Inheritance (2 page)

“And I am no longer Captain Ager Parmer of the Kendra Spears,” Ager shouted back defiantly. “I am now Ager Crookback or Ager One-Eye, or just plain Ager the Cripple. Look at me, Kumul! Look at my face!”

Kumul stopped short, pulling Pirem back with him, and put his face close to Ager’s. “Ager Parmer?”

Ager slouched, the effect of his rush finally catching up with him. The slouch turned into a slump, his left shoulder lifting to be level with his neck. He nodded wearily.

“I thought you were dead,” Kumul said quietly.

“No, not dead, but as good as. It took two years for the wound in my back to stop weeping.”

“But that was fifteen years ago. Why didn’t you find me?”

“The war was over, my friend. I wanted peace and quiet.” Ager swallowed. “But I could never find it. No one at home wanted me around. I’ve been wandering ever since, picking up work where I could find it.”

“What kind of work?” Pirem asked, then blushed. “I didn’t mean…”

“I’m not offended,” Ager said quickly. “I have some learning. I can read and write, and know my numbers. Officers in Kendra’s army must know these things. I work as a clerk, usually for merchants, who care little one way or the other about my deformities. I earn some spending money and my passage from port to port. As with you, Pirem, there is more to me than shows.”

Kumul looked at the youth, raising his eyebrows. “Pirem?” The youth shrugged.

“Your name isn’t Pirem?”

“No,” Kumul answered before the youth could open his mouth. “Pirem is the name of his servant.”

“Servant? Then what
is
your name?”

Kumul laughed. “Since I could not recognize you, I should not be surprised that you cannot recognize this one.”

Ager peered closer at the youth’s face. After a moment he pulled back as if something had stung him on the nose. “He couldn’t be,” he said to Kumul.

“He is,” Kumul replied smugly.

Before the conversation could continue, there was a scuffle among the crowd of passersby and someone cried out. All three turned to see what the commotion was about. A tall, thin woman was bent over picking up fruit that had spilled from a basket and was at the same time cursing the clumsy dolt who had tripped over her long legs. The offender, still scrabbling to his feet, his face red with anger, ignored her. As he stood, there was a glint of steel in his hand. He looked up to see he was being observed by the giant man and his two companions, one a cripple, and the other…

He cursed and charged toward them, now holding his long knife out in front of him.

Kumul pushed the youth behind him with his left hand and with his right drew out his sword. He smiled tightly, silently thankful their assailant’s clumsiness had given him away. What he did not see was a second man behind him, stepping quickly and silently toward the youth, a knife raised above his head for a single killing blow. The crowd around him fell into frightened silence.

Something in the sudden stillness made Ager turn. Seeing the new threat, he moved without thinking to sandwich the youth between himself and Kumul. The second attacker shook his head—the cripple would slow him down but never stop him. He waited until he was three steps from the crookback before playing the trick that in so many vicious street fights had given him victory. He threw the knife from his right hand to his left and lunged. He was so sure of his advantage that the sudden rasp of metal against scabbard barely registered in his mind, nor the flash of a bright short sword swinging up to impale itself in his body.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kumul had seen Ager shift position and knew what it must mean, but only had time to hope that Ager’s injuries had not ruined his skill with a sword before his own attacker was upon him, slashing wildly with his weapon. Kumul easily deflected it downward with his blade and then flickered the tip up and into the man’s throat, the man’s own impetus driving the point a finger’s length through muscle and artery and into his spine.

The assailant spasmed once and dropped to the ground, dead. Kumul tugged his sword free and spun around, using his left arm to keep his charge behind him. Relief flooded through him when he saw the second assailant on the ground, Ager on top of him, blade sunk deep into his heart and lungs.

“Well done, old friend,” Kumul said, then noticed how still the crookback was. He moved forward and placed a hand on Ager’s twisted shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Ager coughed, turning his head so he could see Kumul with his one eye. “The bastard shifted his knife to his left hand,” he said weakly. “Too late for me to change my grip.” His head slumped and his eye closed as he lost consciousness.

