Taskin cracked open ice-blue eyes. He was currently propped up against pillows on the floor, while Jussoud, at the bedside, applied his knowledge as masseur to the king’s intractable malady. Ignoring the seneschal, the commander glanced over the chessboard. Though even slight movement pained his strapped arm, he extended a finger and slid the black bishop two diagonal squares to the left. ‘Check.’
As the seneschal drew breath, Taskin shifted his knife-point regard. ‘I heard you the first time, Lord Shaillon.’ His drained whisper lacked none of its caustic force. ‘Go out, and you’ll be a walking sacrifice. In the king’s absence, and mine, you wield too much power. Can Sessalie afford to set you at risk of being claimed as a sorcerer’s catspaw? I say not. My guardsmen will not let you pass.’
The seneschal jutted his chin, unintimidated. ‘Without me, the council will argue the affairs of this realm to a standstill!’
‘Let them.’ Taskin tipped his head in ironic deference towards the bed.
‘An intelligent tactic,’ interjected King Isendon, roused and lucid under Jussoud’s skilled ministrations. ‘The rule of this kingdom is set under siege. Should I die in this tower, the state legalities are better left tangled. If we fall here, and Devall moves to upset my succession, my sealed record could still thwart him.’ Crown heir Kailen destroyed meant Princess Anja must be left her clear right to inherit. ‘I must believe my daughter can win free and sue for a southern alliance.’
The argument lapsed, leaving grief-stricken quiet, the fust of old books and Dedorth’s frowsty housekeeping thickened by the aromatic smoke of burned cedar. The tight quarters had become a sore trial to the defenders besieged inside. Since Perincar’s geometry and Mykkael’s list of defensive banishings had stood off the initial assault, the sorcerer’s watch spells ringed their refuge without surcease, probing for sign of a breach. Taskin’s guardsmen shared vigil at the windows and door, which left the nine individuals carrying the vizier’s talismans crammed into constant, close company. A chalked ring on the floor marked the limited range where the ninefold shield held to resonance. For any one of the bearers to stray past that distance would spell their defeat, sealing King Isendon’s doom and inflicting a fate that would reach beyond death.
Allowed no expedient weakness to exploit, the focus of the sorcerer’s attack appeared to have shifted elsewhere.
The perilous stand-off fallen since dawn chafed upon everyone’s nerves. Lady Phail sensibly used the interval to catch up on sleep. The seneschal throttled his griped urge to pace, while the surviving sentries conscripted from Highgate stood fretful guard, and their wounded commander salved restless nerves by waging increasingly vicious campaigns on the chessboard.
‘A soldier who took this long to counterstrike would become chopped meat on a battlefield,’ Taskin barked at drawn length.
Never hurried for any man, the Fane Street physician paused to polish his spectacles. ‘Healers by nature don’t sacrifice without forethought. Knight takes rook.’
Eyes shut, Taskin smiled in evil triumph. ‘Mate in two moves. You won’t save your king. Reset the board. We’ll play again.’
‘A bit bloodthirsty, aren’t we?’ The physician fielded his latest defeat with good grace. Though he seemed content to accept a fresh challenge, even his dauntless optimism wore thin from the pressure of constant unease.
Under the thinning drift of the mist, nothing seemed untoward outside. The bell rang from Highgate to signal the change of the watch. The sweet clarity of the sunrise paean drifted down from the Sanctuary on the pinnacle If the sorcerer’s minion now stalked the chancellors in Sessalie’s chambers of state, no word and no news reached the tower. After two overt assaults by cold sorcery, even the keenest mind could not guess how the council might have been soothed to placation.
The absence of the king, the crown prince and the duchess, as well as four ranking officers of the realm, must have been blamed on the fire that had struck the palace apartment. Yet no death knells had rung. The general populace had not been informed of a royal demise. Some semblance of legal decorum prevailed, since a change in succession demanded the proof of a body.
Shadowed by fearfully dire speculation, the select party immured with the king could do nothing but wait out their helplessness. They subsisted on mean rations and slept by turns in tight quarters, while the morning wore past like slow torture. The Duchess of Phail napped in her chair, her white head nested on a frayed bolster, while the off-watch men-at-arms slept, bearing weapons, and the handful of guard from the duty roster held the main door, and sparingly burned cedar in the grate.
