But as she stood in the doorway and stared at him things started to go wrong. Her expression wasn’t the sultry smile he remembered from last time, it was surprise, and not pleased surprise either. Halfway out of his chair and halfway into the courtly bow practiced so often in the sheet of polished tin that did duty for his mirror, he froze.
Because Ilen wasn’t alone.
The man beside her didn’t wear even a kailin’s single braid, but he was rich, the cut and ornamentation of his clothes made that very clear. The possessive way his arm went round Ilen’s waist was bad enough; the expression on his well-fed face as he registered then dismissed Aldric’s existence was far worse. It wasn’t scorn, contempt or dislike, like Baiart until he learned better. This was simple indifference, and it stung like a slap in the face.
The man said something that made Ilen laugh in a way that set Aldric’s teeth on edge, then they walked out of The Brimming Tankard and out of his life.
*
He watched the door while it swung shut, wondering if there was any point in running after them. He wanted to ask questions : if Ilen had meant any of what she said, or if he’d misunderstood, or if she’d been making sport of him all along. So many ‘ifs’. He also wanted to wipe that derisive sneer off the merchant’s face – with so much ostentatious wealth he had to be a merchant – except for one more ‘if’.
If the man was as rich as he seemed he would have powerful friends in Radmur, well able to make life unpleasant for any clan-lord whose unimportant last son had no sense of humour. Aldric stared at nothing in particular for a long while with humour very far from his mind. Then he ordered another drink, not wine this time but Elthanek grainfire, and it was Tewal himself who arrived with the squat stoneware bottle and a glass. A distinctly small glass. Whether he had seen the incident or just heard about it, like any good innkeeper he had a nose for trouble.
“Was the food not to your liking?” Aldric glanced at the roast chicken, his knife still deep in one breast. It matched the way he felt.
“It was fine. Is fine.”
“Then you should show more willing. I took trouble over your dinner, my lord. Eat. Don’t waste.”
“You sound like my brother.” No need to specify which one.
“I could sound like worse. And I have another request.”
“What?” Aldric reached for the bottle, and Tewal moved it far enough to make his intention clear. “Oh. It’s like that, is it?”
“Yes, my lord, it is. You surrender your Blades, or you drink no more this evening.”
“What if I insist? I have the right.”
“As do I, my lord. The right to Peace in the House.” Tewal’s pronunciation drove each capital letter into place. “You know the law. Would you spoil our friendship over that?” The small bearded man who always smiled wasn’t smiling now. He wasn’t angry or aggressive, Aldric would have matched that willingly, but Tewal gave no reason to find fault. He only looked determined to stand by a law meant to protect his livelihood, patrons and property, and unhappy to lay it down so severely.
“I… No, I wouldn’t. All right, Tewal. You win. Here…” Aldric unbuckled his weapon-belt and its cross-strap, then wrapped them around the long and shortsword scabbards. He kept his tsepan, and it wasn’t asked for. No kailin would give up the defender of his Honour, just as no kailin would ever use one as a fighting weapon. Tewal set down the grainfire again and ducked his head in respectful acknowledgement as he took the swords.
“No need for deep drafts, my lord.” His smile was back, if not quite as broad as usual. “Small sips wash away a bad taste just as easily.” So he had seen after all. “Until later, my lord.”
Aldric poured a measure and swirled it in the thick, chunky glass, anticipating the burn. He coughed as it went down, harsh at first, but even honey would taste like vinegar tonight. Yes, he felt wretched and betrayed, but it was better than being led by the nose and other parts for Heaven knew how many unwitting months. With a brief salute to what might have been he took another sip, and this time the grainfire wasn’t so bad.
Aldric’s evening might have ended with him rather drunk, rather sleepy, and rather more aware of how the world wagged. He would have gone back to Dunrath with an aching head if not an aching heart, and many things would have turned out differently. That was how his evening should have ended, except for other tavern patrons who saw things in a different light. Their conversation was quiet at first, except for an occasional guffaw like a mastiff with a bone in its throat. But the volume of their voices increased with their consumption of ale until it was clear they were no longer talking about him.
They were talking at him.
*
The three guardsmen had nothing against Aldric himself, but they were drowning their sorrows after a punishment detail and any authority was fair game. His hairstyle marked him as the sort of young officer who could assign, who had assigned, hours of pack-drill for a piddling misdemeanour. Better still, he wasn’t their young officer, or any officer at all, and they made the most of it.
None of their remarks were individually offensive, but repetition and elaboration made them mount up. A ton of feathers still weighed a ton, and Aldric soon grew weary of sly looks and comparisons between length of sword and weight of purse. Then the suggestions started, that lecherous boys who couldn’t stick up for themselves in public should stay at home and play with something sticking up in private.
The sensible, practical thing would be to finish his final glass of grainfire, poured fuller and drunk faster than intended, and walk off to bed armoured with icy dignity. But after Ilen and giving up his swords another defeat was one too many, especially since his imagination easily supplied the coarse snickers directed at his retreating back.
There would be no retreat just yet.
