Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon

Arcolin, now I know it’s really you and not some Verrakai putting a glamour on me, you’re wanted in the palace. You’re to go there at once. Your cohort can stay in palace barracks, if you like—”
    “We usually march through,” Arcolin said.
    “Aye, but things are different now. You’ll be here at least a day and a night, I daresay. The gate guards will know where your soldiers should go.”
    A night in someone else’s barracks would at least not lighten his purse. Behind him, he heard the marching feet come to a final stamped halt. He turned in the saddle.
    “Change of plans, Sergeant Stammel. I’m wanted in the palace; we’ll be staying in Vérella overnight; the cohort will be housed in royal barracks.”
    “Very good, sir,” Stammel said. He eyed the Royal Guard and asked no questions.
    “There’s been some trouble. We don’t want more.”
    “No, sir.” Stammel would need no more hint than that to keep the cohort—especially the young ones—on a tight leash.
    As they went on from the roadblock toward the city, Arcolin told Stammel what he’d been told. “I suspect there’s a lot more to it, and the city either roiling or too quiet. I don’t know what the prince wants with me; I don’t know if our employers are still here, or have gone on. I will need to contact the Duke’s bankers, and see about finances, too, so we might be here even two nights, if the prince’s conferences last a long time.”
    “Verrakai attacked the prince and killed his uncle? Why? Surely he didn’t hope to take over the kingdom? And why now, just when the Duke’s gone to Lyonya?”
    “My guess would be that Verrakai tried to attack the Duke first. He’d always hated him as baseborn, you know.” Stammel snorted, a very Stammel snort, and Arcolin went on. “If he did that, and attacked the escort of Royal Guard the prince sent with him, then that’s already treason. Then he might think his only chance would be toassassinate the prince and try to hide the facts until—I can’t believe he thought he could pull it off, though. But that Royal Guard captain said he used magery.”
    “He used a Liart priest, I’ll wager,” Stammel said. “Not magery—that’s all been lost for hundreds of years.”
    “That’s what I told him, but he thinks not,” Arcolin said. “He thinks the Verrakaien have it. That’s why they’re all under attainder.”
    “Good thing Dorrin’s with the Duke in Lyonya, then,” Stammel said. “It’ll be hard for her to come back through.”
    Arcolin felt a jolt. He had forgotten that Dorrin was a Verrakai.
    “They wouldn’t include her; she’s not even in the family book,” he said.
    “They know, I would bet on it,” Stammel said. “Proper mess, it sounds like. So—we need to smarten up, before we come into the city?” Under the circumstances, he meant. Before they went into a royal barracks.
    “Good idea,” Arcolin said, and raised his hand. Stammel halted the cohort. He and Devlin and their new corporals went through, checking equipment, sharpening the troops up, and then they started off again. Arcolin took the opportunity to check his own gear, stuffing his winter hat into one saddlebag and the scarf around his throat into the other, putting on his helmet. Stammel came back to the front of the cohort, gave Arcolin a nod, and again they set off, now near enough to see the guard at the first gates.
    The palace guards, more alert than Arcolin had ever seen them, insisted he disarm before he came into the palace itself.
    “One of us will bring your arms, sir,” the taller guard said. “Under the circumstances no one can carry arms save with the prince’s express permission.”
    “That’s quite all right,” Arcolin said, unbelting his sword and dagger. “I have a small boot knife, as well.”
    “That also, if you please.”
    Arcolin removed it, and watched as the guard wrapped them all carefully then put the bundle under his arm.
    “This way, Captain,” the