by Matthew Ward
“Yes, Ashanal. And what of the prince?”
Aeldran, who by complicity was as guilty as his sister? “The matter is settled. Let him do as he wishes.”
Thirty-Four
Melanna found neither sleep nor solace in darkness. Her wound had long since been stitched tight, the pain reduced to numbness by bethanis tincture. She told herself both pain and anger were in the past, settled and done.
And yet…
She’d spent her life fighting the same traditions that would now destroy Naradna. Did that call for empathy? Naradna had made herself an enemy from the very first. More, she’d dishonoured herself through deception, as Orova had dishonoured herself by promising truce as a ruse. Naradna’s fate was of her own making.
Wasn’t it?
Finding no answers in the dark, Melanna dressed and took station at the flaps of her tent, staring out into the renewed drizzle.
Even burdened by a makeshift crutch, Haldrane arrived at her shoulder without a whisper of sound. “Excessive introspection seldom ends well. It is poison disguised as balm.”
She grunted her surprise – at humble tone as much as wisdom. Haldrane had ever been one of her staunchest critics. He, as much as any, had fought the idea of a woman taking the throne.
“Did you know about Naradna?”
Haldrane scratched his chin. “A woman in the army. Preposterous.”
“I’m in no mood for jests.”
“The Icansae have always been… challenging. What agents I have among their number do not, alas, touch upon the royal family. Maggad had a gift for paranoia.” He shrugged, the motion made awkward by the crutch. “You were not to know.”
“Kind words for the upstart princessa?”
“For the Emperor’s heir, savim. All else is irrelevant.”
Was it truly that simple? “Is that why you took an arrow in my stead?”
“My duty and my privilege.” A sardonic smile blunted humility. “I serve the Empire, and the House of Saran is the Empire. To protect one is to protect the other.”
“Then I command your full loyalty?”
“I am dismayed you ever thought otherwise, savim.” He crooked an eyebrow. “As for the arrow? The more I think on it, the likelier it was meant for me. I fear I have made enemies everywhere.”
An understatement. Melanna could name without trying three princes of the Golden Court who would have gladly seen Haldrane dead, save for the repercussions. Men with secrets seldom appreciated those accomplished in unveiling them.
“You may be right,” she replied. “Orova made claim of seeking my capture.”
“To force your father’s surrender?” He tucked his crutch closer. “You have always been his weakness.”
She scowled. “Perhaps I remain so. We cannot pass Vrasdavora. Nor can I retreat. A siege is our only answer, but the war might well be over before it is done. My father could die a thousand deaths while the garrison starve themselves into the Raven’s grasp.”
“At least the Raven showed no interest in today’s business.”
“Orova claimed they had no alliance.”
“And you believed her?”
“Once, perhaps. No more. She is as much an obstacle as the fortress and its constructs. Worse, I made her so. The Goddess warned me, and I didn’t listen.”
Haldrane tutted. “I counselled you against introspection. It blinds you.”
“I’m not infallible, Haldrane. Not tonight.”
“You number your problems in the hundreds. A garrison of flesh and blood, guarded by soldiers of magic and metal, all led by a woman who has proven herself tenacious. I see only two. The woman, and the proctor whose will drives the constructs. If they were gone…”
Melanna shook her head. “You ask for miracles. I know these constructs. They reason well enough that the proctor need only change their orders in challenging circumstance. And Orova is more than tenacious. She cannot die. I don’t even think she feels pain.”
“The assault on a fortress is not a challenging circumstance? As for Orova…” Haldrane held up fingers, and ticked them off one by one. “Ashana’s Huntsman ran her through at Ahrad. She came to Soraved by cart. In the battle that followed, she was hardly to full vigour. Perhaps she cannot die, as you say, but she can be removed for a time.”
Hope drove back the night’s chill. “How?”
“I have agents everywhere. Not all of them willing, I admit. But willing enough. Silver burns the divine. I imagine it will harm Orova no less.”
“Assassination?”
“An ugly word, more suited to pedants than princessas.”
