by Anna Thayer
The supplication astounded him. Of course, he knew that if he were to take the paper and a lament to the throned then Arlaith would be killed. That death would be neither painless nor swift. He remembered the arching light that had struck through him.
He closed his eyes. He could not wish that on any man, even Arlaith.
Eamon folded Arlaith’s papers into his own cloak. Then he leaned forward and touched Arlaith’s shoulder.
“I would be within my rights to take it to him,” he said. Arlaith looked up, ready to protest. Eamon gently shook his head. “But I will not do so.”
Surprise flashed over Arlaith’s face.
“I will not,” Eamon said, simply, “unless it comes to pass that others listed here meet with an untimely demise. If I were you, I should see to it that you do everything in your power to protect them from harm lest some accident befall them and I be given cause to doubt the sincerity of your repentance.”
Arlaith stared at him. “I do not think that I would have said the same in your place,” he whispered.
They watched each other for a long moment. At a gesture from Eamon, Arlaith rose.
Before leaving the palace, they paused only long enough for Arlaith to set down and seal commands that his assassination orders be rescinded immediately. Eamon noted grimly that they were dispatched to Heathlode and Lonnam in the East Quarter, and resolved to be more careful of the two Hands in future.
They took steeds at the palace gates. Arlaith saddled uncertainly but, once there, seemed more himself. He exchanged neither word nor look with Eamon. As they reached Coronet Rise Eamon remembered the Master’s commands. He looked across at Arlaith, whose face was stricken and jaded.
“Lord Arlaith, where will I find the Nightholt?” he asked.
Arlaith shivered, as though the words brought the Master’s fire to his flesh again. “You were there when it was found?”
“In Ellenswell,” Eamon nodded.
Arlaith could not disguise his ire. “Cathair told me that he kept some books that he found there that day. He claimed they were of no importance. Lying corpse-glut!”
It was convincing rage. Eamon reminded himself to be wary of the Left Hand. “Where will he have placed those books, Lord Arlaith?”
Arlaith scowled. “He will have them at his lodgings in the West Quarter. He likely has some kind of safe – if I were him, I would probably hide them in my library.” His jaw set grimly. “If they are not there, then we must ransack his entire quarters.”
Eamon raised an eyebrow. “‘We’, Lord Arlaith?”
“We. Cathair has played most foully with me, Lord Goodman,” Arlaith hissed, “and he evidently intended some dishonest blow to the Master. Why else would he withhold the Nightholt? I will help you kill him, and return the book to the Master.”
“No.”
The curtness of his answer seemed to shock Arlaith, who gaped at him for a moment. “The Master has tasked me, and me alone, with retrieving this book and ending Cathair’s life. I understand your wish to redeem yourself,” Eamon added gently, “but you will understand why I cannot allow it.”
“Yes, Lord Goodman,” Arlaith growled.
They turned their steeds towards the West, and the Brand came into view. Eamon felt a weight shudder onto him, as though the Raven already watched for his arrival.
“Cathair’s weakness, bar his arrogance, is his thrust,” Arlaith told him suddenly.
Eamon shivered. “What do you mean?”
“He never stopped using the strange blade he brought back with him from Istanaria. But it is a strong weapon.” Arlaith’s voice intensified. “Don’t let him strike yours with it; you shall come off the worse if you do.”
Eamon looked at him suspiciously. “Why would you offer me such advice, Lord Arlaith?”
“We have a mutual enemy now, Lord Goodman.”
“Besides the Serpent.”
Arlaith laughed unkindly. “Besides the Serpent.”
There was a long silence. “Cathair is a dangerous man. He will swiftly realize he is cornered. He is no fool. He will make no poetic mistakes.” Arlaith spoke quietly now, sincerely. “He will cast flame and dog and blade at you, and they will be driven by his fury. I know of no man who has survived such an attack from him.”
They approached the Brand. “Will Cathair be at the college?” Eamon asked. His mouth was dry.
“Yes.” Cathair had Handquarter offices in the West Quarter College as well as at the Hands’ Hall; they were just off the college’s central courtyard. Eamon remembered the many times that he had walked beneath their shadow to the officers’ mess.
