A Prince Among Killers

by S. R. Vaught; J. B. Redmond

  Stormbreaker gave Nic a look that wasn’t pity, but close enough to curdle in Nic’s heart. “Our healers can work wonders, even with old damage, Nic. They cannot repair your bones and joints from your initial injuries, but with some medicines and training, they can restore much function to you.”

  Nic averted his gaze and chose to study the big square stones comprising the wall behind his bed. “Will I be allowed to take my vows with the guild before this treatment, or must I wait until it’s completed?”

  Stormbreaker and Dari responded with silence, and when Nic looked at them, they both seemed so shocked that he felt his heart sink.

  Perhaps they did know the truth of who he was, after all.

  “Surely Snakekiller told you this was my intention, and that it has been for some time.” Nic swallowed, though his throat was dry and a slow, aching pain was beginning to claim him from skull to heels. “Are the infirmed not allowed to pledge themselves to Stone?”

  “That is not the issue,” Stormbreaker said quietly, as Dari went back to studying her fingernails.

  Nic’s misery increased, though he didn’t know if it was coming from his flesh or his spirit. He tried to breathe through the tension, lest he bring on another fit. “You know who I am. Who I used to be.” He gazed directly at Dari, wishing she would give him some hint now of her emotions. “And do not wish to be again.”

  Dari didn’t look up, and Nic detected nothing at all from her mind or heart. It was as if she went Quiet the moment Stormbreaker came near her.

  “It is not common knowledge,” Stormbreaker said. “But in rescuing you, Aron revealed his own identity and mind-talents to anyone in Eyrie who might have been listening. Many now know that one of the old legacies has resurfaced. We do not yet know what will happen as a result, but we suspect envoys if not contingents of Brailing and Altar forces are on their way, and possibly envoys or soldiers from Mab as well. We do not know how long Stone will be able to keep its many secrets.” He gave Dari a meaningful look, but she kept her face turned from him. “Any of them.”

  Nic wanted to grab Dari and shake her so she would look at him, but she seemed oblivious to his needs now.

  “Aron and Snakekiller shared the information about you with Dari.” Stormbreaker placed his hand on Dari’s shoulder, showing an obvious familiarity that made Nic envious. “They also told me, and they told Lord Baldric. We have, in turn, summoned Lord Cobb and Lord Ross to assist Stone in preparing for what might come of Aron’s revelation of his abilities—and to assist you. They are discreet men, both of them, so I wouldn’t worry they will expose you until we are all certain how to proceed.”

  Stormbreaker checked the nearest window, possibly estimating the time of day, or taking the exact measure of the waning winter. “It will take them many weeks to arrive, however, and I cannot guarantee trouble will not reach our gates before they do.”

  “Why Cobb and Ross?” Nic asked, bereft, but somehow keeping himself upright. “Won’t calling on them incite the other dynasts against you?”

  Stormbreaker nodded, his expression grim. “Perhaps. Lord Brailing, Lord Altar, and Lady Mab—your mother—are attempting to force Stone to pronounce loyalty and join in this conflict. This we cannot do, but we can select who will advise us and support us if we are attacked. Only Cobb and Ross possess the strength and proximity to assist in the defense of Triune—and in your protection.” Stormbreaker squeezed Dari’s shoulder. “And Lord Ross has his own to protect within these walls.”

  He let Dari go just as she shrugged off his touch and at last let Nic see her eyes again. Now he thought he understood more of the depth of her distress. She had mentioned a relationship to the dynast lord, and clearly Lord Ross’s journey to Triune was not something she welcomed. Would he insist that she return with him? Would she be forced to abandon her twin to whatever fate had claimed Kate?

  “I don’t wish to be protected.” Nic crushed his fist into the blanket beneath his trembling legs. “I wish to be useful.”

  Dari finally spoke. “You’re the heir to Eyrie’s throne, Nic. Your very existence could end this war. How could you serve this land any better than that?”

  Nic turned his face until he could see nothing but the row of beds next to his and the flames dancing in the nearest fireplace. “I do not have the disposition to rule. You must know that. You must remember what was said about me before I—before I died.”

