No Man’s Land
Sarah A. Hoyt
©2025 by Sarah A. Hoyt
All rights reserved.
Hero
Skip:
Everything was going fine until my father stopped giving orders.
Okay. No. So everything was not fine. For one, we had been ambushed.
Which was the problem.
There are no ambushes in space battles. My father had dinned the theory and practice of space battles into my skull before I entered the Academy at twelve.
This is as good a place as any to say I was a child prodigy.
Or maybe I wasn’t. There isn’t really any way to tell. Late born son of a brilliant father and a demanding mother—my father named me Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, for crying out loud!—it was clear enough what I was supposed to do. What I was supposed to be. I wasn’t genetically improved—or not so that anyone would ever admit to—so it was just… Look, I had to be what I had to be. And that meant I was a young boy admitted to a private but prestigious military academy five years earlier than everyone else there. Which meant I had to graduate as fast as I could.
This is how I ended up as my father’s second-in-command at the battle of Karan. At seventeen.
And we were ambushed. But there are no ambushes in space. Just like there are no ambushes on the high seas.
You see the enemy approach for days on end. The best you can do is conceal your strategy or your capabilities from them. But you can’t hide. There’s nothing to hide in or behind. Certainly not with a Schrodinger-drive ship. You can’t port near enough to a planet that would hide you. And you certainly can’t port close to the enemy. Or rather you can, but then the risk of porting to the same space as the enemy and achieving the most pyrrhic victory of all time is high.
And we had intelligence—we had intelligence!—from the Nivirim side. They had no technology we didn’t have, and their ships had a tendency to fall apart because, well, forced labor doesn’t build good ships. And there was no way to hide a ship in space.
There was no way.
So my father, commanding five battle cruisers, the entire war fleet of Her Royal Majesty Queen Eleanor of Britannia On High, empress of the Star Empire, had ported to a nowhere convergence called Karan. Oh, there was some reason for it, including the fact that Karan gave access to other port points, which gave access to other port points which would put our colony worlds of Eire and Hy-Brasil and Prester within reach. Which meant if we let the Nivirim fleet port there and hold it, with no contest, those colonies would be vulnerable, or call it actually enslaved, given the Nivirim system of government.
That’s the high-level version of the situation, which was all I knew at the time.
The trip to orbit in order to port to Karan took a day, and then we were there. There was the middle of nowhere in space. In full view of Nivirim vessels. Ten of them—an unusually large force—but Father said not to worry. “Battles in space aren’t a matter of ship count, Skip,” he said. “They’re a matter of capabilities, of maneuvering, and of training. And we’re better at all of those.” He said it after dinner, leaning back in his chair. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners, the way they did when something amused him. “Always remember, Skip: free men fight better than slaves.”
I believed him. I still believe him. My father, you see—my father never gave me any reason to doubt him. Not even then.
Before I tell the story, something must be rightly understood: I look like my mother, Lady Harcaster. Her ancestors, who had financed the colonization of and ruled over Aeris, all looked like me: colorless, narrow-nosed, thin-faced, tall and spare, the kind of people who grow older by getting thinner and dryer and harder, like aged wood. There are ‘grams of them going back to the time of colonization and they probably look more lifelike than the originals.
Growing up with Mother, I always knew exactly what she expected of me. And what she expected of me was always impossible. So, of course, I did it.
Father, on the other hand, was my anchor. From my earliest memories, I knew Father loved me. So I did what he wanted me to do, not because I feared him, but because I didn’t want to disappoint him.
I suspect that’s why I accepted the appointment as his second-in-command aboard the HMS Victoria, commanding Britannia on High’s space fleet. Because I got to spend time with Father and away from Mother.
Was it stupid? Oh, yes. My stupidity or his? Who knows?
“Look, Skip, your rank is largely ornamental,” he said. “And temporary and probationary. The only reason for you to be Vice-Commodore, fresh off the Academy, is that you stick close to me and you learn. You learn, Skip. That’s all. That’s all you’re doing here. You’re learning.”
I learned. Oh, the blue uniform with the half cape was pretty nice, too. But mostly, I learned. Because sure, I’d be the Earl of Harcaster when Mother died, and have full rule over Aeris, which I loathed because it was not Capital City. But that was a function of being born to Mother, who’d brought the title into the marriage. Being called Lord Harcaster wouldn’t mean anything. Being called Viscount Webson, the junior title of Mom’s family, made me feel stupid. It wasn’t something I’d earned. And I wanted to earn something.
When I was at the Academy, people kept quoting Father and talking about the victories he’d achieved. I wanted to learn that. I wanted to earn that.
The next three days of the ambush-that-wasn’t, while Father maneuvered, and the enemy maneuvered, and he planned for every eventuality, was like being back at the Academy. There was a hollo table, and the ships on it, floating in air. Father moved them. And firing capabilities, and where the weapons were in each ship were discussed, as well as the shielding capabilities, though these consisted mostly of turning the proper points to where we knew the enemy weapons were.
It was on the third night, with Father and the eight captains and vice captains of the other ships, all assembled, that I asked the stupid question.
They’d just gone over the plan, and something that was constantly mentioned at Academy hadn’t been mentioned at all. I cleared my throat and before I could stop myself, heard my voice say, “Sir, what about boarding? What about preparations for boarding or to prevent boarding?” My voice sounded young, wishful, naïve. In fact, much like the voice of a student. Or a child. I was momentarily glad I hadn’t called him “Father” or—as in childhood—“Daddy.”
Look, that was the reason that ships carried each a complement of some five hundred men, each at enormous cost. Because ships got boarded. At the Academy, we’d studied five battles where defending your ship from boarding had turned the tide of the battle. One of those was the first battle my father had fought as commodore: the Battle of Ryrr.
But all nine men stared at me as though I’d lost my mind.
“It never happens,” Father said. “Not these last thirty years, Skip. It doesn’t happen. We board. They don’t. Their ships aren’t that agile. They have outmoded maneuvering.”
