by Amy Bai
"Well enough."
Annan folded his arms and stared out the window, not a particularly confidence-inspiring signal. Kinsey straightened, cradling a book gently in filthy hands, and stared at his lieutenant. Annan didn't meet his eyes.
It was a careful, tricky path, working with the Lardana forces without becoming the Lardana forces. Kinsey still wasn't sure what Taireasa Marsadron wished—or what the Lady Captain wanted, for that matter. He'd thought, right up until this moment, that Annan had navigated those issues on his own, but the set of the man’s shoulders told him that wasn't the case.
It was probably something he should have done... and instead he'd been buried in ancient books and dust, paying no attention to anything else.
"How's the harpy?" Kinsey prodded, trying to lighten the mood a little, but Annan only shifted one shoulder in a shrug, still staring out the window.
"Competent," he replied.
And left a silence hanging that could have sunk a ship, it was so heavy.
Damn, Kinsey thought. He'd definitely failed to pick up on this problem in time. He chewed on his lip, trying to think of some way, any way, that his small company could work within the larger army of Lardana soldiers without taking authority away from Annan—but he knew little of the structure of command. And asking Annan would only get him more of that stoic, uninformative stare.
Then something else struck him; he set the book carefully down and picked up the cloth, sweeping the table. "It occurs to me," he said, feeling his way through the idea, "that we have things to offer our allies that they might not be aware of."
Annan still hadn't turned to face him, but he could see, out of the corner of one eye, that the man’s dark-haired head had cocked slightly. Kinsey wiped the rest of the table down, letting the silence stretch out, and finally Annan spun on one heel, that dreaded eyebrow raised.
"Yes?"
"They don't appear to have much in the way of intelligence among their ranks."
"Unkind," Annan said dryly. Kinsey fought down a grin.
"No, not—stop it. You know what I mean. The Lardana men are mostly cavalry and infantry, and all the lieutenants and sergeants were promoted on the way here—they seem to have lost most of their veteran officers in the uprising. We, on the other hand, are spies and couriers. And one assumes that there are folk somewhere in the kingdom below us that Her Majesty and the Lady Captain might want to get word to. Or receive word about."
Annan frowned, looking thoughtful. "Hm," he muttered.
"You don't think it's likely?"
"It might be, m'lord. They are woefully short on experienced agents." Annan hunched a bit more, like a dark gargoyle, and bravely offered: "Shall I suggest it?"
To the Lady Captain, he meant—and rumor had it she and Annan got along slightly better than a pair of roosters in a single coop, likely part of why Annan hadn't arranged his own solutions long since. Which wasn't much of a surprise. The Lady Captain had not proven herself to be one for polite discussions, and Annan had a sarcastic bent that had prevented him from being promoted more than once before he became Kinsey's man. Being in the room with the two of them was like being stuck in a sandstorm: the space filled quickly with dry, stinging wit and very little usable air.
"Not necessarily," Kinsey said, picturing that conversation and thinking the fragile alliance might not survive it. "I can bring it to Her Majesty. I need to speak to her anyway."
And I probably would have come up with an excuse even if I didn't, he thought, and coughed to hide the heat crawling up his neck. Taireasa Marsadron was the wisest and kindest person he'd ever met—and she turned him into a babbling idiot just by looking his way. It was mortifying, and so far it seemed incurable.
He was going to have to do something about that, but he hadn't thought of anything useful yet.
"… about getting more housekeepers in here, at least until the dust is cleared out and it's possible to breathe," he finished, avoiding Annan's eyes. "I'll never get this library in order otherwise."
Annan cast a dubious glance around the room. The windows were coated with grime. The hearth probably had wildlife living in it. It looked like a few centuries had passed since anyone had cared to come in this place, and yet… there were books, more books than Kinsey had ever seen. Just thinking about them made him feel a bit giddy.
"What is it, exactly, you hope to find in here?" his lieutenant asked. Annan had been sitting on that particular question for a while now, Kinsey could tell.
Kinsey waved a hand at the books. "This isn't enough?"
