by Stefon Mears
“We have to assume they’re ahead of us,” Cavan said. “Probably already heading for that piece of land I’m supposed to inherit. There’s a manor house there, the baronial seat. Kent uses it when he checks on the place. That’s our next—”
“No,” Ehren said, thumping his staff on the stone floor. “This is stupid. Why chase the threat? We need to go to the king.”
* * *
The king. Ehren wanted to go to the king. Cavan almost couldn’t believe his ears. The thought of it was enough to turn his stomach. Not that it needed much persuasion, after the horrid smell of the hellcrow. Drove away any thoughts of hunger, though their lunch of jerked beef, boiled eggs, cherries and apples had been long hours ago.
Bringing problems to the king, that was for nobles to do. Not for bastards like Cavan. Bastards made their own way through life. Even bastards lucky enough to grow up in a fine home, where they were well-treated. Even bastards lucky enough to have land and a title in their future.
Once Cavan had land, and a title, then he would be someone to bring matters before a king. But now? Today?
“No,” Cavan said, finally getting the word out when he, Ehren and Amra were back on the streets of Tradeton, preparing to mount their horses.
“No, what?” Amra said, swinging into the saddle while scanning the streets. “Do you see a foe?”
“No, we’re not going to the king.”
“Cavan,” Ehren said in the same patient tone he used with children. He mounted his blond chestnut before continuing. “The duke of Nolarr — the king’s own brother — is trying to steal land. This is a matter for the crown. Not for us.”
“We don’t have proof,” Cavan said, thinking quickly. He kept his calf-high leather boots firmly planted on the red-and-brown cobblestones beside his horse. “All we have is the word of a free sword back in Riverbend.”
“Well,” Amra said, “that and the duke’s sigil on the four men who tried to kill us on the road from Riverbend.”
“A bit of cloth. Easily forged. Especially away from Nolarr.” Cavan shook his head. “That far from Oltoss, might even have been some other noble’s sigil. Or it might have been close, but not the same. Perhaps crossed black greatswords instead of spears, on a field the wrong shade of yellow. It’s not like we cut one off and brought it back to show the crown.”
“Cavan,” Ehren started again, but Cavan wouldn’t let him finish.
“No! Listen to me for once, will you? Have you ever been to the court of Oltoss?”
Cavan stared at Amra and Ehren in turn. Amra only stared back, mild interest in her green-and-gold eyes. Ehren had an objection on his lips, but let it die. He shook his head.
“I have. Five times. Let me tell you exactly what will happen if we try to take this to court.” Cavan sighed and patted the neck of Dzint, who shifted uncomfortably beside him, reacting to Cavan’s discomfort. “Not one of us has a title, nor a royal summons. Which means we won’t make it into the court proper. We’ll get fobbed off on the second or third assistant to the Royal Seneschal.”
Cavan shook his head. “We’ll tell him our story. He’ll cluck his tongue, and it will sound like sympathy. Probably offers us food and drink. But he won’t believe us. He’ll ask for proof. And when we don’t have any, he’ll tell us to come back when we have some.”
“What about—” Ehren started, raising his hand to point at Kent’s house.
“Not proof,” Cavan said, shaking his head slowly. “Not even close. Nothing about that leads back to the duke.”
“He has a point,” Amra said. “We don’t have anything solid, and we won’t until it’s too late.”
“If it were just the two of us,” Ehren said, pointing back and forth between himself and Amra, “then that may be. But Cavan, you’re the king’s son.”
“Bastard son,” corrected Cavan.
“You’re still the king’s blood. That has to mean something.”
“I have seen King Draven exactly three times in my memory.” Cavan calmed Dzint by mounting up before he continued. “The first time is the first thing I can remember. I remember the glint of his gold crown, the sparkle of the diamonds set into its peaks. His strong jaw, and his brown eyes. I remember him saying, ‘Yes, he has my eyes, and there’s no disputing the mark.’”
“Mark?” Amra said, eyes full of humor now. “Where exactly is this mark, Cavan? And how have we not seen it before?”
