Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

  The blade caught the Chwahir on the side of the head, sending him staggering. Kaidas brought the sword around in a whistling arc. Kivic raised an arm to block the blow, fell to a knee as the steel cut to the bone. Kivic recoiled in shock and disbelief, and the blade struck him again, this time across the face, breaking his nose. He fell back, legs churning up the mud as he tried to get away. Kaidas struck again and again, until the man lay hacked and bloody, obviously dead.

  As suddenly as it had come, the hot fury vanished, leaving Kaidas trembling, his body awash in sweat inside his clothes, his breath wheezing in a raw throat. He looked from the blood splatters down his fine battle tunic to the blood fast congealing down his sword in streaks and clots, to the revolting mess he’d made of a once-living man, and nausea clawed at the back of his throat.

  He shut his eyes and fought for control as sound rushed around him. An eternity later the weird rushing noise ebbed. Other noises resolved into voices, and then words. “Here he is! Oh, is that the prisoner?”

  “… and so we witnessed, before the duke ordered the body restored to the Chwahir side of the border, along with the other dead man and the two wounded,” came the cadenced voice of the judiciary.

  Kaidas could not prevent the unwanted image of mud-smeared gray hair, a middle-aged woman’s mottled face, cheek opened by a knife, lifted by her fellow judiciary from the muddy ground, hood then quickly restored. It felt like personal trespass, so ingrained was the rule that you did not speak to or approach judiciaries acting as Judicial Masks. He did not know if she was among the judiciaries present. Or what happened to them if unmasked.

  “… we both saw that the accused had attacked the duke with a weapon. The evidence was the knife in his hand and the condition of the duke’s overrobe, with a great rend at the front,” the judiciary went on. “As a result, we are satisfied that both the deaths of the prisoner and of the Chwahir warrior were the result of self-defense in battle, your majesty.”

  The queen thanked the judiciaries and indicated that they could withdraw. She then sent the scribe out, so that she, Kaidas, and Davaud were alone.

  “Now I want your version, Commander,” Hatahra said.

  Kaidas did not mistake the privacy of this interview as complimentary, not under that unwavering gaze. He answered bluntly, without any courtly arts: “The one thing I learned from my cousins was how to plan an ambush. I thought I’d better do that in case the Chwahir tried anything. So each day—it took three—I placed my people in position on either side of the road, sent two defenders to accompany the judiciaries, and we waited. When the Chwahir arrived on the third day, they ordered the defenders forward to collect the accused, which seemed to me that they were drawing our people in for an attack. So I signaled to ready swords.”

  The queen gave a short nod, the fan flicking to avert shadow trespass.

  “They attacked. We defended. We outnumbered the Chwahir by three, which they soon saw. Most of them ran the moment they could disengage, except the ones who attacked the judiciaries. The accused tried to run. As it happens, the path he chose was where I’d stationed myself to watch. He attacked me. I killed him.”

  The queen’s eyes narrowed. “No heroic claims?”

  I could make you a king.

  “It was not heroic,” Kaidas said, after a short pause. “He had a knife. I had a sword. I was also wearing mail, as ordered.”

  The queen’s fan snapped shut. “The kingdom is going to hear about a heroic defense,” she said. “And as no Colendi lives were lost, we will call it a triumph.” She smiled thinly. “I will reward you at your wife’s masquerade. I want everyone to know that service is always rewarded. I will also announce my kingdom tour and that the honor of the first stop will be bestowed on Alarcansa.”

  The queen smiled broadly.

  THREE

  OF AN ACT OF WAR

  W

  e reached the Mardgar River, Birdy and the other stable hand sold our carriages and horses. Birdy was kept on, as foreseen, and the coachman paid off and sent back to Colend. The Marlovens (and Seneschal Marnda) oversaw the repacking of our belongings, but the book was in the waistband of my knickers. As soon as night fell, I moved to the back of the barge and quietly slipped the book over the edge, where it fell away into the black waters, every incomprehensible word now in my head.

