The Lascar’s Dagger

by Glenda Larke

“You have no choice. You have whatever it is already.”

  He said nothing. It was all so pointless. What good was it to know that a bird was enjoying a beetle? Was his mission in life to call up worms for them, perhaps?

  He scowled. When she raised that querying eyebrow of hers, he said, “Fox wants you dead. And I think he would be happy to see that something fatal happens to you.”

  “I know. There have been several attempts on my life since you left. And I know he’s already seeking supporters. And has found them.” He looked up at her in surprise, and she added, “You aren’t my only informant. Those ledgers in his office – what do you think they signify?”

  “I’ve written down everything I can remember.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers from his jacket and laid them in front of her on the desk. “You might get more from them than I did. I think he’s raising his own force of armed men, lancers. I think ultimately he plans to use the resources of Ardrone’s forests and lands to fund him after his seizure of power. I think some of the ledgers are his accounting of men and women he’s recruited. He wants your job, and he wants the end of the Way of the Oak. And of the Flow too, I reckon. I believe those men I saw on the Chervil track across the mountains were after me, sent by Fox just to make sure I was dead. And I think it likely he’s some kind of agent of A’Va.”

  She was dismissive, saying, “A’Va’s power is always secondary to Va’s.”

  What was it the shrine guardian had said? A’Va is lies and hate and temptation and fear and greed and indulgence. He hunts you down … he’s real, yet a lie with no entity. He wasn’t sure he understood that. A’Va was the antipodal of Va, of course, one positive, the other in opposition. But without entity? Was that the same as saying without body?

  “Oh, one more thing. The Fox family tree I saw? There was something very odd about the dates on it. If they are correct, the whole lot of them seem to live to be well over a century old. Like shrine-keepers.”

  She snorted. “Unlikely. The rest is more worrying. I will send more cautionary words to King Edwayn about his Prime. It won’t be the first warnings he’s had. If anything does happen to me, make no assumption about my demise. I won’t let Fox climb on to the Pontifect’s chair without a fight.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” But the words chilled him. They made the danger more than just a possibility he’d considered. It was real, serious and close at hand. He waited for her to say more, to explain details, but she was silent. He forgot sometimes that although they had a special relationship, he was only a tiny part of the empire she headed. A minor cleric in a huge web of influence and connections.

  He changed the subject.

  “Now tell me about my parents. Tell me why you lied. And why they should have any relevance to Valerian Fox. Are you and I related?”

  “No. Fox and I have a long history, from the days when we were rising through the clerical ranks of Ardrone. I met him often enough to know he has an evil, ambitious heart, and I thwarted his career whenever I could.” She shrugged. “Naturally enough, he looked for my weaknesses. So when I rescued you from the kind of life you led with Robin Rampion, I wanted to hide my connection to you in order to keep you safe. I had no doubt then that if ever he found out he would hit at me through you. Hence the promise extracted from Robin Rampion, and the lies I told. I suppose, from what you just said, that he has discovered the connection. It’s as simple as that.”

  Oh no, it’s not. That’s not the whole truth. Not by the length of an arrow shot.

  “Why does my father – Robin Rampion – think I may not be his son?”

  “Your mother was a farmer’s daughter. She was beautiful, and wilful. Her parents arranged for her to marry Robin Rampion. She took one look at him and fled to Oakwood. She found a job working in a tavern frequented by students of the university. The three of us – Fox, myself and the man who was probably your father – we were all there at the time, all of an age more or less, and we all came to know Iris, your mother. She and I were friendly. She was very likeable, always laughing, popular with the students.”

  “Are you telling me Fox was part of your group?”

  “No, Va forbid! We all disliked him, even then. Fox and the other man, they’d known each other since they were children, but they didn’t like one another. Fox doesn’t come into the story directly. I mention him merely because he might have known more of what happened then than I was aware of at the time.

