JOURNEY OF THE SACRED KING II

by JANRAE FRANK

  Tagalong intended to see the secret kept until she could safely bring Tamlestari and the children to Vorgensburg. She had not been able to save Aejys, but she would protect the children with her life.

  As Tagalong passed the fourth door down, the sound of voices arrested her attention, for one of them sounded very much like the voice of someone she strongly disliked – someone who had been left behind in Vorgensburg. She paused, pressing her ear to the door.

  "Aejys Rowan is dead."

  "You are certain of this?"

  "I saw the body. Her sister murdered her."

  Tagalong snarled softly. "Cedarbird! Greedy bastard sees an opportunity here?" She eased the door open a crack, peering in. She had discovered weeks before that Briarmottë, a strapping young guardsmon who enlisted with Aejys' household for the journey to Shaurone, had been one of Cedarbird's plants, but had never suspected him of anything more sinister than trying to steal trading agreements. He sat in a chair, staring into a broad stone from which issued Cedarbird's voice.

  Kwaklahmyn speaking stone. With Aejys dead and me here, that damned merchant can play holy hell with Becca if the kid keeps feeding him information. Shit! Shoulda searched him. But who've thought? Those stones are damned rare. "Well, well, what have we here?" Tagalong sauntered into the room.

  Briarmottë started with a small cry of alarm, shoving the stone into his pocket.

  Tagalong caught his wrist, spun him around, and smashed him against the wall. She twisted his arm behind him, shoving him into the wall again with a sturdy foot to the small of his back.

  Briarmottë slumped to the floor with a groan. "What did I do?"

  "Ya been telling Cedarbird everthin' as if happens, haven't ya?" Tagalong Smith growled.

  "No. NOOOO!" The pain in his arm worsened until he thought the sturdy dwarf would rip it from the socket. "Aejys ... just she's dead ... then you came in."

  "Ya shoulda volunteered the stone when I caught ya the first time." She pulled her hammer, laying the head against the young man's cheek. "Toss the stone down now, nice an' easy."

  Briarmottë fumbled in his pocket, throwing the stone onto the ground near Tagalong's feet. "I didn't mean any harm."

  "I'll judge that."

  Tagalong released him with another shove, sending him tumbling away from her and the stone. She spun, bringing her hammer down two handed with all the force in her tremendously muscled compact body. The stone shattered. "Fuck yerself, Cedarbird."

  * * * *

  A young, chocolate skinned woman, her hair a tight cap of kinky black, trotted down the hall, drawn by the sounds of Briarmottë's cries. "What happened?"

  "The wee little mon has just made an ass of himself again," Tagalong snarled.

  "How?" Jaqui frowned. Although she had joined the company as a favor to Hanadi, she was not a Guildsmon and had elected to stay after the others left.

  "Kwaklahmyn speaking stone. Told Cedarbird Aejys' dead. That puts the asshole merchant inna good position ta play holy hell with Becca and our people in Vorgensburg."

  "You destroyed the stone?"

  "Yes."

  "I'll take him in hand," Jaqui said.

  Briarmottë was her lover, which meant that she would probably beat the crap out of him for this newest transgression. That would suit Tagalong just fine.

  "Tamlestari wants to see you. Take a bath first. She knows how Aejys died and is starting to wonder if some of that blood could be from touching her."

  Tagalong's eyes hooded and her mouth tightened. Some of the blood probably was Aejys'; the paladin's body had been a bloody ruin when Tagalong held her. "I will."

  * * * *

  "You didn't find him?" Becca asked, sliding a tray of food onto the table in a far corner near the stairs where the young healer sat, settling in across from him. It was late afternoon and she knew he had been looking since the moment he finished talking with Aejys the day before.

  Taun's squarish, blunt featured face looked tired and depressed. He shook his head dispiritedly. He had his Kwaklahmyn father's broad cheekbones and coloring, deep brown skin and long glossy black hair tied back with a simple leather thong, and his mother's sea-green nerien eyes. The thin lines in the sides of his throat looked more like scars to the casual glance, than what they actually were – the pouchy coverings of his gills. He worked hard to distance himself from his mixed species heritage so that he would be accepted simply as a healer first. Taun was not ashamed of it: but it had proven so awkward at times for his patients and clients that he simply chose to downplay it, rather than lose them to less skilled, but more racially acceptable practitioners.

