Although their approach was anything but triumphal, there was still a welcoming crowd waiting for them as they approached the docks. Endi smiled as he saw Rika there, his sister waving as they came in to welcome them. Endi waved back, then leapt down from the boat as soon as it was close enough to the docks to do it.
“Endi!” she said, hugging him tight. “You’re back! You’re safe. Is the battle over?”
Endi smiled at the warmth of his sister’s welcome, then remembered to keep his expression grim as he stepped back to hold her at arm’s length. It was a grim moment, because he knew how much what he had to say next would hurt her.
“It’s good to see you too, little sister, but the news is cruel today.” He raised his voice so that everyone there on the docks might hear it. “Our father… our father is dead, and we are betrayed!”
“Father is dead?” Rika asked, wide-eyed. “No, Endi, no, he can’t, he can’t.”
Endi held her close as the tears started to come. A part of him just wanted to comfort his sister. A part of him knew that it would look strong, as Ishjemme needed him to be.
“I’m sorry, Rika,” he said. “Come on, we’ll get you back to the castle, and I’ll explain everything.”
He walked her up through the city, its stands of trees and open spaces beautiful after the ugliness of Ashton. Behind them, Endi’s men followed in procession, carrying their father’s body atop a wooden frame, preserved as best they could manage at sea so that all of those there might see him.
“Is Oli still at the castle?” Endi asked as they got close.
Rika nodded. “He’s had so much to organize while you’ve been gone.” She looked back at their father’s body. “Oh… I don’t know how I can tell him…”
“It’s all right,” Endi promised. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll look after everything.”
When they reached the castle, Oli was there waiting for them, their studious brother looking hollow-eyed as though he’d spent most of the time since the invasion force left trying to run everything without giving up on any of his histories. Possibly he had. Endi saw Oli look past them, to where the men were carrying their father’s body, saw his brother’s fists clench as he tried to stay strong.
“We’ll do this in the main hall,” Endi said, not waiting for his brother to ask whatever questions he had. He gave a quiet nod to one of the men following him, and the man nodded back.
They went through to the main hall, where a scattering of those men and women who had been left behind were already gathering. Perhaps the news of the returning ships had drawn them, or perhaps they’d heard the news of what had happened to their former duke.
Endi stepped to the front of the hall, standing next to the lord’s seat, with his brother and sister beside him.
“My friends,” he said, “I have grave news. My father lies dead, slain by the hand of an assassin. By the hand of betrayal.”
Whatever murmuring there had been around the hall went silent, and for an instant, Endi felt the weight of what he was about to do. In this moment, he could still make the choice not to do this. He could still walk back from the edge of the precipice. Ishjemme needed him to jump, though. It needed him to keep it safe.
“Our cousins came among us claiming friendship,” Endi said, placing his hands on one of the room’s great trestle tables and leaning forward. “Yet now they have killed our father!”
“What?” Oli said from where he stood with Rika. Endi would have smiled at that if he hadn’t needed to look serious then. He suspected that his brother and sister would ask all the right questions at all the right moments. They would help in this as surely as if he’d brought them into his plans.
“I know it is hard to believe,” Endi said. “But Sophia is the one behind our father’s death. She took his signet ring. She got us to swear fealty to her. She got us to go along with her war. Then she killed him so that she could rule Ishjemme.”
Rika was shaking her head. “No, Endi, that can’t be right.”
“I know you like her, sister,” Endi said, speaking to the room, not to Rika, “but the signs were always there. Sophia came to us from the first because her attempts to get close to the Dowager’s throne failed. She persuaded our father to swear Ishjemme to her cause. She argued against her brother being the rightful heir to the throne.”
That hadn’t been how it had gone, but it was close enough.
“Even so,” Oli said, “it’s a leap from that to murder. Perhaps this is some misunderstanding?”
Endi shook his head. “I know you want to see the best in everyone, but in this… Sophia ordered all of our family into the teeth of the battle for Ashton. She sent Ulf and Frig to assault the main river gate. She sent Hans through the hardest hand-to-hand fighting in the outskirts. She planned to kill them.”
“That can’t be right,” Rika said, shaking her head.
Endi smiled over at her as gently as he could. “Our father… he died by poison, on the eve of the battle, on Sophia’s flagship, at the heart of our fleet. Are we to believe that an assassin could have gotten through all that? Are we to believe that an assassin who did get through wouldn’t have gone after her unless she sent them?”
“I won’t believe it,” Rika said.
Endi walked forward, taking his sister’s shoulders. “That is because you are kind, Rika, and you want to see the best in people, but there’s more. After the ‘assassin’ who came for Sophia, and who hurt you so badly, I looked into the man who did it, this Bjornen. He was visited by Sophia. I’m sure of it. She arranged the whole thing!”
“And now you’re back here with a fleet,” a man called out from the benches below. “Did you not have the stomach for the battle?”
Endi shot him an angry look. His brother and sister could question him, but not someone else. Endi’s eyes picked out the man, dressed in the clothes of a fisherman.
