Evening all...hot, on time and as promised!
Thank you to you most lovely (and indeed, long-memoried) people who reviewed last time: Roses of Sharon, Kichiko (thank you! Rereading it may take a while - I didn't realise how far I'd got into it until I went back and edited...), Ginastar, Starlight15,Zashera, Queen of Slayers, Dramoskye, saty (thank you! I have a lot more fun and mayhem planned.), Musical Kat, Muffing and last but most certainly not least, the fabulous crouchingbunny.
I adore hearing what you think - comments and criticism are very much welcomed, whether public or PM! Next part up by March 8th.
I hope you enjoy reading,
Ki
A Lady's Shield Part Eleven
There was, for a brief time, a renaissance of hope. Even in a land blighted by civil war, people still found occasion for laughter, and in the days after the Phoenix declared for Iceblood, a certain giddiness filled their followers.
After all, what could go wrong? They had magic and legends among them. Common men marched beside names they'd only heard in tales: the Shang Fox married a village girl who crowned him with bluebells. The Eagle and the Grasshopper moved from place to place, teaching rudimentary strategy and whatever weaponcraft could be passed on easily and quickly.
But there were others. The Adder grimaced at the rough huts he had to sleep in, and slapped an old wisewoman who smeared a poultice on his silks. For all her sweet face, the Kitten would not touch anyone who was not scrupulously clean. Others, too, bridled at the careless familiarity of allies, some of whom had been their servants – or were still their families' retainers.
A tinge of dissent, of disgruntlement, was woven under the laughter and the hope. Insidious, it spread like a shadow.
In love and dizzied by it, the Phoenix did not notice. And if Iceblood thought the nobles cold, then they were not the first such he had encountered. Nor did he possess the familiarity and knowledge to sift the complex politics of the Shang.
They had become legends so easily. But they were still human in so many ways: a girl in the flush of first love. A man better-suited to weapons of war than double-edged words and the clever games of courtiers.
No surprise then, that they did not note the absence of their detractors. Shang were prone to wander, after all, born to it: to feel the rough cast of everchanging ground and sleep beneath a different sky each night, whether their pillow was feather-down or grass.
It never occurred to anyone that their loyalties might travel as far as their feet.
Dissent spread like a shadow: and was subsumed by the king of shadows, poised upon his dark throne.
"Where are we going?" the princess asked between gasps as Ryan dragged her at a near-run through the city.
The streets were narrower here, the houses leant upon one another like drunken men. High walls kept the sun at bay, and if she could not hear the effluvium sloshing in the street, the reeking air certainly gave it away.
"Somewhere real," he answered curtly.
"What do you mean, 'real'?"
He stopped and faced her. Even in the gloom, there was no denying the clear light of her eyes, the steady gaze of someone who had never truly known fear or despair, who had never sunk to the basest level of themselves in order to survive.
"Somewhere where your face an' your name won't save you," he said quietly. "Where it ain't like a game, where you're not just a princess slummin' it for a day. This city was built on blood an' grief, paved with it stone by stone. Until you see what that means, you ain't fit to rule a country."
"I don't think you're in any position to tell me what I am or am not fit to do," she said frostily, drawing her coldness up around herself as if it were armour. Possibly it was. But it was no match for his anger.
"I'm in exactly the position!" He stepped close to her, taller, intending to intimidate her. "People like me – the lowest o' the lowest, the vermin in the gutters – we're the ones who need you most. We need the good rulers an' the strong ones, because we ain't got no one else to fight for us."
"You?" Her voice vibrated with incredulity. "You don't need anyone to fight for you!"
She really believed it. It was her innocence that shocked him, absurd beside that hardness that she had cultivated in herself until she was brittle and glassy as a lady's trinket. Under all those barbed remarks, she was just a girl who'd been sheltered from a world she wasn't meant to see.
But she needed to see it nonetheless.
Gentler, Ryan turned his arms again, reminding her of the scars there. "I don't now. But I was lucky. I had someone who dragged me out o' the gutter. She wouldn't let me die there. I would'a, though, if she hadn't come. I were a broken thing – barely human some days, when the hunger were chewin' me up from the inside out, an' my fingers were too cold to thieve."
He didn't like to think of those days. They seemed little more than sour smoke, clinging to him only in scraps. Faces became one endless blur – all he could recall clearly, too clearly, were their eyes, which were unchanging, like a glimpse into the same ravenous abyss.
He'd done things he wasn't proud of. Some he'd been forced to. Some, he'd gone to because it was money or shelter or a few minutes warmth.
