Protector of Thristas: A Lisen of Solsta Novel

by D. Hart St. Martin

  “Can you spare two?”

  “For the Empir? We can do anything.” She poured the wax where one folded edge covered another edge and put her own seal to it. “The Empir’s name in your hand, my seal. That should certify its veracity.”

  “You don’t even know what it says.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You give me a letter you’ve written to your spouse and say it’s important, it’s my duty to move it on without delay. And speaking of that…” She rose from her desk, went to the door and opened it. “Beser! You and that corporal of yours get ready to ride.”

  “Aye, Commander!” Korin heard from below.

  Kopol closed the door and returned to Korin. “Do you want to stay the night, or do you have to get back right away?”

  “I could use a little sleep. A few hours maybe. Then an early start before morning.”

  “Take my bunk. I’ve been sitting here reading anyway so you shouldn’t have to contend with much noise.”

  “Noise? You don’t know what noise is until you have children.” Korin smiled, and Kopol returned it.

  “And I won’t. It’s a guard’s life for me.”

  Korin got up from his chair and wandered into the commander’s tiny bedchamber. “That’s what I thought,” Korin said as he sat down on the bed. “That’s what I thought.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LIKE GOING HOME

  At this point between Council sessions, very little business required Lisen’s attention, so when Chesa told her that nothing immediate had arisen in her absence, she asked the woman who had officially taken over head-clerking duties from the retired Jazel to summon Commander Tanres. She entered her office, went to her desk and pulled out her notes from the investigation into the assassination attempt. She was going to need these soon.

  Only a few moments passed between her arrival and Tanres’ entrance. “My Liege?” the commander queried.

  Lisen smiled up from her desk, gestured to the conference table and joined the commander there.

  “Has Akdor arrived yet?” she asked.

  “He’s in the Ba chambers in the old palace, my Liege, under guard.”

  “Excellent. Shall we go talk to him?”

  “Now, my Liege?”

  “When else? I’ve been penned up on a boat for nearly three days. I’m restless and could use a walk, and a quick trip to the old palace would suit my needs perfectly.” Lisen jumped up from her chair, leaving her notes behind. This wasn’t to be a formal interrogation, merely an explanation of his situation and why the young Ba twin would remain detained for an indeterminate period of time. “Come on,” she said to Tanres, who rose and stepped towards her Empir.

  “Then, my Liege, let us go.”

  Lisen led the commander into the hall, through the great doors at the front of the Keep and down the stairs, and she noticed that Tanres lagged behind a bit, taking each stair with the same leg.

  “Old knee injury,” Tanres said by way of apology.

  “Well, here’s to a retirement spent in a home with no stairs.”

  “It has no stairs,” the commander replied, and Lisen clapped her on the back. She would miss this woman who had served three Empirs, the last two as the leader of the Guard, but Tanres had earned the rest. When she’d come to Lisen with her letter of resignation several months ago, she had included an offer of returning any time she was needed. It was an offer Lisen had promised to take her up on.

  Across the plaza they pushed on. Lisen hardly ever ventured out this way; it was considered unseemly for an Empir to visit her holders and counselors in their quarters.

  They arrived at the palace, the guard at the door stepping aside for them.

  “You lead,” Lisen said. “I have no idea where the Ba quarters are.”

  The commander stepped in front of her, and Lisen followed—down the hall to the right, then a left at the corner of the hall that circumnavigated the inner perimeter of the building. Halfway down, where the dining hall apparently ended and the room for the bath began, Tanres halted. Two guards stood at the door, and after Lisen nodded to them, one opened the door for her and announced, “The Empir of Garla, my lord.”

  Akdor, who appeared to have had his feet up on the antechamber’s desk, swiftly dropped them to the floor and stood up. “My Liege.”

  He fidgeted, scratched the back of one hand with the fingers of the other and looked generally uncomfortable. Lisen entered the room, signaling the guards to remain outside, and sauntered to the front of the desk.

