The question caught him off guard. To stall, Draken reached out to touch a stream-side tree. The bark was odd, circular stuff like scales on a snake. Lavender moss grew beneath each plate. He tried to pry one up with a fingernail, but it didn’t budge.
“It’s odd, you know. I’ve achieved a higher rank in my enemy country than would ever be possible at home.” At home he was a bastard, a constant reminder of a royal indiscretion. No matter how much he proved himself on the battlefield, he could never overcome his lack of birthright. He shrugged. “I suppose if the opportunity presents itself, I should return, though.”
“Should? Not would?”
Draken shook his head again. Without Elena standing right in front of him, it was difficult to see past finding Lesle’s murderer. “My King might expect it of me.”
Grave concern skewed the Mance’s face, painting it with distorted shadows. “And what of your new Queen?”
Draken averted his gaze. Of course Osias knew what had happened between them; the entire Bastion likely knew by now.
“Should you fail to return to her,” Osias continued, “you must know she’ll believe it to be a betrayal of the worst sort.”
“She said she’d send Reavan after me if I didn’t come back,” he admitted, nudging a rock into the stream with his boot.
“With an army at his back, no doubt. She would rip Akrasia apart searching for you, whether for revenge or rescue.”
“Rescue? I’m supposed to protect her.”
“She made a commitment to you as well, my friend.” Osias reached out and lifted the token off Draken’s chest. “And it’s here for all to see.”
A surprising notion struck Draken. Was Osias...could he be...jealous? The Mance stood very close; his breath swept across Draken’s face. A breeze moved a branch overhead and a ray of sun lit Osias’ face for a single, perfect instant.
“It was just...not serious at all,” Draken said. “You talk about it like it’s marriage.”
Osias wasn’t buying. “You’ve bonded yourself to her more deeply than marriage. You are her champion. You execute any who do her harm. You silence her dissenters. You are her mouthpiece in her absence. You protect her ahead of any other, at all costs, Draken. You are the highest lord in her court, the highest lord in Akrasia, including the Prince of Brîn.” His eyes were darker gray than usual, betraying his trepidation.
Draken clasped the Mance’s shoulder. “Proving my innocence to Monoea is unlikely at best. It’s not as if I’m tied to anyone else, right?”
Osias didn’t look convinced, but he let the pendant fall back to Draken’s chest. “Aarinnaie rides swiftly. We must be off if I am to keep to her trail.”
Not until they rode again did Draken realized Osias had failed to finish his thoughts about Draken’s sword training.
By night the forest seemed to waken and take on more life. Odd calls sounded from far away and the moonlight cast sharp, forbidding shadows. As if huddling together for safety, Osias and Setia slept nearly as close to Draken as they had in their bed. When Draken woke in the night to take over Tyrolean’s watch, Osias’ hand rested on his back. Draken rolled over and found the Escort watching them.
“Is there a problem?” Draken asked.
“None, my lord,” Tyrolean said. He rolled himself in his cloak and slept unmoving until dawn.
***
Setia had been quiet as they walked the forest. But early the next morning she broached a disturbing question. “Curious Aarinnaie’s trail leads this way. I wonder how she passes through the Moonling trees. They are careful wardens of their lands. Most must travel around their forests, not through them.”
“Perhaps they are part of the plot and are allied to her,” Draken suggested. He was curious about the Moonlings.
“Allying a Moonling is not easily accomplished,” Osias pointed out. “But it brings another curious question to mind. How do we pass through their wood unscathed?”
The Escort Captain reached for the hilt of his sword. “They well recall the bite of a Akrasian blade.”
Draken rolled his eyes. In Akrasia as in Monoea, it appeared the ruling army carried a good dose of arrogance alongside its weapons.
Setia sighed. “They don’t fear your sword, Captain, and they don’t fear death. One among us must be considered an ally, a
loc gar
.”
Tyrolean sniffed at the use of Brînish. “We’ve you with us, haven’t we?”
“Ah, Captain,” Setia said with a small smile, “the Moonlings hate sundry even more than Akrasians do.”
“And they do watch us,” Osias said, casting his eyes around the ubiquitous tree cover. “I feel their wards.”
