Restoration (24 page)

Dearest one... you must remember... deceived...
The whispered words drifted through my mind like the perfumed breeze. I snapped my head from side to side, peering through the dark branches, expecting... fearing... to see a glimmer of green. But the only other souls in the olive grove were the two men who came riding through the trees from the direction of the house, their way lit by a young torchbearer who jogged alongside.

In the lead was a straight-backed, bulky warrior, whose nose and cheeks and incipient paunch spoke of too many skins of wine since he had last ridden to war. His sleeveless shirt and cofat—a short cape fastened at one shoulder with a silver brooch—were expensively fashioned, and on the arm left bare, he wore a silver arm ring set with emeralds. He stopped at the edge of the road and examined Aleksander, motioning the slave boy to hold up the light. The other rider remained out of view, to the man's side and slightly behind him.

“Your Highness,” said the florid warrior, his eyebrows slightly raised. He made no salute with his sword and no bow, not even a dip of the head. His greeting was not quite a question.

“Mardek.” Aleksander held his horse motionless while extending his left hand, allowing his signet ring to gleam in the light.

Lord Vassile's full lips were drawn into a disgruntled frown. To refuse his Prince's proffered hand—and the ring that was the symbol of the Empire itself—would be an affront far more serious than a cold reception. The older man nudged his restless mount forward slowly until he could touch Aleksander's fingers, and then he bent stiffly and kissed the ring. “My son Hadeon,” he said as he withdrew, waving his hand at the second rider.

Aleksander's back stiffened; the man who rode into the flickering light was the young nobleman who had splattered us with his wine dregs earlier that evening.

My hand moved to the hilt of my sword, and once again explored our surroundings with my heightened senses. No one else was in the olive grove.

Hadeon, elegantly garbed in purple silk shirt and gold-embroidered cofat, followed his father's lead and kissed Aleksander's ring, but as he lifted his head he cast a calculating glance at the Prince's damaged limb. Luckily for young Hadeon, Aleksander had resolved to keep his mind on his business.

The proprieties established, the Prince became a gracious supplicant. “My lord Vassile, I have come to affirm the strong bond between our families. Both my father and my uncle had nothing but the utmost respect for the Mardek and their service to the Empire. The honor of your house is renowned throughout the land. Thus I come to you in our gravest hour, trusting you will see fit to join our effort to bar the usurper from the throne, where my father's murderers think to put him.”

The portly Vassile sat stiff and wary. “Fine words, my lord Aleksander. We hear many words. The Mardek have no love for this Edik, nor for Hamrasch dogs who squat upon other people's rugs... but you, sir . . .” He raked Aleksander with a practiced eye. “What are we to make of you?”

“I am your rightful Emperor-in-waiting, proclaimed on the day of my birth and anointed by your sovereign in the year of my majority. No honorable Derzhi can make anything else of me.”

“But our Emperor lies murdered. We hear there were arguments between you, disagreements of long-standing. Your impatience is well-known... your intemperate hand. And now you come to us in this state . . .”

Lord Vassile shifted his hand on his horse's neck to still the agitated beast. Only a small movement, but Aleksander and his mount remained absolutely motionless, perfectly controlled. “On the day of my anointing, my Emperor named me as his Voice and Hand. For more than two years I spoke for him and wielded his authority as he intended. Every man, Lord Vassile—even an Emperor—has occasion to argue with himself. As to my father's death, here is the truth of it: the Hamraschi rebelled against my legitimate authority. When the time came to reap the consequences of their perfidy, they plotted against your Emperor and his son in fear that my ‘intemperate hand' would raise up honorable houses like the Mardek at cost to their own domains. Would you have me serve temperance and permit them to succeed in such a crime? And as to my state... cowards and usurpers fear a worthy warrior.”

Aleksander's strategy was a gamble. The minor houses had grumbled for years at the excessive influence of the Twenty, but, of course, if an Emperor's whim could exalt a loyal heged, his next whim could as easily diminish it. Vassile hesitated, scrutinizing Aleksander as if to weigh his appearance against his words.

“What worthy warrior abandons his troops and then dares flaunt his defeat?” Hadeon blurted into the heavy silence, thrusting his narrow chin at Aleksander's boot. “And what murderer is better than another?”

