by DAVID B. COE
“Thank you, my liege.”
“You’re free to go when you like, but the nights get cold this time of year. Why don’t you take a chamber on the west side of the castle. That’s where the queen will put your Qirsi.”
Brall stood, sensing that the king had just ended their conversation. “Very good, my liege. Again, my thanks.”
He stepped away from the table, and started toward the doorway leading out of the great hall.
“What about your Qirsi, Brall?”
The duke stopped and faced the king once more. “My liege?”
“Do you trust her?”
“I brought her with me, my liege, so I must trust her some. But I never told her why we were riding to Solkara.”
Carden nodded once, but said nothing. A moment later, he raised his goblet again, as if bidding the duke goodnight.
“Forgive me for asking, my liege,” the duke said. “But are you well?”
“Am I well?” the king repeated. He emptied his goblet again. “Do you fear for me, Orvinti?”
“I am your loyal subject, my liege. Like any good Aneiran, I wish for the good health and heart of my king.”
Carden poured more wine, smiling thinly. “Of course you do.” He took a long drink, nearly draining his goblet once more. “It’s not your concern, Brall. For all matters that pertain to you and your people, I’m well enough.”
“Yes, my liege,” Brall said, knowing better than to pursue this any further. He turned once more to leave.
“Brall.”
He looked back at the king.
“Don’t ever come here unannounced again. I’m not one of your earls to be caught unawares. If you ever again arrive at my gates without first sending a messenger, I’ll crush you as I would an attacking army. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly, my liege.”
The king stared at him a moment longer, then shifted his chair so that he faced the fire and raised his goblet to his lips.
Maybe he should have been angry. No matter the answer Brall expected him to give, the question itself bordered on impudence. Add to that the duke’s admission that he hoped to glean something from their talk—as if a king might just give away information without intending it—and Carden would have been justified in having the man garroted right there in the great hall.
For an instant he had been tempted to do just that. It might have taught Tebeo, Bertin, and the others a lesson. A frightened duke was a timid duke, and in these times Carden felt far more comfortable knowing that his dukes feared him. He understood, however, that a king could take this too far. While Chago’s murder might have tamed his more rebellious dukes, killing Brall as well would only serve to make him appear scared. The last thing he needed was for all Aneira to know how frightened he had grown these last few turns.
Besides, Brall was far more valuable to him alive than he ever could have been as a cautionary corpse. Despite his friendship with Chago and Tebeo, the duke had proven himself loyal to the crown. Indeed, he had managed to maintain ties to both House Bistari and House Solkara, no small feat given how much Carden and Chago hated one another. The king needed allies just now, particularly those who had mastered the finer points of statecraft. For Carden had not, and the duke might well be his only bridge to those nobles who hated him.
Now more than ever, he needed such a bridge. Because the truth was, he had nothing to do with Chago’s murder. Had he wished for the duke’s death? Of course, a hundred times over. Had he come within a hairsbreadth of giving such an order? Again, more times than he could count. But the words never passed his lips, and angry as he was with Chago’s fulminations about the lightering fees and wharfages, he viewed them as an annoyance, not as a threat to his power. No one in all Aneira could have been more astonished than he to learn of the assassination, particularly when it became clear that the duke had been garroted. Still, only when he heard of the scrap of leather found in the dead duke’s hand did the king fully grasp the implications of Chago’s murder.
Just a few moments before, when Brall asked if he had heard rumors of a Qirsi conspiracy, Carden nearly laughed aloud. Who hadn’t heard such talk? A person couldn’t go anywhere in the Forelands without hearing of the Qirsi threat. No one seemed to know what the Qirsi wanted, or which of the white-hairs were involved, but that didn’t stop people from talking. For all he had heard, however, the king never thought that the Qirsi would strike at him. Yet that was just what they had done. Chago was dead, but Carden had no doubt that he had been their target. Nor could he deny that their aim had been true. As he told Brall, he couldn’t very well admit to all the Forelands that he had allowed himself to be made a fool. He knew that they were responsible, that the land was under attack by the sorcerers, but to raise the alarm among his people was to humiliate himself. They wanted him weakened, so he accepted the blame for Chago’s death and made himself appear strong. They wanted his dukes and his people to hate him so that when they came back to finish him off, like a hunter circling back to kill a wounded stag, no one in Aneira would come to his aid.
He grinned darkly, his eyes still fixed on the low fire smoldering in the hearth. Let them try, he thought. Let them bring their armies and their magic. If they believe one duke’s death is enough to destroy me, they know nothing of House Solkara. He had been hated for a long time now. It no longer bothered him.
Carden lifted his goblet, only to find that it was empty again.
“More wine!” he bellowed, his voice echoing off the ceiling and walls of his great hall.
After a few moments a young servant appeared carrying two flasks, one holding Sanbiri red, and the other the golden honey wine that was served after the main meal. Carden couldn’t remember which he had been drinking most recently.
“I didn’t know which to bring,” the boy said, cowering as he approached the table.
“Both,” the king said, sitting forward and gesturing for the boy to move faster. “Now leave me alone.”
