Souldrifter

by Garrett Calcaterra

  A chill ocean breeze gusted through the open window and Mahalath shivered. It had been hot during the day, which he was accustomed to, but it never got cold like this at night in Khail Sanctu. Seeing nothing else to do for the moment, Mahalath closed the window, blew out the lantern, and tucked himself into his foreign-feeling bed.

  • • •

  Fina sat at the foot of her bed, nearly as stiff as the mattress itself, and thumbed the hilt of the plain dagger at her belt. The antechamber to Queen Makarria’s personal quarters was sparsely furnished, with only two padded chairs for waiting visitors to sit at, and a narrow bed off to the side, intended for chambermaids to use when waiting on the queen during night time hours. The spartan room suited Fina fine. Since taking on the charge of being Queen Makarria’s personal guard the day before, she had brought in a chest for her new clothing, and a folded dressing screen divider to provide her some privacy when changing. She needed nothing else.

  The door handle to the main bedroom rattled and Caile stepped quietly out into the antechamber. “She’s asleep already,” Caile said.

  Fina nodded. He had been in there with her no more than twenty minutes by her estimation, not enough time to eat the entire meal the kitchen had sent up.

  “I got her to eat a little,” Caile said, seemingly reading her mind. “And she had a glass of wine. That was enough, I suppose, and at this point, she needs sleep more than she needs food.” Caile staggered a little as he stepped away from Makarria’s door, but he caught himself and blinked his eyes. “It seems I’m more tired than I realized, too.”

  “Or perhaps you had more than one glass of wine,” Fina suggested.

  Caile smiled. “Don Bricio took it upon himself to teach me to drink. I can handle my spirits. I’m just weary is all. I best be off to bed, too.”

  “Goodnight, Prince.”

  “Goodnight, Fina,” Caile said, opening the door leading into the corridor and glancing back at her. “I’m glad you’re watching over Makarria. Don’t let anyone in here but me or Talitha. Or her mother, of course.”

  Fina stood up from the bed and ushered him away. “I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive, young prince. Off to bed with you.”

  Caile smiled as he walked away, and Fina closed the door behind him. She locked the door, then opened the door at the opposite side of the anteroom to step quietly into Makarria’s spacious chambers. The dishes and remaining food from their meal rested on a tray in the center of a small, round dining table, just as Caile had indicated, along with a bottle of wine, half drank. One red-tinged crystal glass sat beside the bottle on the table. The other was still half-full, sitting on the nightstand next to Makarria’s canopied bed. Fina padded silently over to the bed and looked Makarria over. She was deep in sleep, and Prince Caile had pulled the down-filled comforter over her so she was snugly tucked in.

  Fina liked the young prince, she decided. She had protected Don Bricio’s harem for nearly twenty years before Don Bricio sent her to Khal-Aband, and in that time she had encountered men of all sorts, most of them bad. Don Bricio had kept his most prized girls to himself, but a few he would offer up for a night in exchange for political favors—Fina could not protect them from that. Other men, those Don Bricio wished to taunt or punish, would be paraded through the harem only to be denied access to the women they so wantonly desired, the lust written on their faces as plainly as if they were dogs drooling over a cut of beef. More than a few tried to sneak back in during the silence of the night, and those Fina gladly killed, or gelded if she really didn’t like them. Others, like Don Bricio’s guards and attendants, would sometimes pass through, and though they tried to veil their desire, Fina always saw their sidelong glances and the desire in their trembling fingers. Not Prince Caile, though.

  Fina remembered him well from the few times he had accompanied Don Bricio into the harem. It was clear to Fina that he hated Don Bricio, and the very existence of the harem. Don Bricio did not see it, but Fina did. Caile had still been a young teenager in those days, but he had learned already to carry himself with a wall around his true feelings. His expressions were always even, the words coming out of his mouth respectful to Don Bricio, but the glances he stole at the women told a different story if you knew what to look for. Those glances were filled not with lust, but rather with a fire of a different sort—a fire of righteous anger.

