The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  “He… spoke your name,” said Chastor Ren. “In his state, I don’t know if he remembers that you were ever gone.”

  “And Rudol would let me come? He can’t like the idea very much. Unless it’s some kind of trick.” Traps and lies weren’t Rudol’s way, but it was an excuse not to go. A summons to the king’s bedside was the last thing Josen had expected, or wanted. He’d assumed that he would never see his father again—not conscious, at least. It was, in his estimation, one of the few good things to come of being left to die in the Swamp.

  “Prince Rudol only wishes for your father to be at peace when he stands before the Lord of Eagles,” Mulley said. “I am to tell you that you will have free passage in and out of the Keep, with as many men as you need to feel at ease. The Royal Swords will do nothing to stop you from entering, or from leaving when you wish it. Your brother has sworn this by the Above. But if you mean to come, Josen, it must be now. Time is short.”

  Josen raised an eyebrow. “So he woke up just to die? In his place, I think I’d rather have slept through it.” I’d certainly rather he had.

  “This is no time for jests.” Mulley put on his best chastor’s frown, now, and placed his hands on his hips. “Your father has ruled well and fairly, and now he is dying. Will you come, or not?”

  I wish I knew. If he’d had to guess at his answer before this moment, he would have said that he’d happily refuse his father’s last wish. Gerod hadn’t visited his own wife when she lay dying—he hadn’t been there at the end. He deserved no better now. And yet… Josen looked at Shona. “What do you think? Would it be safe?”

  “Rudol hates to break his word,” said Shona. “You’d take the guards he’s allowing, of course, but I don’t think he would set a trap. Even if he’s turned uncharacteristically sneaky, I imagine he’d rather get you out of the Plateaus than keep you here, now that he knows why you came. And if this is a sincere request, refusing it won’t make him any more inclined to help us.” She frowned, and rubbed at her forehead with the heel of her hand. “But… Carissa has been in his ear every minute since he came back from the Swamp. She very much wants to be queen. I don’t know what she’s been saying to him, or how far she might go if she thinks you’re an obstacle.”

  Well that doesn’t help very much. She was supposed to make the hard decisions; he’d hoped she would take it out of his hands. “What, then? What am I supposed to do?”

  “What do you want to do, Josen? There are risks both ways. If it was my father…” Shona fell silent for a moment, and then, “I think it has to be your choice, this time.”

  “Then…” Josen swallowed, and pushed his fingers through his hair. “I suppose we go to the Keep.” He wasn’t sure, but something about it felt right. And this chance wouldn’t come again. He needed to know it was over. “If he’s going to die, I want to see it.”

  Until that moment, Azra had been quiet and still at his side. Now, she shook her head, and half-turned toward Eroh to sign something.

  The boy was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching. “She says it’s too dangerous.”

  Falyn Morne took a step forward. “The swampling is… not entirely wrong, Prince Josen.” She scowled, as if admitting that was painful for her. “We will do our best to see that nothing happens to you, but if we walk into a trap, I can’t promise your safety.”

  “I don’t think Rudol would do anything to hurt me,” Josen said. He wasn’t certain why he believed that, given what his brother had done in the Swamp, but he did. He had to. He said it was mercy. He thought he was setting me free, in some twisted way.

  “He wouldn’t,” Chastor Ren said gently. His eyes flickered toward Azra. “I am sure that this… this woman means well, but I promise you that you won’t be harmed, Prince Josen. I watched your brother swear as much to the Sky God. He will not break that oath.”

  Azra shook her head again, more firmly, and gripped Josen by his bad arm. The strength of her fingers made him wince. “I go then. He go, I go.” It was the most he’d ever heard her say aloud—she clearly wasn’t near as practiced as Zerill, or even Verik.

  “The decision isn’t yours to make, swampling.” Anger glinted in Cer Falyn’s eyes; Josen was surprised she’d held it back for so long. This was what Eian had wanted, and her loyalty to the man was absolute, but the people he’d asked her to help were the same ones that had taken him away. And even before that, she’d hated them—Josen vaguely recalled Eian telling him once that she’d lost someone in a swampling raid on a trade-barge or the like when she was very young.

