Oath of Fealty

3

Mikeli, crown prince of Tsaia, listened to his best friend, Juris Marrakai, joking with Mikeli’s cousin Rothlin Mahieran about the behavior of their younger brothers. Dinner this evening felt almost normal again, with his friends around him and the worst of the peril—his advisers had said—over. Fourteen days had passed since Kieri Phelan left for Lyonya, and nine since the paladin’s ordeal ended. For a full hand of days, the city had been in turmoil as city militia, nobles of the realm, and Marshals of Gird sought to find and destroy Liart’s followers.

He and his friends had wanted to take part, prove their courage, in those raids on the city’s underground lairs. Their elders had refused to risk them despite their protests. Instead, his friends had been kept at home to guard their families, while he and his younger brother had been confined to the palace, closely guarded. They’d all been told to stay close, be careful, be alert, report anything suspicious.

But finally the city quieted, and the High Marshals had declared it safe enough to relax some restrictions. Once more his friends were together, sharing a meal, as they had so often before. When the door opened, Mikeli expected servants to bring in the next course, but instead saw one of the palace guards escorting a man in Girdish blue and gray, a yeoman by his tunic, travel-stained and obviously near exhaustion.

“My lord prince,” the yeoman said, his voice hoarse with cold. “I bear urgent news.” He glanced around the table, as if uncertain which was the prince, then dug into a pouch and produced a crumpled scroll.

“Here,” Mikeli said. The man handed him the scroll and he unrolled and began reading. The words “well-armed troops … refused your order … Pargunese … magery … treason” sprang out at him. “Treason!” The word escaped before he could stop it; he heard the surprise, the horror, in his own voice. He forced himself to silence, and looked up, scanning the room. The startled faces of his dinner companions, their mouths open, stared back at him. Juris Marrakai, Rothlin Mahieran, Rolyan Serrostin, all dukes’ sons whose fathers sat on his Regency Council. Manthar Kostvan and Belin Destvaorn, counts’ sons whose fathers were also on the Council. He glanced at the messenger, noting the air of suppressed alarm.

“Treason?” That was Juris Marrakai, quick-eared and quick-witted as always. “Whose? Not Phelan’s, surely?”

“No.” Mikeli caught his imagination by the scruff of the neck, mastered his tongue, and tried to think how to say it. If he could say it at all to these, the friends he’d asked in for a quiet supper. The guilty party was also on his Regency Council.

“Not Phelan’s,” he said, this time more calmly. “Someone else, against us and against him. He was ambushed, but survived. The paladin reached him in time.” To the messenger: “Sir, your name, if you please?”

“Piter, my lord,” the messenger said. “Yeoman-marshal of Blackhedge.”

“Were you a witness to this?” Mikeli tapped the scroll.

“No, my lord. To make haste, it was passed hand to hand, like. But the Marshal, he had it from the other Marshal, who was there, and he told me some. It’s Gird’s grace—”

Mikeli held up his hand and the man fell silent. “Gentlemen,” he said to his friends, “this is grave news, and I must meet with those senior in the realm, your fathers among them. I must go at once—”

Juris Marrakai pushed back from the table. “Sir—Your Highness—if it is treason, you must not go unguarded—”

Mikeli tried for an easy laugh; it came out more as a cough. “I am hardly unguarded. The palace guard—”

“We are your friends,” Juris said. “You can’t leave us out; you can trust us—”

But could he? If a councilor could turn traitor, anyone might. He looked again at the papers—for now he saw there were two. One from Ammerlin, commander of the Royal Guard unit he had sent with Phelan, and one from Phelan himself. He held up his hand, and his guests stayed where they were, silent.

The second note, in Phelan’s clear, even script, said much the same, more briefly and pointedly.

As one king to another: treating him as fully adult, as an equal; that respect steadied his pulse. For the sake of both their realms. Long at peace, but for minor incursions along the northern border, Tsaia had trusted in the stability of its neighbors to east and west. If Lyonya fell, if he himself fell, both kingdoms would be in peril. Verrakai’s troops had used magery, Ammerlin said. Used the power of evil priests of an evil deity, the same who had tormented a paladin day after day beneath the city. Despite himself, the prince shivered. For a moment, he allowed the thought Why me? Why in my reign? but then thrust it aside. This was what kings did—dealt with whatever came. Kieri Phelan, thirty years his senior, believed he could do it: he must.

“What did you say to the captain of the guard?” he asked the messenger.

“Nothing, Your Highness. Never saw him. Just told the guard at the gate I had to see you, it was urgent, I had dispatches under the seal of Gird.”

Mikeli paused to order his thoughts. If he called out, someone would come, but in a bustle; time would be wasted. He had messengers here whom every palace guard knew.

