The Charnel Prince

1 The Night

Neil Meqvren rode with his queen down a dark street in the city of the dead. The tattoo of their horses’ hooves was drowned by hail shattering on lead cobbles. The wind was a dragon heaving its misty coils and lashing its wet tail. Ghosts began to stir, and beneath Neil’s burnished breastplate, beneath his chilled skin and cage of bone, worry clenched.

He did not mind the wind or frozen rain. His homeland was Skern, where the frost and the sea and the clouds were all the same, where ice and pain were the simplest facts of life. The dead did not bother him either.

It was the living he feared, the knives and darts the dark and weather hid from his merely human eyes. It would take so little to kill his queen—the prick of a tiny needle, a hole the size of a little finger in her heart, a sling-flung stone to her temple. How could he protect her? How could he keep safe the only thing he had left?

He glanced at her; she was obscured in a wool weather-cloak, her face shadowed deep in the cowl. A similar cloak covered his own lord’s plate and helm. They might appear to be any two pilgrims, come to see their ancestors—or so he hoped. If those who wanted the queen dead were grains of sand, there would be strand enough to beach a war galley.

They crossed stone bridges over black water canals that caught bits of the fire from their lantern and stirred them into gauzy yellow webs. The houses of the dead huddled between the waterways, peaked roofs shedding the storm, keeping their quiet inhabitants dry if not warm. A few lights moved elsewhere between the lanes—the queen, it seemed, was not the only one undeterred by the weather, determined to seek the company of the dead this night. The dead could be spoken to on any night, of course, but on the last night of Otavmen—Saint Temnosnaht—the dead might speak back.

Up the hill in Eslen-of-the-Quick, they were feasting, and until the storm came, the streets had been filled with dancers in skeleton costume and somber Sverrun priests chanting the forty hymns of Temnos. Skull-masked petitioners went from house to house, begging soulcakes, and bonfires burned in public squares, the largest in the great assembly ground known as the Candle Grove. Now the feasts had gone inside homes and taverns, and the procession that would have wound its way to the Eslen-of-Shadows had shrunk from a river to a brook in the fierce face of winter’s arrival. The little lamps carved of turnips and apples were all dark, and there would be little in the way of festival here tonight.

Neil kept his hand on the pommel of his broadsword, Crow, and his eyes were restless. He did not watch the moving light of the lanterns, but the darkness that stretched between. If something came for her, it would likely come from there.

The houses grew larger and taller as they passed the third and fourth canals, and then they came to the final circle, walled in granite and iron spears, where the statues of Saint Dun and Saint Under watched over palaces of marble and alabaster. Here, a lantern approached them.

“Keep your cowl drawn, milady,” Neil told the queen.

“It is only one of the scathomen, who guard the tombs,” she answered.

“That may or may not be,” Neil replied.

He trotted Hurricane up a few paces. “Who’s there?” he called. The lantern lifted, and in its light, an angular, middle-aged face appeared from the shadows of a weather-cloak. Neil’s breath sat a little easier in his lungs, for he knew this man—Sir Len, indeed, one of the scathomen who dedicated their lives to the dead.

Of course, the appearance of a man and what was inside him were two different things, as Neil had learned from bitter experience. So he remained wary.

“I must ask you the same question,” the old knight replied to Neil’s question.

Neil rode nearer. “It is the queen,” he told the man.

“I must see her face,” Sir Len said. “Tonight of all nights, everything must be proper.”

“All shall be proper,” the queen’s voice came as she lifted her lantern and drew back the deep hood of her cloak.

Her face appeared, beautiful and hard as the ice falling from the sky.

“I know you, lady,” Sir Len said. “You may pass. But . . .” His words seemed to go off with the wind.

“Do not question Her Majesty,” Neil cautioned stiffly.

The old knight’s eyes speared at Neil. “I knew your queen when she wore toddling clothes,” he said, “when you were never born nor even thought of.”

“Sir Neil is my knight,” the queen said. “He is my protector.”

“Auy. Then away from here he should take you. You should not come to this place, lady, when the dead speak. No good shall come of it. I have watched here long enough to know that.”

The queen regarded Sir Len for a long moment. “Your advice is well-intended,” she said, “but I will disregard it. Please question me no more.”

Sir Len bowed to his knee. “I shall not, my queen.”

“I am queen no longer,” she said softly. “My husband is dead. There is no queen in Eslen.”

“As you live, lady, there is a queen,” the old knight replied. “In truth, if not in law.”

She nodded her head slightly, and they passed into the houses of the royal dead without another word.

They moved under the wrought-iron pastato of a large house of red marble, where they tethered the horses, and with the turn of an iron key left the freezing rain outside. Within the doors they found a small foyer with an altar and a hall that led into the depths of the building. Someone had lit the hall tapers already, though shadows still clung like cobwebs in the corners.

“What shall I do, lady?” Neil asked.

“Keep guard,” she answered. “That is all.”

She knelt at the altar and lit the candles.

“Fathers and mothers of the house Dare,” she sang, “your adopted daughter is calling, humble before her elders. Honor me, I beg you, this night of all nights.”

Now she lit a small wand of incense, and an aroma like pine and liquidambar seemed to explode in Neil’s nostrils.

Somewhere in the house, something rustled, and a chime sounded. Muriele rose and removed her weather-cloak. Beneath was a gown of boned black safnite. Her raven hair seemed to blend into it, making an orphan of her face, which appeared almost to float. Neil’s throat caught. The queen was beautiful beyond compare, and age had done little to diminish her beauty, but it was not that which twisted Neil’s heart—rather, it was that for just an instant she resembled someone else.

Neil turned his gaze away, searching the shadows.

The queen started up the corridor.

“If I may, Majesty,” he said quickly. “I would precede you.”

She hesitated. “You are my servant, and my husband’s kin will see you as such. You must walk behind me.”

“Lady, if there is ambush ahead—”

“I will chance it,” she replied.

They moved down a hall paneled in bas-reliefs depicting the deeds of the house Dare. The queen walked with measured step, head bowed, and her footsteps echoed clearly, despite the distant hammering of the storm on the slate roof.

They entered a great chamber with vaulted ceilings where a long table was prepared, thirty places set with crystal goblets. In each, wine as red as blood had been poured. The queen paced by the chairs, searching, until she found the one she sought, and then she sat, staring at the wine.

Outside the wind groaned.

Long moments passed, and then a bell sounded, and another. Twelve in all, and with the midnight stroke, the queen drank from the cup.

Neil felt something pass in the air, a chill, a humming.

Then the queen began to speak, in a voice deeper and huskier than usual. The hairs on Neil’s neck prickled at the sound of it.

“Muriele,” she said. “My queen.”

And then, as if answering herself, she spoke in her more usual tone. “Erren, my friend.”

“Your servant,” the deeper voice replied. “How fare you? Did I fail?”

“I live,” Muriele answered. “Your sacrifice was not in vain.”

“But your daughters are here, in this place of dust.”

Neil’s heartbeat quickened, and he realized he had moved. He was standing near one of the chairs, staring at the wine.

“All of them?”

“No. But Fastia is here, and sweet Elseny. They wear shrouds, Muriele. I failed them—and you.”

“We were betrayed,” Muriele replied. “You did all you could, gave all you could. I cannot blame you. But I must know about Anne.”

“Anne . . .” The voice sighed off. “We forget, Muriele. The dead forget. It is like a cloud, a mist that eats more of us each day. Anne . . .”

“My youngest daughter. Anne. I sent her to the coven of Saint Cer, and no word has come from there. I must know if the assassins found her there.”

“Your husband is dead,” the voice called Erren replied. “He does not sleep here, but calls from far away. His voice is faint, and sad. Lonely. He did love you.”

“William? Can you speak to him?”

“He is too distant. He cannot find his way here. The paths are dark, you know. The whole world is dark, and the wind is strong.”

“But Anne—you cannot hear her whisper?”

“I remember her now,” Erren crooned, in the queen’s voice. “Hair like strawberry. Always trouble. Your favorite.”

“Does she live, Erren? I must know.”

Silence then, and to his surprise Neil found the glass of wine in his hand. It was only distantly that he heard the reply.

“I believe she lives. It is cold here, Muriele.”

More was said, but Neil did not hear it, for he raised the cup before him and drank.

He set the cup on the table as he swallowed the bitter sip he’d taken. He stared into the remaining wine, which calmed and became a red mirror. He saw himself in it; his father’s strong jaw was there, but his blue eyes were black pits and his wheat hair ruddy, as if he examined a portrait painted in blood.

Then someone stood behind him, and a hand fell on his shoulder. “Do not turn,” a feminine voice whispered.

“Fastia?”

But now he saw her face instead of his mirrored in the wine. He smelled her lavender fragrance.

“I was called that, wasn’t I?” Fastia said. “And you were my love.” He tried to face her then, but the hand tightened on his shoulder. “Do not,” she said. “Do not look at me.”

His hand trembled the wineglass, but the image of her in it remained untroubled. She smiled faintly, but her eyes were lamps burning sadness.

“I wish . . .” he began, but could not finish.

“Yes,” she said. “So do I. But it could not have been, you know. We were foolish.”

“And I let you die.”

“I don’t remember that. I remember you holding me in your arms. Cradled, like a child. I was happy. That is all I remember, and soon I will not even remember that. But it is enough. It is almost enough.” Fingers traced chills on the back of his neck. “I must know if you loved me,” she whispered.

“I have never loved anyone as I loved you,” Neil said. “I shall never love another.”

“You will,” she said softly. “You must. But do not forget me, for I will forget myself, in time.”

“I would never,” he said, vaguely aware that tears were coursing down his face.

A drop fell into the wine, and the shade of Fastia gasped. “That is cold,” she said. “Your tears are cold, Sir Neil.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for everything, milady. I cannot sleep—”

“Hush, love. Quiet, and let me tell you something while I still remember. It’s about Anne.”

“The queen is here, asking about Anne.”

“I know. She speaks to Erren. But there is this, Sir Neil, a thing I have been told. Anne is important. More important than my mother or my brother—or any other. She must not die, or all is lost.”

“All?”

“The age of Everon is ending,” she said. “Ancient evils and fresh curses speed it. My mother broke the law of death, did you know?”

“The law of death?”

“It is broken,” she affirmed.

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I, but it is whispered in the halls of bone. The world is now in motion, rushing toward its end. All who live stand at the edge of night, and if they pass, none shall follow them. No children, no generations to come. Someone is standing there, watching them pass, laughing. Man or woman I do not know, but there is little chance they can be stopped. There is only the smallest opportunity to set things right. But without Anne, even that possibility does not exist.”

“Without you, I do not care. I do not care if the world goes into oblivion.”

The hand came onto his shoulder and stroked across the back of his neck. “You must,” she said. “Think of the generations unborn and think of them as our children, the children we could never have. Think of them as the offspring of our love. Live for them as you would for me.”

“Fastia—” He turned then, unable to bear it any longer, but there was nothing there, and the touch on his shoulder was gone, leaving only a fading tingle.

The queen was still staring at her wine, whispering.

“I miss you, Erren,” she said. “You were my strong right hand, my sister, my friend. Enemies surround me. I don’t have the strength for it.”

“There is no end to your strength,” Erren replied. “You will do what must be done.”

“But what you showed me. The blood. How can I do that?”

“You will make seas of blood in the end,” Erren said. “But it is necessary. You must.”

“I cannot. They would ever allow it.”

“When the time comes, they cannot stop you. Now hush, Muriele, and bid me peace, for I must go.”

“Do not. I need you, specially now.”

“Then I’ve failed you twice. I must go.”

And the queen, who these past months might have been forged of steel, put her head down and wept. Neil stood by, his heart savaged by Fastia’s touch, his mind burning with her words.

He wished for the simplicity of battle, where failure meant death rather than torment.

Outside, the sounds of the storm grew stronger as the dead returned to their sleep.

Sleep never came, but morning did. By the sun’s first light the storm was gone, and they began the ascent from Eslen-of-Shadows to Eslen-of-the-Quick. A clean, cold sea wind was blowing, and the bare branches of the oaks lining the path glistened in sheaths of ice.

The queen had been silent all night, but while they were still some distance from the city gates she turned to him.

“Sir Neil, I have a task for you.”

“Majesty, I am yours to command.”

She nodded. “You must find Anne. You must find the only daughter I have left.”

Neil gripped his reins tighter. “That is the one thing I cannot do, Majesty.”

“It is my command.”

“My duty is to Your Majesty. When the king knighted me, I was sworn to stay at your side, to protect you from all danger. I cannot do that if I am traveling afar.”

“The king is dead,” Muriele said, her voice growing a bit harsher. “I command you now. You will do this thing for me, Sir Neil.”

“Majesty, please do not ask this of me. If harm should befall you—”

“You are the only one I can trust,” Muriele interrupted. “Do you think I want to send you from my side? To send away the one person I know will never betray me? But that is why you must go. Those who killed my other daughters now seek Anne—I’m certain of it. She remains alive because I sent her away, and no one at the court knows where she is. If I trust any other than you with her location, I compromise that knowledge and open my daughter to even greater danger. If I tell only you, I know the secret is still safe.”

“If you believe her secure where she is, should you not leave her there?”

“I cannot be sure. Erren intimated that the danger is still great.”

“The danger to Your Majesty is great. Whoever employed the assassins that slew your husband and daughters meant to kill you, as well. They still do, surely.”

“Surely. I am not arguing with you, Sir Neil. But I have given my command. You will make ready for a long journey. You will leave tomorrow. Pick the men who will guard me in your absence—I trust your judgment more than my own in such matters. But for your own task you must travel alone, I fear.”

Neil bowed his head. “Yes, Majesty.”

The queen’s voice softened. “I am sorry, Sir Neil. I truly am. I know how badly your heart has been hurt. I know how keen your sense of duty is and how terribly it was wounded at Cal Azroth. But you must do this thing for me. Please.”

“Majesty, I would beg all day if I thought you would change your mind, but I see that you won’t.”

“You have good vision.”

Neil nodded. “I will do as you command, Majesty. I will be ready by morning.”

2 z’Espino

Anne Dare, youngest daughter of the Emperor of Crotheny, Duchess of Rovy, knelt by a cistern and scrubbed clothes with raw and blistered hands. Her shoulders ached and her knees hurt, and the sun beat her like a golden hammer.

Only a few yards away, children played in the cool shade of a grape arbor, and two ladies in gowns of silk brocade sat sipping wine. Anne’s own dress—a secondhand shift of cotton—hadn’t been washed in days. She sighed, wiped her brow, and made sure her red hair was secure beneath her scarf. She sneaked a longing glance at the two women and continued her work.

She cast her mind away from her hands, a trick she was becoming quite adept at, and imagined herself back home, riding her horse Faster on the Sleeve or eating roasted quail and trout in green sauce, with gobs of fried apples and clotted cream for desert.

Scrub, scrub, went her hands.

She was imagining a cool bath when she suddenly felt a sharp pinch on her rump. She turned to find a boy about four or five years younger than she—perhaps thirteen—grinning as if he’d just told the best joke in the world.

Anne slapped the clothes onto the scrubbing board and spun on him. “You horrible little beast!” she shouted. “You’ve no more manners than—!”

She caught the women looking at her then, their faces hard.

“He pinched me,” she explained. And just to be sure they understood, she pointed. “There.”

One of the women—a blue-eyed, black-haired casnara named da Filialofia—merely slitted her eyes. “Who exactly do you think you are?” she asked, her tone quite flat. “Who, by all the lords and ladies in earth and sky, do you think you are that you can speak to my son in such a manner?”

“Wherever do you find such servants?” her companion Casnara dat Ospellina asked sourly.

“But h-he—” Anne stuttered.

“Be silent this instant, you little piece of foreign trash, or I will have Corhio the gardener beat you. And he will do quite more to you there than pinch it, I daresay. Forget not whom you serve, whose house you are in.”

“A proper lady would raise her brat to have better manners,” Anne snapped.

“And what would you know of that?” da Filialofia asked, crossing her arms. “What sort of manners do you imagine you were taught in whatever brothel or pigsty your mother abandoned you to? Certainly, you did not learn to mind your place.” Her chin tilted up. “Get out. Now.”

Anne picked herself up from her kneeling position. “Very well,” she said, facing them squarely. She held out her hand.

Da Filialofia laughed. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to pay you for insulting my house, do you? Leave, wretch. I’ve no idea why my husband hired you in the first place.” But then she cracked a faint smile that didn’t even hint at good humor. “Well, perhaps I do. He might have found you entertaining, in a barbaric sort of way. Were you?”

For a long moment Anne was simply speechless, and for a moment longer she was poised between slapping the woman—which she knew would earn her a beating—and simply walking away.

She didn’t quite do either. Instead she recalled something she had learned in her last week working at the triva.

“Oh, no, he has no time for me,” she said sweetly. “He’s been much too busy with Casnara dat Ospellina.”

And then she did walk away, smiling at the furious whispers that began behind her.

The great estates lay on the north side of z’Espino, most of them overlooking the azure water of the Lier Sea. As Anne passed through the gate of the house, she stood for a moment in the shade of chestnut trees and gazed out across those foam-crested waters. North across them lay Liery, where her mother’s family ruled. North and east was Crotheny, where her father sat as king and emperor, and where her love, Roderick, must be giving up hope by now.

Just a little water separating her from her rightful station and everything she loved, and yet that little bit of water was expensive to cross. Princess though she was, she was penniless. Nor could she tell anyone who she was, for she had come to z’Espino with terrible danger on her heels. She was safer as a washerwoman than as a princess.

“You.” A man on a horse rode up the lane and sat looking down at her. She recognized by his square cap and yellow tunic that he was an aidilo, charged with keeping order in the streets.

“Yes, casnar?”

“Move along. Don’t tarry here,” he said brusquely.

“I’ve just come from serving the casnara da Filialofia.”

“Yes, and now you’re done, so you must go.”

“I only wanted to look at the sea for a moment.”

“Then look at it from the fish market,” he snapped. “Must I escort you there?”

“No,” Anne said, “I’m going.”

As she trudged down a lane bounded by stone walls topped with shards of broken glass to prevent climbing, she wondered if the servants who worked on her father’s country estates were treated so shabbily. Surely not.

The lane debouched onto the Piato dachi Meddissos, a grand court of red brick bounded on one side by the three-story palace of the meddisso and his family. It wasn’t so grand as her father’s palace in Eslen, but it was quite striking, with its long colonnade and terrace gardens. On the other side of the piato stood the city temple, an elegant and very ancient-looking building of polished umber stone.

The piato itself was a riot of color and life. Vendors with wooden carts and red caps hawked grilled lamb, fried fish, steamed mussels, candied figs, and roasted chestnuts. Pale-eyed Sefry, hooded and wrapped against the sun, sold ribbons and trifles, stockings, holy relics, and love potions from beneath colorful awnings. A troop of actors had cleared a space and were performing something involving sword fighting, a king with a dragon’s tail, Saint Mamres, Saint Bright, and Saint Loy. Two pipers and a woman with a hand-drum beat a fast melody.

