Bloodheir

IV

The hall of the Tower of Thrones was small but grand. It had room for no more than thirty or forty people, but on the night of the feast to welcome Aewult nan Haig, whatever the guests lacked in numbers was more than made up for by their grandeur. Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig and his wife Ilessa sat at the high table. On their right hand was Aewult, then Orisian and Anyara. On the left sat Mordyn Jerain and the High Thane’s Steward, Lagair. There should have been one other there. The rumour, already flying through the Tower’s corridors, was that Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig had refused to share a table, or even a room, with the Haig Blood. Orisian, required to spend the evening at Aewult’s elbow, almost wished he could have done likewise.

The long table that ran away down the length of the hall was filled with Lheanor’s officials, the captains of the Haig army and the wealthiest merchants and Craftsmen of Kolkyre. It was not an admixture likely to produce high good humour, and so it proved. A kind of leaden, forced jollity arose, but it lacked conviction. The resentment and mistrust between the Haig and Kilkry Bloods were too deep-rooted to be wholly set aside for even a single night.

Musicians came and paraded up and down the hall. Falconers displayed Lheanor’s finest hunting hawks. A trickster made coins disappear. None of it did much to ease the evening’s latent tension. At length a storyteller was ushered in. As he bowed to Lheanor a hush fell across the room.

“In the Storm Years,” the storyteller began, “not long after the Kingship fell, a man called Rase oc Rainur — tall and red and strong-handed — had a hall at Drinan, which was then but a village. In the summer, the people grazed their cattle far out through the forest. Now, there was a girl called Fianna, daughter of Evinn, who often stood watch over her father’s cattle, taking only his two black dogs with her.”

Aewult nan Haig leaned too close to Orisian, his breath heavy with wine and grease.

“I think I’ve heard this before,” the Bloodheir said.

“It’s a common tale here,” Orisian replied. “It’s called ‘The Maid and the Woodwight’.”

“A miserable one, isn’t it? Doesn’t everybody die?”

“Not quite everyone.”

The storyteller pressed on, but he had clearly failed to catch the Bloodheir’s attention. As a scattering of discussions resumed around the hall, Aewult turned his attention to Anyara.

“You’ve a very fair face, my lady.” He flicked a wide grin at Orisian. “Has your sister given her affections to anyone, Thane?”

“My affections are my own,” Anyara said, “and I don’t give them away. I’m sure your own lady would say the same thing.” She glanced pointedly at the beautiful young woman who sat amongst the Haig captains at the long table.

Orisian was not certain of her name — Ishbel, he thought — but it was already common knowledge in Kolkyre that she shared a bed with the Bloodheir. It was said that he had smuggled her all the way from Vaymouth in one of the supply wagons. Apparently Aewult’s mother, Abeh oc Haig, had forbidden the liaison, as she disapproved of the woman’s background or breeding. Whatever the truth of it, Orisian suspected it was not wise ground for Anyara to start digging in.

To his relief, Aewult appeared to be amused rather than annoyed.

“A pretty face but a pointed tongue, I see,” the Bloodheir said through a mouthful of mutton. “You’ll have to blunt that a bit if you want to marry her off, you know.”

“I don’t mean to marry her off,” Orisian said quickly. He pressed forward against the table, hoping to put a barrier between Aewult and his sister. “How long do you expect to remain here in Kolkyre?”

“Keen to see us off to battle?” Aewult asked, with a smirk. “You don’t need to worry. We’ll be on our way soon enough. We’ll get your lands back for you, Thane, and sit you on your throne in Anduran. Believe me, I’ll not spend a day more than I must up here. It’s too cold and too wet.”

“It’ll get colder yet,” Orisian said. “Our winters aren’t really made for fighting.”

“Ha! A bit of weather won’t hinder us. I’ve an army here big enough to cut a path all the way to Kan Dredar if we needed to.” The Bloodheir waved a bone from which he had picked all the meat, as if that somehow proved his point. “It’ll be a massacre. You’ll see. It’s only Horin-Gyre that’s come south, from the sound of it. Stupid, but then they’re all a bit mad on the cold side of the Stone Vale, aren’t they?”

“It was Inkallim and White Owls that attacked Kolglas at Winterbirth, not Horin-Gyre,” Orisian muttered. There was a patronising, dismissive strand in Aewult’s demeanour that annoyed him. Apart from anything else, it belittled the price that Croesan, Kennet and all the others had already paid for Horin-Gyre ambition.

