Fall of Thanes

III

Snow could conceal many shortcomings, but even its gentle blanket was insufficient to render Ash Pit appealing or graceful to the eye. Vaymouth’s most ill-reputed ward stubbornly asserted its infamous character. The dilapidated houses remained grimy and tight-packed; whores still haunted shadowed doorways; rats still scurried brazenly through the debris of destitution; odious liquids still ran in the streets, cutting steaming channels in the snow.

Mordyn Jerain came with a dozen watchful guards, the bulkiest and most uncompromising of the hirelings he paid from his own pocket. No great warriors these, but street fighters and brutes whose loyalty was solely to the man who paid them the most; and the Shadowhand could pay better than anyone save the High Thane himself.

The party went openly through Ash Pit’s noisome roadways, with little of the discretion that had characterised Mordyn’s previous forays into this part of the city. Every onlooker-and there were some, even in this cold dusk, for Ash Pit never entirely slept-was driven off or turned away with snarled warnings and brandished cudgels. The Chancellor and his fierce entourage swept along like a savagely cleansing wind, leaving quiet and empty streets behind them.

When they came to the door they sought, Mordyn’s ruffians dispersed, taking up stations at each nearby corner, disappearing down gloomy, tight alleys. Mordyn himself rapped on the weighty portal with his knuckles.

Magrayn swung the door open and regarded him with suspicious distaste.

“You are not expected,” she said, as distinctly as the King’s Rot that had ravaged her face would permit.

“Nevertheless, I imagine your master will find the time to speak with me.”

Magrayn eyed the Chancellor, and glanced over his shoulder, noting the menacing figures lurking along the street.

“Won’t he?” Mordyn persisted.

The doorkeeper grudgingly admitted him, and the Shadowhand was taken down into the cellars where the object of his journey was laired.

“Have I offended you in some way, Chancellor?” Torquentine asked, with a trace of hurt in his voice.

“What do you mean?” Mordyn asked.

“You seem a little… cold.”

“Would you have me pay you some pretty compliments? Or embrace you, perhaps?”

“Hardly. Your reach is famously long, but not, I think, long enough for the task of encompassing my prodigious girth.” Torquentine rested his hands on his immense belly with a satisfied smile.

Mordyn grunted. “I am not in the mood for merry banter. I want to buy your services. Will you hear my offer or not?”

“Very well, Chancellor,” sighed Torquentine. It troubled him to find the Shadowhand so altered in manner, but by all rumour the man had suffered considerable misfortune during his adventures in Kilkry lands. Some allowance might be made for that, perhaps. “You know I am always only too pleased to entertain your proposals. If this one is as interesting as — ”

“Rest your tongue a while and listen. Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig will shortly be leaving Vaymouth. He will be sent to In’Vay, bound for the Lake Tower.”

“The final-and fatal-abode of the last King. Seems not inappropriate, if rather ill-omened for poor Igryn. Dare I guess that the former Thane is shortly to depart for the Sleeping Dark, then?”

“Be quiet. I want you to seize him before he reaches the Lake Tower, and transport him back to Hoke. To his own lands.”

“Ah… Chancellor, I am… For once, I find myself short of words.” Torquentine shifted heavily upon his huge cushions, rare consternation troubling his features. He blinked his one good eye. “You want me to free Igryn? From chains the High Thane himself put upon him? That seems… Well, it’s beyond even my not inconsiderable resources.”

“Nonsense. It’s the High Thane’s own desire you’ll be serving. I will ensure that the escort is depleted at the appropriate time. I’ll send you word of where and when the opportunity will present itself. Once you have him, it’s well within your power to move a single man from one place to another undetected. You’ve spent your life making much bulkier cargoes disappear and reappear where they are least expected. It’s not your resources that fall short, but your courage.”

“Indeed, indeed. Call me coward, then. I’ll raise no protest. Craven, I am, when it comes to the matter of preserving my… lack of visibility, shall we say? What you ask runs counter to my most dearly held principles, not the least of which is to refrain from trampling the toes of those whose feet are larger than mine. Not, in other words, to swim in rivers where all the other fish have sharper teeth than I do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know my limitations, Chancellor,” Torquentine said. The first hint of alarm was stirring in his considerable gut. It was not just the faint flicker of contempt he heard in Mordyn’s tone; the Shadowhand’s entire demeanour was so brisk, so hasty, it smacked of carelessness. Or convoluted deceit. “Killing Igryn’s cousin exhausted my willingness to cavort amongst contending Bloods and Thanes. That wine’s too rich for me.”

“You got what you wanted in exchange for that service. Ochan the Cook is dead.”

