The Edge of the Blade

by Jeffe Kennedy

  The interminable dinners with Kral’s officers proved useful for practicing that and the others in my new quiverful of spy skills. The men tended to fall into boasting, telling stories of various battles and hunts, particularly when Kral broke out his stash of mjed. Once I would have been the first to join in, matching them shot for shot and tale for tale. With the prohibitions against proper Dasnarian females drinking—kill me now—and speaking up unless directly questioned, I found myself distressingly sober, and able to observe a great deal. The men, including Kral, frankly seemed to forget my very presence, revealing themselves in ways I might not otherwise have noticed.

  Much like stalking deer from a blind, I remained in plain sight, yet camouflaged, able to witness how they behaved. Lurking in prime position to take them down, should I wish to.

  Of course, I had no problem with Kral’s men in general. The officers shared the usual annoying thickheaded ways of most Dasnarian men, with the salient exception of the Vervaldr, but they possessed intelligence and—if their stories were to be believed—excellent strategic and fighting skills. They made perfect sparring partners for me to learn upon, though ignorant of their role as I honed my skills for the true enemy.

  The biggest surprise came from how all the Dasnarians reacted differently to me in the traditional female garb. In a seeming contradiction, I became both the subject of intense male attention, to a level I’d never before experienced—and someone easily dismissed. When it didn’t stick in my craw, I considered their behavior in terms of Kral’s remark, that he’d considered Her Majesty’s decision to send three females a sign of her ignorance and stupidity.

  Some of that came from his own foolishness. Even with his many changes in attitude toward me, he still couldn’t wrap his mind around a woman ruler. A fundamental blindness on his part that I could exploit, though I hadn’t yet determined exactly how. Ursula had been my captain long before she became my High Queen, and I’d experienced firsthand her canny knack for recognizing ability and placing people where they’d do the most good. She might have other flaws as a leader, but choosing the wrong person for the job, especially for an effort this key to the security of the realm, simply didn’t play for me as an explanation. I could see that now, from the words she’d sent. I picked you for good reasons this time, too. Not the ones you think. When boulders speak, they give good advice. I listened and acted accordingly.

  Kral also underestimated the depth of her relationship with Harlan, her personal boulder. Of course she would have discussed her plan with him. If she talked to no one else, she would ask the person she trusted as much as, if not more than, her sisters. And with him being Dasnarian? He absolutely would have explained the implications of sending women into the Emperor’s court. Furthermore, she could have sent someone else. Many other ambassadors to Ordnung from various kingdoms, quite a few of them men, would have more diplomatic skills than Dafne did. Marskal, lieutenant of the Hawks, outranked me in experience and easily matched my scouting and fighting abilities. Zynda might be her trusted cousin with powerful abilities, but there were Tala men the High Queen could have called upon.

  Considering all the puzzle pieces—and thinking like Ursula, as I’d tried to do—why send the offender with the very foreign dignitary she’d pissed off?

  If she’d truly been angry, she could have simply sent me away from Ordnung on one of the many reconnaissance missions I myself had been fielding scouts on. We’d needed more trained observers out there. Why not send the disgraced head of her scouts to do that?

  I picked you for good reasons this time, too. Not the ones you think.

  It bore contemplating, which was what I did, making those words into a comforting mantra, moving through Danu’s Dance, the twelve sword forms, and any other drills I could recall or devise for myself. Anything to keep moving in the dense, chilled air on deck and to test the limits of the flowing silk scarf that counted as a dress. In becoming adept at the wrapping, I’d improvised a few improvements that gave me greater range of motion. Kral shook his head at that, but I challenged him to point out how it differed in appearance from his way of doing it, and he conceded. I may also have distracted him by allowing him to unwrap the thing and examine my inventions. That paid off nicely for us both.

  I finished a spin, coming up short and pulling the sweep of my blade when I caught sight of Kral. “I hear we’ll be there soon.”

  “Yes, soon you’ll be able to sight the harbor with those keen eyes of yours.” He looked me up and down. “You’ve been at your exercises since dawn—haven’t you had enough?”

