The Broken Realm Page 14

  A fresh vigor replaced the pall of before, and now the men were ramping up. They sat straighter, awaiting his next words.

  “You call him The Deceiver. My friends in the Southerlands would call him a ratsbane. I call him a coward. And soon, I will call him a dead coward. To his face. As I hold his head aloft, bloody hair gathered in my fist.”

  “He’s clear in his purpose,” Jesse said to Storm as the men swelled in their gathered vitality, stomping, applauding.

  “He has no choice.”

  Brandyn stepped higher, climbing atop the table. He, too, seemed to be gathering energy from the room, growing bolder with the strength of the men who had served his mother, and now, would serve him. “They say my mother has escaped The Pretender. And I say, whatever she has planned next will bring this crown to its knees.” He looked around the room, pausing to regard each man. “But we cannot wait for her. She wouldn’t wish for us to be idle, while she plots in the shadows. She didn’t send her four children into the wilderness for us to do nothing, while our Reach is commandeered by the filth of betrayal.”

  “Do they also teach them the gift of language at the Sepulchre?” Jesse asked.

  Storm grinned.

  “She sent us knowing there would be a moment in which we would all be called upon. Ember is safe in the Northerlands, but she is not idle. I see that is news to some of you, but not to others.” Brandyn looked at the Rush Rider, Blackfen. “I have seen it, in my mind’s eye, the magic of my mother’s kin. And you have confirmed it.”

  Blackfen nodded. “I have seen your sister, and her companion, the Tyndall heir, with my own eyes. The Northerlands are not idle either. They do what is necessary to move their part forward.”

  “With closed borders and their fighting men locked behind them?” a man asked.

  “Have you considered, Sir Carlisle, that a locked border may be more for protecting what lies within, than keeping men out?” Brandyn asked.

  Sir Carlisle looked confused about whether that was a true invitation to respond or merely an attempt to call him to account. “Themselves, you mean.”

  Brandyn smiled. “What the Northerlands protects is not for us to know. Trust in them to know their part in this, as you trust in the Blackwoods to know theirs. They are our allies.” He surveyed the crowd once more, and as he did, as his eyes again fell on each man, their spines more erect, their pride clearer, he, too, seemed to grow stronger. “We will first take back our lands. And when the Westerlands is ours once more, we will step forth and join with the other Reaches in taking back our kingdom.”

  The roar this time was louder, shaking the unsteady timbers of the Long-Trodden Mule. Even Jesse couldn’t deny the stirring within him at the sight this young but powerful child standing amongst handfuls of those most loyal and rising them to his side, the growing resistance of the Westerlands. He remembered Byrne Warwick, who had been a good man. Who had been loyal to both the land of his father and his wife, and, by all accounts, a good husband and father. What had happened in The Westerlands could happen in the Southerlands. Had happened before, from a crown who thought more of themselves than the Guardians did.

  “I see it in your eyes,” Kaslan said, sliding in beside him. “I see you coming alive.”

  “It’s too dark in here to see anything,” Jesse countered. He felt Storm grinning at the other side of him.

  “They would follow him. Will follow him,” Kaslan said. “He’s naught but a pube, but they will. Mind me.”

  “As they should. He’s their lord now.”

  “And you’ll be with them. I see it now.”

  Jesse watched Brandyn as he told his story, the tale of all he’d encountered after leaving his home and venturing out into the kingdom toward a new fate. “I told your father I’d help how I can, from here. But more than that, I cannae do. I’ve another task, one that may not seem to you to be as important as the fate of your Reach, but is everything to me.”

  Kaslan clapped him on the back. “We’ll see, now, won’t we?”

  * * *

  Jesse left his boots by the door. He hung his jacket over the bench, then checked the waning coals in the fire. They’d die on their own soon, without any help from him. The women must have retired long ago.

  He made his way up the stairs, fighting off an exhaustion that seemed to start all the way in his bones. Every time he stood amongst the last stand of the Westerlands, he was filled with a heaviness that wasn’t his to carry, but settled into his marrow without invite, taking root. He had his own burden to bear, but he would bear this one, too, it seemed.