The Bloodheir snorted, flourishing his empty goblet to attract the attention of a serving girl.

“There’s not enough ravens or woodwights in all the world to trouble ten thousand determined men. Have you ever ridden to battle, Thane? Too young, I suppose. Have you even killed a man yet?”

Orisian could not help but look away. He remembered driving his knife into the chest of a fallen Tarbain warrior; remembered a torrent of blood that only grew in his memory. And the emptiness that came after that act, leaving unsated whatever hunger for revenge had preceded it.

Anyara was tearing at a slab of bread, concentrating with a fierce intensity that made Orisian glad he was seated between her and the Bloodheir.

Aewult drew his own conclusions from Orisian’s silence.

“No, eh? Well, don’t worry. You can rest here while we cleanse the Glas valley for you. You’re the last of your Blood, Thane. There’s no one to come after you. Can’t risk anything unfortunate happening to you, can we? Haig warriors will do the dying that’s needed to open the path back to your throne.”

Orisian gazed at the storyteller, who was still manfully persisting in his efforts to make himself heard above the soft drone of conversation. Those last phrases had sounded glib, almost rehearsed, in Aewult’s mouth, as if he was repeating a thought crafted by someone else. Orisian wondered whether Mordyn Jerain held even the Bloodheir’s reins.

“There’s been no shortage of dying already,” he said.

“Maybe, but it’s not gained you much, has it?” grunted Aewult. There was a blush in his cheeks, whether born of drink or heat or anger Orisian could not tell. But the Bloodheir’s speech was losing its shape a little; his eyes were gleaming. He regarded Orisian with what seemed to be naked contempt.

“Those who’ve died did so fighting,” Orisian snapped.

“Fighting and losing.” Aewult’s lips were stained red with wine. “Make no mistake, it’ll take the strength of Haig to win you back your seat, Thane.”

“At least you remember that my brother is Thane,” Anyara hissed from beyond Orisian. “The way you talk, I’d thought you had forgotten. Bloodheir.”

For once, Orisian hardly cared if Anyara wanted to pick a fight. His own jaw was tightening in anger, and a kind of furious shame burned in him: so little did Haig think of his Blood, and of him as its Thane, that he was treated as nothing more than a child. He was uncertain whether Aewult deliberately meant to goad him into some mistake or whether the Bloodheir simply did not care.

“Bloodheir to Gryvan,” Aewult said, and grinned. He turned his attention to his plate, cutting into the joint of a chicken leg on his platter. His movements were crude and imprecise. The knife glanced off bone. “I speak with my father’s authority. And I say Lannis stays behind when I march.”

“We’ll see,” Orisian said. He turned to Anyara, urging her to silence with the slightest shake of his head.

The noise was so sudden and sharp that he started, almost lifting from his chair. Aewult had punched his knife into the table top and it stood there, trembling. The Bloodheir glared at Orisian.

“We’ll see you do as the High Thane commands,” he said. “That’s what we’ll see.”

Lheanor had turned at the sound of blade splitting wood. Beyond the Thane, Orisian saw Mordyn Jerain leaning forward and looking down along the table. He thought he detected a momentary narrowing of the Shadowhand’s eyes, a pinch of displeasure on his lips.

“I can’t hear the tale with so much noise,” Lheanor said, clear and strangely solemn. “It is almost done.”

Slowly Aewult nan Haig sank back into his chair. He tugged the knife from the table and dropped it back onto his plate.

“Of course,” he said, looking pointedly at the storyteller rather than at Lheanor. “Let’s hear it.”

The storyteller struggled on to the end of his tale amidst a taut silence. Once done, he retired with a look of undisguised relief on his face. There was some thin applause. The evening rolled uncomfortably on. Aewult nan Haig spoke not one more word to Orisian and Anyara. Before long, he abandoned the high table altogether. With a sour glance in Orisian’s direction, he went down the hall and took the seat next to Ishbel for himself, leaving its evicted occupant to go in search of space elsewhere.

“Let’s go,” Anyara whispered to Orisian. “Tell Lheanor we want to call on Yvane, to see how she is. He won’t mind that.”

Orisian doubted whether Lheanor would mind if every single guest rose as one and left him alone in his hall. Ilessa oc Kilkry-Haig had been trying hard — keeping a smile on her face, laughing at whatever nothings the Shadowhand whispered to her — but her eyes betrayed the effort it took to maintain the appearance of pleasure, of levity. Apparently, it was an effort of which her husband was incapable.

