“She might have known. I’m not sure. The only other…” He shook his head. “The only other person I’m certain of couldn’t have said anything to anyone. At least not after my arrival in this time.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Who was it?”
“Your daughter, my liege. The sovereign princess.”
Mearlan recoiled. “Sofya?”
“Yes, my liege.”
“You know her? As a young woman, I mean.”
“I am fortunate in that your daughter has named me her friend.”
A smile touched the young sovereign’s face, and it seemed all the cares of his office fell away, leaving only the proud father. “I find myself in the odd position of envying you, Walker. I would give all the treasure of Hayncalde to catch a glimpse of that young woman you call your friend.”
“I think that would be a poor trade, my liege. As you say, I know her as a young woman, but only thus. You’ll have the pleasure of guiding her through her childhood.”
The sovereign considered him. “Lest we forget, Seer, our friend here has been tutored in diplomacy, a skill he’s obviously mastered. That was well said, Walker.”
“Thank you, my liege.” He paused. “Allow me to say this as well. I’ve only served House Hayncalde for a short while, but already I’m loyal to this land, and bound to you as my Lord Sovereign. You and the Seer have no reason to trust me, and I understand that my task here lies at cross purposes with your plans and wishes. But I’m acting on your orders, trying to do what I know to be best for your house and land.”
Mearlan uncrossed his arms and stood straighter. After a moment, he blew out a breath. “For what it’s worth,” he said, his tone milder than it had been, “the Seer has spent much of the day arguing on your behalf. It’s me you need to convince. Not him.”
Tobias glanced Osten’s way. “Thank you.”
“That surprises you, doesn’t it?” the Seer said. “I take it you and I aren’t allies in the future.”
“We don’t know each other well enough to be allies or rivals. I’m new to the castle and you’re…” Dried up, he heard in Isak’s voice. “Practically a legend.”
Osten’s smile didn’t reach his dark eyes. He said nothing.
“I’ll dispatch a message to the Queen of Aiyanth in the morning,” Mearlan said. “She’ll be as mad as a sand hornet, but I don’t suppose there’s much to be done about that.” His smile was no more convincing than the Seer’s. “I don’t suppose that older version of me had any thoughts on how I might tame Caltha’s ambitions.”
“I’m afraid not, my liege. You simply told me that she hates the Oaqamarans, and that her hostility toward them fed your own. I was to warn you against allowing that to continue.”
“Not very helpful, am I? What other keen insights did I offer?”
“You told me that the isles in the Bone Sea don’t matter as much as you once thought.” Tobias repeated the rest of what Mearlan had told him about the dispute between Vleros and Milnos.
“You’ve been telling me much the same thing for two turns,” the sovereign said to his minister of state. “I’ve refused to believe it.”
This other minister, a dark-haired woman with icy gray eyes and skin as pale as a full moon, bowed her head slightly, the gesture conveying deference without confirming or refuting the sovereign’s statement. “Bone Sea politics have confounded Islevale’s sovereigns and royals for a thousand years, my liege.”
“An evasion.”
“A simple truth, my liege.”
“More diplomacy.” To Tobias, Mearlan said, “Did I tell you anything else?”
“We discussed concessions to the privateers in the Aiyanthan and Herjean Seas, although you viewed that as a last resort.”
The sovereign’s expression soured; he didn’t like this idea any more in this time than he had in the future. “Very well,” he said. “If all else fails.”
“Yes, my liege.”
A knock drew the sovereign’s eyes to the door. “Yes?” he called.
The door opened, and Tobias nearly stumbled back a step. Sofya stood on the threshold, a dark-haired babe in her arms, and a dark-haired boy behind her. No, this couldn’t be Sofya.
She entered the chamber, followed by a pair of guards and a servant who might have been the babe’s nurse.
“My lady,” Mearlan said. “Come in.” He kissed the woman – who had to be his queen – and took the child from her.
“Walker Doljan, this is my wife, Her Majesty, Sovereign Queen Keeda of Hayncalde.”
