Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook

by Andrea K Höst

  Finally, Damaris fell silent, waiting. Soren couldn't guess the boy's reaction, for there had been no clue in the even pace of his breathing. What if he fled? Rejected whatever Damaris had said and ran? The offer, after all, would take as much as it gave. Freedom from the purpose written on his blood in return for the strictures of the Fae Court and the loss of the powers which made him so dangerous. He was only a few steps away – shouldn't she leap forward, grab him, so that the Tzel Aviar could work his magic?

  But it seemed important to give the boy the chance to choose. And terribly unlikely that a sudden leap would be at all successful. And even as Soren took an unsteady breath, and closed her hands to wait, a killer appeared before her.

  A scavenged jacket hung loosely over rough bandaging. The arrow must have hit deep in the meat of his shoulder – not an impossible wound to dress without help, but difficult. The fine features carried an edge of weariness, but his clear silver gaze was far from the desperately ill and pitiful image conjured by Soren's conscience. He caught her gaze and held it, then stepped forward and offered his hands to her, wrists together.

  That Fae confidence was lost with the gesture, eyes becoming wide and young despite their inhuman light. The hands, slim but hard-used, shook. And Soren shook too. A final blow against the image of the monstrous hunter.

  She reached out and touched the back of one hand; warm skin soft beneath her fingers. Even as she quailed internally, a need to face the practicalities reasserted itself. According to the Tzel Aviar his hands were his weapons, and he was fully Soren's height, though his young male strength was probably weakened by injury and deprivation. Her role here was to protect Tzel Damaris, but also to expose herself as little as possible.

  Awkwardly she took hold of the back of one wrist, glancing up into eyes which now matched her own uncertainty. Then she stepped behind him, reaching with her other hand for his free wrist. Uncomfortable as it made her, she pressed against his back, positioning herself for maximum leverage should he attempt to fight or flee. He offered no resistance, adjusting to her bracketing hold with a wary respect for his injured shoulder. And waited.

  -oOo-

  As a mage, Soren had measured Tzel Damaris against Aristide: probably stronger, certainly more experienced, able to tell when she watched him with palace-sight. In truth, until he began to draw the Moon, she had had no comprehension of what he was capable of doing.

  It began quietly enough. He cupped his hands together as if to hold water and lifted his eyes toward the tranquil sliver of Lady Moon. Those who watched from the palace would not be able to hear the low sibilance of chant which threaded itself through the night, and she could not guess if they sensed what it summoned.

  Lady Moon, whose cycle holds birth and death. Honoured certainty of all who lived, known before the first breath is taken and finally met after the last slips away. But this was not the Lady's quiet regard, familiar from temple visits. This was a dreadful immediacy. This was the sudden realisation that with each heartbeat there was no reason but the Lady's will that there be a next.

  Soren was stitched into crushed immobility, a mouse before a parliament of owls, bound small and trembling with fear. She had never truly felt the authority which sparked and snuffed life. Sunlight was more forceful, that balming, burning touch a constant reminder of what fuelled daily existence. But here, in a reflection of moonlight glimmering against the curve of an impassive Fae mage's fingers, was something beyond angry heat. In Lady Moon was the essence. Tzel Damaris stood there, his chant fading to the wind's night-soft whisper, holding souls in his hands.

  And Soren was supposed to keep him safe.

  A small movement forward with those cupped hands, and the boy mewled, a naked little animal sound which gave her bare warning of a young man's back becoming a bow drawn taut, his shoulders against her neck, arms raised toward his own throat, sinews wire-strung beneath her straining grasp. She thought she could smell death in his hair, old and dried with fear. But he was not struggling, was caught in the grip of some agony, ecstasy, as the Tzel Aviar brought his hands up to the bandaged chest and began to call from the child made monster the power bound beyond his blood. Like to like.

  Her challenge was to hold him upright, vibrating beneath the touch of the Tzel Aviar. He was phasing in and out of visibility and the next time he was visible his hands were encased in sharp-edged light, shifting glimmers of edges and points which formed gauntlets rather than claws. The light left little trails, as if the air itself took wound from its passage. Flesh would not heal so readily. This was what killed Vahse.

