by Matthew Ward
“Now that sounds like instruction, and not envy.”
“I would never dare instruct an Empress,” he replied. “But to my wife, I offer advice. Your beauty lies not in your form, but your fire. I rise to greet it every morn, but others have forgotten. They’re breaking you, inch by inch. Have them see the fire again.”
Bowing low, he descended into the whirl of merriment, a pair of Immortals breaking from the dais to serve as escort. Melanna watched as he mingled with the crowds, one faithful soul amid hundreds about whom she’d only doubts. Aeldran’s advice was sound, for all that he perceived only half of her troubles. Suspicion of weakness so readily became truth, believed by all.
Perhaps a display of strength was required, if not the one Aeldran meant.
The old, overgrown wood sat untouched by the palace’s radiance. The cold made mock of cloak and gloves as readily as the shadows did Melanna’s lantern. Every step occasioned creak of branch and scuttle of an unseen something lost to briar-wreathed gloom. And yet the path was wider than it had been the night before, the frost-hung undergrowth parted in welcome.
A hundred childhood nightmares that might not have been nightmares at all clamoured for attention. Melanna pressed on along without backward glance. No fear displayed for Tavar Rasha, who’d pleaded against this course long past propriety’s bounds. And none shown for he who waited at the wood’s tangled heart.
And Jack was there. Melanna felt his attention upon her at every step. The heady, oppressive weight of anticipation. The last time she’d stood in such a presence, Ashana had watched over her as a mother should. Did she do so now? With the moon bright above, there was always that chance, for all the long silence between them. Melanna shook the thought away as she stepped into the clearing.
This time, she stood before Jack as a mother, not a daughter. Her strength would serve.
The ancient oak loomed black in the darkness. Inscrutable. Vast enough to crush her beneath a single branch, were it so inclined.
“Will you speak with me, Lord Jack? One monarch to another?”
A hunched, gangling shape detached from the oak’s shadow. Robes the colour of decay brushed the snows. A wooden mask, plain barring a scar across one eye, peered from beneath a ragged hood. Branch and briar unfurled from the undergrowth and tugged at his robes, supplicants straining for a blessed touch.
{{Are we equals, Melanna Saranal?}} His voice was the drone of thousand insects, the rustle of leaves in the storm. Green fire blazed in the mask’s eye sockets. {{Are we friends?}}
Melanna swallowed. She’d forgotten what it was to stand before the divine – to be dwarfed by the presence of something that wore ephemeral form merely because it chose to do so. And then there was the scent arisen with his coming: sweet putrescence and the musk of black roses. One breath, and lantern light shimmered a hundred colours. Senses fell mute even as they screamed longing.
“That isn’t for me to say.”
He raised an arm, spindly rag-wrapped fingers reaching to brush Melanna’s cheek. {{I would have had it so, despite your disrespect.}}
She turned her head, skin crawling. Disgust banished fear. “Your actions speak otherwise. You swore to leave me be, and a bargain with the divine binds all parties. So why do I find you creeping about my gardens?”
{{I swore no claim on you so long as Ashana forsook her own.}} The leer returned to his buzzing voice. {{Concerning your daughter, no bargain was struck.}}
Fear returned, anger with it. “She’s a child!”
{{As once were you. She will grow, and I am patient.}}
“Why? Why does the line of Saran matter so much?”
{{Because I will not be cheated twice in as many generations.}}
Twice? Her father had thought to trade his own life in exchange for support on the battlefield, but had been deceived into instead offering Melanna as a bride. What else had he pledged? What had he kept from her? “Tell me.”
Jack creaked closer. {{Your mother desired a prince’s love. When the moon was dark and Ashana blind, she buried a straw doll at Cairnroot. Ten years of wedded bliss, one for each drop of blood shed upon the doll. Then she was to come willing to a graven throne at Glandotha. She agreed so easily, but her promise became a dream.}} His tone grew cold, bitter. {{When I offered reminder, she gave herself to the Raven out of spite.}}
Melanna grabbed at a branch to contest a world trembling beneath her feet. Her games beneath the oak. She’d been Jack’s reminder of bargains unfulfilled, as Kaila was now hers. And her mother’s fall from the horse – no accident, but a deliberate act.