‘Powers of daylight look after my daughter,’ the king prayed in a scraped whisper.
‘Mykkael won’t fail you, Majesty,’ Vensic reassured him. Bent by the light of a tallow dip, he struck his knife upright and tipped the winkle of copper shavings just pared from a drawer pull into Dedorth’s soot-streaked crucible. The melted metal would be used to treat arrow points, by Mykkael’s instruction the best way to stun a sorcerer’s fledged minion.
‘One man, alone!’ Bennent spoke from the shuttered window, where he kept uneventful lookout. ‘What chance does that desert-bred have? I tell you, we ought to strike back while we can, and run Devall out of the kingdom.’
‘Mykkael’s experience has spared your life and the king’s, three times over,’ Taskin stated. ‘If the warning he left with me held any substance, the high prince is already corrupt. Move on him now, and you could be challenging the primary tool sent to spearhead this sorcerer’s invasion.’
‘Well don’t you think folk should be warned of the danger?’ the seneschal pressed.
‘They should not,’ interjected the Fane Street physician, his plump hands staging pawns on the chessboard. ‘Ignorance is the blessing that spares them, just now.’ The horrible deaths of the apothecary and the seeress had established that fact beyond question. ‘For myself, I shrink to contemplate the reason why this tower is no longer set under active attack.’
Lord Shaillon huffed in contempt through his nose. ‘Personally I prefer to enjoy the relief.’
‘Shaillon, your lack of knowledge is dangerous.’ King Isendon stirred on Dedorth’s narrow bed, too tired for involved speech. ‘Tell them, Jussoud.’
The nomad settled the moth-holed blanket back over the monarch’s thin shoulders. ‘As long as the royal family is held as the primary target, the sorcerer is still stalking. He wants Sessalie conquered without blood, in secret. If he’s flushed out of cover in front of the populace, his presence would raise mass terror and fear. Then his work will have impact, and his invasion will draw notice. Tribal shamans often sense death and wars from a distance. The most gifted can read calamity in the movements of storms, even track down the source through skilled dreamers.’
Taskin took black, again without asking, and tapped impatient fingers until his more timid opponent played the first move. ‘Tactics still suggest this enemy wants us trapped quietly. He’ll have a design he wishes to hide. Some motive he prefers to keep secret. Be grateful we have our one man, alone.’ Quite likely that captain’s close guard on the princess was all that stood between Sessalie’s people, and a disaster of unknown proportion.
A sandpaper whisper arose from the bed. ‘Such a chance-met fly in the ointment, that we had a desert-bred captain on hire.’ King Isendon sighed, eyes closed, his thinned hair wisped like silk on the pillow. ‘I fear for Mykkael. As my daughter’s protector, even the prowess of his reputation might not be enough.’
‘He is shielded better than even he knows,’ Jussoud offered in gentle remonstrance. ‘I left him my gift of the Sanouk royal dragons.’
‘Your silk sash?’ interjected the Duchess of Phail, awakened and sharp with surprise. ‘Why give up the token of your lineage and ancestry?’
The nomad inclined his head. ‘I would say Mykkael needs the credential more than I do.’ Whatever befell him, escorting a princess, while bearing the badge of old Sanouk royalty, he would not be misapprised
as a ruffian.
‘Well, you men can rely on your foreign killer and his sword.’ Lady Phail settled back, arms crossed over the bed sheet she wore in place of a shawl. ‘I’ll stake my best diamond on our court ladies. They won’t fall for Devall’s smooth lies indefinitely. I doubt very much if they’ll stay content to hand over Sessalie’s independence.’
‘Whatever the women might choose to try,’ Taskin said, as he wiped the first white casualty off the game board, ‘better hope no one in my guard’s the next target chosen for coercion. This sorcerer’s no soldier. Else he’d see fast as daylight that we’re shielded from spellcraft, but vulnerable as babes to the first assault party backing a ram.’
The thunderous pounding rattled the door of Sergeant Cade’s dwelling, a second-floor tenement overlooking an alley two streets down from the Falls Gate. The protest of the two posted guards clashed with a screech of female dissent. The fracas raged no more than a second. The browbeaten guardsmen were barrelled aside, and the panel burst open, slapping dust off the top of the dish cupboard.
A huge woman cloaked in ermine and flounced taffeta rammed out of the streaming mist. Her incensed invasion crossed over the threshold, while Cade’s twin toddlers stared with huge eyes, and his infant daughter sat, sucking her fingers.
