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Authors: Katya Reimann

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The new High Priestess made quite a picture, riding with her black and green robes furled out behind her like swallow’s wings, and her curling, jet-black hair all tumbled over her shoulders. The withdrawing soldiers spontaneously cheered her on, even though half of them yet did not know who she was.

“I was surprised, if you are curious to know. She was a mistake, if you can believe that—not that it matters if you do. But accepting your own mistakes so often can make for the best outcome, don’t you think?”

That fruity voice—it could be no one else but Argat Climens. Gaultry whirled round, not sure whether to be on her guard or pleased by the woman’s appearance.

“Your Grace,” she said politely. “I was pleased to hear that the charges against you had been dropped.”

Argat looked more tired than Gaultry expected. The long ride west had taken its toll on the woman’s pristine presentation, and the hints of age were more marked below her eyes than Gaultry remembered. There
were also laugh lines around her mouth. Gaultry did not remember those either, but the humor revealed beneath the court polish somehow less surprised her.

“The charges dropped? The court-toads are all saying it’s my newfound influence,” Argat said, tossing her head. “More fools they, not to realize that my pretty darling would be the first to string me up, if there truly was a stitch of evidence against me. But better for Elisabeth—she’ll catch them out, at least the first time they try to cross her.”

Elisabeth had crossed the great bowl of the battlefield and met her brother at the valley entrance. Farther up, the stag-headed red standards of Haute-Tielmark were making their way down, and at last, above even them, Gaultry could see the blue-and-white checkered coats of the Prince’s soldiers. Martin’s grey and green could not, of course, be distinguished among them, but her heart pounded, hoping that soon he would hove into sight. Mervion, at her side, squeezed her hand, flush with a similar longing.

“Elisabeth will not, however, be entirely immune to my influence,” Argat was saying. Gaultry swung back to her, not sure what the woman was talking about.

“I hope not,” she said, resoundingly, and then had to flush as Argat smiled, feline. “I mean to say only, I believe, the High Priestess’s judgment should remain independent.”

“Oh, I would try to lead her on small matters only,” the Duchess said. “She will have much to do, and I am sure her focus will not be very strong on her social responsibilities. I will certainly be able to lead her there, if only to remind her of her duties.”

Gaultry cast the woman a suspicious look. Argat only smiled, archly. “You have performed many high services for Tielmark, Lady Gaultry. Yes,” she turned to where Elisabeth was riding, her smile deepening as she watched her daughter ride, “I think I will have to remind Elisabeth that it is time for the High Priestess to reopen the marriage rolls. A few changes are in order there.”

This aspect of the change in High Priestess—Gaultry stared across at the Duchess, longing churning through her. “I would not ask such a favor,” she said stiffly.

“It’s too late,” Argat told her. “I’ve already done it, and Elisabeth has already agreed. You will simply have to be indebted to me, and that’s the end of it.” She signaled across the crowd atop the command overlook to
a servant, standing patiently by, holding the reins a beautiful grey mare, saddled and ready to ride. “Now compound the debt. Take my horse here, and go ride over and tell him.”

Gaultry could not move. She stared at the horse, then Argat, then back again. “You are speaking of a matter of property,” she said primly, not quite willing to bend herself to Argat’s cajoling. “It makes no odds to me, whether or not Martin and I can marry. We are already as one.”

“So take the horse,” Argat said, laughing, “and go to him.”

That is what Gaultry did.

Tor Books by Katya Reimann

The Tielmaran Chronicles

Wind from a Foreign Sky
A Tremor in the Bitter Earth
Prince of Fire and Ashes

Coda

Vidryas Lanaya-Killer stared out through the velvet curtains of the
gently bobbing palanquin. He had never thought to visit Bassorah City. He had never thought to be carried through its marble-paved streets, splendidly recumbent on a swaying bed of silk, as the center attraction in a triumphal victory parade. Ranks of soldiers clad in shining uniforms cleared a path through the screaming, adoring mob; lines of heavily tranquilized Lanai cattle were dragged along in mooing, lowing misery, spewing manure in their nervousness, but docile beneath the drugs.

It should have been his uncle’s victory, but the glory had fallen all to Vidryas, with his handsome Bissanty face.

He had argued with Ochsan, trying to convince him to claim his proper share of the victory, but his uncle had only smiled and shaken his head. “They want you, Viddy my lad. Enjoy the honors that have fallen to you.”

