A knife of oblivion, p.9
A Knife of Oblivion, page 9
part #8 of The Kingmakers' War Series
They were not calling him Ari. His nostrils flared at the thought. Nobody but Jade and the dragon girl ever called him Ari and lived to tell about it. If any of these louts tried summoning him with that, he’d cut out their tongues.
“I’m not calling him that,” Nath said flatly, and Auberon was relieved and angered simultaneously. Was he such a monster that he wasn’t allowed a nickname?
“Auber, Ron, Obbie,” Tibus said, trying out various bits of the name and sounding like a simpleton, Auberon thought. “Eh, Obbie!”
“That sounds like a stable hand’s name,” Nath said. And then he grinned.
A moment later, they both sprang to the side to dodge the practice sword Auberon hurled at them. He stood panting, indignant, hands braced on his thighs as he bent over to catch his breath.
“You are not calling me Obbie,” he said.
Nath lifted his eyebrows with a smirk. “It has a ring to it, though, doesn’t it?” he said to Tibus.
“Fine, then I’ll call you Ratface,” Auberon hissed. “Ratface and Oaf!”
“You do that anyway,” Nath said with a shrug.
“My mother used to call me Oaf,” Tibus added thoughtfully, scratching at the scruff of beard that had begun to grow along the underside of his jaw.
They were toying with him. Auberon glared at them, infuriated that he wasn’t getting the reaction he wanted.
“Come pick up your sword, Silverlocks,” Nath called. “You have six more exercises to do before you’re done.”
“I am not a servant to be ordered about,” Auberon said, straightening and trying to reclaim some of his dignity after his outburst. He had spent yet another dreamless night in captivity, and the dragon girl was languishing somewhere alone and without her memories to protect her, and he was at the end of his patience, and even the calisthenics wasn’t helping to tamp down the rage in him today. These two idiots were only adding to his foul mood.
If he were in a more introspective and forgiving mood, which he rarely was at the best of times and certainly wasn’t now, he might conclude that the two idiots were using the situation—and his irritation—to distract themselves from similar worries. But that was hardly a consolation anyway. So, they loved the dragonsayer. So what?
It didn’t make them friends. He didn’t have friends. He had only people he was trying to kill, and people he wasn’t actively trying to kill, and people he didn’t want to kill but would if he had to.
“Silverlocks it is,” Nath said to Tibus, and to Auberon, he said, “Come and get your sword.”
Auberon snatched a new one from the rack and charged at the tutor with a bellow. Nath scooped up a bow staff from the weapons leaning against the wall beside him and blocked the blow.
“Your—stance—is—all—wrong!” he cried, emphasizing each word with a strike. Auberon held him off, though, and then, by some stroke of luck, landed a blow squarely against the side of Nath’s head.
“Ha!” he shouted, flushing in triumph. “Take that!”
Nath nodded with grudging approval. “Good,” he said, startling Auberon with the praise. “I’m almost impressed, Silverlocks. Now, those exercises.”
And Auberon was too pleased with himself to argue.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NIGHT AIR was warmer than usual, the breeze coming from the sea light and smelling of salt. The Nyrian court reclined on low couches and rugs as they watched a performing troupe of tree dancers twirl and spin across the low, curving limbs of the artificial trees that had been erected in the palace gardens for the performance. Lanterns glowed along the perimeter of the clearing, casting an otherworldly light over the faces of the court and the lithe bodies of the dancers, and the music—all drums and flutes, the music of the outer islands where the dance tradition had originated—was the type that set fire to the blood of its listeners.
Kael stood at the edge of the lawn, his hands clasped behind his back and his legs planted wide, his usual watchful stance that he assumed whenever he was standing guard personally over the prince. He would rather that Prince Jehn were not at this gathering—this part of the garden was hard to secure. Since there was only the Nyrian court present, and the presence of hordes of the prince’s guards would be viewed as untrusting and unwelcome, Jehn had ordered him to strip the guard down to a mere two guards in addition to himself.
