Above His Proper Station

Dedicated to the memory of
Brian M. Thomsen,
whose input was invaluable

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Map

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Tor Books by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Copyright

1

In Which Anrel Murau Returns to Lume
and Faces a Dismaying Reception

The sun was directly overhead, but a cold winter wind blew fiercely from the northwest, sucking away the sun's warmth and chilling Anrel Murau to the bone as he came stumbling up to the gates of Lume.

Two guards watched his approach with mild interest, but made no move to assist him. They wore the red and gold colors of the burgrave of Lume, rather than the green and gold of the Emperor's Watch. There had been a time when Anrel found the division of duties, where the emperor's men were responsible for keeping order within the capital while the burgrave's men merely guarded the walls, to be perversely amusing, but right now he was far too concerned with other matters, such as not freezing to death, to care about such details.

The cold was not even what most troubled him; rather, it was his recent memories. He had, just that morning, seen a woman hanged for witchcraft—and not just any woman, but the sister of Tazia Lir, the woman whom Anrel had hoped to marry. He had tried to prevent the hanging by rousing the townspeople of Beynos to free poor Reva, but without success; she had been enchanted by the abominable Lord Allutar Hezir, landgrave of Aulix, and had quite literally put her own head in the noose.

It seemed to Anrel that Lord Allutar was responsible for all the great disasters in his life, of which Reva's death was the latest—but not the least. Anrel had not merely seen her hang; he had heard her neck snap. He would have shuddered at the memory had he not already been shivering with cold.

Seeing his own hopes thus dashed by Reva Lir's death, Anrel had fled the scene by diving off a bridge into the icy Galdin River, and had then made his way on foot to Lume.

He had not tried to reach Tazia, to speak to her, and his heart ached with the realization that he would probably never see her again, but he had not dared to make the attempt. He could not believe that Tazia could ever forgive him for allowing Reva to die, and he could not bring himself to face her after so ghastly a failure—better to know he was no longer welcome in her presence than to actually see the grief and anger on that beautiful face. He had spoken to no one in Beynos; he had simply swum away, leaving behind his history and his hopes.

This was not the first time he had abandoned his old life and set out to start anew. When he had seen his friend Lord Valin li-Tarbek murdered by the same landgrave of Aulix who would later hang Reva Lir, Anrel had given a fiery speech in Naith, the capital of the province of Aulix, denouncing the landgrave. That had gotten Anrel branded a traitor, and had turned him into a fugitive.

He had found a new place with the Lir family, but now that was gone. He had nothing left to him but the clothes on his back, the dagger that had once belonged to his father and was now concealed in his boot, and a few dozen guilders hidden in his pockets and the lining of his once-elegant but much-abused brown velvet coat.

He did not even know how much money he had; a seam had torn open while he was in the river, and several coins were lost forever in the dark, icy water.

Swimming while fully dressed in midwinter was a foolish thing to do, and Anrel had been suffering for it ever since. His hat had been carried away by the current and was lost, so he had been walking bareheaded in the cold, his coat, blouse, and breeches soaked through. The wind had dried his clothes, yes, but only at the cost of all his body's stored heat, and he had not been very warmly dressed to begin with. His hands and feet and ears were numb, and he was shivering uncontrollably. He wished there were a watch fire at the gate where he could warm his hands, but the guards had none; they were dressed in several layers of wool and leather and apparently felt no need for additional heat.

“You look miserable,” one of the guards said, sounding not at all concerned, as Anrel neared the gate.

“I am,” Anrel said, clapping his gloveless hands against his sides and trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “My hat blew into the river, and the weather was considerably warmer when I left the inn in Beynos.”

“And what brings you to Lume?” the other guard demanded.

“I'm coming home after visiting my uncle in Aulix,” Anrel said, feigning surprise at the question.

“Where is home, then?”

“The Court of the Red Serpent, number four, third floor, at the rear,” Anrel said. That had been his home during the four years he had lived in Lume as a student at the court schools, and still came readily to his tongue. He did not want to admit being homeless, or give some fictional address he might stumble over or later forget.

