Steeled Read online

  “No, I was never taught,” he started to say, but this lie got stuck in his throat before it was even properly started. A vision flashed across his memory, vivid and sunstruck: Elseth seated on a fallen log beside him, looking up at him with those fine light eyes of hers, a small smile escaping her as she listened to him say his letters over. He coughed and straightened his shoulders.

  “Yes,” he said. “A kindly girl taught me, when I was young.”

  “Good,” said Felcin, which was not at all the result that Thorn was expecting. “Then you can have a look at this note at your leisure, and see that in it, I tell my daughter that you are charged with taking care of her and ensuring that she gets home. It is a weighty responsibility — she has escaped one guard already. But you know her, now, and she must know you. Surely you will be able to reason with her and see that she is kept safe.”

  Thorn looked down at the note in his hand, and nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  “Very good,” said Batrek Felcin, and he clapped Thorn on the shoulder. “I wish you a safe journey, and all the luck in the world. You may need it.”

  Luck was not something that Thorn particularly wanted to have a need for, but it appeared to be with him as he left the noble’s house and re-entered the main part of the town. The crowds had at long last begun to disperse, and he was able to move a bit more freely, without being brushed up against or jostled. As he made his way back toward the castle, however, he was somewhat startled and a little alarmed to hear his name called.

  “Thorn!”

  A male voice. He turned around but saw no one whom he recognized. It took another few moments of squinting into the gathering dusk, lit only by the torches on every corner, before he saw the figures standing at the far end of the street. One tall, one quite small. He heard a slight, girlish giggle, and knew at last who it was.

  “Lully,” he said, and started towards them, drawing his cloak a little tighter.

  “I told you he could hear you just fine,” she said to her companion, who upon closer view turned out to be Berren. Berren grinned a sheepish grin at Thorn and shrugged.

  “Well, we had a bet, the two of us,” he said, “and it turns out she has won. As she must have known she would, or she wouldn’t have bet in the first place.”

  “Of course not,” said Lully, with a smug smile. “I’m not stupid.”

  “What are you doing out here?” Thorn asked them. “Why aren’t you in the castle still, with Irae, celebrating?”

  Lully’s face fell immediately, and Thorn caught a slight shake of the head from Berren. He frowned.

  “They’ve finished with me for the night,” Lully said. “I’m just a serving maid, you know. My job is over once the nobles have had their plates passed around and got their pinches in.”

  “Oh,” said Thorn, but that didn’t seem to be quite enough. “Irae did ask that you be seated at the table, not serving, you know,” he offered.

  Lully’s face developed a brief scowl, but she was able to conquer it rather more quickly than Thorn would have expected and shook her head briskly.

  “No, you don’t have to try and defend her,” she said. “I understand how it goes. It would be silly of me to think otherwise — I’m just a kitchen maid, after all, and she’s the queen of Ainsea.”

  “That didn’t seem to go well,” said Thorn. “I’m just trying to point out —”

  “At any rate,” said Berren, interrupting loudly and clapping Thorn on the shoulder, “since she’s won that bet, I owe this young woman a drink. You are welcome to come along and join us, if you like.”

  Thorn opened his mouth, then closed it again. Lully eyed him.

  “What is it?”

  “I just — in a pub?”

  “Indeed,” said Berren, “unless you know some back alley you’d rather.”

  “I’ve never gone for a drink in a pub before, is all.”

  “Then there’s no time to waste,” said Lully. “Follow me.”

  They followed her. She led them through the remains of the crowd to a still-full pub several streets away from the entrance to the castle. She seemed to be familiar with it, wending her way through the patrons to a small table in the back corner. Berren disappeared for a moment and returned with three pints ranged artfully between his hands, seeming to hold the middle one poised on nothing but a hope and a prayer. He settled them down and settled himself next to Thorn, giving a wide grin to Lully across the table and shoving one of the pints in her direction.

