Royal Exile

by Fiona McIntosh

  “It never gets any easier, De Vis,” he lamented.

  De Vis nodded knowingly; he had lost his own wife soon after childbirth. “I can remember Eril’s screams as though they were yesterday.” He hurried to add: “Of course, once the queen holds her child, majesty, her pain will disappear.”

  They were both talking around the real issues—the murder of a newborn and the threat that their kingdom was facing its demise.

  Brennus’s face drooped even further. “In this you are right, although I fear for all our children, De Vis. My wife brings into this world a new son who may never see his first anni.”

  “Which is why your plan is inspired, highness. We cannot risk Loethar having access to the power.”

  “If it is accessible at all in this generation. Leo shows no sign at this stage…and Piven…” The king trailed off as another agonized shriek cut through their murmurs.

  De Vis held his tongue but when silence returned and stretched between them, he said softly: “We can’t know for sure. Leo is still young—it may yet come to him—and the next prince may be bristling with it. We can’t risk either child falling into the wrong hands. And as for Piven, your highness, he is not of your flesh. We know he hardly possesses his faculties, majesty, let alone any power.”

  The king’s grave face told his legate that Brennus agreed, that his mind was made up. Nevertheless he confirmed it aloud as though needing to justify his terrifying plan. “It is my duty to protect the Valisar inheritance. It cannot be tarnished by those not of the blood. I hope history proves me to be anything but the murderer I will appear if the truth ever outs. Is everything in place?”

  “Precisely to your specifications,” De Vis answered.

  Brennus could see the legate’s jaw working. De Vis was feeling the despair of what they were about to do as deeply as he was. “Your boys…” the king muttered, his words petering out.

  De Vis didn’t flinch. “Are completely loyal and will do their duty. You know that.”

  “Of course I know it, De Vis—they might as well be my own I know them so well—but they are too young for such grim tasks. I ask myself: could you do it? Could I? Can they?”

  De Vis’s expression remained stoic. “They have to. You have said as much yourself. My sons will not let Penraven down.”

  Brennus scowled. “Have you said anything yet?”

  De Vis shook his head. “Until the moment is upon us, the fewer who know the better. The brief will also be better coming directly from you, majesty.”

  Brennus winced as another scream came from behind the door, followed by a low groan that penetrated to the sunlit corridor where he and De Vis talked. He turned from the stone balustrade against which he had been leaning, looking out into the atrium that serviced the private royal apartments. Breathing deeply, he drank in the fragrance of daphne that the queen had personally planted in boxes hanging from the archways and took a long, sorrowful look at the light-drenched gardens below she had tended and made so beautiful. Trying for an heir had taken them on a torrid journey of miscarriages and disappointments. And then Leo had come along and, miraculously, had survived and flourished. But both Brennus and Iselda knew that a single heir was not enough, however, and so they had endured another three heartbreaking deaths in the womb.

  It was as though Regor De Vis could read Brennus’s thoughts. “Do not fret over Piven, your highness. If the barbarian breaches our walls I doubt he will even glance at your adopted son.”

  Brennus hoped his legate was right. Brennus was aware that Piven had made it quietly into the world and had remained mostly silent since then. These days odd noises, heartbreaking smiles and endless affection told everyone that Piven heard sound, though he could not communicate in any traditional way.

  And now there was a new child who’d managed to somehow cling on to life, his heartbeat strong and fierce like the winged lion his family’s history sprang from. There had been so much excitement, so much to look forward to as little as six moons ago. And now everything had changed.

  The ill-wind had blown in from the east, where one ambitious, creative warlord had united the rabble that made up the tribes who eked out an existence on the infertile plains. It had been almost laughable when Dregon sent news that it was under attack from the barbarians. It had sounded even more implausible when Vorgaven sent a similar missive.

  De Vis could clearly read his mind. “How something we considered a skirmish could come to this is beyond me.”

  “I trusted everyone to hold their own against a mere tribal warlord!”