“But,” I said, feeling that if I’d already made a fool of myself, I might as well go on. “Why do we have infantry on alert aboard, then? And why do we wear sidearms into battle?”
Father patted my shoulder. He actually patted my shoulder. “It’s the Force, Skip. Things change very slowly. It’s just tradition.”
All the captains had smiled indulgently, and I wasn’t even mad that Father had called me Skip and not Vice Commodore Hayden. Because I knew it was from an excess of feeling and not a desire to humiliate me.
It was the last time he called me Skip.
Because in the night, while we all slept, we were ambushed.
You probably read about it in the history books, but here it goes: our intelligence was faulty or suborned. Which one, it doesn’t matter, and it wasn’t ever established, although investigations and interrogations ran for years.
Until Karan, boarding between spaceships had been done with boarding sleeves. So a lot of maneuvering went on, until you could be in the right place where you knew the ship shielding was weak enough that the piercing machinery at the end of the sleeve could attach and make an entry.
Our propulsion and navigation systems were better than theirs. Which is why it hadn’t happened in thirty years.
But you know what those extra five ships apparently contained? Lots and lots of small vessels, each of which could carry twenty-five infantry troops. Ships equipped with an explosive prow.
I woke up to the sound of alarms. Our ship had been penetrated. Every officer and serving man were fighting with our utterly inadequate sidearms.
I put my uniform on in the dark, only because I was so fresh from the Academy that waking with an alarm and dressing in the dark, without thinking, was second nature.
But the hallways were choked with people fighting and dying, and only the enemy was in uniform. Our people were in pajamas, in their underwear, or very against regulation, mother-naked and rocking holsters, or in one case that sticks in my mind, dripping wet and with a towel wrapped around himself, Roman-style, with a blaster in each hand and one between his teeth. He was making good work, too.
I remember that. I remember snapshots of the battle in the corridor. I remember blood. I remember dismembered bodies, mostly ours. I remember people, their bodies torn, pouring out blood onto the glassteel of the floor. Many still fighting, even as their lives ran out in red rivulets and pooled in dark patches on the floor.
I remember sweat, shortness of breath. I remember the stink of blood and death. I remember running out of charges on my weapons, and picking them up from corpses without stopping.
All through it, I knew one thing: I should be in the command room with Father. Father would know what to do.
And then my mind becomes clear as I entered the command room. It was filled with dead. Dead in piles.
In the middle of it, Father. He was also in his uniform. He was getting up. There was a gaping wound in his chest, and he was lurching up, trying to reach the com.
“Son,” he said. “Son.” It was a bare rasp. “They knew. They had— They came here first.”
He didn’t need to say it. I could see the path from the outside, through a protected wall, through two adjacent storage rooms. It was plugged with the Nivirim ship, or we’d be leaking air into space.
“Father,” I said. “Commodore, please don’t talk.”
“I must give orders. I must warn—”
But even as he spoke his voice got fainter, and his knees folded under him, his body toppling. And I, with my Academy training, got on the com and called, ship by ship, for status.
Our ship was the only one fully breached, though one of the small ships had attacked the Belcaria. Sentinels had seen it in time, blasted the disembarking attackers as soon as I called out.
I got on the coms. I screamed into them, my voice by turns hoarse and shrill.
Did the captains understand this was Vice-Commodore Hayden? Did I even tell them? Was it even true? Technically, Father was hors de combat. I was in command. I was the Commodore.
I roused the ships. I gave them instructions. Textbook instructions. It’s all I knew. But the hollo of a man in uniform bellowing instructions to the just awakened can be effective. The ships spun, and fired on the small would-be intruders before they got near. The few that penetrated were met with a full complement of wakened-in-time, in-uniform, in-their-right-minds infantry.
Me? I stayed at the coms. I stayed with it, calming, cajoling, ordering.
Do you know I don’t remember firing my sidearm even once, while I was at the coms? But I must have, because Father was unconscious, and there was no one else there with us but the dead. So unless the dead got up to fight—I don’t know. It’s as plausible as anything else—while I talked, I fired and fired and fired, and accounted for about thirty-five of the enemy, which effectively choked the door, so they couldn’t come in anymore from inside our own ship, to stop the commands going out to the fleet.
They must have been working on breaking through the barrier of corpses when our people, commanded by me at a distance, and mostly from the Belcaria, took the Victoria, cleaning up as they went.
When it became clear the people trying to enter were our people, I got off the coms. I had the vague idea that if I could only keep Father alive till the medics got there, the regen would make everything all right.
He was on the floor where he’d lain down. His eyes were closed and his hands were cold, and I thought he was dead.
I have no memory of all the orders I gave in combat, but I remember what I cried, then: “Father! Daddy!”
His eyes opened. I lifted his head. I babbled about medics, about regen.
Father stared at me and smiled. He said, “Good man, Scipio. Well done, son.” And then he died.
My father had the most amazing eyes. Blue, sure, but a very dark blue, so that from across the room they looked black. But up close, you saw them blue and deep like the night sky in summer, blue and deep like the whole universe.
One moment, they were looking at me, shining, deep blue. The next, they were black.
I looked into my father’s eyes and I lost myself.
I forgot what I’d been meant to be, what I was.
They came in. They pronounced Father dead. I was wounded, they said. Nothing vital hit. Or nothing vital that couldn’t be regened.
I didn’t want to leave Father. If I didn’t leave him, perhaps he would come back? They had to tranq me to drag me away to the infirmary.
When I woke two weeks later, they told me that Father was dead, but I already knew.
I wore the blue uniform with the half-cape once more, on a freezing winter day, in blowing snow, as I stood in the family cemetery next to the Earl’s palace of Aeris, and watched Father’s coffin lower into the grave, while space force captains and countless infantry stood at attention, wedged awkwardly between statues of angels and spacemen, of kings and imperious women holding aloft wreaths of victory.
There, in a deep hole, they buried what remained of the most important person in my life to that day.