  Jesse paused just outside his door, listening. His room wasn’t empty. The sound was almost imperceptible.

  Hand on his sword, he gave the door a light press, careful not to push hard enough to make the wood creak. Moonlight spilled across the bed, lighting the answer. His hand fell away.

  Esmerelda slept huddled in a ball, atop his blankets. With a sigh, Jesse sat down at her back and rested a hand on her shoulder. It was then he heard the crying and realized she wasn’t asleep at all.

  “I had a terrible dream,” she said, breathless. Her voice cracked with the remnants of a long night. “About Ryan.”

  Jesse squeezed her shoulder. “Dreams are only that.”

  “I saw him, in the darkness. He couldn’t find his way back to us. He’s lost, and... I don’t know how to tell him. How to find him. I’m afraid for him.”

  Jesse didn’t know the words she needed. Anything he thought of saying stayed in his head. It had always been like that for him. “No matter what darkness Ryan finds himself in, he will find his way out. He has every reason to fight.” He let his free hand hover over her belly, swelling through the fabric of her nightshift. “More than even he knows.”

  “What if he cannot?”

  Jesse stood and peeled back the quilt. “Go on, then. The fire is dead, you’ll catch a chill.”

  “I’m sorry. I woke and I didn’t want to be alone.”

  “And you won’t be.”

  She slid under the blanket, looking up at him. “I ask a lot of you. I know this.”

  Jesse joined her in the bed. His heart surged at their closeness, his thoughts bouncing in and out of the shadows of his intentions and his concern for her. Ryan would not want him to leave her in such a state, he told himself, while also feeling as if there was no separation great enough to still his pulse, which raged inexplicably faster and higher with each pass of his skin over the soft bed.

  “Rest, Esme. The morning will look much different. It always does.”

  10

  Louder, For Your Father

  Oldwin no longer wore the harrowed mantle of a man who had spent the better part of a century in a prison. His countenance unsettled Eoghan just the same. Eoghan decided if he did nothing else, he would need to learn to hide this from the old man. He also needed to stop thinking of him as an old man, for this was an increasingly confusing moniker that told very little of the true story of the creature. Oldwin looked no older than forty or so, even if he had, so they said, lived the equivalent of many lifetimes. Eoghan didn’t want to believe this could be true, for if it was there were implications far beyond his reasoning, but he couldn’t deny the subtleties about Oldwin that stirred thoughts of a time long before. His manner of speaking. That, though he didn’t actually carry a smell, Eoghan’s mind nonetheless associated Oldwin with the cloying scent that might assault you if you opened a room that had been closed far too long.

  They were scheduled to visit the Isle of Belcarrow, to stir inspiration amongst the Rhiagain Guard and Knights of Duncarrow, but the seas were too choppy for a voyage by ship, and so the visit had been postponed. Eoghan was outwardly disappointed at the news, declaring his regret at not being able to pay homage to the men who kept peace in his kingdom. Secretly, he was most relieved at not having to stand before men who were twice him physically, and perhaps in other ways, too. Men he was supposed to inspire, but he knew would snicker and sneer when his ba
ck was turned.

  He also had no suitable answer to give the inevitable queries about their idleness. He had no intentions to deploy more than what he already had. The irony of needing a guard of this size, on an island kingdom with no outside enemies was one he was afraid to question for fear he was missing something substantial. Certainly he could never turn them against his own people. Those conscripted came from the Reaches.

  “Better that this will wait for another day, Your Grace,” Oldwin said, as they walked back toward the keep. Eoghan struggled to keep his pace. The sorcerer stepped as if he had legs twice as long as his body. Eoghan couldn’t complain about it without exposing his own weakness. “For they will be awaiting news of war. News from you.”

  Eoghan curled his upper lip at the corner. “They have been trained for war. They will always want it.”

  “They will want direction, is all. News reaches even the isle of war of what has transpired in the kingdom. They will want to know their role, which only you can decide.”

