by Carol Berg
He strode to Perryn, huddled against the wall, dragged him to Osriel’s feet by the neck of his silk tunic, and shoved him sprawling. Perryn threw his arms over his head and lay quivering, and I cursed myself once again for ever believing he was man enough to lead Navronne.
“This parasite,” snarled Bayard, “this weak-livered vermin, did not merely exhaust Ardra’s patrimony, but Navronne’s, as well. Our father’s treasure house sits empty, its gold squandered on oranges from Estigure, on brocades and perfumed oils from Syanar, on follies, jugglers, and lace, on miniature ponies for his whores, on puling spies and legions of mercenaries from Aurellia and Pyrrha who have never set foot in Navronne, if they exist at all. If I am to crush this devil woman, I must have Evanore’s gold.”
Osriel perched on the edge of his chair, coiled tight as a chokesnake. Bayard bulled ahead without a breath. “You will not have to kneel. You will have autonomy in your own land until the day of your death, and I will recognize you publicly as my sovereign equal in Evanore. Together, we can prevail. Together…” Bayard’s speech trailed away in the face of his brother’s frigid stillness.
“What does she want?” said Osriel, quiet and harsh.
Bayard’s beard quivered with pent rage. “It doesn’t matter what she wants. She’s a madwoman. We yield on these demands and she’ll come back for more. I see that now.”
Osriel leaned forward slightly, and I knew Bayard felt the pressure of his brother’s will as I had earlier. “Tell me what she asked for.”
Heaving a sigh of suffering patience, Bayard whipped his hand toward Max. “Tell him.”
My brother stepped forward and bowed slightly to his master. “First, she demands the province of Evanore, whole and entire. Second, she desires that one of my lord’s brothers, either one, be turned over to her as mortal forfeit for the offenses the line of Caedmon has wrought against the Gehoum.” My brother cataloged the unthinkable as if the items sat on a shelf like tin pots.
Osriel tented his pale hands, his fingertips just touching his chin. He did not speak.
Max bowed again and flicked a glance at me. “Third, she desires a piece of information—the location of a secret library that she claims is anathema to the Gehoum. It does not appear to exist where she was told. And lastly, she wishes to own the contract of a particular pureblood sorcerer.”
“A pureblood?” Prince Osriel dropped his hands abruptly into his lap. “Who? For what reason?”
The public half of Max’s face remained perfectly neutral as his position required. But an eye accustomed to looking past a pureblood’s mask could not miss the wicked humor behind the sheath of dull blue silk. “She insists on controlling one Magnus Valentia de Cartamandua-Celestine, lately returned to the discipline of the Pureblood Registry. She did not explain why.”
Magrog’s teeth! My suddenly sweating hands came near slipping out of each other behind my back.
Bayard shoved his chair away so viciously it tipped over and clattered to the floor. “The cheek!” he fumed, striding to the windowed wall only to reverse course and return to kick the toppled chair. “As if I would go scrambling about the city like her pet hound, hunting libraries and purebloods. My own sorcerer’s brother, as if that would make her my equal.” He paused and glared at me as if Sila Diaglou stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder. “What does she want with you, pureblood, eh? I hear you are a renegade, a liar, and a thief.”
Mind reeling, I pinned my gaze on Osriel’s hands. They were still, so I kept silent and asked myself the same question. Why would the Harrower priestess want me? Not merely for the Cartamandua blood. Max…Phoebia…my father had no contract, for the gods’ sake. They all displayed the bent of my grandfather’s line. Unlike me, they were trained and skilled and intelligent enough to read books and make sense of the world.
“You’d best keep an eye on him, little brother,” said Bayard with a sneer. “By the Mother’s tits, I’d give her Perryn and offer to gut him myself, save for the damnable impertinence of her insisting on a kill of my own blood. But Evanore…”
Perryn had crept to the foot of Osriel’s chair and hunched there in a shriveled knot. “You wouldn’t let him give me over, brother,” he said. “I was ever kind to you. It was Bayard played the bully. He swears he’ll do this bargain, and throw you in as well if he can persuade the witch to forgo Evanore’s gold.”
