Kings of the North

by Elizabeth Moon

  “He runs the School?”

  “Yes,” Kieri said. “And he heads the order of Knights, as well. She would be among men and women of high rank—entry to Falk’s Hall is restricted. I will sponsor her there—pay for her training, even. She will learn superior skills and courtly manners—which you must admit she needs—and who knows what might come of it?”

  Settik stroked his beard. “Well …”

  “If I send her back, that could seem to be an insult, which I do not intend.”

  “I do not think our king would approve,” Settik said.

  “What if you presented it as something that happened before you knew about it?” Kieri asked. “She refused to return—I arranged this because I did not want to force her to return.”

  “And is that not what you are doing?”

  “In a way, but I am not doing it without getting your permission,” Kieri said. “From what she screamed at us all just now, she doesn’t want to go home, she doesn’t want to stay here, she wants to run free. We both know girls from palaces cannot run free, not really.”

  “Mmmm …” Settik seemed to be thinking about it; he nodded slightly.

  “But this is something that might satisfy her and yet do her no harm. Even help her.”

  “It might work,” Settik said. He glanced at his wife. “It might indeed …”

  “Suppose,” Kieri said, “you have a nice night’s sleep. Perhaps even oversleep in the morning.”

  “You have good ale,” Settik said. He licked his lips. “It has been a hard day. Juncis?” His wife nodded. “We will leave the wildcat to herself tonight and enjoy ourselves.”

  Kieri took that for acquiescence. His interview with Ganlin’s guardians went even more smoothly. Her aunt and uncle were tired of her whims, they said. If she was not to marry Kieri, then something must be done with her; she had no future in Kostandan, where she was considered both difficult and a cripple.

  By dawn, the two princesses were out of the house and on their way to Falk’s Hall, escorted by King’s Squires and the Knight-Commander himself.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” the Knight-Commander said before he left.

  “I also, but I could not think of anything else,” Kieri said.

  The next day, the princesses’ escorts started for their respective homes, apparently satisfied and bearing with them parting gifts and letters to the princesses’ parents explaining why Kieri had chosen Falk’s Hall.

  “And that,” Kieri said to the Squires who met him in the salle for practice the following morning, “is that. We all hope. At least it’s quieter and not so crowded. We will all take the day off and have a picnic lunch in the Royal Ride—I’m sure you’ve had as much of princesses and the palace as anyone could stand.”

  Watching them, listening to them, he thought again how companionable they were. They handled their horses, their weapons, the setting up of even such a brief camp as a picnic, with such easy competence. He tried to imagine Elis or Ganlin doing so well, and could not, at least not until they’d become knights. He felt at home with them, as he had not felt with any other women but soldiers before. But nearly all were too young for him, and one of the two old enough—or almost old enough—was sisli. The other had shown no more interest in him than he felt for her.

  He sat quietly, watching and listening, and after a time Arian came over. “Sir King? Do I disturb you? I wanted to talk to you about Pargun.”

  His pulse sped; he ignored it. “What is it?”

  “You recall that before the princesses came, I had been up near the river, carrying messages to Talgan.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been keeping up with the dispatches coming in—I know you have as well—and I’m concerned about those troops.”

  “So am I,” Kieri said. “I may ask Aliam to send me another cohort.”

  “I can’t understand why they’d send their princess to you and then prepare an attack.”

  Kieri had not told any of the Squires about Elis being instructed to kill him. “They wanted me dead,” he said, and went on to tell Arian everything Elis had told him. He pitched his voice so all could hear if they wished. Arian’s face expressed the horror he had felt. Then it softened.

  “A hard trial for such a young girl,” she said. “No wonder she was so difficult to understand.”

  Now that the princesses were gone, the Siers in Chaya began making comments about marriage again. Was he looking? Could he use some advice? Kieri wondered when they thought he had time to look; every day had some crisis he must deal with, and that on top of his regular work. He understood their concern, but it had not even been a half-year yet.

