“Get the king,” Kora ordered. “Get him now. With your uncle and Vane, if Vane’s here. Go.”
Kansten sprinted to the door. She tugged on it until her mother lifted the sound barrier, and then she was off down the hall, dodging servants who stared after her as she ran. She ran all the way to the parlor, praying the king had not left Oakdowns while Kora had been spying on Evant Linstrom.
He had not. Kansten found him where she had left him, in conversation with her Uncle Zac, Thad, Vane, and a slim, stringy-haired, confident-looking woman near her mother’s age she supposed must be Jane Trand, the sorcery instructor Vane and the Magic Council had hired for their school. August was there as well, clinging to her husband’s arm. Kansten’s brothers had shrunk into the corner, trying to overhear as much as possible, but Kansten ignored them. They shouldn’t have been there to begin with.
“Your Majesty,” she panted, trying to catch her breath, “I’m glad you’re still here. Your spy needs you. And you, Vane. Uncle Zac….”
“Already?” asked the king. Amazing what twenty-four hours had done to his appearance. When Kansten first met him, he had looked younger than his fifty years despite his thinned blond hair. Now his bright eyes had dulled and sunken. His complexion looked less healthy, and more lines and hollows grooved his face.
The thin, straw-haired woman said, “I’ll be off to Carphead to find those books, no?”
The king sanctioned her exit, and she transported away. The three men Kansten had named headed for the door, where Vane, with August in tow, turned to say, “Thad? Come on.”
Thad Greller fell into step, as did Walten and Wilhem, which made Zacry narrow the blue-gray eyes set in his strong-featured face. “Where do you two think you’re going?”
Wilhem answered, “With you.”
“I’m afraid not. You’ll wait here.”
Walten’s mouth fell open. “Uncle Zac!”
“Wait,” ordered Kora’s brother. Wilhem threw himself in an armchair with a huff. Kansten would have smiled, but she was too winded. No time to catch her breath; she was rushing back to the room where her mother waited, basking in her brothers’ exclusion from Kora’s report, until Kora herself commanded, “Thank you, Kansten. You can go now.”
Kansten crossed her arms. “Mother, I….”
“You can join your brothers in the parlor.”
“This isn’t right, you know.”
Kora said, “I don’t care what you deem it. You’re my daughter, and I won’t have you listening to this.”
“Very well,” Kansten consented. She had no choice but to leave with what dignity she could, as a way to distinguish herself from her brothers. She made sure to shut the door gently and headed back toward the parlor at a comfortable gait. Eavesdropping would be pointless; one of the sorcerers in the room was bound to cast a sound barrier.
Kora’s head felt light, and not in the pleasant way it sometimes spun when she spent too long on her toes to gain the height she needed to kiss her husband. She sank to a seat on the bed while her allies stood around her, and she said, “It’s not Partsvale.”
Zacry said, “What do you mean?”
“Linstrom’s target. It’s not Partsvale. Partsvale’s a decoy, in case Rexson should try exactly what he’s done, should infiltrate the plot. The assault will be in Yangerton. The Central Plaza, they’ll raze it to the ground. Linstrom and a crony, some man named Terrance….”
August tightened her grip on Vane’s arm as he said, “I know the scoundrel.”
“They’ve been planning the real assault unknown to everyone else. They’ll reveal it an hour before the scheduled attack on Partsvale. It’s too risky for them to leak the change of plans sooner. With two hundred people involved, the chances the army wouldn’t hear….”
Thad Greller stroked his chin. “It’s brilliant,” said the nobleman. “You have to admit, the man’s bloody brilliant.”
Zacry told Vane, “I thought you said the man’s a lunatic?”
Vane had turned pale. “He’s a genius as well. The two can go hand in hand. Hang it all!”
With that, Kora stood. She would have liked to throw Rexson’s wish to send her back to Traigland in his face, but she lacked the heart. He looked too exhausted. Instead she told Vane, “You’re not to turn invisible and spy on Linstrom, you understand? He and Terrance, they have spells to check for intruders. They would find you.”
August clapped a hand over her mouth. Vane moved his arm to her waist, to reassure her, and told the sorceress, “That’s good to know. I won’t stalk him, Kora. You can do that safely.”
