Authors: Sevastian
“I’ll teach you respect,” Jared growled, close enough for Tris to smell the rancid brew on Jared’s breath. And with a movement almost too quick to see, Jared drew his sword and charged forward.
Tris parried, needing both hands to deflect the thrust that, he had no doubt, was meant to score.
He fell back a step as Jared drove on, barely countering his brother’s enraged attack. Jared pressed forward, and the anger that burned in his eyes was past reasoning. Tris fought for his life, knowing that he could not hold off Jared’s press much longer as Jared forced him back into the glow of the torch sconce.
In the distance, boot steps sounded on the stone. “Prince Jared?” Zachar, the seneschal called.
“My prince, are you there? Your father desires your attendance.”
With an oath, Jared freed his sword from Tris’s parry and stepped back several paces. “Prince Jared?” Zachar called again, closer now and more insistent.
“I heard you,” Jared shouted in return, watching Tris carefully. Warily, Tris lowered his sword but did not sheath it until Jared first replaced his own weapon.
“Don’t think it’s settled, brother,” Jared snarled. “You’ll pay. Before the dawn, you’ll pay!” Jared 13
promised. Zachar’s footsteps were much closer now and Jared turned to meet the seneschal before Zachar could happen upon them.
Tris stood where he was for a moment until his heart slowed and he caught his breath, shaking from the confrontation. When he regained his composure, he headed for the greatroom, slowing only when the sounds and smells of the festival reached him as he neared the doors to the banquet hall.
Soterius looked skeptically at him as Tris joined his friend. “What’s your hurry?”
The armsman was far too observant to overlook the sweat that glistened on Tris’s forehead on a chill autumn night, or the obvious flush of the fight. “Just a little conversation with Jared,” Tris replied, knowing from long acquaintance that Soterius would fill in the rest.
“Can’t your father—?” Soterius asked below his breath.
Tris shook his head. “Father can’t… or won’t… admit what a monster he sired. Even good kings have their blind spots.”
“Good feast to you, brother.” A girl’s laughing voice sounded behind them just then, and Tris turned. Behind him stood his sister, Kait, her prized falcon perched on her gauntlet. A dozen summers old, at an age when most princesses gloried in mincing steps and elaborate gowns, Kait was radiant in the costume of a falconer, its loose tunic and knickers hiding her budding curves.
Her hair was dark, like Bricen’s, plaited in a practical braid, which only accentuated how much she resembled both Tris and Jared. Dark‐eyed like her father, with her mother’s grace, Kait was likely to catch the eye of potential suitors before too long, Tris thought with a protective pang.
“Didn’t anyone tell you you’re supposed to get a costume for Haunts?” Tris teased, and even the events in the corridor could not keep a smile from his face as Kait favored him with a sour look.
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“You know very well, brother dear, that this is the one night of the year I can wear sensible clothes without completely scandalizing mother and the good ladies of the court,” she retorted.
The falcon, one of the dozen that she tended like children, stepped nervously in its traces, restless at the noise of the boisterous crowd.
“Are you going to take that bird with you on your wedding day?” Tris bantered.
Kait wrinkled her nose as if she smelled spoiled meat. “Don’t rush me. Maybe I’ll take him with me on my wedding night, and not have to start birthing brats immediately!”
“Kaity, Kaity, what would mother say?” Tris clucked in mock astonishment, as Soterius laughed and Kait swung a lighthearted punch at Tris’s shoulder.
“She’d say what she usually says,” Kait returned unfazed. “That she had better find me a suitor before I’ve scandalized the entire court.” She shrugged. “The race is on.”
“You know,” Soterius said with a wink, “she might find you someone you actually like.”
Kait raised an eyebrow. “Like you?” she replied with such a withering tone that both Tris and Soterius chuckled once more.
Soterius raised his hand in appeasement. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
Kait looked about to make another rejoinder when she glanced at Tris, who had fallen silent.
“You’re quiet, Tris.”
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Tris and Soterius exchanged glances. “Had a bit of a run‐in with Jared,” Tris said. “Stay out of his way tonight, Kaity. He’s in an awful temper.”
Kait’s banter dropped, and Tris saw complete understanding in eyes that suddenly appeared much older than her dozen years. “I’d heard,” she said with a grimace. “There’s talk at the stables. He thrashed a stable hand down there half to death for not having his horse ready.” She rolled her eyes. “At least I’ve managed to stay away from him for a few days.”
