by Stephen Hunt
‘No!’ said Willow, outraged. ‘She wouldn’t. Eleanor was carrying a baby, Carter. Two people died out there trying to help me, trying to—’
Carter cut her off. ‘It doesn’t feel right. There’s more to this than meets the eye, I can feel it in my bones.’ Carter’s sixth sense bordered on the supernatural these days. Heightened vigilance after having survived the horrors of life as a slave; a life where every minor mistake or infraction could mean death? Or something stranger after the many bizarre experiences he’d endured: his mad visions after falling into the Vandian volcano and the brief joining of minds with that sly old road-sorcerer, Sariel?
Willow sunk onto her bed, burying her head in her hands. ‘I thought it was odd, too. But I wasn’t sure if this was my fault, or if there is more to it. Or is that just my guilt, trying to find someone else to blame. I don’t know what to think anymore.’
‘Let’s make her end mean something, then,’ said Carter. ‘Just like being back in the sky mines. When one of us drops we don’t give up, we go on.’
Willow rubbed the tears from her eyes, and Carter could almost see her body filling with a newfound purpose, laying aside the self-pity she’d allowed to wrack her. This woman had done the same for him back in the sky mines, more than once. The two of them shared a bond far greater than love and heart. It was the connection of having survived the worst possible together and lived to see the light on the other side.
‘You’re right,’ Willow sighed. ‘This isn’t helping anyone. Eleanor would kick me in the pants if she could see me like this. You need to ride to the magistrates in town, obtain a court injunction to take me out of the park. I’ll write you an affidavit swearing that I’m being restrained here by my stepmother against my will.’
‘Damn the courts,’ said Carter. ‘You’re coming with me tonight. I’ll take you back to the rectory. Tomorrow we can head out for the woods, join Sheplar and the little imperial girl.’
‘You don’t know what Leyla Holten is capable of,’ said Willow. ‘That woman will lie. She’ll say that you’ve kidnapped me. We’ll have enough trouble on our hands without the local constables hunting for us across half the prefecture. We have to do this legally.’
‘Your stepmother’s less than spit on the wind,’ said Carter. ‘We escaped the imperium together, remember? Legions and soldiers and warships and the volcano’s dead zone. We crossed more miles than there are heads of corn in your father’s fields. What’s Leyla Holten compared to that? Just a southern fortune-hunter on the make.’
‘She’s the mistress of this house … and she’s pregnant as well. A boy, she claims.’
‘Pregnant?’ Carter had to choke down an amused snort. Who would have thought old Benner Landor still had it in him? An heir to replace Willow’s brother, he hadn’t wasted much time. ‘Then your father shouldn’t kick up too much when you leave with me.’
‘You don’t know my father as well as you think you do, then. If we defy him, even if it suits that cow Holten’s plans, there’ll be hell to pay. Benner Landor won’t let anyone make a fool of him. Just the fact leaving here’d make me happy will probably be enough for it to be forbidden.’
‘There was a day when I let people tell me what to do and think and be,’ said Carter. ‘It was a long time ago. I defied an empire to be with you. An old man who thinks he can own all the land to the horizon and a gold-digger young enough to be his daughter? They can both keep it. You’re all I need. And I have news of my own. Prince Owen’s sent word from the capital … a guild courier came into town carrying a coded warning. Owen believes the king’s running out of time down south and needs to make his move quick. He’s hunting for Lady Cassandra to keep the imperium sweet. Things are going to come to a head around here real fast, now.’
‘Does your father know?’
‘Gave him the news before I sneaked out to you. The local prefect’s flown into town. Dad met him in the cathedral and reckons he’s up to his neck in the conspiracy. Probably arrived to give orders to whatever killers the king’s paying to do his dirty work. You’ve got to come with me tonight. It won’t be long before ex-slaves are being snatched from the town and tortured to find out where the emperor’s girl is stashed. You’re not safe here anymore. Anybody we stay with isn’t exactly safe, either.’
‘Sweet saints,’ groaned Willow. ‘Bandits wouldn’t attack the estate, would they? We’ve dozens of armed guards and all the servants have been practising drills with rifles and swords.’
