by Stephen Hunt
Leyla Holten turned and spotted Willow, a look of cunning triumph slipping across her face and then disappearing almost as quickly as it had appeared. ‘Ah, my Lady Wallingbeck,’ announced Holten, loudly, the master of the House of Landor swivelling around to spot his daughter. ‘Ready to hear your husband speak for the loyalist cause this evening? You must be so proud of how essential he has become at court.’
‘Husband,’ said Willow, her voice barely escaped her throat, as though the servant’s foul concoction had sapped her voice. ‘Beast.’
‘You’ll have to forgive her ladyship,’ said the servant as his men manhandled Willow swaying towards the steps to the hotel lobby. ‘She’s taking poppy tincture for her nervous attacks.’
‘Fish oil is the cure for melancholy,’ said her father, sounding saddened. ‘Have the viscount’s doctor contact mine in Northhaven. Willow, hold yourself steadier than this. Stand straight, girl. Half of the realm’s most powerful leaders are gathered inside. You will bring dishonour to your new name in front of them unless you can master your dark humours.’
‘She will settle given time,’ said Holten, affecting concern. ‘I told you, husband, it is natural she should be jealous of my state and yearn for children of her own. When she is pregnant, her body’s changes will bring her comfort naturally without the need for further medical remedies.’
‘What have you done to me?’ Willow croaked.
‘You have a title,’ said her father, as if this was the most precious thing in the world, ‘you have a house of your own to call yourself mistress over, and a generous financial settlement in the bank. We’ve prevented you from throwing your life away. I would say our work’s been well done.’
‘You’ve destroyed my life.’
‘I had hoped she would come to understand the importance of her new position,’ said Holten, tugging at Benner Landor’s walking cane, ‘with the fate of the country swinging in the wind. Her husband may have embraced the king’s cause, but your daughter’s still behaving no better than a petulant child denied a bag of sweets. The pretender’s rabble is breaking windows in the streets, the nation’s order hangs in the balance, but Willow’s self-indulgent whims must be met or she’ll be sure to sulk and swoon until she gets her way.’
‘Yes, you were right about bringing her to Arcadia before it was too late,’ said Benner. He waved at the servants. ‘Drag the frivolous creature inside and ensure she doesn’t disgrace us any more than is necessary to see this evening through. Thank the stars that King Marcus isn’t attending tonight to meet her like this.’
Holten and her father passed Willow as the servants escorted her towards the entrance and she was about to pass the doors when she heard an explosive cry behind her. Her first thought – that the trouble on the streets nearby had spilled outside the expensive hotel – was replaced with a ferocious surge of hope as she turned and saw who it was yelling. Carter! And Carter’s father sprinting fast behind him, along with a young man she didn’t recognize. Willow staggered, shocked. She only realized it was no drug-addled hallucination when she heard Holten gasp; her father growling, ‘How in hell’s name did they get here?’
‘Willow!’ yelled Carter. ‘Let her go, damn you.’
Willow’s father barked at the guardsmen advancing down the steps. ‘Throw these men out – they have no part in tonight’s business at the banquet.’
Jacob Carnehan pushed past one of the retainers trying to hold him back, waving a sheet of paper towards them. ‘I have an affidavit of legal majority for this woman, duly notarized by the circuit court of Northhaven,’ said Jacob. ‘She’s free to come with us and return to Northhaven. Ask the lady what she wants to do …’
The soldier’s captain took the paper and examined it. ‘It’s as he says,’ nodded the officer, confused by the unexpected turn of events.
‘Let me go!’ demanded Willow, trying to struggle free. ‘Take your hands off of me. I’m leaving with Carter.’
Her father shook his head in fury. ‘So, the northern magistrates are still trying to tweak my damn nose? They’re nothing but jealous buffoons in dusty wigs and fancy gowns paid for by my taxes.’ Benner Landor snatched the legal paper from the guardsman’s hand. ‘Let me see that!’ He scanned the document rapidly, before flourishing it with a look of triumph on his face that Willow knew well. So, that was all she was to him now? Trade. A successful trade deal. Her surge of hope retreated as rapidly as it had appeared. ‘This judgement is made out in the name of Willow Landor, and my daughter is a Landor no longer. She is the Lady Wallingbeck! This document carries as much validity as a handbill blown down the street.’
