The Usurper Read online

  'Ready, Seela?'

  'Do I have any choice?'

  'Do any of us?' he asked gently and offered his hand. Surprised by his courtly gesture, she accepted his touch.

  They rode in a carriage around the slope of Mount Mero to the palace. Piro was nervous about meeting King Merofyn and his daughter. Isolt had agreed to marry her brother, Lence, with no intention of honouring that betrothal. What sort of people were these Merofynians, who valued their word so lightly?

  The walk from carriage to feasting hall seemed endless. Jewel-bright mosaics covered the floor. Piro could feel the heat rising up from the tiles. The palace builders had harnessed Mulcibar's blessing by piping hot water from deep within the earth to run under the floor. Her people used Halcyon's blessing to provide hot bathing water, but they really could have done with under-floor heating, especially during the Rolencian winters.

  At last they came to the feasting hall. The air was heavy here with the scent of candles. A lapis lazuli mosaic of a beautifully stylised wyvern glittered on the wall behind the high table. From the king's table, two long tables ran out at right angles. Every seat was taken. Servants scurried about, answering summons.

  Piro's first impression was of a cage of exquisite birds, a multitude of chattering people and no forest of columns to obscure the hall's magnificence. How did the roof stay up? She looked up to discover great ribs running from the walls to points above her. The ceiling was so high it took her breath away.

  Someone laughed and her gaze was drawn to the feasters. They wore so much glittering jewellery, velvets, silks and feathered headdresses, that Piro felt under-dressed.

  She glanced to Dunstany. In his deep indigo robe with his iron-grey hair, he stood out stark and dark. Now she understood why he had dressed so simply.

  As they approached the high table, they drew nearer to Palatyne, who stood in front of King Merofyn recounting the battle for Rolencia. He broke off mid-sentence, seeing them.

  The noble scholar bowed low with an elegant sweep of his hand. 'My king.'

  Piro felt a tug on her skirt and realised she had been staring at the frail old man who had toppled her father's kingdom and brought them such misery. He wasn't at all what she expected, not arrogant, if anything he looked tired and cranky.

  Another tug on her skirt. She flushed and bowed her head, hands by her sides in the Rolencian manner, no fancy flourishes.

  'Dunstany,' a thin voice spoke. 'Like a black cat, you've returned unharmed.'

  The noble scholar lifted his head and so did Piro.

  Dunstany shrugged. 'You know what they say, a cat always lands on its feet.'

  'But you've been doing that for ninety-four years now.' The old man's eyes blazed. 'How do you do it?'

  'A by-product of Affinity, my king.' From his tone, Piro could tell they'd had this conversation before. 'Affinity affects different people in different ways.'

  The king sat back with a grimace. Used to being acknowledged by visiting nobles, Piro felt excluded but also relieved, because she could stand back and observe.

  Dunstany turned to Palatyne with the barest of nods. 'Overlord.'

  'Duke Palatyne,' he corrected, touching a large, official crest on his chest which rested amidst her family's royal emblems. Every time Piro saw the pendants, her stomach lurched as she was reminded of how her mother and father had died. How had Lence died? Would she ever know? He'd been so much larger than life, he and Byren. She could not imagine anything quenching the fire in them.

  'You.' Palatyne tugged Piro forwards.

  She lifted her chin determined not to let the grand palace, and its even grander people, overwhelm her.

  'And this, King Merofyn, is my gift to your beautiful daughter, a Rolencian nobleman's child for her very own seven-year slave.'

  Piro glanced to Palatyne, surprised by his easy lie. Then she recalled she wasn't supposed to understand Merofynian.

  She let her gaze meet King Merofyn's. This was the man who had assassinated her mother's young brother to steal the crown, relying on his cousinship to legitimise his claim.

  Her old nurse had always said you were born with the face the gods gave you, but you ended up with the face you deserved. If this was so, then King Merofyn had been a mean-spirited, angry man and now she thought she also read fear in his frail body. He sat on the great golden throne, behind the royal table, dwarfed by his mantle of office with its gleaming chains and seals.

  Originally, she had put him high on her list of people who needed killing. But, since overhearing Palatyne's plan to poison him and now, seeing him in person, she pitied the king.

