Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 05

by A Pride of Princes (v1. 0)

  A quick glance over her shoulder; the curve of one fair cheek. And grim determination in the line of her lovely mouth. He saw her jerk the mare offstride and then turned her northward instead of west.

  She will kill the mare yet— But the thought was never finished. The mare's passing startled a hare from cover and he broke. The stallion, startled, leaped sideways, stumbled, ran directly into a huge felled tree and, in trying to leap it off-balance, merely succeeded in snapping front legs. His rider was thrown headlong out of the saddle into the nearest tree.

  Lir— But the light of the world was snuffed out.

  A sound. A voice: a woman's, with desperation in her tone. Telling him in accented Homanan to wake up, and then when he did not, pleading something else in indecipherable Solindish.

  Solindish.

  His eyes snapped open. He was conscious almost at once of extreme discomfort, all tangled in vine and bracken and clawed by boughs and limbs. His head throbbed unmercifully; he recalled, dimly, that it had collided with a tree trunk.

  He shut his eyes again. Gods, but my head hurts. . . .

  He heard a rustle in deadfall and underbrush. Through his lashes he saw the bright colors of her clothing, now dulled by debris and mudstains. That she meant to come to his side was plain; equally plain was that Rael, a flurry of wings and talons, would not allow her to.

  "Oh, wake up," she begged. "Wake up and call off this hawk!"

  Rael swept down again from the tree and slapped a wingtip across her raised arm, driving her away once more.

  Enough, Hart said dryly. Have you no eyes, lir? The girl is magnificent—let her come as close as she wants.

  Rael's relief was tangible as it thrummed throughout the link. But his tone belied the truth. Was this a ruse, then, to trick her into giving you your payment?

  Have you ever known me to willingly suffer so much pain in the name of a woman?

  Rael lighted on a tree limb. No, he said dryly, and folded his wings away.

  Hart opened his eyes again. "If I try to move, lady, will my head fall off? Or is it still attached?"

  She twitched in surprise, then shifted a trifle closer.

  "Alive, then," she said in relief. "Oh, I thought I had killed you."

  "No." He levered himself carefully up on one arm and wished he had not; his head throbbed alarmingly and a bough stabbed him in the ribs. "Well, perhaps you did."

  Tentatively he fingered his forehead. "Gods, lady, I would say you need no bodyguard, nor even my protection."

  She said something in Solindish, then shook her head. "I meant no harm to you. I wanted to escape you, aye, but not at the cost of your life."

  "And my horse?" Hart looked over to where the chestnut lay. The stallion's breathing was labored. That he had exhausted himself trying to rise with his shattered legs was plain; Hart cursed aloud in the Old Tongue with as much eloquence as he could muster. "You acquit youself well," he said shortly, and pushed himself out of the underbrush with another bitten off curse. He wavered and clutched the tree for support. But the stallion's plight was more imperative than pain; grimly he unhooked his bow and jerked an arrow from his quiver, walking unsteadily to the chestnut.

  "The hawk—" she began.

  Hart did not so much as glance at her. "Rael will not harm you." He nocked the arrow.

  She rose, skirts tangled on her boots, and came to stand beside him. "Had I the strength, I would do it myself."

  Mocking: "Aye, lady. Of course." He raised the bow and drew back the string.

  Released. It sang briefly, so briefly, and then the stallion was dead.

  He hooked an arm through the bow, settling it across his back, and bent to unfasten the saddlepacks. The horse was slack in death, and very heavy; Hart had to expend more energy than he had left to free the saddlepacks. His head ached, and he sat abruptly to avoid falling down.

  "Give them to me. I will put them on my mare."

  Slender hands beckoned him to comply. "Where do you go, Homanan?"

  "Lestra. Lady—there is no need for that."

  She took the packs anyway and slung them across her mare's white rump, buckling them onto the saddle. Then she brought a skin of wine and knelt beside him. "She is not accustomed to carrying two. You will ride, and I will lead."

  "Nor is there need for that." He drank, returned the skin, rose unsteadily.

  She swept the glorious hair away from her face and showed him lifted brows. "And do you intend to fly?"

  Hart laughed. "Aye, lady, I do."

  She nodded calmly, plainly doubting him. "Even Ihlini cannot do that."

