Ambrose looked at her in surprise. ‘The animosity between our peoples is over. You might heed that tongue.’
‘We’ve wasted enough time,’ the orange-haired girl said to her companions. She gave off a different scent to the others – hers was of rage and violence and desire. And magic, as she sent a mighty burst of wind our way. Neither of us was quick enough to react to the surprise attack. I was thrown from my feet, while Ambrose’s horse hit the ground heavily and rolled on top of him with a wild whinny.
Howl stood guard over me, growling savagely as I rose to my feet and raised my axe. But Ambrose roared, ‘Weapon down!’
He heaved the huge horse off him, then calmly help the creature up, smacking it gently on the rump until it lurched to its feet. Unhurriedly, he soothed its unsettled snorts and finally looked at the orange-haired girl. ‘I will not fight you. But I’ll warn you not to do that again. You’re lucky my horse didn’t break a leg.’
She smiled a little, moving for another attack. ‘Get out of my way, brute.’
‘Kill her,’ my father snarled.
He was right. I moved to intercept her.
‘Stand down!’ Ambrose ordered me. But I couldn’t. They posed a threat to my family and so they had to die.
Confirming it, one of the male warders hissed, ‘The princesses are here! Ahead and unguarded!’
The flames of violence flickered closer. ‘Unguarded?’ I repeated softly. The warder’s eyes flew to meet mine, and there was his fear.
‘Thorne,’ Ambrose said, ‘you will stand down.’
Was he mad? What was possessing him to allow them free reign over his children? I shook my head, watching as even now the orange-haired girl angled around us. Howl moved to meet her, barking ferociously and darting in to snap at her feet. She waved her hand and he went tumbling backwards. My heart seized, but he quickly shook himself off.
‘Stay where you are,’ Ambrose snarled at the girl, but she ignored him. This was getting out of hand.
Kill her, my beast, my da and my own mind whispered at once.
And I would have. I knew that, within. But I never got the chance, for down from the ridge to our left came a host of riders galloping at breakneck pace. More arrived from the road ahead and behind, circling us. Unmistakably Pirenti, soldiers from the Vjort barracks, a score of them. And before Ambrose could give any orders, the soldiers sent the bolts from their longbows straight into the young Kayans’ chests, slaughtering them. No warning, no fuss.
I blinked, my mind clearing now the threat had passed. And I saw that not all five were dead after all. The orange-haired girl had been left alive, but there were twenty arrows trained on her heart. She was staring in shock at the bodies of her companions.
‘The girl’s death is yours, Majesty,’ a soldier said.
Ambrose looked at the four corpses on the ground. His eyes went to the girl, and then to the soldiers on their horses. ‘Did I tell you to kill these people?’
‘They attacked you,’ the soldier replied. It was obvious.
I watched my uncle’s face and for the first time in my life he felt very distant from me. His behaviour this afternoon was bewildering.
‘The girl remains alive and captive,’ the King said. ‘Secure her with sleep. We move north.’
‘Curse you all,’ she snarled, and lifted her hand towards Ambrose.
In less than the space of a blink, an arrow shot straight through her palm, ripping a brutal scream from her mouth. She sank to her knees to cradle her bloody hand. The archer dismounted and took hold of her head and neck, putting her in a sleeper hold. She slumped against him and he lifted her unceremoniously onto the back of his horse.
‘Your name?’ Ambrose asked him.
‘Fain of Vjort, Majesty.’
‘The next time you harm her without my instruction, you will be punished.’
Fain squinted in confusion, but nodded.
Ambrose turned to the soldier in charge. ‘Hirðmenn Erik of Norvjisk,’ he said. ‘What brings you so far south?’
I studied the man curiously, having heard of him. The title of hirðmenn was not necessarily about rank – it named this man a royal bodyguard, one of the deadliest and most respected warriors in the country. There were only three hirðmenn in Pirenti today. Once there had been dozens, but my father had dismissed or killed most of them, stating publicly that any king or prince who needed bodyguards was no true leader of Pirenti. Ambrose kept the three remaining hirðmenn north in Vjort to maintain the barracks and to protect the Jarl in charge of the walled city. I’d met the other two but not this one, this Erik, whose eccentricities were infamous. All of his kind were bred to be painfully loyal, but Erik the most; if Ambrose ordered him to take his own life, he would be dead before the last word of the command left his mouth.
