Heart of Steel

by Samantha M. Derr

  Maybe she had found a Neydelese lover. Someone to promise himself to her despite her marital status, in hopes of raising his own fortunes.

  Perhaps she had taken up a new religion. The old god Neyd, as Isi understood it, was a jealous deity who did not sanction the worship of the Four Kings. Perhaps Marian had become a heretic.

  He could spin out theories all day long—what did it matter? They had already traveled too far down this road to turn back.

  Still, he frowned at her, ashamed of his gullibility. "I thought when you said 'your country,' you meant Skel."

  Princess Marian stared straight ahead. "I do, Sir Isi. I do and I always will. But this message is going to Neydel, so if that pricks your conscience, now is your last chance to do something about it."

  Isi considered the matter.

  "Let me see it."

  Isi did not much care about countries, or borders, or wars. Perhaps it would go so far as to be considered treason, to let her send information into the hands of Skel's ancient enemy. But even if it was, he found he did not care much for his own fate. When it came down to it, his first and only consideration on the matter of loyalty was whether something would hurt Tom. And he truly didn't know if this would hurt Tom or not.

  He had to see it for himself.

  But Princess Marian prevaricated. "I don't know if I can trust you."

  Isi was surprised to hear himself laugh. "Truly? I've indulged you on this mad errand to protect you, and you hold my biggest secret in your hands, and you don't think you can trust me?"

  "Your secret is not as dire as you imagine, sir, and I… The more people who see this message, the more who know I've intercepted it, the more I risk."

  Isi pulled up on the reins. "Then I will accompany you no further. Best of luck in your journey, my lady."

  Her face fell. "What do you mean? You cannot leave me."

  "Of course I can. Tempare is but a mile away. You should get there safely enough. What you do there is no more of my concern."

  For a second, the hard and cold expression he had almost forgotten passed over her face. Her eyes looked distant, unreachable. This must be how she was with the world—cold, regal, restrained.

  Then she reached into a fold at the waist of her stolen trousers and withdrew the folded sheet of paper. She handed it across to him, barely holding it between two fingers, as if it felt vile to her.

  Carefully, almost afraid that she would draw back at the last moment, Isi took the letter that had started this unexpected journey.

  Addressed to Prince Itzcoatl himself, it was a list. A list of ships, and the components of shipbuilding, and names of prominent shipwrights, along with prices. There was nothing official about it. There were no seals or the traditional turns of phrase that indicated official government missives. It was a very informal document. But at the bottom, in precise, heavy hand, with a flourish on the H that Isi knew the man used to prevent forgery, stood the name Percy Gelhorn.

  Etiquette norms meant that there was no reason an advisor to the king should be in direct contact with a Mheztil prince through less than the strictest of formal means. This was Gelhorn reaching out of his own volition, offering something to the Mheztil that he was on record of arguing against in the Nobles' Conclave.

  Shipbuilding was an industry that had burgeoned after first contact. Skel could only trade with the world by sea, and already had a robust history of the craft, but now that the great ocean was being mapped, there was a new impetus to build bigger ships, faster ships, better ships. Designs changed faster than Isi, for one, had any ability to track.

  By contrast, Mheztil was not a seafaring empire. Pre-contact, their limited boat traffic had mostly followed the branching river routes that crossed the continent. When it came to journeying open sea, the small, narrow boats which the Mheztil built tended to hug the coast. Only a storm, an accident, desperation, and two heroic men who would become the first navigators had brought the first expedition safely to Skel's shore.

  Mheztil had been trying to build Eastern-style ships for three decades, but they were up against a lack of natural resources and a daunting series of setbacks and delays.

  Skel had avoided selling them large ships outright because they feared invasion, no matter what sorts of treaties were paid lip-service to by the government. And Gelhorn, a conservative traditionalist, had been one of the staunchest proponents of keeping the Mheztil constrained by their inferior boats.