In the center of the piato, a stern-eyed statue of Saint Netuno wrestled two sea serpents, which twined about his body and spewed jets of water into a marble basin. A group of richly dressed young men lounged at the edge of the fountain, fondling their sword hilts and whistling at girls in gaudy dresses.

She found Austra near the edge of the square, almost on the steps of the temple, sitting next to her bucket and scrub brush.

Austra watched her approach and smiled. “Finished already?” Austra was fifteen, a year younger than Anne, and like Anne she wore a faded dress and a scarf to cover her hair. Most Vitellians were dark, with black hair, and the two girls stood out enough without advertising their gold and copper tresses. Fortunately, most women in Vitellio kept their heads covered in public.

“In a manner of speaking,” Anne said.

“Oh, I see. Again?”

Anne sighed and sat down. “I try, truthfully I do. But it’s so difficult. I thought the coven had prepared me for anything, but—”

“You shouldn’t have to do these things,” Austra said. “Let me work. You stay in the room.”

“But if I don’t work, it will take us that much longer to earn our passage. It will give the men who are hunting us that much more time to find us.”

“Maybe we should take our chances on the road.”

“Cazio and z’Acatto say the roads are much too closely watched. Even the road officers are offering reward for me now.”

Austra looked skeptical. “That doesn’t make sense. The men who tried to kill you at the coven were Hansan knights. What do they have to do with Vitellian road officers?”

“I don’t know, and neither does Cazio.”

“If that’s the case, won’t they be watching the ships, as well?”

“Yes, but Cazio says he can find a captain who won’t ask questions or tell tales—if we have the silver to pay him off.” She sighed. “But that’s not yet, and we have to eat, too. Worse, I was paid nothing today. What am I going to do tomorrow?”

Austra patted her shoulder. “I got paid. We’ll stop at the fish market and the carenso and buy our supper.”

The fish market was located at the edge of Perto Nevo, where the tall-masted ships brought their cargoes of timber and iron, and took in return casks of wine, olive oil, wheat, and silk. Smaller boats crowded the southern jetties, for the Vitellian waters teemed with shrimp, mussels, oysters, sardines, and a hundred other sorts of fish Anne had never heard of. The market itself was a maze of crates and barrels heaped with gleaming sea prizes. Anne looked longingly at the giant prawns and black crabs—which were still kicking and writhing in tuns of brine—and at the heaps of sleek mackerel and silver tuna. They couldn’t afford any of that and had to push deeper and farther, to where sardines lay sprinkled in salt and whiting was stacked in piles that had begun to smell.

The whiting was only two minsers per coinix, and it was there the girls stopped, noses wrinkled, to choose their evening meal.

“Z’Acatto said to look at the eyes,” Austra said. “If they’re cloudy or cross-eyed, they’re no good.”

“This whole bunch is bad, then,” Anne said.

“It’s the only thing we can afford,” Austra replied. “There must be one or two good ones in the pile. We just have to look.”

“What about salt cod?”

“That has to soak for a day. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry now.”

A low feminine voice chuckled over their shoulders. “No, sweets, don’t buy any of that. You’ll be sick for a nineday.”

The woman speaking to them was familiar—Anne had seen her often on their street, but had never spoken to her. She dressed scandalously and wore a great deal of rouge and makeup. She’d once heard z’Acatto say he “couldn’t afford that one,” so Anne figured she knew the woman’s profession.

“Thanks,” Anne said, “but we’ll find a good one.”

The woman looked dubious. She had a strong, lean face and eyes of jet. Her hair was put up in a net that sparkled with glass jewels, and she wore a green gown, which, though it had seen better days, was still nicer than anything Anne owned at the moment.

“You two live on Six-Nymph Street. I’ve seen you—with that old drunkard and the handsome fellow, the one with the sword.”

“Yes,” Anne replied.

“I’m your neighbor. My name is Rediana.”

“I’m Feine and this is Lessa,” Anne lied.

“Well, girls, come with me,” Rediana said, her voice low. “You’ll find nothing edible here.”

Anne hesitated.

“I’ll not bite you,” Rediana said. “Come.”

Motioning them to follow, she led the two back to a table of flounder. Some were still flopping.

“We can’t afford that,” Anne said.

“How much do you have?”

Austra held out a ten-minser coin. Rediana nodded.

“Parvio!” The man behind the tray of flounder was busy gutting a few fish for several well-dressed women. He was missing one eye, but didn’t bother to cover the white scar there. He might have been sixty years old, but his bare arms were muscled like a wrestler’s.

“Rediana, mi cara,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Sell my friends a fish.” She took the coin from Austra’s hand and passed it to him.

He looked at it, frowned, then smiled at Anne and Austra. “Take whichever pleases you, dears.”

“Melto brazi, casnar,” Austra said. She selected one of the flounders and put it in her basket. With a wink, Parvio handed her back a five-minser coin. The fish ought to have cost fifteen.

“Melto brazi, casnara,” Anne told Rediana, as they started toward the carenso.

“It’s nothing, dear,” Rediana said. “Actually, I’ve been hoping for a chance to talk to you.”

“Oh. About what?” Anne asked, a tad suspicious of the woman’s goodwill.

“About a way you could put fish like that on the table every day. You’re both quite pretty, and quite exotic. I can make something out of you. Not for those oafs on our street, either, but for a better class of client.”

“You—you want us to—?”

“It’s only difficult the first time,” Rediana promised. “And not so hard as that. The money is easy, and you’ve got that young swordsman to look out for you, if you come across a rough customer. He works for me already, you know.”

“Cazio?”

“Yes. He looks after some of the girls.”

“And he put you up to this?”

She shook her head. “No. He said you would turn your noses up at me. But men often don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“He does this time,” Anne said, her voice frosty. “Thank you very much for your help with the fish, but I’m afraid we must decline your offer.”

Rediana’s eyes sharpened. “You think you’re too good for it?”

“Of course,” Anne said, before she could think better of it.

“I see.”

“No,” Anne said. “No, you don’t. I think you’re too good for it, too. No woman should have to do that.”

That put a queer little smile on Rediana’s face. But she shrugged. “Still you don’t know what’s best for you. You could earn more in a day than you do now in a month, and not ruin your looks with scrubwork. Think about it. If you change your mind, I’m easy enough to find.” With that, she sauntered off.

The two girls walked in silence for a few moments after Rediana left them. Then Austra cleared her throat. “Anne, I could—”

“No,” Anne said angrily. “Thrice no. I would rather we never made it home, than on those terms.”

Anne was still fuming when they reached the carenso at the corner of Pari Street and the Vio Furo, but the smell of baking bread put everything from her mind but her hunger. The baker—a tall, gaunt man always covered in flour—gave them a friendly smile as they entered. He was slashing the tops of uncooked country loaves with a razor while behind him his assistant slid others into the oven on a long-handled peel. A large black dog lying on the floor looked up sleepily at the girls and put his head back down, thoroughly uninterested.

Bread was piled high in baskets and bins, in all shapes and sizes—golden brown round loaves the size of wagon wheels and decorated with the semblance of olive leaves, rough logs as long as an arm, smaller perechi you could wrap one hand around, crusty egg-shaped rolls dappled with oats—and that was just at first glance.

They spent two minsers on a warm loaf and turned their feet toward the Perto Veto, where their lodgings were located.

There they walked streets bounded by once-grand houses with marble-columned pastatos and balconied upper windows, picking their way through a shatter of unreplaced roof tiles and wine carafes, breathing air gravid with the scents of brine and sewage.

It was four bells, and women with low-cut blouses and coral-red lips—ladies of Rediana’s profession—were already gathered on the upper-story balconies, calling to men who seemed as if they might have money and taunting those who did not. A knot of men on a cracked marble stoop passed around a jug of wine and whistled at Anne and Austra as they went by.

“It’s the Duchess of Herilanz,” one of the men shouted. “Hey, Duchess, give us a lass.”

Anne ignored him. In her month quartered in the Perto Veto, she had determined that most such men were harmless, though annoying.

At the next cross-street they turned up an avenue, entered a building through an open door, and climbed the stairs to their second-floor apartment. As they approached, Anne heard voices above—z’Acatto and someone else.

The door was open, and z’Acatto glanced up as they entered. He was an older man, perhaps fifty, a bit paunchy, his hair more gray than black. He sat on a stool talking to their landlord, Ospero. The men were of about the same age, but Ospero was nearly bald, and stockier yet. They both looked pretty drunk, and the three empty wine carafes that lay on the floor confirmed that impression. There was nothing unusual about that—z’Acatto stayed drunk most of the time. “Dena dicolla, casnaras,” z’Acatto said.

“Good evening, z’Acatto,” Anne returned, “Casnar Ospero.”

“You’re home early,” z’Acatto noticed.

“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate.

“We brought fish and bread,” Austra said brightly.

“That’s good, that’s good,” the old man said. “We’ll need a white with that, perhaps a vino verio.”

“I’m sorry,” Austra said. “We didn’t have money for wine.”

Ospero grunted and produced a silver menza. He squinted at it, then flipped it toward Austra. “That for the wine, my pretty della.” He paused a bit to leer at the two girls, then shook his head. “You know the place by Dank Moon Street? Escerros? Tell him I sent you. Tell him that will buy two bottles of the vino verio, or I’ll come crack his head.”

“But I was—” Austra began.

“Go on, Austra. I’ll cook the fish,” Anne said. She didn’t like Ospero. There seemed something vaguely criminal about him and his friends. On the other hand, z’Acatto had somehow managed to convince him to rent them their rooms on credit for a week, and he had never done more than leer at her. They relied on his good graces, so she held her tongue.

She went to the cramped pantry and took out a jar of olive oil and a pouch of salt. She put a little of the oil into a small earthenware crematro, sprinkled both sides of the fish with salt, and placed it in the oil. She stared despondently at the preparation, wishing for the hundredth time that they could afford—or even find—butter for a change. Then she sighed, put the lid on the crematro, and carried it back down the stairs, then through an inner first-floor door into the small courtyard that was shared by the building’s inhabitants.

A few women were gathered around a small pit of glowing coals. There wasn’t yet room for her dish, so she took a bench and waited, gazing absently around the dreary walls of flaking stucco, trying to imagine it as the orchard courtyard in her father’s castle.

A male voice foiled her attempt. “Good evening, della.”

“Hello, Cazio,” she said without turning.

“How are you this evening?”

“Tired.”

She noticed there was room at the fire now, and stood to take the crematro over to it, but Cazio interposed himself.

“Let me,” he said.

Cazio was tall and lean, only slightly older than Anne, dressed in dark brown doublet and scarlet hose. A rapier in a battered scabbard hung at his side. His dark eyes peered down at her from a narrow, handsome face. “Your day didn’t go well?”

“Not as well as yours, I’m sure,” she replied, handing him the crematro.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean the work you’ve chosen must give you ample opportunity for refreshment.”

He looked puzzled.

“And don’t try to look coy,” she said. “I spoke with Rediana today. She told me what you’ve been doing.”

“Ah,” he said. He went over to place the roasting pan on the ashes and used a charred stick to bank them up around the edges. Then he came back and sat next to her. “You don’t approve?”

“It’s nothing to me.”

“It ought not to be. I’m doing this for you, remember? I’m trying to earn passage for us to escort you home.”

“And yet we seem no nearer to departing than we were a month ago.”

“Sea passage does not come cheap, especially when the cargo must remain secret. Speaking of which, take especial care. There are more men searching the streets for you than ever. I wonder if you know why.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. She had no idea why there was a price on her head, but she figured it had to do somehow with her station and the dreams that troubled even her waking hours. Dreams that she knew came from—elsewhere.

“I took your word for silver,” he said, “and I still do. But if there is any suspicion you have . . .”

“My father is a wealthy and powerful man. That’s the only cause I can imagine.”

“Do you have some rival who vies for his affections? A stepmother, perhaps? Someone who would prefer not to see you return?”

“Oh, yes, my stepmother,” Anne said. “How could I have forgotten? There was that time when she sent me out with the huntsman and told him to bring my heart back. I would have died, then, if the old fellow hadn’t taken a shine to me. He took her back the heart of a boar instead. And then there was that other time, when she sent me to fetch water, never mentioning the nicwer that lived in the stream, waiting to charm me and eat me. Yes, those events should have been clues to my present situation, but I suppose I didn’t suspect her because dear father assured me she has changed so.”

“You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?” Cazio guessed.

“This isn’t a phay story, Cazio. I don’t have a stepmother. There’s no one in the family who would wish me ill. My father’s enemies might, on the other hand, but I couldn’t say exactly who they are. I’m not very political.”

Cazio shrugged. “Ah, well.” Then a smile brightened his face. “You’re jealous,” he accused.

“What?”

“I’ve just figured it out. You think I’m sleeping with Rediana’s ladies, and you’re jealous.”

“I am not jealous,” Anne said. “I already have a true love, and he is not you.”

“Oh, yes, the fabled Roderick. A wonderful man, I hear. A true prince. I’m sure he would have answered your letter, if given another few months to get around to it.”

“We’ve been around this before.” Anne sighed. “Escort whomever you wish, do with them what you will. I am grateful to you, Cazio, for all your help, but—”

“Wait.” Cazio’s voice was clipped now, his face suddenly very serious.

“What is it?”

“Your father sent you to the coven Saint Cer, didn’t he?”

“It was my mother, actually,” she corrected.

“And did your true love Roderick know where you were bound?”

“It all happened too quickly. I thought I was going to Cal Azroth, and told him that, and then that very night my mother changed her mind. I had no way to send him word.”

“He couldn’t have discovered it through gossip?”

“No. I was sent away in secret. No one was supposed to know.”

“But then you dispatched a letter to your beloved—a letter I delivered to the Church cuveitur myself—and in a matter of ninedays those knights came to the coven. Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?”

It did strike—it struck like tinder in Anne’s breast.

“You go too far, Cazio. You have slandered Roderick before, but to suggest—to imply . . .” She stammered off, too angry to continue, all the more because it made a sort of sense. But it couldn’t be true, because Roderick loved her.

“The knights were from Hansa,” she said. “I knew their language. Roderick is from Hornladh.”

But silently she remembered something her aunt Lesbeth once told her. It seemed long ago, but it was something about Roderick’s house being out of favor at court because they had once supported a Reiksbaurg claim to the throne.

No. It’s ridiculous.

She was about to tell Cazio that when Austra suddenly burst into the courtyard. She was out of breath, and her face was flushed and wet with tears.

“What’s wrong?” Anne asked, taking Austra’s hands.

“It’s horrible, Anne!”

“What?”

“I s-s-saw a cuveitur. He was giving out the news in the square, by the wine shop. He’d just come from— Oh, Anne, what shall we do?”

“Austra, what?”

Her friend bit her lip and looked into Anne’s eyes. “I have terrible news,” she whispered. “The worst in the world.”

3 The Composer

Leovigild Ackenzal stared at the spear with a mixture of fear and annoyance.

The fear was entirely rational; the sharp end of the weapon was poised only inches from his throat, and the man holding the shaft was large, armored, and mounted on a ferocious-looking steed. His iron-gray eyes reminded Leoff of the pitiless waters of the Ice Sea, and it seemed to him that if this man killed him, he would not even remember him in the morning.

There was certainly nothing he could do to stop the fellow if murder was on his mind.

That he should also be annoyed was quite irrational, he supposed, but in truth it had little to do with the armored man. Days before—in the hill country—he’d heard a faint melody off in the distance. No doubt it had been some shepherd playing a pipe, but the tune had haunted him ever since, the worse because he’d never heard the end of it. His mind had completed it in a hundred ways, but none of them were satisfactory.

This was unusual. Normally, Leoff could complete a melody without the slightest effort. The fact that this one continued to elude him made it more tantalizing than a beautiful, mysterious—but reluctant—lover.

Then, this morning, he’d awoken with a glimmer of how it ought to go, but less than an hour on the road brought this rude interruption.

“I have little money,” Leoff told the man truthfully. His voice shook a bit as he said it.

The hard eyes narrowed. “No? What’s all that on your mule, then?”

Leoff glanced at his pack animal. “Paper, ink, my clothes. The large case is a lute, the smaller a croth. Those smallest ones are various woodwinds.”

“Auy? Open them, then.”

“They won’t be of any value to you.”

“Open them.”

Trying not to take his gaze off the man, Leoff complied, opening first the leather-bound case of the lute, which sounded faintly as the gourd-shaped back bumped against the ground. Then he proceeded to unpack the rest of his instruments; the eight-stringed rosewood croth inlaid with mother-of-pearl that Mestro DaPeica had given him years ago. A wooden flute with silver keys, an hautboy, six flageolets of graded sizes, and a dark red krummhorn.

The man watched this with little expression. “You’re a minstrel, then,” he said at last.

“No,” Leoff replied. “No, I’m not.” He tried to stand taller, to make the most of his average height. He knew there was little intimidating about his hazel eyes, curly brown hair, and boyish face, but he could at least be dignified.

The fellow raised an eyebrow. “Then what exactly are you?”

“I’m a composer.”

“And what does a composer do?” the man asked.

“He composes music.”

“I see. And how does that differ from what a minstrel does?”

“Well, for one thing—”

“Play something,” the man interrupted.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Leoff frowned, his annoyance growing. He looked around, hoping to find someone else, but the road stretched empty so far as the eye could see. And here in Newland, where the terrain was as level as a sounding board, that was very far indeed.

Then why hadn’t he seen the approach of the man on a horse?

But the answer to that lay in the melody he’d been puzzling over. When he heard music in his head, the rest of the world simply didn’t matter.

He picked up the lute. It had gone out of tune, of course, but not badly, and it was only a moment’s work to set it right again. He plucked out the melody line he’d been working on. “That’s not right,” he murmured.

“You can play, can’t you?” the mounted man challenged.

“Don’t interrupt me,” Leoff said absently, closing his eyes. Yes, there it was, though he’d lost the end.

He started into it, a single line on the top string, rising in three notes, dropping into two, then tripping up the scale. He added a bass accompaniment, but something about it didn’t fit. He stopped and started again. “That’s not very good,” the man said.

That was too much, spear or no. Leovigild turned his eyes on the fellow. “It would be quite good if you hadn’t interrupted me,” he said. “I almost had this in my head, you know, perfect, and then along you come with your great long spear and . . . What do you want with me, anyway? Who are you?” He noticed distantly that his voice wasn’t shaking anymore.

“Who are you?” the man asked placidly.

Leoff drew himself up straight. “I am Leovigild Ackenzal,” he said.

“And why do you approach Eslen?”

“I have an appointment to the court of His Highness, William the Second, as a composer. The emperor has a better opinion of my music than you do, it seems.”

Bizarrely, the man actually smiled. “Not anymore, he doesn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s dead, that’s what I mean.”

Leoff blinked. “I . . . I didn’t know.”

“Well, he is. Along with half the royal family.” He shifted in his saddle. “Ackenzal. That’s a Hanzish-sounding name.”