  Fina had made little of it at the time. Here was simply a young man consumed with ideals the world had not yet crushed. Fina disliked the fact that her girls—and so she thought of them—were playthings for Don Bricio, but such was the world they lived in. There were worse fates for pretty young girls than to live in a palace as concubines. If young Caile had disapproved, had burned inwardly to kill Don Bricio and free them all, such were the foolish thoughts of a royal-born boy who had learned more from books than experience. So Fina had thought then.

  But here she was now. Caile had indeed killed Don Bricio. Makarria had freed the harem girls. And Caile had grown, his righteousness undeterred by all he’d seen and experienced. He loved Makarria, it was plain, and would do anything to protect her.

  Fina sighed contentedly. There were times during her ordeal in Khal-Aband when she had given up hope. Certainly, she had never thought to have warm feelings for anyone ever again. It was only with pure stubbornness, vengefulness, that she had held on to life. The things done to her in Khal-Aband…she would not even think of them anymore. When Caile and Makarria had rescued her and told her Don Bricio was dead, she felt she ought to be angry for being robbed of the opportunity of killing him herself. But she was not. She instead found satisfaction in having outlived the pig, Don Bricio. And she felt gratefulness for being rescued. The gratefulness was turning into something more, she had to admit now, looking upon Makarria.

  Makarria was still deep in sleep, her breaths long and even. Fina smiled and turned away to walk the perimeter of the room. She checked every window and the door latch at the balcony. All was safe, all was sound. Satisfied, Fina exited back to her small anteroom and sat herself at the foot of the bed again. She was weary, but she would not sleep tonight, she decided. She could sleep come morning once they were on the airship and Makarria was surrounded by people she could trust.

  Her mind made up, Fina sat there, purposefully thinking of nothing, pushing away the dark memories that constantly bobbed at the surface of her thoughts. She focused only on the sounds of the sleeping castle around her. After a time, her eyelids grew heavy, but when they dipped near to slumber, she pushed herself up and paced the room for a while, then sat in one of the waiting chairs. She did not know how much time had passed when a knock sounded at her outer door.

  She cracked open the door, her dagger drawn and at the ready, but it was only Caile. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I thought you were sleeping?”

  “I was, but Makarria summoned me.”

  “Summoned you? How? No one’s been here since you left.”

  “She summoned me with her magic,” Caile said, wiggling his fingers as if that was all it took to be a sorcerer.

  The grin left his face when he saw Fina’s lack of amusement.

  “She must have had a nightmare,” he said. “She came to me in my sleep and told me to come immediately.”

  Fina opened the door for him to pass through. She had not heard Makarria stir or speak, but Fina was the first to admit she knew little about Makarria’s powers. “All right, I best go in there with you and check the perimeter again.”

  Caile stopped at the door to the inner chambers. “No, it’s fine. I’ll call for you if she needs anything.”

  Fina opened her mouth to object, but Caile had already opened the bedroom door and was slipping silently through. Seeing no good reason to cause a stir, Fina turned away and sat back at the foot of her bed, still absently clutching her dagger. Caile’s coming this late at night was odd she felt, but she knew better than to be presumptuous. She had only been Makarria’s guard for two days now. Makarria and
Caile had been close for well over a year. Why wouldn’t the young queen turn to him for counsel or comfort from a bad dream?

  The minutes passed and Fina grew restless, increasingly ill at ease. Something was not right. She wanted to convince herself everything was fine, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Caile had not been himself. When he’d stopped her from going in, the look on his face…it no longer had that righteous confidence she had recognized in it before, but instead…something smug. Well, don’t just sit there then, she chastised herself as she stood. There’s no harm in checking in on them.

  Before she took two steps toward Makarria’s door, though, a knock sounded at the other door. With a frown, she opened it to see who was there and was baffled to find a half-dozen servants standing in the corridor.

