A Sharpened Axe

by Jill M Beene

  So when it came time to choose, for her father’s peace of mind and for the provision of Tamrah, Samiris turned her nimble mind toward the task and determined what she wanted from a husband. She wouldn’t have what her parents did; love was out of the question, as was passion. No one was well fed enough for romance.

  No, what Samiris wanted from her husband was for him to stay out of her way. She wanted someone who would help her sister Tamrah with the garden, someone who would mind the chickens and milk the cow. She wanted someone who took direction well, someone who would bathe when he was told he smelled, instead of backhanding her for her impertinence. No one lecherous, no one old, no one physically stronger than she was.

  That left Kalan. Which was why she had encouraged her childhood friend when he showed up on her stoop one morning at his mother’s prodding, red-faced and wincing in anticipation of her rebuke. Samiris had smiled, invited him in, and put him to work in the garden. Kalan had joined them for dinner two days later, an affair made formal in that her father had come downstairs to join them at the table.

  That evening, Samiris announced their betrothal to her father. It didn’t matter that Kalan hadn’t asked her yet. Her father smiled wanly, and Samiris’ conviction that Kalan was the right choice was cemented when Kalan smiled and nodded along as if he truly believed the deed had been done under his own initiative.

  They usually saw each other twice a week, once when she made the mile walk down to the village to barter or to hear the news midweek, and once at week’s end, when Kalan arrived for dinner empty-handed and left afterward with a parcel of leftovers wrapped up for his mother. Samiris and Kalan had an agreement. They had an arrangement. They did not need to add the pretense of love.

  So Samiris shrugged out from under his arm and accepted the bowl of stew from Peg.

  “What kind of soup is this?” Samiris asked.

  “The hot and filling kind,” Peg replied.

  “But what kind of meat is in it?” she asked, stirring the hazy concoction in her bowl.

  “You’ll enjoy it more if you don’t know,” Peg said briskly.

  Samiris shook her head with a rueful smile and took a bite. It was surprisingly good, no matter that she could not place the meaty taste that landed somewhere between beef and mutton. She saw Kalan eyeing her bowl like a hungry dog trying to act nonchalant at the edge of his master’s dinner table.

  “An empty bowl, Peg,” Samiris said. She poured half of her stew into the bowl that Peg plunked down, and slid it to Kalan.

  “Thanks.”

  “We have an announcement,” a man said, standing at a far table.

  Samiris recognized him. It was Greer, a fisherman who usually sailed with Kalan’s brother, but who had stayed behind this trip due to a broken leg. He still leaned heavily against the crutch tucked under one fragrant armpit. The other arm was thrown around the thin shoulders of his blushing wife, Agda.

  “Agda’s with child,” Greer said, raising his mug. “Midwife confirmed it this afternoon. A round on me.”

  The tavern erupted into cheers, clapping, and shouted congratulations. Samiris winced inwardly, and hoped her feelings didn’t show on her face. She thought babies as sweet as the next person, but babies ate. A lot. They also needed to be held at all hours, rendering a mother useless for at least a year. With the same deep effort she used to lift heavy logs, Samiris mustered her congratulations and a smile to go with it.

  Kalan leaned close and murmured, “Can you imagine when that’s us someday?”

  Samiris’ eyes flew open, and she nearly choked on her swallow of ale. Is that what Kalan wanted? Is that what he thought this was?

  The door flew open and crashed backwards against the wall. Three heads stooped in, brass helmets glinting gold in the low firelight. Heavy red capes draped around the soldiers’ broad shoulders and swirled around their feet like liquid. Short swords were strapped to their sides over oiled leather chest plates, and shiny boots came to their knees over iron-creased breeches.

  Samiris’ attention was drawn to the man who stood in front. Broad-shouldered, muscular, and half a head above the soldiers who flanked him, he cut an imposing figure. His brass helmet was not plain as the others’ were. His had been etched with an elaborate crest on either side, and sported a plume of black horse-hair fringe down the center. There was no mistaking the infamous helmet and the embroidered hash-marks on his cape.

