DAVID COE - Seeds of Betrayal

“Of course I’m well,” Carden said, looking away. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“You seem uneasy. And I heard of the surgeon’s execution. You’re certain everything is all right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the king said. He cast a dark glance at the minister. “It’s none of your concern.”

“Very well.”

They lapsed into a silence, the king watching Pronjed, whose pale yellow eyes flitted around the room like a sparrow, coming to rest at last on Orvinti’s crystal dagger.

“That’s a fine blade the duke brought,” he said.

“Yes, it is.”

“Pick it up.”

Before he knew what he had done, the king held the dagger in his hand.

“You’ve ordered the servants away for the night?”

He wanted to lie, or better yet, to call the servants back to the hall, but all he could do was nod. “Yes.”

“Good. Tell me what you and the duke discussed.”

“He wanted to talk about Chago,” the king said, unable to stop himself. “He wanted to know whether I had him killed, or if I thought it was the Qirsi.”

Carden struggled to his feet. He didn’t know what the minister was doing to him, but he had to get out of the hall.

“Sit down.”

He sat.

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. Either way I look like a fool.”

Pronjed smiled, the shadows in the hall making his thin face look almost cadaverous. “True. Turn the blade around.”

He tried to fight the Qirsi’s will, but his hands seemed to belong to someone else, someone who now had a blade aimed at his heart.

“The surgeon said you’d have no heir, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I thought as much. Does anyone else know?”

“Not yet.”

“Not even the queen?”

“No.” The king tore his eyes from the point of the blade to look at the minister. “Why are you doing this?”

“For my people, of course. For the Weaver.”

“But why does he want me…?” He licked his lips. “What have I done?”

“Nothing. But you have no heir, and so Aneira will suffer. And by having the surgeon killed today, you made it so easy.” Pronjed stood and stepped away from the table. “Do it.”

He tried to resist. Ean knew how hard he tried. But his hands were no longer his own. He strained to take control of his body, reaching for his hands with his mind, summoning all the strength he thought he possessed. But none of it was enough against the magic of his Qirsi. He could only watch, despairing and utterly helpless, as he plunged the dagger into his own chest.

The duke had them up early the next morning, which dawned grey and cold, the air damp from a late-night rain. Fetnalla knew that Brail wished to be back in Orvinti for the celebration of Bohdan’s Night, the Night of Two Moons in Bohdan’s Turn, which was only five nights away. If they left that morning, they’d just make it, barring an early snow in the wood.

The duke had returned to his quarters shortly after she did the night before, offering a brief word of greeting to the guard standing by their rooms as he opened his door. The minister heard him from within her chamber and briefly considered going to speak with him. She still wondered why he had come to Solkara, though she had some idea, and she hoped that perhaps, having spoken with Carden, her duke would be ready to confide in her again. She had reached her door, and was resting her hand on the handle, when the memory of his harsh words on the road to the city stopped her.

Since the death of the duke of Bistari, she had noticed a rift forming between them, and with all that happened the day before, it had grown into a chasm. Astounded though she was by the speed with which their rapport had crumbled, she had no doubt as to the cause.

“I will not be spoken to that way,” he had said, “especially not by a Qirsi.”

Never before had he said such a thing to her or made her feel that the color of her eyes mattered to him beyond the powers it gave her to serve him. Certainly he had never given her the impression that he feared her.

Somehow, the murder in Bistari had made Brail suspicious of her, perhaps of all Qirsi.

In a sense, his refusal to answer her questions about this journey to see the king told her precisely why they had come. Her duke knew of the conspiracy, and while she hadn’t thought him bold enough to take such action, Fetnalla suspected that he had come to Solkara to ask the king directly if he had ordered Chago’s assassination. She would have given nearly anything to know Garden’s answer.

Unfortunately, the morning found Brail as withdrawn as he had been the previous day. Aside from instructing her to gather Orvinti’s soldiers in the castle courtyard and have the stable hands prepare the horses, he said nothing to her. He barely even looked her in the eye.

When all was ready for their departure, Brail led Fetnalla toward the king’s hall, intending to find Carden and Chofya, thank them for their hospitality, and bid them farewell. They were still in the courtyard, however, when the bells in the castle’s cloister abruptly began to toll, the sound echoing loudly among the stone walls. Almost immediately, the king’s guards swarmed into the courtyard, surrounding the men of Orvinti and demanding that they drop their swords.

“What is this?” Brail asked, striding toward one of the older men, who wore a captain’s star on each shoulder.

“My apologies, Lord Orvinti,” the man said. “I know only what I was told by the archminister.”

“And what was that?”

“That I was to raise the alarm and then find you and your men.” He glanced at Fetnalla, who had followed only a step behind the duke. “The minister, too.”

“You don’t know why?”

“No, my lord.”

Brail glanced back at Fetnalla, a question in his pale blue eyes.

“You say this came from the archminister?” she asked the captain.

“Yes.”

“Where’s the king?”

“The king is dead,” came a voice from behind them.

Fetnalla and the others turned to see Pronjed walking toward them, accompanied by perhaps twenty more guards. His white hair fell unbound to his shoulders and his face looked wan and lean. Wrapped as he was in a fur-collared cape, he looked like some yellow-eyed buzzard from the southern moors.

“Ean save us all,” Brail whispered.

“How did he die?” Fetnalla asked, shuddering slightly, as if Bian had brushed her cheek with a frigid hand.

“It would seem that he took his own life,” the archminister said. “Though I find that difficult to believe.” He faced the duke. “He used the crystal blade that you gave him last night.”

All the color drained from Brail’s face, leaving it as white as Fetnalla’s hair. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed.

“Are you?” Pronjed asked. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me what you and the king discussed last night. What did you say to him that would make him do something like this?”

“Nothing that I can think of,” the duke said, looking past the minister toward the windows of the great hall.

“What was it that brought you to Solkara, Lord Orvinti? What did you and the king talk about?”

Before Brail could answer, Fetnalla laid a hand on his arm and pointed toward the doorway at the base of the cloister tower. The queen was there, stepping into the courtyard with the prelate. He held one of her hands, and had his other arm around her waist as if he were supporting her. But it almost seemed to Fetnalla that she led him, and that he was the more frail of the two. Chofya’s face looked pale, but her cheeks were dry and her eyes clear. If she had been weeping, she hid it well. She still wore her bed robe, which she pulled tightly around her shoulders, and her dark hair was still tangled with sleep.