by Ted Neill
The chambers were spacious with high ceilings and windows to match. The walls between were adorned with forest green tapestries. The western wall was without windows but the hearth sat there with a roaring fire in its mouth. To either side were bookshelves so high that rolling ladders were anchored to their frames to reach the top. Three chairs waited across from a desk behind which the commandant himself was standing. He was not tall but he had a solid build and brassy hair that stopped just short of his shoulders. He was clean shaven but for a goatee about his mouth that was shaped in such a way that he looked to be wearing a permanent scowl. His dress was official: the green tunic of his office decorated with golden epaulettes and thick looping rings of white silk sewn into his sleeves, denoting his rank.
But all the furniture, furnishings, and players on this stage were overshadowed by the work of art in the wall behind the commandant himself: a great circular window of colored glass, its stained pieces arranged to make a portrait of a young woman with golden hair, hazel eyes, ruby lips, and such beauty that even rendered in glass, she took Haille’s breath from his chest. He and the others were struck silent by the exquisite detail and the craftsmanship that made the girl’s face so lifelike. It was only after a long pause of studying it that Haille realized that the window was not yet complete. The panels of glass around the portrait were arranged to portray a series of events, presumably from the girl’s life. They showed her being christened as a babe on her name-day in a river; frolicking in a flowery meadow as a girl; attending schools; finishing her classes; then the panels depicted a dark figure, a man who appeared hunchbacked, demons who hovered about the girl, enticing her with gifts of gold, fruit, and playing a harp fashioned from bones. In the last panel, which was still incomplete, Haille could make out a gallows but the person hanged there was not yet finished. The process had continued to the very moments before they had entered: on the far end of the commandant’s desk waited the sanders, picks, chisels, and bottles of sealant and dye that were used to fashion the work itself. The scaffolding to reach the final panel sat rolled away to the corner.
It seemed that the commandant was also an artist.
“Commandant Marsch,” Captain Ruane said with a slight bow. “Let me introduce Victor Twenge, my old associate and friend of the High Council. Many a wayward sailor and soldier, even spy he has tracked down or rooted out for me over the years I have known him.”
The commandant said nothing, his eyes sliding from one person to the next under heavy lids. Haille noticed the muscles in Ruane’s throat tighten. “May I also introduce our companions and prisoners?”
“No need, I read your brief: a boy who claims to be Prince and his outlaw companions,” Marsch said with a dismissive wave of his hand, now moving his head side to side to get a better look at Val, Cody, Chloe, and Gunther. “Interesting,” he said, as a soldier placed a goblet of wine within his reach. He took it while two more were offered to Ruane and Twenge. Haille noticed Twenge drink but Ruane did not. Instead, the captain tried to talk over the awkward silence that gathered as the commandant sipped his wine, his eyes finally coming to rest on Cody, who was looking down at his feet, shifting from one foot to another.
“Might I say the work at your back is unparalleled, sir,” Ruane said.
Now the commandant nodded forcefully as if coming alive. “My daughter, the song of my heart, the light of my life, and since her death, the wellspring of my unending pain and loss.”
Twenge stopped drinking from his goblet and looked over it, stupefied. Ruane made a frown, closed his eyes, and bowed low to the commandant.
“My condolences for your grief.”
“Thank you—noted,” the commandant said, setting down his wine and stepping out from behind his desk. “Let me tell you a story, if I may. Please take a seat.” Ruane and Twenge took their places in the chairs set out for them. There was a third, perhaps for Haille, but he did not presume to take it. The commandant did not seem to notice or care. He walked along the line of prisoners, looking them over one at a time, studying each of them. Haille wondered if Marsch was giving extra scrutiny to Cody, but perhaps this was simply out of interest at his rakish good looks. Cody, for his part, continued to cast his eyes downward in a show of humility that caused both Val and Chloe to glance at each other, their eyes holding the same questioning look.
