Daughter of Blood

by Helen Lowe

  “Keep him close,” he said to Lord Nimor, as he and Faro reached the Sea envoy. On impulse, he replicated the ancient salute used by the Che’Ryl-g-Raham’s Luck.

  The envoy returned it. “I will,” he promised. “Honor on you, Storm Spear. Light and safety on your path, until its end.”

  “And on yours,” Kalan replied. “Honor on you and on the Sea House.” He touched Faro’s hair one last time. “I’m sorry,” he said, as the boy’s features contorted. He meant it, too, but still turned away, nodding to Morin and his companion as they rejoined Jad’s escort. Although conscious of the eyes at his back, both hostile and well disposed, he put them out of his mind. He had a duel to the death to prepare for—and although Kalan had been willing to fight before, for the debt he owed Asantir, and to uphold Lady Myrathis’s pledge, now his sense of what was at stake cut deeper.

  It’s about Blood, he thought, stopping beneath the stony, nine-headed gaze of the hydra over the stable’s main door: what this House once was and could still be again. The others halted, too, and Kalan was aware of their confusion as he bowed to the hydra with the fingers of his right hand above his heart. I keep faith, he told it silently: with Malian of Night and with Asantir, with Faro and Lady Myrathis—and with all you once represented, the emblem of this House since the beginning.

  Taking his time, Kalan bowed again, and felt his heart grow still, calm, sure. So be it, he thought, as if the matter had ever been in doubt. I also keep faith with myself: I fight.

  And still the wyr pack howled.

  31

  Oriflamme

  Lady Myrathis’s former apartments were both dark and cold when Kalan reached them, so the first thing he did was hunt out fresh oil for the lamps. He found the suite’s storeroom off the short passage between Myr’s rooms and her onetime governess’s, the small space aromatic with stored herbs and beeswax candles, the latter in a box bearing an Ijiri chandler’s stamp. The lamps took some time to refill, but the subsequent glow was friendly, as was the warmth of the fires once he got them started in both the sleeping chamber and dayroom grates.

  Kalan stayed on his heels in front of the dayroom blaze for some time, listening to the wyr pack’s distant howls. With the benefit of hindsight, he was increasingly convinced that the slain wyr hound had let Lady Sarein kill it. Even if the beast had been taken by surprise, it should have done more than just stand there as though waiting for the blade. The only rationale for such behavior that Kalan could fathom was Sarein being one of the ruling kin, whom the wyr hounds were bred to defend and obey. Yet since Red Keep opinion held that all wyr hounds were erratic, and most at least half mad, perhaps he should look beyond logical explanations . . .

  Kalan shook his head, recalling the weight of the second hound’s head on his shoulder and Jad’s exclamation of surprise. On the road here, his Sea House companions had alluded to shortcomings in the Red Keep wyr hounds several times, comparing them unfavorably to the Sea Keep pack, which was trained by Temple seekers to detect Swarm incursion. “Handlers,” one marine had said, shrugging, “with the skill to actually recognize ’spawn.” She had changed the subject when she saw Kalan listening, and it was only now he appreciated her implication: that wyrs, like any other hound, had to be taught to recognize their quarry. Yet a House that consigned the Swarm to the realm of fireside tales and had exiled or—if what Sarein suggested was true—murdered most of its own with power, must have very few left who could teach their wyr hounds to recognize magic’s so-called taint.

  Kalan pursed his lips in a silent whistle, because he could see why the Sea Keepers might not want a Blood warrior pursuing that train of thought. The obvious consequence, if Blood’s wyr packs only recognized the forms of power their handlers were familiar with, was that the more Blood culled power users from their ranks, the narrower the hounds’ range was likely to become. And begs the question, Kalan thought, as to whether they would recognize the rarer aptitudes at all, let alone those with power unique to other Houses—like weatherworkers. It could also explain why the wyr hound at the Blood Gate had sniffed at Faro but turned away. If the boy’s ability to play least-in-sight derived primarily from Haarth, or from another Derai House, then the hound might well have detected power, just not the sort it was trained to expose.