  He looked at her sharply and recalled this was Solinde, the realm the Ihlini called home. Here they lived with impunity. "Thank the gods," he said curtly. "No, such things are for the Cheysuli."

  "Aye, but—" She broke off. The color ran out of her face, leaving her wan as death. She looked quickly at Rael, then back at Hart. In silence she asked the question.

  "Aye," he told her, "I am. Rael is my lir."

  She pulled her mantle more closely around her slender body, as if to ward off a chill, "I thought—I thought him merely well-trained, when he would not let me near."

  "Lir are not trainable; they do what they will do." He resettled his bow and quiver. "And now, lady, I suggest—"

  But she did not allow him to finish. "I have heard they have yellow eyes. Yours are decidedly blue."

  He raised his brows. "Doubtless you have heard many things . . . some of them may be true." He smiled as he saw her frown of indecision. "Aye, most Cheysuli have yellow eyes. I do not because I am also Homanan. But the rest of me is Cheysuli."

  She looked at Rael again. "You become him."

  "No. I become another. Rael remains Rael."

  She looked at his hands, at his fingers, at the shape of the bones of his face. As if she searched for some clue that would make him bird instead of human. Raptor in place of man. "The Ihlini have said—"

  He overrode her. "Do you traffic with Ihlini?"

  She stiffened. "This is Solinde, not Homana! The Ihlini have freedom here."

  "Freedom to raise a rebellion? To rule this realm in place of those who should?"

  "What is it to you?" she asked angrily. "You are a Homanan, a Cheysuli . . . what is Solinde to you? You have no stake in what happens in my land!"

  "Do I not?" He smiled. "Oh, but lady, I think I do ... because one day I will rule it."

  "Will you?" She faced him squarely, tangled hair hanging to knees, skirts caught high on her boots. "You say so, to me?"

  "I will say so to anyone, because it is the truth." That she was genuinely angry, he knew, because it was shouted from her posture and the expression in her eyes. He had seen such anger before, such cold, controlled anger, born of a true hostility shaped by war and heritage. He had seen it in the clans, in the older warriors who had come through Shaine's qu'nwhiin and decades of Solindish-Ihlini wars. But he had not thought to see it in her.

  "Lady, I do not lie in hopes of impressing you—"

  "Oh, no?" she asked. "Men have done it before. Homanans have done it before. Why should I believe you are any different?" Icy eyes swept him from head to toe; contempt was implicit in her posture. "I think your sincerity requires practice, Homanan. You are not particularly convincing."

  Hart stared at her. She was either completely unaware of her disarray, or else so angry she did not care. Or else she realizes that nothing could dull her beauty.

  He wet his lips. "Lady—" he began patiently.

  "No one rules Solinde," she said coldly. "No one. A regent sits in Lestra claiming right of authority from Homana's Cheysuli Mujhar." One arm gestured toward the city and a rigid finger divided the air. "But is that a ruler?—no. A travesty, no more. We are a proud land, shapechanger, and unused to kowtowing to a foreign Mujhar who rules out of ignorance, holding Solinde in trust for a man we do not—cannot—know. So, shapechanger, when you tell me lies for your own amusement, to impress me or otherwise, it bears no fr
uit at all. I am impervious to such things."

  "Impervious to the truth?" Without waiting for an answer he moved past her to the mare and dug into his saddlepacks. When be had found the thing he sought, he turned back again and put it into her hands. "There, lady—the truth."

  She stared at the thing in her hands. It was small for a thing of so much significance, and yet the shocked tears that sprang to her eyes belied the seeming worthlessness of it. "This is the seal," she said, "the Third Seal of Solinde!"

  "Aye."

  She stared at him; all the color had left her face. "The Trey was broken when the war with Carillon was lost. When Bellam was slain." Her heavy swallow was visible against the fragile flesh of her throat. "The regent has one seal, the Mujhar the other two. But—this is the Third Seal!"

  He had not expected her to know it so precisely, only to know the cipher. Nor had he expected the seal to have such an effect on her, that she would stare at him in shocked discovery. He had every intention of telling her who he was, if only to prove he was not a liar, but it seemed she already knew.

