by Stephen Hunt
Duncan had a feeling the soldier was correct. ‘Who’s the baron’s friend?’
Doctor Horvak peered at the man Duncan had singled out through his monocle. ‘That’s Gyal Skar. Just as Apolleon supports Prince Helrena’s cause for the imperial throne in its imminent vacancy, Prince Gyal is Circae’s choice as the next emperor.’
‘Choice,’ snarled Paetro. ‘There’s more to it than that. I swear it. It’s whispered in the capital that Circae gave birth to a child in secret and ensured the boy was swapped in the cot for one of the emperor’s real newborns, with the poor devil of a true princeling made ashes inside an incinerator to remove any evidence of the crime. Gyal’s supposed mother died in a convenient helo crash before his first birthday and after that the lad was raised in Circae’s orbit.’
‘I thought the empire’s surgical machinery could be used to test if an heir is true or a cuckoo?’ said Duncan.
‘That it may,’ said the doctor, ‘but the identifying features of an individual’s blood can be over-written using high medicine, and it is said the imperial surgeons have such techniques hoarded among their secret knowledge. The code of the blood is like a book whose letters can be changed and swapped around by a competent forger. Whether the rumour about the prince can be substantiated or not, I cannot say. It is certainly true that Circae dotes on Prince Gyal as if he were her own flesh and blood. But then, she has lost one genuine son … Helrena’s husband, the tragedy of which finds us standing here today. Perhaps Prince Gyal is a proxy for Circae’s maternal feelings.’
‘The witch has no feelings,’ spat Paetro. ‘I don’t need your damn high medicine to confirm that one way or the other. Circae is capable of anything. Princess Helrena is the best chance Circae has of recovering her granddaughter alive, but Circae would sooner see Helrena face down in the arena and our house sliced up like old pork roast to scatter to the hyenas than support her in the court.’
But if the bodyguard’s scurrilous tale of scandal had a grain of truth, maybe sacrificing a granddaughter from a daughter-in-law she hated to see a closet son ascend the imperial throne … perhaps that was the kind of blood offering Circae was willing to make. Duncan was more determined than ever to rescue Cassandra and see her safely home. ‘Circae isn’t here to watch the fight?’
‘Easier to divide the spoils if you’re not seen to directly wield the dagger,’ said Doctor Horvak.
‘Not that she’s fooling anyone with her absence,’ said Paetro. ‘Just observing the forms, is all.’
Duncan’s attention was caught by a blast of trumpets from the arena’s speakers. The challenge in the Krevhalle was about to restart. Numbers flashed across banner-long screens, imposed above the dance of death the two daughters of the imperium had recently put on for the mob, the combat’s moving images slowed to a crawl as a hidden orchestra blasted out a portentous hymn heavy with deep drumbeats. Duncan realized the numbers weren’t a count-down to restarting the duel, but the current gambling odds. And looking at the betting, frankly, the wagers weren’t flowing in their favour.
Both women emerged from their tents and stood facing each other. A steward raised a pistol in the air and fired to begin the next bout. Elanthra didn’t waste a second. She lunged forward with her sabre, but Helrena managed to catch the blow between the crossed blades of her sabre and dagger, shoving Elanthra away, a glancing cut to their foe’s shoulder as Helrena’s dagger sliced across silk and forced her enemy’s own blades against her skin. A single wound among a handful, though; while Helrena’s white swathed form was a mass of bloody bandages, not a limb untouched and dripping red. This duel was literally a death of a thousand cuts.
‘The mistress is too slow on her bad leg,’ growled Paetro. ‘Elanthra’s marked the limp. Look how she always strikes against Helrena’s wounded side, where she can’t cover quickly enough. Damn, but I warned the mistress to wait long enough to recover.’
‘The celestial caste’s prerogative to ignore our advice,’ said Duncan, trying to disguise his fear over how badly this was going.
‘Don’t have to be born a princess of the imperium to do that, just being a woman will do.’
Duncan wondered if the soldier was thinking of his dead daughter. Poor Paetro. He felt a wave of compassion for the man. Duty and honour were all that he had been left with, and if Helrena fell here today, who would his friend owe that to anymore? Who would Duncan, for that matter?
