by Kate Elliott
The words hit like an ambush. She couldn’t find a clever retort. “Atani loved his children!”
His tone grew a hard sheen, bright and unforgiving. “You can love someone very much and still make a decision that makes them grieve. You can harm that which you love most because you believe duty outweighs affection.”
“I don’t think he had it in him.”
“You thought him soft, Lady Dannarah. But he wasn’t. He was more ruthless than you ever understood.”
She grasped the teacup and it was only her reluctance to shatter such a fine piece of workmanship that stopped her from throwing it right at his head for his disrespect. But she took in several calming breaths instead because she was no longer young and brash. She relaxed her hand and let go of the cup.
“Now I know I am old, to see you rein yourself in,” remarked Kellas.
The anger poured away as quickly as if she had tipped the tea onto the dirt. “Old, indeed. I shudder to think how difficult it will be to stand up, and my hip is already hurting from sitting on this cushion for so long. We can speculate all we want but meanwhile Atani is dead.”
“Yes, he is dead.”
A warmly moist wind curled through the porch. The moon spread its silvery light along the rooftops and caught in shallow puddles on the street. He said nothing more, and she sensed a vulnerability in this line of argument, so she went on.
“Atani wasn’t the only one my father commanded his Wolves to guard and serve. I am also Anjihosh’s child.”
“You are indeed. None more so, in some ways.”
“Yes, and I take my duty to my father’s legacy seriously. Jehosh has spent so much time having adventures in the north that he has likely lost hold of the palace, which is exactly the kind of problem I would have predicted for him back then. But he asked for my advice. He is desperate for help. We can insinuate ourselves in his good graces—”
“And run the kingdom as his advisers?”
“Incompetent and greedy people are advising him now and making a hash of things. Maybe he has learned humility now that he realizes how easily control has slipped away from him. What if we can work with him, help him become the strong king the Hundred needs? And if he cannot be that king, then we choose among his sons.”
“Are you instigating a palace takeover, Lady Dannarah?”
“We must not let the land fall into disorder and chaos. You were a boy before my father rode into the Hundred. You remember when the demon war almost destroyed the Hundred. You remember when my father killed the demons and brought peace.”
“I do remember.”
“Think of Anjihosh and Atani, and what you promised them. The new laws Jehosh has set in motion are not what my father and brother intended for the Hundred. Artisans and laborers need to purchase licenses to carry on their trade when once they needed only to pay a yearly tithe. Massive building projects are fostering discontent as more men are arrested and sent off on work gangs. Meanwhile factions have begun to fight within the palace, which will only make things worse. One way or the other—with Jehosh or without him—we can change things, Captain. This is our opportunity to restore the Hundred that we knew in our youth.”
One of the rice-paper-screened doors that led into the house slid aside and Hari appeared, lampless. She hadn’t even heard him approach and she suddenly wondered if he had been standing there listening all along.
“Father? A quick word, if you will. I’ll sit with the marshal.”
Kellas absorbed these words without the slightest indication of surprise. He got to his feet with his usual uncanny grace, scarcely hobbled by the aching knees and sore hip that burdened her. With a nod at her, he went inside.
After carefully closing the door Hari took his place opposite her. “More tea, Marshal?”
“A quick word with whom?”
“You know how households are. There is always one crisis or another.”
She liked this cheerful man and did not want to see him harmed but she knew better than to be ruled by sentiment. “In all the years I have known Captain Kellas he served the Hundred as its most exceptionally devoted soldier. I had not the least inkling he had kept a secret family all this while.”
Hari’s friendly expression might fool most but she saw how the smile deflected suspicion. “People are often surprising, are they not? Will you have more tea?”
“The tea is a fine brew, I assure you. But I would rather have more answers.”
“Ah, well, answers are like fish, hard to catch if you don’t have lines and nets.”
“You are a slippery customer.”
“All the better at the bargaining table, Marshal. I am a good merchant, and I intend to stay a merchant. I’ve no ambition to leave home or take up a new profession.”
Brisk footfalls broke into their little sparring match, and Kellas returned. Hari rose to let Kellas have the cushion, but rather than sitting, Kellas remained at attention. He nodded at Hari, and the man sketched a brief good night and went inside.
After a silence Kellas spoke with obvious reluctance, like a man who has accepted orders he cannot refuse.
“I travel once or twice a year to Toskala for business and stay with my kinsfolk there. I can move up the visit, go now instead of later.”
His crisp words sucked the air right out of her mouth.
“Not to serve King Jehosh but merely to speak to him, mind you. I will tell him you convinced me to come. I ask one favor of you in return. Hari wants nothing to do with the palace. Do you understand me?”
She crossed her arms. “Did King Anjihosh know of Hari’s existence?”
“Of course he knew.” For once he sounded impatient and a little angry. “You have guessed correctly that Hari is his child. It will only cause trouble if anyone in the palace discovers his existence. Let him and his family live here in peace, please.”
“Did Atani know of Hari’s existence?”
This time he said nothing.
“Atani knew and never told me?”
His gaze was grave and unyielding. “Yes, he discovered the truth when he was sixteen, when he ran away from the palace.”
