David Coe - Bonds of Vengeance

She took a step toward him. “I don’t want to give such a command, Kreazur. Don’t you see? I want your help.”

“No. You want to keep me from exposing you to the queen. That’s all that matters to you now. And there’s little you can do about it.”

“You think they’ll take your word over mine?” She laughed. “Your own duchess doesn’t even trust you. How can you hope to convince any of the others?”

It was a fair point. His only hope was to beat her back to the castle. He began to back away slowly, preparing to summon a mist.

The assassin pulled a large knife from his belt.

“No!” the archminister said quickly. “Not here. I have another idea.”

Kreazur spun away, intending to run. But before he could take a step, pain exploded in his leg, white hot, as if the assassin had hacked through the bone with a sword. The first minister collapsed to the ground, clutching his thigh. Neither Abeni nor the man beside her had moved. Only as an afterthought did Kreazur realize that he had heard a strange noise, like the snapping of a dry tree limb.

“You didn’t know that I was a shaper, did you?” the archminister asked, stepping to where he lay.

An instant later, new agony. His arm, and this time there could be no mistaking the sound of shattering bone. He cried out, clutching the mangled limb to his chest.

Abeni squatted beside him. “I gave you a chance, but you refused me. And now you’re going to die, just as I promised.”

“They’ll learn of what you’ve done,” he gasped through gritted teeth.

“No, they won’t. They’ll find you near here, dead in an alley, your neck broken along with your arm and your leg. There will be an empty coin pouch beside you and two gold rounds under your body where the men who killed you wouldn’t have thought to look. It will take them a bit of time to sort it all out, but the queen’s archminister will be quite helpful in that regard.” She smiled, though only for a moment. “You see, this part of the city is infamous for attracting brigands and assassins. Just the sort of place a traitor would come to hire a new blade to kill his duchess. Just the sort of place a traitor might die, offering too little gold to the wrong men.”

She glanced back at the assassin. “You’ll take him elsewhere, to a place they won’t think to look for a day or two. Make it look convincing.”

“Is he. .” The man faltered briefly. “As long as he’s alive, he has his magic, doesn’t he?”

Abeni looked down at him again. “Yes, but that’s not a problem.”

Again, the cracking of bone. Then blackness.

Kentigern, Eibithar

“What does it say?”

Aindreas could scarcely hear her for the windstorm howling in his head. His hand had begun to tremble and he gripped the scroll with his other as well. But even with both hands on the parchment, he couldn’t hold it steady.

“Aindreas, what does it say?”

The duke looked up. His wife was staring at him from across the table, concern creasing her brow. Her face appeared fuller than it had at any time since the previous growing season, her brown eyes clearer, less sunken. Her cheeks were pallid still, but tinged with pink, rather than the sickly, sallow hue that had suffused her skin since Brienne’s death. It had taken the better part of a year, but he finally had his wife back. Earlier this very day, he had even heard her singing with Affery, their surviving daughter. He wasn’t about to drive her back into her solitude and the grief bordering on madness that had consumed her mind for so long.

“Well?” Ioanna demanded again.

“It’s nothing. A missive from Kearney, a waste of good parchment.”

A turn ago she might have left it at that. Aindreas took it as another sign of her recovery that she didn’t this day.

“What does he say?” Her expression hardened noticeably at the mention of the king’s name.

“Nothing of importance.”

“A message from the king, delivered to the one man in all Eibithar who has most cause to hate him. And you want me to believe that it says nothing of importance?”

“Please, wife, peace! It needn’t concern you.” He took a breath, knowing this wouldn’t appease her. Before Brienne’s murder, she had been interested in all matters of state, and truth be told, as likely to offer him sound advice as any Qirsi minister who had ever stalked the corridors of Kentigern Castle. “He seeks a parley,” he added after a moment.

“A parley,” she repeated. “And is it the mere thought of meeting with our king that makes your hands shake so?”

“My hands shake with rage, madam. Though whether at our king or at my meddlesome wife, I can’t say just now.”

Ioanna smiled at that. “What does he wish to discuss?”

Aindreas stared at the parchment again, the neat letters making him wish that he hadn’t eaten any of this meal. What have I done? Kearney wasn’t actually requesting a parley so much as ordering him to Audun’s Castle. But it was the king’s stated reason for doing so that had conjured this storm that roared in his heart and head. “He wishes to speak of Kentigern’s grievances against the throne.” He said this officiously, as if repeating it from the message.

“For how long does he propose you meet? Anything less than a full turn would be inadequate to the task.” She shook her head, so that her golden curls flew. “The time for parleys is long past. You should tell him that if he wishes to address our grievances, he should simply abdicate and be done with it.”

He grinned. She was indeed a splendid woman, a credit to their house. Even as he thought this, however, he felt his chest tightening, as if the Deceiver had taken hold of his heart. Looking past his wife, he saw Brienne standing in the doorway, shaking her head slowly, a sad smile on her lovely face. He squeezed his eyes shut for just an instant. When he looked again, she was gone.

“I suppose Javan will be there as well,” Ioanna said. “Curgh keeps the king on a short leash.”

She had been mourning for so long, lost to the world, that she couldn’t have known such a thing for herself. These were his own words coming back to taunt him, those he had spoken to her in their darkened bedchamber as she lay in a stupor, too aggrieved, he had thought, even to hear him.

“No doubt,” he murmured.

“What will you tell him?”

“I’ll refuse, of course.” What choice do I have?

“Refusing a king is no small matter. Are you ready to face the royal army?”

No, but there’s nothing else I can do. I’ve led Kentigern down a path from which there are no turns . “I don’t think it will come to that.”

He hated lying to her, but the truth was too appalling, too humiliating.

“I always know when you’re keeping the truth from me, Aindreas. You know that, and yet you still persist in these lies.”

“I spent all of the harvest and the snows protecting you,” he said, grateful for the opportunity to speak the truth. “I’m finding it’s a habit that’s not easily broken.”

She nodded, even managing a smile. “So there is more to the message than you’ve told me.”

“Yes.”

He expected that she would demand to know what it was, but instead she stood, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “I hope that soon you can find it in your heart to speak to me of such things as you used to. But I won’t press the matter. Do what you must, my lord duke, and guard the pride of our house.” She walked to the door of the great hall, then paused, glancing back at him, the look in her dark eyes almost shy. “It’s been some time since we lay together as husband and wife. But if you still desire me in that way. .” She shrugged, the small smile still on her lips.