Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) Page 8

  So it was that Bastrop passed through the First Gate and found himself abruptly on Jeptallan soil, smack in the middle of Midiron. He lifted his hand at the heads that peered silently over the wall. One of them nodded in return; the others only watched him.

  The villagers of Midiron were not an overtly friendly lot. The Lord General of Tira felt eyes summing him up as his tired horse plodded toward the common well.

  “Water for your mount, sire?” The young man’s tone was polite, but he did not smile until Bastrop turned and revealed the crest on his tunic. The crest of Tira was well regarded, even in Jeptalla. Bastrop was glad he had chosen not to wear his purple cloak with the crest of the Guardians on this particular trip.

  “Aye, and a drop for myself as well.”

  As horse and man were tended, the well-keeper did not speak further. Villagers who passed spared barely a glance and walked on.

  Some feet away, a small child pointed and whispered. His mother slapped his hand and jerked him along. Bastrop could not make out her hissed words, but he understood the gist of it: mind your own business. It might as well be the country’s motto, inscribed in stone on the sanctuary portico.

  Bastrop remounted and picked his way through the village. From the number of people about, he thought it must be a major market day. Twice the road became so congested that he was forced to sit atop his horse, drumming his fingers with impatience, while a wagon was unloaded or a cart of pigs driven into a waiting pen.

  The appetizing aroma of roasting meat wafted from a tavern’s smoking chimney. Hearty male laughter rang from the open windows.

  Bastrop was tempted to stop. Delicious as the smell was, he was leery of tavern fare. One could never be sure they were really serving what they claimed. He remembered stories of one innkeeper in Bethosa who routinely passed off rat and hedgehog as venison. Besides, eating strange food often gave him terrible indigestion. Traveling was no time for cramping bowels.

  He sighed and slapped at the reins, moving forward. He had made good time so far and hoped to reach the Seat before nightfall.

  The village disappeared at the Second Gate, inside which Bastrop observed carefully terraced fields burgeoning with shooma, corn and some sort of cabbages he could not name. It was a beautiful country but there was a wildness here that made Bastrop uneasy. Everything was too close, too crowded. Everywhere he looked was leafy and green, sunlight dappled with shadows. The mingled scents of wild flowers tickled his nose. Somewhere nearby a brook gurgled, but he could not see it for the vines that climbed trees and strangled fences. Forests rose to the west, dark and dense and impenetrable as if the trees themselves formed another barrier.

  Beyond the fields, the Third Wall loomed higher than the two before.

  The Seat had been built by an ancient people at war since the moment they set foot on the continent. Bastrop was not alone in believing that its architects had been military geniuses. Of the twelve Omani allied provinces, only Jeptalla had withstood Tor invasion. And before the Tors and the Great Alliance of Omani, Jeptalla had repelled armies from Gezana to the east and Kirrisian to the north, as well as any number of mercenaries and renegades lured by the rumors of great treasure behind the Three Great Walls.

  The Third Wall was actually a fortress in itself, a quarter of a parsec thick and ninety parsecs in width, stretching from one side of the jutting peninsula to the other. On either side, the land fell away in steep rocky cliffs to the Calla Sea on the east and the Far Sea to the west. The Third Wall was separated from the Middle Kingdom by a moat of murky water. The only entrance was across a stone bridge and through the Third Gate, an enormous wooden door covered completely in iron. The hinges were as big as a man.

  The wall was hollow with three windowless stories of barracks and storage rooms for grain, fuel and weaponry. Thin slits served as windows on the fourth story, where defenders could rain death upon any foolish enough to lay siege to the stronghold. A labyrinth of tunnels ran underground, and these were the Seat’s greatest defense. The entrances were almost impossible to detect.

  Only once had invaders found their way inside. Forty Gezana soldiers, dreams of treasure filling their heads, had charged into the tunnels; all forty died in the darkness. Some were trampled when the torches flickered and died. The rest perished of thirst and hunger, unable to find their way out. Legend said their bones rested down there still, left as a warning to any foolish enough to enter.