“But the hall—”
Carden grabbed the red and filled his goblet. “You can clean tomorrow,” he said facing the fire again. “I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The boy bowed quickly and hurried out of the hall, closing the heavy oak door behind him.
The king took a long drink and closed his eyes, feeling the room pitch for a moment, as if he were on a merchant ship sailing the Scabbard. It was late to be drinking, but he wanted to be certain that Chofya was asleep before he returned to his chambers. On most nights like this he might have gone in search of one of his wife’s court ladies to pass the time. But he had no more interest in a tryst than he did in his marriage bed. Not tonight.
He should have been thinking about Chago, and the white-hairs, and how he would crush them when they brought their army to Aneira. Perhaps he should have been confiding in Brall. With Chago’s death, Orvinti had become the most powerful duke in the land.
Yet, his mind kept returning to his conversation with the castle surgeon earlier that day.
It shouldn’t have surprised him. Kalyi, his only daughter, was nearly ten now, and Chofya hadn’t been with child since. In his mind, Carden had blamed the queen for this. But he could no longer ignore the fact that there were no bastards either. Surely if it was her, there would have been bastards. The surgeon agreed, suggesting that his seed was defective in some way. “Sterile.” That was the word he used.
Blaming the surgeon had been foolish. Having him executed had been the act of a coward. But no one could know of this, except Chofya, whom he’d have to tell at some point. Kings weren’t sterile. Kings were powerful; they ruled men and led them to war. They passed their kingdoms on to their sons. Even in Eibithar, where the ascension of kings defied simple explanation, one principle remained clear: the eldest son of a king followed his father to the throne. To call a king sterile unmanned him. It invited challenge from his enemies, be they within the realm or on its borders.
He was fortunate to have the
one daughter, the surgeon told him. She was a gift from Ean, one for which he and Chofya should have been thankful. But though Kalyi was his light and his music and his treasure, she was not enough. There hadn’t been a ruling queen in Aneira for more than two centuries, since Edrice the Second abdicated to her brother in order to avoid a civil war and assure her son of the throne. Carden would have been happy to see Kalyi rule the land, but the other houses wouldn’t stand for it. He needed a son. House Solkara needed an heir.
“There will be no heir,” the surgeon had told him. “If you want House Solkara to hold the crown, you’d best choose a successor from among your brothers’ children.”
He had three brothers. Two were jackals and one was a fool, and their sons gave little indication of amounting to more. His best hope—and Aneira’s—lay in the possibility that Kalyi would marry young and bear her husband a son. This ruled out a union with the son of another major house, any one of whom would expect to give his name to the child. She would have to marry within the Solkaran dukedom. A price to be sure, but a small one under the circumstances.
He drank, draining his goblet once more. How many times had he dreamed of raising a boy to be king, just as his father had raised him? What had he done to offend the god so?
“I’d gladly trade all I have for an heir,” he murmured.
“Your Majesty?”
The king looked up sharply and saw Pronjed, his archminister, standing in the doorway. He felt his face grow hot with shame.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“I saw the duke had returned to his chambers, Your Majesty. I was curious to know what he wanted.”
He stepped into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him.
Carden shifted uneasily in his chair. He had no desire to speak with the white-hair right now, particularly about this.
“It was nothing of consequence,” he said. “He had concerns about the new fees.”
The Qirsi walked to the table and took an empty chair. “He came all this way to speak of lightering fees?”
The king felt his mouth twitch and wished he hadn’t drunk that last cup of wine. “After Chago, he was afraid to leave the matter to messages, lest their be any…misunderstandings.”
“I see.” The Qirsi eyed him for a moment. “Are you well, Your Majesty?”
“Of course I’m well,” Carden said, looking away. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“You seem uneasy. And I heard of the surgeon’s execution. You’re certain everything is all right?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the king said. He cast a dark glance at the minister. “It’s none of your concern.”
“Very well.”
They lapsed into a silence, the king watching Pronjed, whose pale yellow eyes flitted around the room like a sparrow, coming to rest at last on Orvinti’s crystal dagger.
“That’s a fine blade the duke brought,” he said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Pick it up.”
Before he knew what he had done, the king held the dagger in his hand.
“You’ve ordered the servants away for the night?”
He wanted to lie, or better yet, to call the servants back to the hall, but all he could do was nod. “Yes.”
“Good. Tell me what you and the duke discussed.”
“He wanted to talk about Chago,” the king said, unable to stop himself. “He wanted to know whether I had him killed, or if I thought it was the Qirsi.”
Carden struggled to his feet. He didn’t know what the minister was doing to him, but he had to get out of the hall.
“Sit down.”
He sat.
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. Either way I look like a fool.”
Pronjed smiled, the shadows in the hall making his thin face look almost cadaverous. “True. Turn the blade around.”
He tried to fight the Qirsi’s will, but his hands seemed to belong to someone else, someone who now had a blade aimed at his heart.
“The surgeon said you’d have no heir, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I thought as much. Does anyone else know?”
“Not yet.”
