King's Blood

by Jill Williamson

  Cadoc snorted. “First he railed at Ottee for jokes of bad taste and dismissed him from his service as onesent. The boy ran off in tears and hasn’t returned. Then the sâr kept trying to leave and see for himself. He demanded to speak with you a few times. I told him you’d be here when you could, and he didn’t like that. Captain Veralla and I have done a fair job of keeping him sedated. The captain says his hand is healing well.”

  “Thank you, Sir Cadoc.”

  Wilek went inside. The sunlight coming in the curtained window cast a golden haze over the room. Trevn was sitting up in bed, propped against a half-dozen pillows, a tray of food balanced on his lap. His body was leaning drastically to the right, his head drooping so low it looked uncomfortable. Sleeping.

  Wilek examined his brother’s hand, which lay on top of the blanket at his side. The swelling had gone almost completely down. Captain Veralla had said that only two fingers had been broken, but all four fingers were splinted and had turned a deep purple shade that was quite ghastly.

  “I must find the Rafayah.”

  Wilek lifted his gaze to Trevn’s face. His brother’s eyes were puffy and lidded. “You must stay in bed until you are well.”

  “Would you?”

  Wilek glanced at the shell marking on Trevn’s palm, remembering the pull Charlon had on him when they’d been soul-bound. “Can you feel her? Hear her thoughts?” Wilek asked. “There were times when I could do that with Charlon.”

  With one purpled finger Trevn traced along the shell lines on his embossed hand. “We are too far apart to hear thoughts,” he said. “When I came to the Seffynaw just before the storm, I noticed that distance changes the magic.”

  “Yes, I remember that,” Wilek said. It had been both a blessing and a curse.

  “My chest aches constantly, like it did when Father Tomek died. I cannot hear her, though I sense she is worried. No. She thinks I am worried.”

  “That’s good, then,” Wilek said. “I don’t think you would feel like that if she were—” He stopped himself. “We’re keeping a close watch on the seas. It’s likely that the missing ships were merely blown off course. Perhaps they will soon find their way back to us.”

  A quiet knock and Rayim entered, tiny black box in hand.

  Trevn’s gaze fixed on the box and his face crumpled. “No,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to sleep anymore. Please don’t make me.”

  But Rayim set about pricking Trevn in the neck. “Another day. Maybe two. It’s for the best,” he said.

  Trevn moaned, shook his head as if trying to scare off a fly. “Mielle . . .”

  Plagued by feelings of guilt, Wilek sat with Trevn until he fell asleep. He could not bring himself to mention any of the happenings of the past week with Janek’s shipping and the traitors. And Hinckdan . . . Wilek would have to tell Trevn about that at some point.

  “Under no circumstances should Sâr Trevn be left alone, Sir Cadoc,” Wilek said. “Make sure that any guards who relieve you know that.” His brother was probably a greater danger to himself at present than Kamran was to their father. “I’ll ask my mother if she and the sârahs might take turns sitting with him until we convince Ottee he wasn’t dismissed permanently.”

  “It will be done, Your Highness,” Cadoc said.

  Wilek departed for his mother’s cabin. He left Novan with the honor maidens and the pack of tiny dogs and retreated with his mother into her bedchamber for a private talk.

  “I am sorry that the prisoners got away,” she said. “It is a frustrating defeat. But you must give yourself some grace. Both you and Sâr Trevn are grieving. You have lost people dear to you. Such an experience is not so easily overcome.”

  “Who have I lost? Surely you don’t mean Janek?”

  She frowned. “I mean Sir Kalenek.”

  The name tightened Wilek’s chest. Kal had been slowly weaned away from Wilek—first by his resignation—but now he was gone completely, and thinking of the man made it difficult to breathe. Perhaps his mother was right.

  “I don’t know how to grieve.” When Lebetta had died, he’d kept busy, and with the Woes, before he’d realized it, months had passed and the pain no longer stabbed. “I wish he hadn’t confessed. If I didn’t know what he’d intended, it would have been easier.”

  “We all make choices,” Mother said, “but they do not define us. Besides, he is not dead, so you don’t have to let go completely. Think of him as being on a special mission for you, like when you sent him into Magonia. Ask Arman to watch over him. To help him in that dark place.”