“They don’t trust the Mance, then, either.” A smirk made an unpleasant crease across Tyrolean’s face.
Osias returned his own enigmatic smile. “None do and none should.”
The Escort looked away and the Mance returned to studying the treetops. Osias’ eyes purpled with vigilance, and Draken felt very glad to have him on his side. If, indeed, he was. But surely his tired imaginings of the Mance using him was just a fabrication born of desperation and exhaustion. Osias was fair kind, and he couldn’t fathom Setia a part of some plot against the Queen.
***
The next night was clear and colder than the previous; little white puffs of steam accompanied their soft voices. Draken was glad for his thick cloak and the warmth of the bay mare under his legs. The moons brightened the ground where the trees allowed their light to touch the forest floor, creating a startling contrast with the deep shadows under the trees. The undergrowth looked like crouching animals lying in wait for prey. Draken had been in the woods at night, but never under the light of so many moons. There was something eerie about having most of the gods watching their movements. Monoeans avoided marching at night near Sohalia.
It was late in the night before Osias allowed them to stop. When Draken dismounted his muscles decried the change in position, just as they had been arguing against staying mounted since well before nightfall.
“Sore?” Setia asked.
Mindful of Tyrolean, Draken shrugged. “Just tired.”
Setia stepped closer and touched Draken’s pendant. She smiled up at him and he kissed her cheek. Ridiculous, this strange affection he had for her. But there it was, just the same, as if she were a young cousin or sister. Not quite, he reflected, considering how she’s slept nude next to me for the past several nights. But he was fond of her just the same, and conventions around modesty and personal space were different here. He suspected his own were changing as well.
“Look at it if you like,” Draken said.
Setia lifted the pendant and studied it. “It’s a good likeness,” she said, looking back up at him.
“You didn’t look at the back,” Draken said, twisting the chain and showing her the headless snake. “I don’t know what it means.”
“You ought to. It’s the standard Brîn was assigned after the war,” she said softly. Her lips parted, as if she might say more. But Tyrolean was watching, and Draken turned away to see to his horse, thinking hard. A decapitated snake. Nice, thought Draken. Rub it in, Akrasia.
When the horses were tended and the four were seated around a small, rock-guarded fire conjured by Osias, the Mance spoke. “Draken, were you serious about the swordplay?”
Draken’s attention jerked toward his friend. It wasn’t a topic he wanted to discuss in front of Captain Tyrolean. “Aye,” he said slowly.
“I’ve a plan to solve many issues for you quickly, but you must know it’s an extreme measure. It involves magic.”
Draken definitely didn’t like it. The magic he’d witnessed so far had freed him from the bane and from the web, but he hadn’t been comfortable with any of it. And there was the matter of his suspicions against the Mance, though admittedly the intensity of them had faded since that exhausting night with Aarinnaie and the Queen.
He got to his feet. “I think you and I need to take a walk, Osias.”
Osias rose obediently and they left the others behind. Draken kept within sight of the small fire, flickering through the trees like a mass of starbugs.
“You’ve been kind to me,” Draken said. “And I don’t know why.”
Osias nodded and started to speak; Draken stopped him with a raised hand.
“No. Hear it all. I made a career hunting and killing Akrasian officers and their Brînian soldiers. Here, as an exile, I’ve acted in the name of survival and in the hopes of finding my wife’s killer. I’ve stolen and lied and murdered. I’ve deceived Elena to my own gain.” He lifted the pendant from his chest and let it thunk back against his armor. “I am not this man, this Night Lord. I’m also not telling you anything you don’t already know. So why are you helping me? What do you stand to gain?”
“I told you. You were a witness to the banes. It’s why I brought you to court.”
“So you said. And I testified. But why would you keep helping me?”
Osias’ eyes swirled into deep purple, hard as stone, and his skin darkened. “What the banes find once, they’ll again seek. At first, you were only an exile, a criminal. The worst you could do was kill a soldier, maybe yourself. In a matter of days you’ve raised yourself to one of the most powerful men in Akrasia. If a bane were to get to you now, it could wreak havoc on the Crown, on the kingdom. It could force you to move the troops you now control, to kill many, to kill even Elena. You have the power to destroy Akrasia and the banes know this.”
