Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1)

Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1) Page 67

There is no answer to that, but no trace of humiliation or offense will show on my face. I keep my head high and my eyes forward, as Mother taught us girls to do.

We approach the huge gate with its sentries, lamps burning as the purpling twilight sinks into the full darkness of night.

“Kal, take that cursed scarf off your face. The guards need to see an uncle and his nephew on their way to a joyous wedding feast, not a prince skulking about playing at banditry.”

Kalliarkos tugs down the scarf so it wraps only his neck and leaves his face visible. As we come to a stop, he hands the guards a piece of fired ceramic with a cipher stamped on it, giving us permission to leave the city. Inarsis pulls the curtain out of my hand and shrouds us behind it before the guards can get a close look. So have my mother and sisters been cut off from everything around them. I clasp my hands in my lap and, trembling, wait out the crossing, but quickly enough we are allowed to pass under the triple gates and over a wide plank causeway that spans the canal that rings the city.

Beneath the wheels the grind of wood turns to the rumble of stone as we roll onto a paved road and head out of the city into the countryside. Inarsis ties the curtains up out of the way.

The Royal Road follows the coastline of Efea from Saryenia all the way to the easternmost fortress at Pellucidar Lake in the mountainous Eastern Reach, a journey that takes weeks. At night the road is lit with sturdy glass lanterns fastened to pillars. Iron cages posted at intervals contain the remains of dead enemies scavenged off the battlefield and left to rot. The bones of those the king has defeated are ground to dust and, so it is said, mixed into the goat’s milk drunk by King Kliatemnos the Fifth every morning to strengthen his blood.

“What do you mean to do now, Uncle?” asks Kalliarkos. His raised chin and brusque tone give him a lordly arrogance that makes him seem a stranger, not the amiable young man who first spoke to me on Lord Ottonor’s balcony.

“Must I do anything? Can I not enjoy this lovely ride through the countryside on our way to your sister’s wedding feast?”

The view here just outside the city is not that lovely. Regimental camps sprawl alongside the Royal Road, each surrounded by a wall. Every gate has a company badge painted on it: a looped cross, a triangle finned with two bars, a hatched circle. By these marks soldiers can know their own company and form up again in the disarray of battle, so Father taught me. He praised me for memorizing the name of every regiment in the king’s army. I see some of them now: the Striking Fours, the Bronze Blades, the Old Spears.

Beyond the last camp of the king’s army lie the temporary camps of mercenaries eager to take the king’s coin. Their flags fly but I do not know their names or origins or even what languages they speak. All I know is that such people fight for money instead of honor and loyalty.

Inarsis stirs beside me. “As the man hired by your grandmother to protect you, Lord Kalliarkos, it would be prudent of you to inform me what your intentions are this evening so I may plan for every contingency.”

I tense, waiting for my secret to be exposed, but Kalliarkos does not hesitate. “Is it so surprising that for once I wanted to choose my own company for the journey there and back? It took years to convince my mother that it was humiliating for me to have an ill-wisher at my side at all times, like I was still a little child. Now I have you two nursemaids following me everywhere. I have decided to act as a man instead of a boy. Does that content you, General Inarsis?”

The name jolts me. “General Inarsis? The victor of the battle of Marsh Shore during the Oyia campaign?”

“The same, Spider. As for you, Lord Kalliarkos, your explanation does not content me.”

“How did I not know who you are?” I mutter, partly because I am stunned and partly to distract him while I think.

“Inarsis is a common name among Efean men,” he says with an amused smile.

“I know it is!” I should have guessed that a man of Commoner ancestry who walks like an equal beside a Patron lord must have an exceptionally distinguished reputation. “You are the only Commoner to ever command the king’s army.”

“We call ourselves Efean,” he says in a mild tone that rebukes me.

“Yes, but—” His quiet confidence flusters me. “But all the high officials and lords in Efea are Patron-born. For instance, no matter how well a Commoner—I mean an Efean—learns Saroese, they cannot become an Archivist, only an Archivist’s assistant. I thought it was the same in the army.”

“I assure you that I began the day as a junior officer in the only Efean regiment, which itself was commanded by senior officers, all of whom were Patron men. The battle was a bloody, violent conflict with massive casualties on both sides. I had to step forward after all the senior officers were dead or incapacitated.”