The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) (18 page)

The
chain Kora held cut into her palm, and she stared at its links with hatred.
Memories of the enchanted—better to say cursed—necklace still
haunted her. Invading the egotistical, misogynist mind of Zalski Forzythe’s
first general; nearly dying for the act when he’d tried to strangle her with
the chain; making Zalski her new target and discovering him painfully human,
even respectable in ways, despite his regicide and his sadistic streak…. Now
she would have to use the vile thing to spy on this Evant Linstrom. On Petroc’s
son.

Rexson,
of course, had not insisted she track Linstrom. Once Kora forged her link, that
link was breakable only by the individual’s death, which meant her decision was
final. The king knew this, but even in the days of the Crimson League, he had
never tried to persuade her where to direct her chain’s magic. He’d encouraged
her to trust her instincts, and her instincts, now, told her Linstrom was the
obvious choice. The only choice over his lackeys.

Zalski,
too, had been the obvious victim when she first took her chain from Linstrom’s
father, but something in her gut had warned her to hold off, had hinted she
might find a more useful way to employ her newfound power. And so she had:
Zalski’s general, Kora had soon remembered, had been missing for a year at the
time, off on some secret mission that the Crimson League knew nothing about.

That
first visceral reaction against Zalski did not repeat now, when she considered
a connection with Linstrom. Oh, the mere thought of using the chain again, not
to mention its weight in her hand, made Kora want to purge the contents of her
stomach, but that had nothing to do with her choice of victim and everything to
do with the unique, invasive magic that the chain allowed the Marked One, and
only the Marked One, to wield. Kora remembered Linstrom’s father; he had been a
self-centered, unbalanced, and angry man. The thought of tracking Petroc’s
son—Kora had always called the use of her chain “tracking”—was
enough to make the sorceress sweat beneath her bandana, but she knew Linstrom’s
was the mind she must invade.

Petroc’s
son. Petroc, whose family had guarded the chain for generations, for the Marked
One to use for Herezoth’s benefit in the kingdom’s darkest hour. Petroc, who
had made Kora risk her life to take the chain from him, and the king’s with
her, and that of the friend whose name she had given her firstborn. Petroc, who
had never suspected that Kora, some twenty-five years later, would turn that
chain against his very blood.

“Mom?”
said Kansten. Kora turned to her. The girl was staring, in fear and awe, at the
chain in Kora’s grasp. Kora braced herself for an uncomfortable conversation.
She had kept silent the length of her daughter’s life about her final months in
Herezoth. Now, in Herezoth once again, she would have to speak. She figured
Kansten had been itching for years to ask questions. “Did you kill anyone, Mom?
With the Crimson League, that day you put the mural on the Palace wall?”

Kora
took a seat on the bed. Kansten jumped up beside her, and the sorceress said,
“In that last battle, I don’t believe. But other times…. I could lie to you, I
suppose, if you weren’t too smart to see through me, and I didn’t respect you
like I do. Since you’ve come to Herezoth, since you’ll be aiding the king and
you’ve clearly gained some grasp of what that means…. I didn’t join the Crimson
League with the wish to hurt other people. I joined because my options were to
kill or be killed, and well, as hard as life was in those days, I wanted life
to continue. I didn’t want my mother and brother to grieve my death as I had
seen them grieve my father’s. That’s why I fought, and there were moments when,
yes, I did kill to defend myself or someone else. Kancat, I’m sorry you’ve had
to deal with the aftermath of all of that: with my exile, with the rumors and
the hatred, even in Traigland. Hatred, it’s a horrible thing, and I’m worried
you’ll hear or read things here that will hurt you more than you anticipate.”

“I’ve
already heard things,” said Kansten. “That doesn’t matter. Mom, I admire you so
much. I do. I can promise you, if it were me who went through all you did, I
would
not
have the strength to come
back to this place. I’d gladly let the people here destroy themselves. That’s
no more than the monsters deserve. I think you’re…. I think you’re mad, to be
honest. Mad, and stupid, and selfless. Much braver than I’ll ever be.”

