Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017

Copyright © Anna Stephens 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Anna Stephens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this bookis 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.

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Source ISBN: 9780008215897

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008215910

Version: 2018-01-29

Dedication

For my Uncles, David and Graham.

I wish you could have seen this.

Map

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Map

Dedication

Rillirin

Corvus

Crys

Durdil

Dom

The Blessed One

Crys

Rillirin

Galtas

Dom

Rillirin

Corvus

Dom

Mace

Crys

Tara

Galtas

The Blessed One

Durdil

Dom

Crys

Rillirin

Galtas

Crys

Gilda

Mace

Corvus

Crys

Galtas

Dom

Rillirin

Tara

Dom

Rillirin

Corvus

Dom

Gilda

Crys

Durdil

The Blessed One

Mace

Rillirin

Dom

Durdil

Galtas

Durdil

Tara

Crys

Corvus

Durdil

Dom

Crys

Gilda

Crys

Rillirin

Mace

Galtas

Durdil

The Blessed One

Dom

Tara

Rillirin

Dom

Mace

Galtas

Tara

Gilda

Mace

Rillirin

Tara

Mace

Corvus

Dom

Crys

Dom

Crys

Durdil

Dom

The Blessed One

Galtas

Gilda

Rillirin

Durdil

Corvus

Gilda

Dom

Galtas

Crys

Dom

Crys

Mace

Durdil

Mace

Tara

Rillirin

Mace

Dom

Crys

Rillirin

Mace

Tara

Durdil

Crys

Rillirin

Corvus

Epilogue: Dom

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

RILLIRIN
Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Cave-temple, Eagle Height, Gilgoras Mountains

Rillirin stood at the back with the other slaves, all huddled in a tight knot like a withered fist. Word had been sent days before, summoning all the Mireces’ war chiefs from the villages along the Sky Path, drawing them to the capital to hear the Red Gods’ Blessed One. Whatever They had told her, it was important enough to bring the war chiefs to Eagle Height as winter set in.

Rillirin glanced towards the Blessed One with an involuntary curl of the lip, and then lowered her head fast. The high priestess of the Dark Lady and Gosfath, God of Blood, spiritual leader of the Mireces, was a remote figure, lit and then hidden by the guttering torches, her blue robe dark as smoke in the gloom, face as closed and beautiful as Mount Gil, rearing harsh and impassable above Eagle Height.

The altar was stained black and the temple reeked of old blood. Most of the Blessed One’s sermons ended with sacrifice, with a slave writhing on the altar stone. Rillirin shrank in on herself, staring at the floor between her boots. She had no desire to be that slave.

‘Come first moon we will enter the nine hundred and ninety-fifth year of our exile,’ the Blessed One said, her voice hard as she paced like a mountain cat before the congregation. King Liris stood at the front among his war chiefs, but she pitched her voice to the back of the temple so it bounced among the stalagtites hanging like stone spears above their heads. All would hear her this night.

‘Almost a millennium since we and our mighty gods were cast from the land of Gilgoras with its warm and bountiful countries to scratch a living up here in the ice and rock. Driven from Rilpor, harried from Listre, exiled from Krike.’ Cold eyes swept the warriors and war chiefs thronging at her feet as she listed the countries where the Red Gods had once held sway. ‘And what have you accomplished in all those years?’ Her voice cracked like a whip and the men flinched, hunching lower beneath wrath as sudden as a late spring storm.

‘Nothing,’ the Blessed One spat. ‘Petty raids, stolen livestock, stolen wheat. A few Wolves dead. Pathetic.’ Her teeth clicked together as she bit off the word. She raised her left hand and extended her index finger. It commanded a rustle of fear from Mireces and slave alike as she let it point first here, then there. She didn’t look where she gestured, as though it wasn’t attached to her, or as though it was driven by a will other than hers, a will divine.

The choosing finger. The death finger. How many times had Rillirin felt the brush of its sentience across her nerve endings, wondering if this, now, was the time of her death? It suddenly stilled, its tip pointing straight at her, and Rillirin’s vision contracted to its point and her breath caught in her throat. Stomach cramping, eyes watering, she forced herself to look past the finger into the Blessed One’s eyes, and saw the calculation there.

She wouldn’t dare. Liris would never allow it. Would he?

The finger moved on.

‘You disagree?’ the Blessed One demanded when Liris dared to look up. Challenge heated her eyes, tilted her chin up, and the Mireces king met her gaze for less than a second. ‘No, you would not. You cannot. Each year you swear your oaths to the Red Gods, sanctified in your own blood, promising Them glory and a return to the warm plains, swearing you will restore Them to Their rightful dominion over all the souls within Gilgoras. And each year you fail.’

Her voice dropped to a silky whisper. ‘And so the gods have chosen the instrument of Their return.’

Liris was sweating. ‘You have seen this?’ he managed.

‘The Dark Lady Herself has told me,’ the Blessed One confirmed, her smile small and cruel. ‘There are those in Rilpor who are of more use to Her than any man here.’ She swept her finger across the crowd and they leant away from it. ‘There are those in Rilpor who hate and fear us, and yet who will do more for our cause than you.’

She accompanied the words with the finger, and for a second it pointed at Liris’s heart. The threat was clear and men slid away from him as though he were plagued. The sacred blue of their shirts was dull under the temple’s torches, blackening with fear-sweat at their proximity to death.

Rillirin felt a bubble of shock and then sickening fear. What would happen to her when Liris’s tenuous protection was gone? I’ll be unclaimed. She hated Liris, despised him with everything in her, yet he kept her safe from the depradations of the other men. Kept her for himself.

Liris threw back his shoulders and drew himself up to meet his fate, but then the finger jerked on amid a growing babble of noise. Rillirin breathed out, relieved and disgusted with that relief in equal measure.

The Blessed One hissed and drew all eyes back to her. ‘Our gods are trapped on the borders of Gilgoras like us, but They weave Their holy work inside its bounds nonetheless. With the help of my high priest, Gull, who lies hidden in the very heart of Rilpor, They draw one to Them who can finally see Their desires fulfilled.’ She bared her teeth. ‘Know this now, and rejoice in the knowing. The gods’ plans are revealed to me, and soon enough to you. Begin your preparations and make them good. Come the spring, we do not raid. Come spring, we conquer. And by midsummer, we will have victory not only over Rilpor but over their so-called Gods of Light as well.’

She raised both arms to the temple roof. ‘The veil can only be broken by blood: lakes and rivers of blood. We will shed it all if it will return our gods to Gilgoras. Our blood and heathen blood, spilt together, mixed together, to sanctify the ground and make it worthy for Their holy presence. We shall have victory, you and I,’ she shouted, ‘and the Red Gods, the true gods, will be well pleased.’

Rillirin pushed forward, trying to see Liris’s face, to see whether he knew as much as the Blessed One appeared to. They’re going to war against Rilpor? They’ll be slaughtered. The shadows in the trees will do for them, and the West Rank. Her mouth moved in something that might have been a smile if she could remember what one felt like.

Amid the cheers and cries of exaltation to the gods, the Blessed One dropped her arms to her sides, before the left rose once more, dragged by that weaving, ever-moving finger.

‘You.’ It was a single word whispered amid the tumult, but the silence fell faster than a stone. All eyes looked where she pointed, not to the slaves, but to the warriors and women of the Mireces, born and raised within the gods’ bloody embrace. ‘The Dark Lady demands Mireces blood in return for Mireces failure. She demands a promise that we will stand with our new ally to the gods’ glory, that we will bleed and die for Their return. A promise that we – that you – will not fail Them again. The gods choose you. Come and meet them.’

Liris’s queen rose to her feet, her lips pulled back. She threaded her way through the crowd with small, stumbling steps, breath echoing harsh in the orange light. Rillirin watched her, her guts swamping with relief. You poor bitch, she thought, and then tried to burn out the pity with hate. Rillirin rubbed her stinging eyes, swallowing nausea. Bana was a Mireces and she deserved to die. They all did. Every one of them, starting with Liris and with the Blessed One next. She was pleased Bana was being sacrificed. Pleased.

‘Your will, Blessed One,’ Liris said as the mother of his children reached the altar and looked back at him, for a kind word or a demand for her release, perhaps. Her face rippled when she received neither. The Blessed One smiled and, tearing the woman’s dress down the front, bent her back over the altar stone; the queen’s soft, wrinkled belly undulated as she panted.

‘My feet are on the Path,’ Bana shrieked, and the Blessed One’s knife flashed gold as it drove into her stomach.

Gods take your soul to Their care, Rillirin thought despite herself, her fists clenched at the screams. Yet she didn’t know to which gods she prayed any more, those of Blood or of Light. None of Them did anything to help her. She looked away as the Blessed One dragged the knife sideways and opened Bana’s belly, her other hand pressing on her chest to keep her still. Bana’s screams echoed and re-echoed and the Mireces fell to their knees in adulation.

The slaves knelt too, and one pulled Rillirin down to the stone. ‘Are you stupid?’ he hissed. ‘Kneel or die.’ Rillirin knelt.

Liris’s face was stony and closed as Bana shrieked out the last moments of her life. He stood as soon as it was done and the Blessed One had completed the prayer of thanks. The blood was still running and his war chiefs still knelt in prayer when he shouldered his way through his warriors. Before Rillirin could get away, he reached out a sweaty paw and grabbed her by the hair.

No no no no no no.

‘Come on, fox-bitch,’ he snarled in her ear, hauling her towards the exit. The slaves melted from their path like snow in spring, eyes blank or calculating – her perceived power was something many of them coveted – and the temple rang with Liris’s rasping, angry breath, the pat-pat-pat of blood, Rillirin’s muffled whimpers.

Rillirin stumbled up the slick stone steps from the temple, bouncing from the walls in Liris’s wake, and when they reached the top Liris shook her until she squealed. He cuffed her face and dragged her through the longhouse and into the king’s room, threw her at the bed and dropped the bar across the door.

‘Lord, you must not,’ Rillirin pleaded, on her knees, one hand pressed to her stinging scalp. ‘The Blessed One said that you should not touch me, not for three more days. I’m still sick.’

Liris flung his bearskin on to the floor and brayed a laugh. ‘You’ve had a pennyroyal tea to flush my seed from your belly because you don’t deserve a child of mine. You’re a slave, not a consort, and you’ll do as you’re told.’

‘Honoured, please,’ Rillirin tried as he advanced. She scrabbled away on hands and knees, the weakness a blanket slowing her reactions. He can’t. Bana’s still warm, he couldn’t want – Liris pulled her to her feet by one arm and dragged up her skirts, blunt fingers hard against her thigh. The stench of his breath caught at the back of her throat. It was clear that he did want.

Rillirin squirmed and thrashed, but he was too big, too strong. Always had been. ‘No,’ she screamed in his face. ‘No.’

Liris jolted back in surprise, piggy eyes narrow. His breath sucked in on a whoop of outrage, and Rillirin clenched her jaw and screwed up her eyes. Stupid. Stupid!

She was convinced the punch had broken her jaw, and the impact with the stone floor sent shards of white pain through her shoulder. Black stars danced in her vision. Blood flooded her mouth and her shoulder was numb with sick, hot agony.

Liris picked her up and slammed her into the wall, one hand around her lower jaw, grinding the back of her head into the wood. ‘Bitch,’ he breathed. ‘While I normally enjoy our little games, I’m not in the mood for your spite tonight. You do not answer me back, you hear? You. Do. Not. Answer. Back.’ Each word punctuated by a crack of her skull on the wall. ‘You live because I will it, and you will die when I decide. Tonight, maybe, if you don’t please me. Or on the altar to ensure our success in the war to come. Or after I give you to the war chiefs for sport. When I choose, understand? You belong to me. Now keep your fucking tongue behind your teeth and unclench those thighs. I’ve a need.’

The tears were coming and Rillirin willed them not to fall, glaring her soul-eating hatred at him instead. A wild, suicidal courage flooded her. ‘Fuck you,’ she wheezed.

Liris’s mouth popped open and then he leant back to laugh, huge wobbling gasps of mirth. ‘I’ll break you, fox-bitch,’ he promised and his free hand dragged at her skirts again.

Rillirin worked her fingers around the knife hilt digging into her side, slid it out of Liris’s belt even as he forced her legs apart, and jammed it in the side of his neck. He looked at her in disbelief, hands falling slack, and Rillirin pumped her arm, the blade chewing through the fatty flesh and widening the hole in his neck.

Blood sprayed over her hand, her arm, her face and neck and chest, great warm lapping waves of it washing into the room until his knees buckled and he went down. She went with him, knife stabbing again and again, long past need, long past his last bubbling breath, until his face and neck and torso were a mass of gore and torn flesh.

Red with blood, red as vengeance, Rillirin spat on his corpse and waited for dark.

CORVUS
Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Longhouse, Eagle Height, Gilgoras Mountains

Corvus, war chief of Crow Crag, paced below the dais. Lady Lanta, the Blessed One and the Voice of the Gods, sat in regal splendour beside the empty throne. The other war chiefs fidgeted on their stools and benches.

The Blessed One would not reveal more of the gods’ plan until the king was present, and the king was not one for stirring himself unnecessarily. Still, the sun was high even this late in the year and Corvus would bet Lanta was as impatient as he. A full-scale invasion with only months to plan; an ally within Rilpor they could use to their advantage. The idea warmed his belly. Invasion. Conquest. A chance for glory such as there’d never been, for Corvus to put his name, and Crow Crag’s, on the lips of every Mireces and Rilporian alive. And yet Liris lounged in his stinking pit like an animal.

The other end of the longhouse was crowded with warriors, complaining bitterly about the storm that had blown in. Slaves hunched and scurried to their chores, and Corvus’s lip curled in disgust as an old man tripped and spilt his tray of bowls across the floor. Dogs lunged for the scraps, fighting around the man’s feet and legs, scrabbling through the ragged furs piled up to keep off the chill.

Corvus kept pacing, fists clenched behind his back and face schooled to patience. He glanced at Lanta, sitting remote and inaccessible as the very mountains, and fought the urge to shake the information out of her, to slap it from her. The Blessed One is not as other women, he reminded himself. She’ll wind my guts out on a stick if I touch her. Despite his own warning, he glanced at her with a mixture of irritation and hunger. She didn’t deign to meet his eyes.

‘The gods wait for no man. Not even a king.’ Lanta’s voice was honey and poison and Corvus noted how the other war chiefs froze at its sound. ‘There is much to discuss.’

Edwin, Liris’s second, jumped up. ‘I’ll go, Blessed One,’ he said and scuttled down the longhouse to the king’s quarters at the end, his relief palpable. They all wanted to settle this and get out from under the Blessed One’s eye. Bana’s death hung in the air like the scent of blood.

Corvus had completed two more circuits below the dais before the yelling began. By the time the others had struggled out of their chairs, he was at Lanta’s side with drawn sword, ready to defend her.

‘The king,’ Edwin screeched as he shoved back into the longhouse. His hands were bloody. ‘The king has been murdered. Liris is dead!’

For a moment Lanta’s calm cracked, and Corvus would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been looking at her instead of Edwin squawking like a chicken on the block. But then the mask was firmly back in place. Corvus’s sword tip drooped on to the dais as Edwin’s words sank in. Corvus opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at the men gathered like a gaggle of frightened children below him, backs to the dais, eyes on the far door. They were bursting with questions for Edwin, but none seemed keen to approach him.

Lanta picked up her skirts and strode the length of the longhouse, bursting through the door to the king’s quarters and slamming it behind her before anyone could see. Edwin stood outside it, staring at his hands in disbelief.

Liris is dead and the Blessed One is with the body. Eagle Height has no king. Eagle Height is vulnerable.

‘Gosfath, God of Blood, Dark Lady of death, I thank you,’ Corvus whispered. ‘I swear to be worthy of this chance you have given me. All I do is in your honour.’ One of the chiefs turned at the sound of his voice, his mouth an O of curiosity.

‘My feet are on the Path,’ Corvus said, completing the prayer. He took three steps forward, raised his sword, and started killing. The king was dead. Long live the king.

CRYS
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
North Harbour docks, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘I will have you know I am the most trustworthy man in Rilporin. No, not just in the capital, in all of Rilpor. And these cards are brand new, picked up from a shop in the merchants’ quarter a mere hour ago. Examine them, gentlemen, hold them, look closely. Not marked, not raised, even colouring, even weight. Now, shall we play? A flagon, wench.’

Crys clicked his fingers at the pretty girl hovering in his eyeline and plastered a wide grin across his face. He’d been watching this pair for the last hour, and now they were just drunk enough to be clay in his hands.

The men watched suspiciously as he cut and shuffled the cards, fingers blurring, and dealt them with a neat flick of the wrist only slightly marred by the fact the cards stuck in or skittered over the spilt beer. They’d be ruined, but he’d just buy more. What was the point in gambling if he didn’t spend the money he won? He slapped the remains of the deck into the middle of the table, scooped up his cards, examined them, swallowed ale to hide his glee and breathed thanks to the Fox God, the Trickster, patron of gamblers, thieves and soldiers. He was all three, on and off.

The faces of his fellow players were so wooden Crys could have carved his name into them, but the man to his left was tapping his foot on the floor. Man to his right? No obvious tell. No, wait, spinning the brass ring on his thumb. Excellent, he’d dealt the cards right.

‘Five, no, six knights.’ Crys opened the betting and tinkled the coppers next to the deck. He smiled and drank.

