Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“We might also call them daimones, my lord.”

“I do not know what to make of these tidings,” said Villam thoughtfully, looking troubled. “Is she an agent of the Enemy, or that of God? Is she of humble origins, or of the noblest birth? Did she bewitch the prince, or is her favor, bestowed upon him, a mark of his fitness to rule?”

“My lord margrave,” said the servant Humbert so sharply that Villam blinked, thrown out of his reverie by those words. “The King’s Eagle waits outside. She bears a message for you.”

Villam said nothing for a while, although as he mused he drew his fingers caressingly over the curve of an apple. “I will need a rider to carry a message to my daughter,” he said at last, “a trustworthy and loyal man, one from the home estates. Waldhar, perhaps. His father and uncle served me well against the Rederii, and his mother is a good steward of the Arvi holdings. Let him make ready to leave and then come to me.”

The servant nodded. He had a tidy manner, efficient and brisk. “Will you need a cleric, my lord margrave, to set the message down on parchment?”

“Nay. It is to go to my daughter’s ears alone. Give him an escort of three riders as well.”

“I would recommend six, my lord margrave, given the news of Quman raids.”

“Yes.” Villam had been margrave for many years, with the habit of command and the expectation that his servants would run to do his bidding at once, and effectively. “See that this frater is given food and drink and then send him on his way. Best that it be done quietly.”

“So will it be done, my lord margrave.” Humbert looked Zacharias over with a look compounded half of curiosity and half of disdain. “Would you prefer that those who serve him are like to gossip or to remain silent about which direction the prince rode out in three days ago?”

“Alas, people are so wont to chatter. That is why I keep a discreet man like yourself as my steward, Humbert.”

“Yes, my lord margrave.” Humbert gestured to Zacharias. He did not have a kindly face, but he looked fair. “Come, Brother. You will not want to linger long here at the king’s court, for it will go hard with you, I am sure, should your quest become generally known.”

“I thank you for your hospitality, my lord,” said Zacharias, but Villam had already forgotten him as the doors opened and a woman strode in. She wore fine clothing and, over it, a cloak trimmed with red and pinned at one shoulder with a brass brooch shaped as an eagle.

Zacharias knew her at once, that familiar, fierce expression, her hawk’s nose, and the way she had of sauntering with a little hitch in her stride, noticeable only because he knew to look for it, that she had developed after falling from an apple tree when she was a child.

He hurriedly stepped sideways into shadow, hoping his hood would obscure his face. She had the habit of a good messenger, looking around swiftly to mark the chamber and its inhabitants. When she saw him, she faltered, puzzling over his shadowed face. He knew her well enough to interpret her expression, for it was one she’d worn as a child: seeing something that she knew was familiar but could not quite put her finger on.

Annoyance and curiosity tightened her mouth, and she seemed about to speak when Villam spoke instead.

“Eagle, you bring me a message from the king?”

“Yes, Margrave Villam,” said Hathui, her well-loved voice deepened by maturity and altered by a woman’s confidence and pride. At once, she turned her attention to the margrave.

How different their fates had turned out to be, the admired elder brother and the doting young sister. She had become a respected Eagle, standing beside the king’s chair, while he had been marked forever as a slave, hunted and desperate.

He slipped out the doors before her attention drifted back to him. He was so ashamed. He didn’t want her to recognize him, to see what a poor wretch he had become, no longer a man at all, used and discarded many times over. He remembered the pride shining in her face on that day years ago when he had left their village to walk as a missionary into the east. She must never know what had really happened to him. Better that she believe he was dead.

He took the food and drink offered to him, took his goat and his worn pack and left the palace complex as quickly as he could in case she should come looking, to assuage her curiosity. West, Humbert told him, the road toward Bederbor.

So he walked, alone, nursing his despair. What he had seen, what had been done to him, what he had himself acquiesced to, had opened a chasm between him and his family that could never be bridged. All that was left him was the secret language of the stars, the clouds of black dust and the brilliant lights, the silver-gold ribbon that twisted through the heavenly spheres, the beauty of an ineffable cosmos in whose heart, perhaps, he could lose himself if only he could come to understand its mysteries.

Determined and despondent, he trudged west on the trail of the prince.

2

USING a stout stick as his sword, Sanglant beheaded thistles one by one, an entire company hewn down by savage whacks.

“You’re in a foul mood,” observed Heribert. The slender cleric sat on a fallen log whittling the finishing touches into the butt of a staff. He had carved the tip into the likeness of a fortress tower surmounted by a Circle of Unity. Behind them, half concealed by a copse of alder, Captain Fulk supervised the setup of a makeshift camp among the stones of an ancient Dariyan fort long since fallen into ruin.

“The king was right.” Sanglant kept decapitating thistles as he spoke. He could not bear to sit still, not now, with frustration burning through him. He felt as helpless as the thistles that fell beneath his sharp strokes. “How can I support a retinue without lands of my own?”

“Duke Conrad’s chatelaine made no protest. She put us up in the hall at Bederbor for a full five days.”

“And Conrad did not return, nor would she tell us where he had gone or when she expected him back. Thus leaving us to go on our way. We’re dependent on the generosity of other nobles. Or on their fear.”

“Or their respect for your reputation, my lord prince,” said Heribert quietly.

Sanglant lifted his free hand in a gesture of dismissal. He did not stop whacking. The thistles made good enemies, plentiful and easy to defeat. “Nevertheless, my reputation cannot feed my retinue forever. Nor will my cousins and peers feed me forever, knowing it may bring my father’s wrath down upon them. He could accuse them of harboring a rebel and call them to account for disloyalty.”