*
Aldric had watched enough stage-plays of the less improving kind to recognise this scenario and his role in it. Well, real life wasn’t a play, so maybe sense would prevail if he handled matters with enough diplomacy and tact. A little more caution, a little less anger and a lot less grainfire might have succeeded. Instead he said the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong tone to the wrong person.
“If it’s so funny say it louder, friend.”
The wrong thing was forgetting what calling someone friend could sound like. He staggered back to his chair, sparks dancing across his vision like a cloud of midges and blood welling from a split lip, and stayed there until the tavern stopped spinning while several things stood up to be counted in his rattled brain.
One: attempted authority without an imposing appearance counted for nothing.
Two: actors on stage pulled their punches a lot more than real people did.
Three: the fly-swatting contempt behind the blow hurt his self-esteem almost as much as his jaw, a physical match to the merchant’s expression and whatever he had said to make Ilen laugh.
And that left Four: what to do next.
He was outnumbered, outweighed, everything except outranked, and his stinging lip was proof of how little that was worth. The incident had been too brief for anyone else in The Brimming Tankard to notice. Conversation, demands for more drinks and the serving of those drinks continued as if nothing had happened. Trays laden with the tavern’s namesake were everywhere, and when Aldric got back to his feet he intercepted one not for the beer, but the tankard and the tactical advantage of its weight. He ignored the pewter ale-pots and heavy salt-glazed mugs favoured by Tewal’s regulars as too heavy and hazardous. But a cheap wooden tankard, a miniature barrel with a handle and hinged lid, was more than enough.
The trio of guardsmen had already dismissed him and were laughing at something else when Aldric tapped one of them on the back. He didn’t care which. The man swung round and one of his companions yelled, “Gyrek, look out!” just as the tankard met him in an explosion of staves, hoops, froth and good brown ale that swept him to the floor like a felled tree.
“Who’s next?�
� said Aldric. There was a clattering towards the tavern door as several more timid customers decided it wouldn’t be them. Then someone behind him grabbed his new warrior’s queue and gave his head a violent jerk.
It triggered one of the responses Joren had so carefully trained into him. His elbow slammed backwards and a crunch of impact shot down his arm. The someone let go of his hair, tried to yell past a flattened nose and several loosened teeth, then lashed out blindly and hit somebody else. After that events in the tap-room became even more like a stage-play, and Aldric ducked sideways under a table where he could watch the performance in peace.
A heavy body hit the ground behind him and he found himself with some company, though none he could talk to. The spice-merchant had been on the wrong end of a bottle and was in no state for conversation. Things were getting out of hand and Aldric realised that kailin-eir or not, lord’s son or not, elsewhere was the best place to be when the law came calling. Radmur’s Watchmaster would still remember his last tavern fight, and how much it had cost to set things right.
A chair by the table shot straight up out of sight, then became loud noises and a rain of splintered wood. Two women ran squealing for the door and Aldric stood up to follow them, doing his best to look innocent and uninvolved. Three swinging fists proved he had fooled nobody, and as he resolved that problem someone else departed loudly through the Tankard’s big front window. Breaking glass drew the Watch like wasps to syrup, and there were – had been – enough panes to attract the deafest constable.
Then he stopped as the man who had gone out of the window reappeared again in the doorway. It was his old acquaintance with the coarse mouth and the quick hand, and now he had a long military dagger in his fist. Aldric backed away warily. Knife-fighting was dangerous, few got away unscathed, and to qualify as a fight both sides should have a knife. His tsepan didn’t count and never would. But it helped to be more or less sober, and despite the grainfire he outmatched the ale-sodden guard on that score.
Aldric shifted his gaze to the street beyond and put a shocked expression on his face. It was enough, and the man started to turn before realising his error. An instant later his knife-hand was wrenched round so the elbow bent the wrong way, and Aldric punched the heel of his own free hand against the straining joint. Break, dislocate or whatever else it did, the blow hurt enough to put all thought of further fighting out of mind and the guardsman bellowed as he flailed headlong into a handy pile of chairs. His dagger clattered across the floor and out of sight, and Aldric stepped quickly out into the dark, cool quiet of the street.
Then he spun around with one hand flying to where the hilt of his taipan shortsword should have been, but thanks to Tewal’s intervention it closed on empty air. He let it drop slowly to his side, and the spearpoints levelled at his stomach withdrew a little.
“Aldric Talvalin, once again,” said the Watchmaster with a resigned smile. He gave the ghost of a bow. “And with increased rank, I see. But not increased sense. At least there’s nothing in the canal this time. Yet.”
*
Heavy flakes of snow wavered to the ground as Aldric galloped fast for Dunrath. This fall had begun as he left Radmur and was making the paved road treacherous, but he had no time for caution. The magistrates had deliberated for two days to decide who caused the riot in The Brimming Tankard, and though they’d given Aldric an honourable discharge they’d taken exactly too long over it. Haranil-arluth would think Aldric had deliberately misinterpreted his instructions. It would put him in just the right frame of mind to hear the real reason.
Aldric’s stomach turned whenever he thought about that, and he thought about it constantly.
He stopped at the way-house again, not to feed himself this time but to rest his lathered horse before the beast dropped under him. Not all the stamping up and down nor the rapping of quirt on boot could hurry the weary animal’s recovery, and at last Aldric gave up trying. He went inside and glared in grim silence at the fire.
