The Soldier King

by Violette Malan

  Valaika tapped her lower lip with the feathery end of her pen.

  “Is everything all right, Syl? I know you didn’t come here to go over the accounts with me.”

  Sylria roused herself from whatever thoughts had put that frown on her face and smiled. “There’s a troupe of players come to town,” she said. “A small one, but new faces, and maybe new songs, who knows? Janek would love it, and he deserves a treat after the hard work he’s put in this winter. Or is a moon not considered mourning enough?” she added, when Val didn’t speak.

  Valaika leaned back, her elbows on the arms of her chair, and rested her folded hands on her belt buckle. “I hadn’t even seen Edmir for six—no, perhaps it’s seven years,” she finally said. “It would have been at his father’s burial ceremonies. Janek was only five, I think, wasn’t he? And formal mourning doesn’t forbid theater, in any case. Where are these players?”

  “Their caravan’s in the courtyard of the Hostel Plazan. The players themselves are walking through town singing for business.”

  “What odds do you give me they won’t know any Hellish songs?”

  “Is that any reason to go without entertainment?”

  Valaika grinned. “Go ahead, invite them up here and send word around the town that as many as can fit into the courtyard will be welcome. Let Janek know he’ll be allowed to stay up.”

  “So this is Jarlkevo?” Zania said the next afternoon, as they stepped out into the street from the courtyard of Hostel Plazan. They’d changed into their brightest clothing, the better to catch the eyes of their potential audience. Parno walked ahead with his pipes, playing familiar country dances, interwoven with the songs children use in their games. Already they were being followed by a few children, escaped from their lessons and chores, and even one or two idling adults.

  A familiar series of notes made Dhulyn glance ahead at Parno. Since they had been in Imrion last year he had added that particular children’s rhyming song to his store of music, embellishing it as he did everything that touched his ear.

  “Technically, House Jarlkevo is the whole of the territory, and we’ve been in it since the day after we left Luk.”

  “And ‘House’ is also the title of the person to whom the land belongs,” Edmir added from Zania’s other side.

  “And who belongs to the land, in the old way of thinking,” Dhulyn said. “The House is the House. The territory is the person, and the person the territory. Now Jarlkevo House, on the other hand, is the residence of House Jarlkevo. The Jarlkevoso, she’d be called in Imrion, though I don’t know whether that’s the practice here.”

  “How do you know all these things,” Edmir said.

  Dhulyn tapped her temple, where the wig hid her Mercenary badge. “It’s our business to know these things.” She turned to call out a greeting, blowing a kiss to a smith looking up from his forge, a horseshoe glowing brightly in his tongs. “The town looks prosperous enough, though it’s larger than I would have expected in a newly created House.”

  “It used to be a Holding of the Royal Family,” Edmir said. “A performance, good sir,” he called out at an elderly man who had paused to watch them and their trail of children. “At dusk in the courtyard of the Hostel Plazan.”

  “Is there good hunting in the area,” Dhulyn asked.

  “According to my mother, Jarlkevo was used as a summer Court, and I do vaguely remember coming here as a child—at least I think it was here—before it was made into a High Noble House, and given to my Aunt Valaika.”

  Dhulyn nodded.

  “Yes, madam, yes, good sir, a performance this very night, a small taste only of what we can do, to whet your appetites against the morrow.” Zania had stepped ahead of them, holding out her arms and pirouetting down the narrow street.

  “Which explains the size of the town,” Dhulyn said, as she smiled and blew a kiss at a young man with a wheel of cheese on his shoulder. “Good hunting or not,” she continued as Edmir raised his eyebrows at her, “this town is too large for a place visited for just a few weeks out of the year. But as a summer retreat, and now the seat of a Noble House, and at that of the late consort’s sister, a woman who is still the niece of the Tarkin of Hellik—or do they call him King there?” Dhulyn shrugged. “In any case. With your Aunt Valaika in permanent residence here as House Jarlkevo, the town had reason to grow.”

  Just at that moment a young woman in the long vest of a House servant—orange and black with a narrow dark blue band around the bottom edge—stopped Parno where he was playing several spans ahead of them. He listened to what the servant had to say, and turned toward them, a smile on his face.

  “We’re invited to the House this evening, isn’t that lucky?”

  “And as much of the town as can make it,” the messenger said, loud enough for the townspeople around them to hear.

  Dhulyn glanced at Edmir, but other than a slight tightening of his lips, there was no reaction to the invitation at all. The boy’s learning, she thought. She nodded to Zania.

  “Return our most grateful acknowledgment and respectful greetings to House Jarlkevo. We will await her summons after the midday meal.”

  “We should do The Soldier King,” Dhulyn said. She turned to Zania. “If you think I’m ready to perform it.”

  Parno smiled. A capable expert in her own field, Dhulyn had no difficulty bowing to the expertise of another, even if that other was so much younger than herself. They had set up their small table in the hostel’s courtyard and were eating a light meal of rabbit stew and dried apples in preparation for the message that would summon them to the House.

  “You’re ready, though a week ago I wouldn’t have believed it possible. That’s not what makes me hesitate,” Zania said. “It’s a long play, and fairly serious . . .”

