Ice swam through his limbs, spiraled around his heart, and filled his head. He stood, sword upraised, unable to part his lips in protest.
I can’t move
, he said to Bruche.
Nor I. Damn the Mance.
The very thing that had saved his life… Mance sorcery that placed the swordhand inside of him… likely now that very same sorcery would be his death. Trepidation swept through Draken. His stomach clenched into a hot, tight, fearful fist. Bruche and he fought the binding spell, but his muscles wouldn’t unlock.
Truls circled him, moving with unhurried ease. He disappeared from sight but Draken felt a hand run over his back. He couldn’t so much as shrug it off.
“I admit to being mildly disappointed,” Truls said. “After you eluded me in the forest the first day, only to free my Moonling captive and leave me bound, I’d harbored hope you were better than simply resourceful. It takes some doing to best two Mance.”
Draken followed Truls with his stare as he came back around front. He kept his distance.
“But you’re only a simple soldier, aren’t you? I should have realized how weak you are when my bane almost made you kill yourself. It’s like you’ve blinders on. No ability to see all the sides to a game piece.”
The words seemed to hang on dead air.
Prince Khel shifted on his feet, opened his mouth as if to speak, but thought better of it.
Truls flicked his fingers.
Bruche spun Draken’s body, leapt forward, and slashed. Blood gushed from his father’s throat. His colorless lips gaped and his hands lifted, but he fell forward onto his face before they reached the wound. He did not catch himself. Draken, imprisoned inside his body, could only watch his own hand kill his father. Truls released his grip on Bruche and Draken fell to his knees, gasping.
Blood leaked from his father in a torrent, filling every crack and covering every stone with an ever-growing pool stretching toward Draken’s knees.
“You think I am like the sword? You think I bargain in life?” Again, Truls’ cold smile. “No. We Mance deal mostly in death.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
S
eaborn clattered to the floor. Draken sank back on his hands and knees, weak with shock. It barely registered he had command of his own body again. At Truls’ word, several guards came in, bringing with them a blast of cold air that shocked him back into reality. His father was dead, by his own hand.
Gods, Draken, I’m sorry.
Draken passed a few heart beats trying to remember how to breathe.
It’s not your fault. I should have known Truls could control you.
After all, Osias had shown him. Truth, he’d been so shocked by his father’s involvement in the plot, his anger over Osias controlling Bruche had faded. Still. He could barely summon the effort to be angry with himself. He felt beaten. Crushed. He reminded himself that his father had done nothing but betray him in their time together, when they were man and child, and again, man to man.
But the man had been his father.
Osias never should have brought me to you
, Bruche said.
No.
The spirit swordhand had saved his life.
I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you. I never would have picked up Seaborn or known I could.
He deserved to die, Draken. It is a hard thing to hear. Even harder to believe. But it is true.
Halmar lifted Draken’s bloody father in his arms and carried him away. Draken followed the burly guard with his gaze and looked at Truls, who was watching him, brows drawn. As if the Mance King felt some caution for the first time in his godsforsaken life. Or afterlife. Or whatever state Mance lived in. Osias said they had spirits inside them, the Mance. So maybe Truls was having his own private discussion, as Draken and Bruche were.
How long?
he thought listlessly.
How long has Truls planned this?
From the moment he learned your father had a son, I’m certain of it,
Bruche said gently.
This is my fault. I should have…
Fools all, Draken. You couldn’t have known.
The rest of what the spirit impressed upon Draken took not words, but the memories they so often unwillingly shared: Lesle hanging from a gamehook, her death used to assure Draken’s banishment, her innards likely to free more banes; Draken’s murdering the First Captain, a Mance imposter as Reavan was; the bane attack, which surely had been orchestrated by Truls as well. Truls had tied Draken here with Lesle’s murder as surely as if he’d been born in Brîn. He’d stolen everything worthy and good from Draken’s life and left him no alternative but to make a life in this strange place. And now he’d forced Draken to kill his father.
The realization of how Truls had stolen his life left Draken taut as a drawn bow. His jaw tightened as fury shook life back into him. He struggled to his feet and advanced on Truls. “What are you going to do now? Who are you going to kill? Me? You’d be doing me a fair favor.”
