by Tanya Huff
“It will be followed by wealth and power.” Olina traced the carved sunburst in the arm of her chair, her eyes half closed as she thought of how close success lay to hand. The end of isolation. The end of near barbarism. Although the woodworker had likely not intended it as such, the sunburst was a symbol of the Havakeen Empire. The first Emperor started with less. “I will control the only route between West and East Cemandia. Any merchants desiring to use their newly acquired access to the sea trade must travel through Ohrid and will have to pay dearly for the privilege.”
“Every merchant,” Lukas repeated, his tongue appearing between beard and mustache to wet his lips.
She could see him adding up the possibilities. He’d had a taste of power over this last quarter and wouldn’t be willing to give it up. Nor would he be likely to realize that her plans were a great deal more complicated than she’d allowed him to see and that they included the removal of Lukas a’Tynek the moment the dirty work was done. But if he wanted to believe she’d be content operating a tollgate, or more precisely having him operate a tollgate for her, she had no intention of correcting him.
“But His Grace,” he began hesitantly, a wary eye on her reaction, “the duc—that is the last duc—was executed for agreeing to open the pass to Cemandia.”
“And what does that have to do with the current situation?” Olina asked him, steepling her fingers and staring at him over their tips. “Pjerin a’Stasiek broke his oaths. I swore no oaths to Shkoder and neither did you.” No point in mentioning that the duc’s oaths were expected to hold the people as well. “I would have thought you’d prefer a Cemandian overlord.”
Dark spots of color burned on Lukas’ cheeks. “They admit the kigh are not part of the Circle.”
As far as Olina was concerned, Cemandian religious beliefs were of no importance next to their potential for economic exploitation, but she recognized the strength of their influence on the people. Especially after she’d worked so hard behind the scene to promote the usefully bigoted opinions of her new steward.
Lukas leaned forward, his eyes darting from side to side. Olina wondered if he were searching the room for hidden listeners or if it were the habitual action of a thoroughly unpleasant man that she’d just never noticed before. “There are still those,” he said softly, “who will not want Cemandian rule.”
“Really?” She sat back in her chair. “Do you know their names?”
“Yes, Lady.” Lukas took an eager step towards her. “I heard Nincenc i’Celestin say the Cemandians were an intolerant bunch of superstitious louts and he’d personally remove them from the Circle if they set foot on his land and Dasa i’Ales said she wished there were more bards and …”
The list was surprisingly short. Without a leader to continuously remind them that Cemandia was the enemy and with Cemandia pouring money and goods into Ohrid, most of the people really didn’t care. After all, what had Shkoder done for them lately except execute one duc and run off with another? The moment she had Theron safely in the keep and it no longer mattered what the kigh reported to him, she’d have Lukas arrange accidents for those too shortsighted to see where their best interests lay. If it could look like the kigh were involved, so much the better.
“I want you to speak to …” She paused and considered the numbers that Stasya had said were accompanying the king. Forty people on horseback, crammed into the outer court could easily be taken care of by half that number. “… twenty of those who have no wish to see Ohrid remain a backwater province of a tiny country. Archers may bring their bows, but I will arm the rest.” Albek’s crossbows and quarrels were still in the armory. “The moment that King Theron’s party is sighted at the end of the valley, they’re to come to the keep. Once His Majesty has been disarmed, he will be held until the Cemandian army arrives.
“I don’t want the kigh reporting a plot to His Majesty, so you will speak to these people in ones and twos and have them come to the keep individually—keeping weapons covered. Once they’re here, it will matter less what the kigh tell him as he’ll be expecting a crowd to gather.
“When Theron is safely in my control, I will speak to the people of Ohrid, tell them we have the chance to prevent a long and bloody war and profit immediately from the proper use of the pass.”
Lukas left off nodding his continual agreement to look suddenly frightened. “But Lady, King Theron’s bard will tell the bards in the capital.”