With a curt nod, and a glare at the king she couldn’t manage to soften, though she tried, Kora said, “I know I can.”
While Zacry stood in silent contemplation—that was the only situation in which he could be silent—Thad Greller’s admiration of Linstrom’s intellect and daring turned to visible dread. He stammered, “The Central Plaza? Yangerton? The most populous city in your realm? Your Majesty, this is…. This is so much worse than we imagined. What’s to be done?”
Rexson set his jaw. “Stop Linstrom ahead of time, and Terrance. Kill them at their shop, assault them and their sorcerers at the Hall…. Anything. Any of that’s preferable to them laying waste to Yangerton. The number of people in Yangerton, the children who frequent…. We cannot have Linstrom pillaging that plaza. Kora, are you certain no one else knows his true intentions? No one but Terrance?”
“Fairly certain. It’s possible his lover…. I’ll have to track him more. If there is someone else, I’ll find out.”
The king nodded. “Vane, I need you back in Partsvale. Speak to your fellow spy, that baker. Find out if he’d any inkling of this.”
Vane said, “I don’t imagine he had, or he’d have spoken, but I’ll see what his reaction is. What he suggests. He’s known Linstrom far longer than I.” The sorcerer cast an energy spell, in preparation to transport, but before he left the king asked him:
“Francie? How is she? The queen specifically asked….”
“She’s alive, and with that stone in her shoe she’ll stay that way. I can’t say more than that. She’s too weak to be moved, and traumatized, right terrified she’s with child. She very well might be. There’s nothing to do but wait. Either way, I imagine she’ll resign from the council, Rexson.”
Rexson nodded his dismissal of the duke. August hugged her husband, and Vane kissed her forehead before transporting away with a mutter.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kora’s Children
Kansten’s brothers sent her a sympathetic smile when she joined them in the parlor. She asked about Jane Trand, and they told her she’d gone back to her office at Vane’s school, to fetch some spellbooks for them to study, so they could be better prepared for any battle.
“Uncle Zac sent you away too?” asked Walten. “Infuriating, isn’t it?”
Her knees wobbly, Kansten took a seat on the floor, against the wall. Her brothers joined her, looking concerned, and while Wilhem tapped his foot on the rug she whispered, “I wonder what Mom’s telling them, that she’d send me away like that. I’m frightened, getting more and more frightened each minute. I’ve never seen Mother’s face look the way it did when she sent me for the king.”
Wilhem reminded her, “You did ask for the job.”
“Of course I did. Magic or no magic, I’ll make myself useful. I won’t sit here twiddling my thumbs.”
Walten told her, “You’re not useless, Kansten. You’re not some kind of failure because you can’t do magic. No one thinks you’re weak, you just….”
His sister shoved him. “You do! Both of you! You think I’m too blasted weak to stand the sight of your cursed sorcery. Well, you can work magic around me. I don’t need you to protect me from my defect. What do you think I’ll do if I see you cast a spell, start crying? Throw things at you?”
Walten stroked his thin beard, looking embarrassed. Still tapping his foot, smooth-faced Wilhem tried to talk, but the soun
ds he made weren’t quite words. Kansten shot, “I’m as much Mom’s child as either one of you. I’m just as proud to be her child as you are, and I’m older than you both. Sure, I’m jealous of your magic. Sure, I wish I was a sorceress. That doesn’t mean I resent you, all right? It’s not your fault I’m a bloody disappointment. I don’t grudge that you have magic, but if you keep walking on eggshells around me like you think I’ll crack if I hear you mention a spell, I’ll resent you all right. I’ll grow to hate you. Stop treating me like a baby!”
Walten rose to his own defense. “I had no idea you felt that way.”
“Well, I do.”
Kansten’s eyes had begun to leak. Some clean napkins from Kansten’s lunch with Thad were still stacked on a table halfway across the room, and Walten used a movement spell, Mudar, to make one fly through the air into his sister’s hand. She smiled as she wiped her face. He said, “You’re not a disappointment to anyone, Kans. How could you think that?”
