‘I’ve given that some thought, sir.’
He grimaced. ‘I’m sure you have. You’re always giving thought to things, Threadbare. It’s why I keep you close, so I don’t have to.’
‘Yes sir. Well, the Legion invaded the forest at the season’s turn. The Deniers have the strange habit of dividing up their activities. Women gather and harvest, staying close to the camps, keeping an eye on the children along with the elders.’
‘What do the men do, then? Sit around picking their arses?’
‘I said it was strange, sir. When they’re not picking their arses, the men go off on hunts. Off in search of the herds when the migrations are under way.’
‘What migrations? More to the point, what herds?’
‘It was a traditional thing. To my mind, sir, it’s as much an excuse to get away from domestic life as anything else.’
‘You mean, the men have fun sleeping on cold ground, cooking wretched meals all on their own, and otherwise making pigs of themselves?’
‘Well, sir, they are ignorant savages.’
‘You think the Legion missed the hunters, but now the hunters have returned, only to find their wives and children slaughtered.’
‘If so, sir, then that forest over there is a realm consumed by rage.’
‘So Bahann indeed tucked tail and is on his way back to Neret Sorr.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, sir. It’s more likely they thought that war done with, only to now realize that it’s barely begun. But who commands the forest savages?’
‘No one, that’s why they’re savages.’
‘And their faith?’
Gelas scowled. ‘Ah.’ He wagged a finger at her. ‘See, I’m cleverer than you think. Bahann’s going to attack the monasteries.’
‘I was thinking just the same, sir.’
His gaze narrowed on her. So innocent and pretty. ‘What am I good at, sergeant?’
‘Sir?’
‘Describe my talents, as you see them.’
‘Well, sir. You conduct a reign of terror over your Houseblades, but you’re fair about it, in that you don’t count favourites. So, even while we all hate you, it’s a disciplined hate, and when you issue orders, we obey. And why wouldn’t we? You’ll be at the forefront of any nasty work, because you’re nastier than all the rest of us, on account of you being angry all the time—’
‘You can shut your mouth now, Threadbare.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Since you know all that, sergeant, you needn’t bother with all that ghee you’re lathering my way. Yes, I figured it out. Good for me. But now we’re looking at a new problem, aren’t we?’
‘With our lady gone, it’s down to you, sir, to decide whether we warn the monasteries or not.’
Gelas nodded. He shifted again. ‘This snow’s not melting under me at all, dammit.’
‘That’s not snow, sir, it’s bedrock.’
‘Ah, that explains it then. Where was I? Right. Decisions.’
‘Urusander’s Legion is the enemy, sir. And Bahann’s out from under Raal’s wing, with but three hundred soldiers. If we warn Yannis and Yedan, how many warriors can they muster? Five hundred? Six? Are they good fighters?’
‘They’re utter pigs, Threadbare, and no, I’d not want to mess with them.’
‘Just so. The question then is, sir, is there any tactical value to seeing Bahann and his three hundred cut to pieces, while at the same time forcing the monasteries to relinquish their neutrality and side with us? Big losses for Raal, big gains for the highborn and Mother Dark.’
He studied her. ‘You’re saying it’s obvious, aren’t you?’
‘Sir?’
He pointed at the eye-piece in her hands. ‘Tell me again how that works.’
‘There is a mirror and three lenses perfectly fitted—’
‘Shut your mouth, Threadbare.’
‘Yes sir.’
He slithered back from the ridge, rose and brushed snow from his thighs. ‘Back to the keep. We need to send out a rider.’
‘To warn the monasteries, sir?’ She remained lying on her bed of yellow grasses, not even cold though her cheeks glowed, with clear eyes that reminded him how many decades it had been since he’d last caught the regard of anything as young and as beautiful as this woman.
‘I trust you all understand,’ he said to her, ‘that the hate is entirely mutual.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘But having said that, I’d step into a blade’s path for every damned one of you.’
‘That too, sir, is mutual.’
He grunted. It would have to do.
* * *
After a night of freezing rain, the battlements of Vanut Keep glistened, the ice capturing the morning sunlight in sparks that flared and dripped. But already water had begun flowing down the sheathed stone flanks of the solid walls and squat towers, until it seemed as if the walls were melting.
