The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1)

by P. J. Fox

  It was a big promotion for Rose, from dairy maid to chambermaid, but she knew her business well enough. At Enzie Hall, all hands did all things. And Isla would need a chaperone, at least on the journey north. Once there…well, who could say? A woman such as Rose, young and unmarried, might decide to go anywhere. And Isla thought that she’d like seeing a familiar face. She’d grown fonder of Rose in recent weeks, valuing her staid predictability in the face of Rowena’s mercurial nature.

  She let Rose help her get dressed, and then sat still as Rose braided her hair into a series of ropes and wound them around her head. Pinning them in place, she continued to chatter. Isla listened with half an ear while she mentally prepared herself for her day. In the few weeks left before the ground froze, there was much to do. She really shouldn’t have slept so late and couldn’t afford the missed time. Even if she was leaving soon, she had no intention of shirking her responsibilities here. Which reminded her, she had to ask Tristan about her replacement. She didn’t doubt that he’d thought of one and, more than likely, the candidate would be one of his own men. Which suited Isla just fine; no one at Enzie Moor was capable to the task, which was how she’d ended up with it.

  Rose was still enthusing about Caer Addanc’s windows. Enzie Moor would never be able to afford glass, Isla thought bitterly. This was her home, however much she’d grown to loathe it, and she felt guilty for abandoning it to its fate.

  Moreover, she’d treasured her time with Tristan but she couldn’t help but feel like in some ways she already had abandoned the manor that she’d been charged with saving. Her father’s incompetence and her stepmother’s disinterest had left Isla, at an age where most girls were just starting to braid their hair, with the burdens of someone three times her age. With the burdens of a man three times her age, who’d had the benefit of both life experience and an education. Isla had had neither, and had struggled.

  Which, their shared experience in this regard was part of what formed the basis of her bond with Tristan. He might not have been…himself then, but he remembered what it was like to run a castle alone. He’d done so during wartime, and in his own way been just as woefully unprepared. In his case, he’d made an error in judgment that had ultimately cost him his life. Isla thought she understood; he’d been tasked with a harder job than any ten men could have accomplished working together and he’d had no one to rely on for guidance but himself. Just like her. And now, he was equally as alone as he’d been then because he was so different. He might not be alone of his kind—from what he’d said, Isla had gleaned that there were others—but there were so few that he was as good as.

  They both knew what it was like to be alone.

  Isla wondered if she’d ever meet another demon and, if so, how different he—or she—would be from Tristan. Tristan seemed, for the most part, if not kindly disposed toward people, than indifferent to them. He might take pleasure from killing, but he never killed purely for pleasure. And he took his duties to his so-called brother seriously. But Isla got the impression that Tristan held himself on a tight rein, and that others of his kind might not be so reserved in their tendencies.

  Demons survived on human flesh. That Tristan was currently inhabiting a human form made no difference; he had to feed on others, or he would die. He didn’t age, like a human man would, and he was immune to the ravages of disease that would ultimately fell many of his companions. He could not be killed by mortal weapons, and possessed remarkable powers of healing and regeneration. But he was not immortal; he, like all of his kind, might be so long lived as to seem all but immortal to human eyes but he could be killed.

  She’d asked him once if he ate and drank for show and she’d learned since that he more or less did. He enjoyed certain foods, and they didn’t hurt him, but nor did he truly require them to survive. How often he fed on others, and how he fed on them, Isla didn’t know. She hadn’t asked. She was, in truth, afraid of confronting how different he was. She wasn’t afraid that she’d stop loving him and maybe, in the end, that was the problem: that she’d see something terrible and have to resign herself to the fact that she’d turned out to be the kind of person who didn’t care. Who could overlook atrocities. Who was, herself, evil.

  She’d argued with herself, often enough: wolves fed on sheep, and sometimes, if the snows were late in thawing and food was scarce, on small children. And yet no man decried them as evil. They simply were; they followed their nature. There was nothing of morality in the food chain. Was Hart immoral, when he shot a deer for meat, or even for sport?

  Moreover, she had a hard time convincing herself that Tristan—her Tristan—did such things. She knew him. She’d seen him at table. He had a life, and a family; he was a member of a chivalric order. How was it possible that he had this other side?

  These questions were too hard to contemplate, let alone answer.

  Thanking Rose, Isla decided that her first order of business would be to tour the grounds and see how the manor was performing. Instead of concentrating on one area, she’d collect an overview of them all and see if that would help her feel more confident about the manor’s future—whatever that might be.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “I will not!” The man placed his hands on his hips, arms akimbo, and glared. His bottom lip protruded while his top sloped in slightly, where he’d lost his teeth. His hair was a wild brush on his head, more gray than brown, and he looked as if he hadn’t bathed in years. And probably hadn’t, at that. His jerkin was muddy and his breeches stank, even from this distance. His sleeves gapped at his bulging upper arms, the threadbare laces barely holding them on. His rheumy eyes were defiant. Isla recognized him as one of her father’s men, John. John was, she believed, Rand’s father although she couldn’t swear to this fact. “I will not,” he continued, “implicate myself in the black arts.”

