“It’s very beautiful, Highness.”
“When I was little my father asked me what I wanted as a Winterfall gift. Growing up in the palace meant I was never alone, there were always guards or maids or tutors, so I said I wanted somewhere to be alone. He brought me here. It was just an old empty courtyard then, I made it a garden. No-one else is allowed here and I have never shown this place to anyone, before now.” She was studying him intently, gauging his reaction.
“I am…honoured, Highness.”
“I’m glad. So, as I have honoured you with a confidence, perhaps you will honour me with one in return. What business did you have with my father?”
He was tempted to say nothing but knew he couldn’t simply ignore her. Various lies flicked through his mind but he had a sense that the princess had her father’s ear for untruth. “I don’t think King Janus would wish me to discuss it,” he said after a moment.
“Really? Then I am forced to guess. Please tell me if I guess well. You found out that one of the men you killed today had been forced into the fight. You came here asking my father for justice. Am I correct?”
“You know much, Highness.”
“Yes. But sadly, I find that I never know enough. Did my father grant your request?”
“He was gracious enough to dispense justice.”
“Oh.” There was a faint note of pity in her voice. “Poor Lord Al Unsa. He always used to make me laugh at the Warding’s Night ball, the way he would stumble about the dance floor.”
“I’m sure your fond memories will be a great comfort to him on the gallows, Highness.”
Her smile faded. “You think me cold? Perhaps I am. I’ve known many lords over the years. Smiling, friendly men who gave me sweets and presents and told me how pretty I am, all seeking to win my father’s favour. Some he sent away, some he allowed to remain in his service and some he killed.”
He realised his own father must have been among the many lords she had met and wondered if she had aroused as much uncertainty in him. “Did my father give you presents?”
“All your father ever gave me was a hard stare. Though not as hard as the stare your mother gave me. My father’s plan for us made them wary of me I suppose.”
“Us, Highness?”
She raised an eyebrow. “We were to be married. Didn’t you know?”
Married? It was absurd, ridiculous. Married to a princess. Married to her. He recalled the rude little girl from his boyhood visit to the palace. I’m not marrying you, you’re dirty. Was this really how the King intended to bind him to his line?
“No, I never liked the idea much either,” Princess Lyrna said, reading his face. “But now I can appreciate the elegance of it. My father’s designs often take years before their intent is revealed. In this case he intended to place you at my brother’s side and enhance my standing. Together we would guide my brother in his rule.”
“Perhaps your brother will need no guidance.”
She raised her perfect face to the sky, studying the spectacular array of stars. “Time will tell. I should come here at night more often. The view is really quite lovely.” She turned to him, her face serious now. “What does it feel like when you take a life?”
Her tone was one of simple curiosity. Either she didn’t know her question might cause offence or didn’t care. Oddly, he found he wasn’t offended. It was something no-one had ever asked him. Although he knew the answer all too well.
“It feels like your soul has been soiled,” he said.
“And yet you continue to do it.”
“Until today it has always been…necessary.”
“And so you come to my father seeking to assuage your guilt. What price did he extract I wonder? I expect he took you into his service. A spy within the Sixth Order would be an asset indeed.”
A spy? If only that were all. “Did you lead me here simply to ask questions to which you already know the answer, Highness?”
To his surprise she laughed, it sounded rich, genuine. “How refreshing you are. You offer me no flattery, you sing me no songs and quote me no sonnets. You are singularly without charm or calculation.” She looked down at the throwing knife in her hand. “And you are the only man I’ve met that has succeeded in making me afraid. As ever I am amazed at my father’s foresight.” Her gaze was uncomfortably direct and he had to force himself to meet it, keeping silent.
“What I have to say to you is simple,” she told him. “Leave the Order, serve my father at court and in war, in time you will become a Sword of the Realm, and we may fulfil the plan he laid for us.”
He searched her face for some sign of mockery or deceit but found only serious intent. “You wish us to marry, Highness?”
“I wish to honour my father.”
