Chapter 30
30
Feed and water nature today, and reap a reward tomorrow.
~ Daygarii saying
Vlerion headed downstairs to don his gear and—if he followed Kaylina’s suggestion—grab a huge pan to use as a shield when he walked out of the keep to address the army. Meanwhile, Kaylina went to the tower with the sentinel. After watching its beams kill men, even after she’d commanded it to stop, she didn’t want to stand beside it, but she might need its help again. If the army launched cannonballs at Vlerion, she would ask the sentinel to fire more beams, and she didn’t know if she would bother stopping it a second time.
Nervous, she watched the courtyard below for Vlerion to walk out. The front ranks of the army—and several cannons—were visible through the wrought-iron gate. Surprisingly, nobody had tried to batter it down yet. The stone walls around the courtyard remained sturdy, despite the centuries of neglect, but Kaylina knew from past experience that the rusty, creaky gate could barely restrain a half-hearted taybarri offensive. A battering ram would easily take it out.
Distraction , a soft voice sounded in Kaylina’s mind.
Levitke?
Make distraction. The taybarri had to be nearby to communicate, and Kaylina thought she was behind the castle, but platoons of soldiers were back there. Would Levitke have been able to get that close?
An image of her and several other taybarri and rangers came to Kaylina. They were swimming in the dark river, approaching and attempting to avoid notice as night deepened. Along the way, they’d had to sneak past three barges loaded with soldiers.
You need a distraction so you can get through the men and into the castle? Kaylina guessed.
Yes. Bring message.
You’re bringing one? For Vlerion?
Yes.
Is it one that he needs to hear before he addresses this huge army and tells them… whatever he’s going to tell them? It crossed Kaylina’s mind that Vlerion speaking forcefully—she couldn’t imagine him speaking cajolingly—from the courtyard wall might work as a distraction, drawing all eyes toward him.
But Levitke responded, Yes . She also shared an image of Captain Targon looking surly—as usual.
Kaylina didn’t know if that meant Targon was with the rangers in the river or if he’d sent the message. Either way, Vlerion had wanted to speak with him.
I’ll see what I can arrange, Kaylina replied.
The sentinel started pulsing powerful purple light, emanating it farther from the tower than usual. Uneasy murmurs came from the soldiers in the street, proving they’d noticed it. Noticed it and were staring at it, she hoped.
“Are you eavesdropping on my telepathic conversations?” she asked it. “Can you do that?”
A feeling of smugness emanated from the pot behind her.
“I’ll take that as a yes .” Kaylina leaned out the window to check if Vlerion had come out to the courtyard yet. She didn’t see him. “Will you stop him if he shows up down there? I’m going to run to the kitchen and try to figure out a distraction for my friends.”
If the troops on the river trail were looking toward the front of the castle, they would notice the pulsing light, but it wouldn’t be as obvious from back there.
An image popped into her head of vines stretching across the front door to keep Vlerion from exiting.
“I guess that’ll work.” Kaylina slid through the hole in the floor. “But don’t gag him like the guys in the root cellar,” she called back.
As she ran down the hall toward the stairs, she groped for a way to distract the soldiers on the river trail. They were the ones the rangers and taybarri would need to get past. She imagined herself and Frayvar running into the courtyard banging spoons against pans.
“Sounds like a good way to get shot,” she whispered.
She was two steps from the bottom when an explosive detonated somewhere nearby, white light visible through the windows. Only then did she realize that she hadn’t heard any explosions for a while. Probably because the people who’d previously been fighting each other had joined forces to come here. Everyone was after Vlerion now.
Shouts came from the troops behind the castle. Had they seen the rangers in the river? Who had lit the explosive?
When she paused in the kitchen to look around for something capable of making a distraction, she spotted her brother in the pantry, pushing a… was that the huge storage hutch from the dining hall? He was shoving it into the pantry. The crate that had been on the trapdoor earlier was tipped sideways under a shelf.
“Everything okay?” Kaylina asked.
