The King of Forever

by Kirby Crow

  Scarlet spied Alexyin approaching from the stable gates. He knew they weren’t going anywhere until Alexyin had his say.

  “Sire,” Alexyin greeted Liall with a respectful nod, and a shorter one in Scarlet’s direction, which was better than no acknowledgement at all. Scarlet suspected the dry courtesy was for Liall’s benefit. Alexyin saw the burned gloves on the ground and shot a curious look to Liall.

  Liall ignored that look and glanced at the stable gates. “Theor told you?”

  Alexyin nodded. “He did. I should speak with the Tebeti, allay any fears the delegation might have regarding the incident, if there are any.”

  “You’ve got to be joking,” Scarlet blurted.

  Liall took his hand. “Hush,” he said, not unkindly. He glared at Alexyin. “That’s your advice? Appeasement?”

  “It’s a horse, sire,” Alexyin said flatly.

  “It’s a message!” Liall shot back. “And a threat. I had to send Tesk to guard my apartments—my apartments in my home—because of this.”

  “The very last thing they want is for you to come to harm.”

  “Well, of course,” Liall mocked. “Without me, there’s no royal wedding, is there? Don’t play the mummer. You know what I fear.”

  “A fear we all share, sire,” Alexyin said easily.

  Too easily.

  Liall’s eyes narrowed. He dropped Scarlet’s hand and stepped close to Alexyin, nose-to-nose. “Do we?” he asked softly.

  Scarlett heard the red violence in Liall’s voice and shivered.

  Alexyin met Liall’s gaze calmly. “I am loyal, my lord.”

  “If I believed otherwise, I’d be having this conversation with a head impaled on a spike; one that was lately a Setna.”

  Alexyin’s jaw dropped. “Nazheradei ... my Prince...”

  “Your king,” Liall reminded him.

  Alexyin was shaken and seemed to grope for words. “Sire, I am sworn to the Camira-Druz. Sworn for life. I’m only a man, but I’m faithful and I advise the crown to the best of my ability.” He squared his shoulders. “Wars are perilous and uncertain. Before the first battle begins, my earnest counsel is for you to marry Lady Ressilka. At once.” His glance shifted to Scarlet for an instant. “A king may keep a consort and still take a wife.”

  “Just one consort?” Liall bantered back. “Why stop there? Is that why you prompted the baron of Jadizek to offer me a formal mistress?”

  “He what?” Scarlet roared. Heads turned all over the yard.

  Alexyin ignored him. “My lord, this is how alliances are made,” he said with patience. “How they have always been made, with marriage and children and beds.”

  Scarlet could keep quiet no longer. “D’you know the difference between a Rshani court and a brothel? The brothels post their prices on the front door!” he stormed. “Giant, piss-mucking, whoremongering, sons of—” his curses descended into gutter Falx.

  A wry grin curled a corner of Liall’s mouth. He made no move to stop the tirade, though Alexyin looked like he’d swallowed a fish whole and was choking on the fins.

  “—pack of turd-smelling goat-fuckers!” Scarlet finished, breathing heavily.

  Liall shrugged. “And there, my learned advisor, is your answer. No mistress, from Jadizek or anywhere.”

  Alexyin’s nostrils flared. “Cestimir was a prince who heeded his counselors!”

  “Perhaps that’s why he’s dead,” Liall shot back.

  Alexyin snapped his mouth closed in shock. He threw Scarlet a look of pure venom before bowing deeply to Liall. “As my king commands.”

  Scarlet was shaking as he watched Alexyin vanish into the palace. Liall took him in his arms and stroked his hair.

  “We’re leaving,” Liall whispered into his ear. “You longed to go adventuring again, my redbird. I fear what’s coming will be much more than you bargained for.”

  ***

  They took fifty men and sheltered at a freerider’s fort a thousand feet below the Nauhinir. Scarlet could see the towers of the palace from his window, the points of spires glittering in the sun. He’d seen it from a distance before, but now that he was leaving, it was like looking back on a dream. He was shocked to realize that he considered the Nauhinir as home now. That impossibly immense palace—dwarfing the king’s castle at Ankar—and filled with grand halls and wealth and strangeness; how could that ever be his home?