  I rubbed my hands up and down my bare arms, wishing I could do the same for my rapidly chilling feet. “Yeah, but if I stop moving, I get cold—and I’m a mountain girl. I thought I was tough. Why don’t Dasnarian women freeze to death?”

  His face blanked with some surprise. “I never thought about it. They don’t go outside in the winter months, I suppose.”

  My turn to gape at him. “Say you’re not serious.”

  “If you stayed in our cabin, you’d be warm enough,” he pointed out. “There’s coals for the brazier and blankets to wrap up in.”

  “So I could lose my mind with boredom? No, thank you.”

  He grinned. “No, that wouldn’t be you.”

  “What is me is that I’m going to wear Zynda’s cloak. I’ll keep the klút on, but I’m wearing the cloak over it. It’s pretty and flowing, so you’ll approve.”

  “I’m sure I will,” he replied, with unusual agreeableness, making me narrow my eyes at him. He snagged me around the waist. “Only a couple of hours until we have to pretend not to be lovers,” he murmured, brushing my ear with his lips. “Want to put the time to good use?”

  Oh, yes. Yes, I did.

  12

  Perhaps the harbor at Nahanau had spoiled me with its grotesque grandeur, or the one at Ehas so tropically lovely, but Jofarrstyr left me vaguely disappointed. No towering dragons carved from rock nor smoldering volcano angrily rumbling in the distance. No sunny blue waters cupped by palm trees and whitewashed houses tiered upon each other. Instead, a sprawling stone city, larger than I’d ever seen, lined the coast in both directions. Beyond the crowded shore, the land stretched flat and interminable, covered with more buildings as far as I could see, all under a gray sky that drizzled a mix of snow and sleet.

  “Jofarrstyr,” Kral declared beside me, unnecessarily, but with a tone of pride and triumph. “Jewel of the Dasnarian Empire,” he added, and I turned my face away so he wouldn’t see the dubious smirk I couldn’t quite suppress. Maybe it looked better in the sunshine.

  “Is that the palace?” I pointed to an elaborate structure, taller than the rest, with gold-tiled domes that glittered even in the dim light.

  “No, the palace cannot be seen from the harbor. We’ll take carriages there. That’s the temple.”

  “Of Deyrr?” I eyed it with increased interest, studying it. I’d have to see it closer up, but it looked reasonably penetrable. Certainly it was no fortress, with all those balconies and widows’ walks around the domes. An agile climber like myself could scale that pretty easily. Not in this outfit, but I had my other things packed and ready for just such occasions.

  “No.” Kral coughed out a laugh. “And don’t throw that name around. That sect keeps a low profile, with no great edifices. If they meet, they meet in secret. That is the Temple of Sól, the one god.”

  Great. It would have been way too convenient to be able to find the practitioners of Deyrr in a big, obvious building. The disappointment irritated me enough that I didn’t even bother to argue with the one-god assertion. Of course the Dasnarians would think something like that.

  The Hákyrling sailed ever closer to Jofarrstyr, cleaving through the center of the crowded harbor, other ships making way with expedited movements.

  Clearly everyone recognized the ship belonging to the Imperial Prince. The cheerful mood of all the men aboard palpably vibrated in the air. I supposed if I’d been trapped on t
he other side of a magical barrier and despaired of ever getting home again, I’d be . . . Oh, wait. That was me now. Better and better.

  Recognizing that my own sourness tainted more of my mood than the sight of foreign Jofarrstyr, I huddled deeper into the cloak, taking comfort in its softness. What in Danu had my big mouth gotten me into this time?

  “Warm enough?” Kral asked. He stood a decorous distance from me, wearing what must be his dress uniform. Not his signature color, but a deep blue, also embroidered over the breast with the Konyngrr fist, this time in silver and topped by an elaborate crown. Emperor Hestar’s insignia, no doubt.

  “With the cloak, yes.” The fur lining gave the cloak exceptional warmth, and I’d found a klút to match the deep emerald velvet of the exterior. I sent thanks to Moranu that Zynda had brought the thing along and then had to abandon it. I’d been shortsighted in thinking my leathers would be enough, simply because they always had been.

  Dasnaria, a land of many firsts for me.

