Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) (15 page)

I shivered. “Magic,” I muttered. “I want nothing to do with magic.”

Cullin got up and went to the horses to begin saddling his bay. I followed. He glanced at me, raising one eyebrow.

“It’s a chancy thing,” I said. “Where do you start in a search like that?”

“I found you,” he said, smiling.

“Aye, you did. But it took you a while, and at least you had something to go on.”

He shrugged. “She’s sure she’ll know the man if we find him,” he said. “Is it worth our time?”

“It was a heavy purse she gave you,” I said.

“Aye, it was. Well, we canna go back to Honandun for a while. I can think of worse ways to spend a season or two than looking for a lost heir.”

“What about the others? They’ll be going to Trevellin when Moigar finds them.”

“They’re all experienced guards,” he said. “I can find them work. Thom can lead them almost as well as you or I could.”

I glanced back over my shoulder at Kerri. She sat by the fire, studiously looking the other way, her face calm and composed. But her hands were knotted tightly together on her knees, and her shoulders looked tense. I looked back at Cullin. “You’re the captain,
ti’vati
,” I said. “I follow you.”

“Aye, well,” he said. He turned to Kerri and beckoned her over. “We’ll see what’s afoot when we get to Trevellin,” he told her. “We can decide then what’s best. It might be there will be someone there better able to help you.”

“But I—”

“We’ll decide there,” Cullin said firmly.

Kerri shot a glance at me, her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Instead, she merely walked away and saddled her mare.

Trevellin lay
in a wide valley less than a league upstream from the sea on the Isgardian side of the River Shena. As a trading city, it was busier than Honandun, but had not the sprawl of buildings. Twice a year, the meadows around the city filled to overflowing with tents and stalls as merchants from all over the continent converged on the city for the Trade Fairs.

We stood on the hill overlooking the city, scanning the vast sea of colourful tents. Even from here, we clearly heard the tumult of voices crying the wares of merchants. Scattered phrases of music from pipes, harps and tambours floated in the air as entertainers wove their way through the crowds hoping for a few coppers.

I couldn’t help it. My gaze was drawn from the bustle and confusion below us to the broad flatlands of Falinor across the river. It had been eight years since I had seen it. I found my hand clenching into a fist at my side as I stood there. Not very far from here, less than seven leagues south and east, I reckoned, was the inn where I had first met Cullin as a frightened, half-grown boy, a runaway slave. I had hardly thought about that boy in seven years. Until just now, he had been a blurred memory, less even than a recollection from a clouded dream.

Well, I was no slave now. Five silver and two ornate daggers had purchased my freedom. The sword I carried and Cullin’s meticulous and exacting training had earned me the ability to keep it. I had a name now, and a family with it.

“We timed our arrival well,” Cullin said. “Once the Fair breaks up, there’ll be merchant trains going in all directions. Thom and the men will have no trouble finding work.” He mounted his horse and looked at Kerri. “And you, my lady, might well find someone willing and better able to help in your search for your lost prince.”

Kerri slanted a glance across at me, that I ignored, then made a rocking “perhaps, perhaps not” gesture with her hand.

We rode down the track abreast. At the edge of the Fair, we found an enterprising young man who had set up a temporary paddock  and left our horses to be penned in the enclosure he had roped off. The feed looked fresh and clean, and the other animals in the enclosure looked contented enough.

“I’m going to find a broker for Thom,” Cullin said as we walked toward the thronged cluster of tents and stalls. “Kian, you had best see if you can buy us provisions. Keep Kerri with you until we see if there’s anyone here we can trust to help her. We’ll meet back here in two hours’ time.”