  Aejys harbored no racial or species prejudices, often going out of her way to hire the 'breeds' as most folk referred to them. The ha'taren – paladin of Aroana – hired only tolerant people, so her household with all its rogues, outcasts, and pariahs ran smoother than any other in Vorgensburg: the societal castoffs responded to her faith in them by giving her unswerving loyalty and steadfast, unquestioning faith. So Becca, learning of Taun's situation and nature shortly after Aejys left last summer for Shaurone to fetch her daughter home, brought him into the household and put him on retainer.

  Becca sighed heavily in a mix of frustration and irritation at Josh's being back to his old habits of running away and hiding when things got awkward for him. "Clemmerick knows all his bolt holes. But he isn't here."

  She missed Clemmerick; the big ogre hostler always knew how to handle Josh. He was her right hand man and Becca depended on him heavily, but with the passes snowed in he could not start home until spring with the rest of Aejys' household. "I guess we'll just have to wait until he decides to show again."

  Taun looked unhappy with that. "If he keeps drinking..."

  Becca patted his hand. "I know. But there may not be anything you can do about this." She liked Taun, regretting only that he preferred his own gender sexually which meant she would never be able to satisfy her bedroom curiosity about water-breathers. "Listen. I'll tell you – Shit!"

  The exclamation startled Taun, causing him to flinch thinking it was directed at him, then he followed her gaze across to the front door.

  Thomas Cedarbird, his black hair meticulously braided and adorned with two eagle feathers, entered the Cock and Boar accompanied by three of the other syndics of Vorgensburg. "I want to see the tavern master," he told a serving mon who approached him. The merchant carried himself with a haughty air, the youngest son of a Kwaklahmyn chieftain and only child of his third wife, the daughter of the wealthiest merchant in Vorgensburg, Cedarbird had inherited both wealth and influence. Until Aejys captured the archenwyrm's treasure by killing the monster and set up for herself, Cedarbird had – to all intents and purposes – ruled Vorgensburg. The Lion of Rowanslea had indirectly challenged him by her mere presence and reputation even before she gained a fortune that far outstripped his own. She had refused to put herself in his debt for even so much as the smallest political favors he offered her, rarely siding with him in anything. What made it worse was that for a time he was quite infatuated with her. It was when his agent Briarmottë had revealed her relationship with Tamlestari that he had finally gotten over wanting Aejys. He had now relegated her to the ranks of his rivals and enemies, and those whom he could not influence or dominate he destroyed.

  Becca turned to Taun. "Stay here. I'll see what's going on." Becca strode across the common room. "What the hell do you want, Cedarbird?"

  "Becca," Cedarbird said politely, but with an edge. "I think we should speak privately."

  "What is this about?" Becca bristled. One of these days I'm going to shove your slimy face in.

  "Privately..."

  "Uh Uh." Becca folded her arms, taking a spread-legged, feet firmly planted, no-nonsense stance she had picked up from Tagalong. "Not until you tell me what it's about."

  Make me call the bouncers, asshole, she thought grimly. Her bouncers were a cohort of pixies, tough little knee-high soldiers in cloaks of invisibility. Their ca
ptain, Grymlyken, was in Shaurone; however, his lieutenant, Fezelbaum was just as capable of rallying the troops to eject the unwanted and troublesome as he was.

  Cedarbird tried unsuccessfully to stare the woman down, but Becca would not be moved. Finally he said simply, "Aejystrys Rowan."

  Should have figured he would hear the rumors as swiftly as everyone else. If not sooner. "Upstairs – follow me." She signed Taun to come with her. As the healer moved to her side, she whispered, "Get hold of Skree quick if we need him."

  Taun nodded.

  Cedarbird frowned at the mon, but said nothing until they were sitting in the formal meeting room at the top. He sat down at the head of the horseshoe table and that rankled Becca, for that was Aejys' chair. "I received word from Rowanslea – from an unimpeachable source – that Aejystrys is dead, but there are also rumors that she is alive ... here at the Cock and Boar." His manner suggested to Becca that he held to the former.