  This was Artem Elysius Trego, Captain of the Royal Guard, Duke of Malon, the personal bodyguard and most trusted advisor of the Crown Prince himself. This was the second most powerful man in the kingdom. He was a legendary fighter, a dangerous and cunning adversary in battle, and it was rumored that the Crown Prince deferred to him in almost all decisions.

  So what was he doing in Faro’s bar?

  There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room. Everyone in the tavern went silent and still, the classic response of prey when faced with a predator. With a large hand on the pommel of his sword, Captain Trego scanned the room with calculating eyes. His eyes came to rest on Samiris and he smirked. Her heartbeat leapt and ran like a rabbit that had been flushed from its burrow. Dark eyes held hers captive as he took a wide stance and lazily unfolded a piece of parchment with a thick wax seal on the outside.

  “Samiris Alrive Vanover Orellana,” Captain Trego read in an unnecessarily loud voice, “You are hereby charged with ignoring a royal summons and are ordered to submit to his Royal Excellency, Fitzhumphrey Augustus Monterosso, the Crown Prince of Leiria. We are here to take you into custody to report to the capital city of Teymara.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Samiris looked back at her crude clay cup and squinted at the bottom, frowning. Once, when they were younger, Kalan had slipped dried forest mushrooms into her drink as a joke. She had experienced wild, thrilling dreams, like she was walking through liquid colors bright as a sunset. But the hallucinations had only come with sleep, and unless she had nodded off on her stool....

  Above the wild thrumming of her heart, Samiris became achingly aware of the taut silence that filled the room. Only the crackling of the fire and the faint bubbling from Peg’s basement still could be heard. All eyes in the bar were flicking back and forth between her and the royal guards like the bar occupants were spectators at a high-stakes archery tournament.

  Though Samiris felt a thrill of guilt and fear slip down her spine as keenly as if someone had put a piece of ice down her shirt, she also felt a small flame of anger burning at her center. She had done nothing wrong. Who was this Captain Trego, to come in looking so consistently well-fed and interrupting her meager dinner, pathetic as it may be? And royal summons? She had seen as many royal summons as she had fire-breathing dragons. So Samiris slouched against the bar and let her eye drag insolently over the Captain’s figure from head to toe.

  Then she looked Captain Trego in the eye and drawled, “Nice hat.”

  Gasps, around the room. A glimmer of what Samiris thought might be amusement flashed in Captain Trego’s green eyes. Then he grinned, a show of even white teeth that was more threat than smile. His expression said that he would enjoy what came next, a cat who was delighted to find that the mouse it trapped had enough energy to try and escape.

  “Thank you, my lady,” Captain Trego purred, giving a mocking bow. “Now please, follow me.”

  “I’d prefer to stay here and finish my dinner, so I must decline your gracious invitation.”

  Samiris knew she was teasing a poisonous snake, goading it to strike, but she could not help herself. I have done nothing wrong, she reminded herself, as Captain Trego stalked toward her.

  “Let me make myself clear,” Captain Trego said. He was now towering over her, trying to frighten her with his closeness. Judging by how large he looked close up, Samiris guessed that the tactic had worked for him in the past. “Due to your continued refusal to respond to royal summons, I am au
thorized to take you to Teymara by any means necessary. By force, if that is what the situation dictates.”

  “I have received no royal summons,” she said, staring him in the eye. She was intimidated by his authority and the sheer size of him, but she refused to show it. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Four royal summons have been sent your address,” he said, holding up the same number of his leather-gloved fingers, as if she were a moron who needed a visual aid. “And you have ignored them all.”

  “Impossible. I didn’t get them. Besides, a summons for what?”

  “You are one of the Chosen,” he said.

  Samiris flinched back, eyes wide, as if someone had just informed her that she was half-fae. “Not possible,” she finally stuttered. “That’s only for Northern ladies.”

  “Not this year,” he said, wrapping his large fingers around her upper arm. “Let’s go.”

  Kalan slid from his stool, his slight frame frail and pathetic next to Captain Trego, his shoulders hunched. “You cannot take Samiris. She can’t be one of the Chosen. She is my betrothed.”