“Manthar.” Manthar Kostvan stepped forward. “Take this note—” He scrawled rapidly, poured on hot wax, stamped it with his seal ring. “—to the officer of the guard. I want the palace gates closed to all—no one to enter or leave, no matter what rank. He must alert the palace guard inside, but quietly. We want no panic, no confusion in which someone might be missed. Then find your father and ask him to come to—” He paused. Meet where? Where was safe? Who else would he need? The Knights of the Bells, certainly. “In the Knight-Commander’s chambers, near the Grange Hall. I’m going there now. Go swiftly, but do not raise an alarm.” Manthar nodded and hurried out the door. “Belin.” Mikeli scrawled another note, and sealed it, as Belin nodded. “Escort Piter here to the steward, make sure he gets a meal and that someone takes charge of him, lest the traitor strike him down, then go for your father with the same message.” He handed Belin that note; Belin and the messenger left.

Mikeli looked at the three dukes’ sons still standing at his table. They all looked back, brows bunched a little as they tried to puzzle out what was going on.

“Gentlemen—you deserve to know what is amiss. Let me read this to you.” He read Ammerlin’s message, glancing up from line to line to gauge their reactions. Shock, horror, disgust, anger. When he finished, and let the scroll curl up, they burst into speech.

“I can’t believe they would—”

“After the paladin proved Duke Phelan—the king—was the king—”

“Even a Verrakai—”

“But what can we do?” Rolyan Serrostin, practical as ever, said it first.

“Are all your fathers in the palace this night?” Mikeli asked.

His cousin and Juris Marrakai nodded; Rolyan shook his head.

“My father isn’t far away,” he said. “He only went to have dinner with my great-uncle, a few streets west. I could fetch him—”

“There isn’t time,” the prince said. “And I’ve already ordered the gates closed. Roly, you stick with me. You two, go find your fathers.”

“You need more than one of us with you,” Juris Marrakai said. “My father’s dining with Duke Mahieran—Rothlin or I could find both—”

“I’ll go,” Rothlin said. “My father was going to take yours to the stable afterwards, to talk horses—you know how they are when they get started. I know which stall they’ll be hanging on the door of, if they’re not still at table.”

“I’ll stay, then,” Juris said.

“Tell your fathers I must meet them urgently,” the prince said. “If they are alone, tell them it’s a matter of treason, and who, but otherwise, only that it’s urgent. Go now, and quickly. If any of you come to the Knight-Commander’s chambers before I do, let him know there’s trouble and I’m on the way. Roly? Juris? Let’s go.”

“Not without arming,” Juris said, nodding to the prince’s private chambers.

In moments, Mikeli had belted on his sword and the young men had retrieved theirs from the racks. Roly and Juris each checked that their saveblades were in place. Roly’s, Mikeli remembered, was an ancient stone-bladed knife, supposedly brought all the way from Old Aare when his ancestors came over the sea. His own—he checked it—had been his father’s, given to him after his father’s death.

As they went into the passage, Mikeli felt his skin tighten on his body as if he had gone out in midwinter in summer clothes. For the first time in his life, he thought he knew how the older men felt, who had faced death. His training, he realized, had been only a shadow of the real thing. Kieri Phelan had been in danger, and so had others, but he himself had always been protected.

In the Knight-Commander’s chambers, they found Beclan Mahieran, Knight-Commander of the Bells, and Donag Veragsson, Marshal-Judicar of Tsaia, enjoying mulled wine and pipes and toasting their sock-clad feet before a crackling fire. Their damp boots stood propped on bootholds a careful distance from the hearth.

“You look grim, nephew,” Beclan said. He didn’t rise, but raised a hand in salute. “What’s amiss to bring three of you young rascals here this time of night?”

“There’s trouble,” Mikeli said. The two older men didn’t move, but for Beclan nodding at the other two chairs, an invitation to sit. “It’s serious,” Mikeli said. He didn’t want to sit down; he had to move, and strode to the far end of the room, to the table where Beclan kept a copy of the Code of Gird, before whirling and striding back. “It’s treason. We must raise the Order of the Bells, uncle, immediately.”

“Treason!” Both the older men sat up straighter at that. “What do you mean?” The Knight-Commander got it out first.

“A messenger arrived just now, from the east. Kieri Phelan was attacked by a contingent of Verrakai troops, joined with some from Pargun, and they used magery and had a priest of Liart—”

“But you gave a warrant of safe passage—and the Royal Guard escort—”

“This is from Sir Ammerlin,” Mikeli said, handing the larger scroll to the Knight-Commander. “And this from Phelan—” He handed that one to the Marshal-Judicar. As they read, he moved around the room, noting the sword rack with Beclan’s weapons, Donag’s belt and sword hung on a wall peg, the men’s damp cloaks hanging on adjoining pegs. They must have been out in the city together, he realized, checking what progress the Marshals had made in uncovering Thieves’ Guild hideouts and secret passages.

