THE BLACK HAWKS
David Wragg

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Copyright © David Wragg 2019

Cover illustration © Richard Anderson

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

David Wragg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008331412

Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008331429

Version: 2019-09-02

Dedication

For Sarah,

for everything

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part II

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Part III

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Part IV

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Footnote

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PART I

ONE

Chel ran. His feet slapped against the dusty pale stone of the winter palace ramparts, blood thumping at his temples and breath rasping his throat, while gulls wheeled above and the sleepless harbour bustled beneath. He rounded a corner, the yawning guards on the tower watching his progress with vague interest at best.

A mound of refuse lay stacked against the sea wall, a pile of ashen rags with a long stick propped beside it. Chel shifted to round it, teeth gritted, when the pile moved. It became abruptly man-shaped, and its stick swung out into his path. Before he could react, the stick smashed into his shin. He tumbled, arms outstretched, and sprawled head-first into the stones. A blast of pain tore up his shoulder.

Cursing and swearing vengeance, he tried to whirl, but his vision went purple and the combination of running, falling, and a pounding hangover sent him retching back into the dust. By the time the convulsions passed, the rag-pile man and his stick were gone, the ramparts empty.

‘Thrice-damned pig-fucker!’ Chel spat onto the ground, still leaning on one arm.

A pair of boots stepped to fill his vision, their laces intricately bound, the soft leather grime-free.

‘I admit it, I did not expect to find you on the walls this time.’

He squinted up at the figure blotting the pink-flecked morning sky. ‘Marekhi,’ he coughed. ‘Was just on my way to you.’

His liege’s first sworn regarded him steadily. Her face was placid, her tone light. ‘What did they challenge you with this time? A brandy cask? The barrel-dregs? Did you even make it back to the barracks?’

Chel coughed again by way of answer, wiped at his mouth as he pushed back on his haunches. His shoulder throbbed in time with his headache.

The slightest lip-curl marred Marekhi’s flawless cheek, although her tone remained even. ‘Lord Sokol will be expecting to see his festival robes at ten bells. You will be present, as will the robes, and you will look as though you belong.’

‘Oh, he’ll be up by then, will he?’

‘Your odour will also be much improved. Am I understood, Master Chel?’

He sat back against the flagstones, no longer trying to stand. Her silhouette glowed golden in the morning light. ‘Come on, Marekhi, where’s your festival spirit?’ he croaked.

‘These petty defiances are a stain on our liege’s name, Master Chel.’ Her chin tilted. Her voice was quiet but carried clear over the sounds of the clamour of the port below. ‘You are a man in sworn service to a lord who is a guest at this palace, and your deeds and … presentation are those of our liege. It’s time you acted like it.’

‘I can take a beating, if Sokol wishes to make me an example.’

‘That should not be a point of pride,’ she said, her voice steel-edged. ‘You swore an oath. This behaviour shames your uncle and your family.’

‘If my step-uncle wants the value of my service, he can earn it.’

‘Boy, how much do you think your service is worth?’

For a moment she was snarling, then calm swept over her face. She turned and began striding away, boots clicking on the flagstones. ‘Ten bells, Vedren Chel, with the robes,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Obey, or don’t. But attend to your stench.’

A breeze ruffled the palms in the courtyard, and they slapped together like a round of sarcastic applause. Chel caught a whiff of himself, recoiled, then nodded his thudding head in bitter acknowledgement.

‘Fine.’

***

Chel bent over one of the stables’ water-troughs, scooping handfuls of cool, musty water over his face. A palace horse watched him from the dark of its stable. Chel did his best to ignore it. He felt disapproved of enough already.

‘You’re up, Master Chel! Up-ish, at least.’ A broad and beaming figure in a battered guardsman’s uniform was at his elbow. ‘Didn’t think we’d be seeing you for a good while this morning.’

‘Ungh,’ Chel grunted, and wiped himself down with a horse blanket. ‘Heali.’

‘So,’ the guardsman said, leaning forward, in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘Did you win?’

Chel pressed one palm to his thudding temple. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

Heali chuckled, a sound like marbles rattling. ‘Can’t say no to a challenge, can you, my boy?’

Chel grunted again and leaned back against the stable wall. The stable-yard churned with a gathering retinue, another of the minor lords assembling his host now that the campaigning season was drawing to a close. Chel watched the formation of their column with envious eyes. Within the hour, the column would be on the road, and its host would be back in their homes before winter hit.

‘They’re not staying for the festival, then,’ Heali said with a nod to the milling horse. ‘Any chance your lot …?’

Chel spat a wad of sticky dust. ‘Sokol’s so obsessed with rubbing up against royalty that he’s hanging on for the court’s arrival, and he’s chummy enough with the grand duke that we’ll not be kicked onto the road any time soon. I’m not that lucky.’ He flicked away a spherical fly, hangover sweat mixed with trough water dripping from his brow. ‘Five hells, how can you stand this heat?’

Heali chuckled again. ‘How can you not, Master Chel? Thought you Andriz were the blooms of the desert?’

‘Give it a rest, Heali. I grew up in the south. It’s not that hot down there, not like this – by the harvest festivals we’re usually a month or two into the rains.’

Heali cast a glance up at the pristine, punishingly cloudless sky. ‘Doesn’t look like rain any time soon, Master Chel. So happens, I was heading down to the kitchen to muster a bit of breakfast – care to join me? You look like a man in need of a feed.’

Chel’s stomach hissed bile. His hangover agreed.

***

‘Kitchen’s closed.’ A hard-faced woman in a smock barred the doorway.

‘Closed? Nonsense, my jewel,’ Heali replied. ‘How could the kitchen be closed in a festival week? We’re but days from the feast!’

The woman’s eyes narrowed. She had a jaw like quarried stone and weathered hands to match. ‘Off-limits, then. Especially to you, Heali, and whoever’s riding your pocket today.’ She flicked a sneer at Chel, who was quite offended. ‘This is no time for your antics – we’ve got the Order of the Rose at our shoulders. Get your meat-fingers gone before the churchmen come looking at you too.’

The door slammed shut. Heali frowned at it, thick lips pursed. Chel frowned at Heali.

‘My apologies, Master Chel, thought I’d be able to lend a hand to a brother in need. Come up looking a right pillock, eh?’

Chel gave no answer. His head hurt, and his palms and shoulder ached. His hunger had become a hot blade in his gut. He rubbed one hand over his eyes and started walking back toward the courtyard. Sokol’s robes and the lowport beckoned, and he was in no fit state for it. ‘I need to be going—’

‘Heading out on an errand? Surely not on an empty stomach?’

Chel stopped in the courtyard archway, one foot in brilliant sunlight, squinting against the glare, already tired of the guardsman’s manner. ‘You’re in luck, my boy,’ Heali continued with a munificent smile, ‘because your friend Heali knows where to get the best breakfast in all Denirnas Port.’

‘You do?’ At that, Chel perked up.

‘Of course, my boy. Permit me to atone for my failing – I’ll take you myself.’

‘For the last time, Heali, stop calling me boy.’

‘I mean no disrespect, Master Chel. You’re still boyish from my end of the wick, that’s all.’ Heali raised a hand with a disarming grin. ‘Come, let’s take a wander. There’s a little fellow in the lowport, does the most arresting grilled things.’

Chel gave a sour glance back down the gloomy hallway to the closed kitchen door. ‘What do the Church care of festival preparations anyway?’ he said.

A voice like the earth moving rumbled in the darkness behind them. Chel hadn’t even realized there was a passageway there. ‘Because the festival of King’s Vintage is a lie, a sop to the masses to blot the vile truth from their eyes.’

He turned to find a gaunt figure looming over him, eyes mere hollows in the gloom, his dome of skull ringed by ragged grey locks. He carried a crate of earthenware oil lamps, clinking in time to his lurching steps. Heali sniffed. ‘Lengthened your chain for the festival, did they, Mad Mercunin?’

‘I know what they call me, Heali,’ the cadaverous giant replied. ‘Do you know what they call you?’

Heali laughed, but Chel detected an edge to it. ‘Go on, sod off, you walking corpse. Go whisper your secrets to the cliff ducks.’

Mercunin shuffled away into the gloom, the crate heavy in his arms. ‘Hey,’ Chel called, ‘what is the “vile truth”?’

The well-deep voice echoed from the stones as the porter slid into darkness. ‘That the king is dead, and we shall all of us burn.’

Heali snorted. ‘Take no heed of mad men, Master Chel,’ he said, then walked out into the bustle of the courtyard, nodding for Chel to follow. With a bemused sigh he did, the old porter’s words still rattling in his head.

***

‘Is this place far?’ Chel said as they wandered through the open palace gate, beneath the strutting statue of Grand Duke Reysel. A fresh streaking of bird shit adorned the statue; a pair of skivvies were doing their best to remove it. Duty guards nodded to Heali as they passed. ‘I need to be back by ten bells.’

‘And why’s that, Master Chel?’

‘Sokol will be expecting me to present him with his freshly arrived festival robes. Should have been here days ago, but you know what it’s like this time of year.’

‘I do indeed. Can’t spend days on the walls without learning the motion of the ocean, eh?’ Heali picked his way down the meandering ridge path, steering around the irregular mule traffic plodding uphill, festival loads stacked high.

Across the bay on the opposite ridge, the domes of the Academy glowed in the morning sun, safely nestled along the crest of the highport that towered over the harbour’s eastern flank. In the handful of weeks he’d been in Denirnas, Chel hadn’t made it as far as the highport, let alone the Academy. It looked pleasantly peaceful up there.

In the lowport, the summer’s-end sun was well up, as was the seething press of peddlers, pilgrims and panhandlers. Everywhere was noise and movement, heat and humanity, and Chel’s nausea came roaring back as he tried to follow Heali down the carved steps of the hill path into the town. He kept one hand on his purse and the other on Heali’s shoulder, buffeted by human tides.

They skirted a grim-faced servant tasked with scrubbing the latest Rau Rel graffiti from a pale wall, the words ‘The Watcher sees all’ disappearing beneath his brush. One of the palace guards watched over him; he nodded to Heali and moved aside as they passed. Chel shook his head. The partisans’ graffiti would be back before they made it back to the palace. You couldn’t go twenty strides in the port without seeing ‘death to tyrants’ or some reference to ‘the Watcher’ scrawled across walls; the only thing that varied was the spelling.

‘Who keeps writing this stuff?’ Chel muttered to Heali. Heali didn’t respond.

Preachers’ Plaza was already thick with idle folk circling the ranting box-clerics on their sea-crates, attending them or jeering them in equal measure. Chel took one look at the seething crowd and baulked; he could go no further. He almost cried with relief when Heali diverted from the main path, cutting round the plaza and between two of the low white buildings that blanketed the bluffs above the harbour. A narrow path led up to a flat roof, suddenly dim in the highport’s shadow.

The shaded rooftop was still cool and mercifully removed from the madness below. A clutter of mismatched wooden furniture dotted it, tables and chairs arranged in haphazard fashion, some occupied by resting merchants and sea-folk. Silk pennants and throws hung from poles around the roof’s edge, teased by the brisk ocean breeze, their sigils and symbols a mystery to Chel. A great clay oven dominated the hillside end, already smoking and sizzling, tended to by a small, wiry man.

Heali dumped himself in one of the chairs, nodded for Chel to join him and waved the little man over. Heali produced a purse from beneath his belt with a flourish, placing a stack of coins on the table that could pay for three breakfasts with change to spare. Chel made no comment.

The little man was beside him, asking him something with a cavalcade of syllables. Chel blinked back in incomprehension. The little man repeated his noises with practised patience.

Heali chuckled, marbles rattling again. ‘Chicken or fish, Master Chel? I can recommend the fish.’

‘Chicken.’

‘Ha! Suit yourself.’

The little man nodded and scampered back to the oven, and a moment later the sizzling redoubled. Chel felt a surge of gratitude, although he declined the wine that was offered while they waited. He wasn’t mad.

‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’ Heali took a deep swig and smacked his lips, then topped up his mug. ‘No such thing as a hangover at your age, young man. Splash of spiced wine and a sea breeze, see you right. Heali’s little tip for you.’

Chel ignored him, his gaze on the flapping silk hangings at the roof’s edge. ‘Those Serican?’

Heali shot him an incredulous look, half smiling, anticipating a joke. ‘No, Master Chel,’ he said after a moment, the smile lingering. ‘Not every piece of silk comes from Serica.’

Chel blushed at his ignorance, but at that moment the food arrived. Chel acknowledged that Heali had been right: it was excellent — spiced and fragrant and unfamiliar. He tore into it.

‘So,’ said the guardsman after a respectable number of chews, ‘you’ve been enjoying festival week?’ Chel only chewed. He could feel the food restoring him. ‘Partial to a bit of brandy myself, as it happens. I was a young man once: every night defiance, every morning … regret …’ Chel nodded along, half listening to Heali’s words, until his platter was empty.

Hanging behind the oven was a wooden mask, taller than a man’s head, carved with intricate detail and inlaid with a silvery metal. Its expression was unfriendly. Chel stared at it.

‘What is that?’

‘Battle-mask,’ said a voice beside him. He turned to see a child looking back with wide, dark eyes. I must be hungover, he thought. That’s the third person to get the drop on me this morning.

‘A battle-mask?’

‘My father was a famous warrior in our home. He has many masks.’ The tone was even, the gaze level.

Chel shot a look at the wiry little man, as the girl started clearing plates. He was scrubbing the inside of the oven with something. ‘He doesn’t look like a famous warrior,’ he said.

‘That is why he would have killed you.’

Chel’s eyebrows climbed. ‘That a fact?’

The girl nodded, her contemptuous expression not far off the mask’s. Chel squinted; he could see faded paint on it, yellow and maybe blue. ‘The champions of the cantons were given masks if they won a great battle or defeated another champion in a duel. My father has six masks.’

‘Cantons?’ Chel blinked. ‘You’re Norts?’

She nodded, but her eyes flickered in disapproval at the term. ‘Iokara.’

‘I didn’t think any Norts ever crossed the sea.’