  “Anyway, we – Iris, the man who might have been your father and I – had a falling-out. It was the end of the university term. Iris went home. I believe she might have been pregnant with you, although she never told me that. She married Robin Rampion, so it is likely she saw him as a way out of her predicament. I think he made life unpleasant for her because he doubted your parentage. She ran away, leaving you behind. Shortly afterwards she died, back in Oakwood.”

  “She left me behind.”

  “Yes,” Fritillary said. “She had no resources to care for a child.”

  “And the man who might have fathered me?”

  “He’d moved on. Gone to another university.”

  “Did he know about me?”

  “Perhaps. Iris loved him. I think she would have told him – if she was indeed having his child.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Don’t go there. It’s not worth it. I don’t know anything for sure, any more than Robin was sure. And you’ll never know either. There was … gossip about your mother among the students. Leave it be.”

  His anger roiled, making him feel physically ill.

  Worse still, the woman who’d cared, the one he’d “remembered” that night at the shrine? She hadn’t existed. His mother had deliberately left him with a man who doubted the parentage of her child.

  He looked at Fritillary. She said, “There are some things better left undisturbed, Saker. This is one of them. What matters is now, and the future. I want to keep you well out of Valerian Fox’s reach. I don’t want him to have another chance to hurt you in order to hurt me.”

  “How did he make the connection between us?”

  She shrugged yet again. “A number of people have noted my mentorship of you over the years. I paid for your university fees, which would be a matter of record. Perhaps he investigated because I sent you to the court. Your death would grieve me, and he found that out.”

  He didn’t answer that.

  She said, “I want you to go to Lowmeer to investigate the incidences of the Horned Death.”

  His heart sank. “Are you trying to kill me?” he asked sourly. “Some sort of justice for my foolishness?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be safer in Lowmeer. Saker Rampion is useless to me in Ardrone because he’s not lawfully permitted back there. Change your name to a Lowmian one. They like fish. Call yourself Anchovy Stickleback. Or Thick-lip Mullet.”

  Damn, she wasn’t going to let him forget his foolishness in a hurry. “Actually, I was thinking more about danger from the pestilence than from the law.”

  “Witchery gives you some power to protect yourself from A’Va’s sorcery.”

  “Not true. In the Ardronese outbreaks, shrine-keepers died, and who ever heard of a shrine-keeper without at least one witchery?”

  That reminder appeared to worry her, and she stirred uneasily. “It – it’s a new development, and so far only in Ardrone. You are safer than most people I can send. I want you to investigate the Horned Death, anything you can find out about its connection to devil-kin, anything about the practice of twin murder. Anything relevant, in fact. I’ll give you a letter to an old cleric friend of mine, Prelate Murram Loach, who now heads the Seminary of Advanced Studies on the outskirts of Ustgrind; he’ll help you get started. Of course, you are never to cross the Princess’s path again. You will steer well clear of the Regal’s court.”

  “You didn’t have to say that. I might have acted as a brainless fool once, but I do learn from my mistakes.”

  “Good.”

&
nbsp; “What are you going to do about Fox?”

  “The Ardronese Prime is not your concern, Saker.” She heaved a sigh. “He’s been clever enough to win Shenat approval with his care of those suffering from the Horned Death, even as he stabs them in the back. You can have no idea how many epistles I’ve had from northern Ardrone praising him.”

  “Part of his plan, I imagine. Charm the people you want to make powerless into believing you are on their side…”

  “I shall deal with it. You certainly cannot.”

  “There are other alternatives. Reverence, you need to watch for assassins. For poison in your food. For a stray arrow. A falling tile. If I stayed here, I could be responsible for your safety.”

  She smiled faintly. “No. You go to Lowmeer. Call it your penance, if you like. You leave as soon as you have replenished your kit, whatever you need. Oh, and I’d advise that you wear gloves. All the time.”

  “Did you tell him the truth?”

  Fritillary, who had been standing at the window wondering just what Valerian Fox’s next move would be, turned to face Secretary Barden. “Not entirely.”

  “Mistake.” The old man leaned on his stick and shook his head sorrowfully at her. “He has a right to know.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “But you still aren’t going to tell him?”

  “If I tell – no, when I tell him, I lose him for ever.”

