The Born Queen (39 page)

“You’ve helped plenty,” Aspar said.

“Be good to her,” Emfrith said. “You don’t deserve her. You’re a damned fine man, but you don’t deserve her.”

“I know,” Aspar said.

“It’s a good death, isn’t it?”

“It’s a good death,” Aspar agreed. “I’m proud of you. Your father will be, too.”

“Don’t
you
tell him. He’ll hang you.”

Aspar nodded. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “You understand?”

“Yes.”

Aspar rose and collected the ax. He found a bow and a few arrows, a dirk, then a horse. Emfrith’s men stayed with him.

He wondered where Ehawk was. He hoped he was with Leshya but didn’t have time to search the dead.

The battle on the ridge seemed to be over, too. At least he didn’t see anything moving up there anymore.

He rode south, along the valley bottom.

Fend was waiting for him.

CHAPTER FOUR

O
VER
B
LUFF AND
D
OWN
S
LOUGH

N
EIL’S STEED
stumbled, tried to catch her stride, then stopped and tossed her head, blowing. Her coat was slick with foam, and her withers trembled. Neil leaned forward and stroked her neck, speaking to her in his native language.

“It’ll be fine, girl,” he told her. “The prince says we’ll be giving you a rest in less than a league. But I need you to go now, yes? Let’s do it.”

He gave her a gentle nudge, and she started gamely forward, finally working up to match the canter of the others.

“It’s a beautiful evening,” he told the mare. “Look at the sun there, on the water.”

Three days of hard riding had brought them to an old coastal trail that wound over bluff and down slough. The sun was going home, and Saltmark Sound was skinned copper.

Part of him yearned toward that water, those islands, to be adrift in those terrible and familiar waters. He had been too long landlocked.

But he had things to do, didn’t he? What his heart wanted was no matter at all.

That sent him glancing ahead to where Brinna rode behind her brother, looking paler and less well than he had ever seen her. She had never ridden a horse, much less endured the tortures of a hard ride of many days. He was sore to the bone; he couldn’t imagine how she must feel. To even remain mounted she had to be belted to Berimund. He feared in his bones she wouldn’t survive.

As the sun touched the water, they came to an old castle on a little spit of stone sticking out into the sea. Barnacles up its walls showed that during the highest tides it must be cut off entirely from land. The tide was rising now but was far from high enough to cover the causeway, so they rode in to change their horses, the third time they had done so since starting their push for Crotheny. Berimund was being careful. The first of his friends he had visited had told him his father had put a price on his head and on the head of every man who aided him.

So they traveled ways less straight and warded than the great Vitellian Way.

They didn’t stop for long. Neil kissed the mare on her soaking forehead as they led her away and met his new mount, Friufahs, a roan gelding. He was introducing himself when he heard Brinna say something he couldn’t make out.

“It’s not seemly,” he heard Berimund answer.

“Nevertheless,” Brinna replied, “it is my wish.”

His gaze attracted by the conversation, Neil saw Berimund looking at him.

The Hansan walked over. “You have been alone with my sister on more than one occasion.”

“That’s true,” Neil said.

“Have you been improper with her?”

Neil straightened. “I understand you might doubt me, but why would you cast such aspersions on your sister, sir?”

“My sister is both very wise and very naïve. She has not known many men, Sir Neil. I’m only asking you for the truth.”

“Nothing inappropriate happened,” Neil said. “Not when we were alone. When she set me off her ship in Paldh, I did kiss her. I did not mean to dishonor her in any way.”

“She told me about that. She told me she asked you to kiss her.”

He nodded.

“You did not think that part worth telling, although not doing so would put you in my ill graces?”

“It is her business,” Neil said, “and not my place to make excuses.”

“You admit, then, that you should have refused her?”

“I should have. I can’t say I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“I see.”

He looked out at the half-vanished sun. “She wants to ride with you for a while,” he said. “I don’t think it’s right, but she is my sister, and I love her. Do not take undue advantage, sir.”

He returned to Brinna and helped her over and up behind Neil. He felt her there, taut as a cord, as Berimund strapped them together. Her arms went awkwardly around his waist, as if she were trying somehow to hold on to him without touching him.

Resupplied and rehorsed, they continued on along the coast. Small, scallop-winged silhouettes appeared and fluttered against the bedimmed sky, and a chill breeze came off the waves. Far out at sea he made out the lantern on the prow of a lonely ship. Inland, a nightjar churred.

