The kheld king, p.5
The Kheld King, page 5
They rounded a corner and entered the nursery. A peaceful corner of the Serat, the suite occupied a wing far removed from the official state galleries where said ambassadors and generals would be hosted. Dorilian was earlier than usual, and the nursery was in disarray—toys of different sizes and colors littered the floor, one curtain was askew, and the doors were thrown open to a portico overlooking a walled, grassy courtyard. The main playroom was covered by a single carpet woven on Rebir’s fabled looms, a pattern busy with animals of every kind known and loved, and images of brilliantly plumed birds taking flight. The wet-nurse—a plump woman wearing a white snood—lounged on a chaise laden with cushions. Raxa smiled on seeing him. So did the babe in her arms.
Dor! Dor! Levyathan’s familiar touch tapped at Dorilian’s mind, accompanied by a squeal of welcome. That cry was immediately seconded by another, coming from the portico.
“Da!”
Dorilian knelt and a young girl, dark curls bouncing above a bright blue shift that danced around her tiny body, propelled her chubby little legs across the room to launch into his arms. The nurse’s young assistant dashed into view from the portico, a stick puppet with yellow frogs in her hand, and stopped when she saw where her charge had gone.
“Princess!” Dorilian swept the toddler up. Fahme laughed, round cheeks flushed and mouth open wide. She wasn’t a princess by birth. She was the common-born daughter of Levyathan’s former nurse and a man Dorilian had yet to find and kill, but he would never let the world stop him from treating this child as his own. He owed Noemi that.
“Dor!” The high squeal sounded more like “Dar!” Dorilian kissed Fahme’s neck until she giggled, then handed her to Tutto. Doing so left Dorilian free to go the ample-bosomed woman holding Levyathan.
“He’s getting loud.”
“If he weren’t such a bit of a thing, Thrice Royal, I’d swear the lad calls you by name.” Raxa’s agile fingers tucked an edge of swaddling under the babe’s torso and held out the bundle so Dorilian could take him. “He’s never so happy as when you come by.”
“No happier than I am.” He cocked the baby into his arms.
Rising, Raxa bowed her head and signaled her helper. Both women left the room. Tutto had Fahme seated upon his shoulders and was doing something that resembled a dance, leaving Dorilian free to spend time with his infant heir.
Levyathan’s fat right arm batted a tiny hand against Dorilian’s cheek. The boy’s golden irises, fiercely focused, communicated excitement. See colors! Hear sounds!
“What sounds?”
“Burs!”
Dorilian understood the word better for hearing it also in his mind, spun out as both thought and sound, along with the rest of what Levyathan’s infant vocal apparatus struggled to say. Birds! Laughs. Doors. Raxa sings! Dorilian wondered what Raxa’s singing voice sounded like. He had not asked her to sing when he had auditioned nurses.
“What songs does she sing?”
Levyathan had never heard singing before, at least not as singing. He had only heard colors before. Boats. Rabbits. Spiders.
“When you look at me… what do you see?” Dorilian prompted. He had not asked before. Levyathan had been so new, so tiny. Only in the last several days had he begun to communicate with any structure.
“You!”
“I’m serious. What do you see? Do you see anything of the Rill?” One time and one time only, Dorilian had glimpsed himself through his brother’s eyes. His first brother’s eyes. He had seen someone young, human, but attached to a monstrous creation by milliform cords of invisible power.
Had the Rill power that clung to him changed since then? It felt vaster now, more oppressive.
Levyathan’s little mouth, far too knowing for its tender age, quivered. Not like before. Colors stay inside shapes. Different.
Dorilian cloaked his response with a weak smile. In a way, he was glad. Levyathan was adapting well to having a full set of memories and remnants of another personality thrust upon his infant mind and body. He was neither Levyathan as first Dorilian had known him, nor was he solely the child created by Daimonaeris and Deben. His blended mind and new body were, however, experiencing a life unlike his first. A normal life with normal senses. Their relationship this time was bound to be different. Did Levyathan even remember that his original body had died a year before?
Dorilian knew he had forgotten to shield his thought when Levyathan quipped, “Yeh!”
