The Mandarkin wizard Anskal might have promised to spare Caladhria any future raids but Corrain had no faith in wizards. His own dead lord had trusted a renegade mage and that had been the death of him.
The wicket door flew open and a man fell headlong through it. He scrambled to his feet, one of the Ferl gate wards.
The man had a bloodied nose and a swelling eye. His sword was still in its scabbard though and that clash of blades outside hadn’t been repeated. It was only a common brawl, Corrain realised.
Then he heard young Reven shouting incomprehensible abuse. A moment later the lad choked on a yell of pain.
Corrain was out through the door inside a handful of long strides. He saw a man in a dun jerkin standing over Reven, ready to plant a boot in his ribs.
Grabbing the man by his shoulders Corrain flung him away. Taken wholly unawares, the man reeled backwards down the steps of the hall’s grand portico.
Reven had given a decent account of himself before the blow that had felled him, Corrain noted. The man had a split lip and a bloodied nose.
Regardless, he hauled the bleary-eyed lad to his feet by the front of his already torn shirt. He shook him with all the frustration he couldn’t turn on those cursed nobles cowering in their parliament.
‘What fool’s game are you playing? Where is Sergeant Fitrel?’
Reven pointed with a wavering hand. Appalled, Corrain saw the old man in the midst of the fracas. It seemed that all the Halferan guards were intent on beating some Karpis retainers in crimson jerkins senseless.
‘Stand down!’ Corrain thanked all the gods whom he didn’t believe in that he could still call up a guard captain’s razor-edged tones. ‘Halferan, form up!’
Anger gave his words such steely authority that three of the Karpis men stood to attention before they realised what they were doing.
The Halferans in their pewter livery withdrew to the other side of the hall’s broad entrance. Corrain swiftly assessed their injuries. At least he saw nothing worse than bruises, bloody scrapes and torn clothing. Better yet, the Halferans had inflicted far more hurts than they’d suffered on the Karpis men.
He caught Fitrel’s eye. The grizzled swordsman could only see out of one. The other was already swelling shut.
‘Report, sergeant,’ Corrain growled.
‘Captain!’ Reven spoke up from the pillar he was leaning on. ‘You didn’t hear what they’ve been saying.’ The boy could barely restrain himself. ‘Mocking every one of us, aye and saying such vileness about Halferan’s ladies—’ He broke off, colouring furiously.
Corrain could imagine what stable yard filth had been flung. Hard-riding troopers wouldn’t bother with tactful enquiries about his frankly scandalous marriage. Lascivious speculation about young Lady Ilysh’s performance on her wedding night would have been the least of it.
‘How can some erstwhile guardsman manage the myriad tenants and complex affairs of a barony?’
Corrain wheeled around to see the great hall’s doors now standing open, revealing the barons crowding the entrance. Some were wide-eyed with curiosity. More betrayed distaste as they contemplated his dishevelment. Corrain’s exertions had left his doublet wrenched askew and the shirt beneath had come untucked.
‘He will never command the respect of men he rode with as a common trooper. Look at them, scuffling in the streets. Drunk, like as not.’
Now he saw who was talking. Baron Karpis had raised his voice to carry far beyond his immediate companion.
Scorning Halferan when Karpis men had started this fight. Deliberately too, Corrain didn’t doubt that, not after Reven’s account.
Could he convince the parliament that this scuffle had been provoked? Would it do any good for Halferan’s cause, even if he did?
Would he be back on the road tomorrow, returning to tell Lady Zurenne how utterly he had failed her?
CHAPTER TWO
Taw Ricks Hunting Lodge, Caladhria
1st of For-Autumn
‘DO WE KNOW when the—’ Doratine’s pencil hovered over her slate ‘—when he’ll be home?’
At which time, presumably, they would all know what to call Corrain. Zurenne shook her head.
‘There’s no way of knowing how long this parliament will last. But he’ll send a messenger ahead when they’re on their way. If he doesn’t?’ She shrugged. ‘He and the guardsmen will have to make do with whatever meat and bread may be found.’
