by Ellyn, Court
Arryk belted Raptor and Talon over his doublet. He did not have his father’s skill with fighting knives; he lacked the cold killer instinct, but he’d bested Laral many a time, and Laral had been trained by Kelyn Swiftblade, so Arryk had occasion to feel smug.
Shouts rose from the courtyard; a horse trumpeted angrily; wheels clattered on the stones. Time to go. “You’re dismissed,” Arryk told his squire, pinning the cloak with a silver and emerald brooch. “Go get some breakfast.” The boy bowed and sprang off. “Say goodbye to your father,” Arryk called after him. “And obey your grandda!”
All the shouting brought a moan from the bedchamber. Arryk tiptoed through the breakfast parlor and peeked at the bed. Strawberry curls spilled across a pillow, glistening like threads of spun gold in the sunlight. A bare arm pulled the blankets higher, and she rolled away from the bright windows, frowning. Otherwise, she didn’t wake to kiss her king farewell. No matter. The sentiments would have been false anyway. And Lady Annessa’s eyes were always full of a plea that Arryk couldn’t grant. She’d been Istra’s handmaid. When the queen died, Annessa had mourned almost as deeply as Arryk had. She was sweet and generous and obliging, kept his bed warm and provided brief distractions, but she was not his confidante nor his protector nor his friend. He did not allow it, though she seemed to keep hoping. Part of him didn’t trust her anymore. Had she known the real reason behind Istra’s illness? In those first days, when everything was filtered through a red rage, he’d been a hair’s breadth away from sending her to the headsman’s block with the rest. He still wasn’t sure if sparing her had been the right decision. Or taking her into his bed.
While the sun eased along the curve of her hip, he watched her sleep, hating her. For years now he’d harbored a gently smoldering resentment for everything she knew, everything she hadn’t known until it was too late, everything she represented by lying there. Better not to wake her, else she might see how much she offended him and start crying. When he returned to Brynduvh, he would send her away. Kinder to them both.
Arryk left without a sound.
Sunlight spilled blindingly across the pale sandstone walls surrounding the courtyard and blazed upon the silver helms and long white cloaks of the royal guard. Squires and grooms led horses from the stables. The smell of excitement set the animals to prancing and whickering and tossing their heads. They were a matched set, specifically chosen for coloring and temperament from the best stock Fiera could produce: each was coppery red with four white socks, a thick neck, and a small head, tall and fleet and agile. Green barding trimmed in white satin and blazoned with the white falcon cascaded over their hindquarters, while shiny plate armor guarded their chests and adorned their faces.
Upon Arryk’s appearance, Captain Moray ordered the White Mantles to attention. Their milling, grumbling, and laughing ceased; the sharp ring of their boot heels echoed inside the walls as they marched into ranks. Twenty-five formed a vanguard in front of the carriage and twenty-five made up a rearguard behind it. As soon as the grooms brought each man’s horse, the Mantles mounted as one.
At their head sat Arryk’s brother-in-marriage. As the ranking lieutenant, Rance would take command of the Mantles as soon as they left the city. His father, Lord Raed, stood in the shade under the portico, watching the preparations in somber silence. Shortly after Arryk wed Istra, he named Raed his chancellor. And last year he’d become Lord Éndaran as well, when his mother died. The pull between Éndaran and Brynduvh weighed heavily upon him, but because Raed was one of few trustworthy men, replacing him remained low on Arryk’s list of priorities.
A chain of linked silver falcons was all the adornment Raed permitted himself. He did not wear the bright colors and latest fashions popular at court, but preferred iron-studded leather in black or brown or gray. He was here to take care of the king’s business, not prance around like a peacock. If fops and children were intimidated by his appearance, all the better for the king.
He waited for the White Falcon to acknowledge him, then approached.
“A fine day to embark upon this folly,” Arryk said, glancing at the cloudless sky.
“I will not contradict you, sire.” Raed’s opinion about the Black Falcon’s invitation had rung loudest in the council chamber, and he was far from being the only one who believed trouble loomed. Yet however brazenly the councilors denounced the hand of friendship King Valryk offered, Arryk’s question consistently silenced them: “What happens if I don’t go?”
