03 - The Eternal Rose

by Gail Dayton

  He hurried to catch up with Night. “Have you a scarf, or a handkerchief? Any strip of cloth?” Fox opened his eyes to see the younger man shake his head.

  “Help me.” Fox tore at one of the useless bandages round his forearm. Trouble lay ahead and he didn't need any distraction in a fight. In moments, they had the bandage off his arm and a single layer tied over his eyes to help him keep them shut. It muffled the knowing a bit, but not enough to matter.

  “Now, hurry.” Fox turned Night and propelled him forward, toward the uproar in the boxes ahead. “Be ready for anything."

  “Yes, Godmarked."

  The champion kept pace with Fox's rush, a saber appearing in his hand.

  The three official court boxes were in chaos. The justiciars cowered against the front rail of their platform, away from the conflict that filled the rest of it. Habadra champions fought Adaran bodyguards, both sides trying to reach the little boy cowering against the Daryathi truthsayer.

  The nathain kept trying to lead Sky to safety, but the Habadra had him cut off and blocked every gap the Adarans made. Fox's heart stopped when he saw Aisse swarm over the barrier into the box to lunge her rapier into a purple-kilted thigh.

  Her attack left the Adaran box empty. Habadra's wasn't, until the last person in it jumped the barrier. Too late, Fox shouted his warning. Nur Naitan had moved too close to the Habadra side. The woman slashed, knocked him out of the way and snatched up Stone's son, holding her dagger to his throat.

  “Hold!” she shouted. “Or I kill him."

  Fox knew that voice. The Habadra, Chani. She would kill the boy, right here in the court if she decided to. He groped for a solution as the Adarans obeyed Leyja's nod and disengaged.

  Chani handed Sky to her nearest lackey who held his sword to the boy's throat. “I will leave now with my property—"

  “He's not yours,” Leyja snarled. “We won the trial. Your justiciars said it."

  “The trial is flawed. Your own champions fought each other."

  “After they won. After—"

  Fox sensed men moving through the corridors behind them. “Who?” he asked Night. “Who's passing?"

  “Justiciar's champions,” Night murmured. “To keep order in the arena."

  Fox frowned, sniffed as they came nearer. “I smell gun oil. Muskets?” The Tibran army had conquered the whole northern continent with their muskets, Fox one of them. He knew muskets.

  “They use muskets in instances such as this. They are not very good with them."

  “I am.” Fox sheathed his sword. He stepped into the corridor and appropriated the musket from the champion hurrying behind the others by bashing him in the face and taking it.

  “Night.” Fox checked the weapon, made sure it was loaded properly. “Get over there. Warn them to be ready. When the man falls, we snatch the boy and run."

  Night moved. Fox slid into place just past the entrance to the box, close enough that the notoriously inaccurate musket fire ought to strike his target. With luck and the blessing of the One. He felt the stir of magic and sensed the change in Joh that meant Kallista was looking through his eyes. She knew what was happening. They'd have to intercept her on the way up here.

  Fox blocked out the crowd noise, which was growing again as people noticed the battle and flowed back into the stands to watch. He tipped his head, aiming all his senses down the barrel of the musket. He could not afford to miss.

  Sky was tucked beneath the champion's arm. Leyja stood close, her face in Chani's as she argued. Fox brought the firing hammer back to full cock and slid his finger through the trigger guard. His focus narrowed. He let his breath out slowly and in the quiet before he took it again, he squeezed the trigger.

  The explosion roared in his ear, recoil bucking the musket hard against his shoulder. The champion dropped, the back of his head blowing outward. Joh caught Sky before the boy's feet touched ground and tossed him to Night. Night passed him to Fox who had pitched the empty musket back into the corridor where its owner still sprawled. The bodyguards threw all the godmarked over the barrier and followed, just as Habadra Chani screamed and drew a pair of pistols from beneath her robe.

  Fox handed Sky back to Joh and appropriated another musket from the justiciar's champion who had come back to find his comrade. Fox spun back into the box and brought the muzzle down as Chani fired her first pistol.

