by Ellyn, Court
“Yes, sire.” Kieryn pretended to watch the riders preparing, to behave as if the king’s proximity were no more flustering than the sun rising.
“Will he win?” Rhorek asked.
“He’ll give it everything he’s got,” assured Kieryn.
“Good diplomatic answer. Neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’.”
The king took up Kieryn’s wrist, startling him, and placed a heavy item in his palm, then closed his fingers. All the while, Rhorek watched the riders milling inside the yellow dust clouds. “Your achievement this morning,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The riders began mounting up, and squires wrestled to hold the anxious horses in a line. Kieryn peeked into his palm. A broad silver ring inlaid with a smooth oval onyx winked at him. Tiny nicks and dings in the silver spoke of the ring’s frequent wear. However many rings the Black Falcon owned, he favored this one. Kieryn gulped and muttered thoughtlessly, “Am I to wear it?”
Rhorek smiled and dipped his chin as Princess Mazél passed with a curtsy. Her younger daughter was also to race, and Mazél barked orders as Genna made for the starting line. “Rings are for wearing, young man,” Rhorek told him.
“Thank you, sire.” He could only assume, then, that it was for Kieryn’s own sake that Rhorek had given the gift discreetly. True, Kieryn dreaded the fanfare and gawking eyes that Kelyn craved, but he hadn’t expected the Black Falcon to understand him so well.
The herald with the brass horn raised a warning flag, alerting the riders, and Rhorek silently resumed his seat. Kieryn tried the ring, found it fit comfortably enough on his middle finger. Searching the pavilion, he found his mother among the ladies Maeret, Andett, and Bysana. Rhoslyn was nowhere to be seen, and Kieryn began to worry. He remembered her anger and cringed.
Alovi’s hand shot to her mouth. Hurrying toward her son, she grabbed Kieryn by the arm and jabbed a finger at the riders. “Is this Rhorek’s idea? Putting your brother on that horse?” Astride the tall Roreshan, Kelyn hung back from the other riders. To keep the race fair, the victors of earlier races were to be given a head start. Brandrith pawed the ground irritably, but Kelyn appeared as calm as the morning.
“Don’t worry, Mum,” Kieryn said, “he’s a big boy. He can hold on.”
Alovi hadn’t time to argue; the brass horn blasted, and the fastest horses in Aralorr jolted over the starting line. Rhorek’s left hand was up; as soon as the horses sped past him, he dropped his hand and Brandrith was released. For the first three rounds, Kelyn trailed behind. Alovi squeezed Kieryn’s arm and nearly shook him out of his skin in her enthusiasm to urge Kelyn onward. On the fourth round, Princess Mazél’s entry barreled over in a somersault, throwing Genna off the track and tripping up Lord Rorin’s bay.
Kelyn came upon the tangled mass of flailing legs. Alovi screamed and buried her face in Kieryn’s shoulder.
“He made it around, Mother,” he said. “He’s catching up.”
Brandrith loped past Laral and Leshan of Tírandon, the older brother holding back and shouting encouragement to the younger, and finally Kelyn strove for the lead against the lieutenant and her blue. They ran neck and neck for the next two rounds, with Kelyn allowing Brandrith to fall behind for the last half of the sixth. Then on the final round, Brandrith seemed to become a black bolt of raw energy. His long legs pounded out a wide stride, his sweaty coat gleamed in the afternoon sun, and he left the blue struggling in a cloud of yellow dust.
Alovi loosed a piercing, unladylike whistle through her fingers as Kelyn swept past the king for the victory.
~~~~
In the center of the track, Kelyn walked Brandrith in slow circles to cool his muscles, then dismounted and handed the reins to one of the squires. He smeared sweat from his eyes and spit dust from between his teeth. Lords and ladies from one end of the pavilion to the other were cheering for him. He raised a hand and the cheering redoubled. In all his life, nothing had equaled his exhilaration as when Brandrith flew past the lieutenant’s blue. He had lain low over Brandrith’s neck, immaterial. Proud and vain, the Roreshan had wanted the victory as badly as his rider.
“Excellent show, lad,” said a voice dryly. Lieutenant Lissah stood akimbo, teeth grinding, her black surcoat gray with a layer of Kelyn’s dust. “Though, as you passed, what was the grin meant to imply? I do not appreciate being toyed with.”