When it was done, they let loose a twelve-cannon salute, Earth cannons, the kind not used in battle since Old Earth. Then a military band played the sweet, haunting “Home of the Spacer,” consigning Father’s memory to the stars.
I stood at attention there, and then I stood beside Mother and received the condolences of a grateful Empire. The Queen herself, with frost-blued fingers, pinned the Wreath of Valor upon my chest, the big one, in gold, with the replica of the first colonizing ship in the middle.
I removed it after the funeral. And then I removed my uniform. I sent my resignation to Her Majesty.
And then I lost myself in the fleshpots of New London, the Empire’s capital city.
The King Is Dead
Eerlen:
As he’d feared, the cries and screams echoed, even up in the guarded family wing, at the top of the ancient palace.
Eerlen Troz had rushed up five flights of stairs, the screams and baying of grief accompanying him every step of the way, as he climbed up and up and up.
Sometimes a fresh note broke in, and he could almost follow the progression of the news through the various parts of the building. “The king is dead” was spoken, and the screaming started.
Visiting city and league dignitaries in the guest quarters, traders and nomad clan ambassadors, also in the guest quarters, some muffled sounds that might be from the guard quarters, and he surely hoped the military commanders staying in the palace weren’t howling like peasants who’d lost a child, like nomads who’d lost a lover.
Up and up and up, rushing and breathless, nodding to the guard at the bottom of each flight of steps, ignoring their pointed looks of enquiry, Eerlen held up his long, ceremonial tunic so as not to trip on it and cursed that he’d not been prepared for this.
He’d not been prepared for any of this. He’d expected nothing more than a dinner with Myrrir and the commanders, a discussion of forces and schedules of shield holders. And then a quiet night with Myrrir in the royal quarters. Perhaps a game of Etarresh before bed.
Maker’s womb, this was the last thing he’d expected. But he must get to the child before someone else did. And it wasn’t even because the child was young and the shock would be great. There were far worse outcomes in play, when the heir to the throne was only sixteen.
By the time he reached the top floor, where the royal family slept, he knew the child—his sireling—would be awake. Eerlen was also out of breath, panting, cursing that he was too old for this. Much too old for this. And that it had been far too long a time since he’d crossed Erradi with his bedroll, hunting for his keep. Much too long since even his last ceremonial partial route to check on the Troz clan, of which he was titular head.
He opened the door to Brundar’s room and rushed in, freeing his arm from the guard’s hand which had gone so far as to clutch at him. The guard couldn’t think he was protecting the heir or that Eerlen meant the child harm. It was curiosity. Mere curiosity.
The child was awake and sitting in the middle of the bed that was still too big for him, even now that he was adult height. He sat, his eyes wide open, staring at the door, giving every impression he expected an attack. Which meant his instincts were good, at least.
He was tall but not yet filled out, a sketch of an adult without the shading, his eyes too large in a too-thin and pale face. His green eyes turned towards Eerlen. Surrounded by the child’s disheveled red locks, that face had something not quite real, or at least not quite tame. It was a face one expected to see peeking from the shadows of trees in the deep forest, a face that disappeared as soon as seen. The mouth worked. “The screams… The…” Brundar said, his voice too thin, as though he were much younger. “Was there a breakthrough? Is—”
Oh. That. The historical Draksall breakthrough that killed everyone in the palace four hundred years ago, and gave the throne to the infant saved by his nursemaid.
Well. When there were tapestries and paintings of that catastrophe all over, how could the child not think of that?
Eerlen shook his head, more hoping than sure that it was reassuring. His breath had almost steadied. He took a big swallow of frigid air. These walls didn’t keep the heat in, no matter how big the fire in the ornate fireplace.
The palace might be made of something they no longer had a name for, in shapes stone could not copy. But whoever the ancients were, they had been more resistant to cold than even Erradians or had something other than fire to keep them warm. He was grateful for the air’s coolness, at any rate. And for the need to do something, to keep the horrible aftereffects of the death of a ruler from swallowing all, before he could stop and think he’d lost his lover, he’d lost his sworn lover, he’d lost his best friend and helpmeet and support. Because if he stopped and thought of that, he’d break down and cry like a nomad at a funeral.
But I am a nomad. At least, at heart. And this is a funeral. Or a wake, he thought, but didn’t say. Instead, he stepped towards the bed and knelt so as not to tower over the child. Stretching his hands, he took hold of Brundar’s and held them in his. “Brundar,” he said, and hesitated for a moment. “Your parent came home… Was brought home. He was wounded. He has…he has died. You are the ruler of Elly.”
He meant to swear his fealty then and there, but he should have known better.
It is not like he doesn’t come by his wildness naturally.
When that thought came, it was already too late, and the child had leapt from the bed, running on bare feet, wearing only a knee-length nightshirt.
Eerlen got up and followed. He didn’t waste his breath in calling.
Brundar was running like a scared colt. And he’d been running towards what scared him since he’d learned to run. Perhaps not the best survival strategy, but he came by that naturally, too.
Brundar knew where to go, of course. It wasn’t the first time that Myrrir had been carried in wounded. Warrior king. Eerlen could have spit. He had tried to argue for moderation. In vain. Given the age of the one heir, given the multitude of others who could have claimed the throne sideways, by right of siring, and given that some of those had troops in their following, Myrrir should have had more care for his life.
For the sake of the child, Eerlen had begged.
He’d been told, He’s my child. He’ll survive.
Yeah, well, he thought, as Brundar, far faster, vanished around the last turn of the last flight of stairs, and into the ground floor receiving room that had too often served as an infirmary. The guards on the last three flights of stairs had been crying. The news spread.
The bottom floor was a bedlam of people crying, and wiping noses to sleeves and hems of tunics. Eerlen ran past them without even really looking, registering only that there were groups and couples, and people standing alone, pale and crying. Crazy brave, heedless, and often far too willful. But loved. Myrrir was loved.
