—Bron’s backup.
Then one of the other men wheeled sharply around to face him. He went on the offensive, sword raised, and this time when the blades crashed against each other, his the harder, he felt a profound pleasure in knowing he was going to win.
It took all of three swift strokes before he had his sword at the man’s neck, point pressing lightly into the skin. He felt light and quick and powerful. He did not remember ever having moved that fast before.
“Drop your weapon,” he said. The man looked at him, then grimaced and pushed himself forward. The sword went in smoothly and neatly. Blood poured out his mouth and from his neck. He toppled. Corin pulled the blade out numbly before the man’s weight took him down too. A man who would kill himself rather than face capture was a man who had a cause. Or a man who was afraid of what his own masters would do to him for having botched the job.
Bron was at his side. The fighting was over. “Are you hurt, sir?”
He had to save the speculation for later. “Not a bit. Anyone else?”
“I haven’t checked yet, but it doesn’t look like it. Nothing major, at least,” Bron said. He sighed and swore. “What a bloody mess.”
Corin nodded. His horse had its ears back and nostrils flared. He leaned forward and rubbed its head. “Send someone to get more men. I suppose they’ll need a wagon, for the bodies. And I want to talk to whoever’s got command duty at the nearest watchpost.” He dismounted. “We need more light. Damn this rain.”
As it turned out, two of the men had minor wounds. There were seventeen bodies on the street. Only five of the attackers’ horses had not fled. Corin went with Bron from body to body. None of them had the height and the reddish hair of the Sarians. The man Corin had wounded was unconscious. Bron squatted beside him, felt for a pulse, looked at the wound and the blood. He forced open one of the man’s eyes. “He’s not going to make it,” he said. He drew his knife. “You’d best step aside, sir.”
He stood back and watched while Bron efficiently cut the man’s throat. There was not much blood. The man must have been nearly dead already. They moved on.
The soldiers knew what to do and Corin left them to it. The carnage dismayed him. He could not help feeling that he had caused it. He had laid a trap in response to some impulse from outside himself. He should have resisted more. It was not much comfort to think that the deaths had all been on the other side; it might not be so next time. He was sure there would be a next time. He checked the horses: good stock, well trained, but nothing to identify them. The saddles and trappings could have been found in any saddlery.
The watch arrived first, then the soldiers. Corin was beginning to feel superfluous. The watch commander was slow and stolid and kept repeating that he had never seen anything like it. As soon as the men appeared Corin abandoned the watchman to the others and took Bron aside. A string of shops along one side had overhanging second stories and inset doors that protected them from the rain.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“No, sir. And I don’t expect to either, not with them all dead.” Bron glanced down, then looked back up and said, “Did you anticipate this?”
“No. I thought we might be followed, but not attacked.”
“We could easily have lost,” Bron said, somewhat grimly. “Don’t keep things like that from me, not with matters as they are. I need more information if I’m going to do my job.”
There was no good response to that, so he did not bother making one. Bron was in the right and they both knew it. He had not said anything to Bron about Hadon, but the captain had heard what Liko said. He could not keep his suspicions to himself now. He said, “They weren’t mercenaries. If it turns out they were Mycenean, tell me or the king immediately. I don’t care what I’m doing. And no one else.”
“If the men guess?”
“Make it clear that if I find out anyone’s been talking, even to another man here, about anything, I’ll try him as a traitor.” He whistled for his horse. “I’ve got to get back, Bron. How many men can you spare?”
“Ten, but let me pick them.”
Corin nodded and mounted. “Do that now.”
“Wait,” Bron said. He put his hand on the horse’s neck. “My lord, do you think they were trying to kill you or to take you?”
“Kill me,” Corin said automatically, then really heard the question. Hadon had taken Tai, was he after him as well?
Unthinking, he raised his hand in the peasants’ gesture and said, “I curse you, Hadon of Mycene.”
He went colder than he had thought he ever could. The rainy street was suddenly heavy and full of hatred. A dragon screamed in his mind. He felt the curse leave him, cold and sharp as ice, lightless as a grave. Bron’s face was full of fear.