  Because it’s Liall’s home, he thought.

  He turned from the window and crawled into the bed. The ranger had given up his room to the king, and Liall had gone to take supper with his men. Scarlet had begged off, saying he was tired after the incident at the Leaf Court. Liall had nodded and offered to send for a curae, but Scarlet had refused. A quiet place to sleep was all he wanted.

  A small fire smoldered in the hearth of the ranger’s room, which was quite large for one man. Scaja’s little cottage would have fitted entirely inside of it. He reclined against the deep pillows and closed his eyes, trying to picture his home: the painted window, his narrow bed in the back of the cottage, the weave of the woolen curtain that had separated it from the larger room. It was the only home he had ever known, before Liall. He couldn’t see the cottage in his mind, but he could smell phantom smoke. He sighed and rolled over. It was futile to dwell on sadness.

  What month must it be now? he wondered. Liall said it was Greentide in Rshan, so... the Month of Kings?

  The trade routes from Rusa would be open, or would they? Had his entire country dissolved into civil war, as Liall had predicted, or had the Flower Prince found a way to make peace with the Aralyrin?

  Rannon’s caravan would have been on the move for months. He wondered how the old bastard was, if he’d found someone to make him happy or was still spending his evenings drinking himself blind and staring into campfires. He hoped the man was well.

  I’d have been dead thrice over if he hadn’t taught me the long-knives, he thought. Rannon was owed a prayer to Deva for that, at least. And for much else.

  "On danaee Deva shani," he whispered. He turned his head to look at the patch of sky. "Remember my family, Goddess. Bless the souls of my father and my mother, who wait for me in the Overworld. Please watch over Annaya and Shansi. They’re going to need it, I think. Bless Rannon, even though he’s a slaver and probably doesn’t deserve it or even believe in you. He’s got a hard heart, but he never went looking for that. The world gave it to him, poor man. Bless Liall, because he’s a good king and wants to be a better one. Bless my friends Tesk, Jochi, Nenos, and Nevoi. Oh, and Alexyin, too. He doesn’t like me much, but maybe that isn’t his fault either. On danaee Deva shani."

  His prayers said, he opened the book he had taken from Cestimir’s room. It was a fine volume, the leather perfect and the binding flawless. He found the page he was looking for and put his thumb near the rune, careful not to touch it.

  Senkhara. He squinted at the Sinha words on the page, understanding little. It was some kind of story about a place in the mountains. Or... no. He frowned. Inside a mountain. It might be the story Liall told him about the sacred mountain. He flipped the pages of fine script until he found another rune, and the floor dropped out from beneath the bed.

  The air turned cold.

  It took him a moment to realize he was outside, standing in the snow and darkness. But it’s spring, he thought. The land was lit with a cold blue twilight that illuminated the distant contours of ice hills and black cliffs.

  “I’m dreaming,” he said, even though he knew he wasn’t. Fear slammed into him.

  “Here,” called a voice behind him.

  Scarlet whirled. The gray-eyed man had a face now. “The stranger,” he whispered.

  “The king,” the man answered. A bloated moon rose swiftly over a hill behind him, throwing his face into shadow again.

  The moon shimmered and changed to a giant wheel, turning slowly in the heavens as stars with long tails of cinders fell from the sky and the ground vibrated beneath his feet like a heartbeat.<
br />
  Scarlet stood rooted to the spot, unable to move as the man approached with deliberate steps. The wind howled and the stranger’s long red robes slapped wildly against his body, moving like a living thing.

  The red king, he thought, shivering. “Stay away from me,” he quavered. His hand dropped to his hip, but his long-knives weren’t there. His world shrank to a single point of fear and dread. “Who are you?”

  The stranger pressed his hand to Scarlet’s cheek. “I am the King of Forever.”

  The touch burned with a heat like sun-warmed steel. A fire leapt through Scarlet’s skin and seared along his nerves to his brain. One by one, the stars winked out. The wind stilled. Even the twilight dimmed, leaving him in a blank void containing nothing but him, the stranger, and the burning hand.

  “Remember, blood of Lyr. Wake and return.”

