Emissary Page 5

  “You’ve thought this through, war with them.”

  Irritation bit at him. Was it not his duty as Prince to consider risks to his country? And as Night Lord, risks to her. “We cannot fight Monoea in a real war and win, Elena.”

  “Such talk is treason.”

  He pulled his hand from hers. “The truth is not treason, my Queen. Lying to you would be.”

  Her dark eyes drank in the light, vanishing it into their depths. In these abrupt moments, when she was more Queen than woman, peril shadowed her. Draken felt a sharp pang beneath his breast bone. Where had the mother of his child gone? The Elena he loved? He longed to touch her hair, to soothe her, but he didn’t dare try to break through that armor.

  Damned Monoeans, stealing her from him when they had so little time together. Common sense told him that the King Aissyth had no overt foul intent. He knew his cousin-King. Something, a reason that made sense, had driven him to attack Seakeep. But then, Draken bore the gods’ sword and hard lessons had taught him to ignore logic for instinct.

  “As you say.” Aye, her armor was strapped on tight, now. He wondered sometimes if he ever managed to really pry it off her. “Why would the Monoean King attack us?”

  He rose and crossed to a table to pour them both wine, not really wanting a drink but needing to buy time to shift to thinking like a Prince rather than a lover.

  King Aissyth was far from weak. But still … “This attack doesn’t strike me as King Aissyth’s way. There’s nothing in Father’s scrolls, nothing in recent history to anticipate this animosity. This season and last, trade has gone on as ever.” There, that must sound distant enough.

  “You think his lords masterminded the attack, then?”

  “I don’t know. That would indicate outright rebellion. The Landed are not autonomous as your High Houses are with their troops in Akrasia. The King controls all.”

  “An example I should perhaps follow.”

  Draken didn’t answer. That was her right, if she willed it. He would happily hand over command of his own Akrasian troops at Khein. Others of the nobility, perhaps not, especially now that most of her Council were dead, leaving a collection of young, unproved heirs.

  She smoothed her narrow hand over the coverlet and took the cup of wine he offered. “And what would you do to eliminate this threat, since we cannot fight them and win?”

  “As I said, offer terms. Find out what the King is about before we rush into battle again.” He wondered if she thought him craven as she studied him. She could order his ships to attack and there would be nothing he could do.

  “Fine. Greet their ships, then. Meet them and talk,” she said. “But commit to nothing. See to it personally.”

  He blinked and his mouth went dry. “Me?”

  “You are my Night Lord. In my absence, you are my voice. They must know you as such. They will abide by you. But heed me now. If they will not make terms, or if they attack again, then we must strike back with our full might. I would rather our people die free than live enslaved.”

  He bit down on mentioning the hundreds of slaves already in Akrasia and Brîn, though he was certain Oklai would have. “And the prisoners? They would make a pretty offer for terms.”

  “No. Kill them and offer their bodies to Khellian on a pyre. We need the gods’ favor far more than we need Monoea’s.”

  He’d heard of it, invoking old magic with barbaric, superstitious sacrifices. But he reckoned it pacified the people more than the gods. He swallowed the news of the guerrilla strikes he’d ordered that morning on the grounded Monoeans, and that their own ships were outnumbered in the Bay. He simply bowed his head and strode away, frustrated and knowing she was right.

  This attack needed a sharp retort, but he was still loathe to kill the prisoners straightaway. He could learn things about why they attacked if there was a commander among them. His feet carried him to the courtyard. The day was stretching longer, nearing evening, though still warm. All this fighting and talking and bathing … he should crave a meal and sleep but what he craved more was escape.

  After bidding a slave to ready horses, he found Tyrolean in the temple. The captain knelt before Zozia’s altar, a sheer white cowl obscuring his features. When Draken had stood for a few breaths and the captain didn’t acknowledge him, he walked closer, silent on his bare feet, and dipped his fingers in Khellian’s bowl of blood. He kissed them, tasting metallic salt as if he’d licked his sword blade, and sketched a rough Eye on the bare skin over his heart. It couldn’t hurt.

  Tyrolean pushed back his white cowl and got to his feet. “Your Highness.”

  “I want to question the prisoners. Will you come?”

