The Queen of Death

16

Kandler felt his hand on the pommel of his fangsword, and he wondered how it had gotten there. He glared at Ledenstrae. “Forget it,” he said. “Esprina left her to me.”

The elf smiled back at him. “You believe you have a choice in the matter. How amusing.”

Sallah put her hand atop Kandler’s, keeping him from drawing the weapon. He turned to spit something spiteful at her, but when he did he saw the look in her eyes. His voice caught in his throat, and he closed his mouth.

Sallah cleared her throat and spoke to Ledenstrae. “It’s not clear that allowing you to take Esprë would be in her best interests. Kandler loves your daughter very much, and he only wants to see her happy and well. He believes that those purposes would best be served by keeping her with him.”

Ledenstrae rubbed his chin. “Such a man who would let his mate speak for him is not one whose words I can take seriously.”

Kandler started to curse at the elf, but Sallah shut him up with a finger across his lips. In frustration, he looked to Burch, but the shifter didn’t notice. He was too busy staring at the decorative bits of furniture, artwork, and tightly trimmed foliage that screened the room and the balcony beyond off from the outside world.

“I’m surprised that one who speaks with so many invectives would be given a post as an ambassador, unless, of course, the aim of Aerenal is to plunge its offspring nation into war with its neighbors.”

Ledenstrae smiled. “The title ‘ambassador’ is only a ceremonial one, I’m afraid, given to any member of my family who cares to travel beyond the shores of fair Aerenal. I have no direct political duties. I am only here to recover what is rightfully mine.”

“Don’t you mean ‘who’?” Kandler said. “ ‘Who’ is rightfully yours?”

Ledenstrae bared his teeth, which were as even as the edge of a book. “The girl is of my blood. In the absence of her mother, I am her only family. Now that I have found her again, I wish to reassert my claim on her, and splitting definitions in your barbaric tongue will not dissuade me from the rightfulness of my aims.”

Kandler stepped toward Ledenstrae now, angling away from Sallah as he spoke. “Where have you been for the past few decades? Have you even been looking for her? Where were you for the past four years while I raised her on my own? Where were you when her mother died?”

Ledenstrae’s ivory cheeks flushed pink, although Kandler could not tell if this effect was rooted in anger or shame. “You have your point of view, of course, and you deserve my thanks for taking care of my daughter when I was not available to do so myself. Know, though, that I would have been with her every day since her birth had her mother not stolen her away from me.”

“Escaped from you is more like it,” said Kandler. “You think Esprina never told me how you treated her?”

Ledenstrae pursed his lips. “Yes, I would like to hear that story someday. I suspect her point of view deviates sharply from reality, but that always was one of her more egregious flaws. I do hope that penchant for exaggeration hasn’t been passed down to our daughter. If it has, I suppose I shall have to cure her of it.”

“You got any other children?” Burch asked, his eyes still scanning their surroundings.

The elf stared at the shifter as if contemplating whether or not speaking to Burch was beneath him. He followed Burch’s eyes around the room, then seemed to decide that in a foreign land he could afford to be more liberal with his words.

“Esprë is my only offspring,” Ledenstrae said. “Children are rare in Aerenal. With as long as we live, if we bred like humans or shifters the entire continent would be overrun in no time.”

“Children’s rarity is what makes them so valuable,” Sallah said.

The elf gave her an approving nod. “The Undying Court carefully selects breeding partners to produce the finest possible children. Only the greatest of the great achieve the goal we all wish for ourselves, to ascend to the Undying Court and exist with the other heroes who have gone before us into immortality.”

“Does being a father who’s lost a daughter harm your chances?” said Kandler.

“There is that,” Ledenstrae said. “It is far from the only reason I wish to reunite with my daughter.” The elf paused for a moment before continuing. “When I heard of the Day of Mourning, I feared that Esprina and Esprë had been consumed in it. Reports in Aerenal indicated that there were no survivors, and since I knew them both to be living in Gyre at the time, I knew there would be little chance that they had survived.

