The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  Liam and Benedikt rolled their eyes at each other and kept out of the feggit lord’s way as best they could.

  Come supper, crowded in the noisy barracks mess with fifty hungry men-at-arms, Benedikt near fell face-first in his rabbit stew. “I got to get some shuteye, Willem,” he said, yawning wide enough to swallow a horse. “Be ye coming?”

  Liam played with a crust of bread. He should. His bruises and bones were aching and his burn-scarred cheek stung where it was cut. Even so, he was too jittery for sleep.

  “Soon,” he said. “I got things to think on first.”

  Benedikt yawned again. “Suit yerself.”

  A few tilt yard torches were still burning, throwing light and shadow onto the scuffed, patchy grass. Ducking under the rail with his sword, he wandered into the middle of the empty training ground and started working through the drills Grule had shown him. He’d spent enough time these past months watching Balfre with a blade to know that Roric, raised the same way, would be a lethal man in a fight. Bastard or not, he’d killed Duke Harald. So Harald’s son had to train every chance he got, no matter he was tired and aching, if he wanted a hope of killing the man who’d stolen his throne.

  “You’re dropping your right shoulder, Willem. It puts you off-balance. I’ve told you that before.”

  Startled, he turned. Lord Boice, Balfre’s strange guest, was watching him from the tilt yard railing. He nodded. “Iss, my lord.”

  “Go again,” Boice said, encouraging. “And keep that shoulder high. Else you’ll be asking for a Clemen blade between your ribs.”

  He did as he was told. But after a few moments Boice cursed and ducked himself under the railing. “No. Here.” He held out his hand, approaching. “The sword.”

  “My lord,” he said again, and handed it over.

  “You’re doing this,” Boice said, hunching a shoulder to his ear. “When you should be doing this.” His shoulder dropped. “You see the difference?”

  “Iss,” he said, scowling. Not because he resented the correction, but because he hated to be wrong. “Only I—”

  “Boice! What the fuck are you doing?”

  And that was Balfre, sauntering down the torchlit path from the manor to the tilt yard, Lord Waymon by his side. They were carrying heavy silver wine goblets. Balfre had two.

  “Saving your man-at-arms’s life, I hope, my lord,” Boice said, handing back the sword. “Or should that be Your Grace?”

  “Not quite yet. But the sentiment is appreciated.” Balfre held up one of the wine goblets. “Waymon and I were were sharing a drop of sunwine. Toasting Aimery’s memory. Care to join us?” His gaze shifted. “You, there. You can go.”

  As Boice crossed the tilt yard, Liam pretended to obey… then drifted unseen into a deep pool of shadow. Any chance he got to watch Balfre, he took. When serving a man, ’twas good to know him. Especially when that man must later be thrown down. Balfre, the arrogant shite, never looked twice at the man-at-arms he’d dismissed. Thought an order given was an order followed. Fucking fool. Surely he’d prove no obstacle when the time came to push him aside.

  Boice ducked back under the tilt yard railing, then took the goblet Balfre offered him. Lifted it, in wry salute. “To His Grace, Duke Aimery of Harcia. And to his noble son.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Balfre and Waymon, sipping. But Lord Boice drank deep. The look on Balfre’s face, watching him empty his goblet, made Liam think of a cat with its paw on a mouse. It was the same gloating look he’d seen on Iddo’s face, that day in the cellar. His breath caught.

  Shite. What was going on here?

  Smiling, Balfre laid his hand on Boice’s shoulder. Shook him a little, as though they were friends. “Ah, Vidar. I am going to miss you.”

  Liam felt his blood leap, even as Lord Boice lost his balance where he stood. Vidar? He remembered that Clemen pizzle from the Pig Whistle. Had sworn vengeance on him too, for betraying Duke Harald. But–Vidar was dead. And half-blind and crippled when he was living. Boice weren’t neither.

  Boice was staring at Balfre, his unscarred face stiff with shock. Then he looked at the goblet. Cursed. Threw the heavy silver cup on the ground. “Balfre?” he said hoarsely. “What have you done?”

  So… he was Vidar?

