Kora had to admit, “One of the best I’ve seen.”
“Uncle Zac, hasn’t Wilhem studied hard with you? Does he know enough magic to protect himself?”
Zacry said, “I would never have brought him here otherwise. You know that, Kansten. He’s capable of defending Partsvale.”
“Well, there you go.” Kansten looked the king in the eye. “Your Majesty, I would be honored to carry messages between Oakdowns and the Palace, if you’d allow me. Wilhem should spend his time honing spells, not playing courier.”
The king looked to Kansten’s mother, and Kora nodded, her lips pursed. A helpless expression was on her face. Rexson consented, “Very well,” and Kansten could barely prevent her mouth from falling open. Had a royal just sought her mother’s permission? Her mother? Did the man respect Kora that much?
Kora put a hand on Kansten’s shoulder, the hand that did not grasp the chain Rexson had returned to her. “Don’t you ever think you’re of no use,” she said. “And take me to your room. I’ll be working from there.”
Thad told the king and the sorcerers, “I’ll notify August you’re here,” and with the women, once Kora had cast an invisibility spell, left the room.
* * *
Vane’s mother lived here. This was Laskenay’s home.
Kora glanced every which way as Kansten led her through Oakdowns’s corridors. Ten years before, when the Duke of Yangerton had stabbed Vane, Kora’s brother had brought her here, but only to the master suite where Vane had lain unconscious. Kora had never walked these halls, never gazed past those open doors into lavishly furnished offices and guestrooms. In some respects, Oakdowns struck her as even more comfortable than the Palace. It was smaller, and thus felt cozier. The walls of polished wood, instead of stone, contributed to its homey atmosphere. The passages were wider, their rugs just as luxurious.
Laskenay’s life as a duchess, her life before the Crimson League and fighting to depose her brother, had always remained a mystery to Kora. The renegade sorceress Kora had known had left that existence too far behind her. The woman’s elegance had remained, and the ease with which she directed operations and gave orders—a turn of phrase, here or there, spoke to her noble past—but to see that portrait of Laskenay with her husband…. She had looked exactly as Kora remembered her, and yet, utterly distinct. Kora had never seen her in a gown like that, appropriate for a royal gala. The artist had captured a complacency and a confidence in her ice blue eyes that Kora had never seen there. How long after that portrait had Laskenay lost her husband, her life of comfort, and left her son with an innkeeper? A year or two? The woman would be so proud of the man Vane had become….
Kansten’s room was enormous, twice as large as the one Kora shared with her husband. Three people could have slept on the bed—three children for sure—and there were two cushioned chairs, with a third that rocked; an ornately carved desk; three shelves with as many pots of flowers as books; a large, round table…. This was a guestroom? Kora’s awe must have shown on her face as she cast a sound barrier and made herself visible to her daughter, because Kansten said, “It’s something, huh? And Vane said he put me in one of the smaller rooms. Knew I’d be more at home that way.”
Kora’s voice came almost in a whisper. “I’m glad Vane has this. All this beauty, this comfort. God knows his life outside this place would be my worst nightmare.”
“I never knew what his life was,” Kansten admitted. “I saw nothing beyond how he and August, they’re perfect together. Vane’s blessed in many ways, and he’d be the first to say so, but the other things….”
The prejudice. The fears sorcery caused. Working yourself ragged for the sake of a kingdom of malcontents who had no concept of what you suffered on their behalf, who would turn on you given the slightest opportunity…. No, Kansten would not have been able to fathom that. Kora could. She had lived it herself in the Crimson League, for almost a year. Vane had borne it ten times that long.
The chain Kora held cut into her palm, and she stared at its links with hatred. Memories of the enchanted—better to say cursed—necklace still haunted her. Invading the egotistical, misogynist mind of Zalski Forzythe’s first general; nearly dying for the act when he’d tried to strangle her with the chain; making Zalski her new target and discovering him painfully human, even respectable in ways, despite his regicide and his sadistic streak…. Now she would have to use the vile thing to spy on this Evant Linstrom. On Petroc’s son.