  “Possibly you underestimate the young man.”

  “Underestimate his anger at my duplicity? I don’t think so. Barden, I need him. I need his unquestioning loyalty. And if it takes a lie – or a prevarication – to get it, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Allies are those you trust, not those you deceive.”

  The truth of his words made her feel ill, but the old man didn’t know what it was like to see into the head of a child and sense the nascent talent there, to know there was the possibility of a witchery within unlike any other the world had ever known. A witchery she would one day need at her side, no matter the price.

  I am the Pontifect. Nothing else matters, only my duty to the Pontificate. And to Va, of course. “Right now he is a willing ally and a loyal servant because he doesn’t know the depth of the deception. And that’s exactly the way I want it.”

  She knew the price, though. In the end, Saker Rampion would walk away without a backward glance. There were some things that were indeed unforgivable.

  Only when he’d left the Pontifect’s palace and was sitting in a local hostelry did Saker remember that he’d intended to tell her all about the lascar’s dagger. And yet he hadn’t said a word.

  He dropped his wooden spoon back into the bowl of potage he’d been eating, and drew the kris out of his sheath to lay it on the table. Thinking back to Throssel, he now remembered his earlier intention to write to her about it, and yet he never had.

  You fobbing maggot-pie, he thought, addressing the dagger, you made me forget. More lascar witchery. Ardhi, you’d better find me soon, before this thing curdles my brains.

  He ran a finger over the wrought metal of the blade. It seemed solid, inanimate. The times when it had been more fluid were either in its efforts to reach his side, or to warn him of danger.

  You know what I think I’ll do? I’m going to take you to a shrine, and see how you react.

  The dirty smudge on his fingers came back the moment he stepped under the bare branches of the oak at the main Vavala shrine later that day. When he placed his hands flat to the bark of the trunk, he half expected something awful to happen, but nothing changed. He prayed, his forehead touching the tree, but found little solace. He fumbled for the dagger and touched it to the bark in turn. A stray shaft of wintry sun slipped down through the canopy to illuminate the blade and make the gold flecks shine, but apart from that, nothing happened. The dagger didn’t move, the oak twigs hung still in the windless air, and the shrine-keeper noticed nothing.

  Outside once again, standing near the edge of the tree’s spread, a warbler chirped its friendliness and came down to perch on a branch only inches from his shoulder.

  “Who asked you here, you saucy ball of fluff?” he growled. “You don’t care enough to give me a single feather off your back, even if I asked!”

  The warbler cocked its head, staring. Then it preened its back. When it had finished, it bent down towards him, offering up a single feather in its beak. He gaped at it, aghast.

  No, oh no. That didn’t just happen. He backed away, stumbling, then turned and fled.

  A totally useless, boil-brained witchery. He could charm birds into giving him their feathers … Va above, was he mad? Had the whole fobbing world gone curdled crazy?

  He began to laugh. There was Pontifect Fritillary Reedling thinking she was the one sending him to Lowmeer, when of course that wasn’t it at all. It was Ardhi’s doing, or the Chenderawasi kris, drawing him back to Ustgrind.

  Part of him, the part that knew he was being manipulated by forces far greater than he, wanted to howl at the wind in frustration. In terror. The rest of him – the part that acknowledged he was going to Lowmeer to face whatever he must, whether it be Horned Death, or devil-kin, or A’Va, or just a life without ever seeing Mathilda again – knew that he had finally grown up.

  Life, he thought, is really about accepting that, in the end, you have to deal with whatever happens.

  29

  Paying Another’s Price

  Mathilda sank into a deep curtsey, her skirts spread and her head bowed. She stayed that way, perfectly balanced, afraid to look up.

  What if he’s ugly? I wager he is. I wager he’s repulsive. And old and wrinkled…

  It wasn’t entirely a guess. She’d seen his portrait, painted when he was at least ten years younger, and even then the Regal of Lowmeer had been an austere, grim-faced prune of a man. She’d heard rumours at court that he’d murdered his previous Ardronese noble wife because she’d proved barren.

