Orisian took what the woman offered him. It was a simple leather skullcap. He pressed it back into her hands.
“Keep it. Please. I’m sure your husband would rather you kept it.”
He walked on, with Taim and Rothe on either side of him.
“How many are there?” he asked Taim quietly.
“A hundred or so here. There’re others who have found themselves a better place in the city. These are the lost, the ones who escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs.”
A grubby little boy ran up and touched Orisian’s leg before retreating back to his young mother’s side.
“They’ve come a long way,” Orisian murmured.
Taim nodded. “There’s hundreds more at Kolglas, by all accounts, but there’s not enough food there. And people are afraid the Black Road will take it, of course, so some have moved on to Stryne, to Hommen, even as far as here.”
“They’re getting food, aren’t they?”
“Oh, yes. Lheanor’s paid for some of it. He even sent woodworkers down here to help with the huts. The Woollers have been sending sacks of bread. They won’t starve, Orisian.”
“The only thing they need is their homes back,” Rothe said. His anger was taut, a muscle beneath the skin of his words.
Up ahead, an old man was brandishing a stick at an overeager stray dog that nosed the sack beside him. The dog shrank back, baring its teeth. A younger man nearby threw a stone at it.
“Let’s get back,” Orisian said. “We’re doing no good marching up and down in front of these people.”
Rothe grunted. “I’d not be so sure about that. It won’t feed them, but the sight of you might warm their hearts a little.”
They walked back through busy, noisy streets, heading for the Tower of Thrones. Kolkyre’s northern parts were where most of the artisans lived and their houses, workshops and stalls were everywhere. Little wagons full of timber blocked the narrow roads; beggars and hawkers harassed every passer-by.
Anger was seldom far away for Orisian, these last few days. Everything he saw, everything he heard, was a little coloured by it. He struggled to distinguish between the anger born of what the Horin-Gyre Blood had done to his people and that summoned up by the hostile, patronising games he feared Aewult and the Shadowhand were playing with him. He vaguely sensed, but could not disentangle, another strand that was turned inward: anger at what he feared might prove to be his own shortcomings and inadequacies; his inability to live up to the demands placed upon him.
“We serve no purpose, lingering here while half our Blood is unhomed and the other half is starving,” he muttered.
A man pushing a barrow of charcoal came up behind them, shouting that they should move aside and let him pass. Rothe stopped and turned, glowering. The man almost slipped, hauling his barrow to a halt before it ran into the shieldman’s shins. He spat out some harsh words, but bit his lip when Rothe took a step nearer to him.
Orisian pulled Rothe aside. “Let him pass. It’s his street more than it’s ours.”
The man ran by them, weaving his way on through the crowds. There was an angry cry of pain as he scraped the barrow along someone’s calf.
As they stood there for that moment, withdrawn to the edge of the street, Taim Narran surreptitiously touched Orisian’s arm.
“There are two men, sire, some way behind us. Big. Leather jerkins. Do you see them?”
Orisian looked back the way they had come. He saw those that Taim meant easily enough: two burly men engaged in earnest conversation with a woman selling tallow candles through a window in the front of her house. He nodded.
“I saw at least one of them earlier, when we left the Tower,” Taim said quietly. “Come, let’s walk on.”
He guided Orisian back into the flow of townsfolk. Rothe fell a few paces behind, shadowing the Thane and his Captain. Orisian noticed the shieldman carefully freeing his injured arm from its sling.
“They’ve followed us all the way up this street,” Taim said. “Paused when we paused.” He flicked a glance sideways, at a stall festooned with simple pots and jugs and beakers. “Moving again, now that we are.”
“What do you suggest?” Orisian asked.
“Well, I may be seeing something that’s not there. Even if I’m right, chances are they mean no immediate harm. In either case, we could ignore them for now; worry about it once you’re safely back in the Tower.”