  Bastrop drew his horse to a halt and folded his hands over the saddle horn patiently. Unlike the First and Second Gates, the Third Gate was always closed and guarded by Jeptallan troops. He could see no one on the parapet, but he knew they were there.

  “Proclaim your name and your business,” rang the command from far above him.

  “I am Lord General Bastrop of Tira, Commander of the First Arm of the Omani Legions, Supreme Commander of the Guardians of Omana Teret,” Bastrop declared in a booming voice. “I come in friendship to King Tullus.”

  “And your business?”

  The Lord General’s spine stiffened. Oh, the impertinence of these cursed Jeptallans! Any other door in the realm would have swung wide at the mere mention of his name.

  “My business is my business!” he cried in the voice that caused his own hardened veterans to quake.

  He was stunned to hear laughter from the parapet. He was about to bark in fury when the gate swung inward with scarcely a sound from the oiled hinges.

  A giant of a man strode towards him.

  “Bastrop, my old friend! That’s an answer fit for a native! Are you quite sure your mother didn’t get you by some Jeptallan rogue passing through Tira?”

  The Lord General laughed as he slid down from his horse. He wondered how long the king of the land had been waiting to play this little joke. Certainly, Tullus’ men would have sent word of his approach hours ago, probably since the first moment he crossed into Jeptalla.

  “By the beard, Tullus, you leave my mother out of this!”

  The king’s escort, waiting just inside the gate, looked on in disinterest as the two greatest military minds of the Realm slapped each other on the back and disparaged each other’s mother like a couple of stable boys.

  ***

  “She has a fair enough face, I suppose,” Tullus allowed. He tugged at his beard with one hand while the other held the small portrait of Toyva, Bastrop’s niece. “Is it a true likeness?”

  “Nay, it doesn’t do her justice. She’s a lively little thing, perhaps a trifle silly as all girls are at that age, but obedient and well trained in household skills. She would be a good match for Scearce.”

  “It seems too soon to be thinking of such things.”

  “For pity’s sake, do stop tugging your beard like that! The boy is almost twenty summers. What are you waiting for?”

  “I know, I know. I just always assumed his mother would handle all this... dickering and matchmaking.” Behind the flowing gray beard, mustache and thick, shaggy eyebrows, the king’s face was lined and weary. He waved his hand tiredly at his old friend across the table.

  “Alaida is gone and your only son needs a wife.”

  And, Bastrop thought, your house needs a mistress. The servants had grown slipshod and disorganized with no one to guide them. When Alaida was alive, not only the house but the entire Seat ran as smoothly as a military campaign, so tirelessly and graciously had that tiny woman devoted herself to her duties. Bastrop always left the Seat feeling faintly envious; his own house was chaotic, his wife the least organized person he’d ever met. Somehow such a flaw hadn’t seemed important all those summers ago when he’d fallen in love with an ample bosom and an engaging smile.

  When Tullus did not speak, Bastrop continued. “Look, I say this in the spirit of friendship. I do not mean to be harsh.”

  “Good Bastrop, I know. I know. I have neglected my obligations long enough in this matter. I promise to give serious thought to your niece. But do you think she could be happy here? Jeptalla is much different from
Tira.”

  “You have a gift for understatement! But it is not so different in the things that matter. Scearce will make a good husband—”

  “A good husband for whom, Uncle?” A young man stood in the doorway.

  “Scearce!” Bastrop rose to embrace him. “I’d swear you’re two jackles taller than the last time I saw you!”

  The young man smiled in obvious pleasure, his neatly clipped beard parting to show remarkably white teeth, even though he returned the embrace somewhat reluctantly. Bastrop did not take it personally; Scearce was at that age where displays of physical affection were embarrassing.

  Scearce was as tall as his father without the girth that made Tullus such an overwhelming physical presence. Instead, he possessed the willowy grace of a dancer or an athlete. Scearce had always been small for his age, almost dainty. Small hands and feet had come from his mother, along with the thin, straight nose of the House of Ahornet. Tullus had wondered if his blood would ever show until the boy had shot up like a stalk of shooma searching for the sun, and the Jeptalla king had smiled to see his son reach a height of nearly six jackles. Men of the Omani Realm seldom reached five.

