by David Keck
Durand blinked, eyes sandy and raw.
The little room he’d chosen must have been of use to some clerk or scribe. There was a good table and a large window, now empty of glass and free of shutters. Durand could not have guessed the hour, though some light slipped down between the buildings outside. Maybe it was evening already. He guessed that it was noon at least.
Inevitably then, Durand heard the Traveler’s staff. Tock. Tock. And it seemed to him that a shadow, something broad as a sail, swept over the wall beyond his window.
In the next moment, something crackled on the sill’s broken glass. Durand saw the Rooks hop there, but now Durand did not shrink from the devils. He only stood for them and smiled. They were great ones for working at the cracks in a man’s heart, like the whispering prince had pried at vanity and jealousy and greed and all of that nonsense.
“Why don’t you trouble someone else?” said Durand. “I think we’re finished with each other.”
There were bits of broken shutter here and there, and Durand shied a good-sized one spinning through the pair of them, and off they went.
Durand turned to find Deorwen standing in the only door.
“What were you saying?” she asked.
“Ah. I was just bidding some old friends good-bye.”
“I will speak to the Patriarch about those two, whether you give me leave or not.”
“I didn’t know you’d noticed them.”
“You are not the most observant of men.”
Durand laughed a little. It was a very small room. Deorwen of Mornaway took a step closer.
“We’ll need a glazier as well,” Durand managed. “That’s another man I’ll have to find.”
Deorwen made a small sound. It might have been a laugh. “I was with Heremund,” she said. “Almora has other things to worry her. Did you know that Berchard knows the High Patriarch?”
“How is that?”
“If I understood correctly, Berchard and the good father spent a summer guarding a ship on the River Greyroad. It will have been forty winters. He knew all about Berchard’s eye.”
“A hag got the eye, he said.”
“Just so. Father Semborin joked that the hag likely regretted the quarrel now. Berchard said she’d got plenty of use from the eye and had no right to complain. They had Heremund in tears.”
They stood together in the small room. Durand was sure that the Traveler’s great shadow still lay upon the wall, that Heaven was not done with him. Not yet.
“Deorwen,” he said, “I have been laying things aside lately.”
She stepped nearer.
“Dukedoms. Wives. I’ve noticed.”
“Aye, well, I’d been lugging a lot of old foolishness with me, I find.”
“I think I’d told you as much.”
“But it’s left me to wonder if I’d been carrying all the wrong things. All this nonsense. Coensar. Lamoric. All the rest. What if, all this time, I’d left something behind that I was meant to have kept?”
She stepped closer once more.
There was enough light in the old room for him to see her face, tilted up. She was so small. Always, this fact amazed him.
“You will have to make your meaning plain,” she said, and Durand’s ears caught the slightest falter. “I am going to hold you to that much, Durand Col.” He thought he saw her dark eyes swimming a bit, but the dim light kept her confidences.
“Why can we not be happy too?” said Durand.
“That is not enough. You have not said it yet.”
And, as nervous as a bridegroom, he put his hands on her arms. He hadn’t done as much in ten winters, and even that little made him catch his breath. It was worse than the dizzy moment by the Hazelwood Throne.
“I’ve loved you since before I knew your name. Since Red Winding all those years ago. I think I would have killed Lamoric for you.” Lamoric had left her behind, left her to run after him as he played Red Knight. Maybe he had not known her. “And then there he was, dead. And there was I, his man, and I’d betrayed him. But I could do nothing else.”
“You did none of this alone,” she said.
“But he is gone now,” Durand said. “All this time. You know, he has never been among my Lost friends. Maybe he was too good for the Bright Gates to let free. But I think he has been very much with me. In my thoughts. He was a good man, but I think it is time. We must try. Perhaps there is a way to be happy.”
Beyond the window, Durand heard the Traveler’s staff. The brass ferule was rapping, now farther away. He was sure that the long shadow had left them.
Durand looked down into the woman’s shining eyes. “I love you,” he said.
She seized him as though she were a little girl, and Durand plucked her up and kissed her while her toes kicked the air.
TOR BOOKS BY DAVID KECK
In the Eye of Heaven
In a Time of Treason
A King in Cobwebs
About the Author
DAVID KECK, originally from Winnipeg, is a middle school teacher and cartoonist living in New York with his wife, science fiction and fantasy senior editor Anne Groell.
keckbooks.com
Twitter: @keckda
Visit him online at davekeck.deviantart.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Map
1. A Feast of Life and Death
2. A Rite of Fire
3. Familiar Spirits
4. Lord in All but Name
5. A Keeper of the Dead
6. His Grace’s Shadow
7. A Test of Fire
8. The Trial of the High Passes
9. A Gate of Cloud
10. The Horn of the Forest
11. The Marches of Fellwood
12. Judgment of the Sword
13. Kingdom of the Hornbearer
14. A Road of Stone and Spirits
15. The Mercy of Iron
16. Dark Homecomings
17. An Ill-Suited Hero
18. Whispers in the Lonely Places
19. Of Ice, Death, and Stone
20. A Bitter Glory
21. Like a Red-Gold Coin
22. The Starlings, the Eagles, and the Crane
23. At the River
24. The Vale of Ydran
25. The Path of Ashes
26. A Labyrinth of Dreams
27. The Passage of Honor
28. Dunnock of the Hedges
29. Battlefields
30. The Bay of Eldinor
31. Lost Princes
32. The Mount of Eagles
33. The King’s Watch
Tor Books by David Keck
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A KING IN COBWEBS
Copyright © 2018 by David Keck
All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by David Grove
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-1322-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-30397-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-8834-6 (ebook)
eISBN 9781429988346
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First Edition: December 2018