by Matthew Ward
“Hollow legs,” she replied. “That, and all those rumours about hard-drinking naval lieutenants being nothing more than mariner’s fancy.”
“Hah! Prove it. One last toast. For Kasamor.”
Across the river, the firestone lanterns of the Silverway gleamed invitingly. Strains of fiddle music drifted through the winds, the notes shaping the wild steps of a dance that had spilled out through the open doorway and into the street. The last place she’d drunk with Kasamor. The last place she ever would. Fitting to end things there.
“Very well,” she said. “One last drink. But after that, home.”
Sevaka grinned and threw an unsteady salute. “Agreed. Endala drag me to the depths if I break my vow.”
“It’s not sea-spirits you’ve to worry about, but the gutter. Because that’s where I’ll leave you. And I don’t reckon your mother would approve of you invoking heathen gods.”
“Mother? Hah! She approves of nothing! But the sea keeps us apart.” Her tone grew whimsical. “It’s a good life. Wouldn’t give it up for anything. Y’should try it.”
Rosa shook her head. “I like my boots on firm land, thanks.”
“Pfffff! Then lead on, dryfoot.”
Already regretting the decision, Rosa steered Sevaka towards the tide-worn bridge. She’d never suspected she could spend any amount of time around the younger Lady Kiradin. But as the afternoon had worn on, and liquor had chipped away at Sevaka’s aristocratic mask, she found herself not in the company of hauteur, but a carefree woman whose grief was as genuine as her need to share it.
The wind picked up as they abandoned the shelter of the streets for the empty quayside. Flecked with salt-spray, it howled across the bay and whistled through the rigging of moored ships. Rosa half-led, half-dragged Sevaka past the nearest pier head, where a toiling crew laboured to batten down a forlorn-looking merchantman. With each gust of wind, firestone lamps swayed precariously in the rigging, dancing like mischievous spirits.
Even the stacks of cargo, chained down to deter would-be thieves, offered little sanctuary from the wind. Sevaka, still in a uniform fashioned for such abuse, seemed barely to notice. Rosa’s panelled gown – chosen in a whim of maudlin fancy – was of no protection at all, and she shivered with every step.
And yet . . . However cold she was, however goose-marked her skin, Rosa knew it should have been worse. It was as if what she felt wasn’t really cold at all, but its memory.
Or maybe those endless toasts lingered with her more than she believed.
“Well now, Roslava Orova. And in a dress, too. Must be seeing things.”
Rosa winced at the familiar voice, colder than the wind. She turned about, staggered by the need to steer Sevaka also.
“Aske. I’m not in the mood.”
Aske Tarev pushed away from the stack of chain-lashed crates. “All the better. You owe me a humiliation, you and the rest. And here you are, lumbering around like a rudderless scow. And without a sword for company. Couldn’t pass that up, could I?”
Sevaka pushed clear of Rosa and squinted at Aske. “Do I know you?”
“Allow me to present Aske Tarev,” said Rosa. “A bundle of pride and poor decisions.”
“Ohhhh. That one. The one who couldn’t beat Kas in a straight fight?” She straightened, or at least adopted a posture more vertical than diagonal. “Doesn’t matter. Two against one, isn’t it?”
“She’s armed, and we’re not.”
“Ah.”
Nonetheless, Rosa wasn’t especially concerned. She’d seen enough of Aske’s fighting style – or lack thereof – behind the Silverway. Wouldn’t take much to get the sword off her. The trick would be to stop Sevaka getting hurt along the way.
“And it’s not two against one.” Aske put her fingers to her lips and whistled.
Two hearthguards in Tarev crimson appeared from within the maze of crates. Between dress and drinking companion, Rosa had no hope of getting clear. The merchantman was too far behind to expect help from its crew; the Silverway too far ahead. To fight was certainly to lose, but lose what?
“Let Sevaka leave . . .”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Rosa ignored the protest and pressed on. “Let her leave, and I’ll stay.”
Aske drew her sword. “Sins of the kith. Her brother can’t pay, so she does. But I’ll make you an offer. Yield, and we’ll leave you here, bound and unharmed. Your clothes come with us, of course, or else there’s no humiliation.”