Tobias bowed. “An honor, your majesty.” In any time. She was every bit as beautiful as she had been fourteen years hence. In youth her cheeks were rounder. She wore her hair longer as well. Aside from her eyes, which were hazel, she was the image of her daughter.
Her infant daughter, who squealed with laughter in the arms of her father.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Walker,” she said, puzzlement in her expression. She glanced at her husband, who gave a small, quick shake of his head.
Mearlan steered the dark-haired lad toward Tobias with a firm hand on his shoulder. The boy couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years. His features were still delicate, almost feminine, and in his own way he was as beautiful as his sister. He, too, had his mother’s complexion and his father’s eyes. “This is the sovereign prince, my son, Mearlan V. Mearlan, I present Walker Tobias Doljan.”
“Greetings, Walker,” the boy said, eyes wide. “I’ve always been curious about the Travelers. I hope we’ll have the opportunity to speak later this evening. That is, if you have time.”
Ignoring the irony in the boy’s phrasing, Tobias grasped his proffered hand. “It would be my pleasure, my Lord Prince.”
“And this,” Mearlan said, planting a soft kiss on the brow of his infant daughter, “is my princess.”
Sofya’s cheeks were as round and fat as those of a forest squirrel, and her shining black hair barely covered her head. Her face was flawless, though, and those arresting blue eyes hadn’t changed.
“Good evening, your highness.”
The child gave him a big grin, revealing milk teeth on her top and bottom gums.
“A friend indeed,” Mearlan said, his voice low.
The queen drew closer. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.
Mearlan’s smile tightened. “He’s a Walker. And he’s come some distance, with warnings of… Well, it’s enough to say with warnings.”
“Are we in danger?”
“From ourselves, it seems.” He cupped her cheek with a hand. “You didn’t come here to speak of Walkers. What can I do for you, my love?”
“We will speak of this later, my lord.” She offered it as a statement.
“You know we will.”
She regarded him with sly amusement and said in a voice pitched to carry, “Our evening meal grows cold, my lord, and your children and I do not wish to sup alone.”
“You came to invite me to dine?”
“I came to drag you kicking and screaming to your great hall.”
Everyone in the chamber laughed, Tobias included. Mearlan opened his hands in mock surrender.
“We have more than enough food and wine,” Keeda said, taking Sofya back from the sovereign. “Several of my sovereign’s court will be meeting us in the hall. You are all welcome to join us.”
Despite the generous invitation, Tobias wasn’t certain that he would be welcomed, until Mearlan made a point of telling him so.
“This has been a long and confounding day, Walker,” the sovereign said. “All of us owe you a debt for what you’ve done on our behalf. I’d be most disappointed if you didn’t share in our hospitality.”
He could hardly decline. “Thank you, my liege.”
They filed out of the chamber and through the corridor toward the nearest stairway. Tobias walked alone, but as he shuffled behind the minister of state, he heard a voice at his shoulder say, “A legend, am I?”
Tobias stiffened.
“I took no offense, Walker,” the Seer went on in his low, smooth tenor. “I am curious as to what I’ve become in your time. Something less than I am now, I fear.”
“I didn’t mean to imply–”
“The inference was entirely mine. Still, I believe you would be dangerous to have around for terribly long. Usually I’m the one who entices and terrifies others with glimpses of the future. Yet you can see even farther than I. I’ll admit I find that… unsettling.”
He gave Tobias no time to answer, but swept past him with a rustle of his silken robe.
More ministers waited for them in the great hall, including the minister of arms. Tobias searched for Gillian Ainfor. To his disappointment, he didn’t see her.
The meal laid out for them resembled the one Tobias had enjoyed the evening before: cheeses and smoked meats, boiled roots and greens, bowls of creamy soup. This being Sipar’s Settling, there was little fruit.
A priestess – not the same woman Tobias had seen in his own time – led them in prayer, and they settled in for their meal. Tobias sat near the end of the table, some distance from the sovereign family and between two ministers he didn’t know. These two men wasted no time jumping into what sounded like an ongoing argument about the relative strengths of various armies.
