Prince of Bryanae Read online

  “Don’t have any,” Suel said. “Tough luck. Now if you don’t mind …”

  Willow took a deep breath and slowly released it. She had already humiliated herself in front of her Queen and was being demoted to private, so what else could they do to her?

  She drew her rapier.

  “I’m afraid I do mind, Suel.”

  He glanced at the rapier.

  “You know I could fry you to cinders, don’t you?”

  Willow’s eyes narrowed.

  “I know you could try,” she said. “But if you failed, the results would be … unpleasant for you.”

  Suel licked his lips, then sighed the lament of a great man besieged by an array of mundane indignities.

  “Come here,” he said. “I’ll make you another elixir.”

  Willow crossed the gargantuan hall. His eyes lit upon her bleeding hands.

  “Ah good,” he said, “you’re already bleeding. That’ll make things easier.”

  Chapter 8

  “Take off your clothes,” Suel said.

  Willow remained motionless. She leveled a frigid stare at the mage.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said, his eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. “I’m not interested in you, and I could control myself if I were.”

  Willow nodded. She didn’t like Suel very much—few people did—but she had a grudging respect for him. They were alike in many ways: each rigidly in control and dedicated to a single purpose to the exclusion of all else. For her, it was her duty to the King’s Guard. For Suel … well, even after all these years, Suel’s motivations remained entirely his own. One more reason to respect him.

  “Then why do you want me naked?” she asked.

  “I don’t want you at all,” he snapped. “It’s your clothing I want.”

  “My clo—” Her eyes goggled. “What in the Seven Hells does my clothing have to do with a healing potion?”

  “I’m not interested in healing potions. I want to use the clothing to locate the barbarians.”

  “What?” She grasped her rapier out of habit. “Suel, Tamlevar is dying. I need the potion.”

  “I work for the Queen, Willow. Vazerian has been kidnapped, and—”

  “How did you kn—”

  “—and my job requires me to locate the snotty bastard.”

  “The Prince can wait,” Willow said. “Tamlevar can not.”

  Suel’s eyes narrowed, and he rubbed his unshaven cheek. “Oh?”

  “Oh,” she confirmed. “Now, either you start making that potion, or I will start testing to see which internal organs you can survive without.”

  Suel opened his mouth.

  “No, I am not bluffing,” Willow said. “You know I don’t bluff.”

  His shoulders sagged and he sighed. “Give me the blood. You can get undressed while I brew the potion.”

  Their eyes met and held.

  “Very well.” She unbuttoned her leather jacket. “Where do you want the blood?”

  * * *

  Blood: the appalling price for magic, tapping into the mysterious energy imbued in the crimson liquid. It was both the strength and weakness of every mage. Strength because the fuel for the magician’s magic flowed within his very veins, there to be tapped as needed. Weakness because the supply was inherently limited, and the greater the magic, the more blood was needed to release it.

  In no situation was this more ironic than with healing magic, where you literally traded the creation of a wound for the healing of one, and the rate of exchange was never favorable. A mage could bleed to death trying to heal his own wounds.

  * * *

  Willow stood like a marble statue in Suel’s laboratory, her gleaming rapier loose in her hand serving as her only adornment. The floor’s grit punished her torn bare feet.

  How had she found herself in this situation? She prided herself on her resiliency, her ability to rise above any situation with decorum, but this whirlwind of a day had staggered her.

  Standing stark naked in a mage’s lair, so cold that her teeth chattered and her nipples had hardened to a pair of aching pebbles, Willow watched Suel’s cowled back as he mashed some foul substance with a mortar and pestle. This was not how she had imagined her day would turn out when she awoke this morning.

  And worse things awaited her. She had to prepare a report about the kidnapping of the Prince, face the Chancellor’s unsteady wrath, and then worst of all, she had to present herself to her new commanding officer: Lieutenant Marcus. The ignominy of reporting to that moron was infinitely more shameful than her current nudity, and less purposeful. Oh, the Queen had chosen an apt vengeance. Queen Tiranda the Fair indeed.