  Sheer good fortune that the boy's response continued to be directionless agony, for Soren could barely hold him as it was. The Rose's unease began to increase, a murmur turning to a constant hum, tangling with Tzel Damaris' steady winding chant and the raggedly tearing gasps of the boy they were trying to save. Soren's head rang from the breath of giants, from the struggle to which she was spectator rather than participant, and wished for strength of resolve and purpose rather than this blank desperation which was the only thing which kept her grip in place.

  For it was becoming terribly apparent that Tzel Damaris was losing the battle. The boy's periods of invisibility were becoming more and more frequent and each time he vanished Soren was treated to the sight of a Tzel Aviar being crushed by effort. Slowly a line etched itself onto the clear brow, the colour leached from fine skin. He continued his chant as if each word was a basket of rocks he must lift above his head, and at every syllable another stone was added. And into his eyes, those steady Fae eyes which had surveyed them all with such detachment, crept the waver of a man who finds himself in a trap and sees no way out. Even the Fair could lose their course.

  Then he looked up at her through the space where a killer strained to remain in existence, and broke his chant, slid into it two words which could well have been boulders for their cost.

  "Name him."

  Panic-fuelled memory immediately proffered the explanation the Tzel Aviar had given her beneath the dripping Rose. "A name is power, Champion. A foothold for resistance against imposed will. He was not given one."

  A name, an identity away from the purpose the boy was constructed for, might make all the difference, for it was obvious Tzel Damaris did not have strength enough to break the Moon-cast enchantment. But Soren jerked back in instinctive rejection, a host of consequences unreeling through her mind. Even if she had the slightest idea what an appropriate name for a Fae lordling was, it would be a link, a permanent tie, in its way an act of shaping which she was hardly fit to make, Rathen Champion or not. Define the life of this boy-monster-prince?

  But she couldn't not do it, any more than it had been possible to send a substitute out here in her place. With her mind full of Daseretals, Asteralls and Desterets, Soren leaned forward and said the only name she could manage: "Shaol. You're Shaol. Shaol of Seldareth."

  And that was it. With a sound like wire violently snapped, a bond was broken. The Tzel Aviar grunted, an earthily human sound, and the boy – Shaol – sagged back into Soren's hold, nearly tipping them both over. He twisted, shuddering, then turned to look at her and his eyes were as green as his sister's, but full of tears.

  "My thanks, Champion," Tzel Damaris began, rediscovering his composure, but Soren wasn't listening. All her attention, her whole focus, had been swallowed by the panic of the Rose. And Aristide and Strake, still together, both gasping as if they could barely spare a moment to draw breath.

  -oOo-

  "Can you get me into the palace? Right now?" Her voice was high with panic.

  The Tzel Aviar glanced toward the balcony where Strake and Aristide were supposed to be watching in safety, but didn't trouble her with questions or argument. Two steps and he had a firm hold of Soren's waist, stooping to lift up the boy and murmur something to him.

  The words must have been 'hold on' because a moment later they launched into the air. Hopelessly precarious, as his grip immediately slid from waist to armpi
t and Soren had to cling to prevent herself from plunging to the suddenly distant ground. The thin light of the moon spared her a good view of the effort this sudden flight cost him, but it was a close thing, for they did not so much land on the balcony as drop on to it.

  The palace exploded through Soren's mind, and she stumbled but remained upright while the Tzel Aviar went to his knees and stayed down. The scene before her sprang into precise focus. Strake doubled backwards over the corner of the balcony, a slender knife flaring into white existence at his throat, and black lines streaking Aristide's pale hands as he held it there. But his hands were more on the blade than the hilt and the blood was Aristide's own. He was holding the knife back, struggling against nothing Soren could see.

  Strake hadn't called out. The guardsmen still loitered on the far side of the doors, oblivious to the drama out in the night. Summoned, they would surely leap to cut down the person holding the knife, not knowing he was keeping their King alive. And be left with a perfect scene of traitor and the man he had murdered.

