Sweep of the Blade

by Ilona Andrews

  The identity of the under-marshal was a closely guarded secret. It was never revealed to outsiders. It could be anyone, Karat, Soren, Ilemina, her consort. Had Maud been trusted with that knowledge, letting another House in on it would be treason.

  They really thought she was a complete idiot.

  “Lord Arland didn’t mentioned anyone,” she said. “But you’re right, this is worrying. I’ll ask him.”

  “You should,” Onda said. “Just for your peace of mind.”

  “She’s totally useless,” Seveline murmured in Ancestor Vampiric. “Let me trip her.”

  “No.”

  “She would scream all the way down. It would be funny.”

  “We might still get something out of her.”

  The path widened and turned, following the mountain. A massive gorge opened before them, the trees at its bottom so far below, the expanse of empty air had taken on a slight blue tint. Another mountain cliff formed the other side of the gorge, a sister to the one they’d climbed. A mess of narrow stone arches and breezeways bridged the gaps between the two cliffs, as if some chaotic giant had carelessly tossed a bundle of stone sticks into the gap. The stone formations crossed over each other, some spanning the distance, some ending abruptly, crumbling into nothing, turning the gorge into a maze. They looked completely natural, as if time and weather had whittled the living rock, but their placement was too deliberate. No geological phenomenon would produce slender crisscrossing bridges like these. Someone must’ve made them, how she had no idea.

  On the right, atop one narrow stone protrusion, a vala tree spread its branches. It was ancient and massive, its thick roots wrapping around the stone and burrowing deep into the mountain, as if challenging the gorge. Between the two cliffs the setting sun painted color onto the evening sky, turning it yellow, rose, lavender and finally, high above, a beautiful purple. Against this backdrop, the red leaves of the vala all but glowed.

  The view took Maud’s breath away. She stopped. The other women halted, too.

  “Behold,” a woman’s voice rang out from ahead. “The Mukama Roost.”

  Nothing more needed to be said. Once the ancient enemy made their home here. Now the sacred vala tree ruled the cliff.

  The procession resumed. Maud stared at Onda’s back. They wanted the identity of the under-marshal. That could mean only one thing. She would have to warn Arland as soon as she could.

  She was painfully aware of Seveline behind her. In Seveline’s place, Maud would push herself off the cliff. There was always that chance that she would say something to Arland to alert him.

  The world turned sharp. Maud moved forward on her toes, straining to catch every noise, alert for any hint of movement.

  The bride was almost to the tree.

  Maud hadn’t seen Seveline lunge, she couldn’t have, but she felt it. Her ears caught the faint scrape of a foot on stone, her eyes caught the glimpse of something on the very edge of her vision, and her instincts, honed by the wasteland, jerked her out of the way. She pressed her back against the cliff. Seveline stumbled past her and Maud caught the vampire woman’s arm.

  Shock slapped Seveline’s face. One push, and Seveline would tumble to her death.

  Maud opened her eyes as wide as she could. “My goodness! You have to be careful here, my lady. See how the edge has crumbled? That’s why I walk by the wall.”

  Seveline blinked.

  “Seveline!” Onda hissed. “You’re embarrassing us.”

  Maud released Seveline’s arm. The vampire woman frowned.

  Maud resumed her walking. She might have given away too much, but there was no way around it. She was safe now. Stumbling once and knocking her off the path might be an accident. Stumbling twice would be seen as a deliberate attempt on Maud’s life. Even Seveline with her poor impulse control understood that.

  Still, her best defense, at least for now, was to be seen as a non-threat.

  Maud deliberately stumbled, catching herself on the cliffside, and kept walking. There. Clumsy human almost fell. No need for alarm. Everything is as it appears to be.

  Ahead the bride reached the bridge of the vala tree and solemnly walked along its curved length to the enormous trunk.

