Moth and Spark (15 page)

They were crossing a narrow street in a silent shop district when the attack happened. Riders came at them from either side. What he remembered most afterward were the splashes of water from the horses’ hooves and the reflection of the streetlight on the wet blade of his sword. The guards went into a circle around him before it became obvious to everyone that it was at least two to one against, even with him, and that it was an ill-affordable luxury for him not to fight.

It was loud. The clang of sword blades, the grunts and breaths of the men, the whickers of the horses, the creaking wet leather, the rain. He had his hood back to see, and it was not long before the cloak itself became too hot as he sweated. Strike, parry, thrust, block, again and again. His wrist began to ache, although he was strong enough to keep his arm steady. There were two men against him, one on either side, the water running down their skin in little rivulets. He was taller, with a longer reach, and lither. He was also much the better rider, which was all that gave him the time to hold off both of them.

One of them leaned forward. Corin saw at once that it was too far. He lowered his point, then swung around in a half circle to the man’s inside and caught him with a fast clean thrust to the heart before the man could reengage. The man slid forward and fell as Corin pulled the point free. He thwacked the horse with the flat of the blade to get it to move and ducked the other man’s swing at the same time. He came up, swung himself, and clashed his blade against the other’s, which did not waver.

Brute strength was not going to save him. He had to find some other way to win. He stopped resisting and used the second when the man rebalanced to step the horse back. They paused a moment, both breathing hard. Corin risked a quick look and saw that all the other men were occupied with one another. No one was coming either to his rescue or his opponent’s. He wiped the water out of his eyes.

He kneed his horse forward and leaned over for a two-handed blow at his opponent’s elbow. The man raised his sword quickly, but not quickly enough, and Corin cut neatly through cloth and muscle to the bone. The man’s hand unclasped as the nerves and tendons let go, and blood fountained everywhere. He screamed, a terrible animal sound of pain. His sword fell, the hilt striking Corin’s leg on its way to the ground, but the man, amazingly, stayed seated.

It would be murder to kill him, defenseless, though he would likely die of the wound. Corin watched from somewhere else as his sword rose and fell. At the last second he found the will to twist it so that the blow came with the flat. That was enough to knock the man from his horse. The horse ran without urging.

Corin wiped his eyes again and smelled the blood on his hands. He looked around him at the fighting. The fight was much more even in numbers now, which meant the guards had the advantage. He realized several more soldiers had come—Bron’s backup.

Then one of the other men wheeled sharply around to face him. He went on the offensive, sword raised, and this time when the blades crashed against each other, his the harder, he felt a profound pleasure in knowing he was going to win.

It took all of three swift strokes before he had his sword at the man’s neck, point pressing lightly into the skin. He felt light and quick and powerful. He did not remember ever having moved that fast before.

“Drop your weapon,” he said. The man looked at him, then grimaced and pushed himself forward. The sword went in smoothly and neatly. Blood poured out his mouth and from his neck. He toppled. Corin pulled the blade out numbly before the man’s weight took him down too. A man who would kill himself rather than face capture was a man who had a cause. Or a man who was afraid of what his own masters would do to him for having botched the job.

Bron was at his side. The fighting was over. “Are you hurt, sir?”

He had to save the speculation for later. “Not a bit. Anyone else?”

“I haven’t checked yet, but it doesn’t look like it. Nothing major, at least,” Bron said. He sighed and swore. “What a bloody mess.”

Corin nodded. His horse had its ears back and nostrils flared. He leaned forward and rubbed its head. “Send someone to get more men. I suppose they’ll need a wagon, for the bodies. And I want to talk to
whoever’s got command duty at the nearest watchpost.” He dismounted. “We need more light. Damn this rain.”

As it turned out, two of the men had minor wounds. There were seventeen bodies on the street. Only five of the attackers’ horses had not fled. Corin went with Bron from body to body. None of them had the height and the reddish hair of the Sarians. The man Corin had wounded was unconscious. Bron squatted beside him, felt for a pulse, looked at the wound and the blood. He forced open one of the man’s eyes. “He’s not going to make it,” he said. He drew his knife. “You’d best step aside, sir.”

He stood back and watched while Bron efficiently cut the man’s throat. There was not much blood. The man must have been nearly dead already. They moved on.

