Warrior (39 page)

“Not at all,” he said. “I just think that if you hang Luciena, you’re sending a very loud message to Alija telling her the attack failed and she’d better start looking for another way to harm him.”

Marla smiled grimly. “Then this is a
good
thing.”

“If you say so.”

Marla glared at Ruxton. “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, really. Just a thought . . .”

“Ruxton!”

He shrugged and sipped his wine, quite deliberately taking his time before he answered. “I was just thinking . . . if Alija thinks she’s primed Luciena to attack Damin when the time is right, she’ll probably do nothing more to harm him until she’s convinced the plan has failed. If you don’t hang the girl, if you carry on as if nothing happened, for all Alija knows, Luciena is still biding her time, just waiting for the right opportunity.”

“You’re suggesting I just pretend none of this happened!” she gasped.

“You’re going to have me beheaded now, aren’t you?” he said with a rueful sigh. “I knew I should have kept my big mouth shut.”

“But the whole notion is . . .” Marla stopped and thought about it for a moment. Ruxton might have a valid point. If Alija believed she had an assassin close to Damin just waiting for the opportune moment, she’d have no need to recruit any other assassins until she was convinced Luciena had let her down. That might take months. Even years. “Actually, Ruxton, it’s inspired.”

“So this means you’re not going to behead me?”

“Not at the moment. Do you really think she’ll do nothing?”

“Who, Alija? Possibly. Of course, the catch in this brilliant exercise in double thinking is the question I posed originally. Did the High Arrion really tamper with Luciena’s mind, or did you just inadvertently bring a Patriot Faction viper or a Fardohnyan spy into the nest without realising it?”

“That’s the crucial question, isn’t it?” Marla agreed, and then she looked across the hall and groaned, Alija and Luciena momentarily forgotten. “Oh gods, not again!”

Ruxton followed her gaze and shook his head when he saw what was happening. Mahkas had interrupted the Novera and rearranged the couples so that Damin was dancing with Leila and Starros was now partnered with Tejay Bearbow.

“You really should do something about your brother-in-law,” Ruxton remarked.

Marla nodded, aware that Ruxton was right, but not sure how to handle the situation. Now that Damin was due to leave for his fosterage, Mahkas was getting nervous about the lack of a formal betrothal agreement between his daughter and Marla’s son.

“I don’t know why he keeps on like this,” Marla sighed. “I’ve never actually said they were getting married.”

“But you haven’t said no, either.”

“Still . . . it’s not as if it’s urgent, even if I
had
agreed to it. Damin’s not even thirteen for another week.”

“Mahkas is just afraid Damin will fall in love with some other Warlord’s daughter while he’s away,” Ruxton said.

Marla smiled. “Damin could fall in love with the Goddess Kalianah herself, for all I care, Ruxton.

He still won’t be allowed to marry anybody who can’t support his throne.”

And that was the problem. Marla liked Leila well enough, but she had nothing to recommend her politically. There was nothing to be gained, no treaty to be assured, no territory or wealth to be secured, by marrying Damin to his cousin. The only one who would really benefit from such a union would be Mahkas Damaran, a fact Elezaar delighted in pointing out every time Mahkas raised the subject.

She watched the children dancing together. It was clear, even from across the room, that the cousins were not thrilled with Mahkas’s interference. As Mahkas left the dance floor, looking very pleased with himself, Bylinda took him aside and whispered something to her husband. She didn’t look any happier about Mahkas’s meddling than the children did.

“You should put him out of his misery,” Ruxton said. “It’s embarrassing.”

“I know,” Marla agreed. She glanced down at her glass and noticed it was empty. She needed to be careful. Marla never drank to excess, yet she hadn’t even felt that last glass going down. Across the hall, the people standing around Mahkas and Bylinda looked away politely, pretending they didn’t notice the whispered altercation going on between the Regent of Krakandar and his wife. “But even if I thought Damin marrying his cousin was a good idea, I wouldn’t agree to a betrothal now.”

“You want to keep your options open,” Ruxton concluded.

