The Warlord's Legacy by Ari Marmell Read Free Book Online Page B

even looked happy to see the new arrivals, and none wore the crimson-and-blue tabard of their supposed home.
    Ignoring them completely, the columns followed the road up the final hillside, halting before the drawbridge and the gates—the lowered drawbridge, and the wide-open gates—of Castle Braetlyn.
    Here, and only here, a quartet of armored guards wore Braetlyn’s ichthyic ensign. Three sets of gauntlets clenched tightly on three gleaminghalberds, while the fourth knight approached the newcomers. His salt-and-pepper beard was clearly visible, for he carried his red-plumed helm beneath one arm.
    “None may enter Castle Braetlyn under arms,” he announced, his voice calm but loud enough to carry over the constant song of the sea.
    “Out of the way!” one of the armored horsemen snapped. “We’re here to see—”
    “I know who you’re here to see,” the knight replied, offering the mounted soldier a withering glance before returning his attention to the carriage. “There’s only one person here
to
see. You still shall not enter under arms.”
    “You’ve no right to stop us, you—!”
    “Sergeant!” The carriage door drifted open, allowing a sharp, commanding voice to emerge from within. “We are guests here, and we will behave as such.”
    The horseman grumbled something under his breath, seeming determined to bowl the knight over with the force of his glower alone, but nodded curtly.
    The woman who stepped from the carriage was as broad of shoulder as many of the guards ostensibly sent to protect her, and her bare arms were corded with muscle. Her dark hair, wearing just a few streaks of grey, was pulled tightly back in an unflattering bun, and she was clad, not in formal gown or finery, but in a sleeveless tunic of emerald green and leggings of heavy wool. She carried under one arm a small wooden box, latched with an ungainly padlock, and from her thick neck hung an iron pendant: a hammer-and-anvil that did not
quite
form the ensign of the Blacksmiths’ Guild nor
quite
the holy icon of Verelian the Smith, but something in between.
    “Lady Mavere,” the knight of Braetlyn greeted her, and if there was any resentment in the clench of his jaw, he managed to banish it from his voice. “You are, of course, always welcome.”
    “You are too kind, sir knight.” With a gesture, she waved the driver down from atop the carriage. “You needn’t fear for your lord’s safety,” she assured the soldier. “My assistant and I will see him alone. My men will remain outside.”
    “With the rest of your mercenaries,” one of the other gate guardsmuttered, just loud enough to be overheard. The elder knight, and the emissary of the Blacksmiths’ Guild, both pretended not to notice.
    “Is my lord Jassion expecting you?” the knight asked instead.
    “I’m sure he is, since one of you surely informed him of our presence as soon as we crested the hill.”
    A scowl was all the response he offered. “Very well. Follow me, please.”
    “Isn’t it astounding,” the driver whispered to Lady Mavere as he fell into step behind her, “just how much ‘please’ sounds like ‘bugger right off’?”
    In the presence of the elder knight, she was too much the diplomat to grin.
    Scattered around the edges of the courtyard, and framing every doorway, stood marble nudes that were either exquisite replicas of Imphallion’s classical style, or just perhaps actually dated back to lost antiquity. Impossibly beautiful women reached with beckoning hands, overly muscled men clasped leaf-bladed swords, and all watched the newcomers with empty stone eyes. A few of the statues were not standing at all but lounged supine, draped across the edges of the stairs, leaving just enough room between them to approach the inner keep’s doors. Mavere, impressed despite herself, could only wonder just how deep the baron’s fascination with Imphallion’s lineage and antiquity might run.
    Yet the rest of Castle Braetlyn was not so well