“Your lady is very fortunate I am a resourceful woman,” Faisa Dance said testily. “And a patient one.”
Her irritation rolled off my shoulders. “You have our sincerest thanks, Duchess.”
The aged noblewoman clucked her tongue. “If I’d known my generous offer of information that day would encourage the both of you to press on my aid at will, I might have abstained! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to conjure a false identity on such short notice? Not only that, but to prepare all the necessary accessories?”
She paced around the room, her layered skirts rustling like the regal plumage of a wrathful bird. We stood in one of the many interior spaces of the Coloss complex, which could be near as intricate and winding as the Fulgurkeep in so ways.
This one was used as a private armory. The walls were hung with lanterns and hooks displaying various implents of war, along with the items needed to tend them. There were swords, maces, axes, a variety of polearm, exquisitely carved bows, and a score of other cruel implents. Beneath them stood tables and shelves with an array of items, from little hamrs to work out dents in a breast plate to whetstones for sharpening. There were kits for sewing, tools for patching leather, oils, spare straps, cloths, and much more.
That dim, small room acted in many ways as both a workshop and an altar. It contained everything a knight might need to prepare for war, and for the theater of war.
“This space will be at your disposal,” the Duchess told . “It is private, untrafficked, and I will have a trustworthy guard keep watch on it surreptitiously. You will need such privacy over the next three days, to keep up this farce.”
It wasn’t particularly comfortable, with only a stool to sit on and a cold stone floor spread with hay against the damp, but it would serve. I nodded my thanks. The Lady Dance glided to stand behind an object in the low-lit room’s center. Hidden beneath a dark cloth, I could not see what lay within.
“And here is the centerpiece of my efforts. I do hope you like it.”
She gestured with a gloved hand. Taking her cue, I stepped forward and pulled the cover off. Behind , Emma drew in a sharp breath. Despite everything else, my heart quickened.
The armor was beautiful, in a grim fashion. Set on a stand so I could guess at what it would look like on my own fra, the narrow eye slits in the black helm stared back at from an even height. A greathelm of the kind traditionally used in tourneys across much of the land, it would have been little more than a cylindrical bucket if not for the artfully cut fra and ornate emblem fixed to the mask.
“A trident?” I asked, studying the image affixed to the helm’s front. Worked from copper or a tal treated to show the sa hue, it ford angry slashes of red against the dark steel.
“It’s not what you think,” Faisa told . “The Inquisition adopted the barbed auremark for their own uses, but it is one of many variations on the symbol. In centuries past, it was worn by crusader knights as a mark of penance, but this mark is even older than that. Folklore has it that devils would carry just such an implent when they walked the land, using them to claim the souls of those guilty of terrible cris before dragging them down to Hell for justice.”
“Devils, is it?” I studied the ominous helt. Wrought of heat-blackened iron and perforated with breathing holes, it only had two narrow slits for eyes. The copper trident stood between the eye slits, its wings curving under them to sweep back along the temples, jutting out into points very much like thin horns. The central line of the emblem descended down over nose and chin, into what almost resembled a spiked goatee.
Faisa had either picked well used armor or had it made to look weathered. There were myriad scars along the talwork, from thin scrapes to little dents and other imperfections. Much like the armor I normally wore, it gave the impression of countless fierce altercations.
But my ancient elven chain and second-hand steel this was not. The cuirass sported a more current design, with closely fit plates and subtle curves so it would fit comfortably over my fra and articulate just as well. It almost resembled a human torso, artfully shaped to suggest musculature. The pauldrons were hefty and full, each made of three layered pieces to protect my shoulders and upper arms, frad in paler tal much like the helt. The left shoulder had a long, curling spike of decorative steel almost like a tal antler, the right a smaller one in a different shape.
The set included an array of plates to encase my arms, hands, legs, and feet in solid, tightly fit layers of protection. It also ca with chainmail to be worn underneath, lighter and thinner than my hauberk but still very well made.
Not a single inch of my body would be soft.
