Fall of Thanes tgw-3

by Brian Ruckley

  That wait was, unsurprisingly, longer than was dignified. Alem studied the intricate carvings on the panels of the door. It was supposedly a relic of the Aygll Kingship, removed from Dun Aygll by some warlord during the Storm Years. Whether that tale of its origin was true or not, it betrayed the instincts of the Haig family. They sought to accrue to themselves some of the glamour once attached to the extinct Kingship.

  There were notches and scars here and there, but the quality of the craftsmanship remained evident. Alem’s gaze traced the intertwining coils of ivy and the elegantly depicted warriors. There were figures high up on the door whose faces had been cut away, leaving ugly wounds that marred the otherwise balanced compositions. Those, Alem knew, had been images of Kyrinin, once allies of the Kingship, later its avowed enemies.

  The doors swung belatedly open, ending Alem’s bitter musings. He advanced into the Great Hall, holding his head up and wearing a carefully neutral expression. His footsteps rang in the cavernous vaulted and columned hall. It was unusually empty, and the journey from the door to the Throne Dais at the far end felt uncomfortably exposed. Gryvan oc Haig was waiting there, his crimson cloak drawn across his chest. That was seldom a good sign, Alem thought as he drew near. Whenever that cloak was upon the High Thane’s shoulders, it swelled his sense of his own grandeur. It was no more pleasing to see Abeh, Gryvan’s wife, sitting in her own throne at his side. Alem could barely recall a single well-judged word ever having passed her lips.

  The Ambassador was more encouraged by the sight of Mordyn Jerain standing close by the Thane of Thanes. The Chancellor’s head was bowed, so Alem was unable to make the eye contact he would have desired, but still he felt a hint of hope. For all the dubious games Jerain undoubtedly played, Alem had always found him to be, if nothing else, intelligent and considered. It had been a relief to hear that he was safely returned to the city, and to Gryvan’s side, after his prolonged absence. If anyone in this increasingly turbulent city might be prevailed upon to see the wisdom of a return to civility, it would surely be Mordyn Jerain.

  Alem came to a halt before the dais, and bowed to the Thane of Thanes. He put a little more depth into the gesture than was usually his wont, for though he served a true King, and this man merited none of the respect such a title conferred, a conciliatory demeanour seemed the wisest course.

  “I am grateful for the opportunity to present myself, sire,” he said, head still bent.

  “Perhaps you should await developments before deciding how grateful you are,” Gryvan oc Haig replied, and Alem noted with unease the chill that ran through the words. Slowly, the Ambassador lifted his head, attempting a faint, relaxed smile. He caught the eye of Kale, the Captain of the High Thane’s Shield, as he did so, and wondered at the dead, reptilian quality of the man’s gaze. No, not even reptilian; the lizards that basked amongst the sand dunes of his homeland’s coast had more life in their regard.

  “It is fortunate that you reached us here without coming to any harm,” Gryvan said. “The streets are somewhat dangerous.”

  Alem was uncertain how best to respond to that. It seemed an odd gambit for a ruler to draw such attention to his inability to keep order in his own city.

  “The masses ever find ways to test the will of their masters, I find,” he said smoothly. “I think they will remember soon enough how unwise it is to so taunt the mighty, no?”

  “Three nights of trouble, we’ve had,” Gryvan mused, his hands clutching the edges of his lurid cloak ever more tightly. “Fires. Riot. Murders.”

  “They will keep to their houses once it snows, or rains,” Alem said. He found it difficult to maintain a buoyant strand of levity in his voice, particularly as he had the strong impression Gryvan did not care what he said. Was, in fact, barely even listening. And the Chancellor still had not raised his head. Mordyn looked thinner than Alem remembered, his shoulders a little narrower.

  “There is such a fervour in the people,” Gryvan said, “one cannot help but wonder about its source. We are no strangers to discontent and dispute here, yet never-not in my lifetime, nor my father’s-has it found such… shameful expression. Why is that, do you suppose? What has changed, Ambassador?”

  Alem’s hopes of a successful audience had been slender from the start. Now they withered like a blighted vine. Gryvan’s soft-spoken words were laced with threat, with malice. Alem wondered whether the Shadowhand’s studied disengagement was a silent message: a warning that he could expect no succour from that quarter. He cleared his throat.

