“True enough.” Gerren pulled the book he’d chosen from its shelf, and with his other hand beckoned Kestar to a seat. “Which is of course why you’re here. And why I haven’t yet elected to let Jannyn and Tembriel slake their thirst for vengeance on you. What do you know of your connection to us?”
Elisiya, the elves’ country, had fallen long before Kestar was born—and as he hadn’t recognized either Jannyn or Tembriel from his and Celoren’s patrols, he was fairly sure neither of them had given the scouts personal, particular reason to hate them, above and beyond being Hawks. But Kestar wasn’t foolish enough to voice either of these things, not with Gerren coolly studying his every move. “I met a great-grandmother I never knew in Arlitham Abbey,” he said as he sank into the nearest chair. “She said my great-grandfather was named Riniel. That I look like him. And—” He paused then, aware of his blush deepening, and blew out a rueful breath. “That the Anreulag killed him.”
“Darlana Araeldes. She told you the truth.”
“You knew her, then. You must have known she was royal.” At Gerren’s single short nod, Kestar pressed, “And if that outburst back there was any sign, apparently so was my great-grandfather.”
“Riniel Radmynn was the last heir to the Starlight Throne,” Gerren agreed. “For all that meant after Elisiya fell and there was no longer any throne to put him on. After that, we had no heir either.”
Now the censure came into the fore of the elf’s voice, crisp and cold, enough to blunt the edge of disbelieving laughter Kestar could feel trying to bubble up within him. Mother’s Mercy, I’m not only elf-blooded, I’m the great-grandson of a prince? Cel’s not going to let me hear the end of this. He tamped that thought down hard, though, as a far more solemn one took its place. “And a human descendant’s a sorry substitute, especially one from the Order. No wonder your scouts want to run me through.”
“Jannyn wants to run almost every Adalonian he meets through, and Tembriel wants to set them on fire besides. Try not to take that personally. And no, your resemblance to Riniel doesn’t help. Neither does your former affiliation.”
“Yet you let Celoren and me come here anyway, even when your scouts would just as soon kill us on sight. Which has clearly angered your people.”
“All of us have lost kith and kin to the Hawks.”
Mildly uttered though they were, the words caught Kestar hard in his chest. He had to fight down the urge to draw his father’s amulet out from beneath his shirt, no matter how his fingers itched for the comfort of its weight—a Hawk’s amulet, even one that had lost its power, was the last thing he needed to bring into the sight of Dolmerrath’s leader now. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for that.” Apologizing felt feeble, but it also felt right. “I don’t expect that to mean much. And for the record, I have no delusions that I could somehow take your prince’s place or anything of the sort.”
At that Gerren’s mouth curled, ever so slightly, in something Kestar might almost have called a smile. “Good. Speaking as steward of Dolmerrath, poor substitute for a prince I may be, my people wouldn’t have you. Speaking simply as Gerren, you helped the two most important people in the world to me return safely to our home. For that, I’d like you to see this.” He opened the book he’d pulled from the shelves, flipping through pages until he found what he evidently sought, and held the volume out for Kestar’s inspection.
It was a sketchbook. One part of Kestar’s mind stumbled over the seeming incongruity of so prosaic an object in an elf’s hands. That wisp of thought vanished utterly, however, as he stared at the page that Gerren had chosen—and found, rendered in black ink that still stood out on paper yellowing with age, himself.
Once the shock of recognition faded, though, he saw the differences. Larger eyes. Longer hair, with some pulled back from the face in two intricate braids bound in what Kestar was willing to bet was either silver or gold. Sharper cheekbones, giving the subject of the picture a more lupine look than he’d ever seen in his own mirror, accentuated by the pointed ears. All of those details rained down on Kestar’s awareness like a hail of arrows. But what stopped his breath in his throat was the instrument in the figure’s hands, larger than Kestar’s lost mandolin, with five pairs of strings instead of four. His great-grandfather’s hands, lean-fingered and nimble, were poised in mid-flight along those strings. His head was tossed back, as if bobbing to an unheard rhythm. He wasn’t smiling, and in fact looked almost angry. But that meant nothing, for Kestar knew that look—it was the fierce joy of being caught up in the act of making music, of being swept away by song.
