by Jenna Rhodes
“Where are they? Our deal depends upon the safety and return of my children!”
“Our deal? We have no deal. You made an offer. If you’d stayed holed up at your little farm in Calcort, you might have gotten my answer, refuting the charges that I know anything about this little kidnapping. But you made mention of a valuable paper, and I’m ready and willing to witness your signature, in exchange for the affront you’ve made against my reputation and that of my House.”
“Not without my children!”
“But they don’t seem to be here, do they? Not in that miserable Squatter’s hovel over there, or in my tent, or anywhere near here.”
“A Writ—”
“Words on a paper. Valuable, to a point, but not enough to force me to give up any collateral I might hold. You’ll offer the document I need, or your children will never see their mother again.” Tressandre waved a hand. “Take her off and hang her by her boots and shake her until something interesting falls out. I knew of your deception with the children before you offered that nugget to me. Did you and Lariel think you could hide the true heir forever? String her up, the sooner the better.” Tressandre paused as she turned away, adding, “When you’re ready, let out a scream or two.”
Nutmeg lunged in the hands that fell upon her, to no avail, but she spat her words at the other anyway. “I’ll sign nothing until I see them, safe and sound. Otherwise, even the Gods won’t be able to help you!”
“I don’t need any help, Dweller. You’re the one head-high in trouble, and threatening me won’t lessen that. Take her off.” Tressandre lowered her head to enter her canopy and stopped for a moment, shading her eyes as she looked away. “Waryn, find me whoever passes for the head man of the squatters’ encampment. I want to know what’s happening with the portal. It’s begun to pulse. Get me someone who professes to be an expert on that thing.”
Nutmeg tried to dig her boot heels in as they dragged her away, shouting, “Where are my children? Where are Evar and Merri?”
The scent of bruised grasses filled the air, grasses and blood, the war of seasons ago not so buried as she had thought. They twisted her arms as they pulled her after them.
To the ones who held her, she said savagely, “She has no honor. She’ll break whatever promises she’s given to you as easily as she breaks hers to me. If you have a pinch of Talent, she’ll use you and throw you away.” Her voice broke in her throat, thin and high. Pain flashed up the side of her head as the one fisted her, and the other pulled her to the nearby grove. Her page burned like a small sun inside the ribs of her corset. It wouldn’t fall out if she swung by her heels, but they’d uncover it when they stripped her. She counted on it, and that they would stop searching when they found it and she could get her hands on her long knife.
They tied her boots at the ankles and hoisted her up so that she swung, her hair bouncing free, and her ears singing as three of them pushed her back and forth. Nothing fell but her eating knife and they kicked it away, laughing. Then rough fingers pulled her long coat from her and her outer blouse, and someone used a knife on the back of her corset strings and a cheer went up when the page fell free. Her blouse flapped about her waist and the corset slipped free entirely, falling to the ground. She took a long breath as a rough hand on the rope stopped her swinging.
“You there. Get that to her ladyship and see if she had need of that.”
“All this for a bit of paper?”
“Don’t read, do you?”
Someone spat nearby. Nutmeg couldn’t see who, from her vantage point and through the mane of her hair.
“It has import, or she wouldn’t have been carrying it hid like that.”
A copper-toned Vaelinar bent to pick it up and sprang away in a light run to carry the prize. The hand on her rope spun her about.
“What d’you suppose Jeredon saw in this little bit, huh?”
“We’ve got what we came for. Her ladyship will want her taken care of.”
“That’s what I mean. I’d like to take care of her. I bet she’s tight, huh? So much smaller than us. Maybe that’s what Jeredon liked.”
Behind her, a deep-toned voice answered. “I like ’em small. I don’t like feeling like I’m a spoon stirring a big pot of soup.”
“We don’t have time for this. We’ve holes to dig and cover over in the dueling ground.”
“Won’t take long.”
Her ears buzzed louder, but they jostled closed as they argued around her, and her heart began to thump.
“A’right, then. Stuff her, but make it quick and leave her for the rest of us.”
She could feel fingers on her trousers, tearing them open, and then a shout.
“Lady Tressandre wants us on the grounds. NOW. Lariel approaches.”
She twirled about and about on the rope as someone shoved her with a curse. Lara? Did Tressandre also bait her with lies about the children? Or something else?
“But—”
“Oh, cold hell. Just hit her one and leave her. We’ll be back.”
Her spinning stopped with a crushing blow that brought a squeak to her lips as they left her. Her head pulsed viciously, and she thought she might be sick for a moment.
Nutmeg waited long moments, head throbbing and lip split, but she had a hard head. She’d survived much worse falling from the old apple trees. As soon as she knew she was alone, she began to bend at the waist and pull herself up on her own body until she reached the knotted rope.
• • •
Tressandre smoothed the page out with her fingertip, a smile growing on her face. “She already had it written. Not witnessed, but it makes no difference. This,” and she beamed up at Waryn, “will undercut Lariel. It will shake her to her core, and that will give me the advantage. Our Warrior Queen does not have the stamina nor courage she needs to take me on.”
