The Fox by Sherwood Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

someone else?”
    The Sierlaef felt the words piling up, and his tongue and lips already started that hated flutter.
    He glared at his uncle. That glare, once considered sullen, had become frightening in its intensity, expressing so many years of frustration and rage.
    "Y-you. Wanted Buck. As n-next Harskialdna,” the Sierlaef whispered, because whispers sometimes damped the stutter. He had no idea how sinister it sounded.
    The Harskialdna flung out his hands. Anger, confusion, most of all a sense of lack of control—he hated that more than anything or anyone in a long list of hatreds—struck him silent.
    Over the years he’d driven a wedge between the heir and Evred so that they would never ally against him. He was to be the heir’s guard and guide and future adviser. From the beginning Evred had been far too smart, prone to read the records, just like his father, and then to question. The Harskialdna had been afraid Evred would be as difficult to control (for the kingdom’s own good) as the king had turned out to be. The Marlo-Vayir boy had been obedient, big, strong, handsome, and most of all unquestioning. And the hints the Harskialdna had carefully dropped about the possibility of his being promoted to a royal connection in the future had bound the Marlo-Vayirs to him. But during the past few years that bond seemed to have eroded.
    But he couldn’t speak of that. It admitted his own gradual loss of control.
    The Sierlaef’s thoughts paralleled his uncle’s to an astonishing degree, but the days of free communication had also vanished.
    The Sierlaef’s mind shifted swiftly from image to image: Buck Marlo-Vayir in the good old academy days obeying without question, glad to be one of the elite Sier Danas, the Companions; Evred reading in two languages when his older brother couldn’t manage one; the promises his uncle had made that had turned out not to be true.
    Well, it was time to make them true. He was the future king, not his uncle! Buck had shown a tendency to argue these past few years, so this order concerning Vedrid would be a test. Meanwhile, why not have his own brother as Harskialdna after all? A scholarly, obedient brother who would take care of the boring logistics, like trade and army training and taxes, leaving his older brother full command of the army. That’s what Harvaldar meant: war king .
    The rightness of it helped steady his tongue. “Buck Marlo-Vayir.” He enunciated each word hard and distinct. “Will do what he’s told.” Or die a traitor’s death.
    The Harskialdna stared in horror across the room into the heir’s angry eyes and realized he was not addressing a wayward boy. The Sierlaef was a man now, a man who had his own plans, a man who could issue threats— do what he’s told —and had the kingdom to back him.
    The future king had decided he was going to be telling his uncle what to do, not the other way around.
    The Sierlaef said, “Father can in-fuh-fuh . . .” He forced himself to slow down, enunciating harshly. “ Vest. Igate. Our people. All who know are dead. Idayagans. If they die, so? Seal our hold.”
    The Harskialdna swallowed and then, in a fair attempt to smooth over his capitulation, asked, “So what will you do now?”
    The Sierlaef grinned again, and years of pent-up resentment made that grin a nasty sight indeed. “What I want. When I want. How I want.” He pointed at his uncle. “You make it happen.”
    “Vedrid? Executed?” Buck Marlo-Vayir repeated. He was hot and irritable in his gray coat, but an unexpected visit from the royal heir’s Runner seemed to require no less.
    Nallan, the Sierlaef’s Runner captain, was familiar from the days when Buck and the Sierlaef and the rest of the Sier Danas became seniors, putting up their hair as academy horsetails. Nallan had been willing to clean boots and do the horsetails’ stable chores on the sly—anything to earn the approval of the next king. And he’d hated any new Runners whom the royal heir