  “Truly,” Queen Hatahra said with lifted voice, Carola standing in proud triumph at her left, and her duke at the queen’s right. “Truly, this masquerade surpasses anything I have ever seen. Nothing,” she declared, “will ever match it.”

  Carola lowered herself in a deep court curtsey, wishing that thorn Ananda present only to witness her triumph. But no, it was far better to break the circle of the so-called Roses (thorns, every one of them) by not inviting them. Carola would shut them out of her select inner circle and thus rid court of the last of Her influence. Court would be the better for it.

  As she rose from her curtsey, she permitted herself one triumphant glance upward at the floating lamps, each in an expensive crystal tulip that reflected its light in spangled beauty. They shamed the floating lamps at Her wedding—and had probably cost twice as much—but all the rest of this season, court would talk only of this masquerade, and those who had not been invited would…

  “… so glorious,” the queen was saying, “that I find I cannot wait to discover what delights lie in store. And so I have decided that my progress will not begin at New Year’s as is customary, but at Harvest Festival.” She smiled at Carola. “I am humane. You are released from duty so that you may make Alarcansa as beautiful as rumor praises it. Nor would I dream of separating the newlyweds. If the kingdom requires defense, my lord duke, you will have a transfer token for instant return.”

  Carola dropped into another formal curtsey, her duke bowed, the entire company bowed, and the queen held out her hand to her consort, which was the signal for the music to begin again.

  Carola straightened up, having exerted every nerve to maintain her composure, though her throat tightened with the desire to weep for triumph. Newlyweds, honor, she had reached the pinnacle of courtly influence far sooner than she had anticipated. With one masquerade!

  Melende required a modest demeanor and an elegant finish to whatever one did, whether dressing or regaining influence over court, and so she walked among her guests, giving graceful replies and gestures in return for complimentary words and deferences. She looked for signs of envy and jealousy. There were long glances and oblique angles to the fans of some of the older women, like the Duchess of Gaszin. Jealousy? When Carola attempted to drift by them in order to hear their conversation, they always seemed to be on the other side of the ballroom.

  No matter. People really were a collection of petty desires and spites, as her father had said. She gave up, determined to enjoy her triumph until the last guest departed.

  When the high windows showed blue of impending Daybreak, she left on her duke’s arm, her purpose to retire to a well-earned rest before making a leisurely departure for Alarcansa. So busy was her review of her triumph that she did not prompt him for his thoughts, as she might have. We shall have time to converse as civilized beings, riding together in the coach, she thought. And there was that little flutter of victory when she remembered the word the queen had spoken before all court: newlyweds.

  So rare a word, so very romantic, she was thinking as she walked into her wardrobe, where the ever-vigilant maids waited to help her out of gown and jewels. Newlyweds! How much gossip had reached the queen of those white ribbons? Even the queen took the Duke and Duchess of Alarcansa for a devoted pair, and that was a triumph, too, in its way. But it was an outer triumph, almost… hollow, for it reminded her of her lack of personal victory.

  Perhaps, when they were alone, just the two of them, and no horrid wars or royal demands to distract them, she could delicately remind him of that one last sign. He seemed to have given up painting, but she didn’t care for lover’s cups so long as no one else had one. The rea
l sign was so very simple a thing! Kaidas had only to wave aside her maid of a morning and offer to tie up her hair. So small a gesture, yet so very, very important, akin to the garlanding of a stag at the end of a long hunt…. Was there perchance a painting in that?

  She designed the painting while she soaked in her perfumed bath. It would be full of secret symbols, to remind her of her triumphs each time she glanced at it.

  She emerged smiling from the bath, dressed in her wrapper and ready for bed, but instead of finding him awaiting her in their bedchamber, he was still in his ball dress, staring out the window at the rooftops in the weak light of dawn. Only his mask was gone.

  She let him hear the whisper of her slippers on the mosaic tiles. He did not turn, but said as he gazed out at the pale sky, “I think I’d better go.”