Then Hana had come. Something in his hunched, scabbed form had stirred her, and she'd taken him away. Salvation had been her red hair, scandalously bright in a world of shadows, and her scoldings as she scrubbed him clean of mud and lice, and bawdy songs when he couldn't sleep.
He still hummed those songs in restless nights. But even they sometimes failed to drive away the memories.
"You don't know what you'll do to live," he told her, his eyes distant, old, bedevilled. "You don't know how low you can go. You weep 'cause you have to marry a man you don't know. But I bet he'll touch you soft an' speak you sweet, an' he'll treat you like a person."
"Yes," she whispered, fixed upon him as if in awe or horror or some brew of the two.
"Then you mark me good," he said. "Because where we're goin', there ain't much human left." His smile was crooked. "An' I called it home once."
She reached out, and her fingers clasped his briefly. The touch startled him, and maybe it startled her as well, because Kalasin drew back suddenly, flushed.
"I'm frightened," she said.
"Then you're learnin'," he answered, but when he led her down to the slick, stinking docks, he kept close by, because her confession had touched him. And perhaps because everything in her eyes was opposite to what waited for them there, what he had seen in every face all the squalid days of his childhood.
The stairs creaked as they climbed them. The smell of mildew hung all about the place, a dark festering hovel that hunkered on the very edge of the river as if waiting to topple in. The first three people they had asked for La Bruja had scuttled away without a word. The fourth had let out a little cry and would have followed suit if Davir hadn't grabbed her so quickly that her heels skidded on the cobbles.
And so they had come here.
Andrea stared at Davir's broad back and hoped he knew what he was doing. This part of the city was new to her – entirely different from the poor but lively haunts that Ryan had shown her. No one here smiled or jested: even the sunlight seemed to shy from the grey-green slosh of the river, the decrepit houses, the thin shadows of people who flinched back from them.
She'd thought the docks were full of trade: and so they were, but it was the trade of life for anything offered, bargains struck in desperation and pathos.
No one had tried to rob them. No one had tried to sell them anything. All seemed shrouded in despair, and it struck a cold terror in Andrea that she had never thought she would feel again.
It reminded her too much of the life she had left behind, of those last days in the village waiting for the whisper of the noose.
At the top of the stairs, the door was open. And from it, a low, husky voice said, "You'd best come in, my fine lad, and be sure to scrape the mud from your boots."
Behind them, the splintered door slammed shut, pitching them into darkness. She could not stop her gasp.
Silently Andrea begged Davir to refuse, to go, to be wise.
"Tell that little golden girl she'll be safer inside than out," the same smoky voice said. "The shadows have teeth here."
"Davir..." she whispered.
"I must see her," he said quietly. "Although...I could wish I hadn't dragged you into this."
She wished it too. She wished Ryan were here, to crack jokes and draw his knives so that she would feel safe. But he wasn't – and wasn't she one of Mithros's chosen, wasn't she supposed to be a warrior in her own way, feeble as that might be?
Andrea tried to swallow her fear. But as she followed him up, her hands fumbling blindly along the walls, she could not stop shaking.
The nameless wanderer drifted through the streets, his movements grace and hunger combined. His eyes were dazzled by the colour and sound and texture of this place, so different from the still, silent dark where he lay for aeons. Every breath was flavoured with the city, every movement hindered by this bustling, thrumming crowd of creatures who had no idea that death slid through them like a viper.
When a hand touched him, that small, careless gesture made him stop and gasp, intoxicated by the feel of skin on skin. Until he was nudged on by muttering people, too busy to stop and look at him as more than an annoyance.
Their heartbeats sounded in his ears. Their blood sang to him.
He was so hungry.
But none of them were what he sought. That flame burned in the distance, and he followed it, his mouth dry with anticipation.
Innocence, slick in his throat, soft between his teeth. He thirsted to possess it in every way possible, to be subsumed by it until he was no longer dark and empty and ravenous.
The nameless wanderer drifted towards the docks, ready to kill.
"Justinian," mused Raoul. Hooves clattered on the ground, mingled with the silvery jingle of armour and weapons. They were making good time: Greendell had been within a day's ride from Corus, and even their detour to fight those strange creatures had not taken them far from the main road. The wounded had been left in the village with enough men and mages to protect them while the rest of them rode for the capital.