  Next to him sat Isolt Merofyn Kingsdaughter. Her eyebrows had been plucked completely and her face powdered so that she was very pale. Kohl elongated her tilted black eyes and her mouth had been painted a glistening red, like a furled rose bud. With her high forehead and her hair pulled back under a circlet of silver, she looked like a perfect sculpture, not a living, breathing girl half a year older than Piro.

  'You do me great honour, Overlord Pal...' Isolt corrected herself, 'I mean Duke Palatyne.'

  Piro felt a little kick of delight. If she was not mistaken, Isolt's slip had been deliberate, to remind Palatyne of his origins beyond the Divide. Piro studied Isolt. Was this kingsdaughter a kindred spirit?

  No, she couldn't be, not when she held her honour so lightly.

  Palatyne's jaw clenched, but he said only, 'The Lady Seela is at your service, Isolt.' No title for her.

  'Seela? That is a Merofynian name. Does she speak Merofynian?'

  'No. Rolencian only,' Palatyne said. 'These Rolencians imitate their betters but do not have the scholarship to learn another language. How many can you speak, Isolt Kingsdaughter?'

  This was a clumsy attempt at flattery and Piro thought Isolt agreed with her, because her answer was barely civil.

  'As many as I need to.' She added in only slightly accented Rolencian, 'Come stand behind my chair, lady Seela.'

  Palatyne gave Piro a nudge and she climbed the step onto the dais, going around the table.

  Isolt did not meet Piro's eyes or acknowledge her and Piro realised that, as a slave, she was invisible, yet right behind the throne. Dunstany was right, she could go anywhere in the palace and all she had to say was that she was on Isolt Kingsdaughter's business for the guards to let her pass.

  While Palatyne went on to boast of his success, Dunstany took his seat at the end of the high table. Between the Power-worker and the king were eleven nobles - men and women who had risen to power with the king, Piro suspected, usurping the nobles loyal to her mother's family. This was surprising, as she would have expected the noble scholar to have wormed his way closer into the king's inner circle of advisers.

  Palatyne came around to sit on the king's left hand. On his side were three young nobles she recognised from the voyage, and the Utlander. Here was another layer of new allegiances. Clearly, there was a struggle for power between the older nobles who supported King Merofyn and the ambitious young ones who were eager for power at Palatyne's side. And what did Dunstany do?

  She glanced his way, catching him watching her.

  He sat back and waited. He was a survivor.

  During the long meal Piro wriggled her toes in her fancy new shoes, while she observed the nobility and royalty of Merofynia. Now that she was bored, her stomach rumbled and she wished she had eaten earlier.

  The king, his daughter and Palatyne all had their own food tasters. They ate nothing that their tasters did not. If this was an elegant high court, then she was glad she had grown up in Rolenhold where King Rolen did not worry about poison and sometimes wandered into the kitchen to help himself to a slab of leftover apple pie.

  Sorrow stung Piro's eyes, but grief served no purpose. Revenge was better. She almost laughed. Here she stood, inside the palace, within a body's length of the men who had orchestrated the downfall of her father's kingdom, and no one knew who she was.

  Dunstany thought she was spying for him
, but she had her own plans.

  Fyn studied the sky, hoping for clouds to obscure the betraying multitude of stars.

  'No such luck.' Bantam said, voicing his thoughts. 'Under starlight the ship stands out like a cockroach on a silver plate!'

  Fyn turned back to the approaching Utlanders. 'They're -'

  'Closer still,' Bantam agreed. 'They'll be on us by midnight.'

  Fyn swallowed. To die out here, when Byren needed him... 'We're tacking across the wind. Can't we ride before it like we were doing?'

  Bantam grinned. 'We'll make a sailor of you yet. We're tacking because the cap'n's changed course. We're heading towards the Skirling Stones.'

  He drew Fyn with him to a better vantage point and gestured by way of explanation.

  When Fyn stared in the direction he'd indicated, he was able to make out jagged black rocks, jutting out of the sea. 'What good's that? They'll just follow us.'

  'Into the Skirling Stones? Into a maelstrom of seething water, reefs of razor-sharp rocks and whirlpools?' Bantam mocked. 'No one in their right mind would venture into the Skirling Stones.'

  Fyn just stared at him. Why hadn't anyone warned him sea-hounds were mad?

