Storm Surge

by R. J. Blain

  “Because you can see.”

  “That is part of it.” Acknowledging the truth still stung, but he shook his head to push his worries and regrets out of his thoughts. “Not just that, but because of the Guardians as well. That has changed.” Kalen wouldn’t have to worry, so long as Maiten remained prepared to take his rank if necessary. With his sight back, however blurred it was at times, he could protect himself.

  And, if Maiten spoke the truth, Kalen would have more help with that aspect of his life than he had ever expected or desired. The novelty of the Guardians protecting him cajoled a quiet laugh out of him.

  “What has changed?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Crysallis. What hasn’t changed is the current circumstances. The Rift Rides. How can I use you?”

  “We can’t fight the skreed, Your Majesty.”

  “I’m rather keen on fighting Danarites and Kelshites right now. The skreed will be a problem for later, when there aren’t crazed fanatics creating even more of them for us to contend with. I’ll start the war I can fight first before worrying about the skreed.” Kalen regretted his lack of participation in whatever Captain Silvereye was scheming to do with the Crimson Eye.

  He hadn’t been capable of participation, but that was a different matter altogether.

  “Danarites and Kelshites are a different matter entirely. For them, I give you all of the magic at my disposal.”

  “Which leads me right back to my question,” he replied, seizing the opportunity the woman had given him. “What is a witch? What magics are at your disposal and how can I use them?”

  “What is a witch is a far different question than what can a witch do, Your Majesty.”

  “Semantics. I will start making guesses about the nature of witches if I must. I will not be denied.”

  With a heavy sigh, Crysallis pinched the bridge of her nose. “I will make a point of apologizing to all of your Guardians, Your Majesty, for assuming they bore responsibility for their inability to contain you.”

  Kalen snorted. “I would like to witness that.”

  “I’m sure you would, Your Majesty.”

  “Kalen. My name is Kalen. I can spell it for you, if you’d like.”

  “I am aware of how your name is spelled.”

  “When we are alone, please use my name. You can ‘Your Most Royal and Obnoxious Majesty’ me all you like when in the company of others, seeing as I surely couldn’t stop you. But when we are alone, spare me the titles. I hear them enough.”

  “I have never once called you obnoxious, Yo—”

  Kalen cleared his throat.

  “Kalen.”

  “That’s better. See? We can get along just fine. It wasn’t all that painful, was it?”

  “You’ve a nasty tongue.” Crysallis sighed, muttering something he suspected was a curse—or many curses—beneath her breath.

  “And now that we have that unpleasantness out of the way, while it’s very tempting to go beat sense into Kelsh’s monarch, it might be prudent to head back to the camp. How far are we from them? I’d rather not starve to death before catching up with the others.”

  “I will ensure that you’re fed before it comes to that. It would be easier, however, if you could wait until morning.”

  Kalen snorted. “I can manage until then.” While his stomach rumbled complaints at him, he ignored them, making an impatient gesture at the witch. “Lead the way, then.”

  “Resting might be prudent.”

  “I’d rather a little more distance between us and the swarm’s path,” he admitted with a shudder.

  Crysallis shook her head. “The swarm has long since moved on. That is not a worry for now.”

  While Kalen had his doubts, he kept them to himself. If the swarm did come back for them, he doubted even Crysallis’s power as a witch would be enough to spare them.

  Chapter Eight

  Long after Captain Silvereye had dismissed him, Breton worried. His concerns piled on top of each other until he was smothered beneath their weight. The only consolation he could find was in the lack of feeling from the Rift King.

  Wherever Kalen was, he was fine.

  Breton took comfort in that, although it didn’t stop his guilt over his behavior from gnawing at him. What could he have done differently to prevent all that had happened? No matter how long he thought on it, the answer remained the same: everything.

  Wandering around the camp in the glow of sunset didn’t comfort him or offer any solutions. The mercenaries watched him warily, keeping to themselves. When his frustrations threatened to boil over, he sought out Perin. Ceres stood among the Rift horses. Ferethian glowered at Breton as he joined Kalen’s foal.