  Kral must have heard something in my voice, because he searched my face and actually gave me his human smile, the one he normally showed only after sex, or when I shaved or otherwise tended him. “The white fur suits you—sets off your dark skin and eyes, makes your lashes look even longer. You look both lovely and exotic. An excellent note to set with His Imperial Majesty and the court.”

  I was spared thinking up a diplomatic answer to what Kral undoubtedly intended as a compliment by the arrival of his officers, also all in the deep blue dress uniforms with the silver-threaded crest. “No armor?” I asked under my breath.

  “Into the Emperor’s presence, never,” Kral replied in an equally low tone that nevertheless conveyed his astonished disapproval. “Only he and his guard are armored.”

  “Will it be a problem that I’m wearing my knives?”

  He’d never said so, but I didn’t want to make an obvious mistake on the first day.

  “No.” Kral shook his head infinitesimally, gaze back on the shoreline activity. “They’ll be assumed to be decorative only. It won’t occur to anyone that you know how to use them at all, much less so effectively.”

  Excellent.

  “Don’t look so pleased with yourself. I strongly advise you not to disabuse anyone of their assumption.”

  Probably wise advice.

  Unlike in the harbor at Nahanau, where the Hákyrling had pulled alongside a long, empty dock, at Jofarrstyr we dropped anchor in the harbor and Kral’s men rowed the select group of us to a landing area. I tried not to let that bother me, that I’d have one more obstacle to getting back to the Hákyrling. After all, it wouldn’t make any difference if the ship was sitting at a dock with a convenient gangplank. I couldn’t sail her by myself, and even if I could, I couldn’t recross the barrier without Queen Andromeda’s assistance.

  With every passing moment, I became more dependent on others, and I didn’t like it. Of course, I could always take off, find a new place, a new job. I’d done it before; I could do it again. But that wouldn’t get my mission completed and the information home.

  Trying to shake off the gloomy mood, I studied the landing platform, distracting myself with memorizing details. If for some reason I did have to come back through here in a hurry, any mental maps I retained would up my odds of escape, if only fractionally. Festooned with sapphire silks hanging from a gold canopy, the platform appeared to be reserved for royalty and their entourage only. Guards—all men—in more of the deep-blue dress uniforms waited at attention.

  Other landing areas ranged around the harbor area, some crowded with men, others deserted, all decorated in varying degrees of grandeur—both the people and the platforms. How did one know which platform to row to? I strongly suspected going to the wrong one would result in all kinds of trouble, particularly given the preponderance of soldiers everywhere, all in deep blue, though in different styles that might denote rank or responsibilities.

  In such a concentration, they looked uncomfortably like an army. Perhaps Kral’s boasting of the empire’s might contained more truth than we’d wanted to believe.

  Like all things Dasnarian, the platform was efficiently designed, so that a ramp lowered into our boat and allowed us to glide up it more or less regally. Less, in my case, as the drizzling snow made the surface icy slick. My silk slippers hit it and slid. I recovered quickly, with the balance of long practice, but Kral’s hand cupped my elbow anyway.

  “Don’t make a spectacle of yourself,” he ordered. “I told you the slippers were a bad idea.”

  I hoped Danu noted my heroic restraint to balance out my many faults. Kral and I had argued about my footwear several times, and I’d conceded that my boots looked terrible with the klút. At the last minute, I showed Kral my little craft project: I’d made a pair of slippers with soles cut from my destroyed fighting leathers and silk uppers taken from the end of the klút I planned to wear. They matched, which is high fashion, right? Danu knew I wouldn’t miss the forearm’s worth of silk from the klút, as it had enough length to swathe a woman two heads taller than I. Which probably described most Dasnarian women.

  Releasing me again and moving ahead, Kral swept through the landing area, ignoring the guards, who all bowed deeply, leading our little parade through an arcade of more silk, punctuated with various sculptures, all of the same man. Here brandishing a broadsword at the sky. Next on a horse, brandishing a broadsword. Oh, look, and here with a booted foot on a creature I didn’t know, except that it appeared to be very large and very dead, no doubt due to the, yes, brandished broadsword.

