Elegy (The Magpie Ballads Book 1)

by Vale Aida

  Unexpectedly, he led her not to his brothers-in-arms, but all the way down to the lowest bench, in the shadow of the wooden castle on the stage. Lord and Lady Safin were there with their daughter Iyone, but Hiraen was nowhere to be seen. With rising astonishment, Shandei realised that Emaris was showing her to a seat beside the councillor they called the Saraian, Josit Ansa. The Lady smiled up at her. “You must be Shandei.”

  Josit was past fifty, she guessed, a small, elegant woman with dark ringlets that fell around a fine-featured face in vivid counterpoint to the pale lustre of her cheeks. Shandei opened her mouth, at a loss for words, and then closed it again. To her relief, Josit smoothed over the breach with easy courtesy. “I was sorry to hear about your loss. Believe me, we will get to the bottom of this.”

  Her hands found Shandei’s and squeezed them tight. They were finely made, like the rest of her, but the fingertips were rough and callused. The hands of a working woman. For some reason, that gave Shandei more comfort than anything she had said. “Thank you, milady.”

  “She asked to sit with you,” said Emaris from her other side, barely audible above the chattering around them. The hem of his cloak was frayed where he had been fidgeting with it. “The Captain said I could leave his service if I wanted.”

  “Why?”

  He looked miserable. “We have to find the killer and—and whoever hired him. It’s our duty. And Savonn isn’t staying here. He’s going back to Betronett today.”

  “He what? What about the governorship?”

  Emaris shrugged. “I don’t think he cares.”

  “But he can’t just allow that piece of—”

  At that moment Josit, who seemed to have been listening, said, “Speak of the devil.”

  Shandei shut her mouth in time to see Willon Efren making his way to them along the bench, resplendent in a brocaded doublet and a cloth-of-gold overcoat. His carroty hair was peppered with grey, but his big frame was still tall and erect. His stride was vigorous, easily outpacing the young man who trailed after him, every bit as pompously dressed. “Lucien!” he yelled, waving to catch Lord Safin’s attention. “Lucien! What the hell’s going on?”

  Shandei forced her fingers to straighten out of their fists and ordered a meticulously blank expression on her face. “Behold the Efrens,” said Josit. “The one behind him is Vesmer of the city guard, the youngest of three sons. Willon believes that daughters are an aberration afflicted only on the feeble.”

  “Willon,” Lord Safin was saying. “You’ve not heard the news? Peacefully abed all night, I suppose?”

  Lord Efren scowled. “I heard about the assassins. You can be assured I had nothing to do with that. Does the fool boy think a bit of street gossip will turn the tide in his favour?”

  Emaris was rigid with rage. Aware from long experience that he was only seconds away from leaping to the Captain’s defence, Shandei trod hard on his boot. The movement was less discreet than she intended, and Lord Efren, his gaze arrested, looked down the bench towards them. But Josit spoke first. “Life is full of surprises, Lord Willon,” she said, every word syrupy sweet. “I’m sure your speech will still be magnificently received. Have I introduced you to the Lady Shandei?”

  “The who?”

  “Shandei,” said Josit, “is the daughter and heiress of the Second Captain of Betronett, who was murdered on his way to your dinner party last night. Her brother Emaris, as you surely know, is Savonn’s squire.”

  The gauntlet had been thrown down. There was nothing for it now but to rise, and to sweep the man a deep, exaggerated curtsey, with Emaris bowing at her side. “Milord Efren,” she said. Unable to stop herself, she added, “I am so, so sorry that such matters have troubled your day.”

  This time it was Emaris who trod on her foot. Willon stared at her in dumbfoundment, as if one of his shoes had sprouted a mouth and started addressing his toes. Then he said curtly, “You have my condolences. Your father should have stayed home.”

  Her whole head pulsed with the force of her heartbeat. For a moment she thought she was looking at three of him, each ruddy, big-boned face running into the other, like a many-headed creature from myth. “Of course,” she said. On its own volition, her face cracked into a hideous smile. “You didn’t invite him. It was the Silvertongue you wanted. What a coincidence he was also attacked.”