She nodded. “I want every nobleman in Hythria with a daughter of marriageable age to think he might have a chance of an alliance with the future High Prince,” she said. “I’m certainly not going to spoil it by betrothing Damin to his cousin at the age of thirteen and ruining hopes of any other union.” It was getting increasingly difficult to explain this to Mahkas, who was becoming more and more suspicious that Marla simply didn’t want the marriage to go ahead at all. “I’m actually looking forward to returning to Greenharbour this year. It’s much easier to ignore Mahkas’s unsubtle hints when they’re in a letter.”

“Well, it won’t be long now,” Ruxton reminded her. “Another few weeks and we’ll have to start thinking about setting a departure date.”

“Which also means I’m running out of time to fix my other problem,” Marla said, holding her own glass out for a refill as a barefoot slave approached.

“What other problem?”

“Kalan,” Marla told him with a frown, taking a sip of the sweet, potent wine. “I still haven’t got the faintest idea what I’m going to do about Kalan.”

Wrayan Lightfinger took his time returning to Krakandar, mostly to give his young companion a chance to come to grips with his new circumstances. The young Fardohnyan boy had fallen asleep a fugitive and woken up a fully trained Harshini sorcerer.

That was rather a lot to ask of a twelve-year-old.

He was looking forward to getting home, though. Wrayan had left his chief lieutenant, a thief named Luc North, in charge during his absence. A talented forger, the man was trustworthy, careful but unimaginative. He also lacked ambition, which made him a fairly reliable stand-in—there was nothing more dangerous than an ambitious underling given a taste of power when the boss was away. But if anything out of the ordinary had happened while Wrayan was gone, Luc probably wouldn’t know how to deal with it. Wrayan could be returning to a Guild that was running like clockwork or one that had fallen into complete chaos. He had no way of telling until he reached the city.

Although he was impressed by Wrayan’s position as head of the Krakandar Thieves’ Guild, Rory seemed much more taken with the notion that Wrayan was on speaking terms with the ruling family of Krakandar. The lad spent quite a bit of time questioning him about the Wolfblades, and how he came to know them. Wrayan wasn’t sure why the child was so interested, but he found himself telling far more than he intended. When he related the story about his magical battle with Alija Eaglespike and how he’d come to meet Brakandaran and the Harshini, Rory was fascinated. As the boy was destined for the Sorcerers’ Collective, Wrayan felt obliged to warn Rory about the High Arrion, but he seemed unconcerned. Along with using his magical talent, Shananara had shown Rory how to disguise it. The child was disturbingly confident that Alija would never discover his true ability unless he chose to reveal it to her.

Once again, Wrayan was forced to reassess his opinion of the Harshini. It was easy to think of them as naive and childlike. That Shananara had thought to endow Rory with such a skill hinted at a degree of cunning of which he had never really thought the Harshini capable.

Rory’s talent, as it turned out, was for manipulating objects. He could move things just by thinking about it, from quite large objects—like the anvil he’d accidentally thrown through a wall in Talabar, killing his cousin’s client—to the minute, such as flesh and blood, which meant he had some considerable talent as a healer. He informed Wrayan of this with an air of wonder one morning, as they rode towards Byamor, still coming to terms with the notion that his previously uncontrollable ability was now his to command.

Wrayan had smiled at the look of wonder on the child’s face. He’d be just as enchanted to wake up one morning and discover he could wield his magic so skillfully, he thought. Unfortunately, Wrayan was introduced to the Harshini when he was much older than Rory, so his education had been far more painstaking and, apparently, not nearly as much fun.

“What will happen when we get to Krakandar?” Rory asked.

They had taken shelter this rainy evening in an abandoned farmhouse several miles north of the Elasapine border. They’d been on the road for about three weeks now and had crossed into Krakandar Province the day before. The weather, which had until now been quite pleasant, had deteriorated rapidly in the past day, and they’d finally decided to wait out the rain when it began to drop hailstones the size of marbles on their unprotected heads. The hail had stopped about an hour before, with the light rapidly fading, but the rain still pelted down and Wrayan thought it unlikely they’d get much further today.

