Harshini Read online

  “Then we are of one purpose, my Lord,” Damin replied. “I, too, have only the interests of Hythria at heart.”

  “If you only care about Hythria, how can you possibly expect us to tolerate that woman? She is a viper! When she was here in Greenharbour the last time, you claimed she tried to kill Lernen!”

  “I was wrong.”

  “Wrong? Or simply thinking with your balls?” He glanced around at the others with a knowing smirk. “I hear she’s court’esa trained.”

  Damin called on every ounce of self-control he owned to stop him leaping over the table and taking Cyrus Eaglespike by the throat.

  “You will speak with respect when referring to your High Princess,” he managed to say, despite the effort it cost him to remain outwardly calm.

  “She is not my High Princess, and will never be!”

  “Whether or not Princess Adrina is the High Princess is yet to be decided,” Kalan reminded them, raising her voice slightly. “Lord Eaglespike, do you have a specific objection to the Princess, or is it simply her nationality that disturbs you?”

  “I’d settle for just one good reason why we should accept that foreign whore,” Conin Falconlance interjected.

  Damin gripped the side of his stool until his knuckles were white, but gave no other indication of his anger. “One reason? Gunpowder.”

  That got their attention.

  “Gunpowder?” Tejay gasped. “Gods, Damin, if you took all of his daughters off his hands, Hablet still wouldn’t part with that secret.”

  “I’m aware of that and so is Adrina. When Hablet signed the treaty with the Kariens, which included sharing the secret of gunpowder, it was sealed by her marriage to Cratyn. She knew he was never likely to live up to his end of the bargain. She was understandably fearful that his refusal might result in the Kariens taking reprisals and the most obvious target would have been her. So she made a point of learning the secret before she left Fardohnya.”

  “And she told the Kariens the secret?” Toren Foxtalon asked. It was the first time he had spoken. He had been sitting so quietly Damin thought him asleep, but this news had seemingly woken him from his torpor.

  “No. The only person she has shared it with is me.”

  “What makes you so special?” Cyrus laughed disparagingly.

  Damin turned to him and smiled with languid smugness. “I, too, am court’esa trained, my Lord.”

  Tejay clapped her hands and laughed delightedly.

  “Ha! You deserved that, Cyrus! I say let’s finish with this pointless argument. We all know how we plan to vote and I doubt that anything said here today has changed any of our opinions. It certainly hasn’t changed mine. Order the vote, Kalan!”

  Cyrus glanced around the table, calculating his position. He had lost Tejay—that was obvious—and Foxtalon was quite taken with the idea of learning the secret of gunpowder. Narvell had never been in his camp and it was clear where Rogan’s loyalties lay. He threw his hands up and sat down heavily.

  “Have your damned vote then. This is a farce!”

  “Then I will take your votes, my Lords,” Kalan agreed with a frown at Cyrus for disparaging the validity of the Convocation. “Lord Bearbow, how does Izcomdar vote?”

  “Wolfblade.”

  “Lady Lionsclaw? How does Sunrise vote?”

  “Wolfblade.”

  “Lord Falconlance? How does Greenharbour vote?”

  “Eaglespike.”

  “Lord Hawksword? How does Elasapine vote?”

  “Wolfblade.”

  “Lord Foxtalon? How does Pentamor vote?”

  Toren fidgeted uncomfortably, staring determinedly at the table in front of him. “Wolfblade.”

  Damin breathed a sigh of relief. With five of the seven Warlords on his side he had more than he could have hoped for a few days ago.

  “Lord Eaglespike? How does Dregian vote?”

  “Eaglespike,” he snapped angrily. “For all the good it does.”

  “Lord Wolfblade? How does Krakandar vote?”

  “Wolfblade.” He didn’t need to say anything else.

  “Then I declare Damin Wolfblade is the High Prince of Hythria. Long live High Prince Damin!”

  “Long live High Prince Damin!” the others echoed, with the notable exception of Cyrus and Conin.

