Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion)

by James A. West

  Nesaea’s cheeks grew redder, and her eyes squinted to dangerous slits. “Try it, Scorpion, and you’ll find yourself missing your stinger.”

  “I prefer to keep my stinger,” Rathe said dryly, swatting aside her dagger before it could fulfill her promise. Her sword followed, but he had shifted off balance, and for a moment he feared she was about to cleave his arse. At the last instant, she twisted her wrist and spanked him smartly with the flat of her blade.

  The watching crewmen’s roar of approval drew Captain Ostre’s attention. “Get back to work!” The booming command sent them scurrying, and put an end to Rathe and Nesaea’s match.

  Rathe was about to congratulate her efforts, but Nesaea whirled and stalked away, her bare steel flashing dully. He looked after her, bemused.

  “Best let her temper cool, lad,” Captain Ostre said, coming to a halt beside Rathe. For his part, Ostre had the good grace not to say much about the brawl between Loro and Liamas, though he was put out at having his quartermaster bedridden.

  Rathe gave him a questioning look.

  “Might not be obvious to most of these rogues,” Ostre said, absently scratching at his beard, “but I know a spat when I see one.”

  “Spat?” The word strange on Rathe’s tongue. Before Nesaea, there had been plenty of woman who wanted to share a night of passion with the Champion of Cerrikoth, but nothing more.

  “Spat,” Ostre repeated, “lover’s quarrel, call it what you will.”

  “We were sparring,” Rathe said, sliding his blades into their scabbards. “As for Nesaea, she’s angry because she lost.”

  Ostre fixed him with a doubtful eye. “Seems she had you there at the end.”

  Rathe avoided rubbing his tender backside.

  “Most often the best thing to do with women,” Ostre went on, “is to play the mummer.”

  Rathe disagreed. “Seems the better choice is to drag grievances out in the open.”

  “That’s because you’re young and foolish. Best to let women win … or at least let them think they won.”

  “Best for who?”

  “For you both, lad,” Ostre said with a heavy sigh, as if he didn’t trust his own advice.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Before Rathe could move away, Ostre caught his arm. “As it happens, I didn’t come to offer advice.”

  “Then what?”

  Ostre looked toward to the southern riverbank, not more than a hundred strides away. By now, the Lamprey had sailed well into the long and snaking gorge that ended at Ruan Breach. Rocky walls bounded the river and soared high, overtopped by listing firs and pines draped in fluffy cloaks of snow. “Some of my crew saw one of those riders again.”

  “Edrik’s company, same as before?”

  “It would seem so,” Ostre said slowly. “A scout, most like, keeping an eye on us.”

  Rathe considered the Lamprey’s pace downstream. “They’re pushing their horses hard. How much farther before we come to the breach?”

  “Not near far enough to tire the horses my brother sold them,” Oster said. “But after we get through, the river opens up. From there to the White Sea, we’ll be untouchable. In the meantime, we’re ready as we can be.” The crew had lined the rails with a ratty assortment of shields, and had put out barrels of salted water with buckets stacked nearby, to use against any attack of fire.

  “But first we need to get through Ruan Breach,” Rathe said. The gorge was getting narrower by the hour, and the river swifter.

  “Aye,” Ostre said again. “And that’s why I came to you. Nesaea has it that you’re a demon with a bow. A few good archers can keep our foes busy while my crew sails the Lamprey—once we’re in the gap, with the river surging, things can go wrong in a blink.”

  “I’m a fair enough shot,” Rathe demurred. He had been the finest archer in the Ghosts of Ahnok. “As is Loro.”

  “The more the better—long as your man can put the past behind him.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Rathe promised, but guessed there was no need. Loro was quick to anger, but quicker to smile. He had proven his point, if at Liamas’s expense. It was anyone’s guess if Fira would ever forgive her lover for making such a brutal and bloody scene.

  ~ ~ ~

  Nesaea was forced to halt when the skinny cook bustled out of the galley carrying a steaming pot. When he glanced at her, her anger flared. “Don’t you have anything better to do than ogle every woman you happen across?”

