“Everyone knows women are subordinate to male heirs in Brîn.”
“But not so in Akrasia. Nor Monoea, if they’re trying to set my daughter as Queen. And Brîn is not under her own control.”
Geffen studied him, and his eyes, and shifted her attention to Aarinnaie. “You’ll need an escort.”
“I’ll go,” Osias said.
Draken turned his head, surprised.
“The Queen would have made use of me if she wanted. And I think I’m better off with the Szirin, don’t you think?”
Draken nodded in relief. Osias would keep her from doing anything too foolhardy.
The next morning as the Akrasians broke camp and the troops stretched out over the grassy marches, Aarinnaie, Osias, and an Escort hand-picked by Geffen fell behind until Draken glanced back and they were no longer in view. Even should Ilumat notice in time for him to catch up, he would be hard-pressed to work out where she was going.
“Have you ever known Aarinnaie to not get her way, Captain?” Draken asked at length.
Tyrolean shook his head. “No, my lord. Never.”
“Good enough, then.”
Bruche chuckled mirthlessly. As good as it’s bound to get.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The next evening found Draken sitting with a mismatched collection of servii around a cooking fire awaiting a meal. He toyed with Sikyra’s horse, wishing he had a bit of sand to smooth the rough spot on the tail. His muscles were weary from another long day plodding along on Bumpus.
“Looks a meager meal.” A servii leaned over the pot and reached for a ladle.
The cook smacked her hand away. “Aye, well, hunting wouldn’t kill you.”
“Naught to be found on this Grassland but Ashen,” she said, backing off with a good-natured grin. They’d had a skirmish earlier that day and left the Ashens’ bodies strung up on trees for carrion and a warning. That bit hadn’t sat right with Draken, but he said nothing of it then or now. The Queen had given the order and even Ilumat hesitated at contradicting her during these long, hard days on the road.
Another packed an old cracked pipe with eventide and lifted his blackened eyes to her face. “Should’ve cut their cocks off to toss in the pot.”
“It’d take a bloody lot of them to feed us,” she retorted. It amused Bruche, causing even Draken to quirk a grin.
Ilumat strode to the fire and glowered down at Draken. “Where is my wife?”
It took most of Draken’s will to not let his smile widen. “Hiding, I imagine, my lord. She’s none too keen on marriage, if you’ve noticed.”
“You did something with her.”
Draken snorted. “She was wandering off for days at a time well before I came along and if you’d bothered to get to know her before you married her, you’d have realized she’s not going to stop for the likes of you.”
The servii had fallen silent around them.
Ilumat’s pale face whitened further, his lips in a tight line. His hand found his sword, curled around the engraved hilt. Draken didn’t move. Seaborn was slung on his back for ease of sitting, and he wasn’t about to make so grand a gesture as reaching for it. As hot as his temper ran whenever he considered Ilumat, as satisfying as it would be to spill his blood, Sikyra was worth staying the urge.
“You will speak to the Queen with me,” Ilumat said.
Draken didn’t move. “She may send for me any time she likes and I will attend her.”
“Now.”
Draken had a retort ready on his tongue, but Bruche silenced him. He sat still a moment longer, trying to contain the anger flaring through him. Bruche gently chilled him all over, taking subtle control. The swordhand levered him to his feet. Draken sighed and let Bruche guide him, staring at the back of Ilumat’s perfectly coifed head. How in Korde’s name had he managed baths on the march? He knew Elena had servants with her, but surely not Ilumat …
In that he was wrong. The lord had two sundry body slaves. One of them was dumping out said bathwater as they walked by. His dark eyes followed Draken.
He knows you.
Everyone seems to.
Ilumat marched right up to the Queen’s tent and was admitted without a word by the guard. Draken hesitated and then followed. She was eating, but put down her knife as they entered.
“Forgive me for interrupting your meal, Your Majesty,” Ilumat said with a bow.
She nodded to him but let her gaze rest on Draken. He stared back a moment before realizing she must be waiting for him to kneel, though he’d once been given dispensation not to. He lowered himself stiffly to one knee, reminded unpleasantly of his early audiences with Elena and Reavan … who had been Truls under glamour.