Helrena and Elanthra circled each other, daggers moving as though they were tracing invisible runes in the air, sabres held as high as a scorpion sting. Helrena moved first this time, seeing some subtle sign, an opening in her enemy’s defence that Duncan failed to see, either through lack of art or his distance from the duel. Helrena lunged forward and whirled the blade around in a move that would have sliced Elanthra in half if it had connected, but it didn’t. Elanthra had already moved, her whip-thin body stepping to the side and pivoting to deliver a bone-cracking kick to Helrena’s bad leg, exactly where the worst of the wound had been taken during the revolt. She had either marked her foe’s weakness well, or been supplied the tip by a spy. Helrena tried to step back, avoiding Elanthra’s counter-strike, but her bad leg seemed to fold under her and as Elanthra lunged again, the only way Helrena could avoid being skewered was to crumple under the strike and fall to the ground. Duncan moaned and he heard Paetro bite back a shout of anger by his side. Helrena had lost her dagger on her left while her sabre had fallen to her right, Duncan’s lover scrambling back in the sand as Elanthra swung her sabre down to disembowel the princess.
SIX
THE TRAP OF HOME
Willow sat in the library, oil lamps throwing a warm orange glow across her newspapers as she carefully turned the pages. Her body might be confined inside the house; but given the papers her mind swooped free. It obviously hadn’t occurred to Leyla Holten that the library had standing subscriptions with the Northhaven stationers that could be cancelled, otherwise Willow had no doubt the malicious fortune hunter would have taken great pleasure in denying them to Willow. Although that would have entailed the harpy setting foot in a library for something other than seducing the nearest available male, which was probably, on balance, beyond her. These news sheets were weeks old, freighted up from the capital, Arcadia, by the Guild of Rails. Willow’s main interest these days was comparing how the nationals’ views differed from the local newspapers’ stories. It was obvious that the press in the industrial south was in bed with King Marcus and his allies: every story and editorial cast doubt on Prince Owen’s identity. An impostor, they thundered, a rescued slave whose mind had snapped during too many harsh years in captivity. The conservative, rural north was still free-thinking enough to print the testimony of retainers and civil servants who’d known the old royal family before their unfortunate ‘accident’, swearing that Prince Owen was the heir they had looked after, a boy now grown into a man. It was growing increasingly clear to Willow that this controversy had divided the nation along pre-existing political fault-lines. The citizens of the north which the Gaiaist Party relied on were its pastoral heartland, pitted against the Mechanicalist Party of the great southern cities. Mill owners against land owners, industrial lords against country lords, conservatives against radicals, guild against guild; the same old sniping that had been going on in the national assembly for centuries. So far, none of the papers had reported that the resources being used to industrialize weren’t travelling along the caravan route, but were being supplied by the imperium to King Marcus in return for making his state a slave farm. King Marcus had all the new wealth of the kingdom on his side; Prince Owen wielded only the truth and a superior claim to the succession. Which faction would win?
Willow sighed in exasperation. Mechanisation had caused turmoil, the delicate balance of man and nature so valued by the Gaiaists upended with the trickle of metals made a torrent; everywhere workers displaced from the fields and heading for the cities, the king and his allies growing wealthier than anyone in the country’s hi
story, apportioning mill licences and largesse in return for a slice of ever-increasing profits. Willow had never known anything like it and nor had Weyland. The country had become like a prize pig bred for competition, force-fed food until its body swelled to unnatural limits. Her home was, Willow realized, in a small way, beginning to ape their secret master, Vandia. The imperium was so rich it could buy anything, including the slaves it needed to die in harness to keep the empire rich beyond the dreams of avarice. They were becoming a ghost of Vandia, a pale reflection, just as the covetous King Marcus had made himself a second-rate imitation of the Vandian emperor. Willow was stunned by her sudden insight, the new labour laws passed into statute for factory owners thrown into a shocking new light. Indentured servitude to help mill owners absorb the masses being thrown off the farms … and it was being heralded as a solution to help the starving unemployed; unfortunate families provided with food, clothing, lodgings in return for working for free for a term of ten years. What was that law but a mannerly form of slavery? And a single decade could easily become five at the stroke of a pen on a government charter. What was the nickname the few dissenting newspapers in the north had given the king? Bad Marcus. Never was a title so well earned. She’d heard that a gang of thugs in the pay of loyalist mill-owners had been dispatched to the leading opposition title to smash its printing presses. They’d done the job thoroughly, removing all the lead type used to spell out Marcus’s name so they could never abuse the usurper again, before setting fire to the premises.
