The Exile Princess
Beneath the gates of Ellingen, the last Warlord of Valleth was waiting.
Remin could see him from nearly half a mile away, swollen and glutted on suffering, twice the size of the men surrounding him. It was the sorcery of Valleth to reap magic from death and pain, and this man had feasted longer than any other. When they finally met, Remin had no doubt there would be a fresh necklace tattooed around his neck, a chain of screaming tongues.
The source of that power was still shining atop the gatehouse above him. Black mirrors, slick and gleaming as oil, and the husk of the man who had fed them so well. Sir Ludovin of Saccey had endured three days on the mirrors before he hanged himself, and Remin could do nothing but listen to his screams as he waited for reinforcements to arrive.
The reinforcements had come.
“Load!” Remin shouted, the command echoed and carried westward along the hilltops overlooking Ellingen. A dozen massive trebuchets rode the ridges, their heavy counterweights dragged backward, upward, in preparation for the next volley. They had already broken the main gates of the city and reduced much of the south wall to rubble, in preparation for the attack. And still the trebuchets pounded onward, hammering the city apart.
The same way he had broken so many other cities, over the last seven years.
He could hear them shouting his name in the distance. Remin. Lore-Master. Knight-General of the Empire of Argence. He kept always a little apart from his men, armored and massive on his warhorse, making sure the enemy could see him. He had waged a perfect war upon them. In seven years, he had not lost a single battle. They could not defeat him, only delay him.
Standing on the hill above Ellingen, he looked upon crumbling walls and the vulnerable lands beyond, a country that was ready to fall at his feet.
“Archers!” he called. There was a stirring among the knights massed behind him. That order meant their turn was coming.
Many soldiers of Valleth still wore scaled armor, better protection than mail against the bardiches and spears that were their preferred weapons. It was vastly insufficient against Imperial longbows. Remin lifted a hand, and at his signal, hundreds of arrows flew, humming toward the Vallethi ranks massing before the city.
“Trebuchets! On the towers!” he shouted, and there was grinding and creaking as those massive machines adjusted aim, targeting the remaining forward towers of the city. Valleth would have no covering fire. Remin had spent all the previous day maneuvering, breaking their defensive machines. Now the trebuchet to his left launched another load of heavy stones, and the black mirrors atop the gatehouse shattered.
Before the gates, the Vallethi warlord bellowed his defiance. As if Remin’s men hadn’t spared him deliberately.
Valleth had learned to use war machines from the Empire, but they still had no respect for them. Those killed by a trebuchet or even a crossbow were not counted by the Lord of Tales, and Remin would not allow his enemy to tell themselves that he had cheated, using mechanical means to kill their warlord. He must kill that man with his own hands.
That would be his task, when they charged at last for the city.
“Cavalry, forward!” he called, to a rumbling of drums and then the excited shuffling of horses, dancing with eagerness. He could feel the tension in his men, drawn taut as bowstrings, breathing the hot summer air. “Charge!”
A hundred mounted knights swept down the hill, pounding the earth flat with the terrible thunder of their approach. The knights of the Empire carried heavy steel lances in the charge, metal monsters more terrible than any magic. But that magic still held sway outside the borders of the Empire, and so Remin set heels to his own horse and raced to the front, making himself the target of the surviving sorcerers.
The Vallethi thought him proof against magic, but that wasn’t true. He could feel the stinging slices of their sorcery, Ludovin’s pain that had been harvested from him over days, sharpened and husbanded. Remin let the magic wash over him, twanging like lightning up his nerves, singing to the roots of his teeth. It hurt. Stars, it hurt. But he had been learning all his life how to hurt, and every time he endured it, it increased the fear of his enemies.
They fled from his path as he arrowed toward the gates, where the First Warlord of Valleth was waiting.
He was a monster. Ten feet tall, dwarfing even Remin’s vast height. His ice-blond hair had been shaved and black static crackled up his long, bristling beard, sizzling on the scales of his armor. That was the magic of Valleth, the summoning of the Inside to the Outside. Every life this man had taken, every drop of blood he spilled, every scream he had extracted became part of the story he told himself: the truth of his innermost self. He was the killer. The First Warlord of Valleth. He had cultivated a monster in his own flesh.
