Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (13 page)

Nathryk conducted a slow,
scrutinizing turn around her. “You realize Bano’en insults me with this
proposal? You, Lady Aleksa, are an insult.”

Her chest heaved with the breath of
panic and impending tears. “I am the king’s cousin, on his father’s side,
Highness.”

“Yes, no doubt Bano’en wants to see
his own relations on the alabaster throne. There’s no mystery in that regard. Nor
that he intends to use you as a spy. No, he either thinks I am stupid, or he brought
you here as an insult. But, if I like you, we might manage, regardless. How are
you on your back?”

His court hooted and snickered, and
the wine made another round.

“I beg your pardon?” Aleksa asked.

Nathryk doubted she was as
uninformed as the question made her sound. “You’re a virgin, I take it?”

“How dare you? That is none of your
business!” she declared.

“Oh, it certainly is, lady.” His
fingers encircled her wrist and he gave her a little tug. “Come, let us find
out.”

She fought valiantly, even managed
to smash a wine bottle and turn over a candelabra, but Edryd, good boy, nudged
her along behind while Nathryk ducked her attacks and drew her into the next
room. When she saw the massive four-poster bed, she tried to claw his face, but
two imprisoned wrists were better than one. Edryd bowed out and closed the
chamber door behind them. After that, it was only a matter of muscling her into
bed.

Her cheeks against his face were
slick with tears, and later he found a bruise where she had bitten him, but at
last she wilted under him, and she was a sweet thing, indeed.

H
e woke in the middle of the
night to the sound of that damn drum. No, it was only the pounding of his own
head. He rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up, groaning. Where was the
bloody wine when he needed it?

Someone inhaled deeply nearby, and
turning, he found the girl stirring. Moonlight fell across smooth silver skin
and lit the edges of her eyelashes. A nymph she was, and Nathryk loathed her.
“What are you still doing here?”

She rolled onto her side, but
didn’t look at him. “I belong to you now.”

Despite the throbbing in his head,
he laughed. “What doesn’t belong to me? If it doesn’t presently, it soon will.
Get out.”

Sitting up, she started gathering
her dress and petticoats that were strewn around them. “But you’re going to
marry me now?”

“Why?”

She blinked at him stupidly. He
flapped a hand at her. “Go away. Quickly. Before I get cross with you.”