  How much, Kalan asked himself, do the other Houses—besides Sea—suspect? And what about the ability of Blood’s wyr packs to detect Swarm intrusion? Their handlers should know the common forms of what they called Wallspawn and train the hounds accordingly, but beyond that . . . Kalan felt cold, despite the fire, when he remembered his encounters with Darksworn facestealers in Emer, let alone how he and Malian had been forced to flee from the demon, Nindorith. Potentially, anyone in the Red Keep could be a Darksworn agent and no one the wiser if the wyr pack did not know to sound the alarm—a situation that would also leave Blood dangerously vulnerable to surprise assault, like the one made on Night six years ago.

  Kalan shuddered, remembering that night of death, although in view of the Red Keep’s rearguard location, he thought facestealers a more likely option. He was tempted to suspect Lady Sarein of being a facestealer, but knew that was too easy—as if her cruelty and bloodlust were not part of the Derai’s heritage, when the unpalatable truth was that they always had been. The Derai might not betray their sworn allies or their oaths, but blood feud and assassination, massacre and torture, had all been present in Brother Selmor’s histories. Nor had they been restricted to the Alliance’s dealings with the Swarm.

  Six years before, Rowan Birchmoon had opened Kalan’s eyes to the way in which the Derai had always used others’ worlds as bases in their long war with the Swarm, but made no compacts with the inhabitants. So we could abandon them without compunction as soon as the struggle required it, he thought, frowning at the flames. From what he had seen of both Sarein and Huern tonight, as well as Parannis earlier, they would not hesitate to pursue such behavior again—although the Derai could no longer muster the power required to open another Great Gate. And not only because the Golden Fire had been the prime mover for such massive acts of power; the memorial in the Sea Keep was testament to the vital part required of others within the Derai Alliance.

  Grimly, Kalan pulled his thoughts back to the present, because both the Golden Fire and the Derai Alliance as they had been were no more than fireside tales now. A more pertinent consideration was whether what was left of the Derai would last long enough to resist the Swarm—and if the Houses descended into civil war again they might well exterminate themselves, leaving their enemy to walk into empty keeps.

  If I were leading the Swarm, Kalan concluded, I would do all I could to set the Derai on that course. He knew, too, that if Darksworn agents had already infiltrated the Red Keep, the ruling kin would not be alone in viewing the return of a Storm Spear as an unwanted complication. The Darksworn, too, would want him dead.

  The wyr pack continued to howl all that night and through the following day, a mournful cacophony that could be heard throughout the keep. Kalan gleaned this information from the conversation of the guards outside his door, as well as the intelligence that no one could recall such an occurrence before. The stewards and pages were openly shaken, and the longer the howling continued, the more restless the guards became. Successive sergeants on duty were quick to squash any talk of ill luck, but the uneasy atmosphere remained.

  The Night honor guards commented on it, too, when Kalan met with them to familiarize himself with Asantir’s blades. None of them appeared to recognize him, and he hoped the Red Keep’s strained atmosphere, together with the weapons practice, would keep their minds off events six years in the past. Garan certainly worked him hard, testing his command of the blades with a variety of armaments and attacks. The twin swords also justified their reputation as fine weapons, but Kalan could detect no hint of their reputation for arcane power.

  Nalin was on duty again when he returned to his quarters, but when he asked after Jad, she would only say that he and
his eight-guard had been reassigned. She was reticent, too, about the day’s contests. The group combats had gone well, she said, with no serious injuries, but she did not know which companies, or individuals within them, had excelled. “Oh,” she added, checking as she started to leave, “I almost forgot. A steward left this, with the compliments of the Bride and Captain-Lady Hatha.” She handed him a pouch of oiled silk, the flap sealed by wax that had been stamped with the elder Daughter of Blood’s insignia. “I’m also to say that the pavilion that goes with it will be set up for you on the Field of Blood tomorrow.”

  That must be the same pavilion Lady Myr had mentioned, Kalan supposed. When he slit the wax open, he found a crimson pennant inside. The Storm Spears’ device of crossed war spears, with a twelve-pointed star above their conjunction, was blazoned on it in gold thread. “The oriflamme of your order,” Nalin said, as Kalan let the heavy silk unfurl. “The Captain-Lady must have dug deep to hunt that out.” Her tone said that she wondered why the Daughter of Blood had gone to so much trouble, which mirrored Kalan’s thought—but at that moment the wyr pack fell silent.

