The kheld king, p.25
The Kheld King, page 25
“Ermenthalia planned this. The procession down the river. The barge. That I take Lev with me. I told her myself that I would sail on the new warship in Ilmar. Next thing I know I have lost my ship in a Rift storm and my family is on the run for their lives. The only good to come of this excursion is that I rid Sansordan of a tribe of cannibals.” Dorilian left out the part about seeing Mulsor.
Tiflan regarded him gravely. “I think you are right about Nammuor being involved in this plan.”
“Yes, but I expect him to try to kill me. Why would she? She deliberately put me in his path, lured me out of Sordan. It was a two-pronged attack. Nammuor would capture or kill me, leaving Sordan without a ruler. The other prong was for her agents to bring Lev to her, my successor, the key to the Hierarchate.”
Tiflan nodded. “A regency. As his grandmother, she would be legal guardian.”
“Did she not know Nammuor would kill me? Or does she not care?” Had Dorilian’s world gotten so small the only people who didn’t want him dead were on this ship?
Tutto leaned forward with his own brand of comfort. “You might not be the one she cares about. Her mother was Mormantaloran, from one of its great families. I heard she did not wed your grandsire by choice. Called him a half man.”
Dorilian had never seen Ermenthalia and Labran together but could imagine it. Thinking about it, Dorilian frowned. Daimonaeris had used the same word—for him. “Ermenthalia had a hand in choosing my wife.”
And she had chosen a woman just like her. He discerned another repeating pattern; the temporal refraction pulsed just beyond his senses. A recurrence, uncorrected, like Marc Frederick and Labran, Dorilian and Stefan… the Dazun and the Sorand’ruil…
Tiflan was agreeing with something Tutto had just said. “Nammuor first came to Sordan with his sister at Ermenthalia’s invitation.”
As a possible bride for Deben, not Dorilian. Deben had made the decision to marry Daimonaeris to his son instead. Did Ermenthalia know Levyathan too was Deben’s son? Dorilian tried to place that set of facts into the pattern he sensed but could not make them fit. Maybe none of it fit. He was beyond tired.
“I cannot uncover the truth of any of this until I pin her down. I will secure Suddekar even if I have to go in there and do it myself. Maybe Deleus is involved in this plot.”
Tiflan frowned. “We cannot ignore that possibility.”
No. He had ignored too many possibilities already. Dorilian looked upward at the sails, the sky. Crew he had picked up in Ben-Aranath to augment his exhausted force with more sailors moved among the masts and full-bellied sails. One caught his eye. Was that a… woman in the rigging? At this point only one thing mattered. He directed that question to Tutto. “Can we make Sordan by morning?”
Tutto squinted up at the sails. Once fields of white trimmed with green, the canvas was now stained with blue and red stripes. With a frown, he turned to look behind them, to the west. “Brisk wind like this… full oars… two days. There’s a storm coming at our backs might drive us off course.”
“Don’t let it… and make Sordan in one,” Dorilian said.
21
“She is my wife. She belongs with me, not her mother!”
Stefan flung message and envelope to the ground and hauled on the reins, causing his mount to rear in protest. He managed to keep it under control. Making a scene served no purpose. His nobles, returning with him from a successful hunt, filled the courtyard of the stables. Sun glinted off the windows of the Emrysen Palace where it rose above a display of flowering shrubs. After Stefan had calmed his horse, he swung down from the saddle. Goff had picked up the message and tucked it into his shirt.
Good.
Cullen trotted over. Stefan sent his other nobles away by saying he would meet them later in the banquet hall. Boar would grace tonight’s table.
“Nilla wants to stay with her mother through the harvest,” Stefan complained. “Summer’s not even over yet!” He watched Cullen’s expression pass from realization of what the problem was to concern over Stefan’s response. Goff’s grimace was even more telling. “Don’t tell me I’m being unreasonable to want my wife to return to my bed.”
Cullen and Goff exchanged glances before Goff gestured for Cullen to do the honors. “I’ll tell you, then. You’re being unreasonable. She went through a hard time, and so did you.”
“Losing my heir didn’t stop me from being king. I didn’t use it as an excuse to run away. People need to see me moving on and getting things done. And they need to see her!”
