David Farland - The Lair of Bones

Borenson merely nodded. He would not feign any affection for the marquis.

The old man smiled sourly. “So, the king orders us into battle. Let the fire take the old trees, and make way for the new.” He sighed, then peered up at Borenson. “You’re gloating. You’ll be pleased to see me dead.”

“I—” Borenson began to say.

“Don’t deny it, Sir Borenson. I have known you for what, a dozen years? You’ve always been so secure in your own prowess in battle. No matter that I had wealth that you could never match, or a title above your own, every time you’ve entered my presence, you’ve given me those insufferable looks. I know what you think of me. My ancestors were kings of renown. But over the centuries bits of our kingdom have been bartered away by one lord, or frivoled away by the next, or stolen from a third who was too weak to keep what he rightfully owned, until the last of us...is me. When you were but thirteen years old you looked at me with disdain, knowing what I was: a minnow freakishly spawned from a line of leviathan.”

“You beg me to speak freely,” Borenson nearly growled, “and through your own self-deprecation, you almost relieve me of the necessity.” He leaned on the table, so that his face was inches from the marquis’s, and he stared him in the eyes, unblinking. “Yes, I’ll be glad to see you dead. I have no stomach for men who live in luxury and whine about their fates. When I was a lad of thirteen, you looked down your nose at me because I was poor and you were rich, because my father was a murderer and yours was a lord. But I knew even then that I was a better man than you could ever hope to be. The truth is that you, sir, are a milksop, so weak in the legs that you could never father a child of your own. You say that Bernaud favors his grandsire, but I suspect that if we look among your guardsmen, we’ll find one that favors him more. Fie on you! If you were any kind of a man, you’d do your best to kill me right now for speaking thus, whether you had endowments or no.”

The marquis’s jaw hardened, and for a moment Myrrima thought that he would grab the carving knife from the boar’s ham and bury it in her husband’s neck. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and smiled wickedly. “You’ve always felt so constrained to prove yourself. The lowborn always do. Even now, as captain of the King’s Guard, you feel the need to challenge me.” The marquis had obviously not heard that Borenson had abandoned his station, and Myrrima wondered what the marquis would have done had he known. “But,” the marquis added, “there is no need for me to fight you. You and your shabby wife are the ones going to Inkarra, and we both know that the Night Children will send your heads home in a sack by dawn. As for me, I go to battle the reavers—a foe I judge to be far more worthy and implacable than you.”

For a moment, Myrrima thought her husband would kill the man for his insults, but Borenson laughed, a genuine laugh filled with mirth, and the marquis began to laugh in his turn. Borenson slapped him on the back, as if they were old friends, and indeed for a moment the two were united, if only in their hatred for each other, their scorn for each other, and their desire to unleash their anger upon other foes.

Borenson and Myrrima made their way to the Dedicates’ Keep behind the castle. Like everything else in the marquis’s domain, the Dedicates’ Keep was overnice. The walls of the keep, along with its towers, had been limed, so that the building fairly glowed. The courtyard gave rise to stately almond trees. Their leaves had gone brown, and the grass was littered with golden almonds. Squirrels hopped about madly, burying their treasures. A pair of Dedicates played chess in the open courtyard next to a fountain, while a blind Dedicate sat off in the shade with a lute, singing,

“You hate the marquis?” Myrrima asked as they walked.

“No,” Borenson said. “ ‘Hate’ is too strong a word. I merely feel such contempt for him that I would rejoice at his death. That’s not the same as hatred.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” Borenson said. “If I hated him, I’d kill him myself.”

“What did he mean,” Myrrima asked, “when he said that the ‘children’ would send our heads home in a sack?”

“Night Children,” Borenson said. “That is what the word Inkarran means. It comes from Inz, ‘Darkness,’ and karrath, ‘offspring.’” He spoke the words with such an accent that Myrrima imagined that he knew the language well. “The Inkarrans will send our heads home in a sack.”

“Why?” Myrrima asked.

Borenson sighed. “How much do you know of the Inkarrans?”

“I knew one back home, Drakenian Tho,” Myrrima said. “Drakenian was a fine singer. But he was quiet, and, I guess, no one knew him well.”

“But you know that our borders are closed?” Borenson asked. “Gaborn’s grandfather barred Inkarrans from his realm sixty years ago, and the Storm King retaliated. Few who have entered his realm have ever returned.”

“I’ve heard as much,” Myrrima said. “But I thought that since we were couriers, we would be granted safe passage. Even countries at war sometimes exchange messages.”

“If you think we’re safe, you don’t know enough about Inkarrans,” Borenson said. “They hate us.”

She understood from his tone that he meant that they didn’t just actively dislike her people, the Inkarrans hoped to destroy them. Yet Myrrima had to wonder at such an assessment. She knew that Inkarrans were outlawed in Mystarria, but it wasn’t so in every realm among the kingdoms of Rofehavan. King Sylvarresta had tolerated their presence in Heredon, and even did some minor trading with those Inkarrans who followed the spice routes up through Indhopal. So she wondered if Borenson’s judgment wasn’t clouded in this matter by the local disputes. “And why would you think that they hate us?”

“I don’t know the full story,” Borenson said. “Perhaps no one does. But you know how Inkarrans feel about us ‘Dayborn’ breeding with their people?”

“They don’t approve?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Borenson said. “They won’t talk about it to your face, but many Inkarrans are sickened by the mere thought of it—and for good reason. Any child from such a union takes on the skin, the hair, and the eye color of the Dayborn parent.”

“Which means?” Myrrima began.

“A full-blooded Inkarran, one with ice white eyes, can see in total darkness, even when traveling through the Underworld. But many half-breeds can see no better at night than we do, and the dark eyes follow down from generation to generation. The Inkarrans call such part-breeds kutasarri, spoiled fruit of the penis. They’re shunned in their own land by some, pitied by others, forever separate from the Night Children.”

Myrrima remembered the half-breed assassin that had tried to kill Gaborn.

“But,” she argued, “even some in the royal families are kutasarri. Even the Storm King’s own nephew—”

“Shall never sit on a throne,” Borenson finished.

“Here’s a mystery,” Myrrima said. “Why would a kutasarri from Inkarra agree to act as an assassin? Why would he try to kill Gaborn? Certainly it wouldn’t be for love of country.”

“Perhaps he merely wants to prove his worth to his own people,” Borenson said. “But there may be more to it. The Inkarrans do not just hate us for the color of our eyes. They call us barbarians. They hate our customs, our way of life, our civilization. They think themselves superior.”