Christopher was beside them then, in that sudden way of his, putting a bottle of something down beside the copper bowl, laying cloths on the floor and across Razi’s lap and over the chair. He looked patiently up at Wynter, and she realised he wanted her to move. She shuffled over to Razi’s left arm and Christopher knelt on the floor in front of him, examining the long crescent of the wound that curved like a bloody moon between Razi’s right breast and the square definition of his shoulder.
“Good job you’re lefthanded, Raz. This is bloody deep.”
Razi was sweating now, in anticipation of what was to come. He growled at Christopher, dread roughening his voice. “Just get that old fool’s filthy stitching out of me, before it poisons my blood.”
Christopher rubbed his hands with liquid from the bottle and the smell of alcohol and lemons filled the room. He lifted a little pair of copper scissors from the boiling water and snipped all along the row of stitches, cutting the threads just at the knot. His hands looked awkward, but moved deftly, sure in their work. He paid no heed to Razi’s quickened breath or his high yelp of pain as he set a tweezers to the first ragged stitch and tugged it sharply from the flesh.
“Sit down, Wynter,” hissed Razi, glaring up at her from under his curls. He had a death grip on the edge of the table, and his face had gone from grey to scarlet in the flaring candlelight.
Wynter sank onto the fire-stool. “Who was he?” she asked.
“No one knows.” Razi grimaced and then leapt as Christopher removed the second stitch. “Damn it!” And again as Christopher rapidly tugged the third stitch and then the fourth in quick succession. “Shit! Christopher! Shit!”
Christopher sat back on his heels and looked up at his friend without a trace of emotion. “There are four more to go,” he said, “Do you want a moment?”
Razi locked his lips together and panted in and out through his nose. He looked menacingly at Christopher. “Just. Bloody. Do it!”
“You need to shut up,” said his friend, raising the tweezers again and focusing on the remaining stitches. “The guards will hear you.”
Wynter tried to divert him. “But how did the attacker get in? You can’t just waltz into one of those feasts!”
Razi shook his head and then inhaled another high squeal of pain as Christopher quickly tugged the remaining four stitches from his shoulder. Wynter reached forward and gripped Razi’s corded forearm, her other hand rubbing his neck and shoulder with round soothing motions. “It’s finished now. He’s done,” she said, and Razi laughed through the tears that were suddenly pouring down his face.
Christopher dropped the tweezers and the scissors onto the cloth by the copper bowl. Razi’s blood spread out in delicately veined blossoms on the soft weave cotton. “I still have to stitch him back up,” he said dryly and Wynter’s stomach clenched at the thought of it.
“Let it bleed a while…” muttered Razi, his eyes shut.
Christopher nodded and pushed gently until Razi was leaning back in his chair. “Hold this,” he said to Wynter, and she put her hand against the thick wad of cotton that he had placed under the wound. It caught the fresh blood before it trickled down Razi’s belly and stained his britches. “Don’t block the wound,” Christopher instructed as he set about cleaning up. “Let it clean itself out.”
“All right.” She couldn’t take her eyes from Razi’s face, newly drained of colour and textured like dough. He had begun to shiver, but before Wynter could comment on it, Christopher pulled the cloak up from the back of the chair and draped it around his friend’s shoulders.
Razi took a moment to gather himself, grunting inadvertently with each exhale, his mouth turned down, and his face old with pain. Then he opened his eyes to Wynter again.
“So,” she said, her voice as steady as possible, her free hand still rubbing circles in the knotted wood of his shoulder and neck. “A stranger magically appears in the sanctity of the King’s banquet hall without anyone noticing him, and manages to take a shot at the newly announced pretender to the throne?”
Razi winced at the title, but nodded.
“That’s impossible, brother.”
Razi nodded again.
“I smell conspiracy,” said Christopher, shuffling things about on the table. “And the sooner we get that fellow up on his feet and singing a story, the sooner we’ll get some answers.”
Razi’s eyes actually crinkled up into a smile at that, and he slid a mocking look at Christopher. “If someone hadn’t beaten him out of all his senses, we might already have those answers.”