Tears prickled behind his eyes, and he shook his head as he hurried. No time. Not now. He could always howl later.
He noted without pausing that the yelling in the death chamber—the heated argument that had seen drawn swords—stopped dead as Brundar ran in, and lifted a short prayer to the Maker that the child not be run through by those swords, thereby clearing the way to the more ambitious of the arguing people.
By then, he was mere steps behind and erupted into the room in time to see the five adults in the room standing, frozen in the poses they’d obviously held when Brundar ran in.
Khare Sarda of Karrash, his sword still drawn, his blue eyes flashing, and Parnel Haethlem of Erradi, wearing his bloodstained tunic, his face almost as pale as his pale hair, standing beside him, while facing them were Guinar Ter of Lirridar and Kalal Ad Leed of Brinar. Ad Leed appeared to have put his sword flat over the others’ swords, as though trying to bring them down. Lords of the four subdomains of Elly, and two of them Brundar’s cross-siblings and used to ruling. All of them either with drawn swords or about to draw them.
But worse in that respect was the person by the bed, who had not drawn his sword. He was muscular and somber, the biggest person in the room overtopping the others by a head, his dark battle leathers stained with blood—how much of it Myrrir’s, Eerlen couldn’t guess. He’d carried Myrrir in—his lips clamped firmly together, his face an unreadable mask. That would be Lendir Almar, commander of the royal guard and over-commander of all the armies of Elly, the second-in-command after Myrrir. The child of the last commander. And Myrrir’s sireling, who had always seemed to loathe Eerlen and therefore Brundar, for reasons not quite clear.
The only one of the recognized heirs not present, Nikre Lyto, Eerlen’s adopted child, Myrrir’s adopted sireling and heir to the role of archmagician, was holding shield at the battle front. Without that, he’d have been killed by now. Nikre neither wanted the throne nor had defenses against the court’s intrigues.
You couldn’t have arranged things more disastrously if you’d meant to, lover, Eerlen thought, looking to the hasty pile of cushions and furs on which Myrirr had been lain, and which had become his deathbed.
Myrrir had never been beautiful. Too many Erradians, too much Draksall in his ancestry. A jaw too square, a mouth too strong, and the uncompromisingly direct glance that had flashed from beneath those too-straight eyebrows. Of course, if he talked and moved, everyone forgot his plainness. But he’d talk and move no more. Someone had closed his eyes. His hair was still bound for battle, braided and tied and securely pinned to his head. He still wore his battle-leathers, slashed and soaked in blood.
They said the dead looked like they were sleeping. Myrrir didn’t. He looked dead.
It was nothing too horrible, though his lips had contorted and remained in a final twist of pain, refusing to cry out. And he was pale. Deathly pale. But most of all, it wasn’t Myrrir. The shape might be the same, but something had left. Something was not the same. What was on the bed might be the same form, but it wasn’t Eerlen’s lover. Not his sworn. Perhaps because Myrrir had never been able to stay completely still, even when asleep.
There was blood, a pool of it, under the body on the furs. Some of it dripped from the edge of the furs onto the floor, but sluggishly, starting to congeal. The child should not have seen that. The child—
Brundar stood very still. A statue in the shape of an adolescent on the edge of maturity. Arrested where he’d stopped in his flight, two steps from the corpse, one hand forward, as though to touch Myrrir and wake him—if anything could!—one foot advanced, bare against the age-darkened oak, his nightshirt looking flimsy and far too short, even his hair seeming to have frozen in place, a mass of curls thrown back by his flight. He was so still, he might not have been breathing.
And the other five watched him, their eyes intent. Eerlen would feel better if he could swear the look was not that of a wolf staring at a rabbit.
He didn’t dare touch Brundar. Almost afraid to break the moment, which would break, inevitably, the minute the child started to wail, Eerlen reached under the hem of his tunic for his ankle knives, one worn on each ankle, and that against etiquette and risking Myrrir’s laughter—Are you afraid a dire wolf will jump you in the palace, or a Draksall, sweetling?—and fuck the settled habit of not carrying swords except in battle. He was a fool to have complied even minimally and outwardly. Now he wished for his sword, his lance and his bow. And all too little.
His considerable magical power for defense or attack couldn’t be used in the palace. The shields would not allow it. It was old interdiction, designed to stop Draksall breakthroughs, but it put the throne at risk now.
Eerlen had a feeling the minute Brundar wailed, the tableau would break and minutes later, the child would be dead, leaving the throne of Elly to be fought over by the three half-siblings remaining in that room. Eerlen bet on Lendir, who outmassed both Sarda and Ter and was more battle-hardened than mere governors. But that wouldn’t matter to Eerlen, because he’d be dead before they cut down his sireling, his daggers broken against those swords.
Brundar took a deep shaky breath. It sounded too loud in the absolute silence of the room. He wheeled around, standing, square-shouldered and crossing his arms on his chest, looking much like Lendir Almar, probably without knowing it.
The voice that came out was controlled and even, with an edge of offense. “Why wasn’t I informed before it came to this? Why wasn’t I called before the news went out?” The two questions flew like slaps at Lendir, whose eyes opened wide, startled, and then Brundar turned to the four across the deathbed. “And what is this? Why are swords out in a death chamber? Is this the behavior of the Lords of the Land of Elly?”
For a moment, it hung in the balance. Eerlen didn’t know but could suspect how fast the child had thought and judged the reactions of those in the room, and taken advantage of his moment of absolute quietness to plan. It probably wouldn’t work, but if he had one chance, it was that: sound as much as possible like Myrrir, assume authority and carry it through on that. Myrrir had been loved. For all his faults, for all his errors, he had been loved. And three of the adults in this room were his sirelings. And vassals of the new king. If they’d own it.
Eerlen became aware of his heart thudding so fast, his head spun. And he hardly dared breathe. The daggers felt cold as he gripped them, one in each hand.
Lendir broke first. The look of surprise passed. For a second, something like laughter fled behind his eyes, and then left his features impassive again.