“Did you know there are soldiers in the root cellar?” Frayvar asked in a squeaky voice.
“Yeah, but they’re bound by vines. Or they were .”
Maybe the sentinel hadn’t been able to keep the men restrained while it was launching magical beams at enemies out front.
“One stuck his head up through the trapdoor not thirty seconds ago,” Frayvar whispered, putting his shoulder against the heavy wooden hutch to shove it deeper. “He didn’t look bound . I hit him with a broom, and he ducked back down long enough for me to push the flagstone back in place.”
“What happened to Jankarr?” She put her shoulder against the hutch to help her brother push.
“He went outside a minute ago.”
With a final shove, the hutch fully covered the trapdoor. If the mercenaries had been released, that would hopefully keep them from pushing up into the castle.
Kaylina rose on tiptoes to look out a window. Sword in hand, Jankarr stood at the back gate. He had it open partway and was waving to someone outside.
Her first thought was one of betrayal, that he was letting the army in. But, when he pulled the gate open wider, rangers on taybarri rode through. Water dripped from their fur and plastered the men’s hair to their heads. A firearm boomed right outside the wall. The last rider—Targon—cursed and flattened himself to his taybarri as it ran through the gate.
“Rangers!” someone outside belatedly shouted.
It sounded like the soldiers had been drawn off by that explosive, but they ran back into view now, their weapons drawn. Jankarr slammed the gate shut and locked it, then dove to the side when a soldier raised a blunderbuss.
“Look out,” he warned the others.
The taybarri split and ran to either side of the gate, stopping along the wall where the thick stone protected them. Outside, the soldier with the blunderbuss poked the firearm between the bars and leaned close, seeking to target someone.
A vine erupted from the mortar by the gate, the tip flicking toward his face. He shrieked, dropped the blunderbuss, and sprang back.
If two of his comrades hadn’t grabbed him by the arms and pulled him away, the vine might have wrapped around his neck. Instead, it snapped in the air like a whip as more vines grew out of the mortar between the stones. They wove between the bars, creating a latticework that the men wouldn’t be able to attack through.
“Guess the sentinel isn’t completely out of steam,” Kaylina said.
The soldier’s blunderbuss had fallen through the gate, and Jankarr picked it up.
“Now, if you could disarm the rest of the army, that would be great.” Jankarr spoke toward the vines while staying well back from them.
“It’s not powerful enough to affect that many or reach far beyond the castle walls,” Kaylina called through the window. “At least, I assume so from what I’ve seen it do.”
“What good is it then?” one of the rangers grumbled.
She grabbed a few cookies from the pantry—she had to smash her chest against the corner of the hutch to reach them, but since someone was thumping at the trapdoor from below, she didn’t dare move it. Then she stepped out the back door to greet the rangers.
“It’s been doing its part,” Kaylina said as Levitke ran up to her, dripping water onto the cobblestones. “The sentinel shot Enrikon, but the prince dove-fell off his horse and avoided a lethal blow.”
“It tried to kill the prince?” Targon asked. “Our potential next monarch?”
“I only suggested disarming,” Jankarr murmured.
“The prince has given Vlerion an ultimatum,” Kaylina said. “He’s either to walk outside and hand himself over to an executioner with an axe the size of a plow blade, or the army will raze the castle.”
“It would be a shame to lose that.” Targon looked dourly at the keep.
“With me and my brother and Sevarli in it,” Kaylina added, wondering if Targon would say that still wouldn’t be much of a loss.
Levitke’s nostrils flexed as she noticed the cookies. Kaylina gave her one, then walked to the other taybarri, distributing most of the rest to them.
“I guess it would be a shame to lose my anrokk ,” Targon said somewhat grudgingly.
Once the taybarri had received treats, Kaylina handed the last one to Jankarr.
“I warrant a cookie this time instead of a dried strip of meat?” He looked touched as he accepted it.
“That was a delicious piece of glazed sirloin, and you know it,” Kaylina said.