“Really?” Kelyn said, voice turning to silk. With a leather glove, he batted dust from his sleeve. The south wind wafted the dust into Lissah’s face. “I’ll remember that,” he said, “if ever I decide to toy with you.” He nodded a cool fare-you-well and made for the pavilion. In the shade, he knelt before the king.
“I had hoped for a victory,” Rhorek announced, and the spectators hushed, “but hardly one so sound. Well done, Kelyn. I am pleased to gift you with this magnificent sword.”
Captain Jareg passed into the king’s hands a black leather scabbard bright with silver inlay. The sword’s hilt gleamed new and unblemished, and a falcon spread onyx wings along the crossguard.
Kelyn felt his hand trembling as he reached out. But he pulled it back again, fighting an unwelcome rush of shame. “By rights, I can’t wear it.”
Rhorek leaned forward and winked. “Shall we remedy that, on Last Day?”
Scarcely daring to hope, Kelyn risked a glance at his father. Keth’s face was stone; he looked neither pleased nor angered. But he nodded.
“Come, take your prize.”
Admiring the deadly, beautiful thing in his hands, Kelyn barely heard Rhorek declare the races over. The sun set, and under Master Yorin’s direction, the under-stewards set up long trestle tables in the center of the race course, while squires lit a hundred torches on tall stakes. Nelda led the parade of food from the kitchens, bearing a fine pair of geese roasted with their necks entwined.
Kelyn’s circle of admirers thinned and headed for the tables. He was surprised to find his brother hanging back under the eaves of the pavilion. Sprinting up the hill, he asked, “Did you hear what His Majesty said? I’m to be knighted on Last Day!”
“I heard,” Kieryn replied quietly. Kelyn feared his twin might be jealous or even disappointed in himself, but Kieryn’s expression was one of pride. The occasion was rare when words failed him. He extended a hand toward the shiny scabbard. “No practice sword, this.”
“Where did you get that?” Kelyn asked, seeing the ring.
“You’re not the only one who impressed the king today.”
Kelyn clapped his twin on the back. “Well, then, have we earned the right to be arrogant?”
Kieryn didn’t answer. His expression turned grave, and he pointed over Kelyn’s shoulder.
Captain Maegeth stood under the far end of the pavilion, a hand beckoning someone from the tables. Captain Jareg was climbing the hill toward her. With forced nonchalance, Da and the king excused themselves from the hungry crowd. Once gathered in the pavilion’s shadow, they listened as Maegeth divulged some bit of news in a racing whisper. Keth hissed a round of profanities and cut a path straight for the Northwest Gate. The king pursued, trying to calm his friend, but the War Commander’s wrath was unabated. As soon as the two captains followed them through the gate, Kelyn tugged his brother’s sleeve. “C’mon.” In clandestine fashion, the twins eased around the gatehouse tower and into the deepest shadows inside the north wall. Their father’s long stride hastened him across the bailey, past the keep, and through the cobbled courtyard, to the Front Gatehouse. To the twins’ dismay, Keth turned sharply into the right-hand tower. Maegeth’s quarters occupied the upper floors, but below lay the dungeons.
Hurrying toward the tower, they found Maegeth blocking the door, torch in hand. “Where do you think you’re going, my lords?” Her black eyes glistered with firelight and flicked between the twins, as forbidding as a pair of keyholes to which there were no keys.
“Oh, not again,” Kieryn mumbled.
Kelyn doubted that Ilswythe’s long-time protector would
molest the War Commander’s sons as Lieutenant Lissah had, so he stood his ground. “We’ve a right to know what has threatened the king, Maegeth.”
“And who says anything has threatened the king?”
Kelyn swelled out his chest, clenched his jaw, and tried to look half-a-foot taller. “I say so.”
~~~~
Maegeth led the twins down a flight of steps slick with spring wet and green moss. Keth rarely found use for the cells unless his patrols lucked onto a camp of silver thieves. But legend had it that in the days following the Elf War, many an elf had languished in the darkness here until their bones rotted from the chains. Maegeth used to scare the twins with tales of elven ghosts glowing faintly silver and singing beautiful songs to lure children deep into the darkness, where the spirits cursed them to eternal sleep.
