“Why are you staring?” Prince Gethin of Eastmark’s voice was colored with a mixture of teenage angst and royal pique.
Jonmarc shrugged. “Because the last man I saw with that marking ordered my execution.”
To Jonmarc’s surprise, Gethin made a show of spitting to the side and grinding his spittle under his heel in a gesture of contempt, a gesture accompanied by a rather vile curse in Markian. Jonmarc’s Markian was rusty, but he had to admit that he remembered the curses pretty well.
“
Uncle
Alcion was a traitor,” Gethin said, contempt thick on the family relationship. “He wanted to supplant my grandfather, King Radomar. Your defiance stopped him. The mark means that I’m third in line to the throne,
as it did for Alcion. It relates me to my father, not to that worthless traitor scum.”
“I know. But… let’s just say that Alcion made a lasting impression on me.” Jonmarc’s tone was wry, but as they stood in the salle at Lienholt Palace in Principality, the memories of that other time more than a decade before seemed very near. Shirtless for their fight, Jonmarc knew that Gethin could see the array of scars that covered his chest and back. Most people noticed four: a long scar that ran from behind one ear down under his collar, the faint parallel scars left from a Nargi fight slave collar, the puckered skin of a bad burn across his back, and twin pink bite marks on his shoulder, from a renegade
vayash moru
.
But there were more, many more. Raised welts covered his back, a “souvenir” from a flogging in Nargi. A thin white scar on his abdomen where he had been run through with a sword, a wound that would have been fatal without the magic of both Carina and Tris Drayke. High on his chest a discolored line of skin was the reminder of an assassin’s poisoned dagger. And just below that, the mark of the Sacred Lady was branded onto his skin, a reminder of a vow sworn to Istra, the Dark Lady. Dozens of other scars from fights too numerous to mention covered his arms, hands, chest, and back. With his shirt on, Jonmarc Vahanian was a handsome man with dark brown eyes, shoulder-length brown hair, and a wicked, lopsided grin. Shirtless, he knew that people saw only the scars.
“Some of those are because of Alcion, aren’t they?” Gethin’s voice was quiet, and in it, Jonmarc heard a mix of shame and fascination.
“Yeah. A lot of them, actually. Especially the burn on my shoulder. Too bad for Alcion, the barn he locked me in
and set on fire didn’t actually kill me.” The screams of the other villagers who weren’t so lucky still haunted his dreams.
“My father regards you as a great hero,” Gethin said, and Jonmarc heard honest regard in the prince’s voice. “He saw you fight a magicked monster at King Drayke’s wedding. He told me that you fight in the Eastmark style as well as any of our best warriors. I didn’t believe him.” The young man had the grace to look rueful as he glanced down at the fresh sword cuts on his arm and chest. “I do now.”
Jonmarc drew a cup of water from a bucket near the wall and handed it to Gethin. Then he dug two strips of cloth out of a box and began to bind up the prince’s wounds. “You fight well,” Jonmarc replied, choosing to ignore the compliments rather than search for words to acknowledge them. “You’re salle trained, but you’ve seen some battle, haven’t you?”
Gethin’s chagrin at being bested wasn’t easily mollified, but he nodded. “Some. I was sent to the army at fourteen, and went on my first campaign against raiders at sixteen. I’ve been out a few times since then. It’s all the campaigning there’s been—until now.” He managed to brighten. “Although if I have to lose in the salle, it’s no shame to lose to you, of all people.” He sighed. “You could have hamstrung me with that move, couldn’t you?”
Jonmarc chuckled. “It’s a street move that I like to use on all the young princes I end up having to train right before we go into battle against overwhelmingly bad odds.”
Gethin frowned. “You do a lot of this sort of thing?” His Markian accent made his words clipped and gave his vowels a strange turn. The accent stood out, even in Principality’s polyglot mix of peoples.
“Actually, only once before. An old mercenary friend of mine helped three young noblemen escape with their lives from Jared the Usurper. One of them, a prince who was your age at the time, wasn’t fortunate enough to have even your battle experience. I will say, he improved quite a bit by the time it counted.”
Gethin gave him a dry smile. “Might that unlucky prince have been Martris Drayke?”