It took every ounce of Kael’s finely honed self-discipline and honor to keep himself from calling the prince a fool to his face. With the Seeker here and Briand’s rescue painfully within sight yet still so far out of reach, the captain of the guard felt drawn as tight as a bow. His ability to tolerate courtly nonsense was suffering as a result.
The dancers paused to take a bow, and the Nyrian court applauded. Jehn dutifully lifted his hands to clap, but he seemed distracted. Kael looked carefully at the prince’s hands, to see if they trembled from pain or from the effects of the Nyrian drug he had been taking in excess previously. In the last few weeks, Jehn had claimed to have been weaning himself from it.
Kael wanted to believe him.
Jehn reclined on a bed of cushions beside the queen of Nyr, who was seated on a low gold couch spread with a tasseled rug. She fidgeted with one of the tassels with her long fingers, and Jehn watched her tangle and untangle the strands out of the corner of his eye as the troupe began another dance, this one with a slower, seductive tune to accompany the dancers as they moved across the set with fluid and undulating movements.
Kael wondered if his prince and the queen of Nyr were squabbling again. Jehn was visibly under a strain of some sort, and the queen, though outwardly serene, had a set to her jaw that Kael knew how to spot from careful study of her moods and expressions.
As he watched, Jehn moved his hand slightly to the left, his fingers colliding with the queen’s as she twirled the tassel. She flicked her hand away, and Jehn smoothed the tassel and put his hand back in his lap.
A tiny movement—blink, and one might miss it. Kael, however, did not.
The dancers’ performance finished, and they formed a line and bowed low to the applause of the court. The light of the lanterns brightened, and the courtiers rose from their cushions to stroll the lawn as servers rushed forward with tea and wine to refresh them. Jehn remained seated, as did the queen, though she was beset by several of her ministers.
Kael crossed the lawn with the intent to urge Jehn to retire to his quarters. The prince looked flushed. If he didn’t take care to rest and sleep, he would become ill again.
When he reached the royal couple, the queen’s eyes were dark with anger, and the ministers wore expressions of annoyance. One stalked away, and Jehn smirked after him before settling back against the cushions he leaned against.
“Your Grace,” Kael said, “is everything all right?”
He was awarded with two stares in return—the queen’s gaze acerbic, Jehn’s bordering on indolent. The latter, Kael knew, was an act. He didn’t think the same was true of the former. The queen was angry about something.
“Just reminding the Nyrian minister of finance that he does not wear the crown,” Jehn said airily. “And considering his big head, it would never fit him.”
“I would rather,” the queen of Nyr said icily, “that you didn’t remind him of anything, husband. Not even that you exist.”
The queen looked resplendent and cold in her inky black overdress, embroidered with gold flowers and birds, the front of which split down the front to reveal the teardrop-shaped gold trousers that she wore underneath. She had cunning little gold shoes covered in pearls, but Kael noted that she had kicked them off in the grass and curled her feet up against her like a girl. Her hair was gathered in a cascade of curls that fell in a swoop over one shoulder. A military style in Nyr, as was the overdress and the way it split. This dress and hairstyle were not merely some fashionable assemblage. It was a clear signal to someone that she was prepared to do war.
Jehn, in contrast, was dressed foppishly as usual. He wore a gold tunic, but somehow the color managed to look garish on him when it looked regal on the queen. The length of bare chest visible where his tunic lay open was draped in masses of gold and jeweled necklaces. Jehn was not going for moderation.
Jehn leaned his head back to look at the face queen’s face. He smiled at her with half of his mouth. The flush on his face was still there, but the tension seemed to be unspooling from his body now. “Wine, my wife?” he inquired, lifting a finger to signal one of the servers. “You seem tense.”
She only gazed at him with thinly veiled wrath. Several of the nearby courtiers paused to listen, their eyes slitting with displeasure at Jehn’s boldness and ridiculousness.
One did not call the queen of Nyr tense.
