Warhost of Vastmark

by Janny Wurts

  ‘How dramatic,’ Jinesse said in a stiff-backed distaste that deplored his choice of public venue. ‘We’ve known Arithon as a fair-minded man for the better part of a year. On your word, in just one afternoon, we’re to accept the greater mercy of your judgment?’

  Yet her composure crumbled just enough for Lysaer to glean a ruler’s insight: if the villagers of Merior had sheltered Arithon in ignorance, this one woman had been aware of his identity beforetime. An added depth of grief pinched her features as she challenged, ‘What of the crew who manned the Shearfast? Where was your vaunted pity when your galleys ran them down and let them burn?’

  ‘Your husband was aboard?’ Lysaer probed softly.

  Jinesse jerked her fingers from his clasp. Her wide-eyed flash of resentment transformed to dismay as she spun and flounced off of the dais.

  ‘Go with her,’ Lysaer said in swift order to the officer at the base of the stair. ‘See her home safely and stay there until I can send someone to console her. There were survivors from that vessel. I don’t know how many, but her loved one could possibly be among them.’

  Mollified by the kindness shown to one of their own, the villagers of Merior gave way to a grudging, gruff patience as Lysaer concluded his speech. ‘I’ve scarcely touched on the danger this conniving pirate presents. If you never saw him work shadows or sorcery, you will be shown that his gifts are no tale without substance. Among you stand my officers, who saw the sunlight over Minderl Bay become strangled into darkness. They will stay and hear your questions. Lord Diegan will tell of the massacre he survived on the banks of Tal Quorin in Deshir. We have a man from Jaelot and another from Alestron, who witnessed the felonies there. But lest what they say turn your hearts to rank fear, I would have you understand you’re not alone.’

  Lysaer raised his arms. His full, embroidered sleeves fell away from his wrists as he stretched his hands wide and summoned the powers of his birth gift. A flood of golden light washed the fish market. It rinsed through the flames in the torches, and built, blinding, dazzling, until the eye could not separate the figure of the prince from the overwhelming, miraculous glare.

  Lysaer’s voice rolled over the dismayed gasps of the awestruck fisherfolk at his feet. ‘My gift of light is a full match for the Master of Shadow! Be assured I shall not rest until this land is safe, and his evil designs are eradicated.’

  From the boardinghouse landlady, who called with a basket of scones, Jinesse learned how opinion had turned once Prince Lysaer had left the villagers to enjoy his hospitality. The beer and the wine had flowed freely, while talk loosened. The old gossip concerning the Black Drake and the widow’s past voyage on Talliarthe were resurrected and bandied about with fresh fervour. Most telling of all was Arithon’s reticence. The fact he had no confidant, that he never shared the least clue to his intentions became the most damning fact against him. Paired with first-hand accounts of his atrocities in the north, such self-possessed privacy in hindsight became the quiet of a secret, scheming mind.

  By roundabout means, the landlady reached the news she had been appointed to deliver. ‘When the galley’s crew boarded and took Shearfast, they insist only two of Arithon’s sailors met them. Those refused quarter and fought to the death, but not to save their command. They had already fired the new hull to scuttle her. Despite the flames, the duke’s officers searched the hold. They found a bound man held captive below decks. He was cut loose while unconscious, and is now in the care of Prince Lysaer’s personal healer.’

  Jinesse looked up from the skirt she had been mending, her needle poised at an agonized angle between stitches she had jerked much too tight. The name of Tharrick hung unspoken as she said, ‘But Arithon kept no one prisoner.’

  The boardinghouse landlady sniffed and drizzled honey over one of the pastries. ‘I said so. The Prince of the West showed no opinion on the matter, but looked me through as though I were a child in sad want of wisdom.’

  Unbleached homespun crumpled under Jinesse’s knuckles. She, too, kept her thoughts to herself. For the ruinous delay which Tharrick’s retribution had inflicted on the works at the shipyard, it seemed entirely plausible that Shearfast’s doomed crew might have seized their belated revenge. To ask the next question required all the courage she possessed. ‘What did you say to his Grace?’

