The Soldier King

by Violette Malan

  “It is your carrying on as usual that will provide the rest of us the cover we need,” Dhulyn added.

  Almost as hard to convince had been Valaika’s Steward of Walls.

  Sylria had laughed. “Valaika managed to convince him that a caravan load of players was escort enough—he knew better than to argue; old soldier as she is, Valaika avoids an escort whenever she can. It’s easier in the last few years, of course. Tegrian has never been so safe for travelers. We have the Blue Mage to thank for that much, at the very least.”

  There’s irony, Parno thought. It was only the work of the Blue Mage that made Tegrian so safe, and here they were on their way to put a stop to him.

  “That’s the third time you’ve moved those slippers from one box to the other, and back again.” Edmir looked up from the entry he was making in his journal.

  “I should be with them,” Zania said, not for the first time, as she sat back on her heels and looked from one open chest to the other. “It’s my Stone.”

  Edmir understood her frustration—after all, as she’d pointed out, she didn’t have a ghost eye on her back—but he was very glad the Mercenaries had insisted on leaving Zania behind, though he wasn’t sure if he should tell her so. The idea that she would be anywhere near Avylos, that Zania might look at Edmir and in that dead voice say that she didn’t know him. He shivered and bent back over his journal.

  Zania’s frustration had taken the form of fussy activity. She’d decided to reorganize her props and costumes, now that there were so few players to use them, and in the absence of any eyes to oversee them here at the gamekeeper’s lodge, Edmir had helped her drag the costume trunks into the lodge’s large common room from where they normally rode under the caravan. The lodge itself consisted of this large room, with its cooking hearth, oak plank table, carved stools and uneven stone floor, and a single windowless inner room which Edmir had insisted Zania take as her bedchamber. There was nothing in either room to tell the Blue Mage where he was, no clue to give them away.

  Edmir glanced up at her again. She certainly seemed to be making very little progress with her organizing.

  Could he tell her how happy he had been with the decision to leave them together? He wanted to, that he was sure of, but from the tight look on the girl’s face, he knew it would be unwise. It was so much easier to write these things down. On the page in front of him he had sketched in the outline of a short tale, just a few lines detailing a love story. Here, in the pages of his journal, was the one place—the only place—a life with Zania would ever exist.

  His talk with Parno Lionsmane had made that very clear.

  Best he not say anything to Zania. He sighed and applied himself once more to his story. He had just reached the point where the young prince declares his love to the beautiful lady player when Zania spoke again.

  “The Muse Stone is mine,” she said addressing a pair of boots with turned-down tops. “It belongs to my family.” The muscles in her jaw moved as she gritted her teeth. “And Dhulyn took my great-uncle’s book as well. They’re all I have left.”

  Edmir swallowed. “Zania, if anything should happen . . . I mean. I want you to know that this past moon has been . . .”

  Zania looked up, and her lips twisted to one side in a wry smile. “Better than life at court?”

  “That’s easily answered. How happy are the nobles in the plays you know?”

  “In the comedies, very happy.” She tossed the boots back into the chest and stood up, crossing over to lean against the table where he sat. “But your family, you must miss them?”

  “I miss Kera, but even with her, lately . . . it’s different when you’ll be king someday. That sets you apart even from your brothers and sisters.” He put the quill he’d been using to one side. “But I have to say, at least part of what’s made the last few weeks so pleasurable is not being around my mother.” He thrust his hands through his hair. “Since my father died— Caids, it’s like putting down a weight.”

  Zania moved the inkwell Edmir had been using and perched on the side of the table, doing her best not to look down at what Edmir had been writing. “What weight?” Part, her heart said. Part of what’s given him pleasure.

  “The weight of her disapproval, the weight of not meeting her standards. She expects you to be perfect the first time, without giving you a chance to practice. You tell her you’ve done your best and she tells you to try harder next time, not to be so lazy.” He smiled, but to Zania’s practiced eye, it looked forced. “She was different when we were younger.”

  “So that’s why you’re always asking whether the play is good. I was thinking that for a prince, you needed an awful lot of reassurance.”

  “None of you seems to think that there’s anything wrong with praise—Dhulyn acts like she thinks praise will make you try harder.”

  Zania drew up her feet until her heels were on the edge of the table, and she could wrap her arms around her knees. “And so it should, if it’s earned. Then you’ll do as well or better the next time, in order to be praised again.”

  “Do you think you should have your feet on the table?”

  “What, are you turning into your mother?” She smiled when she said it, but she lowered her eyes. Edmir picked up his pen.

  “With the Stone,” she said. “I could start a new troupe.”

  “Well, fresh material—new plays, I mean—that might help you attract some new actors.” She looked up then and met his eye.

  Only part of what’s made him so happy, she thought.

  I don’t want to go back, he thought.

  Sylria waited for the moon to rise before leaving her bed. She and Valaika were not in the habit of having pages sleep in the anteroom, something she was very glad of now. No questions to answer as she lit the lamp standing on the table in her chamber, drew on a dressing robe over her nightgown and stepped into the corridor. A right turn and a short flight of stone steps brought her to her own workroom.

