by Ellyn, Court
At last, Nathryk emerged from the carriage, one languid, begrudging movement after another: a leg in supple slate-gray leather and knee-high riding boots, then a hand cocooned in a broad-cuffed embroidered glove. Finally a cloak lined in silver fox fur. It draped heavily over an exquisite velvet doublet upon which hunting scenes were picked out in silver thread. An undershirt of water-soft pale gray silk was visible through the doublet’s slashed sleeves. Nathryk’s sleek, sword-straight black hair spilled like glossy lacquer over his shoulders, and upon his head he wore a simple silver circlet mounted with a moonstone. On what else was a prince to spend his allowance but the best tailors in Graynor? Still, these were not proper travel garments, Arryk noted. Nathryk had expected a different kind of entrance into Fiera. Despite his certain disappointment, he remained cool and composed, taking the time to remove one glove a finger at a time and tuck it neatly into his belt. With his gloved hand he untied a splendid warhorse from behind the carriage and beckoned to a stable boy. The stallion snorted and raked the cobbles. His shoes sent sparks fleeing into the damp air.
“He’s a Roreshan racer,” Nathryk told the boy, handing over the reins. “Be gentle with him. Turn your back on him at your own peril, however. He’s a biter.”
Was this the Nathryk whom Arryk knew? Someone who took the time and care to warn a servant? Or was there another purpose hidden in the warning?
Though Arryk saw no sign of it, Nathryk had to be fuming. How could he not, with his long-cherished plan delayed a little longer? But unlike the temperamental child, he had learned to mask his emotions and his contempt. How much more dangerous he was now. Would Arryk see the fight coming or would he suddenly find himself sprawled flat on his back and tasting blood? He thought of the daggers secured in their hiding places and prayed Nathryk had grown past the need to subjugate his little brother.
Nathryk’s glance slid around the courtyard, then lifting his pale face, he spared the gloomy towers and mossy keep a disparaging glare. “Nothing has changed.”
With honed cat-like grace, he started for the keep.
Arryk found himself staring over Nathryk’s head at the gatehouse towers, hoping his brother’s attention would pass him by. It was a vain hope. And why shouldn’t it be? Nathryk’s brothers had always been his favorite playthings. Beside him, Istra and Rance bowed their heads, and Arryk felt Istra’s elbow nudge him in the ribs. He remembered to bow. Nathryk’s boots faced him squarely as he climbed the steps. The fur cloak swayed side to side, revealing flashes of the slim longsword on his left hip and a dagger on his right. The boots stopped two steps down, and Nathryk snickered. Arryk didn’t need to look up to know the expression on his brother’s face; it would be the same arrogant, mocking smirk he saw in his nightmares. His face broke out in a cold sweat, and his stomach threatened to turn.
The boots climbed one more step. A spicy cologne wafted up Arryk’s nose as Nathryk leaned close and whispered, “Still quivering are we?”
Arryk’s brain went blank. What to say? What to do? He thought of nothing at all. He was just a panicking mass of frozen impotence. Don’t let him do this to you… Istra’s words echoed loud and clear. Arryk bowed his head again, this time in shame.
Nathryk’s gloved hand, the one he used on the horse, slid between Arryk and Istra, and as if she were a drape, he swept her aside and continued on. “Uncle Raed, you’re looking older. Come, tell me of Fiera. You’ll be honest, won’t you?” And off he went, satisfied that the pecking order was still in place.
“I don’t suppose you could take your meals in your rooms,” said Rance dryly. He paced the length of Arryk’s solar, window to door and back again, hands clenching and opening.
“For three months?” Arryk asked. “He might take that as a slight.”
“Grandmother says that what she’ll do. She may change her mind in a week or so, but I doubt it. She’s a determined ol’ bitch, even if it means her head ends up on a spike.” Rance had the black-haired, black-eyed look of the rest of the Éndaran clan, but his face was ruddy and capable of expressing joy for the hunt and a flask of mead. His laughter often rang loudest in the dining hall. Arryk once heard that Rance was living life twice as happily, twice as tragically, twice as lustily, to make up for the twin brother who lived not at all.
“Lady Eritha needs to learn caution,” Arryk said. He sat on the rug with Fang, ruffling her ears. “Unless she means to sail on the same ship with me. Do you think I ought to leave sooner?”
