The Running Girl (Kaunovalta, Book I)

The Running Girl (Kaunovalta, Book I) Page 2

by D. Alexander Neill

  Chapter 1 ♦ Starmeadow

  Her first glimpse of the great city took her breath away.

  She had been catching sight of its spires for the past hour, ever since riding out of the Greenwall and into the rolling verdant hills that her people called Astrapratum, the Starmeadow. The hills seemed to wrap around the vast, bowl-shaped river valley that held the city proper, enfolding it in deep ripples of emerald dotted with scattered trees, farmsteads and small habitats that followed the cobbled ways. Here, in this part of the Homelands, all roads led into the vale fed by the slow, silver-blue flood that was so old and well-known to the elves that it was merely called Lymphus – the Lifewater.

  The south-road followed the undulating sweep of the hills, wending its way from valley to peak to valley again, like a river itself, albeit one of close-fit stone. There were people on it – many people. Most walking, some riding, even a few horse-carts and wagons. Commoners, students, farmers, woodsmen, warriors, adepts and acolytes and apprentices; she was even overtaken by a curtained carriage that rattled loudly past, causing her tired horse to shy skittishly. A few scattered folk at first, then dozens; and finally, as she approached the environs of the city, where all of the roadways converged, there were hundreds. The river of cobblestones drowned beneath a river of life.

  Hax was glad to be riding. She had never been fond of crowds.

  Closer to the city, the road dipped down into a final valley, densely carpeted with trees. It was, she thought, like riding through a garden. The road meandered between vast, towering trunks, through a lighter-green carpet of moss, lichen and low bushes, all planted to form an intricate and eye-catching pattern. The trees themselves perplexed her; there seemed to be no logic to their arrangement, and the odd intermingling of species – oak and apple, pine and beech, walnut and redwood – was unnatural, inexplicable. Until she breathed in.

  It’s a poem, she realized with sudden delight. A poem, written in the perfume of the forest.

  How astonishing.

  The trees, flowering in high summer, were exuding their characteristic scents, and these mixed and mingled in an olfactory harmony that simultaneously stimulated and relaxed, intimidated and inspired the observer. Whoever had planted this garden (and Hax, staring up in wonder at the vast, towering heights of the leafy crowns, far above her head, wondered how long ago that had been) had planned its structure and layout to achieve precisely this impact upon passersby.

  She breathed in again, consciously flaring her nostrils, and was rewarded by even deeper and more profound shades of sensation – the mosses and lichens, the bushes and flowers, the vines and even the fungi clinging to the trunks; they were all part of the symphony. The scents did not mix and muddy; each remained distinct, like the colours in a rainbow, blending only slightly at their edges, like a delicately-spiced confection.

  In the instant that she grasped its purpose, Hax also comprehended that the garden’s message – its unique, incomparable scent-poem – would be perceived differently by a rider travelling the road in the opposite direction. You couldn’t do it with words, she thought, blinking groggily, bemused by the olfactory assault. A poem of words would be meaningless if spoken back-to-front. But this…

  Narrow shafts of sunlight lanced down through the canopy, appearing like pillars of fire in the sparkling reflections of pollen-grains dancing on the light breeze. Butterflies flitted between them, clustering around the beams, seeking warmth in their dance. Hax watched them, gratified by purposeful randomness of their ballet, and noticed that others of her race were wandering slowly amid the tree-trunks, gliding gracefully between the flower-beds, wearing the same rapt, bedazzled smile that she must have been wearing herself.

  “First time?”

  Hax blinked. She was surprised to discover that her horse was standing stock-still. How long have I been…?

  Glancing around, she saw that the foot-traffic on the road was thickening, and that pedestrians were skirting her mount, some shooting her an irritated glance.

  One of these had stopped next to her horse’s head. It was a man. Commoner, she thought instantly. He was about her own height but much more heavily built, with shaggy hair tied back in a thick braid, simply dressed in a sleeveless leather jerkin over heavy trousers. And he had, she noticed, an odd pattern of white scars across his knuckles and forearms.

  “I beg your pardon?” she said politely.

  “The Hortum Elandiria,” he replied, making an all-encompassing gesture. “It can be a little overwhelming, if you’re not expecting it.”

  “Ah,” Hax replied. “Yes, it’s…it’s…” It’s what, she thought? Amazing? Magnificent? Wonderful? It was all of those things. The maelstrom of olfactory sensation was pounding in from all sides, and she found it difficult to focus. “Strange,” she murmured at last.

  The fellow smiled. “A southlander,” he said. It was a statement rather than a question.

  Hax was taken aback. “Yes,” she replied, blinking rapidly, in an attempt to clear her head. “Yes, I…how did you know?”

  Instead of answering, the man nodded towards the city. “Come along,” he said. “We’re blocking traffic.” He reached up, scratched her mount’s jowl affectionately, then took the bridle strap in one hand, tugging the creature into motion.

  Hax was about to mouth a warning – Torris was battle-trained, after all, and likely to bite – but held her tongue. The fellow seemed to know what he was doing, and her warhorse appeared willing to follow him. Maybe he’s half-drunk on flower-scent too, she thought wryly.

  They rejoined the flow. The fellow walked beside her horse’s head, guiding it like someone who was familiar with animals. The great charger seemed content enough to be led, so Hax did not interfere. She did, however, catch the man glancing back over his shoulder at her, and frowned slightly.

  Noble, the fellow was too obviously thinking; maybe even one of the Duodeci.

  He saw a young woman, barely past her majority but obviously familiar with her panoply, and at ease in the high-cruppered saddle of a warhorse. She had all of the characteristics of one of the nobler branches of the Third House: a patrician brow, midnight hair, eyes of brilliant emerald. Pale skin, if a little burnt by wind and sun; and regular, even delicate, features. And a confident bearing, he thought shrewdly. Someone used to having their least whim observed as law.

  Not whims, he revised mentally a moment later; commands, maybe, but not whims. She looked like someone accustomed to exercising her discretion as often as she exercised her hereditary rights. It was an interesting thought. Hair’s a little odd, too, he thought absently. Where most ladies of the noble houses had straight hair, and arranged it according to the dictates of magnificent, often preposterous, fashion, this one’s locks, while as long as any, were a confused, tangled mass of curls. No noble bint he had ever seen would’ve tolerated such disarray.

  The final detail – it could hardly have escaped his notice – were what appeared to be a pair of odd tattoos: a double half-moon, executed in dark-blue ink over her left eye, and another double half-moon under it. That seals it, he thought, shrugging. No daughter of the Duodeci would mark her face in such a way. Not permanently, at any rate. It just wasn’t done.

  Then he caught her eye – a chilly glance, punctuated by a raised brow – and realized that she had been observing his scrutiny. He turned his attention hastily back to the road.

  Nettled by the man’s none-too-subtle inspection of her features, Hax snapped her reins lightly. He obediently let go of the bridle. Slowing his pace somewhat, he fell back by her stirrup. She held Torris to a slow walk, so as not to outdistance him.

  “Your pardon,” the man said after a moment, glancing up at her. “I’m neglecting my manners. Allignus Leto, of Starmeadow.”

  “Orkarel Hax, of Joyous Light.”

  The fellow blinked, eyes widening. “Any relation to the mighty Fineleor, domina?”

  She shook he
r head, smiling. “None at all. I simply chose it to honour him.” An moment later she added, “And don’t call me ‘domina’. It’s ‘Hax’.”

  “My apologies. A worthy choice,” the man replied, nodding. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  She chuckled. “Think nothing of it. I get that question all the time. It’s my own fault; I should have chosen a less renowned moniker.”

  She took a deep breath, felt the forest-scent begin to overwhelm her again, and coughed slightly to clear her head. The man glanced up at her in concern; she waved a dismissive hand. “What do you do in Starmeadow, Allignus?” she asked, changing the subject.

  The man held up his hands, palms facing away from her. She could see that, in addition to being marked with a fine intaglio of white scars, they were calloused, and very strong. “Smith,” he said briefly. “It’s why I didn’t fear this fine fellow. I’ve shoed many of his like.

  “Although,” he continued easily, “I’m a tool-crafter by trade. I also do work for the city, from time to time. Even for the palace.”

  “Indeed?” she asked politely, wondering why he had mentioned that.

  “Once only,” he qualified. “And nothing special. Part of a gate mechanism. Finicky work, but most rewarding.”

  Hax blinked. “Rewarding? In what way?” she asked, perplexed.

  Allignus glanced back up at her. “It hadn’t been repaired in generations. I was working with gears and travellers wrought before the Darkness.” He flexed his fingers, clearly remembering the experience. “It was like touching history. An honour to mend it.”

  I can understand that, Hax thought to herself.

  “And you?” the man asked. “What of yourself, Orkarel of Joyous Light?”

  Hax shrugged. This was one area where the truth would definitely not do. “Latrona est,” she replied easily. A sell-sword. “Although, right now, an out-of-work one.”

  “No wars, then?” he jested.

  “Not at the moment. And I’m not complaining,” Hax replied soberly.

  “What brings you to the capital, if I may ask?”

  “Messenger duty,” she said.

  That, at least, wasn’t a lie. She thought of her father’s letter, tucked into the lining of her scrip, and sealed with means both mundane and arcane. And of his instructions to deliver it to her uncle. And only to him.

  The man reached up and scratched Torris’ cheek again. “Humble service for one who bears the aulensis,” he remarked absently.

  Hax reached over her shoulder and touched the protruding hilt of the great sword self-consciously. She’d known that it would raise eyebrows, particularly her aunt’s. But there was no chance that she would have left Sylloallen’s gift behind. “It pays the bills,” she answered, her voice cold.

  They continued in silence for a few moments before Hax, regretting her tone, spoke again. “Your pardon, countryman. It was fatigue, not rancour, that spoke. I’ve been riding for a week. My shoulders ache, my backside feels like a pounded beefsteak, and I’d give an eye for a bath.”

  “I took no offence,” the fellow said immediately, grinning up at her. “I know exhaustion when I see it.” Or smell it, he didn’t add. “I frequently see it reflected in my quenching tub.”

  “May I ask you a question?” she asked. He nodded. “How…”

  “…did I know you were a southlander?” he interrupted, smiling.

  “Yes,” Hax said. “My accent?” she asked, a trifle self-consciously. “I’ve been told it’s noticeable.”

