A frigid drizzle began. Testily Laratus fashioned a blanket into a hood. “I knew it. It always rains in the barbarous north.”
She laughed. “Call this rain?” Inhaling the precious scents of home, she kicked her mare down the slope. “Come on, Laratus! You haven’t seen anything yet.”
It was dusk when they passed the Temple of Healing. Kataljid felt both comfort and pain. Three years she’d lived there, learning the goddess’ work and making friends. All she’d ever wanted was to be a healer, right since she gave acorn-cups of ‘medicine’ to her dolls. But now she had to be a monarch in waiting.
A villager spotted her riding by. “It’s the healer princess!” he cried, and people flocked around. Food, dry clothes, fresh mounts; they could hardly do enough, and all the time they laughed and bantered with her. Laratus hid his surprise. “Spent too long in Rovala, old son,” he muttered to himself, and tried not to show his distaste for sheep’s cheese.
Kataljid revelled in hearing her real name and speaking her own tongue. They spent half the night talking to the abbot while a runner sent for the Oak patrol. At dawn she stepped out into the chill air of home, and discovered yawning and grinning made a painful combination. When the Oak guards clashed spears on shields she almost dislocated her jaw. Laratus cringed back but Kataljid, first wondering and then eager, ran forwards.
One of the patrol threw aside a winged helmet and ran to meet her.
“Lerica!” “Kataljid!” they squealed at the same time, jumping up and down in delight.
Best, though, was riding up to the Oak Hall and seeing her little brother toddle towards her, dragging their father, who forgot all about kingship and openly wept as he hugged her. Kataljid swept Astwin up to ride on her shoulders, and laughed delightedly at his merry eyes. Then did a double-take. The moppet was wearing a coronet of oak-leaves.
“Is he –?”
“Yes, love.” Her father squeezed her. “He’s starting to show the Power of the Land, thank Goddess.” He stopped questioningly as tears rolled down his daughter’s cheeks. “Or have you changed your mind? You want to rule now?”
“I’m just so happy!” she sniffed. “Studying at the Temple has always been my dream. And I’m sure you’ll teach him to be a much better monarch than I would.” Arms around each other, the king and his family turned to go inside. Then she turned back. “Hurry, up, Laratus! You’re not supposed to keep kings waiting, remember?” But she laughed as she said it, and held out her hand to him. A free man, he took it.
What did it matter that the welcome feast was meagre? She knew Oakland went without to help the starving on the steppes. It was enough that her father’s hall was bright with torchlight and warm against the frosty wind. Her family’s joy was tangible.
As real as that of Laratus, when King Olleyrand ordered his slave-mark bleached, and granted him a fiefdom. The eunuch didn’t even wait for her to translate. He bowed so low his hat fell off. “All hail to the Oak!” he cried, and gave a broken speech of thanks. Kataljid realised he’d listened as well as taught.
At midwinter a messenger burst into the hall, snowflakes billowing around him. He shouted, “Sire! The delegate from Rovala has just arrived!”
King Olleyrand stood, eyebrows raised. “At this time of year? Must be more desperate than I thought.”
Kataljid stood back out of sight. She watched the man stride, Eagle-crested robes aflutter, into the throne-room. Even his gilt armour couldn’t make him anything but a short foreigner with knees blue from the cold. He was one of the two people present who didn’t know the saying ‘too stupid to wear breeks in snow’. Laratus, in his cosy local outfit, had learned the lesson for himself.
Translator trotting at his side, the general strode into the circle of light before the throne. When he snapped a fist across his chest in a salute, snowmelt dripped from the plumes on his helmet. “All hail to the –” He looked around the crowded hall and swallowed. “… to the Oak. Such sad news about your daughter’s treachery, King Olleyrand.” The translator interpreted automatically, then quailed as he realised what he’d said. Bearing bad news to people in power didn’t make for a long life.
