A Dirge for Princes

by Morgan Rice

  “Easy to say,” Hans said, “harder to do. You’re back now. Are you going to lead an army to take back the throne?”

  Kate heard Rika groan. “Must we have this all the time? You and your preparations?”

  “We need to be ready to take back what belongs to our cousins,” Hans said. “I know Father says we must wait for Lord Alfred and Lady Christina, but if their daughters are here…”

  “This is going to be your plan, to sail straight to Ashton?” Oli asked.

  “It’s direct,” Hans said.

  Kate shook her head at that. “It wouldn’t work. Ashton is where the free companies gather. It’s also hard to land there. It would be better to land in the north and pick up allies along the way.”

  “Our cousin knows strategy,” Hans said with a smile.

  Kate nodded. “I learned it from… from a good teacher.”

  She was about to explain all about Lord Cranston when something stopped her. If they did go back, she had no doubt that he and his men would be there. For all his talk of being a mercenary, he defended his home, and he followed his queen’s commands. That meant that, if they did go back to Ashton, Lord Cranston would be there to fight against her.

  And so, Kate realized with a leaden heart, would Will.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Endi slipped away from the feast’s top table early, somewhere between Hans’s second story about fighting raiders on the borders and Rika starting to talk about the nuances of harp technique. The newcomers were more interesting, because at least Endi hadn’t heard their stories a hundred times, but even so, there were more useful things he could do than sit and listen to his siblings and newfound cousins.

  He could listen to the rest of the family, and their retainers, for a start. There was an art to it, moving through the room the way a fish slipped through grabbing hands, never letting himself be caught in one place for too long, even though he smiled and laughed, spent a moment listening to Old Sjekar’s idea of a joke, asked a distant cousin about a fishing trip.

  “Harga, you old drunk, how are you?”

  “Still old, still drunk. The way I like it.”

  On the table above, his siblings continued to fawn over the two newcomers. Oli was laughing at something the older one, Sophia, had said. Endi could see that she was beautiful, but there were many beautiful girls in Ishjemme. Typically, his family didn’t go around all but giving away their holdings to them.

  That was what it had meant when his father had acknowledged them without so much as asking for proof of who they were. Ishjemme might be a separate dukedom away from the Dowager’s kingdom, but it was also a place that remembered the past. When the Danses had been kings and queens, Ishjemme had fallen under the cloak of their power. It would again, if Endi did nothing.

  “Varli, as beautiful as ever. If that husband of yours is ever less than grateful for marrying you, you talk to me.”

  He kept moving through the hall, listening to the news, laughing and joking in the way he’d learned through simple practice. He’d always had a good memory, and learning to laugh with the hordes of his extended family had given him things to fill it with. He’d learned to make connections and see the truth of what was happening in Ishjemme. That had been useful more than once. For all Hans’s talk of his prowess, he couldn’t fight if he didn’t know which roads enemies were taking.

  Endi stopped by a couple of the guards. “Do you know where Bjornen is?”

  They looked at one another.

  “I think he’s out in the northern tower, my lord,” one answered. “I could send a runner.”

  Endi shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big thing. I lost at dice to him, that’s all. Wanted to pay up.”

  “Now there’s a man to pay your debts to,” the other guard said.

  Endi had to admit that was true. Bjornen the Bear was a huge man who nevertheless managed to move as quietly as a ghost, and who had no compunction about violence. Occasionally, that was useful.

  “I’m not afraid,” Endi said, flashing a smile, “much. I’ll leave it for now.”

  He deliberately didn’t set off in the direction of the northern watchtower, because setting off so obviously would only attract attention. Instead, he set off for the aviary where Ishjemme kept its messenger birds. Everyone who mattered was at the feast, and in any case, Endi had long since mastered the art of slipping in there without being seen. He’d been doing this for a while now.

  The master of birds kept ink and long strips of paper, but that wasn’t close to secure enough for Endi. He reached into a pocket, taking out a vial of clear liquid and dipping a pen into it. He started to write.

  Sophia and Kate Danse have arrived in Ishjemme. LS has acknowledged. Discussion of Ishjemme invading. Acting to halt.

  Endi let the hidden ink dry for a moment, then turned the paper over and scribbled a note on the other side, something brief and flirtatious, offering congratulations and asking when he might see the recipient again. He went to the corner where the correct trained birds were kept, picking out one of the strongest looking and tying the message in place. Once, the kingdom had used ravens, but with the threat posed by the Master of Crows, it had long since learned the value of doves and pigeons.

  Endi carried the bird out quietly, looking around before he released it. Not that he felt shame at this. It was for the good of his land, giving information to get it, protecting Ishjemme from the threats that might have destabilized it. It was simply that he knew the rest of his family wouldn’t see it that way. They would think it was a betrayal.

  “Ah, sending more notes to your lover.”

  Endi cursed silently, then turned with a suitable look of embarrassment to face the castle’s keeper of birds. The old man was as stooped and hook-nosed as any of his charges.