That was no way to demonstrate his desire for peace.
“Are you sure you won’t travel with the full company?” Raed asked.
Arryk sighed. They had discussed this the night before. It was too early in the morning and too late in the preparations to lose his patience with a man whose only desire was his safety.
“My mind will rest easier if you allow me to accompany you. Why not leave Lady Athmar in charge of Fiera’s defense?”
“Because I do not love Lady Athmar, Uncle,” Arryk replied. Risking Rance was bad enough. “And there’s no one I trust more with Fiera’s safekeeping.” In truth, Raed was Nathryk’s uncle, not Arryk’s, but during his years living at Éndaran it had become natural to think of him as family, and because of Istra, Arryk had the privilege of regarding him as a father.
As for the rest of his escort, Arryk’s decision was easy. The Black Falcon’s guard numbered fifty, so he too would surround himself with fifty Mantles. No more, but no less. “Rance will not leave my side, nor Laral. And I doubt Lady Athmar will stray more than two feet away. If every one of the Mantles stayed behind, I’d wager on her if it comes to a fight.” Arryk knew better than to hope for a chuckle from Raed. “Stop worrying. They won’t let me come to harm.”
Raed was not convinced. He cleared his throat, uneasy. “If I may, sire?” Was this hesitation from the man who had not shrunk from the task of arguing against the king’s decision to travel north?
Arryk waved him on.
“Be careful you do not put your full trust in Laral during the convention—”
“But he’s my—”
“Your dearest friend, I know. But he’s still Aralorri, deep down, and a man on his own turf is like to feel the tug of different loyalties.”
Arryk saw the sense in his chancellor’s words, though it pained him. “I will keep your advice close to heart.”
Satisfied, Raed escorted the king to his carriage. It was a newfangled contraption with steel coils made to absorb the worst of the jolts. Dark green velvet cushions padded the seat and lined the walls. If the rains hadn’t rutted the roads too badly, Arryk might arrive in Aralorr with only a few bumps and bruises. His magnificent white charger was tethered to the boot. Arryk paused to stroke the soft gray muzzle. Weather permitting or not, he would ride into Bramoran rather than hide in a carriage and allow the Aralorris to imagine that a monster lurked inside, or a coward. He was not the showman his father had been, but this was the occasion to fake it.
“I will send a letter upon my arrival,” he said, “another when the convention concludes, and another when we make our departure. They will contain private matters that outsiders who may wish to forge correspondence from me will not know. If you do not receive these letters, you may assume the worst has happened. Then and only then do you have my permission to cross the Bryna with aid.”
“Understood, sire.”
“You speak with my mouth in my absence.”
Raed snapped a formal bow and opened the carriage door for him.
Arryk wanted to shake him and say, “I grew up in your house with your children! I married your daughter! Treat me as a son, not a king!” But this would only fluster a man who armored himself in protocol. Instead, Arryk clapped him on the shoulder and climbed into the carriage. Some considerate and overly exuberant soul had doused the inside with perfumes. He would arrive at Bramoran stinking of roses and myrrh.
“Tell the driver I will stop at the garden on the way.” He didn’t have to specify which garden.
The heralds blasted a pair of silver horns, and the king’s retinue rumbled through the gate.
The streets of Brynduvh curled and sloped over one hill and the next, passed through markets smelling of frying bread and smoked meat, sheep manure and gutters and sweat. Throngs of people scattered to the wayside. Many of them cheered as the White Falcon passed, and they’d not even been paid to. The sight of it warmed him. He tossed out a handful of silver coins so that they did not forget that he valued them.
Beyond the city’s east gate lay Istra’s Haven, or just “the garden.” When first Arryk returned to Brynduvh as the White Falcon, he insisted that he and those dearest to him continue their picnics and their hunts in the countryside. His mastiffs needed a place to run, and he needed a sanctuary where the chirping of birds instead of the squawking of advisers spiced the air. He’d purchased the forest and the surrounding hills from Lord Haethrid for wine, horses, and silver, but it was worth it. How Istra loved bringing her falcons to the reed pond to hunt the ducks. They roasted the fowl right there on the banks, he and she and Rance. Laral sometimes, too. It was during one of these outings that Arryk took Laral’s advice and asked Istra to be his queen. She balked at first, like a dove fleeing before a great black whirlwind. But when she considered the other candidates, she wrinkled her nose and decided no one would keep Arryk’s interests closer to heart than she.
