“—is not likely to consider that any excuse to shirk my duties,” Peregrine finished the sentence. “Come stand a moment, Jaboa. It’s so blessedly quiet out here, and calm.”
With a backward glance over her shoulder, Jaboa stepped out onto the terrace, letting the door swing silently shut behind her. “It’s cold.”
“But so peaceful. Here.” Peregrine wiped away the snow on the stone guard rails of the terrace. “Let’s sit a moment.”
Jaboa glanced around again, as though she expected the Consort to appear at the door, and reluctantly perched on the edge of the rail. Her cheeks were damp and little curls of graying hair stuck out from beneath her coif. Pine needles were caught in the folds of her clothes, and a twist of red ribbon was twined about her wrist. Jaboa closed her eyes and sighed. “You’d think that with the King gone to Tennessey Fall and Roderic away fighting this year, she wouldn’t go to so much trouble. But no, the lady must have things just so. This is how the New Year’s always been celebrated in Ahga, she says, and so that’s the way it’s going to be.”
“As if she’d know,” mused Peregrine. “She’s only been here—four years? Five?”
“She’s been here much longer, my dear. It will be sixteen years in the spring. It was the year Captain—well, now he’s Lord Phineas—was wounded. I remember how upset the King was when he brought Phineas home, blinded—lamed— it was so clear he’d never ride to war again. And then a few months later, just when everything had begun to settle, he brought her.”
“What could the King ever have seen in her?” asked Peregrine, holding out her hand to catch the snow.
“Who knows what men see? She was carrying his child—little Lady Elsemone. Gartred was, and still is, very beautiful. The King’s eye for women—some say it will be his downfall.” Jaboa shook her head and chuckled. “As if anything could bring him down.”
Peregrine did not answer. In the time she’d been in Ahga, she’d had very little to do with the King. This year, the court had not even been back from the summer residence at Minnis Saul two weeks when Abelard had left on his journey south. She couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to him.
The King was her guardian of necessity, nothing more. If only the Consort could be the same. She watched the flakes drift onto her upturned palm, soft as a lover’s kiss. She thought of Roderic again and brushed the snow away. Where was he? she wondered. Was it snowing in Atland? Was he warm and safe and dry? Or even now, was he in the midst of some battle, dodging razor spears, fighting the hideously deformed Muten hordes?
Peregrine shuddered. She had never seen a Muten, and she hoped she never would. She had heard the stories told around the hearths in Ahga since she had come to live there three years ago as a sixteen-year-old orphan, her father’s lands and title forfeit as dictated by the terms of surrender imposed by the King after Mortmain’s Rebellion so many years ago. If she had been a boy, Abelard would have allowed her to return to the fog-bound coast and gently shivering sands of her father’s tiny estate on the very edges of the Vada Valley when she turned eighteen. She had thought when she had come here that the best she could hope for was marriage with some retainer of the King, her hand and her father’s title reward for some service well rendered.
But now, she thought as she shifted her weight on the cold stone, now she’d had these last few months with Roderic, and she preferred not to think about the distant future. It was possible that the King might look favorably on a marriage with his heir—what need did Roderic have of great estates? And if this baby were a boy … ? Only let him come home safe and whole, she prayed to the One and the Three. Let him see his child’s face. Let me lie with him once more. If only he’d send some word. But although messengers came and went from distant Atland with some regularity, there had been no message at all for her.
“Are you cold, child? We ought to go in.” Jaboa stood up, brushing the snow off her gray skirts, flapping her shawl so that she reminded Peregrine of a fat, full-breasted pigeon.
Peregrine heaved herself to her feet, wondering if Jaboa, so long married, had learned not to miss Brand. “I suppose we must.” She would have preferred to freeze in the still evening than return to the hot chaos of the great hall, where Gartred strode back and forth across the dais, blaring orders to anyone hapless enough to stray within hearing, no matter what their duties or their rank. Even Roderic’s old tutor, iron-bearded General Garrick, had been pressed into service, forced to raise and lower the garlands decorating the mantels as Gartred snapped her fingers impatiently. Garrick had never looked submissive when he dealt with Roderic. Sudden tears stung her eyes. Why must everything remind her of Roderic? Even this courtyard—this was the very place she had stood on the day he had first noticed her. “I wish—” she began, and broke off with a little catch in her throat.