Christopher replied by pulling a wickedly curved needle from the bowl of water, and threading it with boiled silk.
Razi looked away and moaned.
Wynter tapped his arm. “Where is Alberon, Razi? Is he dead?” There. She’d said it, and in saying it her heart overflowed with dread and grief. “He must be dead, Razi. Why else would Jonathon do this? And why won’t he say what’s happened him? Jonathon adores Albi, he adores him.”
Razi looked at her, his face tilted so as not to see the needle, and took her hand in his. His eyes were black in this light, pits of liquid darkness. “Father is talking about mortuus in vita. He’s already put things into motion.”
Wynter’s eyes widened in shock. Could this not end? Right now, could this not just end, with her waking up to a warm summer’s day, down by the trout-brook, a basket full of fish, her line in the stream and Razi and Albi strolling towards her down the meadow? Could that not just happen?
She repeated the terrible phrase, her voice cracking. “mortuus in vita” – the King was declaring Alberon “dead in life”? It would be as though he had never existed. Even if her dear friend was alive, he may as well have been a ghost, because, once mortuus had been declared, Alberon was no longer a prince; he was no longer even a person. He simply was no longer there.
“Razi. He can’t… what reason could…? He can’t!”
“He can, and he intends to,” said Christopher abruptly, holding up the needle. “And Razi intends to stop him. Now, let go of her hand, Razi, or you’ll break it when I start to sew.”
By the time Christopher was finished, Razi was trembling and sweating, and Wynter was crying silently as she held his shoulders down from behind. “He’s just done now. He’s just finished…” She kept whispering that in his ear, his damp curls brushing her cheek as she leant in.
Christopher looked into his friend’s eyes, the bottle poised over the horribly aggravated wound. He was waiting for Razi to compose himself. Finally Razi glanced at him, gripped the arm of the chair even tighter, braced his legs and nodded curtly. Wynter pressed down hard on Razi’s shoulders and Christopher poured the remaining liquid over the wound, disinfecting it and sluicing the clots away in an fragrant, hissing wash.
Razi muffled his scream in Wynter’s arm, drumming his heels on the floor and grinding his fingernails into the wood. Christopher calmly pressed a fresh wad of gauze onto the wound and began to wrap his friend’s shoulder in fresh bandages.
Once everything was done, Wynter wrapped the cloak around Razi and knelt behind his chair, hugging him, her head buried in his neck, his chin on her arm. He was drenched in sweat and shaking. Neither of them spoke.
Christopher got to his feet, all his tools and the numerous bloody cloths piled neatly in his arms. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said softly and padded back through the secret door.
After a while Razi stirred, pushed back a little and patted Wynter on her shoulder. “I must go, Wyn. We have so much to do…”
“Where must you go? Razi…?”
But he was rising to his feet, pushing himself up with shaking arms. “I need to interrogate that fellow, the one who stabbed me… need to hear for myself what he has to say.”
Wynter understood this. Understood the power that firsthand knowledge gave, and applauded Razi for his wisdom. But, dear God, he was swaying on his legs, blinking at her from swollen, bloodshot eyes, his naked torso slick with cold sweat. She put her hand
on his chest and appealed to the physician in him.
“Listen, Razi, you need to dry off, let your body calm itself, put some warm clothes on. If you go down to the keep in that state you’ll have pneumonia by dawn. And then where will Alberon be?”
He dithered for a moment and then sat back down, nodding. She shoved a beaker of still warm milk at him, and the pile of toasted bread. “I’ll go get Christopher to bring you some dry clothes,” she said and slipped through to the dusty blackness of the hidden passage.
“Christopher?” She crept cautiously into the dim interior of their suite of rooms. It had that scent of male about it, a scruffy, piled-up kind of feeling. Books and heaps of things were scattered about. She smiled, this was Razi. This was how she remembered his rooms all those years ago. She passed his door, it could only be his door, the room within was so cluttered.
“Christopher?” she whispered again, afraid to call too loudly in case the guards in the hall heard her. She moved on to the next door, this must be Christopher’s room, silent and, except for a dressing trunk, bare of possessions, nothing out of place.