Sevaka stiffened. “And if we don’t yield?”
“Same thing. Only it’ll hurt more.”
Rosa closed her eyes and cursed. No choice in that. No choice at all. One thing to lose your dignity – quite another to hand it over. And she’d faced worse than Aske and her good-for-nothings. What could they do to her that the kernclaw had not? What could they take from her that had not already been lost?
Teeth bared in a snarl, she threw herself at the nearest hearthguard. He yelped and stumbled away, blade sweeping out in a panicked arc. Rosa lowered her shoulder beneath the steel and slammed him into a crate. His sword skittered away and vanished over the quayside. Rosa drove her fist into his face. The hearthguard screamed and went limp. She hit him again, just to be sure, and let the senseless body fall.
A shriek came from somewhere behind.
Rosa clambered to her feet and spun around. Sevaka stood against a crate, one hand clasped to a bloodied forearm. Aske and the remaining hearthguard – their backs to Rosa, and the latter with an equally bloodied nose – pressed in with swords drawn.
Kicking off impractical shoes, Rosa flung herself at Aske’s back. She turned at the last moment. Rosa, in full flight, had no chance to stop. The sword-point took her low in the belly. The tearing of silk was indistinguishable from that of the flesh beneath.
Rosa gasped. Pain flooded to replace stolen breath. She clawed numbly at Aske’s shoulders, glimpsed the other woman’s wide-eyed horror. Then she fell, her knees cracking on cobbles.
The world blurred, its colour fading and its sounds packed tight with goose down. Aske’s rictus as she backed away. The clang of her sword as it struck cobbles. Sevaka’s urgent words as she fell to her knees. The wild gestures of the fleeing hearthguard. The crash of the waves against the harbourside. All impossibly far away and yet close to. All save the croak of crow-voices.
And yet Rosa felt no sadness. The Raven would take her, and she’d see Kas again, though she dreaded the explanation she’d owe.
Rosa put a trembling hand to her stomach.
There was no blood.
The world swam anew. How could there be no blood? And the pain. It wasn’t . . . right. Like the cold of the wind, it felt like the memory of something from another time. And if there was no blood, and no pain, then she wasn’t dying, was she?
What was she?
The impossible question sank beneath a surge of bleak anger. The same anger Rosa had tamped down and contained ever since Kas’s death. Ever since she’d failed him. It tore through her like flame through a parched forest. Uncontainable. Undeniable. The crow-voices faded. The world regained its colour.
Rosa caught Aske within a dozen paces. Skirts tore as the two of them slammed into the cobbles, Aske below and she atop. She drew back her elbow, fist bunched.
“No! I’m sorry!” There was no arrogance in Aske’s expression now. Just stark, unflinching fear.
Rosa slammed down a fist. Something gave beneath her knuckles. It felt good. So good, she did it again.
Aske shrieked. Her hands flailed to fend off the blows. She might as well have tried to hold back the tide.
“Don’t! Don’t! I beg you!”
Rosa struck again. All the guilt-driven rage that ritual and liquor and kind words had failed to expunge tore free in a wordless cry as her fist struck home. She lost herself in that moment. She drowned in it. Only when the scream faded did she come back to herself.
Sevaka’s face, pale and more sober than it had been in
hours, crowded her vision. Her hand shook Rosa’s shoulder. “Rosa? Queen’s Ashes! What have you done?”
The clang of constabulary bells rang out. Booted feet thundered closer. Rosa stared down through her bloodied fingers and began to shake.
A soft click, and the window fell open. Apara released her grip on the trellis and slipped inside. Boots crunched on gravel two storeys below. The soft murmur of bored conversation drifted up the mansion front and faded to nothing as she set the window to. A twitch of the drapes restored the illusion of normality.
Apara pocketed her lock picks and glanced around. If the lady’s information was correct, this part of the house was unoccupied, its master away. Still, no reason to be sloppy. There were servants to consider. Hirelings took all manner of liberties when their paymaster’s eyes were elsewhere. And it wasn’t as if the house were entirely empty. Lights still shone in the main building and the eastern wing. Only here, in the west, did darkness reign.