He fell to kneeling without grace, the sound of his knees hitting the floor resounding on the wood. “King of Elly,” he said, looking up at Brundar. “Defender of the lands, Lord of the people, receive my fealty.”
If Brundar was surprised, he didn’t show it. He nodded and waved his fingers at Lendir, without lifting his hand. “Stand, Almar. Commander of my guard.” The off-hand acknowledgement and confirmation of post might have been done by Myrrir himself. Absolutely sure. Certain of his own authority.
Brundar looked inquiringly at the four governors, tilting his head to the left. He said nothing.
Eerlen, weak with relief they had Almar and his sword, and by extension, the armies behind Brundar, swallowed hard, because he would not cry, not even with relief. He caught the edge of a glance from Almar, a minimal lift of the corner of the commander’s lips, and wondered if he was being mocked or consoled, but it didn’t matter. He wiped his sleeve down his face, to hide his expression. Nothing mattered as much as Brundar’s survival.
Ter tried a protest. He would. He was the oldest of Myrrir’s sirelings, thirty-eight, and he had thought himself the heir to the throne for half that time. “Almar, you cannot be serious,” he said. “Brundar Mahar is a child. His sire, who will reign behind the throne, is an ice nomad, barely broken to civilization! Unless you mean to rule behind the throne yourself.”
Lendir knew better than to answer. Brundar wheeled around on his half-crossibling, snapped, “No one will reign behind the throne, Ter.” It was said in the tone of an adult correcting a child. No real anger, though plain irritation. And no defensiveness.
Kahre Sarda, Myrrir’s youngest, best beloved natural sireling, put away his sword in measured gestures, and Haethlem slid his into the sheath at his waist. Small, dark and lithe, Sarda fell to his knees first, with the gentle drop of a dancer upon a rehearsed movement, inclined his head and pledged his fealty and his domain of Karrash to Brundar. Haethlem, tall, blond and square-shouldered, dropped to his knees behind Sarda, before Sarda stood, and pledged fealty and Erradi—for what that was worth with war raging and invaders at its core and Haethlem’s own household more often threatened than not—and then Ad Leed gave Lendir Almar a quick glance. Was there an imperceptible nod from Almar? Why? What would a Lord of the Land owe Almar?
Ad Leed pledged. Leaving Ter standing, looking sullen. To be fair, he always looked sullen. Or at least peevish. The force of Myrrir’s features had been softened in the Lirridarian, but he compensated for it by scowling.
“Ter,” Brundar said, once more the adult in the room. “We do not have the time or resources for a civil war, while the enemy has broken through into Erradi and occupies a good portion of it.” Just that. Not so much a threat as a statement. The implication being that but for the invasion foothold in Erradi, he and his forces would wipe any resistance Ter could mount off the map.
Ter let out his breath in a sort of sigh of impatience, and shoved his sword, with force, into its sheath, so hard that the clang of guard hitting metal trim rang like a bell, raising echoes from the high ceilings. He knelt measuredly, and said his oath like spitting.
Brundar looked at Eerlen then. “Archmagician?” he said, lilting. And for the first time in the whole wretched evening, Eerlen remembered he was more than Eerlen Troz, out-of-practice-ice-nomad-and-fur-trader, and the sire of the…of the new king of Elly. He felt the weight of the silver chain around his neck and the ancient jewel it held, the red jewel of the Archmagician, the chief of the magicians of Elly. The one who must remove its complement from Myrrir’s dead finger and slip it onto Brundar’s, before he was de facto as well as de jure king of Elly.
He bowed, slipped his knives back into their sheaths, noting Lendir’s amused look at that—he really was mocking Eerlen!—and, bowing, stepped past his sireling, now his king, to the royal corpse. It helped to think of it as the royal corpse, and not Myrrir’s remains.
He had to remove the blood-darkened, worn leather gauntlet from Myrrir’s right hand to get at the ring, at the ruby of kingship.
Unbidden, in his mind, he remembered twenty years ago, being the newly-minted archmagician and making his bow to Myrrir, king of Elly. The chain was unaccustomed at his neck, the ruby of office shone on his chest. He was still in shock, feeling ill-awakened as the ruby muddled his mind with a sense of immense power and a confusion of impressions of his predecessors.
He remembered thinking it would have been easier to swear fealty to Mahar in battle, where Myrrir Mahar would be dressed in leathers and look much like the other commanders. But of course, he’d had to do it at the palace, in a formal reception. The ruby informed him that was how things were done.
He could see himself in his mind’s eye, just seventeen, wearing his nomad furs: tunic and pants of white fur, homesewn and crude, his magician’s blue cloak still new. He’d been initiated less than a year before that. He could feel the stares of the dignitaries and courtiers, and hear that one person—he’d never figured out who, either—laughing in the corner.
And Myrrir—in green silk with gold embroidery, a long, formal tunic and court slippers of gold-embroidered leather that kept tapping rapidly beneath the hem, even as he sat on his ancestors’ gilded throne—looked impatient and bored.
Had Eerlen not noticed the king’s diadem laid askew on his hair, and that the hair was bound at the back, like a warrior’s, as though the king had rushed in from battle, gotten hastily dressed, and dropped the diadem on his own head as he ran down the stairs—which was exactly what had happened, with an added swear word at the need to formally meet the new archmagician—Eerlen might never have found his voice.
But he’d smiled at the diadem and whispered his oath about laying his magicians: healers, illusion spinners, spell makers, portalers and shield holders and all at the king’s disposal.
And Myrrir had looked amused and also as though he were thinking the words that he had whispered into Eerlen’s ear much later after the celebratory banquet, the intricate dancing and the obligatory music. “Never mind the magicians and healers. Can one lay the archmagician?”
Remembering, Eerlen swallowed hard. Smooth, really smooth, my love, he thought as he pulled the ring from the stiffening finger.