“Call me a coward again, Aggi Forthar, and we’ll fight,” Endi snapped, because it was the kind of thing Ishjemme expected its men to say. “I came back here with other men who saw the truth. Other men who want to defend Ishjemme from this betrayal.”
“Why aren’t our brothers and sister here?” Oli asked. “They aren’t—”
Endi shook his head quickly, raising a hand to forestall any tears on Rika’s part. “When I left, they were safe, although I’d feel better if they weren’t still with her. They still believe in Sophia, still think that she is our friend. Leaving like that… I wish I could have brought them with me, but it was the only thing I could do.”
He looked around the hall, trying to gauge how the people there were reacting, who was agreeing, who would need to be pushed aside.
“And now there is only one thing to do, if we are to protect Ishjemme.”
He took the short step sideways to his father’s seat, and settled himself into it.
“What are you doing, Endi?” Rika asked.
“What I must, sister,” he said. “Ishjemme’s duke is dead, and we must have someone to keep us safe. Our siblings are not here, and have been taken in by Sophia in any case. I love you and Oli dearly, but this is a time for strength, and in any case, I am older than you both. I must rule.”
Oli cocked his head to one side. “According to the old laws, the king or queen decides who the next duke of Ishjemme should be.”
Endi looked over at him. “And do you think Sophia will pick anyone but herself? This is what she planned. Even now, my men are hunting around for any of her supporters, to make sure that they can do no harm here.”
Endi hated that part of it. He hated that tonight would be a night of silent knives in the dark for those who might oppose this, but there was nothing else to be done. This had to happen.
“You must both know that I would only ever act in Ishjemme’s interests,” he said.
Rika was still shaking her head.
“This is wrong,” she said. “There’s something wrong here. Sophia wouldn’t do this, and you can’t just claim Ishjem
me like that, Endi. All of this… we need to make things better, not do this.”
“I have to do this, Rika,” Endi said. “Can’t you see that? Won’t you support me in this? Please?”
Rika shook her head again. “I think you’re doing the wrong thing, Endi,” she said. “I think… I think you’re just doing this for yourself. I… I won’t help you.”
She wasn’t the only one. Aggi Forthar stood, slamming his fist into the table he sat at.
“This is a wrong thing!” he declared. “We swore ourselves to our queen, Sophia, and I’ll not see you usurp her throne, Endi Skyddar. Step down from it, or I’ll drag you down.”
Endi had hoped that it wouldn’t come to this. He’d hoped, but a part of him had known, and that part had prepared. He nodded to his men, down in the hall.
“Kill the traitor!”
One of them stepped over to Aggi Forthar, gripping his long, braided hair and using it to wrench his head back. Endi saw the flash of a knife, followed by the spray of red as his man slit Aggi Forthar’s throat.
Men cried out. Rika screamed, high and piercing. Some reached for weapons, as if they might fight Endi and his men, throw down their rightful lord. Endi’s men were quicker, though, their knives and their axes rising and falling.
It was so brutal, and so fast. In the space of a few heartbeats men went from alive to just meat, from people with hopes and dreams to merely something to burn on a funeral pyre. Ishjemme’s winters had always made it a harsh place, but this was brutal.
Then it was silent, or almost silent. Endi could still hear his sister sobbing in the background.
“These men were traitors,” Endi said. “They put an outsider above their own, and would have betrayed us all.”
The others in the hall stared up at him in stunned silence, understanding what was happening. All except his sister. She moved in front of him.
“How can you do this, Endi?” Rika demanded. “How can you just… just murder people? This is wrong! This is evil!”
She slapped him then, the blow stinging more than it should have.
“I’ll never forgive you for this, never.”
If it had been anyone else, Endi might have hit them for that. As it was, he signaled two of the men who had come with him.
“My sister is obviously too upset by our father’s death to think properly. Please take her to her rooms and see that she stays there.”
“Is that it?” Rika demanded as the men came toward her, gripping her arms. “A coup? Are you planning to have me killed, Endi? Like them? Get off me, both of you. Get off me!”
It was everything that Rika had said, but still, Endi went to her. “I would never hurt you, Rika. Never. You’re family. But until you can see the truth of this, I need to make sure you won’t act against me. You’ll stay in your rooms, safe and sound.”
He turned to his brother as the men started to drag Rika away, fighting against them at every step.
“What about you, Oli? Do I need to lock you in that library of yours?”
His brother stared at him for a long time, then shook his head. “Why are you doing this, Endi?”
“For Ishjemme, brother,” Endi said. “I need to protect it. We need to protect it, from Sophia’s mad wars as much as anything else. I know you must have doubts now, but I’ll be a good duke. I’ll make our father proud. You’ll see, in time.”
They all would, even his sister.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
The Master of Crows climbed the hill of gibbets beyond the city, feeling a certain amusement at his attendants’ inability to keep up with his strides. It was a reminder of the strength that was growing in him, building by the moment. He strode ahead of them, past cage after cage filled with the dead or the dying, foes and former friends, the criminal or the merely unfortunate.
“As if it makes a difference,” he said to the wind.
