“There’s another man off in the trees to the southwest—relieving himself I’d say. There might be sleepers in the second house. The two smaller houses are definitely empty.”
“Damn! I should have you with me on every expedition,” whispered the Prince. “We could have all their nests cleaned out in a month.”
“My lord, you promised.”
“Yes, yes. I’m here to talk. Minimal bloodshed. Are you sure you won’t come in with us?”
I shook my head. “I cannot.” I had my own battles to fight, and involvement in such matters would just make them more complicated. “Only when you’re ready to talk to him.”
We had talked it out thoroughly as we traveled eastward, skirting Vayapol and meeting up with Aleksander’s larger traveling force, some fifty Derzhi warriors sitting at the foot of this range of rugged green hills. Aleksander had information from a prisoner that the Yvor Lukash was headquartered in these folded lands of the Kuvai. It was an unlikely spot, so far from any major city, among a people better known for lute-making and minstrelsy than any skill at arms.
I had told the Prince that those setting out to free slaves and right injustice were no enemies of mine. I would neither lift a sword against them nor shed their blood. But I had agreed to help Aleksander confront those who were undermining his efforts to bring a wider peace . . . and my hopes that he was destined to be a ruler such as the world had never known in its sorry history. He had promised to talk before killing, a major concession on the part of any Derzhi.
Fiona had spent the entire journey fuming. Aleksander had commanded that her hands be tied to her saddle, and her horse tethered to that of a guard. I didn’t know whether Fiona understood the Derzhi insult intended—only dangerous prisoners or the lowest, most despised of persons were not allowed to control their own mounts. But she certainly understood the soldiers’ smirking stares at her man’s clothing and their sneering laughs at her humiliation. She could have snapped her bonds with melydda, but she would not deign to do so. Melydda was meant for the demon war. Her frost could have blighted the jungles of Thrid.
After the first day I asked Aleksander to allow her to ride with us, at least, rather than surrounded by leering guards. “I appreciate your attempts to help, my lord, but at some time I hope to get my problems put right, and having a witness that I’ve not gone out to negotiate with rai-kirah could be an advantage.”
“You would have her overhear our conversations?”
I felt my cheeks flame. “It’s likely she is anyway.”
“She can do that?” He glanced over his shoulder uneasily.
“She is skilled at many things, and listening is one of them. It’s one reason they chose her.” I still hadn’t figured out all the reasons. Or why she took to her watch so ferociously.
Fiona lay beside me on the bald ridge top, squinting into the mist. If she saw or heard anything different than I did, she wasn’t saying it. Two of Aleksander’s warriors stood just inside the line of trees behind us, guarding our backs.
“We’re going in while they’re still scattered, distracted with the new arrivals. This mist hides us as well as them. A quick demonstration of our superior numbers, and we can have what conversation we please.” Aleksander gestured with one hand, and one of the soldiers in the trees sounded the call of a wild gorse-hen. It was well-done. No reason why it should be remarked. Beyond it came the squawk of a rivinjay. Again well-done. The call was passed in varying forms until I sensed the Derzhi, who stood waiting in the forest beyond the valley mouth, begin to move silently, stealthily toward the outlaws’ camp. The Prince eased back from me, ready to go down and join his men as soon as they had the outer guards in custody.
But the birdcalls were indeed noticed, or the movement, or something, for I heard a sharp cry of warning, and from somewhere in that valley there came a pulse of enchantment that almost blinded my inner sight. Sorcerers! The morning sunlight began to burn through the mist, revealing men scrambling to shelter under the trees.
“Your Highness, pull them back!” I called out over my shoulder, but Aleksander was already disappearing down the path into the trees, and I dared not call louder. “Fiona! Go tell him! Hurry! They’re going to be slaughtered.” The archers would take care of the first wave of Derzhi horsemen, and when they discovered they were so far outnumbered, enchanters of such power could bring the cliffs down on the rest of them.
She hesitated, and I grabbed her shoulder. “I don’t care about your feelings for me or for Derzhi. People are going to be dead if we don’t stop it. True corruption can begin with silence as well as deeds. Now, go. I need to stay ready here.”
