The Royal Thorns stopped Clarencio outside the drawn curtains of the box. They left the cripple his walking stick, which was either bad practice or an acknowledgement that the search for weapons was nothing more than a formality. Anyone hoping to attack the King of Night would be turned by that selfsame sovereign into a fine spray of blood and flesh.
Inside, King Hazerial was seated on the divan at the center of the viewing gallery, a bloodslave hovering emptily in the shadows and a cloaked man along the wall.
At first, Clarencio thought the man was another of the Royal Thorns. Then he saw those unnerving gold eyes.
“Lord Clarencio.” The king motioned for him to take the chair at his side. The former Thorn was given no more attention than the service table holding the wine goblets. Like bloodslaves, Thorns and tables were all only tools, after all. Barely human.
The barely human’s gold glare purposefully ignored Clarencio’s.
The disgraced former Thorn was looking worse for the wear. Gaunt. Older. Shadows in the face. Standing on two good legs, though. No doubt jogging up and down stairs on them. Fencing. Riding. Walking anywhere he pleased without sudden twinges or spasms that nearly drove him to the ground.
Clarencio took the indicated seat beside the king and stretched out his leg. That felt like an admission of weakness, but it was also an unfortunate necessity. The adrenaline from the fight in the corridor had worn off, and a deep, painful burn had taken up residence in the back of his thigh, heralding the cramps that would soon begin twisting the muscle into knots.
The crowd in the pit house cheered and laughed as, below, an enormous wolf tore the throat from a man half-transformed into a bear. The dyrewolf lapped up the bloody stream while the half-man half-bear took his last struggling breaths. Spectators threw back their heads and howled to the rafters in triumph with the wolf as if they were the ones whose muzzles dripped strings of gore and slobber.
“A local favorite,” the king explained. “And a prime example of the enjoyment these beasts take from their sport.”
Clarencio had heard the assertion that dyre were cannibalistic monsters who lived to fight and would kill one another whether they were in or out of the pit houses more times than he could count. Those arguments rarely took into account the ones who lived in peace with their clans until they were captured and those who died in the arena rather than attack their fellow dyre for the entertainment of the Children of Night.
“There are killers in every race,” Clarencio said, glancing the Thorn’s way again.
“In every strong race, certainly.” The king snapped his fingers and indicated the goblets on the table between their seats.
The bloodslave padded forward, poured the wine, then melted into the background again. Ragged bare feet, empty eyes, spotless white slave’s garb. She looked young, perhaps the same age as the boys Clarencio had just thrashed, but there was no telling how long she had been a bloodslave. Aging stopped with enthrallment, that and everything that made one human—thought, speech, progress, aspiration.
“We are told there is a motion in the Hall to levy standing armies for the war in the north,” the king said. “If it passes, they will be put under commanders in the king’s army and used to bolster numbers where the Helat have inflicted the most casualties.”
“Your Majesty is well-informed,” Clarencio said, bracing himself. Was the king finally about to demand he “aid the crown” by getting the motion passed? Clarencio had been arguing against signing over local armies to the crown ever since Zinote, the father of the king’s new daughter-in-law, had proposed it weeks before. The majority of the lords, whose small holdings barely supported more than a knight or two, cared little one way or the other and were voting the way their allies voted.
“Upon the next assembly, we wish you to block the motion,” Hazerial said.
Clarencio blinked, certain he’d heard the king wrong. “You want me to argue against the levy?”
“It will pass eventually, but we wish you to stall it. Keep it from passing until after Autumnlight. Wasn’t that part of your argument against it? That the men will soon be needed at home for the harvest?”
And that the crown already held too much power without seizing men-at-arms from the lords they had sworn fealty to. But Hazerial would know that as well.
Was he being set up to look like a pennant on a windy day, unable to decide which way to blow? Or was this to show the other lords that House Mattius belonged to the king, jumping whenever Hazerial told him to jump?
Here they were, discussing the matter in full view of anyone in the round who cared to look up, and clearly visible to the majority of the noble boxes. Indeed, several of the aristocratic set seemed more interested in the king’s box than in the fight below.