  “Do you think Varest and Father are safe?”

  “Kalen’s fine. You know that as well as I,” Breton replied, hesitating a moment before continuing, “Varest can take care of himself. Even if he runs into the Wolf Blades, he’s on a superior horse. And were he to find them, I think they’ll be too occupied with the swarm to chase after one man. You worry too much.”

  “Says the man who hid his blind foal’s boot to keep him in his tent,” Ceres grumbled.

  Maiten snickered, stepping out from among the horses.

  Flipping a rude gesture in his friend’s direction, Breton grabbed a curry comb and hunted Perin down. He stroked his gelding’s coat until it gleamed. “Captain Silvereye didn’t give me an answer, in case you were wondering, Maiten.”

  “I’m unsurprised. What do you think?” Maiten draped his arms over Perin’s back, blocking Breton from grooming his gelding. “Do you think he’ll agree?”

  Ceres’s eyes bore into Breton. “Agree to what?”

  With a sigh, Breton leaned his brow against the proud arch of Perin’s neck. “There’s a Rifter-born mercenary among the Mithrians. I want him for Kalen.”

  “You want him? What do you mean?” There was a long pause as Ceres chewed on his lip. “What could you want with a mercenary? The only thing we need is more Guardians.”

  “And that’s exactly what I want him for,” Breton replied with a grimace. “Even if I somehow managed to get word back to the Rift, it could be months before any of the others arrive.”

  “We should start making bets on how many abandoned their searches and are already on their way here.” Chuckling too merrily for Breton’s liking, Maiten rubbed his hands together. “After what happened in Morinvale, I sincerely doubt many continued on a hopeless venture to kingdoms we all know full well he wasn’t in. And while Ferethian’s territorial and doesn’t let many other horses carry Kalen, they’re still his horses. They’ll come to their Rider no matter what.”

  “If they didn’t suicide when they were cut off from him,” Breton reminded the other Guardian in a subdued voice.

  “I doubt it. His Majesty would have reacted if any of them had died. You know how cursed sensitive he is to his horses. I won’t argue he’s been despondent lately, but who wouldn’t be in his situation?” Sighing heavily, Maiten straightened rubbing at his temples. “I don’t think any of his horses died.”

  Breton had his doubts, but instead of voicing him, he said, “I hope you’re right.”

  “If any of Father’s horses died, he’d be devastated. Look at what happened when he lost Tavener. If anyone had tried to challenge him, he would’ve gladly let them kill him.”

  It took all of Breton’s will not to snap at Kalen’s foal for the unpleasant reminder. “No one did.”

  “Wisely so. Only a fool wouldn’t have known what sort of Hellfires-spawned demon lurked in the Rift King’s shadow then.” Maiten grimaced. “And I don’t mean the healers.”

  Breton glanced out of the corner of his eye at the Rift King’s stallion, who stood with both ears cocked back and his teeth bared. “I think the Hellfires-spawned demon heard you, Maiten.”

  “I’ve always wondered why Ferethian waited for so long before forcing his way into Kalen’s study. It was almost half a year before he made his move to claim hi
s Rider, wasn’t it?”

  Ferethian snorted, stretched out his neck, and shook himself. Chuckling a little at the stallion’s reactions, Maiten dared to reach over and give the small horse a slap on the shoulder.

  Breton considered the stallion for a long moment before saying, “Closer to a year, I think. It was six months until the healers ceased worrying about whether or not he’d recover completely. And there were attempts even then, but they were half-hearted at best. A thrown dart here and there, poisoned with vellest.”

  Ceres frowned, his expression puzzled. “With vellest? I thought everyone in the Rift knew that it wouldn’t do anything to him.”

  With a flinch at the pain the memories caused, Breton tried to find a way to explain his suspicions to Kalen’s foal. Before he could speak, Maiten held up a hand for silence.

  The red-haired Guardian rolled his shoulders, tilting his head back to stare up at the stars above. “Ceres, let me ask you a question.”