  ‘Why, nothing.’ The landlady flicked crumbs from her blouse and gave a shrug as dour as a fisherman’s. ‘Let these outsiders untangle their own misadventures. We’re not traderfolk, to hang our daily lives upon rumours. The mackerel won’t swim to the net any better should we buy and sell talk like informants. If Arithon’s evil, that’s his own affair. He tried no foul acts in our village.’ But her forceful, brusque note as she ended spoke of doubts irrevocably seeded.

  The landlady folded the linen she had used to pack the scones. ‘With only two bodies found to be counted, Prince Lysaer wished you to hear there may have been other survivors.’ As she arose and smoothed her skirts over her ample thighs, she added on afterthought, ‘His Grace seems anxious to know the number of Shearfast’s crew. They were Arithon’s people, I told him.’

  Miserable and mute, Jinesse watched the other woman sweep past the pantry to let herself out. Paused at the threshold on departure, her full-lipped, cattiest smile as much for Lysaer’s young officer, listening at his post outside the doorway, the landlady concluded her last line. ‘I said, why ever should we care?’

  The following morning, the Prince of the West presented himself at the widow’s cottage for a visit. By then, he had made enough inquiries to know that her husband had drowned a year past in a fishing accident. Whatever her attachment to the men who had crewed the lost Shearfast, he came prepared to treat her grief with compassion. As his escort, he brought a pair of neatly appointed guardsmen to relieve the one on duty in the yard.

  The elegance and manners of old blood royalty should not have upset her poise, Jinesse thought. Arithon’s disconcerting, satirical directness had never made her feel embarrassed for unrefined origins, nor had his bearing afflicted her with apologetic confusion over whether or not she should curtsy.

  Resplendent in glossy silk, and a chain of gold and matched sapphires, Lysaer stepped across the waxed boards of her parlour and caught her chapped fingers away from her habitual urge to fidget. ‘Come sit,’ he insisted.

  He spun her gently to a chair. The shutters on the window were latched against the morning, the gloom pricked by leaked light through the cracks where the wood was poorly fitted. Clad in dark skirts and a laced bodice of brown twill, Jinesse looked more faded than usual. Her cheeks were drawn and her eyes as tintless as the palest aquamarine.

  Memories of another prince in rough linen who had set her just as deftly on a woodpile dogged her thoughts as she sought once again to plumb royal character through a face. Where Arithon had shown her discomfiting reticence and a perception forthright enough to wound, Prince Lysaer seemed candid and direct as clear sunlight. His dress was rich without being ostentatious. The breathtaking effect of overpowering male beauty he countered in personal warmth that lent an effect no less awesome.

  The study he flicked over the room’s rude interior held detached interest, until the fired glitter of the fine, cut glass bowl on her dish shelves snagged his interest. His surprise was genuine as he crossed the room on a stride. The sculpted shape of his hand bore an uncanny resemblance to Arithon’s as he lifted the Falgaire crystal from the shelf.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  Jinesse’s answer was cold. ‘I received it as a present from a friend.’

  Lysaer recrossed the floor, set the bowl on the chest by the window, then unlatched and flung wide the shutters. Sunlight streamed in, and the salt scent of breakers, cut by the shrill calls of the gulls. The facets of the crystal responded in an incandescent flare of captured brilliance.

  ‘A lovely gift, Falgaire glasswork,’ Lysaer said. He found the battered stool the twins liked for whittling and perched. ‘I shan’t hide the truth. I
know you accepted this bowl from Arithon s’Ffalenn, though no doubt you would have declined his generosity had you known where he first obtained it.’

  When Jinesse did not favour him with more than her stony-eyed quiet, Lysaer sighed and fingered the faceted rim. Broken light caught in the jewels of his rings, an icy point of cold at each knuckle. ‘I know this piece well. It was granted to me during a state visit by the Mayor of Falgaire, then stolen in a raid by barbarians allied with the Shadow Master. You would do well to take heed. The man is a threat to every city in Athera, your own children even now at his mercy. You knew him well enough to receive his favour. Perhaps you also heard the name of the port that will come to shelter him next. Were this campaign in sole charge of Duke Bransian of Alestron, or my Commander-at-Arms, Lord Diegan, either one would use means to force the information from you. I shall give no such orders. Your collusion is a tragedy and I pity your twins. But I shall not try abuse to gain my ends. Your Master of Shadow held no such scruple with the man he took prisoner, who claims to have fired his shipyard.’

