by Widowmaker
It also filled the mandatory two sword-lengths of clear space between them with something more solid than mere good intentions.
That was just as well, for in Bayrd’s case those good intentions were wearing very thin indeed. Without the table, without the armed and armoured Talvalin retainers that flanked it – for Bayrd’s honour and Vanek’s protection – that traditional distance separating men of differing opinions would have given him no more than a second’s delay.
Least visible of all, but most apparent to Marc ar’Dru and Eskra Talvalin sitting ignored in their advisory places to either side of the long table, was a total opposition of mind. For the past hour Bayrd had tried to be reasonable to his guest. The man was, after all, a lord of equal rank, and a bereaved father with a justified grievance and the right to an explanation.
The strain was showing more with every minute that went by, because in all that time Vanek ar’Kelayr had contrived to be just as unreasonable. With no effort at all.
At the back of Bayrd’s anger was a small cool wondering as to what it would be like to live with this creature year in and year out, to never do anything right, never give satisfaction, never hear a word of praise or approval.
A week ago the very thought would have been impossible, but today…Today he felt a touch of sympathy with dead Dyrek, and even the start of something close to understanding.
“You hacked my son’s head from his shoulders, ar’Talvlyn,” said Vanek in the same dry tone as before, “and you still call it suicide?”
If there had been any passion in that rasping voice, any sense of loss or outrage, then Bayrd might have found it tolerable. Instead he heard only what had been there at the beginning, and had not changed since. Impatience at this waste of his valuable time, though with a son dead and the presumed slayer face to face, what else he might devote that time to was not made clear. Irritation that anyone at all should do anything at all without considering his personal convenience. But no hurt, no anguish, no sense of loss at all.
Bayrd had felt it more.
“He killed himself,” he repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. “He took his tsepan and he…” Bayrd hesitated, then shrugged inwardly. Delicacy be damned. It hadn’t worked on the other ninety-nine occasions. “Your son stabbed himself, Vanek-eir. Without persuasion. Without assistance. Under the chin and up. And he died of it. That, my lord, looks very much like suicide to me.”
“And then you cut his head off,” accused Vanek.
“But I didn’t kill him…!”
Wood scraped as Bayrd kicked himself and his chair back from the table, and half-rose, barely managed to rein his temper in. It was not as if this was news to ar’Kelayr, not after so long. Then he caught the other man’s disapproving gaze and followed it, to where his own right hand had whipped across his body in an attempt to close on the sword-hilt that fortunately wasn’t there.
Both men had taipan and tsepan at their belts, shortsword and dagger, but neither of those weapons was designed, or even worn in the proper position, for the slashing cut straight from the scabbard that was the most lethal demonstration of a warrior’s displeasure. As Bayrd settled back into his chair and flexed those betraying fingers, he realized that was just as well.
Isileth was present, as was Vanek’s taiken, the named-blade Katen, two hundred years old and of good repute. As the ultimate element in any negotiation, it would have dishonoured both the weapons and the men who bore them to have left them outside the room. Both longswords were leaning almost upright on simple cedar-wood racks; but those racks were mounted against the wall and therefore safely out of reach.
There were various traditions surrounding the reason why Alban warriors gave up their taikenin when guesting under another’s roof. Courtesy was one, to the great swords as much as to the host. Good manners were another, recognition that there was no proper place for a battle blade except the field of battle. Simple caution was a third.
Especially, thought Bayrd soberly, when one of those swords is a known gortaik’n. Isileth Widowmaker would have been stirring hungrily in her black scabbard for hours now, making that eerie metallic whispering. He had always dismissed the sound before as the blade, encased in a sheath of resonant lacquered wood, merely shifting slightly under its own weight. After the events of the past few days, his certainty had gone. It was becoming increasingly difficult to give the sword its formal title rather than the brutal nickname, or even keep the reference neutral, calling a weapon of cold iron ‘it’. Instead of ‘she’.
Widowmaker was no ordinary sword.
Bayrd had known for almost seven years that because of the Talent, he was no ordinary warrior.