Cavan blew out a sigh. “He didn’t sound happy. Looking back, I’m pretty sure that was resignation in his voice.”
“You were a baby, you couldn’t possibly know that,” Ehren said. “And even if you’re right, I’m sure it wasn’t about you. He probably just wasn’t looking forward to telling the queen about his bastard.”
“Kent always said my mom was a noble, not a serving maid. No way the queen didn’t already know.”
“What were the other two times?” Amra said, voice pushing for them to get back on topic, while her eyes scanned for threats.
“Kent presented me to the king before I went off for warrior training, and again before I went off to study with Master Powys.” Cavan frowned. “In fact, I think the king may have arranged for Master Powys to take me on as an apprentice.”
“That’s a good sign,” Ehren said.
Cavan gave Ehren a droll look. Amra cleared her throat.
Ehren looked chagrined, as though he only now remembered that neither of those trainings had ended well for Cavan.
“Anyway,” Cavan said, “point is I never saw the king at court. Never in any official setting. The first time, I don’t even know where we were, but the king wasn’t wearing anything especially regal. In fact, maybe my memory is off here, but I think he was dressed in regular wools and a roughspun cloak.”
“And a huge freaking crown,” Amra said.
“Might not have arrived with it on,” Ehren said, eyes thoughtful. “He wasn’t going to acknowledge you, which probably upset your mother’s family. Might be why your mother hasn’t been in touch with you. Wearing the crown when he admitted you were his, even if he wasn’t going to formally claim you and make you part of the royal family, that may have mattered.”
“That’s one possibility,” Cavan said. “ I think it’s more likely he had some official business there that required him to wear the crown. Compensation, maybe, if the pregnancy harmed any marriage plans.”
Ehren and Amra looked at each other. This was one of those moments when Cavan would have sworn those two could talk mind-to-mind. Usually Ehren was the first to speak afterward, but this time it was Amra.
“Cavan, if the king had to offer something to your mother’s family, they were more than minor nobles…”
“Don’t care,” Cavan lied. “The other two times I saw the king were at the royal castle all right — in tiny little rooms near the sally port, where I never even saw a servant, much less any other nobility. One old guard escorted us in, and the same old guard escorted us out. Otherwise it was always just Kent and me, waiting for the king, who came in alone, said a few words, gave Kent something for me, and left.”
“He gave you something,” Amra said, “but he didn’t give it to you?”
“Wasn’t anything I got to keep. Letter and a pouch, each time. Wouldn’t have known they had anything to do with me, if Kent hadn’t called them my gifts from the king. Never even found out what they were.”
“He didn’t speak to you,” Ehren said, certainty in his voice now. “Or look at you, even. Not directly. Did he?”
Cavan only shook his head.
“Placating the queen, I expect,” Amra said. “Not acknowledging you officially, that probably helped soothe her a bit. But if he’d shown you any kind of attention or affection? That might have crossed the line for her.”
“Would you have objected?” Ehren asked Amra. “If you were queen?”
“I’d’ve killed you,” Amra said to Cavan, then frowned. “Well, effectively, anyway. I’d’ve killed your mother before she bore
you. Probably would have killed the king too. Cheat on me, would he?”
Ehren gave Amra the kind of look Cavan only saw on his face once in a great while. Like he was looking at Amra and seeing a different person than the one he was used to riding beside. But that didn’t make sense to Cavan, because everything Amra had just said was, in Cavan’s estimation, entirely to be expected from her.
Whatever Ehren was thinking, he shook it off a moment later. He turned back to Cavan.
“So,” he said, “not the king then?”
“No.”
“Pity,” he said. “Would’ve been nice to let someone else solve the problem for a change.”
And with that, they trio began to ride.
13
The late afternoon sun hung low over the Dwarfmarches behind them, to the west. It would set before long. The east road out of Tradeton had meandered through a few dozen farms before bending north enough to join the main road east. The Royal Road, which ran all the way to the huge city of Interr, at the eastern edge of duchy of Nolarr, which formed the eastern boundary of the kingdom of Oltoss.