“Lore-Master,” he said in Vallethi as Remin swung down from his horse and sent the animal away. “I will feed you to the Lord of Tales.”
“I will send you to make your apologies to them,” Remin retorted in the same tongue, more or less. The warlord bared his teeth, showing bloody gums.
It was rare that Remin fought an opponent larger than himself. His stomach clutched at the prospect of facing that hated magic, but he shook out his shoulders and drew a breath all the way to his toes. He had his sword. He had his shield. His plate armor would withstand a few knocks from the warlord’s massive, spiked mace, and that should be enough time to get his rhythm.
All around them, the battle continued, and Remin heard the voices of his knights, shouting orders as they moved into the massed ranks of the Vallethi defenders, hunting for the magicians. They knew their business. They trusted Remin to handle this.
He charged.
He had always been faster than his enemies expected. He went straight in, shield first, twisting aside as the warlord threw up his own shield and slammed the mace down like a hammer. Fast. At close quarters the magic stung, the lightning fire of nettle spines, and Remin gritted his teeth, stabbing at his enemy’s arm with the tip of his sword. The blade grated, as if he had struck the side of a mountain.
“You come with only steel?” The warlord sneered, and it seemed the ground should shake underfoot as he pursued, his heavy boots thudding.
So many warlords cultivated themselves this way. They reaped for size and power, chanting those words as they lapped at the blood of their victims. Hamsa. Eska. Hamsa. Eska. Stronger. Bigger. Stronger. Bigger.
So few of them said faster.
Remin lunged aside as that huge mace swung out again, a sweep that would’ve cleared a small patch of forest, trailing that loathsome magic like a cloud. Remin couldn’t see it or hear it, but he could taste it on his tongue like acid, a stinging like wasps in the sinuses of his cheeks. He felt that pain and bulled right into it.
There was an opening. When the warlord’s arm drew back for another swing, he left a gap between his arm and his shield and Remin was already in it, slamming his sword into his exposed side. The other man twisted aside with a snarl and black blood spurted from his ribs, smoking on the ground.
“Steel seems sufficient,” Remin observed, sliding clear of the mace.
“You dance like a painted whore,” the Vallethi grunted, swinging his mace and shield like two hammers.
“The better to teach you how,” Remin countered, and made the warlord howl as he slammed his sword through one massive boot.
The duel brought the entire battlefield to a standstill. The sorcerers dead, the Eagle Knights staring, weapons falling from their nerveless fingers. Watching as Remin’s sword sliced upward, a perfect arc that took off the warlord’s fingers and sent that dread mace flying. Watching as he spun and slammed the edge of his shield behind the giant’s knees, severing tendons. And a low moan rolled over the battlefield as the warlord fell with a bellowing cry, and Remin moved to finish him.
Even with the sorcerers dead, that magic was still in the air, crackling and snapping like the echoes of distant screams. Forever after, he would bear jagged white scars on his fingertips where his gloves burned away, and even Remin Grimjaw screamed in agony as he wrenched his enemy’s head from his neck and flung it away, feeling as if he had grasped lightning in his hands. It hurt. It hurt, it hurt, nothing else in the world could hurt so much, but there would be Vallethi survivors to recount what they had seen this day, so Remin only kicked the huge body flat, resisting the urge to tuck his spasming hands under his arms.
“I’m fine,” he said, reeling upright as his knights hastened over to him. Black blood sluiced down the runnels of his armor and he was still half-blinded with magic, like hornets crawling over his eyes. But a short distance away, they had finally cut Ludovin down, and so Remin went at last to see his friend and covered him with his own cloak.
“Finish the city,” he said, looking at his brother knights. “Kill anyone that resists. Do not leave one stone standing atop another.”
He meant it literally. Ellingen would be wiped from the face of the earth.
“My lord,” they said, and went to execute his will.
Soon enough, he would follow. There were still a few more nightmares to acquire before the war was over, and Remin meant to make sure the lessons of Ellingen would travel all the way to Mindelind, where the King of Valleth would soon learn he had lost his last warlord.