“I wanted to launch an investigation of my own at the time, in the slim hopes of locating them, but the Last War still raged. Such an undertaking would have been hazardous in the extreme. I would have risked it, but it seemed clear that no one in Cyre had survived.

“I consulted with mystics of all sorts, but none of them were able to find a trace of Esprina or Esprë at the time. Perhaps this was due to some sort of magical disruption emanating from the Mourning, but at the time I believed the results. They merely confirmed my worst fears.

“I mourned for my daughter and yes, even my wife. Despite what she may have told you”—the elf looked at Kandler—“our marriage never ended. In the eyes of the Undying Court, we were matched for all time, and no dalliance with a member of a lesser race could undo that.”

Kandler checked his rage himself this time. He could tell the elf meant to provoke him, and he refused to give Ledenstrae the satisfaction. He glanced at Sallah and Burch instead.

Sallah smiled at him in a way that made his heart hurt. Despite the fact that they would part soon and likely forever, he would have preferred to spare her watching him spar with his wife’s first husband.

Burch caught his eye with a hand signal. The shifter had spotted at least four guards hiding somewhere in the room or on the balcony, perhaps more.

Kandler gave the signal to sit tight. He should have realized that a noble elf like Ledenstrae would never risk death at his hands by failing to protect himself. The elf probably had been hoping Kandler would attack him, giving the guards an excuse to chop him to pieces. With Kandler dead, that would make his claim as Esprë’s father all the stronger.

Kandler wondered why the elf hadn’t just killed him straight out. He supposed that Ledenstrae’s influence here in Aerie might not be enough to cover up a cold-blooded murder. If so, then getting out of here with Esprë wasn’t as hopeless a cause at it had seemed.

“Why now?” Kandler asked, suspicious. “What made you come searching for Esprë now? What are the chances that you’d end up waiting for us here, right in our path?” The elf nodded sagely. “These are all fine questions. To answer: Now seemed like the right time. Certain information came to me that Esprë was, in fact, alive and well, and I set out to find her. As for how I managed to track you down, I’ll admit I had a bit of help with that. An old friend of the family contacted me after running into you recently and alerted me to Esprë’s plight. Fortunately, we have a great deal of influence in Shae Cairdal, and I was able to arrange for transport here immediately.”

Kandler stared at the elf. Who could have tipped Ledenstrae off to their whereabouts? The Lord of Blades or his lieutenant Bastard? Vol? Ikar the Black? The Captain of Bones?

Even if any of them had, how would Ledenstrae have known that they were headed here? Kandler hadn’t made the decision to head south until after they’d survived the battle with Nithkorrh and Ibrido.

There could only be one person.

“That changeling bitch,” he said. “She sold us out to you. She went from one mistress to another.”

Ledenstrae grinned, pulled back his thin, pale lips to reveal sharp, white teeth. “I’m sure I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said. “You must feel surrounded by traitors on all sides. Perhaps your lady knight there betrayed you so she could serve her own cause?”

Kandler glanced at Sallah, who stood scowling at the elf.

When she noticed the justicar watching her, she snorted in disgust. “Could you really think such a thing of me?”

The elf giggled. “Perhaps it was your shifter friend there instead. How well do you really know him anyhow? He’s barely more than a wild beast, is he not?” He gave Burch a cold look. “I’ve heard of curs turning on their masters.”

Burch stared at Ledenstrae for a moment then barked at him. The elf flinched back in fear, and the shifter chuckled. He stopped when he saw the murderous look on Kandler’s face as he glared at the elf.

“Who was it?” Kandler demanded.

A figure sauntered in from the balcony then, one whom Kandler recognized instantly. The emaciated, paper-skinned elf stood there before him and took the arm that Ledenstrae kindly offered to her. Her fine robes of green and blue silk flowed around her, billowing in a gentle breeze. She opened her cut-like mouth and smiled so wide that Kandler feared her knife-sharp cheekbones might slice through her skin. Madness and glee danced in her sunken eyes.

“Majeeda,” Kandler said, his voice tight and low with shock.