Word had come of three riders on the road below, bound, presumably, for Kharkanas. Lady Degalla, already mounted and in position at the head of the train, alongside Lady Manalle, now beckoned closer the sergeant of the tower’s watch. ‘Do they bear a standard, Mivik?’
The young Houseblade shook his head.
Manalle said, ‘Then they’re not mine, Degalla. Besides, if Gelas had need of delivering an urgent message, he’d send one, not three, and that one would be Threadbare.’
Degalla’s husband, who along with Manalle’s spouse would be riding behind his wife, barked a laugh. ‘That is an odd name, milady.’
‘She arrived with it,’ Manalle replied. ‘A child of Wardens, I believe, but before they ever acquired that title. The first discoverers of the Vitr did not immediately formalize their obsession, Jureg. In any case, it’s Threadbare who carries the important news.’
Manalle was ever pleased to display the breadth of her learning, which was only occasionally onerous. Her other habit, alas, was to run away with her monologue, quickly leading the conversation astray. Most of the time, Degalla was content to suffer Manalle’s entirely subconscious need to be the centre of everyone’s attention – as if her looks weren’t enough for that – and she was relieved that her husband had simply smiled and nodded and bitten back his serpent’s tongue that could, if he so chose, drip with acerbic venom.
Degalla cleared her throat. Toleration of guests was deemed a virtue. ‘Now that it has been determined that the riders below are not delivering a message from Manaleth, perhaps we should determine who is upon the road below. Jureg, do accompany me. Lady Manalle, please remain in the care of my Houseblades for the moment, as the safety of my guests must ever remain uppermost in my mind.’
With that, she nudged her horse forward, Jureg falling in beside her, and they rode clear of the gate and on to the winding cobbled track leading down to the road below.
Winter traffic was rare in the best of times, and apart from an unexpected visit from Captain Sharenas over a month past, the tower watch had seen no one riding either from or to Kharkanas since the first snows. Footprints had been noted on occasion, as refugees crossed the road in the dead of night, seeking whatever sanctuary they could find in the forest to the north, but the coming and going of Deniers was of little interest to Degalla.
The three riders below had either heard or seen their approach from the keep’s steep track, and were now drawn up, awaiting them.
‘Two nights,’ Jureg said, ‘and I’m of a mind to flee to Urusander to kiss his sword.’
‘Oh, she’s not that bad,’ Degalla said. ‘The overly schooled are always at risk of becoming insufferable.’
‘Her armour of knowledge is proof against my keenest jibes,’ Jureg replied sourly.
‘Indeed, you can only crush such a creature with knowledge superior to her own. Or the sweeter cut that is common sense. However, should a theory be easily shredded by an utterance of the obvious, then you’ll have made a lifelong enemy. Be warned of that, husband.’
They ha
d slowed their mounts, as the cobbles were slick, the slope treacherous. ‘Hedeg Lesser wears the smile of the punch-drunk,’ Jureg observed. ‘I wager she describes the origin of every carnal position, and finds heat not in the act, but in the deluge of words beneath which she drowns all spontaneity. In her husband’s eyes there is the dulled despair of the defeated: a victim of explanations.’
‘Have you only pity for Hedeg, then?’
‘He stirs to life in her absence, but it takes work. I’ve yet to decide the effort’s worth.’
‘Well, we will share their company for some days yet, in our yielding to Hish Tulla’s invitation.’
The track levelled out momentarily, and then swung round into the final descent, and at this point they found themselves close enough to discern the three riders in detail.
‘Ah,’ murmured Degalla.
Her husband said nothing.
Close to the keep’s gate, Lady Manalle and her husband, Hedeg Lesser, had edged their mounts some distance from the Vanut Houseblades, sufficient for the pair to speak without being overheard.
Below, their hosts picked their way down the slick track.
‘I swear,’ muttered Manalle, ‘if I must witness yet one more exchange of knowing looks between those two, I will weather the curse of murder, guest-named or not. Worse, I may well descend into torture, out of sheer malice.’