Orisian looked from the Thane and his wife out over the rest of the gathering. Aewult was laughing at his own crude stories, Ishbel listening with rapt attention. Further down the table a Kolkyre merchant was arguing with some official who had travelled up from Vaymouth with the army. One of Aewult’s warriors — perhaps from his Palace Shield, judging by his size — spilled a beaker of ale as he rose, swaying, from his seat. He was loudly extolling the virtues of Vaymouth’s sword-makers.

“Yes,” Orisian said to his sister. “We’re not needed here.”

They climbed into the higher reaches of the Tower of Thrones, ascending a narrow spiral staircase like those of Castle Kolglas. The stones in these walls were smoother, though, and of a hard rock that glistened as if wet beneath the light of the torches. For all the many hints of similarity — the smell of those torches, and of old wood; the way footsteps and voices shivered along the stonework — this place felt stranger and more ancient, in its bones, than the castle in the sea ever had. The Tower had, after all, been here since before the Gods abandoned the world. The Kilkry Thanes had only inherited it from its unknown makers.

A short passage led off the stairway to Yvane’s room. An odd pair awaited Orisian and Anyara outside the door. Hammarn the na’kyrim was seated cross-legged on the cold flagstones, scratching away at a piece of wood with a tiny blade. Woodchips and shavings lay all around him. A young Lannis warrior was standing guard opposite Hammarn. He was watching the na’kyrim with an air of puzzled fascination, as if he had never seen anything quite so unusual as this white-haired, half-human old man.

At Orisian’s approach, the guard straightened and stared ahead.

“Go and rest your legs,” Orisian said to him. “Sit on the stairs a while, or find a window and get some air.”

Hammarn scrambled to his feet as the guard moved away. He blew a little plume of wood dust from his carving and grinned first at Orisian, then at Anyara.

“How long have you been sitting out here?” she asked him.

Hammarn frowned. “A time, yes. Cold out, you know. All sorts of cold out there for the likes of me. Best place to be, I think.” He jerked his head at the closed door. “Not very welcoming, though, these days. Bit cold in here, too.”

Orisian rapped on the door.

“I am resting,” Yvane shouted from within.

“Not true,” whispered Hammarn. “She’s not been sleeping, not restful at all. I know. She told me.”

“Let us come and talk with you,” Orisian said through the thick door. “You’d be doing us a favour. We need a hiding place to avoid a tiresome feast.”

“Who’s we?” Yvane asked, each word thick with suspicion.

“Me and Anyara. And Hammarn. Surely you don’t mean to leave him sitting outside this door all night?”

There was an extended silence. Orisian shrugged at Anyara, noting the frown of irritation that had already settled on his sister’s brow. He hoped that she and Yvane could resist the urge to set about one another, but even if they didn’t it could hardly be more unpleasant than Aewult nan Haig’s company.

“No one else, then,” Yvane called by way of grudging permission.

Hammarn clapped Orisian roughly on the shoulder.

“Very persuasive,” he grinned. “Always thought you stood most high in the lady’s affections. Mind you… not sure she has affections, in truth.”

Yvane was sitting in a broad bed, propped up against some voluminous pillows. She looked tired. Her eyes, almost as perfectly grey as a Kyrinin’s, were sluggish. Her reddish brown hair had lost some of its former sheen.

Hammarn went straight to the side of her bed and held out the piece of wood he had been carving. Yvane had to reach clumsily across her body to take it: her nearer arm was still weak, having been skewered by a crossbow bolt during their escape from Koldihrve

“Made you a woodtwine, dear lady,” said Hammarn. “Of Kulkain’s first entry into Kolkyre as Thane, you’ll see. He has Alban of Ist Norr in chains there, if you look close. Bit crude, perhaps. Not my finest.”

“It’s a welcome gift in any case, Hammarn,” Yvane said. Orisian often thought she exhibited far more patience and gentleness in her dealings with Hammarn than with anyone else. It was almost as if she expended all her limited stores of those sentiments on the old na’kyrim, leaving none for anyone else.

“How are you feeling?” Orisian asked.

“How should I be feeling? I’m stuck at the top of a tower in Kolkyre — where they burned na’kyrim, by the way, before Grey Kulkain came to power. My right arm’s all but useless because some madman, or madwoman for all I know, took it into their head to shoot me with a crossbow. And my head feels like it’s full of woodpeckers, chipping away at the inside of my skull trying to get out.”