‘Six from me,’ Foot-tapper said.

Ring-spinner matched him. ‘And from me.’

Crys made a show of looking at his cards again, squinting at the table and his opponents. ‘Um, two more.’ He added to the pile with a show of bravado that sucked them right in. He leant back in his chair and scratched the stubble on his cheek, fingernails rasping. He’d better shave before tomorrow’s meeting. He’d better win enough to buy a razor.

‘So, you fresh in from a Rank, Captain? The West, perhaps?’ Foot-tapper asked.

Crys hid a grimace behind his cup: always the West. City-folk were obsessed with the West, with tales of Mireces and Watchers and border skirmishes. The crazy Wolves – civilians no less – were Watchers who took up arms to guard the foothills from Raiders and protect the worshippers of the Gods of Light from the depradations of the bloody Red Gods.

Crys didn’t reckon half the stories were true, and those that had been once were embellished with every telling until the Watchers and Wolves were more myth than men and every soldier of the West Rank was a hero. They’re soldiers watching a line on a map for two years, interrupted with brief bouts of fighting against a couple of hundred men. Yeah. Heroes.

Crys snorted. ‘The North, actually,’ he said, swallowing his frustration. ‘Finished my rotation there. Palace Rank next.’

‘Palace, eh? Two comfy years for you, then, eh? Must be a relief. But I’m Poe and this is Jud.’

Crys nodded at them both. ‘Captain Crys Tailorson.’

‘Captain of the Palace Rank? I’m sure no one deserves it more. I imagine King Rastoth is in the very safest of hands now you’re here, Captain.’ Poe watched him closely, looking for tells. Crys made a show of thumbing one card repeatedly. Deserved? He’d be bored out of his mind for two years, more like. Still, there were likely a lot more idiots prepared to lose their money here than in the North Rank and its surrounding towns. Few men had dared gamble with him towards the end of that rotation. Not to mention Rilporin bred prettier lasses.

Jud brayed a laugh. ‘You hear about those Watchers? Ever met one? I hear the men all stick each other up there. Ever see that?’

‘I haven’t served in the West Rank yet,’ Crys said, uncomfortable. It was all anyone could talk about of late, the rumours coming from the west; General Mace Koridam, son of Durdil Koridam, the Commander of the Ranks, increasing patrols and stockpiling weapons and food. ‘And that sort of business is against the king’s laws,’ he added belatedly.

‘Strange people, those Watchers. Civilians, ain’t they? Take it upon themselves to patrol the border. Why? They don’t get paid to do it, do they? Why risk your life when the West’s there to protect you?’ Poe asked. He seemed in no hurry to get on with the game. ‘I mean, West’s best, or so they say,’ he added with an unexpected touch of malice.

‘I know why,’ Jud said, laughing again. ‘It’s ’cause their women are all so fucking ugly. That’s why they fight, and that’s why they stick each other. Nothing else to do.’

‘Wolves fight, Watchers don’t,’ Crys explained. Jud frowned. ‘They’re all from Watchtown, it’s just they call their warrior caste Wolves and the Wolves have little or no regard for the laws of Rilpor. As you said, they take it upon themselves to fight. And there are Wolf women as well, I hear,’ Crys said as he flicked his cards again, letting the happy drunk mask slip for a moment. West is best? Maybe you don’t need all that coin weighing you down, Poe. ‘Fierce and just as good as the men,’ he added.

‘She-bears. ’Bout as pretty too, they say.’ Jud emptied his cup, helping himself to more as Crys eyed him. ‘They’re all touched with madness, those Watchers. Fighting for no pay, letting their women fight. Women! Can you imagine? What’d you do if you had to fight a woman, Captain?’

Crys licked his teeth. ‘Try not to lose,’ he said. ‘It’d look awful on my record.’

Poe laughed and slapped the table, but Jud had lost his sense of humour all of a sudden. ‘Look at his eyes,’ he hissed, waggling a finger in Crys’s direction and heaving on Poe’s arm.

Fuck’s sake, and it had all been going so well. Crys put his palms on the sticky table and leant forward, opening his eyes wide and staring them down in turn. ‘One blue, one brown, yes. Very observant.’

He sat back and folded his arms, the soggy cards tucked carefully into his armpit where they couldn’t be seen. Old habits. ‘But I had thought you wealthy, sophisticated merchants of this city and as such not susceptible to the superstitions of countryside fools. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps I’ve been wasting my time here tonight.’

Jud and Poe eyed each other, clearly uncomfortable. They were nothing of the sort and all of them knew it.

Poe’s foot tapped and he managed a nonchalant grin. ‘But of course. A topic of conversation only. You must hear it a lot in the Ranks, no?’ He drained his mug and ordered a flagon. About fucking time, too.

Crys forced a mollified note into his voice, at odds with the irritation mention of his eyes always engendered. Splitsoul, cursed, unlucky. He knew them all. ‘I do, sir. Men either stick to me like bindweed thinking I’m lucky, or they refuse to be anywhere near me. It’s a real pain in the arse, has dogged me all my life.’ Poe tutted in sympathy. ‘Still, what can a man do?’

‘Cut one of them out?’ Jud honked and laughed into his cup, spraying Crys with froth. Crys unfolded his arms and watched him.

Poe thumped him in the arm. ‘Forgive my friend, Captain. Too much ale. He’s got a sword, you fucking idiot,’ he hissed to Jud, who was clutching his arm and whining.

Crys drew out the moment, but decided against it. ‘Come on then, let’s play,’ he said and Poe slumped in relief, thumping Jud again for good measure.

‘You heard the good captain. Play.’

‘Two,’ Jud said sulkily.

Excellent. And about bloody time. ‘I call,’ Crys said and plopped his cards face up, watching the others reveal. He’d lost by a dozen, as expected. Poe had the winner and scooped coins and ale to his side of the table, baring yellow snaggle-teeth in something that might have been a smile. On a bear.

Crys groaned and drank; he topped up the cups of his companions with fatalistic good cheer. Poe collected the cards and Crys watched him shuffle: not even an attempt to separate the already played cards through the deck. He dealt and Crys knew he’d have a poor hand. No matter, he wasn’t ready to win just yet.

Gods, that meal was heavy, he thought as he made his first bet, but it was doing its job of soaking up the ale. Jud was red in the face and giggling, superstitions forgotten against the prospect of winning Crys’s money. He’d be the first to get sloppy and Crys and Poe could clean him out in a few hands. But then they’d need another third. No, better to bide a while longer and then take them both for a little too much instead of everything. Crys had no need of an enemy on his first day in Rilporin, and some men preferred to blame the man instead of their luck when it came to cards.

Plan decided, Crys sucked down some more ale and proceeded to lose another three hands.

Crys had found a lucky streak from somewhere. Strange, that, how his fortune had changed so suddenly. He’d won back most of what he’d lost but was still some way behind the others. Still, it was all running smooth—

‘I’ve been watching you. You’re a cheat.’

Crys lurched up from his chair and fumbled for his sword as Poe and Jud gawped, faces twisting with drunken outrage. The light fell on the speaker and Crys gasped, released the hilt and dropped to one knee. ‘Sire. Forgive me, Your Highness. You startled me and I – I simply reacted. I beg your pardon.’

Poe and Jud grabbed their coins and fled, not looking back, leaving Crys to the mercy of the Crown and seeming glad about it.

‘Shut up, stand up and pour me a drink.’

‘Yes, Your Highness.’

‘Sire or milord will do, soldier.’ Crys straightened and Prince Rivil took the proffered mug and sipped, made a face and sipped again. ‘Awful. I note you haven’t denied my accusation.’

Crys’s knee buckled again but he hoisted himself back up. ‘Your High— Milord may say and think anything he wishes, Sire,’ he said in a rush, staring anywhere but into Rivil’s face and so looking at his crotch instead. He blushed, straightened and snapped into parade rest, staring over the prince’s left shoulder and through the man behind him, one-eyed, well-dressed, a lord if Crys was any judge.

‘Oh, for shit’s sake, man, stop that. You think I’d be in a dockside tavern if I wanted pomp and ceremony? Sit the fuck down and have a drink. I’m here for relaxation, not to have my arse kissed.’

‘I – yes, Your … Sire.’

Rivil folded long legs under the small table and leant forward, oblivious to the ale staining the elbows of his velvet coat. ‘This is Galtas Morellis, Lord of Silent Water,’ he said, jerking a thumb at the man seating himself beside him.

Crys’s head swam. Galtas, Rivil’s drinking companion and personal bodyguard. Crys was in it up to his neck and it didn’t smell sweet.

‘Teach me your version of cheating at cards,’ Rivil said abruptly. ‘I’m not familiar with it.’

Oh, holy fuck. A bed and a razor, that’s all he’d wanted. All right, maybe a woman, but was that so much to ask when you’d been stationed in the North Rank for the last two years, negotiating border treaties?

Crys swallowed ale, wetting his throat, giving himself time to think, not that he could see a way out. ‘It would be an honour, Sire. Would you care to use my cards?’

Crys’s stack of coins was dwindling fast. At this rate he’d be sleeping in the gutter and shaving himself with his sword come morning. Or just using it to slit his own throat; the Commander didn’t listen to excuses, even ones about meeting a prince in a grimy tavern.

‘Oi, rich man. You’re fuckin’ cheatin’. I been watching you, you lanky bastard. You’re doing our brave soldier out of his hard-earned coin. He risks his life on those wild borders and comes here for a bit of ease and rest, and you’re fuckin’ doin’ him out of his money like you don’t have enough of it already? Fuckin’ nobility.’

Crys was suddenly and entirely sober. Galtas had swivelled in his chair and then risen to his feet. Rivil remained seated, his back to the speaker and his cool gaze resting on Crys. The message was clear: get off your arse and help, Crys Tailorson. Crys got off his arse.

‘Sir, I assure you nothing untoward is occurring here. I am merely experiencing bad luck with the cards. It happens – a lesson from the Fox God. Your concern is touching—’

‘Never fear, soldier, we’ll have at him for you. Fuckin’ lords comin’ in here and screwin’ over decent hard-workin’ folk. Honestly, you’re doin’ us a favour if you let us have ’im.’

‘Really, I don’t—’ Crys began into the heavy silence of dozens of men readying for a brawl.

The man was already swinging at Rivil’s unprotected head and Crys could do nothing but bite off the words and make a desperate lunge over the table. Galtas caught the attacker’s wrist, twisted it up and into an elbow lock, and threw him back into the press. He drew his sword, useless in the crowd but an effective deterrent to unarmed men.

‘City guard’s comin’. Scarper,’ a voice called before anyone had a chance to react. Rivil’s eyes snapped to Crys. The aggressors melted away and the rest of the patrons settled down, buzzing with conversation. Many slipped out, not eager to meet the Watch. Crys sat back down and emptied his mug.

Galtas remained on his feet, scanning the room for long moments, and then sat. Rivil jerked his head at Crys. ‘You did that? Those words? How?’

‘A knack,’ Crys said. ‘I can make my voice come from somewhere else.’

‘Sounds like witchcraft. And with eyes like that, I’m not surprised,’ Rivil teased. Galtas frowned, a dagger appearing in his hand.

‘No. Just a knack, like I said.’ Crys had both hands palm down on the table, as unthreatening as he could make himself. Rivil scraped all of his winnings, and Galtas’s, over to Crys’s side of the table.

‘My thanks,’ Rivil said, ‘but why bother? I’m not exactly popular with the Ranks. Why not let that man kick the shit out of me?’

‘You are my prince, Sire,’ Crys said, dropping the coins into his pouch, ‘even if you are a better cheat than me. No one kicks the shit out of the prince while I’m with him.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Come and find me when you’re off-duty tomorrow. I might have a use for you.’

DURDIL
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
The palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘Where is His Majesty?’ Durdil asked. The throne room was empty but for guards, the audience chamber vacant too.

‘The queen’s wing, Commander Koridam,’ Questrel Chamberlain said with an oily smile and the corners of Durdil’s mouth turned down. Third time this month.

Durdil’s breath steamed as he ducked out of the throne room and into a courtyard and took a shortcut through the servants’ passages. Winter was coming early this year, and the preparations for Yule were increasing apace.

Servants flattened themselves against the rough stone walls as he passed, ducking their heads respectfully. He nodded at each in turn. Durdil knew every servant in the palace; it made it that much easier to identify outsiders, potential threats to his king.

A guard stood in silence outside the queen’s chamber. Durdil slowed. He straightened his uniform and scraped his fingernails over the iron-grey stubble on his head.

‘Lieutenant Weaverson, is the king inside?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did he speak to you?’

Weaverson was impassive as only a guard can be. ‘Not to me, sir. He was conversing with the queen.’

Durdil paused, chewing the inside of his cheek. Nicely phrased, no hint of mockery. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. As you were.’

‘Sir,’ Weaverson said and thumped the butt of his pike into the carpet.

Durdil moved past him and pushed open the door to the queen’s private chambers. He hesitated on the threshold, bracing himself, and then stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Rastoth was in the queen’s bedroom, staring at the empty bed in confusion.

‘Your Majesty, you shouldn’t be in here,’ Durdil said quietly, and Rastoth looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide and watery. Durdil was struck by his gauntness. Where had that muscle and fat, that ruddy good humour, gone? This man was a shadow of himself.

‘Where is Marisa, Durdil? Where is my queen?’ Rastoth asked, his voice plaintive. ‘I was just talking with her. She was right here.’ He gestured vaguely and creases appeared between his brows. ‘But that’s not right, is it?’ he whispered. His fingers smoothed the coverlet over and over, the material thin and cold in the freezing room. No fire burning, no tapestries on the walls any more. No rugs.

Durdil walked towards him. ‘No, Sire, it’s not right,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Marisa’s gone, my old friend. Your queen’s dead. Almost a year now.’

Rastoth mewed like a seagull from deep in his chest. He collapsed on to the bed and hid his face in palsied hands too weak to support the rings on each finger. ‘No, that can’t be. That can’t be.’

He straightened suddenly, eyes bright with pain and coherence. ‘Murdered. Disfigured. Defiled here in this very room,’ he said, his voice harsh and broken and filling with rage. ‘My queen. My wife. And her killers still at large. Are they not, Commander? Despite your promises. Despite your every promise?’ He spat the words.

Durdil inhaled through flared nostrils and knelt before Rastoth, his knee protesting at the cold stone. No rugs because they’d been covered in blood. No tapestries because they’d been torn from the walls, covering the queen as her killers hacked through the material into her body. As though even the murderers couldn’t bear to look on what they’d done before they killed her, the destruction they’d wrought on her body and face.

No shattered door bolt, remember? Marisa opened the door to her murderers, let them in. Her guards dead on the threshold, dead facing into the room, not out of it. It ran like a litany through Durdil’s head. The queen knew her killers. Her guards knew them, hadn’t stopped them from entering, only engaged them when they were on their way out, the deed done.

Durdil swallowed the thoughts. ‘Yes, Sire. I have failed to find the killers of your queen. I have failed you.’ He chanced a look up. ‘But I have not stopped looking, my liege. I will never stop looking. I will find them. And we will bring them to justice.’

But Rastoth wasn’t listening. ‘Why, there she is. My little sparrow, hiding behind her loom.’ He scrambled to his feet, tripping on the edge of his cloak and his knee catching Durdil’s shoulder. He wobbled past and Durdil heaved himself to his feet, each of his fifty-six years an anvil on his back.

Rastoth had ducked behind the loom by the window. ‘Where are you hiding now, my pretty?’ he called. ‘Marisa? Marisa, my love.’

Durdil winced. ‘Your Majesty, we must return to your chambers. The hour grows late. Let us leave the queen to her rest. It has been a long day.’

Rastoth straightened and stared at Durdil through the strings of the loom, Marisa’s half-completed tapestry collecting dust on its frame. He’d tried this before and Rastoth had flown into a fury. Durdil had no idea which way it would play this time.

‘You’re right, of course, Durdil. She’s tired. I’m tired.’ He glanced fondly at the bed. ‘Sleep well, my beauty,’ he said, and tiptoed to the door, hissing at Durdil to do the same when the heels of his boots rang on the flagstones.

Durdil grimaced and rose on to his toes and together they crept to the door of the empty room and squeezed through it. Weaverson didn’t so much as glance in their direction, but Durdil stopped in surprise when he saw Prince Rivil.

‘We must let her rest, Commander,’ Rastoth murmured as he pulled shut the door. ‘Perhaps tomorrow my wife will be well enough to be seen by the court again, do you think?’

Rivil stepped forward and Durdil relinquished his place at the king’s side. ‘I’m sure Mother will be well again soon,’ he said, taking Rastoth’s arm. ‘For now it’s you I’m worried about. You shouldn’t be wandering around in the cold at this time of night.’

Durdil glanced at Weaverson and then followed his king and prince, listening to Rivil’s careful voice, watching his hand firm on his father’s elbow. ‘Come, Father, you should be abed,’ Rivil said with a nod to Durdil. Durdil nodded back and forced a smile for the prince.

Rastoth’s fits were getting worse and there was nothing Durdil could do about it. His friend and king was losing his grip on reality; he was slowly becoming a laughing-stock. Durdil wasn’t sure that even finding Marisa’s killers could end Rastoth’s illness now. Not that he had a single lead anyway. He knuckled his eyes hard and glanced again at Weaverson. Then he followed in the wake of his king.

