by Dave Duncan
The dog’s ruff rose. It bared its teeth and seemed to gather himself to spring, but the Czar snapped a command and it subsided again, snarling.
“What, are you afraid, little Vasili? Closer!”
The boy’s next move left him almost touching the hound. Its snarl grew louder, its whole body seeming to vibrate with fury.
Igor seemed satisfied. “Now we have two staunch defenders, do we not? Can you still see, wife?”
Sophie said quickly, “Very well, thank you, Your Majesty.”
Igor surveyed the assembly again. Everyone waited to hear who was next on his list of enemies.
“Prince Griaznoi!”
Igor toyed with his new victim for a while, but settled for appointing Griaznoi’s daughter a lady-in-waiting to the Czarina. The terrified girl was directed to sit beside Vasili on the edge of the dais, fortunately on the far side of him from Iakov. Another prince lost his young wife in the same way, and then the Czar took Maliuta Seisse, Prince Seisse’s eldest son, to be a gentleman usher. The youth looked even more frightened than the girls as he took his place beside them.
“Noble princes and boyars of Skyrria!” Igor abruptly changed the subject. “Our realm has prospered much in recent years from the trade we have fostered with the distant land of Chivial, thanks to our wisdom in granting Chivian ships access to our port of Treiden. We have now agreed to grant an oft-repeated petition from King Athelgar that we give him the hand of our fair cousin Tasha in marriage. You should consider what gifts you will offer us to celebrate this joyous occasion.”
Dimitri heard Tasha gasp before he realized what Igor was saying.
“Smile!” he whispered, turning to her with a big grin of his own, as if he had been waiting for this moment. He kissed her ear. “Even if he’s marrying you to that hound, keep smiling.” He helped her rise and they walked forward together while cheers and applause echoed through the hall. He was careful not to look at Vasili.
Sophie came sweeping forward to meet them, hands outstretched, and her glowing smile seemed genuine. She gave her sister a hug and Dimitri a quick kiss, then turned to lead them to the base of the throne. Igor was actually smiling into his greasy beard. Usually when he smiled someone was either suffering or about to, but perhaps this time was different.
Tasha prostrated herself. Dimitri made a speech of gratitude for the honor being bestowed upon his sister.
“Princess, you must stay here in the High Town and help the Czarina plan your wedding.” Amusement faded into threat. “Your wife, Prince? She was summoned.” His fingers started playing with the knout again.
Dimitri said, “She is already past her term, sire. Much as she wanted—”
“Kiensk has the best midwives in Skyrria. Send for her.”
“As Your Majesty commands.” A very old messenger on a slow horse, Dimitri thought; better that Yelena give birth before leaving Faritsov than in some hedge by the roadside.
“We shall see she is well cared for while you are gone.”
“Gone, sire?”
“The Chivian envoys are on their way here to hail their future queen. It is fitting that you meet them and escort them to Kiensk.”
Dimitri bowed again as he expressed delight he did not feel. Yet Igor was honoring both Tasha and the Chivians by sending a prince of the blood as his delegate. To Treiden, he assumed. How far away was Treiden? Somewhere up north.
He told himself sternly that the Czar was not being unreasonable in making Tasha come to live in High Town, now she was a dynastic bride. It was even understandable that he would hold Yelena and her baby hostage while Dimitri was near the coast. Igor grew very irate when even the lowliest of his subjects fled abroad. He regarded that as treason and rank ingratitude.
• 3 •
Two men rode over a stony plain under a sky astonishingly huge. The greatest heat of summer was passed, but wind and sun together could still flay a man, and the horses’ hooves hammered on scanty grass, too scorched to make decent grazing. A pitiless glare rippled up from the landscape; sinister whirligig dust wraiths swirled over it like lost demons.
For almost three months the Wassail expedition had trekked eastward, through more types of scenery than a man ever dreamed possible—rich meadows and vineyards in Isilond, then Fitain’s craggy hills topped by fabled castles, forests of elm, beech, oak, maple, and linden, and now the sorrowful dry steppes of Dolorth. Life had dwindled steadily. From Laville’s splendor they had come at last to charred skeletons of villages, pathetic reminders that war was as common as weather on these grasslands. Even in such seeming emptiness, Monseigneur D’Estienne never let down his guard. Always he kept outriders scouting on every side. These two were returning after reconnoitering to the south.