  Astonished, Liam watched as Balfre snatched at Boice’s neck. Pulled something free from under his shirt and doublet and snapped it loose. Waymon was staring too, just as amazed.

  “Fuck, Balfre. I believed you when you said you’d given Vidar a different face, but–fuck. It is him.”

  “Not for much longer,” said Balfre, grinning at the man everyone in the manor had called Lord Boice. “What have I done, Vidar? I’ve killed you.”

  Boice turned from him, the movement spilling light from a tilt yard torch onto his true face, Vidar’s face, with its one eye and its ragged scars. He looked stricken.

  “Balfre… why?”

  “Why do you think? Am I half-blind? Or too doltish to notice you’d had a change of heart? You only played the traitor. However bruised by Roric, your loyalty always belonged to Clemen. Take him, Waymon. Lock him in his chamber. He’ll be dead by sunrise.”

  Waymon’s smile was wolfish. “And buried in the midden an hour after that, yes?”

  “The midden?” Balfre laughed. “What a waste that would be. No, Waymon. I’ve a far more useful resting place in mind.”

  Silent, stumbling, like a man half-dead already, Vidar let Waymon hustle him away.

  Balfre stayed behind, his fingers caressing whatever it was he’d snatched from around slowly dying Vidar’s neck. Watching him from the shadows, Liam saw him smile. Then Harcia’s new duke picked up Vidar’s discarded goblet. Tossed it in the air, caught it and turned for the manor.

  Too frightened to move, Liam waited till Balfre was safely out of sight. Then he bent himself double, whooshed the burning air from his lungs in one long, astonished rush. Growing up in the Pig Whistle he’d heard Marcher folk whisper of faeries and goblins and omens and witchery. He’d seen their fingers flick as they warded off bad luck. Iddo always scoffed at them, but Molly never did. She used to call on the faeries and leave charms around the inn. True, the faeries and the charms never saved her but did that mean she and the Marcher folk were wrong? ’Cause how could Balfre have given that treacherous bastard Vidar a different face if he weren’t a man as dabbled in dark muck? He couldn’t. Which meant he was that man. And that meant Liam, Duke of Clemen, had best watch his step.

  “Shite,” he muttered, shivering… then returned to his solitary sword drills.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “Mama, we’re worried about Papa.”

  Sickeningly weary, scoured raw with grief, Mazelina looked up from the dull distraction of needlepoint. Cool sunlight from the dayroom window played across her children’s pale, unhappy faces. And they were still her children, though Kerric was pushed too soon into manhood and Ullia, her brash Ullia, had grown to love fine dresses as well as swords and was sought after by several young Green Isle lords. She still danced ahead of them–but soon she’d let herself be caught.

  “My loves.” She stabbed her needle safe in the half-finished cushion cover and put the embroidery to one side. “Your father mourns his father. You must expect him to be a little distant. ’Tis not even a week since Aimery died. I think he’s only now beginning to realise his loss. And you remember…” She hesitated. “We all remember how it was, when we lost Jorin.”

  Kerric shook his head. “This is different.”

  “Everyone in Tamwell knows Papa has sent for Uncle Balfre,” Ullia said. “I don’t think Aunt Jancis has stopped crying since. And Emeline–Mama, Emeline looks as though she’d leap from the west tower. She never says a word but I know she’s terrified of her father.”

  “Mama—” Kerric sat beside her on the settle. “Is Papa afraid of what Balfre will do now he’s duke?”

  “Kerric! What a thing to ask!”

  “That’s not an answer.”

 
; Agitated, trying to hide it, she stood and crossed to the unshuttered window. The day outside was blustery, the sky scudded with high cloud. Keeping her back to her son and her daughter, she clasped her hands tight to stop their trembling.

  “Kerric, Ullia, your father would be most hurt were I to tell him what you’ve said. So I won’t. And if you love him, you’ll not repeat it.”

  “But Mama—”

  “Enough, Ullia. Comfort Emeline. She’s your cousin, and needs a friend.” She glanced over her shoulder. “As for you, Kerric, make yourself useful to poor Curteis. He and Aimery were very close. And there’s a great deal to be done in Tamwell before Balfre returns.”

  “Mama,” her children murmured, chastened.

