In the distance, the roofs of Bowerstone reflected the sunlight and, beyond the city, the ocean gleamed almost silver. Between the castle and the city, the land stretched, green and lush, with a few merchant carts visile on the winding road. The songs of the birds filled the air and a fiddler played in the courtyard below, a traveling minstrel entertaining the servants while they worked. Guards in black coats, Sabre's silver seal gleaming on their chests, patrolled the walls, pikes reflecting the light in blinding flashes. A column of horsemen rode through the gates, armor jingling. At their head, Blade wore full plate mail, black, and the Demon visaged helm he had recovered from the Necropolis hid his face.
But she would know him no matter what he wore.
From her bedroom window, Queen Elvira watched Blade pause to confer with his Captains, directing him with imperious dignity, his red cloak catching the cold winter breeze and snapping out. Sabre's right hand, General of the Armies of Albion, Blade dismounted and handed the reigns to the stableboy, removing his helm as he strode across the inner courtyard. Sabre had sent him to Knothole Glade, to harry the Reavers back into the sea. The trophies hanging from his saddle proclaimed his victory, the heads of the Reaver Captains, hanging by their braids and beards.
Blade was slim and far too pretty. Clear and unusually pale blue eyes, features that were finely cast but a shade soft, ink black hair, and lightly tanned skin, he had been known as Mouse in his youth in the Guild but had taken the moniker of Blade. By all accounts, he was the deadliest swordsman alive, the first to master the art of two swords since Twinblade. Unlike Twinblade, Blade had also turned his hand to magic.
She clutched her heavy robes more tightly around herself. Of all of Sabre's servants, Blade unnerved her. The most powerful member of the Guild to survive Sabre's purge, Blade's power rivaled that of her husband. Despite the threat he represented, her entreaties to have Blade killed always fell on deaf ears and her last such endeavor had ended badly for her. Sabre had told Blade of her demands at the dinner table, laughing as he told Blade of her fears, her insistence that Blade would betray him. They had laughed together, Blade and Sabre, but Blade's pale blue eyes burned through her when he turned his gaze upon her. Sabre's words had sent daggers of ice through her spine.
"The oaths that bind Blade to me and me to him are more tightly woven than the bonds that bind me to you," he had said, dangerous smile and darkly delighted eyes. "Any pretty little wench can be queen. Only Blade can enforce my will."
And to prove his words, Sabre had given her to Blade for a night. She shivered as she remembered the humiliation and indignity of that night, that endless and degrading night.
She had everything she had ever dreamt of: she was Queen of Albion, her husband was powerful and ruthless, eternal youth through the sacrifices at the Alter of Skorm that Sabre and Blade performed, sending innocents to the torments so they would stay young. She had everything she ever wanted yet the lowest servant girl was happier, the most desperate of merchant wives knew more joy.
"Is that Blade?"
Her husband's voice intruded on her moment of self-pity. She turned and saw him standing in the doorway to her private chambers. He was dressed for Court, elegant yet deadly, his crown gleaming, his eyes burning. Lust radiated from him as he approached and she let the curtains fall closed, lest he display her to the entire courtyard again. She raised her chin and gazed down her straight nose, petulant mouth frowning. His eyes moved down her graceful neck and came to rest on her bountiful breasts.
"It is," she said, holding herself still as his hands roamed over her bodice. "He brought the heads of the Reaver Captains."
"I knew he would. He has never failed me."
She trembled as his hands unlaced the bodice and pulled it open, spilling her breasts free. He thumbed her nipples, twisting and tweaking them. "He will seek your approval, loyal dog that he is," she said. "You should go to him."
He pushed her robe down her arms, letting it puddle on the floor around her feet. "I am king," he said. "Blade will come to me."
Sabre had been a beautiful youth, with jet black hair, lupine blue eyes, and features that would have been feminine if not for the manner in which he carried himself. He had grown into a devastatingly handsome man, sharp featured and possessed of a swaggering masculinity that made her weak, even as he terrified her. She wanted to resist, wanted to deny him, but she went meekly to the bed and tried to swallow her shame when Blade barged in, bold as he pleased.
"I drove the reavers back into the sea," Blade said, his eyes on her.
She flushed beneath his gaze, naked and helpless.
"I knew you would," Sabre said languidly, toying with her hair.
She turned her body away from Blade, hiding her breasts from him.
"The Mayor of Bowerstone is coming to beg for coin," Blade said. "To rebuild his walls and replace the guards."
Blade liked to hear people beg, had made her beg.
"And the people... are they clamoring for me," Sabre asked. "Have they turned against him yet?"
He ran his hand down her shoulder and turned her to face him, giving Blade a view of her as well.
"If you were to send troops and your own mayor, they would open their gates and welcome them in." Blade made no effort to disguise the way he stared at her. "Give them another season of raids, fire, and rape and they'll hang the mayor for you."
Blade's eyes were on her when he said rape and she had to bite her lower lip to keep silent, trembling beneath his gaze.
