Prepared for that command, Jussoud nonetheless chose his honest words with reluctance. ‘I think Mykkael knows, or is hardset in pursuit of firm evidence that will reveal the fate that’s befallen her Grace. He said she’s endangered. Not why or how. I’d hazard two guesses. That he’s loyal, but has a strong reason not to trust where he shares his information. Or else he’s involved with an ugly conspiracy, and doing a magnificent job for the party that wants to obstruct us.’
Taskin nodded, relieved, his respect for the healer grown to the stature he would have accorded a peer. ‘We aren’t wont to warm to a man of his breeding. The court gossip condemns him. His background checks clean, but he was a hired sword and a mercenary. He might have been commissioned a long time in advance, and sent here to win his key position through the opening of our summer tourney’
‘He is a weapon, well sharpened to spearhead whatever cause buys his service,’ Jussoud agreed in blunt summary. ‘He could be the best chance we have to find Princess Anja, or he might be the cipher to cast Sessalie to the wolves that would tear her succession asunder.’ A fraught moment later, he braved the soft inquiry, ‘Will you leave the man free, or restrain him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Taskin answered, his trim shoulders set to withstand an unprecedented burden of uncertainty. ‘You’re an astute judge of character, Jussoud. What do you feel this case merits?’
The commander watched, primed and sharp as a predator, and captured the nomad’s split-second hesitation. ‘Ah, Jussoud, you have doubts.’
The easterner sighed. ‘Just one. Not substantial.’ Mykkael had not said his own hand had killed a child; but the flicker of fear that had crossed his dark face well suggested the chance that he might have.
‘No need to elaborate,’ Taskin excused. ‘As always, your thoughts and mine seem to move in lock step. I value that, even if, with this desert-bred, the waters are dangerously clouded.’
‘Then what will you do?’ Jussoud asked, well aware he might not receive a straight answer.
Yet Taskin chose to share his rare confidence. ‘Let’s first see if Captain Mysh kael keeps his promised appointment at Highgate. If he comes in by free will, I plan to hear him. Should he have sound reasons for today’s behaviour, I’ll wait to see whether he chooses to disclose information I can use. The facts he delivers to my discretion had better hold value and substance. Once those hurdles are crossed, last of all, I must weigh the manner in which he answers to justly earned punishment.’
At Jussoud’s wary glance, Taskin said, starkly grim, ‘Oh yes, I will have to take that risk, won’t I? The brazen creature has made sure he’ll be tested. I have no choice but to handle him now that three counts lie against him, with only one of them mine, for an act of direct insubordination. He’s incurred a diplomatic insult, formally registered, that for the realm’s honour, I cannot ignore. You’ve just witnessed the third, a far more serious charge of striking a crown guard in obstruction of a royal duty.’
‘Bright powers avert!’ Jussoud warned. ‘I respect your prowess, my lord, and your sound grasp of command, but I’ve also seen Mykkael in action. Do you actually know he can kill you, that fast, on the strength of an ingrained reflex?’
Taskin drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I doubt my imagination falls short on that score. But Princess Anja’s survival may come to rely on this southern barbarian’s raw instincts. Either he’s our best hope to recover her, alive, or he’s a loose bolt of lightning, too deadly for any man’s hand to restrain. If he’s too volatile to bide under a crown soldier’s discipline, loyal or not, we can’t risk such a weapon among us.’
As the sun’s rays slanted through the early afternoon, she huddled in the dank gloom of a rock cave. The tied horses rested with closed eyes and cocked hips. Chilled and exhausted, she snatched sleep in catnaps. Yet each time she drifted, fear stabbed her awake, sweating from the recurrent nightmare: of familiar faces tirelessly hunting her, their changed eyes ice-hard with cruelty…
VIII. Afternoon
THE GARRISON SENTRY ON WATCH BY THE FALLS GATE SCARCELY SENSED THE WHISPER-LIGHT STEP AT HIS BACK. BEFORE HE COULD TURN, OR set hand to his weapon, a small, furry bundle arrived on his shoulder, its sharp claws digging for balance.
The startled man-at-arms closed one hand on the scruff of what proved to be a young cat. Then he realized just who had crept up behind him. ‘Captain!’
