The Fox (46 page)

The sounds came nearer. Quick, quick.

He jumbled the paper together and thrust it into the locket he always wore, twin to the one Jened Sindan always wore. He completed the spell as the door slammed open.

In Ala Larkadhe Captain Sindan was finishing his personal drill with the arms master in the barracks. He felt the magic summons and brought the sword bout to a close. Still in work shirt and breeches, he stepped outside, ignoring the cold, where he retrieved the locket and pulled out the paper.

He stared down in shock at the sticky, reddish smears until he made out the two words scratched so awkwardly: “Protect Evred.”

It was then that a young page appeared. “Captain Sindan! Messengers from the Jarl of Yvana-Vayir. They insist on seeing Evred-Varlaef.”

The message transfer was immediate, but no one else in the kingdom save Ndara-Harandviar had access to magic transferred messages. Any message from Yvana-Vayir, therefore, had to have been dispatched weeks ago. Logic denied any connection between this blood-smeared exhortation and the unexpected arrivals, but instinct brought Sindan upstairs at a run, the king’s message still in his hand.

He reached the archive as a young Runner-in-training stopped outside the great carved doors, saying cheerfully to four men in Yvana-Vayir colors, “Well, since he’s not at mess or drill or his rooms he’s got to be in there reading. You can knock, and if he doesn’t come out, you can give your message to Nightingale, his Runner, who’s down at drill—”

Sindan lifted his hand and the youth backed away. Sindan moved to the archive doors and set his back to them. “I am Sindan,” he said, knowing the Yvana-Vayir armsmen would recognize his name, if not his face. “You can give your message to me.”

The four looked at one another, and their spokesman said, “It’s a personal message. From our lord.”

“About treachery,” added another, licking his lips.

Eyes, hands, manner, suggested anticipation of violence. “He cannot be disturbed,” Jened Sindan stated, crushing the bloody paper in his fist.

“Let us knock, and he can tell us himself, king’s Runner, ” said the spokesman, who was thinking,
The king must be dead by now.

“No,” Sindan said, and tucked the paper into a pocket.

Four swords were drawn; Sindan already held his.

“Get out of the way,” warned one, who felt uneasy at four men in their prime facing a single old fellow of near seventy—though one with a hero’s reputation.

“No,” Sindan said again. He gripped his sword in one hand; in a swift move he grabbed a boot knife with the other and settled into a defensive stance.

The four exchanged a look and charged.

The young Runner felt at his sash. No knife, not for boys on inside castle duty. He ran for help.

In the royal city, there was a quick tap at the queen’s door.

Hadand motioned to her women on guard, and one called for identification. Hearing a woman’s voice outside, Hadand said, “Let her enter.”

One of the queen’s night maids slipped in, her face twisted in terror. She ran past Hadand and flung herself down at the arm of the queen’s chair, her skirts billowing around her, and whispered.

“Dead?” The queen started up. “My son is
dead?
”

She pushed past her women, all crowding around her now, their voices shrill as they asked questions no one answered. The queen stalked to her bedroom and shut herself in.

Her women stood outside, stricken, fearful, incapacitated by the sound of sobs, a sound the older ones had not heard since their first days in this place.

The Sierlaef, dead?

It’s a conspiracy,
Hadand thought, and because there were no orders from Ndara-Harandviar, who would herself have come first to the queen, Hadand had to push aside questions—disbelief—and take action.

She motioned for the inside guards to remain at the ready, then slipped out, signed for the hall guards to follow, and ran for the throne room. If indeed a conspiracy had turned into action, surely someone would end up there.

Chapter Twenty-eight

EVRED dashed through the jumble of cottages to the harbormaster’s newly finished building at the high end of the street. Those who recognized him stopped in their tasks.

“Prince Evred?” the harbormaster’s chief scribe asked, afraid at the intensity in the prince’s face—hectic flush, tight mouth, wide stare—when he’d always seemed so calm and remote.

“The captain of that black ship out there. Where is he?”

The scribe hesitated, unwilling to be the one to speak, and turned to his colleagues. Most shrugged, many of them in honest ignorance.

