Lord of Wind and Fire, Book Two:
The Crow Queen
The Crow Queen crouched in darkness, feeling the cool whisper of a breeze touch her cheek. The plants that grew in the garden stirred restlessly with the wind, the soft scrape of their large leaves against one another enough to cover the faint sound of her steps. The stone wall of the mansion in the heart of the garden lay to her left, half-hidden beneath climbing vines. A torch flickered wildly above a recessed entrance onto the lower floor. A quick motion of one hand, and the light died.
A soft oath came from within the recess. A guard stumbled out, fumbling in the darkness for tinder and flint. Only a few moments later, he succeeded in restoring the comforting light of the torch. Cursing the wind and the night, he went back to his station and took a sip from the cup of mulled wine waiting there for him, having never seen the slender figure that had slipped in and out while he was otherwise occupied.
Within moments the guard was slumped on the floor, a thin rivulet of wine trailing like blood from his dropped cup. The Crow Queen stepped over him, pausing only long enough to ransack his belt for keys. She would return them before she left, and no one would ever be the wiser, not even the guard who would awake the next morning with a splitting headache and no recollection of the previous night.
“You take too many risks,” Yozerf had said once, his voice angry and bitter. “Dead men cannot remember your face. Why don’t you just kill them and be done with it?”
“Finesse,” she had replied disdainfully. To spare the lives of the guards and servants who unwittingly crossed her path—that was the mark of the professional.
He had not said anything—had not needed to for her to know that he believed it the mark of a fool.
The door into the mansion yielded to one of the keys from the guard’s belt. The Crow Queen ghosted up the stair inside, her passage barely a flicker of black amidst deeper darkness. She’d heard rumors that claimed she could hide the shadow cast by a poker, and the conceit had pleased her. She wished it were true.
Most of the mansion slept, except for the few guards set about the perimeter. Their master had no true fear in him, believing that his wealth would be enough to keep him safe, and so the Crow Queen found herself able to move unimpeded through his home. Following the route she had memorized, she came at last to the door of his study.
As his wife had promised, he was up late, scribbling in his ledgers. The flames of the candles might have bent slightly as the door at his back opened noiselessly, but if so he never noticed. The Crow Queen’s boots made no sound on the sumptuous Undish carpets that covered the floor. No premonition of danger caused him to look up or shift position.
Her gloved hand knotted in his hair, jerking his head back hard. A curved knife sharpened to a lethal edge sliced through jugular and windpipe before he had a chance to cry out. A torrent of blood splashed across the papers on his desk, obliterating whatever had been written there. His eyes went wide with shock, and his hands scrabbled helplessly at the terrible wound in his throat for a moment before his life bled out. Then he slumped in the chair, the look of surprise still stamped across his features.
So many of them looked surprised, and it never ceased to annoy her. She wondered if the gods would tell him that his wife had hired an assassin to kill him after he had raped their daughter on her tenth birthday. Chances were he would still miss the point.
A few sestarrii gleamed golden amidst the papers and blood, and she took them without guilt. Let the city watch believe that he had been murdered during a robbery. They would never learn the truth anyway.
* * *
She had only walked three streets away from the mansion when the wizard found her.
One moment, the night was empty, silent except for the near-noiseless whisper of her feet on the cobblestones. The next...there was something more to the shadows, as if they had gained a weight and depth that they had previously lacked. She froze instantly, all her senses attuned to the night around her, straining to unravel any possible nuance.
White robes caught the faint light of torches locked beyond manor gates; the flames turned them red, as if they had been washed in blood. Between the ivory bristle of beard and hair, his face looked dark, his expression lost to her. “I have come to ask of you...a favor,” he said.
The Crow Queen slowly rose from the defensive crouch she had dropped into, but her daggers remained in her hands. Not that they would defend her against magic, she thought bitterly.
“What do you want, Ax?” she asked, her voice as cold and expressionless as she could make it.
“To retain your services.”
“No.”
He chuckled softly. “You have not even heard my offer yet.”
“I don’t need to.” She would have walked away, if she’d trusted him at her back.
“There is a lord coming to this city. An important man. I want you to keep him safe.”
She laughed. “I kill. I don’t save.”
“If you do not, you will be the last of your kind.”
Ice slid through her veins, and she hissed softly. “If you threaten—”
“I merely prophesy. Auglar of Kellsjard must live through all that is to come. If he does not, your son will die as well.”