DOM
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Watcher village, Wolf Lands, Rilporian border

‘I’ve got you this time, you old bugger,’ Dom muttered. He was knee-deep in a stream that began high up in the Gilgoras Mountains and widened into the Gil, mightiest river of Rilpor. His bare feet were numb and the air smelt of snow, but the pike was cornered. Dom felt forward with his toes, the fishing spear up by his jaw.

The pike flicked its tail and Dom grinned as he edged closer. He’d laid the net behind him just in case, but this was becoming personal. A flicker again, and Dom lunged, stabbing down into the gloom.

The pike flashed past him, twisting out of the spear’s path, and Dom spun, slipped on a rock and went to one knee. He gasped at the cold but the pike wasn’t in the net, so he lunged back on to his feet and examined the pool.

‘Come out, come out, little fishy,’ he sang, ‘I want you in my belly.’

Instead the sun came out and reflected off the water, blinding him, and Dom blinked. The brightness stayed in his vision, like an ember bursting into life, racing into a conflagration.

Dom groaned as the image of fire grew. He dropped the spear and splashed for the bank, panting. ‘No,’ he grunted through a thick tongue, ‘no no no,’ but it was too late. He was a stride away from land when the knowing came, and he hurled himself desperately towards dry ground before the images took him.

He felt his chest hit the mud as his surroundings vanished and then all that was left was the message from the Gods of Light, filling his mind with fire and pain and truth.

‘You really are a shit fisherman, Templeson,’ Sarilla laughed when he staggered back into camp at dusk. She pointed her bow at him. ‘Why don’t you just – ah, fuck. Lim! Lim, it’s Dom.’

Sarilla slung Dom’s arm over her shoulders and took his weight; she led him to the nearest fire and sat him so close the heat stung his face. He turned away, unwilling to look into the flames, and Sarilla chafed his hands between hers, and then dragged his jerkin off and threw her coat around his shoulders.

Lim arrived at a run and Dom held up a hand before he could speak. ‘Just get me warm first,’ he croaked. ‘I’ve been belly up in that fucking stream all afternoon.’ It might not be what I think it is. Fox God, I hope it’s not what I think it is.

They stripped him, wrapped him in blankets and made him drink warm mead until the colour came back into his face and he finally stopped shivering. Feltith, their healer, pronounced him hale and an idiot. Dom didn’t have the energy or inclination to disagree. He couldn’t look at the fire, but he met the eyes of the others one by one.

‘I have to go to the scout camp, and I have to go alone.’ He waited out their protests, gaze turned inward as he fought to unravel the Dancer’s meaning. His hand gestured vaguely west. ‘It’s coming from the mountains. I have to fetch it. Fetch the key. Message. Herald?’

Dom’s face twitched and he spoke over Lim’s fresh complaints. ‘Don’t know. Not yet. It’s like – it’s like a storm’s brewing up there. There’ll be a warning before it breaks, but only if I can get to it in time.’ He grunted in frustration. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. Midsummer.’

‘Midsummer? What about the message?’ Sarilla said.

‘That too. Shit, why is it so hard?’ Dom grunted, knuckling at the vicious pain behind his right eye. Sarilla slapped his hand away. ‘If the Dancer and the Fox God want me to know something, why don’t They just tell me?’

‘They are. We just don’t have the capacity to understand,’ Sarilla said, and for once her tone held no mockery. ‘They’re gods, Dom. You can’t expect Them to be like us.’

‘Sarilla’s right, the knowings rarely make sense at first,’ Lim soothed him. ‘But midsummer? We’re not even at Yule. We’ve got time, Dom. Don’t push it; it’ll come. There’s no immediate threat?’ he clarified.

‘It’s nearly a thousand years since the veil was cast,’ Dom said suddenly. He had no idea where the words came from, but years of knowings had taught him to relax and let his voice tell him what he didn’t yet understand. ‘Now it weakens. The Red Gods wax and the Light wanes. Blood rises. Find the herald; staunch the flow.’

Dom focused on the mud between his boots, loamy and rich, his chest heaving as though he’d run down a deer. He swallowed bile. The pain crescendoed and then settled to a steady agony that made his vision pulse with colours around the edges. This is it. I think it’s starting. After all these years, it’s coming.

I need more time.

Lim, Sarilla and Feltith were silent, waiting for more. Dom squeezed his hands into his armpits to hide their trembling. No point scaring them before he had to. Why not? I’m scared. I’m fucking terrified. But he was the calestar, for good or ill, and with the knowings came duty. Duty? Sacrifice, more like. My sacrifice. Duty, he told himself sternly, silencing the inner voice.

‘Everything’s in flux, but there’s always a threat,’ he said, finally answering Lim’s question. ‘I’m going up there tonight.’

Lim didn’t argue further. ‘Rest a while longer and I’ll pack provisions.’

‘I have to go alone,’ Dom insisted.

‘You can’t go alone,’ Sarilla said quietly. ‘If you have another knowing up there, in the Mireces’ own territory, you’ll be helpless. Even I don’t want you frozen to death or eaten by bears. Or taken by Mireces.’

Lim glanced at Sarilla. ‘Send a messenger to Watchtown and another to the West Rank. You know how much truth to tell to each. We don’t know what we’re preparing for yet, so let’s not panic.’ He pointed west, the way Dom had. ‘But nothing good has ever come out of those mountains. Be alert.’

THE BLESSED ONE
Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Longhouse, Eagle Height, Gilgoras Mountains

Lanta dealt regularly in blood and death in her exaltation of the gods, but what had been done to Liris … it was messy, wild. A frenzied, senseless attack, lacking in control, lacking in style.

Edwin had done a headcount and reported one missing slave as well as the various men out on business for the king or Lanta herself; then he’d taken a war band and hounds out in pursuit of the killer. The room stank of blood and fear, a scent easy enough for the dogs to follow in the clear mountain air.

Lanta’s thoughts returned to her predicament. One missing slave was easy enough to replace. A killer easy enough to track down. One pliable king, however, would need careful consideration. Of the war chiefs, Mata would be—

She stopped halfway down the longhouse, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. ‘What is this?’

Corvus, seated on the throne, looked up from inspecting his boots. They were bloody, as were his hands. ‘This, Blessed One, is a succession. I thought our people should have the smoothest transition after Liris’s untimely death.’ Corvus spared her a brief smile and picked drying blood from beneath a thumbnail.

He hasn’t. He wouldn’t, not without my approval. Her eyes flicked to the corpses at the base of the dais. And yet he has. She replayed his words as she fought for serenity. ‘Our people?’ She arched a brow. ‘May I remind you, Corvus of Crow Crag, that not too many years ago you were taken as slave from Rilpor? You were Madoc of Dancer’s Lake then, born and raised a heathen. So these are my people, and I decide what is best for them.’

Corvus glared at her. ‘Am I not a good son of the Dark Lady? I pay my blood debts, I raid in Her name, I worship Her and Her Brother, Holy Gosfath, God of Blood. I am Mireces, dedicated in blood and fire, war chief of Crow Crag and now King of the Mireces. That is all of my lineage you need to know.’

So quickly he challenges me. So quickly he eliminates any who would oppose him. And of course, there is Rillirin, who Liris dragged to his chamber after Bana’s holy sacrifice. And Rillirin … interests me.

‘Such a hurried transition, Corvus,’ Lanta said in a low voice as she stalked through the silent audience, picking her way through the tangle of corpses below the dais. Slaves were wide-eyed with panic, huddled at the back of the longhouse like a flock of chickens before the wolf. ‘On whose authority do you claim the throne? I was not consulted.’

Corvus steepled his fingers before his lips. ‘My own. But you can consult the other war chiefs if you’d prefer. Not sure how much talk you’ll get out of them, though.’

Lanta paused in her stride and then continued, stately, predatory. So the challenge comes now, before his arse has even warmed the throne. Then let the gods decide.

‘As for authority, I claim it by right of conquest, as Liris did.’ Corvus had pitched his voice to reach the end of the longhouse, drawing warriors to him. They crowded at Lanta’s back.

‘I stand beside the throne, my voice is second to the—’ Lanta began as she stepped on to the dais. Corvus leapt from his seat and, firm but courteous, pushed her back down the wooden steps. Lanta wobbled, rigid and red with fury now, down on the floor with the rabble.

‘I didn’t invite you to approach,’ Corvus said, his voice pitched loud. ‘When I do, a seat will be made available for you behind me and I will ask for the Dark Lady’s’ – he stressed the honorific – ‘counsel as and when I need it.’

‘The Red Gods will not suffer me to be abused,’ Lanta screeched, her fury a lightning bolt from a clear sky. Insolent, arrogant child! He thinks stabbing men in the back gives him authority over the gods? Over me?

Men shrank away from her anger, but Corvus’s smile mocked. He returned to his throne before answering, stretching the moment long, forcing Lanta and the rest to wait.

‘Where is your obeisance, Blessed One?’

Lanta gaped, disbelief etched across her face. ‘What did you say?’ she whispered.

‘Liris was weak – you took advantage of that to seize more power than your station demanded. I’m restoring the balance. You may not have authorised a new king, but the Dark Lady did. So kneel. Or die. I don’t much care either way.’

‘I know the Lady’s will,’ Lanta shouted. ‘I am the Blessed One. She talks to me, not you.’ Her fists were clenched, face hot with outrage and anger. A challenge directed not just at her power, but that of the gods? I’ll see him writhing beneath my knife for this outrage.

Corvus spread his red hands. ‘Then you’ll know it was Her will that I defeated my rivals. If She didn’t want me on the throne, they would’ve killed me.’

There were murmurs and Lanta felt the shift in the room. He was right and everyone knew it; godsdamnit but she knew it. A change in tactic, then. ‘King Corvus,’ she said and he grinned, ‘now is not the time for a change in administration. Perhaps—’

‘Well, unless you can bring a man back from the dead, you’re fucked,’ he replied and there was muted laughter, quickly stilled.

Lanta bared her teeth. It had been years since anyone’d dared interrupt her. She remembered now how little she liked it. ‘I simply meant, perhaps our people would prefer a united front until you settle into your new role. There are many things I can advise on. If you would allow it?’

‘No.’

Lanta could feel her cheeks burning. The air fizzed between them as Corvus looked into her eyes, all cool detachment and deep amusement, daring her to look away.

She smiled. There were many ways to play this game and she had far more experience than he did. Still, he’d riled her. ‘Perhaps men will be sent to Crow Crag for your consort,’ she hissed, and heard the collective intake of breath. Had she really just threatened the king? Corvus flicked his fingers in dismissal, his face disinterested. As though she hadn’t even spoken. Lanta inhaled hard.

‘Perhaps you should focus on finding Liris’s killer instead,’ he said.

‘Oh, don’t you worry about that,’ she said. ‘They’ll be found and dragged before you for judgement. I wonder what sort of a king you’ll be then, when you have before you the one who really granted you the throne.’

Lanta was never reckless; the gods had too many plans and she was too important to all of them. Yet that easy smile, those infuriating blue eyes, made her desperate to hurt him, but instead of her barbs finding his flesh, everything she said simply glanced off him, as though he was wearing that ridiculous Rilporian plate armour.

‘Tread lightly, Blessed One,’ Corvus said, his voice low with menace. ‘You have no idea who you’re dealing with.’ He paused and smiled, friendly, open. ‘But I can show you, if you ever threaten me or mine again.’

Perhaps that had been over-hasty, she conceded as she stared at Corvus and his bloody hands, his bloody boots. His strawberry-blond hair was wild and sweaty from the fight, and she dropped her gaze from his to examine the bodies. Wounds in the back. She snorted faintly. He hadn’t even had the balls to do it properly.

But done it was. While she’d been examining the torn and bloody corpse of Liris in the room next door, she’d lost everything. The gods’ desires subordinated to the desires and whims of a man. No, she vowed into the silence of her skull, not during my lifetime. Not when I still have some power.

‘It is a comfort to hear you will not let Liris’s killer escape. By all means conduct your own investigation; I shall entreat the Dark Lady’s advice. Liris had taken a whore into his bedchamber before he was killed; she escaped during the confusion but I’ve already sent men after her. The chances are good she saw the killer and we can use her to identify the man,’ Lanta said, deliberately keeping Rillirin’s identity to herself. She needed every scrap of leverage she could find.

‘Why don’t you think it was the whore?’ Corvus asked.

Lanta laughed. ‘A slave and a whore? Impossible.’ She turned away. Even so, I’ll have that cunt on the altar stone one way or another, belly open to the sky and soul food for the gods.

‘Blessed One,’ Corvus said in a voice of honey, and she gritted her teeth and stopped. ‘You still haven’t made your obeisance.’

‘I kneel only to the gods,’ she grated over her shoulder, her eyes murderous slits.

Corvus tutted and shook his head. ‘Not true. I hear you regularly knelt to Liris, mouth open and no doubt eyes closed. Who’d want to see that, after all?’ He laughed and there was a ripple of shocked amusement through the hall, amusement at her expense.

Lanta could hear her teeth grinding and swallowed a roil of nausea. She stared at him in silence. The air grew thick with hate, but Corvus never lost that easy smile. She could level men with a glance but not, it appeared, this one. Not yet. So she curtseyed, low, deep, correct. What does it mean, after all? Nothing. It is as empty as his supposed kingship and soon to be as distant a memory.

In stunned silence, Lanta walked the length of the hall, proud and distant. She crooked a finger and her priest, Pask, held the door for her and then followed her through. It closed with a click and she sucked in a deep breath of mountain air. She had much to think about.

CRYS
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Commander’s quarters, the palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘So, Captain Tailorson, it appears you have led a varied and interesting career in the last two years with the North Rank. Any particular reason for that?’ Commander Durdil Koridam eyed him from behind his desk.

‘No, sir.’

‘Demoted to lieutenant for brawling with common soldiers, a month in the cells for smuggling a family over the border into Rilpor, promotion back to captain for outstanding gallantry under fire … Outstanding?’

‘Major Bedras found himself surrounded by the Dead Legion. It seemed appropriate to save him.’

‘From the Dead Legion? Alone?’ Durdil’s grey eyebrows rose a fraction.

‘There were five of them, sir, youngsters on a blood hunt to prove their manhood.’

‘And how did they manage to surround the major?’

‘Couldn’t say, sir.’

‘No, though I note from General Tariq’s subsequent report that the major is no longer a major.’

‘As you say, sir.’

‘And the family you allowed into our country?’

‘A woman with three children, starving and filthy. Husband killed by the Dead, fleeing to save her children’s lives. It was … it was the right thing to do.’

‘You are a soldier, Tailorson. Right and wrong is for your superiors to decide.’

Crys met his eyes. ‘Right and wrong is for every man to decide. Sir.’

Durdil leant back in his chair and pursed his lips. Crys stared past his left ear, palms clammy. ‘There is a pattern here, Tailorson. You have talent, you have intelligence, you have flair. You could be an outstanding officer. And yet every time you reach captain you do something to get demoted. Are you afraid of being a leader?’

Crys’s left eyelid flickered. ‘Sir.’

‘Was that a “yes, sir” or a “no, sir”, Tailorson?’

‘It was an “I don’t know the answer to your question, sir”, sir.’

‘Well, you’re honest, at least. You’re to join the Palace Rank, Tailorson.’ Durdil shuffled some papers. ‘But because I’m curious about you, you’re to be under my direct command.’

‘Sir.’

The corner of Durdil’s mouth twitched. ‘Normally I’d assume the “Sir” was agreement, but with you I’m not so sure. South barracks. Report to Major Wheeler at dusk for the night shift. Dismissed.’ Crys saluted, spun on his heel and marched to the door. ‘And, Tailorson? Turn up hungover in my presence again and you won’t be demoted; I’ll flog the booze out of you myself. Off you go.’

How does he know? How can he possibly know? I’ve had a bath, a shave, a change of uniform. Crys was still pondering it when he exited the palace and was slapped in the face with a gust of rain. He shivered and hunched his shoulders against the wet. His scarf and cloak were in the barracks in the second circle of the city, a good half-hour’s walk away. The palace crouched at the centre of the city, surrounded by walls like the heart of an onion.

He made his way through the gate into the fourth circle, walking fast and trying not to gawk. The palace in Fifth Circle was awe-inspiring and suitably royal, but Fourth Circle was home to the nobles. Real people lived here, albeit rich and powerful ones, in houses that were ridiculous confections of wood and stone and paint and carved plinths, all set in lavish grounds that could have accommodated three times the number of houses but seemed to serve no purpose except to look pretty.

Rich men and their rich fancies. Never mind the slums in First Circle and the beggars holed up in the tanneries or the slaughter district. Still, it was wide open and defensible and another layer of protection between the palace and any invaders.

Crys snorted and wiped rain from his face. Rumours of unrest were one thing, but Rilporin couldn’t fall. Even the thought was impossible. He stood aside for a clatter of horses and their noble riders, peering up in case it was the Prince Rivil. Still couldn’t quite believe that. When the prince’d run out of copper knights to bet with, he’d started using silver royals as if they were nothing, and he’d given Crys all his winnings at the end of the night. He hadn’t counted it but he was pretty sure it was more than a month’s pay.

Crys felt a stab of shame at how dismissive he’d just been of the nobility. Rivil wasn’t like that and he was more than a lord. He was royalty and, yes, he gambled and drank, but he also rewarded those who served him and aided the king and the heir, Prince Janis, in running Rilpor. Rivil probably did more for the people than all the nobility put together.