“No better, then?” Anyara asked. Yvane scowled at her.

Orisian noted a tray of food lying apparently forgotten on a table by the shuttered window. He held a hand over the bowl of soup. It had gone cold.

“Don’t tell me you’re refusing food as well?” he said.

“I’ve no appetite,” Yvane muttered.

“Nothing’s changed?” Orisian asked, seating himself on the end of the bed. “In the Shared, I mean?”

“No.” Yvane started to fold her arms, but winced and thought better of it. “No change.”

“That’s true, that’s true,” said Hammarn. “The taint can’t enter this quiet head, can’t stir the thoughts in this bucket.” He rapped his knuckles against his forehead. “But even Hammarn can smell its stink.”

“There you are, you see,” said Yvane as if Hammarn’s words explained everything. It took a long questioning look from Orisian to induce her to say anything more. “It’s like a never-ending echo. That first night we spent in this town, the… the howl that filled the Shared, that woke me; it’s the echo of that. Anger, pain, bitterness, all mixed up, all inside my head. And none of it mine.”

“Not good, not good,” murmured Hammarn. He was pacing up and down now, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Yvane said.

“Not yours,” Anyara said. “His, then? Aeglyss?”

“I’ve told you: I can’t be certain.”

“But you think it’s him, don’t you?” Anyara persisted. “Anger, pain, bitterness. That’s how Inurian talked about what he saw inside Aeglyss.”

Yvane sighed and looked down at Hammarn’s woodtwine where it lay in her lap.

“I don’t know,” she said wearily. “I only glimpsed the edges of whatever it was that Inurian saw. But yes, it might be him. If it is.. well, if he’s still in league with the Black Road I think they might be in for a nasty surprise. It’s frightening to think what it must be like inside his head now, if his is the sickness that’s afflicting the Shared.”

Hammarn had paused by the window, and pulled back one of the shutters.

“Look,” he murmured. “Little fires.”

Orisian joined him and looked down onto the dark gardens beneath them. A few torches were burning there, their bearers arrayed in a circle. In their orange light, two men, naked to the waist, were wrestling on the grass. Orisian could hear shouts of encouragement from the onlookers, made soft and faint by distance and the breeze.

It was probably Aewult’s men, absenting themselves from the feast, hot with drink and the prospect of battle. They had an angry, arrogant hunger for revelry, the thousands of warriors the Bloodheir had brought north with him. They were barred from leaving their great camps outside the city except in small groups, but Orisian had already heard, from Rothe, rumours of thievery and drunkenness within Kolkyre. They took their mood from Aewult, perhaps, and there seemed to be nothing gentle in him.

“Lovely friends we have,” Anyara said, looking over Orisian’s shoulder.

“We can only hope our enemies justify our allies,” Orisian murmured. He turned thoughtfully back towards Yvane.

“You can find out whether it’s Aeglyss, can’t you?” he asked her.

The na’kyrim winced. He could see that she knew what he meant, and that her reluctance was instinctive. Her hand rose defensively, unconsciously towards her injured shoulder.

“You’ve said that whatever’s happening in the Shared is… dangerous,” he persisted. “You’ve said it might be Aeglyss. Don’t we need to know? He hounded Inurian to his death. He helped the Inkallim take Kolglas. He’s our enemy. One of them, at least.”

“You wouldn’t ask that if you understood,” Yvane said. “No reason why you should, of course. Last time I reached out through the Shared to Aeglyss, he drove me off. It… hurt.”

“I know. But…” Orisian reached for words, finding nothing to quite express what he felt. “Something’s changed. You’ve said it yourself. We — no — you might be the only person here who can say what it is.”

“It’s like an ocean, the Shared,” Yvane said. She was unusually passive. Distant. “What’s in it now is… poison. You’re asking me to swim out into a poisoned sea; breathe its waters.”

“Only to arm ourselves against our enemies. To know what we face. Aewult and his thousands of warriors: they think they’re the answer to every question. They think nothing else matters. Maybe they’re wrong.”

“If I do it,” muttered Yvane, recovering a touch of her customary bristle, “it’ll be for me. It’ll be because Inurian was a wise man who probably didn’t deserve to die, and because he saw threat in Aeglyss. Not for Thanes or Bloodheirs or armies; not to help you Huanin kill each other in ever greater numbers.”