And he realized with a jolt that there was glowing, smoking evidence of that Talent scorching its way into the table.
Ar’Kelayr, lost in his portrayal of scorn, was beyond noticing anything, but both Marc ar’Dru and Eskra saw the sapphire-flaring signature of Bayrd’s rage charring a hair-fine track into the wood. Bayrd felt a nervous inward spasm at losing control of himself so completely, and slapped his hand down on the blue sparks as though swatting a fly. They stung briefly, but when he lifted the hand again, they had gone. All that remained were the burn-marks on the table, a faint scent of singeing, and a tiny constellation of blisters rising on his palm. The small pain helped to clear his mind.
“I did not kill your son,” he said again, forcing himself to speak quietly, calmly, all the ways he didn’t feel. “There were witnesses who can prove it.”
“Your clan retainers and lord’s-men, of course. Fair witnesses indeed.”
“And the five young men I did not kill. When you heard of this matter, my lord, which one of them was it who told you his version of events, my lord? Did he know how loosely his head was resting on his neck?”
Bayrd stared at Vanek ar’Kelayr, a cool, calculating appraisal from eyes that were as grey and hard as fresh-split flint. He knew the effect of that stare and used it deliberately, a calm consideration that Mevn ar’Dru claimed could see through a rock, given time. Ar’Kelayr did not give him the time. The other man met his gaze for a few seconds, forced it for a few seconds longer, then looked away.
“What you did or did not do to anyone else does not concern me, ar’Talvlyn,” he said. “We are discussing my son.”
“Your son and his companions may have saved that messenger’s life, Vanek-eir.” Bayrd had his voice under control again. “I decided to take five heads as a warning, and let the remainder go. Three died by their own hand. I took two heads. The matter is concluded. So.”
He snapped his fingers for demonstration, the sound abrupt and sharp enough that Vanek started slightly, then tried to conceal that he had done so.
“But consider this, my lord ar’Kelayr. A more barbarous man would have considered that they had cheated him. Cheated his justice. A more barbarous man would have taken his five heads from living bodies. For all that your son did, only two men would have survived to ride away in safety and spread lies about me. Remember that, when next you see those five alive and breathing. I am not a barbarous man.”
His clenched fist came down on the table with such a crash that one of the flagons on it rebounded and fell over, spilling to the ground, splashing wine across the wooden floor. They all looked at the puddles, twenty crowns’-worth of Seurandec soaking into the boards, blood-red in the sunlight from the high windows of the council hall, and then they looked at him. Bayrd smiled, if a mere skinning of lips from teeth deserved the name.
“But if I must,” he said, soft but clear in the deafening silence, “I can be.”
The jarring shock of the blow had awakened echoes in the bones of Bayrd’s arm. Echoes of other impacts, echoes of other reasons. Some of those had been less than good, had left him feeling ill at ease or at the worst bereft of sleep, puzzling over whether what he had done was right. But this premeditated display of rage – no more than an act this time, so that there was no risk of the hot blue-white flare of sorcery be
coming visible…
It had felt wonderful.
There were times when sitting still and silent, letting the other side take the initiative and do all the talking, was the best way to learn what another person thought. But on other occasions, attack was the best defence. Short of drawing a blade on him, he had gone for ar’Kelayr’s throat in the best way that conventions allowed.
And it had worked.
As he massaged the bruised heel of his hand, he could see that though the man was doing his best to restore it, that maddening veneer of contrived disinterest across Vanek ar’Kelayr’s expression and emotions had been shattered beyond repair. Try as he might, the cracks would always show. At least to Bayrd, and to the others here who now knew what to see.
And for the first time he saw the man’s true face.
Without his self-constructed mask, Vanek looked human at last. He looked hurt, and sad, and most of all confused. Then between one breath and the next, the mask of manners was back in place, restored more by habit than from any need. Their eyes met, and in Vanek’s Bayrd could read a plea that his weakness not be betrayed. There was fright in those eyes, the fright of a man whose most trusted weapon has been wrenched from his grasp, whose enemy has seen the weakness and is poised to take advantage of it.