“My daughter was special. Those are the words of any proud father. And we in our everyday speech use words such as ‘beauty’ and ‘grace’ with little appreciation for their meaning. But with her, those words found their truest meaning. Until her, I realize I had moved in a world of shadows. She was a happy child, bringing joy each day to her parents, and she grew into a fine young woman, sharp of mind, kind at heart, and quick with wit. It will come as no surprise to you when I tell you that she had more than enough suitors, high and low born. But few interested her, few could woo her, for she had other more noble pursuits and only the highest standards for herself.”
He made his way back to the desk, now turning his back on them to gaze upon the likeness of his daughter who looked out over all of them. “But into each sunny day, a cloud must come. As you can see from the panels here, a demon came into her life. He took the guise of a comely young man, but I have depicted him as he was in his heart, for truly he was a fiend of the underworld. Purity attracts evil, as if the darkness, out of spite, cannot stand to let such a light exist without marring it. Oh and did he so mar her. She kept him a secret, lying to me—her loving father—and her mother. She met him at night. Spells he wove around her—for what else could make her choose dishonesty, choose him? But so she did, compromising herself, giving him . . . carnal knowledge of herself.”
He turned his face from the window to the floor and made no effort to hide the tears that wet his cheeks. Katlyn clutched her hands over her heart. Haille himself felt frozen by this man’s testimony, this show of vulnerability. This was not the meeting he had expected.
“Like all demons though, the bastard fled and in time she could not hide that she was with child. I confronted her. She claimed to be in love. She claimed that he had pledged to return. But who knows if the demon had even shared his true name with her, fool that she had been.”
He took a long pause now, as if to gather himself, to steel himself for the ending of his story. He met their eyes once more, roving from Ruane to Twenge, to Haille and Katlyn, his back squared, his arms folded over his chest. “As a man of honor I was left with only one course of action. I had to preserve the name of my house, if not the seed.”
“You bastard!” Cody blurted, stunning them all. He charged from the back of the room but was caught by two soldiers who restrained him. Confusion showed on everyone’s face, save the commandant’s, who curled his lip in disgust.
“You show yourself so readily,” he said.
“You are a monster!” Cody spat, fighting against the soldiers.
“Who is the man and who is the monster? The man who defiles another’s house or the man who purifies it with the sword.”
“That was not purifying. It was murder. You had no right. I was coming back!”
The commandant scoffed, “You had no right to her. She was my daughter, my property. How callous, how bold, how shameless you are to even go by the same name as you did then, Cody Youngblood.”
Chloe met Val’s eyes in alarm. Val stepped forward. “Honorable commandant,” he said, the words cracking as if catching in his throat. “This man, my man, has a reputation for indiscretions, but he is my man and I will vouch for him.”
The commandant shrugged, took a sip of his wine, and said, “Then you will share his fate.”
But Cody had fallen to his knees, the cocksure rogue they knew was gone, replaced by a weeping man struggling to speak. “You had no right to kill her, or my child.”
“The bastard child you mean? A demon’s spawn. How many bastards do you have running about in the realm?” Marsch asked.
Cody gave no response but to sob, wiping his f
ace with his bound hands. Ruane cleared his throat, his own face white. The meeting had moved far beyond his own control. Twenge’s face was equally blanched. “Commandant, I . . . I had no knowledge of this or that the man we held here was the same man who . . . led you to . . . .” Ruane’s voice trailed off for a moment before he recovered. “I hesitate to trouble you with anything in your grief. Perhaps we might wait until your grief is less, to decide . . . .”
“My grief will never be less,” the commandant roared, his face turning red. “I am grief.” Marsch turned to Haille, regarding him as one might a child playing some game of pretend. “What proof do you have of this claim to be prince, boy?”
“My words. My sword,” Haille said.
“Not good enough.” Marsch snapped his fingers, bringing his guards to attention. “Put them all in the prison. We’ll execute Youngblood at first light.”