“It was pretty good, but it wasn’t a dessert. Rangers, like taybarri, adore sweet things, you know.” Jankarr waggled his eyebrows in her direction.
“How come he gets cookies when we swam through the icy river, risking discovery by an entire army, and got shot at on the way into your castle?” Targon asked.
The three other men who’d accompanied him nodded.
“I perform like a taybarri for her.” Jankarr winked and chomped into his cookie.
“I’m surprised Vlerion allows that,” Targon said. “Where is he? After all that effort, he’d better be here. I need to talk to him.”
“He is. He—” Kaylina turned, then remembered she’d asked the sentinel to stop Vlerion. Since she didn’t hear him orating from atop the wall, she assumed it had succeeded but hoped it hadn’t used drastic means. Just because the plant was allowing him inside the castle now didn’t mean it liked him. “I’ll get him for you.”
Kaylina jogged back inside, through the kitchen and great hall, and into the vestibule. Vlerion stood two feet from the great double doors but was rooted in place. No, vined in place. One had sprouted from the wall and wrapped around the wrist of his sword arm.
“Sorry,” Kaylina blurted. “Your allies were coming, and I wasn’t sure where you were, so I requested the plant ask you to wait.”
“Ask,” Vlerion murmured, eyeing the vine grasping his wrist like a shackle. “It frames questions in an interesting manner.”
“It does, yes, I’ve noticed.” Kaylina made a shooing motion at the vine while projecting her thoughts toward the sentinel’s tower. Let him go, please.
“I’ve been attempting to have a conversation with it to see why it’s holding me, but it doesn’t speak with me the way I assume it speaks with you.”
The vine released Vlerion and disappeared back into the wall.
“You mean it doesn’t insert smug and presumptuous emotions into your mind while talking about how inferior humans are?” Kaylina took Vlerion’s hand and pointed toward the kitchen.
“If that’s what it does to you, I may be relieved it doesn’t speak with me.”
“You should be.” She led him into the kitchen. “Targon is here. I thought you might like to talk with him before addressing the army.”
“ Captain Targon would like to speak with his subordinate, yes.” Targon leaned against a counter, pushing a hand through his short wet hair to flick water out.
Jankarr and the other rangers had also come inside. Sevarli had disappeared, but Frayvar was in the kitchen, mixing dough to make who knew what. He baked when he was nervous.
“He seems crabby,” Vlerion said.
“I didn’t give him a cookie.”
“He didn’t perform suitably?” Vlerion asked.
“Not like a taybarri.” Jankarr smirked.
“If we could delay the jabberwocky,” Targon said, “there’s a humongous army outside that wants to kill you.”
“I did notice them.” Vlerion tilted his head toward the dining hall. “Do you want to speak in private? Or does it matter?” He nodded toward the other rangers.
Targon speared Jankarr with a dark look. Jankarr sighed but didn’t look confused about his captain’s suspicion.
Kaylina didn’t weigh in, but she wanted to hear Targon’s update—if he knew anything that could help with the situation, in particular.
Thumps came from the floor of the pantry.
“What is that?” Targon snapped.
He was crabby. Kaylina went to check for more cookies.
“Mercenaries in the root cellar are trying to break in.” Frayvar said.
Targon glowered in exasperation at the pantry, then pointed to his men. “Deal with that. We don’t need an invasion force coming up from below.”
“Yes, my lord.” The rangers tugged the hutch out of the pantry, and Jankarr lifted the flagstone, showing his sword before his face.
“Shit,” someone barked from below. “Rangers.”
“Follow me, men,” Jankarr called cheerfully and jumped down.
Arms folded over his chest, Targon didn’t leave the counter he was leaning his hip against. Apparently, he trusted his men to handle the mercenaries.
Once they were out of sight, Targon looked pointedly at Frayvar and Kaylina.
“Oh, I’ll finish the bread later.” Frayvar hurried out of the kitchen. “Sevarli, are the intruders still leaving the gate alone?” he called to wherever their server was keeping an eye on things from.