His advisers had howled, but what could they do? He chose the two most outspoken old men, and again following Laral’s advice, sent them to Zhian and Dorél as permanent ambassadors. The howling stopped.
After Istra’s death, Arryk ordered a wall built around the estate. None were permitted there now but the groundskeepers and the game wardens. They kept the pond stocked with fish and the woods with the elusive snow elk that Laral enjoyed stalking. But Arryk rarely came with hunting parties anymore; he mostly came to be alone and to think.
Master Fairwyn, Keeper of the Trees, was on hand to greet the White Falcon as soon as he climbed from the carriage. “I won’t be long,” Arryk said, as the man unlocked the great iron gate. “Did I interrupt your breakfast?”
“Never, Your Majesty.” Fairwyn lived with his family in the gatehouse. It was good to hear the laughter of children bouncing through the open windows.
“Have the swans returned?”
“They have, indeed, sire.”
“Splendid.” Inside the gate, raked gravel paths meandered through flowerbeds humming with bees. Two old men trimmed the hedges while their wives knelt on cushions, pulling weeds from among roses and wildflowers that had yet to bloom. Only the grounds nearest the gate had been tamed in this way; the rest of the estate remained wild. The keepers bowed an exit as Arryk passed. They did not need to be reminded of their orders: when the king visited, he was not to be disturbed.
Arryk followed the path to the pond. A dock stretched out past the reeds toward a thundering fountain. Two swans circled the splashing waters. The pair had made the pond their home for three years now. The garden felt less lonely with them reigning over it. The ducks had returned as well. They paddled away, griping noisily as Arryk approached the end of the dock. He reached inside the feed box, which was kept full of corn and seed and bread crusts from the gatehouse, and tossed a handful into the water. The ducks forgave him quickly enough.
He wandered on toward the cupola. Under the marble dome, Istra waited for him. Carved from the finest alabaster, the statue stood high on a plinth. She was only slightly larger than life-size. Skirts swirled about her legs, as if she had turned suddenly. A falcon perched on her wrist and her eyes gazed over the pond and the flocks of waterfowl. Despite the dress, she wore a sword on her hip. Everyone they knew had joked that the queen ought to be named Captain of the White Mantles, so dedicated was she to Arryk’s wellbeing.
Pigeons liked to take shelter under the dome. Droppings dripped down Istra’s shoulder, in her curling hair. Arryk stepped onto the plinth and dusted off the mess with his kerchief.
Five years. Five years was all they had before spoiled, scheming men destroyed everything. Arryk never suspected they would carry their resentment so far.
By the third miscarriage, all the fun of getting an heir was gone. Fear replaced hope. Arryk’s advisers blamed it on Istra’s training as a knight. She’d never be able to have children, they said, though that was a lie. Plenty of female knights had children, Istra’s own grandmother among them. When Arryk refused to put her aside, those old foxes took matters into their wizened paws.
“I’m so sorry,” Istra had whispered, too weak with fever and pain to raise her hand to his face. Her bright golden hair had grown dull and clung to her cheeks in sweaty tendrils. Black bruises circled her eyes, and she’d become so small lying there for days while the physicians looked on, prescribing more of that tainted tea.
“Sorry for what?” he asked. For losing another baby? For not detecting the truth before it was too late? For leaving him alone? He never found out why she felt the need to apologize. The White Falcon was a widower at twenty-one.
In reparation, he had unleashed the full fury of the throne. He hoped he never needed to instigate that kind of terror and bloodshed again. No one in Brynduvh had been safe. Houses were turned inside out. Entire families were rounded up and tossed into cells. Inquisitors were given full rein to pry the truth from proud, obstinate mouths. Screams rose up through the floor of the throne room. Later, Arryk was amazed by how little the sound had troubled him.