‘Should I prepare for other guests?’ Doratine’s shaking pencil betrayed her with a shrill squeak on the slate. ‘Lord Licanin?’
‘You have your menus. You may go.’ Zurenne spoke more curtly than she’d intended.
How dare Doratine even hint that the parliament would insist on her sister’s husband remaining as Halferan’s guardian?
However grateful they might be for Lord Licanin’s undoubted aid and indeed, his own guardsmen’s sacrifice, when the corsairs had attacked, Lady Ilysh was her father’s rightful heir. Zurenne had married her to Corrain with every legality observed in the Halferan manor’s own shrine. The parliament could not ignore their own laws, even if Lysha was barely old enough to be blooded by Drianon.
And Corrain had sworn to Zurenne on that same altar, before the goddess of home and motherhood, that the marriage would be in name only, to ensure that she and her daughters would never again be subject to some unwanted guardian’s unchallengeable authority.
But it never did to be on bad terms with the servants. Zurenne managed a conciliatory smile. ‘You have my authority to tell Master Rauffe to buy whatever you wish at the Genlis market.’
‘Thank you, my lady.’ Doratine curtseyed and hurried from the room.
Though of course that made it all the more likely that Master Rauffe would knock on her door with some veiled complaint that Doratine had stepped on his toes. They were forever encroaching on each other’s jealously guarded responsibilities.
Zurenne allowed herself an exasperated sigh. Halferan Manor had been big enough to accommodate them all separately. Doratine’s spacious chamber had been the most favoured of the servants’ rooms above the storehouses beyond the kitchen and its range of buildings. Master Rauffe and his wife had enjoyed the steward’s comfortable dwelling beside the barrack hall and opposite the baronial tower.
All that lay in ruins. Now the entire household was crammed into this modest lodge, only ever intended for seasonal visits by the baron, his chosen guests and their handpicked servants.
Zurenne reminded herself to be thankful that some long-dead Baron Halferan had substantially extended the original timber and plastered-brick building. That had only offered a single wide hall with this sitting room and its adjoining bedchamber to the rear and a garret above for servants.
She looked at her needlework laid ready on a polished marquetry table. She had been delighted to find the delicate piece in that furnishing warehouse, when she had fled to Claithe in search of some comforts after her first few miserable days here.
Besides, she had told herself, the barony’s reputation would benefit from the merchants seeing her composed and prosperous. Everyone would see that whatever their sufferings, Halferan had survived the corsairs’ attacks. Now all their travails lay in the past.
So she had scattered the Archmage’s blood money like a ploughboy sowing seed. She had bought Relshazri joinery, pottery from Peorle, fine wools and linens carried south by merchant ships from Col, Trebin lace and buttons from Duryea. Pewter and brass wares for the kitchen and servants’ hall all the way from Wrede in northern Ensaimin.
Now her purchases looked as out of place here as she was. This lodge had been decorated throughout with a practical eye to the hazards of mud and worse consequences of a day’s hunting with horses, hawks and hounds.
The frivolous chairs that framed the round table looked positively foolish beside the scarred wooden settles intended for guests taking their ease in breeches and boots after a long day at the chase. The costly new carpet in front of the cavernous
, soot-darkened fire place was almost as ridiculous.
Besides, no amount of frills and fancies could distract Zurenne from the constant reminders of her beloved husband’s presence here, reminding her wherever she looked that he was never to return.
The scars on the stone door jamb showed where he’d been accustomed to sharpen his knife while waiting for a groom to bring him his horse. He had inked the map in the entrance hall showing the different chases through the local forests with his annual tallies of deer and boar.
Zurenne picked up a book of Tormalin poetry. She had bought it in hopes of distraction after her daughters had been sent to bed and before they woke in the mornings. Now it reminded her too readily of that small stock of thoughtful books which she’d found on a shelf in the bedchamber, debating the natural philosophy of birds and beasts.
It was so easy to imagine her beloved sitting and reading in quiet candlelight, pleasantly weary after a day on horseback, well fed on venison or game birds. Zurenne had never begrudged him his visits here, his escape from the burdens of his barony.
