Exile (11 page)

Tyrolean gave him a withering look.

“Bold, that,” Osias said. “If he fell, he’d never escape the errings in time.”

“Not half so bold as taking a shot at the Queen in her own house,” Draken said, turning away and staring across at the tower. Two of the bowmen across the way had arrows on the string, facing their small party. Four more bowman watched their party from either side. Reavan had stepped up security with Draken on the roof.

“Here’s where he used glamour, maybe.” A sudden thought. “How good is glamour? Can you make yourself invisible, Osias?”

Osias shook his head. “But I could blend into my surroundings for these purposes, if I were sufficiently accomplished enough to control the magic.” He smiled, leaving little doubt he was sufficiently accomplished. Draken gave an inward sigh. It had been a Mance arrow after all. No point in noting how obvious a suspect Osias was.

“It was a bright day, if you recall,” Osias continued. “If the glare was right, the assassin could have used it to advantage.”

“All right,” Draken said. “We’ll start on the street below. Perhaps someone saw something.”

Stiffly courteous, the Akrasians he questioned gave him little more than nonplussed shrugs. He didn’t get into details of the attack, saying he was making routine inquiries into security at the Bastion. His Brînian appearance didn’t help matters, nor the silent, armed Escorts behind him. He recalled the mistrustful reaction to Reavan when they’d entered the city. As he questioned his subjects, their attention wandered constantly to the Escorts. Clean and orderly as it was, Auwaer didn’t feel quite free, as if it were a city under occupation by its own kind.

His cousin the Monoean King was not a perfect man, Draken knew. But he had the respect of his people. He certainly hadn’t had to enslave an army to fight for him. I would have given my life for him, Draken thought, regret over his losses stabbing him anew.

The other issue was Osias. Though most Akrasians accepted the Mance with awed courtesy, more than one turned away from him in revulsion and refused to speak in his presence. When Draken asked Osias why, he smiled his stunning smile.

“They face hard truths when they look at me,” he said.

But no truths about the assassin emerged from Draken’s questioning. By the end of the third day, Draken had crossed Auwaer City a dozen times, nursed blisters from his new boots, and wondered desperately how to shake Tyrolean. That night, after Draken reported his lack of success to the court, Reavan smirked.

“Shall we relieve Draken of his duties, my Queen?”

Draken wasn’t surprised when Queen Elena looked as if she were considering the suggestion. “Not yet,” she said at length. “The assassin is clever, but I hope Draken is more so.”

Draken felt her dark eyes on him throughout the evening and escaped supper as quickly as he could. But on the way to their room, a voice called to them down the corridor.

“Hold, kinve! I would speak with you.”

“Heir Geord,” Osias said in surprise. Since the first night, the Heir had made a point of distancing himself from Draken and Osias and Setia, not even acknowledging them with a glance.

“The kinve and I would speak alone, my Lord Mance, if it pleases,” Geord said.

Osias looked at Draken.

“Go ahead,” Draken said. “I’ll be along.”

“You’re a difficult man to know,” Geord said, fingering one of his chains and eyeing Draken.

If Draken had disapproved of Geord and his finery before, now he was revolted. Unease crept through him. “Why would you care to know me at all, my lord?”

“I wonder how a common bloodlord and the murderer of Reavan’s First Captain climbed his way so quickly into Elena’s favor,” Geord said.

Geord was quietly, cunningly looking for a way to undo him. What Draken didn’t know was why. “Trick of fate, I suppose, my lord,” he said.

To his surprise, Geord laughed. “
Fate
? A common Brînian has forgone Khellian to take on Akrasian Moonminster Faith? I’d have thought your Mance and Moonling would keep you from such idolatry.”

Draken felt his lip twitch in annoyance. If Geord only knew of the countless arrows bloodied on Draken’s palm and tossed into the seas around Monoea. “I’ve ancestors named for Khellian,” he said. God of war.

Geord’s glance dropped to his marked hands. “They say you’re a bastard.”

“Their blood still runs through my veins, does it not? And I am a soldier. I’ve not abandoned my patron-god.”

Geord leaned in close. “I want you to disappear from Auwaer, Draken.”

“You and I want the same thing, my lord,” Draken said. “Our Queen holds me here.”

“By your own offer.”

“Between the commission or the cages, my lord, I would take the commission. You see how Reavan looks at me. You even pleaded on my behalf, aye?”