“Lots of superfluous pieces,” Faisa noted as she touched one of the sharp horns on the helm. “But this is tournant armor. It requires a bit of panache. There are other items in this room to decorate it as you see fit.”
“It’s beautiful,” I told her honestly.
“It looks rather villainous,” Emma noted with more reserve. “Couldn’t you have prepared sothing a bit less conspicuous?”
She wasn’t wrong. The scarred, dark steel and sharp decorative did make the set look like sothing the classical Black Knight in a chivalrous romance might wear. I’d been too enamored with it to realize at first.
“He’s hardly going to be the most ostentatious vision down on that sand,” Faisa told my squire. “Besides, consider it this way. If he starts winning fight after fight and finds himself set against great nas as a dingy vagabond, people will question it. This way, it will be obvious he has so wealthy patron or great na, and people will accept it more readily. The mighty are known to be eccentric. They will question and be curious, but they will be more prone to anticipating the reveal of his identity, rather than seeking to unmask it out of outrage.”
“A Dance would know theater,” I stated dryly.
“Posh,” Faisa admonished . “But yes.”
Emma pressed her lips together into an uncertain line, looking unconvinced. “It’s just very showy, is all. I thought the point was to not draw attention.”
“I can’t win without drawing attention,” I said. “The Lady Dance has a point. Besides.”
I glanced at her and pointed to the black and copper mask. “It’s my color.”
Emma gave my la attempt at humor a withering look. “Better hope no one else makes that connection. So when will you be fighting?”
“Soon enough,” I assured her. “This first day is mostly group battles to help winnow the tournant’s participants down. As an unknown contender, I’ll have to manage through at least one or two of those. Tomorrow is where you get more of the traditional jousts, with the final day being dedicated to the real matches, the ones that will create a champion.”
If I had my way, we would never need to worry about that final day. I intended to cut an artery in House Vyke’s ddling well before then.
“That reminds .” I turned to Faisa. “I need a mount. The Empress hasn’t gotten back to on that.”
The Duchess just smiled. “It is being taken care of. You will have your valiant steed when it is needed, Ser Headsman, you have my word on it.”
I had little patience for vagaries, but even less for trying to get a straight answer out of a Dance. Besides, my first match would be a foot skirmish anyway.
“I shall leave you to prepare,” Faisa said brusquely as she moved to the door. “People are used to being eccentric and flighty, but if I’m gone too long there will be questions. Also…”
She turned and squinted at . “I’ve heard so tell that a certain red cloaked apparition has been seen wandering the arena. You are not making an effort to stay out of the public eye.”
“No.” I gave her a pointed look. “I’m not.”
She looked perplexed, but shrugged it off and left. I turned to stare at the armor and the array of weapons. Everything I needed to carry this mad plan out.
Was this really the best I could co up with? A disguise and a prayer that I might stop the villains in fair combat? It wouldn’t be that simple.
And it would not save Catrin. Barely a mont had passed where I hadn’t dwelt on how she might be suffering. The knowledge ate at my guts like a devouring ague. Two nights had passed since Yith took her into captivity. What tornts did she have to endure while waiting on to conduct my sches? I could have cleaved Hyperia Vyke down that first night and been done.
I felt a tight grip on my arm, and turned to see Emma’s fierce amber eyes.
“You are distracted,” she stated. “You need to focus, or none of this is going to work.”
“Those are my lines,” I told her with a smile I didn’t really feel.
“You can play the teacher another ti,” she promised. “For now, you need to survive today. We will help Catrin, but we need to do it smart. There’s still a plan, rember? You’re not alone in this.”
I had told no one about Yith’s blackmail except for Emma. She was the only one who both understood the dhampir’s true nature and my relationship with her. I doubted anyone else would consider her worth risking the Accorded Realms on.
Part of wasn’t certain she was, and I hated that side of . The one who would choose duty over love, my vows over friends. And yet, that man was in .
“I need to get this on.” Turning to the stand, I began to lift one of the pauldrons off. Again, Emma put a hand on my arm, stopping .