Orisian sidestepped a little pile of horse dung. A mob of seagulls swept screaming low over the street in pursuit of one of their number that had snatched up some scrap of food. In the Car Criagar, and in distant Koldihrve, Orisian had thought that some kind of safety awaited them if only they could take to the sea and slip away to the south. Now, at the end of that journey, he found only more struggles, more uncertainties. Instead of becoming clearer, answers receded from him. And they would keep receding, he suspected, unless and until he found a way to chart his own course.
“Could they be Lheanor’s men, watching over us?” he asked Taim.
“Unlikely, sire.” The warrior sniffed. “He’d not set such a watch on you without letting us know, would he?”
“Then I want to know who they are, and what they intend. Now, before we get back to the Tower.”
Taim beckoned Rothe without breaking his stride. The shieldman trotted up to join them.
“We’ll turn along the next side street,” Taim said quite casually. “You and Orisian press on down it, in clear sight. I’ll hang back. Give the hounds sniffing our heels a surprise.”
They took the next turning on their right. It was a narrow lane, though still busy. Some women and girls were hanging freshly dyed sheets out to dry. A pair of men were arguing over a cockerel that one of them held in his hands. Half a dozen children were throwing pebbles up onto a shingled roof, laughing at the rattle. Rothe led Orisian on at a slightly faster pace. Taim turned aside and Orisian lost sight of him.
“Best not to look back,” Rothe muttered. “Don’t want to give them any sign of what’s happening.”
“Can Taim manage two?”
“Oh, you needn’t worry about that. They’ll be sorry they woke up this morning.”
Only a moment or two later, a flurry of footfalls, shouts and dull impacts burst out behind them and both Orisian and Rothe spun around. Taim was kneeling on one man who lay face down in the roadway. The second was hobbling off as fast as what looked to be a thoroughly deadened leg would allow.
The cockerel had escaped its owner in the excitement, and ran chattering off down the lane. Both the men who had been arguing over it set off in pursuit. The little gang of children had dropped their pebbles and were pointing excitedly at Taim and his captive.
“Could only hold one, sire,” Taim said apologetically as Orisian and Rothe walked up to him.
“One’s enough,” Rothe said with feeling. “Let’s turn him over.”
They rolled the dazed man onto his back and Taim rested a swordpoint on his chest, pinning him to the cobbles. Rothe leaned down.
“Who are you, then?” he asked, and even to Orisian his voice sounded cold and threatening.
The prone man turned his face aside and maintained a stubborn silence. Taim tapped the man’s chest with his blade.
“Now is not the moment for bravery. We are none of us here renowned for our patience. You’ll come to no harm, if you but share your purpose with us.”
“I’d no purpose but to be walking with a friend,” the man spat a little indistinctly. He still seemed somewhat stunned, either by the unexpected course of events or by his fall to the ground. “We’d not thought to find bandits here. You’ve no right to set upon us.”
Rothe straightened. He and Taim glanced at one another and Orisian saw some kind of understanding pass between the two warriors. Taim sheathed his sword. He kicked the man, without any great force, in the ribs.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“I’ll not give my name to thieves.”
; Orisian caught a certain texture in the man’s voice, an accent that was almost, but not quite, familiar.
“Stand up,” Taim said wearily. He looked to Orisian. “We may as well send him on his way, sire. He’ll tell us nothing beyond what he’s already done just by opening his mouth.”
Orisian nodded.
“Tell your master we don’t like to be followed,” Taim called after the man as he hurried, rather stiffly, away.
“Haig?” Orisian asked quietly.
Taim and Rothe both nodded.
“Nar Vay, I think,” Taim said. “Somewhere close to the border with Ayth. But Haig, yes.”
“Aewult, then. Or Mordyn Jerain.”
“Or the Steward,” Rothe suggested glumly. “Any one of them. All of them. It hardly matters which.”
“No,” agreed Orisian. “It doesn’t. How many men have you got here, Taim? Seven hundred?”
If the warrior was surprised at the question, he hid it well. “About that. A handful under, perhaps, that are truly fit to march. If marching is what’s in your thoughts, that is.”
