The Ippos King: Wraith Kings Book Three Read online

  Ildiko’s grim features lightened with a tiny smile, one that fled when Anhuset abruptly changed tactics, swung low, and struck Ildiko’s outer thigh with a silabat.

  The hercegesé hopped to the side with a yelp and held up a hand to halt their bout. She rubbed her padded leg while glaring at Anhuset. “I thought you were just focusing on my torso.”

  Anhuset arched an eyebrow. “Did I say that?”

  Ildiko’s tone changed from indignant to wary. “No.”

  “You assumed it, hercegesé. I repeated the same movement several times…”

  “So I would assume wrongly.” This time Ildiko’s scowl was for herself. “You did say predictability was a blade with two edges.”

  Anhuset nodded, pleased with her student’s echo of her words. As a novice at gatke, Ildiko made every mistake Anhuset expected her to make, but she listened closely to instruction and committed them to memory. The pain of that strike, and the bruise sure to follow, guaranteed Ildiko wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  “You learn from your enemy; your enemy learns from you. Surprise them with the unexpected by teaching them to expect the same thing.”

  Ildiko wiped her brow with the back of one hand and blew a stray tendril of vibrant red hair out of her eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever master this stick fighting of yours.”

  “Every student says that until they do.”

  “Even you?”

  Anhuset answered Ildiko’s doubtful smile with a toothy one of her own. “Even me, and I had a lot more bruises to show for it than you ever will.” She pointed her silabat at Ildiko. “Enough chatting. Stance. Widen your feet a little more. Forearms instead of wrists.”

  A brief tap at the door interrupted their next round. Ildiko gave Anhuset a questioning look, one returned with a shrug. The entire fortress knew not to disturb the hercegesé and her teacher during gatke lessons. To do so risked the formidable wrath of Anhuset. So far, no one had been that brave or that foolish except one man.

  “Might as well open it,” Anhuset said, relaxing out of her stance. “He’ll just keep knocking until you do.”

  Ildiko creaked the door open, a wide smile blooming across her mollusk-pink features at the sight of her husband standing on the other side. “Just in time, Brishen. You’ve saved Anhuset from yet another beating. I’ve trounced her at least a half dozen times this lesson,” she cheerfully lied.

  Brishen smirked as he crossed the threshold into the chamber, but Anhuset didn’t miss the way his gaze swept his wife’s form, looking for wounds beneath the distortion of her padded armor. Confession time.

  “She’ll wear a bruise on her left thigh for a week or so.” She flinched inwardly when his eyes narrowed. “She’s slower this evening than usual. I hear the queen kept her up all day.”

  Anhuset silently congratulated herself on turning Brishen’s disapproval back toward his wife. His gaze settled on Ildiko’s face, noting, as Anhuset had, the dark circles under her eyes. “Where was her nurse?”

  Ildiko stood on tiptoe to brush a conciliatory kiss across his frowning mouth. “Right beside me. We took turns coaxing Tarawin to settle down and finally go to sleep.”

  “Bring in more nurses.”

  She laughed. “How many people do you think we should cram into that nursery just to get Her Majesty to go to sleep?”

  Brishen slid an arm around Ildiko’s narrow waist to draw her against him. “As many as it takes. I don’t like waking up and finding you gone from our bed, even if it’s in service to the little tyrant.”

  “Who has you dancing on a string just like she does the rest of us.”

  “I dispute that notion.”

  Ildiko laughed. “Of course you do.”

  Fascinated by the interplay between her cousin and his human wife, Anhuset idly wondered what it might be like to have such a connection with someone. She and Brishen trusted each other implicitly. She knew without a doubt her cousin would sacrifice himself for her, just as Anhuset would for him. They were cousins but closer than siblings, more accepting of each other than just friends, and her loyalty to him would remain steadfast until she died.

  But it wasn’t the same type of devotion she witnessed now between the herceges and his hercegesé. This affection burned bright with passion, with desire. There existed between them an unspoken and private language only the two of them understood and shared with no one else.

  A vague ache pulsed somewhere under Anhuset’s breastbone, and it took her a moment to realize the feeling was both wistfulness and no small amount of envy. What was it like to know someone so well that it seemed like they walked within your spirit and you within theirs?