  “Hardly. Melodious, rather,” Allignus replied, somewhat too gallantly she thought. “No. It was your horse. Equus bellator austrinus.” He patted the animal affectionately again. “You grow them big on Eldisle. He’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, he is,” she replied, suddenly intent. “But you were not speaking about my horse. You were speaking about me. You called me a ‘southlander’.” She leaned towards him, bending over in her saddle. “How did you know?”

  The man looked slightly embarrassed. “Well,” he said slowly, “and remember, I’m unarmed…” he added, smiling hopefully.

  Hax glared stonily back.

  “Ah, very well,” Allignus sighed. “It was your reaction to the Hortum.” He waved a scarred hand, indicating the ordered forest garden all around them.

  “Reaction? You mean, because I was…what, dazed, by it?”

  “No,” the man corrected. “That happens to everybody. It’s what came after that, that piqued my curiosity. You called it ‘strange’.”

  “It is strange,” she murmured, glancing around at the regimented ranks of trees and flowers. She took a cautious sniff; the great wall of fragrance was still there, poised to break over her like an avalanche. “It’s unnatural.”

  “Precisely!” the fellow crowed. “That is the difference! In the south, you work, you build, you grow, you live, within the confines of what nature and the world offer you. Here,” he indicated the vast expanse all around, “here, we take those things, and remake them to suit our needs, our desires.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Our whims.”

  “I don’t think it’s bad,” Hax protested. “Just…” her voice trailed off.

  “ ‘Strange’,” he said helpfully.

  “How about ‘different’?” she suggested, smiling.

  “Yes. Different,” Allignus said pensively. “That’s a useful lesson, Orkarel Hax of Joyous Light, new-come to the Meadow of Stars. Folk are different here.” He tapped her boot with a blunt fingertip. “You’d do well to remember that.”

  Hax shook her head in wonder. “A blacksmith, and a philosopher too?” she asked, her tone mocking him gently. “Is your metal-craft as complex and nuanced as your arguments?”

  “Not at all,” he replied, chuckling. “When I work with my hands, the results are simple and beautiful. It is only when I try to work with my poor, feeble head that the outcome is so twisted and brittle.” He glanced obliquely up at her. “You should visit my shop, and view my wares. It’s in the angiportus statera, near north-end.”

  Hax raised an eyebrow, and the fellow coloured instantly. He laughed to mask his embarrassment – a little too loudly. “For all my flaws as a thinker,” he protested, “I’m a competent armourer. A latrona such as yourself would doubtless be interested in what I have to offer!”

  “Enough,” Hax laughed. “You have my word, Allignus, smith-crafter of Starmeadow. I will visit you, if my duties permit. If only,” she added with a wry smile of her own, “so that you may continue my instruction in how we rude folk of the south differ from the sophisticates of the capital.”

  ♦

  “Mirabile defensor!” Hax breathed. Her voice was choked with awe.

  “Yes, it’s quite something, isn’t it?” Allignus nodded agreement. “Two centuries I’ve lived and worked here, and I’m still struck and stunned every time I come home.”

  The scent-garden of the Hortum had marked the last of the sheltered vales outside the southern hills surrounding the city proper. The great stone-way left the trees and soared over the verdant knolls, passing between increasingly frequent buildings of cunningly worked stone, and traditional tree-dwellings woven into the branches of the broad maples and oaks. Like a meandering brook, the road flowed through them, wandering left and right of the slope – until, at last, it broached the line of hills. The final trees lined the top of the crest. It was as though the elves – who loved trees, at least in word and in song, above all other things – were loathe to allow nature to interfere with a visitor’s first glance of the greatest and most ancient of their cities.

  Hax paused on the summit, awestruck. She remembered to give her reins a twitch, moving aside and onto the lush grass that lined the high road, in order to allow the ever-thickening flow of travellers to pass unhindered while she goggled like a yokel.

  Allignus joined her. A thoughtful man, he remained silent, leaving her to sav
our the first few moments of wonder in the tranquillity of her own thoughts.

  At first, Hax had difficulty accepting the scale of what she was seeing. Eldisle was hardly a backwater, and Joyous Light no flyspeck; and she had seen great cities before. But the sheer expanse of Astrapratum astonished her.

  The river vale was ten miles across if it was a yard, and easily twice that from north to south – and the city filled it. Emerging from a cleft in the hills, the river flowed briskly southwards, splitting into two branches far upstream and rejoining further down. The two arms of the great flood formed the island upon which the oldest and mightiest portions of the city lay – including her destination. She could see its pennoned towers gleaming in the afternoon sun.

  The ancient defensive works surrounded the island: towering walls, black and brooding, looming like shadows above the bustling blue of the river. Slender towers, silent and adorned with glistening argent spikes, sprouted every hundred paces or so, leaning far over the waters – a potent guard against invasion.

  Those towers have stood since before the Gloaming, she thought giddily. Fineleor, and Yarchian, and the Argent Three walked there.

  By the holy mother, what wonders and terrors they must have seen!

  Beyond the guard towers, the spires of the old city soared higher still. The island, she knew, was in reality a great rock that had stood in the way of the flood, forcing the river to surround its immovable mass. Astrapratum had begun, some threescore centuries earlier, as a simple fort upon that rock; a tower of guard, erected so far back in time-shrouded antiquity that its foundations were lost among the stones of later constructions. That fort – the citadel of some long-forgotten tribal chieftain of the elvii – had weathered every assault, every blast of war, every foul machination that the minions of Bardan had been able to devise.

  It had defied all foes. And so, when Bræa had come to earth, and took Ciarloth to mate, making him High King of all Harad, it was only natural that they would place their hall upon that rock, and build their citadel around the hall. In time, the whole of the great city had, in effect, sprung up around the Holy Mother and her descendents.

  Bræa’s offspring had dwelt for centuries in peace and plenty. Her grandson, Tior – the first wizard-king of Harad, called ‘the Mighty’ for his miraculous achievements in wielding the Art Magic – had greatly expanded the palace and the city proper. Such was his fame and power that there had been no need for further defensive works until the following generation. Not until Tior’s son betrayed him.

  The black walls and the razor-fanged towers had been built by that son, whom the elves now called Xiardath the Usurper. Their foundations had been laid to defend the city – not against the forces of the Uruqua, who had so plagued the elvii in the Age of Making, but rather against his own people, the scions of the First and the Second Houses, that had refused to acknowledge his suzerainty. These, the greatest of Bræa’s descendents, did not take kindly either to his rebellion, or to his subsequent tyranny. They abandoned him, and he raised tower and wall to prevent their vengeance, and his own overthrow.

  He was not the trusting sort, Xiardath; nor should he have been. But, Hax reflected, as the Halpinya say, he turned out to be holding the sword by the sharp end. He should have been looking within the walls, rather than without; for, having betrayed his own father to eternal exile beyond the walls of the Universe, stolen the Filigree Throne, and purloined the Crown of Stars, Xiardath was in turn betrayed by his own ill-borne son. In the fullness of time, Biardath, black-skinned, white-eyed and fiend-borne bayed his father, slew him, and fed him to the white wyrms. A sad and ignominious end for Tior’s get – even for a traitor.

  The sight of the ancient walls, heavy with their bloody cargo of treason, murder and terror, brought the old, half-forgotten tales back to her. Hax felt a chill trickle down her spine. Too much history, she thought gloomily. The city reeks of it.

  Allignus had been watching her, and saw her face go from wide-eyed wonder to thin-lipped distrust. “You get used to it,” he reassured her quietly.

  “What’s that?” Hax asked. She hadn’t been listening.

  “You’re thinking that the city has seen too much blood,” he replied, “or some other such gloomy thoughts.” He crossed his arms and stared fixedly at the soaring towers. “I feel the same way, sometimes.”

  Then he sighed, shrugging. “But it passes. The Lantern still shines; the trees still bloom. And the wine tastes fine after a long day’s walk. There are flaws, yes, but also beauty here; beauty enough to make the heart ache.”

  “Nothing to be done about it in any case, I suppose,” Hax murmured. “It’s stood so for a long, long time. Defeated all besiegers. Defied all foes.”

  “More’s the pity,” the smith said pensively.

  “Eh?” Hax glanced down at the man. His expression was at least as fierce and dismayed as her own. “How do you mean?”

  Allignus pursed his lips. “Defeat can be a powerful cleanser,” he replied slowly, as if thinking carefully about his words before releasing them into the world. “Purges the soul, as it were. Makes for a new beginning.” He glanced up at the Elf-girl. His face was grim. “Too many victories, Orkarel of Eldisle,” he said firmly, “and you start to think that you can only do right. Defeat makes you think about what you might have done wrong.”

  His gloomy tone seemed to lift Hax’s spirits. “Have you done much wrong, Allignus, philosopher-smith of Starmeadow?” she asked, gently mocking.

  The man snorted laughter. “Have not we all?” Reaching up, he grasped her stirrup, and caught her eyes. The afternoon sun glinted redly in his pupils.

  His voice turned sombre, even grim. “I speak now in seriousness, Orkarel of Joyous Light. Citizen to citizen, if you like.” There was an urgent intensity in his voice. “I know not whither you are bound, but you should know that, in Astrapratum, it is said that the kind word masks a lie, and every smile hides a false face.” He lowered his voice, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “This is especially so at the Palace, if your path leads you there.

  “Trust yourself, latrona. And none else.”

  The smith’s chilling words stayed with Hax as they progressed into the valley and approached the outer walls. They reflected her mood. She was not looking forward to this visit.

  Hax had many fond recollections of her uncle, Landioryn. In her childhood, he’d been a regular visitor at her father’s siege in Joyous Light, both as a casual traveller, and latterly as the Queen’s envoy and commander-in-chief. She’d sensed a kindred spirit in her aunt’s lifemate. He was a daunting specimen; at more than seven hundred and fifty summers he was barely middle-aged, but retained all of the vigour and urbane dignity that had made him a skilled warrior, a respected general, and a fearsome diplomat.

  But there was a certain restlessness behind the façade. Hax sensed it, sensed that he felt stifled by the stultifying rigor and fixed, immutable patterns of the courtier’s life. Perhaps she was more sensitive to such sentiments because she felt the same way herself.

  She recalled dining with her aunt and uncle during a visit years earlier, and feeling comforted that, of the dozens of richly-garbed courtiers lounging and feasting about the marble tables, only she and her aunt’s lifemate seemed out of place.

  Or perhaps, she admitted with wry self-perception, I only like him because Sylloallen has always spoken so highly of him, and I miss Syllo.