  Captain Trego looked back and forth between Samiris and Kalan with a raised eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  Samiris raised her chin. “It’s true.”

  The Captain sneered. “A love match, is it? No matter, the marriage’s not been done. You are free to find another, boy.”

  “I’ve already had her to my bed,” Kalan said, one last desperate attempt to keep Samiris free.

  Samiris tried to wipe the shocked revulsion from her face before the Captain could see it, but the thought of Kalan’s sweaty naked body sharing the same space as hers was enough to make her lip curl.

  Samiris wasn’t a prude; she knew what was to happen on her wedding night and as few times thereafter as it would take to keep Kalan pliable. It was just that whenever she had thought of that before, it was after much mental preparation and bolstering internal dialogue. But to be surprised with the idea, when her emotions were already swirling like the eddies in the receding tide... it was too much.

  Both men saw her disgust at Kalan’s words. Kalan’s face crumpled with hurt and confusion. The Captain smirked.

  “No you haven’t,” the Captain said, his voice steeped with satisfaction. “Let’s go, Lady Samiris.”

  He tugged her off her stool and out the door by her bicep as if she were a wayward child who refused to leave a sweet shop. No one else made one move to stop him, and how could they? He thrust her through the doorway, and once they had cleared it, she twisted hard to break his grip and landed a vicious kick to his leg.

  “Ow, you...” he began, reaching for his shin.

  With a smooth and practiced movement, quick and powerful as a snake’s strike, she reached back and unsheathed her hatchet, bringing the blade to rest on the strip of exposed skin at Captain Trego’s neck.

  Her movement was accompanied by the metallic hiss of ten swords being freed from sheaths around her. She was vaguely aware of figures in red capes surrounding her, reacting to her as if she was a genuine threat. Her attention was only on the Captain, on the pulse jumping in his neck despite his face that was bland in its lack of expression.

  “I don’t like to be drug around like a goat,” Samiris gritted out between bared teeth.

  There was a long silence, in which Samiris realized that she was threatening the Crown Prince’s Captain of the Guard, a crime almost certainly punishable by death. She paled, but steadied her hand, which threatened to tremble.

  “Noted,” the Captain said darkly. “Anything else you care to tell me while you have my undivided attention?”

  “I didn’t know I was called as one of the Chosen. I never got the letters. So you shouldn’t be treating me like a criminal.”

  The Captain raised his eyebrow at her, then looked pointedly at the weapon at his throat. “Are you sure?”

  Samiris sighed, and lowered her hatchet. “I wasn’t going to use it. I just wanted you to listen.”

  “Have you ever tried, ‘Pardon me?’” the Captain asked sarcastically, rubbing his neck. “It can be quite effective.”

  “It didn’t seem like a ‘pardon me’ moment,” Samiris said with a sullen scowl.

  “Now that you’ve vented your anger, let’s go. Get on my horse.” He gestured toward a huge black charger that stood at least half a man’s height over Captain Trego.

  “I’d rather walk, thank you.”

  “It was a command, not an invitation. There’s no need to be scared of him,” Captain Trego growled. In a fluid movement so quick that Samiris only realized what was happening after it had occurred, Captain Trego bent low and threw Samiris over his shoulder as if she had the worth and weight of a sack of grain.

  Instinctively, she slapped at him. When she realized she had just slapped the Captain of the Royal Guard on the buttocks, she refrained from repeating the gesture. She heard him give a throaty chuckle, which made her grit her teeth in impotent anger and frustration. Captain Trego transferred her to the horse without so much as a grunt of effort.

  He landed a stinging slap to her rump as she righted herself astride the massive horse. “Turnabout’s fair play, my lady.”

  “This is Behemoth, is it not?” Samiris snapped, finding her seat.

  “Yes, it is,” Captain Trego said, adjusting a strap on the saddle. “You’ve heard of him?”

  “I’ve heard he’s the fastest steed in the world,” Samiris spat, giving the horse’s flanks a mighty kick with her heels.