“It is not,” Leoff replied. “My father was from Herilanz. I myself was born in Tremar.” He pursed his lips. “You aren’t a bandit, are you?”

“I never said I was,” the fellow replied. “I haet Artwair.”

“You are a knight, Sir Artwair?”

Again, that ghost of a smile. “Artwair will do. Do you have a letter proving your claim?”

“Ah, yes. Yes, I do.”

“I would very much like to see it.”

Wondering why Artwair should care, Leoff nevertheless rummaged through his saddle pack until he found a parchment with the royal seal. He handed it to the warrior, who examined it briefly.

“This looks in order,” he said. “I’m returning to Eslen just now. I’ll escort you there.”

Leoff felt the muscles of his neck unknotting. “Very kind of you,” he said.

“Sorry if I gave you a fright. You shouldn’t have been traveling alone, anyway—not in these times.”

By noon, the infant-eyed sky of morning was cataracted an oppressive gray. This did nothing to improve Leoff’s mood. The landscape had changed; no longer totally flat, the road now ran alongside some sort of embankment or ridge of earth. It was so regular in shape, it seemed to him that it must be man-made. In the distance he could see similar ridges. The strangest things were the towers that stood on some of them. They looked as if they had huge wheels fixed to them, but with no rims, only four big spokes covered in what looked like sailcloth. They turned slowly in the breeze.

“What is that?” Leoff asked, gesturing at the nearest.

“First time in Newland, eh? It’s a malend. The wind turns it.”

“Yes, I can see that. For what purpose?”

“That one pumps water. Some are used to grind grain.”

“It pumps water?”

“Auy. If it didn’t, we’d be talking fishling right now.” Sir Artwair gestured broadly at the landscape. “Why do you think they call this Newland? It used to be underwater. It would be now, but the malenden keep pumping it out.” He pointed to the top of the embankment. “The water is up there. That’s the great northern canal.”

“I should have known that,” Leoff said. “I’ve heard of the canals, of course. I knew that Newland was below the level of the sea. I just—I suppose I thought I wasn’t that far along yet. I thought it would be more obvious, somehow.”

He glanced at his companion. “Does it ever make you nervous?”

Sir Artwair nodded. “Auy, a bit. Still, it’s a wonder, and good protection against invasion.”

“How so?”

“We can always let the water out through the dikes, of course, so any army marching on Eslen would have to swim. Eslen itself is high and dry.”

“What about the people who live out here?”

“We’d tell them first. Everyone knows the way to the nearest safe birm, believe me.”

“Has it ever been done?”

“Auy. Four times.”

“And the armies were stopped?”

“Three of them were. The fourth was lead by a Dare, and his descendents sit yet in Eslen.”

“About that—about the king—” Leoff began.

“You’re wondering if there’s anyone left to sing to for your supper.”

“I’m not unconcerned with that,” Leoff admitted, “but clearly I’ve missed a great deal of news while on the road. I’m not even sure of the date.”

“It’s the Temnosenal. Tomorrow is the first of Novmen.”

“Then I’ve been on the road longer than I thought. I left in Seftmen.”

“The very month the king was killed.”

“It would be a kindness . . .” Leoff began, and then, “Could you please tell me what happened to King William?”

“Surely. He was set upon by assassins while on a hunting expedition. His entire party was slain.”

“Assassins? From where?”

“Sea reavers, they say. He was near the headland of Aenah.”

“And others of the royal house were slain with him?”

“Prince Robert, his brother, was slain there, as well. The princesses Fastia and Elseny were murdered at Cal Azroth.”

“I don’t know that place,” Leoff said. “Is it near to where the king was killed?”

“Not at all. It’s more than a nineday’s hard riding.”

“That seems a very strange coincidence.”

“It does, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, it is the case, and it doesn’t go well for those who suggest otherwise.”

“I see,” Leoff said. “Then can you tell me—who rules in Eslen now?”

Artwair chuckled softly. “That depends on whom you ask. There is a king—Charles, the son of William. But he is, as they say, touched by the saints. He must be advised, and there’s no lack of advice available to him. The nobles of the Comven give it most freely and at every opportunity. The praifec of the Church has much to say, as well. And then there’s William’s widow, the mother of Charles.”

“Muriele Dare.”

“Ah, so you know something, at least,” Artwair said. “Yes, if you had to pick one person to say rules Crotheny, she would be the best choice.”

“I see,” Leoff said.

“So you say you’re worried about your position?” the knight said. “Are positions for your sort rare?”

“There are other patrons who would have me,” Leoff admitted. “I am not without reputation. I last served the Greft of Glastir. Still, a royal appointment . . .” He looked down. “But that’s a small thing, isn’t it, in all this mess.”

“At least you have some sense, composer. But cheer up—you may have your position yet—the queen may honor it. Then you’ll be right in the thick of things when the war starts.”

“War? War with whom?”

“Hansa—or Liery—or perhaps a civil war.”

“Are you joking with me?”

Artwair shrugged. “I have a sense for these things. All is chaos, and it usually takes a war to sort things out.”

“Saint Bright, let’s hope not.”

“You don’t fancy marching songs?”

“I don’t know any. Can you sing some?”

“Me, sing? When your mule is a warhorse.”

“Ah, well,” Leoff sighed. “Just a thought.”

They traveled in silence for a time, and as evening came, a mist settled, made rosy by the waning sun. The lowing of cattle sounded in the distance. The air smelled like dried hay and rosemary, and the breeze was chill.

“Will we reach Eslen tonight?” Leoff asked.

“Only if we travel all night, which I don’t fancy,” Sir Artwair replied. He seemed distracted, as if he were searching for something. “There’s a town where the road crosses the canal up here. I know an inn there. We’ll take a room, and with an early start we’ll be in Eslen by midday tomorrow.”

“Is something wrong?”

Artwair shrugged. “I’ve an itchy feeling. It’s likely nothing, as in your case.”

“Were you searching for anything in particular when we met?”

“Nothing in particular and everything out-of-place. You were out of place.”

“And what’s out of place now?”

“Did I say anything was?”

“No, but something is—it shows in your face.”

“And what would a minstrel know about my face?”

Leoff scratched his chin. “I told you, I’m not a minstrel. I’m a composer. You asked what the difference was. A minstrel—he goes from place to place, selling songs, playing for country dances, that sort of thing.”

“And you do it for kings.”

“There’s more. You’re from hereabouts? You’ve been to dances?”

“Auy.”

“Minstrels might travel in a group as large as four. Two on the croth, one on a pipe, and another to play the hand-drum and sing.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“There’s a tune—‘The Fine Maid of Dalwis.’ Do you know it?”

Artwair looked a bit surprised. “Yah. It’s a favorite at the Fiussanal.”

“Imagine it. One crother plays the melody, then another comes in, playing the same tune, but starting a bit after, so it makes a round. Then the third joins, and finally the singer. Four voices as it were, all at counterpoints to one another.”

“I don’t know counterpoint, but I know the song.”

“Good. Now imagine ten croths, two pipes, a flute, an hautboy, a greatpipe, and every one playing something different.”

“I reckon it would sound like a barnyard full of animals.”

“Not if it’s written right and the musicians perform it fair. Not if everything is in its place. I can hear such a piece, in my head. I can imagine it before it’s ever been played. I have a fine sense for things like that, Sir Artwair, and I can see when someone else does, whether it’s for music or not. There’s something bothering you. The trick is, do you know what that thing is?”

The knight shook his head. “You’re a strange man, Leovigild Ackenzal. But, yes—this town I mentioned, Broogh—it’s just ahead. But what do you hear, with those musician’s ears of yours?”

Leoff concentrated for a moment. “Sheep bleating, far away. Cows. Blackbirds.”

“Raeht. By now we ought to hear children hollering, wives yelling at their men to lay off the ale and come home, bells and horns sounding in the field, workers. But there’s none of that.” He sniffed the air. “No smell of cooking, either, and we’re downwind.”

“What could it mean?”

“I don’t know. But I think we won’t go in by the main road.” He cocked his head. “What use are you if there’s trouble? Can you use a sword or spear?”

“Saints, no.”

“Then you’ll wait here, up at the malend. Tell the windsmith that Artwair said to look after you for a bell or so.”

“Do you think it’s that serious?”

“Why would a whole town go silent?”

Leoff could think of a few reasons, all bad. “As you say,” he sighed. “I’d only be in the way if there’s trouble.”

After ascending to the birm of the dike, Leoff stood for a moment, musing at what a few feet in altitude did to transform Newland.

Mist collected in the low places like clouds, but from his heightened vantage he could see distant canals dissecting the landscape, coral ribbons that might have been cut from the dusky sky and laid on those amber fields by the saints themselves. Here and there he could even make out moving slivers that must be boats.

Lights were beginning to appear, as well, faint clusters of luminescence so pale, they might be the ephemeral dwellings of the Queer-folk rather than what they must be—the candlelit windows of distant towns and villages.

At his feet lay the great canal itself, broader than some rivers—but indeed, it must be a river, probably the Dew, caught here in walls built by human hands, kept here by ingenuity. It was indeed a wonder. Finally he studied the malend, wondering exactly how it worked. Its wheel was turning in the breeze, but he couldn’t see how it was keeping the water from drowning the land below. It squeaked faintly as it rotated, a pleasant sound.

A cheerful yellow light shone through the open door of the malend, and the smell of burning wood and fish grilling wafted out. Leoff got down off his mule and rapped on the wood. “Auy? Who is it?” a bright tenor voice asked. A moment later a face appeared, a small man with white hair sticking out at all angles. Age seemed to have collapsed his face, so wrinkled it was. His eyes shone, though, a pale blue, like lapis bezeled in leather.

“My name is Leovigild Ackenzal,” Leoff replied. “Artwair said to kindly ask if I might rest here a bell or so.”

“Artwair, eh?” The old man scratched his chin. “Auy. Wilquamen. I haet Gilmer Oercsun. Be at my home.” He gestured a bit impatiently.

“That’s very kind,” Leoff replied.

Inside, the lowest floor of the malend tower was a single cozy room. A hearth was set into one wall, where a cookfire crackled. An iron pot hung over the flame, as well as a spit that had two large perch skewered on it. A small bed was butted up against the opposite wall, and two three-legged stools sat nearer the fire. From the roof beams hung nets of onions, a few bunches of herbs, a wicker basket, swingle-blades, hoes, and hatchets. A ladder led to the next floor.

In the center of the room, a large wooden shaft lifted in and out of a stone-lined hole in the floor, presumably driven somehow by the windwheel above.

“Unburden ‘zuer poor mule,” the windsmith said. “Haveth-yus huher?”

“I beg your pardon?” Artwair’s dialect had been strange. The windsmith’s was nearly unintelligible.

“Yu’s an faerganger, eh?” His speech slowed a bit. “Funny accent you have. I’ll try to keep with the king’s tongue. So. Have you eaten? You have hungry?”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Leoff said. “My friend ought to be back soon.”

“That means you’ve hungry,” the old man said.

Leoff went back out and took his things off the mule, then let her roam on the top of the dike. He knew from experience that she wouldn’t go far.

When he reentered the malend, he found one of the fish awaiting him on a wooden plate, along with a chunk of black bread and some boiled barley. The windsmith was already sitting on one of the stools, his plate on his knees.

“I don’t have a board just now,” he apologized. “I had to burn it. Wood from upriver has been a little spotty, these last few ninedays.”

“Again, thank you for your kindness,” Leoff said, picking at the crisp skin of the fish.

“Nay, think nothing of it. But where is Artwair gang, that you can’t go?”

“He’s afraid something’s wrong in Broogh.”

“Hm. Has been quiet there this even’, that’s sure. Was wonderin’ about it minself.” He frowned. “Like as so, don’t think I even heard the vespers bell.”

If that brought Gilmer any further thoughts, he didn’t share them, but tucked into his meal. Leoff followed suit.

When the meal was done, Gilmer tossed the bones in the fire. “Where’ve you come from, then?” he asked Leoff.

“Glastir, on the coast,” he replied.

“That’s far, auy? Mikle far. And how do you know Artwair?”

“I met him on the road. He’s escorting me to Eslen.”

“Oh, gang to the court? Dark times, there, since the night of the purple moon. Dark times everywhere.”

“I saw that moon,” Leoff said. “Very strange. It reminded me of a song.”

“An unhealthy song, I’ll wager.”

“An old one, and puzzling.”

“Sing a bit of it?”

“Ah, well . . .” Leoff cleared his throat.

Leoff finished the song, Gilmer listening in evident pleasure. “You’ve a fine voice,” the old man said. “I don’t cann of this Riciar fellow, but all he said has come to pass.”

“How so?”

“Well, the purple scythe—that was the crescent moon that rose last month, as you said. And a horn was blown—it was heard everywhere. In Eslen, at the bay, out on the islands. And the royal blood was spilled, and then the brammel-briars.”

“Briars?”

“Auy. You aens’t heard? They sprang up first at Cal Azroth, where the two princesses were slain. Sprouted right from their blood, it’s said, just as in your song. They grew so fast, they tore down the keep there, and they creep still. They spell the King’s Forest is full of ‘em, too.”

“I haven’t heard that at all,” Leoff said. “I’ve been on the road from Glastir.”

“Sure the news has been up the road by now,” Gilmer said. “How did it miss you?”

Leoff shrugged. “I traveled with a Sefry caravan, and they spoke to me very little. This past nineday I was alone, but I was preoccupied, I suppose.”

“Preoccupied? What with the end of the world coming, and all?”

“End of the world?”

Gilmer’s voice lowered. “Saints, man, don’t you know anything? The Briar King has wakened. That’s his brammels eating up the land. That was his horn you heard blaw.”

Leoff stroked his chin. “Briar King?”

“An ancient demon of the forest. The last of the evil old gods, they say.”

“I’ve never—no, wait, there is a song about him.”

“You’re right full of songs.”

Leoff shrugged. “Songs are my trade, you might say.”

“You’re a minstrel?”

Leoff sighed and smiled. “Something like that. I take old songs and make them into new ones.”

“A songsmith, then. A smith, like me.”

“Yes, that’s more the case.”

“Well, if it’s a song about the Briar King, I don’t want to hear it. He’ll kill us all, soon enough. No need to trouble over him before it happens.”

Leoff wasn’t sure how to react to that, but he felt sure that if the world were about to end, Artwair would probably have mentioned it. “Very well,” he said at last, gesturing above. “Your malend. May I ask, how does it work?”

Gilmer brightened. “You saw the saglwic outside, auy? The wind spins it, which turns a shaft up there.” He pointed toward the roof. “Then there’s wooden cogs and gears, takes that turning and makes this shaft go up and down. That runs the pump, down under. I can show you tomorrow.”

“That’s very nice of you, but I won’t be here tomorrow.”

“You may be. Artwair has had time to gang and come from Broogh twice now, so something must be keeping him there. And I’m needin’ min rest. And judging by the way the Kuvoolds are pulling at your eyelids, I’d say you need a rest, as well.”

“I am rather tired,” Leoff realized.

“You’re welcome to stay until Artwair gets back, as I said. There’s another bed, on the next floor, for just such a purpose. Take it, if you’d like.”

“I think I shall, even if it’s only for a short nap.” He climbed the ladder to the next level and found the bed, just under a window. It was well dark now, but the moon was out, and up the canal some half a league he saw what must be Broogh, a collection of house-shaped shadows, a wall, and four towers of varying height. He saw no light, however, not even so much as he had made out in the far more distant—and probably smaller—villages.

With a sigh he lay on the rough mattress, listening to the wolf-wings and nighthawks singing, tired but not sleepy. Above, he could hear the gears Gilmer had mentioned clattering and clucking, and somewhere near, the trickling of water.

The end of the world, eh? That was just his luck. At the age of thirty-two he had a royal appointment in his grasp, and the world was going to end.

If he still had a royal appointment.

His thoughts on the matter were interrupted by the sudden breathy voice of a recorder. It was so clear and beautiful, it might have been real, but he’d lived long enough with his gift to know it was in his head.

A melody began, and he smiled as his body relaxed and his mind went to work.

The malend was teaching him its song.

It came easily, first the alto recorder, the wind coming along from the east across green plains. And now the drum, as the wheel—saglwic?—began to turn, and croths—plucked here rather than bowed—began playing the melody in unison with the flute. Then joined the low strings of the bass croths, the vast waters beneath the earth responding, but still all melody, of course—and now water flowing into the canal, a merry trickling on a flageolet, as the malend became the union of air, earth, water, and craft.

Now the variations began, each element acquiring its own theme—the earth a slow pavane on the deep instruments, but on the pipes a mad, happy dance as the wind quickened, and the strings bowing nearly glissando arpeggios . . .

He blinked. His candle had gone out, and it was pitch-black. When had that happened?

But the concerto was finished, ready to go to paper. Unlike the melody in the hills, the dance of the malend had come to him whole.

Which was perhaps why he only now realized that someone was in the room below, talking.

Two voices, and neither belonged to Gilmer Oercsun.

“. . . don’t see why we had got picked to do this job,” a voice said. It was a tenor voice, scratchy.

“Don’t complain,” another said. This one was a booming baritone. “Especially don’t complain around him.”

“It’s just that I wanted to see,” the first replied. “Don’t you want to be there, when they bust through the dike, and the water goes all a-rushin’ out?”

“You’ll see it,” the baritone replied. “You’ll see it well enough. You’ll be lucky not to swim in it.”

“Yah, I suppose. Still.” A cheerful tone crept into his voice. “But won’t it be fun, rowing a boat over all of that down there? Over the roofs of the houses? I’m going to row right over . . . what was the town?”

“Where the girl said you had a nose like a turtle’s prickler?”

“That’s the one.”

“Reckhaem.”

“Right. Hey, a turtle’s prickler is the best she’ll be getting, after tonight.”

“Still better than yours, from what I’ve heard,” the baritone said. “Now let’s be done here. We’ve got to burn every malend for four leagues before morning.”

“Yah, but why?”

“So they can’t pump the water back up, you dumb sceat. Now, come on.”

Burn? Leoff’s heart did a triple-quick-step.

The top of the stairway suddenly appeared, an orange rectangle, and he smelled burning oil.

4 The Praifec

Aspar White fought to draw a breath, but he felt as if a giant hand were clenched around his throat. “Sceat, this can’t be right,” he managed to gasp out. “Winna—”

Winna rolled her blue eyes and shook her honey locks. “Hush, Asp,” she admonished, “don’t be such a kindling. Haven’t you ever worn a Fading collar before?”

“I’ve never worn any damn sort of collar before,” Aspar grunted. “What’s the point?”

“The point is, you’re in Eslen, in the royal palace, not tramping through a heath in the uplands, and before the next bell you’re going to see His Grace, the Praifec of all Crotheny. You’ve got to dress for the occasion.”

“But I’m just a holter,” he complained. “Let me dress like one.”

“You killed the Black Warg and his bandit band, alone, with nothing but your bow, ax, and dirk. You fought a greffyn and lived. You mean to say now you’re afraid to wear a simple set of weeds?”

