by Matthew Ward
Before long, her laughter flowed freely, and faltered only when she cast eyes skyward to the slighted moon.
Melanna’s neighbour – a thin-featured prince of Silsaria named Thirava – took a pull on a wine bottle and passed it on. “Can’t help but notice the brothers Andwar aren’t with us.”
“Surprised they show their faces at all,” replied Haralda.
“Naradna never shows his face anywhere,” grunted Maradan. “So what’s the difference?”
“I keep hearing rumours about their grandfather,” said Thirava. “That he didn’t meet the Raven through natural means.”
“Never known you to be short of rumour, Thirava,” said Haralda. “Nor slander.”
“Maggad was rotting long before he took his Last Ride. Explain that.”
“I don’t have to, because I don’t care. Doesn’t matter to me who warms the Icansae throne, so long as they stand with us when called. Maggad seldom did. Maybe Naradna will.”
He offered a bottle to Melanna. She took a swig – the full-bodied red wine washing away the bittered ale of before – and passed it along. She knew a little of Naradna’s situation. The reclusive crown prince was not well-liked by his cousins, all of whom could leverage slighter claims through victories won in battle. Thus Naradna had to prove himself their better through the flexing of his own sword. Melanna empathised, for her father had been forced to similar lengths only the year before – ironically by Naradna’s grandfather, whose claim would have been laughable, had it not been backed by so many spears.
“I heard they fought well today,” she said.
Maradan laughed. “Have you not heard the troubadours? We all fought well today. Even those who didn’t fight. That’s what troubadours are for. Tell me, whose honeyed words extolled the House of Andwar’s virtues?”
She shot him a cold stare. “My father’s. He’s not given to sweetness.”
A mirthful rumble accompanied Maradan’s sudden silence, a sound more suited to children mocking a playmate for transgression than grown men.
“Then the Icansae must have fought well.” Maradan hoisted his tankard high. “To the Emperor! May he walk ever in moonlight.”
“To the Emperor!” cried a dozen voices.
Melanna raised voice and bottle to the toast, but faltered as Maradan raised tankard anew.
“And to his princessa. A herald of victory in this fallen land.”
“To the princessa!”
The second chorus was quieter than the first, spoken with hesitation in some quarters. Still, Melanna inclined her head to hide a blush of pleasure that risked being taken for weakness.
“Pay no attention.” Haralda’s grin undermined his dismissive words. “He’s hoping for a few honeyed words of his own. That maybe the Emperor will carve him a kingdom from the conquered lands where his family refused. Or does your father intend to claim the Republic’s lands for himself?”
“Neither,” said Melanna. “Tressia will be a kingdom of Empire, with its own voices in the Golden Court.”
Thirava frowned. “He’d make a Tressian our equal?”
“You can put a dog in a dress and teach it to dance,” said Haralda, “but it’ll never pass for a wife.”
Others joined his ribald laughter. The warmth of moments before slipped away into anger.
Melanna sprang to her feet. “Where is your respect? Glory in victory, fortitude in defeat, and honour always. That is our way. How did Corvant come into the Empire? With razed fields and chains about its daughters’ throats? No. My grandfather’s grandfather forgot the blood of old, and named you equals. We’ve not come to break these people, but to free them from the tyranny of the Dark.”
Laughter stuttered. Thirava flinched. Others glanced away or stared into the flames.
“It’s an honourable cause,” said Haralda, all mirth gone from his voice. “But honour doesn’t put food in hungry bellies. It doesn’t pay for spears when Thrakkians come howling over the border, nor walls when the Ithna’jîm send zaifîrs sweeping in from the desert. Nor does it weave tales for my kin to remember when Ashana calls me to Evermoon. I fight for these things. The honour I leave to my Emperor, and to his daughter.”
“Do you care nothing of the Dark?” she bit out.
“For all your father’s warnings of corrupted souls and possessed warriors – for all the claims of a warlock to rival the Sceadotha’s Droshnas – I’ve seen nothing but the same faithless warriors I’ve fought all my life. They deserve only what respect I afford, and what scraps of mercy the Empire can spare.”
