Law of the Broken Earth: The Griffin Mage Trilogy: Book Three

by Neumeier, Rachel

  They might very well be so inclined, Mienthe thought, considering what had happened to Istierinan. She had thought they ought to leave him for King Iaor to judge, or even send him back to his own king, but Kes had not been patient or forgiving with the man who was, or so she had seemed to feel, in some part responsible for her old teacher’s death. When she had destroyed him, she had not left even ash. Nor, when it came to the moment, had Mienthe tried very hard to stop her. She had not confessed to anyone her deep relief at the death of Tan’s enemy. But she was relieved. All she said aloud was, “I hope they are very rare.”

  They were in the Arobern’s camp, set neatly to the east of Tiefenauer, separate and self-contained. The Arobern had thought it politic to keep all his people outside the town, lest anyone should have any impression he’d ever meant to conquer or hold it himself. Iaor Safiad himself had firmly and pointedly occupied the great house as soon as he’d arrived, two days after Tan had written his new law to govern fire and earth. Bertaud had not yet returned. Mienthe was almost certain her cousin was well—the king assured Mienthe he was well—but she longed to see him and be certain of it herself.

  Iaor Safiad had not yet granted the Arobern an audience. He had sent only curt word refusing the Casmantian king leave to withdraw east toward the pass. He had, however, sent almost every available Feierabianden healer to the Casmantian camp, thus demonstrating that while he might be furious with the Casmantian king, he was at least willing to admit that the Casmantian soldiers had suffered on Feierabiand’s behalf. Everyone assumed that Iaor was much angrier with the King of Linularinum than with the Arobern—everyone assumed he would, in due course, forgive the Arobern’s presumption. The Casmantian soldiers, nodding wisely, muttered about royal pride; three or four young men had already wistfully asked Mienthe about the Safiad’s temper. She had not known how to answer their questions.

  Beguchren Teshrichten had not asked Mienthe about either king. He said instead, “One does wonder whether your gift would ever have stirred if Tan hadn’t happened to break the law Linularinan legists long ago imposed on the world.” Then he paused and asked, very gently, “How does Tan do, today? May I hope that there has been some improvement?”

  Mienthe began to answer, but tears suddenly closed her throat and she found she could not speak. Blinking hard, she opened her hands in a gesture of wretched uncertainty.

  “I believe he will come to himself in good time, child. Recovery from such events does take time. He overused his gift, I suspect.” The mage paused and then said plainly but not unkindly, “He might have lost it. Used it up. Such things can happen, in great extremity.”

  As Lord Beguchren knew better than anyone. Mienthe nodded. She swallowed, rubbed her hand across her mouth, and managed to ask, “Is there anything you might suggest?”

  Beguchren lifted his shoulders in a minimal shrug. “I’m certain you are already doing everything I might suggest. Warmth, rest… the company of a friend…”

  “King Iaor made me leave.” Mienthe blushed slightly, remembering the king’s blunt impatience. You’re too thin, Mienthe. How will it help him if you wear yourself to bone and nerve? Go for a walk, go for a ride, see the sky, have something to eat, have a nap, don’t come back here until dusk. Trust Iriene to watch over him. That’s an actual royal command, Mie. Now go away. Though she suspected that Iaor had not actually meant for her to ride down to the Casmantian camp and visit Lord Beguchren.

  “Undoubtedly wise. It serves nothing for you to fall ill yourself. Once you are both entirely recovered, I wonder whether you might care to visit Casmantium.” Beguchren picked up another cluster of berries between his finger and thumb and gazed at it. “How very like a string of garnets! You might like to wait until your berrying season is past, perhaps. But I would be pleased if you—and Tan, of course—would visit me in Breidechboden. I would like very much to investigate the precise nature of your gift. I believe it is certainly a gift rather than any form of magecraft. But certainly an exceedingly odd gift. I wonder what other odd gifts we may find emerging now that the world is no longer subject to the constraints placed on natural law by Linularinan mages.”

