The Dragon Lord

Peter Morwood

The Book of Years Series, Part Three

© Peter Morwood copyright 1986, 2017

Peter Morwood has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in the UK in 1986 by Arrow Books, an imprint of Century Hutchinson Ltd.

This revised edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

Table of Contents

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

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PREFACE

“…by the style and tytle of an Empyre, and as soche held Domination over all those landes for nygh an hundred yeares.

Men full wys in War and Politickes do make assured declaration that, by enbuilden of great Shipes and ye subtleties and Wickednesse of ye Necromancer Duergar Vathach (ysenden hither by ye War-Lorde Etzell to make mischief), this Empyre did desyre and make essay to take enseizen of this lande of ALBA.

Yet by HEAVENES intervention are all preserved from soche sore Distress, for in Spring-tyme of this yeare did Droek Emperor of Drusul go unto his Ancestores, and since that his first-born sonne is dead before him and ye Succession thus ymaden doubtfull, ye Empyre now is rent by great Confusion whereas its Lordes do stryve each against ye other to have power and Mastery— for they are men of no Honour and shew not that Respect which all retainers owe by Duty unto their Lordes and which obligation demandes from those same Lordes unto their vassals…

Now it was yknowen unto all what reasones were en-given that LORDE ALDRIC of ye clan TALVALIN did journey to this Empyre: being full of Sorrow. Yet there are men whose wordes are recognised as Truth in all thinges, who do Declare that this LORDE did but execute a very certain Strategem commanded unto him by RYNERT-KING, and that small Honour if at all was done him by soche a Taske…”

Ylver Vlethanek an-Caerdur

The Book of Years, Cerdor

PROLOGUE

Night and fog lay heavily on Tuenafen, and heaviest of all in the narrow streets of the port’s Old Quarter. Nothing moved there save errant skeins of mist. Most of the houses were in darkness, their doorway lanterns shattered in the riots of the past few weeks. The few lamps which remained served only to emphasise the depth of the shadows their light couldn’t illuminate.

The horseman emerged from a silent swirl of fog that drew back like the curtain of an ill-lit stage: a black-clad man astride a coal-black horse. Both were featureless silhouettes against the slow shift of grey, sable outlines lustrous with a sheen of condensed moisture.

The horse moved. Its hooves struck hollowly against damp-slick paving slabs, muted echoes slapping up and down the street between the blankly shuttered houses. Three paces only. Three heavy clanks of iron on stone, a blacksmith sound impossible to ignore. Then silence once more as reins were twitched and the black horse stopped.

Its rider rose a little in his stirrups, turning warily from side to side. There was a tension in him, in the angle of his head and the set of his shoulders. For all his ominous appearance he seemed as nervous as a cat.

Somewhere close, a clock began to strike the hour and startled his horse into sudden, stamping movement. The sound of its shoes against the ground mingled with a crackle of invective as the rider’s hands jerked back on shortened reins. Doubly betraying after those three unconsidered steps of half-a-hundred racing heartbeats past, the noises made by man and horse rang all too clearly in the muffled quiet.

Boots clattered at his back and a voice yelled harsh words of command. The rider’s heels kicked home and his mount plunged forward, away from the wan fog-filtered light and into the dark maw of a nearby alley.

There was an impact, the sound of something falling heavily to the ground and a muttering of satisfaction.

Then nothing but the noiseless movement of the mist…

CHAPTER ONE

The Hall of Kings in Cerdor was an awesome place, a vast echoing emptiness lined with carved stone pillars to support the magnificence of its vaulted ceiling. Autumn sunshine slanted through windows of painted glass to splash the tinctures of Alba’s high-clan crests across a floor of tessellated marble. Flames danced and flickered in nine great hearths, trying to drive chill from the air, but all their heat couldn’t thaw the icy edge of Gemmel Errekren’s voice.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” The old enchanter was furious, and the energies summoned up by high emotion swirled in lambent coils about his hands and the black, dragon-patterned staff they held. A lesser man might well have flinched from such rage, and with good reason, but Rynert the King remained at least outwardly unruffled, sitting straight-backed and aloof in his great chair.

“I do what must be done,” he said calmly, “for the good of the state.”

Portentous yet vague, such a statement might have sounded good to the ears of a councillor but it didn’t satisfy Gemmel. His teeth clenched until cords of muscle stood out on his face, and the pulsing nimbus of wrath around the Dragonwand grew more visible.

“For the good of the state,” he echoed in a flat sneer. “You give my son to the Drusalans and you say it’s for the good of the state…?”

“Only your foster-son, wizard. But my vass—”

“Enough!” The spellstave in Gemmel’s hands struck once against the floor with a sharp, percussive noise, and glowing shreds of power fluttered free like incandescent moths. “Don’t quibble with me. Your ‘reason’ is no reason at all, King, and well you know it. It’s no excuse either, for all it can excuse so much…”

Rynert shot a glance towards the only other occupant of the hall, hoping for support, but Dewan ar Korentin’s face was as stony as the wall at his back. There would be no approval from that source and the king’s gaze returned to Gemmel.

“Explain,” he said.

“Must I?” The enchanter was openly scornful, but Rynert ignored the lack of courtesy.

“Yes, you must. I’m curious.”

“I wonder that you need be. Your reason has birthed too much misery down the years for any right mind to accept it without question.” Gemmel’s voice was lower now, introspective, as if speaking to himself, and Rynert could see the brooding shadow on his face even at ten paces distance. “Lies, betrayals, and many, many deaths. Deaths by fire and steel, Lord King, and by the gold which pays for both.” The enchanter’s green eyes bored into Rynert’s translucent hazel as if reading secrets buried behind them in the hidden places of the king’s mind, and Rynert dared not be first to break contact for fear he would betray himself. “Yours is a reason I’ve heard already. But the language I heard then wasn’t Alban.”

The whispered words were just a thread of sound, quiet as the metallic exhalation of a drawing sword, but they seemed to flay Gemmel with the lash of a reawakened shameful memory. Something other ears were not meant to overhear. But Rynert heard it.

“Once there was a village. Small. Ordinary. An Imperial village. And its people, small, ordinary people, had committed an infraction of the Empire’s laws. They were being punished for it. I could have helped them, but instead I merely asked why the soldiers were… Doing what was being done. Their Serjeant told me it was for the good of the state and none of my affair. So I did nothing, even though it would have cost me little effort to strike them all asleep until the villagers had fled. But my son tried, and it cost his life. I lost more than a son that day. More than your mind can grasp, King Rynert. Much more. I lost the ability to go ho—” Gemmel hesitated, as a man will when he realises he has almost said too much. “I lost everything. So don’t use that excuse to me again.”

Rynert drew in a ragged breath. He had never been a sturdy man, and now the heart within his chest was jerking like the legs of a snared rabbit, so hard that it took all his small store of physical strength just to conceal the fact. Anger, outrage and affronted dignity blended with a pain that went deeper than his own frail flesh. Gemmel’s story troubled him, touching a guilt his own conscience had failed to rouse. It reflected endlessly to and fro in his mind like a candle poised between two mirrors, guilt begetting shame, and shame begetting still more guilt…

“I am King, just as you say.” The words snapped out, a verbal whiplash laid across the white-bearded face before him, righteous anger that a man could hide behind. “I must make such decisions whether I will or not. The way of kingship is a narrow path that must be walked alone.”

Once more the studied, courtly phrases didn’t impress. It was clear Gemmel’s first impulse was to spit his distaste onto the stones at Rynert’s feet, but he was a man conscious of his own dignity, regardless of how he treated that of others. Instead he gazed for a few seconds at the slight, crook-shouldered king, then turned his back and stalked in silence from the hall.

Dewan ar Korentin broke that silence. Straightening from the wall where he had leaned and watched and said nothing, he padded forward on soft-shod feet to where Ykraith the Dragonwand had notched the marble floor.

“Statecraft,” he muttered, looking at the damage. “Be careful, Rynert. It might be the death of you.”

“Indeed? And what is your word on this?”

“You know it already. I warned you about Aldric Talvalin, and my protest is on record. Again I warn you, and again I want it recorded. Don’t play with him as you do with your other diplomatic game-pieces. He’s different. He’s… Strange. And his notions of honour are strange. Archaic, sometimes, especially in the matters of duty and obligation.”

“Misgivings, old friend?” The smile which curved Rynert’s thin lips didn’t quite fit. “I hadn’t expected scruples from you.” Dewan’s nostrils flared at that and he didn’t even try to mirror the smile.

“Neither misgivings nor scruples, just caution. And simple decency. You commanded him to do a foul deed for one of his rank.”

“A killing, foul? For him? He does for me what he did many times for himself! I remind you, Dewan, that he’s my vassal.”

“Vassal perhaps, but he deserves better. Much better. I can speak as an outsider here, and I say deceit may have its place but not in matters of Alban honour. It cuts two ways, Rynert. He owes you duty, but you owe him respect, and right now the situation seems one-sided. May I remind you, with first-hand authority, that his reputation is well earned. Maybe he’ll understand why you betrayed him,” he raised one hand to forestall Rynert’s protest, “because I assure you, betrayal is how he’ll see it.”

“For his own safety’s sake!”

“For reasons of state. That was what you just said. Well… Perhaps he’ll accept it. Or perhaps not. But if not, Rynert, I wouldn’t want to wear your collar. Not if you were king of all the world.” Dewan ar Korentin no longer used the formal mode of the Alban language, and many at court regarded his addressing of the king that way as an insult. Rynert wasn’t one of them.

“It no longer matters, even if it once did,” he said dismissively. “The piece has moved, and now I need to observe how it affects the play.”

“Publicly. You must be seen to support your own decisions. But in private, as secretly as you sent Talvalin, why not send me after him?”

“Dewan, you’re overwrought. Go away. Return when you feel calm again. And convey my compliments to your lady wife.” Ar Korentin stiffened, bowing acknowledgement of his dismissal with marionette rigidity, and strode towards the great double doors with disapproval plain in the arrogant straightness of his back. Rynert’s voice followed him up the hall. “But until you come back, please regard your time and business as your own affair…”

Dewan halted for perhaps two seconds then turned to face the king. Rynert had that suppressed brightness around the eyes and mouth which accompanied a concealed smile. Dewan watched it fade and felt uneasy, even as he snapped through the punctilious movements of an Imperial parade salute. He bowed and took his leave, knowing there was an ugly wrongness about this whole affair, but able to fathom no more than that.

Not yet…

*

Gemmel was waiting for him, and Dewan would have been more surprised if the enchanter hadn’t been there.

“Wizard,” he said quietly.

“Eldheisart ar Korentin.” If hearing his old Imperial rank spoken aloud took Dewan off guard, he gave no sign of it. “Now do you believe?” the enchanter continued. “Was I so wrong?”

“Not wrong, but not entirely right.”

“How so? I lost one son to the Empire many years ago. I won’t stand by and lose another for… For the good of the state.”

“We should walk,” said Dewan, with a sidelong glance at the sentries flanking the doorway of the Hall of Kings. None were obviously listening, and in the presence of their captain they stood to attention, staring straight to their front. But whatever they heard, they could as easily repeat. Gemmel nodded once and walked. “Now hear me,” ar Korentin began again, once he judged them a safe distance away. “Rynert has—”

“Forfeited what little allegiance Aldric or I might have owed him!”

Dewan ar Korentin was a patient man and slow to anger, but his patience was wearing thin. Both hands came up to grip Gemmel’s shoulders and if necessary shake him back to coherence, but something in the old man’s expression warned that violence would be countered tenfold. Dewan hesitated with hands in air, then contented himself with a spread-armed shrug.

“Just once, wizard, try listening to someone besides yourself!” he snapped. Gemmel’s teeth shut with a click and his indrawn breath was an audible hiss, but Dewan pressed home his advantage in the relative silence. “Because if you listen to me, you might learn something.” The sarcasm was too heavy, and Gemmel lifted a disdainful eyebrow.

“Well? I’m listening. What might I learn?”

“Mathern-an Rynert has given me permission to go after Aldric. Into the Empire.”

“Tacit permission, of course. Nothing direct, and certainly nothing written down.”

“Certainly not!” Dewan’s sense of propriety was outraged by the suggestion. “This is a delicate matter.”

“And potentially dirty,” the enchanter’s voice was flat and nasty. “Enough that your worthy lord might need to wash his hands of it at short notice.” Dewan nodded. He need only consider how Aldric had been manipulated to know Gemmel wasn’t making idle criticism.

“Will you come with me? After all, Talvalin is your… Your son.”

“Foster-son,” Gemmel corrected, “As I keep being reminded. What you really mean is, will I come and help pull Rynert’s political fat out of the Imperial fire before it flares up too far to extinguish. ‘An unfortunate incident’ wouldn’t begin to cover it.” The stare of his cold emerald eyes transfixed Dewan like needles. “I won’t.” The shock of that refusal couldn’t be hidden, and ar Korentin floundered for several seconds before he was able to say anything sensible.

“So what do I do? Go alone?”

“No. But you could come with me.” With each emphasis the enchanter’s long finger poked Dewan in the chest.

“What’s the difference?”

“Between black and white. My way, you know and I know. His way, who knows who knows?” Gemmel was recovering what passed for his sense of humour.

“All right,” Dewan conceded. “Where do we go?”

“First, to the coast.”

“And afterwards?”

“Restore all the marks of rank to that Imperial armour of yours.” Gemmel showed his teeth in a swift, vulpine grin. “No, more than all. Exaggerate. Promote yourself. It may be more useful than you think. But as for afterwards…” The grin flickered again. “Leave afterwards to me.”

*

“How did it get in? This place is supposed to be secure!”

The harsh voice and the man who used it seemed out of place in this room of graceful furnishings and delicately muted colours. He was burly, florid and middle-aged, with a spade-shaped iron-grey beard, and he was encased to the neck in scarlet armour brilliant with the precious-metal geometric shapes of lofty rank. A sharp reek of oily metal hung about him, cutting discordantly through fragrant incense smouldering in a burner by the door, and leather creaked when he moved, leaning forward to smooth an already-flat sheet of paper with blunt fingers. It creaked again when he twisted to stare at a tall, lean figure outlined by sunlight at the window.

“Bruda, I asked you a question.”

The man he called Bruda seemed undisturbed by such brusqueness, although the glare at his back and the deep cowl on his head meant no expression was visible on his shadowed features.

“I thought you were being rhetorical again, Goth.” he replied mildly, his voice muted and metallic. “It happens so often. Set aside its delivery for now. Is it genuine?”

“It might be,” said Goth, turning the paper this way and that as if closer scrutiny might reveal a stamp of authenticity. “When it was found were the codes correct and the seals unbroken?”

“Yes.”

“And this translation,” he slapped at it with the back of one hand, “is it accurate?”

“You wrote it. You translated it. You should know.”