She doubled over, fighting for breath. Had her father ever suspected his beloved’s death had been no accident, but the only freedom she’d hope of seeking? Better Otherworld’s peace and the hope of Evermoon than the mouldered, spiteful madness of Fellhallow’s brides. Had her parents’ love even been true, or a potion brewed of maiden’s longing and Jack’s enchantment? And the son Kai Saran had desired, but was ever denied… had that too been Jack’s doing? Gifts given and taken in the same breath.
Starving lungs at last found breath. Fury burned away the cold, fed by Melanna’s recollection that the Lord of Fellhallow’s bargains ever ran crooked; that he was apt to offer in trade something his supplicant already possessed, but did not know. Jack was deceiver – a refuge for the desperate. Reading deeper meaning into his claims was to conspire in one’s own deception. Aethal Avandal had been an Immortal’s daughter, without rank or wealth. How impossible it must have seemed that the Imperial heir might have risked his own standing for her. How easily she might have been deceived into seeking divine aid.
As for the rest? The past was the past. The future had brought her to the oak.
The world steadied. Melanna stood tall, the last fear burned away. “I came to deliver a message. In friendship or otherwise, it remains the same. Whatever bargains were struck in the past, my daughter is no part of them. You have a forest, and I an Empire. Fire levels all.”
Jack hissed and shrank back, broken and pitiful, some trick of manner granting expression from a mask otherwise bereft. She dared him to read the bluff in her words. Few among the Gwyraya Hadar would countenance war against a god, just as Fellhallow, whose roots burrowed across mist-bordered worlds, was more than a mere forest to be razed. But as with Jack’s bargains, what was believed was more important than what was true.
{{What claws you have, when roused.}} Jack’s buzzing tone offered no clue to thoughts lying behind. {{The time will come when you have to choose between your desires and the good of your subjects. Your father – your mother – clung to the former. What, I wonder, will you choose?}}
He melted into the oak’s shadows, the air crisper for his passing. Melanna stood motionless, trapped beneath an outcome that offered scant victory, for all it felt nothing like defeat. Breath frosting, she retraced her steps to the wood’s perimeter and the formal gardens beyond.
“Empress.” Tavar Rasha broke from the knot of Immortals, concern crowding his battle-worn features. “You’re pale. Are you harmed?”
Melanna gave a vigorous shake of the head. “No. I’ve all that I needed.”
She felt his eyes on her, hoping to glean thoughts in her expression. She’d given no explanation for her descent into the wood, just as she’d offered none for leaving the throne room. How much did Rasha suspect? Perhaps, he merely thought her mad. That would be fair, as Melanna could no longer be certain of sanity. The sense that her life was not – had never been – wholly her own was unshakeable.
“The Golden Court awaits your pleasure.” Rasha’s tone conveyed disapproval absent from the words. Rumours concerning her absence would be spreading. Gossip made no account for rank.
“I know.” She stared back at the wood, no longer a child’s refuge against the world, but an intruder amid the lawns, twisted and malevolent. She’d faced down a god – moreover, without drawing on authority other than her own. That, at least, was a victory. The ephemeral confrontations y
et to come held no dread. “I’m ready for them now.”
He beckoned to the nearest Immortals. “You’ll permit us to escort you inside?”
“No.” She smiled. “But you may accompany me there, if that is your wish.”
Rasha gave her an old-fashioned look, but let the matter drop. For her part, Melanna gazed again at the wood. The vantage from which Jack had spied upon her, and her family. The snare by which he’d thought to steal daughters from their mothers. Show them your fire, Aeldran had said. Metaphor was well enough in its way, but she could do better.
“Burn it, jasaldar. Every tree. Every briar. Tonight.”