Carter’s face distorted as if someone had plunged a dagger inside his chest. ‘Already? No, she can’t be married.’
‘It certainly wasn’t the grand affair that would have been worthy of my house,’ snarled Willow’s father. ‘But by the saints, the marriage papers are legally lodged. She’s not for you, boy. I told you that back in the park. You’ve come a long way south to be disappointed.’
‘Was that before or after you had Carter whipped like a dog?’ spat Jacob, and for a terrible moment Willow thought the pastor might reach for one of the pistols swaying by his side. There was a clatter of rifles from the guardsmen protecting the hotel as they realized the confrontation might turn into more than angry words between two bickering families.
‘I gave your son what he had coming for trespass, breaking into the house and trying to steal my daughter like a bandit in the night,’ shouted Benner. ‘My retainers would have been within their rights to gun him down in the dark. There are enough marauders scavenging about the wilds close to home to have justified it.’
‘We saved Willow’s life,’ said Jacob. ‘Carter saved Willow’s life. We returned her to you from the sky mines.’
‘And you abandoned my son in that far-called hell-hole as though my boy was no more than a tainted barrel of corn oil!’ shouted Benner Landor. ‘You stole my money to fund the rescue expedition and left the heir of my house behind to rot. Duncan’s blood is on your hands. Maybe my treacherous daughter deserves no better than your thieving wretch of a boy, but the name she carries does, and by God that’s what she’s been given. She’s Lady Wallingbeck now, so you can bugger off back to the north and your whelp can rut until he’s dry with fishermen’s girls and tavern owners’ daughters. Willow Landor’s been taken from you every bit as surely as you stole my son from me.’
Carter tried to fight through the line of servants around Willow, but they were picked for their size and strength and held him back. ‘Please tell me this isn’t true, Willow. That you’re not married.’
‘It … is true,’ cried Willow, the admission nearly breaking her as she tried to struggle free of the hands restraining her. ‘They forced me, tricked me. He’s—’ She broke down, overwhelmed by trying to express all the evil that had been done to her.
‘She’s been drugged,’ said the young man wearing a librarian guildsman’s livery. ‘Look at her, Carter. She’s barely conscious.’
‘My stepdaughter has sadly been overwhelmed by the demands of her elevation to high southern society,’ said Holten, standing haughtily astride the steps. ‘Society with whom we have an engagement to fulfil, alongside Willow’s proud new husband. See this beggarly rabble far from the Winteringham, Captain. They have no lawful business with those gathered here tonight, no business at all.’
Before the guardsmen could react, a commotion began beyond the railings separating the hotel from the street. A sizeable group of constables in the bright green uniforms of the capital’s police pushed through the people on the pavement, emblem plates on their pillbox-style hats glinting in the lantern light. Willow hadn’t heard anyone at the hotel whistle for the police. Were they here to help the pastor enforce his court order? Please. She felt her desperation to be free of her forced marriage rise overwhelmingly. Let them be here for me. Shadows bobbed behind the hotel’s high windows, curious faces against the glass wondering if
the capital’s troubles were about to spill into their privileged enclave.
Benner Landor raised his voice as though he spoke to a group of his estate’s tenants, pointing at the three northerners. ‘These wretches are in breach of the peace. See them off.’
‘I have an order from the Northhaven circuit court concerning that woman,’ said Jacob, his deep reverberating voice demanding he be instantly obeyed. ‘She is in her majority and being held here against her will. You will enforce it.’
Willow watched a police officer – the commander from his plumed custodian-style helmet – wave away the document offered in his direction by the pastor. ‘I have an order, too, Father. And mine’s from the People’s Assembly with the seal of the High Court of Arcadia stamped on it. You and your son are called as witnesses to the assembly tomorrow morning. We are commanded to take you into custody to ensure your attendance.’
‘Damn Prince Owen,’ said Jacob. ‘That isn’t our business.’