“What worthy warrior plays at horse racing when brother Derzhi hang in living torment in his city?” said Aleksander, releasing his pent-up fury. One might have imagined the very stones beneath the olive grove rumbling in answer to him. “Brothers whose only crime was service to their anointed Emperor and whose blood cries out for vengeance as did my father's blood. I wear the mark of my service to honor. Where is yours, boy?”

A red-face Hadeon touched hand to sword hilt, but quickly removed it when Lord Vassile raised his hand and spoke sharply. “Please, please, my lord Aleksander. My son is concerned only that we risk what remains of our family security. Any who dare gainsay this Edik are quickly silenced, as you have seen. Indeed no evidence, no rendered justice, but only this false lord's command condemned our brothers. To see you in the flesh and hear your claims is a powerful warrant of your truth. But we have also heard that none of the Twenty will support you. For a small house to risk its very existence in an unwinnable pursuit . . .”

“Edik is buying the Twenty with the fortune of every other house,” said Aleksander. In cold calm he detailed the stories of bribery and treachery that Kiril had collected and sent to him: lands confiscated, horses appropriated for the Emperor's service, and then found in another heged's herds, long-held mining rights and trading monopolies revoked and shifted to a more powerful rival's control. “Do you think the usurper will allow you to keep your mines when the Fontezhi wish to increase their silver hold? What do you protect by your restraint?”

“But what do you offer that is different, my lord? To regain your position you must have the Twenty, and we will again be inhaling their dust.”

“Never again, Mardek,” said Aleksander in ferocious quiet. “Never again will the Twenty hold me hostage, nor will they treat my allies as lesser men. Tell the lords of the Fozhet and the Kan davar, the Naddasine, and the Bek, all of the worthy houses that have been ignored for too long... I will find a new way. By my father's blood and sword, by my dead warriors in Karn‘Hegeth market, I will.”

The old Derzhi's nod of approval was almost imperceptible, yet it signaled that Aleksander had won a monumental victory. Unfortunately, victory bought him very little. Beneath his fleshy exterior, old Mardek was as hard as the rocky foundation of Karn‘Hegeth. “We mourn your father's passing, Lord Aleksander, and would honor his will to see you crowned. Come back to us with evidence that others trust your word and your prospects, and the Mardek shall ride with them and you to Zhagad. Until then, we do nothing, and you are not welcome here. Your presence in the city endangers us all, and my family must come first.” With a generous bow, the first lord bade farewell. “Safe journey, Your Highness.” As if Aleksander could ride out from Karn'Hegeth openly and in the state to which he was born. The old warrior clucked to his mount and rode back the way he had come. Young Hadeon followed his father's example, though less gracefully and without words. A curt bow and he, too, was gone.

Aleksander yanked the signet from his finger and the tie from his braid, wrapped his filthy haffai about his head, shoulders, and boot, and then wheeled his mount, riding past me without a glance or a word. I spurred my restless beast and caught up with him. Though he had acquitted himself well, I, too, remained silent. I couldn't think of any words that he would welcome.

 

Aleksander did not want to accept Vanko's offer of his relatives' hospitality, claiming he would as soon sleep in an alley as share a roof with a sniveling coward, but I convinced him that we would be safer off the streets. I didn't like imposing our danger upon the Manganar family, but we were desperate for rest, and we needed to see to Aleksander's leg. I was afraid of what we might find. After weeks of constant improvement, he seemed scarcely able to move it.

Truly I wanted nothing more than to get out of Karn‘Hegeth that night, but one of the younger Fontezhi lords who resided in the city had fought alongside Aleksander in his first battle, and the Prince thought to visit the man in the hour before dawn. If the nobleman would hear him, perhaps the Prince could splinter one of the Twenty Hegeds. The strategy was unpromising at best, but despite his brave words to Lord Vassile, Aleksander remained convinced that he could not fight the combined might of the Twenty with only the minor hegeds.

Within an hour of our arrival at his brother-in-law's door, Vanko and his brood moved into a goat shed behind the pottery shop, leaving the tiny balcony just off the second-floor family rooms—the house's prime guest quarters—available for Aleksander and myself. I protested that my cousin and I would gladly sleep with the goats; for my part, I could have slept in a thornbush. But Vanko insisted that there was not room enough for all his children on the cool balcony.