  She took it with a nod of thanks and turned her attention to Thorn.

  “What were you doing out there in the rich sector, anyway? The last place I ever expected to see you.”

  Thorn made a face, to which she laughed.

  “I went to see Batrek Felcin,” he began, and she sobered up at once. He explained the rudiments of the tale to her, though he had to stop halfway through for her to tell Berren exactly why all of this had occurred. Berren was a newcomer to the continuing saga of Irae’s attempts to regain her throne, and Thorn hardly knew him at all. To the sheep farmer’s credit, he was clearly paying close heed, nodding as Lully explained— though that may have been only because it was Lully who was doing the explaining. Thorn doubted that he would have received such avid attention, himself.

  “So, you can see why it was a problem,” she finished up at last. “Lisca Felcin is of noble birth, and even with Irae on the throne and her father no longer in favor, it’s a knotty issue.” She turned back to Thorn. “And now it is even more so.”

  “Somehow,” said Thorn, “I have left his house in even greater trouble than I entered it.”

  “Somehow,” echoed Lully, rolling her eyes. “And that was the extent of it? Really? He asked for no proof of what you were saying, nothing that would have backed up your story?”

  “I think he knew I was lying, somehow,” said Thorn, slowly, “but he didn’t know how, and so he didn’t want to question me further.”

  “Well, that makes perfect sense,” said Lully, swirling the remains of her ale around in the bottom of the glass. “If he already knew you were lying, then why would he bother?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “How can you have done that, anyway? How can you bring yourself to tell stories like that, when you went to come clean to him?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” said Thorn, who had had a chance now to organize things in his head somewhat. “He came up with it on his own, really, but then once he said it, I thought — surely it wouldn’t reflect well on Jelen if the truth came out.”

  “You mean Queen Irae,” said Lully, stiffly.

  Thorn nodded, then shook his head, confusing everyone, including himself. “I mean what I said. She’s always still going to be Jelen to me. But imagine the fuss he could have kicked up if I told him that, in fact, the Queen had ordered Lisca to be Forged, and then I had actually done it. We’ve gone through such pains to keep the truth about her uncle secret. Why would I risk that just to make a clean breast of it?”

  Berren snorted into his cup, and Lully kicked him.

  “Don’t be so juvenile.”

  “My nose itches,” said Berren.

  “You’re wingy from ale.”

  “That doesn’t stop my nose from itching.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Thorn, aggrieved, “are my problems getting in the way of your drinking time?”

  “Yes,” said Berren. Lully reached up to put a hand on his head and the other on Thorn’s hand, though he slid it out from underneath her grasp almost as soon as it was there.

  “And so, you’re tasked with going to take a message to a group of highwaymen in order to pass it on to a girl who isn’t there and who you have turned into a fox, but you can’t reveal this to her father and save yourself the trouble because you’ve effectively lied your way into a corner.”

  “Your grasp on the issue is remarkable,” said Thorn, with what he considered extraordinary politeness. As a matter of fact, it was remarkable, since Lul
ly had downed her pint in record time, and he himself was still attempting to swim to shore in his own. At least it didn’t seem to affect him, he comforted himself, though it was true that her sentence was confusing.

  “You have made some questionable decisions in the time in which I have known you,” said Lully, “and I suppose it is a testimony to the steadiness of your character that you continue to do so even now.”

  And he was reasonably certain that that was an insult.

  “That reminds me, though,” said Lully, “I had something that I wanted to tell you. It’s quite important, but it keeps slipping my mind.”

  “If it’s quite important, I suppose it will come back to you eventually,” said Berren philosophically.

  “I don’t want it to be eventually, I want it to be now,” said Lully.

  There was a burst of raucous laughter from behind them, and she turned her head to look over her shoulder, frowning in that direction.

  “They seem far to holiday-like for this time of day,” she said.

  “It is a holiday,” pointed out Berren. “The queen was crowned, and she declared it so.”