It was exactly, Celoren had told him once, how he himself looked when he played. And the sight of it made Kestar’s hands ache for the mandolin he’d had to abandon when the Order had arrested him. No, I want what he’s playing. He had no name for the instrument in the sketch, but that didn’t matter. If he could hold it in his hands, if he could feel its living voice resonating against him as he played, it’d make Riniel Radmynn real.
“He was a musician.” With an effort, conscious of a sudden tightening in his throat, Kestar forced his attention away from the drawing and back up to Gerren before him. “Did you draw this?”
“Yes. Many of us make music, but some of our talents lie in other directions,” the elf answered, closing the sketchbook and turning to put it back in its place upon the shelves. “From the look on your face, I take it you share music with Prince Riniel too.”
“I play the mandolin—though it’ll probably be a while before I can lay hands on another one,” Kestar admitted. He paused, considered, and then ventured, “My mother, Celoren and I are all alive and free. I’m grateful for that. But the Order didn’t exactly see fit to let me keep my horse or my instrument when they arrested us, and frankly, I don’t know which loss stings more. I grew up with that horse. But I never could strum him, and his sense of pitch was abominable.”
To his satisfaction, Gerren let out a surprised little laugh. “Our horses are very clever, but sadly, none of them can sing. But we may be able to accommodate you with an instrument, if you choose to stay among us. I’d like to know your intentions in that regard.”
“I thought you would. Faanshi says we need to be here, all of us who’ve had any connection to her, for the sake of our survival. And the country’s.”
“As her kinswoman foretold, or so says the akreshi Semai. I’m aware of that. And of what Faanshi has said of you.”
The words were simple enough, and yet they made Kestar as nervous as anything or anyone else in all of Dolmerrath. Faanshi’s magic had saved his life, but it had also upended it. In truth, he’d never been a simple Hawk like any other in the Order. Not only was he the son of Dorvid Vaarsen, a man who’d gained a baronetcy—and notoriety—for quelling an elven uprising, he had a certain gift of his own that would have gotten him arrested all by itself had he ever revealed it to anyone besides his partner.
Before Faanshi, though, it’d been easier to pretend.
“I expect she told you I have premonitions sometimes?” That seemed the safest thing to ask, and the thing most likely to catch the interest of the leader of the last free elves of Adalonia. Gerren, however, surprised him.
“She did. More importantly, she told us that you’re a good man. She believed it so strongly that she convinced my brother and Alarrah to retrieve you from Shalridan. Evidence suggests so far that she’s right. But no matter whose great-grandson you are, no matter what name or blood or gifts you bear, I need to know what you’ll do next.”
Which, Kestar mused, had been where this conversation was headed all along—but they’d had days to think about this already. “We’ve decided, Mother and Celoren and me, that we’re with you if you’ll have us. Is there anything I can do to make your scouts less inclined to set us on fire?”
“For a start, you might tell me everything you know about the Hawks in Shalridan. If you’re absol
utely sure you want to help us.”
Gerren’s tone remained polite, but Kestar didn’t mistake his direct stare for anything but what it was: a challenge. He couldn’t blame him for it in the slightest. After all, it’s not every day that a Knight of the Hawk turns against everything he’s been raised to believe in.
But then, there was a vast distance between what the Order had raised him to believe, and what he knew in his heart was right. His mother had lost her home and lands, not to mention the chance to raise her own son. Celoren couldn’t return to his family. Yet both of them had willingly followed him here to the stronghold of the elves, and he was prepared to do anything in his power to keep them all together. And Faanshi, against all sense and reason, had risked her own freedom to save his life twice—to heal him of a mortal wound, and then to act again to break the deep empathic bond between them that her magic had inadvertently caused. She no longer dominated his awareness, but the memory of that profound communion was purest sunlight, warming his resolve.