“Does anyone outside this room know that you two have come to me?” Osriel spoke over Perryn’s head as if the fair prince were some whining hound.
Bayard spluttered. “My aides know, of course. My field commanders. I’m not a fool—”
“Tell me the truth, Bayard, or I’ll send you back with an ox head instead of your own. Does anyone but these two know you’ve come to Gillarine to meet me?”
“No one else knows,” said Perryn, emboldened like a lapdog that finds its courage only at its master’s feet. “He says we must be secret, else she’ll find out he’s plotting against her. He near pisses his trews at the thought. She sees everything.”
“Good.” Osriel pointed to a spot in front of his chair. “Now stand here, the both of you, and listen. Yes, you, too, Perryn. Your ‘kindness’ fell short back when your pleasure was to lock me into emptied meat casks. Stand like a man and listen to me.”
Perryn slouched to his feet, while Bayard stood his ground ten paces back, bristling like an offended boar. My master waited silently. Only when Bayard expelled an exasperated oath and moved to Perryn’s side did Osriel speak again.
“You came here seeking my help, brothers. Did you think I would shovel gold into your pockets and allow you to continue sending my people to the slaughter as you’ve done these three years? You’ve countenanced crimes that make my activities look tame, and I should rightly take your heads for it.”
Reason. Assurance. Command. Of a sudden this mad parley felt grounded in something more than terror.
“I am the rightful High King of Navronne, whether anyone beyond this room ever understands that or not, and you will stand or fall by my will.”
“You are a crippled whelp who knows nothing of warfare.” Bayard spat the brave words, but held his position in the place his half-brother had indicated. He must be at the end of all recourse.
Osriel raised a hand in warning. “I am allowing myself to believe that the two of you have been stupid and blind these three years, rather than vile and malicious, and that your excesses have been as misreported as my own deeds. Either we work together to salvage this mess you’ve made, or you can walk out of here this moment. As for the fool who attempts to touch my gold without my consent, I will take his eyes living from his head and hold his soul captive in everlasting torment. Choose, brothers. For Navronne. For our father, who foolishly believed in all of us.”
A seething Bayard, his complexion the hue of bloomed poppies, whirled and strode away. I was certain he would broach the door, but instead he circled the refectory. Perryn lifted his chin, sneering as if ready to defy both brothers, but glanced at the ceiling, peopled by writhing shades, shuddered, and dropped his head again. Osriel waited. I held my breath.
Halfway between his brothers and the door, Bayard slowed, growling with resentful fury. “What do you propose? I concede nothing until I’ve heard your plan.”
Osriel flicked his ringed hand toward me. “Magnus, tell me: Is your brother trustworthy? I will send him out if you say.”
Max stiffened as if one of Silos’s firebolts had fused his spine. Not the least hint of a smirk appeared on either half of his face. For a pureblood adviser to be dismissed in a negotiation accounted him as useless to his master. If report spread of such a thing, it could ruin Max.
Past grievance, childish pride, and my every base instinct gloated in such opportunity. Yet, for some reason surpassing all speculation, my brother and I stood at a nexus of Navronne’s history. My master, who astonished and mystified me more by the moment, required me to offer a fair measure of a man I scarcely knew. And I’d begun to thin
k I’d best heed the Bastard’s wishes. Petty vengeance had no place here.
“My brother is not and has never been my friend, Lord Prince,” I said. “Neither has he been my enemy save in the petty strife of family and as a danger to my freedom in my years away from my family. I have encountered him only briefly as a man, thus I can say nothing of his honor or his moral strength. But he has ever supported and embraced the strictures of pureblood life. Thus I believe he would do nothing to the detriment of his bound master. In any matter of contractual obligation, I would trust him completely.”
“Good enough. He stays.” Osriel’s brisk assent near sucked the words from my mouth before I could speak them. He nodded to Bayard. “Here is what I propose, brother: Send your pureblood back to Sila Diaglou. Tell her you accept her terms.”
“What?” Bayard bellowed.
The green shoots of hope that had sprung up so unexpectedly in the past hour were sheared off in an instant. The Harrower priestess had plunged a stake through Boreas’s gut, reciting her blasphemous incantations: sanguiera, orongia, vazte, kevrana—bleed, suffer, die, purify. And then she had licked my old comrade’s blood from her fingers. I struggled to hold my position without trembling.