  Sylria liked having her own room, where she could close the door behind her, and look around with the satisfaction she always felt when she saw the orderly papers, inkpots well-stoppered, pens carefully cleaned and laid out in a neat row.

  “You should have been a Scholar,” Valaika had always said to tease her. Well, her father had been one, and Sylria had always wanted a home life, not a life spent chasing down a new theory, a just-discovered scrap of the Caids’ writings, an untranslated poem in some unpleasant ancient tongue.

  She took a book of poetry from her shelf, threw open the shutter of the narrow window and set the book down on the ledge, where the moon would shine directly on it. She turned to blow out the lamp, and when her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she opened the book to the central, blank, pages. She laid her index fingers on the lower corners of the open pages and spoke.

  “My lord Mage,” she said. She had time to wish she’d thought to bring a cup of water to the window with her—time enough for second thoughts, time to wonder whether she should just shut the book before any writing appeared. . . .

  “Tell me.”

  And then it was too late.

  “I keep our bargain,” she said, whispering the words into the cool night air.

  “Tell me.”

  “This will be the last time. With this, I pay my debt in full.” She hadn’t meant it to sound like a question, but she was fairly sure how it would appear in the book that was a twin to hers.

  “Tell me.”

  “The Lord Prince is here, in Jarlkevo, near at hand.” In the game-keeper’s lodge, where whatever the Blue Mage visited on him would be far from Janek.

  “The Mercenary Brothers?”

  Sylria’s mouth was too dry to swallow. She’d been right to call him, she thought. He knew so much already, really, it was impossible to hide anything from him.

  “They have gone, with my House, to Beolind. Here is only myself, and the prince.”

  “Kill him.”

  Sylria fumbled with the book, in her
shock she nearly let it fall to the floor from the stone window ledge. “You cannot ask this of me,” she said, when she had her voice again. “You wanted only news of him, you never said—”

  “Does your son walk? Does he take food? Does he breathe the air? Grow? Laugh? Do you wish this to continue?”

  Sylria sank to her knees, her hands still carefully maintaining the position of the book in the moonlight. Janek, oh, sweet Caids, not Janek. And yet she saw, with a sickening coldness in her belly, that this was exactly what she should have expected. Valaika was the one who had brought the child to term, for the House could only pass to blood, but Janek was Sylria’s—she had nursed him, she had held him, rocked him, dealt with his fevers, coaxed him to eat, and watched him grow, but thin, hollow-eyed, and weak. Not thriving as other children did. And there would be no other. Valaika had waited too long; she could not have another child.

  Sylria had watched as Janek’s illness took its price from Valaika as well, making her thin, her hair dull, the bones of her face showing like a skull.

  When she could not find a Healer, Sylria had gone to Avylos. And the Blue Mage had helped her. And she had promised him anything, anything to save their child.

  And now she knew what anything was.

  “I cannot,” she whispered, and then roused herself. What was she saying? “I cannot promise,” she said. “What if I am not successful?”

  “I will help you. Put the palm of your left hand down on the right-hand page.”

  When Valaika Jarlkevoso had said that Beolind was a day and a half’s ride from the gamekeeper’s lodge, if both weather and horse were good, Parno had given Dhulyn the look that meant “we’ll laugh about this in private.” He remembered that look when, almost exactly a day and half later, they entered the city of Beolind. Valaika was greeted with salutes and attention, and a runner was sent ahead of them to inform the Royal House of their approach.

  “Are you all right?”

  Dhulyn nodded, but Parno thought she looked pale. “This is the first time I’ve passed through city gates without declaring myself a Mercenary Brother,” she replied, using the nightwatch voice. “Let’s hope we never have to do so again.”

  He and Dhulyn, both in short dark wigs, wore tunics in the same orange and black as the cloak Valaika wore, the better to disguise them as retainers of Jarlkevo. Parno moved his shoulders. The tunic was a good fit, but he was getting awfully tired of wearing borrowed clothes. He looked at Dhulyn as she swung herself onto Bloodbone’s back. If he was getting tired of it, he could only imagine how Dhulyn felt.

  Warm, he thought, as she rolled back her sleeves. After all these years, she still found it too warm here in the north.

  “This way,” Valaika said once they had passed through the lengthy gate passage that led through the walls of the city. “I have my own suite in the western wing of the Royal House, and we can go straight there.”

  As they followed Valaika through the city, Parno noticed Dhulyn looking around, frown lines between her brows. He knew that look. She was remembering something she had Seen in a Vision, and comparing it to what she saw now.

  A man on horseback came along, calling out to make way for the Royal Guard. Valaika could have stood on rank herself, but instead she moved to one side.

  There were only five people in the party, two nobles on horseback, and three in the dark blue tunics of the Royal Guard walking along with them. As the group drew abreast of them, Dhulyn suddenly stiffened and called out in a language Parno had never heard her use.

  The taller of the two on horseback turned around at her call, and Parno saw what Dhulyn had seen. The man had the distinctive blood-red hair of the Red Horsemen. Now the two Outlanders were calling to each other, Dhulyn smiling and excited as she pushed through the crowd to the man. As Parno started to follow, Valaika grabbed him by the arm.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t move. That’s Avylos.”

