Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

It was too much; he had pressed too hard. The little man gave a cry and curled up on the filthy ground, hugging his knees to his chest, rolling among the broken beads. Nothing Kel did or said could budge him.

And to be fair, Kel was only too eager to get away. Away from the stink of the Trick, away from the words buzzing in his brain. Your Sword Catcher will betray you. And you will hate him then. Hate him enough to wish him dead.





And thus did the time of the Sorcerer-Kings come to an end. Though the people of Dannemore were glad to be freed from the tyranny of those Kings and Queens, that freedom had been bought at great cost. Great devastation had been wrought upon the land, and after the Sundering came a time of darkness, during which the people, with righteous rage, fell upon and destroyed every artifact of magic they could find. The only magic that continued to exist in Dannemore was the gematry of the Ashkar, for it did not require the Name.

But there was not always to be darkness over the world. Before the Sundering, the people had turned away from the Gods, preferring to worship magic and those who practiced it. But now Lotan, Father of the Gods, set Marcus Carus, the first Emperor, upon the Imperial throne, and he brought beneath his rule all the warring kingdoms and united them, and he created the Gold Roads that spanned all the lands of the Empire and even beyond them, east into Shenzhou and Hind. And now the benevolence of the Emperor shines through the land, and justice has replaced tyranny, and trade has replaced war. All praise the Emperor, and the lands over which he presides, which shall never be divided!

—Tales of the Sorcerer-Kings, Laocantus Aurus Iovit III





CHAPTER TWENTY


Kel had a bad moment when he returned to the rooms he shared with Conor and saw that the Prince had returned from his meeting. It was dim; the lamps Kel had left burning had for the most part been snuffed out. A fire in the grate provided some illumination, as did the blue moonlight that pervaded the room with an eerie glow.

But the door to the tepidarium was closed, and Kel could hear the sound of water. Swiftly, he moved to the wardrobe and divested himself of Conor’s clothes. With shaking hands, he carefully returned the gold coronet to its bed of velvet. He slammed the wardrobe door shut, and by the time Conor had emerged from the tepidarium he had yanked on a linen sleep tunic and trousers.

Conor came out blinking, still in the clothes he had worn earlier that day, though the fur-lined jacket was missing. He had clearly splashed his face with water, and his black hair was wet, his heavy gold crown, rubies and all, dangling from one finger.

“Kel,” he said.

He did not sound surprised to see him. He did not sound much of anything but tired. Kel could not remember the last time he had heard Conor sound so exhausted. He started to cross the room toward Kel, then seemed to give up and slumped down on one of the divans, letting his head fall back against the cushions.

He looked exhausted as well, bruise-blue shadows under his eyes, his boots unlaced, the blue paint on his nails picked away to a mosaic of cracks. He did not move, but his eyes tracked Kel as Kel came across the room and sat down across from him.

Kel remembered a time when Conor’s pains and distresses could be soothed by a trip to the massive playroom in the Castel Mitat. There they had built walls out of blocks, and made a fort, and there had been toy Castelguards and dolls to staff it. They had played games with Falconet and Roverge and Antonetta until one day Falconet had made some comment about being too old for this sort of foolishness, and the next day it had all been gone, replaced by a sitting room full of elegant divans and silk pillows.

Antonetta had cried. Kel recalled holding her hand; the others had mocked her, but her grief over the vanished dolls—who had been characters, truly, with their own histories and names—was his own grief, one that her voluble sadness allowed him to keep hidden.

It was only later that he wondered if it had been wrong to let her bear the mockery for what he, too, felt. He supposed that he had been punished for it: In the end, she had been the one to tell him that it was time to grow up.

“I wondered where you were,” Conor said, “when I got back.”

Kel hesitated, but only for a moment. He had not meant to keep the night’s activities a secret, but he had no choice now. I went to see Fausten, disguised as you, and he said I would betray you. That I would take something important from you and you would hate me.

Perhaps Conor would laugh it off. In fact, it was most likely he would, but he often laughed off exactly what bothered him the most. Fausten’s words were already eating at Kel like acid. What would they do to Conor—especially now?

“I was walking around the grounds,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me into the Gallery.”

“Bensimon wouldn’t let anyone into the Gallery. Roverge tried to muscle his way in, but Jolivet had the Arrow Squadron march him out.”

“He won’t like that,” said Kel.

“Probably not.” Conor didn’t sound as if he cared one way or the other.

“Con,” Kel said softly. “Have you eaten? Had any water, at least?”

“There was food, I think,” Conor said, vaguely. “They brought us things. There was a great deal of wine, though Senex Domizio may have drunk most of it. He called me a buxiàrdo fiol d’un can, which I don’t think he would have done if he was sober. I’m fairly sure it means ‘lying fucker.’”

“Bastard,” Kel said, through his teeth. “You didn’t lie. You made a deal, and you stuck with the deal. They’re the liars—”

“Kellian,” Conor said. He rarely used Kel’s first name; he did it now with a sound in his voice that was like pain. “I know.”

“Is there no way out of this?” Kel asked.

“There is no way out of it. The Sarthians are firm. I agreed to marry a Princess of Aquila with the name Aimada; there is no provision that it had to be her first name.” Conor smiled a ghastly smile. “In the end, Anessa simply kept pointing out that this was a transaction, a marriage of kingdoms; there had never been any pretense that this was a love match. What does it matter in the end, she kept saying. And that should I accept Luisa, we would have the gratitude and alliance of Sarthe, whereas if I sent her back, we would have war.”

“They have been wanting war for some time,” said Kel. “Perhaps this is only an excuse to bring it.”