The Shang Stormwing would have been left behind – indeed, should have been left behind – if not for her cool insistence that she was not theirs to command. She had gone so far as to purchase a horse from the villagers, who had undoubtedly charged her a massively inflated price from the scowls and surly comments they muttered at her back. Thus provisioned, Raoul had not been able to convince her to remain.
"But if there is so much as a whisper of trouble," he warned her flatly, "I will not risk my men for you."
Her smile had been cool. "You will not need to. I am quite capable of handling any trouble."
The remark might have had more effect if Kel hadn't seen her tiny grimace of pain as they set out. Her wounds must have hurt, even atop that placid mount, but the woman kept her face fixed in a blank mask. None of the men spoke to her after the first was rebuffed with a flat stare, and so she journeyed alone even in a mass of people, her isolation surrounding her like a cloud.
"Can it be true?" Raoul continued. "It sounds like a child's tale."
"True or not, it means trouble," remarked Buri. "We have invaders in our lands – does it matter whose name they march under?"
"Not really," the big knight admitted. "But it's a puzzle, and I'd rather think about that than what His Majesty will say when I tell him he has yet another battle on his hands."
"Hmm. Well, I've never heard the name."
"I have, but only in a history lesson." Raoul frowned. "And that was a long time ago. But we have younger minds among us. Kel?"
She dug into her memories for the pieces of those lessons, which seemed ages away: out here, under the sky, the walls of a classroom seemed incongruous. "He was known as the Shadow King and his reign was one of the bloodiest in our history. He was intensely paranoid – he won the throne in a civil war that divided the country, and he won it despite the fact he despised mages and the Gift, but ever after, if he so much as suspected rebellion, he would scourge that area of the land. He used torture freely: he burned men and women and children alike because he claimed the flames would purify them."
"Sounds charming," Buri muttered grimly.
"But even though he hated magic," she said slowly, recalling the teacher's slow, placid speech which had made even such a lurid period of history dull, "he used Immortals in the civil war. He caught them in traps and then broke them so they would be obedient. He turned them on his enemies – tame, mad things that could withstand magic. His reign lasted for over fifty years and then he vanished one day. People literally woke up and he was gone. Some people thought the gods had taken him away to punish him. Others thought he'd fled because a genuine, strong rebellion had begun to form against him and all his burning couldn't destroy it. But no one really knows. So...I suppose he could be alive," she said doubtfully.
It didn't seem likely though. Only gods and Immortals could live so long. Men had no such privilege, and she wasn't sure that was a bad thing.
"You suppose?" The Shang Stormwing's voice cut across them like a blunt axe. "Has your land forgotten the truth of him? Justinian dealt with demons. Every soul he burnt was a tribute to them and his reward was a deathless existence." She spat on the ground. "Such is the price of ambition."
"Demons," Buri said with raised eyebrows. "Stories, nothing more. Our understanding is that this man, this monster hated magic."
Her laugh was husky and contemptuous. "Stories have their birth in truth. He might have hated it, but that doesn't mean he would hesitate to use it. There is power in blood and death and pain, and our tales say that he craved power more than anything."
Before the debate could become an argument, Raoul cut in. "Either way, if someone is raising a banner in his name, we can be sure they won't have much in the way of mercy. The sooner we get back, the better."
Buri nodded at the horizon, and Kel was relieved to see the bulk of Corus rise the distance, faint and grey at this distance, but at last within sight. Her spirits rose and as the rest of the company saw, their pace picked up, their news driving them onwards like a fey breeze.
The Shadow King. That dry history seemed far too relevant now: she shuddered, and prayed it was not so.
La Bruja, they called her, and this was her den: a cramped, reeking little room lit only scantily by candles and thin threads of daylight that trickled through the gaps in the thatch. Strange paraphernalia littered the room: stones, string, a snakeskin flung over the back of a rickety chair, what appeared to be a browned bone. Only the woman herself was invisible-
No, there she was - a curving shape in the shadows. Andrea strained to make out the face of Nina Burridge who had made Hana weep so pitifully, who had made so many tremble at her name.
Then she slithered forward, and Andrea saw that she was a woman of no more than forty, but one hard-lived; her smile was all gum and blackened teeth, her skin pocked with marks. "Hello handsome," she purred in a voice that was shockingly young and vibrant.
Davir smiled at her as easily as if she were a beauty in the Court. "Nina Burridge, I presume."
"Presume a little more than my name, boy and I'll settle a future on you to match your face." Her gaze was avid. "I haven't had a man like you in years."
"And I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little longer," he said smoothly. "I've come to discuss the future."