She eased her way across the carpet, alert for creaking floorboards. She’d been at this since she’d been strong enough to climb a drainpipe. Since the lady had first bestowed her patronage.
Still a child, Apara hadn’t questioned why she’d been chosen. She’d just been glad to be free of Dregmeet’s slums, and at the prospect of regular meals. She’d always wanted a family, and the lady had given her a larger family than she’d even imagined. Hundreds of cousins, scattered across the Republic and beyond, bound by something stronger than blood.
Thirty years and more, and never once been caught. It had made her a legend among her cousins. The Silver Owl, they named her, for labours beneath sunless skies. But her once thrilling profession had become rote, even tedious. There were no real challenges. Not any longer. Part of her longed to get caught, just for the spice it would bring.
Apara shook the thought away. Now of all nights was no time to get sloppy. Not with two forbidden texts strapped to her back. Thieves got service in the clink or slaved for the navy. Witches got the pyre.
Her left eye twitching and her heart leaping at every tiny sound, Apara pressed on.
They must not easily be found without a determined search. By which Apara understood that the owner of the chambers should not discover the books, and nor should the cleaning staff or another burglar like herself. To find the books, the searcher would have to know that there was something illicit to be uncovered, and examine the chambers accordingly.
The books were a vial of poison, waiting to be broken into some poor bastard’s breakfast.
Apara passed up the low bookcase. For all the joy of concealing a tree inside a forest, this particular copse was too threadbare. The top of the wardrobe and the underside of the bed were equally worthless. No aspiring heretic would stow such texts in so obvious a place. But the hearth? The hearth was perfect.
Apara shucked the oilskin bundle off her shoulders. Sitting down with her back to the fireplace, she reached up into the generous flue. Grasping fingers found the lip of the smoke shelf – just wide enough for what she had in mind.
Sure, the books might get accidentally burned, but not until the weather turned cold – a time still some months away. The cleanliness of the hearth cast doubt on any fire having blazed within for some time. And even if the books did burn, who was to say that they’d not been uncovered and deliberately set afire? The lady couldn’t blame her for that.
Mission accomplished, Apara returned to the window and waited for another gap in patrols. Then she fled into the moonlight, leaving Swanholt – the ancestral home of the Akadra family – far behind.
Jeradas, 3rd day of Radiance
Arrogance is more dangerous than a sword.
False hope more ruinous than despair.
from the sermons of Konor Belenzo
Twenty
The encampment was already a fortress by the time Melanna took her last weary strides up the steep slope. The palisade of fresh-split pine wouldn’t have deterred a true assault. Nor would the shallow ditch. That wasn’t the object of the exercise. The point was to send a message: we are here, and we mean to stay.
Horsemen cantered past in a spray of mud. The leader spared her the briefest glance. Recognition? Or had he been appalled at the sight of a woman armed for war? Perhaps both. The havildar of the gate guard bowed low in a swish of silken robes.
“Greetings, savim. You choose a propitious time to return.”
Beneath the blank death mask of his helm, he seemed genuinely pleased to see her. Such men were rare. Especially when they wore the golden scales of the Immortals – the Royal Guard.
She extended a gloved hand. The havildar stooped, took her fingers and pressed them to his lips in the age-old gesture of fealty. Loyal to the House of Saran more than to her personally, no doubt.
“It’s good to be home, and to be greeted with such dignity, Havildar . . . ?”
“Brannor, my princessa.” He spoke without looking up. “Jastim Brannor.”
“Then please, Havildar Brannor, rise. We are comrades.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Brannor obeyed. Without appearing to do so, Melanna took stock of the gate guards. She watched for the soon hidden flickers of surprise and disgust that a woman would claim parity with a warrior.
Even that flicker would have been enough to damn them had her aunt Saramin been present. Her mother’s elder sister had never reconciled a fate that had seen her born to a gender treasured even as it was disdained for weakness. She took every opportunity to repay indignity with wrath. By contrast Aella – Melanna’s younger aunt – revelled in the exertion of wiles and basked in the heady, secret power born of rank and allure. Melanna had learned from both.
