Beclan wanted to ask if this meant he could go home, back to that familiar, safe place, with his family, but he knew he must not ask, only answer. “I will swear,” he said.
“Free him,” the king said to the others.
“Sir king—” The knight got his protest out first.
“The full oath requires that he kneel and that his hands be free,” the king said. “In a roomful of us, alert and aware, I choose to trust Gird and the High Lord will aid you should anything happen.”
The High Marshal unbound his hands; Beclan’s father unbound his ankles and helped him stand. The Royal Guard commander and the Knight of Gird stood either side of Mikeli while Beclan’s father cleared space with one of the chairs set near the fireplace at the far end of the room; Mikeli sat there.
Beclan took a few awkward steps to get the stiffness out while the men lined up on either side of the open space, as if it were the great hall in Vérella. Mikeli nodded, and Beclan walked forward and knelt, placing his hands in the king’s. Once more Gird’s relic touched his cheek, and a sword tip as well. He did not know whose; he did not look around.
Mikeli led him through the oath phrase by phrase; it was not the time to brag that he knew the whole thing. Mikeli’s hands holding his were more callused than he expected, and he scolded himself for that errant thought. Finally it was done, and he himself, in his own name and person, had pledged hand and heart to the king’s person, to live and die by the king’s command. Beclan was not sure what he felt. “Rise, Beclan Mahieran, cousin and dear to me as a brother,” the king said, standing as he said it. Beclan clambered to his feet. Mikeli pulled him into an embrace and pounded his back. “We can’t afford to lose any of us, cousin. But I have one final test.”
“Yes, sir king,” Beclan said.
“Suppose I bid you stay here, as you were.”
Beclan bit back the protest he would have made a quarter-year ago with little effort. “I would say I am yours to command, sir king.”
“Good. Gentlemen, let us sit down and have a meal. I need to discuss those matters we spoke of with Beclan.”
As the men rearranged chairs, the Royal Guard commander went into the kitchen, leaving the door open behind him. Duke Mahieran took Beclan aside. Beclan saw tears in his father’s eyes. “I was afraid I’d lose you, boy. I still can’t figure out how you survived as yourself, but—” Mahieran shook his head, saying nothing more as the Royal Guard commander and the cook carried in food and plates and utensils.
They sat down to a hearty meal; Beclan realized that they must have brought some of the food with them. He had a knife at his place now.
“We want to use you as bait,” Mikeli said. “Word that you might have been invaded by a Verrakai has spread … and if there are other Verrakai still loose—as there may well be—they will want to find you, free you from confinement, and thus we may capture them. The schedule of communication would be the same. In case they attack a courier—which so far they have not done—your messages should be much as they have been, pleading for news, for release. Are you willing?”
Kept here as bait was far better than kept here as a suspected Verrakai traitor. He would have something important to do. “Yes, sir king.”
His father said, “We could not risk a smaller party, yet we cannot conceal this visit entirely. However, the king came to Mahieran estates to commiserate with me about your situation; he rode in Royal Guard guise from the house to here. The old woman knows he’s here; the guards outside do not.”
“You want me to just wait here?”
“Not entirely as you were,” Mikeli said. “You have an assignment now—and you will have weapons. You should not display them, certainly not wear them outside, but you will have them. And you won’t have to let someone else cut up your food.” Now Mikeli’s grin was mischievous; Beclan grinned in response.
“You will stay the night, sir king?”
“No. We must go back to the estate house after the unsuccessful hunt I insisted on.” Mikeli paused, then went on. “Beclan, most of what I know about you, I heard from your brother Rothlin. You should know that Roth stood up for you from the first. But the changes that come to a young man your age are such that they could be mistaken for something else. I’m sorry we had to be so hard on you. You cannot know how glad I am you are safe.”
Beclan said, “Thank you, my lord.”