  “You’ve caught me,” Endi said with a broad smile. Of course, if the old man actually had caught him, Endi would have had another job for Bjornen. “Sending the most salacious details to beautiful women.”

  “To one beautiful woman,” the old man said. “My lord, I know it is not my place, but would you mind a piece of advice?”

  “I suspect I’ll get it if I want it or not,” Endi said with another smile.

  “Find yourself a good woman here. This constant back and forth in letters may seem romantic when you’re young, but a man needs a woman he can hold close.”

  Endi sighed. “It’s easier to say that than to do it. Still, I’ll think on it. And we’ll keep this between us?”

  He didn’t insult the man by pressing a coin into his palm. Friendship was the currency the old man wanted, and would keep his loyalty better than any bribe. Endi could understand that. People wanted to be respected. One day, they would respect him as the man who had protected Ishjemme, both from outsiders and from itself. And yes, maybe the woman he wrote to would be more interested in the advances he made. She was beautiful, after all.

  He set off through the castle, aiming for one of the small entrances that weren’t well watched, a relic of earlier times, as so much else was. His brothers had talked about packing the walls with earth to protect from cannon fire, but the truth was that Ishjemme’s protections were about more than stone walls.

  Endi slipped out into the city, moving between the houses. He couldn’t imagine anywhere more beautiful, or that felt more like home. Even in the depths of winter, when the snow lay thick on the ground, it was a comfortable, perfect-seeming place. Now, in the months before the snow came, when everything was still green, he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  He saw people in the street and kept clear of them, where ordinarily he might have gone over to talk to them. He kept the hood of his cloak up so that the flash of his red hair wouldn’t give him away if he passed too close to the light from one of the houses. He didn’t mind if people around the castle thought that he was fumbling through some ill-conceived romance, but he couldn’t be seen out here, not with what was coming.

  It meant
that it took time to get to the northern watchtower, slipping through the city, past the brightly painted homes. Endi could hear the laughter in some of them, and the music. News of the sisters’ arrival must have started to filter down into the city, prompting celebration from those who couldn’t see the danger in it.

  “I can, though,” Endi said to the darkness. It was his curse that he had to be the one to act when it came to things like this. He seemed to be the only one who understood the dangers in things that made some of his siblings cheer with joy.

  How many factions were there in the city? How much had it taken to keep them balanced: the would-be invaders and the defenders, the ones who wanted to appease the Master of Crows and the ones who wanted to risk assassinating him? Endi always found the middle way, steering Ishjemme through it the way a navigator might pick out the best course for a ship’s captain. Hadn’t he been the one to uncover smugglers along the coast? Hadn’t he dealt with traitors who might have handed Ishjemme to invaders by leading them past the natural barriers that protected it?

  “This is no different,” Endi told himself.

  The northern watchtower lay outside the city’s walls, perched on one of the hills that surrounded it. The path to it was easy enough, because the whole point of it was that messengers should be able to run back to the city if they saw trouble. Even so, the watchtowers were places that attracted men who preferred solitude, or around whom the other soldiers felt less than comfortable. Bjornen definitely fell into the second group.

  Endi hurried along the path leading to the watchtower, then knocked at its reinforced door. When he heard the crunch of gravel a ways to his left, he turned, knowing that the sound was only there because the man who had made it chose to be heard.

  The man who stepped onto the path towered over Endi, easily half a head taller than most men. He was broad with it, muscles barely contained by the dark uniform of Ishjemme’s military. His hair and beard were graying, but that only made him look more bear-like, his eyes glittering a cold blue as they looked Endi over. In another age, he would have made a good berserker, charging into battle with no care for his safety. He even carried a short, chopping axe on his hip. Here and now, he moved through the dark with uncanny grace instead.

  “Your lordship,” he said, dipping his head.

  “Bjornen. I expected to find you inside the tower.”

  “I saw someone coming up the path,” the big man said. “I wanted to see who it was.”

  So he had gone out and stalked them the way a bear might have stalked prey. Endi wondered what might have happened to him if he hadn’t proven to be… no, not a friend, because a man like this didn’t have friends, but at least friendly. Probably nothing good.

  “Well, it seems you’ve lost none of your skills,” Endi said.

  The big man looked almost insulted. “You thought I had?”

  Endi couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t put him in danger, so he kept quiet. That time gave him a few moments in which to consider what he was going to have to ask this man to do. It wasn’t that Endi wanted to do it. He had no hatred for Sophia or Kate, no burning desire for revenge or deep sense of jealousy. It was simply that things were too carefully balanced in Ishjemme, and their presence threatened to plunge it into the kind of war that might see its quiet perfection destroyed.

  “You have a task for me,” Bjornen guessed. He smiled, the teeth white and hungry in the moonlight.

  Endi nodded. There was no going back now.

  “I do. There are people who have to die.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Emeline had hoped that they would find Stonehome by now. Instead, the road seemed to stretch on forever in front of her and Cora, winding away from the waterways now, into rolling lands that were prone to sudden mists and downpours.

