None of the soldiers standing guard in the hallways paid Dervas much mind as he walked out of the east wing into the courtyard. They were used to the folk in this castle taking midnight strolls along the battlements. The week of waiting for war to begin had worn the nerves of even the staunchest soldier.
He made his way towards the shadowy cleft between the fortress and the inner wall that surrounded it. Six of his personal escort, armed as he was, were waiting.
“The others?” he asked in a toneless whisper.
“Dispatched to their locations, my lord,” his captain replied. The other six men of his guard had their own tasks to perform this night.
“Then it is time.”
They entered the central building where the king was housed. When the battle began, the wide stone floor would be carpeted in rows of sleeping men at night. But for now, all the troops that did not fit in the overflowing barracks spent their nights in one of the encampments outside the fortress walls.
In the otherwise empty hall, six King’s Guard stood on duty. Two near the hallway leading to the east wing, two by the hallway to the west, and another two at the top of the stairs. All six watched Sebourne and his men with unblinking eyes as they entered.
“You two, come with me,” Lord Sebourne said to his men in a carrying voice. “The rest of you stay here. I won’t be but a few chimes.”
Leaving four of his guard to wait in the main hall, he and the other two jogged up the stone steps to the second level and the hallway that led to the king’s chambers.
The four guards downstairs sat on a table near the guards on the right of the room. Three of Sebourne’s men started a game of toss blade with a sheathed dagger—an old Celierian warrior’s game fashioned after the Fey Cha Baruk, the Dance of Knives. The fourth man started an easy conversation with the closest guards.
“I don’t know about you two, but I’m starting to wish the flaming Eld would just attack already,” he said. “I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since we got here.”
A clatter made both the guards and Lord Sebourne’s man glance around to find two of Sebourne’s fellows chasing after the sheathed dagger, which had skittered across the hall towards the other two King’s Guard.
“Vern, youdorn!”one of Sebourne’s men complained in a loud whisper. “You’re the flaming worst at this game. You can’t throw worth a damn.” The two reached the fallen dagger the same time Lord Sebourne reached the top of the stair.
“I can throw better than you cancatch!”The man called Vern raised his voice on the last word.
Lord Sebourne and his men sprang into action. The two men on the right of the hall sprang towards the two King’s Guard guarding the eastern corridor. The two chasing the dagger went for the west hall guards. Lord Sebourne and his two companions lunged for the pair at the top of the stairs. Daggers flew. Blades slashed. With their throats slit and chests pierced, the six King’s Guard died in a swift, near-soundless instant.
Sebourne and his two companions headed down the now-unguarded second-floor corridor while his other four men quickly dragged the limp corpses of the King’s Guard into an empty chamber.
Dorian sat at the small camp desk he’d unpacked and set up in his bedchamber. He would have used the larger desk in the adjoining chamber, but his valet, Marten, was sleeping on the chaise in there.
“Just think of me like a faithful hound, guarding his master’s door,” Marten had said with a smile when Dorian objected. Had there been a dressing room, Marten would have slept there on a cot, as he did in Celieria City; but Kreppes was an ancient castle, built for war, not fashionable living, and it lacked many of the amenities of newer abodes.
Dorian sanded the damp ink of his third letter to Annoura in as many days. She hadn’t answered him yet. Though some part of him had hoped she would, another part hadn’t really expected her to. Still, in the small bells of the night, when he couldn’t sleep, it comforted him to write to her, to pour out his heart to her as he so often had in their many years together, to imagine her face softening in a smile as she read his tender words.
When the ink was dry, he folded the letter and lit a stick of Celierian blue sealing wax off the flame of his candle lamp, holding it over the folded flap. As the drops of melted wax splashed on the folded vellum, forming a small pool of Celierian blue, he heard the bedroom door open.
“I’m sorry if I woke you, Marten,” he said without looking up. He pressed his letter seal into the pool of wax and held it for a moment to let the impression set. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“You didn’t.” The voice didn’t belong to Marten.
Dorian’s head whipped around. “Sebourne? What are you doing—” His words cut off abruptly. His hands clapped to his throat, found the small dart, plucked it free. Poison. Potent and fast-acting. Already his muscles were failing, and he couldn’t seem to take a breath.
“Avenging my son,” Sebourne hissed. He stared into his king’s stunned and disbelieving eyes and rammed his sword home, driving the blade up underneath Dorian’s ribs to pierce his heart. “Your kingdom belongs to Eld now. Before this week is out, your son will be as dead as mine. Your wife and the child she carries will be servants of the High Mage, and I will be Lord Governor of Celieria, the newest province in the Empire of Eld.”
Cannevar Barrial knew he should sleep. His body was aching. His eyes were raw and bleary. He would be no use to the king or the allies if the enemy struck when he was too tired to lift a blade. He knew that, but except for a few chimes of restless dozing, true, restful sleep had eluded him all night.
His mind was filled with too many memories of Talisa. He could hardly close his eyes without seeing her tear-stained face, her despair, without reliving the shocking moment of her death, when she’d leapt between her husband and a red Fey’cha blade to save her lover. Even now, Cann could feel the strike of the blade as if it had hit his own heart rather than his daughter’s back.
Ah, gods. He sat up and covered his face with his hands. He wanted to rail against her death. To believe it had never happened. But he was too much a man of the north. Too much a lord of the borders. He’d seen too much death—and worse—to wallow in grief-stricken denial.
He rose from the soft, feminine bed covered with plush, furlined silk comforters in shades of wintry blue and tender spring green. Severn and Parsis had thought him a fool for taking Talisa’s suite after offering his own to King Dorian, for torturing himself with her memory. Only Luce had understood. Luce, Cann’s wild, sweet, fey child, with eyes that saw more than most. Almost a man now, and so like his mother. Luce realized that his father needed these memories of Talisa’s life to make peace with the memory of her death.
He crossed the room to stand beside Talisa’s delicate carved dressing table. The table was all-girl, painted creamy white and laid out with brushes, combs, perfumes, and all manner of womanly mysteries. His hand closed around the pot of perfumed cream Parsis had given her for this past year’s Feast of Winter’s End. Cann unscrewed the lid and lifted the jar to his face, breathing in the delicate aroma of Talisa’s favorite flowers—the scent he would forever remember as hers. Bright, warm, sweeter than a spring morning. His eyes squeezed shut. His heart squeezed tight. But as he breathed the scent, he could see her face, alight with laughter, as she and the other maidens from Kreppes and the surrounding villages had danced around the Spring Tree, weaving brightly colored ribbons around the pine pole’s carved scenes of winter, trailing flowers in their wake as they went. Such a good day. Such a happy, happy day.
He breathed the perfume again, trying to fix that memory in his mind. When he thought of her, he wanted to remember that—not the other sight that hurt so much.