‘Orders from Jarl Sigurd. Patrol group.’
Ambrose frowned and mounted his horse. I knew for a fact that the king’s soldiers patrolled this area, so there was no need for Vjort men to come so far south. Which meant something strange was going on.
‘You’ll travel with us back to Vjort,’ he said, ‘but leave two to bury the slain.’
If Erik found the order strange, he didn’t let on, simply nodded. It was practice to leave the bodies of enemies for the wolves in offering to the gods. Ambrose was making it clear that Kayans were no longer our enemies, even if warders still were.
I followed him back to the carriage, where we found Ella and Sadie battering Roselyn with questions about what was going on. Neither of them seemed remotely frightened.
‘We have a new escort,’ Ambrose told them, ‘but stay inside until I tell you otherwise.’ He obviously didn’t want them spotting the dead bodies. ‘Are you feeling better, darling?’
Ella nodded.
‘Her fever’s broken,’ Rose said.
‘Excellent.’ Ambrose gave both twins a kiss, then gave Rose one as well, making her smile in surprise.
As our much larger party rode forth over the snow-dusted road, I took a moment to squat beside Howl, who made a pleased sound and nuzzled his face into my hand. ‘Good boy,’ I told him softly. ‘You did very well.’
I turned my gaze to the soldiers digging graves. The four dead warders looked very young, still carelessly arranged as they had fallen. In the wake of my retreating bloodlust the violence seemed repulsive, and I thought I understood why Ambrose had wanted to avoid this. But surely risking the lives of his children was no way to do that?
Da paced the road back and forth, his long fur cloak sweeping behind him. He looked grim as he gazed at the bodies. He shook his head, spat on the ground. ‘And to think,’ he said to me, ‘you’re married to one.’
We made camp once the girls had fallen asleep within the carriage. Wind howled through the hills around us and there was little cover against it. Ambrose and I sat with Erik at our own small fire, nestled beneath a single rocky incline. The King called for Rose to join us; she peered nervously at the nearby soldiers but sat nonetheless. I passed her a mug of warm spiced ale, which she clasped between cold hands. Her eyes immediately drifted up to the sky and her expression turned to one I knew well – the one that meant her mind had vanished from this mortal plane and travelled somewhere lovelier by far. As a child I’d been desperate to understand where she went, but she’d never been able to share it and eventually I’d given up asking.
‘What were you really doing so far south?’ Ambrose asked the hirðmenn, pulling my attention.
Erik mostly kept his eyes lowered from his King’s, I’d noticed. His forehead and cheeks had been tattooed to mark him as both a servant of the King and as unfathomably dangerous; these were the marks of the warriors of old, those forged the same day as the Holy Sword.
‘Orders from the Jarl,’ Erik replied. ‘But not a patrol, as I said before the others, Majesty.’
‘Then what?’
‘A supply run.’
Ambrose frowned. ‘Traders and merchants take supplies north each week.’
‘
It is a different kind of trade that the Jarl works in.’
My uncle and I shared a glance. ‘Tell me, Erik – unless you have been ordered not to?’
Erik met the King’s gaze now, looked him right in the eyes. ‘I’ll take no orders but yours, Majesty. Jarl Sigurd has been trading in people.’
A queasy horror clenched my stomach. Ma went stiff beside me. And on Ambrose’s face there was dark fury. The audacity of this Jarl was disturbing.
‘He’s a twisted kind of man,’ Erik added softly. ‘We in the north all take a little pleasure from violence, but not a lot, never a lot. The Jarl is seeking more and more, always more. He sells the stolen men and women to the lonely soldiers, to do with as they will.’
Ambrose stood abruptly and walked alone into the night. I watched him disappear into the darkness, then turned back to Erik. ‘How long since Jarl Sigurd took his place in Vjort?’