  She mentally shook off the emotions and the question they inspired. Such idle thoughts were a waste of time and not for her. She was pleased for her cousin. After all he’d suffered, he deserved this happiness. It didn’t mean she needed, or even wanted, the same thing.

  “Was there something you needed, herceges?” The dry tone of her question drew his attention away from Ildiko and onto herself. A half smile, faintly annoyed, faintly apologetic played across his lips.

  He bowed. “I can take a hint, cousin. Forgive me.” He reached inside the tunic he wore and fished out a letter, its parchment neatly creased and its seal broken. He fluttered it before both women. “Serovek will be here at the end of the week. To discuss something to do with Megiddo’s body.”

  A pall settled over the chamber, and a pitying look chased away all humor from Ildiko’s features. “That’s all he said? No other detail?”

  Brishen shook his head, his own features grim. “I think he wishes to save those for when we speak in person.” He skated his fingertips down her sleeve. “Can you see to it a room is made for him? Maybe now that Saggara isn’t so overcrowded with Kai families seeking shelter, he’ll be willing to stay in the manor house itself instead of the barracks.”

  Anhuset’s stomach fluttered at his words. She frowned at the involuntary reaction. A visit from the Beladine margrave should have no effect on her, but it did, and she resented it. She hadn’t seen him in months, and even when memories of his teasing smile or the feel of his mortally wounded body collapsing in her arms, rose unbidden and unwelcome in her mind, she ruthlessly pushed them away. With the exception of Ildiko, she barely tolerated humans. Serovek’s surprising attentions unnerved her, made her react in ways she didn’t anticipate or understand, and she resented him for it.

  “Of course,” Ildiko said. “Did you want me to order scarpatine pie for him when he visits? I’ll need to tell Cook now so she can prepare.”

  “It’s his favorite.” He raised an eyebrow at Anhuset’s scoffing snort. “I’ll want you at both supper and any meetings we have with him,” he told her, his tone warning off any argument she might put forth. “I value your advice.”

  She bit back a protest. “As you wish.”

  Ildiko’s gaze centered on the letter Brishen held. I wonder what this news is about Megiddo?”

  He leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I have no idea. I wish I did.” He saluted Anhuset, offering a warning that was as much serious as it was jesting. “Don’t kill my wife. I’m rather fond of her.”

  A brief bow and he left the chamber, closing the door softly behind him, but not before Anhuset caught a glimpse of something that pumped ice water through her veins. For the space of a heartbeat, Brishen’s yellow eye had glowed ethereal blue.

  “You saw it! I know you did.” Ildiko’s own strange eyes were wide, her gaze flickering from the door back to Anhuset in a way that made Anhuset’s skin crawl. “I can tell by your expression.”

  Anhuset kept her tone neutral. “Saw what, hercegesé?”

  “Stop playing coy,” Ildiko snapped. She pointed to the door. “The glimmer of blue in Brishen’s eye.”

  “A trick of the torchlight.” A wishful thought more than an answer. She hadn’t imagined what she saw. Nor had the hercegesé.

  Ildiko thumped the tip of her silabat against the
floor, frustration and no small amount of fear threading her voice. “No, it wasn’t. I’ve seen it in the dark as well.”

  Chills rose along Anhuset’s arms. That unnatural blue, sign of a Wraith king’s magic, had no place here, shouldn’t exist anymore except in the blade once wielded by Megiddo, and that weapon was hidden away. “This isn’t the first time?”

  Ildiko shuddered. “I could only wish. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times before this. The first was after he woke from a bad dream. He called out Megiddo’s name.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before now?” Anhuset’s leg muscles twitched with the urge to yank open the door and chase after her cousin, peer into his face, and demand he tell her why a Wraith king’s magic still manifested inside him.