Galtas, though. Galtas was as unpleasant as a runny shit, and the loathing was mutual. It had taken all of an hour for them to agree on that, and it was the only thing they did agree on. There was just something wrong about him, something inherently untrustworthy. Crys didn’t think he should have so prominent a position close to the prince. But maybe that was Rivil’s weakness? A certain blindness to the bad in people. It would be a shame if true. Crys found he didn’t want to see Rivil get hurt.

He exited the fourth circle into the silk and spice quarter of the third, the scents wafting despite the rain. He bought dried mint for tea to settle his stomach and some massively overpriced pepper to spice up the standard-issue breakfast pottage. This might be Rilporin, but it seemed rations were the same wherever you were stationed.

Rilporin, fairest city in the world. He reckoned the whole of Three Beeches, his home town, would fit in Fourth Circle with room to spare. The shops and stalls stopped selling silks and spices and he was in the craft district, with wares of all kinds on display, from tiny polished metal mirrors to knives, cooking pots and jewellery side by side with carved wooden toys and fine beeswax candles. It was a warren of delights, from the pretty girls selling their goods to the gossip they let fall so easily from their painted mouths.

By the time he’d got through the craft district into the cloth district his purse was lighter and he’d had to buy a pack to carry his purchases. Still, the new knife for his brother Richard and the wooden horse for little Wenna were worth every copper and more. Just a shame he couldn’t see their faces when they were delivered.

The sun was westering as he tucked the last of his purchases into his pack, and he slung it over his shoulder and hurried through the press towards the gate into Second Circle and the south barracks. Hungover was bad enough. If he was late as well, he may as well kiss his captaincy goodbye – again.

The south barracks were awash with the scent of fifteen hundred men living in close proximity. Feet and armpits and farts, mostly, the hint of sweat and blood souring the mixture further. Crys barely noticed; he’d been a soldier for twelve years and his nose had long since stopped recognising that particular odour.

The south barracks’ captains shared a small room away from the main dormitories, a luxury he hadn’t been expecting. He slid into it now, just as Kennett, his bunk-mate, was shrugging into his uniform.

Kennett whistled. ‘Cutting it fine, aren’t you?’

Crys flung the pack on to his bunk and tore at the buttons of his sodden uniform. He had one more, dry and mostly clean, which had been stuffed with packets of sweet-smelling herbs for the journey. He dragged it out of his chest and shook it out. ‘Got lost,’ he said.

Kennett eyed the pack and shook his head. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Lost. Right.’

‘What’s this Wheeler like, anyway?’ Crys asked as he towelled his hair and struggled into the dry uniform.

‘An annoying little shit, mostly,’ a voice said. Crys had his head stuck in his uniform and grunted in reply. ‘Stickler for the rules, particularly for punctuality,’ the voice continued.

‘Sounds charming,’ Crys said, his voice muffled. Kennett didn’t answer. The voice didn’t answer. Shit. Crys forced his head through the neck hole and looked over to the door. Really shit.

He snapped out a salute. ‘Major Wheeler? Captain Crys Tailorson reporting for duty.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Wheeler said. ‘You’re still getting dressed.’

‘I got lost, sir. A thousand apologies, sir.’ He buckled his sword belt, did up his buttons and dragged fingers through his hair.

‘Did you?’ Wheeler asked. ‘I trust it won’t happen again.’

‘Absolutely not, sir,’ Crys said and snapped into parade rest. Wheeler was taller than him, lean in the waist and broad in the shoulders. He stood with an easy grace that told Crys he knew exactly how to use the sword on his hip. His face was calm, his eyes curious and maybe, just maybe, the littlest bit amused.

‘Are you an arse-licker, Tailorson?’ Wheeler asked.

‘No, sir, never could get used to the taste. Just keen to make a good first impression.’

Wheeler huffed. ‘Well, you haven’t, so stop trying to ingratiate yourself and fall in.’ He gestured through the door and Crys saw his men. His Hundred. All listening to this little exchange with the greatest of enthusiasm. Crys saluted and marched past Wheeler into the corridor. He swept his gaze along the Hundred and found nothing to fault. What they thought was another matter entirely.

‘Our post, Major?’ he asked.

‘East wing of the palace. The heir and His Highness Prince Rivil’s quarters and surrounds. This is your lieutenant, Roger Weaverson. Rilporin born and bred. Take him with you next time you venture into the city, Captain. He’ll see you don’t get lost.’

‘Thank you, Major,’ Crys said, and nodded to Weaverson, a lanky youth with more spots than beard, but he too carried a sword and carried it well. ‘Lieutenant, Hundred, my name is Captain Crys Tailorson, late of the North Rank. I don’t know you yet, but I’ll come and speak to each of you during this shift. Any questions or concerns, please do speak up and I’ll see what can be done.’ He faced Wheeler again and saluted.

‘You have command, Captain,’ Wheeler said.

Crys nodded. ‘Lieutenant Weaverson, fastest route to the palace,’ he said.

They set out, his Hundred marching behind him, and Crys felt himself fall into the same rhythm, the movements as automatic as breathing. Weaverson took them on a circuitous route, and Crys had his earlier suspicion confirmed: the roads deliberately curved away from the gates in each circle to confuse and confound an enemy. Made it a bastard to do your shopping, but if this place was ever attacked, it’d be a blessing and no mistake.

‘So, Lieutenant, what should I know about my Hundred?’

‘Good men all, sir,’ Weaverson said, as Crys had expected. Never mind, he’d find out soon enough. ‘Can I ask a question, sir?’ Crys nodded. ‘Is it true about the Dead Legion and the Mireces, that they’ve allied to invade? You coming from the North, I thought you’d know the truth of it.’

‘I know nothing of it, by which you can assume it’s horseshit, Lieutenant. My ear is always pressed most firmly to the ground, and I haven’t heard it. The Dead have their own honour, their own code and their own gods. A version of our gods, really, when you get down to it. They’re a small cult within Listre and even if they did join forces with the Raiders, there aren’t enough of them to make much of a difference. So no, I wouldn’t expect there to be verified news of an alliance.’

‘So there isn’t a Mireces invasion coming? Puck has a brother in the West, and he said they’re restless up there, causing all sorts of mischief.’

‘Causing mischief and invading a country are two fairly different things, Lieutenant,’ Crys said, and took the sting from his words with a grin and a slap on the boy’s back. ‘Soldiers talk. Gods, we gossip worse than women at the loom or men in their cups. But I might be wrong, so we should probably guard those princes really well, don’t you think? In case the Mireces have made it into the palace? I want you using every ounce of your guarding muscles, all right? Let no inch of the blank stone wall opposite your face go unstudied during the endless, cold hours ahead. Concentrate really hard on the important stuff, like standing up straight and not farting when someone rich walks past.’

There were chuckles from the first couple of ranks behind him and a sheepish smile from Weaverson. ‘It’s an important job, lads,’ he called, raising his voice, ‘even if it isn’t a complicated one. So if you cock it up, I’ll know you’re a complete imbecile and will treat you accordingly. This is my first shift as your captain. Don’t make me look bad and I won’t have to make you search for something I think I might have lost at the bottom of a deep and pungent cesspit.’ More laughter, and Crys knew they were relaxing into his command, deciding he was all right, not a high-born, bought-his-commission, weak-chinned moron.

Crys took a deep breath of cold night air, sucking it in through his nose and exhaling through a broad grin. Greatest city, tallest walls, miles from a border that might get feisty at any moment. Even better, there was money in his purse and men under his command. Truly was it said that life could be worse than being a captain in His Majesty’s Palace Rank.

RILLIRIN
Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Sky Path, Gilgoras Mountains

She’d thought the storm a blessing when it rushed in, covering her tracks and blowing her scent downhill. She’d stumbled through the night, expecting every moment to be caught, for the Mireces’ dogs to fasten their teeth in her and drag her into the snow. She’d made it on to the Sky Path and to the source of the Gil River before she’d heard the first howls on the wind. She’d made it so much further than she’d expected, a night and a morning and an afternoon.

Now, though, with the sky darkening to dusk again and her skin as blue as her gown where it wasn’t rusty with dried blood, facing an angry mountain cat, Rillirin changed her mind. There were no more blessings left, not for the likes of her.

‘I don’t want your goat,’ she hissed and the cat’s yowl went up an octave. She edged back the way she’d come, back in the direction of her pursuers, wondering which way to die would be least painful. Probably the cat. But the cat’s ears were better than hers and they pricked up, the rumble of threat dying in its throat. It’d heard those hunting her despite the howl of the wind. They were closer than she’d thought, then. She cursed and looked behind, catching flickers of torchlight further up the mountain, the faintest tang of smoke. Liris’s blood was a beacon calling to the dogs, and she hadn’t had the foresight to wash it off. Now it was too late.

Stay ahead of them, get down into the foothills, find someone who’ll help. She shifted back towards the cat and its ears flattened, then pricked again. Face it, no one’s going to help a woman dressed in blue and covered in blood. You’re dead whoever finds you first. Rillirin swallowed tears and shoved her hair back out of her eyes. Then fuck you all, she thought, I’ll save myself. Somehow.

Gripping the remains of the goat, the cat bounded lightly down the sheer rock face on to a ledge Rillirin hadn’t noticed and vanished, its pelt as patchy white as its surroundings. Follow it or follow the path? Could the dogs handle the cat’s path? Could she?

A faint howl on the wind made up her mind for her and she edged on to the steep rock, her boots scrabbling for purchase, the wind tearing at the remains of her skirt and throwing her off balance. She skidded, fell hard on her right hip and was sliding down the rock before she’d had a chance to suck in breath to scream.

She hit the cat’s ledge, winded, and sailed on past, faster, stone burning the backs of her legs and arse until there was no more mountain and then she did scream, falling through space for long, endless seconds, eyes screwed shut, arms flailing uselessly through the air.

She hit water so cold it felt like knives stabbing into her. She’d thought herself cold before, but this was cold that burnt. Everything constricted and she hit the bottom. Fighting her way back up against the drag of her skirts, her head broke the surface and she warbled in a breath, lungs burning as well as her skin. She opened her eyes in time to see the rock the current slammed her into, crumpling her body and forcing her head back beneath the icy surface. She rebounded and the current swept her on, every breath a choking effort against the cold and the insidious lethargy creeping through her limbs.

She could hear the echo of men and dogs lost somewhere behind her, far above the river. If she survived the cold, survived the weight of her skirts dragging her down, survived the rocks, rapids and falls, she’d gladly pray daily for the rest of her life to any god who’d have her.

The river’s voice changed, deeper and angrier, a full-throated roar. The cold, the pain: none of it mattered. There was a waterfall ahead, and Rillirin wasn’t sure she’d survive this fall. She started to paddle, then to thrash, her limbs heavy and dull. The current picked up, swirling her with playful malevolence into the centre of the river, and then again, endlessly, she fell.

Rillirin must’ve gone another half-mile after the waterfall before the water slowed and she managed to haul herself on to the bank. She’d seen enough slaves die of cold in Eagle Height and so she stripped off her gown. She wrung out the worst of the water and then used the rough material to scrub hard at her skin, stimulating blood flow. At least I don’t smell of blood any more. A giggle escaped through chattering teeth.

She staggered forward, fell to her hands and knees and stared blearily at the ground. Pine needles. She crawled forwards into the shadow of trees, a copse so small as to not be worth the name. The wind still howled through the trunks and gouged her skin but the softness under her knees brought tears to her eyes. She squirmed behind a trunk and the wind lessened. Rillirin curled on her side and dragged at the ground, piling needles up and over her, heaping them on to her thighs and flank and chest, against her shoulders and around the back of her head, draping the gown over the top. It cut the wind even further. A few minutes to restore some warmth and she’d look for some way to make a fire. Just a few minutes …

Rillirin blinked and stretched, felt an immediate bite of cold as the pine needles slithered away and the damp wool of her gown settled against her skin.

Daylight. Fuck, she’d slept all night. They could be right there, right behind her. Rillirin lay still, her eyes roaming between the trees and out on to the mountainside. The river chattered angrily behind her, swollen with snowmelt. There wasn’t any movement, and she didn’t expect the Mireces would wait for her to wake up before taking her captive. Had they passed her by, or missed her completely and taken the path she’d meant to take herself?

Rillirin slid to her feet and into her gown, torn and ragged now, one sleeve missing, but all she had against the cold. Checking for movement, she crept to the bank and splashed water into her mouth, wincing at the cold and the pain in her face and jaw, pain which started to spread throughout her body as her muscles woke.

A sharp wind carried the sounds of dogs and men, as though they were made of it, appearing every time it blew, allowing her no respite. With no time for thought or to plan a direction, Rillirin began to run again.

GALTAS
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
The palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘Your highnesses, it is an honour.’ The physician’s bald head winked in the light from the window as he bowed. He gave a short nod to Galtas. Galtas managed a smile and looked back out through the window, bored already.

‘Master Hallos, the honour is ours,’ Prince Janis said. ‘Thank you for coming; we know how busy you are.’

The honour is ours? Sanctimonious little prick. Galtas unsheathed his dagger and used the tip to clean beneath his nails. Busy? Busy failing to cure the king. Rastoth the Kind, they used to call him. Rastoth the Mad now. A smirk pulled at his lips and he bent his head so no one would see.

Hallos took a seat in the heir’s small study and eyed the princes. He smoothed his beard, uncomfortable. ‘King Rastoth’s mind remains as sharp as ever, his intellect as great. These … confusions have nothing to do with age or infirmity, that much I am sure of now. I would venture they are the result of grief, Your Highnesses, a grief that has not lessened since your mother the queen’s demise.’

Janis glanced at his brother, and Rivil’s smile was wan. Galtas rolled his eyes. ‘A grief we share with our father but, perhaps, are bearing a little better.’

Hallos sighed. ‘Your mother’s loss has destroyed the king’s peace. He cannot conceive of a world without her by his side. It troubles him, disturbs his sleep, his equilibrium.’

‘If we could only find those who took her from us,’ Rivil said, voice coiled with anger. Janis put his hand over Rivil’s clenched fist. ‘I speak with Commander Koridam every week, read the reports he receives, and nothing. Still nothing. Almost a year has passed and still her killers roam free.’

‘This failing is not yours, Rivil, nor mine, nor Koridam’s. The culprits will be found eventually, found and brought to justice. We must trust in that.’

Galtas leant his shoulder against the wall by the window, his back to the group before the fire. Pious, pragmatic, devoted Janis. It was exhausting just listening to him. The man was as dull and pointless as an ugly woman. A clever, ugly woman. Galtas suppressed a shudder.

‘Queen Marisa is with the Gods of Light now, Prince Rivil,’ Hallos murmured. ‘Be at peace knowing that. There is no more suffering for her.’

‘Fuck the gods. I have prayed to the Dancer and the Fox God both, asking them to bring her killers to justice, and yet my father still suffers. They still remain free,’ Rivil said, sullen with anger. ‘My brother suffers. I—’ His voice broke and he looked away, biting off the words.

Galtas glanced back, watched Hallos and Janis pause, awkward in the face of Rivil’s grief.

‘I have found a sleeping draught aids the king. Restful sleep does much to restore his strength. If you would like …?’ asked Hallos delicately.

Rivil looked up and wiped at his eye with his thumb. He scrubbed his fingers through his dark gold hair. ‘Thank you, but please, save all your efforts for my father. I fear our enemies may seek to take advantage of his illness soon.’

Janis frowned. ‘Rivil, this is not the time.’

Rivil’s eyes darkened, but Janis didn’t notice. Janis never did. Galtas saw it, though, oh yes. Galtas always noticed.

Rivil focused on Hallos. ‘And the visitations?’

‘At present I have been unable to stem their flow. If anything, they are increasing in number and severity. It may be your father’s way of coping, or working through his grief. In time I believe they will cease.’

‘So you don’t really think he sees my mother’s spirit?’ Rivil asked and Janis coughed, closing his eyes. Rivil ignored him again.

‘I think he wishes to see her, wants it so hard that his brain tells him she’s there,’ Hallos said. He spread his hands. ‘And yet her soul rests in the Dancer’s Light now. Souls do not return from that.’

Janis pushed up out of his chair and Hallos and Rivil rose to their feet. Galtas pushed away from the wall and put away his knife. ‘I think that’s enough for now. Thank you, Master Hallos. We won’t keep you any longer. Rivil, a moment, if you will. Galtas, you stay too.’

Galtas exhaled a deep breath, knowing what was coming. He stayed by the window, unwilling to attract Janis’s attention more than necessary.

‘What was that nonsense about spirits? I need you to grow up, Rivil. You cannot avoid your responsibilities – or the real world – forever. You may be the younger son, but you are also a prince of the blood with duties to Rilpor and the throne. So I’m asking you to act accordingly.’ Janis stared at Rivil, lips pursed. ‘Don’t make me make it an order,’ he added, and Galtas’s eyebrows rose.

A muscle flexed in Rivil’s jaw as he nodded, nostrils flared. ‘You are right, of course, Janis. I forget myself.’ He sounded sincere, at least.

I, on the other hand, forget nothing, Galtas said to himself, glaring at Janis’s back.