Mykkael flashed a smile from under the penitent’s mantle that covered him from head to foot. He had been to the butcher’s, to judge by the fly-swarming contents of the osier basket slung from one casual hand. ‘Have that kitten sent up to the Middlegate watch officer, along with my updated orders, could you please?’
By now accustomed to the odd ways in which the captain saw fit to assert his command, the sentry secured the unsettled creature thrust into his grasp: a nondescript tabby with white paws and pink nose, sadly bedraggled, but bearing a braided cloth collar. ‘Someone’s lost darling?’
Mykkael nodded. ‘Belongs to the little girl who lives on Spring Street, the house with blue shutters and stone walls smothered in grapevine.’ He kept himself masked in the shadow of the keep, out of sight of the carters who jockeyed their drays past the foot traffic on the planked drawbridge. Through the cries of the vendors peddling grilled sausage, and the hoots of two sotted roisterers, he added, ‘Tell the child not to let her pet wander again. I found him in the hands of the rat killer’s boys.’
‘Powers!’ swore the guardsman, correctly faced straight ahead. ‘I thought you’d ordered a stop to their cruelty?’ Before Mykkael’s tenure, such boys had trapped stray cats in the alleys, and lamed the poor wretches for rodent bait.
‘As of today, those boys have received their last warning.’ The captain’s face hardened beneath the coarse hood. ‘If they persist with their mishandling of animals, here’s my updated word: the next offenders will be culled with a warrant. See that the change gets through to my sergeants.’
The guardsman on duty returned a clipped nod.
‘Now,’ Mykkael resumed, brought around to the business assigned to the watch by the Falls Gate. ‘You have the information I wanted?’
The man’s answer was prompt. ‘The recent list of the seeress’s clients, or at least the ones that her family recalls? The descriptions are scant. No one could agree on the numbers.’
‘I don’t care if the details were mixed up.’ Mykkael measured the sun angle, his cloaked stance touched to scalding impatience. ‘Report.’
The guard understood what his pay share was worth. He delivered the paltry summation. ‘The old besom hosted a wide range of visitors, most of them commons who came to buy charms for luck in love, or talismans for prosperity and safeguard. Yesterday’s list included five to eight merchant women from the Middlegate, all of whom came to her heavily veiled. Beyjall the apothecary visited once, perhaps to ask for a scrying. He often sought readings to locate rare herbs, but since the granddame kept her sessions private, the family can’t swear the presumption in this case was accurate. They all remembered the page from the palace. He came, they said, in a craftsman’s rough smock. But his shoes were a rich boy’s castoffs.’
Mykkael’s question slapped back, fast as ricochet. ‘When?’
Taken aback by a stare of driving intensity, the guard breathed an inward sigh of relief that he was prepared with an answer. ‘Two days ago. The night of the High Prince of Devall’s arrival.’
‘Well done. That will do.’ Mykkael adjusted the hang of his sword blade beneath his voluminous mantle, a sure sign he had concluded the interview and now made ready to depart.
‘Anything else, Captain?’ Given a negative gesture from beneath the enveloping hood, the guardsman cast a distasteful glance over the clotted offal heaped in the basket. ‘You’re off on some errand outside the gates? Surely you aren’t taking that as a gift to feed the blind storyteller who begs by the crossroad market?’
Mykkael tapped his chest, where he had a second wrapped packet stowed
, beyond easy reach of the lower town’s scourge of street thieves. ‘The scraps are intended for somebody else. I’ll be back in an hour, two at the latest. Tell your duty officer to have a saddled horse waiting, I expect to be in a hurry.’
Asleep in the sun after quartering the hills through most of the night with a hangover, old Benj the poacher stirred to the jab of a toe in his ribs. The sawing snore that rattled his throat transformed to a grunt of displeasure.
‘Benj!’ screeched a female voice that wrought havoc with his sore head. ‘Benj, you damned layabout, wake up.’
The carping as usual belonged to the wife, shrill as a rusted gate hinge. The toe, which dug in with nailing persuasion and unleashed the fireburst of a pressed nerve, was no woman’s. Benj shut his slack mouth on a curse. Aware enough to interpret the delirious yap of his dogs, he answered without opening his eyes. ‘The only trail that matched your description runs into the western ranges. Six horses, led by a slight person who wore lightweight shoes, with soles stitched by a quality cobbler.’
