Kings of the North (69 page)

Across the room, in the door to his bedchamber, stood a grinning stranger wearing a palace tabard; he held a short bow in one hand and an arrow in his teeth. Spitting the arrow into his hand, he said, “I do like it when they’re naked and helpless.”

Kieri hurled the soap at the man’s face; the man put up his hand instinctively,
dropping the arrow. As Kieri surged out of the tub and grabbed the ewer Joriam had set down, he saw the man fumble at the tabard, as if he expected to find an arrow there, and then dive for the one on the floor. Before he could reach it, Kieri was on him, smashing the heavy ewer in his face, a foot and then a knee in the man’s belly, hitting him again with the ewer, and again … the anger he thought he’d worked off in the salle roared through him like the winter wind, even when the man lay still, blood running from his nose and ears. Kieri raised the ewer again … and stopped. He could hear his own harsh breathing and nothing else. The taig—he must think of the taig. The man was dead. He might not be the only assassin—and his people needed their king, not a wild man.

He looked for the fallen arrow, found it, and stood up carefully, watching where he stepped in case of any other hazard. As his pulse slowed, he felt chilled … Joriam, poor old Joriam … and who else? How had the assassin made it this far? How had he known where to go? Was it safe to call out?

His hands were blood-splashed; he dipped them in the still-warm bathwater, plucked a warmed towel off the rack by the fire and dried his hands, rubbed himself with it. Then he went back to the assassin, picked up the bow, put the arrow on the string, and walked into his bedchamber. He heard a cry from the corridor just as he saw the bodies of Aulin and Sarol and heard someone running toward him.

He had just presence of mind to drop the bow and grab his sword from the rack when two white-faced Squires, Edrin and Lieth, appeared. “Sir King!”

“An assassin,” Kieri said. “I killed him, but not before he killed those Squires and Joriam, I’m sorry to say.”

“He—you—you’re alive!”

“As you see,” Kieri said. They had both seen more than anyone here but Joriam; after a bath the old scars always showed clearly. “I need to dress,” he said, laying his sword on the bed. Joriam, bless him, had set out clothes for the evening in the bathing room, but he was not going back in there, not immediately. “The bodies are in the bathing room,” he said. “Joriam took an arrow in the throat. The Seneschal should be told, to honor our dead.”

The bedroom felt cold after the bathing room; he went to his closet and began dressing, as the Squires called for more help.

“How many dead so far?” he asked.

“A groom, a bootboy, Aulin and Sarol, Joriam,” Edrin said. “Garris told us all to put on mail. Most of us keep our mail with our travel packs, in the stable; I had just put on mine when someone found the groom’s body and called out. Lieth and I ran for the palace. The other one—”

“Other one?”

“Claims he’s a Halveric. Garris and the steward found him in the back passage; claimed he’d been to the jacks—”

“Is he alive?” Kieri asked, shrugging into a velvet tunic over his mail. He reached for the sword belt, snugged it, then sheathed the great sword.

“Yes, and bound to a chair in Garris’s office. Sir King—how did you do it?”

“He flinched at the soap when I threw it,” Kieri said. “Beyond that, the gods were on my side, I suspect.” Dressed, armed once more, he felt better, though the anger simmered.

Now he heard more people coming, voices he knew: the steward, the Seneschal, Sier Halveric.

He started toward the door, but Edrin moved in front of him.

“Sir King—are you—you’re not hurt!” That was Sier Halveric.

“No, I’m not hurt,” Kieri said. To the Seneschal he said, “Aulin and Sarol died in my defense; Joriam also. And I understand an assassin also killed a groom and a bootboy. They should be treated with all reverence, and I am still unsure of the customs.”

“Sir King, all will be done,” the Seneschal said. “I have called for the burial guild; we will take the bodies and prepare them. By your leave, I will begin here.” He knelt beside the Squires’ bodies.

“Of course,” Kieri said. “What shall I do to help?”

“Let us have a sheet from your bed—”

“Not the
king’s
bed,” the steward said. “Let me bring—”

“From my bed,” Kieri said. “They died for me; they deserve far more than a sheet off my bed.” He went to his bed, pulled back the covers, stripped off the sheets, and carried the bundle to the Seneschal.

“Half will do for each,” the Seneschal said. “And as their deaths were violent, your sword may divide them.”

