Greg Keyes - The Born Queen

“To whom? To that girl-queen Anne? You’ve no idea whether she’s alive or not. Or who sits the throne of Crotheny. Aspar, the Briar King is dead. There’s nothing left to check the sedhmhari. There are more of them every day.”

“Yah. And sitting here killing them one at a time won’t help.”

“What do you think will?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought I might go back to where he was sleeping, find something.”

“In the Mountains of the Hare? That’s twenty leagues from here as the eagle goes, and we aren’t eagles.” Her eyes slitted. “Do you have some reason to think you should go there?”

“No.”

“No?” She sighed. “I know you, Aspar White. You just want to die fighting for the King’s Forest. This one here isn’t good enough.”

“It’s not—” He stopped. Not mine, he finished silently, imagining the great ironoaks of his youth rotting into putrid jelly, the bright streams clogged with death, the ferny glens choked in black thorn. Did he really want to see that?

“You came to find me,” he said, “all those months ago. You talked about having a duty other Sefry have abandoned. What is it?”

She had found some coals and was coaxing them to life and adding tinder from a pile near the pit, stirring up the scent of hickory and juniper. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if I can tell you that.” “I already know what you and your kind really are. After that, what secret is worth keeping?”

“I told you, I’m not sure. I’m trying to maun it out.”

“Well, fine; find me when you do. I’m going now.”

“You don’t even know where we are,” Leshya said.

“Well, I reckon if I head south, I’ll eventually come across someplace I know,” he replied.

“We’re lucky I remembered this place,” she said. “Otherwise they would have caught us long ago.” “Who? Fend?”

“And his people.”

“Your people.”

She acknowledged that with a bow of her head.

“Well, I’m sure they’ve stopped looking by now,” he replied.

“I doubt that,” she said. “You were with the Briar King when he died. He might have told you something.”

“What do you mean? So far as I know, he can’t speak.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t tell you something.”

Aspar remembered the shocking rush of visions he’d had as the Briar King died.

“Yah,” he said. “But if he told me anything, I don’t know what it was.”

“Yet.”

“Sceat,” he muttered.

“Aspar, you could be the most important man in the world right now. You might be the only one who can stop what’s happening—save the King’s Forest, if that’s the only thing that means anything to you.” “Is that why we’re still here? You’re hopin’ I’ll have some sainty vision?”

“I can’t think of any other hope to cling to. It’s why I’ve kept you safe.”

He looked at her. “That you have,” he said. “And I’m grateful. But there’s no need for you to take my part anymore. I’m strong enough now.”

“You aren’t, and you know it.”

“I won’t get stronger sittin’ about here,” he said. “And you know that. Now, if you think I’m so important, I reckon you can come with me. But I am going.”

She had a fire now. “Rabbit for supper,” she said.

“Leshya.”

She sighed. “Another four days,” she said.

“Why?”

“You’ll be four days stronger, and the moon will be dark. We’ll need that, I think.”

Aspar nodded and looked back to the east. He pointed at a nearly invisible talus slope that vanished behind a ridge.

“Is that the pass we came in through?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I reckoned.”

“The only way in or out unless you’re a bird or wildbuck.”

He nodded, then squinted. “We might not get that four days,” he said.

“Ilshvic,” Leshya snarled. He didn’t know what she’d said but could make a pretty good guess. A line of mounted figures was coming through the pass, a lot of them.

The broadsword cutting toward Cazio was moving almost too fast to see, and he suddenly understood the nasty grin on the monk’s face. Cazio reacted from years of training, jabbing his lighter but longer weapon out in a stop-thrust that should have pierced the man’s sword wrist. It didn’t, though, because—impossibly—the monk checked his swing. He stepped back and regarded Cazio for a moment, just out of measure.

“Interesting,” he said. “I’ve never met a swordsman like you. Are you from Safnia?”

“They have butchers in Safnia,” Cazio panted, trying to both watch the man and check his peripheral vision. Sounds of battle were everywhere. “But the only swordsmen in the world come from Vitellio.” “I see.” The fellow grinned again. “Vitellio. Home of the father Church.”

The man had gray eyes, darkish skin, and an accent Cazio couldn’t place.

“Tell me,” the man went on. “Why do you follow this heretic queen, you a man from the very birthplace of our faith?”

“I like the color of her hair,” Cazio replied, “and the sort of people she associates with.”

“When I move next,” the man warned, “you won’t have time to see the cut that kills you. Lay down your arms and you will be well treated.”

“I’m already well treated,” Cazio replied.

“You know what I mean.”

Cazio sighed and relaxed his guard.

“See there,” the man said. “I knew you looked sensible.”

Cazio nodded and lunged, throwing his front foot forward and pushing with the back.

The monk blurred toward him, and as Cazio let his lunge collapse into a forward duck, he felt hair shaved from the top of his head. The monk ran onto his rapier so hard that the hilt slammed into his solar plexus and the grip was wrenched from Cazio’s hand. The monk fell, hit, rolled, and sprawled, eyes glazing and blood pumping.

“As long as I can draw you into attacking when and where I want,” Cazio informed him, “I don’t need to be able to see you.”

The monk jerked his head in affirmation. Cazio could see that his spine was broken.

“Come get your sword,” the monk suggested.

“No, I’ll wait a moment,” he replied.

“You don’t have a moment,” the man pointed out.

Cazio followed his gaze and saw that he didn’t. Two of the man’s brethren were rushing toward him. Grimly, he started toward the fallen broadsword, only a yard away.

Then he felt something like a thousand spiders racing across his skin. His windpipe closed, and his heart shuddered, stopped, and started again, faster than before. He gasped and fell to one knee but fought back up.

But there was no need. His attackers were sprawled motionless on the ground, their corpses twisted unnaturally.

He turned and found Anne two kingsyards behind him. Her eyes were green ice, looking somewhere he couldn’t see. Her body was taut beneath her black and ocher riding habit, like the string of a lute tightened almost to breaking.

She shifted her gaze to him, and his heart suddenly went strange again.

Then her face softened and she smiled, and he swallowed as the pain in his chest eased. He started to say something, but he saw she wasn’t looking at him anymore but instead studying the grounds of the monastery.

“That’s it, then,” she said softly. “That’s all of them.”

“That’s what we thought before,” Cazio said, lifting himself to his feet. “Before these fellows came up from behind.”

“True,” Anne murmured. “I miss things still. They just arrived, I think—from the forest.”

“And there could be more. Anne, you ought to get inside. Your Sefry can sweep the woods around.” She shot him a smile that he suddenly suspected was condescending. But then, she had just killed two men without touching them, and it wasn’t the first time.