‘Benj, you rude wastrel, get up!’ The wife caught his limp wrist with a grip like steel pincers and hauled. Her brute effort toppled him sideways off the kennel barrel currently used as his backrest. ‘Benj, at the least, you can hold conversation within doors, like a civilized man of the house.’
‘I’m not civilized,’ the poacher protested. He opened bloodshot grey eyes, peered through his oat-straw frizzle of hair, then winced as the sunlight stabbed into the lingering throb of his hangover. To the cloaked desert-bred who crouched, feeding guts to his fawning hound pack, he appealed, ‘I can talk just as well lying down. We don’t need to go anywhere, do we?’
‘In fact, we do.’ Teeth flashed in the captain’s face, though his grin showed no shred of apology. ‘I’m a bit pressed, and would bless the favour if your woman could heat up a cauldron and boil a slab of raw beef.’
‘You don’t intend to feed a good cut to those dogs!’ the woman yelped in shocked horror.
Mykkael laughed. ‘Evidently not, since the thought seems to threaten you with a stroke! Here, let me.’ He tossed the last gobbet from the basket, wiped his smeared hands on the grass, then replaced the wife’s grip upon Benj’s slack arm with a muscular pull that hoisted the lanky man upright. ‘Come on, my fine fellow.’ He braced the poacher’s wobbling frame and steered a determined course through the dog piles dotting the yard. ‘You’ll be more comfortable inside, anyway, since those beef scraps will draw clouds of flies.’
The mismatched pair trooped into the house, the wife clucking behind, concerned for her rugs and her furnishings. Yet Benj arrived without mishap in his favourite seat by the hearth. Perched on the threadbare, patchworked cushion, he scowled at his feet, perplexed by the fact that the old nag had not forced Mykkael to pause and remove his caked boots at the threshold.
While the woman bustled to hook the cauldron over the hob, the poacher nestled his thin shoulders against the ladderback chair.
Mykkael sat on the settle. At home enough to push back his hood, he washed the suet and blood from his hands in the basin fetched by the poacher’s tongue-tied little daughter. He did not press with questions. A rare man for respect, he stifled his need and waited for Benj to order his thoughts.
As always, that tactful handling caused the poacher to give without stint.
‘Your quarry’s holed up quite high in the hills. As you asked, we did not haze or close in. Just followed the trail from a distance. Good thing you forced me to start tracking last night. With every damn fool out there beating the riverbank, not even my dogs could unriddle the hash that’s left of the scent.’
As though the report were as ordinary as the drone of the bees outside in the melon patch, Mykkael surrendered his packet of meat for the wife to stew over the fire. ‘No one noticed you? No crown riders picked up on your back trail?’
Benj shook his head, cleared his throat, then demanded, ‘Does a guest get no tea or hospitality in this house?’ Before the wife could draw breath and sass back, he answered the captain’s question. ‘No one’s wiser. I left my son in the hills, keeping watch. He will lay down fresh deer scent to turn any dogs, as you asked. If the searchers come near, he’ll divert them.’
Mykkael released a deep sigh in relief. ‘Benj, you’re a hero.’ While the wife scoffed at the untoward praise, the captain accepted the buttered bread set out by the towheaded daughter. He broke the hard crust between his scarred fingers, then raised eyes grown suddenly piercing. ‘Listen to me, Benj. This business is dangerous, more than I ever imagined last night.’
The wife snorted again, bent to poke up the coals. ‘Huh. What else is new? Benj has lived with the threat of the noose all his life, and damn all to sate his taste for the king’s summer venison.’
But the captain shook his head, the bread chunk between his deft hands all at once a forgotten afterthought. ‘No, Mirag, believe me. A hangman’s rope would be merciful beside the perils that stalk Sessalie’s princess.’ His edged words cut the quiet like fine, killing steel swathed out of sight under satin. Without warning, his lean figure seemed set out of place, a jarring wrong note amid the fragrance of sweetfern brought in by her husband’s jaunt through the brambles.
