by Matthew Ward
Izack’s throat bobbed, voice lost in the gulf between sight and acceptance. A feeling Altiris understood only too well. Even forewarned by Kurkas, he’d stared too. The one solace of his fumbling about in Sothvane was that he’d not witnessed the decline presaging the miracle. He could only imagine what Lord Trelan had endured.
“Close your mouth, Lord Marshal.” Anastacia sipped from her glass and fixed the luckless Izack with an impish stare. Strange to see the emotion in her voice mirrored in her expression. A tune once played on the edge of hearing now loud enough to shake the roof tiles. “It’s not polite.”
“I…” Izack blinked and rallied magnificently. “D’you mind excusing me? I need to throttle his lordship. Never fear, I’ll be humane.”
Altiris frowned, the pieces coming together. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Bloody didn’t. I knew you’d been ill, lady, and that you’d recovered. Even said a bloody prayer, didn’t I? Me! Well, it was more a threat than a prayer, but what’s the difference when no one’s listening?” He shook his head. “Nothing about… this.”
Anastacia grinned. “Drool if you must, so long as you do so discreetly.”
“Generous of you, but I don’t want to set a poor example for the lad.”
“I’m sure his mind’s on higher things. As would yours be, if you had one.”
Lord Trelan appeared in the drawing room doorway and cleared his throat. “Ana, please don’t provoke Izack.”
Turning a pirouette of swirling skirts, she slid a hand about his waist and adopted sullen expression. “But he’s so very provocative.”
“I think you mean easily provoked.”
“I know what I meant.”
Rising on tiptoes, she kissed him on the lips and withdrew to the drawing room. Lord Trelan shook his head to disguise a blush of pleasure, and beckoned for Altiris and Izack to follow.
As with Midwintertides past, it was a modest gathering. Her glass refilled, Anastacia stood beside the mantlepiece, deep in conversation with Sidara and High Proctor Elzar Ilnarov – who was for once wearing his golden robes. Constans, perhaps banished from the kitchens, stood close to the battered old grandfather clock, and about as far from the other guests as could be managed. The ladies Orova had been guests the previous year, the thane of Indrigsval the year before that, but no others – within Tressia or without – rated invitation. Ironic, that so many who’d once disdained Lord Trelan would have paid dearly for a seat at his table.
No one expected to see the Lord Protector. Habits held long were hard broken.
“Lieutenant,” said Elzar. “May Lumestra bring you wisdom in the coming year.”
Altiris accepted a proffered glass with only a frisson of discomfort. For all his rank, Elzar’s easy manner encouraged familiarity – partly because he looked no more at home in his robes of state than Altiris felt in cravat and waistcoat. “I’ll take anything she offers.”
Elzar grinned. “You see? It begins already.”
The rich, bitter wine was a distant cousin to anything served in the Ragged Wayfarer – better even than the libations that flowed like rivers at Konor Zarn’s infamous parties. Stonecrest’s cellars ran deep.
“Josiri mentioned your foray into Sothvane,” Elzar went on. “I’d no idea conditions were so bad. Poverty is tenacious, but there’s always more that can be done.”
Altiris mumbled noncommittal reply. Beneath the bright lights and decorations of Stonecrest, with the waft of fine food heavy on the air, it was impossible not to hear how Elzar had spoken of Sothvane as a world apart. Not quite the othering once inflicted on the Southshires, but near enough to make Altiris feel all the more a fraud.
Maybe for all the Merrow’s criminal bent – for all his misplaced loathing of Sidara and the Lord Protector – he wasn’t wrong about everything.
The whirr and click of the grandfather clock gave way to a peal of tinny chimes. Kurkas emerged from the dining room – his steward’s array no less dishevelled than on any other day – and raised his voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.”
The dining room drapes were closed, the outer world banished beyond rich weave. The candlelit table creaked beneath the weight of serving dishes and platters. Cold meats and roasted, fowl and haunch. Potatoes piled high beside the crisp batter of Issamar flatcakes and sour chutneys, pickled fish and a small garden’s worth of vegetables. There was even a tureen of spiced jakiri – a dish Izack had discovered a taste for while stationed at humbled Ahrad. Bottles of red wine clustered about the centre of the table; white cooled in the snow beyond the sash window. A regiment of cakes and sweet pastries waited in tight formation off to one side.