“Aye. And I will not have your failure affect my friendship with this court, even if—” Geord paused with a knowing glance, though the significance of it escaped Draken. His voice went very soft. “—our King would have us enemies with this Queen.”

King? Was he not a Prince at Brîn? At any rate, if this bumbling fool of an heir put his foot in it again, he’d jeopardize Draken’s plans and freedom. Careful, now. “I see no reason for us to make it known.”

“Truth,” Geord agreed. “The time is not yet right. But I do not intend on releasing my hold on the throne.” He stepped closer to Draken and reached out to finger the edge of Draken’s tunic. “You know, we could be companions, you and I. You’re a handsome sort, if a bit rough.”

Draken forced a calm response. “If that is all, my lord, a fair night to you.”

Geord’s lips twitched, whether in annoyance or amusement, Draken had no idea. But he waved Draken away. He walked the rest of the way to his room, so lost in thought he almost passed by his door. Setia was settling into bed for the night. Osias sat on a bench, waiting for Draken’s return.

Draken went to the window and leaned out, his hands gripping the sill. The moons hadn’t risen yet, leaving the city deep in shadow. Street torches burned like tiny, grounded stars.

“What troubles you, friend?” Osias asked. “Is it whatever the heir said?”

“Not particularly,” Draken said. “He was just trying to feel me out.”

No use confusing matters with speculation and innuendo. Geord seemed to think there was some secret understanding between them, but Draken had no idea what it could be. So the Prince of Brîn doesn’t like Elena, he thought. Give me something the city heralds don’t know.

King, though. Geord had said King. So then, perhaps he had learned one valuable thing. Perhaps the plot to kill Elena
had
started in Brîn.

He frowned and sighed at his own foolishness. None of this was leading him any closer to solving Lesle’s murder. Puzzle pieces, he thought, flipped all wrong to conceal how they fit together. Frustrated, he wondered where he’d be if he hadn’t stabbed the First Captain and freed the Moonling. Not searching for ghosts. Not trying to please a foreign Queen.

Dead in a gulley, he told himself.

“What are you thinking on so hard?” Setia asked him.

Draken latched the shutter and unlaced his tunic. “Something Geord said reminds me. When I killed the Escort captain an odd thing happened.” He hesitated, wondering if he should go on. Osias might think him mad, and right now he and Setia were his only allies.

“An odd thing,” Osias said.

“After I killed him, the body disappeared.” Draken hurried on at Osias’ arched eyebrow. “I know. I must have been mistaken. It was dark, and I was exhausted—”

The Mance rose, his tone sharp. “You’re quite certain?”

“Well, I thought I was mad, and then the bane took me. That must be it.” But Osias stared past him so intently Draken glanced behind himself. “What?”

“Mance are, in effect, already dead,” Osias said. “But our bodies are not so. We walk the lands outside Eidola by the grace of our Lord God Korde, breathing and eating and living as others. But we are not like others. If we are assaulted, our bodies ruined, we can remake ourselves anew. When destroyed, effectively killed, our bodies disappear.”

“But the Captain was Akrasian,” Draken said. “Lined eyes and all that.”

“Glamour, Draken,” Osias said softly.

“So you think he was a Mance…” He stopped as the meaning of Osias’ words penetrated his skepticism. He sank down on the bench. “You mean to say he’s still
alive
?”

Osias inclined his head in assent. When he lifted his face, his expression was so drawn he looked aged. His youthful radiance had darkened. “As alive as a Mance can be.”

Draken couldn’t absorb what this meant, beyond the cold realization that Lesle’s murderer, if he were Mance, could never die for his crimes against her. He swallowed hard. “Odd coincidence I seem to have killed a Mance, and now one seems to be after Elena, eh?”

“Odd, indeed,” Osias said. “Odder still he is with Reavan, who steps in our way at every opportunity.”

Draken frowned and rubbed a hand over his cheek. “I’d thought of him, of course. He stands to benefit the most from Elena’s death. But truth? I think his behavior is driven more from resentment, and to hide his own incompetence. After all, he hasn’t found out any more than we have.” A point Draken rather regretted not making at court when announcing his own lack of progress. “He’s as good a suspect as any. But you suggested a Mance could have killed Elena’s father because of the method in which it was done.”

