“A first for most, my lady. Your father’s put a call to someone with a Curii.”
“A Curii? Here?” Excitement followed bewilderment hand in hand at that. Everyone had heard of the fabled horses, but outside of Naran, they were a rare commodity. One was said to be worth a king’s ransom, and that would be just, since that was whom they were raised for. “Would you be so kind, ser?” Her hand already held the reins to the man, but Edwin, in turn, was already reaching for them. He waved her along with a few terse words, and she readily slipped into the stalls.
Inside, the other horses were in a fury. Stablehands rushed between them, coaxing with gentle words while bribing with oats and hay. Charlotte followed the trail of maddened stallions to the back, stepping lightly along the dirt path of the building’s hall, to one of the few quiet stalls.
A red mare pulled loosely at its snare, snorting indignantly. She stepped a little closer, scarcely believing her eyes. The beast was not the largest in the room, but the flared black nostrils and equally black mane gave it away as something wholly fiercer than the rest. Curii, she swallowed. Some people called them a devil breed. They were fleet creatures, said to be kin to the wind itself—and just as wild.
A trainer once told her a man could work such a horse five years before it knew him well enough to trust him. Understandably, few had such patience. Trained Curii were highly sought as station items among the nobility, but only a few small ranches on the borders of Naran and Asantil still bred them. Most were purged alongside the orjuks, who first rode them out of those mountains and used them to burn a swath across Marindis.
One day, both would likely be nothing more than tales.
The horse seemed to sense her approach at the last moment and began to redouble its struggles accordingly. A series of long, high whinnies drew her back from the stalls as a stable boy rushed to his task.
Vissering was becoming something of a gallery for freaks.
Sparing a final, lingering glance for the beauty, Charlotte gathered her skirts and bundled herself back into the cool air. Edwin greeted her with a grin.
“A wonder, isn’t it?”
“Truly,” she answered, leveling her gaze on the keep before them. “Any idea who rides it?” She pictured a foreigner, or a messenger—one of the royal family’s, perhaps. Maybe they had finally decided the Empress had tarried long enough. Maybe the electors were finally called to vote.
“Would that I did, lady. The guards spoke only of a lout—some dark man, of low character. A shade, truly, to hear them tell it. I fear perhaps your father is hiring out.”
She smiled grimly at the thought, but offered nothing in reply. They left it at that, Charlotte leaving her steed in his care as she headed for the keep.
Inside, she skirted the great hall and made promptly for the spiraling steps of the adjoining tower’s ascent, intuition her sole guide. While her father tended to receive guests in the solar, he did not entrust conspiracy to it, and if he had sent for her specifically, that likely meant a very private encounter indeed. The library held her guess and guided her steps three flights above the earth, taking them one at a time despite her father’s haste.
A lady did not rush herself.
All the while, her thoughts turned to the omen of the horse. There were swords within that line of thought. Guns. But most of all: blood. The children of the blood were on the move, and her father knew that better than anyone. Days of his life had been lost to letters between him and the other electors—the dukes and palatines of the Altengard.
It was a pity to think such men, so solid in their own right, could cave so easily to fear of what had befallen the Veldharts. Everything had seemed to backfire then. By all manner of logic, they should have turned their eyes to others of the blood, nearer, younger, more easily controllable. Instead, they turned their voices to one beyond Idasian borders for an emperor. An outsider, they said, proven in his leadership, and bearing with him the friendship of the southern states.
A circled man. One every bit as dangerous as the brother they had slain, but with none of his knowledge of the realm. It was enough to turn a person’s stomach.
Maybe that was it. Mayhaps they had finally sought to put the vote to paper and make the man official. Assal be good, let us hope they have not so suddenly found efficiency. Walthere would have to agree, lest he be scrutinized. They had all already made the decision. The rest was just detail—tradition. It would certainly twist her father’s stomach though.
But just before the library, another thought stilled Charlotte.
Something watched her.