Cavan had seen countless maps of Oltoss in his youth, and he always felt it was shaped like the head of a hound, looking to the northeast. Nolarr started at the blue mountains, and formed the hound’s snout.
The Royal Road started at Interr, ran the width of the country, and continued west beyond the borders where it gained other names. Might even have been the same road that led to Riverbend. Either way, made traveling easier and faster. The road itself was ancient, from back before the War of Three Kings, with that dust-free hard-packed dirt that somehow seemed easier underfoot — or underhoof — than even good, springy grass.
And the road was popular. Two caravans, going toward the capitol, had passed Cavan and his friends that late afternoon. And Cavan had seen dozens of farmers and tradesmen on the road, going about their business on foot. Sometimes leading mules, sometimes pulling carts. The odd thing about them was that they seemed unaccountably … pleasant. The first to offer greetings, or even just smile and wave.
Most such travelers on the road tended toward somewhat … grim dispositions. Or at least standoffishness. At least, when Cavan had noted them. As though travel were a trial to be suffered for the prize of arriving at their destination.
These farmers and tradesmen that afternoon, though, seemed almost happy to be on their way. Perhaps they’d merely all enjoyed good fortune, but Cavan suspected something deeper there. Something about the roadway itself.
These ancient roads were more than mere spellwork, he was sure of it. And Cavan wondered briefly if even Master Powys had unlocked any of the secrets in their design.
On either side of the road around Cavan, the grass grew green and thick, tangled in places by weeds and blackberry brambles. He found his eyes drawn to every sight, still drinking in the color after that trek between the worlds. He reveled in the deepening blue of the afternoon sky. The white of the puffy clouds. The greens and browns of the elms, ashes, and madrones that grew in copses and small woods along the way.
Sometimes those trees grew between the road and the twin rivers to the north and south. Other times, farther off in the background, letting Cavan see the deep, wide rivers that rushed their way through the kingdom, occasionally allowing a branch or fork to diminish them by no more than a sliver.
And Cavan’s ears thrilled to the songs of birds he’d remembered from childhood. Jays, like the ones he’d hunted with a sling when one dared swoop down at Fiddlestaff, the neighborhood cat. Larks and swallows too, singing joyously as they had when Cavan was ten and Kent brought him out this road for the first time, to see the land he would one day call his own.
Cavan had picked his fill of blackberries that day, nearly ruined his supper at the inn that night.
“Should be an inn before the sun sets,” Cavan said. “The Bear Trap. Good stew, at least the last time I rode through.”
“No inns,” Amra said.
“We should stop then,” Ehren said, “if we’re going to set up camp.”
“No camp,” Amra said. “Nothing more than bedrolls, anyway. Certainly no fires.”
“You want to just keep riding then?” Cavan said. “The road’s wide, and easy enough. We’ll—”
“We need to be ready for a fight,” Ehren said. “We need rest, and we need food. An inn should—”
“Let everyone know exactly where we are?” Amra said. “Yes, I think it would do that splendidly. Shall we save ourselves some time and send the duke a formal announcement of our movements?”
“They know where we’re going,” Cavan said.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” Ehren said. “Cavan, does this barony of yours at least have a name?”
Cavan blinked. Of course it had a name. Everyplace had a name…
Suddenly Cavan remembered. Maybe it was the road, or the memory of blackberries, or maybe just the tone of Ehren’s voice. But for the first time in years, the name of Cavan’s future barony leapt back to mind.
“Juno,” he said.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Ehren said, more urgency in his voice than Cavan liked.
“What’s wrong with—” Amra started, but Ehren cut her off.
“Cavan. Tell me you’re joking.”
Cavan shook his head. “That’s the name. The Barony of Juno. Why?”
Ehren looked back and forth between them. “No. Not here. If we’re not stopping at an inn, we’re stopping now.”
“We’re not stopping near the road,” Amra said. “Follow me.”
