Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  ***

  The moment Trell learned of the king’s captive men, he saw the problem this presented for his father. One thousand Dannish soldiers held at Abu’Dhan, ten times as many in the north awaiting orders to return home…clearly his father couldn’t be both places at once.

  Until that moment, Trell had been wondering why the Mage had pulled him back onto the field in this precise moment. Now he understood. He recalled Vaile’s admonishment and felt the weight of her meaning—for already this war had spread its sickness through three kingdoms and threatened to involve even more; it had weakened his own royal house with its treachery and made a laughingstock of Radov’s once strong reign.

  The idea of these symptoms of unbalance spreading unchecked into the Akkad—never mind where Morwyk and the Prophet would wander, sowing their doctrine of intolerance, unbalancing the world further—he could indeed envision the entirety of the Middle Kingdoms eventually succumbing to chaos.

  He wasn’t sure how rescuing his father’s men from Abu’Dhan would help end the war with M’Nador, yet he felt strongly that freeing those men was exactly what the First Lord needed him to do.

  Trell looked up from the map. “You must rally the main army, father. I’ll go to Abu’Dhan and free the rest. That is, if you can spare some men to aid me, Su’a’dal?”

  The Emir turned a deep frown to Farid.

  “You must hear the rest of my news, Trell.” Farid exhaled a slow breath, heavy with disconcertion. “Radov is rallying his forces at Taj al’Jahanna, and he’s pulling his men from the southern lines.”

  Trell’s brows lifted. “He’ll lose Abu’Dhan.”

  “Verily, he’s lost Abu’Dhan,” Farid said, “though we have yet to retake it ourselves. Since Radov withdrew his forces, the region is in turmoil and overrun with Saldarians.”

  “Godless men.” The Emir pressed palms together and lifted his gaze heavenward.

  “The bastards are roaming the countryside preying upon Radov’s people—never mind our own,” Farid added.

  Trell considered all of this information, whereupon the truth hit him rather forcefully. “You think Radov’s going to try to retake the oasis.”

  “It has been Radov’s desire since the moment he lost it,” Gydryn murmured by way of agreement, “and a much debated point of contention among my generals.”

  Trell looked to Rhakar. “Would even Radov be so foolish as to attempt a press on the oasis with the drachwyr flying the skies?”

  Rhakar gave him a look that clearly said how foolish he thought Radov could be.

  “That is the question we’ve been asking ourselves each night while sleep is eluding us, Trell,” Farid admitted.

  The Emir regarded Trell with a deep furrow between his brows. “As much as it ails me, son-of-my-heart…” he shifted his gaze to the king, “Gydryn, I dare not send any men away from Raku at this time.”

  Trell’s father looked to him with pain behind his gaze.

  Farid knuckled his beard while staring at the map. “What about Raegus?” He looked from his father to Trell, explaining, “Su’a’dal sent him with a company of Converted to take the Saldarians in hand.”

  Trell studied the map. Abu’Dhan was a region of high, forested mountains that remained cool even in high summer. No territory could’ve been better designed in favor of bandits and renegades. But he well remembered Raegus n’Harnalt, whose company had replaced his at the Cry, and he knew him to be a capable leader.

  He looked up at the others. “How many men with Raegus?”

  “Two hundred,” Prime Minister al Basreh replied.

  “Do we have any intelligence on the situation at Khor Taran?” Trell shifted his gaze between the prime minister and Rhakar. “What kind of opposition we might be facing?”

  Rhakar crossed his arms. “It’s a large fortress held by at least a thousand Nadoriin, perhaps more. Saldarians come and go.”

  “How much help can you and the others give me?”

  “Scouting,” Rhakar answered. “What intelligence our immortal eyes can draw from the currents. Little else. The Balance in the game hinges on a pinpoint.”

  For a moment Trell held the Sundragon’s yellow gaze, feeling as though he and Rhakar stood upon the same overlook, sharing the same understanding of what they saw. “How many men can I do it with?”

  Rhakar arched a brow. “To any other, I would say at least twice their numbers, for their position is fortified, and they have the high ground.” He looked Trell over with the hint of an admiring smile. “But beneath your command? Two hundred could turn the tide.”

