Enemy Read online

  “With the coins pressed in the past few moonturns, you’ll be known by sight in the city better than ever before,” Tyrolean said for about the tenth time. Draken clung to his patience.

  Makes it a bit of a trick getting out, Bruche intoned.

  “But that’s not the worst of it,” Tyrolean said.

  “No. That would be Halmar and Konnon and all my loyal szi nêre and servants rotting on the walls they once protected.”

  Tyrolean and Aarinnaie exchanged glances as if they’d discussed who would say this bit. Tyrolean cleared his throat. “Ilumat has declared Elena officially dead. He says he has proof.”

  “Her body?” Draken asked, sharp.

  Tyrolean shook his head. “No one knows for certain.”

  Draken’s shoulders sank. The hole in his gut widened. Proof. And Ilumat would be known as the one who had searched and found it rather than Draken. Her consort, her Night Lord. Her Prince had not found her. The Akrasians would have another reason to reject Draken. As if they needed one.

  You were a bit busy running the country and fighting a war, never mind Elena is alive.

  Now you’re on Truls’s side.

  He has no reason to lie.

  The Moonlings never came forward with anything. He’d supposed they would, if only to throw it in his face. But there’d been no word at all. No sign of them. According to scouts, the woods up the mountains were a mess of icy ash and tree carcasses. Not a trace of Moonlings left. I should have gone back for her. Searched for her.

  “We can’t trust Ilumat,” Aarinnaie said. “If you don’t know, there’s no way for him to know.”

  Draken sighed. “Ilumat’s lands are at the foot of the Agrian Range. It is not a difficult thing to climb up and look from there.”

  “It is upland from Skyhaven some distance,” Tyrolean pointed out.

  “But fair closer to the mountains and Auwaer than Brîn,” Draken said. Close enough Ilumat could search and have access to the Royal Escorts in Auwaer, could gain their trust and loyalty by proximity and pretty words. And he hadn’t been busy running a country at war. The thought left a bitter taste. That had all been for naught.

  Aarinnaie put her hands on her hips. “You have that look like you’re about to say something that’s going to make me smack you. What?”

  “Ilumat is young, inexperienced, ambitious. None of those are evil qualities. Does that make him wrong for Akrasia in Elena’s absence? I don’t know. He is her cousin.”

  “How can you not know? He took Brîn.”

  “If I had been a better prince, I would have held the city.”

  She snorted and shook her head, hands on her hips.

  “He’s ambitious enough to have murdered everyone of importance at the Citadel,” Tyrolean said. “He’s young enough to trust the Monoeans over his own countrymen. And inexperienced enough to think erasing centuries of House Khel rule is good for Brîn and Akrasia. The nature of a man does not destroy countries; his evil actions do.”

  “He’s just another Akrasian. He may be no worse or better than the rest.”

  Tyrolean stiffened but Aarinnaie went on, fists clenched. “Elena’s father conquered Brîn. He took Akhen Khel and killed the szi nêre and prominent bloodlords. He killed our grandfather and sent our father into slavery. He drove our people into Blood Bay like animals. Ilumat is no worse or better than his uncle; that’s what Akrasians are.”

  Tyrolean shook his head slowly, his face drawn. “I cannot excuse all that, but I do know the King intended to leave Brîn as a mostly autonomous principality because he knew to do otherwise would destabilize the city and trade—bad for both Akrasia and Brîn. The intention was to place your father on the throne here. A fresh start with a new generation. But your father ran, disappeared to Monoea.”

  Aarinnaie’s eyes narrowed. “To be captured and sold into slavery.”

  Tyrolean was shaking his head. “Princess, you can’t believe all he told you—”

  “Father was craven,” Draken said firmly. “He was enslaved because he ran.”

  Aarinnaie glared at him. “And you’re just like him, aren’t you? A slave as he was? And now craven?”

  “No. He was born in honor and threw it away. I was cursed from birth.” His jaw was tight, his fingers gripped his sword hilt. “But I am no less Khel Szi.”