Tobias ate and tried to feign interest.
He had just finished his first goblet of Miejan red, when the stone beneath his feet shuddered with what sounded like a clap of thunder.
Mearlan stood. “What was that?” He spun away from the table and strode toward the hall entrance, the minister of arms on his heels. Another explosion shook the hall. The sovereign waved his minister of state to his side and after a brief consultation, approached the main entrance.
“Find out what’s happening,” the sovereign said to the guards by the door.
Both men saluted.
And were blown into Mearlan and the ministers by a third blast, which shattered the wooden door as if it were glass.
Dark smoke choked the hall. Men and women shouted. Tobias heard Sofya crying, though he couldn’t see her for the gray haze that had enveloped the hall. He wished he carried a weapon, but the sovereign hadn’t seen fit to give him one. His pistol and dagger were stuck in the future.
He peered through the smoke expecting soldiers wearing Oaqamaran black or Sheraigh blue to stream through the ruined doorway.
Instead he felt a frisson of something at his back.
Power. Like his own.
He whirled in time to see a man – the same man he had encountered earlier – appear along the hall’s back wall. The intruder carried a sextant in one hand and something in the other that belched dark smoke. He was accompanied again by three men, and also by a woman, lithe, her bronze hair generously streaked with silver. She held a pistol in each hand.
Tobias registered what he had missed before: the men around the couple carried golden devices as well. They were similar in design and complexity to the strange sextants he had seen in Mearlan’s quarters the night before, after the attempt on his life. He had no chance to note more than that.
He swung his gaze back to the stranger, who spotted him as well, his expression darkening. The woman fired one of her weapons, cutting down an advancing guard. She said something to the man. He lobbed the smoking object over Tobias’s head, toward the center of the table.
Tobias shouted a warning, but it was too late by far.
A blaze of fire, followed half an instant later by an earsplitting explosion.
Tobias flew off his feet, slammed into a stone wall and slumped in a heap. He could hear nothing for the ringing of his ears. His shoulder, side, and leg ached where he had hit the wall. Blood flow warmed the side of his face and neck. He could see no more than he could hear, and for a disorienting moment he wondered if the explosion had thrust him back into some twisted version of the between.
Then he saw flames. Torches. Belatedly, men entered the hall through that broken doorway. Not belatedly. They had known about the stranger and his bomb, had waited for his attack. Tobias tried to sit up. He had to find the man. This was his doing. He led these soldiers. Tobias knew it with a certainty he couldn’t explain.
The man and woman were no longer where they’d been standing. Had the explosion knocked them off their feet, too? Or had they vanished, using the devices again?
Torchlight gleamed off something small and sleek. A weapon. Flame belched from the barrel. More flames blazed and vanished. Pale smoke mingled with the darker. Tobias’s ears still rang, but he could make out the report of pistols. He forced himself up, charged at these men, whoever they were.
He wasn’t accustomed to this body; as a boy he’d been nimble, quick. His Walk across the years had left him heavy and clumsy. Before he covered half the distance, he tripped, landed hard on the rubble strewn across the floor. He kicked at what had tripped him. It gave under the force of his boot. A body.
He crawled back and in the faint, smoke-hazed glow of those torches recognized the bloodied face of the minister of arms. Her eyes remained open, but she lay still, an iron bolt embedded in her forehead.
He grabbed for her belt, found a pistol holstered there. He located her powder-purse on the other side of her belt, and took it as well, but he hadn’t time to load. Men dressed in black, like those he had seen in his corridor the previous night, made their way through the hall, shooting, reloading, shooting again.
Where were the rest of Hayncalde’s guards? Dead? All of them? Surely not.
Traitors, then?
A man bearing a torch approached. Tobias tucked the pistol under his belt and covered it with his shirt. Then he pocketed the purse and grabbed the minister’s blade from her belt. He lay on the floor, closed his eyes, and positioned his head so the killer would see the blood on his temple and neck.