Tris looked at her and frowned. “Where’d you get that bruise on your arm?”
Kait felt for it self‐consciously. “It’s not bad,” she said, looking away.
“That isn’t what I asked, Kaity,” Tris pressed. He could feel his anger burning already, for this welt and all the others over the years.
Kait still did not meet his eyes. “I earned it,” she sighed. “Jared was taking it out on one of the kitchen dogs, and I clipped a loaf of bread at his head to let the pup get away.” She winced. “He wasn’t very happy with me.”
“Damn him!” Tris swore. “Don’t worry, Kaity. I’ll make sure he stays away from you,” he promised, though they both knew past attempts had only limited success.
Kait managed a wan smile. “After the party, think you could do up one of your poultices? It does smart a little.”
Tris ruffled her hair, feeling such a mixture of anger for Jared and love for Kait that he thought his heart might break. “Of course. I don’t even have to sneak the herbs out of the kitchen any more.”
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Long ago when they were children, Tris had dared night runs to the kitchens to get the herbs he needed to bind up the bruises and cuts Jared inflicted. Though he was only eight years Kait’s senior, he was her self‐appointed guardian since the day she was born. Maybe he had been stirred by how small and lonely she had looked in the nursemaid’s arms. Or perhaps it was Tris’s fear that a baby would prove a more amusing target for Jared’s cruel humor than the ill‐fated cats and dogs that disappeared from the nursery with distressing regularity.
They stuck together, and he frequently took the brunt of Jared’s tempers for her. Jared drove off one nursemaid after another with his outbursts. As Kait got older, she and Tris found safety in banding together against Jared, able to make him back off when they no longer made such an easy mark.
“Father’s got to listen soon,” Kait said wistfully, breaking into his thoughts.
Tris shook his head. “Not yet he won’t,” he said. “He won’t hear a word I say, even though he and Jared argue more and more. Some days, I think they argue about saying ‘good morning.’”
Kait sighed, and the bird on her gauntlet fidgeted. “Maybe mother—?”
Again, Tris indicated the negative. “Every time she tries to say something, father accuses her of favoring her children over Jared. I don’t think he’s ever quite gotten over Eldra’s death,” he added. Jared’s mother died giving birth to Bricen’s firstborn, and it took the king nearly ten years to find the will to wed again, a decade in which young prince Jared had little supervision and less correction as his father retreated into despair.
“Mother won’t even bring it up anymore,” Tris added. “She just tries to keep you out of his way.”
“Uh oh,” Kait whispered under her breath. “More trouble.” Tris followed her gaze across the crowded greatroom, to the red‐robed figure that stood in the hall’s entrance. A hush fell over 17
the room. Clad in the flowing blood‐colored robes of a Fireclan mage, Foor Arontala, Jared’s chief advisor, made his way through the crowd. The throng parted in front of him in a desperate haste to get out of his way, yet the fine‐boned, porcelain‐pale face that peered from beneath a heavy hood and long dark hair did not even acknowledge their presence.
“I hate him,” Kait whispered in a voice that only Tris and Soterius could hear. “I wish grandmother were here. She’d squash him like a flea,” she added, with a little stamping motion for good measure.
“Grandmother’s gone,” Tris replied tonelessly, thinking of his unsuccessful attempt to contact Bava K’aa’s spirit earlier in the evening. He moved to tell Kait what had happened, and then, out of long habit, stopped. Bava K’aa always kept his training such an elaborate secret that even now, he was unwilling to put it into words.
“I wish your father had been quicker to bring a new mage of his own to Shekerishet,” Soterius added in a whisper. “Even a granny witch would be better than that,” he said with carefully shielded distaste.
Foor Arontala passed among the hushed party‐goers as if he did not notice their existence, gliding with preternatural smoothness through the crowd to exit on the other side of the hall, but it took several minutes before the revelry began again, and even longer before it began to sound wholehearted.
“Crone take him,” Tris swore under his breath.
“He looks like She already has,” Kait giggled.
Soterius took it upon himself to lighten the mood. “Do I have to remind both of you that there’s a party going on?” he reprimanded with mock sternness. “Carroway’s been telling tales for most of a candlemark over there,” he said, gesturing, “and you’ve missed it.”
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“Is he still there?” Kait said with sudden interest. “Is there room?”