  The hercegesé gave her a disgusted look. “And who would I tell? The Elsod? That old woman is holding onto life by the tips of her claws at Emlek, wondering how she can keep the entire Kai history from collapsing in on itself now that there’s no one able to capture mortem lights.” She waved away Anhuset’s warning hiss. “I’m not saying anything everyone in this kingdom doesn’t already realize.” She spun the silabat back and forth in her palm, the movement highlighting her agitation. “Brishen barely sleeps as it is. His niece has inherited a country teetering on collapse, its capital shattered, its people still in shock, robbed of their magic for reasons unknown.” Her voice shook then, thickened with sobs that turned her eyes glassy. “I can’t put yet another burden on his shoulders.”

  The two women stared at each other, bound together by a mutual love for the Kai prince and the terrible secret of his sacrifice which demanded he rob his people of their very birthright: their magic.

  Anhuset understood and agreed with the hard choice Brishen had made, but she felt the loss of her magic keenly, an emptiness that couldn’t be filled, although her skills had been small compared to most and confined to practical things that others had mastered as juveniles. There were times when she envied humans like Ildiko, who never possessed magic of their own. You didn’t mourn the loss of something you never had.

  She mentally sidled away from the melancholy her thoughts wrought in favor of worry for her cousin. “Why would Brishen dream of the unfortunate monk?”

  Ildiko shrugged. “Regret maybe? Guilt? Who knows. But for a moment, when he woke, Brishen’s eye burned blue, just like now. Just like the several times before it.” Her features paled beyond their usual pallid shade. “What if the spell used to turn them back from wraith didn’t work completely? Is he becoming wraith again?”

  A seeping horror filled Anhuset, the emotion reflected in Ildiko’s strange eyes. She batted it away, unwilling to believe, or even accept, that such a thing was a possibility. “No, he is not,” she said, and Ildiko took a wary step back at the low-voiced fervor of her reply. “This has something to do with Megiddo, and if ancient Kai magic still lingers, it’s due to the monk’s sword being housed here at Saggara. Brishen would do well to get rid of it.”

  “I agree. I’ll talk to him about it, though I think he’ll be reluctant to put it somewhere other than Saggara. Maybe you can mention something as well.”

  If Brishen heeded anyone’s advice most, it was his wife’s. He was a reasonable man, thoughtful and measured in his decisions, but that sword held the last vestiges of Kai magic in its purest, most ancient, most powerful form. She doubted he’d be moved by even Ildiko’s considerable influence, much less her own arguments. She kept that opinion behind her teeth and gave Ildiko a quick nod. “I’ll do my best.”

  They sparred a few more rounds, half-heartedly now that their thoughts were on Serovek’s upcoming visit and the manifestation of wraith magic that had touched Brishen before fading. Once their session finished, they parted with the promise to keep a closer eye on the herceges and report to each other if the manifestations of magic increased in either occurrence or intensity or both. Anhuset hoped neither would happen. House Khaskem had enough to contend with trying to hold the fragile Kai kingdom together.

  She spent the remainder of the week leading patrols, training new soldiers, and taking reports from Brishen’s spies regarding the mood of so many displaced Kai. No one had ventured back to the ruined capital of Haradis. Memories of the galla still plagued people in their worst dreams, and many now considered the city cursed. Even Brishen physically recoiled when Anhuset suggested she lead a small expedition to Haradis to explore whether or not any portion of it was habitable.

  “Not yet,” he’d said in a voice thick with the recollection of ghosts. “Not yet.”

  She hadn’t pushed, her offer to go spurred more by a sense of duty than by a macabre curiosity. Memories of Haradis being overrun by galla didn’t haunt her dreams. She'd been in Saggara when it happened. Still, there had been more than a few days when she’d awakened to find her own claws tearing through her blankets, the image of Brishen impaled on the ensorceled sword that would transform him into a Wraith king, the Beladine margrave his executioner.

  The equally grotesque memory of Serovek’s resolute face and grim smile when he asked her to deal his own death blow to start his transformation destroyed her sleep just as often. Her reason told her such an act of violence had been necessary. Her guilt assured her none of it mattered and ate at her insides. This man had once saved her life and the life of her cousin. She'd repaid him by plunging a sword blade into his gut.

  That thought worried at her like an angry hornet, and by the time the week was done and Lord Pangion scheduled to appear at Saggara, Anhuset was in a foul mood, wishing she’d never agreed to participate at supper or the meeting Brishen had scheduled afterwards.