When I gave her a questioning look, she shook her head. “All these long months, I have not gotten the chance to truly squire for you. Let do it now.”
Her face seed calm, even determined. So emotion I could not readily na built up in my chest. Gratitude? Pride? So mix of the two, certainly.
Emma had sit on the room’s lone stool. She did not hurry about her work, but she did work with a focused surety. She didn’t allow to help much during the process, either.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
She got my cloak and hauberk off, then began the intricate process of encasing from neck to foot in a shell of steel. She did it proper, too, making sure the chainmail did not catch or chafe on anything, fitting each plate together correctly, and using enough force to firmly tighten the array of straps that would distribute all that weight.
“You’ve done this before,” I noted while she worked on a greave.
“I used to help Hendry,” she told without taking her eyes off her work. “His father insisted he start going about armored by the ti he was fifteen, and already of a height with so n. We often trained in sword play together, so I had so practice in this part.”
“You two used to be close.”
I put no particular aning behind the words. They were just an observation. Though, I could still rember a mont before we’d gone to the Brazen Woods, where he had called her Em.
Emma shrugged. “There was a ti I considered indulging in our courtship, and we were both of an age to have romantic inclinations. He was kind, in his way, and there was a ti when the entire alliance with House Hunting seed a sort of ga to . That is how my mother and I used to discuss it. Oh, the kingdoms we conquered in our idle talks…”
She trailed off, her mouth hanging open a mont. I’d never heard her talk about her mother before, or her father.
“I would flirt with him, even toy with him, but I never felt any… spark, I suppose. After my parents died, I dove fully into my apprenticeship with Nath. Without my parents to cow him, I beca Brenner’s path to power rather than the reverse. Hendry and I grew more distant, then.”
A fuller picture of Emma’s ti with House Hunting started to form for . Poor Hendry. Poor Emma, too.
“Oh, don’t look at like that.” Emma pulled two lengths of leather hard enough for to feel the pressure even through layers of padded cloth and tal.
“Like what?” I asked innocently.
“Like I represent so sweet tragedy.” Her eyes were hard as she stood and moved to my left shoulder. “I am of the blood of House Carreon, and I would have been Hendry Hunting’s hell, given ti. Our affections are not gentle. Don’t you rember Astraea’s tale?”
“You are not Astraea,” I told her in a firm voice.
Emma lifted my right hand by the wrist and slipped a gauntlet over it. The little plates along the fingers clicked solidly as I flexed them.
“I could have been,” she almost whispered. “I may still beco her. I may have a chosen a more martial path, true, but bloodshed and conquest still call to .”
She moved to the front of the stool, and in my seated position she stared down at in a rare reversal.
“I am jealous of you,” she told . “I want to be out on that field, laying low those strutting cocks until I am champion.”
I adopted an apologetic expression. “I know. But I need you for the rest of it. I won’t be able to do much else while I’m playing this part. While I’m strutting, the lance is yours.”
Emma gave a rare sort of smile for her, one without any derision or smugness. Taking by surprise, she placed both of her hands on either side of my head and leaned down to press her lips to my brow, just as Rosanna had done. She kept her hands on my face a mont, studying with an odd mix of approval and apprehension.
“Thank you for making part of this,” she told . “I am proud to be your squire, Headsman, and to be one of the few allowed to see the man behind him.”
She handed the helt. Standing, I rolled my shoulders and let the weight of the armor settle, accustoming myself to it. It had been many years since I’d worn a full set like this. I spread my hands out, displaying myself. “Well?”
Emma pursed her lips. “You look like a knight. Though, I’m not sure you look like the type I’d want rescuing from any towers. More like the one to trap in them.”
“I think my days of being the golden knight are done. Let them see as the blackguard.”
The man I would be out on that sand was much like the Headsman. A performance, a role I played to do my duty. So long as just a few knew the truth of , I could endure it.