  “Almost finished,” Suel said without turning from his work. “Relax.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” Willow said.

  “The chattering of your teeth is distracting.”

  She didn’t reply. Even if she could have stopped, she wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction.

  “Almost finished,” Suel repeated.

  Her reputation was ruined, her career at an end. What remained for her to do? Die?

  “I’m done,” Suel said at last, turning. In his hand, he held a stoppered vial. “Here it is. Now where are my clothes?”

  “Your clothes?”

  “You know what I mean,” the mage snapped. “Where are they? I need them immediately.”

  “They’re on your desk, where you told me to put them.”

  “Ah.”

  “Now, give me the potion.”

  “Hmm?” Suel’s eyes were already on the pile of clothing sitting on his desk. “Ah, yes.”

  Suel tossed the glass bottle to Willow. Her breath caught in her chest and she lunged for the vial. The cold had numbed her fingers so that she fumbled once, twice, before clasping the precious flask in both hands.

  Her eyes burned.

  “Funny, Suel,” she said. “Now what shall I wear?”

  But Suel was already fanning his hands over her clothing as though warming himself.

  “Suel?”

  He glanced up, exuding annoyance from every pore. “What?”

  “I can’t walk through the streets of Bryanae naked. I need some clothing.”

  “Fine,” he snapped. “I don’t care. Wear what you like, just leave these clothes here. I’ll have them back to you within a day or so.”

  Willow clenched her teeth. Her career in pieces. Word of her cowardice no doubt spreading like the Plague through the streets of Bryanae. Tamlevar dying in the infirmary. The Queen’s vengeance. The humiliation of being Marcus’s subordinate.

  And now this.

  It had been one incredibly bad day. Even Willow’s self-discipline had its limits.

  She glanced down at her pale naked body, as white as alabaster. She looked at the gleaming rapier she still held in her hand. Then she looked at the distracted Suel, busily running his fingers through her uniform.

  She walked up behind him. He half-glanced back, but his attention remained focused on her clothing.

  “You still here?” he grumbled.

  It had been a really bad day.

  She slammed the hilt of her rapier into the back of Suel’s head. He grunted and then slumped onto his desk, looking almost exactly as he had upon her arrival.

  She stooped beside the unconscious mage’s body and began removing his robes. He had instructed her to wear what she liked but leave her uniform. She had never been one to disobey orders.

  Chapter 9

  The infirmary was the smallest building the Guard maintained. Its one-story, one-windowed structure made the government’s position on sick leave very clear: you don’t get it unless you’re dying. Consequently, the ward only had three cots, two occupied, and both of these by dying men.

  Tamlevar was one of them. He lay there, barely breathing, his skin a sickly gray. An occasional feeble moan escaped his lips. Belly wounds were effective, but they were neither quick nor painless.

  His neighbor was Corporal Du
nn, who remained in the deathlike sleep he had entered shortly after the amputation of a rotting limb. The cloying sweetly-sick stench of the infection polluted the air despite the best efforts of the attending priestesses, who had applied maggots to the putrefying flesh to no avail. Not even Fyrelord’s Elixir could save Dunn.

  “Tamlevar,” she said, drawing up a chair.

  Tamlevar stirred, brought up a gray hand to mop a gray brow, but he did not open his eyes. Willow leaned forward and gently shook his shoulder.

  “Wake up,” she said.

  His eyes fluttered, then stopped, and Willow thought she was too late. But then they fluttered again, and this time, they opened.

  “Captain Willow,” Tamlevar said. “What’s happened to your uniform?”

  “Private,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Private Willow.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind. I’ve brought you something to drink,” she said.

  A feeble smile came to his lips.

  “Can’t,” he said. “I’m on duty.”

  “Very funny. I need you to drink this. Can you do that for me?”