  There was no telling what else she would have said, if Hiraen Safin had not at that moment materialised at Willon’s elbow, sleek and tanned and all in black. “My lord? Savonn sends to say that he defers to your seniority, and invites you to address the assembly first, if you desire.”

  Willon rounded on him, Shandei all but forgotten. “Is this a joke?”

  Hiraen’s face betrayed the strain of a sleepless night, green eyes shadowed by purplish-grey bruises, but the corners of his mouth twitched. “If you ask me, I believe he has a number of special effects that may unsettle your audience.”

  They gazed at each other for a moment, the young man and the old, the smiling face and the angry one. Then Willon said, “Your friend has made a farce of the assembly with his brawling and his calumny. If he wishes to further embarrass me, he will be sorely disappointed. I will not speak today.”

  “I’m grieved to hear it,” said Hiraen, not troubling to look grieved. But Willon was already stalking off with his son in tow, and after nodding to them all, Hiraen vanished as well.

  “The nerve of him,” said Emaris under his breath, still glaring at the spot where Lord Efren had been. “The nerve… He killed Father, and nearly murdered me and Savonn too, and he dares to stand there and—”

  “We haven’t got proof,” said Shandei dully.

  “Proof, my girl,” said Josit, “is a poor man’s bribe. And the magistrates always rule in favour of the rich, don’t you know? But never mind that. Here comes Savonn.”

  A gong sounded, calling the assembly to order. A pregnant silence fell over the lowest circles of the Arena and rippled its way to the top. The Captain had emerged centrestage on the set, with a wooden rampart over his head and a snarling clay griffin on either side of him, cunningly painted to look like stone. Perforce reminded of the Governor’s funeral, Shandei checked each door and window of the castle for any sign of the choir. But the set was empty save for Savonn, and every eye was on him.

  “Oh, gods,” Emaris whispered. “He’s going to sing, or make something explode, or…“

  Savonn never rushed to speak. He studied his audience at leisure, utterly at ease, secure in their attention. Today he was wearing leather vambraces, greaves and a steel cuirass, with a black half-cloak draped over one shoulder. A sword was belted at his hip, and his helm, with its tall silver plume, was perched on the glowering head of one of the griffins. “You all know,” he said, “that this assembly was meant to be a public vote of the citizens.”

  He barely raised his voice, and yet it carried across the theatre like the cut of a knife. “The Council was undecided, and therefore you were invited to exercise your age-old right to choose your Governor. Last night, as you may have heard, someone tried to take that choice out of your hands.”

  No declaiming. No puffs of coloured smoke. Just this sober, plainspoken man, near unrecognisable as the one who had given them solace and catharsis at their lord’s funeral. Savonn had not appeared to them as the Master of the Revels this time, but the Captain of Betronett, firm, ascetic and unyielding. No one made a sound. No matter the guise, the Silvertongue was always worth watching. “Don’t fret,” he said. “Today you will still get to cast a vote, albeit one of a different sort.”

  At the far side of the theatre, Lord Efren left his seat discreetly to confer with Oriane Sydell. They both looked anxious. Good, thought Shandei.

  “Yesterday,” said Savonn, “on his way to the Efren residence to answer a summons from the Council, my deputy Rendell was murdered in cold blood. I, too, was attacked in the same hour, and would have met the same fate if not for the valiant intervention of his son, my squire.”
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  Heads were turning to follow the direction of his gaze. Emaris shuffled his feet until Shandei elbowed him in the ribs.

  “When questioned, our assailants were not forthcoming, save to say that an unnamed person paid them generously to see that I did not live to address you this morning. I know you must be curious. Friends,” said Savonn, with a sweeping gesture, “I present the severed fangs of the menace that stalks our streets, preying on those who seek to do right by this city.”

  Movement stirred to the left. Shandei looked over to see half a dozen servants in the black and orange livery of the Safins approaching with a litter, heavily laden. Not even the witchcraft of Savonn’s voice could keep the crowd quiet when they saw what was on it: three dead men, bound hand and foot and to each other with heavy steel manacles, their throats gaping where a sword had sliced them through. Their clothes were stained brown with dried blood. Shandei, who on any other day had the strongest stomach of anyone she knew, turned away feeling ill.