“You will do it, then?” Anyara said, with a soft smile.

The three of them watched in silence while Yvane willed herself into slumber: Hammarn sitting nervously on the end of the bed, Orisian and Anyara leaning against the frame of the window. There was nothing obviously amiss with the sleep into which Yvane fell. Her face slackened, her eyelids trembled minutely. She looked gentle in her repose, as she never quite did when awake.

Orisian watched intently, aware that for all the apparent mundanity of the scene he was witnessing something remarkable. Yvane was right, of course, when she said he did not understand this. No human could. The Shared was the sole preserve of na’kyrim. He did not envy them that. Few of the mighty na’kyrim of legend, who wielded great powers drawn from the Shared, had profited by it in the end. While they lived, though, they had done enough harm to make those of his own time outcasts, feared and loathed as much for the mystery they embodied as for the mixed blood that ran in their veins. If the Shared was a gift, it came at a heavy price.

Yvane made soft sounds. Hammarn was growing nervous, fidgeting. The muffled noise of laughter and cheering rose up from outside. Neither Orisian nor Anyara looked round. Yvane held their attention.

Her head rolled slowly to one side. One of her hands opened, splaying itself out on the bed sheet. Hammarn stood up and edged closer to the window, though never taking his eyes off Yvane.

“Not sure,” he whispered. “Not sure.”

“Not sure of what?” Anyara asked.

The old na’kyrim shook his head sharply. “Feels… Not sure.”

There was a tremor in Yvane’s shoulders. Her breaths were coming faster and faster, turning into a faint panting.

“Is something wrong?” Orisian asked, pushing himself away from the wall. “Hammarn, is something wrong?” If Yvane came to harm in this endeavour, he knew that much of the blame would be his to bear.

Hammarn did not seem to have heard him.

“No,” breathed Yvane. Her eyes were still closed, but her head was lifting now, coming away from the pillow. “That is not my name. I am not her.”

“We should wake her,” said Anyara, stepping towards the bed.

“No,” snapped Yvane, much louder this time. Orisian could see the muscles in her pale neck, strung taut as a bowstring. Her hands were bunching into fists. A shiver ran down Orisian’s spine.

Hammarn was sinking down to the floor, shaking. A faint moan escaped his lips.

Yvane pressed her head and shoulders back against the wall. Her eyes snapped open. Orisian saw alarm in them. He moved to go to her side, but before he had taken more than a couple of strides Hammarn was yelping and scrambling towards the corner of the room.

“He’s here!” Hammarn cried. He twisted his head violently round and down, as if averting his eyes from some horrifying sight.

“Go,” Yvane rasped. “Go.” She was staring fixedly towards the door. Orisian and Anyara, standing side by side, looked that way. There was nothing: the plain wood of the door, the grey stonework of the walls. Nothing.

“I am not the one you seek,” Yvane said.

Orisian’s skin was crawling. The air was suddenly thick in his throat, the light fading around the edges of his vision. He put a hand on Anyara’s arm, as much to stave off the dizzying sense of disorientation that beset him as anything. Shadows seemed to be… moving, shifting. He believed, in that moment, that there was something in the room with them. Something he could not see, or hear, but something that nevertheless had a weight, a presence.

“Leave me. Leave us.” Yvane spat the words out. Fear and anger and insistence swelled her voice.

Anyara swayed against Orisian. He glanced at her, and saw beads of sweat on her brow, her eyelids sagging. He put an arm around her. Something unseen, intangible, was constricting his chest.

Then, without warning, it was gone. He breathed again, deeply. Anyara stiffened and straightened at his side. The tension ran out of Yvane’s frame. Her shoulders sagged and she put her good hand to the side of her head, pressing briefly against her skull as if fighting off an ache.

“I will be listening to your suggestions with much less sympathy in future,” the na’kyrim murmured.

“What happened?” Orisian asked.

“I turned stupid. That’s what happened.”

Hammarn unfolded himself out of the corner and hurried to Yvane’s side. He regarded her with acute concern.

“Gone, though?” he whispered. “Gone? And you safe, lady? Safe and well.”

Yvane smiled at him. Orisian noted the fragility of that smile; its weary, almost sad tone.