  The women lined up on the ledge before the bridge, where the path widened to a luxurious ten feet, and began to chant the words to an old poem in low voices. Maud knew them by heart. Her memory superimposed an image of another time and place on the present. Another vala tree, a lantern in her own hand, and her voice soft and earnest, as she recited, and back then, believed every word.

  Night has fallen, sky has opened,

  Ancient stars have no mercy,

  In the Void and cold darkness,

  Find my light and feel my hope.

  You will never stand alone,

  You will never be forgotten,

  Time will never make me falter,

  Find my light and feel my hope.

  I will wait for you forever,

  You won’t lose your way, beloved,

  Find my light and feel my hope,

  And my love will guide you home.

  Sometimes even the strongest love wasn’t enough.

  The bride raised her lantern and hung it on a tree branch. The lantern swayed gently. The bride stood to the side, her hand on the tree’s dark bark. One by one the women moved forward to add their own lanterns to the branches, then walked back off the bridge to the ledge.

  The sound of a flyer tore through the serenity of the gorge. A slick fighter, all gleaming metal, narrow like a dagger, plummeted from the sky at a dead fall. At the last moment the pilot pulled up. The fighter shot through the gorge at a breakneck speed, threading through the maze of arches like a needle, buzzing so close by, the branches of the vala tree shivered. The bride’s robe fluttered from the wind. Maud gasped.

  Kavaline shook her stick. “Tellis, you idiot!”

  The fighter streaked toward the setting sun.

  Seveline leaned back and laughed.

  “I changed my mind!” Kavaline growled. “I’m not marrying him!”

  “Was that the groom?” Maud asked.

  “Yes,” Onda said, cracking a smile.

  “That was beyond reckless,” Maud muttered.

  “There was no danger,” Seveline waved her hand. “Tellis is an exceptional pilot.”

  “He is,” Onda confirmed. “He has over three thousand hours in a small attack craft.”

  Seveline chuckled. “They need to get a move on. If he comes back for a second pass, Kavaline might explode. Your turn, Lady Maud.”

  Maud stepped onto the bridge and took her lantern to the tree.

  Chapter 9

  When the procession descended the trail, Maud saw two figures waiting for her on the edge of the bridge leading to upper levels of a castle. Both were blonde. The first, huge and made even larger by his armor, leaned against the stone rail that shielded the patio from the drop below. The second, tiny, sat on the said stone rail with her legs crossed.

  Maud fought the urge to speed up. Like it or not, she wasn’t going anywhere until the women in front of her exited the trail.

  “How adorable,” Seveline murmured behind her, her voice sickeningly saccharine.

  It took all of Maud’s control to not spin around and punch the other woman in the mouth. Seveline was a threat and the wasteland taught her to eliminate threats before they had a chance to blossom into full blown danger. Spin around, kick Seveline off the trail, spin back, lock the arm around Onda’s throat, and choke her until she passed out and she could crush her windpipe… Maud shook herself. She had bigger fish to fry.

  The women in front of her veered left, toward the bridge, while Maud turned right and headed for the two people waiting for her.

  A long brown smudge crossed Helen’s face. On closer examination, the smudge appeared to be sticky, decorated with tiny bits of bark, and smelled faintly of pine resin. Maud slowly shifted her gaze to Arland. A series of similar smudges stained his ar
mor.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “No,” Arland and Helen said in the same voice. Maud compared the expression on their faces. Identical. Dear Universe, she could almost be his child.

  Something green peaked from between the strands of Arland’s blond mane. Maud reached over, plucked it with her fingers, and pulled out a twig with three leaves still attached. She held the twig between them. Arland stoically refused to notice it.

  Right. She let the small branch fall. “Are they others watching us?”

  “Mhm.” Arland’s face remained relaxed.

  “I need some information,” she murmured. “About the Kozor and Serak.”

  “What sort of information?” Arland asked, keeping his voice low.

  “Rank and power structure.”

  “Is it urgent?”

  “It might be.”