“Your father believes his plan for me dead. Leaving the Order would be of no value to him now. If I followed your command, I would be acting against his wishes.”
“I will speak to him. He listens to my counsel in most things, he will hear the wisdom of my course.” He saw it then, the faint glimmer in her eyes. The wrongness deepened as he realised he had seen it before, in Sister Henna’s eyes when she tried to kill him. It wasn’t malice exactly, more calculation mixed with desire. But where Sister Henna had desired his death the princess wanted more, and he doubted it was the delightful prospect of being his wife.
“You honour me greatly, Highness,” he said, his tone as formal as he could make it. “But I’m sure you will understand that I have given my life in service to the Faith. I am a brother of the Sixth Order and this meeting is unseemly. I would be very grateful if you would permit me to withdraw.”
She looked down, a small wry smile on her lips. “Of course, brother. Please forgive my discourtesy in delaying you.”
He bowed and turned to leave, reaching the door before she stopped him.
“I have much to do, Vaelin.” Her tone was devoid of humour or affectation, entirely serious and sincere. Her true voice, he thought.
He paused at the door and didn’t turn. Waiting.
“What I have to do would have been easier with you at my side but I will do it nevertheless. And I will tolerate no obstacle. Believe me when I say I should hate us to be enemies.”
He glanced back at her. “Thank you for showing me your garden, Highness.”
She inclined her head and turned her gaze back to the sky. He was dismissed. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen, bathed in moonlight. It was a truly captivating sight, one he found himself fervently wishing he never saw again.
PART III
It pleases me to report the excellent progress made by Lord Al Hestian’s command in recent months. Many Deniers have paid the appropriate price for their heresy or fled the forest in fear of their lives. The spirits of the men are high, rarely have I encountered soldiers so enthused by their cause.
—BROTHER YALLIN HELTIS, FOURTH ORDER,
LETTER TO ASPECT TENDRIS AL FORNE
DURING THE MARTISHE FOREST CAMPAIGN,
FOURTH ORDER ARCHIVES
VERNIERS’ ACCOUNT
He had fallen silent as my quill continued its fevered track across the parchment. About me lay the ten scrolls I had filled with his story. Outside night had descended and our only illumination came from a single lantern swaying from a deck beam above our heads. My wrist ached from hours of writing and my back was strained with hunching over the barrel on which I had chosen to rest my papers. I scarcely noticed.
“Well?” I prompted.
His face was sombre in the dim glow of the lantern, his expression distant. I had to speak again before he roused himself.
“I’m thirsty,” he said, reaching for the flask the captain had allowed him to fill from the water barrel. “Haven’t said more than a few words a day for five years. My throat hurts.”
I put my quill down and rested my aching spine on the hull. “Did you see her again?” I asked. “The princess.”
“No. I expect she had no use for me since I refused
her plan.” He lifted the flask to his mouth, drinking deep. “But her fame grew over the years, the legend of her beauty and her kindness spread far and wide. Often she was seen in the poorer quarters of the city and the wider Realm, giving alms to the needy, providing funds for new schools and Fifth Order sick-houses. Many nobles courted her but she refused them all. There was talk that the King was angry with her for failing to wed a conveniently powerful husband but she defied his will, though it pained her greatly.”
“You think she still waits for you?” The tragedy of it stirred my writer’s soul. “That she mends her broken heart with good deeds, knowing that only this will win your approval. Although, for all she knows, you have been dead these past five years.”
The look he gave me was one of amused incredulity. After a moment he began to laugh. He had a deep, rich laugh. A laugh that was both loud and, on this occasion, very lengthy.
“One day, my lord,” he said when his mirth had subsided. “If your gods curse you, you may get to meet Princess Lyrna. If you do, take my advice and run very fast in the opposite direction. Your heart, I think, she would find far too easy to crush.”
He tossed the water flask to me. I drank quickly, hoping it disguised my anger. Everything he had told me about the princess bespoke a woman of intelligence and duty, a woman who wished to honour her father and serve her people. I suspected I could find much to discuss with such a woman.
