by Jude Fisher
The hairs on the back of his neck began to rise.
He was still watching this strange convergence of paths when there was a great hubbub at the entrance to the pavilion and a band of uniformed men came rushing in, shouting something about murder and abduction.
In the midst of them was his daughter, Katla, bound and blood-stained.
Fifteen
Prisoner
‘Katla!’
He heard his own cry emerge as an anguished, keening howl, high and tortured, like nothing he would expect to issue from his own throat. And then he was pushing forward, careless of the folk between him and his daughter. Behind him, he could hear, as if from afar, Fent screaming obscenities at the Istrian guards; Halli, his voice lower, as ever more temperate, apologising gruffly to the families they trampled in their passage.
A clamour rose from the Eyran families close enough to see the guard troop and the figure they held as the perpetrator.
‘Who did you say it was?’
‘Katla Aransen.’
‘Aran Aranson’s pretty daughter? Never – it’s surely a lad.’
‘Would it be Fent Aranson?’
‘No, stupid, look, he’s right there behind his father, threatening bloodshed.’
A laugh. ‘That’ll be young Fent all right: little firebrand he always was.’
‘It’s Katla Aransen, I tell you: I heard her father call her name.’
‘But I saw her earlier: she wore a red robe – very grand.’
‘It is Katla Aransen, I swear.’
‘By Sur, so it is. But why?’
‘They’ve got one of our girls—’
‘Take your hands off her, Istrian bastards!’
Word burned like wildfire around the Eyran clans. Everyone started to push towards the front of the Gathering, where the guard troop were marching their captive. Distinctive and official in their crested helms and blue cloaks, by now they had their swords out and looked ready to use them.
Ravn tore his eyes away from his chosen bride, distracted by the noise. Released from that piercing green gaze, he felt his head clear, as if he had just come up from a deep-water dive. Down on the floor of the Gathering he saw a chaos of movement: an Allfair guard troop hustling a prisoner along, the crowd behind them parted by a group of furious Eyrans, shouting and waving their fists in the air. Of a sudden, the mood had turned dangerous and he had not even noticed the transition. Chill touched his heart. He was a king and this his Gathering, these people his subjects; yet somehow he had been unaware of the drama. He felt confused, disorientated. He had drunk a lot of wine; but this sensation of detachment was not the warm familiar haze incurred by too much drink; rather it was like emerging from a dream, a dream not entirely his own. He shook his head, stared out into the crowd. The silver of the guard troop’s swords glinted in the candlelight. Swords: that was something he did understand.
‘Hold fast!’ he bellowed into the din. ‘Put away those swords: this is a peaceful Gathering, I’ll have no weaponry here.’
The guard captain was staring at him, uncomprehending.
Ravn glared back, infuriated by the man’s insolence; then realised he had spoken unthinkingly in Eyran. He repeated himself in the Old Tongue.
The guard captain drew himself up, affronted. He gave no order for his men to disarm, and instead of presenting himself to Ravn Asharson, bypassed the northern king and pressed on towards a knot of Istrian nobles. They were, he reasoned, the men who paid his annual stipend, now that Rui Finco, Lord of Forent, headed the Allfair forum that ruled on such matters.
‘Falla’s greeting to my lords this night,’ he intoned, in formal Istrian. ‘I bring before you a prisoner whom we took by force running from the scene of a crime.’
The Lord of Forent – a handsome, wiry-looking man with a plain silver band set upon his burnished temples, and the nose of a predator – had at first looked flustered by this turn of events, but he rose to the occasion admirably. Raising an elegant eyebrow, he regarded the guard captain with interest. He turned to Lord Prionan beside him. ‘A theatrical presentation to enliven the evening, my lord?’ he enquired smoothly.
Prionan shrugged. ‘I know nothing about it, if so.’
Rui Finco addressed himself to the guard captain in Istrian. ‘I fear we have not been rehearsed in our lines, sir,’ he smiled. ‘But carry on, for I’m sure we’re up to the task of improvisation.’
The guard captain looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s no mummery, my lord,’ he said. ‘It’s a grave matter. There’s been a death—’
A hush fell over those who understood the sibilant southern words.