  She stared at him. He huffed a breath, and another, nostrils flared. She had watched his mother die by his hand, a woman unapologetic for sleeping with one slave and for birthing another. She had been the victim too, of culture and damned royal pride. He pried his fingers free of the hilt. This argument was getting them nowhere.

  “It’s all changed now. Sikyra—” He swallowed. “I want her to have a life. Maybe Ilumat as King is a way to give her that.”

  “All respect, Your Highness,” Tyrolean said. “Sikyra is Princess, the rightful Queen if Elena is dead. As your life is not your own, nor is hers. You must protect her, not from the throne, but for it.”

  Listen to the Captain. Better for you to take back your power. Only then can you truly protect her.

  Damn them. He fingered Sikyra’s toy horse. “As you say, I’m known now. So how do I move about the city freely?”

  “First, cut your hair.” Aarinnaie met his gaze levelly, daring him to argue.

  Customary during mourning, which was why he hadn’t done. Cutting his hair would be publically admitting Elena was dead.

  Ah, but you are not such a public person at the moment.

  Draken nodded. “Agreed.”

  “Good. We need to make you look like you’re a rogue mercenary again. Shouldn’t be too difficult, eh?” A humorless smile and Aarinnaie strode toward the door. “I’ll be back.”

  Draken pulled his knife from his belt and flipped it in his hand so it presented hilt-first. “It falls to you to corrupt me, Captain.”

  Tyrolean snorted softly. “I am a poor substitute for Aarinnaie, but I’ll do my best.”

  * * *

  Aarinnaie returned with a bundle so heavy she fetched Tyrolean to carry it up the steps. Beads of rain dotted her damp cloak, and she dragged in a blast of cold and the thick scent of wet wool. “Dark in here, isn’t it? Light a damned lantern.”

  “He made me put it out,” Tyrolean said.

  Draken rubbed his newly shorn head, grey-threaded locks scattered about his boots. The cool air against his neck felt familiar as a sharp blade. Tyrolean had also thinned and shaped his beard to the recent local style, low along his jaw and fuller around his mouth. Aarinnaie eyed Draken speculatively. “Tyrolean can have an alternate trade as a barber if rebelling doesn’t work out.”

  “His blades are impeccably sharp,” Draken answered. Thank the gods for his steady hand.

  She tipped her chin at the clinking bundle Tyrolean had hefted into the room and dumped onto the cot, which swayed dangerously under the burden.

  Draken rolled his eyes after untying the sack and peering in. It smelled of damp metal and old sweat. “Chainmail?” Poor man’s armor, and the shirt had patches of rust and several broken links.

  “You can’t go about in expensive leathers and plate. It’s a dead giveaway you’ve got coin, that you’re associated with the Citadel. If you’d only go bare-chested like a proper bloodlord …”

  “I’m not a proper bloodlord or anything like it,” Draken growled.

  “He can’t,” Tyrolean said reasonably. “If he takes a cut he’ll heal. We can’t explain that away.”

  “Right. So I got you these.” She shifted the bag with some difficulty, Tyrolean grabbing the end. Chainmail and other items poured out: a moth-eaten gambeson, a tatty cloak, a worn, serviceable woolen shirt. “The Captain is right, by the way.”

  Tyrolean raised his eyebrows at Draken. “About?”

  “As I waited for the shirt to be repaired I drank an ale at the inn next door. The taleteller there spoke of your healing ability.” A mirthless laugh. “There are quite the load of stories about your escape circulating. Some t
hink you can fly. Others think you can turn bodiless, like a ghost.”

  Draken shook his head, failing to see the humor. Especially with Truls’s filmy gaze on him. Ghosts were real and no joke. His perspective shifted as Bruche pushed forward into his consciousness and turned his head to look at Aarinnaie. She was lighting a lantern. He forced his head away as the fire flared.

  “But one I heard seemed to know you went through the tombs.” She ran her tongue along her top teeth. “They must have interrogated Halmar or Konnon before—Well. Anyway. These are the best I could do on short notice.”

  “No. Osias said the men who helped me enter the tombs were captured and hanged in the square.” Draken undid the laces on his shirt. “I assume there is a reward for my capture.”

  Aarinnaie nodded. “One hundred rare, alive. Fifty, dead.”