She shoved my hand away. “I don’t need you to lecture me, Master Seyonne.” She slipped backward and got to her feet, staying in a crouch until she reached the trees.
I turned back to the edge and peered over again, bringing all my senses to bear, for in that first moment of clarity I had glimpsed the two men standing in front of the house, waiting to greet their comrades. Something was odd, yet familiar, about them. Something I needed to see beyond being able to describe them for Aleksander.
Before long I felt the Derzhi warriors in the forest slip backward, the sounds of their hearts and breathing blending once more into the life of the trees. Shortly afterward Aleksander crept up beside me and looked over the edge. “This had better be important. We had them.”
“No you didn’t. See how the haze is clearing.”
“They wouldn’t have seen us.”
“They heard you. Somehow they knew you were there, and they were ready for you. You were right that they were sorcerers. See . . .”
Warned of the waiting Derzhi, the outlaws were going to vanish into the hills. Men slipped out of the trees, but only enough to move up the valley toward the horses, toward the back passage. An orderly retreat. First the outer guards, the ones beyond the valley mouth pulled in. Then the inner guards, the archers in the rocks, came down, drew back, and took up positions in the center of the camp. The outer guards shifted back, then the others, alternating, calm, careful. Silent. The man who had been in the trees had raced toward the horses in the first moment of the alarm. He came back riding, leading two more horses, and at last the two who had been in front of the house stepped out of the shadows. The first, a short man with a round face and shoulders like a blacksmith, mounted up and gestured to the retreating guards to move faster. Only when all the men were behind him did the last outlaw mount up. He was dressed no differently than the others in loose-fitting Manganar breeches and belted tunic, bow slung over one shoulder, long knife at his belt, and sword sheathed on his saddle. Straight black hair hung halfway down his back. He appeared no more than average in height and slender, but every fiber of his body was rife with power.
“There’s your man,” I whispered.
The Yvor Lukash sat still in the saddle and cocked his head as if he were listening, then slowly scanned the trees and the ridge tops.
“Head down,” I hissed, and even as I said it, in as soft a voice as I could muster, the outlaw’s head jerked upward, and he looked straight at me.
I had never seen his face before. Lean. Hard. Bronze skin drawn tight over high cheekbones. Deep hollows in his cheeks, emphasizing a firm, jutting chin. Long arched nose. Dark eyes. Aleksander’s suspicions were correct. He was Ezzarian. But even more astonishing . . . in that moment when he peered upward at the ridge where I lay . . . I knew him. An air of stillness surrounded him like the moon’s corona on the night before a storm. No matter the face he wore. The sword of light . . . the white dagger. The man who wheeled his horse and spurred the beast after his comrades was the priest who had my son.
“After them,” said Aleksander, springing to his feet and hurrying toward the path and the trees. “I won’t lose them.”
“Wait . . .” My mind was in tumult. I could not risk Aleksander harming the man, but neither did I want to lose him. I had no skill at infant-nurturing to offer my child, no home or healing to nourish his wakening soul, but I had a sword and a strong arm to keep him safe. I could not rest until I had made sure of those who cared for him.
The Prince was already into the thick stand of pines, while I stood staring at the mounted figures disappearing into the hills. If only I could shape my wings . . .
“What is it?” said Fiona. “Do you not obey your master?”
“Come on or the guards will drag you,” I said, retreating from the cliff edge. Without wings I would have to rely on my feet and a horse, and meanwhile try to figure out how in Verdonne’s name I was going to keep the priest out of Aleksander’s hands long enough to find out who and what he was.
I took off running and caught up with Aleksander about halfway between the ridge top and the troops hidden near the valley mouth. The Prince was striding purposefully down the root-laced path through the trees. I wrestled with words and plans. How could I convince him to let me go after the outlaws alone? Whatever speech Aleksander had with a man leading a rebellion against him would leave no room to learn of my child or to discover what Ezzarian would risk the safety of our race and the demon war in such a rash undertaking. These were not matters to be discussed under bonds of uneasy truce or imperial forbearance. And even if I found the words to persuade Aleksander to hold back, how in the name of reason could I get the rebels to trust me? If the man guessed that I had been chasing after him with the Prince of the Derzhi, he would likely see me dead before I opened my mouth. He would have listened to me better when I was a slave, than now I was a free man.
