Oathkeeper (11 page)

“You are in no position to—”

“I am old and about to die.” Grivek took in a long deep breath, drawing himself up to his full height. “I am going to sign this document and agree to all of your demands.” He let it out again, sagging with the exhalation. “Please let me speak.”

Rae'en nodded, wondering in the moment what Parl, the Foresworn, might have said if she'd let him keep talking?

He looked pretty regal there for a moment
, Vander thought at her.

If you say it's true . . .
Rae'en thought back, begrudging the Oathbreaker even that scant token of admiration or respect.

“One: I will be allowed to choose my successor and you will honor my choice. By which I mean, you will allow him time to perform the Test of Four, be acknowledged, and grant him one audience with you before the Aern attack his people.”

“More delays?” Rae'en slammed her fist down on the camp desk cracking the wood. “I have had enough of your—”

“You could at least listen to him,” Yavi broke in but seemed not to have the heart to press the issue.

“Just the one request then.” Grivek lowered his hands, fingers folding in like dying spiders. “Will you grant it?”

You could have at least—

Shut up, Bloodmane!

“What was the second request?”

Grivek looked away, his eyes lingering at the feet of the statue of Kilke. The massively muscled god with his two extant heads each sporting horns stared down at the pair of them as if bemused by the whole affair, one finger raised to scratch the center stump that had once held a third head before Shidarva had dethroned him and taken his place as ruler of the gods.

“I don't want to be eaten.”

Rae'en laughed. “What? Why? You'll be dead. When you're dead you're meat. It hardly matters what happens to it then.”

“Even so.” Grivek looked at her with rheumy eyes.

If I remember correctly
, Vander thought to Rae'en,
the Test of Four takes a few candlemarks. Not more than that. Even if there is to be a funeral first, it's a three- to five-day delay.

“Five days?” Rae'en asked.

“Two at most.” Grivek shook his head. “I will have no funeral. I wish my body to be burned. I will not have my children coming to visit a pit of rotting meat when I am gone.”

“Done,” Rae'en said.

“I have your oath?” Grivek assessed her warily.

“Yes, but only if the fleet can make port unopposed at Port Ammond.”

“They will not attack until after your audience with my successor?” Grivek asked.

“Unless he fails or things take longer than you've specified.” Rae'en leaned in. “I won't get caught in some oath trap like—”

“Granted,” Grivek interrupted. “This isn't like that. I know you won't believe me. You have every right not to, but I'm not attempting to outmaneuver you.”

“Done then.” Rae'en drummed her fingers on the document.

“I need to hear the words.” Grivek looked into her eyes.

“And I need to see the orders.” Rae'en folded her arms across her chest.

Grivek waved over one of his guards and hastily wrote out a set of orders, which he let Rae'en review before he signed, sealed, and dispatched them with the guard to Port Ammond.

“And now the words?” Grivek asked.

What does he expect to happen?
Rae'en wondered.

Aldo knows
, Vander thought back,
but this agreement will make the landing at Port Ammond a lot less exciting.

Anything I can do to make sure Uncle Glin doesn't fall overboard and sink to the bottom of the Bay
, Rae'en agreed.

“I swear,” Rae'en began, “it is my intention to grant up to two days' time, beginning today, to allow your chosen heir a chance to undertake the test you named. Assuming he passes, I will agree to meet with him, also within the same two days, unless he delays or it becomes unreasonable, in my opinion, or in an opinion expressed by my Overwatches, to do so. As for your body, I shall agree to let your people dispose of it and if they keep your wishes or fail to do so . . . that is up to them.”

You swear it is your intention?
Vander asked.

He's an Oathbreaker
, Rae'en thought back at Vander.
He gets what he gets. He won't catch me oathing off until I have my back to a wall.

“She swears it is her intention.” Grivek gave a bitter chuckle. “I suppose it's the best I'm likely to get. Very well.”

A blade of violet flame rose from the tip of Grivek's forefinger, and he signed the document with it, the scent of burnt skin rising from the page. Placing his palm over the signature, the Eldrennai king closed his eyes, lips pulled tight into a severe line of grim concentration. When he pulled his hand away, the symbol of the Royal Bloodline lay emblazoned in its wake.