“They aren’t simple, I look stupid, and I can’t breathe.”

“You haven’t even seen yourself, and if you’ve got enough breath to whinge so, I’d say you’re doing fine. Now here, come to the mirror.”

He raised his eyebrows. Winna’s young face was broad with smile. Her hair was caught up in a black net of some sort, and she wore an azure gown that—to his mind—was cut far too low at the bodice. Not that the view didn’t please, but it would please every other man who saw it, too.

“Well, you look—ah—pretty, at least,” he said.

“Surely I do. And so do you. See?” She turned him toward the mirror.

Well, he recognized the face, even with it shaved clean. Burned dark by the sun, scarred and worn by forty-one years of hard living, it might not be pretty, but it was the sort of face the king’s holter ought to have.

From the neck down, he was a stranger. The tight, stiff collar was merely the most torturous part of a doublet made of some sort of brightly patterned cloth that ought to have ended up as a drape or a rug. Below that, his legs felt naked, clothed as they were in tight green hose. He felt altogether like a candied apple on a stick.

“Who ever thought of dressing like this?” He grunted. “It’s as if some madwoman tried to think of the most ridiculous outfit imaginable, and—Grim’s eye—succeeded.”

“Madwoman?” Winna asked.

“Yah, well, no man would ever invent such a clownish suit. It must have been some sort of evil trick. Or a dare.”

“You’ve been at court long enough to know better,” Winna said. “The men here love their plumage.”

“Yah,” he conceded, “and I’m damn ready to be away from here, too.”

Her eyes narrowed a little, and she wagged an accusing finger. “You’re nervous about meeting the praifec.”

“I’m no such a thing,” he snapped.

“You are such a thing! A nervous little kindling thing!”

“I haven’t had much to do with the Church, that’s all,” he grumbled. “Other than killing a few of their monks.”

“Outlaw monks,” she reminded him. “You’ll do fine, just try not to blaspheme—in other words, try not to talk at all. Let Stephen do the talking.”

“Oh, yah, that will be a comfort,” Aspar muttered sarcastically. “He’s the soul of tact.”

“He’s a churchman, though,” Winna pointed out. “He ought to know more about talking to a praifec than you do.”

That brought a sharp little laugh from near the door. Aspar glanced over to see that Stephen had entered and was leaning against the frame, clad much as he was but appearing far more comfortable. His mouth was quirked in a smile, and his brown hair was swept back in something approaching courtly fashion. “I was in the Church,” Stephen said. “Before committing heresy, disobeying my fratrex, getting him killed, and fleeing my monastery. I doubt much that His Grace the Praifec will have many good things to say to me.”

“Like as not,” Aspar agreed, “we’ll end this meeting in a dungeon.”

“Well,” Winna said, primly, “at least we’ll go well-dressed.”

Praifec Marche Hespero was a tall man of upper middle years. He had a narrow face made sharper by a small black goatee and mustache. His black robes were draped on a body to suit—thin, almost birdlike. His eyes were like a bird’s, as well, Aspar reflected—like a hawk’s or an eagle’s eyes.

He received them in a somber, spare room of gray stone with low-beamed ceilings. In the baroque splendor of Eslen Castle, it seemed very much out of place. The praifec sat in an armchair behind a large table. To his left sat a dark-complexioned boy of perhaps sixteen winters, looking at least as uncomfortable in his courtly garb as Aspar felt. Other than that, Aspar, Winna, and Stephen were the only people in the chamber.

“Sit, please,” the praifec said pleasantly.

Aspar waited until Stephen and Winna took their chairs, then settled in the one that remained. Grim knew if it was the right one. If there was a right one. He still smarted from an incident with spoons at a banquet the nineday before. Who needed more than one sort of spoon?

When they were seated, the praifec rose and clasped his hands behind his back. He looked at Aspar. “Aspar White,” he said in a soft voice, soft as the fabric of Winna’s dress. “You’ve been the royal holter for many years.”

“More years than I care to remember, Your Grace.”

The praifec smiled briefly. “Yes, the years chase us, do they not? I put you at a man of some forty winters. It’s been some time since I saw that age.” He shrugged. “What we lose in beauty, we gain in wisdom, one hopes.”

“Ya—yes, Your Grace.”

“You’ve a distinguished career up until now, all in all. Several acts of an almost impossible sort—did you really sort out this Black Warg all by yourself?”

Aspar shifted uncomfortably. “That’s been made a bit much of,” he said.

“Ah,” the praifec said. “And the affair of the Relister?”

“He’d never fought a man with dirk and ax, Your Grace. His armor slowed him down.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” He glanced at a paper on the table. “I see a few complaints, here, as well. What’s this about the Greft of Ashwis?”

“That was a misunderstanding,” Aspar said. “His lordship was mad with drink, and taking a firebrand to the forest.”

“Did you really bind and gag him?”

“The king saw it my way, sir.”

“Yes, eventually. But there’s this thing with Lady Esteiren?”

Aspar stiffened. “The lady wanted me for a holiday guide, Your Grace, which is in no way my charge. I tried to be polite.”

“And failed, it seems,” the praifec said, a touch of amusement in his voice.

Aspar started a reply, but the praifec held up his hand, shook his head, and turned to Stephen.

“Stephen Darige, formerly a fratir at the monastery d’Ef.” He peered down his nose at Stephen. “You’ve made quite an impression on the Church during your very brief tenure with it, haven’t you, Brother Stephen?”

Stephen frowned. “Your Grace, as you know, the circumstances—”

The praifec cut him off. “You’re from a family of good standing, I see. Educated at the college in Ralegh. An expert in antique languages, which you put to use at d’Ef translating forbidden documents, which translation—as I understand it, correct me if I get this wrong—led both to the death of your fratrex and the commission of unspeakable acts of dark sorcery.”

“This is all true, Your Grace,” Stephen replied, “but I did my work at the command of the fratrex. The dark sorcery was practiced by renegade monks, led by Desmond Spendlove.”

“Yes, well, you see, there’s no proof of any of that,” the praifec pointed out. “Brother Spendlove and his compatriots are all dead, as is Fratrex Pell. This is convenient for you, as there is no one to contradict your story.”

“Your Grace—”

“And yet you admit to summoning the Briar King, whose appearance is said to foretell the end of the world.”

“It was an accident, Your Grace.”

“Yes. That will be small comfort if the world is actually in the process of ending, will it not?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Stephen replied miserably.

“Nonetheless, your admission of guilt in that case goes far to suggest that you’re telling the truth. Privately, I confess I had long suspected something was awry at d’Ef. The Church, after all, is made up of men and women, all of whom are fallible, and as prone to corruption as anyone. We are doubly on the watch now, you may be assured.”

He turned at last to Winna.

“Winna Rufoote. Hostler’s daughter from Colbaely. Not a holter, not in the Church. How in Heaven did you become involved in all this?”

“I’m in love with this great lump of a holter, Your Grace,” she replied.

Aspar felt his face color.

“Well,” the praifec said. “There’s no accounting for such things, is there?”

“Likely not, Your Grace.”

“Yet you were with him when he tracked the greffyn, and at Cal Azroth when the Briar King appeared. You were also a captive of the Sefry, Fend, said to be responsible for much of what happened.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Well.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “I give you a choice, Winna Rufoote. We are about to speak of things that cannot go beyond the walls of this room. You may remain and become a part of something which could prove quite dangerous in several different ways—or you may leave, and I will have you escorted safely back to your father’s inn in Colbaely.”

“Your Grace, I’m a part of this. I’ll stay.”

Aspar found himself standing suddenly. “Winna, I forbid—”

“Hush, you great bear,” Winna said. “When could you ever forbid me?”

“This time I do!” Aspar said.

“Silence, please,” the praifec said. He focused his raptor eyes on Aspar. “It’s her choice.”

“And she’s made it,” Winna said.

“Think carefully, my dear,” the praifec said.

“It’s done, Your Grace,” Winna replied.

The praifec nodded. “Very well.”

He placed his hand on the shoulder of the boy, who had sat silent through all of this. He had black hair and eyes to match, and his skin was dark, darker than Aspar’s.

“Allow me to present Ehawk, of the Wattau, a tribe from the Mountains of the Hare. You know of them, perhaps, Holter White.”

“Yah,” Aspar answered curtly. His mother had been Wattau, his father an Ingorn. The child they bore had never been welcome in either village.

The praifec nodded again. “The events you three have been a part of are of great concern to the Church, most especially the appearance of the so-called Briar King. Up until now, we have considered him to be nothing more than a folktale, a lingering superstition, perhaps inspired by an illiterate memory of the Warlock Wars or even the Captivity, before our ancestors broke the shackles of the demons who enslaved them. Now that he has appeared, of course, we must reassess the state of our knowledge.”

“If I may, Your Grace, my report—” Stephen began.

“I have read your reports, of course,” Hespero said. “Your work on the subject is laudable, but you lack the full resources of the Church. There is, in holy z’Irbina, a certain set of volumes which may be read only by His Holiness the Fratrex Prismo. Immediately on hearing of the events at Cal Azroth, I sent word to z’Irbina, and word has now come back to me.” He paused.

“Word and more,” he continued. “I will explain that later. Anyway, at the time I did not feel that I could wait to hear from z’Irbina. I sent, under Church auspices, an expedition to track this—creature, and to learn more of it. The expedition was a strong one; a knight of the Church and five monks of Mamres. They hired Ehawk in his village to act as a guide. Ehawk will now relate what he saw.”

“Ah,” Ehawk said. His accent was thick, and it was that of someone not used to speaking the king’s tongue. “Hello to you.” He fixed his eyes on Aspar. “I’ve heard of you, Sir Holter. I thought you’d be taller. It’s said your arrows are the size of spears.”

“I’ve shrunk down for His Grace,” Aspar grunted. “What did you see, boy, and where did you see it?”

“It in the territory of the Duth ag Pae, near Aghdon. One of the monks—Martyn—heard something. And there they were.”

“They?”

“Men and women, but like beasts. They wore nothing; they carried no weapons. They tore up poor Sir Oneu with their bare hands and teeth. A madness was upon them.”

“Where did they come from?”

“They were the Duth ag Pae, I’m sure of it. Maybe all of them, except no children. There were old people, though.” He shuddered. “They ate the monks’ flesh as they killed them.”

“Do you know what might have driven them to madness?”

“It’s not just them, Sir Holter. As I fled, I came across village after village, all abandoned. I hid in holes and under leaves, but they found my horse and tore her up. I heard them at night, singing songs in no speech of the mountains.”

“But you escaped them.”

“Yah. When I left the forest, I left them. I came here because Martyn wished it.”

“Martyn was one of my most trusted servants,” the praifec amplified, “and very powerful in Mamres.”

“What sort of madness sweeps whole villages?” Stephen wondered.

“The old women . . .” Ehawk began; then his voice trailed off.

“It’s all right, Ehawk,” the praifec said reassuringly. “Speak what you will.”

“It’s one of the prophecies. They said that when the Etthoroam wakes, he will claim all in the forest for his own.”

“Etthoroam,” Stephen said. “I’ve seen that name. It’s what your people name the Briar King.”

Ehawk nodded.

“Aspar,” Winna murmured. “Colbaely is in the King’s Forest. My father. My family.”

“Colbaely is far from the country of the Duth ag Pae,” Aspar said.

“How does that matter, if what this boy says is true?”

“She has a point,” Stephen said.

“They are not confined to the depths,” the praifec said. “We’ve had reports of fighting in towns all along the edge of the King’s Forest, at least in the east.”

“Your Grace, you must pardon me,” Aspar said.

“For what crime?”

“Pardon me to leave. I’m the king’s holter. The forest is in my charge. I have to see this for myself.”

“Yes, to that second point I agree. As to the first—you are no longer the king’s holter.”

“What?”

“I petitioned His Majesty to have you placed under my command. I need you, Aspar White. No one knows the forest as you do. You’ve faced the Briar King and lived—not once, but twice.”

“But he’s been a holter all his life!” Stephen exploded. “Your Grace, you can’t just—!”

The praifec’s voice was suddenly not soft. “I most certainly can, Brother Darige. I can and I have. And in point of fact, your friend is still a holter—the Church’s holter. What greater honor could he hope for?”

“But—” Stephen began again.

“If it’s all the same, Stephen,” Aspar said quietly, “I can speak for myself.”

“Please do,” the praifec urged.

He looked the praifec straight in the eye. “I don’t know much about courts or kings or praifecs,” he admitted. “I’m told I have few manners, and those I have are bad ones. But it seems to me, Your Grace, that you might have asked me before telling me.”

Hespero stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Very well. You have a point. I suppose I was letting my anxiety for the people of Crotheny and the greater world muddy my concern for the personal wishes of one man. I can always ask the king to change his decree—so I’ll ask you now.”

“What exactly is it Your Grace is requesting?”

“I want you to go to the King’s Forest and discover what is really happening there. I want you to find the Briar King, and I want you to kill him.”

A moment’s silence followed the praifec’s words. He sat there, watching them as if he had just asked that they go hunting and return with some fresh deer meat.

“Kill him,” Aspar said carefully, after a moment.

“Indeed. You killed the greffyn, did you not?”

“And it nearly killed Aspar,” Winna interjected. “It would have killed him, except that the Briar King somehow healed him.”

“You’re sure of that?” the praifec said. “Do you discount the saints and their work so easily? They do keep an eye on human affairs, after all.”

“The point is, Your Grace,” Stephen said, “that we do not know precisely what happened that day, what the Briar King is, or what he truly portends. We don’t know that the Briar King should be slain, and we do not know if he can be slain.”

“He can be slain, and he must be slain,” Hespero said. “This can slay him.” He lifted a long, narrow leather case from behind his desk. It looked old, and Aspar saw some sort of faded writing stamped on it.

“This is one of the most ancient relics of the Church,” the praifec said. “It has been waiting for this day, and for someone to wield it. The Fratrex Prismo cast the auguries, and the saints have revealed their will.”

He opened one end of the case and gingerly withdrew an arrow.

Its head glittered, almost too brightly to be looked at.

“When the saints destroyed the Old Gods,” Hespero said, “they made this and gave it to the first of the Church fathers. It will kill anything that has flesh—beast canny or uncanny, or ancient, pagan spirit. It may be used seven times. It has already been used five.”

He replaced the arrow in the case and folded his hands before him.

“The madness Ehawk witnessed is the doing of the Briar King. The auguries say it will spread, like ripples in a pool, until all the lands of men are engulfed by it. Therefore, by command of the most holy senaz of the Church and the Fratrex Prismo himself, I am ordered to see that this shaft finds the heart of the Briar King. That, Aspar White, is the charge and the duty I am asking you to take up.”

5 The Sarnwood Witch

“We can’t take them all,” Anshar said grimly as he drew back the string of his bow. There was nothing to hit—the wolves were nothing more than shadows in the trees, and he was certain every shaft he had fired thus far had missed its mark. The Sarnwood was too dense, too tangled with vines and creepers for a bow to have much worth.

“Well, no,” the one-eyed Sefry to his left said coolly. “I don’t imagine we can. But we didn’t come here to fight wolves.”

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed, Fend,” Brother Pavel said, pushing wet brown bangs from his gaunt face. “We haven’t a choice.”

Fend sighed. “They aren’t attacking, are they?”

“They tore Refan to shreds,” Brother Pavel observed.

“Refan left the path,” Fend said. “We won’t be so foolish, will we?”

“You really think we’re safe if we stay on the path?” Anshar asked, looking down dubiously at the narrow trail they all three stood on. There seemed no real boundary between it and the howling wild of the forest, just a muddy mingling of earth and leaves.

“I didn’t say we were safe,” Fend amended with a grim sort of humor. “Only that the wolves won’t get us.”

“You’ve been wrong before,” Brother Pavel pointed out.

“Me?” Fend wondered. “Wrong?”

“At Cal Azroth, for instance,” Pavel persisted.

Fend stopped suddenly, focusing his single eye upon the monk. “In what way was I wrong?” the Sefry asked.

“You were wrong about the holter,” Pavel accused. “You said he wasn’t a threat.”

“Me, claim Aspar White wasn’t a threat? The one man who ever gave me a real wound in single combat? The man who took my eye? I don’t think I ever claimed, in anyone’s dreams, that Aspar White wasn’t a threat. I believe that might have been your friend Desmond Spendlove, who swore he would stop the holter ere he reached Cal Azroth.”

“He ruined our plans,” Pavel grumbled.

“Well, let’s see,” Fend said. “I’m confused by your word ruined. We killed the two princesses, didn’t we?”

“Yes, but the queen—”

“Escaped, I grant you that. But it wasn’t because I was wrong about anything—it was because we were outfought.”

“If we had stayed—”

“If we had stayed, we’d both be dead, and our cause would have two fewer champions,” Fend said. “Do you think you know the mind of our master better than I, Brother?”

Pavel kept his brow clenched, but finally he nodded. “No,” he admitted.

“No. And see? While we’ve been arguing, where are the wolves?”

“Still out there,” Anshar answered, “but not coming any closer.”

“No. Because she wants to know what we’ve come for. As long as she’s curious about us—as long as we obey her rules and stay on the path—we’ll be fine.” He clapped Pavel on the back. “Now will you stop worrying?”

Brother Pavel managed a fretful smile.

Anshar had heard about the business at Cal Azroth, but he hadn’t been there. Most of the monks involved in that conflict had been from d’Ef. He’d taken his training at the monastery of Anstaizha, far to the north in his native Hansa. He’d been sent south only a few ninedays ago, told by his fratrex to lend whatever aid he could to the strange Sefry and Brother Pavel.

He’d been told specifically that the Sefry, though not a churchman, was to be obeyed at all times.

So he had followed Fend here, to the place where all the most frightening children’s stories of his youth were supposed to have taken place—to the Sarnwood—in search of none other than the Sarnwood Witch herself.

The trail took them deeper, into a cleft between two hills which soon became a gorge rising in sheer walls on either side. He’d been raised in the country and was familiar with trees, and at the outskirts of the Sarnwood, he’d been able to name most of them. Now he knew almost none of them. Some were scaled and looked as if they were made of smaller snakes joined to larger ones. Others soared incredibly high before spreading spidery foliage. Yet others were less strange in appearance, but just as unidentifiable.

At last they came to a spring-fed pool of clear water whose banks were thick with moss and pale—almost white—ferns. The trees here were black and scaled, with drooping leaves that resembled saw-toothed blades. Empty gazes stared down at him from the human skulls nestled in the crooks of the branches. Anshar felt himself trying to back away, and he crushed the instinct with his will.

He smelled something musky and bitter.

“This is it,” Fend murmured. “This is the place.”

“What do we do now?” Anshar asked.

Fend drew a wicked-looking knife. “Come here, both of you,” he said. “She’ll want blood.”

Obediently, Anshar stepped to the Sefry’s side. Pavel did, too, but Anshar thought he saw hesitation there.

Meanwhile, Fend drew his blade across his palm. Blood welled from the line, and Anshar was half-surprised to see it was red as that of any human.