All told, enough food to feed two-score souls, let alone the mere eight gathered in the dining room. And there’d be more in the kitchens and the servants’ quarters and the barracks. No one at Stonecrest went hungry at Midwintertide.
Lord Trelan reached the head of the table. His mouth creased sheepishly. “I may have overdone things.”
He overdid things every year. He considered it important to do so – to thank the living for their service, even as they toasted the dead. But this year was more lavish than most, and had grown so at the last moment with cooks roused long before first light. Little doubt as to why, not with Anastacia standing at his side. Before her porcelain days, she’d earned quite the reputation for indulgence – a pleasure stripped away by the onset of clay. With sensation restored? Well, Altiris understood his master’s overreaction.
Altiris took his place at the table. He, Sidara and Constans along one edge. Izack, Elzar and an empty chair along the other, and Anastacia facing Lord Trelan across the mountainous vista of food.
“If that’s all, I’ll be off,” said Kurkas. “If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchens.”
Lord Trelan shook his head. “Sit, Vladama. You belong here.”
“You shouldn’t drink so much, sah.” Kurkas scratched beneath his eyepatch. “Sours your judgement something rotten.”
Slipping behind, Anastacia set gloved hands on his shoulders and her lips to his ear. “Sit, Vladama, or I’ll break both your legs. Don’t want to upset the guests, do we?”
Elzar shook his head in dismay. Constans grinned. Kurkas sank into the empty chair with palpable air of wounded dignity. “You win, plant pot.”
She reclaimed her glass from the table, swayed gently, and took a sip. “Of course I do.”
Lord Trelan cleared his throat. “Now that’s attended to—”
The doorbell chimed.
“I’ll go.”
Relief creasing his worn face, Kurkas clambered to his feet, only to be halted halfway by Anastacia’s hand on his shoulder. She seemed not to notice, intent instead on draining her glass to its dregs.
Lord Trelan set his own – barely touched – glass aside. “I can answer my own door, just this once.”
Josiri checked the scabbarded sword was in its habitual hiding place in the hat stand before reaching for the door. Midwintertide or not, it didn’t pay to be careless. Yet the creak of the door revealed neither a Hadari assassin, nor a tattered scoundrel, but a brooding shape in simple black cloth. The lack of escort was not unexpected. Reputation was a shield all its own.
“Viktor?”
A scowl tugged at a scarred cheek. An outward manifestation of inner awkwardness, and ever a herald to confession. “I find my thoughts snared in the living and the dead, and would prefer not to confront them alone. Does your invitation stand?”
Josiri stepped aside. There was ever a certain joy beholding Viktor in discomfort. His heart opened so rarely as to occasion creaking of the hinges. “There’s enough to feed half the palace.”
Viktor made no attempt to cross the threshold. “That’s not what I meant.”
Their argument over Sidara’s fate? That wasn’t yet settled, and it was typical of Viktor – and infuriating besides – to suggest regret without actual apology. But quarrels could come later. “You’re alw
ays welcome.”
The scowl blurred. At last, Viktor crossed into the house and thence to the dining room. His reserve wilted only a little in the face of Sidara’s embrace.
“I’m glad you’re here, Uncle.” She paused. “Or should that be ‘Lord Protector’?”
“I left the Lord Protector at the palace. He’s a grim sort, and not to be trusted in polite company. ‘Viktor’ will suffice until I’m his prisoner once more.”
Izack, who’d not only purloined a bottle of brandy in Josiri’s brief absence, but also lowered its level by considerable degree, thumped the table in approval. “Too bloody right!”
Viktor made his way around the table, offering greeting with a clasp of hands and, in Kurkas’ case, an embrace that left the other looking every bit as discomfited as Viktor himself had at the door.
“Are you well, old friend?”
“Can’t complain, sah. It’s been a while.”
“The price of responsibility, as well you know.”
