Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Read online

He motioned for his steward, and the man came again with the pitcher to refill both their goblets. Nassar raised his. “To peace, and an end to this conflict of brothers.”

  “To peace.” Jasper downed the siri again.

  Nassar arched brows. Something had the young captain on edge, but somehow he doubted it was a meeting of kings. “Come and join me, Captain.” He motioned to a pair of camp chairs. “I would hear what else from Tal’Shira and afar.”

  “And I would tell you what I know, al-Amir, but I must speak with the Lieutenant Evryn val Lynne posthaste and give him this news and more from the kingdom.” Jasper placed his hand on the satchel at his hip by way of indicating his meaning.

  Jasper often carried letters to the men from their loved ones while upon more important travels for his king and duke. Nassar respected the way the Northmen kept in contact with one another. Soldiers were far more willing to give up their lives for another man’s fight when their own personal needs were met.

  Nassar snapped his fingers meaningfully, and his steward darted off to fetch Lieutenant val Lynne. “Farouk shall return with your lieutenant momentarily, Captain. At last look, he was inspecting the ridge fortifications and will need some time to make his way back to us. Until then, sit—by Huhktu’s bones, you look as if you haven’t slept in days.”

  Jasper dutifully sank down onto the indicated seat. Nassar retrieved the pitcher of siri and refilled the captain’s cup for a third time himself. Perhaps if the man imbibed enough spirit it would loosen his tongue. Nassar embraced any distraction to alleviate the tedium of his days. A man could only pray so much.

  “Now tell me,” he eyed the captain as he retook his own chair, “why the haste? Clearly you’ve been many days ahorse.”

  “Your eyes do you credit, al-Amir—though I suppose my weariness is obvious.” He gave an apologetic smile. “Several weeks ago, His Majesty King Gydryn val Lorian summoned me personally to attend him in Tal’Shira. There, he gave me new orders.” A flicker of something crossed the young captain’s brow upon this memory. “He bade me deliver the parley news to every one of our outposts, so that our commanders might know when the parley began and be heartened by it.”

  “That is a considerable undertaking.”

  “Verily. I’ve been riding solidly for several weeks and have visited nearly every one of Dannym’s regiments.”

  Nassar shook his head. “Would that I had more to offer you than siri.”

  “It is more than many have offered. For your hospitality, I pray Azerjaiman sends you many blessings on Qharp’s fair winds.”

  Nassar’s gaze betrayed a certain skepticism. “That I might live to see the end of this war, if Jai’Gar wills it, would be blessing enough.” He stroked his dark beard alternately with fingers and knuckles, eyeing Jasper all the while. The man sat calmly enough, but Nassar sensed that inside the captain was bouncing like a jumping bean on a sun-heated stone. But whatever Jasper had on his mind, it clearly wasn’t something he intended to share, so Nassar didn’t press. An honorable man didn’t interrogate his guests simply to assuage his own boredom.

  Still…there were topics certain to be safe between them. “You were in Tal’Shira recently? What news from the capital?”

  Jasper sipped at his siri. “Refugees are flooding in from Abu’Dhan, the Qar’imali and other parts of the south where the fighting continues. Departing Tal’Shira now means hours of navigating through refugee camps.”

  Nassar exhaled a slow breath. “The Qar’imali…” he shook his head and gave Jasper a regretful look, “wars within wars…this is what we see with the fighting in the south. The tribal blood lives in long tattoos on the arms of such men, recounting their lineage decades back, but ink is all that binds their loyalties now, and ink was ever a weak substitute for virtue.”

  Jasper gazed long upon him. For some reason, he looked disconcerted by Nassar’s observation.

  As Nassar was wondering what the captain had on his mind but wouldn’t say, he noticed a distant shadow passing among the sparse clouds of sunset. He watched the dragon’s passage through the heavens with a slight frown narrowing his brow.

  “One has to wonder why the Emir doesn’t send his Mage or his Sundragons south to end the conflict in the Qar’imali,” he posed thoughtfully, “or at least to stalemate it, as they have done here.”

