The Blood Knight

by Greg Keyes

  They hadn’t stopped there, though; they had crushed the bones of each hand as well, and shattered the wrists that supported them. If they had cut his hands completely off, it would have been kinder. But they hadn’t. They had left them to hang there, a reminder of other things he would never, ever do again.

  He looked again at the hammarharp, at its lovely red-and-black keys, and his shoulders began to tremble. The trickle of tears turned to a flood.

  “There,” Robert said. “That’s right. Let it out. Let it out.”

  “I-I did not think you could hurt me more,” Leoff managed, gritting his teeth, ashamed but almost, finally, beyond shame.

  The king stroked the composer’s hair as if he were a child. “Listen, my friend,” he said. “I am at fault for this, but my crime was that of neglect. I did not supervise the praifec closely enough. I had no idea of the cruelty he was visiting upon you.”

  Leoff almost laughed. “You will forgive me if I am skeptical,” he said.

  The usurper’s fingers pinched his ear and twisted a bit. “And you will address me as ‘Your Majesty,’” Robert said softly.

  Leoff snorted. “What will you do if I don’t? Kill me? You have already taken all I have.”

  “You think so?” Robert murmured. He released Leoff’s ear and withdrew. “I have not taken everything, I promise you. But let that pass. I regret what has happened to you. My personal physician will attend you from here on out.”

  “No physician can heal this,” Leoff said, holding up his maimed hands.

  “Perhaps not,” Robert conceded. “Perhaps you will never again play yourself. But as I understand it, the music you create—compose—is done within your head.”

  “It cannot come out of my head without my fingers, however,” Leoff snarled.

  “Or the fingers of another,” Robert said.

  “What—”

  But at that moment, the king gestured and the door opened, and there, in the lamplight, stood a soldier in dark armor. His hand rested on the shoulder of a little girl whose eyes were covered by a cloth.

  “Mery?” he gasped.

  “Cavaor Leoff?” she squealed. She tried to start forward, but the soldier pulled her back, and the door closed.

  “Mery,” Leoff repeated, lumbering toward the door, but Robert caught him by the shoulder again.

  “You see?” Robert said softly.

  “They told me she was dead!” Leoff gasped. “Executed!”

  “The praifec was trying to break your heretic soul,” Robert said. “Much of what his men told you is untrue.”

  “But—”

  “Hush,” Robert said. “I have been charitable. I can be more so. But you must agree to help me.”

  “Help you how?”

  Robert smiled a ghastly little smile. “Shall we discuss it over a meal? You look half-starved.”

  For what seemed an eternity, Leoff’s meals had consisted of either nothing or some nameless mush that under the best of circumstances was more or less without taste and under the worst reeked of putrefying offal.

  Now he found himself staring at a trencher of black bread that had been heaped with roast pork, leeks braised in must, redbutter cheese, boiled eggs sliced and sprinkled with green sauce, and cream fritters. Each scent was a lovely melody, wafting together into a rhapsodic whole. His goblet was filled with a red wine so sharp and fruity, he could smell it without bending toward it.

  He looked at his useless hands, then back at the meal. Did the king expect him to lower his face into the food like a hog?

  Probably. And he knew that in a few more moments he would.

  Instead, a girl in black-and-gray livery entered, knelt by his side, and began offering him morsels of the repast. He tried to take it with some measure of grace, but after the first explosion of flavor in his mouth, he gulped unashamedly.

  Robert sat across the table from him and watched him without apparent amusement.

  “That was clever,” he said after a time, “your lustspell, your singing play. The praifec greatly underestimated you and the power you wield through your music. I can’t tell you how angry I felt, sitting helplessly as the thing unfolded, unable to stand, speak, or bring it to a halt. You put a gag in the mouth of a king, Cavaor, and you tied his hands behind his back. I don’t suppose you expected to escape without some punishment.”