  Isla stopped, watching.

  The man on the other side of the argument was taller and thinner and younger than John by a good many winters. Coming abreast to the argument, Isla could see both their faces. The stranger stood, arms crossed. He radiated the kind of half-amused, half-infuriated patience that showed he felt decidedly put upon. “It’s not,” he replied in the tone of one who’d been having the same conversation for some time and had grown bored of repeating himself, “a work of Satan.”

  “Says you!” John accused.

  “Says me.” The stranger sighed. And then, summing himself up, tried a different tack. “Listen, man, it’s science. Why, I’m not even religious and—”

  It had been the wrong thing to day. “Not religious!” John looked around, as if for support. Which Isla thought he might have, in the growing crowd of onlookers. Some of them were Tristan’s men, but most were local.

  They filtered in to the kitchen yard, where John and the stranger were arguing, small clumps of men drawn from their own labors by the commotion. Many of the clumps, Isla saw, were mixed: her father’s men had been working side by side with men she didn’t recognize, men who looked decidedly northern. A contingent of Tristan’s men had arrived this week, men who would presumably stay on to help run the manor—which needed all the help it could get. But now, whatever fragile peace the two groups had started to achieve was being threatened. Men regarded each other with suspicion as John accused the stranger. “See? He admits it! He rejects the Gods and—”

  “I don’t reject anything, I merely meant that—”

  “You said you weren’t religious!”

  The stranger threw up his hands in disgust. “Good grief, and curse this backwards place!”

  “Now he’s calling us backwards,” John announced, a certain note of satisfaction in his voice.

  Isla came forward, deciding that the moment for intervention had arrived. Seeing her for the first time, several in the small crowd edged forward. “John,” she said gently, “what seems to be the trouble?” She ignored the stranger for the moment; he could wait. She doubted that he was going anywhere and, if her guess was correct, she already kn
ew who he was.

  John turned morose eyes on his master’s daughter. “He wants to raise water from the ground by witchcraft.” The other man started to sputter and Isla silenced him with a brief glare. John continued. “Being a good, believing man myself, I don’t want no truck with bog sprites and house elves and witches and the Gods know what else. Light protect me, but I don’t.”

  Isla doubted very much that the man standing to her left wanted to raise water by the aid of bog sprites. Or that bog sprites existed. Although demons did, so who knew. He was just on the cusp of young middle age, a well built and broad shouldered man with a closely trimmed beard. He had the same pale skin and dark hair as many Northerners, and his pale eyes glared. His jerkin and breeches, Isla saw, were in good repair, cut from leather and cloth dyed a deep loden green. He was a good deal cleaner than John.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” she said. “And you are?”

  “M’lady.” The man nodded in greeting. He was polite but not deferential. “I’m Silas, the new overseer.”

  Isla had thought as much.

  “Great northern ape.” John spat.

  “Come now,” Isla said crisply, “none of that.” Silas, despite his Morvish name, did bear the distinct mark of the northern tribes. Then again, many of Tristan’s men did. Wars aside, there had been a good deal of friendly contact between the tribes and the villages throughout the North. John narrowed his eyes briefly and then nodded, retreating a pace or two. He glared at Silas suspiciously, sucking at the holes where his teeth used to be. It looked like he was chewing his cud.

  “Does my father know?” Isla asked.

  Silas wiped his hands on his trousers and spat. “I just arrived last night, and later than I’d intended but the roads are treacherous. I was set upon, and had to fight my way free.” He was straightforward in his recitation; the roads were poor throughout Morven and bandits were a fact of life. Isla wondered if Hart, patrolling, would find their bodies by the side of the road. “So no,” he finished, “I haven’t had a chance to introduce myself. In truth,” he added, “I was going to introduce myself to you. It’s my understanding that you’ve held your father’s place?”

  Isla nodded. “So it would seem.”

  Silas spat again, of necessity rather than in editorial comment. “Ayuh, that’s how it is sometimes. But you know from your lord and mine that this manor is being placed under receivership. I ran a spot in the North for His Grace these past five winters and now I’ve been called here.”

  “Welcome.” Isla smiled. She liked Silas already. As coarse as he was, he appeared both competent and interested. And he’d displayed a remarkable degree of patience with John, who was even now making the sign against evil and muttering hexes. “Now,” she coaxed, “about those bog sprites?”

  “Yes, well”—Silas cast a glare in John’s direction—“the first order of business is to establish the basics: water, sanitation, storage.” He waved a hand, indicating the broad expanse of scrubby yard that stretched between the kitchen outbuildings. “Apparently, or so I was told at breakfast, the water that was used to cook my eggs is the same water that the cook pisses in.” There was a note of incredulity in his voice.

  Isla nodded, confirming that this was true.

  Silas shook his head in disbelief. “I haven’t seen the like since I was a quartermaster in the army.” He must mean the northern army; Isla doubted that this man had served under the old king. Although he might have. A general amnesty had been granted after Piers took the throne, to any and all who’d swear a new oath of loyalty.