‘I know Mother’s death hit you harder than you care to admit, brother. But it’s taken something from all of us, don’t forget. And yet we must keep going, stay strong. While the northern and southern borders are secure, General Koridam’s latest report from the west indicates increased movement from the Mireces. They’ve made a couple of late raids, later than we would expect. The folk of the Cattle Lands and the Western Plain are afraid. They need strong direction from the throne, messages of support. You can aid in that.’

He clapped Rivil on the back while Galtas stifled a yawn. Still in love with the sound of your own pompous voice echoing out of your arsehole. I’ve done farts that had more substance.

‘We cannot afford to fail, Rivil. We must make a responsible adult out of you,’ Janis said and grinned to lighten the mood.

‘Gods, I hope not.’ Rivil laughed. ‘I quite like being the rebellious prince.’

‘A part you often play a little too well,’ Janis said.

Rivil inclined his head. ‘The burden of kingship will fall to you, not me. I can afford to have a little fun—’

Janis’s face was hard. ‘No, Rivil, you can’t,’ he interrupted, souring the mood once more. ‘Not now, with Father so ill. Maybe not ever again, not in the way you mean. Understand that. Accept it. Royalty is a privilege and a burden, not a game.’

‘You act as though you are already king,’ Rivil said hotly. ‘Our father still lives.’

‘At least one of us is taking responsibility for his duties,’ Janis said. He bit off whatever he was going to say next and strove for calm. ‘Whatever the reports say, I do not believe our borders are as safe as we would like. We must be ready. We must—’

‘I’m well aware of the monsters at our door, Your Highness,’ Rivil said with icy formality. ‘There’s no need to keep reminding me all the time. I do my duty, and will continue to do it.’

‘I know you will,’ Janis said, and Galtas was surprised he couldn’t hear the anger in Rivil’s voice. Or maybe he just dismissed it. ‘Which is why I need to you sit in the plains court this week. Galtas, keep an eye on him. The court, not the tavern, you hear?’ Galtas inclined his head. ‘Good. Then I’ll see you for supper.’

They stood for a few seconds longer, but Janis was already at his desk and shuffling through reports. And so easily are we dismissed, like boys to our rooms for a misdemeanour.

Galtas followed Rivil into the corridor and closed the door with a gentle click. ‘He does not—’ he began with a hiss.

Rivil waved him to silence, but his face was white with anger. ‘He is the heir. So he does. I must accept it.’

Galtas looked both ways along the corridor. ‘You would make a better heir than him.’

Rivil held up his hand again. ‘Don’t.’ He stretched the tension out of his shoulders. ‘I’m to the plains court, then. I’ll see you tonight.’

Galtas watched him walk away, and then stared hard at the door to Janis’s study, fingers tapping on the pommel of his sword. Eventually, he left.

DOM
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Scout camp, Final Falls, Wolf Lands, Rilporian border

They’d climbed out of the forests cloaking the foothills and into snow and ice, isolated copses of stunted firs and pines providing scant but welcome cover. There was nothing to stop the wind up here and its constant keening set Dom’s nerves on edge, kept the pain in his head thrumming. It would help if he knew what he was looking for, but that hadn’t been made any clearer over the last day.

The scout camp was perched just above the Final Falls on the River Gil, a shelter cleverly disguised with snow and rock so it was invisible from above. If the Mireces ventured down the treacherous Gil-beside Road, the scouts would spot them and run ahead to the village with the warning. It was a miserable posting, but there hadn’t been a surprise attack in the years since they’d implemented it.

They were met with enthusiasm and Dom was grateful for the distraction. Lim and Sarilla were soon absorbed into the group and it took little effort to slip out when everyone was occupied. Ash had the forward post, sitting a hundred strides further upriver, and Dom slapped his fur-covered shoulder as he passed.

‘Where are you going?’ Ash asked.

‘Crossing over and a bit of a wander,’ Dom said.

Ash stood up. ‘On your own?’

‘On my own,’ Dom confirmed. ‘Had a knowing. Said to come looking.’

Ash chewed his lip. ‘That’s not the best idea, and I’ve heard you come up with pretty bad ones over the years.’ He hefted his bow. ‘Let me come?’

Dom looked up at the white and black of the mountain. ‘I’ll only be a few hours,’ he said. ‘If I’m not back by then, come looking, all right? And keep an eye on the path,’ he added as something tugged inside him.

‘Stay safe,’ Ash said and Dom could see his reluctance. Dom nodded and hopped from rock to rock across the river. His wolfskin jerkin cut much of the wind but it was still bitterly cold, and he hunched his shoulders and walked until he was out of sight and sound of the river.

‘All right, then,’ he muttered, closing his eyes. ‘Where am I supposed to go? Whatever this key is, I could do with some help to find it.’

Nothing.

Dom huffed a plume of breath into the air and picked a direction at random, northeast uphill. The Dancer’s messages were often obscure, but this was ridiculous. Go and wander about in enemy territory looking for something, but I can’t tell you what it is. You’ll be fine.

He had a sword, a short bow and quiver, and a knife. Oh, and a tendency to fall down and commune with the gods at the most inopportune moments, don’t forget. He snorted, wiped his nose, and kept walking. No doubt Lim would be apoplectic when he returned, so he’d better make sure he found whatever it was he was looking for. Returning empty-handed would be even worse.

‘If this goes wrong, I’ll never live it down,’ he breathed. His inner voice pointed out he might not live at all and he grimaced, but kept trudging. It was stupid, he knew, yet it felt right. The key was out here somewhere, the message that could confirm or deny the start of something that would change the world.

A squall blew in and ice crystals filled the air, making everything hazy and soft, so it took a few seconds to make sense of what he was seeing. A copse of pine, a movement of red like fox fur near the ground. But any foxes this high up would have turned white by now. Dom squinted and took a few more steps, and the thing moved, stood up, started to run. Red hair. Blue dress.

Mireces.

The wind dropped and the noises that had been concealed by it echoed across the mountain. She saw him and veered away, then jinked back again when men appeared from behind an outcrop. Mireces hunting Mireces.

‘This is not helpful,’ Dom muttered as he dropped into the snow and snatched an arrow, aimed low and took the first hunter in the belly. The second shaft hit the next hunter in the shoulder and he kept coming; the third was a mistake. The third took the man with the dogs in the throat and he let go of the leads as he died. Two dogs, big, with lots of teeth. One sprinted for the girl, the other came straight for him.

Two dead and one injured, but there were four more now and they had bows too, and Dom had no choice but to hunker down as arrows rained around him. The girl was screaming and the sound triggered a rush of light in his head. It was her. He was here for her. ‘Balls,’ he said as the dog barrelled into him and sent him over on to his back.

Dom jammed his right forearm into its mouth, the heavy leather armguard just about protecting his flesh. The dog shook him and Dom’s punches missed. He thrashed, dragged his knife free and stabbed the dog’s belly. It squealed, but didn’t let go. He stabbed it again, trying not to look in its eyes. Sorry. Not your fault. Sorry.

The dog collapsed and Dom struggled from beneath it, scrabbling for his bow. The other dog had the girl by the calf and she was screaming louder as it shook her like a rabbit. The Mireces were closing in on them both when three were dropped in less than a second with arrows Dom hadn’t fired. The man with the arrow in his shoulder turned and fled, and Ash popped up from behind a rock and killed the dog savaging the girl.

‘Thanks,’ Dom said. ‘Good to see you ignored me.’

‘Don’t I always?’ Ash asked, quartering the mountains with an arrow on the string.

‘Let’s get her.’

‘Her?’ Ash asked, frowning. The girl was dragging herself away, her blood a bright trail in the snow. ‘Let the Wolves do for her. Mireces scum.’

‘No,’ Dom said, ‘she’s why I’m here. She’s the key. The message.’ The harbinger. He shook away the thought.

‘Oh, gods,’ Ash muttered. ‘Are you sure? I mean, really sure? Because we’re going to be leaving sign all the way back. We’re bringing them right to us.’ Dom spread his hands but didn’t answer. Ash sighed. ‘Fuck. Fine, then let’s be quick about it. Who knows how many more are out there? Come on.’

They cornered the girl and she curled up small, hiding her face in her hands. ‘Here to help,’ Dom said soothingly. ‘But we need to leave now, get you to safety.’ She didn’t move, didn’t respond. ‘All right, up you come,’ he said and put his hand under her arm. She squealed and kicked and Dom felt a throb up his arm into his head. Definitely the key. ‘Stop,’ he said, making his voice hard. ‘We’re trying to save you.’

He dragged her to her feet and she shrieked as her torn leg took her weight. Dom and Ash slung her between them and made their way down the mountain and back towards the river and dubious safety.

They didn’t go to the scout camp. Ash left Dom to drag her further downhill and went to fetch Lim and Sarilla.

Dom went a half-mile straight down, into thicker forest and patchy snow, and eased her down beneath a fir tree. He took off his wolfskin and wrapped her in it, hooked his bow and quiver on a low-hanging branch and loosened the long dagger in its sheath. She watched him with big grey eyes in a pinched face.

‘You have got to be joking.’ Lim didn’t even look at him, just crouched opposite the girl and stared at her. The bites to her calf were bad, the blood the brightest, cleanest thing about her. The exposed flesh of her arms and legs was filthy, scratched and too pale with cold.

‘You’re safe, you’re safe,’ Dom said as Sarilla and Ash loomed above her. ‘We’re here to help, all right? Your pursuers are dead’ – he glanced at Ash – ‘mostly. There’s nothing to fear.’

‘What’s your name, girl?’ Lim asked. Dom pulled a roll of linen from the pouch on his belt, rubbed gently at the bite marks with snow, and then bandaged her leg. He shivered, saw her note it and glance at the wolfskin she was wearing. Come on, two nice things I’ve just done for you, not including saving your life. So give us something in return.

She was silent.

‘She’s your key? A Mireces?’ Lim asked. Sarilla and Ash were eyeing the landscape as they listened and Dom knew the scout camp would be on high alert.

Dom licked his lips and squinted. ‘She’s the key,’ he murmured, the words again coming from somewhere just a little outside of him, a touch beyond his control. ‘But not Mireces.’ She glanced at him at that, and then away. ‘I’d say an escaped slave—’

‘She’s a spy,’ Ash interrupted. ‘What better way to infiltrate us? A young woman, cold and filthy and starving … they know we’d take her in. So we don’t.’

‘Send her on her way?’ Lim asked.

‘Knife in the throat’d do it,’ Sarilla muttered.

Dom winced, but he couldn’t blame either of them. Except that they were wrong.

‘What’s your name?’ Lim asked again. Still nothing. ‘We’re trying to help here, lass, but you’ve got to help us too.’

‘My name’s Dom Templeson,’ Dom tried with his most ingratiating smile. ‘This is Lim. He’s our chief. The scary woman is Sarilla and that’s Ash. He’s a hothead despite the cold.’

‘Fuck off,’ Ash said. ‘I wish they’d finished her off. You do realise you’ve compromised the camp, and possibly the village, by taking her and killing the Mireces? And for what? Some fucking mute who’ll likely murder us all in our sleep.’

‘You don’t wish that, because then she’d be dead and we wouldn’t know anything,’ Dom snapped as Lim snorted. Best get it over then, he thought. He reached for her face and she squirmed backwards, got her good leg under her and stood, cracking her head on a branch and sending a flurry of snow down on them all. Dom paused, secretly glad of the delay. The tremor he’d felt while carrying her had been strong, verging on painful. He wasn’t all that keen on repeating it, but if she wouldn’t talk, there was little choice. He needed to learn what she knew and he could probably force a knowing if he held on to her long enough.

‘The Mireces are hunting you,’ he said and saw her shudder, ‘so we will protect you. But you need to help us do that.’

Lim looked at him, surprised, and Sarilla and Ash turned from their study of the terrain with identical expressions of disbelief. ‘We’re helping her,’ Dom said firmly. He ignored the mutters and focused on her again. ‘Are you Rilporian?’

The girl nodded and Dom felt a flicker of triumph. ‘Were you captured by the Mireces?’ Another nod. ‘I need you to say something now, lass,’ Dom murmured, taking a soft step forward. She wasn’t fooled; she slid sideways out of his reach. He stopped moving and exhaled softly. ‘I need you to tell me where you escaped from. Can you do that?’

As expected there was silence and Lim puffed out his cheeks. ‘It’s important, child. We need to know which village was tracking you, who it is we’ve killed on your behalf.’

‘Eagle Height.’ The girl’s voice was rusty with disuse, her accent thick with Mireces harshness. ‘Two days ago.’ Lim’s eyes narrowed, and Dom flinched.

‘You’re sure it was Eagle Height? Seat of Liris, King of the Mireces?’ Lim asked and then grimaced. The girl’s filthy robe darkened down the front, steaming piss streaking her legs and soaking into Dom’s careful bandaging.

‘Take her away, Ash, we need to talk,’ Lim grunted in disgust. ‘I’ll fill you in later.’

Dom opened his mouth to protest but Lim gave a hard shake of his head and he waited until Ash had escorted her out of earshot. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Dom hissed then.

‘I agree with Ash. She’s likely a spy.’

‘Really? You think she pissed herself on command?’

‘Yes.’

Dom’s eyebrows rose. ‘She’s Rilporian and she’s managed to escape after who knows how many years serving the Mireces and you say she’s a spy. She needs our help.’ He flicked hair off his forehead and rubbed delicately at his right eye.

‘Don’t be taken in by a pretty face,’ Lim said.

Dom scowled. ‘Don’t you be taken in by her accent,’ he retorted. ‘She’s Rilporian.’

‘So she says,’ Sarilla interjected and Dom threw up his hands in frustration, staring from one to the other.

‘It’s more than that,’ he insisted.

‘This is really what you meant, then?’ Lim asked. ‘You said a message, or a messenger. She’s it? What can she tell us?’

Dom bit his lip, shook his hair out of his eyes again and stared at the girl. She was looking around, backing off slowly. Ash grabbed her arm and pulled her to a halt. ‘I’m not sure, but she’s important. I just don’t know how yet.’

‘Then find out,’ Lim said, ‘one way or another. Either she’s important or she’s dead, but we need to know which and we don’t have time. Gods,’ he muttered and rubbed the back of his neck.

‘You said there was no immediate danger,’ Sarilla said in a tone that was nearly accusatory.

‘I said there was always danger,’ Dom contradicted her, but quietly. Last thing he needed was to start an argument.

Lim growled in frustration. ‘Fine, take her back to the village and get her some decent clothes or she’ll have her throat opened for her, Rilporian or not. I’ll stay here for a day or two, make sure they don’t come back with reinforcements. When I get back to the village, she’d better be ready to talk.’

‘I’m staying too,’ Sarilla said. ‘You’ll need my bow,’ she added when Lim would have protested.

‘Thank you,’ Dom said.

‘Just make sure you’re right about this, and about her,’ Sarilla muttered. ‘We don’t want to start a war over nothing.’

RILLIRIN
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Watcher village, Wolf Lands, Rilporian border

Rillirin sat and watched. She was good at watching, and she was very good at sitting still. Being unobtrusive had kept her alive. It wasn’t as cold as Eagle Height, so she didn’t allow herself to shiver, to move, barely to blink. Instead she curled into the protective angle of the wall of Dom’s house and the woodpile, and she watched.

She watched the men do the chores alongside the women, and she watched the women work with weapons alongside the men. Mostly, though, she watched the short, spiky-haired spearwoman who’d come to visit Dom and sat by the small fire outside his door.

Her name was Dalli and she had a spear as long as she was tall, plus the leaf-shaped blade at one end. Rillirin watched her rub a fine layer of beeswax into the grain of the wood, and then rub most of it back off again. There was an expression of absolute concentration and contentment on her face as she worked, oblivious to Dom clanging the cooking pot or whistling through his teeth.

Rillirin had never touched a weapon, if you discounted the knives in the kitchens of Eagle Height. Her palms itched at the thought of picking up a spear and knowing how to use it. A prisoner in a Wolf village was much the same as a slave in a Mireces village, though, so she didn’t move.

Dalli gave the spear one more rub-down and stood up, hefting it in one hand and then the other. Then she spun it and it hummed through the air. She smiled, shifting her hands and whirling its length through a series of figures of eight, spinning it around herself, spinning herself with it, feet dancing through the snow.

‘Show off,’ Dom called from inside, breaking the spell, and Rillirin blinked and exhaled; she’d been holding her breath. I want to do that. I want to fight, to dance like that. To be strong.

Dalli laughed, leapt at the door and stabbed through it into the gloom. Rillirin clapped a hand over her mouth and lurched to her feet. The movement alerted Dalli, who dropped into a crouch and spun, spear suddenly pointed at Rillirin’s chest. Rillirin flattened herself against the woodpile, a branch digging hard into her kidney, and put both arms over her face.

‘Hush, girl, I’m not going to hurt you,’ Dalli said, and Rillirin chanced a look. Her heart was thudding high in her throat. Dalli had straightened and was cradling the spear in the crook of her arm, its butt resting on the top of her boot.

‘Maybe I’ll teach you one day,’ she said and Rillirin’s mouth formed an O of surprise. How does she know? ‘Every woman should be able to protect herself,’ Dalli added and Rillirin’s face twisted with shame. The woman was mocking her weakness. She lowered her arms and stared at the snow, feeling her face heat up.

Dalli pursed her lips and then stepped forward and proferred the spear. ‘I didn’t mean anything by that,’ she said quietly. ‘Here, do you want to hold it?’ she asked and from the corner of her eye Rillirin saw Dom appear in the doorway, knife in one hand.

