Fall of Thanes

II

When a clear morning at last arrived, and the horses were combed and saddled, it was a grand group that rode out from Vaymouth’s southern Gold Gate. As well as Anyara and Coinach, Tara came with a pair of her maids, Eleth, three palace guards, the master of the stables and one of his boys. It was hardly the liberating solitude Anyara had half-hoped she and Coinach might be permitted, but it was movement, and change, and a brief escape from the encircling city walls, so she was determined to savour it.

They rode down the north bank of the River Vay, following a broad cobbled road through vast fields of stubble. Wagons and mule trains were brushed aside by the two guards who rode ahead, forced to the very edge of the road to make way for the riding party. Farmworkers and travellers and traders stood in the rough verge, watching with irritation or fascination or resentment, according to their disposition, as Tara Jerain and her retinue trotted splendidly past. Anyara paid little attention to all of this. She breathed deeply, and lifted her face to the breeze coming in from the west. The air had the sea on it, and that felt more like home than anything had in many days.

The fields were wide and flat, the sky ever-changing as rank after rank of long, twisted clouds processed overhead, the low sun winking in and out of sight behind them. They rode past a huge sprawl of jetties and quays and warehouses and inns. The tide was out, so beyond this mass of habitation and industry lay a prodigious expanse of dark mudflats, over which flocks of birds swept back and forth in coordinated precision.

On an open stretch of the shore, at the head of a beach of brown sand, was a cluster of trees and about it a short, green sward. Tara brought them to a halt there and dismounted. The maids unpacked bundles of cold meats and preserved fruits. Anyara went to stand with Coinach at the very edge of the grass. She could smell the strandline, the long-familiar but recently forgotten scent of rotting seaweed and brine and wet sand. She was pleased to see on Coinach’s face the same sad pleasure as she herself felt. He looked, as he stood there staring out to the immense flat horizon of the sea, more at ease than he had done for a long time. It felt good, that moment of shared sentiment, but it did not last. Tara walked over to them, bearing food.

“We come hawking along here sometimes,” the Chancellor’s wife said. “Do you like hunting?”

“Not particularly,” Anyara said, knowing it sounded ill-humoured, but not caring.

“Ah, well. I can imagine how hard it must be to take much pleasure in that kind of thing at the moment. Believe me, since my husband left to go north, nothing has tasted good to me. It must have been still harder for you, to suffer the losses you have this winter, and now to know nothing of your brother’s fate.”

Anyara grimaced. There was nothing she was less eager to discuss than Orisian, or anything that had happened since Winterbirth.

“I’m sorry,” Tara said at once, and she sounded entirely genuine, aghast at her own behaviour. “Please forgive me. It is inexcusable to talk of such things without invitation. This sea air makes me foolish. That, and the promise of my husband’s return. In seeking to offer comfort, I stumble about like an ignorant — ”

“It’s all right,” Anyara said to stanch the apologetic flow. “I’m glad for you. You must have been greatly concerned for the Chancellor’s safety.” And she found that she meant what she said. For all that Anyara disliked-detested-Mordyn Jerain, this woman’s love for her husband was all too apparent. It felt churlish not to acknowledge such feelings.

Tara nodded. “Oh, indeed. It was a misery, when so many terrible rumours were reaching us. I feel as though I am about to awaken from a bad dream. But what you and your family have suffered-my difficulties bear no comparison, especially now that they approach a happy resolution. Forgive me.”

“Look,” said Coinach quietly at Anyara’s side.

Far off along the beach, back towards the harbour and dockyards, figures were running over the sand. They were so distant it was impossible to tell what was happening, and no sound could reach so far across the onshore wind, but it looked to be a pursuit of some kind. Something in the way the figures moved-their urgency, their effort-implied violence. They reached the line of breaking waves. Anyara could just make out the white speckling of spray bursting up as the first of them struggled through the shallow water.

“How odd,” Tara Jerain murmured.

Someone fell, and the figures became indistinct, crowding in together in a dark mass. Sharp, angular movements suggested a flurry of knees and elbows.

“They’re killing him,” Coinach said.

“Surely not,” said Tara then, puzzled, doubtful: “Perhaps they caught him thieving.”

“Perhaps you should send your guards to intervene,” Anyara suggested. There was some-thing in the silent, savage scene she found unsettling. Even though it was safely distant, it had a simple brutality that felt as though it could all too easily reach across that stretch of sand. It soured the air.

