The King's Sons (The Herezoth Trilogy) (37 page)

 
“Neslan,” said Valkin, “thank you.”

“What
for, exactly?”

Neslan
reclaimed his chair.

“For
showing me what a dangerous road I walked, letting resentment fester. I can’t
hide that kind of a pussing wound for long. It’s one thing for you to know how
I feel, but once people like the Duchess of Yangerton, or the Count of
Fontferry suspected, I’d have endangered not only myself, not only Father, but
the kingdom at large. Any number of nobles would jump at a chance to grab the
crown.”

“Precisely,”
said Neslan. “What would Father say to that, eh? After all he suffered, all
he’s done for this kingdom and for you, specifically, as his son….”

“I
know. And I’ll come to terms with what awaits me. I just…. I’ll need some time,
to let go of everything the crown means forsaking.”

Rest-filled
nights. Privacy. The use and development of his magic. A wife taken for love,
not political gain. Already those sacrifices seemed smaller than before, when
considered payment to guard the throne from nobles who had courted Zalski’s
favor. He considered how wretched he would feel to let all his father had lived
for come to nothing.

Neslan
offered, “I’ll leave you be for a while, shall I?”

“Look,
all your help these past few days…. You haven’t enjoyed this any more than I
have.”

“Just think on what I
told you. It’s not a shortcoming you don’t want to be king. You’ll use Father’s
approach as a model when it serves, and you’ll be wise enough to recognize when
it doesn’t. Valkin, I never doubted you’d succeed this week.”

“I know,”
said Valkin. Neslan left him, and he felt how tired he was. Sluggish. He saw
the table before him, the scrolls he had thrown with magic, as through some
kind of fog. He would be surprised if he’d slept a grand total of ten hours
over the last three nights. He let his eyes fall closed and ran Neslan’s final
words through his head, over and over, thoroughly believing them; within three
minutes he fell asleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Battle at the Stables

At
nightfall, Evant Linstrom (with the aid of his sorcerers) had gathered each of
his two hundred supporters at the Hall of Sorcery. He had seen nothing of
Terrance all day, and accepted the man must have died in the bakery fire. Pity
of pities, that: he would have made a ruthless warrior when the time came.
Having seen the state in which he left Francie Rafe, Kora had to agree, and
thanked the Giver Vane had killed him.

A
young woman named Gertrude, some kind of seer related to Terrance, had taken
his loss hard. She cried much, Kora saw, and then took on a steely expression
that meant trouble for Oakdowns. She told Linstrom the king was to blame for
Terrance’s death; she was out for vengeance, and thanks to her power to see the
future a minute in advance, Linstrom wanted her in his vicinity. She hesitated not
at all to stand beside him.

As
for Lottie, her disappearance was far more troublesome to Linstrom. Not in her
home, not at the Hall…. Her cottage held no signs of a struggle, but that
didn’t mean the king hadn’t sent Ingleton after her, either to kill her or to
handle her arrest. He preferred to think the first, for a number of reasons: he
didn’t much like the thought of her suffering torture, no more than he cared
for the prospect of her telling the king, under duress, every blasted bit of
information she had concerning the Hall’s recent use. At least Linstrom,
legitimately, could use her fate to press upon everyone his logic for the
night’s excursion and the dire need for success.

Could
Lottie have betrayed him, have gone to the king’s men? Logistically, it was
possible. But had she? That seemed unlikely. He knew Lottie, knew her well, and
she was not a woman to sleep with a man she despised enough to turn over to the
crown. She was too simple and too sincere, and she had slept with him just the
day before. Linstrom had no doubt of Lottie’s feelings where he was concerned,
and even
had
she turned traitor,
unthinkable as that was, his troops were better off thinking her a martyr. He
would paint her as such.

Kora
had tracked the man’s thoughts all day, so Linstrom’s instructions held no
surprises: kill Ingleton, take every one else alive if possible. If not, do
whatever was needed to ensure no one escaped. The king, said Linstrom, knew
about them. He would come after them all, had already begun that process with
Lottie. The anonymity they had hoped to maintain—the doubt as to whether
they were the sorcerers Rexson had insulted or were others acting on their
behalf, angered on principle—had been ruined. Their only hope was to set
their eyes on the throne itself. To seize the crown before Rexson seized them.

Linstrom
had the sense not to mention Esclavay, not just then. A number of the men and
women who stood before him would have qualms about feeding the slave trade.
Better to let them pass the point of no return before revealing all; they would
reach that mark soon enough. They would need money, for mercenaries, and had
one option to contract that volume of coin. He would use Agatha to persuade the
others when the time was right. (He glanced, as he thought the name, at a
rust-haired woman who held herself proudly, even wearing old riding gear.)
Agatha was practical above all else, and not afraid to champion any duty, no
matter how unpleasant, that would serve the greater good of Linstrom’s men. She
kept to Linstrom’s side as long as that was feasible, for he asked her to head
up her own contingent of assailants. Any distress she showed over Lottie was
faked, and not well, to Kora’s judgment.