“Daggi still cries for her mam all the night, and Olia walks in her sleep. She'd as like fall off the balcony,” said Vanko. “Best we stay together near the privy on level ground. I'd not visit the dead handlers again this night.” The ominously silent bundle in his daughter's arms had been the Manganar's infant son.

Malver volunteered to spend the night prowling the market quarter. He claimed to have acquaintances among the traders and caravan drovers who frequented Karn‘Hegeth, and in the market, where they were loading, unloading, and drinking away their profits, he would devise some way to get Aleksander out of the city. Sovari remained abroad in Potters' Lane to keep watch until I came to relieve him later in the night.

The Prince and I were soon sitting in a small hot room above the potter's shop eating a late supper. The stifling room was furnished with a long plank table, a blazing hearth, and sixteen people, most of them wriggling, and at least half of them talking at once. Besides Vanko and his five, the wiry potter Borian and his plump wife, Lavra, had at least six children of their own, aged two to fifteen.

“I'm sorry for your loss, Vanko,” I said, trying not to gobble Lavra's thin soup too greedily. Though we had arrived late, the harried woman had insisted on stretching her pot far enough to accommodate us. We contributed the remnants of our traveling provisions—a lump of goat cheese far past its prime, a handful of dates, and a packet of flatbread—to the lively meal. I sat in the middle of a long bench, crammed between Vanko and one of Borian's sons, a pimple-faced boy of fifteen who seemed to have an excess of elbows and knees.

“Lavra's milk grows fine sons, as you see,” said Vanko, trying in vain to get a small green-glazed bowl to his mouth with two little girls on his lap, one jostling his elbow, and another hanging on his bony shoulders. “I'd hoped to get the babe to her breast before he sickened. He never found the knack of suckling with any of the village women. But truly childer so young and weak don't take to traveling. Eight days we had to come from Eleuthra. My girls did well, though.” Vanko stroked his daughter's curls, though he could not mask his wistful sadness. He was, after all, a Manganar, whose gods mandated that his place in the afterlife was determined by the number of his sons. “If not for the Derzhi at the gates—”

“The braidless brute at the gate only finished what was already done,” said Aleksander. “A man must shoulder his own blame.” The Prince was perched on a stool in the corner, where his awkward leg was out of the way of the sweating Lavra and her rosy-cheeked daughter, who hurried between hearth and table, trying to keep the many-colored bowls filled. Aleksander had spoken very little in the hour since I had knocked on the pottery shop door and inquired if Vanko meant what he said about helping us.

“‘Twas no one but a cursed Derzhi baron as killed the boy,” said Borian, the shy, nervous potter speaking up for the first time. “Tell them as you told me, Vanko. The blame falls on the Rhyzka bastard who would not allow my sister to rest when he decided that the men of Eleuthra were not enough to plant his fields this year. From sunrise to sundown for a seven day he forced her and the other women to kneel in the sun to seed his rows. When she asked to rest for a while and see to her childer, the overseer would not allow her to drink for the whole day as punishment. And so the same every day until the planting was done. Though they gave her water each night after sundown, the child withered in her. By the eye of Dolgar, that's what killed them both.” Borian turned red after this outburst and ducked his head toward his bowl.

“No Rhyzka baron has land-bound peasants in Eleuthra,” said Aleksander scornfully. “Those are Bek lands, held by grant from my—from imperial properties.”

Vanko looked at Aleksander as if the lame visitor had indeed fallen on his head. “What Derzhi ever cared if a man was land-bound to force him to do his work?”

The Prince swallowed the dregs of his soup and shook his head. “The law of the Empire says—”

“Is your head stuck up a goat's ass, friend Wat?” said the gaunt Manganar. “If the lord refuses to sell you wheat and forbids any transport of another lord's wheat through his lands, then you work for him or starve. Though I'd give no Derzhi credit for a decent bone, at least Bek paid a wage for forced labor. The Bek still hold the manor at Gan Hyffir, but the new Emperor—curse all Derzhi now and forever—has given all the land in northern Manganar to these Rhyzka, who wouldn't know the law from the shit on their boots.”