“What could the fortune of a lord of Jenel possibly have to do with my son?”
Ax smiled briefly. “You will see, Londah Jonaglir. You will see soon enough.” And with that, he was gone.
Londah stood alone in the street, her fingers gripping her knives so hard that her knuckles had gone white. Then, with a curse she had learned from the sailors who frequented Segg’s port, she slammed her weapons back into their sheathes and stalked off.
Damned wizards.
Suchen bit back a hiss of frustration as her opponent easily evaded the fist aimed at his nose. Before she could recover, he grabbed her wrist, his deceptively slender fingers trapping her in an iron grip. She snapped her knee up at his groin, connecting only with thigh as he out-maneuvered her again, and then dropped her weight to pull hard against the joint of his thumb. His grip broke and she leapt back, bringing her forearm up in a fast block to fend of the quick snap of a fist. A second time she blocked, then a third, and then went on the offensive, whipping her foot up in a kick that should have knocked the wind out of an attacker, possibly breaking ribs on the way.
He moved aside with an incredible, animal speed and grace, gray eyes tracking her foot so that when her leg was fully extended, he caught hold of her ankle and used her own momentum to send her tumbling to the ground.
She hit hard, the wind huffing out of her lungs, and sent one hand scrabbling in the dirt beside her head. Catching up a handful of mud and rock, she threw it at his face. Her aim wasn’t true, but it forced him to dodge, giving her the opening to get back on her feet. But she was still too slow, and an instant later she found a sinewy arm snaked around her throat, the other poised to grab her head and snap her neck.
“Dead again,” he said in a voice like velvet and midnight.
“Damn it!” His arms loosened their hold, and she pulled away, kicking at a loose rock and glowering at the churned mud of the yard where the soldiers of Kellsjard routinely practiced the arts of warfare.
“You did well,” Yozerf protested.
She glanced back over her shoulder uncertainly. A cloud of blood-red hair straggled wildly about Yozerf’s shoulders, blowing lightly in the wind. The only spot of color in a monochromatic landscape, it contrasted sharply with his black clothing, his bone-white skin, and his sleet-gray eyes. Despite the inhuman size and cant of those eyes and the sharp bones of his triangular face, he looked beautiful to her. Beautiful and entirely unflustered.
Damn him—he could at least be polite enough to look a little winded.
“I didn’t land a single blow,” she pointed out irritably.
“It takes time to learn a new way of fighting,” he said reasonably. “We haven’t been practicing that long. And none of the Sworn would have done half as well—you’re quicker than they are, more flexible. This isn’t sword-work.”
Suchen sighed and pushed a stray strand of blonde hair out of her eyes. No, this was certainly nothing like the measured pace of swordplay, with its repertoire of attacks and responses. This was the dirtiest kind of fighting, where there were no rules, no boundaries, and no set forms. It was a style that Yozerf excelled at, having learned it at an early age on the streets of the city he had been born in.
Having seen how deadly and effective his unconventional style of combat could be, she’d asked him to teach her as well. It had been something to do to get them through the long, harsh months of winter, when snow had fallen heavily enough to isolate Kellsjard from the outside world. Something other than watch the stores in their larders dwindle and wonder what was happening in places poorer and less well-supplied.
“How long did it take you to learn?” she asked.
He shrugged, an easy movement of his thin shoulders that he still managed to make look graceful. “Too long.” One white finger lightly tapped the heavy padding that hung over his shirt to protect him should she somehow—against all likelihood, it seemed—manage to hit him. “And of course I didn’t have this.”
The door leading into the keep opened across the yard. Yozerf turned to look, and Suchen saw his nostrils flare sharply. Over time, she had come to appreciate what a truly keen sense of smell he had. It was one part of his divided heritage: half Aclyte, half Wolfkin shape-changer.
At any rate, the gait of the man who stepped out into the yard identified him at a distance, even to one without a sharp eye or nose. He moved slowly, leaning heavily on a wooden staff topped with a dull globe of steel. The mace head turned the staff into a weapon, at least theoretically, and perhaps took away some of the sting of having to use such a prop in the first place.
“I thought I might find you here,” Gless called when he was close enough. His golden hair blew loosely about his face in the biting wind, no longer kept in the dandy’s curls that he had once been so fond of. His clothing was sober, at least for him—gone were the wild colors, the flamboyant cuffs and ribbons. Lines of pain framed a mouth that still smiled often, but the smile was wan and drawn, as if every joke was bitter.