  He woke in the bed with Liall snoring softly beside him, remembering only the fragment of a dream where he was cold and alone.

  Forever

  A light snow lashed at the blue windows of the opulent sleigh as it crossed the bridge to Sul. The Queen’s Bridge was the only marker of the city boundaries that Scarlet claimed to recognize.

  “I thought pedlars were excellent wayfarers,” Liall teased. “Yet you can’t remember the route between Sul and the palace.”

  Scarlet wore black velvet for this journey, and the fabric against his ivory skin made him seem more beautiful than possible, more like a dream than life. I knew I could not be this lucky, Liall thought. There’s always a price for happiness.

  “It was dark,” Scarlet protested.

  “You can see in the dark.”

  “Oh, hush.”

  When they reached the city proper, Scarlet nearly plastered himself to the window, staring wide-eyed at everything and asking a hundred questions.

  “Why would you want to know where they store the fish, for Deva’s sake?”

  “Because I was wondering if they ever thaw out, and if you smoke them first or what happens to the stores of them when the weather warms up.”

  Liall chose to be amused. “I thought you’d be more engrossed with your history book.” He tapped the cover of the thin volume Scarlet had taken from Cestimir’s room. At first, Scarlet had been hesitant to say where he got it, and seemed relieved when Liall was pleased at the answer.

  “He’s dead, my love,” Liall had said. “I had little time with my brother, but I think it would make him happy to know that you’re reading his books.”

  The sleigh hissed over snow that was still thick enough on the roads to allow travel this way. A few more weeks and it would all be melted.

  Scarlet shrugged. “Some of the pictures tell me what’s happening, but I still can’t read Sinha for shit.”

  Liall laughed. “You’re still thinking like a pedlar. And cursing like a mariner lately, I might add. Have someone read it to you.”

  “Who?”

  “Anyone who can speak Bizye. Have Tesk find someone. He’ll be happy to appoint an interpreter for you.”

  “I’d rather have Jochi,” Scarlet groused.

  “We’ve spoken of this. Jochi’s fate will take him on a different path.”

  “Then I can do it on my own.”

  Liall took the book from Scarlet’s lap and opened to a random page. He pointed at a word. “What does that say?”

  Scarlet looked out the window, his lower lip mutinous.

  Liall sighed, even as he adored the look of that lip. “My sweet love, you must become accustomed to having authority over others. It’s part of your life here. They will not respect you if you insist on being equal to everyone.”

  “I don’t know that I want the kind of respect that folk give to generals and kings and such. Your lot might think it’s respect, but it’s mostly fear. You forget: I was one of those folk. They let you think they look up to you.”

  “I have no illusions that every respect paid to me is sincere,” Liall said. “Nor am I a fool. I lived among common folk in Byzantur, too, lest you forget. I know very well what the average man thinks of the nobility.” He turned thoughtful. “But when they need us, Scarlet, when famine comes, or plague or war, it’s the nobles they look to for guidance. They may resent us, but most believe that the differences between our fortunes are ordained.”

  “Rshani don’t believe in gods. You don’t even believe in luck.”

  “There are gods and there is destiny,” Liall said smoothly, not bothered a bit. “We do not pray to gods, but we have temples and shrines, and we have reverence for those things beyond our knowledge, respect for the worlds unknown to us. We also have ceremonies, as you saw when I brought back the sun.”

  Scarlet snorted at mention of the Greentide ritual. “You should have been a mummer, as well as you played that.” He smoothed his hand over the leather binding of Cestimir’s book. “Worlds unknown... you mean the Overworld? That sounds like worship to me. I think Rshani must have gods after all. You just have no names for them.”

  Liall noticed that Scarlet’s breath was misting the air when he exhaled. “It’s grown cold in here.” He twitched the furs over Scarlet’s legs and drew him closer, sighing at the sweet feel of Scarlet’s body in his arms. I will never get used to how familiar his shape is to me, how dear the curves of his face and the warmth of his skin. One moment it seems like I’ve loved him a thousand years, and the next like we just met.

  “I thought it would be warmer near the sea,” Scarlet said. He curled the laces of Liall’s shirt around his finger.

