Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands

by DAVID B. COE

  Leave me alone, he wanted to call. Whatever you want can wait.

  But he couldn’t even summon the words.

  An instant later, though, when the knocking gave way to something louder, more insistent, Tavis fought to open his eyes. He had so far to travel—he was so far from that shore. His eyes fluttered open for just a moment, long enough for him to see where he was. Kentigern, the guest quarters. It was just dawn.

  The pounding again, and then he remembered. Brienne. She was still there with him, asleep in his bed. Her father …

  His eyes flew open.

  “Brienne! You have to—”

  It had to be a dream. Some horrible, twisted vision planted in his mind by Shyssir, or Bian, or perhaps both. But it couldn’t be real.

  Somehow he was on his knees on the stone floor, as if what he saw beside him had driven him off the bed. He heard a woman speaking outside the door, her voice spiraling upward toward a wail, and in the next moment something crashed heavily against the wood so that the lock creaked. Still Tavis couldn’t look away. He felt his stomach heave and he vomited onto the blankets. But his eyes never strayed, not for an instant.

  Her head still rested on his pillow, framed by her golden hair, just as he remembered from the night. The expression on her lovely face was so serene that he shuddered at the sight of it, and at the small spot of blood smudged on her smooth cheek. Her dress was still open at the waist. He remembered that as well, just as he did the taste of her lips and the softness of her breasts.

  Again something crashed against the door. The wood of the frame had begun to splinter.

  But that was his dagger buried hilt deep in her chest, and that was her blood caked on her chest and her stomach and running down her sides in dried black streams to the dark stains on the bed. There were several wounds on her chest and stomach. And blood. So much blood. Even on the stone handle of the blade.

  The lock gave with the third crash. Or maybe it was the doorframe. Tavis never knew. Guards rushed in. And an older woman, who screamed like a wraith at what she saw and then collapsed to the floor.

  “Look at his hands!” one of the men cried. “Her blood’s on his hands!”

  Tavis looked. The man was right. His hands were covered with so much dried blood that the skin felt tight when he flexed his fingers. Strange that he hadn’t noticed before.

  Two of the men grabbed him, pinning his arms to his sides. One of them brought his knee up into Tavis’s stomach, doubling him over. A third man, the one attending to the woman, shouted for someone to rouse the duke and was answered by another voice, farther off. Sucking for air, his eyes now trained on the floor, Tavis could not make out what this person said.

  “What is all this?” someone asked. “What—?”

  Tavis looked up again. Fotir and Xaver were in the corridor just outside his chamber. The Qirsi minister was gaping at the bed, his yellow eyes wide, his face so pale he looked as dead as Brienne. Xaver stared as well, though he was flinching, as if he wanted to look away but couldn’t.

  “Why are you holding him?” the minister demanded, his voice suddenly raw and strained.

  “He killed the lady,” said one of the guards who was holding him.

  “You don’t know that.” Fotir’s words carried no conviction.

  “Her blood’s all over him, and the door was locked from the inside.”

  “Tavis?” Xavier whispered. He looked desperate, like a man so fearful of the truth that he would have gladly believed any lie at all.

  “I don’t think I killed her,” Tavis said.

  “You don’t think … ?” Fotir repeated.

  But Tavis’s gaze was fixed on Xaver. If anyone could understand, it was his friend.

  “We were drunk. Both of us. The wine from the banquet.” It was so hard to keep his thoughts clear.

  Xaver seemed to understand anyway. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “I remember some of it. Not all.” His eyes returned to Brienne, to her blood, his dagger. “I don’t remember this.”

  “It had to be him,” the guard said. “Look at his hands.”

  Before any of them could respond, Tavis’s father appeared in the doorway. He paused, glancing at both Xaver and Fotir. Then he stepped past them and into the room. He looked at Brienne, absorbing what he saw like a man accustomed to battle and blood and death. Like a king. After a few moments he lifted his gaze to Tavis.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Tavis told him. “I can’t remember.”

  His father nodded, turning once more to the bed.