“No, no,” Tara said. She was a little uneasy and distracted now herself. “Best not to interfere. There’s been a good deal of trouble recently, you know. I’ve heard that there has been much more… disturbance than is usual in the rougher parts of the city. As if some foul mood’s taken hold of everyone at the same time. No, best to keep away from it. Perhaps we should make ready to return.”

In so far as she thought of it at all, Anyara had assumed that the Shadowhand’s return would be marked by pomp, by ceremony or rejoicing, but it came suddenly and unheralded instead. She went, on the morning after their ride to the shore, to break her fast with Tara Jerain, as had quickly become their habit, and the Chancellor was simply there, sitting at the finely laid table. He was thinner than Anyara remembered. His skin had an ashen, bloodless quality.

Until now, these meals had been far more comfortable-almost pleasurable-occasions than Anyara would have expected. Tara was an easy companion, always ready to smooth the conversation along in gentle fashion. This morning was different, and from the moment of her first step into the room, Anyara sensed the change.

Mordyn was a deadening, darkening presence; nothing like the casually confident and eloquent man Anyara remembered from Kolkyre. He barely acknowledged her arrival at the table. His eyes flicked briefly in her direction and then sank back towards his food. He sat in a tight knot, his arms pressed close in at his side, his chin nestled down into his chest.

Tara Jerain said nothing. She greeted Anyara with a nod and a small smile, but they were frail tokens, the afterthoughts of a mind entirely elsewhere. In countless little ways, she betrayed her disquiet: snatched glances at her returned husband, the restless movement of her hands from platter to mouth to lap to table, the concern that pinched the skin at the corner of her eyes into nests of lines. Anyara was silenced by the oppressive unease. Even the serving girls moved quietly and hesitantly about their business.

There were a dozen questions Anyara could have asked. Longed to ask. She did not dare to utter any of them. Mordyn Jerain had always intimidated her, but this was different. Now the bleak silence he imposed simply felt too weighty to disturb.

She picked half-heartedly at the food before her. Her heart sank with the realisation that despite her determination to resist, she had come to believe the many subtle hints that once the Chancellor returned, all might be resolved in a satisfactory way. She had permitted a tentative blossoming of hope, seduced perhaps by Tara’s companionship and the comforts of the Palace of Red Stone, and sloughed a few fragments of her caution and suspicion. Well, the Chancellor had returned, and he brought not relief but some strange shadow. Anyara glanced at him.

Mordyn Jerain was staring at her. For an instant his gaze was unguarded, piercing, then he appeared to realise she was watching him and his expression went blank, his eyelids fluttered and he lowered his head once more. But in that brief moment she had glimpsed such naked contempt, such loathing, that she was suddenly afraid.

Anyara spent that day in restless distraction. Eleth, the maid, sensed her mood and produced from somewhere materials and needles. She suggested she might show Anyara how to produce the patterns of decorative threadwork that had become popular in Vaymouth in the last year or two. It was a kind, sincere offer, but wholly impotent as a cure for Anyara’s agitation.

She could not settle, could not sit still for more than a moment or two. She snapped irritably at Coinach without cause. He exiled himself to the passageway outside her rooms. Eleth came and went in an increasingly desperate attempt to provide some amusement. She fetched dainty cakes from the kitchens. Anyara dutifully ate them, and though she recognised that they were delicious, she found they gave her no pleasure. Eleth brought singing cagebirds. To the maid’s consternation, Anyara only laughed bitterly at them, and bade her remove them.

At last, as the afternoon stumbled towards a grey dusk, Anyara sprang up from her chair with a sigh of frustration.

“There must be parts of this palace I haven’t seen yet,” she said to Eleth. “Show me something. Anything. I can’t sit around here any more. I have to move.”

“Of course, my lady,” Eleth said promptly, evidently relieved. “There must be somewhere…”

“Anywhere,” Anyara said, and stepped out into the corridor.

Coinach was waiting there. He was a touch startled by her sudden appearance, and gave her a somewhat anxious look, as if in anticipation of a scolding.

“Come,” said Anyara briskly. “We’re exploring. Or just wandering.”

Eleth led the way, walking with quick, small steps.

“Are you warm enough?” Coinach murmured at Anyara’s side.

“I’m fine,” she said, which was not entirely true. Some of the passageways of the Chancellor’s palace gathered and retained enough heat from the kitchens and bedchambers and communal rooms to remain comfortable all day, others-such as this one-did not. She had left too hurriedly to think of bringing a cloak, but had no intention of turning back now.