“Most evasive.” Goth’s chuckle was a dry sound, devoid of humour. “But that’s only to be expected.” He set aside the enigmatic piece of paper, lifted a slim dossier whose cover was wired shut and sealed with lead and wax and began to pry it open. As he did so Bruda left his place in the sun and walked lazily across the room, each step marked by the click of a long ash cane gripped in the fingertips of his left hand. Flimsy sheets drifted across the table-top as if they were leaves in autumn, half-a-dozen pages which laid a man’s life open for inspection like something on a surgeon’s slab.

“Impressive, is it not?” said his metallic voice. At first there was no reply while each document was set out, carefully spaced, minutely shifted and arranged just-so. Then, inevitably, one in particular was singled out for closer scrutiny. It was a portrait, an image boasting little artistic excellence but disturbingly lifelike. No human hand captured tones and textures and nuances of colour with such painstaking and subtle precision. It was as if the image from a mirror was caught on paper.

“Impressive,” said Goth at last, “is scarcely adequate.” He glanced up with a crooked smile, but as usual could see no response even though by now he was looking within the deep, dark hood. There was only his own face, distorted and reflected from the surface of a mask of polished metal. Bruda’s cane rattled as it was laid on the table, then his gloved hands came up to throw back the cowl. The burnished silver mask emerged from concealment like a weapon being drawn.

“I had sketches made,” he said, “and distributed wherever they might prove useful.”

“Such as?”

“Every west-coast seaport which runs the Elherran trade to Alba. I’ve got agents in them all.”

“Of course.” Goth nodded once, as if he had expected nothing less. His eyes were inexorably drawn back to those of the portrait: eyes as grey-green as the northern sea in winter. Looking at those eyes, he had no difficulty in believing what he had already skimmed from the dossier about this young man. “Talvalin,” he mused. “Aldric Talvalin. An Alban clan-lord. And you still think Rynert sent this? That he betrayed one of his own?”

“I know he sent it.” Now voice and mask were one, for there was something remote and terrible in that short sentence and, as the metal-shrouded face moved, light slid sparkling away as though flinching from any prolonged contact with its surface. “I’ve known for two months now. And I haven’t found him yet.”

“That still leaves him loose in my jurisdiction.”

“Loose?” Bruda repeated. “I think not.”

“What?”

“He may seem loose, if you prefer the word, because we don’t know his whereabouts. Yet. But he must leave us,” a quick gesture recovered the cane and stirred the papers on the table, “and we know where he’ll try. And then…” The leather-gloved fingers of his right hand spread wide, like a set trap. Goth looked at it, then at the mirror-blank masked face beyond. “Then we’ll have him and we’ll hold him. Here!”

The fingers closed.

CHAPTER TWO

The beach edging Dunacre Bay was almost four miles long.

It curved away to the south-west, and out in a great shallow arc past the old fortress which gave the bay its name, and at low tide it was featureless and flat, admirable for walking and the exercise of horses. The beach shelved out into the sea so gradually that few were aware of its sudden precipitous plunge a hundred yards offshore, into depths granting access to ships of even the deepest draught.

Gemmel Errekren was one of the few.

But Dewan ar Korentin wasn’t wholly convinced the wizard knew as much as he claimed, and the state of the beach right now was no assurance. The tide was out, just at the turn, so there was a long, conspicuous walk before they reached the water and whatever vessel was provided for their use. With luck the sentries on Dunacre’s ramparts would think them merely fishermen, or crab-catchers, or anything besides men creeping illegally out of Alba and even more illegally into the Drusalan Empire.

But maybe the sentries wouldn’t notice them at all, for though Dewan’s eyesight was better than most, he was unable to see anything beyond the opalescent wall of mist and spray-spume which had rolled in from the sea just as their feet touched the sand. He glanced at Gemmel’s back, as he had done often since the weather took its so-convenient turn for the worse, and again shrugged it aside.

As far as any man could shrug under the burden he carried.

Gemmel insisted they leave their horses stabled at the tavern and walk to where they had hidden their baggage the previous night. Unencumbered by the necessities of travel, they would seem nothing more than two gentlemen taking their ease with a constitutional stroll along the beach.

They might have been unencumbered when they left the inn, thought the Vreijek wearily to himself, but they weren’t bloody unencumbered now. It was remarkable how Gemmel managed to foist the truly heavy gear onto Dewan’s broad shoulders, whilst he stalked elegantly along with only his staff and a waxed-leather satchel of books. If he was the powerful sorcerer young Aldric Talvalin claimed, then why couldn’t he just wave that magic Dragonwand and make the bundles float out by themselves?

Dewan knew his notion was just a daydream. He had seen very little sorcery, though even that was more than enough to make him aware the Art Magic was as precise as any science. Too precise, it seemed, to lift the weight off his back. He grunted, swore to himself as the unbalanced stuff he carried slipped further to one side and hitched at it so ferociously that it continued to slip, except this time off the other side.

“Where’s the bloody ship, wizard?”

Gemmel showed no sign of having heard him, for the wind from the sea pulled Dewan’s words off his lips, tore them to meaningless syllables and noise, then tried to push the fragments back down his throat. No natural fog could stay in place with such a wind to disperse it, but Dewan could remember another fog, one which blanketed the battlefield of Radmur Plain, created and locked in place by this same scholarly old man. As if sensing the trend of his companion’s thoughts, Gemmel hesitated and half-turned with the shadow of a smile still crooking one corner of his mouth.

“Yes indeed, Commander.” Though Dewan’s shout had been lost on the tumbling wind, the enchanter’s voice carried clearly and without strain. “I caused this fog. But part is real, so I can spare more energy to secure it.”

The explanation, if that was what it was, told Dewan ar Korentin only that he needn’t worry about vagaries of the weather leaving him exposed on an open beach half a mile from any shelter. It didn’t reassure him, for his concern wasn’t now about the possibility of betrayal, but its consequences. Mist or no mist, he still felt as if he was a small black bug crossing a vast expanse of floor with the same anticipation of a lethal swat coming out of nowhere. But unlike the bug he was all too aware of where the swat would come from, and who would deliver it.

His rank and position as Captain of the King’s Guard – his late rank, he reminded himself, left behind along with everything else except his self-respect – had given him access to military information such as the current state of Alba’s coastal defences. Dunacre was far from the newest of the southern fortresses, but by no means the weakest or most poorly manned, with three squadrons of heavy horse stationed there. Dewan knew all about that. He knew too about a recent reinforcement of troops from his own command, the Bodyguard Cavalry. They were good. Far too good for comfort, when he was walking along a shoreline tailor-made for the shattering Imperial-style charge he had taught the Bodyguard to execute.

And ‘execute’ was the best word for it.

“Where’s the ship?” This time Dewan shaped the words on his mouth so that Gemmel could read them, “and how big is it?”

“Boat, not ship,” Gemmel corrected him, and enhanced it with a gesture of the Dragonwand across a thirty-mile sweep of open ocean. “Big enough, and out there.”

It wasn’t an answer as precise as Dewan wanted, but he didn’t argue. Instead, trudging after the sorcerer, he tried without success to forget what he had learned about the coastal citadels. There was much truth in that old proverb about the dangers of too much knowledge. It was just casual interest in the comfort of his quarters over a glass of red and some honeyed fruit, but of pressing import here where its effectiveness might be demonstrated in the most explicit manner. There were things like powerful long-glasses, installed at his suggestion, to monitor the route of any potential invasion force. There were things like massive counterpoise catapults, whose missiles could burn and sink any Imperial battle fleet before their shipboard artillery was close enough for even ranging shots. There were things like…

Like the ghostly outline of a white-painted tree trunk looming out of the fog, as tall as a ship’s mainmast. It was identical to hundreds of others along the eastern coast of Alba, set up as range markers. Gouges in the heavy timber showed where the shore batteries had been putting in good practice. This was the killing-ground, the area where a practised crew might ignite their target with a single launch, and certainly with no more than three if they wanted to avoid a punishment detail.

But even they had to see what they were shooting at…

He quickened his pace to draw level with Gemmel, who was striding out as though indeed walking for the good of his health – which, if he knew what the markers meant, was an accurate assumption. Yet the old man seemed so unconcerned that perhaps he didn’t know after all. Dewan considered that possibility then dismissed it as unlikely. Gemmel might not know everything but without doubt he invariably knew a damn sight too much. Dewan was drawing breath to speak a few home truths about the beach when the sorcerer turned and held up his hand.

“Silence,” he commanded. “Listen!”

At first Dewan could hear nothing but the hiss of wind and waves, and what was important about them? Then he heard something else, a sound made all the more immediate by his own nervous brooding. Off in the distance, someone was striking an alarm gong. With a spasm of irritation Gemmel drove the Dragonwand butt-downwards into the sand. Not anger, not fear, just irritation such as a parent might feel at their child’s act of pettiness.

“So,” he said.

“So…?” echoed Dewan.

“So King Rynert has decided we’re not to go our – my – own way after all. Despite all his assurances.” There was a grim calmness in the way Gemmel spoke, the cold satisfaction of logic proved.

“Are you telling me that Rynert had choice of yea-or-nay right up to where we are now?” Dewan knew it was crazy to begin a discussion until they were clear of this mess, but the words came tumbling out anyway.

“His representative had.” Gemmel plucked the Dragonwand free and walked rapidly towards the mist-wrapped sea, talking as he went. “The thin-faced gentleman I hoped was still asleep in the tavern. I didn’t point him out in case you did something regrettable, and thought we’d shaken him for long enough to reach the boat. He must have noticed our departure and made straight for the fortress. He wouldn’t like our intended destination. From this coast there’s only one place we would go.”

“But Rynert knew about that!”

“Did he tell his man? I doubt it.” Gemmel’s speech was growing staccato as his long legs raked over the ground like a wading bird. He wasn’t running, there was no need for anything so undignified yet, though Dewan had been at a jog-trot for the past dozen strides. “He didn’t give instructions. Guidance yes, but nothing exact. So he isn’t responsible. Regrettable mistake. Nervous troops. Suspected spies. Not identified until afterwards.”

“Afterwards?” Maybe it was the running, or the shock of what Gemmel was telling him, because in normal circumstances he wouldn’t have uttered a word. But this time he did and was flayed for it when Gemmel stopped in his tracks with anger livid on his high-cheekboned face.

“Father of Fires, must I draw diagrams?” The derisive sneer Dewan had heard once before was in his voice again, like poison in wine. “I had four years to kill the habit of idiot questions in my son!” His lips came back from his teeth in an expression which might have been many things, but was most definitely not a smile. “My foster-son,” he corrected. “Best learn it in the next four minutes, Dewan ar Korentin, if you want to survive the next four hours. You’ve crossed Rynert of Alba, so you’re a dead man.”

“But I’ve served him for—”

“Years, yes,” Gemmel sneered. “Now you no longer serve him. You’re no longer of use but you know too much, and men like Rynert snip off the loose ends that can make their plots unravel.”

That was a moment Dewan knew would haunt his dreams if he lived long enough to have any. The moment when a sorcerer whose eyes blazed like phosphorescent emeralds told him, in tones defying doubt, that the lord for whom he had shed blood, lost blood, suffered pain and gained his first-through-fiftieth grey hairs had cast him aside like a torn cloak. Arranged for him to be smashed into oblivion, by accident and by the men he had trained himself, to snuff out all trace of their differing opinions before it passed the bounds of simple gossip.

“If I live through this—” he began savagely.

“If any of us live through it, you’ll have to take your turn after my fos— No, call him what he is: my son, though I don’t yet merit being called his father. Now run, Dewan ar Korentin. Run as if your life depended on it. Because it does!”

They ran, with a slop of wet salty sand flying up around their booted legs at each footfall. Somehow the mass of gear across Dewan’s back was lighter than before, still as bulky, still as awkward, but no longer the same crushing deadweight. Was it Gemmel’s work, or the urgency of flight? He neither knew nor cared, but he was thankful all the same. The wizard’s voice reached his ears again, piercing the sounds of wind and water, gasping breath and the wet splat of running feet. But this time the old man wasn’t addressing him.

Gemmel was speaking to the fog.

Something – some thing – went over Dewan’s shoulder with a noise like a hoarse whisper, and for one heart-stopping instant he thought Dunacre’s weapons had opened up on them. Even shooting blind into the mist, those catapults could set the beach aflame from surf-line to shingle and roast any living creature on it. But this had nothing to do with human weapons, or even with humanity at all. Sorcerous energy tore a tunnel in the fog that was two men wide, one man high and ran straight as a spear-shaft out towards the sea. He could see parallel white bars of foam where waves curled in to break on the shore, and beyond them a small dark blot sliding swiftly closer which was the wizard’s promised boat.

‘Boat not ship’ was right. Cockleshell was more right still.

If Dewan hadn’t needed all his breath for running, he might have made biting observations about the vessel’s size, speed and potential seaworthiness. He might even have passed comment on wizards who thought that if something could float it would be enough. But a sound in the sky wiped all criticism from his mind.

*

It was a huge rush of displaced air, like something monstrous falling from the clouds, and if Dewan’s wild guess was correct that was the truth. He flung himself at Gemmel and both men went headlong to the sand and into a tidal pool already ankle-deep with chill salt water.

“What the hell?” There was outrage and real fury in Gemmel’s voice, enough that Dewan didn’t like to consider the consequences if he had guessed wrongly. But before the wizard could say more, Dewan got the justification for his hasty tackle from a thump of impact through the ground beneath them. A split-second later, the fog flared incandescent orange and washed their backs with heat.

The vast tearing boom of detonation came a full two heartbeats later, then greasy smoke that stank of naphtha and made them cough. As Gemmel regained his feet he ignored the mess of sodden sand caking his clothes, instead reaching out one hand to Dewan as the Vreijek hauled himself and his cargo from the mire. Their eyes met, and in the wizard’s there was true friendship for the first time.

“Thank you, Commander.” It was enough. Dewan nodded once, then looked from side to side, spitting to clear his mouth as he surveyed the beach. There was more of it to see now than before the missile landed, too much more.

“They must realise this fog isn’t natural,” he said, thinking out loud. “The wind would tell them, and I remember you warning Rynert how hard it was to stabilise such a charm.” There was no accusation in his voice. “It’s the sort of thing he would remember. And he’d pass the warning on.”

“Enough heat would burn off even real fog,” said Gemmel matter-of-factly. He was already jogging seaward again, moving more slowly now so the noise of his own progress didn’t drown the sound of more incoming shots.

Twice more they flattened against the beach, cuddling the gritty wetness of the shingle as if it was the softest feather quilt while fire tore at the world around them. Though Gemmel’s cunningly constructed shroud of mist was almost gone, it was supplanted by the acrid black smoke which made their eyes water and scored at throat and nostrils until each lungful of air was an enemy.