Yozerf watched him come, then cocked his head slightly, as if considering. “You may join us, if you wish,” he offered. Suchen flashed him a sharp glance—surely, such an offer to a man who needed a staff to walk was nothing but cruelty. But Yozerf’s austere face was impassive, a white mask that gave nothing away.
Still, he was not cruel by nature. Many other things, yes—hard, bitter, ruthlessly practical, and at least slightly insane. But never cruel.
Who knows? Maybe he thinks Gless could do it.
Gless gave Yozerf a quizzical look, as if wondering the same things as Suchen. Then a strained smile touched his lips. “No, thanks. You two play too rough. You’re the only couple I know who never quarrel and yet still try to kill each other on a regular basis.”
Suchen grinned. “That’s us—two of a kind.” She slipped one arm around Yozerf’s waist, beneath the protective padding. Although he had actually gained a little weight over the winter, she could still feel the curve of bone through a layer of tough muscle. Glancing up, she saw surprise and pleasure touch his gray eyes at her comment. His arm went around her shoulders, pulling her in tighter to his side.
Gless rolled his eyes at them. “I didn’t come out here to watch the two of you make cow-eyes at each other. Auglar sent me to find you. He’s calling together the Sworn and a few other trusted advisors.”
“Is this about his bid for the kingship?” Suchen asked softly.
Gless shrugged. “I don’t know. It would make sense, though. Spring is here and the roads are finally clear. There’s nothing to keep him from going to the Conclave of Lords in Segg.”
Yozerf’s eyes narrowed slightly at the mention of the city he had grown up in, but he made no comment. They followed Gless back inside, pausing a moment to store their protective padding in the small training hall that formed one wall of the courtyard. Then, confined to Gless’s limping pace, they made their way to Auglar’s study.
When the keep was first built, back when the Empire of Kells still held dominion over all the lands between the Dragon Mountains in the North and the Undish desert in the south, the fortress of Kellsjard had been a simple square tower made for defense rather than comfort. It occupied a high hill on the very edge of the great plain of the Kellsmarch, situated so that any invasions from the kingdom of Shalai would have to pass by it before penetrating farther. But over the intervening centuries, its lords had added on to the original keep. Most often, this additional architecture matched the fashion of their own times, in blithe disregard of anything else around it. As a result, Kellsjard had evolved into a lunatic’s dream of sealed-off courtyards, corridors that went nowhere, and rooms whose purpose had been changed so many times that they were no longer useful for anything. Visitors were well advised not to stray, and even inhabitants who thought themselves familiar with the structure’s every twist and turn sometimes became confused. If any enemy were ever to breach the walls, they would find battle in the corridors a nightmare.
Auglar’s study was in one of the oldest sections of the keep. The walls were of unfinished stone that held in the chill even in high summer. Tapestries struggled to enliven the setting, although their colors had faded through countless decades. Although the air outside was beginning to feel of spring, a fire burned in the enormous hearth, perfuming the room with wood smoke.
Auglar glanced up as they entered. Black hair straggled into his face and framed a pair of startlingly pale blue eyes, and ink stained his slender fingers. Although he had come young to his lordship, and had fought a bitter war of succession to gain it, scholarship was still his first love. “Ah, that’s everyone, then,” he said with a smile that failed to hide the worry that lurked in his eyes.
The small room was crowded, Suchen saw. On Auglar’s right sat his wife, Sifya, her belly swollen in the late stages of pregnancy. Sifya’s brother, Brenwulf, was also present. The Sworn—Buudi, Gless, and Suchen’s brother Peddock—were arrayed about the room. Garal, Suchen’s assistant, sat nervously at the far end of the table, along with Wildstorm the scribe and Jiara the healermage.
Three empty chairs remained. Gless sank into one with an audible sigh, his bad leg stretched out before him at an angle. Suchen sat in the next one, expecting Yozerf to slip in beside her. But instead he stopped just inside the door and leaned against the wall, his chill eyes taking in the gathering dispassionately, an outsider observing a scene that had nothing to do with him.
Suchen frowned uncertainly, wondering what this deliberate distancing could mean. But before she could motion for him to come closer, Auglar rose to his feet.
“I suppose that there’s no mystery about why I summoned you all,” he said. Clasping his ink-stained fingers behind his back, he wandered over to one window, then stopped and stared out. “Most of you know the events of last fall and winter.”