Bayrd gestured for the guards to leave. “Thank you, sirs,” he said, the courtesy not overdone since in token of Clan-Lord ar’Kelayr’s presence they were all of kailin rank and not mere soldiers. “Your presence is no longer required. But,” he glanced at Vanek and nodded briefly, “your silence is.”
Their officer, a Captain-of-one-Hundred, drew himself to attention as his men filed out, and made salute with a sharp click of metal against metal. That was all. No words of warning, no promises of secrecy. None were needed. The Talvalin lord’s-men were all troopers that Bayrd or Marc had commanded in the past, and their loyalty was beyond question.
Iskar ar’Joren had been one of Bayrd’s first Ten, back in Kalitzim a lifetime ago when they had all been no more than the hired swords of a small king. Who was now a Great King, Bayrd reminded himself, and set fair to be an Emperor before he died. Unless he died…
Ar’Joren had been an artilleryman until he lost his hand in a stupid gambling accident, and it was only thanks to the insistence of young Captain ar’Talvlyn that he had kept his place. Bayrd had seen no reason why a trained brain and a skilled eye should be wasted when there were many other hands to do the work of the one that was gone.
That missing hand was an elaborate steel pincer now, linked by pulleys and fine cables to the stump of Iskar’s forearm so that it was still surprisingly capable of even the most delicate tasks. And at the same time, Bayrd had seen it punched through a pine plank, just to prove that it could. For all its mechanical delicacy, it was a startling thing to see for the first time – it had momentarily unsettled even Vanek ar’Kelayr’s composure – and as menacingly efficient in its way as the battlefield catapult which had crushed and severed the original.
Iskar ar’Joren was kailin tleir’ek in command of Dunrath’s counter-siege artillery now. It seemed appropriate.
Even after the guards were gone, they sat in silence as servants came in to clean up the spilled wine and replace it with fresh. After that they waited a little longer until the servants too had left the room. Only then did Bayrd lean forward with his elbows on the table, and despite all the hostile ways he had felt about the man at the far end of it, made himself almost ooze informality.
“Now come on, Vanek-an,” he said, slipping from the higher phase of language and using the lesser honorific as between friends – or at least, not-enemies – “we don’t really need to go through everything again, do we?”
The tension in the room hung on like persistent smoke for perhaps a minute before Clan-Lord ar’Kelayr let his pretence collapse for good. He nodded, and almost smiled; an expression that looked uncomfortable on a face whose muscles weren’t designed for it – or were at least long out of practice. His method of smiling before now had always been that thin-lipped grimace men use when they deign to notice a joke they really don’t care for. An honest grin on that face would have looked like a rictus of terminal agony.
At least now, thought Bayrd with a quiet inner smile of his own, it merely looked like the straining of mild constipation…
And that was an improvement he had never hoped to see.
“My lord ar’Kelayr,” said Eskra, taking advantage of the moment, “I have a question needing answered. If you would. When did you last see your son?” She paused for the sake of kindness, then finished. “Alive, that is.”
Vanek shifted his gaze from Bayrd to the woman he had refused to acknowledge from the instant he came into the room, and there was a long moment’s uncomfortable pause.
“More than half a year,” said ar’Kelayr at last. “No. Longer. It would have been the autumn, just after an Kynyaf Halan.”
“The equinoctial holyday,” muttered Eskra, half to herself. “That makes too much sense.”
It was a thought spoken aloud, no more than that, and not for general consumption, but Bayrd caught it and rapped the table for attention.
“Why so?” he asked. Eskra sent him a quick glance of warning that he was treading dangerously close to matters an Alban shouldn’t know and a clan-lord shouldn’t want to know, but enough had been going on that Bayrd was past such concerns. He might regret his course of action later; but later wasn’t now. “What’s so significant about the equinox?”
