The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  “The Thorns are not Baozites.”

  “No. But they serve Ang’arta. And, perhaps, have plans for it. Ang’arta can’t hope to hold more territory now, not with its conquests in Thelyand so new … but in five years? Ten? It isn’t that long a march from Thelyand’s borders to Oakharn’s, or to yours. Every man they kill today is one fewer they’ll have to face then.”

  “I’m afraid we might have to disappoint them.” Lord Aegelmar extended the folded letter to Blessed Eliset, who took it and tucked it neatly into her sleeve. “See that ten copies are made, along with a written account of what was told here today. Dispatch messengers on fast horses to each of the border castles with instructions to their lords that they are to hold their soldiers back, and take no action, until ordered otherwise by the High King or myself. Each messenger will carry a sealed copy of the record and confession and deliver it directly to each castle’s lord. Another copy must go to King Raharic and each of the Oakharne border castles; find brave men for that task, and ones without family. The original, and the last copy, go to Craghail and King Theodemar.”

  The Lord General returned his unsettling gaze to Bitharn. “There is one other task I would ask of you, if your duties permit.”

  She bit her lip. “What?”

  “Go with the messenger to Raharic. Tell him what you told us. Take the girl, too, if she is strong enough to make the ride. The Oakharne can be a sentimental people; it might be helpful for them to know that we saved this child’s life from a danger that one of their own knights set upon her.”

  Bitharn dipped her head, ashamed that she’d forgotten about Mirri. Of course the girl needed to go back to her parents; they had no idea what had happened to her. Bitharn hadn’t had time to stop and tell them before her headlong ride to Thistlestone. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Thank you,” Lord Aegelmar said, and nodded slightly to signal that the audience was at an end. Bitharn made one last bow—a full obeisance this time, ceding her authority to the High King’s—and slipped out quickly, hoping to avoid the court gossips.

  None of them caught her. Bitharn locked the door to her guest room with a wave of relief.

  It was nearly past sunset. She was late for prayer.

  Bitharn hadn’t prayed since she left Tarne Crossing. She hadn’t prayed alone in years. Since childhood, she’d always observed the rites with Kelland. It felt strange to stand by herself at sunset, like trying to dance without a partner, but she willed her grief aside and stood in the waning light. Drawing a controlled breath, she raised her arms above her head.

  If the Bright Lady willed, she’d have Kelland back. If not, she’d carry the sword and prayers he’d left to her. There was still a need, still a purpose, whatever happened.

  Bitharn exhaled, and began to pray.

  20

  The messenger came at midnight. He bore Langmyr’s royal crown-and-sun on his breast, and traveled under a peace-banner that—surprisingly, given tensions along the border—had been honored by both sides. What he came to say, no one in Bulls’ March knew, although rumors ran wild from the moment he came into sight. Leferic heard his servants, and no few of his knights, whispering like roaches in the rushes. The whispers vanished when he came near and sprang back up as soon as he was past.

  The messenger spoke to Leferic briefly in the privacy of his library and was gone before daybreak. He left two sealed letters behind; one of the servants caught a glimpse of them before Leferic tucked them into his cloak, and that spurred rumors of its own, especially when their lord told no one what the letters said.

  Whatever the news was, it must have been direly troubling, the gossips agreed. For two days and two nights after, Leferic did not sleep. He grew haggard and clumsy, and the castle folk murmured that the messenger must have bewitched him with the same foul magic that had killed his brother and made a soul-broken husk of his father. Several muttered that the Langmyrne should have been given a quick death and sent to the pyre rather than being allowed to ride away, peace-banner or no.

  Heldric reported all these whispers to his lord, but Leferic did nothing. Rumors are poison dropped in the ear, Inaglione had written, and can be deadly if not swiftly cured. There was truth in that, Leferic knew, but grief and indecision made him too weak to act on it. He was beginning to understand why his father had retired to his silent bed.

