“My lord…” Fodrun began carefully. Sif waved him into silence.
“I know it all,” he said, “every argument, and everything I know tells me I am a fool. There is no fear that she will ever be rescued; one day she will die in that dungeon, and that too will be a death by my hand. But at least her blood will not be on me. And yet…”
“Your own father had prisoners who died in the dungeons,” Fodrun said pointedly. “And your great-grandfather…”
“King Garen of hallowed memory had traitors enough to fill more dungeons than even another keep of Miranei could hold,” said Sif. “And my father—my father’s traitors were few. There had to have been more than I knew of, back then when I was at the court by the king’s sufferance, a bastard-born, would-be prince not privy to the secrets of the council chamber. But I can remember only four men whose crimes were heinous enough for them to be condemned to the living death.”
“And no women,” said Fodrun thoughtlessly.
Sif threw him an angry glance. “Can I help it if my nemesis is a woman?” he demanded.
“Sif,” said Fodrun, throwing caution and the trappings of royalty to the winds, “my lord, if you are seeking my advice, it is simply this: do not poison your life and the rest of your reign by forever keeping your father’s daughter between you and what you hold. Make an end to it. Somehow. And then leave it behind, and go on.”
“If I had been in Miranei when they brought her in,” said Sif thoughtfully, “I would probably not have hesitated. But the closer I came to Miranei after the message of her capture reached me in Shaymir, the less clear things became. For example, where is Dynan’s seal?”
“Do you know for sure it was with her?”
“This keep was taken apart,” said Sif. “It was not with my father when he was buried and I can swear to you it was not in the keep he left to go to war. And when they caught her, she did not have it.”
“How did they know it was Anghara?” asked Fodrun with some curiosity. “Surely it would have been difficult for anyone from Miranei to recognize her—the last time she was seen here she was but nine years old, and what is she now…sixteen?”
“Seventeen,” said Sif tersely, not elaborating. A vision of Anghara as she had looked on her birthday arose unbidden in his mind, and he pressed his lips together into a thin line of irritation. Then he took a quick swallow from the wine goblet he held, his eyes staring unfocused into the fire. “And you are right—it was no man from Miranei who recognized her—the squad that captured her is captained by one who used to work for Lyme of Cascin, before Lyme abandoned the manor. This man had been at Cascin while Anghara was there also—and hers is a face you do not forget easily. It was he who recognized her. And there are a few others from Cascin in that squad—I do not throw away resources, and when they came to me, I took them. Of those fifty-odd men, Fodrun, only about five knew what it was they had in their hands; the others had no idea why the great haste to get this girl to Miranei was necessary.” He grinned, a wolfish grin. “I was fortunate it had been the captain himself who knew her at the quays. But then…I always knew he had potential.”
“At the quays? What was she doing there?”
“They made enquiries—three ships had docked that day, two quite late. One was Khelsie.”
“And the other two?”
“Routine,” Sif said, “and both swear they had no passengers. My men tried to get something out of the Khelsies, but they couldn’t find anyone who spoke anything but that cursed tongue of theirs.”
“But surely there must have been a trader of some sort on board,” said Fodrun, “and surely that trader needs to speak a little Roisinani if he expects to trade in Calabra?”
“If so,” Sif shrugged, “he could not be found.” He paused, glancing at Fodrun sharply. “You don’t think…”
The thought gave them both pause for a moment, but then Sif shook his head. “Never. She must have escaped Bresse with almost nothing. How could she have survived there—no money, no way to communicate? Besides, the Khelsies…no. It had to have been one of the other ships.”
“Perhaps she was trying to find a way out of Calabra, and not back in,” said Fodrun speculatively.
“Perhaps,” said Sif, who had forgotten his captain had also told him that the thing which had drawn his attention to Anghara was the glowing look of joy on her face—the joy of return.
