Traitor's Knot Part 9

The hide flap slapped shut, and Braggen stopped cold. Trophy hide on his shoulder, scarred hands crossed on his sword-pommel, he stood speechless, while Sidir lit a pine knot in a staked iron sconce, and Eriegal dodged to avoid being mown down by a tiny dark woman clad in leathers.

'Braggen!' Quick as a sparrow, Earl Jieret's widow stretched on tiptoe and brushed a kiss on his bearded chin. Her black-and-silver hair still wore the s'Valerient clan braid. Bound by a deer-hide fillet, her brow showed a crease of stunned disbelief. Then her brown eyes spilled over with tears. 'Ath Bless! You've returned. We thought - ah, no matter!' Ravaged by grief, but as tirelessly vital, she embraced every part of him she could reach, then hammered his broad chest until his ornery nature relented, and he sat on a gra.s.s-stuffed ha.s.sock.

The taciturn Companion offered up the rare fox pelt.

'Who told you?' Feithan whispered, overcome yet again. She raised the silky fur to her cheek. Eyes shut, she thanked him. Steady in his silent support, Sidir stood at her back, while Eriegal dragged up a second ha.s.sock. She gave way and sat. 'You have news? It can wait. You're aware, we've lost Jieret.'

Braggen nodded. 'I knew.' He found all speech difficult. 'Prince Arithon was blood-bonded. His Grace told me he sensed the High Earl's crossing at the moment that spirit left flesh. But we were already past Leynsgap, by then. I cannot say how my lord fell.'

'We were told,' informed Sidir. Enough time had pa.s.sed, he could force his tone level. 'Luhaine of the Fellows.h.i.+p brought word back to Halwythwood. He said, further, that Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had survived, and that his enemies could no longer reach him. But the Sorcerer would not answer our questions or disclose our liege's location.'

Braggen glanced down, marked hands laid uncertain before him.

Where Sidir's grave tact preferred s.p.a.ce, Eriegal flared to impatience. 'Ath, you're too quiet. You know where his Grace is! Is that why you're shorn of your clan braid, for shame? Braggen, where did you fall short?'

The accused Companion snapped up his chin, bitter. Against precedent, his anger turned inward. 'I did not fail in my charge! As a man with no other skill but the sword, I stood ground at my prince's shoulder. I could, and I did, defend him with weapons. But I am not made as his chosen caithdein. I was not fit to stand in the breach and challenge his adamant spirit.'

'What happened?' pushed Eriegal. 'Where did Arithon go to seek refuge?'

Braggen stood in a rush, with Feithan beside him, her small hands caging his fist. 'Peace!, All of you! This was Jieret's lodge, and he would not have your contention.'

And trembling, Braggen was first to back down. He turned from Eriegal's leashed accusation, and with a dignity no man had seen, eased the earl's widow back to her seat. Then finesse deserted him. 'My lady, on my word of honour, the truth: I cut off my clan braid at need, in order to pa.s.s through the lines as a townsman. Now it's my right to know. What happened to your husband in Daon Ramon Barrens?'

While Sidir pressed long fingers over closed lids, and Eriegal watched, white, Feithan looked up at the man who overshadowed her, savage and raw with resentment. She told him. 'Jieret was captured by Lysaer's Lord Commander of the Alliance armed forces. He was wounded, Luhaine said, and not handled kindly. Yet he was kept alive. His enemies thought to use him as a hostage to bring the Teir's'Ffalenn back to heel.'

'Ath's mercy!' gasped Braggen. 'For Jieret's life? Defend us! For that, the s'Ilessid pretender would have flushed Arithon from cover.'

Sidir bared his face, and found grace at last to lift the burden from the brave woman now sorely bereft. 'Jieret knew that, as well. He found resources no other caithdein has tapped. The Sorcerer told us he achieved true greatness, and opened a gateway into the mysteries through his sworn tie to the land. Signs and wonders were shown to men on that night. Lysaer's war host was paralysed, unable to fight. They could not be made to regroup until Earl Jieret received a sorcerer's twofold death, first by a sword through the heart, then by immolation with fire.'

'The hand on the blade was Lysaer s'Ilessid's,' Eriegal added with wretched clarity. 'Our High Earl met a dog's end, without succor. Now, tell us the fate of Prince Arithon.'

Pale to the lips, Braggen backed up until his huge frame b.u.mped against the center pole of the lodge tent. There, he braced, at a loss for retort. His fellow Companions held their wary ground, well aware he was wont to strike out when cornered.

