Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (108 page)

Fjotra closed her eyes and bit her lip.

The comtesse put her arms around her. “I’m so sorry, my dear.”

She knew that hundreds of the men who had remained to hold the fortress until the final evacuation was complete were probably dead now. Her father and mother might well be among them. She couldn’t imagine the Skullbreaker boarding a ship before every last man had boarded first. Nor could she imagine her mother boarding without him. Her eyes welled up with tears. She’d known this was a possibility from the night the Skullbreaker had sent her away with his sword. But with each successful transportation of women and children, then fighting men, her hope had been born again.

The comtesse’s arms tightened around her, and Fjotra was tempted to release her grief and sob into the woman’s breast.

But that would not do. Not now, not when she and her brother might be the last hope of preserving her people and keeping them alive.

It dawned on her that this was probably not even the important news that Roheis and de Saint-Aglie needed to discuss with her. Otherwise Roheis would have come alone. She supposed it must be something that they had previously expected to discuss with her father.

“You want…wanted to talk to the Skullbreaker I think. But now, you must talk to me and my brother instead.”

“We don’t want to, my dear,” the comtesse said. “I would much rather permit you to grieve in peace for your parents. Unfortunately, sometimes events cannot wait for us to be ready for them. Now, Fjotra, you have to understand that what I am going to tell you could make a lot of very powerful people at court extremely unhappy. Unhappy with you and unhappy with me. So, I have to ask you to promise to keep this to yourself. You can’t talk about it with Svanhvit or Geirrid, and I’m not even sure you should discuss it with Brynjolf. Do you promise? This is a very delicate affair, and it will not do for it to come to light before its time.”

Fjotra felt a little bewildered, but if she trusted anyone in Savonne, it was the comtesse.

“Yes, I promise.”

“Do you swear to hold your tongue, by all your gods and by the honor of your father and your brother?”

She was frightened, but what could be worse than what she’d already heard? “Yes, I will never tell anyone what you tell me. Not even my brother. I swear. You have been so good to us, I would never see you harm.”

The comtesse kissed her. “That’s a good girl. You did the right thing, my dear.”

“I did?”

“Indubitably,” the comte answered. “Now Fjotra, I know you believe the king is going to allow your people to settle here in Savondir. And not without reason. I suppose the king himself probably believes that. But it is not going to happen, at least not as you and your brother envisioned.”

She narrowed her eyes distrustfully. She and Brynjolf had been given assurances, repeatedly, that so long as their people swore to serve the king loyally and well, they would be permitted refuge here in the south. But was now the time when she would discover that the copious volume of words produced by the southerners was good for nothing?

“You see, too many of the nobles of the north hate and fear the reavers. The Haut Conseil knows this and has to respect their feelings. Before, when the expedition to rescue your people was underway, they did not dare to speak out against the settlement because they were aware of Prince Charles-Phillipe’s ambitions to claim the Iles de Loup for the crown, and they knew they could not openly oppose him. But now Charles-Phillipe is dead, and his brother has little interest in the Isles and none in your people. In fact, Etienne-Henri even encourages their opposition and offers them support. He seeks to win the nobles’ favor, and one way he can do so at no cost to himself is to indulge their fears of the Dalarn.”

“I don’t understand. Why the new prince make friend with my brother if he hate us Dalarn? Why he give land and name? Why he try to betroth me?”

“No, my dear, he doesn’t care enough about you to hate you. You already know why he wanted you as his wife—he wanted the Isles. That’s why he lost interest in you the very moment he learned that Charles-Phillipe had died. Brynjolf is nothing more than an amusing new toy for the prince,” Roheis explained. “To have a barbarian in his entourage, a fearsome reaver from the legends of old…it shocks the court, you see? It offends the old and the unfashionable, and it lets him impress the younger nobles with his daring. But think on this, my dear: Where did he give your brother his land? To whom is Brynjolf sworn?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, you don’t, so you cannot understand the significance. Now, do you remember when I told you that the wars I fight are different than those fought by your father and brother? This is one of those wars. Battles at court are more complicated than those contested honestly in the field. Swords don’t lie, but tongues often do. Do you recall your brother’s new title?”