“I’m sorry about your queen,” Brinna said. “I wish I could have met her.”

“I wish you could have, too,” Neil replied. “I wish I could have saved her.”

“You’re thinking if you hadn’t been in our prison, you might have.”

“Maybe.”

“I can’t say. But I couldn’t act until Berimund came, and I wouldn’t have been able to find where she was without him. Neither could you have.”

He nodded but didn’t answer.

“He thought she was safe. He intended to keep her safe.”

“I know,” Neil said. “I don’t blame you.”

“You blame yourself.”

“I shouldn’t have let her come.”

“How would you have stopped her?”

He didn’t have anything to reply to that, so they rode on tacitly for a bit. “It sounds so easy in the stories, riding a horse,” Brinna finally ventured.

“It’s not so bad when you’re used to it,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Parts of me are on fire, and others feel dead,” she said.

“Then let’s rest for a day or so,” he urged. “Let’s get you out of the saddle.”

“We can’t,” she murmured. “We have to reach her before Robert does.”

“Anne?”

“Not Anne. A little girl. She’s in Haundwarpen with a man and a woman. There is music all around them, some terrible, some beautiful, some both.”

“That sounds familiar,” Neil said.

“The man and woman are newly wed. The child is not theirs.”

“There was a composer named Ackenzal,” Neil said. “A favorite of—of the queen’s. She attended the wedding, and I went with her. She and his wife have a girl in their care: Mery, the daughter of Lady Gramme.”

“Yes. And half sister to Anne, yes?”

“So they say.”

“You can guide us when we’re near?”

“What has this to do with mending the law of death?” Neil asked.

“Everything,” she replied. “And if Robert knows that, she is in terrible danger.”

“How should Robert know it?”

“I don’t know. But I see him there.” She paused for a moment. “I know what killed Queen Muriele and Berimund’s wulfbrothars.”

“It nearly killed you, too.”

“Yes. It’s music, horrible and yet somehow lovely. Once you begin listening, it is very difficult to stop. If you hadn’t stopped me, if you hadn’t called that other name, I would be gone now.”

“The name from the ship.”

“Yes,” she whispered. He wished he could turn and see her face. “The ship, when I wasn’t me and you weren’t you.”

“But now we are who we are.”

“Yes,” she replied. “We are who we are.”

He thought she paused, as if meaning to go on, but she didn’t, at least following from that thought.

“I told you I had a higher purpose,” she finally said.

“You did.”

Again she seemed to feud with herself for a moment before going on.

“I once had three sisters,” she said. “We were called by many names, but in Crotheny and Liery we were most often known as the Faiths.”

“As in the stories? The four queens of Tier na Seid?”

“Yes and no. There are many stories. I am what is real.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There were Faiths before me who wore my masks. Many of them, going back to the hard days after Virgenya Dare vanished. We were known as Vhatii then. Time changes tongues and twists names. We have lived, some of us hiding in the open, others secluded in distant places. We’re not real sisters, you understand, but women born with the gift. When we grow old, when our powers fail and even the drugs no longer open our vision, we find our replacements.”

“But what do you do?”

“It’s hard to explain. We are very much creatures of two natures. Here, we are human; we eat and breathe, live and die. But in the Ambhitus, the Not World, we are the sum of all who have gone before us—more and less than human. And we see need. Until recently our visions were rarely specific; we reacted as plants bend toward the sun. But since the law of death has been broken, our visions have become more like true prescience. My sisters and I worked for years to assure that Anne would take the throne, and in one terrible, clear moment I saw how mistaken we were to do so.

“My sisters would not believe me, and so they died, along with the order we founded, or at least most of them. Your Alis was once one of ours.”

“She knew who you were.”

“When she saw me, yes. Not before.”

“How did your sisters die?”

“That’s complicated, too. Anne killed them, in a way—the Anne that was and will be, not the one you know. The one she is becoming.”

“How did you escape?”

“I withdrew from the Ambhitus and hid. I abandoned my role as a Faith and dedicated myself to correcting our mistake.”

“And now?”

“As I said, Anne is beyond me. But I have a chance to mend the law of death. The girl, Mery—we’ve been watching her. She has a strange and wonderful power—like mine in ways but also unlike anything that has ever been. Before she died, one of my sisters planted the seed in the composer so that he and Mery could undo the damage to the law. I must now see that to fruition.”

“If the law of death is mended—”

“Yes. Robert will die.”