There went that eyebrow again. It was a fairly good gauge for Annan's mood—often the only gauge, since the rest of his face moved so little. "You'd have rescued them one at a time and read them in your rooms if that's all you were after."
"A point." Kinsey abandoned the dirt-coated dustcloth and sat. "I'm looking for secrets. Or I will be, if I ever get this place to a state where I can sit in it for an hour without choking."
Annan's eyes lit at the word secrets. He brushed off another chair and sat down gently, as though he expected it to collapse under him. His armor scraped against the wood. "What sort?"
"History. History is full of secrets. And these books are older than any I've seen."
Annan still looked perfectly serious, but there was a shadowy quirk at one corner of his mouth, a sure sign he was trying not to laugh.
"…Right," Kinsey sighed. "The Fraonir are the only ones who have had any access to this library for centuries, as I understand it, so it stands to reason—"
"That any information they may have on this supposed prophecy they seem to know so much and say so little of, is in here." Annan folded his arms, leaning back in the chair.
"Exactly." Kinsey eyed the tumbled stacks and the scattered sheets of paper ruefully. "It may take one scholar-prince of Cassdall another century to find anything at all in this mess. But I have to try."
"Why?"
Kinsey shrugged. "Why not?"
The eyebrow rose a little higher. Annan could probably knock birds from the sky at short distances with that expression.
"Well, what else am I to do? Everyone here is busy making our new lives as livable as possible before the snows hit, but there isn't much use for a scholar. Except—" he waved a hand at the mess around them "—this. And our new allies need information badly, assuming this prophecy is what caused their misfortune."
"You believe that?"
Someone who didn't know Annan well might miss the genuine curiosity in that question. Kinsey held his lieutenant's gaze and shrugged. "A few months ago, no. And I'm sure the political tangle between the East and West was a deciding factor. It was never a stable arrangement, from what I know, and the late king seems to have let resentments stew. But it seems they are missing great pieces of their history, from some eight hundred years back when the royal library burned in some war or other: they call them the Buried Years. They are missing explanations. Why not magic? It seems to be a fact of life here, if not a particularly comfortable or well-understood one. Unless you're about to tell me you haven't seen the way the air blurs around our new allies when they are upset…"
Annan gave a tiny twitch of his shoulders. "No."
Kinsey didn't look away. After a moment, Annan grunted unhappily. "I saw it, my Lord Prince, yes. What it means, I wouldn't guess."
"Nor I, but it's clearly magic."
"I assume so; I'd hardly know."
"Me neither, but there are no other explanations. Hells, magic is rumored even in Cassdall, and every other land that has books I've managed to read… and all those faery tales and rumors must have come from somewhere. What if it was here? What if that is what they lost when they lost their earliest histories? And if magic exists, what rules does it follow? And why not prophecies? Perhaps they follow rules too. I don't know what I'll find in this disaster, but if the Fraonir are as old as they claim—and the age of these books alone might support that—then I have some hope that there is more to the stori
es. And the Fraonir themselves know more than they're saying."
"That I won't argue with."
"Well." Kinsey leaned back, folding his arms. "Maybe I can find something of it here."
Annan's face was as still as ever, but his eyes darted to the mess around them.
"Good luck."
Kinsey sighed. "Thank you."
* * *
Holding court ought to be one of those things that wasn't required when the kingdom had been taken by traitors, but somehow, four times a fortnight, Taireasa found herself sitting on a cobbled-together throne in a hall draftier than any room had a right to be, listening to cases. She had presided over two marriages (those had been lovely, actually), sentenced countless thieves to service, and mediated more property disputes than she wanted to think of.
It didn't seem fair, but fair, she was discovering, had no place in her life as it had become.
She rubbed her hands, trying to chafe some feeling back into them, then gave the last judgment of the day, casting a weary glance at her chancellor afterward to be sure he knew she wished him to bring an end to the audience. But Maldyn was staring past her, his face set in a complicated expression that seemed part worry and part dismay. She looked back, and the last man in the audience line stepped around a cluster of shopkeepers.
