Authors: Benjamin Tate
Well of Sorrows (47 page)
The door to the audience chamber in the palace at Corsair opened, and an officious man with a blunt nose entered. He stepped past the two Alvritshai guards, pointedly ignoring them, scanned the room as if looking for missing items, then finally let his gaze sweep across Eraeth, Dharel, and Colin. He gave a small frown when he saw Colin, but he turned to Aeren and said, “The King is willing to see you now.”
“Very well.”
The man spun and led them out of the room, down one of the Needle’s wide marble-floored corridors lined with huge urns and potted plants and tapestries. Servants and guardsmen passed them in the hall, and they left a wake of half-whispered comments and backward glances behind them. Colin tried to keep his attention fixed forward, but he caught glimpses through open doors into side rooms. Like the audience chamber they’d just left, they were spacious, the walls covered in polished wood, the ceilings vaulted, with niches for statues or artwork on nearly every wall. The audience chamber had held tables and chairs arranged beneath bookcases lined with books and assorted glass objects and small figurines. But as they moved, Colin saw other rooms with long dining tables or walls covered in artwork and huge chandeliers. The sheer size of the rooms overwhelmed him.
When they reached the center of the building, the officious man stopped before two large, paneled, wooden doors. Legionnaires stood stiffly outside, carrying pikes and halberds, in full armor.
The man didn’t consult anyone, didn’t even turn to see if Aeren and the others were following. He shoved the heavy door open and stepped into the inner room.
Colin had seen the official meeting rooms of the Court in Trent. Wide and spacious, they were usually open to the elements, paved in slabs of white marble, with numerous thin columns supporting a lattice-worked roof that could be covered with canvas in the event of rain. Sunlight would glance off the occasional small fountain or other central piece of artwork symbolizing the Family and its power. But the focus of the meeting rooms in Trent were the raised daises, usually with three or four seats, the largest reserved for the Family’s Dom, the remaining seats for the visiting Dom or their representatives.
The meeting hall in the Needle was nothing like that.
It was long and narrow, the floor made of flagstone, the walls of intricately paneled wood and skilled carvings. Banners hung on most of the walls, framed by the carvings, and when Colin recognized the diagonally cut field of red and yellow, a shield in the center, he realized the banners represented the Provinces. He counted six altogether, three on each side, and at the far end of the hall—
Colin’s step faltered. The King waited at the far end of the hall, standing behind a large desk. Behind him, a much larger banner took up almost the entire wall, a single field of yellow, a sheaf of wheat in black in the center. Aides and guardsmen stood to either side of him, but a pace back. As they drew nearer, Colin saw the dark look on the King’s face. He was leaning slightly forward, his fingers steepled on the desk. Dressed in shirt and breeches, he still radiated a sense of power, as if he wore armor instead. Broad shouldered, eyes gray like the flagstone, he glared at them as they approached.
Aeren came to a halt before the desk, and the officious man stepped to one side. Colin’s gaze flicked over the aides, noted the papers that lay in neat stacks to either side of the space before the King, the ink bottle, the feathers of numerous quills, and the chunks of sealing wax. There were no decorative weapons, no personal mementos of any kind.
Then his gaze fell on the guards and halted on the man standing to the King’s right in full dress armor. Obviously part of the Legion, high ranking. The man eyed all of them with suspicion, his gaze traveling over the members of the Phalanx first, judging them, weighing their potential danger.
Then his gaze fell on Colin. Creases appeared in his forehead as he realized that Colin was not Alvritshai and yet wore Alvritshai clothing. Aeren had ordered Dharel to find something appropriate as they rode to the palace. It had been too late for an audience with the King the night before, but Dharel had arrived with Colin’s new clothes—in the Rhyssal House colors—that morning, before they were summoned to the audience chamber.
Now Colin’s hands tightened reflexively under the commander’s scrutiny, trying to grip the staff he almost always carried. He’d been forced to leave it back in Aeren’s appointed rooms.