  “Two hundred against a thousand Nadoriin?” Gydryn shifted an incredulous look to Rhakar and then turned it on Trell instead. “Trell…”

  Trell saw a hollow truth in his father’s gaze, a confession that he would rather lose his men than lose him again.

  The Emir meanwhile frowned down at the map. “It is a risk, assuredly, Gydryn, but Trell held off the entire Veneisean army with only fifty men. If anyone can accomplish this feat with so few soldiers, he can. I trust Lord Rhakar’s assessment.”

  “It’s at least a manageable force to get through the mountains.” Trell scrubbed at his growth of beard. “Are we in agreement, then?”

  If there were any dissenters, they held their peace. The discussion turned to a plan of action. If the gods were with them, Trell and his father would reunite within a few weeks.

  As they were breaking to attend to preparatory tasks, Prime Minister al Basreh laid a hand on Trell’s shoulder and said in the desert tongue, “It is good to have you back among us, Your Highness. The Converted have been missing you.”

  Trell nodded a gracious thanks, though hearing himself named a prince by the Akkadian prime minister still gave him an oddly discomfiting pang.

  As al Basreh moved away, Trell’s father approached with an open hand, which he clasped about Trell’s arm. “Trell…” myriad emotions flickered across his king father’s face, but in the end, he shook his head and gave him a smile. “I’m so proud of the man you’ve become.”

  “I wouldn’t be the man I am today if not for your upbringing, Father.”

  Looking oddly pained by this claim, the king smiled again, but it failed to banish the shadows from his gaze.

  Trell started walking, following the others out of the room. “For so many years, I wondered about my parents. I was always asking my face in the mirror, ‘Who are you?’” He exhaled a slow breath. “Philosophers like to say we’re all the products of our experiences, but I think who we are is more a result of the ideas that we don to fashion ourselves in our own eyes.” He gave his father a grateful look. “Who I am, these qualities you profess to admire…Father, you ingrained them in me from the very start.”

  Gydryn gazed at him in wonder. “I hear echoes of Errodan in your speech.”

  “And of your wisdom, too, Father.” Trell grinned suddenly. “I distinctly remember your telling me—when I was demanding some form of outrageous punishment for Ean over some trivial thing he’d done to me—that my choices would frame the man I was to become.”

  A smile lightened his father’s expression, at last banishing some of the darkness from his gaze. He placed a heavy hand on Trell’s shoulder, and for a time as they walked together, they simply let the contact say what words were too inept to capture.

  Eventually the king dropped his hand and exhaled a slow breath. “Tell me of Ean.” He glanced to Trell, looking him over. “You mentioned meeting Alyneri in your travels. You must know something of your brother, then? I sent him to the Cairs praying he would be far enough away to escape Morwyk’s reach.”

  But not far enough to avoid the First Lord’s.

  Trell nodded to him. “Though our paths haven’t yet crossed, Ean is well by last accounting.” He tried to think of what he could say of Ean that would make any sense to his father. “Like me—and the Emir and many others—Ean is sworn to the Fifth Vestal and works to further his cause.”

  “Which is?�
� The king’s gaze held a curious concern.

  “Salvation.” Trell stopped walking and turned to his father. “Before I knew well of the Emir’s Mage, before I knew him as Alorin’s Fifth Vestal, I knew better of those who served him. I saw in them a nobility and strength of character that I only hoped to emulate. I quickly recognized that people of such integrity would never swear themselves into the service of an unworthy leader.”

  First nodding to this truth, the king started them walking again, clasping hands behind his back. “This sentiment echoes my own observation of you, Trell.” He gave him an earnest look. “Whatever confusions shadow the Fifth Vestal’s name, I trust you would never serve a man undeserving of your support.”

  “I would not be standing here but for his compassion, father.”

  The king gave him a rueful smile. “Yes, I recall your saying so.”

  They reached the atrium and a splitting of their paths. The king placed both hands on Trell’s shoulders, while Trell took his father’s in return, and for a time they gazed at one another with words too heavy on their tongues.

  “I hope we shall one day be granted the time to know each other again,” his father said.

  “This is my hope also, Father.”

  Pressing his lips together tightly, the king took Trell into a close embrace.

