Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga)

by Ellyn, Court

  Kethlyn scowled like a prisoner defying the jailor. “Are you threatening me?”

  Valryk laid his head back on the deep cushion and laughed. “Cousin, I am guaranteeing you.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  Shrewd, Valryk thought. I can’t tell him everything. He stood, laid a hand upon Kethlyn’s shoulder. “Your silence, your listening ear, and your obedience.”

  “You need not toss the circumstances of my birth in my face to receive those things.”

  “That’s what I hoped to hear.” He raised his goblet. “To the kitchen raiders, partners in crime.”

  Kethlyn raised his, warily, and they drank to seal the pact.

  ~~~~

  Part Two:

  The Bloodletting

  1000 A.E.

  15

  Woe to the Children of Lethryn!

  their land was flame, their water

  blood.

  — from Chants of Fire, by Byrn the Blue

  The spring equinox marked the duchess’s return to Ilswythe and the festivities of the Greening Fair. Carah spent the morning preening, in preparation for the evening’s dances. She didn’t care much for the daytime events, which amounted to little more than kempt-up cottars venturing out of their houses to trade the wares they’d spent the winter fashioning. Children shrieked during leg races and barrel rolls, and farmers competed over who tilled their muddy field the fastest. It was a way to make a dull job more interesting, Carah supposed, and Da put up shiny new ploughshares and traces for the prize.

  Her interest lay in what happened after dark. Bonfires dotted the hills and pipers played until dawn while the people danced. Mum and Da let her attend the Greening dances on the stipulation that she didn’t slip off with a commoner’s son. Eliad served as her faithful chaperone and provided her a tireless dance partner. Though the village boys and the men of the garrison ogled her all night, none dared ask to dance with her. Eliad wouldn’t have let them anyway. He arrived from Drenéleth late last night.

  “Did you see his mistresses?” Carah asked Esmi. Her handmaid pinned her dark curls into place. Each pin had a mother-of-pearl flower fixed to it, making her hair looked like the night sky studded with stars.

  “Only a glimpse, m’ lady.”

  “I might’ve known one would be a redhead. Eliad always had a soft spot for redheads. They were both pretty, though. Good taste, don’t you think?”

  “Low taste, since you asked. The redhead happens to be a shepherd’s daughter.”

  “Really?” Carah giggled. “How delightful. I wonder if they’ll be down to luncheon.”

  “I doubt it. Your father might not mind, but they won’t be welcome at your mother’s table, I warrant.”

  “Oh, poo. I’d hoped to have them draw straws, see which gets to be Lady Drenéleth.”

  Esmi’s deft fingers paused. “Don’t you aggravate the situation. It’s unseemly bringing them here in the first place.”

  Carah snorted indelicately, and her cheeks heated. “He couldn’t do without them, I suppose.”

  “Incorrigible.” Esmi stepped back for inspection.

  Carah had stopped growing when she stood over her mother by five inches. Her every step was an embodiment of poise and grace. At eighteen, she prided herself on having become the envy of every highborn lady and the desire of every male between the Glacier and the Galda. Mother said she had become unbearably conceited and warned her not to flirt so much. It was unladylike, and the duchess was one to know. So today Carah resolved to ignore everyone who wasn’t family and play the humble maiden. The dress she’d chosen was sensible in the lingering cold, the wool silk-soft and a gray so pale that the merchant had called it silver. She dabbed on raspberry lip dye, then dug into her jewelry box for her pearl earrings. Underneath them lay the fairy pendant holding the blue pearl, the one Uncle Thorn had given her, the one she swore never to take off. The sight of it induced an old ache of longing. She locked the ache inside the box with the pendant and hurried downstairs.

  “What’s for dinner, Yris?” she asked the steward in the Great Corridor. Master Yorin’s oldest daughter had filled his shoes upon his passing.

  “Dinner, m’lady?” Not much flustered Yris; she’d been too well trained. But something made her fidgety, absentminded.

  “The meal after breakfast but before tea?”

  “Oh. Yes, m’ lady. Dinner.” She giggled and added, “You won’t believe who’s come. Must tell the staff. Er, lamb cutlets. Her Grace asked for you. In the solar. Pardons.” She bowed and hurried off for the kitchens.