Leaning forward, the commander murmured something to his King. His eyes never left Colin’s, and the King’s never left Aeren. The King’s jaw clenched as he finished and stepped back.
“I have already dealt with one group of foreign visitors this past week,” King Stephan said, the menace in his low, cold voice unmistakable. “I had not expected to deal with another. What is it that you want, Lord Aeren Goadri Rhyssal? What is it that the Alvritshai want?”
Aeren tensed . . . and then visibly forced himself to relax. “I come as an emissary. I come as a seeker of peace.”
Stephan barked laughter, pushing himself away from the desk so he could pace behind it. “As you came to my father so many years ago?” he spat. “Is that your idea of peace? To cozen us into a treaty, to dazzle us with your offers of trade and wealth and good fortune so that you can betray us on the battlefield, so that you can murder our King?” Stephan shouted the last, his voice ringing in the enclosed hall, loud enough that some of his aides winced and cringed, looking down at the floor.
Aeren didn’t react. When the echoes faded, he said, “No.”
Stephan snorted, still pacing back and forth, his arms crossed over his chest. He no longer looked at Aeren but glared down at the floor.
Aeren drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I come now as a representative of the Alvritshai, to plead for the Alvritshai . . . but not at the Alvritshai’s behest. The Evant is not aware of my true purpose here on the coast. They believe I am here to forge trade agreements for my own House, attempts that they scorn as a waste of time, doomed to failure.”
Stephan halted. “And the Tamaell Fedorem?”
Aeren shook his head. “He is not aware of my true purpose either.”
Stephan shot Aeren a disconcertingly intense glare, but Aeren did not flinch. “You seem sincere. But you seemed sincere before, when you were dealing with my father.”
“I was sincere then. I am sincere now.”
“And yet you bring spies!” Stephan spat, hand jerking toward Colin.
Aeren frowned. “Colin is not a spy. He aided Lord Barak and myself in Portstown and was wounded in the process. The honor of my House demanded that I care for him. He has since agreed to remain with my party.”
The commander’s eyes darkened, his mouth turning down in a frown, but Aeren had already shifted his attention back to Stephan.
“If what you say regarding the Evant is true, then your presence here is meaningless. The Evant and Tamaell Fedorem,” Stephan’s face twisted into a sneer, “will not recognize any agreement we reach here. You have no official authority.”
“I have no official authority, but that does not mean I have no power,” Aeren said. And Colin heard a subtle change in the Alvritshai’s voice, a smooth modulation that deepened it, made it throb. Aeren took a small step closer to the King’s desk, one hand reaching out to touch the finely crafted, polished oak. “I am a member of the Evant, King Stephan. My House has been a member for more than four generations, and we Alvritshai live a long time. I did not come here to draft a peace treaty. I did not come to discuss terms and make concessions and seek compromises. I came because it is my opinion that neither one of us—the Alvritshai nor the Provinces—can afford to continue waging this petty war. Too many resources are being wasted. Too many lives are being lost. It is my hope that, like your father, you will agree with me. If that is the case,” Aeren said, cutting off the King’s response without raising his voice, doing the opposite in fact, speaking softer, slower, “if that is the case, then I will return to the Evant, to Tamaell Fedorem, and I will walk every path before me, offer everything I have to Aielan’s Light, to convince the Tamaell and the other Houses to come to you with a formal offer of peace and
I will force them to honor it.”
I will force them to honor it.”
Aeren’s voice shook, fury buried deep beneath the words themselves. A fury aimed at the Evant and the Houses, at Tamaell Fedorem. The room fell silent beneath the force of that fury, beneath the raw emotion that it exposed. Colin felt it like a hard knot in his chest; he realized he did not dare breathe for fear of breaking the silence.
In that silence, he noticed that Eraeth had turned to his lord, a troubled frown on his face.
Then Stephan chuckled, the sound killing the silence with a shudder. Colin felt the hard knot in his chest give and exhaled with relief, the sound harsh.