  Jasper noted the direction of Nassar’s attention and turned to look over his shoulder at the dark glint of a dragon flying among the violet clouds. “I’ve seen what they can do. A single Sundragon could vaporize an entire company—perhaps a whole battalion—if it stood unopposed. Combined, they could end this war.” He turned a frown back to Nassar.

  “But then where would we be,” Nassar shifted a sobering look to Jasper, “with a Sundragon as our king?”

  A fervent muttering from afar drew both their gazes, and soon the turbaned head of Lieutenant Evryn val Lynne came into view, followed closely by Nassar’s servant, Farouk.

  Nassar held up a hand in greeting. “Ah, Evryn. Give welcome to Jasper val Renly. The captain has braved the distance to bring news to you from your king.”

  Jasper stood quickly. His right hand automatically went to the satchel at his hip, as a soldier taking comfort in the presence of his sword. “Perhaps we could retire to your tent, Lieutenant, and leave the al-Amir the privacy of his own?”

  Evryn looked inquiringly to Nassar. “With your permission, Commander?”

  “Of course.”

  The Northmen departed, and Nassar exhaled a slow, disappointed sigh. He foresaw no stories shared in his tent that night, no new tales brought from afar. Ah well… a quiet evening at least offered another opportunity for prayer. Perhaps this would be the night his gods blessed him with an answer.

  Nassar thought no more of Captain Jasper val Renly as he went about his evening inspections, nor later as he knelt on his pallet and gave thanks for the many blessings of his life; nor even as he labored through a fitful sleep, awoken several times by unusual sounds out of the darkness.

  In fact, he spared barely a thought for Jasper until the dawn light brightened the canvas of his tent and he emerged with a yawn—

  And found the entire Dannish contingent had made off like thieves in the night.

  Then he thought of Captain Jasper val Renly quite fervently.

  One

  "He is a plate spinning on Balance's needle, likely to topple in any direction."

  –Dhábu’balaji’şridanaí, He Who Walks the Edge of the World, on Ean val Lorian

  “She asks the impossible!” Sebastian val Lorian threw down the charcoal pencil he’d been using and fell back forcefully back in his chair. He scowled across the worktable at Dareios.

  The Kandori prince’s colorless eyes were fixed on a pattern he was penning with meticulous care, but he arched a triangular brow at Sebastian’s comment. The motion wrinkled the dark tattoo of the Khoda Panaheh on his forehead. “The impossible…” his lips curved upwards at the corners. “I don’t think the word falls within Isabel’s vernacular.”

  Sebastian shifted his gaze to the monolith that was Isabel’s staff, which was occupying a corner of Dareios’s laboratory. When Isabel had tossed the staff to him back in Ivarnen, Sebastian had believed she was giving it to him for safekeeping, to watch over until she could return to claim it. Now he felt more like the staff was watching him.

  It didn’t seem overly pleased by his progress.

  Sebastian plucked at the stitching on the arm of his chair. “We’ve been at this for weeks, with barely a scrap to show for our efforts.” Indeed, the worktable between them bore marks of dedicated abuse—piles of discarded papers, charcoal dust, ink smears, and everywhere the ash of their failure.

  Dareios dipped his pin in a pot of ink and looked up under his brows. “She wouldn’t have given us the task if it couldn’t be accomplished.”

  Sebastian grunted sourly. “Would that I shared your faith.”

  ‘…Tell Ean he has to find a way to unmake entir
e companies of these creatures in one blow. Tell Dareios I said to use inverteré patterns if he must…’

  Isabel’s admonishment during those last fevered moments at Ivarnen had become a torment to Sebastian. He and Dareios were trying to find a pattern—rather, a matrix of patterns working in concert—that would allow any wielder to unwork an eidola, or at least disrupt its connection to its master in such a way that the creature lost animation. They’d been upon the task day and night, ever since Sebastian stepped off the node from Ivarnen carrying a barely conscious Rhys val Kincaide and with his youngest brother as a haunted shell of himself.

  And as much darkness as they’d already endured, Isabel’s warning only seemed a portent of worse yet to come.

  Dareios set his pen on its stand, folded fingers on the table and settled his colorless gaze on Sebastian. “Are you going to go talk to Ean?”