  One of the bodyguards yelped and crumpled sideways a moment before the man next to her got his shoulder under her arm and half-carried her out of the box. No time for careful aim. Fox fired an instant before Chani took her second shot. He missed, the musket ball ripping a hole in her sleeve. But so did she.

  Fox let the last bodyguard shove him back into the corridor where he paused to hand the musket back to the bewildered champion. “Tell your captain to secure and protect the justiciars. Now, before Habadra takes her madness further."

  He pelted after the others, bodyguard at his heels. Kallista was waiting with the horses, Obed and Torchay looking a bit befuddled, but no longer attacking anyone. Fox didn't want to think about his own moments of madness. The return of his vision had lessened the effects of the drug, he thought, and the sword through his belly had bled off much of it.

  Fox threw himself onto his horse and dragged the bandage off his eyes, tucking it under his sword belt in case he needed it again. Then he held a hand out to Joh. “Give him to me,” Fox said, drinking in the sight of the boy in Joh's arms. “Will you ride with me, Sky? We're taking you home."

  Sky gave him a wary look. “You were fighting."

  “Yes. So we could take you home. Because you're our son.” Fox turned his hand palm up to the boy. “Will you ride with me?"

  “We need to go.” Kallista's voice held barely suppressed impatience.

  Abruptly, Sky held both arms out to Fox who swung him onto the saddle in front of him. Joh mounted and they rode out of the arena at a fast clip. Fox wrapped one arm around Sky's middle, though such a close hold wasn't truly necessary. He could scarcely believe the boy was theirs. Fox's new vision wasn't good enough to have clearly seen Sky's features while Joh held him, and now, Fox could see only a head full of gold-over-brown curls. But soon, when they were safe behind embassy walls, he could look his fill, find Stone's features in this child. Stone's son, finally home.

  * * * *

  Padrey was in the embassy, on his way to deliver another report to Keldrey Reinas, when the whole place burst into uproar. People ran in all directions, some of them heading first one way, then stopping short to turn and run in one completely different. A guard in white-trimmed black ran smack into him, nearly knocking them both down.

  “What is it?” Padrey steadied himself and her with a grip on her arms. “What's happening?"

  “We've won the trial.” The guard grabbed Padrey's arm in return and dragged him along with her. “But Habadra cheated. Her champions’ weapons were drugged. Then she tried to take the child, even though we won—Eight against three and we won."

  “And?” That wasn't all the story, Padrey knew. Couldn't be.

  “The Reinasti took the boy back. Now they're on their way here and everyone's called out in case there's trouble. Everyone.” She shook his arm a bit, giving him a look full of some kind of meaning. “Especially the Tayo Dai."

  “Right. O’ course.” Padrey nodded like he knew what she meant. “What can I do? I'm a spy. A thief."

  “You take this.” She handed him a wicked dagger from her own belt. “You have been going to the training, haven't you?"

  “Aye. Yes.” When he could, when he wasn't busy counting slaves. Padrey nodded.

  “Then you go out there—” She pushed him toward the courtyard outside the family's quarters. “And you make sure no thieves sneak in to steal any more of our treasure."

  “Set a thief to catch a thief?” He repeated the old proverb.

  “Exactly. Now go.” She opened the wide, multipaned window-door and shoved him through it.

  * * *

&
nbsp; Chapter Twenty-Four

  Padrey looked round at the bodyguards and soldiers swarming the courtyard and felt more than superfluous. He felt useless. Still, none of those others knew how thieves thought. Padrey slid through the daylight shadows to the tree where he'd first entered the embassy. He leaped, caught hold of a low-hanging branch and swung himself up. This was a thief's only way in. He'd tried for days to find another.

  He found himself a perch, dark and shadowy even in the brightening autumn daylight, and took a moment to wonder what sort of treasure he was guarding. More jewels like the one he'd stolen? Gold? Pearls? Or all of it? Wouldn't it be grand to see such a treasure? He didn't want to steal it, nothing like that. He just wanted, rather badly, to see it.

