The Black Wolves Read online

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “How did you come to single him out?”

  “He lied about being local to the area. I knew it from the way he spoke, the way he was easy with the local customs, and how he never got cold when we were all shivering. During the ambush he shot the man who started talking, and did it so quickly I guessed he was trying to shut him up before he revealed anything. In the confusion when Ezan and I encountered the demon, Aikar fled, which sealed it. It turned out that when Chief Jagi emptied most of the fort to chase that demon, two others flew into the fort and released the prisoners.”

  “So the demon you confronted was another decoy. Did Aikar get away?”

  “No. I was able to track him down and turn him over to Chief Jagi before I left Asharat to come here to give you my report.”

  “What did Chief Jagi do with him?”

  “Jagi executed him and hung his body at the crossroads.”

  “Very good.”

  The king stood with a sword sheathed at his belt and a knife held lightly in his right hand as if he hadn’t decided whom to use it on yet. No one who looked at this commanding middle-aged man would doubt he had spent his life as a soldier, even if he now spent most of his time as a wise administrator of the Hundred, a land he had saved from disorder and conflict.

  His gaze shifted briefly past Kellas’s face to the garden that surrounded the open pavilion in which the two men met. Walls surrounded the garden, beyond which lay the various wings and courtyards and buildings of the palace complex. Always cautious and alert, Anjihosh valued his security. From where he was seated, Kellas could see two reeves and their giant eagles circling above the palace; there were at least four on palace watch during the day. On the ground, the king’s personal guards were all Qin soldiers. Kellas had counted seven such guards stationed in and around the pavilion and garden. An eighth stood directly behind Kellas, who sat cross-legged on a pillow in front of the king. Given that Kellas had been required to relinquish his weapons and be strip-searched before entering the palace, he recognized the arrangement for the soldier’s tactic it was. Armed and standing, Anjihosh had an advantage over a seated, unarmed person, especially when his guards were armed as well.

  The king addressed the clerk seated at a low table, who had recorded Kellas’s report. “The village councils in the Asharat Valley will be dissolved and replaced with a military governor. Taxes will be tripled. The councils and a normal rate of taxation will be restored once the smuggling and theft are halted and those responsible turned over by the locals to the assizes. That is all. You are dismissed.”

  When Kellas made to rise, the king indicated the clerk, so Kellas sank back down and waited as the clerk gathered up his implements, stowed them in a box, and departed. Anjihosh waited as well. The king was not a pacer. He had the ability to stand with utter, focused stillness, as if all the pacing were going on in his mind, out of sight to all except demons.

  “So, Tailman Kellas, here you are,” said the king with a quirk of the lips whose flash of humor startled Kellas. “Ironic that you had to assume the lowest rank for this particular mission, considering that in the last eight years you have become my most efficient and productive silent wolf. I think a promotion is in order.”

  That Kellas managed not to grin ecstatically or clench his hands to fists in triumph, much less leap up in excitement, was testament to the hardened discipline of his training. He inclined his chin slightly to acknowledge the praise and blinked about five times to bleed off the surge of adrenaline.

  “Now that one cloaked demon can identify you, we must assume they all can. I will have to put you on different duty for a while.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” The flutter in his belly gradually eased as the king sheathed his knife and drew his captain’s whip, tapping it thoughtfully against a thigh.

  “I wonder what task you would be best suited for…” His intense gaze could not rip into people’s minds to expose their memories, but it seemed to Kellas that the king had such a canny understanding of the men under his command that he fathomed all the depths of Kellas’s heart and self regardless. “Not a desk job certainly, given my memory of our first meeting? Do you recall it?”

  Aui!