‘King Marcus made sure Northhaven’s troops were posted well away when the slave traders flew in before,’ said Carter. ‘And he arranged that just for a cut of their spoils. I don’t think he’d shy away from letting bandits murder everyone in Northhaven to shore up his rule. He’s backed up against the wall now.’
‘Please God, let the assembly vote in favour of Owen’s claim,’ said Willow. ‘A new king and all of our problems will be over.’
‘Maybe,’ said Carter. He sure prayed that’s how things would go; but he reckoned Weyland’s current ruler wouldn’t go quietly if the assembly demanded he abdicate. ‘You know how the saying goes: “hope for the best and prepare for the worst”. Leave Hawkland Park with me. For our future and the sake of everyone here. I know I’m not much … a poor pastor’s son with a trade I’m not much suited to; no property to my name, just the clothes on my back and, it seems, a bunch of real powerful enemies at court.’
‘That’s more than enough for me,’ said Willow. ‘I’ve never cared a whit for land or money or power, and what enemies you have, we share. I’d sooner be by your side in a simple log cabin than inside the greatest estate of the kingdom’s wealthiest house without you.’
Carter reopened the window. ‘Let me save you from all this disgusting luxury, then, Miss Landor. You can ditch all your servants and silk dresses and silver cutlery; swap hot baths for bathing in cold forest streams; trade stuffed swan breast and honey-roasted pork for snared wood pigeon and hare.’
‘Sold,’ said Willow, with a faint smile. ‘It beats Vandian gruel any day.’ She went to a large wooden wardrobe, opened the door and removed a warm brown fur-lined coat that wouldn’t have disgraced a mountain trapper. After she’d put it on, she bent down and fiddled inside the back of the wardrobe. There was a click and Willow dipped her hand deep inside, returning with a canvas bag swelled with coins.
‘You been helping those highwaymen attacking travellers?’ asked Carter.
Willow shook her head, sadly. ‘The week we came back from Vandia, I went to town and sold most of the jewellery my mother left me when she died.’
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘I’m not a fool, Carter Carnehan. I knew we’d be in danger the moment we arrived home with the true king, carrying the secret that the usurper’s court was trading our people for the imperium’s riches. If my mother was alive and given the choice between a live daughter and a well-accessorized dead one, I know which she’d choose. The pieces I kept on top of my dresser have disappeared, anyway. The cow’s been sending her foul little manservant into my rooms when I’m not around, stealing anything that’s not nailed down and fencing it in town. But nobody knew about this wardrobe. My mother had the hidden compartment made for me before she died.’
‘A girl has to have secrets,’ said Carter, a saying that Mary Carnehan often used to bring out and dust off when her son had been asking too many questions.
‘I wish we didn’t know the king’s,’ said Willow. She slipped the coat on, pushing the coins into a pocket. ‘No, actually, I take that back. I am glad we know what King Marcus’s capable of; it’s the only way we’re going to end his reign. Let’s go.’ She gazed around her room for a last time, wistfully.
‘Anything else you want to take?’
‘Only my memories. Damned if this has been any kind of home to me since Leyla Holten arrived. I lost my brother in Vandia, and although I didn’t know it at the time, I lost my father back home too. Sod the bloody lot of them.’
Sod the bloody lot of them. There were words to live by. ‘I’ll climb out onto the ledge first, scramble on top on the roof and then help you out.’
‘I swear, the Carnehan family are part mountain goat.’
‘Part owl’s what we’ll need. Plenty of patrols walking the grounds tonight, guarding against trouble.’ And Carter was sure they’d find some tomorrow morning when Willow Landor’s rooms were discovered empty.