“Now, now. There, there. He’ll come home. Don’t you worry.” Jaboa reached over and squeezed Peregrine’s hand.
“If he’d only send me a letter—something, anything. Even just a line or two, to let me know he’s all right.”
“Tsk, tsk. Don’t fret. That’s the way they all are, even my Brand. Why do you suppose our high and mighty lady is so out of sorts? It’s been weeks since she’s had word from the King. Never you mind. Your prince will come home, and when he does, everything will be just fine.”
“But, Jaboa—” Peregrine turned to face the older woman “—what if she sends me away like—“
“Oh, child, don’t believe those tales.”
“But it’s not a tale, Jaboa, you know it isn’t. She could send me away—me and my baby, both. What if she convinces the King to marry me off before Roderic comes home? Then we might never see—“
“Don’t you think he’d come looking for you? And the baby? He’s none too fond of her. You know that as well as I.”
“But he doesn’t know, you see. I wasn’t sure—before he left. So I didn’t tell him about the baby. And now—“
Jaboa’s faded blue eyes were soft with sympathy, and Peregrine remembered that, throughout the years, the maintenance of Meriga’s fragile peace required Brand’s absence from Ahga far more often than his presence. “And now Roderic has other things to think about. But, really, you mustn’t fret. Brand will bring him home. I promise.” She gave Peregrine’s hand another gentle squeeze. “Now come along. It’s getting much too cold out here.”
Peregrine met Jaboa’s eyes and was startled to see the merry expression.
“Besides,” Jaboa said, leaning forward to whisper in Peregrine’s ear, even though no one was about, “you don’t want to miss the surprise we’ve brewed for my lady. Old Mag put—“
Sudden shouts drowned out the secret. Peregrine looked up and frowned. In the outer ward, men were calling for grooms, for a doctor, and before she could move, a horse and rider burst through the opened gate which led into the outer ward, followed by at least half a dozen of the guards on duty.
The rider slid off the horse and stumbled as his leather boots slipped in the snow. A groom dashed forward to catch the animal’s bridle. Blood-streaked foam flecked the horse’s mouth, as it shied and tried to rear, slipping and sliding on the snow-slick cobbles. With a curse, the man waved away the others who offered aid or escort, and Peregrine saw that he wore the uniform of the King’s Guard. The lower half of his face was obscured by a matted beard, and his hair was plastered against his skull. His cloak was torn and splattered with mud, and he looked as if he had been in the saddle for many days.
He staggered toward them, ignoring the guards who called for the sergeant of the watch.
“Lord Phineas,” the man cried, his face red and raw with windburn. Peregrine glanced at Jaboa. Was the man insane?
“Take me—Lord Phineas—at once,” panted the soldier. “Take me, lady—must speak with him—“
Peregrine’s heart seemed to stop in her chest. Was it Roderic? Was the messenger from him? She sprang to the door. “Come, soldier. I’ll take you there myself.”
Peregrine caught at the soldier’s arm as he heaved himself up the shallow steps, breathing hard, snow frosting his brows and beard. “Please, just tell me, is it the Prince? Does he live?”
The man paused, narrowing his eyes as if he’d not quite understood. “The Prince? I know nothing of the Prince, lady. It’s the King. King Abelard has disappeared.”
Chapter Two
Janry, 75th Year in the Reign of the Ridenau Kings (2747 Muten Old Calendar)
“Lost? My father is lost?” The parchment scroll fell to the floor unheeded as Roderic Ridenau, eighteen-year-old heir to the throne of Meriga, stared at the messenger in disbelief. An unruly shock of light brown hair, silky as a tassel of wheat, fell across his forehead, and he swiped it back automatically. “Phineas expects me to believe that the King has just disappeared?”
The messenger, one of the special corps who rode the length and breadth of Meriga in the service of the King, twisted his gloved hands together, his shoulders shifting beneath his dark blue cloak. “Lord Phineas has sent out three regiments of the King’s Guard to search.”