They sat in silence for a moment, but then Sif laughed—a brittle, hoarse laugh with little mirth in it. “We seem to have moved off the subject,” he remarked conversationally. “What to do with Anghara Kir Hama.”
But Fodrun had regained his composure on that score. “My lord,” he said, “there is no escaping it: if you will not give the word to kill her, there is no alternative but to leave her in the dungeon.”
Sif mastered a flash of temper and managed a grin. “I guess you already gave your counsel,” he said. “Winter Court is long gone; but I don’t need a ceremonial occasion for this, do I? It would be just as easy to do it on the quiet, now…There’s Senena’s babe—it’s due before too long. I will need my mind clear for other things…and the throne truly free of Anghara’s shadow…for my heir.” He frowned at the leaping tongues of flame in the hearth for a moment, marshalling his thoughts, then he shook his head, tossing back the remains of the wine in his goblet. “Leave me,” he said. “I need to think upon it.”
“My lord,” said Fodrun, rising to his feet and bowing before he withdrew from the room. It was doubtful if Sif had even heard him. He had leaned his head against the high back of his chair, closing his eyes. “Whatever I do, you are waiting for me, Anghara Kir Hama, Queen of the Dungeons,” Sif muttered softly, wearily, into the empty chamber. “I would give my promise of Glas Coil and the hereafter if I could only change things so that you never existed…”
Sitting in moody silence before the flames leaping in the hearth, he psyched himself up to make an end. Before he fell into a fitful doze, he made up his mind to issue quiet orders concerning Anghara before he broke his fast the next morning.
But once again circumstances brought an eleventh-hour reprieve. Before Sif had time to summon those who would need to know that his hospitality to the Kir Hama Princess would be extended no longer, another messenger came galloping into Miranei on a lathered horse, and such was his message that everything else was driven from Sif’s mind.
“How could they get through? I left half my army there to protect her!” he raged, as the exhausted messenger poured out news of Favrin Rashin’s daring raid on Torial, the southern manor Sif had recently ceded to his mother, the Lady Clera.
“My lord…there were only a handful of them…they slipped in wearing our uniforms…”
“Dear Gods…” Sif moaned, covering his face with his hand.
“They took very little…it was as though they simply wished to show us they could…but your lady mother insisted on coming out on the battlements…it was an accident, my lord, a stray arrow…”
“Saddle my horse; I will ride at once,” said Sif grimly, straightening. “Get any unassigned men north of the Hal to be ready to follow as soon as they may. This insult cannot go unpunished.”
It was Fodrun himself who brought his horse into the Royal Courtyard and stood waiting, holding its reins, until Sif emerged from the tower. “My lord,” he began, “winter campaigns…”
“Winter is over, Fodrun. Look out from the battlements—the snow is almost gone from the moors. It’s spring; and Kir Hama luck rides high in spring.”
“And the babe…and…the other thing…”
“I plan to be back for Senena’s confinement,” said Sif with a savage smile. “Just as soon as I’ve taught young Favrin a long-overdue lesson. As for the other…There’ll be time enough when I return. Nothing could possibly change in the space of the few weeks I’ll need to clear up this campaign once and for all.”
Sif rode from his keep believing those words. But even as he and his entourage rode away south, things
were already changing in the keep he was leaving behind.
The first seed of change had been planted as close to home as Sif’s own bedchamber. On the night he and Fodrun had spoken freely about Anghara, they believed themselves alone. They were mistaken. And that of which they had spoken was no longer a secret buried between the two men in that room and the five who had snatched her in Calabra.
Because he never bothered to use it, Sif hardly ever remembered the small minstrel’s gallery tucked into an alcove high under the rafters of the royal bedchamber. Dynan had often had musicians there, discreetly secluded from the king’s bedchamber by a carved and fretted wooden screen; Rima had loved going to sleep to the quiet strains of a solitary lute or harp, relaxed in the aftermath of her husband’s caresses. But neither of Sif’s marriages had been a love match, and he never thought in terms of courtship or loving seduction. There was only one access point into the gallery—a low, insignificant door leading off a seldom frequented corridor on the floor above the royal bedchamber, where the musicians could come and go without disturbing the king. That door had been locked, the key was in the possession of his chamberlain, and Sif had wiped its existence from his mind.