  The Rose was flinging scenes of the palace through her mind, person after person, standing, sitting, sleeping. Trying to find who or what was controlling the trump blade. But Strake had said it wasn't able to sense magic of itself, that it would have to rely on visual signals. And no-one, none of them, was conveniently sitting in a circle, chanting and scribing ominous symbols.

  Soren looked straight at Lady Arista. The woman was standing just inside the door of her apartments, eyes intent on nothing, head tilted in concentration. It was so marvellously easy to reach out through the Rose, to summon glass-glimmer thorn ghosts and–

  "Don't kill her."

  Aristide, his gaze fixed on the region of Strake's collar-bone, face completely expressionless. Asking her to spare the life of the mother he hated. Soren blinked at him, then turned her attention back to that distant room where, the beginnings of a frown creasing her brow, Lady Arista reached out with her hand as if plucking some unseen string. Light flared around the hilt of the dagger, and abruptly Strake and Aristide between them were able to move it a fingers-width back. Aristide began muttering some attempt at counterspell while Strake inhaled sharply, as if he had been holding his breath.

  "Mimic casting," he said, in a tight but remarkably unflustered voice, even as the knife began edging toward his throat again. "Spell tastes of Aristide, as if he activated it. But it's not. We won't be able to hold it much longer."

  Soren stared back at Lady Arista, who was now gazing with considerable affront at the thorny vines surrounding her. But not casting. She'd just interfered with the attack – that had been obvious enough. Which meant it was someone else, one of the palace hundreds was doing this. The Rose's panic, fury, competed with her own. This was her greatest test, where she had to truly be the Champion, use the tool of palace-sight, save her Rathen.

  And she couldn't! She was staring at them all, all she knew to be mages, all she suspected, anyone at all. At Aspen, staring at the door of his room. Barons, ambassadors stilled in the middle of evening activity, reacting to a second sudden excess of power nearby. Any of them could be the caster.

  Frantically, Soren tried to expand her focus, to see them all at once, every person in the palace, all of them, searching for the one who shammed or betrayed effort, malice, anything. Lady Arista reached out again, doing something which made the knife flare, slip back.

  And there, at the palace's heart, someone reacted. A slight jerk, a frown, then leaning forward as if to push harder.

  "Halcean?!"

  Off in the Champion's apartment's, Soren's aide reacted to her name, her eyes widening, focus shifting. She had heard.

  "Halcean. Stop." Soren could scarcely believe what she saw, but she could still deal with it. All around Halcean, seated so innocuously in her room, the palace's defences uncoiled. Milk-white threat. Soren couldn't keep the hurt from her voice, but her tone still made clear the consequences of refusal: "Stop now."

  And, face white, Halcean obeyed. Surrounded by thorns as long as her forearm, she made a simple chopping gesture. The light surrounding the trump blade went away and both Strake and Aristide let out their breath. Metal rang as it fell to the balcony.

  "Why?" Soren asked then, struggling against roiling anger larger than her own. The Rose was fully roused, still curling and twisting at the back of her mind even though the crisis was past.

  She watched dismay war with fear on the woman's face and she spoke, but lip-reading was still beyond Soren. Only sorrow was evident, and regret.

  Strake touched her arm then. "Your aide?" he asked, shortly. He was staring at the Tzel Aviar, still kneeling, and the boy who stood behind him. Huge moss-green eyes in a smudged face, blood on his clothes, and hands which could not cut. Soren tried to think with a head which thrummed with second-hand fury, anxious to divert her Rathen from any confrontation.

  But Strake simply and very deliberately turned his back on Vahse's killer. Aristide reached with bleeding hands for the fallen trump blade. Lady Arista emerged from her apartment in search of the source of the casting and the guards on the far side of the balcony door seemed finally to realise something was wrong. And the vines about Halcean stirred.

  Inside her but separate from her Soren felt anger turn to malice, to vengeance. Eyes widening, she pulled the vines back, willed them away. They swayed, lifted, then coiled down.