For several shaky breaths she was actually too upset to speak, but at length the tremors calmed. “It probably should come as no surprise to me that my father sired a child on another woman. He had lovers but he was always discreet and so careful never to complicate matters. He hated complications. He hated anything he could not control.”
Kellas’s lips moved but no sound came out. She waited, but he made no further attempt to speak. Rather, he stood at attention with hands at soldier’s rest behind his back, just as he had for all the years he had served the palace. The grandfatherly man walking up the street with his granddaughters had vanished back into the soldier accepting his orders.
Then, breaking the moment, he looked past her, alerted by a movement in the darkened audience hall. “Come out,” he said sharply.
One of the girls paced out of the interior with head bowed and eyes cast down but a steely defiance in her unbowed shoulders. Her gaze flashed up. “Take me, please, Grandpa. You promised me.”
“Not this time, Fo,” said Kellas.
“You said I’m ready! Melisa went out when she was younger than me!”
“Don’t argue with me, Fohiono.”
“We can fly out tomorrow,” said Dannarah as the girl turned away, shoulders heaving. “It’s no trouble to take both of you.”
The girl turned back eagerly.
“I absolutely refuse it, Fohiono,” said Kellas. “As for me, I am not being slung like a sack from one of those cursed eagles. I will make my own way.”
“It will take at least twenty days for you to travel overland!” Dannarah protested.
“My arrival will seem less suspicious if I come on my own. Fo, go to bed.”
It was the voice Dannarah had heard him use on soldiers. The young woman obeyed instantly, wiping away tears as she left.
Hari reappeared. He smiled with the m
ost amiable manner imaginable, not a shadow in his face except that cast by lamplight bruised by night. “I’m to escort Lady Dannarah to the loft.”
Kellas nodded. “Good night, Lady Dannarah. Will I see you in Toskala?”
“That is up to King Jehosh, is it not? I will return to Horn Hall and await a summons.”
They made polite farewells.
Hari escorted Dannarah all the way to the loft in the clearing, deflecting her attempt to question him about his mysterious mother by telling her amusing stories about his childhood that made her laugh. The ordinary tales of a mischievous child who liked to play cheerful pranks were, she thought, his way of letting her know he was a successful merchant with connections, wealth, a large and affectionate family, and hirelings whom he spoke of as if he considered them family, too.
“I am sorry not to have the opportunity to meet your mother,” she said as they reached the clearing.
“So you have said five times already,” he retorted with a smile.
“And heard the same reply five times over,” she replied, wondering what it would have been like to grow up with a cheerful, joking brother like this man. But if he’d grown up in the palace, under her father’s eye, he’d not have been so easygoing.
He halted halfway across the clearing, as if to make clear she had to walk the last part on her own. “We are not weapons to be used in your war.”
“My war? We all want what is best for the Hundred, do we not?”
“Indeed we do.”
“Why is Captain Kellas here?”
“Because he married my mother.”
“How long ago?”
“Why do you care? Good night, Lady Dannarah.” He left her with the lamp, walking home without it because he was sure of himself in a place he knew so well.
Why did she care? It was none of her business. The infatuation she had nursed as an adolescent had long since faded. In all her years as a reeve she had not pined over Kellas. But now she wondered if he had already been involved with this mysterious woman when young Dannarah had demanded he become her lover. Had he met her when he’d tracked Atani to Mar? Imagine how a man might feel, commanded to have sex with one woman when he loved another.
The hells! He’d as good as told her tonight, hadn’t he?
You can love someone very much and still make a decision that makes them grieve. You can harm that which you love most because you believe duty outweighs affection.
She had always gotten what she wanted: independence, a reeve’s status, lovers as she wanted them, respect, skill, and eventually co-ruler of sorts with her brother. Atani’s death had shattered all she had worked for. But afterward she had made a decent life at Horn Hall, taken care of her people, done her duty. Coming here cut a fissure in the world she thought she knew, one that revealed unseen patterns beneath like a broken vessel teeming with maggots aswarm over meat you never knew was rotten.
Reyad was on watch, whittling to pass the time. Tarnit and Lifka slept on bunks built into a back corner. The eagles were settled and quiet. Odd how little she’d had to do with Bronze Hall over the years. Odder still that a loft had been built specifically to facilitate communication between Bronze Hall and Plum Blossom Clan.
“Marshal, did they say anything about the rice?” Reyad asked as she walked up.
“A man like Captain Kellas is not to be caught out easily. We’ll have to find out if this variety is grown anywhere else.” She studied him. He was carving one part of a leafy branch that resembled the spiky leaves of redheart. “Reyad, do you wish to enlighten me about that little exchange between you and Auri at River’s Bend?”
His knife-hand paused. He glanced at her and then away. “No.”
“No?”
“No, Marshal, I do not.”
She knew exactly how far to push the reeves under her command, so switched tactics. “We can fly out over the Suvash Hills if you’d like. There’s no reason we can’t stop at your clan’s holding on our way back to Horn Hall.”
Trembling, he set knife and wood on the dark shavings. “If it would be no trouble … Yes.” He pressed a hand to his mouth, lowered it, raised it again to cover his eyes.
