The Turncoat Prince

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

Darna reached for her tunic. Tevan tried halfheartedly to pull her back into the bed, but she shook him off and crossed to the far side of her room.

“You’re brilliant,” he said. It was one of his usual empty lines of praise, something he said so often that it had lost all its meaning.

For at least a year or two, she’d intended to ask him to stop visiting her, but she had no other prospects, nor any real reason for her discontent, so she’d never gotten around to it. Now he was about to leave for the bleak western province of Slaradun. There was no need to ask him to go anymore. She would have her bed back to herself in a few days’ time. When he came back, well, that was something she could manage next Midsummer.

“If you hadn’t trained for a priestess all those years, I think you’d have surpassed me by now at the guild,” Tevan said. He didn’t really mean it; she knew that he thought more of himself than he did of her.

The guild master did praise her work, which was all well and good, but Tevan was Anamat-born and related to half the members of the higher guilds. If he’d been younger than she was, which he wasn’t, and dull-witted, which he also wasn’t, the guild master still would have favored him.

“Of course, I’m glad you did have your time in the temple,” Tevan said, finally sitting up and facing her. “Now you’re my own personal priestess.”

It was things like that which irritated her, that possessiveness undermining every bit of flattery, as if the only reason any of her qualities mattered was the questionable fact that he had them in his hands. She counted the days until he would leave, three more nights. Now he was looking out the window again, ignoring her.

“Looks like you have a visitor. Another lover?” he asked.

“I don’t have another lover and you know it,” Darna said. How did he still manage to be so jealous? She had a crooked gait and red hair, and she scowled half the time. Not the kind of woman to attract many lovers, especially when the most beautiful priestesses in the known world were at the temple just downhill. Although she’d been inside those walls herself, she’d never been a beauty.

“Whoever it is, she’s probably just looking for the healer.” One of Darna’s neighbors was the second-best herbalist in the city outside of the temples.

“He,” Tevan corrected. “Handsome fellow. Guardsman. I think I’ve seen him around the palace.”

Darna tensed. Thorat knew where she lived, but he’d never come to visit her. They usually met at Myril’s rooms whenever he was in the city, or over jars of ale at Ink Pounders. Yes, that was his step on the stair, confident yet light.

“I’ll just tell him where to find the herbalist,” Darna said as casually as she could manage.

She went out onto the landing. There he was, climbing her own stairs. Sometimes, she had dreamed that he would come, had fantasized that he would take her in his arms and forget Iola for a little while. She knew that would never happen. Even if Thorat lost his ardor for Iola, which would probably never happen, he was far too handsome for her, as Tevan would no doubt point out.

She did count Thorat as a friend, and he looked worried.

“Did you hear me coming?” Thorat asked.

“My friend saw you on the street.” She pulled the curtain aside to let him in.

Thorat hung back. “I need to talk to you alone.”

“I’ll just tell him to go,” Darna said.

“I’ll keep watch,” Thorat said.

It was an odd thing to say, but before she asked him what was wrong, she had to shoo her indifferent lover away. Tevan had already pulled his tunic on over his head and was picking up his sandals.

“It’s an old friend from my scrappling days,” Darna said. “He seems to have some news he wants to tell me alone.”

“Surely, it’s not so personal as that,” Tevan said. “We can all share a cup of tea, maybe invite in some foreign sailors, too.”

“It’s not like that.” Darna ushered Tevan to the door and brushed his tunic down flat. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Tevan shook his head. “Not tomorrow. I have meetings with the prince of Slaradun and his suppliers all day, and they’ll probably go into the night. But the next day?” He smirked and reached out to pull her in close. His warm breath wafted across her face. He did like her, gracious about it or not.

“The next day is Midsummer Eve,” Darna said softly.

“And I’ll be here. All day and night if I can.” He hugged her closer, wedging his thigh between hers, and kissed her. “Remember that,” he said.

“I’ll have to go to the temple for the vigil.”

“All afternoon, in that case.” Finally, Tevan let her go. On his way out, he gave Thorat a smug look, as if to remind Thorat that he’d claimed Darna first.

Thorat ignored him. Once inside, he went directly to the window, looking up and down the street before he said anything. Darna went to his side and watched Tevan emerge below, then walk down the street and around the corner. Some revelers were piling up wood for a bonfire at the square. One of them had a drum that he tapped tentatively, as if trying to remember the chants. Thorat looked sharply around the room, then drew the curtains shut.

“Was that your lover?” Thorat asked.

“For now,” Darna said, as if Tevan hadn’t been pursuing her since before she left the temple, for entirely too long. For all that, he’d never met her oldest friends in the city. He’d never wanted to. “Do you want a cup of tea? I have some warm already,” Darna offered. It was the dregs of the pot, but it was still warm.

“I think you’d better sit,” Thorat said.

Darna hesitated. She had two stools beside her writing table, but she sat down on the bed instead. Thorat took the closer stool and sat down facing her. He took a deep, shaky breath. He seemed nervous, but Thorat was never nervous. He always seemed unerringly sure of himself, but now he glanced worriedly at the gap between the drawn curtains.

“This place isn’t safe for you,” he said. “I think you should go stay in the temple.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I’ve lived here for years.” Darna looked over her shoulder and drew the curtains across that last gap. “Is it something to do with Tiadun?”

Thorat nodded. “Was the prince of Tiadun your father?”

