chapter EIGHTEEN
THE MIDDAY SUN streamed through the windows of Duke Miro Karasek’s apartments in Zalinenka castle. Karasek sat at his desk, writing letters. It was quiet, the servants momentarily busy elsewhere, and the scrape of his ink stick against the inkstone sounded unnaturally loud. He had packed his gear and weapons the night before, and between the silence and emptiness, the rooms had a deserted air.
… the king’s runner had knocked on his door at midnight. Come. No delay. He had paused long enough to scrub the sleep from his eyes, then followed the messenger at a run. It was not fast enough. Dzavek paced the length of his study, his shadow flickering in the light of a dozen candles. The moment Karasek crossed the threshold, the king swung around to face him …
Karasek added water to the ground ink and mixed it thoroughly. A few more lines, rapidly brushed, finished off the letter to his secretary. He dusted the paper and laid it aside to dry, then wrote a second letter to his steward. He trusted both men to know their duties, but it gave him a small measure of comfort to send these last instructions.
The orders had come late the night before.
… You sail tomorrow, the king said. Karasek bowed his head. What else could he answer? But his acquiescence was not enough, apparently. You don’t ask why, Dzavek said. Look at me, Miro.
Miro lifted his gaze to the king’s. They were of a height—both tall and lean, both with dark deep-set eyes, black with a hint of indigo, like the storm clouds in summer. Karasek had seen portraits of the king through the centuries, before the deep lines marked his face, before his eyes turned cloudy with age. The resemblance was strong between them. More than once, he had wondered if they shared an ancestor. Or was the king himself Miro’s ancestor?
I have found my brother, Dzavek said. The Morennioùen queen. She rides with companions to the coast where she hopes to take a ship home. You must stop her.
Simple orders. Why had they bothered him so?
Because you once loved her. Because you betrayed her once before, in the king’s name, the emperor’s honor. At the cost of your own.
Bells from the palace towers rang noon. Two more hours until they sailed. There was little else to accomplish, to distract himself from worrying. He and Grisha Donlov had already reviewed the final preparations. A ship waited for them at the city docks—a swift-sailing craft with room enough for her crew and a single squad, twenty of Dzavek’s best soldiers, men and women whom Karasek could trust on this mission.
Miro rubbed his forehead. After he had left the king, he had slept uneasily, dreaming he had returned to Taboresk. He was riding through the forests, in the hills near his estate. No purpose. No guards. He was alone with the endless pine forests, with the sky like a clear blue mirror overhead. It was a strangely unsettling dream for all its tranquillity. Like a final visit with a friend before they died.
He blew out a breath. He knew better than to give into nerves before a battle.
One last letter, then. He took a new sheet, dipped his brush in the well of his inkstone, and wrote.
“From Zalinenka castle, Rastov, to the Baron Ryba Karasek of Vysokná. My dear Cousin Ryba. I write to you with a fresh burden to offer. My duties require my continued absence from Taboresk, and I find myself uneasy about my estates…”
Miro reread the first lines. He disliked them. They implied a lack of trust in his secretary and steward. And yet he knew no other way to express his unsettled state, not without making its cause too plain.
I want your eyes there. I want you looking over the portraits and statues, the stables and fields. Capek is shrewd and Sergej Bassar is capable, but I need a friend and brother to oversee my home, once our home together.
Stilted. Awkward. Not at all how they spoke in private, but this letter was a public one, so he continued in the same formal style: “If your own duties and obligations permit, I have a very great favor to ask of you. Vasche Capek himself can run Taboresk with little direction—and I have already sent him instructions for the next month—but my heart would rest easier if you could arrange a visit…”
His brush moved easily through the glib phrases. In his thoughts, however, he wrote a different letter, worded as though he were alone with Ryba in Taboresk. I am afraid, he wrote in that invisible letter. For myself, and for the king. I fear the threat to our honor—his and mine. I am a soldier, as he reminded me. I deal in spilled blood and battle cries, in the broken bodies of our enemies, those who face death bravely, and those who weep in panic, even with a new life awaiting them across the rift.
He paused and looked out the window. The sky had turned a luminous blue, vivid against the pale stonework of the castle. It reminded him strongly of his dream. Not a life dream, he told himself. Nevertheless, the image of those empty silent forests troubled him. It was like a sending from the gods, reminding him that he faced death on this mission.
He stared down at the half-written letter, seeing instead Dzavek’s face etched with lines. He remembered the king’s soft voice, explaining that he could not leave the kingdom unprotected against Veraene’s growing desire for war and a return to the empire. He would sacrifice his honor to protect it. He would willingly sacrifice his brother’s kingdom. This was no new turn in his character, Miro thought. The clues had been obvious for centuries, if one examined the records. His father had done so, but no one else, it seemed. Why?
It is because we died and thus forgot. Our king, however, lives on.
He had lived on, gaining strength and youth from Lir’s jewels. Later, the jewels gone, Leos Dzavek had continued to extend his life, using the magical knowledge acquired during that first century. He drew the years with a sure hand, like a smith would draw a thread of forge-heated gold, long past all expectation.
But no man can live forever. Not even Toc could deny death. And he knows it, Ryba. I see the terror in his face, when he holds Lir’s ruby in his hands. He knows that even with the jewels, he will die someday.
A thought he could not share, even with his cousin, even in a letter never written.
A shadow fell across Miro’s desk. The sun had risen higher in the sky. He would need to go soon before the next bell rang. Taking up his brush, Miro continued his dual letter. As he wrote of Taboresk’s ordinary concerns, his second letter continued his thoughts about Dzavek’s intentions.
We forget, you and I, that Leos Dzavek, for all his achievements, is a man with faults and flaws like any other. He nurtures a bitter hatred toward Morennioù’s queen—the woman who was once a man, once his brother. They trusted each other. They betrayed each other—several times over, if the histories are true. And because they did, Leos Dzavek would fashion me into a blunt tool, just as he did with Anastazia Vaček. He would bloody me, wipe me clean with a rag, and cast me to one side. I fear I will never be able to eradicate the stain.
Miro pressed both hands against his eyes. I swore an oath to Leos Dzavek and Károví. I swore another to my father as his heir.
He thought of his father, whose conversations remained guarded, even in private interviews with his own son. Alexej Karasek had served Dzavek for a lifetime. He’d spoken of the king’s insight in council, of his farsighted plans for Károví, both within the kingdom and in the greater world. Honor and glory and strength, his father had said. He wants a gift for the future. And yet his father had also spoken of doubts.
Miro sighed and read through the half-finished letter. There was little to add, except a postscript inviting his cousin for the hunting season next autumn. He folded the paper, sealed it with wax, and wrote the address on the cover. That he used no magic would signal to Ryba that the contents were public. And since Ryba knew Miro as well as any brother, he would know to read between the written lines, to the invisible letter Miro had composed in thoughts alone.
It would be safer if he could not.
He summoned a runner and handed her all three letters. “Letters to Taboresk and Vysokná,” he said. “Deliver the first two into my steward’s hands, the third to my cousin, Baron Ryba Karasek. Use the fastest courier you have.”
The letters dispatched, Miro turned to the one remaining trunk of clothing. He removed his fine woolen trousers, the silk shirt, and the loose tunic with its satin trim and embroidered sash. In their place, he donned the knitted undershirt, the tunic of fine-linked mail, the gloves fashioned of the same material. It was appropriate. If he was the king’s chosen weapon, he would look and dress the part.
I will make Valara Baussay my prisoner. By sword or magic.
Anything less would be treason.