The scribe wondered if the prince’s sudden appearance had anything to do with his conversation with that Guild Fleet fellow this morning—so easy to talk to, that fellow had been, so interested; the scribe had spent the day since anxious that he’d said too much, especially after the fellow vanished without talking to the harbormaster at all. “I do not know anything except that the harbormaster went to a private interview.”
I won’t say too much now,
he thought.

But the chart mistress, an older woman, glanced up from her desk, brushing back a strand of gray hair. “At the guild mistress’, wasn’t it?” she asked, looking vaguely around the room. “Were they not handling those affairs there?”

Evred flung a “Thank you,” over his shoulder and ran out. He dashed back up the hill, dodging people, horses, wagons, dogs, chickens, and mittened children.

He was fairly certain the guild mistress lived in the jumble of half-built houses beyond the new inn with the nautical sign; if not, Evred at least knew where Inda’s boat was tied up. He’d go to the dock and wait there—all day, if need be.

He’d reached the archway where he’d first glimpsed Inda, and was looking about for the inn with the sailor painted on it when a hand gripped his shoulder. He started violently and whipped around, a knife in his hand. A passing woman gasped and dropped her roll of cloth; a tradesman backed away hastily, almost falling under the wheels of a cart.

But Evred did not see them. He glared at Vedrid, whose gaze flicked from the knife to the fury in the prince’s face. He backed up a step and saluted. “Evred-Varlaef. You must come at once.”

Evred looked around, his mind floundering to find sense in the sudden whirlwind of sensation. “What?”

Vedrid opened his hand toward Nightingale, who stood with three sweaty horses, looking pale and wide-eyed. “I was at the perimeter on watch, as you ordered, and saw him riding at the gallop,” Vedrid said in Marlovan, aware of the staring harbor folk.

Nightingale spoke in a quick, low voice. “After you left, Captain Sindan was attacked.”

“By—”

A quick look. “Yellow and blue livery. He’s—” Nightingale shut his mouth and shook his head, unwilling to say the word
dying,
but they saw it in his manner.

Evred closed his eyes. War, need. Duty. First the sound, then the sense. He had missed his chance—his single chance. The self-hatred caused by this inescapable realization was so intense it was physical.
I let him go
.

There would be no justice yet again, and this time because he was the fool who had lost Inda.

But he was a fool with duty before him: he would simply have to find another time, another way. He opened his eyes and became aware of curious eyes surrounding him. Including a pair of his own guards veering from sentry patrol, surprised and dismayed to find him there in Runner blue.

“Surprise inspection,” he said. “Carry on.” And to Nightingale and Vedrid, “Let us depart at once.”

The king knelt by the side of his dead son, unaware of the time that had passed, until a riding of men wearing Yvana-Vayir yellow and blue slammed the door open and dashed in, spreading out, swords and knives in hand. They clattered to a stop, staring at the king, at the dead heir, and one another, their purposeful movements now uncertain. The man before them was unarmed, and unhated; he was the same king they had seen at a distance a month ago, taking the yearly sworn oath of their own Jarl.

Though they’d cut down the king’s personal Runners in his chambers, this was the
king
. No one wanted to be the first to strike.

Tlennen-Harvaldar got slowly to his feet, his hands empty, and met each pair of eyes.

“Our Jarl ordered us here, Tlennen-Harvaldar,” said the Yvana-Vayir riding captain, who had the most ambition.

The king said, softly, “Are you forsworn?”

Looks, uneasy stances, and then another said, his gaze midway between the king and his captain, “Not to our Jarl.”

From the doorway came Mad Gallop’s voice, “Kill him!”

Yvana-Vayir’s men stepped forward, but no one raised a weapon. Mad Gallop bawled, “Anderle, my son!”

Hawkeye joined him, grimacing at the name he hated. Tlennen-Harvaldar looked old, his gray hair disheveled, a golden locket hanging against his robes. Old, and he was the king.

The Jarl’s gaze moved back and forth. “You ignored your brother’s treachery, Tlennen,” he said, every word loud, as if loudness made it more true. “You always protected him. Even when he was wrong. That’s the weakness of family sentiment. The times demand strength. Strength of will. Starting here.”

Tlennen shook his head slightly. “If you take the crown, Yvana-Vayir, I hope you are wise enough to see before I did that its weight warps will. And strength. And vision. So that what seems right can be the wrong decision, and you are left forever making amends—or compounding your errors.”