“I don’t know.” He might have been. After all, her mother had been a priestess and might have lain with any number of men, including the prince of their province, but no man was supposed to claim a priestess’s child as his own, though they did when it suited them. The prince had tried to claim her. He’d sponsored her priestess training, possibly because she’d stood as proof that he could sire a child, although a girl child wouldn’t normally inherit the throne. He’d needed that, not that it had done him any good in the end.

“He’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter.”

Thorat shook his head. “That’s the trouble. It does matter. Calar, his brother, your uncle, he found out about you. He wants you dead. He’s offered a land grant, a rather large land grant, and a share of the Cerean trade in dragon stones to the man who kills you.”

“Kills me? Me?” Darna’s voice squeaked. “Why?”

“I don’t know all of it,” Thorat said, running his hand through his hair. His hand looked strong, competent. He had a good longsword which he knew how to use. Maybe he would protect her, not that she’d ever needed protection before.

“You don’t know all of what?” Darna asked. If she was going to be murdered, she’d like to know why.

“He had your father murdered.”

“I don’t know that he was my father.” The idea that Calar had killed his brother, the prince, was not at all surprising.

“The prince looks like you. Looked like you. He had the same expressions. I believe he was your father, even though you’re not like any other princess I’ve seen.”

“I wasn’t raised to be a princess.”

“You weren’t raised at all. You’re half-wild.”

“Exactly,” Darna said, “but now I’m also a full initiate of the Guild of Planners.”

“Congratulations. I didn’t know that.”

“They blessed my masterwork this past winter, just before Tiada was killed.” Tiada was the dragon and guardian deity of her home province. Dragons were supposed to live forever, as long as the land, so now her homeland was dead. The death of the dragon meant far more to her than the death of a man ever could, even if that man had sired her, and that was far from certain. Thorat had been there at Tiada’s death. That much she knew, though the details of why he’d been there were not entirely clear.

“You know about that?” Thorat asked.

“Iola thought I should know. She said that Tiada had joined the deepest stream, and that that was different from death, though it looks the same to us on the surface. She knew that I was Tiada’s child.” Darna had sensed the absence of the dragon before Iola had told her about it.

“And not the prince’s,” Thorat mused.

“I have no interest in being connected to the prince of Tiadun,” Darna said. “He had nothing that I wanted. Everyone knows that. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference. Why would Calar want me dead?” She did know her alleged uncle’s name. She kept track of what was happening in Tiadun, just in case. “I’m no threat to him.”

“But he thinks you are, and he’s right,” Thorat said. “You could walk into the province, marry any chieftain or prince’s kin, and challenge him for the throne, even if he hadn’t killed his brother, or had him killed. The priestesses and the villagers could put you on the throne as mistress of your own keep. You could cause trouble for Calar whether or not you try to take the throne yourself. Half his claim rests on the idea that his brother was barren, which he wasn’t, not if you’re the old prince’s daughter. The armsmen at the keep are resigned to Calar’s command, but people don’t like him, not in the keep town and not in the villages, either. He brought the Cereans in and had them led to the gate.”

If she were to avenge Tiada’s death, then she would have to challenge Calar, not to mention the Cereans. The thought had some appeal, but she had no way to do it. Calar had a small army of guardsmen and a battalion of Cereans at his back. She had only herself, her limping self with her measuring tools and scrolls. It wasn’t a fight she could win as a simple guildswoman, or as a presumptive princess, not alone.

Thorat frowned at the floor. “The old prince, for all his vole-slaughtering worship of Farseer…”

“What about him?” Darna prompted.

“He wasn’t dragon-blind.”

“He must have been,” Darna said. No one who’d seen Tiada could turn to foreign gods, could they?

“He wasn’t at the end. My apprentice was in the camp and overheard him say that he was seeing dragonlets.”

“Your apprentice?” Darna asked. “And what were you doing there? Working for my uncle who wants to kill me now?” It was all just absurd.

“I left before that,” Thorat said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Darna frowned. Thorat was as secretive as a priestess, maybe more so. She felt that he wasn’t just a simple guardsman. Myril and Iola knew more, more that they’d never shared with her. She only knew that there was something else to him, that it had something to do with why he’d been in Tiadun at the death of Tiada, not that he’d been able to save her. He was, after all, only a man.

“Stay with me,” Darna said. “I’ll be safe here if you stay with me.”

“I can’t,” Thorat said. He gave her a pained look. “I would if I could, honestly I would, but I think maybe you could be safe in the temple. Calar has half his guardsmen here in Anamat, and that price he’s put on your head is enough to tempt almost anyone.”

“Does it tempt you?”

“Of course not.”

Darna felt petty for asking. She knew better than to doubt Thorat, even if he was too good for her.

“We have to figure out how to keep you safe,” he said.

Darna nodded. Since she’d left the temple and the dancing teachers had stopped badgering her with exercises, her old limp had reasserted itself. She could walk fast enough with a cane, but she wouldn’t be able to outrun a skin-and-bones scrappling, let alone a fit guardsman with a sword or an archer’s arrow. She wasn’t ready to die, and it wasn’t worth the risk to try to talk her so-called uncle out of his ill-conceived assassination attempt. If he’d had any sense, he wouldn’t have considered her a threat to begin with, but clearly, he didn’t, and if there was one thing she’d learned in her years as a guildswoman, it was that you couldn’t talk sense into someone who’d started off with none. Calar was almost certainly dragon-blind. He couldn’t see what his so-called foreign allies were doing, elbowing him out of place, as their tradesmen were displacing the guilds of Anamat.