Warrior (63 page)

Xanda nodded in agreement. “I think I prefer the Sisterhood’s indifferent hospitality, though, to Hablet’s rather more personal interest in us.” He studied his wife closely for a moment. Luciena knew he was waiting for her to offer an explanation.

Things had been awkward between them since she’d returned from her meeting with Princess Adrina, refusing to say who’d she been with and demanding they leave Talabar that very day without offering any reason. Fortunately, Xanda trusted her enough to do as she asked without pressing her for an explanation at the time, but he wasn’t happy with her continued silence on the issue.

Luciena had made all their escape plans alone.

For fear of being overheard, she was afraid to discuss anything more contentious than the weather with her husband while a guest in the Summer Palace. She had kept her own counsel and sent Aleesha with a sealed note to the only person in Talabar Luciena was sure she could trust and whom Lecter Turon would not have any reason to suspect. Then, under the pretext of taking the children to see a show by the famous Lanipoor Players, who were currently performing in the city, they had left the palace with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

It was only in the carriage on the way to Rorin’s father’s house that Luciena informed her husband they were leaving Talabar and it was a stroke of sheer good fortune that her cousin, her one trusted ally, was actually in port.

It would have been impossible to escape the city on the ship that had brought them to Talabar; it was under guard by Hablet’s soldiers, supposedly to protect it from Fardohnyan citizens concerned the Hythrun ship might have brought plague to the city. Normally, at this time of year, the
Melissa
should be heading up the Glass River to Brodenvale in Medalon with a cargo of fine Fardohnyan silks, ready to wait on the spring melt to speed her journey downstream, returning by the end of summer with a load of Medalonian wool and wines. They’d been delayed by a broken rudder, which was finally repaired, and Drendik had been preparing to sail that very day.

Had Luciena waited another hour, they would have missed him completely.

Her husband, however, was still a little annoyed at her refusal to divulge the source of her intelligence, or the reason why she had insisted they leave Talabar so abruptly.

“Of course,” he added cautiously, “if I knew exactly
what
we were supposed to be escaping from

. . .”

“I promised I wouldn’t betray my source,” she reminded him. She’d been telling him the same thing for weeks.

“You sound like Ruxton Tirstone,” he complained. “He says the same thing to Marla whenever she tries to find out where he gets his intelligence from.”

“I’m not trying to be mysterious, Xanda. I simply gave someone my word.”

“And your word to this mysterious someone is more important than your oath to me?”

“That’s not fair. My marriage vows have nothing to do with my word to someone else.” She smiled, trying to lighten the tension a little. “Besides, I thought we’d already established that I married you under duress? If that’s the case, then my oath to someone else would be far more binding than my oath to . . . Adham
Tirstone
?”

“You made an oath to Adham Tirstone?” Xanda asked, obviously confused.

“No! He’s here! Look!” she exclaimed, pointing to the familiar figure standing on the dock scanning the cluttered boats for something. “Adham!”

Damin’s stepbrother looked up, searching for whoever had called his name. When he spied Luciena and the
Melissa
, he waved frantically to get their attention and then pointed to an empty berth a little further along the crowded dock. Luciena and Xanda both hurried along the railing in parallel with him as Drendik followed Adham’s directions and, with his two brothers’ help, eased the boat into the narrow berth.

“Welcome to Medalon!” the young man called, as the barge bumped against the wharf.

“What, in the name of all the Primal Gods, are you doing in Border-town?” Xanda called down to him, impatiently waiting for the Fardohnyan crew to secure the boat.

“Long story!” Adham called back, looking around with a frown. Luciena could easily guess the reason for his concern. This was Medalon, home of the Sisters of the Blade. In this country, they conducted periodic purges to rid themselves of pagan worshippers. Even in Bordertown, probably the most tolerant place in the whole country, it was inadvisable to swear by the name of any god, let alone all of them. “Are the children with you?”

“We’re all fine!” Luciena assured him, yelling to be heard over the racket of the surrounding docks. She glanced around nervously, wondering if anybody was paying their shouted conversation any attention. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” he called up to her.