“Hear that?” Mad Gallop demanded, glaring at his hesitant men. “Hear him admit he’s wrong? In a king, is that not treason against our forefathers?” And when the king said nothing, the Jarl turned to his heir. “Execute justice, Anderle,” his father ordered. “Kill him!”

Hawkeye gripped his sword, looking past his father to the king, whose face was still wet with tears of grief, and he shook his head. “He did not betray us.”

“I will have you, king!” Mad Gallop shouted, drops of spittle dotting Hawkeye’s grimy coat.

“No,” Hawkeye said again. “He’s the
king
. It was the Sierlaef who—” He stopped at a familiar sound from outside.

War horns reverberated, echo after echo.

A shout came from somewhere below: “Algara-Vayir green!”

Mad Gallop bellowed in rage; Hawkeye stared at the king, at his father, at the men, recognizing his own reluctance in them. They were waiting for him to act.

So either he disobeyed his father, or he committed a far greater wrong and obeyed him by killing the king.

Nothing he could do here was right—except getting help.

So he turned his back on them all and ran.

He didn’t get far. On the first landing he nearly ran down Buck Marlo-Vayir and hound-faced Noddy Toraca, who had been brought by Cama. They had been racing up the stairs as fast as he’d been descending. Hawkeye stumbled to a stop.

Before anyone could speak, Cama and Cherry-Stripe clattered down the hallway, having come up the main staircase. Cherry-Stripe had his sword in hand.

Noddy said, “Hawkeye’s in it?”

Cherry-Stripe pointed his sword. “You attacked the king?”

Hawkeye, sick almost to the point of dizziness, shook his head. “No. It’s my father’s plot. Look, he’s got the king in the Sierlaef’s rooms right now. The Sierlaef’s already dead. I think the Harskialdna might be, too, or he’d be here. My father sent an entire riding after him. I swear—on my honor—I did not know what he meant to do.” His voice broke at the end. “I can’t stop him—he
ordered
me to . . . I don’t know what to do.”

They stood there, questions in all their faces as Hawkeye struggled to command his emotions.

Buck jabbed his sword toward Cama and Noddy, who had arrived from the north moments after the big cavalcade, having ridden in their muddy trail most of the way. “You didn’t go north?”

Cama said briefly, “Noddy sent Runners. Faster—they know their trails. We thought we might be needed here.”

Buck turned to Hawkeye, then looked away from the tears in his old academy mate’s eyes. He hefted his sword. “To the king.”

He and his brother ran upstairs, followed by their own Runners. Cama remained, his one good eye narrowed in cold anger, Noddy next to him. Both with swords drawn and ready.

Hawkeye cast down the weapon he realized was still gripped in his hand. “It’s my father’s plot. Not mine.” He squeezed his eyes shut, wrenched by guilt and remorse.
I never should have told him
.

Noddy sighed, leaning on his sword. It seemed it was his job to guard Hawkeye, though no one was giving orders. “Truth is, I don’t know what to believe. Rousted out of bed by Cama here the very morning I get home from Convocation, my own Runners sent at the gallop—not even a change of clothes—northward to Sponge, us riding day and night. Blood all down the hall that way.” He jerked a thumb up and backward, his long, jowly face wry. “Has the world gone mad?”

“Not the world,” Cama commented, lifting his head at the sound of shouts, adding sourly, “Just us.”

The voices neared. Cherry-Stripe clattered back down the stairs, grimacing. “It’s all over,” he said. “King’s dead.” He expelled his breath in a whoosh. King dead— no one in charge. Cherry-Stripe tried to marshal his thoughts. The Jarl of Yvana-Vayir was a king killer, but here was his son. What to say? The ballads sure didn’t give any hints about this situation. “Hawkeye, your dad and his men ran off down one of the other hallways. Any idea where to?”

Cama whistled. “This damn castle is enormous. We could run around a week and never find them. What now?”

Hawkeye wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He drew a short breath. “Any of you know if the king had time to give orders to Ndara-Harandviar before my father and I got upstairs? Where’s Hadand?”

No one even thought of Queen Wisthia.

Cama jerked his chin over his shoulder toward the stairway leading down. “Women have the lower passageways guarded below. Saw ’em taking over behind me. Are there any women up there?”