“He’s now vicomte of somewhere, I don’t remember.”

“Fronmorat,” the comte answered. “Fronmorat is a small comte in the prince’s desmense of Chenevin. It’s only two or three days’ journey from my own lands as well as the lands the Haut Conseil intends for the king to give your people. They make it sound generous, but instead of a single duchy near the sea, where your people could prosper and grow powerful, the haut seigneurs will divide them and scatter them among the Ecarlatans in five or six different comtes. They will do so in the hopes that, in another three generations, all that remains of your people will be the occasional fair-haired, blue-eyed child. And that will destroy your people as completely as the ulfin wanted, albeit in an indirect and more sophisticated manner.”

“Suppose you are telling me truth.” Fjotra didn’t know if what Saint-Aglie described was actually what the king had been planning to offer her father, but she knew that neither she nor Brynjolf would have ever noticed the fatal poison in the proffered bait. “What would you have us do, refuse the lands? I not see how we could. Where do we go? Even without the last ships, there must be twelve thousand Dalarn living outside of Portblanc now, and they live on the king’s goodwill. If he will not feed them, they will starve!”

“I very much doubt the king is foolish enough to refuse to fill the bellies of ten thousand desperate and hungry reavers. What they are not given, he knows they will take. Even the Haut Conseil knows that. But Fjotra, do you understand why those lands are at the king’s disposal to give?”

“Are not all lands in Savonne for him to give? He is the king!”

The comte rolled his eyes. “Ah, the joys of barbarism. No, the king is neither a god nor a tribal chief, my lady. Since I can’t possibly supply the knowledge you lack of five hundred years of law and civilization now, you’ll just have to accept that the reason they are in his possession is because his grandfather stole them from the nobles of Ecarlate when he defeated their king. A few of those noble families were permitted to retain their ancestral lands. My lady Desmargoteau here is one example. Her Domdidier is a small comte in vassal to the Grand-Duc. My own comte of Saint-Aglie is another.”

“I don’t see how this matters. You do not want my people to take the land the king give because his father’s father steal them?”

“No, my dear, of course we want you to take the lands,” Roheis assured her. “It was the Grand-Duc himself who suggested the Ecarlatean lands to the other seigneurs on the Haut Conseil, once he understood they wanted to divide the Dalarn and keep them from the sea. And he did so because we want you and your brother to swear to be loyal to the Grand-Duc as his vassals, and we want your people to join us when he declares himself King of Ecarlate and rises against the de Mirid crown.”

It was too much to follow. The strangeness of this place, the death of Prince Karl, and now possibly her parents, was hard to accept. And now, instead of finding the hoped-for refuge in the south, there was more war and death on the horizon. What had she done, what had her people done, to make the gods hate them so? It was as if a curse was following them, so that not even crossing the sea would permit them to find peace. Were they being punished for the reaving of their forefathers? Was this retribution for the bloodshed and fear her people had visited on generation after generation of dwellers on the sea coasts?

“Fjotra, what’s wrong?” The comtesse crouched down before her and held her hands. “Your people will have their place! The women and children, they will be safe from the battles.”

That made Fjotra laugh. She pulled a hand free to wipe away her tears. “My lady comtesse, you not know war like me. You can make no promise so. War touch everyone. Even the little children die. Comte, why you think you can win against the king? I know from Prince Karl that another duc try last year.”

“An astute question, my lady. The reasons are four. First, we will not be alone. The Seven Seats will also rise, because the Vagran nobility cannot stomach the notion of Etienne-Henri as king. He is an insolent wretch with no concern for the crown, the kingdom, or anything beyond his appetites. Second, the royal academy of king’s mages have not been so weak in many years. Many of the Immortels are aged, and ten of its strongest mages died in a sorcerous experiment earlier this year. Moreover, some of the mages are sympathetic to the Ecarlatean cause.