“Great Kemen preserve!” said Perryn, looking as if he would be sick. The blond prince backed toward the door. “You can’t do that, you twisted, depraved—”
“Have your man say that your brother Perryn is already forfeit because of his treasonous looting of Navronne’s treasury and his forgery of our father’s will.” Osriel pressed forward, his words harsh, decisive, shivering the air. “Have him report that your bastard brother is mad and can be persuaded to yield his land, his pureblood, and the secret of the library. Set a meeting with the woman and use it to haggle with her over the gold and apportioning of Evanore—she will never believe you would concede it all. Let her think she is going to win, while you control the damage as you can. At the last, settle for the best deal you can make, with the stipulation that her legions enter Evanore at Caedmon’s Bridge and attack my hold at Renna on the winter solstice. Tell her that I submit myself to Magrog at Dashon Ra each year at midnight on the winter solstice; thus my magic will be at an ebb.”
“And then?” Bayard growled in contempt and snatched Perryn’s sleeve, before the cowering prince could run away.
“Either the joined might of Eodward’s sons defeats her, or the world we know will end.”
The simplicity of this declaration left Bayard speechless. My head spun; my stomach lurched at the speed of events. Even Max’s mouth hung open.
“Osriel, you are mad,” said Bayard, recovering his wits sooner than my brother or I. “And I must be mad to listen to you. Yet Father’s writ claims—Tell me this, Bastard. What do you do with dead men’s eyes?”
The challenge echoed from the vaults as if the hideous beings dancing there had joined in the question. I wanted to cry out in chorus, “Yes, yes, tell us.”
“Ask first of Sila Diaglou how long she plans to let you rule,” said Osriel with such quiet menace as to raise the hair on my arms. “Bring me her truthful answer, and I’ll give mine.”
Osriel uncurled one slender hand to reveal a white ball of light, pursed his lips, and blew on it. A shivering lance of power split the air between Max and Bayard, causing Perryn to yelp and crouch into a ball at Bayard’s feet. “This will keep our brother quiet for the nonce. Lock him up safely, where no one can harm him. I’ll send a messenger to your headquarters in Palinur on the anniversary of Father’s coronation. At that time, you can inform me of the outcome of your negotiations, and I’ll notify you of any change in plan.”
Perryn pawed at his mouth and tongue in a wordless, animal frenzy I recognized. Poor, stupid wretch. How many words did his tongue-block forbid?
Bayard folded his arms and stared boldly at the man in the green hood, reclaiming something of the pride he had brought into the hall, but little of the arrogance. “You wear Father’s ring. I assumed this sniveling twit had stolen it from his dead finger, then feared to wear it publicly.”
Osriel’s slim fingers caressed the gold band. “Father gave it to me the night he died. Believe that or not as you choose. Perhaps I stole it. Perhaps my devilish magic twisted his mind.”
Testing. All of this was testing. Would Bayard believe? Would he accept what was offered or balk in arrogance, in self-deception, in fear? Would I? For I could not shake the notion that all of this was my test as well. Osriel had no need of me in this confrontation. I brought no power, no prestige, no insight that such a perceptive mind could not have come up with on its own. Yet a man of such well-considered purposes would not have me here without specific intent. Perhaps it was only to witness a kind of power I had known but twice in my life: in an abbey garden when an abbot had peered into my soul and found it worthy of his trust, and long ago beside a battlefield cook fire, when these princes’ father had shared his love of Navronne with a youthful pikeman.
After a moment, Bayard shook his head. “Father’s writ purports to explain why he chose you over me. Reading it, I heard his voice as clear as if he spoke to me aloud. ’Twas the Ardran hierarch showed me the thing, and I destroyed his chamber after. Had the Karish peacock shitting his robes, I did, naming him a cheat and a forger, as mad as you to believe our father wrote such lies about a crippled weakling.”