But Senena, his child-queen, had frequently found herself in need of a quiet, private place where she could hide from an intrusive and inquisitive court and the pretense that was her life.
Few in Sif’s court had frequented his father’s Miranei—some had discreetly retired into the country, and others Sif himself had removed for reasons of his own. What remained was a court with more than its fair share of sycophants who tried to cultivate Senena in hopes of obtaining Sif’s ear, and who had done exactly the same thing to Colwen, his first queen. Given this company, Senena chose instead to befriend the chamberlain, who had also served Dynan—a kind and gentle man with no expectations from her. He had daughters her age, and was not fooled by the act she put on for Sif’s nobles. It was he who offered her the sanctuary of the minstrel’s gallery, and armed her with the key to its door.
In recent months, as she grew large with child, Senena came to greatly appreciate this refuge. Colwen, who had left the court after her repudiation to accept a convenient marriage proposal from a border Duke, had returned to Miranei, apparently for no other reason than to flaunt her own swelling belly. It seemed her Duke had succeeded where Sif had failed, and had got her with child; and although Senena would deliver her child before Colwen, the spurned queen wanted to be in attendance when Senena went into labor—just in case Senena offered Sif a girl. Colwen did not omit to tell anyone the midwives had said that her own child was bound to be a boy. Sif ignored both the gibes and the woman; Senena was possessed of a thinner hide. Her gallery was a lifesaver.
She had been there when Sif had brought Fodrun in. She had not meant to eavesdrop; but she had fallen asleep in the comfortable armchair her friend the chamberlain had procured for her, and by the time she’d woken the conversation below was in full swing. Moving would mean the risk of an inadvertent sound, putting both her own head and the chamberlain’s into the noose; she sat in silence, hoping they would finish their business soon and leave. But she could not help hearing what they spoke about. When she finally grasped that Anghara Kir Hama had not lain buried in the family vault these eight years as everyone had blithely supposed, but was instead a living prisoner in the Miranei dungeons, the shock was so great that even the baby within her turned and kicked violently.
Anghara…alive…that meant Sif’s claim to the throne could only have been treachery…
The next morning had been pandemonium, with the arrival of the messenger from Torial and Sif’s almost instant departure. Senena welcomed the distance between them, at least until she had a chance to come to terms with her new knowledge. But once Sif had left and Fodrun, whom he had left to be his lieutenant and her shadow, had been detained elsewhere, she donned a voluminous cloak and made her way to the great doors in the bowels of the keep. They stood banded and barred with iron, and blackened with centuries of smoke from the torches which always burned in two sconces, one on either side of the gate. Two soldiers stood guard before the gate to this underworld, their swords naked in their hands.
“Hold,” one of them said, his voice low and somehow fittingly sepulchral in this place. “Who comes?”
Senena had counted on surprise, and was amply rewarded by the sight of their faces as she pushed back the cowl of her cloak. “The queen,” she said. Her voice rang with confidence and authority she had never had, never even felt, as Sif’s wife; but these men weren’t to know. “Let me pass.”
“Lady,” began one, dropping creakily on one knee, “it is not meet for a woman that you go down there…”
“It is for a woman that I go,” said Senena. “I will not need to descend to her if you have her brought here to me. I wish to speak with her. Is there a place where I could do so in private?”
The two had exchanged glances. “A woman, my lady?”
“Lady, we cannot…your husband the lord king…”
“The king is not here,” Senena said. “I sit beside him on the Throne Under the Mountain. Do as I say.”
