by J Glen Percy
“It is no trouble. I can show myself to the dignitary quarters.” Honey was on the queen’s words as her gaze shifted to Mykel’s bowed head. “There are a few appointments I hope to make and perhaps a few messages for your hawks to carry, depending how the day fairs.”
Bent though he was, Mykel noticed his brother adopting the same posture. And not before the older twin had spared a nervous glance for the queen. What reason had he to fear her?
“Our home is yours,” Meryam finished, spinning before the queen could speak further.
Worry for his sister could not douse Mykel’s sense of liberation as he entered the confines of his home behind the other three. Had it been years? Of course not, but the keep’s familiarity felt distinctly foreign and most welcome all at once. Comfort existed here as did safety, two things Mykel had missed on his travels. Most noticeably though, and if only briefly, he was finally free of the queen.
Gabryel answered Meryam’s questions as he led the way, explaining the physicians’ reports in between. The more Mykel listened, the clearer it was that his information would have to wait until his sister’s situation was under control. There was no sense adding another gust to the gale. Until then he would make himself scarce, the one thing he knew he excelled at.
It wasn’t until Gabryel opened the door to Aryella’s room that Mykel’s plan fell apart. Seemingly at ease in her restful state, the mark on her forehead was anything but natural. Disturbing. Ominous. He had seen the mark before in books, and it reminded of Wyn’s glowing moon blade on the road to Whitehaven. Peaceful though she seemed, it was immediately apparent that Mykel would be holed-up in his favorite reading spot a very long time if he planned on waiting for Aryella to be herself.
Their mother rushed to one side of the bed as Wyn stepped hurriedly to the other. Unexpectedly, the Fellsword’s waterless gaze took on a pain that Meryam’s pouring eyes could not match. Like the immense oceans shifting with the tide, some unseen force pushed on the immovable Fellsword. He fought back and for the moment succeeded. How long could the ocean withstand the tide? What happened to the shore when the tide won?
Perhaps Gabryel’s half-told story was more incredible than his own. The collapse of Wyn Fellsword would trump the murder of a thousand lords and the births of a thousand bastards whether Mykel heard the unfiltered version or not. If Wyn crumbled, Mykel was certain the stone and timber stronghold would come down with him. Perhaps the entire town. What did Wyn see in that symbol that the others, including Mykel, did not?
After a long while, Gabryel pulled Mykel into the hallway.
“There is something else,” Gabryel said, giving no indication he had witnessed the Fellsword’s struggle. “Breccyn wants to show our parents himself, but I can show you. You can’t say a word to anyone though, especially with Ceres and the queen in town.”
Mykel released a flood of disbelief and confusion. “Wait, the prince is in Shorefeld? What happened to Ary? How did she get that mark? What happened to your arm? Where is Breccyn? What did-?”
“Come on,” Gabryel replied, tugging at Mykel’s arm. “You have to see the rest for yourself or you’ll never believe me.”
CHAPTER 26
Breccyn dashed up the uneven stone stairs from the cells, shielding squinted eyes against the high sun as he emerged above ground. The toothless jailor had notified that his mother was home, though Breccyn wasn’t sure how soon after her arrival word had traveled down below. It would be his life he had to worry about, not Aryella’s or Cecily’s, if he was not there to explain.
Not waiting for his vision to adjust, he bolted across the open grounds towards the main residence. His mother would probably kill him regardless. Quite truthfully he had nothing to do with Aryella’s situation, but neither would he let his brother take the full flame for it. At the very least, he supposed wryly, his execution at the hands of his mother would prove timely for the king.
Lord Fairfield’s late-night wisdom to keep both girls hidden had been sound. Aryella was in the keep proper, while the princess had been placed in one of the oft unused dignitary apartments. It was there he had spent the predawn hours grieving over her broken body and wallowing deeper into self-pity. Just before sunrise, the emptiness of his sorrow had hit him. What did it matter? Agony and regret would not restore Cecily’s face, nor would they shape her future. The thought was not his in origin, he recognized.