Yet Braggen gave them no whisper of argument. His volatile fists stayed locked at his sides. 'Grant me the presence of my acting clan chief. Also Rathain's appointed caithdein since, in this life, I can scarcely bear to repeat what will have to be said.'

Feithan arose. Silent and quick, she fetched wooden cups and a bottle of cherry brandy. Eriegal woke out of his bristling distress. He took Sidir's urgent hint and left to bring Jeynsa, who had yet to make timely appearance.

Nothing remained except to wait, with Braggen's raw nerves wrapped in the lodge tent's familiar, close shadows. Though he had a wife and a daughter, kept safe, in the northern wilds of Fallowmere, this place was as much a home to him. Head bent, he breathed in the pitch scent of resin, underlaid by the fragrance of leather and goose-grease and the wax used for weatherproofing the camp gear. The summer furnis.h.i.+ngs seemed as they always had, except for the absence of Jieret's sword and the dearth of scouts coming and going. The encampment had been three-quarters stripped of its fighting men, blood-bought cost of a crown prince's freedom.

None too soon, the pent silence shattered, cut across by a male voice, declaiming, overlaid by a woman's vituperative anger. The lodge door flap cracked open, careless of the light, and Jeynsa strode in, still raging.

Brows pinched into an iron scowl, eyes like chipped flint, she encountered the motionless presence of Braggen, and stopped. Her vivid regard raked him, over. From cropped head to sc.r.a.ped boots, she missed only the foxtail melted at one with the shadow.

Her opening was hostile. 'Did you cut your hair out of protest as well?' Against the stunned stillness, she raked back the hacked bangs that remained of her s.h.i.+ning brown hair.

Eriegal moved, shut the door flap, then caught her arm. 'You have no shame!' Despite his dumpy stature, he man-handled her subsequent, wild cat wrench. Curbed, she stood glaring, hard-breathing and heedless of the deep bruise her clamped wrist was going to show later.

His voice level, Sidir explained from behind. 'She cut off her hair rather than suffer the formal ritual of her invest.i.ture.'

Braggen stared, horrified. 'Girl, you did this to avoid receiving the pattern of the caithdein's traditional clan braid?'

'We're a perfect, matched pair, as you see,' Jeynsa sheared back. 'Why'd you cut yours?'

'That's enough!' Feithan ploughed Eriegal aside to confront her daughter. 'No get of mine is brought into this world to insult clan heritage under this roof! Apologize, Jeynsa! Right now.'

Strapping at seventeen, with her sire's tough strength clad in scout's knives and leathers, the girl towered over her mother. Nonetheless, her eyes dropped. Smoking with banked defiance, she spoke the rote phrases, then perched against the board trestle. To Braggen, she said, 'You have news of my father? Don't trouble to report. I know how he died. By Sight, I stood witness. No reason, and no blooded prince under sky could justify how he suffered!'

Struck breathless, Braggen appealed to Sidir. 'What's she saying? Ath's own mercy. The High Earl was tortured?'

'Worse.' Jeynsa spat on the packed earth floor, while the brand dipped her drawn features in carmine. 'He was mutilated, degraded, cut dumb, and drugged. Did you know, when they finished, they threw his charred skull to be mauled in the teeth of the tracking dogs?'

'He was gone by then, and you know it!' Feithan's composure withstood the cruel pressure. 'Luhaine swore you his oath that your father was raised beyond pain when his spirit crossed over Fate's Wheel.' Upright, arms folded, she drew a fierce breath. 'But that's not why you won't forgive him. Be honest! You hate what happened because Jieret held true to his oath as caithdein. He died, and died well, for this land and his prince. You reject the willed choice of his crossing because of his triumph, that dared come before his own family.'

'What's to forgive?' whispered Jeynsa, while the tears welled and spilled. 'Not Father! It's the crown prince who left him that I would cry down for Dharkaron's redress.'

Braggen shoved off the center post. 'Prince Arithon's will had nothing to do with this! Jeynsa! I was there.' Helpless anguish broke through, as, after all, he spoke out before Barach arrived to share witness. 'Your father broke orders. As caithdein, by right claim of precedence to the realm, he rejected Prince Arithon's instructions. I was to have been the one sacrificed to Lysaer. Jieret was your liege's choice to return, safe and sound, to this hearthstone.'

'I don't believe you,' Jeynsa gasped, unappeased. Her glimpsed sight of the fox-brush roused more galling venom. 'I still see the sword fall. Every night, I smell the stench of the pyre. My father's heart's-blood runs red through my dreams. He had no tongue, and no voice, beyond the wretched sound Ath gave an animal.'

'That's quite enough, Jeynsa!' Sidir thrust forward; yet Braggen, like rock, only shuttered his face with blunt fingers.