I had almost forgotten how a trade fair assaulted the senses. The air swirled with the thick smell of leather goods, wine, food of all descriptions, animal dung, perfumes and the smell of bodies left too long unwashed. It rang with the shouts of thousands of voices crying wares, bargaining and bickering, raised in song, laughter or anger. It glittered with the colours of the tents, the gleam of metal-wares and jewels, the shimmer of silks and satins, the sheen of furs and the more prosaic glow of fruits and vegetables piled high on tables and nestled into baskets We found it impossible to move without being jostled on all sides by people wandering happily or hurrying through the mass of humanity crammed into the narrow aisles.  Stalls and tents jammed cheek by jowl filled every available space. Beneath our feet, the trampled grass lay dead and brown, choking in dust.

Kerri edged closer to me and I put my arm around her shoulders to prevent the crowd from separating us. She stiffened, glared at me and muttered something, but didn’t pull away. In that sea of moving bodies, it would be too easy to lose one another.

A display of weapons caught Kerri’s eye and she drew me toward it in order to take a closer look. She picked up a dagger that looked more like a piece of jewellery than weapon. The merchant’s eyes gleamed almost as brightly as the begemmed haft of the dagger as he volubly praised its workmanship, the keenness of its edge, its usefulness and suitability for so obviously a highborn lady such as herself.

Kerri laughed and replaced the dagger. “It’s a pretty toy,” she told the merchant. “But I have no use for it.”

“Perhaps this, then?” the merchant said hopefully, picking up a more utilitarian dagger and displaying it with a flourish.

Kerri shook her head. “Thank you, no.”

Disappointed, the merchant looked for the next prospective customer and we moved away.

As we turned, we were nearly bowled over by two men shouldering roughly through the crowd. I looked up and stopped in mid-stride. One of the men was Drakon, son of Lord Mendor. Frozen, I stared at him. He had grown, of course, since the last time I saw him, but I was incongruously pleased to note I was considerably taller and broader than he. The lank sandy hair was still the same, as were the pale blue eyes and the sulky and cruel droop to the corners of his mouth. A purple welt  of burn scar ran from the corner of his left eye up across his temple and back into his hair, which hung oddly over his ear. When the slight breeze lifted his hair a little, I saw that the ear itself was badly misshapen, the skin around it puckered and red. He was richly dressed in hunting leathers with a silver-chased baldric across his chest, supporting a longsword at his hip. He looked at Kerri as a man looks at a tavern bawd, then glanced at me, contempt in his eyes, a sneer on his mouth, seeing only a Tyran clansman, dusty from travel. Then the disdainful expression in his eyes changed to shocked recognition and he stiffened.

“You!” he cried. His hand flew to the dagger at his hip. “I was told you were dead!”

My hand went to my own dagger. “You would do well to keep your blade sheathed, Drakon,” I said softly.

He drew the hair back to display his disfigured ear. “You did this to me,” he snarled. “I will reclaim you as my property, and I will see you hanged.”

“If I were you, Drakon,” I said softly, “I’d be verra careful how I spoke to the grandson of the Laird of Broche Rhuidh of Tyra.” I bared my teeth at him, a mocking imitation of a polite smile. “Ask Dergus how he sold me for a galley slave. Did he no tell ye? He’d no ken I purchased my freedom, would he, then? Nobody’s property but my own now.”

Drakon looked over his shoulder at the liveried house-guard who stood behind him. “This man is an escaped slave,” he said loudly. “He’s my property. Take him—”

He stepped aside as the house-guard leaped forward. I heard Kerri swear as I pivoted to meet the house-guard. Drakon went down as Kerri swept his feet out from under him. I hit the house-guard full in the face. He fell back, blood spurting from his ruined nose. There was no room to manoeuvre with the crowd jostling and swirling around us. The thirst for revenge burst  in me, a sudden, hard need. Rossah’s blood crying out for vengeance, but I could not draw my sword and challenge Drakon right there. Too many people were in the way.

Even as I tried to fight my way through the crowd to him, Drakon scrambled to his feet and backed away. “I will kill you yet,” he shouted. “You are a dead man, you slave bastard—”

I lunged after him, but he dodged away, then disappeared quickly into the throng. Kerri grabbed my arm as I tried to follow him.