  “The changes from your trauma and your journey—” Stormbreaker began, but Dari cut him off.

  “Hush,” she said, and Stormbreaker fell silent as if she had slapped him.

  Nic heard the rustle of her robes as she moved. Moments later, her spicy scent overtook Nic’s mind, and he felt her warmth as she sat beside him on the bed. Her hand covered his when she reached out, much the same as he had reached out to her earlier, when her heart had been so heavy.

  He felt her touch like a balm on his pain and confusion and shame.

  “I know little of your history, Nic,” she said, and her voice drew his gaze like nectar attracted birds and butterflies in the trees of Can Rowan. He studied her face and eyes, seeking any insincerity, but found nothing but kindness. “I have heard the cruel jibes and nicknames, but none of those match the truth of the man beside me.”

  Nic wanted to argue that he wasn’t a man, that he couldn’t possibly return to being a Mab of Mab, much less a king-in-waiting, but Dari’s presence took his words from him.

  “All of Eyrie is in chaos. Goodfolk are starving. Bandits and soldiers are raiding villages, thieving stores and supplies, even stealing women and children for their own uses.” Her fingers seemed like feathers against his knuckles. “The suffering must end before society collapses and we revert to living as animals in the wild.”

  Snakekiller had made these arguments to Nic repeatedly, but he had always debated with her until they both surrendered and returned to other topics. He didn’t think that strategy would work with Dari. He couldn’t imagine attempting to change her opinions, so he remained silent. Soon enough, she would see the truth of him and be disappointed, he had no doubt.

  “Your experiences have changed you, like mine have changed me, like Aron’s have changed him.” Her smile was so kind Nic felt wounded by the sweetness of it. “Perhaps you can’t see that as yet, and I can’t tell you what form those changes have taken or will take. I can, however, assure you of this much—you are no longer Eyrie’s hob-prince.”

  “Then who am I?” Nic whispered, thinking of the armies marching toward Triune, of the darkness expanding to absorb all that was left of the land his mother had failed so completely—that he, too, would fail if he was forced to assume the crown he did not feel worthy to accept.

  Dari seemed to consider her response for some time. She placed her other hand on Nic’s arm, deepening their contact, and the shield she seemed to have thrown up at Stormbreaker’s presence melted away. Once more Nic felt the fullness of her emotion, the complexity of her mind, her essence—and that immensely powerful graal lurking below the surface of her consciousness. It filled his mind. She filled his mind.

  “Who am I?” he murmured again, certain that she could tell him, and knowing that he would believe whatever she said with his all his heart, and strive to make it reality. “What am I?”

  She touched her forehead to his, and he closed his eyes.

  “Hope, Nic,” she said, and her words poured into him like a fresh elixir. “You’re our hope.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  ARON

  “Go away,” Aron told Eldin Falconer, trying not to stare at his crimson robes and glittering silver bracelets. The bright colors stood in contrast to the Thorn Brother’s dark blue eyes and his dark countenance. The crystalline, thorny spirals on his face seemed to accent the lines at the corners of Falconer’s frown as he tried to move past Iko and enter the small cell Aron now called home.

  The Sabor had not drawn his blades, but each time Falconer attempted to approach the door, Iko shifted
to block his progress. The House of the Judged, more like a great stone barn with three tiers full of barred stalls, seemed to ring with silence broken only by the shuffle of Falconer’s feet, and his snorts of disgust.

  Aron shifted to a sitting position on the cot that served as his only furniture in the cell, which contained little else save for a small table with a basin and below that, in the farthest corner, a bucket to receive waste. Books littered what little space was available on the floor, along with a few dirty cups and dishes still piled with food Aron had found tasteless and unappealing. His eyes felt crusty from reading the tomes on Eyrie’s history and on arcane practices associated with older graal talents.

  When Falconer continued to try to enter and began to curse Iko for his interference, Aron folded his arms across his gray tunic and swore back at the man. At Aron’s outburst, Falconer grew still long enough for Aron to say, “You should have departed weeks ago. You have all the children Stone couldn’t keep from you. Why do you wait?” To Iko, Aron said, “Let him pass. Let him say his piece. Perhaps then he will go and cease to trouble me.”