“He’s gone, my friend,” Yvane said, and turned to Orisian. “The Shared’s a seething pit, and Aeglyss is the snake in its depths. I should have turned away, but… I was so close. I looked upon him. It might have been… I can’t be sure. Perhaps there were Kyrinin there. He might be amongst the White Owls.”

She closed her eyes, wrinkled her brow. The rawness of the memory was plain in her face.

“Whatever he’s become, it’s far beyond me. He had hold of me at once. But didn’t know me.” She grunted. “Thought I was someone else. And when I pulled away, came rushing back to myself, he followed. He couldn’t do that before.” She stared at Orisian. “He’s learning new tricks.”

“He didn’t harm you, though,” Orisian said quietly. “Did he?”

Yvane shook her head just once. “He’s got ten — a hundred — times my strength in the Shared, but he doesn’t know how to use it. Not yet. He’s wild, half-mad. Still, I’ll not be trying it again. Next time, I wouldn’t get back; not unless he’s the slowest learner the world has ever seen.”

“At least we know it’s him now,” Anyara said. She spoke much more gently than was her wont, almost hesitant. “For sure, I mean. We — you — learned that much.”

“That much, and a little more. He thought I was someone else, and when that thought was in him, I felt such… need. Such longing. There’s someone he’s searching for, someone he longs for, and her name is K’rina.”

Ammen Lyre dar Kilkry-Haig had learned many things from his father, Ochan. He had learned that a clever man need not be subject to the same rules and restrictions as others; that the weak made themselves victims by virtue of their shortcomings; that a father might love daughters easily but would only love a son who fought for, and earned, that affection.

A year ago, not long after Ammen’s thirteenth birthday, he had been cornered in a Kolkyre alleyway by two youths. They had good cause. While out that night carrying messages for Ochan, Ammen had found a man sprawled in the middle of a narrow, dark street. The reek of drink was as strong as he had ever smelled. Groping through the man’s clothes, Ammen was disappointed to find not a single coin, but the sot did wear a fine little knife on his belt, a blade with a horn handle and a decorated scabbard of good leather. Ammen unbuckled the belt and slid the knife off, complete with sheath. As he straightened, glancing up and down the silent street, the drunken man suddenly cried out and grabbed at Ammen’s sleeve.

Surprised rather than alarmed, Ammen tried to pull away, but the man’s grip was much stronger than seemed reasonable. He rolled onto his side, shouting incoherently, pulling so hard at Ammen’s arm that the boy almost fell to his knees. Ammen kicked him as hard as he could in the face. The man wailed and relinquished his hold. Ammen wasted another moment in stamping ineffectually on his hand and then walked away. This was one of the many small pieces of advice — all of it seeming the greatest, fiercest wisdom to Ammen — that his father had imparted: a running man is more obvious than a painted dancing girl in a room full of fishwives. So if you want to avoid notice, walk.

On that night a year ago, the advice had failed. Ammen had covered less than two dozen paces before he’d heard angry shouts behind him. Two young men had come out from one of the shabby houses that lined the street, leaving its door open to spill feeble lamplight into the night. One crouched by the drunken, groaning figure on the ground; the other was staring after Ammen. The two youths exchanged a few curt words — enough to tell Ammen that the man he had robbed was their father — and then the chase was on.

Ammen knew the streets around Kolkyre’s harbour as well as anyone. It was his father’s territory, and thus his. But his pursuers had longer legs, and they were driven by powerful indignation. They ran him down in no time, and he turned at bay in a tight, lightless alley that stank of fish guts. Afterwards, turning the treasured memory of those moments over and over in his mind, he was proud that even then, with the two burly youths bearing down on him and shouting their fury in his face, he had not felt fear. Their anger made them careless: in the deep darkness of that alleyway they did not see Ammen draw their own father’s knife from its scabbard. He slashed the first one across the face and was rewarded with a piercing howl of shock and the sight of his assailant reeling away. There was no time to savour the victory, for the second closed and Ammen took a stunning blow to his head. The crunching sound and the splash of blood over his lips told him that his nose was broken, but he was so dazed by the impact that he felt only a numbness that spread across his cheeks. He fell, and his attacker threw himself down on top of him, fumbling for the hand that held the knife. Ammen never could remember exactly what happened then, but he knew that he stabbed the young man more than once. He might not have killed him, for the blade was short and his strength faltering. It was enough, though. Ammen staggered to his feet and ran, rather unsteadily, for home.

Ochan’s pleasure on hearing of the incident lit a glow of pride and joy in Ammen’s heart.