“Let’s go find out,” Tris said, hoping that the diversion would break his heavy mood.
Carroway, Margolan’s master bard, sat in the center of a rapt audience. It was evident by the press of partygoers around him that the storyteller was building to the climax of his tale.
Carroway leaned forward, recounting the adventure from the time of Tris’s great, great grandfather’s rule in a hushed voice that forced his listeners to lean closer. “The Eastmark raiders pressed on, cutting their way toward the palace. Valiant men tried and failed to push them back, but still the raiders came. The palace gates were in sight! Blood ran ankle‐deep on the stones and all around, the moans of the dying cried for justice.” As Carroway spoke, he leaned to the side and casually lit two gray candles.
“King Hotten fought with all his might as all around him, swords clashed and the battle raged.
Twice, assassins closed around him. Twice, hurled daggers nearly found their mark.” With lazy grace, Carroway’s arm snapped up and thunk, thunk, two daggers appeared from nowhere, thudding into the woodwork behind the rearmost listener. The children screamed, then giggled at Carroway’s sleight of hand.
“But the weary defenders had no more troops to spare,” Carroway went on. “Now it was the eve of the Feast of the Departed—Haunts as we call it—when spirits walk most boldly among us.
They say that on Haunts, the spirits can make themselves solid if they choose, and cast illusions so real that mortals cannot sense or feel the deception until—” he paused, and a well‐timed small poof and a puff of smoke appeared by sleight of hand, “—everything so solid the night before vanishes with the morning. Knowing this, King Hotten begged his mage to do anything that would stop the invaders. The mage was nearly spent himself, and he knew that summoning a major spell would probably be his death, but he harnessed all the power he possessed and called out to the spirit of the land itself, to the Avenger Goddess, and to the souls of the dead.
And with his dying breath, the fog began to change.
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“From the blood‐soaked stones, a mist began to rise. At first, it hovered above the street, swirling around the raiders’ legs, but it grew higher and denser, until it reached the horses’
bridles. Soon, it was a howling wind, and as the terrified raiders watched, it took on faces and shapes, distorted by the tempest. And on that feast night so long ago, the spirits chose to take on form, to manifest themselves completely, to seem as real and solid as you or me.” A thin fog was rising from Carroway’s candles, swirling along the floor of the castle, sending its tendrils among the listeners who startled as they noticed it and stared at Carroway, eyes wide. As they watched, the thin veil of smoke formed itself into the figures of the story, phantom wisps in the shapes of rearing horses and fleeting ghosts.
“The spirits of Shekerishet rose to defend it from the raiders, by the power of the dead and the will of every valiant fighter who ever died to defend king and kingdom. A howl rose above the wind, the shrieks and warning wails of the rising ghosts; and the fog was so thick that it separated the attackers from each other.” Carroway’s wrist flicked and two small pellets scattered from his hand, screeching and wailing as they hit the hard floor. His audience jumped out of their seats, wide‐eyed with fright.
“Confounded and terrified, the attackers ran,” Carroway went on. In his gray bard’s robes, dimly lit by the flickering torches, he looked like something out of legend. “The wall of spirits drove them back, onto the waiting blades of the Margolan army. The ghostly guardians of the palace pushed back the enemy, pursuing the raiders until they scattered beyond the gates,” he said, stretching out his hand. His audience shrieked in good‐natured fright as the smoke rose at Carroway’s command, shaping itself into a man‐sized apparition of a skeletal fighter, poised to draw his sword from the scabbard that hung against his bony leg.
“They say that the ghosts still protect Shekerishet,” Carroway said with a grin. “They say that the spirits of the castle defend it from intruders and will let no harm come to those within. They say that the curse of King Hotten’s mage still carries power, and that every king’s mage since then has added to it with his dying breath.”
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“And that,” Carroway said, sitting back with satisfaction, “is the story of the Battle of Court Gate.”
Tris chuckled as the wide‐eyed children filed away, leaving their costumed storyteller to gather his belongings. Kait danced up to Carroway and blew him a teasing kiss. “I loved it!” She piped up enthusiastically. “But you’ve got to make it scarier.” She winked at the bard. “If I hadn’t already sworn never to get married, I’d pick you,” she added. Tris suspected that Kait was only partly jesting, though she had known Tris’s childhood friend for so long that Carroway was like a brother.