Flamecaster

by Cinda Williams Chima

  Lila favored the Tamron Road, which would get them into friendly territory quicker and keep them away from Ardenscourt. She didn’t feel it necessary to mention that it would also make it less likely that they would run into someone she knew. The last thing she needed was to be seen with Princeling sul’Han.

  Ash pushed riding east to Ardenscourt, then north through Delphi. “The Tamron Road is the logical choice, which means they’ll be watching it,” he said. “Only an idiot would head straight for Ardenscourt.”

  “Exactly,” Lila said. “Only an idiot would try that. I don’t like it. That road is heavily traveled, always crawling with southerners.”

  “We are in the south,” Ash said, rolling his eyes. “More traffic means we’ll be easier to overlook.”

  “Unless we run into more of those bloodsucking crows of Malthus.” Or some other people I’d just as soon avoid, Lila thought.

  “Let’s split up, then,” Ash suggested. “I’ll go via Ardenscourt and you go via Tamron. We’ll lay bets on who gets there first.”

  You’re trying to get rid of me, Lila thought, so you can go south to Freetown, like you planned. Well, I’m not going to let you. But that meant giving in.

  Once that was decided, they hurried on to the stables, where Ash insisted that they pick out horses to steal, arguing that they couldn’t take their own if they wanted to play dead. Ash chose Maribel, a spirited piebald mare that had belonged to the messenger service, so she’d been exercised more than most of the students’ personal mounts. Lila picked Brady, a bay military gelding newly arrived from Arden with a student at Wien House.

  Less than an hour after the last man died, they rode away from Oden’s Ford. At least Lila convinced Ash not to leave a note for Taliesin, dean of Spiritas, the healing academy. She was determined to win that one.

  “I don’t want her to worry about me,” Ash said, looking down at his hands.

  “Maybe she’s the one that outed you,” Lila suggested. “She knows you better than anyone, right?”

  Ash flinched when she said that, but then he shook his head. “If she wanted me dead, I would be dead,” he said.

  “That’s an odd thing to say about a healer,” Lila said. “Anyway, she won’t worry if she thinks you’re dead. And it’s probably best for now if that’s what everyone thinks. Especially while we’re traveling through Arden.”

  So far, the princeling had met all of her admittedly low expectations. He was a major pain in the ass. Still—she couldn’t get the image of the bloodsucking crows out of her mind.

  They rode first in the moonlight, and then in the darkness after the moon had set, and finally in the mist of the early morning, climbing the long, gradual slope away from the river. As the light grew, the great trees of Tamron Forest gradually became visible on either side, like rooted ranks of soldiers. Their horses moved at a brisk pace, their hooves flinging up the mud of the road, splashing through the puddles of a recent rain. They didn’t have much to say to each other.

  “I wonder how wide a net they’ll cast,” Ash said, after an hour’s silent riding.

  “Who knows?” Lila said. “Depends on how committed they are to killing you.” She studied him critically. “Your size and that copper head of yours make you stand out.”

  Ash reached up, fingering his hair, as if he’d forgotten what color it was.

  “Too bad the weather’s not colder,” Lila said. “Once it’s light out, it would be best if you kept your hood up.”

  As the day came on, the landscape around them began to emerge, the colors muted and grayed. The autumn mist clung low to the ground, filled the ditches on either side of the road, and shifted and swam as the horses moved through it. Now and then the dense forest was punctured by a clearing along the road, centered on a farmhouse and other buildings. The shapes of people drifted through the yards like ghosts. Farmers rose early.

  Tamron Forest crowded close to the road, as if anxious to reclaim it, and Lila found herself startling at every sound. The roots of great trees broke through at the berm, and the canopy often met overhead, shutting out the frail light. Any assassin hidden along the road would be but an arm’s length away. Lila imagined a rush from the undergrowth, sinewy hands reaching up to drag Ash from his horse and slam him to the cold earth, a circle of pale faces within dark cowls.

