Ash and Ambition

by Ari Marmell

  “Perhaps.” Her scowl was back, now directed inward. “I reacted poorly to news of his return. My behavior on the steps was… unbecoming.”

  “Since when…” Andarjin held the rest of that thought while they split apart to hug opposite walls, allowing a group of oblivious and overly perfumed courtiers to pass between them, gossiping and giggling and nearly suffocating all who drew near, before coming together once more. “Gods, what a horrid stench! Anyway, since when do you care what Nycolos thinks of your behavior?”

  “I care what I think of my behavior. Besides, we were in public.”

  “Perhaps, but—”

  “What of Her Highness?” Zirresca asked, unwilling to speak any further of her own embarrassment. “Was she able to tell you anything of use?”

  “Not particularly,” the margrave replied, going along with the topic change. “She was fairly certain her father wanted to further discuss Nycolos’s return and what it entails, but then, that was hardly a surprise.” He smiled again, a mirror to his companion’s frown. “Don’t fret, Zirresca. Princess Firillia still supports everything we’re trying to accomplish. If there’s a word spoken in that council that we need to know, she’ll tell me.

  “In the interim,” he added, halting at an intersection leading to different wings of Oztyerva, “I should go pen a letter to mother. I’m quite sure one of her agents here in the palace will let her know of Nycolos’s return, but it would be inconsiderate of me not to inform her anyway.”

  “Well, we can’t have that,” Zirresca said, rather than any of the dozen questions she’d have preferred to ask—and which she knew Andarjin would never answer. Her Grace Pirosa, Archduchess of Vidirrad, ruled the largest of Kirresc’s provinces and was, without doubt or competition, the most powerful and influential noble in the kingdom beside Hasyan himself. The knight often wondered just how much her friend’s mother knew of her son’s schemes and intentions, or whether she would approve if she did.

  And Zirresca was just honest enough with herself to wonder, as Andarjin offered her a final wave and wandered off to his own chambers, if she refrained from asking because she knew the margrave wouldn’t respond—or because she was afraid she wouldn’t like the answer.

  Chapter Ten

  Nycolos sat high in the stands alongside one of the many open fields that made up the back half of Oztyerva’s grounds. He was clean for the first time in months and clad in genuine finery for… well, if one discounted natural scales, the first time in his very long life. Yet he radiated a cold hostility despite those pleasures, or the warming rays of the mid-morning sun. The many melees and jousts below, training for knights, palace guards, and even Prince Elias, scarcely registered in his mind. He was too preoccupied reliving recent events.

  The remainder of last night, after Kortlaus had guided him to his chambers, had not gone well for him.

  Nycolos had thought, when he first laid eyes upon his quarters, that this might prove the first truly comfortable night he’d spent since adopting this weak and ungainly body. As the bearer of a noble title, however minor, he was apparently entitled to a modicum of luxury. The canopied bed was decadently soft, the full wardrobe boasted every manner of outfit, and the dresser provided a mirror, a basin of clean water, and various toiletries and brushes in silver or ivory. The table bore a platter of fresh fruits, pungent cheeses, and cold meats, as well as a decanter of rich wine. A brass tub occupied one of the suite’s several side rooms; it had already been filled, slowly warming over a layer of coals.

  It was the merest pittance compared to what had once been his, what he deserved, but after the past weeks it was so inviting, Nycolos couldn’t decide what to indulge in first.

  And he had swiftly come to understand that things were not to go so smoothly as he might have preferred.

  Smim, though proper and deferential as ever, had been irritable and unwilling to speak much. His master had finally wormed out of him that he was upset over the detail and apparent glee with which Nycolos had, during his recitation to the court, described the knight’s slaughter of Smim’s fellow goblins. The argument that this was the way a real human would have told the tale, oddly enough, did nothing to assuage Smim’s ire.

  Then, in the midst of that argument, and only just before Nycolos grew aggravated enough to order the goblin to move past it, had come a tentative knock upon the chamber door. Where he had anticipated the chirurgeon, however, he was faced instead with a small team of servants, maids and valets who all but swarmed him under as they poured into the room. His memory must be tricking him, but he swore their presence had made his chamber louder last night than the practice field was today.