He glanced at the two of them. “Well?” he said. “She’ll want more than this.”

Anshar nodded and drew his own blade, and so did Brother Pavel.

Anshar was cutting his palm when he caught a peculiar motion from the corner of his eye.

Brother Pavel still stood there, his knife across his palm, but he was jerking oddly. Fend was facing him, holding his hand to Pavel’s head, as if to hold him up . . .

No. Fend had just thrust a knife through Brother Pavel’s left eye. Now he removed it and wiped it on Pavel’s habit. The monk continued to stand there, twitching, the remaining eye fixed on his half-cut palm.

“A lot more blood,” Fend amplified. He gave Pavel a push, and the monk toppled face-first into the pool. Then the Sefry looked up at Anshar. He felt a chill, but stood his ground.

“You aren’t worried you might be next?” Fend asked.

“No,” Anshar said. “If my fratrex sent me here as a sacrifice, a sacrifice I’ll be.”

Fend’s lips twisted in a grudging smile. “You Churchmen,” he said. “You have such belief, such loyalty.”

“You don’t serve the Church?” Anshar asked, surprised. Fend just snorted and shook his head. Then he sang something in a peculiar language Anshar had never heard.

Something moved in the trees. He didn’t actually see the motion, but he felt and heard it. He had the impression of vast, scaly coils dragging themselves through the forest and contracting around the pool like a great Waurm of legend. Soon, he knew, it would poke its head through the tree trunks and open its vast, toothy mouth.

But what did step from the trees was very different from what his impressions had led him to imagine.

Her skin was whiter than milk or moonlight, and her hair floated about her like black smoke. He tried to avert his eyes because she was naked, and he knew he shouldn’t gaze upon her, but he couldn’t help it. She was so slim, so exquisitely delicate, that he first thought she was a child. But then his eyes were drawn to the small cups of her breasts and the pale blue nipples that tipped them. To his surprise he saw she had four more, smaller nipples arranged down her belly, like on a cat, and he suddenly understood that she was Sefry.

She smiled, and to his shame, he felt a surge of lust equaled only by his terror. She lifted a hand toward them, palm up, beckoning, and he took a step forward.

Fend stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“She’s not calling you,” he said, pointing to the pool.

Pavel suddenly gathered his arms and legs beneath him and pushed himself clumsily to his feet. He turned to face them.

“Why have you come, Fend?” Pavel croaked.

“I’ve come to speak to the Sarnwood Witch,” Fend replied.

“You’ve found her,” Pavel said.

“Really? I’d always heard that the Witch was a terrible ogress, a giant, a thoroughly ugly creature.”

“I have many appearances,” Pavel’s corpse said. “And there are many foolish stories told of me besides.” The woman cocked her head. “You killed the Dare princesses,” she said. “I smell it on you. But there were three daughters. Why didn’t you kill the third?”

Fend chuckled. “I thought my sacrifice entitled me to have my questions answered.”

“Your sacrifice only ensures that I won’t slay you without hearing what you have to say. From here on out, you’ll have to stay in my good graces if you want anything more than that.”

“Ah,” Fend said. “Very well. The third daughter—I believe her name was Anne—was not present at Cal Azroth. Unknown to us, she was sent away.”

“Yes,” the corpse said. “I see. Others found her in Vitellia, but they failed to kill her.”

“So she’s still alive?” Fend asked.

“Was that one of your questions?”

“Yes, but it sounds as if it’s someone else’s problem now.”

“Earth and sky are being bent to find her,” Pavel said. “She must die.”

“Yes, well, I know that,” Fend replied. “But if, as you say she has been found—”

“And lost again.”

“Can you tell me where she is?”

“No.”

“There, then,” Fend said. “The others lost her—they can find her again.”

“You had the queen in your grasp and did not kill her,” Pavel said.

“Yes, yes,” Fend replied. “It seems someone is always reminding me of that. An old friend of mine showed up and put something of a damper on the whole business. But as I understand it, the queen is not as important as Anne.”

“She is important—and have no fear, she will die. Your failure there will cost you little. And you are correct in one thing—the daughter is everything, so far as your master is concerned.”

For the first time, Fend seemed surprised. “I wouldn’t call him a master—you know whom I serve?”

“He came to me once, long ago, and now I smell him on you.” The woman lifted her chin, as did Pavel, in grotesque parody. “Is the war begun?” the corpse asked.

“How is it you know so much concerning certain matters and nothing concerning others?”

“I know much of the large, but little of the small,” Pavel said, and chuckled at the word play. Behind him, the woman just stood there, but Anshar could see her eyes now, a startling violet color.

“I can see the sweep of the river, but not eddies and currents, not the ships upon it or the leaves following it seaward. Your words supply me with that. You say one thing, and I see those things connected to it—and thus I learn the small things. Now. Has the war begun yet?”

“Not yet,” he replied, “but soon, I’m told. A few more pieces are moving into place. Not really my focus, that.”

“What is your focus, Fend? What did you really come here to discover?”

“They say you are the mother of monsters, O Sarnwood Witch. Is it true?”

“The very earth is pregnant with monsters. What do you seek?”

Fend’s smile spread, and Anshar felt an involuntary chill. When Fend answered her, he felt another, deeper one.

6 The Eyes of Ash

It was only moments before smoke started boiling up through the stairwell and the crackling of flame rose over all other noises. The floor began to heat, and Leoff realized that if the malend were an oven, he was just where the bread ought to be.

He went to the window, wondering if the fall would break his leg, but jerked his head back when he saw two figures watching the malend burn, their faces ruddy in the light spilling from the door.

The brief glimpse he got wasn’t reassuring. One of them was nearly a giant, and Leoff could see the glint of steel in both their hands. They hadn’t searched the malend—they were letting the fire do it for them.

“Poor Gilmer,” he murmured. They had probably killed the little man in his sleep.

Which would probably be an easier fate than what lay in store for Leoff. It was already getting difficult to breathe. The flame was climbing for him, but the smoke would surely find him first.

He couldn’t go down; he couldn’t go out the window. That left only up, if he wanted to live even another few moments.

He found the ladder and climbed it to the next level. It was already smoky there, too, but not nearly so much as the level he had just left.

And it was dark, very dark. He could hear the gears working again, and something squeaking nearby. He must be in the machinery of the thing now.

He found the final ladder and went up it with trembling care. He had an image of getting a hand—or worse, his head—caught in an unseen cog.

The final floor wasn’t very smoky at all. He faintly made out a window and went to it hopefully. But they were still down there, and now the drop was ridiculous.

Trying to calm himself, Leoff felt around in the dark, and nearly shrieked when he touched something moving. He caught himself as he realized it was a vertical beam, turning—probably the central shaft that drove the pump.

Except that the shaft he’d seen on the first floor wasn’t rotating; it was moving up and down. The motion must be translated somehow on the floor just below.

That still didn’t seem right. The axis of the—what had Gilmer called it? The big veined spokes? Saglwic. Their axis would have to be horizontal, so that motion must be translated to this shaft.

Which meant that there was something still above him.

Groping carefully above, he found a great-toothed wheel of wood at the top of the shaft. It was rotating. A little more feeling about, and he discovered the second wheel, set above the first and at right angles, so that the teeth meshed at the bottom of the second wheel to turn the first. Leoff figured that the shaft turning the second wheel must be connected to the windwheel itself.

He found that and followed it, not sure what he was looking for. The smoke had discovered him again, as had the heat.

The shaft passed through a greasy hole in the wall only incrementally larger than the smoothed beam itself.

He began to understand what he was looking for.

“There must be some way to repair the saglwic— Yes!”

Below the shaft he found a latch, and lifting it allowed him to open a small square door. He cracked it open and peered out.

A pale moon sat on the horizon, and by its light he saw the spokes of the malend turning in the wind, and beyond that the waters of the canal, shining like silver. He saw no one below, but there were shadows enough to hide anything.

A shudder ran through the building, then another. Beams were collapsing below. The tower ought to stand, though, since it was made of stone.

A blast of hot air and a fist of flame followed the thought and came punching up through the ladder hole.

Saints, I don’t want to do this! he thought. But it’s this or burn.

Holding his breath, he followed the slow rhythm of the rotating spokes until he felt it with everything he had. The song of the malend came back to him, filled him up, and now he breathed in time with it.

He jumped on the downbeat. His legs jerked when he did it, and he nearly didn’t make it, but one hand caught the wooden latticework of the windsail. Without warning he found himself turning upside-down, but he managed to claw his other hand into the fabric. His stomach churned with fear and disorientation as the landscape retreated impossibly far below him. Then it was rushing back at him again, and he started climbing down the vane.

As it dipped near the ground, he hastened his pace, fearing to make another rotation, but it was still too far away. He clung tight as his perch swung up again, and oddly enough, his fear began to turn into a sort of exhilaration. His head was toward the axis now, and something seemed to be tugging at his feet, even when his feet were pointed toward the sky, as if the saints didn’t want him to fall. He went with the tug, climbing on even while upside-down, and when next the vane moved earthward, he was low enough to drop.

He hit the ground hard, but not breaking hard, and lay there in the grass for a moment.

But not for long. Keeping low, he moved away from the burning malend and toward the canal. He had almost reached it when a strong hand gripped his arm.

“Ssh!” a low voice commanded. “Quiet. It’s just me, Gilmer.”

Leoff closed his eyes and nodded, hoping his heart would not explode through his breastbone.

“Follow,” Gilmer said. “We’ve got to get away from here. The men who did this—”

“I saw them, on the other side of the malend.”

“Auy. Stupid, they are.”

“Well, there are no windows on this side to watch.” They reached the canal. Leoff saw that a small rowboat was moored there.

“Quickly,” Gilmer said, untying the rope. “Get in.” Only a few moments later they were out in the center of the canal, with Leoff pulling on the oars as hard as he could. Gilmer had taken the tiller.

“I was afraid you were dead,” Leoff said.

“Nay. I’d stepped outside to watch her turn. Heard ‘em come in and what they were talking about. I didn’t reckon I could stop ‘em.” He looked back at the malend. Flames were bursting from the top, and the windsails had caught like torches. They were still turning. “Sorry, love,” Gilmer said softly. “Rot ‘em for doing that to you. Rot ‘em.” Then he turned away.

“What now?” Leoff asked.

“Now we go to Broogh and see what mischief is goin’ on there.”

“But Artwair didn’t come back.”

“Then he may need our help.”

It seemed to Leoff that any trouble Artwair couldn’t get himself out of was likely to be far too much for the likes of a composer and a windsmith. He started to say as much, but then another thought occurred. Gilmer must have seen it on his face. “What?” the old man asked.

“My instruments. My things!”

The old man nodded sadly. “Auy. We’ve both lost today. Now think about what those folk down there will lose if these villains break the dike.”

“I just wonder what we can do. I can’t fight. I know nothing of weapons.”

“Well, me neither,” Gilmer replied, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll just let it happen.”

As if mourning the malend, the wind dropped, and stillness settled on the canal, broken only by the liquid pull of oars through water. Leoff watched the banks anxiously, fearing that the men might be following them along it, but nothing stirred through the stately silhouettes of the elms that bordered the waterway.

Soon the trees were joined by larger shadows—cottages at first, then tall buildings. The canal narrowed.

“The gate is ahead,” Gilmer whispered. “Be ready.”

“For what?” Leoff asked.

“I’ve no cann,” the elder man said.

The Watergate was a simple one made of wrought iron, and it was open. They passed almost noiselessly through it and into the town of Broogh.

The strange silence of the night was thicker there than it had been farther down the canal, as if Broogh were the very heart of the stillness. Neither did the faintest candle illumine the windows. They were filmed with moonlight like the eyes of the blind.

Quietly, Gilmer guided the small boat to a quay.

“You first,” he told Leoff. “Careful not to rock me.”

Leoff stepped gingerly from the boat and onto the stone landing, and a shiver ran up his spine as his feet touched solid ground.

Artwair had been right—something was terribly wrong here.

“Hold her steady for me,” Gilmer said. “Be useful, auy?”

“Sorry,” Leoff whispered. Even his faint reply seemed to echo in the silent town. He held the edge of the boat while the windsmith tied her off, feeling the pulse in his throat.

Broogh was beautiful, cloaked in moonlight. The tall, narrow buildings were leafed in silver, and the cobbles of the streets seemed liquid while the waters of the canal had become a sheet of mica. The bridge that must have given the town its name arched strong and elegant a few paces away, a saint sleeping in stone at each pillar. Beyond, across and down the canal, rose the bell tower of the church.

Just next to him, on the street parallel to the canal, a wooden sign was barely readable in faint light. It proclaimed the door beneath as the entrance to the paiter’s fatem. Beneath the words was a small wooden bas-relief of a fat sacritor filling a cup from a cask of wine.

When Gilmer finished with the boat, he pointed at the Paiter’s Fatem. “There,” he said. “That’s the busiest tavern in town, and it should be awful busy right now.”

Like every other building in Broogh, it was quiet and dark.

“We’ll have a look inside,” Gilmer murmured. “If everyone is hiding, you can bet half the town is hiding in there. In the cellar, maybe.”

“Hiding from what? A few rascals like the ones who burned your windmill?”

“No,” Gilmer said. “Broogh has a reputation.”

“What do you mean?”

“Evildoers have sought out this town in the past. Its location is perfect—break the dike here, and the water won’t stop for sixty leagues. It’s been tried. Thirty years ago, a renegade Hansan knight—Sir Remismund fram Wulthaurp—came here with twenty horse and a hundred foot. He installed himself in this very inn and sent letters to Eslen, threatenin’ to open the waters unless he was given ransom.”

“But he didn’t?”

“Nay. A girl, the daughter of a boatwright, the fairest in town, was to be married the next day. She put on her weddin’ gown and went to Wulthaurp, up there, in that topmost apartment. She kissed him, and as they kissed, there, near that window, she wound the train of her dress about his neck and threw herself from the buildin’. They made a bloody mess almost where you’re standin’. At that signal, the rest of the folk turned against his men. The army had to fight its way out the gate, leaving nearly a hundred Brooghers dead in the streets.” He shook his head. “Nor was that the first time such a thing has happened. No, every boy and girl who grows up in Broogh thinks of the dike and the bridge as a holy trust. They all yearn to be the hero of the next story.”

“And yet you think something has frightened them into hiding?”

Gilmer shook his head. “No,” he said sadly, “I fear they’re nay hidin’ at all.”

The door opened with no more protest than a faint creak, but their entry drew no response. Muttering to himself, Gilmer took out his tinderbox and struck light to a candle.

“Holy saints!” Leoff gasped, when the light fell about them.

There were indeed a lot of people in the Paiter’s Fatem, or what had once been people. They lay or slumped in groups, unmoving. Leoff had no doubt whatever that they were dead. Even in the warm light of fire, their flesh was whiter than bone.

“Their eyes,” Gilmer said, his voice thick with emotion.

Leoff noticed then, and he doubled to the floor, retching. The very earth seemed to reel beneath him and the sky to press down.

None of the dead in the tavern had eyes, only ashy pits.

Gilmer clapped his hand on Leoff’s shoulder. “Easy,” he said. “We don’t want them as did this to hear us, do we?” The old man’s voice was quavering.

“I can’t . . .” Another wave of nausea came over Leoff and he pressed his forehead to the hardwood floor.

It was many long moments before he could look up again.

When he did, it was to find Gilmer studying the corpses.

“Why would they burn out their eyes?” Leoff managed.

“Saints know. But they didn’t do it with brands or hot irons. The eyes are still there, just gone to charcoal.”

“Shinecraft,” Leoff whispered.

“Auy. Shinecraft most foul.”

“But why?”

Gilmer straightened, his face grim. “So’s they can break the dike and have no hindrance or witness.” His lips puckered. “But they aens’t broken it yet, have they? There’s still time.”

“Time to do what?” Leoff asked incredulously.

Gilmer’s face went flat. “These people were my friends,” he said. “You stay here, if you please.”

He searched through the corpses for a moment and finally came up with a knife.

“Whoever did this aens’t counted on anyone living now. They don’t know about us.”

“And when they do, we’ll end just like these,” Leoff said desperately.

“Auy, could well be,” Gilmer said, and walked toward the door.

Leoff looked again at the dead and sighed. “I’m coming,” he said.

When they were back on the street, he glanced again at the cobbles. “What was her name?” he asked.

“Eh?”

“The bride.”

“Ah. Lihta. Lihta Rungsdautar.”

“And her fiancé? What became of him?”

Gilmer’s mouth quirked. “He never married. He became a windsmith, like his father. Hush, now—the floodgate isn’t far.”

They passed more dead in the streets, all with the same empty gaze. Not just people, but animals, as well—dogs, horses—even rats. Some had expressions of terror frozen on their faces, while others looked merely puzzled. Some—the worst somehow—seemed to have died in rapture.

Leoff noticed something else, as well—a smell, a faint odor of putrefaction. Yet it did not have the scent of the grave or butcher shop. There was no hint of maggots or sulfury gases. It reminded him of dry rot—subtle, not really unpleasant, with a faint perfume of burnt sugar.

As he progressed, he made out a noise, as well—a rhythmic hammering—not like a single hammer, but like many, all beating the bass line of the same dirge.

“That’s them working at the wall!” Gilmer said. “Hurry.”

He led them to the city wall and the stone stairs that went up it. They stepped over dead guardsmen to reach the top. From there they looked down.

Newland was moon-frosted to the horizon, but just below them, the wall cast a shadow down the embanked dike it stood upon. Torches burned there, flames straight and unwavering in the windless dark. Five men stripped to their waists were working at a stone section of the dam, hacking away with picks. Another five or six looked on—it was hard to tell exactly how many.

“Why is that one section made of stone?”

“It’s a cap. Most of the dike is banked earth. It would take too long to dig through it if the king needed to have Newland flooded, as has happened now and then. But it’s never been done at royal behest without warning to the low-dwellers.”

“But won’t they be drowned when they cut through?”

“Nay. They’re digging a narrow hole, see? The water will come out in a jet and tear the hole bigger as it goes, but it’ll give them time to move.”

“Who do you think it is?”

“Saints know.”

“Well, what can we do?”

“I’m thinking.”

Leoff strained his eyes to understand more of the scene. There was a pattern down there. What was it?

He settled his mind. There was the landscape, and the dike. They were like the staff that music was written on. Then there were the men digging, like the melody line, and the men silently standing guard, like the low throbbing bass notes of a pavane.

And that was all . . .

“No,” he whispered.

“Eh?”

Leoff pointed. “Look, there are dead down there, too.”

“Not surprising. Anyone alive would try to stop ‘em.” The windsmith squinted. “Right, see? They came around from the gate and attacked ‘em from behind.”

“But see how they’re lying, in a sort of arc? As if something simply struck them down when they got too close.”

Gilmer shook his head. “Aens’t you ever seen battle? If they formed their line there, that’s where they’d fall.”

“But I don’t see any signs of a fight. We haven’t seen any signs of battle anywhere in town, yet everyone is dead.”

“Auy. I noticed that,” Gilmer said dryly.