  “Eerie,” Nalin said, after they had both listened to the ensuing quiet. The pack had cried for a night through until the next day’s dusk, Kalan realized, exactly the length of time prescribed for the rites of Hurulth. He wondered whether he dared put that down to coincidence. “Fireside tales,” the sergeant muttered, as if she were holding a similar, internal conversation, then took her leave.

  Kalan draped the oriflamme from a hook on the sleeping room wall, where it hung down like a tongue of flame. When he lay on the bed, he could see the crossed spears and star reflected in the shield-mirror opposite, where the play of firelight created an impression of shadows clustered around the bright insignia. His gaze shifted to the white hind in the tapestry, haloed with rose and gold by the fireglow. Where do you fit? he inquired silently, but unsurprisingly the hind made no answer, just continued to gaze at him with limpid, trusting eyes. Like Lady Myrathis, he thought, trusting in me to fight a duel to the death in her name.

  And this time tomorrow, either he or Lord Parannis would be dead.

  Contemplating that prospect, Kalan let his focus center on the moment when he would enter the duelist’s circle on the Field of Blood. After that there would only be himself and Parannis. Everything else—honor or dishonor, success or failure, life or death—would fall to either side of the honed blade that was the warrior’s path through life. My chosen path, Kalan thought, and however many shadows might gather around the Storm Spear’s oriflamme, in that moment he was content.

  Kalan slept deeply, without hearing the wyr pack again or any echo of the Hunt of Mayanne. All he could recall on waking was the play of firelight across The Lovers, in which sometimes the young woman looked like Myrathis, and sometimes like a Sea Keep mariner, with cabled hair and features lost in shadow. Sometimes, too, her dream face had reminded him of Yorindesarinen, illuminated by fire in the glade between worlds. The dream face of the man had alternated between that of Ammaran, from the memorial in the Temple quarter, and an older, harder visage that Kalan could not recall seeing before.

  But today was not a day for being concerned about the significance of dreams. Today, Kalan thought, rising and beginning a series of stretches, is for the edge of the blade.

  Later, after he had washed and eaten, he went over his armor piece by piece, before taking out his whetstone and ensuring every weapon was honed to a killing edge. On the Field of Blood, the final phase of the Honor Contest would be playing out, the watching crowd absorbed. Yet even a grand melee and the selection of a new Honor Captain paled beside the prospect of a duel to the death between a Son of Blood and a Storm Spear. So the gathered House, Kalan guessed, would be reserving their full fervor for the ultimate event.

  He put the whetstone and the last slender dagger—one of a pair that would slide into sheaths inside his boots—to one side, then laid out the full array of his weapons and armor. His fingers lingered over the Storm Spear device on the cuirass, which the Che’Ryl-g-Raham’s armorer had superimposed over the earlier, expunged insignia, before he dismissed the mystery of that erasure. Whoever the former owner had been, his or her memory had been obliterated with the device, and Kalan would never know what warrior of Blood carried the arms south into Haarth. It did not matter, he realized. All that mattered was that he bore himself, and the arms, with honor.

  Kalan surveyed the full armament one more time, before composing himself into the vigil of an Emerian knight. He had never observed it in full at the festival of Summer’s Eve, seeing out the cycle from one day’s dawn to the next in Serrut’s chapel, because he and all his fellow knights-in-waiting had been called away to rescue Ghiselaine of Ormond. By the time the festival had passed, many of those who had begun the vigil with him were dead, slain before they gained their knighthood. Kalan took time now to remember them all, as well as the Normarch damosels and the guards who had also died at Summer’s Eve, before sinking deeper into the vigil’s trance.

  Kalan-hamar-khar. The whisper sifted through the layers of stillness, brushing at his awareness with phantom wings: Storm Spear. Kalan held both mind and body quiet, tracking its flutter. Other fragments spiraled into his consciousness: the tramp of guards’ feet, a roar of acclamation from the Field of Blood, and the perpetual Wall wind, prying at shutter and stone for entry as the phantom circled his stillness again. A champion, after all this time. The ghost touch feathered across his suppressed wards—and startled away, dissipating into footsteps, voices, and the hungry wind, crying to be allowed in.