  Of course he remembered the rash argument eight years ago in a tavern with his equally bored and pathless friends, when he had boasted he could and would climb the promontory called Law Rock even though it was both impossible and against the law. He remembered his reckless disregard as he started up the cliff face where no one, not even the city militia, dared follow. Three times during the climb he had really believed he was about to lose his grip and plunge to a bloody death, but he hadn’t. When he had dragged himself over onto the top of the towering rock plateau that overlooked the city of Toskala, soldiers had surrounded him with bristling spears. For a moment he had thought they meant to force him back over the edge to his death. Instead they had marched him to a stone cell. He’d been too exhausted to resist when a sad-faced ordinand had shaved his head for execution. They had swept up the hair, tossed him a clean linen kilt and vest, and marched him out onto the wide plateau of Law Rock as it began to wake beneath the lifting veil of night. The memory had burned into his head so vividly he could taste and feel and smell it all over again.

  Air smoky with an oily residue threads up from lamps that illuminate their path. The stern profiles of the soldiers and the gleaming hilts of swords flank him. Wind teases along the stubble of his scalp, all that remains of his much-admired hair. Soon his spirit will be shorn from him in much the same way as his hair was.

  He thinks they are leading him to the assizes court for a dawn execution but instead they halt before an ironbound gate set into a whitewashed wall. A pair of soldiers with the foreign features of the outlander Qin take him down a corridor without windows, alcoves, or identifying markers.

  The corridor offers no escape route, not even for a young man as strong and agile as he has just proven himself to be. The foreign-born Qin soldiers, although married into the Hundred and living with wives and children just like anyone, have the most fearsome of reputations: It is said they are utterly fair and completely ruthless.

  They reach a bronze-plated door and cross a threshold into a simply furnished room whose ceiling is tented with draped fabric. A latticework wall screens one side of the chamber. Morning sunlight stripes gold over rugs piled four deep.

  A man sits cross-legged on a brocade pillow watching two children intent on a game involving a large marble square striped in pink and white stone, three bone dice, and a cadre of miniature animals carved to exquisite perfection out of ivory. Kellas does not recognize the specifics of the game they play, but the children’s expressions have a charm that can coax a smile even from a condemned man. The older is a handsome boy of about eight years whose smile lights his face like fire. The girl, a little younger, has piercingly intelligent eyes and a robust laugh. She is winning, but the boy finds the turn of play funny rather than upsetting.

  “The horse! I knew it would be the horse!” he chortles as she pushes a carved horse from a white stripe onto a pink stripe and crows to mark her victory.

  The seated man marks Kellas’s entrance before returning his attention to the children at play. The two soldiers halt Kellas beside the door.

  “Who is that, Papa?” asks the girl, looking up. “Is that the man who climbed Law Rock? Grandmother says you have to kill him because he broke the law and defied you. Mama says he should live for being bold.”

  “He is already dead,” says the man. He opens a small chest and collects the ivory figures, placing them into tiny silk-lined compartments carved to fit each piece’s contours.

  The boy’s eyes widen as he stares at Kellas. “Is he a ghost? But he can’t be a ghost because people can’t see ghosts. Only demons can see ghosts.”

  “Who told you that?” The man’s cool voice has a pleasant timbre, but its tone makes Kellas shudder.

  “Thinwit,” says the girl dis
dainfully to the boy. “You promised not to tell.” She turns an acute and fearless gaze on the man. “It isn’t fair if you get mad at someone else because Atani talks too much!”

  Trembling, the boy rises to stand as stiff as a spear. “I don’t want to tell you, Papa.”

  “Was it your mother the queen?” says the man, too evenly.

  “I will not speak.”

  The girl leaps to her feet. “Stupid!”

  “Dannarah. Sit down.” The man does not raise his voice.

  She sits.

  “Atani, sit down.”

  The boy plops down as if strings holding him up have been sliced through.

  “Enough.” The man does not sound angry, merely thoughtful. “Of course any words that pass between you and your mother remain private between you. A son remains loyal to his mother above all things, Atani.”

  “What about a daughter?” asks the girl.

  “Daughters love their mother, but daughters leave.”

  “I’ll never leave! I don’t want to leave you, Papa. You won’t make me, will you? Not like Mama’s brothers made her travel far away from her home.”