‘Then you should feel shame at your ignorance.’ With that she turned and marched away, platters in hand, leaving Chel gawping in her wake. She reminded him strongly of his sister Sabina.

Heali was chuckling. ‘Feisty lass, eh? His boy will be around here somewhere. He’s even less forgiving.’ He laughed again, and Chel’s cheek twitched. ‘Didn’t think Norts crossed the sea. Not been around long, have you? How could you not know a mask? Everyone knows Norts fight in masks.’

‘That’s not what she … ah, forget it,’ Chel sighed. His hangover had faded but his shoulder still ached. He looked back at the little man, who was running a sharp-stone over a gleaming steel carving-blade. He didn’t let his gaze linger.

Heali was talking again, but Chel let the words wash over him. For the first time that morning, he felt vaguely human, and his eyes wandered over the spread of the lowport below, its ceaseless flurry. They had a good view down into the plaza from the rooftop. One of the preachers had attracted quite a crowd, although her proclamations were inaudible over the general clamour.

‘… close chums, goes the word, but is theirs a harmonious affection? A bond of equals, or pals for the proles, as my old cousin would say? You’ve been with the good lord some time now, I’d wager, and …’ Chel was half listening again, his attention drawn to something disturbing the crowds on the plaza’s far side, perhaps a wagon trying to move through. People were definitely trying to get out of the way of something.

‘… perhaps handle some of his correspondence?’ Heali went on. ‘See, there’s always dissent, especially around a man with a title like the grand duke. Question is, should matters come to a head, which way would your liege be leaning? Now, Master Chel, as a young man who likes a nip, perhaps you’d—’

Movement on a rooftop overlooking the plaza caught Chel’s eye.

‘Sweet merciful Shepherd, it’s that pig-fucking beggar! The one that tripped me on the wall. There, on that roof!’

He was off and running before Heali could stop him, pelting away and down the steep steps back to the lowport, chair tumbling in his wake. The shamble of rags had been unmistakable, the stick, the cloud of ash. He tore into the human press at the foot of the path, one eye on the rooftop on the far side of the plaza. The beggar couldn’t have seen him, not from there, and even if he had, how fast could a shuffling old bastard leaning on a stick go?

The human tide at the plaza’s edge seemed suddenly against him, as if the square were trying to empty itself in one go. Chel fought to get past, his eyes locked on the roof-line above, then with a curse changed tack. He rolled around the flood of traffic and into a side-alley, in dingy shade from the angled sun. Unimpeded at last, he drove his tired legs forward. The alley bent around toward the back of the plaza, and from there he’d have a direct line toward the crumbling rooftop where he’d seen the beggar. He just needed to find steps or a ladder, or—

Gaze still fixed on the bright sky overhead as he rounded the bend at full speed, he didn’t see the figures in the alley’s gloom. He crashed into them, sending one tumbling, crunching into dirt himself for the second time that morning. At least the robed man beneath him cushioned his fall. He was mumbling the world’s fastest apology, already looking around for his target roof, when his cushion’s companion whimpered, a small, pitiful sound in the claustrophobic stillness.

Eyes adjusting to the alley’s shade, Chel looked from one to the other. The man he’d downed was back on his feet, clad in a dark, stained robe, a short, thick stick in his hand and a snarl on his face. Huddled against the far wall was the whimperer, a wild-haired woman, her face mud- and blood-darkened.

Chel swallowed, shifting back toward the pair. ‘What’s going on?’

The man’s snarl widened. His head was shaved but for a dark tuft at its crest. Chel had seen hair like that around the port and assumed it was a fashion of sorts. ‘Church business. Fuck off.’

‘What kind of church business involves beating a woman in an alley?’

‘The kind you don’t get involved in.’

Chel set his jaw. He felt the fluttery canter of his heartbeat against his ribcage. ‘I’m from the palace. I won’t let you hurt her.’

The man’s snarl became a grim smile. ‘That, boy, would be a matter of opinion.’ Chel braced for his swing, but instead the man bared his teeth and whistled through a dark gap at their centre. Chel heard the approaching thud of footsteps from the distant alley-mouth, the rhythmic jingling. He turned to see two more robed figures advancing, heads shaved but for the tuft, sticks in hand. They passed through a musty shaft of morning light and their robes glowed a deep red, their steel necklaces gleaming.

Chel rubbed at his thudding temple. ‘Oh, shit.’

***

The three robed men marched Chel and the bleeding woman out of the alley and shoved them into the sudden bright emptiness of the plaza, the sun’s glare harsh against the whitewashed stone. Chel kept his feet, the woman collapsed to the dust beside him. She was draped in filthy rags, her visible skin scarred and blotchy, odd pale welts curled down her arms like vines.

‘Shepherd’s mercy, what is it now?’

A figure strode into view from behind a dark-wood cart that stood at the plaza’s rough centre, its sides and rear caged with iron. She was slight and sharp-featured, her silver hair cropped close to the skull, and was swathed in robes of white and rich vermilion. A long, hook-headed staff tapped the stones in time with her steps. Chel recognized her immediately. He’d seen her at the winter palace, being treated by the servants with a deference that bordered on fear: Sister Vashenda of the Order of the Rose. No wonder the plaza had emptied so fast. Chel grimaced. A set-to with the Church on a hangover was about as far away from ideal as anything he could imagine.

‘One of the heretics, Sister,’ one of the tufts grunted. ‘Fell short on her repentance.’

A sigh. ‘And the other?’

‘Interfered. Says he’s from the palace.’

Her head tilted. ‘Does he now?’ She waved her free hand, urgent, exasperated. ‘Go, find the rest, get them to the croft. Clean this place up.’

The tufts departed, leaving Chel and the two women in the otherwise empty plaza, except for the cart. From the look of it, there were people inside, peering gloom-eyed from behind the cage bars. Chel swallowed.

Sister Vashenda was staring directly at him. ‘Brother Hurkel,’ she called toward the cart. ‘Would you join us, please?’

The cart moved, shifting on its axle, then settled as its front lowered to the ground. The hulking figure that lumbered into view was clad in a rust-coloured tunic, a milk-skinned beast of a man with a shock of blond hair crowning a too-small head the colour of beetroot. An intricate steel necklace jangled at his beefy chest, and at his belt his stubby fingers rested on a short, heavy ball mace. Its head was stained dark.

‘Yes, Sister?’ the giant rumbled.

‘Brother Hurkel, do you know this young man? He claims to be from the palace.’

‘I do not, Sister. Perhaps he has hit his head. Perhaps he wishes to.’

Chel stood his ground. A sickly fire burned anew in his innards. ‘I’m a sworn man in the service of a lord under the grand duke’s aegis. I’m protected as his guest and servant.’

The sister walked toward him, her face curious, as if he were the most interesting turd she’d stepped in that day. She looked him up and down. Behind her, Hurkel had advanced, drowning them in his shadow. ‘Do I know you, sand-flower?’ Vashenda asked, eyes narrowed. ‘Are you Sokol’s brood?’

‘By marriage, not blood,’ he snapped, then cursed himself.

She offered a smile that contained not a jot of amity. Her teeth were so white. ‘Between chosen people, a word of advice, perhaps?’ She stepped close, a silver flower gleaming at her chest, bright in his eyes. ‘Sand-flower or not, a lucky traveller keeps from the Rose’s path,’ she whispered, then clacked her teeth so hard in his ear he shied away, certain she’d bitten off his earlobe.

‘Brother Hurkel,’ she said, stepping away from him. ‘How high does Lord Sokol rank?’

The beast-man waggled a slab hand, palm-down, his bottom lip protruding. ‘Middling, if friendly with his grace the grand duke.’

‘Of little consequence, then. Sand-flower, are you, perhaps, in need of some spiritual re-education at the croft? I doubt Lord Sokol will miss a “relative by marriage” for a few days, especially for the betterment of his eternal soul. Hmm?’

She was shaking her head slowly at him. Chel felt himself shaking his along with her.

‘Good. Depart.’ A brief, bright smile. She turned back to the rag-clad preacher, who had remained on her knees. ‘Now, what have we here?’

The meat-pile growled. ‘Heresy, Sister. Godlessness. Abomination.’ His thick fingers tightened around his mace. Chel heard its wooden haft creak.

The box-preacher’s head was up; Chel saw a fierce gaze, clear and defiant, that bore into the robed figures looming over her. When she spoke, her voice was cracked but strong. ‘Your godless church is the abomination! Lo Vassad sits atop a festering dung-heap of corruption. Your type act not for the people, but for avarice, venality – how plush are your robes, false prelate.’

Sister Vashenda cocked her head and raised an eyebrow to her colleague, a hand to her mouth in mock-horror. ‘Truly are evil days upon us, that such profanity be uttered before the Shepherd’s humble servants. That the poor townspeople should have been so assailed.’ She crouched in front of the kneeling box-preacher, lifting her chin with a finger, and trotted out her words with tired practice. ‘Very well. Will you repent of your madness and ill-speech, and be welcomed back to the good Shepherd’s mercy?’

‘I will never bow to you, idolater. I have heard the voice of truth, felt the touch of the real Mother of the earth.’ She rubbed at the odd scars on her arms, livid whorls shining in what sunlight escaped Hurkel. ‘I have been chosen by the storm.’

Vashenda sighed. ‘I will never understand you people.’

‘You are dirt in the Mother’s eyes! You are—’

‘Yes, yes, dirt and damnation and such, very good.’ Vashenda stepped away with a wave of her hand. ‘Brother Hurkel, the heretic is yours. Have your fun, in God’s name.’

A grin split Hurkel’s beetroot face. He began to advance, the mace gripped in his meaty fist.

Vashenda’s eyes fell on Chel. ‘Sand-flower, you are still here.’ When he said nothing, she continued, directing her attention away from whatever Hurkel was about to do. ‘You know, people speculate on why the red confessors of the Brotherhood of the Twice-Blooded Thorn carry blunt tools on their divine business. Many believe that the Articles forbid the Shepherd’s children from carrying weapons, or from spilling blood in divine service.’

Hurkel towered over the kneeling preacher, weighing the mace in his grip. He was chuckling to himself.

Vashenda gave a rueful smile. ‘Nonsense, of course. God’s will must be performed by whatever means necessary.’

Chel’s heart was galloping in his chest. He looked from preacher to Hurkel and back again, light-headed, mouth dry.

‘Sand-flower, what are you doing?’ Vashenda’s tone was low, warning, as he moved toward Hurkel. ‘Sand-flower! Do not be foolish!’ His breath coming in shallow gasps, fingers trembling, Chel stepped between Hurkel and the kneeling preacher, who was chanting something to herself in a low, urgent voice. He looked up into Hurkel’s porcine eyes, staring back at him with a hot mix of incredulity and outrage.

‘Sand-flower! Why in God’s name must everyone …’ Vashenda leaned her head against the crook of her staff, eyes clenched shut. ‘I suppose we’ll find out how much you’ll be missed after all, you stupid boy.’

Chel didn’t move. He couldn’t. His gaze was locked on Hurkel. The enormous confessor was grinning again. Chel’s vision was twitching in time with the thump of his pulse, a taste like burning at the back of his throat.

The distant peal of bells carried on the sea breeze, from somewhere out past the headland. They were joined by others, closer at the harbour’s edge, then a moment later the plaza rang with the clang and jangle of churches, chapels and watchtowers.

Chel blinked. It couldn’t yet be ten bells, surely?

Hurkel looked at Vashenda, who looked back at Hurkel, eyes narrowed, brows low. His expression matched hers. ‘That’s an alarm,’ Vashenda said slowly. Hurkel grunted, his attention dragged away from Chel.

Shouts followed the bells. Suddenly the plaza was full of people again, running this way and that, their shouts and calls vying with the cacophony of bells.

Vashenda grimaced. ‘We’ll have to take the heretic’s confession later. Brother Hurkel, put her in the cart with the others.’

Chel stood his ground. Already the plaza was thick with motion, the sound of the bells sporadically near-deafening. ‘Leave her alone,’ he shouted over the noise.

Someone was bellowing Vashenda’s name from across the plaza, another red-robed, tufted type, his features animated with alarm. Vashenda exhaled in exasperation, then leaned forward and fixed Chel with a fearsome glare as the chaos enveloped them. ‘This is not over, sand-flower. You may yet enjoy the chance to regret your choices.’

She growled at Hurkel and jerked her head for him to follow. Hurkel gestured at the cart, but she shook her head. ‘They’ll still be there when we come back.’ The two of them stalked away, leaving the cart with its whimpering cargo locked at the plaza’s centre. Chel felt his insides unclench as they passed from view. He needed to get back to the palace.

Heali was pushing his way through the crowd, his fleshy face waxy and pallid. ‘God’s breath, Master Chel. That’s pushing your luck, even for someone of your blood.’ He shook his head. ‘Why would you get yourself involved in all that?’

Chel had stilled his breathing, although the light-headedness remained. ‘You saw? I could have used some moral support there, Heali. Besides, I’m sworn. They couldn’t have touched me.’ I hope, he added to himself.

‘I’m sure that knowledge would have been a comfort once they had you strung up by your ankles in the croft. You want my advice, young man, you stay—’

‘Beating the poor wasn’t in any Article I ever heard.’

Heali gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘Maybe you’ve not heard the new ones. They’ll let anyone in these days, give some alley-boy a stick and a red robe and call him a confessor, I dunno, makes me question sometimes …’ He tailed off. ‘Stay out of their way, Master Chel, for your own sake. The Rose have a long memory and a longer reach.’

Chel only sniffed. His legs were trembling. He hoped Heali couldn’t tell.

The wild-haired preacher’s head emerged from beneath the rancid cart. ‘They’re gone,’ Chel said, doing his best to look reassuring.

She clambered out and fixed him with her clear eyes. ‘Mother bless you, child. You and your people shall be in her highest favour.’

‘Er, if you say so.’

She turned and began working at the cage’s bolt, trying to prise it open. Within, the sallow and frightened faces shrank back, more alarmed than ever. Interfering with the Rose’s confessionals was simply not done.