  “I wouldn’t have killed her, Father. I couldn’t have. We … I liked her. I liked her very much.”

  Javan didn’t look at him, but he nodded once more.

  Tavis heard voices and footsteps echoing off the walls of the corridor. A good many people were approaching. Aindreas? The duchess? He felt like he was going to vomit again. He should have been crying, he realized. That’s what people would expect from the man she was to marry. He wanted to cry, for her and for himself, but the tears wouldn’t come.

  Aindreas and Ioanna reached the room together and stopped on the threshold. Seeing her daughter’s body, Ioanna fell to her knees, letting out a howl that chilled Tavis to his bones. Aindreas pushed past Fotir and Xaver, and stepped by Javan, glaring at him as he did. For several moments he stood beside the bed, staring down at Brienne, his expression hard and impenetrable, like the walls of his castle. Finally he reached down and pulled the dagger from her breast. Ioanna let out another sob. The duke raised his head and looked directly at Tavis. The guards tightened their grip on Tavis’s arms.

  “Is this yours?” Kentigern asked, his voice tight as a garrote.

  Tavis swallowed. “It is, my lord.”

  With a single stride the duke was standing right in front of the boy, staring down at him with eyes that were red-rimmed and shockingly cold.

  “Why did you do this? Did she spurn you? Is that it? You tried to force yourself on her and she fought you off?”

  “I don’t remember what happened, my lord,” Tavis said, his voice quavering. “But I don’t think I killed your daughter.”

  “This is your blade!” Aindreas said, his voice rising.

  He held the dagger so close to Tavis’s face that the boy flinched away. He grabbed Tavis by the wrist and held up his hand, wrenching Tavis’s arm out of the guard’s grip.

  “This is her blood on your hands! And still you deny killing heir?”

  The duke released his arm, and almost immediately the guard took hold of it again.

  “I wouldn’t have killed her,” Tavis said again. “I cared for her.”

  Aindreas raised his hand to strike him.

  “Hold, Kentigern!”

  The duke spun toward Tavis’s father, his finger leveled like a sword at Javan’s heart.

  “You are not to speak!” he hissed. “Your son murdered my daughter, and now he lies about it like an Aneiran!”

  “He claims to be innocent. And I believe him.”

  “Then you’re a fool, or a liar as well!”

  Javan’s head snapped back as if he had been slapped. “How dare you!” he whispered. “I am to be your king! And you presume to speak to me in such a way?”

  Aindreas took a step toward him, brandishing Tavis’s blade.

  Before he could take a second, however, there was a sound like breaking glass and the bloodstained steel of the dagger shattered into tiny pieces that fell to the floor like flakes of snow.

  Aindreas halted in midstride, his eyes wide.

  “My apologies, my lord,” Fotir said, though he didn’t sound sorry at all. “But let’s not compound this tragedy with further violence.” He glanced at Kentigern’s Qirsi minister, as if seeking support, but the other man refused to look at him. “This is a time to mourn Lady Brienne’s death,” he went on, after a brief pause, “and to look for those who might be responsible.”

  “Fotir is right,” said Javan
. “We’ll help you in any way we can with such a search, and with any investigation of—”

  “We don’t want your help,” Aindreas said. He still held the hilt of Tavis’s dagger, though he seemed to have forgotten it. “And we need search no farther than this room.” He turned to the guards holding Tavis. “Put him in the dungeon. If any of our guests try to stop you—any of them at all,” he added, glaring at Javan, “put them there as well.”

  He turned and started toward the door. But seeing his wife, who was still on her knees, her body shaking with her sobs, he stopped. Removing his cloak, he draped it over her shoulders, then bent to help her to her feet. There were tears on his face, though there had been none just a few seconds before. Ioanna climbed to her feet, clutching the duke’s arm with both hands, and the two of them stepped into the corridor. She paused there, and though Aindreas kept his eyes on the floor, she looked back at Tavis. Her face was damp, her eyes swollen and red. She said nothing; her expression didn’t even change. She just stared at him. Yet Tavis felt as though she were screaming at him, calling him a butcher, imploring Bian to torment him for the rest of time. When finally she looked away and walked out of sight, he sagged. Had the guards not been holding him, he would have fallen to the floor.