It’d be convenient if Ilumat could be proved false.
It doesn’t matter. Elena isn’t interested in truth. She’s only interested in seeing me pay. Which he had no doubt would happen once Sikyra was found safe, and doubly so if she weren’t.
Always making with the good cheer, you are. I often wish you would be more grim and cynical.
Cynicism has kept me alive this far.
My mistake. I thought it was me.
“Draken did something with my wife,” Ilumat said.
“Did something?” the Queen echoed faintly. Her tone gave Draken some hope but Ilumat kept on.
“Killed her. Sent her away. I know not. I only know she is not in this camp.”
Draken shook his head but a glance from Elena quelled the motion.
“You disagree? She is in camp?” Elena asked.
Draken sighed. “I do not disagree, Your Majesty. She is fair gone.”
Ilumat stepped forward, just shy of stomping his boot on Elena’s fine rug. “Out with it. Where is she?”
Draken kept his attention on Elena, her impenetrable mask of royalty, and tried to ignore the stone weighing his stomach. “She has her way of disappearing, this you know, and I have never controlled her.”
“You deign to tell the Queen what she knows?”
“Queen Elena knows much of Aarinnaie. I daresay almost as much as I do. Certainly more than you, my lord. Of course, nearly everyone knows more of Aarinnaie than you.”
“She is my wife.”
Draken snorted. Bravado under Elena’s dark stare. “A formality and one you hardly prepared yourself for.”
“Enough.” Quietly, but Elena silenced Draken.
He bowed his head, then lifted it. “She left. She fears for Reschan, my Queen. She fears for Brîn. She fears I will have no safe path to take Sikyra home, nor home to take her to.”
Elena’s lined eyes narrowed until they appeared shadowed from brow to cheekbone. “Her fears are misguided. You will never take Sikyra anywhere again.”
“Our daughter needs me.”
“Only long enough to see her safely to her mother’s arms,” Ilumat said. “Your usefulness will end in that moment.”
“As yours ended the moment you gave Brîn to the Ashen. Never forget, Ilumat. They do not take nobility as prisoners, only the common soldier. Nobility get their throats cut.”
“Then you should be safe enough in their hands when it comes to it,” Ilumat retorted.
“Do not let him bait you, cousin.” Elena set her knife down. The scent of fresh-cooked meat filled the tent. Draken’s stomach clenched in hunger. “You spoke with Galbrait today. If he said nothing of use, I shall let Ilumat try his own methods.”
Draken’s jaw clenched. He’d wanted the chance to tell her alone. It was dangerous information for Ilumat to have, if he didn’t already. There was nothing for it, though. Ilumat stood rooted as if his claws had unfurled from his boots to grip the very earth he stood upon.
“Algir,” Draken said. “The Ashen plan to mount a new offensive there as soon as thaw allows ships to land. And the Moonlings hope to trade Sikyra there, to send her to Monoea.”
“Why the Moonlings?” Ilumat asked.
Draken ignored him. “You’ve seen their magic, Your Majesty. You know it firsthand
. It was only your quick thinking that allowed you to defeat it when they held you captive.”
Reminding her of that time was a gamble, and one he lost.
“It matters not. We will march on it and put to the blade any person who dares threaten my daughter.”
Draken couldn’t help believing he was included in that statement.
After he was dismissed from likely for the last audience he would ever have with Elena, he went back to the fire and sat with a sigh. There was a slight lull in conversation, a few curious glances. But other than that, the servii were more interested in eating than the doings of royals. He ate his cold food and started walking the camp. Servii nodded to him, and one, rosy-faced from hacking wood, even started to salute before his compatriot pulled his arm down and whispered a few words. Draken made no acknowledgement he saw.
Is it so curious they admire you? You led many of these soldiers in the battle of Auwaer. After a long time of quiet, Bruche’s low voice inside his head startled him.
I nearly fell there. He’d been captured, stabbed, and thrust into the Palisade. Galbrait and the priest Rinwar had used his healing against him to bring down the magical wall around the city. It lay there still, rubble of seeming nothingness in chunks and black dust.