She bit back a swell of anger. First the assault on Ahrad without declaration of war. Then Elspeth’s slaughter of the prisoners. Now this. “You’d have us discard all honour?”
“Can there be honour in dealing with a woman who breaks a truce?”
Contradiction emerged from the mire. Not Melanna’s, rather Haldrane’s. Lost in the tumult of the day, now dredged to the surface. “You have agents everywhere.”
“An overstatement, but in practical terms…?”
“Orova told me Lord Akadra had vanished into exile and holds no influence. I cannot help but wonder how my father’s spymaster, who sees so much, made no mention.”
“So it is for a lowly functionary to gainsay a goddess?”
“If the Goddess errs, yes.”
He smoothed his goatee. “I fear you overestimate my courage, savim.”
“And I know you don’t think me so foolish as to believe that.” She tore her gaze from the pyres. “I’ll have the truth, Haldrane.”
To her surprise, he offered an approving smile. “Yes, I knew. One does not let a man like Viktor Akadra stray beyond one’s sight.”
“Then this is all for nothing.” Melanna closed her eyes against sudden dizziness. “The Dark has no claim on Tressia.”
“Nothing?” Haldrane shook his head. “Ahrad is gone. The Republic is in disarray. We have the opportunity to sweep Tressia from the map.”
“You deceived me! You deceived my father!”
He shook his head. “A child’s rationale, scrawled in bright colours against the world’s murk.”
“Not so! I fight for the Goddess. To free Tressia from the Dark!”
“And did you fight for the Goddess last Sommertide, when we marched on the Southshires? Did you fight to cast out the Dark? How grateful the common folk of Trelszon and Kreska and Davenwood must have felt for your largesse. A shame we never told them they died for their own good.” He waved a dismissive hand. “War has ever been our way, savim. You know its power better than any – only the justification changes. But not mine. The Empire will never be safe while a Tressian banner flies. Plunder? Glory? The grace of the divine? I leave these to others.”
She snapped her eyes open, too angry almost even to speak. “My father will hear of this.”
“Your father knows.”
Impossibly, the void in Melanna’s stomach yawned wider. How easily she’d spoken of discarding honour. There’d been none in the endeavour from the first. “No.”
“We spoke on the matter many times. You mustn’t think him averse to saving the Tressians from the Dark. But he’s spent his life fighting to keep the throne and the House of Saran as one. Dark or no, the Goddess offered opportunity to bind the kingdoms of the Golden Court.” He shrugged. “As I said, you have always been his weakness.”
Melanna clenched her fingers and sought some flaw in Haldrane’s words. “Why tell me this?”
His eyebrows arched. “Because you asked, savim. You are the Emperor’s heir. My voice, and my eyes, will ever be at your command.”
Wrath boiled through the void, fed by loss and humiliation. It urged her to strike Haldrane – to banish that infuriating, conceited expression. A horrible, gnawing truth held her back: Haldrane had told her little she’d not already known, or would have seen, had she not blinded herself out of love for her father, and for a goddess who had never made claim t
o infallibility. For all his cynicism, Haldrane’s stance wasn’t without foundation. The Empire had to come first, whether for spymaster, Emperor… or heir.
Anger receded. Not banished, but chained. A child he’d called her, and perhaps she was. “If you wish to go on serving the Empire from this side of the mists, it would be better if I didn’t hear your voice this side of dawn. Am I understood?”
Haldrane’s lips parted as if to speak, then twisted to a wry smile. Offering a bow made awkward by his crutch, he limped away.
Naradna did not rise, but remained seated on the edge of the narrow bed. Having been instructed to empty it of anything with which the captive could do herself harm, Sera had taken the simple step of removing all save the barest comfort.
“Why are you here, Saranal?”
Naradna sounded more weary than defiant, a shrunken figure in silken robes. Without armour to disguise her form, Melanna recognised a woman more like her than not. Older by a few years, as Aeldran was older. Perhaps a shade darker of feature and more muscular of build. Eyes blue where her own were green. But she was otherwise no less the sister in aspect than she should have been in purpose.
