Albric was right. It was a mistake to have trusted her. But that was part of the past, too, and beyond his power to change.
Pushing his chair back, Leferic left his study and went down to the great hall to do justice.
The parade of woes was by now familiar enough to be tedious: boundary disputes, accusations of stolen goats, and one claim of witchcraft, which was brought by a distraught mother who could not fathom why else her son would have run off with a clubfooted milkmaid who had a mustache to rival Sir Brisic’s. The hardest part of that case was keeping a straight face until it was dismissed.
Then came the litany of sufferings near Langmyr. Sheep and dogs shot down and left to rot, brawls fought over tavern slights, one farmer’s house and granary put to the torch. The family escaped, but their milk cow had been sheltering from the cold inside with them, and the animal died in the blaze. Leferic had hoped that his ride to Littlewood would relieve the tensions crackling along the border, and to some extent perhaps it had. There was still no real peace, but neither had there been any killings since the “bandits” were dispersed.
None he knew about, anyway. Leferic was certain that much of what happened on lonely stretches of river and wood never reached his ears. He ordered reparations for those who had suffered losses, promised that the wrongdoers would be brought to justice, and instructed Heldric to sell a new milk cow to the burnt-out farmer at half price once the man had settled into a new farm. By then, Leferic hoped, his treasury might even be able to afford it.
Finally the last case was over and the heralds cried the day’s proceedings to an end. Leferic escaped as soon as he was able, fleeing the great hall for the fresh air and solitude of the castle towers.
The air was sharp as shattered glass when he emerged into the night, but Leferic didn’t mind. The chill focused his thoughts. He walked along the battlements, eating a spare dinner of cold meat and bread, and mulled over how he might meet his debts. Below him the castle town bustled with torches and lanterns; its streets looked like streams of red fireflies swirling through banks of black air. In the distance the Seivern River glittered under the moonlight, the radiant thread of the River Kings’ Road tracing its curves.
His guards patrolled the walls in pairs. They greeted him as he passed, but none stopped him or spoke long enough to interrupt his thoughts. Leferic had become a common sight on the walls around this hour, and his men were familiar with his habits. After a nod to each, he went on.
The thrum of a bowstring broke through his musings and drew his attention to a darkened stretch of wall. Two of the torches that illumined the battlements had been doused there, swathing the crenellations under a cloak of darkness. It was from there that the sound had come. As Leferic stood listening, he heard a second shot, and then a third.
Prying a nearby torch out of its sconce, he went to investigate.
As his torchflame carved sight out of shadow, Leferic saw a single man standing at the wall with a bow, one foot on a crenellation. By the scar on his cheek, Leferic recognized Ulvrar. The young northman stepped back and lowered his bow as his lord approached; his eyes had the pale green glow of a wolf’s in the night.
“What are you doing?” Leferic asked.
“Practicing.” Ulvrar motioned with his bow to the darkness below, and Leferic peered down from the wall. The ground was too far away; his torch threw long shadows against the castle’s side, but it could not reach the earth. If there was a target, he couldn’t see it.
“In the dark?”
“The night is not as dark for me.” Ulvrar’s eyes shone, green and gold and green again. His faint smile seemed to mock Leferic’s discomfort.
“Because of the … wildblood.” Leferic fumbled for the word.
“Because of that.” The northman sat in the gap between two merlons, his back to the sky. “Had I not been a coward, I would be able to do more—run for leagues without tiring, join a pack’s nightsongs, even take on the shape of a wolf myself. Your legends of skinchangers are about us, Leferic-lord. Did you know? We are your storied monsters. But I was a coward, so here I am in the south, and I cannot become a wolf. I can only see like one. And smell. You are afraid. I can smell it.” His smile became a grin, and his teeth glinted, sharp. “I hope you are not afraid of me.”
“No, not of you,” Leferic said, although he wondered how foolish that made him.
“Then what do you fear?”
“Failing my people.”
The scarred youth grunted. “I feared that once.”
Leferic’s lips twitched halfway to a smile. “What happened?”