“People understand, Stefan. They know a woman needs time to heal.” Cullen didn’t flinch away from Stefan’s narrow glare. “If they think anything about it meaning something else, it’s only because you’re moping around like a man desperate to prove something.”
“Like what?”
“That you’ve nailed the throne to your headboard? Put it out of other people’s reach?”
As usual, Cullen was right. Partly, anyway. Even Goff looked relieved that Cullen had provided Stefan with an opening. “I want her here, all right? I want to show people—” What did he want to show them? How should he even say it? “I want to show them a royal couple. A symbol of unity. They need to see that I have not just a queen, but a wife—one that isn’t running away from me. Because that’s what it looks like.”
Stefan led them away from the other courtiers and stable hands, toward the overlook at the high point of the garden, with its view of the Upper Canal and the golden façade of the Emrysen Palace’s stately south wing. “Day after day I have to deal with problems and demands. Half my nobles think the Highborn should be in my place. Maybe they don’t say it to my face, but I know they think it, and you know it too.”
“Aw, Stefan—”
“He’s right,” Goff put in from his seat on the nearby wall. “The damn Highborn princes petitioned him to let them go home. Prince Rheger back to Dannuth, and Stauberg for his son that thinks he needs to walk on the Wall. Good riddance, except I had a man say to me just the other day he likes that they’re here, the Highborn princes! And you know why? What was his reason?” Goff’s beard jutted as he scoffed. “Said it makes him feel better with the world to know there’s Highborn at hand.”
“That’s their religion,” said Cullen. “They think about Leur same way as our faith in the Mother and Lud.”
Stefan was tired of hearing it. “Well, there aren’t enough Highborn to go around, are there? I’ve found I don’t like having Rheger Dannutheon or his son too close at hand, showing me up. People compare me to them! And I sure as Mother’s Milk don’t like people talking about how important they are.”
A faint thrum drew their eyes to the soaring Rill structures that crowned Dazunor-Rannuli, a charys gliding to roost high upon the Mount. Bare moments later, a bolt of brilliant light accompanied by an ascending whine split the day as a second charys shot north, high over the canal beside which they stood.
“They are important.” Cullen pointed at the Rill. “They’re especially important if people believe they give them that.”
Wealth. Power. The ability to move with the swiftness of gods. Stefan distrusted the Rill more than the Highborn themselves.
“Burelan Phaeros gets to flaunt his riches because of that.” Let Cullen chew on the full cause of Stefan’s discontent. “He fields an army as large as mine. He’s courting Palaistea, who has an even bigger army herself and more estates than I do, and he’s been busy making friends. Or maybe buying them.”
Cullen could not dispute the possibility. “His holdings generate enough trade that he fills his own book—but so do all the other great lords.”
“Those great lords are barely loyal to me. Every tax I levy, they oppose and make me step back. They’re all in arrears on the taxes they do owe. Nothing makes them happier than to make me poor!” Stefan had his own income, to be sure—Rill revenues and the proceeds of his properties—but he needed monies to fund the costs of running the damned kingdom. “Aren’t you angry they won’t support Kheld trade in any form? We grant Kheld merchants licenses, and still people go out of their way to sell their goods to someone else! Anyone else! No one will trade with Khelds. But my lords find ways to trade with Sordan. I know they do, even though I told people not to.”
“You can’t enforce it. Stefan, I warned you about that.” Cullen’s frustration was clear. “Rill trade is… like water. You stop it at one point, it just leaks out somewhere else.”
“Dorilian cut it off at his end, didn’t he? He doesn’t allow Esseran goods to be unloaded in Sordan or Hestya. He made it so Esseran ships, from any of our domains, can’t dock in Sordan. He stops them in his lake and impounds them! He stops them in his river. I have the Seven Houses chewing off my ears.”
“Sure, but they’re getting their goods through anyway. They use Trongorian merchants as go-betweens. Or they ship to Randpory.”
“But they have to use Trongorian ships! Or Ardaenan or Mercedan. Because of that, our ships go wanting and our goods cost too much. Our merchants make less profit. We’re being cut out by everyone!”