  Arland offered her his arm. She rested her fingers on his elbow and together they strolled to the bridge, letting the last of the bridal party go before them.

  They crossed the bridge leisurely, Helen walking in front of them.

  “Where are we going?” Maud asked.

  “To see my dear uncle. I so miss him.”

  Maud hid a smile.

  The last robed woman disappeared into the nearest tower. They followed, but where the women went left, they went right. As soon as bend of the hallway hid them from view of the departing bridal party, both she and Arland sped up as if they had planned it. Helen ran to catch up. Arland bent down, picked Helen up, and carried her, and Helen let him, as if it was a thing he did every day.

  They took a lift up three floors, crossed another breezeway, then another, until they came to a solid, almost square tower secured with a blast door, solid enough to take a hit from an aerial missile. The door slid open at Arland’s approach, and Maud followed him inside, through yet another, blissfully short, hallway to a large room.

  If they had show her twenty different rooms and asked her which was Soren’s, she would immediately pick this one. A thick rug, looking as old as the castle, cushioned the floor. Skulls of strange beasts and arcane weapons decorated the grey stone walls between the banners of House Krahr and antique bookcases. The bookcases were made with real wood and filled with an assortment of objects and trophies, chronicling decades of war and dangerous pursuits: odd weapons, maps, rocks, data cores of every shape and size, uncut gems, an Otrokar charm belt – Soren either made friends with an Otrokat shaman or killed one, and knowing the history of the Holy Anocracy and The Hope-Crushing Horde, the later was far more likely. Money from a dozen galactic nations, daggers, dried plants, shackles, several Earth books, one of the them probably Sun Tzu’s Art of War, unless she read the golden Hanzi logograms incorrectly, and a Christmas ornament in a shape of a big blue ball with a sparkling snowflake inside rounded up the bizarre collection. Here and there padded chairs and a couple of sofas offered seating. In the middle of the room a large desk held court, so massive and heavy, Maud doubted Arland could lift it alone. Behind the desk, in an equally solid chair, sat Lord Soren, carefully studying some document on his reader.

  The room screamed Veteran Vampire Knight. It was so classic, it hurt.

  The door slid shut. Lord Soren raised his head and regarded the three of them with his dark eyes. He scowled at Arland, nodded to Maud, smiled at Helen, and resumed scowling at his nephew.

  “What?” Arland asked.

  “Did you have to break his arm?”

  Arland made a noise deep in his throat that sounded suspiciously like a growl.

  Lord Soren sighed. “To what do I owe the pleasure of the visit?”

  “I need to understand the structure of House Serak,” Maud said.

  Lord Soren nodded and flicked his fingers across his desk. A giant screen slid out of the ceiling on Maud’s right and presented two pyramids of names connected by lines. The one on the left read Serak, the other Kozor.

  “Who are you interested in?” Lord Soren asked.

  “Tellis Serak,” she said.

  Helen crawled onto one of the sofas, curled up on the big blue pillow, and yawned.

  “Ah. The dashing groom.” Soren grimaced, flicked his fingers, and Tellis’ name near the top of the pyramid ignited with silver. “His father is the Preceptor, his mother is the Strateg.”

  “Who is the marshal?” she asked.

  Another name ignited in the column to the left. “Hudra of Serak. She is the Marshal in the name only.”

  “Why?” Arland asked.

  “She has five decades on me,” Soren said. “She was fierce in her day, but time is a bitter enemy, and it always wins.”

  Interesting. “Are they are grooming Tellis to become the marshal?” Maud asked.

  “He is the most obvious choice,” Soren said. “His ascension to marshal would cement the family’s hold on the House. They had been preparing him since childhood. Not that he is ready, by any means. Too young, too reckless.”

  Of course. If Arland had buzzed his bride in the fighter, he would be dashing. But since this was scion of Serak, he was reckless. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but marshal candidates must be well rounded in their military education?”