Nearer home the sky began to clear, and he approached Dunrath in thin, harsh evening sunshine. The frosty air was still and silent, the only sound his steed’s hoofs muffled by new snow. He could see no guards, no sentries, not a soul. The chestnut passed over the outer lift-bridge, and still no one questioned his presence.
Aldric frowned and scanned the courtyard as he dismounted. Though no grooms were in the stables, horses stood in the stalls and even his new battle armour lay boxed in one corner, not yet unpacked. More worried by the minute, he went up into the citadel itself.
It was cold, and full of shadows made deeper by the dust-flecked shafts of light streaming through the western windows. There was no movement or sound except for what he made himself. He had never seen the corridors so still and dark. Even late at night there were lamps and servants, now there was only that slow eddy of golden specks washed by the evening light. He shivered and let his taiken slide from back to hip, the long blade appearing in one hand almost of its own volition, then very carefully he eased back one of the great hall’s doors and stepped inside.
*
The vast chamber was empty, dead fires slumped to grey ash in its hearths, and the many lamps and candles to keep it bright and cheerful had burned down to charred wicks. That was when unease finally became fear. He crossed the hall at a run and took the stairs into the donjon four at a time, almost going headlong more than once as panic and darkness made even familiar places treacherous.
At the foot of the spiral stair leading to his father’s tower rooms, he paused to control his breath and listen. All the corridors with access had en-canath, singing floors, uncarpeted boards laid loose to creak at the slightest pressure. Now they were silent, almost as silent as the young man who slipped upstairs like a stalking cat. The planks groaned when Aldric set foot to them and he hesitated briefly before continuing to his father’s door, then realised with the floors announcing every step that there was no more point in caution. He threw the door open, went inside…
And the sword slid from his slack fingers to clash against the floor, while a thousand useless thoughts, fears, hopes, excuses melded into a single silent scream.
Haranil-arluth Talvalin sat in his high-backed chair by the fireplace with his taiken resting on his knees. His head drooped forward on his breast, as if the old lord was asleep, but it was only an illusion, shattered by the spear that nailed him to his chair.
A few feet away Joren lay propped against the wall. There was no illusion of sleep there, for he had fought hard. His right hand was empty where someone had stolen his sword, but his left still gripped the broken wooden haft of whatever axe or mace had served him well before the end. Blood congealed in puddles on the floor, spattered the walls and smeared across ripped fabrics and hacked furniture. Aldric stared for a long time at Joren’s face, at the loose mouth and the obscene emptiness of wide, dead eyes.
And began to cry.
*
When he recovered from his brief, convulsive sobbing, Aldric pressed his face to the cool wood of the door and tried to grasp what fate had forced upon him. He was late. He had promised his father, his lord, to return at a certain time and he had broken his promise. Broken his Word. Reason nagged it hadn’t been his fault, hadn’t been deliberate, that he would only have died with the rest. Reason had no place in a kailin’s honour-code.
Without a trusted Word he would be better dead.
His arms drooped by his sides, and something touched one of them. Aldric glanced down and his scarred left palm burned with renewed pain. The black hilt of his tsepan glinted at him, a reminder of its purpose and his duty.
Better dead…
Slowly he drew it. The chiselled iron grip was cold against his hand, and the thin blade glittered in mockery of how he trembled. Aldric stared at its bitter point and cruel edges, cringing inside at what tradition and the Code expected of him. To what purpose? Dying would neither avenge his family, nor mourn them, nor even carry out the funeral rites. Yet staying alive would brand his nam
e with permanent dishonour.
“No!” The denial spat from his bloodless lips, chasing the tsepan as it flickered across the room and thudded into a panel. The dirk swayed and thrummed with the impact, its blue-enamelled crest-cap – his crest – winking at him like a sardonic eye, contemptuous of his cowardice. Aldric rubbed his hand, but the pain wouldn’t go away. His haunted eyes looked far into the distance, towards where the sun hung low over the Blue Mountains and edged a lapis sky with gold. A gentle breeze passed through the shattered window, caressing his face and cooling its film of sweat.
I lived as well as I could. I ate good food. I drank good wine. I had good friends. I even loved someone a little. Under the Light of Heaven or in the Shadows, my hands and soul are clean. Why fear death?
All men and women born crossed that final threshold and passed into the darkness. Only kailinin could choose their time to do so. It was an honourable right, if there was truth in what the priests said, to leave this melancholy world and return reborn.
He crossed the room, twisted the tsepan free, and returned to kneel at his father’s feet in First Obeisance as he had done mere days past and a lifetime ago. Aldric bowed his head and pressed his right hand, the sword-hand that should have defended his honour, into the still-wet blood staining the floor. Cold stickiness spread across its palm. When the ritual phrases that accompanied tsepanak’ulleth refused to form in his head he opened tunic and shirt, reversed the dirk and nuzzled its point into place under his breastbone. The steel was cold, and it stung.
“My lord father,” he whispered at last, “I am dishonoured. I ask forgiveness and… And I offer my life as recompense.”
The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Page 5