“The Czar is crazy!” the Marquis said. “He makes war on his own people. He’s an autocrat who can do anything and frequently does. You would be insane to trust your ward to the whims of such a maniac. Why are you laughing?”
“Just thinking we should get along well together.”
“Who should?”
“Me and the Czar,” Oak said. “If we’re both crazy, I mean.”
“I am serious! Do you doubt that I have only your best interests at heart, my good friend?”
Oak had no doubt that his good friend Orson—His Grace the Marquis Vaanen—was sincere, although perhaps not being completely honest. The strangest of all the strange things that had happened in the last few months was that a fisherman’s son from a shack on the rocky coast of Chivial had become fast friends with one of the grandest nobles of Isilond, heir to a name almost as ancient as Wassail’s.
Why they so enjoyed each other’s company was a mystery. They were the same age, but seemed to have nothing else in common except a love of fencing and a preference for brawny women. Orson was lean and impetuous, a ferret to Oak’s badger. His daily income must exceed what a fisherman would earn in a lifetime. He owned several counties, was lord of the high justice and hereditary champion of the queen of Isilond, except there wasn’t one of those at the moment. Whereas Oak never regarded himself as more than the junior member of Beau’s tiny team, the Marquis’s exalted rank automatically made him commander of the entire Isilondian contingent. In practice he was content to let the more experienced D’Estienne attend to tactics and logistics, and the diplomatic de Ferniot handle cranky Lord Wassail. He also acknowledged de Roget as master of fencing, which was the expedition’s primary purpose so far as the Isilondians were concerned. Perhaps that very willingness to let the winds of chance blow as they willed was what he and Oak most shared.
As the horses reached the crest of the rise, Oak saw the expedition snaked out across the plain far ahead of them, four hundred men and almost a thousand horses. Orson was still ranting about the Czar.
“He hunts with monstrous, unnatural dogs—dogs that make wolves look like kittens. He sets them on people, to tear them apart.”
Oak made noncommittal noises. These lurid tales of a murderous Czar riding to supernatural hounds through the icy rigors of a Skyrrian night seemed to him just a little too, um, lurid.
“And what of the depravities in his retreat at Czaritsyn?” Orson persisted. “Foul orgies, fiendish tortures, gruesome conjurations!”
“You think I’ll get invited?”
“To what?”
“The orgies.”
The Marquis exploded in laughter. “You really are crazy!”
“Those tales come from Basmanov,” Oak said complacently, “who is biased. He admits that the Czar would hang him if he ever went home.”
Beau had discovered Basmanov serving beer in a fleabite Fitanish tavern and hired him to be their guide and their instructor in Skyrrian language, history, and customs. He might be either more or less than he claimed to be.
“Basmanov should know,” Orson protested. “He was a boyar.”
“So he says.”
“When he fled into exile the Czar had his wife raped to death by the streltsy and then fed his childr
en to hounds!”
“So he says. For all we know, he’s a spy or an escaped convict.”
He also bragged about vast estates and innumerable mistresses.
“He uses a sword like a gentleman!” Orson announced, forgetting that a certain fisherman’s son could do far better. “And others have told us similar stories.”
“Basmanov’s a thief. The night we stayed in the margrave’s castle, he went prowling, pocketing things.”
“What!” Orson was aghast at such a breach of hospitality. “Why did you not tell me?”
“Because I made him put them back,” Oak said complacently. At sword point. He had told Beau.
Oak’s experiences now included lodging as guest of high nobility in palaces, bivouacking in leech-rich swamps during thunderstorms, and everything imaginable in between. Wassail’s safe-conducts, the Marquis’s letters of introduction, D’Estienne’s field craft, and de Ferniot’s glib tongue had brought the wayfarers safely across Eurania to the Skyrrian border. They had been fortunate that this year—for once—nobody was at war with anybody else. If you believed in mad Czars, things might now start to get interesting. If you didn’t, you could look forward to a gaudy state betrothal ceremony and a long ride home again with the princess and her entourage of silken ladies.