  “What is it?”

  “How does one obtain vellest?”

  “You either get it from the stores or you go into the deeps and find it,” was the immediate reply.

  Maiten laced his fingers behind his head. “No one acquired any vellest from the stores, not once from the moment His Majesty lost his Tavener until the moment Ferethian sieged the Rift King’s study. What does that tell you?”

  “They went into the deeps to get it?” Ceres asked uncertainly.

  “Now why would they do that? Because you’re right—by then, everyone knew that poisoning the Rift King with vellest was a fruitless effort. He drank the stuff whenever someone was idiotic enough to leave it where he might find it, much to the healer’s disgust and disapproval.” Maiten sighed and lowered his head to stare down at the ground. “I know a lot of you foals avoided him around that time, especially you and your brother. They didn’t do it to kill him. In their way, I think they were trying to help him.”

  “They were helping him by trying to kill him?” Ceres asked in disbelief.

  Breton snorted and shook his head at Ceres’s lack of understanding, but remained silent so that his friend could explain. It was a theory that he disliked, but he hadn’t heard any others that made sense.

  No matter how much he hated to admit it, he and so many others had been cowards then. How much pain could they have spared Kalen if they had acted instead of watching and doing nothing?

  The Rift King’s false assassins had done more good than all of the Guardians combined in those days.

  With a disgusted glare at Kalen’s foal, Maiten made a rude gesture. “Didn’t I just say that trying to poison His Majesty with vellest was useless? It does, however, ease pain. There are those who believed he had more than his fair share of it. Showing sympathy to His Majesty wasn’t exactly wise back then; it was the only way some had. It was more than any of us Guardians had.”

  “So you let people try to poison him?” Anger soured Ceres’s expression and tone. “You did nothing?”

  “Neither did you,” Maiten whispered.

  Kalen’s foal flinched at the other Guardian’s words. Fearing an argument between them, Breton cleared his throat to catch their attention. “Enough. We can’t change the past. He survived. The rest doesn’t matter. What does matter is bringing him back to us and keeping a better watch over him.”

  “He doesn’t need to be watched. He needs to be involved in everything we’re doing,” Maiten replied in an annoyed tone.

  Waving his hand in both acceptance and dismissal of Maiten’s complaint, Breton said, “Until we get an answer from Captain Silvereye, all we can do is hope Crysallis keeps her word.”

  Maiten sighed. “Crysallis doesn’t lie. She may not tell the complete truth, but I have never seen that witch go back on her word once she’s given it. She’ll do as she says. She always does.”

  A headache formed behind Breton’s eyes. Without any evidence to dispute Maiten’s claim, he nodded his agreement. After what had happened in Morinvale, he wished the woman had returned to the Rift. Would her ongoing presence in Kelsh prove a risk?

  Breton swallowed and hoped he hadn’t made a mistake trusting the witch with his wayward foal.

  Pacing back and forth, Ceres halted and pointed at Maiten and then at him. “What I don’t understand is why you’re going to trust some mercenary to be a Guardian, Rift-born or not.”

  “What other choice do we have?” Breton replied bitterly. “We could chase after Kalen, but it wouldn’t do us any good at all. He may have no love for his sire, but his dam is a different matter entirely. If we put her at risk for his sake, he won’t forgive us.”

  Ceres grimaced. “I can’t deny that. I think he loves his dam as much as he hates his sire.”

  With a low groan, Maiten sank down to the ground and bowed his head. Horasian edged forward and shoved his nose against his Rider’s chest. “It’s more than that.”

  Breton frowned. “What is it Maiten?”

  “May he forgive me for speaking,” his friend muttered, shaking his head. “I break my sworn word. His Majesty has declared to me that if he cannot fulfill his role as Rift King, his sire is to take his place. He feels, and perhaps rightly so, that Lord Delrose’s biases, experience as an Akakashani, and general temperament would be good traits for the resolution of the dispute between Kelsh and Danar. He thinks of his death as Arik before him had.”

  Breton sank down to the ground, his mouth hanging open in shock. “What?”