“Only too well,” murmured Buudi, the first among the Sworn. Although silver had begun to streak his black hair some time ago, he seemed to have aged years over the course of the last winter. The lines on his rough face were deeply graven now, and the decades looked out sadly from his brown eyes.
Auglar cast him a rueful glance. “Yes. Last fall, the wizard Ax came to Suchen and asked her to escort a young woman here. Little did we know then that she was Queen Rozah, fleeing in disguise from her Regency Council, which had kept her prisoner and usurped her power. The Council was destroyed, but not without the loss of Rozah’s life as well.”
No one said anything. The Sworn had been charged with keeping Rozah safe, but they had not been able to save themselves from treason within their own ranks. Although no one could blame them—they had done all that they could—Suchen knew that they held themselves responsible for the Queen’s death.
For that matter, so did she. What she would have done differently, she didn’t know, but there had been many nights when she had lain awake in Yozerf’s arms, wondering if she could have done something—anything—to save Rozah.
As for what Yozerf felt, who had last seen Rozah alive...not even Suchen could say.
“Since then, Jenel has been without a monarch,” Auglar continued at last. “This is a dangerous time for the kingdom. Ax warned us that Jahcgroth of Argannon plans to conquer Jenel, as cold and ice threaten to destroy his own kingdom. Yozerf has confirmed this.”
Yozerf nodded once, shortly, but said nothing.
“Jenel cannot afford to remain leaderless for much longer,” Auglar went on, pacing restlessly back across the room to stare now into the fire. “I am related to the royal line, and so have decided to present my claim to the throne. Unfortunately, word has reached me that Lord Fellrant intends to do the same.”
Brenwulf’s eyes narrowed. “This is the lord who attacked you when your father disappeared?”
“Yes.” Auglar shook his head at old memories. “Fellrant saw an opportunity and took it. He has a reputation for being ruthless in pursuit of what he wants, and if I may judge by the siege he lay around Kellsjard, that reputation is well deserved.”
“But we prevailed,” Buudi added firmly.
“Yes.” Auglar smiled briefly. “And we will this time as well. Both of our claims are too distant for it to be immediately obvious which of us should take the throne. Therefore, we have been commanded to present ourselves before the Conclave of Lords at Nava Nar in Segg.” He cast a rueful glance at Sifya’s belly, then reached out to take his wife’s hand. “The timing is dreadful, of course, but if I want to have any chance against Fellrant, then I have to leave as soon as possible. Sifya will command the keep in my absence.”
“The thanes won’t be happy about that,” Sifya pointed out, her accent giving away her peasant origins.
“The thanes can go to Hel’s domain,” Auglar said bluntly. “After last winter, they should be glad I don’t hang the lot of them.” He squeezed Sifya’s hand fiercely, then let go. “The Sworn, of course, will accompany me. Jiara will remain here with you.” His expression turned wistful. “If I can’t be here for the birth of our first child, at least I can be assured that the delivery will be safe and easy.”
“You have nothing to worry about, my lord. Either of you,” Jiara added, nodding in Sifya’s direction.
“Excellent.” Auglar rubbed his hands together. “Then that is all, for now. We will leave as soon as we can. Suchen, see to the supplies we will need for the journey. And if Brenwulf and Yozerf could stay a moment longer?”
At last, Suchen thought with satisfaction. She glanced at Yozerf’s face, to see if he guessed what was coming. But wariness lit his gray eyes from within, and a slight frown touched his sculpted lips, quickly hidden.
She rose with the rest, pausing a moment to touch Yozerf’s arm. “Don’t be so paranoid,” she whispered, feeling the tension in the muscles under her fingers. “At least until you know why he wants to talk to you alone.”
He nodded sharply, but she could still sense his trepidation. With a sigh, she dropped her hand away and followed everyone else out the door, leaving the three men in privacy.
* * *
Yozerf remained where he was, his back pressed hard against the stone wall. Dread pooled in his belly, for he thought that he knew what Auglar wanted to ask from him.
The human lord paused a moment to stoke the fire. Brenwulf glanced briefly at the flurry of sparks, then turned his steady gaze back to Yozerf, no doubt scenting the Aclyte’s unease. Yozerf pointedly avoided his stare, a wolf’s gesture of submission. He and Brenwulf had never been easy with one another—two males, one an interloper, the other jealous of his place in the pack.