Amra glanced up and down the road to make sure no one was watching, then led Cavan and Ehren off to the north side. Through the nearby grass and trees they went, making small turns here and there that looked random to Cavan. By the time the dark was rising around them, the three of them sat among a copse of alders atop a small hill. Barely enough room for their horses and bedrolls.
The river rushed nearby, and its fresh smell lifted Cavan’s spirits in the face of whatever doom Ehren saw in the name of his future barony. Assuming Cavan ever did inherit it.
After he’d performed his sunset prayers, Ehren had broken out cold roasted chicken that tasted and felt entirely too fresh to have ridden around for days or weeks in that marvelous brown leather backpack of his. The chicken went well with fresh blackberries that Cavan picked, and a loaf of good Oltoss rye bread that Amra had picked up somewhere on her reconnaissance.
They washed it all down with horns of river water that tasted as good as it smelled.
Finally, in the dim twilight, Cavan asked, “So why does the Barony of Juno concern you?”
“You don’t…” Ehren drew a deep, slow breath and sat back against the rough gray bark of an alder. “Obviously you don’t. Obviously no one around here does, or the name would have been changed before you were born. Unless there’s a reason they kept the name. As a warning to—”
“Ehren,” Amra said in a sweet voice, “will you tell us what you’re talking about? Or would you prefer I water that tree with your blood?”
“Sorry,” Ehren said, and this was now officially the longest Cavan could remember Ehren going without a smile. In and of itself, that was enough to start a gnawing worry deep in Cavan’s guts.
Ehren untied the leather thong from his hair, and ran his fingers through his blond locks as he talked. Cavan wondered if this was a calming routine of Ehren’s. If so, he didn’t use it often.
“This was said to happen … maybe three centuries ago? I was studying with the elves when I ran across the story, and they don’t measure time quite the same way we do. They couldn’t, long as they live.”
“Focus,” Cavan said.
“Right.” Ehren shook his head. Tough to tell in the twilight, but Cavan thought he looked pale. More so than usual. “Back then, the area south of the Wailing Woods and east of the Dwarfmarches was entirely controlled by the Dunaian.”
“The Dunaian are extinct,” Cavan said. “After the W
ar of Blood.”
“Not entirely.” Ehren’s fingers were tapping on the pristine white linen of his breeches. “They interbred with humans. Their blood lives on in some of us, especially here in Oltoss.”
Ehren glanced at Cavan. “Nobles and royal lines, especially. You probably have some Dunaian blood.”
“Anyway,” Amra said.
“Right. The Dunaian had fewer gods than the rest of the races. They had a Creator … Nuwin, I think … and a Destroyer, Yeenach. The Destroyer was said to live in the Underworld, while the Creator lived in the seas.”
“And Juno?” Amra said, apparently in no mood for a lecture.
“Juno was a mortal who fell in love with the Destroyer when he spent the dark part of a year walking the world. She traveled with him. Loved him. And when he left her before the turn of the seasons, she followed.”
“To a mountain range?” Cavan said.
“A range of mountains that ‘glittered like sapphires by the light of the high sun.’”
“The Blue Mountains,” Cavan said. The name of the range between Nolarr and the rest of the kingdom of Oltoss. When Cavan thought back, he could imagine someone describing them as glittering like sapphires, at least during the high summer. They had ridges of crystalline deposits that ranged from pale blue to almost indigo.
“It was there she found a cave that lead to the Underworld.”
“And lived unhappily ever after, I’m sure,” Amra said. “As though there’s another option with a god called ‘the Destroyer.’”
“That wasn’t how the Dunaian viewed—”
“Ehren,” Amra said, cutting off the lecture at the source.
“The point is,” Cavan said, “you think maybe there’s a cave or cavern somewhere in the barony that goes a little deeper than we’d like?”
“I’d assumed some mine had been discovered. Gold maybe, or gemstones.”
“Couldn’t have been gemstones,” Cavan said. “No way the duke could have found out in time to keep Kent from spreading word of that.”