* * *

Back
at Oakdowns, the general had some three hundred soldiers at his command, all
from the barracks and the Crystal Palace. The manor’s defense would have
numbers on its side, but whether numbers could outweigh Linstrom’s advantage in
magic remained a mystery. If nothing else, the king’s men knew Linstrom’s
battle plan and would meet him with all the ferocity they could muster.

Jane,
Lottie, and Zacry, all together, had cast Jane’s new spell on everyone to
protect against the enemy’s befuddlement magic. To what degree that protection
would hold, no one could say, but Jane vowed it would negate most confusion
spells in full and the worst effects of the strongest. As he’d promised, Vane
had a spell to secure Oakdowns from Linstrom’s detection band, so the throngs
lurking inside—as well as on the grounds, in gardener’s sheds, privies,
and the carriage house—wouldn’t frighten off the invaders.

Vane
had cast a spell to alter Kora’s appearance. It straightened and darkened her
hair, erased her crow’s feet, and reshaped her nose. While it could do nothing
about her ruby, a simple charm she had used many a time assured her bandana
would not rip away. She doubted her own children would recognize her.

Thanks
to Kora, the king’s men knew Linstrom would open two fronts. He himself would
lead a small group to attack the stables and subdue its caretakers while the
rest began with the manor, gaining entry from any doors excluding the main
ones, which were visible from Oakdowns’s iron fence. What Linstrom didn’t know
was that, instead of unsuspecting, unarmed horse groomers, he would find the
king himself awaiting him, with Vane, Thad, Kora, and a host of uniformed
soldiers.

Zacry
had wanted to join that group, but the king refused at Kora’s behest. She
wanted Lottie nowhere near Linstrom, as much as that was possible, and Lottie
was Zacry’s partner. Instead, Rexson put Zacry in charge of magical operations
at the manor proper, to work hand in hand with the scarred but vigorous
general, who was clearly in his element.

Gratton
let out the strongest oaths Kora had ever heard when the king directed him to
stay with Hune, instead of ordering the prince away. The king pulled Gratton
and Kora aside and repeated, so that no one could overhear, “Protect my son,
Gratton. And Kora’s two. They may be sorcerers, but they’re the youngest men
here. Keep them together, all three, and stay with them. I’d entrust their
welfare to no one but you.” That gave Kora some comfort, barely.

Rexson’s
group moved to the stables before dark. Vane maintained normal lighting there,
four strong oil lamps that gave good visibility and dispelled shadows as night
dropped upon them. Departing servants had taken as many horses as possible, but
a small number—Hune’s horse among them—remained in their stalls.

The
stables consisted of a long, wooden building with many windows and a
straw-strewn central aisle. A second story housed quarters for the stable
hands; on the ground floor, stalls for Vane’s carriage horses stood to the left
and right with waist-high doors all latched. A locked cabinet near the entrance
held brushes, saddles, troughs, and buckets. Soldiers hid themselves in the
stalls, along with the king, who as a renowned swordsman would join their ranks
and had even donned their uniform as a disguise.

Kora
had stationed Rexson in a stall, and he’d accepted the assignment; he would be
safest tucked away there, as Linstrom hoped to avoid all injury to Ingleton’s
horses, which could be sold. The double doors would be Linstrom’s entry point,
so Vane and Kora positioned themselves behind them. Kora stalked the foe with
her chain while Thad warned the duke, “You’ll be seeing quite a bit of my mug
tonight. Blame your wife for the inconvenience.”

“You
promised her not to leave me. Well, you’ll be just as annoyed by my huge eyes
before we’re done as I am with your ridiculous moustache.”

Thad
protested, marching off to his stall, “The moustache gives me character.”

 
Then the wait began. Kora had always grudged
waiting when the League set an ambush, but at least tracking Linstrom (after
expressing a desire to pray, to explain why she knelt) served to distract her
thoughts.

Linstrom
had chosen two sorcerers to accompany him, armed with a battleaxe and sword.
That meant they would be casting those strength spells Lottie had demonstrated.
Among others with lesser magic, he had two swordsmen who flew and Gertrude,
gifted with foresight as well as, apparently, a bow and arrow. While her power
was limited to the minute to come and precluded foreknowledge of death, as she’d
reminded Linstrom, she would ruin the surprise of the king’s army.