“Would that I could,” Truls said. “But I’ll be needing you for Seaborn.”
Seaborn. Draken was starting to hate the very name. “I wish Elena had never given me the bloody thing.”
“Ah. She wouldn’t have done, but for my suggestion. Don’t you remember her thanking me for it?”
“I recall you arguing
against
it.”
Truls sighed and spoke slowly. “It does not do to order queens about. They’re not accustomed to it.”
Draken stared at him, trying to remember the conversation between Reavan and Elena. He’d suggested she give Draken the sword, aye, but in anger. And he thought when she’d complained how Reavan talked and talked, as if to fill her head with his thoughts rather than her own. She must have become quite resistant to his suggestions. So he’d started taking another tack. “You played her.”
Truls simply gestured to Brînian guards. “Bind and gag Prince Khel’s bastard.”
Two Brînians pushed him to the floor and suppressed his struggle by yanking his arm nearly out of his shoulder socket. They stripped him of his cloak and bound his arms tight behind his back. Another gagged him with soft leather strips stuffed in his mouth and a wide leather band tied around his jaw. He tried to bite at their fingers but only gained a sharp cuff to his head for his trouble. The gag across his face was uncomfortably tight, and the leather strips choked him. He coughed and worked them forward with his tongue as Truls bent over him to speak in his ear.
“I don’t have to kill anyone. When the Queen arrives, I’ll simply present her traitor.”
The words left Draken cold. Even Bruche felt resigned.
You’re to be bait then, to draw Elena and her troops into whatever foul magic trap Truls had in store.
Truls turned on his heel and walked away, leaving him with one guard. It was a long time until his return. Draken lay very still, staring at his father’s blood as it dried in the cracks of the stone floor. The winds buffered the building against any sounds, and he floated in a sea of Bruche’s cold, so time seemed to ebb and flow as much as when he’d presented the sword to the gods. At last, Halmar returned, alone. Truls was nowhere in sight. Together, Halmar and the other guard dragged Draken out of the room and into the cold storm. The rough stony ground drew stinging blood. The pain from his injured shoulder, twisted with thick cords behind his back, bit deep into his belly despite Bruche doing his best to mask the pain. No one spoke, not even Bruche
The gates slammed shut behind them, loud as thunder, and Draken caught a glimpse of Seakeep. His father’s body had been strung from the battlements over the gate. The Prince’s mouth gaped open in a silent cry of agony and his eyes stared in horror at what Draken could only imagine as Korde, come to collect the newly dead for Ma’Vanni. Or, in his father’s case, more likely drag him kicking and screaming into Eidola to endure eternity as a bane.
Naught to be done for him now, Draken.
The stony ground scoured his bare back, ripping his skin as if reopening the magically healed wounds from the lashings he took aboard his father’s ship. The damage would be spectacular, but he felt little through Bruche’s cold. Then, without a word, Halmar stopped. Breathing hard, Draken tried to gather strength to face what was in store. He refused to cower or look away, even trussed and bloodied.
Ahead lay Brîn proper, the gray-stone walled city built obviously much later than the fortress Seakeep. Torches lit the wall at regular intervals and from what Draken could tell from his awkward vantage, the gates were sealed. Further inland, thick woods made a deep, black shadow not even the Seven Eyes could penetrate. Bruche had hunted those woods, Draken recalled from the spirit’s memories. He could see how the edge of the forest, the walls of the city, and the cliffs along the Erros made a rough triangle. And at the top point, where the Eros joined Blood Bay, lay Seakeep.
Centered between the forest and Seakeep, thousands of spear-points glittered in the moonlight. Green banners stiffened in the wind. Ranks of Escorts filled the other half the grasslands leading to the town wall, well out of arrow range from Seakeep. Draken couldn’t even begin to count the rows from his vantage on the ground. Five thousand troops? he wondered. Ten? Why had Elena brought her army? How had she known?
But for his father’s small personal contingent now under Truls’ command, it appeared the bulk of the Brînians had chosen to wait out the Queen’s decree behind their gates.