“I’ll take watch, Reeve.”
“Yes, Marshal.” He put everything away in his pouch and made his way to the bunks.
She leaned against one of the support pillars; it was too uncomfortable to stand for long periods because her back would hurt. The grass in the clearing glimmered, still wet from the storm. Her bare feet were cold and her heart was stunned.
Atani knew about Hari. That her father had concealed the truth she could understand because he was a private man who never shared his intimate life with anyone, not even her mother, his queen, whom he had never loved nor respected. But for Atani to learn of it and never tell her confounded her. She had shared everything with him, all her hopes and dreams and her ugliest thoughts. Everything!
Every report she had heard about Atani’s death mentioned a demon who had spoken familiarly to Atani, who had called him “brother,” perhaps in mockery, and then guided Lord Seras’s hand in throwing the spear that had killed him. That’s how the story was told ever afterward. She had thought it mere embroidery to give Seras’s vile act more drama, to make sense of how any person who knew Atani could be driven to kill a man everyone loved and respected.
Atani’s disappearance and return at sixteen took on a more ominous cast. It seemed likely he had discovered the truth about Hari, and still he had not shared what he had learned with her. She should have asked Hari if he had ever met Atani, if Atani had visited here more than once. If they had become acquainted as brothers. Fishing back through her memories she recalled bitterly how, the evening before he was killed, Atani had said some strange things to her about demons that she hadn’t understood at the time. Had a demon stalked him and he’d been afraid to confess his fear? What if he had been trying to confide in her and she hadn’t listened?
Wings fluttered across her sight, and she jerked back, banging her shoulders against the wall. But it was only a nightjar that vanished away above the roofs of the town. Following its flight drew her gaze to a break in the clearing.
A figure stood in the shadows, wrapped in cloth. After a moment its shoulders tensed with determination and the creature strode forward, swishing through the grass to reveal itself as a granddaughter, wearing a long shawl wrapped around her body.
“Fohiono,” said Dannarah by way of making sure she remembered the name correctly.
“Marshal Dannarah, take me with you to the palace when you leave at dawn.”
Dannarah studied the girl’s shining face and fierce gaze. “I am not in the habit of carrying off a young person when their elders have already forbidden it.”
“He doesn’t understand!” said Fohiono with passionate intensity. “I have trained since I was seven to be skilled at all the things he is skilled at. Why won’t he let me go with him?”
“He’s protecting you.”
She pressed a fist to her forehead, then lowered it. “No one protected him.”
“That your grandfather cares for you enough to protect you is the burden you carry. If you sneak away with us and harm comes to you, he will mourn you for the rest of his life. Do you want to be responsible for his grief?”
She looked away.
“Love can cut as well as nurture,” Dannarah added.
“No one is ever weakened by love,” she retorted. “That’s what Grandmama says.”
“Your mysterious grandmother, of whom I had never heard before today and cannot meet because she is not here. Who seems to have given birth to a son sired by my father, a child I had never heard the least whisper of before today. What else can you tell me?”
The girl met her gaze squarely. “You won’t take me no matter what. But I had to ask.”
“You remind me of Kellas,” said Dannarah wryly, already liking the girl. “Tight-lipped. Disciplined. Hard to take by surprise.”
“My thanks. I
take that as the highest praise.”
“As you should, for it is meant that way.” This was the girl Lifka had been friendly with, something to consider for later. There was more than one way to worm into a close-knit clan’s confidence. “I was seven years old when I saw Captain Kellas for the first time, did you know that?”
“When he was brought into King Anjihosh’s service because he climbed Law Rock even though it was forbidden? Yes, he’s told us that story.”
“There must be some story I can tell you about your grandfather that you haven’t heard.” A vicious little voice woke, prodding her to shock the poor girl, but she ventured into safer waters. “Like the time he saved King Anjihosh from getting an arrow in the back.”
“That’s his shoulder scar,” said the girl, unperturbed in a way that allowed Dannarah to see how much of Kellas’s aplomb she had absorbed. “When he threw himself between the king and the enemy.”
“Marshal?” Tarnit’s voice called softly from the bunks. “Is all well?”
“Just visiting with one of the clan. All’s well. Go back to sleep.”
“I’d better go.” Fohiono lingered, making no move to leave. “What is King Jehosh like? Is he as brilliant and ruthless as King Anjihosh? As wise and compassionate as King Atani?”
“Jehosh is his own man,” Dannarah temporized.
A gust of air made the grass shiver. Mist swirled up where the path met the clearing, only to resolve into a woman watching them. What Dannarah had taken for mist was in fact a cloak white as bone that stirred mistlike in the blowsy wind. With absolute certainty Dannarah knew she was facing a demon.
Fohiono huffed out a breath, then made a curt fare-thee-well and stomped down through the clearing. Meeting the demon as if it were an ordinary woman, she ducked her head like a scolded child, said something with a defiant twitch of her shoulders, and vanished down the path, headed for home. She was no more surprised to meet a demon in the clearing than she would have been surprised to see an owl swoop past.
The girl was gone but the demon remained.