He turned and knelt before slipping it onto Brundar’s finger. Brundar instinctively closed his hand. Later, a goldsmith would have to be engaged to make an insert to conform it to the new king’s finger. Stupid to cut it to size before Brundar stopped growing.
Eerlen bowed his head. “I, Eerlen, head of the Troz line and the Troz clan, Archmagician of Elly, swear its brotherhood of Magicians and all its functions, its healers, shield holders, illusion weavers and judicial magicians and all creators of portals and spells to the command of Brundar Mahar, King of Elly.”
Not for the first time, it occurred to him to think that Brundar was an odd name. Who called his child Vengeance? The child would grow to ask the same question.
But Myrrir had done it, and Eerlen was honorbound to answer the question when it came. Not that Myrrir’s name—Blood Oath—was any better. The Mahars were strange people. And kings for thirty unbroken generations. One more. Let there be one more. No, two more. Barren of a line-child himself, the end of his long, storied line, Eerlen wanted to see his sireling’s children.
“You may leave,” Brundar said, waving his hand at the four governors. “Almar, keep watch at the door, please.”
Eerlen turned to leave. He could do with some kind of privacy. Tears were going to overwhelm him at any moment, and he’d promised himself a good howling. Not that there was ever full privacy for the royal family. There would be an ear at the door, a valet’s intrusion. Just enough to allow him an unguarded moment.
But Brundar said, “Stay, Troz,” calling him by his line name for the first time in Brundar’s life. And Eerlen stayed. He heard the door close, by Lendir Almar’s hand, softly, as if he feared disturbing the dead.
Brundar turned a desolate face to Eerlen and opened his mouth as though to speak, but before Eerlen could so much as move, he closed his mouth, turned away, took the remaining steps to the bed, fell to his knees, buried his face in Myrrir’s shoulder and shook.
Well, at least he isn’t howling. Nothing that can be heard outside.
At length, he heard the word Brundar whispered: “Emee.” It was the baby word for parent. And there, in the silent death chamber where the fate of the whole world had just been decided by the child on his knees by the bed, it made Eerlen Troz’s hair rise at the back of his head.
Because it was Murder
Eerlen:
It was the morning after Myrrir’s death, and Eerlen Troz had felt better. He was almost sure he’d slept, for at least a couple of hours, or at least lost consciousness for a couple of hours, after the good howling he’d promised himself and indulged in.
It hadn’t been very satisfying, as it had happened in his room, a small chamber adjacent to the royal quarters and with his face pressed on the pillow to deaden the sound.
The chamber and the bed felt strange to him—he’d almost never slept there—and the royal apartment next door too empty, too cold. In the back of his mind, he kept waiting for the sound of footsteps, for Myrrir’s voice calling, “Len.” No more.
He’d give his life for that, even to hear the revolting pet name which might have been appropriate when Eerlen was very young but certainly wasn’t now.
This room had once been used by a valet or a body-servant, but it had been changed into his own room when it became obvious that he’d be living in the palace. Not that he ever slept in it if Myrrir was in residence or expected. Then he shared the royal bed. Which was almost every night.
This room was narrow, long and sparsely furnished, with a single bed, two large trunks for his clothes and a writing desk with inks and brushes enough for a business letter, or a complex dispatch. There was in fact one of those started, which he’d been working on when summoned by Myrrir’s mind-touch, saying he’d been wounded and was being carried into the palace.
It was a business letter and opened with “Greetings and salutations to Kalal Ad Leed, Lord of Brinar—” It had been meant as a formal request for cloth for the army, bureaucracy since Ad Leed knew very well what was needed, and it fell under “doing Myrrir’s work for him.” Because Myrrir couldn’t be everywhere, and he trusted Eerlen like his own self.
With a pang, Eerlen realized he didn’t know if he’d ever take on those duties for Brundar, if Brundar realized those duties even existed, and that he would probably have to find another room within the palace, if Brundar should want him to stay and not decide that Eerlen should, instead, return to his nomad route in frozen Erradi, hunting fur bearing animals, sleeping in ice caves.
Not that Eerlen would mind. In many ways, it would be better to escape the palace and the settled life of a courtier, not to mention the constant reminders of Myrrir. He’d never been suited to the palace. And he kept expecting Myrrir’s voice. Craving Myrrir’s company. Imagining Myrrir calling him.
His eyes were drawn towards the only ornament in the room, the only thing not strictly utilitarian. It was a life-size portrait of himself and Myrrir, painted a couple of years before Brundar’s birth. It was a copy of the one in Myrrir’s workroom on the other side of the royal bedroom. It had been painted in one of the chambers that Myrrir used as a workroom: a vast room, with a vaulted ceiling, soft rugs and enveloping nomad-style floor cushions, which Myrrir preferred to chairs or sofas.
Myrrir was dressed in a dark blue silk tunic, ending just above the knee, pants of the same material falling in soft folds beneath, and court slippers in dark blue leather engraved in some kind of floral motif. He wore the swearing belt Eerlen had given him: composed of heavy squares of silver, engraved with passages from Missa’s Confession. It was quite the most elaborate and expensive thing that Eerlen had ever commissioned the making of—ten bear pelts. Enough for a small house—and utterly inappropriate to Myrrir, who probably would have preferred red leather tooled with Eerlen’s name.
But Eerlen had been young and over-impressed with the idea that the king would accept his swearing and swear to him in return. Myrrir’s dark blond hair, the color of ripened wheat, was pulled back on one side and fell over the other shoulder, straight and smooth. It had been Myrrir’s despair that his hair shed ties and binds, so he had to work double hard at it to keep it out of the way in battle. He’d once cut it short when he was very young, and the story was still a scandal at court.