Then they heard the high, shrill scream of a cavalry trumpet. Gemmel bared his teeth and broke into a run again, aware that safety lay in speed, but ar Korentin didn’t move and an instant later the wizard jolted to a splashing halt at the sound of a sword leaving its scabbard.

“Dewan, no!” He was shouting the words even as he turned. “Light of Heaven, don’t!” Dewan’s head jerked round and there was unconcealed scorn on his moustached face.

“Will I let them ride us down without a fight?” The eyes in that face were cold and flinty, an expression Gemmel had seen before on Aldric’s face, in Aldric’s eyes. It was an expression that promised violence.

“Don’t fight them!” The sorcerer’s lean hand clamped onto Dewan’s wrist and exerted a pressure that made the Vreijek’s brows lift in astonishment. His sword was forced inexorably down until its point grounded on the sand. “They’ll be king’s-men, perhaps your men. Perhaps your friends.”

“If they attack us, they forfeit that consideration.” Then a wry smile twisted Dewan’s mouth. “What will we – no, what will you do?”

“Whatever I have to. Get to the boat. Move!”

“All right, we’ll play the game your way.” Dewan returned the sword to its scabbard, staring at where the trumpet had sounded, still hidden by smoke and the tattered remnants of the mist. “But remember this blade’s still here if you need it.”

“I hope it won’t be necessary. With any luck I won’t—”

“You will,” Dewan interrupted. “Because our luck’s run out.”

They came out of the drifting smoke at a parade walk, a column of eight riders in full battle armour with maces, swords and axes, but no spears or bows. All weapons for close work, noted Dewan; someone wanted to be sure. He could hear the sound if not the sense of the red-plumed officer’s commands, in that long-drawn-out cry cavalrymen used to carry over the beat of hoofs. Despite the threat, despite the menace, he felt a grim pride as the small formation swung from column to line of attack with parade-ground precision, and wondered if he really had schooled these men himself. It was an idle thought, for what did it matter when they were trying to kill him?

Then they stopped. One horse snorted; another stamped, scraping at the sand with one forehoof as its head nodded up and down, up and down like a mechanical toy until the rider shortened his reins. No-one spoke at first, and the only sound was the ever-present wind.

“Commander ar Korentin, I am Erdal Astamon, acting Third Warden of this Shore.” That was the officer again, a low-clan kailin trying to make the most of his meagre authority even though his light, youthful voice was an unlikely contrast to his ominous appearance. The entire troop was probably made up of such youngsters, and that told him these men had never trained under him, never served with him, never heard of him except as a name – and a foreigner’s name at that – in distant Cerdor.

Very clever, and very wise, for if men of his own command had indeed been ordered to take him, they would have disobeyed. Theirs was the old loyalty which King Rynert so arrogantly flouted, first in his dealings with Aldric Talvalin and now with Dewan himself. It was a loyalty based on the Alban Honour-Codes, born of obligations and duties between a lord and his retainers, and something which Dewan, though no Alban himself, respected out of common courtesy.

“Commander ar Korentin, you must lay down your weapons!” Acting Third Warden Astamon was trying hard to be officious, without success. “You must come with us!”

“I must do nothing!” Dewan’s parade-ground bellow slapped out across the beach, and gave him the satisfaction of seeing two troopers snap to attention in their saddles with a movement so pronounced it was visible even at this distance. “What I do is my own affair. By the king’s own leave!” That shook them even more. “And what I do now is no concern of yours!”

“You shouldn’t have said that,” muttered Gemmel at his back.

Dewan glared at the wizard, then at the soldiers, and clamped down on his anger far, far too late. Just because this officer was young didn’t mean he was a fool. Such words out of his quarry’s own mouth were a gift put to immediate use.

“But it is, Commander, it is.” Astamon’s voice seemed older now, harder and more sure of itself. “You’re behaving in a suspicious manner, and as Warden of the Shore, that makes it my concern!” He rose in his stirrups, gesturing with his drawn sword. The troop moved forward a little, closing knee-to-knee before halting for what Dewan knew would be the last time. The next order would be to charge. “You-will-come-with-us-now!”

Gemmel laid a restraining hand on Dewan’s shoulder and stepped in front of him, planting the Dragonwand upright in the sand again. It was like an archer readying his palisade stake and for the same reason, as defence against cavalry. But the reptilian spellstave was much more than a length of sharpened wood.

“What about me?” Though Gemmel didn’t shout, Dewan was aware from his own experience that the soldiers could hear well enough. “My name is Gemmel Errekren. Don’t I warrant a threat or two?” There was no response. Either the troopers hadn’t been told about Gemmel and were at a loss – or they knew as much of his reputation as any other man in Alba, and that was enough to make anyone fall silent.

“Hear me well, for I will say this only once.” Gemmel closed the fingers of his left hand around the Dragonwand, just below the carven firedrake’s head. Dewan felt a pulse of power from the adamantine talisman like the wave of heat from an opened stove door, except that this was a wave of cold that clad his entire body in gooseflesh. There was a sonorous humming in the air and the sorcerer’s hard voice sliced through it like a blade. “You are meddling with things you don’t understand. You are meddling with me. And I am subject to the human failing of impatience. So be warned. Leave me alone!”

When his clenched fist snapped open like the talons of a hawk, the gesture unleashed a great dry crack of thunder which sent all eight horses bucking madly across the beach. Six wrenched their steeds back under control more by brute force than skill then huddled back to a poor copy of their original formation. The other two, Astamon and another man, had been flung from their saddles against the wet, unyielding sand. Both stirred after a moment, but only one got up again.

Third Warden Erdal Astamon took an unsteady pace forward and tried to support himself with his sword. It was a futile gesture, for its unsheathed blade sank into the sand and pitched him flat again. His plumed helmet had come adrift, and without it he was indeed what Dewan had suspected, a mere boy of no importance. His face didn’t need a razor more than once a week, his dark hair had only a kailin’s single braid, and a lack of clan or family influences had consigned him to this thankless post. But his sand-spattered cheeks were red with embarrassment and rage, and his voice held all the shrill spite of youth.

“Ride over them!” he yelled. “Cut them down! Kill them both!”

A ripple of fidgeting ran along the line of riders, but nothing else. Even the unhorsed man flattened himself against the sand and didn’t move. As they hung back, Gemmel raked them with a dispassionate stare that ended disdainfully on the young officer. Then he pulled the Dragonwand free of the beach as a man might draw a sword.

“Seven wise men and one fool. Watch, fool, and become wise.” Gemmel raised the spellstave over his head and poised it there like an executioner’s blade. The wind from the sea died to a moan and then to silence as if the world held its breath. Perhaps it did. “Ykraith,” he said into the stillness, “abath arhan.”

Dewan felt a shudder rack him as midwinter’s icy teeth bit at the exposed flesh of face and hands. The last remnants of smoke turned pure white and dropped with a tiny crystal tinkling to coat the beach with rime. Underfoot the sand crackled with the crisp noise of grass on a freezing night, and puddles of sea-water snapped like sheets of glass beneath his weight. Louds of breath hung briefly on the unmoving, bitter air, then sifted down like snow to join the frozen fog.

“Ykraith, devhar ecchud,” said Gemmel and for an instant the words seemed almost visible in the breath smoking from his lips. Then a sourceless gale whipped them away, scouring the long beach clean and piling a million glittering spicules of ice high above the sorcerer in a vast plume whose apex centred on the upraised Dragonwand. It was a wind to cut the breath from a man’s lungs, a wind to flog clouds across the sky or raise a ship-killing storm. It was a wind which all but threw Dewan off his feet, and it sent a solitary ripple scudding out across the surface of the sea far faster than any arrow from a bow.

Yet it was a wind which scarcely ruffled Gemmel’s hair.

*

The island was an uninviting place. Except for one small inlet and an even smaller beach, it rose sheer out of the ocean, rimmed by ragged talons of rock that tore wounds of white surf in the dark and swirling water. Nothing had disturbed its solitude for months, except wind stirring the mantle of vegetation that concealed whatever dwelt upon it from curious eyes. Not that there had been any eyes for a long time. No ship had even crossed the island’s horizon until now.

Voyadin was a deep-sea patrol vessel of the Imperial Second Fleet, hunting pirates south and west of Alba in the disputed waters of the Thousand Islands. The Ethailen Myl was what the Albans called them, a term neither recognised by the Drusalan Empire nor used on their charts. Those pirate attacks had become too selective, targeting Imperial convoys in a way that showed more than just a taste for profitable victims. It suggested the attacks took place to order.

For all her bulk the warship swept as gracefully as a swan around the headland and into the shelter of the island’s solitary cove. While the crew made ready to drop anchor and lower a boat to replenish the water-barrels, Eldheisart Korradet her commander studied the shoreline through a long-glass. He was so intent that when the deck lifted beneath his feet he didn’t look to see the cause.

It was a ripple, like one caused by a current or a breeze – or something monstrous moving rapidly beneath the surface – and it crossed the calm water of the bay so fast that few witnessed its passage. But its landfall on the beach made a hiss of disturbed sand and gravel loud enough to hear aboard the warship, despite the distractions of shipboard activity. That crisp rustling of unexpected noise drew the eyes of many on deck who should have been about their own affairs, and meant they saw full-grown trees begin to sway and shiver like a field of ripened wheat. The ripple swept up and up until it was only a tremor crossing the scrubby grass on the island’s solitary peak, then sank into the solid rock as a wave sinks into sand. It caused gossip, speculation, and such a falling-off in normal duties that Korradet stalked across the quarter-deck to yell his crew back to work, but there was no time for that work to resume. No time for anything at all.

Because the island of Techaur blew up.

It was a very little detonation as those who survived them reckoned such things. Nothing like the blast in living memory which had flung a dozen small islands off the sea-bed near the coast of Valhol. But then Heaven and the Father of Fires had not yet finished making Valhol.

What happened here was nothing to do with Heaven, and a great deal to do with Hell.

A shock-wave of concussion slapped out across the bay, bringing shattered trees, lumps of red-hot rock and a steaming spray of gravel from the beach. Voyadin lost rigging and rolled so far over that her entire portside was awash, but because she wasn’t yet secured at anchor she rode out both the blast and the twelve-foot wall of water running in its wake. The island had lost more than a hundred feet of height, most of it smacking into the sea amid columns of white water like good practice from a shore battery. The rest was still rolling skywards amid a dome-topped cloud of smoke and dust which reared above the shattered mountain.

It was the fire flaring from that decapitated peak which made Eldheisart Korradet decide to put several miles of open water between his ship and this place. He would leave it to the pirates, or the Albans, or the Elherrans, or anybody else mad enough to want it, because this fire wasn’t natural. A crewman who had seen Valhol’s Hlavastjaar, that great rip in the world aptly named Hell’s Gullet, had come babbling to him about the wrong way the mountain was burning. As if there ever was a right way for stone to blaze like tinder.

Korradet saw what the sailor meant. There was no outflow of glowing liquid rock, nor any spray of ash and cinders. There was only that single jet of flame, so hot and white it approached a shade of blue and so bright it hurt his eyes even at this distance. He didn’t use his long-glass, any more than he would have stared through it at the sun, but even unaided vision could see how the narrow flame carved the remnant of the mountain like a knife in tender beef.

No, he corrected himself, nothing so crude. This cut like the blade of a skilled surgeon, shearing with such precision that there might almost have been a mind directing it.

That was what frightened him most of all. Korradet was brave enough in ordinary circumstances or he wouldn’t be on this patrol with just a single ship, but he didn’t want to meet whatever possessed that mind and controlled that fire. Then, impossibly, it grew even brighter, until it was as if the sun had come down from the sky to rest atop the ruined mountain. Every man aboard the warship heard the sound which accompanied that glare of splendour. It wasn’t the flat reverberation of another blast, nor was it the rumble of falling rock.

It was a roar such as could only have come from a colossal throat.

Eldheisart Korradet and his under-officers gave no orders. None were needed. Someone flung the ship’s helm hard over and with that strong southerly wind still tugging at her sails the patrol-ship reacted like a scalded cat, accelerating towards the open sea with foam creaming up from her long ram. She was on no particular course, except away from Techaur.

And away from whatever being roared and flamed and dwelt there.

*

The plume of frost over Gemmel’s head roiled and twisted as if it had an eerie life of its own, and a wan light deep at its core backed each writhing contour with shadow, black rifts in reality where anything might lurk unseen. Strange shapes formed and faded in its turbulent depths, flitting in and out of the darkness like bats half-glimpsed at dusk.

There was no sound now from the soldiers. Even their officer’s shouts had ceased. All of them gaped wide-eyed at the fugitives they had been sent to capture or kill, a simple mission simple no longer, and there wasn’t a man of the patrol who didn’t wish himself elsewhere.

A harsh grin etched into Gemmel’s face as he used years of study to construct such nightmares as would make sleepers fear the night. The ice-crystals drew closer together, forming the curves and angles of a geometry that had no place this side of madness. Even to look at it courted vertigo and nausea.

There was a thin, doleful note threading down the wind, a monotonous reedy piping like a dirge played on grisly flutes made from human thighbones, and as if the whining melody had summoned them, things moved in the cloud. Amorphous obscenities squirmed in a tangle of serpentine limbs, unclean creatures with a shocking suggestiveness in their deformed outlines. Dull yellow eyes glared down at King Rynert’s troopers with heartstopping malevolence and a perverse lust that went far beyond mere hunger after flesh and blood.

A moment more of this, thought Dewan ar Korentin queasily, and they must break. Or I will. His stomach was churning, sending sour bile up a throat that was already overcrowded by the beating of his heart. He was so full of his own misery that he didn’t see a ripple of disturbed water streak out of the southern ocean and send a spume of spray up to join the writhing horrors in the air.

Without warning, or any bidding from Gemmel, all movement ceased. The cloud hung monstrous and immobile over its creator’s head for just an instant before contracting into a shape Dewan recognised at once. Reason and logic insisted that this too was illusion, something conjured out of frozen water, made to frighten like the other scarecrow images Gemmel had created. But neither reason nor logic had a place here, not from the instant he glanced sideways and saw the wizard’s face. It wore the momentary remnant of a grin, mixed with an air of confusion. Then only shock remained, the expression of a man who didn’t know what was happening any more.

“Lady Mother Tesh…!” Dewan unconsciously blessed himself at lips and heart. He had seen something like this before, in the company of Aldric Talvalin, yet Dewan couldn’t comprehend how a creature so huge was able to stay airborne. Its flight, and indeed its very presence here, made nonsense of everything he had ever been told.

Not that anyone had ever told him much about dragons…

*

The icedrake swung its awesome spined and crested head and let out a roar. The sound was beyond imagination. Impossibly bass, unbelievably piercing, it was like the rending of sheet steel and a music like the harmony of choirs, a cry of incalculable strength and majesty that made the air tingle and the earth shake. It was power given a voice.

But from the look on Gemmel’s face, that power wasn’t his to command.