“I’ve always thought that,” she admitted. “I’ve always felt my lack of magic made everyone uncomfortable around me. Unsure how to relate to me. I thought my presence annoyed everyone, for just that reason.”
Wilhem, who had moved on from foot-tapping to picking at the seams of his tunic, looked up to protest, “Kansten, that’s ridiculous. You think you’re an annoyance? Who trained with me for that long run I wanted to do last year, when I needed motivation?”
“I did,” said Kansten.
“Who helped me stand up to that idiot kid who was picking on me at school, back when I was ten and too scared to talk to Dad?”
“I did that too.”
“Who went exploring with me all the time in the woods behind Uncle Zac’s? Showed me how to climb the trees there and launch just right to be able to jump the creek?”
“All me.”
“You think those were annoyances? Kansten, I’ve learned tons from you. I’ll never forget those things you did for me.”
Wilhem’s sister punched him lightly, affectionately, in the shoulder. Walten, always more uncomfortable with expressing emotion than his brother, cast another spell, this one to light a lantern on the wall that had gone out. “In all honesty,” he said, “it’s lucky for me you can’t do magic. If you could, there wouldn’t be a spell you wanted to learn you wouldn’t master. You’d be a far superior sorcerer than me, which means I wouldn’t dare do something like this.”
The tear-stained cotton napkin Kansten had laid aside flew up with a word from Walten to smack her in the face. She pulled it away with a grin, and gave Walten a shove that knocked him sideways. When he pushed himself back to a sitting position, Kansten’s thoughts sobered to watch him, and she said, “I want you both to promise you’ll look out for the other. I know you two. You’ll take better care of a brother than you’ll guard yourself. I know you won’t go home, not before this is over, and I know you’ve studied enough magic to protect each other, even if I’ve never really seen you cast. Promise me.”
“We promise,” the boys said in unison.
“Bet your bottoms you do.”
Walten, who apparently wanted to speak of something else, asked his sister, “What have you been up to since you got here?”
“Went to the Palace,” she said. “You remember those kids years ago who came from Herezoth to stay with us a while?” They did. “They were the king’s children.”
Wilhem said, his voice soft, “I guess that makes sense, come to think of it.”
Walten asked, “You met them again, I guess?”
“Yeah,” said Kansten. “They’re pretty much prigs. Guess that makes sense too.” She tried, and failed, to prevent the corner of her lip turning up in an ironic smirk. Almost immediately, she brought her expression back to neutrality, but she wasn’t quick enough.
Walten’s eyes grew wide. “Prigs, huh? All of them? You sure about that?”
Kansten sighed in frustration, cursing herself. “Give me a break, Walt. They’re princes.”
“Which isn’t a prig?” Walten pressed. “I don’t imagine it’s the oldest.”
“The youngest one’s almost normal. He’s fond of his beagle, lets it follow him around. I halfway forgot who I was talking to.”
Wilhem paled. He shifted his weight to his other arm. “You didn’t swear in front of him?”
“Him and his dog. Who cares? I wasn’t trying to impress him. He’s a bloody prince.”
Walten rolled his eyes. “Our sister the eloquent. You swore in front of royalty?”
“And I’m oddly proud of it, after the fact. Was mortified the moment it happened…. Don’t tell Mom,” Kansten begged.
“We won’t,” Wilhem assured her. “She’d tan your hide.”
Kansten grinned at her brothers. “She’d make a rug of me.” Then her elation faded. “I’m glad we had this talk,” she said. “You know you two drive me batty, ‘cause I’ve never been shy about that. What I don’t say enough is I honestly don’t know what I’d do, if you weren’t around to annoy me.”
It’s not their fault I don’t have magic. That I don’t fit in anywhere. I thought I’d belong here, in Herezoth. I thought…. It’s not their fault. I shouldn’t act as though it is. That’s not fair to them, and they’re nervous right now.
The boys would never say so, but they were terrified at the thought of a magic battle. Kansten saw fear in the way Walt clenched his bristly jaw, in the way Wil could not stop fidgeting. He’d been restless since he sat down. While Walten tensed even more, Wilhem said, “You know we love you, Kans.”
“If you love me, you’ll go home.”
Walten said, “We love you tons, we do, but fat chance.”