  The man’s eyes went wide. “Sorry, m’lady.”

  “I’m not a lady, fool.”

  “As you say,” he muttered, the contents of his pot sloshing as he squeezed by.

  Shaking off her irritation, Nesaea continued to Loro and Fira’s cabin. She was about to open the door, but raised voices within gave her pause. Loro, it seemed, had come to apologize. Nesaea was sure he wouldn’t get any sympathy from Fira. He would be lucky to make it out with his skin intact.

  She folded her arms and leaned against the wall, one foot tapping restlessly against the deck. That drumming tattoo ended abruptly when she realized the raised voices she heard were not spoken in anger. Are they laughing?

  She could scarcely believe it. After Loro pummeled Liamas, and all but announced to everyone that he was done with Fira, how could they now be laughing together?

  But they were. And then Fira’s voice lowered, becoming a seductive cooing, and Loro’s laughter took on a different note.

  Nesaea cursed under her breath, shoving away from the wall. She battered the door with her fist, refusing to let her friend make as big a fool of herself as Loro had already proven to be.

  Their voices cut off at once, followed by a moment of silence, then tittering laughter—and tittering it was, like a pair of young lovers.

  Fira swung the door open. Her hair and clothes were disheveled, and her breath was coming too fast. “Nesaea? I thought you were sparring with Rathe?”

  “I was, until he began acting the idiot. Now I find you doing the same.”

  Fira abruptly shut door in her face. Loro said something within, and Fira answered. A moment later, the door swung wide again, framing Loro’s battered features. He searched Nesaea’s eyes, then turned back to Fira. “You’re right, they had a spat. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Nesaea stood aside for him to pass, her mouth hanging open. After Loro vanished up the steps to the main deck, Fira dragged Nesaea into the cabin and shut the door.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” Nesaea said acidly, plopping down on the edge of the bed. Fira had aired the cabin out and lit a few candles. Now instead of sickness, it smelled of mold, tar, and burning tallow.

  “What did you two fight about?” Fira asked, sitting down and taking Nesaea’s hand, as if she needed comfort.

  Wondering how Fira could know they had fought, Nesaea pried herself loose of Fira’s grasp. “You, as it happens.”

  Fira laughed. “That was a foolish waste.”

  Nesaea gaped at her. “Last night you were ready to make a eunuch of Loro, and now I find you flirting with him, and you call me foolish?”

  Fira put on a sly grin and shrugged off Nesaea’s consternation. “Until you interrupted, we were doing a fair bit more than flirting. As to cutting off Loro’s manhood, you know me better than most, and I shouldn’t have to explain my, ah, rages. As for as Loro and I, we fight and then we love.”

  “What of Liamas?”

  “What of him? I told you on the trip here looking for your father that he’s too pretty by far.” Fira shuddered. “Rather he was. Anyway, I could never love a man who thinks he’s more comely than me.”

  “Loro almost killed him!” Nesaea protested, knowing full well that was not what was bothering her, but at the same time having no idea why she was angry.

  “Did he?”

  “You know he did. If Rathe hadn’t stopped him—”

  “Then someone else would have,” Fira assured her. “If not, then Loro would’ve stopped … at leas
t, I think so. Though, I must say, my kiss was a bit more costly for Liamas than I expected.” She grinned mischievously. “I hope he liked it. Either way, it has all turned out for the best.”

  “Has it?” Nesaea asked, appalled, not sure she knew her friend half so well as she thought.

  Fira gave her a guilty look. “I suppose not, if you and Rathe are fighting over my nonsense. But I have to wonder, were you really fighting over us at all?”

  “Who else, if not you?”

  Fira pulled her hair over one shoulder and fixed Nesaea with a level gaze. “You make a fine show of playing the highborn, and that act has earned you and the Maidens a fair bit of coin, but you’re not, and will never be, a true noblewoman.”

  “I know that,” Nesaea said, though she felt a twinge of remorse at hearing it.

  “Do you? Or, deep down, have you begun to believe you really are Lady Nesaea, and that Rathe is some handsome lord, come to take away your troubles?”

  Nesaea’s mouth worked. “Most of my life I’ve done well enough on my own. I don’t need a lord’s help, or Rathe’s, for that matter.”

  “Perhaps not,” Fira replied, “but is it such a poor thing to have someone to share your burdens with, now and again?”

  Nesaea stood up and began pacing. The cabin felt stuffier than before, the air cloying. “What are you getting at?”

  “You say you need no one, and as long as I’ve known you, that’s been true. But after Rathe pulled you out of Lord Sanouk’s catacombs, only to then leave you with Queen Erryn—”

  “That jumped-up chit’s no queen,” Nesaea growled, remembering all too well the dismay and hurt she’d felt when Rathe abandoned her to guide Erryn, the same pretty slip of a girl who had all but begged Rathe to share her bed and become her king.

  “She has the will and the wealth of any dozen kings,” Fira said. “And because of you, she has the beginnings of a fortress and an army of Prythian mercenaries to protect it and her. If those things don’t make her a queen, then there are a fair number of queens and kings who don’t deserve the title. But that’s not my point.”

  “What is?”

  “After we left Valdar, you headed in the same direction as Rathe and Loro.”

  Nesaea scowled. “We’d already spent a season entertaining throughout Cerrikoth, and with winter coming, east into Qairennor was the only way to go. That Rathe and Loro went the same was happenstance.”

  “Maybe,” Fira allowed. “But if you’d not heard of your father in Cliffbrook, we Maidens would have wintered along the shores of the Sea of Muika.”

  “What difference does that make?” Nesaea demanded.

  Fira looked at her as if she were daft. “Because that’s where Loro has always talked of going, and for certain you would’ve found Loro at Rathe’s side.”

  “Are you saying I was chasing Rathe?”

  Fira gave her a bland look.

  “That’s absurd. I’ve never pursued a man, and I never will.”

  “Is it so wrong to follow the one you love?”

  Nesaea felt a pang. “I’ve never said I loved him, and he’s surely never said as much to me.”

  “The words might not have been spoken, but that changes nothing.”

  With some effort, Nesaea kept her mouth shut. There had been times after the madness of Ravenhold when it seemed Rathe would speak the feelings of his heart, but he never had.

  Nesaea gusted a sigh. “I do not wish to speak of this.”

  Fira shrugged. “You’ll have to come around to it sometime, unless you plan on sending Rathe away, and going after your sister alone.”

  “I might at that,” Nesaea said, hating that a part of her meant it. She’d had help along the way, but most of her life had been ruled by her own actions.

  And is that the real reason you are angry? a small voice asked. Nesaea conceded that it was. The idea of relinquishing her freedom to a man who had cast her aside once before, even if he had done so thinking that was the best way to keep her safe, didn’t sit well with her.

  Even for love? came that same small voice.

  Nesaea considered the question, but could find no answer.

  Chapter 17

  Erryn started awake, eyes taking in the pale gray light spread across the uneven floor tiles. Morning already, she thought, but felt unrested. She had seen the same snowy glow of dawn every morning since taking shelter at Stormhold. The fortress was vast, with countless chambers and halls carved into the mountain. Had she chosen to, she could have explored for days, maybe weeks.

  But what good is exploring a prison? The idea wasn’t new, but no less troubling for its frequency. She almost laughed at her former irritation of Aedran calling her girl instead of queen. What I’d give to be a mere girl again, one who Aedran tapped on the nose, and favored with wanton looks.

  Now, because her hired subjects had shown her their convoluted history through a series of dances, she was the Queen of Pryth. She didn’t understand that custom in the least, and the longer she thought about it, the more foolish it seemed. Worse still, instead of revering her supposed authority, they treated her as a jewel or a talisman to be fawned over on occasion, then tucked inside a locked box and hidden away.

  I have to escape, she thought, this new idea making her heart race. Just as quickly, her hopes fell. Before she had gone to bed, One Eye Thal had reported that another storm was blowing in. Despite the news, Aedran ordered the men to make ready to set out come dawn, just in case. Another safeguard was to keep up the hunt for more hidden food stores within Stormhold.

  Seeing no reason to crawl out of her makeshift bed on the floor, Erryn closed her eyes. She lay there a long time, struggling to find sleep, before her eyes popped open again. The pale light she had seen earlier was gone, and she guessed a guard must have passed by before, using a candle to light his way. Weary as she was, sleep seemed farther away than ever. She rolled to her back and pulled her blankets up to her chin.

  Queen of Pryth, she thought in disgust. Voice of the gods. I want to take back everything I ever hoped for, sneak off into the night, and behave as if I never named myself queen of anything….

  Her thoughts trailed away when she noticed the faint light had returned, and was falling from the ceiling … a ceiling that was moving. She blinked, rubbed her eyes. The glow remained—not from a single source, but from many hundreds, maybe thousands, all tiny and wriggling.

  Erryn sat up, the blankets pooling at her waist. She held up her hand, turned it with growing wonder. A silver radiance bathed her fingers. She flung aside her blankets and stood up—

  The light winked out, leaving her in absolute darkness.

  Not absolute, she thought, turning toward a faint golden glow … the light of a candle pushing through the doorway, made weak by the length of the corridor beyond, at the end of which stood her guards. She tilted her head, listening for any indication that the men had seen anything alarming. Other than the blood pounding in her ears, she heard nothing.

  Erryn was moving before she decided she should, rushing for the doorway. She had to tell someone what she had seen. A shape loomed before her, huge and furred. She recoiled, eyes bulging. Something strong grabbed her shoulders, pulled her close when she lashed out, burying her in the scent of wolfskin and leather and oiled steel, and that of a man. Aedran.

  Almost as soon as she recognized the smell and feel of him, her fear became rage. “Unhand me, oaf!”

  He held her, speaking in a soft rush. “Easy. It was just a dream. Just a dream.”

  “It was no dream, idiot. There’s something in here with us.”

  He stiffened, and she heard the gentle ring of steel escaping its scabbard. “What?”

  “Be still,” she said, “and you’ll see.”

  He stood stock still, his breath deep and even. She stood at his side, irritated that some foolish part of her tried to move her closer to him. Somehow, she resisted.

  Minutes crept by, but the room remained dark.

  She s
ensed him shifting about, and squeezed his hand to signal him to stay still. When did I catch hold of his hand? She would have dropped it, but his fingers were twined through hers, and the jackass would probably make her work to get free, which in turn would leave them standing here even longer in the dark … near her bedding, where she had wanted to be with him not so long ago. She hated that a part of her still wanted to feel him pressed against her, his lips on hers—

  Her amorous thoughts ended when the light on the ceiling came to life again.

  “What is that?” Aedran breathed, craning his head. In that cold glow his beard looked more silver than red, his skin lined and gray. That’s how he’ll look as an old man, she thought.

  And still handsome, a pesky voice intoned, irritating her.

  “Do you know what they are?” she asked.

  “No.” He studied the crawling lights awhile longer, eyes wide with wonder. “They don’t seem dangerous.”

  “I wonder how often folk have said the same, only to end up dead,” she answered scornfully.

  He either didn’t hear her, or was acting as if he hadn’t.

  Erryn squinted, letting her lashes weaken the light enough to make out the creatures. They looked like furry caterpillars, she decided, though smaller than any she had ever found around Valdar or Hilan. And, of course, these glowed, something she had never seen before, let alone heard of.

  One of them fell off the ceiling and hit the floor with a faint plopping noise. Its light died at once. Erryn kept her gaze on the spot, waiting. After a few moments, it began to glow again, apparently unhurt by the tumble. It inched over the floor, a fuzzy, luminous ball.

  “I don’t want them falling on me,” she said, shuddering at the thought. Caterpillars were a short step up from worms, to her mind, and worms were an even shorter step up from maggots.

  Aedran opened his mouth to answer, but a revolted shout cut him short.

  “That was close,” he said.

  “One of the guards,” Erryn answered, sure of it.