“Are you asking me or the dog?”
Arryk glanced up and found Rance standing over him with his arms crossed. “Maybe I should sail to Heret instead of Dorél. What do you think? It’s farther.”
Rance’s arms fell to his sides, and he sank onto the settee. “You will do as you think best, my prince, and I will mourn the loss of another brother.”
Brother? Is this what a brother should be like? Someone who watched your back and took you hunting and filled your goblet with wine rather than poison? Arryk marveled at the revelation. “Maybe exile won’t last forever.”
Rance replied with a doleful turn of the lips. As long as Nathryk lived, Arryk’s next breath was not worth betting on.
A shout echoed down the corridor, “You!”
A copper bucket clattered to the floor.
Arryk’s spine stiffened. Fang felt his mood change, and her hackles bristled. She padded for the door.
The hapless maid who had dropped the bucket must have tried to flee, for Nathryk demanded, “Come back here, you little cunt. Is the Princess Regent still in her rooms?”
Fang’s muzzle wrinkled up as she displayed her teeth. The name might fit after all! Arryk followed her to the door with Rance on his heels. Outside, a door opened and slammed shut again. Rance peeked out. Finding the corridor empty of everything but the forgotten bath bucket, he tiptoed to the princess’s suite and pressed his ear to the door. After a moment, he waved Arryk to do the same.
More afraid of getting caught than missing a row, Arryk hesitated, squirming on his threshold, but when Rance’s eyebrows darted up at something he overheard, curiosity got the better of him. Arryk laid his ear lightly against his aunt’s door.
“—couldn’t wait until I summoned you?” Ki’eva was saying.
“Summon me? You’ve got airs, woman. No, we will discuss it now.” Nathryk’s voice receded deeper into the room.
“There’s really no point,” said Ki’eva. “Your shame has spread everywhere. Everyone in Brynduvh is talking about how you—”
“Rumors. Spread by my enemies to undo me. But that’s not what I meant.”
“What then?”
“My enthronement, Aunt.”
“Did I miscalculate? Or did you turn eighteen when I wasn’t looking?”
“Don’t mock me.”
A hiss at Arryk’s back scared him half out of his skin. Even Rance reached for his dagger. But it was only Istra, mouth open and eyes wide as if eavesdropping were a scandal. “What are you two doing?”
Rance waved his younger sister to silence. Not about to be left out, she pressed herself between the two of them and her ear to the door.
Aunt Ki’eva sounded weary. “Even if Bano’en can’t live up to his end of the deal, we will live up to ours.”
“The ‘deal’ was to ensure Fiera didn’t incite another war, Aunt,” Nathryk said, every word clipped with his attempt to restrain his anger, “and Bano’en must be satisfied or he wouldn’t have released me.”
“He released you because you were intolerable. More than that! Because you spent his money and whored in his palace and raped his people. He was not discreet in his letter, Nathryk.”
Istra’s jaw dropped open. “It’s true,” she mouthed.
“You believe him over me?” Nathryk went on.
“Any day of the year. Bano’en has proved himself faithful until now. You have yet to prove yourself worthy of the throne at all. Your father’s wishes—”
“Fuck my father’s wishes!” The bel
low thundered against the door. “He is bone and ash, and Fiera lacks a king these five long years.”
“It isn’t Fiera you care about—unless Bano’en was able to instill better character in you after all, but I see no sign of that.”
“You resist because you’ve come to love the throne yourself! You would take it from me!”
“No, you fool of a child.” Ki’eva’s anger manifested as half-purr, half-hiss. “I will give you the bloody throne upon your eighteenth birthday, as I promised your father, and not a day sooner. You are dismissed.”
Rance grabbed his sister’s arm and Arryk’s, too, and hauled them back across the corridor. They were safely hidden inside Arryk’s vestibule when Nathryk flung open the princess’s door, turned on the threshold and shouted for all to hear, “The throne is mine by right! Neither you nor anyone else will take it from me.” The irate click of his boot heels receded fast. If Father, seated upon the alabaster throne, had shone as brightly and severely as the dawn, Nathryk would be as stunning and dangerous as a storm.