“Sit down, will you? My neck hurts having to follow you around.” Beclan rolled his head; the prince could hear the crackle. “Striding around in here won’t accomplish anything. What have you done so far?”

Mikeli threw himself into one of the chairs; his friends remained standing. “I was at dinner—” He told them what he had done. “And then I came here.”

“Good beginning. Though as we’ve been finding out, this palace isn’t as secure as it could be.”

“I suppose someone could come in over the walls—”

The Knight-Commander shook his head. “Not that way. Underground: it’s a warren, with some parts left from Gird’s day, additions and demolitions, no rational plan. I asked the steward to look into it, because I know some of the lads in training have secret passages to get from the barracks to the training hall and it occurred to me that the Thieves’ Guild would no doubt benefit by a way in. I never thought of one of the nobles—” He glanced at the other two. “Do they know who—?”

“Yes; I read them Ammerlin’s message. I didn’t tell Manthar and Belin.”

“Verrakai never liked Phelan,” Beclan said. “He always resented him, and I suppose it was just too much—but ignoring a royal pass—”

“I wonder if that family has held on to any of the old magery,” the Marshal-Judicar said. “That could be … difficult.”

“Illegal,” Beclan said. “But no one’s seen anything like that since the Girdish wars. Surely you don’t think they’ve managed to conceal it all this time?”

“My father says they had it longer than anyone,” Juris Marrakai said. “He said that’s why our families have always been at odds. We lost the magery early, and they didn’t—they scorned us for that. Said we’d intermarried with stupid peasants.”

“Leaving that aside,” the Marshal-Judicar said, “the question is what resources does Verrakai have here and now. Which of the family are in the palace now, tonight, and what Verrakai retainers—”

“Or agents,” the Knight-Commander said.

“Or agents. Which are here now, an immediate threat, and where might they be? I know the Duke maintains a house in Vérella; gods grant he’s there, and not here.”

“And gods grant he doesn’t yet know that we know, that the attack failed and we have a message from Ammerlin.” The Knight-Commander pulled his feet off the footstool with a sigh and looked around at his boots. “Not dry yet, I’ll wager … but the palace plans, such as they are, are up in the library—”

“I’ll go,” Serrostin said. “I know exactly where they are. Do you need anything else?”

The Knight-Commander sat back. “Yes, Rolyan, if you wouldn’t mind. The chapter secretary may still be somewhere about; if he is, ask him to attend me here. I don’t suppose another few minutes of warm feet will matter.”

“And beware,” the prince said. “We don’t know what the situation is, Roly, so be careful.”

“I will,” Rolyan said with a grin, patting the hilt of his sword.

In the quiet after Rolyan left, the prince wanted to leap up again and do something, anything. When would the other men come, those he was sure—almost sure—he could trust? How long would it take—how long had it been already? Just as he was ready to spring to his feet again, Juris Marrakai sat, with a sigh, in the other chair.

“I never liked Verrakaien, you know that, but I still have trouble believing any peer of the realm would act like this. Thieves, surely, but—”

“Those who follow evil gods become evil themselves,” the Marshal-Judicar said. He struggled out from under his lap robe, and padded sock-footed across to a cabinet. “We need sib, Knight-Commander; my mind at least is clouded by supper and wine; I’ll brew some.” He poured water from a jug into another warming can, and set that on the hearth, pushing it close to the fire with a poker, and poured in a packet of dried roots and herbs. He sat down, pulling the lap robe back over his legs. “You young men don’t feel the cold as much as we do, and you don’t get as fuzzled with a little mulled wine, either.”

“We have how many Verrakaien to worry about?” Beclan said. “The Duke, obviously, and his brother, who called that challenge on Phelan.”

“All of them,” Donag said, closing his eyes for a moment. “Your Highness, until they’ve been examined, we do not know how many still have, and use, the ancient magery, and if they do use it, with what purpose. It’s possible that more—even women and children—are as guilty as the Duke. You must issue an Order of Attainder.”

“The Council will have to approve,” the Knight-Commander pointed out. “The prince can’t issue an order like that without Council approval until he’s crowned.”

“Attainder!” Mikeli said. “It’s not the fault of the whole family if one person goes wrong—that’s what the Code of Gird says.” And the youngest Verrakai boy at court was a close friend of his own younger brother, Camwyn. Camwyn would be furious if Egan was imprisoned.

“The Code of Gird does not forbid attainder in cases of high treason, Your Highness,” said the Marshal-Judicar. “Your safe conduct was a direct order: defying your authority is sufficient. So is using magery in defiance of your orders. Every member of the family must be seized and examined; someone you did not suspect might start a rebellion.”

“Or assassinate you and your family,” the Knight-Commander said. “Treason is always a conspiracy; it’s too big a task for one man, and throughout history has been the work of groups.”

Mikeli wanted to jump up again but made himself sit still. Kings did not fidget.