Bitharn’s relief was short-lived, for what the blessed light revealed of Mathas’ corpse was monstrous. His nose was slit, his left eye gouged; bloody lashes flapped around the hole. His lips had been torn away, leaving him with a scarlet grin. Ragged cuts and tiny punctures riddled his face and throat and chest. His fingers had been broken and wrenched in different directions like a clump of trampled grass. She couldn’t count the number of burns on his flesh.
“Around a gag,” Kelland said with the iron serenity that fell upon him when his anger threatened to break loose. He touched the rope clenched in the corpse’s bloodstained teeth. Bits of flesh flecked the gag; it had been in there when his lips were cut.
“This wasn’t done to make him talk.” Bitharn felt bile rise in her throat. “It was—for fun?”
Kelland reached across the mutilated body and pried open the lid of Mathas’ remaining eye. Pupil and iris alike were obscured behind a swirl of ivory mist, which continued to roil as Bitharn watched.
“Not for fun,” Kelland said. The light died around him. The baker’s body returned to its pretense of wholeness as the shadows flooded back in. “To draw us out. The Thornlady is here, and this is her challenge.”
“You can’t meet it alone.” Bitharn said it with more firmness than she felt. She wasn’t sure how much use her arrows would be against a Thorn’s spells, but she was sure that she couldn’t let Kelland go off on his own. He needed her help, even if he was too bullheaded stubborn to say so. Her arrows might only be a distraction, but a distraction could be a crucial edge—and who was to say that she wouldn’t get a lucky shot? Thorns died like anyone else with a yard of steel-tipped ash in the eye.
From the mulish look on Kelland’s face she saw that the knight knew it, too, and didn’t want to give in. “I can. Bitharn—”
“Don’t coddle me. Don’t protect me. You need someone to watch your back. The Thorn won’t be alone. She has her ghoul-hounds.”
“She doesn’t care about them. They aren’t a weakness.”
“I am?”
“That isn’t what I meant.” He touched the corpse’s cold blue lips, bringing up a finger stained with crumbling flecks of flesh that belied the dead man’s illusion of peace. His hand trembled in the air—with rage or fear, she didn’t know. “This is what she is. This is what we face: a creature who would torture a man like this and consider it holy service. A creature who worships pain. You cannot ask me to bring you into her reach.”
“That’s exactly why you have to.” Bitharn crossed her arms, refusing to soften at the sight of his flinch. She wasn’t thrilled at the thought of facing a Thorn—it terrified her, in truth—but neither was she a helpless maiden who’d faint at the first sign of danger. “You didn’t have any trouble bringing me to Silverpool. Or to Rhyanne Tower. You needed me there. And those bandits on the River Kings’ Road when we first crossed into Langmyr? Right now they’d be prancing around on your horse, wearing your armor and waving your sword, if it hadn’t been for me.”
“I know that. I know all of that. That’s why you have to stay back. This is different. She is different.”
“If that’s true, it’s only because you need me even more here. Promise me you won’t try to fight her alone.” If he gave his word, he’d be bound to it: a Knight of the Sun couldn’t break an oath. “Promise me.”
He balked for a long while, his dark eyes filled with anguish, but in the end Kelland bowed his head, acquiescing. “I promise. Bright Lady forgive me, I promise. I won’t fight her alone.”
14
“Sir Gerbrand is dead,” Heldric informed his lord as Leferic was dressing. “He surrendered himself to Sir Merguil two days ago. He was beheaded at dawn yesterday. The funeral rites were at sunset. Minimal, but honorable.”
Leferic nodded absently, looking from a doublet of gold-slashed green to one of black velvet trimmed in red. The rich green improved his color, as much as mere cloth could, but the formal colors of Bulls’ March were likely to serve him better today. His liegemen needed every possible reminder that he was their lord. Resigned to another day of sallowness, he picked up the black. “His heirs?” There were two sons old enough to be troublesome. Two daughters as well, but they were of little consequence; nobody rallied around a woman to reclaim a hold. A kingdom, perhaps, but not a hold.