  “He won’t listen to me.” Sebastian shifted his gaze to meet Dareios’s, only to realize that the truthreader had been referencing another matter entirely than the one occupying Sebastian’s thoughts. Understanding pinched sharply behind his eyes. “Thirteen hells—did Isabel visit your dreams last night, too?”

  “Preyed upon them might be a better description.” Dareios traced his forefinger along one triangular eyebrow. “I fear if it takes us too much longer to get Ean to comply with her wishes, the Prophetess will visit my mother in her dreams.” He winced at the prospect. “We must head off such a catastrophe at all costs, Sebastian.”

  Sebastian frowned down at the half-finished pattern on the parchment in front of him.

  Dareios sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I never would’ve given Ean that pattern if I’d known he would use it to keep Isabel from communicating with him.”

  Ean had been plagued by troubling dreams ever since Ivarnen, dreams that had so disturbed him that he’d finally asked Dareios for a pattern to ward his mind while he slept. Sebastian well understood the malaise of ill dreams. Dore still haunted his.

  “Yes,” the truthreader murmured, obviously catching Sebastian’s thought, “my palace is full of men with ghosts.”

  Sebastian plucked at the arm of his chair. “If you hadn’t given Ean that pattern to ward his dreams, he only would’ve worked it out some other way.” If there was anything he’d learned about his youngest brother, it was that Ean’s ingenuity knew no bounds—of imagination, prudence, or even the near side of common sense. Sebastian slid further down in his chair and leaned his head back against the cushion. “I wish I knew how to get through to Ean. Everything I say just glides off his stubbornness like water over an oilskin cloak.”

  “A mind once set can become as immutable as granite.” Dareios exhaled a sigh redolent of personal experience. “Sometimes all we can do is chip away at its immutable face and pray our blows miraculously hit a fault.”

  Sebastian gave him the quirk of a smile. “Is that another of your Kandori sayings?”

  “Nay, Prince of Dannym, it’s the experience of a man with eight sisters and an Agasi wife. In Kandori, stubbornness is more abundant than jewels.” He winked at him. “Now that is one of our proverbs.” Dareios picked up his pen. “Go, my friend. Ean needs you, and we need him. In the meantime, I will press on. The steps of today’s disheartenment become the path of tomorrow’s success.”

  Sebastian pushed resignedly out of his chair. “I should’ve been raised in Kandori. You’ve a saying for every state of existence.”

  Dareios placed the point of his pen and his attention back on the pattern he was inking. “Never fear, Prince of Dannym.” He arched a brow wryly as he drew a curving line. “If you continue courting my sister Ehsan, she will surely educate you in all of them.”

  With his mind split between worrying for Ean and contemplating when next he would see Ehsan—thank you, Dareios, for putting the distraction of your gorgeous sister so firmly in my thoughts—Sebastian set off towards the laboratory where Ean was working.

  His brother had claimed the most distant of Dareios’s workrooms, supposedly for the safety of others—in case a pattern he was testing went awry—but Sebastian suspected the arrow of Ean’s true motives was aimed at solitude, which he seemed to crave since returning from Ivarnen.

  Whatever else was plaguing Ean, it certainly wasn’t helped by the Lord Captain Rhys val Kincaide’s condition. After all they’d sacrificed and endured to save him, if Rhys didn’t survive…Sebastian feared what it would do to Ean.

  Dareios’ Adept sisters had done all they could to shore up the captain’s pattern, but he’d contracted an illness during his captivity—which imprisonment Sebastian, as Işak’getirmek, was to blame for—and the malaise had set in deeply; only time would tell if he could make a full recovery. Until they deemed him safe from Death’s reach, Dareios’s sisters were keeping Rhys unconscious in a Healing sleep.

  Still, Ehsan believed that Rhys’ prognosis looked promising, and her words had heartened Ean—that is, until several days after they’d returned from Ivarnen. That’s when desolation’s spear had struck his little brother.

  They’d been working the cortata together on the sand court, stripped to their waists beneath the warm springtime sun while Dareios’s gaggle of sisters watched behind veils that hid their whispers but not their admiring eyes. Sebastian had just been lifting his sword for another swing when Ean stilled, as if suddenly paralyzed. Then his face had become a mask of anguish. His fingers went slack, his blade fell to the sand, and he dropped to his knees while the currents went mad.

