Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (20 page)

They entered through a gate into a courtyard that was brilliantly lit by torches fixed high up on the walls. The courtyard was immense, larger than the comtesse’s entire garden. It was almost like finding the country in the heart of the city: a stony field under a clear and starry sky.

Everyone appeared to know the comtesse, and not a few of her acquaintances, after greeting the comtesse, stared at Brynjolf and her with unmitigated astonishment. However, the comtesse did not see fit to introduce them to anyone yet. She merely nodded pleasantly to the various lords and ladies and exchanged noncommittal pleasantries in lieu of satisfying their obvious curiosity, looking past the newcomers and toward the chateau. Fjotra wondered if she was looking for the king or for someone else.

Looking up, she saw the wall surrounding the courtyard was thick enough that guards could patrol it high over their heads. One…two…there were six guards in all. They were armed with a strange sort of weapon that she hadn’t seen before. She pointed them out to Brynjolf, and he told her they were a special type of bow called a crossbow. The weapons looked deadly, although their strange shape made her wonder how the string was drawn, and she shivered when she realized how easily the men standing atop the wall could turn the courtyard into a butcher’s pen full of helpless people. It made her uneasy, and she wished they could go inside the chateau. It might not actually be any safer, but at least she wouldn’t feel so exposed.

Brynjolf felt it too, she could see. He kept his back to the nearest wall, barely took his eyes off the guards, and kept feeling at his side for his nonexistent sword. Given the way he then proceeded to run his right hand over his left wrist, she suspected he might have ignored the comtesse’s orders to leave all his weapons at the manoir.

“Ah, there he is,” said the comtesse. “Come, both of you. I must introduce you to a friend of mine.”

She led them to a tall, lean man with a short, neatly trimmed beard and dauntingly intelligent eyes. When he looked at her, Fjotra had to resist the unconscious urge to shrink away from him. She had grown up among enough killers to recognize one when she saw one. He was accompanied by an even taller woman in a green silk dress with hair as white as Fjotra’s own. But it wasn’t until she noticed that the woman’s ears were pointed that she realized the woman was an elf. She gasped. She had heard tales of elves before, but she never seen one. Truth be known, she hadn’t actually believed they were real.

“Magicien Theuderic,” the comtesse said, “how good it is to see you! And you, as well, Milady Everbright.”

The man called Theuderic kissed the comtesse’s hand. He smiled, but Fjotra could see that it never touched his brown eyes. “My lady, you look lovely. How the priests will be ruing their vows tonight.”

“I doubt there will be many at the ball tonight, Magicien. May I present Prince Brynjolf d’Ulven and his sister, the Princess Fjotra de Raknarborg?” The comtesse turned to Fjotra and Brynjolf. “Your royal highnesses, this is Magicien Theuderic of L’Academie Royale, and his companion, the Lady Everbright of Merithaim. She is, as you may see, an elf.”

Theuderic grinned at her. “Roheis, you are unconscionable! Only you would dare to dress up two Dalarn reavers and pass them off as royalty!” He glanced at the elf and squeezed her hand. “And here I feared
we
would be the talk of the ball.”

“They are not true prince and princess?” the elf woman said quizzically. Her accent was strong enough that Fjotra, much to her surprise, could hear it even through the Savonner. Fjotra thought the exotic woman was beautiful despite her unnatural slenderness, perhaps even more beautiful than the comtesse. But she sensed there was something sorrowful behind the elf’s green and slanted eyes.

“Their father is what passes for a king in the Iles de Loup. I tend to doubt Skuli Skullcrusher’s line compares favorably with the Miridines, much less your own royal lineage, Lady Everbright. But he is the ruler of the Dalarn there. We usually refer to the son and daughter of a ruler as a prince and princess, do we not?”

“
Hjerneskalstyrtso,
” Brynjolf interjected.

The two Savoners and the elf lady looked at him as if he had suddenly sprouted horns.

“I do beg your pardon, your Royal Highness,” Theuderic said, pretending to look alarmed. “But I tend to doubt that anyone here, with the possible exception of your sister, understood that dreadful noise.”

“I think you would say ‘breaks the skulls,’” Byrnjolf explained helpfully. “Not crush them. There is a difference, yes?”