  So while Isi didn't know much about the minutiae of the debate, he understood enough to know that this innocuous-looking list hinted at consequences beyond his ken. It seemed that Percy Gelhorn was speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Whether Itzcoatl and his fellows were inclined to take him up on his secretive offer was almost a moot point. Gelhorn was up to something, and no interpretation of his actions was particularly good.

  Isi looked up, straight into Princess Marian's dark blue eyes. "Why didn't you take this straight to your father?"

  "It's hardly enough evidence to prove any sort of conspiracy."

  "It's a start."

  "An easily disputed one. When Gelhorn realizes this has been waylaid, he'll claim forgery of any version that comes before the king's eyes. However, I know a man in Neydel who can prove its provenance indisputably. Never mind how—that's not something I can tell you. But getting this out of the country is my best option."

  Isi didn't agree with that, but he didn't feel empowered to argue with her. Princess Marian was a competent woman. More than competent. She knew her own mind. And whatever she was after, Isi knew that she would see it done, no matter how he interfered.

  He inclined his head. "Do you want me to tell Tom of this?"

  "Not now. Not yet. He would misunderstand."

  If she thought Tom would misunderstand, then Isi certainly misunderstood. He'd drawn easy conclusions about the letter, but what if they were the wrong ones? She seemed to be making moves on a gameboard that he hadn't even set up yet.

  It would be easy enough to dismiss her. To assume that she was nothing more than a bored, ill-treated wife looking to chase conspiracies for excitement. But a sense of unease, even danger, pricked at the back of his mind.

  Let her get this little slice of treason out of the country. Then he would turn his mind to what to tell Tom.

  He handed her the letter and spurred Peaseblossom to a brisker pace. "Come along, then."

  She smiled, a bright expression that transformed her face. "Thank you, sir. Now, when we get to the gates, you play Tom's emissary, and I will be your mute manservant."

  "But—" as if anyone couldn't see through that paltry disguise of hers. Even if the guards at Tempare had never seen Princess Marian in person, they would be sure to know that she was not what she claimed.

  "People see what they expect to see," she answered his unspoken question. "They do not expect to see princesses running around in men's clothing, and so they will not. If they note anything odd or mark me as a woman, they will merely assume we are lovers on a secret rendezvous. That will do wonders for your reputation."

  "You are mocking me again."

  "I am not. I do not know why you are so ashamed that you see mockery around every corner."

  Was he ashamed? He had never thought himself thus.

  He just wanted so badly to be like everyone else in the world, and he did not know why he could not be.

  She sighed. "Your face is going to stick like that, sir. Do not worry so. I have a plan of action."

  "Fine." It wasn't fine, not particularly, but he was going to trust her to see this through. He trusted her, he realized with a jolt.

  "When we get to Tempare, I will go to a house. You will go to the ostler at an inn called the Tipsy Goat to care for our poor, beleaguered horses. You will order travel rations for a week. You will go to the sheriff and tell him that you are on official business for the prince and that you have heard I am in hiding in town. When I come out of the house, I will be dressed as Princess Marian again, and
you will arrest me."

  "Arrest—"

  "This is how we're getting back to court without you being hanged as a murderer and treaty-breaker. I certainly cannot be hanged, and arrest will not put much of a knot in things."

  "You sound as if you planned on being caught all along."

  "Not planned on it, but certainly planned for it. This hinges on you, you know. After you have arrested me, you must take me to Tom. Not my father, and certainly not Percy Gelhorn. Understand?"

  "I should arrest you right now," he grumbled, mostly to be contrary. She may have planned for every conceivable eventuality, but he couldn't help but feel that those plans all meant a lot of trouble for him.

  "But you won't."

  "No."

  He was too damned curious, and as eager as she to see Gelhorn's missive and its uncomfortable implications out of their hands.

  But why go to Tom, instead of her father?

  "If your spiderweb of plots is intended to hurt Tom—" he began, unsure of how to articulate his distress at the idea.

  She cut him off.

  "It will sound grandiose, but I'm trying to save him. I'm trying to save Skel. Please, let us do this my way."