He hugged Levyathan close and pressed his cheek to the tiny head covered by golden fuzz. For the second time that day, tears rose to his eyes, and this time he let them spill, wetting the sweet-smelling skin. Levyathan’s mind slid alongside Dorilian’s like fur across his skin, warm, buffering as he released his grief.
A mess, such a mess. Essera. Nammuor. It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse. My enemies increase by the hour.
Levyathan’s calm soothed him. Better. Soon. Bigger every day.
Not big enough. Not yet.
I grow. You grow too!
He nodded. Levyathan might be different now, trapped in the body and mind of an infant, but he had always been wise. Like now, reminding Dorilian that his body too was still immature. He was but twenty-one years, undergoing the final stages of Highborn adolescence. He closed his eyes and hugged the boy tighter. His one victory. He had kept his dead brother’s life coiled within his spine and pooled in his gut, until the day Daimonaeris, wanting to deceive him into thinking his father’s child in her womb was his, had seduced him. Even knowing the truth, he had allowed it. Her beauty was the only thing about her that had not been a lie and the opportunity to have sex had pulled at him like a drug. He had never dreamed doing so would give Levyathan another chance at life.
At least, in killing her, Dorilian had saved Levyathan from Nammuor’s plan, whatever that had been—or still was. Who knew what a man who twisted the forces of nature could do with a babe of Sordaneon blood? He lifted his head again and met Levyathan’s baby gaze. Trust and joy looked back at him. “I love you,” Dorilian whispered. “You are my brother twice over. I will protect you, no matter what.”
Levyathan smiled toothlessly and jerked his arms and legs.
Raxa walked back into the room, a fresh towel over her shoulder. She waited until Dorilian placed the baby again into her soft rounded arms, then she settled back on the chaise to nurse, baring a breast swollen with milk, onto which Levyathan’s mouth hungrily latched.
New shouts broke the nursery’s peace as Fahme saw her opportunity. She squirmed until Tutto swung her off his neck. At once she ran over to a lopsided lump of bright blue cloth on the floor.
“Ball!” She picked it up and turned, tossing it in the general direction of Dorilian’s boots. Stamping her feet, she held out both hands.
“Seems to me you might as well get some practice.” Tutto looked resigned. He picked up the blue lump and tossed it.
Dorilian caught it and squatted facing the girl. He extended the ball out in his right palm. He focused. “Catch,” he said.
The ball vanished and reappeared instantly in Fahme’s tiny palms. She squealed in delight, then tossed the ball back. It fell halfway. While Tutto stomped to fetch it, Fahme toddled over to one of the room’s three large crewelwork horses and plopped down behind it. “Ball!” she demanded.
Tutto retrieved the ball, handed it over, and Dorilian focused again. “Catch!” Again, the ball vanished from his hand to appear in Fahme’s
They played the game several more times. Fahme never lacked in places to hide, her favorite being behind the curtain. Dorilian enjoyed the game, for the most part, because she did. Her laughter reminded him of his own childhood when he had played this game with his grandfather. Games had provided his first lessons in utilizing his innate Highborn gifts. Fahme would never learn the second part of the game, how to send the ball back. But someday Levyathan would, so Dorilian figured he might as well keep in practice.
He should be sending more important things than soft lumps of cloth from his hand, and farther than across a room. This morning aside, the remaining Malyrdeons were lying low in Dannuth, not communicating. Several times he’d tried to send message cylinders their way, only to get no response. He’d stopped sending them.
After a dozen rounds of ball, Dorilian rose and stopped the game. Protesting loudly, Fahme ran to the ball and grabbed it, then stood in front of him, throwing it as hard as she could to get his attention. It bounced off his knee. “More!”
“None of that!” Tutto swooped in and pulled her away, back up into his arms. “Attacking the Highborn! Can’t let these little ones get ideas!” The girl arched her back and her little fists pummeled Tutto’s scarred arms until the nurse’s helper appeared to whisk her away, saying the child was just tired. Tutto scowled and rubbed his forearm. “You should wait twenty years and marry that one. She has plenty of fight.”