  Tired, uncertain as to custom and propriety, Nycolos had found himself efficiently stripped naked and herded into the tub. His initial instinct was to lash out, to fight, but they obviously expected him to accept, even relish, such treatment. So, though he found the entire notion demeaning, he reluctantly acquiesced. Once he was submerged, a trio of servants washed and scrubbed and combed until he was certain he must glisten like a new bronze statue while the rest went about tidying the chamber and absconding with the dust-encrusted outfit in which he’d traveled.

  Pained by his injury, irritated at Smim and the fussing of the servants, and otherwise generally bewildered, Nycolos didn’t really pay much notice to the procedure, or to the experience of being bathed by strangers. In retrospect, he could scarcely recall a moment of it, and it hadn’t even occurred to him until later to wonder if, as a human, he was supposed to be somehow embarrassed by his nudity.

  Only as he was being toweled dry by servants wielding soft and fluffy cloths did a new knock at the door signal the arrival of the chirurgeon: a straight-backed scarecrow of a fellow, clad in a stiff, dark tunic that buttoned up to his chin. Nycolos wondered how the man didn’t find it ludicrously confining.

  To him, as he had to no other, Nycolos admitted that a sliver of the weapon remained within his wound. The chirurgeon harumphed, and grumphed, and gave him a careful examination, poking and prodding at his chest until Nycolos nearly screamed in agony and had to restrain himself from taking the man’s head clean off that reinforced collar.

  And then, after all the study, all the poking about, all the pain, the chirurgeon’s answer had been most unsatisfying. With the sliver so deep, he would need to consult with other healers, perhaps even seek sorcerous assistance, before it could possibly be removed, the wound properly treated. In the interim, take these herbs with every meal, keep the injury slathered in a salve made of those, and try not to engage in too much physical exertion. At which point, apparently in no way ashamed of his performance or lack of genuine answers, the man departed as pompously as he’d arrived.

  Had he dared resume his proper form, Nycolos would have eaten him. Perhaps he still might.

  Then, long after the servants departed and Nycolos finally began to stumble and grope his way toward slumber, had come yet another fist upon his door. He’d very nearly chosen to disregard it, but Smim answered before he could order him not to.

  The young boy beyond, a page of some sort, had—after a momentary start, and fighting the urge to flee from the goblin—delivered a note from the Margravine Mariscal. It bore, in a flowery hand, a request that Nycolos meet for a brief conversation in “their garden, beneath the boughs of the quince trees.”

  Despite Kortlaus’s earlier admonition regarding his supporters among the court, Nycolos ignored it. He wouldn’t be here long enough to need any such support, and he was too fatigued to worry about maintaining appearances, or to care what sort of unimportant, human concerns anyone else wished to burden him with.

  Closing the door in the page’s face, he’d fallen into the bed and allowed the yielding, nigh-gelatinous mattress to engulf him…

  The clash of blades dragged him from his reverie. On one end of the field, Kortlaus and two of his companions held a small mound of dirt against an assaulting force of four or five times their number. All were armed with dulle
d practice blades, primarily sabres and spears. Dozens of yards and several other faux skirmishes distant, Dame Zirresca dueled one on one with Prince Elias, oldest child and heir apparent of His Majesty, Hasyan III. The young man was a veritable giant, topping his father’s own imposing height by nearly half a foot, yet his dark skin glistened with a sheen of sweat and, though clearly skilled, he was hard-pressed to defend himself against the far more experienced knight.

  Each wielded a szandzsya, or as they were known beyond these borders, a Kirresci sabre-spear. A haft of two feet was topped by a gently curved blade of roughly equal length, sharpened on the crescent’s inner edge. Although awkward in untrained hands, the szandzsya was a brutally effective weapon, cleaving armor and bone, crushing helms, or punching through mail—and that merely on foot. When swung from the back of a galloping charger, it was a veritable scythe of humanity.