  Cyrus pushed his stool back and rose to his feet. “This is a sad day for Hythria, my Lords. You have just handed our nation over to a man who is under the thrall of a Fardohnyan whore. You will live to regret this decision. Come, Conin, let us together commiserate on the death of our nation’s independence.”

  Lord Falconlance stood and followed Cyrus wordlessly. The doors swung open as they approached, and swung shut behind them when they left the room. The tension flowed out of the room with the departure of the Warlords.

  “Anyone care to wager that Cyrus’ idea of commiseration involves a civil war?” Rogan asked of no one in particular.

  “I don’t think I care for the odds, Rogan,” Tejay said.

  “Kalan, as High Prince, I want command of the troops belonging to the Sorcerers’ Collective.”

  The High Arrion didn’t even hesitate. “They are yours, Damin, along with anything else you need.”

  Rogan smiled. “You see, there’s an advantage to keeping things all in the family. How long do we have, do you think?”

  “Until sunrise, is my guess,” Damin replied. “I suspect they’ll be waiting for us when we open the city gates in the morning.”

  “Then we won’t be opening the city gates,” Narvell predicted grimly.

  “What about the harbour?” Tejay asked. “Cyrus and Conin have enough ships to blockade it.”

  “I issued a warning to the fishing fleet this morning before I left the palace. Any boats that want to leave will be gone by now. As for the rest, if the demon child is to be believed, help is on the way. We won’t have to hold out for much longer than a couple of weeks.”

  “Help? What help?” Foxtalon asked suspiciously.

  “The Fardohnyans.”

  “The Fardohnyans! You can’t trust them!”

  “And I don’t,” Damin told him. “But I do trust the demon child.”

  “I hope your trust is warranted, Wolfblade,” Rogan warned. “We are placing a lot of faith in that slip of a girl.”

  He smiled at the description. “That ‘slip of a girl’ has the power to destroy a god, Rogan.”

  “She also has the power to destroy us,” Kalan reminded him ominously.

  CHAPTER 32

  The siege did not bother the citizens of Greenharbour at first. If anything, they considered it something of a novelty, a variation from the normal humdrum of their everyday lives. Crowds gathered at the walls each day, hoping for a chance to climb up to the ramparts and see the armies of Greenharbour and Dregian massed below. A few enterprising souls even began charging admission, after doing a deal with the guards on the walls, and they did a roaring trade until Damin got wind of it and had the entrepreneurs thrown in gaol.

  By the second week the shortages began, and then the novelty quickly wore off. There was fresh water aplenty, but Greenharbour was a large city and it wasn’t possible to store enough to keep the population fed for long. The city housed almost fifty thousand people, and relied on the bounty of the sea, as well as the numerous farms outside the city, for produce. With the harbour blockaded, there was no daily catch, and with the gates closed against the armies of Lord Eaglespike and Lord Falconlance there was no produce getting through. Damin heard reports of a loaf of bread costing a hundred times its normal value.

  They fared no better in the palace though, because Damin had distributed most of the palace stores quite publicly on the seventh day of the siege, in the hopes of avoiding a hungry population storming the palace in the belief that food inside was being hoarded for the High Prince and his family.

  For the first time, too, he began to fully appreciate how much his mother had done for the High Prince over the past thirty-odd
years. And was more than a little surprised at how willingly she had handed over the responsiblity. Galon Miar, Marla’s fifth husband, had remarked to Damin once that he thought Marla sought power for duty’s sake, not personal ambition. In light of Marla’s willingness to let her son rule in his own right, Damin was starting to think the assassin may have had the right of it.

  Cyrus and Conin were carrying out typical siege tactics, he knew. They made no effort to attack the city. They didn’t have to. It wasn’t the threat outside the walls that would undo them, but the internal unrest. Damin had stationed troops to defend the walls of the city, but the bulk of his forces were employed simply keeping the peace. As the siege dragged on, he grew less and less tolerant of the opportunists and malcontents. He had begun by throwing them in gaol. This morning he had ordered three men beheaded for hoarding grain and then selling it at inflated prices. He didn’t regret their passing. As their heads dropped into the baskets beneath the executioner’s block his only thought was, That’s three less mouths to feed.