  Eoghan paused as a foul wind nearly ripped him off his feet. He pulled his cloak around his head, then felt silly for it, for how it must look, but it would betray his feelings if he removed it now. “It is not the crown who desires for war.”

  “Whether you desire it or not, it may be upon us.”

  “All credited to that fool in the sky dungeon. It is good I left him to rot, for who knows what other damages he would’ve wrought if left to his own choices.”

  “He’s done damage enough already, I’d say,” Oldwin replied. He stepped in front of Eoghan to keep him from sinking his ankles into a puddle. Eoghan didn’t thank him. He needed Oldwin to understand his place. They were not equals.

  “The Westerlands will do nothing with the Quinlanden Guard placed within their cities.”

  “And the Quinlanden Guard will maintain their position only so long without word from their lord.”

  Eoghan paused. A hard snap from the crossed swords of the Rhiagain flag catching in the wind made him momentarily furious, but he recovered. He was learning to control his emotions better. “Then we send word.”

  Oldwin grinned at his back. “A most prudent choice, sir. Though we must also consider the fate of the Westerlands in longer terms as well. Their lord is dead, and their lady is a fugitive of the realm. Even if she is apprehended, she cannot reign.”

  Eoghan agreed wholeheartedly, but detested when the sorcerer said what he was thinking before he could. This seemed to be a frequent occurrence, which confirmed to Eoghan he’d been right to free this man to give him counsel. He didn’t have to like him to appreciate the necessity. “They have three children who could restore order.”

  “Not while their mother lives.”

  Yes, Eoghan had been thinking about this particular problem a good deal. Aiden’s treachery was subdued, but Asherley and Assyria must be brought to heel. Assyria he would imprison, for she was blood, and he would not be the king who executed his own sister. Asherley he had no such restraint for. Her head would go on progress throughout the kingdom, reminding all of the price of betraying a Rhiagain crown. Of the chaos she tried to bring to innocent lives.

  But they had to find them first. The Southerlands seemed the most willing to harbor enemies of Eoghan, but he’d sent the Rhiagain Guard into every town and village, and there’d been nothing reported. He’d even given them leave to do as they wished in order to elicit the answers required, and still, nothing of use. The only sightings of the ship had been heading north, but if they were in the Northerlands, then Eoghan would have to find and bide his patience. He could not enter those lands, even if they had not closed their borders. But Assyria had taken Anabella and Stefan not to wither, but for some great plot yet to be revealed. If Eoghan had no patience, Assyria had even less. She would not be idle long.

  They would leave the Northerlands, or wherever they were, and when they did, Eoghan had men at the ready.

  “Permission to speak without restraint, Your Grace,” Oldwin said, breaking him from his stream of thoughts.

  “Seems to me you already do.”

  Oldwin’s face was hard as granite. “I saw, from my cell, you enraptured of the Blackwood girl, before you even left Duncarrow to meet her acquaintance. I saw how it would end.” Eoghan awaited the sorcerer’s condolences, but none came. “I saw her death at the Sepulchre, and I saw the Dereham heir’s wife learn what killed her.”

  Eoghan spun around. “What killed her?”

  “It was you that killed her, sir, however inadvertent.”

  Eoghan had heard this, that it could be some rare ailment only a Rhiagain could pass, but if that were so, all foreign brides brought to Duncarrow would have been recipients of this foul disease. “Rumor only.”

  “Not rumor. The Magi call it the Virulent Spindle in their trite spirals of notes on us. On all they do not know about the Rhiagains. But we call it Fornicus Mortem. Around half of Rhiagain men carry this disease. You have it. Darrick did not. Fornicus Mortem did not exist in the kingdom until we brought it with us. And because it does not exist here, their medicine cannot assuage it, and the healers cannot address it. Only we know the cure.”

  A hard surge of blood rushed into Eoghan’s face. “You know the cure? We could have saved her?”

  “To save her, I would have had to have been free. I was not free while Hollyn Blackwood drew breath, so no, we could not have.”

