The Edge of the Blade Read online

  “Perhaps you should undress,” Kral offered blandly, “so I may check you for additional injuries.”

  “Thank you, Trond,” I said to him, deliberately ignoring Kral and rising to go. “My hands were the worst of it.”

  “Stay, Ambassador.” Kral’s tone enforced that this was an official order. “Leave us, Trond.”

  With a salute for his general, Trond beat a retreat hastier than farmers fleeing before shape-shifted Tala. I faced Kral, using the movement to take me a safer half step away from the bed. Not that I feared he’d grab me—though the thought gave me mixed feelings—but to ensure a more formal perimeter. If I’d guessed back at Ordnung that I’d be faced with a solo diplomatic mission reliant on this man, I wouldn’t have fucked him.

  Okay, maybe I would have, knowing me, but I would have been smarter about it.

  Or maybe not, knowing me.

  Danu, give me strength. “Look, Your Highness.” I jammed my fists on my hips, then suppressed a wince as the stitches pulled. “I may be new to the ambassador game, but I’m not a toddler in the hunting party. You don’t get to give me orders, and I don’t have to obey them.”

  “And yet you did obey,” he pointed out with a hint of a smile. “Toddler in the hunting party?”

  Dafne had taught me Harlan’s trick of translating words directly if I didn’t know the other language’s version of the expression. Better to get the sense across than say nothing for fear of saying something wrong, she’d advised. In the face of Kral’s bemusement, I reconsidered the wisdom of the advice. Of course, the man seized any opportunity to amuse himself at my expense.

  “It sounds better in my dialect. When an inexperienced youngster goes along hunting and causes problems through ignorance.” I sounded remarkably patient.

  “Oh, I understood the metaphor.” He levered himself up on the pillows, pain crossing his face at the awkwardness. “Help me here.”

  “I’m not your nursemaid.”

  “I’m wounded battling magical creatures unleashed on the world by your queen, while protecting you and your companion, and you refuse me the minor assistance of helping me take pressure off a painful injury—because of, what, your damnable pride?” His voice rose until he finished on an incredulous near shout.

  “Hush,” I hissed at him, jabbing a finger at the boards over his head, a gesture made considerably less dramatic by the white bandage. When he opened his mouth, a hard look in his eye, I moved in to help, more as a way of shutting the man up already. This was all I needed—to be becalmed, trapped and surrounded by lethal fish-birds, while Kral and I took bites out of each other. And not of the enjoyable variety.

  “More on the other side,” he directed, indicating the side away from him, where the bed abutted the curving wooden wall, requiring me to lean over him.

  “I can get it from this angle.” I shoved an arm behind the pile of pillows, adjusting them that way. No compunction to be overly gentle, lest he think me softening toward him. “There.”

  “Better,” he grunted.

  “May I be excused, then?”

  “Now, explain,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Who takes young children hunting?”

  “Look, Kral. I’d love to hang out and chat, but I have things to—”

  “To what?” He interrupted. “To go sit in your cabin and be quiet?”

  He had a point. I’d already driven Dafne and Zynda crazy on the journey thus far with my pacing. Being cooped up didn’t suit me any more than it did Kral.

  “Stay,” he coaxed, in a much more enticing tone. “Talk to me. Don’t make me lie here alone to listen to the fish-bird scratches. I hate having to lie abed with injuries.”

  I could sympathize with that, especially having spent my own time recovering recently. “Conversation isn’t exactly our strong suit.”

  “There.” He jutted his chin at the far wall. “In that cabinet you’ll find some mjed. We can share some to mute the pain.”

  “Yes, but what will mute the misery of your company?” I replied, mostly out of habit, because I was already halfway to the cabinet. An afternoon bout of drinking with my friendly enemy to kill the boredom. What in Danu could go wrong?

  Danu didn’t reply. The bitch goddess never did when I needed it.

  4

  Another ingenious mechanism, the cabinet door appeared to be part of the cabin wall until I pressed where Kral told me to, allowing it to spring open, revealing a fairly deep cavity with several shelves. “Clever,” I remarked.

