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  He made his way to the kitchen where she had spent most of her time, the floor tiles liberally adorned with broken crockery, the table where she prepared the meagre meals they shared tipped over and lacking a leg.

  “Protect me?” she had laughed when he explained his reason for coming here every night. Her eyes went to the short sword at his belt, twinkling a little. “I’m sorry, but that really doesn’t suit you.”

  “No,” he admitted. “It never did. But, thanks to your brother, I do know how to use it.”

  In truth, he always knew she needed little protection. Those few Faithful sufficiently deluded to imagine her some kind of substitute for her brother were sent away with implacable and waspish refusal, whilst the King never had reason to suspect her loyalty. She worked every day under Master Benril’s less-than-pleasant tutelage and spent her nights in this empty house, her charcoal and silverpoint crafting wonders from the parchment she starved herself to buy. It was parchment that bought her toleration, for he always had an ample supply and would bring some when he came, content to sit and watch as she worked, a bottle of Wolf’s Blood never far away despite her obvious disapproval.

  “Every word she speaks regarding her brother and her father is to be recorded,” Malcius had told him that day he had been called to the palace, ostensibly to receive the queen’s endorsement of his latest collection of poems, but in reality to press him to a new duty. Malcius’s face had been grave as they walked together in the gardens, a king forced to reluctant necessity. “The identity of any and all visitors also. Lord Vaelin’s shadow was ever far too long, Alucius. Best if she’s not caught in it, don’t you think?”

  He thought he was making me a spy, Alucius mused, glancing at the wall where she had pinned her sketches, bare now, save for the outline of parchment on whitewash. Little knowing the Meldeneans had got there first. Poor old Malcius, Janus would have known in an instant.

  He climbed the creaking and partly missing stairs to the upper floor, Twenty-Seven following, hopping the gaps with nimble swiftness. He paused only a little at the door to Alornis’s room, as he had done at the end of many a drunken night, just to catch the soft whisper of her breath as she slept. Why did I never tell her? he wondered. Words spoken so easily to so many others, but I could never say them to her, the one time they would have been true.

  The room where he had slept was mostly intact, his narrow bed still sitting against the wall complete with mattress, though the sheets were gone. He pulled it away from the wall and knelt, dislodging a fragment of plaster to reveal a small hiding place, missed by the Volarians who had come looting. He sighed in relief at finding the narrow leather bundle intact.

  “Doesn’t seem much does it?” he said to Twenty-Seven, placing the bundle on the bed and undoing the ties, revealing a small dagger. The handle was undecorated whalebone and the sheath plain leather. He drew it, baring a well-made blade six inches long. “But,” he went on, “the man who gave it to me said the barest touch is enough to kill. Not instantly, but the poison on the blade will ensure a swift death.” He met the slave’s eyes, something he rarely did since there was nothing there to see. “What would you do if I tried to stab you with this? Kill me? I doubt it. Disarm me more likely, break my wrist perhaps. Or would you, I wonder, simply stand there and die, sure in the knowledge that I’ll find another just like you at my side before the day’s out?”

  Twenty-Seven stared at him and said nothing.

  “Don’t worry, my good friend.” Alucius returned the dagger to its sheath and pushed it into his belt. “It’s not for you. Besides, I find I’ve grown too fond of your company. Your conversation being such a delight.”

  He pushed the bed against the wall and settled onto it, lying back with his hands behind his head. “How many battles have you seen? Ten, twenty, a hundred? I was in a battle once, well three times if you count the Bloody Hill and Marbellis, though my part was hardly worthy of note. No, my one true battle was in the Usurper’s Revolt, the High Keep. The first great victory in the illustrious career of our soon?to?be deliverer. There are songs about it, awful and dreadfully inaccurate, but I’m in them, most of them anyway. Alucius the poet-warrior, come to avenge his brother, ‘his sword like lightning from a righteous storm.’”

  He fell silent for a moment, remembering. It was always the smell and the sound he recalled best, much more vivid in his mind than the images, which were just a red-tinged jumble. No, it was the sound of horses screaming, the stink of sweat, the odd crunch steel makes when it pierces flesh, voices begging their god for deliverance, and shit … the acrid, stinging perfume of his own shit.