Naradna snorted. “The immaculate Melanna Saranal, lost for words. It’s almost worth it. I ask again: why are you here?”
The speck of sympathy bled away. “I don’t know. I suppose I want to understand.”
“What’s to understand? You of all people shouldn’t have to ask.”
“You think we’re the same?”
“We seek the same ends.”
“You lied. You claimed to be someone you were not.”
“I am Naradna. Who I was before burned alongside my elder brother.”
“You killed him?”
“He died, as did so many, from my grandfather’s ambition.”
The unmourned King Maggad. How often it all returned to him. “Some of the tales my father told me… some of what I saw… I don’t know why my own grandfather kept him so close.”
Naradna grunted. “Ceredic was afraid. Better a tethered wolf than one running free.”
“My grandfather feared nothing.”
But Melanna’s defence was automatic, and ill-matched memory. At the end, her grandfather had been a haunted, unsteady soul, reliant on the Golden Court more than in command over it. He’d never have understood her desires while still flesh. But perhaps now he walked immortal Evermoon, his eyes would be open to all that she was, and all she strove to be.
The expected sneer never came. “A good man should always fear a wolf. Especially one never content with his lot. My own sire died to my grandfather’s paranoia, and two of my uncles. Victims of a plot that never existed outside delusion. Soon after, Mother died with her dagger at Grandfather’s throat, cut down by his Immortals.”
Naradna’s eyes lost focus. Then, with swift shake of the head, she rallied. “He’d have ordered the deaths of myself and my brothers too, even though we were not of age. But Mother attempted her assassination before the Golden Court. Even in failure, she placed us plainly in the Emperor’s eye, and Grandfather wasn’t yet ready to challenge him. She was branded mad, and we were sent into exile at Tarrabesk. My elder brother died soon after, carried off by fever.” She shrugged. “It was a simple enough matter to take his place.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” snapped Naradna. “With his death, I became Grandfather’s heir – or I would have done so, were I not a girl. I swore I would not let the Icansae throne pass to another. It was to be my revenge. Aeldran agreed.”
“I’m surprised.”
“I’m the elder. He’s always respected that. Our retainers were loyal. They walked the bazaars, telling all who would listen that the Princessa Andwaral had succumbed to illness in her brother’s place. They rejoiced that Naradna lived, though so disfigured by sickness that he never again left the estate without a mask. Eventually, Grandfather’s paranoia so turned the houses of Icansae against him that he returned us to honour in exchange for a promise of support. And I set out to prove myself in the only way that has ever mattered, in the hopes that he might declare me his heir.”
“Then Maggad died.”
“Eventually.” Naradna offered a thin smile. “He screamed for days before his heart rotted black. And better he did, or he’d be Emperor in your father’s place, and you mourned as his bride of brief moonlight.”
“You killed him?”
“I knew of it, and said nothing.”
“Because he refused to name you his heir?” sneered Melanna.
“Because silence was a gift I owed my brother.”
Melanna found the answer to be no answer at all. Aeldran had murdered Maggad, even though it put his sister’s plans in jeopardy? More, she’d permitted him to do so?
“Why?”
“I know what folk say of us.” Naradna folded her arms. “The Andwars are driven, by which they mean ‘selfish’. Clever, by which they mean ‘deceitful’. And above all, tragic – which is kinder than deeming us bleak to the point of madness. I am all those things, as were my father and my grandfather. Aeldran is not. When he learned our grandfather commissioned the attempt to assassinate your father—”
“That was Maggad?”
For a heartbeat, Melanna was back beneath the birch trees of Ashana’s temple, her father’s life ebbing away. She drew down a deep breath. Another memory stirred. The Icansae prince who’d been swiftest to come to their aid. Aeldran. And today. His unhappiness at the challenge…
Naradna nodded. “A nest of outcast vranakin dwell in the gateway slums at Bazharan. Grandfather used their talents often. My brother believes in loyalty. He would have died for the Emperor that day… or for his heir.”