  “That is a good idea.” And not so far from the truth.

  “You should also talk about him. Tell Zeroah stories about some of your exploits together. These things will help, little by little. Just remember, you never stop grieving death. You learn to live with it. Grief is not an illness; it’s a transition.”

  Wilek thought of Chadek, his brother who had been sacrificed to Barthos at age ten. Though the memory of his brother on that platform still haunted him, the pain hadn’t flared for years. Still, that experience had shaped everything about the rest of Wilek’s life.

  “I’m worried about Trevn. If we never recover Miss Mielle, with the soul-binding spell he might never learn to live with his grief. I’ve dealt with that magic. I know how it feels.”

  “Arman’s ways are beyond understanding,” Mother said, chilling Wilek with the same words Zeroah liked to say. “We might not understand now why these things happened, we might never understand, but we will survive.”

  Wilek hoped so. For all their sakes.

  Trevn

  Trevn awoke recalling a dream about riding the roof of a carriage with Mielle. The memory brought a smile to his face until the familiar ache reminded him that she was gone.

  Every day since Ottee had told him the Rafayah was missing, it had been the same. For a few blissful seconds he would wake, not yet remembering, and for the space of a breath or two, life would seem normal.

  But it wasn’t.

  Wilek had told him about Hinck and all that had happened while he slept, and there was still no sign of the Rafayah.

  He felt Mielle’s concern rise up in the back of his mind. I’m fine. He tried to think calming thoughts.

  His distance from Mielle was slowly killing something inside him, and being confined to his room didn’t help. Wilek had agreed to stop sedating him and let him out of the cabin if he promised not to leave the ship. So Trevn had promised, yet his oath plagued him. He daydreamed about commandeering a smaller ship from the fleet and taking it out to look for the Rafayah, certain the soul-binding would work like magnets and lead them to each other.

  Trevn climbed from bed and didn’t bother to wake Ottee as he dressed in his blacks. He forced himself from the room and met Cadoc outside. The man’s eyes were red, and he looked exhausted.

  “Is something wrong, Cadoc?” he asked.

  “I was thinking of my parents, Your Highness.”

  Trevn felt ashamed. He had been so absorbed in his own grief that he had forgotten Cadoc’s parents had been aboard the Rafayah. “The ship did not go down, my friend,” he said. “If Mielle had died, I would have felt it. Trust the Magonian’s magic in me as proof of that.”

  Cadoc merely nodded. Trevn set off for the king’s galley. There he grabbed a handful of rolls, then made his way topside. The best thing he could do was to continue his apprenticeship and help Wilek find land. Once their people had a safe place to live, Trevn could focus on finding Mielle. And Cadoc’s parents.

  Captain Bussie sent Trevn to shadow the carpenter and caulker. These men he found on the carpenter’s walk, patching up leaks gained after the storm. Trevn’s hand kept him from helping, and he soon wandered topside again. Trevn hated the sympathetic looks people gave him. His blacks were for mourning Janek, not Mielle. People thought Mielle was dead, but she was not dead. He would know.

  On the quarterdeck Bonds and Rzasa were splicing rope into pieces long enough to use for sheets and haly
ards.

  “Boots!” Bonds hollered. “Come end an argument. Now that we no longer see Nivanreh’s Eye, half the ship is certain we will sail off the edge of the sea.”

  “I never said the world was flat,” Rzasa said. “Everyone knows it’s a bowl.”

  Trevn sat cross-legged on the deck, happy to distract his mind with intellectual pursuits. He’d been intrigued by the new north-guiding stars. Rather than sitting at their backs as Nivanreh’s Eye had, the trio rose before them like a beacon. To him this was proof that the world was spherical. But he must use a different type of logic with Rzasa. “The sun and moon and stars all appear to travel around us in circular fashion. It’s the same every day.”

  “Which means the bowl’s round,” Rzasa said. “Doesn’t mean it’s a ball.”

  “When a ship is at the horizon, its hull is obscured due to the curvature of the earth,” Trevn said. “That is all that has happened with Nivanreh’s Eye.”

