Sword (20 page)

Kinsey scowled. He
had
chosen this escape, arguing for it in the face of sea routes and the outlaw camps hidden in the marshes where his dead father's name still meant something—places where they might have been safer. The mountains had been a place of curiosity for him his whole life, but now that he was finally in them, with his uncle's troops on his heels and no way back, he couldn't say why he'd felt so sure about this particular direction.

"You could still ride back. My uncle would happily take your word of my death, and gods know he could use the soldiers. I'll go on alone."

Annan cast him a sharp look from under lowered eyebrows. "No," he said, apparently at the end of his patience with this topic.

"Truly," Kinsey pressed with false cheer. Most of his men had no family—Annan had chosen them with that in mind—but Annan himself had siblings, somewhere in the moors outside the capital. He felt guilty every time he remembered it. "That might be best. As things stand, my entry into foreign lands with an armed escort this size may be taken as something less than friendly. If I were to—"

"
No,
my lord."

There was a wave of agreement from around them where men were in earshot.

Damn it.

He had never meant to have so many lives attached to him in this.

And now they were being driven like a herd of sheep up into the mountains, out of Cassdall altogether—into Lardan, home of every faery tale and whispered rumor of magic he had ever chased through a book as a boy.

He should probably worry more about that… but he wasn't precisely sorry to be where he was. He definitely wasn't going to miss the court. Now that both his father and mother were gone, there was nothing to hold him to Innisfell or even to Cassdall itself, and plenty of reason to leave before his uncle's assassins finally found a way past Annan.

Still, there were strange people living in the Baar mountains. There were ruins among the peaks, from a kingdom so long dead he had never found a written history that had more than a vague reference to it, though he had hunted eagerly, loving the mystery as a boy. He could see the dark stone of an ancient wall looming above them on the far ridge and he fought off a shudder. Childhood tales of the Síog, the fey folk that haunted the peaks and tricked travelers, came back to haunt him now.

A silly thing to worry about when they had assassins following them and a mountain to climb.

They made camp with the sun just beginning to set, its fiery light slanting through the branches of trees. Tents were pitched, and two of the men came back from the forest with enough game to feed them all. The air filled with the scent of roasting meat and burning wood. Kinsey sat on the ground next to the campfire, ignoring the looks his men gave him—a prince should probably have more dignity, but this particular prince was too tired to care—and accepted a mug of tea. Annan, being made of sterner, more suspicious stuff, did not sit, but strode around like a general, barking orders and pointing at tents. He was in a bad mood.

It had been a long few days. It promised to be another long span of them before they were out of range of the Cassdall army. And what happened then was anyone's guess. He had no idea what their reception would be once they crossed the mountains; they might be attacked on sight.

Kinsey sighed, worrying about the men who had, for reasons he couldn't fathom, followed him into exile, and huddled over the meager warmth of his tea.

Before he could settle into the hope of dinner, there was an outcry from within the trees, where the sentries were posted. Kinsey instantly came to his feet, his tea forgotten. There was no sound of fighting, so it probably wasn't his uncle's assassins. Somehow that thought wasn't very comforting.

Annan came to stand next to him. He had his sword out, and his eyes were narrow and hard. Many things were moving beyond the dark edge of the forest. It sounded like hooves, and the low voices of many men.

No way back now
, Kinsey thought, and tried to keep his hands from clenching.

"A company from across the border, Highness!" one of the sentries yelled, invisible among the trees. "Claiming peaceful intentions! What shall we do?"

"Allow them!" Kinsey shouted back, before his lieutenant had the chance to do more than open his mouth. Annan sent him a look a little more readable than his looks generally were. Kinsey bit his lip. He'd had no idea he was going to speak until his words were already echoing through the night.

"My Lord Prince," Annan began quietly. Kinsey cast a glance at his lieutenant's tired face and felt a little bad for the man, who had given up a promising career to follow his lord into exile, and now had to deal with a scholar-prince's disregard for common sense in the face of mystery.

"We can hardly hide a hundred men," Kinsey said reasonably, his voice pitched just as low. "And this is what we came for, is it not?"