  Her aunt, in stark contrast to Landioryn, was not at all to Hax’s liking. Annalyszian was nothing at all like her sister Alrykkian – Hax’s mother. The wretched woman was a socializing flitterby, a congenital gossip and professional meddler who seemed to bear some deep grudge against Hax’s father. Her visits to Joyous Light, whenever she had seen fit to grace them with her presence, had inevitably been tense, unpleasant affairs. And it had only gotten worse after Hax’s mother had vanished. Sixty years ago, now, the girl thought bleakly.<
br />
  Even though Rykki’s disappearance had occurred during a visit to Annalyszian’s own home, the dreadful woman had somehow contrived to blame Kaltas. Meetings, as a result, were always fraught with tension.

  Hax planned to stay close to the Grand Duke, and as far away from his Duchess as she possibly could.

  The outer walls, of some rough, gray stone, were less impressive than Xiardath’s ancient fortifications. They were only a dozen paces high, built far more recently; within the last few centuries, during the interregnum of the Hand in Ekhan. They seemed to be less a defensive outwork than an administrative demarcation for the city proper. The rock between the rivers, as it turned out, represented only a tenth part of the city as a whole; on both sides of the flood, beyond the black walls, the buildings, trees, squares and such-like sprawled across the bottom of the valley bowl, climbing its sides like some hungry, creeping predator. The outer walls appeared more than anything to be designed to stem the spreading tide of buildings and people.

  The gates were still open when they approached – two travellers in a vast, creeping caterpillar of life that wound far back up into the hills, half inching towards the city, half creeping slowly away from it.

  The gatehouse itself was simple but elegant; a graceful tower of sand-coloured stone, decorated with swooping bas-reliefs, a work of art as much as of fortification. If it was guarded, she could not see the guards; and she was equally surprised at the absence of tollsmen or tax collectors.

  She considered mentioning her impressions to Allignus; but the swelling throng had taken on a life of its own, and was exuding a continuous, numbing roar that made speech between travellers difficult. Especially if one of them was horsed.

  Once beyond the gate, the crowds diminished slowly, as those who were coming to the city from far away gradually found their streets and quit the high road.

  Hax scarcely noticed the change; her eyes were elsewhere. Everything about the city fascinated her. The roads, die-straight and perfectly even, were well-worn but also well-maintained. The structures that lined them were equally gorgeous, all the more so as they appeared to follow no common design or even philosophy of construction. Broad buildings, and narrow; high buildings, and low; structures of a dozen different shades of stone and a hundred different shades of wood, with windows of glass or mica or even isinglass, roofs of tile or plank or thatch, sprawling gardens, towering orchards, gleaming orblights, smoking torches, flaring lamps…

  It was too much to take in; a welter of sensation, a maddening profusion of sights, sounds and smells that beat in upon her like a hurricane. She found herself sweating and flushed, heart hammering against her ribs, until the slowly waning crowds began to trickle away.

  “What do you think? So far?” Allignus asked. Although he still had to raise his voice to be heard, he no longer had to shout.

  “Terrifying!” she replied, forcing a smile. “And wonderful! Although…” glanced around. “It doesn’t feel as old as it should.”

  “This is the new city,” he said, waving idly at the buildings lining the road. “Only built since the Sundering, in the last thousand years or so. Hardly time for grass to grow between the cobbles,” he added with a grin. “Don’t worry, we’ll be at the river wall shortly. You can tell me how old it feels then.”

  The smith – unsurprisingly, given that he was a resident – was true to his word. As the crowds shrank, they were able to resume their earlier pace.

  The darkening sky drove them onwards. Allignus had told Hax that the High Guardsmen locked the river wall gates at sunset. He wanted to reach home that night, and Hax, now that she was within striking distance of her goal, was just as eager to complete her mission.

  They reached the river while the Lantern was still a hand’s-breadth above the eastern lip of the valley’s wooded rim.

  Seen from the east bank of the Lymphus, the old city was even more impressive. Allignus had advised staying on their present path, as the southeast high road led directly to the Crane Gate, and there was no time to circumvent the metropolis and find another gate before nightfall.

  Up close, the river was stunning; a vast, slowly-undulating ribbon of deep blue a half-bowshot wide – wider by far than any river that Hax had ever seen. And this is only the eastern branch! She reminded herself.

  The high road led to a narrow bridge – a stone ribbon pointing straight at the fortified island that lay in the heart of the stream. Four paces wide at best, the bridge was divided down the centre by a low wooden railing; traffic approaching the island (there was little) took the downriver side, while departing pedestrians and horsemen, a significantly larger throng, used the northern, eastbound lane. It seemed to be a sensible arrangement to Hax, given the narrowness of the stone way.

  A few moments later, as they negotiated the slender span, she realized that its narrowness was intentional – a means of restricting an invader’s access to the island. Should’ve made it meander, then, instead of leaving it straight, she thought, recalling Lallakentan’s sombre lessons on the science of siege craft.

  If I were the defending general, she used excitedly, I would mount…

  She looked ahead, squinting. The setting sunbeams at her back helped a little, shedding their powerful light on the vast, razor-peaked tower overlooking the bridge. Above the portcullis, gilt-edged, iron-shod doors stood, shut tight. I wonder what’s behind them? she thought idly. Crossbows? Oil? Something worse?

  This is the fortress of the High King, the last redoubt of the Third House, she thought, suddenly chilled. It would be something worse than oil or bows. Much worse.

  Unlike the sand-coloured gatehouse of the outer wall, this gate was heavily guarded. Hax counted fully two dozen armed and armoured soldiers, clad in the polished steel cuirasses, peaked helmets, and bright emerald cloaks of the High Guard. She felt a martial thrill when she saw them; these were the cream of the Queen’s army. A private soldier in the Guard was deemed equivalent to an officer in any other force.

  Half the troupe was arrayed at rest within the tunnel leading through the tower, leaning, relaxed but alert, on the hafts of their glaives – the Chalybs Altus, the ‘Great Steel’ that Sylloallen had taught her how to ply from her earliest days in the training yard at Joyous Light. The other half were questioning travellers seeking admittance to the old city. This naturally caused a back-log, especially as curfew was approaching. Hax and her companion found themselves at the end of a lengthening line of grumbling, footsore travellers.

  “Does it always take this long?” she asked after a few moments, as the line crept slowly forwards.

  The smith made an equivocal gesture. “Sometimes,” he replied. “Usually when there’s a diplomatic visitor. A neighbouring king dropping by to see Her Serene Majesty. Or a fête at the Palace. Or some wit slid a leech into the guard captain’s porridge.” He shrugged. “Nothing to worry about.”

  That proved to be her companion’s only inaccurate prediction. As they reached the front of the line, Allignus waved her deferentially ahead. Hax spurred Torris lightly, reining up just as she reached the line of Guardsmen at the head of the bridge.

  Their chief – a serious-looking fellow, unhelmeted, with wisps of grey at his temples – looked her up and down, and said tiredly, “No weapons.”

  Hax blinked. “I beg your pardon?” she replied, astonished.

  The old soldier repeated himself. “No weapons, miss. Nothing longer than a hand-span blade.” He motioned at the great sword and bow slung across her back. “Disarm, please.”

  Hax frowned at the unexpected request. She had never before been asked to cede her arms; it simply wasn’t done. Then she kicked herself mentally. You’re not in Eldisle anymore, idiot. No one here knows who you are.

  She was at an impasse. She had to reach her destination – but there was no way, no way in this life, that she was going to relinquish her mentor’s blade.

  Try tact, the Voice wa
rned her.

  Why not? she thought bleakly. I’ve nothing to lose. “I bear a message for the Palace, captain,” she said courteously.

  “All the more reason to hand over your arms, mistress,” the old soldier replied, his tone grim. He laid a hand on the hilt of the gracilensis that depended, slender and deadly, from his baldric. “No harm will come to them, I assure you.”

  Hax tried again. “I claim herald’s right,” she said, politely but firmly. Maybe that would work.

  “Herald or no,” the man replied, “you will cede your arms, or turn back.” He beckoned to his troupe, and four of them stepped forward.

  The commoners behind her surged backward in a body. Hax heard Allignus draw his breath in sharply.

  Staring balefully at the guard commander, Hax sighed. “What is your name, captain?” she asked.

  “Yaarin Eliassyn of Starsheen, Lady,” he replied firmly. Evidently, her garb notwithstanding, he had seen the same thing in her mien that Allignus had seen. “Tessarius, of the Eighth Guards’ Regiment. Commander of the Crane Gate. Your sword, please. Now.” His voice, though still polite, took on a hint of menace.

  She had hoped to keep a low profile while in town. But I’ll be damned before I turn Syllo’s blade over to this pike-pusher! she thought angrily. “Tessarius,” she said her voice ringing with unaccustomed authority, “I would be happy to debate this matter with you. In the meantime, perhaps you would consent to send a messenger to the Palace to inform Crown Prince Landioryn that his niece, Allymynorkarel Aiyellohax, daughter of Kaltas of Eldisle, dux et imperator, regrets that she has been delayed at the Crane Gate, and so will be unable to attend upon him this evening.” She smiled thinly. “You may give the reason for the delay or not, as you see fit.”

  The colour drained from the man’s face. Hax found that mildly amusing, so she decided to push a little harder. “I’d be obliged if you would also advise the Grand Duke that, as commanded by my father, I will wait upon my great-aunt, Her Serene Majesty, Ælyndarka the Fair, Queen of the Third House, the moment I am at liberty to do so.”

  The guard captain was no fool. He bowed low, then straightened, pressed his fist to his lips, and raised it, palm open, in salute. He was not smiling. “You may pass, your Grace,” he said.

  Taking their cue from their captain, the rest of his troupe bowed as well.

  Hax was impressed to note that there was not the slightest trace of a quaver in the fellow’s voice. She instantly regretted embarrassing him. Putting the spurs to Torris’ flanks, she trotted through the opened infantry line, beckoning to Allignus to follow. The smith held up empty hands, and gave the captain a helpless shrug.

  As she passed the commander, she leaned over in her saddle until her stirrup strap creaked. “One of the disadvantages of command, captain,” she whispered softly. “Every now and then some uppity tart will pull rank on you.”

  The man’s eyes went wide with astonishment. Then he grinned. Haughty noblewomen he was used to. Jesting ones were an oddity.

  If anything, his surprise made Hax feel even worse about her tantrum. “I’ll tell my uncle you’re a good man, captain,” she added sotto voce, straightening up.

