“Is this about the incident with the axe? I don’t care about that anymore. The Duke can keep it. Never did me any good.” Her plan hadn’t worked in the slightest, just making everything worse. The whole castle was laughing at her. She’d heard the words “little axe girl” whispered about a million times in just a few days, accompanied by at least a chuckle, sometimes all-out laughter. Over the past several years, she’d been careful to put her tomboy past behind her, only to destroy all her good work in one morning. “What was I thinking? I mean, me with an axe. Me?”
“It suited you more than the dresses,” Lucii said.
“Don’t say such things. I thought the rest of the castle had done their worst with the insults.” Suma flung herself facedown onto her bed.
Lucii grabbed her arm and pulled her up. “Do you trust me?”
Suma laughed at that. “You are the most untrustworthy person I know. That you asked probably means that there are beetles hidden in my shoes. No, that’s Balti’s style. Something worse.”
“If I had put beetles in your shoes, I would have asked you to trust me with a smile on my face. Do you see me smiling?”
Suma frowned. He hadn’t even smirked since entering her room, which was totally unlike him. “What’s going on? It is about the axe, isn’t it? I tell you I’ve returned to needlework and harp playing, and I’m never picking up a weapon of any kind again.”
“If only it were that simple. It’s impossible to explain to you what’s going on, or it’s beyond me, at least. I have to show you.” Lucii knelt down in front of Suma and took her arms in his hands. “When we fought in the training paddock, I made sure that neither of us were hurt, despite you thundering about with that axe of yours. Trust me now and do exactly as I ask.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Good. You should be scared.”
“What do you want me to do?” Suma asked.
“Fill up the holdall. Essentials for a journey.”
Suma had no idea what that meant. She had never even spent a night outside the castle. She glanced inside the bag and saw that Lucii had already put some clothes inside it, boys’ clothes from the looks of things. She went to the closet and started grabbing some of her dresses and shifts at random.
Lucii nodded at her harp in the corner. “Do you still make that shriek like a bag of drunken cats?” Lucii, being Lucii, couldn’t go too long without making a joke of some sort.
“Of course not. That was last year. I’m much better now, and the sound is more like the howling of enraged wolves.”
Suma threw the dresses on top of the holdall then went to get some of her soaps, a small bottle of shampoo, and her needlework kit. By the time she returned with that, Lucii had thrown half her dresses onto the bed and crammed the other half into the holdall.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“Nearly.” Lucii’s lack of concern about her dresses suggested he didn’t see many balls or fancy banquets in her future. She dropped the soaps into the bag and glanced at the book on her bed. Lucii would object to her bringing it, but a book was surely essential for a long journey. She went to her closet and wrapped her Gwavin and Lara book in a thick blue shawl. “Something to keep me warm.” She placed the shawl on top of the soaps.
Lucii pulled the holdall shut with ties then lifted it onto one shoulder. “Don’t attract any attention,” he told her as they exited her room.
“What do you mean by that? Don’t throw off my clothes and dance naked in the hallways?”
“That would be a start.”
Suma walked alongside Lucii as he led the way down the corridor. The sun had started to set, but it was too early for the torches to be lit. They passed several servants at work and one of the Duke’s soldiers going the other way. No one gave them a second glance. The only remarkable thing about them was the holdall on Lucii’s shoulder.
No scenario Suma was imagining made sense. Is Delmoria being invaded? Is the family in danger? Why can’t Lucii just tell me what is going on? Surely, whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than what she would imagine by him dragging her out of her room like he had. Could it?
Lucii stopped outside the Duke’s solar. He checked up and down the corridor then opened the door and peeked in. Satisfied, he entered. Suma hesitated at the entrance, for she had never been inside the Duke’s solar, and entering without his permission felt wrong. Lucii grabbed her arm and pulled her inside then shut the door behind her.
“Hey,” Suma objected. You don’t need to manhandle me.
Lucii dumped the holdall on the ground beside a suit of armor. He then grabbed one of its metal arms, lifted and twisted. The whole suit came away from the wall.
“Get in,” he told Suma.
“Get into the armor?” Is this day going to get any weirder?
“No, idiot. There.” He gestured at a small alcove behind the armor.
Suma peered at it. “I won’t fit there.”
“You will.” Lucii gave her a helpful shove.
Suma knelt inside the alcove and turned to the side, just about squeezing in.
Lucii twisted the armor back around until it was almost in position. He then picked up the holdall and shoved it on top of Suma’s head then twisted the armor fully into place.
“Hey,” Suma objected. The bag was bending her head back, twisting her neck painfully.
“From now on, not a word, not a sound,” Lucii said. “No matter what you hear.”
Even the stories in my books aren’t this dramatic. “Shouldn’t you add at the cost of your life?”
“If you think that’s not implied, then you haven’t been listening closely.”
Suma searched his voice for a trace of humor but didn’t find any. She really hoped she wasn’t the butt of one of Lucii’s more elaborate jokes. Perhaps I should be hoping that is all it is. She managed to shift herself so that the weight of the holdall fell on her shoulder rather than her head, though that was barely more pleasant.