Yet as the dragon’s silvery head came down and around to gaze at him with great eyes the translucent blue of glacier ice, the wizard flung both arms wide in a greeting that was almost a salute. Ykraith the Dragonwand swept an arc through the cold, clear air and left a trail of pearly vapour in its wake. The stuff hung like smoke for a moment before sifting onto the beach like a snowfall made of crushed diamonds.

Gemmel carried himself well, his studied arrogance betrayed nothing, and only Dewan was close enough to read the truth in the sorcerer’s dilated eyes. A sweat of exertion which had filmed his skin had frozen into a cracked mask, each hair of his beard was as stiff as wire and his skin was like the time-fretted countenance of an antique sculpture. If any vestige of his grin remained it was a rictus of hidden fear, and when he leaned on the Dragonwand, he moved like an old, old man with an ordinary walking-stick. For a long moment, Gemmel looked ancient.

Then he recovered, straightening his back with a heave as though throwing off a ponderous weight. The semblance of extreme age faded as if it had never been until Gemmel Errekren again wore the aura of an enchanter at the peak of his powers. Dewan wondered how much was real and how much just another illusion.

The icedrake hung above them on barely moving wings, staring with huge patience at the small creatures whose efforts had called it into being. The few seconds since it filled the sky seemed hour-long.

“Time stops,” said Gemmel, “as it stands still.” The words meant nothing to Dewan, creating no answers but only questions.

“What will—?” he tried to ask, but a peremptory flick of the sorcerer’s finger hushed him.

“Peace. Be silent. Be still.” As if knowing he would be obeyed, Gemmel turned from the Vreijek and glanced towards the watching soldiers, fascinated like small birds before a snake. He raised Ykraith two-handed, with the carved dragon at the spellstave’s head pointed towards the hovering icedrake. Its chill, remote eyes blinked once, and it seemed to listen as the wizard spoke again in a language neither Alban nor any Imperial dialect, though it had audible kinship with them all.

Dewan guessed the sorcerer was asserting his mastery over the summoning. Or at least he was trying, for by the tremor in his voice he was still uncertain of success. Staring up at the huge, graceful being, ar Korentin wondered apprehensively what its response would be and even, in a secret corner of his mind, whether an adverse reaction would hurt.

What punched between the bones of his left forearm didn’t hurt for the first couple of seconds after it struck home, but then the stunning shock of impact faded away, replaced by a searing pain like the touch of a hot iron. Dewan’s blood felt just as hot as it washed over spell-chilled skin, and though he had been wounded many, many times before, he still felt sick.

“They didn’t carry bows…” There was more offended outrage than anything else in his protest to an uncaring world. Then he looked down at the small steel dart transfixing his arm and realised he had been both right and stupid. Even though none of the troopers had a bowcase amongst his gear, they were Alban horse-soldiers with telek spring-guns holstered on either side of the high pommels, as much a part of military saddle-furniture as girths and stirrups. It was so obvious that only being a foreigner preoccupied with other matters excused the oversight, though Dewan’s disgusted oath didn’t excuse himself at all. Even before his gaze shifted from the missile to its point of origin, he was sure of who had shot him. There was only one candidate.

Erdal Astamon was up on one knee, and the click-clack of reloading carried clearly in the still, cold air. This time he gripped the weapon in both hands, and he was squinting along it with one eye while the other squeezed shut in a demonic wink of aim. The Warden’s youthful face wore a killing look as his telek steadied, unwavering now, and Dewan stared into its black bore for a time that seemed as long as the years of a man’s life. Time enough to live, and time enough to die.

Time stops, he thought, and closed his eyes.

*

Gemmel hadn’t seen the shooting, but he heard the meaty slap of sharpened metal piercing flesh. In that same long time – less than half a second of reality –he turned and saw the levelled telek, Dewan’s wounded arm, and the blood flowing from it. The sorcerer saw all those things, and through them the older images which had haunted his dreams for years, inexorable events whose grim ending had taken away his son.

He shouted a single short phrase and the power he feared was no longer his to command paid heed at last. The great white-armoured wedge of the icedrake’s head moved fractionally and its jaws yawned wide, a frigid blue-white cavern lined with ragged icicles. When it unleashed a blast of unimaginable cold, a seagull rash enough to fly too close tumbled from the air and shattered like blown glass when it struck the beach.

King Rynert’s cavalry went down like wheat before a new-honed scythe, men and horses together in one heap. There wasn’t even a clatter from their gear, for by the time they hit the ground everything was sheathed and muted by an inch-thick crust of snow. Nothing escaped…

Except for the slender object which flashed clear of the freezing haze. It had been only a lead-weighted dart when it launched from the young Warden’s telek. Now, blunted and thickened by accumulated ice, it was more like a lead slug hurled from a sling and when it hit Dewan ar Korentin right above his heart it sounded like one. He made a small noise halfway between a cough and a grunt, and his mouth opened as he tried to recover the air knocked out of him. Then he dropped to his knees and toppled backwards like a felled tree.

For several seconds Gemmel saw nothing amiss. He was too concerned with other matters, and making sure the soldiers he had put down stayed that way was the least of them. There was also the icedrake, summoned without intent, unrestrained by wards or defences, with no means of enforcing its dismissal.

And then he had no need. Without any further word or sign from him it was already fading. The scaled body, all icefloe blue and snowdrift white, grew swiftly transparent until it was barely an outline traced on the air with the delicacy of frost-ferns on glass. And then it was gone, leaving the sky above his head empty once more, slowly warming yet as clean and clear as polished crystal. Only the soldiers and their mounts, moving like sleepers in the grip of dreams, were proof it had been there at all.

Gemmel spared them just the briefest glance. All his attention was for Dewan, sprawled face-upwards with his spine bent at an awkward angle by the bundle strapped to his back. Blood ran from the hole in his arm and another ribbon of it crawled from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto the sand behind his head. When Gemmel ripped open his tunic there was only a purple bruise, white-centred like some strange flower, to show where the second telek dart had driven home. But it had still hit like a hammer right above the heart, and there was a bluish tinge about the Vreijek’s slack lips. Though ar Korentin was a fit, strong man in the prime of his life, Gemmel was well aware what such a blow in such a place could do. He knew how to do it himself. Even as the thought took shape he was fumbling for a pulse with hands made clumsy and insensitive by the bone-deep cold he had created, and found an irregular fluttering like something caught in a trap. It faltered once, resumed, faltered again…

And stopped.

“No.” Gemmel didn’t shout the word as a frantic denial; he said it as an unquestioned fact. A blow like the one Dewan had suffered could indeed stop a man’s heart and another, delivered with precision by a clenched fist, might start it again. Perhaps. Or a rhythmic pumping of both hands against the breastbone might encourage the heart beneath to match their effort. He did neither. His knuckles went pale as his grip tightened around the Dragonwand, but he had learned during the past few minutes that he could no longer trust the talisman to do his bidding. For now its powers had passed beyond his control. Instead he stared along the beach to where Warden Astamon was proving his youth and strength by fighting against the icedrake’s chill.

He was the only one of his entire troop to move with any purpose, and that purpose was completion of his task. Not arrest of fugitives, not even reprisal for being attacked, but vengeance for the insult offered by the form of that attack. An attempt to kill him would have recognized him as a noble, honourable opponent. Instead the assault was by something closer to a barrage of snowballs flung at an irritating child. The young man had already rolled over and forced himself up onto his knees. Now he scrabbled for the fallen telek.

“No,” said Gemmel again. With his right hand still pressed against Dewan’s unmoving chest he levelled the left at Erdal Astamon, its thumb, index and little fingers extended like the tines of a trident, and though he spoke the words of a healing-charm they came out as a curse. A lance of energy stabbed out at the Warden, shimmering like the haze which dances above a forge, and Astamon lurched backwards as if kicked.

Gemmel had once told Aldric how magic needed energy to fuel it. That could come from a talisman like the Dragonwand, or be leached from other sources. It had taken the strength from three fresh-hewn oak logs to leave Aldric’s broken ribs as good as new, and the wood had decayed in that process from green timber to rotted pulp. There were no trees on this beach, and Gemmel was angry enough that he wouldn’t have used them anyway. Not with Warden Astamon so close at hand.

The young man’s hair had been dark despite its crust of frost. As the haze surrounded him that hair faded to steel-grey and the skin of his ruddy face turned pale and collapsed into wrinkles, while his shoulders sagged beneath the weight of many years arriving all at once. That shimmer surrounded Dewan as well, and though his own grizzled hair and harsh features remained unchanged, the dart-wound in his arm closed until it was just a scar, pale and long-healed like the others he carried. Then his ribcage expanded with a convulsive jerk as his lungs wrenched in a whooping gasp of air.

Gemmel felt the movement under his hand, and the thumps of a renewed heartbeat pounding almost loud enough to hear. He sat back on his heels and watched the regular rise and fall of Dewan’s chest while his own pulse slowed and the sweat of effort dried on his skin. A mirthless smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Five minutes more and what he had just done would have been necromancy.

“I think that makes us even,” he muttered, and stood up to ease the kinks from his spine and cast a wary glance at the other bodies littering the beach. Then he put them out of mind. It would be a quarter hour or more before they could even stand unaided, and Erdal Astamon would walk with a cane for what few years of his life the brutal spell had left him. Gemmel remembered Aldric’s shock at the cost of careless healing-magic, and wondered how he would have responded now. He slid the Dragonwand awkwardly through the back of his belt and twisted it into something like security, reminding himself for the hundredth time to make it some kind of shoulder-strap. Then he crouched again and lifted ar Korentin from the ground.

There was no visible effort, only a surge of strength that seemed more than human. He cradled the big man’s limp body in both arms as he might a child, as he had once carried his own child, as he had once carried the young Alban warlord who was now his fosterling. His own, most honourable son.

Gemmel laid Dewan athwart the stern of the boat then raised the sail, steadied the tiller and spoke the words that summoned up an offshore breeze. Though he was drained and wearied by fear and physical effort and mental strain, he did everything in the same abstracted manner with his thoughts elsewhere. Those thoughts were out there, across and beyond forty miles of grey water, a distance too far for even a suggestion of the Empire’s coast to shadow the horizon. All his thoughts, his hopes, his fears both real and imagined. Out in that far place with the son not born his son.

And he wondered if his son was safe.

CHAPTER THREE

Outside was dark and cold, an autumn night already edged with the oncoming winter. A scimitar moon cut fitfully through weak places in the overlay of rain-swollen clouds.

Inside the small anonymous tavern it was almost as dark, but much warmer. Flame-lapped logs burned in a wrought- iron hearth, sparks glowed and spat, a sharp tang of resin scented the smoky air and nimble shadows danced among the rafters. From one corner of the common-room came the sound of a three-stringed fola playing a melancholy tune, each sequence of protracted chords as cruel as loss.

The few patrons sat around plain wooden tables and drank from plain pottery cups, convinced they displayed the elegant austerity just now fashionable in the Drusalan Empire, even though several looked back and the rest forward to better days where luxurious excess was or would again be more socially acceptable. A false carefree tone overlaid their quiet conversation, which made the unease beneath it all the more apparent. The source of that unease was easy to find.

He sat alone with his thoughts and a cup of cheap grapefire spirit made from the lees of wine, staring into the clear liquid as if it held the secrets of infinity rather than an oblivion he had sought since sundown. Wearing black and looking as if he did so for deeper reasons than stylish severity, his appearance would have deterred far friendlier people than the sullen few who sipped and murmured well away from him. He needed a shave, the pallor of his face threw a five-day stubble and the bruise-dark shadows under his eyes into sharp relief, and a coyac – a sleeveless jerkin of dense dark fur – hunched his shoulders to the point of deformity. It made him seem not entirely human.

Empty jugs strewn across his table showed how long and hard he had been drinking, and by rights he should have been on the floor an hour ago. Instead the quick, economic movements which filled and refilled his cup were still sure and precise, and his grey-green eyes remained clear. That too was not entirely human.

A sheathed longsword lay on the table amid the clutter, its hilt within easy reach and its unsubtle presence a blatant threat to peace. The innkeeper, trying to take the weapon from him after he drained the first two jugs far too quickly, had been warned off with a grotesque mixture of stilted formal Drusalan and gutter Jouvaine in an accent that had nothing to do with either. A great deal of silver changed hands almost at once, as if the stranger repented his hard words, and since he had plenty of the Empire’s florins and spent them as if they had no value, it seemed safe to let him drink himself into the stupor that was clearly his intention.

Yet any stupor seemed as far away as ever.

*

Aldric Talvalin poured more grapefire into his cup and gulped down half of it with the wrenching swallow of someone taking a dose of medicine. The coarse stuff burned, making his nostrils flare and his eyes squeeze shut. The tears on their lashes weren’t mere maudlin drunkenness. Maybe tonight, if he drank enough, there would be no dreams.

Dreams. Memories. And within those dreams and memories, nightmares. Fear, and fire, and candle-light. Again they came, rising through the haze of alcohol. It was an ill thing to jolt awake in the dark stillness of deep night, soaked with sweat and pinioned by the quilts with the echoes of your own cry of terror in your ears.

But it was far worse to be awake already and jolt stone-cold sober.

Aldric sat as he had sat before, trembling, while the drink which should have laid him gratefully senseless on the floor became just acid heat in his gullet. And still the dreams returned to haunt him.

Blood, and flame, and shrieking. Things that were, but are not: things that are, but should never be. Huge wings in a starlit sky. A tall tower stark against iron clouds, and a swirl of snow. Blue smoke streaming upwards, the incisive reek of heated metal and the sweet, heavy scent of roses.

Aldric dreaded his dreams for they always seemed portents of evil, and bitter experience had proved the truth of that foreboding time and again. His left hand reached out to a crumpled thing on the table near Widowmaker’s scabbard and it shifted as his fingers touched it, making a small, sere crackle. Once more he could smell roses. He had plucked this blossom from between the withered talons of an ancient corpse three months ago, standing at the heart of a burial mound in the Deepwood of the Jevaiden plateau. Now the rose was as withered, dry and dead, its baleful brilliance faded to a more natural hue and the unwholesome richness of its perfume diluted by time to a fragrance almost pleasant…

Even though it was dead, he thought as he cradled the desiccated flower in the palm of his hand. Or because it was dead?

As dead as Crisen Geruath.

As dead as his own honour.

He had already sent a note to Rynert the King – a terse, enciphered message of success at Seghar, delivered by the master of an Elherran merchantman – but his task remained incomplete. There were other messages, locked by sorcery within his skull. They were proofs of Alban support for Lord General Goth and Prokrator Bruda, and confidences which might sway overlords whose fealty still wavered between them and the Grand Warlord Etzel. If things had gone otherwise, Geruath of Seghar would have made meeting those men easy. Now his part in the deaths of Geruath and his son made such meetings an elaborate form of suicide. Aldric had few illusions about Imperial judicial process. Probably he was already tried and sentenced, with execution of the verdict delayed only because no-one knew where he had gone.