  Mienthe thought she would be perfectly ecstatic if her gift, whatever it encompassed, never woke again. Drawing that last double spiral had left her with a persistent and not altogether comfortable sense of increased depth in the world. Well, that was an odd and entirely inaccurate way to describe it. It was more as though everything in the world was now attended by a faint reverberating echo—well, not precisely an echo. Mienthe frowned and ate a berry. The sharp sweet-tart taste seemed just a little bolder or darker or more distinct than it should have. She put the berries down and sighed.

  Beguchren said gently, “Is it so very unpleasant?”

  “Oh… it’s not unpleasant, exactly.” In fact, Beguchren’s curiosity almost made her curious herself. “What other anomalous gifts?” she asked. “You really think other people might—might—” She waved a vague hand.

  “Have gifts similar to yours? Or perhaps unique to themselves? Certainly. Why not? You demonstrate the possibility, and I do not believe the new law will constrain such gifts.” Beguchren regarded her with a calm, detached interest that, oddly, made Mienthe feel more comfortable with her strange gift rather than less. He murmured, “I would like to see what you might do in the high mountains. I suspect your gift may be as closely related to wild magic as to the ordinary magic of the earth—an odd notion, and yet I do suspect so. I am curious to see what you might do with the winds. And perhaps with the sea. One might well understand both the winds and the sea to contain”—he made a circular motion in the air—“circles and spirals. Yet we have ordinarily envisioned the sea as allied to earth and the winds as allied to fire.”

  “Have we?” Mienthe, distracted by an odd thought, had barely heard him. She said instead, “I wonder whether, if a mage’s power smothers the inborn gift and if you’re no longer a mage—” She stopped. Looked up, with some trepidation. She had not meant to wake old sorrows.

  But Beguchren was smiling slightly. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But, yes. I wonder that as well.”

  “If you—” Mienthe began hesitantly.

  A Casmantian soldier, ducking his head in apology as well as to clear the low tent roof, came in, and she broke off, trying to decide whether she was glad or sorry for the interruption.

  “Lady,” the young man said to Mienthe, and to Beguchren, “my lord, the Arobern asks you to attend him. Immediately, he says, if you will forgive me.”

  Mienthe jumped to her feet. “I should go—”

  “Not at all,” murmured Beguchren, rising more slowly. “We may well value your advice, Lady Mienthe. Please accompany me.”

  “The Safiad has sent for me,” the Arobern told them both. He paced nervously from one end of his much larger tent to the other, then spun to glare at Mienthe. “What will he say? What will he do? I am certain Erich is safe—” Nearly certain, suggested the stiffness of the Casmantian king’s shoulders. “But what will he demand? An apology? An indemnity?” His deep voice dropped further, into a rumbling growl. “A longer term for my son to be held as a hostage at his court?”

  Mienthe had to confess that she could not guess. “He ought to thank you,” she added, but cautiously, because no one but she seemed to think this at all likely.

  The Arobern grunted, jerked his head No. “I offended his pride. Twice. No. Three times. Once in coming through the pass without leave—twice in leaving Beguchren to delay him on his road—a third time, worst of all, because he knows he must be grateful to me.” The Casmantian king jerked his head again. “No. He will be furious.” He prevented Mienthe from exclaiming how unfair this was by adding, in a low growl, “I would be.”

  “He will be more furious still if you do not come as he bids you,” murmured Beguchren. The elegant Casmantian lord looked faintly amused, so far as Mienthe could read his expression at all.

  “Yes. True.” The Arobern ran a
big hand through his short-cropped hair, looking harassed. “Come,” he said to Mienthe abruptly. “You, come. An apology is well enough, if that will satisfy the Safiad’s temper, but if your king demands a second term for my son in his court, you tell him he should be grateful to me!”

  Mienthe could hardly refuse.