Eskra sighed audibly, stared at her own hands for a moment, then made a gesture with them that would have been a shrug had it gone further up her arms. “If you really need to know…”
“I do.” He nodded towards Vanek. “It concerns a dead son, and false accusations, and perhaps treachery in high places.” Ar’Kelayr looked shocked at that, but said nothing. “We all need to know.”
“Very well.” Eskra sounded reluctant, but resigned. “Your principal Alban holydays represent more than most of you care to realize. Five of them in the year, yes?” The three Albans at the table nodded in a staccato chorus. “The equinoxes –” Eskra marked off two fingers, “– the solstices –” two more fingers, “– and year-turning. The first day of the first month of spring.” She tapped her thumb. “Calendar points. Festivals. Nothing more.” All the fingers folded up into a fist and thumped down against the table.
“Not so. There is magic here. In the Land. In Alba. And this is what magic is…”
“No,” she corrected herself. “This is what true magic is: the turning seasons, death and life, growth and decay, and the knowledge of how to channel it. Not just old men with old books. Not just circles chalked on floors. Not just scraps of herbs and muttered words so ancient that their meaning is forgotten. All magic uses words to change the world. And certain times of the year make it easy.”
Eskra stared at the three men along the table. Two were more or less aware of what she meant, the third had no desire to know. She grinned, quickly so that any real humour hiding at the back of the expression would be lost in its brief severity, and saw Bayrd at least grin just as quickly back.
“These times? These days? Why are they different from all other days? Why are they remembered, my lord ar’Kelayr?”
Vanek twitched in his chair and refused to speak.
“An Gwaynten Pasek, the Greening, falls in springtime. The festival at Midsummer is an Haf Golowan, the Fire. In Autumn you celebrate the Golden Time, an Kynyaf Halan. Especially if the harvest has been good, yes? But at midwinter nobody likes to think of an Gwaf Degoleth-ys, because that is Darkness. So tell me – why have they their own special names?”
No-one answered, and only Bayrd met her eyes. He no longer showed any inclination toward grinning.
“Because names are important. Name the thing, call the thing. Four seasons and four names. Only two of them to do with seedtime and harvest. Why? Because none of them have to do with the seasons at all.” Again, that sharp look; and this
time even Bayrd preferred not to meet it. Eskra nodded, as if this was no more than she had expected.
“These are the times when the locks and bars are loosened. The times when day and night are one length, or when the balance swings one way or the other. The shortest night – and the longest. Then the doors between this world and all the others swing loose on their hinges.”
She sat back in her chair with a grunt of disgust she didn’t trouble to conceal. “And your people have so carefully forgotten it all.”
She looked at them again, and now there was a glitter in her blue eyes that might have been a glint of scorn or equally a twinkle of amusement, a sweeping stare that took in Bayrd just as much as the other two. He didn’t know whether that was for his own protective colouration, or because in the past few years all her attempts to improve his understanding of sorcery had only served to reveal how inept he was at using the Talent.
Marc ar’Dru seemed more amused than anything else at his inclusion, but Vanek ar’Kelayr looked uncomfortable at being a party to this discussion at all. He had the air of a man who would far rather be somewhere else, the air of someone whose deepest suspicions have been well-founded. Bayrd knew what those suspicions might be; he had heard them often enough since he married Eskra.
She drummed her fingers briskly on the table. “Old Magic,” she said. “High Magic. The Art. Sorcery. Call it what you will, so long as you recognize that it exists. Because that way you can come to terms with it. Deal with it. Work against it. But instead you Albans ignore it.”
“The late Overlord Albanak called for your assistance, lady,” ar’Kelayr pointed out with a touch of that old pose, as of a man scoring a point. “He did not ignore…it.”
“As I recall events, my lord, he had little choice in the matter.” Bayrd took care not to smile at Vanek’s too-selective memory; a smile would have put too sharp an edge on the reproof.
“You Albans ignore the Art,” said Eskra. “You despise those who have mastered it. That I know well enough. Worse, you spurn any of your own with the Talent to begin to understand it.” Bayrd diplomatically studied the table-top, or the wine in his cup, or his fingernails. Anything to keep expression from his face.