by Tia Reed
“See if you can ease her suffering,” her brother said to Arun.
She flinched as the minoria’s fingers touched her temples, cried deep in her heart as they brushed stray strands of hair away, an intimacy that was too forward. He must have felt her trembling despair. She could not contain it; nor could she fend him off.
Princess. Warmth spread from his capable fingers as cerulean blue light bathed the tent. The last of her physical hurts subsided, but she could choose not to answer. There is someone who wishes to speak to you.
Her mind fell quiet so that she thought him gone from her head.
A new voice broke in. Is she there?
Could it be the question was more than a figment of her longing?
You said I could talk to her.
Vinsant? It was impossible, but the voice was so real, so strong.
Hey, I can hear you. This is so cool. We can speak every day and no one will ever know.
How she had missed his cheeky grin and ludicrous schemes. The yearning drove her to sob. Did Father punish you? She wanted to take him in her arms and hug the air out of his chest, his protests ignored.
Nah. I mean I’m kind of banished to the mines until he realises he can’t bear to go through life without talking to his favourite child again but Levi, I mean the majoria, is teaching me awesome magic. I can borrow light and heat from the sun, summon water, heal aching muscles, shield –
Oh, Vinsant. She had not meant him to hear. In ordinary circumstances, the words would have been no more than a sigh inside her heart. But this was magic, and her thoughts and feelings were laid bare.
What’s wrong? He hurt you. I know he hurt you. I’m coming to get you Kordahla. I’m almost as good with a sword as Mariano now.
Vinsant, no. His idle boasts were never that, and she could not bear to have him hurt, to have him see her this way.
I promised you I would. You know I can.
I know, but you mustn’t. She sensed his hurt, his anger. I need to know you will complete your training.
You’re sick. You’re dizzy. I can feel it. They can’t do this to you.
Apprentice, remember why you link.
Whatever that was supposed to mean, it silenced her brazen, protective little brother.
Promise me you will finish your training. Promise me you will make up with Father.
His resistance almost toppled her.
Have a care, apprentice.
Promise me, she persisted.
My promise won’t make you well.
It will, Vinsant. You can’t know how much it will. She could not disguise the pleading.
Can we still talk?
Oh, Vinsant. Talk to me every day.
I’ll finish my training. I’ll be the most powerful majoria in the history of the mahktashaan. You’ll see.
We must break the link, else Mariano will grow suspicious. Arun’s gentle intrusion felt like a caress.
Vinsant chuckled. He’ll never guess. That brought the ghost of a smile to the corners of her lips. Then her mind was her own again, the inner silence profound while the clatter outside rang sharp in her ears.
She was clutching Arun so hard, her hands were white, and he had not uttered the shadow of a protest. His sympathetic eyes glowed cerulean inside his hood, searching for some sign she returned to life. So close were they, she could see every detail of his concerned face.
“Thank you.” The words were the barest breath on her lips.
“What did she say?” Mariano demanded.
“She will eat,” Arun replied, helping her onto a stool. He dipped his head in the merest bow and fetched her bowl. “Princess.”
She took it, stared at the lumps of meat inside, the hares the soldiers had speared, and the one Brailen had managed to club on the head with a rock. Her appetite had long since vanished but, morsel by morsel, she spooned the meal into her mouth, chewed and swallowed beneath her older brother’s gaze. Her stomach gurgled its appreciation, and her blood ran warmer for the sustenance.
“It will be all right, Kordahla,” Mariano said after Arun had taken her bowl. She looked at him, right at him, for the first time in days, saw past the stern set of brow and lip to the worry beneath. “You should rest.”
The tent flap kicked down as he left her alone, with a single candle flickering through her memories.
“Did your magic work this?” she heard him ask.
“It was not my doing,” Arun replied, “Guilt drives her to starve but the mind contact reassured her we harbour no ill will. Her mind totters in a precarious place. Highness, I request your permission to continue the contact.”
Silence marked what would be Mariano’s slow appraisal. His voice, when he spoke, was reluctant. “For as long as it helps her, my permission is granted.”