Curran Maurynim, second son of the baron of Maurynim, looked up at her, his face breaking into a broad smile. Before Taireasa could do more than open her mouth, he strode forward and knelt in front of her throne. A slim girl by his side—that would be Loessa, his new wife, she remembered—echoed his movement and his shieldman Beagan knelt on his other side. All sound in the hall stopped.
"My Lady Queen," Curran began, a thread of genuine pleasure warming his voice. Curran was an old friend, someone she'd known nearly as long as Kyali and Devin, though they'd seen little of one another since they both reached their majority. "Maurynim swears fealty to the rightful queen of Lardan," he declared. "My father wanted to be here himself, but we are preparing for siege and he had to stay to guard the fortress. He sends me in his stead."
"We brought more supplies," the Lady Loessa added, and blinked at the loud cheer that immediately met this news. She would have said more, but Taireasa stood and left the dais, ignoring the way the guards at her back came to attention, taking Curran's hands and lifting him to his feet.
"Welcome," she said, and was dismayed to hear her voice tremble a little bit.
It was so good to have a friend here who hadn't been with her through the events of the rebellion. Someone who wouldn't look at her with pity, or the wounded, silent sorrow that Devin carried with him everywhere.
…Or not look at her at all, like his sister.
She shoved those thoughts aside, kissing Curran's cheek and trying to ignore the flicker of worry that crossed his face. She knew what he was seeing. The mirror gave her back a ghost these days, a shadow of a girl with dark smudges under her eyes. Her nights were haunted by Kyali's dreams. She'd discovered that no sleep was preferable to sleep punctuated by the sound of her own choked-back screams, and so she worked until she was too exhausted to stand.
Kyali herself seemed not to suffer this… but then, Kyali spoke so little, Taireasa had no real way to tell anymore.
She couldn't afford to think of this now.
She made herself smile again, so Curran wouldn't worry, and turned to greet his wife. Maldyn was herding the day's supplicants out the door at a turtle's pace, people craning for a last look. Earl Donal of Wyssin, a burly man with the voice of a herald and the tact of a drill sergeant, halted in front of the doors, damming the exodus like a boulder in a stream.
"Majesty," he bellowed, at what he probably thought was a perfectly reasonable volume. "If the lord of Maurynim is threatened in his fortress, should we not go to his aid?"
The flow of people leaving the hall came to an abrupt stop, leaving a crowd clogging the doorway and Maldyn and all the guards frozen in the act of trying to clear the room.
Burying a wince, Taireasa turned his way. "A matter for council, Earl Donal."
Which he knew perfectly well: this was just another attempt to get himself on the council. Not two months in and already the handful of nobles who had followed her into exile were jostling for power. It would have been funny, if it weren't so sad. She raised an eyebrow at her chancellor, who ought to be maneuvering the bluff earl of Wyssin out the door and instead was standing blank-faced and curious, as though he were actually considering the idea. The villagers around him had noticed and were listening avidly now.
Damn it.
"Maurynim stands firm, my lady," Curran declared, deliberately loud. "We ask no aid, nor require any."
Donal waved a hand in a wide gesture. "But surely, my lady, we ought to—"
"Surely, my lord, this is a military matter and not a thing to discuss in hall," Taireasa replied, trying—and failing, she suspected—to keep her voice from tipping into outright sarcasm. He wanted to be included in her innermost circles, but couldn't understand why blurting out an unconsidered opinion in the middle of a roomful of villagers was a poor notion. "We have hardly had news of Maurynim. Planning a counterattack this very moment does seem a bit premature."
Yes, the sarcasm definitely got through there.
She sighed and went to take Earl Donal's arm, speaking more quietly. "My lord, there are indeed things to be done, but we are not yet ready to face the army of the West on their terms. You realize this already, of course. I am only telling you what your experience has already told you, I know. I will hear your advice when our soldiers are called on. You will give it to me when I ask, yes?"
