Apart from that to the stability of the Union, the prospects of Savine’s children, her own position and the state of her marriage, all of which she had thrown into jeopardy by setting Orso free against all good judgement. “None that cannot be mended, I hope.”
“You were kind to me, that evening. You give the best gifts.” Rikke hooked the emeralds around her neck and held them up to the light, then peered down at the runes Savine was wearing. The ones Rikke had given her in return. “And you even kept mine to you.”
“Nothing else would have suited the occasion.”
“Well, I won’t be swapping back, if that’s what you’re hoping.” And Rikke flicked open a fan with a snap, started wafting herself as gracefully as any regular at the theatre. “Am I doing it right?” And she peered down her nose, setting a few strands of hair no doubt left loose for the purpose fluttering about her tattooed face.
“I may have to come to you for lessons.”
“Ha again! You were kind to me that night and you’re being kind now. You’re a lot kinder than folk make out.”
“I doubt everyone would say so.” Savine lowered her voice. “I did betray you to Stour Nightfall, after all.”
“I did betray you to King Orso. No doubt we both had our reasons. Doesn’t mean we’re not friends.” And she grinned sideways. A grin with a hint of danger. “I mean, what’s the use of stabbing your enemies in the back?”
“Those bastards you can stab in the front,” murmured Savine, taking a quick pinch of pearl dust. There was a time she would have hidden it, but who would dare disapprove now? She offered the box to Rikke.
“My governess in Ostenhorm once said that, when abroad, one should observe the local customs.” Rikke drained her glass, then whipped off one of her gloves to take a hefty pinch, nudged the gold ring through her nose to the side and noisily snorted it up. “By the dead.” She stuck her tongue out, blinking back tears. “That burns.”
“It grows on you, believe me.”
Rikke held on to Savine’s arm as she stifled a sneeze, then pulled a little brown pellet from her glove and held it out. “We can swap gifts this time, too.”
“Chagga?” Savine took it from Rikke’s fingers and tucked it down behind her lip, then could not help a shudder. “That tastes…” She could hardly find the words to describe its earthy bitterness.
Rikke chomped on a pellet of her own and winked. “It grows on you, believe me.”
All about the gardens people were swapping gifts and stories, forming strange partnerships and embracing the unknown. Curnsbick was talking in a mixture of broken Northern, shouted common and flamboyant gestures to a set of merchant women swamped in furs. Something about chimneys, Savine thought. Probably they understood the details as well as she ever had.
Selest dan Heugen, meanwhile, giggled as she worked her own brand of magic on the monocled hillman. “There’s copper in these mountains of yours?” Her nose twitching as if she could smell the profits, while his gaze strayed so far it was a wonder his eye-lens didn’t drop down the front of her dress.
“We have thousands counting on us now.” Savine watched Lord Isher and some long-bearded chieftain shake hands with immense dignity. “We must look to the future.”
“That’s what I’m all about. But what could we savages have to offer civilisation?”
“Civilisation just finished a round of slaughter to make the Bloody-Nine blush. The North has some remarkable natural advantages—”
“You said the same about me, when I last came to Adua.”
“And time has proved me more right even than I knew. When Leo and I travelled across the North last year—”
“To betray me to Stour.”
“Exactly—before you betrayed us both—I saw vast forests ready to be given over to the saw. Great marshes ready to be drained and brought under the plough. Hills rich with coal and iron scarcely mined. River after river surging swiftly to the sea, begging to be channelled, dammed and harnessed by waterwheels.”
“You saw opportunities.”
“I may have no beautiful runes upon my face, but I can look into the future, too, in my own way.”
“Savine o’ the Long Eye.” Rikke thoughtfully stuck her bottom lip out, glancing towards the wall of the Agriont, beyond which a set of chimneys were still puffing vapours even as the sun set. “So you could help me do to the North what you lot have done to Adua?”
“I could help you do to the North whatever you want.”
“For a price.”
Savine smiled her sweetest smile. The one she had always used to seal deals. “For our mutual benefit. I do give the best gifts.” And she slid a gentle fingertip under the emeralds Rikke wore, weighed them a moment, then laid them gently back against her skin. “But not only out of kindness. I freely admit I greatly underestimated you.”