“His wife has gone to Isencras to join the Daughters of the Sun. The younger daughter went with her. The elder stayed behind; Sir Merguil seeks your permission and advice in making a suitable match for her. A plain girl, I’m told, and of no great accomplishment, but she wishes to marry rather than giving her life to the Bright Lady, and Sir Merguil sees no harm in agreeing.”
“I’m sure we can find a household knight to take her,” Leferic said. He picked out a gold chain set with three dark garnets and draped it over the surcoat. “Perhaps Lady Vanegild has one looking for a wife.” He wanted the girl out of his own domain—and well away from any loyalists who might linger in Littlewood—but close enough to watch. Breakwall would do nicely.
“She has no dowry,” the gesith pointed out. A pretty girl of good family might find a husband without one, but a plain girl whose father had been executed in disgrace would need a small sack of silver to marry even a household knight with no lands of his own.
Leferic cast about for some excuse to refuse and found none. The last thing he needed was another drain on a treasury already running dry. But he had promised the girl the right to marry, and her father had given his life for it. “Arrange something suitable . . . suitable and modest. I want as little silver as possible wasted on this charity. What about her brothers?”
“Sir Merguil has taken them into his service as armsmen.”
“Has he? Interesting.” Leferic mulled it over and decided that Merguil was a clever man. Keep your enemies closer than your lovers, Inaglione had written. If Gerbrand’s sons proved loyal, he’d have gained two good armsmen; if not, they could be easily dispatched by public trial or a quiet word to one of his other cutthroats. Most of Merguil’s men were mercenaries, and they had no allegiance to any of the petty houses in this part of Oakharn. They’d have no qualms about knifing Gerbrand’s sons at the first sign of treachery. No doubt the boys knew it, too, if they had half the sense the gods gave turnips. One might be kept in line by threats to the other, whereas he would have disregarded any danger to himself.
Yes, Merguil was a clever man. He’d bear watching.
“There is other news.” From the heaviness in Heldric’s voice, it wasn’t good.
“What?”
“You recall the celebrations that followed your nephew’s birth?”
“Of course.” Leferic’s mouth twisted. “Galefrid spent a great deal of money to ensure that everyone would.” His brother, delighted by the birth of his first son, had thrown perhaps the most lavish celebration that Bulls’ March had ever seen. There were roast oxen and sugar-crystalled pastries and rivers of wine; singers and jugglers and even three Moonbrothers in silver and blue. Galefrid had paid for an entire tourney to be staged with a fat purse of golden rayels for the winner, and although Leferic had protested the cost, his brother had only laughed.
“Maritya’s rich,” Galefrid had said, too happy for prudence, “and why shouldn’t I celebrate that too?”
And Leferic, the second son, had no answer that would not sound like raw envy. So he stood silent as Galefrid outspent himself yet again, and then he went up to his study and added that to the long list of reasons why his brother needed to die. Galefrid had never understood how foolish it was to feast the commonfolk when the treasury was bare; all it did was ensure that twice as much food would have to be snatched from their mouths to pay for it later.
He would have been a disastrous ruler. The celebrations for Wistan’s birth had sealed it. Leferic remembered that very well.
“Galefrid did spend a great deal of money,” the old gesith agreed, dry as dust. “We still owe most of it, and the merchants are getting impatient.”
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“How can that be?” Leferic had examined the ledgers himself; he’d tried to find something in them that might drive Lord Ossaric to stop the foolishness. He hadn’t found much. The ledgers were clear that while Bulls’ March would be sorely taxed to afford the celebrations Galefrid had planned, it could be managed with scrimping and saving and—critically—letting his new wife’s parents bear the greater part of the cost.
That last part stuck out now, ugly and lethal as a flapping rent in a chain-mail hauberk. “Maritya’s parents refused to pay?”
“They did.”
He wished he could stab his dead brother again. “Bright Lady have mercy. What was the point of marrying a merchant’s daughter if not money?”