“She hasn’t wed because a husband would be a shackle for her,” Vaelin Al Sorna told me. “She does good deeds to curry favour with the common folk. Win their hearts, and she wins power. If she has a heart, then it’s power that stirs it, not passion.”
Silently I resolved to make my own researches into the life of Princess Lyrna. The more this Northman told me the greater my compulsion to travel to his homeland. Although I suspected he had little appreciation for the artistry and learning evident in the culture he described, I lusted for it. I wanted to read the books in the Great Library and view Master Benril Lenial’s frescoes of the Red Hand. I wanted to see the ancient stones of the Circle, where he had spilled the blood of three men. We had thought the people of the Unified Realm little more than illiterate savages, and in truth, many of their warriors had been just that. But now I could see there was more to their story than simple barbarism and war lust. In a few short hours I had learned more of his realm than in all the years of study for my history of the war. He had kindled something in me, the desire to write another history, greater and richer than all my previous work. A history of his realm.
“Did the King keep his promise?” I asked. “Did he impose his justice and save the woman in the Blackhold?”
“The men I named were executed the next day. The woman and her son were packed off to the Northern Reaches within the week.” He paused, his face heavy with sorrow. “I went to see her before she left, Erlin arranged the meeting. I begged her for forgiveness. She spat at me and called me a murderer.”
I took up my quill and wrote down his words, taking the liberty of exchanging “spat at me” with “cursed me with all the power of her Denier gods.” I like to add a little colour where I can.
“And your part of the bargain?” I continued. “Did you do what the King had commanded? Did you kill Linden Al Hestian?”
He looked down at his hands—resting on his knees—flexing the fingers, the veins and sinews standing out clearly amidst the scars. Killer’s hands, I thought knowing they could choke the life from me in a few seconds.
“Yes,” he said. “I killed him.”
CHAPTER ONE
A Cumbraelin longbow was over five feet long when unstrung and fashioned from the heart-wood of a yew tree. It could propel an arrow over two hundred paces, almost three hundred in skilled hands, and was quite capable of piercing plate armour at close range. The one Vaelin held was slightly thicker than most, the smoothness of the stave evidence of the extensive use it had seen. Its owner had a keen eye, sending his steel-tipped arrow clean through the armoured chest of one Martil Al Jelnek, an affable young noble with a fondness for poetry and a somewhat tiresome inclination to talk constantly about his betrothed, who he claimed to be the fairest and kindest maid in all of Asrael, if not the world. Sadly, he would never see her again. His eyes were open but had lost all vestige of life. His mouth was stained with blood and vomit, the signs of a painful death; Cumbraelin archers tended to coat their arrowheads in a mixture of joffril root and adder venom. The bow’s owner lay a few yards away with Vaelin’s shaft in his arm, his neck broken by the fall from the birch in which he had hidden.
“Nothing,” Barkus said, trudging through the snow, flanked by Caenis and Dentos. “Looks like he was the only one.” He kicked the dead archer’s head, making it swivel on a twisted spine, before kneeling to divest the corpse of any valuables.
“Where’d all the soldiers go?” Dentos asked.
“Scattered,” Vaelin said. “Probably find most of them in the camp when we get back.”
“Bloody cowards.” Dentos peered down at Martil Al Jelnek. “Didn’t they like him? Thought he was a nice enough fellow, meself. For a highborn.”
“These supposed soldiers are the sweepings of the Varinshold dungeons, brother,” Caenis told him. “They have no loyalty to any man save themselves.”
“Did you find his horse?” Vaelin asked. He didn’t relish the prospect of carrying the dead noble back to the camp.
“Nortah’s bringing it,” Barkus said, straightening from the archer, jingling the few coppers he had found. He tossed the Cumbraelin’s quiver to Vaelin. The arrows it held were stained ash black and fletched with raven’s feathers. Their enemies liked to sign their work. “You keeping that?” He nodded at the bow. “I could get ten silvers for it when we get back to the city.”