‘Hey,’ Chel called after her. ‘Hey! They’ll be coming back, you don’t want to hang around for that, right? This will make things worse!’

The preacher stopped for a moment, and looked out over the harbour as a briny gust from the coast blew dust around the plaza and the bells rang on around them. ‘A great storm is coming,’ she said, her eyes still on the harbour. ‘The Mother has shown me. There will be a cleansing flood.’

He squinted out at the sea, still glittering in the morning sun, trying to work out what she saw; her words were all too close to Mercunin’s earlier proclamation. ‘You know, there’s a porter up at the palace you should meet, you two would get on like a house on fire.’

Heali grabbed his arm, pulling him away. ‘That’s enough, Master Chel. You can’t help the touched any more than you already have. We’d better get back up the hill.’

With one last look at the struggling preacher, they made for the palace.

TWO

What seemed like half the palace’s population was crammed onto its white walls, jostling and bickering for a clear view of the bay. Above them, the lone, sad warning bell of the palace’s solitary spire tolled in fitful answer to the jangling mass below.

‘Can’t see a bastard thing,’ Heali muttered, squeezing around a gaggle of servants. He was a hand shorter than Chel, who didn’t have much of a view himself. They laboured along the crowded battlements until at last they found a space between the chattering crowds.

‘God’s breath,’ he whispered as Chel pressed in alongside.

The mid-morning sun, kept low in the northern sky over the sea by autumn’s arrival, gleamed from the gentle waves of the bay. But where sea should have followed, the neck of the bay was blocked by a giant black vessel: long, wide and low, a floating fortress of dark wood and metal, its sails and oar banks crimson and gilded with silver. A pair of smaller vessels, just as dark, trailed it like ducklings. Chel guessed even the smallest would have rivalled the largest ship currently moored in the harbour. The main ship could have sailed over the grand duke’s pleasure barge without scratching its hull.

They didn’t seem to be advancing. The dark ships sat out to sea, riding the waves up and down in place, anchors dropped, while the terrified bells rang out around the bay. A small boat, black flag of truce fluttering from its prow, had dropped from the largest ship and was rowing into the bay beneath the watching eyes of the port’s population, and the swivelling half-dozen giant skein-bows on the headland sea-fort. From the other direction came the duke’s barges, moving to encircle it, the tin hats of crossbowmen glinting from their decks.

‘What are they? Who are they?’ Chel asked, his eyes not leaving the floating fortress. Adrenaline washed through him, refreshing the fearsome trembling that had only just left him from his encounter with Brother Hurkel.

Heali’s brow was slick, his breath short. ‘Norts, boy. The black ships of the Norts have come for us.’

Others were joining them, muttering and shouting filling the air as guardsmen jostled with servants and house staff, occasionally shunted aside by the arrival of someone with a title to wield. Their hubbub filled Chel’s ears.

‘Is it an invasion?’

‘It’s a blockade!’

‘But if Denirnas Port is closed, it’ll be nothing but river traffic ferried up from Sebemir! The north will starve!’

Chel nudged Heali. ‘We’re not enemies of the Norts. Are we?’

‘I’m not much inclined to go down and ask them, Master Chel.’

In the port, the bells faltered, then one by one they stopped. Perhaps the operators were now watching the scene in the bay, or piling their worldly goods onto a mule and making for the mountains. Two fluttering objects had risen from the main deck of the giant Nort vessel, like outsize birds with wings of spider-silk. They glimmered and glistened, borne aloft on the inland breeze, anchored by thin ropes or cables to the vessel beneath. The silk-birds soared up and over the little boat and the approaching barges, twinkling beneath as if they carried lanterns.

‘What in hells do you suppose those are, Master Chel? Totems? Decorations?’

‘If they’re sails, they’re very small and very far away.’

A further commotion ran through the crowd like a wave. ‘Oh joy,’ muttered Chel as he watched ducal guards pushing their way to the promontory. ‘The grand duke and his entourage are here. I’m sure everything will be just fine now.’

‘You sound a touch insincere, Master Chel.’

‘Call me judgemental, but if three years in Sokol’s service have taught me anything it’s that the more skivvies, flunkies and lickspittles that surround a lord, the less contemplative their decisions.’ And that’s without counting his repellent offspring, he added to himself.

Robed notables scuttled in the duke’s wash, hemmed by the brooding house-guards. Chel half expected to see Lord Sokol among them, but it was still early yet. He watched them bustle their bullish way through those already gathered, his lip curled. There was the duke’s eldest, Count Esen, pushing an inattentive kitchen-waif from his path and almost off the ramparts; only the swift hands of a watching guardsman prevented her from falling. Count Esen only smirked.

Chel felt Heali’s restraining hand on his arm.

He spat into the dust and sighed. ‘At least that ghastly prick actively blackens his father’s name.’ He watched a pale, slumped figure come trudging after the other nobles. ‘That little prince doesn’t do a thrice-damned thing, just slopes along like a kicked dog after the rest of them.’

Heali chuckled. ‘Tough job, being the ward of a grand duke. No doubt takes a lot out of him, weekly lectures at the Academy, the feasts and festivals.’

Chel froze. One last figure had come to join the ducal party: Sister Vashenda had stopped a way short of the promontory, looking out over the bay. Chel was rooted to the spot, sweat-slick, praying she didn’t turn his way.

His prayers were for dust. As if sensing him, Sister Vashenda turned, and the sharp lines of her face locked rigid. She advanced, her hook-headed staff tapping the stone, signalling to her lackeys as she came. ‘Sand-flower!’ she called, her eyes burning. ‘Impeding the work of God’s messengers is a vile crime …’

Chel tried to stand his ground again, but his legs were shaking uncontrollably. He was safe here, surely, within the walls of the palace. A sworn man, a guest of the duke—

‘… But the release of heretics is beyond contempt.’

‘What? You mean … But that wasn’t me!’

‘There will be a reckoning, boy!’

Something had happened out in the bay. One of the seneschals gasped, ‘Beneath a flag of truce no less!’ Others around him shushed and jeered. The duke’s barges had fired on the little Nort boat. Then the mutterings rose in pitch and urgency. ‘What in hells!’ a guardsman shrieked. Chel turned from the prelate and peered out over the jostling assemblage, toward the harbour.

‘Sand-flower! Do not turn your back to me.’ He heard Vashenda shout over the crowd. ‘Brother Hurkel,’ she called, ‘take the Andriz!’

The floating silken birds were spewing flame. Streams of liquid fire poured from the sky, dousing the duke’s barges. Screams filled the air as the flaming mass gushed over them, the men within scrabbling overboard as the flames roared up. Tin hats glinted on the waters of the bay, while gobbets of fire spat and hissed, burning on the surface.

‘Witchfire!’ came the cry along the battlements. Others joined it. People started to run, and at once the ramparts churned.

‘Come hither, Andriz.’ Chel turned to see Brother Hurkel come lumbering into view, his grin undiminished by the chaos around them. ‘You’re late for your lesson.’

‘He means to take you, Master Chel, Norts be damned.’ Heali was at Chel’s shoulder. ‘I’ll stall him. Make for the sea-fort!’

Chel ran, the duke’s roar to attack ringing over the thundering of his heart in his ears. He pelted off down the rampart, weaving in between hurrying guardsmen, servants and seneschals, all of whom had remembered urgent business elsewhere. Witchfire! he thought. Mercunin was right, we shall all of us burn. From behind him came Heali’s bright wheedling. ‘Ah, Brother Hurkel, if I might—’

‘Fuck off, Heali,’ was all Chel heard before the duke’s signal drums rang out from the walls, loud over the sounds of the fleeing crowd. Ahead of him, the massive skein-bows cranked and turned, while ghastly burning smells were drifting over the palace, borne by the same wind that kept the silk-birds aloft.

Chel rounded a turret as great thrums filled the air. A whistling volley of giant bolts, each as long as Chel was tall, soared out over the bay, blurs rippling through the air. He heard the distant eruptions of water and great tin booms like kettledrums where they found their mark. A ragged cheer rose from those guards still at the wall as the spray subsided.

Quickly, gasps and oaths replaced the cheer. Chel slowed, snatching a glance over the bay. The black ships remained, unsunk, bobbing on the gentle waves.

‘Are they made of iron?’ one of the guardsmen said, incredulous. ‘How the fuck do they float?’

Something flew out from the black ship, something like a fireball, trailing bright flame and black smoke. The fireball shot over the water, faster than a skein-bolt, screaming like a demon. It smashed into the headland below the sea-fort, exploding in white and crimson flame and sending chunks of rock soaring into the air, stone splashing out into the bay.

Chel tumbled and skittered, his heart galloping up his throat in what felt like a desperate bid to escape. ‘What in all the saints …?’

Another fireball launched from the black ship, then the turret ahead of him exploded. The blast showered flame and stone across the walls as the turret’s skein-bow, arms burning, pitched over the collapsing battlement and dropped into the bay. A wall of choking smoke blew over the rampart, forcing Chel to hunch and gasp, while stone shards and pebbles rained down around him. From somewhere through the fog came the sound of Brother Hurkel’s calls.

Chel wiped at his eyes and pushed himself to his feet as another explosion rocked the stone beneath him. ‘Fuck. This.’

As smothering clouds of smoke and ash billowed over the walls, Chel ran.

***

He dropped from the wall above the stables. The palace was emptying, he couldn’t see Sokol and his retinue, and their mounts were gone too. They must have cleared out at the first warning bells. How very Sokol. Chel took a long, ragged breath to try to calm his nerves. He had to get out before the Norts razed the entire port. There were still horses left, although not for much longer: already palace staff were tussling with liveried riders over the ownership and use of those that remained. Then, of course, there was Brother Hurkel and his companion confessors to consider. If witchfire hadn’t put them off his trail, they may yet be lying in wait.

A narrow, two-wheeled cart stood just beside the stable arch, abandoned midway through unloading supplies for the kitchens from the look of it. It stood, facing the wrong way, a burly, bored-looking mule hitched before it. A dusty cloak lay across the driver’s bench.

‘Perfect.’

He jumped up to the cart and threw the cloak over himself. Sweating from the morning’s heat, the strain of Hurkel’s chase, the Nort attack and now cart-theft to boot, Chel geed the reins and drove the cart and mule forward, wheeling around the stables and toward the main courtyard and the outside world.

***

Chel couldn’t keep his hands tight on the reins. They shook and slipped with his still-thumping heartbeats as well as with each rut on the road. He’d joined the main road out to the provinces, but all around him people surged, creating a long line back to the city. He could only hope that Vashenda and Hurkel had more to worry about than his escape.

A cloaked figure poked his head out from the crates in the back of the cart. ‘Why are we slowing?’

‘Argh! Who in hells are you?’ Chel shrieked.

‘We’ve been invaded! Invaded! They’re going to kill us all! Why aren’t we going faster?’

‘Because this road is full of people, you plank. I’d rather not tip this thing and kill us and them before we get anywhere.’

Something about the way his companion stiffened when he’d called him a plank bothered Chel. ‘Who are you? Why were you hiding in this cart?’

The figure pulled back his hood and looked up at him. Chel’s insides congealed. He looked back at the pallid face of the hang-dog prince, the runt of the litter: Tarfel Merimonsun, Junior Prince of Vistirlar.

‘Five bloody, blasted hells …’

‘Why aren’t we going faster?’ shrieked the prince.

THREE

‘Your highness! I’m so— I didn’t realize. I was just trying to get out of the city and find my liege—’

‘Immaterial! I’m commandeering you.’

‘But—’

‘Listen, peasant: whoever you’re sworn to, whoever they’re sworn to, totter high enough up the stack and they’re all sworn to the crown. And who wears that?’

‘Uh, your father?’

‘Well, yes, but he’s ill, isn’t he? So while he recovers, the master of the Star Court is …?’

‘Your brother, highness?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But he’s not the one commandeering me.’

‘Well, no, you gormless pleb, but that’s why you’re going to take me to him.’

‘But your brother is in Omundi and that’s days away – I’d be an oathbreaker! I have to be released, it doesn’t work if I just walk away.’

‘In my father’s name, are all you provincials so thick-skulled? Your pestilent oath won’t matter a gnat’s fart once we reach my brother. The crown can supplant or dissolve inferior pledges, you homespun halfwit. You’ll be released the moment my brother decrees it.’

Chel’s hands went very still on the thin reins. The mule plodded on, making progress into the rough countryside. In Chel’s mind, a second road was unfurling, one that led into a suddenly unconstrained future. For a moment he forgot his fear. ‘Released from my oath?’

‘In a heartbeat.’

‘And what about a pardon for any unwitting offences against the Church?’

‘Of course! My brother is on excellent terms with Primarch Vassad. Just get me to safety. And fast! This whole coast is unsafe. One of my brothers was murdered on the road by brigands, you know.’

Chel’s mind was galloping ahead. The prince slapped at his arm.

‘Do you dare defy a prince of the kingdom in a time of war? I’ll have you e—’

‘I’ll take you, highness. I’ll get you to safety, I swear it.’

‘Well, about bloody time. There you go, you have a new oath already.’

Chel saw no sign of any of Sokol’s band on the road. Images floated in his mind: silken birds pouring fire onto the water beneath, the screaming fireballs ripping across the bay and into the fort, the giant black ship, sitting implacable between frothing plumes. Already the memories were becoming unreal, too much to absorb, greasy moments slipping away into his subconscious.

He still felt a burn of shame at the thought of abandoning his sworn duty, despite the young prince’s commands. He told himself that Sokol would no doubt be on the road east already, and that they’d likely catch him up, whereupon Prince Tarfel could explain the situation. Perhaps they’d all make the journey together, Sokol prideful of his new charge right up to the moment where Crown Prince Mendel dissolved Chel’s oath before his eyes.

Chel and the prince went east, toward Omundi and the army.

***

The port was burning, great gouts of flame pouring from the sky like incandescent pillars. Whole buildings were reduced to rubble, the palace on the bluffs a blackened cadaver, the Academy opposite a scorching glare too bright to regard.

