Kate Elliott - An earthly crown

"Do you remember when I taught that seminar at the university in Prague?"

"Oh, yes." Marco's eyes narrowed. "Tess was attending the university at Prague then, wasn't she? In fact, I rather have it in mind that Charles encouraged you to take the position so that you could keep an eye on her.''

David found he could not speak the words, especially since it was the one secret he had ever kept from Charles and Marco.

"You had an affair with her!"

"Marco! Hush. And in any case, I wouldn't call it an affair. We grew fond of each other. True, we shared a bed, but we shared a friendship, too."

"What was she like? I confess I haven't seen her since the year she left for university."

David smiled. In his heart, he felt her presence as an honest and pleasing warmth. She was a good person, an amiable companion, and a fine intellect, though she suffered from insecurity; as well she might, since she was Charles Soerensen's little sister and heir, whether she liked it or not. "She was chubby."

Marco choked on a hunk of bread. "How unromantic of you! Chubby!"

"Well, it's true. She was."

"And then?"

"My seminar ended, and I left. Later I heard she got engaged to another student, but evidently it didn't work out, which I've often suspected is why she left for Rhui so suddenly." And perhaps even why she had stayed there; Tess was insecure enough that David also suspected she might nurse a wound like that for years, especially to hide it from Charles.

"David, you see me at a loss for words. You see me rendered speechless. I am astounded. Amazed."

"Oh, shut up."

Marco laughed and picked at his meat with his knife, trying in vain to find a strip that wasn't spiced to death. Liveried men lit torches and placed them in racks alongside the incense burners, adding a fine, stinging smoke to the brew. Charles laughed at something Bakhtiian said-although David could not imagine a man who looked as hard and dangerous and uncivilized as Bakhtiian did having a sense of humor-and, like a nervous echo, the city elders laughed as well. Maggie, looking serene, poured more wine for the two men. Cara, sitting down at the other end of the table with Jo and Rajiv, stifled a yawn under one hand.

"And just think," said David, "these conditions must be advanced compared to the way the nomads must live. Poor Tess. Whatever do you suppose possessed her to stay there? Sheer intellectual curiosity? Is the fieldwork too good to let go?''

Marco put down his knife. "Oh," he said, as if God itself had just granted him a revelation. "David…"

"And don't you dare tell Charles!"

Marco blanched. "But, David-"

"Give me your word!"

Marco laughed abruptly, an odd note in his voice. "Hell. I swear it. It lends one a warm feeling to think about these youthful indiscretions, doesn't it?"

Marco was definitely acting strangely all of a sudden. "You talk about it like it was in the past, and meant to stay that way.''

"It always is, David. In the words of the immortal Satchel Paige, 'Don't never look back. Something might be gaining on you.' "

"Marco, did you eat something that affected your brain? No doubt there are molds aplenty in this food. Or is that lovely young actress just addling it?''

"I'm just saying that Tess may have changed, and you should… go slowly when you see her again. And not expect too much."

"Hah! Odd sort of advice, coming from you. You sound positively auntly, Marco."

There was a sudden commotion at the far end of the hall. A woman screamed. A jaran soldier stumbled against a chair, tripping backward over it, and sprawled onto the floor. Like a wave rushing in, five men, swords drawn, plunged forward up the central aisle toward the dais. Marco jumped to his feet. David gaped.

For an instant, nothing and no one moved except for the five armed men, who ran toward the head table with death in their eyes and a sudden scrambling of guards at their backs.

Bakhtiian was on his feet before David realized he had moved. He grabbed the table and heaved it up and forward, and it crashed over onto its side. Plates and glasses and half-eaten food and the dregs of wine spilled onto the steps and clattered onto the floor. His saber was already in his hand in the span of time it took Charles to blink.

David sat there stunned with his food in front of him while an attack was waged not six paces away. Marco knocked over his own chair in his haste to get to Charles. Men shrieked.

"Aleksi!" shouted Bakhtiian as the first of the assassins leapt up the steps. A dark young man in a red shirt jumped over the upended table and cut down the first man so quickly that David did not even see the blow. Jaran soldiers closed in from the other end of the hall. A guard flung himself past David from behind and engaged the nearest assassin. The young man called Aleksi twisted his saber around another man's sword, sending it flying, and with a cut that seemed born of the first one disarmed a second man by disabling his arms with wicked-looking slices. One man left-

And then Aleksi suddenly sprang around and flung a cut back at Bakhtiian, who ducked away from it while at the same time shoving over Charles's chair. Charles landed in a heap, Bakhtiian in a crouch, and Marco tackled from behind the old baron who had sat beside Charles this whole time. From whose robes had appeared an ugly looking short sword, which Aleksi had knocked away.

David had not yet moved from his chair. All of the actors except Owen and the leading man, Gwyn Jones, were cowering under their table. Diana stood beside Jones. She gripped the edge of her chair, staring with bright eyes at Marco, who was sitting on top of the old baron, looking furious.

Now, two assassins were left. The one nearest David had been driven back into a circle whose boundaries were delineated in red: the scarlet shirts of the jaran guard. One lay quivering in a heap; one lay prostrate; one sobbed, clutching his bleeding arms against his chest. The two remaining clutched hard at their deadly-looking long swords.

Bakhtiian rose. "Aleksi, take them," he ordered with astounding calm.

Aleksi nodded without expression and stepped forward, and the others made way for him. The elders and other barons on the dais clumped into a frightened group. Cara had already run down to Charles, and she helped him to his feet. Marco stayed sitting on the old baron.

And the most horrifying thing of all was that it was beautiful to watch. Barbarian he might be, but he was an artist with the sword. Two of them, against one of him, with such different weapons, but there was no doubt what the outcome would be. The knowledge made the two assassins desperate. Aleksi looked as cool as a man out for an evening stroll. One of his comrades shouted something in a joking voice, and Aleksi actually cut down one man with a swift slice along his face and chest, paused beside his comrade long enough to grab a saber in his other hand, and turned back to face the last man.

"And you realize, of course," said Ursula el Kawakami, appearing in all her unwonted splendor beside David, "that he's already at a distinct disadvantage, using that saber on foot against long swords. That's a cavalry weapon. Amazing."

Aleksi used one of the sabers to distract the poor man and neatly hamstrung him with the other. The man screamed out in pain and collapsed to the floor. There was a moment's pause. The assassins were all disarmed.

Then everyone in the hall turned to look at Bakhtiian.

He sheathed his saber, and the scraping sound it made in the hush sent an atavistic shiver down David's back. At once, the barons and elders of Abala Port flung themselves on the floor in an obscene frenzy of groveling.

But Bakhtiian ignored the nobles of Abala Port. He delivered a stinging rebuke to his guards, in his own language. They did not grovel. They looked ashamed.