"You don't
know
that, m'lord."

"A good guess."

But it was a bit more than a guess, which he couldn't exactly say to Annan. He had never in his life felt so sure of something. The feeling worried him. It wasn't at all like him.

Gods, what was he getting them into?

Through the trees came a double line of soldiers, escorted by his own men. The strangers wore odd livery, and their armor was stained with dirt and what he was certain was old blood. Under the dirt many of them were pale, like Madrassians were, though not all of them. They looked beyond exhausted. Their lieutenant, a calm man with a bloodstained linen wrapped around his graying head and a strangely familiar shield, rode in front. He seemed oblivious to the bared swords of Kinsey's men.

Behind him, another horse shouldered its way forward. It bore a young man, perhaps his own age, dirt-smeared and haggard. He had a larger version of that odd red-and-black shield stitched on both shoulders: obviously the lord here.

Some of the enigma across the border had come to them.

Kinsey stepped forward, hearing and ignoring Annan's hissed objection. "Welcome," he said, but the word came out faint. He coughed and said it again, adding: "Your company seems in need of a rest."

There was total silence as they waited for the lord to reply. The man's face worked. Up close, he seemed even wearier than his soldiers, and far younger than most of them. His jaw was knotted as though only pride kept him in the saddle. He shut his eyes, and his throat moved.

"You're here," he said finally. "You're really
here
."

Kinsey couldn't think of anything to say to that. He tried anyway.

"I—yes. I am. We are. Here, that is. Wherever that is. Um. Perhaps we—"

Annan, having long experience with his prince's tendency to ramble like an idiot when he was thinking, strode right up to the young lord's horse. Kinsey hissed an objection of his own, and was ignored in turn.

"His Highness Prince Kinsey of Cassdall greets you, and invites you to dismount," Annan said, dry as a drought in a desert. The rebuke was actually more for Kinsey than for the strange lord. He swallowed his annoyance and set a hand on Annan's arm, trying to get a grip on the situation before the man could start a battle among tired soldiers.

"Excuse my lieutenant, please, sir. Rough living doesn't agree with him."

"Speaks the man who tried to wrap himself in a canvas last night," Annan muttered. The foreign lord didn't smile, but the quizzical expression on his face said he'd heard. Kinsey felt a flush trying to crawl up out of his collar.

"I am Kinsey, late of Innisfell, capital of Cassdall," he said simply, choosing to avoid the weight of his title, which probably didn't mean much now anyway.

"Devin," the lord said absently, and slid out of the saddle in a clumsy motion that had hands on both sides twitching. He shoved what seemed to be a harp case—odder and odder, this got—up on his shoulder, ignoring the sword that banged awkwardly at his hip. "Um. Corwynall, Devin of House Corwynall. Head of House Corwynall, actually. Late—late of—"

That expressive face crumpled, then smoothed out into a wooden mask. It looked like fresh grief. Kinsey sucked in a breath, astonished by the sudden force of his sympathy. He clenched his hands, resisting the urge to reach out and pull the other man to the fire where they could talk without this audience.

"Faestan," Devin Corwynall finished hoarsely. "Late of Faestan, capital of Lardan."

Kinsey looked the man over, thinking carefully. Corwynall was a name he knew, one of the two Great Houses of Lardan. And if this Devin was indeed Head, he was a very young Head. Kinsey wondered if the battle these men had clearly just come from had anything to do with that. Then he remembered where he had last seen that coat of arms, the black dragon on the red field, the daggers and sun… the symbol of the Corwynall direct,
royal
line. A chill went down his spine. If this Devin was who he claimed to be, he was a prince of the blood, or something very close.

Dear gods, who had died?

"Sit," Kinsey invited, not at all what he'd meant to say. He could feel Annan's eyes boring holes in his back. "Please. You clearly need rest. We haven't much, but we can share a fire and a meal, and you can tell us what brought you here. If—" He broke off as Devin Corwynall swayed on his feet, and gave up trying to be polite. Instead he got the man by the arms and pulled him over to a stump by the fire. "Sir, I don't know what has happened to you and your men, but we can surely spare enough tents to make you comfortable."

