Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (85 page)

But he was talking to the rapidly receding back of the man. Fjotra’s surviving assailant was running away as fast as his feet would carry him, and the flapping sole of his right boot made the sight almost comical.

Their rescuer spread his hands as if mystified by the reluctance of the other man to continue the one-sided conversation, then he held out his hand, and the two coins leaped up into it from the ground as if his hand were a powerful lodestone.

“How you know he be married?” Fjotra asked their savior, a little afraid to address him, but too curious to remain silent.

“What a remarkable response,” the man mused as he watched the tall man flee with a pensive expression on his face. “Of all the vast panoply of mysteries that life’s rich pageant has provided for your entertainment today, that is what you consider to be the most curious matter? I weep for Man. In any event, I direct your attention to his hand, the visible one.”

Fjotra didn’t understand most of his answer, but she did see there was a simple silver ring on the man’s left hand. That made sense, she thought, although it was strangely observant of the man to notice it in the middle of an altercation. And the ring still didn’t tell her how he knew their assailant had children.

“Is he a troldmand like Patrice?” Svanhvit asked her.

“No, I am no king’s sorcerer. I merely happen to know a few useful tricks,” the man interrupted in perfect, unaccented Dalarn, causing all three girls to stare at him in even more disbelief, if that were possible. “Am I, on the basis of your courageous, if ultimately disastrous attempt to speak our most noble tongue with our late friend Josson, correct in ascertaining that you are Fjotra, the daughter of Skuli Skullbasher, the king soon-to-be-in-exile from the Wolf Isles?”

“Skullbreaker,” she said reflexively.

“I stand corrected. As does my question. Stand, that is, it can hardly be corrected. Are you the aforementioned Fjotra?”

“Why you want to know?” she asked him in Savonnais. “How are you called?” It wasn’t so much that she had any reason to distrust him. After all, if he wished her and the other girls any harm, he could have simply pretended not to see them being assaulted and walked on. But there was something deeply disconcerting about him. The friendly smile that so readily played about his lips never seemed to touch his dark eyes, and the way he carried herself reminded her a little of an actor she had seen at one of the plays to which the comtesse had taken her.

“Why does anyone wish to know anything? In my case, I should like to know because I am charged with the responsibility of bringing the maiden of the aforementioned name to her future husband. He awaits her even now, so that she may be betrothed within the bell, and I daresay he would be bitterly disappointed were he to find himself engaged to marry a reaver maiden given to frothing at the mouth, stripping naked, and biting at shields every time she loses her temper instead of the legitimate heir to the Isles de Loup.”

“You make the mistake,” she told him, both confused and amused by his words. “I am Fjotra, daughter to the Skullbreaker, but I have no husband and no betrothed.”

“You will shortly,” he assured her. “Now, if you’ll be so kind as to come this way, your royal highness, I will escort you to your destination. My name, not that it will mean anything to you, is Donzeau, and I am in service to the Duc de Chenevin.”

Fjotra nodded absently, her mind racing. Donzeau was correct that his name meant nothing to her, but she knew she had heard of the duc before. But where? There weren’t so many duches in Savondir that she should not be able to place the man’s liege. The comtesse had taught them all to her, but it wasn’t the sort of knowledge one needed in Raknarborg, so she’d forgotten. She mentally ticked them off. Savonne, Meridiony, Ecarlate, Lutece, Aubonne, Carouge, Vevenny…. Chenevin!

Her eyes narrowed.

“The Duc de Chenevin…he is the king’s son, yes?”

“Indeed, he is of the blood royal, as are you, if one takes an extraordinarily broad perspective on the matter. But never mind that. Of such fictions are the grandest civilizations built. In my experience, be the blood red or blue, it all bleeds the same.”

“Yes,” Fjotra said. She did not trust this troldmand who smiled as he killed and called his victims friends. But she knew he could easily prevent her from fleeing, and besides, she was sure there was some mistake. Perhaps the Duc de Chenevin had misunderstood how matters stood and thought she was already engaged to marry Prince Karl. Since Le Christophe had only just arrived today, he did not yet know that his brother was dead and that he was now their father’s heir. If nothing else, she owed it to Prince Karl to break the news to his brother as gently as she could. “You may take me to the duc.”

Donzeau bowed, though whether he was mocking her or not, she could not tell. “The honor is mine, Your Highness.” He led them back the way they’d come, until they were back in the more prosperous commercial quarter again, where she could smell the sea and some of the buildings began to look familiar to her.

And not just to her. As they turned a corner near a blue building that housed a butcher, judging by the ham hocks hanging suspended outside, Geirrid caught up to her and whispered in her ear.

“I know how to get to the ship from here. I’ll go get help.”

“No!” Fjotra whispered urgently back, and she tried to grab Geirrid’s wrist, but her brave friend was too quick for her and adroitly eluded her. She didn’t dare to look back, not wanting to alert Donzeau, but the rapid patter of the brown-haired girl’s feet on the cobblestones as she dashed across the street seemed loud enough to drown out the pounding of her heartbeat.

Her heart froze as the troldmand, without breaking stride, raised his left hand and made a simple gesture. There was a crashing sound to her left, but Fjotra managed to keep herself from looking until she heard Svanhvit scream. She whipped her head around and saw Geirrid sprawled out motionless on the far side of the street. Next to her lay a cobblestone that had ripped itself from the street.