“Yes, of course,” the comtesse said with an uncharacteristically tight smile. “Skullbreaker. I do stand corrected. Well, from the various tales the dear prince has shared with us concerning his father, his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father, most of which involve the enthusiastic slaughter of more people than even you would consider reasonable, Theuderic, you can rest assured that the Skullbreaker line is as royal as any in the Iles de Loup.”

“Then I am indeed honored to make your acquaintance, your royal highnesses,” the magicien said gravely. He bowed to Brynjolf, then took Fjotra’s hand and kissed it. She couldn’t help an involuntary shudder, and his eyes flickered with momentary amusement at her response. He turned back toward the comtesse. “Am I genuinely to assume that you are serious about this northern alliance, Roheis, or is it simply one of your hare-brained schemes to score off the Duchesse?”

“Score off the Duchesse?” The comtesse’s laugh was rich with genuine amusement. “My dear sieur, I could not possibly care less about Ysoude one way or the other. They must be introduced to society, and one way or another, I intend to see that they receive an audience before the Haut Conseil, if not His Majesty himself.”

Theuderic stared intently into her face for a moment, but the comtesse didn’t flinch. She merely smiled provocatively at him. Finally he nodded, turned to Brynjolf, and extended his hand with his palm up. “Give me the blade, reaver prince. The King will be here tonight. You can’t be introduced to him in possession of that.”

Brynjolf blinked in astonishment. Inadvertently, his hand leaped to his wrist. “How you know I have blade?”

Theuderic sighed. “Your royal highness, I happen to be one of the King’s Own. Which is to say I am one of his royal battlemages. Detecting metal hidden about another’s person is a simple spell every court mage learns in his first year at L’Academie. You wouldn’t have come within fifty feet of His Majesty without one or another of the various counterspells surrounding him setting you on fire. Roheis, didn’t you warn them about this?”

“I told him not to bring any weapons,” the comtesse said. “I didn’t know about any magical wards. How would I know about such things?” She made a displeased face at Brynjolf. “With all due respect to your father’s fifteen clans, if you cannot manage to follow my instructions, I will arrange to have Henriot bring you back to the manoir, do you understand? Fjotra, what about you? Do you have any knives about your person?

Fjotra shook her head and surreptitiously kicked Brynjolf before he tried to argue about the command to surrender his weapon. It was no surprise that he was carrying a blade, since the men of her people considered themselves naked without a weapon of some kind. Chagrined, Brynjolf apologized as best his limited vocabulary would permit and slipped the knife out of his sleeve. Theuderic took it from him and adroitly concealed it somewhere in his bright blue finery.

“Will it not make you on fire?” Fjotra asked the magicien. She wasn’t sure if she was more embarrassed or furious with her brother. How could Brynjolf be so foolish? If Lady Roheis sent them away now, they might never have another chance to meet the king!

Theuderic smiled. The magicien was handsome enough, but there was something deeply disturbing about him that made her want to shriek and flee from him. He looked at her, at everyone, in a way that put her in mind of a hawk studying at a mouse, deciding if it would be permitted to live or die. “I am one of the King’s Own battlemages, Lady. He has nothing to fear from me, and even if I was a traitor, my possession of a small and sharpened earth element would be the very least of his concerns. The wards will not touch me. But since we are speaking of concerns, perhaps you might tell me of this pressing matter that Comtesse Roheis intends the two of you to set before His Majesty.”

She glanced at the comtesse. “We ask him that we come here, to Savonne,” she told him.

“You mean to Lutece, the city?”

“No, the lands by the sea. In north.”

“Who is we? Yourself and your brother? Your family would like to move here?”

“No, ‘we’ is…all Dalarn. All that still live.”

Theuderic’s jaw fell open. He looked from her to the comtesse. “Are you mad, Roheis? You can’t seriously expect His Majesty to agree to settle tens of thousands of reavers inside the realm!”

“Tell him about the ulfin, Brynjolf,” the comtesse ordered. “They call them ‘aalvarg.’”

Brynjolf told him how the aalvarg had driven their people from the two larger islands in the Iles de Loupe. The sorcerer folded his arms, but as the story unfolded, his bearded face gradually transformed from a mask of skepticism into one of reluctant interest. Brynjolf’s tale ended with the news that the Dalarn were now reduced to less than one-tenth of their former numbers and were all living behind the walls of the great fortress of Raknarborg.

