The Sianian Wolf

by Y. K. Willemse

  Francisco instantly thought her vulgar.

  “Ah, Annette,” Asiel said. “The last of the Selsons, or so we hoped. Master is not pleased with you.”

  “Is he pleased with you?” Annette asked. Her voice was low, with a Tarhian lilt.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You would be better minding your own safety at times like this, when anyone can make a mistake.”

  “Times like this!” Asiel laughed. The old guard’s sharp eyes absorbed the sorcerer’s body language. “Annette, are we not riding on the back of an incredible victory? Sure, there were mishaps. But they shall be easily rectified. Siana is not about to slip from us.”

  Annette’s face darkened.

  Asiel moved over to her. “Master awaits your compliance,” he said at a volume Francisco (and the intolerable guard) strained to hear. Asiel spoke so closely to Annette that his lips brushed her face. Annette’s breathing was high and shallow. “Master knows you hold the secret that will buy us complete victory. Serve him as the rest of us do, willingly, without compromise, and you will find the happiness you seek.”

  He raised a bony hand, stroking her cheek with one finger. Annette inhaled sharply and recoiled.

  “You and my uncle do nothing but lie,” she said. “He too presses me for a family secret he never received.”

  Her eyes fell on Francisco and she gasped.

  “How can this be?”

  Asiel seized her shoulder, hissing something into her ear. Annette stared at Francisco.

  “This cannot be,” she said.

  Annette had seen Francisco’s supposedly dead brother, Rafen.

  “My prince, I do not believe we have met,” she said, coming forward and bowing to kiss the hem of his coat.

  Francisco watched her with distaste. “We have not,” he said stiffly. “Who are you?”

  “I am the Lady Annette. Once daughter to King Robert of Siana,

  now servant to Nazt.”

  “You are still more daughter than servant,” Asiel said smoothly from behind.

  “My Lady, then,” Francisco said, with a curt nod and perfect Tarhian manners. “May your stars be good.”

  “And your stars, may they ever be bright,” Annette said, fascinated and bowing again.

  Francisco discreetly pulled his coat tighter around himself to prevent another person from kissing it. Too many lips in one day meant a filthy coat.

  “His Majesty was searching for someone in the cells,” Asiel said.

  “You are dismissed,” Francisco said in Tarhian to the guard.

  The old man reluctantly walked away backwards.

  “Does the prince need help?” Annette asked.

  Francisco turned to her. “I need no help, I search for no one,” he said quickly. “I am returning to the keep.”

  “Ah, yes,” Asiel said, sweeping over to Francisco and laying a hand on his shoulder. “So far from the keep today, Your Majesty. Perhaps Your Majesty is seeking—” Asiel ducked lower, planting his lips on Francisco’s ear, “—some freedom,” Asiel hissed. His voice stirred the hairs in Francisco’s ear and filled his head. “Your Majesty desires to escape this palace? For a day. I know where curiosity would take you. I am the best of escorts, my princeling.”

  Laying a hand on Francisco’s shoulder, Asiel straightened. He smelt of onions. Francisco was trembling, his ear full of Asiel’s spit. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

  “Master has not visited us for two and a half months,” Asiel said to Annette. “Perhaps you are safe now. When he returns, I will fear for you, most fair of women.”

  Annette’s lips curled in revulsion. Asiel turned Francisco so his back was to her. The sorcerer snaked a sinewy arm about his shoulders and swept him away down Prisoner’s Column.

  “Wait!” Francisco said shrilly. “I cannot come this way. My father would not like—”

  “It is time, Your Majesty,” Asiel said, dragging Francisco up some stairs to their left, “that you thought about what you like.”

  “But I would not like—”

  “You are afraid of displeasing your father,” Asiel said knowingly, pulling Francisco down a wide, carpeted corridor. “Your Majesty is the noblest of sons. I assure you, your father will not fear for you while you are with me, my princeling.”

  Asiel rushed Francisco down another flight of stairs to a rough-

  hewn door. He wrenched Francisco through it, past two surprised

  guards, and into one of the huge palace stables.