  The horse reared slightly, and Captain Trego cursed as he lunged for the reins, but Samiris was not a stranger to horses, and she kept her balance. Then Behemoth was off, his powerful hooves eating up distance at the same pace that Samiris imagined the Crown Prince ate pies. Samiris heard a cry of male rage bellow behind her, and she leaned over the pommel of the saddle and urged the gargantuan horse forward.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Reports of Behemoth’s speed had not been exaggerated; his hoofbeats pounded the ground in a heavy rhythm. As the wind whipped past her face, Samiris felt anger rising within her, rage that was as familiar to her as a family pet brushing against her leg. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Before the curse, there had been plenty of food. Leiria had been a prosperous nation, once. Northern merchants sailed across the eastern sea to trade grain, fabrics, leather and furs. There were great feasts in packed dining halls, and even the beggars weren’t all that hungry.

  One night, everything changed. No one knew exactly what happened. Samiris had heard at least a hundred different versions of it through her years, but the gist was this: a fae princess, one of the last of her kind to walk the world of man, fell in love with the Crown Prince of Leiria. The fae princess tried to seduce him, and when he refused her, she cursed the land. Immediately, a royal guard had fought back and beheaded the fae princess with an iron sword, in hopes that the curse would be broken.

  It hadn’t worked.

  The curse caused the land to withhold its bounty. Prime farmland became barren as the desert. Animals dropped and decayed in their verdant pastures. Fish floated to the top of lakes and rivers, forming a foul, gelatinous crust of rot that lasted for weeks. What had before been a wealthy, thriving nation was brought to its collective knees with one hit. Whole families starved that first winter. Ever since, the land’s remaining inhabitants had fought for survival like cornered, wounded beasts.

  The Crown Prince, whom everyone had regarded as the most attractive man in the kingdom, was transformed into the blubberous punchline of a thousand bar jokes. His new outward appearance was one of layered, sweaty chins and a surfeit of acne that dusted his pasty face, paprika sprinkled over an uncooked chicken. His scalp, the only part of his skin that had color, was pink, and peeked through his sparse hair like a naked, blushing maiden hiding poorly behind a leafless hedge.

  In essen
ce, the beloved, handsome rogue had been transformed into a gluttonous, clumsy oaf. Gone was his interest in swordplay and chasing skirts. Instead, he spent his hours in the dim library bent over dusty tomes, where his companions were the stuttering, hissing candles and his only friend, the Captain of the Royal Guard.

  The cruel irony of the curse made Samiris grit her teeth. Like a stone dropped into a pond, the curse’s power radiated out in rings, the effects felt most keenly the further one got from the palace in Teymara. The entire country was afflicted except the Crown Prince’s home, the capital city of Teymara. The closer one got to his castle, the lighter the curse’s grip became. And although citizens died by the score from starvation and disease, the Crown Prince and his royal court stopped aging.

  After the curse fell, the nation held out as long as possible, much like a child holding his breath underwater. But with the desperation of that first gasp above the surface, the country nobles broke. The wealth of the countryside was transferred to Teymara and Brizelle, the major cities, in just a few years. A bag of jewelry for a fattened cow, an antique sideboard inlaid with ivory flowers for a goat, an heirloom painting of an ancestor for a couple of chickens... soon the nobility of the cities staggered under the weight of their accumulated wealth, and the nobility of the countrysides were nobles in name only.

  The only hope that the curse would ever be broken was the Choosing. Every year, a group of young ladies were brought to the castle. The Crown Prince would court these Chosen in hopes of finding his one true love. At the end of the set courtship, the remaining girl would face the Questioning. Legend had it there were three questions, but no one knew what the third question was, because if the Chosen girl didn’t answer the first two correctly, she was immolated on the spot.

  That had happened once a year for fifteen years, now. Every year, an innocent girl was burned to death with magical fire in front of the royal court, to remind the Crown Prince of the pain he had inflicted upon the heart of the fae princess. They said that the smell made spectator’s eyes water and their noses run. They said that you could hear the screams for miles.