“Feeling is only meaningful if it drives action,” Ar’ravn had spoken earlier in the week, the jail’s howl masking the tossing waters below. “Hating your mother’s slayer does not bring justice. Starvation does not lay the sand ox on your plate. Action is always meaningful.” Breccyn witnessed her inner reflection. These words were not just words to the captive Gray.
“The drunkard takes action every evening to preserve his witless state. I fail to see the meaning,” Breccyn had argued at the time.
“Does the drunkard’s body not suffer?” she had replied. “His family? Some actions own more meaning than others, Breccyn Starling, and the meaning is not always virtuous. Purpose, as with all things, drives its bearing and virtue. Action, not feeling, is meaningful, and always so.”
The recollection had had him racing through the dark from Cecily’s side to the southern buttress and the cells below where for the next few hours he had probed every corner of Ar’ravn’s mind on the floor-drawn symbol. The symbol that had found its way to Aryella’s forehead. The Sign of the Five, she called it. A balance of the deities and their priesthoods. Yet by the time her knowledge was sapped, Breccyn was no closer to why it had appeared. He was still having trouble buying Gabryel’s unbelievable tale of how it had appeared. One thing was certain. Whether the iron door had caused the mark or Cecily’s captors had cruelly etched it, the symbol belonged to the gods. Breccyn feared his father’s reaction as a result, a reaction that would undoubtedly take from Breccyn’s hide. Well his father would have to get in line.
Breccyn never said why he was asking, nor did he mention the princess and her condition. Not that it likely mattered, he reflected as the welcome sun warmed his flesh. The Grayskin’s smoldering eyes saw much that was not mentioned. Despite not looking for it, Breccyn had found something in Ar’ravn as well. There was a comfort in her sensible perspective, a comfort Breccyn wrapped himself in like the gifted wool blanket.
The fatigue produced by a sleepless night caught up to him as he sprinted the wide outer stairs, the high sun confirming he had spent longer in the cells than he had intended. As Breccyn staggered through the main hall’s entry he was immediately halted by the last voice he wanted to hear.
“Why if it isn’t Breccyn Scofflaw,” Prince Ceres hailed. He reclined at a square table, his feet propped ill-manneredly. There were two others with him; a rough-looking man who was absently dropping a blade into the timber floors between heavy gulps from a mug, and an even rougher-looking mutt whose thin-set eyes were about to roll from their sockets, such was his gawking. Ceres dropped his boots to the floor. “Come, Scofflaw. Join us.”
“My Prince,” Breccyn said, ignoring the insult. “I had heard you were in Shorefeld. Welcome. I am told my mother has recently arrived as well. If you’ll excuse me-” Breccyn started for the stairs but was stopped before taking a single step.
“I will not. Royalty receives priority in the civilized world, a lesson you mud-mucking mongers seem slow to embrace. If your mother is here, where is my reception? Where is my reception from you?”
A man didn’t choose his in-laws any more than he chose the length of his legs, Breccyn’s father had told him once. “You could be born to nothing but lifeless stumps and your in-laws will still be the greater nuisance.” Before Breccyn had killed the two Rosemarked barflies, before he had harmed Cecily – whether he had killed the princess or nearly killed her had yet to be seen – the disdainful man sitting across the room would have been that nuisance.
Breccyn was in no mood to receive barbs like an archery target. “A chair for sitting, a mug for drinking,
it’d take royalty to ask for a grander reception than that,” he retorted.
Surprisingly, the prince’s unseemly companions did not react like blind lickspittles in constant search of approval from their master. The sinewy man offered a thoughtful look as he took another swig, his eyebrows climbing into his retreating hairline. The ugly boy barked an outright laugh.
Breccyn recoiled at the boy’s mirth. Why were those eyes so close together? There was plenty of real estate beneath that overgrown crop of carrots for features to spread out.
Prince Ceres was not so amused. “Sit, Scofflaw.”
Breccyn could do nothing but obey, taking a seat opposite the prince. Though the child remained seated – it couldn’t be a girl, could it? – the weathered man took one last swallow and removed himself from the table. Breccyn would have bet the man was more capable than his toothless mouth indicated.