I’ve escaped the imperium, and all my miseries as a slave, only to find the empire being rebuilt in miniature here by the shores of the Lancean Ocean. They had to fight. She had to fight. Willow had to tell someone. The door opened and she nearly jumped out of her chair, her reverie broken. She had nothing to tell him.
Nocks leered at her, the stocky manservant grinning. ‘Thought you might be here, petal. I can see why you fancy the pastor’s son. Two book-botherers together, a match made in heaven, eh?’
‘Unless you’ve come here to dust the shelves, why don’t you push off,’ said Willow. ‘My attentions are occupied with something more important than your fripperies.’
‘Fripperies? That sounds like a right good word. Maybe you’ve got a dictionary around here I can look it up in. But first—’ He pulled out a soggy envelope and slapped it down across her desk. ‘I’ll thank you to show me a little more in the way of your famous northern manners, given I’m kindly acting the part of postman for you today.’
‘What is this?’
‘Got it out of the maid’s pockets. The woman was found bobbing under the river ice by the weir.’
‘What?’ A terrible gnawing horror dawned on Willow as she processed the unpleasant servant’s words.
‘Silly cow; looks like she tried to cross the lower brook last night rather than leaving the estate by the main gate. The ice cracked and she went under and drowned. Eleanor, I think her name was. Mistress reckons she was trying to lift some of the silver from the house. Thieving bitch had this letter on her, though. Ink’s run, but we could just make out your name on the front. Thought it might belong to you.’
Willow lifted up the sopping paper envelope, her letter to Carter and the pastor rendered into illegible papier-mâché apart from her faded signature on the front. ‘She’s dead?’
‘Course she is. Not a fish, was she? You can have a gander at her corpse if you like. It’s in the outhouse behind the kitchen until the undertaker’s cart arrives from Northhaven to carry her away. Still as hard and cold as a block of ice. But that’s winter for you. Reckon she’ll stay like that until the spring melt.’
Tears ran down Willow’s face, guilt and horror rising up inside her. My fault, this was my fault. ‘Eleanor can’t have drowned down there … the ice is too thick.’
‘Oh, but the world’s like that,’ smiled Nocks. ‘One minute you’re here, carefree as a bird, and the next the world’s opened up beneath you and swallowed you whole. But you and I know that, don’t we?’ He ran a finger down his hideous scar. ‘Me sporting this. You being carried off by slave traders. The ice can always crack below your boots, wherever you are.’ He raised a fist and pretended to bang an imaginary sheet of ice hanging above his head. ‘Help. Help me.’
‘Get out!’ yelled Willow, throwing her chair back. ‘Get out!’
‘No gratitude in your bones, girly,’ laughed Nocks, backing away. ‘Thank me later for bringing you your post. Don’t you worry about matters; it’ll just make it all the sweeter when you come around to my way of thinking.’
Willow picked up a paperweight from the desk and hurled it at the door as Nocks shut it, then she collapsed behind the table. Her newspapers fluttered in the rush of air from her body, all the kingdom’s problems held in their pages, rendered small and inconsequential by the manservant’s hideous news, its mocking delivery. How had Eleanor died couriering the message? It didn’t make sense. Willow only knew one thing for sure, and that was that the maid and her unborn child had died trying to help her. Two lives gone, just like that, plus a living hell for Eleanor’s husband as long as he lived. What have I done?
Nocks was halfway down the corridor when Leyla Landor appeared. ‘How did she take the news?’
‘Not well,’ grunted Nocks. ‘Floods of tears and a good bit of guilt to go with it.’
‘Excellent.’
‘I do hope it’s worth it,’ said Nocks. ‘Having the death seem like an accident. I could’ve slit the maid’s treacherous throat and made it look like she’d run into a gang of highwaymen.’
