by Tim Stead
“Citizens of Samara,” Tarnell began. “We are here today to welcome King Bren Portina of Blaye into our midst as a friend, an ally, a son.” There was a ripple of approval through the hall. Someone clapped briefly.
“In ancient times our cities were good neighbours,” the King went on. “In peace time and in war we stood together, and the west was safe and prospered. For centuries before the coming of the Faer Karan our two cities were a beacon for the world, and so they shall be again. What better symbol can there be of this great and enduring friendship that a union of our two royal houses?”
The King sat. He was not, Arla reflected, a man given to long and windy speeches. There was a short silence. Arla knew the running order here, and now it was time for Portina to speak, but the King of Blaye took his time getting to his feet.
When he stood the crowd, which had begun to murmur, hushed again. He allowed his gaze to sweep the room, coming at last to rest upon his wife-to-be, the Princess Calaine.
“I am honoured,” he said. “I am honoured by the warmth of your welcome, by the kind words of your king, by the opulence of this feast.” He looked back at the king. “But most of all I am honoured by the chance to ask your princess for her hand in marriage.” He paused, but did not sit.
“This is indeed a new age,” he said. “The Faer Karan are gone, and I thank the Mage Lord for that particular deliverance. We have had years of peace. We have prospered. Our cities grow fat once more with trade and the industry of our citizens. Even the poorest are raised up by it. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new golden age.” He paused again, smiled and shrugged. “But I do not know,” he said. “Unlike the Shan I catch no glimpse of what is to come. I only know what is in my heart, and I stand before you full of hope. I stand here as a king and as a man. As I king I promise you all the friendship of my state, but it is as a man that I ask, in all hope and humility, for the hand of the fair Calaine, your princess, your queen-to-be, in marriage.”
He sat.
Now, according to form, it was time for Calaine’s reply. Arla studied the room again. Everyone was watching Portina and the princess. This was the perfect time for an attack. But nobody moved and the princess stood. She looked pale, which Arla put down to the unhealed wound in her leg. Arla rested her right hand on an arrow, ready to knock and shoot at the first sign of danger.
“Samara is one city,” Calaine said. “And the world is a large place. I was born here. I was raised here. I am a child of Samara as much as anyone here, and those of us who love our city believe it is the greatest in the word. But until recently I had not strayed beyond Samara Plain, and so it was a lesson to see Samara as others see her, and to learn that in other places also there is pride, and love and the firm belief that their home, their way, their custom is the best.”
A movement caught Arla’s eye, and she turned towards the kitchens to see Corin beckoning her urgently. She slipped past the soldiers that lined the north side of the hall and joined her officer.
“A message from Ulric,” Corin said. He drew her down the corridor a few steps to where a lawkeeper waited. She could hear Calaine still speaking, her voice diminished to a mumble by the walls. “Tell the commander what you told me,” Corin said.
“We received a letter of thanks from the king’s steward,” the lawkeeper said. “Thanks for the additional men we cleared for work this afternoon, and Ulric was concerned because he did not think you had done so.”
“How many men?” Arla asked.
“Four.”
Arla swore. “Where’s the steward?” she asked.
“We’ve looked, but we can’t find him,” Corin said.
“Look again,” Arla told him. “You and the others. Look everywhere – bins, cupboards, everywhere.”
She left them to it and hurried to the steward’s office. It lay in a narrow corridor just beyond the kitchens. There were papers scattered across the top of a desk, the detritus of the preparation for the feast. She didn’t have to look far. A letter lay on the pinnacle of the chaos, clearly marked with the seal of the law house. It was addressed to the steward by name and listed four men. The signature at the bottom was Arla’s, but she had never signed the document, never seen it. It was a forgery.
She felt a presence behind her and turned. Taranath loomed over her shoulder.
“I’d swear that was your hand,” the big Green Isler said.
“So would I, but I’ve never seen it before.”
“So they’re here.”
“Aye, and the only one who knows what they look like is the steward, like as not.”
“So he’ll be dead then, I suppose,” Taranath said.
“Get back into the hall,” Arla said. “Watch Calaine and the King – both Kings.”
Taranath left and Arla looked at the paper again. It looked as genuine as anything she’d ever seen. She could almost believe it was her own hand that had signed it. It looked perfect.
Corin appeared in the doorway.
“We’ve found him,” he said, and by his tone she knew that the steward was dead.
“Where did they put him?”
“Basement. Killed there by the look of it. Too much blood to be anywhere else. They hardly bothered to hide him, just threw a cloth over the body.”
Knives. Of course it would be knives. There were hundreds of the things in the kitchens and a few would hardly be missed.
“Talk to as many of the serving people as you can,” Arla said. “See if anyone can point to a man who arrived this afternoon. If you find any of them, take them alive if you can and hold them down in the cellar. I’m going back in the hall.”
She had to. She was the only one with a bow. She walked from the office, picking an arrow from the quiver as she went, and knocked it on the string, keeping the string loose. It was real now. Hekman had been right. It was going to happen.
