by Matthew Ward
The woman gasped as the shadow-coils constricted. “You’ll have nothing from me.”
“Viktor!”
Thin fingers closed around his arm – a reminder that Calenne would see what came next. Drawing down a deep breath, he checked the shadow’s contraction. “I want answers!”
Kurkas staggered to his feet. “Said she had a message for you, sir. From the duke. Seemed said message took the form of a beating and a ripper’s grin.”
Relief that Kurkas yet lived eased Viktor’s temper another notch. He dragged the shadow back deep. The woman crumpled to a heap. “Do you need a physician, captain?”
“Me, sir?” Kurkas swayed. “Made the error of head-butting a helmet. She’s still a fighter, after all these years.”
The comment made Viktor look closer. As his anger fell to a dull ebb, he put a name to the face. “Revekah Halvor. You’re a notorious woman. Did Josiri truly send you to slit my throat?”
He didn’t believe so. The Josiri he’d seen would never have the courage to order an assassination.
“I came here to kill you for him,” she snarled. “For what you intend for the Southshires. And for what you did to Anastacia.”
Viktor’s conscience seethed anew. “I intend nothing for the Southshires but the best of fortunes.”
“It’s true, Revekah,” said Calenne. “I’ve seen the warrants. Viktor will set you free of the Council. Would have done already if my idiot brother hadn’t refused him.”
Her scowl deepened. “So you are with him. I weep for your mother’s loss.”
“Then stop! While you and Josiri carry on like frightened brats, Viktor’s trying to save us!”
“And Anastacia?”
“A mistake,” said Viktor. “One I’ll gladly undo, if I can.”
Kurkas cleared his throat. “Permission to take this harridan outside and give her a good hanging, sir? Takes the fight out of a body, a nice bit of rope about the neck.”
The fingers on his arm tightened. “Viktor . . . She was Katya’s dearest friend. You can’t.”
He shook Calenne aside. “She’s an outlaw, and by her own confession came to murder me.”
He crouched and stared into Revekah’s eyes. She gazed back without fear.
“And you’re northwealder scum,” she said, “and a witch into the bargain. I won’t beg clemency from the likes of you.”
Viktor nodded, and straightened. “Captain?”
“Sah?”
“Escort Captain Halvor from the camp. We’ll keep her weapons to prevent any further . . . rash behaviour on the way.”
“Sorry sir, sounded like you said . . .”
“Then you heard me right. See to it. At once.”
Revekah regarded him through half-lidded eyes. “Why?”
“Because I kill only if called to.” He offered his hand. “There will be death enough in the days to come. I intend to fight for your home, and I am woefully outmatched. You can help, or you can live with the after-math. But choose swiftly.”
She struck his hand aside and clambered stiffly to her feet.
Viktor nodded. He understood Halvor’s enmity, even if he could not respect it. But he didn’t have to reciprocate. He only hoped he’d not regret his mercy.
“Captain Kurkas? Kindly see her out. And captain? I’d deem it a favour if nothing you witnessed here today became the stuff of campfire rumour.”
Kurkas threw a salute. “Sah! What’s one more secret between friends?”
Josiri ignored the first two cheers. By the time the easterly wind carried a third to Branghall’s walls, curiosity overcame reluctance. He took to the balcony.
And on the balcony of the reeve’s manor, one hand braced against the wooden handrail, and the other bunched in a fist and raised aloft, stood Calenne.
Calenne?
Josiri barely recognised her at first. Never in his life had he seen her in armour. It suited her. But how could it not? Their mother had never looked more herself than when arrayed for battle.
“You all know what has befallen.” Calenne’s windblown words crackled at the edges as words so often did with force behind them. “The Hadari have crossed the mountains. Our borderlands are burning.”
There were no cheers now, nor any murmurs that reached Josiri’s ears. They listened to her more raptly than they ever had him. Then again, what had he ever fed them, save platitudes? He’d tried to serve two masters, and in the striving disappointed both.