  “I’m here with the wine and meal the prince sent for,” one of the kitchen servants said in a hushed tone, apparently as ill at ease as Fina was with this late night disturbance.

  “Prince Caile sent for this?” Fina asked, looking at the platter of food the man bore. “And the rest of you?”

  “We’re the queen’s chambermaids,” one of the three women still in their nightgowns said. “We received word from the prince that we were to come at once.”

  “And I’m a courtier,” the other man standing in the corridor replied. “I was told to come fetch a message to take to the raven keeper.”

  “Let me guess, Prince Caile sent for you?” Fina said, not bothering to wait for his response. She still had her dagger gripped tightly in her right hand as she strode away and turned the doorknob to Makarria’s chambers. The door caught on something when she tried to open it, but she forced her way through, toppling over a chair that had been placed on the other side to wedge the door shut.

  Fina stopped and inhaled sharply at what she saw. At first she thought Makarria was strewn across the bed, murdered and dead. But no, it was worse. The covers had been thrown aside, her clothes ripped off her, and she lay there, unconscious, naked, with the half-undressed Prince Caile scrambling away from her. A bottle of wine lay overturned beside him, its spilled wine soaking into the mattress.

  “What, what are you doing?” he stammered, looking back at Fina.

  “You—” she growled at Caile, stalking toward the bed. “I’ll kill you!”

  Caile slipped off the opposite side of the bed from Makarria and fastened his trousers shut. “Save your anger, woman, and tend to your queen.” His voice was distant and cold. “Touch me and I’ll put you right back where I found you.”

  Anger welled up in Fina, but before she could reach him, the servants from the corridor burst into the room, gasping and openly gaping at the scene before them. “All of you, leave at once!” Fina yelled at them. She glanced away from Caile, just for a moment, to push them back into the anteroom, and before she knew it Caile slipped right past her and the servants both, right through the anteroom and out into the corridor. “Stop!” she yelled, but the fool servants were blocking her way.

  Behind her, Makarria groaned and began to stir. Fina grimaced, wanting nothing more than to chase down Caile and cut out his venomous tongue, this smiling prince who had duped her, but she would have to deal with him later. Right now the young queen needed her. “Be gone,” Fina barked at the servants who still stood there gawking as she ran to Makarria’s side. “And someone go fetch the queen’s mother!”

  9

  Familiar Enemies

  Natarios Rhodas looked up with disdain from the message in his hand to the messenger standing before him. “Ambassador Rives summons me? Oh no, I don’t think so. I’m lord of proceedings, not him. If he wants to speak, he can come to my tower.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me. Go! Tell that fool to come here if it’s so damned important to talk. And make sure he brings a message to send to Lon Golier so it looks legitimate.”

  The lackey scurried away, out of Natarios’s living quarters and down the spiral staircase of the tower. Natarios tried to pick up where he left off before the man had arrived, enjoying his morning snack of hard Bergian cheese and nutbrown ale from Lepig, but he was too aggravated to take any pleasure in food and drink. With a snort, he pushed himself up from his cushioned couch and exited his room into the stairwell, up to the chamber above him. The caged ravens warbled when they saw him, but there were no new messenger arrivals waiting on the landing. Natarios threw a couple handfuls of nuts and seeds to the clamoring birds in the cages, then went back to the stairwell and climbed the last twenty steps to the chamber where the scent-hound lay in perpetual slumber on its brass compass.

  That was where Ambassador Rives of Golier found him ten minutes later. “Who do you think you are, summoning me?” Rives demanded, barging into the chamber before fully realizing where he was. When his eyes landed on the scent-hound, he froze in his tracks.

  “I’m the lord of proceedings,” Natarios said, amused. “Let’s not forget that. It looks unseemly for me to be beckoning at your every call. If we must communicate outside the council meetings, it makes more sense for you to come here, on some pretence of sending a message to your Capital, for if you’ll remember, I’m also still the houndkeeper—master of messenger ravens and master of our lovely hound here.”