“So they form an arc. Look to the center of the arc.”

“What do you mean?”

“A lantern casts light in a circle, yes? Pretend where the corpses are is the edge of a circle of light. Now look for the lantern.”

With a skeptical grunt, Gilmer did that. After a moment, he whispered, “There is something. Some sort of box or crate with a cloak over it.”

“I’m willing to bet that it’s what struck down the people of Broogh. If we go down there—if they see us at all—they’ll turn it on us.”

“Turn what on us?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any idea. But it’s covered up, and there has to be some reason. Something tells me we can’t do anything as long as they have that.”

Gilmer was silent for a long moment. “You may be right,” he said, “but if you’re wrong . . .”

“I don’t believe I am.”

Gilmer nodded solemnly and peered back down. “It aens’t far from the wall, is it?”

“Not too. What do you have in mind?”

“Follow me.”

The little man gingerly searched the guardsmen for weapons, but found their scabbards empty—small wonder, considering the cost of a good sword. Then he guided Leoff along the top of the wall to a small storehouse. They had to step over six dead bodies along the way.

Gilmer opened the door, stepped into shadow, and stepped out again, grunting. He held a rock the size of Leoff’s head. “Help me with this.”

The two of them wrestled the stone to the parapet.

“Reckon we can toss it out far enough?” Gilmer asked.

“There’s a slope,” Leoff replied. “Even if we miss, it will roll.”

“Might not destroy that shinecrafting box, then. We’ll have to heave together.”

Leoff nodded and put both hands on the stone. When they had it aimed, Gilmer said very softly, “On three. One, two—”

“Hey! Hey there!” A shout went up, farther along the wall, not far from them at all.

“Go!” Gilmer shouted.

They heaved. Leoff wanted to watch, but someone was running along the battlement toward them, and he didn’t think it was for a friendly chat.

7 Discovered

The river Za dissolved Anne’s tears and swept them gently toward the sea.

Canaries sang in the olive and orange trees that struggled up through the ancient cracked flagstones of the terrace, and the wind was sweet with baking bread and autumn honeywands. Dragonflies whirred lazily in the pour of golden sunlight, and somewhere nearby a man strummed liquid chords on a lute and crooned softly of love. In the city of z’Espino, winter came gently, and this first day of Novamenza was especially kind.

But Anne’s reflection in the river looked as cold as the long, bleak nights of northernmost Nahzgave. Even the red flame of her hair seemed a dark shadow, and her face as pallid as the ghost of a drowned girl.

The river saw her heart and gave her back what was in it.

“Anne,” someone behind her said quietly. “Anne, you should not stay out in the open so.”

But Anne did not look up. She saw Austra in the river, too, looking as spectral as she did.

“I don’t care,” Anne said. “I can’t go back to that horrible little place, not now, not like this.”

“But it’s safer there, especially now . . .” Her voice faltered as Austra began to cry, too. She sat next to Anne, and they held each other.

“I still can’t believe it,” Austra said after a time. “It seems impossible. Maybe it’s not true. Maybe it’s a false rumor. After all, we are far and far from home.”

“I wish I could believe that,” Anne said. “But the news came by the Church cuveiturs. And know that it’s true. I can feel it.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It happened the same night they tried to kill us, you know. The night of that purple moon, when the knights burned the coven. I was meant to die with them.”

“Your mother lives yet, and your brother Charles.”

“But my father is dead. And Fastia, Elseny, Uncle Robert, all dead, and Lesbeth is missing. It’s too much, Austra. And all the sisters of the coven Saint Cer, killed because they stood between me and—” She shuddered back off into sobs.

“Then what shall we do?” Austra said after a time.

Anne closed her eyes and tried to sort through the phantoms that whirled behind her lids. “We have to go home, of course,” she said at last. It sounded like a weary stranger talking. “Everything she said . . .”

She stopped.

“Who?” Austra asked. “Who said? What’s this, Anne.”

“Nothing. A dream I had, that’s all.”

“A dream?”

“It’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.” She tried to smooth her cotton dress. “I don’t want to talk about anything for a while.”

“Let’s at least go someplace more private. A chapel, perhaps. It’s almost three bells.”

The city was already waking up around them from its daily siesta. Traffic along the riverside was picking up as people returned from naps and long lunches to their shops and work, and the illusion of solitude was wiped away.

The Pontro dachi Pelmotori spanned the Za a few tens of perechi to their right. Quiet a few moments before, it was already humming with activity. Like several of the bridges in z’Espino, it was really more like a building, with shops of two and three stories lining both sides, so they couldn’t actually see the people walking on the span. All that was visible was the red-stuccoed outer façade with its dark mouths of windows. The bridge belonged to the butcher’s guild, and Anne could hear their saws cutting, their boys haggling prices. A bucket of something bloody flew out one of the windows and splashed into the river, narrowly missing a man in a boat. He began shouting up at the bridge, waving his fist.

When another bucket of the same stuff came even closer, he seemed to think better of it and returned to earnestly rowing.

Anne was about to agree with Austra when a shadow fell across them. She looked up and saw a man, dark of complexion—like most Vitellians—and rather tall. His green doublet was faded and a little threadbare. He wore one red stocking and one black. His hand rested on the pommel of a rapier.

“Dena dicolla, casnaras,” he said, with a little bow. “What makes such beautiful faces so long and sorrowful?”

“I do not know you, casnar,” Anne replied. “But good day to you and the saints bless you.”

She looked away, but he did not take the hint. Instead, he stood there, smiling.

Anne sighed. “Come,” she said, plucking at Austra’s dress. The two of them rose.

“I mean you no harm, casnaras,” the man said hastily. “It’s just that it is so unusual to see hair of copper and gold here in the south, to hear such charming northern accents. When such treasures of the eye present themselves, it behooves a man to offer whatever services he may.”

A small chill ran up Anne’s spine. In her grief, she had forgotten to keep her head covered, and so had Austra.

“That’s very kind of you,” she said quickly, “But my sister and I were just returning home.”

“Let me escort you, then.”

Anne let her gaze travel around. Though the streets above were now beginning to bustle, this part of the terrace was something like a park, and it was still relatively quiet. To reach the street, she and Austra had to travel some ten yards and climb a dozen stone stairs. The man stood between them and the nearest stair. Worse, another fellow sat on the stairs themselves, taking a more than casual interest in the conversation.

There were probably others she didn’t see at all.

She stood straighter. “Will you let us pass, casnar?”

He looked surprised. “Why shouldn’t I let you pass? I told you, I mean no harm.”

“Very well.” She started forward, but he backed away.

“Somehow we’ve started off on an ill footing,” he said. “My name is Erieso dachi Sallatotti. Won’t you tell me yours?”

Anne didn’t answer, but kept walking.

“Or perhaps I should guess?” Erieso said. “Perhaps one of the birds will tell me your names?”

Anne was now certain she heard someone behind them, as well. Rather than panicking, she felt a swift anger take her grief for wings and rise high. Who was this man, to bother her on this day, to interrupt her mourning?

“You are a liar, Erieso dachi Sallatotti,” she said. “You most certainly mean me harm.”

The humor vanished from Erieso’s face. “I mean only to collect my reward,” he said. “I do not see what anyone would want with such a pale and disagreeable catella, but there is silver to be had. So come, will you walk or be dragged?”

“I will call out,” Anne replied. “There are people all around.”

“That might deprive me of my reward,” Erieso said, “but it will not save you. Many in the streetguard seek you, as well, and they might well use you before claiming their silver. That I will not do, I swear by Lord Mamres.” He proffered his hand. “Come. Take it. It is the easiest way for you, and for me.”

“Is that so?” Anne said, feeling her anger blacken. But she reached for his hand. As their fingers touched, she felt his pulse, the wet flow of his insides.

“Cer curse you,” she said. “Worms take you.”

Erieso’s eyes widened. “Ah!” he croaked. “Ah, no!” He clutched at his chest and sank down to one knee, as if bowing. He vomited.

“Be glad you did not meet me by the light of the moon, Erieso,” she said. “Be gladder still that you did not meet me in the dark of it.” And with that she stepped past him. The man on the steps stood and stared at her wide-eyed. He said nothing, and he didn’t bar their way as they went up to the street.

“What did you do?” Austra asked breathlessly as they slipped into the crowd on the Vio Caistur.

“I don’t know,” Anne replied.

By the time they reached the stairs, almost all her anger and courage had burned out of her, leaving only fear and confusion.

“It was like that night at the coven, when the men came,” Anne said.

“When you blinded the knight.”

“Something in me—it frightens me, Austra. How can I do these things?”

“It frightens me, too,” Austra agreed. “Do you think you killed him?”

“No, I think he will recover. We must hurry.”

They turned from the Vio Caistur into a narrow avenue, hurrying past stocking shops and a tavern that smelled of grilled sardines, through the Piata da Fufiono with its alabaster fountain of the goat-legged saint and on until the streets grew smaller and more tangled until at last they reached the Perto Veto. The women were already out on their balconies, and several groups of men sat drinking on the stoops, just as they had been the day before.

“They’re still following us, I think,” Austra said, glancing behind.

Anne looked, too, and saw a group of men—five or six of them—rounding the corner.

“Run,” Anne said. “It’s not far.”

“I hope Cazio is there,” Austra said.

“Figs for Cazio,” Anne muttered.

The girls started running. They had gone only a few yards when Erieso stepped from a side street, pale but angry, another man by his side.

Erieso drew his rapier, a narrow, wicked length of steel. “Sorcel this, witch,” he snarled. “I’ve word that they’ll pay every bit as much for you dead, and my goodwill is all worn away.”

“What a big prickler for such little girls,” a woman taunted down from her balcony. “It’s good to see that real men have come to our street.”

“Rediana!” Anne called up, recognizing the woman. “They mean to kill us!”

“Oh, the duchess likes me now, does she?” Rediana called down. “Not like at the fish market yesterday, eh?”

Erieso snorted. “You’ll get no help here, cara,” he said.

An instant after he said it, an earthen crock full of something odious struck his companion squarely in the skull. The fellow dropped, squealing and pressing his head with his hands. Erieso yelped and began to dodge as he was pelted with rotten fruit and fish bones from more than one window.

His other men had arrived now, though, and they spread out to encircle the girls. They were forced to the middle of the street, where heavy objects couldn’t be thrown.

All the women on the street were shouting now.

“I’ll wager he’s got a limpet in his breeches,” one shouted. “Or a wet little snail, all curled for fear in its shell.”

“Go back to Northside, where you belong!”

But Erieso, safely out of range of anything dangerous, had ceased paying attention to the ladies of the neighborhood. He advanced on Anne and Austra once more.

“You can’t kill us, not in front of all these people,” she said.

“There are no people in the Perto Veto,” he said. “Only vermin. Even if someone here bothered to tell the tale, no one would listen.”

“A pity,” a new voice said. “For this tale shall have an interesting ending.”

“Cazio!” Austra cried.

Anne didn’t look—she could not take her gaze from the tip of Erieso’s sword, and she knew Cazio’s voice well enough by now.

“And who in the name of Lord Ondro are you?” Erieso asked.

“Why, I’m Cazio Pachiomadio da Chiovattio, and I’m the protector of these two casnaras,” he said. “And this is turning out to be a fine day, for I have someone to protect them from. I only wish you were not so clearly cowards—it cheapens my joy. But, no matter.”

Anne heard steel snick free of leather.

“Caspator,” Cazio said, speaking to his sword, “let’s us to work.”

“There’s six of us, you fool,” Erieso said.

Anne heard a quick motion behind her, a gasp, a gurgle.

“You count poorly,” Cazio said. “I make only five. Anne, Austra, come back. Quickly.”

Anne did as he instructed, nearly brushing Cazio as he slid past her, his sword held out in a level guard.

“Stay behind me,” he said.

Now the women were cheering. The fellow Cazio had already run through was dragging himself pitifully off the street as the swordsman engaged Erieso and the rest of his men. Anne wasn’t fooled by Cazio’s bravado, though—five were too many, even for him. As soon as they surrounded him . . .

But he showed little concern, fighting languidly, almost as if he were bored. He danced in, out, around, and for a moment actually had his opponents standing in a clump, all defending themselves at the same time.

But then their advantage sank in, and they began to flank him. Cazio parried one attack and did a strange sort of twist, binding up his opponent’s blade and forcing the point out to the side, where it pricked another of Erieso’s men. At the same time, Cazio’s point drove hard into his original target’s shoulder. Both men cried out and backed away, but neither seemed mortally injured.

“Za uno-en-dor,” Cazio told them, “my own invention. I—”

He broke off to parry a furious attack by Erieso, then quickly ducked a thrust from another quarter. He scuttled back, but wasn’t fast enough to avoid a third thrust, which hit him in the left shoulder. Cazio grunted and grabbed the blade to hold it there, but didn’t have time to run the fellow through, for they were all converging on him again.

“Cazio!” Austra cried in pure anguish.

Then a bottle struck one of the men in the head, bursting his ear into a red mess.

Anne looked to see who had thrown it and discovered around thirty men of the neighborhood standing behind her, armed with knives and wooden clubs.

One of them was Ospero. He flicked his thumb at Erieso.

“You there!” Ospero grated. “What do you want with these girls?”

Erieso’s lips tightened. “That’s my business.”

“You’re in the Perto Veto, pretty boy. That makes it our business.”

Erieso’s able men had withdrawn to stand near him. One held his ear, and blood flowed between his fingers. Anne suddenly felt as if she were caught between a pair of lions.

Erieso’s face worked through several expressions before he finally sighed. “That one, the one with red hair. She’s betrothed to Prince Latro, but the stupid little catella is smitten with this fellow here and ran off. I’ve been sent to get her back.”

“Is that so?” Ospero said. “Is there a reward for her return?”

“No.”

“Then why would you be so stupid as to follow her down here?”

“My honor demands it. I promised to get her back.”

“Uh-huh. Prince Latro, eh? The same Prince Latro that put the tariff on our fish, so he can sell his cheaper? The same Prince Latro that hanged Fuvro Olufio?”

“I know nothing of these things.”

“Then you don’t know much. But I’ll tell you this—if cutting off my nose would bring pain to Latro da Villanchi, I’d do it gladly. He’ll get his girl back. From us. In pieces.”

Erieso’s face reddened even further. “You won’t do that. The prince’s wrath would be terrible. He would have the meddisso send troops here. You want that?”

“No,” Ospero allowed. “But we’re modest, down here in the Perto. We don’t much care if we get credit for this sort of thing, only that it happens.”

“But how will you—” Erieso’s eyes widened as the men suddenly surged forward. “No!”

He turned and ran, and his men ran with him.

Ospero laughed as he watched them vanish from sight. Then he turned back to Anne, Austra, and Cazio.

“He was lying, so I guess there is a reward for you,” he said to Anne. “I think you’d better tell me what it is, and I think you’d better do it now.”

As if to emphasize his point, Ospero’s men drew nearer.

8 The Basil-nix

I’m going to die, Leoff thought. It seemed a slow thought, as everything seemed slow, and limned in a peculiar golden light. He could see everything about the man who was approaching him all at once. His hair was light, cut in uneven bangs. It was too dark to tell the color of his eyes, but they were set wide on his face. His jerkin was open almost to his belly. His ears stuck out. He had a rag tied around his head.

And there was the sword, lovely as a viper in the moonlight.

He’d meant to run, but when he looked up and saw how close death was already, he knew he didn’t want it in the back.

Then something came sailing past him, another shard of moonlight, and it hit the man high in the chest. That stopped him. He yelped and looked down. Something metal hit the ground and sang a perfect note. It seemed to hang there, undergirded by a strange set of harmonies.

“Damn,” Gilmer said.

“Silly bugger,” the man said, lifting his sword again. “I’ll have your testicles for that before you die.” But then he hesitated.

The singing Leoff had heard hadn’t been in his head. It was there, below the wall, a spine-chilling sound. It was only reluctantly that he recognized it as men screaming—or crying out, at least, at the tops of their lungs.

The man with the sword was standing just next to the edge, and he looked over.

Then he tried to join the song. His mouth gaped, and the cords of his neck stood out like wire. Finally, he simply collapsed.

“What?” Gilmer started forward to look, as well, but Leoff tackled him to the stone and lay there, trying to hold him down.

“Don’t,” he gasped. “Don’t. I don’t know what was in that box, but I know we mustn’t look at it.”

The man with the sword had fallen so his head was turned toward them. Even in the moonlight they could see that his eyes had gone to ash, just like the eyes of the other dead in Broogh.

There was still shouting below.

“Don’t look at it!”

“Cover your eyes! Let Reev and Hilman get it.”

“It didn’t get them all,” Leoff whispered.

“What didn’t get them all?” Gilmer asked.

Leoff noticed that the old man was trembling.

A stronger, more commanding voice rose over the others: “That came from the wall. Someone’s still in there. Find them. Kill them.”

“That means us,” Leoff said. “Come on. And don’t look!”

The two men scrambled down the stairs and back into the silent town.

“How long will it take them to come around?” Leoff huffed, as they raced over rough cobblestones.

“Not long. They’ll come in by the south gate. We’d better hide. Come on, this way.”

He led Leoff through several turns, across the square below the bell tower, and up another street.

“I wonder how many it got, whatever it was?”

“No telling.”

“Shsst!” Gilmer said. “Stop. Listen.”

Leoff did, and though the sounds of his breath and heart cloyed in his ears, he could make out what Gilmer had stopped for—the footsteps of several men approaching the spot where they stood.

“Come on, in here,” Gilmer said. He unlatched the door of a three-story building, and they entered it. They took the stairs to the second story, to a room with a bed and a curtained window. Gilmer went to the window.

“Take care,” Leoff said. “They might have it with them.”

“Auy, raeht. I’ll just peek.”

The smaller man went to the window. Leoff was watching him nervously when a hand clapped over his mouth from behind.

“Shh,” a voice said in his ear. “It’s me, Artwair.”

Gilmer turned at even that faint sound.

“My lord Artwair!” he gasped.

“Hello, windsmith,” Artwair said. “What sort of trouble have you gotten us into?”

“My lord?” Leoff repeated.

“You didn’t know?” Gilmer said. “Sir Artwair is our duke, cousin to His Highness, Emperor Charles.”

“No,” Leoff said. “I did not know that. My lord—”

“Hush,” Artwair said. “This is of no importance now. They’re coming, close on your heels, and they will find you. The basil-nix has a keen nose.”

“Basil-nix?”

“Auy. Our darkest legends come to life, these days.”

“That’s what was in the box?”

“Auy.” He grinned tightly. “When I arrived, they were walking the streets with it, shining it about like a lantern. I saw the last of the townspeople die. I have my old nurse to thank for my life, for only from her tales did I understand what was happening. I averted my eyes before its gaze turned my way. Of course, when you burst its cage, I nearly died again, because I was watching. Still, that was clever. I think you killed more than half of them before they got the thing covered again.”

“You saw?”

Artwair nodded. “I was watching from the south tower.”

“How did they manage to capture and cover the thing?”