Aldric had reached his decision after Seghar. The brutalities and the casual wickedness in that rotting heap of masonry had sickened him until he no longer cared about his own tenuous hold on the lands and lordship of Dunrath. His note to Rynert said as much, and he was getting out of the Empire while he still could. He should have been aboard the Elherran ship bearing that note, and indeed he would have been if an early morning canter hadn’t led him to the ridge towering high above Kenbane Haven. It was the only place along several miles of coast where he could see the bay beyond the harbour wall.

A bay where an Imperial battleram was sliding though the dawn mist like a patrolling shark.

Kenbane had been one of five points of departure agreed in secret with Rynert and Dewan ar Korentin. Now he wondered who else knew that supposed secret, for the warship’s presence was no accident. Even if it was, Aldric no longer cared. The threat was enough.

That had been over two months ago, near a Vreijek port many miles south-west of here. Time and the onset of autumn gales must have made even the Imperial fleet if not exactly careless, then at least a little less enthusiastic. He would see when he tried to leave tomorrow.

What profit in an enterprise, Lord King, Aldric rehearsed silently for perhaps the hundredth time, when I’ve already lost all chance of completing it?

Rynert would have a hundred valid answers to that rhetorical question. Or the single answer which was all a king required.

*

A young man entered the tavern.

He attracted no attention, though if anyone noticed him at all they might have wondered about the pains he took to avoid that attention; nondescript to a studied degree, dusty, tired, with an air of boredom that accompanied repetitive, unrewarding work. The gaze that swept the common-room had more sleepiness in it than anything else – until it reached Aldric, and the weary half-yawn carving notches in the corners of his mouth stretched much further as it became a wide grin of self-congratulation. The grin didn’t go unnoticed, by Kamis the innkeeper at least, for he sidled up to wonder in the way of innkeepers what had caused such obvious happiness, and did it mean celebration and more drinks?

“I think,” said the young man, “I may have come into money.” He savoured the fine vintage Seurandec he had felt justified in ordering and nodded towards the drunkard in black. “That one isn’t local, is he?”

“Him, local?” No more than you, Kamis almost said aloud, but after what this new arrival had spent on a single bottle of imported wine, he thought better of it. There was something about the idly asked question which struck him as peculiar. Nothing he could pin down, but it was there all the same. “Not by a long ride in any direction.”

“I thought not. But you must have travellers from the seaport here to drink, eh?”

“Not many. It’s too far for most.”

“Indeed.” Another grin split the young man’s face. “Or too far to stagger back?” The innkeeper laughed.

“Something like that.” Then he moved away to serve another customer and left the inquisitive young man alone with his wine, missing the intent expression on features still dusty but no longer bored.

The young man set down his cup with its contents barely tasted and began an unobtrusive study of this foreigner who didn’t want to do his drinking in Tuenafen Port. It had taken ten hours, forty taverns and a sizable outlay in untouched alcohol to get here, but now the whole thing was worth his effort. When something pleased the Vixen, she had ways of proving it.

The sketch she had shown him was a good one, detailed and an excellent likeness. Not identical but close enough and, give or take the few miles to Tuenafen, in the right place. A beckoning finger summoned Kamis and brought him leaning over the counter, full of ill-disguised curiosity. Gossip, juicy scandal or even the arrest of a criminal would bring new customers into the tavern to hear all about it. The young man gave him a look that blended amusement and contempt in equal measure, for these occasional favours for Kathur the Vixen could end in ways sensible people preferred not to talk about, if they even survived the experience.

“That foreigner,” he used the insulting Drusalan word hlensyarl, “is to stay here.” There was an authority in his voice which hadn’t been there before.

“What?”

“Keep him here. Don’t let him leave. I don’t care how you do it, but do it.”

“But what about that sword? I can’t do anything if he—”

“I think you can.” The young man straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “Because if he isn’t here when I get back…” He didn’t bother to complete the sentence.

*

Far steadier on his feet than he had any right to be, and far clearer in his mind than he would have liked to be, Aldric settled his bill. For an innkeeper who had tried to eject him from the premises or confiscate his sword, the man Kamis now seemed reluctant to let him go. He fumbled more than usual as he made change from the fistful of florins which Aldric had slapped onto the counter, and as an apology of sorts pressed a gratis bottle of wine into the Alban’s hands.

Aldric turned it over, glanced at the letters etched on the green glass, then blinked twice and read them again with the conviction that his eyes were tricking him. This ‘apology’ was a bottle of white Hauverne, matherneil, the Kingswine which changed hands in Alba – if it ever got there – for upwards of thirty marks a time. His free hand dug into the pouch at his belt and poured a shining, chiming stream of silver coins over the counter and onto the floor, no longer caring that silver was a mere courtesy title for the Empire’s money nowadays. In economic matters as in all else, Tuenafen was a part of the Empire. Let the useless currency buy something here if nowhere else.

“This will get drinks for everyone,” he said, brows coming together in a frown of concentration as he worked on the slurring High Drusalan syllables. They were elusive enough when sober and a slipshod drunken tongue just made them worse, but the words he sought eventually fell into place. “Fill all the cups. And—” the bottle of Hauverne thumped onto the bar-top, “—open this. Bring two good glasses. One for me.” His eyes locked with the innkeeper’s as his left hand freed Widowmaker’s shoulder-belt, and the slithering noise as the taiken dropped to battle position at his hip was like the sound an adder makes moving through long grass. “And one for you. We’ll sample it together.”

If he entertained suspicions about the extravagant gift, they fell silent as his host first sipped appreciatively then drank with every sign of enthusiasm and no hesitation at all. Aldric smiled and followed suit. The wine was rich and fragrant with an acid tang of fruit yet as sweet as honey, and it rose to his head as the harsh grapefire spirit had never done. Perhaps because that stuff was being drunk for effect, while brooding on the need for its effect, while this Hauverne was being drunk for delight in its flavour. Of the many roads to oblivion offered by a tavern, this was the one to choose.

The door opened, and stayed open while the cold night air flowed in. Heads turned and a voice rose in protest, but it cut off short as six armed men crossed the threshold, wearing crest-coasts over light mail and short cutting-spears cradled in their hands. They fanned out to either side of the door with the crispness of drill and discipline.

Then they stopped.

She glided into the common-room like an empress, wrapped in furs against the bitter air outside, with raindrops beaded on her high-piled auburn hair flaming like rubies in the firelight. If her guards had caught a few eyes, her own appearance drew all the rest. Conversation ceased, the fola’s thin music fell silent and everyone stared.

She was well worth staring at, and knew it. As tall as any man in the room, her willowy elegance gave unconscious grace to every movement. Nobody in the tavern had seen her before, nor was foreknowledge necessary to realise she was either the pampered daughter of a noble house, wilful enough to travel the Imperial roads alone, or a courtesan of the highest rank. The young man at her side was a harsh contrast to her finery, for he was nondescript to a studied degree, dusty, tired…and familiar to Kamis, whose tongue licked at lips which had gone far drier than his cup of wine would ever quench. They looked at each other, one apprehensive, the other satisfied by a job well done.

When the woman snapped her fingers the innkeeper jumped despite himself, and emerged from behind his counter to bow judiciously low. Still unsure of her station, he preferred to treat her as high-born rather than make an insulting error that the half-dozen troopers of her escort would take – and cause – pains to correct.

“You have rooms.” The fox-haired lady spoke even that simple fact in a smoky contralto purr. “I wish to rest. See to it.”

Her decision to grace his establishment startled Kamis, for though clean enough it was a class or more below where she would normally stay, but he concealed it well. Such occurrences were rare, but not unheard-of. There were many travellers who despite or because of riches and importance, preferred for various reasons not to advertise the fact, and his inn wasn’t the only one which maintained at least one fine stateroom against the day Wealth stepped through the door. As it had done tonight.

It wasn’t any innkeeper’s place to wonder the whys and wherefores, merely to make everything he could from the opportunity. Bowing lower than ever, Kamis went about his business deep in calculation about how much he could overcharge and get away with it. The lady and her companion made private conversation for a moment, mouth to ear, then the young man nodded and went out, taking the soldiers with him to the unspoken but obvious relief of the entire tavern.

Aldric watched them go, but found his gaze sliding back towards their mistress. Mistress. His mind toyed with the word as he sipped wine and let the soft, sweet liquid flow over his tongue. Sweet. The adjective in his native Alban, and the thoughts in his head, had nothing much to do with wine at all. Granted she was inaccessible. Granted he had a failing for a pretty face and an attractive figure. Granted that same failing had tripped him up more than once, and granted he was leaving Tuenafen in the morning.

But he too could rest here for the night.

*

In the beginning there was fire, and a dream of fire; a dream of gazing down and down into the liquid seething of the world’s hot secret heart; a dream of rumbling sound almost below the limits of hearing; and a dream of the smell of burning, blended incongruously with a sense of unbelievable blue-white cold.

The great Cavern on the Island of Techaur, and a thing of power exchanged for his given Word. Granted for a promise made to…

Made to…

Speak and say, kailin Talvalin. Name my name.

“Ymareth!” Aldric said the name aloud in his troubled sleep and snapped awake, staring straight up towards the darkness of the ceiling. Or at where the darkness should have been. Light moved among the beams of rough-cut timber and it wasn’t the light of dawn. Dawn didn’t flicker like that, it didn’t roar beyond the shutters like that, and it wasn’t the awesome, awful amber of flames running wild.

Then there was awareness, and full awakening, and the knowledge that this time his dream of fire was real.

Aldric flung back the quilt from the narrow bed, rolling sideways to plant both feet square together on the floor, and clutched at the wall as the whole room continued to roll around him. For an instant, a few heartbeats, for the second it took his naked skin to film itself in icy sweat, everything plunged sideways. Only his fingernails gouging into the plaster kept him from pitching onto his face. There was sourness in his throat, queasiness in his belly and a pounding headache behind his eyes. He knew only too well what had caused them, but what about the bitter stink of fire and the smoke making him cough? Aldric steadied himself with an effort crossed the room and flung the shuttered window open.

Heat slapped like a physical blow across his face and chest, the bellow of a fire out of control assaulted his ears, and mingled with that bellow was the squealing of terrified horses. To any ears it was a ghastly noise, but to an Alban horse-lord it was infinitely worse. His bloodshot eyes stared at the stables where a solitary ribbon of flame was fluttering up its wall, a little insignificant thing barely a handspan wide. But the stable wall was wood. And the stable roof was thatch.

Aldric wasn’t sure afterwards how he scrambled into his clothes so fast. Straps and laces were left undone, secured too loosely or too tight, but shirt and boots and breeches were all in place before the little flame had grown much larger. He thrust his tsepan dirk into his belt, wincing as its pommel nudged his nauseated stomach, then scooped up Widowmaker and his nameless taipan shortsword as he made for the swiftest way down he could see. It was the open window.

He went over when he landed, betrayed by his wobbly legs, and rolled like a shot rabbit while dirk and swords all flew in different directions. After the bone-jarring impact came the nasty realisation that in his present state he was lucky not to have broken his neck. There was no time even to shrug. A swift glance told him what had probably happened. The hottest, best-established flames were billowing from an incandescent framework where the kitchens had once stood, and even in the instant of that glance they bridged the gap between courtyard and tavern. Thatch exploded like tinder, sparks and smoke filled the air, stinging and choking, a dense grey cloud rolled across his line of sight and something unseen collapsed with a tearing crash.

Where in damnation’s bloody name is everyone? He saw them, someone, anyone, black against the firelight, running about in an aimless fashion or flinging meagre buckets of water at the inferno. Other more practical people were already carrying their belongings clear of the doomed building.

No more time to watch! Get the horses out! All of them! Where’s the rain we’ve been expecting since yesterday?

The thoughts tumbled through Aldric’s confused brain even as he ran towards the stable-block, watching that ribbon of flame as he might have watched a snake. In the few long strides which took him to the door it expanded to a flickering yellow scarf, tipped and trimmed with dark smoke. Confused or not, they were the last rational thoughts he had for a long, long time. Everything afterwards was action.

The stables were the familiar Imperial pattern, tall sliding doors at either end of a paved walkway and loose-boxes on each side strewn with deep, comfortable – and fiercely inflammable – straw. The horses in them were supposed to be left free to move about, but tonight of all nights someone had secured their headstalls to the iron holding-rings in the rear wall of each box. A spasm of anger shot through Aldric at this evidence of some ostler’s thoughtlessness. It wasn’t just because of the fire and because his own task had now become more than simply flinging all the doors wide open. None of the horses could have reached food or water until the man came back to release them. With enough time he would root out whoever was responsible and make them pay for such neglect.

But not tonight, because time was in very short supply.

*

Lyard knew his master, and it was just as well. The Andarran’s rolling eyes showed white, terror-sweat streaked his black coat and foam drooled from where he had champed uselessly at his halter. He allowed Aldric to lead him out at a steady pace even though the flames of his own private hell skipped only a plank’s thickness from his heels. But after another minute of building panic, the big warhorse would have pulped anybody in his path.

The pack-pony was next. Aldric flung the saddle, frame and baggage any which way across the animal’s back, jumping aside as it barged after Lyard. As it always followed Lyard – he coughed as smoke throttled what might have been wry laughter – but a damn sight more willingly than usual!

The other horses were the problem. They weren’t battle-schooled and dangerous bloodstock like the Andarran courser or obedient baggage animals like the pony, just a matched pair of carriage ponies and half-a-dozen riding hacks. They weren’t as brave, biddable or well-trained, and they were unfamiliar thus risky. Scared, too. The laid-back ears and bulging eyes would have told anyone that even if they were deaf to the piteous noises of fright. But it was only fright, not pain. Not yet.

Not ever, if he could help it.

The thatched roof caught just as Aldric went into one of the stalls, and in that same second what felt like a mace slammed him backwards to the floor. It was close enough to the truth. The horse in that stall had lashed out in a paroxysm of fear and its iron-shod hoof clipped his thigh, stunning the big muscle and tearing the riding-breeches of his heavy combat leathers as if made of paper. Another inch and it would have ripped flesh from bone and crippled him. As he swore under his breath he clambered back to his feet, cuffing at hindquarters which swung round to pin him against the partition. The horse flinched away then thumped back, and stars inside his head joined the sparks already floating through the air.

Something that was only a dark outline against the fire-glow swam into view. No, someone. Aldric shook glowing motes from his eyes and the world snapped back into focus. It – he – was a man, big and broad-shouldered. One of the lady’s escort? The man shouted something, but roaring flames made nonsense of the words.