Carter emerged first, the cold biting across his cheeks at this height. He quickly got himself onto the roof. Then Willow emerged. Carter helped her off the window ledge and onto the tiles above, keeping a tight hold as they scrambled across the gables. Willow was never as comfortable with heights as he was. Carter remembered that from their youth. Willow’d been quite a tom-boy, almost as ready for mischief as Carter and her brother, but she had always hesitated when Carter and Duncan scaled the grounds’ old oaks. Shouting up angrily as they shook branches and threw acorns down at her. Those trouble-free days seemed a lifetime away, now. The two of them moved slowly and carefully in the dark, checking each icy foothold on the tiles’ slope before they reached the edge of the mansion facing the brook. The sentries’ lantern light made it easy to mark the servants’ position in the grounds. He and Willow waited until the lights had bobbed around the far wing of Hawkland Park and then started to descend using a drainpipe, moving between the ledges and balconies until they reached the ground. Carter landed first, Willow hitting the flower bed outside the dark dining room next. She groaned, trying to hold her silence but he thought Willow might have twisted her ankle on the final drop. He slipped across to her, but that concern vanished as his heart leapt into his mouth — gravel crackling to their side. Carter spun around, taking in the ring of armed retainers emerging from the mansion’s shadows, seven or eight men uncovering lit lanterns covered with black-out blankets. An ambush, but how?
A short, evil-faced servant waved a pistol towards the leather belt under Carter’s coat. From the wicked scar running down his face it must be Nocks, the mistress of the house’s lapdog. ‘You can drop that to the dirt, hayseed. And certain careful how you do it.’
Carter did as instructed. His belt hit the floor, one pistol and two knives crunching on the path’s gravel. No, just the one blade, Carter noticed his second sheaf lay curiously empty. Not that its loss mattered much given his present circumstances. He heard a deep growl of disapproval and glanced behind him. Damn, but it was old man Landor himself, accompanied by his new wife. Leyla Landor was beautiful, but well-formed the same way a newly minted blade was, the kind that’d cut you even as you held it in your hand. Her face glowed pale and cruel in the lantern light. Benner looked older and more tired than he remembered. Resurrecting his half-burnt town as a city must be proving wearying.
‘You’ve set yourself on a hard path,’ rumbled Benner. ‘Because if I didn’t know any better, boy, I’d say you were running off and taking my daughter with you.’
‘Carter wasn’t taking anything,’ said Willow. ‘I was leaving with him.’ She frowned in the direction of Leyla Landor. ‘You’ve got everything you want right there.’
‘On this land, I decide what I want,’ said Benner.
‘I told you she was playing you for an idiot,’ smiled Leyla. ‘All you do is disappoint us, Willow.’
Willow angrily tried to push Nocks away as the man dipped a hand into her coat, triumphantly removing the bag bulging in her pocket. ‘And they’ve been thieving from you, to boot. Look at this fat bundle of trading currency. How many silver candlesticks have you and lover-boy here stolen from the park to sell for this? I wager that’s why Willow’s maid was avoiding the gatehouse and creeping across the brook the other night. Probably carrying a sack full of stolen loot so heavy it broke the ice under her feet.’
‘That’s not true!’ shouted Carter. He stumbled as retainers swarmed over him, grabbing Willow too, forcing their arms behind their back and binding them with rope thick enough to anchor a riverboat.
‘This is your filthy influence on her,’ bellowed Benner at Carter. ‘You’re as much a thief as your father, boy. Jacob Carnehan’s been laughing at me ever since he returned to Northhaven, speaking out against my plans from his pulpit. He bilked me for the money to fund the rescue mission and used it to buy you back, abandoning Duncan to rot in a foreign hell-hole.’
‘It wasn’t anything like that,’ cried Willow. ‘I’ve told you a hundred times. Duncan had been granted his freedom when the expedition turned up to rescue us. Duncan was as good as one of our captors!’
Benner leaned forward and slapped her. ‘Liar! Lying to cover up your guilt about abandoning your own brother while you fled for freedom. But now I see why the boy brought you back, even if the coward deserted Duncan. You’ve been rutting with this bandit against my wishes under my own roof; a man who left your brother to die. Have you fallen so far?’
‘You mustn’t be too harsh on her,’ said Leyla with false kindness. ‘When Willow was held as a slave, she no doubt submitted to many degrading acts to survive. This low rascal traded on her vulnerability to debase her.’
Leyla Landor’s tone only seemed to enrage the old man more, as she’d calculated it would.
‘I won’t have excuses made for her,’ barked Benner. ‘She carries the Landor name. That means something in this nation. She’s disgraced her family, her house and her honour.’
‘Here we are, Mister Landor …’ Nocks held Willow’s coins out to the head of the house.