The city walls crumbled to ash as the entire sea lit with alchemical fire, washing like a wave over the port. He watched it rise before him, screaming silently, anchored to the spot in the ruin of the sea-fort. Heali’s voice called to him, exhorting him to flee, but he remained rooted as the curtain of flame rose higher until it consumed the sky. There, at its centre, just before it fell upon him, he saw a tiny figure, dark against the blaze. It wore a snarling mask.

His head knocked against the crate behind him and with a gulp of air Chel woke. The reins were still in his hands, soaked through. Mortified, he tried to wipe away the worst of his slick sheen, while the mule plodded faithfully on. He felt in no hurry to sleep again.

It was a three-day trip to Omundi, rattling along the pitted dirt roads in the mule cart. The makeshift convoy moved as fast as it could, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the invading Norts as conditions allowed, the bulk of their contingent likewise seeking the safety of the League’s armies.

They camped only briefly and stopped at few roadside shrines. Prince Tarfel made for a dreadful travelling companion: he insisted on hiding among the kitchen supplies in the back of the cart, where he alternated between gibbering panic, which was tiresome, and ostentatious boredom, which was worse. He was prone to bursting into song when under-occupied; his reedy tenor could at least carry a tune, but his limited repertoire ground down Chel’s resolve as the journey wore on, to the extent that he considered teaching the prince some of the more rustic ditties favoured by Sokol’s regulars. When not singing, the prince demanded explanations for everything they passed on the road, from the meaning of the plague quarantine markers to the frequency of the smoking char pits. The only sight to hush him was a rack of gibbets strung at a crossroads, the bodies dangling beneath shorn of noses and ears, the signs around their shredded necks clearly reading ‘Rau Rel’. Otherwise, Chel kept his answers short. When a kingdom has been fighting the same war on itself for twenty years, there’s little new to say, he thought to himself.

Chel tried to focus on the immediate future. He would ditch the prince with his brother, hop back on the cart and roll on south, cut east at the Lakes and be home ahead of the news of Denirnas Port’s destruction. Away from the madness, away from murderous confessors and their lingering venom. By the time he arrived, he could shape the story of the Nort invasion to his choosing, his interactions with the prince, how he came to be reprieved from Sokol’s pointless service, assuming Sokol had even survived. Enough remained of the cart’s contents to barter his way all the way back to Barva. He was going far away from all this. He was going home. All he had to worry about was what to say when he arrived. What to say to his sisters, what to say to his step-father. What to say to his mother. Chel bit his lip in contemplation. At least he’d have plenty of time to think.

‘Look, the pennants, the pennants!’

Tarfel had roused himself and was pointing down into the river valley. Ahead of them, down the curve of the dusty road as it wound its way into the river valley, the bright walls of Omundi shone in the evening sun.

Spread like a dark blanket pocked with campfires before the walls, the armies of the Glorious League lay camped, the Church-blessed alliance of great Names and small, the crown-led instrument of divine unification. Siege engines stood idle in their earthworks, just out of bowshot, and Chel noted with distaste the rocky dam that had diverted the river’s flow away from the city and down deep-cut channels in the earth. Little seemed to be happening.

Highest of all the pennants that fluttered at the centre of the camp was the white lion of Merimonsun, and Tarfel squealed with glee at its sight. ‘Go there, go there!’ Chel geed the mule down the slope toward the camp.

***

Whether or not the pickets at the camp’s edge believed that the mule cart was an official royal conveyance, Tarfel’s shrieking, princely entitlement and signet-waving had them escorted to the camp’s centre in short order by nervous men-at-arms. An equally sceptical vizier bade them wait, still guarded, at the edge of a wide earth circle, ringed by the exotic tents of the great and good of the royal forces. Lions, pictorially speaking, were everywhere.

Overhead, a host of messenger-birds, doves and pigeons, seemed in constant circulation, teeming from the cotes stacked beside the grandest pavilion, coming and going in a ceaseless flutter of feathers. Panting foot messengers with grime-streaked faces came pelting past at regular intervals. All activity seemed centred on the pavilion, the hub for messages from hand and wing, a commotion of traffic in each direction at its entrance. Chel guessed that the news from Denirnas must have reached them by now. Beside the pavilion’s flap, watching every item in and out, stood a tall, hooded figure, robed in white and vermilion and dusted with travel-muck.

Chel’s heart thudded once and stopped, his pulse replaced with a sudden flooding lightness that spread over his skin. How had Vashenda got here ahead of them? His mouth was dry, tongue thick. Then his brain registered the difference of stance, of height, the curved sword belted beneath the robes, and he felt his heartbeat restart. It was not Vashenda. Another senior prelate, but not one who’d ordered him adjusted.

‘Bear?’ He was jolted out of his thoughts by a hand on his shoulder. ‘Bear, is that you?’

‘Five bastard hells, it can’t be,’ he whispered.

***

Chel and the prince turned to find a young woman standing behind them, excitement and trepidation surging over her face. Her straight hair was bound and shrouded in the fashion of the Star Court, and she gazed at them with eyes as grey as Chel’s own.

Her face split in a wide grin and she threw her arms around him. ‘I knew it was you!’

‘Sab?’ Chel reeled, carried backward by her momentum. ‘How are you here? What are the chances? You look …’

She released him from her crushing grip. ‘Taller? More dynamic? Matured like fine spiced wine?’

‘Different.’

‘It’s been three years, Bear, near as matters. I wasn’t going to stay small and grotty. You look the same, if dirtier. But what are you doing here?’

‘I should ask likewise. Why aren’t you at home?’

She arched an eyebrow. ‘Why’d you think, Bear-of-Mine?’

Tarfel cleared his throat with a frown, and the girl grinned again. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’

Chel sighed. ‘May I present Sabina Chel of Barva, my little sister.’

Tarfel inclined his head, looking Sabina up and down. ‘Not so little any more, eh?’

Frowning, Chel continued. ‘Sab, this is His Royal Highness Tarfel Merimonsun, prince of the realm, youngest son of King Lubel.’

She’d already begun a bow of her own and she staggered at his words. ‘You’re friends with a fucking prince?’ she hissed, head bent.

‘Well, not friends exactly,’ he said, experiencing several different flavours of mortification.

‘Your brother was good enough to escort me here from Denirnas,’ Tarfel said haughtily. ‘Charmed, I’m sure.’ He extended a grubby hand for her to kiss. To Chel, he murmured, ‘Bear? You’re not very bear-like, Chel.’

‘It’s, ah, a family thing.’

The sneering vizier reappeared, informing them that negotiations with the city had paused, if not concluded, and Prince Mendel had a moment for an audience with his brother. Tarfel swanned off after the man and into the grand pavilion. The robed prelate lingered outside, her hooded gaze swinging back across the Chel siblings, black eyes glittering within. Chel felt an unpleasant tingling as it swept over him, then the figure ducked beneath the flaps and was gone.

‘Who is that? That prelate?’

Sab sniffed. ‘Ah, Balise da Loran: “Lo Vassad’s clenched fist”. She’s the Star’s chief minister and a double-bastard.’

‘Chief minister? She’s a Church prelate!’

‘She’s also first sworn to Prince Thick, you know, after he had to start afresh. Many feathers in that cap.’

‘Prince Thick?’

She gestured toward the pavilion. ‘Mendel, the crown prince. Your new chum’s big bro. The man’s a haircut in boots. Pretty, though, even with the scars.’

He shook his head, baffled. ‘So who’s left at home, if you’re here? Has everyone been sent away?’

‘The twins are still there, Bear. They’re too young to go anywhere yet.’ She offered a sad smile. ‘They’ll look after Mum.’

‘But why are you here? I mean, here, at Omundi?’

‘You know, bit of this, bit of that. Making friends, keeping my eyes open.’

‘Sab.’

‘I’m travelling with the court. Can’t you tell?’ She twirled in her formal garb.

‘As what?’

‘As a lady-in-waiting, seconded to the entourage of our crown prince’s intended. The Lady Latifah has about three dozen of us, so I just slot into the mass. Five hells, is that girl stupid: people call her Latifah the Dim, sometimes to her face, poor lamb. That was Prince Dunce’s pick from the nobility’s nubility. Shepherd’s tits, imagine their children! They’ll need breathing lessons!’

‘How long in service? And when did you start cursing like a sergeant?’

‘Are you interrogating me, Bear? Since the spring. Amiran thought it was time I made my way.’

‘Of course he bloody did. You’re far too young to be fending for yourself at court!’

‘I’m not a duckling, Bear. I’m the same age you were when you set off on your travels. Speaking of which, where’s Uncle Hanush? Is he with you?’

‘Don’t call him that. And no, he’s not.’ His cheeks coloured at the thought of Lord Sokol, and his clothes felt suddenly hot.

Sab narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s going on? How did you come to be escorting the little prince? Your last letter said you were spending the year burning farmers up north.’

‘We did. Not burning farmers – well, some of them might have been. We were suppressing insurrections in the northeast all summer. Then Sokol decided we’d be wintering with Grand Duke Reysel at the winter palace in Denirnas, where they don’t so much have winter as a cool spell between summers. Mostly we just seemed to chase people away from places.’

‘And did you do much fighting? Are you a deadly swordsman yet? The finest blade in the provinces, slaying brigands and setting the ladies’ hearts a-flutter?’ She made swooning motions.

He shook his head, smiling. ‘None whatsoever. I’ve been fetch-and-carryman to Sokol’s fetch-and-carrymen since he took me in service. Even the dogsbodies give me errands.’

Sab shrugged. ‘He did promise Mum he’d keep you safe. I bet you’ve learned some salty language from the soldiers, if nothing else.’ She winked, then hugged him again. ‘Oh, Bear, how I’ve missed you. Are you staying long?’

He said nothing for a moment. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Is Uncle Hanush still in Denirnas? Did he send you with the prince? We heard whispers, not long before you arrived, something about a fire at the port? I didn’t pay it much heed, you know what expansive gossips the Star viziers can be, but seeing you here …’

Chel felt suddenly cold, his back prickled with sweat. He felt the muscle in his cheek twitch as images flitted through his mind, smoke and flame, half-dream and half-memory. With a scowl he drove the visions aside, rubbing at his temples with grimy knuckles.

‘Something happened,’ he said, teeth gritted. Focus on the future, he told himself. ‘Listen, I’ve got things arranged. In exchange for getting Prince Tarfel here safe, he’s going to have his brother dissolve my oath to Sokol, and then—’

‘What? What did you say?’

‘I’ve made a bargain with the prince.’

‘To escape your oath? Bear!’

‘The crown can supplant or dissolve inferior pledges, Sab, everyone knows that. It’s law.’

‘I don’t care if it’s law, an oath is an oath. It’s your duty. It’s the honour of the name our parents chose for us. That Dad chose.’

‘Then it’s as worthless as the oath! My sacred pledge pissed away on that waste of air? I’ve wasted years bringing him clothes while he hid from battles. I could be …’ He threw up a hand in frustration. ‘If I’m to be sworn into duty, let it at least be meaningful, or let me go home.’

Sab kept her voice low, but her gaze was searing. ‘Does Uncle Hanush even know you’re here?’

‘Will you stop calling him that?’

‘He’s Amiran’s brother.’

‘And Amiran’s our fucking father now? He sent me away, Sab. Now he’s sent you away, too. Soon it’ll just be—’

‘A-hem.’ The vizier was back. ‘His highness the prince commands your attendance.’

‘Which one?’

‘You, boy.’

‘No, which prince?’

If the vizier had been sneering before, now his expression could have curdled milk.

***

‘Vedren Chel of Barva,’ the vizier announced, contempt dripping from his voice, as he ushered Chel into the grand pavilion then withdrew.

‘My brother’s saviour!’ Prince Mendel strode forward, grasping Chel’s unresisting arm and pumping it, a warm smile beaming from his absurdly handsome face. Thick, golden hair like a mane crowned his head, matching a well-groomed beard. Chel found himself gazing into earnest, cornflower-blue eyes, creased with concern.

‘Dear Tarfel was telling me of the horrors you saw at Denirnas when the Norts attacked, how you rescued him and carried him to safety.’ Chel raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly, expression neutral. Tarfel avoided his eye. ‘You must have been terrified. I know something of life and death situations myself,’ the prince went on, one hand straying to a jagged scar that ran down one side of his face. It managed to follow the line of his jaw, if anything augmenting his already exemplary looks. ‘But witchfire! God’s breath …’

It seemed to Chel an ideal time to remind the princes of the agreement, in case such things had somehow slipped Tarfel’s mind. He could stand his sister’s disapproval — in time she would understand.

‘Your highness, I—’

‘I can only apologize that you had to face it alone. It’s no secret that the siege is going badly – we should have broken Omundi long ago, and been with you well before festival week. I’m afraid it’s the same as it was in Father’s day – these wretched so-called “free cities” would rather starve themselves to death than rejoin the kingdom.’ He shook his head, seeming genuinely rueful. ‘We have …’ Mendel went on, then tailed off, his beautiful face shifting to a frown. ‘We have …’

A robed figure came gliding from the shadows of the pavilion’s inner chamber behind the crown prince. Balise da Loran, still hooded, floated to Mendel’s shoulder and bent to murmur into his ear. The light returned instantly to the prince’s eyes.

‘We have received more news from the port,’ Mendel declared, as if the interruption had never occurred. Da Loran slid back into the shadows, to where a trestle stood at the pavilion’s wall, piled with message scrolls and missives. Chel watched as she picked up one of the messages and cracked its seal.

‘Yes, brother?’ Tarfel was leaning forward, pained and anxious. He was awfully pale in the lantern light. ‘Have the Norts laid waste to all Denirnas?’

‘No, dear Tarfel, indeed they have not. It seems Grand Duke Reysel may have overreacted to their initial overtures, and they made their point on the sea-fort in return. We’ll have to add that to the reconstruction tally. For now, however, they seem content to sit in blockade, until their demands are met.’

‘Demands? What are they demanding, brother?’