“So long as we’re here, we’re guests,” Orisian said. “Beggars. Playthings for Haig. They mean to keep us here, rotting, while they settle affairs in the Glas valley. And what happens then? Aewult and the Shadowhand will make all our decisions for us if we let them.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” Rothe growled.
“They might,” Taim said.
“I just don’t want to fail those people, homeless on that street back there. Or Croesan,” Orisian sighed. Or my father, he could have added. Or Fariel, even. “Aewult might not be as clever as he thinks he is. He might not find it as easy as he expects to march all the way up to the Stone Vale. There are things…”
He left the thought unfinished. He had said nothing to anyone about what he and Anyara had witnessed in Yvane’s chamber. In truth, they had seen nothing. Only felt, and heard what Yvane told them. He did not doubt that Aeglyss was a danger; others might not be so willing to trust the words of na’kyrim. He shrugged.
“It feels… if we were in Kolglas, we’d be on our own ground, if nothing else. Nobody could tell us what to do then. Nobody would find it so easy to set their spies on us.”
“Aewult will be… upset, if we march without his approval,” Taim observed.
“Can you move quickly, or quietly, enough to ensure he’s got no chance of stopping you? That’s all that would matter. Once you’re on the road north, the way is clear.”
Taim smiled. “I should think so. Certainly, I should imagine, with a little help from Lheanor and his people.”
“I’ll talk to the Thane,” Orisian said. It eased him a little to make a choice, to set his feet on a path of his own choosing. Here in Kolkyre, he felt impotent and ringed about with uncertainty. Could it really be as easy as simply deciding to walk away from it?
“And another thing,” he said. “I want Anyara to have a shieldman.”
“A shieldman?” Taim echoed.
“The best man you have.”
“That’s… not usually done, sire.”
“If it was, I wouldn’t have to ask, would I? She’s faced more danger than I have since Winterbirth. And she’s all the family I have left. I want her to have a shieldman.”
Taim bowed his head a fraction. “I will find someone.”
Rothe took an almost sheepish step forwards, scratching absently at his beard in the way he always did when uncomfortable.
“You should have another shieldman of your own, Orisian,” he said. “Several, in fact. We’ve been remiss not to take care of it sooner. Now you’re Thane, and I’m broken-winged…”
“No,” said Orisian, too quickly perhaps. “No more.”
Rothe looked dismayed. Orisian touched him on his good arm.
“I don’t need anyone but you, Rothe. You’ve served me better than my father could ever have asked of you. I won’t have anyone else.. ”
He did not finish the thought. It might not be fitting, he imagined, for a Thane to show too much distaste for the sacrifice of others in his name. Already, on that torch-lit night of Winterbirth in Castle Kolglas, he had seen Kylane, his second shieldman, die in his defence: as hurtful a death, in some ways, as any there had been. Rothe had long ago made the promise to do likewise if needed, and Orisian would not shame him by trying to undo that, but he would permit no one else to shoulder the burden afresh.
He could see in Rothe’s softening, sad expression that he did not need to explain his reasons. The man had been with him long enough to know something of how his mind worked.
“It’s unwise,” Taim Narran said. “However worthy Rothe might be, he cannot guard you always. You are Thane, as he says. You must allow us to see to your protection as…”
“No,” Orisian insisted. He turned away. “Let’s get back.”
“It’s all right, Taim,” he heard Rothe saying with strained levity behind him. “These wounds are only grazes to the likes of me. I’ll have shaken them off in another few days, then you’ll see the Thane is still well-guarded.”
As they drew near to the barracks, one of Taim’s men, looking a little harassed, intercepted them.
“There was a messenger searching for you, sire. The, er, the guest in the Tower of Thrones wanted to see you. Urgent, I think.”
“Yvane, you mean? Is that who you mean?” The guard nodded, and Orisian frowned. “Well, call her by her name, then. There’s no one to eavesdrop on us here.”
