The Queen of Mages (19 page)

Dardan blinked a few times, trying to come
to terms with this awful news. He needed to marshal his thoughts,
so he took a few slow steps away from Amira. How likely was Edon to
actually come after her? If he really believed that he had to… to
do this horrible thing…

Before, he’d been only a lout of a prince.
Now he was the king, a murderous king, if the tale was true. Dardan
had to do something. He went back to Amira and took her hands.
“Amira, my darling. I will speak to my father. We will make certain
you are safe and protected.”

“Thank you, truly,” she said, and the
perfect smile on her face lit Dardan’s soul like never before. He
silently cursed the black spirits again for throwing this obstacle
before them.
What did a sweet girl like this ever do to deserve
the wrath of a monster like Edon?

———

Count Asmus glanced up from writing
something as they entered. Old Ban sat at the side table, squinting
at parchments. “Can it wait?” Asmus said. “I’m amidst a letter to
the Arkhails.”

Dardan planted his feet. “We must speak. It
is urgent.”

Asmus paused, then sighed and lay down his
quill. “What is it?”

Dardan guided Amira to a seat before Asmus’s
desk and sat beside her. “Lady Amira has told me something
important.” He looked to his betrothed. “Do you wish to say it, or
should I?”

“Please,” Amira said. Dardan recounted their
conversation in the garden.

Asmus’s eyebrows nearly climbed off his
face. “You really believe Edon would come and try again to kidnap
you?”

“He did it before. I see no reason why he
would not do so again.”

Asmus scoffed. “Before, he was merely an
idle prince, whose misguided affections may have led him to do
something untoward. Now he is a king and has far more pressing
issues.”

“‘Misguided affections’?” Katin said, not
bothering to hide the scorn in her voice. “M’lord, Edon tried to
rape
her.”

Asmus waved his hand. “Whatever you may call
it, it is past, and a fluke. At that time, Lady Amira had no
attachment to our house.” He pointed at Dardan. “Now she is your
betrothed, and is due our protection.”

“Edon will not know of our betrothal, and
even if he does, he may not care,” Dardan argued. “Amira believes
the threat is real, and so do I. We must ensure her safety in case
Edon comes after her.”

“Ensure her safety how? Fortify Tinehall?
Build a bulwark around the town? Perhaps we should simply raise
arms and march on Callaston!”

“Foxhill Keep. We can hide there if Edon
comes.” Foxhill Keep was an old abandoned fortification a mile or
two north of the manor, just off the Thorncross road. Dardan had
gone there many times as a child, exploring the ancient stones. It
was still defensible, as he recalled, with a small keep surrounded
by a stone wall. A few men could hold it easily. Not that he was
expecting a siege; he just wanted a place to hide Amira if
necessary. “All we need are some provisions, and a little
warning.”

Asmus laughed suddenly. “You’re as mad as
Edon. You really suppose this is necessary?” He sighed. “Very well.
I’ll humor you. But you can see to the provisioning yourself. If
Edon does come… I suppose I’ll misdirect him, say you’ve gone off
to visit Baroness Lalia or something.” Asmus stood up and irritably
waved at them. “You’ve bedeviled me enough to last a month.
Begone.” As they turned to go, Asmus said, “Dardan, wait. Tarry a
moment.”

Dardan gave Amira’s hand a squeeze before
she and Katin left. He watched them go, then turned back to his
father.

Asmus spoke quietly, perhaps the quietest
Dardan had ever heard from him. “If I do this, it would almost
certainly count as treason. She had better be worth it.”

Dardan puffed out his chest. “She is. I’d
stake my life on it.”

“You already have, my boy.”

———

It was critical that the plan remain secret.
Dardan caught up with Amira to remind her and Katin. He noticed
during that conversation that Katin seemed to glare every time she
looked at Liam. He wondered what that was about; hadn’t they been
getting along?

In the night, Dardan sent Liam to fetch
supplies from the kitchen: beans, dried fruit, salt beef, hardtack.
He had Katin pilfer a few blankets and pillows from the maids.

Dardan and Liam packed it all up in sacks
and rode to Foxhill Keep to stash it away. The only thing they
didn’t have to bring was water; the keep had a cistern built into
it, to catch rainwater, and it was still full enough to sustain a
few people for a few days.