“Keep that blade close by you,” his father had laughed. “It’d be wrong to sell something that’s served you so well. We’ll call you Ammen Sharp now, shall we? The little boy who grew a tooth.”

So Ammen became Ammen Sharp, and treasured the name. Having borne it for a year now, it felt as much his true name as any other. Only Ochan called him by it; his mother and sisters remained ignorant of its origins. Being a secret shared only by Ammen and his father, it had become that much more precious to the boy.

He was with Ochan, watching as his father sorted through a pile of trinkets, when his cousin Malachoir — one of the numerous distant relatives who served Ochan as thieves, runners, watchers, guards — poked his head nervously around the door. Ochan was engrossed, minutely examining each bauble and bracelet for any sign that it might have some true value.

Ammen had no idea where this little hoard had come from, and the question had not occurred to him. From his earliest years he had understood and accepted that goods and materials of every imaginable kind appeared in his father’s possession and then, just as abruptly and inexplicably, disappeared once more.

Malachoir cleared his throat.

“What?” snapped Ochan without looking up. He disliked interruption.

“Urik’s here,” the cousin reported. “He wants to see you.”

“What does that mudhead want?”

“He won’t tell us. Says he needs to talk to you. Says there’ll not be another chance if you won’t talk to him now.”

With a snarl of displeasure Ochan let a copper brooch fall from his hands.

“I pay that man so I never have to see him, not so that he can visit me in my house. It looks bad to have a Wardcaptain of the Guard showing up on my doorstep. Attracts attention.”

“Well, he was hooded when he came. And he did come to the kitchen door, not-”

“Enough, enough,” Ochan grunted. “Get him in here.”

The man who entered was short and broad-shouldered, a stocky little bull. He wore a voluminous rain-cape that concealed any hint of his standing as a member of Kolkyre’s Guard. Narrow, dark eyes darted from side to side as he edged into Ochan’s presence.

“Look at that, look at that,” said Ochan to his son. “Our very own Wardcaptain come to test our hospitality.”

Ammen smiled, and then tried to fill the gaze he turned on Urik with suitable contempt. He knew this man was useful — important, even — to his father, but knew as well that he merited nothing in the way of respect.

“Don’t puff yourself up too much, Ochan,” Urik growled. “I’ve come here to warn you, not amuse you.”

“Warn me? Warn me?” Ammen felt a shiver of anticipation at the tone in his father’s voice. He knew it well. It presaged anger, danger, violence. When he was younger, Ammen had soon learned its perilous implications. Urik evidently did not recognise it, or did not care.

“Yes, warn you,” he snapped. “And I needn’t have come, so don’t think you can-”

Ochan was up and out of his seat in a single smooth movement, lashing a long arm across the table to seize the collar of Urik’s cape. He pulled the Guardsman’s face close to his own.

“I think I can do as I like in my own house, don’t you, Urik?”

Urik hesitated for only a moment before nodding. Ochan released him and sank back into his chair. He had knocked some of his piled trinkets to the ground, and flicked a finger at them.

“Pick ’em up, boy,” he said to Ammen, who obeyed at once, going down beneath the table on his hands and knees.

“What is it you think you’re warning me about, then?” he heard his father asking.

“That your luck’s run out, that’s what. You’ve been named for taking. The Guard’ll be looking for you tomorrow. It’ll be me, as like as not.”

“You?” roared Ochan. He sprang to his feet once more. His chair tumbled backwards, one of the legs rapping Ammen’s hip as it went. “You? Is it that I’m not paying you enough, Urik? Is that it? You’ve got yourself a hunger for more of my hard-won coin. That’s what this is about, is it?”

Ammen stuck his head up above the level of the table, not wanting to miss such excitement. Urik had shrunk back towards the door, holding up both his hands as if he could fend off Ochan’s anger.

“No, no,” the Wardcaptain insisted. “It’s nothing to do with that. I don’t want a thing more from you, Ochan. Not now, not ever. You don’t understand. This isn’t us, it’s not the Guard. The word’s come down from higher places, from the Tower of Thrones itself. You’re to be taken and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Nothing.”

“Then what use are you to me?” hissed Ochan as he edged around the table. “I’ll have back every coin I’ve passed into your stinking, fat little hands all these years.”

“But I’m here, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here to give you the chance to disappear.”