Kora
patted her daughter’s hand. “You’re brave, Kancat. Braver than I’m comfortable
with, for sure.” She added, fearful of the girl’s reaction, “I wish you and
your brothers would go home.”

“You
transport me back, and stay there, and I’ll go without a squeak of protest.”

That
cut off Kora’s entreaties before they could even begin. She sighed. “You know I
have to be here, Kansten.”

“And
you know the king needs a messenger to bring him your reports, so let’s leave
it there. As for my brothers, I wish they’d go home as much as you do. Why did
you bring them in the first place?”

“Your
uncle left me no choice. And as quickly as I’d cast any spell I came across to
make them younger, to justify forcing them back to Traigland, I’ve no such
magic. It doesn’t exist. They’re both adults, and I promise you, I begged them
not to do this.”

“Hang
them, they’re so bloody stubborn!”

Kora’s
lips stretched in amusement. “And you, you’ve been the height of yielding all
your life. You didn’t try to cast spells six years before the age I wanted you
to reach for that. Not you, no ma’am. You didn’t rant and rave and insist on
coming to this place, despite the warnings I gave that it wouldn’t match the
image you created for yourself. If your brothers are stubborn, they picked that
up watching you, Kancat. Don’t fault them for it.”

“They
could die, Mom.”

“I
don’t need you reminding me of that. I’ll bloody fall apart, and I have to use
this…. This….”

A
swear strong enough to describe the chain escaped Kora.

Kansten
held her mother’s arm. If she was trying to comfort the sorceress, she
succeeded, to a degree. The girl noted, “You never mentioned that chain
before.”

“I
haven’t mentioned a lot of things.”

Kansten’s
voice became quiet. “You saw people killed, didn’t you?”

“I
won’t discuss this, Kansten. Not now. Not here. I need to forge that connection
with Linstrom before I lose my nerve.” Kora paused. “When I first started using
this necklace, it would put me in a kind of trance. As I used it more and my
magic grew, I learned to counteract that, but it’s been so long I can’t say
what will happen. If I look to collapse or some such thing, don’t be alarmed.
I’m not ill or in trouble.”

Kansten
nodded. She forced herself to smile. Kora was proud that her arms were steady
as she placed the chain over her neck, because she exerted no small effort to
prevent them trembling. The once familiar, forever loathsome weight and chill
of the metal shook her confidence momentarily. Then she muttered Linstrom’s
name.

As
always when using the chain, Kora found herself in the mentally exhausting
position of monitoring two locations; a kind of split vision allowed her to
focus on one or the other at will. Back at Oakdowns, she had fallen from the
bed to her knees, unresponsive to Kansten’s one attempt to rouse her, and was
relieved to think she had warned her daughter about a trance.

The
situation was different in Partsvale. Kora stood there, unheeded, amongst two
men in a cobbler’s shop closed for business; the first of them was clearly
Petroc’s son. Linstrom shared the dead sorcerer’s gray eyes, thick chest, and
the darker shade of his odd, two-toned hair. Though not as long as Petroc’s had
been, he tied his back in the same fashion. His crooked nose was different, but
his disdainful sneer was the spitting image of his father.

“It
makes no difference, Terrance,” he told a taller, bearded man. Auburn-haired.
They were cutting strips of leather on the floor with razorblades.

“No
difference? Francie Rafe was a member of the Magic Council. I hadn’t questioned
her. She might have provided a windfall of intelligence, and you killed her
before she could. Killed her to appease your weak-stomached lover.”

Insubordinate oaf.

Linstrom
pointed his blade at Terrance. “First of all, you will not insult Lottie.”

“Why?
Why shouldn’t I? She hasn’t the stomach for what we’re planning.”

“Let
me be the judge of that,” Linstrom ordered. “I know her far better than you
do.”

“Because
she opens her legs for you?”

“Lottie’s
proven herself trustworthy, and you know it. The king overlooked her the same
as the two of us. She’s the one who’s got the Partsvale scribes waiting to
print about the council scandal. It was her idea to go after the guardhouse
first. She’s as loyal as you, and you’ll refrain from badmouthing her.”