  “Our trust was a mistake, majesty…and so was our confidence in the Set’s strength. It should never have come to this. And, worse, we haven’t prepared our people. It’s only because word is coming through from relatives or traders from the other realms that they know Vorgaven has fallen, Dregon is crushed and cowardly Cremond simply handed over rule without so much as a squeak. I’m sure very few know how dire the situation is in Barronel.”

  Brennus grimaced. “Ormond might hold.”

  “Only if we’d gone to his aid days ago, majesty. He will fall and our people will then know the truth as we prepare to fight.”

  The king looked broken. “They’ve never believed, not for a second, that Penraven could fall. Food is plentiful, our army well trained and well equipped. Lo strike me, this is a tribal ruffian leading tribal rabble!” But as much as the king wanted to believe otherwise, he knew the situation was dire. He no longer had options. “Summon Gavriel and Corbel,” he said sadly.

  De Vis nodded, turned on his heel and left the king alone to his dark thoughts. Minutes after his departure, Brennus heard the telltale lusty squall of a newborn. His new son had arrived. Not long later the senior midwife eased quietly from behind the doors. She curtsied low, a whimpering bundle of soft linens in her arms. But when she looked at the king her expression was one of terror, rather than delight.

  “I heard his battlecry,” the king said, desperately trying to alleviate the tension but failing, frowning at her fear as she tiptoed, almost cringing, toward him with her precious cargo. “Is something wrong with my wife?” he added, a fresh fear coursing through him.

  “No, not at all, your highness. The queen is fatigued, of course, but she will be well.”

  “Good. Let me see this new son of mine then,” Brennus said, trying to sound gruff. His heart melted as he looked down at the baby’s tiny features, eyelids tightly clamped. The infant yawned and he felt an instant swell of love engulf him. “Hardly strapping but handsome all the same,” he said, grinning despite his bleak mood, “with the dark features of the Valisars.” He couldn’t disguise the pride in his voice.

  The midwife’s voice was barely above a whisper when she spoke. “Sire, it…it is not a boy. You have been blessed with a daughter.”

  Brennus looked at the woman as though she had suddenly begun speaking gibberish.

  She hurried on in her anxious whisper. “She is beautiful but I must warn that she is frail due to her early arrival. A girl, majesty,” she muttered with awe. “How long has it been?”

  “Show me,” Brennus demanded, his jaw grinding to keep his own fears in check. The midwife obliged and he was left with no doubt; he had sired a girl. Wrapping her in the linens again, he looked mournfully at the old, knowing midwife—old enough to have delivered him nearly five decades ago. She knew about the Valisar line and what this arrival meant. How much worse could their situation get, he wondered, his mind instantly chaotic.

  “I fear she may not survive, majesty.”

  “I am taking her to the chapel,” he said, ignoring the woman’s concerns.

  Their attention was momentarily diverted by Piven scampering up, his dark curly hair its usual messy mop and his matching dark eyes twinkling with delight at seeing his father. But Piven gave everyone a similar welcome; it was obvious he made no distinction between man or woman, king or courtier. Everyone was a friend, deserving of a beaming, vacant salutation. Brennus affectionately stroke
d his invalid son’s hair.

  The midwife tried to protest. “But the queen has hardly seen her. She said—”

  “Never mind what the queen instructs.” Brennus reached for the baby. “Give her to me. I would hold the first Valisar princess in centuries. She will go straight to the chapel for a blessing in case she passes on. My wife will understand. Tell her I shall be back shortly with our daughter.”

  Brennus didn’t wait for the woman’s reply. Cradling his daughter as though she were a flickering flame that could be winked out with the slightest draft, he shielded her beneath his cloak and strode—almost ran—to Penraven’s royal chapel, trailed by his laughing, clapping five-year-old boy. Inside he locked the door. His breathing had become labored and shallow, and the fear that had begun as a tingle now throbbed through his body like fire.