“I’m sure. I ask only one thing—that instrument my great-grandfather was playing in your picture. If it still exists, I’d like to play it.”
Not even at that did Gerren smile. But all at once his expression eased perceptibly, and for the first time since he’d come to Dolmerrath, Kestar thought that perhaps he might have just won a friend. “That can be arranged.”
“Then this conversation is about to turn very informative. Where would you like me to start?”
Chapter Four
The Green Kirtle, Shalridan, Jeuchar 6, AC 1876
Captain Amarsaed was going to have her head. And given how the past two days had gone in Shalridan, Jekke was almost ready to volunteer it to him.
The Hawks stationed at St. Telran’s were stretched critically thin. Most of the members of the Order who’d been sent into the province were busy scouring the countryside for any trace of the traitor Kestar Vaarsen, the escaped slave girl Faanshi, and their accomplices—and half the countryside seemed bent on taking up arms against the rightful rule of the Bhandreid and the Church, making the task set to the Hawks all the more difficult. Much of the populace of Shalridan had fled the city, and of those who remained, far more of them were inclined to shoot at any Hawks they saw rather than follow their orders. Any one of these things was dire enough. Taken together, they made it impossible for Jekke to search the city in uniform. She kept her amulet with her—no Hawk would ever go without her amulet—but she hadn’t dared pull it out from beneath the simple bodice she’d put on to blend in with the townsfolk, not when the sight of it could easily get her shot.
Not that her amulet had spoken a single time since Captain Amarsaed had ordered her out into the streets to look for any sign that the grim news out of Dareli had reached Shalridan. There were three other telegraph stations in the city alone, and many more stretching eastward through Kilmerry Province. As she and the captain had feared, word had already started to spread, as swift as the riots and fires. Many of the people she passed on the streets were babbling the news to each other, and she spotted at least four different children in pages’ caps waving freshly printed broadsheets, crying out for the attention and coin of passersby.
Worse yet, multiple crowds were beginning to gather and chant imprecations against the Church—and against the Voice of the Gods Herself. Jekke had never seen the like of it before, and it struck chords of disquiet into her heart.
She took her circuit down to the streets closest to the wharves, and her amulet spoke for the first time in days, immediately drawing her attention from everything else. She’d begun to worry that the amulets she and the other Hawks wore to track elves had ceased to function—perhaps even because of the Anreulag’s assault on Dareli—but the burst of warmth and light at her throat gave her sudden reassurance that the blessing the Order had put into the silver, a blessing drawing on the Anreulag’s own power, was still active.
It was also bright enough to give her position away despite the cover of the growing darkness. And so she ducked into the shadows that filled the alley between two nearby buildings, her heart pounding, her breath hitching in her throat. By the time she verified that her path was clear, her amulet’s warning had begun to sputter and fade. It died entirely when she reached the docks, leaving her with the sinking realization that the number of vessels in Shalridan’s harbor had gone down dramatically with the outbreak of the riots. With foggy conditions aggravated by the pall of smoke, ships could slip with ease in and out of the harbor.
And her amulet had just warned her that someone of elven blood was out there on the water, very likely on a ship vanishing even now into the night, with no one at St. Telran’s the wiser. Most likely someone with significant power, given the strength of her amulet’s reaction—perhaps even multiple people.
Like Vaarsen, the healer slave for whom he’d betrayed the Order, and their accomplices.
Gods help us. They’re practically dancing away from us.
She couldn’t prove it, not when her amulet remained dormant as she ran up and down the entire length of the docks. Without her amulet’s light, she couldn’t invoke Hawk authority to close the harbor or search outgoing vessels—assuming she could find the personnel needed to enforce such edicts, which was not at all guaranteed with the streets thronged with rioters. Jekke had no choice but to report back to the captain for further orders, and she could only imagine how he’d react when she informed him that in their haste to secure the city, they’d lost their chance to recapture the very fugitives who’d brought them to Shalridan in the first place.