Rexson, of course, had not insisted she track Linstrom. Once Kora forged her link, that link was breakable only by the individual’s death, which meant her decision was final. The king knew this, but even in the days of the Crimson League, he had never tried to persuade her where to direct her chain’s magic. He’d encouraged her to trust her instincts, and her instincts, now, told her Linstrom was the obvious choice. The only choice over his lackeys.
Zalski, too, had been the obvious victim when she first took her chain from Linstrom’s father, but something in her gut had warned her to hold off, had hinted she might find a more useful way to employ her newfound power. And so she had: Zalski’s general, Kora had soon remembered, had been missing for a year at the time, off on some secret mission that the Crimson League knew nothing about.
That first visceral reaction against Zalski did not repeat now, when she considered a connection with Linstrom. Oh, the mere thought of using the chain again, not to mention its weight in her hand, made Kora want to purge the contents of her stomach, but that had nothing to do with her choice of victim and everything to do with the unique, invasive magic that the chain allowed the Marked One, and only the Marked One, to wield. Kora remembered Linstrom’s father; he had been a self-centered, unbalanced, and angry man. The thought of tracking Petroc’s son—Kora had always called the use of her chain “tracking”—was enough to make the sorceress sweat beneath her bandana, but she knew Linstrom’s was the mind she must invade.
Petroc’s son. Petroc, whose family had guarded the chain for generations, for the Marked One to use for Herezoth’s benefit in the kingdom’s darkest hour. Petroc, who had made Kora risk her life to take the chain from him, and the king’s with her, and that of the friend whose name she had given her firstborn. Petroc, who had never suspected that Kora, some twenty-five years later, would turn that chain against his very blood.
“Mom?” said Kansten. Kora turned to her. The girl was staring, in fear and awe, at the chain in Kora’s grasp. Kora braced herself for an uncomfortable conversation. She had kept silent the length of her daughter’s life about her final months in Herezoth. Now, in Herezoth once again, she would have to speak. She figured Kansten had been itching for years to ask questions. “Did you kill anyone, Mom? With the Crimson League, that day you put the mural on the Palace wall?”
Kora took a seat on the bed. Kansten jumped up beside her, and the sorceress said, “In that last battle, I don’t believe. But other times…. I could lie to you, I suppose, if you weren’t too smart to see through me, and I didn’t respect you like I do. Since you’ve come to Herezoth, since you’ll be aiding the king and you’ve clearly gained some grasp of what that means…. I didn’t join the Crimson League with the wish to hurt other people. I joined because my options were to kill or be killed, and well, as hard as life was in those days, I wanted life to continue. I didn’t want my mother and brother to grieve my death as I had seen them grieve my father’s. That’s why I fought, and there were moments when, yes, I did kill to defend myself or someone else. Kancat, I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with the aftermath of all of that: with my exile, with the rumors and the hatred, even in Traigland. Hatred, it’s a horrible thing, and I’m worried you’ll hear or read things here that will hurt you more than you anticipate.”
“I’ve already heard things,” said Kansten. “That doesn’t matter. Mom, I admire you so much. I do. I can promise you, if it were me who went through all you did, I would not have the strength to come back to this place. I’d gladly let the people here des
troy themselves. That’s no more than the monsters deserve. I think you’re…. I think you’re mad, to be honest. Mad, and stupid, and selfless. Much braver than I’ll ever be.”
Kora patted her daughter’s hand. “You’re brave, Kancat. Braver than I’m comfortable with, for sure.” She added, fearful of the girl’s reaction, “I wish you and your brothers would go home.”
“You transport me back, and stay there, and I’ll go without a squeak of protest.”
That cut off Kora’s entreaties before they could even begin. She sighed. “You know I have to be here, Kansten.”
“And you know the king needs a messenger to bring him your reports, so let’s leave it there. As for my brothers, I wish they’d go home as much as you do. Why did you bring them in the first place?”