  “Thank you.”

  “The craftsman who built the cabinets, not you.” I pulled out the familiar ceramic keg, stoppered with a wax-sealed cork, and two sturdy mugs made of a metal I didn’t recognize, etched with the same design as on Kral’s blanket. An intricate pattern of something reminiscent of a spider’s web, but with a hand in the center. “So, is this a family crest, or what?” Making conversation, cordial chatting, look at me go.

  Kral took the mugs I handed him, holding them while I poured. “You’ve not seen this design before?”

  “Other than on every surface in this room? Nope. To Danu of the clear eyes and bright blade.” I clunked my mug against his, then tipped it up to the sky I couldn’t see.

  Kral didn’t drink. “To the Emperor, and the Konyngrr dynasty. May both continue until the end of time.”

  “A little much, don’t you think, to celebrate a mortal man instead of a deity? Smacks of distressing arrogance.” Dafne had complained of that arrogance, how Kral and the other Dasnarians hadn’t bothered to learn enough Nahanaun to really communicate with King Nakoa KauPo. Entirely possible that Kral truly hadn’t understood Nakoa’s plan to imprison Dafne—which would be all his own lunkheaded fault.

  “His Imperial Majesty is more than a man. Arising to the throne via the blessing of the gods makes him semi-divine in his own right,” Kral returned, sounding very much as if he were quoting something.

  I took a healthy drink of the mjed to keep from laughing in his face and to bolster the epic levels of tact this conversation would surely require. “I might not be terribly fluent in Dasnarian, but even I understand that ‘semi’ means ‘not so much.’ ” I let my gaze fall to the juncture of his thighs and raised my brows. “As in semi-erect isn’t going to do much to make me happy.”

  “You enjoy provoking me, but if you know something of hunting, then you know better than to waken a sleeping bear.” He frowned at me. “Don’t go all faint on me. If you’re going to pass out, do it on the bed. All you need is an injury to that already thick skull.”

  “I’m not faint.” Credit to me that I managed to sneer the word, which had the suffix that applied only to females. Dafne hadn’t managed to beat much through the aforementioned thick skull of mine, but she had made me aware of those nuances. In general, female forms of address in Dasnarian meant they were thinking of me as lesser, which meant I should pay attention in those circumstances, particularly if I wanted them to take me seriously as an ambassador. Curse Kral for managing to hit on exactly the metaphor that got under my skin. I’d never been missish in my entire life, but I no doubt looked it at that moment. He had to pick bears. What were the odds?

  “So, your brother is semi-divine. What does that make you—quasi-divine?” I toasted my own wit, though my mug had little in it to drink. Shrugging, I poured more, since I held the mjed keg still, then looked for a place to set it down. Who had no tables? The floor it was.

  Kral was regarding me. “Is there anything at all you hold respect for?”

  Restless—and it had nothing to do with those poking-the-sleeping-bear memories, as that was ancient history—I prowled the cabin, testing various panels to discover which held hidden cabinets. “Sure. I respect Her Majesty Ursula, High Queen, and my captain, and also Marskal, my lieutenant, along with all my fellow Hawks, who never fail to have my back. I respect Zynda and her magic, Dafne with her ridiculous bravery, enviable knowledge, and even more enviable ability to learn. I respect the edge of the blade, t
he sing of the bowstring, the pitiless thrust of the spear, the fang of the mountain cat, the claw of the brown bear, the cornered fighter, and Danu’s merciless justice.”

  “A long speech for you.”

  “Think so? We haven’t spent much time talking, I might point out. Still not a long list, all in all.”

  “I notice I’m not on it.”

  I turned from a cabinet full of clothing, all in burgundy. “Difficult to dredge up respect for a man who holds me in contempt.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  Instead of another scathing attack on my moral depravity, he hesitated. “I do not hold you in contempt. Far from it. In fact, I . . . I’ve been thinking on our conversation of this morning, and it occurs to me that perhaps our problem lies in not understanding each other.”