Her husband tugged at his close-trimmed, greying beard. ‘Careful, beloved. That’s not a curse thinned by blood or years. Would you truly consign our family to everlasting condemnation?’
‘I am tempted. It is the selfish pleasure that most easily forgets consequence.’
‘Then there is her venal brother to consider. Lord Vanut would delight in a blood feud.’
‘Wretched family,’ muttered Manalle.
Her husband nodded in commiseration, and then asked, ‘Who are those riders, do you think? Emissaries from Urusander?’
‘I doubt that. Such would bear a standard, bold and diffident as befits both their vulnerability and their arrogance.’ She glanced over and was pleased to see her husband’s appreciative smile. There had been no accident in the inversion of her last statement. Diffident arrogance and bold vulnerability – what sweeter descriptive for emissaries of the Legion, coming among the highborn with belligerent promises of peace and preening threat? ‘Perhaps,’ she ventured, ‘survivors from the Wardens.’ A moment later she shook her head. ‘I still cannot fathom Ilgast Rend’s stupidity.’
‘If word of the slaughter at Andarist’s estate had reached him, Manalle, might you not forgive him his outrage?’
‘Then let him beat fists against a tree. Not waste thousands of lives in a futile gesture. He made us all seem precipitous, enslaved by base needs. Never mind Urusander – none of this is his game – it is Hunn Raal’s, and Hunn Raal is a clever man.’
‘When sober.’
‘His every stumble invites you to underestimate him, husband.’
‘She should have included us in the ride down,’ Hedeg said. ‘It was a deliberate snub.’
Manalle shrugged. ‘We would have done the same at the gates of Manaleth.’
‘To mark our irritation, yes. But what cause has she to be irritated with us? We are ever courteous, even as Degalla mocks your superior intelligence, while Jureg clumsily gropes for secrets in his witless conversations with me.’
‘Be at ease, husband. We prove their betters with patience.’
Hedeg said nothing. They had begun their exchange voicing positions opposite its conclusion: for all his wife’s brilliance, she was ever at risk of lending fangs to her contempt. The time for feuds was not now. But as she has counselled, patience. Once these lowborn thugs are dispensed with, then, Lady Degalla, my wife will face you with drawn blade, for all the slights we list here.
‘I never much liked Hish Tulla,’ said Manalle.
Of course not. Even more beautiful than you, and better with any weapon you’d care to name. Of course you hate her, beloved. Tutors can teach nothing about envy, beyond their own, and those rivalries and petty feuds give proof of their own failure in managing it. His wife was indeed brilliant, but this did little to constrain the swirl of base emotions churning beneath that genius. Erudition offered the illusion of objectivity, as befitted learned opinion, but the venal thing beneath had the face of a spoiled child.
Ah, wife, if you but guessed at the generosity of my love for you …
Degalla raised a gauntleted hand in greeting. ‘Emissaries of the Shake,’ she said, ignoring for the moment the peculiar presence of a Warden. ‘You ride to Kharkanas? Are we to find significance in that?’
The warlock – she thought he might be named Resh, though her memory was uncertain – shrugged at her questions. ‘Lady Degalla. Jureg Thaw. I see, among the retinue at the gate, two standards. You have been hosting Lady Manalle and Hedeg Lesser. It’s curious to see the highborn out in this bleak season.’
Jureg spoke. ‘Warlock Resh, you have found yourself a survivor from the Wardens. But the Shake are hardly known for their largesse, much less sympathy. Is she a prisoner?’
The third figure was covered in a hood of black wolf fur, the skin draped over his habit, but something in his posture led Degalla to suspect who it was who had elected to remain hidden from them. She recalled hearing of an incident, outside the door to the Chamber of Night. Smiling at the hooded figure, she said, ‘I am told Lord Anomander displayed forbearance upon the threshold to Mother Dark’s holy sanctuary. But surely it is known that he no longer resides in the Citadel, leaving such matters to Silchas Ruin.’
Resh tilted his shaggy head. ‘What matters are you referring to, milady?’
‘Why, the protection of Mother Dark, of course. I would not think the approach unguarded. Nor should you.’