  "She's alive." Becca scanned the faces of the three myn Cedarbird had brought along as witnesses and supporters, trying to engage their eyes and take their measure: Marya Maryasdottir, the stout master of the weaver's guild, gave her a cold stone-faced look; the syndic for the gem merchants collective had a nervous tic jumping frantically in his cheek and refused to meet her eyes; the big longshoreman's representative gave her a polite, shame-faced shrug.

  Cedarbird' face remained darkly serious. "We want to see her."

  "No," Taun interrupted. "She's badly hurt. I don't want her disturbed."

  Cedarbird snorted. "I say you're lying. You're concealing the fact that she's dead. If she's dead without heirs, then her property belongs to the city. We will not allow you to put this off."

  "Tagalong always said you were a greedy son of a bitch..." Becca growled. "She was right."

  Cedarbird shrugged off the insult: He was not getting into a shouting match with a common whore who had been raised above her station. "So do we see Aejys or do we take the properties?"

  "You see Aejys. If she wants to be seen," Becca snarled, "But you leave when Taun tells you or I put this in your ugly face." She raised her clenched fist to the level of the syndic's eyes. She had always wanted to take a serious poke at the haughty merchant.

  Cedarbird winced, wondering how Aejys could ever have hired the former prostitute, much less raised her to such a high level as seneschal and tavern master when she clearly had neither manners nor sense in dealing with her superiors. He had complained before about Becca, but Aejys always brushed him off with a smile and shrug. If Aejys was dead, then Cedarbird intended to smash the infuriating whore back down into the gutter where she belonged – hard – along with the rest of the riff-raff Aejys had collected. There would be nothing left when that detestable Tagalong Smith returned in the spring.

  "She'll see us or we will be back with the city guard to impound the properties."

  "Wait here."

  Taun threw her a glance, pleading not to be left alone with them, but Becca shook her head. Cedarbird frightened him. He sent a silent plea through his mind-link with Skree, calling the triton to his aid. The nerien was better at sending, than receiving, except when he was touching the person, so he did not know if Skree heard him or not.

  * * * *

  Aejys and Molly were alone in the bedroom when Becca stalked in, eyes blazing. "We got trouble," she said.

  Aejys levered herself up on her elbows and Molly put aside her embroidery to shove pillows behind her. Aejys suppressed a groan at the pain in her back and stomach. Her back had been cut to ribbons of dangling flesh by the lash and stomach torn open by a blade. The slain lifemages had mended enough of the stomach wounds to save her life, but healing came slow. Even the smallest movement or pressure against her back hurt. "What is it?"

  "Cedarbird. Says you're dead and wants the properties."

  "Wondered when he would show his colors. Any idea where he got this notion?"

  "It wasn't our people."

  "Send him in." Aejys hated letting any outsiders see how badly off she was, but there seemed no other choice.

  * * * *

  Becca found Skree sitting beside Taun. There must have been an exchange of harsh words as Cedarbird's tame guildmasters and syndics looked uncomfortable. She gave Taun a quick glance of approval, and then signed the others to follow. She led the way into Aejys' bedroom with Taun and Skree close beside her and Cedarbird at her heels, the others in tow.

  Molly looked up from her embroidery, throwing a defiant glare in response to the disapproving gaze of the outsiders at seeing yet another female in pants. Becca dismissed Molly with a wave. Then she saw Josh sitting in the chair by the bed. He had not been there when she came in a few minutes ago. She was uncertain whether his presence was a good thing or a bad thing, but Taun seemed cheered to see him.

  Aejys reclined against the pillows piled behind her. Josh sat beside her, striking a lucifer to light the pipe she gripped between her teeth. She shifted the pipe to the side of her mouth to talk around it. "So, Cedarbird," she smiled unpleasantly, her expression made still more distasteful by the swelling, cuts and bruises; her storm grey eyes hard. "What trouble are you making for me and mine today? I would rise to greet you, but as you can see I had a difficult time in Rowanslea."

  "Aejys!" He stared in complete, incredulous startlement. "I – I... How did you get here? Bri – I was told you were dead."