It was less a presence than a sensation. Eyes prickled like needles along the skin of her neck. She was being watched, where only shadows should have lurked. Only one spider could and would have at that.
“Boyce, if you think—”
She stopped. Shadows broke along the slim, high cheeked face, nestled into the eclipse of a cowl. He seemed as thin as a willow branch to her, but something about him belied a hidden strength. There was no hint of steel about his person. It seemed unnecessary. Burdensome, even, for a man that could set himself out of sight and out of mind behind walls he had never before graced. Gloved hands remained perched—delicately, almost—against crossed legs. This…man, was the only other soul in the alcove.
“It sees,” the shadow said, without question. Silver eyes, hammered and battered to the points of blades, swept the distance between them and sought to cut her down. Yet nothing of the man itself so much as moved.
She held, but not without a backward step. No sign of acknowledgement of that small retreat broke that man’s face, however. His black face. Black as the horses in the yard. Black as the moonless night. Unnatural, and disturbingly feminine.
“It—I see much, dark blood,” she replied, catching herself. “But not what brings you to our home.”
It wasn’t human. She could tell that much. Still…
It didn’t unnerve her like she thought it should, and that only proved all the more disturbing.
Breaths passed long and silent between them, until Charlotte caught herself lamenting the absence of her shield. Dartrek served his purpose. Still, she began to pull her long gloves free, intending to confront this shade fully. Her father’s men were always in distance of a shout, and sometimes there were no better ways to gauge a man. Fear was no excuse to act afraid.
A step forward was all she gained.
Dull, wooden raps echoed amidst the room as Walthere and his entourage wobbled through the open door at the other end of the room. The dark one’s eyes, however, remained fixed on her. Not a smile or even a frown to break the air. Charlotte pulled herself away, to the men that would burn an empire. Old, out of shape, swaddled in fortune. They looked beyond her, to the dark man coddled in their wealth.
Most looked as startled as she felt.
“So you have met,” Walthere wheezed. Cane leading, he shuffled for a chair. Recent months had seemed to exact physical vengeance for his political successes. While out hawking one morning, his horse had startled and bucked him from the saddle. He’d had the cane ever since. “Good. This saves us some trouble. Names? Dreams? Aspirations? Have we moved to those at least?” His eyes provided the mirth his lips never would.
Charlotte followed her father’s smarmy gaze back to their guest. The creature only cocked its head in something resembling curiosity. Long fingers slid the length of its thighs.
“No? Pity. Charlotte, darling, this is what you would call a sellsword. A very good one.”
Purple lips finally curled, ever-so-slightly.
“It has come to my attention our northern holdings have need of such—protection. Thieves, you know. Always looking to take what isn’t theirs.” A sad shake of his head seemed to dismiss the danger, adding, “The people beckon, and I think it time—”
“Talks too much,” the dark man observed with the softest of yawns. His eyes flicked, fleetingly, to the sidling specter of Boyce. An eyebrow rose. “Silk and lie
s, they say.”
Boyce did not smile. Sleeves weighted with daggers, he crossed his arms against his chest.
Charlotte rather liked this man already.
Charlotte’s father was a man unaccustomed to interruption. His dark eyes narrowed to slits and his lips pursed distastefully.
The guardsmen that accompanied him fanned out slowly about the hall, looking aside with practiced disinterest. Mardel and Kamps, two of her father’s closest fops, turned as if to find a place to sit, but realizing their place, turned away in noted discomfort. Theirs was not a place from which to speak. Only Boyce advanced, scuffing the carpet under polished boots, with eyes for the sellsword alone. It was his hands Charlotte watched, the conciliatory motion—open, empty, palms extended. Diplomats moved as such. Snakes moved as such.
He began to say something, but the sellsword shifted, violence tilting his hands back toward some unseen threat at his hip. Boyce was the only one that stopped outright, though the others tensed about the shoulders and the wrists, weapons brandishing more readily, more uncertainly. Boyce’s own hands folded inward.
