Текст книги "Irregulars "
Автор книги: Astrid Amara
Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
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Текущая страница: 31 (всего у книги 32 страниц)
Chapter Nine
A stinging salt rain lashed Henry as he raced for the shelter of an overhang. The green-garbed assassins Cethur Greine had sent to retrieve Jason surrounded and led him as they had for the entire day’s journey through archaic portals, across the ragged sea cliffs, and now up through the dim twilight to the white walls of the high king’s citadel.
They sneered at the pelting rain. Their commander—a lustrous-skinned, dark-haired bastard who addressed Henry obsequiously in English but referred to him as miolra, vermin, in his own tongue—caught hold of Henry by the hood of his red sweat jacket.
“You cannot stop here, young prince,” the commander told him in thickly accented English. “We must climb to the parapet wall and cross over to the Hall of the Throne before the King’s Star rises.”
“Why?” Henry asked because Jason would have. He already knew the answer—not that these men would tell him the truth. They planned to murder him under cover of darkness, before word could spread across the Tuatha Dé Dannan Islands that the prince had returned to the sidhe realm.
His armed escorts played at polite only because it suited them not to have to drag him kicking and howling up the high walls before them. And Henry went along because every minute he kept them fooled meant a greater distance for Jason to put between himself and Greine.
Jason might have reached Atlantis by now. Princess would hate the water but love to chase the flying fish.
Overhead lightning cracked at the darkening sky and Henry heard storm waves breaking against the cliffs below.
“You must take part in the ceremony of your father’s coronation.” The commander raised his voice to carry over the sudden crash of thunder. His gaze moved over the glamour of Jason’s face as if he were sizing him up for sandwich meat.
“It would be easier for me to keep pace with you if you removed these bracelets.” Henry held out his wrists, displaying the iron manacles and engraved chains that linked them. The binding spells etched into the iron unnerved him. He’d seen them before, written on leather restraints and a bronze blade. Under any other circumstances Henry would never have submitted to the power of these iron manacles—but he’d needed Greine’s men to take him before Jason woke.
“They are necessary for the ceremony,” the commander informed him.
Yeah, Henry thought to himself. Necessary as a sack when you’re drowning kittens.
The man on Henry’s left—a scarred sidhe who Henry guessed was old enough to just remember the earthly realm—added, almost apologetically, “We couldn’t remove them in any case, my prince. Your father holds the key. You are his to bind or set free.”
“We must move,” the commander stated and he shoved Henry towards a tower of weathered white stairs. Henry climbed and his keepers followed like hungry dogs.
Flurries of wind pelted Henry with rain as he rose to the spectacular heights of the outer parapet. He shuddered in his soaking clothes and swore under his breath. But even so the view before him momentarily absorbed him.
The Tuatha Dé Dannan controlled only a string of verdant islands in all the vastness of the faerie realm, but their audacious defiance of the violent, black sea besieging them testified to the magic at their command.
The high king’s alabaster citadel rose from bare stones and jutted over jagged cliffs like the prow of an immense ship. Its towers shot up as straight as vast masts topped with turrets for crows’ nests. Above every tower the famous storm banners, emblazoned with the high king’s gold crest, billowed in the wind and traced trails through the dark clouds.
Forty years ago, when Henry had last stood on the citadel walls, the high king had held the throne and those storm banners had ensnared the rage of typhoons and hurricanes, raising the entire island so that it sailed across the seas. In the lee of the citadel, the island cities of the Tuatha Dé Dannan, with their exposed fields and golden orchards, had sheltered in perpetual summer.
But now the high king’s storm banners merely dragged wind and drizzle down upon their own towers while the stone galleon of the citadel steadily succumbed to gravity and the sea.
Through the rain and gloom, Henry took in the ocean’s conquests. Young mangroves sprouted up in flooded courtyards and the amphitheatres of the low-lying carnival district had become stagnant lagoons. Beyond the parapet, huge waves crashed and roared like conquering demons as they relentlessly eroded the citadel’s walls.
However, not all the kingdom’s magic foundered. Where plumes of sea spray reached the very heights of the white walls they broke into flights of doves.
“Now there’s a trick I wouldn’t want to see done with rabbits,” Henry commented as he leaned over the alabaster stonework of the parapet. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought for just a moment he’d seen figures down on the ragged rocks.
He edged further out for a better view and his six sidhe guards bristled like alarmed watchdogs. Their spears gleamed bright as lightning flashed over the dark sea. Again the commander caught the hood of Henry’s red sweat jacket.