In the solar, Lucii strode back and forth. The gap between the legs of the armor and the walls provided light to Suma’s hiding spot. Through the gaps, she could also see small slices of the solar, and she realized she’d barely looked around the room when she had the chance. She’d always been curious what the Duke’s solar looked like, and she was inside it and still didn’t know.
She eased her head back and forth, trying to glimpse as much of the solar as the small gap revealed. She got an impression of wood paneling. Various weapons hung from the walls. She was frustrated that she couldn’t see more.
A door opened. “You’re here already. Good.” The Duke. Metal thumped on wood.
“Did you have any better luck with the axe?” Lucii asked.
“Yes. I mean no.”
“If yes means no, what does no mean?”
“What have I told you about dumb jokes?”
“If I was a better son, I’d make better jokes.”
“Lucii.”
“Yes, I know. You want a serious eldest son. What can I say? Maybe Arron will overtake me in age one of these days.”
With the coldness in the Duke’s voice, Suma didn’t know how Lucii dared to joke. She could just imagine the way the Duke was staring at him, having experienced the power of that stare.
“I’ve had the same experience as you had with the axe,” the Duke said. “I haven’t achieved any explosive power with it, nor have any of the other men I’ve asked to try it.”
“It’s sharp and pretty but too unbalanced to be useful for fighting,” Lucii said. “Perhaps we should just throw it away.”
“Lucii, be serious. I haven’t seen any more of its magic, but I have learned all about it. It is one of the weapons of power.”
“One of the what now?”
“For the last few years, the Soylant Wizards have been working on creating weapons that they believed could help them stop Zubrios. It took several years to create the spell, but they finally got it ready a handful of days ago. Of course, they
are a bunch of incompetent misfits and managed to mess everything up. The Armentell Order helped them choose five warriors to receive the weapons. Instead of the weapons going to the warriors, however, one night the spell was cast—no one knows by whom—and the weapons ended up spread throughout the realm. Somehow, my daughter must have ended up with the axe. It provides the power of a strength-mage.”
“A single strength-mage is hardly going to frighten the Lord Protector.”
“No. As I said, those wizards are fools. However, imagine being able to break through a castle gate with a single blow. This slice of fortune will be huge for our family.”
Chills ran through Suma at the thought of her axe breaking through a castle gate. Perhaps she had given it up too easily. She hadn’t thought too much about where the axe had come from. A miscast spell. Just blind fortune had seen it land by her feet in the Duchess’s Gardens. Or blind misfortune. She was glad to hear where the axe came from, but surely that wasn’t why Lucii had brought her.
“Before you learned all this, you thought that the axe was bonded to Suma only. Do you still believe that?”
“Yes. It’s been confirmed.”
“So we should train Suma. She’s the only one who can control the power.”
“My source believes that the bond could pass on,” the Duke said.
“That means it might not.” Lucii had a beseeching tone to his voice that Suma had never heard before. “She can be our official castle gate knocker-over.”
“She looks like a jester with it in her hands. She could do stunts, but it would be a hundred times more powerful in the hands of a proper warrior. A thousand. I won’t have the greatest power that has ever fallen to our family subject to the whims of a stupid girl child.”
The tightness in Suma’s chest was not due to the enclosed space.
“So you still want to do what we discussed earlier?” Lucii’s voice was now soft, with a thread of sadness running through it.
“It’s what has to happen.”
Suma shifted her head from side to side to better see what was happening in the solar. The Duke, who had been standing behind his desk, came out to stand in front of Lucii. He put his hand on Lucii’s shoulder. “Son, sometimes when I hear what you come out with, I wonder if you could be mine at all. It’s only when I see you fight that I see the warrior within, the same warrior that dwelled in my heart when I was your age. Beneath the mask of chuckles and jokes, there is a man.” The axe rested on the desk behind the Duke, and he placed his other hand on it. “You saw what a girl child could do with this in her hands. You can’t tell me that your warrior blood doesn’t sing at the idea of possessing its power.”
“I save my singing for bathing and for late nights in the tavern.” Lucii backed away so his father no longer held his shoulder.
“The same blood runs through our veins,” the Duke said. “Offering this to you is the greatest gift I have given anyone. I have barely slept these last few nights, tossing and turning with a hot fever at the thought of the axe being so close yet so far away.”
“Whoa. No son wants to know of his father’s degeneracies. Let’s have no more talk of what happened between you and the axe in the bedroom.”
The Duke sighed. “I’m making a sacrifice such as I barely believed possible, and you joke. A few years ago, I would not have hesitated. I would have claimed the axe for myself. But I’m getting older. You are young, and in your hands, this axe could be a benefit to our family for decades to come.”
“I appreciate the sacrifice, but the axe is not yours to give.”
“If it belongs to the family, it belongs to me. You think she is strong enough to hold it on her own. I have made light of what happened out in the training paddock, tried to turn it into a joke. But too many saw, and not all are stupid enough to be convinced that it was some fluke. Undoubtedly, the Order already know about this, and likely the Lord Protector’s clerics too. If we don’t take it from her, then they will.”
“If we protect her, they won’t take it so easily.”