  Sebastian hadn’t known what to do. He’d gone to one knee, placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, and remained silently at his side this way for close to an hour. All the while, the riotous currents had wreaked such havoc on his senses that he’d suffered a headache for two days afterwards.

  Following the event, Ean had refused to speak to anyone. Even a visit from Rhakar with good news of their brother Trell’s rescue from Darroyhan had failed to guide Ean out of his black overcast.

  Over the last fortnight, however, Sebastian had managed to pry an explanation out of his brother for what had occurred that day. Just bits and pieces, what little Ean knew—mostly he’d sketched a rough outline and filled it with conjecture—but now, no amount of reason from Sebastian could make Ean see any other shape than the one he’d drawn.

  He found his brother standing on the laboratory balcony with his hands braced on the railing. A late spring breeze was rustling the garden trees and pushing ashen clouds across the sky, but Ean was so encased in the fifth that the wind darted around his form, disturbing neither his hair nor his clothing.

  “I eliminated five more patterns last night,” Ean said without turning.

  Sebastian paused in the open archway. He had no idea how Ean was testing the patterns to determine their effectiveness at destroying eidola; he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Dareios has a dozen more for you to try when you’re ready.”

  “Fine. I’ll do them tonight.” Ean dropped his chin to his chest. He was gripping the railing so tightly that his knuckles were white.

  Sebastian took a tentative step into the raging fifth—it felt like a wall of wind pressing against him. He couldn’t tell if Ean was holding the fifth on purpose or if it was boiling in response to his mood. “Are you all right, little brother?”

  Ean speared a hangdog stare at him. “How could I possibly be all right?” He clenched his jaw and returned his gaze to the valley, where the crater made by their fall, weeks earlier, made a pock in the fertile plain. “I’m not sure I even know what ‘all right’ means,” Ean muttered as an afterthought, “but I’m fairly sure it doesn’t apply to me in any possible sense.”

  Sebastian frowned and exhaled a slow breath. He well knew his brother’s mind. Verily, Ean had shared everything with him—the fullness of his tale from the moment he’d set foot on the mainland to now and all of his dreamed memories—yet for all Ean’s recent hard experience, he was still sorely unacquainted with the vagaries of love.


  Of course, trying to explain this to him…

  “Ean,” Sebastian sought another route into the quagmire of Ean’s obstinate resolve, “you can’t know that Isabel—”

  “I know what I perceived, Sebastian.” Ean tightened his grip on the railing. “I sensed it would happen even before she left, and I felt its truth the moment our bond was restored. She’s betrayed our troth.”

  Sebastian winced at the vitriol in his brother’s tone. “That’s conjecture at best—”

  Ean spun him a fierce glare. “I’m not wrong.”

  Sebastian held his brother’s gaze. “There is one way to be sure.”

  Ean grunted and looked back to the valley.

  Since Ean clearly wasn’t going to release the fifth any time soon, Sebastian braved the tumultuous vortex to join his side. The hairs on his arms were standing on end as he placed his hands on the railing and stood shoulder to shoulder with his youngest brother.

  “Isabel visited Dareios and me in our dreams last night. She asked us to deliver a message to you.” He cast Ean a sidelong eye. “She wants you to stop warding your dreams so she can speak to you.”

  Ean worked the muscles of his jaw. “She knows where to find me.”

  “Yes, and I trust she would’ve come in person if she could have.”

  The currents were seething with Ean’s indignation. “I have nothing to say to her. She laid with another man.”

  Sebastian took a deep breath and a firm hold upon his patience. “Let’s say you’re right, Ean.”

  Ean gave him a look that said he clearly was.

  “Will you deny her an opportunity to explain? She must’ve had a good reason for what she did—thirteen hells, she sacrificed herself to save the three of us! That act alone should secure your willingness to hear her side of things.” He searched Ean’s face for even a flicker of willingness. “Ean, it’s Isabel we’re talking about here—”

  “Yes, Isabel.” The currents rippled beneath his sounding of her name.

  Sebastian pointed out as gently as he could, “You know she understands far more than we do about this game.”