Fifteen
Viktor stared broodingly into subdued streets as the carriage made a jolting, shuddering crossing of the bridge, his expression no less a warning to unquiet spirits than the blue-white crackle of ghostfires. Elzar knew better than to take offence. Lumestra knew there was little in the city’s broken skyline to offer encouragement for the year ahead.
There’d been a time, a few years back, when it seemed the Republic had been turning a corner – the corrupt bickering of the Council ended, the Hadari border quiet. Now Elzar’s hopes of glorious rebirth had faded like the foundry’s flames. Sunlight no longer graced the city as once it had, and with fall of night it seemed so different as to be alien. Maybe it was just imagining, wedded to an old man’s failing sight. Or perhaps Lumestra truly was dead, as Anastacia readily proclaimed.
A whinny, a squeal of greased axles. The carriage eased to a halt at the palace’s marble stairs. Viktor roused himself. “Hedvin will take you home if you wish, but I hoped to prevail upon you a while longer.”
Elzar stifled a yawn, the prospect of warm hearth and soft bed never more appealing. Late nights were long behind him. But such offers were seldom made whimsically where Viktor was concerned. “Of course.”
Viktor thumped a hand against the carriage roof. The door opened. Constans stood to attention beyond, the boy a reluctant shadow beneath the lanterns of the palace approach. Further up the steps, four Drazina and two simarka stood watch at the gate. Viktor dropped to the ground, grace as ever belying stature. Elzar gratefully took his proffered hand, and lowered his twinging bones into the snow.
“Will that be all, father?” asked Constans.
“It will,” rumbled Viktor. “We’ll speak in the morning.”
Constans bowed and walked away, soon naught but a shadow in the greater dark beyond the ghostfires.
“He’s very formal,” said Elzar, following Viktor up the steps. “I hardly recognise the boy I once wrestled from the branches of a hayadra tree.”
“He’s learning his place in the world, and his responsibilities.”
“Not as fast as he might, from what I hear. A little too fast with his hands, and faster to throw around his name… and yours. It could be he’s a very different young man when your eyes aren’t on him.”
“That too is part of the lesson,” said Viktor. “Better he learns it young than its lack ossifies with age. Had I been wilder in my youth, I might have made fewer mistakes since.”
Little consolation for those who were Constans’ unwilling tutors, who – if rumour held true – bore the cost of goods purloined without payment, but Elzar held his tongue as they passed into the palace.
For all that there were always Drazina in sight – Kai Saran’s lesson, at least, had been well learned – the corridors felt empty. Elzar almost found himself wishing for the days of the twin councils, and the crowds of petitioners with their voices raised in quarrel. Few petitioned Viktor, and fewer still with raised voice.
Only Captain Tzila held post at the entrance to Viktor’s chambers in the old clocktower. She offered a low bow as they approached, cloth whispering across sculpted steel armour.
“The high proctor and I are not to be disturbed,” said Viktor.
Tzila inclined her head in acknowledgement, her helm’s empty gaze lingering on Elzar perhaps a moment longer than necessary. But he’d lived too long to quail before theatrics, even of the bleak sort Tzila practised.
As ever, Viktor’s chambers held a peculiar sense of abandonment. The sense that someone had lived there once, and might one day do so again – but not today. It wasn’t for any lack of cleanliness, for in that regard every inch of shelf and carpet was pristine. More, everything was too orderly. Not a book out of place, or a scrap of paper discarded at a careless moment. Nor did the room terribly suit Viktor, if truth be told. The ornaments, the chandelier; the sumptuous cloth of chair and drape. Costume worn for others. The approximation of what a man in his position should aspire to, rather than what he wanted.
Elzar gratefully accepted a glass of sweet caldera wine, and sank into a fireside chair. “Thank you, my boy. May I say it was good to see you out and about today? I know it meant much to Josiri.”
Viktor made no move to find a seat, just as he’d forgone pouring himself a drink. “I’m not always free to act as I wish.” He shrugged. “A Lord Protector’s burdens.”
“Nonsense.”
