by F. G. Cottam
They had arrived dusty and ripe. It didn’t matter. They sat across from him and Dray read what the count had written. If the contents of the letter made him angry or frustrated him, it did not show in his expression. Adam stole a glance at Maul, wondering whether Delilah Crane had yet perished in the man’s inhuman grip. He looked back to Dray, hoping that they would never connect the dots and that Alabaster Swift was a woman capable of keeping a secret.
Dray smiled at them. It was an engaging smile. He had aimed it in Jane’s direction. ‘How many parasites do you think he commands?’
‘He is a student of earth history,’ Jane said. ‘He is a great admirer of Imperial Rome. He boasted of having raised nine legions.’
‘It’s my understanding that the Ninth Legion disappeared,’ Dray said, ‘somewhere beyond Hadrian’s Wall, in the land where you so recently grovelled in the ground without reward.’
Jane shrugged and smiled back at him. Adam saw that Maul was staring intently at her. ‘That would leave him commanding eight legions. Have you seen his parasites fight?’
‘Have you?’
‘An exhibition bout,’ Adam said. ‘One of them briefly toyed with me. I ran it through. It lived to sport at full strength before the count was obliged to call it off to spare my life.’
Maul’s eyes turned to Adam. He frowned.
Dray said, ‘I did not think they were capable of play.’
‘They are capable of whatever he instructs them to do,’ Jane said.
Dray shrugged. He put the letter down on the round table at which they sat. Autumn sunlight had raised the temperature in the tent and there was the smell of canvas, slightly musty, and the sharp, vinegary smell of Proctor Maul breathing heavily – Adam supposed to control his fury.
‘It ends,’ Dray said.
Jane said, ‘As easily as that?’
‘How can we trust you? Trust is earned,’ Adam said, ‘not gifted.’
‘We are as patient as we are implacable,’ Dray said. ‘A war on the scale threatened would not benefit our world. I see no alternative but to end our involvement with yours. I speak for the Crimson King.’
The public execution of the count’s wife had been a spiteful miscalculation. Tactically, it had been a disaster. Adam looked from Dray to Maul and knew that they both appreciated that. And so would their king, and someone would pay for the blunder. Salabra would not be a pleasant place for them to return to. It would not be a comfortable place for any of its citizens in the face of the king’s petulant wrath. That said, it would be worse in the hovels, where disease held sway and the culls thrived and the scapegoats endured whatever caprice delivered.
‘Hostilities end forthwith,’ Adam said.
‘They do,’ Dray said, with just a subtle note of exasperation.
Adam nodded at Maul. ‘So if he hasn’t yet killed Delilah Crane, he cannot return to do so now, can he?’
‘He cannot.’
‘Does she live?’
Dray did not reply. The look on Maul’s face was enough to give Adam his answer.
‘We are free to leave unmolested?’
‘You enjoy the protection of the count. Go now.’
They reached their gateway at dawn. Adam’s thoughts were muddled by the fatigue of their having been in the saddle for so long and the spent adrenaline cost him by Maul’s proximity in their tense conference.
He thought about the warrior whose blood he shared, smiting Edgar Maul in a lonely arena with his dead daughter in his arms summoned for strength to his mind. He imagined McGuire, watching as Alabaster Swift sent a gang of thugs sprawling in the Edwardian snow with only a vindictive thought. He pictured that colossal battleship and its slavish crew marooned in their collective madness on an ocean poisoned by magic. He heard the words his father had rasped out during that bedside vigil on the afternoon when the breath at last departed him. Chance is how we describe events when we don’t yet know their purpose.
Finally they arrived at the place. Jane reached out her hand and Adam held it. He kissed her. She said, ‘It isn’t the end at all, is it?’
‘It’s the end of the beginning,’ he said.
Recent Titles by F.G. Cottam
BRODMAW BAY
THE COLONY
DARK ECHO
THE HOUSE OF LOST SOULS
THE MAGDALENA CURSE
THE WAITING ROOM
THE MEMORY OF TREES *
THE SUMMONING *
* available from Severn House