  “The Jarlkevoso would be in mourning, though, wouldn’t she?” Dhulyn turned to Edmir. Parno thought the boy looked paler than usual, and he’d been quiet and more thoughtful since the talk they’d had in Luk. Judging by the way he was getting through his bowl of stew, however, his appetite was fine. Edmir nodded in answer to Dhulyn’s query, but his eyes remained hooded.

  “She’d be expected to mourn six moons at least, though she’s not known for her conservative approach to social things,” he said. He looked up. “Theater’s allowed during mourning, but something serious would be more suitable.”

  Parno smiled at the boy’s querying tone. Edmir wanted to see his play performed, but he didn’t want to seem to be suggesting it.

  “Listen.” Dhulyn leaned forward and tapped the tabletop with the end of her spoon. “This may be our only chance to perform it— certainly Edmir’s only chance to perform in it himself. After tonight, he will be the prince again, and he will have walked on the stage for the last time.”

  Edmir’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth, the piece of bread he’d been using to sop up the stew’s gravy dripping on the table until Zania’s nudge brought him back to himself. He smiled guiltily and wiped up the mess with the cloth that had been used as a potholder when the dish was brought out to them. Parno glanced at Dhulyn and saw that she, too, was watching Edmir. So, he wasn’t the only one who thought the boy didn’t seem as happy as he should be, considering they were taking the first step along the road that would restore him to his birthright.

  “There’s another consideration,” Parno said, and waited until they were all looking at him. “The play’s about a king who comes home from the wars after everyone believes him dead, correct? No one recognizes him, and he has to trick his way into his own home before he can reveal himself to his family?” Zania was nodding, and Dhulyn smiling. “Under the circumstances, what better play could we put on?”

  Jarlkevo House was an old-fashioned square-towered fortress, standing at the highest point of land within the walled town. What had once been a lonely crag of rock with strategic command of an entire valley was now a steep hillside lined with narrow streets and the openings of houses and buildings that appeared to be han
ging from the face of the rock itself. Clearly, space was at a premium.

  “I’ve seen larger courtyards at some country inns,” Edmir whispered to Parno, as the Mercenary stopped to try the tautness of the rope securing the screen in front of them.

  “You’ll not find the rooms within to be very spacious either, I’d wager,” Parno agreed as he turned away to check the next rope.

  Edmir looked out from behind the screens he, Parno, and Dhulyn had earlier set up across the short end of the courtyard. There were a great many more people out there than the murmuring voices and sounds of movement had led him to expect. A raised platform had been set up perhaps halfway between their stage and the far end of the courtyard. This platform had seats for several people—and children had already taken up places on the front edge, following a bold brown-haired child in deep blue—but there were two padded chairs covered with a canopy which were obviously intended for his aunt and her consort Sylria.

  Edmir frowned. He remembered their son, his cousin Janek, as a rather sickly child, coughing and pale, though letters from his aunt had reported the boy much improved in the last few years. Apparently, however, he was not improved enough to attend this evening’s performance since there was no chair of state put out for him. Too bad, Edmir thought, remembering the boy’s trusting brown eyes as he’d stood next to Edmir at his father Karyli’s burial ceremonies. Later, in his mother the queen’s private sitting room, they had played a game of tiles while the grown-ups talked. He’d taught Janek and Kera both to play the Sparrow game. He hoped the boy was all right. Janek was his only cousin, and besides Kera, the only living relative of his own generation.

  Edmir’s stomach clenched suddenly, and he tasted acid in the back of his throat. He was beginning to regret having eaten anything at all; even the half bowl of stew and few mouthfuls of dried apples he’d managed to wash down with watered cider felt like lumps of stone in his belly. Dancing in public was easy, even speaking—he’d done as much before his parents and their Noble Houses since he was a child, to say nothing of functioning as his mother the queen’s representative. And he’d thought the half dozen parts he’d done in the last moon or so had accustomed him to acting and the stage. Tonight felt entirely different. This was his play, these were his lines, his words. Even before the battle in the Limona Valley his stomach hadn’t felt this queasy. Soon he’d have to step out to give the Prologue—Dhulyn had insisted he should do it—but right now he savored the comfort and safety he felt behind the scenes.

  The screens themselves were canvas stretched over light frames of wood, painted on both sides to make the most use of them. Like much of the troupe’s properties and costumes, the scenery was normally laid flat on top of the caravan, covered over in heavier canvas against the weather. These particular screens were painted to look like a garden or perhaps a wood on the side currently facing the audience, and like a stone wall on this side. The play opened with the Soldier King coming through the forest where he had hunted as a young man, and the meeting with the old huntsman who would be the only character who recognized him right away. When they were ready, he and Parno would swing the screens around and they would end the play in front of the painted stone walls that represented the castle. Zania, in her costume as the old huntsman, came up on his left side; he grinned at her, glad of the distraction.

  “There were more of these when I was a child,” she said, running her fingers lightly along the crosspiece of the screen of scenery. “I remember one in particular that was a lady’s private bedchamber, with tapestries painted on the walls. I remember my mother standing in front of it. I don’t know who has it now.” Her voice was wistful.