  Rives ripped his eyes way from the part-woman, part-dog contraption that was the scent-hound. “Of course, you’re right. I was merely impatient to tell you the news: we’ve secured three more votes for Lord Kobel. That puts us at nine, two away from a majority.”

  Natarios was surprised by this turn of events, enough so that he was unable to feign indifference. “Already? That was fast, I must say. We still have twelve days left until we vote.”

  “When the money and incentive is there, it’s best to strike. No sense in waiting.”

  “Perhaps,” Natarios replied. “I simply worry about revealing our gambit too soon. Sure the steam-engineer’s guild and the sorcerer’s guild and a couple of the lesser candidates are happy to take your money now, but your King Lorimer of Golier isn’t the only man with deep pockets, you know? What if someone like the Old World Senate sets their mind on getting control of Guderian’s war machines?”

  Natarios said this as a mere hypothetical situation, never before having thought of it as a possibility, but the way Rives suddenly grinned made Natarios realize he was far closer to the mark than he realized.

  “You needn’t worry,” Rives assured him. “King Lorimer is a visionary. His aims and allies extend beyond the Five Kingdoms.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell me so before?” Natarios demanded.

  “Because it was not something you needed to know.”

  “And it is now?”

  “Yes.” Rives turned away from Natarios and walked toward the scent-hound, holding one hand over the outer ring of the compass as he circled it slowly. “Our financers need assurances. When Lord Kobel is elected, we need to know we’ll have control of the steam-powered war wagons. More importantly, we need to know that we’ll have control of the smelters and the war-wagon factory.”

  A sense of danger coursed through Natarios, but he maintained his demeanor of arrogant indifference—he had mastered the skill long ago in dealing with the sorcerer Wulfram. He was admittedly a coward, but judging by his outward appearance, Natarios Rhodas was the bravest man in all the Five Kingdoms. Or the most foolish.

  “I can give you no assurances,” Natarios said, displeased about this sudden revelation of the Old World’s potential involvement. “The dreamwielder swore the Sargothian cavalry to her allegiance until such time a new King of Sargoth is chosen, and they are the ones who guard the war machines, the smelters, the factory, all of it. If Kobel is elected, the cavalry will obey him, so it’s him you must deal with. Me—I’m just in charge of rigging the election.”

  • • •

  More than anything, Makarria wanted to sleep. Her body ached and lethargy hung over her like a leaden mantle, but she pushed away the weariness, the nausea threatening to make its way o
ut, and listened to Fina’s story.

  She couldn’t believe the words she was hearing. It was like being outside of herself, watching someone else’s life. This could not be her life Fina was talking about. This was not something that could happen to her. And certainly not something Caile would do. He would never. All she remembered from the night before was returning to her room, nibbling on some food and sipping at a glass of wine. But Makarria’s mother and Talitha were corroborating everything Fina said, telling her of how they had found her. Telling her how her mother had set guards at Caile’s chamber door to keep him prisoner. Describing how the attendants had walked in to see everything, and how their gossip had spread like wildfire through the palace and into the city as the people awoke and went about their morning business. Telling her about the crowds outside the palace protesting, and of the Brotherhood of Five demanding a hearing.

  “The people are saying it’s an illicit affair,” Talitha said. “Rumors are flying around that you have been bedding Caile from the beginning, ever since your coronation.”

  “It was nothing of the sort,” Fina said. “There was no blood, and you’re a virgin still, so I’m sure Caile did not rape you. But he meant to, and he’d undressed you already. Likely touched you. He would have done more if I hadn’t walked in.”

  Fina’s words hung in the air.

  “The rumors are easily fixed,” Fina continued when no one said anything. “Tell your people that Caile assaulted you and when I cut off his balls for you to show them, your name will be cleared.”

  “A bit barbaric perhaps,” Talitha said, “but warranted if that’s what you decide, Makarria. A public shaming and banishment would achieve the same effect.”