Or so she told herself. Facing down Drakos Crovan was one thing. Confronting her own people was another matter.
“Perhaps you’d escort me to my father?”
“Should I not send for the lunassera?”
Saramin would have glowered. Melanna smiled. “Am I not safe in your company?”
Brannor’s fingers gripped the hilt of his belted sword. “My life before yours, savim.”
“Then we need not stir the sisterhood from meditation.”
How old was Brannor? Forty winters? Fifty? A long life, filled with the screams of the dying, and the flutter of the Raven’s wings. And yet the thought of being alone with her unsettled him.
Melanna breathed a silent prayer to Ashana. Her authority was slender enough. Each challenge – each denial – was a setback. But like steel, authority had to be tempered to reveal its true strength. If she hid from challenge, then the life she longed for was as good as lost.
Ashana heard her prayer. Discomfort won out over disobedience.
“As you wish, savim.”
Melanna offered a smile just the right side of respectful, as Aella would have done. “You honour me, havildar. Lead on.”
For most folk, the journey to the prince’s tent would have taken an age. However, Melanna had the twin warrants of her face and the flat of Brannor’s sword to clear a path.
Outriders cantered past, sallying forth to forage in the rich valleys below. Clansmen laboured to erect tents and stow possessions. And all around, the prayers and the brawls and the rich, close-harmony work songs. A hive of anarchy and raucous sound, all bent to a single overarching order.
Melanna knew every song, but they seemed incomplete without women’s voices in counterpoint. Back home, the lighter, sharper notes would have struck glorious contrast. But women were permitted more freedom back in the towns. There, noble daughters claimed vocation as merchants, advisors, priests and artists. And those of common birth joined menfolk in manual labour. A woman could carry any burden, so long as it was not a sword, and few travelled with the army.
A little beyond the vast, black consecrated folds of the tent that served as the army’s temple they finally reached the palatial, fur-lined tents of his Exalted Highness, Champion of the Golden Court and Heir to the Imperial Throne, Kai Saran.
Melanna
took leave of Brannor and passed inside. The Immortals within greeted her with the usual mix of curiosity and disdain. Melanna left her weapons in their care and eased aside the bear-pelt screening the inner sanctum.
A fire smouldered at the centre of the chamber. It set the air dancing with rich wood smoke, and the subtle scents of heather and jasmine. Almost enough to mask the earthy aromas of mud and stale sweat – but not quite.
Beyond the fire, crouched low over the generous, map-laden trestle, stood Melanna’s father. Kos Devren, warleader of the host, was a grizzled, unhappy presence at his side, his finger stabbing down at parchment.
“We should march while we can.” Devren delivered the suggestion as tersely as one could to royalty. “We have the passes. Every Tressian within a league is scrambling away west. Sitting here does nothing but rob us of advantage.”
“We’ve been over this, old friend.” Melanna’s father ran a hand through his neat beard and massaged cheeks the colour of weathered teak. Even in silken robes rather than armour, he remained every inch the warrior. A full head taller than the cadaverous warleader and nearly twice as broad, he spoke softly, safe in the knowledge the words would be heeded. “We are here to invite battle, not enter it unwisely. Haste invites defeat.”
“And delay gives Maggad time to seize victory in the north! If he breaches the Ravonn, he’ll have your throne. You’ll have the sword’s kiss. And your daughter – if she’s lucky – will be a bride of brief moonlight.”
Melanna stiffened. Taken as a trophy, then discarded? She’d die first.
She said nothing to alert the men to her presence. Nor did Hal Drannic, her father’s bodyguard, make any move to do so. Drannic wasn’t much given to words, and favoured actions as the vessel of his thoughts. Only the tiniest flicker of his brow acknowledged that he’d seen her at all.
“Maggad is an old man,” said Melanna’s father. “His days of greatness lie squandered. He’ll let caution guide him. One failure is more than he can afford.”