‘Grave and death – a clever wordplay: bravo!’ Hesto Dystra clapped his hands. Nearing seventy now, his wits were not always as sharp as they’d been.
‘This is not a play!’ the guard captain bellowed at last, his temper frayed beyond manners.
The Lord of Forent looked from the guard captain to the captive behind him and saw a scrawny-looking lad with a swelling black eye, wearing a stained and bloodied tunic and the most garishly coloured headcloth. As if aware of his regard, the prisoner’s head came up and he began to shout something at him in the guttural northern tongue. The Lord of Forent regarded him with greater interest. His knowledge of Eyran was rudimentary but functional.
‘Excellent,’ he declared, in Istrian. ‘We shall have our entertainment after all: for the captive declares himself innocent of all charges!’ His gaze enveloped the milling crowd. He switched to the Old Tongue. ‘We have a trial!’ he called. ‘We need quiet to hear both the charges and the prisoner’s response.’
At this point, three Eyran men burst through the ranks of the throng with murder in their eyes.
‘What in Sur’s name is this travesty?’ roared Aran Aranson.
The Istrian lord eyed him warily. ‘The prisoner is held on suspicion of a crime,’ he said steadily in correct but stilted Eyran.
‘What crime?’ demanded Fent, over his father’s shoulder.
The Lord of Forent consulted briefly with the guard captain. ‘The man under arrest is suspected of abduction, sacrilege; and—’ he paused to watch the prisoner’s response ‘— murder . . .’
‘Murder?’ Aran cried, aghast.
‘Katla?’ Halli looked dumbfounded.
‘Man?’ howled Katla. She laughed. In a perfectly inflected Old Tongue she said: ‘I think you’ve got the wrong girl.’ With a flourish somewhat constrained by the ropes that bound her wrists, she pulled away the rainbow-silk that confined her hair. Or what was left of it. Damn: that little detail she had forgotten.
Shorn and patchily-dyed, damp with sweat, her hair stood up in little peaks and spikes from her skull, accentuating the sharp planes of her face, the preternatural brightness of the unswollen eye. Revealed thus, she looked even more the desperado they claimed her to be.
There was a general puzzled silence as those nearest to the scene tried to make sense of the captive’s odd gesture, and others craned to stare. The elderly Dystra brothers put their noddles together and began to mutter furiously. One of the soldiers in the guard troop cocked his head and regarded Katla speculatively.
The guard captain stared at his prisoner as if making mental note.
The big, dark Eyran was shouting again. Something about a daughter . . . Rui Finco regarded him dispassionately. ‘Speak more slowly, Northerner: I cannot follow your gibberish.’
Aran Aranson’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘I said, this is my daughter: a daughter of Eyra, and as such she should be questioned according to Eyran law, which demands the highest-ranking Eyran lord hear her case. I call for King Ravn Asharson to hear this matter, for I know my daughter Katla to be truthful, and I will not trust her life to the enemies of our people . . .’
Lord Rui Finco held Aran’s gaze for several heartbeats, then he turned to confer with the Lords Prionan and Dystra and repeated the northerner’s request. Hesto Dystra shrugged. ‘He is within his rights.’
Lord Priona
n acquiesced. ‘The Allfair is held on neutral territory.’
The Lord of Forent nodded. ‘As you will.’ He turned away from his peers, glanced towards the dais, only to find that King Ravn Asharson had once more been captivated by the pale nomad woman. He stared at this tableau, his mind working furiously. All was not going to plan. Giving a swift glance back at the Gathering, he took in the various positions of the mercenaries, poised as they were at different points around the pavilion in their bizarre guises. He caught the eye of a big woman in an ill-fitting green dress, gave her an imperceptible shake of the head, and watched as she melted into the background.
Vaulting onto the dais as smoothly as a leaping cat, Rui Finco bore down upon the northern king, who stood motionless and perplexed, the mer-creature’s pale hand upon his arm. How bizarre, he thought, that it should come to this, on such a night. As he approached, he saw how Ravn Asharson’s head came up, how his eyes were as vacant as a sleepwalker’s. Perhaps opportunity would present itself once this new matter was dealt with; and the woman could be useful, too, given this uncanny effect she had upon him.