“Oh, you didn’t come out of it too badly. Stour Nightfall did the same and he’s hosting no garden parties, I promise you.” From a few strides off one would have taken it all for good-natured blather. But there was an edge on Rikke’s every word. A conversation with her was a cake full of razors.
“You proved yourself a cunning and resourceful enemy,” said Savine. “When I am lucky enough to find one of those, I do everything I can to turn them into a friend.”
“That’s nice to hear, from someone as cunning and resourceful as you. Nothing would warm my heart more than your friendship, but… it’s not my heart that brought me here.” Rikke tipped up her chin, looking down her nose at Savine, then reached behind her head and nudged her hat forwards so the brim cast her eyes into shadow. “My head holds a worry… when it comes to looking to the future…” That twinkling left eye slid over to Leo, frowning at the festivities with grim detachment. “I’m talking to the wrong half of the marriage.”
When Savine offered a gift, she was used to it being accepted. She never offered one until she was sure it would be. But she kept smiling in spite of her annoyance. “I and my husband have always had an equal partnership,” she said.
“Please.” And Rikke nudged Savine with a sharp elbow. “When you came to visit me in Uffrith you had him saddled like a pony.” She beamed around at the gathering, showing every one of those fine teeth again. “Now everyone admires you. Envies you. Loves you. The Darling of the Slums! When they talk o’ you, your girls May and Liddy can’t find praise high enough.”
“You are all far too kind,” said Savine.
“But it’s not your soldiers on every street corner, is it?”
And Rikke snapped her fan out between them and glided away, taking the last word with her.
For now, at least.
Leo felt a bit of an outsider at his own party.
It should have been a palace function where he finally felt at home. It was his home now, after all. He’d earned it. He’d won it. And it was full of Northmen. The feel of the gardens was closer to the Dogman’s old hall in Uffrith than the stuffy receptions of King Jezal’s reign.
But the blunt Northern accents and the bluff Northern laughter only made him think of how he used to be. That fearless, generous, reckless young fool who could run all day and never tire, who could beat all his friends with their choice of weapons, who stood not far from this spot after he won a duel against Stour Nightfall, loved and admired by all. The Young Lion! A hero with the world at his two good feet! By the dead, he missed that man. He made the one hand that worked into a fist so tight the knuckles clicked. Felt the unpleasant tingling in the other as the fingers twitched in sympathy inside his jacket.
He watched Rikke strut away from Savine, both of them smiling like warmer words were never said. His old lover and his new. Or two old lovers, maybe. Wasn’t much affection between him and the Lady Regent these days. Since she helped Orso escape, any warm feelings were strictly for the benefit of observers.
It reminded him of his parents’ marriage, towards the end. A lie it suited everyone to pretend was true, even years later. Maybe everyone follows in the
ir parents’ footsteps, doomed to blunder into the same mistakes like a blind man into furniture. All our paths set before birth, inevitable, like Curnsbick’s useless fucking cart, only running on the rails it’s given. The only choice you have is how fast you’ll roll to the end of the line. A depressing thought. Leo was having a lot of those, lately.
It wasn’t as if he was left alone. The maggots kept coming, to smile, bow, flatter, always with that needy nervousness in their eyes, that oily fear in their voices, always trying to winkle something from him. It made him sick, their petty selfishness, their blinkered greed. He was covered from morning till night in a grease of lies there was no scrubbing off. But that’s what you’re left with once you’ve led your real friends to their deaths.
He watched Jurand and Glaward talking to Rikke. The few survivors of those carefree times, laughing together, without him, and he ground his false foot into the lawn until the stump of his leg ached. He’d been thinking about sending Glaward away. Some foreign posting. So Leo wouldn’t have to look at his stupid face. So he’d have Jurand to himself. He’d won everything, and still he was endlessly angry, endlessly jealous. But then he’d lost everything, too.