“They have two blind men with them,” he said. “They serve as its handlers. The rest walk behind. The cage is like an aenan lamp, closed on all sides but one. It makes a light, this thing, and once you have seen it, you can resist only through the greatest contest of will.”

“But the cage is shattered now.”

“Auy. And so they must take greater care, and so must we.”

“We must flee, before they find us.”

“No,” Artwair said softly. “I think we must fight. Two men remain at the dike. It will take them longer, but they will still open it if we give them time. We can’t allow that.”

“No,” Gilmer agreed. “Not after Broogh gave its life.”

“But how can we fight something we cannot look at?” Leoff wondered.

Artwair lifted something near the door. Two flasks of blue glass, filled with liquid. Bags had been stuffed in the top.

“Here is my plan,” Artwair said.

Moments later, Leoff stood facing down the stairs. Artwair stood below him on the first landing, a shadow with a bow held before him, and an arrow nocked. Gilmer crouched behind Leoff at the window, with his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“They’re here,” Artwair’s voice came up. “Be ready.”

Leoff nodded nervously. He gripped a candle in one hand and one of the flasks of oil in the other. Gilmer was similarly armed.

Leoff heard the door open, and the bow sang a low pitch.

“They have a bow!” someone yelped.

“Move up!” another voice commanded. “They can’t hit what they can’t see. If they open their eyes, they’ll die.”

Footsteps started up the stairs. The bow whined again, and again, and someone shouted in pain.

“A lucky shot,” shouted the person who seemed to be their leader. “Up, and quickly.”

“Now!” Artwair hollered, and ran back up the stairs.

Leoff lit the oil-soaked rag.

And he saw a light suffusing the landing. It was beautiful, golden, the most perfect light he had ever seen. A promise of absolute peace filled him, and he knew that he could not live without seeing the source of that light.

“Now, I say!” Artwair shouted.

Distantly, Leoff heard glass breaking and a renewal of shouts from below. Gilmer must have thrown his flask, aiming for the entrance to the house. But Gilmer didn’t see the light, didn’t understand . . .

Leoff suddenly remembered the corpses in the inn. He remembered their eyes.

He threw the flask at the landing Artwair had just vacated. The light was brighter now, more beautiful than ever. Even as flame blossomed like a many-petaled rose, Leoff leaned out to catch a glimpse, just a small glimpse—

And then Artwair knocked him roughly to the floor.

“By all the saints, what do you think you’re doing? You cannot look!” he snarled.

More screams. It was a night for screams. The oil burned quickly, and so did the mostly timber house.

“Gilmer!” Artwair shouted. “Did you hit the doorstep?”

“Auy, that I did,” Gilmer replied. “I reckoned it was worth risking a peek, since they had the thing on the stairs. My aim was true.” He scratched his head. “‘Course, now we’re trapped in a burning house.”

“So are they,” Artwair said. He went to the window, pushed open the curtain, and set an arrow on the bow. “Now is the reckoning,” he said. “Watch the stairs. If any get through, call out.”

The stairwell was already an inferno, and choking smoke boiled up. This was also a night for fire, Leoff mused. He was destined to burn, it seemed.

He heard the bow twang over the roar and over the screaming. And again, as Artwair fired at something in the street.

A shadow came up through the flame then, something the size of a small dog, but serpentine. The flames turned golden.

Leoff snapped his eyes shut.

“Close your eyes,” he screamed. “It’s come up.”

“Follow my voice,” Artwair returned. “The window. We have to jump.”

“Here,” Gilmer said. He grasped Leoff’s hand and pulled him up. The smell from earlier was all around, and he felt his skin tingle from more than the heat.

Then he touched the window frame, and driven by terror he gripped it, stepped through, hung for an instant by his fingers, and dropped.

His belly rose to his head, and then the ground seemed to explode under his feet. A pain brighter than any sun lit him up.

Someone tugged at him. Gilmer, again.

“Get up,” the small man said.

Leoff tried to answer, but he gagged on his tongue instead.

Artwair’s face appeared in the ruddy firelight.

“He’s broken his leg. Help me move him.”

They dragged him away from the fire, which had begun to spread. Darkness crept in with the pain, and Leoff lost track of what was happening a time or two. The next thing he knew clearly was that they were in a boat, on the canal.

“Stay with him, Gilmer,” Artwair said grimly. “I’ve two more to deal with. Then we can go.”

“Go where?” Gilmer said, and for the first time despair colored his voice. “My malend, my town . . .” He was weeping now.

Leoff lay his head back, watched the smoke rise against the stars as the boat rocked gently on the canal. He tried not to think about the pain.

“How’s the leg?” Artwair asked.

“A dull ache,” Leoff replied, glancing at his limb. It had been splinted tight, but even so, every jounce the wagon made in the deeply rutted road sent a throb up his thigh, even with the hay bales to cushion it. Artwair had hired the cart and the untalkative fellow who drove it.

“It was a clean enough break, and should heal well,” Artwair said.

“Yes, I suppose I’m lucky,” Leoff said glumly.

“I mourn for Broogh, too,” Artwair said, his voice gentling. “The fire claimed only a few buildings.”

“But they’re all dead,” Leoff said.

“Most are, auy,” Artwair allowed. “But some were afar, or late in the fields.”

“And the children,” Leoff said. “Who will look after them?”

Gilmer and Artwair had made a house-to-house search the morning after the fire. Thirty children they had found in all, still in cribs or abed. Those old enough to be out had shared their parents’ fate. “They will be cared for,” he said. “Their duke will see to it.”

“Yes, that,” Leoff sighed. “Why did you not tell me who you were, my lord?”

“Because one learns more, sees more, lives more when people aren’t constantly calling him ‘my lord,’” Artwair replied. “Many a greffy and kingdom has come to ruin because its lord had no knowledge of what went on in its roads and on its streets.”

“You’re an unusual duke,” Leoff said.

“And you’re an unusual composer—I suppose, though I’d never heard of one before I met you. You’ve done me—and this empire—a great service.”

“It was Gilmer,” Leoff said. “I didn’t understand. I would have run far away, if it had been just me. I’m no hero, no man of action.”

“Gilmer has lived here all his life. His obligations and duty are rooted deep in his bones. You are a stranger, and owe this place nothing—and as you say, you aren’t a warrior. Still you risked all for it. You are a hero, sir, the more because you wished to run and did not.”

“And yet we saved so little.”

“Are you mad? Do you have any idea how many would have perished had they broken the dike? What cost to the kingdom?”

“No,” Leoff said. “I know only that an entire town has died.”

“It happens,” Artwair said. “In war and famine, in flood and fire.”

“But why? What were those men about? Where did they get that terrible creature?”

“I wish I knew,” Artwair said. “I very much wish I knew. When I returned to the dike, the last two men had fled. The rest were killed by the fire or by the basil-nix.”

“And the creature,” Leoff asked. “Did it escape?”

Artwair shook his head. “It burned. That’s it on Galast, there.” Leoff looked. The packhorse had an irregular bundle on it, wrapped in leather.

“Is it safe?” he asked.

“I wrapped it myself, and have suffered no ill.”

“Where did such a thing come from?”

The duke shrugged. “Some months ago a greffyn was slain at Cal Azroth. A year ago I would have sworn all such creatures were nothing but children’s alvspellings. But now we have a basil-nix, as well. It’s as if a whole hidden world is waking around us.”

“A world of evil,” Leoff said.

“The world has always had plenty of evil in it,” Artwair said. “But I’ll admit, its face seems to be changing.”

By noon, Leoff saw what he thought at first was a cloud hunkered on the horizon, but he gradually made out the slim towers and the pennants upon them and realized that what he saw was a hill rising up from the great flat bottom of Newland.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“Auy,” Artwair replied. “That’s Ynis, the royal island.”

“Island? It looks like a hill.”

“It’s too flat here to see the water. The Warlock and the Dew meet on this side of Ynis, and divide around it. On the other side is Foambreaker Bay, and the Lier Sea. The castle there is Eslen.”

“It looks big.”

“It is,” Artwair said. “They say Eslen Castle has more rooms than the sky has stars. I don’t know—I’ve never counted either.”

Soon they came to the confluence, and Leoff saw that Eslen was indeed on an island of sorts. The Dew—the river they had crossed at poor, doomed Broogh—ran into another bediked river, the Warlock. The Warlock was enormous, perhaps half a league in width, and together the rivers formed a sort of lake from which the hills of Ynis rose precipitously.

“We’ll take the ferry across,” Artwair said. “Then I’ll make certain the right introductions are made. I’ve no way of knowing if your position is secure, but if it is, we’ll find out. If it isn’t, come to my estates at Haundwarpen, and I’ll find a place for you.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Call me Artwair—it’s how you came to know me.”

When they came in sight of the ferry crossing, Leoff feared they had come up on an encamped army. As they drew nearer, he saw that if it was an army, it was a terribly patchwork and unorganized one. Tents and wagons had formed themselves into a sort of maze with narrow avenues and squares, almost a makeshift city. Smoke curled from a few cookfires, but not as many as he might have expected. He remembered what Gilmer had said about wood being scarce.

People certainly weren’t scarce, though. Leoff guessed that several thousand were gathered there, and most of them weren’t in wagons and tents but were disposed upon blankets or the bare ground. They watched the cart pass, and their faces showed many expressions—most commonly greed, anger, and hopelessness.

At the heart of this ragtag encampment was a more orderly one, with tents all flying the king’s colors and no lack of armed men wearing them. As they approached the camp, a man of middle years stepped out into the road, a hard look of determination reflected in his eyes.

“Clear off,” the driver said.

The man ignored him, looking up instead at Artwair. “My lord,” he said. “I know you. I worked in your city guard when I was younger.”

Artwair peered down at him. “What do you want?” he asked.

“My wife, my lord, and my children. Take them into the city, I beg you.”

“And put them where?” Artwair asked softly. “If there were room in the city, you wouldn’t have been stopped here. No, they’re better off outside, my friend.”

“They are not, my lord. Terrors stalk this land. Everyone talks of war. I am not a man easily frightened, my lord Artwair, and yet I fear. And it’s damp here. When the rains come, we will have no shelter.”

“You would have none in the city, either,” Artwair said regretfully. “Here you have the water to drink, and soft ground, and some food at least. In there you would have nothing but beds of stone and piss thrown from windows to lick up for your thirst.”

“But we would have the wall,” the man said, his voice pleading now.

“The things you fear will not be stopped by walls,” Artwair said. Then he straightened. “Remind me of your name, sir.”

“Jan Readalvson, my lord.”

“Come into the city with me, Fralet Readalvson. You’ll see for yourself it’s no place for your family, not at the moment. Furthermore, I’m going to give you a charge—distributing food, clothing, and shelter to these people. I trust that after you provide for your family, you will be fair in your disbursements. I will check on you, from time to time. It is the best I can do.”

Readalvson bowed. “You are very generous, lord.”

Artwair nodded. “We’ll move along, now.”

They boarded the ferry and began their short journey across the water. Above them, the castle rose like a mountain, and the city rolled down like its slopes, an avalanche of black-roofed houses stopped only by the great wall that encircled it.

As they neared the broad stone quay, Leoff saw conditions there were much as they were on the side they’d just left. Hundreds of people were huddled on the far side of the quay, though these were without wagons or tents, and their expressions held less hope.

“You said you served in my guard.” Artwair spoke to their new companion. “From whence do you hail now?”

“I heard there was steading in the east, near the King’s Forest. I took a wain there ten years ago and built a farm.” His voice seemed broken. “Then the Briar King woke, or so they say, and the black vines came—and worse.” He looked up. “There are times I can still hear the shrieks of my neighbors.”

“They were killed?”

“I don’t know. The tales—I could not risk to see, do you understand? I had my children to think of. I still feel them at my back, though, I still feel the shiver in my bones.”

Leoff felt a shiver in his bones, as well. What was become of the world? Was the end truly at hand, when the heavens would splinter and fall like shards of a broken pot?

When they reached the quay, the crowd pressed toward them, but the city guard pushed them back, and a path cleared. A few moments later, the gate creaked wide, and they entered the city itself.

Their way led them into a courtyard, and beyond that, through a second gate. The walls above them bristled with guards, but clearly they recognized Artwair, and so the inner gate was opened.

The main thoroughfare to the castle wound through the city as if it were a great snake crawling up the hill. Leoff propped his back against the wagon to sit for a better view as they jounced past chapels of ancient marble streaked and decayed by a thousand years of rain and smoke, houses with steepled roofs stabbing skyward, low cottages with white walls and red trim crammed tightly together save where narrow alleys divided them. Most buildings were of two stories, with the upper stories overhanging a bit—some few were of three.

They rolled into another plaza, in the center of which stood a weathered bronze statue of a woman with her foot upon the throat of a winged serpent. The beast coiled and writhed beneath her boot, and her face was as cold and imperious as the north wind.

Near a hundred people were gathered in the square, and for a moment, Leoff thought it a mob, but then he heard a bright soprano and pulled himself up farther. On the broad pedestal of the statue, a troop of players was performing, accompanied by a small ensemble of instrumentalists and singers. The instruments were simple—a lesser and bass croth, a drum and three pipers. When Leoff arrived, a woman had just finished singing as another woman in a green gown and gilt crown acted out her words. The player seemed to be addressing a man on a throne. Leoff had missed the words of the song, for the crowd roared in response and drowned her out, but the tune was a simple one, a well-known tavern ballad.

The man on the throne drew himself up, grinning stupidly. “Hold a moment,” Leoff said. “Can I hear a bit of this?”

Artwair shot him an ironic look. “You may as well have your introduction to the court, I suppose. The lady in green represents our good queen Muriele, I believe.”

The man coughed, as if to clear his throat. Down among the musicians, a chorus of three men sang.

The player broke off into the helpless laughter of an idiot and gamboled a bit while the chorus repeated its verse. A ridiculous figure in a huge hat joined the “king” in his dance.

“Our good king Charles,” Artwair said wryly. “And his jester.”

The instruments fell silent, and the player acting the king suddenly spoke what seemed to Leoff to be gibberish.

A sinister figure in black robes with a long, ridiculous goatee ran onto the stage. He fawned up to the queen. He did not sing, but spoke in a theatrical fashion that resembled chant.

“Let me interpret!” the black-robed figure cried. “Good Queen, your son has proclaimed, in the voice of the saints, that I should be given the whole of the kingdom. That I should be handed the keys to the city, that I should have leave to fondle your—”

The audience finished his sentence for him in a roar.

“Our beloved praifec Hespero,” Artwair explained.

“What’s this!” A group of three men dressed as ministers rushed up, tripping and bumbling into one another. Below them, a chorus began singing,

They paused, and the music changed meter, became a rather jolly dance.

The “nobles” covered their eyes, and the chorus began another verse as they capered around the queen.

“Our wise and beloved Comven,” Artwair said.

The queen drew herself up in the midst of this.

“The Queen implores!” she chanted. “Is there no one to save us in our time of darkness?”

The chorus then launched into a song of loss and mourning for the queen’s children, while she danced a pavane for the dead, and the other songs came back as counterpoint.

“Is that the sort of thing you compose?” Artwair asked.

“Not really,” Leoff murmured, fascinated by the spectacle. “Is that the sort of thing that’s common around here?”

“The lustspell? Auy, but it’s a thing for the street, you understand. The common folk like it. The aristocracy pretends it doesn’t exist—save when it goes too far in mocking them. Then the players might have a more tragic end to their play.”

He glanced back at the singers. “We’d best move on.”

Leoff nodded thoughtfully as Artwair spoke to the driver and the wagon creaked back to life, climbing through steadily wealthier neighborhoods.

“The people seem to have scant faith in their leaders,” Leoff remarked, reflecting on the content of the tale.

“Times are hard,” Artwair answered. “William was only a middling-good king, but the kingdom was prosperous and at peace, and everyone liked him. Now he’s dead, along with Elseny and Lesbeth, who were truly beloved. The new king, Charles—well, the portrayal you just saw of him was not unfair. He’s a nice enough lad, but saint-touched.”

“Our allies, even Lier, have turned against us, and Hansa threatens war. Demons come from the woodwork, refugees crowd the streets, and the marshwitches all foretell doom. People need a strong leader in times like this, and they don’t have one.” He sighed. “Would that unflattering portrayals of the court were the worst of it, but the guilds are up in arms, and I fear bread riots are not far away. Half the crops withered in the field the night of the purple moon, and the sea catch has been bad.”

“What of the queen? You said she was strong.”

“Auy. Strong and beautiful and as distant from her people as the stars. And she’s Lierish, of course. In these times, with Liery making renegade noise, some don’t trust her.”

Leoff absorbed that. “The news from Broogh won’t make things any better, will it?”

“Not a bit. But better than if Newland had been drowned.” He clapped Leoff on the shoulder. “Worry not. After what you’ve done, we’ll find you a stipend of some sort.”

“Oh,” Leoff said. He hadn’t been thinking about his own worries.

The eyes of Broogh would not let him.

9 Proposals

The view from the throne was a long one, a vista of knife-points and poison.

The buttresses of the greater hall rose like the massive, spreading trunks of trees into a pale haze of cold light coming from the high window slits. Above that smoky atmosphere lay another, deeper vault of darkness. Pigeons cooed and fluttered there, for they were impossible to keep out of the vast space, as were the cats that prowled behind the curtains and tapestries in search of them.

Muriele often wondered how such an immense space could feel so heavy. It was as if—in entering the great bronze valves that were its entrance—one were transported so far beneath the earth that the very air itself became a sort of stone. At the same time, she felt perilously high, as if in stepping through one of the windows, she might find herself falling from a mountaintop.

It seemed like all the worst of Heaven and Hell were present in the symmetries of the place.

Her husband—the late King William—had seldom used the great hall, preferring the lesser court for his audiences. It was easier to heat, for one thing, and today the great hall was freezing.

Let them freeze, Muriele thought of the assembled faces. Let their teeth chatter. Let pigeon shit fall upon their brocades and velvets. Let this place crush them down.

Examining the people who had gathered before the throne, she hated them all. Someone—probably someone who was out there staring up at her now—had arranged or helped to arrange the murder of her children. Someone out there had killed her husband. Someone out there had left her with this, a life of fear and grief, and as far as she was concerned, it might as well have been all of them.

Knife-points and poison. Five hundred people, all wanting something from her, some wanting her very life.

A few of the latter were easy to spot. There was the pale face of Ambria Gramme, the black lace of mourning on her head, as if she had been the queen and not merely the king’s mistress. There was Ambria’s eldest bastard, Renwald, dressed as a prince might dress. There were Gramme’s three lovers from the Comven, pressed near as if to hold her up above the crowd, blissfully unaware—or perhaps uncaring—that each was cuckold to the other.

Gramme would kill her in a heartbeat if she thought she could get away with it.

To Muriele’s left stood Praifec Hespero in his black robes and square hat, hand lifted idly to stroke his narrow goatee, his eyes nearly unblinking as he absorbed each word around him and arranged them in his plans. What did he want? He played the friend, of course, the advocate, but those who had slain her daughters had worn churchly robes. They were said to have been renegade, but how could she take anything for granted?