  “And your proposed solution was…?”

  “To dig a well. They’ve been doing it in Chad for two hundred years.” He glared at John. “Chadian brothers discovered the means.”

  The church also said that reason was a tool of the Dark One. “John has heard your explanation,” Isla said tactfully, “but I haven’t. Perhaps you’d be so good as to explain this Chadian well?” And perhaps if John could see that she understood and approved, he’d give up this idea that the new overseer was trying to ruin them. Moreover, Isla was curious.

  “Look at the ground, here.” He pointed to where pieces of rock, the tips of huge points that no one had yet been able to dislodge, thrust up through the dying grass. “This is a rock called shale. It’s soft, and can be split with a pickaxe. I won’t bore you with the details, ma’am, but beneath our feet is something called an aquifer: a water-bearing layer of porous rock.”

  “Satan!” John shrieked. “Water doesn’t come from rock; that’s the workings of evil!”

  “Water does come from rock, you pestilent old bag!”

  “Water comes from rivers and lakes, you ham-fisted northern giant!”

  Isla rested her head in her hand.

  “And where do you think the water in the rivers and lakes comes from? It comes out of the ground!” Silas thundered, answering his own question. “From springs! And a well is a man-made spring. There’s nothing of Satan, I can assure you, in using water to cook that you haven’t just pissed in.”

  “The church says—”

  “Is your priest here, drinking your water?”

  “Enough!” Isla had finally reached her limit. She didn’t speak loudly, but even so her voice carried. “Quit it, both of you, or I’ll have you both in the stocks. And then I’ll tell His Grace what I think of your self-control.”

  Both men shut up instantly.

  Silas, it seemed, was aware of a process wherein water rose from a well under its own pressure and without pumping. This process was used in the North. Which, with its craggy peaks, was ideally suited. If the pressure was great enough, Silas explained, then the water would rise straight to the surface and flow freely from the well. He proposed to dig the well and, around it, a deep basin that he would then line with tile. The basin would serve as a continuous source of fresh water, and the action of the well would keep it from freezing too deeply. All one would have to do would be to breach the surface of the ice with a pick. “We can also use the same process to fill irrigation channels,” he finished.

  “That sounds brilliant,” Isla said.

  “I asked John to help me oversee the project,” Silas replied. Quite tactfully, Isla thought. He was, sensibly, trying to include the earl’s own men in his projects so that they’d feel as though the projects were their own. No one wanted the manor’s residents to feel as though they were being taken over. Tristan’s men weren’t here as an invading force, however much old hands like John might think otherwise. “John didn’t want to, which I respect, but when I proposed using my own men he felt left out.”

  “You’re going behind our backs,” John grumbled, just loud enough to be heard. “Making changes.” He said changes like Silas had proposed bringing the plague. But John had lost his audience; hearing the new overseer’s explanation, heads in the crowd were nodding. Isla felt grateful that she’d been present to diffuse a potentially dangerous situation.

  With a final word to Silas, Isla left him explaining how and where water could be found. Even John had begun to ask questions, and she paused for a minute to listen. If the two groups, Northerners and Highlanders, could learn to get along then Enzie Moor’s future was assured. She didn’t know exactly how many of the duke’s men proposed to stay, or how many more had been summoned. She certainly hadn’t realized that Silas had been, although she’d figured out who he must be readily enough. She’d known that someone would be appointed to the position.

  Part of her was pleased, and part of her was a little sad. This had been her home, her baby, and now it was someone else’s. Isla’s presence had been so vital for so long; her whole identity had been wrapped up in being the only responsible one in the manor. Now that was changing. She was growing irrelevant, and she wasn’t sure entirely how that made her feel. She was relieved; this was what she wanted. But when she left, she’d do so as someone else’s bride. And in the North, she’d be someone else’s wife. Caer Addanc was, she was sure, well enough run tha
t however much her input was valued no one would rely on her the same way. No one would rely on her the same way again. The knowledge was bittersweet.

  Someone else’s wife. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted?

  Sometimes she was sure of the answer and sometimes she felt like the walls were closing in on her. She’d grown so used to her freedom, to acting as an independent adult and to making her own decisions. As Tristan’s wife, she’d be expected to obey him—his rules and his commands, whether she agreed with them or no. Could she? After living as a free spirit for so long? Could she rein herself in, constrain herself to someone else’s will? Forever? Even someone she loved as much as Tristan?

  Lost in these unsettling thoughts, she didn’t notice Rowena until she almost ran into her.

  FORTY-NINE

  “Oh,” she said, startled. “Good morning.”

  Rowena looked radiant, as always, her skin flawless and her hair glittering in the sun. And today, too, she looked something like her old self: not the aloof ice queen she’d become in recent weeks but the near-child she was, happy to be outdoors and alive. Seeing Isla’s change in expression, she smiled wanly.

  “Good morning,” she replied. She’d worn one of her simpler dresses today, and the cloak thrown casually over one shoulder revealed a kirtle bare of ornamentation. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she added, by way of apology. She looked a little shame-faced. And then, “have you had breakfast?”