“Then take it, my lady. Show her and leave the field. You don’t need to meet Lariel Anderieon now, if that paper will undo her kingdom.”
She lowered an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting to me that I quit? Run like a coward?”
“No. Take your victory home and defend it. You’ll have it and the children, and Lara will be unable to move against House ild Fallyn again. She will wither and die, last of her line, and you will prevail.”
“I can prevail here. I want flesh taken for Alton.”
Waryn leaned close to her, his long face creased. “You know the boy looks like Jeredon. You have little advantage to press.”
“They’ve spent the summer in the pasture we had to abandon to the old magics, the wastes of the Mageborn war. Who knows how corrupted their young flesh is? How twisted their powers have become? If my mares gave birth to two-headed colts and three-legged foals, will they be any less touched? If they are even mortal enough for their own mother to want to reclaim? If they are clean enough for the Warrior Queen to trust her throne to? Why do you think I had them put there?”
She paused and ran her fingers over the page. “It seems you fear my ability to take down Lariel.”
“I don’t.”
“You do, or you wouldn’t advocate running to a stone hole where I can defend myself. I won’t kill you for your advice, Waryn, but I won’t forget what you’ve revealed by it.”
“You’ve great skill. You’re better than Lara in every way, but she’s always managed to survive, even when we’ve thought it impossible.”
“I will avenge my brother. I will avenge every slight the Vantanes and the Anderieons have piled upon my blood. This should have been my land, my valley, but it was denied my bloodline. Our blood, lest you forget.”
“Then do it tomorrow from the safety of our fortress.”
She slapped him, with the full force of her arm behind it. He staggered back and started to raise a hand to his face before stopping himself with great will.
“Now leave me, and
see to the preparations I wanted.”
Waryn bowed stiffly, the side of his face flaming red, and left her.
Tressandre went to her weapons’ rack and began to choose, with infinite care, what she would show to be wearing, and what she would have hidden on her person. She had no intention of meeting Lariel Anderieon on equal footing when she had every chance to prepare a more fortuitous end to their meeting. This meeting, this duel, should be their last.
Chapter
Fifty-Five
THE MORNING COILED ABOUT THEM with a cold and icy mist, that did not dare to part before the sun’s weakening rays, and broke only after they left the kitchen and went into the arena. She shivered as she stripped down so he could equip her. The challenge she’d left for Tressandre as she’d crossed the borders would be answered.
Bistane wrapped her wrists with the thin chainmail, bare splinters of the shattered Jewel of Tomarq glittering as he did. He should salvage more from the Jewel’s cliff site, but without Tranta to sanction it, the effort did not feel proper, rather like stealing a relic the man and his brother had died trying to protect. The last scion of the Istlanthir family had floated to shore, dead, with an unknown assailant also drowned gripped tightly in Tranta’s hands, taken over the cliff with him. Tranta had survived one fall off that massive cliff; it seemed too much to ask that he would survive a second, but Bistane would have asked it if he could. Bistane missed Tranta’s laugh, his wry humor, his friendship, and his longing for the sea. So many peers had gone, torn apart by the greed of Quendius and the ambitions of the ild Fallyn and the machinations of Daravan. Yet now he stood, preparing Lariel and asked himself if they were falling into yet another trap. His lips tightened as he clipped the links shut one by one with the needle-nose pliers he gripped. “Too tight?”
“No.”
He slapped her leg lightly, and he wrapped another bracer about her lower thigh, covering her leg and her knee. Again, he slipped just enough links in to clip them shut, essentially closing her into the mail. In order, he did her right side, wrist, elbow, then thigh and knee, his expression closed in concentration.
He tugged on them gently. The mail did not move over her skin, each link digging in slightly. “Get up. Dance about. Give me some positions and action, I want to see if the braces stay in place.”
More than half naked, Lariel did as bid, a look on her face that showed him she was thinking of teasing him and dragging him down to the arena floor with her where she could kiss away the frowning intensity of his concentration. But she did not. They were working too seriously at keeping her alive. He patted his palm down on the bench. “Those two need adjustment.” And in moments he had her mail tight enough that she pulled back with a tiny sound of protest before giving in. He pulled her toward him and set her on her feet instead of holding her close as she craved. Lara shut her eyes tightly for a moment, as if willing herself to accept the seriousness of the moment. He wondered if she tried to avoid it as he did, knowing somewhere behind the knot in his stomach, he felt afraid.
“You look worried,” she said.
“Because I am.”
He touched his hand to her forehead, and his fingertips were chill but barely colder than her own face. That touch sent a current leaping toward her, cutting through the chains that surrounded her and in a moment, she understood exactly what he felt. Lara leaned back. Fear welled in a tiny, ice-cold bubble that threatened to fountain and overwhelm her, and she shoved it back down.
“Now I’m going to tell you what to do, and you’re not going to like it.”
Lara kept her gaze on him, watching him with a slight curve to her mouth, thinking of how much he reminded her in that moment of his father Bistel, the matchless Warlord of the north, her great friend and adviser, as well as the son with whom she’d fallen in love.