  “I thought you were meant to kill them.”

  He sighed. “We had this conversation before, Captain.”

  “Aye. We did.”

  Draken glanced around at the temple, avoiding Tyrolean’s gaze. It was peaceful, made of the purest white stone quaried in Felspirn. Water ran over Ma’Vanni’s icon, softening the bright paint and trickling over stones and shells at her feet. Tyrolean spent a lot of time in here. Mostly alone. There was the priest also, but he was old and creased, with his tender hands and worn voice.

  “She didn’t say when,” Draken said. “She didn’t say immediately. Come.”

  He turned and led Tyrolean back to the horses. His szi nêre waited with horses of their own. “Are you bloody mind-readers?” Draken asked Halmar.

  “The stableboy informed Seneschal Thom of your request for horses.”

  He mounted Sky, who snorted and tossed her reins. “There are dozens of orchestrations that go on inside the Citadel without my knowing, isn’t there, Halmar?”

  A slight smile tugged at the szi nêre comhanar’s pierced lips. “Hundreds, Khel Szi.”

  The door to the great hall of Seakeep had been pried open like the tower door, hanging off great black hinges like a broken tooth. Inside, the Monoeans sat chained to each other. Draken had been wrong in his count. Two dozen faces tipped up as he stopped inside the door to let his gaze adjust. Bruising mottled their skin. Blood and grime dirtied their grey under-padding. Armor, glittering a little where the dull grey paint had been scratched away to reveal bare shiny metal, made an untidy pile in a corner. The seaxes and other weapons were stacked more neatly. Draken’s eyes narrowed. He’d ordered Brînians guard them and wondered what had happened to that. Elena?

  One Escort was testing the weight of a seax, whipping it through the air. Another grinned as he watched. “I wouldn’t give that to my girl for a Sohalia trinket,” he said.

  Draken cleared his throat. “She could do fair worse for a weapon. Many of my soldiers died by them this day.”

  The Escorts snapped to, fists to chests. “Night Lord!”

  Next to him, Tyrolean drew breath as if to speak. Draken held up a hand to stop him from admonishing the Escorts to call him Highness. He liked them calling him Lord. Made him feel closer to the action.

  “Sixty-four, to be precise,” one of the Monoeans said. His pale hair was grey with dust and clipped tight to his head as Draken’s used to be. An altogether practical custom most Akrasians and Brinians eschewed. And now Draken, as well, though his locks were tied back from his face.

  The accuracy caught Draken off guard. He’d known, of course. He reported to the Queen after all. Either someone had been talking in front of the prisoners or this Monoean had eluded capture long enough to make his own count. The latter, by the looks of him. Older than the others and sharp-eyed. He had a thick black smudge on his forehead. All the prisoners did.

  Draken acknowledged him with a slight dip of his chin. The Escorts’ eyes widened. But thirty years of Monoean military protocol was a tough habit to break, and courtesy cost little when spent on a dead man.

  “Your name, Comhanar?”

  The Monoean didn’t balk at the Brinish. “Laran Kupsyr, Your Highness. For that is who you are, yes? The magical Brinian Prince?” Not a trace of disdain tinged his voice. By the god
s, he was really asking.

  And Draken knew him—or rather, the name. He was part of a Landed family, not a minor one. But the son of an important Landed lord should be attending his King at court and fussing at politics, not killing Akrasians and Brinians on a tradeseason morning. Aching tension settled deep in his bones. The man was military; the crispness of his tone, the capable hands laced with caluses. Zozia’s Name, what had driven him to take up the sword? Certainly nothing good. And how was Draken to find out without betraying all he knew and how he knew it? He could think of one way, but it left a foul taste on the tongue.

  “May I see it? The gods’ sword?” Kupsyr asked.

  For long thudding heartbeats Draken didn’t breathe.

  “Reckon it’ll be the last thing you see,” the mouthy Escort said.

  Draken cleared his throat again, felt annoyed with its spindly sound. “Halmar. Unchain Commander Kupsyr and bring him.”

  His szi nêre moved to act, though the order was outside their duties. Tyrolean moved to follow.

