“Irwin Kole was never a man for subtlety,” Lord Theodore remarked, though quietly. “Nor does he take his vanity lightly.”
“It will survive the seas,” Justine remarked, though she did not disagree with the lord’s assessment. “Storms are terribly common this time of year.”
“Of the weather, and not loyal men and women, hmm?” the lord asked but did not wait for an answer. “I am eager to be off.”
Upon the deck she was greeted by Brennon and Demetri. “Ser Marcus and Lady Tricia?” Justine asked of them.
“Have not seen them yet.”
“Should we—”
Justine cut Amerie off. “No, we will not deter from our intent. There are still guards about. See that those who have assembled are below decks, and that Irwin Kole has this ship ready to heave anchor upon my mark.”
“That much has been done,” Demetri intoned. “The trader wished to leave some minutes ago. Feels it on the wind, he says.”
“That is his arrogance, ser,” Justine replied curtly, though not doubting the words. “Sers Brennon and Demetri, see that he does not act on his arrogance. I shall send Lady Amerie when I have made the decision to depart.”
The knights inclined their heads and bounded off below decks.
“How long will you wait, Justine?” Amerie asked as she slumped against the rail. “I do not leave to wish them behind, but with the emptiness, it may be that they were ambushed. T’would account for why they have not yet arrived.”
Justine took to one knee and peered out at the port. All remained still and quiet. “I do fear that and worse, much worse.”
“Then should we not—”
“No.” Justine knew exactly what her friend wanted to do, but she gave her word. “I will not wait overlong, but they must have more time.”
Naught passed in the stillness, not even the passing footfalls of guards. The moon hid behind the clouds, and Justine thought it must have been hours after midnight. The port was supposed to be quiet.
Mayhap not this quiet.
“I am sorry, Justine.”
Justine turned to Amerie, who simply stared into the distance. “For what?”
“My outburst, in the hall. I could not have left it unspoken.”
The apology was unexpected. “No ill came of it, Amerie, and there are more concerns now.”
“That does not make it less wrong,” the knight sighed. “My temper gets the worst of me.”
“Do not fret, my friend, simply—”
She cut herself off as figures moved through the shadows towards the galleon. Who or what they were she could not tell; she leaned over the rail to try and see further: there were many with swords drawn, and three bound at the wrists, prodded forward.
“Amerie, see that Irwin is ready to sail.”
“What is that—”
“They have not come alone,” Justine replied as she hopped upon the gangplank.
She near sprinted upon the dock, halting halfway. Father Curtis was on his knees, his arms wrapped behind his back, face drawn but unblemished; Ser Marcus and Lady Tricia’s were alike, but a thin wound arced down their cheeks, blood seeping through the wounds. A score of knights and guards stood behind.
“Release them,” Justine demanded, unsheathing Resolution. “Ser Gerold met his end this night. Need there be others?”
“There will be others, if you do not come to your senses.”
The voice was so familiar to Justine. Lowering her sword arm, she watched as the knights and guards parted, revealing Lord Arthur, walking towards his prisoners and leaning heavily on his oaken cane. He was as she remembered: strong, proud, and his long grey hair billowed in the cold wind.
“It is by your blessing that the port is empty, Lord Arthur?” Justine asked, fearing the answer.
“Blessing?” Lord Arthur answered, fingering his clean-shaven chin. “No, not blessings, not here anymore—‘tis the king’s will. He awaits you, Lady Justine, along with the others upon that galleon.”
“That was the trap, then?”
“Mmhmm,” the lord said without as much as a smile. “I did not learn much ‘til I came down here myself, but I suspected the worst when Ser Gerold did not send a runner. You disappoint me, Knight-Captain.”
Justine shuddered at the title, what it meant, and that even Lord Arthur consented to this madness. “And you disappoint me, my lord.”
Sneers and chuckles came from behind Lord Arthur, but he waved a veined hand, beckoning them to silence. “No vows did I break upon this night.”