Melanna strove to bring anger to heel. Words could never convince Haralda. They could never convey the horror of Davenwood, where the Droshna had blinded an army and scattered it in defeat. Nor could they truly recount the stygian malice of Eskavord’s populace shackled to a singular, malevolent will.
Some things, you had to survive.
“They’re people. Like us. If they are to die, we should at least—”
“But they’re not, Saranal.” Even now, Haralda’s voice held no condescension. Somehow, that made it worse. “They’re Tressians.”
Melanna cast about the fire but saw only strangers. Minds closed as steel traps. They saw not the Dark, nor the humanity of those they fought. As lost as Elspeth, in their way. And she’d sought to be their equal?
Snarling, she dragged her sword free of its scabbard and thrust it into the flames. The blade bit into ashen soil beneath.
“I say otherwise. And so does my sword.” She stepped back, and let her gaze sweep the circle. “To press your claim is to challenge us both.”
Haralda narrowed his eyes. “Your father—”
“Knows better than to involve himself in my honour. What of you?”
He found no more support about the circle than Melanna had before. Likely, most agreed with him, but wished no part of what might follow. Peers they had acclaimed her, but no man of Haralda’s thirty winters would look the better for duelling a woman who had yet to see her twentieth, no matter the outcome. Or maybe they recognised what Melanna clutched close as unbreakable truth: that there could only be one victor in that contest, and it wasn’t he.
“Sister.”
The soft, musical voice cut through the silence. Melanna held her gaze on Haralda for one heartbeat, two, and then turned about to find herself staring at Elspeth.
No. Not Elspeth, but similar enough in build and aspect that she forgave herself the mistake. Ashana’s daughters were of common cast, with little to choose between them save in manner. Where Elspeth was all hard edges, this woman was diffident.
“Elise.” Melanna strove to keep the guess from sounding like a question. “What is it?”
“The Emperor requests your presence.”
“Of course. Lead the way.”
Elise’s pale brow creased in confusion. “But… your sword?”
Melanna glanced back at the fire and its circle of resentful silence. “They need its example more than I.”
“I don’t understand. They lack for weapons?”
“Something like that.”
Ahrad’s great hall struck Kai as excessive. The vaulted ceiling was too high, designed to accommodate towering statues whose stone could instead have buttressed the walls.
It wasn’t as though the statues were pleasing. Too austere, in the way that Tressian art often was, with neither Lumestra nor her attendant serathi properly displaying the beauty for which they were fabled. Hardly the faces or forms fit to tempt a hot-blooded soul, though at that moment Kai was anything but, his skin prickling and fingers beset by creeping numbness that the hearth’s fire did nothing to hold at bay. He told himself that this too was the fault of the architect, but in truth knew it to be the price of a long day wedded to advancing years.
Despairing of feeling truly warm, he bent over the table and let his eyes roam the map, mulling the interplay of distance with reports from his icularis spies. The unseen algebra of campaign that made victory or defeat faster than th
e fall of any sword. He knew it by heart, and yet had the feeling of something unseen creeping to undo all he sought to achieve. That was the problem with growing old. The closer you came to becoming a ghost the more you saw them in every shadow.
The door creaked open. Earlier than expected.
“Daughter, I didn’t expect you so soon…”
Not Melanna, but Elspeth. The daughter of the moon stood with the closed door at her back, her hands behind, and all traces of the afternoon’s bloody business washed away.
“What has become of my guards?”
“What makes you think anything has become of them?”
“They know who I wish to see, and who I do not.”
She pushed away from the door. “And they always obey, because you are their Emperor?”
“Because they are my Immortals,” Kai replied, wishing he could read motive in her brittle tone. “Their service is a gift I strive to earn. So I ask you again: what has become of my guards?”
A frown touched her brow. “I haven’t harmed them. I knew they wouldn’t let me in, so I set them dreaming.”
