A grand and gracious lady, Meesha mused, but a woman I could never be. I could never bear such submission. I shall never marry.
Tolak waited alone in front of the large doors that opened to the outer hall. Stókenhold Fortress had no slaves, bonded servants, courtiers, or the military presence one would expect in a manse of royal blood. Tolak had been allowed to bring his steward and favored staff from Blackthorn, but otherwise, Stókenhold Fortress was kept by hirelings from the village—a kitchen staff, maids, stablemen, groundsmen, and a few private guardsmen. King Orsis-Kublan had boasted it was “an act of great benevolence” to allow a man shamed and exiled to have servants at all, even if the man had once been called a son.
The kingsmen assigned to the prison were quartered in the oldest part of the fortress and isolated from the main complex.
Tolak and his family understood that, besides looking after the prison, the keepers were there to spy and report and enforce the privation of exile as suited the king.
Exile of a royal person to an obscure province or humiliating circumstances was deemed, by tradition, a more acceptable punishment for dissent and disloyalty than prison or execution. There were no bars on Tolak’s chamber, and he and members of the family were free to come and go as they pleased within the dominion of Westgarten, but they were always watched. It was rarely spoken, but everyone understood that Tolak and his family were prisoners of the king.
Meesha waited with her mother and Valnor’s wife, Sarina. Valnor had married Sarina on the day she had turned sixteen. Tolak had arranged the marriage without the blessing of House Kublan. Valnor and Sarina had already been acquainted, and their love had flourished. Now she was pregnant with her third child. Meesha knew Valnor loved his two little girls, but she also knew her brother wanted the new child to be a boy. She reached behind her mother and squeezed Sarina’s hand and offered a reassuring smile. She knew what Sarina was thinking.
I also wish Valnor was here. She longed for the feeling of well-being that came when her brother was close. It was Valnor who kept her hope alive that the great wrongs wrought upon them by the king would be righted and their father redeemed. If such a miracle occurred, Valnor—not Kadesh-Cor—would be heir to the throne, but her brother never spoke of it. Not even to Meesha.
The women waited at the far end of the long table that was set for the lavish banquet. Forty-four places—the count of the expedition—plus three seats of honor for the prince and his two sons.
Victuals were prepared and waiting in the kitchen, ready to be served. Hirelings from the village were working as waitstaff. Ignorant to the intrigues of the highborn, the village girls were aflutter at the prospect of serving the prince of the North and his royal, handsome sons.
Meesha saw two girls peeking from the kitchen with wide, expectant eyes and shook her head. To the lowborn, royal means handsome no matter how ugly.
Meesha looked at her father, who waited at the door. His shoulders were slightly slumped. She felt a rush of anger and left her place at the table. She walked quickly to her father, slipping her hand into the crook of his elbow and standing beside him. She knew it should be Valnor standing beside their father to greet the guests, but he wasn’t there. She didn’t care what people might say. Her father looked old and tired, and she wanted to put her arm around him.
He didn’t look at her or speak, but a flicker of a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth at her touch.
The rattling of armor and a commotion of voices echoed from the hall. Meesha fixed her eyes on the doorway as the moon moths took flight once again. And then she had a strange and unexpected thought. Will he be among them? The man in the chariot?
CHAPTER 31
Sargon was hidden from Meesha’s sight as the visitors entered the room. Tolak stepped forward to greet Kadesh-Cor and his sons, and Sargon appeared from behind his father. He was no taller than she. His hair was a rage of flaxen curls. His face was a bit puffy but clean-shaven and as pallid as the bottom of Meesha’s feet. The whites of his eyes had a taint of yellow. His face was well-proportioned and not unattractive, but there was something unpleasant about the way his brows were fixed in a perpetual scowl of arrogant condescension.
Meesha had an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. She was shaken by the feeling she had been here before, in this precise moment, but it was as if she were in a dream. She saw Sargon’s eyes flit to the dark side of her face, then away. As salutations were exchanged and introductions made, Kadesh-Cor’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of her head.
