Warrior (55 page)

Fortunately—for Hablet, at least—the plague in Hythria had changed everything. For the first time in decades, Hythria had its attention focused inwards. Hablet had no need to think about ways of getting across Medalon’s southern plains, or the reaction of the Sisterhood to his territorial ambitions.

Originally, Hablet had closed the borders out of fear—a desperate attempt to protect Fardohnya from the sickness ripping Hythria apart—only afterwards realising what a marvellous opportunity the gods had handed him. He would not open the borders again until his troops were in place and his army could pour through the passes into Hythria.

The unsuspecting Hythruns, weakened and demoralised by the plague, would be powerless to stop him.

“What’s wrong with my plan?” Hablet asked. “I think it’s brilliant.”

“And it
is
brilliant, sire,” Lecter agreed, then he added with a fawning smile, “However, as your ultimate goal is the annihilation of the Wolfblade family, it might be viewed as . . . containing an element of danger, perhaps.”

“How is it dangerous? We go to war with Hythria. They call up every able-bodied man to fight us. The two nephews of Lernen the Lecher—Daniel and Narmin, isn’t it?—rush to the front—”

“Damin and Narvell,” the eunuch corrected.

Hablet shrugged. “Whatever. The point is, Lecter, the only two living males who can reasonably claim to be of the Wolfblade bloodline, who pose any sort of military threat and who are liable to outlive me, will be at the head of Hythria’s army. They’ll be dead before we reach the eastern border of Sunrise Province.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Trust me. It’s a Hythrun thing. Honouring Zegarnald is more important to a Hythrun than breathing. They’d rather fight than take a willing woman to bed!” He glanced down at where the eunuch’s manhood would have been located, had he still been in possession of it, and smiled nastily. “A sentiment I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

Lecter was too smart to rise to the taunt. “Even so, sire . . .”

“You mark my words, Lecter,” he said dismissively. “Those boys will rush to the front line to prove their worth to the God of War. And when they do, we’ll kill them. What could be more straightforward than that?”

“But what if they
don’t
rush to the front?”

Hablet laughed at the very notion. “A Hythrun male with a heartbeat and two sound legs not going to war when he has the chance? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Even so, your plan to get past Winternest in particular relies on the engineers mastering the secrets of making a cannon work,” the eunuch reminded him, conceding Hablet might be right about the absurd Hythrun love of war. “That day seems further away than ever.”

Hablet shrugged, unconcerned. “They’re just having a few . . . technical difficulties.”

“
Technical
difficulties, sire? My spies tell me the weapons explode without warning. Even when they do work, it’s sporadically at best. And they still haven’t found an alloy that won’t split after a few shots and kill the men manning the guns.”

“Keep your voice down, Lecter,” the king warned. “There’s no need to let everybody from here to Westbrook in on our little family problems.”

“The truth is, your majesty, you’d be safer with something a little less . . . overt.”

“I like overt,” Hablet informed his chamberlain.

“But you’re using an invasion to cover what are, essentially, a couple of political assassinations.”

“And for a very good reason, Lecter. If I make any attempt on the Hythrun throne that can be traced back to me, people will start to wonder why. Once they start wondering why, somebody may stumble across that rather awkward twelve-hundred-year-old statute you discovered that passes my throne to the Wolfblades if I die without a male heir. Or had you forgotten about that?”

“Of course not, your majesty.” Lecter mopped his brow again, as it beaded with perspiration. “I just think we could do this a little more subtly than a full-scale invasion.”

“What does that mean?” the king asked suspiciously.

“Your guests,” he began, wringing his damp kerchief as if it pained him to suggest such a thing.

“They are both closely related to the two young men you need to dispose of. Either one of them could get close to Damin Wolf-blade or Narvell Hawksword without raising suspicion.”

“You think one of them might undertake the assassinations for me?” the king asked with withering scorn. “What a brilliant ideal Recruit a member of his own family to assassinate Lernen’s nephews! Now why didn’t
I
think of that?”

“You mock the notion too hastily, sire,” Lecter objected. “Without giving it any thought.”

