The Warrior's Bond

by Juliet McKenna

  CHAPTER THREE

  Preface to the Chronicle of the House,

  As Given by Sieur Loedain D’Olbriot,

  Winter Solstice of the 50th Year of

  Bezaemar the Canny

  It has fallen to few Sieurs of this House to record any Emperor completing a second full generation on the throne, but I find myself thus honoured. Indeed, as I look over the Imperial Rote, I see we have been blessed with more long-lived rulers over the last handful of generations than at any time since the Chaos. The world is a very different place since the days of Decabral, when the Eager, the Nervous and the Merciful all died by the sword. I wonder if Bezaemar the Canny will equal Aleonne the Gallant’s fifty-six years of rule; he has certainly faithfully followed the wise man’s example in using diplomacy to bring us peace instead of the warfare that once so often drained our resources of coin and youth.

  As Tormalin fares, naturally so does D’Olbriot. How stands Tormalin at the end of so momentous a year? I can declare without hesitation that concord extends clear across the traditional domains of our Old Empire. We are seen again as the natural leaders of all lands bordered by mountains, forest and sea. Even the distant kingdom of Solura bows to our supremacy. Tormalin culture reaches once more to the very gates of Selerima. Our fashions are worn as far afield as the streets of Col, and learning from the antiquarian scholarship of Vanam enriches our libraries, restoring much that was lost in the Chaos. With accredited ambassadors in every Dukedom of Lescar and sitting as honoured observers in the Caladhrian Parliament, we are no longer at risk of unheeded anger boiling up into unexpected attack. Gold once spent like water to service the cohorts and galleys that guarded borders and coasts now enriches our dwellings with paintings and sculpture, ceramics and furniture. As noble wealth supports our craftsmen, so our traders carry their goods ever further along the peaceable high roads, even to the Great Forest and beyond. Long seasons of patient negotiation mean the Archipelago is no longer a source of fear and danger but a ready supplier of muslins for the poor and silks for the wealthy.

  As ceremonial rivalry replaces contests of arms, D’Olbriot stands as of right in the first order of nobility. The niceties of rank are ever more finely codified to guide those visiting from lesser lands, and D’Olbriot reputation grows with every year that passes. I have extended D’Olbriot patronage beyond our own tenantry to those lesser Houses whose distance from Toremal or lack of resources hamper them in this race for status. Our daughters are eagerly courted and our sons are received with hopeful civility wherever they pay their addresses to a lady. D’Olbriot lands and enterprises flourish from the Ast Marsh to the Cape of Winds and our tenantry benefit daily from the enhanced position we have secured for all beholden to our Name.

  So why do I not rejoice? Is it simply that I too am an old man, tired of bearing my own burden? I am in truth weary and let this document thus record my own decision to step down at this close of the year, bidding my Designate, my grand-nephew Chajere, take up the oath of the Sieur. But wisdom is a blessing of age, and it may be that I see within with clearer eyes, for all the webs clouding my outer vision. As Bezaemar has celebrated the longevity of his rule with lavish pomp, precious few of the commonalty have seen him do so and none too many of the nobility at whose pleasure he supposedly rules. Even Esquires of my own Name find themselves endlessly delayed in anterooms where tedious games of precedence are played out before they are admitted to the Imperial presence. Bezaemar has always been noted for his intelligence, but how can even the wisest of men make sound judgements when all his information comes from so small and so limited a circle of advisors? I am minded of a pond, peaceful and still, thus pleasant to look at but after time smelling rank with decay. After so long without anything to stir us, does not Tormalin risk similar stagnation?

  Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic. The recent celebrations have naturally prompted renewed speculation as to who might succeed Bezaemar the Canny and those old Sieurs supporting him will soon be replaced in their turn by younger men looking to make a mark on their House. The Tor Bezaemar grandson most often mentioned is a lively, good-humoured lad, well known and liked among all who will vote on the question and with a wide circle of friends among the junior Esquires of our Houses. If I am spared, I pray that I might see such a man take up the mantle of the Emperor with new vitality.