  He had fifteen hundred Raiders in the city, comprising the three hundred men each Warlord was permitted. The Guards of the Sorcerers’ Collective, although competent, had no combat experience to speak of. He had placed the Raiders on the walls and kept the Collective Guards for civil matters. They were well suited to the task. They knew the city and the people knew them. In total, he had two and a half thousand men, but no idea when, or if, help would arrive. There were close to ten thousand camped outside his walls.

  A knock at the door disturbed him, and he looked up in annoyance. The elegantly carved desk in front of him was littered with parchment. Lernen never seemed to have to deal with this much work. He was beginning to wonder how his uncle had found time to indulge his wide variety of perversions. Damin had barely found time to eat or sleep since becoming High Prince.

  “What?” he called angrily.

  The door opened a fraction and Adrina’s head appeared. “Do you have a moment, Damin?”

  “No,” he replied unhappily.

  She opened the door all the way and entered the study with the Harshini, Glenanaran, at her side.

  Damin rose to his feet with a frown. “What is it now, Adrina? Are the peasants storming the Sorcerers’ Collective?”

  Glenanaran smiled, which was the usual Harshini reaction to anything one said in their presence. He was very tall and slender, with long, fair hair held back by a simple leather band. His height was emphasised by the long white robe he wore. His totally black eyes were wide with an innocence and hopefulness that no human could ever hope to emulate. “No, Your Highness. But it grieves me to see you so overwrought.”

  “The administration of a city under siege is proving to be worse than I could possibly have imagined, Divine One. Being overwrought seems the only appropriate reaction.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Glenanaran. Damin enjoys feeling sorry for himself.” Adrina smiled at him. She was looking suspiciously pleased.

  “What are you up to, Adrina?”

  “We have an idea.”

  “Actually, the idea belongs to the High Princess, Your Highness. I am merely the instrument of her desire.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Damin muttered as he sat down. “All right. Tell me this grand idea of yours, Adrina. The day can’t get much worse.”

  “You have to order the fishing boats to put to sea.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Adrina, the harbour is blockaded.”

  “I know. The boats can’t get past the blockade, but the fish can.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Fish, Damin. You know, those little silver wiggly things that people eat?”

  He smiled, in spite of himself.

  “What the High Princess means is that we can call the fish into the harbour and your fishing boats can net them without trying to get past the blockade.”

  Damin leaned back in his chair and studied Adrina in amazement. “That is the most brilliant idea I’ve ever heard.”

  “I thought so.”

  “And you can do this, Divine One? Doesn’t it conflict with your aversion to killing? Those fish will go straight into the cooking pots of Greenharbour.”

  “We cannot abide violence, Your Highness, but we understand the laws of nature. Death is an inevitable part of life. All creatures serve to nourish and feed other creatures. Even humans, when they return to the soil, feed the creatures of the earth, who in turn feed other animals. I cannot say it will make me happy, but neither can I stand idly by while the people of Greenharbour starve.”

  “Then I’ll order the boats to sea immediately. And get some troops down to the harbour to avoid a riot when the catch comes in. I cannot thank you enough, Glenanaran. This may mean the difference between life and death.”

  The Harshini bowed solemnly. “I am aware of that, Your Highness. And now, if I may be excused, I will return to the Collective to speak with Farandelan and Joranara. I will need their help for this task.”

  “Of course,” Damin agreed. “And again, I thank you.”

  As soon as he was gone, Adrina walked around the desk and pushed a stack of rolled parchment out of the way, so she could sit on it. Her expression was insufferably smug.

  “So, how do you like my first official act as High Princess?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Not bad! It was a stroke of genius!”

  “Yes, it was. But you already know that. I’m not going to inflate that ego of yours any more than it already is by admitting it, though.”

