Two more Juregs appeared in the doorway, halting when they saw the problem. The young man walked the Jureg leader towards the exit. “I’m sure you gentlemen can find another tavern to drink in.” He waited for the sons to pick themselves up and leave. The other two men backed out of the door and, once they were both through, the hunska returned his prisoner’s knife to its scabbard so fast that Glass barely saw the flicker of his hand. The Jureg took the point and left without bravado. He could roust a tavern every day for the rest of his life and not meet another hunska full-blood. Pride was one thing but no raider got far on pride. Pragmatism was what kept you alive in the margins, and the Jureg had lots of it.
The young man spoke to a couple of locals by the door then returned to the table. There were no cheers: the villagers stared at him as if he might at any moment burst into flame or become a horse. Not until the last yard of his approach to the inquisitors’ table, his half-smile fading as he spotted Glass’s silver chains, did a weather-beaten traveller call out in sudden excitement, “It’s him! I know him! From Verity! The ring-fighter! Regol!”
37
ABBESS GLASS
“I’M SURPRISED THAT we met on the back-roads, given that you’re bound for Sherzal’s palace.” Glass watched the young fighter, ignoring her bread. The inquisitors, even the guards to either side of her, had much finer fare on their plates. The town of Hurtil nestled among the Grampain foothills and, as the last civilized staging post for travellers visiting the palace or forging on through the Grand Pass to Scithrowl, it boasted several restaurants of passable quality.
“Those toll-roads will bleed a man dry.” Regol took a forkful of beef from his plate. Despite his confidence, something in the action declared him an irregular user of cutlery.
“I thought ring-fighters were handsomely paid. Especially successful ones. And surely you must be successful to be known so far from Verity?”
“I win more than I lose.” Regol shrugged, chewed, swallowed. “And I’m careful with my money. It has to cover a lifetime. Nobody lasts too long in the ring. There’s always someone getting better while you’re getting worse. And when the time comes to quit, many leave the ring unfit for other work.” He cut more meat from the joint before him. The smell of it set Glass’s mouth watering. “Besides. I wanted to see something more of the empire than what you can glimpse clattering along the toll-road.” He paused, considering. “That village, Bru? I came from near there. Born in a barn. My parents sold me to a child-taker.”
The inquisitors looked up at that. The Church of the Ancestor took a very dim view on any who would sever the bonds of family for as little as money. On the other hand the fruits cut from the tree in such a manner were invaluable to the church. Children given to the monasteries and convents by a parent could be taken back; those sold from their families and arriving later on the church’s doorstep could not.
“Did you see them?” Glass asked.
“Them?” Regol looked up from his meal, flashing her a dark glance from beneath his brows. Glass made no reply. They both knew what she meant. Regol returned his gaze to his knife and fork, cutting his meat ever smaller. “My father died a few years ago. I saw my mother in the crowd that gathered when I rode in. She didn’t recognize me.”
Glass leaned back and let the young fighter pretend to concentrate on his food. Properly Regol should not be allowed to address a prisoner, but Brother Pelter had needed him. The inquisitor had engaged Regol as additional security, offering the promise of Sherzal’s gratitude as well as a handsome purse. Glass welcomed the company. Regol for his part, once realizing that Glass had been the abbess of Sweet Mercy, had been keen to talk about the blade training, then the Caltess forging, and gradually, like an artist revealing their subject from a confusion of lines . . . Nona Grey.
With her trial jury watching on Glass knew she had to guard her tongue where Nona and her escape were concerned. She knew that keeping Regol happy and continuing to offer his protection was certainly among Brother Pelter’s motives in letting him talk with her. But a stronger motive for Brother Pelter was doubtless the desire to give her enough rope to hang herself with. Even so, she told the ring-fighter as much of the truth as she dared.