A faint blush of colour spread in the guard’s cheeks. Orisian at once regretted his sharp tone.
“What was it about, then?” he asked, calm this time. “I’ve other things to be doing at the moment.”
“Don’t know, sire. Seemed pressing, though. The messenger was.. anxious.”
“All right,” Orisian said, struggling to conceal his disappointment. What he wanted to do now was see Ess’yr, and Varryn too. He wanted to see their pleasure at being given the chance to leave this place; reassure himself that Ess’yr — that both of them — would come with him. “Taim, we’ll talk more later. Rothe and I will see what Yvane wants.”
The na’kyrim was alone in her chambers, standing with her back to the window and her hands clasped behind her. As he entered, Orisian blinked. Some shadow or mote had passed across his right eye for a moment: a momentary blurring of his vision as if some invisible fingertip had pressed gently against his eyeball. It cleared.
“I don’t have much time, Yvane. There’s a lot happening now.”
“Just you, Orisian, if you’d be so kind. This is only for you.”
Orisian nodded to Rothe, whose indignation was undisguised. The shieldman opened his mouth to protest.
“It’s fine, Rothe,” Orisian said. “This won’t take long.”
Rothe went, closing the door behind him a little more firmly than was necessary.
“I don’t think there’s anything you could say to me that should be kept from Rothe,” Orisian said, turning back to Yvane. Again, that irritation in his eye like the scratch of a wayward dust grain. He twitched his head, as if that might clear it. “He deserves better from you than…”
“It’s my privacy that Yvane protects, not her own.”
Orisian jumped sideways, almost exclaiming in surprise. Seated there, in a chair that a moment ago had been empty, was a na’kyrim: a short young man with his hands resting on his knees. His voice was soft, fluty.
“Don’t worry,” said Yvane before Orisian could speak, or call for Rothe. “He’s no threat. This is Bannain, from Highfast.”
Orisian took another step backwards, still unsettled. The man, he was sure, had not been there when he entered the room.
“How…” he began, but was not sure how to complete the question.
Bannain smiled in a detached kind of way, and flourished his long fingers.
“Mere trickery. I apologise if I startled you.”
“Of course you startled me,” snapped Orisian.
Yvane lai
d a hand on his arm, all the while frowning at Bannain as if in reprimand.
“He might be a little full of himself, Orisian, but he means no harm. Bannain has the knack of using the Shared in a very potent, but very narrow” — she emphasised that word — “way. It makes him well suited to certain tasks. He’s been serving the Elect as a messenger for quite a few years.”
Bannain folded his arms across his chest and stretched his legs out, resting the heel of one foot on the toe of the other.
“It’s nothing too sinister,” Yvane continued. “He just makes the eye… slide over him, if you like. He can only keep it up for a few moments, so he’s not as clever as he thinks he is.”
The younger na’kyrim smiled again. “All true. Again, I am sorry. I only wished to avoid the attention of anyone who came with you. Normally, none but Lheanor and one or two others know of my visits to Kolkyre. Of course, once I found out Yvane was here with news from the north I had to come and speak with her; and she in turn insists I tell my story to you as well.”
“Your story?” Orisian asked warily.
“Bannain was sent here by the Council at Highfast to warn Lheanor,” Yvane explained. “I think you might want to hear what he has to say.”
“All right, then. Tell me.” Orisian could not quite shed his caution and mistrust. If Yvane said this man was safe, and had something useful to say, he believed her, but it did not mean he had to like Bannain’s manner.
“Hard to explain, to one who is not na’kyrim,” the young man said, “but Yvane claims you’re more likely to grasp it than most. She’s told you already about the canker that’s appeared in the Shared?” His nose wrinkled in distaste as he asked the question.
“She has. And about its cause.”
“Its cause. Indeed. You’ve met this man Aeglyss, I’m told.”
“Not met. I’ve seen him, once. My sister was unlucky enough to spend more time in his company than me.”
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