“Sordan is suffering, too.” Goff spoke up surely. “They need our lumber, our metals.”
“Not enough. Dorilian’s been developing new sources, and new markets too.”
“So are we.” Cullen’s jaw firmed. “In Amallar, which won’t trade with him. And Trongor, which isn’t playing sides, just wants the best deals. Kyredon, too. That domain is growing, Stefan. And didn’t the Lahgaelan ambassador just tell you their king said our ships can dock in Ben-Aranath and they won’t let Sordan stop them?”
“And what does that mean? Now we can get close to Sordan—just not get to Sordan except on Lahgaelan ships.”
“There’s Mormantalorus, too.” Goff said what Cullen wouldn’t.
“We shouldn’t overlook them. They’re big.” Stefan had told Cullen to look into this option a year ago.
“And rich!” added Goff. “Just far away.”
“Far away,” Cullen agreed. “But more than that, they… they have no use for Khelds. None. Your grandfather—”
“Didn’t trust them. I know that.” Stefan more than knew it—he had argued that Marc Frederick was missing a bigger picture, that Sordan was the more dangerous foe. Sordan, which had stabbed them all in the back. As far as Stefan was concerned, Mormantalorus presented an opportunity. Not so long ago, that land had been part of the Triempery—a vital, trusted part. Maybe it could be lured back. “Are we trading with them at all?”
Cullen gazed at the canal and its display of recreational gonds preferred by the wealthy inhabitants of this quarter of the city. He exhaled in frustration. “We do have some trade with Mormantalorus. Pearls. Dyes. Gems. Those crystals used by mage-artisans in Permephedon to make waterglobes and all that. No traffic by Rill, of course, with the nearest node being at Hestya and Sordan being at war with them. Their goods arrive mostly on ships from Merced, Trongor and Lahgael. When I was in Maskos last year to confer about trade, I tried to meet the Mormantaloran ambassador. He… wouldn’t.” Cullen’s face tightened. “I was told they don’t conduct business with ‘lesser men.’”
“Lesser men?”
“Us.”
Which ruled out Khelds—but not the greater part of Stefan’s kingdom. If Stefan sent the right man to negotiate, maybe a deal could be arranged that would bring Essera great advantages. He had heard Erenor mention Mormantalorus as a possible trade and political ally. It would be rich to not only align with Dorilian’s enemy but also profit by it. If he could also establish strong ties with Lahgael, Stefan could actually flank his annoying nemesis.
“Let’s go back to the palace,” he told his companions. “Time for a celebration.”
They had just stepped onto the paving stones leading to the imposing entrance to the West Hall, Goff bending Stefan’s ear with a proposal for placing two promising young clansmen as tax collectors—a position Stefan felt had been dominated for too long by Staubauns—when Erenor dashed down the steps, breathless, his face animated and alert. At his side was Lucien Illarion, who looked more alarmed.
“I do not know how much to believe of this, sire, but”—Erenor drew air before he could continue—“something is not right in Sordan.”
“I know that.” Nothing had been right with Sordan since the day Marc Frederick had given back the Hierarchate’s autonomy.
“No. I mean really not right. Dorilian Sordaneon isn’t in the city.”
Stefan rolled his eyes. “I know that, too. He’s parading his wealth on some golden barge down his private river.”
“Sire, it is something else. Our agent in the city has sent word that the Gracious Hierarchessa, Ermenthalia, is in Sordan—while the Hierarch is not, which isn’t usual at all. What’s more, she has called for Sordan’s Halia to convene. They are not in session.”
A development completely out of the ordinary, because it was something only the ruling Hierarch could do. Unless….
“Has something happened to Dorilian?” Stefan could only hope. His heart beat faster at the rush of excitement.
Lucien shook his head of gold-bright hair. “We do not know. No one knows. All we know is this is highly unusual.”
Dorilian was on a progress into a far-flung corner of his Hierarchate. If anything had happened, it would take a longer time than this for news to travel as far as Stefan’s ear. But not, perhaps, to the ear of the Hierarch’s family. Or his grandmother.
“He might be dead.” The possibility dangled so close that Stefan did not hesitate to take a bite from it. Retribution, juicy-sweet because it was perfect justice, too. It would be fitting for Dorilian to die on account of excessive wealth and pride.
