Servant of the King (The Fledgling Account Book 3)

by Y. K. Willemse

  Sherwin grabbed his shoulder, and Rafen leapt to his feet, facing him accusingly.

  “Raf, yer were going wolf,” Sherwin breathed.

  Rafen stared at the dark hair receding from his hands. Behind the holly bush and through the leaves, the path of the Woods beckoned him. He remembered his paws tattooing the ground; the sound of flowing water; the call of birds from treetop to treetop; and the wild, free sunlight that splashed the world with color.

  “Let go of me.” He hurled himself forward – one run in the trees wouldn’t do any harm; and he would come right back to join the others before they all went searching for Alexander.

  Sherwin threw a restraining arm around his waist. “Raf, yer can’t—”

  A Tarhian voice called through the trees ahead.

  Sherwin paled. Rafen dropped to his haunches behind the holly.

  “—sound over here,” the Tarhian said.

  “Leave it,” someone else answered. “Is it not Yamon? He was watching this place.”

  “It was a young boy.”

  Through the holly’s knotted branches, a Tarhian was visible in the trees beyond the glade.

  “Get back,” Rafen mouthed to Sherwin. “Now.”

  Sherwin slithered back to the hole, suspiciously watching Rafen.

  With one last look at the tantalizing Woods, Rafen scampered after his friend and slipped into the dark underground corridor.

  For five minutes, they held their breath. Outside, the luxurious grass partially muffled footfalls. Eventually, strained silence fell.

  “Do yer think he saw the hole?” Sherwin murmured.

  His tired eyes adjusting to the darkness, Rafen didn’t reply.

  “We shouldn’t’a done it,” Sherwin said. “Someone needs to tell Robert about this ’ole. It should be filled.”

  It was tacitly agreed that Prince Robert was the actual leader in Fritz’s Hideout, because King Robert instigated little except stable rations. After receiving no reply to his message to the admiral, the king had fallen into despair. His son now acted on his behalf.

  “Don’t tell Robert,” Rafen hissed. “Leave it alone.”

  “Why? It’s dangerous. An’ what was the point of that before, ’ey? Goin’ wolf an’ everything, yer could’a had us killed.”

  Rafen leaned against the end of the tunnel.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I just want to get out.”

  In the pale light from the hole, Sherwin’s face softened.

  “Yeah, I know, china plate. It’ll ’appen soon. We said a month and a ’alf, didn’ we?”

  “Robert wants more plans,” Rafen said. “He’ll take forever.”

  They started heading back. Halfway down the corridor, someone shifted in the darkness ahead. Rafen opened his left hand, willing a flame to spring into life on his palm. Francisco squinted. He had forgotten his torch.

  “Comrades!” he said, unintentionally high as always. Then he saw their faces. “What is the matter? Where have you been?”

  “Nowhere,” Rafen said, but Francisco’s hand already moved to delicately pluck a blade of grass off his shirt.

  “Outside?” he whispered.

  Though he was Rafen’s identical twin, Francisco’s facial expressions seldom resembled his brother’s. His dark blue eyes widened now, his breathing becoming shallow. Francisco was slightly taller than Rafen, and he had used to look better fed. The Tarhian King Talmon had raised him as his son, and Francisco was accustomed to carrying himself with elegant, foreign royalty. However, his alarm was palpable now.

  “Whatever did you go outside for? Ah, we will be skinned!”

  Francisco always spoke of himself, Rafen, and Sherwin as one plurality: “we”. This was in recognition that Rafen and Sherwin were inseparable, and Francisco was Rafen’s twin. Francisco knew from experience that whenever Rafen was in trouble, he himself was likely to be implicated soon.

  “Let them skin us then,” Rafen told his brother.

  “Yeah,” Sherwin said. “It’s not a crime to get some air.”

  “It’s more of a crime for King Robert to force us to stay in this hellhole constantly,” Rafen added in a dark tone. “Next time, we’ll take you with us.”

  Francisco twitched nervously. “We might risk everything for some air, my brother.”

  Rafen met Sherwin’s eyes. “We won’t next time. I’ll be careful.”

  Sherwin inclined his head. They moved on in silence for a while.