Behind them hung a giant embroidery of Mendel’s late twin, Corvel, a golden sun framing his golden visage, white lions rampant each side. The embroidery bore the legend ‘The Wise’. The twins had been known as ‘The Wise’ and ‘The Fair’ respectively – there was even a song about them – and from Chel’s current vantage, Mendel was very fair indeed.

Balise da Loran was back at the crown prince’s side, and to Chel’s shock he seemed to be deferring to her. ‘Their demands are unimportant,’ came a gravelly and thickly accented voice from beneath the hood. ‘Acknowledging them would be catastrophic.’ She fixed Tarfel and Chel in turn with her hooded gaze, her face within lost in a void from which no light could escape. Mendel was looking at the floor. Chel kept his own eyes fixed on the crown prince; the prelate made his skin itch.

‘The League’s troops remain mired in the siege,’ da Loran continued. ‘Attempting to march everyone to Denirnas now – this close to the end of the campaigning season, with Omundi on the brink of collapse – risks an uprising in our own ranks. But we cannot show weakness in the face of this foreign provocation. We must hold firm, until we can marshal the forces to expel these godless savages.’

Mendel was nodding along, past the end of her words and into the silence beyond. After a moment, Tarfel said, ‘Meaning what, brother?’ forcing Mendel to look up again.

‘Meaning—’ da Loran began, but Tarfel cleared his throat, spots of colour on his waxy cheeks. Chel realized he was as unnerved by the prelate as he was.

‘I’d say my brother can speak for himself in matters of state, wouldn’t you?’

Da Loran stared very hard at the young prince, who seemed to lose an inch in height beneath her gaze. After a moment, she rumbled, ‘Of course, your highness,’ and turned her gaze to Mendel, who looked momentarily surprised. Da Loran muttered something, and the crown prince’s eyes came alive.

‘Meaning, Tarf my boy,’ the crown prince proclaimed, refocused, ‘that the festival celebrations in Denirnas must go ahead as planned. A symbolic gesture, true, but hugely significant. We will show the north that the crown of Vistirlar does not bow or flee in the face of heathen aggression. We stand tall. We celebrate the festival of our father in defiance of savage alchemy, and we show this fractured kingdom that we are not afraid.’

Chel listened with his brow crunched in rising incredulity. Tarfel seemed no less astonished. ‘We do?’

‘We do. And I can’t think of a better representative of the crown to oversee the festival proceedings at Grand Duke Reysel’s side.’

Nobody spoke for a moment, Tarfel slow to meet his brother’s beaming gaze. A heartbeat later his pallid face became entirely bloodless.

‘Brother! What the fuck?’

‘Tarfel, language. You must be our avatar, little brother. You must bear witness to the splendour of the festival’s events, first-hand.’

Tarfel’s voice was very small. ‘But they have witchfire …’

‘Let them … Let them …’ Mendel wasn’t listening, ‘Let them bob and rot in the harbour-mouth. Our people are resourceful, resilient. We will find ways to cope without sea trade. We can lump supplies over the hills from Sebemir’s river docks, that should prevent total starvation.’

Tarfel looked to be gagging, unable to speak. Eventually he said, ‘But you’ll send reinforcements? The army, the League, some will be coming too? We’re at war …’

Da Loran answered this time. ‘The forces of the League are needed in the east. Omundi must fall.’

Tarfel had visibly slumped, his head slung from the sloping mound of his shoulders. Chel watched with a sort of vicarious horror. This plan seemed ludicrous, and he could not wait to be as far away from these people as possible. ‘For how long?’

‘While the campaigning season lasts, although I suppose at that point the League will be breaking up for winter.’

‘But then you’ll come? To the winter palace? You’re expected …’

‘It wouldn’t be fair to leave Father on his own down south, would it? We’ll send a couple of regiments, maybe a free company or two, but this is a battle the Norts cannot win, and they know it. They’ve spent what threat they have, and now they must sit and wait. They cannot break our resolve, our unity. Take heart, dear brother, they will be slinking back over the sea sooner or later – storm season in the north is but a couple of months away.’

‘A couple of months?’

‘Fear not, you won’t be defenceless. Master Chel, I understand my brother made a promise to you?’

Chel swallowed. This was it.

‘He did, your highness.’

‘Good, very good. And who is your current liege?’

‘Hanush Revazi, Lord Sokol.’

‘Do I know him?’ A quick look toward Balise. ‘Not to worry.’ A warm feeling began to creep over Chel. ‘Would you mind kneeling?’

Chel knelt, almost unsteady, his hands trembling with anticipation. Mendel summoned a flunky with a clap of his hands.

‘Right, you, vizier, get this down. Vedren Chel of Barva, by decree of the crown of Vistirlar, your oath is dissolved. All restitutions and so on through the usual whatsit and so forth – Balise knows this bit.’ Chel bowed his head, a fluttering feeling in his chest. ‘Ready with the next one? Splendid. Master Chel, your hand, please.’

The warm feeling vanished, replaced by a sudden tingling cold.

‘I can’t think of anyone better suited, dear Tarf. Now, Master Chel, if you wouldn’t mind repeating the following …’

A short time later, and with very little fanfare, Chel found himself sworn into the service of Prince Tarfel Merimonsun of Vistirlar, under oath to serve, honour and protect. Especially protect. The whole thing felt oddly close to marriage. As he stood, he exchanged a glance with his new liege. Tarfel looked just as miserable as he felt. Back to Denirnas. Back to the Norts. Back to the Rose. Back to the muscular embrace of Brother Hurkel. Chel was reasonably certain he was going to vomit on the crown prince’s gleaming boots.

Mendel clapped his hands again. ‘There. You two will do wonderful things for the kingdom, I just know it.’ He turned to the vizier, who had done little to mask his disdain during the proceedings. ‘Now, please escort Prince Tarfel to the riders. At least, dear brother, you will have a proper escort for your return to Denirnas.’

Chel found himself marching out beside Tarfel. He swallowed down the rising bile, managing to hiss, ‘You have to do something, highness! I was supposed to be released, not sent back to die!’

Tarfel returned his imploring stare with wet and haunted eyes. ‘You heard my brother. This is the crown’s will, and we will obey.’

Chel almost put a hand on his sleeve but thought better of it. ‘This is the will of the Church! You saw what happened in there, that prelate was—’

‘Enough, sworn man. I know what people say about my brother since his injury, but he is the crown’s representative, and his commands are a royal decree. Now be silent!’ The young prince looked to be on the verge of tears. Chel’s own eyes were wild and giddy.

Outside the pavilion, a phalanx stood at the circle’s edge, their robes shimmering in the light of the freshly lit torches. Tufted hair, rust-red robes, gleaming maces at their belts. The lead figure, of course, wore white and vermilion, if a little dusty from the trail, and was already in conversation with the hooded Balise. Vashenda had come to collect them. Chel felt like laughing, manic and loud. How could things be otherwise?

FOUR

‘Welcome home, Master Chel! Back in time for the feast!’ Heali fell in step alongside Chel, fleshy face all smiles. It was, Chel supposed, nice to encounter someone pleased to see him for a change.

A dozen Brothers of the Thorn, their robes the colour of blood in the evening sun, had flanked the crude carriage that passed for royal conveyance. Chel had been stationed on its back plate, bounced by every rut and divot, exhausted by the first hour on the road. He’d exchanged little more than a shocked sentence with his sister before they’d swept him away, but her confused and reproachful stare had stayed with him long after Omundi’s broken valley dropped from view, along with her parting words.

‘Duty isn’t swearing to obey a person, Bear. It’s about service to the kingdom, its people. It’s about trying to make things better. Serve the people, Brother Bear. Make Father proud.’

He’d had no response for her.

Vashenda had ignored him on the road – which just served to make his anxiety worse – with the exception of a pointed remark to the prince that he was at least properly guarded for his return voyage. ‘Do you know what would happen if any harm came to you, highness?’ she’d said. ‘Do you know the trouble it would cause?’

With the sun sinking over the bay at their journey’s end, the column was dispersing at the city gates, the body of their escort departing for the croft and taking the carriage with them. Vashenda remained, a harbinger, to supervise the prince’s slow climb to the winter palace in person. Chel wondered if Hurkel lay up there in wait. The population of the refugees’ shack-village at the foot of the outer walls had trickled back after the screaming exodus of the days before, but the port’s fringes still looked strange and empty to Chel’s eyes. Odd shapes dangled from the walls, indistinct in the gloom of the structures’ shade, but his gut told him they were bodies. Bone-weary and ill-at-ease, part of him was glad when Heali appeared, unbidden, at his elbow, as what remained of the royal procession approached the gates.

‘You survived then, Heali? What did I miss?’

The big man chuckled. ‘A lot of bluster, Master Chel, then a lot of nothing. Norts calmed down a bit after making their point on the fort.’

‘I heard.’

Heali leaned in close. ‘Truth be told,’ he said, his odour unimproved in the days since Chel had seen him last, ‘the duke calmed down a fair stripe too. Think maybe he saw the merit of negotiation.’

‘Perhaps the duke’s a sensible man after all. Have they said what they want?’

Heali shrugged. ‘They’ve declared a blockade, it seems. Something about mistreatment of a citizen, or the return of stolen property … but what would a lowly guardsman know of international intrigue?’

‘What indeed?’

‘So now they just sit there, stopping up the bay. Nothing goes in or out. People in the port are going mad, whole place is …’ he waved a frustrated hand ‘… constipated.’

They began to climb the winding trail to the palace. The black ships lurked at the edge of Chel’s view, out at the harbour’s fringe, huge and dark and implacable. Heali followed his gaze, looking pained. ‘There have been some incidents. Place is swarming with refugees and pilgrims, watch can’t control all the outsiders, their notions of justice.’

Chel thought of the little man and his oven, his stern-eyed little daughter, and felt suddenly sick. He didn’t ask, afraid to hear the answer.

‘Duke’s insisting the festival is going ahead, ordered the folks to stay for the celebrations, but word’s out that he’s sent most of his own family south. Not sure most in the port can summon the enthusiasm.’ He scratched himself. ‘And you’re quite the popular fellow, it seems.’

‘Popular? What do you mean?’ Chel was hoping for something positive, but Heali’s words did nothing but stir queasiness in his gut.

‘Had a few folks asking after you – you know the types, funny little haircuts, like to wear a lot of red. Don’t worry, I told them you were long gone, although I wasn’t expecting you to come riding back into port by return, was I?’

‘Five bloody, blasted hells …’

‘Still, word is you’re the prince’s man, now. Quite the stroke of fortune, that; might even keep your ecclesiastical friends at bay. If you’re lucky.’ He raised a beetle-thick eyebrow. ‘Makes you a connected fellow, though, wouldn’t you say? An elevation like that could provide many opportunities. As it happens—’

They approached the palace gate, which stood wide open as ever. Chel blinked. ‘What does it take to close this bastard? City’s full of destitute and vigilantes, bay’s full of heathen alchemists, the palace is piled with feast-food and lingering nobility and still nobody thinks to shut the fucking gate?’ He threw up his hands. ‘How in five hells am I going to protect that pointless prince if we can’t even keep the door closed?’

Heali was looking at him through narrowed eyes, his gaze glittering in the light from the gate-side braziers. ‘You expecting trouble, Master Chel?’

Chel tutted in irritation. ‘No more than I have already. But two nights ago, I swore to give my life that Tarfel Merimonsun might keep his, and I’m thrice-damned if I’m giving it up to the first mask-wearing Nort or murderous Rau Rel partisan who wanders in off the fucking mountainside.’

The courtyard was eerily empty, devoid of its customary bustle. The minor damage from the preceding days had been patched and festival decorations were distastefully strung from every pillar and ledge, but unease permeated the atmosphere like a stink. No one from the palace was there to meet them. Chel wondered if Mercunin the ominous porter was still around.

Heali was still talking. ‘… fellow like you who walks beside a prince, he’s got a certain cachet, might find certain opportunities …’

Vashenda had stopped ahead of them and was addressing the prince in the manner of a stern master to a hopeless pupil. She instructed him to wait, then swept around to face Chel and Heali. Heali muttered something and excused himself immediately. With the slightest frown, Vashenda moved off to confer with another robed figure. Chel and the prince were left alone at the edge of the deserted courtyard.

Tarfel affected a semblance of regal bearing as he surveyed the festival decorations. Chel tried to sound reassuring. ‘Not what we were hoping for, highness. You were supposed to be safe with your brother by now, and I was supposed to be on my way home.’

‘No, no, indeed.’ For a moment the mask dropped, and Tarfel looked at him with wide, watery eyes. ‘Vedren Chel – our bargain stands. We just have to wait it out until reinforcements arrive, until storm season, whatever it takes. Keep me alive, keep me safe through this, and I’ll get you released. Again. Yes?’

Chel blinked. ‘I swore to serve you and protect you, highness. I mean to keep that oath.’

‘Of course, right you are. I’ll release you at the end of all this, prince’s word.’

Vashenda was back, a pair of guards at her heel; with a gesture she dismissed the prince in the direction of the residence, and the guards went with him. As Chel went to follow, she stepped in front.

‘You,’ Vashenda said, her silver scalp gleaming in the torchlight. ‘With me.’

Chel realized he was clutching his sealed oath scroll in his sweating hand, held against his body like a talisman. She can’t hurt me, he told himself. Not now I’m sworn to a prince. He swallowed, flicked a brief, troubled glance around the courtyard, and followed the good sister.

***

‘Get in my way, put one foot out of line or release any more heretics back into the city and you will spend your final days learning new meanings of pain,’ Vashenda said as they entered a small but plush bedchamber within the residence, adjoining a far grander set of rooms that Chel assumed belonged to the prince. ‘Am I understood?’

Chel nodded. He could feel the sweat beading on his brow.

‘Good. And thus let our understanding be reborn in the light of the Shepherd’s mercy,’ Vashenda continued, a sudden smile transforming her features into something even more terrifying. ‘The past marches ever away, and we must watch the grass before us.’ Chel wasn’t sure if that was scripture or merely church-speak. ‘You are now Prince Tarfel’s man.’