‘But it’s mine,’ said the police commander. His constables had their pistols raised in the group’s direction. ‘I’ll relieve you of your side-arms, Father, as slowly and carefully as you like.’
For a second, Willow saw a flash of the terrible figure she had glimpsed in Vandia during the slave revolt – the man who had no right to be a pastor or Carter’s father – absolutely not the peaceful, gentle man she had grown up with in Northhaven. A shadow who could draw his pistols and walk their fire across every constable and guardsmen here like an angry hell-storm, dodging and weaving, enemies dropping to thunder faster than dying men could possibly react to. A corpse-maker, a hungry devil given flesh. But that evil alien shadow passed as quickly as she’d glimpsed it, the young man in librarian’s livery resting a hand on the pastor’s wrist. ‘That’s not the way. Not yet.’
Carter lashed into the servants blocking his path as the constables seized him from behind, dragging him away. ‘I’ll come for you, Willow. I don’t care what they do to me or what any court in the land decrees. You’re not staying in the south with that bastard. I’ll come for you, wherever you are, wherever they take you …’
Willow struggled to break free, to call to Carter; to tell him she’d fight for as long as she endured and that she’d escape time and time again, however much filth they poured down her throat, whatever they did to her, however much pain they subjected her to; but the servants clamped their hands tight over her mouth and dragged her through the hotel doors. Into polite company, gossiping ladies in bell-shaped dress whispering at the shocking disturbance outside. Her father had stormed away down the corridor, furious at being embarrassed by the interlopers in front of the great and the good.
Leyla Holten strode forward, Willow gripped vice-tight from behind by the servants. Holten had the servant’s bottle in her hand and she forced the neck into Willow’s mouth, making her stepdaughter gag as the bitter liquid rolled down her throat. Holten smiled for the benefit of the chattering aristocrats in the lobby. ‘There we are my dear, that should help calm your nerves for the evening,’ Holten bent in and whispered into Willow’s ear as her feet swayed beneath her. ‘But don’t think you won’t feel anything when you’re taken back to the hall after the banquet. My fingers will make sure that William is wound as tight as a bow-string for his sport tonight. There won’t be enough laudanum in the kingdom to deaden your pain.’
Willow’s dulled gaze focused on Holten’s face. ‘I swear … I’m going to see you dead, you bitch.’
Holten kissed her gently on the cheek, turning to smile at the onlookers and whispering back. ‘And I swear I’m going to keep you alive, Lady Wallingbeck. For just as long as I can, right up until the moment you decide to slit your wrists to end all of this.’
Cassandra’s eyes opened blearily, her face left itching by the sleep draught. For a brief moment she allowed herself a flash of elation at the possibility that she had been followed from the great forest and rescued by the imperium’s agents. But her hands were still tied behind her back. Then she saw she was not the only prisoner huddled under the camouflage net strung between boulders, she was one of three women, the other two Rodalians by the look of them. And the men that had taken her were nothing like the ragtag bandits back in Weyland. Her kidnappers were bare-chested above brown leather trousers and covered in a whirl of abstract tattoos, a tanned blue tinge to their skin that seemed natural rather than dye or woad. They had sword scabbards strapped to their backs, and a couple carried large wooden crossbows as well, quivers filled with ugly barbed-head bolts tied to their thighs. All of them had dark hair, short-cropped, but the most remarkable thing about her new captors was how muscular they were – they would have embarrassed the professional gladiators of the empire, warriors who spent all day with weights and training, fed like prize cattle to build fighting bulk. It was unnatural! Muscles upon muscles, looking more like shaped rocks than mortal flesh.
‘Do not make a noise. Do not stare at them,’ hissed one of the Rodalian women. ‘Try not to attract their attention.’
Cassandra snorted. ‘As these dogs have already seized me, I don’t think they have much to fear from my gaze.’
‘They are Nijumeti … nomads from the Arak-natikh steppes,’ said the woman. ‘Do not anger the warriors.’
‘To hell with them.’
‘Your accent is far-called. You are a traveller with a caravan?’