  In that moment, as he held his father with equal strength of feeling, Trell sensed another circle beginning, a needle threading their paths in diverging arcs. He prayed those stitches would eventually circle around to join anew.

  Then the king was joining Farid, who was waiting just ahead before a passage leading left, while Trell turned to his right and the waiting Sundragon who was his guide into the next circle of his life.

  Twenty-seven

  “You know what chafes my arse about that so-called prophet, Bethamin? Who’s he supposed to be a prophet for?”

  –The pirate Nodefinder Carian vran Lea

  Viernan hal’Jaitar’s black robes swirled around his legs as he strode against a damp, buffeting wind up the stairs leading into Niko van Amstel’s Bemothi manor.

  Viernan loathed Bemoth. The entire kingdom was a fermenting cesspool reeking of verdant, growing things. The humid air was saturated with stench—he’d become saturated with it in just the short time it had taken him to walk from the node to Niko’s door. His silk robes most assuredly stank of vegetative life.

  As he topped the steps, the doors opened to disgorge a butler in liveried black and grey and a shorter man holding several fat ledgers.

  “Welcome, my lord,” intoned the taller of the pair. “May I have your name and occupation, if you please?”

  I do not please. Niko had invited—nay, demanded—Viernan present himself at his estate, which really meant that Dore Madden had demanded it; but being trapped in Dore’s filthy pocket did not require him to suffer Niko’s pretentions.

  As Viernan was deciding how he intended to respond, a rotund woman in a crimson gown walked across the hall and happened to glance his way. Her round eyes became instantly rounder. “Viernan?” She rushed over to him like a too-fat cherry and elbowed the butler aside. “Viernan! Why, it is you!”

  Viernan scowled at the Healer Mian Gartelt.

  “Oh, but come in—come in!” She grabbed his arm and drew him unwillingly inside, informing the butler as she passed, “He needn’t be in your book. He’s one of Niko’s oldest friends.”

  “Yes, madam.” The butler bowed stoically and withdrew with his aide.

  Viernan couldn’t decide which indignity rankled the most: being dragged anywhere by Mian Gartelt or being named a friend of Niko van Amstel.

  Mian roped her chubby arm through Viernan’s. “It’s so good to see you here at last, Viernan.” She pulled him into the stream of guests milling in Niko’s halls, fruit of the aristocracy with clearly nothing better to do than wile away their insincere hours upon the decadent pursuits offered at Niko’s home.

  Mian gave him a cherubic smile and patted him on the arm. “So tell us, what have you been doing these many years, Viernan?”

  Avoiding inane conversations such as these. He made a point to avoid fraternizing with any of the Fifty Companions when possible, but especially with brightly colored vipers like Mian Gartelt.

  Viernan halted and abruptly disengaged his arm from her piggish fingers. “I’ve come to see Niko.” The emphasis in his tone spoke clearly enough even for Mian Gartelt to get the point.

  Her painted expression twisted beneath flashing eyes, but instantly reassumed its sugar-sweet façade. “I see courtesy is still too rigorous an undertaking for you. You always did treat etiquette like a whore’s unwelcome get. If this is your liege’s idea of decorous comportment, I faint to imagine myself in Radov’s court.”

  Viernan smiled thinly at her. “Likewise, madam.”

  Mian looked him over icily and waddled away.

  Viernan snared a valet and had the man lead him to Niko.

  The valet ushered him into a gallery, where Viernan found his host stalking back and forth before a wall of glass doors like an actor playing a dramatic theatrical role. The day outside appeared as night beneath the building storm.

  Seated in a chair facing Niko’s stage, Dore Madden was saying, “…you have a vestal ring—”

  “But it only opens the portal for me.” Niko threw up an exasperated hand. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you, Dore.” His gaze fell upon Viernan then.

  “There must be another…” Dore noted the sudden shifting of Niko’s attention and spun his head. He immediately scowled at Viernan.

  “Ah, Viernan.” Niko sounded dispirited. “You’ve come.”

  Viernan felt no need to reply to this observation. He headed further into the room and heard the doors shutting behind him. “What is so important that it requires my presence in this seething cesspool of a kingdom, Dore Madden?”