Although phrased as a question, it wasn’t delivered as such. He relaxed his sweaty grip on the oath scroll and nodded again.

‘These will be your new chambers, at the prince’s side. You will clean yourself, dress for the feast and await collection. You will attend the prince utterly, you will not leave his side.’

He nodded, too tired to do much more. At least he’d be able to collapse on the bed the moment the sister left; his legs were quivering beneath him.

Vashenda inclined her head, apparently satisfied. ‘Then do not leave this room until they come for you.’ She moved toward the door. He noted the bundle of sealed messages tucked into her robe; she looked in a hurry to deliver the last issuings from the pavilion at Omundi.

‘Wait,’ he called. ‘I need to talk to Lord Sokol, or at least send him a message, or something. I need to tell him what happened.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘I would suggest the latter, lest you strain your voice. Lord Sokol and his retinue departed the same day you did.’

‘What?’ With the port’s population looking so restored, he’d unconsciously assumed Sokol and his band had returned or remained.

Vashenda narrowed her eyes at his impertinence but continued. ‘I believe he had urgent business to attend to in the southeast, quite unexpected I’m told. So unfortunate it should coincide with the arrival of our northern cousins in the bay.’ She was entirely deadpan.

‘But what about me? I should have been with him!’

The eyebrow raised again. ‘Indeed, you should. And now you are the prince’s man.’ She walked through the doorway. ‘Do not leave this room until they come for you.’ The door closed with a clunk that sounded suitably final.

He flopped down on the bed. Sokol gone, fleeing home from the sound of it. And now Chel was anchored to a whelp of a prince, parked on a cliff-top, a beacon for belligerent Norts and their rains of witchfire and shrieking fireballs. If Hurkel didn’t wander in and stave in his skull first.

A basin in the corner took care of the worst of the road-grime, and the clothes laid out on the bed fitted no worse than anything else he’d worn since he’d left Barva. They were absurd, of course: garish and gaudy, fine working on the details without any investment in comfort or utility. He guessed this was the uniform of the royal guard, perhaps even specific to the junior prince himself. He’d seen no one dressed in such ridiculous fashion anywhere near Prince Mendel. A belted scabbard completed the ensemble, and he was irked to find that the short blade sheathed within was an edgeless ornament.

And how, he muttered to himself, am I supposed to defend a prince with that?

The palace was deathly quiet, only occasional distant kitchen sounds echoing up from the grates. He saw no guards in the courtyard, or on the towers above. The place seemed deserted. An unease began to settle within the pit of his stomach. The situation seemed absurd. The Norts were still in the bay and Prince Mendel had no intention of granting their wishes. Surely they wouldn’t simply sit and wait for the storms to wash them away? Why would the Norts not simply raze the rest of the port if they felt they were not being heard, and the rest of the north with it? And why would Mendel send his own brother back into the teeth of their alchemy for a mere festival?

No, not Mendel: Balise da Loran. And now Vashenda, another prelate, had ordered him to sit here and wait. Something untoward was happening, and he was at the centre of it. He should never have left the prince’s side.

Dark clouds scudded overhead, the fat moon behind them shining through in scrappy patches, throwing slow-moving patterns over the tiled rooftops. He watched them flow and shift, eyes glazed, when movement in a moon-patch drew his eye. At last a guard had appeared, moving slowly along the rampart above the courtyard. Chel squinted. The figure was too ragged to be a guard. It shuffled forward, climbed over the wall and dropped to the roof below. As it dropped, Chel saw a long staff in its hand and its ash-streaked and tattered robes. Chel’s heart stopped in his chest. It was the man from days ago, the beggar who had tripped him, who had landed him in the mess with the Rose in the first place. An intruder inside the walls.

‘Pig-fucker!’

Chel almost tore the door from its hinges as he raced from the room.

***

He pounded through the empty, darkened hallways of the residence, making for the main courtyard. The winter palace had more hidden corners than he’d given it credit for, and his fuddled brain was struggling to process navigation as well as haste.

A large figure stepped from the darkness into his path and he careered into it, sending them both sprawling.

‘Easy there, Master Chel! What’s the commotion?’

‘Heali?’ Chel knelt, dazed. ‘What the … Are you lying in wait for me or something? Where is everyone else?’

Heali dusted himself off as he got back to his feet. His clothes looked different, but it was hard to tell how. ‘Why, attending to duties, Master Chel, as I assume you are too. But as it happens, glad to run into you, a stroke of fortune, you might say—’

‘Not now, Heali.’

His dark eyes were narrow in the distant torchlight. ‘Something amiss, Master Chel?’

Chel shook his head, then looked past the heavyset guardsman into the courtyard. The main gate still stood open. A single sentry leaned against it, looking to all the world asleep. ‘Just look at this place! Guards missing from their posts, the gate hanging open, and I’ve seen an intruder climbing over the wall.’

‘Someone’s inside the palace? One person?’

‘Not just anyone, Heali. Something is going on! We need to rally the remaining guards, close the gate, secure the duke and his remaining family, the prince, everyone.’

‘You absolutely certain, Master Chel?’

‘I know what I saw, Heali. I’m heading for the walls. Maybe we can still catch him. Are you coming?’

Heali muttered something in reply, but Chel was already sprinting for the stairs. Somewhere a distant bell was ringing.

FIVE

‘There’s fire down in the city!’ Chel squinted in the darkness. The ramparts were deserted on either side, a cold wind blowing in from the sea. ‘What in five hells is going on?’

Heali was still a few steps behind him, wheezing from the climb. ‘God’s balls, boy, let me catch a breath.’

Another bell was ringing somewhere closer, down in the port. Chel darted along the ramparts. Beneath them, the gate was still open, but he hoped to see men rushing to close it at any moment.

‘He was there when I saw him, moon-side. Come on, he can’t have—’

Two riders galloped through the courtyard, fast enough to throw sparks from their horses’ shoes on the stones, then through the gate and onto the hillside. Chel stared after them. He watched them thunder down the winding trail toward the port below, heading for the city’s south gate. Beyond them, he saw a line of torches, bobbing in formation, making slow progress up the hill from the direction of the fires. The riders slowed as they approached the torches, came to a momentary stop, then accelerated again, disappearing into the darkness that pooled at the valley bottom. The torches bobbed on, continuing their climb.

‘What in hells was th—’ He turned to find Heali standing right behind him. The guardsman’s avuncular face had lost its habitual joviality.

‘Heali? You all right?’

He shook his head, features dark. ‘I’m sorry, my boy,’ he said, and Chel felt the chill of sweat on his back return. ‘I misjudged you.’

Chel took a step backward, part of his exhausted brain trying to recall how many paces from the edge of the rampart he’d stood. ‘Misjudged me how? What’s going on?’

‘I thought we’d be able to come to terms, Master Chel. I thought I’d be able to keep you clear. I was wrong. It’s a shame, truly.’

Chel took another backward step. His fingers were trembling, his voice hoarse. ‘What do you mean, Heali? The fuck are you talking about?’

‘You were supposed to be lucky.’

He saw the dull moonlight glint from the knife in the guardsman’s hand. Heali advanced, fleshy mouth a grim line. Chel’s back foot scraped over the rampart’s edge, emptiness beneath his heel. He met Heali’s dispassionate gaze.

‘Why?’ he whispered.

Heali offered a remorseful sigh.

‘You’re the goat.’

He jabbed forward. The knife caught Chel in the ribs, scraping along one of the ornate buckles and scoring a gash along his flank. He felt only the bump of impact, no pain, then the hot rush at his side. Heali tried to pull back the knife for another stab, but it had snagged in the excessive folds of Chel’s fancy dress.

Chel unfroze. He grabbed Heali’s knife-hand with his own, forcing the blade away from his body before it could carve him again. With his other hand he swung a wild punch at the guardsman’s head, glancing the meat of his cheek and making him curse. Heali warded a second flailing blow, then with both hands tore the knife clear of Chel’s uniform. Chel scrabbled backward, away from the drop, until his shoulders met the hard stone of the wall.

Heali put a finger to his cheek, probing for damage, then shook his head again. ‘Enough, boy.’

Heali took half a step when something dark smashed over his head, staggering him forward, shards of the object showering the ramparts. He turned in surprise as a figure at the top of the stairway lobbed another dark shape. It thumped into Heali’s face and bounced off, shattering on the stones at his feet in a dark splatter-mark. Chel squinted in the half-light. It looked like the remains of a lamp-oil jug from the kitchens.

Heali had recovered enough to take a step toward the figure, which stood with a crate at its feet and a grease-light in its hand. Too late, Heali realized what had doused him. He turned back toward Chel as the grease-light arced through the air, trying to outrun the flame that flared at his feet and leapt for his legs. Screaming, the big guardsman stumbled and flailed, flames surging up his body, then one foot missed the rampart and he was gone, a puddle of amber flame left fluttering on the stones.

Chel heard the impact on the courtyard below, then nothing more. One hand clutched to his injured side, he made wobbly progress to the rampart’s edge and peered down. A dark shape lay sprawled below, unmoving, small yellow flames flickering at its edges. He shivered, and felt the pain, hot and fresh, as well as a sudden urge to both vomit and piss himself.

Three guardsmen ran into the courtyard, gave the sprawled and burning shape a cursory glance, then ran straight through the gate and out into the night.

He turned to find Mercunin, the cadaverous porter, looming over him, his grease-light back in his hand. The man’s hollow eyes were pools of shadow, even with the light so close.

‘Thank you,’ Chel said, trying to stop his teeth chattering. ‘I … You … Thank you.’

The twin voids gave nothing away. ‘We shall all of us burn,’ the man intoned in his earthen rumble, and Chel thought his rictus mouth twitched upward at the words. Then Mercunin was stalking over the deserted ramparts as the fire-pool guttered and died. He collected his crate and vanished down the steps, clinking. Plenty of oil jugs remained.

Chel risked another look at Heali’s broken form, shivered and winced, then stumbled to the wall. The line of torches was almost at the gate. He could see the glimmer of steel in their dancing light.

Armed men were about to storm the palace, the guards had fled, and still the gate stood open.

***

By the time he’d lurched his way down to the courtyard, he could hear the thud of marching feet on the dusty road outside. The guards and sentries were long gone, and Chel realized he had no idea what, if any, mechanism operated the gate. Throwing his shoulder against the gate’s heavy wood achieved little more than forcing more blood from his abdomen. He didn’t have time to figure it out; the men were moments from the palace. No palace bells rang, no guards had come running. He was on his own.

He risked a quick look through the archway. The armed column made its way up the incline, maybe two dozen figures. They sported pikes and torches, and Chel spotted axes and knives at their belts. Their clothing was dark but motley. His eyes darted to their heads.

Each man sported a shaven head, save for a tuft of hair at its crest. Chel’s eyes widened. The men were confessors.

They halted before the gate, then at a signal each raised something to his face and affixed it. Wooden masks. Chel jerked his head back, breathing hard. The masks were crude, rough-made things, nothing like the fine-wrought snarling mask the little Nort in the lowport had displayed. Confessors were disguising themselves as Norts? Nothing here added up. He had to raise the alarm.

Skirting Heali’s still-smouldering corpse, he drove his aching body toward the palace interior.

***

Chel burst through the open archway and stumbled into the western hall, which had been dressed for the festival. A few people drifted between its elegant columns as Chel looked around, wheezing, singed and bleeding. The smell of smoke carried into here as well: something was burning within the palace, but no one seemed to be doing anything about it.

The handful of nobles who had chosen – or been forced – to stay rather than flee after the Nort attack looked up in shock at Chel’s entrance, as did the skeleton crew of servants, minstrels and feast entertainers who surrounded them. Ignoring their ire, Chel made for the grand duke and the remainder of his family at the high table, where they were surrounded by half a dozen or so of his preening house guard.

‘We’re under attack,’ Chel croaked, his voice scratched and hoarse. ‘Take shelter!’

‘Who in five hells are you?’ boomed the duke. He had remained seated. Beside him sat his strutting son Count Esen, who was staring at Chel with the same expression as he might a coil of catshit, and beside him his hairy cousin, Morara.

Chel tried to bow, wincing at the pain in his side. ‘Vedren Chel of Barva, sworn to Prince Tarfel, your grace.’

All heads turned to the far end of the table, where Prince Tarfel, scrubbed pink and draped in lace, was seated, flinching at the sound of his name. He looked up at Chel, his expression shifting from surprised confusion to embarrassment.

‘Well, Merimonsun?’ bellowed the duke. ‘Is this one of yours?’

The little prince flushed from head to foot. ‘Well, as you say, your grace, in fact—’

‘Answer me, boy!’

‘Yes, yes, he’s my sworn man. First sworn. Only, really, I’ve not—’

Chel looked from one to the other, almost bursting with frustration. ‘Please, your grace! We don’t have much time – armed men are entering the palace as we speak.’

Some of the nobles started to rise, panic flushing their plump features.

The duke raised a thick eyebrow and tweaked his pointed beard. ‘Then where are the alarms, Chel of Barva? Where are the palace guard? Where is my commander to tell me of this emergency?’

Chel looked around. The commander of the palace guard was entirely absent. This did not reassure him.

Count Esen leaned forward, handsome features locked in a sneer. ‘Have this dog beaten, Father. He’s clearly drunk, and likely lost a wager to send him here. These provincial irregulars are notorious for it.’

Chel locked eyes with the young count. The noble’s eyes glittered with mocking challenge. Fuck you, Chel thought back. I’m trying to save your life, you abject halfwit.

He said nothing.

‘I can smell burning!’ a noble shouted. She looked young and earnest. ‘And there’s a bell! In the distance!’

Chel looked back to the duke, ignoring his son. ‘Please, your grace. I saw not a guard between here and the city gate – I’ve just run straight in here unchallenged. I can’t tell you where everybody is, only that soldiers are inside the palace right now. We must take refuge!’

The duke looked at him through narrowed eyes, then around the room, gauging the rising panic in the hall. Several of the nobles had begun to chatter among themselves, despite the duke calling for quiet, and members of one family, including the girl who had noticed the smell of smoke, were already making for one of the doors out of the hall.