  “Are you holding up okay?” Emeline asked Cora. She could have just looked for the answer in the other young woman’s mind, but she was trying to do that less with her new friend. Since Cora had no powers of her own, it would just seem like hours of walking in silence to her.

  “I’m fine,” Cora assured her, and to Emeline’s surprise, she seemed to be. Emeline had assumed that she wouldn’t be strong enough to walk all this way, finding food as they went along, stealing it where they had to. Instead, she kept up without complaint alongside Emeline, walking all day without stopping.

  Emeline was surprised by that for a couple of reasons. One was that she couldn’t believe someone who had lived as a servant in a palace could be used to that kind of physical exertion. The other was that she couldn’t believe Cora had wanted to come with her, when she’d had the chance to go with Sophia instead.

  “How much further do you think it is?” Cora asked.

  Emeline shook her head. “There’s no way to know. We know it’s southwest, on the moors, but beyond that…”

  Beyond that, they were guessing. All they could do was keep going.

  They kept going, skirting villages, only occasionally passing through them when they needed to find food there or ask for more directions. Stonehome was a dangerous place to ask after though. Every time they asked, Emeline could see the suspicion in people’s thoughts, trying to work out if they were witches of the kind the priestesses said should be killed for the crime of simply existing.

  They got some relief from the rain in a village that had been left empty. There was no food there, because whatever there had once been had long since rotted away. Still, it gave them a chance to rest for an hour or two.

  “Why do you think everyone left?” Cora asked.

  Emeline shrugged. “Maybe the crops failed. Maybe there was an outbreak of plague. Maybe they were killed by raiders, or they upset the Dowager. Maybe they picked the wrong side in the civil wars.”

  The truth was that there were too many possible reasons a village might be empty to ever know for sure.

  “So, shall we settle down for the night here?” Cora suggested. She led the way into a small cottage. “I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.”

  The cottage was a strange place. It had the advantage of being warm and dry, and Emeline had to admit that she was tired too. Even so, she found that she didn’t want to stay there. There was a sense of wrongness about the place, of there being something lurking in the background.

  Then Emeline saw the faces looking back at them from the corner of the room, and she screamed, despite herself.

  “What is it?” Cora asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “You don’t see them?” Emeline asked. The forms of children stared back at her, pale and gaunt, the walls of the room visible through them. Flames seemed to flicker around them.

  “See what?” Cora asked.

  “I don’t know what happened here,” Emeline said, “but I think it was bad.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Cora said, but she sounded less certain.

  “I think we need to go,” she said to Cora, all but lifting her from the floor. “We’ll find somewhere else to stop.”

  She pulled Cora from the village, not looking back.

  They kept going, sticking to the road now as much as they could, passing through a forest that was stranger and wetter than any Emeline had seen before. Mist and rain looked to be constants in it, the moisture giving rise to fungi that stuck out from every tree trunk, and that rose up from the forest floor. Some were almost as tall as she was, their gills hanging down and dripping with water. There were flowers that gave off the stench of rotting flesh, while others had the sweetest perfume, and seemed to attract moths larger than Emeline’s hand.

  “It’s strange to think that places like this can exist in the same kingdom as a city like Ashton,” Cora said. “Is the whole kingdom filled with places like this that I haven’t had a chance to see because I’ve been stuck in the palace?”

  “I don’t know,” Emeline admitted. While she’d been stuck on the streets of Ashton, it wasn’t as though she’d had a chance to explore outside it. “Maybe one day, I’ll
have a chance to find out. What about you?” she asked. “Have you thought about what you’ll do with your life after we get to Stonehome?”

  She saw Cora shake her head. “Not really. I was just concentrating on getting there. After that… I guess I just hoped that things would work themselves out. I guess, maybe one day, I could find work with a troupe of actors or something. I know all about makeup and clothes and things, and that way, I’d get to see what’s out there.”

  Emeline had to admit it sounded like a good dream to have. It sounded good to have a dream that stretched ahead into the future. Her own dreams had been focused on Stonehome for so long that she’d barely thought beyond it.

  They kept going, and ahead, Emeline saw a farmhouse. Since the sky was starting to darken, she headed toward it. Maybe they would be able to find space to rest in a barn, or even manage to acquire some food. At the very least, they could check that they were still heading in the right direction.

  “That looks like a place to stop for the night,” Emeline said, leading the way toward it.

  “Depending on what kind of welcome we get,” Cora said.

  They walked up to the farm, seeing animals out in the yard. There was a horse there that looked as solid as a house. There were chickens, and even a dog.

  “Hello?” Emeline called.

  The door to the farmhouse opened, revealing a woman who might have been forty, with strong-looking arms and an apron coated with enough flour to make it clear that she’d been baking.

  “Oh, hello,” she said. “Are you lost?”

  “Maybe a little,” Emeline said with a smile. It was important not to seem threatening. “We’re traveling south and west, trying to find a place called Stonehome. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it?”

  “Stonehome,” the older woman said. “I’ve heard stories of a place called that, out on the moors beyond Strand. That’s a small town a little way from here. But you wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. Come inside, both of you. I’m just cooking.”