Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (6 page)

“Aren’t you going to put it on?” demanded Triss. “You have to see that it fits properly.”

“I’m quite confident in Maylien’s seamstress.” But he was practically dancing on the
wall, so I finally nodded and stripped off my robe.

Where Zhani pants would have buttoned or closed with a simple drawstring, these had
an elaborate double tie to cinch the waist tight. My fingers tied the traditional
knots without any input from my mind. Then they went right on from there to pull on
the shirt and long vest—tying and adjusting as needed—and finished up by slipping
the cowl over my head. The wide belt and low boots had been delivered the day before
and I put those on over all, leaving only my worn harness and trick bag to complete
the outfit.

When I was done, I turned to the mirror and found myself facing a Blade of Namara.

Seven years had passed since I last wore the formal clothes of my order. Seven long
brutal years. The pain of it should have left lines etched into my face,
had
left lines, but those were gone along with the features they had once marked, erased
like my order and my goddess. The assassin
in the mirror was a stranger. Oddly, that made it easier. I think that it might have
broken me to find Aral Kingslayer looking back at me out of the glass. The man in
the mirror now was a different Blade, forged from the same steel perhaps, but someone
else. Maybe it was even someone who could bear the weight of the events that had broken
the old Aral. I had to hope that it was so.

I turned my eyes to the shadow that hung in the darkness behind my shoulder. “Well,
what do you think?”

Shadow wings wrapped around my chest from behind and a dark and scaly cheek pressed
against my own. “I think you look absolutely magnificent.”

I reached back and scratched the soft spot behind his ear, happy for him being happy
for me, even if I couldn’t be happy for myself. As always, the different messages
of scale and shadow sent by fingers and eyes provided a strange contrast, reminding
me of the way Triss’s dual nature rode the line between is and is-not.

He sighed contentedly under the attention. “It wants only your swords showing to make
it perfect.”

Stung, I stopped scratching. I didn’t make the mistake of thinking even for an instant
that he meant flipping the lovely new set of Tienese dueling blades Maylien had given
me a few days before so that they showed over my shoulders. They were of the best
mortal steel, and any smith in the city would have been proud to have forged them,
but they would never—could never—touch the divinely created swords my goddess had
given me on the day she made me a full Blade.

After a moment, I answered him. “No, Triss. I gave them back to Namara, and she can
keep them.”

“Laid them in her tomb, you mean.”

“If you prefer it. Yes. Would you make me a grave robber?”

“I hardly think that—”

But I cut him off. “Triss, don’t.” I shook off the wings that wrapped me round and
turned to face my familiar. “Just, don’t.”

“It’s not theft to take back what is your own.”

“They were never mine. They always belonged to Namara, and I only ever carried them
in her name and service. In the normal course of things she would have reclaimed them
on my death, drawing them back into her soul and using their essence to shape a new
set for the Blade who took up the cause in my stead. When she died, that possibility
vanished, a door forever closed. But my service ended that day, too, and with it,
any claim I had on those swords. They belong to the goddess, I have returned them
to her, and there the story ends.”

I could see that he didn’t fully accept my argument, but sense or mercy prevented
him from pushing it any further. I changed back into my regular street clothes, and
put the assassin’s grays in the carved rosewood trunk at the foot of my bed, though
I was more than half tempted to throw them into the room’s small fireplace. I was
having a hard time reconciling how simultaneously right and wrong having them felt,
and the seamstress had promised me another set in silk, as well as a heavier woolen
version with a matching poncho to be delivered in the next few days.

It made my teeth itch, and I couldn’t help but long for a steaming pot of efik to
soothe my nerves. I’d been able to keep a pretty good grip on my drinking the last
few weeks, but the more time I spent sober the more the older craving had grown stronger.
I shuddered briefly and forced myself to once again picture the sleepwalkers that
used to haunt the alleys of Emain Tarn in Varya, the open slashes on their arms packed
with ground efik and covered in flies as they slowly grinned their way into the grave.
I was going to beat this.

*

“I
hate wearing this.” I tugged at the loose jade green sleeve that covered my left
arm.