“Do you remember your nephew Princeling Sargon, son of Kadesh-Cor, of House Kublan?” Kadesh-Cor spoke to Meesha, but his scornful smile was aimed at Tolak when he spoke the name of their common house.
Meesha clenched her jaw to suppress the surge of contempt she felt.
“Oh, how could I forget my dear, sweet half nephew Sargon?” Meesha’s words dripped with dark honey, and before her good sense could stop her, she stepped forward, gripped his face between her hands, and kissed him on both cheeks as was tradition. But Meesha went far beyond tradition. She held his cheek against the marked side of her face until he jerked back in shock and dismay.
In some strange collision of emotions, the horror on his face was softened by the fluttering of his eyes and what, for a moment, was a dazzled look of infatuation.
“And what does pretty Meesha think?”
They sat in their places around the long table. Sargon’s voice rose above the drone of conversation.
Meesha found little interest in trivial bantering. Her thoughts drifted to the tower where she remembered standing at the crenelations of the east wall and looking down at a man with the iron collar of a slave around his neck. He was not among the few who came to the hall with the prince. Why would he be? He is a slave. The sound of her name brought her back.
“Meesha?” It was her father. “Sargon posed a question for you.”
Meesha looked to where the grinning princeling sat in his place of honor at the end of the table.
“Your opinion? It would please me to hear your thoughts on such matters. I have particular interest in the opinion of a lady of such grace and beauty.” Sargon’s flirty compliment was tainted by sarcasm.
Flirting? How can that be? Meesha shivered at the thought.
Such grace and beauty. Sargon’s words hung in the air. Meesha regretted the impulsive kiss that had invited such familiarity, and yet his flattering words were enticing. And his flirtations? Is that what he intends, or is he more cunning than I and mocks me with subtleties all can see but me? Is he so detested by the girls of Blackthorn he would trifle with a girl who has a face that . . . A knot tightened in her stomach. No. He mocks me. She could not escape the fleeting felicity of flattering words, but favoring anything about Sargon only increased her ire, and she flushed the compliment from her head.
“Meesha?” This time it was her mother. “Please.”
“I’m sorry,” Meesha said. “I fear I was in a lightness of being. What was your question, Sargon?” Her omission of his title was obvious.
Tolak, sitting beside Prince Kadesh-Cor at the end of the table, rescued the moment. “We were discussing the dangers of travel on the King’s Road and—”
“No!” Kadesh-Cor cut him off with a sharp gesture. “You misunderstand me. There are dangers for commoners and peasants, but I and my companions travel without the slightest concern for the lowborn riffraff.”
Meesha noted that each time Tolak spoke, Kadesh-Cor interrupted to oppose his point of view or tell him he was wrong. The thick discord between them was palpable. There was tension in every twitch of their expressions. Feigned courtesies. Guarded words. Pretended interest in the vacuous conversation.
Her elder half brother hardly looked at Katasha, and when he did, their eyes met for only a moment. Katasha smiled, but Kadesh-Cor flushed and looked away.
Meesha knew her fathe
r had hoped for some small measure of reconciliation, but none seemed likely. Since the visitors had arrived not a single word had been spoken about what was painfully obvious. Meesha’s loathing of Prince Kadesh-Cor and his sons worsened.
“You travel with a great company,” Meesha said, flitting her eyes to her father for approval. “What bandit would be brave enough to attack a royal expedition of House Kublan traveling under the protection of the king?” She spoke the name of House Kublan as if it were rotted cabbage. As an afterthought, she glanced at the captain of the kingsriders accompanying the expedition and added, “And under the protection of the notorious kingsriders.” Her smile made it sound like a compliment.
Tolak’s forehead wrinkled as he raised his brows and looked at Katasha. She used a napkin to cover a smile.
Meesha locked eyes with the burly captain without intending to. Ill-mannered as it was to stare, she could not pull her eyes away. He was a rough-looking man with a history of violence written on his face in ragged scars.