He turned to study Rory, wondering if he should tell him the truth or spin some story that would make him feel more secure. He settled on the truth. The boy was remarkably accepting of his strange plight, a fact that made Wrayan wonder, if along with filling his head with knowledge, Shananara had done something to dampen the child’s emotional turmoil at the same time. In the past few months, Rory had accidentally killed a man, been torn from his home, pursued across hundreds of miles of Fardohnya, arrested as a Hythrun spy, drugged, kidnapped, sprung from a Fardohnyan jail and finally confronted with the lost race of the Harshini, yet he acted as if these were perfectly normal, everyday events. There had to be some magic involved. Wrayan couldn’t detect that his mind had been tampered with, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t, of course. Just as Alija couldn’t see Wrayan’s hand in the mind shields that protected Marla and her family, Shananara’s skill was so far above Wrayan’s ability that she could have done any number of things to the child and he wouldn’t have been able to detect it.

“I’ll take you to meet Princess Marla,” Wrayan told him, shifting his saddle so he could use it as a pillow. “If you’re going to join the Sorcerers’ Collective, you’ll need her patronage.”

“Why do I have to join the Sorcerers’ Collective?” Rory was squatting beside the fireplace, eating the remains of the stew Wrayan had prepared for their dinner directly from the pot. It was his third helping. There didn’t seem to be enough food in Hythria to fill the child up.

“Because you’re a sorcerer?” Wrayan suggested, shaking out his blanket.

“I know
that
. I mean, what’s the point, though? Isn’t the idea of joining the Sorcerers’ Collective to learn how to wield magic?”

“You’d think so.”

“But I already know more than anyone in the Sorcerers’ Collective could teach me,” Rory pointed out through a mouthful of stew. “What else is there to learn?”

Wrayan smiled. “I’m sure there’s something Shananara forgot to tell you.”

“They probably won’t let me in,” the boy shrugged.

“Why not?”

“I’m Fardohnyan.”

“That shouldn’t matter. There was a time when people from all over the world studied in Greenharbour.” He glanced at the boy’s fair hair and blue eyes as he sat on the floor. “Besides, you don’t look it.”

“My grandfather was Hythrun,” Rory explained. “He always called me Rorin. That’s my Hythrun name, he used to tell me. He said it meant ‘one whose future would unfold in unexpected directions.’ ”

“He got that much right,” Wrayan chuckled, pulling the blanket over himself. “And he taught you well. You speak Hythrun like a native.”

“My grandpa was a sailor. He lived in Talabar most of his grown-up life, but he had the
worst
accent,” Rory said, smiling in remembrance. “It was just easier to talk to him in Hythrun. At least that way you had some hope of understanding him.”

“Lucky for us you did. Do you think you could pass for a Hythrun?”

“I suppose. Why?”

“Fewer questions, for one thing. We can say you come from Krakandar, which would explain why Princess Marla is sponsoring your application to the Collective. If we give you a Hythrun surname, nobody need ever know you came from Talabar.”

“Do you think I’ll be able to find my cousin when I get to Greenharbour?”

Wrayan settled his back against the wall of the farmhouse, and stretched his legs out and closed his eyes. “I wouldn’t get too excited about it, lad. Greenharbour’s a pretty big city. Do you know his name?”

“
Her
name,” Rory corrected. “It’s Luciena Mariner. My father and her father were brothers.”

Wrayan opened his eyes and stared at the boy. “You are Luciena Mariner’s
cousin
?”

Rory nodded warily. “Is this a bad thing?”

“Not really,” Wrayan replied with a sigh, as a whole swathe of remarkable coincidences suddenly became clear. “It just explains a few things Brak never bothered to mention.”

“Do you think we’ll ever see him again?”

“Who? Brak?” Wrayan shrugged. “I couldn’t say. He has a habit of turning up when you least expect him. Are you
really
Luciena’s cousin?”

“You keep saying that like you know her.”

“I’ve met her,” Wrayan said.
The same day Brak turned up without warning, after a five-year
absence
. “She’s in Krakandar with Princess Marla,” he added, shaking his head, wishing, for once, Brak wasn’t so damned fond of being cryptic.
Why couldn’t he just come straight out and say: Wrayan, there’s
a child in trouble and I need you to help me rescue him, oh, and by the way, that girl you met today in the
palace? You might want to introduce the two of them when you get him home. He’s her cousin
.

“Does that mean my grandpa was right? I really am related to the Hythrun royal family?”

Wrayan smiled. Now he understood Rory’s fascination with the Wolf-blades. “I suppose, if you’re really Luciena’s cousin, then you are. In a roundabout sort of way.”