~~~~
Cold autumn rain delayed Princess Ki’eva’s departure, which pleased Nathryk; the rain gave him time to try to talk some sense into her. Each audience was brief and bitter, however, no matter how charming and self-controlled he was when the conversation began. She refused to listen to reason.
Much can happen to a boy before he’s grown. His grandmother had told him that once, long ago. He hadn’t anticipated usurpation by his aunt. Faithless slut.
Who else was in on the scheme? Every bloody soul at court and here at Éndaran, he’d wager. He always knew his own family despised him, Grandmother foremost among them. She had hers coming. They all did. Their heads would ornament Brynduvh’s gates within the week of his enthronement. Grandmother and Uncle Raed and Rance and Chubs. The nickname no longer fit Cousin Istra. Not for some years now. Was she still a virgin? Not the way she carried herself. No, she’d likely fucked every man in the garrison. Ruined. But Nathryk had learned not to care about that. She would be sweet enough when her time came.
So would Arryk, stupid boy. Nathryk’s investigation through his little brother’s rooms had been brief but fruitful. Because of those hidden daggers, the dungeons of Brynduvh would ring with Arryk’s screams.
On the third day the rain swept south. That afternoon at tea, Aunt Ki’eva stood at the window watching the sunlight catch in the water that dripped from the eaves and announced, “I’ll be leaving for Brynduvh first thing in the morning.”
She refused Nathryk an audience.
He cloistered himself in his rooms, tossing back one tumbler of liquor after another. The fat old valet his grandmother had assigned to him bustled about, folding Nathryk’s clothes into the oversized trunk he’d brought from Graynor. “Leave out my travel cloak and my riding boots. I’ll wear this to supper.”
Imprison him here, would she? Damn thieving whore. Traitor! He’d spent his entire life yearning for escape from one place or another. He wouldn’t stand for it any longer. He had his Roreshan stallion, his parting gift from Bano’en; he could ride anywhere he wanted, and Aunt Ki’eva had heard the last plea he would ever voice. It was time for him to command.
He kept his emotions bound up tight inside. He mustn’t let his temper spoil it for him. Calm and confident with the liquor coursing through his veins, he strode down the corridor to his aunt’s suite. Her handmaid and a pair of footmen carried out a trunk and other items that the princess wouldn’t need in the morning. They bowed at his approach, then hurried off, leaving the door open.
“Aunt?” he asked, slipping in and closing the door.
Ki’eva peered from her dressing room and sighed impatiently. “Give up, Nathryk. I won’t hear you anymore. I’m bored with the entire argument. You’re insane to pursue it.” She wore a dinner gown of dark gold silk and ivory lace. Though she stood at the vanity to put on her earrings, she didn’t bother looking in the mirror.
“I’ve ordered my things to be packed,” he told her, falling into a plush chair and flinging a leg over the arm. Beyond the windows, sunset painted the sea brass and indigo. Ragged purple clouds, all that remained of the rain, dwindled on the horizon.
“Oh?” she asked stiffly. Her eyes darted toward him in the mirror as she reached for a perfume bottle. “And where are you going?”
“To Brynduvh with you, of course.”
The scent of night blossoms filled the room. “So you say.”
He leapt from the chair. “I do say! I won’t beg you, Aunt, even if that’s what you expect me to do.”
She rounded on him with a rustle of silk. “I don’t expect you to beg, Nathryk. I expect you to do as you’re told. You’re not king yet, my boy. We have preparations to make—”
“—and assassins to place, bottles of wine to poison, and what else?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. No one is scheming against you.”
“The hell you aren’t!”
She drew back her shoulders, raised her chin. “Paranoia is a poor way to begin a reign.”
“Then give me what is mine! Or I shall take it.”
She answered with a slow nod and a scoffing snort, then hurried for the door. “You never did learn your place.”
Nathryk seized her by the arm and spun her into the wall. Her breath whooshed from her with a grunt. “You stand in my place!” he bellowed in her ear.
“Let me go!” Her fingernails gouged grooves in his forearm. Dots of blood bloomed on his silk sleeve.
“Your Majesty,” he insisted. “Let me go, Your Majesty. Say it!”