“Not even the queen?”
“No.” The king tore his eyes from the point of the blade to look at the minister. “Why are you doing this?”
“For my people, of course. For the Weaver.”
“But why does he want me…?” He licked his lips. “What have I done?”
“Nothing. But you have no heir, and so Aneira will suffer. And by having the surgeon killed today, you made it so easy.” Pronjed stood and stepped away from the table. “Do it.”
He tried to resist. Ean knew how hard he tried. But his hands were no longer his own. He strained to take control of his body, reaching for his hands with his mind, summoning all the strength he thought he possessed. But none of it was enough against the magic of his Qirsi. He could only watch, despairing and utterly helpless, as he plunged the dagger into his own chest.
Chapter Six
The duke had them up early the next morning, which dawned grey and cold, the air damp from a late-night rain. Fetnalla knew that Brall wished to be back in Orvinti for the celebration of Bohdan’s Night, the Night of Two Moons in Bohdan’s Turn, which was only five nights away. If they left that morning, they’d just make it, barring an early snow in the wood.
The duke had returned to his quarters shortly after she did the night before, offering a brief word of greeting to the guard standing by their rooms as he opened his door. The minister heard him from within her chamber and briefly considered going to speak with him. She still wondered why he had come to Solkara, though she had some idea, and she hoped that perhaps, having spoken with Carden, her duke would be ready to confide in her again. She had reached her door, and was resting her hand on the handle, when the memory of his harsh words on the road to the city stopped her.
Since the death of the duke of Bistari, she had noticed a rift forming between them, and with all that happened the day before, it had grown into a chasm. Astounded though she was by the speed with which their rapport had crumbled, she had no doubt as to the cause.
“I will not be spoken to that way,” he had said, “especially not by a Qirsi.”
Never before had he said such a thing to her or made her feel that the color of her eyes mattered to him beyond the powers it gave her to serve him. Certainly he had never given her the impression that he feared her. Somehow, the murder in Bistari had made Brall suspicious of her, perhaps of all Qirsi.
In a sense, his refusal to answer her questions about this journey to see the king told her precisely why they had come. Her duke knew of the conspiracy, and while she hadn’t thought him bold enough to take such action, Fetnalla suspected that he had come to Solkara to ask the king directly if he had ordered Chago’s assassination. She would have given nearly anything to know Carden’s answer.
Unfortunately, the morning found Brall as withdrawn as he had been the previous day. Aside from instructing her to gather Orvinti’s soldiers in the castle courtyard and have the stable hands prepare the horses, he said nothing to her. He barely even looked her in the eye.
When all was ready for their departure, Brall led Fetnalla toward the king’s hall, intending to find Carden and Chofya, thank them for their hospitality, and bid them farewell. They were still in the courtyard, however, when the bells in the castle’s cloister abruptly began to toll, the sound echoing loudly among the stone walls. Almost immediately, the king’s guards swarmed into the courtyard, surrounding the men of Orvinti and demanding that they drop their swords.
“What is this?” Brall asked, striding toward one of the older men, who wore a captain’s star on each shoulder.
“My apologies, Lord Orvinti,” the man said. “I know only what I was told by the archminister.”
“And what was that?”
“That I was to raise the alarm and then find you and your men.”
He glanced at Fetnalla, who had followed only a step behind the duke. “The minister, too.”
“You don’t know why?”
“No, my lord.”
Brall glanced back at Fetnalla, a question in his pale blue eyes.
“You say this came from the archminister?” she asked the captain.
“Yes.”
“Where’s the king?”
“The king is dead,” came a voice from behind them.
Fetnalla and the others turned to see Pronjed walking toward them, accompanied by perhaps twenty more guards. His white hair fell unbound to his shoulders and his face looked wan and lean. Wrapped as he was in a fur-collared cape, he looked like some yellow-eyed buzzard from the southern moors.
“Ean save us all,” Brall whispered.
“How did he die?” Fetnalla asked, shuddering slightly, as if Bian had brushed her cheek with a frigid hand.
“It would seem that he took his own life,” the archminister said. “Though I find that difficult to believe.” He faced the duke. “He used the crystal blade that you gave him last night.”
All the color drained from Brall’s face, leaving it as white as Fetnalla’s hair. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed.
“Are you?” Pronjed asked. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me what you and the king discussed last night. What did you say to him that would make him do something like this?”
“Nothing that I can think of,” the duke said, looking past the minister toward the windows of the great hall.
“What was it that brought you to Solkara, Lord Orvinti? What did you and the king talk about?”
Before Brall could answer, Fetnalla laid a hand on his arm and pointed toward the doorway at the base of the cloister tower. The queen was there, stepping into the courtyard with the prelate. He held one of her hands, and had his other arm around her waist as if he were supporting her. But it almost seemed to Fetnalla that she led him, and that he was the more frail of the two. Chofya’s face looked pale, but her cheeks were dry and her eyes clear. If she had been weeping, she hid it well. She still wore her bed robe, which she pulled tightly around her shoulders, and her dark hair was still tangled with sleep.