"Then we shall give them another season." Sabre's deft hands guided her, firm and unyielding.
She closed her eyes and braced herself but Sabre sent Blade away, laughing softly at her fear. She felt the bed shift as he rose and dared to open her eyes. He stood at the window, curtains open, gazing out. She wished she had the courage to shove him through the glass. He glanced over his shoulder at her, lupine blue eyes shining with dark amusement. He looked away but she stayed on the bed, trembling and clutching the blankets to her, hiding beneath them.
"You've given me three fine children," Sabre said.
His words were warm but she did not fool her.
"Two daughters and a son," he continued.
She heard him walk back to the bed. She did not look up. She knew what he wanted and that it would be easier if she gave him what he craved before he took it by force. She let the blankets fall and slithered onto her belly, raising her hips and reaching back with both hands to present herself to him.
She had everything she wanted but wished she had never been born.
Two of the apprentices were banging their swords together in the sallé, displaying the rudiments of hack and slash. Three parts enthusiasm, one part skill, they were pale shadows of the Guild Warriors of the past, not even a Sorrowful Blade and Adelina had been at the low end of the skillset. She sighed and leaned on the wooden rail, calling out pointers and encouragement.
In the last few years, she had encountered a few individuals that might have restored the Guild to its old power and prestige but not one of them had been interested.
In Oakvale, she had encountered a brother and a sister that showed great skill and promise, Garrison and Cameron Cage. In Bowerstone, she had encountered two boys, cousins or brothers or something else, they would not say, that had filled her with hope and then crushed that hope when they refused to follow her. They would not even give her their names.
This is what the Guild has come to. I should be ashamed.
Some days, she lied to herself and swore to her reflection that nothing she did would have changed the inevitable. Sabre was King. Bow to his will or die. Some days, she faced the hard truth that she should have fought beside Scarlet Rose, her son, and his witch. She should have gone to Snowspire with Sparrowhawke and Whisper. She should have done something beyond sitting in the castle and training children into mere shadows of those that had come before.
So many regrets and nothing to be done about any of them.
She heard the gaggle of courtiers and the false laughter of the parasites that clung to the Prince and the Princesses. Straightening and ordering her apprentices to stop, she turned and bowed to the approaching royals.
Prince Talon, heir and eldest of the Royal Brood, wore black leathers and one of his father's swords, an obsidian longsword with two augmentations melded into it, fire and lightning. He had his father's features, the haughty and handsome cast to his features and the ink black hair. His eyes were closer to his mother's clear bluish gray than his father's dark blue. Tall and strong, he had been trained by his father and by Blade.
Princess Eliana and Princess Liara were twins, three years younger than Prince Talon. They had their father's dark coloring, raven hair and dark blue eyes. Their forms were pleasant, not too full or soft like their mother but with womanly curves and rounded breasts. They wore quartered skirts with leather pants beneath, boots, and bodices, all in shades of black and red.
"![G o o d [Good]](/emoticons/g_o_o_d.gif)
morning," Briar Rose said, meeting their eyes boldly. "It is an honor to stand before you."
The three royals were surrounded by the sons and daughters of wealthy merchants, mayors, and of the new aristocracy. Simpering sycophants and desperate to earn favor, they looked down their noses at her. She placidly returned their looks, her eyes depthless as the sea and twice as mysterious. She took comfort in the knowledge that she could slay them all with hardly an effort and ignored their disdainful gazes.
"Are any of your apprentices worthy of the Royal Guard," Prince Talon asked.
Briar Rose shrugged. "It is too early to tell," she said. "Some have shown promise but it will be years before any are ready for the oaths or the Seal."
Prince Talon leaned against the rail, his back to the apprentices, eyes too sharp and knowing. "In the last ten years, none of your apprentices have earned the Seal."
"Guild Warriors are rare," she countered. "If your father wanted another generation, he should have left more of them alive to breed."
Shocked silence descended over the flock of colorful sycophants and the two Princesses advanced a step. They had been trained, just as Talon had, and Briar Rose wondered if the three of them would attempt to kill her today but Talon laughed. The sycophants stared at him but his sisters retreated that same step and the violence hanging over them dissipated.
"I suppose he should have. I've heard many tales about Whisper and the Sorrowful Blade. By all accounts, both were inspirational beauties and quite skilled on their knees." He gave her an altogether uncomfortable look, speculative, undressing her with his gaze alone. "But those tales do not mention you, Briar Rose."
"Your father never had the pleasure of me," she said.
Something in his eyes told her that he meant to and that thought set her heart hammering against her ribs but not with desire. She had none for this prince nor his father.
"Pity that," he said. "You of all people should know how important it is to breed. Perhaps you should have whelped your own brats to bolster the Guild numbers."
The silence stretched but the Prince chose to end the moment, turning and striding away, taking his sisters and their flock of courtiers with them. Turning back to her apprentices, Briar Rose shivered despite the heat of the day.
So many regrets...
Adelina the Sorrowful Blade carried so many regrets.