She heard a quiet scrape in the receiving room and went to the door, pausing to squint about in the gloom. Despite the heat, there was a fire in the grate. They had obviously lit it to boil the equipment and, in fact, there was a small cauldron suspended over it at that moment, the bowls, scissors, and other implements of Razi’s trade bubbling away in its depths. The pile of bloody cloths was set neatly to one side and Razi’s shirt lay crumpled on the floor beside them.
Christopher was standing by the window, blue lit by the moon, his back to her. He didn’t turn around, and when he answered her, his voice was thick. He had to clear his throat to get any words out. “Does he need me?”
“No. I’ve persuaded him to rest a while. Told him I would get him some fresh clothes; his own are soaked through.”
He nodded. “I’ll bring them in a moment.”
She turned to go, and then stopped. He seemed so lonely there. “Christopher…” she began, but couldn’t think of anything else to say. He didn’t turn, just kept standing, looking out the window and she didn’t know how to comfort him so she left, returning to Razi whom she found asleep at the table, an uneaten slice of toast in his hand.
Torture
Wynter was standing in the kitchen of her old cottage. The sun slanted through the partially closed shutters and illuminated a vase of white poppies on the scrubbed table. She was so afraid. Her heart was hammering in her chest and there were black edges to her vision.
Outside they were murdering her cats. She could hear them yowling and calling out to each other in their pain and fear. She didn’t want to see, but she couldn’t help herself and she flung out a hand and knocked the shutter back.
They had slung washing lines across the yard, passing from the gables of the workshop across to the roof of the stable. The cats hung by their necks, silhouetted black against the white hot sky, the washing lines bobbing and swaying under their weight. There were dozens of them, dying slowly, their legs and tails thrashing and scrabbling at the air, their mouths open, pink tongues and needle teeth flashing in their swollen faces.
Their awful cat-wails, their high, baby-strangled yowls, filled the sun-laden air, and Wynter felt she was going to be sick. But she was too frightened to run outside to help them. She knew that all she had to do was cut the lines and they might survive, but she was too frightened, and she just stood there as the terrible, unearthly noise clawed at her stomach and her heart.
“You can never be friend to a king, sis.”
She leapt at the voice and turned to find Alberon sitting at the table, his crossed arms resting on the wood.
He had grown into a beautiful young man, the very image of his father, as like the King as Razi was different. The sun made fire of his red-blond curls and copper wires of his eyelashes. His big-featured face, his broad mouth, his sleepy blue eyes were all as she recalled them. He was looking at her with a sad kind of affection, and for some reason the sight of him made her want to weep; there was no joy in it at all, just a bitter, bitter sorrow.
He turned away from her and looked out the window, his face creasing in distaste at the sight of the cats. He got to his feet, stooping slightly to keep sight of the yard. He already had Razi’s height, but there was a broad-shouldered, bullish physicality to him that was all Jonathon, more power than grace.
“The things we do,” he said in sad wonder. “The things we find we must do.” He gestured to the yard, and looked at Wynter with his vivid eyes. “Here comes the last of them now.”
The horrible screeching started up again. They were bringing more cats down from the castle, great wicker baskets full of them, all tumbled together, clawing and screaming and terrified.
Wynter ran to the corner, her hand over her mouth, because she knew she was going to be sick.
She woke in the chair, alone. But the screaming continued. Razi and Christopher had left as soon as Razi was dressed, and she had sat herself down, vowing to listen for their return. She must have dozed off – the candles were burnt out. Two hours maybe? And now the air was full of screaming. Hollow and thready, but real nonetheless. She leapt to the window, and even before she looked down into the orange garden she knew what she would see.
Heather Quinn was racing through the trees, her mouth wide, her loose hair flying. The moonlight shone through her and almost made her solid as she flitted through the tree trunks and passed through the stone benches. She ran on transparent feet, her hands raised to the windows that overlooked the courtyard, begging for someone to listen.