But her words elicited nothing from the hooded man slumped on his horse. Perhaps, she considered, she had been wrong. An instant later she amended her position. It was, she felt certain, Caplo Dreem within those shadows.
‘Shall we be sharing the road, milady?’ Resh asked.
‘For a time,’ she replied.
Her husband cleared his throat. ‘There are rumours – signs – that Deniers remain in the forest, and have grown belligerent.’
‘If so, we’ve not heard about it,’ the warlock replied. ‘In any case, what need have we to fear our followers?’
‘Your followers?’ Jureg frowned. ‘And how did you heed their pleas for help this summer past?’
‘We made what offers of refuge we could.’
‘For the children, yes, as surety to your future. But I understand that few lived long enough to ever reach your monastery gates.’
‘Are these matters of some concern among the highborn, Jureg? If so, why?’
‘Neutrality will avail you nothing,’ her husband replied. ‘You are ruled by an old woman and an even older man. Inaction and fear of change plague their every moment, and that infirmity seems to have infected the rest of you. Should Lord Urusander win this war, warlock, do you truly imagine that he will leave you alone? Or, rather, will Hunn Raal leave you alone? Will the new High Priestess of Light? Yours is a misplaced faith, by any measure.’
The Warden snorted. ‘This is pathetic. There is nothing here worth hiding. Ladies Degalla and Manalle are setting out with their husbands and a retinue of servants and guards. Presumably, one of the highborn has called for a meeting – that it’s taken this long is the only reason for being coy. I’d be just as embarrassed under the circumstances. As for us, why, Warlock Resh wishes to examine the nature of the Terondai. Sorcery now seethes through Kurald Galain – is this a consequence of Lord Draconus’s gift? Or was the Azathanai, T’riss, the source? Is it not wise to determine the source of this magic before indulging in it?’
After a long moment, Degalla shook her head. ‘And your perusal of a pattern on a floor requires the presence of an assassin? No, Warden, but I’ll grant you your innocence, and conclude that you have been deceived by your c
ompanions.’
At that, Caplo Dreem finally lifted his head, drawing back his hood. He smiled at Degalla. ‘I can hear them,’ he said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Hedeg and Manalle. They speak quietly, but are beneath the arch of the gatehouse, sending down sufficient echo. I can hear their every word.’
Degalla twisted round, stared up at her distant guests, and the steep, long climb to where they sat astride their horses. ‘Impossible,’ she said.
‘What are they saying?’ Jureg asked.
Caplo’s strange eyes remained fixed on Degalla. ‘They revel in their contempt for you, milady. More, there is a smell about Hedeg, hinting of some future violence, with you the victim. It is likened to a licking of the lips, a sudden heat of pleasure beneath the skin of the face, a darkening gleam in the pools of the eye. Indulging in anticipation is a sensual repast for those two. They have long shared a fiery bed of vindictive lust, and the coals run deep.’
Jureg shot Degalla a glance. ‘Manalle believes herself superior with the blade.’
‘Fear not,’ Caplo replied. ‘Her intelligence is a fortress no doubt can vanquish, but in the matter of crossing swords, it will prove her undoing. It is not the keenest wit that guides a weapon master’s hand, but the easy surrender to instinct, and the faith such a thing demands. Manalle cannot relinquish control, and this will one day kill her.’
‘Be silent, assassin,’ snapped Degalla, but she eyed Caplo in consternation. There was something uncanny about the man, something wild and barely constrained. ‘You presume beyond all reason.’
‘Perhaps I do,’ he said, offering her a feral smile.
Resh stirred. ‘Milady?’
‘Warlock?’
‘We have reason to believe that Lord Urusander will not wait until winter’s end. Even now, his legion prepares to march.’
It seemed that the presumption was far from done. ‘And you offer us this for what purpose?’
‘You have little time, milady. If Lord Anomander has left the Citadel, then he has abrogated his responsibility. It might be wise to elect for yourselves a new warlord.’ He paused, and then waved a hand. ‘To be honest, seen from the outside, does Anomander truly reflect your cause? I would think the man rages and may well be consumed by the need for vengeance, in his brother’s name.’