“There have been indications of some searching for this place,” his father said. “Strangers seen about the place, on the roads. But they faded into the woods. So I think there will be someone coming. We do not intend to expose you to the same danger again. We have more Royal Guard, all Girdish, all bearing relics. There will be a High Marshal on guard day and night. It will look as if they’re keeping you under guard and hidden, but it should be possible to contain them, the High Marshal thinks.”
“They are strong,” Beclan said. He could not describe what he meant in words they would understand, he saw by their expressions. “They … say things,” he said. He pushed his fear aside. His father—his father and the king—trusted him; he must be the man they thought he was.
From then on, though the old woman still cooked his meals, she now invited Beclan into the kitchen and treated him as she might a grandson. “Just call me Granna Surn,” she said. “Or Granna … doesn’t matter.” She was a little deaf; he had to speak loudly to make himself heard. He hoped that meant she’d not heard his cries when he dreamed.
Beclan had not hung about the kitchens or chatted with women servants since he was a small boy, so her stories and sayings were all new to him. She seemed to have a connection to the past very different from the formal histories and family traditions of his own family and those of other peers.
“And I says to Colm, that’s my sister’s youngest, you know, if you want to be liked, you have to like others, but he’s proud as a young lord, beggin’ your pardon, my lord, I don’t mean you, and it doesn’t do for him, bein’ as he is only a forester’s son on a lord’s estate. So he says there’s more than one way to like others, and next thing you know there’s a girl expectin’ her first and he’s the one made the dance with her and now there’s no more of his nonsense.” She pushed a platter toward him. “You have another one of those stuffed rolls, my lord, you’re too thin for a lad your age.”
She was as different from Farin Cook at Dorrin’s house as could be, but they shared an earthy practicality. Now that he was allowed in the kitchen, she insisted on teaching him how to wash his own socks and clucked with annoyance when he admitted he’d never learned to darn a sock, knit a scarf, or so much as sew on a button or mend a rip. Cackling with glee, she pushed the implements at him: the darning egg, the knitting needles, the sewing needle—which she threaded for him only once.
He stabbed his thumb repeatedly, sewing a button on for the first time. Granna Surn shook her head, put a dab of something black and gooey on it, and the pain vanished. She didn’t answer when he asked what it was. His first try at plain knitting produced a lumpy mess. She made him pull it out again. He had never imagined the skill that went into knitting even a scarf, let alone a sock, but not many days after that, he was knitting a tube on four needles, amazing himself. Still, he was glad his brother and the other young men—and the king—didn’t know what he was doing. He was sure they’d never knitted anything.
And yet he had seen Dorrin’s troops busy with the same tools. Sergeant Vossik had explained that soldiers must be able to maintain equipment and uniforms; he’d given Beclan a sharp glance that Beclan had ignored. Those tasks were for common soldiers, he’d told himself; now, in his shame, he did his best to learn what the old woman taught him.
Then one night he woke in the dark, touched by the same pressure he had felt before. Fear chilled him. They were near—and no alarm had been given outside. Were all the Royal Guard dead or spelled into sleep? He pulled on his clothes without lighting a candle, choosing the soft-soled low boots he wore inside the house. It was only two strides??
?he’d practiced this—to the peg where his sword belt hung. He wrapped it around, snugged it, and loosened the sword in its scabbard.
All those times, pacing through the rooms, up and down the stairs … he knew the distance to wall, window, cupboard, stairs. He eased across to the opening and then down, knowing which treads creaked, which didn’t. But where was best? If no one remained to help him, where should he wait? Surprise, Dorrin Verrakai had told the squires, was a sovereign military virtue. Be where the enemy does not expect you, she had said.
Where would they expect him? If himself, and not one of them in his body, they would expect him in bed. If one of them, they would expect him to know they were coming … and he did know. For an instant, he went cold all over. He knew—as they would have known. Did this mean he harbored evil even though the Marshal had said he did not? Was he contaminated, after all, at some level a Marshal could not detect? But though he felt the touch of their magery, he felt revulsion, not attraction. Would they know that?