  "My mage," Aejys replied, her face expressionless, her tone tight with an undercurrent of threat. "I would say the rumor of my death is a trifle premature – or are all your sources as inaccurate as Briarmottë?"

  Cedarbird started at the name.

  "Tag and I figured him out the first week."

  Cedarbird had always been a small thorn in her side, ever since he began to suspect that she was indeed Aejystrys Rowan, the Lion of Rowanslea, and not just a down on her luck soldier who had managed to capture a great wyrm's treasure: He had tried to entice her into Vorgeni politics as his ally as well as various others ways to put her in his debt, but Aejys had always refused to be drawn into his plots, plans, and schemes, political or otherwise. Tagalong had never trusted him, predicting that he would become serious trouble when he saw she could not be bought. Tagalong had just been proven right.

  Cedarbird seemed to squirm for a moment, and then pulled himself together. "He is my amanuensis' nephew, nothing more. He is not in my employ and never has been. I don't know what you are talking about."

  "That's not what he told me when Tagalong caught him trying to undercut her trading agreements along the way. He filled two pack animals with samples he bought."

  "He lied."

  "I seriously doubt that. But that's not the issue here. You threatened to take everything if I died or was already dead without heirs. I'm solving that here and now. Until such time as I produce heirs of my body, I'm declaring Becca my heir. I'm formally adopting her."

  Becca stared at Aejys, her eyes gone round as saucers. Everyone in the room stared at Aejys. The declaration was too much for Cedarbird who exploded.

  "You can't do this! She's a whore! Half the city's been between her legs. You have done insane things before, Aejystrys Rowan, especially since you gained your fortune. But this will not hold up. No one in Vorgensburg will ever accept this filthy gutter slut as your legitimate heir!"

  Becca went instantly from astonishment to white-faced shaking anger. She started toward Cedarbird, but Taun grabbed her, holding on tightly as he pressed his mouth to her ear, murmuring, "No. No. No. Let Aejys handle this."

  Becca glared and subsided.

  "Watch. Your. Mouth," Skree told him.

  "It will hold up. There are many ways to see that one's will is enforced after death. I learned that at my mother's court. Furthermore, my allies in other realms would take more than a passing interest in seeing my will carried out. Shaurone could use a seaport."

  Cedarbird shook his head uncertainly. "But you said you were not..."

  "Ohhhh, you were right all along,
" Aejys said, her words laced with sarcasm and anger dancing in her eyes, daring him to try anything. "I am the Lion of Rowanslea. I have more resources than you can even dream of. The threats you made to Becca have made me very unhappy with you."

  Josh turned his red-rimmed drunken eyes to Cedarbird and, with a small gesture, filled his hands with blue fire extending them toward the merchant. Cedarbird backed away, shaking his head as if the former sailor had just sprouted a second set of arms.

  "I don't like you calling Becca bad names," Josh said. "She's my friend." The sot stood, moving closer Cedarbird. "People who play with fire get burnt."

  Skree gave a slight grin and filled his own hands with bright green light, extending them also toward Cedarbird, making a fine game of it.

  Aejys started to laugh at the expression on Cedarbird's face, but choked it off at the pain in her chest and back; Josh had pulled her out of danger, but she was still far from healed. Just then she simply wanted to give Cedarbird a taste of her power; with Tagalong and Clemmerick in Rowanslea, as well as part of her household guard, it was imperative to make Cedarbird understand that she was still a power to be reckoned with. "Cedarbird, I'm telling you to back off. If you don't, I'll break you like so much kindling. Josh. Toss him ... out."

  Josh grinned. A wave of his hand sent the flame coruscating over the syndic. Cedarbird screamed, more from fright than discomfort, as the flames did not burn him, then he vanished. The other syndics gasped in alarm. Josh shook his head, his words slurring a bit, "Put'em in tha snow out front."

  Aejys sucked in a series of deep breaths, pushing past her pain. "Live and let live." Her eyes narrowed as she met the steady gaze of the stout matron from the weaver's guild, Marya Maryasdottir. "Till now Vorgensburg has been good to me."

  "You've been good to Vorgensburg," Marya answered. "But you are the only person in this city wealthier and possibly more powerful than Cedarbird. He could crush the rest of us easily."