Chapter Ninety-Three: Destined Path

The dead horse did not belong to the missing prince.

For that matter, it did not seem to belong to anyone of note. Its frame was of a draught horse, but the animal was thin and old, and seemed to have died a nonviolent death. Clearly it was the beast of some peasant, but the unfortunate rider could not be found. Either they had hobbled their way back to town, or they had tumbled down a hidden ravine so that their skeleton might mystify travelers in some future time. To be on the safe side, Princess Nicoleta issued a small force to hunt down possible raiders or bandits. In any case, the snow had melted, leaving no tracks for them to follow.

Osmund feared the unpleasant matter would frighten Luca away from future outings. Happily, this proved not to be the case. The boy was emboldened by the adventure. If he clung even more tightly to Osmund, Osmund did not mind it. He ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately and offered him his time and attention when he seemed to want it, and his quiet companionship when he didn’t. The jokes came as before, calling him Luca’s mother or father or even his nursemaid, but he closed his ears to them. What the boy wanted was a friend, and until Nicoleta consented to finding him children his own age, Osmund could be a friend to him.

Nicoleta was still hiding something, but Osmund’s ponderings on that matter were put to a halt. He was in his room drowning his thoughts in a particularly lousy novel when he heard the horns heralding an arrival. Cemil and Sakina had returned.

He flew to the courtyard alongside the servants and guards, his heart fluttering in his throat as he angled for a glance. The gate had been hoisted open, and against a blanket of freshly fallen snow they beheld the army of riders approaching. In the forefront, the tall, regal shape of Anaya, and Cemil on her back. Sakina on Taylan at his side. Safe. Osmund felt a great tension leave him.

But when Cemil grew closer, they saw his expression was a tempest.

The riders entered the bailey. Their numbers were inflated since they left, but not with friends. Among them were new horses, mules too, but not of fine stock like those in the castle. Arms and legs tied, heaped upon wagons or on the backs of the mules were gagged men and women, all shabbily dressed. Prisoners.

The emperor stepped forward to greet them. He was on his own two feet today, though he carried a residual pallor. “The voivode?” he pressed.

None of these prisoners looked a warlord. Leaders of men always dressed to distinguish themselves above their flock. Cemil dismounted Anaya. “He’s here,” said Cemil darkly, and motioned for a horse.

Nicoleta gave a startled intake of breath from somewhere to Osmund’s right.

The voivode, tied and bound on his mount, was an aging man, utterly unnoteworthy. At sixty, or perhaps a very hard fifty, he looked wiley, perhaps, but that was all.

“That’s him, my sovereign!” cried Lord Sebry. “My god! We have him!”

“He led the battle himself,” Cemil said. His tone was glacial. “We lost many. He lives so that we might draw out the son, who escaped.”

The voivode launched into a spiel.

“He says his son Petru won’t be caught in such an inglorious trap, nor will he negotiate with any Meskato,” Sebry told the imperial party grimly. “He taunts you and asks you to execute him here and now.”

To Osmund’s shock, Cemil responded to this by spitting in the old man’s face. “We’ll keep you alive two weeks to test it,” he said ruthlessly. “When you make this request again, it’ll be with tears of sincerity in your eyes.”

Sakina nearby was ghostlike beneath a very thick cloak. She winced away from Cemil’s temper. For the first time since Osmund met her in person, he thought her eyes resembled those in Aylin’s portrait.

Mirhan approached Cemil and murmured something privately in his ear. Cemil reared back and went instantly pale. “What?! How long?!”

“A week now, my prince.”

“A week?! Is Banu still here?!”

Osmund watched Cemil furiously scan the crowd until their eyes met. For a long moment they regarded one another. “I did say Prince Osmund,” Mirhan hissed.

The misunderstanding had caused a scene. “That is…very concerning,” Cemil said, collecting himself with an awkward effort. “…Tell me everything.”

The Meskato prince went away with his father’s men. Sakina stayed back. In fact she didn’t budge a single inch.

“Sakina?” Osmund ventured. She threw her arms around him and buried her face into the fur collar of his coat. They stood for a long time.

“Excuse me, is the lady alright?”

It was Ioana, addressing them in Meskato. Nicoleta behind her stood, arms crossed, thick brows taut with worry. Sakina separated from Osmund, instantly composed. “I’m perfectly well,” she replied in an airy tone that nonetheless carried real dislike. “Apart from being sent to kill your enemies. Thank you for your concern.”