  “The thing is, my lord,” old Joriam said, soaping his king’s back, “you may be young, as half-elves go, and you may be strong as oak and lithe as willow, but if some rock drops on your head, you’re dead. Or a fever: even kings get fevers. It’s your duty, same as wearing a crown or visiting your father’s bones.”

  “I know that,” Kieri said, feeling smothered by the constant attention to his single state.

  “She doesn’t have to be royal, my lord. Or even noble. Just … you know …” He left it there, and poured the clean water over Kieri’s soapy body. “Fertile,” was what he meant.

  Kieri tried looking at all the women around him with marriage in mind, but he hated thinking of them that way, as breeding animals. They were people, people he had come to know and care for. And they were, mostly, too old to have children or too young for a man his age. He wanted companionship; he wanted someone he could talk to.

  That thought sent him to the ossuary, one hot afternoon. This time he lit no candle, just sat and listened … to nothing … for a long time. Then once again he felt presences gathering around him. One conveyed the combination of wistfulness and stubborn anger that he now associated with his sister.

  I’m here, he thought.

  Once again: Betrayal. Danger. He sat quietly, trying to open his mind as he did to the taig. They lie. She had conveyed that before, but who lied? She trusted. Who trusted? A fuzzy image of a face leaning down, a sense of warmth and safety. Kieri finally realized this was an adult’s face as a very small child might see it … a face he almost knew … did know, as he noticed the elven bone structure, subtly different from human.

  Our mother trusted? Trusted whom?

  This time the image was clear as if incised in crystal: the Lady. Their grandmother. A wave of distrust and anger came with it. Kieri tried to think it through: their mother had trusted their grandmother, and his sister thought their grandmother had … had what? Neglected her in some way? Betrayed that trust? But how? The obvious was behaving as she had with him, staying away, not helping in some way.

  You trusted. All wistfulness with that, a palpable stroke along his left cheek. You left. You never came again. Followed by a burst of anger.

  The hair stood up on Kieri’s body; he could feel it prickling in his clothes. Betrayal … could she mean his mother’s death? His captivity? Nausea roiled his gut; he stood up, gulping, struggling not to pollute the ossuary, and staggered into the anteroom.

  “Sir King!” The Seneschal stared at him. “What’s wrong—what can I—?”

  Kieri could not speak; he lurched up the stairs barefoot with the Seneschal behind him, still talking. His Squires, at the entrance, turned to him; he saw the shock on their faces. It didn’t matter. It could not be true, she must be mistaken, it could not be—he made it to a corner of the courtyard, leaned over, and spewed, choking, tears suddenly burning his eyes and overflowing.

  Moments later someone handed him a cloth; he wiped his mouth. Another cloth, this one wet; he wiped his face and tried to stand, but his stomach betrayed him, and he had to bend and gag, bile burning his mouth. Hands steadied him; he began to know where he was, that the Squires were screening him from view, that they had brought water, towels, his cloak, that his feet burned from the hot pave stones.

  Finally, aching as if he had a fev
er, he was able to stand, clean his face again, turn away from the mess on the stones.

  “Come, sit here,” the Seneschal said. He had brought a chair and set it in the shade of a wall. Kieri leaned on a Squire’s arm without noticing whose it was, made his way to the chair, and sat. The Seneschal washed and dried his feet, put on his socks, helped him into his boots. His breathing steadied. He accepted the mug of cold water someone brought, sipped. It stayed down.

  “I’m … sorry,” Kieri said.

  “Sir King … Something happened—the bones.” The Seneschal’s wise gaze held his.

  “I … believe I misunderstood,” Kieri said. “It must be that I misunderstood.” Out here, under the bright sky, what he had been shown and events he had surmised from it were impossible to imagine, let alone believe real. His sister had been a tiny child, barely walking, when their mother died; how could she know what their mother thought—whom their mother trusted—who had betrayed their mother and him, if indeed it was not a random attack by brigands? Whatever his sister believed, he could not—he would not—believe that his grandmother had connived at his mother’s death. “And,” he said, trying to straighten more in the chair, “I may have a touch of summer fever. I drank from a spring yesterday—” A spring the taig had assured him was safe, but tainted water could cause summer fever.