Heldric gave him a crooked expression that might have borne a passing resemblance to a smile. “Some might speak of love. In your brother’s case, I believe that might even be true. But it is also true that Galefrid never cared to learn much of Seawatch’s customs, or he would have known that while it is, indeed, customary for a wife’s parents to give lavishly upon the birth of a first child, they do not do so until that child has survived a year. The people of Seawatch are practical, and frugal. Too many babies die in the cradle for grandparents—however proud, however wealthy—to empty their purses on every one.”
“Wait. The money Galefrid spent on Wistan’s birth celebration—the money he relied upon—was money he didn’t yet have? Money he knew Maritya’s parents wouldn’t pay until their grandson was a year old?”
Heldric bowed his head. “The first part is true, yes, my lord. As to the second part … who am I to say what your brother knew or did not know?”
“You don’t have to,” Leferic muttered. “I take it Maritya’s parents will be cancelling their gift.”
“So they have informed us, yes. The message arrived this morning. I still have the scroll, if you wish to read the original words. They are not kind. Reinbern de Marst blames the ‘barbarism of the north’ for the deaths of his daughter and grandson, and curses your father for permitting the match. I do not believe he will be receptive to any suggestions of debt.”
“What if we tell him it’s for funeral expenses?” Leferic suggested, blackly amused. “Or, if he doesn’t like that idea, we could ask whether he has another daughter I might marry and get with child. Maybe the merchants can be persuaded to put off their claims until that one’s a year old.”
Heldric chose not to dignify that with a response. “The money must be found somewhere. Cadarn’s men need paying, Sir Galefrid’s debts must be met, and I fear soon you must incur new debts on your lord father’s behalf.”
“Why?”
“The king is coming.”
“King Raharic? Here? Why?”
“Not here. He is coming to Blackbough Castle. It is still close enough that you will have to spend a pretty piece of silver putting on a show for him … and, perhaps, more. King Raharic Auldring, blessed be his name, believes the time has come for war.”
IN THE SILENCE OF HIS STUDY, Leferic read the letters himself.
If anything, Heldric had softened the truth. King Raharic was not merely coming to Blackbough Castle. He was bringing his War Court with him, and his message included a royal command for the border lords to gather their swords and await his arrival “to answer the Langmyrne infamy.” If the king didn’t intend to go to war, he certainly wanted to make a show of rattling scabbards across the Seivern. A waste of money, and very possibly a waste of lives as well.
Leferic wished he knew his king better so that he might properly interpret the royal decree. Was King Raharic mad enough to believe that warring across the river in winter was anything but an invitation to disaster? Or was this merely an excursion meant to enliven a dreary court and keep his border lords honest? Leferic had no idea. He had only seen his king three times in his life, and the first two times he’d been a child too young to remember much. The third time he’d only had glimpses across a tourney field and at court in Isencras. Useless.
By reputation King Raharic was a fine warrior and an honorable man, though hard and sour as a pickled rock. He was not said to be either a fool or a blusterer, but why go to Blackbough otherwise?
Leferic put that question aside to puzzle through later. Whatever the king’s intentions, his visit was going to be costly. Heldric was right about that. There would be riders to outfit, additional servants to hire, entertainers to pay. He’d have to feast the king and his War Court at least once in Bulls’ March, and that meant everything from finding a pastry chef with a small army of assistants to having his huntmaster prepare hounds, falcons and drivers if the king wished to amuse himself by hunting Bayarn Wood. Leferic could ill afford the expense, but what choice did he have?
With money on his mind, he turned to the next letter. And found that some things were not about money at all.
Reinbern de Marst’s letter was three pages long: three pages of eloquent, scathing rage. In it he grieved for his lost daughter and the grandson he would never know, cursed Galefrid for taking them into their enemies’ reach, and castigated Lord Ossaric for the barbarism of his realm and his failure to rein in his son’s stupidity. Because of them, de Marst wrote, his wife wept nightly and he himself was consumed by sorrow. Neither prayer nor charity soothed their pain … but revenge might.
