The Bandit King (12 page)

Though I would have thought I had taught him the truth of the matter earlier, before tossing him in the
oublietta
.

Vianne’s smile was a ghost of its old unworried self, but it held a depth of affection altogether too profound to be wasted on a mere boy. “So you did. My thanks,
chivalier
. Now, be so kind as to accompany the Baron and
Chivalier
di Tatancourt to the Keep. Watch over them well, Tinan, for I need their services. Baron, take care.” She turned away, handling the palfrey’s reins with Court grace. “Raise the Gate.” Her tone sliced the honeyed afternoon glare.

“My liege—” My father made one faint attempt at dissuading her, but it came to naught. He retreated with Tinan and the Messenger as the levers and counterweights began to move, the Gate creaking and moaning heavily. Lifting, steam hissing up as layers of charm and countercharm spilled along its pitted, dark-oiled surface.

“Vianne.” My gray nudged Adersahl’s aside, and he allowed it. “This is madness. Why not let di Narborre come to you?”

“Because I do not wish it.” Each word cut short, without the laughing accent of the Princesse’s ladies. The Pruzian clicked at his horse, which ambled forward; Adersahl’s stepped to the side. In short order Vianne rode through the still-opening Gate, Arran and I hastened after.

The wind rose, ruffling the edges of her cloak, swirling dust and soot in odd whorls. The white palfrey lifted her head, stepping very prettily, and the Road unreeled before her hooves. Vianne rode, straight-backed, the Pruzian Knife before her like a herald, into the jaws of Garonne di Narborre’s army.

There was some faint courtesy, at least, though they sent no herald or honor-guard. The great half-fan siege-shields had been pulled aside from the Road’s shattered surface, and we were not swarmed. Campfires burned, the besiegers at rest, the smell of men packed together too closely for too long, the foreignness of Damarsene cooking.

They bring their own spices, the hounds of Damar, when they come baying in a foreign land.

Infantry-heavy. Well, what else to siege with? And many engineers. Their flags are high, morale is good. All from border provinces; those are devices from the Reikmarken Charl.
My belly was curiously cold. I had felt this chill before, riding into an armed camp, hoping my disguise would hold—but I wore no disguise here. And there was Vianne, slender and so vulnerable, the cloak and hood not masking her grace or her fragility. The Aryx on her chest sang, a thrill through the blood of every d’Arquitaine who could hear it—what did they think, those among di Narborre’s dogs who watched her ride past?

Adersahl’s horse moved beside hers, and he made a low remark. Her answering laugh rang clear but false—it was the merry biting sound she used when she was not truly amused, but had to appear so. Others would think it lighthearted, but I had watched her too long to be misled. The breeze showered us with dust, and from the commander’s tent in the distance came a commotion.

They know we have arrived.

My hands loosened on Arran’s reins. He was taut with readiness, sensing my unease in the way my knees tightened, my palm aching for a swordhilt. I had not been given steel.

And why should I have been, if she expected me to slide it twixt her ribs? Who had my sword now? Jierre, most likely. I had stabbed him in the right shoulder, gauging the blow to leave him alive; it was not beyond Bryony’s skill to mend such an injury. My lieutenant would ache in the winter there, did he grow much older.

Di Yspres would seek an accounting for that, one way or another. That was a problem for another day.

Wait. Watch.

The siege camp’s layout was standard. No surprises. Guards and challenge-patterns, the Damarsene leaving their tents to see this tiny group come to treat with them, a murmur running through their ranks.

Vianne’s head lifted. She looked about with interest, hopefully noting the mangonels, the machines capable of flinging the Graecan fire. The vats of bubbling tarry stuff the fire would be made from, each with a hedgewitch or a Damarsene sorcerer—they, as the Pruzians, call them
Hekzmeizten
—standing watchful, to make certain it did not overheat and explode, doing the enemy’s work. I saw only a flash of her chin, a slice of her cheek.