  Once, they heard hooves behind them on the packed surface, horses coming fast. They shoved off through the small growth that fringed the road and hid behind the massive trunk of a moss-covered oak. A dozen black-clad men on dun-colored horses thundered past, ringmail glittering. Among them, Destin Karn, the only one unarmored, eyes fixed forward, slitted against the wind and dust.

  “The King of Arden’s Guard,” Ash murmured when they had gone. “They’re in a hurry, aren’t they?”

  Bones, Lila thought. Destin Karn, of everyone, might expect me to take this road. I told him I was going to, after all. Is he hunting me after I ditched him on Bridge Street? Or is he hunting Ash? Does he suspect that I helped him escape?

  Maybe he’s just hurrying home to report the bad news.

  Now they proceeded more cautiously than before, aware that the soldiers they’d seen might double back when the trail grew cold. When they began to see traffic upon the road, Lila led the way back into the woods, penetrating several hundred yards before she chose a camping place, a defensible spot with a low hill at their backs. They built no fire; it wasn’t worth the risk. They left their horses saddled, fed them, and tethered them to a long lead to allow them to browse. Then they threw their blanket rolls on the ground in a grove of trees.

  They sat up for a bit, eating cheese and bread, passing one of the wineskins back and forth until it was empty. Lila ached all over, courtesy of the rough and tumble in Stokes and from riding horseback cross-country for the first time that season. Ash sat with his back against the trunk of a tree, one knee bent, the other leg straight. He said little, though she noticed he was favoring his arm.

  By the time they’d finished the wine, Lila could scarcely keep her eyes open.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Ash offered.

  Lila shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she mumbled, her lips oddly numb. “You’ve got to be exhausted from loss of blood and having the flash sucked out of you and all. Let me just get up and walk around a bit. That’ll wake me up.”

  “Hey,” Ash said, putting a hand on her arm. “Go to sleep. You don’t have to be the hero every single time.”

  “All right.” Lila yawned. “But wake me up at midday and I’ll take over.” She slid into her bedroll and was immediately asleep.

  When Lila awoke, shivering, the sun was low on the horizon, the light nearly gone. It took her two tries to sit up, and then her head spun so that she had to brace herself with her hands. She was stiff and sore from lying too long on the ground, half-covered in leaves, and her mouth tasted like the floor of an unmucked stall.

  “Ash?” She looked around the clearing, and the motion nearly put her flat on her back again. “Ash!” she said, a little louder. Brady stood a short distance away, looking at her, ears pricked forward, still chewing. The other horse was gone. A scrap of chamois was pinned to a nearby stump with Lila’s own knife. It bore a single word. Sorry.

  That’s when she knew. “Bones,” she muttered. “You two-faced, conniving, sneaky bastard.”

  Lila rose shakily to her feet. The empty wineskin lay nearby. She kicked it, and it went sailing into the brush.

  Really, Hanson? Did you think I’d fall for the turtled wine trick? I guess so. I am too stupid to live.

  He’d probably left as soon as she had fallen asleep, took a chance by traveling in daylight. Nobody would expect to find him riding back toward Oden’s Ford. He could be halfway to Freetown by now. Or on his way to the dungeon in Ardenscourt. Or dead at the hands of the bloodsucking priests.

  That was the thing. Lila had secrets, but Ash had proven that he had secrets of his own. Now there was no telling where the princeling was
headed or what he really intended to do.

  12

  IN THE KING’S GARDEN

  Destin Karn dressed for his meeting with King Gerard Montaigne of Arden, knowing that he might not survive it. He knew the price of failing to meet the king’s expectations, and he had failed at Oden’s Ford.

  It wasn’t for lack of effort. Destin had it on good authority that ten bodies had been found in and around Stokes Hall—but none were students. Five were Darians and five were school officials—provosts and dorm masters. They’d all been killed with conventional means—if throat-cutting could be considered conventional. None had been killed with conjury, so they hadn’t been done by the witch queen’s son. That fit with what Tourant had said—that the boy had been training as a healer, and so would be an easy mark.