“The Abyss take you!” she cried and drove her foot into the side of his knee. Pain lanced through his leg. He collided with the back of an armchair and lurched after her. Her fingers grasped the knob, but Nathryk drove his shoulder into the door and turned the lock. Ki’eva backed away, fear ripe in her darting eyes. The servant’s entrance. She ran for it, but Nathryk threw out a foot. The dignified Princess Regent gasped and toppled face first onto the rug. Her fingernails clawed the woven flowers, but she didn’t scramble up fast enough. Nathryk flipped her onto her back, saw her lip bleeding and he’d not even struck her yet. Her palms barraged his face and her knees pummeled his ribs, but he caught her wrists easily enough and drove one knee between her thighs, then the other. His tongue swiped up the blood on her lip, and it tasted coppery sweet in his mouth.
Ki’eva shrieked in outrage. Smashing a hand over her mouth, Nathryk said, “It’s just you and me now, and who’s going to stop me? I’m the Great Falcon, whore!”
Arryk was desperate to have things back to normal. He doubted ‘normal’ would ever come again, so he grasped onto what he could. In the library, he listened to Master Graidyn read two documents on the punishment of criminals. One was Fieran, one Aralorri. There were hardly any discernible differences.
“Hnh, Brother Realms,” Arryk muttered, and Graidyn looked up from the documents. “Why can’t we get along?”
The old tutor nodded sagely. “There is a great deal of determination that goes into such prolonged hatred, Highness. For one side to give in would mean swallowing a vast amount of pride and leaving itself vulnerable to an enemy who may choose to keep hating.”
“Was war and conquest the only way my father could achieve what he wanted?”
“Who can say, now?” Grief strayed into Graidyn’s red-rimmed eyes. “Given the results, war might not have been the best way after all.”
How then? Could the reunification of Westervael ever be achieved? Such a bold, grand dream. It took a bold man to dream it, and a bolder plan to accomplish it. War should have been the easy, direct way, if costly. But a thousand things had gone wrong. War, Arryk had read, was the result of failure, of one kind or another. Was it true? Could a good thing come from something terrible? How could unification of two peoples follow those people slaughtering one another? No, his father meant to conquer, not unify. Uniting the Brother Realms, truly uniting them, would take a different kind of vision. Nathryk d
idn’t have it, nor did he care to.
Heavy stomps and muffled thumps shook the ceiling. The occasional gruff shout descended as well, though the words were lost. With a pained sigh, Arryk said, “They’re fighting about it again. Poor Aunt. I don’t envy her that battle.”
“Nor I, Highness. She’ll have some peace after tomorrow, Goddess bless her.”
“Aye, but we won’t.”
A shriek shuddered through the library, and a shadow darted past the window.
“Mother’s mercy,” Graidyn cried, pushing himself up from the table. He ran to the window and shoved back the pane. Arryk peered over his shoulder.
On the cobblestones below, Aunt Ki’eva lay twisted in an unnatural heap. Blood pooled in her golden hair and spread in dark clouds in the puddles of rainwater. Her toes were bare and somehow gruesome in their nakedness. Washerwomen at the well and soldiers from the gatehouse rushed to her, shouting.
“Get up,” Arryk breathed, an eight-year-old boy again screaming into the wind and surf, and keening shullas wheeled overhead.
“There!” Graidyn said, leaning out the window and pointing upward. Arryk didn’t dare lean out and look. He backed from the window, a band of panic tightening around his throat. His tutor whirled from the window. “Nathryk. Did you see? His face reflected in your aunt’s windowpane. He did this. Highness!” Graidyn shook Arryk by the shoulders. “Stay here, do you hear me? I’ll get Rance.”
Arryk reached for his tutor, but too late. Graidyn rushed from the library. Stay here? Yes. With his back to the wall. Arryk slid into his writing desk and watched the door. Frantic voices rose from the courtyard, Lady Eritha’s among them. “Highness!” he heard. Was it Istra calling for him? Feet pounded past the library. Not Graidyn. Not Rance. He shouldn’t be sitting here, he decided. He should be running. Yes, to the nearest port. His racer was just the thing. She’d carry him to safety, and then he’d sail far, far away.
He was halfway out of the desk chair when a shadow filled the doorway. “Rance?” he asked.