“Young prince, you must come away from the edge. It is not safe.”
The impulse to show him just how unsafe it was flashed through Henry’s skull, but he resisted. Jason wasn’t likely to elbow a man off the parapet. So not only would it be a damn obvious giveaway but also it would probably result in Henry playing pincushion to five very long ivory spears. And that, in turn, would all too quickly end the entire charade.
“Sorry.” Henry met the commander’s stony gaze as if he were too guileless to recognize the disdain there. “I’ve just never seen anything so majestic,” Henry gushed.
Jason would have been furious at being played like such a chump, but there were advantages to being underestimated by men as well armed and experienced as these ones. And at this point Henry needed every advantage he could get.
The commander accepted his excuse, obviously expecting little of a youth raised by throwback humans too dim to master the simplest spells.
Thunder crashed through the sky.
“We must not keep your father waiting.” The commander nudged him onward. Henry went, shivering and working his frigid, stiff fingers against his shackles as inconspicuously as he could manage. He knew there wasn’t any point; he wasn’t going to get them off, but it wasn’t in his nature to quit. While he wore them he could not retreat into the shade lands; he was trapped here.
Despite Henry’s foot-dragging, they soon reached the broad stone staircase that led down to the wide courtyard of the Hall of the Throne. As they descended, Henry noted the large number of goblin mercenaries standing guard in the shadows of the ornamental flowering trees surrounding the hall.
Furtive figures peered from the tower windows surrounding the courtyard and below servants dressed in dull green liveries gawked at Henry as he drew near but averted their gazes when he looked back at them.
Then from some high place Henry heard a man sing out the first phrases of ‘the Song of the High King’s Return’.
“Blood of our true king,
Son blessed by the stone,
Even the storms will sing
Come claim your throne—”
Two wiry white goblins drew their scimitars and dashed across the courtyard into one of the many towers. Moments later, only the wind raised its voice to welcome Henry as he strode across the alabaster path to the golden doors of the Hall of the Throne. His guards trailed him with a wary tension in their movements.
Snow goblin mercenaries hauled the doors open and Henry had to shield his eyes with his shackled hands against the blaze of golden light that fell across him. The din of hundreds of voices burst over him only to be immediately silenced. Gathered on either side of the long gallery, nobles, courtiers, and ministers clothed in resplendent raiment stared at Henry.
“Son of Regent Cethur Greine, born of Princess Easnadh Naomh.” A goblin child, dressed as a page, announced Jason’s lineage and bowed before Henry. “Presenting Prince Lasair.”
Henry briefly wondered what Jason would have thought of being addressed as Prince Lasair. He probably would’ve been too disturbed by the thought that some man in a tower had just had his throat slit to even notice. Henry wasn’t particularly happy about that himself.
He glared across the sea of beautifully gowned and coifed sidhe. At the far end of the immense golden hall Cethur Greine brooded from atop the dark, decayed stones that had once been the shining gold throne of the high king. Without the Stone of Fal, the throne—like the citadel itself—was dying.
Goblin mercenaries flanked Greine and he returned Henry’s gaze with an expression that was like longing but more voracious. Phipps hadn’t lied. Greine strongly resembled Jason. Henry’s heart gave an unnerving kick as he stared into Greine’s dark eyes. Jason had obviously inherited his bronze skin, dark hair, and slim build from his father, but Henry had never seen Jason’s face light with a smile so imperious or cruel as Greine’s.
“At last.” Greine rose and held out his right hand. In his left he held an ivory knife. “Come to me, child.”
“Do not trust him, my prince,” the little goblin page whispered as Henry passed him. Then he bowed and backed away as Henry’s guards followed.
Henry crossed the Hall of the Throne with his head held high. On either side of him silk-robed courtiers and ministers sporting the jeweled rings of office averted their gaze. Not one of them protested; not one even whispered as much warning as the goblin page had. One woman covered her face with her hands and two men turned away, but all of them let “Jason” walk past to his death.
Henry hadn’t wanted to get angry—he hadn’t wanted to feel anything for fear he would betray himself—but as he glimpsed his reflection in the polished gold walls rage began to smolder inside him.
Because it was Jason who he saw striding past the assembled nobles of the Tuatha Dé Dannan. Slim, soaking wet, and barefoot, he looked too resolute to merit the iron shackles restraining his shivering arms. Too young to deserve the armed guards at his back or the goblins standing before him at the foot of Greine’s throne.