“Third, two hundred men-at-arms died in the suppression of Montrove and another five hundred are believed to have fallen at Raknarborg, at least forty of them knights. And fourth, because there two thousand four hundred seventy-five more or less healthy Dalarn men of fighting age presently in the camps outside Portblanc.”

“But why should they fight for you against the king who promises them land?”

“Not for us—with us! Consider where they will be, my lady. They will be surrounded by rebels on every side, so they must either fight for us or against us. Neither the Grand-Duc nor the king will permit you neutrality. And what else can such men do? What else do reavers know? Will they fish the mountains or drag their nets across the valleys? Will they harry our villages and then attempt to flee on foot? No, they must learn how to work the land, and who better to teach them how to do so than the very folk who have worked those lands for centuries?

“You and your people need us as badly as we need you, Fjotra. And, unlike the Haut Conseil, the Grand-Duc does not fear your people. He will not divide you among the comtes to have your blood watered down but will give you portions of his own lands, tying your little comtes together into one sustainable principality that will permit you to remain one people, together. And he will swear to protect you as your liege lord.”

“He will pay our men to fight?”

The comte nodded. “Naturally. He will pay one silver coin plus mercenary wages to each man who fights, plus one gold coin per man to you and your brother for every ten, as well as enough grain to supply the women and children until the return of your men. He’ll also give you four hundred cows, five hundred pigs, a thousand sheep, and a quantity of laying chickens to distribute among your people as you see fit.”

“What if the king will give us more?”

The comte shook his head and chuckled. “He won’t. I am certain he won’t because most of what he will promise you will be coming from the Grand-Duc’s lands, not the royal treasury. Oh, he’ll promise to pay for the grain and the animals, to be sure, but it will just be more debt to be added on top of what is already owed. But you need not take my word for it, nor must you decide tonight. You thought the king would give you lands by the sea, did you not?”

“The Red Prince say that to me, yes. He think it too.”

“Then it will not be hard for you to discern the truth. If the king stands by his promise to your people and makes Brynjolf a duc of a fief on the coast, you may forget everything we have said to you. I only ask that you keep your word to remain silent. On the other hand, if the king divides your people and proposes to send them south into Chenevin, Meridiony, and Ecarlate, then you will know that we spoke the truth.”

Fjotra nodded. And it was true that Brynjolf’s lands, wherever they were, were in the south. And the comte was correct to ask what else the Dalarn men could do. In fact, she was certain that, if she asked them if they preferred to work the land or war against the Savoner king, nearly all of them would choose the latter. They were a people of war. Most of them had never known anything else. It would take many years before they could become a people of peace.

Fjotra met his cold and strangely remote eyes without flinching. She knew he was perfectly capable of ordering her killed in order to prevent her from telling anyone in the court about the Grand-Duc’s rebellious intentions. But then, she assumed the Ecarlatans must have begun their preparations long ago and made their decision to rise almost as soon as news of the Red Prince’s death had arrived. They might well be ready already, and were merely delaying the rebellion in the hopes of enlarging their forces first.

And so she lied.

“I will not open you, Comte.” She frowned, irritated that she didn’t know the word. “
Svigte
, to make known, you know, to the king.”

“Betray?” suggested the comtesse.

“Yes! Betray. I will not betray you, either of you. The king, he is generous. Prince Karl, he was a good man. I like him. But what you give us, you give us life for all the people. If you do not help, the ships do not come. If you do not help, we die. We Dalarn do not forget this. As the comtesse tell me and Brynjolf when we bring your letter, now I say to you: We help if we can.”

The comte looked at the comtesse, who looked at him expectantly. “I think that is a satisfactory response for the time being. The comte de Aumont will meet you in Portblanc. He is the son of the Grand-Duc. You can trust him as you would trust me or the comtesse, this I assure you.”

Fjotra allowed him to kiss her hand as he bowed and departed the room.

The comtesse breathed a loud sigh of relief.

“Well, that’s done with. I’m so relieved you answered as you did, my darling. I told him you were not to be touched, but he doesn’t always listen to me. But you realize that Brynjolf may think differently than you do? His affections for the prince are genuine. de Chenevin has not bought them.”