“My mother, Katya Trelan, was the Phoenix,” shouted Calenne. “She died fighting those who sought to steal our lands. Now we are invaded once more. And it is in the nature of phoenixes to be reborn!”
A murmur broke out among the crowd. Josiri’s knuckles whitened on the balcony balustrade.
“For the sake of your families, you followed my mother.” All of a sudden, Calenne’s gaze lifted from the marketplace. Josiri knew with certainty that she stared at him as unblinkingly as he at her. “For their sake again, I ask you to follow me!”
Josiri felt sick. Calenne in battle? It was everything he’d striven to prevent. One more failure to add to the list. He didn’t have to ask who’d filled her head with such nonsense. Not with Viktor Akadra standing at her shoulder like some malignant shadow.
The crowd cheered. They cheered for her as they never had for him.
“We will be free of the Hadari,” shouted Calenne. “And equals in the Republic once more. I have asked Lord Viktor Akadra, the Council’s champion, to join his future to mine. Our families will stand united. The line of Trelan is rising, and the Southshires with it. At long last, we have the power to unmake injustices of the past, and we shall all of us have the future we long for!”
Josiri barely heard the cheers. He scarcely saw Akadra sink to one knee before Calenne. They intended to marry? Every time Josiri believed things could get no worse, they conspired to do so. But how could he stop her?
Muffled cheers rang out again as he entered the great hall. Self-pity boiled away into anger. His hands closed about a chair’s backrest. A wordless, heartsick cry ripping free of his lips, he flung the chair across the chamber. It shattered against flagstones beside the ruin of the upended table. With a choked snarl, Josiri sank to the floor and stared at the empty space where his mother’s portrait had so recently hung.
“I’ve failed you,” he muttered. “I’ve failed everyone.”
She offered no answer, as he knew she could not. In any case, he knew it wasn’t her voice he longed to hear, but Anastacia’s.
He was still there when the cheers at last faded and the church bells rang for seven. The doors to the great hall parted to admit Revekah Halvor.
“I take it you’ve heard?”
“All of it.” He paused, a new thought breaking to the surface. “How did you get in here?”
“Took a brooch and walked.”
“The guards didn’t stop you?”
She shrugged. “There aren’t any. Akadra’s co-opted them into his army.”
“His army? A few hundred souls cowering in the shadow of kraikons.”
“He’ll have more soon enough. Your sister lit quite the fire. Might even shake a group or two out of the Wolf King’s shadow.”
Another reminder of failure. “Like I should have, you mean?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you meant it.”
She sat beside him and rested her forearms on crooked knees. “I spoke to Calenne today. She told me you and I were carrying on like spoilt brats.”
“She said that?”
“That’s the gist.” Revekah sighed. “What if she’s right?”
“She isn’t.”
Josiri gritted his teeth. He wanted to shout, to scream. To rant about the unfairness of it all. But it wouldn’t come. The aftermath of anger left emptiness stretching from toenails to fingertips and was never stronger than about his heart.
“I think . . .” Revekah hesitated. “I think she might be. Why didn’t you discuss Akadra’
s offer with me?”
“Why would I?”
The last of the warmth slipped from her voice. “Oh, is that how it is?”
“You think I should bother you with the lies of my mother’s killer?” He shook his head, more to convince himself than her. “I’m . . .”
“Lumestra help me! If the next words out of your mouth are to be ‘I’m the duke, it was my decision’, then I suggest you stay silent.”
Despite a tone that could have shattered steel – despite even his own mood – Josiri smiled. “You’ve not spoken to me like that for a very long time.”
“I haven’t needed to. If I’d known about Akadra’s offer, we might have been able to make a stronger case before Crovan and the others. Or maybe . . . ?”
“I should have accepted? No.”
“In the long run, what’s the difference?”
“Not everyone will believe Calenne. Not everyone will follow her.”
“Maybe not. But I do, and I will. I spoke with Akadra earlier today . . .”
Josiri leapt to his feet. Things always did get worse. “What?”