“Get them out!” Aldric mouthed at him, enhancing his unheard words with mime, then returned his attention to the plunging horse. Its frantically jerking head had drawn the headstall’s knot far tighter than human fingers could hope to loose, but there were other ways than untying and a knife appeared in his hand from the scabbard down one boot. There was no point in trying to quiet the beast; it was beyond the stage where gentle words would have any effect. With the ropes cut the horses would stampede out faster than he could drive them, and he could get clear himself before the roof came in.

As if summoned by his thought the rafters beneath the blazing thatch overhead made a long, groaning creak and a drizzle of sparks broke through the tight-packed reeds and straw. Aldric spared a single instant to glance up, then sliced his blade across the braided halter just as the horse threw all its weight into a final, desperate heave. The hemp went taut as wire, humming with strain, and the first touch of the razor-whetted knife jumped and skittered across its fibres. Then the edge bit home, it parted with a deep sound like the strings of a great-bass coruth and the horse floundered back on its haunches then wheeled to bolt headlong from the stable.

Aldric sat down hard, yelping with pained surprise as blood welled from the scar beneath his right eye. It was three years healed, but the whiplash strike of the severed rope had laid it open like an hour-old cut and he barely noticed the brief sting at the nape of his neck which might have been a spark.

As he darted from stall to stall, severing ropes and dodging horses as if taking part in a crazy rustic dance, he heard the roof groan again as it sagged further. Chunks of its structure fell away and the drizzle of sparks became a torrent of blazing fragments all over the floor. Except for the paved walkway that floor was knee-deep in loose, dry straw which ignited with the roar of a hungry animal and filled the confines of the world with fury. Heat washed over Aldric as he stumbled from the last stall on that side and into the main aisle of the stable, almost trampled as all the remaining horses galloped past him on the way to open air and safety. His mouth stretched into a tight grin of relief. The other man had been busy.

There was unknowing irony in how that thought coincided with a rub at the sore spot on his neck, dislodging the tiny dart imbedded there.

He could see no trace of his helper, likely too wise to linger in this furnace. It was time to follow the horses’ good example, for worms of smoke were already writhing from the wooden walls as they heated to flash point and the doorposts at each end of the building were already on fire. The only other time he had seen anything burn like this it had been set ablaze on purpose. That momentary suspicion led nowhere. With so much straw about, no wonder the fire had spread so fast.

But the tavern wasn’t full of straw and it was also well alight. That too meant nothing and drifted from his mind even as he tucked his head down and sprinted for the nearest doorway. His legs were unsteady beneath him and once-solid objects were wavering in the haze of hot light and smoke. Then all concerns and idle notions vanished in the vast rending sound as the stable caved in on itself.

And on him.

The surge of heat made his senses swim as it consumed what little air remained. A searing gale tugged at his hair as it funnelled through the blazing doorway, an exit that receded down an endless corridor of fire even as he ran towards it. Aldric felt the rush of movement at his back as something came scything down like a headsman’s sword, heard the impact as it smashed between his shoulders like a giant’s fist, saw the sparks exploding like a halo around his head—

Too late! You left it too…

And that was all.

*

“How did you find him in Tuenafen?” Goth planted both hands palm-downwards on the desk and leaned forward, beard jutting pugnaciously. “How did you know?”

“I told you.” The scrap of parchment Bruda held between finger and thumb of a black-gloved hand looked insignificant, and the writing on it was minute. But it afforded a certain degree of pleasure even though his glistening metallic mask concealed whatever smile might have curved his lips. The smile was there, audible in the smugness of his laconic words: “I told you long ago—”

“Three weeks.”

“And now I too have been told.”

“I didn’t somehow think it was coincidence.”

“I abhor coincidence.” Bruda might have shuddered theatrically at the thought, but Goth saw no tremor in his own misshapen reflection.

“Of course.” There was the merest touch of acid in his voice. “Unless you create it. I know.” He straightened, pressed hands palm to palm and touched their steepled fingertips to the end of his hawk nose as he pondered a moment. “Now, Tuenafen.” The hands clapped decisively. “The quickest route is by sea. I’ll put a battleram at the disposal of your squad.” He stalked to the window and looked out. When he swung back, Bruda hadn’t stirred from the high-backed chair where he lounged with such elegant indolence. “Teynaur is moored in the estuary,” he said. “Use her.” His smile widened as the masked man sat bolt upright, his lazy assurance gone in an instant.

“Teynaur? But she’s an… An augmented ship.” There was a long beat of silence.

“If you don’t like the idea, let Voord go alone. Such things don’t worry him. Rather the reverse.”

“To an unhealthy degree!”

“No matter. He’s efficient. You used that very word when you sent him to Seghar. Have you changed your views?”

“No.” Bruda’s reply was sullen. “Despite what happened to him he remains most capable.”

“Good. Then it’s agreed.” Goth gathered up his rank-marked helmet and settled it in the crook of one arm, preparing to leave. Then he hesitated. “You want Talvalin alive?”

“Yes. Why ask?”

“So do I. I also want him untouched. There’s a difference. Make sure Voord remembers it.”

*

“The wound is new. And he has a beard.”

“It’s just a lack of shaving. That’s something I’m better qualified to know than you, lady. But the wound was old when I saw it.”

“When you saw it? When you thought you saw it? Or when you saw what you wanted to see?”

“I saw what I saw. Look for yourself.” Paper rustled crisply. “Now say I was wrong.”

“Close. Very close. This is an excellent likeness of somebody. But is it close enough?”

“Close enough for me. I sent messages last night and this morning, one by courier, one by pigeon.”

“Without asking permission?”

“I saw no need, lady. I thought you would approve.”

“Never presume what I will or will not do. But yes, I approve.”

“And the Lord-Commander? What will Voord say?”

“Voord will be… Very pleased.”

*

The soft murmur of sound droning like insects on a warm summer night was surely a dream. It took shape and became voices, a man’s and a woman’s. They ebbed and flowed, weaving patterns of words, but whatever language the voices spoke, none of their words made sense. The dream faded, but Aldric’s eyes remained shut. Other than the slow rise and fall of his chest and the never-ending tic of pulses beneath his skin, he didn’t move. But with a swiftness that fell between one breath and the next, he became totally aware of his surroundings.

There was softness above and below him, a yielding warmth of quilts comforting in its familiarity. Light surrounded him, brilliant enough to glow red through the skin of his eyelids. A faint flavour of bitter herbs left a metallic taste in his mouth, and there was a scent of flowers, the arid, delicate fragrance of dried blossoms set out to perfume the air. He opened his eyes to see them, to see where he was—

And saw only featureless white.

Sweat beaded on Aldric’s skin and now he couldn’t move, even though each breath was coming faster and faster and the blood-pulse in his ears was running wild. Memories crashed back into his brain, of monstrous heat, smoke and flames surging in his wake as he fled for ever. Of the roof coming down, the blow across his back and the midnight embrace of oblivion. Of the long fall into the dark which had never reached bottom.

A fall as black as blindness…

His skin was no longer beaded by perspiration but slickly sheathed in it. Aldric could feel each droplet forming, running down his ribs, his jaw and his temples. What had happened could never have been so selective as to destroy only his sight. Not that inferno. And if blindness was black, as the proverb claimed, then was this flaring whiteness death?

With that thought came a great uncontrolled intake of breath which could only return as a scream.

Or a gasp, for in the same instant someone took the bandage from his face and pressed a cool, moist pad against each eye in turn, and when they opened again Aldric’s world lurched back to reality with a dizzying jolt. The unborn cry became a hissing exhalation that trickled out between his teeth, leaving him shamed by the sleek glaze of fear on his skin and by the surely audible thudding of his heart. But the woman who sat by his bed and gazed down at him either didn’t notice, or had the courtesy to feign deafness. Without her furs and her guards and her imperious air she looked very different. Her hair was unbound now, and in the lamplight which filled the room it was the deep rich russet of a fox’s pelt. She was smiling.

“I thought…” He faltered, because the admission would sound foolish, or cowardly, or both. “I thought I was dead.”

“Quite so. There was a time, indeed, when we thought we’d lost you.” She spoke in the Jouvaine language and her voice was as Aldric remembered it, a soft throaty sound, surprisingly deep. Almost a purr, if foxes purred.

“Lost me?”

“Lost you,” she repeated. “You were lucky. Very lucky. The timber which hit you wasn’t properly aflame, and you were already running hard in the right direction. Otherwise you would never have got out.”

“I should never have gone in,” he muttered, deciding not to sit up as his stomach gave a little warning heave. His words, indeed his thoughts, were forming more easily and that surprised him. He had been stunned before and the concussion had jumbled both stomach and brain for a long while afterwards. As she said, he must have been very, very lucky. He knew he had been something else. “I was stupid—”

“You were brave, and you were unselfish. You didn’t have to stay after you freed your own horses, but you did, and saved them all. That was typical, I suppose. You’re fond of horses.” Again the smile. “I know a little about Albans.”

If she had hoped for any reaction, the lady was disappointed. Aldric had never tried to conceal his nationality; his Elthanek accent made it difficult to support such a deception and instantly suspicious if discovered. His identity was quite another matter. The risk of an ulterior motive behind her casual remark was enough to send another worm of nausea coiling through him, masked only by a smile of sorts to disguise whatever else might show on his features.

“Most people do.” Or think they do. The words stayed behind the fence of his teeth. For one thing he was in no mood for opening his mouth more than necessary, and for another this lady was his hostess and the house in which he lay was hers.

There could be nothing left of the tavern where he had awoken so suddenly last night, nothing at all. He was certain of that, though he was less certain that it had been last night, or even the night before. Aldric closed his eyes and shivered as he wondered how many days and nights he had lost. And what had happened while they passed him by. Who are you? Where am I? What is this place? What day is it? The questions were all there, waiting and needing to be asked. Banal questions, obvious questions, stupid questions. But all lacking the answers which he needed to make sense of what was going on.

“You’re still far from well, ’tlei,” said the lady gently. “Sleep now. We can talk again later.” Her hand on his brow was cool. “Sleep.”

He slept.

*

He slept.

He dreamed.

He woke, and woke knowing he had been drugged, his senses insisting on the fact and emphasising it with that faint metallic, medicinal flavour at the back of his throat. It was the after-taste of herbal soporifics, extracts of poppy, or valerian, or nepet, or hops, or… The possibilities were endless. He was in the Empire now and the Drusalans had raised herb-lore to an art form and a science, while also lowering it to a vice. As he swallowed in an attempt to clear away the bitterness, Aldric realised just how parched his mouth had become.

At least there was a terracotta jug of water on a table near the bed. Aldric rolled over and reached out, then hesitated at the thought of more soporifics in the water itself, put there so he would drink without thinking. Brief consideration put an end to that idea. If the intention was to keep him unconscious he would never have woken up to worry about it. He ignored the cups, gripped the jug itself, put the vessel to his lips and disposed of its contents in half-a-dozen rapturous gulps. Then he stared for several seconds at the shiny glaze of its brick-brown interior, tilted it a few degrees further and let the last drops of water patter across his face.

Only then did the questions once more play follow-my-leader through his mind. Who, and where, and when? And why? There were various answers to that one, few of which were appealing. The lady of the fox-bronze hair and the purring, feline voice had something to do with all this. Yes, all of it. The fire and the trapped horses, the grinding roar of falling timber and a shower of sparks before the lights went out.

How in the name of nine hot hells did I survive?

Aldric studied the room, noting the elegant understatement of furniture and ornaments which were a wealthy person’s version of the current austere style. If this place was meant to impress him, then despite his cynical efforts to the contrary it succeeded. He grinned when he saw his own possessions, but it faded swiftly as more details gave cause for a deal of thought.

His saddlebags lay on a chair by the far wall. Nothing wrong with that, though he was sure they had been opened and the contents carefully scrutinised. A garment of some sort, not one of his own, was draped across the linen chest at the foot of the bed, obviously meant for him. His own clothes were either still packed away or in a smelly, smoky, unfit state, unless someone had washed them. Or, he amended, ordered them washed.

But whoever managed the disposition of his Three Blades had known exactly what they were doing. Isileth Widowmaker wasn’t merely laid on a shelf or hung from wall-hooks as anyone might who, what were her words? ‘knew a little about Albans’. Oh no. Instead the taiken leaned on a fine sword-stand of fumed oak with its weapon-belt wrapped around the scabbard in one of the crisscross patterns proper for battle-furnished longswords. His taipan shortsword was hooked to the interlacing of the belt so it could be easily removed and worn indoors according to custom, and his tsepan dirk wasn’t with the others at all but on the cushion of a three-legged stool set close in beside his bed. That seemed insignificant, but it meant the Honour blade was within arm’s-length of its owner as tradition and the Codes required. It told Aldric that someone under this roof knew more than he liked about his homeland, his background and possibly himself, and that they had the confidence to flaunt that knowledge.

His glance towards the door was more speculation than hope. If they or he or she or whatever were so sure of themselves, there might just be a remote possibility that the overconfidence could extend further, into carelessness and locks not turned.

The thought was no sooner completed than he was out of bed with Widowmaker off the sword-stand and the scabbard off her blade. Then he paused long enough wrap himself in the fur-trimmed cymar overrobe so thoughtfully provided. Its heavy fabric was the colour of autumn maples, its fur was red fox, and it was tailored for someone so much bigger than Aldric that it hung from his shoulders, as loose as a riding mantle. Clothing meant much more than simple modesty right now. In this potentially hostile setting bare skin felt vulnerable beyond any mere lack of armour, and even a single layer of cloth gave illusory protection.

At least it should have done.

Instead the sleeveless, side-slashed, open-fronted and oversized cymar emphasised with every movement that he was naked beneath it, which felt worse than having nothing on at all. Aldric exhaled a soft oath. This was a deliberate mind-game, and the robe had been selected with a deal of care to unsettle him just as it was doing.

Isileth’s equally naked blade gave more comfort. Once the taiken was in his hands then armoured, unarmoured or newborn naked he could give good account of himself to anyone, or anything, or any Thing. His mind reconsidered that last one, and an inward shudder raised the hair on arms and neck as he regretted tempting fate with such a thought. The events in Geruath’s citadel at Seghar were still far too recent for such an idle jest.

With a mirthless smile he gently closed his left hand on the door’s iron handle and increased the pressure to an inward pull. Nothing happened. He relaxed a little, then pushed instead. Again nothing. He tried sliding it sideways, then shrugged with resignation and wrenched back with all his strength and weight behind it.

The door wasn’t stiff, unoiled or jammed as he had allowed himself to hope. It was locked and bolted top and bottom, and the jolt of his failed attempt to open it sent silver spikes of discomfort into every joint from wrist to shoulder. So much for carelessness. Aldric shrugged again, this time more of a suppressed wince, and would have sworn if swearing might have helped. As he considered the matter and flexed his arm to work the twinges out of it he swore anyway, not loudly but with great sincerity.