  'You think we're crazy, don't you, little monk? And we would be, if the cap'n hadn't done this before. He's a true artist, able to feel his way through channels, against tides and over reefs. He knows his way through the Skirling Stones.'

  'Why? Why go there in the first place?'

  'We're sea-hounds, boy. Ostron Isle pays a bounty for every Utland raider we destroy. But it's hard to catch them unawares on the open sea.' He tilted his head. 'Back home where I grew up, there were spiders big as sparrows. They'd build a trap by digging into the soil and disguise it with bits of twig and bark, so that it looked like a bit of ordinary ground. When an unwary beetle came by, they'd dart out and snatch it. That's a bit like the cap'n's plans. No one expects attack from within the Skirling Stones.'

  'That's clever.' Fyn began to hope. 'How many times have you done this?'

  Bantam hesitated for a single heartbeat. 'Just the once, to see if it could be done. But the plan's a good one.'

  Fyn's heart sank. He'd failed his family, he'd failed the abbot and now it looked like he would die and fail Byren.

  Byren arrived at the hidden loyalist camp to find another two maimed youths being treated alongside young Vadik. Equal parts anger and frustration boiled through him, making it hard to accept Esfira's thanks as she hugged her crippled son. At least Vadik was no longer feverish.

  Leaving the injured men in the care of Dovecote's stable-master, who was the closest thing they had to a healer, Byren went looking for Orrade. This camp had grown around the survivors of Dovecote Estate, people Orrade had led into the hills to escape the Merofynian invasion. Byren needed to know how many more families had arrived since then, how many were warriors and what food and weapons they had.

  Clearly reassured to have Byren back, people came up to him, eager for news, eager for words of encouragement. They'd lost homes and loved ones to the invasion and they looked to him to right these wrongs. He felt the weight of their expectation.

  Hiding his fears, he paused, exchanging a word here and there as he made his way up to the cave Orrade shared with what remained of Byren's honour guard.

  These were the younger sons of lords and wealthy merchants, who had remained true to Byren when Cobalt tried to destroy his reputation by claiming that Byren sought to usurp Lence's claim to the throne. As evidence Cobalt had provided the lincurium rings and pendant, which Byren had found and had made up for his parents and Lence's betrothed. But the really damning evidence was a poem he'd written to Elina, his Dove. Cobalt had twisted the poem's meaning, claiming it was addressed not to Orrade's sister, but to Orrade himself.

  Tonight, there was no sign of Orrade in the cave. Winterfall and Chandler greeted him jovially, pulling him over to the fire circle where a thin soup bubbled. Byren felt indebted to his four remaining honour guard, so he sat and chatted about what they'd seen and heard on their way here.

  Byren accepted a bowl as they spoke of better times. No one mentioned Cobalt's accusations and, after a while, they fell silent so that only the fire's crackling filled the cave.

  'I wish -' young Wafin began, then broke off. He was fifteen, around the same age as Orrade's brother Garzik.

  Byren felt a familiar stab of guilt over Garzik's death. It helped him to be patient with the youngster. 'What do you wish, Wafin?'

  'I wish I knew if my mother and little brother were all right,' he said.

  Chandler made an abortive gesture, too late to cut Wafin off. And everyone winced, glancing to Byren, reminded of his losses.

  'I'm sorry -' Chandler began.

  Byren silenced him with a wave of his hand as he held Wafin's gaze. 'All you can do is place your trust in the Goddess Halcyon to protect them in this world, or keep them safe in the next.' He said the words, but he didn't believe it. He'd called on Halcyon to help him warn his family, and look what had happened. No, he believed a man made his own luck. Restless, he came to his feet. 'Where's Orrie?'

  'Probably up at the Narrows' cave,' Winterfall said. He stood up and walked Byren to the entrance. 'Look, I didn't object when Orrie left Old Man Narrows in charge. He was more experienced than me, but you should do something about that daughter of his. She thinks she's as good as any man.'

  Byren hid a smile. 'Up and around the bend, you say?'

  Winterfall nodded and went back to the fire circle.

  Byren headed off. Florin's unconventional attitude was the least of his worries. With so many people living in close quarters and no proper sanitation, next thing he knew there'd be sickness, claiming the few healthy warriors he had. He could have really used an abbey healer to set up a proper village.