Despite having his eyes closed, he could tell when the torch was directly above him, its glow like sunlight in the smoky dark of the hall. He held his breath, wondering if the man would shoot him. His ears still rang, but his hearing was returning. Pistol shots echoed through the hall. He heard moans, footsteps, laughter – which infuriated him – and over it all…
“Someone find that child and silence it!” a man shouted in an accent Tobias couldn’t place.
Sofya.
The man above him started to move on. Tobias seized his leg and pulled as hard as he could, unbalancing him. The torch dropped from the man’s hand. His pistol went off. White pain blinded Tobias for an instant. Blood gushed from his ear and covered more of his neck and shoulder.
Still, the man fell. Tobias threw himself onto the prone form, his fingers tightening on the minister’s dagger. As a fifteen year-old, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. But he was bigger now, stronger. The killer flailed with both fists, drew breath to scream for help. Tobias absorbed the blows, mashed his free hand onto the man’s face to muffle his cry. With the other hand he hammered the blade into the killer’s neck.
The man spasmed once, twice, then sagged and moved no more. Tobias pried the pistol from his fingers, hooked it on his belt, and pulled away, leaving the torch. His ear throbbed, and he could only hear out of the other one. Sofya still cried. He crawled toward the sound, following as direct a route as he could while also avoiding other attackers.
Soldiers converged on the one Tobias had killed, but before they reached him, another skirmish broke out near the wreckage of the hall entrance. Had Hayncalde’s soldiers arrived at last?
He didn’t dare pause to find out, but rather used the opportunity to hurry toward the princess. One of the attackers reached her first. He held his torch low, apparently searching the floor for her. Tobias saw him lift a chair and toss it aside. Then he bent and heaved something else out of his way. Abruptly, the babe’s cries grew noticeably louder. Tobias could guess what had been covering the princess. He thought he might be ill.
Instead he rushed toward the man, who had straightened and pulled out a knife, his fe
atures shadowed and grim. The killer seemed to hear him. He looked up from the girl, fumbled for his pistol, which he had holstered. Before he could pull it free, Tobias drove his aching shoulder into the man’s midriff, rode him down to the floor.
The torch fell. The man stabbed his dagger into Tobias’s back, just below the shoulder. Tobias howled. He stabbed at the man as well. Once in the side, a second time higher up, under the killer’s arm. The killer bellowed his pain, tried once more for his pistol. Tobias heard voices, knew that the killer’s comrades were already running to his defense.
He pushed himself up with his off hand, creating a bit of space between them, and plunged the blade into his foe again. This time he found the man’s gut. The killer arched his back, blood spouting from his mouth. Tobias pushed harder with the knife, angling it upward, toward the man’s heart. Steel grated against rib. A wet gasp of breath, another gush of blood from his mouth, and the man went still.
Tobias took the dead man’s pistol, which was loaded and half-cocked. He stooped and picked up Sofya. As he feared, she had been hidden from view by her mother’s broken body. As soon as he tucked her to his chest, she quieted and wrapped a chubby fist in his bloodied shirt.
“Finally,” someone growled from near the entrance.
It seemed the fighting there had subsided. Tobias feared the sovereign’s men had been driven back. He crept backward, trying to shroud himself in shadow, watching as the torches converged on the man he’d killed.
“Nab’s dead,” one of the men said in that same strange accent. He bent over the body. “Stabbed, from the look of him.”
“Then at least one of them is still alive,” came another voice, the one he had heard earlier. “Find him. Kill him.”
The men fanned out, holding their torches high, trying to light the vast hall. If not for the smoke from their bombs and pistols, they might have spotted Tobias. As it was, he managed to remain in shadow. He kept low, and retreated farther into the hall, away from the entrance.
His back throbbed where he had been stabbed. His ear and head ached. His entire body was battered and bruised. He had no idea how he and the princess might escape the hall. His best hope would have been to hide in some dark recess and wait for the assailants to leave. But he couldn’t be sure Sofya would remain quiet, and if they were discovered they would both be killed. He didn’t see any way past those who stood near the entrance. They were trapped; eventually they would be found.
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