David Coe - Bonds of Vengeance

“Very well. Do what you can.”

“Yes, Weaver.”

She was awake almost before the words crossed her lips. The chamber was dark, save for the deep orange embers of her fire. She had no idea how much of the night remained. Closing her eyes once more, she lay back on the sweat-soaked pillow, trying to slow her racing pulse.

Not long ago, before she knew that there was a Weaver leading the movement, she would have thought it impossible that she could be lured into what Evanthya still called the conspiracy. Even after Brall first started to spy on her she remained loyal to House Orvinti, despite the pain her duke’s distrust had caused her. But his decision to have her watched was only the beginning. She hadn’t told Evanthya about the rest. She still found it all so humiliating that she couldn’t bring herself to speak the words.

Soon after she first heard the soldiers in the corridor outside her door and noticed servants skulking about near her chamber, she was summoned to the duke’s hall for a conversation with Brall. They spoke of the soldiers’ training and of the duke’s plans to visit the outlying baronies when the thaw began, trifles that hardly warranted discussion. Yet, he kept her in the hall for some time, even going so far as to eat his midday meal with her, something he hadn’t done in nearly a year.

When at last Fetnalla returned to her chamber, she found several of her belongings out of place. It didn’t take her long to realize that her chamber had been searched, that her audience with the duke had been a pretense intended to keep her occupied while his soldiers went through her possessions, no doubt searching for evidence of her treachery.

She was furious, but still she did not contemplate joining the renegades. Rather, she wished only to leave the castle, to put as much distance as possible between herself and Brall. She didn’t mean to leave for good-she merely wished to sit astride her horse, her beloved Zetya, and ride out past Lake Orvinti into the Great Forest. The day was cold and grey, but she didn’t care. She wanted only to ride. Upon reaching the stables, however, she was told that she could not. Her horse was fine. The stablemaster was taking good care of her. But by order of the duke, the minister was not allowed to ride her beyond the castle walls.

Fetnalla wandered away from the stables, unsure of where to go. She was too dumbfounded to speak, too enraged to cry. “I’m a prisoner,” she muttered to herself, the truth of this making her chest ache, as if Brall had struck at her with his sword. She wore no shackles; there were no bars on her door or her window. But the duke had robbed her of her privacy, her freedom, her joy, all in the name of preventing her betrayal.

Instead, he drove her to the conspiracy.

The first time the Weaver walked in her dreams, she knew that she would follow him to the brilliant future he described for her, that she would do whatever he demanded of her. There had been no warning prior to that first night-the gold came later. Fetnalla didn’t even know how the Weaver had known to come to her. Clearly, though, someone with the conspiracy had heard of her duke’s suspicions and had gauged accurately her growing resentment of his distrust. For she was drawn to the movement by far more than just fear of the Weaver and her certainty that he would kill her if she refused him. Dangerous as it was, she found that she wanted to join, to strike a blow against Brall. He already believes I’m a traitor , she thought upon awaking from that first dream. He’s earned my betrayal

She had done little for the movement since then. The Weaver had come to her two other times before this night, and she had told him what she could of Brall’s intentions regarding the coming war with Eibithar. Soon he would ask more of her. Others had killed for the movement, she knew, and perhaps she would as well.

She also knew that eventually the Weaver would learn of her role in Shurik’s death. By then, she hoped to have proven her worth to him, so that he might spare her. But it had never occurred to her until tonight that she would lead him to Evanthya. And Fetnalla knew that unless she managed to turn her love to the cause before that happened, the Weaver might well kill them both.

Yserne, Sanbira

It was said throughout Sanbira, and even in the other kingdoms by those who had journeyed to the southern realm and found it impossible to deny the truth, that Castle Yserne, seat of the Sanbiri matriarchy, was the most beautiful fortress in all the Forelands. Rising from the base of the Sanbiri Hills, and built of the russet stone mined from their depths, its soaring rounded towers, elaborately detailed ramparts, and gently curving walls seemed more a work of art than a castle. And on days like this one, when the sun shone and the air was still so that the castle’s image was perfectly reflected in the brilliant blue waters of Lake Yserne, it seemed a creation of the gods, as much a part of the landscape as the hills themselves and Shyssir’s Wood to the west. Yet, as history had shown time and again, marked by the failure of sieges launched by the Brugaosans, the Trescarris, and even, centuries before, by the Curlintes, its battlements and the red walls surrounding Yserne city sacrificed nothing for their grace.

Olesya of Sanbira, the fourth queen of that name to rule Sanbira from Castle Yserne, the Lioness of the Hills, as she was known throughout the southern Forelands, had lived in the fortress all her life, nearly half a century now. To this day, she had found no finer structure anywhere, not even in Curtell, where she had gone years before to visit the renowned Imperial Palace of Braedon. Despite its glazed windows and interior fountains, or perhaps because of them, there was something garish about Harel’s palace. Those who built Castle Yserne had both the good sense and good taste to err on the side of simplicity rather than excess.

In recent turns, the queen had found herself looking at the castle through different eyes. Where once she had taken it for granted, accepting Yserne’s beauty and strength with little thought for its creators, she now couldn’t go anywhere in her demesne without admiring the craft that had yielded such a place. Tanqel the First, the second man of Yserne to rule Sanbira, oversaw construction of the castle more than five and a half centuries before, and though he was remembered for his violent temper and bloody reign, Olesya had decided not long ago that if he could build a castle like this one, there had to be more to the man than cruelty and a quick blade.

Which, she was wise enough to understand, brought her to the core of the matter. How would she be remembered? She had ruled well for twenty-nine years, enjoying one of the longest reigns of any ruler in Sanbiri history, king or queen. She had been wise and fair, tolerating far more from the northern dukes than most reasonable women would have, and striving to maintain peaceful relations with Wethyrn to the north and Caerisse to the west. During her reign, Sanbira had weathered droughts and floods, outbreaks of the pestilence and once, in the earliest days of her rule, a land tremor that devastated the cities of Trescarri, Listaal, and Kinsarta. But in all, hers had been a prosperous reign, and mercifully uneventful.

“Is that how I’m to be remembered, then?” she asked herself aloud, standing before an open window in her chambers. “As the queen who ruled when nothing happened?” She gave a rueful smile. A fine legacy for the Lioness of the Hills.

She had never thought in such terms before Dalvia’s illness. But watching from afar as her dearest friend wasted away, like a wild beast caged against its will, Olesya had been forced to accept that even queens didn’t live forever. She was young yet-merely in her forty-ninth year-but her own mother had died at fifty-one, her father at fifty-three. She felt fine, but so had Dalvia only a turn or two before the illness struck her.