And here, just approaching her feet, a new pack of dogs dressed in silk were crouching, peering at her, looking to see if her neck was exposed to their teeth. She wished she could have them killed out of hand, slaughtered like animals and fed to pigs.

But she could not. Truly, she had few weapons.

And one of them was her smile.

So she smiled at the leader of the pack and nodded her head, and to her left, her son on the emperor’s throne copied her by nodding his head, indicating that the dog could rise from his bended knee and bark.

“Your Majesty,” he said, speaking to her son, “it is pleasing to see you in good health.”

Charles, the emperor—her son—widened his eyes. “Your cloak is pretty,” he said.

It was indeed. The archgreft Valamhar af Aradal liked his clothes. The cloak her son so admired was an ivory-and-gold brocade worn over a doublet of sea green that matched the archgreft’s eyes. It did not, however, match his florid pink face with its standing veins or his corpulent form.

His guard, in black-and-sanguine surcoats, were trimmer but no less garish.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said in a tone of absolute seriousness, ignoring the snickers, as if that were a perfectly reasonable response from an emperor.

But she saw the ridicule hiding in his eyes.

“Queen Mother,” Aradal purred, bowing now to Muriele, “I hope I find you well.”

“Very well indeed,” Muriele said brightly. “It is always a pleasure to welcome our cousins from Hansa. Please convey my delight at your presence to your sovereign Marcomir.”

Aradal bowed again. “In that I will not fail. I hope to convey more to him, however.”

“Indeed,” Muriele said. “You may convey my condolences on the recent death of the Duke of Austrobaurg. I believe the duke was a close friend to His Majesty.”

Aradal frowned, very briefly, and Muriele watched him closely. Austrobaurg and her husband had died together on the windswept headland of Aenah in some sort of secret meeting. Austrobaurg was a Hansan vassal.

“That is most gracious, Your Majesty. The whole matter is as puzzling as it is tragic. Austrobaurg will be missed, as shall Emperor William and Prince Robert. I hope—as I know you hope—that the villains behind that atrocity will be brought soon to light.”

As he said it, he cast a brief glance at Sir Fail de Liery. The corpses on the headland had been riddled by Lierish arrows.

Sir Fail purpled, but said nothing—which for him showed admirable and nearly unheard-of restraint.

Muriele sighed, wishing she still had Erren by her side. Erren would have known in an instant whether Aradal was concealing something. To Muriele he sounded sincere.

“There has been much regrettable loss of life, these past months,” he continued, glancing back at Charles. He bowed. “Your Majesty, I know your time is valuable. I wonder if I might come directly to the point.”

“So I command,” Charles said, looking slightly aside at Muriele to see if he had spoken properly.

“Thank you, Your Majesty. As you well know, these are unsettling times in many other ways. Uncanny things walk in the night, terrible prophecies seem to be fulfilled. Tragedy looms everywhere, most terribly for your family.”

My face is stone, Muriele told herself.

But even stone would melt if it contained her fury. She didn’t know for certain who had arranged the slaughter of her husband and daughters, but there could be little doubt that Hansa was involved, despite the puzzle of Austrobaurg. Hansan kings had once sat the throne her son now occupied, and they never ceased dreaming of taking it back and placing it once more beneath their buttocks.

But if there was little doubt of their involvement, there was also little proof. So she did her best to keep her composure, but worried that she was not entirely succeeding.

“His Majesty sent me here to offer our friendship in these troubled times. We are all one beneath the eyes of the saints. We would hope to put any past unpleasantness behind us.”

“It is a commendable gesture,” Muriele said.

“My lord offers more than gesture, milady,” Aradal said. He snapped his fingers, and one of his servants placed a box of polished rosewood in his hands. He bowed, and handed it toward Muriele.

“Surely that is meant for my son, archgreft,” Muriele said.

“Present?” Charles mumbled.

“No, milady. It is for you. A token of affection.”

“From King Marcomir?” she said. “A married man? Not too affectionate, I should hope.”

Aradal smiled. “No, milady. It is from his son, Prince Berimund.”

“Berimund?” She had last seen Berimund when he was five, and it didn’t seem that long ago. “Little Berimund?”

“The prince is now twenty and three, Queen Mother.”

“Yes, and so I could easily be his mother,” Muriele said.

A chuckle went around the court at that. Aradal’s face reddened.

“Milady—”

“Dear Aradal, I am only joking,” she said. “Let us see what the prince has sent us.”

The servant opened the box, revealing an exquisite chatelaine of formed gold set with emeralds. Muriel widened her smile, allowing her teeth to show a bit. “It is exquisite,” she said. “But how can I accept it? I already wear the chatelaine of the house Dare. I cannot wear two.”

Aradal’s face finally colored a bit. “Your Majesty, let me be frank. The friendship my lord Berimund offers is of the most affectionate sort. He would make you his bride, and one day Queen of Hansa.”

“Oh, dear,” Muriele said. “More and more generous. When did the prince conceive this great love for me? I am flattered beyond all words. That a woman of my years can excite such passions—” She broke off, knowing that she was only seconds away from saying the words that might start a war. She stopped, and breathed deeply before continuing.

“The gift is exquisite,” she said. “Yet I fear that my grief is too fresh for me to accept it. If the prince is honest in his intentions, I beg that he give me time to recover before pressing his suit.”

Aradal bowed, then stepped nearer, lowering his voice. “Majesty,” he whispered, “do not be unwise. You may not believe me, but I not only respected your husband, I liked him. I am only a messenger—I do not set in motion the affairs of state in Hansa. But I know something of your situation here, and it is a tenuous one. In these times, you must look to your security. It is what William would have wanted.”

Muriele dropped her voice low to match the archgreft’s. “Do not presume to speak for my husband’s ghost,” she said. “He has not been cold for very long. This offer, at this time, is inappropriate. You know that, Aradal. I have told you I will consider it, and I will. That is the best I can do, for the moment.”

Aradal’s voice dropped still lower, as everyone in the chamber strained to perceive the faint conversation. Muriele felt five hundred gazes needling at her, looking to see what new advantage they might find in this.

“I agree, lady, that the timing is inopportune,” Aradal admitted. “It is not how I would have chosen to do things. But time is against us all. The world brims with war and treachery. If you will not think of your security, think of your people. With everything that has happened, does Crotheny need a war?”

Muriele frowned. “Is that a threat, archgreft?”

“I would never threaten you, lady. I feel nothing but compassion for your situation. But it is not a threat to look at dark clouds and guess that a storm is coming. It is not a threat to council a friend to seek shelter.”

“You are a friend,” Muriele lied. “I see that. I will consider your council most sincerely, but I cannot, will not give you an answer today.”

Aradal looked grim, but he nodded. “As you wish, Majesty. But if I were you, Your Highness, I would not delay for long.”

“You will not delay another second,” Sir Fail de Liery roared, his face so red with fury that his hair might have been a plume of white smoke drifting up from it. “You will tell that puffed-up oyster from Hansa that you utterly reject any overture from his thimble-headed prince.”

Muriele watched her uncle pace like a chained birsirk for a moment. The court was over, and they were in her private solar, a room as airy and open as the court was cold and hard.

“I must appear to consider all offers,” she said.

“No,” he replied, pointing a finger, “that is certainly not true. You cannot contemplate delivering—or even appear to consider delivering—the Kingdom and Empire of Crotheny to Marcomir’s heir.”

Muriele rolled her eyes. “What heir? Even if I were to marry him, I would still have to produce one. Even if I had a mind to—and I do not—do you honestly think I could, at my age?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sir Fail snapped. “There are wheels within wheels turning here. Marrying you gives them the throne in all but name.” He pounded the casement of the window with the heel of his hand. “You must marry Lord Selqui,” he snapped.

Muriele raised an eyebrow. “Must I?” she said coldly.

“Yes, you must. It is entirely the best course of action, and I should think you would see that.”

She rose, her fists balling so tightly that her nails cut into her palms. “I have listened now to five marriage proposals, with William’s breath still warm on the wind. I have been as patient and gracious as I can be. But you are more than a foreign envoy, Fail de Liery. You are my uncle. My blood. You put me on your knee when I was five and told me it was the waterhorse, and I laughed like any child and loved you. Now you have become just one of them, another man coming into my house, telling me what I must do. I will not have this from you, Uncle. I am no longer a little girl, and you will not impose upon my affection.”

Fail’s eyes widened, and then his features softened a bit. “Muriele,” he said, “I’m sorry. But as you say, we are blood. You are a de Liery. The rift between Crotheny and Liery is growing. It isn’t your fault—something William was up to. Did you know he lent ships to Saltmark in their battles against the Sorrow Isles?”

“That is a rumor,” Muriele said. “It is also rumored that Lierish archers killed my husband.”

“You cannot believe that. The evidence for that was obviously contrived.”

“At this point, you cannot imagine what I would believe,” Muriele said.

Fail seemed to bite back a retort, then sighed. He suddenly looked ancient, and for a moment she wanted nothing more than to hug him, feel that rough old cheek against hers.

“Whatever the cause,” Fail said, “the problem remains. You can heal this wound, Muriele. You can bring our nations back together.”

“And you think Liery and Crotheny together can stand against Hansa?”

“I know that alone, neither of us can.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

He puffed his cheeks out and nodded.

“I am a de Liery,” she said. “I am also a Dare. I have two children left, and both are heirs to this throne. I must protect it for them.”

Fail’s voice gentled further. “It is well known that Charles cannot get a child.”

“Thank the saints, or I should be dealing with proposals for his hand.”

“Then when you speak of heirs, you mean Anne. Muriele, William’s legitimization of his daughters has little precedent. The Church is against it—Praifec Hespero has already begun a campaign to annul the law. Even if it stands, what if Anne . . .” He stumbled, his lips thinning. “What if Anne is also dead?”

“Anne is alive,” Muriele said.

Fail nodded. “I dearly hope Anne is still alive. Nevertheless, there are other heirs to consider, and you know they are being considered.”

“Not by me.”

“It may not be up to you.”

“I will die long before I see one of Ambria Gramme’s bastards put on the throne.”

Fail smiled grimly. “She is a very political animal,” he said. “She has won over more than half the Comven to her cause, as you must know. Muriele, you must be reconciled, both with the Comven and with your father’s people. This is not the time to further divide Crotheny.”

“Nor is it the time to return it to Lierish rule,” she said.

“That is not what I am proposing.”

“That is precisely what you are proposing.”

“Muriele, dear, something must be done. Things cannot continue as they are. Charles does not—will never—hold the people’s trust. They know the saints have touched him, and in gentler times, they might not care. But terrible things are happening, things beyond our understanding. Some say the end of the world is upon us. They want a strong leader, a certain one. And there is still the fact that he cannot father an heir.”

“Anne could be a strong leader.”

“Anne is a willful child, and all the kingdom knows it. Besides, with each passing day, the rumor is growing that Anne shares her sisters’ fate. The dangers on your borders are multiplying. If you do not give Hansa the throne by marriage, they will take it by force. Only their hopes and the feeble worry that the Church might intervene have delayed them this long.”

“I know all of this,” Muriele said wearily.

“Then you know you must act, before they do.”

“I cannot act rashly. Even if I were to marry Selqui, it would anger as many as it would please. More. If I spurn the offer from Hornladh, they might well join Hansa against us. There is no clear course for me here, Sir Fail.”

“Your course is made clear by your loyalties. Mine is made invisible by mine. I need real council, real options, not this continued pressure from every direction. I need one single person I can count on, one person who has no loyalties other than to me.”

“Muriele—”

“No. You know you cannot be that. Lierish seawater flows in your veins. As much as I love you, you know I cannot trust you here. I wish I could, but I cannot.”

“Then whom can you trust?”

Muriele felt a solitary tear start in her eye and roll down her cheek. She turned so he would not see it. “No one, of course. Please leave me, Sir Fail.”

“Muriele—” She could hear his voice break with emotion.

“Go,” she said.

A moment later, she heard the door close. She went to the window, gripped the frame with her fingers, and wondered how sunlight could seem so dark.

10 Ospero

Cazio stepped between Anne and Ospero. He didn’t raise his sword to guard, but he did keep it in front of him.

“As I told those other fellows,” he said firmly, “these ladies are under my protection. I am no more willing to give them up to you than I was to them.”

Ospero’s eyes tightened, and he suddenly seemed very dangerous indeed, even without the twenty-odd men gathered behind him.

“Careful how you talk to me, boy,” he said. “There are many things you do not know.”

“There certainly are,” Cazio responded. “I do not know how many seeds there are in a pomegranate. I do not know what sort of hats they wear in Herilanz. I’ve no understanding whatever of the language of dogs, and I cannot tell you how a water pump works. But I know I have sworn to protect these two ladies, and protect them I will.”

“I’ve made no threat to your charges,” Ospero said. “On the other hand, they have become a threat to me. When swordsmen from Northside come into my town, I am very much concerned. When I am forced to act against them, it is even more my concern. Now I have to kill them all and sink their bodies in the marsh, and I need to know if anyone will miss them. I need to know who will miss them, and who, if anyone, will come to look for them. And most of all, I need to know why they came here in the first place.”

“And the reward does not concern you?” Cazio asked skeptically.

“We haven’t gotten to that yet,” Ospero said.

“Nor shall we,” Cazio replied. “Now, kindly send your men away.”

“Boy—” Ospero began.

“I don’t know who they were,” Anne blurted. “I only know someone wants me dead and is willing to pay for it. I can’t answer any of your other questions, because I don’t know the answers. I thank you for your help against those men, Ospero. I believe you are a gentleman at heart, and that you will not take advantage of the situation.”

Ospero graveled out a laugh, and many of his men echoed it. “I’m no gentleman,” he said. “That, above all, you can be sure of.” Cazio raised his sword deliberately. “You don’t want to do that, boy,” Ospero said.

“I think I know better than you what I want to do,” Cazio replied haughtily.

Ospero nodded slightly. Then he moved with astonishing speed, dropping and whipping his leg out so that he clipped Cazio’s leading foot. Cazio spun half around, and Ospero stood and almost lazily took his sword arm and twisted it so the sword fell clattering to the ground. As if by magic, a knife appeared in his other hand and flashed up to Cazio’s throat.

“I think,” Ospero said, “you’ve need of a lesson in respect.”

“He’s in need of many lessons of that sort,” a new voice said.

“Z’Acatto!” Austra shouted.

It was indeed the old man, shuffling down the street toward them. “What do you plan to do with him, Ospero?” z’Acatto asked.

“I’m just deciding whether to bleed him out quickly or slowly.”

“Do your worst,” Cazio gritted.

“I’d say to do it quickly,” z’Acatto advised. “He’s likely to make a long-winded speech otherwise.”

“I can see that,” Ospero mused.

“Z’Acatto!” Cazio yelped.

The old man sighed. “You’d better let him go.”

Anne braced herself. She knew that despite his appearance, z’Acatto was a mestro of the sword, and also that he had a deep love for Cazio. He wouldn’t let the younger man die without a fight. Could she summon the power of Cer again, blind Ospero, and make him drop the knife? She would have to try, for all their sakes.

But to her surprise Ospero took the knife away and stepped back. “Of course, Emratur.”

Cazio looked shocked. “Emratur?” he asked. “What is this? Emratur?”

“Hush, boy,” z’Acatto muttered. “Just be glad you’re alive.” He turned to Ospero. “We’ll need to talk in private,” he said.

Ospero nodded. “It would seem there are things you did not tell me.”

Z’Acatto nodded, too. “Cazio, take the casnaras back to the room. I’ll join you there shortly.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue for once,” z’Acatto said bluntly.

Ospero’s men dispersed as the two older men walked off together.

Cazio watched them go, sighed, and sheathed Caspator. “I wish I knew what that was about,” he said.

“What was that name Ospero called z’Acatto?” Anne asked. “Emratur? I’ve never heard you call him that.”

“Come on,” Cazio said. “We’d better do what he said.” He started walking.

Anne followed. “Cazio?” she persisted.

“Cazio’s just saved our lives,” Austra reminded her. “Again.”

Anne ignored her. “You looked surprised,” she said.

“It’s not a name,” Cazio grunted. “It’s a title. The commander of a hundred men.”

“You mean as in an army?”

“Yes, as in an army.”

“Was z’Acatto an emratur?”

“If he was, I’ve never known it.”

“I thought you had known him all your life.”

They had reached the steps to their apartment, and Cazio started up. “I have. Well, sort of. He was a servant of my father’s. He taught dessrata to my brothers and me. But sometimes, when I was young, he would leave for months at a time. I suppose he might have been off fighting. My father had many interests in those days. He might have commanded a hundred men.”

“But z’Acatto still serves your father.”

“No. My father fell on hard times, and eventually was killed in a duel. I inherited z’Acatto, along with a house in Avella. They are all that remain of my father’s estate.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Tears welled in Anne’s eyes. In the excitement, for just a few moments, she had forgotten to grieve.

Cazio stopped, looked a little puzzled at her expression, and put a hand on her shoulder. “It happened a long time ago,” he said. “There’s no reason for you to cry.”

“I just recalled something,” Anne murmured, “that’s all. Someone I lost.”

“Oh.” He looked down at his feet and then brought his gaze back to hers. “I’m sorry to be so brusque,” he said. “I’m just—well, I wish I knew what was going on. I thought something was strange when z’Acatto got us lodging here, that he must have known Ospero before—it was too easy, and he even gave us credit. Now I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what it means.”

“Then you don’t trust z’Acatto?”

“I don’t think he would ever betray me, if that’s what you mean,” Cazio said. “But his judgment is sometimes poor. He let my father get killed, after all.”

“How was it z’Acatto’s fault? What happened?”

“I don’t know what happened, but I know that z’Acatto feels guilty about it. It was after that he started drinking all the time. And he doesn’t have to stay with me—I haven’t the money to pay him. Yet he does, and it must be out of guilt.”

“Maybe he stays out of love,” Austra suggested.

“Hah,” Cazio replied, waving the possibility aside with his hand.

“But who is Ospero? I thought he was just our landlord.”

“Oh, yes—he’s landlord for most of the Perto Veto. He also controls a lot of what happens at the docks. And the ladies I escort. They call him zo cassro, around here—‘the boss.’ Not a pocket gets picked without him knowing about it.”

“He’s a criminal?”

“No. He’s the prince of criminals, at least in this quarter.”

“What are we going to do?” Anne said.

“Until the right ship comes along, and we have enough to pay passage for it, there’s nothing we can do. They’re looking for you everywhere now. We’re safer here than anywhere. If z’Acatto knows what he’s doing.”

“I’m sure he does,” Austra said.

“Let’s hope so.”

Anne didn’t say anything. She knew very little about z’Acatto other than that he stayed drunk most of the time. Now, as it turned out, Cazio didn’t know as much about the old man as he thought he did.

It might be true that z’Acatto would never betray Cazio. But that didn’t mean Austra and Anne were safe—not in the slightest.