  “Akdor, welcome back to Avaret.”

  “Thank you…my Liege.”

  “Do you know why you’re here?” She rubbed a finger across the fine wood of the desk’s top, her finger coming away clean. No dust.

  Akdor swallowed hard. “I was told you had questions regarding an assassination attempt…or something like that.”

  “Yes, questions I’m not willing to ask until my Will arrives from Seffa. He should be here in a few days. You don’t mind waiting, do you?”

  Lisen watched his golden-brown eyes widen. He wants to refuse.

  “Uh, no, my Liege, of course not. But do you think you could, um, possibly call off your guards?”

  Lisen shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, Akdor,” she said with deadly purpose, “but I have no reason to trust you. The guards stay. Commander?”

  She twirled on her heel and started out the door.

  “My Liege?”

  She stopped but didn’t turn back. “Yes, Akdor?”

  “May I write to my brother?”

  “Of course. I’m not a savage. You may write to whomever you please.”

  “All gratitude, my Liege.”

  Lisen marched away as he spoke, Tanres right behind her. Once out on the plaza again, heading back to the Keep, Tanres caught up with her.

  “My Liege, is it wise to keep a noble under arrest without charging him?”

  “He’s not under arrest. And besides,” Lisen added, “if he did it, he’s never going home again anyway.”

  Nalin sat at Bala’s desk in the old palace, Lisen’s note from this morning lying where he’d set it. When he’d arrived two days ago at Lisen’s request after her return from Elor’s investiture, she’d beseeched him for his patience. She’d explained that she had word that the guards were on the trail of what they thought might be a witness to the transaction between Akdor and the assassin. So for the last two days he’d waited at his Liege’s pleasure, and although he didn’t begrudge her for the time, he’d left Bala at home starting to bulge, the baby she carried in her pouch halfway between conception and emergence. Wait, no, he reminded himself. This is nothing compared to the length of my absence if she’d insisted I go to Thristas. I can be patient.

  He returned to the contents of this morning’s note. Apparently the information given to the guards had failed to prove correct. Lisen didn’t say what had been faulty—or even if she knew—but the guards had returned to their previous meticulous pursuit of evidence, this lead dropped like so many others before it. So now, Lisen would arrive soon here at the Tuane quarters, and the two of them would question Akdor together. And then, Lisen promised in the note, he could return home.

  A knock at his door gave him barely enough warning before Lisen stepped in, dressed rather severely in a tan tunic, a leather vest and leather leggings. He knew that two guards stood outside—the guard that always appeared when he arrived in Avaret and Lisen’s own security attachment.

  “I’m sorry, Nal. I really thought we’d have something to take into him, something to make him twist about a bit.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” he said as he rose.

  “Then, let’s go see the little worm.”

  Lisen leading the way, the two of them stepped out into the hall and around the corner to the Ba quarters accompanied by their obligatory detail. Two additional guards stood watch over the door there, and Nalin sensed the walls closing in on him. Lisen must have felt it, too, because she ordered the two guards w
ho’d come with them back with a swift swipe of her hand. Then, moving between the two guards at the door, she opened it, and they entered Akdor’s well-appointed jail cell together.

  Akdor jumped up from the couch on which he’d been lounging. His tunic was in dire need of cleaning, and old food dishes lay strewn about the room. Nalin knew someone would have taken them from him if he’d let them, but apparently the ill-fated of the two Ba twins chose to live in his self-created squalor.

  “My Liege, Nalin,” he croaked. Nalin suspected he hadn’t used his voice in days.

  Lisen stepped around the couch, moved a tray to the floor and sat down. Then she set a plate of chicken bones from beside her on top of it. “Nal, I’ve cleared a place for you.”

  The reality that the Empir and her Will had come to question him appeared to finally take shape in Akdor’s brain, and he looked around for a suitable space. He finally settled on the chair behind the desk, and there he sat.

  “My Liege, to what do I owe this visit?”