“Forgive my ignorance, Your Majesty, but I don’t understand why you wish me to block the motion. Adding standing armies to the king’s will strengthen your presence, and making the men answerable to the crown alone will cut down on conflicting orders from multiple lords’ field commanders.” These were the main two legs Zinote was propping the motion up on.
“You’re Josean-blessed,” Hazerial said. “Surely you can appreciate that the path to ultimate victory is rarely simple.”
Rarely simple, but even more rarely littered with poor tactics.
“This delay will cost us nothing and has the potential to gain everything.” The king sipped his wine. “You will block it until the harvest. Now, as for the reason we summoned you.”
Clarencio glanced at the former Thorn again, the only survivor of the three young men his father had grafted. Funny how he’d never considered it before, but Clarencio was the last survivor of three as well—still limping around with his father long dead in the Cinterlands Massacre and his sister soon after. If they had a mind to, the ruined pair of survivors could spend many an hour pointing fingers of blame at one another.
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“The time has come to prove whether you are truly an asset to the crown,” Hazerial said. “This matter is of the utmost secrecy, but if you are successful, we will reduce the contracted time before you wed our daughter. From ten years down to five.
“She finds the pit houses distasteful as well, Kelena. It seems she has no stomach for watching any beast torn apart.” The king smiled sidelong at Clarencio. “The two of you may be better matched than you anticipated.”
It didn’t bode well that His Majesty was placing the carrot so far before the stick. But the girl’s wide, panicked eyes as her mother forced her into the deep dungeon beneath Blazing Prairie still had the power to make Clarencio sick at heart these many months later. The child sobbing in the midst of that hell of blood and darkness.
Clarencio realized he was massaging the cramp in his leg. He scowled and folded his hands atop his walking stick.
“If it is right and within my ability, I will see it done,” he promised.
Hazerial smiled. “It is our belief that you are the one member of our court whose convictions best align with this commission. We wish you to open communication with the Helat.”
Now Clarencio knew he’d misheard. “Your Majesty?”
“You will proclaim yourself our emissary to the Children of Day. The war has gone on too long, too many lives lost, a relic of ancient times that must be buried and forgotten to move on. We are certain you can convince them to begin talks of peace between our nations.”
The back of his leg seared. Clarencio shifted, trying to lessen the pain. Stall the vote against strengthening the crown’s army with his own, send secret communications to the enemy. Sure, and why not assign him to attempt a public assassination of the king while he was at it?
“Your Majesty, what is the ultimate goal of this communication?”
“One day, perhaps, lasting peace.” Hazerial chuckled, a sound as cold as frozen bones splintering. “We realize, however, that such a thing is unlikely to be accomplished in a single dispatch, no matter how convincing you are. Our hope is that the Helat will eventually agree to establish a royal ambassador of Night in the Kingdom of Day. A nobleman bound to honor and high ideals, who speaks with the voice of his king. Duke Clarencio of House Mattius, husband of the king’s only daughter.”
Better known as Clarencio, the traitor to the crown, executed for conspiring with the Helat and claiming himself equal with the king.
“Come now.” Hazerial gestured to the dyre tearing one another apart below. “You view those beasts as human, but not the race that sprang from the same loins as Khinet? The Helat are our brothers. Can there ever truly be peace in a world where brother fights brother?”
Someone had been reading archives of Lord Paius’s old speeches. The king smiled, daring Clarencio to call attention to the borrowed words of the dead man.
Clarencio sipped his wine. If he was going to be executed for a traitor, he would get what he could out of the deal on his way to the noose.
“Your Majesty knows the issues close to my heart,” he said. “But five years is still a long time to put off an heir.”
The king gave him a knowing smile. “The night you receive word from the Helat that they will accept an emissary, we will consider Kelena’s training finished. The wedding will take place immediately.”
“Then I will begin at once.”
“Draft the letters yourself, Clarencio. No secretaries are to be privy to this matter.”