  ‘Arithon kept no one captive,’ Jinesse insisted.

  Lysaer did not miss how her gaze stayed averted from the bowl. That’s a falsehood most easily disproved. The wretch we saved off the Shearfast was left bound there to burn. Once we got him cleaned up, he was recognized as a former captain of Duke Bransian’s, who had reason to bear malice toward your Master.’

  ‘Why not go back and question him?’ Jinesse said, a struck spark of iron in her tone.

  Lysaer met her with patience. ‘When the victim regained his wits, he talked well enough. He said he had torched the s’Ffalenn ship works, and for that, suffered rough interrogation. The scars on his body attest his honesty.’

  ‘Arithon never beat him,’ Jinesse said.

  ‘No.’ Lysaer regarded her in level, brutal truth. ‘Alestron’s officers did that for what looks like mishandled justice. What Captain Tharrick received from your Shadow Master were burns, inflicted with a knife blade heated red-hot, then assault with a bludgeon that left knots in his sides from broken ribs. Not pretty,’ he finished. ‘The additional blistering he suffered from the flames before he was rescued from Shearfast cause him pain aboard an anchored galley. My healer says he needs stillness and rest. Therefore, I came to beg your charity. Let Tharrick come to your cottage to recover from his injuries. My servant will be sent to administer remedies as needed. After seeing this man’s condition first-hand, you may reconsider your opinion on the criminal your silence comes to shelter.’

  Too upright to feign horror, since every mark on Tharrick’s body was already infinitely well known to her, Jinesse sat braced in her chair. The depths of her feelings stayed masked behind acid and painful politeness. ‘Bring your injured man here. I refuse none in need. But lest you hope falsely, my kindness to an outsider will lend no more credence to your plotting.’

  ‘Very well.’ Lysaer stood in a frosty sparkle of disturbed gemstones. ‘I see I’ve upset you. That was necessary. My concern for the dangers you refuse to acknowledge is no light matter for dismissal. Two of my guards will stand watch at your door. Having suffered the tragic consequences of s’Ffalenn cunning all my life, I realize the allure he can foster. Knowing, I stake no less than my personal assurance of your safety.’

  ‘I wish no protection,’ Jinesse said, obstinate.

  Lysaer inclined his head in regal sympathy. ‘I can hope you’ll reconsider, if only to help your lost children. Have no fear. The ones in the village who disagree with your stand shall not be permitted to badger you. Should you wish to confide in me, you have only to send one of the men-at-arms. Rest assured, mistress, I will come.’

  On the instant the Prince of the West had departed, Jinesse took the offending bowl of Falgaire crystal and shut it away in a clothes trunk. She banged the catch down and sat on the lid, then buried her face in her shaking hands and wept in painful relief.

  Tharrick had survived the wreck of Shearfast.

  By a stunning twist of fate, a misapprehension, and the sort of tangled handling Arithon left like moiled waters in his wake, Lysaer s’Ilessid meant to send him here, ostensibly to undermine her prior loyalties.

  The sob in her throat twisted to a stifled gasp of irony. In fact, Tharrick under her roof would but tighten the villagers’ resistance. They might have betrayed the exiled captain’s collaboration with Arithon while he was aboard Lysaer’s galley, but under her roof, he became as one of their own. Whatever ill intent they came to believe of the Shadow Master, Tharrick’s interests would suffer no immediate betrayal.

  The procession to deliver the invalid to her cottage arrived in the early afternoon. Jinesse had the bed in her back room made up in clean linens to receive him. A brisk hour in the kitchen over pans of hot water and recipes for herbal poultices convinced the prince’s physician that she was well versed in the treatment of burns. An indolent man and a scholar by nature, he was content to leave the convalescent in her care. Her dislike of outsiders left him distinctly unwelcome. He would check in, he assured, every few days to see that Tharrick’s weals closed cleanly.

  The litter bearers left, cracking crude jokes and laughing through the winter twilight that mantled pearly mist over the beachhead of Merior. As Jinesse closed the shutters against the sea damp and set about the chore of lighting candles, Tharrick stirred from the heavy sleep of drugged possets. He opened his eyes to the familiar sight of a pale-haired wraith of a woman with a profile like clear wax, underlit by the flutter of a tallow dip.