  “My lady, arise.”

  A hand wavered under her nose, thin-fingered, knobbled and swollen at the knuckles. She placed her hand on the palm offered to her, then raised her head to look.

  “Your Grace,” she whispered. Her sapphire-blue, pearl-studded wedding gown billowed around her, and her first impression was that she was the only splash of brightness on a ship draped in funereal colours. An awning, erected over the deck in case it rained, dimmed the sunlight and accentuated the sombre. Everyone within her range of vision was wearing black or grey, with white trimming. Va save me, they’re a congregation of pied auks!

  “Welcome on board,” the Regal said. “We’ve been awaiting our royal bride with impatience.”

  He bent to kiss her fingers as she rose from her curtsey, and his dry lips lingered on her skin longer than was customary. She had a whiff of bad breath; the ruler of Lowmeer had rotting teeth. Her next impression was of a long face ending in a jowled jawline, and a paunch that obliterated his waistline. The rest of his figure was too thin. His neck was scraggy, his arms lacked flesh, and his thighs were as scrawny as those of an underfed rooster.

  Sweet Va, she thought in revulsion. I must bed a man who resembles a starveling fowl with a pot belly? She fought a desire to scramble back on to the galley that had rowed her out to the anchorage. Instead, she said, “Your Grace is indeed kind.” Her voice wobbled, more in horror then fright.

  “Allow us to present our cousin, the Lady Friselda Drumveld. She will be milady’s wards-dame.”

  Sweet Va, she had to be fifty. At least. A solid trunk of slate grey was finished with white cuffs at the wrists and topped with a white linen headdress. Her only adornment was a plain gold widow’s band on her finger.

  “It will be my honour,” the woman said. Her voice rumbled like approaching thunder.

  Mathilda inclined her head in acknowledgement. What in Va’s name is a wards-dame?

  “We are sure Lady Friselda will be of indispensible service to milady.” Vilmar’s gaze fell to the curve of Mathilda’s breasts, pushed
up by the tight bodice of her wedding gown, and lingered there. “Shall we proceed with the ceremony?” He offered her his arm, and she slipped her fingers through the crook of his elbow. He patted them with his other hand.

  Prime Fox bowed and stepped forward to face them.

  Sweet cankers, how she hated him!

  She looked around the deck, desperately seeking a friendly face. In answer, Ryce moved forward until he was standing at her shoulder. She gave him a frantic look of entreaty, but he ignored the message.

  Where’s Celandine? I need Celandine. No … Sorrel. She must remember that. Celandine had ceased to exist. And Sorrel wanted to be unobtrusive until the ship sailed.

  She was close to panic. Trapped. There was no way out, not now. The Prime spoke, something about the sanctity of marriage, but she didn’t listen. The Regal was leaning heavily on her arm, as if his knees wouldn’t hold him erect. She riveted her gaze on to his hand where it covered her own. Liver spots splotched his skin. She thought wildly of breaking free, of flinging herself over the railing into the cold waters of the Betany estuary. Her heavy gown would drag her under in seconds.

  She shivered.

  No. You are the daughter of a king. You are about to become the Regala. You will show the world what it is to be a queen…

  She raised her chin and prepared herself to recite her wedding vows.

  The festivities dragged on.

  Festivities? No, Mathilda thought savagely, there was nothing festive in the way the Lowmians conducted themselves. Regal Vilmar ignored her and spent his time speaking to Ryce. Someone had brought him a chair, and he’d eased himself into it like an old man. When his glance did stray her way, it was to fixate on her neckline.

  My husband.

  Dear Va. I am truly married. Tonight he beds me; tomorrow morning we sail with the tide for Ustgrind.

  As the afternoon wore on, and it grew colder up on deck, the wedding party dispersed. Most of the Ardronese guests departed for the shore and the town hall, where a banquet had been prepared to celebrate her marriage. The Regal, determined not to set foot on Ardronese soil because he believed it would show him to be the lesser monarch, ordered food to be ferried from there to the Lowmian banquet, planned for the lower deck of his own vessel.