Vaelin kept hold of the weapon. “Thought I’d see if I could master it.”
“Good luck. These buggers train for a lifetime from what I hear. Their Fief Lord makes them practice every day.” He looked down at the meagre collection of coppers in his hand. “Doesn’t seem keen on paying them much though.”
“This lot fight for their god not their lord,” Caenis said. “Money holds little interest for them.”
They stripped the armour from Al Jelnek and heaved him onto the back of his horse, Nortah slapping Barkus’s hand away when it strayed to the dead man’s purse.
“He won’t need it, will he?”
“We left the House seven months ago, for Faith’s sake!” Nortah snapped. “You don’t need to steal any more.”
Barkus shrugged. “It’s a habit.”
Seven months, Vaelin thought as they made their way back to camp. Seven months of hunting Cumbraelin Deniers in the Martishe forest aided, in the loosest sense, by Linden Al Hestian and his newly raised regiment of infantry. Linden Al Hestian, who was conspicuously alive a full month longer than the King had ordained. With every passing day Vaelin felt the burden of his bargain weigh a little more heavily.
His mood was not lightened by his surroundings. The Martishe was not the Urlish, being both darker and denser, the trees so close to each other in some places that it was practically impassable. Added to this was the broken nature of the ground, dotted with hollows and gullies that made perfect ambush sites and forced them to abandon their horses. They walked everywhere with bows ready and arrows notched. Only the nobles amongst their contingent continued to ride, making themselves easy targets for the Cumbraelin archers who haunted the trees. Of the fifteen young nobles who had accompanied Linden Al Hestian to the Martishe, four were dead and another three wounded so badly they had had to be carried out. Their men had suffered worse, six hundred had been enlisted or pressed into the regiment but over a third were gone; killed or lost amidst the trees, some undoubtedly deserting when the chance arose. Often they would find men who had been missing for weeks, frozen in the snow or tied to a tree and tormented to death. Their enemies had no use for captives.
Despite the losses, their small Order contingent
had won a few victories. A month ago Caenis led them in tracking a group of over twenty Cumbraelins as they moved along a creek, a clever move but of little value if Caenis was on their trail. They followed for hours until their enemies paused to rest, hard-faced men in buckskin and sable pelts, their longbows on their backs, not expecting trouble. The first volley cut down half, the rest turning and fleeing back along the creek bed. The brothers drew their swords and hunted them down, none had escaped and none had asked for quarter. Caenis was right, their enemies fought for their god and displayed little reluctance in dying for him.
The camp came into view a few miles later, in truth it was a stockade rather than an encampment. When they first arrived they had tried mounting a sentry picket, which had simply provided their enemies with an opportunity for some nighttime archery practice. Linden Al Hestian had been forced to order trees felled to provide timber for a stockade, a grim circle of spiked trunks sitting in one of the few clearings to be found in the Martishe. Vaelin and most of the Order contingent hated the damp oppression of the place and spent most of their time in the forest, patrolling in small groups, making their own camps, which they moved every day, playing their deadly game of chase with the Cumbraelins whilst Al Hestian’s soldiers sheltered in their stockade. The sortie by the unfortunate Martil Al Jelnek had been the first for weeks, even then the men he led had to be threatened with a flogging before they would march. In the event, it had taken a single arrow to set them to flight.
A stocky brother with bushy, frost-adorned eyebrows and a fierce glower was waiting at the gate to the stockade. At his side was a very large mongrel with a grey-flecked coat and a gaze that could match its master’s for fierceness.
“Brother Makril.” Vaelin greeted him with a short bow. Makril wasn’t much for formalities but as commander of their contingent he deserved a show of respect, especially in front of Al Hestian’s soldiery, some of whom were loitering near the gate, fearful eyes tracking from Al Jelnek’s corpse to the dark wall of the forest as if a Cumbraelin arrow might come hissing at them from the shadows at any moment.