  She saw him come aware. A still, pretty smile raised the corners of her mouth as she reached out to smooth the singed ends of his hair over his bandaged forehead. ‘Don’t speak.’ Her look warned him silent as she whispered, ‘Lysaer’s men-at-arms wait without.’

  Tharrick closed his eyes, unsure how he had come to be returned to the widow’s care, but grateful for the comfort of her presence. That her cottage was kept under watch was not hard to believe. Lysaer and his officers had been demanding in their efforts at interrogation. Passion and urgency had driven them to dig for any clue to Arithon’s intentions and location. Tharrick had withstood their pity and their blandishments. He had sweated in his sheets through their threats, and repeated himself unto tedium. His ignorance was no lie. Only the Shearfast’s dead captain had known their intended port of call.

  Now, restored to friendly surroundings and the outward illusion of safety, necessity came hard to maintain the act that he and the widow were strangers.

  Late in the night, when the thud of the breakers thrashed the spit at flood tide, Jinesse came to his darkened bedside. She brought water as she had when he was Arithon’s charge, and tucked in the bedding tossed awry in his suffering.

  ‘Do you believe the Prince of the West?’ she demanded point-blank at a whisper. Fresh in her mind lay the morning’s trip to the market, where a neighbour had refused to sell her eggs. Another wife pointed and insisted that she was a creature enspelled, drawn into wickedness to abet the Master of Shadow.

  Tharrick studied the edge of her profile, printed in moonlight against the outlines of gauzy, high-flying clouds. ‘That Prince Arithon is evil? Or that he’s guilty of criminal acts in the north?’

  The crash of the surf masked their voices. Jinesse bent her neck, her features blocked in sudden dimness. ‘You feel there’s distinction?’

  Tharrick stirred from discomfort that had little to do with blistered skin. ‘The accusations fit too well to deny. Don’t forget, I saw what he caused at Alestron.’

  ‘You’ll betray him,’ Jinesse said.

  ‘I ought to.’ Tharrick shoved aside the corner of the coverlet and reached out a wrapped hand to cup her knee. ‘I won’t.’ Aware of her porcelain fairness turned toward him, he swallowed. ‘Corrupt, evil, sorcerer he may be, yet I am not Daelion Fatemaster to dare stand in judgment for his acts. By my lights, he’s the only master I have served who treated me as a man. For that, I’d take Dharkaron’s Spear in damnation before I’d turn
coat and pass blithe beneath the Wheel to Athlieria. If blind service to Prince Lysaer’s justice is moral right, I prefer to keep my own honour.’

  ‘What will you do, then?’ Jinesse demanded. ‘The peninsula’s cut off by Avenor’s crack troops. The duke’s war galleys blockade the harbour. Lysaer’s guardsmen watch every move I make. Sooner or later, demands shall be made of me. The villagers don’t support my silence.’ She finished in a bitterness on the trembling edge of breakdown. ‘I cannot abandon my children.’

  The tips of Tharrick’s fingers flexed against her knee. ‘I gave you my promise, mistress.’ In short, snatched whispers, while the moonlight fled and flooded and limned the widow’s form with silvered light, he told of the sailhands who rowed from the Shearfast for the shore.

  ‘They were to seek sanctuary in the hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood. It’s my plan to go there and rejoin them, and take whatever facts I know concerning Lysaer’s campaign plans. I’m telling you this, mistress, because I hold earnest hope that you will decide to come with me.’

  ‘I can’t.’ The thread that held Jinesse to composure came unravelled, and her slender body spasmed to the jerk of stifled sobs. ‘Fiark and Feylind are endangered. Lysaer insists he’s concerned for them. But he cannot be everywhere and atrocities happen where armies march. I fear what might come if my twins were caught in the path of the bloodshed intended to bring down the Master of Shadow.’

  The brimming, liquid tracks of her tears and the anguish in her voice caused Tharrick to shove upright despite his pain. He gathered her against his warm shoulder. ‘I may have chosen to throw my lot in with Arithon. That doesn’t mean I support the ruin of small children. Come away with me. I’ll help see your young ones restored to you.’

  ‘So he did tell you where he was bound,’ Jinesse murmured. Her sigh of relief unreeled through a throat tight with weeping.