But her gaze had slipped past him, and Andrea almost cowered from the shrewdness and the coldness in her pale eyes. "Well now," she breathed. "What a lovely bit you are. So much power there...what I'd give you for a taste of it."
Unable to speak, she only stared back, prey. Then Davir stepped in front of her, and his protectiveness made her glad.
"Give her peace, that will be enough," he said with his familiar acerbic tone. "I am the one who has come to deal with you."
La Bruja chuckled, a sweet sound, but oddly sinister. "You have nothing I want."
"I need my future told," he said firmly.
"Aye, boy, that's what you want. But this is about what I want, and what I want is her."
She felt a chill go through her. There had been a brief, savage hunger to Nina Burridge's face in that moment.
"I will pay you handsomely," he persisted. "Whatever you want-"
"Her."
"I have coin-"
"Her," she repeated and there was a dangerous flatness to her voice. "That is the price of the future. Nothing else will satisfy me."
For the first time, Andrea heard desperation in his voice. "I am not here on a whim. Our most powerful prophet sent me-"
"How thoughtful of him." Her voice was mocking. "But I care nothing for your prophet – only for my profit, boy."
He turned to her. His eyes were bright, vulnerable in a way she had not imagined he could be. "Andrea, I would not ask this unless I had to..."
She shook her head, terror welling up in her throat, pricking at her eyes. "No, not her."
How young he seemed then – indeed, he wasn't so much older than her, and he was afraid. It gentled that scornful mouth, took the poise from his stance. He reminded her sharply of Ryan, all edges and pride, wrapped up in finery that didn't quite suit who he truly was.
"I must have her help," he said softly. "I was not sent only to guard that infuriating, selfish princess, though that's work enough for a lifetime. I was sent because our seers saw that there was something I had to do – something which might help avert disaster in Tortall."
Her head whirled. "Does your Emperor care so much about what happens to us?" she said. After all, mere years ago, Carthak had been at war with them, and though everyone said that the new ruler was different, the dizzying change of politics seemed strange, unbelievable to her.
"Oh yes," he said. "My cousin would have Tortall for his ally – though I'd rather he didn't have that shrew for a wife."
His disrespect made her wince. "What did they send you to do?"
He eyed as if he wasn't sure of her – and then heaved a huge sigh, raking his hands through his hair. "I stole a nail from the Chamber of the Ordeal."
Maybe she'd been around Ryan too long but that didn't exactly seem the height of criminal activity to her. "Is that it?"
"That's it."
"And what's that supposed to do?"
He shrugged. "That's why I am here. To find out what I must do next."
She licked her lips. "What…what is this disaster you're supposed to stop?"
His breath brushed her ear as he leaned in. It would have intimidated her earlier, such nearness: now, she felt oddly comforted for he seemed real, solid, human in this strange place.
"War is coming. An army of monsters and the dead, roused by a man who should have vanished from this world long ago. If he succeeds, he will rule a land of shadows and endless cruelty – he will have screams for his music and brutality for his laws and no throne bar that built on the bodies of your people. His power is such that ordinary weapons will not harm him – but there is an entirely extraordinary power which is equal and opposite to his. That was the first step in waking it. It didn't please the gods to show the seer any more." He paused and said bleakly, "Or it pleased Chaos to keep us blind."
With each word, her panic seemed to recede. She'd had a small taste of a place like that – and she had been lucky enough to be rescued from it. Knowing what lay at stake, even with terror cold in her heart, how could she refuse him?
Quivering, she stepped forward. Her voice was thin. "What do you want?"
Nina Burridge gave her ghastly, broken smile. "Oh, nothing too terrible, golden girl. Come here."
She crooked a finger and Andrea could do nothing but obey. She tried not to recoil when the woman stroked her hair, murmuring, "Like sunlight, aye." That grimy hand crept to her throat, and slid around it as if she might strangle her. "So much power."
And then a knife was flashing towards her – Davir shouted, the sound a whipcrack, time slowing to a crawl as she stood frozen, unable to do anything-
Andrea shrieked at a hot, sharp pain in her arm. Stunned, she stared as blood dripped from the gash there into a bowl that the woman held out.
"You mad old hag!" the Carthaki snarled.
He wrenched her from that cold grip, stripping off his cloak to clamp it over the wound. Andrea let him tend to her, woozy. It wasn't a deep cut, but she knew the shock of it was making its way through her body.
