“Did you know our mother could do that?” Lynan asked him.
Olio shook his head. “Well, in theory, of course, b-b-but I’ve never seen the Keys used b-b-before, except as decoration around the queen’s throat.” His brow furrowed in thought. “I wonder what the other Keys m—m-might be capable of.”
“How is Ager?” Lynan asked Kumul.
“His breathing is almost normal,” Kumul said with obvious relief. “And see, the bleeding has stopped altogether.”
“It is a wondrous thing the queen has done,” Edaytor said.
“The queen would do anything for Kumul,” Lynan said.
“Which shows how little you know about your own mother,” Kumul replied sharply.
Chapter 3
Kumul woke with a start, almost falling off his stool. He had fallen asleep with his head resting at an odd angle against the wall and now had a painful crick in his neck. Standing up, he went to Ager’s bed. The man was still asleep, but it seemed to be the sleep of the peaceful and not of the dying. The crookback’s face seemed very old and careworn for someone who could not have been older than forty years of age, and his long hair, mostly gray, was lanky and thin.
Although the fire in the hearth had long gone out and the room was cool, Kumul felt the need for fresh air. He went to the room’s only window and eased open the wooden shutters. The city of Kendra slept in the darkness. A faint light broached its eastern walls. He could make out on the water just beyond the harbor entrance the phosphorescent glimmer of the wakes of fishing boats returning to the city’s wharves, although the boats themselves, and even their sails, were still lost against the black expanse of sea.
He returned to Ager and, once again, carefully studied the man’s face, trying to remember what it had been like all those years ago when they were both comparatively young, filled with an energy that had long since been dissipated by war and injury and the loss of their beloved general.
Kumul had not seen Ager for over fifteen years and had assumed he was dead; but last night, against all expectation, they had met again, only for Ager almost to die in his arms. He felt bitter at that last twist of fate.
The sharpness of his feelings surprised him. He had lost friends before, and his friendship with Ager during the Slaver War largely had been largely professional, not personal. Yet now it seemed to him that the friendship, stretched across a war with as many defeats as victories, had inherited the weight of years of vacant peace during which Kumul had slowly learned he had few real friends left in this world.
A sound rose from the great courtyard outside, the clattering of hooves on cobblestone, the challenge of the guards. He heard the sentries stamp to attention, something they only did for members of the royal family. It must be Berayma, Usharna’s eldest child, returning from his mission to Queen Charion of Hume, one of Usharna’s less predictable and more outspoken subjects. The mission had been a sensitive one, and Kumul prayed that Berayma, severe as a winter wind, had been up to it.
Kumul looked again at Ager’s face, calm in sleep but carrying with it all the scars of war earned in the service of Queen Usharna. He had a premonition then, a warning of some danger, distant but closing in. He tried to wish it away, but it hung at the back of his mind, formless and brooding.
Gasping, Areava broke away from the shreds of her sleep. She looked around wildly, pulling the sheets about her. It took her a few seconds to recognize her own chambers, and when she did, she collapsed back against the bedhead, shivering in the predawn stillness.
The black wings of the nightmare that had roused her still beat in her memory. She had dreamed of the sea rising up over Kendra and the peninsula it was built upon, washing over the great defensive walls, flooding through its narrow streets, surging against the palace itself, and still rising. She had seen her mother Usharna struggling against the waters, the weight of her clothes and the Keys of Power dragging her down relentlessly, and then her half-brother Berayma had appeared, holding out his hand to the queen, their fingers locking. For a moment it had seemed that Berayma would drag her free of the flood, but the pull of the sea was too great and his grip weakened. Areava saw the strain on her brother’s face as he tried to hold on to the queen’s hand, and then her fingers, and then the tearing sleeve of her gown…
“Oh, God.” Areava wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself tightly. A sob broke from her and she could not help the tears that came. She felt ashamed of her weakness, but the dream had been so terrible, so frightening.
She steadied her breathing, made herself stop crying, then slipped out of bed. She stirred the dying embers in the hearth, added a few small logs. Slowly the fire restarted; with the increasing warmth the last shreds of the dream seemed to evaporate from her mind, leaving behind nothing but a vague disquiet about the future. But Princess Areava of Kendra did not believe in premonitions or prophecies. Putting aside the uneasiness, she started dressing, wondering what had woken her. She remembered the sound of riders cantering into the forecourt. Had it been part of the dream? She went to the narrow door that led to her balcony and opened it. She looked over the railing to the forecourt below and saw several horses being led to the stables. So that part was real. A thought, unbidden, came to her that perhaps all of it had been real, and a shiver went down her spine.
The sun was already well above the horizon when Lynan was roused by Pirem. His servant gave no greeting, simply held out his clothes for him as he dressed and helped put on his belt with its small dress knife.
Lynan checked himself in the mirror. He liked what he saw. If not as tall as his siblings, he was as wide, and he did not object to a face which, if not handsome, was not so bad it would scare the ghosts out of children. His focus shifted and he smiled at the reflection of Pirem, whose face would scare the ghost out of a seasoned warrior. He was as short as Lynan, thin as a fencing blade, with a head made up of more sharp points than a knife box. Pirem’s lips were sealed tight.
“Not talking this morning, Pirem?”
“No.”
“Did you have a particularly heavy night on the drink?”
“Not as heavy as you, your Highness,” Pirem said pointedly.
“Ah. I see. You are angry with me.”
“Angry with you, your Highness? Me? What right has a lowly servant to be angry with the boy he has raised almost singlehandedly when that boy goes off an‘ almost gets hisself skewered by the likes of street thugs? I ask you, Your Highness, what right do I have?”
“You’ve been talking with Kumul.”
“Someone had to carry fresh water and sheets up to the room where that poor man who got hisself skewered on your behalf now lies on his deathbed.”
“Don’t exaggerate, Pirem. Ager is not on his deathbed.”
“Pirem, is it?” He cocked his head as if listening to the sound of his own name. “I thought that was a moniker used by a certain lad who’s got not enough sense to do as he’s told when what he’s told is for his own health and happiness.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Pirem, give your tongue a rest.”
“An‘ here I was thinkin’ you were concerned ‘cause I wasn’t sayin’ enough. Silly me.”
Lynan turned away from the mirror and confronted the servant. “All right, Pirem, have it out. Give me your lecture.”
“Oh, far be it from me to lecture your Highness, who knows so much already about the ways of the world he doesn’t bother listenin‘ to the advice of his seniors…”
“Forget it!” Lynan said abruptly, his irritation turning to anger. “I’ve had enough, Pirem. I had all the lectures I needed last night from Kumul, and I don’t need any more from you.”
Pirem could take no more. His voice broke as he cried out: “God’s sake, lad, you almost got yourself killed straight dead!”