The small daughter retreated and clung to her mother’s flax skirts. Mirag folded the child into a wordless embrace, and regarded the creature who ate bread on her settle, his poised calm transformed to a predator’s stillness, a heartbeat removed from raw violence.
Mykkael made no effort to dismiss the fresh fear blown in like a chill wind between them. ‘Already, two people have died for far less than your husband knows now. Keep your family at home. Talk to no one. Leave your son in the hills, under cover, and for your life’s sake, hold to the very letter of my directions.’
‘So long as I can sleep off the whisky that’s pounding my brain to a pulp,’ Benj said, wise enough to pretend to complacence before the wide eyes of his child. He tipped back his head, hands laced in his lap. ‘That boy on the run, that’s made off with the horses? He’s somehow involved with the fate of the princess?’
‘Her life may depend on what happens to him,’ Mykkael admitted, unflinching.
Benj nodded, satisfied. ‘Then I’ll be here, for when you have need of me.’
By the time the water boiled, he was out cold and snoring. Mykkael snacked on bread and honeyed tea while his meat cooked, and Mirag badgered him to part with a chunk to enrich her stewpot for supper. The girl-child slipped out to play with the dogs, while Benj twitched in whisky-soaked dreams. Mykkael sat in thought, the odd finger tapping, while time fleeted past, and the sun slanted gold through the shutters.
‘Meat’s cooked almost through,’ Mirag said at last. Since she had successfully cadged the best portion, she helpfully wrapped the remainder in yesterday’s bread heels, then tied up the package with cheesecloth.
Mykkael arose. He extracted a filled purse from under his cloak and solemnly exchanged bundles. ‘Here’s compensation for the burst shutter, and the fee for Benj’s tracking. There’s more added on to cover additional service. Mirag, listen clearly. The coin stays in your hands until I send you word, do you hear? No drink for Benj. Keep him home and cold sober, with the dogs close at hand on their chains. I’ll come back tonight with instructions.’
This once, the shrewd matron hesitated before she tucked the silver away under the lid of her milk crock. ‘Captain, the danger to us has always walked with the power of your crown authority. I won’t see my man hang for coursing royal game. Promise me this! Whatever happens, though you face your own downfall, you won’t expose Benj’s name, or say that he had any part in this.’
Mykkael pulled up his hood. ‘I doubt that King Isendon would value a few deer above the murderers your Benj has helped the garrison bring back to justice.’
But the poacher’s wife remained adamant. ‘Captain, your promise! For my son’s interference with Taskin’s lancers alone, we could all lose our heads for crown treason.’
> Sober now, sharply aware the woman before him was trembling, Mykkael reached out and gathered her clasped hands. ‘You are brave as a tigress, and for that, on my honour: there is no act of treason in safeguarding the king’s daughter’s life.’
When Mirag’s fear did not settle, Mykkael bowed his head briefly. Then he laid the chapped skin of her knuckles against the sword belt slung over his heart. ‘Madam, hear my oath. No man in Sessalie knows your husband has ever worked with me in liaison. Nor will they, I swear by the blood and the breath that keep the life in my body’
The Seneschal of Sessalie received no warning beyond the desperate string of entreaties from Collain Herald, outside. Made aware he confronted an imminent invasion, but given no chance to order the scatter of state documents under his hand, he turned his head, lips pursed in harried forbearance. Then the latch tripped. The door to the chamber reserved for the king’s private consultation wrenched open with a force that snuffed all the candles.
Bertarra charged in, turquoise skirts spread like sails, and her round face flushed with agitation. ‘Guards, guards, guards, guards!’ she burst out. ‘Can’t step an inch without tripping over the boots on their blundering feet.’ Unabashed by the presence of four more men-at-arms posted by Taskin’s select order, she marched hellbent towards the table where the seneschal marshalled the sheets of the afternoon’s sensitive business.
‘A waste of crown effort, guarding the barn door after the stock has been stolen,’ the late queen’s niece ranted on. ‘I’ve counted a dozen or more brutes standing idle who ought to be outside the gates, scouring the countryside for kidnappers.’
The seneschal knew when not to waste his breath, arguing. He pushed up the spectacles slipped down his beaked nose, while the lady rocked into a belated curtsey before the chair that supported the king.