“That’s because such a stupid idea doesn’t deserve any thought!” Hablet snapped. “How, in the name of all the Primal Gods, do you propose to make either Luciena Taranger or her husband agree to turn around, go home and assassinate two members of their notoriously close-knit family?”

“By taking their children hostage,” the eunuch replied calmly.

Hablet hesitated for a moment. He hadn’t thought of that. Those boys of theirs were noisy little brats, too. The younger one had already ruined the carpet in one of the guest rooms and broken a marble bust, and only yesterday, the older boy had got into a fistfight with two of the king’s baseborn children that resulted in several bloody noses and a couple of screeching women demanding he have the eight-year-old Jarvan Taranger thrown into the harbour for daring to hurt their precious babies.

Hablet didn’t have a problem with the fight. Boys did that sort of thing all the time. It was good for his sons to learn to stand up for themselves. He could have done without the screeching women, though.

Scratching at his beard thoughtfully, Hablet tried to find fault with the notion, certain it couldn’t be that easy. “Wouldn’t they just go back to Hythria, gather an army and come back here in force to retrieve the children?”

“What army, sire?” Lecter asked. “Hythria is in disarray. All the Warlords have retreated to their strongholds, a third of their armies are dead from the plague, another third are dying of it and the remainder are too afraid to step outside for fear of catching it.”

“What about afterwards? Don’t you think somebody in Hythria might think to question why a member of the family suddenly upped and killed one or both of their precious heirs? The whole point of this invasion is to arrange the death of the Hythrun heir and his half brother in a way that can’t be traced back to me. Don’t you think the first thing Xanda Taranger would say when they find him standing over his cousin’s body with a dagger in his hand is: ‘Hablet made me do it’?”

“Experience has taught us that no assassination attempt against a member of the Wolfblade family, successful or otherwise, leaves the assassin alive to implicate the instigators afterwards, your majesty. They are cut down without mercy.”

“A fact both Captain Taranger and his wife are probably well acquainted with, Lecter.” He shook his head. “No. I can’t see it happening. It’s a bad idea.”

“Won’t you at least let me sound out the possibility?”

“How?”

“I only wish to make a few subtle enquiries, your majesty. Just to establish what the Tarangers value more: their children or their princes.”

Hablet shrugged, not seeing the harm in a few subtle enquiries. “Just do it quietly, Lecter. I don’t want them thinking we’re up to something. Luciena spoke of purchasing another five ships at dinner last night, to replace some of their fleet’s older vessels.”

The king smiled in remembrance of the conversation, thinking it was at that point he had really started to warm to the young Hythrun woman and her overly protective husband, despite their irritatingly boisterous children. Up until Luciena Taranger had announced her intention to buy Fardohnyan ships, rather than waste money purchasing inferior Hythrun or Karien vessels, Hablet had found her company quite dull. And more than a little offensive. It was wrong for a woman to be involved so blatantly in commerce. Although her husband was clearly an active partner in the business, she seemed to make far more decisions than he would have deemed reasonable, and certainly more than Hablet would have tolerated had she been one of his wives.

But nothing endeared a person to Hablet more than the notion of a tidy profit. The bribes alone, from the various shipbuilders in Talabar wanting to buy a slice of the action, would pay for the upkeep of his harem for the better part of a year. He frowned at the eunuch.

“Five ships, Lecter. That’s an awful lot of money we’d be throwing away if she gets offended.”

“I’ll be the soul of discretion, sire,” the chamberlain promised with a bow.

In a whisper of expensive silk, he turned and headed for the door. Hablet waited until he had almost reached it before calling after him, “Was Balkar terribly upset when he learned Adrina had rejected him?”

Lecter hesitated, obviously quashing his irritation, before he turned and smiled at his king. “He wasn’t too put out. He may have even been relieved. He found Adrina’s personality a little . . . grating, I think.”

“Did you have to give back the whole bribe?” Hablet asked with a malicious grin.

“A portion of it,” the eunuch agreed cautiously. “Naturally, there was a fee for my services.”

“That’s the fourth one you’ve had to return recently, isn’t it?”

“The fifth, actually.”

“That little girl of mine must be costing you a fortune.”