Kumul bent down and saw that a knife had been driven into Ager’s right side to a third of its length. Blood was flowing freely. The youth knelt down next to Kumul.

“That is a serious wound,” he said. “We must get him to the palace.”

Kumul nodded. “I’ll carry him. You take his sword.” Leaving the blade in for fear of doing more damage, Kumul lifted Ager gently as if he weighed no more than a child.

The youth jerked the short sword out of the dead man. “I’ll run ahead to wake Dr. Trion.”

“God!” shouted Kumul. “Behind you, boy!”

The youth spun on his heel and saw a third attacker almost upon him. Obviously undeterred by the fate of his two companions, he had seen his chance to strike when the giant had taken up his burden.

“My friend,” the youth said quietly, “that was a mistake.”

The assassin saw his target move forward to meet him. Surprised, he had no time to slow his charge. Instinctively, he raised the knife’s point to deflect as best as possible any swing toward his neck or head. It was the last mistake he would ever make. He saw the youth take a step sideways and crouch. Before he could react, a sword sliced upward into his belly and ripped out as he stumbled forward. He gasped in pain, felt the earth rise to smash against his head, and lost consciousness before the blade fell against his neck, almost severing it through.

The youth stood, washed in blood, his eyes alight for a moment and then suddenly as dull as coal. His sword hand dropped limply to his side. The crowd started talking excitedly as if the fight had been put on for their benefit.

“Quickly, Lynan! We have to go. There may be others!”

Roused by the use of his real name, Lynan looked up at Kumul. “It’s… it’s not what I thought it would be like.”

“Later! We have to go. Now!”

The two hurried off. Ager, still unconscious in Kumul’s arms, moaned in pain.

“I fear we will be too late,” Kumul said grimly.

“He will live,” Lynan replied fiercely.

“If God is calling him, no one can hold back his ghost.”

“He
will
live,” Lynan insisted. He looked up at Kumul, tears welling in his eyes. “He knew my father.”

Ager slipped in and out of consciousness, at times the feeling in his side a gnawing pain and then nothing more than a dull, persistent throbbing. At one point he thought he was floating in air, but he managed to open his eye and realized Kumul was carrying him. He had a vague memory of Kumul doing this once before, but then remembered the memory was of Kumul carrying a friend of his from the battlefield. Dimly it occurred to him that his friend had died, and he wondered whether that would be his fate, though whether he died or not did not seem terribly important to him this moment. Another time he caught a glimpse of a figure of a man floating in the air beside him, his face young and then surprisingly older, and he knew that face, knew it almost as well as his own.
It’s his ghost
, he thought.
He’s come back to take me with him
. But then the face was young again, and none of it made any sense to him.

After a while, the feeling in Ager’s side was gnawing more than throbbing, and in his clearer moments he understood it meant he was still alive and unfortunately coming out of whatever delirium had held him. He tried to say something, but Kumul told him to shut up. On reflection, that seemed like a good idea, so he did. Then, just as the pain was becoming too much for him, he was carried through a huge gate. Kumul shouted orders and soldiers scurried away to do the constable’s bidding. He knew he was coming to the end of his journey, and knew that meant some bastard with small hooks and cutters would soon be slicing into him to dig out whatever it was that was causing the hurt.

Kumul was carrying him up a flight of stairs now, and the man’s jolting stride sent spasms of pain through his body and, absurdly, made his empty eye socket itch. He moaned involuntarily, and felt humiliated. He tried apologizing, but Kumul again told him to shut up. Eventually they entered the most luxurious room Ager had ever seen. One wall was hidden by a tapestry of dazzling color. Opposite, a hearth was aglow with a blazing fire. Kumul finally laid him down on something he assumed must have been a proper woolen mattress, for it made him feel as if he was floating. He could hear Kumul and the young man talking earnestly with each other, but for some reason he could make out only a few words, and they made no sense at all.

Despite the warmth from the fire, Ager was beginning to shake. He concentrated on trying to keep his limbs and jaw still, but to no avail. To make things worse, the pain in his side was almost unbearable. He wanted to cry out, but the only sound he could make was another moan. He reached for the source of the pain, but felt something hard there instead of his own flesh. Perhaps he was shaking so much Kumul had had to pin him to the bed. The thought made him want to laugh.