Jonmarc nodded. “Tris was as green as grass back then when it came to real fighting. Not his fault: Margolan hadn’t been to war in a generation, and his salle training had been mostly for sparring, not for real battle. I’ll tell you what I told them: My ‘technique’ was learned one street fight at a time, which is the only way I know how to teach anyone. Oh, and did I mention—there are no rules.”
Gethin smiled widely. “We have a saying,” he began, and then lapsed into Markian with a look that dared Jonmarc to translate.
“A scar at the hand of a master brings no shame,” Jonmarc interpreted dryly. “I know I speak Markian with a Borderlands accent, but when I was your age, I was a Principality merc hired into the Eastmark army and well on my way to becoming a senior officer. Until the court martial.”
Gethin shouldered gingerly into his shirt, and Jonmarc worried for a moment that he had scored more deeply than he intended. But the look on Gethin’s face kept him from inquiring. He had no desire to batter the prince’s pride any more than his loss in the salle had already done. Despite himself, Jonmarc found that he liked the young man.
He put on his shirt and turned, only to find Gethin
looking at him as if debating whether or not to speak. Jonmarc raised an eyebrow, inviting comment.
“You’ve known Princess Berwyn for a while, haven’t you?” Suddenly, Gethin sounded every bit as young as his years. Whatever assurance Gethin had in his sword skills and his royal lineage, he seemed flustered by his new role as a peace-offering groom for a politically arranged marriage. For Jonmarc in his position as Champion for the princess, that boded well.
“I met Berry when we’d all been captured by slavers who’d been sent by Jared to hunt down Tris Drayke,” Jonmarc replied, dipping a cup of water for himself. He took a long drink. “They’d captured Berry when she had traveled into Margolan to visit family, but they didn’t know they had nabbed a princess. They thought she might be noble, and that someone might pay a ransom.” He chuckled. “They got more than they bargained for.”
“She’s a fighter?” Gethin’s voice revealed skepticism.
“Not exactly, although Berry understood the ‘no rules’ part before I ever met her. She slipped me a blade, poisoned the slavers with bad mushrooms in their stew, scalded the leader with a pot of hot soup, and in a brawl to the death with slavers, vengeful ghosts, and more magic than I care to remember, she was hopping from ledge to ledge dropping boulders on their heads.”
Gethin smiled, and Jonmarc guessed the other was forming a mental picture of the events. “Then I’ll try not to make her angry,” he said with a grin. Just as quickly, he grew serious.
“I must admit, my lessons were a bit thin on how to woo a headstrong bride for a marriage of necessity.” Gethin looked decidedly uncomfortable. “But just in the
short time I’ve been here, I can see that Princess Berwyn won’t be forced into something she doesn’t want.”
“Look, Gethin, I’m really not the best person to ask for advice about women,” Jonmarc said, setting his cup aside. “My way of winning over Carina involved nearly getting myself beaten to death by a Nargi commander who was overdue for revenge.”
“Truly?”
Jonmarc grimaced. “Yeah. Truly. So as I said, I’m maybe not the best person to consult.”
“I have no one else.” Jonmarc met his eyes and saw Gethin the young man, and not the self-assured Eastmark prince.
“All right,” Jonmarc said and sighed. “Ask. But it doesn’t mean I know any answers.”
Gethin hesitated, and Jonmarc had a flash of insight. Gethin had been presented as a trophy groom to seal an alliance, accompanied by priests, ambassadors, and staff. None of his companions would be suitable for personal questions. “Am I correct in guessing that Princess Berwyn didn’t know about the pact our fathers made—at least, not about me?”
“She knew they were working on an alliance. She didn’t know it involved marriage.”
Gethin sighed. “Is there a rival? Is her heart already taken?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
At that, Gethin relaxed, just a bit. “That’s for the best. I left no one behind, either. Perhaps that, at least, is in our favor.” He dared to meet Jonmarc’s eyes. “I’ve seen quite a few arranged marriages at court. At best, the couple grows fond of each other. Most merely tolerate a charade where
each goes separate ways. At worst, they spend the rest of their lives ripping each other to shreds.” He looked away. “I’m the extra heir. That meant chances were high that I would be sent somewhere for a political marriage. I’ve always hoped to manage the best of the three options, if love isn’t one of the choices.”