"We have tents. I think. I'm not sure. I haven't slept in a few days. We were sent to find you." Devin heaved a sigh and ran a hand through his dark hair. "I didn't really believe you'd
be
here."

After a moment, Kinsey realized his mouth was still open and shut it. "You were… sent."

Annan had come to hover over them, and so had the other lieutenant, the man with the bandage on his head. The soldiers went about rearranging the camp in a deathly silence. Devin Corwynall took a mug of tea and sipped, wincing. "Sent," he agreed. "By the Fraonir—uh—" He looked up, hesitating. "The people of the mountains. They said I would find you here."

"And how did these Fraonir know where to find us?" Kinsey asked, thinking of that feeling of being watched.

"I don't know."

"Well,
why
were you sent to find us, then?"

Devin looked at him mutely, grief naked on his face, and Kinsey felt again that wrenching pull of sympathy for the man. It frightened him. He'd never felt so drawn to someone in his life, nor so certain his life was about to change.

"We come over the mountain, m'lord," the foreign lieutenant said quietly. "Our lands is taken. The mountainfolk, they offered us help, and said we ought to seek you out."

Annan made a noise of utter disapproval and folded his arms. Kinsey sat, trying not to let his dismay show on his face. "Your kingdom is taken? By whom? And why did you seek us out? We are only a hundred men, Lord Corwynall. Exiles, yes, and looking for a place to settle… but we cannot take your kingdom back for you."

Annan made a less-disapproving noise and sat next to him, inviting himself to the meeting. At that, the foreign lieutenant did the same, and they huddled around their small fire.

"By the West," Devin said, taking up the thread again. The tea had put some color in his face. "The barons of the western provinces of Lardan, that is. Our own. We should have… I don't know. We were unprepared, and we shouldn't have been. Our capital is taken, sirs. Our king and queen murdered. Our Lord General… my father… also murdered. And I have
no
idea why we were sent to you, except to say that the Fraonir offer you shelter."

It was not good news.

"The—ah." Kinsey took a plate of food and passed it without thinking to Devin. He'd read in some book somewhere of the split baronies of Lardan, but he'd no idea it was such a contentious place. And these mountain folk… "Shelter. How do they plan to accommodate that? And how did they know we would need it? And are we to accompany you in—whatever you do next?"

"I truly don't know, sir. They knew things of me and mine I would never have believed possible. I don't know what sort of shelter or for how long, or at what price, if any. There wasn't time to argue more answers out of them. But yes—you must ride with us. And yes—we may need your help. The Fraonir have offered
us
shelter as well. But we all have to live to find it." Devin faltered, then wiped his face with a shaking hand. "I’m sorry. I don’t even know who you
are
. I can’t promise I even know where I’m going from moment to moment, and I'm sure my company won't be safe for you."

It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement for an alliance.

But he and his men were leaving Cassdall, seeking a life elsewhere—and here was everything he had hoped for. Except, of course, that it brought the threat of war with it.

Head reeling, Kinsey sipped his tea, giving himself a moment to sort through the information. Devin picked listlessly at his food.

"Kinsey of Cassdall is who I am," Kinsey said, choosing to answer the one easy question for now. "Formerly a prince of Cassdall."

"
Still
a
prince of Cassdall," Annan said forcefully. "You renounced
nothing
, my lord."

For Annan, it was a speech. And the sentiment behind it was touching, if it wasn't just Annan's way of tipping negotiations in his favor, but Kinsey only shrugged. "Leaving the kingdom rather does it for me, doesn't it? Forgive us, Lord Corwynall. It's a point of some contention. My own father died recently, and his brother claimed the throne by force. We've been dodging my uncle's assassins ever since. I rode into the mountains rather than face his troops."

"We seem to have common troubles, Highness."

"Don't call me that. Please. If my books on your House histories are correct, the same title could apply to you, and it's
your
kingdom we are riding into tomorrow."

Beside him, Annan went still. The silence after his words caught up to him and Kinsey went still, realizing what he'd said.