by Dan Allen
She had left it open out of habit, perhaps. Nobody was awake this time of night, and the guards didn’t patrol inside the castle after the gates were shut. She needn’t worry about being discovered.
Reann dropped the pile of painted portraits facedown on the table. On the backside of each painting, the names labeled the pictured nobles. The wax seal of the noble, to certify the authenticity of the portrait, also emblazoned many. The names were largely unfamiliar until—
Dorgan. Her stomach turned. It was the first time she had seen the name written without the usual postscript title: the traitor.
Dorgan of Ruban, one of a cabal of Rubani nobles who profited from illicit trade with Hersa, had led Tira’s corsairs to where Toran’s fleet was sheltered in a cove. Dorgan’s act had lived in the histories as the ultimate act of treason, disloyalty, and dishonor. Tens of thousands across all five realms cursed that name for the loss of their brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons.
She separated the canvas from the rest and turned it over to view the portrait. By light of the single candlestick, a gaunt face stared back at her. Reann’s grip slipped on the candle, spilling wax onto the corner of the painting. The likeness to Verick was unmistakable.
She pulled her fingers back as if it were tainted by a plague, clasped her hands to her chest, and turned away from the wall of records, scarcely breathing.
Verick was really Dorian of Ruban, son of the greatest traitor since the dragon-slaying Outlanders of legend.
There could be only one reason for his seeking Toran’s heirs.
As hated as Dorgan’s name was in the five realms, Toran’s name was equally infamous in its southernmost province for the burning of their port—their only source of livelihood.
The Ruban Payment.
By Reann’s reckoning, Dorian would have been a young child at the time, left behind in Ruban when his father fled to Hersa. The burning of the port and the ensuing poverty and starvation had made an example to all the realms. No one had ever dared betray Toran again.
“He wants to find the heirs,” she whispered, “to kill them.”
Heart and head had a tug-of-war inside her. She knew two men. One a gentleman and friend; the other a fraud and a killer. One a foolish girl’s wish; the other her doom. She almost wished she hadn’t discovered Verick’s real identity.
A creak sounded through the library and Reann’s heart seized in her chest. Light from the hall cast a tall shadow into the library. The legs of the shadow crossed into a solid shape as the figure moved swiftly into the room. Reann spied the shadow of the scabbard.
It’s him!
The evidence of her discovery lay scattered on the table. She would have no chance to make excuses. Curiosity would finally kill her.
Soft steps sounded swiftly and the shadow merged with the dark floor and walls.
He’s coming to the library alone? Why? Whatever the reason, Reann did not feel safe. He could kill me here, now, she realized.
From the recessed corner of the library, Reann’s eyes darted for a safe haven, finding only unscalable walls of shelves.
Even if Reann could have turned herself into a mouse, she wouldn’t have found an escape. Behind her, the library ended in a walled corner.
Reann put out the flickering candle with her fingers, dousing herself in instant darkness. She shrunk back against the outer wall of shelves until her body pressed against the shutters of a window.
In answer, the shutters spilled open on their well-oiled hinges, revealing a starless, moonless night broken only by distant torches on the fortress wall. The courtyard was a twenty-foot drop.
In desperation, Reann climbed onto the sill, gripped the wooden shutters with her fingertips and swung outward. Her feet dangled free as the shutters patted against a cover of ivy. Reann’s fingers turned white trying to keep her grip on the wooden slats.
She listened as footsteps moved in a deliberate pace toward her. Her lungs burned for air but she refused to breathe. More footsteps. Then silence.
The dull thump of something being set on the reading table reached her, followed by a scrape as it slid forward.
A book—what could he be reading in the military records section?
Paper rustled intermittently, signaling the hasty turning of pages. Then silence.
“Ah,” Verick said with a note of pleasure at his discovery. “Here we are. At last. Wait, no.”
The book closed.
At last, Reann thought. She clung to the window shutters with cold fingers. The strength of her grip began to fade. He’s leaving.
“Dungeons of the seventh . . .” Dorian suddenly whispered. His voice trailed off.
His footsteps came quickly toward the window.
Reann attempted to move farther out on the shutter, but her hand slipped. Hanging by one arm, her unbalanced body swung outward, twisting her arm and leaving her facing away from the fortress. Her loose hand gripped a few leaves of ivy clinging to the stone wall, while her grip on the shutter frame slipped in tiny, deadly increments, like a clock counting down to death.
Verick’s face flashed into view briefly—the man she had known, and almost trusted, and now feared, as Dorian. He glanced down into the courtyard. Across the courtyard torches wavered. Two guards headed for a night patrol on the castle wall approached from the gate house.
Dorian ducked back into the library. The candle went out. Then silence.
Reann waited three perilous seconds more before letting go of the ivy and swinging back toward the open window. She lifted her leg to catch the sill and grasped the curtains.
The thick cloth of the curtains held.
Reann crawled over the sill and slid to her knees on the library floor, shaking from head to toe. She gulped air and whimpered.
Then she noticed the empty reading table.
Dorgan’s portrait!
It was gone.
Verick—or rather Dorian, son of Dorgan—would have to assume that somebody had found out his secret. It would only make him more dangerous, more desperate.