I thought I would have at least a little time to sort out this dilemma. But we had gone no more than twenty steps together, when I felt the stirring of air some fifty paces in front of us, just around a curve where the path squeezed between a giant rock outcropping and a steep gully. Massive enchantment. Profound stillness.
Without time to weigh consequences or possibilities, I yanked on Aleksander’s arm, stopping his mouth with an upraised hand at the same time I halted his steps. Fiona and the two Derzhi guards came up behind and almost ran into us. I flicked my eyes toward the boulders and prayed for Aleksander to understand what I was about to do. Then I snatched the startled Prince’s sword and quickly and carefully whipped it across his cheek, leaving a shallow, bloody scratch from his left eye to his chin.
Aleksander slapped his hand to the wound and stared at the blood, then at his sword in my hand. “What the cursed—”
“I’ll never go back,” I screamed, aborting the Prince’s erupting roar, even as one Derzhi guard shoved Fiona to the ground and another laid an arm the size of a tree trunk to my head. The second man stomped his boot on my hand, which had already let loose of the Prince’s sword. Spitting blood and dirt from my mouth as the guards tried to twist my arms out of the sockets and pull my head off my shoulders, I cried out, “Put me back in your chains. But don’t think you’ll keep me forever. There’s fire in your empire. I am not this Yvor Lukash, but your slaves will be free, whichever of us does it.” I gave the warriors only enough of a fight to keep my tongue free and breath in my lungs. The messier I was, the better. “I will never serve you again, Lord Vanye.”
For a heart-stopping moment I allowed one guard to plant his knee in my back and pin my arms behind me, and the other to bend my head back at an angle I would have declared impossible and hold a knife to my throat. Aleksander, pale and rigid with fury, blood dripping down his cheek, stared at me as if I were the Lord of Demons come to life again. Had he heard the name I’d called him—the dead man’s name that was the root of our history together? Everything depended on his listening.
Trust me. Think. Even if you don’t understand everything, remember what we have done together. You know I would never harm you.
Even as I willed him to understand, the Prince motioned to the guards. “String him up to the tree, give him fifty lashes, and leave him here to bleed. Let the wolves teach him a slave’s true worth. I’ve better things to do than coddle a runaway. He’s warned these bandits off, and now we’ll have to report a failure to Prince Aleksander. He won’t like it. I told him that talking to outlaws was useless.”
When Aleksander pursued a deception, he threw himself into it with a vengeance, and somehow I always ended up bleeding for it. The well-disciplined guards—whatever their mystification, they did not dare question the Prince’s strange reference to himself—bound my hands to a tree branch far above my head. Before they began with the lash, Aleksander walked around me as if to inspect that all was secure, stopping where his blood-streaked face looked into mine. Rings of gold banded the powerful arms folded tightly across his chest. I had walked his soul, shared such intimacy as brother and brother, father and son, or man and wife could not imagine, so I did not need to hear words to understand the question in his eyes.
Are you sure?
“Tell your Prince that his empire will not survive as long as injustice rules,” I said, “but if he heeds those who cry out to him, trusts those who have faith in him, his glory will never end.”
“Fifty,” he said, then turned on his heel and strode down the path. His hand lay on the hilt of his sword, but there was no disturbance as he disappeared into the trees.
No sorcery can blunt the pain of such a beating. What skill I could bring to bear faded quickly as torn flesh and battered muscle took their toll. Aleksander could not have given me less. Not for cutting him. Those I felt watching from the shadows would never have accepted it.
Stupid ploy
. There were a hundred less destructive moves that could have set up a confrontation, but I’d had no time to think of them. Aleksander had to believe that I was going to spy on his enemies, and the observers had to believe that I was going to die for my offense. How I was ever to untangle matters, once I had learned what I needed to learn, I had no idea.