The Assassin King (13 page)

The Lord Marshal squeezed her hand. “Your abilities were sufficient to keep me from death, to return me to health, if not vitality—” “It is not enough,” Rhapsody interrupted. “If you are to lead the forces of the Middle Continent again in a war that is perhaps directed by malicious greed and a desire for conquest, or perhaps something darker, something demonic, you will need to be as hale and able as it is possible for you to be. And what I have come to understand since Meridion's birth, since my time in Elynsynos's Lair, is that I have been going about this in the wrong way. I could heal you, Anborn, save you from death, but I cannot remake you to what you were, because only you can do that. Only you know the man you were, and are, what you have seen and done. Only you own the memories of everything that has happened to you in the course of a very long lifetime. Good and bad, those memories are what make you whole—and I believe only you can embrace them enough to allow them to restore what you were.” The large hands that encircled her small ones trembled slightly.

Anborn looked down at where their hands were joined. “I don't know that I want that man back,” he said tonelessly. “I've done many terrible things in my life, Rhapsody, things you may know of, many more that you don't. Perhaps, in the course of prosecuting the war that is to come, I will do them again, or worse. If the cost of purging those things from my soul was the loss of my legs, then so be it.” Rhapsody inhaled. “It was not,” she said, her voice ringing with a Namer's truth. “You cannot purge anything that has happened to you, as if it were an impurity of steel to be smelted away in a forge fire. All that has gone before has made you what you are, like notes in a symphony. Whole or lame, you are who you are. Ryle hira, as the Lirin say. Life is what it is. Forgive yourself.” She released his hands and pushed the shell against his chest. “At least try to be as whole as you can, if not for yourself, then for the men you lead. And for me.” The Lord Marshal's rigid face relaxed a little. “You are very infused with admiration for yourself, and your place in my esteem,” he said jokingly. “All right—what must I do?” “Hold the shell to your ear, perhaps before you lie down to sleep, perhaps when you wake. Listen to the music within it; it may take you a while to even hear the song in the crashing of the waves. Hum it, or sing it if you can hear the words, though that is not an easy thing to do unless you are trained as a Singer. Just try, please—try to remember who you were and blend that in with who you are. I don't know if it will make any difference, but we are about to be parted, one from the other, for what we both know will be a long time, if not forever. I beg you, Anborn, do this one last thing for me. If not for me, do it to add one more healthy body to the fight for the survival of the Middle Continent, and perhaps the world.”

Their eyes met sharply, and for an instant they both recalled another discussion years before, the meeting in which she had asked him to consider being her consort. Let us not mince words, General. We both know that war is coming; it draws closer with every passing moment. And while you have seen war firsthand, I have seen the adversary—or at least one of them. We will need everything we have, everything, to merely survive its awakening, let alone defeat it. I will waste neither the blood nor the time of the Lirin fending off a martial challenge over something so stupid as my betrothal. A marriage of convenience is an insignificant price to pay to keep Tyrian safe and at peace for as long as possible. We will need every living soul when the time comes. “I will,” the Lord Marshal promised finally.

“Even as I split the ears of the men encamped near me with the horror of my singing voice, for you I will make the attempt, Rhapsody. I will try to imagine you as I do, singing to my great-nephew, and perhaps that will ease my sense of ridiculousness. But, in return, you must promise to let go the silly burden you have carried of the responsibility for my laming. My rescue of you was foretold in prophecy centuries before I ever laid eyes on you, and if I learned nothing else from my cursed mother, may maggots eat her eyes, it was that you cannot fight Fate.” His blue eyes twinkled in the growing darkness. “Of course, if I see Fate coming, I intend to make a good tussle of it anyway.” A knock sounded as the door opened, and Ashe's shadow appeared in the doorway. “The preparations are under way, and should be completed shortly, Aria,” he said. “The quartermaster intends to have the horses tacked and ready to leave in a quarter hour.” He eyed Anborn for a moment, then extended his hand to his wife. Rhapsody rose and came to him, taking his hand. “Who has the baby?”