She stepped past a few of the soldiers. The talking was over, the ceremony finished, and they had all taken their seats at the high table. She saw Hekman sitting next to Portina and caught his eye. She held up her bow, hoping that the arrow on the string would send a message. Apparently it did. Hekman frowned and leaned into Portina’s ear whispering urgently. The King of Blaye nodded, glanced in Arla’s direction and then scanned the room himself.
It would be a waiter, she was sure of that. Every time she saw one of them approach Calaine with a new dish or a bottle, every time one leaned over the table her fingers tensed on the bowstring.
Corin appeared at her side again.
“Can’t we call this off? We know that they’re here. I don’t think we can protect them like this.”
The same thing had already occurred to Arla, but she doubted that the King would listen to her.
“Have a word with the chief,” she said. “Ask him.”
She watched Corin walk around the outside of the room and bend down by Hekman’s shoulder. There was a brief whispered conversation and Corin pulled back. Hekman was seated seven places to the king’s right, and he sighed, visibly, and stood. He walked over to the king and bent down to speak to him. Almost at once Arla could see that it wasn’t going well. Tarnell frowned, half turned in his chair and jabbed his finger several times in the direction of the gathered people of Samara all eating happily in the body of the hall. He jabbed it at Hekman a couple of times for good measure.
Hekman returned to his seat. On the way he looked across at Arla and gave the slightest shake of his head. She understood. The answer was no. The feast would continue. She understood why. It was pride. Tarnell would not show weakness before his subjects and certainly not before Bren Portina. But pride, especially pride like this, was no more than self regard dressed up as stupidity. There were men in this hall, perhaps in the kitchens, intent on killing Calaine and the King of Blaye and even to the most tactically challenged commander it would be obvious that the risk of them succeeding was high.
She continued to watch. Each blue coated waiter that approached the royal table was a targ
et, but they were there all the time – sometimes as many as eight of them, and in the body of the hall there were always at least two dozen more.
This was not a hastily assembled plot. It had been refined almost to perfection. They had stolen and copied a law house seal. They had mastered the forgery of her own signature. When they moved she expected it to be clever, precise, probably deadly, but she watched and the banquet went on. Food was served. Wine flowed and the conversation buzzed louder. Some of the people in the body of the hall were getting drunk, their voices raised, their laughter raucous.
Arla flexed her fingers. She was no more than twenty paces from Calaine, no more than twenty-five from Portina. She could hit what she wanted at this range. She could stop a man in a second, but there were four of them, and a second was all they would need.
It seemed endless. The waiters came and went, the courses did the same and slowly the body of the banqueting hall grew more soused and raucous as the tension at the high table tightened to an almost unbearable pitch. They had stopped eating – the king, Calaine, Portina and all their guests. The guards around the room knew it was coming, too, but the suspense dragged on for so long that Arla had half begun to believe that the banquet would, by some miracle, pass without incident.
A shriek broke the tension, but it didn’t come from the high table. Everyone in the room turned, all the guards, all the lawkeepers. Every eye was drawn to the terrible sight. One of the waiters, resplendent in his blue satin coat, had slit the throat of one of the diners in the middle of the hall. Even as they turned he struck again, but this time missed his mark and sank the blade of his knife into a woman’s shoulder as the man beside her fell backwards in a spray of blood.
Soldiers rushed forwards. The blood and the very act of violence drew them irresistibly towards the assault, and Arla pulled back the string of her bow. She sighted quickly along the arrow, seeing the exact spot on the assassin’s back where the arrowhead would strike.
Then she understood.
She turned, spun on her heel and loosed almost before she had made sense of what she saw. The waiter standing behind Calaine had already raised his blade and it had begun its descent towards her neck when the shaft took him in the throat. Calaine dived sideways out of her seat. Whether she perceived the danger or simply saw the arrow flash past Arla could not have said, but a second waiter immediately drew his blade and dived atop her.
A third, already drawn, struck at Portina, but the King of Blaye was forewarned by the arrow and, half turned in his seat, he blocked the blow with his forearm.
Arla saw the colour of blood as Portina fended off the stroke and a moment later her second arrow was on its way. It was dangerous shooting now. The hall was in motion. Guards and lawkeepers were running forwards, everyone at the high table was beginning to rise and turn. But Arla knew that she was the quickest option. Her arrow would arrive before any other help and so she loosed, aiming a little to the left so that Portina could still move and not be struck.
He was faster than she had thought. Her arrow cut through the King of Blaye’s shirt and on, taking the assassin in the hip. It was enough. The man was turned by the impact, his knife flailing up and away as he tried to keep his balance, and then the king’s men were on him, dragging him down backwards, away from Portina.
The concern now was for Calaine. She was below the table and so was the second assassin who had attacked her. Arla saw a hand rise with a blade and fall again, and then the soldiers arrived, just a moment too late to prevent the blow.
She pushed her way towards the high table through the seething, panicked crowd. Someone seized her arm, and she tried to shrug his hand away, but his grip was firm.
“You tried to kill the princess!” the man cried.
“Idiot.”
She hit him in the face. Hard. He went down. Now was no time to argue.
She pushed on. It was less that twenty paces, but it took what seemed an age. Eventually she climbed over the high table, springing up and jumping down into the mass of blades and armour that surrounded Calaine. She could see that the princess was still down. Had she been badly hurt? Arla tried to push past a soldier, but got pushed back.