  Draken lowered his voice. “No, Ty. See to a proper place to execute them—outside somewhere, and private. No point in more mess. The slaves are overwhelmed as it is. I’ll be back shortly.”

  He made Kupsyr climb the many steps to the wall overlooking the sea. The Monoean stumbled once, his chains still binding his arms behind his back. Halmar hauled him to his feet, twisting his arms awkwardly. The man gasped in pain. At the top, the siz nêre released him and stepped back.

  The two men stood together at the sea wall, for all purposes alone. Mists chilled Draken despite his armor and cloak and must have dampened Kupsyr to the skin through his sweaty, quilted armor padding. It was a long time before either spoke.

  “Are these your slaves?” Kupsyr gestured behind them.

  “My guards. Szi nêre. Landless warriors, blooded all. Sworn, not enslaved.” This he said with no little pride. His guards were arguably the finest soldiers in Brîn and Akrasia.

  Kupsyr grunted. “You’re going to kill us.”

  “Those are my orders.”

  “Fair enough. Ma’Vanni knows the kings have held us separate from the gods’ will long enough. May Ma’Vanni keep us.”

  His little speech sounded just as Thom had said. “You disagree with the King’s Decree.” Not King Aissyth’s decree, Aissyth’s father’s. Though it had been Aissyth who eradicated slavery.

  “That law calls magic heresy,” Kupsyr said. “And yet, here you stand with a magic sword and orders to execute your prisoners.”

  Draken raised his brows. “You’re a rebel, then?”

  “Disagreement does not make rebellion.”

  But it was the first stone on the damned road. Draken just looked at him.

  Kupsyr shook his head, impatient. “Magic is the gods’ will, manifest. You’re proof of that. You and that sword.”

  Draken’s hand strayed to the hilt, fingers playing with the loose bit of leather wrap. “How did you hear of Seaborn?” Let’s see how much you know. He didn’t disappoint. “It’s all over Sevenfel. The new Prince with the magic sword Ahken Khel. The Prince who stopped a civil war between Brîn and Akrasia and won the heart of the Queen.”

  Draken turned and leaned on the seawall, staring out into the mists. “Why did you attack us this morning?”

  Kupsyr remained silent, but a deep frown creased his face. Out here in the light, such as it was, dirt and blood splatters shone in stark relief against his pale skin and hair.

  Draken sighed and gave up on the Brînish. He lowered his voice and switched to Monoean. “You are the commander of these troops, sir?”

  “What’s left of them,” Kupsyr said with a wry twist of his lips before his expression cleared. Draken guessed he’d been coached in case of capture.

  “I have heard the Monoean nobility is granted some provision for disagreeing with orders, if the reasoning behind them is suspect.” But did that hold true with taking orders from a rebel lord? And which Landed dared go against the King?

  “I never said I disagreed with the orders to attack, nor the reasoning,” Kupsyr said.

  Unease swelled in Draken’s belly like grain-bread soaked in wine. “Who is your liege, since it is clearly not King Aissyth?” A tightlipped frown was Kupsyr’s only answer.

  “I know something of your culture, as you obviously know something of mine. You wear nothing to show you’re someone important.” And yet, I know by your name you are. “If you cooperate, I might be able to strike a deal.”

  “For?” Rough, grudging.

  “The manner of your death. I think we can do better than cutting some minor veins and stringing you on this cliffwall to bleed out down the stones for half a sevennight, eh?” He was irked and impatient enough to follow through with it, too. Questioning this man was a gamble, and Draken was losing.

  “Speak to Captain Yramantha. She’s got more information and more to gain from your cooperation than I.”

  Yramantha. The same who had dumped Draken unceremoniously into Khein Bay, carrying out his sentence of exile.

  “What does my cooperation have to do with it?” Draken asked.

  “Important people want to meet you, to know how you come by this sword and by the magic. How you turned a godless country into a righteous one.”

  Righteous? Brîn? His gaze flicked to Halmar’s impassive form, cloaked by shadow. “Meet me? You could fool wise Zozia with your actions, and you certainly fooled me. It seemed your troops fair meant to kill me.”

  “And yet you did not die for all our trying.”

  Draken snorted. “And how will they use the information, these important people?”