  There was an idea, coalescing at the back of Isi's mind. She was trying to save Tom. Trying so save Skel. And back in the forest she'd thought her husband had sent her help, though they'd had a cold relationship since the day of their wedding. Which meant that she'd reached out to him and asked for that help. Or demanded it, holding some threat over him.

  Oh.

  What if she had failed to take the evidence of Gelhorn's treason to her father not because it was paltry evidence, but because it wasn't treason?

  If the king had backed Gelhorn in his machinations, if Skel's perpetual squabbling was beginning to break into factions, and if Princess Marian was on the opposite side? Then either she felt Tom was on that side with her, or she thought that there was going to be a conflict, a war, and that Tom was going to win it.

  Isi hoped that his conclusions were wrong. He hoped that he was blowing things out of proportion, because he did not understand the machinations of people with ambitions. In any case, Tempare stood stubbornly in the distance. He gave her a short nod. They would play things her way, and Isi would simply have to deal with the trouble it landed him in as it came.

  *~*~*

  They got through the gate with hardly a second glance. Marian, as mute manservant, arched her eyebrows as if to say, See? Why do you worry so much?

  And then things continued more or less according to her hurried plan. Isi fancifully wondered if the world arranged itself to please her because of her royal blood. It was silly, but she did seem to have an uncanny ability to get things exactly as she wanted them.

  For instance, Isi had meant to covertly follow her wherever she was going to see if he could identify a person she was meeting with, but they got caught up in a traffic dispute and when he turned to her, she had completely vanished.

  She hadn't learned that trick from Anne Derry.

  He circled the street and all its crosses for half a mile. Even scouted out the eventual meeting place they had agreed upon. He did not think he looked out of place—Tempare hosted more Mheztil than any city outside of Skelhome—but he worried that someone would take note of him because he did not wear either a slave or a freeman's ear baubles. And so in the end, there was nothing for it but to give off the search and make his way to the Tipsy Goat to do as Marian had instructed him.

  And then there was the arrest. He'd meant to do the thing quietly: inform the mayor and the city wardens, take her officially into custody but not bring any excess attention to them.

  Instead, she'd emerged from her hiding place dressed shockingly in red silk, and played the scene like a hoyden running about the stage. They had attracted plenty of attention as she had screamed obscenities at Isi and swooned. Before, she might have fallen dramatically into his arms, but now, apparently having a care for his distaste of touch, she crumpled instead against the neck of her ever-patient horse.

  Isi felt wretchedly embarrassed as the residents of Tempare swarmed around them, staring and speculating. "Bear up," Marian whispered when she got a look at him. "Madness looks better on a woman than cunning. Soon enough, these people will swear to anyone who listens that I have been running wildly around this town for three days, not half an afternoon."

  He did not understand why she might want that, but whatever the reason, she succeeded in her goal.

  They spent the night at the Tipsy Goat, Marian barricaded alone in the finest room with Isi at the door, scowling at the curious crowds who gathered in pursuit of the mad princess.

  The next morning, they headed back the way they had come. It was only three hours before they encountered the royal search party. Marian tensed, apparently ready to bolt if their pursuers were not of the faction she favored, but her absurd run of luck held. For it was Tom who had found them.

  With a cry, Marian threw herself off of her mount and ran to him. She fell into his arms, sobbing hysterically about rapists and murderers and fleeing for her life. Isi wasn't even sure, anymore, that she was truly acting.

  Tom petted her head and looked over to Isi. And Isi had no idea what to say. He couldn't lie to Tom, but he couldn't tell the truth, either.

  Tom's eyes turned hard, as if he knew that Isi was about to let him down.

  Well, he had let Isi down before. Maybe he hadn't faced an easy choice when it came down to putting a price on Isi's head or finding some other way to make him free. So be it. Isi had no easy choice here, either.

  So he opened his mouth and he lied.