Closing her eyes, she released the breath she had not know she held. For the first time in days, tomorrow held the promise of a brighter dawn.
Chapter 14
ILL-HUMOURED GUARDS were never to be abided but, just inside the palace gates, among the strapping horses, Jordayne was inclined to hold her tongue since the cause of their grumbles and black looks was snapping his head off at every man who twitched a muscle, or didn’t, as the case may be. Heaving an affected sigh, she walked into the midst of the soldiers, and greeted each with their name and a light touch to arm or thigh or face that dispelled their brooding.
Seeing her, Matisse strode right up and rammed his new sword into the dirt. A lock of his fair hair bounced onto his forehead. “If you insist on coming, you’ll have to keep up.”
“When, brother dear, have I not?” In a move calculated to infuriate him further, she plucked the new sword, and examined the hilt, raising an eyebrow at the emerald, the gem of the House of Giordano, embedded in the golden hilt. “A little extravagant for a service sword, don’t you think?”
Matisse grabbed it from her. Oh dear, he really was in a foul mood. She would have to keep a closer eye on him than she had thought. There went the scrap of fun she had hoped to have among marauding men at midnight. Someone was going to get hurt. Now these tough men could take care of themselves, and the lowlifes who dealt in addiction deserved every cut and slash they received, but there were innocents to consider, and these days it seemed nobody in authority but she cared a hoot for the common man. Why else would she drag herself from bed and lover, an inventive one at that, in the dead of night, to accompany an overaggressive if warranted raid? On a night Daesoa was a mere sliver past new. These men needed at least one woman’s tempering.
“My men will not waste their energy on protecting your sensibilities,” Matisse said walking away.
“Do I have any?” she wondered aloud, and called for Aribelle, her white mare.
“My lady, perhaps you wish to don a cloak,” brown-bearded Sergeant Rokan said when she mounted. He handed her Aribelle’s reins and held up the modest garment.
“On such a balmy night?” she replied tilting forward so that, although he was looking up at her, he could glimpse her stunning cleavage. It was the one concession she had made to her charms tonight. Jangling bracelets and clicking beads were ill advised on a covert prowl. A vain hope of what the stillest hours might promise had seen her stash a few in a small saddlebag. The men would remain none the wiser, until she wished to embellish her feminine wiles, of course.
“Where we’re headed, the folk may misinterpret your sophisticated taste in dress,” Rokan said matter of fact, immune by now to her teasing flirts.
She laughed. “How is it you have not?”
“I’m a happily married man,” he replied with the scariest of benign grins and a creasing around his narrow eyes.
She gripped his arm. “I’ve complete faith in your ability to defend my honour, Sergeant Rokan, but until the occasion arises, I suggest you join Lord Matisse. If the dealers misconstrue his intent, the consequences will be fatal.”
He left her with a bow, a flit of a smile, and the cloak draped over the mare’s withers as M
atisse called the order to proceed. They rode through the palace gates and turned south, along the wide cypress-shaded avenues with their spacious squares, down the functional roads and on to the shadowed, narrow alleys with their cracked paving and dilapidated buildings. Here, beside a crumbling house with faded patches of rich paint on broken corbels, Matisse dismounted and ordered the guards to split up.
“You should go with the mounted party,” Matisse said to her as she walked to his side.
“And miss a spectacular display of skill as you break in that sword. Never.”
“Suit yourself.” He strode off to organise his guards.
“Hmm,” Jordayne said to no one in particular, for she had never seen him in a mood so foul. It had darkened with each day that had passed since Ordosteen handed Kordahla to Lord Ahkdul. His languid blue eyes had turned to harsh steel, and his saunter had stiffened to a stride. She had not worked out whether his guilt stemmed from bedding the princess or from Ordosteen’s betrayal. Knowing Matisse, it was both. And he was right. The shah was honour-bound to protect the princess in return for the crystal and quartz.
“I bid you stay close, lady,” Rokan said.