'I will tell you this much,' he said, m.u.f.fled, then lowered his arms, unutterably altered. 'I heard our prince beg. I listened to his appeal to Earl Jieret. His Grace used words that no man I know could possess the stern fibre to refuse. Naught but one. Out of love, this prince's caithdein held firm. When I tell you what our liege risked to spare Rathain's royal blood line, you will realize: Arithon was forced upon Earl Jieret's mercy. As the man sworn to preserve our crown heritage, your father rejected his liege's bared will. There is no fault, and no blame for what happened. No reason, past the needs of this kingdom, that have robbed us all without quarter. As the last standing witness, I promise: none suffers more for the death of your father than the prince now left burdened, and living.'

A soft sound, to the left, as Sidir responded. He gathered Feithan's slight form as she swayed, lent the s.h.i.+eld of his shoulder, while Jeynsa uncoiled and rose to full height, untamed as a wounded lioness. 'Then where is his Grace? Why is he not here? Why are you and Luhaine sent to speak in his place?'

Braggen's stripped attention stayed on her. 'His Grace couldn't,' he said, numbed. 'To evade Lysaer's war host and escape certain doom through the madness of Desh-thiere's curse, Prince Arithon claimed refuge by entering the maze in the Mathorns.'

'Kewar!' Sidir was rocked. Eriegal stared, aghast, while Feithan pushed straight, and Jeynsa, wild with malice, burst into jagged laughter. 'Oh, how apt! The score of his blood debts shall kill him, no doubt.'

But it was Sidir whose grave intellect interpreted Braggen's strained face. 'His Grace hasn't died, has he?'

The Companion shook his head, anguished. 'In fact, he survived. I've been charged to bring word by the Fellows.h.i.+p Sorcerers. The Prince of Rathain withstood the harsh challenge. His Grace is fit, and still sane.'

'And?' whispered Eriegal, as the pause grew prolonged.

'Barach should hear this,' Feithan broke in.

Yet Jeynsa's merciless, challenging stare impelled the reluctant answer.

'The last living blood of Rathain has been granted sanctuary, embraced by the old code of guest welcome. His haven is Kewar, and his host is no less than the Sorcerer, Davien the Betrayer.'

'A fine, abrasive pair they will make,' Jeynsa snapped. 'I wish I could be there to watch the fur fly as they tear each other to ribbons.' She spun and stalked out, just barely careful to mask the light as she pushed through the door flap.

The shocked quiet lingered, a speechless abyss: the last survivor of Rathain's royal line remained with the renegade Sorcerer. Davien, whose incentive had fomented rebellion, raised the towns, and broken the rule of the high kings over five hundred years ago.

Against cracking tension, Eriegal moved, crossed the lodge, and rescued the forgotten tray of refreshments. Braggen accepted the brandy thrust into his hand. Then he watched, brooding, as Feithan was coaxed to a seat on Sidir's dauntless insistence.

She looked frail as cut paper, though her hands, bare of rings, did not tremble. As Eriegal poured a cup for her, Braggen spoke with a tact he had never possessed. 'No, lady. You will not apologize for Jeynsa's behaviour.'

'Her defiance is setting a terrible precedent.' Feithan sighed. 'Ath knows, we've all tried. I can't make her listen.'

'Prince Arithon will handle her,' Sidir a.s.sured, the wing of white in his hair a moonlit patch against darkness. His words offered hope. Of the four who remained, he knew the prince best, having shared the harrowing campaign in the mountains at Vastmark.

Braggen knocked back his drink. Yet no fire in his belly could warm his heart. He had too much to say: the uneasy details that had allowed Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn to evade certain death inside Lysaer's closed cordon. The Companion who had partnered his Grace must choose whether to disclose the last words exchanged between prince and sworn liegeman, and whether to reveal the tenacious desperation behind Earl Jieret's terrible sacrifice. Until Barach arrived, and while Feithan regained her composure, Braggen sat with his forehead laid on his fist. Quiet, among friends, he wished he was numb. The trophy foxtail stayed tied to his belt, promised but not delivered to Jeynsa by the father lost in Daon Ramon. Who had broken the heart of his youthful successor because he had commanded another to stand in his place and, inevitably, had not come home.

Summer 5670 Home Port The merchant brig, Evenstar sheared into Innish, crammed with barrels of dried orange peel, Elssine steel, and candied peaches from the orchards of Durn. She was warped to the dock, while the sh.o.r.e factor's stevedores called ribald comments, half-naked in midsummer heat. They waited, observing with ferret-sharp eyes, while the brig's well-disciplined crew raised her hatches to unlade her hold.