  “Sir King,” the Seneschal said. “Bones do not lie.”

  Kieri looked up at that old, wise face. “Bones can be mistaken,” he said.

  “Yes,” the Seneschal agreed. “But if it comes to the living tongue or the bones: bones do not lie, and tongues do. Whatever you learned from bones will have truth in it. I pray you, come again to the ossuary and listen.”

  “Not today,” Kieri said. He felt cold sweat break out at the thought.

  “No, my lord, not today. But such reactions—if it is not summer fever—suggest the bones have urgent messages.”

  He went back to his rooms, feeling hot and cold by turns. Summer fever. It must be summer fever, with the ache, with the nausea, with the loss of appetite—he refused supper and went early to bed, waving off the palace physician. Despite the open windows, not a breath of air stirred; sound carried from the courtyard below, the stables, the streets of Chaya. A child cried out suddenly; he flinched, squeezing his eyes shut and then forcing them open to see … nothing but the vague outline of the window.

  Toward morning, thunder rumbled in the distance, then nearer. A chill damp gust of air blew in, and then the storm broke overhead. He fell asleep then, waking sticky-eyed, with a foul taste in his mouth, much later than usual. Rain fell steadily outside. He lay, listening to it, and turning over in his mind what he had experienced. Hints. Suggestions. His own mind had made a connection out of his own experience, something his sister could not know. He had created his own nightmare out of such fragile materials.

  By breakfast, when his appetite returned, he had himself firmly in hand. It made no sense that his grandmother had betrayed his mother and him … if she had, why would she have accepted his coronation? Tried to find him an elven bride? A vast gulf yawned between her not coming when he asked for her and deliberate malice, an attempt to kill. Perhaps she and his mother had been, like many mothers and daughters he’d known in his life, annoyed with each other—perhaps they had even quarreled—but that didn’t mean anything worse. A young child, his sister, could misunderstand—

  He welcomed the interruptions to his musings—messages brought in by couriers, appointments, meetings—but he hoped Orlith would not come until he felt calmer.

  “Sir King, there’s a message from Tsaia—” Arian, with a letter from King Mikeli in Tsaia. He took the letter from her and tried to focus on King Mikeli’s concerns about the theft of the mysterious necklace from Fin Panir. Some, Mikeli reported, were saying that Dorrin Verrakai had arranged the theft.

  “Ridiculous!” Kieri said aloud.

  “Sir King?”

  “This—” Kieri read her the letter. “Dorrin gave the regalia to the king; why would she steal the necklace?”

  “That fellow you told us about in Aarenis might have sent thieves,” Arian said.

  “Yes—that’s what Mikeli suspects,” Kieri said. “Alured’s dangerous. Though why he thinks the necklace alone will do him any good …”

  “Perhaps he thinks he can use it to call the rest of it to him?”

  Kieri shook his head. “I don’t think it works that way. The crown or the ring should be the most powerful, assuming that the items are innately magical. They might be drawing the necklace to themselves—in which case it should show up in Vérella.”

  Night after night Kieri’s sleep was troubled, though he could not remember specific dreams, only an undefined menace. He would have to do something, he realized, about the bones and their hints. He wasn’t ready for another trip to the ossuary, and didn’t want to ask the elves. Instead, he began asking who in the palace had known his sister or even his parents.

  He started with Joriam, who was polishing the big brass ewers in his bathing room. The old man’s eyes lit up.

  “Yes, my lord, I do remember. Your mother now, my lord, she was a beauty, she was. Fresh as a snowdrop, but strong, the way elves are. She didn’t ride just the air and water horses, but any color—she liked to match with your father when they rode out together. The two of them, on matched horses … it brought tears to the eyes.”