He puffed up like a bullfrog, letting himself be guided slowly out the door. "Oh, well, of course. Glad to, Your Majesty."
The size of him pushed the commoners out ahead like flotsam before the flood. Earl Donal had that to recommend him, at least. Taireasa had to bite back a real grin, and stood watching him stride through the lower hallway as the guards finally took possession of the doors.
"Well done," a low voice whispered in her ear. She turned without surprise, because these days she could feel Devin's presence from across the keep, and she'd sensed him coming up behind her. "He'll preen for days, and probably not realize until next week that he still hasn't been invited to your council table."
The grin got completely past her: for a precious second, she was just the princess, crowing to the general's son about another clever trick she'd pulled. But Devin's own smile was shadowed at the edges, by which she could be certain that he had seen Kyali at least once today.
It seemed they could do nothing but break each other's hearts, the three of them.
Or, well, the two of them. Kyali might have left her heart at the foot of the mountain, for all she could tell. Kyali had broken her own heart, had done it for the sake of a friend who would never, apparently, get the chance to repay her.
If Kyali wanted to leave it behind, Taireasa couldn't find the strength to argue. She could ask nothing else of the general's daughter, of the friend who had given so much. She was only grateful she still had Devin to lean on. She didn't think she could bear this exile from home and dearest friendship without him.
Thinking it brought Devin that much closer, until she could sense his sorrow gnawing away at him, could feel the mingled pleasure and misery that seeing her called up in him. It wasn't a good time—there were plenty of witnesses left in this drafty room—but Taireasa reached in that way they were both learning to do, and let him see, for a second, that he wasn't alone in his grief.
He caught her hand in a drowning man’s grip as the air between them shivered.
"You're so much better than we deserve, Taireasa," Devin murmured.
He turned then, and slipped away between Maldyn and Kinsey, who had appeared at some point in the proceedings and was looking around curiously, an owl out in the daylight. Maldyn, for his part, went to have a word with Curran and Loessa. Kinsey stared after Devin's retreating back with an ex
pression of mild bemusement.
"I can't decide if he's avoiding me specifically or only people in general," the Cassdall prince mused.
"He's avoiding himself," Taireasa answered without thinking, startling him into meeting her eyes at close quarters. His were gray as old glass, and seemed to go on forever. His features, fine and strong, had the sheen of good bronze. She felt heat crawling up her neck and looked away, having been too honest for her comfort or Kinsey's.
But Kinsey nodded slowly. "Yes, that makes sense. I suppose I'll let him sort it out on his own, then."
"Oh, don't do that, my Lord Prince." Gods, she was nothing but impulse around him. She forced herself to finish. "Take him riding, or make him help you in the library. Pester him until he agrees. He needs a friend. And right now, I can only be a queen."
Kinsey's expressive face crinkled into a look that wasn't pity, but might have been sympathy. "I'll do that," he said. "The ride, not the library. I wouldn't wish that on my own uncle."
"Is it so bad?"
He sighed. "It's… messy. But I am making headway, of a slow sort. I hope to have it organized in another month."
"I'll assign you some servants. I can do that much. No, don't argue: there may be something important hidden in those stacks, and we know so little of—of—" Taireasa waved a hand vaguely, encompassing the hall, the mountain, the mess that was her new life.
"…present circumstances," Kinsey finished.
"Far more elegantly phrased than my description would have been," Taireasa said dryly.
He gave her a crooked smile. "I doubt that, my lady."
"You've no idea." She was getting flashes of feeling from him now: loneliness, worry for Devin, something complicated having to do with soldiers and command. Curse her intrusive, unruly Gift.
She exhaled, trying to make her shoulders relax through sheer will. It didn't work. Though he was already halfway to his rooms, Devin's sadness clung to her like dust, making her own that much harder to ignore.
"I think I need the company of friends myself, my Lord Prince. And Curran and Loessa deserve a proper greeting. Will you join us for wine in my apartments tonight? I've an appointment over dinner with a regiment of shopkeepers that I'll want to recover from afterward. Will you come? You and your lieutenant?"