  Iko moved aside as gracefully as a folk dancer, his leather boots making no sound against the dusty stone floor.

  Falconer entered Aron’s cell and glanced around the tiny space as if its size and clutter offended him deeply. As if conditioned by force of habit, he began to straighten, piling up books as he said, “My escort was diverted. The risk of leaving would be too great, until I’m certain they’re in position to meet me.”

  A few moments later, Falconer had scraped the plates into the slop bucket and piled the dirty dishes outside Aron’s cell, right next to Iko’s foot. The Sabor hadn’t deigned to look at Falconer again, and probably wouldn’t, unless Aron asked Iko to intervene.

  “My boy,” Falconer said as he stepped back in the cell, his flaming red robes seeming to take up all the space he had cleared with his tidying. “When I do leave, I want desperately to take you with me. I’m certain I could convince Stone to release you to my care.”

  Aron laughed, hearing the sarcastic, bitter sound as if he weren’t quite attached to it, as if it weren’t his laugh at all, but someone else’s. Someone desperate and tired and far beyond any salvation. “And would I be less dangerous in Thorn’s care than in Stone’s?”

  Before Falconer could respond, Aron waved him off. “I have no use for you or any of Thorn’s plots and aims. I have my differences with Stone, but I’ve cast my lot with them, and I’ll meet my fate within the walls of Triune.”

  Falconer let out a breath. He leaned his tall frame against the wall opposite Aron’s bed, and Aron thought he might have been trying to look casual, or perhaps friendly and convincing. An effective ruse, or at least it would have been, for someone who couldn’t sense the truth like a bright glow off someone’s skin, who couldn’t smell it like a spice, or taste it like a flavor, or touch it like a texture in the air. The more Aron used his graal, even its simpler aspects, the stronger it seemed to become. Even though he had been blessedly free from nightmares and visions since he returned to Triune, he feared his legacy might possess him at some point, take control of his mind, or at least his sanity.

  “Thorn has only one aim,” Falconer said, keeping his relaxed posture. “Thorn seeks the survival and unity of Eyrie.”

  Aron glared at him. “You’re lying.”

  When Falconer stood straight again, his cheeks flushing and his mouth already open to protest, Aron shook a finger at him. “Don’t forget, High Master, I have the Brailing mind-talent. I can tell truth from lies without even trying, whether I wish to or not. You came here for orphans, but you seek far more than motherless children.”

  This gave Falconer pause, and Aron watched the color slowly recede from the man’s face. “Very well,” Falconer said at last, speaking as if the concession pained him. “Thorn does hope to find children with legacies of your magnitude. We wish to shelter you and offer you the proper training and protections so that such blessings are never lost to our society again. Stone has no interest in this. You’ve seen that. Stone wishes to suppress powerful mind-talents.”

  “Stone seeks peace amongst its members, and fairness for the Judged,” Aron said, growing tense despite his sense that he had the upper hand with this man. “Mind-talents are nothing more to Stone but an indication of intelligence and potential.”

  “It’s a waste,” Falconer said, as if he thought Aron was agreeing with him. “It’s a shame not to use such abilities, not to develop legacies to their fullest.”

  Aron stared at Falconer, beginning to understand that the man believed this deeply, that he might have convinced himself in part if not in full, of the rightness of Thorn’s pursuits—and their methods. “And how would you ensure the survival of my graal, High Master? Would you breed me like a bull talon or some prized stallion, to make sure the traits were passed on to a new generation?”

  “Of course not!” Falconer’s shock was genuine. “And you are young to be so cynical.”

  Aron gestured to the books Falconer had stacked when he was straightening the cell. “It’s all there. The theories and practices that led to the mixing disasters. The guilds—both Stone and Thorn—were no less innocent than the dynast lords. First you contained the strongest amongst the Fae and Fury races. Then you ‘studied’ them. Then you selected pairs to intermix the traits you hoped to claim for the Fae.”