It’s a trap. They’ll kill me if I take the spear. They can say I attacked them. But Rillirin looked at it, at the warm rich wood, the curves of the grain and the faint sheen of beeswax. She could just make out the hatchings carved into its middle for grip. It was beautiful.

Dalli ran her free hand through her short spiky hair. ‘Go on if you want,’ she said. ‘It’s up to you.’

Rillirin licked her lips, fingers twitching; then she shook her head and looked away, shoulders creeping up around her ears. I remember this game. Drink the wine, wench, you’ve earned it, then a punch in the face if I did. Punch in the face if I didn’t, sometimes.

Dalli tucked the spear back under her arm. ‘Another time maybe,’ she said easily, with a smile Rillirin didn’t – couldn’t – trust. ‘You just let me know and I’ll be pleased to teach you. We all would, whatever weapon you fancy.’

Rillirin didn’t reply. She slid down the wall on to the ground, arms around her knees. Still.

CORVUS
Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Watcher village, Wolf Lands, Rilporian border

When Edwin had limped back into the longhouse and announced the slave had been taken by Wolves and his war band were all dead, Corvus had almost gutted the man there and then. One slave, one snivelling little bitch had managed to outsmart him and lead him into an ambush? And not only that, but she’d know all the secrets of the village, their weaknesses. If she talked, she’d give the Wolves all the information they could need to attack Eagle Height itself.

Corvus gathered all the available warriors in Eagle Height and set out without delay. They found tracks at the Final Falls fresh and only hours old, so Corvus led his men on as fast as they could go. If they could catch the Wolves in the open, he could slaughter them all, take back the wench and find out who’d killed Liris. Could be one of the men with him now, waiting for an opportunity to make a bid for the throne in much the same way he had.

Freezing sleet fell, marring the trail, and Corvus grimaced and sped up even more. Lanta, in a knee-length gown and black leggings, ran easily at his side, as she had done for the last day and a half. He still didn’t know why she’d insisted on coming, but despite his misgivings she hadn’t held them up. She was faster than some of his men.

The sleet had plastered her hair to her skull, dulling its vibrant blonde to sand. He couldn’t help but smile at her discomfort, though she hid it well. As war chief of Crow Crag, he’d run and fought through every kind of weather the mountains could throw at him. He was made for this. Sacrifice and communion no doubt had its strains, but she was in his world for a change and he intended to ensure she knew it.

Firelight. Corvus skidded to a halt and flung out an arm to stop Lanta running past. His warriors spread out in a skirmish line and hunkered down, and Corvus quartered the trees ahead. Campfires, more than one, and the smell of cooking.

‘Gosfath’s balls,’ he muttered, ‘we’ve found their fucking village.’ He had a few hundred men, but there was no way of telling how many Wolves there were. Could be a hundred, could be a thousand. The Lady’s will. My feet are on the Path.

‘We’re looking for the slave, remember. She’s not a warrior, so capture any woman who can’t fight. Kill everyone else.’ He got the nod from Fost to his right, Valan to his left, and drew his sword. He heard the creak of bows being bent and strung. He gestured and they started the advance, a silent line in the wet, melding with the dark beneath the trees. ‘Blessed One, stay here,’ he said, not waiting for a response.

Pitch torches hissed and sputtered at intervals in the village, doing nothing to light the darkness. He signalled again and men began peeling off in pairs into the houses, pulling daggers as they slid through the doors. They’d entered all of three buildings before yelling put an end to their stealth.

Shouts of alarm went up and Corvus waved his men on. Wolves poured from the houses and arrows flickered in both directions; the clash of steel started up, shivering loud on his left flank. The empty village was suddenly full of Wolves, armed and armoured as if they’d known he was coming. About a hundred, maybe more; it was hard to tell in the sleet and flickering of torches. Fewer than he had, anyway.

An arrow stuck into the meat of his forearm and Corvus yelped, looked for the archer, saw him and charged. Bow and hand came up to block and Corvus’s sword thunked home; the archer squealed and kicked, falling to his knees, the bow cracked, fingers pattering into the mud. Corvus stepped forward and mashed the severed digits beneath his boot. The archer’s other hand came around in a blurred arc and a knife stabbed into his ankle. Corvus roared in pain and stumbled back, and then another Wolf leapt over his companion, hair flying, howling a wordless challenge as he swung his sword.

Corvus brought his blade up and they clattered together, screeching. The man was shorter, lighter than him, and Corvus bared his teeth and bore down, forcing the Wolf back, herding him into the archer so he’d trip. But somehow the archer wasn’t there, and the Wolf managed to lash a boot into Corvus’s knee, buckling it. He went down hard, twisting to the side, and felt a sword tip rake the bearskin on his back. Motherfucker.

And then Valan was there, hammering into his attacker, driving him back. Corvus swatted the arrow out of his arm and lurched to his feet, gasping, his attention snagged by one of his men clubbing a short Wolf in the face. He wrenched the spear from her hands and dumped her belly down across a wall. He kicked her legs apart and was fumbling with her trousers when a man glided out of the darkness and slipped a sickle-shaped blade around the Mireces’ neck, jerked it in and across. Blood erupted across the woman’s back and she lunged upright, turned and drove her elbow into his temple. She picked up her spear and lunged back into the fight, shrieking defiance. Fuck, these women are tough. Pity they’re faithless whores or I’d have one as queen.

Still, the man was a fucking idiot, going for a rape when the battle’s not won. If they hadn’t killed him, Corvus would’ve taken great pleasure in doing it himself.

Flames were licking up from inside a few of the houses now, the smoke adding further to the chaos, and Corvus took the moments Valan had won him to turn in a circle and search. He stilled. There.

A tall warrior stood in a doorway, sword unsheathed. He made no move to engage any of the Mireces running rampant through his village, holding his position in front of a door. Corvus sucked blood out of the arrow hole in his arm and material of his sleeve and spat it on to the ground as an offering, then ran for him, stabbing a Wolf on his way past and leaving him to fall. The tall Wolf saw him coming and braced himself. Their swords met with a clatter and the Wolf parried and punched at the same time. Corvus gave ground, but the Wolf didn’t follow and he knew the slave must be inside.

‘Here,’ he called, and heard Valan shout in acknowledgment.

‘Wolves,’ the man shouted in his turn, ‘to me.’

Corvus attacked, shoving him back so he crunched into the door, and there was a scream from inside. ‘Give us the girl,’ he yelled as he trapped the Wolf’s thrust on his guard and stepped close, drawing his dagger as he did. ‘We just want what belongs to us.’

The Wolf snarled at that and attacked again.

‘Come out or he dies, bitch. They all die,’ Corvus shouted as he ducked a thrust. His dagger scraped over the Wolf’s chainmail and the man spat in his face. ‘Do as commanded, slave,’ he added and the Wolf hacked at him again, fury clouding his eyes. The door opened and Corvus grinned. ‘Good little bitch,’ he muttered, and then he recognised her. ‘Rillirin?’

His hesitation when he saw her nearly killed him. An archery string appeared around his throat from behind and someone dragged at his neck, sawing the string back and forth. ‘Get her out of here,’ his attacker shouted. ‘Waypoint three. Fuck’s sake, go!’

Corvus rammed his elbow back once, twice, and then the other one, half twisted and got his forearm under the back of his attacker’s knee, yanked on his leg and flung them both backwards into the dirt. The archer had no response and landed hard, Corvus on top of him. The string slackened and Corvus struggled to his feet, kicked the man hard and then spun to the house. The door was open and empty. They were gone.

‘Fuck,’ he roared, and rounded on the archer, but the man was on his feet and backing off between the houses, hand axe in his right, long knife in his left. He reached the trees and fled, not looking back. The other Wolves were fighting a controlled retreat into the treeline north, south and east of the village, splitting up, turning tail and running, fading like smoke. In seconds the village was deserted.

Corpses littered the ground, most in the greens and browns of the Wolves, but there were scores in blue as well and his jaw tightened. Treacherous, heathen bastards.

‘Valan, Fost,’ he called. He swept his uninjured arm across the village. ‘Burn it down. Every last fucking hovel.’ He stared around in frustration and then let out a roar of pure disbelief. Rillirin? How?

Lanta prowled out of the darkness, predatory as she stared at the carnage, her hands extended in offering – the dead belonged to the gods now. Corvus grabbed her arm and squeezed, dragging her forwards and breaking off the prayer, ignoring the shocked mutters from his men. The wound in his forearm blazed and the pain made him squeeze harder. Her lips compressed but she made no sound and the triumph in her eyes made him want to beat her to death.

He shook her. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ he demanded, hoarse. ‘How long have you known it was my sister we were hunting?’

DOM
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Waypoint three, Wolf Lands, Rilporian border

Men and women trickled into the glade in the birch forest, the third of their many assembly points in the event of attack. Healer Feltith was already there, busy with those who’d arrived before Dom and the girl. Wolves huddled in tents, under shelters and around tiny fires.

Dom managed a smile when he saw Ash approaching. ‘Thank the gods you saw them up at the Final Falls. That advance warning saved—’

‘Where the fuck is she?’ Ash snarled, grabbing Dom’s shoulder and hurling him out of the way of the tent. He pushed through the flap and grabbed the girl by the hair, dragging her into the night. ‘Who are you?’ he roared into her face. ‘What are you?’

‘Ash, what the fuck are you doing? What—’ Dom started; then he noticed the glow up in the foothills. They were burning the village.

Ash grabbed his arm with his other hand and hauled them both towards a fire. Lim sat with Sarilla, her hand swaddled in a piece of shirt, face grey. Ash shoved them to a halt. ‘They’re fucking dead, Dom. Fucking scores of us, slaughtered. Because of her. I told you she was trouble, I told you we should’ve killed her. Did you even find out like Lim asked you to?’ he added as Dom fought a riot of nausea. ‘Who she is, why they want her? What have you learnt?’

‘I haven’t – It wasn’t …’ Dom started, but there was nothing to say. Ash’s eyes burnt with the need to hurt and Dom swayed back from the violence. The girl was shaking at his side and Sarilla was staring at her with black hatred.

‘Enough.’ Lim stepped forward, limping badly but putting himself between the two men.

‘Enough?’ Ash gasped. ‘Tansy’s dead, so’s Ross. Dalli nearly got herself raped and your wife’s crippled.’ He glared past Lim at Dom, pointing at Sarilla. ‘She’ll never use a bow again; fucking Raider cut off three of her fingers.’ Ash spat. ‘Because of you. Because of her.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Lim snarled, and Ash subsided a little. Lim rounded on the girl. ‘What did you do?’ he asked. ‘Enough of your silence. My people died for you this night. More will die if we don’t know why they seek you.’

She whimpered, shook her head.

‘Tell me,’ Lim bellowed in her face and Dom flinched, reaching for him; Lim shook him off, not even glancing his way.

‘I killed Liris,’ she sobbed, hands up in a gesture of futile defence. ‘I killed Liris, I’m sorry, I killed him.’

The clearing descended into stunned silence, and even Feltith paused in the act of bandaging Sarilla’s hand to look at her.

Dom was staring at her; they were all staring at her. ‘You killed the King of the Mireces and didn’t think to tell us?’ he managed, but she was too scared, crying too hard, to hear him.

Ash moved first, shoved a sack and a folded tent into Dom’s slack arms. ‘You could have told us that, not her. You could have known days ago. But you didn’t and this’ – he waved his arm – ‘this is on you. So get the fuck out of here, Calestar,’ he hissed, ‘and take your Mireces whore with you.’

Dom looked from Lim to Sarilla to Ash, his mind a whirl of incomprehension, shame and simmering anger. ‘Sarilla, I—’

‘Get her away from me before I slit the little cunt’s throat,’ Sarilla growled and Lim helped him on his way with a shove hard enough that he stumbled. He heard the girl squeal and looked over in time to see Ash grab her throat and spit in her face, before pushing her towards him.

‘Lim,’ Dom tried, but his adopted brother wouldn’t meet his eyes.

‘Go to the temple and talk to Mother. You could use her wisdom.’ And they closed in around the wounded, their backs an impenetrable wall and Dom on the wrong side. Even Cam, the man who’d raised him like a son, the man who’d never once pushed him to use his gift despite what it might tell them, couldn’t meet his eyes. They blamed him, every one of them.

Dom’s breath hitched in his throat and he backed away, unable to turn from the sight of them ranged against him. They were his people that had been killed, his friends and neighbours. Theirs were the bodies littering the burning village he called home. But they were right, weren’t they? This was on him. He could’ve stopped it if only he’d pushed her. If only he’d used his gift, regardless of the cost.

He didn’t look away until he was inside the first line of trees, and then only because the girl touched his shoulder. He felt a tingle of understanding, a flicker from the knowing, and pushed it away. It was too late now. He didn’t care if she was important, didn’t care that such a momentary touch could ignite his gift. There wasn’t anything worth learning from her now and no one to tell it to even if he did.

Too late for Sarilla, for the other wounded. Too fucking late for the dead.

‘Go where you like, I won’t stop you. I’ve lost family because of you, friends, lovers. Their deaths are my shame, do you understand?’ Dom demanded, turning on her. He dropped the tent, grabbed her shoulders and shook, and then backhanded her so she fell into the mud. ‘Maybe Ash is right. Maybe you are a fucking spy. You couldn’t have done more damage if you’d fucking planned it.’

She rolled on to her back and wiped blood from her mouth and nose. ‘You expect me to trust you, to tell you everything I know when I’m as much a prisoner here as I ever was in Eagle Height?’ She stood up, shaky but tall. ‘I spent nine years slaving for the Mireces. Nine years you will never begin to understand. And for nine years I listened to their stories about the Wolves. How could I possibly trust you? All I know is what they told me.’

Dom laughed, a wheezing giggle tinged with madness. ‘What the fuck does it matter if you trust us? My people are dead because I didn’t want to scare you. Because I trusted that if you had something to tell us about the Mireces you would, that you had some touch of being Rilporian left inside. That if you’d killed their fucking king you’d have let us know.’ He bit off any more words. What was the point? Slumping, he picked up the tent again. ‘Just go. Go on, go.’

‘Go where?’

‘Fuck do I care? To hell, maybe, to the Afterworld. You deserve it.’ He hauled the tent on to his back and began walking southeast. She shifted from foot to foot, uncertain. Then she followed.

MACE
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
West Rank headquarters, Cattle Lands, Rilporian border

Mace Koridam, general of the West Rank, rested back in his chair and stretched his shoulders when Captain Tara Carter entered. ‘Report?’

Tara saluted and stood at parade rest in front of his desk. ‘There’s a lot of movement up there. Some sort of raiding or tracking party, it looked like. Found what was left of some dead Raiders, gear and weapons mostly. Animals had been at the bodies, but most had Wolf arrows in them. We got within five miles of the Sky Path, but the number of Mireces patrols forced us back.’

Mace frowned and crossed his arms. ‘Your orders were explicit, Captain.’

Tara met his gaze steadily. ‘Yes, sir. I’m aware I went beyond my remit, but there was too much activity, so I made the call. Sir.’

‘If this is about you proving yourself, Carter, I can assure you that you have singularly failed to impress me.’

‘It isn’t, sir. Word in the mountains is that Liris is dead, killed in his own bedchamber.’

Mace paused and eyed her. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked, though Tara was already nodding. ‘By the gods, this changes everything.’ With Liris dead, they could have an opportunity to force a battle and break the Mireces once and for all, ending the constant border threat.

‘My opposite number among the Wolves filled me in on that particular piece of intel,’ Carter said as there was a knock at the door. It opened and she gestured. ‘Dalli Shortspear. Turns out we weren’t the only ones sneaking around the Sky Path.’

Dalli gave Carter and Mace a strained smile and Mace winced. ‘Gods, woman, that’s the most impressive black eye I’ve seen in a long while.’

Dalli fingered the bruising. ‘Mireces spear butt, right in the eye. I will confess to a momentary confusion in the aftermath.’

Mace whistled. ‘I’d confess to being unconscious if it was me. But you’re otherwise well?’

Dalli gave a half-shrug, her usual energy missing. ‘As well as can be expected. Mireces war party on the hunt for an escaped slave. She made it down to us and they followed her, attacked the village. Burnt the village. We lost nearly seventy.’ She tapped her fingertips to her heart, commemorating the dead, and Mace and Tara copied her. ‘We’d had a few hours’ advance warning, but there were too few of us nearby to form an effective defence. We fought a holding action, then had to run.’

‘My sympathies, Dalli, to you and yours. Any help you need rebuilding, please do ask. I’ll increase our patrols in the meantime, give you a chance to recover.’

‘Thank you, General, we’d appreciate that. We’re stretched thin. For now we’ve sent the girl to Watchtown with Dom, to keep her safe and … keep her away from the other Wolves. There’s some bad feeling about what happened. The Mireces wouldn’t have attacked if she wasn’t there, and if she’d told us beforehand that she’d murdered Liris – well, let’s just say we wouldn’t have sent most of our warriors to winter in the smaller settlements.’

‘She killed him?’ Mace asked, incredulous. ‘A slave?’

Dalli touched her face again. ‘That she did, General. Or that’s what she told us anyway, and we believe her.’ She rested her hip against his desk and Mace was suddenly aware of her exhaustion. She was hurt and hurting, grieving, but she’d come to warn them anyway. She puts half my men to shame.