  “Hm, no. The wind off the water makes it colder sometimes, though generally it is warmer in Sul by now. The far north stays frozen year round.”

  “It does? I didn’t know that.”

  “Spring is slow to come this year. People are calling it an omen.”

  “And blaming me for it, no doubt, as well as every mare that throws her foal early and every cask of spoiled beer.”

  Liall did not answer. It was true, so there was nothing to be said.

  “And what do you think it is?” Scarlet asked.

  “I think it’s nothing,” Liall answered firmly. “The weather is often strange, not only here, but in every country and island of Nemerl. Once, I was traveling in Morturii and saw a tower of whirling red sand as high as the walls of Rusa. A strange heat swept across the Channel that year, carrying a sour stench and clouds of tiny black flies. Half the crops in Ankar withered from it. Was that an omen?”

  Scarlet shrugged. “Perhaps. I don’t remember a famine in Morturii, though. What year was that?”

  It was long before Scarlet was born. “I don’t recall.”

  “It’s too bad the spring is late. I was looking forward to a little sun and heat.” Scarlet shifted nearer to Liall’s warmth, but the next moment he sat straight up. The first of the tall rigging lines in the harbor had come into view. “Oh look! The ships! Look at all the ships. Oh, how beautiful they are.”

  “You’ve seen the harbor before,” Liall reminded fondly.

  “I was scared out of my wits and hardly knew where I was,” Scarlet scoffed, his nose nearly pressed to the glass. “I don’t remember half of it. Oh look! What’s that?”

  Liall tried to see where Scarlet was pointing. “That? That’s a razka kul. A sword of the sea. A warship.”

  Scarlet’s voice was hushed in awe. “I’ve never seen anything so... so...”

  Liall was pleased. “I’m not surprised you’ve never seen one. They don’t sail to Kalaslyn, but far southwest to the island kingdoms of Artinia and the Serpent Sea.” He looked with appreciation at the majesty and soaring lines of the warship, and at the forbidding row of cannon lining her sides. “To my knowledge, there are no ships in the world to equal them. They are the queens of the water. Even the heavy Artinian ships will flee from them.”

  “And what’s that little thing beside her?”

  Liall looked again. “A sloop.”

  Scarlet laughed. “Is it really? Why’s it painted like a cloud?”r />
  “For camouflage.” The sloop was single-masted, fore-and-aft-rigged, with a short bowsprit and a single headsail. The sails were gray with splashes of white, the boat painted in gray colors as well to mingle with the frequent mists and snows of the Rshani coastline. “Do you see the large wooden creature attached to the bow? That’s a water dragon. The sloop is a patroller; swift on the water and built for speed. It’s done up like that to fool the dragons and keep it safe.”

  “Dragons,” Scarlet snorted. “You teased me once about that. There’s no such thing.”

  Liall leaned in to kiss his ear. “Just as there are no such things as magic or Shining Ones or the Land of Night. The creature that statue represents is not truly a dragon, but it’s large, fast, and destructive, so they call it a dragon. I’m no mariner, so I’m not the one to argue the point with you.”

  “I thought you liked the sea.”

  “I do indeed, but that does not make me a mariner. I thought you hated the sea?”

  “I do, but I like the ships.” Scarlet chuckled softly. “Think how far a journeyman could go aboard one of those. You could get all the way to the end of the world.”

  Liall smiled. “We are at the end of the world, and we are a pair of contradictions. It suits us.”

  A knock came at the roof of the sleigh. Liall pushed the furs off. “Put your cloak on, and your new gloves.”

  Scarlet’s cloak was charcoal gray with the badge of Camira-Druz stitched on his right shoulder and pinned with a platinum snowbear. The gloves were black with crimson cords, lined with the fur of a white fox.

  He pulled them on slowly and held his hands up to admire their fit. The left glove was narrower than the right, custom-made to accommodate his missing fifth finger. Liall had ordered them from the glover weeks ago, and a good thing, too, considering what had happened to Scarlet’s last pair.

  “Thank you for these. I’ve never had gloves so fine all for my own.” Scarlet tightened the cords on the left glove.