He took a sour slurp of wine, watching Rikke plough through the throng. She didn’t work the crowd with Savine’s silky subtlety. She did it in a way all her own, with her big smile and her crazy eyes and that easy laughter and those wild gestures, wine sloshing from her glass as she threw up an arm.
He could’ve limped over. It would’ve felt good to meet her halfway, to find the honest smile he used to have around her. His face could still make that shape, couldn’t it? But she’d betrayed him, so it would’ve been a kind of surrender. The Young Lion might’ve suffered defeats, but he’d never surrendered. Never. Whatever it cost him.
So he stood there, patience wearing down, while Rikke chatted to Lord Isher. While she compared necklaces with Selest dan Heugen. While she fanned the hair combed over Dietam dan Kort’s head into fly-away wisps. It seemed as if she’d given every guest a compliment before she finally reached him, grinning as if there was no chasm full of broken promises yawning between them.
“If it isn’t Black Rikke.” The Northern words felt good in his mouth, he had to admit. “The beautiful and mysterious Witch of the North! You look well.” She looked better than ever, in her own mad way. No doubt Antaup would’ve been nudging and oohing and phwoaring at the sight of her even more eagerly than he used to. Had Leo not got him killed.
“If it isn’t little Leo, the biggest man in the Union.” Behind the regal bearing and the costume and the tattoos, did he catch a glimpse of that awkward girl he used to know? Used to love, even? The thought seemed to hurt, right in his chest. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?” She leaned close, the smell of chagga on her warm breath bringing all those times they’d lain together rushing back. “Since fucking in a stable.”
He felt himself blushing, the way his mother always made him blush when a conversation didn’t go her way. “Everyone had fun that night,” he said, stiff and unconvincing, “and everyone’s having fun now,” managing to sound bitter, too.
“Not you,” said Rikke, watching him over the rim of her glass.
That flash of honesty might’ve shaken him from his gloom once. Now it pushed him deeper. “Fun is for people with all their limbs,” he grunted.
The sun had fully set and the party was turning wild. The pent-up terror of the Great Change released, maybe. Isern-i-Phail had pulled her purple skirts right up to her crotch and was showing a scar on her muscular thigh to Zuri, who considered it with her black brows high. Shivers, general’s jacket opened to his grizzled chest, was offering his drawn sword to Glaward, who looked like he might have cut his thumb on the edge as he studied the silver mark near the hilt. By the dead, a hillman had commandeered a violin and was sawing out a barely passable jig to gales of shrill laughter from a tipsy Isold dan Isher.
“I’m sorry,” said Rikke softly. She wasn’t smiling any more. “Sorry I didn’t come to help. Sorry I broke my word. It hurts me, to see you hurt. Can’t blame you if you don’t believe it. Can’t blame you if you don’t care. But I’m sorry.”
Leo felt the sting of tears in his eyes. He hadn’t realised how badly he’d wanted to hear it. He wanted to say he was sorry, too. Take her hand. Kiss her cheek. Be her friend. The dead knew he needed one. The way they had been long ago, sitting up in the rafters of her father’s hall.
But those children were long gone. Leo hadn’t chosen to make himself fearsome, but that was what the times demanded. For the sake of the country, his family, his wife. Whether they thanked him or not. Softness now was weakness. Weakness now was death. He could see no way back.
A chill breeze whipped the feathers on the ladies’ hats, made the torch flames flash and flicker.
“Sorry won’t bring my leg back, will it?” he snapped. “It won’t bring Jin back, or Antaup, or all the others who died that day.”
She glanced at him sharply from under the brim of her hat. “Really? All Tricky Rikke’s fault? I didn’t make you turn rebel. I didn’t talk you into fighting a battle. I didn’t put the spur to your horse on the day.”
“You sent a bloody letter to Orso, though!” He saw Jurand look over, tried to bring his voice down and failed. “I fought for you, I risked my life for you, and you betrayed me!”
He’d been hoping for more guilt. Instead he got an angry snort. “What was I supposed to do, laugh along while you sold Uffrith to Stour? See everything my father worked for—”
“What?” snapped Leo.