“What have you done?” Fjotra screamed in Dalarn.

Donzeau turned around, a half-smile on his face.

Seeing it enraged her. She leaped forward and grabbed his throat with one hand. “If she is dead, I rip out your eyes and feed them to you before I give you to the sky god!”

“And they say northern girls are ice princesses.” The troldmand, unconcerned, calmly met her eyes. She felt a gradual but irresistible pressure forcing her fingers back. He answered her in her own language. “What I have done is show you the foolishness of defying the duc’s will. Look. The girl is barely harmed—already she stirs. But the next time, I shall do worse than simply bounce a rock off her thick barbarian head, do you understand me, Princess Skullbreaker?”

Fjotra glared at him, but her fury was mitigated by her relief at the sight of Geirrid sitting up and staring at the blood on her hand. She switched back to Savonnais. “Yes, I understand. May Svanhvit go help her?”

“So long as they both come with us and don’t try to run again.” Donzeau waited, his arms folded, until the two girls had made their way back across the street to them. Then he addressed them in the northern tongue. “Ladies, her royal highness here is sufficiently brave, stubborn, and proud to place her life at risk. This means that other disciplinary means are required. So you two shall stand for her good behavior, and I trust you will remind her of that if need be, since it is your lives that are at stake. Do you understand what that means?”

Geirrid nodded. Svanhvit only looked confused.

“
Sacre Dieu!
” Donzeau shook his head in disgust. “It means I will kill you if she doesn’t behave.” He turned and walked away without waiting for a response.

The three girls stared at each other in shock for a moment, then quickly made haste to follow him.

AULAN

Across the city, young men and women alike had been frantic with activity for the last few weeks. For the young patricians, it was the time when they declared themselves as candidates for the lower offices that would one day qualify them for the magistracies. There were only twenty-four tribuneships and twenty quastorships available each year. However, the term of office was almost irrelevant, as once elected, a competent young man would find himself in demand for everything from legionary general staffs to provincial governorships. And while election to the first two offices in the cursus honorum were not absolutely required in order to find employment with the senatorial elite, it was rare for anyone not to do so.

Unless, of course, you were the son of the second man in Amorr and you were marrying the daughter of the first man.

Aulan examined his future brother-in-law with a slightly envious eye as they stood outside. It was dark, but the short walk to the Comitium, the large square that faced the senate house, was lined with torches. The December air was cold, but their thick wool cloaks provided them with sufficient protection against it, especially since there was little wind.

Sextus Valerius had never stood for tribune, had never spent a winter in the freezing filth of a legionary casta, and he would never need to ruin himself to entertain the public with a series of increasingly decadent spectacles or spend a year of his life poring through the highly fictional accounts of provincial officials, pretending as if his efforts would even slightly dam the river of moneyed corruption that began in the provinces and reached flood-like proportions in the city. A few ritual words, a simple consummation, and all the Senate would be at his feet as soon as he was of age, courtesy of his father and father-in-law.

For whatever that was worth, Aulan reminded himself. Amorr was on the cusp of the greatest change it had known since the Houses Martial had risen against the last Andronican king, and it was impossible to know exactly what form that change would take. He was no philosopher or historian, but in three years of legionary duty, he’d learned that nothing ever played out when or how it was expected. Killing that poor Valerian farmer had been the first mission to go as planned in months. He’d been half-shocked when he and his men didn’t find themselves in the midst of a plebian riot or discover that the Valerian was surrounded by a bodyguard of retired ex-gladitorial champions.

His father blithely assumed, no doubt correctly, that he would ride the inevitable chaos like a master charioteer, guiding it to take him precisely where he wanted to go. The problem was what would come after him. For all his ambition and arrogance, his father was almost wholly uninterested in the temptations that plagued lesser men. He’d been the only governor to end his term ruling Ptolus Triticus a poorer man than when he began. Governance of the wealthy, grain-rich province was much sought after by proconsuls, as one year there produced more tax revenue than four in almost any other province.

Aulan had no doubts that his father was right to bring the allies and provinces into the empire as the full citizens they should have been, in some cases, for centuries. Amorr couldn’t hope to continue suppressing the sort of rebellions that had swept across its periphery for the last two decades. But he had spent enough time around the Cynothii to be uncertain that men accustomed to kings, princes, and other monarchs would make the transition to senatorial rule as easily as his father and the other leading men of his party assumed.

He groaned and looked at the Valerian in a new light. Aside from his younger brother, who was yet to prove himself, his future brother-in-law might well be his most reliable ally in the years to come, which was an alarming thought for someone who had grown up thinking of House Valerius as a collection of mindless warmongers. At least Sextus Valerius looked the part of a Senator-to-be, and Aulan took some comfort in knowing his sister thought well of the man too.

For all of Severa’s near-embarrassment with the brave young gladiator, so fortuitously dead on the sands not long after that aborted rendezvous, she was normally a very sensible young woman. Even if the Valerian turned out to be an empty-headed ass, he would have a keen mind whispering in his ear, and, he hoped, guiding his public career in a manner advantageous to the various members of House Severus.