“Flesh of my flesh,” Greine addressed Henry, “your loyalty and life are mine to claim. For the sake of our kingdom I call upon you to submit—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Henry snapped. “You want to murder me, then come down and try, but don’t feed me bullshit about obedience and loyalty, Greine. You don’t even know what those words mean.”
Shocked gasps echoed through the hall and for just an instant Greine appeared too stunned by Henry’s outburst to respond. Far behind Henry someone stifled a nervous laugh.
Then Greine’s dismay turned to fury.
“Kill him!” Greine shouted.
With armed opponents both behind and ahead of him, Henry opted to go for Greine. If nothing else, he was going to ruin the regent’s white robes.
Henry took one of the goblins off guard, slamming his knee into the patch of soft flesh between its bone-hard legs. The goblin grunted and stumbled back, but others rushed forward.
He blocked a goblin’s blade with the chain of his shackles and then smashed the heavy iron manacles across the goblin’s skull. It dropped to the floor. Henry’s heart raced and sweat began to bead on his brow. He spat the name of pain into a third goblin’s red eyes and it fell, howling. The rest of the goblins retreated then.
On his black throne, Greine paled as Henry started for him.
“Kill him!” Greine roared.
Two goblins rushed him, one swinging a halberd and the other brandishing a scimitar. Henry lunged aside but still felt the halberd’s iron tip punch through his sweat jacket and graze his shoulder. He caught the shaft of the halberd and wrenched the goblin wielding it into the swinging blade of his comrade. The scimitar ripped through the goblin’s flank, spilling blood and bowels across the floor.
Henry’s hands were slick with sweat as he jerked the halberd from the fallen goblin’s dying grip. It wasn’t much of a weapon so long as Henry’s hands were shackled, but it put fear into the goblin mercenaries before him. Henry smelled it in their milky white sweat and saw it in their wide red eyes. He advanced and the goblin in front of him took half a step back.
For an instant Henry felt a rush of hope; he had only to reach Greine and it could be over. No one else would have to die.
Then two ivory spears harpooned him from behind. Pain ripped through his chest. One spearhead split Henry’s ribs and jutted through the front of his jacket. His lungs shuddered and suddenly he was breathing blood.
God, he hated getting it in the back.
“You stupid fuckers.” Henry spat a mouthful of blood at the nearest goblin. “You’ve trapped me here and now you’re all going to die with me.”
Wisps of white mist drifted from Henry’s body. Despite the blaze of gilded torches, the hall darkened. Bound by the iron shackles, he couldn’t escape into the shade lands, so now they came here to enfold him. Black rafts like rotting kelp drifted from the shadows and the air turned murky, cold, and acrid.
Henry stepped forward and the goblins before him broke ranks and pelted for the doors. But it was too late. The hungry dead were already descending. Choking screams suddenly filled the hall.
Henry dropped the halberd and staggered to the throne, dragging the ivory spears behind him. Greine stared at him in horror as he drew closer.
When Greine plunged his ivory knife into Henry’s chest, Henry hardly felt it for the numb cold spreading through him. He gripped Greine’s throat in both hands.
“No,” Greine gasped. “The kingdom is yours but have mercy on your father.”
Henry had neither the inclination nor the time to tell Greine that this was a mercy. He should have simply left him to the savage appetites of the hungry dead. But there was too much of Jason’s visage in Greine for Henry to bear the sight of that. Instead he strangled the life from Greine.
Greine’s wide-eyed corpse fell from the throne and Henry slumped to his knees. Darkness enfolded him, but it did not end his pain or the screams surrounding him.
Chapter Ten
Jason felt the difference the moment he stepped out from the rusting shipwreck of a portal onto the ragged rocks of the Tuatha Dé Dannan Islands. A sensation like an electric hum went through his body and the wild winds seemed to sing their names to him. The crash of the waves pounded with the rhythm of his heart. He didn’t know this land, but it knew him.
“That’s the citadel there.” Gunther pointed his long, taloned finger up to the towering white edifice jutting out over the crashing sea. “I told you Rake wouldn’t steer us wrong. The man knows how to travel.”
Jason simply nodded. He’d grown accustomed to Gunther’s lean, jagged visage, but Gunther’s retired ex-partner had been another matter: winged, towering, and wreathed in flames. Jason had felt like he was standing on the precipice of a volcano, gazing down into molten magma each time he’d met Rake’s gaze. But the man had behaved normally enough, offering Gunther directions and wishing them good luck when they’d left him.