They all stood dressed as if for a ball, and only the sellsword seemed discontent to play along. His dark clothing hardly complimented his already dark complexion, and it was ragged, beaten, and torn. Beneath, she caught glimpses of skin that struck her as more hide than flesh, leathery in bearing and doubtless scarred. There were few men she could truly posit of the title “grim.” This was one.
“The mark?”
It broke the rules. All the more reason for amusement. Politics was a vulgar thing, its foundations the coarse dung of mankind. People didn’t discuss it in such open terms.
One of the guardsmen crossed in front of her and Charlotte brushed aside, musing on the look that waited at the other end. It was Usuri’s look: death and madness. Where did her father find such people?
“A high-flown bird—a craven and a crow,” Walthere ultimately replied through a thin scowl. “You’ll find its name in your saddlebags. Boyce has your p—”
“Payment when done. No others?”
The startled look on Walthere’s face earned a cocked eyebrow from the sellsword.
“Other what?” Boyce answered for his lord.
The sellsword’s bright eyes fell, and his face answered in kind: competition. Whoever they were sending him after, he wanted no competition for it. Walthere shook his head quickly.
“Father!”
“One crow. One hawk. That should be enough.”
There was scrutiny in the hunter’s stare, but he shrugged after a moment and made to rise. “If more come, they will not return.” He seemed to follow Boyce’s feet—the backward slide. A smile teased out, and though his words were offered to Cullick, his gaze shifted up for Boyce alone. It was like watching two spiders circle the same mate. There was an accounting in that look.
But Charlotte had heard enough. They already tended to one mad soul beneath their roof; she would not abide another. Pressing past her father’s man, she made for him, howling anew. “Father, you cannot possibly consider this.” She did not slow even at the darkening of his glance—the terse flick of a man that did not want to be disturbed. Mardel stepped forth to intercept her, despite a dismayed shake of the head from Boyce, and he started to speak, but Charlotte swept past him as one might cattle.
She was aware of the eyes that watched her from every corner of the room. She did not care. Charlotte stood before her father, even as his hand took her arm. “Not now,” he hissed, but she shook him off, pressing him back with a sharp, “Then never, ser.” She had been called for a reason. She was not some passive witness and she would not bear another grievance with tight lips. Stiff steps carried her into her father’s space, such that he was forced to either give ground or meet her eye to eye.
He gave, taking her by the hand and drawing her into his web. Boyce stepped up to fill their space.
“Unbelievable,” he snapped and whispered in the same breath. “You would undermine me? Now? You cannot imagine the words—”
She stilled him with a hand against his chest, breathing through his anger. “Father,” she said, thinning her tone. It shook him, but he wheezed out the final words and let them go. “Forget you so soon your contract to another? Already you saddle us with a killer. One we already risked much to court. You would send another?”
“You said yourself that she is broken. She refused. And besides, her woman’s craft stands upon our own capabilities. Some things even her ways cannot reach. This is practical.”
“It is asinine. And what of that other? Do her as you did the rest? You know what may happen if you cross her.” Little dolls all burned to ash.
Scarlet flushed the man’s cheeks. Backtalk was a sin, but the mention of the girl in front of others… “I will not be called to account. Not by you. I know the risks. She has her uses yet. I can talk her back from that hole she digs herself. But this—this is different. A letter came for me, and I think you know its worth.” Her heart sank. The measured look he gave her confirmed its nature. So the electors had been measured. “I simply have not the time any longer for her moods. And if she—if she doesn’t come to it, if she won’t, then yes, dear heart, this world shall be done a kindness.”
Breaths could not suffice. Charlotte wanted to scream, but the air gathered in her lungs and burst forth in an exasperated creak. She turned away. They will burn. Practiced muscles eased, made a mask of her face. It’s all she wants. Can’t you see? Humanity numbed her.
They had a witch. They had a mad little witch, caught in the highest strands of their web, mad as a poisoned little fly. On her back they flew the fires of their hate. Then they denied her. They wondered why the fly would foam. It twisted, raged. No use. No use. A fly without wings was no use to them. But how could a web ever snuff the flames?