“Vines grew across the front one,” came her distant voice.
“Oh, good.”
With him out of the kitchen, Targon turned his I-want-privacy-to-speak-with-Vlerion look on Kaylina.
“I’m not as good at taking hints as my brother,” Kaylina said.
“I knew the day I met you two that he was the smart one.”
“Because he didn’t hurl a sling round at a ranger?” she guessed.
“That was one reason.”
“Talk, Targon,” Vlerion said. “She’ll eavesdrop if you send her away.”
Targon scoffed but didn’t deny it. “Fine. I came to tell you that we’ve got trouble, but you probably figured it out.”
“When the trouble started firing cannons at the castle and pointed out my executioner, yes.”
“Here’s the gist of what I got. I was called into a meeting in the royal castle with the queen this afternoon when the prince stormed in, demanding to talk to his mother. Petalira had been asking me to swear my loyalty and that of all my men to her. She was vexed that Enrikon unexpectedly brought legions of mercenaries with him and had used them to capture the harbor and a couple other key points in the city. She gave me a whole list of reasons why her son wasn’t mature enough to be granted command of the entire kingdom. This was happening at the same time as she found out that none of her bounty hunters had been successful yet—she was pissed when you turned down her marriage proposal, Vlerion—and that Spymaster Milnor was missing.”
Targon paused to eye Kaylina. She couldn’t imagine how he’d learned about Milnor’s death, since Vlerion hadn’t reported in to Targon since she’d told him, but his squint suggested he somehow knew. Or at least suspected she’d been involved in that. He didn’t ask, however. Instead, he returned to briefing Vlerion, as if he were the lower-ranking officer reporting to his superior.
“Enrikon has had men looking for you too. Since the newspaper printed. No, before that. Since the beast took out some of his mercenaries in the catacombs. He also offered up a fat reward to whichever one bagged you.” Targon made a throat-cutting motion.
“We heard about that,” Vlerion said.
A few clangs and shouts drifted up from below—the rangers dealing with the mercenaries, presumably.
“What’s been going on here with our people?” Vlerion asked. “When Jankarr, Kaylina, and I were riding back into the city, we saw smoke around headquarters. Was it attacked?”
“Yes, that happened after I left the castle. I wasn’t dumb enough to outright reject Petalira’s demand that I promise the rangers will serve her, but I didn’t want to give an oath and then be foresworn. I told her I’d serve whomever the senior lords deemed to be the rightful leader and was coronated. From the curses she sent after me, she took it as a rejection. I don’t know for certain that she sent the armored men in plain clothes who showed up, lobbing explosives into our compound, but I believe so. They were doing some poor acting to try to make us believe they were Virts, but they were too well trained with weapons to be factory workers. Besides, I recognized a few faces from the Kingdom Guard. Not local boys. They were from neighboring towns. She must have ordered them brought in when she learned her son had arrived with an army. The rangers defeated them and got their explosives away from them but not before the miscreants lit fires and blew a hole in Penderbrock’s infirmary. He’s extremely vexed about that, since he just got a new organization system put in and half his medicines were destroyed.”
Vlerion looked toward the keep wall, as if he could see what the army was doing outside. This discussion was taking up a lot of his hour. Kaylina was tempted to check a window to see if the prince had returned.
“Anyway,” Targon said, also glancing toward the walls, “before I left the royal castle, Enrikon suggested to his mother that they set their differences aside for the time being, combine their armies, and take you out. They’re worried that there’s a growing sentiment among the commoners and some aristocrats that you’re the man who should rule Zaldor next.”
Kaylina expected Targon to scoff again—his entire demeanor and delivery had a surly, exasperated bent to it. Instead, he gazed at Vlerion when he finished and raised his eyebrows.
“Are you asking me to?” Vlerion spoke quietly and arched his own eyebrows.
“No. That would be sedition. Unless you were to slay Petalira and Enrikon and take the crown for yourself. Then I’d simply be obeying my new monarch and commander.” Since Targon still looked surly, it was hard to tell if he hoped that would happen.