  “Indeed,” Soren said. “They are trained to lead. They spend a certain amount of time with every branch of the House military to familiarize themselves with people under their command, but the bulk of their education centers on effective deployment of these forces and military strategy.”

  “A marshal usually has a specialty,” Arland added.

  “Yes,” Soren confirmed. “Typically they concentrate in whatever aspect of warfare presents the greatest threat to the House in the foreseeable future.”

  Maud turned to Arland. “What’s yours?”

  “Ground combat,” he said.

  “Arland was trained to lead us into battle on Nexus,” Soren said. “We had anticipated to be embroiled in that conflict several times over the next decades, but thanks to your sister, it’s no longer a concern.”

  It was just as she thought. “How likely is it for the marshal to have other pursuits?”

  Arland’s thick blond eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”

  “If you wanted to devote a lot of your time to something not vital to the House, could you do it? For example, if you enjoyed target shooting, could you spend a significant chunk of your time practicing it?”

  “Would I have time to devote to hobbies and leisurely pursuits?” Arland frowned, pretending to think. “Let me ponder. Two weeks! I took two weeks in the last six years, and my uncle came to fetch me, as if I were a wayward lamb. Because the great House of Krahr cannot endure without my constant oversight. My job, my hobby, my off time, my ‘me’ time, all my time consists of taking care of the never-ending sequence of mundane and yet life threatening tasks generated by the well-honed machine that is the knighthood of House Krahr. I haven’t had a moment to myself since I was ten years old.”

  Lord Soren stood up, took a small blanket off the back of the nearest chair, walked up to Arland, and draped it over his nephew’s head, like a hood.

  Okay. She hadn’t encountered that before.

  “He is giving me the mourning shroud,” Arland said and pulled the blanket off his head. “Like the mourners wear at funerals.”

  “So you may lament the tragic loss of your youth,” Soren said.

  Arland draped the blanket over Helen, who’d fallen asleep on the pillow. “To answer your question, my lady, no. A marshal has no time for any significant pursuits outside of his duties.”

  “Tellis of Serak has logged over three thousand hours in a small attack craft,” Maud said.

  Both men fell silent.

  Years ago she remembered watching a science fiction epic with its fleets of small attack craft spinning over the enormous destroyers. The reality of space combat vaporized that romantic notion about as fast as an average warship would vaporize the fleet of individual fighters. Even if the fighters somehow managed to make it
through the shields, the damage they would inflict would be insignificant. It would be like trying to attack an aircraft carrier with a fleet of row boats. They would spend their arsenal, resupply, spend it again, and still the capital vessel wouldn’t be disabled.

  “It’s my understanding that small attack craft is used only for one thing,” Maud said.

  “Boarding,” Arland said, his voice a quiet snarl. “Once a ship surrenders, the fighters deliver the boarding crew to take charge of the vessel and secure its cargo.”

  “Explains the flying acrobatics,” Soren said, his face grim.

  Maud glanced to Arland.

  “After the battle, there is usually a debris field,” Arland said. “Chunks that used to be escorts flying in all directions. The pilot needs a maneuverable ship and quick hands.”

  “Is there any reason House Serak would ever board pirates?” Maud asked. The question sounded ridiculous even as she said, but it needed to be voiced.

  “No,” Lord Soren said.

  “Their ships are glass cannons,” Arland said. “They’re modified to inflict maximum damage and rapidly scatter, when necessary. Most of them are held together by hopes and prayers. The vessels have no value, and the crews have even less. I wouldn’t waste time or resources on boarding. I’d simply blow them out of existence.”

  Silence reigned.

  “This is a hefty accusation,” Soren said. “We have no proof. We might even be mistaken.”

  “I heard it quite clearly,” Maud said.

  Soren raised his hand. “I don’t dispute that. But we don’t have all the facts. Perhaps Tellis is indulged.”

  “Three thousand hours?” Arland asked.

  “Stranger things have happened.”