“I should apologize,” Ceres said cordially. Breccyn’s eyes narrowed. The prince Breccyn knew surrounded himself with witless doormats, people willing to lick the mud off his boots and ask for more. And now apologizing? Then the slander continued. “Better off searching for dewberries in the Drablands than courtesy amongst criminals. I should have known better.”
The... girl’s eyes looked eagerly to Breccyn, anxious for the exchange to elevate. “What do you want?” Breccyn asked to her visible disappointment.
“I was sent to negotiate horses for my father’s construction efforts in the East, yet I am told you have something much more valuable to me. Let’s begin there.”
Breccyn reached to his belt and tossed Ceres’ impractical bejeweled dagger onto the table. “Next time you send someone to kill me, at least have the decency-”
“Where did you get this?”
Ar’ravn did not believe her orders had come from the Romerians. The flicker of confusion disrupting Ceres’ perpetual arrogance all but confirmed it.
The prince regained himself quickly. “Questions for another time. I am speaking of my sister. Where is she?”
Breccyn froze. How could Ceres know Cecily was here? Unless.... Breccyn ground his teeth into each other. He would have Lord Fairfield’s head for this.
“Where is she?” Ceres repeated.
“She is here,” Breccyn admitted cautiously.
“Where? Her misguided affections will not protect you, either from your present crimes or from stealing her away because of them.”
“It’s not like that, Ceres. I didn’t steal her. I... rescued her.” Gabryel and Aryella had anyway. Ceres cared for his siblings like Breccyn cared for his. There was no telling how he would react if he knew Cecily’s condition.
“Then where is she?” Ceres snorted. “I would see her well.”
A thought struck Breccyn. “I can prove it.” He patted at his tunic, high then low, searching for Cecily’s drafted message. He quickly recalled giving the cloth note up. “Cecily sent a message asking aid,” he explained. “Gabryel has it. He was there and will swear its truth.”
The prince shook his head. “Not good enough, Scofflaw. You are not good enough. What she sees in a mud-blooded monger, how she withstands the Starling family’s stench, is a mystery beyond the contents of the Forgotten. She is precious nonetheless, and mine to look after. Now where is she?”
Rising to the insult, Breccyn’s hand went automatically to the hilt of his sword. Ceres matched his stance, the small table between looking shortly to be refashioned into toothpicks. Wisely, the homely girl distanced herself, hoping to avoid the same fate as the furniture.
“She is precious, but she’s not yours.” Breccyn fumed. The prince’s insult would be the last he tolerated without bloodshed. This was his home. And while he stood on this precipice.... “You do own something precious to me, though I would not have it donated to me the way it was passed on to you. Amongst men, some things are meant to be earned.”
The moon blade called to Breccyn. It had since he entered the keep. There were no unintended consequences to his actions now. If he was going to come to blows with Ceres over Cecily, over the disrespect and disparagement, if he was going to start a war with the prince’s blood on his blade, he would see that his ambitions were served as well.
“Careful, Scofflaw,” Ceres warned through a wicked smirk. The two were nose to nose. “I’ve heard a baby waves its rattle with more skill than you and that log-chopper. I am Ceres Fellsword. Slaying you would be akin to infant murder next to my battle with the stag-headed Feral.”
Breccyn drew steel, but all went dark before his sword cleared the scabbard.
* * *
Wart watched everything hoping this Breccyn Starling had what it took to spill the prince’s innards across the knotted plank floor. It was a long shot. She had watched Ceres butcher a monster and knew next to nothing about the young lord. Living in the West, she knew the name of course, but her penniless family was four or five minor lords down the liege-line before touching anyone that touched the Starlings. Capable of besting Ceres or not, she certainly enjoyed him spitting in the prince’s porridge.
Wart was purely on the Starling’s side until just before Allis snuck up from behind and conked him a good one. At mention of the deer-headed creature, Breccyn Starling’s pupils had flickered. He knew something. Maybe he was responsible for the beast’s appearance, for her family’s demise. Were that the case, she did not know which of the two self-important mollycoddles she preferred dead.
