The Soldier King

by Violette Malan

  “There’s a chest up top I wanted to check,” she said, trying to match the Mercenary woman’s whisper-quiet voice.

  “In the dark?”

  When Zania didn’t answer, the Wolfshead gave a short laugh.

  “But then, you did not need any light to find what you were looking for in that hiding place, did you? Go back to bed,” she said. “I will wake you when there’s enough light to see anything.”

  Zania waited, but it seemed that Dhulyn Wolfshead was not going to ask her anything more about what she’d found.

  “I don’t know if I can sleep inside,” Zania said, closing her mouth abruptly. It was true, she realized, but it hadn’t been what she’d meant to say. “That’s . . . that was the elders’ place and I . . .”

  “You thought you’d be there one day, but not so soon.”

  A statement, not a question. A tug on her wrist, and Zania followed the older woman as she led her away from the caravan, under a willow tree whose overhanging branches provided them some cover from the cool breeze. Dhulyn Wolfshead leaned her back against the trunk of the tree. Zania glanced around. Of course, she thought. From here she can see the whole clearing, moonlight or no moonlight.

  “What will be the first thing we need to do, Zania Tzadeyeu, if our disguise is to work? People have only to look at Parno Lionsmane and myself to know that we are Mercenary Brothers.”

  “I have an idea for that, but we should also see what talents we have among us,” Zania said. “The Lionsmane can play, for example. Can he make songs as well? There’s money to be made bringing new music to people. Can we all sing, dance? And we must find scenes and plays we can perform with so few players. Not that Great-Uncle Therin takes . . . took so very many parts, I suppose.” With the darkness to cover her, Zania tried to imitate the Mercenary woman’s stance, chin up, head slightly tilted on an angle like a bird listening, feet shoulder-width apart, knees a little bent, shoulders squared to the torso and arms hanging loosely from the shoulders.

  “What did he do, then?”

  Zania thought she heard a whisper of amusement in the Wolfshead’s voice, as if she’d seen what Zania was doing, and what’s more, had understood why she’d been doing it. Zania shook herself. “Why ask me all this about the past? We have to plan where we go from here.”

  “To know where we go, I must know where we have been,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said. Her voice was the merest thread of sound in the darkness. “I am the strategist of my Partnership. Let me see how things were done, and I can help you to see how things will be done.”

  Zania found herself nodding. That made sense.

  “Well, Therin took the parts of the older men, you know, kings, counselors, old Jaldean priests full of advice and the like. My cousin Jovana and I would take all the younger parts between us, pages, young sons or daughters, sometimes the young lovers, if the story called for such.”

  “Played both parts, did you?” Though the Mercenary woman was close enough to her that Zania could feel the warmth from her body, her voice seemed to come from some distance away.

  “Female and male, you mean? Yes, it’s easy enough. We were on the lookout for a boy to join us, but all we found were the acrobats. Twins, Nik and Sari. They’d do for spear carriers, but neither of them could act.” Zania sat down cross-legged at the Wolfshead’s feet. “My aunt Ester played the more important lovers or princesses or pirate queens.” Zania was dismayed to hear the note of discontent and envy that had crept into her voice and hurried on. “My uncle Jovan partnered her, taking the man’s roles, lords or lovers, the parts Great-Uncle Therin was too old to play.”

  “And soon you would have taken your aunt’s roles?”

  “Yes. Well, either Jovana or I would. Depending. It was Great-Uncle Therin decided who played what, and what story it was we acted, for that matter.”

  “We must all serve an apprenticeship,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said. “Mercenaries in our Schools, Scholars in their Libraries, even the Marked in their Guilds. We cannot all begin by playing Nor-iRon Tarkina.”

  “You know that play?”

  “There’s a reason I’m called the Scholar,” the Mercenary said, “and you have just learned what it is.”

  “Do you know the play well? We have enough people to do the first act. Parno Lionsmane could play the old Tarkin on his deathbed. You could play the Marked counselor, the Seer Estavia. I’d be Nor-iRon as Heir, and the prince could play . . .” Zania became aware that Dhulyn Wolfshead had stiffened, and fell quiet. The Mercenary was silent for a long time, long enough that Zania’s heart began to thump uncomfortably.