  “This was before the troupe spilt up to look for Avylos?”

  She nodded, and then pointed with her chin in the direction of the unseen audience. “Is she out there? The House?” On the Mercenary’s orders, they’d all been careful to refer to Edmir’s aunt by her title only, in case anyone should overhear them, and wonder at their use of her personal name.

  “I thought I saw her walking into one of the doorways on the far side of the courtyard, but I’m not sure.” He scratched at the pointed chin beard that Zania had carefully glued to his face for his appearance as the Prologue. That, along with the long formal robe he was wearing, was meant to make him unrecognizable to anyone who may have seen him in the Queen’s Court. Or on the funeral coins that were already circulating.

  So far, at least, it seemed to be working.

  Parno rejoined them and put his hand on Edmir’s shoulder, giving him a little shake.

  “Ready? The House and her consort have just come in and taken their seats.”

  Edmir, clenching his teeth, shot another quick glance at the audience and nodded. Parno patted him on the shoulder, and Zania squeezed his arm. They each took careful hold of the handles on the screens in front of them and pulled them aside just enough to give Edmir an entrance.

  He swallowed again and stepped through. The crowd noticed him and hushed.

  “Long ago, and far off,” he began. “Among the lands of the Great King . . .”

  Valaika leaned forward, chin on hand, elbow on knee, when the Prologue stepped out from behind the screens. He was a tall young man with sun-streaked curly brown hair, wearing a short pointed beard slightly darker in shade. He was richly dressed, like a courtier at a formal audience, and, unexpectedly, his accent was Tegriani. There were not so very many players in Tegrian, and Valaika thought she knew them all. And she was certain that Sylria had said these came from elsewhere.

  But the play was beginning now, and she turned her attention to the action.

  When she saw the Prologue again, in the second act, it was as one of the suitors of the widowed queen. He wore the same formal tunic, though now he was beardless, and his hair had been brushed straight back from his face, revealing his jeweled earrings. He walked with the kind of swagger that made Valaika hope that, at the very least, this character would not end up winning the queen’s hand. He was making the queen—a striking woman indeed with eyes like gray pools in her white face—a very pretty speech, which somehow had an iron threat in the back of it.

  “Mother.” Janek had come up from where he sat in the front with his friends to whisper in her ear.

  “Not just now, my heart, if you please. It’s rude to speak during a performance.”

  “But, Mother, that’s Edmir.”

  “What?” The boy was addled. “Janek, mind your tongue. That can’t be. Edmir is—”

  “Mother, please. Look at him carefully.”

  Janek was so insistent, so serious, that Valaika swallowed the reprimand that was rising to her lips and looked back at the stage.

  A maidservant—Valaika swore she’d seen her earlier as the aged huntsman—had come on stage to offer the queen and her suitor refreshment in the form of goblets of wine. The queen took her goblet, but the suitor waved his away with a lifted shoulder and a short chopping movement of his hand.

  Valaika sat up so abruptly that she banged her elbow on the arm of her chair. She’d seen that movement before. That exact movement. The question was, where had this actor seen it?

  “See! See!”

  “Hush, Janek.”

  Sylria laid a hand on her knee. “What is it?”

  Valaika leaned over so as to whisper in Sylria’s ear. “We must invite them to stay after the play. Ask them for music, anything.”

  Sylria frowned, shrugging her right shoulder in question, but Valaika shook her head and indicated the stage. No point in ruining the show for the rest.

  And it was a testament to the play itself, and how well it was acted, that Valaika didn’t remember her request until she was standing with the rest of the audience at the end of the play, clapping and shouting.

  Fifteen

  “WHERE ARE YOUR PIPES?” Dhulyn felt along the edges of her wig. She’d sweated so much under the torches kindled for the final scene—but it seemed the glue still held. She knew she should be pleased
at this summons to meet with the Jarlkevoso and her family. They had been wondering how to get a private audience with the woman since they’d received their invitation to play in the courtyard, but this felt a little too pat, a little too easy. It seemed that since picking Edmir up out of the battlefield, everything that should have gone easily, hadn’t. Dhulyn did not think of herself as a superstitious type—like all Red Horsemen, she believed that humans made their own luck, since the gods of Sun, Moon, and Stars had larger things to occupy them—but the fact remained that when it looked as though some god was helping you, that was the time to be most wary.

  “Relax,” Parno addressed her feelings rather than her question. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  She stopped tightening the ribbon laces in her bodice and looked at him. “Oh, very funny.”

  He put his hand around her wrist, the palm warm and callused against her skin. “Seriously, what is the worst that can happen?”

  “We die separately.”

  His hand tightened. “We are always together,” he reminded her. “In Battle.”

  “Or in Death.” And she felt better.

  As they followed the two pages who served as their escort through the narrow halls and steep staircases of the House, Dhulyn took automaticnote of bottlenecks and potential escape routes. The prince was silent, pale and tense, as she would have expected. For him the next few hours—even the next few minutes, could mean everything. Zania walked beside him whenever she could, at one point reaching over and straightening the cuff of his sleeve. Dhulyn smiled and looked away.