  “It gets worse, old friend. I am his second choice,” Maiten whispered in a broken voice.

  ~~*~~

  When Captain Silvereye came to find him, Breton hadn’t managed to rise from where he sat among the Rift horses. Too many emotions boiled within him, and he didn’t dare speak lest they escape and become his undoing. Anguish dominated, born of the thoughts of losing Kalen to the inevitable fate of Rift Kings. Anger at having been excluded from the Rift King’s choice of succession flared, but was smothered by fear and worry.

  How far into despondency had his foal fallen? How much of it was his fault?

  “I haven’t seen a more miserable lot in a long time,” Captain Silvereye announced.

  Breton didn’t bother looking up from staring at the night-darkened ground. “What do you need, Captain Silvereye?”

  “I will bargain with you, Rifters. I will consider giving you Delaven, but he does not come cheaply.” The amusement in the Mithrian’s tone forced Breton to lift his head.

  Captain Silvereye smirked, and the expression gave Breton the chills. “What bargain?” he asked warily.

  “Three things. First, you will permit a Mirthian of my choosing among your number. This person will serve as a liaison between your people and mine. It will be with the understanding that this individual will serve the Rift King first, but that information will be given to me. An ambassador between the Guardians and myself. Seeing as His Majesty requires more protection than your numbers can provide, this person’s first duty will be to serve as his bodyguard. You Guardians have other duties. Second, you will permit a Kelshite, of the Yadesh’s choosing, among your number.” The smirk broadened into a grin. “Third, upon his safe return, he will be initiated as my co-captain.”

  Ceres and Maiten choked. For a long moment, Breton could do nothing, not even breathe.

  “You want to what?” he exploded. The horses snorted, shying away before settling down to stare at him in equine displeasure at his outburst. Ferethian stood stiff-legged, staring at the Mithrian.

  Captain Silvereye looked smug. “I think this arrangement would benefit all of us a great deal. By declaring him my co-captain, His Majesty will have the opportunity to work among the mercenaries without revealing himself to be the Rift King. As I am a Shadow Captain, that rank will also be granted to him. No Mithrian would even consider harming him. Shadow Captains are always ransomed should they be captured in battle. The death of a Shadow Captain is severely punished. Should Kelsh or Danar harm him while he is in this capacity, M
ithrias will march. You can check the Covenant, if you’d like. It is the one circumstance Mithrias can and will take action against any kingdom regardless of its status in the Six.”

  Maiten coughed and cleared his throat. “I am fairly certain, Captain Silvereye, that the Covenant was created to prevent a situation like this, was it not? The Rift is neutral. Joining the ruling council of Mithrias is not a neutral position.”

  “I was not intending on informing the council of my co-captain’s secondary occupation.”

  “Secondary occupation?” Maiten asked incredulously.

  “Secondary occupation,” Silvereye confirmed.

  Breton bowed his head, rubbing at his temples with his knuckles. “How do you intend on hiding the fact that the Rift King is your co-captain?”

  Captain Silvereye gestured at the ground beside him. “Mind if I sit?”

  With a shrug, Breton shifted closer to Maiten to make room for the Mithrian, away from the agitated horses. “I did not take you for the impulsive type, Captain Silvereye. I usually leave such things to His Majesty and the twins.”

  Ceres snorted.

  Captain Silvereye sank down to the ground. “I’m not. I have been considering this since I first realized who your wayward Rifter was. This incident simply solidified my need to make this a plan rather than a consideration.” With a tired groan, the Mithrian settled into a comfortable position. “I have consulted with Lord Delrose on this matter, and there are several things we could do. First, we contrive a story that one Satoren Delrose ended up in Mithrias and began a shining career as a mercenary, working his way through the ranks until joining me as co-captain. Of course, as the Kelshite King did not send word to Mithrias regarding the disappearance of one Satoren Delrose when he was young, or sent word of his importance to Kelsh, it makes sense that Mithrias would not have any reason to return the Kelshite to his home kingdom.”