If they surround us, the only hope is to kill a few and drag her onto Arran’s back. The Pruzian may hold some of them, but di Narborre was his client—or his client’s lundsman—to begin with. Adersahl is a canny Court sorcerer, but against so many…
Sickness took me by surprise, a wedge of bile rising to my throat.

The mince pies were sitting
most
uncomfortably. And the thought of Vianne before me in the saddle, as she had ridden through half of Arquitaine during our escape, did not help.

The commander’s tent was a monstrosity of dark fabric, dust and smoke hazing its sides. It flew the new device of d’Orlaans—the crowned serpent over a rising sun. The swan of the Tirecian-Trimestin family, being his murdered brother’s sign, perhaps gave him an uneasy conscience.

You know better. The man has no conscience. Be ready to exercise a similar lack.

The stamped-down space in front of the commander’s tent was a strategic nightmare. It would take so little to make Vianne a prisoner, and then I would be faced with terrible choices.

Calm, Tristan. Watch. Wait, and plan.

It was Adersahl who lifted her down from the saddle, and though his hands did not linger at her waist a bolt of something hot and nasty speared me. Twas not the mince pies.

Van Harkke took her horse, murmured something to her. Another laugh, this one truly amused, from her throat as I dismounted, not liking to leave Arran behind but unwilling to let Vianne wander farther alone.

There was no party to meet us at the entrance to the tent—an insult, to be sure. Vianne did not seem to mind. She took a deep breath, shoulders squaring, and glanced once more at the Pruzian Knife.

He nodded slightly, and she looked to Adersahl next. He nodded as well, the crimson feather in his cap waving finely.

I waited for her gaze, but it did not turn to me. Instead, she arranged her skirts and stalked for the tent. The song of the Aryx rose, its melody developing a counterpoint, and familiar fire raced along my nerves. I did not wonder at it—the Aryx is the fount of Court sorcery and a mark of the ruler’s legitimacy.

And also, twas
her
. I would be dead not to feel that pull. It is the Moon’s longing for the Sun, chased across the sky night and day. Or the aching of a lock for a key, a gittern for the hand that makes it sing.

How could she think I meant
her
harm?

Smoke threaded up. The folds of hanging fabric before my Queen suddenly crawled with silvery witchflame, lapping tongues of it devouring the entrance-flaps. They ate the material in a spreading pattern, and by the time she reached the hole in the tent wall it was large enough for her to simply pass through, her head down and her hood pulled so close none of the falling ash would foul her.

As entrances go, twas a dramatic one.

Adersahl was slightly behind her, and I was at her heels. The Court-sorcery flames died, smelling of cinna and clovis. She pushed her hood back, and the men at the map-table all leapt to their feet.

I knew the d’Arquitaine among them, noblemen and d’Orlaans’s creatures all. Simeon di Noreu, di Narborre’s foppish little puppy, with his blond curls and his curled lip; portly dark Firin di Vantcris with his hand at his swordhilt, a duelist fond of cheating. Tathis d’Anselmethe, the pointed beard he affected dyed coal-black, a nobleman who stooped to collecting his own taxes. A few others who did not merit mention. The Damarsene commanders were unknown to me, but I stored their insignia in memory with a swift glance and began calculating how best to rid one of them of his weaponry.

Vianne stood, straight and slim on the costly carpets over hard-packed earth, her simply-braided hair a glory in the haziness, before Garonne di Narborre, d’Orlaans’s Black Captain.

He was a gaunt man; food held little interest for him. Di Narborre glutted himself instead on violence, on misery, on the sheer joy of causing pain. It was the hands that gave him away—spidery, fingertips twitching as if they longed to roll slippery blood between them, the calluses blackened no matter how much he oiled and perfumed them.

His flat dark gaze dropped to Vianne’s chest, where the Aryx hung. The avidity of his expression brought a rush of boiling to my head.

No man should look at her so.

“Garonne di Narborre.” Clear and crisp, a carrying tone she must have learned at Court.

“As you see.” He swept her a bow, but his gaze did not stray from her chest. I took a single step forward, but Adersahl’s hand appeared around my elbow like a conjure-trick, and he squeezed.

Hard.