  The old fellow gathered his composure. “As you wish, your Grace,” he said, struggling to keep from smiling. He bowed again.

  Hax waved as nonchalantly as she could manage, spurred her mount, and cantered gracefully into the tower tunnel.

  Behind her, Allignus hurried to follow. He was cursing softly under his breath.

  As he passed the captain, he muttered, “If it’s any consolation, captain, I didn’t know either.”

  Yaarin snorted in amusement. “Not especially,” he called out to the smith’s retreating back. “But I thank you, nonetheless.”

  ♦

  “ ‘Your Grace’?” Allignus asked a moment later.

  Hax sighed and glanced down at the man. “I’m sorry about that. I was hoping not to make any noise about who I am. But I’m in a bit of a rush, and didn’t feel like waiting.”

  The smith nodded non-committally, one eyebrow raised. “I thought nobles travelled in state. Carriages, servants, guards and the like.”

  “I hate carriages,” Hax replied. “They make me queasy. And I don’t need guards,” she added, tapping the hilt of her sword.

  Allignus laughed, his temporary reticence forgotten. “Not even a single lady in waiting?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can bathe myself.”

  Her companion nodded, still smiling. “I don’t imagine that there would have been many volunteers to make the ride from Eldisle to the capital.”

  It was Hax’s turn to chuckle. “No, indeed.”

  A few moments later, the smith cleared his throat. “Lady, may I –”

  She cut him off. “Don’t ‘lady’ me, Allignus. My name is ‘Ally’.”

  “Ally, then,” he said. “If I may ask – why ride?”

  “Eh?”

  “I know who your father is,” he shrugged. “Why not leap the flux? Does his Grace the Duke of Eldisle not maintain a house wizard?”

  “Ah,” Hax nodded. “Yes, we do. But the fellow’s young, newly-appointed. His master, our previous mage, had served my father for centuries, and left only a few years ago, to take up new duties.” She snorted. “You may have heard of him: Kalestayne of Arx Eos.”

  The smith’s eyes widened. “The Master Magister himself?”

  She nodded. “I studied under him, for a time.” The memories still made her shiver.

  “No wonder you felt safe insulting a High Guardsman,” Allignus murmured. “You move in powerful circles, La…Ally.”

  “Fortunate birth,” she shrugged. “Nothing more than that.”

  A few streets, and a few hundred elves later, Allignus laid a hand on her stirrup. She tugged Torris to a halt.

  “I go north, here,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the crowd. “You go south, to the palace gates!”

  “Yes!” she replied. She could see the elegant towers and snapping pennants looming over the southern end of the island.

  “Remember my invitation!”

  “I will!” She extended her hand.

  The smith took it. Instead of shaking it, he tugged her sideways and pressed his lips to the back of her glove. “Good journey, your Grace!”

  To her astonishment, Hax found herself blushing. To cover her embarrassment, she nodded curtly. “Good journey, Allignus.”

  He bowed, then straightened up and, with an airy wave, moved off into the crowd. Hax sat, silent and thoughtful, atop her steed, watching until she lost him in the throng. Then she turned Torris’ sleek, massive head towards the south, and eased him carefully through the swarming masses of townsfolk.

  Hax’s previous astonishment at the scale of the great city was thrust into the background the moment she saw the size, grandeur and opulent magnificence of the Palace. Her ultimate destination was not difficult to find. Palatium Prosapiae Tertius, the Palace of the Third House, as it was known throughout the Homelands, was more than a building, or even a collection of buildings; more than tower, keep or fortress. It was a massive, sprawling complex that completely dominated the southern third of the island; a vast array of soaring towers, magnificent temples, stately gardens and extravagant mansions.

  The whole glorious, monstrous, untidy lot served as the residence, the ruling chambers, the resting halls, and the seat of power of the Duodeci Basilicum, the Divine Twelve. These were the great names of the realm – the foremost families of the Third House. Descendents in line direct from Tior and Dior, the grandsons of the Holy Mother, descended also from Hara the Wise – the children of gods who had come to earth in mortal form, intermarrying with the elvii, spawning the Houses of imperial Harad, and giving rise to the Age of Wisdom, more than five thousand years earlier. A wonder, she thought, mesmerized.

  The palace grounds were separated from the rest of
the island by a vast, silent moat, drawn not from the river, but from some deep spring of dark water. Beyond the moat lay a tall, glistening black wall, identical to the river wall surrounding the old city – but higher and thicker, topped with glinting machicolations, and interspersed with glowering, fortified towers. There was but one gate in that wall, and behind it lay all of the majesty and glory of Elvehelm. The great tilting grounds; the arboreta, which were to the Hortum as a beech is to a potted plant; the Queen’s own flower gardens; the ponds and streams and waterfalls, driven by arcane means; the royal playhouse, the auditorium, the opera; the High Guards’ garrison and training hall; the royal residences, the vast ballrooms and dining rooms and sitting rooms and libraries; the matchless kitchens and monstrous store-houses, and the quarters of the servants who worked them; the salons, the libraries, the solaria, the dancing floors, the music halls; and the hospitals, where skilled healers mended wounds, prolonging the final hours of the last generation, and witnessing the first moments of the next. It was a glorious maze of majesty, a riot of colour – white marble, gleaming silver, yellow gold. The lustre of bronze, the shimmer of steel, the rich sparkle of gemstones, all shining in eternal light – an aurora that outshone the setting sun.

  And amid this splendour walked a greater splendour still; the scions of the Third House, the lords and ladies of the Twelve. Decked in finery unequalled anywhere on earth, they strode the corridors, lounged idly in the chambers, and wandered the gardens where the glory and wisdom of all Anuru lay concentrated and distilled, like brandy wrought from the finest wine. Satins and silks; furs and gilt; bright eyes, and bare shoulders. The inviting smile, the sly smirk, the suggestively lowered eyelid. The gentle lilt of the flute, the heart-rending quaver of the vithelle, the insistent, throbbing pulse of the tambours; candlelight and arcane spark, roast meat and incense, exotic floral scents, satin, silk, sweaty musk…and the headiest of all perfumes: power, sweet and intoxicating, addictive, treacherous, delicious, poisonous. Depending on the hands that held it, it could be a balm to heal the soul, a nectar to seduce the gods, or a venom to freeze the veins and stop the heart.

  Pleasure and poison, wine and bile, wisdom and gluttony, fidelity and sluttish excess, restraint and depravity; honour, treachery, and all the limitless shades between. All flowing in one direction: towards the southernmost peak of the island; the great chamber, perched like a watchful, hungry hawk above the reunited rivers: Astraprytaneum, Starhall, the hold of the Kings and Queens of the Third House, they who had for a score of generations sat upon the gilt chair below the ancient throne of Tior – the magnificent effigy, wrought of adamant by ancient smiths in the shape of a rearing dragon, fire-eyed and vigilant. The Filigree Throne, the siege of the High King of the elves. Ælyndarka, Queen of the Third House, occupied the golden chair. The great throne of the High King had been empty since Tior’s passing, save for the brief, profane touch of his tainted get.

  As she traversed the final gate (a trifling matter; the guards, who had evidently received word from the unfortunate captain at the Crane Gate, passed her through immediately and without question) and entered the palace grounds, Hax thought on all of these things. She recalled the advice she had been given by Kaltas, her father, especially about her aunt; the warnings about the Court that Sylloallen, her long-time master, had let slip, before his abrupt departure some years earlier; and the old, off-hand comments, half forgotten, that her mother had voiced in laughing, lilting whispers, before vanishing on the southroad, sixty miles, and sixty years, from where Hax now sat.

  A sigh escaped her lips. Thinking about Syllo – or about her mother – always made her melancholy.

  She shook herself back to her purpose, determined to heed all of the counsel and warning she had been given. The Court could be a battlefield, her father had told her; but it was not the sort of battlefield that she had spent half her lifetime preparing to address. She would watch her surroundings; guard her flanks; guard, even more carefully, her tongue; be wary of flatterers; and be warier still of kin.

  But I can’t be wary of them, she thought tiredly, unless I can find them first.

  She glanced around, hoping for some sign. The sheer scale of the Palace was intimidating. From the hilltop, far to the south and east, the place had looked reasonable, manageable; but now she realized that it was, in essence, a city within the city proper. It had only looked small because she had failed to comprehend how incredibly gigantic the city itself was. All of Joyous Light would fit within the Palace grounds, she thought dully. How am I supposed to find anything? Or anyone?

  Some rules, fortunately, were universal, regardless of where one found one’s-self. Hax asked the gardeners. Ten minutes later, she was clattering across a square bearing an exquisite fountain featuring water spurting from the lips of a trio of fabulously-rendered mermaids, heading towards a vast, expansive mansion. There was something comforting in the sculpture; the mermaid was the sigil of House Aiyellohax, her father’s personal seal. The fountain made the place feel a little less alien.

  The grand duke’s personal guards – a hard-bitten, professional-looking lot, which was precisely what Hax would have expected from Landioryn – met her at the gate of the Ala Martigona, the ‘Lily House’ traditionally occupied by the Heir and his family. Despite the wear and tear of travel, they had recognized her instantly. Hax assumed at first that they had been given a description; then she saw one of the guardsmen surreptitiously attempting to conceal a scrap of parchment bearing a reasonably accurate likeness of her visage. She nodded in resignation; the previous year, her father had engaged an artist to produce a rendering of Hax and her older sister, Jianni. Evidently, Kaltas had contrived to have additional copies made, and had distributed them far and wide. With any luck, only family’s seen them, she thought sourly.

  Then she snorted. Pity they hadn’t thought to send a copy to the Crane Gate.

  The guards led her through a long, high-ceilinged foyer. Hax shook her head in wonder; the simple antechamber alone was larger than her father’s banquet hall. Illumination came from high windows, and from orblights scattered here and there with seeming randomness. Silver basins balanced on knurled pedestals of marble held rainwater and floating blossoms, lending a delicate scent to the air. Intricately-carved marble pillars supported the distant ceiling, where pass-throughs admitted more light and fresh air – and birds, Hax realized with a smile.

  She glanced down at the floor. It was spotless; evidently, someone had taken steps to prevent the avian visitors from fouling the tiles. Clever, she thought grudgingly.

  The guards deposited her in a sitting room off the entry hall. Hax selected a likely-looking settee and dropped onto it with a contented groan, massaging her aching thighs.