  “I made him teach me,” he told Twenty-Seven. “On the march. Every night we’d practice. I got better, good enough to fool myself I had some kind of chance, some hope of surviving what was coming. I knew I was wrong when Malcius ordered the charge. Knew in an instant I was no warrior, no avenging soul, just a scared boy with shit in his trews. I remember screaming, I suppose the others thought it a war cry, but it was just fear. When we charged the gate they sought to bar our entry with their bodies, linking arms, shouting prayers to their god. When we struck home the force of it sent me flying. I tried to get up but there were so many bodies pressing me down, I screamed and I begged but no one pulled me free, then something hard came down on my head.”

  He remembered the kindly sister who had nursed him back to health, later destined to find herself in the Blackhold for heresy and treason, all because she spoke against the war. He remembered his father’s face the day he returned to the mansion, the sigh of relief followed by a curt order: “You will not venture again from this house without my consent.” He had nodded meekly, handed back Linden’s sword, and gone to his room where he had stayed for the best part of a year.

  “I have always been a coward, you see,” he said. “And the more I learn of this world I find it the only sensible course in life, for the most part. At Marbellis I stood and watched a city burn, then watched my father hang a hundred men for burning it. I stayed at his side throughout the siege, even when he led a charge to seal a breach in the defences. Didn’t shit myself that time, though I was very drunk. When the walls fell I ran when he ran. Darnel was there, oddly enough, just as terrified as the rest of us. I remember he had to fight his own men to get to the ship that took us to safety, and when we sailed away I looked at his face and knew him to be every bit the coward I am.”

  He turned to Twenty-Seven, beckoning him closer and speaking softly. “I need you to remember something.”

  He spoke for a short time, the words unrehearsed but flowing well. When he was finished he ordered Twenty-Seven to repeat them, the slave doing so in a disconcertingly precise imitation of Alucius’s voice. Is my accent really that mannered? he wondered when the slave fell silent.

  “Very good,” he said, then gave careful instruction regarding when and to whom his words were to be repeated. “I’ll sleep now,” he told Twenty-Seven. “Wake me by the eighth bell, if you would.”

  He was gratified to find Darnel on horseback at the docks, his few remaining knights clustered about him on foot. The Fief Lord was ever keen to tower above those around him and insisted on riding whenever he ventured from the palace. A full battalion of Free Swords was lined up along the wharf behind Mirvek, waiting to greet whatever luminaries approached on the huge warship now cresting the horizon. Alucius knew from his father the Volarian supply convoys had been subject to frequent attack in recent weeks, the Meldeneans no doubt happy to find piracy as profitable an endeavour in war as in peace. However, a ship possessing the size and power of the monster sailing towards them could surely expect to remain immune from their attentions.

  Alucius had spent the morning in expectation of some great commotion, men rushing to man his father’s carefully laid positions as Lyrna’s army appeared on the southern plain. But there had been no alarm, no warning trumpets to pierce the morning air and no armies to besmirch the surrounding country.

  If she could have
come, she would, he knew. If only to hang me. He had been keen to avoid her since the war, her scrutiny being ever so acute, their meetings limited to the occasional palace function. There had been times when she sent messengers requesting his attendance at luncheon but he had always demurred, fearing what her insight might tell her. I know what you did, Lyrna.

  It had begun the day he returned from Marbellis and she came to the docks to greet the feeble remnants of her father’s once-great army. Her smile perfect; grave, encouraging, free of judgement or reproach. But he saw it, just for an instant as she watched a Realm Guard with a missing leg being carried from the ship. Guilt.

  It had all tumbled into place later, an instantaneous realisation when he learned their new king was safely returned to the Realm and Vaelin taken by the Alpirans. He had been at the palace when Malcius, pale-eyed and gaunt beneath his beard, placed the crown upon his head and the assembled nobles bowed … and Lyrna’s face betrayed the same flicker of expression he had seen that day at the docks.

  I know what you did.