CHAPTER SIX
When Tam received the prince’s note she held it a moment before unsealing it. Nothing on the outside distinguished the sender from the writers of the other messages that had been delivered, but she guessed. She had saved it for last; it could be anything. It was polite and somewhat formal, but it looked as though he had written it himself, and his signature was nothing more than his barely decipherable scrawl. He meant it, then. Tonight she could, if she wanted, sit across the table from the Crown Prince of Caithen himself.
Her first impulse was a childish excitement, which she pushed back. She supposed she might be the only woman in the kingdom who would consider turning down an invitation from Corin, but because she was so impetuous by nature she tried hard to do things deliberately, to have decided what to do instead of simply taking the first path. Especially with him; he had to be used to women chasing him, and she did not want to seem like she had come running at his call. She had more pride than that, for better or worse. On the other hand, she had gotten herself into this situation in the first place; it would be only right to play it out. She did not know what imp had made her saucy to him, but the imp needed to be paid.
Once the shock of the library had worn off yesterday, she had told herself that he meant nothing by it. When the what if thought rose up, she forced it away. She had distracted herself with games, conversations, an unusual chattiness that was remarked on several times. Now that it was real, she did not know what to do.
He could not marry her; that was not even a possibility to discuss. But if he could not marry her, then there was only one other likely reason for the invitation. If she said yes to the dinner, she was saying yes to much more. And that was the problem. Corin was said to be discreet, careful, and generous, but he was a man and no doubt wanted what men wanted of women. He had certainly looked at her that way. Lady Elwyn’s son had looked at her that way too, but he had been considerably easier to disregard.
Pregnancy was easy enough to take care of. As a doctor’s daughter she knew quite a bit about childbearing and its opposites. Nor would an affair with him damage her irreparably—since he was who he was, she would likely be exempt from the usual scorn heaped upon a man’s mistress, at least in public. A future husband would not consider her used goods. No one would expect her to have rejected him; she simply did not know if she wanted to do it. The two or three times before that she had thought herself in love, with men who had courted her for months, she had not had any urge to take the man into her bed before she should, and had felt little regret when they drifted away before a proposal. She had no grounds for deciding if she cared enough for Corin; she could hardly say she knew him. Yesterday’s incident did not qualify as conversation. It did not even qualify as flirting. What if he turned out to be arrogant, thoughtless, dull?
He had not looked like a prince, or at least had not been dressed like one, when she saw him for the first time in the entrance hall, and it did not even occu
r to her that it was Corin she looked at, although it was word of the prince’s return that had brought her, caught in the wake of a flock of eager ladies, to the hall. His clothing had been very dirty, his brown hair lying every which way, and his chin unshaven for several days. He looked exactly like the soldiers with him. There had been a battered saddlebag slung over his shoulder. But she glimpsed his face, his shoulders, the way he walked, and thought, That is a man I would like to know better. He was very handsome. When his eyes touched on her face, she went shy like a girl and looked away while heat rose inside her. “Who is that?” she whispered to Alina. Alina turned a coy face to her and said, “Don’t you know? That’s the prince.”
Her reaction had been pure sinking disappointment. Perhaps she should heed that, go to him because she had wanted him as a man first. When their fingers had brushed yesterday it had been like fire in her entire body. It had been nearly impossible to take her eyes off his face, especially with him looking back at her. Even remembering it brought the blood to her cheeks. She could still feel his hand on her arm, holding her up.
“Tam?”
She jumped. Jenet, who had rooms near hers, was standing in the open doorway. “Good morning,” Tam said. She folded up the letter, thankful that it was so plain—had that been his intent?—and put it in a pocket.
Jenet said, “Is anything the matter?” It was curiosity and not concern that prompted the question, but it was said politely. Tam had quickly learned which questions were meant to be answered, and what the answers should be. If she responded patly, Jenet would obey the rules and stop prying. But of all the women on the floor Jenet was the one she liked the best, and it was briefly tempting to confide in her. She dared not say a word to Cina.
She compromised. “Not a thing, thank you. I am just wrestling with the eternal feminine dilemma of which dress to wear to dinner tonight.” And that was the decision. For better or for worse, she would dine with him. All she had to do now was figure out how to get her answer to him as inconspicuously as possible.