Wolfblade (83 page)

Elezaar was right about that, too. Knowing what made her brother tick was going to be the only way to handle him.

No, vengeance may be only a step away, but Marla wasn’t going to take that route. She wasn’t going to drag Nash’s name through the dirt. She wasn’t going to hurt Kalan or Narvell by leaving them a legacy of treason and mistrust. They would grow up believing their father was a good and noble man. She didn’t want Nash’s father cowed either, with the shame of learning his son had betrayed the Hawksword name with his treachery. Nash would be remembered as a wonderful father; a dutiful son.

Marla had a much more effective, much more direct plan for dealing with Nashan Hawksword.

All it was going to take was money.

After all, that’s what we have an Assassins’ Guild for, isn’t it
?

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said, smiling at Lernen comfortingly.

“There’s an awful lot there,” he pointed out, obviously relieved that she was going to take some of the burden from him. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to get started today?”

This is your fault, Kagan
, she lamented silently to the old man’s ghost.
Lernen might not have been the intellectual giant you wanted as High Prince, but you didn’t do any of us any favours by keeping him away from his duties
.

“I can’t I’m afraid,” she told him. “I have another appointment. Something very important I have to take care of. But I’ll be here first thing tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, brother,” she told him with a reassuring smile. “You can always count on me.”

Accept what you cannot change—change that which is unacceptable
.

It was Elezaar’s Second Rule of Gaining and Wielding Power.

Marla made a detour on the way home that meant she was late for lunch. By the time she arrived, the twins were down for their afternoon nap. She kissed their unlined foreheads, cautioned the guards standing over their beds to remain silent and not disturb her children, and went to find Damin. He and Starros were in the nursery with Lirena who was knitting by the window while the boys played with a puzzle Elezaar had found for Starros in the markets for his sixth birthday.

“Look, Mama!” Damin cried as she knelt beside him. “We fixed it!”

“You broke it,” Starros complained. “That bit doesn’t go there!”

“Does too!”

“No, it doesn’t!” Starros insisted, moving an incorrect piece into the correct place, not the least bit intimidated by his young companion.

“Listen to Starros, Damin,” Marla ordered. “Wanting to be right doesn’t make it so. The piece goes there, where he said it did.”

Damin tossed the last piece he was holding down in annoyance. “It’s a stupid puzzle, anyway. You wanna get the swords, Starros?”

The young fosterling calmly finished the puzzle then looked at Damin thoughtfully.

“I’ll let you get the first hit in.”

He thought about it for a moment longer then looked at Marla questioningly. “Is that all right, your highness?”

“Of course it is. Off you go, Starros. Damin, come here and give me a kiss before you go.”

Damin brushed her cheek hurriedly and then ran outside to find the wooden swords one of the guards had fashioned for the boys. Damin was much more excited about it than Starros, who was far more studious than his foster brother.

“He’s going to be a handful, that one,” Lirena remarked sagely from her chair by the window.

“Who? Damin?”

“Doesn’t like to lose,” the old nurse noted with a slight frown.

“That’s not a bad quality in a prince, Lirena,” Marla pointed out.

“No, but it’s going to make him a right pain in the buttocks until he grows into his crown,” the old nurse declared knowingly. “Just you wait and see.”

T
he new High Arrion of the Sorcerers’ Collective, Alija Eaglespike, was many things, but patient had not always been one of them. It had been a hard lesson, learning to wait for what she wanted.

But learn she had—the hard way—that, in the end, those who endured won the prize as often as those who fought for it.

When her plans for Barnardo to take the throne had been so comprehensively quashed by Laran Krakenshield and his cohorts, Alija had known the only choice she had was to regroup. Despite thinking it was disastrous at the time, Laran Krakenshield’s coup had been a blessing in disguise. Things were turning out even better than she could have hoped, and the best part was, unlike her last unsuccessful bid for power, this time nobody was even aware she was involved.

She had attended the wedding of Marla and Nash Hawksword in Krakandar, thinking nobody had any concept of what this seemingly innocuous union meant. Marla was deliriously happy. Even without touching her mind, Alija could tell that from across the room. Her love for Nash hadn’t faded in the slightest in the years she’d been married to Laran, and the fact that she was now being allowed to marry the love of her life meant the young woman positively glowed with contentment. Alija was happy for her. She had no personal gripe against Marla and was glad the girl would have a chance to be with the man she loved. It was more than Alija had ever had.

And she was pregnant; that had been the best news of all. Nash had let it slip after they returned from Bordertown and his happiness was almost equal to Marla’s, although for quite different reasons.

Poor Marla
, Alija remembered thinking at the time, feeling genuinely sorry for the girl.
You really have no idea, do you?

Alija had been having an affair with Nash even then. They had a lot in common, she and Nash. They both believed they should be wielding power. They both had to wait for their chance. They were both impatient. It had
been surprisingly easy to make Nash see the opportunity within his grasp. He had always known that Marla liked him, although, until Alija brought it to his attention, Nash had no idea the girl was in love with him. The idea amused him at first. And then he began to see the possibilities.

After that, there was no stopping him.

Nashan Hawksword was a common enough phenomenon among the sons of Hythria. Born when his father was barely twenty, Nash was over thirty now, with a hale and hearty father not yet fifty years old, who showed no signs of slowing down. Unless killed in battle or by accident, Charel was likely to live a good while yet and Nash might be middle-aged or older before he got to inherit Elasapine. It was an awkward situation for an ambitious man who loved his father and wished him no harm.