Auglar turned so that his back was to the fire. The flames leapt up behind him, framing him in gold and throwing his face into shadow. “You both know that I lost two of my Sworn last winter,” he said at last, grief edging his words. “Uzco was killed and Dara-Don...Dara-Don betrayed me and everyone else. Until now, I have done nothing to rebuild the Sworn, partly out of respect for Uzco’s memory, and partly out of fear. I kept asking myself how I could have judged Dara-Don so badly.”
“He was true when you made him Sworn,” Brenwulf said soothingly. Yozerf said nothing—the bonds of the Sworn were forged from trust. And he had learned long ago that trust was the most dangerous trickster of all.
“Perhaps. But I fear that leaving a void in the Sworn has done more harm than good to those who remain. It’s been a constant reminder to them of the defeat that they suffered, of the friendship that they lost. I think it’s past time to remedy the situation.
“Brenwulf, Yozerf—I am asking the two of you to become Sworn to me.”
It was the highest honor any lord could offer a retainer, short of raising him to the nobility itself. Brenwulf immediately came to his feet, smiling. “Of course, Auglar. You’re my sister’s mate—part of my pack. I would do anything for you.”
Auglar clasped his hand warmly. “I knew that already, Brenwulf.” Still smiling, he turned to Yozerf. “And you, my friend? You saved my life last winter—I haven’t forgotten that, and now at last I have an appropriate reward.”
For a long moment, Yozerf simply stared at him, surprise holding back any motion or word. And it came to him with a sudden clarity that he knew two things.
One: that Auglar was offering him a place. A real place.
No more sulking on the edges of their comradeship, watching from a slight remove that he could never quite seem to cross. No more the outsider that no one really knew what to do with. No more the unsheathed blade that was too useful to throw away, but never really trusted.
A place. Belonging.
The Sworn were the men that a lord trusted above all others, even above his own kin. Their obligations to him were clear: to protect, to advise, and in the end perhaps to die. Their lord valued them above all others, but in turn they valued him equally. Their bond went deeper in its way than that of blood or marriage.
He already had a sort of bond with them—didn’t he? They—all of the people who had gathered in this room—were his pack. But that deep instinct, informed by the wolf’s understanding, meant less in human terms than what Auglar offered now. Or perhaps it was simply that humans needed words for these things to make them real, and that was what Kellsjard’s lord wanted to give him. Acknowledgement of the bond from both sides, not just his.
It was more than he had ever thought to be given, more than he had ever dreamed of in the long, hungry years when he had wandered alone.
But he also knew a second thing. Auglar wanted to be king.
Yozerf meet Auglar’s expectant gaze and held it for a moment. “No,” he said clearly, then turned and walked out the door.
* * *
Yozerf took the nearest stair he came to, following its windings until he reached a window that let out onto a rooftop. Unseen by anyone, he slipped out onto an expanse of blue slate tiles, following them until they gave way to copper sheeting, then red pottery. Gargoyles offered convenient handholds, their smooth-horned heads cold under his thin fingers. Fragrant smoke belched from chimneys, occasionally blowing into his face and blinding him.
At length, he came to a high tower at the north end of the keep. He had discovered it by accident one night, its crumbling masonry giving him the handholds he needed to haul himself up through its single, high window. A heavy wooden shutter had blocked the way, but the iron hinges holding it in place had rusted almost to nothingness, and he had found it easy to push through.
Kellsjard had many rooms and corridors that had been sealed off during later building sprees, and at first glance he had believed this tower to be one such forgotten nook. A single rotting table and chair stood in the center of the tiny room, adrift in mounds of dust and cobwebs. The round shape hanging on one wall had proved to be a bronze mirror, lost beneath centuries of grime. Curious, he had let himself down through the trap door in the floor of the room, following a spiral stair until it ended abruptly in the solid wall whose construction had led to the tower’s abandonment.
She had been lying at the bottom of the stair, curled against the unyielding wall, as if she had tried at the last to force down the stones with her bare hands. Time had not left much of her: a few mice-gnawed bones, a red layer of dust that might have been a dress, and the dull glitter of gold at her ears, throat, and waist. Yozerf did not know who she had been, or why she had been sealed away in the tower and left to die. A rival, a mistress, a sister? With humans, the possibilities for cruelty were endless.
A few questions to the servants revealed that the portion of the keep near the sealed tower was said to be haunted by a woman’s ghost, although no one knew her story. Yozerf briefly considered telling Auglar of the old bones he had found, then decided against it. Better to leave the unknown woman her silent monument.