As far as he knew, no one had seen them go.
The missing supplies might be noticed, but in a house as large as
Tinehall, sometimes things got misplaced for a while. No one would
think anything of it.

As they carried the supplies up into the
keep, Dardan struck up conversation. “I never had a chance to ask
how your little stroll with Katin went yesterday. It can’t have
gone too poorly, considering her answer to the proposal. And yet I
noticed her staring daggers at you today.”

Liam grimaced. “Her acceptance was the only
pleasant part of it, m’lord. I managed to muff the question the
first time. She thought I was proposing to
her
.”

Dardan laughed. “Really! Liam Silvertongue,
I’d have thought to name you. I’m surprised you’ve spent so much
energy chasing that woman and not caught her yet.”

“I’m as surprised as you are, m’lord. Not to
brag, that is. I’ve never met a woman who spurned me so easily, and
yet persisted in giving me a chance.”

“Perhaps the Caretaker is testing you,”
Dardan said, unable to hide his smile. Liam just shook his head in
wonder.

Earlier

Amira closed the door on Dardan’s stunned
expression. The kiss hadn’t been
that
amazing, she was sure,
but her betrothed had seemed to enjoy it.

She could hardly dwell on such things. King
Viktor was dead at Edon’s hand. She armored her mind against
roiling emotion. Collapsing into a blubbering heap would do no one
any good.

Katin, unsurprisingly, looked about ready to
explode. “We have to get out of here! Now! Tonight!” She began
scrabbling at the dresser, yanking the drawers open and scooping
handfuls of clothes onto the bed.

Amira walked over to her, spun her around by
the shoulder, and slapped her lightly across the face. “Calm down,”
she ordered. The
vala
stared at her, agape. Amira pulled
Katin over to the bed and sat her down. “Edon is not here. It does
us no good to panic.” She let go of Katin’s hand and waited a
moment to be sure the girl would not get up at once. Amira fetched
water from the side table and waited until Katin drank it. “Listen
to me. We’ve only just heard this news. For all we know, it’s a
mistake.”

“A mistake?” Katin all but shrieked. Amira
held up a warning finger. She would not let Katin panic. “A
mistake?” Katin repeated, quieter. “You know that’s absurd. What
are we going to do?”

“What can we do?” Amira sat down beside her
vala
. “Flee into the woods? Take a ship from Seawatch and
sail for Liahn?” It felt odd being the practical one for once.
Amira did not want to ever see Edon again, any more than Katin did,
but it was not as simple as pulling up stakes and hightailing it
for the hills.

Amira watched her
vala
for a minute
as the girl calmed. “We must do something,” Katin said. “I will not
let you just sit here and wait for him to show up on the Tarians’
doorstep.”

Amira sighed. “You cannot even know that he
will come. Surely a king must be too busy to personally bother
every woman who takes his fancy.”

“You know bloody well it’s more than
that.”

“Fine, I admit it, but our options are
limited. Should we reveal my power to the Tarians? One of the women
in this room, as I recall, has repeatedly and strenuously insisted
that
no one can ever know.
” She raised her eyebrow
pointedly.

Katin glared right back. “You must do
something. Convince them that you need protection.”

“Hm. It would be no great trick to convince
Dardan. He’s head over heels. He’d challenge the king to a duel, if
it came to that.”

“And if the king has the same power you do?
How would that duel turn out?” Katin’s panic had subsided, but
Amira could see she was still furious. She felt her own anger
rising, and went over to the washbasin. She splashed water on her
face and dried it, taking time to calm herself.

A thought struck her. “What if we had
somewhere to hide?”

———

She felt awful about lying to Dardan as they
stood by the pool. Well, not lying outright; merely adjusting the
truth a little. The result was the same, she told herself. Edon
believed she had some eldritch power, and might come after her
again.

That was the only difficult part. Dardan
took it from there, convincing his father that some hiding place
must be prepared. Amira was surprised by his fervor. She had seen
men fall over themselves for her before, but none of them had ever
gone so far as to try to thwart a king.

The next days were spent in tense waiting.
Count Asmus had sent men off to try and find out more; news from
the direction of Callaston was sparse. It was late in the night,
six days later, when a rhythmic thumping sound woke Amira. She sat
up in the dark. Her eyes had adjusted enough to make out the candle
on the nightstand. Without thinking, she pushed her ember at it,
and it sprang alight. She peered out the window but saw nothing
unusual in the moonlight.