  The D’Olbriot Residence Gatehouse,

  Summer Solstice Festival, Second Day, Morning

  I woke to one of those moments when your cares haven’t raised their heads and you can savour a comfortable bed, crisp linen and the promise of the new day. All that was missing was Livak curled close beside me and waking to my kiss. That fancy lasted about as long as it took me to fling aside the single coverlet that was all these sultry summer nights needed. Washed, shaved and out of the gatehouse before the early sun had risen a hair’s breadth higher over the roof tiles, I found the day outside still cool. Hedges lining the walks of the grounds cast long shadows still glistening with dew as I hurried to the barracks to see if any news had turned up while I slept.

  Stolley was lounging on a bench by the barracks door. “Morning, Rysh, I’ve some messages for you.”

  “Thanks.” I took two letters from Stolley. “Did anything else I should know about turn up last night?”

  “Maitresse Tor Kanselin sent a bowl of crystal berries from her personal hot-house.” Stolley shrugged. “A lad from Tor Bezaemar came offering their Sieur’s personal physician. Sirnis Den Viorel sent him a tisane casket this morning.”

  “Anything else?” I persisted.

  Stolley sucked air through the gap where he’d lost three teeth in a fistfight. “You’re expecting some growling rough with a nail-studded club asking for a private audience, are you?”

  “Or a mysterious beauty claiming to be an old friend, maybe some down-on-his-luck musician begging for a hearing?” I nodded, mock serious. All these characters and more were dusted off each year for puppet shows to tempt our Festival pennies. “How about the genial old man just looking for an honest game of Raven? I could do with winning a few crowns.”

  “Don’t go looking in the barracks,” Stolley warned me. “All the new blood has been warned about you.”

  “Spoilsport.” So nothing out of the ordinary had caught Stolley’s eye.

  “Did you get any scent last night then?” Stoll was as keen as me and everyone else in the barracks to see whoever had stabbed Temar strung up from a gibbet.

  “Nothing, and I checked in with every sergeant between the hills and the sea.” I shook my head. “I’d best get some breakfast and start calling back on them.”

  “It’s the lower hall for upper servants,” Stoll reminded me with a pointed nod at the main house.

  I groaned. “Why do housemaids have to be so cursed shrill in the morning?” But I crossed the grounds to the main house, mindful of Esquire Camarl’s rebuke. A hall servant I knew slightly was sweeping briskly around the door as I took the steps at the run.

  “Ryshad, good morning!”

  “And to you, Dass.” Not inclined to stop and chat, I took the backstairs down to the whitewashed lower hall, a long basement with shallow windows high in the walls bringing light from outside. Heavy, scarred tables with backless benches were crowded with ladies’ maids, housemaids, valets and lackeys, all talking at once and all trying to make themselves heard by speaking louder than their neighbour. The babble echoed back and forth from the limewashed stone, battering my ears. I knocked at the servery built between two massive pillars that once supported the undercroft of a D’Olbriot residence built and demolished generations since.

  “What can I get you?” A freckle-faced child tucked a wisp of chestnut hair back behind her ear, wiping hands on her coarse apron.

  “Bread, ham, whatever fruit’s left and a tisane with plenty of white amella.” I smiled at the lass.

  “Something to keep you awake?” she chuckled as she assembled my meal from the plates and baskets to hand.

  �
�Fifth chime of midnight was sounding as I got back last night,” I admitted.

  “I hope she was worth it,” she teased, suddenly older than her years.

  “And Fair Festival to you,” I retorted

  She laughed. “It will be once I’ve served my turn today and fetched my dancing slippers.”

  Sipping my tisane with a smile puckered by its bitterness, I found a seat at the very end of a table. A few of the maids and footmen spared me a glance but were more interested in sharing their gossip with the visiting servants. I knew most faces, even if I couldn’t put a name to them, and the few newcomers were visibly escorted by resident servants. Messire’s steward wasn’t about to have the smooth running of his household disrupted by some valet not knowing where to go for hot water or how to find the laundry.

  The first note was another from Mistal, wanting to know where I’d got to yesterday, so I ignored it in favour of the salt richness of dark dry-cured ham against soft white bread still warm from the oven. The second simply had my given name scrawled clumsily on the outside. I cracked the misshapen blob of unmarked wax and unfolded the single sheet as I savoured the perfumed sweetness of a ripe plum.