Nathryk would have been proud.
In the end, more than two dozen heads had adorned the city gates. Every one of the councilors he’d inherited from his father, three physicians, and one midwife had gone to the block. Arryk himself promised the midwife amnesty if she told the truth about the babies. Yes, Lord Quelstorn had paid her to ensure the queen lost every one of them, because the White Falcon had spurned his granddaughter in favor of someone else. Arryk broke his promise to the woman, and Lord Quelstorn was dragged out of his castle and made to walk all the way to Brynduvh tied behind his horse. He arrived on bleeding feet and dared shout that he didn’t deserve this treatment. Arryk ordered him tied to a spit and turned slowly over a low fire in Sanguine Square until he confessed publically. His head joined the others, and his sons and daughters and grandchildren were shipped to Ixaka and their lands granted to someone else. Ravens circled the gates for weeks. New faces, younger faces now lined the council tables, with Laral often among them.
In the years since, Arryk was given to long periods of silence. The spells came and went in their own seasons; he couldn’t predict when they would come or when they would lift. He locked himself in his suite, thinking of nothing, feeling nothing, relishing a dim kind of half-light and resenting the bright light of day. It was usually Laral or Rance who dragged him back to the land of the living. They caused him to care about his duty again, his people, his legacy.
This was the reason he found it difficult to believe Laral capable of betrayal. Cruel things happened in war, he’d read. Families split over ideals, houses torn, friendships sundered. If the convention ended in bloodshed, Laral would have to choose. His greatest fear. He and Arryk had discussed it on occasion, but never at length. Neither liked thinking about it when the hunt was going so well.
Folding the kerchief and putting it away, Arryk realized Istra’s statue faced north. Today that seemed significant. Beyond the pond and the forest rose the Shadow Mounds, misty green swells like whales breaching. Beyond them lay Aralorr and the road to uncertainty. “Yes, I’m leaving,” he told the statue. “I wish you were, too. Would you have talked me out of it or insist I go? It’s an opportunity, you know. We could mend a thousand years of hostility. Wouldn’t that be something?”
A duck responded with an indignant quack. The two swans glided past. One tilted its head and peered up at him, then drifted on.
He would like to delay longer, watch the deer come bounding out of the trees at dusk, but he was already later getting started than he’d intended. If Arryk
failed to arrive at Brengarra at the appointed time, Laral would worry that highwaymen had fallen upon him and send out a search party. It wouldn’t be the first time.
At the gate, Arryk thanked the gardeners for keeping things tidy. “But do tend to my lady’s statue. The pigeons, you know.”
The White Mantles came to attention, and Rance glanced back for his orders.
“To Brengarra,” Arryk announced and climbed into the carriage. Through the window, he watched Master Fairwyn close the iron gate. Rance gave a shout, and the carriage lurched forward. Arryk lowered the window and peered back. Why was he filled with the foreboding that he had visited Istra’s garden for the last time?
~~~~
Laral felt as if someone had stuffed scratchy wool socks up his nose then whacked him in the head with a mallet while jumping up and down on his chest. Fever boiled in his face, turned his cheeks shiny red, made his skin hurt. He hunkered lower into his armchair before the great fire in the Lord’s Hall. This grim, drafty, high-vaulted room had been the heart of the original castle, a thousand years ago. The thatched roof had since been replaced with gray slate and the earthen floor laid over with heartpine. Dusty heads of red stags and giant boars peered down from the wattle-and-daub walls. Long oaken tables ran the length of the floor, though rousing feasts were rarely held here anymore. Bethyn’s father had preferred the Hall for his private getaway; here, his fire roared as loudly and hot as he wanted it to, and his wolfhounds lounged at his feet and no one cared if they drooled on the floor. Some years passed before Laral felt comfortable coming here. Invading hallowed space, it was. By the time his second child was born, however, he’d adopted Lord Jaeron’s chair for his own.
Bethyn tucked a blanket around his legs and clucked her tongue. “You really ought to stay in bed.”