She fingered the hilt of the jewelled dagger she had tucked through a purposeful slit in her layered skirt. The reassuring feel of it against her hip brought a wistful smile to her face. A coming of age gift from Magus Trove, her first lover, its emerald compared in every way to the one Matisse had set in his sword. Which was just as well. She would have hated to replace it on that account.
“To him, I shall indeed,” she replied, moving to her frustrated brother’s side. He directed an annoyed frown her way but continued to dole out orders.
They slipped along deserted lanes that twisted among ever more decrepit buildings. The attractive men accompanying them were the gilded hilt of the Myklaani guards, their stealth and strength unsurpassed. Still, it was hard to imagine news of their arrival had not preceded them. Knots of youths dispersed even as the scout peeped around sheltered corners. A cloaked man passing the twisted intersection at which they paused turned his head their way before striding on with renewed purpose to push into an unlit dwelling. Rokan traced his path, past the crumbling statue of Wyn deq Kaelor attempting to bestow a touch of dignity to the squalid block. Her sergeant squatted by a withered weed, and pressed his finger to the ground. When he displayed the incriminating red powder coating it to his lord, it phased Matisse not one bit. Her brother strode towards the house, the guards hurrying in his wake. Without waiting for them, he kicked the door in and stormed through.
Oh dear, she thought in response to a woman’s muted cry. She entered after them, into a small, single-room house made cosy with tattered cushions strewn over worn chairs and embroidered mats on a rickety, uneven table. His cloak off, their furious target was baled at the end of Matisse’s sword.
“Where’s the rest of it?” Matisse demanded.
The man’s eyes darted to a woman pale as death lying on a sagging pallet by the wall. Her black hair streamed around her, lank with the sweat of pain. “That’s all there is and by the Vae you’ll have to run me through to take it,” he said.
“The Vae do not succour drug dealers.”
“I am no dealer.”
“Your eyes do not hold the craving of an addict.”
Sighing, Jordayne lifted the packet from the unsteady table set with mugs and water jug, and assessed the red powder inside. A fool could have seen these folk did not earn the kind of lek porrin brought in.
“I know who you are,” the brooding man said. His face was lined with hardship, but he was an attractive specimen save for the loss of half the middle finger on his left hand: clean-shaven, tall, dark of hair and pale of skin. “You know nothing about me yet you stand in judgement with the ignorant presumption of one born to position and wealth.”
Matisse pressed the tip of his sword against his prisoner’s chest. The man refused to retreat, although he was forced to measure his breath. “And who are you to know so much?”
“Rondel deq Oakson, your loyal subject until this hour.”
Matisse pressed forward, driving the man against the wall. “This sword is keen for a blooding. I’ll ask you but once more. Where do you keep your stores?”
An eye on her bloodthirsty brother, Jordayne deposited a shake of the red powder into a mug, added a measure of water and held the vessel to the woman’s lips. Too thin beneath her ragged shift, Rondel’s wife lacked the strength to sit up. Jordayne steadied the cup in her weak hands.
“What ails you?” Jordayne murmured. When the woman shook her head, Jordayne fixed Rondel with an angry glare. “Does it appease your conscience to ease your wife’s pain yet allow the disease to ravage unchecked?”
“What else would you have me do?” the man barked.
Jordayne set the mug on the table, a silver hulek tucked beneath it, and planted her hands on her hips as the woman wilted onto the pallet. “Take her to a physic. Porrin may be causing her more harm than good.”
Their luckless victim spat. “They’ll not see us without coin for their rhetoric, and more for their useless cures. Half that ill-spent coin has paid for Maya’s ease tonight.”
“Physic Hamid deq Lamont at the hospice will treat all who visit. Without lek.”
“Do you intend to send every whining addict to the hospice? At our expense?” Matisse growled.
“I do if it’s warranted.”
“They’ll be claiming they’ve as much right to our porrin as the mages.”
“And so they do,” she snapped, regretting her loss of temper at once. Her little brother hated it when she was right. Matisse lowered his sword but rammed his arm against the fretting man’s throat.