Still they hesitated, and something kindled in Senena’s pale eyes that was steely and implacable. A part of this came from imitating Sif’s own regal attitude, but another part was entirely her own. She may have been young, she may have been timid and sensitive, but she had a core of strength and nobility which would have set her apart even without a crown on her head. Sif had chosen his queen all too well.
“Do as I say,” she repeated to the two guards, and in that moment the swift and imminent retribution they read in her face overruled the nebulous possibilities of what Sif might do when he returned to Miranei.
“This way, my lady,” one of the two said, handing her through the grim gate and into a guardroom where a fire burned brightly on the smoke-blackened hearth. Two more men had been lounging there, but they leapt to their feet when Senena entered. Her escort barked at them to get out, sending one of them down to the lower levels to get the prisoner.
They ran into unexpected trouble when the gaoler Sif had placed to watch over Anghara refused to hand her over without specific orders from Sif. But when the messenger they sent came panting back with this refusal, Senena calmly slipped off the wedding ring Sif had given her, with its miniature Roisinani crest worked in jewels.
“Give him that for a token,” she said, “and ask if he will rather face his lord’s wrath when he learns I have had to climb down into the vaults myself?”
It wasn’t Sif’s own ring, but even the jailer had to bow to the fact it was a royal token, and, not without grumbling, hunted out the key for Anghara’s cell from the bunch hanging at his waist.
Anghara had long ceased to believe the door of her cell ever opened—even she must have been introduced through the trapdoor at the bottom, which yielded everything from food and water to fresh straw every now and again. She sat curled up on her pile of straw, staring owlishly at the widening crack of light which entered through the opening door.
“Come on,” said her jailer gruffly, “ye’re wanted.”
Another first; nobody had spoken to her directly for months. She sat frozen; she had to be manhandled to her feet when she showed no signs of moving.
It was a long journey to the top; there were steep stairs, and Anghara hadn’t walked more than five steps for a long time. Whatever Senena had expected, it was not the pale, wide-eyed wraith of a girl, wearing a filthy dress which was only a memory of its former self, with whom she was confronted in the guardroom. The dress hung off the frail prisoner—the delicate bones in her narrow hands and fragile wrists were almost visible through the skin.
The two girls’ eyes met, held.
“Senena…” whispered Anghara through cracked lips, not seeming aware she had spoken.
“Put her down in that chair,” Senena commanded, “and then leave us.” Somehow it did not seem strange that this girl, whom she had never set eyes on bef
ore in her life, should know her on sight.
The soldiers obeyed, and Senena knelt at the foot of Anghara’s chair, taking the thin, cold hands into her own and trying to rub warmth into them. Her eyes were wide and haunted. “Oh, Gods…” she murmured, staring into the hollow-eyed face beneath the matted red-gold hair. “Sif, what have you done?”
3
Anghara didn’t know whether to bless Senena or curse her.
Their first meeting had not been scintillating—after uttering Senena’s name Anghara couldn’t seem to gather her wits about her to say any more, simply staring at the young queen’s flushed face. Senena did not stay for long on that first visit, but she left specific orders—and in her wake the grumbling soldiers provided a lukewarm bath, the first Anghara had had since she had left the Kheldrini ship in Calabra, and a change of clothing. It was nothing grand, but anything would have been better than the rags to which her dress had been reduced over the long months of her captivity. She had clean hair, clean clothes—even her food had climbed a notch or two in quality, and, best of all, since Senena had begun showing an interest, there had been precious little tamman in it. In their second meeting, and those that followed, Anghara began to remember how to relate to another human being. At first it was no more than a few words, but then, as Senena persisted, Anghara slowly started to cross a wide and trackless ocean back to the shores she once knew.
The upside of all this was that she was beginning to regain a sense of her own humanity; the downside was, of course, that she felt her captivity all the more keenly every time one of her meetings with Senena came to an end. And she knew with bitter certainty that it would all cease, one way or another, as soon as Sif returned to Miranei. When he found out what Senena had been up to in his absence—and he could h
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