  Then, cold and early on the morning of the third day, a new messenger arrived. This one came from the north, not across the river from the west, and he wore King Raharic’s green oak wreath on a surcoat of snowy white. Unlike the last rider, this one stayed through the day; and as he lingered in the castle, and exchanged courtesies with the knights and servants, word of his tidings began to spread. It was in that fashion, slowly, that the people of Bulls’ March came to see the true shape of things.

  Or so they imagined, Leferic thought dourly as he sat at the paper-strewn desk in his library. The real truth, and the burden of its guilt, were his to bear alone.

  He ran a hand through his lank blond hair, trying to force his thoughts into something like order. By all rights he should be preparing to meet Raharic’s messenger, but the royal herald had sent word that he was exhausted by his travels and would prefer to reserve the formal audience for tomorrow.

  The real reason for the delay, Leferic suspected, was that the herald was using this time to quietly feel out his liegemen and how they had reacted to the news of Albric’s betrayal. He wondered what the messenger would make of the fact that most of them hadn’t heard it. The knights, for their part, would probably assume that Leferic’s delay in sharing Albric’s confession with them meant that he’d plotted along with the dead man. They had little love to spare for him as it was: easy enough to believe he’d been part of a treacherous conspiracy.

  They’d be right about that, of course. Which was part of what made this so hard.

  Leferic raked his fingers through his hair again. His gaze strayed to the books that filled the shelves on every wall. Nearly three hundred volumes of scholars’ research and sages’ wisdom, histories and legends, religious precepts and secular wit.

  Three hundred volumes, and no answers.

  Even Inaglione, that wisest and most cynical of courtiers, could offer only limited counsel across the chasm of centuries and the great silence of the pyre. Leferic had recognized, that first day when he came up to the library after learning of Galefrid’s death, that he would have to rely on his own wholly inadequate wits to survive. It was not a new thought. But it had never been as brutally urgent before.

  Now, for the first time, he saw just how lonely a path he had chosen.

  He’d have no friends on this road, no close confidants. His only guide was the shade of a dead courtier, writing to him across the gap of ages and a culture that had fallen from Rhaelyand and Ardashir’s golden palaces to this miserable pile of rocks in the woods.

  Any friends he might make would eventually be sacrificed to the needs of his position. Leferic didn’t know if he could bear that again, even if the choice were open to him. Better to keep his friends limited to books and ghosts. Better to be lonely and remember the real price of power: that everyone in his life, no matter how loyal or how beloved, was a pawn he might someday have to give up on the board. Everyone.

  He thought he’d understood that, thought he’d accepted it with Galefrid’s death. But his brother had never meant much to him, and Leferic now saw that he’d understood nothing.

  The Langmyrne messenger hadn’t just delivered their Lord General’s message and a copy of a prayerbook confession. He’d brought an unwanted truth, one that Leferic’s thoughts kept circling like a sparrow trying to find a roost on a razorspine tree.

  The only way out of his predicament was to let Albric take the blame for a crime of which he was blameless. The sins were Leferic’s, and his alone. But he would have to shove them onto his friend’s corpse if he was to keep his throne. Or his head.

  And Albric had known that, and had opened his arms to tak
e them before he died.

  Leferic struggled to grasp the enormity of that choice. Albric had warned him away from the Maimed Witches since the inception of their first plan. When his warnings weren’t heeded, Albric had accepted death and dishonor as the cost of shielding Leferic from his own folly. He hadn’t fought his fate, hadn’t complained; he had simply done it, accepting as his duty a sacrifice that Leferic could never have asked for.

  And Leferic would have to let that go. There was nothing he could do to lessen the stain on Albric’s honor without bringing suspicion onto himself and rendering that sacrifice worthless. He had little use for the empty mouthing that “honor” often was, but Albric had prized it, and it was a grievous irony that he should have given up his to save his lord’s.