  He had always marvelled at how quickly the Meldeneans found him. Drink, women and the occasional flurry of poetry had been his chief distractions in the two years since Marbellis, liquor making him somewhat incautious with his words, words that some might take as sedition. The Meldenean had sat down next to him one night in his favourite wineshop, so favoured because the first cup was always free for veterans, a small expense since they were so few in number. The Meldenean wore the garb of a sailor, as befitted his nationality, speaking initially in coarse, uncultured tones. He bought wine for Alucius, professing himself ignorant of letters upon hearing his occupation, but asked many questions about the war. He came back the following night, buying less wine but asking more questions, and the night after that. With every meeting Alucius noted his accent was not so coarse as before, and his questions more searching, especially regarding the King and his sister.

  “They’re traitors,” Alucius had said, a little too loud from the way the man winced and gestured for him to speak softer. “The whole family,” he went on, knowing he was far too drunk and not caring. “Janus sent my brother to die in the Martishe, had my father slaughter thousands for nothing. Abandoned my friend to the Alpirans. She did that, not Janus. It was her.”

  The Meldenean gave a slow nod. “We know,” he said. “But we’d like to know more.”

  They offered him money, which he refused, proud of himself for being sober when he did so. “Just tell me what you want.”

  Spying, he discovered, was an absurdly easy occupation. Few people ever see more than they wish to, he decided, having accepted an invitation to read poetry to a gaggle of merchants’ wives, rich in gossip and fat with information regarding the new trade routes their husbands had been obliged to forge since the war. They saw a handsome young poet, tragic hero of a tragic war, wilted obligingly at his verse and proved very helpful when he asked for likely investment opportunities. “For my father, you understand. He needs something to occupy him these days. Peacetime is such a trial for a military man.”

  He would go to inns frequented by the Realm Guard, finding welcome among the veterans who had been at Linesh with Vaelin, embittered cynics to a man and talkative when sufficiently full of ale. He made it known he was available for commissions, penning love poems for smitten young nobles and eulogies for the funerals of rich men, gaining access to the wealthy and the powerful in the process. His Meldenean contact was happy with his work and provided the pigeons to speed delivery of his intelligence, and the dagger should he ever face discovery.

  “I’m not an assassin,” Alucius told him, eyeing the dagger with distaste.

  “It’s for you,” the Meldenean told him with a grin before walking from the wineshop. Alucius never saw him again. The following week came the summons from the King and his order to spy on Alornis, after which he found his enthusiasm for his new occupation began to wane. Being with her dimmed his anger, made the sting of betrayal less acute. He continued to gather information, mostly trade gossip of little value, sending the birds off and knowing, should he include his notice of retirement among the messages, the Meldeneans were more likely to offer a blade than a pension. As it turned out, the Volarians made such worries redundant.

  Alucius stood with Twenty-Seven some ten yards behind his father, who had positioned himself outside Darnel’s coterie of sycophant knights. “Impressive beast, isn’t it?” he asked, moving to stand on his father’s left.

  Lakrhil Al Hestian nodded as the ship came closer, Alucius seeing two smaller vessels following in its broad wake. “Apparently it’s the sister ship to their Stormspite,” his father said. “I forget the name. Mirvek thinks it a sign of the Ruling Council’s continued faith in his command, bringing more reinforcements than expected.”

  Alucius remembered the Stormspite as a brooding monster that had sat in the harbour for days until General Tokrev sailed it off to Alltor, never to return. Picking out details as its sister came closer, he was struck by the similarity between them; even for ships built to the same pattern the resemblance was striking, though the Volarians were a people greatly fond of uniformity.

  “Are your preparations complete?” he asked. “All made ready to bleed Lord Vaelin’s army white?”

  “Hardly,” his father grunted. “The Free Swords are lazy when not set to pillaging, and the Varitai little use in labour. Give them a shovel and they just stare at it. Still, it seems we’ll shortly have more hands to complete the task.”

  “Could you have held Marbellis? If you had had this much to work with?”