  “For you?” His eyes softened, his lips parted.

  “For whatever reason. Just drink.”

  She uncorked the vial. Tamlevar’s eyes were having trouble focusing, but they made intermittent contact with her. She leaned forward and cradled his head in her arm. She inadvertently brushed her breast against his cheek.

  “Not now, Willow,” Tamlevar said. “First the potion. There’ll be time for all that later.”

  Willow’s face colored but she said nothing. She tilted Tamlevar’s head back and gently upended the vial to his lips. The smell of the potion was so bad that it matched the reek of Corporal Dunn’s infection.

  Tamlevar grimaced, but drank the entire potion. Afterwards, he made a show of licking his lips.

  “Delicious,” he said, and lost consciousness.

  That was funny because decades earlier, his mother had said the exact same thing when Willow had given her a similar potion.

  Chapter 10

  Willow kept vigil, sitting beside Tamlevar in an uncomfortable wooden chair. The black youth’s deathlike coma slowly eased into a seemingly natural slumber as the day’s light faded into night, and still Willow remained beside him.

  Why? What was so special about him that kept her glued to his side? The thought flitted about her head, but she refused to let it perch upon a reason. There was danger there, she realized. For over a century, she hadn’t let anything frighten her and now she was terrified. She tried to bring her discipline to bear, to crush these fears, but they dodged her and she was unable to navigate her resolve through the labyrinth to face them head on. They harried her at every turn, slipping from the shadows and knifing her in the side. She wrapped her arms around herself in the dark and trembled with rage at her weakness, at her inability to restore her self-control.

  She peered down through the darkness at Tamlevar’s face. He was handsome and young, so incredibly young, so full of naiveté and foolish optimism. Poor Tamlevar had not yet learned about the world’s cruelty and injustice. He acted as if the world were a dangling fruit ripe for the plucking. She felt contempt for him, yet she also envied him.

  Willow glanced about the infirmary. It was deep into night now, and all the staff had left for the night: no priestesses, no physicians, and not even fellow members of the Guard. They were all scrambling to bolster Bryanae’s defenses, no doubt, and to prepare a rescue for the Prince.

  But Willow was in a limbo until the Chancellor made her change in rank official. Until then, she was neither Captain nor Private. She had allowed the barbarians to capture the Prince and now she could have no part in his rescue. An ignominious end to an otherwise spotless military career.

  She looked at Tamlevar again. There was nobody around to see her, so she reached forward and gently stroked his face. So young, so handsome, and so alive. When had she last been alive? Her mind drifted backwards, but halted with the memory of a scream and a flash of terror. No, she dared not think back that far. Never again.

  But how to avoid it? The barbarians had returned. She had fled them, but they had found her again. How could she remain in Bryanae when they were coming?

  What then? Flee? Abandon her post, her honor, even her precious discipline? Throw away her identity? It would be tantamount to crumpling up the scroll of her life and tossing it into the waste bin.

  But then how could it hurt? Was her life really so exemplary? The discipline, the endless routine, the orders and shouting, the drills and weapons. What was it all for?

  When was the last time she had actually enjoyed herself?

  She began to drift into sleep. Her first instinct was to fight it, but then the part of her that had already been defeated said, what’s the point? She relented, and fell into a choppy dream-filled slumber, with her head cradled in her arms upon the bedside table.

  She was buffeted from one nightmare to another. After what seemed to be minutes or days, she stirred to the regulated sound of marching outside. She fought her way back to consciousness, and as she did, she became more aware of her surroundings.

  For one, she wasn’t resting on the table anymore. Now her head rose and fell. She heard a soft, steady thudding, and realized within moments that it was a heartbeat. A hand stroked her head, playing deliciously with her hair. For a moment, caught in a half-waking, half-sleeping state, she reveled in the simple pleasure of the sensation.