  “Still,” said Lully, her delicate mouth turning down even further. “Some people are trying to have serious conversations about serious subjects, and they’re over there causing needless noise for no reason.”

  “Lully,” said Thorn, entranced by the ever-growing complexity of her sentences, “you are a poetess. Have you read Riskel?”

  “I’ve half a mind to go and say something to them.”

  “You’ve half a mind left, you mean,” said Berren, not unkindly. “Don’t start a fight when you’ve had a pint.”

  She turned the frown on him and stood to her full height with a slow kind of majesty that was undone somewhat by the fact that she was so short.

  “I may start a fight on one pint,” she said, “but I will finish it on two.” She flipped a hand at him carelessly. “If you have the second one waiting for me when I am done, then I will keep it short.”

  She moved off towards the little knot of men and Berren turned to look at Thorn. “Has she always been like this?”

  “You’re asking me?” said Thorn. “I never knew her till two months ago. Has she always been like this as long as I’ve known her?” He thought about it. “Yes.”

  They sat and watched in a sort of strange fascination, as Lully drew closer to the raucous men until she was more or less obscured by others in between.

  Berren stood up from the table. “I don’t like this. I can’t see her, I can’t hear her.”

  “She’s asking them what they’re laughing about,” Thorn reported.

  “Well, at least she’s being polite.”

  “I didn’t tell you the exact words she used. We should, perhaps, go over there.”

  Berren nodded his agreement, and Thorn thought that, as short a time as Lully and Berren had known each other, she had clearly made a lasting impact. Together, they reached the little group of men just in time to hear another burst of laughter.

  “You think it’s on account of the Queen that we’re in our cups?” said one man. He was likely not much older than Thorn and was not a great deal taller than Lully. “Well, and you’d be right, I suppose — but not from celebration, my lassie, not by a long shot.”

  Lully bristled.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “That means that she’s no sort of queen,” he retorted, “and all sorts of child. What does she know about running a kingdom? Her father didn’t see fit to make sure she kept her throne, and so she lost it to the first man who whistled for it. She’s done nothing on her own.”

  “Uh oh,” said Thorn.

  “Lully,” said Berren, his voice a calm warning to which she paid no attention at all.

  “You’ll watch your tongue when you speak about your queen,” she breathed, her voice low.

  “I’ll say what I please, you mean,” said the slight man. “She doesn’t seem to mind — real men are protesting her coronation all over the place, and she tolerates it in the name of democracy and fairness. In the name of a peaceful reign. Hah!”

  His companion spoke up now — he was a great deal taller and broader, Thorn was upset to see.

  “What kind of a queen is she, anyway?” He spat on the ground, notwithstanding the shout of irritation from the man pulling pints behind the bar. “She wasn’t even able to depose the December King on her own. She had to have a ragtag crew of nobodies helping her, and no one knows what uncanny power she really relied on. And even then, Lev exiled himself. If she can’t punish the man who takes her throne away from her, how are we supposed to believe that she can follow through on anything she claims?”

  “She couldn’t kill him,” said Lully. Her hands were fists at her sides. “He can’t die. He is immortal.”

  The bigger man shrugged and downed the last of his pint. “So, they say. Maybe she just didn’t try hard enough. Anyway, any girl like that who decides she wants something — be it a kingdom or a trained pony — and is just given it can’t be much of a ruler. She’s not a queen, she’s a spoiled brat.” He snorted in disgust and shook his head. “Weak. Just you watch. The ambassador from Elgodon says something she doesn’t like, she’ll run crying to her nanny.”

  “Worse,” said the first with a grim sort of satisfaction. “The barbarians from Henschot will be uncouth at her. Or the worthless prince of Marwas will marry her after all, and they’ll pass a law that everyone must be as peaceful as they are, and we’ll all turn into women.”