Elspeth trod lightly, skin shimmering silver as moonlight from the windows fell across it, and growing pale when she crossed into shadow. A reminder that however much she looked an ephemeral waif, she was something entirely other. She drew hands from behind her. A dagger glinted.
How easy to recall the wild, cornered creature of the afternoon, snarling up from a floor slick with blood she’d shed. “Have you come to kill me, Ashanal?”
She sank to her knees, head bowed. The dagger she extended in trembling, cupped hands. When she spoke, her voice shuddered and cracked. “My mother is gone, and I am lost beyond words. All I know to do is what she bade of me, and I cannot do that if you send me away. I will take any vow you demand, but please, let me stay by your side until your work is done.”
Kai blinked, taken aback by the unexpected turn. “You’re a daughter of Ashana. Is there any vow I can demand that will hold you?”
“A bargain with the divine binds all parties,” said Elspeth. “Or else it is not a bargain at all.”
“So priests proclaim. What if I refuse?”
“I beg you not to.”
Of all the words he’d envisioned spilling from Elspeth’s lips, “beg” wasn’t among them. Was this genuine, or some game to which he did not know the rules? What if he accepted? Would she strike as soon as his back was turned? What if he did not? Could he prevent her shadowing his every move? The creature he’d beheld in the chapel had been unworthy of his sympathy, but the huddled shape before him reminded more of the lost child he’d rescued from battle’s fury. Which was the true Elspeth? Was there any way to know?
“You will kill only to defend others, or at my order,” he said at last. “You will comport yourself in a manner that does honour to your mother. Abide by these conditions, and you may stay by my side until this war is done.”
She shuddered, and craned her neck to regard him. “I… I accept your bargain.”
As simple as that? “What more must I do?”
“It is already done. I’m told ephemerals like to shed blood to mark a bargain.” The first smile crept across her face, more unsettling than reassuring. “I have a dagger.”
“But it isn’t necessary?”
She pursed her lips. “No.”
Her disappointment was palpable. Or was it all just an act? Either way, the decision was made. Kai gently closed her fingers around the dagger’s blade and pushed it away.
“Then rise, Ashanal. You are divine and need not kneel before me, nor anyone else.”
Twenty-Two
“What remains of Ahrad’s defenders scatter like rats before a watchman’s torch.” Melanna’s father reached across the map and tapped each coin stack in turn. “They’re making heaviest retreat towards Tregga, picking up garrisons from villages and watch-forts as they go.”
“Heaviest?” said Melanna. “What about the others?”
Haldrane stirred himself from the shadows by the great hall’s mantlepiece. The head of the icularis sought out darkness as other men sought out food. Other than Kos Devren and herself, the spymaster was probably the only other who commanded her father’s trust.
Certainly not Prince Cardivan of Silsaria, whose ancestral claims to Rhaled’s throne remained suppressed, rather than settled. Nor King Raeth of Corvant, whose open venality explained much about his son’s manner. And nobody trusted King Sard of Britonis, for he did entirely too much trade with the Ithna’jîm. But they were also her father’s peers and held sway over the army’s largest contingents. Rulership, as Melanna had been so often reminded, was as much about the appearance of consultation as command.
As for the daughters of Ashana waiting patiently at the room’s perimeter? After Elspeth’s display that afternoon, Melanna was little inclined to trust any of them. Why Elspeth alone was permitted to come so close to the table – to stand behind the Emperor’s chair, no less – was a mystery she swore to unravel and, if at all possible, unmake.
“I hear whispers of scattered forces in the Greyridge foothills,” said Haldrane. “Never more than a few hundred souls, but if they gather as one, it could prove problematic. I understand King Sard’s outriders are having some trouble with the Knights Sartorov a little to the north.”
Sard bristled. “My son has the matter in hand.” The heavy, resonant vowels – seldom heard so far north and west – reminded just how far much of the army had travelled. “By nightfall tomorrow, he will lay their banners at the Emperor’s feet.”
“I’m sure he will,” Haldrane said smoothly. “Or at least, he would, if not for the garrison mobilising from Fathom Rock. And don’t discount the citizenry. They breed them feisty in the Eastshires. Your son may discover that the hard way.”