Eyes wide and mouth working to
swallow a new round of sobs, she dressed as well as she could in the dark. Nathryk
slumped back into his pillows, and vaguely heard the girl slip out the door.
Neither jeers nor laughter followed. His court must have passed out hours ago.
He wasn’t long in joining them.

~~~~

A
rryk raised a fist. The
mastiff pup’s eyes were riveted to his hand. She licked her chops and sat. Pleased,
Arryk splayed his fingers and pressed the flat of his hand to her cold, wet
nose. “Stay.” He turned and walked a few steps, then peered over his shoulder.
The mastiff was bounding happily after him. “No!
Stay.
” He sat the pup
down on her haunches, and repeated the order. Backing away this time, he made
it only three steps before the pup followed, wagging her tail and grinning with
her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. Arryk scrubbed a hand over his
face and groaned.

Nearby, Gill chuckled. He was Éndaran’s
master of hound. “She’s too young yet, Highness. She hasn’t the attention span for
‘stay’.”

Arryk gave up and scooped the pup
into his arms, even though she was almost too big to carry anymore. “How are
you to be my guard dog if you don’t stay where I need you?” She threw back her
head, and her great tongue lashed him wetly under the chin. “I should’ve gotten
one last year instead.”

“No need to worry, Highness,” said
Master Gill. “You’ve some months yet. Let’s let her run with the others. If
she’s tired, she may be more apt to listen.”

Arryk set the dog on her feet, and
Gill’s assistants unleashed the wolfhounds. They streaked across the hills, and
the bold mastiff pup labored to catch up with them. Chill autumn winds and shortening
days had turned the hillsides of the Tempest Peninsula golden. Clouds clung to
the cliff tops, cutting off the view of the Great Fire Sea, and drifted as
wisps of fog among the jutting stones and stands of wind-gnarled trees. Éndaran’s
sullen black walls swam through the mist like a great behemoth rearing from the
sea and vanishing again.

Traipsing after the dogs, Gill
asked, “Decided on a name yet?”

Arryk grimaced. “Istra keeps
calling her Daisy. That’s no proper name for a fierce guardian, but she says ‘Fang’
doesn’t fit her either. She’s too sweet, Istra says. I don’t need a
sweet
dog, I need a killer.”

Master Gill laughed. “It’ll come,
Highness.”

The wolfhounds flushed out a nest
of rabbits and chased after them, baying so loudly that none in the party heard
Istra’s calls until she was almost upon them. “Arryk!” she cried, remembered
herself and amended, “Your Highness!”

She cantered from the castle walls
on a squire’s swift racer, even though she was a year knighted. She gripped the
horse’s bare flanks with her heels. What was so urgent that she hadn’t taken
the time to saddle the animal? Arryk started toward her. Istra raised a piece
of parchment and waved it. The closer she rode, the clearer the distress on her
face. Bad news. Of course.

Istra reined in and leapt from the
racer’s back. Instead of bowing, she bent over to catch her breath. “From your
aunt.” She lifted a sealed letter. The seal of the Princess Regent was stamped
deeply in the green wax. Straightening, Istra added, “I assume it says the same
thing as the one addressed to Grandmother.” The letter she had opened flapped
crisply in her fingers.

“What is it?” Arryk demanded,
swiping it from her and scanning the words too fast to eek meaning from them.

Istra’s fretful glance darted
toward Master Gill and his assistants. They turned their attention elsewhere.
Only then did she tell him. “Nathryk has been expelled from Graynor. He raped
some lord’s daughter. Bano’en will abide his presence no longer.”

The blood drained from Arryk’s
face. The hills and sky seemed to flip upside down. “No. Can he do that? It was
agreed! He wasn’t supposed to release Nathryk until his eighteenth birthday.
That’s three months away!” The nightmares that plagued his sleep cavorted in
the mists around him, shrieked inside his head. He was going to be sick and
Istra would see.

“It gets worse. Apparently, Nathryk
meant to ride straight to Brynduvh, but word of his release reached your aunt
first. Ki’eva met him on the road at Machara with a full company of cavalry and
every man of her guard. She refuses to let him enter Brynduvh until his
enthronement. They’re coming to Éndaran, Arryk. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

H
e shut himself in his
rooms, just he and Fang, for the rest of the day. The preparations for the
arrival of the Crown Prince and the Princess Regent sent the castle into a
frenzy, but Arryk refused to allow the maids in to conduct a brisk cleaning.
Last spring, the last time Nathryk visited, Istra’s brother Rance had whisked
Arryk off to the Shadow Mounds for a month-long boar hunt. He’d rarely felt more
grateful. But this time, with Aunt Ki’eva coming too, and on such short notice,
there was no chance to prepare an excuse to escape.

For hours Arryk lay on the settee, hands
clutching his shirtfront as he fought the panic. Though he stared at the
ceiling, he saw only Nathryk’s hateful leer and remembered every blow of his
fist.

Eventually he became aware of a
permeating silence, close and stifling. The shouts of the housekeepers and
clatter of the staff had trailed off. Fang slept between his ankles. How long
had he lain here? The hour candle on his mantelpiece had burned out at
midnight; the wax had built fanciful shapes and spilled over the rim of the
brass holder. But he didn’t care enough to change his clothes and crawl into