  As soon as they were gone, she fetched a shawl and went to find Grefin.

  He was in Tamwell bailey’s smithy, alone, hammering out his pain on old, worn horse-shoes. It was a trick he’d learned on the Green Isle. A way of conquering his feelings without alarming his family or the lords who’d come to love and trust him.

  Stripped to his hose and heedless of struck sparks and molten metal, he lifted his head as she entered. Caught his hammer on its downward stroke. The scars and knots on his bare torso, gifts from the northern raiders, were slicked with running sweat.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Mazelina,” he said curtly, before she even tried to speak. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  The shawl she’d needed to cross the bailey was stifling in the smithy’s heat. She let it slip to her elbows. Made sure her voice was gentle because his grief had made him brittle. Like badly tempered steel.

  “And you won’t know, my love, till you decide who you believe. Aimery… or Balfre.”

  He threw down the hammer, filling the smithy with ringing echoes. “How can I decide, Mazelina? How can I choose between my father and my brother? All my life I’ve been torn between them, like a piece of meat between two wolves. I’m exhausted. And I can’t–I can’t—”

  Weeping, she went to him. Held him hard. Waited for his storm to pass so he could hear what she had to say. When at last she felt all his muscles soften she leaned away from him, just a little, and pressed her palm to his hollowed cheek.

  “Then don’t decide, my love. Don’t choose. Let Balfre choose for you. Let him show you who he is. And when he shows you, because he will, then you’ll know what to do.”

  Grefin rested his cheek on her hair. “Do you know how much I love you?”

  “As much as I love you.”

  “Mazelina…” He breathed out, slowly. “I’m tired of hammering horse-shoes. Take me inside.”

  Closeted in his study, Humbert cursed as he read the the latest spidery-scrawled letter sent him by an increasingly desperate Lord Scarwid. The news from Eaglerock wasn’t encouraging. Though the worst disruptions to trade in Cassinia had settled, the dukes there dabbling in peace for a change, Clemen’s fortunes continued miserable. His Grace was cold and unforthcoming, growing grimmer each passing day. Master Blane blamed him for Ercole’s death, with a chorus of his brother traders echoing the man’s grief–and rattling their coffers. No longer generously inclined, they wanted their loans repaid. Roric was despondent and would scarce listen to any advice in council, save it came from Lord Aistan. To appease the merchants there was to be another increase in taxes. Eaglerock’s tradesfolk were crying foul. And the township’s exarchites also stirred trouble, attracting malcontents, muttering strife. Wasn’t there any way Humbert could come to Eaglerock and guide His Grace in person? For it seemed any written advice he offered Roric was being ignored.

  Sighing, Humbert pinched the bridge of his nose. Scarwid’s plea for intervention wasn’t the first he’d received of late. Several lords had written to him in the past few weeks, nobles who’d supported the move against Harald and were then in full agreement that Roric was their only hope. Now they begged him to be their spokesman a second time, encourage the duke they’d chosen to soften his stance. Listen to wider counsel. Ease his throttling grip upon the duchy.

  He had no idea what to tell them.

  A sharp knock, and then his study door pushed open. Egann, with a most peculiar look on his face.

  “My lord, you should come. There’s strange trouble at the Pig Whistle. Folk are claiming Lord Vidar is there. Dead.”

  Humbert stared. “Man, are you drunk?”

  “I wish I were,” Egann said grimly. “But I’ve a sober man-at-arms outside who’ll swear he’s seen the body.”

  “Vidar’s body?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “That you hauled out of Crooked Creek and I sent to Eaglerock to be buried. That body.”

  “The very same.”

  “Egann, has the shiting world gone mad?”

  “It would seem so, my lord.”

  “Shite.” He stood, shoving his chair back. “You’d best show me.”

  They rode hard to the Pig Whistle inn–or what remained of it. By Marcher Law its blackened ruins should have been cleared and a new inn planned to take its place, the freehold leased to any soul with the coin to pay. But some Marcher folk claimed the burned-down Pig Whistle was haunted and didn’t keep secret what they thought they heard and saw. With the susperstitious Marches already uneasy, and bad blood splashed far and wide over Molly’s death and the inn’s burning, better to let things rest a while–or so Humbert thought. Balfre didn’t seem to care either way. And after Ercole, and Harcia’s treachery, he wasn’t in the mood to sit down and chat. So nothing had been done.