Sard glared at Haldrane, but offered no retort. Folk who crossed the spymaster had a tendency towards unfortunate accidents.
Melanna’s father gestured at the table. “Your estimates as to the rest. Do they stand?”
Haldrane clucked softly under his breath and made slight alteration to the positions of three coin stacks, added a pair of copper pennies to another, and removed a fifth entirely. Though Melanna wasn’t certain as to how denominations scaled, the scope was clear: sizeable garrisons at Tregga, Tarvallion and Fathom Rock in the north, and at Margard and Kreska in the south; an array of forces retreating south and west from Ahrad; in the west, a towering stack of silver and copper coins atop the city of Tressia itself. The prize.
“We go on,” said Melanna’s father. “Straight for the throat. Tregga, Tarvallion and then Tressia itself.”
“Are you sure, my Emperor? Perhaps now is the time for a methodical approach. Remember the Siege of Hasmarere.” Devren grinned wolfishly. “Prince Sallan paid dearly for his haste.”
“He did indeed.” The Emperor nodded, the curl of his lip a sign he was lost in old memories. “We taught him caution, you and I. A shame he lost his head.”
“No shame, savir. My pleasure.”
Cardivan shook his head. Snow-white hair made it look more struggle to stay awake than objection. “Tregga alone might stall us for weeks. They’ve rebuilt the walls since your father’s time…”
“And manned them with avaricious fools,” said Haldrane. “I’ve had six months. A tenth of the garrison do my bidding. The gates will spread wide in welcome.”
“Then Tregga will wait until we’ve secured the border.”
Melanna shook her head. “Delay gives the Tressian Council time to shake free of complacency. If we take the capital, we’re halfway to victory. If we delay, the shirelands will muster against us.”
Raeth snorted. “Let them. Farmers and militia?”
“I’ve learned not to underestimate farmers,” said Melanna’s father. “The Tressians have no shortage of pride, and pride grinds mountains to dust. We keep to the plan. Nothing has changed.”
His voice held steady. How, when so much had changed? Ashana and
her Huntsman were gone, though most of the war council were ignorant of the fact, and deliberately so. Ashana had brought the kings of Empire together in common purpose. Word of her death threatened to break them apart.
But what choice was there? With the Goddess gone, surprise was their chief weapon, and it faded by the hour.
Kos Devren gave a stiff bow. “If that is your wish, my Emperor.”
“I wish none of this were necessary, old friend. All war is risk, but we must cleave to the course. We owe the fallen nothing less. The Dark must be driven out before it overtakes us all.”
Sard and Raeth nodded. Cardivan shook his head. Haldrane smiled a thin, sly smile and slunk back to the shadows.
“The Dark is upon us already!”
Flanked by watchful Immortals, two silver-haloed warriors in Icansae scarlet strode into the chamber. The earthy stench of hard travel came with them; scuffed armour and tattered cloaks told a bleaker tale. The taller of the two was every inch the royal son, with dark eyes and rugged cheekbones beneath oiled black hair. The shorter carried a narrow, cloth-wrapped bundle. His golden mask gave no clue to intent.
Melanna moved to intercept, already regretting that her gesture beside the fire had left her weaponless. Devren beat her to it, the folds of his bear cloak shifting as he laid hand on his sword.
“Prince Naradna! You will address your Emperor with respect.”
Naradna halted, unflinching though Devren was near two heads taller and twice as broad. “This morning, I offered the Emperor a sword in victory. I do so again in defeat. I trust he will heed this token where he ignored the other.”
The bundle thumped across the table, scattering coins before it. The cloth covering fell part open. Sard leaned across the map and twitched the rest aside. Smoke curled up from a sword’s blade.
“We pursued the Tressians to Soraved,” said Naradna, his eyes on Melanna’s father. “The trees filled with shadow. Silver helms and swords that burned like fire. They slaughtered my warriors. You say the Dark will soon overtake us? I say it is already here.”