The sellsword chuckled. “A penny for the moat, where all the ashen song be wrote—a tune for man, so long eloped in hours of decision and derisive hope. Flutter, flutter heart, beyond your base and noble part. All eyes behold the passing.”
The words, poetic in their way, slipped away into the cracks of the hall, and they all met them dumbly. No one knew quite what to make of them, Charlotte least of all, for the man said them straight at her. Or through her, as seemed more the man’s wont.
“Yes, thank you for that,” Boyce breathed a moment later. “But I believe it is time.”
The sellsword only vaguely seemed to note this fact, nodding slowly to the sound of Boyce’s voice. Then the creature turned, sharply, to bow before him—a smooth sort of half-tilt, as one might begrudge an elder. He turned and repeated the same to Walthere, and adjusted only slightly to make for Charlotte. He did not bow. Rather, the sellsword came forward. He stopped when he was nearly foot for foot with Boyce, where his slender frame became all the more apparent beside the bulging spider. He swept his cloak back and bent down, while extending a hand to take her own. She slid her own out to meet it, as jurti demanded.
Audacious creature. The guardsmen shifted, uncertain whether to take offense. Leather coiled about her fingers like a vice.
As he bent before her, hand clasped tight, she had a premonition. Of foreboding. Of uncertainty. She shifted and he—sniffed her. Even Boyce started at that, but Charlotte only stood there, lips parting with the shock of it. For a heartbeat, she had a glimpse of herself tipping to a prince, only to take his hair in hand. Again, it all came down to the dolls. Beast, she very nearly snapped. Purpled lips laid a kiss against the flesh and the sellsword retracted a pace, the fainted flicker of a smile curling the edges of those lips.
“It smells.”
She yanked her hand back in disgust, but the smile remained. “I say,” her father barked, though he said no more, and did less, making no move for the man. Charlotte wanted to slap them both.
“How dare you,” she settled for instead. “This perfume—”
But the creature clucked his tongue at her, interrupting her fury. “Not that. The sm
ell. It smothers you.” His head cocked slightly to the side, appraising her under a new light. “It has been touched. A curious thing.”
He is insane, she thought with horror. It was the only explanation. Perhaps that was what happened when one outlived his people. Or perhaps there was a reason the aswari burned them from the world, in their infancy.
Yes, Charlotte knew him then. “Iruwen,” Boyce called to him in that moment. Children’s tales and monsters even to the Vorges, the people that came before the People, that were looked on as freaks even by their cousin aswari, whose open hearts had so damned them in so many other things. They were the guilt, the Vorges named them simply, on which all love was built. “Come,” he said, “I will walk you to the stables.” She heard the words, and numbly watched the shadow rise, and for this she was glad, for in spite of how the Vorges named them, Charlotte felt no heart in this creature before her.
The assassin bowed in parting, and with a whistle of a hum he was off. Though his legs were longer, he kept his strides measured, to walk perfectly side-by-side Boyce out the door.
And hopefully, Charlotte shuddered, out of our lives.
She stared after the two men and made that her prayer. “If you summoned me to ask advice, I give it freely father: be rid of that one. Be rid of him and be glad you did.” This was one wolf she truly feared. At a glance of the others gathered, she knew it was a common sentiment. “Your courtyard is already a-wag about his coming.”
“And let them wag,” Walthere said curtly. “Such is the wont of such people, as the blade is his. Only the holy man needs preaching, child, and you remember that proverb.”
“Without shame, without conscience.”
Walthere’s lip curled into a wolfish snarl, but he held it back. A snap of his fingers and a bark of that wrath sent Martel scrambling to their side, though, with a paper in hand. “In politics, there is no conscience. Grow up and stop pretending to something I did not teach you. Instead, take that woman’s mind of yours and put it to this damnable script. They’ve made an elector of a priest and set this vote to our hands.” He shook the letter from Martel’s hand as he spoke, thrusting it at her.
At Faith's End Page 10