  Savonn spoke over the outcry of dismay. “There is no shortage of people who would profit from such an arrangement. One need not look far to find them.” A pause, so everyone had time to stare at Willon Efren. “But alas, I do not only refer to matters of politics. I urge you all to remember the curious death of our Lord Governor, so lately slain.”

  Silence fell. Of course they remembered. The choir of Ceriyes had made sure of that. “I urge you to consider not only the jackals that squabble within our city, but the wolves that lurk without. For as long as Cassarah is leaderless, Marguerit of Sarei goes unchecked, and the question of Kedris Andalle’s death remains unanswered. And while we sit around talking, some among us have already moved on to the knife in the dark.

  “I,” said Savonn Silvertongue, “am also done with talking. Today I ride for the Farfallens to bring justice to our Governor’s killer. Stay here if you will, and appoint as your ruler whomever you please, and pray to your gods that the Ceriyes do not find you next. Stay, and speculate, and quarrel, and fret. Or come.

  “Come with me to the mountains. Let the babblers and the paper-pushers scheme among themselves. Come away with me to the wild country, where the arrow flies true and treachery has nowhere to lay its head, and let us make our own fortune where we find it. What do you say?”

  An uneasy rustling. Then a clear voice answered from the middle of the theatre, behind Shandei. “We fight!”

  She looked round. It was Hiraen, standing on his bench in the midst of his company, his bow lifted shining in the air. A moment later, all his black-cloaked fellows rose to join him, and the cry swelled strident from their ranks. “We fight! We fight! Savonn! Lord Silvertongue!”

  Sound was strange in the Arena. There could not have been more than a couple hundred men cheering, but their voices seemed to rise and fill the theatre, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, building and rolling up and down the rings like spindrift. Shandei realised that the men of Betronett were not the only ones on their feet: that pockets of shouting had arisen as well from the Safin household and the city guard and even the civilians at the top of the theatre. Emaris was sitting bolt upright in his seat, fingers furled tight over the edge of the bench, tears glistening diamond-bright in his eyes. A muscle worked in Josit’s jaw.

  Savonn took a neat cat leap from the stage and came up the stairs. Those who had risen rushed to join him, clambering over the benches, swarming across the stage to take the steps three at a time. They swept up the stairs in a wash of shouting, Savonn’s curly head nearly lost in their midst. The small host passed between the top benches, taking the loudest of the yelling with it, and vanished over the edge of the Arena into the rising sun. Those who still had their wits about them had stayed put. But many—about eight hundred, Shandei guessed, including the original Betronett company—had gone with the Captain. Come away with me, the Silvertongue had said, and people knew a good show when they saw one.

  By now everyone was on their feet, peering to the top of the bowl to see where Savonn and his crowd were going, or to the bottom, where Lord Willon seemed to be having a loud disagreement with Lady Oriane. Emaris’s face was wet. He said, “Shandei.”

  He had not done this in a long time—come to her out of some trouble or other, a scraped knee or a broken toy or a scolding from their father, and looked at her as if she were the Mother Alakyne made flesh, able to heal all hurts. Her chest ached with a forlorn sadness. “Go with him, baby boy,” she said.

  “But—”

  “Father would want you to.” She did not know if it was true, only that Emaris needed to believe it was. It would kill him to stay when all his friends were going. “We’re a Betronett family, always have been. Leave the killer to me.”

  He stared at her. Then he embraced her again, hard, and in the next moment vaulted the bench and took off running up the stairs. Shandei watched him until he was gone, her own eyes prickling. Lady Josit’s slender arm came around her shoulders. “It’s all right,” she said. “Savonn will look after him. They have their work, and we have ours.”

  And so she did. She looked over at the Efrens again. Willon was shouting orders at his guards, somehow managing to look both confused and angry, as if in all this he was the one who had been wronged. Your father should have stayed home, he’d said.

  Her hand clenched hard around the ivory dagger in her belt. Hear me, Mother Above, she prayed. Hear me, Aebria and Casteia and all the Ceriyes. The law will not help me, but I will kill him. Even in the midst of his guards, his riches and his sons, I will find a way to strike him down. Be my witnesses. I will kill him.