“Have you ever been inside?” Arlaith asked.
Eamon nodded. Mathaiah had been made his ward within that building, and Eamon had often worked there as a Hand of the quarter.
“Then you already know that their layout is almost identical to the ones he keeps in the Hands’ Hall,” Arlaith told him. “His library, which also acts as his study, has a small side room which he uses for his dogs. They sleep there, I believe.” He looked at Eamon earnestly. “He came out of the East. You must be cunning with him, Goodman. Once he discerns your purpose, he will not spare you. His enmity with your house goes back further than his hatred of you.”
Eamon tried not to blanch. “But he can be killed?”
“He is but a man,” Arlaith told him, “though he is strong and crafty. He is a terrible foe.”
“You are one also,” Eamon answered. He looked firmly and earnestly at Arlaith, scarcely recognizing the words as coming from his own heart as he spoke them. “Be my foe no more, Lord Arlaith.”
Arlaith held his gaze for a long moment. In that moment, Eamon wanted nothing so much as peace with the man before him.
At last, Arlaith bowed his head. “Whether you live or die this day, Lord Goodman, I will keep the promises I have made to you.”
CHAPTER VII
It was early evening when they arrived at the West Quarter College and dismounted. Waite arrived to greet them; the captain looked ten years older than when Eamon had last seen him.
“My lords. How may I serve you?”
“I have some business to attend to with Lord Cathair,” Eamon answered.
“Of course,” Waite replied, his careful tone showing he comprehended more than was said.
“Part of my task involves retrieving a book from Lord Cathair’s library. If I should not succeed in what I must do, captain, you will accompany Lord Arlaith while he retrieves the book in my stead. You will recognize it by its foreign script. When it is found, you – and none but you – will take that book and you will deliver it, in person, to the hands of the Master,” Eamon told him. “No other man is to receive it, nor lay a finger upon it.”
Waite glanced in alarm between them. “Surely, my lord, Lord Arlaith would be a more fitting –”
“It shall be as Lord Goodman has commanded, captain,” Arlaith answered, though Eamon thought that he saw the Hand’s lip catch for a moment in an angry sneer.
Waite’s eyes widened. He looked back to Eamon. “What task have you, my lord?” Did the captain view him as another cadet whose life might needlessly be lost?
“One from the Master.”
“How shall I know if… if I must search for this book, and go to him?”
“You must go if you hear that I am dead. You will give that book to none but the Master – not even to Lord Cathair, if he should command it.”
Waite blanched. “Very well, my lord.”
Eamon gave him a nod and glanced at Arlaith’s stony face. Then he crossed through the hall to the courtyard. Cadets and ensigns watched him from the colonnades. He thought he saw Manners’ face among them.
He paused before the door to Cathair’s quarters. There he unstrapped his scabbard, drawing it into his hand so as to carry it with him. He kept it well back beneath the cover of his cloak. He crossed the threshold.
Cathair’s hall was well lit. Eamon followed the corridors towards the Hand�
��s library. He knew, from long experience, that it was Cathair’s accustomed haunt.
He knocked on the door. When no answer came, he went inside.
The library was a broad room lined with bookshelves, much like its counterpart at Ravensill. Cathair was at his desk. Reclined comfortably in his chair, he read by the dwindling light of the window behind him. The arches of the window frames were darkly painted. Where they soared towards their apex, they resembled the spread wings of a raven in flight.
Paws clattered on the floor and Eamon froze. Cathair’s four hounds bounded up to him, their white fangs bared in stark snarls. As they had always done they sniffed and feinted at him, daring him to fear.
Cathair indolently turned another page of the book that he held. Steeling himself, Eamon spoke.
“Call off your dogs, Lord Cathair.”
Cathair looked up, feigning surprise.
“Lord Goodman! Why, you’ll never believe me, but I didn’t hear you come in. You’ve the silence of… a snake.”
The Hand set the book down, rose, and came down the long room. Eamon assessed the Hand’s size, the confidence of his stride and gait, and the glint in his savage green eyes. Cathair bore his blade at his side – a curved blade out of the east, as Arlaith had said it would be.