  “Come on,” one of the guards said, shaking Tavis roughly to get him to stand on his own again.

  The two men started forward, compelling Tavis to do the same.

  “Keep in mind that he’s a lord,” Javan warned as they walked past him. “He’s soon to be duke, and one day king. Remember as well that he protests his innocence, and until he is proven otherwise he is not to be mistreated.”

  The guards barely slowed down.

  As they led him out the door, Tavis glanced back at his father, who looked grim and pale, and, for the first time Tavis had ever seen, old as well.

  “We’ll find out who did this!” Xaver called to him. “You have my word.”

  The young lord nodded, but the last thing he saw as they took him to the dungeon was not his friend, but rather the bloodied corpse of his queen.

  The room was silent save for the receding sound of the guards’ heels on the stone floor as they led Tavis away. There were still plenty of the duke’s guards there, along with Brienne’s serving woman, Kentigern’s first minister, Javan, Fotir, and Xaver. But none of them seemed to know what to do. Or perhaps they knew, but none of them wanted to be the first to touch her. Xaver didn’t even want to look at her, though he was unable to stop himself.

  At last, one of the guards went to the bed and covered Brienne with a blanket.

  “No!” the serving woman cried out.

  She tried to reach her lady, but was held back by the men attending to her.

  “Your son will die for this!” she shouted at Javan. “The duke will see to it! And if he doesn’t, I will! I swear it in Ean’s name. He will die!” She was crying again, her entire body racked with spasms of grief.

  “Take her to her chambers,” Kentigern’s Qirsi minister said quietly. “Have the healers sent to her.”

  One of the men nodded before helping her stand and guiding her out of the room.

  “When can I see my son?” Javan demanded, planting himself right in front of the Qirsi.

  The minister shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the duke, my lord.”

  “Perhaps you can ask him for me.”

  “As you wish,” the man said, bowing ever so slightly.

  “Tell him as well that I wish to speak with him as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll let him know, but I wouldn’t expect him to grant you an audience anytime soon.”

  Javan’s jaw tightened. “That’s for your duke to say, not you.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the Qirsi said with a shrug.

  He turned to the guards and spoke to them in low tones, leaving Javan, Fotir, and Xaver to themselves.

  “My lord—” Fotir began.

  Javan silenced him with a gesture. “My chambers.”

  Fotir nodded, then glanced at Xaver. “I’d suggest that master MarCullet join us as well. I believe he knows Lord Tavis better than anyone.”

  Javan seemed to have forgotten that he was there, but after a moment’s hesitation he nodded. “Yes, that probably makes sense.”

  They turned to leave, but two of Aindreas’s guards stopped them. “First Minister?” one of the men said.

  The Qirsi looked up from his conversation with the other guards.

  “They’re free to go,” he said, “as long as they realize that they’re not to go to Lord Tavis without leave from the duke.”

  “You’ve made that quite clear,” Javan said.

  The man actually smiled. “Good.” It was all he said. An instant later he turned his back on them and returned to his discussion with the guards, as if the duke and Fotir were of no consequence at all.

  Javan glared at the minister briefly before finally stalking out of the room.

  Xaver and Fotir returned to their room to dress before joining Javan in his chamber.

  “Do you think he did it?” Javan asked, after the first minister closed the door.

  It was the same question Xaver had been asking himself almost from the moment he saw Brienne’s body. He would have given anything to be able to answer with confidence, but his arm had barely healed and the wound on his heart was still raw. One turn ago he would have denied that his friend could ever murder anyone. He would have been equally vehement, however, in denying that Tavis could ever attack him. Too much had changed.

  It seemed that the duke and his minister were thinking the same thing, for they were both looking in his direction.

  “I honestly don’t know, my lord,” he said at last, meeting Javan’s gaze. “Tavis has been acting … erratically.”