  “A man would have to be rich in presumption, I think, to advise a High Thane upon the rule of his own city. No? The one who stands before you now, sire, is not such a man. Not at all. The matters I hoped to discuss are entirely — ”

  “See how he seeks to slither out from under your boot,” hissed Abeh venomously.

  Alem blinked in surprise at her outburst.

  “My lady, I intend no slithering. I mean only that it is not my place to make comment on these unfortunate disturbances. In knowing that, I show only respect.”

  “Unfortunate?” Abeh sneered. “Do you pretend you don’t rejoice in this ruining of Vaymouth? Do you claim your spirits aren’t lifted by the sight of everything we have built here being torn down?”

  Alem smiled. A stupid gesture, he knew, as likely to antagonise as to assuage the High Thane’s tempestuous wife. It was born of bemusement. He smothered it as quickly as he could beneath a bland mask of-hopefully-foolish puzzlement.

  “This was the fairest of cities,” Abeh snarled at him. “Now it’s being fouled. All this discord, all this damage. Ugly!”

  Alem began to wonder if the woman had finally lapsed into the frothing, idiot decline that had always seemed her most likely fate, but he was saved from having to find a coherent response to her rantings by Gryvan himself.

  “Hush,” the Thane of Thanes said, with a glance at his wife. “Hush. We’ll have no answers from him like that.”

  “Answers?” Alem echoed. “I came in expectation of… not such questions, at least. I am too slow, perhaps. It might be so. Yet I admit, I do not understand.” It was cold in this cursed hall, he thought. They could not even keep the winter chill from their own palaces, these fools.

  “Be quiet,” said Gryvan. “Mordyn?”

  The Chancellor now at last lifted his head and took a step forward. There was not even a glimmer of recognition in his eyes as he regarded Alem; not a hint at the years of careful sparring that lay between them, the grudging respect the Ambassador thought had grown. It was a stranger who now looked down upon him from the dais, and an unfriendly one at that.

  “I have seen,” Mordyn intoned, “in Kolkyre and Anduran, evidence of conspiracy between Lannis and Kilkry, the Crafts and this man’s Kingship. I was given letters that the Gyre Bloods found. I have uncovered more since my return.”

  “This is absurd,” Alem protested.

  “Silence!” Kale came striding forward as he shouted, halting halfway down the steps at the front of the dais. The lean warrior glared at Alem with contempt.

  “The High Thane has been shown proofs,” Mordyn Jerain was saying levelly. “The patterns, the tracks left by those who seek to undermine the rule of Haig, have been revealed to him. He sees clearly now, and all your lies and your pretences will not serve to cloud his sight again.”

  “I tell no lies,” said Alem. “If you accuse me of this, you are much in error. And giving great offence to me and my master.” His unease was transforming itself incrementally into fear. This discourse might wear a cloak of eloquence and be housed in a grand hall, but its substance was that of the alleyway, the knife fight.

  “Do you deny, Ambassador,” Mordyn said, “that your Kingship has conspired with the Goldsmiths to foment disorder? That you covet the lands of the Free Coast, and of the Dargannan Blood, and even up to the gates of Vaymouth itself? Do you deny that even now your armies assemble along your northern borders, at your ports, imagining us weak? Do you pretend that Dornach
coin is not lining the pockets of the mobs tormenting Vaymouth’s slumber every night?”

  “All that, I deny,” Alem said. “And if you have more, that I deny too, but will not tarry to hear it. You invite these imagined dangers of yours into reality by your insults, and I will give no aid to you in that. Therefore, I remove myself from your presence, sires and lady.”

  He bowed, feeling the weight of his pounding heart in his chest, and backed away. He turned and saw Gryvan’s men spread across the distant doorway, blocking it; others advancing down the echoing length of the hall.

  “I must have the truth in this, Ambassador,” Gryvan said, almost sorrowfully, behind him. “You will understand that. You understand power. Its necessities. The requirement-absolute, unwavering-to defend it, and preserve it. I cannot stand idly by when all that I have inherited, all that I will pass on to my son, is threatened.”