  “She traveled far away from her home in order to marry me. Had she not done so, you would not be here. So what are we to make of that?”

  “You won’t yell at her, will you, Papa?” asks the boy worriedly. He is really quite uncannily good-looking. His plea makes his features brighten with compassion.

  “I never yell at her, Atani. Surely you know that.”

  “You never yell,” agrees the girl. “But sometimes you don’t talk to her for days and days and days, and then she cries.”

  In a shocked tone, the boy murmurs, “Dannarah!”

  Kellas sucks in a sharp breath, waiting for the man to slap the girl for her impertinence, but the man merely closes the chest’s lid and fits the clasp to its hook. The Qin soldiers seem to be observing the fabric strung from the ceiling. How they manage to keep their faces devoid of emotion he cannot comprehend. For himself, adrenaline has pumped exhaustion out of his flesh. He wants to crawl out of his skin.

  But what would be the point? He is already dead.

  He marshals arguments, pleas, tears, cocky demands, but when the man rises, all thought flees. The king of the Hundred is a man of medium height and medium build, dressed to perfection in a plain-cut tunic of surpassingly beautiful blue silk whose subtle depths shade to green. He is not handsome like his son; his daughter resembles him, with the same texture of wavy black hair, and a hooked, prominent nose that gives both the look of proud eagles. But he draws the eye as if he has commanded the air and the light to pull every gaze to his person so his wishes may be obeyed without delay.

  “You are an observant daughter, Dannarah.” He gives her a kiss on each cheek, and a half smile almost indulgent but quickly stifled. He turns to the boy, who straightens expectantly. “And you are a loyal son, Atani. Now go on. Your mother will be expecting you.”

  “Will you eat with us?” demands the girl.

  “Dannarah!” whispers the boy in thrilled disbelief.

  The king’s narrowed gaze suggests he is turning over distaste at the prospect. Then he touches each child on the head, hands resting on their hair with obvious affection. “Perhaps I will, little eaglet. Do not wait on me, though.”

  A curtain is swept aside by a woman wearing the bronze bracelets of an outlander slave.

  “Take them to Queen Zayrah,” he says.

  She escorts the children out. The curtain, sewn with bells, tinkles down behind them.

  The king touches his own forehead as a man might probe to see if the pain is an encroaching headache or merely the brush of a difficult thought. Then he looks up.

  “What is your name?”

  An unexpected flare of hope carries off Kellas’s tongue, but with an effort he steals it back. “My mother gave me the name Kellas. Dedicated to the Fire Mother at birth. Given into the Herald’s service when I was fourteen, just before the war. You are the outlander who saved us.”

  “As it happens I remember the events of seven years ago. But let us discuss what brings you here today. To ascend Law Rock by the Thousand Steps you must have a pass. To climb the cliff without permission is punishable by death.”

  In the face of that steady gaze Kellas’s careful arguments skitter like mice from a house fire and he blurts out what is true instead of what is prudent. “Before you made yourself king, people rigged up ropes and aided climbers up the cliff face as a challenge in honor of the gods, at festival time. Anyone could ascend the Thousand Steps to visit Law Rock and the assizes at any time. That was the law carved on a holy pillar set atop Law Rock for all to honor.”

  One eyebrow arches.

  Blessed Ilu! This time he really has gone too far. “But I know the law has changed since the end of the war.”

  “That is correct. The law has changed. The Hundred is no longer under the rule of a hundred corrupt town and city councils and a thousand ineffective village conclaves, none of whom were able to stop the demons who with their atrocities almost destroyed this land. Peace is always preferable to war, is it not?”

  The king pauses. After a moment, realizing he is meant to respond, Kellas says, “Yes.”

  “It would behoove you to use a more formal address. Yes, my lord.”

  “We never had lords and kings in the Hundred before this.”

  “But you have them now, and with it order, prosperity, safe roads, secure harbors, and farmers who can grow crops and raise animals without fear their hard work will be trampled by outlaws and their children savaged and murdered. Do you want to go back to those times?”