  The tramp of feet reached the corridor outside his rooms as Kalan withdrew from the vigil. He stretched again to the crisp accompaniment of challenge and response between his current guards and the new arrivals. When the knock came and he lifted the bar clear, his hands were as steady as its steel-banded oak—and remained so, even when he saw Taly on the far side with Jad beside her. Both warriors wore white surcotes rather than the customary Blood red, their faces unreadable as the surrounding stone, while every other guard in the corridor looked straight ahead with no expression at all. “By the Earl’s will and the Battlemaster’s command,” Taly said, “we are to serve as your seconds.”

  Kalan guessed the secondment was a public sign of disfavor, rather than an honor, since it would have disqualified her from further participation in the Honor Contest. Yet even if this had been the time and place for questions, Taly and Jad’s reserve forbade it. So he stood aside to let them enter, while the escort, which Kalan assumed was to see him to the Field of Blood, remained drawn up in the hallway.

  Initially, the arming was a silent affair on both sides as Taly and Jad ensured that every lace was tight, every strap and buckle secure, with no gaps or looseness for Lord Parannis’s weapons to exploit. Finally, the two Blood guards handed Kalan each set of weapons in turn: first the boot knives, then those for his belt, and lastly his sword. He had no doubt Asantir would have her twin swords ready for him, but still buckled on his own blade for the journey to the arena. Once the weapons were secure, Kalan tucked his gauntlets into his belt. He would only don them on entering the arena, just as Taly would retain the shield, and Jad his helmet, until the time came to fight.

  Taly cleared her throat. “I’ve seen Lord Parannis fight. He’ll take the offensive, coming in hard and fast to get you on the back foot. He’s strong, too, and very fit, so you can’t expect to wear him down easily.” She looked at Jad.

  “The Son of Blood likes to display his virtuosity.” The honor guard spoke stiffly, as though his sworn duty to Blood and its ruling kin was warring with the command of Heir and Earl that he act as second. Yet since it was a second’s duty to advise the duelist, honor and loyalty also required that he discharge it fully. “Defeat alone isn’t sufficient, he wants to display mastery over his opponents.” Jad’s eyes narrowed as though reviewing Parannis’s duels. “His repertoire is considerable, and he’s ambidextrous. Far more than with most opponent
s, you must expect the unexpected.”

  “He also likes to wound first, so that his opponent’s strength bleeds out.” Taly rubbed at the shield’s gleaming face. “And he always maims before he kills.”

  Jad hesitated, then spoke very quietly. “I’ve heard he may use poison on his blades; that some opponents have done well against him until he draws blood.”

  Taly stared, her reserve banished by shock. “Surely that’s because of the blood loss, otherwise—” Her voice trailed off. A duelist who used poison was considered lost to honor under the Derai Code, but when Kalan remembered Lady Sarein’s behavior in the stables, and the way Parannis had pursued his challenge, he was not prepared to dismiss Jad’s warning.

  “I don’t say that it’s true,” the honor guard said, “only that I’ve heard it whispered. Apparently the subsequent weakening always happens too fast for bleeding out, especially when the wound is shallow.” Jad met Kalan’s eyes, shame in his own. “He still always wins, even when those he fights aren’t wounded ahead of the killing blow.”

  The shame, Kalan thought, could be at having to stand as second to a Blood outsider, or have its source in Parannis’s dishonor—or arise because the honor guard had been ordered to pass on that last message, in hopes of unsettling him ahead of the duel. Taly’s fist rapped against the shield, her expression grown hard. “There’s always a first time.” She turned away from Jad’s shrug, visibly rechecking that every detail of Kalan’s weapons and armor was in order.

  “Time,” Kalan said, “to go.”

  The ensign hesitated, then drew herself up. “I would not have withdrawn from the contest except by the direct order of Earl and Battlemaster. Nonetheless, I am honored to serve as your second.” Surprise fleeted across her face, as though having spoken the words formality required, she realized that she meant them. “The Nine keep you, Storm Spear.”