  * * *

  Swept along in the crowd, Emaris followed the host down the street, past the forbidding walls of the citadel and the high-fenced courtyard of the Temple of the Sisters, and toward the Gate of Gold: the grandest of Cassarah’s five gates, forty feet high, built from interwoven steel frets gilded with real gold. There was a great tiled courtyard near the entrance, surrounded by tall brick buildings, registrars and customs houses and the like. There, his brothers-in-arms were saddling their horses to leave.

  It was clear that the exodus had been planned well beforehand. Ostlers led out horses with efficient calm; errand-boys came running with spare cloaks for those who had forgotten theirs; cooks and kitchen servants handed out parcels of food to last them until Medrai. Emaris, who had come just as he was from the Safin manor—sleepless and exhausted, without arms or armour—huddled by a pillar to keep out of the way. His father should have been here to tell him what to do. But he was alone, with no orders.

  “Well?” said a matter-of-fact voice. Like an apple one kept trying to push underwater, Savonn had bobbed up at his side again. “How angry are the Council?”

  “Lord Willon looked ready to bite off his own tongue,” said Emaris flatly. “He’ll never let you go.”

  “Won’t he? It depends how much bloodshed he’s willing to risk.” Savonn studied him, eyes narrowed against the sun. He had sat up all night with Emaris in one of Lady Safin’s spare bedrooms—not talking, not coaxing, just sitting, only slipping away to the Arena just before cockcrow. “I already said you don’t have to come. Did you sleep at all?”

  Emaris ignored the question. One never looked for kindness from Savonn, but it came at the most inopportune moments. If he overthought this, his resolve would falter. “So try and make me go away.”

  “Sweetheart,” said Savonn, “the gods themselves quake to contemplate it. You keep losing this, is all.”

  He was holding out Emaris’s sword in its scabbard. Emaris searched his face for a hint of admonition, but found none. He took the sword and hung it on his belt, half wishing Savonn would say something rude so he would have no choice but to turn around and go back to Shandei. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Most of the time, neither do I. Turn around and start walking, I see the Council coming to accost me.”

  Sure enough, it had grown noisier. Standing on tiptoe, Emaris saw the councillors coming into the c
ourtyard. Willon Efren was in the lead, surrounded by his household guard. Lucien Safin had him by the arm, talking and gesturing and, by the looks of it, being determinedly ignored. At a word from Willon, the guards began to spread out around the edges of the courtyard.

  “They’re coming,” Emaris observed. For lack of an alternative, he plunged with Savonn into the milling mass of man and horse. He had attained that special depth of fatigue that drowned all one’s senses in an ambulatory coma, in which even the surreal and the lethal seemed pedestrian. At this rate they would find themselves in a stand-off with the Efren guards by noon, and have their heads on the block at nightfall. “He’s giving orders to his men. Lord Lucien is yelling. Oh, now Lady Oriane’s guards have joined them. They’re looking for you. They’re going to arrest you. Perhaps you ought to be arrested.”

  “Perhaps,” Savonn agreed. “But it would rather ruin the scene. And Lord Lucien would call his guards, and there would be murder. Where’s your horse?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Take Hiraen’s, he’s got at least twelve more.”

  Savonn was mounting his own black palfrey. After a moment, Emaris swung up onto the gelding beside it, and strung the bow that hung from its saddle. The men of Betronett were urging their horses into their orderly ranks, and behind them Daine and Hiraen had managed to chivvy the rabble of new recruits into two long files on foot. At the end of the courtyard, the Efren and Sydell guards eyed them like a colony of plague-ridden rats.

  “They’re not barring the way yet,” said Emaris, with only an academic interest in the proceedings. No doubt Savonn would do something awful to get rid of the guards, or they would all go to the headsman together. “I don’t think the Council wants a bloodbath. We outnumber them, but if they couch their spears we can’t charge. Are we charging them? Or are you just—damnit!”

  A lieutenant had begun to shout. “Shut the gate! Shut the gate!”

  A horseman in Efren cream and bronze exploded past them at a gallop, streaking towards the gate towers with the order. Hiraen stepped up on Savonn’s other side, his bow already drawn. “Shall I stop him?”