Nina Burridge was swilling the blood gently, peering at it as if it were gold. She glanced up almost absently at his harsh words. "I'd be careful of my words, boy. Mad old hags such as me have our ways of commanding respect." Her eyes glittered. "Especially when I have such powerful tools at my fingertips."
He was rigid with fury. "You have what you wanted," he bit out. "Your price is paid."
"A future, you wanted," she said. "For yourself? I need some token of yours."
He dug into his clothes: Andrea was unsurprised to see him pull out a nail. "Here."
Her eyes narrowed. "An...unusual choice."
"I am an unusual man. Get to it."
"Don't provoke her," mumbled Andrea softly. "It didn't help last time."
Some of his tension vanished when he looked at her. "No," he said ruefully, "it didn't, did it? I am sorry, Andrea. I shouldn't have brought you here."
"Was that an apology?"
"Indeed." He smiled wanly. "Keep it to yourself. I'm not known for them."
"What have you brought me?"
Nina Burridge's gasp interrupted them. Her face was beaded with sweat, her eyes glazed. She rocked back and forth, fingers clenched tight about the nail.
"You fool," she breathed. "Do you know what you have unleashed? Centuries it lay in the dark, held only by the will of a broken man – and you have let it out again to devour us all! It must be stopped."
"How?" he demanded, brusque, urgent.
A vast, shuddering breath wracked her. "I do not...I cannot..." Her back arched. "She must rise from the ashes, rise and burn again, or all is lost. Wake the phoenix, boy, call her back down the fiery path and make the old bargain, or we are all lost."
She gave a cry and the nail clattered to the floor. Through strings of greasy hair, Nina Burridge stared out at them. Her face was terrible, twisted with fury, her eyes white and wild.
"You dare bring this to me," she breathed. "Get out! Get out of my sight, you dog! You have brought death here, and I only hope that it will take you first and you linger long in its jaws."
Power crackled in the air – deep red fire crackled about her, casting a ghoulish light on her. Her hands rose, threatening, and Andrea knew she did not have the strength to try and fight her.
"Go," snarled la Bruja, monstrous – but under it all, afraid. No, terrified.
With no further talk, they obeyed, her words chasing after them like a riddle, a geas, a curse.
Wake the phoenix or we are all lost.
Kalasin was silent as he took her to the heart of the docks. When they came to a house with a red lantern flickering in its window, she made some sound of protest and he turned to her with his face grim and aged.
"You need to see," he said quietly. "You got to learn."
The proprietor licked her lips at the sight of their faces, and suggested the likes of them wanted the King's Lay or the Pleasure Gardens. But his coin stifled her protests, and Kalasin shuddered as he took her into the heart of the house with its rotten floorboards and faint cries echoing from the rooms.
"How do you know this place?" she whispered as he led her through the narrow corridors.
He didn't look back. "I used to live here."
He felt her silence, shocked, repulsed, he imagined. But then her hand coiled around his, gentle, and she said, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry," he said softly. The word was ashes to him, bitter, too late. "You want to see sorry, you open your eyes and look about you."
As they entered the room, she gasped and her grip tightened.
The girl who lay in the bed was a wreck. There was no other word for it. The mattress was stained, the small window coated with dead insects. Her hair was tangled and begrimed, and if she'd had beauty, the pox had eaten it away to leave only hollows and scars. From the waist down, she was naked, her thin, bruised legs apart as if in offering, her lips slack and open in ghastly echo.
Her eyes were dead. No spark moved there: nothing but a void lay inside her.
"I knew her once," he said. "She were a right beauty. Susie Starshine, they called her, an' said she'd be the one to make it out'a here. Her hair were red like fire, an' she had this laugh – all soft an' smoky, it sent shivers down ye. She charged in silver, not in coppers, an' each man swore she were the Goddess come to earth to lay with mortals so's they could taste heaven afore they died."
"What happened to her?" she whispered, gazing at that vacant face.
"She hated the work. She drank away her profit to make it all a mist, an' then a day came when the drink weren't enough, so she took powders instead until she were bright an' addled an' lively as lightnin'. But they weren't enough either, so she took more an' more until all her mind was eaten away by herbs an' black magic. This is what's left, an' now they say she's the Crone come to earth to lay with men an' warn 'em of hell before they die."
He fell silent, remembering too keenly that girl he'd known, who'd radiated such hope, such joy.
"I still remember her laugh," he said softly.
Kalasin shivered beside him. "I didn't know."
