Blood Succession (Knight Protector Book 4)

  Blood Succession

  Knight Protector, Book 4

  By Rachel Ford

  Chapter One – Aria

  She watched the countryside fade away, the way daytime slowly loses its hold on the world, and night settles in. She watched the walls of the city looming larger and larger, like the coming of a darkness she couldn’t escape.

  She thought about escape. She thought about calling for a halt to their procession on some pretext. It wouldn’t matter what, really. She was queen, or as good as, wasn’t she? She could command a pause.

  Then she’d need to get her hands on a horse. Chariots were all well and good for open fields and solid roads. But it had been chosen less for its maneuverability than for its openness. A skimmer would have done just as well, and got them there quicker, if maneuverability had been the key consideration. But letting the people see her had been the motive, so a chariot had been called upon, where she would be visible to everyone. A bonus, from the senate’s view; but not from hers. Anywhere her chariot could go, others would follow – more freely, and just as fast.

  And they would follow. A queen couldn’t just disappear into the ether. They wouldn’t allow it, those brave sons and daughters of the South who were tasked with her safe arrival. They might not stop her out of any love for her, or sense of loyalty. But it would mean a death sentence for their failures, and maybe worse.

  She glanced at her chariot driver. He was a tall man, with the band of a slave on his arm, lean and well-muscled, scarred to the point of notice but not deformity. The sort of kaladorn kings and senators liked to surround themselves with: fierce enough to impress, but not frightening.

  She didn’t know his name, or the sound of his voice. He hadn’t spoken to her. He’d followed Senator Crassus and bowed low and stayed silent. She didn’t even know the color of his eyes. He’d never lifted them to look at her. He’d responded to every command with a bow of the head.

  So he would stop if she told him to. She knew that.

  But, if she ran, he would die. Not because he’d done anything wrong. He couldn’t refuse an order to stop. He’d suffer for that, too. Maybe not death, but he’d lose his eyes, or a hand. Or maybe they’d brand him and send him to the mines. Either way, it would be a fate worse than death. So he would stop if she commanded. And he would die if she ran.

  She glanced around her at the other chariots, the horsemen, and the foot soldiers. It was a royal guard, an imperial guard of slave soldiers – kaladorn soldiers. There must have been three hundred slaves at least.

  And if she ran? She would be signing the death warrant for every single one of them.

  They would try to stop her escape, but for the same reasons, she wouldn’t – couldn’t – try. Not yet. Not here and now, when there were people who could be blamed and punished for her flight.

  They kept riding. The morning was bright and warm, for a late winter day anyway. She wore a light cloak around her shoulders and needed nothing heavier. Soft breezes floated in from the south, with the promise of spring rains in the near future.

  The birds seemed to sense the shifting weather, too. They were starting to build nests of twigs and hearty winter grasses, the kind that could withstand frosts and rainfalls – and would insulate baby birds against spring chills. Soon, the heat would dry the old grasses up, and summer varieties would take their place, like new flowers would replace the winter blooms. The birds would feed their young on the nectar of those fresh spring flowers, and by time the hatchlings left the nest, they’d feed on the first summer fruits.

  Life would go on as it always had, season after long season. Unchanging, unyielding, unbroken.

  Except, not for her. For Aria, life had changed completely and irrevocably when King Agalyn died. She’d been happy and secure. Now, she felt she’d never be happy or secure again. How could she be? Gone was the countryside estate of her youth, the quiet meadows and rolling hills, the vagaries and eccentricities of country society.

  In its place loomed the city and the crown: a lifetime of it, like a convict’s sentence.

  She’d grown up hearing stories of how her branch of the family had escaped that life, how they’d traded pomp and ceremony, wealth and slaves, gems and palaces, for a simpler way of life. For freedom and love.

  Not that Aria had grown up poor. By country standards, she was quite well off. The love that had cost her ancestor’s place in the royal palace had been between a prince and a country eques’s daughter: not rich, not marriageable by royal standards, but an heiress in her own way.

  She’d spent her life enjoying her grandmother’s legacy. She never thought she would have to live her grandfather’s too. No one had. Her second cousin, Agalyn, had been born the third of three strong sons, and he had an uncle who in turn had sons of his own. All of them would have inherited before the outcast branch.

  But the uncle and his children drowned at sea. And Agalyn’s brothers? Well, there were rumors about that, rumors that said there was more than ill luck behind the untimely deaths of not one but two healthy sons. People said that the eldest hadn’t fallen to his death, but had been pushed; and the younger hadn’t mistakenly eaten poisoned berries, but had been hand fed them by his own younger brother.

  Aria didn’t know if there was truth to the tales. Maybe there was. Maybe Agalyn had killed them both to take the throne for himself. And maybe they had been an unlucky line. He was dead too, wasn’t he, killed in a war he started, in the horrible, frozen wasteland of the North? Maybe there was a curse on their House.

  Maybe she was next.

  The city loomed larger. It grew from a pale blob on the horizon to a massive, shimmering focal point of her attention. And it grew larger yet, until it was all she could see – it became the horizon.