Rikke narrowed her eyes, the tattoos on her forehead twisting as she frowned. Somewhere in the distance there was a soft rumble of thunder. “Your wife stabbed me in the back the first chance she got. Bought the Great Wolf’s help with my home.” Here was a part of the story Savine had conveniently left out. Leo stared over at his wife, standing beside the Great Machinist in her usual dazzling white, and found her looking back. Studying them. Trying to gauge what they might be saying, and how to turn it to her advantage. “You didn’t know that?” asked Rikke.
Leo shut his eyes. By the dead, had he learned nothing? Of course he hadn’t persuaded Stour to follow him to the Union out of brotherly feeling. Of course Savine struck a deal. And of course she’d done it behind his back. Rain had started spitting down, white streaks frozen in the torchlight. Servants struggled with portable awnings as the wind picked up. A woman chased after a lost hat as it tumbled across the lawns.
“No.” He bit off every word. “I did not know that.” He glowered over at Savine again, but she wasn’t even looking now. Laughing gracefully at some joke of Curnsbick’s, as if Leo’s pain didn’t matter a shit to her either way.
So she was as much to blame as anyone for Stoffenbeck. For everything he’d lost there. More. Finding that Rikke had good reasons for turning on him should’ve been the perfect chance to forgive her. But news of one more wounding betrayal by his wife didn’t sweeten Leo’s mood. They’d both stabbed him in the back while they stabbed each other in the face, yet somehow they could glide away friends, ruling the gardens, loved by all, while he was left nursing unhealable wounds, hated and feared and alone.
“Why did you come here, Rikke?” he snarled. “Dressed up like the fucking fortune-teller at an overpriced carnival?”
Her jaw worked. “My father always said we should set our feuds aside, if we could. Told me one score settled only plants the seeds of two more. I was hoping to put the past behind us and look to the future. Please, Leo. There’s been enough blood shed between the North and the Union.”
He gave a joyless snort. “Oh, I could stand more bleeding from the right bodies.”
“Your wife seemed minded to forgive, and I always reckoned her the ruthless one.”
“So did I. But apparently I’ve been wrong about a great many things.” By the dead, what Leo really wanted was for her to put her arms around him and hold him the way she’d held Savine. But someho
w, without meaning to, he’d made himself into a man no one wanted to touch. “It’s good to see you again, Rikke. Really it is. I miss what we had. Really I do.”
“You miss what you had,” she said, softly. “You miss what you were.”
“If you like.” Another crackle of thunder, louder, nearer. The way the damp banners rustled put Leo in mind of Red Hill, of Stour Nightfall’s standard and his own, two young gods facing each other across the bridge. But memories of past glories only made his fury cut deeper. “The truth is I’m a lot less forgiving than I was. The way I see it, you owe me.”
“Owe you what? An arm and a leg?”
“Something!” he hissed in her face. Glaward glanced worriedly over. Caul Shivers, too. Leo ignored them. “You owe me something, and I’ll collect. If I have to march to Carleon and rip it from your hands!”
She didn’t back off. Not a step. There was a lot of her father in the stubborn set to her face, glittering specks of rain across the fur on her shoulders. “If you want war, the North’ll fight you. Fight you as one, you can count on that.”
Anger was safe. He knew where he stood with it. “Oh, Rikke.” It might’ve been the first time he’d smiled that night. A hard smile, half a snarl, lips curled back from his teeth. “You know how much I love a fight.”
And he turned on his heel and strode back into the palace. Or came as close to striding as he could, metal ankle squeaking with each lurching step.
It was bloody raining now anyway.
“I don’t like it,” grunted Tunny, nudging back the wet bushes to peer across the Middleway.
“Neither do I,” said Hildi, wet shoulders hunched around her wet ears.
“Well, frankly, neither do I,” said Orso. “I can’t remember the last time I liked anything.” He puffed a sigh into the rain. “But what choice do we have?”
Royal servants aren’t generally supposed to disagree with kings, of course, but that had never stopped these two before, and he had been faintly hoping they might leap forwards with some unexpected alternative. The only sound they made, though, was the faint chattering of Hildi’s teeth.
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