“Not by our choice,” Sargon glanced at his father for validation. “We’ve a large enough company and are able to protect ourselves without the kingsriders.”
Meesha saw the captain’s contempt for Sargon. He was likely the worst of men, but in their mutual contempt for the pampered princeling, they were kindred souls.
Tolak broke the uncomfortable silence and spoke to the prince. “Indeed, and we await the men of your company with high expectations. I trust they are hungrier than we.” He laughed softly and touched his stomach. “I am eager to call for the food. Will they join us soon?”
“Is that why we sit before empty plates?” Kadesh-Cor scolded. “All who are coming are here. By the gods, be a gracious host and call for the food. We are famished.”
“As are the men of your company, I am sure.” Tolak smiled. “The moment they take their place at our table, we shall begin. There is a fine feast prepared, despite our circumstances.”
Kadesh-Cor pushed his chair back from the table and scowled at Tolak. “You expect us to share the table with those who accompany us as servants?”
“Whatever the status, caste, or station of the men of your expedition, m’lord prince”—the title was clearly bitter on his tongue—“to us they are travelers on the King’s Road, no one of them better or worse than another, and by custom they are entitled to my hospitality. We have invited them, and they are welcome to my table.” Tolak gestured toward the thirty-three empty places at the long table. “We have prepared for all.”
Kadesh-Cor’s lips soured in a sneer. “Why do you persist in this stubborn stupidity? Have you learned nothing? You grow more foolish as your years slip away.” He extended his hands, palms up, like a parent perplexed by a pouting child. “The privilege of royal blood is ours by the will of the gods. It is as old as the earth and will continue ten thousand years after your body is burned and the saga of Tolak, son of Kublan, the man who might have been king, is forgotten. Your contempt for the rule of kings makes you nothing more than a naked fool wallowing through a thicket of blackthorns.”
Kadesh-Cor leaned forward with one hand on the table. “Despite what you may think, I have not come without purpose. We have much to talk about.” He took a deep breath, visibly trying to calm himself.
Meesha felt a surge of hope. Perhaps they had finally come to what was important above all else. The reconciliation of father and son. A healing of old wounds. For her father’s sake, she hoped it would be so.
“My grandfather has sent a message that I wish to discuss with you in private.” He paused before continuing. “I wish to speak to you as . . . as your firstborn, if only you will show some deference to . . .” Kadesh-Cor stood up and waved his arms as if his unspoken words were a swarm of bees. “Pray, call for the food and let us feast as family, and then we may retire as men to talk about things of importance.” There was a rumbling of tankards hammering the table as was the tradition of Blackthorn.
Tolak nodded and raised his hand. The steward came quickly to the table. “Please ask the cook to have the trenchers placed and the platters prepared to serve. Have the servers take their places.”
Kadesh-Cor smiled and nodded to his company.
“And shall we bring the food, m’lord Tolak?” the steward asked.
“In the very instant the rest of our guests arrive.”
Meesha was suddenly aware that her mouth gaped open and closed it. She had never loved her father more. Had this been his intention from the beginning? Was this why Tolak insisted in hosting his son? Meesha felt certain that it was. Was it better that he yield to the demands of Kadesh-Cor in the hopes of reconciliation or for him to remain firm in his convictions? She knew the answer. Words tumbled out of her mouth before she thought them through.
“I’ve yet to answer your question, dear half nephew Sargon,” she said, her eyebrows raised and her eyes bright, “I am eager to meet the men who keep you safe from the bandits on the King’s Road. Perhaps you should run and fetch them?”
Sargon slammed his palm on the table in a concussion of rattling pewter and stood up. “What insolence is this! My father is prince of the North and heir to the throne. The men of our company are unworthy to sit at a table with him. With any of us! Even you”—he pointed a shaking finger at Tolak—“disgraced and dishonored as you are!”
It was only a flashing thought, but Meesha imagined leaping to the table with her sword and closing the princeling’s arrogant mouth with the point of her blade at the end of his nose.