Dorilian laughed, not just at the idea of ever marrying Fahme, as common a child as ever graced a Sordaneon nursery. No, another marriage was just about the last thing on his mind. More than that he didn’t think he would ever want another wife—siring a child at this juncture would be a mistake. Additional Sordaneon heirs would remove one of the few reasons his Rill-greedy enemies still had for keeping him alive.
He had been thinking about other things while tossing the ball. All his best lessons had centered on games. After leaving the nursery, he turned to Tutto. “Find the emissary who came last week from the Lords of Gobba and Annech. He said he would stay in the city.”
“I remember. Those Lords fear Stefan will open new lands to Kheld settlers in Neuberland.”
“Meet him in secret, find out what they want, then use Philemon Leander to broker the deal. No one is better at concealing the movement of Esseran Rill shipments.”
“Didn’t you just stop those?”
“They will resume once we have the means to funnel arms through Leseos without any the wiser.”
Tutto grinned approval, making chasms of the scars seaming his cheeks. “You’re going to start a war, ignite a fire right in Stefan’s own hearth.”
Dorilian nodded. “Nammuor could not create a better scenario for my destruction than to engage Essera against me. Might as well give Stefan something better to occupy his time.”
5
“You want to what?” Cullen bumped the stone he’d been setting into the wall he was building, causing the block to topple and nearly land on his foot.
“I want to give you an estate, make you a lord. The first Kheld lord ever.” Stefan had been king for a few months and felt it time to put his own stamp on his reign. He tied his horse to a post Cullen had sunk into the ground near the stone pile. Not just for tying horses, the post likely was the start of a future fence. “If you had an estate, you wouldn’t have to build a house for Asphalladra. It would come with one, even several.”
“No, Stefan, I would still have to build her a house.” Cullen squatted to pick up the stone again. “That’s what a Kheld man does for a woman he wants as his wife.”
At the moment, that house was just a set of stone steps leading down into a muddy hole in the ground, some timber framing, and four walls not as high as Cullen’s hip. It would be a good house of three rooms and a cellar when finished, though that might take several months. Cullen grunted as he set another stone in place, rocking it back and forth until he liked how it fit. Deciding he might as well help, Stefan walked back to where Cullen had hefted the square gray stone into place and was tapping it with mortar made of lime and sand, bags of which lay near a trough. Stefan picked up the battered bucket and a trowel so he could scoop mortar around the stone.
“So, she’s set to marry you?”
“If I can get her father to agree to it. You know how Staubauns are. But he’s got two other daughters he can marry off, and…”
Stefan frowned. Staubauns held most, if not all, of the wealth in his kingdom, tied up in estates, ships, warehouses and Rill slot contracts. None of it was available to Khelds. Asphalladra’s father, the Enlad of Chennor, would never marry his daughter to Cullen, a man without a lofty lineage and who owned nothing but a decent plot of land overlooking the Dazun River. Even a stone house of several rooms would not be fine enough for the daughter of a nobleman who owned four Rill slots.
“The Enlad’ll never agree. And he won’t say it’s because you’re Kheld, or that she’s too good for you and he doesn’t want little mongrel grandchildren.” Stefan kept on even though Cullen grimaced. “He’ll say you’re too poor to provide for her, that he can marry her to a man with better prospects.”
Cullen slammed another rock down on the wall. Sweat plastered curling strands of dark brown hair to his forehead. “Phalla doesn’t want a man with better prospects. She wants me.”
“And well she should, because you’re ten times better than any lord. But she’s not a Kheld woman free to choose her own man. What’s needed is for her father to see some value in picking you.”
“I made enough coin from our mines to buy this land, didn’t I? Those shares still bring in a profit. And I’m your friend, Stefan. Being the king’s friend counts for something already.”
They were out of stones for setting, so Stefan went over to the pile with Cullen to pick up more. The work felt good, stretching muscles he was letting go soft with royal living, and giving space to a mind he’d let become cluttered with the demands of nobles and generals. Several trips back and forth from the pile soon had him sweating, too. Rough rock scraped marks across the leather gussets of his fitted sleeves and left smudges of dirt on the silk, but he didn’t care. He had servants now who needed work.
Cullen dumped the barrow they’d filled onto the trampled grass. “There now, I can add a bit more by sunset.”