Since then, he had made the tower his sanctuary, a place where he could escape to be away from humans and where he could plumb the depths of his own secrets in solitude. Only once in all the months that he had been coming here had he glimpsed the ghost of the dead woman. Shortly after deciding to make the tower room his own, he had entered to find her standing by the table: a thin, transparent shape in a red dress. She had started towards him—then flung up her hands in an expression of horror and fled, vanishing before she reached the trap door.
“Shadows,” Telmonra had whispered with a nasty chuckle.
And what are you? he had asked in that silent space in his mind where she could hear him.
“Vengeance.”
Now, Yozerf hauled himself in over the windowsill and carefully replaced what was left of the broken shutters behind him, blocking the thin, gray light of the overcast afternoon. The darkness in the tower was nearly absolute, but he had supplied it with tallow candles filched from the storerooms. Recalling their shapes and placement in his memory, he reached into the silent space once again.
The candles burst into simultaneous flame, flooding the small chamber with yellow light. Cobwebs that he had not bothered to clear away streamed wildly in the sudden flow of heated air, like the rotted banners of dead armies.
Yozerf sighed and ran a hand back through his hair, absently tugging out the snarls the wind had worked into it. It was a trick, that was all, just a damned trick. A trick that had taken him long practice to perfect to the point where he wasn’t in danger of setting himself on fire as well as the candles, but still nothing compared to the feats of a real wizard. Nothing compared to what Auglar needed.
And even if it had been what Auglar needed…would he—dared he—admit that he could perform such tricks?
The single chair creaked dangerously under him when he slumped into it. The candles glowed in his sight, threatening to become a blur. Suddenly feeling tired beyond words, he propped his boots up on the ancient table and tilted his head back, staring unseeing at the wheel-spoke rafters.
He was tired, so very tired. The look that he had glimpsed on Auglar’s face just before he walked out came back to him: shock, confusion...and hurt. Strange beyond words, to think that any gesture he could make would hurt a powerful human lord. Before meeting Auglar, he had thought that the mighty were beyond such things because they cared for nothing save themselves.
He didn’t want to imagine the look on Suchen’s face when she found out.
“They are humans,” Telmonra whispered scornfully, as if that damning statement should be all that was needed. At one time, it would have been.
He was not entirely certain that all changes had been for the better.
* * *
Suchen sat in her favorite chair in front of the fire, unable to concentrate on the book she had been trying to read for hours. The candles on the small table at her elbow had burned down, spilling long loops of melted wax over the silver of the candelabrum. The wind moaned around the cornice outside the window and caused the fire to gutter slightly.
The heavy, oaken door swung open on near-silent hinges. Setting her book aside carefully, she looked up at the shadow that filled it. The firelight snagged on his mad tangle of blood-red hair and lent unnatural color to the pale skin of his face and hands. His large, canted eyes reflected it like the wolf’s, an eerie incandescence that stole her ability to read his expression.
“Why?” she asked simply, careful not the make the word an accusation.
Yozerf’s mouth tightened slightly. He shut the door behind him, then drifted past her to the window. One hand lifted, pressed lightly against the glass. “Do you have to ask?”
“Obviously I do.”
He sighed and slumped a little. “Suchen...think. Auglar wants to be king. But right now, his fate is largely in the hands of a group of southern lords who only want a reason not to like him. The first of Auglar’s Sworn is a disgraced nobleman who lost his inheritance because he was having an affair with another man. Peddock is the disowned son of a merchant. Gless is a peasant. And Brenwulf is a constant reminder that Auglar is married to a commoner.” Yozerf’s mouth quirked into a sudden half-smile. “That motley assortment alone might give the southern lords all the excuse they need to send Auglar packing. Add an Aclyte to the mix, and I assure you that it would.”
She started to deny his words, then caught herself, forced herself to think about all the things she had encountered traveling with him. And, although she didn’t like it, forced herself to remember her own childhood in the south, a life that had included Aclytese servants who were viewed as little more than trained dogs whose performance had long ago lost its novelty. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps nothing. Yes. You know it. Auglar isn’t thinking like a southern lord.”
“Auglar isn’t a southern lord.”