“Then don’t come,” replied Maylien. “You said yourself that you don’t think we’re
going to be in any danger this morning.”

Heyin nodded. “The king won’t dare make a move
against Maylien at a meeting of the Council of Jade, no matter how much he wants to.
That’s why we decided to wait to deliver the declaration of Maylien’s legitimacy to
the chancellor until today at the Winter-Round court. It’s afterward, when we’re on
our way back to Marchon House and in the days that follow that we’ll be in the most
danger. That’s why I suggested you wait for us outside the great gate and shadow us
back here.”

I shrugged. They were both right, and I really did hate wearing the green and gold
uniform of Maylien’s baronial guard. Pretending to be part of the very sort of hierarchy
my goddess had so often sent me to decapitate always made me twitchy. I’d done it
on missions in the past, but somehow this felt very different. I didn’t mind killing
Thauvik. Removing corrupt rulers was the work I had been born for. But putting Maylien
in his place ventured into territory that my goddess had always avoided—the politics
of succession. The role of the Blade was to act as a threat, never a promise. We didn’t
choose sides.

“I know,” I said after a moment. “I even mostly agree with you. But what if we’re
wrong and he’s even crazier than he seems? I want to be in the chamber when Maylien
delivers her papers.”

Now Heyin shrugged. “If you insist, I won’t oppose you. Gods know, I’ve no one better
to guard her back.”

The sky was still dark as our small troupe left the gate of Marchon House. Heyin walked
in front with a pair of his lieutenants. Maylien would come immediately behind on
an open-work ivory chair set in a palanquin with the silk curtains in the green and
gold Marchon colors pulled aside—the baronial seat on its way to sit before the throne.

“I wish I could walk,” she said to me as they were affixing the narrow chair to the
palanquin. “It’s a terrible way to travel, but the tradition’s a thousand years old,
and so’s the damned chair. Whatever Marchon it was originally made for must have been
three feet tall and knife-edge skinny.”

“Do you ever wish you could just step away from all this and go back to the Rovers?”

“Every damned day. When I first set out to take the baronial seat from my sister,
there were things I hated to lose about that life and things that I didn’t mind giving
up. How could I not miss walking under a clear blue autumn sky with an open road and
nowhere to be? These days I even miss the icy winter rains of Radewald and slogging
through ankle deep mud in hopes of finding an inn. I hate this role and I hate the
choices it forces on me.”

She looked longingly back at the house where Bontrang had been placed in a cage to
prevent him following her to the palace. Her magery was deeply troubling and bordering
on criminal as far as her fellow nobles and the law of Zhan were concerned. That had
made her challenge of her sister and assumption of the baronial seat almost impossible,
and it continued to make her an outcast among the peerage. It was also going to make
putting her on the throne that much harder, though I had to assume Fei knew what she
was talking about when she said it was less of a problem than her bastard status.

But then the palanquin was ready for her and she had to climb up into her narrow ivory
chair. I fell in at the back of the procession with a couple of her guards. Within
a few minutes of hitting the main thoroughfare leading from the Sovann Hill down toward
the river and the palace, we encountered the coterie of the Earl of Anaryun, and had
to pause to let his people move out in front.

We stopped again when the Duke of Jenua claimed precedence in front of the earl. Later,
as we left the Sovann behind, a couple of baronets fell in behind us. Then, as we
approached the Sanjin Island bridge, the Duchess of Kijang coming down the river from
her estates west of the city bumped everyone back a place. She ranked fourth in the
peerage, behind only the Duke of Anyang, the Duchess of Tien, and the king himself.

The streets directly in front of the palace gates were an absolute madhouse, with
every high noble of the realm and their entourages jockeying for proper position in
the march of the peers. Most of the baronets and clan lords and lesser
lights weren’t high enough in the peerage to be granted entry to the meeting of the
Council of Jade, but they had to attend the Winter-Round court that followed or risk
formal censure by the Crown.