  “Kaidas,” she said his name tenderly, to soften the tone of remonstrance. “Surely you remember that the queen released us both from our duties? We may leave at our leisure,” she finished, conscious of her admirable restraint.

  He made a quick sign with his fingers, too quick to catch, but she perceived his impatience. “Yes, I comprehended; I intend to depart for Alarcansa at this moment. And travel fast. I’ve been standing here contemplating that challenge, and the work that shall be required to meet it.”

  “Challenge?” she repeated, too surprised to hide her astonishment.

  He turned, and there was that expression, the one she’d seen when he said, An act of war.

  Here was his explanation at last; she was aware of her ambivalence about hearing it, and for the first time questioned her desire to hear his every thought.

  He said, “Surely, you did not mistake her remark about newlyweds as anything but irony?”

  Carola was so shocked that she shivered and closed her hands around her arms, hugging them against her as the ice was followed by the scorch of rage. The words were out before her tired mind could control them: “You will ride home too fast for me? Would you have been so considerate of Lasthavais’s comfort?”

  If she could have snatched the words out of the air, like those Elgars of legend snatched arrows when shot by enemies, she would have. But rage had forced them, and they were spoken. She watched their impact in the tightening of his mouth, the quick dilation of his pupils.

  He said evenly, “Please honor me by appreciating the fact that I have never introduced her name into any conversation between us. I beg the honor of a similar forbearance.”

  She curtseyed, and though she trembled with fury, the years of control her father had inculcated permitted her to imbue every line of her body with the irony he seemed to think her unable to perceive.

  His brows lifted. “Since you have introduced her name, twice, and since I would not have any lack of answer subsequently used to fuel your slanders, I will take leave to state that if I had—”

  Slanders? “I have heard enough,” she said, in her father’s tone.

  “If I had ridden with Lasva at the speed I will shortly travel, she would have laughed and made a joke of it, she would have spared a thought for the comfort of the servants, of innkeepers and stable hands, and of the horses and myself. Everyone, in short, but herself.”

  “I have never slandered anyone,” she began, hating the necessity to defend herself.

  He turned away. “I will end my part of this distasteful conversation by observing that the first time I heard your voice, you were making a remark about the King of the Chwahir that your cousin faithfully carried through court, embellishing its venom at each repetition but always prefaced by my cousin says. Do you really believe the queen was not aware whose wit inspired Tatia’s tattle about her sister?”

  The shock knocked her back a step. “The queen has never said…” Carola paused, the hot rage subsumed by horror. The queen’s penchant for irony was well known. Carola had enjoyed the occasional moth kiss aimed at Altan, at Gaszin, at that hummer from…

  Oh, but surely, never toward Alarcansa. But the idea, like her first words to Kaidas, could not be caught and smothered. That very evening, a courtly moth kiss in the word newlyweds.

  Carola’s gaze shifted to his face.

  He saw the pain under the shock and anger and found a breath of humor at his own heated righteousness. With considerably less temper he said, “My part of the queen’s ire was earned by my father when I was still in the nursery, when he apparently dallied with her. Do you see it? The queen is going to arrive in state, expect entertainment on an imperial level, and beggar Alarcansa before she moves on to either Altan or Thora-Dei, whoever she wants to intimidate the most.”

  Beggar Alarcansa.

  Carola’s chin came up, and intent stiffened her spine and shoulders. Behind her breastbone was that strange numbness that one gets just after touching hot metal, before the pain. The pain of burn was going to come, oh yes. A very angry queen, who had been far, far more observant than Carola had ever conceived. Do not ever underestimate an enemy, once you identify him, her father had said when Carola was scarcely ten years old. Or her, Carola had thought, remembering her cousin Falisse, and her intolerable smugness over everyone calling her Songbird. How Carola had done everything she could to take away that pride, that pre-eminence, but she could not take away that voice.

  She said, “I will ride with you.”

  “I am going to travel fast. That means no languor of a morning,” he said.