‘No, Nocks, you keep it and divide it among yourself and your men. You were absolutely right to keep a watch on my daughter’s quarters from a hide on the grounds. I never thought your fears would be proved correct, but it seems you’re a better damn judge of people than I am these days. Work well done, this evening, sir.’
‘What about this thief?’ asked the manservant, jangling the coins in his hand.
‘Apply a good leathering for trespassing,’ ordered Benner. ‘Then lock him in one of our out-buildings overnight. Toss him out of the park tomorrow morning, after we’ve left for the airfield. I don’t want to see his face again.’
Carter was shaken. Left for the airfield? Where the hell are they going?
‘What are you talking about? Don’t you dare touch Carter!’ shouted Willow, writhing in the arms of the servants restraining her.
‘Take your hands off her,’ pleaded Carter. ‘How can you treat your own daughter like this?’
Benner stepped forward and waved a fist under Carter’s face. ‘Shut up, boy. You had the best of my girl out in foreign parts. I hardly recognize her as a Landor now.’
‘Name’s the only part of you Willow’s got,’ snarled Carter. ‘Everything else comes from her mother.’
Benner’s elbow lurched back and lashed forward, winding Carter in the pit of his gut. ‘You’re not fit to utter my wife’s name, boy. You brought Willow home alive … that’s the only reason I’m not ordering my men to drop you in an ice-hole like that poor maid you corrupted. My daughter’s not for the likes of you. Never was. You might have taken her when she was a slave, but your taint on her skin doesn’t make her your property. For the Landor title Willow bears, if nothing else, she’s going to be married off well; just as she would have been if wicked fate hadn’t snatched her from us.’
‘You should be grateful,’ said Leyla towards her obviously shocked stepdaughter, ‘that there’s still a man of quality willing to accept you, Willow. But then gossip travels slowly across the nation these days with so many real troubles in the news. I can’t say you’ll make Viscount Wallingbeck a good wife, but perhaps with enough time you’ll make him a passable one. William Wallingbeck’s a respectable friend of mine from the capital, so I’m counting on you not to totally disgrace our arrangement.’
‘I’ll see you in hell first, Holten!’ Willow spat and swore at her young stepmother, thrashing furiously and almost breaking free of her captors before extra servants grabbed her and hauled her back. Leyla Landor t
ook a medical bag from one of the retainers, removed a bottle of chloroform and soaked her handkerchief in the sweet-reeking liquid before slipping behind Willow and smothering the girl’s face inside the silk fabric. Willow moaned and slowly stopped struggling and slumped towards the gravel. The servants dragged her unconscious body into the yellow light of an open doorway.
‘Completely hysterical. Send for the doctor immediately,’ commanded Leyla. ‘She’ll need to be professionally sedated for the trip to the capital. I don’t want the girl making a scene along the way. Long journeys are intolerable enough at the best of times.’
‘You mad bastard,’ railed Carter at the landowner. ‘Willow’s a free Weylander. You can’t marry her off against her will … you’re selling her like some nomad trading a spare pony for a wife.’
‘Hold your tongue, boy.’
‘Marriages between people of quality are arranged all the time in the south,’ said Landor’s new wife. ‘Raggedy woodsmen in the wild north may run off at will with penniless field-girls, but those with inheritances to protect must compose suitable matches. The base freedoms of the rutting poor are not, thankfully, shared by sophisticated society. You will understand in time and so will Willow. It is better this way.’
‘Better for you,’ said Carter. ‘With a fresh heir to the park filling your conniving belly. You’re throwing Willow to a nest of vipers in Arcadia.’
‘Have you even visited the capital? Of course not,’ said Leyla. ‘Your views really aren’t worth a damn, hayseed.’
‘Get this thieving rogue out of my sight,’ ordered Benner Landor.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’ Carter cried as the servants dragged him away from the house. ‘If you send Willow south, it’s as good as a death sentence—’
‘You’re pig-ignorant,’ laughed Nocks, the manservant strutting by his side. ‘I knew you’d be heading to the estate for willowy Willow. That envelope we fished off the maid was intended for you, and once you’ve dipped your fingers in that sweet honey, you could never leave the jar alone.’