  How does it feel to know you’re hardly worth keeping a bloodlord in wine for a year?

  It doesn’t matter. A hundred rare would be enough for many people.

  Aarinnaie studied him, hands on her hips. “The beard fair helps, but it’s not enough. Someone will recognize you.”

  “It’s not to be helped,” Tyrolean said. “It’s cold and damp out. Wear your hood up.”

  “Inside?” Aarinnaie shook her head. “No. He needs something rather more drastic.”

  Draken wasn’t sure what. Osias wasn’t here to glamour him, and while ink was fine for war and had fooled the Monoeans for a little while when he’d had to go back there as an emissary, he couldn’t walk about Brîn done up for battle.

  Aarinnaie squatted to poke up the fire. The coals glared at Draken like the eyes of a bane. He turned his head away, squinting, to find Tyrolean watching him.

  “Regardless of disguise, I need to see the Citadel.” Draken pulled his shirt off and reached for the gambeson. It smelled worse out of the bag, but the fit was all right.

  “Are you mad?” His sister gaped at him.

  “Likely. But it’s something I must do.”

  He let Tyrolean help him on with the mail shirt. Tyrolean buckled it up the back for him. Again, the fit was decent, but its weight would take a little getting used to.

  “It’s too dangerous.” She swallowed. “And you don’t need that in your head. You shouldn’t remember them this way.”

  He had seen death before, aplenty. Countless men screaming on the end of his blade, pierced by his arrows. His father strung from Seakeep’s gates. His wife hanging from a gamehook, gutted and bled out like a stag. He cast a glare toward Truls, who had arranged for her death, had taken her blood and used it to bring him here. “I do, actually. I must know what I’m up against.”

  He finished dressing, buckled his sword around his waist, and strode out into the damp daylight. The alleyway off the entrance was deserted but for rubbish caught in corners. Truls ranged ahead. Tyrolean had his hood up, and Draken followed suit. Even the meager light filtering through the thick clouds made him squint. Aarinnaie fell far enough behind to act as rearguard if needed.

  You’re going to have to do something about your vision.

  The air felt chill and harsh against his skin, the dim light hot on his eyes.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Eidola. The mountains, jagged shards of stone plunged into the low-slung clouds, flashed through his vision before he had to lower his gaze. The lower edges were clear and sharp enough he could fair imagine them drawing blood from the skies. It would be misty at the gatehouse to the realm of the unsettled dead, the sort of cold that seeps into bones. That damp air couldn’t be good for Sikyra’s illness. Had Osias managed to get her there by now? Was she crying for him? Did the Mance frighten her? She’d be missing her toy. His hand fell to finger the carved horse through the soft leather of his belt pouch. If he had only kept his daughter, he still would have the chance to disappear with her, make a life somewhere without all this danger and politics. He knew ships and the sea; he could have paid for a berth working as crew. They could be nations away within moonturns.

  Draken almost stumbled over someone in his way, opened his mouth to apologize, but the younger man flicked his gaze over him, muttered an apology, and trotted out of his way. He was sundry, paler skin than Draken’s with reddish Brînian locks, and smaller than Draken by half a head. A metal band encircled his neck. A slave then, on some errand for his master. Others skirted them as he stared after the slave. If Sikyra were captured … someone might enslave her because of her lighter skin mixed with her tight black curls. A pretty girl like her could be raised up for a brothel, make her masters a fortune …

  “My lord.” Tyrolean, voice quiet, hand steady on Draken’s arm.

  Draken swallowed the bile rising in his throat and forced himself to walk. Even under the shadow of his hood, he couldn’t look up much without his eyes watering, so he focused on the cobbles at his feet, blackened with rain and dirt, fringed in tenacious green moss struggling under boots and hooves and the cold.

  Brîn had succumbed to Ilumat so easily. Despite reports of violence, this day the people moved about their business as if it didn’t matter who held the Citadel. Perhaps it didn’t. He could claw his way back inside Citadel, kill Ilumat even. But the Akrasians would never accept a sundry bastard on their throne in Elena’s absence. No wonder Ilumat had such an easy time of it. A pureblooded, landed cousin to the queen, in Sikyra’s absence and with Elena declared dead, his lineage was absolute, undisputable.