  Scearce’s was a sensitive, open face made striking by the deep-set, light brown eyes as long-lashed as a girl’s. Boys from the village had taunted him, calling him pretty. They had not yet learned the danger of judging a book by its cover. With a fury that stunned his tormentors, he bloodied noses, broke bones and blackened eyes until no one dared to call him anything but Prince Scearce.

  He was headstrong, stubborn and proud, confident in a way that only the royally born can be. But he took his duty as Tullus’ heir quite seriously. He studied swordplay and warfare with a diligence that left little room for any man to doubt his capability. He could ride faster and farther than any man in his father’s troops, he could pluck an eagle from the sky with his bow and wrestle an opponent twice his size to the ground and pin him there. Duty demanded no less of him. Honor pushed him to be better, stronger, faster.

  Even if he had not been the heir to the Jeptallan Seat, Scearce would have been sought after by every unmarried female in the province. Women saw his fair, gentle face with those liquid, long-lashed eyes and melted. But so far, he’d spared hardly a look for any of them.

  It wasn’t that he was uninterested. Quite the contrary. Their sidelong looks and pink lips made him shiver with nervousness. He never knew what to say to them; his experience with the opposite sex had been mostly limited to his mother, elderly servants and to another whom he hadn’t seen in a fistful of summers. Even that friendship was cut from the cloth of childhood, like a favorite toy discarded but still recalled with much affection.

  And he could hardly lump Lilli with the village girls who giggled and winked as he passed by. His feelings toward her had been of an entirely different sort: brotherly, protective and tender. The local wenches who eyed him so blatantly elicited another response, so strong and coarse that he was afraid of dishonoring his house. He knew other young men in less enviable positions took pleasure wherever they liked; but he also knew the ruined girls and bastard children they left in their wake. No, it was better he wait until his father found a bride for him. So it was with an equal mix of excitement and anxiety that he overheard the conversation between his father and Lord General Bastrop.

  “Your uncle has come to propose a bride for you. His niece, Toyva.”

  “Fie, Uncle! Sounds like incest to me.”

  Bastrop laughed. Scearce had called him “uncle” since he was old enough to talk; it was an honorary title of affection, much as men who’d served together in the ranks called each other “brother” where no blood was shared.

  Tullus handed his son the portrait of Toyva. The young man shifted from foot to foot as he gazed down into a soft, round little face with a nubby chin and fat cheeks.

  “I was telling your father the portrait does her little justice,” Bastrop said when Scearce did not speak. “She’s a sprite of a thing, talks too much and giggles. But she’s a good girl, from a fine family, if I do say so myself.”

  “She’ll think me old,” Scearce said, returning the small oval to Bastrop. “She looks like a baby.”

  “She’s fifteen, the right age.” Bastrop snorted. “Take a girl any older for a bride and you’ll find they have already acquired the most annoying habits. And she’ll find you much younger than the other prospects her mother would consider. Sweet Mother, before I left she’d received a call from Vidor Renegor.”

  “Renegor of Mannishulo? That scrounging old fool?” Tullus laughed, some of his good humor restored. “He must be nearly ninety, the randy old goat. He should be ashamed of himself.”

  “Ah, does not the Book of Belah say a man should sow his seed for as long as the soil is fertile?” Bastrop grinned at the flush in Scearce’s cheeks. “Don’t you see? She’ll think you Belah reborn, come to save her from a life in Mannishulo with eight stepchildren older than her own father and mother!”

  Scearce laughed in spite of himself. Bastrop had always been so kind to him, better than his three blood uncles had ever been. Alron and Ramertah, contented in their own small estates in the Outer Kingdom, were mere names to Scearce, not family. He’d met them at his mother’s burial rites last summer for the first time since his naming ceremony as an infant.