  A miracle. Praise Danu for opening the eyes of the blind. “On that we can agree.”

  He shifted, as if uncomfortable. “Tell me about taking children hunting. Is this the way of your people?”

  “I don’t get this, Kral. Why do you care?”

  “We won’t understand each other without knowing more about each other, and it seems we’re stuck in close quarters for some time. We have nothing better to do, so let’s tell each other stories. I’ll trade one of mine for one of yours. More mjed, if you please.”

  My turn to be bemused, I poured him more. And myself, too. Why not? Again, no Danu popping in to guide me otherwise.

  “I’ll start by answering one of your questions. No, I am not divine at all. By Dasnarian law, only he who is anointed Emperor ascends to the level of semi-divine. I will only attain that state should I succeed my brother on the throne, which is unlikely unless things change drastically, as he has now sired two fine sons who stand in line before me.”

  “I doubt a government can legislate a mortal man into godhood.”

  “True. Only the gods can do so. The law simply recognizes the fact.”

  “Do you believe it—that your own brother is a god? That you would become one?”

  He gave me a long look, as if debating how much to say. “You know, no Dasnarian would ask me that question. It doesn’t matter what I believe. It is the way of things in Dasnaria, and no man profits by going against that. Your turn.” He tipped the cup in my direction.

  “Fine. I will follow no one into godhood. I come from a nomadic group of . . . hill people. Simple folk called the Bryn.” I substituted words freely there, but Kral seemed to get the general meaning. “We moved around a lot. No permanent structures. So it’s not like we always had safe places to stow the kids while hunting, especially during lean seasons. You leave little ones behind without enough protection, and they end up being the ones eaten. Which runs counter to the whole point of acquiring food, if you’re running at a loss. Those are the kinds of people who take little kids hunting.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In the Thirteen, kind of in the middle. Low mountains in the western part of Noredna, northern part of Duranor, depending on who was drawing the lines at the time and which kingdom had a more aggressive tyrant on the throne. Doesn’t tell you much, but there you go. Isolated enough that I grew up speaking a little-known dialect and had to learn Common Tongue later.” Something I hadn’t given much thought to, but perhaps that had made acquiring Dasnarian easier. Dafne said that the more languages she learned, the easier it became to pick up new ones.

  “I thought you’d grown up at Castle Ordnung, a royal by-blow, perhaps.”

  “Me? Ha! Perish the thought. My people skirted the line of criminality, mainly because they danced along the edge of starvation, too. If they needed something and the opportunity presented itself, they took it. Disappointed?” Maybe he’d been angling for an in with the royal family when he hit on me. Funny that it hadn’t occurred to me before. Though I wouldn’t kick myself for missing that possibility. People in general were bad about seeing motivations in others that they didn’t themselves possess, and I was no different. I indulged in sex because I liked it and it was a convenient method for extracting information. Using it to climb socially or politically? No. No gray areas there. I didn’t have many moral qualms, but that was one.

  Kral watched me but didn’t dignify my jibe with an answer, instead asking, “How did you end up serving the High Queen, then?”

  “That’s several questions in a row. My turn.”

  “You asked me several.”

  I shrugged, as if I didn’t care. As if the memories crowding my head of those days didn’t hurt still. The hunger and the struggle. The loneliness of being clanless. “I struck out on my own. Left my home, traveled around a while. Discovered that the skills that had kept me alive in the hills”—I pulled a dagger with my free hand, spun it, and resheathed it in a blur—“made me useful to various militias, royal guards, standing armies.”

  “You were a hired sword?”

  “Yes and no.” I found a new cabinet, with books in it. Dafne would have liked to see those. “The Twelve didn’t really have mercenaries as such, or didn’t until Harlan and his Vervaldr arrived. But each individual kingdom maintains various fighting forces, some for the protection of their own royal families, others to mobilize at the request of the high throne for the common good. I found jobs here and there. Stayed awhile, usually got bored—or kicked out, as I’m not always the best with authority, and don’t smirk like that—then I heard that Princess Ursula needed a good scout for her elite guard, the Hawks. So I lit out for Ordnung, trounced the competition in the trials, and got the job.”