“Of course, of course. Most grateful to you for that, sincerely. But Igryn’s a rebel, a prize of war. His lands are still unsettled, to say the least-growing more so, from what I hear. Blinded he may be, but if he’s returned to his people a free man, an enemy of the Thane of Thanes… my wit is unequal to the task of discerning the benefit-to Gryvan, or you, or any of us-in such a development.”

“You are not required to discern such things.” Again that dismissive, curt edge to the words. The Chancellor had never, in Torquentine’s experience, been quite so verbally rough.

“But how could renewed unrest-war, even-on our southern borders be in anybody’s interest, when the Black Road is — ”

“None of that is your concern.”

“Well, with regret, I must differ on that.” Torquentine recognised dangerous ground when he felt it beneath his feet, but he found himself unable to meekly submit. This vaunted Chancellor owed him a good deal; owed him at least an acknowledgement that the two of them were masters in their own, very different, arenas. “War presents its opportunities, certainly, but they diminish precipitately if that war becomes too extensive, too disruptive. I, like everyone else, was under the impression all of this trouble with the Black Road would be tidied up rather more quickly-rather more victoriously, in fact-than is proving the case. Now you seem to be tempting yet more unpleasantness from an entirely different direction.”

“You will be very adequately rewarded for your assistance. And there’s more. I want fires set in every warehouse and storehouse of the Goldsmiths you can reach. And the Gemsmiths, and the Furriers. I need it done urgently.”

Torquentine could barely believe what he was hearing.

“Oh, this is madness. You mean to make a fool of me. This is some strange jest, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“You want the whole city given over to riot and mayhem?”

“I want you to do as I bid, and to enjoy the fruits of your efforts. I will give you fifty times the payment you’ve received for any other service you’ve done me.”

“Now I know you are jesting.”

“Not at all. And not in this, either: if you refuse me, you corpulent slug, I’ll have you dug out of this burrow and burned alive on one of Ash Pit’s famous fires. The world is changing, Torquentine. Those who don’t change with it will pay a heavy price for their intransigence.”

After Mordyn Jerain had departed, Torquentine lay in such deep thoughtfulness, for so long, that the candles guttered around him. They failed, one by one, and his chamber eased its way into gloom. At length he stirred and summoned his doorkeeper. She came, Rot-faced, and knelt at his side.

“Magrayn, we are in an unenviable position,” he said distractedly, with none of the humour or affection that usually coloured his dealings with his disfigured attendant. “I am required by the Shadowhand to court disaster, and to wage war upon enemies I do not want. He offers me absurd riches if I agree, and threatens, if I refuse, to instead wage war upon me.”

“You could kill him,” Magrayn suggested promptly. Her tendency towards a practical way of thinking was one of the things he treasured about her.

“Perhaps, though that would be an undertaking no more palatable. To kill a Chancellor? Insanely ambitious.”

“Then we must find a way to satisfy him with the least risk possible.”

“There might be ways. Might.” Torquentine shook his heavy head, wishing the tangle of his thoughts might be so easily unwound. “But there’s a foul taste to all this, Magrayn. We’re already in the midst of war, and he seems intent on starting another one inside our own house. He invites chaos in Dargannan-Haig, vengeful fury amongst the Crafts. I don’t see the sense in any of it. There’s nothing to be gained by it.”

“The Shadowhand can unearth gain where others see only dirt,” Magrayn said, brushing a flake of forgotten food from Torquentine’s fat cheek.

“Indeed. What if his gain wears the same cloak as our loss, though?” He sighed. “We’ve little choice but to play the Shadowhand’s game for now. Make such arrangements as would be needed to move a man, in total secrecy, from here to Hoke. A blind man. Put some eyes on every warehouse used by the Goldsmiths, the Gemsmiths and the Furriers. We need to know every nook and cranny of whatever nocturnal routine the guards keep. And find someone in the Palace of Red Stone who can tell us what’s happening in there.”

“We’ve tried that before, without success. The Chancellor’s household is… tightly controlled.”

“Try again, harder. We shied away from too much risk in our previous attempts; now, we may bear a little more of it, I think. Desperate times, my dear. Also, examine all our plans for making a hasty departure from this burrow, as the Shadowhand saw fit to call it. Make sure they remain both sound and secret. And bring the best killers we know to Vaymouth-those who can be here within, say, three or four days. I want them close at hand. When troubles gather, it’s best to have troublesome friends within reach.”

“I will see to it all.”

“Excellent. Perhaps you could send me down some of those little apple tarts too? All this worry is terribly unsettling for my stomach. It needs some comforting, I think.”