“Not me, sah. Just a simple steward, tending my betters.”
Viktor moved on to Anastacia, who held out a gloved hand for him to kiss. “When the herald brought word, I hardly dared believe. Flesh from clay, as beneath First Dawn. A midwinter miracle, when they are needed most.”
The curl of her lip might have been precursor to sneer or smile. “Is Lord Droshna moved to poetry?”
“Lord Droshna is grateful that at least one of his past mistakes is unmade, even if he’s bemused as to the means.”
She withdrew her hand and tilted her head. “I’ve no answers for you, Viktor. My mother always delighted in mystery. She’d be pleased that to have birthed another, even in death.”
Josiri heard fragility beneath the bravado. She’d offered him no deeper explanation. Awash in relief, he’d forsworn deeper enquiry. Truth was, it wasn’t so simple as Anastacia having been restored to her old self. The spirit he’d first known had been as immune to physical harm as to liquor’s embrace. Just as the fuzziness of her speech hinted at wits on the road to intoxication, her gloves and painstakingly applied makeup concealed scores of scabs and scratches earned in the sloughing of porcelain skin. A spirit would not have been afflicted thus, nor a divine serathi, who bled golden light, not mortal ichor. But she’d insisted she was well, and stridently dismissed trifles of infirmity.
Concerns remained, and Josiri was determined to see them aired. But they, like Viktor’s designs for Sidara, would wait.
With a final solemn bow to Anastacia, Viktor took a place hurriedly set for him. Elzar rose with the stiffness of advancing years, cleared his throat and waited for Josiri to find his own chair.
“We come to the close of the seasons.” The words, more strident than was Elzar’s custom, echoed in the gloom beyond the candleflames and set hairs bristling on the back of Josiri’s neck. “Lumestra commands us to greet the future unafraid, and unburdened by the past. To treasure those we hold dear, but not to forget those who came before. Speak their names, while the mists draw nigh and Otherworld comes close to this world bereft of sun. Let the dead live again in this brief Dark, that we may move forward when dawn rises.”
Izack raised his glass in toast, levity for once absent. “Aharan Izack. Finest brother a man could want. Even if he couldn’t tell one end of a sword from the other.”
He glanced at Constans. The boy shook his head and stared down at the table.
Sidara frowned, though Constans was hardly alone in silence. Elzar sat apart from remembrance, as priests always did. And Anastacia invariably disdained the ritual as “ephemeral nonsense”.
Sidara’s expression cleared as she raised her own glass. “Malachi and Lilyana Reveque, who strove always for others and never for themselves.”
“Ezhan Czaron.” Altiris’ glass joined the growing circle, tribute to a long-dead father.
Kurkas hesitated, as he did every year. Then he dribbled more brandy into his glass, and hoisted it high… as he did every year. “Sedrin Costra, you reckless, charming bastard.” He raised his voice and stared up at the ceiling, daring a response from beyond the mists. “And Revekah Halvor? You still owe me for a bloody eye.”
Laughter rippled along the table. Josiri smiled, lost in bittersweet memories. Kurkas wasn’t the only man to have crossed swords with Revekah and come away the worse. She’d fought all her long life, against Thrakkian raiders, Council occupation and Kai Saran’s Immortals. And at the end, faced with a battle she couldn’t win, she’d gone defiant into flame.
He caught Viktor staring at him, brow furrowed in unspoken question, and nodded assent.
Viktor added his glass to the toast. “Calenne Trelan.”
“Katya Trelan.” Josiri raised his glass. “Though I dread what she’d say to see me now.”
Of the nine gathered at the table, three had fought against his mother during the Southshires’ doomed secession; two more were heirs of a family whose vote had loosed the war. Altiris, at least, Katya would have approved of. Maybe even Elzar, for her quarrels with the Council had never encompassed the church. As for Anastacia? Who was to say?
“As the Old Year dies, and the New draws in…” Elzar tailed off as Anastacia rose, trembling glass extended and voice wracked with rare uncertainty.
“To my mother. To my sisters. To Zorya.” The words spilled as water through a millrace, gathering speed as confidence returned to a voice that seldom possessed anything else. “To brief, brilliant souls who strive for more in moments than those who squander eternity.”