  It still might not be enough. Even if Leferic stood silent, even if he joined the mob spitting on his friend’s good name, his liegemen might seize on the excuse to be rid of him. They’d claim he’d turned a blind eye to Albric’s plotting, allowing the treachery to go forward so he could seize the throne. Or they’d say he had only been allowed to keep his father’s chair because he was a puppet to Ang’arta, bowing to the Thorns’ every whim.

  With more time he could win them over, as he’d won Sir Brisic and Sir Merguil. Leferic was sure of that. Bit by bit he could chip away at old alliances, exploit old enmities, weld competent men to his side, and replace fools with loyalists. But to do that he needed time and money. At present he had neither. Without those, all roads led to the same end: a fall from power, maybe to the headsman’s block. All those deaths for nothing.

  Albric had bought him a chance, not a certainty. His thoughts circled that, trying to find a safe place amidst the bristling barbs and failing, failing every time.

  A knock sounded at his door. Leferic lowered his head into his hands, hoping futilely that he’d hallucinated the sound in his grief and exhaustion.

  He wasn’t that lucky. Another knock came, this one louder. Leferic dropped his forehead to the tabletop. The rough wood felt as welcoming as a pillow. “Leave me.”

  “That might be unwise.” Cadarn’s voice was muffled but grim.

  “Why? Is the herald calling for an audience? He said he wasn’t ready—”

  “No. Ulvrar found some travelers on the road. Badly hurt but alive. Andalya sees to them now. She says they will live.”

  “Bandits?” Leferic forced himself out of the chair and to the door, letting Cadarn in. He saw no one listening in the hall, but this was not a conversation to be shouted through three inches of wood.

  The exile shook his shaggy blonde head. “Ghaole, Andalya called them. Corpses of men made into monsters by foul magic. She said they were the work of Thorns.”

  Leferic sank nervelessly into his chair. His elbow jostled a sheaf of papers, spilling them across the floor. “Who did they attack?”

  “A girl, a knight and a baby. Andalya said the knight is from Bulls’ March.” Cadarn’s blue eyes were steady and appraising. No accusation there, not yet. Leferic wondered if the skar skraeli had heard the rumors about Albric’s treachery.

  “Can they tell us what happened?”

  “Not yet. Andalya said the girl might be awake by sundown. She was not hurt so badly as the knight.”

  “The baby?”

  “Cold. Hungry. Not hurt. The other two fought hard to keep it so.”

  “Where are they being housed?”

  “The sickrooms. For now.”

  “See that they have guest quarters when they are well enough to take them. Until then, keep a watch on the sickrooms. Only your men, or those you know well enough to trust.” Leferic hoped the northerners would do it themselves, but he thought it best to give them some leeway. Neither Cadarn nor any of his men used Blessed Andalya’s title, and all seemed uncomfortable around her. “I do not want anything untoward to befall them.”

  Cadarn furrowed his brow. “You think they are in danger?”

  “I would prefer not to risk it. If a Thorn sent monsters to attack them, who knows? Better to be safe. You said the girl would be awake by nightfall?”

  “So Andalya said. Nightfall.”

  SUNDOWN FOUND LEFERIC IN THE WHITEWASHED sickrooms. There were three such rooms on the castle’s southwestern face, between the chapel and the kitchens. In peacetime two of them were used to store flour, smoked meat, and other foodstuffs, but one was always waiting for the wounded. Peace was never that sure on the banks of the Seivern.

  Blessed Andalya was tidying up and preparing to leave her charges for the night when Leferic arrived. She was a short woman whose hair had begun graying when she was sixteen; now forty, she had a round, youthful face under a braided coil of starry white. The Blessed patted Leferic’s shoulder as she passed through the door in a rustle of sun-yellow robes.

  “Be careful of them,” she said. It was not a request. “They’ve been through seven hells to get here.”

  Leferic bowed in response, and closed the door after the Blessed.

  Glassed lanterns hung from hooks on the walls, shedding a warm golden light and perfuming the sickroom air with the fragrance of vanilla and cloves. The Blessed forbade torches in her healing rooms; she said their smoke polluted the air, and insisted that the sickrooms be illumined by lanterns that burned the scented oils she brewed. The fragrance was supposed to ease the dreams of the wounded, or something of that sort.

