The King's Own (2006)
(The second book in the Borderlands series)
A novel by Lorna Freeman
To my sisters:
Marcia, Joy, Halleigh, Sandra, and Adia.
All y’all are brats, but I
love you anyway.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Again, this was not a solitary effort. Eileen Austen, Trai Cartwright, David Delbourgh, Chris Kern, and Teresa Rhyne all had a hand in this. As did Tod Goldberg, who patiently corrected my bearings until I found my footing and my way. Thank you, everyone, for the insights, support, and bops on the head when needed.
Prologue
When I was a child, my father was asked to head the trade council in our Weald—a great honor as humans were viewed with deep suspicion in the Border. (We were thought light-fingered as we’d pilfered one kingdom already.) Despite his drawbacks, however, Da not only managed to guide the council in developing a well-considered plan, but also in implementing it in a reasoned manner, to the benefit of all in the Weald. As the Weald’s general council had a hard time agreeing on the placement of privies, it was considered a resounding success. Da’s reward was more councils.
Chapter One
“Alas,” Lady Alys cried, her long blond braids spilling about her as she turned from her mirror and collapsed on her daybed. Her nurse thrust past the messenger to clump to her side and start chafing her hand. “Alas and alack,” Alys cried again, allowing the just-delivered letter clasped in her other hand to fall to the floor. The messenger, stumbling from the nurse’s push, dropped his carrypouch with a hollow thump and tinkle as his possessions burst from it. He fell to his hands and knees to gather them up, his backside waving high in the air.
Alys tried once more, raising her voice. “Alas! My sweet Dillem has answered his liege’s summons to help fight the wicked Lord Morul.”
The nurse, still rubbing Alys’ hand, leaned forward and made soothing noises of sweet Dillem’s fighting prowess, saying that he would soon return safe and sound to wed m’lady.
“No, no,” Alys loudly moaned, moving so that she could see around her nurse. “You don’t understand.” She tried to lift her hand but the nurse still had it. After a brief tug of war, Alys regained possession and pressed the back of her wrist against her brow. “Morul has entreated the northern darkness—”
The crowd around the street players’ makeshift stage stirred, casting uneasy looks our way. Lady Alys, sensing that she was losing her audience, began to shout.
“The northern darkness,
born of myth, magic and rune,
bell and blood, candle and book,
binds hell to its bidding—”
Lady Alys broke off in mid-declaim as the crowd shifted once more, opening a path between her and us. Her eyes flitted over Troopers Jeffen and Arlis’ more regular appearance to alight briefly on my tabard, with its new lieutenant’s insignia, before moving on to my waist-length braid with my feather attached to it, the butterflies on my shoulder and finally coming to rest on the plain, tall ash staff I carried. All of it reeking of the myth, magic and rune that made up the kingdom of Iversterre’s northern neighbor, the Border. Wanting in on the act, the wind eddied around me for a moment, fluttering the feather and the butterflies’ wings.
The life of a street player was a hard one. Besides the ever-present threats of overripe vegetables and small dead animals, official tolerance was always chancy, and to insult those in power was to live very dangerously. Alys shrank back on her daybed, while the nurse and messenger decided that there was no need for them to be there as this was really m’lady’s scene. They exited stage left. A moment later the curtain rang down and an announcement came from behind it that, due to unforeseen circumstances, the remainder of the morning’s performance was canceled.
“Lieutenant Lord Rabbit,” Jeffen said, sighing. “Drama-bane and play-killer.” Tucking his cloak about him, he turned from the stage. Arlis and I followed, heading for one of the streets leading from what the town’s aldermen, in a burst of grandiosity, named Theater Square. It boasted one playhouse.
I said nothing, more concerned with what new rumors would arise to join the thousands of others that whirled around Freston. We had arrived yesterday afternoon, returning from the Border accompanied by folk most in Iversterre believed only existed in children’s stories and dramas like the one that had just so abruptly ended. Add to the mix the arrival and determined stay of King Jusson IV, and the small town was rocking and reeling like one of the fire peaks in the Upper Reaches.
The wind, however, whipped around me, bringing with it the fragrance of harvest. It was going to be a good one; the fields were full to bursting and fall fruit hung heavy on trees. Harvestide was fast approaching, the celebration of the last gathering of the year. The wind murmured, telling me of acorn stashes and birds flying south, before taking off to flutter ribbons tied around lampposts and romp among the people in the square. My face eased into a smile as I watched, taking in the familiar sights, sounds and smells.
Home.
At least, home for the last five years.
I was born and raised in the Border, a loose association of fae, fantastic beasts and other like persons, existing in contentious unity to the north of the kingdom of Iversterre. Once the People were spread down to the southern seas in a network of city-states, small fiefdoms, territories, factions, tribes and clans, all gleefully crossing and double-crossing each other as they played the fae version of king of the hill. It was a golden age of shifting alliances, treachery and betrayal. Then one day humans appeared and began their own game of push—sometimes by guile, sometimes by bloody force—and the People were displaced bit by bit, until they looked up to find that not only had they been shoved off the hill, but they’d been thrust to the edge of what was once all theirs. More than a little upset, they set aside their differences during the last war of acquisition started by the human kingdom and, for the first time, the humans faced a united opponent. Iversterre’s Royal Army was beaten silly, with the Border Army doing a victory dance on the remains.
However, lost wars and the People’s dislike of humans didn’t deter my parents, Lord Rafe ibn Chause and Lady Hilga eso Flavan, from leaving the land of their birth and settling in a Border back province. Changing their names to Two Trees and Lark, they turned farmers and weavers, and bore eight children in between crops, all the while believing that if they left the fae alone, the fae would leave them alone. They were right. But that was mainly because my ma and da had the good fortune to settle in Dragoness Moraina’s territory—and honored Moraina did not like fuss and botheration. Unless she herself was causing it.
Despite being named Rabbit, I am human. And, while human, I grew up surrounded by the fae. I had my share of chores—plowing fields, mucking out barns, and all the other things that made farm life interesting—but I also spent spring afternoons learning forest craft from a tree sprite, summer days swimming with river otters, winter nights listening to guesting bards’ tales of swords and sorcery. It was my golden age of childhood.
But when I entered my adolescence it became apparent that I was mage-born and my parents apprenticed me to Magus Kareste. A short time later, I ran away to Iversterre and became a horse soldier in the Royal Army of King Jusson IV. I never looked back—until last spring, when my past caught up with me with all the finesse of a bull in rut.
It was during a routine patrol last spring that my troop became lost in the mountains above Freston. Scouting for a way back to the garrison, I came upon Laurel, a mountain cat and head of the Faena. Next I knew, I had the feather I now wore in my braid, the symbol of a covenant that swept me and my troop out of Freston to the Royal City of Iversly, and then to the Border and the court of His Grace, Loran the Fyrst.