‘At least that fat old bastard Liris is dead,’ Dalli said. ‘Even if too many of ours are as well.’

Mace stalked to the window and back again. ‘You say there’s bad feeling around the slave? We’d be happy to host her here,’ he said, trying not to sound too eager. Her knowledge of Eagle Height must be extensive. This could be the turning of the tide. But why did she have to make her way to the Wolves? I could do so much with that knowledge, so much.

‘She and Dom will stay at the temple. With luck there won’t be trouble, but we’ll bear it in mind.’

‘Of course. If her presence in Watchtown becomes complicated, let me know and we’ll send someone to fetch her. In the meantime, if you learn anything from her, please do share it with us.’ He paused and Dalli dipped her head. ‘Do we know who the new Mireces king is yet? Or if there even is one?’

Tara sighed. ‘That we don’t know. I can take a patrol—’

Mace held up a finger. ‘You’ve done enough, Carter. Just let me have your full report by this evening.’ She opened her mouth to protest. ‘I’ve told you before, being a reckless idiot is not going to get you promoted any faster. If anything, it’ll make me more inclined to demote you. You are not the only captain with a Hundred in the West Forts. I appreciate your zeal, but I have other capable officers who can take out patrols. And I’m not sure your men would appreciate another run out so soon. Dismissed,’ he added when Carter looked like protesting anyway.

She saluted and stalked to the door, closing it very firmly behind her. Mace suppressed a smile; Carter was going to be an outstanding general one day, if she managed to stay alive that long. And if she could actually bloody listen to orders.

‘She’s a good one,’ Dalli said, breaking into his thoughts. ‘You’re lucky to have her.’

‘I know, I just wish she didn’t think she had to prove herself all the time.’

Dalli snorted. ‘She’s the only woman in the Rank, and she’s an officer. Of course she has to prove herself all the time. She’s fighting the instincts of five thousand soldiers.’ Dalli poked at the bruise again. ‘Your men aren’t as enlightened as ours; most of them don’t believe Tara should be wearing trousers, let alone wielding a sword. She’d probably be better off joining the Wolves.’

‘Stop trying to steal my best officer, Dalli,’ Mace said with a mock frown. ‘You can’t have her. Listen,’ he said, moving back to the desk, ‘how bad is the feeling about this woman?’

Dalli’s brows drew together. ‘Bad enough. Seventy is too many for a single skirmish on our own ground. Those four incursions we repelled over the summer cost us less than a hundred, plus your losses of course. To lose so many now, this late in the season …’ She closed her eyes. ‘It’s been a hard year for us.’

‘Then maybe she should stay at the forts,’ Mace said. He squeezed her shoulder and she opened her eyes again. ‘Think about it.’

‘I’ve got to visit a few settlements in the foothills, tell them what’s happened, then I’ll be going to Watchtown. I’ll see what the atmosphere’s like. If necessary, I’ll bring her here.’ She stood up from his desk. ‘But for now, General, with your permission I’ll raid your kitchens and then find somewhere to get my head down for a few hours. Long way still to go.’

‘Of course. Dancer’s grace upon you.’

She gave him a crooked smile. ‘And you, General.’

When Dalli had left, Mace wandered back to the window and looked down on the fort, then up at the mountains clawing the air, white and angry against a white sky. Change was coming: he could feel it. Maybe a king-killing slave from Eagle Height could help ensure that change was to their advantage.

CRYS
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
The palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

A couple of easy years, they said. A rest from the threat of border patrols, they said. Crys stood in the audience chamber and tried to keep his eyes open. He’d been here a few weeks and was bored out of his mind. Most of his wages had gone on drinking and gambling and he’d been threatened with a flogging already for being late on duty. That was Rivil’s fault, though; the prince could drink like a horse. Though it wasn’t exactly the done thing to blame your superiors for your own tardiness.

His Hundred were in charge of the king’s honour guard this week, and he’d thought that’d liven things up. So far he’d stood and listened to the king mumble for four days. He couldn’t make out most of it, and what he could didn’t make much sense. And the court? Crys had never seen such a bunch of expensively clothed arse-lickers in all his life.

Only Rivil’s endless supply of court gossip had kept him going, and he’d discovered which of the twittering court ladies was not blind to a dashing young officer offering a supportive hand during a turn in the gardens.

He’d spent the morning amusing himself by examining their outfits, grateful for the fashion for low-cut necklines. He’d be asleep if there wasn’t an army of well-endowed bosoms parading in front of his face.

The doors opened and the princes entered together. Crys snapped to attention, thumping his pike on to the marble, the sudden movement sending a rush of blood to his numb feet. Rivil winked as he walked past and Crys fought to remain stoic as the prince flicked him the finger for good measure.

Galtas followed a few paces behind, as always. The bastard’s single eye blazed a challenge at him. Crys really was going to have to give the little prick a beating at some point. He was bigger, but Crys would bet he was faster – he’d just stay on the side without the eye.

The princes bowed to the king and Rastoth beamed at them. ‘My boys,’ he boomed cheerfully, ‘my good boys. You are well?’

‘Very well, your majesty,’ Prince Janis said with another bow, ‘and how is your health?’

‘Excellent,’ Rastoth said, though Crys noted that Rivil glanced to the physician for confirmation. Hallos inclined his head. Janis stepped forward and offered Rastoth his arm as he rose, and the three of them made their way about the throne room, courtiers simpering and smiling like a flock of birds around them.

Crys followed, his knee stiff from standing still for hours.

Rivil dropped back to walk at Crys’s side. ‘Bit of a limp there,’ he whispered.

Crys glanced at Janis, then back to Rivil. ‘It’s the size of my cock,’ he whispered, ‘drags me to the right. What’s a man to do?’

Rivil burst out laughing and Crys grinned. Janis looked back and frowned. ‘I’m not sure our wise and devoted heir approves of our friendship,’ Rivil joked, giving Janis a little wave.

‘He’s just fuming because the king’s stopped next to Lord Hardoc. Or is it Lord Haddock? His breath smells like a week-dead fish, anyway.’

Crys kept a wary eye on Commander Koridam as Rivil sniggered. ‘His daughter, though,’ the prince said and whistled. ‘Have you seen the tits on her? Face like a cow’s, but with tits like that I’d – Commander, what a pleasure.’

‘Your Highness, if you are finished with my captain, may I have a word with him?’ Durdil asked.

Gods, what now? Crys saluted, bowed to Rivil, and gestured to Weaverson to take his place. He followed Durdil out of the audience chamber and down the long corridors to the commander’s study. Whatever it is, it can’t be more boring than guard duty.

Durdil sat at his desk and stared at Crys. He cleared his throat. ‘Captain Tailorson, Prince Rivil has requested you to lead his honour guard when he and Prince Janis travel west. They’re going to visit the West Rank before winter sets in.’ Durdil’s eyes were narrow with calculation, so Crys kept his face neutral, as though this was only to be expected. ‘I understand you’ve become quite the prince’s boon companion lately.’

Crys’s elation died rapidly. ‘I – It is difficult to refuse a prince, sir, when he gives an order.’

‘I see. And drinking until dawn with him, that’s because he orders you to, is it?’

Damn. ‘Well, no, sir, but when I’m off-duty—’

‘An officer is never off-duty, Captain Tailorson. Especially not an officer serving within the Palace Rank. One who is under my direct command.’

Shit. ‘If my actions have been improper, sir, then I apologise. I will decline the prince’s request.’

Durdil huffed. ‘You’ll do no such thing, Captain. As I noted on your first day, you have the potential to be an outstanding officer. You are not embracing that potential. Captain of the princes’ honour guard will necessitate you performing at the highest level for an extended period of time. The safety of the princes is paramount, so I expect regular reports and thorough examinations of everything the king wishes examined. And I have asked the heir to keep an eye on you – I have mentioned I am considering you for promotion and would value his opinion on his return.’

He grinned, though Crys felt no desire to smile in return. ‘I may also have mentioned that in your desire to achieve that promotion, you will be taking your duties extremely seriously and will have little time for carousing.’

Godsdamn shitting shit. ‘I am indeed honoured, sir. I will serve to the best of my ability.’ Crys wondered if it rang as hollow in Durdil’s ears as it did in his own.

‘It will be a testing of your mettle, captain.’ Durdil leant forward and put his palms flat on his desk. ‘Do not let me down.’

‘Of course not, sir,’ Crys said in his blandest voice. He snapped out a salute, spun on his heel, and exited the office.

Careful what you wish for, imbecile. Sometimes you actually get it.

TARA
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
West Rank headquarters, Cattle Lands, Rilporian border

‘Correspondence from the king, General,’ Tara said and handed it over.

Mace looked up from his letters and frowned. ‘What now? We can’t have a reply to the report about the raid and Liris’s death already. The throne doesn’t move that fast.’ He arched his back until his spine clicked.

This was one of the best things about being Mace’s adjutant, being here when he read his correspondence. Tara knew what the common soldiers thought they did up here, but at least they didn’t say it in front of her any more. Not since I broke that big git’s arm in two places. She grinned as Mace checked the name and seal on the envelope and then broke the wax.

His mouth opened as he read and then the colour drained from his face. Tara stepped forward, alarmed, and Mace swallowed and straightened in his chair.

‘It seems we are to be graced with royalty,’ he said. ‘The princes Janis and Rivil are coming to inspect the Rank, the forts, the supplies, the trade routes and anything else they can think of.’

Tara raised her eyebrows. ‘The princes? Why?’

Mace sighed. ‘The king’s health is not as robust as it once was,’ he said.

Tara kept her face neutral. That’s an understatement.

‘This may be the start of the princes assuming more control to ease the king’s burdens. Janis is capable, more than capable, but distant. It’s hard for men to be inspired to die in his name if he’s an enigma to them. Rastoth in his day could inspire anyone to do anything. Janis needs to learn to do the same.’

‘The West’s definitely the right place to start then,’ Tara said, ignoring the churning in her stomach. ‘We’re more loyal than the other Ranks as it is. West is best, after all,’ she added with a grin. Everyone said it.

‘I think that will be up to the princes to decide,’ Mace said and Tara’s smile faded. ‘They’re the future of this kingdom, Captain. Janis will be king and Rivil the Commander of the Ranks, so they need to see us at our absolute best.’

‘Future commander?’ Tara asked. ‘Surely that will be you, General.’

Mace folded his hands on the desk. ‘Me, Captain? While I admire your loyalty, I have no desire to be Commander of the Ranks. I am content with my position as general of the West. Which of course is entirely dependent on the princes’ assessment of my command. They’ll be here in a week. They’ll have my quarters, so I want you in charge of making sure they’re fitted out as best we can and my stuff is moved into the barracks.’

‘Colonel Abbas’s room—’ Tara began.

‘You know what would happen if I turfed Abbas out of his quarters?’ Mace asked.

‘Good point, sir. Well, my quarters then.’ Despite her words, Tara didn’t much want a repeat of the fourteen months she’d spent in the barracks with the rest of the soldiers, even if they had made her one of the dirtiest fighters in the Rank. There wasn’t anything Tara wouldn’t use as a weapon, and there wasn’t a body part Tara wouldn’t target if it’d get a fat fucker with rape on his mind off her. Still, Mace was the general and she was a captain.

‘The barracks, please, Captain. If it’s good enough for the men, it’s good enough for me.’

‘As you say, General.’ Best get it said, then. ‘Sir, about the princes, would you prefer it if I took out a long recon?’

Mace stared at her for a second. ‘Captain Carter, you are a bloody good officer first, if a little … hasty, and a woman second. You didn’t get this far by hiding from your superiors, or hiding your’ – he gestured vaguely and Tara’s face warmed – ‘female attributes. You’re up for rotation in two years: better get used to strangers having an opinion on you soldiering. Until then, I’ll vouch for you personally.’

Tara’s face warmed again, with gratitude this time. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘How many Hundreds are patrolling?’ he said and Tara pictured the barracks, the kitchens, the drill grounds inside and outside the forts.

She grimaced. ‘Seven, sir, with the Wolves out of action. It’ll put a stretch on us to get all four forts inspection-ready with that many men out.’

‘Best get busy then, eh, Captain?’ He jerked a thumb at the door. ‘Get your arse on to the wallwalk and flag the news to the other forts. I want this place hopping in an hour. Spick and span, Carter, spick and span. We’ve royalty coming.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Tara said and saluted. Princes Janis and Rivil. Do I even have a dress I can fit into these days? Do I even know how to wear one?

GALTAS
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
South Harbour dock, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

Galtas watched the loading of the royal barge with little interest, his mind on other things. He’d argued against Crys’s inclusion in the trip, especially against him leading the honour guard, offering to do it himself in the end. Rivil had helpfully pointed out Galtas held no formal rank. Galtas had equally helpfully pointed out they could hire a private guard as so many other nobles did, and he could lead that. Last thing he needed was that inquisitive little shit poking his nose in.

Then Janis broke in and said Palace Rank was the only appropriate guard for princes. Galtas hawked and spat into the calm waters of the harbour at the memory, at Janis’s utter dismissal of him. Appropriate. Oh, Janis was all about that, wasn’t he? Appearance was everything. He wondered what went on underneath that dour, faithful, self-righteous exterior. What perversions Janis must keep hidden to protect his reputation. Galtas didn’t doubt he had them, but years of prying had never revealed so much as a whore or a bastard or an unexplained death. It was impossible.

‘Careful with that,’ a voice snapped and Galtas jerked back into the real world and scowled down the dock. Tailorson was directing the loading. The captain waved his arm, then leapt from the dock into the barge to catch the swinging cargo and help lower it to the deck.

Galtas fingered the pouch of poison hanging from his belt and spat again. Quite the little hero. Gods, he was almost as insufferable as Janis, and significantly closer to Rivil than the heir would ever be, despite outward appearances.

There were plans to be safeguarded and an inquisitive soldier was an unnecessary risk. Galtas touched the poison pouch again, checked the position of the sun, and then made his way to the Ship Tavern on the edge of the water outside the city.

Many plans, and many ways they could go wrong already, without Rivil being distracted by his new pet soldier. He took a table in a quiet corner and put his back to the wall, sipping at the ale the girl brought. If those plans came to fruition, he’d never have to bow and scrape to the likes of Janis again, or put up with shits like Tailorson.

He drank and waited, eyeing each new customer and wondering if his contact would be on time. Waiting was the hard part.

THE BLESSED ONE
Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Longhouse, Eagle Height, Gilgoras Mountains

Lanta seethed. She’d felt Rillirin’s presence, she’d seen into their stinking excuse for a village, and then Corvus had slaughtered all he could find and the rest had fled. Her humiliation cut deep and she knew the Red Gods were displeased. She was displeased.

‘We are no closer to finding Liris’s killer,’ Lanta hissed. Corvus twitched, but had no answer. She could hear the enamel squeaking on her teeth, they were so tightly clenched. He’d left a band of five led by Edwin and Valan scouring the forests for Rillirin and ordered the rest back to Eagle Height, and when she’d argued against it, he’d suggested she stay and search herself. The mockery in his face when she’d declined had been plain. ‘Rillirin could be anywhere by now.’

‘We’ll find my sister when the gods will it,’ he said, ‘and then we’ll learn everything she has to say.’ He’d a fondness for quoting the gods’ will at her, as if he even knew what that was. A fondness for ignoring her, for ignoring the gods too when it suited him.

Lanta feared nothing, not even death – death would simply bring her into the gods’ very presence, to sit with the Dark Lady as Her Blessed One for all eternity. But the thought of that little cunt slipping through her fingers filled her with something akin to fear. Fear and bright, pure rage.

‘She was right there, Corvus, and you didn’t take her. You let her escape. Is your sense of family—’

‘You will address me correctly, Blessed One,’ he said smoothly, ‘as “Sire” or “your Majesty”. I give you that courtesy and you will do the same for me. As for my sense of family, Rillirin is a heathen and so she is dead to me. You think I would have allowed her to be a mere bed-slave to be used by any man who could claim her if I felt anything for her?’

‘Sire,’ she managed, swallowing bile, ‘be that as it may, Rillirin knows who killed Liris, but she also knows many of our secrets. Secrets we have just handed to the Wolves. The invasion, maybe even the ongoing negotiations with the Rilporian, may all be spilt. She is a weakness we cannot afford.’

‘And yet the gods will it otherwise,’ Corvus said and Lanta’s teeth squeaked again. ‘As for the Wolves, we sowed bloody confusion in their very fucking homes, killed them while they slept. The survivors won’t be able to stand against us for long.’ He waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Commune with the gods, ask them for direction. Leave Rillirin and the war to me.’

Lanta sought for calm. ‘I shall pray and seek guidance. For our cause and for you, that you may have your eyes opened.’

‘Oh, I see clearly, Blessed One. Very clearly.’

His arrogance made her want to spit in his face, to draw her sacred hammer and put it through his temple. Instead she curtseyed and went to the door leading down into the cave-temple, controlling her temper until she was out of sight.

‘I will have that little bitch under my knife for this,’ she whispered, the sibilants echoing back to her. ‘Corvus’s arrogance, his ignorance, may destroy us all. I will not let that happen. The gods will triumph. They will have Rilpor. I have sworn it and I need no king to bring it about.’