Tears, so often a threat, even so long after his death, welled in her eyes.
A peremptory knock on the door startled her into dropping the book of poems.
‘My lady?’
‘Mistress Rauffe.’ Zurenne braced herself as the door opened.
The steward’s wife was as thickset and uncompromising as her husband was lean and jovial.
‘My lady.’ She curtseyed. ‘I was wondering if you have given any further thought to my proposal?’
‘I have,’ Zurenne said firmly, ‘and it is out of the question.’
‘My lady.’ Mistress Rauffe curtseyed again. ‘It is hardly seemly for the household lackeys and the maidservants to be living in adjoining rooms. If my husband and I were to take—’
‘I would have thought you would be grateful to have a room to yourselves, even one so small.’ So they would be, Zurenne was sure, if the former storeroom between the scullery and the kitchen wasn’t right next to the other one which had been cleared out for Doratine’s use.
‘Everyone else is forced together like beans in a pod. You cannot see the floors for sleeping pallets.’ She swept a hand towards the current great hall, built on the lodge’s eastern face with all the florid ugly stonework of generations long past. Her other hand carried the gesture across towards the guest suites on the other side of the original hall, now the lodge’s entrance. The servants’ rooms that Mistress Rauffe coveted sat across the corridor from those suites.
‘The kitchen wing is the newest building here.’ Zurenne had to blink away more tears. Her own husband had commissioned a devotee of Tormalin Rational architecture to design the clean-cut wing, after she had pointed out the deficiencies of the earlier additions on her first visit here after their marriage. ‘You will be warmer than anyone else, as the season turns to Aft-Autumn.’
Zurenne really didn’t want to imagine what the rest of the demesne servants would endure once For-Winter arrived, crammed into the extended garrets beneath the lodge’s mismatched rooflines.
‘Very well, my lady.’ Mistress Rauffe curtseyed a third time but Zurenne knew better than to take that as a sign of acquiescence.
Sure enough, the woman insisted on the last word as she went out into the entrance hall. ‘Perhaps we can discuss it further when the baron arrives.’
Zurenne longed to call her back, to demand which baron she meant. Corrain, confirmed as Baron Halferan? Or did the steward and his wife truly believe that the parliament would refuse his claim in favour of Lord Licanin?
But she let the woman leave. This haphazard household wouldn’t run half as smoothly without Mistress Rauffe’s brisk attention to a myriad practical details and her talent for getting the very best work from the most dilatory maid.
Zurenne told herself firmly that was only the couple’s former loyalties talking. After all, they had come to Halferan from Licanin, after their lord had so belatedly learned of the abuses which Zurenne, her daughters and the barony had suffered at the hands of that scoundrel Master Minelas with his forged claim to their guardianship.
After the villain had murdered her husband and no one had come to her aid for a year and more. After the neighbouring barons of Karpis and Tallat had given that supposed grant only the most spurious examination, doubtless bought off with coin stolen from Halferan’s own coffers.
All at once, Zurenne was paralysed by terrifying memories. Of Minelas intercepting her letters. Of him dictating the lies she must write to her sisters. Of him wringing the necks of Halferan’s courier doves in front of her. Of the threats the usurper had made, as he plundered her daughters’ inheritance; to wed and bed Ilysh himself with all the violence he clearly relished. Of the ruffians he had hired to replace her husband’s honest guardsmen. Of the way those evil men had kept Zurenne a prisoner in her own home, even after Minelas himself had departed on whatever business had proved to be the death of him. But even that hadn’t brought her salvation.
She came to her senses and looked afresh around the cluttered, inhospitable room. Once again, tears threatened, now with a headache pressing close behind.
Zurenne longed to leave but there were no gardens to walk in here, only kennel yards and stables and a deer park beyond. Besides, as soon as she stepped outside the dour sanctuary of this sitting room, she would be besieged by the expectant gazes of those who’d survived Halferan Manor’s destruction. When would their true lady, their beloved lord’s daughter lead them home to rebuild?