“I was thinking of exiling them, not killing them,” Vlerion said.
For the first time, Targon shifted away from the counter, straightening as something sparked in his eyes. Was that hope?
“Then you’re contemplating it? You always said you had no interest, and I agree that your brother would have been more suited for it, but, by all the altered orchards, you’d be a better pick than Enrikon. And Petalira, even if she had a blood right to the throne, which she doesn’t, spends far too much time scheming. ” Targon scowled at Kaylina, whom he’d also accused of being a schemer.
Her brother called her that all the time, and it wasn’t un true, but she glared back at him. She didn’t appreciate being compared to Petalira, friend of Jana Bloomlong—an even schemier schemer—who wanted to see Kaylina dead. No doubt, she’d cheered when the army had arrived.
“The Virts won’t accept Petalira,” Vlerion said. “It would be more of the same going forward, which they’ve proven numerous times this year they object to.”
“I would hope you wouldn’t give in to all their demands either,” Targon said. “You need the aristocrats’ support if you’re going to do this, and the Virts are their underpaid exploited employees, needed to run their farms and factories.”
“At least you admit their working conditions are abysmal,” Kaylina said.
Targon chopped his hand through the air. “You could figure out what bones you need to throw them to keep them content later.”
“Yes,” Vlerion murmured and looked to Kaylina, holding her gaze.
Targon, she realized, wouldn’t know what Vlerion had truly been contemplating. Taking control of the monarchy only to turn it over to someone else. As far as she knew, he’d only shared his thoughts with her, trusting her with them. She appreciated that, though it was far more daunting being the confidante of possible future king Vlerion than ranger lord Vlerion.
“That can be after Petalira and Enrikon are… exiled.” Targon added.
Did that pause mean he preferred they be killed?
Since he’d slept with the queen, Kaylina found the captain’s willingness to entertain that idea appalling. Though maybe it was because he’d slept with her, and seen firsthand her scheming, that he believed she needed to be killed and not exiled.
“Petalira is watching this from a tower along the royal castle wall,” Targon said. “We could see her from one of the bridges. She must have shooed out the archers so she and her bodyguards would have a good view. She doesn’t want to miss seeing Stillguard Castle annihilated and you killed.”
“If I’m killed, it’s not supposed to be annihilated,” Vlerion said.
“Uh-huh. How much do you trust Enrikon to follow through with his promise?”
“I trust him not to want to be shot again by that plant.”
“You think it’s going to rise to your defense?” Targon asked skeptically. “It can’t care who takes the throne.”
“Kaylina does,” Vlerion said quietly.
Targon opened his mouth, his eyes implying he had snark in mind, but he paused and considered her.
“Yes,” he finally said. “I believe she does. Does she control it or vice versa? I thought that thing was an unknown, but if it shot the prince… Korbian, did you ask it to do that?”
Er, how much trouble would she get in if she admitted that? She didn’t feel any guilt about the sentinel hitting the prince, but that guard it had killed…
“When he said he was going to have Vlerion killed… yes. I was frustrated. But it kept attacking after I asked it to stop, and it hit some men.” Kaylina swallowed. “It killed a man. At least one. So, yes, it’s an unknown. It will sort of help me sometimes, but it doesn’t obey me explicitly. It… likes killing humans, I think.”
“Well, it’s Daygarii, so of course it does.” Targon didn’t sound that upset about the death, maybe because his men were now under the castle, killing more troops.
“It’s powerful and has a mind of its own,” Kaylina said so there wouldn’t be high expectations. “I can often talk it into helping, but I can’t guarantee the results.”
“I need to address the army before my hour is up,” Vlerion said. “I was about to do that when you arrived, Targon.”
“What are you going to say?”
“I’m going to argue that I’m a better candidate to rule than Enrikon and ask them to come over to my side.”