At Jason’s feet, Princess let out an annoyed yowl and pinned her ears back against the rain.
“Can you find Henry?” Jason asked her.
She gave a little sniff, then leaped across the ragged rocks toward the jutting white prow of the citadel. Both Jason and Gunther sprinted to keep pace with her. As they drew closer to the huge citadel Jason thought he glimpsed a figure wearing a red jacket at the very height of the wall.
Please let that be him. Let him be all right.
Jason wanted to call to Falk, but he knew his voice wouldn’t carry across so vast a distance. Instead thunder boomed across the leaden sky.
And then the figure was gone.
Jason’s muscles burned, but his whole being called out to move faster still—to reach Falk sooner. And suddenly storm winds roared over them, lifting and throwing them ahead nearly too fast for them to keep their feet.
“Are you doing this?” Gunther shouted.
“I think so,” Jason called back.
“Don’t kill us, okay?”
Oddly, Princess appeared delighted, bounding into the gusts and all but dancing on the air. They took the stairs up the citadel wall in the same wild, terrifying manner, springing into the wind as if they could fly as easily as the flock of doves rising above them.
Just as they reached the height of the wall Jason released the winds. He and Gunther staggered a few steps on the rain-slick flagstones, regaining their equilibrium. Princess set down with a hop.
In the courtyard below, dozens of toothy white snow goblins stood at attention, their weapons ready. One yawned and then glanced up to the wall. It gave a shout and pointed up to where Jason and Gunther stood. Jason’s whole body went cold as he watched entire ranks of goblins raise their toothy faces to glare at him.
“Crap,” Gunther muttered.
Then, with a howling cry, the goblins charged.
Princess dashed down the staircase, straight for them. Gunther drew the scimitar he’d taken from Phipps’s shop and Jason let the razor-sharp notes of the ‘Amhrán Na Marú’ fill his mind.
Then, racing past Princess, he released the cruel melody of bone-cutting blades and merciless flames. Goblins fell, their bodies torn in half, their limbs burning. Gunther defended Jason’s back, growling and swearing. Blood from his scimitar spattered Jason as he swung its edge through their attackers’ bodies. Soon blood slicked the steps. Steadily, the goblins fell back as he and Gunther advanced.
They reached the courtyard. The white-flowered trees burned before Jason’s song, sending plumes of smoke into the pelting rain. One of the remaining five goblins lunged for Jason with his blade drawn. Jason called fire from his heart and the goblin seared to ash as he charged. The remaining goblins turned then and fled.
Princess bounded to the golden doors of an ornate building. Jason followed her and Gunther brought up the rear. Despite the rain, all Jason could smell was blood. His ears rang and his throat felt cracked and raw.
Somewhere across the citadel someone sounded an alarm.
“They’ll bring out their archers in a—” The rest of Gunther’s words were drowned out by the cacophony of screams rising from behind the set of huge gold doors.
Princess arched and hissed. When Jason laid his hand against one of the doors Princess backed away. The golden surface felt deathly cold against Jason’s bare skin.
He remembered this bone-deep cold from when he’d lain in the murky darkness of the shade lands. Suddenly he knew why people were screaming. The thought of going in terrified him. But Henry was in there and he couldn’t just leave him.
“You’d better get behind me.” Jason’s words came out in a hoarse rasp.
Gunther nodded, and holding his scimitar, he stood at Jason’s back.
Jason pushed the doors open and stepped into the choking, acid depths of the shade lands. Stinging pain washed over his exposed skin. His lungs caught on the sickly, thick atmosphere and his stomach clenched.
Before him, ghosts rose in an endless a sea of shadows and darkness. They were the dank air and its sticky black drifts. They were the chilling cold and the contorted monstrosities biting, grasping, and devouring every shred of life.
In their midst, the living were few. One tiny goblin only a foot from Jason yowled like a dying kitten as dark, clawed limbs sank into its chest. A bleeding woman crouched with her arms over her face while the man beside her was torn open.
Helpless fear shuddered through Jason.
There were too many of them and he had no way to fight them. Jason couldn’t burn the dead or drive them away with wind. They were ghosts—nothing but hunger and hurt.
Then he remembered Henry holding one of them gently and setting it free in a burst of brilliant light.
Jason didn’t know if he could do the same, but he’d come too far to give up now.