  She clasped the seal against her chest, shielded by pride and hair. "So." Her voice was cool, dulled by shock and hostility. "So, the Mujhar at last sends his wastrel son to sit in judgment on Solinde."

  Wastrel son. It hurt. Worse than he had expected.

  "Lady—"

  She backed away a step, edging toward the mare. "If I took this ... if I took this with me and sent men back to murder you—"

  "—you would be executed." He moved too swiftly for her, catching her hands in his own. "Aye, lady, wastrel son that I am, I am also the Prince of Solinde."

  She laughed. She laughed so hard she cried, and then thrust the seal at him. "Take it! Take it! Without the other two it is nothing. Even in my hands!"

  "Lady—"

  But she was free of him, shedding his hands easily as she leaped for the mare and scrambled into the saddle.

  Curtained by hair, there was little of her face he could see. But he heard her words all too clearly.

  "Hart, Prince of Solinde, know you that battle has been joined!"

  And before he could speak, she was gone.

  Two

  Oil braziers burned in every comer of the room, casting a pall of clean bright light that obliterated the shadows of early evening. It glittered off the silver and crystal wine decanter, off the fine-mesh ceremonial mail shirt showing at hem and sleeves of his rich blue Solindish overtunic, off the polished silver plate that conjured his reflection: black hair, still damp from the bath, starting to curt against his shoulders; bright blue eyes in an angular face of burnished bronze, not even remotely Solindish; and a somewhat rueful set to the mouth as he pushed hair aside and studied the swelling on his forehead. The pattern of the tree bark was impressed in his flesh.

  Hart sighed, turned from the plate and faced the man who waited so quietly, so patiently, by the table near the fireplace. "I will survive," he said mildly as he saw the man's expression. "I promise."

  The pale brown eyes watching him narrowed minutely, fanning outward a webwork of tiny creases. Tarron, regent of Solinde by authority of Niall the Mujhar, was not a man who gave up his thoughts without careful deliberation. But neither was the newly arrived Prince of Solinde ignorant in the ways of reading men, even lifelong politicians; Hart had learned to discern the inner man in dozens of dicing games.

  Tarron inclined his head slightly. "As you say, my lord—surely you would know better than I."

  Surely I should . . . Hart agreed inwardly. As surely as I know my head is likely to fall off.

  Rael, settled on his oaken perch in a corner of the royal chambers, remained eloquently silent. Hart ignored him altogether and smiled blandly at the regent, hoping to turn Tarron's irritation into good humor. His abrupt arrival in lir-shape had ruffled feathers other than his own, figuratively speaking; Tarron, he felt, was displeased more by the lack of pageantry associated with the arrival than by the sudden usurpation of his own authority. Hart knew a messenger from Homana must have arrived before him, if only to prepare Tarron, because his father would have seen to it.

  Jehan would know better than to spring me on Solinde—or on Tarron—unannounced. Hart's smile widened to a crooked grin of wry humor as he recalled what the girl had named him. But I wonder what the regent thinks now that the wastrel son has arrived? He gestured toward the polished table and two padded chairs. "Sit you down, regent," Hart suggested, and did so himself.

  What Tarron thought of his lord's wastrel son remained unspoken as he seated himself at the table and accepted the wine Hart poured. The regent's ascetic face was smooth and serene again, a polite, politic mask. He was older than the Mujhar himself. Hart knew, having served as councillor to Donal before Niall's ascension and Tarron's subsequent appointment to Solinde. He was well experienced in dealing with men of all ranks and races. Even Cheysuli.

  "Is all to your liking, my lord?" Tarron inquired.

  Hart laughed, amused by his attitude. They faced one another like two men in a fortune-game, seated across the table with nothing at all to bind them together save a royal command. They did not play with dice, they did not wager, but the game was surely on. "Aye, and how not? Since my somewhat unusual arrival less than two hours ago, I have been bathed, clothed, fed, examined by a chirurgeon, and ensconced within royal apartments as luxurious as my own in Homana-Mujhar." A gesture encompassed the chambers. "The servants have been so thick around me I can scarce move my elbows for fear of blacking an eye or knocking loose a tooth. Only now am I given room to breathe, and I find myself attended by no less than the Mujhar's regent himself, when I would do well enough on my own." His mouth twisted wryly. "If I said no, you would have it all done over again, and that I could not bear."