‘Remain in your seats!’ the duke bellowed. They ignored him, and a moment later had disappeared down one of the narrow hallways that led toward the main wing of the palace. Others were rising, the servants already making for the kitchen exit, the minstrels in hot pursuit. The duke remained seated, glowering at Chel, and growled for his own men to stay put.

Chel looked to the prince, who was likewise unmoved. ‘Please, your highness, we need to—’

Screams silenced the hall. From the first passageway, a bloodied noble came stumbling back into the room, slick hands clutching at a savage rent in his midriff. ‘Norts!’ he shrieked, then collapsed. He did not move again.

At last the duke was on his feet. ‘Bar the doors! Bar every fucking door in this hall!’

***

The duke’s guards moved quickly, rushing to the doorways and slamming them shut, then dragging festival tables in front. Screams and hammering came from beyond more than one. Then they moved to the storm-shutters, hauling closed the wide windows that had offered such a charming view out over lower terraces and the western sea beyond. Few nobles remained in the hall, besides Chel and guards: the duke himself, his son Esen and nephew Morara, and Prince Tarfel. Wherever the others had fled to, Chel hoped they were safe. Somehow, he doubted it.

The duke was breathing hard, his face flushed and gleaming. ‘Norts in the palace. Shepherd’s eye, we’re doomed.’

‘Charge them, Father!’ Count Esen was at his father’s side. An ornate, slim-bladed dagger had appeared in his hand. ‘Drive these dogs back into the sea!’

The duke waved him away. ‘You, prince’s man. How many did you see?’

Chel swallowed. His side was beginning to throb. ‘At least twenty, your grace. But they weren’t coming from the sea, they came up the hill path from the city gates.’ He shot Count Esen a look of challenge. ‘And they’re not Norts at all. They’re in disguise.’

The duke shook his head. ‘Norts, partisans, it’s piss in a gale. Assassins are in my palace, murdering my guests. We’ll either have to fight our way out, or dig in here until reinforcements arrive.’

The eyes of the hall fell on the wide archway beyond Chel. There was no door, only a long hallway to the eventual doorway between them and the water gardens.

Chel turned to the duke, one hand still clasped to his side. ‘Keep yourself, the prince and your family safe. I’ll do my best to hold them off or draw them away.’

The duke stared at him, thick brows lowered. ‘You’ll need luck indeed to see off a score, Chel of Barva.’ He turned to the prince, who was cowering behind the table. ‘Quite the sworn man you have here, Merimonsun.’

The prince whimpered something. Chel met his helpless gaze, nodded, and set off.

He hurried down the hallway, trying not to limp; already his side felt like it was seizing up. The garden doors were bigger and heavier than he’d realized. His breath coming in serrated gasps, his side burning, Chel drove the one door closed, then the other. From down the hallway came the crash of silverware and the groan of wood on stone as the duke’s guards upended tables to barricade the archway.

Chel slid his edgeless half-sword between the overlarge handles, then, when the sword wobbled and flapped in its setting, he braced his body against the doors and gripped the handles tight. A slim gap remained between the solid wooden panels, and he peered through it, anxious to catch a glimpse of the column’s progress. He had the most narrowly angled of views across the area beyond the doors, a vaguely circular courtyard ringed by colonnaded walkways. He could see the edges of the flickering light of their coming attackers, hear their clanking footsteps on the smooth stone beyond.

Someone screamed. He pressed his eye to the gap, but the doors’ thickness blocked his angle. He saw blurs of dark arrows flash through the sliver of night, before a swirl of what looked like orange briar shot past his narrow viewport. The torchlight jumped and swung, the shadows on the surrounding walls flailing in concert. Further shouts and cries followed, along with the clatter of metal and whump of fearsome impact.

Chel considered opening the doors a crack. He needed reinforcements.

The doors smashed inward, hurling him backward onto the flagstones, jarring his bones and knocking the back of his head against the stone. Reeling and cursing, Chel looked back at the doors. His edgeless sword lay bent on the dark stone. Over it, framed in the doorway by torchlight and the flames that licked from the opposite windows, stood a towering silhouette, its outline blurred as its loose robes swayed around it.

Chel squinted.

His eyes fell on the long staff in the figure’s hand. His eyes widened.

‘The pig-fucker!’

The man before him was tall and broad, his former hunched shuffle discarded. Grey, lank hair hung from his head, his features indistinct in the flickering torchlight. He swung the staff around his body, thumping it into a meaty palm.

‘Come again, little man?’ His voice was deep and clear, its accent mild but vaguely northern.

He scrabbled forward, snatching the half-sword from the floor. ‘You’re the pig-fucking beggar. You have caused me nothing but trouble since you tripped me.’

The beggar shook his head. ‘Get out of my way.’ He started to move forward.

Chel pushed himself to his feet. ‘No.’

The beggar paused. Chel stood half a head shorter than him, holding the bent, blunt blade before him like a religious artefact. ‘What?’

‘I won’t get out of your way.’

The beggar looked past him to the hallway’s end, where oil lamps glimmered behind upturned tables. Irritation darkened his shadowed features. Behind him, the noise was peaking, the sounds of metal on metal and metal on flesh reaching a crescendo. Flames licked higher from the palace buildings.

The long staff swung before Chel was ready, sweeping his legs out from under him. Again he thumped back against the stones, the staff’s other end bouncing savagely from his wounded abdomen. He hissed and spat, curled double on the cold stone floor.

Muttering, the beggar set off past his prone form, tapping the staff as he went.

Chel’s hand gripped the man’s ankle, and he stumbled. He whirled around, grimy robes sending up a cloud of ash, and kicked Chel’s hand away from his foot. Chel felt his fingers bend too much.

‘Just fuck off, will you, boy?’

The beggar made it almost to the barricade when Chel landed on his back, bloodied and screaming, flailing one-handed at the beggar’s head.

‘I won’t let you hurt the prince!’

The pair stumbled forward into the piled furniture, colliding with one end of a badly balanced long table and crashing in a tumble of blood, ash and wood-splinters.

In the shuttered darkness of the hall, Chel staggered to his feet, blood streaming from a new gash in his forehead. He gripped a broken chair leg, ignoring the splinters in his palm, and swung at the beggar’s head as he rose. He missed, thumping the wood against the man’s shoulder and earning an enraged bellow in return.

The beggar scrabbled for his staff but Chel was faster, even with blood in his eyes. He landed one foot on the long wooden pole before the beggar could lift it and took another swing at the man’s reaching form. The beggar swivelled, dodging the blow then driving a fist into Chel’s midriff. A second hit followed, connecting with his slackened jaw and sending him sideways.

Chel pushed himself to his knees as the beggar snatched up his staff. ‘Stay down, boy,’ the man snarled.

Chel lunged forward, planting his shoulder into the man and driving him backward against the polished stone of the wall. The beggar’s surprise was short-lived. Thick arms wrapped around Chel’s neck and shoulders, and a moment later the beggar twisted and Chel found himself slammed into the stonework himself, his cheek grated like cheese. His right arm was jammed back against him, the joint screaming against its limits as he struggled.

‘Nine hells, boy, why won’t you lie down?’ The rough voice in his ear mixed rage with bafflement.

‘I won’t … let you … hurt the prince,’ he managed.

‘God’s dancing balls, boy!’ The arms that pinned him swung him from the wall, out to face the ruin of the feast. ‘I’m no danger to your fucking prince!’

He strained, gasping in the beggar’s relentless hold, before his eyes made sense of the scene before him. The men of the duke’s guard lay face-down at the foot of the steps to the high table, their throats cut, swords still in their scabbards. Grand Duke Reysel himself lay sprawled over the high table, his ample belly slashed and stabbed with dozens of gory wounds. Behind the table, blood-streaked knife in hand, stood Count Esen Basar. He was grinning. Around his neck hung a makeshift Nort mask.

‘We started without you, couldn’t risk …’ The count’s grin froze as he registered the beggar gripping Chel. ‘You’re not one of mine,’ he said, eyes widening. Something was rattling at one of the shutters. ‘Morara! Now! Do it now!’

‘The prince—’ Chel began, when an upturned table clattered sideways across the hall. The count’s hairy cousin Morara kicked another chair aside as he closed on a cringing royal shape in a darkened corner. Chel writhed in the beggar’s grip, struggling to free himself, before kicking at the man’s shin.

The beggar bellowed and snarled. ‘Fuck this!’ He wrenched Chel’s arm around, grinding the bone from its socket, then flung his stricken form against the wall. Chel’s battered forehead clunked against the stone and he slumped sideways, his vision blurring.

From his new vantage point on the hall floor, events took on a certain fuzzy, dreamlike quality. He saw the beggar move away from him with what seemed leisurely ease, although part of his brain was still registering the sickening damage to his shoulder and the latest blow to his head. He watched as the beggar slammed his staff against the closest storm shutter, sending it arcing open to the night beyond. Something flew in from the wide window, a man-shaped darkness, and piled straight into Count Morara. The count went from standing to screaming in a heap of bloody pain as gleaming blades rose and fell in the dancing amber light.

Chel watched this as numbness flooded from his ruined shoulder across his body. He watched Count Esen back away from the beggar, then throw his knife at him. The beggar caught it and threw it back. The flying blade carved the handsome count’s cheek wide open, and screeching, he ran. He fled like a panicked doe, fast and fleet, around the room’s edge, over Chel’s slumped form and out through the collapsed barricade before anyone could grab him.

‘Now that’s a fucking shame,’ Chel tried to say, then the blackness overcame him.

PART II

SIX

Every part of Chel’s body hurt, from the scrapes to his face through to his burning side and battered middle, down to the sour and aching muscles of his legs. His right arm was strapped across his body, bound tight, and its shoulder throbbed with menace. Hot blood pounded against his temples like a three-day hangover. He was very thirsty.

He reeked of smoke, sweat and mule, and vague memories from the previous night floated through his wobbling mind. Flames, mostly, and blood. Firm hands, rough on his battered body, dragging him. Harsh voices and pain. The counts. The grand duke. The prince. Faces and shapes, unfamiliar, large and small. A mule. Bells.

He opened his eyes.

He was in a cramped store-room of sorts, piled with sacks and crates, with odd-pitching wooden walls. The only dim light came from a grille somewhere above, along with muted shouts and the occasional distant bell. The building around them seemed unsteady, as if it were shiftly slightly in a strong breeze. Someone beside him was snoring.

It was Tarfel, nestled beside him on a bed of lumpy sacks, still in the remains of his evening finery, soot-streaked and ragged. The prince stirred and whimpered in his sleep. He had a graze on his cheek, a nascent bruise beneath it, but looked otherwise unharmed. Chel guessed that the dark spatters on the prince’s silken shirt were from elsewhere. Chel wondered if he should let the prince sleep. He looked so pale and feeble, his mousy hair flopped over his scrawny features, his fringe puffed up on every out-breath.

Chel pushed himself to his feet and looked down at his own ruined clothes. The voluminous outer layers had been ripped away, leaving him in a dark snug tunic and trousers. He lifted his shirt to find the gash at his side bandaged, the skin around the dressing clear of crusted blood. Someone had cleaned his wounds and bound them, then left him here with the prince. That had to be a good omen. He tried to wring recollections from his brain. A woman’s voice, perhaps?

He glanced around, ignoring the complaints of his grumbling neck and shoulder. A glimmer of light along the base of one wall revealed a door. Chel tried the handle with his good hand. It was resolutely locked. With a sinking feeling, he returned to the prince.

‘Your highness? Prince Tarfel?’

Tarfel stirred, then rolled over. ‘I won’t!’ the prince said with remarkable clarity, and Chel blinked. ‘I won’t go! I don’t need lessons from those horrid old men.’

He mumbled on with decreasing coherence, before finishing with a half-garbled demand for the servants to bring fresh pillows. Chel blew the hair out of his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his good hand. ‘Prince Tarfel!’

A rolling snore echoed around the store-room. Chel prodded the prince with a foot. He got no response.

Shouts echoed overhead, followed by thumps and clunks in the structure around them, then the whole building lurched into motion, rocking gently as it went. After a moment of unsteadiness, Chel collapsed onto a sack beside the prince. Of course it was a bloody boat. No smell of brine, no great lurching waves. They weren’t at sea. They must be on the river, and that had to mean Sebemir. The only questions were: where were they going, and who were they with?

Tarfel at last lifted his head, blinking in the gloom.

‘Whatever is going on?’ the prince said after a moment of dark, creaking quiet.

‘We’re on a boat, highness,’ Chel replied. ‘I think we’ve been kidnapped.’

‘Oh,’ the prince said. Then, after a moment, ‘What?’

‘Do you remember, highness? Someone tried to kill you last night, and someone else tried to kill me. Heali …’ Chel shook his head, numb at the memory. ‘The guards were gone, the Watch Commander with them, and those people in the palace weren’t Norts. Esen Basar killed his father, and I think he was trying to kill both of us. He had … he had a Nort mask, a pretend one. And … that pig-fucking beggar saved us.’ His shoulder pulsed at the memory. ‘But he ripped my arm out, and dragged us over the hills to what must be Sebemir, and now we’re locked in a cupboard on a riverboat. So I think it’s safe to assume that we’re still in trouble.’

‘Oh,’ the prince said. Then, after a moment, ‘What?’

***

For a time, Chel slept. He woke to the sound of raised voices beyond the door. The sky visible through the grille still offered the crimson streaks of sunset. It could not have been long. The prince was snoring again beside him, and Chel nudged him with his good arm.

‘Voices.’

Tarfel stirred and sat up. His bruise had darkened.

‘Who do you think they are?’ Chel said. ‘Those that took us.’

‘Oh, they’ll be mercenaries,’ the prince said with a grimace.

‘Not Rau Rel?’

‘Of course not, partisans would have murdered me immediately. You know, “death to tyrants” and all that nonsense.’ The prince shifted uncomfortably. ‘I imagine I’m to be ransomed. Question is, who would have the gall to order my abduction?’