  Zirresca spun hers in a sword-like grip, both hands grasping the weapon near the blade, while Elias seemed to prefer a broader stance, fists further apart in a more traditional spear-fighter’s hold. Nycolos, observing, found himself appreciating the weapon for its claw-like shape, to the extent he could bring himself to care.

  “See, Master? Right there.” Smim pointed a gnarled finger and Nycolos almost growled—or perhaps whimpered. The goblin had maintained a running commentary of the duels and skirmishes since they’d first sat down, and the wyrm-in-human-guise had kindled the faint spark of hope that Smim had finally wound down.

  “This is precisely what I’ve been speaking of,” Smim continued, clearly not having wound down at all. “She took the prince’s legs out from under him and now she’s just standing back, waiting for him to rise! What sort of combat lesson does that teach?”

  “Human knights prefer to think of themselves as honorable warriors, Smim. Besides, I don’t believe she’d do any such thing in a genuine battle. This is practice, after all, and he outranks her.”

  “Bah. Do you know what goblins call ‘honorable’ combatants, Master? We call them—”

  “Food,” both said in unison. “Yes,” Nycolos continued alone. “I know.”

  “Even if this is training, even if the boy—”

  “He’s young, Smim, but he’s a grown man.”

  “If you say so, Master. Even if the young man understands he shouldn’t behave this way in a real fight, if all he’s ever seen is his teachers pause to allow him to rise, who’s to say he won’t hesitate when the moment comes? This is foolish, the lot of it. And their armor? It—”

  “You spent almost an hour pointing out the flaws in their armor, Smim. I don’t actually need to hear it again.”

  “My point is,” the goblin huffed, “I can think of a dozen ways to kill any one of these ‘warriors.’ Goblin children would never be instructed so poorly.”

  “Fewer than half of goblin children make it past the age of seven.”

  “Yes, but those of us who do know how to survive,” Smim declared proudly.

  Well, Nycolos couldn’t argue with that.

  “The humans can’t be so incompetent,” he pointed out, pausing to let a particularly loud flurry of steel on steel come to an end. “It only took one of them to kill me.”

  “Magic, Master. It was the power and protection of that damned sword, nothing to do with the wielder. Doesn’t count.”

  My chest feels as though it counts quite solidly.

  “And besides, you’re not dead.”

  “Perhaps. I’m not yet certain this isn’t just as—”

  “Sir Nycolos?”

  He turned and rose, bowing—as gallantly as he knew how—to the woman approaching across the stands. She wore flowing yellows and reds, the offspring of flower and flame, and peered at him from over a closed and folded fan which she tapped idly against her chin.

  “My Lady Mariscal.” He greeted her with a politeness he didn’t feel. He might be unwilling to go out of his way to shore up friendships and alliances he wouldn’t be needing, but no sense in deliberately damaging them, either.

  She nodded, curt and unhappy. “I’m surprised to find you lazing about in the stands. You’re not practicing with the others?”

  “Chirurgeons orders, I’m afraid. I’m not to overly exert myself.”

  “I see.” She seemed to be awaiting something. When it wasn’t forthcoming, she cast a meaningful gaze, first at the lady-in-waiting she’d left some paces back—near enough for propriety’s sake, far enough that she couldn’t readily overhear their conversation—and then, with a faint moue, at the goblin.

  Ah. “Smim?”

  “Of course, Master. I’ll just go somewhere else and be… somewhere else.”

  “Why don’t you go keep the margravine’s handmaiden company? We’d not want her to get lonely.”

  Smim smirked and scampered past the new arrival. The servant was professional and dignified enough not to flee, but she visibly recoiled and her Eep! was probably audible on the practice field below, despite the grunts and cries and the clash of blades.

  “That is an unpleasant little creature,” Mariscal sniffed once he was gone.

  “Smim’s not so bad. I wouldn’t be here without him.”

  “If you say so.” The tapping of the folded fan increased to match the beating of a nervous heart, then ceased. “Have I given you some manner of offense, baronet?”

  “Uh, no, My Lady?”