  Rzasa, who was also sitting cross-legged, smoothed out a wrinkle in his red socks. “If we’ve traveled over the side of the world, why haven’t we fallen off?”

  “Because we are on the surface of the sphere,” Trevn said, “and the nature of most objects pulls them toward the Lowerworld, which exists in the sphere’s center. Very few substances rise toward Shamayim. Smoke does. And steam.”

  “Cotton?” Bonds asked.

  “No,” Trevn said. “Cotton floats on the wind, but when there is no wind, it falls to the earth like any of us.”

  A shadow fell over Trevn. “Hey, Boots,” Nietz said. “Cap’n wants you to go help Master Bylar in the forward hold.”

  “The world is a sphere,” Trevn said, standing. “And it will soon carry us to land. I promise you.”

  He found the steward in the forward hold working on an assessment of the cargo. The man had started in the aft and was nearly finished by the time Trevn arrived. This compartment was filled with barrels, which were topsy-turvy when they should have been stacked. Several were broken, and among the shards of wood were apples, some kind of dried meat, and swaths of crumpled fabric.

  A squadron of ten soldiers worked hard to move the good barrels out into the corridors. Master Bylar stood on the left side of the entrance, wax tablet in hand as he carefully logged each food item. He wore on his belt the keys to the food compartments, never letting them leave his person. Such authority gave him nearly as much power as Wilek, when one considered the ship filled with slowly starving souls.

  “I did not realize you kept such close tallies on the cargo,” Trevn said.

  “Oh yes, I must,” Master Bylar said. “If I allow people to help themselves to an extra bite here and there, what will we eat next month? No, I must take care to pass out our provisions sparingly so that they last as long as possible. It does not make me popular. Many despise the jingle of my belt. But it has kept us fed so far.”

  Trevn caught the edge in the man’s voice. “How much longer can we last on what’s here?”

  The man answered without hesitation. “Three weeks, unless we start catching fish again.”

  Trevn carried that cheery news back to the quarterdeck, wishing he could speak with Mielle about this. The morning fog had left everything wet, and the moisture still hadn’t burned off. The farther north they sailed, the cooler the temperatures. Was Mielle cold? He spotted Admiral Livina at the rail, grow lens to his eye.

  “He see something?” Trevn asked Captain Bussie, who was at the whip.

  “Ahead on the water,” Bussie said. “Looks like more wreckage.”

  Mielle. Trevn’s heart leapt, and he joined Admiral Livina. The man passed Trevn the grow lens.

  “Looks like it’s been tied together,” Trevn said. “I think I see movement.” They were too far out to recognize any of the people, but his bond with Mielle did not speak. “Pirates again?”

  “Could be,” the admiral said.

  What would Randmuir of the Omatta need with so many ships?

  But when the Seffynaw heaved alongside, it turned out not to be wreckage at all but three waterlogged dinghies lashed together. Inside, some twenty white-skinned passengers stared upon the great ship.

  A chill ran over Trevn at the sight of them. And he’d been so certain that anyone but Mielle would have been a terrible disappointment. “They’re pale, like Miss Onika.”

  “Which means they’re not of our fleet,” Admiral Livina said, excitement in his voice.

  Trevn caught his meaning at once. These people had to have come from somewhere. Perhaps they would be able to lead the fleet to their homeland.

  The pales, however, were in a dismal state. Their sallow, thin faces made it look as if they had been drifting for several weeks. They had lashed the dinghies with one in the lead and two behind and fashioned a mainmast of an oar. It carried no sail, however, merely a frayed and sun-bleached windsock made from a sleeve of what had once been a dark-colored tunic or jacket. The sleeve flipped about in the low wind.

  Trevn gave a secondary count and determined that of the twenty-one bodies aboard the makeshift vessel, only seven were awake. By the look of the flies crawling over some of the faces, many of those sleeping might be dead.

  “Should we lower a boat to bring aboard the survivors?” Trevn asked, eager to try to speak with them.

  “Not yet,” Livina said. “We’ve barely got a hold on the fever. We can’t risk bringing ill people on ship.”

  “But they could lead us to land!” Trevn said.