Jason drew in a deep breath and forced his voice to rise like a blazing light. He beckoned the abandoned and broken, the lost and vengeful with a melody that promised all they desired.
He instinctively grasped what they so craved because he knew what it was to be terrified and abandoned. He understood how betrayal burned inside and how hurt haunted memory. He knew too well how it felt to be locked away from love and life and be left with only a desperate longing.
He called them to him with the notes of blazing joy, building his song from the wonders he’d witnessed in Henry’s company, the laughter he’d shared, and the ecstasy that had delighted his entire being.
And ghosts came to him, not just a few but by the hundreds. They rose from the bleeding bodies of the living, flocking over Jason with their grasping teeth and fury.
Jason closed his eyes against their numbers and gave himself up to his song. It blazed inside him and poured out like flames from his lips. He sang with all the strength of his life, offering himself up in shining waves of respite and release. He sensed ghost after ghost reach for him and then burn away in the wake of his song, until at last his whole body felt wasted and hollow and his voice broke.
He struggled for the strength to open his eyes. When he did, he found himself standing in a long golden hall. Lamps blazed overhead and blood spattered the gilded walls. And yet Jason could feel that he still stood in the shade lands as well. Abandoned white hills glimmered like mirages at the edge of his vision. The air tasted sweet and felt empty. Overhead the faint trails of dissipated ghosts streaked the air like shooting stars.
Stunned, bloodied groups of men and women dressed in silk rags gaped at him in silence. Near the doors a small goblin clung to Gunther, whispering in a growling, low language.
Gunther looked to Jason.
“We’re going to need nurses and physicians in here,” Gunther told him. “Will you be all right on your own if I go with Gnasher to get help?”
Jason nodded mutely. He didn’t think he could speak even if he wanted to.
As Gunther pulled one of the doors open, Princess came bounding out of the night. Wild storm winds followed her, rushing over Jason as if they’d missed him.
“Looks like you won’t be alone after all,” Gunther commented. Then he and the smaller goblin slipped out into the courtyard.
Princess brushed her rain-damp body against Jason’s legs and then bounded down the length of the hall to where a dozen bodies—both goblin and sidhe—lay among fallen weapons. At the foot of a broken, black throne slumped three men. One Jason did not recognize. But the second—impaled by ivory spears—was Henry. The third man leaned over Falk, clutching at his heart.
Princess reached them before Jason but only by a moment. She stepped directly through the man who crouched over Falk without seeming to notice him.
Jason studied the man’s handsome, translucent features. He hardly seemed to take note of either Princess or Jason. He gazed at Falk with such sorrow and yet he kept his hands buried in Falk’s chest as if he were trying to dig out his heart.
“Franklyn?” Jason asked.
The man started in surprise and then very slowly lifted his gaze to Jason.
“How do you know me?” Franklyn asked. His voice was only a sigh.
“Henry told me about you,” Jason replied. He knelt down at Falk’s side. Grief and guilt distorted Franklyn’s face as he met Jason’s gaze.
“I can’t get my knife out of his heart,” Franklyn whispered. “I keep trying, but I can’t get it out. How can he forgive me if I can’t get my knife out of his heart?”
Jason considered the shadow that Franklyn was, the way he clung to Falk.
“The knife came out a long time ago,” Jason told him. “You just have to let go now.”
“I can’t.”
“You must.” Jason reached out and curled his hands around Franklyn’s forearms. They felt cold and as insubstantial as snowflakes melting against his fingers. “I’m going to help you.”
Franklyn looked frightened then, but Jason simply whispered a hoarse, aching lullaby to Franklyn and slowly, gently lifted his hands from Falk’s body.
“I deserve to suffer,” Franklyn said as he rose to his feet with Jason.
Jason shook his head, uncertain if he could force even one more word from his throat. They had all suffered. Wasn’t that what Falk had said? Probably suffered too much.
Jason embraced Franklyn, though it was like holding ice to his bare body. Franklyn melted against him and Jason found the strength to utter a final word.
“Good-bye,” he told Franklyn. And then, in a streak of light, Franklyn was gone.
At Jason’s feet Falk dragged in a slow breath. His eyes fluttered briefly open, seemed to focus on Jason, and then fell closed again.
Jason felt the shade lands slip away.
***
The doors of the Hall of the Throne swung open and a group of men and women in dull green uniforms gaped in. Despite the horror in their expressions, they entered the hall and immediately busied themselves tending to the wounded. They spoke in a bright language that Jason didn’t understand, but he thought that at least a few of them must be doctors.