Too impatient to wait until the short gangplank was pushed out, as soon as the boat was tied up Xanda jumped the railing and landed on the dock beside Adham. Luciena couldn’t hear what he was saying to Adham, though, because at that moment, against her explicit instructions, Emilie appeared from belowdecks.

“Why is it so cold here, Mama?”

Luciena looked down at her daughter with a frown. “I thought I told you to stay below with your brothers.”

“They’re fighting again. Is that Uncle Adham that Papa’s talking to, Mama?”

“Yes, it is,” she replied, drawing Emilie to her for warmth. The children had no other clothes than those they’d fled Talabar wearing, and they were far too flimsy for Bordertown’s chill winds.

Although she’d been on deck for only a few moments, already the child was shivering.

“Why is Uncle Adham here?”

That was something Luciena was also anxious to learn. “We’ll find out soon enough, darling.

Now go below, please, and tell Aleesha we’ll be disembarking soon. And remind those boys that if I have to come down there and speak to them, neither of them will be able to sit down for the rest of the week.”

“You can thank Drendik’s broken rudder that I’m here,” Adham informed them an hour or so later, after settling the family into one of Bordertown’s better inns. The children were being bathed and fed in their rooms by Aleesha while the adults met in the taproom downstairs with a welcome cup of mulled wine and a loaf of fresh bread, baked so recently it was still warm from the oven. It was reasonably quiet so early in the day, with only a couple of women wearing the distinctive blue robes of the Sisterhood sitting at one of the tables on the other side of the room. Drinking tea and deep in conversation with each other, the Sisters paid the Hythrun newcomers little notice.

“As can we,” Luciena agreed. “But what has Drendik’s misfortune got to do with you?”

“I’ve been trying to unload a shipment of spices we had earmarked for Karien. They’re turning us away at every port these days.”

“But why store your cargo here in Medalon?” Xanda asked. “Aren’t they just as sensitive about Hythrun ships carrying the plague?”

“The ship wasn’t one of ours, it was a Karien trader.” Adham smiled apologetically. “I know we have an unofficial agreement to use your ships wherever we can, Luciena, but the Kariens are much easier to deal with when it’s their own people bringing the spices up the Ironbrook River, especially into Yarnarrow. We’ve had shipments held up for months at a time in the past, because they’ve supposedly been polluted by ‘heathen’ handling. And it would cost too much to sail them back home, even if I could have found a way to cajole a terrified Karien crew to land in any port ravaged by plague.”

“So Ruxton arranged for the ship to offload in Medalon?”

Adham nodded. “He sent me up here to sort the whole mess out just after you two left Greenharbour for Talabar. I eventually found some warehouse space in Testra where we could store the stuff until things settled down. Rodja contacted Drendik through our agent in Talabar while I was on the way here. He was supposed to pick up the spices here in Bordertown and move them up to Testra for us. Once I found the warehouse, I came back here and arranged for the Kariens to offload the cargo, paid them off and sent them on their way, thinking the
Melissa
would arrive any moment. That was a fortnight ago.”

“But, fortunately for us, Drendik’s rudder broke,” Luciena said. “What happened to your spice cargo?”

“It’s still sitting on the end of the Bordertown wharves, while I go grey praying for it not to rain.

Still, it’s not a problem now,” he said, with obvious relief. “The Primal Gods must have heard my prayers.

Drendik promises me he can have my spices loaded and under cover by this evening. He’ll be on the river again by tomorrow, heading for Testra. After that, Brehn can send us a deluge and I won’t give a damn.”

“You’re not going with the cargo to Testra?”

Adham shook his head. “I’ve had enough of atheists and the Sisterhood’s bureaucracy for a while. I trust Drendik. Besides, I’ve heard a few rather disturbing rumours about what’s going on behind Fardohnya’s closed borders on the other side of the Widowmaker. I think I’m going to be needed at home.”

“But Greenharbour is rife with plague,” Luciena reminded him.

“I meant home as in Krakandar. Rumour has it that’s the only city in Hythria still free of the plague. At the very least, it’s bound to be safer than Greenharbour, otherwise Damin wouldn’t have been sent there.”

“Damin is back home in Krakandar?” Luciena glanced at Xanda in surprise before turning to Adham. “But how will you get there? Surely the borders are closed?”