  Adrina laughed. Despite the siege, despite Tamylan’s death and everything else that had happened to her recently, Damin had never seen her happier. She was finally in her element, he realised. She had power and respect and the ability to use that awesome intellect for something other than causing trouble. Hablet had been a fool not to recognise what he had in his daughter. Then again, he might have actually seen her potential and banished her to Karien where he thought she could not threaten him.

  Her laughter faded after a while and she became serious. “It’s only a temporary measure, Damin. We can’t ask the Harshini to call fish into the harbour indefinitely.”

  “I know. But every day we hold out is a day closer to help arriving.”

  “You still believe R’shiel will be able to convince my father to send help?”

  “If anybody can, R’shiel can. It’s simply a question of how long it takes. She knows the urgency of the situation.”

  “Personally, I don’t see why she couldn’t just stay here and throw a few fireballs around like she did in the Defender’s camp in Medalon. That would have softened Eaglespike’s spine quick enough.”

  “She wants peace, Adrina,” he reminded her. “Besides, throwing fireballs around might cow Cyrus into submission, but it would more than likely burn my city to the ground.”

  “And you think a running battle through the streets of Greenharbour is going to be any less damaging?”

  “No. But I’ve some control over the way a battle goes. R’shiel has no control over where her magic lands.”

  “Do you think she’ll ever be ready to face Xaphista?” she asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “If she fails,” Adrina warned, “we’ll spend the rest of our lives at war. I’ve lived with the Kariens, Damin. I’ve heard what they preach. Xaphista won’t be content until the whole world is on its knees before him.”

  Following the Harshini summons, the fish netted in the harbour kept the city fed for another few days, but that problem was quickly replaced by another, more urgent dilemma, one that even outweighed the threat of imminent starvation. To make matters worse, it was an enemy Damin had no idea how to fight: garbage.

  Normally, an army of slaves was employed to remove the refuse of the city and dump it outside in a vast old quarry several leagues away that had been disused for decades. But the garbage wagons were full and there was nowhere to go. Damin refused to let them dump it in the harbour and had ordered th
e rubbish burned instead. That would have worked if the refuse was dry, but in the humidity of Greenharbour, nothing ever dried completely and the burning could not keep pace. So the garbage piled higher in the streets and ten days after the siege began, Kalan came to him with the first reports of disease spreading through the poorer quarters of the city.

  He ordered the affected areas quarantined, but it only served to slow the spread of the disease, not stop it. The Harshini, who were naturally immune to human ailments, worked tirelessly healing the sick, but there were only three of them—not enough to keep pace with the plague. Sorcerers from the Collective worked beside them until they either dropped from exhaustion or succumbed to disease themselves. He had seen Kalan only twice since the outbreak, and both times she had been haggard with fatigue.

  He’d had a blazing row with Adrina when she decided that she should go out and help, claiming it would enhance his position as High Prince no end if his wife were seen to be caring for the sick. Her pregnancy was just beginning to show and even if he hadn’t been terrified at the thought of her catching something, he was not going to let her endanger their unborn child. She had reluctantly given in, and only then when he reminded her of the danger to their baby. The atmosphere had not been pleasant since. Adrina was like a caged leopard, prowling around the palace, feeling useless and frustrated. But he didn’t resent her mood—he felt exactly the same way.

  On the fifteenth day of the siege, Cyrus sent a message under a flag of truce. The messenger was let in through the postern gate, and proved to be Serrin Eaglespike, the Warlord of Dregian’s younger brother. He was escorted to the palace followed by the curious stares of a population weary of the siege and hopeful that the young lord’s presence heralded the end of their ordeal.

  “My brother offers leniency, my Lords,” Serrin informed them as he stood before Damin, Narvell, Rogan, Tejay, Toren, Adrina and Princess Marla in the main hall. He handed Damin a parchment sealed with the Eaglespike crest—Cyrus’ formal terms for surrender. Damin didn’t even bother to open it.

  “In return for what?” Rogan demanded.