  “Did the Lady come to visit often then?”

  “No … I wouldn’t say that. At your birth, yes: said the elven needed some elven magic and upset the midwives no end. Out with you all, she said, and there was words spoken, I heard from one of the maids. And at Midsummer, of course, and usually Midwinter, bringing snow sprites.”

  Kieri had never heard of snow sprites.

  “All sparkly they are, in the dark. Elf-light I suppose. Swore it did not break the rule against fire … well, they aren’t warm at all. They dance.”

  “Did they ever quarrel?”

  Joriam’s face changed; he looked wary. “I wouldn’t like to say, my lord. I was young then, you know, and the queen was our queen, and the Lady was the Lady. And mothers and daughters, you may know, are not always in accord.”

  “Joriam, I need to know … what did you see or hear?”

  Joriam put down the rag and box of polish he had been using. “My lord … your mother had spirit, and she may have said more than she meant—”

  “But she said …”

  “I overheard—I shouldn’t have, but I was in here, cleaning the brass same as I am now. They knew it, but their voices rose anyway. She said your father was king, and the Lady must deal with him herself. She was not going to be—” Joriam blushed but went on. “—not going to be ruling him … between the sheets. And then the Lady said your mother would regret it.”

  “And?”

  “And then the Lady came to the door of the bathing room and told me to be gone and keep quiet. Forget what you heard, she said. I did not look at either of them as I came through the bedchamber; I could feel their magery beating at me.”

  “Yet you did not forget.”

  “No … my lord, I did not. For your mother said remember, and she was my queen.”

  Kieri forced himself not to pace back and forth. Joriam looked anxious enough. “Joriam, I know you’re no gossiper, but this is a matter of importance to me and to the realm both. I have no parents left to guide me; when the gods send dreams or visions, I must find a way to interpret them.”

  Joriam ducked his head. “My lord, you came from the bone-room in a state—”

  “Yes. I learned things, but not enough. Not everything a king needs to know.”

  “And you want me to tell you more.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was so beautiful,” Joriam said. “They both were, mother and daughter, but when they were angry, it was like a fire. Not often. The Lady … I think she did not understand how your mother could love your father. We all saw that. She had not married him from a duty
to pass on the taig-sense; she truly loved him, and he loved her. She never put on airs with him, as the elves do so often. Never treated him as lesser. The Lady said, ‘You’re losing your nature,’ and your mother said, ‘I am what I am.’ ”

  “Did she get along with other elves? My mother, I mean?”

  “Some. Not all. There was some, you know, just like now, thought themselves too great to associate with humans at all. Your mother argued with them; they couldn’t nay-say her because she was the Lady’s own daughter, but they did say she was young and would learn better. Her brother, he was older—”

  “Amrothlin?”

  “I don’t know all those names, my lord. Only that another time, she said to the Lady, ‘You must tell my brother to treat the king with more respect.’ ”

  Kieri shook his head.

  “My lord?”

  “No—I was scolding myself, Joriam, for not having asked you before about my parents and other matters. Only you have been such a quiet presence, and so many other matters claimed my attention …”

  “If there’s more you need to know, you should talk to Tekko as well … you know, the old huntsman. And Erda, she was one of your mother’s maids. Dressed her hair and all.”

  “Sir King?” Sarol, King’s Squire, spoke from the door.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a courier come from Captain Talgan. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Joriam, thank you—and I will want to talk more with you later. And the others. It’s time I knew more about my family. But I must go now.” He followed Sarol downstairs, his mind leaping ahead to the Pargunese situation. He wished he could get reports from Cracolnya, who would surely have posted troops on the Tsaian-Pargunese border. Though Mikeli had agreed to send any information he had on Pargunese troop movements, so far that had produced nothing useful.

  Talgan’s report included observations by forest rangers as well as his own troops: everything he had been able to glean about Pargunese activities both on the river and in Pargun itself.