“A part of me hoped you’d say that, and that I was coming here to swear my sword—and that of all the rangers—to you, but the pessimistic part of me thinks they’re going to shoot at you the second you walk into view. You should have made your bid before the army amassed at the castle gates. None of them are going to cross the line to the other side while all the others remain. They would be risking being stoned or outright killed as traitors.”
“I know, but they amassed with surprising swiftness.”
“I should have tried to talk you into this yesterday instead of sending you to check the watchtowers,” Targon said. “Honestly, I didn’t think you would entertain it. Not only because you lack interest but because of the curse.”
Vlerion tilted his head toward Kaylina. “She spoke to her druid father about lifting that.”
“Is that possible?”
“We’ll see. I’m forbidding Kaylina from letting him turn her into a tree.” Vlerion managed a faint smile for her.
“Uh, okay.” Targon appeared more bewildered than amused.
“If I survive the rest, I’ll talk to her father myself and bargain with him, see what can be done.” Vlerion took a deep breath and faced Targon, his face graver than she’d ever seen it. “The rangers will support me in my bid?”
He was asking Targon to sign his men up for a mission that might be suicidal. If none of the guards turned… If none of the mercenaries turned… There were thousands if not tens of thousands of men in the city and the surrounding areas. And how many rangers were stationed in Port Jirador? A few hundred at most.
Though he had to have considered all of that, Targon nodded without hesitation. “Yes. They’re standing ready at headquarters and awaiting my order.”
“Thank you.”
Targon stepped forward and handed him a sealed scroll. “That came for you while we were putting out the fires at headquarters. You’ve a few Virts willing to swear to support your bid too, though they’re not fighters, so I would reserve them for schemier operations.”
“If they can influence the newspapers, that’s enough.”
“We’ll see.” Targon pointed in the direction of the front gate. “If that army doesn’t like what you have to say, you won’t survive long enough for the printing of the next edition.”
Grunts and scuffs and more than one curse came from the root cellar. Targon turned, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. Jankarr’s head appeared, but blood ran from a fresh cut on his jaw, and he hurried to scramble through the trapdoor, rolling to get out of the way quickly. The other three rangers also came up, one injured and being helped by his comrades. They pulled him free, and Jankarr surged to his feet.
“Problem?” Targon asked.
Jankarr and another man rushed to push the flagstone into place, then shoved the hutch back over it.
“No problem.” Jankarr’s cheer didn’t match the blood on his face as he slumped against the hutch.
“We drove the mercenaries back,” one of the other rangers said, “and killed a couple of them, but a whole platoon showed up with explosives. They called us traitors and chased us back here.”
“We weren’t chased ,” Jankarr said. “We tactfully retreated.”
“You weren’t real tactful when that arrow hit you in the ass.”
“It only grazed my hip.” Jankarr clasped a hand to a gash in his clothing—and in his flesh.
“You screeched like a dying pig.”
“It was my parents who gave me that hip. I’m partial to it.”
Targon sighed. “That was a lot of words to say we’re all trapped in here.”
“Yes, Captain.”
All sets of ranger eyes—even Targon’s—turned toward Vlerion. They’d made their choice in coming here. Now, he was their only hope to escape the night alive.
Kaylina wished she could say that she and the sentinel could turn the tides, but if the plant had been forced to withdraw the vines in the root cellar to deal with the attacks out front, there was a limit to what it could do with its power. A hard limit.
Frayvar and Sevarli jogged into the kitchen.
“Teams with battering rams have arrived,” Frayvar said, “and some of the troops are throwing potions at the vines blocking the gate. Or maybe those are acids.”
“They’ve also got a bunch of men with rope and grappling hooks,” Sevarli added.
Targon looked at Vlerion. “You’re up. I hope you’ve been practicing your speech.”
Vlerion didn’t feign confidence. His expression was bleak, but he nodded to Targon, then hugged Kaylina and headed for the front door. As he walked out of the kitchen, he gave her a long look back over his shoulder, the kind that meant he had regrets, and he didn’t know if he would see her again.