  "No." The words were a whisper through frozen lips. Just loud enough to bring Strake's attention back to her, to see the strain on her face as she pushed again, harder, with all her will.

  "What?" Strake had hold of her arm.

  "It wants to kill her." Numb words, forced out. She was shaking now, sweating with the effort it cost her to hold the vines back. Halcean, eyes huge, sat mouse-still in her chair, watching a vicious tip turn inches from her face. But Soren wasn't going to let it happen. Halcean had betrayed them, yes, tried to kill Strake, and she would pay for it. But not like this. Soren would not allow it.

  Then, on the heels of this absolute resolution, the Rose pushed her almost negligently to the back of her mind, reached out, and cut Halcean to pieces.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  "I am Darien, boy. You would do well to remember that."

  Arista Couerveur had not taken kindly to being suspected of attempting regicide, nor to the amount of time she'd been kept waiting before she'd been permitted to see the King. Soren, sitting in the audience chamber opening off the throne room, listened to Strake reacting to being called 'boy', and his brusquely polite termination of the meeting. She watched her Rathen pass a hand across his face as the former Regent stalked away, and Aristide's face as he passed his mother. Briefly Soren glanced at the Tzel Aviar, putting a freshly scrubbed killer to bed, then returned to gazing at the guards in the process of removing pieces of person from the Champion's apartments.

  After the thing behind her eyes had fallen back satisfied into nothingness, Soren had been overwhelmed with a new kind of anger. It swelled in her chest, burning, choking, urging her to scream and rant and tear at her face. But instead she'd very carefully said: "She's dead," then closed her mouth on all the other words which wanted to pour out.

  The ominous silence she'd maintained since was no doubt the inspiration for the expression on Strake's face as he and Aristide came into the audience chamber and sat down. Frank worry. Aristide looked at her intently, but then succeeded in acting as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had been happening. He'd taken off his blood-stained demi-robe, but the white undershirt was also spotted with patches of red, and his hands were swathed with bandages.

  "A third child of my father's," he began, his voice thoughtful, detached. "No doubt originally intended to be a spy rather than an assassin, but circumstances in Darest have altered of late."

  Purpose-built to get every advantage out of Tor Darest. Halcean had told Soren that, quite directly. She'd called Court a game, apparently been happy to play the part she'd been set. Deliberately cultivated Soren, cast s
uspicion on Aspen, pretended loyalty. But she hadn't been happy to be made assassin. Another tool. Another puppet.

  Strake snorted. "Does this Veth family even exist?"

  "Vereck checks all residents of the palace. A Runath family, settled in Darest out of the east some twenty years ago – my sister would have been an infant, and I doubt the Veth woman was her blood mother. They purchased the semblance of a title and land close to the Saxan border and have been rigorously ordinary since. The local garrison has been contacted, but there is little chance of finding them there."

  "And what redress do we have?"

  The smile which touched Aristide's mouth now was faint, and very cold. "Her paternity is clear. I will have her body delivered to my brother. Beyond that? Accusation, counter-assassin, harsh words? We can certainly go to war with Cya if you wish it."

  For a moment Strake looked tempted, then he made a disgusted motion with his hands. "You don't."

  It was open acknowledgement that it was as much Aristide's choice as Strake's, but neither of them marked the gesture with so much as an eye-flicker. "I want a successful Spring festival," Aristide said, very mild. "And to build ships, which I suspect is what made our lives too costly for Cya. This is a distraction. Our energies are better spent."

  Strake shook his head, not angry but frustrated. He knew perfectly well they'd lose a war against Cya or any other land, and was twisting on a need for vengeance gone unfulfilled. The night's drama had left him with a small cut on one hand, a great deal of nervous energy, and a rigorous determination to avoid all mention of Vahse's killer.

  Head buzzing, Soren shifted her attention to the Fair. Damaris was holding someone's sigil, no doubt reporting success. The boy sat in the middle of a vast bed: clean, clothed, bandaged and miserable. There would be a price to pay for naming him, Fae princeling, murderer, monster. Shaol.