  The priest came and was promptly banished. Soon after a knock at the door revealed De Vis with his twin sons in tow, looking wide-eyed but resolute. Now tall enough to stand shoulder to shoulder alongside their father like sentries, strikingly similar and yet somehow clearly individual, they bowed deeply to their sovereign, while Piven mimicked the action. Although neither Gavriel nor Corbel knew what was afoot for them, they had obviously been told by their father that each had a special role to perform.

  “Bolt it,” Brennus ordered as soon as the De Vis family was inside the chapel.

  A glance to one son by De Vis saw it done. “Are we alone?” he asked the king as Corbel drew the heavy bolt into place.

  “Yes, we’re secure.”

  De Vis saw the king fetch a gurgling bundle from behind one of the pews and then watched his boys’ brows crinkle with gentle confusion although they said nothing. He held his breath in an attempt to banish his reluctance to go through with the plan. He could hardly believe this was really happening and that the king and he had agreed to involve the boys. And yet there was no other way, no one else to trust.

  “This is my newborn child,” Brennus said quietly, unable to hide the catch in his voice.

  The legate forced a tight smile although the sentiment behind it was genuine. “Congratulations, majesty.” The fact that the baby was among them told him the plan was already in motion. He felt the weight of his own fear at the responsibility that he and the king were about to hand over; it fell like a stone down his throat to settle uncomfortably, painfully, in the pit of his stomach. Could these young men—still youthful enough that their attempts to grow beards and moustaches were a source of amusement—pull off the extraordinary plan that the king and he had hatched over this last moon? From the time at which it had become obvious that the Set could not withstand the force of Loethar’s marauding army.

  They had to do this. He had to trust that his sons would gather their own courage and understand the import of what was being entrusted to them.

  De Vis became aware of the awkward silence clinging to the foursome, broken only by the flapping of a sparrow that had become trapped in the chapel and now flew hopelessly around the ceiling, tapping against the timber and stone, testing for a way out. Piven, nearby, flapped his arms too, his expression vacant, unfocused.

  De Vis imagined Brennus felt very much like the sparrow right now—trapped but hoping against hope for a way out of the baby’s death. There was none. He rallied his courage, for he was sure Brennus’s forlorn expression meant the king’s mettle was foundering. “Gavriel, Corbel, King Brennus wishes to tell you something of such grave import that we cannot risk anyone outside of the four of us sharing this plan. No one…do you understand?”

  Both boys stared at their father and nodded. Piven stepped up into the circle and eyed each, smiling beatifically.

  “Have you chosen who takes which responsibility?” Brennus asked, after clearing his throat.

  “Gavriel will take Leo, sire. Corbel will…” he hesitated, not sure whether his own voice would hold. He too cleared his throat. “He will—”

  Brennus rescued him. “Hold her, Corbel. This is a new princess for Penraven and a more dangerous birth I cannot imagine. I loathe passing this terrible responsibility to you but your father believes you are up to it.”

  “Why is she dangerous, your majesty?” Corbel asked.

  “She is the first female to be born into the Valisars for centuries, the only one who might well be strong enough to live. Those that have been born in the past have rarely survived their first hour.” Brennus shrugged sorrowfully. “We cannot let her be found by the tyrant Loethar.”

  De Vis sympathized with his son. He could see that the king’s opening gambit was having the right effect in chilling Corbel but he was also aware that Brennus was circling the truth.

  In fact he realized the king was distancing himself from it, already addressing Gavriel.

  “…must look after Leo. I cannot leave Penraven without an heir. I fear as eldest and crown prince he must face whatever is ahead—I cannot soften the blow, even though he is still so young.”

  Gavriel nodded, and his father realized his son understood. “Your daughter does not need to face the tyrant—is this what you mean, your highness…that we can soften the blow for her, but not for the prince?”