  Mind you, with the Merofynians' policy of deliberate cruelty, he didn't know how long he could trust the Rolencian valley people to hide the camp's location. Would the threat of maiming and death succeed, where a bag of gold had failed?

  It was all very well to say his people were loyal, but what choice had little Vadik had?

  As he approached the cave, he heard Florin's laughter. Pausing in the shadows at the entrance, Byren spotted Orrade and Florin playing a children's game. Red stones and black moved in patterns on a makeshift chequerboard.

  Since Dovecote had fallen and Orrade's father, sister and brother had been killed, Byren hadn't seen Orrade let down his guard like this. Although his friend was now Lord Dovecote and Florin was the daughter of a tradepost keeper, events had stripped them of these distinctions, leading them to a cave in a hidden loyalist camp and a game of strategy.

  'There!' With a flourish, Florin cleared the board, winning most of his pieces. 'Next time don't underestimate me.'

  'Oh, I'd never underestimate you,' Orrade said, a cheeky grin on his narrow face.

  Florin pulled back. 'Are you flirting with me, Orrie? Because I'll tell you now, I don't flirt. I don't play silly games. I say what I think.'

  'I know,' Orrade said, lowering his voice. Byren edged closer. If his friend had developed an interest in Florin, it would save them both heartache. 'And that's why -'

  So fixed was he on the pair by the fire, that Byren didn't notice the bundle of spare fire wood. He brushed against it, toppling the wood and interrupting Orrade.

  Florin turned, saw him and sprang to her feet. 'You're back. I saved you some potato and leek soup.'

  Orrade put the game away in the shadows of the cave, where Leif, Florin's little brother, slept.

  'Soup sounds good,' Byren said, as though he hadn't just devoured a bowl of the same soup back at his honour guard's cave. He accepted it with thanks and they took their places by the fire.

  'When I saw young Vadik and the others...' Florin could not go on, her strong hands clenched on her knees, knuckles white with anger. 'It's cruel. It's wrong -'

  'It's war,' Orrade said. 'If you want to win, you can't afford to be soft.'
>
  Florin's gaze flew to Byren's face and he felt moved to protest.

  'War doesn't have to turn men into animals, Orrie.'

  'Who wins?' Orrade countered. 'The lamb or the leogryf?'

  'We're men, not animals,' Byren repeated. 'We make choices. Leaders make choices and people follow them because of those choices. Palatyne rules with fear. I won't be that kind of king.' He dunked the flat bread in the soup, tearing off a chunk and swallowing it. Last season's onions made it tasty. 'If I offered a reward for the head of every Merofynian warrior, I'd be no better than Palatyne. I might win, but I'd start my rule under a shadow of cruelty.'

  Orrade met his eyes, deliberately not pointing out that his father, King Rolen the Implacable, had been ruthless, executing the Servants of Palos who had tried to put the king's illegitimate half-brother on the throne.

  Unaware of this unspoken interchange, Florin took the empty bowl. 'See, Orrie, Byren's right.'

  'I stand corrected,' Orrade said. But there was a smile in his eyes as he met Byren's gaze.

  And Byren felt an answering smile tug at his lips. It had always been like this between them. Was he selfish to keep Orrade by him, when he knew his friend's true feelings?

  Orrade looked away first. Then he stood and stretched, yawning as he scratched his belly. Florin would see it as perfectly natural. Byren saw it for the act it was.

  'I'm for bed,' Orrade muttered. 'Coming, Byren?'

  He looked down. Since they were lads on their first spar campaign, they slept side by side, sharing the same blanket. If Byren didn't go back to that cave and stretch out next to Orrade, his honour guard would have reason to suspect there was something in Cobalt's vile accusations. But, now that he knew Orrade's true feelings, he didn't want to sleep, spooned against his friend. 'I'll be down soon as I finish another bowl.'

  Florin smiled and served him more soup as Orrade nodded and headed off, leaving him virtually alone with her. It didn't worry Byren, for Florin had spoken the truth. Unlike the girls back at Rolenhold, who had flirted with him and Lence and been only too eager to lift their skirts for King Rolen's twins, Florin didn't smile and cast him coy glances.