by Matthew Ward
“Does it matter?” asked the woman.
Broken-nose’s scowl deepened. “Guess not. Pretty little thing, aren’t you?”
On balance, Calenne had preferred being ignored. “I want no trouble.”
“Alone in the forest with only a scrap of metal for protection? Doesn’t matter what you want.” The scowl became a leer. “But we’ll take care of you. If you ask nicely.”
“Look at this lot,” said the thin man, his tone struck with wonder.
He upended her haversack. Oil-clothed provisions scattered across the dell. Gold crowns fell like rain. The thin man fell to his knees and scrabbled in the dirt.
Calenne drew her sword and clung to it as the lifeline it had so quickly become. “That’s mine! Let it alone!”
The thin man scrambled back, hands held up in surrender. “Yours? I don’t think so. Duke’s ransom here. Where’d you steal this lot, eh?”
Broken-nose lumbered closer, his own sword now drawn. “Don’t make trouble. I’ve had a bad day.”
Calenne spun on her heel, the point of her sword tracking towards Broken-nose. Dreams of travel had faded to nothing, blotted out by the prospect of robbery and worse. Raven take Anastacia anyway. The demon had rushed her into this. This was her fault. Calenne knew the thought was untrue even as it formed. Nonetheless, the spark of anger helped her stand a little taller, a little straighter.
“It can still get worse.” She barely recognised her own voice, so hard and flat had she spoken.
Broken-nose flinched. “Some manners wouldn’t hurt your prospects any.”
“Steady, Vorn,” said the woman. “Don’t you recognise her?”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s the duke’s sister.”
Calenne’s heart sank to an even lower ebb.
The thin man laughed. “You’re daft. What’d she be doing out here? Locked up in Branghall, isn’t she?”
“I tell you, it’s her.” The woman spoke soft and insistent. “I was there when they burned the painting. On the balcony, she was. Scowling like there was a bad smell under her nose. Doesn’t know how good she has it. Never missed a meal, have you my lady? Never been rousted in the middle of the night because of some northwealder’s lies?”
Fear crashed across Calenne’s thoughts. Sword-given confidence faded to nothing. “Look. Take the money. Take anything you want. But leave me alone.”
Broken-nose’s expression brightened. “Well I never. Lumestra loves me after all, eh, Keera?”
They closed in.
Viktor mistook the first scream for a shrieker owl announcing its intent to slaughter something small, desperate and furry. It wasn’t until a second split the air that he recognised the voice as a woman’s.
Across the dying fire, Vladama Kurkas scowled into his tankard and began to rise. “Things haven’t changed much. Fifteen years, and still a lawless bunch of cusses. Want me to take a look?”
Viktor waved him down. “No. I need to stretch my legs.”
“Suits me. Bad enough spending Ascension out in the middle of nowhere without a body to cosy up to. Makes me long for the border . . . all those farm-lads impressed by a uniform.” Kurkas set his empty tankard aside and reached for Viktor’s with his good arm. “Won’t be needing this, will you?”
Viktor snorted at his captain’s presumption. The audacity of an old comrade. He left the tent, skirting ordered lines of sleeping soldiers and smouldering watch fires. A handful of hearthguards were awake. The thin birch-scented breeze carried the soft murmur of their conversation.
He felt wary eyes upon him, sensed the apprehension of orders soon to be issued. They were good lads and lasses all. The best. After two days of hard marching and the prospect of difficult days ahead, Viktor couldn’t blame them for wanting a quiet night.
Nor did he especially want to stretch his legs, as he’d told Kurkas. But since they’d crossed into the Southshires, he’d been assailed by the lingering sense of . . . something. It wasn’t fear, not exactly. More, it was a feeling of loss tinged with anticipation. Drink could not ease that feeling, though Raven knew he’d given it many opportunities to do so. Nor could any other form of bodily pleasure drive it out. Only activity saw it suppressed, and in the still watches of the night there was little activity to be found. Worse, his shadow revelled in the sensation.
Sentry pickets stiffened to attention at his approach.
“You heard?”