  “Akdor, I promised questions, and I always keep my promises.”

  She had a wicked streak, this Empir of his. Nalin himself was incapable of dallying with a suspect in this manner, especially a noble, but because of her lack of exposure in her youth to Garla’s hierarchical system, she could withhold respect from nobles such as Akdor who had failed to earn it. A part of Nalin envied this ability of hers to ignore class and station. And another part of him was quite content with the way he saw the world and its inhabitants.

  “Now,” she continued, leaning in towards him, “did you or did you not hire an assassin to kill me?”

  “What? Me? No. No.”

  “Akdor,” Nalin said, recognizing Ba’s awkward attempt at prevarication, “we began with a long list of suspects, including the Empir’s children, and slowly eliminated each and every one. You’re all that’s left.”

  “Why? Why would I try to kill you?” Akdor asked of his Empir, his light brown eyes imploring her.

  “Ah, motivation,” she said. “Yes, motivation. Let’s see. Nalin?” She turned to him then back to Akdor. “Maybe the fact that you lost the case against your brother and you blame me?”

  Akdor pulled back in his chair. “No, my Liege. Never.”

  “Well, that’s good. Because I had no say in the decision at all. If I remember correctly, when the vote got to three for your brother, the judges settled that as the verdict without ever turning to me.”

  “But you were in charge.”

  “No, I gave them some basic guidelines and then sat back, deferring to the first judge they’d chosen for themselves.”

  “Well, you wanted Mutar all along.”

  “No one knows what I wanted, and no one ever will, not even my Will here or my spouse. Nalin? What do you think?”

  “I say put it before the Council. Let his be the second case they tackle under the new rules of justice.”

  “But—”

  “No.” Lisen rose, and Nalin followed.

  “I can’t leave?”

  “No, Akdor, you can’t leave,” Lisen said as she approached the door, where she stopped and turned back to him. “Oh, and, Akdor, I’m sending someone to clean this place up. It’s disgusting.”

  Out she strode, ignoring Akdor’s further pleas from behind her. She headed down the hall, Nalin and their guards following in her wake. She halted in front of his door.

  “Go home. Give Bala my love.” She started to leave but stopped. “But stand ready to return if Tanres needs you while I’m in Thristas.”

  “Of course, my Liege,” he said. “Safe journey.”

  “Thank you. And to you as well.” She took a few steps down the hall but pulled up yet again. “And take a guard with you, will you. I don’t like hearing that you’ve traveled without one.”

  “Aye, my Liege.”

  And finally she was gone. Two days of waiting around, and then all that came of it was this brief “discussion” with Akdor. He sighed and entered the Tuane quarters, leaving his guard behind in the hall. He suspected Lisen’s mind was on Rinli in the desert and the investiture to come and that everything else fell to the side with that on her mind. It wasn’t the first time his needs had been ignored, but it was a comfort to know that it had been this way with Flandari far more often than it had ever been with Lisen.

  He gathered what little he needed to take and would leave once he’d changed into riding leathers.

  And, yes, he would take a guard with him this time.

  Lisen looked at the eleven-year-out Insenlo and smiled in sweet satisfaction. Her youngest, her thinker and the only other person Pharaoh allowed up top, the girl sat the stallion now after the long ride out, just she and her mother together, to the far end of the park. Well, the two of them together and four guards on watch, keeping their distance. Lisen rode another stallion whom Jal had been working with lately. Pharaoh rode well with any horse, even with other studs like himself. The bay Lisen sat on now performed fairly well in the presence of the best horse in Lisen’s stable, so she kept her horse in loose check while she and Sen looked out towards the Keep in the distance below the hill they’d climbed. It was Insenlo’s favorite place, and Lisen enjoyed it as well.

  “You miss your father.”

  Insenlo nodded slowly, her green eyes reflecting an inner melancholy.

  “I miss him, too.” He and Rinli had been gone for over a month; Nalin, for a week-and-a-half. Avaret had slipped into a lethargy which refused to cooperate with her need for the occasional minor complication.