He strode to the top, where more gibbets stood in a circle. All were occupied, but only one held a living inhabitant. The man had probably been strong once, but his strength had fallen from him in his time there, leached away by hunger and the work of the crows.
“I know what this place is,” the man called out. “I know what you’re doing here!”
The Master of Crows raised an eyebrow at that, then extended senses that had nothing to do with sight or hearing. Sure enough, the man in the cage had a spark of talent. Perhaps that was why he was even there.
“And what am I doing?” the Master of Crows asked.
“I can see!” the man called back. “I can see the pattern of the cages!”
The Master of Crows smiled slightly at that, looking out over an arrangement of gibbets that would have looked random to most people. Almost anyone watching wouldn’t have seen the subtle patterns there. Even his underlings hadn’t questioned his insistence on placing the gibbets in exactly the right spots. Yet this one had seen the whorls and the symbols worked out in ancient scripts, the funnel of power they helped to fuel, the spells worked in the deaths of others to curse his enemies.
“You have a good eye for it,” the Master of Crows said. “Who were you, before this?”
“You don’t know?” the man in the cage said. “I thought—”
“You thought that you were someone important? You thought that there was some grand purpose to you being there?” The Master of Crows shook his head. “There is no purpose beyond continuation. The crows feast, and I continue.”
“I thought…” the man continued. “I thought you had come to slay me yourself, for all that I had done to thwart you. I thought that my death would be a glorious thing, or that I could defy you by taking my secrets into its blackness.”
“I do not even know your name,” the Master of Crows said.
“I am Ackhert, mage of the most hidden library, seeker after the unseen, seer of—”
“Yes, yes,” the Master of Crows said, cutting him off. “I’m sure you thought that you mattered.”
“If you are not here for me,” Ackhert said, “if you are not here to torment me or make me reveal all that I know, then what are you doing here?”
The Master of Crows briefly considered killing him to end the annoyance of this conversation, but there was little to be lost by talking to him.
“I am… tying up loose ends. I have arranged matters elsewhere, and soon, I will feed as I have not before.”
“And the spells?” Ackhert said.
“I am going to war against dangerous foes,” he said. “I will take every advantage I can get.”
It was better not to waste power. Better to funnel it into all the magic needed as cleanly as possible. There were many things to do for the invasion to come, and doing them all would need power focused precisely, not scattered.
“Ah,” he said, as he saw the first crows on the horizon, black dots against the blue cloth of the sky, “do you see them? Do you see the power they carry?”
The man in the cage stared out at them, and from the way his features paled, the Master of Crows knew that he did see.
Soon, it was impossible to ignore them. The crows went from dots to flocks, looking like storm clouds now against the sky rather than specks. They flew in close, the gibbets drawing them, the power they’d gathered tangible like the feel of lightning to come in the air. They settled on the gibbets in their thousands, in their tens of thousands.
“So many…” Ackhert said, obviously barely able to comprehend it.
The Master of Crows did not blame him for that.
“There have been battles,” he said. “A sacrifice of the living to take a throne. The death of one who has long sought to keep me out. Slaughters and counter-slaughters.”
“The power there…” the other man breathed.
The Master of Crows smiled at the hint of awe there, and the hint of jealousy beneath it. It was a truth of this world that the weak did not truly want fairness. They wanted to be powerful. This one could not, though, but the Master of Crows was feeling generous.
He snapped his fingers at his attendants. “Free this man.”
“My lord?” one asked.
The Master of Crows looked at him and the attendant hurried to do it.
“I have no need for whatever crumb of power you can give,” he said. “Not today. So if you can make it past the lines of the gibbets on your own, you are free to go.”
Ackhert looked at him as if trying to work out the trick. Then he started to move, with slow, shuffling steps, down the hill.
The Master of Crows spread his arms out, and the crows started to come to him. Each one brought with it a flicker of power, a flash of death.
A knife rising in Ishjemme, amid the coup…
A musket ball unseen, only the sound of it coming, and the impact, and the blackness…
A fierce battle by the river gates, cut down by a curved sword…
Death after death came to him, borne on the wings of his creatures, and the Master of Crows laughed at the power that flowed into him. He laughed until it mingled with the cawing of the crows, their feathers covering him like a cloak, the energy within him feeding his life, bringing him power.
He felt it spread out through the gibbets, the deaths there fueling spells to grant his fleet the winds they wanted, to curse his enemies with weakness and fear, poor luck and more. Most of the power went into him though. Most of it filled him until he felt he might burst with it, and kept filling him.
He opened eyes he hadn’t realized he had closed. Ordinarily, the world looked so dull and flat, filled with things he had seen a thousand times before. Now, the energy of death wreathed all, letting the Master of Crows see the endings in everything.
“With this, I will have enough,” he whispered, but he knew it wasn’t the truth even as he said it. Nothing would ever be enough. No amount of power, no cascade of death to feed his pets.
He looked down the hill, to where Ackhert had gotten. For a man so weakened by captivity, he had gone a long way. Perhaps the process of taking power had taken longer than it had felt like. But that didn’t matter. Not when he could see the death in everything written in every movement of the air.