Theuderic shook his head. “I’m truly sorry to hear about the travails of your people, highnesses, but this still strikes me as madness. To create a new demesne…to effectively create a new duchy, actually, is what you’re asking the king to contemplate here. From whom would you have him take the land, Roheis? It is a small thing to be generous with someone else’s territory, perhaps. My lady, such an act could risk tearing the realm apart.”

“Is that anything those of true scarlet blood should fear, sieur?”

Theuderic glared at her, and the comtesse fell silent even though her eyes still flashed defiance. “You don’t know what you are asking, Roheis. You push too far, too fast. Do not think you can expect to fully understand the Red Prince’s purposes, no matter how close you are. Even less can you understand His Majesty’s. You must let your dreams go. Have you learned nothing from the example of Montrove?”

There was the short sound of a fanfare, and the crowd stirred as heads turned toward the entrance to the courtyard. “It sounds as if the Red Prince has arrived,” the comtesse said, her voice flat with either irritation or anger.

Unlike the others, Fjotra wasn’t looking toward the gate and the crowds awaiting the prince’s entrance. She was looking up at the walls. A movement had caught her eye, and she noticed that there seemed to be more guards there now than before. She counted them again quickly and saw that there were now eight of them, all dressed in black to blend in with the shadows, and all armed with crossbows. She turned to Theuderic, knowing he was the only one who might be able to do anything. “My lord mage, who want to kill your prince?”

“Kill the Red Prince?” The magicien laughed. “Depending upon the day of the week, nearly any number of people. He can be difficult. I suppose there are a few surviving rebels left in Montrove who would like to see him dead, given how he killed their duc last year.”

She nodded. “They be here. I count eight men on the wall now. Before, only six.”

“
Merde!
” the magicien swore, startling both the comtesse and his elf lady with his sudden vehemence. “Can you tell me which two?”

“I think those,” Fjotra said, pointing to the only two guards who were walking together. Both were walking slowly but in a direction that would soon bring them to a point above the crush of people near the entry gate, which was presumably gathered around to see the prince’s entourage enter the courtyard.

The sorcerer faced them and closed his eyes. Then he turned toward one of the other guards and closed his eyes again. When they snapped open, there was certainty in them. “They are assassins. Both of them. They’re carrying far more metal than the other guards. Brynjolf, can you climb the wall?”

Her brother nodded, as Fjotra knew he would. The bricks had enough edge on them that she thought she could probably climb the wall herself, although she would be sorry to ruin her beautiful gown.

“Good, then climb up behind them. Out of sight. Don’t attack them right away. Do you understand? Wait until I interfere with their attack. Then just shove them off the walls. I can’t imagine both will manage to break their necks in the fall. We’ll want one for questioning, preferably both.”

The comtesse held both her hands to her chest. “Shouldn’t you alert the other guards?”

Theuderic shook his head. “That will cause too much confusion and panic. It might even start a stampede that would prove more deadly than the assassins themselves. Trust me, I can stop their attack.” He turned to Brynjolf. “I need you to make sure they don’t escape.”

Brynjolf nodded eagerly, obviously pleased to be of service in the sort of activity he understood. “I will throw them down to you.” He smiled at Fjotra, bowed to the comtesse, and quickly began making his way through the crowd toward the wall.

Fjotra was worried, but mostly because she suspected her brother was eager to do this to impress the comtesse, not for what two unsuspecting southerners might be able to do to him. Her brother had never reaved, but he had been fighting the aalvarg ever since he had been old enough to hold a sword.

It wasn’t long before there was a ninth man atop the wall. Fortunately, none of the guards saw Brynjolf climbing up to join them, as it belatedly occurred to her that the guards would have no way of knowing his intentions in scaling the wall. All four of them—Fjotra, the comtesse, Theuderic, and the elf woman—were now watching the walls.

Without any visible sign, the two false guards raised their crossbows to their shoulders. No sooner had they done so than the sorcerer said something unintelligible and gestured with one hand. The two crossbows erupted into white-hot flame. One of the assassins cried out in surprise and dropped his flaming weapon at once. The other, more self-controlled, somehow managed to hold onto it long enough to loose his bolt. It hit something on the other side of the wall with an audible
thwunk
.