“Your uncle left me no choice. And as quickly as I’d cast any spell I came across to make them younger, to justify forcing them back to Traigland, I’ve no such magic. It doesn’t exist. They’re both adults, and I promise you, I begged them not to do this.”
“Hang them, they’re so bloody stubborn!”
Kora’s lips stretched in amusement. “And you, you’ve been the height of yielding all your life. You didn’t try to cast spells six years before the age I wanted you to reach for that. Not you, no ma’am. You didn’t rant and rave and insist on coming to this place, despite the warnings I gave that it wouldn’t match the image you created for yourself. If your brothers are stubborn, they picked that up watching you, Kancat. Don’t fault them for it.”
“They could die, Mom.”
“I don’t need you reminding me of that. I’ll bloody fall apart, and I have to use this…. This….”
A swear strong enough to describe the chain escaped Kora.
Kansten held her mother’s arm. If she was trying to comfort the sorceress, she succeeded, to a degree. The girl noted, “You never mentioned that chain before.”
“I haven’t mentioned a lot of things.”
Kansten’s voice became quiet. “You saw people killed, didn’t you?”
“I won’t discuss this, Kansten. Not now. Not here. I need to forge that connection with Linstrom before I lose my nerve.” Kora paused. “When I first started using this necklace, it would put me in a kind of trance. As I used it more and my magic grew, I learned to counteract that, but it’s been so long I can’t say what will happen. If I look to collapse or some such thing, don’t be alarmed. I’m not ill or in trouble.”
Kansten nodded. She forced herself to smile. Kora was proud that her arms were steady as she placed the chain over her neck, because she exerted no small effort to prevent them trembling. The once familiar, forever loathsome weight and chill of the metal shook her confidence momentarily. Then she muttered Linstrom’s name.
As always when using the chain, Kora found herself in the mentally exhausting position of monitoring two locations; a kind of split vision allowed her to focus on one or the other at will. Back at Oakdowns, she had fallen from the bed to her knees, unresponsive to Kansten’s one attempt to rouse her, and was relieved to think she had warned her daughter about a trance.
The situation was different in Partsvale. Kora stood there, unheeded, amongst two men in a cobbler’s shop closed for business; the first of them was clearly Petroc’s son. Linstrom shared the dead sorcerer’s gray eyes, thick chest, and the darker shade of his odd, two-toned hair. Though not as long as Petroc’s had been, he tied his back in the same fashion. His crooked nose was different, but his disdainful sneer was the spitting image of his father.
“It makes no difference, Terrance,” he told a taller, bearded man. Auburn-haired. They were cutting strips of leather on the floor with razorblades.
“No difference? Francie Rafe was a member of the Magic Council. I hadn’t questioned her. She might have provided a windfall of intelligence, and you killed her before she could. Killed her to appease your weak-stomached lover.”
Insubordinate oaf.
Linstrom pointed his blade at Terrance. “First of all, you will not insult Lottie.”
“Why? Why shouldn’t I? She hasn’t the stomach for what we’re planning.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Linstrom ordered. “I know her far better than you do.”
“Because she opens her legs for you?”
“Lottie’s proven herself trustworthy, and you know it. The king overlooked her the same as the two of us. She’s the one who’s got the Partsvale scribes waiting to print about the council scandal. It was her idea to go after the guardhouse first. She’s as loyal as you, and you’ll refrain from badmouthing her.”
Terrance shoved his razor into the wooden floor, so that it stood upright. “I’ll agree to that, if you can defend killing a Magic Councilor before questioning. A Magic Councilor!”
“Rafe lived and worked in Podrar. We don’t need information on Podrar, Terrance. We’re attacking Yangerton.”
Terrance chuckled. “Can’t wait until we drop that information on the fold. Quite a shock they’ll get, a mere hour before the attack. We’ve been planning Partsvale and more Partsvale.”
“Yes, two hundred individuals are aware we’ve been planning Partsvale. And we won’t let that planning go to waste, I hope. We’ll leave our mark here in good time. Our merry band will be surprised by the change of first target, but they won’t grudge increasing the scope of our attack beyond anything we could accomplish in piddling Partsvale. As for wounded pride, they’ll appreciate I wasn’t senseless enough to allow two hundred people knowledge of our major attack during months of planning.”