Doratine wasn’t the only one who would struggle to address Corrain as the new Baron Halferan when the parliament was obliged to grant him that honour. Everyone knew that the marriage was a convenient fiction to keep the barony out of another outsider’s hands. They persisted in their old allegiance and looked to Ilysh as her father’s true heir.
Which was exactly as it should be. Zurenne drew a resolute breath and surveyed the plastered walls above the walnut panelling. She wouldn’t remove any reminders of her husband’s presence here, not even those ugly trophies wrought from the antlers of prized deer. No matter how lacerating she found daily recollection of their companionship, of the consolations of their marriage bed, of their shared joy in their beloved daughters.
Nor would she yield to the nightmares that persisted after she woke alone, night after night in the silent darkness. The fear that the parliament’s barons would somehow rule against Corrain and hand her and her children to some other guardian. She could not stand the thought of even one as benign as Lord Licanin.
Zurenne’s hand strayed to the triangular silver pendant on its ribbon around her neck. Adorned with her private sigil made from the upright runes shown on the bones rolled at her birth, the Archmage’s gift was enchanted so she might summon his help if the corsairs ever reappeared.
She would use it to speak to him, if the parliament denied Corrain’s claim. Let the Archmage use his influence to change their mind, or the coin that he seemed to be able to summon out of thin air. Whatever it took, Zurenne didn’t care.
Otherwise she would tell the world that Master Minelas, that charming man who had so convincingly sworn that the lamented Baron Halferan had appointed him to care for his widow and orphaned daughters—
Zurenne would tell the world that the scoundrel had been a renegade mage. That the wizard isle of Hadrumal’s so-called Council had never so much as suspected his vicious nature, much less acted to curb it.
Once they had learned of his villainy, they had only sought to conceal it. If Corrain hadn’t returned, ready and willing to bear witness to the wizard isle’s disgrace, Planir need never have admitted to Minelas’s crimes. He had made no effort to find those Halferan men enslaved in the Archipelago, even after he had learned the renegade had sold them to the corsairs.
In the dark silence of the night, Zurenne wondered if the magewoman Jilseth hadn’t been trapped alongside them when the corsairs had besieged Halferan, would the Archmage have let Zurenne die with
her children; the last witnesses able to denounce Minelas for the villain he was?
Though of course the Archmage had told her no one would believe her, when Zurenne had threatened to tell before. But if he didn’t want her to keep his secret, why had he handed over so much gold and silver, supposedly making good on Minelas’s thefts? Zurenne knew that coin was the price of her silence without any wizard having to say so.
She sighed. Demanding the Archmage’s help, if Corrain’s claim was dismissed, assumed that Planir could find some way to defend Halferan from the parliament’s decree. Zurenne suspected that saving them all from slaughter by corsairs had been simple by comparison.
She realised her restless feet had brought her to the sitting room’s heavy oak table, long enough to seat five men on each side. It had been pushed back against the wall opposite the hearth, sturdy benches tucked beneath it.
Now it held stacks of leather-bound ledgers and bundles of the rent rolls that had preceded them; record of the barony’s dues collected at solstice and equinox. Singed and scattered remnants of folded parchments were heaped haphazard beside them. All that Master Rauffe had salvaged from the muniment room as they fled the corsairs. Along with the shrine ledgers, this was all that remained of the archive relating the barony’s pact with generations of tenantry.
Zurenne had no notion what to do with them. Her husband always dealt with such matters. Besides, there was no point her starting such an undertaking. Once Corrain was confirmed as Baron Halferan that would be one of his many challenges.
Though of course, she could address her own correspondence. Zurenne contemplated her prized writing box holding pens, ink and paper, the two halves cunningly hinged to open into a leather-faced slope. She should already have written the greetings customary at the turn of each season, sharing the latest news of her children and the household with her sisters and the neighbouring baronies ladies.
Several of their letters had arrived in the past day or so. They lay on the top of the writing box, their wax seals uncracked. Zurenne didn’t want to read her sisters’ protestations of affections or their excuses as they sought to explain why it had taken them so long, even after all her letters had stopped, to persuade their husbands that something was amiss in Halferan.
Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) Page 2