  Tarron did not smile. "You are the Prince of Solinde."

  Hart laughed aloud. "Aye. But even you must know my reputation; it is what puts me here instead of Homana-Mujhar." He leaned forward, looming across the table. "I am Hart, the second son, the wastrel son, who spends his gold and wits in taverns, dicing his life away, I am the man responsible for setting the Midden aflame, though unintentionally, and for killing thirty-two people—men, women, children. And I am punished for it: I am sent to rule Solinde." He sat back again, all humor banished, flopping against the chair. "But where does that leave Solinde, regent? Where does it leave you?"

  Tarron did not hesitate. "It leaves me in fear for the future of this realm," he said quietly. "It leaves me wondering if the Mujhar's prejudice interferes with his intellect. And most certainly, in these past two hours, I have seen nothing in you that assuages my fear, and everything that leaves me wondering how I can possibly do what my lord has commanded, and teach a hopeless reprobate how to govern." He paused. "Even a royal one."

  Hart stared at him a long, rigid moment. He had expected anything but censure from the man; Tarron was too well-versed in the delicacy of politics and the exigencies of rank to ever be so blunt and risk his entire career.

  But Hart knew better than to believe he had misheard, asking to have them repeated; the words had been explicitly distinct, displaying neither malice nor bitterness, only heartfelt sincerity.

  That kind of honesty was a thing Cheysuli honored.

  But Hart was more than Cheysuli. He was also Prince of Solinde.

  "Ku'reshtin," he said without heat, more surprised than offended. "Is this how you spoke to Donal?"

  "Your grandsire never required it," Tarron answered quietly.

  Hart gazed at him thoughtfully. The regent wore understated clothing of plain, unrelieved black, as if to downplay the importance of his rank. His dark brown hair was graying at the temples and brushed back from a face almost stark in its severity of expression, but it was derived of sharp bones rather than of nature. And yet Hart sensed little or no humor in the regent; he wondered if Tarron recalled the follies of his own youth.

  Unless there were no follies. He sighed a little and tapped fingertips against the wood
of the table. "No doubt you feel I deserve it; perhaps I do. Perhaps this is why my jehan sent me to you. Perhaps I am to develop some sense of guilt for past indiscretions, merely by seeing the condemnation in your eyes." Hart sat up and pushed the chair back to rise, scraping wooden legs against marble floor. "And perhaps I will, one day—but not just yet."

  Belatedly Tarron rose as Hart moved to open the door. "My lord—where are you going?"

  "Out," Hart said succinctly. "The urge for a game is upon me, and the sweet perfume of a smoky tavern."

  "My lord—"

  Rael, Hart summoned, ignoring the regent's protest; the hawk flew out of the open casement even as Hart walked out of the room.

  He went out of the palace and into the bailey, following blurted directions he had asked of a Solindish servant. Lestra's royal palace was enough like Homana-Mujhar that he had no difficulty finding the bailey and hence the guardroom; when he paused by several off-duty soldiers lounging by the entrance, he saw they assessed him indifferently, not knowing who he was.

  Anonymity suited him well enough, at least for the moment.

  "I am looking for a game," he told them, tapping his heavy belt-purse significantly. "Not here—undoubtedly your captains prohibit wagering within the castle walls—but elsewhere. In the city. Can you suggest a tavern?"

  They were Solindish, not Homanan, for their woolen tunics were indigo banded with silver braid, not the crimson and black livery of the Homanan Guard. Four pairs of eyes reassessed him, noting the richness of silken overtunic, the glitter of costly mail, the quality of leather trews, silver-buckled belt, polished kneeboots. To them, Hart knew, he was an enigma: a Homanan garbed Solindish. It altered their responses.

  And if they knew I was Cheysuli? He smiled; Rael had perched himself on the roof of the guardroom.

  "Homanan tavern, or Solindish?" one of the soldiers asked in accented Homanan.

  Hart shrugged. "Does it matter?"

  The Solindishman, red-headed and green-eyed, showed his teeth briefly in a humorless smile. "It matters. Lestra is a Solindish city, for all the Mujhar might have it otherwise; the Homanans cluster together like chicks about a hen."