  “By Carn, we already have enough to concern us,” Francisco said. His Tarhian accent was still thick, but he and Sherwin understood each other now. “Where does Wynne sleepwalk to? Who sees where she goes?”

  “Wynne doesn’t sleepwalk,” Sherwin said with finality. “She pretends, and then she goes and puts a dagger by somebody’s King Lear.”

  “How did you get out?” Francisco said.

  “Franny,” Rafen said (the nickname had caught on), “nothing happened. It’s all right.”

  Francisco made an expansive gesture. “By Carn, I guess it is your concern.”

  Seventeen-year-old Wynne appeared in the circle of light from Rafen’s flame. She wore a dress Queen Arlene had picked for her from some of the Hideout’s stores. It was pale pink with a tight bodice, and Wynne gave herself airs in it, probably painfully conscious that by this time her Sianian peers above the ground had likely been married for two years. The accepted age for a young woman in Siana to marry was fifteen. Wynne’s yellow hair was pulled back in a long braid, and her green eyes, so like Erasmus’, had a spark of malice in them while she chewed on a hard wafer. Rafen backed away a step.

  “’ey,” Sherwin said. “Who said yeh could help yerself to rations?”

  Wynne continued munching, crumbs clinging to the corner of her mouth.

  “Tha’s not fair!” Sherwin’s tall, skinny frame became taut. “Do yer know how hungry I get? Fit to die! And yer, a girl who’s not even growth spurting, stuffin’ yer boat race behind people’s backs!”

  “Oh, you want some, do you?” Wynne said in her robust peasant’s brogue. “Ay, here’s some for you.”

  She broke a portion off the wafer and held it out to Sherwin, who hesitated. Accepting it would make him a perpetrator too.

  “Don’t, Sherwin,” Rafen said. At his words, Wynne dropped the quarter of wafer and swiftly stamped on it with one of her perpetually bare feet, leaving powder in the dirt.

  “Eat it now, you wean,” she spat at Sherwin, taking another large bite of her food.

  Sherwin’s face flushed. “’ow could yer do that? Wastin’ food, when we’ve barely got any, and the king won’ let us out to get some more and all the river fish dried up? Yer big stinker! This is it! I’m complainin’ now, yer can’t—”

  “Sherwin.” Rafen laid a hand on his arm. “It’s all right. We’ll tell King Robert.”

  The color drained from Wynne’s face. She froze, the crumbs of the devoured wafer sticking to her fingers. “You can’t.”

  “Wynne…” Rafen said slowly. Every conversation he had with Wynne over her wrongdoings always ended in her reminding him what he had done. He plunged on anyway. “Wynne, King Robert arranged these rations because—”

  “He does not want us going out to get food anymore,” Francisco said.

  “Not that we did anyway,” Sherwin fumed. “The Selsons did, but as soon as we arrived here, the Lashki knew everyone was alive.”

  “We need the rations so that we can survive,” Rafen finished. “Surely you know that.”

  “Survive?” Wynne said in miserable scorn, and Rafen was horrified to see tears in her eyes. “How can you talk about survival? Ay, all you think about is your own survival. The king said he would throw me out if I broke the rules again. Is that what you want?” Her voice had degenerated into a weeper’s throaty imploring. “Do you want me to get thrown out, to get captured again, by-by him?”

  Rafen knew she meant Asiel, an Ashurite philosopher in the Lashki’s service.

  �
��You never meant me and my family anything but harm, Rafen, son of a human,” she said. “First my father, now me—”

  “Wynne, no,” Rafen began.

  “All I’m doing is satisfying my hunger.” She raised painfully skinny arms. “You left me without a father to provide for me and—”

  “I won’t say it!” Rafen shouted. “I won’t tell. All right?”

  “You’re lying,” Wynne said, rubbing her eyes. “I know you, Wolf. Ay, one moment, you are man, and the next you are a dog at someone’s throat.”

  “Wynne!” Rafen said in exasperation. “I promise I won’t tell. I promise, all right? I’ll say I had rations early.”

  “Is that the truth, Rafen? I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “You can trust me,” Rafen protested.

  “After all you’ve done—”

  “Please believe me, Wynne.”

