The Conqueror's Shadow (16 page)

Everything went black.

Nathaniel Espa—Knight of Imphallion, and currently Duke Lorum's eyes amid the growing turmoil in the east—knelt at the bedside of the torn and broken shape that had once been an old friend, and willed the tears not to come.

The Lady Alseth, wife of Sir Wyrrim, laid a hand on Nathan's shoulder. “It would've meant a lot to him that you came,” she whispered through a throat torn ragged with sorrow. “It means a lot to me, too.”

“I wish it had mattered,” Nathan said softly. “I tried to get here sooner, Alseth, I truly did.”

“You couldn't have done any more,” she offered gently. “Not even the great Nathaniel Espa could have snuck or fought his way into Rahariem, not with so many of the invaders still inside.”

“Maybe I could've had you smuggled out faster,” he protested limply. “It's just, by the time I knew Ivriel might prove a safe haven …”

“You saved me, Nathan. You saved my son, and you allowed Wyrrim to die in a bed, rather than in some dungeon. We're grateful.”

Nathan nodded once, placed a palm upon the forehead of his
dead friend, and rose. “What was he doing on the battlefield at his age, anyway?” he asked.

“Come, Nathan, you've known him longer than I have. You know he'd never sit by while his city was attacked. Besides,” she added darkly, “it wouldn't have mattered.”

Nathan frowned and escorted her into the next room, where they both sat and pretended to sip at goblets of wine that neither of them really tasted. “What do you mean?”

“It was horrible. Even once the walls fell, and the city surrendered, that wasn't good enough. Every noble who had more than a few household soldiers to his name, and every ranking Guild leader—they were
all
rounded up and herded into the keep. I don't know what went on in there, but some of the men who went in unwounded came out looking worse …” She choked briefly, but continued. “Worse than Wyrrim. And many didn't come out at all.”

Despite the redness and the tears, her eyes remained steady as she stared into the knight's widening gaze. “I've learned enough about war from Wyrrim to know that this wasn't about interrogation or military secrets. This was about fear—and maybe punishment, though the gods alone know for what. Whatever rare civility is normally to be found in war, you'll find none here.”

“And you're certain this isn't a Cephiran invasion?”

“Quite. Some of the mercenaries were foreigners, certainly, but many more were Imphallian. This is someone else, Nathan.”

Nathaniel Espa allowed his eyes to hover once more over the body of his old friend—a corpse that, even hours after death, still soaked the sheets with bloody wounds. Then, slowly, he turned his gaze outward, and wondered grimly what new terror had emerged from the east.

“Idiots!” Lorum, Duke of Taberness and Regent Proper of Imphallion, slammed a fist into the gold-trimmed wardrobe. It rocked dangerously
and would have crashed to the floor if one of the servants hadn't dashed to steady it. “Those bloody, unthinking idiots!”

“In all fairness, Your Grace, they're just defending what they see as their own interests.”

The regent's neatly trimmed beard actually bristled as he scowled at his companion. “And when the Guild halls have been reduced to rubble around their ankles, and there's a monster on the throne who won't put up with their damn pouting? How'll those ‘interests' fare
then
, do you think?”

Nathaniel Espa, former hero of Imphallion and now adviser to the regent and a respected landowner, raised an age-greyed eyebrow, though he refrained from letting the grin he felt actually show on his face. The Lorum of old never had the nerve to speak that way, not about the Guilds, and certainly not to his old mentor. But the regent, having led the kingdom through the hard years of reconstruction after Rebaine's defeat, was made of sterner stuff. In attitude, if not in build, he'd almost come to resemble the enraged ursine adorning his noble crest.

A damn good thing, too, since the appearance of Audriss seemed destined to lead Lorum, and all Imphallion, into yet another war.

Since the Serpent first appeared, Lorum had lobbied with the Guilds for a consolidation of power. The division of governmental responsibility was all well and good during peacetime, he argued vehemently, but an army without a single commander could not prevail against a well-prepared foe. He cited precedent, pointing out that Imphallion's armies fell before Rebaine's advance almost twenty years ago, until all the nobles and the Guilds fielded a unified force. They would have to do so again if they hoped to repel this new enemy, this Serpent, Audriss.

But the Guildmasters were obstinate, and most resisted any such idea. “Audriss is not as big a threat as Rebaine,” they insisted. “Denathere got careless; the other cities are more than capable of defending themselves. Let the Guilds field their forces as needed to protect their interests. There's no need to overturn a system that has worked for hundreds of years.”

“It
hasn't
worked for hundreds of years!” Lorum had argued, over
and over again. “It didn't work seventeen years ago!” But most refused to listen, and those few Guildmasters farsighted enough to see the wisdom in his proposal were afraid of speaking out too loudly in his support for fear of alienating their brethren. And so the resistance to Audriss's advance continued: piecemeal, sporadic, and utterly ineffective.

“If this entire kingdom were flooding, Nathaniel,” Lorum continued, his voice a shade calmer, “they'd rather let the lot of us drown than swallow even a mouthful of pride.”

Nathaniel could only nod. “True. But if Your Grace will recall, after the war, it was nearly three years before you restored the Guilds to their full authority.”

“It was necessary for the rebuilding, Nathaniel. They weren't cooperating.”

“Oh, I agree, it was your only choice. But it made you few friends in the Guilds, and they'll think twice before allowing you the same—as they would say—opportunity.”

“Damn. Damn! They won't have a kingdom left to exercise their ‘authority' in if we don't do something now.”