The sword whispered through the sheets Edrin and Lieth held
taut, one after another; they helped the Seneschal straighten the bodies, ease them onto the sheets, and carry them to the passage. Kieri came to each, and knelt for a moment with a hand on each head.

“Falk honor your service, for which you have a king’s thanks.” Then he bent and kissed each forehead. “Fare well in your afterhome. You honor the gods you served.”

He went with the Seneschal and the Squires into the bathing room, where they laid Joriam in a winding sheet; Kieri felt tears sting his eyes. The old man had been a comfort to so many—sweet, thoughtful, gentle—serving Lyonya’s royal family all his life; he had been the one to recognize Kieri’s sword when Paks arrived with it. To die like this—so violently, so unfairly—it was wrong.

The Seneschal finished with Joriam’s body after Kieri had given his thanks and farewell blessing. By then the burial guild had arrived. Kieri and the Seneschal stood aside as they lifted Joriam’s body onto a plank and carried it away. The Seneschal glanced around the room, then at the assassin’s body. “And that one?”

“What do you with murderers’ corpses?”

The Seneschal gave him a long look. “They were someone’s get and sometimes someone’s parent. We give their bodies back to the taig, but do not raise the bones.”

“Do that, then, with this one.”

“You broke his head,” the Seneschal said. “How?”

“That ewer,” Kieri said. “It was all I could reach as I came out of the tub.”

“You were in the
tub
when he—?”

“Yes,” Kieri said. The aftermath of the day hit him then and a mental image of himself—a naked, wet, redheaded man throwing soap and then charging an armed man with only a ewer for a weapon—almost had him break out into a laugh. He tamed it to a single snort and an internal chuckle. He must have looked ridiculous, as silly as … as the Pargunese king in the stableyard. He had better not, he thought, share that with anyone else.

When he came out into the passage, all the Squires in the palace were there, watching as the burial guild lifted the bodies of their comrades to carry them away. Some were weeping; some looked grim.

The guilt he had always felt at the death of any of his soldiers smote him; who was he that others should die because of him?

Because he was a king? Because he had been a duke? Because—

Peace
, came a voice.
Because you honor them and they honor you. And you did not kill them. When you die, see that your death honors me
.

Kieri felt his knees loosen and stiffened them. That was clear enough, though he wasn’t sure which of them it was, Falk or Gird or the High Lord.

Does it matter?
asked a different voice.

No, it didn’t matter. What mattered were his people and his land.

His Squires crowded around him as he followed the bodies downstairs. The lower hall was full of people: servants, other Council members, a half-dozen elves. Two other bodies were there, already wrapped.

“The usual place of initial rest is too small for so many,” the Seneschal said.

“The dining room?” Kieri asked.

“No place where food is served,” the Seneschal said. “What about the salle? It has a stone floor, for the washing, and could be consecrated for this use for the time needed.”

“Take it, then,” Kieri said. He followed with the rest as the burial guild carried the five bodies to the salle; the armsmasters bowed to the Seneschal and formally released the salle for his use.

Once the bodies were laid ready for the care before burial, Kieri went back to the main palace to see the other assassin.

The man bound to a chair in Garris’s office wore Halveric uniform, and his skin bore evidence of time in the hot, sun-blazing south. His face seemed familiar. Kieri glanced at Garris. “What have you learned?”

“He keeps saying he’s really a Halveric soldier and he doesn’t know anything about the other one.”

“I
am
a Halveric,” the man said. “I mean, not a Halveric by family, but I’ve been in Halveric Company eleven years.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kieri said. He hitched a hip onto Garris’s desk and looked into the man’s eyes. The man blinked, as most people did, and unlike the most egregious liars Kieri had known. “But let’s begin. Why didn’t you give your message to a courier at the relay station?”

“Because there
wasn’t
a courier at the relay station,” the man said. “Nobody was there. Just horses in the stable. I thought they’d probably
already been sent, but Captain Talgan said his message had to get through. So I left my horse, and a note, and took one of the others.”

“Why did you think others had gone if horses were there?”

The man’s brow furrowed. “Well … I guess I thought those were the horses they’d left—but they were fresh. Maybe they left enough earlier the horses had rested up—”

“And maybe you’re lying. What happened at the next relay post? More missing couriers?”