Anger surged around the hall. The general shot a hasty glance at the thanes behind but went doggedly on. “It grieves me to bring you tidings of her treachery and death. She slew her guardian and members of the Lion House. The emperor demands compensation. A thousand head of aurochs will be the initial tribute.”
Laratus whispered in Kataljid’s ear. Haughty as Princess Haladra herself, she stepped out of the shadows.
“You?” the envoy gasped. “Here?”
“As you see, General Adraius, rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Her Rovalan was perfect, which was just as well as the translator covered his face in horror. “Far from committing murder I was abducted. I was lucky to escape your civil war.”
The Eagle shifted uneasily. “A... a minor disturbance, child.”
“Minor? Perhaps you don’t realise how far the news has spread. New warlords are carving out territories left, right and centre.” She spread her hands. “And as you see, I am alive to refute your claims.”
Despite the winter chill General Adraius began to sweat. He waved a hand to dismiss her, and gazed imperiously at the king. It would have been more potent if he hadn’t been trembling. “Sire, Emperor Lalixir has proof of the murders your daughter committed. As she is alive she will form part of the blood price for her crimes. That may mean you pay less tribute next year.”
Kataljid chuckled. “Nice try. Lalixir just wants to buy off the army because he doesn’t trust them. Besides, he’s too busy fighting all those uprisings to waste time on me. Now hear my father’s terms for your tyrant.”
She glanced at King Olleyrand, who nodded and asked her to translate. She wasn’t about to let the unhappy interpreter water things down out of fear. “I pity your people,” the king said, “but whom the gods destroy I should not succour.”
“Oh, father, how terribly unjust.” To make certain Adraius had got the message, she said it once in each tongue. When the king winked she fought to suppress a giggle because she knew what the next play in the game was. It had all been planned out long before because they’d known this day would come. “But surely, father, if the empire made a sacrifice to our goddess, she’d allow us to give them a little charity?”
Straight-faced, Olleyrand thanked her for her pious suggestion.
The spectre of famine and unrest in the empire loomed over their negotiations. At last the general spent a fortune on a thousand head of aurochs, Oakland to see to their transportation. He didn’t seem to notice no one actually mentioned a delivery point. As they’d suspected, he was Rovalan enough to think the capital was the empire.
Laratus wrote out the agreement with the interpreter hanging over him. King Olleyrand signed it in blood. Cursing under his breath at acorn-eater customs, Adraius nicked his palm to add his name.
Kataljid snatched the parchment from his grasp and smiled. There was a distinct glitter in her eyes as she blew the signatures dry. “Of course Oakland is happy to help the empire in its hard times. We will split our deliveries equally between every province.”
Adraius blanched. “But – but –”
Olleyrand smiled coldly. “My housecarls will see you safely to your camp, general – ah, Agriljus, didn’t you say? The emperor wouldn’t want anything to happen to you before you get home, now would he?”
Doubtless afraid to face Lalixir, Adraius ignored the slight. Besides, the tall warriors who filled the hall suddenly pressed in on him. He must have realised then that he would never see a copper of what he’d looted from rebel towns.
Two days later, Laratus happily checked off the wagonloads of payment. His new gold tooth glinted in his smile. Tomorrow he’d start a short break on his estate.
The estate he owned as a free man of Oakland. It was right next to the healing house where Kataljid looked after her patients.
But first
Laratus was going to play horsey with his fosterling Atwin. The eunuch was part of a family at last.
Sword and Circle
Adrian Tchaikovsky
They were shouting for her. At first she thought she heard her name in the tulmult: “Ineskae! Ineskae!” but that was her sodden imagination. The roar was a wordless demand that she turn up and bleed for them. Out there was a makeshift amphitheatre, just a hollow in the ground. Its uneven sides were lined with a raucous, leery crowd who wanted to be entertained by her death.