“He must become one if he wants their approval.” Yozerf shook his head, hair sighing softly against black-clad shoulders. “Auglar and Fellrant are both used to doing things as they wish. Until now, no one paid much attention to the demesnes of the Kellsmarch. Who cares about a land of herdsmen and farmers, where there isn’t anything to be found but grass and wind?”
“You’re overstating the case.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t change my point.”
“No.” She sighed and looked at her hands. “Auglar wants to leave as soon as possible. Within the next few days if he can.”
“Good luck to him, then.”
“I’m going with him.”
Yozerf’s back stiffened sharply. She saw the hand that rested on the glass curl very, very slowly into a fist. When he spoke, his voice was like the winter come inside. “No.”
“Yozerf—”
“No!” He spun around, and his gray eyes were wild with desperation. “You aren’t going to Segg!”
She bit her lip, hating the mix of rage and fear in his words. “The decision is already made. Auglar needs me. If he is to become king, he will need a Steward.”
“Let Garal go.”
“Garal isn’t as good at this as I am!” she snapped, temper suddenly fraying. “I am the Steward of Kellsjard. No woman has ever done what I’ve done. If I become Steward of Nava Nar...can you imagine what it would mean?”
His expression went blank, face a white, inhuman mask that allowed nothing to escape. “Then this is what you want.”
Suchen hesitated. “I...I don’t know. But Auglar has asked me to come with him, even if only for a while. If he does become king, he will need my help, at least at first. There’s no telling what sort of mess the Council left behind them—he’ll need someone who can look through the books, who can understand what the numbers mean and where they don’t add up. For a little while.”
Yozerf said nothing. For a moment, he stood very still, as if weighing her words against some unknown criteria. Then, without warning, he turned and smashed his fist through one of the glass panes of the window.
“No!” Startled by the suddenness and violence of the motion, she grabbed his arm. Through layers of black cotton and wool, she felt muscles tense as wires. But he made no movement to repeat the act, only turned his hand over slowly. The glass had cut his knuckles deeply, and streamers of blood the same color as his hair ran out over white skin.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if in response to some pain. “I just...I can’t....”
“Shh. It’s all right. No one’s asking you to do anything.” She tugged on his arm gently, and he allowed himself to be led over to the light of the fire. Suchen carefully picked out shards of glass from the wounds, then fetched a pewter ewer filled with water to wash them. When she shoved his sleeve back to keep it from getting wet, her fingers encountered the ridges of old scars that crisscrossed the great veins of both wrists.
Those scars had been made in Segg, she knew, although it was not something he spoke of often or in detail. And she had known that he would be upset when she told him that she was going there herself. “I’m not asking you to go,” she said quietly as she bandaged his hand with cloth torn from an old shift. “You know that you are more important to me than anything—even my duty to Auglar.” She glanced up, met his wild, inhuman eyes. “I am going because I have to, but if you want to stay here, then I will return to you as soon as I may. Someone else can be Steward of Nava Nar.”
“I don’t want you to die.”
It was such an unexpected response that she stopped in mid-motion. “What? Why do you say that?”
“Because that’s what Segg is, Suchen. It’s death, death in a thousand forms.” He pulled his hand away and ran it back through his hair. “Death for the unwary, death for the foolish, death for the young, death for the weak, death for the poor, death...death.” Yozerf stood up abruptly and stared down at her, a crazed look in his eye. “It will swallow you. It will swallow all of you.”
Grief for him touched her. “Yozerf, my love, no. You say that because of your own experiences. But things will be different for us. We’ll be staying at the palace, not on the streets. We’ll be safe.”
He looked at her sadly. “You’re wrong.”
“No.” She put her hand on his unwounded one, drew it close to cradle against her face. “I’ll be all right. You stay here—I’ll be back soon, you’ll see.”
“I can’t stay here,” he said raggedly. “I can’t stay here. You’re my mate; you’re my pack. Where you go, I must go as well.”
The desperation in his gray eyes tore at her heart. “Do you mean that?” she asked, uncertain what instincts might be ripping him apart. If he’d been human, or even purely Aclyte, she would have thought that he was exaggerating. But the way he said mate and pack made the words sound less like concepts and more like something felt in the blood and the bone.
He pulled away from her and went back to the window, despite the cold evening air flooding in through the broken panes. His head leaned wearily against the casement as he stared blankly out. “Yes.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does!”
He only shook his head, not looking at her—not looking at anything as far as she could tell. “No. I’ll go with you. I don’t mind.” And the way he spoke the lie told her that she would get nothing more from him.