  According to the academy, two students had gone missing: Lila Barrowhill, a cadet in Wien House, and Ash Hanson, a northern student who was a proficient in Mystwerk. It appeared that a great deal of killing had happened in Hanson’s room—it was awash in blood. But the two bodies in there were both Darian brothers.

  Had the Darians and provosts killed each other? Had Lila intervened? Why would she? From what Tourant had said, she and sul’Han weren’t particularly close at school. Nor was she the hero type. Anyway, Destin found it hard to believe that a woman could be responsible for so much bloodshed. The king had ordered him to keep Lila away from the killing field as a precaution. Montaigne had no intention of risking one of his most promising operatives in case a sudden attack of citizenship prompted her to intervene.

  The irony was that Destin was the one who had recruited Lila—he’d been her handler for the past two years. But now, more and more, she interacted directly with the king. Destin didn’t like losing control of that relationship.

  He never should have allowed her to leave the party—he knew that now. If Lila and sul’Han were both dead, Destin had failed. If they were both alive, Destin had failed.

  There had been just one verified student casualty. Renard Tourant, an Ardenine cadet, went missing that night and was found floating in the Tamron River a few days later, apparently drowned. Destin wished he’d been able to take a little more time dispatching that blundering fool, but he’d been in a bit of a hurry to get out of town before anyone thought to question Denis Rochefort, a visitor from Arden.

  It was possible that the scheme had succeeded. It was possible that there had been more than five Darians, and that the survivors had carried the bodies of Barrowhill and sul’Han away for one of their ghastly rituals. They were blood-hungry bastards, always fighting like jackals over who got to do the deed. Destin preferred a more dispassionate approach to killing. It was sometimes necessary, but Destin didn’t enjoy it as a rule.

  It was possible, but Destin didn’t believe it. He’d been promised proof of the kill that he could take back with him to Ardenscourt, but had not received it. According to his sources, the two missing students had not surfaced, alive or dead, in Arden or the Fells, in the weeks since.

  Destin suspected that it was only that bit of hopeful ambiguity that had kept him alive this long. That, and the fact that the deans at Oden’s Ford had been unable to prove that Arden was behind it.

  Oh, they suspected plenty. The Darian Guild was tied to the Church of Malthus, the state church of the Ardenine Empire. The king of Arden had long claimed the right to search the academy campus for saboteurs, spies, and contraband, though he’d never before tried to exercise that right. The administration at Oden’s Ford sent stern letters to the king and to the principia of the Church of Malthus, demanding to know what, if anything, they knew about the violation of the peace. Since it appeared that those responsible had fled into Arden, they further demanded that the culprits be apprehended and returned to the academy for trial.

  Agents of the church and the empire denied any knowledge of the attack at the academy. They pointed out that Arden had no reason to attack students at Oden’s Ford, assuming that the school was not harboring enemies of the state. They suggested that they look to the north for the guilty parties. After all, one of the victims was a citizen of Arden. Perhaps the two missing students were responsible for the killings. The king of Arden offered to station soldiers at Oden’s Ford to protect students and faculty if the academy requested it.

  The academy declined.

  The king had made his displeasure known since that day. Though just eighteen, Destin had been considered a rising star and a favorite of the king’s—until Oden’s Ford. He hadn’t had an audience with Montaigne or an assignment from him since. Destin had little to do but worry that the king might show his displeasure in a more concrete way. Some nights, as he lay awake in the stifling heat of the season they called autumn in the south, he considered fleeing the country.

  His father had anticipated that he might run, and issued a preemptive warning. “There’s no going back from that. The king has a long memory, and Arden has a long reach. It won’t be long before the king controls all of the Seven Realms. What are you going to do then—try your luck in Carthis?” The look in his father’s eyes was a threat and a warning and a dare all in one.

  And so, finally—this meeting, after weeks of silence. Why now? Destin guessed that the king had reached a decision about his future.