“No, but you did before,” Justine declared. “You sat while a dark counsellor whispered lies into the king’s ears, and you accepted that. You sat while preachers were arrested upon the street, beaten to an inch of their lives, and then branded. Is this conduct befitting a lord?”
“You accept those lies, my dear?” Lord Arthur asked, shaking his head. “You are lost, but matters may soon resolve themselves. I give to you a single offer: lay down your steel, command the same of your knights, and return to Castle Marcanas. I shall free the father, and he can flee to whatever land, along with those other insurgents.”
Justine thought the offer was tempting, and if the lord who stood before her was the man she remembered, she would have taken it. He was not: for all she knew, the king’s fleets would be in short pursuit of the galleon. “No.”
“No?” Lord Arthur asked, taken aback. “After all the death you have wrought, is it your wish choke upon your own?”
“It is my wish, my lord, to honour my vows.”
The lord closed his eyes. It all seemed to be falling apart. The kind, noble lord that meant so much to her had realized what honour and duty commanded him to do.
She flexed her fingers, prepared to do what she must.
“Unbind them and return to the garrison, Ser Kilne.”
“My lord!” the slender knight to Lord Arthur’s right roared. “The king’s command it was—”
“To obey my commands this night,” the lord finished for Ser Kilne. “Or would you like to account to King Adrian why yet another knight-captain has sown disloyalty?”
Ser Kilne stood in silence as guards stepped forth and cut the bonds. Justine’s knights turned and scowled, though walked past her and onto the ship. Father Curtis did not rise—he remained on his knees, as if in prayer.
“Up with you,” Lord Arthur said, tapping his stick against the back of the priest.
The priest still did not stir, and Justine thought the worst—that the very lord she trusted so explicitly had broken the kind preacher. Then suddenly, Father Curtis rose slowly, wobbling down the dock. She looked into his eyes: guilt and powerlessness overwhelmed him.
She raised her eyes to Lord Arthur and the knights and guards beyond. The lord, though bent, stood tall and proud; much like he had countlessly in court. Yet the revulsion in Ser Kilne’s eyes were clear, and his discontentment.
“Need I repeat myself, Ser Kilne?” Lord Arthur said without looking to the knight-captain.
“No, my lord,” he said before shouting at the knights and city guards, hurrying them away from port.
“Do you know what you have done, Justine?” the lord asked as he stepped towards her. She sheathed Resolution, unafraid. “The king shall not forget.”
“I hope that he does not,” she said curtly. “I cannot serve him, not anymore.”
“Instead you shall serve the likes of Lord Theodore Rusels?” he asked, pointing his cane towards the rail. She looked behind and saw him standing there, though Lady Amerie was pulling him away.
“That is not my fate,” Justine said solemnly.
“’Tis not your fate, or you do not know it?”
The lord had read her heart, as he always did. “I do not know.”
“If you flee,” Lord Arthur said, putting two hands on the knob of his cane. “The king will come for you. The lands beyond are wild—the very land will be your foe ahead, and the King Adrian’s wrath behind.”
“I
cannot serve the king any longer.”
Lord Arthur looked at her, and she could not hope but look into those intense eyes; and there she saw a calmness, a warmth.
“I believe you,” he said suddenly. Then with a slight shake of his head, he turned to leave.
Justine would not let him leave. “What of the priests, traders, and nobles?”
The lord stopped but did not turn. “You slew many knights and city guards. Your debt has been paid.” Then he continued to walk away.
“Lord Arthur,” Justine shouted, but he did not stop. “You will face me, Lord Arthur!”
“Or what?” he shouted back but did not turn. “You shall not spill my blood, not here.”
“I should.”
The lord halted and turned. “You would not dare.”
“The blood debt has not been paid, Lord Arthur. I pray that your blood shall not be spilled to see it through.”
Though Justine walked up the gangplank, the lord still shouted, but she would not turn. “You are young and a fool, Justine! You are not infallible.”