By Myrrir’s side, Eerlen looked—to his own eyes—insignificant and much too young. He was about Myrrir’s height, and as with Myrrir, there was too much Erradian and too much Draksall in his ancestry for him to ever be pretty, much less beautiful. But there, the resemblance ended. To Myrrir’s laughing green eyes, his counterposed a dull grey. And where Myrrir’s features gave the impression of mobility and inner joy, as though he were about to burst in laughter, Eerlen looked grave, as though he were pondering some deep matter. In fact, in those days, he’d lived with a near-crippling fear of saying the wrong thing. But it could pass as serious thought in some lights.
He wore—against Myrrir’s protests, he remembered—an ankle-length dull-white silk tunic. Silk had been Myrrir’s insistence, but the white had been Eerlen’s. And while it might be Erradi’s color, Myrrir had been right that it washed out Eerlen’s pale skin and hair, till the whole looked like a shadow, except for the ruby, which Eerlen had cupped in his left hand for the portrait. It hadn’t even been on purpose, to showcase his status, but he’d put his hand up and the painter had liked the gesture and told him to hold.
His other hand reached forward, almost meeting but not quite, Myrrir’s hand, that reached back. He, at Myrrir’s insistence, wore Myrrir’s swearing belt, a thing of gold and diamonds, with Mahar spelled out in garnets in the middle of it.
Eerlen remembered being uncomfortable and feeling out of place and stupid when the portrait was painted. Right now, he’d trade all his self-assurance, all the knowledge that twenty years as archmage and the king’s sworn had earned him to be there again, when the portrait was painted. To reach fully forward, to feel Myrrir’s warm battle-calloused hand engulf his. To have Myrrir look back, laughter in his eyes. To know he had years ahead with Myrrir.
He’d endure everything—the stillbirths over the years, the seventeen children who’d breathed for no more than a day, if that long, the one he’d almost hoped, and whose graves dotted the royal cemetery, at Myrrir’s insistence whose headstones read, Much loved sireling of Myrrir Mahar, the blighted hopes for his own line, Myrrir’s voice, on a rare sad note: Too much Draksall on both sides, sweetling—the comedy of errors of learning how the court worked, the days of missing the ice and solitude so much he felt he’d die, the weeks of holding the magical shield over the battle against the might of the enemy with barely any time to eat or sleep… He’d endure all of it for twenty years more with Myrrir. Truth be told, for twenty days more with Myrrir. Or twenty hours.
He sat up. For one, because if he knew; if he’d been forewarned, he could have kept Myrrir from being murdered.
The word in his mind shocked him and he shook his head. War deaths weren’t murder. Not that way.
He dragged himself to standing. His eyes felt gritty, perhaps from crying, perhaps from not having cried enough.
He’d got so far as to think he must choose clothes for the day and bathe when there was a knock on his door.
“Come,” he said, while ready to reach for his dagger under the pillow. No, it shouldn’t be anyone hostile, not when enemies would have to get past guards, but who knew? Technically, as the king’s sire he had no power and no status—certainly far less than as the king’s sworn lover and helper, which he’d been until yesterday—but someone might decide Brundar loved Eerlen too well, and therefore Eerlen must be removed.
But the person who came in would know all about the guards. Because he led them. Which wasn’t to say he was tame or safe. Lendir Almar stood just inside the door, his bulk projecting a strange echo of Myrrir’s more gracile form, his serious eyes a shadow of Myrrir’s laughing ones, and said, “Troz.”
“Almar.” What followed, Eerlen guessed, could be anything from a request to vacate the premises to a request to accompany him to a tidy cell, to— No, there was no good outcome here, not when Almar was frowning thunderously, an expression that made him look like Myrrir in his worst moods.
“I need help and the king is asleep. I don’t want to wake him, and the archmagician should have authority in this, because it is judicial.”
Eerlen started. This was not at all what he expected. His hand flew to the ruby as it did when he wasn’t sure. “The archmagician? My authority?”
Almar took three steps into the room, and stopped, his hand extended towards Eerlen but just short of touching him, a plea, lifted, half-folded, palm up. “Milord,” he said. “As head of fourth circle, I beg you to stop my sir—to stop Myrrir Mahar’s preparation for burial until a quorum of the circle can examine the corpse.” He paused a breath. “If you don’t, he will be washed and dressed and the traces will be gone.” Another pause. “I’d say you do the examination yourself, but you’d still need a quorum of fourths before it were taken as official, begging your pardon, milord. But your being his sworn, you’d need corroboration.”
“Yes,” Eerlen said, curtly. And was shocked to hear the word, because his mind was spinning madly: Of course Almar was the head magician of the fourth circle. A justice bringer; an examiner of scenes of death; a determiner of guilt.
Ridiculous for Eerlen to have almost forgotten in the mess yesterday that Almar was under his control. He could have brought him to heel with— No. He could not. Almar was Myrrir’s and Myrrir’s sirelings were as stubborn as their sire. He couldn’t have made Almar do anything short of breaking him, and that’s not what the archmagician did. But Almar was a fourth, as Myrrir had been, of all things, a third circle—a healer—as Brundar would likely be when fully grown. Fourth circles were judicial magicians, judgers of guilt and foul play.
“But the traces of what?” he asked, confused.
Almar bit his lower lip, not so much in frustration as in surprise. He looked at Eerlen in utter surprise or perhaps in suspicion, as though he couldn’t believe Eerlen was asking this in earnest. “Of my sire’s murder.”
He could prevent Myrrir from being murdered, ran through Eerlen’s mind, in recollection of his earlier unbidden thought. Had he picked up something from the scene? From Myrrir’s mind-touch? Sometimes his magic knew things he didn’t know. “It was a death in battle,” he said aloud. He scrubbed his hand across his face, as though it would make the whole thing go away. “Those aren’t murder.”
“It feels like murder,” Almar said. “I could feel it in the room last night. The murderer was there, too.” And then his eyes widened, apparently in shock at Eerlen’s long and fluent cursing. It surprised Eerlen, too. He’d never been profane, certainly where anyone could hear him.
In difficult situations, faced with recalcitrant traders, or a shortage of food for the army, or a new shield-piercing spell by the enemy, he’d been known to say “Rotten ice,” but that was it. In fact, servants and secretaries knew that very mild swearing was a sign of extreme displeasure.