Soft, scented ladies were an intriguing thought. It was a long time since Oak had dallied in the velvet brothels of Isilond, and he found no pleasure among starving peasants who would sell their children outright for a crust. Dust swirled in his eyes, making him curse. His teeth gritted with the stuff. Arkell claimed you could drop all Chivial on these steppes and never find it again.
“Something is happening,” Orson said, rising in his stirrups to peer ahead. “D’Estienne is shortening the column.”
“Perhaps they have sighted a tree?”
Grin. “Improbable. More likely Dvonograd. Basmanov says it will be soon. And then we must part, my friend!”
“I hope we will meet again.”
The Marquis smirked. “At the King’s Cup?”
Oak smiled uneasily. Preferably not. “Our ward swears if we ever get him home he will never leave Wasburgh again.”
Orson was perceptive enough to spot the evasion. Amused, he asked the question nobody had yet put into words. “What are your Blade friends going to say if we win?”
“When you win. Beau promised, didn’t he?” Beau’s pledge that the Sabreurs would sweep the quarter finals and take the top four spots did not seem crazy now. Any one of the four could beat Oak or Arkell without drawing breath. Orson and de Roget were the equals of Beau himself.
“He is an incredible instructor. But won’t the others call you traitors?”
“Not once they get used to the idea,” Oak said stoutly. “Wards must come first, so any of them would have done the same.” If they had seen the possibility, that was. Beau had offered Ironhall expertise and his teaching skill as the price of Isilondian support—Oak remembered watching the Regent work it out, on the night of the de Roget match, which now seemed so long ago.
“I am assured that decapitation is painless after the first few minutes.” Orson squinted into the wind. “The vanguard has returned. They must have sighted Dvonograd, or the river, at least. It is farewell, friend.”
“I am sorry. We are all grateful. We could never have come here without your help.”
The Marquis’s dark stare rested on him for a moment. “But how will you make your way home? You think Sir Dixon’s gallants will be escort enough? Returns are always more dangerous, because the evildoers have had time to prepare—assuming Skyrria does not swallow you whole so you are never seen again. Friend Oak, will you not at least try to convince Beau to turn back while there is still time?”
This was what he had been leading up to. His concern was flattering, but Oak shook his head.
“He is Leader. He decides.”
Orson sighed. “Are all Chivians mad?”
“Just us Blades.”
“I tried to convince Estienne we should wait here for you, but he convinced me we cannot. The days are growing short, the weather will soon turn, and the grazing is bad now. This is Eighthmoon already! We must hurry if we would be home before winter sets in. How long will your business in Skyrria take?”
“Don’t know. Banquets and state weddings don’t get dashed off in an afternoon.”
Arkell claimed another week or ten days should see them in Kiensk, but return would take longer; a queen and her train would travel slowly—and it was a long way back to Laville.
“You will have to stay in Kiensk until spring.”
“It would seem so,” Oak said imperturbably. If he didn’t see Chivial again for another year, did that matter? His life belonged to his ward. “The Czar will see us safely on our way home.”
“But how far? If he sends troops into Dolorth or Narthania he will be breaking treaties. He may provoke a war he certainly does not want. He may abandon you here at Dvonograd!”
“Is he mad enough to abandon his sister-in-law?”
“Perhaps. So, listen,” Orson said, as if coming to a decision. “Remember Gneizow?”
“Could I forget a place named after a sneeze?”
“The landgrave seemed an honest man. I will leave some men and horses for you at Gneizow—Sergeant Narenne’s troop. If you can send word ahead, he will meet you here at Dvonograd. If you can’t, he will be waiting there. Should you decide to return home by sea, please send him word.”
“That’s incredibly generous of you!” Oak had never anticipated such an offer. “I am sure my ward will insist on reimbursing you!”
“No. It is for friendship.” Orson’s eyes twinkled. “The least I can do for a lover!”
Oak laughed. Yes, he could laugh now, but he had been appalled the first time he realized what other men thought of their friendship. Orson, man of the world, had an aristocrat’s disdain for anyone else’s opinion. His fellow Sabreurs had pretended not to notice, Beau and Arkell knew Oak too well, and lesser men dared not jeer openly at a Blade. It was old Lord Walrus—the ultimate prude, who disapproved of a man even smiling at a woman other than his wife—who had considered himself entitled to ask.