Kansten sighed. “I knew that wouldn’t work.” She began to say more, but stopped short and scrambled to her feet as the door turned nearby. Her brothers stood as well, and Hune Phinnean entered, his brown hair windswept and tied as when Kansten first had met him. He wore riding gear of a quality Kansten had never seen, with a leather jerkin and boots so immaculate they shone in the lamplight. Her immediate thought was that the garb of an equestrian suited his slight build far better than a servant’s uniform had. It lent him bulk. Authority.
“Kansten,” he said, and his blue eyes seemed to darken with unease. Or did the rest of his face grow pale? All she noticed was his eyes. “I was looking for August. Didn’t want her to think I’d forgotten her. I know she’s distraught, and I hardly spoke a word to her yesterday.”
“What is it with you nobles all wanting to coddle her? She’s a person, not porcelain. She won’t break.” Hune sent her a quizzical look, and she explained, “Some man named Thad beat you here by a good seven hours. I assume you know him.”
Her cheeks grew hot when she realized she had chastened Hune, and in front of Walt and Wilhem, but the prince’s response was to smile out of gratitude for what he deemed good news. “Thad Greller’s seen her? Good. I’d have come here earlier, but I promised my brother I’d attend a conference he had to run with the Traiglanders.”
“These are my brothers,” said Kansten. Walt and Wilhem stood looking so awkward that Kansten almost laughed. They didn’t know what to do, whether to bow, or nod, or extend a hand perhaps. She could almost see their frantic brains at work, trying to decide. “My sorcerer brothers. They’re here to….”
“Help Vane,” Hune deduced. He grabbed Kansten’s shoulder with a jerk. “Are you all right?”
Kansten waved a dismissive hand, horribly convinced she wouldn’t fool the royal in the slightest. “I’m no more made of porcelain than your Duchess of Ingleton.”
The prince put Kansten’s brothers out of their misery by extending a hand to each in turn. “Thank you,” he said. “My family thanks you both, sincerely.”
Hoping Hune might not see, Kansten sent her brothers a glare that ordered them from the room. They were only too happy to oblige her. Alone with the prince, Kansten admitted as they took proper seats near the unlit hearth, “I always thought them self-centered,
those two. And a bit lazy, but I judged them wrong. I’ve judged everything wrong up to now.”
She dared not mention her old dreams of Herezoth, not before the kingdom’s prince, but Hune, somehow, read her disillusion in her face. He told her, “You only just got here.”
“To apprentice as an architect. With Cline Dagner.”
Hune looked impressed, but made no comment about her teacher’s prestige. “Give Podrar a chance,” he said. “If you don’t like the capital, try Yangerton, or a village somewhere. I know Herezoth has problems, but this place is much more than its tensions. It’s people like Thad Greller, with his gift for diffusing that tension with wit. It’s a history of stunning achievements: architectural, military, magical. Kansten, no place that creates men like Vane or my father can be all bad.”
“I suppose not,” said Kansten.
Hune sighed. “I’m sorry you had to come in the midst of all of this.”
“I should have expected it, is the thing. I can’t help feeling I should have. My apprenticeship starts next week, so I thought to spend this one seeing the sites. The Great Square, the Temple….”
Hune smiled. “Whoever named the Great Square was a dolt. I have to admit, though, the Great Rectangle hasn’t quite the same ring.”
Kansten asked, “Do you ever wish you could leave Herezoth?” When Hune did not respond, she said, “That’s far too personal a question, I’m sorry. I….”
“I’ve never wanted to leave Herezoth,” he told her. “Podrar, on occasion. The Palace, almost daily: I trust you’ll keep that assertion between us. But not Herezoth. This place grips a person, Kansten. I’ve heard that said, and as strange as it sounds, there’s a measure of truth in the statement. There’s something in the air, or the soil, and once Herezoth has a hold on you, that’s it. Your heart never leaves. You can get on a boat, sure. You can pass your years elsewhere, but that elsewhere is never home. You should hear the way our Traiglander guests speak of immigrants from Herezoth. The expatriates are dull-eyed, they say. Always dull-eyed. Traiglanders are amazed to come here and find the kingdom full of life, its people hearty.”
The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) Page 16