Brother Pelter perhaps had never known the emotions that rule the young. He might claim that he was old enough to forget such passions, but Glass had as many years as Pelter, and her first loves still burned bright among the dusty archives of her memory. They waited around forgotten corners, waiting to surprise her at the strangest of times. Glass saw in Regol’s careful dance around the missing girl an interest she recognized. She saw a domino standing, others lined behind it. She saw the time to push it. “We always hope that other people will see past the skin and bones we wear, Regol. These masks we’ve been given. We hope they’ll see us. Some spark, some flame, something special, something that’s of worth. Some people are born without that sight. Some mothers find they lack it even when they look at their children. They are as crippled as the blind. Worse perhaps. Your mother didn’t see you when you returned because she had never seen you. I would know my Able after fifty years unseen, though he were old and grey himself.” Her fingers still remembered her child’s hair. The clean scent of him as a baby still haunted her at unexpected moments, causing her breath to catch and her heart to ache.
Glass watched Regol. He seemed still a boy to her—young man he should rightly be called but she could still see the lines of the child that Partnis Reeve had purchased for the Caltess. She had watched him, watched his sarcasm, the lightly mocking smile, the sardonic airs and assumed ennui. She knew armour when she saw it. And who wears such heavy armour if they are not vulnerable without it?
“All I know is my mother didn’t see me. Just the clothes and the horse . . .”
“The fault isn’t yours, boy.” Glass picked at the penitents’ bread. “She may lack that sight. But it’s burning in your eyes. And you’ve seen the flame in others. In someone. In someone who could be precious to you.”
Later Glass would speak again of Nona Grey. Of how she fled the Inquisition and of the manner in which Lord Tacsis had promised her life would end. Later but not now.
* * *
• • •
UNDER REGOL’S PROTECTION their luck had turned within the day and a third senior inquisitor, Brother Dimeon, had been located and won to the cause. It hadn’t been hard for Brother Pelter to convince him. Brother Dimeon’s antagonism towards the abbess was well known. Glass had kept him on a tight rein and at a low rank during her tenure. Since her departure Dimeon’s star had risen swiftly.
With their party complete, Pelter had directed that they return to the toll-roads, and the carriage had made swift progress. Their driver promised to have them at the palace by evening.
“Come.” Pelter placed a silver coin on the table and stood to leave. “Time we were going.”
Glass rose slowly. She broke a piece from the brick of penitents’ bread before her and began to chew.
* * *
• • •
THE GRAND PASS proved less grand than its name. Although the Grampains boasted no deeper or broader pass this side of the Corridor, the Grand Pass was neither deep nor broad. The road grew narrow and wound its way up slopes of frightening steepness to gain altitude. With the increased elevation the winds grew fiercer and colder. Ice clung to the rock and gathered in any hollow. The dark stone of the Grampains became white-clad, the carriage frost-bearded. They left the trees behind first, then the grass, until all about lay pale as death, unmarred by any sign of vegetation.
Small forts studded the pass at regular intervals. Not primarily for preventing passage—Blenai’s Fist served that purpose on the eastern slopes—but to house the soldiers who made regular sorties into the peaks, patrolling for Scithrowl spies, or raiders, or the forerunners of any mass invasion. Smoke rose from behind their battlements and firelight bled between their shutters but still they looked bleak and isolated amid the vastness of the mountains, me
re points of warmth and light scattered across an untold weight of cold stone. The wind ceased to moan and took up howling instead, running its teeth along the carriage’s slatted windows. Ice fragments peppered the backboard and the stronger gusts set the whole vehicle lurching first one way then the other. Although all manner of perils lay ahead for Glass she found herself at that moment feeling rather sorry for Regol, leading the way on his painted mare, sorry for Heb the driver, hunched in his seat, and even a twinge of sympathy for Sera atop the wagon whose job it was to cut her down should she try to escape.
The sky above was a deep maroon, shading towards black, strewn with dark ribbons of cloud that looked like lacerations where jagged peaks tore the heavens.