  Kellas swallows. “No, my lord. No one would want that.”

  “This palace is the seat of my power and the home where I raise my children, who as my heirs will maintain my legacy. What belongs to me is mine to control. No one climbs Law Rock without my permission. Is that difficult to understand?”

  If he must die, he will cursed well die with dignity. “I make no excuse. I wanted to do it. So I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” He winces, hearing how petulant and frightened he sounds.

  “Is a healthy young man like you not wanted for your clan’s work?”

  The familiar resentment swells. “Those ivory figures your children were playing with, Your Highness? That fine, delicate carving? That is my clan’s work. I’d recognize Auntie Gitla’s carving anywhere. It’s the horses’ manes. She always does them with the bows and flower ribbons. No one knows how she gets the detail so fine.”

  “They are remarkable for their skill and beauty. A respectable trade any man and woman can be proud of. Yet you say you were dedicated to the Herald’s temple at fourteen.”

  The man is a cursed good listener; he fishes words right out of you.

  “I could never sit for more than half a bell without becoming so restless it was like ants crawling on me. They knew I’d never have the patience for carving and they didn’t want to spend the coin to make a marriage for me, so they dumped me in Ilu’s temple. Sweeping the grounds and carrying messages about the city for the rest of my life! I would rather die falling from a cliff.”

  “So you climbed Law Rock. Perhaps hoping to fall in truth. Is that the only reason?”

  The truth will sound stupid because it is stupid. “I accept the punishment. No one will miss me.”

  “Not even your mother?”

  Shame flames up his cheeks. “What does it matter? You said I am already dead.”

  “Your life is forfeit, which means your life now belongs to me. Why did you climb Law Rock, Kellas? Up the cliff without a rope, at night, with only the moon to light your way.”

  Through the lattice Kellas sees an aura of light shifting as people move across a courtyard beyond. He hears women singing in a foreign language, their tone as melancholic as sailors dreaming of the lost harbor of their youth.

  “Look at me.”

  The king’s gaze is not petty
or cruel but you would never turn away from it, not without permission. Kellas’s gut tells him this is a man who will not judge him for being a fool but rather for not admitting to it.

  “On a dare. To impress my friends. To make a girl sorry she’d scorned me. Because no one has ever climbed Law Rock unaided except in the tales. But now I have!”

  The king flicks a wrist. A pale spot flashes. Kellas catches a small, hard object. Opening his fingers, he discovers a carved horse.

  “Good reflexes, too,” says the king. “What you accomplished is a cursed impressive feat. Now that your life is mine, I have better ideas for how to make use of you than spilling your blood on Execution Rock and hanging your corpse from a pole. If you are interested in becoming a tough and loyal man who will dedicate his honor to protecting the Hundred. Your choice, Kellas.”

  He raises an open hand, expecting an answer.

  Imagine what adventures a man might grapple with under the command of the brilliant outlander who saved the Hundred from chaos and civil war! Kellas doesn’t hesitate before tossing the piece back.

  “No, Atani, you can go sit with Mama if you want, if her attendants will even let you in. I’m going to have supper with Papa like we were promised.”

  Kellas blinked as he shook away the memory of the encounter eight years ago and reminded himself he was standing in the king’s presence.

  The voice that had broken into his thoughts belonged to Lady Dannarah, now much older than the little girl he’d seen that long-ago day. With the brash energy of a person very confident in herself, she hurtled up the steps of the pavilion in advance of her brother, who was lagging behind to adjust the sash of his silk tunic.

  “Here we are, Papa! Stewards are behind us, bringing the food. Atani, no one but you cares if your sash is tied perfectly … Oh!”

  She registered Kellas seated to the left in a lattice of afternoon shadow. Her gaze lingered a little longer on him than was appropriate for a girl of fifteen being raised in a palace whose women followed the restrictive customs of the Sirniakan Empire where her mother the queen had been born and raised. With a jerk of her chin she snapped her head around to address her father. “You have heard the news, have you not, Papa?”