“I say we just
take
the damn armies.” Lorum and Nathaniel both turned to face the speaker, who had remained so abnormally silent that they'd all but forgotten his presence. His face was twisted in its accustomed scowl. “They can whine all they want, but if you've got most of their men fighting for you, they can't do anything about it.”

Tall, thin, and wiry, he was the image of suppressed energy. Brown hair, cut short, matched equally brown eyes on a face incapable of smiling. His outfit was black, darker even than Lorum's own formal attire, but then he never wore anything else. His tabard sported an odd symbol indeed: an abstract shape suggesting the image of a fish, crimson-hued, on a field of ocean blue.

Not an imposing symbol, but Braetlyn was a coastal territory, grown strong from its humble beginnings as a thriving fishing community. And this young man, now in his early twenties, was Baron of Braetlyn. His name was Jassion, and it was said he'd not laughed once since Lorum's officers dug him, silent and trembling, from the pit of corpses in Denathere's Hall of Meeting.

As he grew to manhood, he'd remained determined, angry, and cold. He was not a cruel lord, no harsher of rule than any other noble; but if there was no malice in his treatment of his subjects and his fellows, neither was there kindness. To Jassion, the world held only three sorts of people: those who could be useful and were to be cooperated with, those who were useless and were to be ignored except where his responsibilities dictated otherwise, and those who were dangerous and were to be killed.

Lorum, Nathaniel, and the others put up with him because he was a relentless fighter and a skilled tactician, and because his rank demanded it. Jassion, as best they could tell, had been gracious enough to place them in the “useful” category. Not the start of a lasting friendship, but a functional alliance, at least.

“My lord,” Nathaniel began, trying his best to sound tactful, “I'm not convinced that's the best option at the moment …”

“That's fine, Espa. You're not the one I need to convince.”

Two pairs of eyes—one determined, one resigned, both angry—turned on the regent. Lorum sighed shallowly.

“Gentlemen, the enemy is out there, remember? Not inside these walls. And that includes the pair of you, understood?”

“The enemy,” Jassion shot back, “is anyone who'd keep you from defending your kingdom and separating Audriss's damn head from his shoulders! And if the Guilds are standing in the way of that, then you'd better damn well believe you
do
have an enemy within these walls!”

The old knight stepped up beside Lorum, shaking his head sadly. “My lord, were we to attempt to seize the Guilds' soldiers by force, Audriss might as well go home. He'd no longer have need to conquer us, because I doubt there would be much of Mecepheum left to conquer. We'd destroy ourselves long before he got here.”

Jassion scoffed. “They wouldn't have the stones to fight back against a determined force! Once they realized their options were joining with us or dying as traitors to the Crown, they'd—”

“Die as traitors,” Lorum interrupted, “and take a lot of our men with them. Besides, even if we could somehow pull it off, the political ramifications—”

“Political ramifications? Gods, you're talking about the survival of the kingdom! The Guilds and their politics be damned!”

The two men glared at each other, the air between them threatening to ignite. And then, as casually as if he were reaching out to open a door, Nathaniel cuffed Jassion across the face.

The young baron staggered, one hand reaching for his bloodied lip in shock, the other dropping to the pommel of his sword. “You—you …”

It was, Lorum noted with some small amount of satisfaction, the first time he could remember Jassion at a loss for words.

“You have the right to disagree with His Grace,” Nathaniel informed him calmly. “You are here, after all, for your input. But Duke Lorum is your regent, and you
will
treat him with the respect due him and his station. Am I quite clear?”

Jassion's black-gloved fingers clenched, inches shy of his weapon. He nodded once, sharply, though his eyes burned. “Quite. My apologies if I spoke too forcefully, Your Grace. But I still feel you're making a terrible mistake in even trying to cooperate with those bovines who call themselves Guildmasters.”

“Perhaps, Sir Jassion. But I've no other option available. And do not forget yourself again. It is
my
mistake to make. You are not in command here.”

“No,” the baron spat back, his voice bitter. “I'm not. And we may all suffer for it before this is over.” And with that pronouncement hanging between them, he strode stiffly from the room.

“He should have asked your leave to go,” Nathaniel said mildly.

Lorum didn't seem to hear. “He's been doing this a lot recently. Storming off and vanishing for hours on end. I wonder where he goes?”

The older man shrugged. “No place in particular, I'd wager. Jassion would never admit to it, but this is a rough time for him. This situation can't help but bring back memories of his sister. He's probably just spending a great deal of time alone with his thoughts.”

“Yes,” Lorum agreed slowly. “That's probably it.” But he continued to gaze into the empty hallway, long after Jassion's rapid footsteps faded into memory. Absently, he fingered his signet ring, his
badge of Imphallion's highest station, and he frowned. Then he simply shrugged.

“Come, Nathan. With or without our hotheaded baron, we've got planning to do, and little time in which to do it. Wherever Jassion's gotten off to, I'm sure it's no concern of ours.”

“So?” Tyannon called as Corvis trudged back over the low rise. “How does it look?”

She stood leaning against a tall, scraggly tree that offered precious little in the way of actual shade, one hand absently clutching her belly where it was just beginning to swell. Leaves crackled under her feet as she shifted her weight, and the air smelled strongly of autumn.

“The property's a steal,” Corvis said, stopping next to her and taking a moment just to inhale the scent of her hair; it had changed, ever so slightly, in recent months. Ever since …

“Corvis? You're doing it again.”

“Sorry. Uh, where …? Right. The inn's not exactly the loveliest place I've considered staying, but it's affordable enough. We'll have a roof until the house is done. And there are a few folk in town willing to help with the carpentry for some extra coin. I don't know if we'll have the whole thing done in time for the baby, but there'll be enough to live in.