There were almost no Wasp-kinden amongst the spectators, that was the shame of it. The Commonweal had possessed a tradition, once, of stately and mannered duels between skilled masters. Like so much, it had not survived the war. What the Wasps had brought with them was a taste for blood and brutal violence, and these conquered locals were latching onto imported ideas with a will. Why not try to emulate the winning side, after all? Centuries-old traditions had not stopped the armies of the Black and Gold.
She drained the jug, harsh grain spirit searing her throat. The sound of individual voices blurred in her ears so that the mob of them, gamblers, brigands, fugitives and deserters, became like a wave of the sea that ebbed and flowed in its own living rhythm.
“You need to go!” someone shouted in her ear.
“I need to drink!” She was already swaying: a wizened woman of the Mantis-kinden, lean and leathery as dried meat, every feature withered as a prune. Her wild white hair floated about her head like a cloud, and her eyes were red-rimmed. Her people had a reputation as peerless killers. It was a reputation she was trying hard to undo, but so far it had proved insoluble in alcohol.
When she took a step forwards, she stumbled, then wheeled around glowering as though someone had tripped her. Had it not been for that accursed badge, nobody would have taken her seriously.
They were not taking her seriously. They were laughing at her. She realised she had lurched forwards just enough to be nominally before her opponent. She was supposed to be fighting.
“Grandmother.” Her opposite number was a broad-shouldered man of the Dragonfly and he had one of their long-handled swords down by his side. “Perhaps you have come to the wrong place. This is a fighting circle. For fighters.”
Hoots, jeers. Had her badge lost its power at last? Was that why they were so deservingly derisive?
No. She realized that her dishevelled, stained robes were hiding it. With a convulsive twitch of one hand she freed it from the folds, presenting the device to her enemy and to the mob. The sword within the circle blazed in gold from left breast and the catcalls and mockery died in patches. She turned one way and the other, feeling the world swim and the ground tilt beneath her feet.
“Yes!” she shouted out. “Look at it! It’s right there!” She tried to point, but ended up jabbing herself painfully in the chest.
“How dare you?” came the voice of her opponent, the nameless Dragonfly warrior. “How dare you steal such a thing and defile it?” He had been in the war, she guessed. To him, the Weaponsmasters’ order was an ideal that had somehow survived his people’s defeat.
She deserved every drop of his contempt, but still she slurred out, “Didn’t steal it.” The charge of defiling she did not bother to defend.
Then he was at her, just a simple cleaving stroke aimed at ridding the world of this offence to dignity. She tried, she really tried to stand and take it, but the badge was a harsh master. The badge would not let her.
She had come to the circle without a blade, but it was in her hands even as her enemy swung, the grip familiar as breathing: a Commonweal sword like his, five feet from point to pommel, and half of that haft.
She struck halfway through his swing, the blade dragging her tired old arms with it, no messing about with ripostes, but making the parry itself an attack. She ended in a high guard, commanding the middle line, point jabbing at his face. Convulsively, he tried to force her sword aside, because he was far bigger and stronger than she. It took the slightest rotation of her wrists to angle her blade inside his own and, in pushing her sword across himself, he cut his own throat. It was a miserable death for him, a miserable show for the audience, a wretched failure for an old woman who wanted only to die.
Die with dignity, she reminded herself, but that ship had sailed long before, carried off on a tide of cheap spirits.
Later, sitting with a bowl of something clear as water and harsh as defeat, she sensed someone approach her from behind. There had been a time, shortly after the war, when she had put her back to corners to deny the assassins their due. These days she sat with her back to open doors whenever she could. Surely somewhere there was a killer competent enough to rid the world of her?
Not this one, though, and she turned and rose in one smooth motion, holding the drink up at arm’s length, bringing the blade down in a smooth strike to bisect her enemy’s left side from his right. Except the sword was not in her hands, or anywhere in evidence. Always the fucking thing knows best. She was left in a guard as perfect as an illustration from a manual, save that her hands were empty. The boy she faced was barely twelve. He had a name, she recalled.