“Where they have been left leaderless and in complete disarray. Helpless before the army that will roll down on them out of the mountains.” Olina smiled and stood. “I have planned this too well for it to fail.”
* * * *
Pjerin stared out at the village, the Ducal sword an unaccustomed weight at his hip, betrayal a greater weight on his heart. How many did Olina have? How many were willing to bow their necks under the Cemandian yoke? Shkoder may have been less than willing to spend coin in principalities with so little chance of return, but at least it had left them free; something Cemandia would not do.
His hand closed around an obscuring branch and he savagely shoved it down out of his way.
The keep, built to ensure the independence of the first duc and his people, tested by steel and blood in the time of both the second duc and the third, would become no more than a way station for fat merchants traveling to the sea. A city would grow at the mercy of trade; dependent, parasitic, vulnerable. His people would labor for Cemandian overlords, ape Cemandian ways, subscribe to Cemandian beliefs. Priests would come and build a Center and children who showed any ability to Sing the kigh would be ripped from their mothers’ embrace and put to the sword.
Ohrid would exist only at Cemandian suffrage. Better it be destroyed before that. The end would be cleaner if the mountains themselves rose up and crushed it, earth and stone wiping it from the map.
The sudden crack of the branch breaking shattered the dusk, cutting off the evening song of birds and frogs. A crow broke out of the canopy high overhead, hoarsely screaming a protest, ebony wings beating against a sapphire sky. Pjerin could feel Annice’s glare in the prickling of the skin between his shoulder blades. He ignored it.
After a moment, he made his way to where she sat, Gerek sprawled half asleep over what was left of her lap, horse and mule stripping the underbrush of green and tender plants. They’d pass a sheepfold on their way to the village where they’d leave the animals. With lambing over, the fold would be empty, but there’d be food and water and a stout door to bar against predators.
“We’ll wait until full dark,” he said softly, dropping to the ground by Annice’s side. “Most of the villagers will be asleep by then; morning comes soon enough at this time of the year.”
“Your people work hard,” Annice murmured as Gerek resettled himself on his father’s lap.
“We aren’t like lowlanders. We depend on no one.” Pjerin traced the curve of Gerek’s cheek with the back of one finger, the gentle motion a direct contrast to the edge in his voice.
“Maybe they work a little harder than they need to.”
“What are you talking about?”
Annice pushed a kigh away from her belly. “Granted,” she said thoughtfully, “that neither my most royal father nor His Majesty, Theron, King of Shkoder, High Captain of the Broken Islands, and so on, and so on, have exactly beat a path into the mountains, but neither have you done anything to remind them of their obligations. You don’t take the seat you’re entitled to on the council, nor do you send someone to represent you. You sit up here with your head in the clouds and you say, if they don’t want us, then we don’t want them.”
“You weren’t exactly unwelcomed,” he growled.
“Because you didn’t have to do anything to get me here. There’s a whole wide world out there, Pjerin. Why not make an effort to be a part of it?”
“I take care of my people.”
She nodded. “I know. And now you’re being replaced by the entire Cemandian nation.”
The weigh
“No.” The denial was almost Sung, impossible to disbelieve. “But I think that when you’ve dealt with what she’s done, you might consider why she did it.”
His lip curled up off his teeth. “I don’t need a lecture from you, Annice, not about the choices I’ve made. You haven’t always chosen wisely yourself, have you?”
Annice regarded him levelly, wincing slightly as the baby stretched. “I don’t regret a single decision I’ve made,” she told him.
His brows rose. “Not even spending ten years isolated from your family?”
“That wasn’t my choice,” she snapped, slapping at an insect, all at once not so eager to meet his gaze.
“Wasn’t it?” Pjerin asked bluntly. “I don’t recall you meeting anyone halfway. If they didn’t want you,” he added, “you didn’t want them.”
Annice started as he threw her own words back at her. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?” Tucking Gerek more securely into the curve of his arm, he stood. “Maybe we both have something to think about.”
