“You may, of course,” Oklai said. “But you should think long on whether she is the proper person to wield it.”
“You think the Brînian Prince should have it back? Is it why she gave it to me, so I could bring it to him?”
The Moonling lifted her hand again. “I know not. I only know their wars involve us all.”
Draken thrust it toward her. “You take it then, Lady. The Moonlings made it.”
She shrank back. “I do not want it, my lord. I would not see my people die for it.”
“The Mance, then,” Draken said, turning to Osias. “You’re the Prince, and your King is corrupt. You take it, use it to fight him.”
“We rule only the walking dead,” Osias said. He abruptly laughed. “And they are quite enough.”
“Wielding Seaborn is a great burden, my lord,” Oklai said. “But it does not have to be a terrible one.”
Draken was so troubled he felt ill. Queen Elena had to know of the sword’s history and legend. And Reavan...he had wished to wield the sword himself. No wonder he’d been so furious when Elena had given it to Draken.
Only Tyrolean was bold enough to say what they were all thinking. His lined eyes did not waver from Draken’s face. “Perhaps our Queen is wiser than she appears, my lord.”
Though meant to be a compliment, this was of no comfort. Draken sighed, weary of the pendant hanging on his chest and the sword weighing so heavily his belt. “Or, she’s less so.”
Chapter Twenty-One
T
he travelers were ordered to rest by Oklai in the manner of a kind, resolute mother. Osias obediently lay back and closed his eyes. Aarinnaie withdrew to a corner of the tent. Tyrolean kept near Thom in a companionable silence.
But Draken sat apart from the others, his forearms on his knees, staring at the horrible sculpture of the river creatures and the empty raft. He saw all too clearly how soon they would have been overcome, magic sword or no, if the Moonlings hadn’t rescued them.
“Earthy magic she has,” Osias had once said in description of Setia. But this Moonling magic seemed outside stone and soil; the Moonlings had suspended the rules of life and time and allowed them to escape. He was grateful, but he knew he would never understand.
Understandings are beyond such as myself as well
, Bruche whispered.
I’m meant to take orders and to follow them. I’m content with it, friend. But I know you’re not.
He used to be. Content. Determined to follow orders, sometimes giving them. But never like this. Never with a nation’s fate in the balance.
Slaves don’t have much choice in it.
Bruche paused.
I will help you.
You’ve already helped.
Draken meant it. He owed the spirit inside him his life, and he no longer felt resentment at sharing his body with Bruche.
But why didn’t you tell me about the sword?
Would you have believed me? A magic sword? And would you have let me wield it? You don’t trust magic.
How did you keep it from me?
Truth? I thought it a fine, useful blade, but not Seaborn. One might think it would have a jeweled hilt or engravings.
Setia, who had knelt with her blood cousins conversing in their own language, came to Draken. She sat close to him and leaned her cheek against his arm. He mentally compared her to the fullblood Moonlings. She wasn’t much taller than the fullbloods, but they had a wiry quickness to them she didn’t.
“What did they say to you?” Draken asked. “Were they kind?”
“Kinder than I deserve, as I’m not of them.” Setia sounded troubled. “I was never so much Moonling as I am now Mance. I am bound to Osias.”
Any topic was preferable over the cursed sword. “While we’re having history lessons, do you mind telling me about you and Osias?”
The question touched her. He felt the animalistic tensing of muscles.
“Do you think I shouldn’t know?” he asked. “I’ve slept next to you for weeks, and yet I know so little of you both.”
She was silent a long while, long enough Draken felt it was a lost cause. At last she sighed. “I, too, felt Seaborn’s blade.”
The words took almost as long to register as he had waited to hear them. A cold weight grew in the center of his chest. She’d been a slave at House Khel.
Draken tried to absorb the fact that she had witnessed the slaughter, much less been a victim of it, but his mind and emotions had withdrawn. He shifted and his wrist bumped into the sword hilt. “And Osias saved you?”
“He used part of his own life to restore mine. Mance do not need sleep or food. Osias is different. He must rest and eat to restore the energy taken by my life.”
Draken nodded. It made sense. “It’s why he’s not at home, isn’t it? It’s why he wanders rather than staying at Eidola. He was banished, like me.”