  Wynne’s green eyes roved over all three of them momentarily. “You will say you took rations?”

  “I promise.”

  “Promises mean little from your lips, Wolf,” Wynne said, her eyes red-rimmed. She turned, disappearing into the darkness.

  “Raf,” Sherwin said in a low voice, “why do yer do that to yerself?”

  “Do what?” Rafen said wearily, feeling like he’d run all the way to New Isles.

  “She does not deserve favors from you, my brother,” Francisco said.

  “Don’t say that,” Rafen said venomously. “She deserves a better life than what I’ve left her with.”

  “Raf, yer can’t listen to her.” Sherwin shook his head. “She blames yer for everything.”

  “I probably deserve it.”

  “You do not,” Francisco snapped. His tone reminded Rafen of Talmon dismissing an absurdity.

  Sherwin stooped and scooped up the pieces of crushed wafer from the ground. He lowered his head into his cupped hands and sucked the crumbs into the vortex of his mouth.

  “What are you doing?” Francisco said, horrified.

  “Can’t see good food like tha’ wasted, sorry,” Sherwin said. “Blimey, Franny, don’t yer get hungry?”

  “I have been hungrier in this place than ever before in my life,” Francisco said, and Rafen believed it. His brother had visibly lost weight since leaving the decadence of Talmon’s household, and he hadn’t had much to lose either. “Yet,” he concluded, “I do not think I could ever eat something I knew had been under a foot.”

  Sherwin shrugged it off. He looked relieved at having consumed something.

  Chapter Two

  Elizabeth’s

  Advice

  Though the Lashki interrogated her concerning them, he no longer cared about the royal family.

  It was impossible that after nearly seven weeks, the wound still pained him. Immediately after receiving it, he could not even travel through the air to kill Rafen. The best part of a day without the copper rod had sapped him, and the wound had dealt the final blow. Demanding kesmal had been difficult. Now, he had regained his ability to travel invisible as a spirit, and still the wound plagued him, an ache in his unseen bones. When he plunged into the cool Sianian waters of his childhood, it burned like fire.

  Once, this perfect body he had created for himself, after purposely committing suicide, had been an unstoppable machine. He could only imagine how he had looked to the thirteen-year-old Fledgling that moment they had met in the king’s bedchamber: towering in his moth-eaten brown robe; dripping with delicious moisture; every bone and joint outlined by the thin, nearly transparent skin; his high-boned face framed by the serpentine black dreadlocks that were his glory; his black eyes calculating. In Tarhia, he had questioned the Fledgling so he could divine if he were a threat or not. He had decided Rafen was not worth troubling himself over. Eight years later, the Lashki’s body was failing him, all because of the Fledgling’s touch.

  He could only hope Rafen had suffered as much for it as he had.

  He stood above Annette, his maimed leg shaking as he directed the rod at her head. She remained unmoving on the red and white checked floor of the throne room, her neck arched, rigid, and pallid. Her arms lay on either side of her, blotchy, the veins prominent.

  She was more resilient to torture than he had thought. He had repeatedly induced suffocating fits, and amidst strangled screaming, she had delivered all kinds of lies as to where her family might be. The Lashki knew they were lies because they were all the old tales he had heard before, when he had pressed her last summer and winter. Even while searching for Rafen, he had contacted her with kesmal, through crystal balls, mirrors, waters, and her own mind. She had resisted him every time.

  She shivered beneath him, her neck relaxing somewhat. Yet her eyelids remained glued shut.

  He wasn’t worried about the royal family’s threat. They, all of them, were pathetic, tremendously weak. The fifth Secra Adelphia – Arlene’s mother and the sixth Secra Etana’s grandmother – had been the true threat. Once married to King Fritz and still immensely powerful, she could have interfered and done much. However, she had left Siana when he had set some of his minions on the current Zaldian chief. Adelphia had had alliances with the powers in Zal Ricio ’el Nria before, and she had left Siana well before the royal family had returned to Siana. The Lashki had found out that she had gone from there to Sarient, to inspect the progress in the training of Richard Patrick, the Fourth Runi. One thing Annette did do for her Master was forge her father’s handwriting cunningly. What with her and Frankston’s previous correspondence, Adelphia had obviously been content that everything in Siana was well, even though the Lashki was certain panicked messages from noblemen and Sianian philosophers had reached King Albert of Sarient. It was convenient King Albert was a fool and a coward; not only would he ignore the messages, but he would make sure that no bad news about his province would reach anyone outside his immediate family.