  Iaor Safiad was in the solar, in a big, heavy chair with ornate carving on its legs and back. Normally that chair occupied Bertaud’s personal apartment, but Mienthe was not surprised to see that the king had claimed it, for it was very like a throne. Especially the way Iaor sat in it: not stiff, but upright, with his hands resting on the polished brass finials that finished its arms. There were other chairs near his, but none were much like a throne, and no one was sitting in any of them. There were guardsmen at the door, but they only stared straight ahead, with the most formally rigid posture possible, and did not even seem to notice the Arobern. Or Mienthe, standing nervously in his shadow. She did not know why she should be nervous, except that the Arobern’s nervousness had communicated itself to her during the ride up to the great house.

  Only one other person was with the king: Erich. Prince Erichstaben Taben Arobern, who was standing, his back straight, his chin raised, and his face blank, at the king’s left hand. The Arobern stopped when he saw Erich. His gaze went first to his son’s face, shifted to take in the young man’s height and breadth of shoulder with silent amazement, and rose again to his face with an unspoken but unmistakable hunger.

  Erich lifted his chin half an inch higher and met his father’s eyes for a brief, taut moment, then turned his face aside as though the effort of sustaining that intense contact had abruptly grown too great. He glanced instead at Mienthe and tried to smile, but it was not a very convincing effort and he gave it up at once.

  The echo behind the tension in the room was so powerful that Mienthe found it difficult to endure. She stopped just inside the door and simply tried to breathe evenly, hoping she would not be called upon to explain anything to anybody.

  Mienthe was not surprised the king had Erich with him. What surprised her was how very much the prince resembled his father. Erich lacked some of his father’s bulk, but none of his height. And their expressions were alike, also. They even stood with the same upright pride. She had not realized how very alike they were until she saw them like this: together in good light.

  At last the Arobern moved his gaze, as with an effort, to Iaor Safiad. He walked forward with a heavy stride and stopped a few steps away from King Iaor’s chair, his hands hooked in his belt. Mienthe could not read his expression now. There was nothing simple or friendly in the way the two kings looked at each other. She almost fancied she could hear the ringing clash of swords when their eyes met.

  The Arobern said, his grim voice touched with irony, “Well, Iaor Daveien Behanad Safiad. I find the second time much like the first. Perhaps someday I will come before you as something other than a supplicant.”

  Iaor Safiad answered, with a flash of temper, “Perhaps someday you will come into Feierabiand without an army at your back.”

  So everybody else had been right, Mienthe saw, and she had been wrong. Her heart sank.

  But the Arobern only lowered his eyes, like a man laying down a sword. He said, “Yes. I did not wish to offend you. But I expected you would be offended. You have been patient. And generous beyond measure.”

  “You left me little choice but generosity.”

  “You had every choice. You took that one. I am grateful.” The Arobern looked deliberately at his son, then turned his gaze back to King Iaor. He sighed heavily, came one step closer to the throne, and began to kneel.

  “No,” said Iaor, stopping him. He turned one hand, indicating one of the other chairs. “Sit, if you wish.”

  There was a little pause.

  The Arobern, moving slowly, seated himself in the chair. He set his broad hands on his knees and looked at Iaor Safiad without speaking.

  “Your son,” said King Iaor, with deliberate emphasis, “has grown into a fine man. He should make any father proud. No doubt Lord Beguchren told you.”

  “Yes,” said the Arobern.

  There was another pause. Iaor broke it. “You took every chance,” he said, with the same slow, deliberate emphasis. “I am grateful.”

  The Arobern bent his head just enough to show he had heard, then met the other king’s eyes again with somber intensity.

  “Shall we agree we are mutually indebted? And that we are not likely to find ourselves at odds during the lifetimes of our children? Feierabiand is glad to count Casmantium as an ally.”

  “Casmantium, the same.”

  Iaor nodded. He said grimly, “Then, as we are allies, I will tell you that I intend to send a courier to Linularinum. To Kohorrian’s court. I will bid Mariddeier Kohorrian attend me here in Tiefenauer. Do you think he will obey my summons?”

  “Ah.” The Arobern leaned back in his chair. After a moment, he smiled. It was not a kind expression. “I will send a man also, is this what you intend? Perhaps a soldier, to stand behind your girl courier? And Lord Bertaud will send a man of his, am I to think so? Yes. Then, yes, Kohorrian will come. You wish me to leave a man of mine here also, to stand at your back when you scold Mariddeier Kohorrian?”