“Now that would be a thing to celebrate!” Goff clapped Stefan’s shoulder and seemed even more joyful. Cullen, however, looked thoughtful and sober.
Erenor, too, counseled caution. “We do not know anything yet. It is barely more than a whisper. The Seven Houses have the best information; they have placed spies so deep in Sordaneon business they know everything—and they would not tell me a thing. They are sitting tight, watching, just like we are.”
Stefan smiled and resumed walking. There would be a banquet tonight to celebrate his hunt, and maybe something more. Whatever was going on, and whatever happened because of it, Dorilian’s troubles were clearly serious.
By the time Dorilian sailed into Sordan’s harbor, his ship had changed allegiances—at least in appearance. Their wind-filled sails of blue with red diagonal striping proclaimed a Trongorian ship. So did the blue railings and trim, and the boldness of a red prow leading the way. Gone was the Hierarch’s flag, replaced by that of the maritime Electorate. Only when the ship turned toward the military basin did he order that flag struck and Sordan’s flag to be raised, along with the banner of the Hierarchate.
A ship intercepted them. The armed men who boarded were led by an officer Tutto knew for having commanded him in Sebbord’s service. Upon observing the ranks of soldiers wearing Eagle armor and gear and seeing Tiflan in his Teremari regalia, with Dorilian standing at their head, wearing Derlon’s Armor while displaying a fiery orbus in his right hand and the Rill Stone on his left, the man quickly pieced together the situation.
“Your Thrice Royal Grace,” he stammered. “Why this—?”
“Who controls the City?” Dorilian doused the orbus to show his empty, unburnt hand. He had washed during the voyage and seen his armor cleaned and polished. No longer was he stained with blood.
“The Gracious Hierarchessa has convened the Halia. We feared—”
“So do I. Signal that my ship may dock and that I require horses and additional men.”
“Yes, Thrice Royal!”
Dorilian’s military would always stay with him. To them, he would forever be the prince who had freed Sordan from Essera’s occupation. He was also sacred—Highborn and Rillborn and the last of a line descended from their god. Under his command Sordan’s military had been elevated to greater prestige than in the last forty years. They would follow him in a heartbeat against an old woman whose only claim was that of having given birth to Deben the Conquered.
To Tutto and Legon, and two hundred Eagle Guards who had accompanied him from Ilmar, Dorilian said, “Protect my Heir and my family. I will send for you once I have settled matters in the Upper City.”
The Gracious Hierarchessa was going to regret having summoned Sordan’s Halia.
Dorilian reached the Upper City leading a force of several thousand. Word of his return spread quickly. Commanders who had tacitly stayed on the sideline of the Gracious Hierarchessa’s political maneuvers instead threw the full weight of their allegiance to their Hierarch. Upon reaching the Dekkora, Dorilian sent a force of three thousand to seize control of the Serat from Ermenthalia’s troops and another few thousand to secure the Rill. He doubted they would encounter much resistance.
Dorilian led his thousand upwards to the splendid Citadel itself, where the Halia held court in chambers wherein Aryati star farers had once walked and lived and perhaps ruled. With towers that soared to heights unparalleled by all but Permephedon’s spires, the Citadel belonged to another time.
Hierarchal banners in profusion, flanked by Tiflan and Legon, Dorilian rode his horse down the inclined arcade, past the open arches and into the open, sunken courtyard. His troops encountered only brief resistance from a regiment of Suddekan soldiers. All but a few, upon seeing they were opposing Sordan’s Hierarch, knelt and laid down their arms. Tiflan and Legon stayed at Dorilian’s side as he spurred past a line of stunned Citadel guards and a smaller cohort of Suddekan soldiers, his mount leaping into the first level of the tower. The splendid rotunda within gave way to vaulted, wondrous corridors and ramps to other levels. Only when he reached the tree-shaded and beautiful Courtyard of Judgment and the grand doorway leading to the Halia Chamber did he draw rein and dismount. He ordered the soldiers still with him to secure the courtyard. With Tiflan and twenty men chosen by Legon, Dorilian advanced on the Halia Chamber.