“Wasn’t by choice. Point of fact, I went there to murder him. Made a proper botch of it, too. He could’ve killed me. Should’ve. Instead, he lectured me.” She rose, her eyes meeting Josiri’s. He had the sense that she did so not to make a point, but because she was looking for something. “Your mother always wanted what’s best for folks. Somewhere along the line, I’ve lost sight of that.”
“Have you forgotten what he did? To my mother? To her dream?”
“I’m forgetting nothing. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t miss Katya. But it doesn’t matter what Akadra did in the past, not if he’s prepared to fight for us today. I’m going to stand with him. I’d like you to come with me.”
He didn’t believe her. He couldn’t. Calenne, he almost understood. Especially with the prospect of escaping the family name. But Revekah? He stared up at the bare wall. It was strange. He couldn’t even picture the portrait in his mind’s eye any longer. Now, whenever he tried, he saw only Calenne.
“Then you’re betraying her too,” he said softly.
The stinging slap rocked Josiri back on his heels.
“How dare you. Katya was my friend. My sister. I fought for her. I’d have died for her. I’d have fought for her son, had he risen to it. I’ll sure as Queen’s Ashes not abandon her daughter.” She shook her head. “You’re a selfish, prideful ass. Katya would be ashamed.”
She spat on the floor and strode away, leaving Josiri in accusing silence.
Thirty-One
Sevaka arrived at the Silverway as the bells rang for nine. Rosa barely recognised her. Vigorous strides practised on rolling decks had fallen away into uncertain, almost hesitant paces that barely twitched her grey skirts.
“Sevaka,” Rosa stood and embraced the other woman. “Thank you for coming.”
She offered a distant smile. “I’m sorry I wasn’t home when you called. A busy day.”
So it was a dour mood to match a dour dress? “I heard you’ve resigned your commission.”
“Times change. Mother reminded me of broader duties.”
They sat, and Rosa poured Sevaka a glass of wine from the chipped bottle. She’d not yet brought herself to touch her own glass.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Like I’ve been dashed against the rocks at Scyllarest.” Sevaka sipped her wine. “You?”
“You might say that this week’s been a hell of a year.”
“I like that.” Sevaka raised her glass in toast. “A hell of a year. May our enemies have it worse in the week to come.”
Rosa clinked her glass to Sevaka’s. After the merest hesitation, she took a sip. It didn’t much taste of anything. Then again, nothing did any longer.
“You have enemies?”
“I’m a Kiradin,” said Sevaka. “Of course I have enemies. And I’m sure to inherit more from my mother.”
“Such is life in the nobility.”
Well, not for everyone. Rosa couldn’t imagine her uncles having much in the way of grudges awaiting settlement. They lacked the ambition to cultivate any.
A drunken roar and clash of tankards erupted from a nearby table. Sevaka leaned back and stared up at the cross-hatched timber beams. “What about you? Enemies, I mean?”
Rosa scowled. “A few. And maybe one I never knew I had.”
“I hope you’re not talking about me.”
Rosa took the childlike bleakness for affectation, so ill did it sit with the woman she’d drunk with so recently. “No. But I wanted to ask your advice.”
“I’m not sure what my advice is worth. You’d be better asking Malachi.”
Rosa shook her head. She’d considered that. “I can’t. I need a different perspective. Malachi’s too much the politician.”
“Well, that’s one thing of which I’ve never been accused. Tell me.” Rosa took another sip. She’d rehearsed this conversation in her head, but now it was upon her . . . ?
“A fellow knight . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to use the word “friend”. She told herself it was because that would too easily give Viktor’s identity away. “. . . stands accused of conspiring with the Crowmarket.”
Sevaka gulped down a mouthful of wine and scraped her chair closer to the narrow table. “Do you trust the source?”
“The source is your mother.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “My question stands.”
“Should I?”
Another gulp. Sevaka glowered at the empty glass and refilled it from the bottle. “My mother hears many things. More than I’d like. If she brought this to you, she must have had reason.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“Don’t be coy. There’s nothing you can say in my mother’s absence that I haven’t said to her face. Often at pitch and volume.”