With that in mind, I lowered the helm over my face. My vision narrowed as the close confines of leather and steel enclosed . My breathing beca loud and deep within the shell, not all of it escaping the lattice of small holes cut into the mask.
Emma’s reaction to the change told it had an effect. Her eyes widened, all the doubt washing out of her in that simple shift of muscles in her face.
“Faisa Dance knows her business,” she breathed. “If I did not already know, I would think you are that armor. Even now I’m having to remind myself of it. And your eyes… ah! That clever witch.”
“What?” We both started as my voice erged from the helm as a brazen snarl, barely recognizable as anything human. “Ah.”
Glamour on the helm. One to mask my features in shadow, alter my voice, and I suspected sothing more. She would have needed to pay a fortune to a smith capable of working aura to have sothing like this commissioned, and couldn’t have done it on such short notice.
Which ant she’d had this already. What sort of artifact had the duchess pawned off on ?
Hopefully it wasn’t cursed or sothing. I took the helt back off, and Emma let out a breath of relief.
“Thank you. That was disconcerting.”
“A spell of non-recognition,” I said aloud as I studied the ornate helm. “Elves and enchanters use its like all the ti, so one can be standing right in front of you in a crowd and their face won’t even cross your thoughts. It can be broken if you realize you’re being manipulated, or if you know who’s under the disguise already.”
“I know the theory,” Emma said testily, annoyed at my lecturing. “I use glamour too, you know.”
I nodded. “Keep reminding yourself it’s under here, or you might end up forgetting. That could cause a ss.”
Worry touched her face. “I don’t like that idea. That my mind can be twisted that way.”
“That’s how all magic works, Em. Glamour is just another form of phantasm. You work your reality onto the one everyone else shares. Focus on what you know to be true, but don’t deny other truths. That can lead to conceit, and it’ll end up blinding you.”
With that, I put the helt back on. I doubted I’d be taking it off often over the next few days, and wanted to get used to it. It fit almost perfectly, the padding on the inside hugging my skull. I took a minute to work my neck about, testing the range the helm could turn or tilt. It didn’t allow fully free motion like the rest of the armor, but it was cleverly made.
“And your weapon?” Emma asked. She knew well as I that it wouldn’t be possible to use Faen Orgis out on the island. It would give away imdiately to many.
I searched the room with my eyes, then moved to one of the racks set near the door to lift one of the instrunts waiting on it.
“An axe again?” Emma sounded disappointed.
“Best to use what my hand knows,” I told her. Again, my voice erged from the helm amplified rather than muffled. To my ears at least, it sounded deeper and more lodic, almost musical. “I won’t be the only one using an axe, and the armor will keep anonymous.”
My eyes had gone to the collection of swords, including one weighty two-hander which looked so much like my old blade. But it had been the better part of a decade since I’d handled a sword, and there was no ti to retrain myself.
An excuse. I knew the real reason, but it boiled down to the sa. The axe would do. The one I’d claid had a relatively short handle, not so long as my arm, with a proper grip wrapped in leather and frad by two wedges in the haft to keep it from slipping. Heavy, solid iron, it sported two twin blades from the head in the style of a classical barbarian weapon.
I twirled it, and grunted in pleasure at the way the air audibly parted around the brutish arm. It had a good balance and pleasing weight, and the extra blade ant I could keep fighting longer if the first turned brittle from overuse. Many wood axes were made the sa way. The steel also had a darker color, the only ornantation a disk set between the twin blades.
“I like it,” Emma decided. “The rest of the armor is quite fancy, so it balances it out.”
After so thought, I chose a tall kite shield of white wood rimd in tal as well. Emma picked out a black surcoat pattered in white, wrapped a blue cloth around the helm to form a sort of cowl, and added so other decorative. By the end, I looked a proper tourney knight.
“I think you’re ready,” Emma said with a tight, eager grin. “By the way, what na did the Empress pick for you?”
“Ser Sain.” I turned, tal plates clicking softly with the motion. “From an old story Lias used to tell us.”