Jekke would rather shoot herself in the head than make such a report.
And so, desperate for any scrap of information she could take back to her commander, she began a sweep through the taverns closest to the harbor. The story she’d invented—that she was a shopkeeper’s daughter from Marriham, stranded in the city when the unrest broke out, and now looking for any word of her family—got her plenty of sympathy from tavern staff as long as she flashed enough coin to pay for drinks. She also got three offers of marriage, two from men who stank of smoke and whiskey and one from a woman probably old enough to be her mother. Those were far less interesting than the offers to ferry her out of the city if she had more coin than what she was spending on her ale, and to reunite her with her missing kin if she paid three times the price.
At the Green Kirtle, though, she finally found a lead that made her want to shout prayers of thanks to the Father and Mother.
Some of the patrons were sharing broadsheets back and forth, chattering in urgent voices about the word from Dareli. But most of the place was given over to a ring of men and women singing songs that by themselves would have her on alert, Nirrivan war songs that hadn’t been openly sung in the western provinces in well over a hundred years. And there were new ones as well—one that prompted the crowd to bellow the response of “Nirrivy rises” at the end of every chorus, and another that praised a saint with shining hands, who walked through fire to heal the sick and the fallen.
Part of Jekke noted that, even as she paid for a beer she had no intention of drinking. If the people were already making songs about the so-called Saint Faanshi, the Hawks left in Shalridan were fighting a lost cause. Captain Amarsaed needs to know about this.
But the rest of her locked on to an urgent whisper somewhere nearby. She didn’t catch it all. What words she did catch, though, seized her attention with all the force of her amulet firing off.
“Didn’t bloody well think about that, did they? How’re we supposed to reach the Good Folk of the North when the whole damn city’s falling to pieces?”
Jekke had never been skilled at dissembling; such was not among the skills the gods and the Anreulag had granted her. It took everything in her power to pretend to drink and watch the singers, when in reality all her senses were latched onto the men at the table just a few feet away. She’d ha
d to put as much fact into her cover story as possible, just for the sake of the ring of truth. She was, in fact, a shopkeeper’s daughter from Marriham. She’d grown up in Kilmerry Province. By that happenstance alone, she recognized the phrase the men had used.
The Good Folk of the North.
There’d always been rumors that the last free elves in Adalonia had a stronghold somewhere in Adalonia’s borders. But no one ever spoke of the elves openly, and when Jekke had joined the Order of the Hawk, she’d quickly found that the people of Marriham or Tolton or Camden were suddenly far more circumspect with their language around her. She was a Knight of the Hawk, and they gave her their respect. But she was no longer Jekke, with her sharp head for numbers, who’d always bought extra sugar cookies just to see the baker’s beautiful daughter smile. Her own grandfather insisted that the cradle tales he’d told her were flights of fancy, nothing more, and that for all he knew, the Good Folk were delicate little fairies who would do good deeds for you if you left them a plate of milk on the porch. Not a single member of her family would ever tell her otherwise.
But she remembered the tales differently. And her family’s closing ranks against her had always galled.
And so she eavesdropped on the men at the nearby table until she managed to glean a few precious scraps of information—and when they slipped out of the Kirtle at the end of a song, she bribed the serving girl to tell her the rest. They were sailors, these men, whose ship had left port without them. They had a job to do, or so they’d claimed, taking two horses northward for passengers on their vessel.
Horses that, she remembered in a rush of hope, matched the description of the horses ridden by two of the fugitives with Vaarsen and his healer.
It wasn’t much to go on. But it was enough to take back to St. Telran’s so she could report to Captain Amarsaed. If the gods are merciful, this’ll gain me at least a stay of execution.
Victory of the Hawk Page 5