And could he stand against them? He had done so once, but—this felt subtly different.
Tsaia: River Road
Dorrin Verrakai, summoned to Vérella at the king’s command, met Duke Mahieran riding east with a contingent of Mahieran troops. Her first thought was for Beclan—she had heard nothing but that he had been returned to his family. Exactly what had happened, she did not know, except that Beclan had been found alive and all with him were dead. With Daryan and his father at odds over his healing by a Kuakgan, she hoped that Beclan’s continued absence did not mean anything dire. She also hoped Mahieran did not blame her for whatever had happened to Beclan.
“Well, Duke Verrakai,” he said, halting as he came near. “So you are on your way to meet the king.” It was a cold day with a biting wind, but his voice was colder.
“At his command,” Dorrin said. “How is Beclan faring? Was he wounded? I have heard nothing definite.”
Mahieran’s mouth tightened, then he said, “He appears well. Do you truly know nothing?”
“Nothing but that he alone survived some kind of attack. Sir Flanits—the Royal Guard commander—sent only a brief note. I had asked him to find Beclan and escort him safely to Harway, and apparently Beclan wasn’t where I thought he would be. The commander was quite annoyed.”
“Why did you leave him alone?”
That stung. “He wasn’t ‘alone.’ He had an escort of twenty militia, five of them experienced soldiers, headed by a sergeant with years of experience in Phelan’s Company.”
“Only six were found with him, all dead—”
“And he alive and unwounded—so it seems to me they protected him well.”
“Perhaps.” Mahieran sighed and waved his troops back, out of earshot. “Let me tell you his story as briefly as I can—we would have asked you, when you got to Vérella, what you thought, but perhaps it is better here, with fewer listening ears.”
What he related seemed incredible to Dorrin. The first part, Beclan’s decision to deviate from the assigned route, she could well believe. And the Kuakgan had told her of trapping some wandering Verrakaien in a treehold. Certainly she could believe those Verrakaien would try to take over Beclan’s body; that was exactly what she’d feared, why she’d sent the Royal Guard to find and guard him. But the rest, from Beclan’s resistance to his current situation, set up as bait to lure other Verrakaien—
She stared at Duke Mahieran; she could not believe he’d been so stupid. “You did what?!”
Mahieran lifted his chin. “I doubled the number of guards, and he’s perfectly safe—”
“He is not,” Dorrin said. “You’ve had him in the same remote place for near a quarter-year—since before Midwinter, and it’s now past half-Evener. Easy to find anyone in that time. And as for guards—it would be no harder to immobilize or put to sleep fifty than one. Did you learn nothing from that attempt on the king’s life?”
“Duke Verrakai!”
“He is your son,” Dorrin said, ignoring his anger as her own rose, “and if you want him dead, then I cannot stop you. But I tell you that he is not safe no matter how many ordinary guards you have around him. It is not merely my relatives who may come but Bloodlord priests … Had you even thought of that?”
“No. But we killed them—”
“You killed those you found in Vérella. Do you think that is all in the whole of Tsaia? Or that they might not come over the mountains from the south? Do you know their powers? We fought some of them in Aarenis, Kieri and I; it took a paladin to hold one at bay.”
“So … what do you suggest, since you know so much about this evil?” From his tone, he still distrusted her.
“You need a paladin, not just a Marshal, and you need a magelord. Or more than one magelord.”
“You are the only one we know of,” Mahieran said. “And we are not sure of you.”
Dorrin stared him in the face. “Do you still think I connived to harm your son?”
“I don’t—I don’t know. You’re—how can I know you’re not charming me now? How could I tell if you lied?”
Dorrin controlled her voice with an effort. “Do you trust Kieri? The king? You did once …”
“Before I knew he was half-elf. I don’t know what powers he has, save that I’ve heard they are great. And he’s your friend; he has spoken in defense of you. The two of you together could overpower me.”
