The Unwritten King

10. Square Peg, Round Hole

The Faisan family line went further back than Caldora itself. During the bloody division of Maesia, among the first and strongest soldiers to fight for Caldoran magic were a man and a woman with only three stones between them - inercium and forcate on her side, encaline on his. No matter who married into their bloodline across the generations to come, no other stones were ever mastered by their children. It was dubbed "the curse of the Faisans," though curse was something of a misnomer. Their lineage moved mountains.

Caldoran code demanded that all mages in control of at least four stones served the kingdom. In the fine print, an exception: if called upon, specified three-stone wielders could also be levied. No names appeared anywhere in the law, but it was universally and tacitly known that this stipulation had been devised to keep one particular family tethered.

It worked for hundreds of years, until the lineage bore a tameless spirit who scorned her predetermined life of obligation. She faked her family's death in a mansion sent up in flames and fled to the frontier with her husband, her son, and her daughter in law, and so ended the Faisan name.

That woman was Malik Faisan's grandmother.

The last direct notch in a legendary family line, Malik passed his days tending to his garden and rereading the archive of books left behind for him. They were factual but entertaining, mostly chronicles by Faisans who had witnessed the history firsthand. It was a peaceful life, if not the most exciting for a young man in his prime.

Or, it had been, until a stranger crash-landed in his gardenias.

Their cloak was filthy. That was all Malik had time to note before the Mingles descended.

They flocked the stranger with talons and fangs, batlike wings swarming into a stormcloud over Malik's garden. The stranger's hands lashed out from beneath the cloak. Malik knew at once he was Interran - he'd be stupid not to. The bands around his arms were not subtle. Neither was the jewlery dangling from his ears when his hood fell away in the struggle. Not just any Interran, then. Noble birth. A strong fighter, probably, but the river was too far to do him any good, and the rocks he flung skyward with the mossy gem on his wrist were too slow for the nimble brutes.

Malik did not step outside to help him. He had learned wariness before he learned kindness; if somebody was to appear on his doorstep, he was to bury their body. This was the only way to protect his freedom. The Mingles would make his life easier.

Huge black eyes caught Malik's through the window. The stranger must have seen on Malik's face that he planned to watch him die, because he did not bother pleading. He narrowed his eyes, accusing, determined, and sprung back into his hapless fight.

Malik felt himself freeze from the inside. Then he felt himself run through the door.

When the battle was over, and the Mingles hung limp from stone stakes jutting from the flowerbed - his poor masterworts - the Interran said, How did you do that? He was looking at Malik's rings. At least he was not stupid, either.

Malik dressed Adrian's cuts with salve he made himself and fed him from the garden. When Adrian asked for a bed to lie in, Malik gave him the second room. And that night, when regret and hard-taught fear got the better of him, he knelt at Adrian's bedside with a knife pointed at his chest.

Adrain caught his wrist mid-strike and fixed him with that same narrowed look. He did not move to leave the next day, and Malik did not make him, though his stilted hospitality came at a price. In exchange for a room in his home and food off his table, he demanded labor.

If you knew who I was, Adrian bristled. He disliked like this man and his tone. He was not a servant to be driven.

Are you going to tell me? asked Malik, to which there was no response. It matters not. Whoever you think you are, whoever you might have once been, to me you are nobody. I am the king of this land. A man who runs from his title has no right to wield it as a weapon.