But Jehn remained—or pretended to remain—oblivious to the blunder he’d made. The server approached, and Jehn took two cups from the tray. He offered one to the queen, who turned her head with a tinkle of her jeweled earrings. Jehn shrugged and swallowed both in two gulps.
“I think,” Kael said, “we ought to retire for the evening, Your Grace.”
Jehn set the cups on the grass. “Why? Things are just getting interesting.”
“Perhaps you ought to listen to your captain of the guard,” the queen said, and a faint flush rose along her cheekbones.
Jehn saw it and relented. He rose unsteadily to his feet and leaned on Kael as they headed for the path that led through the heart of the garden to the palace. He muttered the whole while about the queen’s minister of finance, and all ministers of finance for that matter, and something about the price of bricks in the city.
The path wound through an archway constructed from trees that were tied together to form a living structure. At the end of the green tunnel stood a melancholy, crescent moon-shaped bridge carved from blue-green stone. The bridge arched over a narrow creek that fed into the larger river that wove through the palace grounds and emptied into the harbor. Ornamental trees grew thick around the banks of the water, obscuring the area around the bridge in a way that made Kael uneasy. If they were attacked here, the terrain would favor the attacker.
“Legend has it,” Jehn remarked absently to no one in particular as they approached the bridge, “that barren women who drop a pearl from this bridge will conceive at the next full moon. They say queens of ages past used to—”
His next words were cut off by a faint scrape of a boot against a stone. Kael put out his hand to stay the prince’s steps.
Hadn’t he just been thinking this was a poorly defendable spot?
“Wait here,” he commanded, drawing his sword and signaling to the other two guards, who dropped into position on either side of the Austrisian prince.
Kael stepped forward as a figure appeared in the moonlight at the mouth of the bridge. Steel glinted in the stranger’s hand.
An assassin.
The assassin struck, and Kael parried the blow with a violent clash of his sword as he shouted for the other soldiers flanking the prince to get Jehn to safety immediately. The assassin leaped at him, and Kael fell back against the smooth stone of the bridge. He could see only a mass of cloth and lithe limbs and the glint of the assassin’s eyes in the moonlight.
He struck a blow with his sword, feeling the steel sink into flesh, and the assassin made a sound of pain and fell back, giving Kael time to strike again, this time with the hilt of his sword. His boots slid in the mud of the path, and Kael bit back a curse.
He needed this attacker alive for interrogation. They had to know who was behind this first assassination attempt in the Nyrian court.
The assassin staggered, and then struck at Kael’s face. Kael dodged the blow, but the tip of the blade sliced his cheek. Blood splattered across his shirt and the assassin’s eyes. He leaped for the attacker, catching him by the wrist, shoving him back and controlling the blade as he slammed his elbow into the assassin’s face.
The assassin dropped his weapon and grappled for a moment with Kael against the bridge before bringing his full weight against Kael, knocking him hard against the stone. Kael’s grip slipped, and the assassin gained purchase against the ground and leaped.
They both plummeted into the creek below.
The water was deeper than Kael expected. Bubbles exploded around him as he plunged into the dark water. His shoulder struck a rock as he twisted, grappling with the assassin, who planted a boot against his chest and kicked hard, shoving him back. Kael’s fingers dragged across skin and fabric, snagging on something. A pocket? Whatever it was tore away, and then the assassin was gone, vanished into the shadows as Kael seized a rock and hauled himself from the water alone, still holding the scrap of cloth that was the assassin’s pocket, whole and intact in his hand except for a ragged edge where it had torn away. It felt heavy, as if it contained something.
Kael shoved it into his belt and swept the area, looking for signs of the attacker.
But the assassin had vanished like a gust of wind.
Footsteps pounded on the path above. Soldiers.
“Captain!” one shouted. “Where is the assassin?”
“Fled,” Kael called as he wiped away blood streaming from a cut above his eye. “Quickly—search the gardens. Secure all exits. Now, man!”
The soldiers rushed to obey, and Kael climbed the bank, retrieved his sword, and followed.