  *~*~*

  As Isi walked with Tom along the riverbank, he could almost pretend that things were simple. That they were two friends out to take in the fresh air, watch the sunset over the water, discuss inconsequential things. The weather, perhaps, or the newest sensation at the theater.

  It was folly, of course. When had things ever been simple between them?

  Even as children, Tom had always been the prince, and Isi had always been the foreigner, the slave. It didn't matter that he was now and forevermore a free man. Most people, on looking at Isi, would always see the slave first. They would always wonder why Tom, who could have whatever he wanted, kept time with the foreigner of low birth. And that bothered Isi more than he could express. The possible explanations that such people might come up with made no difference to him, but it was the wondering that bothered him. The constant feeling that everyone else felt he had no right to his best friend.

  And now things were as complicated as they had ever been. Isi was supposed to be Tom's sworn man. The Heartless Knight, avatar of the Heartless King, a hero in title and bearing. He was supposed to be loyal above all else. Yet he'd promised the princess that, somehow, he'd manage to be loyal and lie at the same time.

  Tom picked a high-sprouting weed and worried it between his fingers, crushing it so that the sharp smell of grass filled the air. "How did you know to go to Tempare?" He sounded concerned, but mostly mystified.

  "I thought that if someone had kidnapped her, their goal would be getting her out of the country, and that seemed the fastest route possible."

  "Kidnapped—but by my eyes, Is, you must have set off before any of the rest of us even knew she was gone! You might have said something."

  "I thought I might overtake them—her—well, I wasn't sure. It was foolish. I was wrong."

  Tom frowned, as if trying to add up sums that Isi knew would never come out straight. "No, Isi. You weren't. I just—I'm trying to put it all together in my head, but nothing makes sense."

  "What has she said to you?"

  "Not much. She's not acting like herself. I'll set Emery on her once we're all back in Skelhome. He'll be able to figure out what she was doing all the way out there, running wild. I'm sure of it."

  "You don't sound so sure."

  Tom laughed. "I don't, do I?" He sighed, tossed the weed away and shoved his ha
nds in a fold of his cloak to keep from fidgeting. "Well, it's been a long few days. All of this 'dutiful son' shit, and trying to keep the Mheztil happy, and now I have to figure out how to convince my father that his eldest child hasn't gone mad so he doesn't send her away to a convent—say, can't we just run away?"

  Now it was Isi's turn to laugh. That was a game they had once played, one Isi had thought long forgotten. They would pretend to be adventurers, running around the world to places both of them had only read about in books. "Can't we just run away?" one of them would say to trigger the game, and then they would be camel drivers in Alman or astrologers in Kiyin, anyone but the Skellan prince and the Mheztil slave. For an afternoon, an hour, however long it took for the world to shatter the illusion.

  Tom must have had a hundred questions about what had happened with Marian. But he did not ask any more of them, and Isi didn't volunteer any lies. He had a feeling that Tom would know them for what they were, and that he didn't ask his questions because he didn't want to hear.

  *~*~*

  The return to Skelhome meant days at the court and nights on the town, and one might have thought nothing had changed. Though everything had changed. The Mheztil were quietly starting to pack up, arrange voyages, whether for home or elsewhere, none would say. Conservatives like Alan Lyme were making noise about the hunt that they had taken to calling King Andrew's Absurdity. Marian was hidden away in the palace while Emery tried to drag the true details of her flight out of her. And the rest of them were forced to listen to Emery while he talked, and talked, and talked some more about the whole mad mess.

  So the prince was only moderately drunk tonight, and that only because he had declared himself determined to break his disturbing streak of sobriety immediately, before he grew so disgusted with himself that he ran off to take holy vows.

  "To my eldest sister," he slurred, wearily. "Who keeps her tongue better than my Silent Knight."

  "That's not fair," Emery groused. "You charged me to get her to talk."

  Frankly, Isi thought Emery wasn't apt to have much success. She was good at holding her tongue, that woman. And of course, being a woman, and a royal one at that, harsher methods of getting her to talk were frowned upon.