The Bloodforged (31 page)

*   *   *

“Dear gods, what
have I done?” Erik sat on the bed, head in his hands, a note of pure despair in his voice.

Alix didn't know what to say. She couldn't wrap her mind around what had just happened. It was too unreal, too incomprehensible. She had never witnessed a more spectacular diplomatic disaster in her life. That it should be perpetrated by Erik—
Erik
, the most careful, restrained man she had ever known—was unfathomable. “Why were you so angry?” An irrelevant question, surely, yet it was all she could manage.

“I don't know.” He shook his head dazedly. “I don't know what came over me. One moment, I was barely listening,
trying to think of an elegant way to broach the subject of the war, and the next . . . I can't explain it. When Kader said those things about the tribes . . .”

“Of course he feels that way!” Alix practically shouted the words. She knew she wasn't improving matters, but she couldn't help it. “The crown and the mountain tribes have been bitter enemies for generations! Omaïd, his father, his father's father. For centuries, Erik! Of course he hates them! By all the gods, Rig would have said the same things!”

“And he would have been wrong.”

“What does it—?” She broke off, shaking her head. There was no point in arguing about it; the damage was done. She raked her fingers through her delicately pinned hair, paced back and forth on the rug.
Think, Alix. There has to be a way to fix this. Oh gods, please let there be a way to fix this.

“I've doomed us,” Erik said dully.

Alix dropped to her knees before him, heedless of the seam ripping in her dress. “Don't say that. We'll figure this out. You and I can figure this out.”

He took her face in his hands, rested his forehead against hers. “My beautiful Alix. So fierce. If only it were that simple.”

Impossibly, the world seemed to spin a little further out of control.
My beautiful Alix.
He'd never spoken to her like that, not even before Liam.

“I'm so sorry,” he whispered. “I'm so sorry, Alix.”

She pulled back to look at him. There were tears in his eyes.
Tears.
Reflexively, she threw her arms around him, and found that he was shaking.
Blessed Farika, what's happening to him?
Her arms tightened around his shoulders, as if she could hold him together, as if she could shield him from whatever demons gnawed at his mind.

Demons.
A fleeting thought, figurative. But something was terribly wrong here, something she couldn't define, let alone combat. A blade of fear sliced into her, piercing even through the hurt. She clung to him, stunned and afraid, utterly helpless.

His shoulders convulsed in a silent sob. Alix felt her own tears streaming down her face, dropping onto her broken king, spattering his perfect clothing, falling into his perfect red-gold hair.

*   *   *

“Where is His
Majesty now?” the chancellor enquired coolly.

“Asleep,” Alix said. “I asked one of the servants to bring a tonic. It's a testament to his illness that he actually took it. Normally, he refuses any kind of medicine that slows his thinking.”

“Perhaps he should have taken it before supper.”

Alix sighed. “I know you're angry, Chancellor, and you have every right to be.”

“My feelings are irrelevant. It is His Lordship King Omaïd who has been offended, most grievously.”

“I know, and His Majesty regrets that from the bottom of his heart. He is unwell, Chancellor. He is not himself.”

“And what, pray, is the nature of his illness?”

I wish I knew.
“Something that befell him in the mountains. Many of us suffered illness there, of one sort or another. I myself caught a terrible fever, and could barely hold my food down for weeks. It seems that it struck His Majesty a little later, that's all.”

“Regrettable.” The chancellor crossed his legs, swirled the brandy in his crystal glass. Behind him, a log slumped lower into the fire, sending out a shower of sparks.

Alix drew a deep breath and in her most highborn voice said, “I'm sure you'll agree, Chancellor, that it would be foolish to allow something so trivial to come between longtime friends and allies. Even families quarrel now and then.”

“True, though I cannot agree that the matter is trivial. There is no more sensitive issue in this country than that of the mountain tribes.” He spoke the last words in little more than a whisper.

“I know that. So does King Erik. As I said, he is not himself.”

“King Omaïd is very angry. Nevertheless, given time, I am sure he will forgive the matter.”

“That's just it, Chancellor. Time is the one thing we don't have. Oridia will breach our borders any day. We
need
Harram. It would be unspeakable if a few careless words brought on by illness condemned my country to fall.”

