The Fire Prince (The Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy Book 2) (32 page)

“Who lives here?”

“One of our Brothers.” His voice told Jaumé he was asking too many questions.

A servant came and swung back the gates.

“See to the horses,” Nolt ordered a man who hurried from the stables at the back of the yard. “You, boy, help him.”

The men followed the servant into the house.

Jaumé watered the horses at a trough. He rubbed down three of them and his pony while the stableman tended the others. The man watched him critically and nodded now and then. When his jobs were done, Jaumé waited by the door Nolt and the Brothers had entered. He was hungry, but knew not to go in until he was called. After a while he found a patch of sun by the stable wall and sat there. Presently he dozed.

He was woken by footsteps. Nolt and an older man crossed the yard. They went into a shed on the far side. A few minutes later they came out. The man held a pigeon. It was gray, with darting eyes and a small head.

Nolt fastened something to the pigeon’s leg. Jaumé understood: a messenger bird.

The man flung the pigeon into the air and it was gone in a flurry of wings, over the wall, over the roofs. Was it going to Fith? Wherever Fith was. North across the ocean was all Jaumé knew.

The man turned and saw Jaumé. He had hard green eyes. His mouth, lengthened on one side by a scar, turned down. “How old is he?” he asked Nolt.

“Eight.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Take him with us.”

“Leave him. The jungle’s too hard for a boy.”

“Bennick thinks he can make it. We’ll see.”

“One mark?”

“Yes.”

“If he gets another?”

Nolt shrugged. “We’ll do what we do.”

They went into the house. Nolt jerked his head at the last moment, telling Jaumé to come.

The house was bigger than any Jaumé had ever been in. Bigger than the fishermen’s houses in Girond, the farmhouses, even the alderman’s house. It was made of wood and had two storeys and long corridors with rooms opening off one another.

The Brothers were at a table in a wide hall. Bennick pointed to a water bowl on a side table. Jaumé washed his hands. He sat beside Bennick and ate hungrily. Even here the food was simple—bread, cheese, meat, fruit. He tried not to look at the man with the hard green eyes. He tried to make it seem like the Brothers’ talk held no interest for him, but he took in every word.

“So Esger’s dead?” Nolt said.

“Kings come, kings go,” the green-eyed man replied. His name was Kritsen. He had a wooden hand with a thumb he moved by flexing muscles in his arm. Jaumé guessed he’d been a soldier once, and a leader like Nolt.

“It was a kill?” Ash asked.

“By Meffren.”

Several of the men knew the name. They grunted, nodded.

“This new king?” Nolt asked. “Jaegar? The contract stays the same?”

“Yes.”

“And we’re closest?”

“That I know of.”

Across the table, Kimbel grinned.

“Jaegar’s honest?” Maati asked.

“No. But he’ll pay the All-Mother. Meffren’s made sure of that.”

Bennick snorted a laugh, but Nolt frowned. “How soon?”

“Five moons,” Kritsen said. “You’ve time enough.”

Nolt nodded.

“Who went to the first stone?” Odil asked.

“Moase. And ten.”

“And ten? What happened?”

Kritsen shrugged. “Only the All-Mother knows that. You been in the jungle, any of you?”

The Brothers shook their heads, except for Gant. “Been on the edges,” he said. He looked like a shadow, black hair, black skin, his teeth and the whites of his eyes gleaming.

Kritsen twisted his mouth sourly and looked at each of them, sliding his eyes past Jaumé with a grimace. “No failures this time, or our honor’s gone.”

Nolt nodded once.

Kritsen went to a cabinet at the back of the room and took out a roll of parchment. The servant cleared the dishes away and Kritsen spread the parchment out. From his seat Jaumé could make out colors—blue, yellow, green, jumbled together—and lines like twisting snakes.

Kritsen put his finger on a spot of black where one of the yellow parts met the blue. “You’re here. Droznic-Drobil.” He moved his finger across to the other side of the parchment. “And you go there. Where the rivers meet.”

“The stone’s there?” Nolt asked.

“And our prince. If he makes it through Ankeny.”

Prince? Jaumé’s ears pricked. Bennick had said they were going to meet a prince. Were they joining an army? Somewhere in the jungle? He had no idea what a jungle was.

“How do we travel?” Ash asked.

“Not easily.” Kritsen put his wooden hand on the black spot that was Droznic-Drobil. “Now listen.”

Jaumé remembered the name of the colored parchment: a
map
. He leaned forward to see better and Kritsen’s eyes swung to him, harder and greener now, in the light of an extra lamp the servant had brought.

“What’s the boy doing here?”

“Ach,” Nolt said angrily. He’d been rebuked. “Bed, boy, quick.”

Jaumé went. He almost ran. Outside the door, he didn’t know which way to go. The servant approached with another lamp and led him down a corridor into a large room lined with bunks.

Jaumé saw his belongings on a lower bunk. Bennick must have put them there.

The servant left the lamp on a shelf.

Jaumé sat on his bunk. He was angry with himself for attracting Kritsen’s attention. He might have seen where they were going. He might have found out more about the prince. But he was too tired to be angry for long. He found the latrines through a side door, came back to his bunk, burrowed under the blanket, and fell asleep. He didn’t wake when Nolt and Bennick and the others came in late in the night.