Reann waited, knees curled to her chest, her body shaking and unsure of whether it was safe to leave the library. Her doubts screamed that Verick might be waiting for her outside in the hall with another threat or to fulfill his earlier one.
Thoughts of the slain thief, his pale face, the blood on her fingers flickered through her mind amid images of Dorian in his room, his hand on her shoulder, his arms embracing her.
“No,” she whispered, trying to make herself believe. “He’s not going to kill me. Anybody could have found that portrait. He doesn’t know.”
Reann calmed herself. She breathed slowly until her thoughts became measured and sure.
He came to read something, she decided, something about one of the heirs—something he doesn’t want to share.
Reann looked at the row of records, barely illuminated in the light from the distant lanterns on the fortress wall. The sheer number of books was staggering. He could have read any of them.
Reann tapped her finger on her chin and then gave a wry smile.
Nobody ever reads these books.
Reann paced a step back and looked more closely. She used an old parlor trick, sniffing along the row of military records to see if any smelled less stale. One of the books had a distinctly less mustiness about it, and the faint smell of a candle scented with maple—like the one Reann had placed in Dorian’s room a day before.
She pulled the book from the shelf, her fingers tingling with anticipation. It was a ledger recording payments made to war widows and their survivors. Reann carefully opened the cover and began pressing the pages sideways, feeling how they opened easily to pages where the oil from Dorian’s perusing fingers eased the cling of the thin sheets. The book slipped open to a page in the last third of the book.
A gap in the late night clouds
let a glow of hazy moonlight in through the window. Reann moved to the window and turned the book toward the light.
Names of slain soldiers occupied the first column. The second column was their rank, then their commanding officer, the date and cause of death, and the pension due. The last column contained details of the payment recorded by the commanding officer.
It was the law that each officer, a noble, was to pay the pension of his slain cavalry to the man’s widow and kin.
The horror of it was that Reann knew exactly why Dorian had come for this book.
The birth of a child to Emra, the blind translator, was written in the midwife’s record book.
An unwed courtier . . . and blind.
“The eyes of blind see anew. They behold his fortress ever true,” Reann whispered, recalling how Dorian had mentioned the couplet from his notebook.
Reann’s eyes stared at the text. She recognized Toran’s handwriting as tears welled in her eyes.
Name of Deceased: Rembra of Fordal
Rank: Captain at Arms
Circumstances of Death: Perished defending Toran at the ambush of Devil’s Canyon, South Dervan Lowlands, 7th day of the 40th week, 23rd year of the reign of Toran. Awarded the Order of the Diamond Star for loyalty.
Next of kin: Emra of Fordal, daughter
The name Emra was crossed out with a notation presumed deceased in newer, finer letters, followed by the words Sole heir: Reann of the Citadel of Toran.
The column for remunerations included Reann’s granted status as a ward of the estate.
“He knows,” Reann said. Her heart ached.
Dorian, her first crush, was her mortal enemy. Then she recalled his reaction as he read the words. It wasn’t a snappy “gotcha” or a sinister, hissing “finally!”
He had whispered no as if he hadn’t wanted it to be true. A sliver of hope pierced the darkness.
He cares for me.
Ranger sauntered into view and hacked on a fur ball.
“Stop being so light-minded,” Reann chided. But the absurdity of it cracked on her like a falling piece of lumber. “No, you’re absolutely right. Get it out. It’s all just a matter of getting the bad out. Toran always said you can’t win a war, you can only win friends. That’s what I have to do.”
“I can get the bad out of him, Ranger,” Reann whispered. “I have to.”
Dorian was the son of a traitor. Verick was her friend. She couldn’t even bring herself to call him Dorian.
He was Verick.
Dorian had to die for Verick.
Chapter 20
Montazi Realm.
The business of preparing for war continued as it had for every summer in Terith’s memory. Except in Neutat, where the preparations doubled. The villagers had split, half of them returning to Neutat and half remaining at the place of resort.
Ore from the upper Montas arrived daily, dropped in heaps at temporary forges set up in courtyards, transformed by the heavy blows of hammers into piles of arrowheads and swords. Werm and the engineers continued to repair the bridges, hoist root dwellings back onto the fractured megalith, and build paths to homes displaced by the blast. The ivy was sustained by the incessant rain as new roots plunged into the cracks made by the steam blast, webbing the broken rock back together. Creaks and groans were a constant nighttime serenade as the broken mass settled.
Terith sent two of his best yearling dragons to Tertat, Tamm and Remo’s home village. It was an insufficient gesture of thanks to the men who had helped him beat Pert in the challenge, though the animals would certainly strengthen their strythe-fruit dragon crossbreeding program.
Terith took time when he could to be with his promised wife Lilleth, always traveling to Ferrin-tat by night to save a day’s work. When the sun rose in the morning, the canyons echoed with the scattered cries of dragon hatchlings, the hope of the future.
It was solstice, and it was hot, so muggy it seemed the air itself was sweating.