Sergeant Brass gave a sharp nod. Another veteran of Zanya, he was as glumly unenthused about a return to the Southshires as Captain Kurkas. “Off to the south, my lord. A quarter mile. No more. Was about to take a couple of the lads for a gander.”
Viktor grunted. In another life, Brass had been a poacher – the scourge of the Akadra estates. Age had done little to blunt his senses. If he said a quarter mile, a quarter mile it would be.
“The watch is yours,” he said. “Stay on post. I’ll see for myself.”
The thin man’s grip tightened across Calenne’s throat. Blood seeped from the cut on her brow, stinging her eyes. She blinked it away and sought her sword.
There. By the fire. Within reach, if she could get free.
Fingers closed on her wrist, dragging it up and behind her back. Black spots danced behind her eyes.
“You have her, Gregor?” asked Vorn.
“I have her. A fighter, isn’t she?”
Over by the fire, Keera moaned and grasped ineffectually at her bloody shoulder. Calenne clung to the memory of her screams as the blade bit home. A bright point in a night growing steadily darker.
“Hush your noise,” growled Vorn. “We’ve had enough caterwauling.”
“Easy for you to say,” Keera bit out. “It’s not your arm.”
“Tell you what,” Calenne told her. “Give me back my sword, and I’ll show him how it feels.”
Vorn struck her across the face. Her reply dissolved in a blur of crimson. She spat a sticky gobbet onto the ground.
Gregor laughed. The grip on her wrist slackened. Just enough. Through the pain and the thick, metallic tang of her own blood, Calenne realised it was the best chance she’d have. She brought the heel of her left boot down on Gregor’s instep, and flung herself backwards.
Calenne lost Gregor’s howl of pain in the crashing, jarring thud as they slammed into the undergrowth. She drove an elbow into his face and staggered upright. Still unsteady, she fled the dell, uncaring of the branches whipping at her face or the thorns raking her clothes.
She stumbled more than ran. Her pulse raced in her ears. The footsteps behind thundered with the urgency of drumbeats. She was going to die. And yet somehow, the prospect was a distant one, as if a fate destined for another. She wished she could speak to Josiri one last time. No. This was his fault, as much as hers. What more was there to say?
She didn’t see the tree in time, hidden in moon-shadow as it was. Her left shoulder struck a glancing blow, and she caromed away. She landed awkwardly on splayed hands and knees. The strike of a boot against her hip tipped her belly-up. Her head struck an exposed root. The world swam.
Calenne scrambled back on hands and haunches. Her back struck the rough, unmoving obstacle of a tree trunk. A heartbeat after, the point of Vorn’s sword was at her throat. Shivering yet somehow defiant, she glared up at him. She could at least die with dignity.
“Do it,” she spat. “I don’t care.”
“Oh no, my lady,” said Keera, her good hand still clasped to a bloody shoulder. “First, you owe me for an arm.”
Gregor limped into sight. “For starters.”
The shadows surged. Gregor simply . . . vanished. A lingering scream ended in a sickening thump. A new shape bore down through the trees, blacker than the night.
“Gregor!”
Keera fumbled for her sword. She reeled away in a spray of blood and crashed into the brambles, lifeless as a side of butcher’s meat.
With a garbled whimper, Vorn threw down his sword and fled.
Calenne barely saw him go. Her throat tightened as she laid eyes on the newcomer. Fear she’d thought vanquished dragged her once more into icy embrace. That butcher’s sword. The black surcoat, and its blazon of the silver swan. She knew that swarthy, scarred face almost as well as she knew her own, though she’d never seen it with adult eyes.
The Black Knight. The man who’d killed her mother. He’d come for her. As she’d dreamed he would.
He reached out for her, lips framing words she did not hear. For in that moment Calenne Trelan’s tortured mind cast off from the shores of the waking world and took refuge upon a sea of turbulent dreams.
Astridas, 2nd day of Radiance
Friendship is worth nothing unless tested.