As they rounded a corner, Eleth gave a soft gasp of surprise and drew to an abrupt halt. Anyara almost walked into her. Mordyn Jerain was there, standing motionless in the corridor ahead of them. His arms hung limp at his side. He was staring blankly at the wall. If he breathed, he did so soundlessly, and without discernible movement of his chest. He did not, Anyara realised after a moment or two’s tense observation, blink. His eyes were glassy, unfocused.

She took a step forward, gently easing Eleth to one side. Coinach whispered something cautionary, but she ignored him. There was something eerily unreal about the scene. The Shadowhand looked like a man who had simply… stopped; as if his body had been unexpectedly abandoned by whatever enlivening force had once inhabited it.

“Chancellor?” Anyara said quietly as she took another pace closer. Here was an opportunity to undo her reticence of the morning, if Mordyn could be roused from whatever stupor had taken hold of him. Here was the chance to find out what he knew of Orisian; what role he might play in untangling her own uncomfortable situation. She firmly crushed the urge to slip away before this troubling man noticed her presence. If she was to be of any use at all to her brother, her Blood, herself, it would not be by hiding away, by giving in to the fears that flocked about her.

And then, slowly, he turned his head. She met his cold eyes, and was reminded of the predatory gaze of the hunting hawks her family had kept at Kolglas. It brought her to an instant halt. Yet he said nothing. He simply stared at her. In the space of a few heartbeats, the silence became so potent that she imagined she could feel its pressure upon her skin.

“Chancellor?” she said again, aware of the tremor in her voice. She quelled it. “I wondered if I might speak with you?”

He tipped his head slightly to one side, narrowed those eyes a touch.

“You…” he said slowly, clumsily. “You were in the forest. You were at Anduran.”

Anyara frowned. “Anduran? Yes, yes, of course. Many times. Never… We met in Kolkyre, though, for the first time.”

“Indeed.” He fell silent once more, yet continued to stare at Anyara. There was nothing in his gaze now: no life, no interest. No hostility even. Just that dead regard.

Coinach came up beside Anyara. The Chancellor did not seem to notice him.

“Perhaps you should return to your chambers, lady,” Coinach murmured.

“I thought perhaps we might discuss my future,” Anyara said stubbornly to Mordyn. He would surely understand the absurdity of the circumstance they all found themselves in. Had he not been absent from Kolkyre at the crucial time, she doubted Aewult’s idiocy would have been permitted to follow its mad course. “I am sure this misunderstanding can be easily tidied away, now that you have returned. The High Thane will surely listen to you…”

“Yes,” said Mordyn. He still held his head at that strange angle, like a bird. “He will. He already does. You are too late, though, to exert any influence upon what it is I choose to say to him. How unfortunate.”

He took a single step towards them. Coinach edged his shoulder in front of Anyara, and for once she did not find his protective instincts foolish or misplaced. There was something in the Shadowhand’s manner so unnatural that it was impossible not to read threat into it. The corridor suddenly felt constricted: tight, like a trap.

“Things change too fast for you,” the Shadowhand said. “You’re nothing now. The struggle stopped being about you, your Blood, a long time ago.”

“Come away,” Anyara whispered to Coinach, tugging at his arm. There was, she now realised, nothing to be gained here. Quite the opposite, in fact: for the first time since she had arrived in this city, she sensed true danger rather than mere hostility or cold contempt, stirring in the shadows, in the edges. Drawing closer.

Coinach kept himself between her and the Chancellor as they walked away. Eleth was watching with a shocked expression, one hand lightly touching her lips as if in a forgotten attempt to hide her reaction. Anyara glanced back over her shoulder as they went. Still Mordyn Jerain was staring at her, leaning forward slightly, as if his own sudden, intense interest had overbalanced him.

“Hide,” he said. “Hide away. It doesn’t matter. What’s coming will find you; find everyone.”

Anyara grimaced, filled with both detestation for the man and irritation at how deeply his words and his demeanour troubled her. She gathered in Eleth with an outstretched arm, and shepherded the alarmed maid away, back around the corner.

“Stay away from my table, lady,” she heard the Shadowhand saying behind them, out of sight. “I will not break bread with you. Stay out of my sight, lest you draw my attention down upon you too soon.”

Anyara walked quickly away. She shivered as she did so.