  I might have identified a man with a larger ego than Kral’s. Of course, semi-divinity would do that to even the most humble of men, I supposed. Still, I seriously doubted Emperor Hestar had ever started out as modest kind of guy.

  As instructed, I stayed by Kral’s left side, lagging by a pace. I didn’t mind the inferior status the position implied, as it allowed me to absorb all I could through peripheral vision and take my cues from Kral. At the end of the arcade, a grand carriage awaited. Seriously, outrageously ornate. Uorsin would have eaten his left arm in acquisitive envy. The thing appeared to be fashioned entirely of gold and silver, embedded with jewels. Six horses in equally lavish harness blew steaming breath. All six were perfectly matched, in an unusual silver-white, barely dappled with gray that matched their darker manes and tails. Stranger to me, however, the horses stood hugely tall—my head would barely reach their shoulders—and carried massive muscle bulk, as such an undoubtedly heavy contraption no doubt required. Probably necessary for carrying around the big Dasnarian men in their full armor, too.

  I still awaited with keen anticipation my first glimpse of a Dasnarian female. Kral’s improbable remark about them not going outside seemed to be validated so far—I’d not seen one woman. Now, I’d be the first to say I’m a fan of men. I like them, both specifically and in general. But to be exclusively surrounded by them? Danu, it gave me chills, and not the good kind.

  The fact that every man in sight fell into immediate and deep obeisance to Kral didn’t make me feel any better.

  “Ambassador?” Kral held out a hand at the carriage, ostensibly to help me up the three incredibly shallow steps. Frozen slush coated the metal, however, so I swallowed my pride and took his hand. Better to look like I needed help than slip and bang out a tooth or something. Despite the leather soles, the chilly wet had soaked right through my slippers, freezing my feet further.

  Kral handed me into a seat and settled opposite. When it became apparent that none of the other men would join us, I kicked off the slippers and tucked my feet up under me, worming them inside the silk so I could warm them against my skin. Predictably, Kral frowned at me.

  “That’s not a position for a lady to sit in,” he informed me.

  I looked around the ostentatious carriage, even peeked under a cushion and behind one of the velvet curtains covering the window, then gave Kral a quizzical look. He heaved out an exasperated sigh.

  “Yes,
we’re alone, but you agreed to follow the rules of female behavior at all times. If you slip up and forget—”

  “I’m not stupid, Kral.” But I had reached my limit for the moment. “I’m capable of discerning when I need to assume the persona you taught me and when I can take a moment to prevent frostbite.”

  He gave the slippers a disgusted glance. “Like you listened when I told you those were a bad idea?”

  “Barefoot would have been better?” I snapped back.

  “What would be better is if you completely absorbed the manners required of you here. You’d be in less danger of getting yourself in trouble if you behaved as a Dasnarian woman at all times.”

  “Not going to happen, Kral. I’ll play the part, but I’m not going to lose sight of who I am.” The very idea settled dread in my gut. I’d prefer to become one of Illyria’s reanimated dead, shuffling mindlessly to do her bidding. Actually, behaving like a proper Dasnarian female came pretty close to the same thing. Fortunately, I understood Kral better now. Though he might berate me on proper manners, it came from a place of concern. He liked the woman I was, in all my brash and unmeek ways, whether he’d admit it to himself or not. “I know you’re concerned for my well-being, but you’re going to have to let me find my own way here. You gave me the knowledge I need. Trust in that.”

  “Speaking of which,” he said, twitching the curtain to glance out the window, “you should start addressing me by my title. Prince Kral, General Kral, or simply Your Imperial Highness. And try not to sound sarcastic when you say it,” he added with a wry twist of his mouth as he glanced back at me.

  “You’re calling ‘Your Imperial Highness’ simple?”

  “I’d particularly like it if you’d shout it while coming.” He grinned, eyes glinting.

  That sense of humor saved him from being completely insufferable. If only he let it out more. Already my ardent, teasing lover from the Hákyrling’s voyage seemed to be disappearing, walled away under an increasingly hard and shiny shell that Kral fastened around him and held in place with the glittering Konyngrr fist. Tension rode him, and he clearly chewed over how this return home would go.