“Don’t be a fool,” she snapped. “You’ll never find him in this crowd. He won’t fight you, anyway. I’ve seen that type before. He’ll be more likely to wait in ambush for you, or send an assassin to put a dagger in your back.”

She was right, and I knew it. But it still took all the self-control I had not to go charging blindly after him.

“I owe him a blood debt,” I said with more calm than the tension in my body laid claim to. “Both him and his father, Mendor.”

She pulled me toward a large tent set with tables and benches where ale and food were being served. “Let’s get something to eat,” she said. “I could use a glass of wine. If you like, you can tell me about it.”

***

By the time I had told Kerri about the boy called Mouse, I had calmed down enough so that I no longer wanted to tear the Fair apart to find Drakon. Rossah had waited these eight years with that infinite, sweet patience Mouse had always both envied and despised. She would wait a while longer. As I spoke, the urgency left me and a firm determination took its place. In the rash, passion of youth, Mouse had made a vow for vengeance. Kian dav Leydon ti’Cullin was a man and, I hoped, more capable of rational thinking even when angered. Reason told me Mendor and Drakon could never think they had acted wrongly, ordering the death of one slave, the castration of another. They simply dealt with their property as they saw fit. But I was still in no mood to listen to cold reason. I was Tyran enough in my attitude toward slavery, perhaps even more so than Cullin. I had reason enough. There were, even in Falinor, slave owners who allowed their slaves the simple courtesy of the dignity of humanity. If nothing else, Mendor and Drakon deserved a hard lesson in the morality of slave owning. I was more than willing to serve as instructor in their learning.

Kerri listened without interruption as I spoke. When I finished, she remained quiet for a long time, her hands cupped around the crude earthenware goblet of wine. Finally, she looked up at me.

“You still don’t remember your parents?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. I don’t really remember anything before I was seven. Just the occasional feeling I
should
remember something.”

She made an odd little gesture with her eyebrows. “What a strange, lost feeling that must be,” she said softly, displaying an insight not many people had. “But that might mean you’re not really Cullin’s nephew after all...”

Her line of thinking was almost visible. I laughed harshly. “If you’re trying to fit me into the space left by your missing princeling, you can forget that idea right now. I’m no Celae.”

“But the Rune Blade—”

I shook my head. “No,
sheyala
. By your own admission, only a Celae can read the runes on a sword, and I canna read them on my own.”

“Who was your mother?” she asked, kiting off on a different tack.

“My mother was Saesnesi,” I told her. “Saesnesi with a touch of Maeduni blood. A far cry from a Celae. Besides, how old did you say your princeling was?”

“Liam said he’d be about twenty-six or twenty-seven.”

I spread my hands. “I’m twenty-three, at least three years younger,” I said, proving my point. “No,
sheyala
. I’m no Celae princeling. Get that out of your head.”

“That Blade tells me different.”

I got abruptly to my feet. “It’s time to meet Cullin,” I said. “And it’s time to find someone else to help you. If Cullin wants to do it, I’ll go with Thom.”

She stood up and glared at me. “You don’t get shut of me that easily,” she said. “If you aren’t the prince’s grandson, then you and that sword will lead me to him. Where you go, I go. Like it or not.” She planted her fists on her hip and thrust out her jaw. Stubborn, she was. Like a rock. “If I don’t go with you, I go after you. You’re stuck with me, my friend.”

Cullin was
late. Nearly four hours had passed since we parted and still no sign of him. It was unlike him not to be where  he said he would be, when he said he’d be there. He had not even sent a messenger with word to say he’d be late.

I paced restlessly in front of the rope paddock, unwilling to admit I was worried. The encounter with Drakon had unsettled me, and I didn’t like the way Mouse’s memories kept crowding into my mind, and one memory in particular. A small child screaming in helpless terror and pain, savaged by the dogs Drakon had set on her because the child’s mother had accidentally spilled dirty wash water on Drakon’s new boots. If I closed my eyes, I could still hear the child shrieking, and see the bloody foam around the mouths of the dogs. I clenched my fist angrily and tried to shake off the memories.