For the first time, she saw real compassion in the chancellor's eyes. He sighed, swirling the brandy absently. “I sympathise, Your Highness, truly. It would be terrible indeed if tonight's events should lead to so dire a fate. But our good king is not the sort of man to change his mind about such things. I'm afraid . . .” He paused uncomfortably, tossed a mouthful of brandy down his throat. “I'm afraid the assistance of the Harrami legions is quite impossible at this time.”

He may as well have thrown the brandy in her face.
Everything we've been through. All that we've lost . . .

“Perhaps they will not even be necessary,” Kader said, as if grasping for some comfort, however inadequate. “Our ambassador in Varadast says that support for the war has reached a nadir. The people are weary. Even Varad's counsellors press him to end it now. They say . . .” The chancellor trailed off; he could see that she wasn't really listening. He sighed again, heavily. “Is there anything else I can do, Your Highness?”

“No,” Alix said, the words falling from numb lips. “No, Chancellor, it would seem not. It would seem there is nothing anyone can do.”

“T
hank you for your frank honesty, Your Highness,” First Speaker Kar said when Liam had done. Or at least, that was what his lips said. His eyes said,
Where do you get the nerve?
“It is a testament to the strength of our alliance that we can be so candid with each other about matters of domestic policy.” Those last two words being the operative ones, obviously.
Mind your own sodding business
, diplomatically speaking.

“I should have mentioned it earlier,” Liam said, “but I got
so caught up in this business with the fleet . . .” He spread his hands, smiling. The two men sitting across from him did not smile back.

“Perfectly understandable,” said Defence Consul Welin. “After all, that is why you are here.”
As opposed to meddling in our lawmaking, you presumptuous princeling.
There was a certain grim enjoyment in learning to speak this language, Liam decided, of stripping these carefully costumed words down to their brittle bones.

“His Majesty was deeply concerned to hear of this measure,” Rona Brown said, in a deeply concerned voice, with deep concern etched all over her face. “It weighs heavy on his heart that boys of fourteen and fifteen could be cut down in defence of Alden. He does not want it on his conscience, my lord speakers.”

Or at least he wouldn't, if he knew a single bloody thing about it. He didn't, of course; the measure had been tabled after Erik and Alix had already set out for Ost. But the speakers couldn't know that, and Rona had played their trump card flawlessly, laying it on the table with just enough gravitas to remind everyone how much power it represented. Liam couldn't have done it with half so much aplomb. Coming from him, the threat would have sounded childish, like a small boy invoking his big brother to scare away a bully.

Kar shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Traded a glance with Welin. Liam could read the substance of that silent exchange: How much risk was here?

Rona read it too, and she clarified the matter. “Of course, His Majesty understands that the Worker's Alliance does not shoulder the burden of this decision alone. Your learned colleagues in the Republicana have their voices as well, and so they shall be acquainted with His Majesty's views. It is only right that they take their measure of responsibility, don't you agree?”

In case your situation isn't clear to you, let me push you in front of this moving carriage.
Once the People's Congress and the other leagues got wind of Erik's opposition to the measure, they would trumpet it far and wide.
Even the King of Alden, whose own borders are under attack, is against it!
Popular support—if there was any to begin with—would be gutted.
The Alliance would be isolated, vilified. All with their precious elections looming on the horizon.

Liam shook his head inwardly. He'd learned the language, but that wasn't nearly enough. It was one thing to know a sword when you saw one; it was another to wield it to perfection. For the tenth time, he thanked the gods for Lady Rona Brown.

First Speaker Kar didn't appreciate her quite so much. “Of course, my lady,” he said, voice taut with barely restrained anger. “This is a very serious matter, after all. So serious, indeed, that I doubt the measure will be brought to a vote anytime soon. There is so much to discuss, so many factors to consider. It may be that in the fullness of time, certain amendments are made.”

“May Eldora light your way,” Rona said gravely.

They were ejected from Kar's offices as summarily as protocol would allow, to find Dain and Ide waiting for them at the bottom of the steps. The moment they were out of sight of the Republicana, Liam turned and planted a kiss on Rona's forehead. “Bloody
brilliant
!”

She blushed fiercely, her self-conscious smile a far cry from the stone-cold look she'd been giving the speakers a few moments before.

“Went all right, then?” Ide asked. Dain, meanwhile, threw an arm around Rona and gave her a squeeze.