“Or a Gadye. But they do not come to Auwaer and they wear masks that make glamour impossible. And the only other race able to work blood magic are the Moonlings, which we’ve mostly ruled out.”

What did he know? Precious little: Elena’s father, the Akrasian King, gutted and bled like an animal. Like Lesle. And now likely a Mance hunted Queen Elena—even Osias had suggested it. Perhaps he had returned to the Bastion under new glamour. How had such a plot reached its fingers across the sea into Monoea? And why? Or perhaps they weren’t connected at all.

He thought of all the remnants of the Akrasian army he’d banished over the years. One of them had come to get revenge, he realized, and just made the killing look like it’d been done for blood magic. That must be it. He saw again Lesle’s body and sighed. What she’d gone through…

Osias stepped closer and peered into his face.

Draken realized he’d drifted off into thought again, leaving the room in silence. “Just talking about it…I miss home, I suppose.”

Osias knelt before him, catching Draken’s wrist in his long fingers. “I believe you are home. Here, in Akrasia. In Brîn. You’re of the Blood, after all.”

Draken shook his head. “I wasn’t born here. This place does not belong to me, Osias.”

“You cannot go back.”

A silence. “Not without finding my wife’s murderer.” There. He’d thrown his gamestones. Now to see what it earned him.

Osias stared up into Draken’s face, his own graven with grief. “Ah, friend. I fear we may never unravel all there is to know of this. But I am here to help you. I won’t allow them to harm you, and I will see you home—wherever it may be.”

Draken nodded and leaned back, eager to get some distance between them. “Why do you call me friend? We barely know each other.”

“Because you see his beauty, and therein lies the faith of your heart,” Setia said softly. “Not everyone can, you know.”

They went to bed as usual. Draken didn’t shrink away as Setia nestled her warm back against his side. She fell still immediately. Osias reached over and touched Draken’s chest as he customarily did, but he took his hand away and fell asleep without saying anything else.

Draken stared up into the darkness for a long while, thinking of his wife.

***

The light of the next day felt harsh on Draken’s eyes. Twice he had to apologize for being short with his friends, though he granted Captain Tyrolean no such courtesy. He curtly instructed him to take them to the temple. Maybe piety would lead to answers—not his own, of course, but others’.

“A good opportunity to pray for your wisdom and success,” Tyrolean agreed with a small, insulting bow.

Draken didn’t bother to hide his annoyance, but followed along with a scowl creasing his brow and a headache dampening any remnants of enthusiasm.

The domed temple was the most beautiful Draken had ever seen. Open to the warm air of Auwaer, pillars and a low white wall designated the boundary around the holy place. The floor was tiled in mosaics in every hue of sea blue, symbolic of Ma’Vanni’s watery realm, and all else was white except the painted statues of the Seven Eyes. No one gave Draken a second glance as he donned a white cowl behind Tyrolean and followed the draped parishioners making offerings of coins and grasses woven into small creatures and abstract designs. The only stern, unrelenting stares came from the Seven, shocking to a man who’d never faced idolatry. Draken admitted some beauty to the stone figures, but he couldn’t escape the notion that kneeling to statues was sacrilege. Tyrolean knelt and made his prayers before Zozia, the small goddess whose hands spread in a gracious gesture. He stayed for a long while.

Osias took Draken’s arm. “I think you should be more interested in seeing Khellian.”

Draken studied the hulking god with the scowling thick brow and mouth clamped tight in a disapproving frown. Hair grew wild around his head like a seacat’s mane, stag horns sprouting like craggy trees from his helm. He rested on a rough block of white stone grafittied with battle sigils Draken recognized from warfield shrines. A blade, a bowl of blood, and scattered coins graced his bare stone altar. Draken sliced the blade across his palm, dipped his finger in the bowl of blood, mixed it with his own, and smeared a line across his forehead. Then he turned to gaze upon Ma’Vanni, the Mother goddess. Central in the temple, she afforded an excellent view of the rest of the people within.

Tyrolean appeared behind them, a smudge of ash on his forehead from Zozia’s altar. He took in Draken’s marked face. “Shall we speak with the people here? Perhaps a mystic or a priest knows something.”

But despite their prayers, they found no answers the whole long day and wandered back to the Bastion, silent and exhausted. Draken was past ready to wash the blood from his forehead anyway.