‘And heartily enjoyed yourself before you took a knife to the girl? You’re a wicked fellow … I really don’t know why I keep you around. An accident leaves nobody for Willow to blame but herself. If outlaws had murdered her maid, Willow would hold the gang responsible. I wager her time as a slave left her able to hate quite adequately. She’s used to seeing death – not so used to causing it, I suspect.’
‘Hating adequately? Not a problem for either of us,’ said Nocks. ‘A little revenge is good for the soul.’
‘All in good time, you horny devil. It’s time to accelerate our plans for Benner’s daughter,’ said Leyla. ‘A good marriage will serve all of our interests.’
‘And here’s me thinking it was going to be a bad one?’
‘Willow’s husband-to-be’s not so bad. Voracious between the sheets, of course, but what man isn’t, given the chance?’ She reached out to brush Nocks’ hair and he shivered at her subtle, knowing touch. ‘He’ll beat out whatever spirit’s left in Willow that we haven’t broken. And, if she’s lucky, after that maybe he’ll sate his appetites on his mistresses rather than her.’
‘You’re sure old man Landor will go along with the plan?’
‘A noble title for his daughter?’ smiled Leyla. ‘It’s what the old fool’s always yearned for, and that’s the secret of managing Benner Landor. Give him what he wants, not what he needs.’ She rubbed her belly. ‘First a loving virile wife; then a male heir on the way. Next, a highborn match for his out-of-favour little bitch.’
‘How fast can we move?’ asked Nocks.
‘As quickly as we can. There’s a visitor arrived in town who’ll be able to help us.’
‘You should be thanking Willow,’ said Nocks. ‘The way she abandoned her brother. What would you’ve done if Duncan Landor was still hanging around, blocking your new brat’s inheritance?’
‘Oh, slept with him … had you arrange a fatal fall from his horse. Maybe both in quick succession. His portraits make him look like quite the young buck. It’d be nice to think at least one of the Landors was capable of making a woman bite the pillow.’
‘The old man doesn’t tickle your fancy? You’re a right good actress, then,’ said Nocks.
‘Of course I am. Around a pig like Benner Landor, nothing else will do.’
‘I dare say the old man’s vast fortune helps,’ said Nocks.
Leyla smiled, a cold, cobra’s grin. ‘Well,
it certainly can’t hurt, can it?’
Carter glanced around; checking the patrol of armed retainers had rounded the corner before sprinting from behind the hedge towards the house. Benner Landor wasn’t taking any chances with his security. Given how many dangerous wanderers were on the road these days, that was a wise decision. The oil lanterns’ light swaying in the guards’ hands grew dim and he started to climb. In Carter’s childhood, he and Duncan Landor had treated Hawkland Park’s rooftop escarpments as their private fiefdom, climbing its chimneys and scaling skylights and sloping attic roofs like a pair of red squirrels. Who would have thought that he’d be putting his knowledge of the Landor grounds to this use?
Carter shrugged off the wind on high, iron drainpipes which creaked as they took his weight. The roof tiles were slippery and silver with frost, but he kept his footing until he reached the wing where Willow roomed, and swung himself down outside her window, rapping on the pane of glass, three long raps, three short. Carter waited for the window to open, then Willow helped pull him through the thick winter curtain, her face a muddle of warring emotions – hope, fear, sadness, longing. Something is definitely wrong. He hadn’t seen Willow this upset since their wicked life-and-death existence inside the sky mines. That was when he noticed the anteroom beyond. She hadn’t just bolted the door to the corridor in the house; she’d dragged a couch across the doorway to barricade herself in for the night. What the hell’s going on here?
‘What is it?’
‘Everything,’ blurted Willow, before unburdening herself … the maid’s accident, Willow’s torments at her stepmother’s hands and imprisonment inside the grounds of Hawkland Park.
‘You’re right, it doesn’t make sense,’ said Carter, after Willow’s voice slowed and she stopped confessing her troubles. ‘I crossed the brook myself to sneak up to the house. It’s frozen solid. And anyone with half a brain tests the ice first. See if it cracks before you walk on it. Eleanor hadn’t been drinking had she, trying to find the courage to help you in a bottle of whisky?’