  “You’re awake,” came a hoarse half-whisper, and she could hear it resonate in the chest upon which she lay.

  She lifted her head to see the owner of the voice: Tamlevar.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you. You looked like you needed the rest,” he said.

  Willow blinked and sat bolt upright.

  “I looked like I needed the rest?” she said. Her eyes narrowed and she pointed a dagger-like finger at him. “What was my head doing on your chest?”

  “Hey, don’t point your finger at me,” he said, raising his hands in a supplicating gesture. “Your head was there when I woke up.”

  “And was your hand stroking my hair when you awoke as well?”

  “Ah,” he said, and his cheeks blushed purple. “That. That’s a different story. You were having nightmares, and that seemed to help calm you down.”

  “I don’t have nightmares.” The words sounded ludicrous the moment they escaped her lips, but it was too late to recall them.

  Tamlevar’s smile broadened.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  Their gazes held for a long moment, and then Willow broke eye contact. She leaned towards his abdomen and sniffed the wound. The scent of death was no longer there. She pried up an edge of his bandage and was pleased to see that the gash was already healing.

  It was still dark, but she could see Tamlevar clearly enough to note his complexion wasn’t as grey as it had been the night before. Was it already morning?

  “What time is it?” she said.

  “False dawn. Should be sunrise in a little bit.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Expecting guests?” Tamlevar said.

  “Captain Willow!” said whoever was at the door. “Captain Willow, are you in there?”

  “Private!” she shouted.

  “What?”

  She shook her head, both in frustration and in an attempt to clear the fog.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Go away!”

  The solider at the door hesitated a moment, then said, “I can’t, Captain. You’re needed.”

  “Needed for what?”

  “There’s another elf out here. She wants to speak to you.”

  Willow leapt to her feet. Another elf!

  Her mask cracked as though dashed against marble. Her surprise and fear were evident for all to see in a shamefully open display.

  “Another elf?” Tamlevar said.

&nbs
p; Discipline, damn it. Discipline.

  She struggled for composure, forced the mask to return.

  “I’m coming,” she said. She walked to the door.

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll just wait here then, shall I?” Tamlevar said.

  She glanced back at him but made no reply. She grabbed the door handle, turned it.

  Discipline.

  She stepped out onto the cobblestone street. The corporal who had summoned her stood at attention. But his eyes glanced down at her robe.

  “Captain?” he said, looking puzzled.

  “Private,” she grumbled.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I’m a corporal.”

  Willow sighed. Could this day get any worse?

  “Never mind,” she said, shaking her head. “You said there was an elf here to see me. Where?”

  The corporal nodded down the street. Her eyes followed. It was still dark out, though silhouettes were backlit by the false dawn. The first few soldiers and merchants were starting to emerge. One at a time, they noticed the figure at the end of the street and stopped to gawk. Those near Willow glanced back and forth between the two elves.

  She was beautiful, this other elf: a tall blonde whose figure was lithe and seductive. Her jutting breasts were bare and adorned by a silver chain that connected her nipples. A rosy streak was dashed across each of her cheeks making her face look simultaneously savage and lovely.

  When she caught sight of Willow, she began to approach. After a moment of shock, Willow walked slowly to meet her.

  The new elf walked with the grace of a dancer, but with the arrogance of nobility. She was dressed in silk finery, in tiny wisps of gossamer that floated down from her tall frame. In comparison to the ratty cowl Willow had stolen from Suel, the new elf looked like a fairy queen out of legend.

  As they drew close, Willow rested her hand on the hilt of her sword, a gesture noted by her visitor. Soon, only the distance of that rapier separated the two elves.

  “Greetings, Waeh-Loh,” said the elf.

  “Hello, Mother,” said Willow.

  Chapter 11

  “You’re looking well, Waeh-Loh,” said Tee-Ri. “Other than the dark circles under your eyes, that is.” Her eyes surveyed Willow, had already glanced at the shabby cowl she wore.