‘Well, considering we’ve just seen Grand Duke Reysel murdered by his own son, perhaps the usual rules don’t apply right now, highness?’

The prince put one hand on his weak chin. ‘A little patricide isn’t uncommon, especially among northern Names. Notoriously emotional bunch, prone to hysteria.’

‘Morara and Esen meant to kill you, too, highness, and make it look like the Norts were responsible. Unless … Unless …’ Chel had told no one of the confessors beneath the Nort masks, but he had announced in front of Count Esen that he knew that the Norts were false. Had he doomed all those present in doing so? Was this his fault?

Tarfel ignored him. ‘Exactly, and now I’m kidnapped! Who would dare hold the kingdom to ransom?’

‘I’m not convinced that our kidnappers and your would-be assassins were working toward the same ends, highness.’ Seeing as one lot seem to have murdered the other.

‘Since Father’s Wars of Unity ended – the first time, at least – a few outposts of resistance to his rule have lingered: the southern territories, of course, the so-called free cities of the North, that grubby lot in the south-west … But none of them would risk bringing down the fury of the crown by stealing a prince.’

‘Are you sure it wasn’t the Rau Rel?’

‘Don’t be absurd. A gaggle of mud-farmers have no coin for mercenaries, even barely competent ones. Mud-farmers, dissidents, disgraced minor nobility, barely a name to their, er, name.’ He rubbed at his elbow, bruised from impact on a vegetable sack. ‘This was one of our continental rivals. They were imperial colonies when the Taneru ruled, and now witness their impudence. They shall pay for this, the moment I am freed. I shall not forget this insult.’

Chel nodded, turning away and rolling his eyes. ‘Of course, highness.’

Tarfel’s pout froze, gradually replaced by a faraway, fearful look. ‘Our bargain stands, doesn’t it? Chel? See me to safety, I’ll see you released.’

‘On my oath, highness. And if it’s really mercenaries on the other side of the door, maybe we can make them a better offer.’

Chel crept forward, feeling every ache of the damage the previous twenty-four hours had wrought on him, and pressed his ear to the door.

***

‘… cutting it fine, boss. Any finer we’d have been wafers.’ A rumbling, gentle voice. Peeved.

‘Not my choice. We had a run-in with some of our friends of the cloth.’ Chel remembered that voice: the beggar’s growl. He rubbed his good hand over his strapped shoulder and bared his teeth. So that was his kidnapper after all.

‘Ah, hells. I thought we’d be rid of the pricks at least.’

‘They had freelancers. Half a dozen horse-archers. Mawn if I’m any judge – and I am. They butchered some local militia they must have taken to be us.’

‘Twelve hells, boss, Mawn this far east?’

‘Forget it. We’re alive, and back on track. Despite enough cock-ups to leave a convent smiling.’

‘Ah, don’t be blaming me again, man!’ A reedy voice with a strong accent. Somewhere over the southern waters, Clyden most likely. ‘Told you before, friend Spider was covering while I took care of business. It’s not my fault I get tummy trouble, I’m delicate downstairs. You know, come to think it, could be a waterborne parasite from that last crossing. You ask me, it’s a wonder that we’re not laid low more frequently, given how often—’

‘Stop eating half-pickled fucking fish for breakfast, Lemon!’

‘I wasn’t the only one dropping bollocks out there, man! If Loveless could hold back on fucken every pretty thing she lays eyes on, we’d—’

Chel heard the creak and thump of the outer door.

‘We were just talking about you,’ the beggar said.

‘Nothing good, I hope,’ came the reply. ‘She’s aboard, by the way. In case you were worried.’

‘Not for a moment.’

‘No doubt. She wants a word. Or equivalent.’ The newcomer chuckled at that, for no clear reason.

Chel heard the beggar growl at the others and stomp away, then the groan of the door in his wake. All seemed quiet. He shifted, trying to catch something, when the bolt thunked and the door flew open. He pitched forward into an aching heap on the boards of the hold.

A sinewy, shaven-headed man with an aquiline nose and an abundance of earrings stood over him, a nasty grin on his face. He wore a tight, sleeveless tunic, exposing arms marked with a fearsome quantity of company tattoos. ‘Hello there, fuck-nuts. Having a good snoop, were we? Hear anything good?’ He rolled him over with the toe of his boot.

Chel said nothing for a moment, feeling his body throb beneath the pressure of the boot. Two other figures were in the low room, but he was struggling to make them out from where he was pinned. ‘Only,’ he said after a moment, his voice cracked, ‘that the little one should eat less fish.’

The bald man bellowed a laugh at that, as did the woman behind him.

‘Little one? Little? I’d wear your balls for earrings if you had any, chum,’ came the Clydish voice. ‘I’ve got a fucken name.’

Chel spread his good hand, still prone. The bald man’s foot hadn’t moved. ‘We’ve not been introduced.’

The man laughed again and removed his boot, then reached down with a muscular hand and dragged Chel upward until he was sitting against the wall. ‘Fair’s fair, now. Tell the sand-crab your names, boys and girls.’ He added under his breath, ‘Not like it’ll make much difference in the long run.’

A woman stepped forward from the gloom. She was the most striking woman Chel had ever seen: maybe a hand shorter than him, with a short shock of hair, alchemical blue, and a jawline so strong it could have been sculpted from marble. She kept one loose hand on the hilt of a short sword that hung from her hip. He had to wrench his gaze away from her, worried she’d think him simple.

‘Well, you’ve met the Spider here,’ she nodded at the bald man. Spider leered at him. Her accent was soft but distinct, something foreign but eroded to little more than uncommon vowels. ‘And the large and amiable gentleman back there is Foss.’

Behind her, a shape shifted against the wall, something Chel had at first glance taken to be a pile of sacks. He was enormous: big hands, big face, wide around the middle. He looked like a small hill. His hair was tied back in a thick bundle of dark braids, and his curly black beard boasted two streaks of grey at the corners of his chin. He offered Chel an awkward smile.

‘I go by Loveless,’ the blue-haired woman went on, ‘and this fine specimen of Clydish stock is Lemon.’

The final figure bowed her head in acknowledgement. She was small and wiry, her pale skin splashed copper with freckles. A mountain of orange hair bounced above a face that was round-eyed and squarish. She still looked irked.

Tarfel shuffled out of the store’s darkness beside and above him. ‘Why are you called Lemon?’

‘Because she’s round and bitter,’ Loveless said with a straight face.

‘I’m not fucken round!’

The laughter that filled the room met a sharp end when Spider rounded on the captives, his mirth vanished. ‘Now that’s enough about us. Who the fuck are you?’

‘I am Tarfel Merimonsun, Prince of—’

‘Oh, do shut up, princeling,’ Loveless said. ‘We know who you are, you blithering pillock. Why do you think you’re here?’

‘About that,’ Chel said, still sitting against the wall. His shoulder pulsed. He wondered if it had been Loveless who strapped him the night before. Perhaps it had been Lemon. Or maybe the other one they’d referred to?

‘The Spider asked you a question, Andriz piss-pot.’ Spider was still very close to him, and Chel could see the top of a freakish knife jutting from his belt. ‘Who are you, and what the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Vedren Chel, of Barva. I’m sworn to the prince.’

‘Chel?’ Loveless said. ‘What does that mean?’

‘I’m not sure it means anything. Do names always mean something?’

‘Oh, dear little scab-face, names mean everything.’

Lemon had wandered closer. ‘Got any nicknames? Any monikers or noms de guerre?’

‘Any what?’

‘Ah, come on, man. All our noms are de guerre these days. What do other people call you?’

Chel thought of the various names he’d been called over the last few years. ‘Chel.’

Tarfel pushed back into the conversation. He looked vexed at being excluded. ‘His sister calls him “Bear”!’

That got more sniggering. ‘You don’t look much like a fucking bear,’ Spider said. ‘More like a shit-eating rat. Are there rat-bears?’

‘I think there are in Tokemia,’ Lemon said.

Chel swung his sore head toward the prince. ‘Thank you, highness.’

Tarfel had the decency to look abashed, then a thought crossed his features before Chel’s eyes. ‘You’re not Rau Rel, are you?’ the prince said to the room.

More laughter. ‘No, princeling,’ Loveless said. ‘We’re mercenaries.’

Delight spread across Tarfel’s face. ‘See, Chel? Which company?’

The mercenaries exchanged cautious looks.

‘Black Hawk Company,’ Lemon said after a slight hesitation.

‘I’ve not heard of that one. How many strong are you? Two thousand? Five?’

Lemon looked around the room. ‘The second one.’

‘Five thousand?’

Lemon coughed. ‘Aye, well, we’re an incipient venture. Up-starting, if you will. Old hands, new pennant.’

‘Could I, by any chance, make you an offer?’ the prince said.

‘Only if you offer to fuck off back into that store and stay quiet until Kurtemir.’

Chel saw the big man, Foss, stiffen at that. He guessed that their destination was not intended to be divulged.

Spider was back at his ear, and this time the knife was in his hand. ‘The Spider notes with disappointment that you still haven’t answered his question. Why are you here, sand-crab rat-bear?’

Chel’s mouth felt suddenly dry, and he swallowed. ‘If you don’t know, I sure as snake-shit can’t tell you.’

‘He’s here because I want him here.’ No one had heard the door open this time, but there the old beggar stood, head ducked below the low lintel. He walked slowly into the hold and into the light. His rag-bundle clothes were streaked in grime: dust, soot, blood and who knew what else, his hair hanging in great ashen strings before his face. ‘Get to your duties. We’re not away clean yet.’

Foss gave him a sharp glance. ‘The river dock closed as we left it,’ he said in a low voice. ‘A sail?’

‘Not yet,’ the beggar said, then turned to the rest of the hold. ‘Was I mumbling? Get to it! Not you, Lemon – you’ll be keeping our friends company for now.’ Lemon started to protest, but he held up a hand. ‘You need the practice. The rest of you, out.’

As the other mercenaries shuffled out, the beggar marched to a water basin in the corner of the hold. He reached down and dragged his rotten clothes over his head, discarding layers of rags at his feet, then leaned forward and dunked his head. Chel watched through narrowed eyes as he splashed the water over himself, washing away coats of filth, then stood again, water cascading over his bared torso. Chel’s good hand was back on his ruined shoulder. Who was this brutal old bastard who had done him such damage?

The man before him had jet-black hair and skin the colour of sand, and was nowhere near as aged as Chel had thought. His body was sharp-edged and thickly muscled, and criss-crossed with more scarring and tattoos than Chel had ever seen on a single human. His upper arms cascaded with markings, some no doubt Free Company, but none Chel could distinguish or recognize. What kind of man could serve in that many companies anyway? An alarming collection of knives belted at the man’s waist glittered in the lantern light.

The beggar turned back to the hold, and at last Chel saw his face in the dim light. He was prow-faced, his nose a sharp, brutal beak, his dark and heavy features following in its wake. He seemed surprised that Chel and Tarfel were still there. He looked like a furious eagle.

He pinned Chel with a glare. ‘Got something you want to call me?’ Then he grinned, short and sharp. ‘Lemon! Get those fuckers locked away.’ With that, he scooped up a shirt and strode for the door.

A moment later the hold was empty, but for the disconsolate, muttering Lemon. ‘Aye, right. Practice, is it? Fuck’s sake, like I had any fucken alternative. Would he have me shit my breeches on duty? I ask you.’

Tarfel had already wandered back into the store in anticipation of being bolted away. Lemon checked over Chel’s bandages and strapping, while he lay piled where Spider had left him.

‘The tall one,’ Chel said. ‘With the nose. He’s the brains?’

‘The brains? Maybe the spleen, or wherever bile comes from. Right, you’ll live. Now get yourself back in there, wee bear, or ancestors-take-me I’ll fuck you right up with a hammer.’

Chel looked up at her. Buried in the matted fur and leather of Lemon’s outfit was an array of ironmongery, small hammers, axes and picks. ‘Are you a miner?’

She half smiled. ‘Once, maybe. In a sense.’

‘It doesn’t work, you know.’ It was Tarfel, from within the store’s gloom. ‘Your name, I mean.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘Lemons. They’re not bitter, they’re sour. That’s different.’

‘You’re telling fucken me! I’ve been telling those half-wits forever! Oh, but it’s all “Ah Lemon, what’s the difference, you’re a shite-heap either way”.’

Chel sensed an opening. Lemon seemed grateful to have someone to talk to. ‘They don’t sound like they’re very nice to you.’

Lemon frowned. ‘Are you joking? They’re the best bunch of bastards I ever rode with. Not that they know the value of an education, mind.’

‘You’re educated?’

‘I may not have attended a fancy Hacademy, but knowledge is power, wee bear, as the powerful know. Like me.’ She jabbed a thumb at herself. ‘For example, these folk we saw earlier today.’

‘Who? The prince and I didn’t really—’

‘Hush and listen, this could save your life some day.’

‘Oh?’

‘Aye, “oh”. See, thing is, most people, they don’t get hit by arrows much.’

‘That so?’

‘Indeedy. So, if and when they do, they don’t know what to do. They think that’s it, and they should just keel over, curl up their toes, back to the ancestors.’

‘Whereas …?’

‘Ah, you can fight on with an arrow in you! You can fight on with a dozen, like a fucken pin-cushion. I knew a fella, a Clydish man, mark you, not like one of you northern piss-sheets, fought on with sixteen arrows, two spears and a sword in him. Carried on for hours, cracking heads and ripping limbs.’

‘And he lived?’

‘Well, no, but he didn’t lie down and die at the first blow, did he?’

‘So what’s the big secret? If you’re hit by an arrow, don’t die?’

‘Aye. That’s the secret: don’t die. Now budge your skinny arse, before I help you along.’ She gave a meaningful wave with a fat-headed hammer, and Chel began to drag himself back into the store. The door closed behind them, and Lemon bolted it.

‘Hey, Lemon?’

‘What do you want, bugger-bear?’

‘What about the big guy? He got any names?’

‘Oh, Rennic? Hundreds. More than the rest of us combined.’

‘And what do you call him?’

‘We call him boss.’

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