Ioana went back and forth with her lady in her usual even timbre, and Osmund had to wonder whether she chose to pass along the obvious sarcasm. “My lady begs you to let her tend you in her room, if it please you. It will be warm and comfortable, with fresh food to eat.” Ioana made her face very kind and pleasant. She seemed to be silently entreating for peace.

Sakina sighed after a moment. “You’re very welcoming, princess,” she said softly. “Osmund and I will go. I’ll satisfy your combined curiosity. I’m afraid you won’t like it.”

Nicoleta’s receiving room was on the second floor of the keep overlooking the main gate. It was humble, but hanging tapestries depicting the military exploits of princes past gave it a sense of history. As they entered, a servant was already stoking the hearth and setting out fresh towels and linens. Sakina accepted the little luxuries offered her without apparent thought.

“My lady asks for an account of the battle,” said Ioana, sitting side by side with her princess on a hardbacked sofa. “How were the losses on both sides?”

“We overwhelmed them with numbers, using constructs to scale the walls to avoid the logistics of a long siege.” A serving girl brought Sakina and Osmund cups of warm cider. Sakina took hers with subtly trembling hands. “They were given clear instructions to surrender. The voivode refused. We were told in explicit terms that they sought to kill as many of us as they could.”

“My lady says—”

Sakina interrupted. “I’m sorry, but can we dispense with the ‘my lady says’? It’s understood that it’s your lady we’re speaking to. The direct translation, if you please.”

Both girls consented without fuss. “I’m sorry for the losses you suffered,” said Nicoleta, filtered through Ioana. “You understand my people fight because this is their homeland.”

“And no one is trying to take it from them,” returned Sakina. “When they commandeered the fortress, they were raising arms against their own.”

“Our own, selected by you.”

“You are part of the Empire,” Sakina reminded her. “Those are the terms of our relationship.”

“Not a single person alive in Videl agreed to those terms.” Ioana wouldn’t raise her eyes as she spoke the words, but Nicoleta’s gaze was steadfast. “That deal was brokered by my late grandfather because the alternative was total subjugation.”

Sakina’s dark cheeks flushed. “Do they not know that things will be different?” she said with some scorn. “We want peace for your land as much as you. Isn’t that the whole reason we’re offering to you the very best of our princes in marriage?”

Not five minutes in, and tempers were flaring. “The fighting is done,” Osmund cut in anxiously. “The rebellion is crushed now. Isn’t it?” He looked between them for confirmation.

Nicoleta and Sakina exchanged a tense stare. “His son is still out there,” Sakina said. “Petru. A brute he was. He took a small force and fled into the mountains. With any luck he’ll freeze up there.”

“People will shelter him,” said Nicoleta calmly. “He will recruit more.”

“This rebellion has no chance at success!” Sakina spoke with animation. “You must find some way to get your people, vulgar as they are, to listen!”

“This rebellion will fail,” Nicoleta agreed. “Its embers will die, in time. But the other nations of the faith are listening. Esten, Maralvia, Chantel, all of Ocendom. They’ve heard your emperor craves war again. By uniting against a common foe, they might avoid becoming the next target.”

The air seemed suddenly stifling. “I’m sorry,” Osmund said shakily, “Are you saying the Empire faces a religious war on multiple fronts if this rebellion goes on?”

“Videl wants total independence,” said Nicoleta, delivering the final strike. “Nothing less.”

Cemil’s allies soaked this in. It was Sakina who recovered her voice first. “Independence?” It left her lips like a vulgarity. “Princess, that isn’t possible.”

“You will talk to your prince about it.”

“I won’t,” Sakina argued, “and you’ll thank me for it. Videl is part of the Empire. Nothing short of a miracle will change Cemil’s mind on this.”

Nicoleta spoke again, and the familiar word in her unfamiliar speech was jarring, even before Ioana translated. “Are you responsible for what happened in Elmaluk?”

Sakina shot a bewildered gaze in Osmund’s direction. He returned her an equal one, lest she think him responsible. “I don’t know what you mean by that,” said Sakina stiffly. “Your countrymen attempted to murder one of our imperial princes. We have been gracious enough not to mention it.”

Nicoleta rose from her chair to rummage through an end table, shoving a key into a lock and yanking out a drawer that seemed to be stuffed to the brim with correspondences. She returned with a single letter and thrust it into Osmund’s hands. It was written in Tolmish.

He read the words in increasing dread. Sakina leaned over him anxiously. “Who is it from, what does it say?” she demanded.