“Student or clerk?” the guard asked, demonstrating that he knew who lived in Red Serpent Court.

“Clerk now,” Anrel replied.

The soldier nodded, and raised his pike so that Anrel could pass. “If you've been gone for a while, you should know—there's a curfew in effect now. No one is to be on the streets between midnight and dawn.”

That was bad news. Anrel had known there was considerable unrest in the capital, as there was many places in the empire, but he had not realized it had reached that point. “Thank you for the warning,” he said. He hesitated, then asked, “Is there anything else I should know? Did I hear something about a prince?”

The guards in Beynos had told him the empress had borne a son, and the news had been confirmed, but Anrel wanted to judge what these guards thought of this birth.

“Prince Lurias,” the guard said. He smiled as he spoke, obviously pleased by the news. “Born three nights ago. Mother and child reported to be doing well, thank the Father and the Mother!”

Whatever discontent might be abroad, it had not reached the level of stifling this man's delight at the birth of an heir to the throne. Anrel managed to stop shivering enough to smile in return. “Wonderful! And … there were rumors at the last inn that demons had been seen in the streets. Is that why the curfew was set?”

The smile vanished. “No,” the guard said. “There are no demons. Just rumors.”

“There are foreign magicians at the palace,” the other guard said. “Who knows what they might be doing?”

Anrel looked from one man to the other, trying to judge what he should believe. Did the first guard know what he was talking about, or was his denial mere instinct?

“It's just rumors,” the first guard insisted, annoyed. He waved for Anrel to pass. “Go on, then, get on to the Court of the Red Serpent!”

“Thank you,” Anrel repeated, ducking his head and hurrying forward, past the two guards and into the shadowy passage through the ancient city walls.

The “gate” was far more than a simple gate, of course. The guards were posted at the outer end of a sixty-foot stone tunnel, where massive wooden doors stood ready to be slammed shut, and iron gratings could be dropped into place on a moment's notice. The floor of the tunnel was hard-packed dirt for the first fifteen feet, but then Anrel's boots thumped onto thick oak planks, blackened by centuries of shoe leather—planks that Anrel knew could be retracted into the walls, revealing pits and other traps beneath.

The corridor smelled of stone and damp. Dark shafts led up into the walls and ceiling here and there, where other defenses lurked, their exact nature a military secret.

Anrel could also feel less tangible defenses—the magical wards that generations of sorcerers had woven around the city. The burgrave of Lume was responsible for maintaining and extending those spells, and for that reason the title was generally given to the most powerful sorcerer in the empire. Normally burgraves, who ruled towns and cities, were outranked by the landgraves who administered the sixteen provinces, and were assumed to need less powerful magic than the margraves who guarded the empire's borders; accordingly, they were usually chosen from the second or third tier of sorcerers. The position of burgrave of Lume was an exception, and the present incumbent, Lord Koril Mevidier, was said, despite his relative youth, to be the most formidable magician in the world.

Certainly the wards Anrel felt as he made his way through the passage were strong ones. He supposed that most people would be completely unaware of them, but he was the son of two sorcerers, and although he had deliberately failed the trials himself, rather than ever risk facing whatever doom had befallen his parents, Anrel had inherited some magical talent. He honestly did not know how strong his gift might be, since it had never been evaluated accurately by a sorcerer, but it was definitely real. He could feel the wards as a faint crawling on his skin, a slight tingle, a vague pressure on all his senses, and he knew they were powerful indeed.

Those wards, and the various more mundane traps and devices, had helped Lume hold out against attackers many times, though it had been almost a century since a foe had gotten close enough that the gates had been closed and the defenses readied. Not since the Barley King's War had an enemy besieged the capital, but the emperor still saw to it that the walls and gates were properly maintained and manned, and Lord Koril had obviously tended and elaborated the protective spells.

Of course, that maintenance had contributed both to the empire's security and the emperor's financial difficulties.