“I’ve listened to your arguments long enough. My decision is made, and it’s time you accepted that. Now, I talked with someone who is familiar with the weapons-of-power spell, and when the girl is killed, then it should bond with you.”
Suma’s stomach twisted. The Duke couldn’t mean what he seemed to be saying. He mightn’t have much time for her, but she was still his daughter.
“What happens if the girl dies, and the axe doesn’t bond to anyone? She’d be dead for no reason.” Suma was glad to detect anguish in Lucii’s voice. “And we’ll have lost the power of the axe.”
“It’s a risk worth taking.” Her father’s voice held nothing but coldness.
“I can’t kill my own sister.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve thought about how this works best. I’ll arrange for someone else to do the deed and for you to arrive too late to save her but in time to avenge her. Make sure to kill her assassin with the axe. If that doesn’t lead to the axe bonding to you, nothing will.”
Lucii paced away from his father. Suma had to remind herself to breathe in the silence that followed. When she did, she remembered to breathe softly. Lucii hadn’t been overdramatic when he’d warned her against making a sound. She didn’t dare imagine what would happen to both of them if the Duke discovered her.
“Son, I don’t want to give you the idea that you have a choice here. I’m just explaining what’s going to happen.”
“Very well.” Lucii paced back to stand in front of his father. “Leave the axe with me.”
“This won’t happen until tomorrow night at the earliest.”
“If I am going to do this, I want it to have every chance of working. Best that the axe is in my presence as long as possible if we want it to bond. Unless you are planning to take it to your bed one last time.”
“Enough with the jokes.”
Lucii sat down on a chair in front of the desk, putting his palm on the blade of the axe. “Give me a chance to come to terms with what I have to do.”
“Very well. I will expect less weakness from you in the future, though.”
A door opened and shut.
Tension drained from the air, and the holdall on Suma’s head seemed too heavy to bear. Lucii pulled the suit of armor away from the wall, and Suma, unable to bear staying still a moment longer, threw herself at the widening gap between wall and armor the moment her body fit through, falling to the ground. The holdall fell on top of her.
Lucii lifted the holdall off her and helped her to her feet. Suma’s knees buckled, and Lucii lifted her again and supported her for a few moments until she steadied.
“I’m sorry.” Lucii wiped moisture from Suma’s cheeks.
She hadn’t realized she’d been crying. “No need to be sorry. Just do a good job of avenging me.” She made a chopping motion with her hand. “Whichever bastard Father hires to kill me deserves what’s coming to him.” Suma’s voice came out in a monotone. Something deep inside her had died.
Lucii took the holdall to the desk and loosened the ties. He then shoved the head of the axe inside, leaving the handle poking out the top. “Come on.”
“I don’t think my legs work.”
He pushed open the door and checked both ways. “Do you want to wait here until Father returns?”
Suma hurried after her brother. Lucii took long strides down the corridor, forcing Suma into a half run to keep up. A thousand questions whirled through her mind, but she didn’t know where to start, and Lucii didn’t slow down to give her a chance to frame one. Into the servants’ quarters they went, down a narrow stairway and out a side door.
Dusk had descended. In the training paddock, the shadowed figure of an instructor gave final tips to a young swordsman. The carpenter was putting away his tools, and the blacksmith continued to hammer on a piece of metal, his face glowing red from the embers of his fire.
Lucii paused for a look around before leading the way to the main gate.
“Where are you off to this late?” the sword instructor called out after him. Belkin, Suma remembered.
“Escaping the castle with the young one. We are going to seek our fortune on a ship,” Lucii replied at a shout. Suma didn’t understand how he kept his voice lighthearted. Her own throat had twisted into a knot. She feared the Duke finding them and stopping them, but she almost feared getting away more. Where will we go? What will we do?
“Aren’t you already heir to the Delmoria fortune?” Belkin asked.
“One fortune is never enough, I always say.”
“Dunno about that,” Belkin called back. “I’m not sure I’ve the stomach to drink through two fortunes.”
“I’m a better man than you, Belkin, and we both know it.”
Belkin barked a laugh. “If you weren’t the heir, we’d soon see about that.”
Lucii continued past him. Whether the guards at the main gate heard Lucii’s exchange with Belkin or not, they didn’t move to stop either Lucii or Suma.
When they turned the first corner out of sight of the gates, Lucii came to a stop, waiting for Suma to catch up. His hand trembled, and he flexed his fingers.
“You could have warned me what to expect in the solar,” Suma told him once she’d caught her breath.
“How do you explain something like that? You’d never truly have believed it unless you’d heard it from his lips.”
“I wish I’d never heard it.”
“And I wish you’d never had to. But you had to know why you need to leave. You have to realize that you aren’t safe and will never be able to return here ever again.”
“This is my home.” She realized she was complaining about it the way one complained about a beloved companion.
Lucii shook his head. “No longer.” He pointed halfway down the street, where a carriage waited, its two horses with their heads bowed. “I have arranged for you to be taken from Xercia tonight. I don’t know the details, and I don’t want to know.”
“You aren’t coming?” Suma had feared leaving with Lucii. She certainly couldn’t just leave by herself.
The Silver Portal (Weapons of Power Book 1) Page 11