“Let’s do that, then,” he muttered.

The moon set, and stars jeweled the sky. They moved from canter to trot and back to delay wearing out their mounts.

Brinna, shivering from fatigue, sagged into him and then straightened.

“Hold on or you’ll fall off,” he said.

“I wish…” she sighed.

“What?” He managed to croak, though he knew he shouldn’t.

She didn’t answer, and behind him she felt even more rigid than when she first had been placed there.

“I said there were three reasons I risked having you brought up from the dungeons,” she murmured.

“Yes. You said the third didn’t matter.”

“I said it didn’t matter then,” she said. “I never meant it didn’t matter. Do you remember the first two reasons?”

“You said that you didn’t believe I could be an assassin and that you thought we could help each other.”

“You have to understand my world,” she said. “The way I lived. Four attempts that I know of were made on my life; one was by one of my own cousins, who was afraid I would see that he was cuckolding my father. A coven-trained assassin sent from Crotheny when I was ten. I don’t know who sent her. A Black Talon killer from the dark forests of Vestrana came closest. He actually had the dagger to my throat. I want you to understand all of that because although I didn’t
want
to think you would kill me, part of me still thought you might.”

“Then why? What was the third reason?”

“The third reason was that I was willing to risk death to touch you again.”

The horse thunked along in silence as a great bloody moon sank toward the dark sea.

“I love you,” he said.

He felt her soften, then mold against his back, and her arms were suddenly comfortable and familiar around his waist. He couldn’t, didn’t dare turn around to kiss her, but it didn’t matter. It was the best thing he had ever felt in his life, and for the next few bells nothing, not his failure, not his grief, not even his thirst for revenge, could distract him from the woman who had her arms around him, from the mystery and wonder of her.

CHAPTER FIVE

A
CMEMENO

C
AZIO STROKED
Austra’s face, then gently prized open her lips and dribbled some watered wine between them. After a moment her throat worked, and the liquid went down.

He regarded her still features, trying not to let the strange panic rise.

She’s still alive, and so there’s hope
, he thought.

“Anne will have chirgeons who can cure you,” he assured the sleeping girl. “This always turns out well in the stories, doesn’t it? Although there it’s usually the kiss of the handsome prince. Am I not handsome or princely enough?”

The carriage rumbled on for a moment.

“We might not even have to go all the way to Eslen,” he told her. “We’ll be at Glenchest by this afternoon. Probably the duchess can help us.”

Austra, of course, said nothing.

They ran into a knight and his retainers about half a league from Glenchest, one Sir William, a servant of the duchess. He escorted them back to the rather baroque and defenseless mansion. The duchess did not meet them, which was rather uncharacteristic, but after the men were settled in quarters in the village, Cazio received an invitation to dine with her. He took z’Acatto and Austra in the carriage.

Elyoner Dare was a petite woman whose demure composure gave little immediate hint of her deep satisfaction in the pursuit of vice. One usually discovered her pleasantly wicked nature early in conversation, but this day she was very different from the last time he had seen her. She wore a black dress and a black net on her hair, and her courtiers and servants, usually quite colorfully attired, were also dressed in muted tones.

When they entered, she rose and offered her hand. Once they all had kissed it, she bent and kissed Cazio on the cheeks.

“It’s good to see you,
mi dello,
” the duchess said. “All is dark, but you are still a light to these eyes.”

“Duchess Elyoner, I would be pleased to present my swordmaster and mentor—” He realized he did not know the old man’s real name. Z’Acatto was the family nickname and simply meant “the cursed.”

“Acmemeno d’Eriestia dachi Vesseriatii,” z’Acatto said. “At your service, Duchess.”

Cazio blinked, trying not to show his surprise. The duochi of the Vesseriatii were some of the richest, most powerful men in Vitellio.

Elyoner kissed him on the cheeks as well.

“Austra is with us,” Cazio said. “She isn’t well. I was hoping your chirgeons could help her.”

“Austra? Ill? Of course we shall do what we can.” Her forehead puckered in a small frown. “How is it you were not with Anne when…” She didn’t finish, but her eyes seemed to glisten a bit.

“She sent us away, to Dunmrogh,” Cazio replied, then caught Elyoner’s tone.

“When
what
?” he grated.

Cazio sat on the very bench where he first had kissed Austra and took a deep pull from the carafe of harsh red wine. He glanced at z’Acatto as the old man came up and then handed him the stoneware jug.

Oddly, the older man hesitated, then took a drink.

