The Web Rulers Weave: Ruins of Unity
Page 29
“The loss of the West is not a loss of all. The Starlings will succumb quickly.”
“To whom? The Grayskins are more likely to follow me than my own Rosemarked once word spreads that I pardoned a monger of murder. Who will remain loyal?”
“I will,” Ozias pledged. “I have no rose and I need no rose. You are my king.”
“Then that makes one,” Erick responded humorlessly.
“Your wife stands behind you, Your Grace.”
Erick chuckled once more. “That’s what I’m afraid of. If the gods want the honest truth, I’d rather the insolent poet she travels with stand behind me than her. Can you send word to your men in the capital to have her watched? She is hiding something. I should very much like to know what it is before yet another dagger is planted in my ribs.”
* * *
“I have a job for you, tracker,” Willa said as Allis meticulously brushed his mare. Like singing, when it came to horseflesh, the man knew what he was about. She had to give him that.
“So does your husband, highness,” Allis said, his back to the queen.
On any other journey she would have found her room and settled in, but pressing matters pressed. Mykel Starling needed killed before the secret in his head found its way to his mouth. That’s where the tough-as-leather tracker came in. They were leaving for Rosemount first thing on the morrow and the toothless man was taking his charge from the king to accompany her as serious as he had the charge from her son. No doubt that meant he would be slinging insults her direction every step of the way
“Yes, but the work I have pays better than escorting a tired queen to her castle.”
Allis’ hand continued its smooth motion over the mare’s withers. “I’m a tracker, highness, not a murderer,” he said without removing a grain of attention from his work. “I won’t kill that boy for you.”
Willa could not mask her surprise. How could he possibly know? People and horses, the man knew what he was about. She recovered swiftly, though it mattered not. “You carry many sharp edges for someone who does not kill,” she countered plainly.
“Likewise, highness.” This time, Allis’ hand paused and he turned to face her directly. “And if my instincts tell me truthful, I’d say you have used yours more recently against the living than I have mine.”
“You know nothing of me,” she snapped, indignation arriving before a second bout of surprise. Insult after insult, why had she even bothered asking for this man’s help?
“No, I don’t. But I’d wager a cask of brown drink that that fancy dress of yours is hiding more than just a dagger. Perhaps the queen-sized problems of which you spoke?”
The tracker’s knowing gaze made her uncomfortable. Not the discomfort she had felt watching Ozias Stellen’s hungry eyes sparkle at the prospect of war, but that of a bitter wind moving right through her heaviest garments. As if her naked skin was exposed to the world and her most intimate thoughts along with it. People, horses, herself; it grieved her to admit but the man plain knew what he was about. Simple in appearance, Allis the tracker was anything but.
“If you won’t kill the boy, I will simply have to find someone that will.”
Allis had returned to brushing his horse and hesitated ever so slightly at her words. It was refreshing to see him taken aback for once.
“It’s as you say, highness,” he replied, the brush moving back and forth over the animal’s hide once more. “A queen’s business is none of my own.”
* * *
Murder the princess, then circle north and do her mother the same. Those had been his orders. As Kadin drifted in and out of consciousness, his subconscious contemplated the impossibility of his instructions. He had taken the princess easily enough, but she had called his bluff. The truth was, he could never have followed through with her murder.
His face stung where she had added another gash to his collection, but distantly so; the constricting, demobilizing ache that penetrated his every fiber was much nearer. How long had he been out? Bearing the excruciating pain as he forced himself upright, he took in the surrounding carnage. What had been a company of men - his men - was a scattered mess of human piece-parts feeding the valley’s weeds… and the countless ravens and vultures presently picking them over. What had the Starling girl become? Most of him still believed it was all some terrible dream.
It wasn’t the promise of gold or land that had had the harsh man accepting a mission he knew he could not possibly complete. Something more precious, far more valuable, drove him. Something that already belonged to him. Reaching inside his blood stained jerkin, his shaky hand retrieved a folded piece of paper. It was a drawing his daughter had made the last time he saw her, the last time he had held his wife. That was more than a year ago now. Abduct the princess? Sure. Kill her, kill the queen? Impossible. He could harm any man in the known world, and had many. Not women.
Kadin was promised his family’s release in return for the Romerian murders. Not even that could drive him to harm the princess. Even the Starling girl, berserk with unfathomable power as she slaughtered his men like worms, was beyond Kadin’s power to harm. Tears fell from swollen eyes. He was careful not to let them drop on his precious drawing.
* * *
“Lord Fairfield causes more havoc with his mouth than a hive of Ferals,” Breccyn spat. “He must have told the prince that Cecily was here, that Gabryel and I brought her to the keep. That’s why Mykel is dead. Lord Fairfield will pay just as Ceres did.”