Rae'en unslung Grudge, her father's warpick, from her back. Grivek held up a hand, imploring her to delay a moment.

He took the thin crystal and silver circlet from his head and whispered fire along it. “Rivvek,” he said over the glowing crown. “I name Rivvek my heir. Seek him.”

The fire grew. Mystic heat suffused the metal and crystal until it flowed, the molten composite fashioning itself into the likeness of a small bird. The crown flew out over the water where a sea hawk dove, struck, and died in a screeching conflagration.

“In your own time,” Grivek said after the crown was out of sight.

“But Rivvek is Aiannai,” Rae'en scowled. “Oathkeeper.”

“Yes,” Grivek agreed. “Your father's scars are on his back. Rivvek is the only Eldrennai other than Wylant he personally accepted.”

“This changes nothing.”

“He will.” Grivek coughed. “He's the only child I've ever had who was brave enough to see what we did to the Aern. Understand it and try to make amends.”

“Amends?” Rae'en scoffed, picking up the document, rolling it up, and putting it into her right saddlebag.

“Ask him how he got those scars,” Grivek suggested.

“Don't you know?” Rae'en asked.

“It's his tale to tell.” Grivek shook his head as he spoke. “And now you have one more reason to grant him an audience.”

Did he tell you, Vander?

Only Bloodmane
, Vander sent.
Well, and your father. Rivvek asked to share it with them first and afterward Kholster said Rivvek had asked him to keep it to himself. You could always—

I'll ask Rivvek when I see him.

“Seriously,” Yavi said as she walked back over, “can we all just put our weapons away and—”

Sharp and shrill the cry of Grudge, the warpick of her father, her kholster, and now her god rang out as Rae'en struck, ending the final Grand Conjunction the only way Rae'en could ever envision it ending . . . with the death of the Eldrennai king. Blood from King Grivek's punctured throat sprayed across Yavi's face, spattering the statue of Kholster before which a small broken camp table lay.

Yavi drew her heartbow, nocking an arrow even as the king's lifeblood dripped down the silvery expanse of her bark-stripped skin, standing out in sharp contrast to the cheery yellow of her head petals.

“What have you done?” Yavi shouted.

“Killed the king of my enemy.” Rae'en eyed the Vael with contempt, the jade irises surrounding the amber pupils of her eyes expanding slightly, banishing a portion of the black sclera so unique to Aern. She bared her doubled canines. “I told him I had a few favors—” she gestured at the signed documents on the table, “—to ask before I killed him. It was not unexpected. Why are you so surprised?”

“But then you killed him!” Yavi shouted. “You really killed him!”

“What else would I do?” Rae'en jerked the hooked beak of Grudge's head free of the dying king's throat as his guards and attendants rushed forward, weapons drawn. “The last Conjunction is ended. Why don't you go home and play with the other flowers, Yavi? Surely they have something or someone useful you could be doing.”

CHAPTER 9

PICKING SIDES

Yavi only took two blinks to think before choosing sides. Rolling away from the Aern and the charging guards—cries of outrage on their lips, a wolfish grin set upon hers—Yavi unslung her heartbow.

Was there really any choice at all?

The temptation to shoot Rae'en was there in her core, but next to it burned an understanding of why Rae'en had killed King Grivek. It was all fair hunting to try to change the Aern's mind, but to believe Rae'en might actually choose other than she had didn't track at all. There was no other decision for Rae'en to make: Kholster was dead and Rae'en blamed the Eldrennai for it.

Or Yavi assumed she did. And even if she didn't hold Grivek personally accountable, Rae'en had granted Grivek's last requests, gone so far as agreeing to delay the war even further. True, it might be nice if the Aern weren't so darned stubborn, but when Yavi thought back to Kholster's interactions with the Eldrennai, to the hatred that burned within him tempered by a willingness to reinterpret his oaths as liberally as he could, to grant requests he hadn't been required to even consider. . . . And, again, Rae'en might be less willing to bend than her father, but she'd still done so, still made concessions she had no strategic reason to make.