  You and Sikyra have more claim to the Akrasian and Brînian thrones than the one who did that. Bruche drew his gaze toward the Citadel.

  Brînians moved in a quiet line before the wall, keeping their distance from several servii, who didn’t seem to be doing much but standing around hurling the occasional insult. A hedge of ribbons and flowers divided the Akrasian guards and the Brînian people. Most of them looked like Sohalia leftovers; the best the people could come up with to honor their dying city-state on such short notice.

  Draken stopped walking, a dozen paces back from the line of shuffling, grieving Brînians. He shifted his hand to his sword hilt and stilled, his throat tight. An odd quiet pervaded the road before the Citadel, broken only by an occasional cough. The familiar dome loomed over the other buildings, too lustrous under the shadow of clouds for Draken to look at for long. It had been home, but perhaps not. He felt a strange detachment from the place. But below … behind the gawking line of Brînians and sturdy guards … the heads of szi nêre dotted the spiked rail atop the stone wall.

  Konnon, the dapples stark in his flaccid skin, lips gaping. One of his eye sockets hung empty, a streak of blood down his cheek, and his thick wavy hair was shorn. Maybe as a trophy.

  Halmar … eyes closed, locks shorn. Someone had ripped the expensive rings from his ears and lips and brows. Blood had flowed freely, now russet stains on ash-black skin that even the rain and mists couldn’t cleanse away. A dozen more, a row of familiar faces, szi nêre who had shadowed him, fought for him, jested with him, died for him.

  Aarinnaie came up behind him and gasped softly. “Thom.”

  His chamberlain’s Gadye mask gleamed with more verve than his dead, sightless eye. Draken fell very still, but for his hand tightening on his sword. He started to draw. Bruche chilled his arm and released the sword, shifting to take Aarin’s hand in his. Draken grimaced in frustration. At least they hadn’t taken Thom’s mask. He’d known someone who had endured it and, bound to the body by ancient magic, ripping it away was among the worst of cruelties.

  No. Not now. You’ll have your revenge, but not here.

  “Your hand is cold,” Aarinnaie said at last.

  “It’s Bruche.” The spirit’s presence lingered heavy in his chest. Draken released her and turned without a word let Tyrolean lead him, blindly at first, and then with purpose.

  A group walked ahead, speaking softly. Draken heard the words Khel Szi and almost stopped walking. Bruche pressed him on.

  “Still loose then,” someone commented. Another made the harsh Brînian grunt d
emanding silence. The familiarity of the sound struck Draken. These were his people. He’d already given himself over to them whether they wanted him or not, and there was no stepping back from it.

  Sun cut through the clouds. Draken had to shut his eyes against the glare. He could barely see anyway for the tears. Tyrolean kept his hand on Draken’s arm, guiding him. “Where are we going, my lord?”

  “To build an army.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Aarinnaie fashioned a simple strip of loose-woven black linen tied round Draken’s head into a mask so he could open his eyes and see in the light. It was only partially effective. To shield the oddness of wearing it, he pretended to be blind and let his sister lead him on the street. It wasn’t all acting. Full daylight still forced his eyes to a tight squint and his eyelashes brushed the fabric annoyingly. He’d even taken to wearing it at night because the odd torch momentarily blinded him and it was frustrating for his companions to be without light.

  In the dim tavern with the mask and gentle, ambient light from pierced lanterns, his vision settled. Tyrolean put his back to the wall, at a more private, corner table. Draken slid in next to him slowly, feeling his way because he wasn’t supposed to be able to see. A full cloak concealed Seaborn tied securely to his thigh. Blind men had no use for swords but he refused to leave it. The blade on his wrist would draw less attention as it doubled as an eating knife. When the server set a mug in front of him he fumbled for it, hopefully convincingly.

  Tyrolean reached for it, sipped, waited a breath or two, then pushed it into his hand. He still insisted on tasting for Draken, a habit he could give up if his disguise and the mask were any use at all. Though it might look as if Tyrolean was just taking some of his blind friend’s ale.