She scowled, and looked as though she were about to say more. Then she sat abruptly, and added her glass to the circle.
Elzar let silence reign a moment, then nodded. “As the Old Year dies, let us go forward into the New. In gladness and not in sorrow, safe in the promise that we will all walk together in the Light of Third Dawn.”
“In the Light of Third Dawn.”
Glasses chimed, one against the other. Candles were blown out, lanterns roused and drapes drawn, the Dark of old banished from the room as Lumestra had once banished it from the world.
“And now that’s done with, can we eat?” said Elzar. “I’m starving.”
Anarchy descended. Settings were treated as mere suggestions, rather than shackles. Diners exchanged places as readily as plates. Jokes were broached, memories shared and stories told.
Izack, no mean trencherman, somehow found breath between forkfuls to extol Viktor’s triumphs on the eastern border and then segued guilelessly into a far less flattering tale – one involving rich wine, a tender gut and a convalescence that stretched into the following night. Viktor brushed the first aside with habitual modesty, and glared sourly at the second, murmuring darkly – if ineffectually – about deliberate poisoning by a rival, and finally leavened discomfort with a self-effacing shrug.
As appetites failed before the table’s impossible challenge, Anastacia, now noticeably slurred in speech and manner, spoke at length of golden streets, vibrant gardens and stained glass shining like gemstone. Goaded by Elzar, she even sang. Though Josiri understood none of the words, the lanterns seemed all the brighter while the notes lingered, and his heart lighter.
None listened more enraptured than Constans, who scribbled notes on a scrap of paper, and afterwards quizzed Anastacia on the form and meaning of the lyrics. But whatever power had moved her to sing had dispersed, and she sought to change the subject.
Unexpectedly, Viktor rescued her by launching into a recital of the Heinrada’s Lament, which he claimed a Thrakkian deepwinter tradition. The guttural words held no more meaning for Josiri than had Anastacia’s song, and were very certainly nowhere near as melodious. Viktor frequently claimed he’d no mind for music, and to hear him sing thus was a rare and unusual treat. His basso delivery sounded genuine enough, and Constans provided running translation – his proud expression for once bereft of slyness.
Unfortunately, by the time the bold Heinrada stood alone against the drakon who’d devoured his father, Kurkas ch
imed in with a translation of his own, one tending less towards epic poetry and the valour of heroes, and more towards a mummer’s farce – complete with directions from the god Astor that Heinrada should demoralise the foe through a display of bared buttocks. Mirth redoubled when Viktor unexpectedly joined Kurkas in sabotaging his own performance, matching the steward’s falsettoed parody so precisely – in meter, if not pitch – as to reveal that this wasn’t the first time they’d played such a game.
Constans bristled at Kurkas’ levity but, at Altiris’ suggestion, the matter was settled by a duel, fought at arm’s length across the table with chicken bones for swords, and eagerly cheered on in all quarters. When it was done – and Constans the winner – toasts were offered to victor and vanquished, to old friends and new, to the absent and the estranged. Having drunk to the valour of Essamere, it seemed only fair to do the same for Lancras, Fellnore and vanished Prydonis; to the dwindled bloodlines of Reveque, Trelan and Akadra.
Bottles ebbed, and wits drifted on seas of wine and brandy. The company retired to the drawing room, and conversation grew subdued, for all that it remained companionable. There, as at table, Sidara and Altiris were rarely apart, for all that they seldom came into actual contact. Still, the two remained a study in contrasts, Sidara effortlessly confident and Altiris wary.
Afternoon bled steadily towards evening, and a pentassa deck was fetched in preparation for games of jando. All were destined to lose to the cardsharp who styled himself high proctor. Even when Josiri marshalled six players against him – Altiris and Sidara chose instead to rabble-rouse from the comfort of a hearthside chaise – Elzar took every hand, and for all of Izack’s accusations of skulduggery and false dealing, was never once caught in the act. It helped, of course, that Elzar – like Constans – had scarcely touched a drop all afternoon.