  Leoff laughed bitterly. “I hardly think that now,” he said, then lifted his head defiantly. “But I do not accept you as king.”

  Robert smiled. “Yes, I quite gathered that by the content of the play. I am not entirely a buffoon, you see.”

  “I never took you for one,” Leoff replied. Vicious and murderous, yes, stupid, no, he finished silently.

  The usurper nodded as if he had heard the unvoiced thought. Then he waved his hand. “Well, it is done, isn’t it? And I will be candid; your composition was not without effect. Your choice of subject matter, your casting of a landwaerden girl in the major role—well, it certainly won over the landwaerden, and not to me, as I had hoped.” He leaned forward. “You see, there are those who think of me as you do, as an usurper. I had hoped to unite my kingdom to stand against the evil that bears on us from all sides, and to do that I really needed the landwaerden and their militias. Your actions have rendered their allegiance more ambiguous than ever. You’ve even managed somehow to create sympathy for a queen no one liked.”

  “It was my honor to do so.” Then he understood. “Queen Muriele is not dead, is she?”

  Robert nodded affirmation, then pointed a finger at Leoff. “You still don’t understand,” he said. “You talk like a dead man, speaking with the bravery of the condemned. But you can live and compose. You can have your friends back. Wouldn’t you like to see little Mery grow up, oversee the progress of your protégé?

  “And what about the lovely Areana? Surely she has a bright future ahead, perhaps even at your side…”

  Leoff listed to his feet. “You dare not threaten them!”

  “No? What would prevent me?”

  “Areana is the daughter of a landwaerden. If you are trying to win their allegiance—”

  “If I give up hope of doing so, if I cannot unite by conciliation, I will have to do so through force and fear,” Robert snapped. “Besides, I am sometimes prone to, shall we say, black humors. My humors were particularly black after the performance of your little farce.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Areana was taken into custody soon after you were. I quickly realized the error in that, but as king I must be careful about admitting my mistakes, you see. I must work at things from where I am.”

  Leoff’s head swirled.

  At one point in his torture he had been told that the entire cast that had performed his singing play had been arrested and publicly hanged and that Mery had been quietly poisoned in the night. That was when he had broken and “confessed” that he had practiced “heretical shinecraft” most foul.

  Now he found that they were alive, which brought joy beyond measure. But the threat to their lives was renewed.

  “You’re most clever yourself,” he told the king. “You know I will not risk losing them again.”

  “Why should you? Your allegiance to Muriele is senseless. She has no mandate to rule, and certainly not the talents. Despite my faults, I am the best the Dare family has to offer. Hansa will declare war on us any day unless I can appease them. Monsters threaten all of our borders and appear in the midst of our towns. Whatever you think of me, Crotheny is better united behind one leader, and that will be me or no one, because there is no one else.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Undo what you have done, of course. Write another lustspell to win them over for me. I have provided you with hammarharp and every book of music the kingdom has to offer. I will make Mery and Areana available to you as helpmates, to make up for the unfortunate state of your hands. I will, of course, have to supervise your work more carefully than did the praifec, and
we will hire the musicians who will perform the work.”

  “The praifec has branded me heretic before the world. How can any work of mine be performed now?”

  “You will be offered as proof of divine forgiveness and intercession, my friend. Where before you took your inspiration from the darkness, now you will take it from the light.”

  “But that is a lie,” Leoff said.

  “No,” Robert replied drily. “That is politics.”

  Leoff hesitated slightly. “And the praifec will go along with this?”

  “The praifec has his hands full,” Robert told him. “The empire, it seems, is a veritable hornet’s nest of heretics. You are lucky, Cavaor Leovigild. The gallows make a constant music of their own these days.”

  Leoff nodded. “I hardly need you to repeat your threat, Your Majesty. I quite understood it the first time.”

  “So it’s ‘Your Majesty’ again. I take it, then, that we’re getting somewhere.”

  “I am at your mercy,” Leoff said. “I wonder if you have a subject for your commission.”