  Falconer’s sigh had a dramatic, false quality Aron didn’t appreciate. “I did no such thing, and neither did any living person at Thorn or Stone, or in any dynast. That’s ancient history.”

  “Is it?” Aron didn’t bother to hide his contempt. “Are you certain you want my graal in your presence, High Master Falconer? Because once again, you aren’t telling me the truth.” He was sorely tempted to use his legacy to force the man to share what he knew, but he resisted the urge.

  “Thorn is protecting children with powerful graal, nurturing them, as we have always done.” Falconer drew himself up straight again, and for a moment he reminded Aron of statues he had seen of the Brother, with one of the god’s more angry and disapproving expressions. “When we became aware that certain traits were reasserting themselves, we contacted all the dynast lords and encouraged them to search their goodfolk more carefully, for treasures that might otherwise be missed.” He stretched out his arms, as if to encompass Aron’s cell. “We provide education and care for these children, not containment. Not imprisonment and threats about using the talents nature saw fit to grant them.”

  Aron pushed himself from his cot, gratified that he was tall enough to stand toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with Falconer, even if he didn’t share the older man’s muscle and bulk. “Then it was thanks to your meddling that Lord Brailing grew worried about the security of his position in his own dynast and in Eyrie—since neither he nor his heirs possess strong graal. Is that why he sent unsanctioned assassins after the Mab heirs, too? Was it common knowledge that some of them were showing stronger traces of the old Mab mind-talents?”

  “Thorn is not responsible for the Mab murders!” Falconer’s face turned almost as red as his robes. He stepped back from Aron, but the cell’s wall blocked a better retreat. “Nor are we responsible for the Watchline massacre. That was Lord Brailing and Lord Brailing alone, though I understand he might have had assistance from Canus the Bandit and his Brotherless followers. The same base creatures who are even now snatching children from their beds in villages all over Eyrie.”

  “Before you can steal them from the same beds?” Aron didn’t move back, crowding Falconer on purpose. “That’s what’s making you angry, not that the children are being taken, but that someone is reaching them before you get there.”

  “I won’t listen to such outrage.” Aron noted that Falconer’s condescending tone had deteriorated to anger and defensiveness. Falconer had ceased seeing him as a child and potential quarry, and was now treating him as an adversary with the power to threaten his beliefs.

  “What do you know
of the carriage and the Guard contingent I encountered when I made my rescue of Nic?” Aron asked, gratified to see Falconer grown even more furious. “Was that the escort that got—what did you say—diverted?”

  Falconer didn’t answer, but Aron gathered the truth in all five senses. Falconer well knew about that sinister caravan and the soldiers who had attacked Aron and Iko on their journey into Dyn Cobb.

  Once more, the man took on a countenance that reminded Aron of statues of the Brother, and Aron felt himself teeter on the brink of understanding something. Of grasping something of monumental import—but he couldn’t quite reach it. Instinct drove him to reach toward Falconer’s mind with his own, but at the same moment, Aron detected a brilliant flare of red as Falconer made full use of his own graal, closing Aron away from his incidental thoughts and emotions.

  “You are a menace and an ingrate,” Falconer growled, and Aron didn’t disagree. At least Falconer was speaking the truth now, as he saw it. Whether or not it was reality, Aron couldn’t say, but Falconer believed it absolutely. He also believed his next statement, which was more persuasive and devastating than any of the rest.

  “Your presence here is a liability to Stone. By now Guard forces from Brailing and Altar and likely Mab as well are marching on Triune, intent on taking you for their own use, or killing you so that no one else gains the benefit of your talents.”

  Aron stepped back from the man. His legs struck the edge of his cot, and he sat down hard.

  “I have no wish to have you in my presence, if you must know—but come with me.” Falconer swooped toward Aron like a bird of prey, his arms wide again, his red robes billowing out like crimson wings. “Come with me and spare the lives of your friends. Relieve Stone of its impossible commitment to you.”

  Aron glared up into the man’s face, knowing that his own cheeks must be as red as the man’s clothing. “Leave me alone,” he said, but his voice had lost its sarcasm, its anger, and all its force. “Just leave.”