‘My lord king,’ he said quietly in the Old Tongue, ‘we have a situation here that demands your immediate attention.’ He took Ravn’s arm to draw him along the dais towards the guard troop, feeling at once elation and repulsion at the ease with which the northern king gave himself into his command. The side of his face felt suddenly chill. He turned, to find the mer-woman staring fixedly at him, her eyes as hard and green as malachite. ‘Never fear, my lady,’ he found himself saying to her, ‘I will return him to your care shortly.’
‘You will,’ said the Rosa Eldi softly. ‘You will.’
Katla was unceremoniously bundled up onto the dais, where she stood awkwardly, one knee bent, blinking at all the unwanted scrutiny. So much for an inconspicuous getaway, she thought bitterly: she’d have a fair few miles to swim after Erno if she ever got out of this one. She watched King Ravn Asharson being detached from the arms of a tall, pale woman and led towards her by an Istrian lord wearing a plain silver circlet. So the King didn’t pick the Swan of Jetra, then, she thought inconsequentially. At least that’s some consolation for poor Jenna. The pair of men looked well-matched: both tall and dark and well made, even if one was bearded and the other, in true southern fashion, was not. The flickering light of the candles played off similarly high cheekbones, reflected in two pairs of dark eyes. As they came closer she could see that there the resemblance ended, for the Istrian lord was older than her king, harder about the face, too. A moment later, her heart pounded as she realised that this man to whom the others deferred and called by a strange foreign name was the one who had come to their stall the first day of the Fair. Oh, Sur, she thought, he already had me marked down as a miscreant. A dangerous fanatic, he had seemed then, ranting about the woman found on top of what he called Falla’s Rock, then appalled at the very idea Aran would allow a woman to touch a sword, let alone have forged it herself.
The guard captain manhandled her roughly into position, facing her king. Someone, she noted, had carried his throne to this part of the dais, where he now sat in isolated splendour, his crown a little skewed, his eyes bleary. He looked, she thought, like the play-king from the mummer’s theatre who had entertained them at Rockfall last winter: tawdry and rather the worse for drink. Her heart fell. For the first time since they had taken her, she felt afraid.
‘Your name, prisoner,’ declaimed the guard captain.
‘Katla Aransen.’
King Ravn regarded her with a little more focus, trying to place the name.
‘Sir,’ the guard prompted self-importantly.
Katla stared at him with a queer light in her eye. She would ‘sir’ no one.
The guard captain glared at her, but he recognised stubbornness when he saw it. Just let him have five minutes with this chit in a quiet place, he thought, she’d soon learn some deference. He drew himself up, filled his lungs with air and began to bellow out the charges:
‘Katla Aransen: you have been apprehended on the suspicion of carrying out murder—’
‘Who has been murdered?’ someone cried from down on the floor.
The guard captain halted, irritated by the interruption. ‘A slave,’ he said, addressing the crowd. ‘A slavegirl has been cruelly slaughtered and her mistress abducted. And the Lords of Jetra’s shrine for the Swan has been horribly desecrated—’
Oh seven hells, Katla thought then, looking down at the safflower stains on her tunic. All I did was pick some of the damned flowers up: it’s hardly what you’d call desecration . . .
A few of the Istrian faces in the crowd looked at once rather less interested in the proceedings: a slave – well, that was something of an inconvenience, and an expense when it came to replacement, to be sure, but at least it was not one of their own. As for the desecration of the shrine: was it not a showy gesture to make a contemplation garden in the midst of the Allfair? Asking for trouble. But the abduction – that was the intriguing thing . . .
Seeing how Ravn Asharson was guided away along the dais by Rui Finco, Lord Tycho Issian had felt a small hope rise in him. It seemed that Falla – the champion of all true lovers – was offering him a chance at last to claim his bride, to save her from desecration at the hands of the barbarian king. Trying to force his way to the dais through the crowd of voracious onlookers – all intent on the forthcoming trial as spectators at a bear-pit – was like swimming against a strong tide. Yet to see her standing there, pale and silent, as beautiful as her name; perfect in every detail, he knew he would risk all – reputation, fortune and daughter – for this woman. He longed to take her in his arms, to make her sacred to the Goddess by all the laws of holy Istria, to take her home to Cantara and hide her away from defiling eyes forever. The thought of the northerner’s hands on that cool white skin, of his mouth investigating her most secret places, was too much to bear. This was not merely a marriage bargain he was upholding, he thought: it was a sacred mission to save a soul.