No, she thought, but neither are you, my lord.
The Mother
Last Light
8 October 14810
Justine shouldered through the private cabin door, bearing a tray of hot stew and hard bread.
Father Curtis Lakin had still not tended to his living quarters: the sleeping pallet was yet unmade, his spare robes and undergarments draped over a knee-high dresser, and the remains of his lunch lay scattered on the table. Justine pushed all the dishes aside and put the tray down. The priest did not stir as he knelt before an ornate sculpture of the Mother, her wings spread protectively: a symbol of the unerring Light and grace of the divine.
“Father Curtis,” she said, unlatching her sword belt and leaning it against a wooden chair. He did not reply, and that did not surprise her. Every visit for the past week was much the same. “Father Curtis,” she said much more sternly.
“Is it that time again, child?” he asked without turning, his hands still held together. “Has it come so soon?”
Weeks at sea had come and gone, and Father Curtis remained secluded in his cabin, barring all visitors.
Save for Justine.
“We must eat,” she said, removing the wooden bowls from the tray. “Or all that we have sacrificed would have been for naught.”
Father Curtis finally rose from his knees and walked laggardly to the table. His face was drawn and worn, as if a mountain of sorrows rested on his shoulders. “Stew once more?” he asked sitting down. “Seems like the only meal the cooks prepare for us.”
“It is all that Irwin kept in the stores,” Justine said, taking her place across from the priest. “I am grateful for that.”
The priest sat in silence, dipping the heel of his bread into the stew, before slowly chewing and swallowing. Satisfied that he would eat another meal, Justine hollowed out her share, pondering just how long Father Curtis would hold his tongue. Every day his moods darkened more and more, but she hoped that his dour countenance would fade one day, and when it did, she wanted to be there for him.
“Did you think him capable of such an act?”
That was it. Justine put the little of her bread aside and placed her elbows on the table. She looked long at Father Curtis, but his downturned eyes revealed naught. “You would speak of it?”
The priest ate the last of his bread, took a deep breath, and faced her briefly: she saw a man torn, weary, and guilt ridden. He shrugged, stared into his wooden bowl, and finally spoke. “I have replayed it in my mind countlessly. The journey was without event for much of it. The night was dead and still. We were wary, yes, but we had believed that we would be on deck of the Gold Counter before long. Lord Terrence even rapped my shoulder, smiled and told me, ‘Fear not, Father, for our flight is near at hand.’
“I smiled at the lord. So much had gone wrong for our cause, but you, Justine, you were the good; and at long last we would be free of the tyrant on the Lion Throne. Then a thought occurred to me: that I was going to tell the lord that our flight was providence, and that it was the Mother’s making, all of it. I turned to the lord, and though he smiled, his lips ran red with blood.”
The priest looked down again and gripped the table hard. “They were on us: knights in plate, the city guard in mail. I cried, I screamed at them to stay their steel, but they did not heed me. Lady Tricia and Ser Marcus were valiant, but it was not enough. There were too many.
“I dropped to my knees. The dead faces looked at me in horror, in despair. In that moment I failed them, Justine. I failed them. Then, I heard a click-clack sound, and Lord Arthur stood above me, and I knew by the smile on his face that he thought justice done.”
Father Curtis fell silent. Justine shook her head: so much had changed in the royal city, and so much for the worse. “He is not the man I once knew. The man that was there for me ever since I was a child.”
The priest shook his head and scooped up a spoonful of stew. “Did you know him well?”
Justine did not rightly know how to answer that—how much dare she tell the priest? In his state, did it truly matter? “I believed in him, and he believed in me,” she answered, satisfied with her choice. “He was not simply a lord to me, but a friend. I saw what that was worth.”
“So we all have seen what friends are worth,” Father Curtis declared. “Now I fear that we run from one darkness unto another. Perhaps the true Darkness.”
“Is that why you seclude yourself in this cabin? Why refuse all but me?”