Aern were willing to be kind when they could be, and Eldrennai, well . . . Yavi squinched her face. She remembered Dolvek's haughtiness, the way he and King Grivek flew about the room at breakfast hurling fire at one another in an argument. She had no trouble recalling the sound of Grivek's sobs when Kholster had retold the story of the Battle of As You Please.

They could feel guilty, but why hadn't they tried to do anything about it in the centuries since the exile, shown any initiative in resolving their differences with the Aern, to the extent they could be resolved, other than by abiding to the terms of the peace treaty the Vael had been forced to negotiate? The Eldrennai had tried to hide their shame so hard that Prince Dolvek had been able to break the truce between their peoples unwittingly.

It was like the Litany.

The Eldrennai who'd lived before the Sundering knew what they had done but preferred to forget what it meant and what it had cost. They had tried to salvage their pride instead of taking ownership of their mistakes and working as hard as they could to make sure each new generation would never repeat them.

In a way Prince Dolvek's sundering of their peace had been an inevitability. At least by making an exhibit of the Aernese weapons and armor, he had been trying to do something good. Sure, he'd utterly failed to realize that the Aern were connected to their warsuits and would know the moment they were moved. He'd misread everything and everyone, trying to do a good thing. He'd failed to listen to any of the many people who'd tried to stop him or explain things. It was like the whole no grabbing thing. Yavi didn't know exactly why her people had such an aversion to being grabbed, but they did. It was almost always unthinkable and intolerable, so when an overprotective guard had grabbed her arm inside the museum exhibit and the warsuits had killed him, Dolvek had thought she'd been in danger and only belatedly realized it had been his own guards who had been in the wrong.

A warsuit would never hurt a Vael.

No, the Eldrennai didn't tend to leave such a favorable impression. There was hope for them, though. While Yavi would have given no credence to any suggestion that Prince Dolvek might talk the Aern out of anything, to find a way for all three races to coexist, his brother . . .

Prince Rivvek had Kholster's scars on his back. He was Aiannai to the Aern, an Oathkeeper. If anyone (other than General Wylant) had a chance at stopping the fighting, it was Rivvek, but if the late king's guard slew Rae'en . . .

All of those thoughts that had been turning round and round in her head since Kholster's death led to a single conclusion: If they killed Rae'en, the Eldrennai were committing suicide.

“There'll be no stopping the war at all, if you Oathbreakers kill her,” Yavi shouted.

Rather than engage the guards in melee combat, Yavi called on any nearby wind spirits to lift her into the air. The friendly zephyr who'd helped her soar earlier with Wylant tried to answer, its touch cool and friendly on her bark, but Yavi's anger and frustration with both the Aern and the Eldrennai made her too heavy. Which meant she needed to put herself back in a happy mood, or she needed a different sort of wind spirit. A killing wind.

During the Summer such a wind spirit might have been hard to come by, but the Winter wind was full of anger and death, and though Winter was yet to come, there was always a kiss of it in Autumn. Yavi just had to find it.

Eyes narrowing, vision opening more to the realm of spirits than the physical, Yavi caught sight of a frigid ethereal being twisting around the base of the central obelisk. It was an old being, smelling of bodies in the snow or under the ice. Raw power pushed against her magic, a hatred nursed through the warmer seasons, never dying, merely waxing and waning.

Dangerous, then. Too dangerous to work with? In another two blinks Yavi embraced the risk.

“Let's kill things,” she whispered to it with her magic. “Help me fly so we can rage together.”

Kill
, it thought at her,
freeze and crack. Mmmmmmm.

Growing opaque enough to reveal cruel blue eyes gazing at her from within a coiled serpentine body of ice and snow, the elemental spirit flowed over her in a wave of frost, chilling Yavi to her heartwood. Icy coils wrapped around her waist, jerking Yavi aloft in the eye of a vortex of frigid wind and hail. Her bark hardening under his rough touch, Yavi drew, aimed, and—

A human male, dressed in traveling clothes and a dark-blue overcoat so expensive she knew she had to be staring at Captain Tyree even though she could only see his back—well, there were clues there, too, but—ran out onto the black marble ground of Oot and blocked her shot.