But for a moment, Remin’s black eyes turned away to the south, back to the Empire, where his sacred bride awaited. She was the last thing he needed to forge a dynasty that would last for all time, the foundation for a noble House that could never be destroyed again. And when he was done, Kings and Emperors would kneel before him.
A thousand miles away, on the isolated estate of Aldeburke, a certain young woman felt an inexplicable shiver down her spine.
***
Spring was a green dream trembling at the tips of the leaves when a column of black-clad knights rode through the gates of Aldeburke.
From the window of her secret perch in the library, Princess Ophele Agnephus glanced up from her book and caught her breath. She knew the heraldry of every major and minor House in the Empire, but she didn’t recognize these banners: black and silver, bearing the device of crossed swords over a bridge. An ominous combination of symbols.
Were Lord and Lady Hurrell expecting guests? They wouldn’t tell her if they were, but despite their exile and disgrace, Ophele’s guardians had begun hosting infrequent gatherings over the last few years. Rich merchants and lesser nobles, poor and ambitious, hoping to capitalize on Lady Hurrell’s greater ambitions. But never knights. Two score of them, some bearing lances and all bearing swords, with shields at their backs.
No one who wanted to see the Hurrells would spare any goodwill for the daughter of Lady Rache Pavot.
Slipping one of her smaller books into her pocket, Ophele shimmied over the side of the ceiling rafter and dropped soundlessly to the floor, scurrying off to fetch her cloak.
This late in the season, it rarely dropped below freezing at night, but this was not the first time Ophele had judged it prudent to disappear. Darting through the narrow halls at the back of the house, she could already hear the clamor of the servants, hastening to receive the guests. Ophele took advantage of the chaos to duck down the stairs at the back of the kitchen and slip into the pantry.
“Azelma!” Footsteps thudded past the door, and Ophele stopped short, making a rapid rearrangement of the apples and potatoes in her pockets. Voluminous as her cloak was, it would not do to appear too lumpy.
“Yes, I heard, I heard,” came the old woman’s voice, unruffled. “Does Her Ladyship want anything in particular?”
“A full luncheon, she says, and something sweet with tea afterward.” That was the butler clattering silver together, sounding harassed. Maybe that meant no one was expecting these guests.
There was a squeaking on the stairs as he departed, and Ophele gave it another second before pushing the door open a cautious crack, peeking out. The only other person in the kitchen was Azelma, a round little figure in a spectacular lace cap.
“Ssst,” she hissed, without turning around, and set two loaves of bread at the end of her worktable, still steaming from the oven. “Out the back door, Your Highness. Should be clear for a few minutes yet.”
Ophele snatched up the bread and scuttled away.
Maybe all this fuss had something to do with her.
That thought put wings on her feet. Ophele knew she was the Emperor’s daughter, but it was in the same distant way she knew there was an Emperor and he lived in a palace; it was probably true, but she had no firsthand evidence and it didn’t make much difference to her life either way. It wasn’t like she was his real daughter. Lady Hurrell had always been very careful to explain the difference, and while Ophele’s veins might contain the divine blood of the Emperor, they were stained by her mother’s treason and irrevocably dirtied by her illegitimacy.
Somehow, the lady had always implied it was Ophele’s fault. As if she had chosen to be born, and so choosing, had willfully defiled the Emperor’s sacred lineage.
But it had been a long time since anyone had given a fig for her parentage, and no one noticed or called her back as Ophele set off into the forest. She had never ventured beyond the walls of the estate, but her mother had often taken her into the trees to forage, teaching her all the secret delights of mushroom, root, and berry. Though most of the trees were still winter-naked, there were several large stands of pine to the north that offered a good view of the road, and Ophele set up camp under the boughs of an obliging pine, plucking the book from her pocket.
It was hard to focus. Her eyes kept straying back to the road, recalling that grim column of men and imagining the many things it might portend. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of anything nice. Armed men appearing at the prison of the sovereign’s secret bastard weren’t likely to bring good news.
Maybe they would be content with delivering it to Lady Hurrell, and would take themselves off thereafter.