  So—what’s proper dress for one’s own execution? Destin wasn’t prone to elaborate attire. If he had been, his father would have beaten it out of him long ago. Still, he knew how to present himself well when the occasion demanded it. Black was always in good taste. He dressed head to toe in fine black wool with leather trim. His shirt bore lace at the collar and cuffs. His boots and swordbelt were plain, but made of the finest leather. His amulet was tucked discreetly inside his shirt, where it wouldn’t be seen, but it would absorb mana’in, the demonic energy that oozed from him, day and night, like the seepage from a sulfurous spring. Best not to fling that in the king’s face, on top of everything else.

  Being gifted was a double-edged sword in the south. It made Destin and his father useful to the king, but it also made them vulnerable. The Church of Malthus had a habit of burning uncollared wizards, and the king had a habit of letting them do it. Montaigne viewed the gifted in his employ as a necessary evil.

  Destin studied his image in the glass inside his wardrobe, and was satisfied. This will do to be buried in, he thought. Assuming there is enough left to be buried. With that, he went to find his father, who, for once, would be in his apartments.

  Marin Karn might be general of the Ardenine armies, with quarters in the palace itself, and estates on Ardens-water and at Baston Bay, but when he was in the capital, he could often be found playing cards and drinking in the common room of the barracks, where Destin always felt out of place.

  Destin saluted the brace of soldiers in front of his father’s door. “Can you let the general know I’m here?”

  That word was conveyed, and Destin was duly admitted to the first waiting room—the first circle in the maze that would eventually lead to his father.

  When he was finally ushered into his father’s privy chamber, he found the general half-dressed, in the process of stripping off his linen shirt. “Fetch me another,” he ordered, dropping the shirt on the floor. “I’ve sweated through two of these already. All of this traveling from the arse-puckering borderlands to the ovens of Bruinswallow will be the death of me.”

  Promises, promises. Destin crossed to the wardrobe and chose another shirt, then played valet, helping Karn into it. Fetching a towel, he blotted sweat from his father’s face and neck. Karn slapped the towel away.

  “Stop that,” he said. “A man sweats. But maybe you wouldn’t know that.”

  Destin could tell that his father was nervous because he was being nastier than usual. Which meant he was worried about this meeting between his son and the king. Worried that his own position was precarious enough without collateral damage from the failures of his son.

  At last, the general was committed, laced into his final cho
ice of shirts. Destin handed him his uniform tunic.

  “Belt first. Then the jacket,” Karn said through gritted teeth. “Are you ever going to get that straight?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Destin said stiffly. “I don’t often wear a uniform myself, so—”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Karn said, as if it had just occurred to him. “You don’t.”

  Destin clenched his teeth. They could never seem to have a conversation without a dig from his father. Instead of the army, Destin had chosen the clandestine service, which reported directly to the king. Though his rank was lieutenant, he wasn’t a real soldier in his father’s eyes. Plus, his father didn’t like Destin being out from under his direct supervision.

  Destin, on the other hand, liked it very much.

  The bells of the cathedral church bonged the quarter hour.

  “It’s nearly time to go,” Destin said. “Do you have any advice?” That, in fact, was why he’d come. Somehow, his father had managed to survive thirty years in service to this king. He must have developed some sort of strategy.

  “Stop quaking like a girl,” Karn said, his usual disappointment plain on his face.

  “You are mistaken, General,” Destin said evenly. “I am not quaking. Merely concerned.”

  Karn snorted. “If the king means to kill you, you’ll never see it coming. So relax.”

  That wasn’t exactly helpful.

  “Second thing, whatever the king asks you to do, say yes. If he asks you to dig up your mother and hang her body from the ramparts, say yes. If he wants you to make him a coat from the carcasses of kittens, your answer is yes. If he wants you to kiss his royal ass, say yes. Am I clear?”

  “Yes,” Destin said. Then couldn’t help adding, “And if he asks me to kill you? Should I say yes to that as well?”

  Their eyes met. Held. Then Karn barked out a bitter laugh. “By all means, boy, do the deed if you think you can pull it off. If you say no, the king will find someone else to kill us both. One of us may as well come out of it alive.”