The women of Ferrin-tat, especially the unwed, traipsed about in summer clothes. Terith wore no top, his shirt and cloak stuffed in a woven bag slung from his shoulder as he crossed the megalith toward Ferrin’s keep, passing armed guards and bowmen and gathering as many friendly greetings as salutes.
When Terith arrived at the circle court, Lilleth waved to him. She wore a scant leather top. Her long legs peeked from between the folds of a side-split skirt. Seated on a cushion sewing, she was damp with perspiration in the heat of the early afternoon. It was the first time Terith had seen her wearing that kind of summer clothing.
“Wow, Lilleth, you look—”
“Like an Outlander slave,” she said with a laugh and a conspicuous, yet very attractive, blush. “I know.”
“Any particular reason?”
“You.”
“Me?”
Lilleth leaned back into the retreating shade of an overhanging broad fern. She patted the pillow next to her. Terith dropped his travel bag but, instead of sitting, scooped Lilleth up into his arms, cradling her with the ease of something much smaller and lighter, but no less precious.
“I would think you were Enala, dressed like that, but for your eyes. I know those.”
Lilleth took Terith’s face between her hands and pressed a kiss against his lips.
The cherry red of her lips clung to his as she wrapped her arms around his neck and slowly put her feet down on tiptoes, almost floating.
At the touch of her lips, a flicker of awakening rose unbidden. Light from beyond the horizon flared in the corners of his vision, painting the world in an electric hue. A fresh breeze swirled around them. Whether it was in his head or real, Terith couldn’t tell. It was paradise in her arms either way.
“Wow,” he said, taking a breath. “Did you do that?”
“Do what? I thought that was you.”
“It’s hot enough around here as it is,” croaked an old cook, leaning her head out of the kitchen door, “without you two steaming up the place!”
Terith laughed and took Lilleth’s hand. They walked together, laughing as they went, taking the high road to the summit past the hot spring. No thought of climbing into the steaming water crossed his mind. The muggy air alone was as good as a sauna. He peered up into the late morning sunlight that shone in streaks through the low clouds.
As they walked, Lilleth lifted a bird from a limb and held it in her hands. “Look. These are northern birds come south for the summer rains, a backward migrant.”
“Why don’t they try to fly away when you grab at them?” Terith wondered. “I’ve never caught a bird without scratching my knees to pieces.”
“It’s because I don’t try to eat them.”
“Shall I pluck it and cook it for you?” Terith volunteered.
“No!” Lilleth let the bird fly away and looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Don’t touch my little birdies.”
“Your birdies?” His eyes strayed down.
Lilleth quickly put a finger under his chin and pushed his head up to meet her coy gaze. “Yes. They’re pretty.”
“I’ll give you that one,” Terith said. He cupped her hand in his and kissed her fingertip. “But how do they taste?”
“Oh, don’t be so terrible. You’re a man, not a beast.”
“What makes you so sure?” Terith laughed. He kissed her hand and then her wrist, moving gradually up her arm.
“Oh, I’m sure,” Lilleth said, putting her free hand on his bare chest where Terith’s heart beat much too quickly for a casual stroll. “But are you?”
“When is the wedding again?” Terith stammered. “Not today?”
“Not for two and a half months,” Lilleth sighed, taking his hand in hers, interlocking her fingers as the two meandered along the trail.
“And I have a war to win in the meantime,” Terith said.
&nb
sp; Lilleth slid her rolled fan from under her skirt tie, spread it, and fanned it over her chest, looking even more attractive. “Is it time yet to go to battle? How long can you stay?”
“The horde will strike before the week is out.”
“How many are there?”
“Too many,” Terith said, as a shiver passed over him. “I’m afraid a lot of—never mind that, Lilleth. Our time is our time. Let’s enjoy it.”
“You’d better,” she said with a smile. “Because I’m not wearing this every day.”
“You mean you want to take it off?” Terith said delightedly.
Lilleth gasped and smacked him playfully on the head with her fan. “Don’t press your luck.”
“Thanks, by the way,” Terith said walking with her, their joined hands swinging gently.
“For what?” she asked, picking a yaz fruit and biting into it.
“For convincing me to ride in the challenge.”
“You’re thanking me?” Lilleth shook her head. “I’m not the one who got shot at, flamed at—”
“Punched in the gut.”
“Punched?”
“Long story—it was in the tunnel.”
Seeing the look in Terith’s eye, Lilleth didn’t ask. Thoughts of Pert dropped the tone of the conversation a shade.
After a minute of quiet walking in the dark wood, Lilleth spoke again. “About the war,” she said. “I . . . I’ve been thinking.”
“You can’t change what will happen,” Terith said softly. “Don’t let it trouble you. Can’t you just believe that things will work out?”
“I know, I should . . . But should we . . . I mean, what if you die? You will fall, I know. If I saw it, it happened, or will, I mean. I’ve spent a month learning to accept it. It’s better than denying it, anyway. That’s your job.”
“Fair enough,” Terith said. His heart ached for Lilleth. He didn’t believe that what she saw would happen. It wasn’t part of his story. His story was with her.
“This may be our only time together,” she said softly. “Should we . . .” Her voice trailed off as she squeezed his hand more tightly. She faced him and looked him in the eyes. “Should we have a child now?”