“Think anyone’s gone running to the authorities?” asked Terrance.
“Doesn’t matter if they have. The authorities would plan a defense of Partsvale. Let them. It won’t inconvenience us. We’ll be in Yangerton. You and I have been arranging Yangerton for quite some time.”
“Yes,” said Terrance. With a scathing look, he grabbed his razor and returned to work. “We’ll be in Yangerton. And Rafe will be buried by then, along with any information she could have given about Ingleton. The wench worked with the king’s pet sorcerer for ten bloody years. You think Ingleton won’t be the first man the crown calls to oppose us? You didn’t think Rafe might know a little something about him that would prove useful?”
“I judged it more to the point to prove that our cause is just. We’re working to make the king pay for his deceit. To reclaim the place that’s rightfully ours and has been denied for centuries. We aren’t thugs. We’re not out to terrorize defenseless women who, you know as well as I, that tyrant has as hoodwinked as the rest of the kingdom with his supposed agenda of peace. Some innocents will have to die; that’s unavoidable. That doesn’t mean we condone torture. You think Lottie would have been the only one uncomfortable with what you’re suggesting we should have done to that woman? After what you’d already put her through? Agatha supported you, but no one else spoke up. Your own cousin quailed at the thought of delivering a death blow. Gertrude didn’t want….”
Terrance turned defensive. “You told me to create a diversion.”
“I didn’t tell you to rape a woman, hold her hostage for a day, and then bring your battered, bloody captive to the Hall as some kind of trophy. The last part, in particular, I find unsettling.”
Terrance threw his razor. “You bloody liar. I was watching your face the entire time we were in the library. You weren’t unsettled in the slightest. You were giddy as a girl in May until your strumpet….”
Linstrom sliced Terrance’s arm above the elbow. The men wrestled until Terrance knocked the blade away, which served to calm Linstrom’s ire.
You never learn, Terrance. Never learn. Maybe that gash will teach you something.
The underling chuckled to himself as he healed his gushing wound with a spell.
On the other hand….
Terrance’s white tunic remained ripped and wet, stained crimson. He might have lacked Linstrom’s bulk, his barrel chest, but his air of invincibility was no less fo
r that. “A blade? A bloody sorcerer, and you attack me with a blade? Don’t hold back, Linstrom. Good Giver, it’s not like I’ve people in hiding here waiting to avenge me. We cast spells to check for unwanted guests.” He shook his head. “A blade….”
“As useful a tool as an incantation to show I won’t tolerate….”
“You know I don’t have a problem with Lottie. She’s just soft, is all. Inexperienced in the kind of work we’re doing. I’m not convinced she won’t swoon the night of the attack, but I don’t doubt her conviction to our cause. She was involved before I was. I’m simply saying that on this occasion, you let your damn libido override your brain.”
“Perhaps,” said Linstrom. “If it’ll calm you, I knew who Rafe’s coworkers were. I read the Podrar papers. Ingleton’s not a dueler; he’s a politician—Ingleton and that Zacry Porteg both, politicians and scholars. The king’s sorcerers aren’t a threat to us. We’ll make a wasteland of Yangerton’s Central Plaza.”
“Yes,” said Terrance, “about that…. Our new recruit? Rickard Holler?”
Linstrom nodded his appreciation. “The late Duke of Yangerton’s bastard.”
“Think he’ll resent the idea of laying waste to his father’s duchy?”
“It’s not as though the bloke knew his father. Had no attachment to him, Terrance. He’s more interest in causing trouble for Ingleton than protecting an inheritance he’ll never see. Hasn’t those ambitions. He’s far from the duke’s only bastard, anyway, and hardly the oldest, based on his youth. He won’t complain.”
* * *
For over an hour Kora knelt in her trance. Kansten, bored stiff, began writing in a journal, and jolted as her mother stood up; she streaked ink across her page.
The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) Page 15