"No," he agreed. "But this is what ye'd be if you were born here. An' ye'd auction your beauty for silver like she did, ye'd try to forget like she did. This is what it means to be poor, my fine noble lady." His voice was more hostile than he had intended, and she flinched from him. "This is what it means to be forgotten, to have nothin' because ye've sold all you had to hungry strangers. She needed you when she were Susie Starshine, blazin' in the dark, but you left her here, an' she faded, same as any star."
To her surprise, he went over to the girl and drew the ragged sheet up over her. She did not twitch; only the lift of her chest even indicated she lived. Ryan bent down and pressed a kiss to her sallow forehead.
"She were kind to me," he said quietly. "She didn't have to be. Even when she were drunk as a sailor, she knew how to be kind."
He could not bear to remain any longer, and so he strode out with the princess trailing in his wake like a scented dream, a piece of the life that Susie Starshine had reached for so desperately.
When at last he was calm enough to look at Kalasin again, tears gleamed in her eyes. It roused him from the torpor he'd been sunk in, from the despair that had clung to him.
"Don't cry," he said gruffly. "Ye angered me. I...shouldn't'a taken you there."
Her face was pale, but resolute. "You should have. I didn't know... That can't continue. I won't let it."
He wanted to laugh at her naivete, but he found himself touched by it. "It will, but if ye can save even one person from that life, then it'll be worth it."
He didn't look back: but as they left, he thought for a moment he heard a careless, merry laugh, glimpsed a flare of red hair. But Susie Starshine was nothing more than a husk, a memory withered into dirt and silence.
The nameless wanderer breathed in the scent: blood mingled with magic. Close, so close. The hunger rose until it was immense, sharp as a blade twisting in his gut.
The other was nearby too: he was torn by the thought of devouring them both, glutting himself on their sweet, bright power. He hesitated, but only briefly, then went back to his original quarry, her scent thick with blood, and luring him with the force of an enchantment.
Beautiful, deadly, he closed in.
They crashed out onto the street, Andrea clutching her arm and hauled along by Davir.
"Did you understand any of that?" she asked, letting him guide her along the waterfront. She still felt sick and dizzy, but the worst of the pain had subsided to a dull ache.
"No, but I have high hopes that your scholars will," he said grimly. "Are you all right?"
She glanced at her swaddled arm ruefully. "I will be. I hope that knife was clean."
"I very much doubt it," he said sourly. "Let's get back to your palace. I've seen enough of this fair city for one day-"
He ground to a halt, and she nearly stumbled over him in the process.
"What kind of mad mummer's farce is this?" he breathed, and there was only blistering fury in his eyes.
Bemused, Andrea followed his gaze – and saw a figure she knew far too well. But why would Ryan provoke such anger-
Then she glimpsed the face of the girl with him: and there was no mistaking her, not when Andrea had seen her gliding across the Court every day. Even wrapped in simpler clothes, Princess Kalasin was striking.
Why on earth had Ryan brought her here?
She was left foundering as Davir strode over to them with such force she half-expected the ground to crack under his feet. His hand clapped onto the princess's shoulders: she squeaked, Ryan drew a knife, and it was getting messy-
"Ryan, don't!" hissed Andrea, scurrying over to join them. "He's a friend."
Davir didn't look particularly friendly at that moment: the glare he turned on Kalasin was ferocious. "Have you lost whatever remains of your minuscule mind?"
She tried to shrug off his grip, to no avail. "Have you lost your sense of propriety? I am a princess."
Out of her view, Ryan rolled his eyes.
"And I am your bodyguard!" he snapped back.
"Is he?" mouthed Ryan. Andrea nodded a quick confirmation, and he edged away from the pair of them. Whatever madness he'd suffered in bringing the princess – gods, the Crown Princess, who was second-in-line to the throne – clearly didn't extend to wrestling fuming Carthakis.
"You are a nuisance foisted on me by a man who clearly has so little confidence that he must treat me like a pet dog!" Princess Kalasin spat, and wrenched one of his hands away by dint of digging her nails straight into the back of it.
Davir's eyes were dark and cold. "Such caution is clearly justified. What on earth are you doing in the middle of the slums?"
Her cheeks were scarlet, she almost incandescent with wrath; her voice was contemptuous. "Visiting a brothel."
That shut him up.
"You didn't!" Andrea hissed at Ryan.
He looked guilty. Clearly, he had.
"A brothel." Davir's words were level and far too calm. "Princess Kalasin was in the lower city visiting a brothel. An idea as foolish as it is redundant."
The Princess went white with rage. "Barbarian!"