  “What in Dast’s name is this?” I was so startled I spoke out loud.

  “Sorry?” The girl beside me turned from discussing southern fashions with a maid from Lequesine. “Did you want something, Ryshad?”

  “No, sorry, but Fair Festival to you anyway, Mernis.” I smiled up at her with all the charm I could muster after shock on top of a late night. “Do you know if the breakfast trays have gone upstairs yet?”

  “The hall lackeys were taking them up as I was coming down.” Mernis nodded. “You’re supposed to be shepherding the young D’Alsennin, aren’t you? Didn’t do too well yesterday, from what I hear?” She wasn’t being offensive, just curious, but I wasn’t about to give any gossip to share with her friends inside the House and beyond.

  “Is he awake, do you know?” I wiped my sticky hands on a neatly darned napkin before tucking the letters inside my jerkin.

  “I saw the Demoiselle Tor Arrial going in to him,” volunteered a lad some way down the table, the tailor’s apprentice as I recalled.

  “Many thanks.” Everyone at this end of the long table was paying keen attention now, so I gave them all a bland smile and took the backstairs to the upper floors. I took them two at a time, varnished oaken boards underfoot softened only by a strip of woven matting and limewashed walls an unadorned yellow. There was no page outside Temar’s door this morning, but a newly sworn man, sufficiently flattered by the assignment not to pine for festivities he’d be missing.

  “Verd.” I nodded a greeting. “Has anyone asked after D’Alsennin?”

  “A few of the maids,” he shrugged. “Always after any excuse to dally.”

  “Or flirt.” I grinned. “If anyone does come sniffing around, don’t set their hackles up, but I’ll be interested to know their names.”

  Verd’s pouchy eyes were shrewd. “And what do I tell them?”

  “Just shake your head and look dubious,” I suggested. “See if they look like that’s good news or bad.”

  I knocked and hearing a muffled summons, opened the gilt-latched door. Temar was sitting up in the massive bed, an old-fashioned piece but still monumentally impressive. Hung with valance and curtains of scarlet and ivory damask, the ornately carved posts were matched by a deeply incised headboard. Temar sat against a bank of pillows looking uncomfortably self-conscious, a tray with the remnants of a good breakfast by his knees.

  “When can I get dressed?” he grimaced in frustration, looking faintly ridiculous in a frilled nightshirt.

  “When I am satisfied you are fit to do so.” This crisp response came from the Demoiselle Tor Arrial, who was sitting over by the window, hair confined in a silver filigree net this morning, a touch of elegance to offset her austere mauve gown.

  “Ryshad, tell them to let me out of bed,” Temar appealed. I noted the appalling bruise had faded to a purplish smear and dark stains under one eye.

  “How is he?” I turned to Avila. This healing was her handiwork so she was the best judge.

  “Well enough,” she allowed after a pause.

  “Can I get up?” demanded Temar.

  “You lost entirely too much blood for my peace of mind,” said Avila repressively. “You must not do anything strenuous for at least another full day.”

  “Getting out of bed is hardly strenuous,” the youth objected. “And I cannot spend half the Festival sat here. Inside a handful of days, the leading Names will leave for country properties with cleaner water and cooler air. There are people I need to see!”

  “If you overreach yourself today you risk lying flat on your back for another three.” Avila met Temar’s challenge with equal force. “How will that help us recover the missing artefacts?”

  “Talagrin’s haste is Poldrion’s bounty.” Temar and Avila both looked blankly at me. “Hurrying now risks more delay in the long run? Never mind. You feel fit enough sat in your bed, Temar, but you can’t rush a head injury. I’ve seen enough novices knocked senseless on the sparring floor to know that. What about your wound? You must be feeling that cut every time you breathe?”

  “Avila healed it with Artifice,” said Temar scornfully. “She took the stitches out just now.”

  “Oh.” There wasn’t much I could say to that.

  “But we do not want another blade wasting my efforts,” Avila said waspishly. “Were you able to run any assailant to earth last night, Ryshad?”