“I must protest!” Val said, stepping forward only to be seized by the guards around him.
“And this one who vouches for Youngblood, we’ll kill him too.”
“This is madness!” Chloe yelled.
“Quiet, woman, or you can join them,” Marsch added, then turned his back on them all to gaze at his daughter, forever captured in brittle, glowing glass.
Chapter 28
The Long Night of Darkness
The rock beneath the fortress was honeycombed with caves and corridors, a melding of natural rock with mortared stone. The dungeon was a spacious and airy chamber, the cells consisting of bars that ran floor to ceiling. Haille felt very much like an animal on display as they each were placed in their own cage. Smoldering torches and long horizontal slits in the wall let in the light of the setting sun, creating ribbons of light crosshatched with the shadows of bars on the walls surrounding them. Beneath one of these broken rays, Cody sat, hunched, weeping, unable to look up from his hands which glistened with his tears.
The rest of them sat in silence. Val had his back up against the bars, his face turned up to the ceiling. By his expression, Haille could not be sure if their captain was thinking of a way out or reflecting on the events of his life as a man on the eve of execution might. But either way, Val’s eyes had a faraway cast to them and Haille knew better than to try to reach him.
Chloe, who was in the cage next to Cody, stretched through the bars to comfort him. He moved to the edge of his cell and let her cradle his head as best she could, his forehead tilted in the direction of her shoulder but meeting the bars instead. He did not seem to notice or care. The tears and shame flowed freely.
“I’ve been such a selfish fool,” Cody said, sobbing. “Her name was Evangaline and she was . . . exceptional.”
Chloe asked the question they were all wondering: “Why did you leave?”
Cody sniffed and covered his face. “Because I always do. Driven by some fear, some restlessness.”
“Some unfillableness,” Val volunteered from his cell. He had slid down to the floor, his back against the bars, his head tipped downward so that his chin rested on his chest. “It is in all of us. We just try to fill it in different ways.”
“Captain,” Cody said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he would punish you too. I deserve this, but you—”
“You deserve your friends beside you in the end.”
“Val, we can’t just give up,” Chloe said.
“We can hope for clemency, but I don’t anticipate that the commandant will have a change of heart.”
“He’s a mad man, to murder his own daughter . . . ,” Gunther could not finish his thought.
“Virtue can often twist into vice in individuals prone to extremes,” Adamantus said from his cell on the end of their row. It reminded Haille of an expression Yana had shared with him about strengths being turned to weaknesses, but he could not remember it in fullness just then.
No one slept. At best Haille dozed. In a dark and dreary dreamscape he imagined the soldiers coming for his friends, opening their cages, and leading them away. He woke in the darkness of the night only to think: Not yet.
He listened to Katlyn cry and sniff throughout the night and Cody speak of a father he had never known and a mother who provided for him by entertaining men and their appetites. Chloe was his comforting solace, withholding judgment and replying to his admissions and sobs with, “There, there.”
Val was quiet through the night, breaking his silence at one point to ask the elk, “Do you know anything of the other side, elk?” To which Adamantus replied, “No, I am afraid I don’t. All those that I have known to have passed through that veil have kept their secrets to themselves.”
Eventually, by the time the sky showed the lightening blue-gray of dawn, a dozen soldiers came down the steps and opened Cody’s and Val’s cages. In his dreams, Haille had already watched his friends taken away more times than he wanted, but no nightmare apparition had prepared him for the actual moment, the bile rising in his throat and the tears that blurred his vision.
“Listen to me!” he begged the soldiers. “My father is King Talamar. I am Prince Haille Hillbourne. We will absolve these men of their sentences. They are friends of the crown. There will be repercussions if they are hurt.”
He could not bring himself to say the word “killed,” but the soldiers were unmoved. A younger one of the lowest rank who trailed behind with the keys to the cell doors lingered beside Haille’s door as Val and Cody were led up the stairs.