  No, the royal family was not a threat, but he was sure Rafen was with them. And that was why he had spent innumerable resources, guarding every square of ground in the Cursed Woods. Now he knew Rafen was based there, he meant to guarantee the boy would be found if he sallied forth.

  The Lashki turned quickly, his leg sending spasms shuddering through him. He twisted his hands around the rapier-length copper rod, his rotten teeth grinding. Annette was no use to him unconscious.

  Nazt’s bellow pained him the most. Because of Rafen’s continued existence, it was unfilled, and so was he. He felt hollow, weakened, feverish, when the voices were like this. He was unable to concentrate on anything. Sometimes, it even sapped him of his kesmal. Worse still, he was afraid that Nazt would leave him. And if it did, he knew his immortal body would eventually fail him for good. The next time Rafen was in his hands, the Lashki would hold nothing back. He would destroy both the frame and the soul himself, so that there wouldn’t even be an afterlife for the boy.

  He raised the rod and willed a blue speck to appear in its tip. All was not lost. Would Rafen really remain in hiding with the Selsons while Siana was in captivity? The Lashki was beginning to understand him. Like his soul could have no rest while Rafen was alive, Rafen’s could have no rest until King Robert was back on the throne. Rafen had not joined Alexander earlier, but he would try now. He might even attempt to persuade the Sianian lords to help him, in which case it was paramount that the Lashki made sure he did away with all those whose loyalties he was beginning to doubt. Though the admiral was dead, the Lashki knew Rafen would journey south anyway, to where Erasmus had doubtless told him Alexander was raising an army. The Lashki would keep his numerous guards stationed in the Woods, for they might capture Rafen when he passed in and out, should he communicate with the fool Robert regularly.

  In the meantime, the Lashki would go hunting.

  *

  “I’m sorry,” Rafen said for what felt like the fiftieth time, after telling King Robert he had stolen food.

  “I did not think it of you, Rafen,” King Robert said, shaking his head. “That’s all.�
�

  He sat on a bench against the earthen wall of what often functioned as a sitting room for Sherwin, Wynne, the Selsons, and the Riddings. The stout king’s shoulder-length red hair hung in stringy strands about his doughy face, and his watery blue eyes searched Rafen’s gaze. Beneath a limp red moustache, his mouth had fallen. Stretched skin, rather than his previous fat, hung from his arms. A single gold ring, without gem or inscription, remained on the index finger of his right hand.

  He was not the king of yesteryears.

  Roger and Elizabeth sat on a bench against the opposite wall. They both stared at Rafen, wordless. Roger’s brows had lowered, his eyes dark. Elizabeth, now unobtrusively arranging her husband’s collar, looked at Rafen knowingly. Her dark blue eyes matched Rafen’s in everything except what they saw. She had already guessed the truth. Flicking back her long black curly hair, she straightened.

  “I know you are hungry,” King Robert said flatly. “Indeed, we all are, Rafen. But if you want dinner early, you can tell me. You can tell Robert. I simply did not think it of you.”

  “You don’t give him enough food,” Roger snapped, glancing King Robert’s way. “That’s why.”

  “Roger, none of us can have more food,” King Robert retorted.

  “Then let him go out and get a rabbit or something to eat.” Rising, Roger tore himself from his wife’s grasp. “But no, you have to possess him, hold him close, play the tyrant. I understand perfectly now.”

  “Do I ask where he is every minute of the day?” King Robert said, his voice rising. Rafen noticed ironically that he only regained his energy when arguing with Roger. “Do I shout in his face when he has been away for only half an hour? Do I follow him most of the way when he goes to relieve himself, to make sure he isn’t creeping somewhere else? Do I tell him how to sit, how to drink water from a chalice, how to pronounce his consonants, and exactly what spot on the floor he is supposed to sleep on each night?”