Ignoring the kigh leaning against her hip, she watched as he settled the boy onto the mare’s saddle. Still only half awake, Gerek clung to the saddlehorn and blinked owlishly into the night. When he turned back to her and held out his hand, she hesitated for a moment, then laid her fingers across his palm. He pulled her to her feet. She held on a moment longer.
“Maybe,” she said, “you’re right.”
Pjerin’s smile was a flash of ivory in the darkness, his lips a warm pressure against the top of her head. “Don’t strain anything,” he advised.
* * * *
Candlelight flickered through an open window on the far side of the village, the only evidence that anyone remained awake in all of Ohrid.
“Dasa i’Ales,” Pjerin murmured. “She’d like to be a poet. While she’s creating, you could walk right past her singing at the top of your lungs and she wouldn’t notice.”
“I remember her,” Annice murmured back. She’s terrible. But she kept that opinion to herself as she had no desire to challenge the protective note in Pjerin’s voice. This was his land. These were his people.
Bohdan’s daughter’s house was very nearly in the middle of the village. The three of them picked their way carefully toward it—the moon, a day off full, lighting their path, the wind pushing at their backs.
“The dogs need to catch our scent,” Pjerin explained quietly as they passed the first of the gabled stone buildings. “They need to recognize who we are, then they’ll know there’s no reason to give the alarm.”
“Every dog in the village knows you?” Annice whispered incredulously.
“Dogs like Papa,” Gerek piped up, much refreshed by his nap. “And me.” He frowned. “Hope Dasa’s geese aren’t out.”
In many ways, geese were better sentries than dogs. They couldn’t be bribed and they didn’t like anyone.
“If they are …” Pjerin reached down and laid a cautionary finger across his son’s lips. “Annice will sing them a lullaby.”
Annice rolled her eyes. “I don’t do lullabies for geese,” she muttered.
Pjerin’s voice buzzed against her ear. “You do now.”
A few steps farther and a half a dozen of the village dogs raced out to meet them; ears up, tongue lolling, and great plumed tails beating at the night air. Gerek, being closer to the ground, had his face thoroughly licked. One of the dogs went into such ecstasy at Pjerin’s touch that it made a nuisance of itself and finally had to be told sternly—but quietly—to go home.
Fortunately, the geese were conspicuous only by their absence.
When they reached Bohdan’s daughter’s house, Pjerin lifted the latch and silently swung open the heavy door. The odor of roast pork permeated the building; obviously they’d just culled one of the suckling pigs before weaning the litter and sending them out to the forest with the village swineherd for Second Quarter foraging. Annice couldn’t decide whether the smell—a familiar one at this time in the year—made her feel hungry or sick.
Holding a clog in each hand for it was impossible to move quietly wearing them, she followed Pjerin and Greek down the main room of the house to a pair of doors set off center in the far wall. The polished planks of the floor felt strange after earth under her feet for so long.
It appeared that Pjerin was having trouble deciding which room Bohdan slept in. Annice sighed and pointed to the left-hand door. The door on the right, set farther from the outside wall, defined a larger room. Logically, because Bohdan’s daughter and her partner would need a larger bed, they’d have to have the greater amount of space. When he continued to look doubtful, she pushed forward and opened the door herself. They didn’t have time for this.
A high, narrow bed stretched the entire length of the left wall. At its foot, the thick stone wall of the cottage held a small hearth—which shared a chimney with the other bedchamber—and a narrow window. The single shutter had been left open and the moonlight painted silver-white highlights across the bed.
The man in the bed was old, his body barely lifting the blankets draped over him. His cheeks had sunk on both sides of a jutting nose where the flesh had wasted off the arc of bone. Yellowed parchment stretched over the dome of his head. His eyes were deep in shadow, untouched by the moonlight. The one hand resting outside the quilt looked translucent, veins and knuckles swollen through the thin skin.
Pjerin couldn’t believe that Bohdan had aged so much in such a short time. When he’d been falsely accused, when the guards had taken him away, his steward had been elderly, yes, but vigorous. A man, if not in his prime, equally not in his dotage. This ruin appeared one breath from death.
His throat tight, Pjerin touched the old man lightly on the hand.
Gray-lidded eyes flipped open, widened, and then Bohdan’s lips twisted into a smile. His voice echoed the dry rasp of fallen leaves stirred by the wind. “Have you come to take me into the Circle, Your Grace?”
“I’m not dead, Bohdan,” Pjerin told him softly, taking up the skeletal hand in his. “I’m as alive as you are, and I need your help.”
“Alive?” The parchment brow furrowed. “Alive?” Gnarled fingers pulled free and crept up the younger man’s arm. Breathing heavily, he dragged his hand across the broad chest so that it rested over Pjerin’s heart. Rheumy eyes filled with tears. “Alive.”
Seventeen
Bohdan’s daughter, Rozyte, set down the wooden platter of bread, cold pork, and cheese on the table, then slid onto the bench beside her partner. Her eyes locked on Pjerin, Duc of Ohrid, she pushed the platter toward Annice and in a low voice instructed her to eat.
Annice picked at the food, too tense with worry about Stasya to be hungry.
“I’m sorry to be of so little help, Your Grace,” Bohdan sighed. Discovering the duc he loved had not betrayed him had erased years from the ruin they’d found in the bed, but he still looked old and tired. Scrawny shoulders rose and fell in a disappointed shrug. “I’ve been sick. I don’t get out.” He sighed again. “I would like to think that the whole village would stand behind you, our rightful lord, but …”
“But?” Pjerin prodded when the old steward paused.
“But most people would rather be ruled by Cemandia than Shkoder,” Rozyte answered.
Pjerin’s face grew dark. “Ruled?”
Rozyte raised a cautioning hand. “Your Grace, please, don’t wake the children. I can only tell you what I’ve overheard.”
“But Shkoder doesn’t rule in Ohrid,” Annice pointed out, her tone only slightly less sharp than Pjerin’s had been. “The treaty is a partnership. Ohrid guards the pass and has access to Shkoder’s greater resources. Shkoder gains security and provides Ohrid with those things it hasn’t the size or population to acquire on its own. All five principalities retained their independence.”
“We have not overly benefited from that partnership,” Rozyte replied shortly. “But since His Grace has been presumed dead, Cemandian traders have done very well by us.”
“Cemandian traders have bought you!” Pjerin spat. Annice closed her fingers around his arm, and he settled back onto the bench, seething.
“We were without your leadership, Your Grace,” Rozyte’s partner, Sarline, spoke for the first time.
Pjerin nodded a tight acknowledgment of her words, but Annice heard the shadow of another meaning and took a long look across the scarred planks of the table. Sarline pushed a graying braid back over her shoulder and pointedly refused to meet the bard’s gaze.
“Olina will close the keep if she finds out I’m alive.” He pronounced his aunt’s name like he hated the taste of it in his mouth. “A siege will place us and His Majesty—when he arrives—right in the path of the Cemandian army.”
“But, Your Grace,” Bohdan protested, “we don’t know for certain there will be an army.”
Pjerin laid both hands flat on the table. “Olina knows what capturing King Theron will mean to a Cemandian invasion.”
“Granted,” the old steward allowed, “but how would Cemandia find out that His Majesty was arriving in Ohrid?”
“Rozyte said that Olina’s new toy left for home just after Stasya arrived. No doubt she sent a message with him.”
“But, Your Grace, to change the course of an army he would have to gain access to the throne and he was only a mountebank.”
“He was Albek.”
All five adults at the table swiveled to stare at Gerek standing in the door to Bohdan’s room.
Rozyte shook her head. “Simion was nothing like Albek,” she said sternly. “Father asked me to check when he arrived, Gerek. The two were very different.”
“They had different hair and different clothes,” Gerek snorted. “But the person was the same.”
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