Snow goblins and tall men in leather armor arrived, bearing stretchers that seemed to have been improvised from spears and blankets.
A pretty young girl with her hair in braided loops spread black cloths over the dead. She approached the throne with a drawn expression, her eyes darting to Jason and then away as if she didn’t dare look him in the face. She draped a black cloth over one body, but when she came for Falk, Jason waved her away.
And oddly she obeyed him, bowing and backing from him as she whispered, “Lasair.”
Jason felt too done in to wonder what that meant. None of the other sidhe in the hall approached him. Most averted their gazes when he caught them staring at him.
A dozen gold-skinned men dressed in silk arrived at the doors, speaking among themselves excitedly. Jewels glinted from their ornately braided hair and the rings adorning their graceful hands.
Goblins and soldiers carried the injured and dead out past them.
Gunther ducked in through the doors and offered Jason an easy salute before beckoning a man whom Jason had earlier decided was a doctor. It was nearly more than Jason could manage to lift his arm and wave to Gunther in return. But at least Gunther seemed to have things in hand. It didn’t look like they were going to have to try and fight their way out of here. That thought alone came as an immense relief to Jason.
Gunther and the doctor stepped out into the rainy courtyard.
Jason gazed down at Falk. If only he would wake up. Jason’s gaze suddenly fell on the iron shackles binding Falk’s wrists. He knelt, caught them in his hands, and called on them—as he had called on the storm winds—to release Falk. The iron stung his hands, but he didn’t let go. He’d fought goblins and conquered a world of furious ghosts; a set of bracelets wasn’t going to stop him now.
The metal cracked in his grip and the iron chain fell away.
Jason swayed and stumbled back, nearly delirious with exhaustion. He slumped onto the black throne, wanting only to rest there briefly.
Suddenly a sound like fanfare filled the air and gleaming sparks lit the battered black surface of the throne. If Jason had possessed the strength he would have leaped clear, but as was, he simply watched as gold filigree spread through the dark stone and sprouted up from the back of the throne to reach all the way to the roof of the hall.
Jason scanned the room for Gunther, hoping the agent would offer him some sign of just how badly he’d screwed things up.
He didn’t find Gunther, but the view that greeted him seemed almost incomprehensible. All across the hall, men, women, and even goblins stared at him as if in awe. After a moment, some burst out in laughter; others cheered. Many, even those among the wounded, dropped to their knees before him. The girl with her black blankets knelt with her hands raised toward him as if she were warming them before a fire.
“Lasair,” called a man in leather armor as he too knelt.
Beyond the open doors the rain seemed to suddenly cease and sunset rays of light poured into the already bright hall. Jason couldn’t be certain, but it almost seemed that the entire building was rising upward.
As more people poured in through the great, golden doors only to drop to their knees, Jason began to wonder seriously if he was dreaming.
Then Gunther appeared at the door and sidled his way through the growing crowd to approach the throne.
“I leave you alone for ten minutes and you become the high king,” Gunther commented. “Not exactly discreet.”
Jason frowned at Gunther’s words. Then he realized that Gunther was making fun of the ridiculous scene he’d made. He wondered how long this was going to take to straighten out. Outside the hall, bells rang out and Jason thought he heard distant voices rising in cheers.
“Sorry,” Jason rasped. He flopped his hand off the arm of the throne, trying to reach the body sprawled there. “I found Henry.”
Gunther’s eyes dropped to where Falk lay in the shadow of the throne. He winced at the sight of the spears jutting from his body.
“He’s alive,” Jason assured him.
Gunther nodded and then crouched down at Falk’s side. With what struck Jason as practiced efficiency, Gunther jerked the spears from Falk’s body. He groaned.
“Time to wake up, Henry.” Gunther stood and surveyed the crowd gathering at the foot of the throne. “You’re going to miss the high king’s coronation.”
Jason mouthed a dry rasp of a laugh at Gunther’s sarcasm.
But then Falk’s eyes opened. He stared up at Jason for a moment, then offered him a weary smile and clumsily sat upright.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Henry told him. He tugged self-consciously at the sweat jacket he wore, as if he could shield Jason from the sight of the wound in his abdomen.
“Neither are you,” Jason replied hoarsely. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” Henry sounded almost surprised. “I feel better than I have in a long time…You don’t look so good, though.”
“What kind of thing is that to say to your knight in shining armor?” Jason murmured.
