Treason's Shore (63 page)

Well, that was easy enough. “If you wait right here, when the door opens, that means the king is ready for whatever’s out here.” Goatkick motioned to Pirate-Prow. “Fera-Vayir, you take this fellow over to guard-side, to the watch captain.”

Their footsteps vanished, then the red-eyed messenger swayed. “Huh.” He yawned so fiercely that Goatkick and Han felt that jaw-hinge, back-of-the-tongue gape of sympathy. “How long is the wait?” the man rasped. And yawned again.

“Don’t know. Some days, all morning, some—”

“The ambassador didn’t say ‘in his hands,’ so I can trust you, can’t I? Right outside his door? I don’t think I can wait without falling over. We got caught by a snow storm east of the river, and haven’t had a bite for almost two days.”

Goatkick hesitated, eyeing Han Tlen, who stood against the wall, gaze down at the scuffed toes of her boots. He could send the stranger off with her. No one would say anything. Hand-delivering important messages was as cherished a privilege as drumming the second gallop at Restday Drum for the entire castle. When you got to hand-deliver messages inside the office you often got to watch the king open them, and hear him talk about important stuff.

Goatkick was going to give the messenger to Han. He knew she’d obey. But the turmoil inside him every time he saw her had changed to something closer to guilt than to the old resentment, though he couldn’t explain why.

And so he snarled at her, “You stay here with the message. I’m going to see to this fellow.” He smacked the message into her chest.

Han hastily clutched it, then looked up, startled. She’d been in training long enough to understand the unspoken privileges; her face drained of color, then flushed to the tips of her ears.

Goatkick plunged past. “Heyo! Come along, Runner. Don’t sleep on the wall there.”

He stalked down the hall, the stranger plodding wearily after.

Han held the weather-worn, heavy sealed packet tightly against her body, wondering if this was another sting. One of the big Runners-in-Training surely lurked somewhere to lure her away from her post on a false duty, so she’d get beaten. She planted her feet, clenched her jaw, and hugged the bulky message, determined to stay right there until that door opened, even if the entire Venn army galloped down the hall. Even if it took a year.

She’d scarcely had time to imagine trying to protect her charge against a horde with winged helms, like she had seen in the pass, when Vedrid opened the door to let one of the staff Runners out. As the man strode past, Vedrid smiled at Han. “What have you there?”

She croaked, “Messenger from Wisthia-Queen.”

“The king’s mother? The border passes are open early this year, it seems. Come inside.”

The word “mother” still hurt, but Han was so relieved to discharge this important duty (and to the king!) she felt it less than usual.

Evred had heard his mother’s name, which evoked a brief image of her watchful face, the expression of her eyes—so loving, but sometimes inexplicably perplexed. That blurred into a vivid image of Tau, who lived with her now. How strange that was.

He cast an absent smile at Han before dismissing her, and turned the bulky packet over in his hand. Someone had wrapped it in several layers of thick paper, and there was something inside.

Evred pulled his knife and slit the seals, noting that they did not seem to have been disturbed.

The letter was written neatly in Old Sartoran. Evred grimaced. He’d never read it fluently, though he’d come close many years ago, during his command at Ala Larkadhe. But he hadn’t had the time since.

He bent over the heavy paper, puzzling out the letters and realized that the actual language was new Sartoran, just framed in the ancient lettering.

It was quite short.

Below the instructions he’d signed his name in the language of his ancestors,
Taumad Dei
.

Estral Mardric? Evred recovered the name: the murderer of Flash Arveas. She’d been a spy for the Resistance under the guise of an Idayagan poet. Why would Tau bring her name up?
Because he is surrounded by spies.

Evred poked at the paper-wrapped object and discovered a slim golden case. He grimaced, feeling world politics stoop from the mountainous border and dive at him like a hawk on the hunt.

Chapter Three

J
UST before midnight, Fulla Durasnir stood on the highest tower of Saeborc contemplating the meaning of words.

Overhead the first thunderstorm of the year crackled, hissed, and roared. His extremities were slowly going from painful shivering to numb, but that did not matter because he was shortly about to step off into . . . what?

Millennia ago,
a walk to the far shore
meant putting the old into a shallow boat and sending it into the winter ice. The early Venn sent their dead heroes out in burning boats, and the old and weak into the winter darkness, in order to make place for the strong. That custom persisted even after they settled, spread, and encountered the Sartorans, who called their practices barbaric.

The practice persisted until a king, wise as well as strong, discovered on getting old that the juices of life, though thinned, still ran. He also discovered that some elderly folks had vanished to the south rather than freezing to death—and some wily oldsters had even managed, with willing cooperation from their families, to take some of their wealth with them. This discovery gave an ironic twist to the expression “walk to the far shore.” A self-proclaimed exile was not an outcast, especially if they cast their wealth and wit with them, to the eventual benefit of Venn’s enemies.

The wise old king appealed to hearts as well as to heads when he spoke of the wisdom of age balancing the strength of the young. As his son was impetuous and arrogant, no one was in any hurry to see him inherit, and so the custom of the winter ice ended with him when he died peacefully in bed. But traces of the grim legacy lingered in idiom and song. Fulla Durasnir’s mother had said when he was young,
Down at the taproot of Venn thinking is the concept of the undiscovered country on that far shore, the dark sea between being death
.

As Durasnir contemplated stepping off the tower into the unseen waters crashing far below, he wondered if going a-viking had been his ancestors’ way of going to war against death.