“I ran away.” Ulvrar shrugged. “I do not envy you, Leferic-lord, and you are a ruler where I was only a warrior turned wildblood, so for you it is harder.”
“Perhaps.” Leferic had no desire to dwell on his difficulties, and this unexpected encounter was another chance to ask the questions he had not been able to ask on the road. “Why are you all here? On the ride to Littlewood, you told me that you were all exiles.”
“So we are.”
“Why?”
Ulvrar narrowed his unnaturally bright eyes, but after an instant he shrugged again. “For most of them I do not know. Cadarn knows; he will always hear an exile’s story before he takes that exile into his company. But otherwise he lets us keep our shames private. His own story is known to us all: he killed a man and refused to pay bloodprice, so the thanes made him outcast. Since then he has done it many times. Cadarn Death’s-Debtor owes a great deal of blood money he will never pay. But mostly the men he kills are not worthy men and do not deserve the bloodprice, so it is no true crime.”
“Who was the first one?” Leferic asked, curious what death should have caused Cadarn to leave his people and homeland.
“A warrior of the Split Pines Feirgrei. Cadarn is—was—Split Pines Skarlar. Different clans, but close-together holds. They send raiders together sometimes. One raid they struck a summerlander town. Many of the summerlanders’ women and old ones hid in their chapel, hoping that their goddess would protect them better than their men did.
“Cadarn was leading the Skarlar that day. He told his warriors not to trouble with the chapel. There is no honor in killing women and weaklings, and the houses held more prizes than they could carry home already, so they did not need it. But Garrok, who led the Feirgrei, did not agree. He fired the chapel. His men raped the women and killed the graybeards who came out and left the rest to the flames. So Cadarn became angry and challenged him, and Garrok died.”
“I thought only murders warranted a bloodprice. Not deaths in combat.”
Ulvrar stared at him unblinking. “If Cadarn challenges a man, he dies. All men know this. Garrok knew this. To his credit he went to it well. But the thane of the Split Pines Feirgrei demanded bloodprice, so the bloodprice had to be paid, else there would have been war between the clans. Cadarn said a man who would burn women and weaklings was no true man, so he spat on Garrok’s name and chose exile.”
“I see,” Leferic said, though to him it all seemed clear as mud. “And you?”
“For me it was the skraeli.”
“The skraeli?”
“Is that not one of your names for us? Skar skraeli: killers of the dead.”
“I have heard the name,” Leferic admitted, “but I have no idea what it means.”
“It means we are Ingvall’s children who kill Hrotha’s children to protect ourselves. And you summerlanders, although you do not know it. The skraeli are Hrotha’s children. They are … like men, but not. Mockeries of men. They walk on two legs and have the same shape, but there the kinship ends. Their skin is loose and wrinkled and yellow like old ivory; it hangs off their bony arms in great flaps. They have no hair or lips or eyelids, and their eyes are milky blue like the bellies of the icebergs on the White Seas. Their mouths are filled with teeth like broken needles, and their claws are long and sharp.
“Skraeli eat men. They hunt the seas and the icy slopes in bowl-boats and sleds made of s
tretched human hide. Their paddles are flayed arms and legs with the fingers and toes cut apart, spread wide, and webbed with bloody ice. Skraeli are things of nightmare. When I was young I thought they were stories, but I have fought them myself and now I know the tales are true.”
“But why should they drive you to exile? Were you afraid to fight them?”
Ulvrar shook his head impatiently. “I was not afraid to fight them. I was afraid to become them. No one knows where the skraeli come from; they have no females or children that anyone has seen. Even when we find their lairs, it is always only males. I believe—and I am not the only one—that skraeli are failed wildbloods. The beast takes them, and they go mad. That is why there are so few skraeli now, just as there have been fewer wildbloods every year. It is a fate I could not face. So I fled.”
“I see,” Leferic said again, and this time it was true. Ulvrar had turned his back on power, and his people, rather than risk letting it corrupt him into a monster. Leferic had not. And although his failure would not turn him into some ice-eyed nightmare, it would doom him just as surely.