“You’re not close, then?”
“Close? My brother was the only thing that mattered to her, as she has taken great pains to remind me. Everything else . . .” She shook her head. “So on the one hand, you have the honour of your comrade, and the possibility that my mother is lying, or mistaken. On the other, you have honourless – and I’m guessing – criminal endeavour by said comrade.”
Rosa nodded. “Pretty much.”
“Have you considered walking away?”
“I can’t!” She winced, having all but shouted the words. Fortunately no one had taken obvious interest. Bellowed denials were common currency in the Silverway. “I have a duty.”
Honour and duty. Ever a complicated mix. She’d sworn to Ebigail that she’d not repeat the allegations to Sevaka, and this discussion edged close to breaking that promise. Why had she sought her counsel anyway? She barely knew the woman. But if Viktor was guilty, there was every possibility Malachi was compromised. Lilyana too. Who did that leave? No one her own age. At least, no one nearer than the border.
“Even so . . .” Sevaka toyed with her glass, eyes on its contents rather than on Rosa. “This comrade . . . he’s well-connected?”
Rosa hesitated, but that alone would hardly give Viktor away. “He is.”
“Then this will end with you trapped between my family and his. Are you prepared for that?”
She’d not thought of it that way. But Kas wouldn’t have hesitated. “If there’s guilt, yes.”
“Then you need proof. Something more substantial than my mother’s word.”
Would it change anything if she knew the accusation came from Kas? Or had supposedly done so? “And if there’s no proof?”
“Then my mother must be mistaken. And we can none of us be blamed for that.”
Sevaka leaned back in her chair. Her manner was that of a duellist having delivered a deathblow, now content to wait out her opponent’s last breath. And yet there was an intensity to her gaze . . . almost an eagerness. Such a pity she couldn’t be told more, for Rosa had an inkling she’d make a capable ally.
&n
bsp; “You’re right. I need proof.” Rosa stood, seized of fresh determination. “Thank you.”
“So you’ve used me up, and now you’re to abandon me on the dockside?” Sevaka asked without rising. “You dragged me down here, you can at least share another drink or two. We never finished our toasts . . . and I’m in no hurry to return to Freemont.”
The need in her voice chimed kinship in Rosa’s soul. There was little she could do at that hour save dwell on her next move. And unless she was prepared to aimlessly walk the city streets, she’d do so amid the lights and laughter of Abbeyfields. She couldn’t face that. Alone in a crowd was alone in a crowd, whether you were a solitary drunk at a tavern table, or a guest in a family home.
“All right,” she said. “But no politics, no intrigue and no brawling.”
Sevaka beamed. “Agreed!”
She emptied her glass and called for another bottle.
“The situation is intolerable!” insisted Makrov. “I demand the Council take action!”
The archimandrite stood with his back to the window and the moonlit gardens, his scarlet robes ominous in the gloom. Outspread arms and rigid posture drew forth Marek’s childhood memories of fiery sermons delivered from high pulpit. Expected in the solemn confines of a church, but wholly unfit for Lady Ebigail’s drawing room.
Possibly the archimandrite knew no other way of making address. More likely he was too angry for appropriate behaviour.
“Demand, archimandrite? Lord Akadra and I are not children. Nor are we penitents seeking absolution. Kindly refrain from addressing us as such.” Lady Ebigail returned her attention to her teacup, leaving her guest in the throes of speechless apoplexy.
Makrov glanced at Lord Akadra, reclining in the chair to Lady Ebigail’s right and received a weary wave of the hand. “Sit down, Arzro. No one disputes your intentions, but as Ebigail says, we should manage a little decorum.”
Makrov havered, grimaced, and finally lowered himself into a chair.
“Better.” Lady Ebigail set aside her teacup and at last looked up at Makrov. “But I feel you may be overstating the situation, Arzro.”
“Overstating?” Makrov bit out. “Hadon’s son mocks everything I’ve worked for! And with the Council’s backing!”