He stopped in shock the third time he mentioned the Maker’s Balls and the Maker’s Empty Womb, and sighed. “Shall I try it first? Then call a quorum?”
“Milord, your being the archmagician—” Almar didn’t quite say that given his command of power, its strength and his experience and abilities, Eerlen could create traces of murder or erase them, even if there had been the opposite. But he made it clear.
Eerlen almost swore again. “Very well,” he said, almost with venom. If Almar vocalized his suspicions, Eerlen could challenge him to a duel for it. But he hadn’t. That reticence, that pause insulted while not providing the remedy of covering the insult in blood. “Is the chamber guarded?”
“I left two of my best with instructions to let no one through.”
“Very well. Go and wait there,” Eerlen said, as he put out a call for all fourth circles within reach of Eles city, and why they should come.
Then he rushed through bathing. He remembered when the ever-running warm water pools of Eles palace had been a sybaritic delight, but that day, he rushed through dipping and soaping and rinsing, half-dried his hair and braided it still half-wet. He slipped on undyed linen pantaloons and short tunic, Elly peasant attire for the Northern temperate area, pulling the ruby to sit over the tunic. He owned better clothes and as the archmagician, he was entitled to better clothes, had often worn them, for effect. And as the king’s sworn—
He heard Myrrir in his mind, saying, “Oh, please, Eerlen. Stop trying to pretend I seduced some hapless illiterate! Put on something the court won’t gawk at.”
He frowned at Myrrir in memory. Myrrir wasn’t good at treading the very fine line of palace politics. He’d been born the child of a royal parent, after his full-grown sibling had died childless. Myrrir had known himself a ruler from the time he was born. He’d never needed to dissemble and excuse, to apologize or beg. He’d always been at the pinnacle of society, either destined to become ruler, or the ruler.
Eerlen, as half-Draksall from a parent the brotherhood had cut off, sensed his position, both archmage and king’s sworn, as precarious, like a floorboard that turns under your foot.
Yes, he was the Archmagician. Yes, he’d lived in the palace for twenty-three years, and been the king’s sworn for twenty-one. But it was important just now not to give the impression of lording it over people, or that he still had a role in the palace. It would give rise to the idea he intended to control Brundar, and would rule behind the throne.
Because he knew he stood on fraught ground, he dressed humbly and eschewed palace slippers for his own moccasins with the rough soles: better for running.
He ran out of his chamber and down the five flights of stairs.
To his surprise, Brundar, looking ill-awakened and too young in a long tunic of heavy dark fabric, was waiting outside the door. “They won’t let me in,” he said, his voice less the king’s and more the bereft child’s. “They say they’re examining my parent.”
By the far wall, knit in the shadows, Eerlen glimpsed Nikre Lyto, his adopted child. Though he was likely the next archmagician, and though he was by law and right a member of the royal family, he was shy and unassuming, and Myrrir’s death would have made him more skittish, fearing the fight of succession might reach for him. Myrrir had fondly nicknamed him Archmouse for his retiring ways.
Eerlen started towards Nikre, but the door opened, and Almar, pale and strained, stood in the doorway. “You must come in, Archmagician,” he said. His eyes flickered to Brundar. “And you, my lord. Distasteful as it is, both of you must come in.”
Brundar’s eyes widened. He swallowed audibly, but he inclined his head and stepped into the death chamber ahead of Eerlen.
Myrrir had been stripped and turned on his stomach. There was a sheet covering him to the small of his back, where the marks of several dagger stabs were visible.
“He has wounds in the front, too,” Lendir said. “More grievous, perhaps, though these…” He paused. “These were poisoned. And came from the back, where only his trusted stood.”
“His trusted?”
“Ter, Sarda. My half-siblings. Their seconds-in-command. They were the ones behind my sire. I was… I was further back and only rushed forward when I saw him fall. I have witnesses. The dagger stabbed him in the back, several times, making it impossible for him to back away when the shields failed and he was slashed from the front. But even so, he’d have survived, only the dagger was poisoned. Plant poison, probably from gaern. We can’t tell for sure, but though it was slow due to small dosage, it was the poison that killed him.” Almar seemed to anticipate Eerlen’s protest that daggers were not good means of poisoning someone. “There was a spell on it, Archmagician. You’re welcome to study it, but once the skin was breached, the poison would find its way to the blood. It’s no spell we know.”
Eerlen felt for the spell, could sense the threads of it. They were incisive, effective, and utterly alien to Ellyan spell work.
“The spell is not… If it’s Ellyan, it’s wholly invented by a genius.” He didn’t say he only knew one genius who could create such innovative work. Because that genius was Brundar, who wasn’t even a full magician yet, who had no reason to kill his parent, and whose mind at any rate ran to healing spells, not this type of dark subterfuge.
Aloud, Eerlen said, “It’s very effective. You are correct. From the moment Myrrir was cut, no matter how small the pinprick, the poison would find his blood, and the poison is strong enough, it would kill in any amount.”
“We judge he got four or five times the lethal dose,” Lendir said. “The king was murdered.”
“Why?” Brundar asked, startling Eerlen, who’d forgotten his sireling was in the room. “Why would anyone murder my parent? While he was fighting to defend Erradi and all of us?”
And suddenly, with a feeling that his world had sunk beneath him, Eerlen thought that they should never have done this. They should have let it be a secret. They shouldn’t have certified the royal murder.
If they didn’t find the murderer, it would make both brotherhood and crown seem ineffective and unimportant. Better no one knew a crime had happened.
…But would the murderer or murderers not try to kill Brundar? If they thought they’d gotten away with murder, unpunished?
His mind thought of the death of Myrrir’s firstborn. They’d proclaimed it an accident, and while guarding Brundar, had never let it be known the royal family’s security had been breached.
Had that been the right thing to do? Or had it led by steps to Myrrir’s own death?