  Her respite was short-lived. After mere moments, while she was still trying to work the kinks out of her spine, a regal-looking elf-woman opened a high door of dark wood inlaid with ivory, entering the sitting room with lithe, silent grace.

  This worthy was black-haired and green-eyed like Hax, and just as tall, but centuries older. Her hair was coiled and knotted into complex braids, and piled into an edifice perched precipitously atop her head, making her appear taller still. She wore a silver gown that covered her from throat to floor, leaving her arms bare, and trailing behind her like a lemur’s tail.

  The woman glided towards Hax like gossamer borne upon mist. Hax was wondering whether her memory was faulty – whether this, in fact, was her aunt Annalyszian – and was about to bow, when the silver-clad woman bowed first.

  “Amplexo, domina,” she said, her voice low and lilting. “I am Alicante, Her Grace’s chamberlaine.” She waved a hand at the surrounding splendour. “Her Grace has directed me to bid you welcome. Lily House is yours.”

  A surprisingly cordial message from the damnable woman, Hax thought. “I thank you,” she replied awkwardly. A peculiar sensation was creeping over her: discomfort, unease. Terror. The elabor
ate, suffocating courtesy and ritual of the capital and the Palace had caught her in their clammy grip. She hated it. It was so different from the easy informality of her father’s court. She felt as though she were on enemy ground.

  Jumping at shadows again? the Voice asked slyly.

  “I have prepared the Thalami Vesperae for you, domina,” Alicante explained. “Her Grace asks that you attend upon her at dinner.” The woman looked at the windows, noted the levelling of the Lantern’s rays. “There is sufficient time to bathe and dress.”

  She gave Hax a long, dubious glance, as if making a mental appraisal of her condition and the amount of labour necessary to improve it. “Just,” the woman added blandly.

  Ally felt a muscle jump in her cheek, but held her silence.

  “I have had a selection of her Grace’s gowns brought to your rooms,” Alicante continued remorselessly. She gave Hax a cursory once-over; the Elf-girl felt like a dubious side of venison being assessed by a butcher. “No doubt one of them can be altered in time for dinner.”

  Hax blinked. Things were progressing a little more rapidly than she had expected. “Actually,” she temporized, “I’ve had a long and trying trip. I was hoping…”

  Ignoring her, the chamberlaine stepped forward, and without so much as a by-your-leave, lifted Hax’s baldric over her head, relieving her of sword and bow. Hax had to suppress a momentary, panicked urge to whip out her dagger and gut the woman. “You will be partnering your esteemed cousin, His Excellency the Marquis of Liliandera.” Hoisting the weapons under her arm, the woman turned and made for the door through which she had entered.

  Hax didn’t move. Alicante – possibly through some arcane sense that enabled her to detect reticence on the part of her noble charges – halted, turned, and favoured the girl with a grave and reproving glance. “We do not have time to waste, domina. Follow me, please.” She turned again and strode briskly out of the room, obviously – too obviously – assuming that Hax would follow.

  The girl shook her head wearily. She wondered, briefly, whether there was any possibility that she could simply drop her father’s scroll on her uncle’s desk, collect Torris, make for the hills, and spend the night at a roadside hostel. Or wrapped in a blanket beneath the stars.

  Of course not.

  Sighing, Hax followed the woman out of the sitting room. This bears, she thought morbidly, every indication of turning into a long and difficult visit.

  As it turned out, she was only half right.

  ♦

  Hax endured innumerable indignities over the next several hours. The most embarrassing was being bathed by no less than three of her aunt’s maids – middle-aged, matronly women of the common class, who spent a good hour clucking and muttering about her bodily cleanliness and the variety of slowly-fading bruises remaining from her last practice match with Lallakentan. At least she didn’t have to endure their conversation; apparently, the sight of her numerous, self-inflicted tattoos deterred the women from addressing her directly.

  I suppose, she mused later on, that I ought be glad they didn’t break out the lye soap and scrubbing brushes.

  The most painful part of her ordeal was when all three went to work on her tangled mane, plying comb and brush with sadistic gusto. Hax’s hair, as Allignus had noted, was the lustrous blue-black that marked most of the Third House, and all of the Duodeci; but unlike the majority of the women in her family, hers was curly rather than curtain-straight. Especially when wet. That fact tended to make cleaning it, and arranging it into something more dignified than helmet-padding, something of a nightmare.

  Compared to the work of the coiffeurs, being fitted into one of her aunt’s gowns – floor-length, high-collared and long-sleeved – was a pleasure. Hax was relieved; the thing was surprisingly demure for the capital. She’d heard tales about the revealing and immodest fashions preferred at court, and had been dreading being tricked out like some sort of dockyard strumpet.

  As it turned out, though, she was the same height and only a little thinner around the midsection than her aunt, and thus only a few minor stitches were required to nestle her tightly into the dress. The shoulders were uncomfortably snug, but that, she thought with a wry snort, merely reflected the disparity in their chosen professions. Training with the great blades evidently built larger muscles than gossip, fêtes and slander.

  Shoes were found as well. Hax found the raised heels annoying and difficult to walk in, but she comforted herself with the thought that she wouldn’t be expected to run or fight in them.

  Once all was ready, she was garnished, like some sort of ambulatory confection, with a long, translucent veil affixed to her piled, still-damp tresses with silver pins. She felt like a caricature, and wondered whether she would seem out of place with her great sword slung over her shoulder. It would certainly draw comment, she mused, but it might make dancing difficult.

  She nearly forgot about her father’s letter. While the attendants’ backs were turned, she managed to extract it from the secret compartment in her scrip and transferred it to her person. The dress was snug, but the folded parchment was thin, and it fit invisibly under her shift, against her belly. She hoped that she wouldn’t be called upon to exert herself to the point of staining the thing with sweat. Neither the Grand Duke nor her father would thank her if the ink ran.

  When Annalyszian came to collect her, even she was forced to nod with thin-lipped approval. Hax looked nothing like the bedraggled and travel-worn mercenary that had ridden into the palace only a few hours earlier; she had been transformed, inch by painstaking inch, into the very picture of elven nobility.

  Teetering uneasily on her heels, the girl essayed a smile. It was not reciprocated. “You’ll do,” the older woman said flatly. “Follow me.”

  Where Hax had thought her own dress elaborate to the point of outlandishness, her aunt’s attire made the girl blink several times. The Grand Duchess wore an exquisite gown of gilt-stitched imperial purple, constructed to appear as though she were being embraced, front and back, by a pair of peacocks. The birds’ wings, bodies, tail-feathers and even heads were accentuated with tiny jewels worked into the fabric, and were strategically placed (or so it seemed to Hax) to display as much skin as possible, while maintaining an absolute minimum of decorum. Her hair, long and straight (Like mother’s, she recalled, feeling a pang of grief stab her unexpectedly), was unadorned, save for a bright, finely-wrought coronet denoting her rank.

  Hax’s aunt, Annalyszian Æyllian, lifemate of the Crown Prince of the Third House, was very rich, very well born, very well-connected, very beautiful, and very aware of it all. As a result, Lily House, the official residence of the Crown Prince, was the throbbing heart of most of the intrigue that took place within the Palace. Its mistress worked hard to keep it that way.

  Hax knew all this in the back of her mind, but the next few hours were to implant the knowledge deep in her vitals. She resolved to keep a close eye on her mother’s sister, especially as they had quarrelled once already. It had been a long time ago, but ‘Lyszi had a long memory.

  The Grand Duchess seemed sublimely unconscious of her niece’s scrutiny.

  As they strode through the corridors, Hax racked her brains to come up with some means of breaking the chill between them. “Thank you for the gown,” she said at last, speaking in subdued, polite tones, determined to avoid another quarrel. “It’s lovely. Very traditional,” she added, admiring the long sleeves.

  “I didn’t expect you to be travelling with anything appropriate for the Palace,” her aunt replied coldly. “And it’s not lovely; it’s thoroughly out of style.” She sniffed. “But it’s the only thing I had that would cover those ghastly tattoos. Most of them, anyway.” The woman turned and shot a meaningful glance at Hax’s face.

  The girl took a deep breath, struggling to maintain her equanimity, trying not to think about what the pair of half-moons above and below her left eye signified. A
nimus later, she thought grimly. Errands first.

  “Will uncle be at dinner?” she asked tentatively.

  “No,” her aunt answered. “The Grand Duke” – she laid special emphasis on the title, as if to discourage further familiarity – “is away north, inspecting the Cellovallis garrisons.” She turned and gave Hax a chillingly neutral glance. “Why?”

  Say nothing, the Voice advised her. “I…simply wanted to pass on a greeting from my father,” she temporized. “They were both at Duncala.”

  That had been a famous battle at the founding of the eponymous Ekhani county north of the Homelands, some sixty years earlier. Unable to think of anything else to say, she continued chattering. “They stood back-to-back, in the last redoubt, when the Hand knights…”

  “I’ve heard the story,” Annalyszian interrupted coldly. “You may give any messages you carry to me. In his absence, I am Landioryn’s viceroy, and hold his chair at the Council.”

  She knows. Hax thought of the letter concealed beneath the tight, binding stays of her bodice, and felt a worm of panic creep up her spine. She had no idea what the letter said, but her father’s directions had been explicit: Give it to your uncle, the Grand Duke, he had said; but not to your aunt. Above all, not to her. Destroy it first.

  Hax shrugged elaborately. “It was merely to say ‘Salvete’, aunt. Nothing more.” She knew that Annalyszian was not a caster (How well I know it! she thought) and hoped that the woman did not possess any arcane means of detecting falsehood.

  Apparently she was safe; Annalyszian eyed the girl balefully for a moment, but Hax could not decide whether the look on her face denoted distrust, or simply the profound dislike that she had come to expect from her aunt.

  “Very well,” the older woman snapped. They began walking again. “Speaking of battles, I don’t want to see you carrying that ridiculous butcher’s blade around here,” Annalyszian commanded as they strode towards the library to greet the princess’ guests. “If you must go armed, you may wear the pugiunculus, like a lady. Or the gracilensis, if, quod abominor, I am forced to present you at Court.”

  Hax felt a splinter of cold hatred enter her heart, due less to the woman’s patronizing tone than to the insult to her former master. Her great blade was a gift from Sylloallen, the sword that he himself had borne in battle, including at Duncala. Other than memories, it was all that she had left of him.

  And her father had borne it before Syllo. Put it aside? she thought, enraged. A frown crept across her face. Take it from me, bit…

  No. She could not afford another breach. Not until she had done what her father had sent her here to do.