  “But, Yris, who—?”

  “They’re in the courtyard, m’ lady,” the steward called back, impatience echoing high in vaults.

  Miffed at the steward’s vagueness, Carah huffed off, determined to see for herself. The massive bronze doors stood open to let in the fresh spring air; voices floated in with the breeze. One belonged to her father. The other? Carah’s heart leapt into her throat. The hope was unwelcome. She pressed it down with all her past disappointments and emerged into the glaring sunlight.

  There he stood in his blue robe, patting dust from his sleeves and chatting with Da. Carah stared, while four years’ worth of nightmares of him vanishing and she searching, fruitlessly searching, swept over her. But she was awake, and here he was, large as life. She laughed in delight, forgetting her resentment, and ran down the steps. She flung her arms about his neck, and he held her so tightly that she knew he’d missed her, too. “You’re safe,” she sobbed. “We thought you were dead. Where have you been? Why didn’t you write?”

  “Darling girl,” Thorn muttered and kissed her brow. Stepping away, he held her at arms’ length. “So fine. You make me feel older than ever.”

  To Carah, Thorn didn’t look old so much as worn. He was thinner than she remembered. The lines had deepened around his eyes and mouth, and not from laughter. The green marks on his eyelids, which she had always found unspeakably enchanting, were gone. Bone-deep weariness lurked in his eyes. He wore his hair shorter, at his shoulders rather than his waist, and the four gold stripes edged toward silver. This above all startled Carah. She had been so eager to grow up that she ignored the fact that everyone else aged right along with her.

  Over his robe he wore a sword-belt. An elaborate hilt of twined leaves was nicked and battered. Carah had seen him carry a sword on his saddle but never wear one.

  “You were in trouble, weren’t you!” she cried. “I knew it, I felt it.”

  “Did you?” That seemed to please him, but she couldn’t guess why. “It was nothing we couldn’t handle, love.” His smile put her at ease. “We’ve come to put aside our troubles for a while.”

  “You mean to stay?”

  “If all goes well.”

  Joy threatened to burst her heart. “And it’s not even my birthday. I must find Mum and tell her. She’ll be so pleased.”

  She ran for the door, but halfway up the steps she stopped and cast a puzzled frown over her shoulder.

  Off to the side, a silent figure held the reins of two magnificent black horses. We’ve come? Carah thought her uncle meant Saffron and himself. Who was this beardless youth who seemed to find the cobblestones more interesting than the lord of the house or his daughter? Dark, waist-length hair was pulled neatly back from a sun-darkened face, and he too wore a sword over a robe of brownish-red velvet. Gold embroidery curled along the hems. An avedra robe!

  Carah descended the steps and slowly approached the stranger. He raised his face and regarded her coolly with stunning aquamarine eyes. Carah’s breath caught in her throat.

  “Love,” said Thorn, “this is Rhian son of Ryrden of the Pearl Islands, my apprentice. Well, hardly apprentice anymore—”

  “Your apprentice!” Carah cried. Old anger erupted into her face. “I’ve been waiting four years for you to come back, all the while imagining you a pile of ash somewhere. But when you finally show yourself, you tell me you’ve been prenticing someone else! Just like that? L
ike it’s no great thing? It’s a wonder you bothered to come back at all!”

  Tears welling, she ran for the keep, but her father seized her by the arm. “I will not suffer this childishness, Carah,” he growled into her ear. “Apologize to our guest and to your uncle.”

  She wrenched her arm free. “No, Da. He’s the one who can’t keep a promise.” She fled into the keep, leaving her father to express whatever regrets he liked. This stabbing, sinking ache had pierced her chest too often before; she swore she would never let herself feel it again. But to no avail. She sobbed her way to the stairwell and heard her mother’s voice calling from the solar.

  “Dearest, what’s wrong?”

  Carah whirled and jabbed a finger toward the happy sunlight beyond the bronze doors. “Go outside and see for yourself.”

  Her mother blinked blankly. “Yris told me your uncle returned. That should please you.”

  Carah broke into a wail, ran to her chamber, and slammed the door.