The priest shook his head once more and shoveled more of the stew into his mouth. Justine did the same, wondering if Father Curtis had put the pieces of his dour visage back together, and prepared to bottle up for weeks more. She wanted him to come out of this. The priests and priestesses needed him. She needed him. She needed him to trust her.
Trust. That word hung with her. Trust—she trusted Lord Arthur, and he turned on her and the subjects of the king, all at the behest of madness and chaos. It is power that does that to us all. I have to temper it, I must. We cannot live like this.
Father Curtis spoke suddenly. “Do you believe in the Mother?”
The question was so sudden, unexpected, and she dropped her spoon. “What does it matter?”
“Faith, child, matters more than anything.”
I wish I could tell you the truth, Father, but alas, you are not the only one who must keep secrets. “I do. Always have.”
“Yet not fervently,” Father Curtis said solemnly, and Justine suspected he did not believe a word of it. “I find the Mother’s Light to be the only comfort in these dark days; She is the only source of strength amid these storms and doubts. My faith teeters upon the edge, child, and so I must find it, unguided by those without, be they sworn to the cloth, to house, or to coin.”
“And by sword?” Justine asked. The father had omitted her allegiance from his list and she wanted to know why.
The priest pushed his bowl aside, staring back at her. “I do not believe it mere accident that you were in that hall with us. I believe the Mother willed it. I simply must understand it.”
“I was there upon Lord Arthur’s orders,” Justine recoiled. “If I had known more, mayhap it would be different, but it was not the Mother’s doing.”
“Was it truly not?”
Maddening. Simply maddening. Justine thought the priest was so lost in despair of the dreaded Darkness, that he would cling to faith so desperately, and worse, extend it to her.
To explain the folly of it all to the father would be a waste of breath. “You are done and I must be going,” she declared, cinching the sword belt to her waist. “I shall return on the morrow.”
“The Mother wills it, so it must be so,” Father Curtis said, inclining his head before returning to the sculpture, hands together in prayer.
Justine snorted derisively as she exited, uncaring if the priest heard her and embraced the storm.
The wind pummelled rain at
her as she stood outside the cabin door. It seemed that the weather was worsening, the autumn storms would relentless. Is that the Mother’s wish too? She pulled her cloak tightly, walking down the deck.
Few remained above decks. The sails pulled wildly as the deckhands pulled down the rigging, screaming at each other. She left them to their work, hastily descending a set of stairs to the cabins on the lower deck.
Lantern lights swayed wildly atop the long hall. Many of the cabin doors were open, revealing the men and women of cloth, nobles, and traders enjoying glasses of wine and mugs of beer and ale, seemingly oblivious to all that raged around them. Bits and pieces of their conversation drifted through—hope for a green land, new trade routes, and a bastion of divinity—but Justine did not heed any of it. She did not know how long she meant to stay on the new land, if they ever encountered it.
Regardless of whether this lot shared Father Curtis’ hope and divinity.
She entered her own cabin and smiled. It was much smaller than the priest’s, with but a slim pallet on the right-hand wall and an oval window opposite, raised slightly above a small dresser.
It was all she needed.
She unlatched her sword belt, light mail, and cloak, setting it beside the far wall. The pallet was far too alluring to care much for drying of fabric or proper care of mail and steel. Collapsing upon it, she draped her left arm over the side, and let sleep overtake her.
Justine opened her eyes, discovering a crowd of towering men and women in coarse linens and dirt-streaked hair. They shouted and jeered, calling for the head of the traitor lord. She jumped up and down, thinking it would reveal more, but there were too many huddled together.
“Child, you do not want to see this,” a strong, but calm voice said from behind her. “By command of the king you must be here, but you must not look upon it.”
Justine turned and saw a man dressed in a fine doublet of black and green. I know him, she thought as she gazed into his grey eyes. The man looked down warmly, his smile, little more than a frown, put her at ease. She knew him to be her father’s close friend, Lord Arthur.
The Prelude to Darkness Page 8