But married to the sister of the High Prince, Nash’s horizons had suddenly been broadened. Why hunger after a province when a chance for the whole country lay within your grasp?

Laran’s death in a border raid had been a boon Alija couldn’t have planned better if she’d tried. To have Marla pregnant and married to Nash so quickly was something neither of them had imagined possible. It was really only a matter of time after that. Nash’s son was almost two, having weathered the first, and most dangerous, year of his life. Any time now they could kill Damin and replace him with Nash’s son. Both children were the fruit of Marla Wolfblade, after all. Once Damin was dead, Lernen would have no choice but to adopt his only other nephew, Narvell Hawksword, as his heir.

It didn’t bother Alija unduly that the first attack on Damin had failed. Even surrounded by guards, nobody could protect Damin from Nash, or would suspect his beloved stepfather was responsible. When she seriously wanted to remove him, it would be easy enough to poison the child. This attack had been little more than a feint, really. Just testing Nash’s resolve. While the whole of Greenharbour was up in arms about the threat to the High Prince’s heir, Kagan had quietly slipped away and Alija had been able to step immediately into his position; the need was so urgent to replace him at such a critical time, that nobody had thought to object.

And now . . . well, it was quite straightforward, really. Once Damin was gone and his brother named heir, the High Prince would die—an illness would be easy enough to arrange. Foxglove was such a wonderfully virulent poison. And she knew it worked. One only had to look at Kagan to see how effective its leaves were. Young Narvell would become High Prince with his father, Nashan Hawksword, as his regent—conditional, of course, on Alija’s eldest son, Cyrus Eaglespike, being named as Narvell’s successor. Then it was just a matter of time. Nash could rule in his son’s name until Cyrus was old enough to rule in his own right. At that time, she could remove Narvell in some terrible and tragic accident, and her son would become High Prince.

It was a roundabout route
, she thought, opening the door to her study,
but an effective one
. She’d learned her lesson the last time—

Alija stopped just inside the door and looked around the room in shock. It was a shambles. The drawers of her desk had been upturned, their contents scattered on the floor. The shelves on her left had been emptied onto the floor as well, the pictures torn from the walls, the silk screens slashed to ribbons.

But the worst devastation was to the lacquered cabinet by the window. The doors were wide open, the magical locks gone, and the contents nothing more than a heap of smoking ash.

Then she noticed the man sitting at her desk. He was very tall, dressed in black leathers, with dark hair and a smug look on his face. He was leaning back in her chair, his boots resting on the desk’s polished surface. Angrily, she reached for her power, drawing every scrap she could handle, and hurled a blast at the presumptuous stranger, thinking the fool had no concept of who he was dealing with.

But her angry blast dissipated into nothing. Shocked beyond words, it was then that she noticed the stranger’s eyes were black. Totally black. There was no white in them at all.

“Lady Eaglespike, I presume?” the man said, with the faintest hint of a sneer.

“Who are you?” she hissed, looking around for a weapon. There was nothing nearby. The best she could hope for was to use some of the scattered debris as missiles, but when she reached for her power again, she couldn’t find it. She could feel it, just out of reach, but there was something holding her back. The stranger looked amused as he felt her struggling against the invisible barrier.

“My official title among the Harshini is Lord Brakandaran té Cam,” he announced calmly, picking up a stick of sealing wax from the desk and turning it over curiously in his hands. “You might know of me by my other name, though. Brakandaran the Halfbreed?”

“Brakandaran is a legend!” she spat at him.

He smiled. “Why, thank you, my lady. I like to think so.”

“Who are you really? How did you get in here? How did you . . .” She stared at the cabinet and then looked at the man who claimed to be the Halfbreed. Perhaps he was. She couldn’t imagine anybody else being able to break the wards on the cabinet.

“What do you want?” she asked, a little more cautiously.

The Halfbreed made a great show of thinking about it before he replied. “Hmmm . . . what do I want . . . world peace . . . a nice little place in the countryside, perhaps . . . a tavern where the beer is free . . .”

“What do you want of
me
?” she demanded angrily.

“Ah, now that’s a little more complicated. You’ve been a very naughty girl, Alija.”

“What are you talking about?”

He tossed the stick of wax onto the desk and stared at her. “You hurt a friend of mine, lady. Very badly. And you did it using Harshini magic. I take a rather dim view of that.”

He knows about Kagan
. Alija desperately wanted to glance over her shoulder to check the distance to the door, but realised it was an idle hope. If this really was the Halfbreed, she would have no hope of making it out of the room before he caught her. He could probably flay her alive with a thought. She remained silent, just hoping he hadn’t tried reading her mind.

“And now you’re High Arrion, I hear.”

“I deserve to be High Arrion,” she informed him, sure of that, at least. “I’m the only one in the whole damn Sorcerers’ Collective with any sort of real power. The rest of them are just faking it.”

“There was another contender,” Brak reminded her. “Until you tried to kill him.”

“Who?” she scoffed. “There’s not been anybody since—” Alija stared at him in shock. “That’s your
friend
? Wrayan
Lighifinger?”
The relief she felt was indescribable. He didn’t know about Kagan. He knew about Wrayan, but he had no idea she’d killed the High Arrion. She might even survive this confrontation.