“Better than all right,” Liam said. “We didn't get a firm yes, but I'd bet gold to granite they're going to water the measure down before it goes to vote, especially on the age issue.”

“Will it be enough to satisfy Gir?” Dain asked.

Liam inclined his head in the direction of the docks. “Only one way to find out.”

*   *   *

The leader of
the dockies was loitering by the doors of the warehouse with a pair of his men when Liam and the others approached. The Wolves must have looked well pleased with themselves, because Gir met them with a grin, his expression echoed unsettlingly by the thug with the stained red teeth. “Well, Your Highness?”

“Don't expect mass mobilisation to go to a vote anytime soon, and when it does, I doubt your sons will be receiving their summons.”

“You didn't manage to sink it, then?”

“Not altogether, no. Like I said, I'm a foreigner. Dictating Onnani laws is a little beyond my power.”

“So you stalled it?”

“That, and I made it known that the King of Alden would be very displeased if the age of mobilisation was lower in Onnan than in his own country. That's the best I could do, and frankly, it should be more than enough.”

Gir grunted. “How do I know you're telling the truth?”

“You obviously have sources,” Liam said, “or you wouldn't know about the motion in the first place. Consult them. Or you could just trust that I'm not a
complete
idiot. If I lied to you, you'd find out soon enough. It does me no good to convince you for a day. I need you onside for at least the three months it'll take to finish those ships.”

That must have convinced the dockie, because a look of fatherly relief came into his eyes, and he nodded. “Thank you.”

“I'm not looking for your thanks,” Liam snapped, letting his anger seep through at last. “We had a deal. I expect it to go into effect immediately. If you get your men back on the job today, I'll even throw in a pardon for the whole attempted-murder thing, free of charge.”

Gir frowned. “Come again?”

“I suppose I should be flattered you thought it would take three men to put me down, what with me being unarmed and all. Well now, come to think of it, looks like it would have taken more, doesn't it?” Childish, but
oh so satisfying
. “Anyway, what's done is done. I'm a tolerant bloke, and I've got bigger fish to fry”—yes, he'd said
fish
—“but just know that if anything like that happens again, I'm going to be
very
cross.”

Gir regarded him searchingly, as though looking for the joke. He turned to the man on his left, the one with the red teeth. “You got any idea what he's—”

“I do,” said the third man, and before Liam had even registered what was happening, a knife had buried itself in Gir's ribs. He gasped and staggered into the waiting arms of the red-toothed man.

Instinctively, Liam dropped to retrieve the dagger in his boot—which turned out not to be very clever, because it put his head at the perfect level for the red-toothed man to kick it.
The impact blasted the sense out of him, throwing him to the ground and leaving the top of his brain swirling like water at the bottom of a drain. For a moment, he struggled to process what was going on around him. He heard Rona cry out, heard Dain roar and crash into someone. By the time he was back on his feet, half dazed, dagger in hand, he found himself and the other Wolves surrounded by about a dozen men, all of them armed and ready. Gir lay facedown, motionless in a spreading pool of blood. The red-toothed thug was grappling with Dain, and Ide had an arm around the throat of the third man, the one who'd stabbed Gir. “You're gonna wanna back up, lads,” she called to the ring of onlookers, “'less you fancy hearing a neck break.”

The dockies hovered warily. Most had their eyes on Dain and Red-Tooth, waiting to see how it came out. One of them, though, a lad of no more than fourteen, took a halting step toward Ide. “Fen?” he said uncertainly.

Fen.
Liam remembered the name Gir had called in the warehouse yesterday, the unseen hands that had opened the lanterns.

“My life is not important.” Fen spoke in heavily accented Erromanian, words aimed at the Wolves, not the boy. “This is more big than one man. I am happy to die for this. That way, my brothers do not die.” He spoke the language poorly, unlike his leader.

Unlike his leader.
Liam remembered the note, the awkward phrasing of the death threat.
Gir wouldn't have written that
, he realised grimly.
No wonder he looked so blank. He had no idea what I was talking about.

As if reading Liam's mind, Fen said, “Gir betrayed us. We do not bargain with you, Prince of Alden. We do not surrender.” Ide tightened her grip, but before she could silence him, he shouted something in Onnani.

It was as if some unseen rope had been cut. The dockies surged forward. Ide released her captive, only to sweep a dagger from her boot and open his throat.