  This stable on the east wall was home to two hundred horses. It was wide and high-roofed. The cobbled alleys between the many stalls were covered with straw. Asiel approached one of the tethered horses, which he somehow knew to be Francisco’s.

  “Here, my little prince,” he said, unlatching the swinging doors, untying the stallion, and saddling him. The horse whinnied nervously at Asiel’s touch. Asiel’s strong hands shoved Francisco into the saddle and closed his fingers on the reins. He prepared his own horse close by.

  “This is an excursion Your Majesty will not forget,” he said with a smile that never reached his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Wynne’s Prison

  “Raf!” Sherwin said, a betrayed look clouding his features while he straightened with the water pouch in his hand. He stood by the river, which flowed fast in the wild wind that had followed the recent sleet. The ice on the water had started melting, and little jagged islands of it were tossed along. “I woke up this mornin’, and yer weren’t there. I was jus’ abou’ to look for yer. Yer weren’t going to leave. So wha’s this then?”

  Standing before the broomsedge he had just stepped out of, Rafen said, “I can explain.”

  “Oh, sure. I jus’ didn’t think… after I almost died—”

  “Sherwin, it’s not like that,” Rafen said quickly, walking toward him. The air was perceptibly warmer, and the snow beneath his tattered boots was slippery. Startling a wood stork into flight, Ahain broke out of the cover behind him, barking joyously at rediscovering his master.

  “I met Francisco,” Rafen said.

  “Yer what?”

  “I met my twin.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Tha’s where yer were last night?”

  Rafen nodded. “I was in the New Isles palace.”

  Sherwin went a pale shade of green. “Raf,” he said, “are yer suicidal? Innat where all the Tarhians are staying at the moment? An’ the Lashki?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they’ve found out yer alive,” he said bleakly. “They’re after yer again, aren’t they?”

  “They haven’t found out yet. Francisco wouldn’t tell,” Rafen said, forcing himself to believe this before plunging into his next sentence. “Sherwin, we’re identical.”

  Sherwin looked blank.

  “Identical: we look the same,” Rafen elaborated. “Black hair, blue eyes—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get tha’,” Sherwin said. “I’m tryin’ to figure out why they would want a Rafen look-alike around, tha’s all. Wouldn’t the Lashki hate him?”

  “I never got to ask Francisco that.”

  Rafen settled down on the moist snow and unfolded the muffler he’d been holding to his chest. It was full of raw roots he had gathered on the way. Sherwin sat down beside him, his legs folded, and started helping himself.

  “Am I glad to see yer alive after all of tha’!” he said, chewing a root. Ahain settled down near them. “Yer talked to ’im then?”

  “I tried,” Rafen said. He told Sherwin about their conversation.

  “So yer reckon he believed yer in the end?”

  “I don’t think so. He wouldn’t come with me either, but he didn’t want me to go.”

  “Poor pot.”

  At Rafen’s look, Sherwin quickly said, “Er, poor man.”

  “I wish he’d find Wynne.”

  Rafen swilled the top of a root around in his mouth and swallowed it
whole. It stuck in his throat. He was remembering the other thing Francisco had said.

  “Erasmus still hangs on the scaffold in New Isles,” Rafen said softly.

  Even though he was waiting for Alexander and the recruits, he wasn’t going to sit around now that he knew this.

  Sherwin’s head snapped up.

  “We’re going to give him a decent burial,” Rafen said, clenching his fists.

  Sherwin met Rafen’s eyes and he nodded.

  *

  Asiel was right. This was where Francisco’s curiosity would take him.

  The New Isles marketplace was a vast oval filled with slushy snow that a crowd had muddied. On its eastern edge, the marketplace adjoined the wooden wall of New Isles; northward, it reached the arching city gates; westward, it was adjacent to the wide steps and desecrated temple of Zion; and southward, it met the thicket of skinny, dilapidated houses where the city’s vast population dwelt.

  “Ah, look at these stalls,” Francisco said to Asiel.

  “Yes, my prince,” Asiel said.

  The marketplace was filled with colorful stalls and caravans, outside of which loud-voiced merchants showed off their wares. Advertising signs had been erected throughout the throng of both Tarhian soldiers and Sianian peasants.