  “Not a one.” I shook my head. “Every man sworn to D’Olbriot and every other Name that owes us will be picking up the hunt, but until we get some scent you really shouldn’t go beyond the walls of the residence, Temar, not today certainly.”

  “Have you found any hint of Elietimm within the city?” Avila demanded.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “And Dastennin be my witness, I’ve looked. Have you felt anyone else working Artifice?”

  “Not a trace,” she replied. “But I will continue to search.”

  Temar looked as if he were about to speak, his thin face sulky, but he quailed beneath Avila’s steely gaze.

  I pulled a letter out of my jerkin. “This morning’s bad news is someone wants to put a knife in me next. Whoever’s behind this, Temar’s not their only target.”

  Avila recovered first from her astonishment. “Explain yourself

  “This is a declaration of challenge.” I unfolded the anonymous note I’d received and read the crisply printed pronouncement aloud. “Be it known to all men duly sworn to the service of a Prince of Toremal that Ryshad Tathel, lately sworn to D’Olbriot and newly chosen to honour that Name, stands ready to prove his merit with sword, staff and dagger. According to custom, he will meet all comers in formal combat at the noon of Solstice on the practice ground of the D’Olbriot Cohort.” I folded the sheet carefully along its creases. “All quite according to form, as you see. The only problem is, I didn’t declare for trial.”

  “I am sorry but I do not understand,” said Avila testily.

  “Raising a Cohort was an uncommon event in your day, wasn’t it? Tenants were called up to serve for some specific emergency?” They both nodded slowly. “Well, during the Chaos the nobility needed standing troops to defend their people and their property. That’s when the first men were sworn, as soldiery to the Houses. By the end of the Kanselin era the formal structure we use today had developed. Recognised men are the bottom rung; they wear the livery of the House and if they show themselves trustworthy the Sieur offers them his oath and they swear to him in turn. Sworn men wear the amulet to symbolise those oaths. For those who make a mark, there’s promotion to chosen man, and then proven are at the top of the ladder, those few most highly regarded by the Sieur and his Designate.”

  “And this business of challenge?” Avila gestured at the paper I held.

  I looked at it. “There’s not so much need for warriors these days, but swo
rn men serve as bodyguards when nobility travel. Each House takes its turn supplying the Cohort keeping Toremal’s peace in the Emperor’s name, season by season and festival by festival, so we all have to be useful in a fight. Only a handful of Houses still maintain sword schools.” I ticked off the names on my fingers. “D’Olbriot, Tor Kanselin, Den Haurient, Tor Bezaemar and D’Istrac, but they all take men from the other Houses and train them up.

  “When a recognised man comes to take his oath, he must prove he’s a competent fighter, so he issues a challenge with letters like this posted on all the sword school doors and sent to every House’s Sergeant-at-Arms. He has to fight everyone who turns up—any sworn man that is, not just ruffians off the streets—or he forfeits the honour of being offered an oath.”

  “A test of endurance as well of skill.” Temar was looking interested. “You are also supposed to do this?”

  “A sworn man elevated to chosen or a chosen man raised to proven always used to issue a challenge. Those already holding the rank would test his worth for promotion.” I rubbed a hand over my chin. “But it’s seldom done these days, only if the sword school wants to put on an extra display at the end of the recognition bouts or to honour a noted swordsman.” I shook my head. “And in any case, I didn’t issue the challenge. But now it’s posted I’m honour bound to answer anyone who turns up to meet it.”

  “What is the person responsible hoping to achieve?” Avila wondered.

  “Beyond killing Ryshad, if they get the chance,” commented Temar with a faint grin.

  I smiled humourlessly back at him. “They won’t get that chance, but humiliating me out on the sand would be a major embarrassment for D’Olbriot.” Just as injuring Temar had humiliated the Name.

  “If this challenge is nothing to do with you, why take the risk?” objected Avila.

  “It is a question of honour,” Temar retorted swiftly.

  I was glad he’d said that. “I’ll go down to the sword school this morning, shed a little sweat getting my eye in. It’s been a season or more since I did any serious training. I can ask a few questions while I’m there.”