Cathair paused before him with a broad, insincere smile. The dogs continued snapping at Eamon, but then fell back a little so as to surround their master. They formed an impenetrably loyal wall of claws and fangs.
The Lord of the West Quarter laid his hand to the head of the nearest hound and caressed it. “I do not believe that any reports were required of me this afternoon and so I must ask myself what I can do for you, Lord Goodman?”
“You may obey me! Call off your hounds.”
“My hounds?” Cathair answered. “How cruelly you misname them, Lord Goodman! They are but pups!” he cried, fondling their heads and ears.
Eamon laughed. “Then send them to their nest, Cathair, but remove them from my feet.”
For a moment he was worried that Cathair would refuse. How could he obtain the Nightholt and kill the Hand if dogs surrounded him? The anxious thought assailed him that, somehow, Cathair already knew why he had come. But Cathair had not seen how he bore his blade. It emboldened him.
The Lord of the West Quarter watched him with a measured gaze, as though trying to break into his mind, but he was no breacher. At last he smiled.
“Very well, Lord Goodman,” he said. He made a shrill noise and the four creatures looked to him. The Hand gestured firmly to the small door at the side of the library and, almost as one body, the hounds raced towards it barking and yapping. Relief flooded Eamon as Cathair opened the door to permit them passage, then closed it behind them. The dogs bayed at their confinement.
“Is that better, Lord Goodman?” Cathair crooned.
“Yes.”
“And how are you finding yourself at the palace, my lord? I hear that you were unwell the night of your feast. I trust you are recovered?”
“The Master’s doctor saw to me.”
“Indeed? Then the Master must be very fond of you,” Cathair smiled. “That would be most poetic.”
“How would it be poetic?”
“You would not be the first Goodman of whom he was… fond. Though perhaps,” he added wistfully, and not a little spitefully, “you shall be the last.”
Eamon tried to match his gaze. “What do you mean by that, Lord Cathair?”
“I am right in understanding that you have no heir?” the Hand enquired politely.
“Yes,” Eamon answered, utterly bemused.
“Then, Lord Goodman,” Cathair answered, “I mean that your blood is as limited as many a man’s.”
Eamon stared at him, trying to make sense of Cathair’s words. “Always you speak in riddles, Lord Cathair.”
“‘Thus spake the Raven’,” Cathair replied with an airy smile. “I have my reputation to think of, Lord Goodman.”
“Then let me speak plainly.”
“Please do.” Cathair strolled back to his desk and took up his book once more. Eamon stared after him, steadying himself.
“Somewhere in this library, there is a place where you hide things of value to you. It is a command from the Master that you show me this place and its contents.”
Cathair raised an eyebrow. “That is… an unusual command, Lord Goodman.”
“A command it remains. Show me the safe.”
Now the Hand eyed him suspiciously. “How am I to know that this command comes from the Master, Lord Goodman?”
Eamon matched his gaze. “I am the Right Hand. You are bound by my commands also.”
“Indeed!”
“Indeed. And should what I seek not be in your possession, you will come with me to the Master; he will verify that my commands are his own.”
Cathair sighed theatrically. “Very well, Lord Goodman. I will show you my safe, and its poor contents.”
The Hand went to the western side of his enormous library, and spent a moment idling at his shelves. A red light appeared on his palm. This he set by the back of a leather-bound tome. Eamon watched, amazed, as a panel of the case blurred in a haze of red light and flickered away, revealing instead a recessed alcove.
Not bothering to look inside, Cathair indicated the opening with a grandiose gesture. “Be my guest, Lord Goodman.”
It was a nonchalance that betrayed the safe’s contents: even before he took a step closer, Eamon knew it was there. He could feel it, a pulsing evil, before he breathed another breath.
He approached the alcove in trepidation. There, among the books, scrolls, and trinkets, tucked to one side, lay the Master’s tome. The binding seemed scarce enough to contain the lacerated script that had long tormented Eamon’s nightmares.
Eamon did not reach inside to take it: he would need both his hands to deal with the Master’s betrayer. And yet… why would a traitor reveal his treachery so easily?