  Ten-meter walls ran the length of the city, and behind it great buildings rose higher yet. The palace stood in the center, on a hill far above everything else. It glimmered in the midmorning sunlight: marble and gold, silver and granite. She had seen lithographs of the city and the palace before. She’d seen it from far, far away, as a white blur on the horizon. But she’d never passed this close or seen so much of it.

  Part of her forgot the coming night, and the curse, and the countryside she’d left behind. Part of her watched in awe as the city seemed to get bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter.

  Senator Crassus must have seen the change in her thoughts expressed in her visage, because he smiled when he spoke. “A most exquisite sight, is it not, my Queen?”

  She glanced over at him. The senator was riding alongside of her, just a little further back than she. It was a question of respect, she gathered: no man should put himself before his queen. In the case of her driver, though he stood before her, she supposed that didn’t count. Kaladorn weren’t seen as people as much as they were things, property of the king. Or, very soon, the queen.

  She shivered at the thought. But she remembered her manners and spoke. “It is.”

  “I know the trip has been very long. But we will be there soon, and I trust you will find it very much worth the trouble once we are.”

  She turned her head to regard the other man. He was still smiling in a friendly, guileless way – the kind of way good politicians could smile. She’d met with a few local politicians in her day, equites who hoped someday to move to the senate; some of them actually had. None of them had been guileless. But the ones who didn’t move on lacked the skill of appearing guileless. The ones who did, had it. They could seem to smile freely and sincerely like Crassus, whatever their real feelings. So Aria didn’t trust her companion’s expression.

  But, then again, she wouldn’t have trusted anyone fr
om the capital. The smile only sealed the deal.

  Behind the suspect expression was a handsome man of fifty, perhaps, with strong features and a full head of now-graying hair. He had good teeth and sharp eyes, and the tan of a man who didn’t just spend his days in the senate or his villa. He was a good horseman, too, to judge by how effortlessly he handled his mount, and he spoke with a polished accent. She wasn’t quite sure what her preconceptions of capital senators had been, but it must have involved pale, pampered, fleshy men who hid from the sun and abhorred exercise, because she was surprised to find him so much the opposite.

  “It is a beautiful city, Senator,” she said, as politely but noncommittally as she could.

  He nodded. “I understand – I hope I do not presume too much – but I understand that this will be…well, a most startling change of pace for you, having grown up so far from the capital and her hectic pace.” He smiled again, and she might have almost believed the paternal kindliness in the expression sprang from some genuine source. “And not the least so as you are without close kin of your own to join you in the transition.

  “So – again, I hope I do not overstep – but know that my family and I are and will be there for you, whatever your need or concern.”

  “You are very kind.”

  He bowed in his saddle. “And I hope the palace gardens will do something to remind you of your own home.”

  That truly was thoughtful, and she smiled too. “We shall see, Senator. But I hope so as well, for I fear I will miss them very much indeed.”

  He nodded a second time. “I can only imagine. But – though I suppose it must seem it now – they are not lost to you, my queen. There will be a transition period, of course, and you will spend much time in the city. But you have not lost the home of your childhood. You have gained all of the South.”

  She didn’t want all of the South, of course. She wanted nothing more than her home, and her peace, and her freedom.

  But Agalyn had died and lost the war in the process. By right and law, the duty of leadership passed to her.

  She tried not to focus on any of that, or even the glimmering city in front of her. Its beauty alone didn’t absolve it of everything else it represented. So she tried to think instead of nothing but the easy road and the cool morning, the end of winter and the start of spring.

  It was a time she loved, in normal circumstances, full of the promise of life and joy. She had almost convinced herself to be happy when they rounded a bend in the road, and saw something so horrifying that, at first, her mind couldn’t quite comprehend what it was.

  Stakes lined the road on either side, and on each of them hung – something. Each something was large. Some were about the size of a man, and others seemed to be half as big. They were black and red and purple, bloated and torn and disfigured by heat and scavengers.

  Then a breeze wafted by, carrying a smell so horrible she understood. These were, or had been, men and women. Long weeks of decay coupled with hungry birds and animals had reduced them to miserable, misshapen, almost unrecognizable lumps of rotting flesh and bone. But they once had been men and women.

  Aria vomited. She didn’t think about it. She didn’t have time to stop herself, or the chance to repress the urge. It just happened.

  Crassus issued an order to the slave that drove her chariot, and they passed through the terrible gauntlet and then pulled off the road into a little glade, out of sight – and smell – of the dead.

  She was shaking, from embarrassment and horror. Crassus helped her down to solid ground. She saw, now, that she’d soaked the chariot floor, and the chariot driver’s feet and legs. He hadn’t flinched or said anything. He hadn’t responded at all, which did nothing to make her feel better about any of it.