He glowered. “Is it? I think this is the first Midwintertide I’ve not been on the road. Every town and parish demands my presence. Conscription numbers are falling, and the fortifications lag behind schedule. Worse, every guild, merchant and banker expects me to solve their squalid quarrels.”
Elzar chuckled into his glass. “This was always your problem. Thinking yourself alone, when in truth you’ve only yourself to blame for isolation.”
“You think I don’t rely enough on others? I handed the army to Izack, the constabulary to Josiri—”
“And promptly raised the Drazina to do the work of both,” Elzar countered, “and in a manner answerable to you alone.”
“The provinces have never been more independent.”
“And yet both Sevaka and dear Arlanne – like Josiri and Izack – are scarcely free to make decisions without you snorting down their necks.”
“They told you this?”
“No,” Elzar lied. “But I’ve seen it for myself. Or did you not summon us to a meeting yesterday only to impose your own view? It’s not the first time.”
Viktor frowned. “I thought you agreed with me about the Eastshires?”
“That’s not the point. You’re too used to ordering soldiers about. Folk trust you. Trust them in return.”
“Or I’ll become a tyrant?”
Elzar shook his head. “You can’t save the Republic from behind stone walls, my boy, even if those walls lie mostly in your own mind. You have to walk in it. Otherwise, how are you to know what you’re saving?”
Viktor paced back and forth, footfalls heavy and rhythmic. “Saving the Republic? Is that what I’m doing? Not so long ago, I was torn between riding south and staying to thwart my father’s ambitions. You told me I’d look back on that moment five years hence, and curse my easy life. You were right.” He came to an abrupt halt and spread his hands. “Five years and more are ash upon the wind. There’s nothing I’d not do to have them back, and hope alongside.”
“You give folk hope, Viktor. You always have. But I’d forgotten about your father.” Hadon Akadra had been so like his son. Arrogant, assured, and forever terrified at the prospect of losing control. But unlike his son, Hadon had lacked empathy, or else had it worn away by privilege. “Whatever happened to him, I wonder?”
Viktor’s brow furrowed in distaste. “We can only hope it was what he deserved.”
“In the end, that’s all any of us can hope for.” Elzar set the glass aside, untouched. “Viktor, what is it you want of me? I’ve known you too long to mistake purpose for friendliness.”
He received a wry smile in return – or as close to such as Viktor ever came. “I need your help.”
“You have it. Always.”
The glower returned. “You shouldn’t say that until you know what I have in mind.”
Elzar chuckled. “You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”
“I’m deadly serious.”
“All my life, or as near as matters. Most of what I am, I owe to you.”
Elzar’s cheeks warmed, though the claim was true enough. Even now, he caught glimpses of the terrified boy who’d sought shelter in the foundry after footpads had murdered his mother. “And in all that time, have I turned you down?”
“Not once.”
“Then you have your answer.”
Viktor nodded to himself. An acceptable impression of a man mulling things over, for all that he’d surely made his decision long before. For all his strengths, Viktor was apt to imitate the mannerisms of ordinary men more than have emotion drive him thus. “This way.”
Following him through the inner door, and up rather more stairs than he’d have wished, Elzar at last entered a room that matched Viktor rather better. No trace of elegance lingered in moonlight cast from upper windows. Battered tables were barely visible beneath cracked and curling books, furled parchments and wax-crusted candelabra. The drapes of the lower windows were threadbare, so thick with dust as not to have been opened in some considerable time. Deeper into the room, past the spiral stair that curled towards the clocktower’s summit, unused furniture languished beneath sheets.
Only one corner seemed cared for. There, Viktor’s flame-etched armour sat on a wooden mannequin. Steel brackets secured two swords to the adjoining wall. One was a claymore too heavy for most men to wield. The other sword was shorter, slender, with gold detailing at pommel and hilt. Its blade was rusted where the claymore was hale. A blue ribbon, frayed and fading, hung like a tassel from its grips.
Elzar set an elbow against the wall and sought to quell heaving lungs. “Couldn’t we… have discussed… this… downstairs?”
“My apologies.” Viktor plucked a tinderbox from a table and set about waking the candles to life.