“Honor is everything to the commandant,” he said. “If you are the prince, I am truly sorry.”
“Then do something!” Haille implored, his hands tightening on the bars.
“I . . . I can’t,” he said, then shuffled away, running up the stairs to catch up with the other soldiers. Only after his footsteps faded did Chloe break down weeping for her friends. She had been strong the whole night and only now did the strain show. Gunther was in a cage across from her and out of reach, but he pressed himself against the bars to move as close to her as possible, his eyes deep pools of sorrow.
The light in the window-slits grew brighter and rosy. Haille hoped that at least it was a beautiful sunrise that greeted his friends on their last morning while at the same time he hated the lightening sky and the passage of time for all were reminders that Val’s and Cody’s time was coming to an end.
The sound of feet descending down the steps broke them all out of their stupor. At first Haille wondered if it was the courier come to tell them their friends were dead, the execution complete, but who would move with such urgency to bring that message? Then he heard the jingle of keys and wondered if the meek-faced jailor had returned after a change of heart. But no, the figure that stepped out of the stairwell was one he did not expect: Victor Twenge. Haille recognized his fair hair and fine-boned features immediately even in the limited light.
“Come to gloat, Twenge?” Chloe said from the floor of her cell.
Twenge snorted. “If only.” He lifted the ring of keys from his belt, pushed one into the lock on Chloe’s cell, and swung open the door. She stood up, her feet spread in a fighting stance. If Twenge had come to take her to be executed as well, without reinforcements, he had grossly miscalculated.
“Come on,” he said, stepping aside from the door. “We need to get moving if we’re going to escape.”
“What? You?” Chloe said, still unmoving.
“I stand for the law, for justice. This is neither. It is a vendetta.” He turned to Haille’s cage, worked the key into the lock, and freed him. “After all, more than a few folk believe this young man’s story, Captain Ruane among them. He is waiting with the Swiftwind and a contingent of rangers. We just need to reach them. Time is of the essence.”
To Haille’s disbelief, Twenge moved from one cage to the next releasing them, even the elk.
“Where did you get the keys from?” Haille asked.
“Some fresh-faced young soldier of the fort. He practically tossed them to me. I barely had to threaten him. Not much of a jailor.”
But a decen
t human being after all, Haille thought.
Twenge led them to a storeroom where their weapons had been locked away and they armed themselves before running up the twisting stairway. After a series of turns they emerged on the battlements under a sky streaked with fiery dawn clouds. The walkway curved along away from them where it met the great folded arm of the windlass, its cage waiting, the operator’s seat empty.
“The Swiftwind is below,” Twenge said. “We just need to reach the windlass.”
“Won’t they try to stop us?” Chloe asked.
“Marsch has called everyone to the execution,” he said with a grimace then wiped his face with his palm. He could not meet their eyes as he spoke. “This is our only chance.”
They had emerged behind the drum tower and Haille stepped forward to peer around its edge, bracing himself for whatever he might witness. In the main yard, dozens of soldiers were gathered in square formations—not a hundred men but close. All faced the stage which had been turned into a gory spectacle: two stumps had been anchored to the floorboards, a black-hooded executioner, his ax resting on its handle next to his foot, waited between them. Val and Cody were held before the chopping blocks by three soldiers each. His friends’ eyes were fixed on the scarred, stained stumps and the baskets resting on the far side of them. Marsch was draped in black cloth, his face smeared in ashes like a mourner at a funeral—not Val or Cody’s but his own daughter’s. In Marsch’s eyes, Haille could imagine the fires of his daughter’s pyre burning. Marsch was reading from a scroll, a long list of his daughter’s virtues and Cody’s vices. Haille noticed the curl of paper at the bottom was still thick.
“It’s a long sentencing,” he said.
“More of a diatribe,” Chloe said. She had moved to the edge of the tower alongside him. He reached out for her hand.
“Chloe, I know Val said you would be in charge if something happened to him.”
“Aye.”