But you didn’t, nor did you allow Auwaer to fall. It is in Akrasian hands yet, and the Queen has you to thank whether she likes it or not.
He snorted and kept walking, wondering how his sister fared. There was no sleep for him that night, so he joined the patrols, watching with his darksight. There had been a few attacks on them, and already he saw Ilumat’s fearful influence. They were guard heavy, enough to make for tired indifference late in the night and leave too many exhausted during the day marches. Draken kept circling the encampment slowly when he realized they perked up a bit at his presence. It wasn’t enough, though, because Ashen slipped through as the last moon was dropping.
Draken’s darksight sharpened as pitch fell over the Grassland, but it was the gurgle of a stabbed man that caught his attention. He rushed for the sound, Bruche drawing Seaborn, but the guard was blue-faced and irretrievably dead while the Ashen loped between the tents. Draken followed, bellowing an alarm. A few sleeping servii rolled from tents and rushed to defense, but there had to be a dozen or more. Shouts broke out from across the encampment, thirty tents away. Draken’s heart sank. This was a multi-pronged attack.
“To the Queen!” Draken shouted even while he ran for where Galbrait slept under guard. They were already at him; Galbrait’s guards fought those who would kill or rescue him. The Ashen were expertly brutal and quick with their seaxes, and had learned the less obvious weaknesses in servii armor kits. Two of his guards fell before Draken could reach them.
Draken had the advantage of a rear approach and knew his enemy’s weaknesses. He slipped Seaborn between grey plates and severed muscle and, catching a rib, focused on detail rather than the broad scene. The Ashen didn’t scream, but lurched free and turned to face him. Then Draken caught the trailing shadow of a bane. He snarled and slashed at the man’s throat. The Ashen tumbled at his feet. The last servii standing took out the other two guards in a driven, expert move that warranted a promotion if Draken had been in a position to give one. Instead he nodded to her and ducked into the tent, bumping heads with Galbrait. Pain lashed through Draken’s cheekbone, but he hauled the prince up and out by his bicep. “Move.”
“Where!?”
Draken didn’t answer. He didn’t know. Bruche had an idea though, and directed him toward the center of camp. Toward the Queen. He stashed Galbrait in a nearby horsemarshal’s tent, not daring to broach hers.
All told, three dozen enemy tried to recapture Galbrait. In the process, eight servii lost their lives. Ilumat cursed their incompetence, but Draken thought it relatively few, especially when he saw the bodies. Some dozen of the attackers were Akrasians, unarmored. He stared down at them, bile rising at the violent waste. They wore the plain clothes of farmers and traders. Nothing marked them as soldiers but their wounds. Three were captured.
The bane-riddled Akrasians had little interest in the Queen and even less in being interrogated, and yet Ilumat gave it a go in a voice pitched to keep everyone in camp awake. Draken’s jaw clenched. The captive Ashen growled in their shackles like animals, trying to lunge through the trampled grasses at anyone who moved, teeth snapping. Servii milled about, trying not to look like they were watching too closely.
“Ruddy bit me, that one did,” a servii nearby said. She lifted her arm to show them her ripped, bloody sleeve.
Two brawny servii held one of the snarling Akrasians down on the ground. Ilumat stepped closer. “Where is your commander? Your encampment?”
The Ashen struggled with inhuman grunts and snarls and tried to stretch and bite, but the servii held firm. Draken sighed. He knew what it felt like to be bane-ridden. There was no reason in these men. “They’re bane-ridden.”
“You were at Brîn during the Battle of Red Moons, my lord?” Not quite a question, but the servii with the bite looked at him expectantly.
Draken raised his brows. He hadn’t heard it called that before. At length he nodded. It was no secret he’d been there when two entire armies tried to slaughter each other. Albeit his view had been limited by a particularly uncomfortable position on the ground with his arms and legs trussed. Galbrait gave him a curious look but Draken didn’t explain.
“You might as well kill him,” Draken said. With no Mance to release him, it was hopeless. He was too far gone.
“He is Akrasian,” Ilumat said.