  De Vis felt something in his heart give. The boys would make him proud. He wished, for the thousandth time, that his wife had lived to see them. He pitied that she’d never known how Gavriel led and yet although this made Corbel seem weaker, he was far from it. If anything he was the one who was prepared to take the greatest risks, for all that he rarely shared what he was thinking. Gavriel did the talking for both of them and here again, he’d said aloud for everyone’s benefit what the king was finding so hard to say and Corbel refused to ask.

  “Yes,” Brennus replied to the eldest twin. “We can soften the blow for the princess. She need not face Loethar. I have let the realm down by my willingness to believe in our invincibility. But no one is invincible, boys. Not even the barbarian. He is strong now, fueled by his success—success that I wrongly permitted—but he too will become inflated by his own importance one day, by his own sense of invincibility. I have to leave it to the next generation to know when to bring him down.”

  “Are we going to lose to Loethar, sire?” Gavriel asked.

  “We may,” was Brennus’s noncommittal answer. “But we can do this much for the princess. Save her his wrath.” His voice almost broke upon his last word and he reached to stroke her shock of dark hair, so unlike Leo’s and Iselda’s coloring.

  “And Piven?” Gavriel inquired.

  All four glanced at the youngster. “I am trying not to worry about this child,” Brennus replied. “He is harmless; anyone can see that. He is also not of our blood,” he added, looking down awkwardly. “If anything happens to him he will know little of it and if he survives, nothing will change in his strange internal world. It’s as though he is not among us anyway. I am prepared to take the risk that the barbarian will hardly notice him.”

  The De Vis family nodded in unison, although whether they believed him was hard to tell.

  “The queen, er…” Gavriel looked from the king to his father.

  “Will be none the wiser,” De Vis said firmly. “It is enough that most of us will likely die anyway. We can spare her this.”

  “Die?” Gavriel asked, aghast. “But we can get the king and queen away, taking Leo and the baby across the ocean to—”

  “No, Gav. We can’t,” his father interrupted. “The king will not leave his people—nor should he—and I will not leave his side. We will fight to the last and if we are to fall, we fall together, the queen included. But we cannot risk the royal children.”

  Brennus took up the thread again, much to De Vis’s relief. “Piven is not seen as an heir but he is also no threat. And while I sadly must risk that Leo is found, tortured, abused and ultimately exploited for the tyrant’s purposes, I am giving him a fighting chance with you, Gavriel. That said, I won’t risk the possibility of my daughter falling into Loethar’s hands.”

  That sentence p
rompted a ghastly silence, broken finally by Corbel, who looked uncomfortably away from the dark eyes of the baby that stared at him from the crook of his arm. “Tell me what I must do,” he asked.

  The king sighed, hesitated. De Vis’s encouraging hand on his arm helped him to finally say it. “Today, my daughter must die.”

  Corbel stood alone with the tiny infant, hardly daring to breathe. He wasn’t sure she was even breathing, to tell the truth, and for a minute he hoped that she had stopped of her own accord. But her tiny fingers twitched and he knew she clung stubbornly to life.

  He made no judgment against the king. He imagined that if he was hurting this much over such a traumatic task, then surely the king was hurting twice as hard to demand it of him. His father must believe him more capable of being able to carry out the grim request than Gavriel and he understood why. His father probably anticipated that he would be able to push his guilt into a deep corner of his mind, perhaps lock it away forever and never think about it, let alone speak of it. Corbel knew he gave this impression of being remote, capable of such hardness, but he was no such thing.

  The baby girl, swathed in soft, royal birth linens, shifted gently in his arms. It was time. No amount of soul searching was going to get this job done and the responsibility rested with him alone.

  Just do it, he urged himself. Leave the recrimination for later. His job was to hand the dead child to Father Briar, who would take her to the king so that he could allow the queen to say goodbye to her. Meanwhile his father would be waiting in the preserves cellar to brief him on where he must flee. Nobody must ever connect him to the dead child. He wanted to say goodbye properly to Gavriel but their sovereign and even their father had not given them time.