  Alem turned back to face the throne. The servants and scribes who had accompanied him into this trap were clustering tightly together, looking nervously about as the Haig warriors drew slowly closer.

  “I must act,” said Gryvan. “I must. If the dangers that crowd about me prove illusory, so be it. Whatever harm is done can be undone in time. I will regret it, and endure that regret. But if I fail to act, and those dangers prove real, I will have wilfully squandered the labour of generations. You can understand, surely, that when I see signs of sickness in my body, however faint, however uncertain, it is better to examine them, to excise them even, than to pay them no heed?”

  “Gryvan, I implore you — ” Alem reached out his hands, unashamed by the supplicatory gesture and by the pleading in his voice, knowing in his mounting despair that nothing mattered save somehow reaching the High Thane, making him understand “-give thought to the consequences of this. Where has your sense gone? Whatever lies have been dripped into your ear, you…”

  Alem could hear jostling behind him, cries of outrage. The High Thane’s shieldmen were seizing his attendants or pushing them aside. Kale, the rangy leader of this pack of hounds, was stepping down from the Throne Dais, coming towards him with an air of malicious, eager intent.

  “Thane, there is no sense in this,” Alem shouted, his voice climbing a shrill ladder of alarm. “You must see that! You cannot truly believe we would play such crude games against you. You invite disaster!”

  Kale had hold of his shoulders. He could feel the warrior’s iron-hard fingers grinding into his muscles through the cloth. Beyond, Alem saw that Gryvan was no longer looking at him. The High Thane gazed up into the vaulted roof of the hall, detached, as if his presence were merely accidental.

  “Disaster,” Gryvan muttered, so softly that Alem barely heard it, “as I have been recently reminded, comes to those who allow events to precede them. I, Ambassador — ” he said this into the great cavern of the hall’s roof “-I choose to walk ahead of events. I choose to shape them, not be shaped by them. I am Thane of Thanes, and I am fierce enough still to hold my throne.”

  They took the Ambassador from the Great Hall and bore him into the bowels of the Moon Palace. They followed seldom-used passages, and bundled him down dark and tight spiralling stairways. There was no glory or elegance there. No marble, no carvings, no fine and graceful tapestries. Only bare rock and rough-hewn steps; torches giving out tarry smoke and walls streaked with grime.

  They took him as deep as it was possible to go, to places few ever visited, and fewer wished to visit. There they showed him cruel instruments. They showed him branding irons and hammers; water-filled barrels big enough to hold a manacled man; iron-tipped whips and flaying knives. Though his mind cowered in disbelieving horror, he denied them the words-the confession-they desired.

  They tore his clothes from him. They ripped his finery into pieces and cast it into braziers. They cut away his hair with knives, so roughly that some of it tore from his scalp, and he felt blood on his head.

  Though he knew nothing would come of it, he begged them to think again, to turn aside from this terrible course their Thane had set them upon. There was only hatred in their eyes, only abuse on their lips.

  They asked him again to confess his crimes, and those of his people, and those of his King. And he could see how they craved his refusal. They wanted it, above all else, so that they should have the chance to break him. There was something unnatural, excessive in their eager ferocity.

  He gave them what they wanted, for he would not betray his people with falsehoods. He would not invite the consequences such lies would have. His captors turned gladly to the tools that hung on the walls about them, that rested against stands and waited in the seething braziers.

  And in time, bloodily, they broke the Ambassador of the Dornach Kingship in that deep and dark place, and he assented to every accusation that was relentlessly put to him. He gave truth to every falsehood the Shadowhand had uttered. And once that truth was given, and his purpose served, the High Thane’s men put a knife into Alem T’anarch’s heart and sent his corpse to be burned on the pyres, in Ash Pit, reserved for the bodies of murderers and thieves and traitors.

  IX

  Anyara was afraid. She sought for all the old, stubborn determination with which she had learned to resist fear and doubt and grief. But that determination was frayed, almost eaten away like some moth-discovered robe. The fear and hopelessness leaked through it. Her only other defence was distraction, and that she turned to willingly and with all the vigour she could muster.

  “Could we steal horses and slip out of the city?” she wondered.