  Padrey wasn't in his tree long enough to stiffen up when the window-doors were opened and left open after the Reinine came through. She was holding the hand of a small boy dressed in a rust-stained kilt. Most of her ilian followed, save for the three who had fought in the arena today. Padrey assumed they were off cleaning up, changing clothes. He eased farther out on the broad branch where he hid to hear them better.

  “I got my kilt dirty.” The child's voice was almost too quiet to hear.

  “Doesn't matter.” The Reinine crouched beside him, making herself small enough to look the boy straight in the eye. “We're going to throw this kilt away. You're our son. Sky Varyl. You'll wear a son's clothes. Adaran clothes."

  The boy peeled out of his kilt right there in the courtyard. “My clothes from the jail?"

  The Reinine's chuckle sounded a bit choked as she shook her head. “New clothes. Made just for you."

  She looked toward the nursery at the same time the banging caught Padrey's attention and he looked too. A chubby brown-haired toddler, the next-to-littlest girl, had apparently spotted her parents through the glass in the window-doors and was not happy about the barrier. She beat on the panes with both open hands, shouting “Mami,” at the top of her lungs.

  The Reinine laughed. “Do you want to meet your sedili, Sky? Your sister? I don't think we can hold them back much longer."

  Her prediction proved correct when one of the bigger boys opened the door and children poured into the courtyard, swarming the adults, staring shyly at the new boy in their midst. After the others had been outside for several ticks, two more children appeared, the two eldest, the Reinine's twins. They ran to their mother where she knelt beside Sky and stopped short, suddenly bashful. Padrey listened hard to hear over the general babble.

  The red-haired girl elbowed her fair-haired twin, making faces and pointing at the boy. The blonde poked her sister back, then thrust a bundle at Sky. “We brought your new clothes, so you could put them on right away, Lorynda and me. That's Lorynda. She's my twin."

  The girl took back the garment Sky held and gave him another. “Smalls first, silly. Trousers are too scratchy, else. I'm Rozite. I'm your sister, not just your sedil, ‘cause my father is your father too."

  Sky took the trousers from her and pulled them on over the smallclothes he'd just put on. “Papi Joh taught me to tie,” he said. “My father is dead."

  “I know.” Rozite nodded, her face solemn. “I cry sometimes, ‘cause I miss him a lot. You can cry with me if you want."

  “Don't cry.” Red-haired Lorynda put her arm around her sister. “It makes me sad when you cry, ‘cause I miss Papi Stone too. You can have my Papi for your first father. He doesn't have any little boys and no girls besides me. And he already loves you bunches. He said so."

  Motion diverted Padrey's attention to the Reinine; she was wiping away tears. Most of the adults were, though Aisse Reinas didn't seem to be bothering. She just let them flow.

  Sky poked his head through the neck of his tunic and fought his arms through the sleeves. “My mother is dead too."

  “You can have our Mami,” Rozite said quickly, as if to keep up with her sister's generosity. “The people wouldn't let her come see you in the jail and it made her mad.” She giggled. “Mami said bad words. And she threw a cup so hard she bent it."

  The children's laughter at the Reinine's misdeeds was interrupted by the entrance of the morning's champions, transformed into shrieks as most of the children rushed them. Padrey had seen the Reinine's ilian with the children before, enough he could tell them apart and match them with birth parents, but briefly and never in unguarded moments like this. He felt as if he should turn away, grant them what little privacy they could have, but he couldn't. He had to watch.

  Torchay Reinas strode to the Reinine, a twin in each arm. Fox Reinas carried his smallest son under his arm while his daughter Niona clung to his back like a monkey. His other son rode his leg until Obed Reinas peeled him loose and tucked him under his free arm, the other already filled with squirming black-haired little boy.

  “So.” Torchay Reinas set the girls down near the just-dressed boy. “You're giving me away, are you? To this fine lad?"

  He bowed with full Adaran court flourish. “I'd be proud to stand as father to you, Sky, and I'm pleased to be finally making your acquaintance.” He knelt between the twins and offered his hand. “I'd have come before, but I'm head of the Reinine's bodyguard and I could no’ leave my duty for so long."

