Warrior

by Jennifer Fallon

  “I actually knew that, Xanda,” she told him, a little peeved by his lecture. She wondered if he was talking to her as if she was an ignorant tourist because he was still angry at her silence on the subject of their flight from Fardohnya. “We own a good half of the ships doing the trading, remember?”

  “I was just trying to point out that they couldn’t close the border if they tried.”

  “And they’re not trying,” Adham assured them. “The Defenders are only stopping people entering the town from the south to prevent the plague coming into Bordertown. They don’t give a fig about people heading out in that direction.”

  Luciena gasped as the possibilities dawned on her. “But that means . . . why, we could be home in a couple of weeks!”

  “That’s certainly my plan,” Adham announced. “You’re more than welcome to join me, if you’re heading that way.”

  Xanda didn’t even wait to check with his wife before nodding. “Don’t worry, we’ll be joining you.”

  Adham seemed unsurprised. “Then you should take this opportunity to rest today, Luciena, and make certain the children know what they’re in for.” He turned to Xanda and added, “You’d better come with me. We’ll need to purchase horses and enough supplies to get us home. Once we get out of here, I don’t plan to stop until I’m across the border.”

  Luciena nodded her agreement. Placing her hand over Xanda’s, she smiled, hoping he’d take it as an unspoken apology. “Go with him. Spend whatever it takes. Just make sure it includes warm clothes for the children. I want to go home.”

  “So do I.” He leaned forward, kissed her lightly, and then smiled, squeezing her hand. He would forgive her eventually, she knew. The prospect of heading home was far more important than a silly squabble over keeping secrets from him.

  Adham smiled, too, obviously just as anxious to be gone from Medalon. “It’ll be just like the old days, won’t it? With nearly all of us gathered in Krakandar again.”

  “And maybe this time, I won’t try to assassinate Damin,” Luciena remarked dryly. Adham froze, staring at her, not sure if she was joking. She laughed softly. “If you could see the look on your face, Adham.”

  “I’m glad you can joke about it,” he remarked warily.

  Her attempt to kill Damin when he was a boy was not a subject they spoke about often. Marla had sworn them all to secrecy so Alija Eaglespike would never learn that her interference with Luciena’s mind—and Wrayan’s subsequent shielding of it—had been discovered. It had also, for many years, been a memory filled with such extreme shame and humiliation for Luciena that nobody wished to remind her of it.

  That had all changed six years ago when Damin finished his fosterage and arrived in Greenharbour. Expecting some residual resentment or mistrust, Damin had stunned Luciena by treating her as if nothing had happened. In fact, he’d been positively friendly towards her. Certain he hadn’t forgotten the attack, she’d eventually asked him outright why he didn’t seem bothered by what she’d done. The young prince had smiled and winked and said nothing more than, “Rule Number Eleven”.

  It had taken her weeks to find out that he was referring to Elezaar’s notorious Rules of Gaining and Wielding Power. Rule Number Eleven: Do the unexpected. It told her more about Damin Wolfblade than any other single thing she had seen him do.

  “It was Damin who started sidling up to me every time we bumped into each other at palace functions to ask me if I was planning to kill him again, Adham,” she explained with a shrug. “I figured if my victim could find something in that entirely disastrous episode to laugh about, then perhaps I should, too.”

  “I don’t think Damin does it to put Luciena at ease, mind you,” Xanda added. “I think he does it to frighten Elezaar, actually. That, or to irritate Marla.”

  Adham shook his head. “I wonder, sometimes, about that boy.”

  “That’s his intention, Adham,” Luciena replied, with a flash of insight that made her realise something that up until now she had never really seen about Hythria’s young prince. “I think he wants to keep everybody wondering. I think Damin’s deliberately keeping everybody in the dark about what he really thinks, or even what he’s capable of. I doubt there’s anybody in Hythria who could tell you what he’s really like.”

  Adham thought about Luciena’s words for a moment and then nodded his agreement. “You could be right, Luciena.”