And then Ager was aware of a new presence—a short, bearded man with a clipped monotone of a voice that only added to the room’s background hum. What distinguished him from the other two was a smell that was strangely comforting, and after a moment he realized it was the smell of the sword bush. The realization alarmed him.

Oh, no
, he thought.
It’s a surgeon. I’m going to hate this man, I know it
.

The doctor placed a gentle hand against his forehead. Kind brown eyes looked down into his single gray one, then the hand moved to his side and took hold of the thing sticking into him. The doctor did not move it, as Ager had been afraid he would do, but he retreated and talked to the other two again. A second later he was back. Ager heard him say, “This will hurt like nothing you’ve ever felt before.”

“I’ve had a fucking ax in my back,” Ager tried to say, but could make only a hissing sound. “Nothing can hurt more that.”

Then Kumul was leaning over him. The giant gave a lopsided smile and held Ager by the shoulders, pinning him down. He felt the young one doing the same with his knees.

And then agony. The surgeon was right. It did hurt more than anything he had ever felt before. He screamed. His body arched into the air. He screamed again. A great, swallowing abyss opened beneath him and he fell away from the earth.

The surgeon Trion left the room shaking his head. “I don’t know, Kumul. I just don’t know.”

“He saved my life,” Lynan told Kumul.

“He saved both our lives,” Kumul replied, not lifting his gaze from the crookback. “You were lucky tonight.” Lynan said nothing. “You must not do this again.”

“Do what?”

Kumul turned to face him. “You know my meaning,” he said, anger creeping into his voice.

“I’ve been leaving the palace—”

“Sneaking out of the palace,” Kumul corrected him.

“—
sneaking
out of the palace most nights for over a year now. Nothing like this has happened before.”

“You know I put up with these expeditions because I think you deserve some leeway—you’re a young man now—but I warned you to stop last month.”

“For no reason.”

“No reason!” Kumul barked, then glanced anxiously at Ager, guilty about raising his voice. “You know as well as I do the
reason
.” He grabbed Lynan by the shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “Your mother the queen is dying. Her ghost may stay with her for another week, or another month, or even another year, but it may just as easily flee her body tonight. Things are starting to happen in Kendra. Forces are aligning themselves for the succession, including the Twenty Houses.”

“The Twenty Houses have no reason to hate me,” Lynan said weakly, knowing the lie even as he spoke it. “My mother is Usharna, Queen of Kendra. I am one of them.”

“And your father was a commoner made general, and
his
mother was a Chett slave. The Twenty Houses have every reason to want to see you put out of the way before the queen dies.”

Lynan turned away, not wanting to hear. Kumul sighed heavily and leaned over Ager to check his bandages.

“He is still bleeding a little. And that fire is dying. I will get more wood.”

“I hope this wound doesn’t weep for two years like his last one,” Lynan said. As soon as he had spoken the words, he regretted them. He had not meant to sound so callous. But it was too late. Kumul stared angrily at him.

“Have the courtesy to watch him for me while I’m gone,” he ordered, and left.

Unreasonably angry himself, Lynan tried standing on his royal dignity, but alone and with no one to be arrogant with, he slipped back to reality. What did he think he was doing? Kumul deserved better than that from him. And who did he think he was fooling? He had all the royal dignity of a midden, unlike his older half-siblings, all true bloods and sired from Usharna’s first two noble-born husbands. Kumul was right: he had the form but not the substance of the court’s respect. His own mother, the queen herself, did her best to ignore him. He knew, too, that this was why he so desperately wanted to know more about his father, whose blood apparently flowed thicker through his veins than his mother’s. But General Elynd Chisal was not even a memory for him. He was made up of tales and anecdotes, history lessons and hearsay. “Kendra’s greatest soldier,” Ager had said of him.

Lynan remembered the crookback then with a strange mixture of gratitude and unexpected affection. He checked Ager’s breathing—shallow but blessedly regular—and laid the palm of his hand on the man’s forehead to test his fever. He heard someone come in the room, and turned, expecting to see Kumul.