Yet the slim, blonde captain who incited their best gossip had already gone, whisked ash.o.r.e from the anchorage by the oars of a lighterman. While her first mate settled affairs at the wharf, Feylind rushed up the stairs to her brother's office, a garret-room set above the tenements and shop-fronts overlooking Innish's harbour. She found the door locked. Scarcely pausing for expletive, she hammered the oak panel.

'Fiark! I know you're in there!'

Her brother's voice answered, nonplussed, through her racket. 'No, Feylind. Don't bother. I'm not going'to burst myself arguing, and you're sailing upcoast beyond Shand. There is famine. I have signed the lading bills to send succour. The sh.o.r.e warehouse already holds your next cargo. My secretary's primed with the tax-stamped doc.u.ments, at the custom-house to receive you.'

Shut out in the musty dark of the corridor, Feylind howled a filthy word through her teeth.

'Beans,' her twin spoke back in rejoinder. 'Also salt pork in barrels, dried corn, and flour. Spirits and wine - because of rains and flooding, the low-country cisterns have become uselessly tainted. Children have sickened. You'll be carrying medicinals. Oh yes, and some nets of fresh limes, dropped by fast galley from Souths.h.i.+re.'

Feylind smiled like lightning unleashed. Captain to a crew of twenty, all male, she unslung her boarding axe and let fly. Moulding and varnish smashed to uncivil splinters as she razed off the outside latch.

'Feylind, you maniac!'

The lock turned with alacrity. Sunk steel was wrenched from its setting as Fiark jerked open the mangled panel. Feylind immediately began her next stroke. As the door swung wide, the raised blade topped its arc. She snapped her wrists; changed its falling trajectory.

The haft left her hands, and the edged helve impaled in the rim of her brother's desk. Quill-pens fluttered air-borne. Stacked ledgers toppled. Piles of correspondence disgorged their lead weights, and sluiced in white sheaves to the floor-boards.

Fiark's fair brow relaxed. Immaculate in his dark velvet and pale lawn, he sized up his twin sister's strapping, tanned arms, and the sailor's slops she wore hacked to frayed threads above bare feet and neatly turned ankles. His sigh masked a smile. 'After the scars from your hobnailed boots, today's flourish is scarcely significant.' He met her eyes, of identical blue. 'You are not sailing east. King Eldir needs a skilled captain, and Evenstar's the only bottom we have with no dicey political strings on her registry.'

'b.u.g.g.e.r that, with a goat,' Feylind said, furious. 'You can kiss your High King's land-lubbing a.r.s.e! Give him your mouthful of sweet consolation, because I am not sailing to Havish.'

'I will not start a war!' Fiark snapped. 'And dare spew that filth to King Eldir's face, he'd have your tongue for gutter-snipe insolence.'

Feylind hooked her chapped thumbs in her belt. 'You know who missed his backup rendezvous at Alestron.'

Her volatile change in subject need mention no name. Fiark shut his eyes, only half in forbearance. 'Ath, you're obsessed.' Then, 'Yes, I was aware.' Without pause to tidy the wreck of his desk, he reached for his key, closed and locked his breached door, and valiantly called for a stand-off. 'Since the taverns at this hour are too hot for arguing, we'll discuss the matter at home?'

'Yours?' Feylind said. 'Not Mother's.'

Fiark grinned. 'She won't give up trying to put you in skirts? Or are you concerned that your language will finally hound the poor lady to drink?'

Feylind laughed. 'It's the subject we're h.e.l.l-bound to discuss. His affairs. If she overhears us, she'll have a nerve storm. Last time I spoke of his doings in her kitchen, she doused me down with a milk-pail, then just about dinged me unconscious.'

'Using what? Her straw basket of sewing silk?' Fiark needled sweetly.

'Sithaer's raving furies, nothing so kind.' Feylind pattered down the dim stairway. 'Mother gives the impression she's fifty and frail. But raise her temper, we're more alike than you know. She went for my nape with her flat-iron.'

'To keep you in the house? And it worked?' Fiark burst into unbridled delight. 'Is that why you're packing your boarding axe? Ath, I wondered. After all, you're not dressed to repel panting suitors.'

'The ones who pant get my boot in their teeth.' Paused under the arch at the outer arcade, a flamboyant, slim figure stamped against the glaring noon suns.h.i.+ne, Feylind paused. Her freckled face sobered. 'With Mother, you don't get the grace of a warning. I swear I saw swimming lights for a week, with a b.u.mp fit to rival a peac.o.c.k's egg.'