‘Prisoner seems to be my permanent trade at the moment.’
‘I am Dolki.’ She indicated the other woman, who smiled thinly back. ‘This is Inmu. She is a river washer. She speaks no trade tongue. Until she was captured, she hadn’t even left our valley.’
Cassandra introduced herself and shivered in the morning’s cold, a single blanket left from the night before. Her leg irons had been struck off, ankles now unencumbered, although her hands were bound tighter than ever behind her back.
Cassandra moaned in pain. Her ankles burned. ‘Do they hold us for ransom?’
Dolki shook her head. ‘What ransom would the daughter of a postal rider be worth? They will carry us back to their clans in Arak-natikh.’
‘Those big brutes will freeze to death before they take us anywhere.’
‘They will not,’ said Dolki. ‘They are able to lie down in night snow and treat it as we would a soft down mattress. Cold does not affect the Nijumeti. Heat does not bother them. Pain much the same. It is said they can ride a week in the saddle and still fight a battle at the other end. You will find out … your children will be half-Nijumet.’
‘I will have no children by these barbarian dogs!’ said Cassandra, outraged.
‘Why do you think they have snatched us?’ said Dolki. ‘They are a raiding party and this is their final rite of passage as clan riders. They must steal wives from Rodal so that they have less need to raid rival steppes clans for women, causing feuds and bad feeling.’
‘I thought your cursed freezing land was known as the “Walls of the League”, holding back such savages?’
‘The major passes are fortified by great walls,’ said Dolki. ‘No horde can force entry. But our border with the steppes stretches for thousands of miles.’ She nodded her head up towards the camouflage netting. ‘The Nijumeti scale the mountains in parties of less than a hand, and those who survive enter Rodal to search for wives and booty that may make their boys into men. Even the skyguard’s patrols cannot stalk and strafe them all.’
‘I will make no boy into a man!’
‘In that much you are right,’ said a voice. It was a female Nijumet, her azure face half-hidden in the shadow of a hooded leather cloak. ‘There is hardly enough meat on your arm to lift a feed bucket up to a pony.’
Dolki moaned in fear and fell into silence.
‘And have you come looking for a husband, barbarian? Or would you have me as a wife, too?’
The Nijumet yanked her hood down and slapped Cassandra hard across the face. Her arm was as bare and strong as the male warriors. ‘I am a witch rider, whore-child, and you w
ill show me respect.’ She seized Cassandra’s face and turned it left and right, then dug her blue fingers into Cassandra’s mouth to inspect her teeth, ‘Incredible teeth, like those of a four-year-old. What manner of creature are you, wide eyes? No Rodalian, that much is certain.’
‘You will not have heard of my country. When you do encounter Vandia, you will have cause to lament its name.’
‘Brave talk for a little sow taken so easily.’
‘In case you didn’t notice, I was chained, tied and sat on a shit hole in the middle of a night when your barbarian friends grabbed me. If it were otherwise, you would not have a prisoner. You would have your friends’ corpses to drag back to the dirt of your home.’
‘I saw you were chained. It was I who melted your restraints away with my magic,’ laughed the witch rider.
‘Use a less powerful acid for your “magic” next time. My ankles are raw and bleeding.’
The witch rider crossly pushed Cassandra away. ‘Rodalians do not keep slaves, so I would know you for a convict even without my dream-travels. What are you? A whore being dragged to trial? A caravan traveller caught stealing horses? A murderer? A poisoner?’
‘I am the granddaughter of the Vandian emperor, a hostage of war and of immense value. If you return me to my people you will be made rich beyond dreams.’
‘I may actually believe such words, slipping through those expensive, shining teeth. But your foreign titles are horse shit to me. Nijumeti count nothing of value unless it is stolen by guile and can be packed on the back of a saddle.’ One of the male nomads slipped under the netting and the witch rider turned to speak urgently to him. ‘Do not take this strange one for a wife, Alexamir. She is a soft noble who knows nothing of cooking and healing and keeping a tent. Any of these Rodalians are a better match. At least they know how to clean trousers in a stream. Would you have your children be weaklings or, worse, stillborn?’