“Should have guessed,” he muttered under his breath. “Now after all that racket, who else does?” It was talk for the sake of hearing a familiar voice and nothing more. Despite his self-accusation, Aldric suspected – no, was sure – that whoever needed to know he was awake knew it already. If he was a prisoner or a guest, though not even the Drusalan Empire kept guests under lock and key, then the past few moments’ activity wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.

But who would notice? And who would they tell?

He grimaced and recovered Widowmaker’s scabbard from where his unsheathing flick had sent it, ran the taiken’s blade home with a steely whisper then sat down in one of the several chairs. Aldric drew the cymar’s folds around his chest, laid the sword across his thighs and composed himself to wait.

He didn’t wait long.

Only ten minutes passed from the first signs of life in his room to the series of metallic clicks as its door was unlocked. At the sounds he rose smoothly, swiftly and silently, and as he spaced his feet for balance his right hand tightened on the longsword’s hilt, giving it that minute twist to free the locking-collar. Widowmaker seemed to tremble with eagerness in his grip. She would leave her scabbard at a touch, as quick as a striking snake. And as deadly.

*

The woman standing quite still in the doorway realised it at once, though she wasn’t in the least afraid if the smile on her full red lips meant anything. But she had been told, in fact warned at length, about how fast and dangerous this young man could be. She had noted that warning, just as she noted many other things while she studied his tantalisingly concealed and at last so very alive body. Once, while he lay in drugged sleep, she had drawn back the covers and studied him, mildly attracted by what she saw, but only as she might have appreciated the contours of well-made sculpture.

Now he was up and moving the Alban looked very different, with lithe, powerful muscles that slid and shifted purposefully under his tanned skin. Yes. Different indeed. Alive. For just an instant, before she controlled it again, the interest in her eyes was as naked as the body under a cymar she had spent a quarter-hour selecting for effect and entertainment value. Not a minute of that time was wasted. This one would be treated with all the caution he deserved, and a little more besides.

For now, at least.

*

Aldric stared at her with eyes gone narrow and watchful in a face schooled to expressionless immobility. His whole demeanour was as poised and wary as a startled cat, ready to dodge or lash out at a heartbeat’s notice. A blurred, hazy memory told him he had seen this woman twice before, but he only recalled the first sight of her with any clarity.

She had been entering a room on that occasion too, flanked by armed and armoured guards.

Well, there were no guards this time. And that was her mistake, because if need be he could reach her and lay the persuasive length of Widowmaker’s edge against her expensively scented throat before that throat could shape a cry for help. And then, though the idea repelled him with its total lack of any honour, he could bargain for his freedom with her life.

“You’re awake.” The fact was self-evident and made her words unnecessary, but their very triviality eased the taut silence which hung in the bedroom’s atmosphere like smoke.

“I am.”

“Good.” It was scarcely a conversation sparkling with brilliant wit. She hesitated, studied him from hair to heel with the same frank appraisal as before and nodded to herself. “You look well rested and healthy.”

“I would feel more at ease with my clothes on, lady,” said Aldric, uncomfortable beneath that speculative stare. “Where are they?”

“They were foul. Stained, torn and—”

“And mine. I asked where, lady, not what. I want my own clothes, not this… This horse-blanket.” It was a superior horse-blanket of considerable value, but that no longer mattered. Aldric knew he was trying to be humorous, to lighten the mood, and knew too he wasn’t succeeding as the emotion his not-quite-humour concealed came bubbling to the surface. That emotion was anger. It was directed at her for the way his memory jarred with what he saw and heard, and fed on itself as unease hardened to an abruptness without the civility expected of a guest. Or was he a prisoner after all? “My clothes,” he repeated. Then more quietly, “Please.”

“Better.” She said it with relief and even gratitude, not the bantering tone of one who has scored a point. “When properly made, ’tlei, such a request is easily fulfilled.” The purring, husky tone was back in her voice and added a honeyed warmth to her words which hadn’t been there before. She clapped her hands together twice and stepped to one side.

A man came in, one who made Aldric take an instinctive snap-step backwards. Not because of who the man was, just a liveried servant, but what he was, and that was huge. He stood head and shoulders taller and those shoulders were a piece with the rest of him, bulky with muscles whose outlines showed even through his clothing. This man was an excellent bodyguard whose presence alone was a weapon, and from his expression he understood the sharp, discourteous way his mistress had been addressed. And he disapproved.

In his arms, neatly folded, were clothes Aldric recognised like old friends. They were mostly black leather, tunic and breeches and boots. But there was something else as well, not leather but fur; a coyac of black wolfskin. Aldric felt a small churning deep in the pit of his stomach. In his secret heart of hearts he had hoped not to see that thing again. It was a memento of events he preferred to forget, and of a man he had killed. Destroying it himself would kill the man twice, but if an accident happened… Well, he wouldn’t make any great effort to prevent it.

Of everything I own, I wish that one was burned to ashes, and the ashes scattered on the wind.

His clothes were dropped unceremoniously onto the bed with no regard for their neat folds, and one boot slid with a thump to the floor. It was the right boot, of course, and it balanced upright for a moment then toppled over. The knife which fell out made an accusing tinkle that drew all eyes.

It was Aldric who looked up first, feeling that despite their expressions of astonishment the knife’s presence didn’t surprise anyone. The whole affair had been stage-managed from the start, as deliberate as the choice of overrobe he wore. He ducked down, picked up the knife and turned it over in his fingers once or twice, then returned it to the sheath stitched inside the boot’s laced and buckled top.

“Thank you.” The remark was addressed to nobody in particular, and so neutrally voiced that it was impossible to tell if he was pleased, amused, or blazing with anger. The big servant glowered at him, and Aldric took note of the diagonal belt across his chest supporting a makher, the leaf-bladed shortsword favoured by the Drusalan military. So she has an escort after all. But one I can handle. Size is just more meat for the blade. He met the other stare for stare and it was the bigger man whose gaze dropped first. No satisfaction at the small victory showed on Aldric’s face by even a flicker of eyelids, because he was growing more and more certain that someone was testing him for a purpose of their own.

But what was it?

“Get out.” His command was so quiet it was little more than an exhalation of breath. The servant hesitated and then, though it required a glance towards his lady and her nod of assent, he left without further protest and closed the door behind him as a good servant should. The woman remained. Aldric paused in the act of laying out his clothes on the bed and flicked a look towards her, then made a gesture with one finger, a little circle drawn horizontally on the air between them.

“Turn around, lady,” he said, and waited until she complied. Albans were modest folk, except in situations where modesty was an affectation. Those situations usually involved bedmates, and this Drusalan female wasn’t in that category yet. Given how they had met, he preferred to keep it that way.

“I had not,” she said to the wall, “expected a man of men who value honour to be a man who threatens unarmed women.” There was a hint of disapproval in her voice, distinct and deliberate if not quite sincere.

“I didn’t threaten you. Not even once.”

“You did, and I saw you do it. You held your sword, and you looked at me, and you wondered if you might have to put the blade to my neck before you got out of here. Oh yes.”

“Was I so obvious?”

“I hadn’t expected it of a guest in my house,” she repeated. This time Aldric said nothing. He dropped the cymar to the floor and drew fresh linens from one of his saddlebags, then busied himself working one leg into the tight-fitting trousers he wore beneath his leathers. “And I hadn’t expected such a one to need long underwear.”

He froze, balanced on one leg with the other raised beneath him like a stork, half in and more importantly half out of the garment in question as he blushed all over. Except for his left leg from the knee downward, ‘all over’ was visible beyond dispute. His head snapped round faster than she expected, and caught the tag-end of an expression he hadn’t been meant to see. She was looking over one shoulder with an impish smile on her lips, but her eyes glittered with malicious amusement. It wasn’t honest good-humour created by her ridiculous, inaccurate but apt observation. Oh no. It was a nasty wallowing in the undignified embarrassment her words had caused. That wallowing, and the pleasure stemming from it, was stilled even as Aldric realised its existence. But the fact he had seen and recognised it troubled him.

“Not underwear, lady. Trousers. Proper trousers.” He hitched the trews up and fastened them at his waist. “Try wearing combat leathers next to your so-tender skin, then ask again why I wear these if you still have to.”

Without further insistence that she look away, since she clearly had no intention of doing any such thing, Aldric finished dressing in clean clothes from the skin out. Somebody had been decent enough, if that was the word he wanted, to shave him and bathe him whilst he was unconscious, so he wasn’t hiding anything she hadn’t seen. Loose white shirt and knee-length hosen came next, then the black of breeches, boots and tunic. Finally, unwilling to wear it but more unwilling to let her see his reluctance, he pulled on the wolfskin coyac.

Its fur was as he remembered it on that rainswept day when it was first pressed into his armoured hands, payment for the death of a man who might in other times or circumstances have been his friend. The pelt was deep, warm, and redolent of the herbs which Drusalans liked to strew in their clothes-chests. Yet underneath it all was the faint reek of fire and spoiled, rotting flesh.

The woman watched in silence as he enclosed himself in a black made deeper still by its points of contrast between white fabric or burnished metal. On someone else it might have seemed over-dramatic, but there was an aura about him, introspective and brooding, which stifled ill-chosen remarks at the source.

“Combat leathers, Alban? Surely you don’t—”

“Intend to do without them, or my weapons? Not until I’m clear of this place or much more confident of the company I keep. May I be open with you?”

“I see no way to prevent it.” That derisive undertone wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear in any pretty woman’s voice, and especially hers because she was so very pretty. No, she was beautiful. Naturally beautiful, expensively beautiful…

And dangerously beautiful, because she knew the power it gave her.

“I don’t trust you, lady. I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this whole affair, from the fire at the tavern to your apparent generosity. For that much at least, I thank you. But I can find no proof for the feeling, nothing I can hold, nothing I can be sure of. So I have to accept your motives at face value.”

“That’s good of you.” Her words were flat and the thought behind them probably vicious, but even though her tone scoured him like ground glass, Aldric was glad he had made himself plain. At least it proved he wasn’t as naïve as she might have thought. “And if you didn’t accept them, hlensyarl?” It was the first time he had heard that particular Drusalan word among the smoothness of her Jouvaine, and it jarred. “What would you do?”

“What would I do?” he echoed, picking up his tsepan with the ghost of a respectful bow, a small swift inclination of his head, before slipping it into place on his weapon-belt. There was a moment’s hesitation as if considering what to say next, and in that hesitation he lifted Isileth and looped her cross- strap across his shoulder, hooking it low so that the longsword rode slantwise across his back. Her hilt reared alongside his neck like an adder about to strike, but for all her threatening appearance the taiken was being carried in peace posture.

It was a courteous gesture and a compliment of sorts, one understood by whoever had set the longsword on her stand with her straps wrapped just-so according to lore and ancient practice. But it was also an insult, one so subtle that only the same knowledgeable person would appreciate it, if ‘appreciate’ was the right word with insults. Wearing a sword like that in the presence of a suspected enemy proclaimed unconcern and disdain. It announced I consider you no threat in elegant cursives clear as the noon sun to those who knew how to read them.

“What would I do?” he said again, almost tasting the words. His grin was a pleasant thing to see, but the words that accompanied it weren’t pleasant at all. “Lady, I have no idea. But I warn you, now and later, don’t press me hard enough to find out. Neither of us would enjoy the result.” His bow this time was from the waist, not an Alban obeisance but a false, theatrical sweep of movement and another insult to any who chose to see it so. “And now,” he lifted his saddlebags and hefted them into a comfortable carrying position on one shoulder, “I thank you for your kindness, and I take my leave.”

“Leave, Alban?” He heard surprise and shock, either genuine or feigned so well that she was a talented actress as well as a seductively beautiful woman. That last was why he wanted out of her house, out of her city, and out of her circle of influence. One of the more world-wise philosophers of history had said ‘A wise man knows his own failings’, and Aldric Talvalin knew his only too well. He wasn’t an indiscriminate lecher but he was susceptible to a pretty face and striking figure, and the first thing about setting any trap was to bait it properly. Most lures merely attracted; this one, he suspected, could actively entice.

“In the name of the Father of Fires, what are you running away from? Why leave so soon?”

“Because as you say, lady, I’m Alban. I want to go home, and… And if this is Tuenafen, there should be a ship to suit me in the harbour.”

“I think not.”

Had her voice been amused, or mocking, or several other things he was in no mood to hear, he might have dropped the saddlebags and drawn on her. Woman or not, pretty or not. Beautiful or not. But she sounded, looked, perhaps was, sincerely annoyed and regretful. Enough at least to calm a response as reflex as the bristling back of a kourgath wildcat from the Alban forests. Even then he had to draw in a slow, deep breath so the thunder of his heartbeat wouldn’t come vibrating up to leave a tremor in his voice.

“Explain.”

“There have been no ships in Tuenafen Port these two days past. Not that it would have mattered. What with the blow on your head and the drugs my physician recommended, you were unconscious for almost three days and nights.” Her expression changed as eddies of thought and consideration fled across it, and if she really was acting then it was masterfully done. “But after all, this is for the best.”

“Is it? What is?”

“You being here with me, and I in your debt.”

“For those damned horses?” The foggy recollection of their earlier one-sided conversation was growing clearer. “All I did, lady, was to make a reasonable attempt at killing myself. To no good purpose.” She tut-tutted at him and waved one finger in the air, as reproving as any tutor.

“Not without purpose, I insist on that. Those horses weren’t just damned, especially the carriage ponies. They were – and are, thanks to you – damned fine, damned expensive and damned healthy. I owe you, Alban. Let me at least repay a little of it.”

“Lady, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

“If there was a ship in the harbour today, now, this very minute, and you boarded to buy passage for yourself – oh yes, and for your own horses – you would be wasting your time. Because you can’t afford to, not since the fire. Your money is gone. All of it.”

A chill like the touch of an ice-dipped razor slithered down Aldric’s spine as he saw the bars of a cage closing around him. But there was still one possible key that no one knew about. He forced his voice to a flat calm.

“How much damage was done? I… I missed the end of it.”

“Enough and to spare. The fire gutted the tavern, burnt it to a shell. Stables, kitchen, tap-room and most of the guest-rooms too. Yours among them. Somehow your saddlebags weren’t there—”

Yes, they bloody were! He caught the snapped contradiction just in time; let her think she was playing him for a fool a little longer. But his saddlebags were always in the room where he slept. Even leaving aside his money, they contained the clean clothes and razor needed first thing every morning. So who had moved them?

“—but once found they were investigated—”

“Of course they were!” This time he interrupted aloud, but his sarcasm seemed almost an expected response and passed without comment.

“Investigated,” she spoke with heavy patience, “for any idea of who you were. Because at one stage my principal concern was to find true words for your grave-marker.” Aldric stared at her and his mouth twitched without completing any of the dozen things he might have said, not one of them with words the Drusalan woman would have liked. For her part, she lifted both shoulders in an ostentatious shrug and let it go at that. Why worry now? the shrug said. You’re still alive, aren’t you?