  Shona put a hand on Morne’s arm to calm her, but it was Azra she spoke to. “I understand your concern,” she said, “but I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to come. Rudol is not… a great friend to your people. He would take it as an insult to see you at his father’s deathbed. And whatever promises of safe passage he’s made, I doubt he intended them for you.”

  Azra tightened her grip; her fingers dug painfully into Josen’s wasted flesh. He tried to pull away, but she was stronger than he was. He was more than a little bit nervous, now. The way she’d been staying near him, looking at him… he’d thought it was just that she’d promised Zerill she would protect him, but this felt like something else.

  “Azra, you’re hurting me,” he said.

  She didn’t relax her grip. “He go, I go,” she said again.

  Morne shook Shona’s hand away, and gripped the hilt of her sword. “You aren’t going anywhere, and we aren’t wasting any more time. Release him.”

  Faster than Josen could follow, Azra’s hand moved, and suddenly there was a knife in it. A stone blade melded seamlessly to a wooden hilt.

  “What are you—” The question died half-asked; Josen’s throat seized when Azra pressed the tip of the knife against his armpit.

  Verik signed something; Azra flashed him a look that must have been answer enough, because he reluctantly released Josen’s other arm and stepped back. Shona tried to approach, but Morne blocked her from harm’s way with one arm. Mulley retreated until his back was against the wall, wide-eyed with terror.

  And Josen just stood, frozen. Whatever this was, it was happening far too quickly now, and he didn’t know what to do.

  Morne suffered no such hesitation. “If you hurt him, you die, swampling,” she said, drawing her sword. Her men did the same, moving to surround Josen and Azra.

  “Wait!” Eroh jumped up from his bed and approached the knights. The man nearest to him looked to Morne for instruction; he clearly hadn’t been prepared for this. A swampling with the eyes of a Windwalker. A Storm Knight’s worst nightmare. But the boy didn’t make any sudden movements, and he stopped just short of their reach.

  “She doesn’t want to hurt him,” Eroh said. “She just can’t let him go. She promised.”

  And then Josen understood. “Don’t… don’t come any closer, Cer Falyn.” His tongue was heavy in his mouth, and his throat was half-closed with fear; he had to force the words out, thick and clumsy. He looked at Azra, and tried to control the trembling that kept scraping his skin against her knife. “You were asked to watch me, weren’t you, Azra? To make sure I don’t reveal anything I shouldn’t about the Abandoned?”

  Azra didn’t have any hands free to sign; she kept her eyes on Morne and the other knights, and didn’t so much as move her head.

  Eroh answered for her. “Yes. She’s supposed to keep you from telling secrets.”

  “I… I understand,” said Josen. “Your people don’t have much reason to trust us. You’re worried that if you aren’t watching, I might betray your trust. But Azra, you were there when we met Rudol. You heard what I said. I asked him to spare your people. I didn’t know you were… watching me like that, then. I could have tried to tell him something, but I didn’t. I promise you, I won’t give away your secrets. I only want to help.” It felt unclean and unworthy to say that to a girl whose mother he might have killed, but if he didn’t stop her, Morne’s knights would, and not gently. He wasn�
��t going to let that happen.

  She didn’t loosen her grip, and her focus remained on the knights, but her eyes flicked toward him for an instant. She’s listening.

  “I need you to let me go,” he said. “I wish we could bring you, or that I could stay, but we would only make Rudol angrier than he already is. Zerill brought me a long way to do this, and if it’s going to work, we have to be… diplomatic. Which means you’re going to have to let me out of your sight, sometimes. If this ends here, like this, everything she did was for nothing.” He hoped that would mean something to her; that he’d guessed right about her relation to Zerill. It wasn’t much to go on, but he couldn’t think of anything else. “If you let me do this, I give you my word that no one will hurt you.” He glanced toward Morne. “Isn’t that right, Cer Falyn?”

  Morne pursed her lips in distaste, but nodded. “My men will stand down if she does,” she said. But her sword didn’t waver.