In my mory, the wizard’s soft voice echoed the words of the song he would hum at the end of the tale.
And here ends the song of Ban Sain, love’s fool and dragon’s bane.
Who won a frozen heart and Death’s disdain.
Rosanna had loved that story. I had too, though I would never admit it to either of them. Not least of all because Rosanna seed that frozen heart to back then.
A knock ca at the door. I waited while Emma checked, and she peeked back into the room a mont later.
“It’s ti,” she said. “Your block is being called.”
Unable to properly nod with the greathelm on, I gestured. “I’ll be out soon. Just want to do a last check of my gear.”
Emma vanished, off to other tasks I’d given her. Through the walls, I could feel an odd hum. Distant drums, and several thousand spectators eager to see chivalrous blood.
I took the helm off, staring at the emblem worked into its mask. “A devil, huh?”
Was I that? Would that be how the realms rembered ? Could I accept that?
The demon appeared very suddenly. Without warning, the room’s temperature seed to drop. The air took on a slimy quality, like grave worms wriggled over my skin. My breath ca out as a visible mist. A lodious voice whispered from the shadows.
Playing war, Alder Knight?
While your lady love wallows in
darkness?
Yith’s sinister laugh filled the room. I could hear scuttling insects, and caught sight of a large crimson beetle on a nearby table.
“I have not forgotten,” I told the demon.
Why play out this farce?
There is only one way.
Kill the witch.
Kill her brother.
Kill them all!
War is inevitable.
“…Maybe,” I admitted. Then, turning my back on that foul presence, I moved to the door. “But I can at least make sure we’ll win before it starts.”
Pausing, I turned to glare at the beetle. A carmine beetle, red as blood with a pattern on the shell very much like a face. “If you’ve hurt her…”
She scurries about the shadow world.
I know her whereabouts always, thanks to my larva.
But she is unhard by my hand.
Another thought, almost as unsettling as that, made ask my next question. “Are you going to tell your mistress about my disguise?”
Only if she asks.
I must answer all her questions truthfully.
But only if she asks.
Which ant I would need to keep Hyperia from being suspicious. If she commanded her demon to inform on , then he would and the ga would be up.
The ga would be up if I killed her, too. I let none of my doubt show on my face. “If you want Hyperia Vyke dead so badly, then why don’t you help ? Tell what she’s planning while her brother plays at tourney.”
The darkness seed to shiver. Anger? Amusent? Doubt? The sense of the demon in the room made my blood cold and confused my senses. Between the dull ache in the scars Shyora had given and the way the aurefla crackled with righteous fury, it took concentration to focus on the creature more minutely.
“You can’t, can you?” I tried to find Yith’s true presence, but it felt faint. Most likely, he wasn’t actually here. Just talking to through a fragnt of his spirit.
I can bring no direct harm to Hyperia Vyke.
Or her allies.
Or her kin.
I cannot share her secrets.
“But you have enough give in your leash to act independently,” I mused. “Enough to make this bargain with .” Narrowing my eyes, I continued the thought. “Which ans she’s bad at this. Reynard would never have allowed you to betray him so brazenly.”
My master was mighty.
Few mortals have ever known my kind so well.
And if my enemy wasn’t fully competent, much of the rest made more sense. The reckless intrigue, the attacks, Yith’s presence in the city… an amateur sleuth could have eventually traced it all back to the source. I had, and I’m a blunt instrunt.
Sothing stank. Everything I knew about Hasur Vyke, the true mastermind behind the twins, told he wasn’t the kind of man to act so clumsily. Was this a case of less capable children mishandling his plans? Or was there more?
No ti. The drums outside sounded louder.
Two days, Alder Knight.
I slipped the helt back on as Yith’s presence retreated from the room. My scars continued to sting. I lifted a hand to feel at the part of the helm covering my left eye, tracing the marks beneath.
I’d faced a more clever demon than Yith Golonac once, and survived it. He might know my sche with the tournant from his spying, but he did not know my other plan.
Reviews
All reviews (0)