  “Pity we won’t find out until he’s High Prince,” Xanda remarked.

  The conversation seemed to have suddenly turned serious. Luciena smiled, hoping to lighten things. And to get her husband and Adham moving. This pointless discussion about what Damin Wolfblade might or might not be like wasn’t getting them over the border any faster.

  “We could try asking him, you know. When we get to Krakandar,” she suggested. And then she added, tartly, “Assuming, of course, that you two ever get around to arranging transport to get us there.”

  Adham took the hint good-naturedly. He downed the last of his wine, rose to his feet and shook his head. “I’m never going to get married.”

  Xanda also rose to his feet, and smiled as he pulled his cloak around himself in preparation for the chill wind outside.

  “No woman would have you anyway, Adham,” Luciena told him. “Now go, both of you. And don’t come back until you have everything we need. I want to take my children home.”

  Chapter 59

  In twenty-five years of dedicated service, Elezaar the Dwarf had done much for his mistress. He had advised her, trained her, instructed and mentored her children, supported her, and sometimes even manipulated her, in his effort to keep himself safe by remaining under her royal protection.

  Never once, in all those years, had he regretted his decision.

  Marla Wolfblade had exceeded all his early expectations. He had latched onto an inexperienced and naive young princess, hopeful her position would protect him from Alija Eaglespike. He’d had no inkling she would one day rise far above even Alija’s exalted station. It would have been nice to claim he’d had some insight, some premonition about Marla’s potential. But in all honesty, he couldn’t claim anything of the sort. The uncertain woman-child who had stood in Venira’s Emporium all those years ago, shopping for her first court’esa, had given no hint of the future path she would take or the greatness she would achieve.

  Nobody who knew Marla Wolfblade when she was fifteen would have believed she would eventually become the most powerful woman in Hythria. Arguably, she was even more than that now.

  One would be hard-pressed to name any man who wielded more power than the High Prince’s sister.

  But still, even after all this time, Elezaar had secrets he had never shared with his mistress. He had never divulged some of the more shameful details of his previous service, both in the House of Dell and a few other noble Hythrun Houses where the veneer of civilisation was barely skin-deep. Nor had he ever let her know he had witnessed the massacre of Ronan Dell and the rest of his household.

  And he had never, in twenty-five years of loyal service, told Princess Marla that he had a brother.

  Some of the information—such as the identity of Ronan Dell’s killers—he had kept to himself as insurance. He had learned much about his mistress over the years and one thing that secretly surprised him was her ruthless decisiveness when the occasion called for it. Once, he had thought to keep some of his dangerous secrets to protect himself from Alija. Now, at the back of his mind, was the notion that if his beloved princess ever turned on him, he would need just as much insurance to protect himself from her.

  There were other, less important things, too, that hadn’t been worth sharing. That he had once had a younger brother had never seemed worth mentioning. After all, Crysander was dead by the time Elezaar entered Marla’s service.

  Or so Elezaar believed.

  Until now.

  For days, Elezaar had burned with the knowledge that his brother might still be alive.

  The news had come in the form
of a carefully worded message from the slave trader, Venira.

  Bekan, one of the slaver’s statuesque doormen—all but unemployed with plague ravaging the city—had arrived at the kitchen entrance to Marla’s townhouse, asking to see Elezaar. With plague on the loose, the cook wouldn’t let him in the house, but she had called Elezaar down to speak to him through the barred gate in the high wall that had originally been designed to keep assassins out and which was, at present, keeping the sickness at bay. Marla had taken Damin’s advice and had Bruno Sanval scour the libraries for information about past outbreaks of the plague, and subsequently instigated a drive to clean the city of rats and debris, employing plague survivors to do the work. She was paying them, too, even the slaves involved in the cleanup, and it finally seemed to be having an effect. They went whole days now with no new outbreaks reported. Marla was so optimistic that she was already starting to make tentative plans for the future, along with sending messages to every major province (in her brother’s name, of course) with instructions to do as Krakandar and Greenharbour had done and cleanse their cities of disease-carrying vermin. If there was a way to rid Hythria of the plague, or even a chance it could be slowed down a little, Marla was determined to see it done.