  “You see?” Josen said. Azra was looking at him now, not at Morne or the others. “This can still go peacefully. That’s what Zerill sent us here for. Peace. She risked everything for this chance, and I don’t want to let her down. Please, Azra. For her sake.”

  Azra looked at Verik, then; he signed something, and gestured at Josen. She didn’t move, and Josen wasn’t very good at reading swampling faces, but the slight lines that appeared on her brow could have been uncertainty.

  “Please,” he said again.

  Very slowly, she lowered her knife.

  Immediately, Morne moved forward, reaching for Azra’s blade.

  Josen halted her with a raised hand.

  “No,” he said. “Let her keep it.”

  Morne looked at him incredulously. “After all that? I’m not—”

  “If she’s going to trust us, we have to trust her,” said Josen, still holding Azra’s eyes with his. “But unless you’re going to use it again, can you put it away? I think it’s making everyone a bit nervous.”

  She looked back at him for a long moment, and then nodded. A flick of her wrist, and the blade was gone again to wherever she’d had it hidden to begin with. She signed something to Eroh, and he said, “She will trust you. For Zerill.” Azra’s hand moved again. “But… she will find a way to make you sorry, if you break your word.”

  Josen took a deep breath. “Thank you, Azra. You’re making the right choice, I swear it.” His heartbeat was beginning to slow to something like normal, but his hands still shook; he closed his fists and tried to hold them still.

  “So,” he said, turning to Chastor Ren, “I believe we have somewhere to be?”

  Rudol

  Rudol sat by the fire in the king’s receiving chamber, staring into the flames.

  He was alone in the room. Master Jovert and his apprentices had done all they could, and Rudol had sent Mulley to fetch Josen—the only messenger he could think of that his brother might trust. When word had come that they’d arrived, just a few moments before, Carissa had insisted on going to meet them so that Rudol could stay by the king’s side. Sweet of her, but he wished she hadn’t. He didn’t much want to be alone with his father just then.

  Nothing that Gerod had said since he’d woken had been as clear as that first time he’d spoken Josen’s name. He muttered and babbled like a man in the throes of madness, starting on one topic and changing to another without warning, oftentimes midway through a sentence. Rudol could make little sense of it, though he recognized bits of old memories here and there. It was hard to sit by the bedside and listen to such raving from a man who had never been less than completely in command of himself; harder still to do it knowing that his father wanted Josen instead. And with that knowledge came the voice, his brother’s voice, always taunting him.

  It was more than he could take.

  So he’d retreated to the next room to wait. He could still hear mumbling and raspy breaths and coughing from the bedroom; if the sound stopped, or if the coughing became too much, he would look in. But he couldn’t sit by that bed anymore. Not alone.

  Lord of Eagles, what am I going to do when he’s gone?

  He stood quickly when he heard footsteps approaching down the hallway. Better that no one know he’d abandoned his father. Let them think he was summoned by the noise.

  “If he goes in, I do.” That was Shona’s voice, from just outside the door. Carissa wouldn’t like it, but Rudol was hardly surprised. Shona wasn’t going to risk leaving Josen alone with him—too easy for the wrong words to erase whatever diplomacy they’d managed in their last meeting.

  He opened the door and motioned for the Sword blocking her passage to move aside. “Let her in.”

  In the hall, Josen and Shona stood waiting with Carissa and Renold Mulley just behind. Falyn Morne and a dozen Knights of the Storm made a loose circle around them. Apparently they hadn’t been willing to accept his invitation in good faith. No matter. They came.

  “I trust you weren’t seen by anyone?” Rudol had given Mulley clear instructions about that, and ordered the halls and the courtyard emptied for their arrival. No one could know Josen had been here. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  “We boarded the coach behind the walls of the Stormhall, and got out behind the walls of the Keep,” said Shona. “The curtains were drawn all the way. Just as you asked.”

  “Good.” He beckoned for them to follow. “But your knights stay here.” He wasn’t about to let Falyn Morne see his father like this. “This door is the only way out. If I decide to have you dragged into the dungeon, it will have to be past them. That should be enough assurance of your freedom. Unless you think I mean to have you executed at my father’s bedside?”