  Seventeen

  “COUSIN!”

  Dhulyn spoke without thinking. When the men rode out of the shadow of a Jaldean Shrine into the sunshine, and Dhulyn saw the taller man’s face clearly, and his hair—blowing back from that remembered face and red like old blood—the greeting had burst from her. She had spoken in the old tongue, the language of the Espadryni, that she hadn’t used since her Schooler, Dorian the Black, had found her in the slaver’s ship.

  She was urging Bloodbone forward even as the man stopped and looked at her. It was the boy, the one her Vision had shown her being hunted in the woods, much older, but still recognizable as the prey running in the forest of her Vision. So it was the past she’d Seen.

  “How can we be kin?” he answered her, also in the old tongue. His deep blue eyes were narrowed, calculating. The foot guards with him exchanged glances, round-eyed, but they stayed silent. He looked over behind her, his eyes narrowed still further, and he inclined his head— not a bow, but as someone who acknowledges an acquaintance. He had seen and recognized Valaika, Dhulyn thought, so this was evidently someone from the Royal House.

  “We are the same Tribe, if not the same Clan,” she said, willing his attention back to her. Now that she had spoken, and drawn his notice, she’d better make the best she could out of this. “What does that make us, in this city of northerners, if not kin?”

  He tilted his head. “You speak the old tongue. The Hunter Moon has passed more times than I wish to remember, since I have heard it last. You have the voice, but not the look of an Espadryni.”

  “It is easy to change the color of one’s hair,” Dhulyn said. “I will be pleased to prove our kinship, but not here, in the street. I was Dhulyn of the Darklin Plain Clan. My mother Asmodhul and my father Fentlyn.”

  “You say you were?”

  “The Darklin Plain is empty. The horses and cattle run wild. You know this as well as I.”

  “I do. I was Avylyn of Forest Plain Clan. My father Teravyl and my mother Werlyn. Come with me now, and if what you say of yourself is true, you shall be welcomed here as though we were of one blood.” He put out his hand, palm down, in the manner of their Tribe.

  A cold knot formed in the back of her throat and Dhulyn cursed herself—she was even more a blooded fool than she’d thought. She recognized the name. She knew what his next words would be.

  “Here I am known as Avylos, the Blue Mage.”

  She took his hand, palm to palm, turned their wrists until her hand was uppermost and released him. She let Bloodbone fall into step beside his horse. What else could she do, but find some way to salvage this? As she rode away from her Partner, she stretched up her right arm, as if adjusting the fall of her cloak. First she extended her thumb and index finger only. Follow and watch. And then, she closed her fist. In Battle.

  “And in Death.” Parno mouthed the response from where he sat on Warhammer, pushed up against Valaika’s horse, automatically giving the open hand signal as he did. Then both his own hands closed into fists, and he forced them to relax.

  “I thought you said he had dark hair?”

  “He did when I knew him.” Valaika said. “What now?”

  “Follow and watch,” Parno said.

  The older woman took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Then it’s a lucky thing we’re all going to the Royal House.”

  Parno hoped the smile he gave her was more confident than the feeling behind it. “We wanted to get into the Mage’s quarters. Well, now we’re in.”

  Avylos’ hand trembled slightly as he adjusted the magic that locked his workroom door. A woman of his tribe. What if she was? How much did she know, and how many others had survived? He would have to kill her—it was the only way to be sure, to be safe. But she was younger, what if she knew nothing? What if she was the last?

  And there was more to consider than her parentage. He had never felt such a strong manifestation of power as he had when the woman, Dhulyn, had taken his hand. Espadryni or not, she was Marked. That was beyond doubt. When he was young, he no more thought the women of
the Espadryni were Seers than he’d believed the men were Mages. Tricks and illusion—that’s what he’d told himself before the Stone had shown him that magic truly existed. But now, with the power of the Stone pulsing through his veins, he could see the Mark for himself, a glow somewhat like the young dice boy’s, only . . . thicker. Could he feed it to the Stone, even if he wanted to?

  An Espadryni. A Seer. The use he could make of her—what if she was of more value to him alive? Would it be a waste to feed her power into the Stone?

  “All the rooms in this wing are mine,” he told her as he pushed open the door and led the way in. “But this is my workroom, where I conduct my private business.”

  “Your pardon, Lord Avylos, but you are the consort, are you not? Do you have any private business?”

  Avylos pressed his lips together, glad that his back was turned as he opened the shutters to let in the afternoon light. He could not let her see how her casual disrespect had cut through him like a knife.

  “As consort, perhaps not, but as the Blue Mage, much of my business is private,” he said through gritted teeth. Perhaps he should show her the Stone after all, and sooner rather than later.

  He turned back toward her and found her standing, perfectly relaxed, looking around the room with an expression of polite interest. Her face was a long oval, her skin coloring naturally pale, like his own, showing little or no darkening from the sun. Her eyes large, a steel gray in color. Her mouth was full, but there was a small scar on her upper lip. As if she felt his eyes on her, she looked at him and smiled. For a moment the scar caught at her lip and made her seem about to snarl, but then her mouth softened again, and her smile was gentle.