“Father valued you, Bayard. If you read the entire writ, then you know he named you Defender of Navronne and your sons after you, believing that your strong arm and stubborn temper should hold the righteous sword that mine cannot.” It was the nearest thing to an apology I ever thought to hear from royalty. A gift offered without coercion, without demand for reciprocation, with humbling generosity.
I thought Bayard would pounce on Osriel and grind him in his jaws. “Why didn’t he tell us? He knew what I believed. What everyone in this kingdom believed. Every day of my life I trained to be king, and he never told me elsewise.” Pain, not anger, drove his fury—a familiar anguish, rooted in family, in a child’s expectation and betrayal.
“You trained to be a warrior, Bayard, not a king. Father made his decision only after I turned one-and-twenty and showed some prospect of living for more than a moon’s turning. He told me first. Then Perryn. But you were off pursuing Hansker again, and he would not have you hear such news from any lips but his. Nor would he shame you by telling another soul before you. But you spent more time on your ships than in Navronne those last few years. How many times did he summon you home? He risked everything to save your pride and lost the gamble.” A gentle reproof, taking its power from unbending strength.
“I could not abandon my men halfway between Hansk and Morian just so I could play courtier. Let up the pressure, and barbarians lose all respect. I saved Navronne. I—”
Bayard cut off his own protest. Even he could hear how foolish it sounded now after three years of war and thirty thousand Navrons dead. He spat on the floor. “You’ll never rule; you know that. A bastard. The evil stories told of you. Clerics of either stripe won’t accept it. The people won’t. Not when there’s a strong, legitimate elder son. The hierarch’s paper is ensorcelled so it cannot be destroyed, sad to say, but without a valid second copy no one will believe it.”
Osriel did not accept the gauntlet Bayard threw, but rather slipped it back on his brother’s hand. Only time would tell whether he had left a spider in its folds. “We will preserve this kingdom first, brother, and then turn our minds to its ruling. I’d recommend you not go setting any crowns on your head before the solstice.”
Bayard jerked his head in assent. “I’ll see you on the solstice, then. Between times…I’d recommend you look to your back, little Bastard. I think you’re the only thing in this world the mad priestess fears.”
Bayard grabbed Perryn’s collar and shoved the moaning princeling toward the door. Max hurried ahead and held open the door, casting me a long, curious gaze before following his master from the room.
As soon as the door had
closed behind Max, the flames in the braziers faded. The shadows flowed together, pooling in corners, settling over the monks’ tables and stools. The man in green slumped backward in his chair and leaned his head tiredly on his fist.
My mind, numbed with wonder and shock at what had just unfolded, slowly began to function again. Should I kneel to my king or should I topple his chair through the gaping windows and protect Navronne from a madman, a honey-tongued servant of Magrog who had convinced me that even the evils he acknowledged would admit to rational explanation?
Before I could choose any course, he swiveled his head my way, still resting his temple on his pale fingers. His eyes remained shielded behind his green velvet hood, but I felt their scrutiny. “So advise me on my plan, Magnus Valentia. Perhaps I should allow this bargain with the priestess to stand. The land is mine. The pureblood is mine. I know the whereabouts of the lighthouse. My brother Perryn has fallen to ruin in defeat and is useless to anyone. Bayard has too many dead Navrons on his conscience to be trustworthy. I could throw him into the bargain and allow Sila Diaglou to take care of all my problems.”
Slowly, deliberately, I removed my mask and tucked it into my belt. A hundred responses darted through my head. I could not be easy, not with my fate bandied about as a bargaining chip of less worth than a slip of gold from Evanore’s mines. Yet neither fear nor resentment shaped my answer. “You wish me to be honest, my lord. So I must confess, I am very confused.”
Confused was too simple a word. I could not shake a growing admiration for this man—the same villain who had bound Jullian in terror to manipulate me, who claimed pleasure in bending minds to his will and refused to deny he stole the eyes of the dead. In the space of an hour I had both learned the unthinkable truth that the Bastard of Evanore was the rightful king of Navronne, and heard enough to suspect that choice not so unthinkable. Even as he quipped of betrayal and surrender, the echo of his charge to Bayard fed a mad and greening hope. Beyond shadows and sparring, nothing this man did was a lie—which frightened me to the marrow. Yet…