“No!”
The boy rushed at Ide, knife raised, face twisted in anguish. Before she could react, Liam stepped between them and threw a carefully placed punch, dropping the boy before he could get himself killed.

“Wouldn't've cut the lad,” Ide said, annoyed. And that was the last bit of conversation they had time for; she twisted to get under the swing of a full-grown dockie, and it was on.

In these kinds of scrums, incapacitation was more important than killing. It was no good waiting for an opportunity to land a fatal blow when you had two other blokes flanking you. Speed was the thing, and space, and for that, you needed to drop as many as you could as fast as you could. Liam was all elbows and fists and the occasional judiciously placed knee. When he used the blade, it was opportunistic, and he aimed—he wasn't ashamed to admit it—for the soft bits. He blinded one man with a jab, sliced another open from lip to ear with a hook. He reversed the blade for an uppercut, burying his dagger under a man's chin for a quick, tidy kill.

Only when every dockie within his immediate reach was either down or bent at the half did Liam pause—to breathe, and to check up on the Pack. Ide, who was a full head taller than any of her opponents, dropped a man with a hammering blow to the temple before stooping to pick up his sword. The dockies around her took a step back to reassess the matter, which was probably wise. Rona, meanwhile, was pulling a lifeless Red-Tooth off Dain. A half step away, a dockie was on hands and knees, howling, blood dripping from a wound Liam couldn't see.

The boy Liam had knocked out was struggling back to his feet. Liam wasn't the only one who noticed; someone shouted something at him, an urgent order. The lad hesitated a heartbeat, dark eyes fixed on Liam. Then he bolted.

He might have been fleeing, and that would have been fine. But Liam had looked into the boy's eyes, and what he'd seen there hadn't been fear. It had been something else, something fierce. Wherever he was running to, it wasn't safety.

Liam faltered. Shot a glance at the Wolves, still swallowed in the melee. Then Dain cried, “
Stop him, Commander!
” and any lingering doubt vanished. Liam charged after the boy.

Hearing footfalls behind him, the lad found a new speed. He leapt over a stack of crates, graceful as a deer, and swerved around a thick coil of rope. He narrowed his shoulders to crash between a pair of startled sailors, then banked left at a warehouse, breaking Liam's line of sight.

Dread pooled in the pit of Liam's stomach, but it wasn't until he rounded the corner of the warehouse that he realised why: The boy was heading for the shipyard. They were nearly there; already, the lad had begun waving both arms above his head, signalling to someone. The dread in Liam's stomach burst into a flare of panic. He knew what the boy was doing. He knew what was going to happen. He did the only thing he could think of: He stopped, took aim, and whipped the knife.

The boy dropped like a puppet shorn of its strings. Someone screamed. Liam jogged up to the motionless form, the flare of panic already turning to ashes of dread.

He'd been aiming for the shoulder. He'd missed. The dagger had buried itself at the base of the skull; the boy was probably dead before he even hit the pier. Liam stood over the limp form, swaying a little, seized by a sudden wave of nausea. Somewhere nearby, a woman had begun to weep. Sinking to his knees, Liam rolled the boy over, forced himself to look. A smooth, round face. The face of a child. He'd killed a child. He was very nearly sick then, but at that moment a pair of hands grabbed him roughly by the arm, and there were people all over him now, hands wrenching him this way and that, which was fair, which he deserved, and they were shouting and calling him names he couldn't really understand but which were almost certainly justified since he'd just murdered a child.

They yanked him to his feet. That was when he saw the smoke, black, billowing, rising from the shipyard. The stench of burning pitch bit at his nose. In the distance, a bell clanged.

They'd done it. What he'd known in that desperate moment they were going to do, what had made him throw the dagger and kill a child. They'd set it on fire. Three months' worth of half-finished galleys. Alden's great hope.

He'd failed. The boy's death, everything they'd gone through over the past two weeks—all of it in vain. All of it blown away like smoke on the wind.

Closing his eyes, Liam let them take him.

*   *   *

The breeze racing
up from the bay was tainted with smoke. Try as he might, Liam could not smell the sea. He couldn't
hear the rushing of the tide. Just the occasional snatches of excited babble that still drifted on the wind, carrying word of the dramatic events at the docks.

“Commander.”

He didn't turn. He couldn't find the energy.