He wet his cracked lips. “You should know, Lord Cathair, that Lord Arlaith wishes you dead.”
“Oh?” Cathair looked up carefully. “Is that so? Why would that be?” He still had not seen what lay in his keep. Could he not sense it?
“You betrayed the Master and set the blame upon him.”
There was a long pause. Cathair’s eyes pierced him.
“And so you come?” he laughed. “Pray, Lord Goodman, what treachery have I committed?”
Without another word, Eamon gestured levelly into the alcove. Cathair looked; saw; froze.
“Do you know this book?” Eamon demanded.
Cathair could only stare. “Whence came this?” he breathed. Fledgling fear was replaced by anger. “Who told you that you would find it here?”
“Lord Arlaith,” Eamon replied. Cathair raised his eyebrows. “He seeks your life for what you have wrought against him, for he has endured the Master’s wrath for what you have done. He is not the only one who has expressed your life as their object this afternoon.”
“Indeed?” Cathair answered curtly. “Who else has spoken so foully of me?”
“The one you serve.”
Cathair froze. “The one I serve?” His eyes narrowed. Slowly, he stepped away from the alcove. “Do you come to me with this news as a courtesy, Lord Goodman?”
“No,” Eamon answered quietly. “You stand accused, Lord Cathair, of withholding the Nightholt from the Master.”
Cathair met his gaze calmly. “I entrusted the Nightholt to Lord Ashway. Ashway delivered it to Lord Arlaith. Now, it would seem that the Nightholt has made its way into my keeping, with neither my knowledge nor my consent.”
Uncertainty trickled into Eamon’s veins. Cathair had always been fiercely loyal to the Master. What reason could he have for withholding the Nightholt? Yet there it lay.
One of the Hands was lying… but which one – the poet, the seer, or the Left Hand?
“The evidence stands against you, Lord Cathair,” Eamon persisted.
“So
it would seem, Lord Goodman. Tell me, do you not find this entire affair to be conveniently incontrovertible?”
“Tell me, Lord Cathair, who would plot so against you?”
“Who indeed?” Cathair stared at him for a moment, then his face suddenly became a picture of unspoken, dire outrage. “A treacherous, pandering knave!” he hissed, striding to one of the shelves at the far end of the room. “A duplicitous bastard! Beware, Right Hand,” he bellowed, “for you know not what the Left is doing!”
Eamon watched him, a black figure in the window-light. The Raven turned towards him. His green eyes glimpsed Eamon’s scabbard. When Cathair next spoke, his tone was simple.
“Have you come to kill me, Eamon Goodman?”
“Yes.”
For a moment there was a leaden silence. Dust drifted in the darkling air. Then suddenly Cathair raised his arms. His palms were surrounded with red light. A long smile appeared on Cathair’s face; his green eyes twinkled. Cathair cast his hands forward. There was fire between them, a flaming orb of red that would rend flesh from bone. Eamon knew it; he had seen it done in the Pit.
The sphere spun unstoppably towards him. Despite Arlaith’s warnings, Eamon was unprepared; he leapt just before the light struck him, but tripped on the rug and crashed heavily to the ground, taking the worst of the fall on his knees and knuckles.
Cathair howled with laugher and as he laughed another orb cracked through the air, hissing and sparking. It careered towards Eamon, who leapt up, impeded by his heavy cloak.
It nearly cost him his life. The light struck the floor, reducing half the rug to ashes.
Eamon was on his feet again. His feet were on the solid wooden floor. He tore away the fastening on his cloak and let the thing fall to the ground. Cathair came forwards, laughing.
“Sent to kill me?” he bayed. The dogs beyond the door roared with their master, and lunged against the wood with their heavy bodies. The vile red leapt between Cathair’s hands. “A sparrow sent to fell the Raven? You have been sent to die, Goodman!” The sphere left his hand.
Eamon darted from the fire’s path and only too late did he realize that it had not been aimed at him; Cathair’s goal was the wooden case by which Eamon stood. As the flame hit the wall, the impact of the collision caused the case to crack and come away. With a great creaking and shattering and shower of splinters, the grand bookcase groaned forward and vomited wood and tomes.