  But the welcome notion that the plague might be on the wane meant little to the dwarf because the news Bekan delivered left Elezaar faint with shock.

  “My master has acquired some merchandise he thinks you may be interested in,” the slave announced, looking past Elezaar to ensure the cook wasn’t hanging about in the yard, listening to their conversation.

  “I’ve no interest in anything your master is selling,” Elezaar snorted contemptuously, turning to leave. This was probably a ploy of Venira’s to unload excess stock he couldn’t sell because the slave markets were closed. The dwarf wasn’t interested in helping Venira show a profit during a plague. And he certainly didn’t feel he owed the fat slaver any favours.

  “He said to tell you the merchandise’s name is Crysander.”

  Keeping his shock well hidden, Elezaar hesitated and turned to look at the messenger, staring at him with his one good eye. “What else did Venira say?”

  “He said if you’re interested in arranging a purchase, he’ll hold off turning the merchandise out into the street.”

  Elezaar shook his head sceptically, thinking how unlikely it was that Venira would discard anything likely to make him a profit. “He threatened to turn him out, did he?”

  The man shrugged. “Times are tough, Fool. Venira can only afford to keep the stock that’s likely to turn a profit and this one is well past his useful life.”

  Could it be true? Elezaar was too afraid to hope. Crysander had been two years younger than Elezaar. Just past his twenty-third birthday the day Elezaar saw him fall on the blade of Alija Eaglespike’s henchman in Ronan Dell’s palace. Crys would be nearing fifty years old now, had he survived. Certainly well past his useful life as a court’esa.

  And hadn’t Ruxton once reported—years ago—that he’d heard a rumour about Elezaar’s brother?

  “Did Venira say how he acquired this . . . merchandise?”

  The doorman shrugged. “I think he was one of a batch of slaves purchased from someone in Dregian Province. I couldn’t say who. I’m his doorman, not his bookkeeper.”

  “If I was interested,” Elezaar had replied cautiously, “and I’m not saying I am, mind you . . . but if

  . . . I would want to see what I was buying first.”

  The doorman nodded. “Venira expected as much.”

  Torn with indecision, the dwarf hesitated for a long time before answering. “Come back in three days. I’ll tell you if I’m interested then.”

  The three days had dragged, leaving Elezaar a nervous wreck. Trapped in Marla’s townhouse, he could do nothing to investigate the possibility that his brother still lived. All he could do was torment himself worrying about it, trying to run various scenarios through his head in which Crys had somehow survived the mortal blow Elezaar was certain he’d watched his brother suffer. The whole thing is probably just an elaborate lie, he told himself, over and over. Venira undoubtedly had some other game afoot, some devious plan for showing a profit at a time when every other slaver in Greenharbour was in danger of going bankrupt.

  But his dreams were haunted by visions of the past . . . Ronan Dell’s corpse laying across the blood-soaked silken sheets . . . Another body on the floor by his feet . . . he still couldn’t remember her name. Just a child; her slender, broken body in the first bloom of womanhood . . .

  Elezaar was trapped in his nightmare, playing his lyre with desperate determination—a solo symphony to accompany the torment of Ronan Dell’s pleasure . . .

  Then the dream would change abruptly and Ronan Dell and his slave were dead once more and Crys was always there, with his handsome dark eyes and long dark hair and his slender, boyish physique, which even at twenty-three still retained a dangerous allure of adolescence for a man like Ronan Dell.

  In his dream, Crys was unafraid. He’s not in any danger from the assassins, Elezaar always realised at that point, amazed, even now, how much the revelation surprised him. Crysander is one of them.

  “You betrayed our master.” The accusation echoed across time. Still shocking. Still terrifying to realise.

  “I’ve been faithful to my master all along . . . I have always belonged to the House of Eaglespike.”

  Then the sound of marching feet. A troop of soldiers rounding the corner . . . an overwhelming feeling of panic . . . Crysander shoving him back into the bedroom . . . turning to the captain of the troop .

