The Fire Prince (The Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy Book 2) (43 page)

Harkeld felt himself flush. He busied himself with pulling off the other boot. “So there’d be agents like this in Osgaard and Lundegaard?”

“They’re everywhere. Isn’t a kingdom in the world doesn’t have ’em.”

“And the red-haired man who was here a couple of weeks ago—”

“Is the one who killed Frane and Gerit.” Ebril pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside.

Harkeld stripped out of his own shirt in silence. “Did you know Frane well?”

“We trained together, the last few years at the Academy. Me and Petrus and Innis. Justen. Hew. Frane and Susa.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ebril grimaced, shrugged. “We all knew this mission could be dangerous.”

But not this dangerous. Not with Fithians after us
. Harkeld shucked his trews and climbed into bed. Dareus had died because of the curse, but Frane and Gerit and Susa were dead because of the bounty on his head.

Ebril snuffed the candle.

Harkeld lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling he could no longer see, turning over everything he’d learned. He felt almost as ignorant as the villagers downstairs.
I need to pay more attention. I need to ask more questions
.

“Ebril... that assassin, the one with the red hair... isn’t it odd that he was alone? Don’t they usually travel in groups?”

“Not always. They start with a Journey, like us, but after that it depends on what contracts they take. Some of them like to work with companions, others don’t.”

“Journey?”

“It’s the final part of our training.” The bed creaked as Ebril rolled over. His voice became slightly louder. “We Journey for a year or so with experienced Sentinels, learning what it’s
really
like. And then we go back to Rosny and take the oath. If we still want to. Some people don’t, by that time. Journeys are meant to be challenging, y’see. Sometimes students even die.” He yawned. “The Fithians do it a bit differently. They Journey after taking their oath. It’s when they make their first kills, under supervision of an experienced assassin.”

“How long did you train?”

“Me? All up, twelve years.”

“Twelve!” He rolled until he was facing Ebril’s bed. “Are you serious?”

Ebril laughed at his astonishment. “Twelve’s standard. Fithians train for about that, too. Of course, they start younger.”

“They do?”

“‘Give me a boy before the age of ten’... Haven’t you heard that?”

“No.”

“The Patriarch will only take them before they’re ten. The younger the better. And only orphans. By the time they’re adults, they’re masters of every weapon. And utterly loyal to the Brotherhood.”

“The one Justen killed looked younger than us.”

“He did, didn’t he?” The laughter was completely gone from Ebril’s voice. “Three kills, though. Rand found the tattoos on the back of his neck.”

“Plus Gerit and Frane.”
Five kills
. Harkeld rolled onto his back again. He stared upwards. “So what did you learn for twelve years?”

“The first few years was mostly how to control my magic. And ethics.”

“Ethics?”

“What’s appropriate use of magic and what isn’t. They drum
that
in early. That’s the biggest thing we deal with, y’see. Mages who abuse their power.”

“It is?”

“Uh-huh. A while back in Noorn, there was a bandit family with fire magic. They killed scores of people. Took nearly a dozen Sentinels to catch them.” Ebril yawned. “But usually it’s smaller stuff. Burglars who can shift shape, or people who use threats of magic to line their pockets. Or curses. I saw a nasty one on my Journey. Boils.” Bedclothes rustled as he shifted position. “Anyway, people who only have a little magic, they’re at the Academy for a year or two. The more magic you have, the longer you stay. It’s really only Sentinel candidates who stay past eighteen.”

“What do you learn then?”

“More magic. And lots of fighting. How to defend ourselves with and without magic. Sentinels are expected to be able to fight as well as a soldier, y’know. And we learn laws and such, how to pass judgment, what kinds of sentences to give. And court etiquette, because Sentinels travel all over the Allied Kingdoms and are invited into royal palaces. And then there’s the Journey. And then, when we turn twenty-four, we take the oath.”

“Twenty-four?” Harkeld frowned. “Is Innis that old?”

“No. They made an exception for her. The Council debated for days over it. Could have gone either way.” Ebril yawned again. “But this is a critical mission, and she’s the strongest shapeshifter we’ve had in a century, so they decided ability was more important than age and experience.”

“Huh.”

“You thinking of becoming a Sentinel? You could do it. Your magic’s strong enough, and you’ve already got the fighting skills. I reckon a year or two of training, and then a Journey, and you’d be ready to take the oath.”

“No,” Harkeld said. “One of the healers is going to get rid of my magic once the curse is destroyed.”

“Your choice,” Ebril said, his tone a verbal shrug.

Harkeld frowned up at the ceiling. “Ebril... how do healers remove a person’s magic?”

“They kill the bit of your brain that makes magic.”

“What?” He rolled to face Ebril again. “I thought magic was in the blood.”

“It is, but it comes from the brain. There’s a gland that puts magic in our blood.”

Harkeld felt his eyebrows rise.
Oh
.

“You’d best ask Rand about it. Or Innis. They’d explain it better’n me.”

Harkeld lay awake, considering this startling news. He didn’t like the thought of someone tampering with his brain, killing part of it.
But the result’s worth it
. He wrapped the bedclothes more closely around himself and shut his eyes. The bedding smelled clean, the pillow was soft, the mattress wasn’t lumpy.
Sleep
, he ordered himself.

But sleep refused to come. Soon they’d be at the second anchor stone. What would it be like this time?

Harkeld opened his eyes.

This was when Dareus and most of the soldiers had died in Lundegaard—when they neared the anchor stone.
It gets
more
dangerous now, not less
.

Bedclothes rustled as Ebril rolled over. He was still awake too.

“Ebril...”

“Huh?”

“You know how the curse raised all those corpses... do you think something like that will happen again?”