CHAPTER 27
Aryella’s wound had not affected Mykel quite like Wyn Fellsword. Nobody else had seemed to notice. The boy was certain his mother had recognized the emblem too, yet her visible despair had been a drop of rain next to Wyn’s caged torrent. Mykel did not know if Wyn harbored the same unspoken disdain for the old ways that his lord father did. If the liegeman’s ghastly expression was any sign, Mykel would say yes.
The youngest Starling followed his twin from the main residence towards the guest quarters at the far end of the stronghold. On the way, Gabryel backfilled the gaping holes in his tale that had previously been withheld from their mother. Ear-catching though it was - magical doors, Ferals, and wilderness roving brigands – Mykel heard very little of Gabryel’s account.
“Why the guest house?” Mykel protested. Men flying through the air? Exploding? He had only caught part of that.
“You will see,” Gabryel replied.
Mykel stopped dead. “I can’t, Gabe. The queen is there.”
Gabryel was clearly puzzled, but neither did he ask into Mykel’s opposition. “She’s not.”
“How do you know?”
Gabryel hesitated, the nervousness he had greeted Queen Willa with returning. “All of Cairanthem down to the last deaf idler would know if she had found what I am going to show you. Come on.” Gabryel resumed his fantastical tale and his heading, noticeably quickening pace as Mykel followed after.
Rounding the enormous stables, the guest quarters came into view. They were no ordinary barracks. Just shorter than the main residence at three stories in height, each of the five peaked gables held a banner to the open air. In days past, the flags of the five independent kingdoms were displayed as welcome streamers to foreign envoys. The black and red of united Cairanthem repeated itself five times over now. An ocean-facing portico lined the structure in place of interior hallways. Doors to several fully furnished suites opened onto the covered space, allowing multiple dignitaries to conduct their business and host their own guests without tripping over one another. Under Unity, the guest quarters remained mostly vacant.
It was at the fourth suite that Gabryel arrived, pausing with one hand on the door latch.
“-that’s when Breccyn found the three of us.”
“Hold up,” Mykel said. “What if she’s in there?”
“The queen? She’s not.” Confident in voice, Gabryel was as tense as Mykel himself.
“She can’t know where I am, Gabe. She could be behind any one of these doors.”
“Keep your voice down,” Gabryel cau
tioned. “You’re as buggered as an armless archer. I get it. I’m no more keen on seeing her than you. I promise you, she’s not behind this one.”
Mykel nodded timidly.
“Like I was telling it, Aryella, Cecily, and I escaped. That’s when Breccyn found us.”
Wait, what was that? The princess was with them? Why hadn’t he seen her here? Mykel opened his mouth at the same time his brother opened the door and he had his answer.
Through the grand entryway and into the main reception room, a pallet of blankets was made on the floor. Echoing their unresponsive sister in her bedchamber, another lifeless girl lay. Mykel wanted to believe she was sleeping, but her shredded face and bloodied clothes said otherwise. He also wanted to believe that he did not know the girl. That wasn’t true either.
“Breccyn thought it too stuffy in the rooms above,” Gabryel explained.
Mykel had always liked Cecily. She understood him, valued him in the same way Wyn did. Breccyn, of course, was always sad to see her Shorefeld visits end. So too was Mykel. Mangled, but not beyond recognition, her wounds were worse than Aryella’s. They were not nearly as ominous in some ways. In others, they spelled Cairanthem’s doom more surely than the gathering Grayskins.
“Is-is she dead?” To Mykel’s surprise, Gabryel shook his head. “You said you escaped. What happened?”
Gabryel replied by handing Mykel a crumpled piece of cloth. “Breccyn shot at her by mistake,” he said. Mykel read the smeared note, suppressing the sickness that immediately clutched for his stomach.
“Light Gabryel, her face is half gone and her mother could be right next door!”
“Her brother too,” Gabryel reminded. “He’s far more dangerous, I figure.”
Mykel released a skeptical snort but said nothing. “They will find out eventually.”
“Eventually yes, but not today. Not if we move her from here.”
“Oh sure, just grab the princess by the hands and ankles and drag her across the lawn. She’s as frail as overblown glass. Stuffing her down in the cells wouldn’t buy you a week. The four corners and the capital will be overturned looking for her.”