  Crassus shouted orders, and slaves came with water. These kaladorn were of a more genteel, domestic class than the driver. They were all women, and they’d rode in a carriage with shades drawn to shield them from view. And unlike the driver, they did speak, softly and comfortingly, as if they were eager to please and aid. They wanted to know if she was ill, or if there was anything at all they could do. They begged her pardon as they removed her soiled sandals and cleaned her feet. They begged it again as they scrubbed the hem of her dress. She wasn’t sure why they were apologizing at first. The third or fourth time it happened, she gathered that the apology was for touching her.

  She thought vaguely how odd it was that people who were on their hands and knees to scrub her vomit away should be apologizing to her. Shouldn’t it be the other way around, that the one who created the mess should offer the apology?

  Crassus waved the women away brusquely. “Stop fussing and fetch a brandy.” The driver he commanded, “Clean yourself. You reek.” Then he turned to her, the harshness gone from his tone and face. “Are you ill, Majesty?”

  “Those men and women…who were they?”

  “Ah.” Recognition flashed across his face, as if her question explained her mystery illness to him. “A…startling sight, I suppose. Forgive me. I would have prepared you, but so long have we in the capital seen it, I suppose I didn’t think of it.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They were kaladorn, Majesty: soldiers, who fought in the war.”

  “Why are they dead? Why are they impaled and left out like that?”

  Crassus shuffled, and pulled his features into a neutral expression – so studiously neutral that it almost seemed disapproval, albeit veiled. “It is the law, Majesty. When a king dies on the field of battle, the kaladorn who failed him die too. Either in combat, avenging their master, or they are executed.

  “These men and women fled the field after the king’s death. They returned home.”

  She gripped the side of the chariot. Her feet were bare. One of the women had taken away her sandals. She felt the sun-warmed earth under her feet. Everything else swam a little. The enormity of her change in circumstance, the dire nature of it, filled her head and turned it round and round.

  What manner of place, and what kind of people, was she headed to, where such a thing could be deemed normal – so commonplace that someone like Crassus, who didn’t even approve of it, would forget to warn her?

  She glanced at the horizon behind her, the rolling hills and blue skies. The open road… She thought of the sea far to the south, and the border to the north. She thought again of escape. Her eyes started to scope out the horses all around them, some still bearing riders. But here and there, soldiers had dismounted. She counted the steps between herself and them, and thought about crossing the distances barefoot.

  Crassus seemed to read her mind, because he said gently, “I will not pretend I don’t know the thoughts running through your mind now, Majesty. I will not pretend I haven’t seen them there all day, and before that: ever since I arrived to escort you back.

  “But if you would run because of that sight, know that there are three, almost four, hundred souls here today who would suffer the same fate if you absconded: your driver, those women who scrubbed your feet, and all these soldiers who would give up their lives for you without a second thought.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied, not a little surprised to have been so easily caught out.

  He considered, smiled to himself, and then nodded. “Of course. Forgive my presumption, Majesty. I am relieved to hear it. Have you ever seen a man impaled, or crucified? Or a woman? It’s worse, somehow, with the women. I don’t know why, but it’s – almost unwatchable. It doesn’t matter the crime. It doesn’t matter how heinous. To see her writhe and hear her scream and plead, beg for mercy as the nails are driven through her flesh. One strike, and then another, and another.

  “And then they leave her, to the sun and heat and animals. Every second, her weight bears down on the wounds, as if they were driving the nails all over again.”

  She looked up at him, ghastly pale. “What in the gods’s names are you doing, Crassus?”

  “I am speaking of what would
happen to these kaladorn, if you were to flee your duty. I am explaining why I am relieved that you would never consider such a thing.

  “Because my duty would compel me to stop you. But if I failed, this would be the fate of these loyal kaladorn.”

  She stared blankly for a long moment, a hundred thoughts competing for space in her head. Finally, she settled one to say out loud. “Then I am a prisoner.”

  “A prisoner? Of course not, Majesty. You are heir to the throne of the South. Like all of us, you have a duty, to serve your nation in whatever way she calls upon you.”

  “I don’t want to be queen.”

  “Well, it is your right to abdicate the throne. But it must be done properly, in accordance with the law.”

  She snorted. “What’s the difference, if I leave now or leave once they put a crown on my head?”

  He smiled at her, a sympathetic, kindly expression. “The difference is one is lawful and the other is not. I don’t make the laws, Majesty. At least, not that one. It predates you or I by some hundreds of years.”

  “I am a prisoner,” she said again.

  “In twenty-four hours, you will be the most powerful person in the world,” he said. It was a lie – one of those polite lies good patriots told in reference to their own nation’s standing. The South had just lost the war. Not officially, and not yet. But matters had progressed beyond writing on the wall. The North had demolished the wall and built a sepulcher of it – a sepulcher for Agalyn and the South’s proud armies.

  And as soon as the snow melted in the North, her armies would be pressing at the border to finish the job.

  She ignored the lie. He continued. “And if you choose at that time – though I hope very much you will at least give it time to get to know the city and the role, and consider the well-being of the South. But if you choose to abdicate, no one will stop you.”

  “Until you find some other patsy to take the role,” she said. “And I’ll wind up with poison in my wine or a knife in the back. That’s how it happens, isn’t it?”