Lilith Saintcrow - The Bandit King

There was a movement at the door. I looked up, and Tinan di Rocham’s dark, boyish face appeared atop a ragamuffin’s collection of torn, ash-stained clothes. His swordhilt glinted, and his dusky eyes were ablaze with something other than his usual good humor. He studied me closely.

“Di Rocham.” I gave up trying to make my legs work. Strength would return as my body realized I was still its master. “You look terrible.”

His grin was a balm, and the shadow of manhood on him fled. “No more than you, Captain. I’m to guard you. But I would wager you’d take a bath and fresh clothes, and your word of honor you won’t stray can be your surety.”

You are too trusting, and if I meant harm you would be foolish to offer me an opening. “Straying is the last thing on my mind, di Rocham.” I considered him, taking stock of my strength—or the lack of it—one final time. “But you will have to help me stand.”

Tis a wonder what a shave and fresh garments will do for a man. Still, it may have been the six hours or so of sleeping like the dead, while the gods spun all our fates on a wheel and decided what to do next with us. I was shaken into wakefulness by di Rocham, who also looked much better for the application of hot water and clean cloth.

The city was quiet, the streets cleared and the fires merely smoke now. Despite last night’s chaos, the damage appeared moderate—as such things went. Di Rocham rode beside me, and any questioning produced the same piece of information: He had been told to take me to the stables, collect Arran and his own Guard gray, and convey me to the Main Gate. He must not have known more, and I saw Vianne’s hand in this particular fillip.

The sun beat down, late afternoon turning the white stone of Arcenne to soft tawny and the red tiles to sienna both burnt and raw; the clopping of hooves almost soporific as Tinan took a wandering route designed to avoid damaged streets. The mince pies the boy had brought me, swallowed quickly just after waking, sat uneasily behind my breastbone.

I teased out the implications of what I knew. Di Narborre and a parlay, perhaps not the first of such. How would they bring him or his envoy inside the walls? Who would his envoy be? And what plan was lodged in my Queen’s nimble brain?

She requires your presence to use it effectively.

There were stories of the Aryx, of course, but even in the secret archives the exact method of its usage was not put to paper. It was simply given from one monarch to the next—but the Seal had been sleeping since the time of Queen Toriane’s death.

The archives had much to say about King Fairlaine’s following madness and eventual suicide, but none of it concerned the Great Seal. Their son and Heir, Tiberius the Great, managed to keep the Seal’s slumber from common knowledge. Tiberius’s Left Hand was integral to that quasi-deception; it was his crafty assassinations of a few key Damarsene nobles that created enough confusion that Tiberius could wriggle out of war at the price of tribute paid to Damar. Which bled Arquitaine, true, but at least it kept her borders safe. Since the Angoulême had arrived with his army and the New Blessed to marry the Old, none had invaded.

At least, not with any success, the Blood Years notwithstanding. Those had been dark times, Damar and Hesse vying with the merchant princes of Tiberia’s fracturing principalities and Navarre’s glory-hungry Queen Ysabeau I and her cursed Consort to take bites from the apple of Arquitaine. Not to mention Arquitaine’s own nobles seeking to displace or marry the widowed Queen Jeliane. Di Halier had shepherded his Queen through those dark times, and sometimes I suspected that her Heir, King Henri I, who my own dead King had been named for, was di Halier’s instead of her Consort’s.

Di Halier had never written as much overtly, but…

History did not matter. What mattered was that Vianne, somehow, had wakened the Seal from its slumber. I did not think even she knew what she had done. The Seal frightened her, and well it should—she remarked once or twice that she did not use it, it simply worked through her. Being so used did not strike me as a comfortable event, especially when I saw her afterward, blank-faced, pale, needing careful chivvying to wake and warm her.

And to remind her of who she was.

My head was down as we rode, peripheral vision serving to keep me aware while I thought as deeply as I dared. Tinan hummed a courtsong, taking at face value my promise not to stray. Of course, I was the Captain. His habit of treating me as such had not yet eroded. What did the Guard know, and how could I turn that knowledge to my favor? Jierre, of course, might be lost; Vianne had no doubt worked her will thoroughly there and meant to use him as a balance to my own influence. And yet—

The square behind the Main Gate opened around us, and I looked up.

“Dear gods,” I breathed. Is she mad?

For the bracing behind the Gate had been cleared, and there was my Vianne, cloaked, on the same docile white palfrey. Adersahl di Parmecy beside her on his gray, and on a dark gelding to her right a familiar bruised face sat atop a stiff body. Fridrich van Harkke sat his horse like a nobleman and glowered at the Gate. Even a hedgewitch charming could not erase the damage I’d done to his face.

Serves you well. You were between me and my Queen, assassin. It was twice I had worsted him. The next time, gods willing, I would kill. He was far too dangerous to be allowed so close to her.

The other figure was a Messenger—Divris di Tatancourt, dark curls, a nobleman’s carriage, and his uniform freshly laundered. The killspell laid on him had not found its target, thanks to my Vianne, and he would no doubt be gratefully loyal. Or at least, so she obviously hoped.

My father was there too, on an ill-tempered black charger. The slim figure on my mother’s horse bent toward him, a last-minute conference.

Garonne di Narborre would not be entering the city.

She intended to sally forth to meet him.

“Do not trouble yourself, Baron.” Vianne’s face was set and remote. She did not seem to have slept, if the bruised circles of flesh under her eyes were any indication. The blue silk she wore bore the marks of my mother’s dressmaker, and her hair was braided simply.

Still, she was every inch the royal. Perhaps being locked underground had given me fresh eyes. Where had she acquired this look of brittle grace, this air of command? The woman I had married was an unwilling Queen at best. This d’mselle , her set, pale face as fine-carved as a classic Tiberian statue, was… something else.

My hands tightened on Arran’s reins. He tensed before I could master myself, and I let out a long slow breath.

“The more I think on it, the more I think it unwise—” My father’s objection was merely brushed aside. She raised one gloved hand, and the novel sight of Perseval d’Arcenne swallowing his words fair threatened to lay me flat with surprise.

“I told you not to trouble yourself, Baron. All will go well, especially if…” She broke off as we approached.

“I brought him!” Tinan di Rocham announced. Adersahl sighed, but twas the Pruzian I watched.

Fridrich van Harkke paid no attention to my presence. He gazed at the Gate with surpassing intensity, and with a jolt I realized he considered it the greater danger.

Though it rankled me to be counted less, it did not matter. A distracted man was easier to overpower. Let him, with a Pruzian’s arrogance, think me soft.

Though I would have thought I had taught him the truth of the matter earlier, before tossing him in the oublietta .