Melanna scowled, conflicted. “Poison isn’t honourable.”
Naradna spat. “Some people aren’t worth honour.”
Expedience so lately echoed by Haldrane roused quiescent anger. “I take no lessons in honour from someone who bears a name not her own.”
“But it is my name. I made it mine.” She shrugged. “What does it matter otherwise?”
“Everything. We are our family. Our sires and grandsires spanning back to the Empire’s foundation. Back even to the Age of Kings. What you’ve done dishonours them all!”
“Can you even hear yourself?” Naradna laughed and shook her head. “Our sires and grandsires, as if they’re all that count. What of my mother, Saranal, and hers, and her grandmother before that? Do I dishonour them? At least I remember they exist.”
The accusation drove Melanna forward. “When my mother looks down from Evermoon, she sees that I live without pretence. I broke tradition and held to my path, even when swords barred my way.” She halted, muscles knotted tight but determined not to give Naradna the satisfaction of a raised voice. “You’ve no idea what I sacrificed.”
“You are blind.” Naradna sprang to her feet, eyes gleaming. “The poor Rhalesh princessa, with no one to support her wayward dreams save her imperial father and the Goddess of Evermoon. I had only my brother. Do you know what my grandfather would have done to me had he known the truth?”
Melanna’s anger curdled. Tradition decreed no specific punishment for a woman who sought war – an oversight that offered a horrifying degree of freedom for a man like Maggad Andwar. In that, at least, Naradna was correct. Melanna’s father had been her shield, as had Ashana. She’d fought for much, but had been given far more.
“He’s in no position to harm you now.”
“Yes.” Flat satisfaction belied Naradna’s grimace. “And with mourning done, my cousins see the empty throne as theirs for the taking. My throne. My birthright. They’d never yield to a woman, but a prince, gilded with triumph? You know the power that holds. It might even break tradition once the truth stood revealed. Harder by far to remove a queen than cage a princessa. I have no desire to live out my days as a man.”
The words rekindled fading anger. “All you’ve done is reaffirm everything tradition upholds. When m
en look back on this day, they won’t see an heir fighting for her birthright. They’ll see a liar who holds honour second to ambition. You’ve proved that women have no place in battle, or upon a throne. They’ll wield your deception as a weapon against any who follow you.”
“I should think of others?” Shoulders heaving with silent mirth, Naradna hung her head. “Two seasons since your father’s coronation and your own heirdom set in stone. In all that time, you have done nothing other than for yourself.” She sat heavily on the bed and leaned back, hands splayed behind as support. “A word from you would have changed it all. You said nothing. You changed nothing. You claim to have broken tradition. You ignored it. You cannot blame the rest of us for seeking our own paths. Honour is a privilege enjoyed by those free to indulge it.”
“Wait… Us?”
“You thought I was the only one?” Naradna snorted. “Armour hides much. An Immortal’s helm hides more.”
“You lie.”
“It suits you to believe yourself remarkable, but do you really believe that in all the generations of Empire, you were unique? That when families send spears as fealty, a daughter might not take the father’s place, or a sister her brother’s? A warchief’s gatherer sees only armour. Ample opportunity for a woman to fulfil familial duty, or to seek war out of desire.”
“I’d know.”
“And who would tell you? The women whose families must bear the shame if they are discovered? Their comrades? You know the power of a bond forged in battle. Bodies are burned before the truth can be known.” She shrugged. “And when they are not? Would our royal peers admit to knowing women fought in their ranks, or would they keep it hidden?”
Melanna grimaced. Of course the Golden Court would keep the matter suppressed. It only made the fate of the discovered women – if they existed – bleaker still. Another truth her father had held from her? Coming so close behind Haldrane’s revelations about the Droshna…
“If this is so secret, how do you know?”
“I am a deceiver,” Naradna replied. “I recognise deception in others.”
“How many?”
“Two or three in every hundred. I suspect the number would increase tenfold overnight, if not for tradition’s weight.”