“Marrying for love almost started two wars in recent memory,” Jonmarc noted. “From what I’ve heard, your grandfather didn’t take kindly to your aunt eloping with Donelan.”
Gethin grimaced. “No, he didn’t. And the rules that forbade the royal family to marry outsiders were struck down by my father, as soon as he took the throne, in Aunt Viata’s memory.”
“But because your grandfather was spoiling for war, Tris’s father agreed to an arranged marriage between his heir and the heir to Isencroft’s throne, just to put Eastmark on notice. It managed to stop that war, but it created a real mess when Kiara ended up betrothed to Jared the Usurper and then sided with Tris.”
“And if our intelligence is correct, Isencroft is on the brink of civil war over having a shared throne and a mixed-blood heir.” Gethin closed his eyes and shook his head. “And people actually believe that the royal family can do as they please.”
“What do you think I can tell you?”
“I believe that Berwyn and I will do our duty to our kingdoms, although she’ll make me prove myself to her, as is her right,” Gethin said, beginning to pace. “But can I win her heart?”
Jonmarc chuckled. “Berry was quite the matchmaker, trying to pair up Tris and Kiara as well as Carina and me.
So I suspect she harbors some hope of an agreeable match. I’m not the best person to ask about winning hearts, but it’s a good start to win her respect. She can’t stand pretense or arrogance. She can forgive mistakes but not lies. And she has a wicked sense of humor.”
“I’m relieved to find that she’s not one of those fragile noble girls,” Gethin confessed. “You know something of Eastmark. We train our princesses just as hard as our princes in the sword.”
“I found that out from a turn or two in the salle with Kiara,” Jonmarc said with a chuckle. “She held her own with me, and she said it was her mother’s training.”
Gethin looked down. “I know Viata only from my father’s stories of her. He was much younger, and he mourned when grandfather banished her. When father took the throne, he found a court artist who remembered Viata and commissioned portraits of her. So in a way, she returned to the palace, at least in memory. I grew up hearing his stories about her and thinking how strong and brave she must have been to defy grandfather. When I was a child, I was silly enough to hope that I would find a beautiful, headstrong princess like Viata.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place.” Jonmarc watched Gethin, surprised that the prince would be so open. That honesty, along with Gethin’s sword skills, raised Jonmarc’s opinion of the young man and made him somewhat more comfortable with the shaky alliance. “Berry’s got a lot of fire, and she has a good head on her shoulders. She needs someone who’ll admire that and support her, instead of trying to get the upper hand.”
“I’ve thought a lot about Aunt Viata lately, because what happened back then is a great deal of the reason that
I’m here, now.” Gethin walked to the salle window and looked out toward the eastern horizon. “Eastmark has never willingly given one of its royal family for an alliance. Father’s taken a risk with this. There are some among the nobles who still agree with grandfather’s ways. They don’t want to see our blood ‘polluted’ by outsiders,” he said scornfully.
“
Sathirinim
,” Jonmarc murmured. The term meant “corpse flesh,” and it was the view of many of Eastmark’s older leaders that the pallor of outsiders’ skin was evidence of deeper inferiority.
Gethin’s head snapped up. “Don’t use that word! Father made it a crime to say it, and he’s done his best to root it out wherever he could from law and custom. Nothing enrages him more, not even blasphemy.”
“But old ways die hard,” Jonmarc replied, understanding Gethin’s meaning. “Kalcen’s gone out on a limb sending you here. It’s the final defiance against what King Radomar did to his sister, isn’t it? And not everybody likes it.”
Gethin sighed. “No, they don’t. If it doesn’t go well, if the offering were to be refused…”
Kalcen would lose face among his nobles, and that can be fatal
, Jonmarc said to himself, mentally finishing the sentence that Gethin left unsaid. “I think I understand. Principality is used to a mix of people. Hell, I met mercs from places beyond the Winter Kingdoms. As I recall, there were more than a few Eastmark soldiers who found their way across the border and settled down with Principality women, no matter what the old king thought. On the other hand, some of the mercs noticed that their ‘bad blood’ was good enough to spill on Eastmark battlefields,
but not good enough to win them an Eastmark woman. They’ll be scratching their heads over why you’re here, that’s for sure.”