‘Only a pair of years, and a world of whispers, Majesty.’
‘Whispers?’
‘Of Sigurd’s master and his weak lungs that had never yet been weak, and of drowning in his blood on a night dark with no moon.’
I blinked. ‘You think it was foul play?’
‘I’ve no thoughts either way, Majesty.’ Erik shrugged. ‘Not for rumours.’
‘Ribweed makes a fine poison for the lungs,’ Roselyn said softly, looking at the hirðmenn.
Erik gave her an appraising look through the flames of the fire. ‘Aye, that it does, Lady. That it does.’ He had a peculiar, rhythmic way of speaking, almost like reciting poetry. He lowered his head to my mother and added, ‘Forgive this talk of dark deeds and death. The night is more beautiful for your flame-hair and I’ve the honour of meeting you both.’
‘And you,’ I replied faintly. ‘From where do you come?’
‘From the north-west coast, as far north as a man may survive in the wilds.’ He smiled. ‘Though not nearly as far north as His Highness can wander.’
I was still reeling from the information he’d imparted, but I managed to give him a crooked smile in return for what he believed was a compliment.
‘My family live in a rock castle on the edge of sea and ice. We grow to manhood with tales of the wolves under the mountain and the ancient souls who bear those wolf-hearts within their own.’
Roselyn’s soft voice lifted in response, and I noticed, abstractly, how similarly they used their words. ‘The late King Thorne spoke of this tale. Wolf souls within human bodies and human souls within wolf bodies. He said it was both gift and curse to be not one thing nor two things, but caught in between.’
Erik gazed at Ma, and I saw a shift in his eyes, something completely undeniable and just as unnamable. ‘My Lady, he was wise then, your husband.’
And this about a man who had killed almost all of Erik’s kind for offering him their lives in protection. Ma felt it, too, the generosity of the words. Whatever intimacy the conversation held was becoming too much for her, because she dropped her eyes and excused herself. Erik’s gaze followed her until she disappeared inside the carriage. Despite myself, I looked around for Da, expecting to find him listening to the conversation, but he was nowhere to be seen.
‘Sleep, Erik,’ I told the man. ‘We have a long day’s travel ahead, and you’ll be sorely needed when we get to Vjort.’
Erik inclined his head while I rose to follow the path I had watched my uncle tread into the night. I could smell him, smell his travel clothes and dirty, sweaty skin. I could also smell his grief and his rage and his fear. He had climbed to the top of the ridge and was looking down over the camp, at the small lights of the campfires flickering within an expanse of black. The wind was brutal, whipping against my uncovered face, but Ambrose seemed unbothered by it.
As I joined him I realised that Da had not been with me at the fire because he stood here beside Ambrose, and the sight of the two brothers together caused a disruption in my heart. It made me think, not for the first time, that he must truly be here watching over us, and was not only in my mind. But that, in all likelihood, was my yearning given voice.
Sword, what Ambrose wouldn’t give to be able to see his older brother standing with him, keeping him company in the cold. Or even just to know he was here. I couldn’t tell him, though, without revealing my own particular brand of madness.
We stood in silence before Ambrose broke through with sudden, desperate words. ‘I can’t kill anymore, Thorne. I can’t.’
‘I thought that once too –’
‘No. Not to survive. Not even to protect. I just can’t.’
Fear made me colder. ‘There are twenty men down there who’ve seen you attacked by a Kayan child. And those twenty will tell twenty more the minute we reach Vjort.’
Ambrose shook his head. Didn’t speak a while. ‘A warder once told me I was weak of heart. Perhaps I am.’
What a ludicrous notion. I didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think of the right words.
‘All I know is that I don’t recognise the man I once was. I must set the example if I wish for change. I cannot kill anymore.’
‘Tell him he has to,’ Da said.
But I didn’t, I couldn’t. It felt too bruising to force someone into a smaller, sicker box than they could fit within. Instead I placed my hand on Ambrose’s shoulder and said simply, ‘I’m yours to command.’
Because we both knew that Vjort would be brutal and bloody and violent. And we both knew that I had become more of those things than Ambrose ever was.