But that choice, too, was in the past. He had made his bid for power, and now it was in his hands. All he could do was master it, or be destroyed.
15
The Burnt Knight came to Tarne Crossing three days after the baker’s death.
Albric stood among the crowd that had gathered to watch the Celestian knight ride across the bridge. Sir Rengaric, the knight who held Tarne Crossing, had ridden out with an honor guard to formally accompany the Burnt Knight into his town, and they made an impressive spectacle as they came clattering across the pale stone bridge in a stream of banners and glittering steel. Red pennons flew from the archers’ towers and the horses wore garlands of scarlet maple leaves, for there were no roses so late in the year. Rengaric’s armsmen wore hardened leather and ring mail, not expensive plate, but they had oiled the leather and burnished the chain until it shone like bronze and silver.
A trumpet blared as the procession came to Tarne Crossing’s walls. With great ceremony the gates swung open and Sir Rengaric led his riders inside. The Burnt Knight rode in the center of the column, and as he crossed beneath the gatehouse arch and back into the sunlight, Albric and half the people of Tarne Crossing got their first look at the man.
He was an astonishing sight. The Burnt Knight rode a seal-brown courser, and his skin was nearly as dark as the horse’s coat. He wore his hair as a pitch-black mass of braids with small white shells clattering at the end of each one. Albric had never seen anything like it. Judging from the murmurs that swept the crowd, neither had anyone else.
The Burnt Knight was smaller than Albric had expected, and much younger. He carried himself well, and he wore his sword comfortably ahorse, but still Albric felt a twinge of doubt. Could he trust his life and his lord’s fortunes to someone barely out of boyhood?
He’d heard that the Burnt Knight traveled with a female companion, but there was no woman among the riders. Sir Rengaric led the procession to the market square, where he began a formal speech welcoming the Burnt Knight to Oakharn. Albric slipped away through the crowd. He had plans to make.
Over the next few days, Albric studied the Burnt Knight and his companion. He found the woman soon enough: she’d come to Tarne Crossing a day earlier, unobtrusively scouting the town and its people while the knight tended to sick villagers in Langmyr. They were careful, these two. They did not go blindly even into friendly lands. That made him feel a little better. Careful or not, though, he had no choice but to trust himself to them.
In the days following the baker’s murder, Albric had spent most of his time drinking alone and staring at the wine-soaked dregs of his conscience.
He couldn’t go through with it. He could not help Severine ambush one of Celestia’s holy champions. Neither could he stand by, idle and mute, knowing what she had planned. He’d dishonored himself and his oaths past any hope of forgiveness already; he couldn’t take any more. Wine pushed his other worries aside and gave him the clarity to see that much, although it hadn’t helped him think of a plan.
How could he hope to stop her? No mortal man could stand against magic. Albric had seen only the smallest part of what the Thornlady could do, but it was enough to convince him of that. He had no prayer of defeating her in combat.
The Burnt Knight, however, had a chance. Maybe a good one. Severine had sought Albric’s help in confronting him; surely she wouldn’t have done so unless she expected the Celestian to pose some real danger. If the Burnt Knight could threaten her, perhaps he could kill her—especially if he was forewarned of what he faced.
The only question left was how to betray the Thornlady without also betraying his lord. Much as he loathed Severine, his first duty was to Leferic: nothing he did could be allowed to compromise his lord’s position. Only after his duty to Leferic was discharged could he turn against the Thorn.
Fortunately, fate conspired to help him there. Albric knew that the Burnt Knight and his companion were investigating the massacre at Willowfield on behalf of the Langmyrne Lord Inguilar. As soon as they arrived, they began asking questions about it, but Albric had little fear that they would uncover his guilt. The only man in Tarne Crossing who could connect his name to the dead village was the guide they’d hired to show them to Willowfield, and he’d died under suspicious circumstances shortly before Albric had reached the town.
A nighttime robbery, they said. Convenient. It saved Albric the trouble of doing it himself.