Joy and despair contended for mastery of Tara Jerain’s heart. Her beloved husband was restored to her, and she longed to rejoice in that simple fact. So fearful had she been during those long days when no one could tell her where he was, or even whether he still lived, that she had felt like some fragile vessel of the thinnest glass: a single clumsy word, a single barb of spite, might have broken her. The nights had been the worst, contorted by the agony of ignorance, haunted by the fear of the coming dawn and the possibility that it might bring with it some ashen-faced messenger bearing the worst possible news.

And now that terrible shadow was lifted. But another had fallen, for the husband returned to her was not the one who had left her. Their lovemaking on the night of his return, which during his absence had been an imagined island of hope amidst despair, had instead been perfunctory: a thing of habit or necessity rather than love. Nothing in the days since had shown that to be an aberration. Something in him had changed. Something had gone, and with the recognition of its departure Tara found joy losing its ever more tenuous grip upon her spirits.

Mordyn was bent over a table, his shoulders lit by the candles that burned all around. The swan feather of his quill shivered as it scraped across parchment. There was no other sound. He was utterly engrossed in his work.

Tara watched from the doorway. This was a familiar sight. Many times she had seen her husband at work in just this way, in just this warm light. Yet all was not as it had once, so comfortingly, been. The hunch of his shoulders was narrower, tenser, than it used to be. His hand darted to and from the inkwell with angry impatience. Even the sound was different: harsher, cruder, as if quill and parchment warred. He had always had the lightest and most precise of hands. She felt an aching sense of bereavement as she noted each one of these tiny differences. Yet how could she be bereaved, when the object of all her affections was here before her, alive?

She walked forward, her slippers soundless on the floor. Mordyn was too absorbed in his labours to notice her approach. When she set her hands gently on his shoulders, in the way she had done countless times before, he started and gave a half-strangled grunt of alarm. He glanced up at her even as he covered over what he had been writing with blank sheets of parchment. Perhaps he thought Tara would not notice this petty act of concealment, but she did. He had never done such a thing before, never shown the slightest sign of distrust or secrecy. What pained her still more, though, was the way he shrugged off her hands with an irritated shake of his shoulders. With that single loveless gesture, he wounded her to the quick. Tara was startled to find her eyes moistening, a premonition of tears. This man bore the face and form of her husband, but she no longer recognised what lay beneath that surface.

“What happened?” she asked, standing limp and empty behind him.

He must have heard the hurt in her voice, for he twisted about in the chair to look up at her, and though his gaze was at first unsympathetic, it softened.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You cannot have told me everything that happened to you. There must be more, to have changed you so much. If you won’t tell me, how am I to understand? How am I to ease whatever troubles you if you shut me out?”

“No, no.” The affection in his voice rang hollow to Tara. She did not believe it, and did not know what to do with the horror, the crippling fear, that disbelief engendered. She loved this man with all her heart, and had never doubted his equal love for her. Yet now… now, she felt terribly alone.

“It’s nothing,” Mordyn went on. “I am troubled only by the amount that must be done, now that I have returned. There are so many demands upon my time, my thought. I’m sorry. I do not mean to cause you alarm, or concern.”

“You’re so thin, so pale. You must be sick.” She could hope for that, in this horribly changed world; she could hope that her precious husband was sick, for it might explain, more gently and comprehensibly than any other explanation, why he had become a stranger to her. But he shook his head.

“I am well. Any pallor is only the mark of my travels, my tribulations. You will see: soon enough, I will have some fat back on these bones, some colour back in my cheeks. Do not worry.”

And he turned away from her again, bent back towards his writing table. That dismissal allowed anger to rise briefly through Tara’s confusion and sorrow.

“What are you writing?” she asked sharply.

“Tedious matters. Nothing of consequence.”

“May I see it?” She reached over his shoulder and lifted a corner of the covering sheet. He slapped it down again.

“Please. I am in haste. Let me finish this in peace.”

Tara left without another word, forcing herself not to look back as she went. She yearned to do so, to indulge the faint hope that she might find him gazing after her with all the old, profound love in his eyes, but she could hear that hateful quill scratching out its black path. He had forgotten her already, she knew; she, and all her concerns, had been expunged from his awareness in an instant. For years she had dwelled in the light of the warmest, most elevating sun imaginable. Now it was being extinguished, and the darkness descending upon her was all the deeper for the glory that had preceded it.

And, she reflected as she walked along a corridor of white marble, it had not even been his own hand in which her husband wrote. She knew his spidery, flowing script as well as she knew her own. Even that momentary glimpse of his work had been enough for her to know it was in another style altogether. He meant to conceal authorship of the text. Or his hand had changed along with his manner, his mood. His heart.

She paused at a narrow window that looked out over the rooftops towards the heart of Vaymouth. Gryvan’s Moon Palace loomed like a pale mountain over the city. Snow was falling, drifting down in a slow, tumbling dance. Where once Tara might have seen a certain austere beauty, now she saw only bleakness.