  “Just you watch,” said the other. “The next step will be to embrace all sorts — foreigners, cursed ones, the Forged. We’ll all go to hell in the name of unity.”

  “Lully,” said Berren, quietly.

  Lully was facing both of the men down, fists still clenched, knuckles white.

  “What,” she said through her teeth.

  Berren smiled, very faintly.

  “Do what you will, my darling.”

  The first blow, considering that it had to be thrown from a much lower down position, carried a great deal of force behind it. Thorn was almost certain he heard the shorter man’s jaw crack, just a hairline, but enough to land him in pain for some time. The second followed almost immediately after, and the taller man bent over a little — not double, for Lully’s force was not as great as she might have intended, but any blow in that area would at least leave someone breathless. Lully herself was clearly biting back a shout — or a curse — likely of pain, as she shook out her fist. The men stepped back, groaning, and the rest of the pub went completely silent, a milky white absence of noise such as Thorn had rarely experienced, apart from the distant sound of some part of town still reveling.

  “Would anyone else like to express an opinion?” inquired Berren.

  There was a long, bated moment, and then several other men stood up, chins lifted, hands at the ready.

  “Well,” said Berren, looking around at them. “Damn.”

  Thorn had been in fights before, it was true, but they were not only few and far between, they also seemed to have rules. If you put yourself in the way of a weapon, you got hurt. If you kept yourself out of the way of a weapon, you might be preserved. The difference between fights such as the one in which Karyl had been mortally wounded, with the Damn Rogues what seemed like years ago, and the one which was ensuing at the moment, was that the rules he thought he knew did not apply. There were no rules. Everything was a weapon: stools and chair legs, entire chairs themselves, knives and full tankards and pint glasses and even other people. It was Berren who picked up the shorter man who Lully had already hit. He threw him at the crush of people who were coming at them, and then tucked Lully behind him. Lully ducked out again in time to kick someone squarely in the crotch, then dodged for the door.

  Thorn had never punched anyone before, and he found that he did not like it. It seemed to be a requirement, however; with his brain fuzzed and fogged by the ale, the door seemed impossibly far awa
y, with an impossibly thick sea of humanity in the way. He had always viewed touching people with a certain amount of distaste; the only good thing about punching was that it didn’t require him to touch others for very long. He made his way through part of the throng, dodging and ducking, before someone’s wild blow connected to his cheekbone and sent him reeling. He was on the floor before he knew it, and there were hobnailed boots everywhere, and more than a few of the brawlers tripped over his sprawled long legs.

  In the distance, through the haze, he heard Berren give a triumphant sort of crow, and heard the loud thump of multiple bodies hitting the floor.

  An answering crow came from Lully, ending in a startled shriek as someone lifted her; from the sound of things, she kicked her attacker in the face, and was deposited back on the ground more or less safely.

  It was just then, as Thorn began to suspect that the two of them deserved each other, that something heavy came down upon his face, and the last thing he remembered was a vague notion of needing to swear off ale forever.

  3

  Tasked

  “I hope I don’t have to actually tell you how disappointed I am in all of you.”

  The December Queen Irae, resplendent in if slightly overwhelmed by her robes of state, tucked her hands behind her back and fixed them all with a glare the likes of which Thorn had not seen since — well, since the last time Irae had been so disappointed in him. Really, it seemed to happen with depressing regularity. Perhaps he should try to do something to stop that from happening.

  He had no idea what, however.

  As a matter of fact, he was a little bit fuzzy on how he had managed to land the disappointed glare this time, though as he had woken in a jail cell with Berren snoring on the ground near him, he had an inkling that it wasn’t the most distinguished of evenings.

  “And on the night of my coronation, of all the possible times and seasons!” She left off trying to seem impassive and flung her arms out at her sides, clearly frustrated beyond reason.

  “That is why,” said Lully, who had her arms folded sullenly but seemed to have at least some idea of what they were doing there. In Thorn’s experience that probably meant that it was her fault.