  Lakrhil turned to him with a quizzical expression; it was an unspoken understanding that Marbellis was a subject neither of them wanted to discuss. “No,” he said. There must have been something in Alucius’s expression, some vestige of his intent, for he leaned closer, speaking softly. “You don’t need to be here, Alucius. And you’ve yet to produce a single useful word from the Aspects.” His eyes flicked to Darnel. “I can’t protect you forever.”

  Alucius’s gaze went to his stolen house, finding the balcony where he ate breakfast and counted the ships every morning. She was there as requested, a small, plump figure leaning on the balustrade, her gaze fixed on Darnel, or rather Darnel’s horse. “It’s all right,” Alucius told his father. “You won’t have to.”

  Darnel’s horse gave a loud snort, jerking and shaking its head. “Easy now,” the Fief Lord said, smoothing his hand over its neck. Alucius was relieved to see Darnel wore no armour today, just finely tailored silks and a long cloak. He reached for the dagger at the small of his back, concealed beneath his coat, his eyes intent on Darnel’s horse. It snorted again, giving a loud whinny, eyes widening into panicked mania as it reared, too sudden for Darnel to grab a tighter hold of the reins, pitching him from the saddle. Free of its rider the great warhorse wheeled around, lashing out with its hooves at the nearest of Darnel’s knights, the iron shoes ringing loud on the man’s breastplate as they sent him sprawling. The animal pivoted on its forelegs, vicious hind hooves scattering the remaining knights as Darnel back-pedalled on the ground, eyes wide in panic. The horse stopped its assault on the knights and turned again, wild eyes fixing on Twenty-Seven before charging with a shrill scream. The slave-elite’s expression remained as calm as ever as he attempted to dive clear of the horse’s path, proving fractionally too slow as the animal’s flank collided with his shoulder, spinning him to the ground, slack and senseless.

  Alucius drew the dagger from its sheath and sprinted towards Darnel, now climbing to his feet, well clear of any protection. Only use the shortest possible thrust, Vaelin had told him, all those years ago when he fancied himself a hero. It’s the fast blade that draws blood.

  Some battle-won instinct must have sounded in Darnel’s mind, for he turned just as Alucius thrust towards his back, the blade piercing his cloak and becoming entangled in the folds. Darnel snarled, bringing his fist around to smash at Alucius’s face. He ducked under it, tearing the da
gger free of the cloak and lunging for Darnel’s arm, knowing even the slightest cut would be enough. The Fief Lord sidestepped, his sword coming free of its scabbard in a blur. Alucius felt a great stinging burn flare across his chest, the shock of it sending him to his knees, Darnel looming above him, sword drawn back. His expression was fiercely triumphant, smile broad in anticipation of the kill. “You think to kill me, little poet?” he laughed.

  “No,” Alucius replied, feeling blood bathing his chest as he glanced over Darnel’s shoulder. “But I expect he will.”

  Darnel whirled but too late. Lakrhil Al Hestian speared the Fief Lord through the neck with the spike protruding from his right sleeve. Darnel took some seconds to die, spitting blood and weeping as he hung from the spike, eyes bulging and lips babbling gibberish before he finally slumped to the wharf. Alucius still thought it hadn’t taken long enough.

  A cold hand seemed to enfold him on all sides as he collapsed, feeling his father catch him, smiling up at his ice-white face. “The Aspects,” he said. “Get to the Blackhold…”

  “Alucius!” His father shook him, his voice a rage-filled scream. “ALUCIUS!”

  Alucius was aware of a great clamour somewhere, though his vision was too dim to make out the source, men yelling in alarm and summoning memories of the High Keep. He found it strange that the sky above his father’s head seemed to be filled with black streaks, like the arrows at the Bloody Hill, another unwelcome memory. He closed his eyes, pushing it all away and filling his mind with Alornis’s face as the last of his blood seeped away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Frentis

  “Winterfall Eve,” Brother Lernial said in his perennially dull voice. He had said almost nothing since arriving with the Eorhil woman the day before, slumping in front of a fire and staring at the flames for hours. Insha ka Forna stayed at his side, her gaze continually drawn in expectation.