“So you’re only trying to protect Akrasia? It’s like a bad haggle at market, Osias, and I’m not buying. There’s more to this.”
Osias sharpened his tone. “More banes escape every day my King is missing. We cannot hold the gates at Eidola without him. You’re good at finding things. You found Aarinnaie. Perhaps you can find the Mance King as well.”
Draken leaned closer, his hands flexed, ready to draw a knife. “Enough dodging. Evidence indicates a Mance is involved in the attempt against Elena.”
“You’re suggesting the Mance King is plotting against the Queen?”
“No. I’m suggesting you are.”
Osias’ lips parted and he blinked his purpled eyes.
“I’m not stupid, Osias. I realize how easy you could turn the entire plot against Elena on its head, onto
my
head.”
“You don’t believe it.”
“But I’ve wondered. And now you propose this magic to further bind me to Akrasia, to control me, maybe to set me up.”
“I simply want you to survive, Draken. I think within you lies the safety of Akrasia.”
“Why?” The word burst forth in a rush of air. “Why me? Khellian damned me to exile. The gods stole all I’ve ever loved. I am as ruined as any bane, and nearly as hateful.”
Osias backed a step. “You’ve noble blood. I can smell it on you. You recall I mentioned it when we met?”
Draken shrugged. “What of it?”
“It’s a talent Mance have. Part of my charge as Mance is to protect the nobleborn, especially from banes.”
“The only noble blood in my veins is Monoean, and it’s profane. I’m the bastard son of a slave and a cousin to the King. I never even knew my mother. She was sent away in disgrace. I’m not nobleborn. I’m slaveborn. And my motivations are as tainted as my blood. I want only to kill the man who murdered my wife.”
“You won’t find rest with revenge, Draken.”
“No. But my wife will.”
Osias sighed and relented slightly, dropping his gaze. “Blood doesn’t lie. Nor do your actions. Whatever your intent, you’ve helped Elena. You’ve helped me protect her. And I believe you can help me find my King.”
“So that’s it, then. It’s what you want from me.”
“Put that way, aye.” Osias dipped his chin in a nod. “I want you to find my King. And I want you to help me protect the nobles of Akrasia and Brîn so they can protect the people.”
Protect the people. Draken thought of the desperation he’d seen in Elena’s eyes when Aarinnaie had tried to kill her, the way she’d clung to him, a stranger. And after all of it, when she knew firsthand what facing down death was, she’d told him she’d give much to protect the people, even her life. He thought of the officers he’d known and the officer he’d been. He would have traded his life a thousand times for the men who had died under him. It was something he’d taken for granted, but he’d never quite felt it so strongly as in this moment.
Would his cousin-King have died for him? For his people? He didn’t know. But he believed Elena when she said she would; gods help him, he believed in her. And he’d been a soldier his whole life. Belief in a monarch meant protecting and obeying, nothing more and nothing less.
Draken found he’d closed his fist around her pendant. He blinked and looked down at the moonwrought token in his hand, her likeness pressed into his flesh.
“What—” He started gruffly, and cleared his throat. “What is it you suggest we do?”
Osias laid his hand over Draken’s, pulled it free of Elena’s pendant. The darkness had cleared from his skin and the Mance glowed like a living god in the dark woods. “This needs saying in front of the others, friend. We’ll need their help.”
They walked back in silence. With only the flicker of the firelight to illuminate his face, Osias looked less benevolent. The tattoo stood out against his pale features, and the single moon-eye seemed to stare right into Draken’s heart.
“I suggest a merging of souls,” Osias said without preamble. “We find an appropriate soldier who is passed to Ma’Vanni’s world but wishes to come back, and you host him. Some hang about Her gates, hoping for that very thing.”
“What?” Draken said. “Like a possession?” Wasn’t it what the bane had done?
“Not in the way you think. You live, and this makes you much stronger than any dead soul. You maintain control.”
“I didn’t have control of the bane,” Draken said.
“It caught you unawares, in a weak moment. Another time, with warning, with preparation, you could fight back. But the proper sort of soul will not want to control your actions, except when needed. Then you allow the soul to take enough control to command your actions.”
Draken was catching on. “So when I need to fight…”
“When you find yourself in need of a swordhand, you allow this spirit to act as one.”