  A fire burned deep in Eoghan. Rage had always led to frustration, for he had no outlet for the anger. No power with which to see it turned to action. His frail limbs fought with the flame of his agitated mind. “You kept this to yourself, knowing I could have pulled you from your cell much earlier, and brought relief to an innocent girl. She died, for love of me.”

  “I see your anger of me runs quite deep, but anger is no replacement for rational thought, sir. Even had I called for you, you would not have come. Your need of me began when Lord Quinlanden ran afoul of the kingdom, not before. I hadn’t the power to convince you of my usefulness until you determined on your own that it was necessary.” He dropped his eyes to the side. “Or your wife determined, as it were.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  Oldwin’s face twitched. He seemed as if a grin was waiting to break through. “I do know that. Just as I know that when you speak of innocent girls dying, this means nothing to you, for I have seen your treatment of your own wife, another innocent girl. I have seen in your heart what you would have done to the other wives, had their actions not stolen the opportunity.”

  “Speaking as you wish does not mean I will tolerate insubordination!”

  Oldwin was unfazed. He stood patiently, waiting for something.

  “Now you are absent of things to say?”

  “I have nothing more to say on the matter of Hollyn Blackwood. She is the past. There is only the future now. I’ll ensure Lady Assana is delivered of the elixir needed to keep her from meeting the same fate, and that will be that. But, as you have solicited my counsel, I would provide some to you, if you would still allow it.”

  “Go on then, say it!”

  Oldwin folded his hands over his dark robe. “Lord Warwick’s daughter, Lady Esmerelda, is not dead. She is in hiding.”

  Eoghan’s eyes widened. “Not dead? How can that be?”

  “Many who take their life in the Southerlands employ the sea to that end. Women, particularly, who lack the courage to fall on swords as a man might. Many never return to land. It is their way. A way that is convenient if one wishes others to believe they have surrendered their life to the sea.”

  “I will have Warwick’s head, too!”

  “Warwick,” Oldwin said with a small grin. “Does not know.”

  Eoghan’s mind turned over this truth, wondering how he could weaponize it. “What an unexpected turn of events, Oldwin. I suppose she feigned her death to escape me then, is that it?”

  “For love, they say,” Oldwin said, with a light sneer. “As only a woman would.”

&nbs
p; Eoghan felt a very brief pang of sympathy for Esmerelda Warwick, whose actions were not so very different than his own when he devised a way to marry Hollyn. But this empathy ended at the realization that these same actions had contributed to the chaos of The Right of Choosing, and all that followed. In her way, Esmerelda was responsible for the grief swirling around his fragile world.

  “Let Warwick’s belief of her death remain so,” Eoghan said. “He has earned no relief from us.”

  “If she were to fall into our hands, she could be so much more.”

  “Yes,” Eoghan said, considering. The wind died down, but a fresh rain peppered the earth, and them. He hated the rain. Wanted to go inside. But Oldwin was fickle in his revelations, and it seemed he had more to say. Eoghan wouldn’t interrupt that.

  “I have not seen her in some time. If her location becomes clear to me, we will send the Knights for her.”

  “What else would you have me know?”

  “One of the Ravenwoods has flown The Rookery.”

  “What care have I of a Ravenwood?”

  “Sees herself as another Rhosyn, it would seem.”

  “And is she? Will she, like Rhosyn, go on to form yet another house that loathes me?”

  “I know not,” Oldwin said. “But have you not ever wondered why your father, and his before him, have left the Ravenwoods to roost? Why none have ever ventured farther north than Wulfsgate?”

  “Some sort of agreement, he told me. An armistice of sorts. It is why I have not sent men to destroy Dereham’s Reach, inch by inch, blockades be damned. Not all in this kingdom is ours.”

  “It is so much more than that,” Oldwin said. “The Ravenwoods and Rhiagains have a shared past. They, shall we say, came from where we did.”

  “Ilynglass?”

  Oldwin didn’t answer. “We have a common ancestor. And we cannot harm them, while they cannot harm us. To even attempt it would be to invite utter destruction.”