For that matter, Maylien’s participation would normally have been limited to a gallery
seat for the Council of Jade, because of the relatively minor position of the Barony
of Marchon. Only her uncle’s formal recognition of her and her sister as
official
bastards of his late brother allowed her to claim a place at the council table, informally
ranking her with the earls and dukes and counts. That was also the only thing that
made it possible for me to attend—each of the jade councilors was allowed an unarmed
personal attendant whose job was to kneel behind their master’s chair and await commands.

The Council of Jade met at the high table in the largest of the palace’s formal chambers—built
purpose specific for the twice annual event. The king sat on his throne at the head
of a long table that jutted out into the center of the room on a raised platform.
The lesser peers placed their chairs of office around the councilors on three sides,
sitting on the lower level of the floor. I set Maylien’s chair on the left side of
the table, very near the foot, then joined the other attendants, going to one knee
at the edge of the dais holding the council table.

The first twenty minutes or so of the convocation was eaten up with a brief welcoming
speech by the king and other court formalities that left me quietly thinking that
if I ghosted Thauvik now at least he’d shut up. That was followed by the official
presentation of credentials by the participants, starting on the king’s right with
the Duchess of Tien who also served as chancellor of the realm, and then alternating
back and forth across the table in descending order of precedence. Mostly it was a
matter of each noble rising and stating their antecedents, which the chancellor dutifully
attested to the king, who acknowledged them with a nod.

Occasionally however, a seat had changed hands either
through the normal course of succession or by right of challenge in the previous few
days and the new holder had to petition for the formal recognition of the Crown. In
both instances, the newly made noble had to bring their documents up the table to
be formally examined by the Duchess of Tien. In the case of traditional succession,
they presented wills and certificates of legitimacy. With challenges, they brought
documentation of blood relationship to the challenged and witnesses’ statements as
to the conduct and outcome of the duel. It took nearly an hour for the presentation
of credentials to reach Maylien, who sat third from the end, a position determined
by order of precedence.

“The Baroness Marchon,” said the Duchess of Tien, in a loud formal voice.

I slid Maylien’s chair back as she rose to speak. “Thank you, Chancellor. Your Majesty,
Chancellor, peers of the realm. I am the Baroness Maylien Dan Marchon
Dan
Pridu, and I ask permission to approach the throne to present my credentials and
formally claim the titles of Duchess Pridu and Crown Princess.”

The Duchess of Tien, who had seemed practically asleep in her chair, abruptly sat
up straight, “Pardon? What did you just say, Baroness?
Dan
Pridu?”

Though she was so old that no one expected it ever to become an issue, the Duchess
of Tien was also the current Crown Princess and formal heir to the throne, though
not the Duchess Pridu, due to her lack of sufficient royal blood. That title was currently
unclaimed. The king didn’t move, but his eyes, never warm to start with, went suddenly
icy. The “Dan,” which replaced the “Tal” Maylien had used until now, indicated a legitimate
claim to the Pridu name that Thauvik Tal Pridu himself didn’t own. The surrounding
sea of lesser nobles, which had been very quietly chattering away, slowly quieted
as they realized that something unusual was happening at the high table.

“I asked permission to approach the throne so that I may present my credentials,”
said Maylien. “While examining the cellars in Marchon House, I recently came across
a
document which I am forced by law and custom to present to this body and the Crown.
It seems that shortly before his death, my father, the late Ashvik the Sixth, formally
adopted my sister and I as his heirs, legitimizing us. While I would never dream of
claiming precedence over my uncle, who has been a wise and just ruler, I cannot in
good conscience refuse the duty to the throne and succession placed on me by my late
father with this document.”

Maylien bowed formally to the head of the table. “For the second time, I am the Baroness
Maylien Dan Marchon
Dan
Pridu. May I approach the throne?”

The duchess jerked at that and the king now sat up straight as well, while the whole
vast room went utterly quiet, with many holding their breath. The throne was the only
noble seat not directly subject to the Right of Challenge under general circumstances.
But there
were
exceptions, most notably if the Crown refused to cede certain acknowledgements to
the top dozen or so members of the royal family in direct line of succession for the
throne. If Maylien’s papers of adoption were adjudged to be real, she would fall into
that select group, and refusing her permission to approach the throne three times
would allow her to issue challenge.