  The duke made a sour face and looked away. “I’m afraid you’re being too kind, Master MarCullet. My son has been an ass. No one knows that better than you.” He stepped to the window and stared out at the morning. “But being an ass is one thing,” he went on, not bothering to face them. “Murdering the girl is quite another. I’d like to think that Tavis is incapable of doing … what we saw in there.”

  “He is, my lord,” Xaver said. “When he’s sober.”

  Javan turned at that. “Yes. That’s right. Drink changes him, doesn’t it?” There was a look in the duke’s eyes that Xaver had never seen there before, as if he were desperate to believe what he had just said. It seemed to Xaver that the man was begging him to agree. For the first time he could remember, Javan was speaking to him not as his duke, but as Tavis’s father.

  “But even drunk,” Fotir said, still looking Xaver’s way, “do you really think he could commit so brutal a murder?”

  He shrugged. What did the Qirsi want from him? He had done his best to be honest with Javan, at the risk of offending the duke and appearing disloyal to his liege. “He was drunk when he attacked me,” Xaver answered. It was all he could think to say.

  Fotir nodded. “I know.” His voice sounded almost gentle, like morning waves lapping at a sandy shore. “What happened when he attacked you?”

  “I’ve told you before. I don’t think the duke needs to hear it again.”

  “I think he does. I think all of us do.”

  He considered this for several moments, his eyes fixed on the minister. “He was up on the castle wall,” he began at last. “Sitting on the walkway. He warned me away, saying that he just wanted to be alone. I tried to talk to him, to get him to tell me about his Fating. But he wouldn’t tell me anything. And when I tried to take his arm to bring him back down to his quarters, he swiped at me with his blade.”

  “Did he come at you a second time?”

  Xaver shook his head. “No, he—” Suddenly, he understood. Whatever he thought of the first minister, he could not deny that the man was clever. “No,” he said again. The duke was watching him, but Xaver kept his eyes on Fotir. “As soon as he saw what he had done, he dropped the dagger. He tried to apologize to me
, but I was too angry to listen to him.”

  “Understandably,” the Qirsi said. “But those aren’t the actions of a killer, even a drunk one.” He turned to the duke. “Lady Brienne’s killer showed no remorse, but instead struck at her again and again. Even at his worst I don’t think Lord Tavis is capable of such savagery. To be completely honest, my lord, I don’t believe he has the stomach for it.”

  Javan managed a smile, though it was fleeting. “I never thought I’d be so grateful to hear someone speak of my son’s cowardice. Thank you, Fotir. And you as well, Master MarCullet. What I said yesterday I mean doubly this morning: my son is fortunate to have such a friend.”

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  The duke took a breath, and his body appeared to straighten as he did. “Well, the two of you have convinced me. But how do we convince Aindreas?”

  Xaver said nothing. His own doubts remained, and he hated himself because of them.

  “I’m not certain we can, my lord,” Fotir said. “According to the guards, Lord Tavis’s door was locked from the inside. It was his blade that killed her and you saw the blood on his hands. We, who wanted more than anything to believe in his innocence, found ourselves doubting him. The duke of Kentigern has no reason to believe us and, most likely, no desire to see Lord Tavis proven innocent.”

  “But at least for now, he has no knowledge of what Tavis did to Xaver. More than anything else, more than the blood and the dagger and the locked door, that’s what made us doubt him. If we can just keep—”

  “Qirsar, have mercy!” the minister breathed. His face had gone as white as it was when he first saw Brienne, and he appeared unsteady on his feet, as though he had been struck a blow to the head.

  “What is it?” the duke demanded.

  “Shurik knows, my lord.”

  “Shurik?”

  “The duke of Kentigern’s first minister.”

  Javan’s eyes narrowed. “You told him?”

  “Yes,” Fotir said, nodding and lowering his eyes. “I knew nothing of Brienne’s murder, of course. And we were speaking in confidence. But he knows, and I have no doubt that, under the circumstances, he will share this information with his duke.”