Roderic sank onto one of the long wooden benches beside the rough-hewn council table, feeling as if the air had been punched from his lungs. He stared at the hide map of Atland pinned to the surface, as though it might hold a clue to the King’s whereabouts.
On the opposite side of the room, his eldest half-brother, Brand, stood with arms crossed over the insignia of the King’s Guard emblazoned on his tunic. “When exactly was it realized that the King was missing?”
“He was expected at Ithan Ford by Thanksgiven Day, Captain. When he didn’t arrive by the fifth of Sember, Lord Senador Miles sent word to Lord Phineas in Ahga and Lord Senador Gredahl in Arkan.”
“And?” asked Roderic.
“The King had left Lord Gredahl’s holding in Arkan at the beginning of Vember, Lord Prince. He should have arrived in Ithan in plenty of time for Thanksgiven.”
Brand gestured a dismissal. “That will be all for now. Tell the master of supplies to give you dry clothes and a place to sleep. We may need to talk to you again before we send you back to Phineas.”
As the messenger bowed out of the door, Roderic looked up, the dismay plain on his narrow face, with its high, slanting cheekbones, his light brown brows furrowed above his gray-green eyes. Brand walked around the table, and stooped to pick up the discarded scroll. “Well, little brother. It’s a fine coil we have here.”
“What are we to do?” Roderic twisted restlessly on the bench and stared over Brand’s head at the narrow window. Outside, sleet spattered the rippled panes of smoky glass, and the wind howled between the low stone buildings of Atland garrison.
Brand paused in his reading, his lips pressed tight in an expression which reminded Roderic of their father. Finally, Brand looked up, and concern flickered in the depths of his dark eyes. “We don’t have a choice.” He shook his head, and the protest died in Roderic’s throat. “Right now, we don’t have a choice.”
Roderic stared at his brother. At forty-five, Brand was not only the eldest of all of the King’s illegitimate children, but the Captain of the King’s Guard as well. The King’s Guard were the elite troops charged with the responsibility for the King’s safety, and the Captain of the King’s Guard outranked every other soldier in all the Armies of the King. Abelard trusted Brand as he trusted few others. Only Abelard’s insistence that Brand accompany his heir had prevented Brand from going with their father on what should have been a routine tour of the Arkan Estates. Now, in the orange glow of the fire, Brand’s face was closed and grim, his jutting hawk nose so like Abelard’s looking pinched in his square-jawed face. His hair, clipped close about his temples, was more silver than black, and the stubble on his chin was nearly all gray.
He blames himself, thought Roderic. He got up with a sigh, hooked his thumbs in his belt and paced to the window.
The rain was falling in fat, steady drops, regular as the muffled beat of a funeral drum. The guards huddled at their posts, wrapped against the weather in heavy cloaks of olive drab, crouched over low braziers of smoking charcoal. He gazed over the walls into the dark mountains rising up, stretching off into the distance as far as he could see. Beyond the garrison walls, the land lay ravaged beneath the lowering sky. Here and there, the black, bare trees rose like twisted skeletons, reminding him of the charred bodies he’d seen too often in the course of this wretched campaign.
This was his first command, and he had hoped to make his father proud. Now, he wondered bitterly if Abelard would ever know. And what would Abelard’s disappearance mean for him? He was the heir of Meriga, the only child of Abelard’s dead Queen. So far, he’d yet to prove himself on the battlefield. How could he rule all Meriga?
He turned away from the window with another sigh and paced to the hearth, where the fire snapped and hissed.
“Stop that, damn it,” Brand spoke over his shoulder.
“Stop what?” Roderic threw another log into the middle of the fire.
“That pacing. It reminds me of Dad.”
Roderic swung his long, gangly legs over the bench beside his brother and tapped the scroll. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. I suppose Dad could have been ambushed by Harleyriders—though they’ve usually retreated to the deserts south of Dlas by Vember. Maybe he met a Muten war party as he crossed into Tennessey on his way to Ithan, or maybe there was some sort of accident.” He looked at Roderic and shook his head again. “I just don’t know.”