“
D’mselle
di Rocancheil—” di Narborre began, and the oily self-satisfaction in his tone alarmed me. The offal-eating pet of d’Orlaans
never
sounded so happy—unless the prey was fair caught, with no chance of escape.

“Silence.” She made a slight movement, and the incredible happened.

Garonne di Narborre choked. The charm was a simple one—Court sorcery, to steal the breath from a man. Twas meant to be transient; it required far too much force and concentration to maintain for longer than a few moments.

Yet maintain it she did, the Aryx ringing and the rest of them curiously motionless, perhaps shocked. This was, no doubt,
not
the way they expected this interview to pass.

Di Narborre’s knees folded. He clawed at his throat, and the Damarsene tensed to a man, sensing something amiss. The one closest to me—a stocky man with the red-raven hair common among them, his mustache waxed and his hand at his rapier’s hilt—had far more presence of mind than most, and I lunged forward a split moment before he had committed himself. The knifehilt at his belt smacked into my palm, the blade serving me far better than him at this moment, and I had his belt slashed with a twist of my wrist. Shoved him,
hard
, and the rapier rang free—but in my hand, not his. Adersahl had drawn as well, and I was briefly both thankful and disappointed that Jierre was not at my side.

He would have enjoyed the challenge.

“Ah, no,
sieurs
.” I showed my teeth as Vianne made another slight movement, di Narborre’s knees hitting the carpeting as he began taking in great heaving gasps. “My Queen did not give you leave to move.”

The substance of a threat must be such that the first among equals does not dare to test it. With di Narborre neatly immobilized, the rest were unsure. I marked di Vantcris as the one most likely to give us some trouble, and the Damarsene I had so neatly disarmed as the likeliest among his fellows as well. So I moved to the side, a light swordsman’s shuffle, and Adersahl moved forward as if directed to do so.

It was gratifying to see he still followed my lead.

“Murderer.” Vianne’s right hand was half-lifted. Slender fingers held just
so
, threads of Court sorcery woven among them, ribbons sparking silvery as the Aryx flamed with light.

“No… more… than
him
,” di Narborre choked, and he was staring at me instead of at my Queen. I did not seek to hold his gaze. “Orders. Given.”

“Oh, I know your orders.” Bitter as
kupri
-weed, she laughed. “
Make certain none still live.
Those were your orders for Arcenne too, I wager. And for Risaine. Is it so easy to kill, then,
sieur
?”

Risaine?
Then I knew—the hedgewitch noblewoman in the Shirlstrienne, slain once di Narborre realized she was not Vianne. My Queen had taken her death hard, as hard as the Princesse’s, though I wondered at why.

Di Narborre sucked in a whooping breath. The plummy shade of suffocation faded; more was the pity. “Ask d’Arcenne. Do you know what he did,
d’mselle
? He—”

I could have stood to see him choke for the rest of his life.

A single peremptory gesture, Vianne’s fingers fluttering. “I know what you would have me
think
he did.”

Di Narborre almost cowered. I will not lie—it gave me a great deal of pleasure to witness.

A very great deal indeed.

“Whatever he did, whatever you would have me think, matters little.” The Aryx rang under her words, and that thrill along my nerves returned, stronger than wine or
acquavit
. “Return to your master. Inform him you have seen me, and that a few Damarsene and some Graecan witchery will not save him from my wrath.
I
am the holder of the Aryx,
I
am the Queen, and you are forbidden my presence again, on pain of death.” She tilted her head. A pause stretched every nerve to breaking. “I will give you a gift to take back to Timrothe d’Orlaans, as well.”

The noise was massive, a welter of melody from the Aryx, screams and shouts and the coughing roar of flame from outside. The tent’s walls flapped, lines straining against a sudden wind. Heat roared through the hole behind us, and the rest of the tent burst into flame. The Damarsene shouted, wisely dropping to the ground; every d’Arquitaine, however, stayed bolt-upright, their knees locked.

Every one but Garonne di Narborre, who stared up at Vianne. The mocking smile was gone from his sharp hungry face, and he gaped as if he had never seen her before.