“Grunthor.” “Do you think that was wise? Did you feed him first?”

“The baby?” “That wasn't who I meant.” Rhapsody turned one last time and smiled at the Lord Marshal. “Good fortune in all that you will be undertaking,” she said. “And remember your promise.” Anborn swiped an impatient hand at her. “Go,” he said curtly.

Rhapsody watched him for a moment longer, then let go of Ashe's hand, came back to where the Lord Marshal sat, and stood before him. She bent down slightly and pressed her lips to his, allowing her hands to rest on his wide shoulders, taking her time, breathing in his breath.

Then she returned to her astonished husband and left the room without looking back.

Anborn waited until the heavy door had closed solidly behind them, their footsteps fading away in the hallway beyond. When at last he could no longer hear any trace of sound, he picked up his spectacles and returned to his work. “Goodbye,” he said softly to the map on the desk in front of him.

I'm not even going to ask what just happened," Ashe muttered as they walked down the hallway with the same sense of controlled urgency that had been in place since the meeting.

“That was not a sight I had hoped to keep in my eyes as we are about to be parted in the advent of war. Please be certain that you do not do that to Achmed where I can see—I'll be unable to take nourishment for weeks.” Rhapsody was lost in thought and didn't hear him.

“Who did Anborn neglect to kiss goodbye that never came home?” she asked when they finally reached the door to their chambers. Ashe looked blank, then took the handle and opened the door. “I've no idea,” he said, gesturing for her to enter first. “Anborn has lived a long time, and through some terrible days. I imagine he has lost many people he has cared for, though no one special comes to mind except perhaps Shrike, and I don't expect they did much kissing.” Rhapsody went to the candelabra on the table near the bed and touched the wicks, sparking them into flame. “His wife, perhaps?” Her husband closed the door. “I would doubt that. Estelle was a fairly horrid woman, and when she died a decade or so ago my father told me Anborn was more relieved than anything else. I was in hiding then, so I don't really know much about what has gone on in Anbom's life. He has an oft-stated fondness for tavern wenches and serving girls; I don't think it's impossible that he may have lost one or more that he cared for.” Rhapsody shook her head and came into his arms. “I don't think that's the answer, though you are probably right that it was not Estelle.” She thought back to a frozen glade at the forest's edge in Tyrian, on the night Constantin had made reference to in the council meeting, when the Lord Marshal had come in answer to her Kinsmen's call on the wind to find her and the then-gladiator lost and freezing to death. Anborn had rescued them both, had taken her, frostbitten and all but naked, into a hidden shack that had served as a way station for him, where he tossed her a soft wool tunic of fern-green, long of sleeve, pointed at the wrist, to cover herself. This doesn't look like it would fit you too well, Anborn. To whom does it belong ? It belonged to my wife. She won't mind you wearing it— she's been dead eleven years now. It looks far better on you, by the way. I'm very sorry.

No need to be. We didn't like each other very much. We didn't live together, and I rarely saw her. But you must have loved her once. No. For such an intellectually gifted woman, Rhapsody, you can be charmingly naive. Then why did you marry? She wasn't an unattractive woman. Her family was an old one, and she was principled; if she ever cuckolded me, I never knew it, and I believe I would have. I was loyal to her as well, until she died.

The honest cynicism had stung her. That's all? Why bother? she had asked him. A fair question, to be sure. I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you. Did you have children?

No. I'm sorry to disillusion you, Rhapsody. You obviously know what my family is, and so know that we don't have the most romantic history. From the very beginning, sex and mating in our family has been about power and control, and it has remained thus. And I can't foresee a time when that will change—dragon blood is pervasive, you know.

The brutality of the observation had not been lost on her. Ashe pulled her closer. “In these last moments before we part, forgive me if I say that I couldn't care less about whoever Anborn kissed or did not kiss—except that it was quite disturbing to witness it being you.”