  It was that same tone again: an act of war.

  “I shall be ready before the glass changes,” was her response, and she whisked herself back into her bedchamber, surprising her yawning maids in the act of stowing her cleaned jewels and rolling her ribbons.

  She issued orders in a determinedly low, pleasant voice that sent them scurrying, and then, when they were safely out of the room, she moved to her ribbon drawer, and pulled out the waiting white ribbons. She was about to pitch them in the fire, then hesitated. No. That would only cause comment.

  Just how much subsequent slander had been aimed her way, that she didn’t know about? Before this she had never considered the possibility that a Definian could be mocked. But that was before the queen had given Alarcansa a moth kiss before nearly all the court, at an Alarcansa masquerade.

  No, that was a royal moth kiss. Carola carefully replaced the ribbons that she would never touch again and walked to the wardrobe to dress for riding.

  In spite of the rude, even vulgar incivility of this mode of travel, her melende required that she match Kaidas pace for pace; she would show concern for others, including animals; she would never bring up the forbidden name unless he introduced it first. She would demonstrate through her actions that anything that fool Lasthavais Lirendi could do (or Kaidas believed she could do—because Carola knew that the princess had never so much as sat bestride a horse) a Definian could do with more style and grace.

  And so, because they traveled largely in silence, she had time to think.

  Carola had to appreciate the queen’s mastery. In spite of all her flourishing words about loyalty and romance, heroism and defense. My part of her ire was earned… Carola had known about the queen’s antipathy for the Baron Lassiter. It had never occurred to her that the queen had accepted Carola’s suit not just as an effective break of the prospective ducal alliance, but as a personal strike at the Lassiters, father and son.

  And now the queen was going to strike again.

  Carola regretted those damned floating lamps.

  When she rose on the third morning of their journey, and the early light outlined the familiar ridge that marked the distance to her home, her mood was more uneasy than relieved. Too much had changed. From a lifetime of habit she yearned to share her thoughts with Tatia, and yet there was that my cousin says. Those particular words had never been on Carola’s orders. She had always been quite clear that if Tatia shared her views, she was free to speak of them, but to tell her to say something? What could Tatia have been thinking? Carola was tired of conversations in her mind, both with her silent duke and w
ith Tatia.

  This was her firm conviction: she could duel with the queen, style for style. Since it was going to cost, she might as well create an entertainment that would be talked of as the epitome of fashion, if not by an antagonistic queen, then by her entourage. Even in beggary a Definian would display more style—more melende—than a Lirendi.

  They rode into her courtyard just after the sun had cleared the mountaintops. She dismounted and said, “Shall we breakfast at the Hour of the Deer and form our plans?”

  Kaidas bowed and strode off. She had matched him pace for pace, as she had promised. He did not acknowledge it, but neither did she see any of that withering sarcasm.

  Taking in a small breath of relief, she walked inside her palace. It was quiet. She encountered one of the maid-servants carrying a silver chocolate service. The girl looked so startled the dishes rattled as she curtseyed. “Oh, your grace,” she said. “We did not know you were to come!”

  “Who is that for?” Carola asked, annoyed that her personal dishes—the ducal dishes—were being used. Surely the servants did not dare—

  “Lady Tatia,” the girl said quickly.

  “Return it to the kitchen to be kept warm. We will breakfast at the Hour of the Deer,” Carola said, smothering the impulse to add as always.

  She trod at a deliberate pace up the stairs to Tatia’s rooms, which were empty, the bed stripped, the finer furnishings shrouded. Carola looked around, puzzled. Where was Tatia—visiting a vineyard? No, that maid had been taking chocolate to her.

  Carola started out, and it was then that she noticed things out of place: a mirror gone from the wall there, where Carola customarily took one last look at her dress and coif before descending the stairs to public view. The side mirror gone from outside her own suite, where she liked seeing herself as she entered and left her private rooms. The parrots’ cage was missing from the small anteroom.