“This duel should last no longer than bare moments. Do you understand? You go in with a dagger in each hand. You go for her vulnerable spots, the same ones I just protected on you. Go for the joints and then for the arteries. Slice her to ribbons. Here, here, here, and here. She can’t last if you do. You’ll be boxing, kicking, shoving her off if she closes, slashing before you’ve driven her off. If she has armor of her own, then you will have to step back, gather, kick her legs out from under her before she takes to air, and come in under the rib cage.”
“Brutal.”
He nodded at her. “Yes. Don’t give her warning. Don’t stand there and pronounce her guilt and treasons. She knows what she’s done to you, to your brother, to your grandfather, to your heirs. She knows and she doesn’t care. Save your breath, you’ll need it. I want you to explode at her. Both hands. All the skill and energy you have. Cut her arteries to ribbons and let her drown in a pool of blood. That is all the judgment you need. Do you understand?”
“I do, but—”
“No. You can’t waver on this. If I think you are, I’ll take you out of the duel and put myself in as your champion and you know what will happen?” He gripped her by the arms and drew her close to his face. “She’ll kill me, Lara, because I don’t have the Talent you do. I can’t anticipate what she’ll do by even the merest of a moment. She will find a way to kill me, as skilled as I am. She thinks this is her moment, and she’ll use every last trick she has.”
He took a breath. “And while you stand there, stricken, at least I think you’ll be stricken if I drop dead—she’ll close in and kill you as well, while you’re off-balance. She’s going to go for it, and she won’t care this time if she wins your lands fairly and cleanly or not. She’s going to get what she wants.”
“I won’t let her.”
“Not by all the ice in Hell.” He shook her, lightly. “You had better not let her.” He ran a critical eye over her as he let her go. “Don’t depend on the crystals to do much.”
“Why embed them, then?”
“They will spark at her attack. Just a moment of distraction, of hesitation on her part because of what they did to Alton, and she will remember that, and that will give you an advantage you need.”
She had nearly forgotten the force of that scene, the fury of the jewels flaming out and taking him down as he closed in to kill her. It wasn’t a memory she could reach easily, hidden by her long sleep, but she touched it now before letting it go. “You want me to slaughter her.”
“No. This is a duel and she’ll be fully prepared, weapons and hatred in hand. I want you to be, too. This is her last, best chance, to become the Warrior Queen and take Larandaril. She knows it. She craves it, Lara, like we all crave air. Food. Water. And some of us, love.”
“I don’t know if I can—”
“You have to do this. I won’t let you go out unless you’re ready. Are you ready? You have to give it your all.”
“And if I fail?”
“Then I will defend Larandaril as long as I can, as long as it was not a fair fight, and it won’t be. The ild Fallyn blood in her ensures that. They have never entered through a door when a window beckoned. It’s not in them.”
“You’re saying she will cheat.”
“I’m saying she cannot help but cheat. Which is why you must be ruthless. If you give her one quarter, she’ll take your life from you.” He tapped her chin. “You cannot afford to be one bit less on the offense than she is. And I know you. You are already thinking that, if you can but pin her down once, you might be able to force a surrender. And, if you do that, you are considering what you will do with her. Where you will imprison her. Where you might exile her. Perhaps Abayan Diort has a dungeon deep enough for her. You don’t know that she hasn’t already gotten to Diort and made a deal with him. He wants all these lands united, like the Mageborn who gave birth to him, but he’s not willing to start a war to get what he wants. He’s been trying diplomacy instead.”
“I can’t trust anyone.”
“You can trust me, and you can trust yourself. If you steel yoursel
f.” He rubbed his palm lightly over her arm and she felt the caress ripple through the mail he’d fastened in place to protect her there. Protecting her vulnerable spots. Just as he tried to use his words now to give her a layer over her worries and feelings.
Lara rubbed her hand under her nose where it suddenly itched terribly. “I will,” she told him.
“All right, then. Get dressed. Word is she’s on the upper hills of Larandaril already.”
Lara stretched her neck uneasily. That was what she had felt, tensing her muscles and trying to knot her temples, the borders of Larandaril trying to tell her they’d been crossed by an enemy. She moved for her leathers. “I’ll be ready.” Her voice sounded brittle to her ears. Brittle and false. She swallowed tightly. She would be ready. She would.
“This is a duel, you realize.”
“And we both know she won’t follow any rules put to her.” Bistane stepped back and looked her up and down, assessing his work.
“I have a different standard.”
“So do I,” he told her. “My standard is that you live. Not only for me, although the Gods know I can be selfish. But you need to live for the sacred Andredia, and Larandaril, and Evarton and Merri as well. We all need you.”
A pleased blush tinged her face, and she looked down, fussing with her leathers and gear, as if unwilling to let him know her true feelings. Bistane smiled to himself.
“Ah,” said Bistel in his ear. “The wonder of a well-placed love. You give and it returns.”
He wanted to turn but did not, wondering that his father’s ghostly presence would be with him, with Lariel so close. She’d never given any indication of being able to see Bistel, but he did wonder from time to time about just how tangible the phantom might be. He thought about what his father had just said and answered. “Do you think Tressandre loved Jeredon like that?”