Wynter had never seen Heather Quinn, but everyone knew what to listen for in the night, should Heather come calling. She had been a King’s Mistress, Jonathon’s grandfather’s mistress to be exact, and had flung herself to her death from the Sandhurst tower. She was the castle harbinger, a foreteller of death, and people took it very seriously when she made her crazy, screaming circuit of the complex in the dead of night.
Down by the stables the hunting dogs began to howl in their kennels, their rising, ethereal wail a musical overtone to Heather’s screams.
Wynter leant far out of her window, expecting shutters to open and lights to blaze, expecting people to begin shouting and calling and checking each others’ rooms. But nothing happened around the courtyard except some discreet movements at windows, and some quietly closed shutters.
Heather’s desperation grew as no one paid her any heed, and she ran a frenzied circle around the garden, her face turned up to the blank windows, pleading for attention. She spotted Wynter and her mouth stretched wider, a horrible gaping chasm in her distorted face. She turned at an unnaturally sharp angle and raced through four orange trees in her desperation to get to Wynter. Her eyes widened to saucer-sized voids and her hands seemed to stretch up, the fingers growing as she sped like lightning across the grass.
“Don’t let her talk to you, child! They’ll hang you from a tree.”
Wynter leapt back from the window, partly from fear of Heather Quinn, but mostly at the shock of a cat-voice so close to her ear. Heather Quinn broke away as soon as Wynter was out of sight, cutting sharply left and flying past under the window. She shot out of the garden and passed under the fountain arch, her screams fading into the distance, headed for the river.
A small, marmalade cat nestled on the windowsill, hidden in the shadows behind the shutter. It regarded Wynter with phosphorescent eyes and she backed away from it, unsure of its intent. It blinked at her. It seemed to be waiting. Wynter looked about her, took a breath and curtsied as in the old days.
“All respects to you, mouse-bane,” she said very softly, “well met, this night.”
The cat sighed, uncrossed its paws and rose to its feet. It dropped from the windowsill like an unfurling silk scarf, and landed with a barely audible patta-pat on the wooden table beneath. “Close the shutters, fool. You will be watched.”
It had been so long since Wynter had h
eard cat-voice. That curious, whining growl, all long drawn-out and with too many rrrrrrs. Wynter couldn’t help but smile at its familiar, impatient tone.
The cat watched her with all the inherent scorn of its species, and switched the tip of its tail, pit-pat, pit-pat, as Wynter quietly snapped the shutters closed.
As Wynter found and lit another candle the cat tutted, sighed and tapped its claws on the table, impatient to be given her full attention.
“So you’re ready then, are you?” it said. “Quite sure, miss? Want to go bathe perhaps? Or take a stroll?”
“I’m sorry, good-hunter. I cannot see so well in the dark as you.”
The cat pffted and turned its head as if to say, oh please, don’t bother. Flattery will get you nowhere with me.
Wynter spread another curtsey and, knowing every cat’s love for titles, introduced herself formally, “Protector Lady Wynter Moorehawke at your service, good-hunter.”
The cat rose to its feet, suddenly furious, and Wynter was taken aback at its hissing anger.
“I know who you are, girl-once-cat-servant, why else would I be here? Do you think, after all that’s befallen, we’d deign to speak with any but you?” It flowed around itself in a prowling figure of eight, grizzling under its breath until it managed to regain some self-control. Then it sat back down and directed its green-eyed glare at Wynter once more.
“GreyMother sent me to warn you.”
“GreyMother? GreyMother lives?” Wynter laughed out loud in joy, but the cat just stared at her disdainfully until Wynter took her seat and composed herself.
“GreyMother lives, though old, very old now. And Coriolanus too, though much weakened and always poorly from the poison.”
“I’m so sorry,” whispered Wynter, tears once again springing to her eyes at the thought of her precious friends.
The cat looked at her as if she’d let loose a fart, its nose wrinkling in disgust. “What care I for your sorrow, human? I am here for revenge on he-who-betrayed-our-trust. That is all, and to use you as an instrument of his downfall. Don’t speak to me of your sorrows. I despise them. We all despise them, as the nothings they are.”