“You don’t know our border with Medalon very well, do you?”

“He means it’s miles and miles long,” Xanda explained in response to Luciena’s questioning look.

“It’s the reason there’s no customs post on the border, either. It’s impossible to police. Set up a roadblock in one place and everyone would just cross somewhere else. Fortunately, most of the trade between Hythria and Medalon happens on the Glass River with ships that sail out of Greenharbour.”

“I actually knew that, Xanda,” she told him, a little peeved by his lecture. She wondered if he was talking to her as if she was an ignorant tourist because he was still angry at her silence on the subject of their flight from Fardohnya. “We own a good half of the ships doing the trading, remember?”

“I was just trying to point out that they couldn’t close the border if they tried.”

“And they’re
not
trying,” Adham assured them. “The Defenders are only stopping people entering the town from the south to prevent the plague coming into Bordertown. They don’t give a fig about people heading out in that direction.”

Luciena gasped as the possibilities dawned on her. “But that means . . . why, we could be home in a couple of weeks!”

“That’s certainly my plan,” Adham announced. “You’re more than welcome to join me, if you’re heading that way.”

Xanda didn’t even wait to check with his wife before nodding. “Don’t worry, we’ll be joining you.”

Adham seemed unsurprised. “Then you should take this opportunity to rest today, Luciena, and make certain the children know what they’re in for.” He turned to Xanda and added, “You’d better come with me. We’ll need to purchase horses and enough supplies to get us home. Once we get out of here, I don’t plan to stop until I’m across the border.”

Luciena nodded her agreement. Placing her hand over Xanda’s, she smiled, hoping he’d take it as an unspoken apology. “Go with him. Spend whatever it takes. Just make sure it includes warm clothes for the children. I want to go home.”

“So do I.” He leaned forward, kissed her lightly, and then smiled, squeezing her hand. He would forgive her eventually, she knew. The prospect of heading home was far more important than a silly squabble over keeping secrets from him.

Adham smiled, too, obviously just as anxious to be gone from Medalon. “It’ll be just like the old days, won’t it? With nearly all of us gathered in Krakandar again.”

“And maybe this time, I won’t try to assassinate Damin,” Luciena remarked dryly. Adham froze, staring at her, not sure if she was joking. She laughed softly. “If you could see the look on your face, Adham.”

“I’m glad you can joke about it,” he remarked warily.

Her attempt to kill Damin when he was a boy was not a subject they spoke about often. Marla had sworn them all to secrecy so Alija Eaglespike would never learn that her interference with Luciena’s mind—and Wrayan’s subsequent shielding of it—had been discovered. It had also, for many years, been a memory filled with such extreme shame and humiliation for Luciena that nobody wished to remind her of it.

That had all changed six years ago when Damin finished his fosterage and arrived in Greenharbour. Expecting some residual resentment or mistrust, Damin had stunned Luciena by treating her as if nothing had happened. In fact, he’d been positively friendly towards her. Certain he hadn’t forgotten the attack, she’d eventually asked him outright why he didn’t seem bothered by what she’d done. The young prince had smiled and winked and said nothing more than, “Rule Number Eleven”.

It had taken her weeks to find out that he was referring to Elezaar’s notorious Rules of Gaining and Wielding Power. Rule Number Eleven:
Do the unexpected
. It told her more about Damin Wolfblade than any other single thing she had seen him do.

“It was Damin who started sidling up to me every time we bumped into each other at palace functions to ask me if I was planning to kill him again, Adham,” she explained with a shrug. “I figured if my victim could find something in that entirely disastrous episode to laugh about, then perhaps I should, too.”

“I don’t think Damin does it to put Luciena at ease, mind you,” Xanda added. “I think he does it to frighten Elezaar, actually. That, or to irritate Marla.”

Adham shook his head. “I wonder, sometimes, about that boy.”

“That’s his intention, Adham,” Luciena replied, with a flash of insight that made her realise something that up until now she had never really seen about Hythria’s young prince. “I think he
wants
to keep everybody wondering. I think Damin’s deliberately keeping everybody in the dark about what he really thinks, or even what he’s capable of. I doubt there’s anybody in Hythria who could tell you what he’s really like.”