“Anything else you have to tell me?” Cazio asked, trying to work up some anger and finding he couldn’t. “Are you actually a duoco? Or perhaps meddicio of z’Irbina?”

“My brother is duoco,” z’Acatto said. “I assume he is. I haven’t seen or heard from him in years.”

“Why? Why did you live in my house as if you were my father’s servant? Some vagabond soldier he dragged back from the wars?”

Z’Acatto took another drink, then another.

“I always told you I did not know the face of the man who killed your father,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I lied.”

Cazio stared at the old man, and his life seemed to stretch out behind him like a rope he was trying—and failing—to balance on. Was anything he knew true?

“Who killed him?” he demanded.

Z’Acatto squinted off into the middle distance. “We were in a little town called Fierra, in the Uvadro Mountains. They make a fortified wine there called uchapira. We were drinking a lot of it, your father and I. There was a man; I don’t even remember his name. Turned out I had slept with his woman the night before, and he called me to steel. Only I was too drunk. When I got up to fight, my legs failed me. When I awoke, your father was out in the street with him. I was only out for a few moments, so I was still drunk and mean. I only meant to fight my own duel, but when I came screaming out of the tavern, Mamercio was distracted, and the man stabbed him right through the spleen.” He looked back at Cazio. “I killed your father, Cazio. My drunken stupidity killed him. Do you understand?”

Cazio stood jerkily. “All this time—”

“I did the only thing I knew to do,” he said. “I took his place, raised you.”

“The man he fought?”

“I killed him, of course.”

“You could have told me. You could have told me a lot of things.”

“I could have. I was a coward.”

Cazio felt his heart constrict as he looked at this man he did not know, had never known.

“This is worse, knowing now,” Cazio said. “Now, when everything is all coming apart.”

“What will you do?”

“Now that Anne is dead? Kill Hespero. Find a cure for Austra. Go home.
Why didn’t you tell me
?” he shouted.

“I can only apologize so much,” z’Acatto grunted.

“You haven’t apologized,” Cazio said.

“Cazio…”

“Go away,” he said, suddenly very tired. “Just leave me alone, whoever you are.”

Z’Acatto got up slowly and stood there, arms hanging at his sides, for a long moment. Then he walked off.

Cazio continued drinking.

He woke the next morning, still on the bench, with one of Elyoner’s pages tapping him apologetically. He groggily levered himself up to a sitting position.

“What?” he said.

“My lady would have you come to her chambers at third bell.”

“What bell is it now?”

“Second, sir,”

“Fine,” Cazio said. “I’ll be there.”

It was only as he found his room and was bathing as best he could from the basin that he began to worry about the place assigned for the meeting.

When he arrived to find the duchess in bed and Austra on an adjacent bed, his worries intensified.

“Don’t look like that,” Elyoner said with more than a hint of her old self. “Every man wants a go with two women.”

“Duchess—”

“Hush and sit on the foot of the bed,” she said, sitting up against enormous pillows. She was clad in a dressing gown of black-and-gold brocade.

As Cazio sat gingerly on the bed, two serving girls came in bearing trays of food. One was placed in front of the duchess, another next to Cazio. A third servant, a slight girl with large eyes, entered with what looked like porridge and began to feed Austra.

“Greyna is very good,” the duchess said, nodding at the girl. “Her brother was injured in the head at a joust and was unable to feed himself. He lived two years, so she’s had plenty of practice. She has a large soul.”

“Thank you for all of your kindnesses, Duchess.”

Elyoner glanced over at Austra. “That girl is as dear to me as Anne was,” she said. “She was as much my niece as Fastia or Elseny.” She shook her head. “I am hardly thirty, Cazio. I hope when you are my age you have not lost so many dear ones.”

“Austra isn’t dead,” he said.

“No,” the duchess replied. “She isn’t. Break your fast.”

He looked down at the tray, thinking he wasn’t hungry, but the cream fritters, sausage, and dewberries invited him to try a few bites, anyway.

“Unlike Greyna’s brother, Austra doesn’t seem to have an injury to her head or any wounds at all except those cuts on her legs. You said it was done by a churchman. Do you know what he was up to?”

“No. She said he said something about the ‘blood telling’ but nothing about what that meant.”

“Curious,” Elyoner said. “In any event, whatever has happened to the dear girl, I think we must suspect some eldritch cause—something I, unfortunately, know very little about.”

“Do you know anyone who knows more?”