In the cool, whitewashed kitchen with its azure tiles, the light fell like rippled water through roundels of gla.s.s. Feylind sat at ease at the trestle, a robust toddler astride her bent knee. Summer had bleached the child's hair from its dark brown to the mixed hues of pulled taffy. His flushed face resembled his pert mother, while the blue eyes that surveyed the s.h.i.+p's captain, beyond mistake, favoured Fiark.

'That's not a toy,' Feylind murmured, prying curious fingers away from the hilt of her rigging knife. 'Just haul on my earring. There's a fine little man.' She grinned as the wife laid out fruit and pale wine. 'My son's aboard s.h.i.+p?'

'And your daughter.' The neat woman smiled. 'Tharrick took both of them. They were wrecking the peace until they could visit their father.'

Feylind raised her eyebrows, head tipped to forestall the mauling yank at her ear-lobe. 'They saw the flags on the custom-house?'

'Flags! They know the lines of a s.h.i.+p and her sail rig,' Fiark corrected from the side-lines. 'The boy's been begging for months to ply his hand at the oar as a lighterman.'

The wife sat beside him, perhaps to revive the exhausted admonishment, that long since, Feylind should have wed her first mate.

'Don't start,' Feylind warned. 'The randy goat's already married to Evenstar, besides.' Her strong hands set down the squirming child, then unsheathed the disputed blade and began to dismember peaches. 'Our boy's too young for the lighters, as yet. He could run errands for the chandler's, if he's keen. You don't mind them underfoot?'

'Sh.o.r.e rats.' Fiark grinned. His elegant, buckled shoes were propped up on a chair seat. Fair-skinned, but without his sister's lined squint, he leaned back with his collar and doublet unlaced. 'You'd have them on Evenstar's deck? The sea's in their blood, there's no question.'

'To mimic my sailhands' randy habits?' Feylind chuckled. 'Not on your life. I'd set them a ruinous example as a mother, forbye. No. The pests can stay safe in the nursery with yours.' She pinned her brother's sapphire stare. 'Since, after all, I am not bound for Havish.'

Fiark's pigeon of a wife shoved erect and bristled. 'You promised! No language!'

Feylind shrugged. 'That's up to Fiark. He doesn't need to provoke me with reasons to go back on my given word.'

'In fact, I must.' Her brother lunged. Faster than his rich clothing suggested possible, he s.n.a.t.c.hed his son short of his clamber up Feylind's knee. At his nod, the mother whisked the wailing child out. 'We're going to argue in earnest, I see.'

'Argue!' Feylind glowered like a shark, regretting the axe left behind in the garret office. .

Fiark's brows were set level, now, as their need to mince p.r.o.nouns was discarded. 'Feylind. There were set-backs. Arithon never reached Eltair's coast. His escape plan from Jaelot met failure.' He told the rest quickly. 'His Grace is safe, but holed up in the Mathorns.'

That Arithon was now the guest of Davien was a fact far too volatile to reveal, given Feylind's impulsive temperament. In no mood to try her with subtle explanations, Fiark waited, intent.

When his sister said nothing, he caught her wrist. 'Feylind, his Grace is safe! I've had confirmed word by fast courier, through Atchaz. Dakar and the rescued double are also secure with the s'Brydion at Alestron. That's a milk run, d.a.m.n it! A coastal lugger and a hired crew of fishermen can collect the pair, and Khetienn can be flagged down for an off-sh.o.r.e rendezvous.'

Feylind stared, drained under her sea-going tan. 'Leaving Arithon land-bound? Merciful death. I can't bear it!'

'For now,' Fiark stated. 'The idea is his choice. I can't cross his royal will on the matter, and neither can you.'

When his twin swallowed, anguished, he held his breath, hoping that somehow good sense would prevail.

'The weather's not canny.' Uncomplacent, Feylind squared her shoulders. 'They say it's done nothing but dump rain in the west.'

Fiark released his sister's taut limb. Sympathy, from him, would destroy her tough strength. She had not married, as both of them knew, because her unswerving devotion tied her heart to the cause of the Crown Prince of Rathain.

She stirred finally, stabbed the knife into a melon, and folded her arms at her breast. 'Why couldn't his Grace have made me the acting captain of the Khetienn?' she whispered in plaintive longing.

Fiark need not answer. The reason was self-evident: Feylind was bound as master to an honest brig because Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had sworn his royal oath not to set her at risk. Once, years ago, a female captain had been killed, mistakenly condemned as the Master of Shadow's a.s.sociate. The trumped-up charges had been an act of spite, inflicted by frustrated enemies.