Stefan had more to add, too. He hadn’t come by just to help Cullen build his wall. “You never did give me your answer about being my trade minister.”
“Stefan, I told you—”
“How can you tell me no? You filled that office last year, when I was Prince of Dazunor.”
The sun settled low enough to drop behind a line of trees. Stefan watched Cullen’s blue gaze flick across the land he had cleared, toward the bluff line and the dark gray expanse of the river. Here at Trulo the Dazun was so wide a man could barely see across it, a deep channel traveled by barges and ships.
“Things have changed,” Cullen said.
“What’s changed?”
“You have.”
Stefan had hoped Cullen would be over that. They had argued fiercely at the time of his coronation three months before, because he hadn’t listened to Cullen and all hells had broken loose. Angry Dorilian had imposed onerous restrictions on merchants and goods—even ordinary travelers—moving through Sordan, including kicking a bunch of Esseran merchant princes out of lucrative warehouse property. The unhappy nobles had been hounding Stefan for weeks, wanting him to restore their losses. Every time he looked upon their sly aristocratic faces, he was almost happy there was nothing he could do. He had no military forces in Sordan to command, and Dorilian, for all his faults, was staying true to his word and pretending Stefan didn’t exist.
“Then help me change things back. We’re friends, aren’t we? You just said so yourself. You’re my cousin, my blood. Nothing can change that.”
“I reckon not. But Stefan, it was you who told me to go away, to get out, in front of everyone.”
“I had to. You were telling me, in front of everyone, what an idiot you thought I was. Marc Frederick wouldn’t have put up with it, you know that—and neither will I. But in private, like now, just the two of us, you can tell me anything.”
“Then I’ll tell you again.” Cullen locked gazes with Stefan. “You were an idiot, putting Dorilian on the spot the way you did. I think he meant to come to your coronation. I think he would have done it and given your nobles something to think about besides whether they should get rid of you. Instead, you didn’t have any Highborn in attendance, not one, because once the Malyrdeons heard about what happened, they stayed away too.”
A flush of anger and embarrassment nearly loosened Stefan’s tongue, but he held it. “All right, it didn’t work the way I planned, but it was worth trying.”
“Sure it was. Now you have Dorilian sitting pissed off in Sordan, plotting ways to make you suffer”—Cullen ticked off his mortar-crusted fingers one by one— “the Seven Houses and their Rill pals all pissed off in their palaces up here because they’re not getting their way, Essera’s remaining Highborn princes wondering what you intend for them, and me pissed off because I couldn’t stop it. Even your own mother is mad that you made her look like her word was no good. And you want me to be your trade minister.” Cullen expelled a lungful of air. A sharp wind off the water ruffled his coarse linen shirt. “Dorilian did you a favor, Stefan. I can’t imagine a more dangerous prisoner. You would have had a war on your hands if you’d succeeded—and not just his folk, but Mormantalorus, too, because they make no secret they want Sordan for themselves. There’s blood involved, with the Sordaneon Heir being their ruler’s nephew and all.”
Hearing his friend say these things was hard. Worse, Cullen had it right. Stefan pushed down the urge to defend himself, stewed for a moment, then finally said, “I know.” Seeing Cullen’s angry expression soften meant more to Stefan than all the flattery of his courtiers. “I wasn’t thinking about those things. All I could think about was neutralizing the enemy in front of me. I wanted to gain the upper hand on the Rill.”
“Well that was clear enough, seeing as you went for the exact way old Marc Fred did it.”
Stefan sighed. “I tried it because the Highborn are going to be trouble. The Malyrdeons backed my grandfather, but they haven’t said they’re backing me. Rheger’s correspondence is polite, but noncommittal—and when I was at Stauberg two weeks back, Elhanan’s lackeys said he was in seclusion and wouldn’t let me see him. Me! The king! Maybe there are only four Malyrdeons left, but all of them are possible rivals for my throne, especially those two boys of Enreddon’s. I didn’t want them to have Dorilian to rally around, or giving them help, and now—” He kicked at the pile of stones in frustration, causing one to shift and several others to tumble down. “People are saying it’s because the Wall must have shown something, or foretold that I won’t be king for long, or that one of them will be.”