“The princess?” she said.
The soldier didn’t answer. He was wide eyed, on the edge of panic himself, and Arla knew that it wasn’t wise to press a point with an armed man in that condition. She stepped back and to one side, trying to see past the wall of anxious men.
There was an angry roar from within the melee.
“Blood and fire, will you let me STAND UP!”
The voice was Calaine’s. Apparently she was not mortally wounded, and as the soldiers backed away from her anger Arla could see the princess sitting on the floor surrounded by the wreckage of the chair she’d been seated on. She was trying to get her good leg under her, and the wound on the other had opened again, judging by the blood staining her dress. Arla stepped forwards and seized her arm, helping her to her feet.
The dress had been ripped by a blade about half a foot below the neck-line and the secret of Calaine’s survival was thus revealed. Chain mail. She was wearing chain mail beneath the dress. Arla suppressed a smile.
“You’re unhurt?”
Calaine winced as she tried to put weight on her leg. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “But I’ll mend.” She looked Arla in the eye. “You saved my life, Arla Crail. It’s not a thing I’ll forget.”
Arla half nodded, half bowed. “A favour returned, Do-Regana,” she said.
“Damn but you ex-guards are stiff necked,” the princess said. “Is it over? Will they try again?”
“It’s over,” Arla said.
Tarnell was there, anxious. Calaine put her hand on her father’s arm. “I’m fine,” she said. “No harm done, thanks to the commander’s arrow. It was a fine shot.”
The King of Samara looked Arla in the eye and nodded. “I’m in your debt,” he said.
Arla began to back away. The great were gathering around, and it was no longer her place, but Calaine seized her wrist.
“Come to my apartments tonight,” she said. “After sunset.”
Arla nodded. “I will,” she said, and was released. She found herself standing next to Taranath.
“They’re all dead,” the big man said. “One by you, two by sword and one by poison.”
It was no more or less than she had expected. “It’s over, here,” she said. “Go back to the law house and write it up. I’ll stay and tidy things. I’ll be back in tomorrow.”
Taranath nodded and left.
Arla began to circulate again. It was over, but she was going to be here until the last dignitary was gone. Just in case.
*
When the heir to the throne tells you to do something, you do it. So it was that Arla came to the gates of the citadel just as the sun was setting over the ramshackle roofs of Gulltown.
“Calaine’s expecting me,” she said to the guard on the gate. He nodded her through, and a soldier detached himself from the guardroom to escort her across the citadel. It was a more respectful greeting than on her previous visits.
In spite of her unfortunate memories of the place – she’d spent more time in the cells here than any other part – Arla liked the citadel. It was a well conceived piece of military architecture, solidly built and not at all unkind to the eye. It was built of the local sandstone and glowed firelight-yellow in the evening sun, its clean lines making bold shadows on the courtyard floor and walls.
They came quickly to Calaine’s apartments, which were, in their own way, as modest as Arla’s own. Everything was bigger here, of course, and the quality was better, but Calaine lived in two rooms, as Arla did, and the main room was devoid of boastful ornament.
Calaine answered the door wearing white trousers and a mail shirt. Arla had never known anyone who was so comfortable in armour. The princess had been raised a soldier and still reverted to it whenever she could. She waved Arla to a chair.
“W
ine?”
Arla shook her head. “I’ve work yet to do, and I’ll need a clear head,” she said.
Calaine sipped her own wine, replaced it carefully on the table between them.
“You saved my life today,” she said, and held up a hand to still Arla’s inevitable protest. “I’m not saying this to praise you, or to thank you, but it’s a fact. Without your vigilance I would have been killed. All my life I have relied on myself, on my own skills, but it seems that for a princess, for a queen, they are inadequate.”
She sipped her wine again, rubbed the bridge of her nose with a tired gesture. It had clearly been a long day for the Do-Regana.
“My father is in the same situation, though I’d never get him to admit it. We both need to be protected, and while each and every one of the King’s men would run off a cliff if we asked it of them, would gladly give their lives for the House of Tarnell, they lack… something.
“The distraction the assassins used was clever. It should have worked, but it didn’t because you saw it for what it was.”
“I was lucky,” Arla said.
Calaine smiled. “People who are lucky a great deal of the time are mistaken in thinking it luck,” she said. “You have rare abilities, commander, and I’d like to make use of them. I am forming a new unit, a royal guard, and I want you to be its captain.”
It was an exceptional offer, but it would mean abandoning the chief. She wouldn’t be investigating any more. Her job would be uncovering plots against the crown, keeping Calaine and her father safe at functions like the betrothal. Doubtless the pay would be good. She shook her head.
“I don’t want it,” she said. “I like what I do now. Am I allowed to say that?” For a moment she was afraid that it had been a command clothed as a question, but Calaine smiled again.
“I thought you might say that,” she said. “Are you sure I can’t change your mind? You can set your own pay. It would make you one of the most powerful people in Samara.”
Arla was tempted for a moment – not to take the job, but to find out just how much Calaine was willing to pay her, but it would be less than gracious.