  Only other folk, valuing coin over fear and sentiment, had taken matters into their own hands. They knew there were merchants and traders coming into the Marches who were ripe for something to eat and drink by the time they reached the Crossroads. Eager for somewhere to ease their weary bones and horses and mules. So while there was no longer an inn to offer hospitality, that didn’t mean they must be disappointed. Not wanting any more ructions, sensitive to the Marches’ mood, Humbert had decided to turn a blind eye. For a while.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, as he and Egann and the man-at-arms who’d brought the unwelcome news came in sight of the Pig Whistle’s charred, rainsoaked skeleton. “You’d think it was market day in Eaglerock.”

  They eased their horses from fast canter to slow trot and approached with caution. Enterprising Marcher folk had set up carts and trestles and barrows in the burned inn’s forecourt. Canvas tents flapped their awnings to one side, straw pallets inviting the weary to rest. On the other side, rows of horselines with water and hay and oats for sale. The damp air smelled of pies and pasties and hot pease pottage and ale and horseshit and burning peat and wet charcoal. Dogs barked. Men shouted. Women shrieked and flapped their skirts. Some in the gathered crowd were Marcher folk, some were foreigners, and some–shite–looked to be travellers in from Clemen. A handful of men-at-arms tried to keep order. Halting, Humbert slid from his saddle, threw his reins to Egann and stamped his way through the excitement until he reached its cause.

  Vidar. Dead on the ground in the middle of the muddy, trampled forecourt. Dagger slashes in his doublet, fresh blood spilled from the wounds. Kneeling beside him, the healer woman Izusa. She seemed nigh witless in her distress. Seeing him, she scrambled to standing.

  “Lord Humbert! My lord!”

  A ragged silence fell, slowly. Humbert scowled at the woman, then the body at her feet. Shite. Behind him he could hear whispers and muttering. It is him. I told ye. That be Lord Vidar. No hope now of keeping this secret. What a cockshite fool he’d been to wink at the Marcher folk come to ply their trade in this curs’t place.

  “Izusa,” he said heavily. “This is—”

  “My lord, forgive me!” Izusa held out bloodied hands in appeal. “I found him not far from my cottage, stabbed and crawling on all fours. I tried to help him but he commanded I take him on my horse to your manor. He had desperate news for you, Lord Humbert. I didn’t dare disobey him–but I fear I cost him his life.”

  She was
close to babbling, her eyes wide, tears streaming. Horribly aware of the folk crowding close, he did his best to soothe.

  “Izusa, I’ve no doubt you’re not to blame. Whatever misfortune did befall Vidar, then—”

  “Here—” She pulled a folded paper from within her blouse, thrust it at him. “Vidar said it would explain all. He said Clemen is in great danger. Aimery of Harcia is dead and—”

  Shocked gasps. Humbert flinched. “Aimery’s dead? You’re sure?”

  “Vidar swore it. Even now Balfre rides to claim his birthright. My lord, your duke and Aimery’s son, with Vidar’s help, they long ago made a pact. Once Balfre was duke, Roric would freely give him Clemen and its Marches in return for a fortune in gold and jewels so he could live out his life in exile.”

  “Never!” Humbert protested, as the crowd in the forecourt started to jostle and shout. “Vidar said that, Izusa?”

  “His dying words. On my life. And he wrote it down.”

  Stunned, he looked at the the confession she’d thrust at him. Dimly heard the crowd shouting. Felt himself elbowed and pushed and kicked. Looked up to meet Egann’s horrified stare. Then somebody took hold of his arm and turned him. Norbert of the Clemen Marches, who ran pigs in Fallow Copse.

  “Is it true, my lord? Are we sold to Harcia?”

  The young man’s frightened demand was like the first gust of wind heralding a storm. Within heartbeats a gale of questions raged around him. Hands clutched. Fingers pinched. Some of them belonged to Clemen men-at-arms, their duty and training wiped away by panic.