Terrance
shoved his razor into the wooden floor, so that it stood upright. “I’ll agree
to that, if you can defend killing a Magic Councilor before questioning. A
Magic Councilor!”

“Rafe
lived and worked in Podrar. We don’t need information on Podrar, Terrance.
We’re attacking Yangerton.”

Terrance
chuckled. “Can’t wait until we drop that information on the fold. Quite a shock
they’ll get, a mere hour before the attack. We’ve been planning Partsvale and
more Partsvale.”

“Yes,
two hundred individuals are aware we’ve been planning Partsvale. And we won’t
let that planning go to waste, I hope. We’ll leave our mark here in good time.
Our merry band will be surprised by the change of first target, but they won’t
grudge increasing the scope of our attack beyond anything we could accomplish
in piddling Partsvale. As for wounded pride, they’ll appreciate I wasn’t
senseless enough to allow two hundred people knowledge of our major attack
during months of planning.”

“Think
anyone’s gone running to the authorities?” asked Terrance.

“Doesn’t
matter if they have. The authorities would plan a defense of Partsvale. Let
them. It won’t inconvenience us. We’ll be in Yangerton. You and I have been
arranging Yangerton for quite some time.”

“Yes,”
said Terrance. With a scathing look, he grabbed his razor and returned to work.
“We’ll be in Yangerton. And Rafe will be buried by then, along with any
information she could have given about Ingleton. The wench worked with the
king’s pet sorcerer for ten bloody years. You think Ingleton won’t be the first
man the crown calls to oppose us? You didn’t think Rafe might know a little
something about him that would prove useful?”

“I
judged it more to the point to prove that our cause is just. We’re working to
make the king pay for his deceit. To reclaim the place that’s rightfully ours
and has been denied for centuries. We aren’t thugs. We’re not out to terrorize
defenseless women who, you know as well as I, that tyrant has as hoodwinked as
the rest of the kingdom with his supposed agenda of peace. Some innocents will
have to die; that’s unavoidable. That doesn’t mean we condone torture. You
think Lottie would have been the only one uncomfortable with what you’re
suggesting we should have done to that woman? After what you’d already put her
through? Agatha supported you, but no one else spoke up. Your own cousin
quailed at the thought of delivering a death blow. Gertrude didn’t want….”

Terrance
turned defensive. “You told me to create a diversion.”

“I
didn’t tell you to rape a woman, hold her hostage for a day, and then bring
your battered, bloody captive to the Hall as some kind of trophy. The last
part, in particular, I find unsettling.”

Terrance
threw his razor. “You bloody liar. I was watching your face the entire time we
were in the library. You weren’t unsettled in the slightest. You were giddy as
a girl in May until your strumpet….”

Linstrom
sliced Terrance’s arm above the elbow. The men wrestled until Terrance knocked
the blade away, which served to calm Linstrom’s ire.

You never learn,
Terrance. Never learn. Maybe that gash will teach you something.

The
underling chuckled to himself as he healed his gushing wound with a spell.

On the other hand….

Terrance’s
white tunic remained ripped and wet, stained crimson. He might have lacked
Linstrom’s bulk, his barrel chest, but his air of invincibility was no less for
that. “A blade? A bloody sorcerer, and you attack me with a blade? Don’t hold
back, Linstrom. Good Giver, it’s not like I’ve people in hiding here waiting to
avenge me. We cast spells to check for unwanted guests.” He shook his head. “A
blade….”

“As
useful a tool as an incantation to show I won’t tolerate….”

“You
know I don’t have a problem with Lottie. She’s just soft, is all. Inexperienced
in the kind of work we’re doing. I’m not convinced she won’t swoon the night of
the attack, but I don’t doubt her conviction to our cause. She was involved
before I was. I’m simply saying that on this occasion, you let your damn libido
override your brain.”

“Perhaps,”
said Linstrom. “If it’ll calm you, I knew who Rafe’s coworkers were. I read the
Podrar papers. Ingleton’s not a dueler; he’s a politician—Ingleton and
that Zacry Porteg both, politicians and scholars. The king’s sorcerers aren’t a
threat to us. We’ll make a wasteland of Yangerton’s Central Plaza.”