“I see now why my father fell for your Alvritshai tricks,” Stephan said, his voice bitter. “Do all of the Lords of the Evant have such powers of persuasion?” He paused for a moment, then waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. I am not my father. I will not be swayed by the smooth words of liars. And I will not be lured onto a field of battle so that I can be murdered by your hand.”
No one spoke for a long moment until Aeren stirred.
“Not all of the Lords of the Evant on the field of battle that day at the Escarpment knew of the betrayal the others intended,” he said.
It took a moment for Aeren’s words to register, but when they did, Stephan’s face blackened with fury, as if actually naming the battle had brought all of the emotions from that fateful day that they had both been skirting to the forefront.
“Get out,” he spat, shoving away from the desk, barely in control of himself, his hands shaking, his face livid. “Get out of Corsair, now, before I have you escorted out on the point of a sword.”
The Legion commander had already stalked forward before Stephan had finished, the other guards in the room on his heels. Aeren wasn’t inclined to linger, turning to where his own guardsmen had tensed to give a small shake of his head. They were herded to the door, the officious man closing it behind them with a murderous look. Just before the door closed, Colin saw the King standing with his back to the desk, staring up at the yellow and black banner on the wall behind him.
“Move!” the commander ordered harshly. He motioned them down the corridor, back toward their rooms in the eastern wing of the castle. His guards flanked them, servants and aides already in the hall pressing themselves up against the wall or dodging into open doorways to get out of their way, even though Aeren moved at a casual pace.
As soon as they reached the door to their assigned chambers, the Legion commander said, “You have twenty minutes to pack. We’ll escort you to the port after that.”
Aeren turned. “That won’t be necessary. Only Lord Barak and his retinue will be using the courier to depart. I’ve made arrangements to travel back north by land.”
The Legionnaire’s brow creased with suspicion. “Then we’ll escort you to the edge of the city. Twenty minutes.”
Aeren nodded. “Very well. We’ll be ready in ten.”
He swung the door closed in the commander’s face.
He immediately barked orders in Alvritshai, and Dharel and the guards scattered, pulling clothes and supplies—papers, ink bottles, various odds and ends—and putting them into trunks and cases, hurried but not rushed.
Eraeth said something terse, and Aeren gave him a nasty look. “No, it did not go as I expected.”
“How did you expect it to go?” Colin asked. When Aeren gave him the same look, he added, “I heard about what happened at the Escarpment while I was in Portstown. At least, the Province version of what happened.”
“I know what the humans believe happened. I didn’t expect Stephan to simply agree out of hand.”
Colin frowned. “What did happen at the Escarpment?”
Aeren sighed, shook his head, and moved to the table in the corner he’d been using as a desk, beginning to sort and stack papers, placing them in a leather satchel. “I don’t know. I wasn’t at the forefront of the battle at the time of the betrayal. I was . . . elsewhere.” He paused and stared down at his hands a long moment, then shuddered and looked up. “From what I’ve gathered through the Evant, there was a betrayal at the Escarpment, one that has set the Alvritshai and the Provinces against each other for decades. I’d hoped that enough time had passed for the grief over his father’s death to have abated. Obviously, I was mistaken.”
“It didn’t help that you came immediately after the Andovans arrived and made their own demands,” Eraeth said.
The door to their chambers opened. The Legion commander stepped into the room. A small detachment of Legion stood behind him in the hall, at least three times their original escort from the King’s chambers.
Aeren ignored both him and the Legion guardsman. “Dharel, send someone down to the courier, along with whatever supplies we won’t need, and tell them to take Lord Barak to Caercaern. We’ll meet up with them there.”
Dharel nodded, motioning to the rest of the Alvritshai Phalanx. The guardsmen began toting the small trunks and cases out into the hall under the Legionnaires’ careful watch. One of them handed Colin his staff and satchel.
Aeren turned his attention on Colin. “Will you come with us, Rhyssal-aein?”
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