  Near the fortified eastern wall was one lone inn, which bore the crudely painted label “Sianian Arrow”. “Arrow” had been crossed out and replaced with “Pistol”. Outside this inn, several Tarhians drank from large tankards.

  Francisco laughed aloud. “Were not the gates carved?” he asked, looking at them. “Ah, but I remember. They were carved with the victory of King Fritz on the Plain ki Naag. Father told me. His Master did not like them.”

  This was an understatement. One night, the Lashki himself had defaced them with kesmal, leaving scratched, inscrutable surfaces.

  “Sianian cities are different from cities at home,” Francisco said as he and Asiel reined in. “Our cities wend by a main road. The Sianians like their buildings in one place, like a herd of harts, do they not? And they like their walls.”

  “Indeed, my princeling,” Asiel said boredly.

  The busy marketplace was something new too. Francisco knew from the little he had seen of Setarsia at home that very few people set up stalls in the streets, because the city was so spread out. Aggravating peddlers were common, and his father had many of the pests shot.

  “When was His Majesty last in a marketplace?” Asiel asked, sliding off his horse and tethering it to a wooden post by the eastern wall.

  “Not… ever,” Francisco said. “Always in a palace, in Setarsia or here.”

  “I see,” Asiel said.

  Francisco shifted on top his stallion, knotting his fingers in its silky mane. His eyes drifted to the temple, which had been mostly pulled down. On a wide wooden platform, a black scaffold stood before its steps. A man’s form swung from it.

  Francisco pulled his cloak closer around himself, feeling cold suddenly.

  “Your Majesty is deep in thought,” Asiel remarked, tethering Francisco’s horse to the same post and extending his clammy hand.

  Absentmindedly, Francisco grasped it with his gloved one and slipped off his horse. Asiel wrapped an arm around Francisco. Stroking his shoulder, he moved Francisco through a wooden doorframe into a room in the eastern wall. Francisco turned.

  “I want to see the market.”

  “I have something you will prefer.”

  “But please, I enjoy—”

  “This is better, my prince, much better.”

  Asiel steered Francisco through the room, which contained an upset table and two jugs on the floor. Now Francisco was in a narrow hallway where shafts of sunlight stole through skinny, glassless windows to his right. At the end of the hallway, Asiel produced a tiny key from his tattered robe. They stood before a heavy wooden door with the smallest of locks. Asiel inserted the key, twisted it, and leaned on the curved handle, pushing the door open. A shriek startled Francisco and he leapt back.

  From within, an almost inarticulate female voice screamed, “Leave me alone! I told you, never come back!”

  “Haven’t I always treated you with the greatest of honor?” Asiel said in mock indignation.

  A sob was his only answer.

  “Come and look, my prince,” Asiel said, as if he were displaying some wild animal. His hand closed on Francisco’s coat and drew him forward.

  “What is it?” Francisco said curiously, moving into the doorway.

  The room was bare except for an old blanket against the left wall, and an upturned bowl on the floor. Against the back wall, a young woman in a torn dress cowered. A net of yellow hair obscured her face, which was smudged with dirt and streaked with tears.

  Her green eyes met Francisco’s. Her neck shot upward, and her muscles tightened.

  “You!” she shouted. “What are you in pretty clothes for? Did you side with them?” She lowered voice. “I hate you. You’re the reason my father left me for days at a time. You’re the reason he hangs yonder.” She raised a shaking arm and pointed at the left wall.

  “Ah, what is this?” Asiel hissed at her words. “Speak to her, my prince. Perchance we will hear more.”

  Cold realization dawned on Francisco. He stumbled backward, only to discover Asiel behind him. Asiel gripped his shoulders with bony hands. The Ashurite had somehow guessed Francisco’s interest in Wynne and deliberately indulged the prince’s curiosity, because he knew his father would never have allowed it.

  And Rafen’s safety was at stake.

  “Let me go!” Francisco cried, struggling fiercely. He had to escape before Wynne said his brother’s name.

  “I’m glad you’re caught too,” Wynne said bitterly. “You understand what it’s like for me now.”