  “We should leave talk of performances for when the others are with us,” she said.

  Zania relaxed. “Of course.”

  Nine

  “I SWEAR TO YOU, LORD Mage, the dice are not weighted, I’m not cheating, I swear it.” His hands shaking, Zel-Nobic took the cup of brandy-laced wine the Blue Mage gave him and held it, too frightened to actually lift it to his mouth and take a drink.

  “I never thought you were, Zel-Nobic. If I thought you were a mere cheat, I would be very disappointed.” The tall Mage’s voice was mellow as warm honey, and Zel-Nobic’s hands stopped shaking.

  “Disappointed, Lord Mage?”

  The Blue Mage sat back and rested his elbows on the arms of the chair on the far side of the worktable. “I am not concerned with cheating at dice—that carries punishments, certainly, but not from me. I am looking for something else, something much more important. When I realized that I would not find a teacher, I began looking for an apprentice,” he said. “If my own experiences have taught me anything, it is that knowledge is a fragile thing, and we must all do what we can to preserve it.”

  “Yes, my lord Mage.” Zel wasn’t sure exactly what the Blue Mage meant, but he nodded, and raised the cup to his lips. The wine was smooth and sweet. The Blue Mage was proving to be very friendly. Really, much friendlier than people here in Beolind had led him to believe.

  “Do you think you might be willing to help me in this, my friend? You might become the first pupil in my Academy. Do you think you could try?”

  Friend, Zel thought. The Blue Mage of Tegrian, consort of the queen, has called me friend. “Yes, my lord Mage.”

  “Call my Avylos when we are alone together.”

  “Yes, my . . . yes, Avylos.”

  “That’s better.” Avylos smiled, and Zel realized the man was younger than he appeared. “Come, stand by me here.”

  Zel obeyed Avylos’ gesture and came round the end of the worktable to stand at the Mage’s side. The top had been cleared of everything except a small wooden chest, plainly carved of a fine-grained wood. Avylos placed a pair of blue-glass dice with white pips on the table in front of him. Not blue glass. Zel didn’t know how he knew, but he knew he was right. Not glass at all. Sapphire, maybe?

  “Now, roll these dice for me, Zel-Nobic.”

  For the next hour Zel did just that, rolling dice over and over. At one point Avylos gave him a different set of dice, green instead of blue, and Zel went on rolling the numbers the Mage asked for. Then Avylos gave him the blue set back again, and Zel rolled all four. Then six, red ones; then eight, another blue pair but these with red pips. When the Mage gave him yet another pair, however, this time smoky topazes, they fell randomly. Zel couldn’t even manage to get eight out of ten to fall correctly, getting only three dice to turn up the number Avylos called out.

  “No, no, that’s fine,” Avylos said, patting him on the arm as Zel apologized. “Naturally there’s a limit to what the untrained skill can do. We’ll take that as our starting point, and work forward from there. How do you feel?”

  Zel shrugged. He often played for longer than this. “My wrist aches a little, but otherwise fine.”

  Zel almost stepped back when Avylos took him by the shoulders, but managed to stay still when the Mage clasped him to his chest, and kissed him on both cheeks.

  “Finally.” Avylos’ voice resounded in his chest. “An a
pprentice. A brother.” The Mage stepped back until Zel could look him once more in the face, his hand still on Zel’s shoulders. Avylos smiled, his lips twisted to one side, his eyebrows raised. “That is, if you want it?”

  “Oh, yes, my lord—I mean, yes, Avylos.” Zel could barely speak around the lump in his throat, the pounding in his ears. He would be a Mage, he would be Avylos’ brother. And to think his mother had been worried about him coming to the capital.

  “You won’t mind, will you, if I ask you to bind yourself formally to the apprenticeship.”

  Zel almost fell over himself agreeing that no, he wouldn’t mind. He’d have to let the man he was working for know, of course, but no one was going to deny the Blue Mage. Already Zel could see himself in a soft linen robe, like the one Avylos was wearing—a different color of course, there couldn’t be two Blue Mages. And perhaps he could get his sister brought to the Queen’s Court. Zelniana couldn’t manage the dice as well as he could, but if there was to be training, perhaps she, too, could improve.