“I assume you mean outside of the Church?”

“That’s probably best.”

“No, not really. But surely you do.”

He nodded. “Yes, there’s an old Sefry woman in Eslen that Anne consulted.”

“Eslen won’t be easy to get into,” Elyoner said. “The city is under siege, with Hespero’s army camped on the south and Hansa on the north. The fleets have met in Foambreaker Bay, but I haven’t heard much more than that.”

“Who rules?”

“Artwair had declared himself regent,” she said. “The logical heir is Charles, but no one wants that charade again. After him it gets complicated; there’s Gramme’s bastard, Robert, any number of cousins.”

“You,” Cazio pointed out.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s out of the question. I simply won’t do it. Buts it’s actually rather moot, because I suspect Eslen is going to fall, and Marcomir and Hespero will decide the matter.”

Cazio shrugged. “I don’t care who rules. They can put a pig on the throne as far as I’m concerned. But I’ll have Austra back, and I need to kill Hespero.”

“Kill the Fratrex Prismo of the Church? I’ll be interested to see how you do that.”

“I’ve met them that seemed immortal and unbeatable before,” Cazio said. “Most of them are dead now, or might as well be.”

“That’s it, then? You’re really going to Eslen?”

He nodded. “If I can impose on you for a few horses.”

“Of course,” she replied. “Do you have a plan for getting into the city?”

“No,” he said. “But I’ll have one when I need one.”

He rode out the next day with Austra in the carriage and three spare horses. He didn’t bother to find z’Acatto to say good-bye.

The road took him west across the flat yellowing grass of the Mey Ghorn plain. Clouds scudded across the sky like fast ships until near sundown they piled up and blotted out the stars. The air was wet and cool and smelled like rain when he went to where Austra lay and fed her some porridge and watered wine. She seemed thinner.

“The Sefry will know what to do,” he assured her. “Mother Uun will have a cure.”

The rain came gently enough, and he lay there listening to it on the canvas until sleep at last folded him into her blanket.

He woke to the morning songs of birds and realized that the sun was well up and he had lost time. He felt guilty for sleeping at all when every bell counted. He gave Austra her morning meal and ate a bit of dried meat. He found the horses grazing and brought them back to the harness. He settled onto the seat and started out.

It had been a long time, he realized, since he had been alone, his time in the wine cellar at Dunmrogh aside. He wasn’t technically alone now, but for all intents and purposes he was. He’d once spent a good deal of his time solitary, and he understood now how much he missed it.

What sort of man am I?
he wondered. Anne was dead. Austra was well on her way to joining her. And yet, somehow, part of him was excited to be in the quiet of his own thoughts, with no one questioning him, with nothing to do but watch the road.

“Anne is dead,” he murmured aloud. He remembered his first sight of her, bathing in a pool in the wilds around the Coven St. Cer. She had become so completely a part of his life, that the thought that he would never see her again seemed not only wrong but fundamentally impossible. They had survived so much together, and for what? For her to die now? Had any of it been worth it?

But of course, no matter what one survived, death was always coming. There was no winning that game.

By noon the road was winding gently downhill, and the occasional malend could be seen turning its sails in the distance. He stopped to feed and wash Austra and let the horses go to water. He was just about to start off again when riders appeared on the road ahead.

He looked about, but it was all open fields. If they were enemies, there wasn’t much he could do.

Oddly enough, the impression he had was that the horses he saw were mounted by giant mushrooms, but as they drew nearer, he saw that they were Sefry, wearing their customary broad-brimmed hats to keep the sun from their dainty skins.

When they were even nearer, he recognized their colors as those of Anne’s Sefry bodyguard.

He watched them come, wondering what they could possibly be up to. Having failed their mistress, were they now on their way to cast themselves into the eastern sea?

He counted forty of them and wondered why he bothered to do that. Weren’t these friends? If they were, why did he have such a strange feeling in his belly’s abyss?

And why were they flanking him?

He drew the horses to a halt. One of the riders came forward and pulled down the gauze that hid most of his face, revealing Cauth Versial, the leader of Anne’s guard.

“Cazio,” Cauth said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yes,” Cazio replied. “Fancy it.”

“You’ve heard the news?”

Cazio nodded, noting from the corner of his eye that the Sefry were continuing to surround him.

“It was a terrible shock.”

“I would imagine,” Cazio said. “To have the person you were supposed to be protecting murdered in plain sight with you all around her. How could that happen?”