  Francisco broke free of Asiel’s grasp, ducked down, and darted through his legs, almost becoming caught on his robe. Asiel yelled and whirled around, whipping a curved nhanya sword from his robes. Kesmal erupted from the nhanya’s blade with a crack. Francisco rushed down the hallway, flew through the entry room, and flung himself out of the eastern wall, crashing into his stallion. Within, wood splintered as Asiel’s kesmal struck the upset table.

  Unknotting the rope that tethered his horse to the post, Francisco leapt onto the stirrup and threw himself into the saddle. Some peasants nearby had paused in their examination of a merchant’s apples to watch his frenzy.

  “Fly, fly, fly!” Francisco shouted in Tarhian, hammering the horse’s flanks with his boots.

  The horse shot toward the open city gates. Surprised Tarhian soldiers scattered before the stallion’s hooves as Francisco urged it to go faster. His first impulse was to ride for the palace. Yet he knew his father would not be welcoming to him after his excursion. He swung his horse around toward the Woods, willing himself to believe he would be safer there.

  Behind him, pursuing hoof beats sounded. Asiel was not far behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Talmon Tricked

  “I can’t be bothered catching these fish,” Sherwin complained.

  “I thought it was Lillian Gish,” Rafen said.

  Sherwin beamed.

  “’ey, yer gettin’ the hang of this.”

  Rafen and Sherwin were by the river again, though in a different part of the Woods. Rafen had caught another shiny, blue-green shad with his bare hands. Sherwin’s fifth attempt had failed. He was wet from the neck down, something Rafen marveled at, as he was only wet to his elbows.

  “Be careful,” Rafen said, looking at his dripping friend. “It’s still cold. You might get sick.”

  “Yeah, yer would know, mister croaky voice,” Sherwin said.

  Watching his third fish flip-flop on the wet, snowy bank, Rafen lay on his back and smiled with satisfaction. Ahain twitched impatiently near him, waiting for Rafen’s permission to eat.

  Rafen was enjoying Sherwin’s company more and more of late. He couldn’t remember if he had ever had a friend his own age a
nd gender before. At first, he had behaved like a spoiled brat around Sherwin, like Richard Patrick would have if he were forced to befriend someone. Now, Rafen would rather die than be without the companionship. He thanked Zion for Sherwin every day.

  “Raf,” Sherwin said. He sat cross-legged on the slushy snow, staring with envy at the frantic fish.

  “Hmm?”

  “When are we going to the city to get Erasmus?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, sitting up, his smile fading. “I’ve been trying to think of a plan. After that, we will search for Alexander. I can’t wait any longer, Sherwin. It’s been about ten weeks.”

  Sherwin watched him with concern. “Fair enough. So ’ow are we going to get Erasmus back?”

  “We have to get into the city, probably jump into the back of some merchant’s caravan. And then we’ll need a diversion – I want a wagon. You’d have to get that. Then I’d have to get Erasmus. And I have to make sure I’m not seen. We also need to rescue Wynne, if I can find out where she is.”

  “Not meaning to be rude,” Sherwin interrupted, “but I have no idea how yer going to do this.”

  “I’ll make it work,” Rafen said forcefully, sitting up. A thought occurred to him. “Sherwin, are you ever afraid? I mean, we’re about to try this, and afterward, we’ll be fighting for Siana.”

  Sherwin swallowed. “I’m okay.”

  “Really?” Rafen probed. “This isn’t your world or your country.” He paused before continuing in a softer voice. “If you don’t want to fight, I understand.”

  “I want to fight!” Sherwin said, turning to him, obviously offended. “Really, I do. Naw, Raf, yer don’ need to talk like tha’ to me.”

  “You might die.”

  Rafen’s words chilled him, because it was true of both of them.

  “I know,” Sherwin said. “I often wonder wha’ would ’appen if I died ’ere – if I’d jus’ revert to me normal world, or if I’d be gone for good. But, Raf, seriously. Yer act like this world and this country mean nothin’ to me. Yer wrong. Yer forget I said I belong ’ere. I feel as much for this country as yer do. I’m meant to be fightin’ at yer side, yer know. Sure, I’m scared. Innit everyone? But I’d rather live a full life ’ere than a ’alf life back where I came from.”