“Who’s your supplier?”
“It will be my life if I tell you.”
Matisse pushed harder. “It will be your life if you don’t.”
The prisoner’s eyes shifted to his wife. “Blood your sword, Lord Matisse, for it will be a cleaner death than the dealers mete out.”
On the pallet, the woman let out a weak gasp.
Matisse stepped back but raised his sword. “Do not tempt me.”
In the shadow of war, the life of a stalwart man was sacrosanct. Sauntering to her brother, Jordayne ran a finger along the edge of his blade down to the tip and up to the hilt, where she tapped the emerald.
“I do believe a moon or so ago you were lamenting the lack of brave men in our fair realm.”
In a sudden change of mood, Matisse grinned. “Wasn’t that the day you were in a murderous mood, sis?”
It was. And all because of that sorry excuse for an apprentice the mages had hoped to train. He had proved his worthlessness to her in the space of an afternoon. When they tracked the murdering traitor down, Matisse could blood his sword to its hilt!
“I believe you got to vent your anger with an execution,” Matisse continued.
“As you pointed out yourself, Korwin the Stout was not the kind of citizen we value. Now this one. . .” She ran the back of her finger from Rondel’s square jaw to his temple and turned away with a shrug.
Matisse dropped his arm but slammed a hand against Rondel’s chest. “You had best remember porrin is illegal unless prescribed by a physic.”
“My lord,” Rokan interrupted with a sidelong look at her. “We don’t need his cooperation to ferret out the dealer. Your men are entering The Bear’s Barrel with drawn swords.” Deq Oakson stared him full in the face. Rokan drew his feet closer together. “We can send a spy into the Fox and Hound to mention deq Oakson by name. I’m sure the likes of him is known about that drinking house.”
Deq Oakson didn’t twitch.
Rokan fingered his bearded chin. “But I do suggest roughing up the patrons of the Tipsy Toad first. That pricy establishment has a fine reputation for encouraging the black market.”
Rondel blanched.
“What was the name of the dealer who frequents it?” Rokan asked.
“Prahak deq
Fraaq,” she replied. It was a name the artists Matisse had canvassed whispered, one that had required a certain amount of threat to discover, and one which had inspired darker works of art.
For the first time since she had entered, doubt weakened Rondel’s stance. A less perceptive woman might have missed it.
“The Tipsy Toad it is,” Jordayne said with a sigh of resignation.
Matisse, oblivious to all but his desire for sport, belted his sword as he rounded the table, and opened the door.
Rondel lunged and gripped the edge of the table. “Not there. You cannot go straight there.”
Matisse fixed him with a stare that would have put anyone except the shah in his place before joining his soldiers outside.
The ill woman moaned. Glazed her eyes might be, but they reflected a deep love.
“Lady Jordayne,” Rondel beseeched.
She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. The man was staunch even in his entreaty. “War with Terlaan threatens. Verdaan allies with Terlaan through marriage, and cheats the mages of their quota of porrin. Without it, we cannot hope to prevail. That is a warning you may spread.”
The man shook his head, his clouded eyes looking through her. “It wasn’t me that revealed the Tipsy Toad. For the love of Vae’oenka, make it clear it wasn’t me.” His hands turned up as he watched his wife’s restless loll, a hopeless gesture.
“It was not,” Jordayne said, because it was obvious his concern for his life was concern for his ill wife. She tossed her head. “Although I demand a favour in return. Prevail upon your contacts to gather porrin for the mages rather than spread its curse along the streets. And take your wife to the hospice.” She yawned and stretched her arms down and behind her, arching her back.
The man blinked as though her words snapped into sense. “Is there truly a war coming?”
“Dindarin has shown his sword, but perhaps Vae’oenka may yet intercede.” She stepped into starry night.
Matisse would have left the two youngest guards to escort her. The callow, cinnamon-haired youths, intimidated by her proximity, refused to even meet her eye. Round of face, lean and wide-nosed, they looked like brothers.