  Merton, the eldest after Tullus, was a different matter. His estate, a fertile and large holding just outside the Third Wall, was near enough that he visited often, usually to borrow coin or complain, or perhaps just to measure Scearce’s health and progress with slitted eyes. Tullus’ only son was all that stood between Merton’s own offspring—three short, brawny boys—and the Seat of Jeptalla. Scearce did not think himself at all paranoid to distrust the man.

  “So, you’ll think about it?” Bastrop squeezed his shoulder and winked.

  “But I can’t bespeak myself to anyone I haven’t even met.” He knew nothing of this girl. Suppose she was stupid or ugly, igniting none of the passions he had waited so long to indulge? “Suppose we have nothing to talk about?”

  “Bah! It’s dangerous for a man to talk to his wife,” Bastrop laughed, only half-joking. Imagine a boy worrying about being able to converse with his wife!

  “I can’t at least meet her first?” Scearce glanced anxiously at his father. “Mother....”

  “What is it, boy?” Tullus’ voice thickened. Even after all these moon risings, the merest reference to his dead wife was painful. He had not dreamed he could miss someone with an ache so deep and steady. “Speak up.”

  “When Mother and I spoke of marriage, she made me promise I would choose wisely, with heart and head equally balanced. She said that the only happy marriages were ones where both were considered.”

  He saw no point in mentioning that particular conversation with his mother had begun the day she told him he must stop writing to Lilli.

  “She said that, did she?”

  “Yes, father.” Scearce’s gray eyes met those of his sire. “She said she knew the moment she saw you that you were the man she would marry.”

  “Well, then,” Tullus said softly, “we will give your bride the same opportunity.”

  “Thank you, father.”

  “And what should I tell my niece?” Bastrop couldn’t repress a faint scowl. He had hoped to have the business settled. Instead, he would return home to face his nagging sister, who thought of nothing but her daughter’s marriage night and day. “That you will not consider her until you’ve looked her over in the flesh? Checked her teeth mayhaps, like a barnyard nag?”

  “Oh, uncle!” Scearce laughed. He was relieved beyond measure that his father had spared him a bride sight-unseen. “Please give Toyva this token of my sincerest interest—” he tugged a small ring from his finger and pressed it into Bastrop’s palm— “and tell her that I hope to prove myself a worthy candidate for her consideration when we meet at the Festival of the Single Moon—”

  “The festival! But that’s a whole summer
hence!”

  “And if at that time it pleases us both,” Scearce continued, unaware of the astonishment on his father’s face, “then we will ask the blessing of the Shallan himself.”

  Bastrop swore quietly, yet was unable to resist a smile. He was disappointed not to be bringing Toyva an actual proposal, but he saw the sense in Scearce’s plan. The two young people would have time to correspond and get to know one another, and it was an old and honorable tradition to seek the Shallan’s blessing on the final day of the festival. Many traveled to Shallanie for just that purpose. Toyva’s mother would be pleased that Scearce had thought of it. Not everyone in the realm felt the Jeptallans were as dutiful to the Shallan and Omana Teret as they should be.

  Besides, the Lord of Tira thought to himself, perhaps by then Toyva would have outgrown those annoying giggles of hers.

  Chapter 7: Osane

  She heard the sobbing as it echoed off the polished marble hallway long before she ever reached the shallana’s chambers. Cadia-dedre Osane took a deep breath and smoothed the skirts of her scarlet burlang before entering the room. She wished she did not have to deal with this. But Anthely had called for her and she could not refuse.

  The bedchamber of the shallana was enormous, spanned by gilded beams and supported by columns of the same pale pink chiate as adorned the hall outside. The hazy room was virtually empty but for the bed, the silk canopy embroidered with tiny gold flowers. A gaggle of uneasy women near the windows looked up as Osane entered.

  The thick smell of burning darma petals closed her throat and stung her eyes. The incense was supposed to soothe the soul, but it did not bring any peace to the woman who lay tangled in the bedclothes.

  A metallic smell just beneath the incense hit Osane’s nostrils. Then she saw the blood on the sheets.

  “It’s definite, then,” she murmured, to no one in particular. “She’s lost another one.”

  “Don’t you dare speak of me as if I were not even in the room!” A tear-streaked face rose from the bed.