She shook her head to clear it of the memory and smiled up at her husband. “We only have a few fleeting moments—either the quartermaster will declare the provisions and mounts ready, or the baby will wake, screaming, in Grunthor's arms, and we will need to rescue them both. Perhaps we should forget about An-born for the present and just be alone together, while I am still here.” “Agreed,” the Lord Cymrian said. Without another word he swept his wife from her feet and laid her carefully down on their marriage bed, then lay down beside her. He took her small face in his hands and stared down at it, as if to commit to memory every feature again, as he had done each night into each day that they had been together for the last four years, the vertical pupils in his eyes shrinking in the candlelight, the cerulean blue irises gleaming with an intensity surpassing that of an ordinary man. It was the dragon within his blood that was assessing her now, Rhapsody knew, a nature both alien and familiar to her that obsessed over each thing or being that it considered to be treasure. She could feel her skin prickle beneath the vibration of his inner sense as it memorized the length of each of her eyelashes, the number of breaths she took, the beating rhythm of her heart. She could feel his anxiety rise and knew that he also perceived how weak she still was from childbirth, how much blood she had lost, how fragile her health had become. The dragon Elynsynos, to whose lair Ashe had originally guided her during a sweet spring long ago, had provided most of the insight she had into this side of the man whose soul she shared. Wyrms are not avaricious—-we do not desire much, Pretty, only what we believe is rightfully ours. We are each part of a shield that protects the entirety of the world, and yet we do not wish to own everything in that world. That which is part of our hoard, our treasure, is not our prisoner; we guard it jealously, hut only because we love it with everything that is in us. What humans see as possessiveness, dragons believe to be the purest form of love. This is true whether the treasure is a single coin, a living being, or a whole nation of people. Independent as her own temperament was, she had come to understand that element of his nature, all the while knowing that he battled it, grappled with it, struggled against it every day, endeavoring to keep from letting the draconic side of himself frighten or subsume her. As she looked back into his eyes now, she could see straight to his soul, and within her own she felt an overwhelming sense of impending loss; she had learned to treasure him in the same way.

Ashe saw the tears glinting in her eyes, perceived the lump in her throat, and slid his fingers deeper into her hair, cupping her head and covering her mouth with his. Time became suspended as they shared a breath, the musical rhythm of inhalation and release that was the song of their joined lives. When their lips separated he saw that her wan face was wet with the tears she had fought so long to hold in check; his dragon sense had registered her weeping, but the sight of it always squeezed his heart more than he was prepared to withstand. There was something within him mat perceived her as even more beautiful in tears than when she was smiling, and the thought disturbed him greatly. He pulled her closer as she buried her face in his shoulder, secretly glad to be rid of the sight. “A quarter hour, no more,” she murmured. “Why does it always seem that we are limited in our time together? We are barely in each other's presence more than the span of a few heartbeats before we are once again parted. And how can you withstand losing our child again? I am afraid, Sam—genuinely afraid that this will be more than you, man or dragon, will be able to withstand. I know I would not be able to bear it were it you that was leaving, taking him with you.”

The Lord Cymrian exhaled slowly; he had been contemplating, with dread, the same thing.

“I will hold on to the few scraps of comfort that remain— the knowledge that, with what is to come, you and Meridion will be safe. I will continue to remind myself, as the dragon grows impatient and angry, that I have never deserved you or the happiness you have brought me from the start.” He put his hand over her mouth to quell the protest that threatened to spill out.

“For all that I know you love me, Rhapsody, you really don't know how much I love you; the inadequacy of my tongue prevents me from putting it into words. Each wrong I've done you, each error I've made, each time I have allowed pain to touch you, digs a deeper hole of regret that has, like all other vessels within me, filled up yet again with more longing to be with you. Sometimes I think that if ever I were to hurt you, even inadvertently, the breath would turn to ice within me. To do anything other than to commit you to Achmed and Granthor's protection and get you both as far from the coming hostilities as possible would be to risk that hurt—and that is what, more than anything, I would be unable to bear. So, for the sake of the One-God, do not endanger yourself or our child, I beg you—the knowledge that you are safe as the world begins to fray and come apart is the only thing that keeps me from following my father into the ether—or perhaps to an Ending not unlike his.”