Gregory Keyes - The Blood Knight

The usurper nodded as if he had heard the unvoiced thought. Then he waved his hand. “Well, it is done, isn’t it? And I will be candid; your composition was not without effect. Your choice of subject matter, your casting of a landwaerden girl in the major role—well, it certainly won over the landwaerden, and not to me, as I had hoped.” He leaned forward. “You see, there are those who think of me as you do, as an usurper. I had hoped to unite my kingdom to stand against the evil that bears on us from all sides, and to do that I really needed the landwaerden and their militias. Your actions have rendered their allegiance more ambiguous than ever. You’ve even managed somehow to create sympathy for a queen no one liked.”

“It was my honor to do so.” Then he understood. “Queen Muriele is not dead, is she?”

Robert nodded affirmation, then pointed a finger at Leoff. “You still don’t understand,” he said. “You talk like a dead man, speaking with the bravery of the condemned. But you can live and compose. You can have your friends back. Wouldn’t you like to see little Mery grow up, oversee the progress of your protégé?

“And what about the lovely Areana? Surely she has a bright future ahead, perhaps even at your side…”

Leoff listed to his feet. “You dare not threaten them!”

“No? What would prevent me?”

“Areana is the daughter of a landwaerden. If you are trying to win their allegiance—”

“If I give up hope of doing so, if I cannot unite by conciliation, I will have to do so through force and fear,” Robert snapped. “Besides, I am sometimes prone to, shall we say, black humors. My humors were particularly black after the performance of your little farce.”

“What are you saying?”

“Areana was taken into custody soon after you were. I quickly realized the error in that, but as king I must be careful about admitting my mistakes, you see. I must work at things from where I am.”

Leoff’s head swirled.

At one point in his torture he had been told that the entire cast that had performed his singing play had been arrested and publicly hanged and that Mery had been quietly poisoned in the night. That was when he had broken and “confessed” that he had practiced “heretical shinecraft” most foul.

Now he found that they were alive, which brought joy beyond measure. But the threat to their lives was renewed.

“You’re most clever yourself,” he told the king. “You know I will not risk losing them again.”

“Why should you? Your allegiance to Muriele is senseless. She has no mandate to rule, and certainly not the talents. Despite my faults, I am the best the Dare family has to offer. Hansa will declare war on us any day unless I can appease them. Monsters threaten all of our borders and appear in the midst of our towns. Whatever you think of me, Crotheny is better united behind one leader, and that will be me or no one, because there is no one else.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Undo what you have done, of course. Write another lustspell to win them over for me. I have provided you with hammarharp and every book of music the kingdom has to offer. I will make Mery and Areana available to you as helpmates, to make up for the unfortunate state of your hands. I will, of course, have to supervise your work more carefully than did the praifec, and we will hire the musicians who will perform the work.”

“The praifec has branded me heretic before the world. How can any work of mine be performed now?”

“You will be offered as proof of divine forgiveness and intercession, my friend. Where before you took your inspiration from the darkness, now you will take it from the light.”

“But that is a lie,” Leoff said.

“No,” Robert replied drily. “That is politics.”

Leoff hesitated slightly. “And the praifec will go along with this?”

“The praifec has his hands full,” Robert told him. “The empire, it seems, is a veritable hornet’s nest of heretics. You are lucky, Cavaor Leovigild. The gallows make a constant music of their own these days.”

Leoff nodded. “I hardly need you to repeat your threat, Your Majesty. I quite understood it the first time.”

“So it’s ‘Your Majesty’ again. I take it, then, that we’re getting somewhere.”

“I am at your mercy,” Leoff said. “I wonder if you have a subject for your commission.”

The king shook his head. “No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen your library, and it is stocked with popular tales of the region. I trust you will find some inspiration there.”

Leoff gathered his strength of will.

“One thing,” he said. “I will need helpmates, I grant you. But please show mercy and send Mery back to her mother and Areana back to her family.”

Robert stifled a yawn. “You were told they were dead, and you believed it. I could tell you I had sent them home, but how could you know it was true? In any case, I would rather you not convince yourself that you have made them safe. It might inspire you to some new foolish behavior. No, I would prefer you had their company, to steady you in your purpose.”

With that he rose, and Leoff knew the conversation had ended.

Shivering suddenly, he started toward his cot, anxious to close his eyes and lose himself once more in dreams. Instead he remembered Mery when he’d first met her, hiding in his music room, listening to him play and afraid that if her presence were known, he would send her out.

Instead of retreating to sleep, he turned his path and trudged wearily to the books the king had provided him, then began to read their titles.

The man screamed as the demon-woman plunged her clawed fingers into his chest, through the hard bone and tight skin to the soft, wet stuff beneath.

Anne tasted iron on her tongue as the spinning slowed, stilled, and centered. Her fear suddenly gone, she looked into the face of the monster.

“Do you know me?” the demon roared in a voice that burred through flesh and bone. “Do you know who I am?”

Light flashed behind Anne’s eyes. The earth seemed to tilt, and she was suddenly on horseback.

She was riding with Cazio once more. She remembered Austra gasping behind her and then a terrific stir.

Something struck her to the ground, and then a hard arm wrapped about her, lifting her forcefully into a saddle. She remembered the acrid smell of her abductor’s sweat, the gasp of his breath in her ear. The knife to her throat. She could only see his hand, which had a long white scar that ran from his wrist to the lowest knuckle of his little finger.

“Ride,” someone said. “We’ll deal with these.”

She remembered staring dully over the head of the horse, watching the rise and fall of the snowy forest floor, the trees blurring by like the columns of an endless hall.

“You sit still, Princess,” the man commanded. His voice was low and warm, not unpleasant at all. His accent was educated, slightly alien but unplaceable. “Sit still, give me no trouble, and things will go better for you.”

“You know who I am,” Anne said.

“Well, we knew it was one or the other of you. I reckon you just cleared it up, but we’ll be taking you to someone who knows your face to be sure. No matter, since we’ve got both.”

Austra , Anne thought. They’ve got you, too . That meant her friend might still be alive.

“My friends will come for me.”

“Your companions are probably dead by now,” the man said, his voice shaking with the galloping of the horse. “If they aren’t, they’ll find it difficult to follow us. But that needn’t concern you, Princess. I wasn’t sent to kill you, or you would be dead by now. Do you understand?”