* * *
• • •
DESPITE THE TWISTY narrowness of the route, the road they followed was not without traffic. The dim way-lights of carriages, carts, and wagons punctuated the sinuous length of the pass, snaking up towards the highest point and the long descent that followed. And there, cradled and largely hidden by the arms of a side valley, a glow that might have risen from a small town but instead hinted at the lights of Sherzal’s lonely palace.
“I would say that anyone who secretes themselves so high in such a forsaken place must be plotting something.” Glass continued to peer through the slats, speaking to nobody in particular. “But that might hold just as well for a convent atop a rock or an inquisitor in a tall tower.”
The three senior inquisitors dozing on the seat opposite made no reply. Brother Pelter only curled his lip, but Melkir, though he stiffened his face into the guards’ mask, couldn’t help but twitch the corner of his mouth in the direction of a smile.
* * *
• • •
THEY ADVANCED IN fits and starts, seeming to halt at every second one of a hundred and more passing places to allow wagons and carts coming in the opposite direction to go by. Trade flourished across almost every border in the Corridor. Any closed border sealed off the world to the east from all nations to the west. The pressure that then built to reopen such a border grew rapidly and was exerted by a growing number of nations, starved of whatever delicacy or local rarity their people craved. And as conflict threatened trade boomed, merchants suddenly desperate to stockpile goods that might not be available again for long and bloody months, even years. Glass had no real basis for comparison but given how many heavily laden wagons they were having to stop to let pass, she guessed this might be a boom.
* * *
• • •
TO MANY OF the Sis, Sherzal’s decision to isolate herself amid the Grampains had seemed like madness. Granted, the emperor’s youngest sister had also taken herself to the very edge of the empire, but Velera’s palace lay in the thriving port of Gerren, a city that had few equals in terms of wealth and society.
Sherzal’s palace was, by necessity, more of a fortress, at least from the outside. In fact it had been a fortress before she took command of it and set her masons to work. The Grand Pass offered no hospitality, no concessions to the frailties of humankind. For grounds and gardens Sherzal had windswept rock. Her home’s reply to the constant gales was to offer only slit windows, and few of those. The emperor’s eldest sister lived behind thick walls of dark grey stone, quarried from the mountains themselves. Her palace squatted between the arms of a side valley, seeking shelter, with only three towers brave enough to push above the sullen bulk of stone.
High walls enclosed a courtyard in front of the main palace. Glass watched through the window slats as guards drew open the huge gates and ushered them within. No plumes and pomp for the hardy souls manning Sherzal’s door or patrolling her battlements: these were soldiers, dark-cloaked, armoured veterans who had known both victory and defeat.
Wheels clattered over flagstones and crunched over gravel. The driver brought his horses to a stop. Sera opened the door and Brother Pelter stepped down into the swirling wind. Glass followed with Melkir holding her elbow to steady her on the step down. She took in the scene. Constructing a level area wide enough for the scores of carriages now lined up within Sherzal’s courtyard must have been the largest feat of engineering involved in the whole project. The emperor’s sister might have taken herself away from society but clearly she had intended from the very start that society should come to visit, and in numbers!
The emblems, resplendent in glowing colours beneath rain-beaded varnish, announced a gathered throng of unmatchable pedigree. Glass hadn’t time to catalogue many before two footmen descended the steps from the grand portico and begged that the esteemed inquisitors follow them out of the wind. And so Glass, together with her guards, her accuser, and her judges, climbed Sherzal’s marble stairs. They passed beneath the arched doorway, leaving the wild night behind.
The great door clanged shut behind them. For a moment inquisitors, guards, and prisoner stood blinking, adjusting to the sudden warmth and absence of wind. The brilliance of scores of crystal lamps bathed the vaulted hall. Statues lined the walls: members of the Lansis dynasty, proud, regal, dwarfing all members of Glass’s party, emperors side by side with those who never sat upon a throne. Between one statue and the next lay a niche, each hung with a crystal lamp and displaying a single object fashioned by artisans, some ugly, some exquisite, all of breathtaking value simply on the basis of the kind and weight of the materials from which they were made.