"If that is your idea of civilization, I'll accept the insult gladly," he retorted. "Look about you! This place is dangerous. To go strolling about it is pure lunacy!"
"Oh, but it's perfectly suitable for you to come here?" she fired back at him.
"I am not the second-in-line to the throne," he said through gritted teeth. "I have neither fame nor fortune."
Ryan snorted. "Aye, well, no one'd know that with them fine clothes. Ye think you're any safer?"
"I am capable of defending myself," Davir said mildly.
"An' I'm capable of defendin' her," pointed out the street-rat. "I got blades. I got magic. Now, d'you want to tell me why you're bringin' Andi into such a damn dangerous place?"
For the first time, the harsh glaze in Davir's expression faded to regret. "Because I was thoughtless," he said, and there was a rueful note in his voice. With breathtaking speed, a knife glittered in his fingers then vanished again. "I had no magic to protect her. Today I needed it. You must be her partner in crime."
Ryan eyed him warily, then he glanced at Andrea. "He all right?"
"I think so," she said wryly. "He doesn't put up with any nonsense."
The thief nodded, then stuck out a hand. "Ryan Talver," he said. "And I've never seen a noble use a knife like that. You got the scent of the streets about you."
"Davir sin Porphyros." He paused. "These days. When I was a child, I went by Davy One-Cut."
The princess was staring at him in disbelief. "But you're...you're royal."
"A very dangerous thing to be when Ozorne ruled," he murmured. "It did me no favours. I lived in greater comfort on the streets than I would ever have done in the palace." He surveyed her and said coolly, "And I know their ways well. Maybe next time you want to go roaming around the backstreets you'll have the common courtesy to inform me."
"You'd never let me."
A smile hooked up his mouth. "Are you so sure?"
She stayed silent.
"I'll strike you a deal, princess. I will keep my silence about this little trip, and I will even accompany you on further – expeditions."
"What do you want from me?" Kalasin said suspiciously.
Davir's smile widened until it curved like a crescent moon. "No more screeching. No more insulting the emperor until you've had the chance to meet him and can aim your barbs with a little more accuracy. No more sneaking off. I won't even ask for courtesy."
It wasn't as though she had much choice in the matter, Andrea thought. But Kalasin was shrewd enough not to show it. "Very well." She tossed her head. "Then I demand you escort me back to the palace. There is a grand masquerade being thrown tonight for some utter non-entity and I have no desire to miss it."
"Oh," Davir said mildly. "And no demanding, except in emergencies."
She didn't answer: instead, she stalked back towards the palace, trusting that they would follow her. Davir muttered something distinctly unflattering and followed in her wake like a stealthy, patient panther.
"Lass, your arm," Ryan said, seeing it for the first time.
Now they were alone, Andrea had other things to consider. "Never mind that, Ryan, a brothel?"
"It weren't like that," he protested. "I wanted her to see...to see..." He faltered, and she glimpsed something new, and terrible in his eyes. Shame.
In all the time she had known him, Ryan Talver had been a maelstrom of emotion – bold and reckless and angry and anguished – but never that.
"I wanted her to understand that it ain't no joke, bein' poor," he said quietly.
She didn't pry. She was afraid of what she might unleash. "And did she?"
"I think so." He swallowed. "Lass, let's go. I don't want to stay here any more. The longer I stay here, the more it seems like I never left, like all that other life ain't nothin' more than a dream."
He was trembling, she saw.
"Come on then," she said gently. She didn't know what comfort to offer for his demons, which danced in his eyes with fervid glee, which fed on his fear and his shame and his horror. She had never seen Ryan with his defences stripped away – and such intimacy frightened her. So she stayed silent and followed out Daivr and the princess out of the shadows.
It hovered in their wake, drifting from darkness to darkness. Too much power protecting them now: it should have been quicker, but fear had made it slow. It remembered the last innocent, who had struggled so long in its jaws, who had so nearly overthrown it.
It would be cautious. For such a glut, it could wait.
Their words haunted it, filtering into sense as it slowly recalled language, which it had used once. Words were chains. Words were spells and vows and punishment.
And words were knowledge.
In its slow, predatory mind, a plan formulated.
Grand masquerade...the palace...princess...tonight
Words were knowledge. Words were secrets. Words were the way to its prey.
The young man smiled.
Very few people had unquestioned access to the King's rooms. Roald, however, had the good fortune and the genetics to be one of them. So it was that he sauntered in, hastily brushing aside greetings and answers to the riddle he and Kally had posed, all mercifully wrong.