CHAPTER FORTY

“O
PEN UP, IT’S
Eliam.”

Karel shivered as he waited. A knife-sharp wind stung his eyes, bit into his skin, whipped his cloak around him.

The crossbar slid back. Karel stepped inside. Princess Brigitta barred the door behind him.

The cabin was cozy, the brazier burning. Rutgar and Lukas were drilling holes again.

Karel placed the bucket of fresh sea water on the floor. “We’ve rounded the bottom of the Hook. We’re heading north. And the wind is favoring us. A southerly.” Fresh from the icy waters of the south pole. “We should reach port in a day and a half.”

“Good. I’m worried about Yasma. She needs to eat.”

Karel shed his cloak and crossed to Yasma’s pallet and crouched. He smoothed strands of hair back from her face with cold fingers. So thin and fragile.

“When we’re at King Magnas’s castle, she can eat and eat and eat,” Princess Brigitta said at his shoulder. “I’ll see that she grows fat.”

“Princess...” Karel glanced up at her. “Yasma and I can’t come to the castle with you.”

“What?” Shock was vivid on her face. “But—”

“If word gets out that you and the boys were accompanied by two islanders... You must see we can’t come with you.”

“But...” Tears filled the princess’s eyes. “Won’t I ever see you again?”

Karel looked away. “Perhaps, in a few years, you could visit us. Perhaps not.”

Princess Brigitta was silent for a long moment. “You’ll marry her.” It was a statement, not a question.

Karel shook his head. “I doubt Yasma will ever want a husband.”

“But... I thought you and Yasma loved each other.”

“We do, but not in the way you think. We’re brother and sister. Here.” He touched his chest above his heart.
It’s you I love
. But Princess Brigitta was as far out of reach as the sun. “We’ll pretend to be refugees, find a place to live far from the castle. I’ll keep her safe.”

“You must take my jewels.”

“We won’t need that much. We’ll live plainly, draw no attention to ourselves.” A simple life, but free, away from the brutality of Osgaard.

“How can I ever repay you?” The tears shone even more brightly in the princess’s eyes, trembled on her lashes.

“By being safe and happy.”

Princess Brigitta uttered a short laugh, but the sound had a sob in it. She wiped her eyes with her shirtsleeve. “The day you were assigned my armsman was the most fortunate day of my life.” She took one of his hands in both of hers, raised it to her mouth, kissed it. “May the All-Mother bless you, Karel. Forever.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

T
HEY WAITED FOR
a pigeon all morning. The men exercised in the yard, wearing only breech-clouts. They were so lithe they could tie their bodies into knots, it seemed to Jaumé. They could jump higher than a horse and twist in the air and land facing the other way, even old Maati, short and wiry and with his whiskers growing gray. Steadfast, with his sleek black hair and slanted eyes, was the smallest and quickest. Ash had muscles like huge slabs of meat. He was tallest and strongest.

The men all had a five-bladed Star tattooed somewhere on their bodies. It meant they were Brothers. Jaumé counted the dagger tattoos they also wore, on shoulder blades, chests, arms. Those were something to do with battles. Nolt had more than twenty, and Maati too. Bennick six. Ash and Stead both nine. Stocky Odil had four. Gant’s were hard to see on his black skin. Jaumé thought he had six, too, like Bennick. The youngest Brother, Kimbel, had none.

Kritsen stripped off his clothes and joined the men, even though he had a wooden hand. He had daggers tattooed along his ribs, more than thirty of them.

Jaumé sharpened knives and arrowheads all morning. After lunch, Bennick let him practice with his bow, shooting at a butt set up in the yard. Kritsen, crossing from the stables, stopped to watch. Jaumé ran through everything Bennick had taught him, then stopped thinking and let his body do what it had to do. All three of his arrows hit the center of the butt. Kritsen grunted and went on. Bennick winked at Jaumé.

In the afternoon, Kritsen sent Jaumé with a kitchen woman to buy vegetables at the market. Jaumé didn’t let his face show he was insulted. Kritsen had seen him using his bow; he knew he was a soldier, not a servant. But maybe Kritsen was telling him he was a boy with a mark against him?

The kitchen woman was bossy. “Hurry up, boy, don’t dawdle.” Then, “Not so fast, it’s not a race.” They bought greens for boiling and sweet potatoes to roast with meat. On the way back the woman said, “Wait here,” and went into a pastry shop.

Jaumé put down his woven sack of vegetables. His shoulders ached and he was sweating in the humid air. It was hotter here than Vaere, even though it was nearly winter. It didn’t look like Vaere, either. The buildings were built of wood, not stone, with galleries on stilts leaning over the streets.

A barmaid came out of a tavern and served three men tankards of ale. Jaumé would have liked something to drink, but knew he’d have to wait until he was back at Kritsen’s house.

One of the men at the table was a sailor. He was talking about the kingdom of Lundegaard, across the gulf, and a battle that had been fought there. Jaumé caught the word “prince” and moved closer to hear.