  “To overthrow the King and reinstate holy law.”

  The King—his cousin. Even though he’d been disowned, they were still family. Draken didn’t disdain the gods enough to taunt their anger by going against his own blood. This was all much, much worse than he thought. And he still didn’t quite understand how he and Brîn played into it. But at least Kupsyr had given him a taste of what he was up against.

  “Is that all you’ve to say, then?”

  Kupsyr gave a tight nod.

  “I do not condone much of the gods’ actions, but I dare not tempt their anger by going back on a parley. We have made terms. I will abide. How will you die?”

  A brief hesitation, his chin lifted. “On the edge of your sword.”

  “Do you need time to pray?”

  “My actions are my prayers. I have done what I came to do.”

  “Which was to kill my people? To start a war?”

  “To bring you back to Monoea. For where you go, Your Highness, the gods surely follow.”

  … back to Monoea. There it was. Kupsyr knew Draken’s past, knew who he was. He had to put a stop to this before it went a breath further. But before he could draw his sword, a breathless Brînian runner appeared on the stairs and dropped to a knee.

  Gods, what now? What was so imperative it couldn’t wait until he finished executing this man? “Speak.”

  “A visitor at the Citadel, Khel Szi. The message said ‘ghost’.”

  Imperative, indeed. He waved the messenger away, and when his footsteps faded, he nodded to Halmar, who came forward and pushed Kupsyr to his knees. Draken detected a tremble running through the Monoean at the whispered hiss Seaborn made as it emerged from its scabbard. The faint glow of godslight shone in the depths of the blade. Or a reflection of sunlight peering through the misty clouds. Draken didn’t look up to check.

  “May the will of the Seven become the will of all,” Kupsyr said.

  Halmar held Kupsyr upright with his big hands as Draken slid the blade into the Monoean’s shoulder at an angle, just behind Kupsyr’s collarbone, sheathing Seaborn within flesh and bone and heart. Kupsyr’s eyes widened and his head lolled back. Bloody spittle bubbled over his lips. He gasped and sprayed a fine mist with his last breath. His slumping body put his full weight on the sword, twisting Draken’s arm awkwardly. Fools all, he should have wi
thdrawn it straightaway.

  But he hadn’t, and the blade didn’t come free as easily as it had slid in. He had to twist it and wrench it free of the slumped, limp body. A slick coat of crimson heartblood concealed its godslight and spread in a gleaming pool over the flagstones on the battlement.

  “String him up on the wall so the Monoeans can have a look at him.” His voice was rough. He cleared his throat. “Then we’ll start on the rest.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Draken strode into his private quarters, stripping his blood-stained cloak from his bare back and tossing it to Kai. “Go.” The slave boy bowed his way out. Draken waited for the outer doors to close. All remained silent. A gentle sea-stained breeze drifted in through the balcony doors and the place smelled fresh with flowers, though not enough to cover his own stink of death. He must remember to have some flowers sent to Elena’s room.

  “We’re alone,” he said to the empty room. His voice echoed off the bright tiled surfaces. “Show yourself, Ghost.”

  The slightest of rustlings and Aarinnaie Szirin of Brîn, royal assassin and Draken’s half-sister emerged from the thick waxy leaves of an Oscher tree outside the open shutters leading to his sitting room balcony. She lowered the hood of her long-sleeved tunic, brushed the excess bark from her palms, and gave him a veiled smile before executing a slow, perfect curtsy worthy of any High Court in the world.

  Mud caked her worn leather boots. Grey bark and white riverbank dust streaked her dark clothes. Her nails were ragged and black with dirt. A Gadye must have braided her long black curls into a hundred thin plaits—a curious affectation, that—but several curly strands had escaped around her face. She reeked of sweat and horse.

  Draken poured her wine. He tore a few fragrant herbs from the brightly painted cache pot on the sideboard to drop into her flagon and gave it to her. “What’s gone wrong now?”

  She took the drink and said with faint amusement, “Politics suits you, brother. You’re as abrupt and cynical as any lord I’ve ever met.”

  “It’s not every night you track dirt on my rug, Aarinnaie.” He waited, arms crossed, while she drained the cup.