“He is nothing better a dead man.” Draken tried to keep his voice down, but disapproving murmurs rose around him, spurred by his statement. Akrasians were nothing if not fiercely loyal to their own kind. “Kill him and have done with it.”
Ilumat’s nostrils flared. “No man wants to die.”
“No. But these are not men any longer.”
Ilumat drew his sword. Draken’s fingers twitched. Was Ilumat coming after him? But the swordsman turned back to his captive and held the sword point close to the man’s chin. “Tell me the answers to my questions, traitor, and I’ll spare your life.”
Draken’s stomach turned as the black spirit flowed through the barrier of skin and then snapped back within its confines. The bane turned the Akrasian farmer’s head to look at Draken, then lurched the body at Ilumat’s sword point. It jammed through the man’s throat without giving Ilumat time to react. Blood spurted all over the lord’s fine clothes. He stepped back, breathing hard, pale under Draken’s darksight. The serviis’ cries of shocked dismay battered Draken.
Draken cursed and turned to go.
“Don’t leave my sight. This is your fault. This is—” The rumble of excited conversation swallowed Ilumat’s shouts. Draken kept walking. Ilumat and the Queen were blind in a far worse way than he. Korde would only keep attacking, a diversion that not only slowed them from catching up with the Newseason melt and Sikyra but one that brought the death and mayhem Korde desired. He glanced up at the edge of Ma’Vanni, sliding over the horizon into the deepening dark before dawn, taking her usual path with ambivalence despite all that transpired below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Wall of Algir had broken.
It crawled up into the cold, overcast sky, matching its greyness but for the two great rents in it, as if a godhand had torn stones out and let them crash into rubble below. From careful listening, and by Tyrolean’s estimation, it wasn’t recent enough to attribute to the Ashen, which left many questions. Speculation ran through the army like a bout of sour-gut from bad water. No one suggested the Moonlings. Their diminutive size had everyone fooled against their formidable power. Draken was alone in his suspicion because even Bruche disagreed.
Even from well outside the city, ocean winds swept down over the rugged, rocky steppes to the Akrasian encampment … the final one whence they would launch searches and attacks. They were a bit warmer, thank the gods, with sign
s of Newseason coming on. It had been three sevennight to drag the reluctant footsoldiers to Algir and now that he was here, his worry increased tenfold. There was no sign of Aarinnaie or his soldiers at Khein. She should have moved far quicker than Elena’s army, even with the distance she had to travel. The Kheinians were all on horseback and she had promised to travel light. They should be here.
Unless they had been waylaid by attacks from the Ashen. He cursed himself for sending her and even Bruche didn’t try to disagree.
Exhaustion, dwindling food supply, and increased patrol duties had the whole army on edge. As Draken walked through it the day after they arrived, taking shadowy glances through his blindfold toward the great broken city wall and castle ruins rising over the city and port, he noticed how poorly their encampment was set. Instead of customary neat rows, the tents were staked haphazardly and sometimes with makeshift poles and ropes fixed with knots.
Tyrolean walked with him and Truls drifted behind. Draken saw the ghost-Mance so often he hardly noticed him now. After the incident with the bane, he had hardly slept for watching each night, and Geffen had put her distance between them. Just as well … she must know he was a dangerous ally to have, in more ways than one. Draken’s mood turned surly and tense. This close to the city, all he wanted to do was rush in. Holding himself back for even half a day was agony.
“I need to speak with the Queen,” Draken said.
Tyrolean shook his head. “Is that such a good idea, my lord?”
“My daughter is in that city. I need servii. I need to go after her—” A party riding out toward the city caught his eye. He stared at them, the riders and hills and city beyond hazed by his mask and the stinging late daylight. His strides lengthened for the Queen’s tent.
He expected not to be admitted, but she allowed them. She stood quietly by her maps table, Ilumat by her side. A lantern illuminated the pale, exquisite planes of her face and her armored form.
Draken said nothing, nor did he take a knee. Tyrolean did, at Draken’s side.
“It’s time for me to go in and start to search, Your Majesty.” Her title bit into what little calm he had left and came out clipped.
Enemy Page 34
