Greg Keyes - The Born Queen

“How can you help?”

“I don’t know, but I felt called here.”

“That’s not too useful,” Leoff said.

Brinna leaned forward a bit. “I broke the law of death,” she said quietly. “I am responsible. Do you understand?”

Leoff exhaled and pushed his hand through his hair, wincing as he touched the sore spot. “No,” he said. “I don’t really understand any of it.”

“It will work,” Mery insisted.

Leoff nodded. “I compose more with my heart than with my head, and my heart says it would work if it could be performed, which it can’t. That’s the problem, you see.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“You read music, yes?”

“Yes,” she said. “I can play the harp and lute. I can sing.”

“Then you notice that there are three voices, yes? The low, the middle, and the high.”

“Not unusual,” she said.

“No. Quite the norm. Except that if you look closely, you’ll see that there are two distinct lines in each voice.”

“I noticed that, too. But I’ve seen that before, too, in the Armaio of Roger Hlaivensen, for instance.” “Very good,” Leoff said. “But here’s the difference. The second lines—the one with the strokes turned down—those have to be sung by…ah, well—by the dead.”

When she didn’t even blink at that, he went on. “The upturned lines are to be sung by the living, and for the piece to be done properly, all the singers must be able to hear one another. I can’t imagine any way for that to happen.”

But Mery and Brinna were looking at each other, both with the same odd smile on their faces.

“That’s no problem, is it, Mery?” Brinna said.

“No,” the girl replied.

“How soon can we perform it?” Brinna asked.

“Wait,” Leoff said. “What are you two talking about?”

“The dead can hear us through Mery,” Brinna explained. “You can hear the dead through me. You see? I am the last piece of your puzzle. Now I know why I’m here.”

“Mery?” Leoff turned his gaze on the girl, who merely nodded.

“Fine,” he said, trying to resist the sudden dizzying hope. “If you say so.”

“How soon?”

“I can sing the middle part,” he said. “Areana can sing the upper. We need someone for the low.” “Edwyn Mylton,” Areana said.

“Of course,” Leoff said cautiously. “He could do it. If he’s still in Haundwarpen and if we could get to him.”

“Haundwarpen is under siege,” Areana explained.

“No,” Brinna said. “Haundwarpen is fallen. But that’s actually good for us.”

“How so?”

“My brother is a prince of Hansa. They won’t stop him entering or leaving the city, and they won’t ask him questions. Not yet.”

“A pri—” He stopped. “Then you’re a princess of Hansa?”

She nodded.

“Then I really don’t understand,” he said.

“My brother and I are here at our peril,” she said. “Understand, it doesn’t matter who wins the war. If the barrier between life and death deteriorates further, all of our empires will be dust.”

“What do you mean,” Areana asked, “at your peril?”

“My brother tried to help your queen, and I am run away,” she said. “If we’re caught, we may well both be executed. That’s why we need to move quickly. At the moment, the army here recognizes my brother as their prince. But word from my father will reach here very soon, and we will be found, so all must go quickly.”

We’ll do the piece, his thoughts rushed. We’ll cure Mery.

He clung to that thought and shied from the next: Brinna was prepared to die, perhaps expected it, perhaps had seen it. That did not bode well for the rest of them.

“Well,” he said, “we’d best find Mylton, then, and get on with this.”

“What now, sir?” Jan asked Cazio. Cazio stared at the freshly turned earth and took a few deep breaths. The morning smelled clean despite the carnage.

“I don’t know,” he said. If Anne’s Sefry guards were traitors, Mother Uun probably was, too. If he took Austra to her, they might be walking right into the spider’s web.

But what else was there to do? Only in Eslen was he likely to find anyone who could help Austra. “I’m still going on to Eslen,” he said. “Nothing’s changed about that.”

“I reckon we’ll be going with you, then,” the soldier said. “The empire is a month behind on our salary, and we’ve worked hard enough for it.”

Cazio shook his head. “From what I hear, you’ll only walk into slaughter. Go back and keep the duchess safe. I know she’ll pay you.”

“Can’t let you walk into slaughter alone,” the soldier replied.

“I won’t get in by fighting,” Cazio said, “with or without your help. I’ll have to use my wits somehow.” “That’s a bloody shame,” Jan said. “You’re bound to come to a bad end that way.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” Cazio replied. “I think it’s for the best. You fellows will just draw a fight we can’t win. The two of us might be able to slip in the back way.”

Jan held his gaze for a moment, then nodded and stuck out his hand. Cazio took it.

“The Cassro was a good man,” the soldier said.

“He was,” Cazio agreed.

“He raised a good man, too.”

They broke camp a bell later. The soldiers headed back to Glenchest, and Cazio and Austra were alone again.

It was along about midday that Cazio felt a strange, hot wind carrying an acrid scent he had smelled before, deep in the tunnels below Eslen. He drew Acredo and turned on the board, searching. There wasn’t much to see; the road was bounded on both sides by hedges and had been for nearly a league. Until now he’d been enjoying the change from open landscape; he could almost pretend he was back in Vitellio, taking a tour of one of the grand trivii with z’Acatto, working up an appetite for pigeon with white beans and garlic and a thirst for a light vino verio.

Now he suddenly felt claustrophobic. The last time he’d come this way, it had been with an army, and they hadn’t much feared bandits; now he realized this would be a perfect place for them to hide, say, just around one of these bends, and wondered if he hadn’t dismissed Jan and the others too quickly. Of course, that had nothing to do with what he had smelled, which he was beginning to think was an illusion, anyway, just a stray memory of one of the many horrible things he had experienced in the last two years or so.

He kept Acredo in hand as they went around the curve.

There was someone there, all right. It wasn’t a bandit.

“Fratir Stephen?” He drew back on the reins and brought the carriage to a halt.

“Casnar!” Stephen replied. “You’re a coachman now.”

Cazio was momentarily at a loss for words. He didn’t know the fellow well, but he did know him, and the odds seemed against a chance meeting. And there was that other thing…

“Everyone thinks you’re dead, you know,” he said.

“I expect so,” Stephen replied. “The slinders did make off with me. But here I am, fit and well.” He did look well, Cazio thought, not dead at all. Although there was something about the way he spoke and carried himself that seemed very different.

“Well,” he said for lack of something better, “I’m glad you’re well. Did Aspar and Winna find you?” “Were they trying?”

“Yes. They went after you. That was the last I saw or heard of them.”

Stephen nodded, and his eyebrows pinched together for an instant. Then he smiled again.

“It’s good to have friends,” he said. “Where are you off to, Cazio?”