So when the guard captain loudly announced the charges against the captive, he was not, at first, paying any attention to the man’s words.
It was only when folk started to stare at him that he stopped fighting his way through the crowd.
‘What?’ he asked angrily of the man blocking his way. ‘What is it?’
The man in front of him was a rich merchant from Gila. He knew Lord Tycho Issian from a few hard business dealings, and also by reputation: a cruel man, it was said, cruel and . . . strange; but one whose star was rising rapidly. ‘Your daughter, my lord,’ the merchant said hesitantly. ‘They are speaking of your daughter.’
Infuriated, Tycho whirled around. Those nearby quailed at the look in his eyes. ‘What of my daughter?’ he cried.
‘The prisoner is charged with involvement in an abduction,’ the guard captain returned loudly. ‘The abduction of the Lady Selen Issian. My lord.’ He inclined his head towards Tycho with a chill in his stomach. Not to have come to this lord quietly and immediately with the news of his daughter’s disappearance was something he might well come to regret.
Tycho felt his heart grow still and cold. Selen abducted . . . How could that be? His face worked uncontrollably. He moved towards the dais, and the crowd melted away to let him through.
The guard captain lowered his voice when Tycho was close enough. ‘My lord, I fear Eyran raiders have ruthlessly murdered your little slavegirl and stolen away your daughter. We caught one of the perpetrators running from the scene.’
‘Why would . . .’ Tycho’s voice broke. He stared at the prisoner, uncomprehending. Without Selen all was lost – the bride-price, the Rosa Eldi – everything. ‘Why would this . . . thing . . . conspire to take my daughter?’ He returned his gaze to the guard captain, his eyes black with rage. The official quailed. A moment later, the Lord of Cantara had leapt upon the dais and was running at Katla, arms outstretched, fingers like claws. Even with guards coming at him from all angles, still he mana
ged to grasp her by the throat, careless in his desperation of the unclean touch. ‘Why?’ he shrieked, and: ‘What have you done with her, you whore?’
The soldiers pried Tycho away, handed him back down to the ground, where, as if from nowhere a tall, pale man appeared to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder and say something quietly into his ear. The Lord of Cartara subsided, as if distracted.
‘Continue!’ King Ravn called above the hubbub.
‘We found this . . . woman . . . running from the scene, my lord,’ the guard captain declared pompously. ‘And we may, if the Goddess smiles upon us, also have a witness to the atrocities committed. In the meantime, we have this—’
He produced a wicked-looking dagger and brandished it at the crowd. It was a dagger in the northern style – pattern-welded and beautifully ornamented. Dull red had been smeared down the silver blade, had set in thick courses down the dragon-wrapped hilt.
King Ravn took the dagger from the man’s hand and regarded it thoughtfully. A fine piece of work: beautiful craftsmanship, as elegantly functional as a good Eyran longship.
Seeing the knife, Aran Aranson’s face grew still as stone. Beneath the wind-dark tan, his blood fled away to leave an ashy pallor. He recognised the blade of course: it was one of her best.
Other Eyrans sighed and whispered: Katla Aransen’s work was well known in the northern isles.
‘I have killed no one; wounded no one; abducted no one,’ Katla said loudly into the hush. ‘I swear it in Sur’s name.’
‘And this dagger?’
Rui Finco’s voice was smooth and detached. He took the weapon from the northern king and turned it over in his hands, careful to avoid the still-tacky cross-piece, then passed it back to the guard captain, wiping his hands fastidiously on his doublet. ‘It’s an unusual-looking blade,’ he said. He thought of the weapon he’d sent the mercenaries to purchase; so much more sensible than his original idea of selecting it himself. ‘Most distinctive.’