  Coinach looked dubious. The two of them were sequestered in her chambers, the door locked from the inside, the shutters closed across the great windows. They conspired by candlelight, though outside it was a bright if cold afternoon.

  “Nothing’s impossible,” the warrior said carefully. His doubt was ill concealed.

  “There must be Lannis merchants in the city, aren’t there?” she said. “Visiting Craftsmen? Someone who could help us, perhaps smuggle us out.”

  “I don’t know. I could try to find out…” He sounded doubtful.

  “Yes. I’m forbidden to leave this gilded gaol cell, but you… No one actually said you couldn’t go out into the city, did they?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, lady, no. Seems unlikely they’d — ”

  “It’s no use anyway,” Anyara said. “What good are we to anyone, running away, sneaking off into hiding like some masterless bandit with a price on his head?”

  She clapped her hands together in irritation, and in doing so snapped out the flame of the closest candle. She growled at it, and lit a taper at one of the others to restore it.

  “We should be trying to find a way to undo some of this madness,” she muttered, frowning at the wick while she waited for it to take the flame. “Change things, not flee from them. I didn’t come here just to be locked away. If we can’t unpick the Shadowhand’s lies, Orisian, our whole Blood, everything is at risk. We need help.”

  “Yes, though Vaymouth is hardly the most fertile ground to search — ”

  A hesitant, almost furtive, knocking at the door interrupted them. It startled Anyara. She almost dropped the still-burning taper, but swiftly recovered herself and gently blew it out. Coinach was already moving towards the door.

  “Who is it?” called Anyara.

  “Eleth, my lady. I have… I have clean bedding.”

  Anyara nodded to Coinach, and the shieldman opened the door. The maidservant entered, her arms piled with sheets. She looked curiously from Anyara to Coinach and back again, clearly wondering what kind of business they had been engaged in, locked away together in a darkened room. The suspicion might have amused Anyara once, perhaps embarrassed her, but now she spared it no more than a moment’s thought.

  She noticed the change in Eleth at once. Gone were the girl’s open, friendly expression, her casual chatter. She seemed smaller, more withdrawn. That alone Anyara might simply have ascribed to the fraught and fractious atmosphere in the pala
ce, and the change in her own status from tolerated guest to prisoner. But there was more, she sensed. Eleth’s cheeks drooped, her mouth was set in limp misery. She looked as if she had been crying recently.

  “Are you all right?” Anyara asked as the maid opened the great chest at the foot of the bed and began putting in the fine sheets, one after another in neat, luxuriant layers.

  “Yes, lady,” Eleth murmured, and the fluttering of her words betrayed the lie.

  “I’ve not seen you for days. They told me you were sick.”

  “Yes, lady.” There were tears there, so close to the surface: a loosely lidded pot simmering towards a cold and sorrowful boil. Anyara toyed absently with the sleeve of her dress, wondering whether to press the matter. She felt a glimmer of concern for the girl, but it was overlaid by other, more urgent, preoccupations.

  “Do you know where the Chancellor’s wife is, Eleth?” she asked as the maid softly closed the chest.

  “She is in the bath chamber, lady. Ensuring it has been cleaned as it should, I think.”

  “I need to talk to her, Eleth. It’s very important. Would you take me to her, please.”

  “I am not sure we are supposed to…”

  “I only want to talk to her. No harm can come of it. Please, Eleth.”

  The door to the bathing chamber was open. As they drew near, a metallic crash and a skittering clatter rang out. The sudden noise, so obtrusively violent amidst the marmoreal quiet of the palace, halted Eleth in her tracks, and had her shrinking away. Whatever troubled the girl, it was pervasive, rendering her delicate.

  “Wait here,” Anyara whispered to Eleth and Coinach, and she went alone, cautiously, to the doorway of the chamber.

  The bath was set into the floor, its polished stone darkly gleaming. There was a soft, persistent scent of perfume on the air, perhaps in the tiles themselves. Heat washed over Anyara’s face, for there were braziers burning in each corner of the room. One of them lay on its side, its glowing contents fanned out across the floor, a sprawl of fiercely luminous coals. Tara Jerain stood beside it, staring down at her hands.