  Iaor did not precisely smile in return, but there was a glint of hard humor in his eyes. “I thought you might be persuaded to leave me Lord Beguchren Teshrichten for the purpose.”

  “Ah.” The Arobern tapped his heavy fingers on the arm of his chair.

  “I should be pleased to see Lord Beguchren turn his tongue against Mariddeier Kohorrian rather than against me. And, in truth, I should value his counsel. I consider that he owes me at least so much. What surety would you require?”

  The Arobern’s eyebrows rose. “From you? I would be ashamed to ask for any surety from you, Iaor Safiad. I will bid Lord Beguchren act as my agent in this matter. I think he may even be pleased by the task.”

  King Iaor briefly inclined his head.

  The Arobern nodded in return, paused, and then asked, “And I? What will you have of me, Iaor Safiad?”

  “I will expect you to withdraw from my country quietly and in good order. As, of course, you entered it.”

  The Arobern, regarding Iaor warily, made a gesture of acquiescence. “As soon as you give me leave to go.”

  “I give you leave.” Iaor gripped the arms of his chair and rose. Then he paused, looking down at the other king, and added, “As a hostage one will not touch has no practical use, I will release your son. When you return to Casmantium, Prince Erichstaben may go with you.” He added to Erich, in a much different tone, “I’ll miss you, boy, especially when my daughters pester me to teach them dangerous tricks with their ponies.”

  The young man flushed, grinned, and answered, “Well, Your Majesty, and I’ll miss the little girls! May I thank you, and beg you to make my apologies to them for leaving without bidding them farewell?”

  “Perhaps I’ll send them to Casmantium for a visit,” Iaor said to him. “In two years. If your father approves.” He gave the Arobern a hard stare.

  The Arobern got to his feet and bowed, very slightly. “Of course, Casmantium would be honored to welcome the little Safiad princesses,” he said formally.

  Erich smiled, a swift, affectionate smile. He glanced at Mienthe and the smile became wry. But then he looked back at his father and the smile slipped altogether.

  King Iaor crooked a finger at Mienthe and walked out.

  Mienthe followed, all her nerves on edge. She hadn’t said a single word, even to say good-bye to Erich. She wondered how soon the Casmantian force would leave—soon, probably, at dawn, perhaps—She wondered whether King Iaor would mind if she went out to the camp again, to bid Erich and his father farewell? Because the king was indeed very angry, she knew, for all he showed it so little. She might not have realized it, except that to her new perception, the echo of his anger filled the space around him like a dark mist.

 
; The door closed behind them, and the king stood still for a moment in the hallway, breathing deeply. Then he turned to Mienthe—she tried not to flinch—and took her by the shoulders. “Mie,” he said, smiling with forced good humor that did not touch his eyes. He let her go, but indicated with a nod that she should walk with him. “What I am considering—tell me, Mienthe, would you perhaps consent to escort my daughters to Casmantium in a few years’ time? I believe I might not object to a possible connection between my house and the Arobern’s, and my daughters are not so much younger than Erich. I do not like to ask Bertaud to go, but you seem on good terms—excellent terms—with the Arobern and his people.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mienthe said, answering the most important part of this. “I mean, of course I will gladly do anything you ask me to do, but—Your Majesty, everything happened so fast, and I didn’t know what else to do, but go through the pass. I’m sorry—”

  The king shook his head, his taut anger easing at last. “No. No indeed, Mie. It was well done. You have done nothing which requires forgiveness. Nor has Brechen Glansent Arobern. You need not tell me so. I am perfectly aware of it.”

  Mienthe nodded, relieved. She asked tentatively, “What will you say to Mariddeier Kohorrian?”

  “Ah.” This time, when the king smiled, the humor did reach his eyes. “I have no idea. I will think of something. Beguchren Teshrichten may advise me.” He glanced up and smiled suddenly, a much kinder expression. “And perhaps your cousin may have some ideas of his own.”