Of course not. The more eyes and ears, the more people who could exonerate him when the accusations began flooding in.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Hazerial beckoned the former Thorn from his place on the wall.
“Your messenger,” the king said. “We are told he can carry missives through the lines without being seen.”
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Clarencio said, locking eyes with the man who had crippled him and killed his sister. “Sneaking around is a particular skill of his.”
***
The interior of the House Mattius carriage was sweltering, an oven raging in the heat of the Siu Patanal sun. Before Clarencio even dropped onto the seat, sweat was dripping from his chin and pasting his clothing to his skin.
Gritting his teeth, he hammered on his leg until the monstrous spasm that had seized it calmed to a tolerable level of torture.
When he could speak again, he muttered, “Still alive, are you?”
Saint Daven shrugged. “Maybe not much longer, if the rumors are true about the Helat and blood magic.”
“Did you volunteer?”
“What do you think?”
The carriage rolled down the streets, lurching over every uneven cobblestone, and sending jags of lightning up Clarencio’s leg and into his back. He scowled across at the silent Thorn.
Saint Daven pinned back the window cover, allowing in a gasp of air. Summer sunlight glared into the carriage with it. Clarencio had to fight the urge to snap at the Thorn to shut the window cover.
“Ambassador to the Helat, at the king’s request?” Saint Daven said. “Lord Paius wouldn’t know what to think.”
“I’m not sure I do, either,” Clarencio admitted.
“Mitchi would like it. I suppose ambassadors attend a ball or a feast every night?”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Excuse my impertinence, your lordship.” The Thorn sketched an apologetic seated bow. “The Lady Michiala spoke highly of the gaiety of court life to her father’s Thorns.”
“If one Thorn in particular had been professional enough to do nothing but talk, she would be here to enjoy court for herself.”
Saint Daven had one of those jaws too sharp to hide anything. He went back to staring out the window, a traitorous muscle ticking in the hollow of his cheek.
“If I’d known having a child would kill her, I never would have touched her.”
“Michiala was a child herself,” Clarencio shot back.
Saint Daven huffed a humorless laugh. “I was two years younger than she was.” Gold eyes glaring out the window. Muscle ticking. “Your father gave us his blessing.”
Clarencio ground his teeth as the carriage crashed through a rut. Hounded by the pain in his leg, by the pain in his chest. Hounded by the ghosts crowding the air around them.
“My father, who adored and sheltered his baby girl all her life, approved of her being impregnated by a boy he stole from Thornfield?”
Tick, tick went that sinew in the cheek. “Almost sounds like you actually cared about his lordship. Pretty convincing for a blood traitor.”
“You will never understand the love and respect I had for my father,” Clarencio said, strangling the walking stick with his hands. “Nor will you ever understand what it cost me to turn him in.”
“Don’t talk to me about costs.” Tick, tick. “Ever had your soul shattered serving a man who should have been king? Ever killed your brothers by the dozen to protect him?”
“And yet here you sit, alive and well, while he and my sister molder in the ground.”
“My child, too, in case you forgot.”
“Don’t you dare play the injured party with me!” Clarencio snapped. “While you were rotting in the dungeons beneath Castle Sangmere, I kept the priests from sacrificing your child to the strong gods. I watched her try to breathe, saw her little body fight and struggle and fail. I buried my niece and her mother. Alone, on the leg you maimed, I buried what was left of my ruined house, and I’ve been fighting to rebuild it ever since.”
Silenced, the former Thorn sat back in his seat, sweating and glaring at the lord.
The lord glared back, sweating and clenching his teeth against another hellish spasm rolling up his thigh. The pain was never as bad as when he was around the man who had caused it.
The carriage lumbered around a corner and down the blistering street, coming to a stop at House Mattius’s Siu Patanal residence.
“Now here we both sit,” Saint Daven muttered. “Alive and well.”
Clarencio exhaled. He looked out the window at the townhouse and thought of the unwritten letter to the kingdom’s sworn enemy and the inquisition’s cell awaiting the traitor commissioned to pen it.
“Maybe not for much longer,” he conceded.