  Avylos had opened the wooden chest on his worktable, exposing a blue crystal rod, resting in a bed of dark silk.

  “What is it?” he asked, regretting his question as soon as it left his lips; in that instant, Avylos’ eyes shuttered. But then the Mage smiled and all was well once more.

  “It shows well that you are curious,” Avylos said. “This is an artifact of the Caids. It will change color if one of us swears falsely, and so it will give us the Caids’ blessing on our contract. Lay your hand here, alongside mine, and repeat after me.”

  Zel put his hand down on the blue crystal, finding it oddly warm and almost soft under his fingertips. What’s it made out of? he wondered, but stopped himself from asking. Even the most patient teacher, even his brother the Blue Mage, wouldn’t like to be interrupted too many times. He would have all the time he wanted for questions once his apprenticeship began.

  When Zel awoke some hours later, he was behind a table in the tap-room of the Archer’s Rest Hostel. He licked his lips and blinked. Had he been dreaming? His head felt strangely hollow. Zel cleared his throat, casting his eyes around the room and feeling for his money purse, and his dice bag. All that about the Blue Mage and the apprenticeship, had it been a dream? How long had he been asleep? Had anyone noticed?

  To cover and explain the motions of his hands, Zel drew out a pair of dice and idly threw them on the table. Fours. He blinked, and tried again, saying “sixes” to himself as his hand moved. The dice showed a three and a five. “Fours” he said to himself. A two and a three.

  No change with a different pair of dice. Nor did tossing with the other hand help. Nor did waiting and trying again. Nor did a cup of ale. Nor two.

  Hand shaking, Zel rubbed at his upper lip. Not a dream, he thought. There was a hollow inside him, an emptiness that used to be filled. The Caids-cursed Mage had done this to him. Couldn’t have another magic man in the place, oh, no, not even a poor boy trying to make his living with dice. No apprenticeship, no brotherhood. Zel had his hands on the table, braced to stand up, before he thought better of it and sat again. What could he do? Who could he go to and say “I used to be able to control the movement of the dice, and the Blue Mage took that power from me?.”

  Thank the Caids he hadn’t mentioned his sister, Zel thought. At least she was safe.

  “Sun, Moon, and Stars, I tell you. I am not a player, nor do I dance or sing.” Dhulyn looked up from where she squatted by the fire, poking the glowing embers back to life. She smiled her wolf’s smile, and Parno laughed as the two young people leaned away from her as far as they could without falling off the rocks they were using as seats next to the cook fire.

  “That’s not strictly true,” he said, still grinning as Dhulyn turned her fierce look to where he leaned against the side of the caravan. “You dance very nicely with a sword in your hands, and you have a pleasant singing voice, but nothing, I agree, that people would normally pay to hear.”

  “All of this is beside the point,” Dhulyn said. “Until the little Cat explains how we will not be known for Mercenaries, the singing and dancing are irrelevant.”

  “Wait.” Zania leaped to her feet and dove into the caravan where they could hear her burrowing among the boxes and bags stowed in the overhanging net. Dhulyn shrugged and rolled eyes, letting her hands fall on her knees.

  When Zania came back out, she dangled six or seven small linen bags from their drawstrings. She deposited them on the ground, tossed one to Parno and another to Dhulyn before she knelt down and began to work at the strings of a third. It took both fingertips and teeth to loosen the mouth of the bag, but finally she had it open, and took from it a long fall of dark hair. She shook it out, and fitted it over her own short white-blonde hair. Instantly, as the dark hair blended with her sun-darkened skin, she became a Berdanan.

  “There are maybe twenty of these wigs,” she said, indicating the bags Parno and Dhulyn had in their laps. “All kinds of colors, and lengths. Made over the years from human hair, and sewn onto caps.”

  Dhulyn had her own bag open and was turning the gray wig it held over in her hands, examining the tiny stitches that attached the hair to the cap. The caps themselves had been made from strips of leather, very supple, and likely able to fit more than one person.

  “I thought if you shaved your heads—or at least cut your hair very close like mine,” Zania was saying, “you could wear one of these wigs. No one would think it odd if they noticed it. Players must be ready at all times to look like someone else. People would expect us to wear wigs and even costumes to draw attention to ourselves.” She indicated her own brightly colored skirts.