  “Moreover, your taste needs to improve, and quickly,” her aunt was saying. “No more dressing like a vagabond or a pirate. We’ll have a wardrobe fit for a lady in a week or so.” She snorted derisively. “I suppose I can always bill your father.”

  Hax felt another splinter enter her heart – a razor-shard of hot, sanguinary rage. She did not understand what grudge her aunt held against her father; she only knew that Annalyszian refused to speak his name. It was a deliberate slight that Hax had, somehow, contrived to forget. Being reminded of it now set a slow fire of resentment burning in her belly.

  “And,” the woman continued remorselessly, “take that stupid ring off. It makes you look like a peddler.”

  Hax stopped walking. Politeness be damned. “This was my mother’s,” she said flatly. “And your mother’s, too, before that.”

  “I remember,” Annalyszian snapped. “Aylanni wore it all the time. Rykki, too. It looked ridiculous on both of them.” She sniffed. “Take it off. We’ll find something more suitable.”

  “I passed without the walls seven years ago, aunt,” Hax said, reminding her aunt, as diplomatically as she knew how, that – as a legal adult – she was entitled to make her own decisions. Especially about jewellery, the girl thought sourly.

  “Really?” the Grand Duchess asked, sounding chilly. “Odd. It seems only yesterday that you were pissing your breeks and thwacking imaginary Hand knights with a soup ladle.”

  She continued walking. “Come along, child.”

  Hax gritted her teeth and followed her aunt. She did not remove the ring. But the slow boil of anger that Annalyszian had ignited flared brightly.

  It was not going to be a pleasant night. For anyone.

  Her cousin, the Marquis of Liliandera – a nobleman only a few years her senior – proved to be a stunningly attractive specimen of high elven manhood. Tall, with deep black hair and rare amber eyes, well-dressed, well-armed, and obviously well-moneyed, he was the very picture of the grace and polish she expected of the cream of the Duodeci.

  He was also an effeminate, supercilious, drunken boor. Between greeting Hax with unctuous courtesy in Annalyszian’s library prior to dinner, and seating her carefully at the high table a quarter of an hour later, he managed to grope her no less than three times.

  The first time, Hax pretended not to notice, hoping that a chilly reception might discourage him from further adventures. That did not work. So the second time it happened, she caught his hand, put her lips next to his ear, and threatened to break his wrist. He laughed, too sodden with wine to take her threat seriously.

  The third time, she broke it.

  The fellow was game, she had to give him that; he was gritting his teeth, tears standing out in his eyes, but still smiling as he bowed apologetically to Hax’s aunt, grovellingly excusing himself, pleading an urgent errand that he had somehow, tragically, forgotten. Annalyszian had been unable to conceal her surprise and discontent (Hax wondered how often high-ranking guests fled one of her dinner parties before the first course had even been served), but she had graciously excused the sweating lordling.

  As he left, he took Hax’s hand in his unbroken left one and bowed over it, grating, “We’ll meet again, lady. I intend to revisit our conversation at the earliest opportunity.”

  “I look forward to it, my lord,” she had replied sweetly. “You’ve many bones left.” And for good measure, she’d blown him a kiss.

  Now, however, she was regretting her impulsiveness. The Marquis’ adventurous fingers would at least have been moderately diverting; in his absence, dinner promised to be paralyzingly dull. There were a score of couples present, and those on either side of her (the seating arrangements had been hastily reshuffled to cover the Marquis’ sudden absence) had little to offer in the way of conversation beyond banal observances about fashion, horses, and new fragrances; and gobbets of pointed, slanderous gossip about the innumerable and often indecipherable petty scandals that were the currency of the High Court.

  Hax recalled the Queen’s last visit to Joyous Light, a little more than a ten-year earlier, and the overt ribaldry of her courtiers. Ælyndarka herself, not to be outdone by her ladies, had recounted a drolly inappropriate tale about her attempt to talk her way out of a satyrs’ ambush. The story had been juicy enough on its own merit, but the rank and fame of the teller had lent a special frisson to the occasion. Hax had felt her ear tips reddening at the Queen’s risqué japes, and had watched her father, close to purple with embarrassment, doing his best to return the conversation to a more demure topic.

  Kaltas had succeeded on that occasion, but Hax did not share her father’s gift for easy persiflage. Seated now at her aunt’s table, she did her best to emulate her father’s example, listening to the conversation swirling along the great length of the board; but it was more of the same. This dressmaker, or that; this cobbler, or that one; to buy hats here, or there; who was keeping company with whom; whether feathers or plumes were, or were not, perfetto; whether a certain perfumer used too much rosewater in his new scent, or too little musk oil and amomum; and on, and on, until Hax caught herself fingering her gold-handled table knife, wondering whether it was sharp enough to pierce her bodice, and long enough reach her heart.

  As a consequence of crushing boredom
, she drank too much. Analyzing her behaviour later on, she came to the conclusion that her overindulgence was not entirely her fault. Each pair of diners was backed by an attentive steward, who carefully and unobtrusively replenished every glass that fell below a certain level. Hax – who detested the lack of control that accompanied drunkenness, and despised those who allowed themselves to fall prey to it – was normally cautious to the point of abstemiousness. Sylloallen, and later Lallakentan, had mocked her gently for it, but her father was approving of her practice; not so much because he feared that she might be taken advantage of when deep in her cups, but because, he once explained, “hands shaking with wine-lust would spoil her aim.” She had venerated Sylloallen; but she loved her father, and so took his advice to heart.

  As a result, she normally watched her wine-glass like an owl watching a titmouse. Her vigilance, however, was amateur, while the stewards’ ministrations were expert; and so, an hour after the affair commenced, she found that her head was spinning, and that her patience with the witless trivialities being spouted by her tablemates was at an end.

  When the woman on her right – a vapid, coquettish thing called Fellinaria, whose sole distinguishing characteristics were ostentatious jewellery, an immense, bouffant hairstyle, and less sense than the chair upon which she sat – asked Hax where she had purchased her ‘exquisite’ gown, Hax smiled demurely, and said, “Oh, I stole it.”

  Fellinaria tinkled merrily with laughter, one hand to her rouge-smeared lips. “Nicely put,” she giggled. “We all like a good bargain. Don’t we ladies?” This last was addressed to the two women seated across from Hax, whom Fellinaria had somehow managed to bring into the conversation with a mere glance.

  The more, Hax thought grimly, the merrier. “Bargains don’t come any better,” she agreed, favouring the ladies with a toothy smile. “After all, it’s not like she needed it anymore. The real challenge,” she added in a clinical tone, holding up her right sleeve and inspecting it closely, “was getting it off her corpse without any tears or bloodstains.”

  There was an instant of stunned silence. Then one of the ladies across the table tittered uncertainly. This led to a more general effusion of mirth, until even the addle-pated Fellinaria was giggling happily again.

  “You’re dreadful,” this worthy expostulated, patting Hax on the forearm like a clever child.

  Her smile, Hax thought, looked a little forced. “Just thrifty,” the girl replied. “Good dressmakers are so expensive.” Then she gave the woman a slow, calculating look, and remarked, “You know, I think we’re the same size.” She took a sip of wine, adding, “You are staying at the palace tonight, are you not?”

  That was the last Hax heard from Fellinaria for the rest of the evening.

  ♦

  All things – even the excruciating torture of a dull dinner party – eventually come to an end. Hax lost track of the time; but the Lantern had long since set when the last of the guests – a fleshy-lipped, dissolute-looking gentleman with a fresco of gravy stains decorating his tunic who had partnered Hax’s aunt with, in Hax’s opinion, an unseemly degree of enthusiasm – took his leave, tottering down the steps of Lily House and collapsing into a waiting carriage.

  Annalyszian maintained her happy smile, waving as the fellow was bundled into the conveyance, and holding her pose until it vanished into the gloom, rolling jerkily towards the Palace gate.

  When she turned to Hax, her smile was gone; and her voice, when she spoke, was like winter frost. “Come with me.”

  Hax was well acquainted with wine, but unaccustomed to the volume of the stuff that typically inundated social functions in the capital. She was sobering quickly – the night air helped somewhat in that regard – but she was still tipsy enough to take umbrage at her aunt’s peremptory tone.

  The older woman led her back into the residence, bypassing the library and dining hall, traversing a half-dozen other well-lit and well-appointed chambers, climbing broad stairs, and eventually ending up in a comfortable, exquisitely decorated boudoir.

  The doors to this chamber – they were actually gilt wood, Hax saw with amazement – were flung noiselessly wide by a pair of ladies-in-waiting. Annalyszian ordered them out of the room, then sat on a gorgeously brocaded day bed and began removing the long, lethal-looking garnet-tipped pins that had held her hair in place.

  When the doors were closed, she snapped, “I won’t have ill-bred animals in my house.”

  Hax blinked in surprise. “I beg your pardon?” she asked.

  “You heard me,” the elder woman hissed. The last of the pins came out, and her hair tumbled down, a glorious ebon curtain reaching nearly to her knees. “D’ye think I’m blind? This is Lily House; the palace of the Crown Prince. It is not a sailor’s ale pit, where thugs brawl over coppers in the shit-soaked straw!”

  If Hax had been taken aback before, she was positively stunned now. She’s talking to me as if I were still a child, she thought angrily. Memories of the terrible day, threescore years earlier, when all Eldisle had gathered to bid farewell to Hax’s mother, flashed through her mind. She had had a similar confrontation with her aunt just before the ceremony. It had not ended well. Evidently, she thought, she remembers it, too.

  Well, piss on her. Hax squared her shoulders. “If it’s the ‘Crown Prince’s palace’,” she replied, her voice flinty, and her face expressionless, “then who was that chubby lout who spent the night pawing at you? Aunty?”

  Annalyszian had been struggling with the tiny pearl buttons that secured the collar of her gown. When she heard this, the colour drained from her face. She leapt to her feet. “How dare you?” she shrieked.

  Lunging forward, she aimed a swift slap at Hax’s cheek. Despite her state of inebriation and the damnable heels, Hax sidestepped this easily, and the older woman stumbled. Before Hax realized it, her clenched fist was flashing towards her aunt’s unprotected neck. It took a supreme effort of will to withhold the blow.

  Annalyszian caught the movement out of the corner of her eye, and prudently stepped back a pace. “You’d strike me?” she demanded theatrically. “In my own home, you’d strike your own blood kin?” There was a thin edge of nervousness in the woman’s voice now.