~
Later, Kael stood in his still-damp clothing in Jehn’s chambers while the Austrisian court physician tended to the laceration on his cheek and ribs, listening to his guard give a report to Jehn, the queen of Nyr, and a handful of trusted Austrisian nobles regarding what they’d found searching the city and hills surrounding the palace.
In short: nothing.
The assassin had escaped without leaving so much as a footprint.
Jehn lay on one of the couches, staring at the ceiling with his hands folded over his chest, listening with an intense frown on his face. “You’re sure there was nothing to identify the assassin?” he asked Kael, interrupting the report of the head guard. “You have no idea of the nationality, or even the sex of the attacker, correct?”
“I believe,” Kael said, suppressing a wince as the physician cleaned a gash along his collarbone, “the assassin was a woman. But,” he added, “I could see nothing of her except her eyes, and it was too dark to gather a single detail except that she had two of them.”
“Hmm,” Jehn said. “A female assassin. Less likely to be from the Austrisian mainland, in that instance.”
“More likely to be Nyrian,” Lord Billor, one of the newer members of Jehn’s inner circle, commented quietly. “They seem to train male and female assassins equally, if the queen’s inner circle of guards is any indication.”
“I can assure you, there is no plot among my people to assassinate my husband,” the queen of Nyr said coldly. “My spies would have discovered it.”
“Furthermore,” Kael said, “I believe someone inside the palace helped her gain entrance.”
“I agree,” the palace guard said. “One of the gardener gates was left unlocked, which is how we believe the attacker was able to get inside. The guards along the wall were given orders to patrol in a different formation than usual, with a concentration of forces on the opposite side of the garden.”
“And who gave these orders?” Jehn asked with a lift of his brow. His voice was low and soft, and if he were worried, he didn’t show it. “Do we know?”
“The orders were sent by note, and supposedly signed by my hand,” Kael said. He felt deeply weary as he said the words. The queen of Nyr gave him a sharp glance as if trying to discern if he were a traitor to the prince. “Obviously, I sent no such order.”
“Obviously,” Jehn said with a tip of his head. “But someone chose to use your name to issue the order.”
“Do you think someone is trying to frame you?” Lady Valora asked from where she stood near the door. She had been quieter than usual during the discussion.
The others looked at her. Jehn’s forehead creased as if he were thinking through half a dozen threads of possibilities.
“I don’t know,” Kael said. “It’s possible that I was the most logical choice, and there is no conspiracy against me. It’s also possible that someone is trying to besmirch my reputation, or frame me.”
“If it is a Nyrian threat—” Lord Billor began.
“The Austrisian court has already had its share of traitors,” the queen of Nyr said coldly. “My people have a saying: If you hear a hiss, look for vipers in your own house before tearing up the floorboards of mine.”
“Conspiracy or not, that is not my concern at the moment, however,” Kael added before they could get too far afield from the discussion.
“And what is your concern at the moment?” the queen of Nyr asked. Her voice was silky, but it held a hint of poison. They had always been a bit at odds, the queen and him. She had her agenda, and he had his—protecting the prince. Sometimes, Kael even had the odd thought that she was jealous of him somehow.
“The prince’s safety,” Kael said firmly, meeting her gaze without flinching. Not many could when she was giving that cutting look that was like scorched steel—even the surliest of the queen’s ministers looked away under that glare.
But Kael was used to the witching glare of his dragonsayer love. He was practiced in not flinching.
A brief spark of pain shot through him as he thought of Briand. Lords, he missed her. He hoped she was well, and holding a knife to someone’s throat at this very moment. He felt he would give his left hand to see her right now.
The queen seemed annoyed that she hadn’t induced Kael to cower, but she covered it smoothly, her face returning to a grave, faintly concerned expression, the same one she wore whenever she was speaking to her most exasperating ministers.
“Then we are in agreement,” she said.
“I’m doubling your guard,” Kael said to Jehn. “Please refrain from strolling alone anywhere, Your Grace. Avoid public places for now—the baths, the main hall, and for lords’ sake, stay away from bridges and forests. In fact, why don’t you simply remain in your rooms?”