Da and I shared a look, and to my words or my thoughts he nodded with a grim sort of acceptance.
Chapter Eight
Isadora
I was settling to sleep when I saw Falco creep from his room and then from the house. I watched him speak to Jonah in the courtyard and climb over the wall. Grabbing my cloak, I followed quickly.
‘Did he say where he’s going?’ I asked Jonah.
‘What are you doing up? You don’t have watch duty until dawn – Iz!’
I scaled the wall and landed silently on the other side. Falco was moving north, and he was fast. And surprisingly silent. I kept up with him but remained a good distance behind, stalking him through the shadows of the city. I wasn’t sure why, I simply knew I didn’t trust whatever he was doing.
Since I hadn’t had time to fall asleep first, warders would have power over the two of us. Which made this a more dangerous night outing than usual. Falco wore his two swords, but it was commonly known that he couldn’t use them, and weapons were no good against soul magic anyway.
He slipped into an alley with a dead end and I wondered what in gods’ names he thought he was doing. I crept around the corner and ran smack into him. My knife was out without conscious decision, pressed tightly against his kidney. It had been a long time since someone had got the drop on me.
‘Well, well,’ Falco said.
My jaw clenched as I fought the urge to slice him open. Not now. Not until after I destroyed the Mad Ones. But this postponement didn’t mean that a dark part of me didn’t want to spill his blood right here and now, didn’t crave it, even.
With my knife still pressed against him, Falco leaned in close, murmuring, ‘Aren’t we looking ghoulish tonight, little Sparrow?’
I recoiled, my lip curling in anger.
Falco smiled. ‘Come on then.’ He led me out of the alley and east towards the sea. Though it grated that he’d discovered my presence and then ordered me along like his obedient servant, I smoothed my feelings away and focused – distractions in the night could get you killed, and I now had an idiot to protect as well as myself.
We wound our way expertly through side streets and tunnels, over rooftops and behind abandoned buildings. I was surprised at how well he knew the city, particularly in such heavy dark. The man hadn’t entered it without a blindfold in twenty-five years. An image of the ten-year-old orphan he’d been when they crowned him pushed its way into my mind. But that thought was uncomfortable, so I pushed it straight back out.
As I realised what we were nearing, I stopped. Falco glanced back at me and continued on. I hesitated. The fool was going to get us caught. Cursing him, I ran to catch up and found him breaking into the bell tower. He’d drawn a knife from somewhere on his person and was running its tip around the edge of a window. Carefully, he pushed the whole pane of glass in and caught it before it broke. Then he climbed inside and waited for me before replacing the piece of glass.
We took the stairs to the top – hundreds of steps that curled at least seven stories high. The ancient bronze bell was even bigger up close than it looked from the ground. The ropes that would toll it were thick and heavy, and the thought of using them to fill the world with noise was repulsive to me. Falco moved around the bell and stopped at the tower’s eastern balcony. I did the same, and we gazed into the warder stronghold below.
It was huge – Sancia was the holy city of warders after all. This was where they came to train in their magic, from age thirteen right through to twenty. The stronghold – or, as they preferred to call it, ‘the temple’ – had at least a dozen different buildings and was guarded by warders who walked the perimeter at all hours. I could imagine that the wards they’d set up around it would be considerable, just as at the palace. This was the only vantage in the whole city from which to see inside the temple walls, and in their arrogance they kept not one guard up here with the bell.
Falco removed a small piece of parchment and a stick of charcoal from his pocket. He settled in to watch, and began marking things down. I snuck a look and saw the marks represented the number of guards and how often they appeared. He was making a schedule of their movements. He also sketched the layout and added in detail he must have already known.
My first thought was that this was a fool’s errand. No matter how well he knew the movements of the warders, he would never get inside without magic – more than his single warder Osric could possess. But that thought faded quickly as I realised it was inspiring to be around someone who was actually trying to do something, even if it was hopeless.
I too surveyed the movements below, soon reaching over to touch the drawing of the east wall to indicate a warder’s movement. Falco marked it down without taking his eyes from the temple.