Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

Reason. Assurance. Command. Of a sudden this mad parley felt grounded in something more than terror.

“I am the rightful High King of Navronne, whether anyone beyond this room ever understands that or not, and you will stand or fall by my will.”

“You are a crippled whelp who knows nothing of warfare.” Bayard spat the brave words, but held his position in the place his half-brother had indicated. He must be at the end of all recourse.

Osriel raised a hand in warning. “I am allowing myself to believe that the two of you have been stupid and blind these three years, rather than vile and malicious, and that your excesses have been as misreported as my own deeds. Either we work together to salvage this mess you’ve made, or you can walk out of here this moment. As for the fool who attempts to touch my gold without my consent, I will take his eyes living from his head and hold his soul captive in everlasting torment. Choose, brothers. For Navronne. For our father, who foolishly believed in all of us.”

A seething Bayard, his complexion the hue of bloomed poppies, whirled and strode away. I was certain he would broach the door, but instead he circled the refectory. Perryn lifted his chin, sneering as if ready to defy both brothers, but glanced at the ceiling, peopled by writhing shades, shuddered, and dropped his head again. Osriel waited. I held my breath.

Halfway between his brothers and the door, Bayard slowed, growling with resentful fury. “What do you propose? I concede nothing until I’ve heard your plan.”

Osriel flicked his ringed hand toward me. “Magnus, tell me: Is your brother trustworthy? I will send him out if you say.”

Max stiffened as if one of Silos’s firebolts had fused his spine. Not the least hint of a smirk appeared on either half of his face. For a pureblood adviser to be dismissed in a negotiation accounted him as useless to his master. If report spread of such a thing, it could ruin Max.

Past grievance, childish pride, and my every base instinct gloated in such opportunity. Yet, for some reason surpassing all speculation, my brother and I stood at a nexus of Navronne’s history. My master, who astonished and mystified me more by the moment, required me to offer a fair measure of a man I scarcely knew. And I’d begun to think I’d best heed the Bastard’s wishes. Petty vengeance had no place here.

“My brother is not and has never been my friend, Lord Prince,” I said. “Neither has he been my enemy save in the petty strife of family and as a danger to my freedom in my years away from my family. I have encountered him only briefly as a man, thus I can say nothing of his honor or his moral strength. But he has ever supported and embraced the strictures of pureblood life. Thus I believe he would do nothing to the detriment of his bound master. In any matter of contractual obligation, I would trust him completely.”

“Good enough. He stays.” Osriel’s brisk assent near sucked the words from my mouth before I could speak them. He nodded to Bayard. “Here is what I propose, brother: Send your pureblood back to Sila Diaglou. Tell her you accept her terms.”

“What?” Bayard bellowed.

The green shoots of hope that had sprung up so unexpectedly in the past hour were sheared off in an instant. The Harrower priestess had plunged a stake through Boreas’s gut, reciting her blasphemous incantations: sanguiera, orongia, vazte, kevrana—bleed, suffer, die, purify. And then she had licked my old comrade’s blood from her fingers. I struggled to hold my position without trembling.

“Great Kemen preserve!” said Perryn, looking as if he would be sick. The blond prince backed toward the door. “You can’t do that, you twisted, depraved—”

“Have your man say that your brother Perryn is already forfeit because of his treasonous looting of Navronne’s treasury and his forgery of our father’s will.” Osriel pressed forward, his words harsh, decisive, shivering the air. “Have him report that your bastard brother is mad and can be persuaded to yield his land, his pureblood, and the secret of the library. Set a meeting with the woman and use it to haggle with her over the gold and apportioning of Evanore—she will never believe you would concede it all. Let her think she is going to win, while you control the damage as you can. At the last, settle for the best deal you can make, with the stipulation that her legions enter Evanore at Caedmon’s Bridge and attack my hold at Renna on the winter solstice. Tell her that I submit myself to Magrog at Dashon Ra each year at midnight on the winter solstice; thus my magic will be at an ebb.”

“And then?” Bayard growled in contempt and snatched Perryn’s sleeve, before the cowering prince could run away.

“Either the joined might of Eodward’s sons defeats her, or the world we know will end.”

The simplicity of this declaration left Bayard speechless. My head spun; my stomach lurched at the speed of events. Even Max’s mouth hung open.

“Osriel, you are mad,” said Bayard, recovering his wits sooner than my brother or I. “And I must be mad to listen to you. Yet Father’s writ claims—Tell me this, Bastard. What do you do with dead men’s eyes?”

The challenge echoed from the vaults as if the hideous beings dancing there had joined in the question. I wanted to cry out in chorus, “Yes, yes, tell us.”

“Ask first of Sila Diaglou how long she plans to let you rule,” said Osriel with such quiet menace as to raise the hair on my arms. “Bring me her truthful answer, and I’ll give mine.”

Osriel uncurled one slender hand to reveal a white ball of light, pursed his lips, and blew on it. A shivering lance of power split the air between Max and Bayard, causing Perryn to yelp and crouch into a ball at Bayard’s feet. “This will keep our brother quiet for the nonce. Lock him up safely, where no one can harm him. I’ll send a messenger to your headquarters in Palinur on the anniversary of Father’s coronation. At that time, you can inform me of the outcome of your negotiations, and I’ll notify you of any change in plan.”

Perryn pawed at his mouth and tongue in a wordless, animal frenzy I recognized. Poor, stupid wretch. How many words did his tongue-block forbid?

Bayard folded his arms and stared boldly at the man in the green hood, reclaiming something of the pride he had brought into the hall, but little of the arrogance. “You wear Father’s ring. I assumed this sniveling twit had stolen it from his dead finger, then feared to wear it publicly.”

Osriel’s slim fingers caressed the gold band. “Father gave it to me the night he died. Believe that or not as you choose. Perhaps I stole it. Perhaps my devilish magic twisted his mind.”

Testing. All of this was testing. Would Bayard believe? Would he accept what was offered or balk in arrogance, in self-deception, in fear? Would I? For I could not shake the notion that all of this was my test as well. Osriel had no need of me in this confrontation. I brought no power, no prestige, no insight that such a perceptive mind could not have come up with on its own. Yet a man of such well-considered purposes would not have me here without specific intent. Perhaps it was only to witness a kind of power I had known but twice in my life: in an abbey garden when an abbot had peered into my soul and found it worthy of his trust, and long ago beside a battlefield cook fire, when these princes’ father had shared his love of Navronne with a youthful pikeman.

After a moment, Bayard shook his head. “Father’s writ purports to explain why he chose you over me. Reading it, I heard his voice as clear as if he spoke to me aloud. ’Twas the Ardran hierarch showed me the thing, and I destroyed his chamber after. Had the Karish peacock shitting his robes, I did, naming him a cheat and a forger, as mad as you to believe our father wrote such lies about a crippled weakling.”