She should never have crowned Sabre. She should never have allowed Sparrowhawke and Whisper to travel on Sabre's business to Snowspire. She should never have trusted her mother's safety, her brother's safety, to Sabre. She should have killed him when he slumbered beside her, all those times Sabre had slept so peacefully after taking her. But she did not regret bearing his child.
There was no doubt that Hawke was Sabre's son.
Hawke had his father's eyes in a face that was more hers than Sabre. She watched the children she had taken in, the heirs of the bloodlines that carried the power of the Guild: Garrison and Cameron Cage, Twinblade's children by one of the female bandits that had fought for him; Sparrow, the younger sister of Raven, who had been her brother's Guild Trained sorceress; Kestrel, her brother, fathered in rape by the Bloodraven; and her darling son, Hawke.
In the days before Sabre's reign, she had helped shake Albion with four trusted friends, five after Blade had joined them. In the days to come, she would lead and guide these five against Sabre. Her lament carved into his bones, his crown taken, his dreams burned to ash, she would see Sabre dead.
No matter the cost.
She turned away from the window and looked around the house. It had seen better days but it was hers now. It had cost a fortune but she counted every coin as well spent. On the bannister, she traced her name and the names of her friends, even Sabre's, remembering the day they had carved them there. She walked up the stairs and into the Master Bedroom, remembering the wild carnality that had filled the chamber.
I plot your death in the house you once owned, old friend. I dream your death in the bed we all shared, old lover. I train my fighters with all the tricks you ever showed me, snake. You'll get what we served Maze. You'll get what I gave the Bloodraven.
She reached beneath the bed and closed her hand around the hild of the Betrayer's Blade. She had thrown fortunes into the fountains at the Temple of Avo, buying blessings, buying youth, buying time. Still young, still strong, she unsheathed the blade.
I'll give you fire and blood.
"Mistress?"
She turned and looked at the young woman standing in the door behind her. "What is it, Sparrow?"
Sparrow wore her blonde hair in braids and her blue eyes were the color of the deep sea before a storm. A gold stud pierced her upper lip near the right corner and small gold hoops pierced both her ears. "We located the cellar entrance."
"."
Adelina followed the girl into the back of the house and into the cluster of trees. The boys had been digging and she looked down at the rotted boards. At her nod, the boys pried them up, revealing the stone steps, covered in moss, that led down to the secret cellar her friends had dug out, back before things went sour, before she knew Maze had betrayed her. She led the way down and shivered as the webs broke across her face. Following her down the steps, Hawke raised the lantern higher and illuminated the small room.
Dank and musty, rank air tickling her nose with rot and decay, she allowed herself a smile. The weapons had been too powerful to risk falling into the wrong hands, too powerful for Sabre to risk giving them to any of his followers, too powerful to destroy. So they were hidden away, kept safe for any future need.
Did you think I did not know? Did you think no one whispered about it to me in the dark? Did you think that the secrets shared with Thorn and Sparrowhawke did not find their way to me?
She opened the first chest and lifted the first leather wrapped bundle from its depths. Unwrapping it slowly, she revealed the Dollmaster's Mace. Her breath caught in her throat and she laid it back in the chest, on the other leather wrapped weapons.
"Take them upstairs," she said softly. "Hide them in the house and seal up the cellar."
She rose to her feet and stepped on a spider that scuttled past her foot. None of the weapons were a match for Avo's Tear and she did not know a sorcerer powerful enough to summon the Sword of Aeons but they would be enough. She had known Sabre since he was a boy, had studied him as a man, and knew better than to challenge him directly. She had waited far too long for her revenge to rush it at the last moment.
He needed to suffer.
Sabre gazed down at the Map Table.
No quest cards littered its surface, no Guild Warriors clamored around it. He ran his hands over the contoured surface of the table, tracing the mountains of Knothole Glade and tracing the path to the Arena with his fingertip. The apprentices no longer lived in the castle, relegated to barracks built against the west wall of the keep. Briar Rose lived in the Tower of Maze, where he could keep an eye on her at all times. Sometimes, he thought he saw the faces of those long dead on the guards that patrolled his grounds, Sparrowhawke and Thorn for the most part, sometimes the Bloodraven.
The Seer tells me that an old friend is coming to kill me.
He traced the contours of the path through the Darkwood.
She tells me that my sins will send me to rot in my grave.
He touched the small town on the cliffs above Oakvale, Twinblade's Dell.
But I've killed all my old friends and she told me it wasn't Blade.
He turned away from the table when the doors opened and a dozen guards marched three dozen slaves into the castle. He smiled as he moved down the line, gazing at the pretty girls that trembled in their chains. Here was a Whisper, and there was a Sorrowful Blade.
"Wash them and take them to my chambers," he commanded.
Then he turned his attention back to the Map Table, troubled by the Seer's words and trying to remember anyone who might have survived his purge.
Dear angel, where are your warming wings tonight? It's so cold outside. Won't you hold me for a while? And angel, I feel alone and unalive. The night is frozen and these tears have stung my eyes.