  ~~~~

  Kelyn had no intention of apologizing for his daughter, and he’d be damned if he’d suffer embarrassment when the accusation rang true, even if Carah had expressed it inappropriately. “She counted on you, brother. When you didn’t show up, Rhoslyn and I had to nurse the wounds you inflicted. Your reason for breaking her heart had better be a bloody good one.”

  Weariness and sorrow creased Thorn’s face. “Is war a good enough reason?”

  Before Kelyn could ask what he meant, Rhoslyn hurried onto the landing. Her hand flew to her chest. “Thorn, you damnable fool! How are you? Come in and tell us everything.” She too must have mistaken Rhian for a groom; her gaze darted past him, returned and stuck. “And who is this?”

  “Rhian, my apprentice,” said Thorn.

  “Ah. So you’re what my daughter is upset about.”

  Kelyn glimpsed a touch of ice in Rhoslyn’s eye as she glanced toward Thorn. She concealed it masterfully, however, as she reached for Rhian’s arm. “No matter. I’m sure everything will be sorted out soon enough. You must be tired.” She ushered them into the family’s favorite parlor. Yris poured Doreli red into three goblets and brandy into a fourth. Kelyn hadn’t drunk red wine by choice in over twenty years.

  Settling on the edge of a settee, Rhoslyn asked, “Have you been ill, Thorn?”

  He sank into a fireside armchair with a groan. “No, Your Grace, never ill. In fact, I’m in better shape now than I ever was at twenty.” He leaned toward his brother and patted Kelyn’s belly. “Unlike the lord of the house.”

  Kelyn huffed indignantly and wagged a finger. “I’ll have you know I’ve not had to let out my belt in a decade.”

  Thorn grinned. “Looks like that belt is pinching a bit to me.” He cast a wink toward Rhoslyn.

  Kelyn set down his glass with a sharp click. “Gone for four years and immediately he starts with the insults. If we were still twenty, I’d take you down and make you beg for mercy.”

  “Does that mean you can’t take me down at forty, War Commander?”

  Kelyn tensed for the spring.

  “Boys!” cried Rhoslyn. “Take it outside.”

  Thorn’s laughter was deep and easy, as if he hadn’t had the opportunity for laughter in many, many days and relished the feel of it. He stretched out his legs in leisurely fashion and took the time to swill his wine. “Now that Carah thoroughly despises me, how is Kethlyn?”

  Rhoslyn beamed with pride. “I left him in Windhaven. For the first time, he didn’t come back with me. He insisted. I’m going my best not to worry about him. I have to admit, he is ready to take over most of my responsibilities. Often all he requires is my signature on official documents. I suppose I should be hurt to be reduced to nothing more than a scrawl of ink, but I’m relieved actually. Let Kethlyn worry about merchant squabbles and pirate hangings, and—”

  Thorn interrupted with a snort of laughter. “Hanging the kindred, are we?” He glanced at his apprentice.

  All this while, Rhian had remained as aloof as he’d been in the courtyard. He seemed content to tag along behind his mentor, owning neither opinion nor passion about much of anything. He reclined in the velvet chair in the corner, savoring the wine. At Thorn’s comment, he glanced up and shifted uneasily.

  “Thorn said you’re from the Pearl Islands?” Kelyn asked.

  Rhian cleared his throat. “Rávalin, aye, m’ lord. My family were pearl fishers.”

  Thorn tossed a pillow at him. “Not going to claim kin after all?”

  Rhian blushed, but he blinked as if at a loss.

  “Claim kin?” Rhoslyn leaned around the arm of Kelyn’s chair to see the young avedra better.

  “Sure,” Thorn answered for him. “Rhian here is practically family.”

  Rhian managed a narrow-eyed grin. Kelyn suspected that their relationship wasn’t always roses. “ ‘Practically’ doesn’t make it so, Dathiel.”

  “Please, I’d like to hear it,” Rhoslyn prompted.

  “So be it, Your Grace,” Rhian said. “It happens that my Grandmother Raysa had a sister. And that sister happened to marry the younger brother of a certain duke, and that is all.”

  Rhoslyn’s hazel eyes brightened. “The banished brother who turned pirate! His son was my cousin Rehaan, captain of the Aurion!”