  “We’ll get to that.” Dore turned back to Niko. “The ring and the map. Those are his terms. Have you the map?”

  Niko cast him an injured glare. “How can you be so fixated on a bloody weldmap when our strand is tumbling into chaos? Have you not heard a word I’ve said? This rebellion has gotten far out of hand.” He turned and stalked petulantly in the other direction. “We’ve lost a score of nodes to these so-called rebels. I’ve had to double the watches on the nodes we still control. Rethynnea’s Guild is still up in arms over the robbery of their weldmap generator, and the Guildmaster is furious with me—”

  Dore scowled at him. “It’s Tavestra and his lot behind this, rest assured.”

  Niko eyed him askance, somewhat skeptical. “And now there’s talk of some new candidate for the vestalship? This man they’re calling the Admiral.” He lifted a wounded look to Viernan. “They can’t do that, can they, Viernan? The vestalship belongs to me.”

  Viernan thought himself as likely to be confirmed as Alorin’s Second Vestal as Niko van Amstel.

  “No, no, no.” Niko wagged his head and continued pacing. “They’re even staging protest rallies outside the Guild halls—Dore, are you listening to me? The Guild Masters have sent guards out into the crowd, but they haven’t found a single Nodefinder among them. It’s like they’re all being paid to make trouble for me.”

  “Very likely,” Dore muttered.

  Niko halted abruptly and spun to face him. “But I’m becoming unpopular.”

  Dore glowered at him in the throes of rumination. “You can somehow travel to and from Illume Belliel. Why can’t you take another person with you?”

  “I’m telling you, it doesn’t work that way.” Niko exhaled a frustrated sigh and looked down at his vestal ring. “My ring only allows me to travel to the cityworld—I don’t know why.” He started walking slowly again while turning the ring around on his finger. “Even if I did manage to bring someone across the node with me, we’d arrive to a thousand tons of raw power boring down on us—I’ve seen the demonstration, Dore. It’s no idle threat.” Niko tapped the ring with his mid
dle finger. “Maybe there’s something wrong with the stone.”

  Viernan regarded him sootily. Or perhaps there’s something wrong with you. The vestal rings were widely rumored to respond to their owner’s thoughts and deeds, even becoming ruined if a vestal broke their oath of service to their strand.

  As if catching a strain of the thought, Niko extended his fist and followed its lead over to Viernan. “What do you make of it, Viernan?”

  Viernan hadn’t seen a vestal ring up close in three centuries—and if he saw another one in the next three more, it would still be too soon—but he didn’t need to look closely at Niko’s to notice the milky blur clouding its core. “The vestal rings are aqua clear.” He leveled an inscrutable gaze upon Niko. “Yours is cloudy.”

  Niko flung his hand at Dore. “Do you see? That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Alshiba gave me a defective ring.”

  More likely you’re the defect.

  Dore’s eyes glinted like black agates deep in the hollows of his skull. “Our ally grows impatient, Niko. You will do as we’ve promised—and soon—or face the spear of his displeasure.”

  Niko stilled. His face assumed a sickly hue.

  Viernan cleared his throat pointedly.

  Dore turned a glare of annoyance over his shoulder, which Viernan matched with equal venom. He stood taller and drew his robes closer about his form. “Speak what you’ve called me to hear, Dore Madden, lest I depart without the knowledge.”

  Dore shifted in his chair, noisily, by way of conveying his displeasure. “Fine, fine, but sit down, will you?” He waved irritably at a seat in front of him. “I am not an owl.”

  “Nor I a dog.”

  “Viernan, you needn’t be so prickly.” Niko rubbed dully at the stone in his ring and looked up under his brows. “We’re allies, you know.”

  Viernan eyed him sharply. “You need not remind me of this unfortunate truth.”

  Niko exhaled a dramatic sigh. “We do live in unfortunate times.” He breathed on his ring and then scrubbed the stone against his coat sleeve. “Here we stand together, bound to the troth of repairing our dying world…” he looked at the stone, frowned, lifted his gaze back to Viernan and immediately assumed, as with the donning of a mask, that pretentious expression he favored when addressing the masses, “yet what do we face but dissention, rebellion, internecine battles, when we should be a unified force!”