“My lord … I am at a loss. You supported me when that attempt was made on the king’s life—”
“And perhaps I was wrong to do so.”
“Our king is alive,” Dorrin said. “His brother is alive. Why do you doubt that my actions then saved them?”
Mahieran grimaced. “It could have been a ploy—”
“To do what? I don’t want the throne. I have never wanted a throne.”
“But there is a crown in Vérella you say talks to you. A crown and regalia. And the necklace went missing from Fin Panir—”
“If I was willing to give up the crown, why do you think I would hire someone to steal a necklace?”
“I don’t—I don’t know.” Perspiration glistened on his brow in spite of the cold. “I don’t understand you, and that’s the truth. You’re not … you’re not like other dukes. You’re not like other women. You’ve killed—”
“Yes,” Dorrin said. “And I have saved. Including our king.”
“Celbrin says”—Celbrin, Mahieran’s wife, who had been no more than formally polite at the coronation and cooler yet at Autumn Court—“you are a man in a woman’s body, quite possibly invaded as a child, and have no memory of it.”
“If I had been so invaded,” Dorrin said, “the invader would know—and my life would have been very different. I would have been like the other Verrakaien.”
“Unless it was a long-laid plan. Or she says perhaps you’re sisli—”
Dorrin let out an incredulous noise before she could stop it. “Sorry, my lord Mahieran, but in the first place, no, and in the second place, what difference would that make?”
He was flushed with embarrassment now but plowing ahead. “She says it’s unnatural, that you’ve had no lovers, no husband—”
“Uncommon, yes,” Dorrin admitted. “But neither has Paksenarrion—does your wife despise her?”
His gaze shifted aside. “She doesn’t want to meet her. She says she’s not worthy to be in a paladin’s presence.”
That would be true, Dorrin thought, if indeed Mahieran’s lady thought all women with swords were unnatural.
“And she says the other women feel the same.” Mahieran stopped short at that, brow furrowed.
Frustration edged Dorrin’s tone. “So—the noble ladies distrust me because I’m not like them, is that it? And use their pillow wiles to work against me?”
Mahieran glared at her. “It’s more than that. We are not ruled by our wives, Duke Verrakai. We have our own concerns about you.”
“Sufficient that you would risk your son’s life—and possibly more than that
—should he be successfully invaded?”
“He won’t be. He withstood them before.”
“He withstood one attack, yes. You have much to be proud of in that. Verrakaien renegades, one of them badly wounded, trapped and away from any other resource. No way to access blood magery. Even so, formidable for anyone to defeat. But what he may face could well be much greater than that. A planned attack by those knowing the disposition and nature of the guards you set—”
“How would they know?”
Dorrin wanted to shake him. “Does your wife know?”
“Yes, of course. But Celbrin would never—”
“Never tell a friend not to worry, because you had set plenty of guards? She talks to other women about me. How much more likely it is she talks to other women about her children?” His expression shifted from angry denial to thought. Dorrin went on. “Somewhere, Duke Mahieran, there is more treason to be found, and someone may have connections to your wife you do not know. That she does not realize are dangerous.”
“I suppose …” His voice trailed away. “But she would never do anything to hurt Beclan.”
“Not intentionally, no,” Dorrin agreed, though to her mind Celbrin Mahieran was as likely a traitor as anyone else. “But you do not know what she said to whom, or what those other women said to their other friends, even their servants.” She watched the expression on his face as it shifted and dared to go further. “And if there is a traitor still in the nobility whom you have not unmasked, what better way to gain information than by sympathetic questions from wife to wife, friend to friend? Verrakaien women, as well as men, were trained to evil; so no doubt were some among their allies.”
Duke Mahieran chewed his lower lip for a moment. “Do you really think Beclan’s in serious danger?”
“I do. They have had ample time to locate where you have held him, ample time to make a plan and carry it out.”