  . .

  Even in his dream, Elezaar’s heart pounded against his ribs hard enough to break them. In the hall, he could hear them talking . . . “Did you find them all?” Crys always asked as the soldiers stopped in front of him. And although he knew what was coming, Elezaar couldn’t stop himself looking through the slit in the doorway. . . .

  “Thirty-seven slaves,” the man confirms. “All dead. There should be thirty-eight, counting the dwarf. We didn’t find him.”

  “And you won’t,” Crys tells them. “He’s long gone.”

  “My lady wanted nobody left alive,” the captain reminds him.

  “No credible witnesses,” Crys says. “The Fool could stand on a table at the ball tonight in the High Prince’s palace, shouting out what he’d seen here, and nobody would believe him. You needn’t worry about the dwarf.”

  “I suppose,” the captain agrees doubtfully. “What about you?”

  Crys shrugs, still naively innocent of the fate that awaits him as he explains that he’s already been sold to Venira’s Emporium.

  “Then we’re done here.”

  Elezaar tries to cry out a warning . . . the captain’s hand moves from the hilt of his sword to the dagger at his belt . . . he clamps his mouth shut to save his own life . . . is almost drowned by the overwhelming guilt as he rationalises away what he knows must happen next . . .

  The captain may simply be moving his hand to a more comfortable position, he remembers thinking.

  And then the true nightmare begins . . . The captain’s blade plunging into Crys without warning .

  . . the man—Alija’s man—driving his dagger up under Crys’s rib cage and into his heart . . . Crys falling . .

  . the creak of leather as the captain bends over to check Crys is dead . . . the fading stamp of booted feet

  . . . the scrape of his brother’s sandals against the polished floors as the soldiers retreat, dragging Crysander’s body behind them . . .

  Elezaar sat upright with a jerk, bathed in perspiration, hating the dream and his own weakness for letting it torment him like this. It was still dark outside, the air cool and still in the pre-dawn silence.

  He took a deep breath, waiting for the pounding in his chest to subside.

  At first, the nightmare had plagued him night after night. But over the years, the dreams had faded until he was almost able to convince
himself that he had put Ronan Dell’s house of horrors behind him. The nightmares were back with a vengeance, however, and they wouldn’t go away until he knew for certain if Crysander was still alive.

  And if he is alive? What then?

  Elezaar had no money of his own. To purchase Crysander from Venira would require Marla’s cooperation. To gain that, he must tell her things he’d kept from her for twenty-five years. Just learning that he’d held back such valuable information from her would destroy the trust he’d spent almost a lifetime building.

  And there was nobody else he could ask.

  Had Ruxton Tirstone still been alive, Elezaar might have been able to prevail upon the spice trader to do him a favour simply out of friendship. Elezaar grieved his passing sorely, now more than ever. There was no point in asking Rodja Tirstone. Although the elder Tirstone son now ran his late father’s spice empire, and certainly had the funds—and perhaps even the will—to help Elezaar, Rodja would consider the request unusual enough that he’d feel obliged to mention it to Marla, which put Elezaar right back where he’d started.

  Anybody else in the family with the resources to purchase a slave from Venira was out of the city. Had Damin been here, Elezaar didn’t doubt for a moment that he could have begged the young prince’s assistance and received it, with Marla being none the wiser. Xanda and Luciena were fond of him, and their children adored him. They might have helped him, too, had he been able to ask for their aid. Adham Tirstone was reckless enough that he would have loaned Elezaar the funds without even asking why a slave needed so much money. Even Kalan might have come to his aid if he’d worded his request the right way.

  But there was nobody he could turn to, which left Elezaar with the untenable prospect of losing his brother a second time.

  Or having to face Marla and ask for her help.

  If he did that, it would mean admitting he’d kept the secret of Ronan Dell’s killers from her, when she could have used the information to bring Alija down years ago, long before the Lady of Dregian Province ever rose to become the High Arrion.