Furious, Oak had snarled, “If we’re happy, why does it matter?”
His ward had turned an immediate deep puce.
Fortunately, Beau had been present. “We had some friends so inclined at Ironhall, my lord. They tended to pester me more than most, and I can assure you that Oak was not one of them. Nor Arkell. And I always declined. Your Blades’ lusts, while outrageous in intensity, are all orthodox in direction.”
His lordship had grunted furiously and changed the subject.
Now Oak could joke about it. “It’s still very sweet of you, darling.”
By the time they reached the column, the Dvono was in sight as a distant glimmer of silver. The smudge on the far bank must be Dvonograd, which had sounded like a grand city three months ago and was now known to be some sod-roofed cabins inside a stockade. It belonged to Czar Igor, who had forbidden the Ambassador to bring more than ten armed guards across his borders.
Orson rode off to confer with D’Estienne. Oak went to join Beau, Arkell, and their ward, who traveled in a litter slung between two horses. The custrel riding ahead, leading the litter horses, was young Wilf, who rarely spoke to people much.
The trek had taken a great toll of Lord Wassail. He blamed gout, but gout would not explain his constant exhaustion, the once-bloated face sagging in loose folds, the former high color faded to the hue of stewed liver. Upright he seemed stooped and shrunken, and even prone and bundled in marten skins he could find no rest. He rarely roared or tried to bully now, as if he was afraid bad temper might seem weakness. His ward’s courage left Oak breathless.
He had seemed to rally after a healing in a swampy hole of a town called Radomcla, ten days back across the plains. Dvonograd would have an elementary, although Basmanov claimed that Skyrrian conjurers were ignoramuses, little bet
ter than shamans. The exile could not find one good word to say about his native land.
“Good chance, Sir Oak,” Wassail said. His lungs sounded like a cat.
“And to you, my lord. The Marquis has just promised to leave some men and horses for us at Gneizow. I told him that was very generous.”
Wassail mumbled agreement, but the news did not produce the joy Oak had expected. The mood was somber.
“Over there,” Beau said, waving at the river, “is Skyrria. Our Isilondian friends can take us no farther. The Czar’s troops should be waiting to escort us. If they don’t murder us instead, we shall be entering a land where law as we know it isn’t even an idea. You’ve heard the tales of Igor being his own chief brigand. Since the fortune in gifts we carry is destined for him, he probably won’t try to rob us, but others may, if news of our coming has spread. Blade regulations and our bindings require us to keep our ward away from peril whenever possible.”
Oak shrugged and said, “Yes, Leader.”
“Well?” Beau’s eyebrows were silver streaks on a face weathered ruddy by the wind and sun. Constant dust had painted red rims around his eyes, but they kept their steely glint. He always seemed more dapper than anyone else, his chin better shaved, his livery cleaner and less faded. That was largely because Lord Wassail’s servants—Hagfield, Kimberley, and Percy—tended him as enthusiastically as they did their master. Beau had that effect on people. He was also mounted on the best horse in the company, Triplets, a magnificent bay he had won off D’Estienne’s aide-de-camp in an all-night dice game. “We all want to turn around and run away. All we need is a good excuse. We’re hoping you can suggest one.”
There were times when Beau’s humor seemed strained. Arkell was frowning and the sick old man in the litter did not smile either.
“Blades do not overrule their wards lightly, Leader,” Oak said. “I assume Lord Wassail wishes to continue his mission?”
Wassail scowled the best scowl he had produced in a week. “I am worried, Oak. Very little news comes out of Skyrria. I suspect His Majesty would never have sent us here if he had heard these wild stories about the Czar. We knew he bargained faithlessly with merchants, but not that he broke his word to other princes, as he apparently does. What will I do if the beautiful child princess turns out to be a waddling hag? What if he demands new concessions? I feel responsible for all of you and Sir Dixon’s men also. I have ordered Commander Beaumont not to proceed if he feels the risks are too high.” He closed his eyes as if this speech had exhausted him.