  “I was ecstatic to hear that you’d returned alive. I was so eager to see you.”

  “I, um.” Nycolos hadn’t the faintest idea why, but his instincts screamed that he trod the very precipice of dangerous territory. “And I you, of course.”

  “Then why are you acting this way?”

  It wasn’t a shout; the margravine was far too refined and self-possessed for that. Yet it clearly wanted to be.

  “I…?”

  “Surely you might have greeted me at court? Properly, chastely, as a peer and a friend, even if that’s not—if nothing more?”

  “I was… trying to stand before His Majesty and the others, to answer their questions. My fatigue, and my injuries—”

  “Didn’t stop you from insulting Margrave Andarjin, or spinning quite a lengthy tale, or interrogating Lord Kortlaus on the walk back to your chambers.”

  Nycolos could only manage a helpless shrug.

  “And then later? My note?”

  “I told you, Lady Mariscal. Exhaustion. Discomfort. I’d just returned from—”

  “You could not even spare one moment? For me?”

  Fists clenched now of their own accord. Nycolos still failed to understand what he might conceivably have done wrong. Was the woman insane? “Your message said nothing of this meeting being a matter of any urgency or importance—”

  “It wasn’t.” Had she stood any nearer to him, he felt her tone would have frozen the humors in his body quite solid.

  “Then why are you so troubled? We’re both here, so talk to me now! Tell me what it is you wanted to say.” He gestured down at the bench on which he’d earlier sat.

  “I’m quite sure,” she said, each word coated in frost, “that I cannot for the life of me recall what that might have been.” She pivoted on her heel with an almost military precision and marched back across the stands, sparing him not one more word or glance. Her lady-in-waiting gratefully rushed to follow, leaving a smugly smirking Smim behind.

  “What was that about, Master?” the goblin asked as he returned to Nycolos’s side.

  “I haven’t the faintest—”

  “Nycos!” Kortlaus appeared at the base of the stands, glaring upward in equal parts amusement and aggravation. “What in the name of Vizret’s hell was that?”

  “My, what an original question,” Smim muttered.

  “I’m sure,” Nycolos said, dismissive and impatient, “that I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, spare me. Are you trying to drive her away?”

  Would doing so negate the need for any more of these inane conversations? “
Not especially so.”

  “Then stop behaving like a donkey’s arse and talk to the woman as if you value her a little more than your chamber pot!”

  “I… What?”

  “Oh, gods help him.” Kortlaus’s pious glance at the heavens neatly obscured from Nycolos his actual expression. “Get down here and grab a blade, you lackwit.”

  “I told you, the chirurgeon—”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll go easy on you.” Then, in a stage whisper, “I’ll make you look good before Mariscal’s out of sight.”

  “Thank you.” Nycolos’s words were stiff as his spine. “That will not be necessary.”

  “Are you quite certain that injury was to your chest and not your head?”

  “Leave the poor man be, Lord Kortlaus,” Zirresca mocked from behind, where she’d stepped aside from her princely sparring partner. “Clearly whatever befell poor Nycolos in the Outermark has stripped him of any courage he possessed. Better that we’ve learned of it now than in an actual battle.”

  “Listen here, Nycos is injured and he’s suffered through—”

  But Nycolos was leaning forward over the bench as through straining against a leash.

  “Master, no!” Smim hissed.

  “I’ll be fine, Smim.”

  “Yes, that’s what concerns me.”

  Although the unhealing wound did indeed pain him, it was not the real reason Nycolos had avoided joining the others on the field that day. No, he’d meant to hide his complete ignorance of human styles and expertise in combat. That he could defeat any one of these foolish creatures one on one, even in this feeble body, he had no doubt—but it wouldn’t be through besting them at their own arts.

  His pride had been poked and scratched all morning, however: by his bitterness over his current state, his ignorance and defensiveness in the face of Margravine Mariscal’s ire, and by the ridicule—however friendly—in Kortlaus’s questioning and teasing. He allowed them to get away with such things, barely, to maintain his façade and because these were people whose friendship he might need until he was cured.