“Aye. You’re of a kind, the two of you. I think it’s why he wanted to keep you safe.” She twisted her head up to look at him, still leaning her cheek on his shoulder. “Don’t be angry. He doesn’t speak of it anymore, even to me.”
“You said you know where the Prince went after the battle.”
She bit her lip. “I do.”
“Will you tell me?”
She nodded. “When it isn’t so dangerous for you to know, my lord.”
Draken sighed. They’d said it was dangerous knowledge the night he’d caught Aarinnaie. He glanced back over his shoulder at the Moonling soldiers. Several of them were watching him and Oklai gave a sharp clap of her hands. They turned their backs. He let his hand fall to the sword hilt at his side, his thumb playing with the familiar loose tag of leather wrapping.
“They revere you,” Setia said.
“They don’t think I’m some sort of…”
Words failed him, and her dappled forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.
“Never mind.” Draken had a certain appreciation for his sword, which, with Bruche’s help, had saved his life on a few occasions. But he didn’t want to use it to rule anyone.
A tremendous surge of longing for home engulfed him. He wanted the familiar. He wanted friends and family, like a normal person. He wanted work that challenged, yet didn’t overwhelm. He wanted his life back, his cousin-King, his wife, his home. He tried to focus on Lesle but had trouble bringing her face to mind. Before utter panic set in, he reminded himself, She had blonde hair. She used to kiss him and make him laugh when she thought he was taking life too seriously. Those memories were small comfort.
Lesle is dead, my friend,
Bruche said,
and for all intents so are you—at least to Monoea
.
No. I will hunt Lesle’s killer. I will put her to rest
.
The old spirit didn’t answer, but Draken felt his acquiescence. He sat staring for a long while in the timeless void. When the Moonlings stirred and indicated it was time for them to rejoin the world once again, he still had no answers. He had nothing but a cloying, unanswerable worry around his heart.
The Moonlings alone seemed to be able to reach through the veil of time and space. Their spears touched the river creatures in ways Draken’s sword couldn’t. He and Tyrolean watched, feeling out of sorts, as the Moonling band destroyed the rest of the creatures, hapless in their frozen state, above water and below, and freed the raft from their claws.
They marked the shore with stones where Shisa had died, and Oklai said, “She died an honorable death in defense of her passengers.”
Thom nodded wordlessly, still stricken. Draken tried not to stare, but a single tear streaked down the rigid moonwrought mask.
“You’re but one moonrise from the mouth of the Bay,” Oklai said to Draken, staring up at him with her dark eyes. “See it does not swallow you, for the errings are not the only threat Brînian lands hold. Prince Khel is never trustworthy and I fear the Mance King.”
Draken and Osias joined the others on the raft and the Moonlings worked their magic to release them from the Abeyance, their chants carrying on the freed winds. As the river began to flow, the Moonlings raised their spears in salute to the small band, and their war cries sounded like far-off, starving predators vying for a bite of a stringy prey.
***
Draken scrubbed his hand on the back of his neck and spoke into the quiet darkness over the raft. He’d been quiet a long time, thinking over all he’d learned. The only sound was the lick of the water against Thom’s pole. “I can’t help but feel we are entering a bane’s den in Brîn.”
“No doubt it’s a touchy situation,” Tyrolean said. “The Prince always has been something of a bastard.”
Aarinnaie’s hair had dried into tight ringlets, teased apart by the breezes on the river. She clutched the hem of her tunic in tight fists against her thighs. A manacle shackled her to a ring in the middle of the raft. The ring was used to fix cargo, and this night Aarinnaie was no better than cargo. She looked young and slight in the dark, huddled in chains.
Draken gentled his tone. “The Mance King taught you to kill, didn’t he?”
Aarinnaie lowered her head. “Aye.”
Osias took out his pipe and tamped in the dried leaves. A sweet, musky scent rose from them, and Draken found himself wishing for a breath of smoke to soothe his own nerves.
“Is he in league with your father?” Draken asked.
She looked up. “Father believes they are allies against Elena. Truth? I think the Mance King wants only what he wants.” Her gaze dropped to the shining blade in his hands. “I think he wants the sword, like everyone else. After I killed Elena, I was to find the sword and bring it to him.”