There were a few sideways looks as Neal accompanied him, but no one noticed Iceblood, who had slipped into invisibility with an ease that Roald knew he could never match. The signs were there for someone looking: a curious patch of space that drifted behind the pair of them, a crowd that parted without seeming to know what for. Not many among the court's flock were so observant; its finer minds had better things to do.
Unsurprising then that his father's first words were, "Roald, is there a reason why an invisible mage came in with you?"
"Er, yes," Roald said, wondering where to begin.
Luckily, he was saved the job when Neal issued a sweeping bow and said, "Your Majesty, not only is he an invisible mage, he's also five hundred years old."
There was a hallowed silence, and then King Jonathan said carefully, "Please explain, Squire Nealan, and do so in a way that makes you sound slightly less demented."
With barely a ripple in the air, Iceblood appeared. There was no trace of deference in those strange orange eyes, nothing but cool assessment as the man who might have been king and the man who was gazed at another.
"My name was once Faeleon," he said. "And I threw away my kingdom for love."
His father's mouth quirked fractionally, though there was little mirth in his voice. "I very nearly made the same mistake."
"It was no mistake," the mage breathed. "I would have given the world to Justinian if only he had let me have her!"
"Her?"
Neal bowed, sounding nervous for once. "This, sire, is where it becomes a long story."
King Jonathan nodded. His eyes were cool, ice to Faeleon's fire. "Then I think we had better get started, squire."
It was a good hour later before his father sat back, thoughts moving behind what Roald had always called his regal mask. That calm expression, offering no suggestion of his opinion, open to everything, trusting nothing.
"And you think this monster wants my daughter?"
"I think it likely. Her or the other – Andrea, is it?" Iceblood paused. "There is one sure way to capture it, if one of them will agree."
"Bait." His father's voice was flat.
"Yes."
"No. Not Kalasin. You may ask Andrea Kirisra if she is willing to help you, but I will not risk Kalasin's life on a whim." King Jonathan paused, and his eyes flicked to Roald briefly. He saw in them a certain amount of weariness, all his father would allow to slip past his guard. "In the meantime, I offer you the hospitality of the palace. You have guarded my kingdom well while you controlled the Chamber, and now you are willing to protect us once again."
Iceblood inclined his head stiffly. "Thank you. It will suffice."
In a swish of ragged cloak, he was gone. The doors slammed behind him.
"An extraordinary man," King Jonathan remarked. Roald had the feeling it was not entirely a compliment. "I would dearly like to know who took that nail from the Chamber. No friend of ours, surely."
Roald could only shrug.
"Is there anyone else who knows of this?" the King said quietly, his fingers drumming on the throne.
"No-"
"Yes," Roald cut in quickly, shooting Neal an apologetic glance. "Pip knows."
His father's eyebrows raised. "Phillippa ha Minch? Why am I not surprised?" He sighed. "A sniff of excitement and that girl's charging through the crowds to be part of it. If her father wasn't so important, I'd have made sure she was married off long ago. As it is, her tie to the throne and that infernally large dowry are too valuable to squander just to keep her out of trouble."
Pip was one of a horde of distant cousins: few noble families in Tortall weren't related to one another, and the ha Minchi had numerous links to the Contés. A distant aunt of hers had been a queen long ago; her father owned vast tracts of land and was loyal to the throne, and one of her uncles was a key strategist and commander.
"It wasn't like that," he protested. "She was just there – she came to help me..." He clamped his lips shut. He hadn't meant to reveal so much – that he had needed help, that he had been waging silent war upon the Chamber and all its fearful images.
"Very well," his father said. Maybe he remembered his own experience with the Chamber:; either way, he didn't pry. "Make sure she understands the importance of discretion." A faint smile touched his face. "Perhaps the cover of a dance. That should keep anyone from wondering who our mysterious visitor is. I will ensure the right people know – and you, son, you can keep the wrong ones from knowing."
Yes, he recognized his father the consummate politician. There was a definite expression of awe on Neal's face, touched with respect.
He was careful not to show his own emotion, which was strange and wild at the thought of dancing with Phillippa ha Minch. At first he had been intrigued because her dreams were so fierce: not of men and kisses and moonlit walks, but of fighting and freedom and traveling. And even though he was a prince, and she was in no way suitable, he found himself wondering...
Part of him shrank back from those dreams, because a girl who was so intensely independent could no longer settle for something as ordinary as a kiss.
But a dance - he thought she might settle for that. It would be enough. It had to be.
Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought...