Oathbreaker

by Cara Witter

  The woman looked nothing like Saara, but seeing the flame spin and dance, Nikaenor couldn’t help but think of her. He felt like an idiot, remembering how sure he was that he was going to marry her someday, when what he’d felt was the pull of them being chosen.

  Okay, he thought, remembering the way his heart beat faster when she regarded him with those dark eyes, or how she left him tongue-tied in a way that Jaeme or Sayvil never did. Maybe it wasn’t just the pull making me an idiot.

  He was long past any hope that she might be interested in him in the same way. They might both be bearers, but she was a queen now. Still, he missed her. He missed having them all together.

  Maybe that was why Jaeme was having so much trouble finding Kotali. Maybe if all four bearers were here—

  Peace, Mirilina said. Nikaenor patted his coin pouch gently. He’d wondered at first if that gesture was sacrilegious, but Mirilina didn’t seem to mind. Kenton was wrong. The gods weren’t distant—Mirilina could hear his thoughts, and now she could answer them.

  She answered with that one word more often than not, especially in the dark of night when Nikaenor worried about his family.

  “Ridiculous,” Sayvil said with a scowl, emerging from the apothecary. “For the price they wanted for three measly leaves, I could plant a whole row of dew-dress.”

  “But you bought it, right?” Nikaenor really didn’t want to spend the rest of his day finding every apothecary in Grisham to look at identical bottles of crushed leaves.

  Besides, he was getting hungry.

  Sayvil sighed. “Yes. We’ll likely need some for pain relief. Though given how long Jaeme’s taking finding his damn stone, maybe I should have gone the planting route.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Kenton,” Nikaenor said. “Jaeme’s looking. I was just with him, and he was really trying. You know, in a Jaeme way.”

  Sayvil snorted. “If Jaeme’s trying anything, it’s to get Kenton to leave him and Daniella here while the rest of the us deal with this whole world-saving mess.”

  Nikaenor felt his hackles rise. Sayvil could be prickly at the best of times, but to imply that Jaeme would just abandon them on their mission . . . He shook his head. “That’s not fair. Jaeme’s done a lot for us. He’s risked his life. My dad would always say ‘If a man stands for you once, you treat him like he’d do it every time. And then he will.’”

  “Sounds like the way fools get taken advantage of,” Sayvil said. Then her expression softened. “I’m sorry, Nikaenor. I didn’t mean—”

  Nikaenor felt a surge in his chest at the slight to his father, as if the man were really here, and Nikaenor could leap in front of him and protect him from the insult. Or, perhaps, from the sword. He shrugged and avoided her gaze so she wouldn’t see the way his eyes suddenly burned. He hadn’t cried in front of any of them, other than when Kenton had first told him about his father’s death, and he didn’t particularly want to start now.

  Not that he thought tears made him soft, or weak. His dad had never been one afraid to shed tears, and he was one of the strongest men Nikaenor had ever known. But he was afraid if he started crying, he might never stop. And Mirilina needed more from him than grief. They all did.

  Peace, Mirilina said.

  Okay, Nikaenor said back. Though he really wished he could be eating something now. Food helped take his mind off things he’d rather not think about.

  “Come on,” Sayvil said, and tugged him along the street. They wound past shoppers picking out bolts of cloth from a stand of bright linen and cotton, and another street performer playing a jaunty tune on a pan-flute. Then they were out on one of the main thoroughfares of the city, leading toward the southern gate. The thick summer air smelled of sweat and passing livestock and somewhere nearby, a hint of roasted cinnamon almonds.

  The crowds were pushed back to the sides of the street as some high-ranked lord and his retinue passed, leaving the city in a small parade of knights riding long-maned horses and carrying purple and white banners, followed by a large coach where the noble ladies of the house likely rode, though the curtains were closed. Behind the coach were a few more horses, lesser steeds ridden by various house attendants. The attendants wore puffy purple sleeves with small bells attached at the wrist and caps with long white feathers jutting from them, and Nikaenor snickered at how ridiculous they looked.

  They might get to live in a castle and mingle with high folk, but Nikaenor would rather scrub a hundred pots in his family’s inn than have to wear that particular outfit to work.

  He was about to point them out to Sayvil when a face across the street caught his attention. A man in his late-twenties, clean-shaven with dark hair and a face that Aralie would probably sigh over—not that that took much. He looked strangely familiar, though Nikaenor couldn’t figure out why. The man wore the clothes of a typical townsman of Mortiche, a belted plain-linen tunic with cording at the neck, over pants tucked into high leather boots, scuffed with wear. A servant from the castle on his day off?

  Nikaenor frowned. Something about the man bothered him, though the fellow was doing nothing unusual. Just watching the passing noble house like many others on the street, his fingers drumming lightly on the hilt of a short blade sheathed at his side.

  All at once, Nikaenor’s blood became ice, because he remembered those fingers drumming against a hilt, but not of some workman’s knife. A full sword, one of those cruel, serrated Sevairnese blades. Fingers drumming as this same man strode into the common room of the Fish Hook, stepping over the bodies of his own soldiers and tavern patrons alike to reach where Kenton was being held down and beaten by soldiers.

  “Sayvil,” Nikaenor managed, through a throat all but closed off with panic. “Sayvil, it’s him.” He grabbed her arm too tightly and she winced, pushing him away.

  “Nikaenor, what are you—”

  “It’s him. General Dektrian. Over there.”

  Sayvil’s mouth clamped shut, her face paling as she followed his gaze. Her eyes darted over the crowd across the street. “He can’t be here. It’s Mortiche, he can’t be—”

  “He’s not in his uniform. He’s in disguise, but it’s him.” Nikaenor’s heart thudded painfully in his chest, torn between fury and fear. “We have to do something. We have to—”

  “Are you sure?” Sayvil’s eyes were narrowed, still scanning over the crowd.

  “Yes.” Nikaenor stared at this man, so utterly plain-looking now, just one man in the crowd.

  But Nikaenor had watched helplessly as this man ordered his mother and sister bound and taken prisoner. Nikaenor had sat in that prison tent himself, terrified of what this man might be doing to them, what he might do to Nikaenor to get him to talk. And Nikaenor had come back to a town—his town—destroyed by this man’s soldiers. To his father, murdered.

  By this man, who now turned and said something to another plainly dressed but thickly muscled man standing next to him. The second man nodded, and they both turned and disappeared into the crowd, along with a third man behind them.

  Nikaenor cursed, a word that would have earned him stall-mucking for a month back home, and certainly earned him a shocked expression from Sayvil.

  “He has people with him,” Nikaenor said. “We have to tell Kenton, now.” Without waiting for Sayvil’s agreement, he turned and ran in the direction of the castle.

  Fifty

  I’m sorry, Hugh,” Jaeme said.

  Hugh’s face softened. “Look, let’s go upstairs, all right? We can sit down with your uncle, and you can tell us everything. We’ll find you a way out of this, Jaeme. It’s not too late to stop.”

  Jaeme looked once more at the body of the boy. He imagined this was the same speech he would have gotten for his alleged snap habit. If Hugh had any idea what this boy had been used for, he’d be singing a different song.

  Jaeme’s uncle, who had raised him, who had
loved him all his life, had sold him out, cast him aside.

  Yes, he and Jaeme definitely needed to have a chat.

  “Okay,” Jaeme said. He followed Hugh out into the hall, leaving the wall swung open behind them. He walked beside Hugh down the long corridor, ignoring his friend’s worried looks, directed both at Jaeme and back at the room with the boy, as if the thing might start following them. For all Jaeme knew, it could.

  Jaeme squeezed his eyes shut. If he’d approached Hugh before, he might have persuaded him that his uncle was in league with Diamis. But now that Hugh felt he’d caught him, Jaeme had lost all credibility. It was clever, Jaeme realized, for his uncle to betray him in this way. He must have been waiting for an opportunity since the moment Jaeme came to him about the body, and Jaeme had gone and provided it to him. Jaeme had no proof, no evidence but his word. The Council members would believe Greghor, just as they’d believed the witnesses against his father all those years ago.

  Why? Jaeme thought. Why would his uncle do this? Why couldn’t Jaeme have believed Kenton sooner? Why couldn’t he find the damned stone? Why did it all have to end like this?

  I’m trying, Jaeme thought. I’m really trying. Why can’t you help me?

  As he and Hugh passed the vaults containing the ashes of his ancestors, dukes and duchesses and lords and ladies before him, Jaeme nearly wished his ashes were already among them.

  By the mountain’s height, Jaeme thought, if I’m your bearer, why won’t you tell me where you are?

  “It’ll be all right,” Hugh said to Jaeme. “It’s not too late to accept help.” And Jaeme looked up at him in surprise.

  But are you ready for it? a voice asked. Not Hugh’s, but one in Jaeme’s mind.

  Jaeme blinked. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps he was finally going mad like his mother. Or perhaps.

  Kotali? Jaeme asked.

  The voice seemed to chuckle.

  Yes, Jaeme was almost certainly going mad. But as their footsteps echoed on the stone, Jaeme felt something, a tug on his heart, perhaps on his soul. Calling him out of the castle. Away from here.

  Jaeme wanted to escape.

  He drew a steadying breath. Kotali, he thought. If that’s you, help me.

  There was a pause, then a clear thought, one Jaeme was certain didn’t come from himself. What will it take, the voice said, for you to believe?

  Jaeme’s breath caught, and Hugh glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.

  Is that what you’ve been waiting for? Jaeme asked.

  Kotali didn’t respond. It made a sick kind of sense, though. Saara was ambitious, but she believed in Nerendal, in the reality of his hand in her life. Nikaenor, of course, believed devoutly. And Daniella had said that Kotali was a skeptic like Jaeme, that he had perhaps been waiting for Jaeme to be ready to believe.

  I’m ready, Jaeme said. I’m listening. I believe that you’re there, I swear I do. And inasmuch as I don’t, please, gods, don’t punish the others for my doubt. He cringed, and Hugh reached out to pat his arm, as if in comfort, no doubt thinking that Jaeme was feeling regret for his deeds. To the contrary, he was merely doubting the wisdom of using the name of the being he was speaking to telepathically as an epithet.

  Good, Kotali said. An image formed in Jaeme’s mind, crisp and pure, of himself as a boy, running into the woods beyond the castle and into the grove of trees on the cliff behind the castle. The one he’d longed to escape into since they arrived, the one he’d ached to take Daniella to, before and after things grew tense between them.

  The boy-Jaeme ran through the woods, finding a stick to use as a sword, and climbed an outcropping of rock that Jaeme remembered well. It had been a refuge from imagined blizzards, a bulwark against oncoming armies, a haven in need of defending, a den of woltrechts in need of slaying. Today, Jaeme’s child self ran straight to the top, his feet finding footholds even as pebbles rained down after him.

  Kenton was right. The gods had chosen bearers who were physically close to them. Kotali had been waiting outside the castle, calling to him all along.

  Jaeme looked over at Hugh. He had a concerned look on his face, and Jaeme believed that Hugh meant to help him.

  But his friend also had a hand on his sword.

  Jaeme remembered the way the walls had caught fire when Saara claimed her stone, the way they’d all known it had happened, even him and Daniella, who’d been hidden away in the antechamber. The voice that had boomed through the castle and the surrounding city, echoing off the stone. All hail my Chosen.

  And Jaeme knew how to make things right.

  “I’m sorry, Hugh,” he said again.

  Hugh took his hand off his sword and put it on Jaeme’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said again.

  For the first time, Jaeme believed him.

  He reached out, grabbing for the handle of the nearest door—wine storage, if Jaeme remembered correctly—and flung it open. Hugh turned toward him, but he was too late. Jaeme grabbed him by the arm and swung Hugh around, launching him into the open doorway.

  Hugh clipped the doorframe, stumbled, and crashed into a rack of wine bottles. Glass rained down, and Jaeme cringed. “I’m sorry,” he said, one more time. Then he slammed the door closed again and reached for the lock.

  Which had been broken. By Kenton.

  Jaeme swore at Kenton, at his uncle, at the forces of Grisham that were no doubt already conspiring against him from above. He held the door closed, and Hugh pushed against it. Jaeme reached for one of the light charms hanging from the hook on the wall. He shook the charm off and used the hook and the length of chain to secure the door, so Hugh couldn’t open it more than an inch.

  “Jaeme!” Hugh shouted. “Don’t do this!”

  Jaeme resisted the urge to apologize a fourth time. The chain wouldn’t hold Hugh forever, so Jaeme turned and ran for the stairs, planning a route through the castle in his mind, taking only the least traveled halls.

  He only prayed that he wasn’t too late.

  At the top of the stairs, Jaeme found three men waiting for him: Lord Okar, the son of one of his father’s viscounts, Lord Rikter, a vassal of Hugh’s who Jaeme had competed against more than once. And, at Okar’s side, a concerned-looking Matthon Buras.

  “Jaeme,” Okar called down the stairs. “Your uncle has sent for you. We’re to bring you to him at once.”

  Phillips stepped down one stair. “Where is Duke Hughsen?” he asked. “He went to find you.”

  Jaeme shrugged and ignored the question. “That’s a lot of fanfare for my uncle to summon me. I’d think a page boy would have sufficed.” His fingers itched for his sword, and once again he cursed himself for not having it with him.

  Okar’s lips set into a grim line. “Come easy, Jaeme. There are still several dukes in residence. You don’t want to make a scene.”

  Come here, Kotali’s voice said, reverberating in Jaeme’s head like echoes off the stone walls.

  Jaeme knew what he had to do. He placed his hand on the stone wall like he was using it for support, but in reality was pulling off some of the stone, forming into a small blade under his hand. “I’m not the one making any kind of scene here,” he said, hiding the stone piece in his palm as he brought it back down to his side and walked slowly up the steps until he was just below Phillips. “It seems like you fellows are taking care of that, looking to accost a man in his own castle.”

  “It’s your uncle’s castle, and it is by his orders—”

  Phillips cut off as Jaeme lunged forward with the small stone blade, swiping and, regrettably, only managing to nick Phillips’ neck. Phillips stumbled back with a yell, drawing his sword, and the other men drew theirs. Jaeme met eyes with Buras for a moment, who fell in line behind Okar—the knight Jaeme’s uncle had assigned him to when he’d folded Buras into his service.

  So much for fealty, Jaeme though
t. Phillips raised his sword to strike, and Jaeme prepared himself to dart under it, to strike again—

  Then Phillips nearly crashed into him as Okar fell right into him from behind. Jaeme dodged to the side, flattening himself against the wall. Phillips did the same on the opposite side as Okar fell, his body slumping onto the stairs. Jaeme looked up the stairs to see a smiling Buras flipping his blade around after hitting Okar in the head with the pommel.

  Phillips turned on both of them, but Jaeme was already in motion. He ran up the stairs, getting the higher ground, and turned to face Phillips with Buras beside him, now two against one—even if one had a sharp shard of rock for a weapon.

  Phillips lowered his sword as if to yield, shooting a dangerous look at Buras, then whipped it up again and lunged toward Jaeme. Jaeme dodged once more and punched Phillips in the face with his free hand, sending Phillips sprawling on top of Okar, his sword clattering farther down the stairs.

  Jaeme picked up Okar’s fallen blade, testing the weight of it. “Thanks,” Jaeme said, watching as Phillips attempted to stand and only succeeded in waking Okar, who reached up, disoriented, and grabbed Phillips by the shoulder, holding him down.

  “Of course, my lord,” Buras said. “I told you I’d serve no one else, even if you did allow me to be assigned to the castle guard.”

  Another thing Jaeme should have realized was his uncle working against him. “Come on,” Jaeme said, leading Buras down a narrow hallway that headed toward the castle laundry. From there they could loop around and come out near the kitchens through hallways that were usually trafficked by servants rather than knights. They didn’t have much time. He had no way to know how many knights his uncle had alerted.

  “You can run now,” Jaeme said. “You could be arrested for helping me.”

  Buras shook his head. “I swore allegiance to you. I know who’s earned my loyalty and who hasn’t.”

  “You’re a faster learner than me,” Jaeme said. “But if that’s the case, I need a favor.”