  Shona hesitated. She didn’t speak, but the silence and the look in her eyes said enough. We were friends once, and now she can’t even trust me this far. He should have expected it, really. She knew what he’d done to Josen, but she hadn’t been there. She would never understand why he’d done it. Now that he’d seen Windwalker eyes looking out of a swampling boy’s face, Rudol wasn’t sure he understood anymore.

  But as painful as it was, he didn’t let himself flinch. “In or out,” he said. “Make your choice. We’re letting in a draft—I’m told that isn’t good for his lungs.”

  It was Josen who made the decision. “He isn’t going to hurt us,” he said, and waved off Morne and her knights. “Come on.” He strode through the door, and Shona followed.

  Rudol held the door for them, and Carissa and Chastor Ren after, then pushed it closed. He didn’t waste time with pleasantries. He knew where things stood with his brother—there was no point lying about it. And he couldn’t bear to see Shona look at him like that again, like he’d become a stranger. Without a word, he stalked toward the bedroom where his father lay.

  “Wait.” Josen’s voice stopped him with his hand on the door. “Why am I here, Rudol? Really?”

  “Our father is dying. Is that not enough?”

  “You can’t expect some tearful reconciliation. I won’t forgive that man. I won’t cry for him. You must know that already. Why did you bring me here?”

  Tell the truth, little brother, whispered another voice, so close to the same. He asked for me. Even after everything I’ve done, he wants me here more than he wants you.

  Rudol breathed out through his nose and rubbed a hand over his scalp. “Do what you will, Josen,” he said. “He asked for you, so I sent for you. That’s all the answer I have. If you want another, ask him. Although I doubt you’ll get a very satisfying one now.” With that, he strode into the king’s bed chamber.

  Gerod’s mumbling ceased for a moment when Rudol entered; he looked at his son with unfocused eyes.

  “Father?” Rudol said gently. “Josen is here.”

  “Josen?” Gerod lifted his head from his pillow. “He’s… here?” The words took the wind out of him, and he sucked in a short, tortured breath; blessedly, he didn’t start coughing. As the others came through the door, he searched their faces as if trying to remember which one we
nt with the name.

  But it was Shona the king’s eyes finally fixed upon. “Shona? Is… is it you? Have you… come back to me?”

  Shona glanced uncertainly at Rudol.

  Rudol spread his hands. “He must think…” He trailed off. They both knew what this was. Gerod’s first wife had been Shona’s aunt, and shared her name.

  “Let me… hear your voice. It has been… so many years.” The king spoke in a weak, barely audible wheeze, but he was more coherent than he’d been since he’d awoken.

  Shona looked at Josen now; he just shrugged helplessly. She turned back to Rudol. “What should I…?”

  “Just… let him believe it.” Rudol wanted his father to go peacefully into the Above, but it was more than just that. He’d never seen this before. He’d heard the stories, heard that Gerod had chosen his first wife for love, not gain, but that had never fit very well with the man he knew. “Please, Shona. It won’t be for long.”

  Shona regarded him silently for a moment, sighed, and moved to Gerod’s bedside. “I’m… I’m here.”

  A sad smile creased Gerod’s gaunt face; tears welled in the chasms of his sunken eyes. “My love.” He reached one hand toward her, and she took it, wincing only slightly at the coldness of his skin. “I have missed you… more than you can know.”

  Rudol couldn’t remember ever seeing his father cry, and even a hint of a smile was just as rare. Unconsciously, he found himself looking at Josen; at the same moment, Josen turned to him with his mouth half-open. Rudol hardly recognized him anymore, with his white-streaked hair and haunted eyes, but even so, for just a moment, bonded by shared disbelief, it felt like they were brothers again.

  How many times have we stood here together like this? This wasn’t the same as when they were young—it had always been a scolding back then, usually for something Josen had gotten them into—but it brought back those memories. Whenever Rudol had been on the verge of tears, he would always look at his older brother, and Josen would make a funny face, and suddenly they would both be trying not to laugh out loud in the middle of one of their father’s lectures. Until he started leaving me to sit through them alone.