  “My cousin as well, Your Grace. Only on the low-down and dirty pirate side.”

  Rhoslyn squirmed on the edge of the settee. “Who could’ve guessed? And yet there’s something about your face that reminds me of Rehaan. Did you know him at all?”

  “I met him only once. All I remember is that he wore red and he scared the shit outta me. Oh, pardons. I don’t think I was even three. He’d returned to the Islands so Prince Naovhan could pardon him. That was right before he sailed south for the last time.”

  Rhoslyn saddened. “ ‘Down she dove ‘neath the indigo main’,” she muttered, quoting the old song.

  Thorn stood abruptly. “Well, Your Grace, I leave my apprentice in your care while I go wrestle my ugly brother to the ground. Outside, of course.”

  Kelyn took the hint. Time for serious talk.

  ~~~~

  Atop the eastern tower, Thorn filled his lungs with the scent of home. Greening meadows and muddy riverbanks, horses and sheep and kitchen smoke. Under these lingered hints of cold, lichen-painted stone and the perfume from his mother’s garden. In all his travels, there was nothing more familiar or comforting. He never meant to be away so long.

  A cloudbank hid the tops of the Silver Mountains, threatening another spell of cold, wet weather. And over the Drakhans, Forath rose alone. He followed fast after the sun, a bloody gash on the blue face of the sky. He and his silver sister had been feuding longer than expected. The two moons hadn’t shared the sky all winter, and they showed no sign of merging. Thorn had asked the Elaran stargazers in the observatory towers about the matter; they told him that the last time the phenomenon occurred was a thousand years before, during the last year of the Human-Elf War.

  Thorn eyed the red crescent with a silly sense of resentment, as if the moon were responsible for all that had happened in the past few years—and all that was sure to come.

  Kelyn followed his gaze. “The first night the Warrior Moon rose by himself was the same night Rhorek died. I didn’t think anything of it at first. But now it seems fitting. You knew, I suppose.”

  Thorn glanced down at the onyx ring upon his hand. Rhorek’s gift to him. His fingers had thickened; the only way he could remove the ring now was to cut off his finger. “I heard he was ill a long time. I would’ve come, but I don’t visit sick beds anymore.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Kelyn leaned heavily against the battlement. “I’m glad Father died in battle, rather than suffer for weeks like Mother and Rhorek. I guess it wouldn’t have been appropriate for Rhorek to die on the field. He was never one for war. So what about this war you—”

  “What of Valryk?” Thorn interrupted. A few more moments of peace, that’s all he wanted. “What kind o
f king is he?”

  Kelyn glowered at him. His resentment was a crackling wave rolling over Thorn. “It’s too early to tell,” he said at last. “He’s intelligent, quick-witted, but impulsive. He’ll beggar the crown yet with all his building projects. And after a year he still seems closed to advisement. His council speaks, and he shuts us off. He sent his mother back to Rhyverdane. All her experience, and he has no use for it. He has as little use for me. You’d think all those years I trained him would have made us friends, but no. The past few months have been all too quiet, mostly because Valryk sends for Kethlyn instead.”

  While Thorn listened, his gaze swept the hills and valleys. It had become a habit, this watching. The sea of land around them appeared empty and benign, but Thorn knew better. Across the Avidan, crowds gathered on the edges of wide fields, cheering on teams of mules and men behind sharpened plows. The rich earth rolled aside in black curls. Below the castle walls, tables and stalls were set up for the selling of wool and pies, ceramics and furniture. People bartered for the things that caught their eye; boisterous voices wafted up the walls on the updraft.

  How untroubled, these who had no inkling that a storm raged beyond the edge of sight. Thorn lifted a short, bitter prayer to the Mother-Father that these good folk might live forever in blissful ignorance. But he suspected the storm was about to spin through their quiet lives.

  He crossed the tower turret and examined the fortress grounds. Ilswythe’s gates stood open; villagers and visitors came and went freely.

  “Did you hear me?” Kelyn asked.

  Forcing a casual shrug, Thorn addressed the matter at hand, “You’ll have to advise Kethlyn, then.”

  “That hasn’t been easy either.”