Vidryas had grown enough in wisdom to recognize Ochsan’s ironic gleam. “This is all a part of your planning, isn’t it?” he had accused his uncle. “You must always have intended for me to have the credit for the victory in your place. This is all a part of your plan for Dramaya, even down to the Bissanty crowds, cheering me in the streets.”

His uncle had not bothered to deny him. “Let them call you Lanai-Killer,” was all he’d added. “Better not to insist on the ‘Lanaya.’ The crowds will shout Lanai-Killer in any case—why insist on ‘Lanaya’? Your captains will be the only ones to notice, and do you think your pride will faze them? They’ll report you up the ranks—that’s all. But it could be
enough that later you’ll come to regret it. Let them call you Lanai-Killer, after their own manners. What is a little piece of language, to sully their celebration?”

“I can accept that I am a soldier beneath your command,” Vidryas had told him, sighing. The impenetrable stolidity of his uncle’s jowly face revealed nothing of his cunning, of his dauntless ability to lead men, but Vidryas was no longer a young fool—he knew what lay under his uncle’s impassive surface. “My Uncle, as you saved my life in the mountains, as you showed me what it was to be a man and a soldier, I will honor your orders. Llara in me, for that I have agreed to this pretense that I was the man who led your soldiers to victory. But I will not deny my blood. You cannot have that, along with all the rest of my allegiance.”

Despite what Ochsan had declared that he wanted, Vidryas knew that he had decided rightly. He had seen that in his uncle’s eyes, even as Ochsan grumbled and hawed, and made his little pacing movements, exactly like the little black bull that the terrible goat-herder witch had called him.

“Have it your way then,” Ochsan had said. “Now—go on. Enjoy your procession. You have earned it—whether for the reasons the crowds believe or not.”

The impassioned cheering of the crowd surrounding him now almost had him believing his uncle’s words. One day, surely, there would be a price for this pleasure: the rising crowds shouting his name, wealth of flowers and coins hurled into his lap. He had grown enough as a man to know that. The Emperor had rallied this triumphal parade for a reason, and the reason was surely not to celebrate Bissanty’s victory over the Lanaya. Rebel Tielmark had raised a King. The throne of Bissanty’s Tielmaran Prince, a sacral altar in Great Llara’s Temple, had cracked and fallen, a dreadful portent of loss.

This parade—if to Vidryas, this parade was the epitome of his young life, to the Emperor it was only a distraction, while he decided his next move. Vidryas could count on none of today’s popularity to remain with him—he could not even count on the Emperor wanting him to retain these garlands of victory.

The parade, passing along the grand avenue, reached Bassorah’s ancient victory arch, and passed beneath its cooling shade. Beyond lay the square dedicated to all the Great Twelve, and across it, the rising dome of Llara’s temple. As Vidryas’s palanquin emerged from the arch, the cheering struck him with fresh strength.

“Lanai-Killer! Lanai-Killer! Vidryas, Llara-Blessed!”

The faces staring up at him were alive with a joy, with an energy to which it was impossible not to respond.

For today, for this hour, Vidryas could pretend that his boyhood dreams were true. He was the leader of a great parade, and at its finish, there would be the Emperor to honor him. The Emperor and his melancholy wives, surrounded by the four remaining princes of Bissanty and their children—the Pallidon heir with his two beautiful little boys, and the ancient Sea Prince with his strange white daughter. It was the fit conclusion to any soldier boy’s fable.

Today—for this moment—his boy’s dreams were true.

About the Author

KATYA REIMANN lived for six years in Oxford, England, where she wrote a Ph.D. dissertation about pirates. She put this knowledge to active use in founding the (now defunct) Kamikaze Punt Club.

She enjoys going down caves and up mountains, being out of doors and in boats.

Prince of Fire and Ashes
concludes the Tielmaran Chronicles. Katya lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she is currently at work on her new novel, assorted smaller writing projects, and raising her identical twin daughters, to whom this book is lovingly dedicated.

K
atya’s webpages can be found at
www.katyareimann.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

PRINCE OF FIRE AND ASHES

Edited by James Frenkel

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eISBN 9781429979719

First eBook Edition : March 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reimann, Katya.

Prince of fire and ashes / Katya Reimann.—1st ed.