While he meditated, his wife Brun sat at her table six flights below, checking her list. She’d spent two days personally overseeing the delivery and stowage of Fulla’s belongings aboard
Cormorant,
so that Erkric’s minions couldn’t introduce spiderwebs into them; the old captain’s cabin, now that Rajnir and his entourage were established across the stern suite, had been inspected by one of the ship’s trusted navigators.

Something was wrong, despite her care. Instinct had been prodding at her all day. Lacking an identifiable cause, she’d decided that something had to be missing from Fulla’s sea gear. She bent over her list yet again as, outside her door, Dag Ulaffa paused after the long climb to the Oneli Stalna’s rooms, midway up Saeborc. Ulaffa leaned against the wall with a hand pressed against his side.
Climbs are not for the old,
he thought wearily. But this entire life was not for the old.

Despite the cold his brow and upper lip were slick with sweat. That and the pain in his side were not good signs, he knew. He must not drop dead.
Must
not! He tapped at the door, and when the servant brought him into the warm chamber where Brun Durasnir sat at the desk, he sank wearily into the guest chair.

“I went out on . . .” He gestured wearily upward, toward the towers. “Fulla is up on your tower.”

“He’s on board the
Cormorant
. Or at the chart house—”

Ulaffa made a negating motion, and swiped a hand across his eyes. “Saw him. When I. Went outside to talk with Agel.”

Brun’s mouth whitened.
Here
was her something wrong.

Leaving the dag to recover in the guest chair, she ran out, heedless of cape or gloves, and propelled herself up the last spiral of steps, her skirts bunched in her fists.
If he dares to leap off the tower . . . I’ll murder him myself!

Oh, that makes such good sense,
she thought with the hilarity of desperation. She dashed into the bastion, thrust shoulder to the door, and saw her husband poised at the edge of a crenellation, staring into the blackness below.

“Fulla!” Brun shouted with all her strength.

The wind snatched it away, but Fulla Durasnir’s head turned.

Their eyes met.

Reluctantly—Brun could feel the effort Fulla made—he stepped back. Just a little, as wind screamed around the stones, and rain slanted in stinging spears.

Not for Brun the heart’s cry,
How could you do this to me, to your son?
He would obliterate himself despite them, he would do it to protect them, he would do it because all honor and meaning had gone from his life.

“I deny you this luxury.” Her voice rose above the shriek of the wind.

Durasnir’s head dropped back, his anguish illuminated in the glare of lightning. When the long rumble of thunder died away, he said, “I cannot bring myself to speak to the empty shell of a king. He’s the living, breathing emblem of the emptiness this kingdom has become. And I lent myself to it, with my forcing you into that pretence when we arrived home.”

“I was glad to—” A gust of wind belled her skirt like sailcloth and nearly blew her off the wall. Durasnir lunged forward to catch her, but his numb hands only slid over her, unable to grasp.

So he threw himself on her. They crashed onto the tower stones in a clumsy tangle of limbs.

Durasnir levered himself painfully up, and they helped each other regain their feet. “You, unlike the king, have volition,” Brun gasped, fear sharpening her voice. “Use it.”

“I was so doing.” Durasnir leaned his head down so it almost touched hers. His tone was dry, too bleak for humor. “When I chose to end a life that mocks everything I swore to uphold.”

Brun clawed her hair out of her eyes. “This is not a good death. It is a coward’s death.”

He bowed his head; she’d only told him what he already knew.
So try again, woman
. “Fulla. Your death on the eve of launch will bring nothing but disaster for us all.”

“There is no path out of Rainorec, Brun. At most I hoped my death might postpone it. Long enough that someone stronger, smarter, might prevail.”

“That’s stupid.” Brun grimaced.
Wrong again
. “No, that’s exhaustion. Fulla, this last year would have ruined a man of twenty. If you’ve slept at all these past two weeks, it was not in our bed.”

He lifted a hand, which could have meant anything.

“Dag Ulaffa reminded us just after Rajnir’s coronation that what little meaning is left is in
our
hands. Can’t you see? The fleet
will
launch come morning’s tide. Your death will not halt it because Erkric needs to get the king away. And we’ve all conspired to keep knowledge of Rajnir’s empty head from the people because we know that the streets will run with blood if anyone finds out.” She paused, and slowly Durasnir turned toward the tower edge, staring out.

“Maybe . . .” He did not finish the thought.

Maybe it was time to unleash the Rainorec. She knew he was thinking it: how could life become worse than it was?

It’s worse for you because you are bearing all the pain that everyone would feel if we were engulfed in civil war
. “You say you hoped someone smarter would lead, but that will not happen because Erkric would control the promotions.”

Fulla had stilled. He was listening.

So she babbled on, telling him nothing new—some of it he’d told her—but she had to anchor him back in this world. “That fool Dyalf Balandir would lead the pack of wolves. He thinks being young, handsome, and first-born son of an old House entitles him not just to be your second in command, but to anything. Loc would try again, despite what happened to his brother. Because of it. Lefsan would try to regain their old influence. Hadna House is always conspiring. They’re raised that way. Don’t you see? If they find out about Rajnir, then at least five, probably seven, Houses would throw all their treasure and men into securing the city, after talking themselves into thinking it’s for Drenskar and the Golden Tree.”

Durasnir had not moved.

Brun tucked her hands up under her armpits. “So far, you have managed to prevent seven Houses from tearing one another apart, right down to their thralls. And you know they would do that. How has that betrayed your vows?”