  The king shook his head. “No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen your library, and it is stocked with popular tales of the region. I trust you will find some inspiration there.”

  Leoff gathered his strength of will.

  “One thing,” he said. “I will need helpmates, I grant you. But please show mercy and send Mery back to her mother and Areana back to her family.”

  Robert stifled a yawn. “You were told they were dead, and you believed it. I could tell you I had sent them home, but how could you know it was true? In any case, I would rather you not convince yourself that you have made them safe. It might inspire you to some new foolish behavior. No, I would prefer you had their company, to steady you in your purpose.”

  With that he rose, and Leoff knew the conversation had ended.

  Shivering suddenly, he started toward his cot, anxious to close his eyes and lose himself once more in dreams. Instead he remembered Mery when he’d first met her, hiding in his music room, listening to him play and afraid that if her presence were known, he would send her out.

  Instead of retreating to sleep, he turned his path and trudged wearily to the books the king had provided him, then began to read their titles.

  THE MAN SCREAMED as the demon-woman plunged her clawed fingers into his chest, through the hard bone and tight skin to the soft, wet stuff beneath.

  Anne tasted iron on her tongue as the spinning slowed, stilled, and centered. Her fear suddenly gone, she looked into the face of the monster.

  “Do you know me?” the demon roared in a voice that burred through flesh and bone. “Do you know who I am?”

  Light flashed behind Anne’s eyes. The earth seemed to tilt, and she was suddenly on horseback.

  She was riding with Cazio once more. She remembered Austra gasping behind her and then a terrific stir.

  Something struck her to the ground, and then a hard arm wrapped about her, lifting her forcefully into a saddle. She remembered the acrid smell of her abductor’s sweat, the gasp of his breath in her ear. The knife to her throat. She could only see his hand, which had a long white scar that ran from his wrist to the lowest knuckle of his little finger.

  “Ride,” someone said. “We’ll deal with these.”

  She remembered staring dully over the head of the horse, watching the rise and fall of the snowy forest floor, the trees blurring by like the columns of an endless hall.

  “You sit still, Princess,” the man commanded. His voice was low and warm, not unpleasant at all. His accent was educated, slightly alien but unplaceable. “Sit still, give me no trouble, and things will go better for you.”

  “You know who I am,” Anne said.

  “Well, we knew it was one or the other of you. I reckon you just cleared it up, but we’ll be taking you to someone who knows your face to be sure. No matter, since we’ve got both.”

  Austra, Anne thought. They’ve got you, too. That meant her friend might still be alive.

  “My friends will come for me.”

  “Your companions are probably dead by now,” the man said, his voice shaking with the galloping of the horse. “If they aren’t, they’ll find it difficult to follow us. But that needn’t concern you, Princess. I wasn’t sent to kill you, or you would be dead by now. Do you understand?”

  “No,” Anne said.

  “There are those who would kill you,” the man replied. “That you know, yes?”

  “I most certainly know that.”

  “Then believe me when I tell you that their masters are not mine. I am charged with your safety, not with your destruction.”

  “I don’t feel safe,” Anne said. “Who sent you? My uncle, the usurper?”

  “I doubt that Prince Robert cares much for your welfare. We suspect he is in league with those who murdered your sisters.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I don’t understand. You say you don’t want me dead. You imply you wish to preserve me from harm, yet you’ve taken me from my most loyal protectors and my friends. So I know you can’t wish me well.”

  The man didn’t reply, but he tightened his grip.

  “I see,” Anne said. “You have some need of me, but not one that I would approve of. Perhaps you intend to sacrifice me to the dark saints.”

  “No,” the man said. “That is not our aim at all.”

  “Then enlighten me. I am at your mercy.”

  “Indeed you are. Remember that. And believe me when I say that I will not kill you unless I have to.” The knife came away from her throat. “Please don’t struggle or try to escape. You might manage to fall off the horse; if you don’t break your neck, I’ll easily recapture you. Listen and you will know your friends aren’t following.”