The Akrasian army held as a lone rider moved from the ranks. Draken caught his breath. Elena. She glowed like white flame as her horse closed the twenty lengths distance between them and halted, sidestepping. Truls, in his Reavan glamour, waited on bended knee. Elena lifted her chin and Draken twisted to see what she looked at: Seakeep, its eternal flame glowering at the top like a disregarded beacon to the uncaring gods.
“You called me and my army to Brîn, Reavan. Now show me my enemy.”
Truls rose. “I’ve found your assassin, Queen Elena. Your Night Lord is Prince Khel’s son. A bastard, but loyal to his father.”
Elena didn’t even look at Draken. “Khel’s son?”
“He took Seakeep and killed his father, thinking to march the Brînians against you. The blood on this sword is fresh and I found his father’s body hanging from the gates.” Truls inclined his dark head in the perfect caricature of shame. He held Draken’s sword to Elena, hilt first. “I think it was quite the involved plot. I was late unraveling it, my Queen. I pray your mercy.”
With all his magic at his disposal, with unfettered power to rival the very gods’, Truls had betrayed Elena with a mere lie.
Draken curled his stomach muscles and fought the strain of the dragging rope, but he settled when one of the soldiers slapped his head hard enough to make the moons wink out to black. He twisted his head in futile effort to shake the gag, but it only served to start off a round of muffled, strangled coughing. They waited him out until he could only implore her with his gaze.
Moonwrought armor sheathed her form, and white veils fluttered like filmy mist about her expressionless face. She was utterly impassive, a stunning, unbreakable wall. Had he ever really touched her? Had he made love with this icy beauty? The memory of it froze and shattered under her stare.
“Is this as far as it goes, Reavan?” Elena asked, reaching down to take Seaborn, dull and faintly red as the stormy sky. “Does it end with him?”
“No, Your Majesty. He has riled would-be Brînian rebels. Already, they arm themselves in the city. These soldiers have surrendered. If I may be so bold, we might make an example of them.”
“No,” Elena said.
Reavan fell silent, content to let Elena take the final step into his snare. None of the few Brînians protested his lies.
Enchanted
, Draken said to Bruche with a sinking feeling.
Aye. Controlled by banes, in turn controlled by Truls.
Elena held Draken’s gaze long enough to set his nerves alight along his spine. He held his breath, waiting. Her Night Lord should protect her to the death, but he could do nothing to prevent this. He shook his head and grunted, imploring her with his stare:
Do not do this, Elena. He killed Lesle. He killed my cursed father. He’ll kill you, too—
“I understand now why he was so eager to keep Aarinnaie alive and to set her free.” Elena spoke as if she were inquiring about trade deficits between Reschan and Auwaer, not casually debating a man’s fate.
“Let me kill him, and have this matter finished. Surely without a leader, the Brînians will easily fall. We can hang his body on the gates to Brîn and your enemies will flee in terror,” Reavan said.
Elena brushed the veils back from her face, a filmy glow against the black of her loose, tangled hair. It slammed the memory of their night together back into Draken’s heart and mind. Gods, he’d feared himself half in love with her. But her expression had no trace of compassion. Draken closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see her give the assent to kill him, much less draw her sword and kill him herself. It would be better to not anticipate the exact moment the blade severed his life.
“No,” she said. “As Draken himself pointed out when we captured Aarinnaie, this plot may be wider than just he and his sister.”
“Aye, my Queen.” Reavan submitted with a sharp sigh of feigned disagreement.
Draken grimaced around his gag.
Gods, he’s played her again
.
“Take him to Seakeep. I’ll question him later, myself, after I’ve settled matters with Brîn.” Elena turned her horse, her voice ringing out commands. “Take these Brînians prisoner until we determine their intentions. Secure Seakeep. Reavan, you come with me to the City.”
Reavan mounted a horse provided by a servii and cantered back toward the army and Brîn with the Queen.
It took a bit to sort out the Brînian guards and longer still to sort who would take charge of Draken. In the meantime, he twisted around so he could see what Elena was up to. A company of Akrasian servii, led by a horse marshal, approached the city gates, but a flock of spears from the city walls stayed their advance. A shouted order, and they fell back into formation within seconds, archers kneeling behind shields to shoot at the walls. Elena shouted orders to ready a battering ram, and a series of horn battle calls followed.