Lecter Turon smiled unpleasantly. “Never fear, your majesty. I will continue, with unwavering devotion, to seek suitable husbands for all your daughters. For Adrina, however, I will take special care to find somebody whom I believe will treat her in the manner she truly deserves.”

“I’m quite sure you will,” Hablet agreed, thinking there was nothing more amusing than watching Lecter Turon trying to be polite about the king’s beloved daughter when inside the slave was eaten up with anger and humiliation and there was nothing he could do about it.

It was days before Alija’s headache faded enough for her to think coherently again, even longer before she was able to come to grips with everything she had learned in that one brilliant starburst of jumbled thoughts and memories she had snatched from Ruxton Tirstone’s mind at the moment of his death.

Fortunately, with the plague having put an end to all but the most necessary social intercourse, nobody really noticed the High Arrion was locked in her room with the curtains drawn, hiding in the darkness from the pain and the threat of impending insanity that linking with a dying mind had unleashed upon her.

Only Tarkyn Lye was allowed to wait on his mistress, but even the blind
court’esa
knew something was seriously amiss. He didn’t question her, for which she was grateful. Alija wouldn’t have known what to say, in any case. It would take her months, she guessed, to sort through the haphazard images that bombarded her waking thoughts and haunted her nightmares. Perhaps she would never truly understand them.

What Alija
did
understand, though, and what frightened her to the very core of her being, was that Ruxton’s mind had been shielded so effectively that she hadn’t even suspected it was there.

And it was her long-forgotten nemesis, Wrayan Lightfinger, who had wielded the spell.

It was more than just the knowledge that Wrayan lived that frightened Alija, when she could bring herself to think about it, several days after Ruxton died. She had always known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that he was still alive. Brakandaran the Halfbreed had told her that much when he visited her the day Nash Hawksword died, almost twenty years ago. That was the day the Halfbreed had destroyed the irreplaceable Harshini scrolls she had removed from the Sorcerers’ Collective library.

It was the day Alija had learned the Harshini weren’t nearly as extinct as everyone believed.

Strange that she should forget something so important.

Wrayan survived your attempt to cauterise the inside of his skull, and he’s none the worse for it
, Lord Brakandaran had told her.
He’s no concern of yours any longer. Wrayan won’t be back to bother
your ambitions. The gods have another fate in mind for him
.

Why had she never tried to find Wrayan? Alija wondered. Was it something Brakandaran had done to her? Had he placed some magical inhibition on her curiosity that prevented her from remembering the Harshini still survived? Or even that she had been visited by the Halfbreed? Why had she never tried tracking the young man down?

Only Wrayan wouldn’t be a young man any longer
, she realised.
He would be in his forties by
now
.

If Wrayan Lightfinger had shielded Ruxton Tirstone’s mind, she reasoned through the pounding pulse that filled her aching head, he must have done it because Ruxton knew something he didn’t want Alija to know. And it could
only
have been there to prevent her learning his secrets. There was no other person alive with the ability to read minds that she knew of . . . although for some disturbing reason, young Rorin Mariner’s face suddenly loomed large in her mind.

She pushed the thought away, trying to concentrate on what she knew to be fact. Ruxton’s mind had been shielded. Wrayan had done it.

Why?

To protect something, obviously. Or someone
.

Logically, the answer to that was Marla Wolfblade. There was simply no other person in the world who impacted so critically on both Alija’s world and Ruxton’s.

But was the shield there to hide something specific? Or was it there as a general precaution?

Alija tried to recall that glassy smooth surface she had assumed was the outer limits of Ruxton’s dying mind and realised how familiar that feeling was. She had seen it before; so many times, she assumed it was normal.
How many other minds around me are shielded from my touch?

Marla’s mind?

It would almost have to be
, she decided, although how the princess had managed to locate Wrayan and convince him to perform such a service for her remained a mystery, as did the former apprentice’s willingness to undertake the job. And where had he learned such skill? The young man who had placed the pretty lights in Tarkyn’s mind had left an unavoidable trail a mile wide for her to follow the last time he’d challenged her. This shield had been so subtle, so seamless, that she would still be ignorant of its existence had she not been there at the moment of Ruxton’s death.