There was silence. “You know,” Ebril said, sounding much more alert, “you could have asked me that in the morning. Would have woken me up good and proper.”

“Sorry.”

There was more silence. “I don’t know,” Ebril said. “By the All-Mother, I hope not.”

So do I
.

“There’s no ruined city,” Ebril said, after another long pause. “It’s just jungle and hot pools, so far as I know. Wouldn’t be many corpses lying around to be woken up.”

Harkeld nodded, relieved. “Good. Thanks.”

“Flin... stop thinking and go to sleep.”

Harkeld grunted a laugh. He closed his eyes again. This time, sleep came easily.

W
HEN
H
ARKELD WOKE
, the sun had risen and Ebril was exercising barefooted in the middle of the bedchamber. He watched the witch complete a sequence of lunges and retreats. He’d seen something like that before, in Osgaard.

“Do all witches do that?” he asked, when Ebril had stopped.

Ebril shrugged. “We do it every day at the Academy. Becomes habit.” He sat on his bed and reached for his socks. “We’ve been traveling so fast it’s been a while since I’ve had time to do it.”

“What’s it for?”

“It wakes up your body and your mind. The instructors say it improves balance, too, and co-ordination and flexibility, and all sorts of things.”

Harkeld pushed back the bedclothes and sat up.

“There are other sequences, but that’s the one people do most often.” Ebril hesitated. “I can teach you, if you want.”

Harkeld considered this offer. He had a flash of memory: gray-haired Dareus jumping lightly down from the rope dangling over the palace walls. Dareus had been well into his fifties, as old as King Magnas, but he’d moved like a man twenty years younger. “All right.”

T
HE EXERCISES WERE
harder than they looked. Harkeld kept overbalancing. His movements were jerky compared with Ebril’s smooth flow and he couldn’t get as low in the lunges. He was short of breath by the time they’d gone through it six times.

“Wakes you up, doesn’t it?” Ebril said. He sat down and pulled on his socks.

Harkeld nodded. He wiped his face. There was perspiration on his upper lip. “Most witches do that every morning?”

“Yes.” Ebril hesitated, sock in hand. “Look, I don’t know if you’re doing it on purpose, but... you keep calling us witches. And to us that’s like...” He screwed up his face. “It’s like if I called you a whoreson all the time.”

“Oh,” Harkeld said.

“In Rosny, if someone called me a witch, I’d hit them.”

“Oh,” Harkeld said again. “I didn’t realize.” He’d known the witches preferred to be called
mages
—Dareus had corrected him several times—but he hadn’t known
witch
was such an insult.

“I wasn’t sure if you were doing it deliberately.”

“It’s the only word we have here for, um... mages.” He shrugged awkwardly. “I’ll try not to use it.”

Ebril grinned. “Good enough for me.”

Harkeld fished his boots out from under the bed.
Justen never told me this stuff!
he thought resentfully.

But Justen had been pretending to not be a witch.

Not a witch. A mage.

I
T TOOK NEARLY
four hours to cross the Szal. The river was several miles wide, braided into broad channels interspersed with shingle bars. The deeper channels had flat-bottomed ferries on cables, the shallower ones had fords. By Harkeld’s count, they loaded and unloaded the horses onto five different boats, forded seven channels, and rode across a dozen bars.

A small, dark hawk circled above them—Innis—but there was no sign of Ebril or Petrus or Justen.

The forest on the far side of the Szal hadn’t been logged. Instead of tree stumps and mud, tall trees cast cool shade. They followed the road east for half a mile, then turned north onto a narrow track. Innis was still the only shapeshifter Harkeld could see. In the late afternoon, he discovered why. A russet-breasted hawk arrowed down, a dead pigeon in its talons.

Cora took the pigeon.

The hawk changed shape. “I caught it heading north-west,” Ebril said.

A tiny leather pouch was tied to one limp leg. Cora unrolled the scrap of parchment inside. “We can guess what it says, even if we can’t read it.” She held the message out to Rand.

Rand examined it and shrugged.

“May I?” Harkeld asked.

Rand passed the scrap to him. A dozen incomprehensible symbols were inscribed on it in black ink.

“Don’t throw that pigeon away,” Ebril told Cora, shoving his legs into trews, dragging on his shirt. “I’ll have it for dinner.”

Not long afterwards, Petrus brought another dead pigeon. “It was flying east.”

The message this pigeon carried was longer; there were two lines of cryptic marks. Harkeld stared at them in frustration. What did they say?

He held it out to Ebril, riding alongside him. “Want to see?”

Ebril took it, looked at it, grimaced.

“Can you understand any of it?”

Ebril nudged his horse closer. “Well, this one, the one that looks like a lightning bolt, means
mages
. And that arrow is a compass point. And this symbol here...” He pointed at a triangle with a dot in the center. “Is their one for a target. And the circle with one side shaded tells when the message was sent. See? It’s the moon a few days past full. And the one on the second line that looks like a throwing star is the symbol for an assassin, obviously. As for the rest...” He shrugged. “One of these marks will identify who sent the message, and one’ll be a number, for how many of us he thinks there are.” He handed the message back to Harkeld. “The first line says we’ve passed through Vlesnik heading east. The second... My guess is he’s asking for assassins to be sent after us as fast as possible.”

Harkeld’s ribcage seemed to contract slightly. “But the message didn’t get through.”

“Not this one, but chances are he’ll resend tomorrow. Very thorough, Fithians.”

Harkeld folded the scrap of parchment and tucked it in his pocket. “That’s not reassuring,” he said dryly.

Ebril grinned at his tone. “Don’t worry. We’ve got a good head start.”