Servants came forward to take the inquisitors’ coats. Others went out to collect luggage while a butler, an older man with an impressive mane of white hair, established the credentials and business of the new arrivals. Inquisitors are seldom welcome at parties, even when the host is the Inquisition’s prime instigator.
From what Glass could catch of the low-voiced conversation between Brother Pelter and the butler it seemed that their arrival was expected and that contrary to decorum they were invited to join Sherzal’s gathering, immediately.
Glass knew that Sherzal’s parties typically lasted a week or more to allow for the uncertainties of travel, her guests often being far flung. She would accommodate a sizeable fraction of the empire’s nobility, providing scattered entertainments during the day with grand balls and banquets to crown each evening.
“We’re road-stained and tired,” Brother Dimeon grumbled. A big man with an unhealthy pallor and puffy flesh, the inquisitor had proved a poor traveller, clambering from the carriage at every pause to stretch his back. “I want a room, clean robes, and a rest.”
“I concur.” Agika nodded. Her hair was in disarray after dozing against Brother Seldom for the last two hours of their journey. She hid a yawn behind her hand.
The butler relented. “Leon and Noel will show you to your rooms, inquisitors.” He paused. “But the honourable Sherzal was insistent that your prisoner be brought before her on arrival.”
“I will present her,” Brother Pelter said. With a motion of his hand he invited the senior inquisitors to follow the servants to their rooms.
“I’ll come too,” Regol said, showing his smile. “They’ll expect a ring-fighter to look like a ruffian.” His black cape sparkled with melting ice fragments and he smelled of wet horse. Glass imagined him striding in among the bejewelled throng in Sherzal’s hall and found an echo of his smile on her lips. A glance in Brother Pelter’s direction wiped all humour from her mouth. The palace opulence might make it easier to forget why they were here, but the narrow malice on Pelter’s face allowed no doubt. He wanted to see her burn.
* * *
• • •
SHERZAL’S GUESTS WERE already gathering before their banquet. Scores of the Sis moved in loose groups between three huge reception chambers. In one a gallery held several musicians, and the gentle tones of harp, thinule, and flute drifted across the conversation. In another acrobats performed feats of balance and strength, largely ignored by the glittering crowd, and in the third dancers twirled, pulsing to the soft beat of drums.
The butler led Brother Pelter and Glass with deft surety, navigating the sea o
f silk and diamonds, gold and brocade. Sera followed with Melkir, their services wholly unnecessary but perhaps calculated to add an implication of guilt and danger in case any should miss the abbess’s chains.
Any crowd can be a lonely place but Glass knew that those who have experienced a hostile crowd would choose loneliness in an instant. In such a place there was always someone at your back. Hard glances, sharp comments, laughter behind hands. The Church abjured its flock to be humble but it was hard to hold high office and not grow accustomed to the respect it brought. Glass had worn that authority and approval like a cloak for many years. It had grown around her, slow and insidious, but now it had been stripped away in an instant. She felt diminished. Naked. An old woman paraded for show and mockery. She kept her head high, but her body lied, a last defence against the humiliation Sherzal must have planned for her.
However, of all their party, it was Regol, following the two guards, who claimed the most attention. Glass was grateful to have the focus taken from her. It seemed that more of the Sis frequented the Caltess than anyone might suspect. But then again few families rose to such heights without having at least a little taste for blood. Recognition, greetings, and invitations rang out where the ring-fighter passed, though none would mistake them for friendship: he was a novelty, and winning his company would reflect well on the lord or lady who drew him to their circle.
“Regol!” A young woman’s voice, raised in pleased surprise. “How fashionably late you are!” Glass glanced over her shoulder to see a tall young woman in flowing green satin insinuate herself into the hunska’s path. “I came to protect your virtue in such company. Surely only the Durnsea has more sharks.”