bed.

Fang raised her head suddenly,
fawn-colored ears perking up. Knuckles softly tapped the door. Arryk sat up in
a hurry. “Who is it?” His voice cracked, so he repeated the question, forcing
his voice deeper.

“It’s Istra, Your Highness.” The
thick andyr door muffled her reply. “Please, I need to show you something.”

He dragged himself off the settee
and opened the door. The lamp in Istra’s hand blinded him. She gasped. “You
look positively ill.”

When his eyes adjusted, he saw that
she wore only a white sleeping gown. Her golden hair lay in a thick braid
across her shoulder.

“Don’t let Nathryk do this to you,”
she whispered. The lamplight flickered in tears that pooled but did not spill
over. “I know well who you are when he’s not around, Arryk, and you’re no
coward. Captain Bartran and I have worked with you every day so you can defend
yourself. Have we strived for nothing? If Nathryk sees you like this …”

“I wish Fang was bigger.” Was that
all he could think to say?

The pup whined at his feet. Her
eyes were two black marbles in the lamplight. She raised a paw and set it
against Arryk’s leg.

“And meaner,” Istra added. “She
should’ve barked when she heard me outside. But never mind. We’ll take other
precautions.” She took his hand and led him into the corridor. Those
sword-hardened fingers didn’t belong to someone with so pretty a face. Even
scarred, she still earned the stares of every man in the garrison. Oddly she
didn’t seem to notice, nor did she go about holding
their
hands. In
truth, Arryk suspected that she still thought of him as a nine-year-old. True,
he was all neck and hands and feet, and his voice, damn the thing, couldn’t
make up its mind which way to go, but his fourteenth birthday had come and gone,
and Istra was ever in his dreams.

She led him downstairs to the
library. When Arryk wasn’t training with her and Captain Bartran, he spent most
of his time among books and scrolls. Master Graidyn, his tutor, must’ve retired
only a short time ago. The tea in his mug still steamed. Beside it lay
yesterday’s philosophy lesson: comparing the Shaddra’hin ways with Ixakan
mysticism.

All the tables had been rearranged.

“Your writing desk is over there
now.” Istra pointed at a table near the shelves that lined the north wall,
opposite the library door. His chair, denoted by a drawing of horses and
falcons on the backrest that he’d done when he was ten, stood between the
shelves and the table. No one could enter the library without him seeing.

“You did all this?”

“Graidyn helped me. He agrees. You
shouldn’t be caught unaware. There’s more.” She nudged him. “Sit down.”

For a moment, he thought her
instructions humorous and his dark mood started to lift. Smiling at the puzzle,
he obeyed.

“With your left hand, feel under
the table. It has to be your left, in case you’re writing something and you
don’t want to raise suspicion.”

Arryk’s fingers brushed the
underside of the table until they bumped against a hard, cylindrical object. He
couldn’t guess what it was until he recognized the hardened leather of a
sheath.

“Practice drawing it,” Istra said.
“Careful not to stab yourself.”

Arryk leapt up. “I can’t! Istra,
he’s the Crown Prince
and
my brother. I can’t!”

“Highness, he murdered Bhodryk.
Brotherhood means nothing to him. You have to be prepared.”

He shook his head vehemently. “Not
this. I expect broken noses, not Nathryk’s sword between my ribs.”

“What about assassins?” Istra set
the lamp on the tabletop and those calloused fingers squeezed his shoulder.
“Listen, I know what you mean to do, after his enthronement. Rance told me, and
I agree with you. I think you should flee. Every one of us who’s crossed
Nathryk should flee, but until then, he will be living here with us, and you
must not turn your back on him.”

Arryk became aware that his
breathing came in small gasps, like that of a panicked rodent, and he loathed
himself for it. Why couldn’t he be brave? “It isn’t fair. I’m not even the
oldest. Why should I be a threat?”

“Because your father killed his
older brothers to secure the throne. Nathryk knows it, and he won’t let it
happen to him.”

“But I don’t want the throne!”

“Can someone like Nathryk
understand that?”

Arryk sank onto the edge of the
table, hands pressed over his face.

“We’ll fix something in your
bedroom, too,” Istra added. “And you’re not to go anywhere unarmed. If Nathryk
wants to pick a fight with you now, it needs to sting. Understand? Rance, Master
Graidyn, or I will never be far away.”

Arryk thought of the girl mentioned
in Aunt Ki’eva’s letter and grit his teeth. “I’ll kill him if he hurts you.”

Istra smiled, and her fingers on
his arm became gentle. She touched his face and turned away.

They spent half the night deciding
where to conceal a dagger in his sleeping chamber and another in his solar. Night
still darkened the windows when Istra stood back nodding and satisfied. “I’ll
talk to Rance in the morning. Unless he’s taking a piss or tending to his wife,
he’s not to leave your company.”

She padded off to her own rooms,
leaving Arryk with a terrible vision of assassins breaking down his door and
slipping through his window.

~~~~

T
he escort rumbled into the
courtyard early the following afternoon. One hundred cavalrymen and fifty royal
guards wearing the Princess Regent’s livery surrounded a small mud-spattered
carriage. A white spread-winged falcon adorned the door. Stiff green plumes
quivered between the ears of the six white horses, and sweat slicked their
necks. The Princess Regent had not traveled in luxury, but in haste.