The soldiers knew what to do and Corin left them to it. The carnage dismayed him. He could not help feeling that he had caused it. He had laid a trap in response to some impulse from outside himself. He should have resisted more. It was not much comfort to think that the deaths had all been on the other side; it might not be so next time. He was sure there would be a next time. He checked the horses: good stock, well trained, but nothing to identify them. The saddles and trappings could have been found in any saddlery.

The watch arrived first, then the soldiers. Corin was beginning to feel superfluous. The watch commander was slow and stolid and kept repeating that he had never seen anything like it. As soon as the men appeared Corin abandoned the watchman to the others and took Bron aside. A string of shops along one side had overhanging second stories and inset doors that protected them from the rain.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“No, sir. And I don’t expect to either, not with them all dead.” Bron glanced down, then looked back up and said, “Did you anticipate this?”

“No. I thought we might be followed, but not attacked.”

“We could easily have lost,” Bron said, somewhat grimly. “Don’t keep things like that from me, not with matters as they are. I need more information if I’m going to do my job.”

There was no good response to that, so he did not bother making one. Bron was in the right and they both knew it. He had not said anything to Bron about Hadon, but the captain had heard what Liko said.
He could not keep his suspicions to himself now. He said, “They weren’t mercenaries. If it turns out they were Mycenean, tell me or the king immediately. I don’t care what I’m doing. And no one else.”

“If the men guess?”

“Make it clear that if I find out anyone’s been talking, even to another man here, about anything, I’ll try him as a traitor.” He whistled for his horse. “I’ve got to get back, Bron. How many men can you spare?”

“Ten, but let me pick them.”

Corin nodded and mounted. “Do that now.”

“Wait,” Bron said. He put his hand on the horse’s neck. “My lord, do you think they were trying to kill you or to take you?”

“Kill me,” Corin said automatically, then really heard the question. Hadon had taken Tai, was he after him as well?

Unthinking, he raised his hand in the peasants’ gesture and said, “I curse you, Hadon of Mycene.”

He went colder than he had thought he ever could. The rainy street was suddenly heavy and full of hatred. A dragon screamed in his mind. He felt the curse leave him, cold and sharp as ice, lightless as a grave. Bron’s face was full of fear.

W
hen Tam received the prince’s note she held it a moment before unsealing it. Nothing on the outside distinguished the sender from the writers of the other messages that had been delivered, but she guessed. She had saved it for last; it could be anything. It was polite and somewhat formal, but it looked as though he had written it himself, and his signature was nothing more than his barely decipherable scrawl. He meant it, then. Tonight she could, if she wanted, sit across the table from the Crown Prince of Caithen himself.

Her first impulse was a childish excitement, which she pushed back. She supposed she might be the only woman in the kingdom who would consider turning down an invitation from Corin, but because she was so impetuous by nature she tried hard to do things deliberately, to have decided what to do instead of simply taking the first path. Especially with him; he had to be used to women chasing him, and she did not want to seem like she had come running at his call. She had more pride than that, for better or worse. On the other hand, she had gotten herself into this situation in the first place; it would be only right to play it out. She did not know what imp had made her saucy to him, but the imp needed to be paid.

Once the shock of the library had worn off yesterday, she had told herself that he meant nothing by it. When the
what if
thought rose up, she forced it away. She had distracted herself with games, conversations, an unusual chattiness that was remarked on several times. Now that it was real, she did not know what to do.

He could not marry her; that was not even a possibility to discuss. But if he could not marry her, then there was only one other likely reason for the invitation. If she said yes to the dinner, she was saying yes to much more. And that was the problem. Corin was said to be discreet, careful, and generous, but he was a man and no doubt wanted what men wanted of women. He had certainly looked at her that way. Lady Elwyn’s son had looked at her that way too, but he had been considerably easier to disregard.