‘Powers of daylight! Since when does a house arrest keep a man out of the kitchen?’ Lady Bertarra advanced, jewels wrathfully swinging, while the floorboards creaked under her bulk. ‘Sergeant!’ she bellowed. ‘Come out! As the late queen’s niece, I will know what’s happening within my family’s kingdom!’
Cade’s pert wife leaped up from her stool, all but dropping the lid of the butter churn. ‘My lady?’ That any court matron should call in this district framed an incomprehensible precedent.
‘Your husband!’ snapped Bertarra. ‘Send for him. Now.’
Scared by the uproar, the child at the table started to wail.
Bertarra turned her head, startled. ‘Oh, please! Hush, my button.’ Still speaking endearments, the queen’s niece pawed under her cloak. ‘I haven’t come to bring harm to your father.’ Her ringed fingers emerged, clutching a half-dozen lemon drops twisted in waxed paper. She handed a sweet to the tearful girl, then offered the rest to her brothers. As one, the twins pounced, whooping with unbridled pleasure.
‘You’ll share those, you scoundrels!’ admonished the wife. ‘Tell the great lady thank you.’ Plainly clothed and embarrassed, she gave up her rough seat. While her daughter’s crying subsided to wonder, she extended a chapped hand to take Bertarra’s furred wrap. ‘Please be welcome, my lady, and forgive the rude manners. The children are beset with excitement. They’ve had low-country sugar just once, from their cousin’s uncle whose second daughter married a sailhand from Dreish.’
Still puffing from her ascent to the garret, Bertarra shed her weighty mantle and sat, just as Cade poked his bald head through the back-chamber doorway.
Before his flustered wife could begin introductions, Bertarra plunged into ranting. ‘The king, the crown prince, and the seneschal are all missing since the fire in the royal apartment! Commander Taskin’s gone from his bed. Two days ago, he lay dying, and now, no one’s home at his townhouse. We’ve got women with husbands in the palace guard whose men folk have failed to come home, and the High Prince of Devall has the council tied up behind closed doors in debate. As the oldest member of Isendon’s family still at large, I demand to know what is happening!’
Cade entered, his laconic features flushed pink. Clad in shirtsleeves and breeches, he had been caught shaving, to judge by the stubble still prickling his neck. Eyebrows lifted, he measured the tonnage of jewels and silk crammed into his tiny kitchen, then managed to field the astounding invasion with a semblance of professional aplomb. ‘My lady? Have you spoken to the new acting captain at the keep?’
Bertarra sniffed. ‘That prig!’ Earrings rattling, she drew herself up. ‘Jedrey told me to be quiet and go home. As though there wasn’t a crisis, and I had nothing better to do than nibble tea cakes and write invitations.’
Cade reached the trestle. He clasped his wife’s shoulder in reassurance, then added with measuring thought, ‘I’m under house arrest, were you aware?’
‘For protesting that idiot’s promotion, I know.’ Bertarra fluttered a dismissive hand. ‘Stennis, at the garrison, told me as much. He said your disgrace was political nonsense, that your jailers were Mysh kael’s, and that you could talk here more freely’
Cade hooked a stool from the corner and sat down, his good-natured face tightly guarded. ‘Stennis holds the day roster at the keep? He’s still acting on Mykkael’s left orders?’
Bertarra glared at him, miffed. ‘Not openly. Though how anyone could overlook the reek of burned cedar is a mystery even a dunce isn’t likely to miss. Sergeant! I came here for information, not to run on over lists and messages.’
‘Then where’s Jedrey?’ demanded Cade, not wont to pause for mannered diplomacy with Sessalie’s peace under compromise by a sorcerer. ‘Is he still busy mustering men for an assault upon Dedorth’s tower?’
‘If that means flaunting his new rank above Highgate, and whispering over some plan set in motion by Devall’s insolent marshal, then yes. Stennis was stalling, though he wished you to know, by mid-morning, he’ll run out of excuses.’ Bertarra narrowed her eyes at the half-clothed sergeant in seething exasperation. ‘I came here,’ she declared, ‘to find out if there’s a conspiracy afoot against Sessalie’s royal family. Is it true there are sorcerer’s minions mewed up in the observatory? Who burned off the roof? The ladies are worried. If the crown is in peril, they’re anxious to help. But don’t you dare act like the last braying ass, insisting the kingdom is peaceful!’