“The men who drive the wagons and carry our burdens are lowborn,” Sargon continued. “Drudges, gillies, drovers, and servants. Even slaves.”
Slaves! An iron collar. A bared chest and rippling muscles, glimmering with sweat. Meesha saw him again in her mind’s eye and gasped a short breath. The corset is the cause of it, she lied to herself to justify the flutter in her stomach.
Sargon wasn’t finished. “If you feed a lowborn a leg of roasted swan with butter and sweet cloves when his gut is used to eating bread crusts and pork rinds, he’ll retch for a week.” Sargon’s vulgar imagery stirred a ripple of laughter.
Kadesh-Cor growled at Sargon. “Sit down.”
Sargon sank into his chair, his pallid skin tainted with a flush of pink. Chor, the older son, was more like his father than his brother, and his chagrin at the blathering of his younger brother was telling.
Kadesh-Cor inhaled deeply then turned to Tolak. “Those seated at your table are the only guests you shall accommodate this night.”
Meesha scanned the company present. The six Huszárs were seated at the table, including the exuberant lad who rode with them. Horsemaster Raahud and the kingsriders sat farthest from the hosts. Beyond them the places were empty.
“And I, once again, welcome you to Stókenhold,” Tolak said. “I regret that you disregard the tradition of the King’s Road and refuse the conditions of our hospitality, but none shall eat at my table unless all who are hungry are fed. Pray, call for the men of your company to join us.”
Kadesh-Cor clenched his jaw. “I have sent them to quarter with your keepers of the prison. They shall be fed there.”
Meesha was certain Kadesh-Cor knew her father had no access or influence over the keepers consigned to watch after the prison. She also knew that quartering with the keepers meant the men of the company would be bedded down in the old stables that lay a level below on the southwest side.
As youngsters, she and Valnor had explored the lost and forgotten corners of the old fortress. She knew the discomfort the drivers, drovers, and reinsman—and the man in the iron collar—would suffer in the old stables. From the tower they were nobles in a royal parade. To the prince and his arrogant boy they were little more than the animals that pulled the wagons. Will the keepers share their ration of food, or will they feed the company rotting fruits and spoiled meat?
“The keepers are il
l-prepared to feed such a throng,” Tolak offered, as if hearing Meesha’s thoughts. “Your animals will go hungry as well as your men. Let us feed the men of your company here at my table and send our stablemen to help with your horses.”
“The men are cared for.” Kadesh-Cor pointed at the steward. “Bring us the food.”
Tolak shook his head.
The steward stood as still as an iron post.
“It is not a suggestion,” Kadesh-Cor bellowed at the steward. “It is a command of the prince of the North and heir to the Peacock Throne. Are you fool enough to defy a royal command at the bidding of this man who is without kingdom, rank, or honor?”
“A man in exile is a kingdom unto himself,” Tolak said.
The only sound was the dripping of water and fire that crackled at the far end of the hall.
Tension filled the room like smoke. Meesha held her breath.
Were it not for his thumb thumping the wooden table in cadence with the echoing drip drip drip, Kadesh-Cor might have been a statue of an ancient king. After a time, he rose to his feet. “Is it any wonder our omnipotent and sovereign king disavowed your blood and sent you here?” His nostrils flared with noisy breathing.
Tolak rubbed his neck in sudden weariness. “There are none here who will heed your command unless put to the sword. Surely even you would not act so shamefully.”
Meesha caught the contemptuous smirk on the captain’s lips. When she looked at Kadesh-Cor, it was evident he’d seen it as well. Every eye was upon him. His face flushed. Heat and hubris rushed to his head. He drew his sword and laid the point of it against Tolak’s chest.
Katasha gasped and brought her hand to her lips. The captain of the kingsriders shook his head at the prince’s foolish action and moved his own hand to his sword. The Huszárs turned to stone.
Tolak stiffened but showed no fear, even though he bore no weapon.
“You misjudge my willingness to enforce a royal command.” Kadesh-Cor jutted his chin, but his voice wavered.
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