“Would you have done?”
She snorted. “Of course not.”
Draken nodded and looked at Osias. “How much of this did you know?”
The Mance puffed on his pipe. “Very little. I only suspected my King of manipulating the Brînian Prince after the Mance arrow was shot at Elena.” He glanced at Aarinnaie and she nodded.
“I shot at her the day you arrived.”
“How did you disguise yourself?” Draken asked.
“I seduced a guard and fed him sleeping-wine. He shared it, as I hoped he would. I snuck in and stole Escort greens. Then, while the tower was fair occupied with their drinking, I climbed up the outside of the building with a rope and took my shot.”
“Has the Mance King been to Monoea?” Draken asked.
She blinked at him in surprise, as if she’d forgotten who he really was. “No. But he obsesses over it. Near a year before he sent two Brînians there. I don’t know why or if they returned.”
Draken suspected he knew why. He thought back on his wife’s murder. So much blood, from guards to…
Guards. Slaughtered outside the Queen’s door like animals. Like his wife.
He shifted closer to Aarinnaie, lowered his voice to intimate. “You brought a knife to kill Queen Elena. How exactly were you going to do it?”
Her lips twitched before she spoke. “In the most horrific way possible, meant to frighten Akrasians to their core.”
“You were going to gut her,” Draken said, keeping his voice low, nearly a hiss. “You were going to string her up and let the blood run out of her. You were going to take her insides back to the Mance King, so he could work whatever cursed sorcery he does. You’re no better than he is. You’re no better than an animal yourself—”
“Draken. Enough.” Osias, his voice like quiet, dangerous thunder between the high banks of the Erros.
The moon glinted off tears running down Aarinnaie’s cheeks. She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared at Draken.
“No one deserves to die like that,” Draken said.
“It’s how he taught me. For his magic. It honors the dead, he said—”
“It turns their souls to banes.”
Aarinnaie twitched violently at Osias’ soft voice and ducked her head to her knees.
Draken tightened. Lesle…“Murder is murder.” And the Mance King will pay, he thought. They all will. He rubbed at his eyes with his forefinger and his thumb. When he looked up, Osias’ features were dark with the shadow of worry. Odd lines accentuated his exhaustion, making him shadowed and ugly.
“Draken,” Osias said. “You must put revenge aside. Only war can come from such foul inspiration.”
“My lords,” Thom said. “I think we’d best put
all
these matters aside. The Brînian guard is upon us.”
When Draken put his attention outside the disturbing conversation on the raft, it was to find the river canyon had deepened. The walls leading to the widening estuary towered forty handspans over their heads. Great torches and the helms of many, many soldiers gleamed in the moonlight atop the riverside cliff. Behind them, a great tower thrust a flame into the sky. The bay stretched before them, black waves shifting ever-moving earthbound reflections of the moons. But black shadows caressed the moons, covering them from view and then peeling back to reveal them once again. It took a moment for Draken to realize they were great banners, the red coiled snake stitched on black cloth.
“Banners for war,” Tyrolean muttered. “The snakes have their heads.”
“Sevenmoon,” said Draken. “We’re wide open down here. Why didn’t someone warn me of this?”
“I thought since Father released the errings, they wouldn’t keep such a close watch on the river,” Aarinnaie said, her blue eyes lifted to the silent contingent above them.
Draken turned on her. “You knew there might be errings? Your silence cost Shisa her life.”
Aarinnaie didn’t answer, just sat in her chains, chin lifted.
Draken turned his back on her, muttering, “You think you know so much, but the problem is, you don’t
think
, Aarinnaie. It’s as if you would have every living soul be your enemy.”
Painted images and carvings of battle scenes covered the top half of the river wall, lit by the moons. There were no outward docks, but when he studied the shadows at water level, he found entrances protected by stained metal gates. Dim lights flickered deep within the caverns beyond.
The challenge, when it came, echoed like thunder as it spiraled against the canyon walls. “Who rides our waters unbidden?”
“The company of Draken, Night Lord of Akrasia,” Draken shouted back. “We request safe passage and an audience with His Highness, Prince Khel of Brîn.”