Descending one slick step at a time, Kieryn recalled the tales, as well as the thrill of fear they had sent shivering in his belly. The only light he saw rose oily and orange from the torches lining the corridor, and the voices bouncing along the stone belonged merely to his father and Rhorek and Jareg. They sounded heated, echoing from far down the passage. Though Kieryn had lived within Ilswythe’s confines nearly every day of his life, this part of his home was new to him; he opened his senses to the shadows, to the voices, to the cold damp sliding up his spine like fingers. The air reeked of mold and dead rats and decaying straw. Pale niter seeped through the stone, painting phantom shapes on the walls.
Kieryn’s head began throbbing. He blamed it on the stink of the mold and the strain of the unsteady torchlight on his eyes.
Maegeth must’ve given Da the proper key, for the cell near the end of the corridor stood open and the heated voices spilled out. The twins lingered on the threshold, while Maegeth continued inside. She set her torch in a bracket, and Keth asked her, “What did they tell you?”
Along the far wall, lined with rows of rusted chains and wrist shackles, hung two men. They squinted against the light of the torches and ducked their heads, revealing blisters on their cheeks, red and oozing.
“They told us nothing,” Maegeth said. “Not even when we set hot iron to them.”
Rhorek approached the men. Captain Jareg followed as closely as the king’s shadow. “Their names?”
“I know not, sire.”
The king studied the men closely, stoically. “So you are the ones who tried to kill me. Death has many faces, it seems. But not yours. Not today.”
A prisoner’s face crumpled up and he spat at Rhorek’s feet. The king scarcely flinched, but Jareg drove his meaty fist into the prisoner’s jaw. The man’s head cracked into the stone wall and he dangled senselessly from the chains.
“Pathetic,” Rhorek said to the other. “Men of your breed can’t even fail with grace. How shameful it would’ve been to fall by your hands.”
Bugger that! muttered the prisoner. Or, at least, Kieryn thought it was the prisoner, but no one reacted, not even Jareg with his fist.
To Maegeth, the king said, “If they tell us nothing, they are useless. I will not leave them to burden Keth’s hospitality. Leave this one alive until I have spoken with the stableboy who found them.”
~~~~
“I took Lord Galt’s stallion back to the stables. He had a swelling in his front fetlock. The right one … no, the left. After I tethers him, I go to the storeroom in the back to fetch a h’ointment. And it was in the storeroom I overheard ‘em. One of ‘em said, ‘You got it?’ The other said, ‘Of course, I got it.’ When I peeked around the door, there they was, all hunkered down in a back corner, and one of ‘em pulls a little bottle from his pocket. Oh, what’s the word for it? A vial, that’s what it was. ‘One drop of this will kill a dozen kings,’ says he. Then I shuts the door and bars it and runs for Cap’n Maegeth.” The stableboy was no older than fifteen. His face, splotchy red with a plague of pimples, blotched the brighter under the attention of so many eyes.
“The vial?” Keth asked. He had ushered Rhorek and Jareg to Captain Maegeth’s headquarters and even allowed his inquisitive sons to join them, though he’d threatened them with their lives if they so much as breathed a word about what they’d seen. Stone and steel, the captain’s rooms were as stark and gloomy as the cells themselves, only lacking the mold and rats. Kieryn longed to return to the plush comforts of his rooms; his head still throbbed. But he couldn’t back out now; his father would think him squeamish.
“We’ve locked it up tight,” Maegeth said, perching on the edge of her battered desk. “Substance smells like Ghost Root.”
“Destroy it.”
“Of course, sir.”
Rhorek laid a hand on the stableboy’s shoulder. “You did well, lad. But they mentioned no names?”
“No names, Your Majestic Sir.”
Someone knocked on the thick oaken door. The man whom Maegeth had left with the prisoners entered and saluted with a fist to his chest.
“It’s done?” asked Keth.
“On my own blade, m’ lord. You’ll be interested to know that before I struck, the bastard cried out, ‘Long live King Shadryk’.”
Keth grimaced. On a lengthy exhale, he muttered, “Ah, damn …”
“Now, Keth,” Rhorek began, “this doesn’t have to mean what you think it means.”