A long silence passed, the other man in the room weighing his words carefully before speaking. “Are you certain it was him, my lord?” What Wyn Fellsword meant to say, Breccyn knew, was to avoid hasty judgements. Ar’ravn had already berated Breccyn on the topic earlier this evening while he visited the Grayskin woman behind bars. Wyn was in no position to berate anyone.
Breccyn had spent the days after the battle at the Fork limping between the dungeon, Cecily’s bedside, and his sister’s, where he was presently. Three women, three separate afflictions, and his wounded leg seemed to be improving faster than all of them. Quite predictably and infuriatingly, Wyn had not left Aryella’s side since their return. If the man wasn’t careful, it was he who would be hanging around the Howling Cells.
“Who else could it be? He feigned helpfulness, then pointed the prince directly to her.”
“Do not jump in the pit before counting the snakes,” Wyn cautioned in reply. If Wyn were thrown in the cells, between the Grayskin assassin and the ghost-skinned Fellsword, his father would have to turn the place into a school for the number of lectures Breccyn would receive there.
“I have counted the snakes, and Fairfield is the largest,” Breccyn said. “I want his head. For Mykel, I will have his head.” Breccyn hobbled to Aryella’s side and took her cold, limp hand in his own. “My sister’s honor, the death of two privileged drunkards; how long ago it feels. I had truly hoped the king’s mercy would be the end of it.”
“A pit of uncounted snakes....” Wyn mused. “We are all beyond the king’s mercy now.”
“Aye, a scofflaw and an oathbreaker starting wars side by side.”
Wyn chuckled despite himself. “Only, scofflaw has become an admirable thing across the West. Oathbreaker, not so much. Perhaps you will find that greatness you so fondly speak of after all.” Wyn’s tone was muted, regretful, and Breccyn would almost believe the man’s shame if not for the way he looked at Aryella. “Why did you protect me when I approached your father?” Wyn asked suddenly.
Breccyn had asked himself this very question to the cadence of his throbbing leg as the three men rode back to Shorefeld. He knew the answer well, and it troubled his mind all the more. “I had always admired you, Wyn. Never envied. All the great things you had done, everything I wanted for myself; I never knew why I did not envy you. I had every right to, and I know now why. I would not envy a bird its flight nor a horse its swiftness. I have things those could never have. With you, I had love. Or what I thought was love. Now I find
that you have what you were sworn to never have. You have everything I could ever want, and I hate you for it.”
“Your hatred led you to protect me?” Wyn inquired doubtfully.
“We love the same father, brother. I would not see him hurt more than he already is. Not for any amount of hatred. Not right now.”
* * *
Aryella dreamt. Purer than any ink, thicker than any syrup, she drifted through infinite blackness. Time was lost. Images appeared in impossible vividness, vanishing into the impenetrable black just as suddenly. Figures, events, realms and kingdoms; entire histories. She dreamed dreams that had shaped the world. When those ended, she dreamed dreams that would shape the world.
She required an army to achieve those dreams, and in fact, she had one. The dreams had shown it to her. But it would take more than a ruler’s beckon to summon this army; hawks carrying letters simply would not do. Hundreds of arches entered the blackness, an immense stone structure crossing leagues of undulating landscape. The River Ash ran straight as an arrow over the stone to where it emptied into a massive reservoir. Yes, her father’s creation would work.
Aryella’s eyes snapped open transporting her from eternal darkness to a modest low-lit room and the wood-crafted bed supporting her body. To the vigilant man standing nearby, her pale white eyes were entirely unrecognizable. Hollow. Commanding. His sword was out in a flash, but she reacted not. An otherworldly glow reminiscent of the man himself enshrouded the blade from hilt to tip, overpowering the few candles in the room. It was his eyes she studied, black as the darkness she had just exited and wholly familiar. Love flowed through the man’s gaze as steady as the sacred blade he held to her throat. He would not hurt her. If only she could promise him the same.
* * *
Sterile moonlight filled the gulch with a wraithlike glow befitting of the mass grave. Vultures, wild dogs, and other carrion creatures had collected their fill of human debris for near on a week, yet more remained. Pale shadows cast by scrub brush and tall grasses were all that rested over the broken, half-consumed dead at this hour. Silence held the narrow draw in its embrace. Then the shadows began to move.
They came in numbers not seen since the Feral Wars, malformed men and beasts, sometimes a grotesque combination of both, wearing dead, watery skin, black ink dribbling over their misshapen jaws. There were only a dozen, but that was a dozen more than were thought to exist. A portal to the above-ground world had suddenly opened, freeing them from their subterranean prison. Others would follow. Many others.
The twelve wasted no time finishing the job the vultures and ravens could not, filling their rot-filled bellies with fresh meat and man-blood for the first time in decades. Then silent as the night the pack moved on, cold white eyes in search of their next meal, living or dead.
* * *
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Other works by J. Glen Percy:
A FEW LIVES LOST
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HERH8S4