Cade met her tirade with his careful, slow smile. ‘My lady, if I tell you that Mykkael was right all along, will your Highgate society listen?’
Bertarra snorted. ‘Blinding glory, why not? The man may be uncouth, but everyone must now acknowledge he’s competent. Taskin spoke for him, and so did the king. Desert-bred or not, since he took the garrison, the maidservants all say they can walk the Lowergate streets at night, safely’
The wife made her decision, abandoned her butter, and graciously offered to brew tea. As though her hospitality sealed a decision, Cade drew his candy-smeared daughter on to his knee and started talking in earnest.
The last stage of the crossing over the flume did not occur without cost, though all five of the princess’s horses arrived, safe and dripping, on the far bank of Hell’s Chasm. They stood in a tight, dispirited bunch, coats steaming in the morning’s chill shade, while early sunlight rimmed the crowns of the trees atop the towering rim wall. Still breathless from the effort required to draw Fouzette across the current, Mykkael reclaimed his sword and adjusted the fit of his harness. Since Anja could not fail to notice the blood streaking through his soaked shirt, he had no way to mask his discomfort. Taskin’s three stripes stung his back like live fire, and the gash that crossed his left shoulder and chest had torn open from his exertion.
Aware of the princess’s fixed, worried eyes, the captain tried to allay her concern. ‘If you’re nervous the bleeding might draw down a kerrie, I have an evasion in mind.’
Anja sucked in a shaken breath. ‘You can hide from the kerries all you like. But not me.’ Surely he saw he would have to concede, give over his tightly defended privacy before risking a needless infection.
Finished fastening his harness, Mykkael retrieved his dry surcoat and scrip. ‘Princess,’ he stated, his tone beyond argument, ‘I am not such a fool as to neglect a wound. But this is no place to dawdle with salves and fresh dressings.’
‘What are you hiding?’ asked Anja, point-blank.
Head bent, Mykkael rummaged among his supplies and pulled out a sealed wooden phial. A wicked smile turned his lips. ‘A poacher’s prized remedy for masking his scent when he sets the baits in his traps.’
While Anja tapped her foot, unwilling to sanction the slic
k change of subject, the captain uncapped the stopper. He sprinkled a sampling of the contents over the spread cloth of his surcoat, then bundled the garment over her head and enfolded her shivering shoulders. ‘You’ll forgive me, I trust, on the day of your wedding, when Sessalie’s defence is firmly secured through a southern alliance.’
The indescribable stink struck the senses with the force of a physical blow. Anja recoiled, gagging. Slit-eyed and furious, she could not snatch the breath to upbraid his reviling prank.
Mykkael sidestepped her snake-fast attempt to land a slap on his cheek. ‘Kerries,’ he reminded. ‘We can’t smell like fresh meat. I assure you, the reek will wash off.’
Beset, every step, by her blistering glare, he proceeded to anoint himself and each of the horses. Then he retrieved his bow and stowed his coiled rope. Once Anja was mounted, he set a brisk pace back downstream towards the Widow’s Gauntlet.
‘Powers take the meddling high council!’ Bennent cursed from his post beside the shuttered south window. ‘Do you hear that?’
Outside, the echoes of an officer’s orders rang off the stone causeway that wound up to the observatory’s cobbled courtyard, then turned in switched-back curves to mount the pinnacle behind the Sanctuary. ‘Tell me that’s not the Lowergate garrison’s former night sergeant.’
Taskin raised his gaunt head from his pillow. ‘Jedrey?’
‘No less.’ Bennent locked anguished eyes with his wounded commander. ‘Listen. He’s detailing a company to cordon the tower. Save us! These aren’t Highgate lancers. We’re facing attack by Mykkael’s pack of common-born soldiers.’
‘They can’t. They wouldn’t,’ Vensic cried in shocked protest. Smudged with charcoal from his labour over the crucible, his good-natured face had gone white. ‘Common or not, those men are well trained. Mykkael taught us as a company to think, and not just take orders like blind sheep.’ He glanced, apologetic, towards the Duchess of Phail, then finished his thought in rough language. ‘I can’t believe the whole garrison would lie down like scared virgins for Jedrey’s high-handed bluster!’