“No—but they let me have a horse when I told them I had to get through.”

“You didn’t think to hand it over and go back to your captain?”

“No, sir—my lord—because I was already too far to be back by when Captain Talgan said, and if I was going to be over my time, I thought it didn’t matter how much—and they said fine, because they were a courier short anyway.”

That sounded almost reasonable. Kieri tried to think of something to ask that a Pargunese spy couldn’t have learned by lurking near the camp. “Did you come north with Talgan in the summer?”

“Yes, sir—my lord.”

“Where was your closest camp to Chaya?”

The man stared, as if surprised. “Why, sir—my lord
—you
know—it was just down behind the palace, in the water meadows.”

“And what did you eat—what were your trail rations?”

“Trail rations! We didn’t eat trail rations. We had food sent out from the palace. Bread still hot from the oven, roast meat, even some of those funny little pastries with pointy tops—”

The man must have been with the Halverics, then.

“What’s Captain Talgan’s nickname among the troops?” Kieri asked. “The one you think he doesn’t know?”

The man flushed. “It’s … not polite … sir.”

“I know that. Most nicknames aren’t. Come now, tell me.”

“You won’t tell him I said it?”

“No,” Kieri said.

The man knew the nickname and came out with it, still red in the face. “And it’s only because that time old Sergeant Manka, that’s been retired these five years, saw him in the—”

“I know,” Kieri said. He sighed. “Beldan, I now believe you are in
fact a Halveric soldier, but I am not certain you aren’t also a traitor. Why is your pouch wet?”

“I told Sir Garris—it was the snow, falling off the trees and landing on the saddle. But the inside’s not wet; I opened it to check before I went to the jacks.”

“Well, Beldan, we have a problem. You’re a Halveric veteran or someone who knows more about Halveric Company than anyone not in it should. You’ve got plausible answers to my questions. But I lost five men and women this evening to an assassin and was nearly killed myself, so you will understand why I am cautious.”

“Yes, my lord, but—but can I have some water?”

“Certainly.” Kieri glanced at Garris, who poured a mug of water. Kieri sniffed it carefully before holding it to Beldan’s lips. The man sipped.

Sier Halveric came to the door. “Sir King—oh—Beldan!”

“You know him?” Kieri asked.

“Of course,” Sier Halveric said. “Aliam uses him as a courier between Halveric Steading and Chaya. What has he done?”

“Perhaps nothing,” Kieri said. “You can vouch that he’s been with Aliam a long time?”

“Years,” Sier Halveric said. “And honest.” He beckoned Kieri nearer the door. “But not very smart,” he murmured.

“Then it’s his misfortune that he arrived the same evening as an assassin,” Kieri said. He stood up. “Release him, Garris.” To Sier Halveric he said, “I grant this man to you as armsman, Sier Halveric. Keep him close with you, if you will, until Aliam’s troops arrive; he can accompany them to the north.”

“Gladly, Sir King.”

As Sier Halveric led the man away, Kieri heard him say, “That wasn’t the king—that was Duke Phelan! I’d know the Duke anywhere!”

Kieri shook his head at Garris’s expression. “It doesn’t matter … if he’d seen me crowned, he wouldn’t have understood. We had a man in my company who called his new sergeant by the first one’s name for years.” He stretched. “And now I’m hungry, and we still have to read that message.”

Garris pulled it out, sniffed it. “Just water, as he said.” He handed it to Kieri.

The report was clear enough: Pargunese troops had come across in boats, under cover of darkness, and set fires. Talgan’s troops, rangers, and Royal Archers had fought them back to the river, but more were preparing to come over.

“The fire seems natural,” Talgan wrote. “But the wind may not be. Prisoners speak of ‘scathefire’ that will burn all to the bare rock, but will not say what it is or when it will be used. In the dawn-light, as I write, I can see boats and fires along the far shore, but not how many soldiers the Pargunese have. One prisoner said the old king was disgraced and only fools followed him, that the weavers’ Lady was with his king—” Talgan had included a sketch of the boats and his best guess at the line of defense, which wavered inland in multiple places.

“So the worst is yet to come,” Kieri said. More Pargunese would be coming across the river, and his troops had not been able to clear the riverside. At least one courier was missing completely, probably killed by the assassin, who had been ahead of Talgan’s messenger.