  “I know Rin needs Fa,” the girl said softly, “and I know someone has to go to Thristas with her, and that someone can’t be you. But now he’s going to be gone longer, and even while he’s here, I’ll probably never see him.”

  Lisen sighed. Her daughter echoed the concerns she and Korin had discussed before his departure. All those years ago, when they’d made the decision on how to set up Rinli’s time in Thristas, they’d never considered the possibility of two additional children who would need their father, too. She knew Korin, as much as he loved the desert, regretted every moment away, but they trusted no one else to keep Rinli safe in an unsafe environment.

  “Think of it this way. You’ll see him soon when we travel to Thristas for your sister’s investiture.”

  “Why Rinli?”

  “What?” Insenlo, being Insenlo, had startled Lisen with her simple but pointed question.

  “Why Rinli?” the girl asked again. “Because she’s the oldest? Because she was conceived in Thristas?”

  “Because she was all we had at the time to negotiate with for the treaty. And because her lineage and the circumstances of her conception may fulfill the prophesy of Mantar’s Child.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know, sweet cake. If nothing else, it was convenient. But maybe it was more.”

  Lisen’s horse lurched and tried to take a nip out of Pharaoh. Pharaoh maintained his composure while Lisen fought to bring her horse back into line.

  “We’d better head back,” she said.

  Insenlo nodded and urged Pharaoh down the hill, Lisen following behind her.

  A few moments later, as they rode up to the stable, Lisen saw Commander Tanres standing in the way of their approach.

  “You go. I’ll catch up,” she told Sen and pulled her horse up in front of Tanres while Insenlo rode around her. Lisen dismounted, and the commander stepped up to her.

  “My Liege, a letter from Korin. The guards who brought it from the Pass said it was urgent.”

  Lisen took the folded letter from Tanres and stared at its seal. “Kopol sealed this,” she remarked, wondering what it meant. She broke the seal and read.

  My Liege,

  I hope this finds you well and still in Avaret, for I fear I have difficult news. The Elders are insisting on the presence of your Will, and I have been unable to dissuade them. I believe we must concede this one. My apologies to Holder Tuane.

  Korin


  Lisen read it a second time then looked up to Tanres. “I will need your fastest rider ready to go immediately. Meet me in my office.”

  “Aye, my Liege.”

  And without hesitating, Lisen broke into a run to the Keep, up through the portico and on into her office. She slipped in behind her desk, pulled out paper and inked her stylus.

  Nalin, she wrote.

  Elders’ Council insists on your presence. Come immediately for departure thereafter. Offer Bala my apologies.

  Lisen

  A letter written in haste in the hope of a hasty response. She didn’t like it, but the peace depended on a willingness to compromise. She could only hope that this would not all end in chaos. What had her sins drawn them all into?

  Nalin sat on a stool and watched as Linell and Alabar prepared the family dinner. The kitchen’s open windows welcomed the early evening breezes, and his daughter and son were actually doing a fairly reasonable imitation of getting along. They’d become quite proficient at putting a meal together now that they’d grown old enough to take over for the cook on his free day once a week. It was a blessing that they could do it. Bala’s pouching had proven to be more difficult than Alabar’s, and although her nausea had ended with the transfer to the pouch, her appetite had not resumed as vigorously as it should have. All seemed well otherwise, so Nalin did his best not to worry. He also did his best to avoid cooking; it was not a thing he did well.

  “No, no, don’t mess with the soup. It’s fine.” Linell punctuated her order by slapping Alabar on the hand holding the spoon he’d intended to use to stir said soup. “Just keep slicing bread.”

  “I’ve sliced eight slices already.”

  “Then wrap what’s left back up in the cloth and put it back in the pantry.”

  “Stop telling me what to do.”

  Nalin rubbed the light beard on his chin. Some might consider serving the Empir as her Will a difficult task. Obviously they’d never been a parent.