Better an enemy of unwavering purpose than an ally of uncertain faith.
from the sermons of Konor Belenzo
Fifteen
Calenne awoke swathed in blankets. A dull ache shadowed her thoughts. Daylight streamed through cracks in the pavilion’s panels, parting gloom sweet with the scent of dew-laden canvas. She heard muffled grunts of men and women at labour beyond, and . . . the clash of weapons?
The previous night flooded back. The wolf’s-heads. The Black Knight.
She sat bolt upright and clutched the blankets to her thin blouse. A blouse that felt tighter about her right arm than was usual. Katya’s coat and boots sat piled beside the low, slatted bed. Her scabbarded sword rested against the tent pole. Where was she?
“Good morning.”
Shadows shifted on the tent’s far side. The scarred face. The eyes.
She half-sprang, half-fell from the bed. Her knee jarred, but her hand closed about the sword. Before the Black Knight could close the distance, she had the blade free. Its point wove uncertainly between them.
“Get away from me!”
The shriek was fear given voice. Calenne hated its tremor.
The Black Knight arched an eyebrow and raised his hands. “You’ve nothing to fear.”
Nothing to fear. From the man who’d slain Katya. “You expect me to believe that?”
Better. She almost sounded in control. Calenne embraced the lie, clutched it tight and willed it to be truth.
He circled closer. She sidestepped to keep the blade between them and realised too late that the motion took her further from the tent’s flaps and safety.
“I hope you’ll apply reason,” he said. “I could have harmed you while you slept, had I desired. Instead, my physician tended your wounds. How is your arm?”
Calenne’s free hand found the bandage below her right wrist, and the scabbed cut upon her brow. Neither felt as bad as they should.
The pavilion’s folds parted to admit a man whose left arm ended in a knotted bundle of cloth a little above his elbow. His tunic bore both the silver swan and a captain’s star.
“Bit of a racket, sah. Everything squared and set?” The newcomer’s voice held the gravelly vowels of one who’d lived his formative years in the heart of Tressia. His one good eye took in the scene with wry amusement. “Begging your pardon, but I’ve warned you about this before. Ain’t no way to meet a woman. Ain’t no way to meet anybody.”
“Thank you, Captain Kurkas.” The Black Knight’s growled reply contained a hint of humour, despite his glare. “But the matter is in hand.”
Kurkas scratched at his eyepatch. His gaze didn’t leave Calenne’s sword. “If you say so.”
“I do. Take the company on to Eskavord. Leave a dozen soldiers and one of the carts. We’ll follow along, assuming our guest is well enough to travel.”
“Certainly has a vigour to her. You sure you don’t . . .”
“That will be all, captain.”
“Right you are.” Kurkas bowed and beat a hasty retreat.
Calenne’s captor – or should that have been rescuer? – waited in silence, hands raised in surrender to a woman little more than half his size, seemingly unworried at the tableau’s inherent ridicule.
“You’re going to Eskavord?” Calenne said at last, raising her voice over the noise of the departing soldiery.
“I’ve business with your brother.” His lips shifted. Not quite a smile, but not wholly not a smile either. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to introduce us? It has been some time since Josiri and I last met.”
Fifteen years was indeed a long time. And yet he’d recognised her. No wonder as to why.
“My name is Viktor . . .”
“Akadra.” Calenne spat the word. “I know who you are. You killed my . . . You killed Katya.”
“So I am told,” he said drily. “But you of all people should know that no truth escapes the Council’s lips unsullied.”
She jerked the sword-point at his chest. “What do you mean?”
“I offered your mother protection. Instead, she embraced the Raven.”
Calenne glared at him. It couldn’t be true . . . could it? The Black Knight was a murderer. She wanted to snarl rejection, but the narrative of a lifetime’s nightmares could offer no rebuttal to the soft-spoken claim. Akadra hadn’t sought to convince, but to relay fact.
“You’re lying.” Even to her, the rejection sounded feeble.
“Why would I do so? I make no apology for those I slay, nor do I feel shame for the deed. Death, after all, is my calling and my duty.”
The desire to believe him was overpowering. Why? She’d lived her whole life in fear of the Black Knight, the cruel revenant from her past. But now he was before her, the mantle didn’t fit. And if that were so . . .