The thumping came again, loud and urgent.
Someone was knocking at the manor’s door.

She had tried to avoid thinking of Edon, but
he invaded her mind. Edon had already been a monster to her, and
hearing that he had killed his own father made him something worse.
Every night since then, she’d gone to bed wishing she’d killed Edon
instead of Sir Thoriss.

She assumed that Edon must have developed
the same power she had. And he’d had two months of privacy at
Gravensford to practice with it. She’d imagined him, striding into
the great throne room of Elibarran, raising a hand and snuffing his
father’s life out, while the queen screamed…

The knocking stopped. Someone had probably
opened the door. Perhaps she should wait until someone came to
fetch her—or they might not at all. It might be nothing, some news
unrelated to the king’s death, but impatience got the better of
her. She went into the adjoining servant’s cell and woke Katin, who
cursed her as usual.

They put on dressing gowns and robes and
went out into the hall. From the main stairs, Amira heard voices in
the sitting room and saw shadows flickering through the doorway. It
was well after midnight, but the whole house seemed to have woken.
She pulled her robe tight and went downstairs.

Count Asmus was in his nightrobe, crouching
on a settee. He seemed haggard, only half-awake, but listened to
the man before him: Topher Belwin, son of an ironmonger. He had
eyes the same unremarkable brown as his hair, and a face so plain
that it took Amira several moments to remember who he was.

Old Ban stood behind the count, and Gerald,
the kindly old house major, sat nearby in his own nightrobe. A
couple of house maids lurked in another doorway. Dardan tried to
warm his hands as Liam poked the hearthfire back to life. Luther,
the Tarians’ master-at-arms and part-time blacksmith, came waddling
up and bowed to Amira as he squeezed past.

Topher paced restlessly as he spoke to the
count. “They said some lords was killed, too, but I don’t know the
names, and they didn’t neither. They also said a rumor that the
prince—the king—had married some duke’s daughter, but they weren’t
sure they believed it. I talked to another man who swore that Edon
burned his father alive.”

Amira winced. It could just be a
coincidence…
Don’t be foolish. You knew it.
She exchanged a
glance with Katin. Her
vala
had caught the phrase about
burning as well, and scowled.

Topher went on. “I got within sight of the
Festival Gate, but it was closed up tight and all the guards had
pulled in. That mob of merchants and farmers wanting to get in to
the markets was right angry, I can tell you, but no matter how they
howled up at the guards, nobody would say when the gate might open
again.”

Asmus nodded at him. “Well done, boy. You
must be exhausted.”

“I’m fine, m’lord. Do you need me to do
anything else?” Topher offered.

“No, no. It’s late, and you should rest.
There’ll be a spare room somewhere around here, Gerald can find you
a bed—”

“Thank you, m’lord, but I have to get back
to father. He’ll be worried sick.” He bowed before the count and
left.

Dardan finally noticed Amira standing there.
He came over, but they were both in their nightdress, and he
hesitated before her. “Amira. Are you all right?”

“Yes. It sounded like he didn’t learn
much.”

Asmus came to join them. “With the city
gates closed up, there was little he could do. You should all go
back to bed. We’ll need our rest come the morning.” His gaze
lingered on Amira for a few seconds more, until she bowed a little
and turned back to the stairs.

“It seems your caution was in the right,”
Amira said to Katin when they were back in her chamber.

“I’m not happy about it, if that’s what you
mean by your tone. M’lady.”

Amira bit her tongue. Her words had come out
harsher than she’d intended. Katin’s overabundance of caution
frustrated her, but it galled even worse for her to be proven
right.

The Tarians spent the next morning in the
sitting room again, going over everything Topher had told them.
Aside from King Viktor being dead, they could not conclude much of
anything.

The gates of Callaston had not been closed
until three or four days after the king died, which implied that it
had taken Edon that long to solidify his control over the dukes,
the army, the Wardens, and the city constables. Many folk—nobles,
mainly, since they had country estates—had fled the city. Topher
had heard that several lords had been killed. Whether Edon was also
responsible for those deaths was unclear. Some said there had been
fighting in the palace; others said that Edon had quietly had some
lords executed. There were other, more ludicrous rumors, but these
were discounted out of hand: Edon had married his own sister; Edon
could breathe fire; Edon had conquered Callaston at the head of an
army of Vaslanders. The debate wound down with Asmus resolving that
they stay vigilant, and keep alert for any news.