In the temple, Lanta took a deep breath and stilled her mind and heart. To step into the circle unprepared was to have your soul torn to pieces. She lit the candles and threw bunches of dried sage on to the brazier and smoke rose, thick with visions. She knelt, palms on thighs, eyes closed and breathing steadily, until she felt the pathway to the gods break open and she rushed along it into the presence of her mistress.

In the stillness of the temple Lanta’s body twitched and bent, shuddering with pain that was indistinguishable from pleasure.

‘I am here, my child,’ the Dark Lady said and Lanta’s mind thrilled with awe and terror. Sweat darkened her dress. ‘You are distressed?’

The Dark Lady was a voice in Lanta’s head, a voice of fear and blood and orgasm, and Lanta opened herself like a flower to its owner. ‘My goddess, I fear Your will may not be done. I fear Corvus is not strong in his faith, that he will fail to accomplish Your desires. Will you guide me, tell me what must be done? Should I remove him?’

The Dark Lady was silent and Lanta waited, muscles tensing in waves through her body as the Goddess rifled through her mind and memories, her desires and plans. Lanta didn’t fight it, didn’t try and hide anything from Her. Not that she could have. All her ambitions and secret wants she put on view, and the Dark Lady pondered them, turned them over like trinkets, and discarded them.

‘Corvus does my will,’ the Dark Lady said abruptly, and Lanta sucked in a breath. ‘He is one of many instruments I command. You are another. The Rilporian is a third. The calestar the fourth. When all those pieces come together in one place, then will my victory be complete.’

‘The calestar? I did not know.’

‘You did not need to,’ the Dark Lady said and Her voice hurt. Lanta submitted. She could feel Her amusement. ‘You do not like Corvus, do you? Or is it that you do not like that he has stripped you of power?’ Lanta’s mind was crushed suddenly in a vice and she screamed, clutching her head. She fell to the stone as the Dark Lady tore open her skull.

‘You do my will, child, as does Corvus. Your petty ambitions mean nothing to me. If you hinder my plans with this feud with him, you will regret it. Never forget you could be replaced as easily as he could, as Liris was.’

‘Your will, Lady,’ Lanta gasped. ‘I will not fail you.’

The pain was gone and instead she felt the touch of fingertips, stroking along her skin, caressing, soothing, exciting. Lanta forced herself back on to her knees, shaking with the echoes of pain and the Dark Lady’s sudden arousal.

‘See that you do not fail me, child. Rilpor will belong to Blood again and, after it has fallen, all the world will know my wrath.’

DURDIL
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Physician’s quarters, the palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘I will no doubt regret asking this, but how do you keep the cadavers so fresh?’ Durdil asked.

Hallos tapped the side of his nose and sat forward in his chair, putting his glass to the side. ‘You have your secrets, my old friend, and I have mine. I’ve had a few of your recruits assisting me with my research.’

Durdil eyed him dubiously. ‘You haven’t made any of them into cadavers, have you?’ Hallos laughed and waved a hand. ‘How many recruits?’

‘Three, and they’re all fine, before you ask. They had a few days’ leave and wanted to make some extra coin. They’ll be well enough to return to the barracks tomorrow.’

‘Hallos!’ Durdil snapped. ‘My soldiers are not your personal playthings. You know I had four drop out last year after you got your hands on them. One of them still has a limp.’

‘It’s vital research, Commander. The king himself gave me permission.’

‘I’m not sure he was aware of what you’d be doing to them. You’re a physician, not a soldier. What did you learn this time?’

‘Not much, unfortunately. I’m trying to find a way to swiftly elicit unconsciousness so that wounded men can be treated. A blood choke, you call it. Only they keep waking up when the pressure on the neck is released.’

‘You are not to keep pressure on indefinitely,’ Durdil almost shrieked.

Hallos patted the air. ‘I know, I know. I am a physician, after all. The brain would be compromised if the choke were applied for a sustained period. I tried it on some dogs before I moved to humans.’

‘You tried it on …’ Durdil trailed off and then drained his glass. ‘Remind me never to bring my hounds to the palace.’ He paused and replayed Hallos’s words. ‘Wait, you said they’ll be well enough to return to the barracks tomorrow. Where are they now?’

Hallos shifted in his seat. ‘Hospital,’ he muttered, and then patted the air again. ‘Precautionary only, I promise. I am making progress on ascertaining how long a healthy man can hold his breath in a variety of situations, though. Under water, in toxic smoke, while under stress, while running. All fascinating.’

‘And how is this of use?’ Durdil asked.

‘Well, say the palace caught fire, gods forbid. The king is trapped in his quarters with a fire raging its way towards him. You’re at the other end of the corridor. Now I’m confident that a fit man, as you undoubtedly are, could sprint that hundred yards while holding your breath in around twenty seconds. Meaning you know how long it will take you to reach the king and escort him to safety.’

Durdil choked slightly on his drink. ‘Twenty seconds? You have a lot of faith in an old man, Hallos. But let’s go along with the scenario. I heroically hold my breath and sprint the length of the corridor, full of toxic smoke, and burst into the king’s quarters. Now, once I’ve got my wind back, which I imagine would take several minutes and perhaps a small lie-down, how do I get his majesty out? With all due respect, I do not think him capable of sprinting a hundred yards while breathing, let alone while not.’

‘Ah, but this is where the research really comes into its own,’ Hallos said excitedly. ‘One of my volunteers breathed in toxic smoke for eleven minutes by the sand clock before finally passing out. Now, it wouldn’t take eleven minutes to walk a hundred yards, would it? And even if Rastoth were somehow incapacitated and you had to carry or drag him, it wouldn’t take you more than a minute, two at the outside. And we can tell from my research that your body would be able to withstand that much smoke without long-term adverse effects.’

‘You poisoned one of my recruits for eleven minutes?’

‘Durdil, you’re missing the point. The human body is resilient: there’s so much it can absorb, endure, before it starts to break down.’

‘Well, we know I wouldn’t need to sprint the hundred yards if I could walk it without dying.’

‘Yes, but these were simply two experiments conducted under similar conditions. It’s not meant to be taken as a training manual.’

‘Truly, your research astonishes,’ Durdil said, deciding not to point out that any man who’d ever burnt his dinner could tell you surviving a smoke-filled room for two minutes was easy, though surviving your wife’s withering scorn afterwards took a little more grit.

‘Oh, this is minor stuff, really. I’m taking a man’s appendix out tomorrow. It’s causing him terrible pain. Would you care to assist?’

Durdil smiled. ‘I think I’ll leave that to you. I would rather how it’s done remained a mystery. Though I feel that there are too many mysteries for me of late. This is a young man’s game, and I don’t think anyone would mistake me for one of those any more.’ Durdil rotated his glass, staring at the firelight winking through the red of the wine. Like the colours inside your eyelids when you turned your face up to the sun.

‘Speaking of young men, how is Mace faring? Wolves and Mireces keeping him busy?’

Durdil’s expression was grave. ‘More mystery. I had word only today that the Wolf village was attacked by Mireces hunting an escaped slave. Turns out the slave killed King Liris before fleeing. But they can’t find out who’s taken the throne.’

Hallos whistled. ‘Have you told Rastoth?’

Durdil wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Yes. He’s still sending the princes west. Both of them. Despite the danger. And then he forgot I’d told him.’ He rubbed his face, weary beyond words.

‘The princes can look after themselves, and Mace will ensure they’re kept safe. I spoke to them, you know, about Rastoth.’

‘And?’

Hallos shrugged. ‘They’re still grieving for the queen. They want their father back. The kingdom needs a king, Durdil. Perhaps it’s time for Janis to be crowned. I know it’s been suggested already.’

Durdil stiffened. ‘Rastoth still lives.’

‘Barely. And you’ve made no progress on Marisa’s death. I can’t imagine he will begin to recover until that chapter is closed.’

‘So it’s my fault?’ Durdil demanded, and then apologised. ‘Forgive me, Hallos. I am tired. But Rastoth is my king. I cannot countenance deposing him, not even in favour of Janis.’

‘The killers know the court; they knew the queen. Even the guards knew them. Galtas said they were dead facing the door, so they were killed when the assassins came back out. So they must have known them or they’d never have let them into the queen’s presence in the first place.’

Durdil sat forward. ‘Galtas said that? Those details are confidential. Not even the princes know that.’ He drained his glass and thumped it on the table, and then raked his fingers across his scalp. Galtas? How did he know? Unless …

He stared into the fire. He could still taste the blood in the air from that night, the thick stench of it and the sight of it daubed in bright swathes on the walls. Stepping over the dead guards with his sword drawn into that red room and seeing a slender arm sticking out from under a pile of torn tapestry. An arm that, when he crouched beside it, he saw wasn’t attached to a body. He felt an echo of the nausea that had risen in him then and swallowed hard. She’d been in pieces. Not just killed, but dismembered. His throat was tight; he took the glass Hallos refilled for him and drank.

‘As you say, they must have known us intimately. Which is why I’ve started investigating the court. The nobles, the nobles’ wives, the clothiers, the queen’s jeweller, her bathing attendants, her dressers, even her chambermaid. There’s nothing.’ He met Hallos’s eyes. ‘I even investigated you, my friend. I’m sorry, I had to. It was my duty.’

‘I hope I passed,’ Hallos said, a little unsteadily.

‘You did, of course, Hallos. Of course.’ Durdil paused. ‘I even looked into the whereabouts of the princes, you know,’ and he heard Hallos gasp. He spread his hands. ‘What else could I do? Someone she knew, Hallos, a friend, acquaintance or servant. Why not a son?’

‘And what did you find?’ Hallos hissed, leaning forward.

‘Nothing, of course. The heir was in his chambers, accounted for by a dozen separate, reliable witnesses, and Rivil was with Galtas in that posh inn in the cloth district. Innkeeper himself told me.’

‘Isn’t he dead now, that innkeeper?’ Hallos asked and Durdil was glad for the change in subject.

‘Aye, stabbed by his wife of all things. She found out he was sleeping with his daughter by marriage. Suppose you can’t blame the poor woman.’

‘People, eh?’ Hallos said. ‘The more you learn about them, the less you understand.’

Durdil huffed and reached for his drink; then he paused, hand extended. So the innkeeper who vouched for Galtas is mysteriously dead. And Galtas knew the placement of the bodies. But no, because Rivil was there with him. But then, they often drink in the Gilded Cup: the innkeeper could have got his days mixed up. And now I can’t ask him. But I can ask Galtas where he was the night the queen died.

Brooding, he drank. He didn’t notice Hallos leave.

DOM
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Wolf Lands, Rilporian border

The air had the silent weight of snow when Dom half woke and rolled over. He snuggled into the warmth of a neck and back and drifted back to sleep, dreams flitting behind his eyelids like swallows. The images became clearer, and then stranger, darker, tugging at him until he gasped and jerked awake. He flailed and broke contact with the girl, and the images vanished. She moved too, rolling over and pressing her back against the freezing canvas, her breathing harsh.

The knowing swelled and burnt its way through his skin where he’d touched her, worming its way towards his skull. He stretched out a foot and kicked at the tent flap, allowing a spear of daylight and a blast of freezing air into the gloom. They stared at each other by its light, Dom turning over the images he’d seen, probing at them like a tongue at a rotten tooth.

The tent was so small they were still practically touching, even when they were both straining away from each other. He caught a whiff of old sweat and rain from the ragged plait of her hair that lay across the space between them, but he didn’t move it. Right now he didn’t know if even that much would bring on another knowing and he wasn’t risking that here, with only her for help and company.

Normally I can’t tell when a knowing will happen. Why is it with her I know one’s coming? Why is everything twisted around her? She’s like an oak and the world is ivy, climbing her, revolving around her. He scrubbed at his face. So what happens to the ivy if she falls?

He forced the images to the cage at the back of his mind. ‘I’ll kindle the fire. Pack up,’ he growled and wriggled out into the snow. He reached back in for his jerkin and coat and brushed her arm. She yelped and he huffed in irritation, at her and at the tingle that shot through his fingertips. ‘Hurry up,’ he snapped, anxiety and grief and anger making him sharp, ‘we should reach the plain by noon if we don’t dawdle.’

Dom squatted by the embers of the fire and laid more wood on it until it blazed and he could melt snow for tea. He threw some dried rosehips into the bowls and went to piss while it heated.

I’m afraid of her, that’s what the problem is. She’s going to change everything. ‘No,’ he said aloud, ‘she’s going to set in motion old plans I thought I’d escaped.’ He stared unseeing at the melting yellow snow, then shook himself like a dog and returned to the camp.

Rillirin had collapsed the tent and screwed it into a bundle three times its proper size and was struggling to tie the leather thongs around its bulk. Her face was red with the effort and he watched her in silence, the echo of the glimpse he’d seen through her throbbing behind his right eye.

‘You’re making a mess of that, aren’t you?’ he said when he couldn’t bear to watch any longer. Sharp again, when he shouldn’t be. Couldn’t help it. She squeaked in alarm and spun to face him, the bundle dropping from her arms and unfurling again.

‘Forgive me, honoured,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll do better, I promise.’

‘This is the third time I’ve shown you how to do it, isn’t it?’ he said. He didn’t wait for an answer, but spread out the tent and showed her how to roll it. ‘Got it this time?’ he asked. She bobbed her head. ‘Good. Check the tea.’

She’d made the bowls from pine bark and resin their first day out from the village, when Dom had been too numb to do anything but stumble through the woods. Crude but effective and lightweight, they slipped easily into the tent folds for carrying and had come in handy every day since.

‘You ready?’ he asked when he’d finished his tea, and she drank the rest of hers and stowed the bowls. She hefted the tent on to her shoulders and Dom adjusted it, teasing one corner out of the ties to hang down to her calves and keep off the worst of the wind. They hadn’t even had time to find her a coat before they’d left. Before they’d been banished. He killed the fire, buckled on his sword and headed east. Rillirin limped along behind him, bent slightly beneath the tent but unprotesting, dogging his heels like a whipped cur.

They walked all day, reaching the edge of the Western Plain by late afternoon. The sun was already fading when they made camp. Rillirin was pinched with cold and Dom built up the fire, then put out a hand to stay her. ‘Get warm, lass, I’ll do the rest.’

He could see her instinct to obey warring with her fear that he would punish her for laziness, so he threw her the pigeons he’d brought down with his sling. ‘Pluck these, will you?’

She hunched by the fire, working quickly and piling the feathers in her lap. When she was done and the tent was up, she held up the handfuls of down. Dom raised an eyebrow. ‘No thanks.’ He put his head on one side, curious. ‘You keep them,’ he said.

Her eyes flickered to his face and away; then she carefully separated the feathers in half, took off her boots and stuffed her socks with them. He could see the tiniest smile graze her lips as her toes warmed up.

‘Clever,’ he said approvingly. The silence stretched between them as the pigeons roasted in the top flames and chestnuts cooked in the coals. Dom turned his back to the fire and looked up at the sky, tracing the constellations sprayed across the velvet of the night. His fingers tapped against his vambrace and he hummed softly. ‘Would you like to talk?’ he asked.

There was no response so he turned back and she looked away hurriedly. ‘Of course, honoured. What do you want to talk about?’

‘No,’ he said as he poked his knife into a pigeon, ‘do you want to talk? You have the choice.’

‘Of course, honoured,’ she said again.

‘All right. What do you want to talk about?’ he pressed.

‘Whatever you desire, honoured.’

‘Please stop calling me that, lass. It’s a Mireces term and neither of us is Mireces.’ He pulled the pigeons off the spit and put one in her bowl, juggled chestnuts from the fire and split them evenly. ‘Here you are. All right, can you tell me your name?’

She was quiet, staring at the food, and for a second he thought she was praying. Who to? Had she fooled them all? Was she praying to the Red Gods? Then she looked up and there was a wet sheen to her eyes. ‘Rillirin Fisher,’ she whispered and he knew it had been a long time since anyone had asked or cared.

‘Rillirin Fisher,’ he repeated. ‘That’s a beautiful name. Rillirin. Rill.’

‘Not Rill,’ she snapped; then she cringed. ‘Forgive me, honoured, I spoke wrong.’

The vehemence, the sudden sick expression, told him that Rill was associated with some bad memories. ‘I apologise,’ he said formally, ‘Rillirin. And I’m Dom Templeson. I know I’ve told you that before, but now we’re properly introduced. We’ll be at Watchtown tomorrow. Stay close to me, all right? It’s our town, a Watcher and Wolf town. People might be a little … hostile.’

She paused with the pigeon’s leg in one hand, her eyes wide, fingers suddenly white.

‘But you’re under my protection and I’ll keep you safe,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to visit my mother – my adopted mother. She’s high priestess at the temple of the Dancer and Fox God. She can cleanse you, if you want it.’

He concentrated on eating, pretending he couldn’t hear the muffled hitches in her breathing, the sniffs as she fought tears. How desperate for cleansing would I be after nine years in the hands of Mireces? His eyes drifted to the vambrace on his right arm and what it concealed, and then he turned his thoughts carefully in another direction, like a parent steering a recalcitrant toddler away from danger.

‘And Liris? Can you tell me why you killed him?’ he asked as he sucked the meat from the last of the bones.

The silence stretched even longer this time and she dropped the chestnut she was holding back into her bowl. ‘He was’ – Rillirin’s hand rose to her throat, fell back into her lap – ‘he was going to rape me. He still had his dagger in his belt, so I, you know …’ She made vague stabbing gestures and then stuck her hands in her armpits and hunched over, nostrils flaring.

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