Hire a Maimed Witch, Leferic thought acidly, reading the outpouring of Reinbern’s grief. It worked brilliantly for me.
Reinbern de Marst, however, had other ideas. Seawatch was not called the Realm of Purchased Princes for nothing. There a merchant could be as influential as a lord, and the de Marsts were very successful merchants. They had neither armsmen nor mounted knights, but they had money.
And because they had money, they could order the Banks of the Four Families not to loan a penny to Bulls’ March. If they wanted, they could cut off the entire kingdom of Oakharn without serious damage to their interests. They could order merchants to take their trade elsewhere, leaving Bulls’ March to buy its goods from lowly peddlers or at cutthroat prices from their neighbors in Breakwall and Blackbough.
Small darts, in normal times. Bee stings. Lord Ossaric would have scoffed. Leferic could not.
He needed money. He couldn’t afford to lose trade.
As it was, he would have to raise taxes on the peasants—an unpopular move on the eve of winter, and possibly a very unwise one. He’d be lucky to squeeze another threepence per head from his farmers’ sheep; half of them would probably butcher their animals and salt down the meat rather than pay the additional tax. Take any more than that from them, and the peasants would revolt if they didn’t starve first. Either way, it would be a quick and ignominious end to Leferic’s rule.
Under such circumstances he could spare little thought for Reinbern’s grief. It wasn’t that his letter lacked force; the man would never be a poet, but his blunt, raw words hit harder than a hundred singers’ carefully composed laments. It was that Leferic simply could not afford to care. The order was given; the woman was dead. No amount of prayer or wailing would change that. All he could do now was grit his teeth and chart the best course from where he was.
You’d be wise to do the same, Leferic wanted to snarl at the bereaved merchant. You wanted her to be a lady. You had to know this was part of the game. All nobility is built on blood.
Yet he did not toss the letter aside. Instead he read it again, engraving every word of Reinbern’s misery on his soul. It was penance, of a sort, and it was a lesson. The past was beyond any man’s power to change, but the future was not, and Leferic wanted to memorize the cost of killing before he resorted to it again. The emotions it unleashed were too volatile. Too violent. Used frivolously they would break a kingdom apart, and he meant to build.
The last of his letters, however, gave him little hope of that.
A silver lady, Albric had written, ungrammatically because of the constraints on his disguised message, plays us false. I do not know her motives or her true goal but it is plain that she
does not care to see this work done. The child should have been dealt with by now, yet she delays and makes mistakes that are no accidents. It is not mercy. She wants something else.
We are in Tarne Crossing. A baker who gave succor is dead. Questions first. We are close. I will finish duty with or without her help.
Leferic stared sightlessly at the missive for a long time after he finished reading. Then he thrust it into a candleflame, let it char to a crisp black curl, and pounded the ashes into dust. He poured water into the ashes to make a slurry and emptied it into the soil of a dwarf heliotrope growing by the window. The sweet-smelling herb, sacred to Celestia, was supposed to bring good luck wherever it bloomed, but precious little of that luck seemed to be visiting him.
What could the Maimed Witch want? She had named her price in silver and he had paid in full when he contracted her, knowing that there was no bargaining with the Thorns of Ang’arta. At the time he’d thought the price surprisingly low; Cadarn’s men were costing him twice as much. But that was a full company of white wolves, and contracted for an entire winter, whereas the Thornlady was one woman hired for one task. Leferic, who had never hired a mercenary before dealing with the Maimed Witch, had persuaded himself that the price was more generous than he thought. After all, how were the Thorns to make any money if they set their prices so high that no one could pay?
Now he wondered if his first instinct had been right. She’d come too cheaply. But why? Ang’arta had no interests along the Seivern. To them it made no difference whether Galefrid or Leferic or a three-legged dog sat the throne of Bulls’ March.
Inaglione’s wisdom did him no good here. He had no idea what the Thornlady wanted, or what she feared, and if Albric’s observations were accurate, she was certainly not his.
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