That
amount of force to come against defenseless stable hands was excessive, to
Kora’s mind. But then, Linstrom needed a show to convince the handful of
servants he expected to find to surrender, didn’t he? He needed them alive.
Needed slaves. He also needed them secured, so they posed no danger of sounding
an alarm.

As
Linstrom’s army formed ranks to transport to Oakdowns—he had walked his
sorcerers by earlier in the day, forcing a pause in the manor’s staff
evacuation—Kora extinguished and relit the lamp nearest her with two
quick spells. That was a signal to Vane, the king, and Thad that their
opponents were on their way. Arms trembling, she then removed the chain from
around her neck; years ago, Zalski’s first general had almost strangled her
with the thing. Why court that death again?

Ideally,
Linstrom would have entered the stables before his men, unsuspecting, for Vane
and Kora to hit him with killing spells. All afternoon he had planned to walk
into the king’s trap, but thanks to his archer’s foresight, during his trek
from Oakdowns’s gardens he must have learned a battle waited a minute or so in
the future. He adjusted his strategy.

Kora
stepped toward Vane as the stables glowed an eerie shade of blue: the color of
a clear winter sky, one that had no place on a summer night. He motioned her
back. That glow was a different hue from a sound barrier, but Kora imagined it
would function as well to seal the stables’ occupants inside. This was not
supposed to happen….

Linstrom
tried to light the building. Kora heard his incantation,
Fwaig Commenz,
through the gap beneath the doors. Vane, however,
had protected every inch of his estate from fire a decade ago, and his magic
proved its worth; Linstrom’s attempts at arson made the walls shudder for a
good twenty seconds, but burned nothing. The greatest danger was the cabinet
toppling and crushing Vane, so Kora stuck it to the wall with the same spell
she used to keep her bandana on her head.

The
horses whinnied in a panic as the stables shook. They were so loud no one could
give instructions, so Vane made his way to them down the straw-covered aisle.
He nearly lost his footing as the floorboards splintered, and when the horses
started screaming louder, he cried “
Contfabla!
”
various times. The silence after his muting spells sped Kora’s heart.

“Don’t
worry,” Vane told his allies, making his way to the front of the building.
“This is all show. He can’t burn us out. He’ll give up the attempt and come to
us, just as we want.”

Kora
whispered to Vane, “You reinforced the windows here? Like in the manor?” Vane’s
horror-stricken eyes gave her all the response she needed. Dread sunk upon her
heart, but she turned her gaze to the double wooden doors she must defend,
fighting to keep her balance as the stables shook, then settled.

One
second all was motion; the next a stillness descended to throw Kora to her
knees. Vane fell back against the cabinet. The day-like glow of Linstrom’s
first spell disappeared, leaving ample light from the wall lamps. Kora had
hardly risen to conjure her crimson shell when her worst fears came to pass.

Windows
shattered in every stall as the double doors blew open. Kora did not expect the
flying swordsmen to enter from the second floor, and she and Vane, who had
shielded himself with a spell, missed an easy opportunity to blast them back
up.

The
rest of Linstrom’s men climbed into stalls where the king’s men had unwittingly
trapped themselves. The sounds of men grappling, swords crashing, and arrows
splitting the air took over. First things first: the flying maniacs. This was
no time to play nice, so Kora broke the first’s neck with a severing spell, and
he plummeted into the aisle after bouncing off a shut stall door.

All
the king’s soldiers must aim to kill, including his sorcerers. A bound man
could be freed; one magically frozen could be restored to cognizance. Kora must
ensure that Linstrom’s men, once overpowered, couldn’t aid the lunatic a second
time.

That
was why, with his ice blue shield steadied, Vane killed the other man in flight.
Blood rained on the straw as he sliced open the airborne assailant’s chest, and
Kora watched the corpse tumble into a central stall. Then, Vane at her side,
she started down the aisle.

In
the first set of stalls Rexson had killed a bowman, though he’d taken an arrow in
the shoulder. No time to heal him yet; that wound was not life-threatening.
Kora yelled at him to lie back and wait, and he obeyed, his face twisted in
pain. Across from him, a red-eyed axeman had made quick slaughter of two men in
uniform and blown their wooden door to pieces as he made an exit. Vane cast a
shield to protect himself from shards, and Kora shouted to the duke, “Get him
casting. Get his axe from him. Linstrom’s mine!”

Before
she could progress farther into the stables, Thad Greller rushed past her to
aid Vane. At the same moment a red-eyed swordsman sent more uniformed corpses
flying over the door of a stall he then leapt over. Rexson’s living soldiers
jumped into the aisle to surround him, to take him on together. It was their
only chance.