  It didn’t seem to soothe their current guests. Certainly the big man sleeping on the first linen-draped pallet was not resting easily. His coarse black hair was a rumpled mess and his clothes were spotted with sweat; his jaw clenched in his dreams and his hands kept twitching toward fists. Thick-wrapped bandages swathed a wound on his calf and another on his side.

  Leferic knew that man. Brys Tarnell: one of his brother’s knights, not long sworn to his service before Galefrid died. Albric had never liked him, calling him an up-jumped mercenary with the honor of an alley cat. All true, so far as Leferic could see, but the man was alive when Galefrid and his other knights were dead, so perhaps there was something to be said for alley cats.

  He did not know the girl on the next bed. She had the look of peasant stock: callused hands, thick legs, broad plain face. There was no hint of beauty about her, save in her wide brown eyes, which watched him with the fear of a doe beset by hounds. She held a baby in her arms, and she was humming a cradle song to the child as Leferic came to the foot of her bed.

  Leferic studied the baby carefully. Brys Tarnell had been with Galefrid in Willowfield, and there was only one child in this world that an honorless man like that would risk his own hide to protect.

  He barely remembered his nephew’s face. Children of that age all looked much the same, and he’d never paid much attention to Galefrid’s family. But why else would a mercenary fight off ghaole to save a baby? The child had to be Wistan.

  The absurdity of it made him want to laugh. Or hit something. All that plotting and agonizing, all those deaths … and all he’d had to do was wait for some peasant girl to bring the child home.

  Or not. Perhaps it might have turned out differently without those ghaole on the road. How much was the world changed by each word spoken, each decision made? How many ripples did each drop make on a rain-hammered pond? Leferic would never know. What he did know, looking at the peasant girl and the baby sleeping in her arms, was that he had the opportunity to remove one of the myriad threats that plagued him. The Blessed had already declared that the child suffered from the strains of the road; it would be the easiest thing in the world to leave him on the windowsill, let him take a fatal chill, and put him back to be found safely dead in the morning.

  Should he do it tonight? Or wait until tomorrow evening, and have both Brys and the girl dosed with dreamflower dust first?

  The girl stopped humming. Leferic glanced at her, wondering if some hint of his intentions showed on his face. She watched him warily, clutching the baby tightly to her breast. “My lord?” Her accent was Langmyrne, and as lowborn as
he’d guessed.

  Leferic shook himself inwardly. The girl had done nothing to offend him, and she was a guest under his roof. That he was planning to kill the baby she held was no reason to treat her with discourtesy. He offered her a half bow and the ancient words of greeting: “Be welcome under my roof. Bright Lady bless your presence in my halls.” With a slight, reassuring smile, he added, “It was a long road to get here, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.” A little of her wariness faded, but the girl still looked like a doe who might spring wild in panic at any moment. “We’re grateful to your men for bringing us in. We’d likely all be dead without them.”

  “‘For the road is long and dark, and no man sure of safety,’” Leferic quoted. “It was one of your countrymen who penned those lines, was it not?”

  The girl’s expression closed in on itself, as though she suspected him of mocking her ignorance. She looked down to the child. “Might’ve been. I wouldn’t be able to say, my lord.”

  “It was. Casubel of Craghail, one of the great poets of his age. There aren’t any Oakharne who come near matching him, I’m sorry to say. But I came to talk of roads, not verses. Which one brought you here?”

  “I’m from Willowfield, my lord.”

  “My brother met his end there.” Leferic said it casually, attaching no great emphasis to the fact, but he watched her reaction intently.

  “I know.” Her eyes flickered up toward him and back down to the baby’s face. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “We all die in the end. What matters is what we do with our lives before then. Galefrid died young, it’s true, but he left the most important legacy behind.” Leferic paused, wanting the full import of his words to sink in. “He left a child.”