  When Sky gave his hand, the red-haired Reinas used it to draw him in for a careful embrace. “Besides,” the bodyguard said with a wink, “it didn't seem quite fair that your Mami Kallista be the only one not to meet you. So I waited with her."

  “Torchay—” The Reinine touched his shoulder. “Let Fox see."

  What was this? Padrey switched his focus to Fox Reinas, only now noticing the way the man stared at his trio of offspring. Fox cupped his daughter's cheek as he gazed another minute, then dropped a kiss on her forehead and turned to their new-found child. He could see? What had happened?

  “You said you can't see.” Sky's voice wasn't suspicious, exactly.

  “Today I can. Kallista worked magic and I can see. Not very well, though. You have to be close.” Fox Reinas beckoned and slowly Sky stepped nearer, until the Tibran could brush the tousled hair out of the boy's face.

  “You look grand in your new clothes,” Fox Reinas said. “Like the Reinelle you are. You have your father's eyes ... and your mother's smile.” “My mother was bad,” Sky said. “She killed my father.” “She did a bad thing. She listened to bad people and after a while, she believed what they told her. But when she made you, she wasn't bad. None of those bad things got into you, only the good parts of your mother. She was good when we knew her.” He smiled. “And you got the very best parts of your father, who was one of the very best men I've known. And I knew him since we were the same age you are now, so I know. I know you, Sky Varyl, and I am very proud to have you for my son.” “Don't you have boys?” “I have two, and a girl, and all the rest of this mob.” Fox cocked his head, looking at the child. “You don't have to pick. Not today, or ever, if you don't want to. You have five fathers. And four mothers. You are our son. You belong to all of us.” As little Sky hugged the golden-haired Reinas, Padrey had to grab hold of a tree branch to keep himself from falling when understanding smashed into him like one of the Reinine's lightning bolts. Leaves that would stay green all winter rustled with the violence of his reaction, but fortunately, no one below noticed. Padrey had to crawl back to the main trunk and huddle in the fork of two great branches, it hit him so hard. The treasure he helped to guard was not gold or jewels. It was the children. Power and wealth meant nothing to these people, except as it could be used to protect the defenseless, to help those who needed it. He had sworn oath to the Reinine because she'd promised to free his family, and he'd meant it. But still, he'd held a bit of himself back, waiting to see whether she would keep her promise, or forget it when it became inconvenient or unprofitable. He hadn't understood. Not who he had made his oath to, or who she truly served. Now he did, and it made him feel all peculiar inside. It made him want to be part of it, whatever the cost. He wanted what they had.

  * * * *
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  Kallista watched the nursery servants herd the children away after the chaos some called luncheon. Sky seemed to be fitting in nicely. Meeting Joh and Aisse's son Tigre, just his age, had helped.

  She shook her head and turned it to business. “Two things. Send somebody for the embassy's lawyer. We're complaining to the justiciars about those drugged blades. We did get them back home with us, didn't we?"

  “The East healer took them,” Obed said. “To give to their truthsayer. She thought it would be better for a neutral party to hold them. I believe she obtained five of the weapons."

  “Good thinking. We'll ask Nur Naitan to send one to the justiciars but hold back the rest. Second thing.” Kallista pushed back from the table to pace. “We have Sky back safe with us. I think it's time we presented the en-Kameral with our demand to free the rest of the slaves."

  She thought out loud as she paced. “Viyelle, you and—Obed? Or Joh—or hell, both of them—get with Namida Ambassador and come up with a demand to be presented to the en-Kameral. I'd like it done today to present tomorrow. And Vee—” Kallista caught the prinsipella's gaze. “Don't let Namida soften it. It's a demand. If they don't release the slaves, we will take them."

  “Both of you, then,” Viyelle addressed Obed and Joh. "Help." She made a joke of her plea, and chuckling, the men rose from the table to join her.

  “My Reinine."

  The unexpected voice of a bodyguard just behind her made Kallista jump. She raised an eyebrow in question.

  “My Reinine, the embassy guard sends word that justiciars are at the gate with demands."

  Her eyebrows went higher and she cocked her head. “What demands, Bodyguard?"

  “I do not know, my Reinine. I was not told."