“Oh, yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? If they take me, your name’ll be the first to spill from these lips, Urik. You’ll join me in whatever cell they’ve got in mind for me, or under the headtaker’s axe.”

“Ochan, please…” Ammen grinned to hear such a note of pleading in the voice of this man who held high office in the city’s Guard. “Please don’t think such things. I’ve taken my life in my hands just coming here to warn you. If I could turn them aside from your trail, don’t you think I’d do it? Haven’t I done it often enough before? No, this is beyond me, far beyond me. Your only chance is to take yourself off somewhere you’ll not be found.”

Ochan the Cook rushed forward and drove the Wardcaptain back against the wall. He pinned the small man’s shoulders to the stone.

“It’s the Shadowhand,” Urik cried. “They say it’s his command that you be taken. Sweet Gods, what could I do in the face of that? Nothing! Nothing!”

Ammen rose quietly to his feet. His father was silent and still, staring into Urik’s fearful face. Ammen had heard of the Shadowhand, of course: the Tal Dyreen who whispered in the High Thane’s ear.

Ochan released his grip on Urik’s shoulders and stepped back, deep in thought. The Wardcaptain shook himself and resettled his cape about him.

“You must find a hiding place, Ochan. Take yourself away from here. You’ve family in Ive, haven’t you? Or better yet, you could take to the Vare: no one would find you there.”

“You want me to hide away amongst masterless men like some common cutpurse?” Ochan growled. “Don’t insult me. You must be wrong, anyway. Why would the Shadowhand care about me?”

“How would I know?” snapped Urik in exasperation. “I’m only telling you what I’ve been told. The order came through the High Thane’s Steward, but I heard he used the Shadowhand’s name to nail it in place. That’s all I know, and if you’ve any sense it’ll be enough. Disappear, for a while at least. Maybe the clouds will clear once all this trouble with the Black Road is done and the Shadowhand is back in Vaymouth.”

“Get out,” muttered Ochan, turning his back on the Wardcaptain. Urik did not hesitate to obey.

Ochan righted his chair and slumped back onto it, his eyes fixed on the knotted surface of the table. He ignored his son, and the heap of baubles that had so recently been the subject of such close scrutiny. Ammen drifted towards the door on soft feet.

“Time to visit your cousins in Skeil Anchor, perhaps,” Ochan said quietly. “Better there than anywhere Urik might think of. But the Shadowhand can’t truly be after my blood, can he? I can’t have trodden on feet big enough to set him after me.”

He beckoned Ammen closer. He draped a strong, long arm around the boy’s shoulders.

“A miserable place, Skeil Anchor; wet and windy. But we’d not be looked for there. Not for a while, anyway. You’ll come with me, boy.”

Ammen grinned.

“But you tell everyone we’re going to Ive,” warned Ochan, jabbing a wet finger at him. “Your mother, your sisters, anyone who asks. You understand?”

Ammen nodded eagerly.

“The Shadowhand?” Ochan muttered. “Can’t be right. I’ll have that Urik’s guts if he’s lying about this. But then… there was… what was his name? Can’t remember. The one I got Urik to pick up. He was from Vaymouth, wasn’t he?” He looked up abruptly, his stare fixing on the wall in front of him. His arm fell away from Ochan’s shoulder. “Gods, he couldn’t have been Torquentine’s man, could he? It couldn’t be that fat slug who’s…” He lapsed into a pensive silence.

“Are we going now?” Ammen asked cautiously.

“Tomorrow, early. There’s one or two men I’ll need to talk to before we go. No telling how long we might be gone. But we’ll not stay here tonight. I know the watchmen on Polochain’s warehouse by the quay. You head down there after dark. Tell them I sent you. I’ll find you there, once I’ve done what needs doing.”

Ammen Sharp packed a travelling bag, and while he did so a smile broke unbidden across his face again and again. Tomorrow he and his father would be on the road together. Ammen was pleased and proud: his sisters would never be invited to share in this part of Ochan’s life. When his mother asked what was happening, Ammen told her they were going to Ive, and thought nothing of the lie.

He put his precious knife on his belt; crammed his wooden whistle into the pack, and his steel and flint, waterskin, stubby candles and the little crossbow he used to shoot seagulls from the rooftops.

It would be at least a full day’s journey to Skeil Anchor, more likely two now that the nights were stretching. If he was lucky, there might be bad weather to delay them, force them to hole up in a wayside inn; give him more time to be alone with his father, his sole companion in adventure.