  “Naturally.”

  I liked when he smiled more easily like that. “Some things you can count on. Eventually I became head of her scouts, too. Served her ever since.”

  “Despite not being the best with authority.”

  “Ursula—I mean, Her Majesty—is different.”

  “I doubt that. She struck me as an exceedingly authoritative person.”

  She’d created that impression quite deliberately. Not that Ursula didn’t give orders when she needed to, but she’d grown up with a tyrant of a father, and that changes how a person views the wielding of power. I’d been in on some of the strategy sessions where they discussed exactly how to play it when Kral arrived at the gates of Ordnung with his battalion of crack warriors. Kral kept his expression bland, but he watched me carefully. I, however, was no stranger to interrogation techniques. He could dig all he wanted and I’d never betray anything vital about Her Majesty. Let him wonder. On the other hand, I was learning useful things about him and Dasnarian culture. Good information to be able to report back. A decent spy learned everything she could, I figured, just as the best scouts did. Might as well spend the shipboard time usefully. “She and I get along just fine.”

  “What made you leave your people?” A change of tacks from my inquisitor. Recognizing he’d hit a wall. Interesting. A practiced interrogator, then. No surprise, really.

  “Why does any teenager leave home? Even wolf puppies leave the pack and go wandering. I wouldn’t know about sharks.”

  “You were a teenage girl on your own in the world?” He sounded indignant on my behalf. Kind of sweet on one level. Insulting on another.

  “I was fifteen—an adult in my tribe—and could take care of myself.”

  “You could have been raped, enslaved.”

  “That’s why a girl’s best friends are a pair of sharp daggers.”

  “I don’t understand your people at all. A young, fertile woman should never be treated so casually, as if she has no worth.”

  “Isn’t that why I’m subjecting myself to this interrogation, so you’ll understand? And I’ll point out that my people—who are many and varied, so it’s really not useful to lump them into one way of thinking—place more value on a woman than as a walking womb.”

  “This isn’t an interrogation.” Kral frowned still, notably not addressing my last remark.

  “No? An exchange of stories, you called it, but it
’s become solidly me answering your questions and you judging my answers.”

  He made a reflective sound, relaxed more into the pillows, and waved that away. “Force of habit. Ask me something, then.”

  “Tell me about this design.” I held up a seal with it, probably for stamping scrolls and so forth. I’d carried plenty of sealed messages in my time. “Family crest or what?”

  Kral held up his empty mug, so I crossed the room, scooped up the mjed keg, and refilled for us both. If he meant to get me drunk, he’d discover that took quite a bit of doing. And even a nice buzz couldn’t make me reveal anything I didn’t wish to.

  “Do you always poke around in other people’s things without permission?”

  “Ooh, yet another question. First of all, you showed me how to open the cabinets, so I figured that for permission, since we’re being all chummy and so forth. Second, you didn’t tell me to stop, which you’ve had multiple opportunities to do. And third, yes, I’m a scout by profession because curiosity is in my nature. I enjoy exploring and digging up clues.” Also, I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to gather what information I could. You never knew what might prove useful later. “If you’d rather I sat on my hands, I should warn you that’s not my forte. I can just go.”

  He smiled then, more of that real one, like he’d smiled at me that night, his eyes not at all icy then, but full of warm admiration that I’d drunk up along with his excellent liquor. “I’d rather you stay and continue to entertain me.”

  Unable to resist, I sketched a quick jig for him, an intricate quick step and hop, followed by an elaborate bow. “Anything to please the customer,” I said in my home dialect. “Throw a coin, kind sir?”

  He laughed. “Do I even want to know what you said to me?”

  I couldn’t help grinning back. The mjed did make for a happy drunk. “Tell me about the crest. Why so surprised I didn’t recognize it? You haven’t worn it on your daily stuff or your armor.”

  “It’s a sort of a family crest, though most of the meaning it holds is intimate—for the Konyngrr dynasty, not necessarily as the ruling party.”