Only a friend as tried and true as Keth of Ilswythe would dare look at the Black Falcon as though he’d lost his senses. “What else could this mean, sire? Shadryk the Third has some bloody scheme up his sleeve, and it involves your murder. Damn the Goddess, how did these sons of bitches get into my house? I’ve stretched the garrison beyond their means, the Guard is on alert … who brought them in?”
“You’re talking of treason again, Keth.”
“I am.”
“And which of your guests do you suggest I accuse?” The king’s tone was sarcastic.
“The river lords to start. Shadryk has easiest access to them.”
“Lander? Ha! That man spits at the word ‘Fieran.’ Every year he puts a dozen Fierans on their pyres as they try to flee with his sheep.”
“Athlem, then.”
“Keth, we should be subtle about this. One assassin is dead, the other in chains. Like I said yesterday, to make this matter known at Assembly would cause unnecessary unease.”
“Unnecessary—?”
“I will question Athlem and anyone else whom I feel—”
“There’s another,” Kieryn said.
Keth rounded on his son. “I told you boys to be silent!”
Had he spoken aloud? Goddess spare him, he’d interrupted the Black Falcon! Rhorek looked too astonished to take offense. Kieryn hadn’t meant to speak at all. The last of the conversation he’d heard was his father damning the Goddess. And by Ana, his head felt like a melon split by a hammer! Da, however, looked like he longed to increase Kieryn’s pain tenfold.
“It only makes sense, Da,” he began, but came up short. He swallowed and looked to Kelyn, for his claim didn’t make sense. He hadn’t reasoned it out. He couldn’t explain why he was utterly certain.
Kelyn encouraged him with a nod.
“I mean … the reluctance of those men to say anything … especially names … maybe they feared to tell one name too many. Divulging King Shadryk’s name means little really, we might’ve guessed who sent them … and if they were ordered to try until they succeeded . . . they might’ve come in larger numbers, in case some were caught … and they’ll try again.”
Just as when Laral had won the second race, Kelyn regarded his brother with keen suspicion. He nodded and said, “Kieryn’s right.”
~~~~
5
Only the library could afford Kieryn the refuge he needed. His books did not doubt his competence, question his actions or his word. Why had he spoken? What addlebrained idiocy had urged him to open his mouth? He wanted Rhorek to be safe, but if another attempt on the king’s life didn’t happen, what would Kieryn’s father think of him? That he was delusional? Paranoid? Desperate for attention
?
Hanging the assassins’ heads on poles atop the gatehouse had been Keth’s solution for putting the fear of the Black Falcon into anyone foolish enough to raise a hand against him, but the notion hadn’t appealed to Rhorek. The king wanted the matter kept quiet. Ana-Forah had seen fit to spare his life twice in one week, he’d claimed. But Kieryn wondered if there wasn’t truth in the old superstition about the ‘third time.’
He opened one of the heavy doors to the library and slipped inside. Gentle candlelight cast deep shadows among the shelves and deepened the dusk beyond the windows. A shuffling of pages alerted him to his tutor’s presence. “I am such an idiot, Etivva,” he said, rounding a free-standing bookcase. But it was not Etivva’s face that greeted him.
Rhoslyn’s fair hair shone in the candlelight, and her smile was one part curiosity and two parts mischief. “An idiot, are you?” she said. “What have you done?”
Abashed, he replied, “None of your concern.”
She laughed. “Must’ve been something dreadful, indeed.”
“No. Just humiliating.”
“Well, I’ll be kind and not force you to relive it.”
Grateful, he surged ahead, “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you since the tournament.”
“And my absence has been killing you.”
Actually … “No, just worrying me. I thought you might be sick … or angry.” He fidgeted with the onyx ring; it felt heavy and clumsy on his hand.
Rhoslyn squirmed uneasily in the chair. “Yes, well, I apologize for … you just took me by surprise. You took everyone by surprise. That’s why I’m here, you know, to apologize. When I didn’t see you at the races—”
“You were at the races?”
“Well, from afar. I watched from the ramparts, like a sentry. The pavilion was too crowded. And I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to face everyone, and there was no one around to make me do so.”