Pregnancy was easy enough to take care of. As a doctor’s daughter she knew quite a bit about childbearing and its opposites. Nor would an affair with him damage her irreparably—since he was who he was, she would likely be exempt from the usual scorn heaped upon a man’s mistress, at least in public. A future husband would not consider her used goods. No one would expect her to have rejected him; she simply did not know if she wanted to do it. The two or three times before that she had thought herself in love, with men who had courted her for months, she had not had any urge to take the man into her bed before she should, and had felt little regret when they drifted away before a proposal. She had no grounds for deciding if she cared enough for Corin; she could hardly say she knew him. Yesterday’s incident did not qualify as conversation. It did not even qualify as flirting. What if he turned out to be arrogant, thoughtless, dull?

He had not looked like a prince, or at least had not been dressed like one, when she saw him for the first time in the entrance hall, and it did not even occur to her that it was Corin she looked at, although it was word of the prince’s return that had brought her, caught in the wake of a flock of eager ladies, to the hall. His clothing had been very dirty, his brown hair lying every which way, and his chin unshaven for several days. He looked exactly like the soldiers with him. There had been a battered saddlebag slung over his shoulder. But she glimpsed his face, his shoulders, the way he walked, and thought, That is a man I would like to know better. He was very handsome. When his eyes touched on her face, she went shy like a girl and looked away while heat rose inside her. “Who is that?” she whispered to Alina. Alina turned a coy face to her and said, “Don’t you know? That’s the prince.”

Her reaction had been pure sinking disappointment. Perhaps she should heed that, go to him because she had wanted him as a man first. When their fingers had brushed yesterday it had been like fire in her entire body. It had been nearly impossible to take her eyes off his face, especially with him looking back at her. Even remembering it brought the blood to her cheeks. She could still feel his hand on her arm, holding her up.

“Tam?”

She jumped. Jenet, who had rooms near hers, was standing in the open doorway. “Good morning,” Tam said. She folded up the letter,
thankful that it was so plain—had that been his intent?—and put it in a pocket.

Jenet said, “Is anything the matter?” It was curiosity and not concern that prompted the question, but it was said politely. Tam had quickly learned which questions were meant to be answered, and what the answers should be. If she responded patly, Jenet would obey the rules and stop prying. But of all the women on the floor Jenet was the one she liked the best, and it was briefly tempting to confide in her. She dared not say a word to Cina.

She compromised. “Not a thing, thank you. I am just wrestling with the eternal feminine dilemma of which dress to wear to dinner tonight.” And that was the decision. For better or for worse, she would dine with him. All she had to do now was figure out how to get her answer to him as inconspicuously as possible.

“How formal is it to be?”

“That’s where I can’t decide. Formal but not too formal, handsome but not artificial.”

“Of course,” Jenet said. “One of those.”

“One of those what?”

“Dinners. Where you’re not sure how it will go, so you want to look your best without him thinking that you care too much. And you won’t reveal the name of the gentleman yet, in case things go badly.”

Tam laughed. “Does this happen often here?”

“Oh yes. Every unmarried woman I know has a dress for such occasions. Men aren’t clear on what they want most of the time, so you have to have something ambiguous. Let’s see what we can find in your things.”

They spent more time than Tam had thought possible with her trying on dresses and Jenet commenting on them. She did not mind the time; it was raining again, and she needed a distraction. At last they selected something, and Tam sent Jenet on her way. That left only the problem of the acceptance.

She found plain paper of her own and wrote a brief formal reply
.
Then she went in search of one of the page boys who hung around everywhere like monkeys. They were not the common message boys who carried business between clerks or officials, but rather nobles’ sons supposedly learning the niceties of court, which made them privy to potent gossip. It was hard to choose between a younger one who was
less likely to question it and an older one who was more likely to keep his mouth shut if appropriately bribed.

She finally opted for the latter. “I want you to take this to Prince Corin,” she said.

The boy looked her up and down and said, somewhat haughtily, “His Highness doesn’t read letters from people he doesn’t know.”

She said sweetly, “He knows me,” and unfolded his letter enough to show the signature, the simple name.

The boy looked at her again. She knew that she was perfectly decent, but it was obvious that he was trying to figure out how much respect she merited. The boy was surely old and wise enough in what he did to know about men, women, and what the prince wanted with whom. Perhaps she looked too respectable for a royal bedmate and he could not place her anywhere else. Perhaps he scorned her for being willing to go to the prince at all. Or was a note to Corin so very unusual and improper?