  “Not if we’re all dead from disease.” But the admiral did not abandon the pales. He threw out a line, which one of the survivors tied to their craft. This would tow them along behind the Seffynaw while the admiral went to speak with Wilek.

  The sailors went about unsurprised by the admiral’s actions, but the passengers stood along the rail, indignant at such barbarity, protesting that these people should be brought aboard at once. Trevn agreed with the passengers. These people might be able to lead them to land. Perhaps Mielle was there already.

  In the end the hope of land outweighed the risk of disease, and Wilek ordered the nine surviving pales to be brought aboard and sequestered in the sickroom under Captain Veralla’s care.

  Trevn wanted desperately to visit them, but Admiral Livina had set guards outside the door to keep people away, leaving Trevn no excuse to skip his father’s ageday dinner in the admiral’s dining room, which Wilek had insisted he attend.

  While Trevn had been sleeping away his life, Wilek had brought their father back to the Seffynaw. The man looked no worse than he had when he’d left, except now he rarely spoke. He just stared, his dark, glassy eyes fixed on nothing.

  There were fifteen seated at dinner. In addition to the royal family, Miss Onika, and members of the Wisean Council, Mielle’s little sister was in attendance. Amala looked so like Mielle that Trevn’s heart ached. Why had she been invited? Could this be Wilek’s way of easing his guilt over recent circumstances?

  Then Wilek did something most intriguing. He introduced Amala to their father.

  “May I present to you Miss Amala Allard. I have adopted her as my ward.”

  The rosâr, sickly as he was, perked up at this and reached out a shaky hand.

  Amala took hold of his hand and curtsied.

  The king smiled.

  This produced a round of applause as if the king were a babe taking his first steps.

  “You approve of this, Sârah Zeroah?” Kamran asked her.

  “Indeed I do. I loved Miss Mielle dearly. It is our duty to care for her sister now that she is gone.”

  Gone. The word rang in Trevn’s head like a gong.

  Somehow the moment passed without Trevn doing or saying anything unpardonable, and dinner was served. Conversation settled around the pales and finding out where they came from.

  Miss Amala sat on Trevn’s left, Oli on his right. The duke seemed withdrawn, and Trevn guessed he was still suffering from the lack of evenroot. Miss Amala, however, drove Trevn near insane w
ith her endless chattering about the state of her overly dry skin. How could two sisters be so opposite in every way?

  Trevn looked at the girl, really looked at her for the first time, and realized there was no warmth in her eyes. He might recognize their shape and color, but they carried an eager desperation that unsettled him.

  “Your Highness,” she whispered, leaning close. “I’ve been wanting to speak with you for some time. I am so desperately embarrassed that Sir Kalenek, my warden, killed Sâr Janek, your brother. I am mortified to be seen in good company. Do you think people judge me by association?”

  “Yes,” Trevn said, shocked the girl had broached the subject in this gathering. “But my guess is that your definition of good company and mine are very different. You should not care what people say, Miss Amala.”

  “It’s just that everywhere I go, it seems as though people are talking about me. I hope that Sir Kalenek’s crimes will not taint me forever.”

  Trevn held his tongue and imagined that Mielle would say Tuhsh! and scold her sister for such a remark. He decided to remain silent. This entire meal was a typical waste of time, and he’d just about convinced himself to beg leave when Miss Onika stood, clear eyes blazing in the direction of the king and Wilek.

  “You must not follow the pales,” she said. “Their way will lead you to destruction. A fatherless child is being trained to rise up against Armania. The land of shards is no place for his power. He must be lured north, where the magic of his people will diminish against the magic of Arman.”

  Trevn pressed his hand over his chest, which was thrumming at the prophetess’s voice.

  “I feel strange,” Rashah said.

  “Out,” the king said. “Ooouuut!”

  Wilek jumped up and motioned to Oli, who flew to Miss Onika’s side and took hold of her arm.

  “Miss Onika?” Oli said. “Will you come with me?”

  “Dismissing me does not change the facts, Rosâr Echad. Continue on this course and you will all die.”

  Everyone stared in silence while Oli led her away and the king continued to moan.