Dardan confided to Amira afterward that
Asmus had set watchers on the road to Callaston, in case Edon did
come. This comforted Amira, but only a little.

———

She was grateful for it five days later,
when a Tarian guardsman came riding up to Tinehall as if chased by
black spirits, and told the count that a large party of armed men
was coming up the Callaston road. They were perhaps two hours
behind him.

Inside of half an hour, Amira, Dardan, Liam,
and Katin were all mounted on the Tarians’ fastest horses, with
saddlebags packed as if for an overnight stay. “We’re off to see
Baroness Lalia,” Dardan announced at the front door of the manor.
“We should be back in a day or two at most.” Gerald and a few other
servants were present, helping arrange things. Asmus watched them
go, a big smile plastered on his face. He had told no one else of
the guardsman’s warning yet; his men watching the road had been
instructed to report directly to him, and only him.

Baroness Lalia lived in the south of
Hedenham County. When Dardan and Amira and their
valai
reached the road—out of sight of the manor house—they turned north.
Amira hoped the ruse would work; only Asmus and Old Ban knew their
true destination, and they were men of many years, who could lie
convincingly to a king. The servants were mostly young, but as long
as they believed Dardan’s claim, they would repeat it earnestly if
questioned. Amira hoped it would not come to that.

It had been midafternoon when the news came,
and by dusk they had ridden to the keep and found a place to settle
within its walls. It sat atop a low hill, a few hundred yards from
the road, bracketed on either side by forest. The hill before the
keep was clear of trees; a wide field of ankle-high amber tussock
grass covered it.

The keep itself was as cold and charmless as
Amira expected an old fortification to be. Dardan told her that it
had been built more than a century ago, against the threat of some
earlier Vaslander incursion. It was three stories high, surrounded
first by an expanse of weedy dirt, and then by the outer wall,
twenty feet of tightly-fitted stone. The gate faced west toward the
Hedenham road, but the door into the keep itself was on the east
side of the structure. Anyone breaking through the gate would have
to go halfway around the keep to assault it.

They hobbled the horses at the keep’s entry
and went up to the second floor. There was a small firepit below a
window that would let the smoke out. The light might give them
away, were someone to approach the keep from the forest behind it,
but Dardan judged that Edon’s men would not search anywhere near
here. Not tonight, at least.

There was not much conversation. Nobody
really wanted to speculate on what Edon might do, or what they
might have to do if Edon found them. Dardan had brought cards for
five-jacks and played a few hands with Liam, but both men were
clearly distracted. Amira spent most of the evening wondering how
long they would have to stay there. Asmus would send word when it
was safe to return to the manor.

The four of them settled down for the night
on what thin bedding Dardan and Liam had stashed there. It was
hardly comfortable, but they were all young; sleeping on stone for
once seemed like an adventure to Amira.

She spent the next day exploring the keep
and wandering in the yard, taking care to stay out of sight behind
the walls. Katin followed her around sullenly, alternately
complaining about having nothing to do, and insisting that they
should be riding for the hinterlands.

They had gone back up to the second floor of
the keep for something resembling afternoon tea when they heard the
sound of a horse whickering. Liam went to look out the window at
the horses hobbled down below, and then cursed when the whickering
came again. “That wasn’t ours,” he said, and drew his sword.

Dardan was sitting on an old rotting stool.
He bolted to his feet, grabbed his scabbard, and started buckling
it on as he went for the stairs. “You two stay here,” he ordered
the women. Amira nodded, and once he and Liam were gone, she went
to the window. She could see the horses below, but nothing odd,
until movement caught her eye. Someone was coming around the corner
of the keep. She jerked back before they could see her.

Katin had picked up a shard of wood perhaps
an arm’s length long, a fragment of decaying furniture they’d found
in an adjacent room. She hovered near the stairwell, keeping
herself between it and Amira. Amira could see fear and
determination written plainly on her face.

Then Amira heard someone cry out—a girl’s
voice.
Who in the world?
The question was answered moments
later when Dardan and Liam came back up the stairs, dragging
Calysane Tarian with them. She wore a cloak, the hood drawn back.
“Let me go, you oaf,” she growled at her brother.