Even though the boy’s inspection irked her she knew she had better not show it, or she would gain the reputation of a social climber who thought that being Corin’s lover gave her royal status. Assuming of course that she did become his lover. But the boy owed her ordinary courtesy as a guest of the court.

She said, “I’m quite sure he will be pleased to receive this,” and saw the calculation on his face. If the prince were pleased with the message he would be pleased with the messenger. Next time she would find a younger boy. A little application of the stick seemed appropriate. “I would hate to have to tell him there was a problem.”

That did it. “I will take it right away,” he said, and bowed.

That evening, half an hour past the appointed time, Tam pulled her shawl a bit more tightly around her. She had been sitting for a while, and the air was getting colder as night came on. Rain had been falling in drips and drabs all day. A page—a polite one—had already come, “to offer His Highness’s deepest apologies, but he will be late,” and she was not sure how much longer she could bear the waiting. There was nothing to occupy herself with. She stood up; perhaps walking would warm her a bit, even if it was only back and forth across the hall. The shawl
was a fine soft black velvet, edged with silk and patterned with flowers the precise color of her dress, which was an unadorned deep wine-colored gown with a low square neckline, slender waist, and full skirt. Her hair was up, but strands of it were already escaping the pins, and there was one tendril she kept having to sweep back over her ear. Her only jewelry was a simple gold necklace and gold earrings in the shape of a flower.

Her mood was swinging from excitement to anxiety, back and forth, making her fidgety. The hall was a marbled circle where several major passages intersected; there were stone benches and lush flowers and a fountain in the center. It had a high domed ceiling that she thought was lapis lazuli, with curving gold lines interwoven over the surface. The palace was a graceful and beautiful building, and she usually enjoyed looking at it, but not now. The lighting was the soft gold of the glowlamps, but even that she did not appreciate tonight.

Many people met one another here, because of its location, and there was nothing particularly unusual about one woman sitting alone in the early evening, waiting. She thought that was probably why Corin had chosen it, instead of having her escorted from her rooms. Occasionally someone walked through and glanced at her; for a short period a man across the room paced as he waited for someone himself. A cat sitting on the edge of the fountain looked at her as it dipped a paw into the water to drink. She petted it and was rewarded immediately with a loud purr before it jumped down and went about its own business. Mostly she was alone in the quiet. The clock had been striking the hour as she arrived; the half hour had just rung loudly in the empty hall.

It had been impossible to hide the fact that she was dining with someone from the other women in the wing, and she had not even tried. Two had offered to have their maids do her hair and face. Jenet was the only one who refrained from asking who the man was. Tam steadfastly refused to divulge the name of her Secret Lover. No one’s guesses were close, and several were quite comical, but to all of them but one Tam just said calmly, “That’s your guess.” She outright and with vigor denied that it was Lady Elwyn’s son, who was handsome enough but a braggart. When Tam had finally had as much as she could stand of Alina’s twittering, she said, “Oh, he’s just someone I met in the library,” which was certainly true but also entirely misleading. The women were going
to be insufferable when they found out—if they found out—and she was already trying to think up a stash of fibs. She knew she was jumping far ahead of events, and she rebuked herself.

Alina lingered annoyingly. Tam had resolved to be nice, and even when Alina made a remark clearly designed to elicit jealousy about how charming and flirtatious the prince had been at dinner the night before, Tam kept her mouth shut and smiling. It was just a thrust in the dark at all the women, not a snub directed at Tam, and Tam had no fear she had been discovered. Nor did she have any concern that Corin cared at all for the girl; a man who would invite the woman who mocked him to dinner would have no interest in a burr like Alina. Jenet had been to the same meal, and when Alina was not looking she rolled her eyes.

And then at last she heard footsteps and turned, and he was coming toward her. He too was well dressed but not overly formal, black trousers and a deep blue open-collared shirt, with no signs of rank or wealth beyond the cut and quality of the clothing. He was more handsome than she remembered. Her eyes went to him and her hands wanted to. She took a few steps, and they met beside the fountain. She made only a shallow curtsy; if he needed full-fledged ceremony he would have tossed her out of the library at once when she ran into him and out of the palace entirely when she was rude. The etiquette of the entire situation was amusingly thorny; no book of protocols would say how one greeted the heir to the throne after jibing at him the day before.