Eshe: a malnourished Dragonfly-kinden child, hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed. She could not remember where she had got him from, or why. He had just been there, one morning, getting the fire going when she woke on the cold ground. He was just another of the ten thousand orphans the war had churned out.
“Please, Weaponsmaster, we must go.” He was so deferential to her. It was as though he saw someone else before him, someone who still possessed an echo of that pre-war golden glory.
“Winnings,” she got out. The bowl was empty. She had no idea if she had drunk it or spilled it.
“I have them, Weaponsmaster. We must go. I have had word. There were men asking for you.”
“Let them ask it to my face.”
There was a rod of iron in this one that somehow the Wasps had not broken. “They are hunting you, Weaponsmaster.”
She just blinked at him blearily. Slowly, muscle by muscle, her perfect form collapsed until she was sitting on the floor again, her stained robes spread out about her.
“Fine. Go tell them where I am. There might be a reward.”
But that was too cruel and his face showed it. She hated Eshe, sometimes. She had never asked to be responsible for him. She had tried to drive him off. He had not gone. She had refused to feed him. He had proved more than able to scrounge food for both of them. And these days, he kept hold of the money.
“Bad men,” he insisted. “Killers. They will not care who dies, what burns, to get at you.” He was shuffling from one foot to the other. “Please.”
Why should I care? But the badge cared. The sword and the oh-so-honourable circle of the doomed order of Weaponsmasters, they cared, and they hauled her to her feet. Will I seek them out? she wondered. Apparently, she would not. Instead, she left town hurriedly – this place in the heart of the occupied Commonweal whose name she couldn’t even recall. She made sure people saw which way she had gone.
Once she had staggered a sufficient distance, with the alcohol evaporating off her like mist, she covered her trail and doubled back. She wanted to look at her pursuers. Perhaps one of them would be good enough to kill her. There was always hope.
Sober, she could be stealthy as a shadow. An old, old shadow, it was true, but then all shadows were old. They were the only things in the world that even the rising sun could not renew but must either destroy or leave in hiding. Creeping like a creak-jointed thief back into that village, hiding and lurking, she felt in bitter need of destruction.
Eshe, she had told to stay away, out in the fields. No doubt he would ignore her, as he always did, but he was at least half shadow himself, and who would notice one more starving Dragonfly child in a land that the Wasp armies had chewed their way through?
She remembered the war: the one that had so recently ended. Back then she had been a prince’s champion and her badge a source of pride. Sword to s
word, she’d had no equal, and this in the Commonweal, where the art of the duel had been perfected centuries before. When the Wasp Empire brought their challenge she had laughed, they all had. Oh, certainly the Wasps had always been a hostile presence on the Commonweal’s eastern border, but they were savages, soon riled and soon slapped down.
Those few merchants and vagrants who warned that the Empire had changed in the last generation were ignored. The Monarch of the Commonweal commanded a nobility unparalleled with sword and lance and bow, and a levy of peasants vast enough to swallow the Empire a hundred times over. The outcome of the war was never in doubt.
Of all their predictions, only that last had been true.
A fugitive in her own country, she crouched and spied on these men who had come to take her. There was no mistaking them: not soldiers but some band of trackers sniffing after the bounty the Empire would pay for her head. There were more than a score of them, men who had been peasants, and then soldiers, and were now just survivors. She saw Dragonfly and Grasshopper-kinden amongst them, and a handful of Wasps who were probably deserters. It was their leader who caught Ineskae’s attention, though.
It wasn’t that you didn’t see Wasp-kinden women. They came with the army, but as slaves and kept women and whores. The Wasps had a firm idea of where women belonged in their Empire. And yet here was one of their delicate maidens out on her own, and in command of a pack of killers. This one had seen better times, it was true. She was lean and angular, and wore a knee-length brigandine that had been ill-used and stitched back together. Her fair hair was hacked short, and she carried herself with every bit as much belligerence as a man of her people. Across her back was the same style of Commonwealer sword that Ineskae herself carried.
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