  Hax rolled her eyes. “Turnabout’s fair play, your Grace,” she replied. It was not quite a sneer. “You weren’t too shy about striking me just now.”

  Rage and – Is that fear? Hax wondered – warred in Annalyszian’s face. “I knew this day would come,” she said at last. “Rykki tried. But you were always his child, not hers. And now look at you!” She waved a deprecating hand towards Hax. “Disobedient. Rebellious. More like a footpad than a daughter of the Duodeci.” She paused, then added, in as off-hand a tone as she could manage, “I hope he’s proud of what he’s achieved.”

  He. His. He’s. Hax felt her blood begin to boil. Her judgement, never good when she was deep in her cups, disappeared completely when her father was impugned. Especially by this…this woman.

  “Say his name,” she grated, clenching her fists.

  Annalyszian glared. “Never under this roof,” she hissed. “And as for you…if you weren’t my dead sister’s daughter…”

  “ ‘If’!” Hax laughed mockingly. “ ‘If’, and ‘if’! Always ‘if’!” She reached up, tore the costly veil from her hair, and threw it to the floor. Silver pins scattered like hailstones. “What honour do you show your dead sister when you deny her husband’s name, and treat her daughter like a beggar at your door?”

  “More than he showed her!” Hax’s aunt raged. “Dragged away from the capital, to an island hovel! Crammed into a draughty fort, along with the kine and the swine! A daughter of an ancient line, scrabbling in the dirt like a commoner!”

  Forgetting her trepidation of a moment before, the older woman stalked towards Hax, eyes flaring with rage.

  Hax blinked at her sudden fury, backpedalling. This was a side
of her aunt that she had been warned of by both her mother and her father, but that she had never before witnessed.

  “A daughter of kings,” the duchess raved, “taken in wedded bondage by a petty southern lord!” she spat. “What welcome should I afford one of his bratlings, heya?”

  Through the haze of amazement and wine fumes, Hax felt the calm of sudden clarity descend upon her. If I stay, she realized with something akin to astonishment, I might kill her.

  “Farewell, aunt.” She bowed mechanically, then turned and strode towards the doors of the boudoir.

  “Nec averso, scortum!” Annalyszian shrieked.

  She heard running, slippered steps, and turned back to face her aunt – just in time to receive a bone-jarring slap. Nails like talons gouged her cheek, stinging and drawing blood.

  Hax flinched; the heel of her shoe caught on the hem of the gown, and she stumbled backwards. Pouncing like a cat, the older woman followed, drawing her hand back for another blow.

  Hax’s calm restraint vanished instantly, like tears fallen on white-hot steel. A blind, blank-eyed fury descended over her.

  She caught Annalyszian’s wrist as it fell. Fingers long accustomed to the weight of the aulensis, the greatest of all elven blades, ground into the older woman’s bones, eliciting a hiss of pain.

  “Scortum?” Hax hissed. “ ‘Whore’, is it? I, who have never known a man’s touch, called ‘whore’ by the likes of you?” With her left hand, she bent her assailant’s arm towards the floor; with her right, she caught the woman’s throat.

  “ ‘Whore’, thyself, aunty!” she shouted. Flecks of spittle sprayed from her lips. “I am not one of thy court-cunnies, spreading my legs for every rake with a heavy purse and a ready smile!”

  Rage like bile hammered up her throat; she opened her mouth to breathe, and was dumbfounded when hissing syllables tumbled out. It was a phrase that had come to her long ago; she had mastered it in the silence of her soul, but never once uttered it – not against enemies, not even against the fell creatures of the night, much less one of her own kind. Especially her own kin.

  The magic answered her call. Night bloomed in her breast, and a vast, frost-fanged maw opened within her heart. Beneath her fingertips, the older woman’s lifebeat hammered frantically; Hax could feel it fluttering like a moth, could feel the feeble flickering of the woman’s essence beneath her claw. Warmth like fire, like hot blood, like magma, suffused her hand, her arm, her breast, flowing into her like flame, suffusing every fragment of her being. Hot spurts of glory filled her with exaltation. Life, delicious and heady as wine, flooded through her.

  Specks danced before her eyes. Hax drank it in, panting with blood-lust, bathing in it, shuddering at the unutterable ecstasy of the taking.

  Her enemy screamed once; a febrile, terrified scream, that trailed swiftly off into a gasping moan.

  Hax smiled in victory – a terrifying, ghoulish rictus. “Say…his…NAME!” she snarled.

  The colour draining from her face, her eyes rolling and white, Annalyszian slumped.

  Were you planning on killing her? the Voice asked drily.

  She’s…what? Her mind was heavy, clotted with power and the taste of blood. What am I…

  At the last possible instant, Hax came back to herself. With a supreme effort, she choked off the magic; cut through the throbbing conduit of power with the blade of her mind, like an axe biting through an anchor cable. The twisted strands of the flux, shadow-dark and splintery, whipped away into the aether.

  She blinked like a sleeper rising from deep dreams. The exaltation broke like a fever, leaving her shaking and chilled. A bitter taste of ashes and gall lingered on her tongue.

  She let go of her aunt’s throat. Deprived of that meagre support, the woman slumped bonelessly to the floor.

  Terrified, Hax knelt at the older woman’s side, feeling for the lifebeat in her throat. It was there; weak, certainly, but there.

  “Hara laudior,” she whispered. She glanced around the room, found her aunt’s dressing table, and located a hand mirror of polished silver. She held this before the stricken woman’s lips, waiting an agonized eternity before the faintest hint of mist appeared.

  What to do? She had no skill at healing. But there had been a cut-crystal decanter on one of the tables. Striding quickly to the curtained corner where it stood, Hax removed the stopper and sniffed. Mons Temetum, she thought. Or some other sort of ardent spirit. Lallakentan had been a firm believer in the restorative power of drink.

  Flask in hand, she hurried back to her stricken aunt. Kneeling, she poured some of the potent fluid into the palm of her hand, then held it to the woman’s lips. When she failed to drink, Hax put the bottle down, pried her jaws apart, and rubbed the liquor into her gums.

  That worked. Annalyszian coughed weakly, retched, and began thrashing feebly.

  Hax held the decanter to her lips until the woman had taken two small swallows. When her aunt’s eyes opened, she whispered, “Condona me, matertera,” putting all of her remorse into those three words. It was difficult, as she did not feel especially remorseful.

  Annalyszian’s eyelids flickered weakly. Her face was grey, her lips blue-tinged. They parted, and when she spoke, her voice was a harsh, atonal croak. “Ego te abligatio, sicaria,” she gasped. “Proditor,” she added, her voice growing progressively weaker. “Venefica.”

  A blaze of ice shot through Hax, gripping her heart in a fist of iron. Assassin rang in her mind like a funeral bell. Traitor. Sorceress.

  And so ends my mission, she sighed, her heart clenched tight within her. Less than a day. Fast work, she sighed, even by my standards.

  Hax stood. “Pareo,” she said dully. Then she strode to the window – the high tower window that overlooked the palace gardens.

  I need time, she realized suddenly. Time to think, to…to decide.

  Turning back towards her aunt, who lay, gasping, on the carpeted floor, she made a swift gesture, and intoned “Uinahtaa.” An old incantation, one she had used safely, many times.

  A look of impotent fury skittered across Annalyszian’s face…and then it faded. Her eyes closed, and she slumped to the carpet.

  Hax nodded once. “Thank you for the gown,” she murmured quietly.

  Then she stepped up to the sill of the vast window, grasped the shutter cords in her hands…and threw herself onto the night breeze.

  ♦

  She plummeted like a stone, dropping four stories between one heartbeat and the next. At the last possible instant, she murmured a spell to arrest her fall, stepping lightly to the ground between two plum trees, heavy with blossoms and ripening fruit. Her costly shoes sank into the thick, aromatic loam of the garden. The life-giving scent of flowers filled the air, and she breathed it in gladly; it went a long way towards cleansing her palate of the horrid, coppery tang of magic and blood.

  To Hax’s eyes, the gardens lay in a sort of twilight. Although the Lamps had not yet risen, the cloudless sky shone with starlight, bathing the trees and flowerbeds in a soft blanket of argent glory. And the Starhall itself – the heart of the city, the Queen’s residence, where stood Tior’s ancient throne – blazed with arcane splendour, lighting the whole of the palace like a second sun.

  Multicoloured shadows lay everywhere. Slipping between the trees, Hax sat on a convenient patch of grass, and became one of them.

  Her mind was at war with itself. While one part gibbered What did I do? over and over, like a child who has broken a valued bauble and is awaiting a parent’s judgment, another reflected coldly and dispassionately on the evening’s events. This part asked a different question.

  What do I do now?

  That, she knew, was simple enough. After all, her mission was not to pay a visit to her aunt; nor was it even to remain in Starmeadow. It was to deliver her father’s missive to the Grand Duke. She touched her bosom briefly, reassuring herself that the letter was still in p
lace. It was.

  Well, then, she pondered, what next?

  I have to flee, she realized immediately. That was no benign spell she had cast against her aunt; it was lethal, a working of the Ars Anecros. Had she used it against a fellow elf in Eldisle, she would have faced her father’s judgment, and the punishment would have been severe. He had already excused her once, taking the punishment that had rightfully been hers; but she had been a child then, and his responsibility under the Codex. She was an adult now. There would be no more pardons.

  Her mother, in her last letter to Hax, had warned her daughter against letting her passion get the better of her. No one would take the blame for her this time. Neither Kaltas nor Lallakentan had any sympathy for necromancers; both had faced the shambling fruits of that dark art in battle too many times. And here, having used the power against the wife of the Heir…

  She could not hope for leniency. She had to flee.

  My sword, she bethought herself suddenly. My bow. My armour. My…her saddlebags, her bedroll, her clothing; it was all still in the chambers she had been assigned.

  The urgency spurred her to action. She had minutes, at most, before Annalyszian raised a hue and cry. She scanned the multitude of high, arched windows, trying to guess which one was hers.

  Then her head snapped around. There was a rush of slippered feet; half a dozen people were running, swift and soft, through the shrubbery. Hax heard harsh, whispered orders being given, and though the words were indistinct, the tone was not.

  She could not afford to be seen. With a quick gesticulation, she whispered “Näkymättömyys”, and vanished into the shadows.

  Cloaked in ethereal dimness, Hax stepped into the lee of a statue depicting some ancient warrior-king. She strained her ears. Who could be so foolish as to make mischief in the Queen’s gardens? she wondered with dry despondency. Apart from me, of course?