  “What’s your name?” Anne asked.

  Again a pause. “You can call me Ernald.”

  “But it isn’t your name.”

  She felt him shrug behind her.

  “Ernald, where are we going?”

  “To meet someone. After that, I cannot say for certain.”

  “I see.” She thought for a moment. “You say I won’t be killed. What of Austra, now that you’re certain she isn’t me?”

  “She…she won’t be harmed.”

  But Anne heard the lie in his voice.

  Taking a deep breath, she snapped her head back and felt it crush into the man’s face. He yelped, and Anne flung herself from the mare.

  She landed badly, and pain coursed up her leg, which already was aching from an unhealed arrow wound. Gasping, she struggled to her feet and tried to get her bearings. She made out their trail and began hobbling back along it, shouting.

  “Cazio! Sir Neil! Help me!”

  She glanced back over her shoulder, almost feeling him there……but saw no one, only the horse. Why would he be hiding?

  She quickened her pace, but the pain nearly paralyzed her. She went down on one knee, then doggedly fought her way back up.

  Something moved in front of her, but she couldn’t see just what. It was like a brief shadow across water.

  “Help!” she shouted again.

  A palm snapped against the side of her head then, and as she fell, she saw a snowy blur. Then her arm was twisted hard behind her, and she was being forced back toward the horse. She gasped, wondering where Ernald had come from. Behind her? But she had looked for him.

  Wherever he had gone, he was here now.

  “Do not try that again, Princess,” he said. “I have no desire to hurt you, but I will do it if I must.”

  “Let me go,” Anne demanded.

  The knife was suddenly pricking into her neck again.

  “Mount back up.”

  “Not until you promise not to kill Austra.”

  “I told you, she won’t be harmed.”

  “Yes, but you were lying.”

  “Mount, or I’ll cut your ear off.”

  “My leg is hurt. You’
ll have to lift me up.”

  He laughed harshly. The knife came away, and he grasped her suddenly by the waist and threw her over the saddle, then pushed her injured leg over. She screamed, and bright speckles gyred before her eyes. By the time she could think again, he was sitting behind her, the knife again at her throat.

  “I see now that being nice will get me nowhere,” he said, kicking the horse into motion.

  Anne gasped for breath. It felt as if the pain had broken something loose in her, and the entire world was rushing up like a whirlwind or a hurricane from the sea. She shivered and felt the hairs on her neck stand on end.

  “Let me go,” she said, her heart thundering in her chest. “Let me go.”

  “Hush.”

  “Let me go.”

  This time he cuffed her with the hilt of the knife.

  “Let me go!”

  The words ripped out of her, and the man screamed.

  Anne felt the knife in her hand suddenly, gripped in white knuckles, and with terrible desperation she drove it into his throat. In the same instant she felt a strange pain in her own throat and the sensation of something sliding under her tongue. She saw his eyes go wide and black and in those dark mirrors there was the image of a demon coming up from beneath.

  Screaming, she wrenched the knife through his windpipe, noticing even as she did so that her hands were empty, that it wasn’t she who was holding the knife at all. And she understood just enough to flee, to run into the gaping darkness where her rage came from, to close her eyes and stop her ears to his gurgling…

  The light dimmed, and she found herself back in her chair, facing the other man, the one who had been trying to rape her. The demon was there, stooping over him just as she had come down upon Ernald.

  “Oh, no,” she murmured, staring up into the terrible face. “Oh, saints, no.”

  She woke on a small mattress, unbound, with her clothes returned to a reasonable state of propriety. Her head throbbed, and she recognized the beginnings of a hangover.

  Her captor sat on the floor a few kingsyards away, weeping quietly. Of the demon there was no sign.

  Anne started to rise, but a sudden wave of nausea forced her back down. That wasn’t enough, however, and she had to struggle to her hands and knees to vomit.