“Phineas says he’s called an emergency Convening of the Congress. Shouldn’t I be there?”
Brand shrugged. “In theory, of course. The Congress will acclaim you Regent—which I suppose you already are. But in reality—you can’t leave Atland, Roderic. Not now. Not until we get the upper hand in this revolt.” The brothers lapsed into silence, both thinking the same thing.
The war in Atland was not going well. Roderic was charged with what he increasingly thought of as an impossible task—the defeat of the Muten rebels once and for all. The King had managed to quell the last rebellion, a dozen years ago, by a combination of diplomacy, tactical genius, and luck, when a particularly virulent form of plague swept through the Muten ranks. Impervious to all the diseases which afflicted the Mutens, the King’s Army had easily overrun the enemy.
But both brothers knew that so far, his heir was not so lucky. It was simply that terrain and weather, as well as sheer numbers, were against them. The Mutens bred like rats, producing six and seven and eight offspring, and those who did not starve or die from disease, went on to reproduce the same way. They were vermin, and like vermin, impossible to eradicate.
A log split with a loud hiss, and Roderic was reminded of their last encounter, only a few days ago. The driving rain had turned the ground to a soupy sea of red mud, and his horse had slipped and scrambled for purchase, even as he shouted the order to retreat. Once again they had underestimated the number of the Muten forces, underestimated the ferocity with which the Mutens fought. He had clung to his stallion’s neck, watching the foot soldiers scramble for safety beneath a volley of razor-sharp spears that whined above the wind. From his perch on a rocky promontory, he had counted the bodies, slick with gore, heaped upon the battlefield. Most of those bodies wore the colors of the Armies of the King. The cries of the wounded and the dying, the horns which signaled the retreat, joined in an eerie chorus, punctuated with the shouts of officers as they tried to marshal the survivors into some semblance of order. The memory of that sound made his blood run cold, and the realization that he was ultimately responsible for those deaths made his sleep restless. They had left Ahga four months ago, but it felt like four years.
Finally Brand spoke, and his voice was heavy with regret and self-reproach. “We’ve got to get you back to Ahga in time for that Convening,
if we can. I reckon we’ve three months—at the most.”
“Three months?” Roderic repeated. “That long?”
“If Phineas sent word to the estates when he sent the messenger to us, some of the Senadors haven’t even heard the news yet. And with the weather, and this rebellion, there’re too many Scnadors that can’t leave their estates. For example, Kora-lado can’t get out of the Saranevas until spring. The Senadors on the eastern coast would be fools to try to cross the Pulatchians in the middle of a Muten revolt. We have time. But not much.”
“Not much of what?” The door from the outer room slammed open and shut, and Reginald, another of Roderic’s half-brothers, stood shaking the water off his cloak. He threw back his head and ran his fingers through his long, lank strands of sandy hair. His watery blue eyes were the only feature which reminded Roderic that Reginald was Abelard’s son. “Not much chance of finding a woman to come out in this weather. Hell of a way to keep New Year’s.” He scratched his armpit and yawned. His clothes reeked of old sweat and damp wool.
Reginald had commanded the garrison in Atland for years, charged with keeping the peace between the Pulatchian Highlanders, the lowland farmers, and the Mutens who lived in the inaccessible mountain hollows of the Pulatchian Mountains. Roderic knew his father had never questioned Reginald’s abilities as the commander of the largest garrison in southeast Meriga. But in the last months, Roderic had begun to regard Reginald’s slovenly habits and sloppy person with disgust, and he was beginning to think that perhaps Abelard had never really known what sort of man Reginald was.
Now Reginald reached across Brand for the flagon of wine leftover from the noon meal. “There anything left in here? Not much. Let’s send for more.”
“Sit down.” Brand’s voice brooked no disobedience.
“As you say, Captain,” Reginald replied sarcastically. “Why the long faces? What in the name of the One’s wrong with you two?”
Before either Roderic or Brand could reply, there was a loud shriek and the muffled sounds of a scuffle from the outer room. Brand rose with a curse and was across the room in a few long strides. He flung open the door. “What’s going on out here, Sergeant?”
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