  It would be folly. She knew that much; the place was positively swarming with armed and armoured members of the High Guard.

  The answer to her unspoken question came swiftly, in the form of a steely slither, a low grunt, and the soft clatter of armour on stone.

  Gods! She knew those sounds of old. This was no pair of illicit lovers seeking the solitude of the bushes.

  She ran her hands over the gilt-embroidered silk of her gown. Nothing. Not so much as a nail file.

  No. Not ‘nothing’. After what she had just done to her aunt, certainly not ‘nothing’.

  Hax hissed an incantation under her breath, raised her arms to her shoulders, and soared, silent and invisible, into the night sky.

  Atop the trees, the breeze was brisk, and the thin material of her gown offered little protection from the chill. She ignored it as best she could, straining to see.

  From her new vantage point some fifty paces above the gardens, she could easily make out what was going on. Six…no, seven black-clad forms were slipping noiselessly between tree and flower-bed, navigating expertly the gaps between the patrolling bodies of Guardsmen. She saw the glint of steel, and her lip curled involuntarily, baring her teeth. I need a…

  There. She dove noiselessly, landed softly near the cooling corpse of a silver-mailed soldier, presumably the one she’d heard expire a moment before. She laid a finger on his throat, feeling for the lifebeat, and was unsurprised to find nothing.

  Her fingers found blood and a small, foul-smelling wound just under the angle of his jaw.

  Hax gritted her teeth in a silent snarl. Taking care to avoid making a sound, slid the elf’s sword out of the scabbard slung across his back. A chalybs altus, she was happy to note; the great glaive of the High Guard. So unlike Sylloallen’s gift, her own aulensis. Heavier, more cumbersome. But it would do.

  She hefted the weapon in one hand, smiling grimly, and blessing Sylloallen for having trained her in all of the blades. For all its weight, the thing was well-forged, and had a delicate balance. At least the High Guard still gets good kit, she thought.

  An instant later, the new sword in hand, she was once more soaring invisibly through the chill night air.

  After an instant’s frantic searching, she had located the shadowy infiltrators again. The Voice was screaming cautions at her now. She ignored it. No more planning, she thought. Nor any vacillation.

  Audacity. She dove towards the group, gesturing frantically, and whispering incantations in the tongue of wyrms. One after another, they took effect. Her tender flesh hardened against blows and darts, and flickers of arcane force danced over it, shielding her from other harm.

  The last spell, she shouted: “Palokerä!”

  A radiant speck of light shot from her outstretched fingertips, flashing through the sky, striking the ground amid the black-clad stalkers. It blossomed instantly into a roaring, incandescent ball of flame. Two of the figures ignited and collapsed, screaming in agony, to the ground; a third was blasted backwards into a tree trunk.

  Hax felt a slight tickle as the illusion of invisibility surrounding her dissolved and disappeared.

  The other four seemed unharmed. Two, possibly having heard her incantation, looked up and caught sight of Hax; one raised a crossbow to its shoulder, took aim, and released the bolt. The other dipped a hand to its belt and flung a trio of tiny steel darts in her direction. All four missiles ricocheted harmlessly into the treetops, deflected by the invisible barrier of arcane force that she had erected around her unarmoured flesh.

  Without hesitation, Hax swooped lower, aiming for the dart-thrower, snapping “Kärventää raasku!” Coruscating blades of light lanced from her fingertips. The shadowy figure was struck by two of them and fell, thrashing and shrieking. The crossbow-wielder, still struggling with his cocking mechanism, dodged nimbly out of the way.

  By this time, a third figure had caught sight of her. It was robed in black, like the others, and had a heavy leather satchel slung over one shoulder. A woman, Hax thought, judging solely on the basis of shape and posture.

  As Hax watched from her aerial vantage, this worthy raised a hand, gesturing in the girl’s direction and hissing a series of iron syllables.

  Hax recognized immediately the nature and purpose of the gesticulations. She had no time to try to counter the spell, and just enough to mutter “Pestis!” before a cold wave of energy washed over her.

  Her flying spell failed, and she fell.

  She had one more chance. In the instant before striking the ground, she cried out, “Kynäleta!”

  Her tumbling body jerked to a halt just above the greensward, then settled softly to the lawn.

  Hax clambered to her feet, hampered by the tight sleeves and long train of her dress. She had retained her grip on the Guardsman’s sword, so now she hefted it, watching her opponents carefully. In the distance, she could hear the thunder of plated boots on the pathways of crushed marble; evidently someone had seen her display of fireworks. Good, she thought. A delay ought to…

  The figure that had assailed her a moment ago raised its hand again. Hax focussed carefully on her attacker’s gestures.

  Two more darts whined softly through the air, bouncing off her shield.

  Hax ignored them, squinting, her mind racing. The woman was…

  The elf-girl flung up a hand, shrieking “Keskeyttää Palokerä!”

  A glowing ball of intense, shimmering fire streaked towards her. At the very instant it began to blossom into lethal, consuming flame, Hax’s countervocation reached out and quenched it.

  The backlash was terrible. A bolt of agony lanced through her mind. She had succeeded in interrupting the caster’s spell, but the power of the casting had nearly knocked her off her feet.

  Hax’s own power was not inconsiderable, but this enemy mage was far, far more skilled than she. Time to go, Hax thought bleakly, preparing to flee.

  The black-clad crossbowman, mirroring her thoughts, snapped at the caster. “We don’t have time for this!”

  It was
a man’s voice. And he was speaking the elven tongue.

  “Decessio,” the caster snapped. Definitely a woman, Hax thought. The figure extended its arms and began chanting.

  The crossbowman and the third figure stepped closer, each grasping one of the caster’s hands.

  “No!” Hax leapt forward, lashing out with the guardsman’s glaive. The blade hissed through the air…and then she tripped, stumbling over the hem of her damnable gown. The keen edge missed the caster by a hair’s breadth, slashing through the leather of the woman’s satchel.

  One of her assailants cursed foully at the close call. A glint of light, something tumbling; the crossbowman reached down, caught a small object, fist-sized, as it fell…

  …ichor-green light flared…

  They were gone.

  “Damn it!” Hax shrieked. She stabbed the great, curved sword point-first into the sod and fell to her knees, howling in frustration.

  Then she saw it. A dim, grey thing, glinting against the grass, exactly where the black-robed caster had been standing. She picked it up, tossing it lightly in one hand.

  It was a goblet. A simple wine-cup, formed out of some sort of smoked glass, with a stem and base of rough-wrought silver. It felt cold and heavy in her grasp. She examined it as closely as she could in the darkness, but found no markings. Nothing to tell whence it had come, or what it was.

  Boots thundered to a halt behind her. “Stand up!” a voice commanded.

  Hax stood and turned, still regarding the cup in her hand. She felt dazed, unable to speak.

  Then she looked up and saw their faces. A thick, heavy feeling of dread descended upon her heart.

  The Voice within her was conspicuously silent.

  “Identify yourself.” The words seemed to float down to her, as though she were standing at the bottom of a deep, narrow well.

  Hax turned to regard the speaker. Five High Guardsmen, one of them a grizzled veteran bearing the plumed helmet of a Captain, stood before her. Two held their glaives at the ready; a third levelled a razor-tipped pike at her face. A fourth, unarmed, seemed to be winded. He was breathing heavily, as if he had been running.

  Hax inspected the Captain’s visage closely, or at least, those parts that were visible beneath his helmet. It was not Yaarin Eliassyn. She sighed; the odds had not been good in any case, but she’d hoped for a friendly face.

  The Captain half-turned to the unarmed soldier. “Kessaline? Is this her?”

  The soldier had a torn piece of blood-soaked cloth pressed to the side of his neck. “That’s her, Tessarius,” the elf replied. “I saw her evoke the fire. She was flying.”

  The captain turned back to Hax. “Your name?” he asked quietly.

  She blinked rapidly. “Orkarel Hax.” The cup seemed to weigh a thousand pounds in her hand. For some reason, she was thinking about it, rather than about the weapons pointed at her breast.

  Or, her conscience rebuked her, about your sleeping aunty upstairs, whom you just tried to kill.

  The Captain shook his head. “Nomen virago est. Your true name,” he insisted.

  “That is the only name I use,” she replied stubbornly. A buzzing sensation ran up her arm and settled into her heart. Her throat felt numb.

  The officer shrugged. “Very well,” he said. “The diviners can always get the rest, I suppose. I arrest you for theft, murder and high treason, by the name of Orkarel Hax.” He stepped back, sheathing his glaive. “You will please come with me.”

  No. The Voice was back. “I…this isn’t…” she stammered helplessly.

  The captain’s eyes hardened. “Lady, do not make me use force.” His hand was still on his sword-hilt.

  The pikeman leaned in, and Hax felt the razor point, cold and hard, against her ribs. “She’s a magus, captain. Perhaps the shackles…”

  “Yes.” The officer fumbled at his belt and produced a pair of glimmering silver manacles. He looked up and said, almost apologetically, “Your hands, lady, please.”

  No. The Voice again.

  Yes, she thought frantically. You have proof of your innocence. The enemy left bodies behind. Perhaps there are other witnesses. You can…

  Kaltas warned you about this, and Sylloallen, too! the Voice within her shrieked. There are unseen forces at work here! Fool, flee!

  The Voice was right, Hax realized. Unconsciously, she took a step back.

  Nerves strained to the breaking point, the pikeman lunged forward. She felt the point of his weapon slash through the stiff brocade of her gown and skitter across her ribs, leaving a deep gash behind. The cut burned, first hot, and then cold.

  Gasping, Hax grabbed at the wound. She hissed a spell, and vanished.

  Instantly, she dropped to the ground. The captain roared in anger, drawing his blade again, while the pikeman and the two swordsmen lunged at the spot where she had just been standing. Moving as quietly as possible, Hax rolled between the wielders’ legs, scrambled to her knees, and scuttled off as silently as she could manage. Blood and crushed grass stained the knees of her gown.

  Her foot struck a pebble, and it clattered audibly.

  “There!” one of the Guardsmen shouted, pointing.

  Enough, she thought weakly. With a frantic gesture, she whispered, “Lennähtää mina!” Blood streaming from the wound in her chest, she soared invisibly into the night sky, the grey glass goblet still clenched tightly in her fist, while shouts and bells summoned the High Guard from its barracks to face a threat to the Palace and the Queen.

  ♦♦♦

 

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