With the spy dead, approaching the Burnt Knight should pose little risk to his lord, only slightly more to Albric himself, and—if he was lucky, if the Bright Lady was good—a fatal one to the Thornlady. He was far from certain that the young knight could match her, but the people of Tarne Crossing seemed to have faith in him. Albric supposed that would have to suffice.
He did not go directly to the Celestian. Severine was likely to be watching him, and it was impossible to approach the Burnt Knight discreetly. Petitioners were constantly tugging at his hem, begging for help with an ailing parent or a blessing for a newborn child.
Instead Albric went to the girl. He waited until she was off by herself in the market square, browsing through the stalls on a brittle winter morning. In the corner of his eye he could see a crow hopping from foot to foot among the ropes of onions that hung from a vegetable seller’s stall. The bird was too far away for him to tell if it was an ordinary crow or one of Severine’s dead pets, but he wasn’t inclined to risk guessing wrong.
Albric slipped through the crowd and brushed past the girl. He touched her elbow and muttered: “Don’t look up, and keep your voice down. We’re being watched. I need to talk to you.”
The girl nodded, apparently to something a flower seller was telling her about a wreath of prickly holly. She was very pretty, despite dressing in travel-stained men’s clothes. A thick braid of gold-streaked amber hair fell past her shoulders. Her face was a perfect oval, framed by a few bright strands that had come loose from the braid. The last hint of a summer tan still showed on her cheeks, though in winter it was fading to a suggestion of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Albric let his gaze linger. It was no hardship, and it gave him an excuse to talk to her, if Severine was indeed watching through the crow’s eyes.
“You’ve been following us,” she murmured back, holding up the holly wreath and running a finger along the wickerwork that supported the ornamental leaves. Between the glossy leaves the berries were red and orange and yellow, all the colors of the sun, to signify Celestia’s protection through the dark nights of winter. “Who are you?”
“An unwilling pawn of the Thorns,” he replied. The girl tensed, but kept her eyes on the wreath. He admired her discipline. “I would like to betray them. Can you arrange a meeting?”
“Maybe.”
“Try. The Dancer and Drum. Tonight, after sundown prayers. Go to the under-commons; I’ll be there. And be careful. There are unfriendly eyes in the sky.” He turned o
n his heel and strolled away, making a show of ogling another girl in passing.
Once he was safely out of sight, Albric ducked into a wine seller’s shop. He ordered a cup of strong red to bolster his courage, took a seat on a creaky bench in the corner, and began rehearsing his lies.
He had no way of knowing whether they’d come, but he had to hope. And if his hope was to be worth anything, he had to plan.
By the time Albric drained his second cup of wine, he knew the shape of his story. Close enough to the truth to protect him, far enough from it to protect his lord, and all of it designed to damn her.
After that it was only a matter of waiting.
He came to the Dancer and Drum just as sundown prayers began, and drank his way steadily through them. There was a time, not long ago, when Albric stood his prayers three times a day. Since Severine, he was unworthy of standing among the true faithful, so he hid from the sunlight and drank. Maybe, if he succeeded in scouring her from the world, he might stand in the goddess’ sight again … but even if that was denied him, he’d have the consolation of knowing that he’d tried. That he had done more than let himself be played as a Thornlady’s pawn.
Above, the sunset prayers ended. He could tell by the sudden stirring in the streets and the influx of new arrivals in the tavern’s upper commons. The main taproom was at ground level, where people talked and laughed and a quartet of musicians played. The under-commons, dank and dim and reachable only by a set of narrow wooden stairs behind the front door, were where people went to drink. The under-commons never changed, no matter the tide of the day’s prayers.
Albric ate a dinner of black bread and cheap meat, pale from the brining cask and so salty it burned his tongue dry. He didn’t know what animal it came from; he didn’t much care. It was there only to provide ballast in his stomach for beer.
He was on his fourth mug, and more than half drunk, when they arrived. Two hunched figures, shrouded in robes of sackcloth that covered their hands and dragged after their feet, hobbled toward the lonely table where Albric had gone to do his drinking. He scowled at them, and was about to order them off, when he caught the tip of the girl’s braid tucked inside her cowl and heard the soft clinking of shells from beneath the other one’s hood.
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