  Dhulyn sighed noisily, ran her fingers over her hair and tugged on one of her braids. Parno nodded. If she was already thinking about her wires and picklocks, and where she would hide them if her hair was cut, then she was already in agreement. One thing to be said for Mercenary Schooling, he thought. It cured you of useless modesty, and of vanity as well.

  “I thought that tonight, at the Vednerysh Holding, Parno Lionsmane could play, and I could dance. And then, you two could give a fighting demonstration—what did I say?”

  Dhulyn was shaking her head. “Then we might as well leave our badges showing. Anyone who has ever seen a Mercenary fight, even just a Shora, will know us for what we are. The last thing we can do is give such a demonstration.”

  “But you can fake one.” Edmir had been silent for so long, Parno had almost forgotten he was there.

  Dhulyn froze, her hands in the act of pulling the strings on the wig bag closed again.

  “Perhaps you should explain,” Parno said.

  “You know what I mean,” Edmir insisted. “You see performers and stage magicians do things all the time and you know they must be faking it, somehow, even if you can’t figure out how. Swallowing swords, making eggs appear out of nowhere. We could do something like that. Make a large show of how difficult it is to do something that is actually very easy for you. Easy for Mercenaries, I mean,” he said. Parno looked at Dhulyn, but she seemed just as puzzled as he felt, and Edmir went on. “Do you know the knife-throwing trick? Acrobats and jugglers do it sometimes in the market squares. A person stands against a target and someone else throws knives at them—”

  “Sometimes blindfolded,” Zania cut in.

  “That’s right. Or standing with their back to the target. And they make an outline of the person’s body with the knives, without ever hitting the person. Or not often anyway.”

  “But we don’t know the trick,” Zania pointed out. “We don’t know how it’s done.”

  “We don’t need to know,” Edmir said. “They can do it without trickery, can’t you?” He looked first at Parno, then at Dhulyn, waiting until they nodded.

  “It’s not unlike a game we play in the Mercenary Schools called Coward’s Knife,” Parno said. “Two players throw knives at each other, getting closer and closer. You lost points if you flinched, or if you drew blood.”

&nbs
p; “As long as no one thinks you’re Mercenary Brothers,” Edmir said, “everyone will be sure it’s a trick. Only we will know it’s real.”

  “I don’t know,” Zania said. “Oh, I believe you can do it,” she added quickly. Dhulyn lifted her hand to rub her mouth, and Parno stifled his own smile. The poor girl actually thought they needed her reassurance. “But this is still Troupe Tzadeyeu, and people will expect plays, not juggling and trickery. I think we must try.”

  Dhulyn shook her head. “I’m very sorry, but I can’t do this. All our Schooling, our Shora, teach us to be truer, not to pretend.”

  Parno frowned and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Dhulyn, my heart. You know how sometimes, when swords are out, it seems that you—” he lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “That you charm a man onto your blade?” Or into your bed, he didn’t say aloud, though he knew from the quirk of her eyebrow and the start of her grin that she’d heard him say it nonetheless.

  “The Two Hearts Shora?”

  Parno nodded. “Try it on Edmir here, but without the sword.”

  Dhulyn turned to Edmir, looked him up and down. “It would only work standing up.”

  They all stood, and Dhulyn stepped a few paces away, rubbing her temples and breathing deeply. Parno cut off Edmir’s questions.

  “Better you don’t know what to expect,” he said. “Then it will be a true test.”

  As they watched, Dhulyn lowered her hands from her face and adjusted her feet. Though her hands were at her sides, her feet were placed as though she were holding a sword in her right hand, and was about to use it. Used against a single opponent, the Two Hearts Shora had been known to work even on a Mercenary Brother, as it wasn’t one of the basic training Shoras. Parno knew it, he’d made sure Dhulyn taught it to him, but he wasn’t as good at it as she was.

  Parno waved Edmir into place in front of his Partner. The prince hesitated, looked once at Parno, once at Zania, before he moved into the opponent’s space in front of Dhulyn. The boy was more frightened than he should be, Parno thought.