  She had just left the training arena, drenched in sweat and short-tempered despite a grueling practice session with other fighters, when a flurry of activity near the redoubt’s main gates caught her attention. The Kai clustered there either waved, bowed, or simply stared as Serovek and two of his retainers casually guided their mounts through the entrance and past their observers.

  He was still as ugly as she recalled. A big man on a big horse, he sat in the saddle with the practiced ease of someone who probably spent more time there than on his own two feet. The flickering light from the torches set around the bailey gilded his dark hair where it trailed over his shoulders. The last time she’d seen him, he’d sported a beard that blunted the angles and hollows of his face. He was clean-shaven now, skin paler than she remembered, likely from more time spent inside during the harsh mountain winters.

  In profile, his beardless features looked carved from stone, not with a sculptor’s chisel but a hunter’s skinning knife. If she looked upon him as just a construct of facial bones, she understood why Ildiko said he was handsome, but the awful human eyes and horse-toothed smile ruined his visage, just as it did every human Anhuset encountered. She bore no resentment toward humans who reacted in similar fashion to the Kai. They shared a mutual revulsion of each other’s appearances.

  Still, there was something about this man that fascinated her, despite her disgust at the notion. Anhuset wouldn’t hesitate to admit or agree that Serovek Pangion was bold, courageous, and possessed a nobility of character that was often in short supply in both the Kai and human races. He had saved her and Ildiko from capture and death by raiders and their mage hounds, tended Anhuset’s wounds and participated in Brishen’s rescue. And he had volunteered to become a Wraith king and fight alongside the Khaskem against the galla.

  And yet you dislike him, an inner voice admonished her.

  Another added a mocking rebuttal. Because he’s dangerous. He makes you feel.

  “Be quiet,” Anhuset muttered aloud, surprising a passing Kai soldier who gave her a puzzled look before darting away at her warning glare.

  The small crowd of Kai paced alongside the visitors’ horses, some calling out greetings in Common tongue. The three Beladine responded in the same language, bending to clasp clawed hands with their gloved ones, smiling their square tooth smiles. Someone said something Anhus
et was too far away to hear, and the margrave tilted his head back to laugh, the sound echoing through the bailey. He had always been comfortable around the Kai, unfazed by their more feral appearances.

  And he had never made any secret of his attraction to the dour sha-Anhuset.

  Anhuset scowled and purposefully maneuvered her way through the bailey so that she could observe without being seen by Saggara’s newly arrived guests. The last thing she wanted was Saggara's curious Kai watching as Serovek tried to charm her with his teasing smiles and frank admiration.

  He motioned to his retainers and they all dismounted to stand amid the growing crowd. The retainers disappeared from her view, but Lord Pangion didn’t. The Kai were a tall, lithe people, taller than most humans, yet he stood taller than those surrounding him, his broad shoulders enhanced even more by the heavy clothing he wore to ward off the cold. For all his size, he moved with surprising grace, and that acknowledgment sent odd flutters through her ribcage. An irritated hiss whistled between her teeth. Handsome to others. Not to her.

  A subtle change in both his expression and his stance made Anhuset instinctively slip into the narrow space between a tower of hay bales and one of the walls belonging to the redoubt’s cooperage. His eyes narrowed, their quick flickers from side to side as he scanned the yard making her shudder a little. A warrior well trained, he’d sensed he was being closely observed, regarded with an intensity far greater than those who stood much closer to him.

  His gaze passed over the spot where she hid. . . gods’ bollocks, she was hiding from the Beladine Stallion! The realization made her lurch out of the concealing spot, her back snapping straight, chin up as she glared at the man who had neither seen her nor spoken to her, yet had already managed to practically set her hair on fire from annoyance.

  Serovek didn’t pause in his reconnoitering of the bailey, but once more his manner changed, shoulders relaxing, eyes still narrowed but with amusement now as a faint smirk played across his mouth. The uncomfortable certainty that he'd seen her lurking behind the horse fodder made her growl. She straightened her tunic with a jerk, prepared to march across the yard and, as Brishen’s second, formally welcome him to Saggara.