“It’s signed ‘Defender of the Faith’.” Osmund recognized the hand, and wished he didn’t. “It advises the princess to send a call for aid to the rest of Ocendom and denounce and reject Cemil. Publicly.”

“Denounce him!? What nerve!” Sakina seethed. “With what slander?!”

Osmund read the charges aloud. There were three he understood, and all too well.

The first: that he enslaved with evil magic his maternal half-brother, who was born of a subjugated people.

The second: that he insulted Nicoleta by keeping a male servant in his own bed, and affording him all the privileges of a wife.

And third: that he looked the other way as his closest allies, including Mirhan of Nath and Sakina Al-Katiba, worked to eliminate rivals in his own family.

The charges were not quite the truth. But close enough to it.

“How,” Sakina whispered in horror. “How would anyone… Who could have possibly…?!”

“Lord Pravin,” said Osmund numbly. “I don’t know what deal the two of them had, but apparently Mirhan’s overestimated his own worth to him.”

“Pravin?! That Tolmish merchant? Again?!”

Osmund turned to Nicoleta. “Where is the—the Tolmish prince?” He corrected himself just in time. “You know something.”

“Gone,” said Ioana for her princess.

“Gone?” Sakina repeated, her voice gone shrill. “What do you mean?”

Nicoleta’s eyes flicked back to the letter, and Osmund read on silently. It continued:

You have written me asking for a meeting with Prince Osmund. Well, I send him to you now. And I know you will see him for what he is. Allow me to explain.

The man you are expecting is dead. This temporary replacement has been wed to my daughter, who has just given birth to two healthy boys. I need not tell you he thus cannot have, nor is he worthy of, your lovely hand. And so to this end, I humbly offer my own.

When the ships from our fairweather friends are secured, we shall give birth to our own empire.

The letter crinkled in Osmund’s grip. “Oh, he is a villain,” he muttered, in his own language by habit.

“Yes,” said Nicoleta in Tolmish. “He is.”

The others turned to her in unison. “What was that? Was that Tolmish?” Sakina said urgently, still in Meskato. “You speak it?! Why have you kept this from us? Osmund, what does the rest say?!”

“I told this ‘replacement’ that I knew of the plan,” said Nicoleta to Osmund directly. She spoke his native tongue with a very thick accent. “When I mentioned his two new sons, he changed. He came to me many times to ask for—protection. ‘Sanctuary’. Then he ran away. The letter he left is his. It is not fake. He wrote it.”

Ran where? Osmund might’ve asked. But away was the meaningful part. The impostor had learned that with the birth of his children, he had become disposable. And potentially not a moment too late.

“The Tolmish prince is gone,” he told Sakina. “Alive. Or was when he left.”

“You are speaking in riddles,” Sakina complained. “Will someone kindly explain things to me!”

“My lady apologizes for causing you distress,” said the attendant, looking as if she’d rather be anywhere else. “And…she adds that she’s curious whether Şehzade Cemil really looked the other way, or if perhaps he doesn’t know about your activities in Elmaluk at all.”

Sakina glared. “I see that’s how it will be.” She sounded almost impressed, or as impressed as a person could be while contemplating violence. “Fine. I will plead your case for independence. But I will have no results from him. Neither of us will. And rest assured that if you take the advice of this…‘Defender of the Faith’, we will not exercise mercy.”

She swept out of the room. Osmund meant to follow, but could not seem to make his legs obey.

“What are your intentions with Cemil?” he asked. “Will you marry him?”

Nicoleta took vigil by the window. “I will not see Videl burn for war. This is my responsibility. To save my people. And my family.” A slender hand drew a winding line down the embroidered curtains. “I know my future husband is also unwanting.”

“He feels the same as you,” Osmund muttered. “He believes people born to power have a duty. A destined path. That it’s shameful not to fulfill it.”

“‘Destined path’,” Nicoleta repeated. She was still tracing with her eyes the shape of the distant hills. “Saint Ocens roamed our world for many years before the heavens shared with him his path.”

Osmund blinked. “Our path appears to each of us at different times,” Nicoleta went on. “I see now that you walk your own.”

“My path?” Osmund attempted to laugh. His heart was pounding hard. “I have no claim to greatness like you.”

“I believe everyone is born to a purpose, highborn or low,” said Nicoleta. “Our faith teaches us this. But I will be clear. I don’t forget a face, Prince Osmund.”