It wasn’t the first time she had slept outside. Ophele set a slow blaze to burn through the night and burrowed into her cloak, to wake up early the next morning, stiff with cold. Plucking up some dry pine needles, she poked them into the coals of her fire until she built up a small blaze. The hollow under her pine tree was nicely sheltered from wind and rain, and the boughs overhead dispersed the smoke. Raking the hottest coals to one side, she wrapped an apple and a potato in a stout strip of leather and buried them to roast.
The sun had barely cleared the horizon when she saw the first sign that something odd was happening at the manor.
Through the trees she could hear distant shouts, clanking armor, the neighing of horses and the barking of dogs. Was it a hunt? Sometimes Lord Hurrell hosted hunts for stag or even boar, but usually those events were held at a hunting lodge some miles away. The estate groundskeepers were careful that no animal as dangerous as a boar was allowed near the manor. And it was far too noisy to be one of Julot Hurrell’s less official hunts. When Lord Hurrell’s son went riding with his friends this early, it was usually because they were still drunk from the night before.
Ophele kicked dirt over her fire and retreated further into the forest, skirting around the west side of the manor. Julot had always thought it great sport to chase her about the estate, and she had no intention of letting two-score knights join in the fun. There was a patch of fir trees that offered better cover not far away, and she made for them like a light-footed little shadow, all but invisible in the morning gloom.
But it wasn’t just Julot hunting her. Perched in one of the taller trees, Ophele was just in time to see people flooding out of the manor, bundled up against the cold and carrying lanterns. They had even turned out Azelma from the kitchen, her ruffled white cap bristling about her face. Azelma would not be happy to be forced out into the cold.
“Princess!”
“Princess Ophele, please come out!”
“Your Highness! Where are you?!”
It looked as if every single person in the manor was abroad. She even saw Julot and Lord Hurrell on the hilltop, and the young Lady Lisabe Hurrell in a blue gown and white fur cloak, walking the garden and calling, syrupy sweet. And those were knights, armored and fearsome, wearing that black badge.
Ophele’s breath caught in her throat. Once before, Lord Hurrell had roused the whole manor to find her, and she pressed back against the trunk of the fir tree, covering her mouth with her hand to hide the white puffs of her breath in the frosty air.
Should she run? But where could she go? She wasn’t ready yet to run away from the manor, though she had often dreamed of doing just that: fleeing to a place where no one knew her, maybe to one of the countries on the other side of the sea. Ophele knew that normally she would have had guards, to prevent such a thing, just in case she planned some evil against the Emperor; everyone knew bastard children were the seeds of treachery. But she had had no guards since she was a child.
Maybe that was the trouble. Maybe that was why the knights had come. Maybe they thought she was plotting against the Emperor, because there were no guards watching to make sure that she wasn’t. There were books where just such a thing had happened, and most of them were histories. Ophele had read them all.
“Princess Ophele!”
She wasn’t foolish enough to run, but no matter how much she scolded herself, she couldn’t force herself to go down to them, either. Tam from the stables was close by. He wasn’t bad. He had never actually been mean to her, and had even shown her a litter of kittens in the barn when she was nine. If she had to get caught, he probably wouldn’t hurt her. Biting her lip, she watched as he drew nearer and nearer, within ten feet of her tree, and if she was ever going to speak it should be now, but her lips were glued firmly shut and then he had passed, and it was too late.
Now she was definitely guilty of treachery. Huddling with her hands over her mouth, she watched in an agony of guilt and fear as the sun rose and the hours passed and the search went on, wondering what they would do when they found her.
“No sign on the ground,” said a man’s voice nearby, and she was so startled she nearly toppled off her branch. “Unless she left the estate, there aren’t many places she could be hiding.”
“Miche said he found signs of a fire under one of the pines to the north. The ashes were still warm,” said another voice. She didn’t recognize either of them, and she knew everyone in Aldeburke. “Guess it’s time to start shaking trees.”
Oh, no.
Her heart pounded. She strained her ears, listening for the quiet steps. They weren’t like Tam, blundering through the trees like an ox; there were two men, one to her left and one to her right, moving as patiently as if they were picking over every pine needle. There was nowhere to run. There was nothing to do but curl up as small as she could and wait, hoping they would pass her by.
The branches moved under her. A man’s face, broad and grey-eyed, peered through them, then whistled and turned his head to call.
“Your Grace!”