“I always knew she was a coward,” she whispered.
“No. Your mother was a brave soul.” He spoke warmly, almost reverently. “In many ways, I admired her conviction. She taught me much that day. I’ve held the lessons close.”
The compliment, delivered so close behind the accusation of suicide, served only to harden the latter’s veracity in Calenne’s mind. A long-held truth slid away, but another hardened to granite.
Her knuckles whitened on the sword. “She wasn’t my mother!”
The commotion of voices and carts faded into the distance. Akadra fell silent, perhaps reflecting on the wisdom of confronting an agitated orphan with her parent’s suicide. Or perhaps not. He didn’t look the type to second-guess. Calenne envied him that.
“Must I take the weapon from you?” he rumbled. “I’d prefer you set it aside through choice. Less discomfort for us both.”
Calenne suspected the discomfort he meant was hers alone. In any case, she’d no illusions of besting the Council’s champion. She took a deep breath and set the sword down.
He lowered his hands, crossing them at the small of his back. “Thank you.”
She regarded him sidelong, again surprised by his solemnity. Almost charming, in a grim sort of way. Not the brash, dazzling presence of the late Kasamor Kiradin, Lumestra embrace him, but a stolid certainty of manner and poise.
“Why were you watching me while I slept?”
“An exaggeration. I arrived moments before you awoke.”
“I expect you’re waiting to be thanked. For saving me.”
Again, the not-quite smile. “Duty requires no thanks. And as to what quarrel occurred between you and Kasamor that set you fleeing into the night? I shan’t pry. Some matters should remain private.”
A precipice yawned beneath Calenne’s feet. “You saved me because of Kasamor?”
“I saved you because you were in need.” He shrugged. “That you are my friend’s wife makes me all the gladder.”
She could lie. Of course she could. But Akadra would discover the truth soon enough.
“Then you haven’t heard?”
She felt his eyes on hers, colder than before – his expression hard where before it had offered only empathy . . . even kindness.
“Heard what?” For the first time, a hint of danger crept into Akadra’s tone.
Calenne lowered her eyes from his. “Kasamor’s dead. He died days ago.”
Akadra’s brow furr
owed. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Slowly, steadily, he turned his back to her. His right hand tightened about his left wrist. He neither spoke, nor uttered any sound. Yet somehow, his presence filled the small pavilion in a way it hadn’t before. Goose bumps raised across Calenne’s flesh. For a moment, she thought she saw her breath frosting in what so recently had been balmy air.
“How did he die?” Akadra asked at last.
Calenne shivered away the imagined cold. That belonged to her nightmares, not the waking moment. “On the road. More than that, I don’t know. Lady Kiradin’s letter said almost nothing.”
“And his companion?” His voice took on fresh urgency.
“I don’t know.” In all the hours she’d dwelled on the fateful news, Calenne hadn’t stopped to consider if others had perished alongside. “I’m sorry. Was she important?”
“All my friends are important.” He turned to face her once more. A little of the warmth returned to his voice, but it couldn’t wholly hide the darkness rippling beneath. But Calenne sensed that whatever threat it held was not levied at her. “But it’s selfish of me to dwell on my own loss when yours is the greater. You have my deepest condolences, Miss Trelan.”
Calenne opened her mouth to reply, but no words came. In the space of minutes, her emotions had spiralled from abject terror, to pity. Now they settled on familiar guilt. But this, at least, she could conceal.
“Thank you,” she said, dully.
Akadra’s eyes narrowed. “If you are not wed, you remain Trelan. You should be at Branghall.”
Even now, there was no accusation in his tone, just curiosity.
She shot him as defiant a look as she could manage. “I escaped.”
“The enchantment is supposed to be without flaw.”
“So are many things. But they’re not. You’re the Council’s champion. You of all people should know that.”
“Indeed.” A hint of a grin, as soon gone as glimpsed, flickered across his lips. “It’s no concern of mine. But I must impose upon you for that introduction. Events will unfold better if your brother has reason to think kindly of me.”