“There was no money in those saddlebags, none at all. Nor in your pockets. If there had been, it would have come to me for safe-keeping. Yet the innkeeper insisted you were rich. ‘Free with Imperial silver,’ were his exact words. Not any more. Whatever wealth you might have had is melted slag beneath the ruins of the inn. Now do you understand what I mean when I say I owe you?”

“I understand I can’t pay my way in the Drusalan Empire any more,” Aldric said coldly. Either the silver in question was destroyed, which was unlikely, or was beyond his reach to convey that impression.

“As you say. So until I repay my debt, Alban, you’re my guest. Otherwise you’re a pauper.”

“Oh.” Aldric set his saddlebags down again and let his shoulders sag. Not all of it was relief from the weight, but likewise not all was pretence. This woman wasn’t the only one who could play a part. Everything was far too neat, far too clearly planned in advance, and far too obviously planned for his benefit – if benefit was the right word to describe it and he didn’t think it was. But for all her seeming omniscience she didn’t know everything, and in that lack of knowledge lay his one chance to get clear of this mess before the cage had fully shut.

“I want to see my horses, lady, and check that all my gear is as safe as you assure me. Then I want a look at the harbour.” It felt odd not having used her name once despite all they had said to each other, but he didn’t yet know it. And she didn’t know his, and that was for the best. Time enough for names, even assumed names, when they could be of use.

“I’ll have a servant escort you,” she said quickly, too quickly for Aldric’s liking.

“I’d rather go alone.”

“No!”

“No?”

“No. It would be too dangerous.” He quirked one eyebrow at that. “You’re a foreigner. Inyen-hlensyarl. And people are wary of foreigners right now.”

“I’ve noticed that much already.” His mind went back to the attitudes in the tavern common-room. “Why?”

“Kaven var hlenseyarlek egit im-anah tlavarek egyit,” she said in Drusalan, and Aldric made sure to look blank until she translated. “The things outlanders do are not the things we do.” Odd that she didn’t trust the explanation to Jouvaine first, even though they had spoken it comfortably up until now, as if the Drusalan version carried more weight. Or maybe not so odd at all. In a strange country, inhabited by strange people, strangeness becomes ordinary or at least acceptable. He had found that true enough in Seghar and the Jevaiden, where it was strangers who became a threat.

“Why,” she asked, as if the answer was obvious, “do you think I had your bedroom door locked?” Aldric blinked. He had planned to spring that same question on her and glean what he could from the expression it provoked. Now it required an effort of will and facial muscles to prevent the position being reversed.

“To keep me from running away?” The woman stared at him. Was that contempt he saw in her eyes, or was he imagining it?

“No.” The denial was flat and toneless, “it was to keep everyone else out. Otherwise… Oh, Father of Fires, I don’t know. Call it too much caution and let it go.”

“Understood,” Aldric lied, reluctant to let it go at all. “Now, I want to stretch my legs, check my horses then see the harbour. All right?”

“All right.” She turned to leave, then hesitated and swung back with one hand extended. There was something nestling on the palm, a thing of looped steel and silver wrapped in white buckskin. It was the spellstone of Echainon, and Aldric’s heart came crawling crookedly back up his throat. “This is yours. I kept it safe. As I would with anything belonging to a guest.” Aldric thought she came down over-hard on the last word, but passed no remark. “It’s a beautiful gem.”

Gem? She had called it nothing more, and the Jouvaine word’s meaning was plain enough. So the stone had kept its own secret and concealed the eldritch blue glow which would have marked it as much, much more than just a jewel. Aldric’s mind worked rapidly to make his position more secure, to explain away what she might have read from his eyes.

“Not even a gem, lady. Only quartz, without value except for the sentimental kind. Of course it is very old, and there are those who set a price on age.” The glibness of the lies unsettled him. It was as if someone, or the stone itself for all he knew, was prompting him for its own protection. “But it’s an heirloom I inherited, and for that if nothing else I feel it has worth.” His fingertips closed on the talisman and hooked it off her hand, confirming repossession even as he bowed to her, this time in the proper style. There was nothing insulting about a formal Alban Third Obeisance, even his abbreviated version, but the bow gave him opportunity to relax the muscles of his face which felt like they were cramping into a permanent expression of careful neutrality. Only the light film of sweat on the palms of his hands might have betrayed him, but the shaking of hands was Gemmel’s custom, not his. “Again I thank you, lady.”

“Call me Kathur, Alban. Everyone does. And you?”

“Kourgath-eijo, from… From south and west of here.” Now it was Kathur’s turn to smile, both of them content with their exchange of lies. He had told her only that he shared names with the wildcat on his silver crest-collar, while south and west took in a sizable slice of the Empire, Vreijaur and the independent city states of Jouvann. His answer had answered nothing.

Her reply had been just as vague. Kathur, indeed! She had been named or chosen a name for the rich colour of her hair, because en-Keythar in Drusalan meant ‘fox’ and she had given him its feminine equivalent. There were folktales about the Wildcat and the Vixen, and Aldric wondered if this would be one with a happy ending.

He would have to wait and see…

CHAPTER FOUR

Aldric gave the stable door a firm push. It swung inward and a broad bar of dusty golden light speared past him into the gloom, pinning his shadow against the deep straw on the floor. He remained in the doorway for several minutes, not moving, saying nothing, just watching the hard-edged contrasts of sunlight and darkness for sudden movement. Widowmaker was in battle position now, down on his left hip, and his right hand had gone from the door straight to her hilt.

As his eyes became accustomed to the dimness they could see that everything was in exact order, and such neatness made him think again of what Kathur had said. His horses were safe. His harness was safe. His pack-saddle and its armour-boxes were safe, though doubtless as carefully searched as his saddlebags had been. Everything he owned was safe, except the silver to take him out of here at a time of his own choosing. Yes, that had been a selective fire indeed. Who had set it? Not a flicker of the thought showed on his face for the interested scrutiny of Kathur’s promised escort standing nearby.

It confirmed all his suspicions, not that Kathur’s transparent excuse had dispelled them for long. If the inn had indeed been burned as a first step of getting him where he was wanted, it was an act of such casual ruthlessness as to take the breath away. The act of someone who cared nothing for consequences or, because of who supported them, didn’t have to care. Or because they themselves weren’t someone but Someone. That thought was the most unsettling at all.

Lyard shifted in his stall, demanding attention from the one man in this whole place he recognised and trusted. Aldric patted the big Andarran courser’s questing muzzle and gave him an apple, autumn-wrinkled but still sweet, filched from a fruit-bowl in Kathur’s house. For fairness he gave another to the pack-horse, and crunched into a third himself as he scanned the stable building. He examined fresh bedding, new grain and clean water, smelt the slightly dusty aroma which told him the place was well-aired and dry, and nodded with reluctant approval, honest enough to admit he had wanted to find fault somewhere. He watched the horses consume their presents, inspected the tack set out on wooden frames at the far wall, then turned to stare at Kathur’s servant. This wasn’t the big man who had taken such an instant dislike to him, just a nondescript youth, but he represented eyes and ears where Aldric didn’t want them.

“How far to the harbour?” He asked the question in Jouvaine around a mouthful of fruit, deliberately rude. There was no answer and Aldric considered repeating himself in Drusalan though the apple might prove an obstruction even for that language. Besides, it was a language he had been at pains to prove he neither spoke nor understood, so he decided not to bother. “I’ll walk anyway.”

As he said it he ran one palm over the elaborate, expensive tooled leather of his high-peaked saddle. It was more expensive than any footslogging or carriage-riding Drusalan could understand, and his touch, as gentle as a man stroking the naked body of a lover, was accompanied by a little smile. He had good reason for the smile, because that touch proved he was still in control of his own fate after all.

The embossed pattern was a classic design for horse furniture, all loops and whorls, and it would have required an expert eye or the systematic destruction of the saddle to discover a single welt fractionally thicker than all the others. Its presence – and ensuring that nobody, not even Gemmel his own foster-father, knew of the change in the pattern – had cost Aldric an impressive number of Alban silver marks, enough to do the work and the rest to forget doing it. He had paid for the saddle after one more unpleasant conversation with King Rynert, and considered the money well spent. Sewn inside that ridge of leather was a parchment roll thinner than a goose-quill. It was a letter, but not an ordinary one, which was fitting on this far from ordinary mission for the king, and its presence set his mind a little more at rest.

Let Kathur the Vixen say whatever she pleased about the state of his finances; he could afford to buy a rapid, secret passage after all. Or even a ship. Aldric had to keep a smile off his lips, because that realisation hadn’t occurred until now. He could buy an entire merchant fleet, for the letter was credit scrip drawn on what the largest, wealthiest merchant guild in the northern Empire, and it was a note of hand good for thirty thousand Alban deniers’ worth of bullion gold.

Aldric had remained Clan-Lord Talvalin and unquestioned master of Dunrath for enough time to make good use of his rank and title. He wondered if anyone had yet noticed the guild-stamps in Dunrath’s treasury which effectively depleted it by one-third, and resisted an impulse to laugh out loud for the first time in too long.

Even though he had reconfirmed his wealth, Tuenafen still left Aldric ill at ease. Anywhere in the Western Empire would have had the same effect. Young Emperor Ioen and his rebellious Grand Warlord were heading inexorably towards armed confrontation after sudden and mysterious deaths struck the Imperial Court like a plague or, as fanatics proclaimed, the retribution of outraged Heaven. The deaths had begun with Crown Prince Taroen, killed in a hunting accident which many believed was no accident at all. They had moved like a scythe in wheat through courtiers, councillors, advisors and ultimately to Emperor Droek himself, found dead – of poison and horribly contorted, said one source, of other excesses altogether and smiling, said another – on a concubine’s couch in the Pleasure Palace at Kalitzim.

Until their sudden demise all had been puppets who danced obligingly when Woydach Etzel pulled the proper strings. Now the emperor’s surviving son, Ioen, found himself centre stage in a political drama for which he had never rehearsed, and that raised certain suspicions about the passing of his father and his brother despite the four years between their deaths. Not that anyone accused the boy himself. At the time of his accession to Crown Prince he was sixteen and incapable of such ruthlessness. Or so his supporters claimed.

That was either innocence or delusion and Aldric had given such beliefs a cynical smile, but there was no such presumption about Ioen’s guardian and mentor. Lord General Goth was capable of whatever he could justify, and recent months had shown him remarkably skilled at creating sound excuses for anything he did. Reports were rife of an assassination here, a kidnapping and imprisonment there, and skirmishes far more serious than the clashes between partisan gangs Aldric had witnessed once or twice in other towns. They had already happened in Tuenafen and the results were everywhere: broken windows and smashed doorway lanterns, with those as yet undamaged now protected by shutters or grilles of heavy mesh. Minor streets had been sealed off, and main thoroughfares had checkpoints manned by a city militia with authority to stop, search and if need be detain any who roused their suspicions.

The atmosphere was tense and strained, brittle as thin ice, yet to Aldric’s surprise people were going about their ordinary business in an ordinary way. They talked about what was happening in the Empire, things like the political divisions and the religious schism of the Tesh heresy, but always in roundabout terms that were vague, ill-defined and comfortable. They called it ‘Dissent’, or ‘Difficult Times’, or ‘Troubles’, but never the obvious ‘Civil War’ as if by not giving the situation its proper title they could deny its existence. It was the direct opposite of that old warning ‘say the name, summon the named’, but their laughter when it came was forced and over-loud, and they had an unpleasant tendency to follow strangers with their eyes while never looking straight at them. Aldric caught such sideways glances more than once, and the way they flinched aside when his own met them. It made his skin creep. Somebody, somewhere, had told him why, and it was a reason so ridiculous that he had given it no credence then.

Now he wasn’t so sure. His taste in clothes was the problem. It seemed a preference for black and silver showed partisan support, for Woydach Etzel the Grand Warlord of all people, and with his foreign accent was enough to influence any who saw him. No one in the Empire was neutral. Either they approved of the way he dressed or somebody, somewhere, would find him so provocative that they would attack him – purely as a political statement, of course, with no personal animosity intended. As if that mattered.

And anyone attacking Aldric Talvalin with Isileth Widowmaker close to hand would end up sliced in half – purely as a reflex response, of course, with no personal animosity intended. As if that mattered.

It wouldn’t to an Imperial court, and it wasn’t the way to fade into any background. But it would soon be Aldric’s birthday, and he planned to be alive and healthy to celebrate it properly. If that meant borrowing enough money from Kathur to buy himself new clothes, then so be it. After all, she kept insisting how much she was in his debt. In twenty-three days he would be twenty-four years old. A quarter century, near enough, although sometimes he and others doubted aloud he would ever live so long. It would be ironic… No, it would be downright stupid if an unfortunate choice of clothes let some fanatic succeed where Duergar, and Kalarr, and Crisen and all their respective minions had failed. Light of Heaven, thought Aldric as he mentally reviewed the list, were there so many? Then he strolled around a corner for his first view of Tuenafen harbour, and that was when thoughts of the past were abruptly replaced by fears for the future.

Battlerams. Three of them, for the love of… Feeling like a cat gone mousing in a kennel it had though empty but which turned out to be full of mastiffs, Aldric slackened what had been an eager pace and stared at the anchored warships. Now another memory came forward, his encounter with the battleram Aalkhorst, and it was anything but reassuring. No, not three, he corrected as another predatory shape slid with heavy grace around the sea-wall. Four.

Four armoured warships, each of whose seven steel-sheathed turrets contained a chain-geared repeating catapult capable of reducing an enemy vessel to matchwood and drifting splinters. He had seen what they could do.

Aldric watched the new arrival join her consorts in the harbour. The long manoeuvring sweeps deployed from oarlocks near her waterline served to give the battleram the look of a monstrous, malevolent insect, and all her canvas was reefed except the spritsail puffed like a pigeon’s breast by a wind from astern. Yet the true wind of the world was an offshore breeze, raising choppy ripples straight toward the oncoming bow, so despite the Empire’s stringent laws against sorcery it looked as if the Fleet still had exemption. There was a wish-wind charmed into this warship’s sails, and perhaps the others too. She could go wherever she pleased whenever she pleased, regardless of the irritating vagaries of real weather, and she could do it far faster than any honestly driven vessel could hope to match.

Now if only he could see whose side these brutes were on.

But they had stowed their banners, struck their colours and displayed no marks of allegiance anywhere on their reptilian hides. There was a nameplate clamped to the flank armour of the new ship’s hull, but that was of little use. First it would need familiarity with the Imperial fleet, from coastal tenders on up, to work out whether Emperor or Warlord owned any given vessel.

And second, Aldric couldn’t read Drusalan. Speak it at least in the formal mode, yes, that was straightforward enough, but the written language used a different alphabet to the one shared by Alban, Jouvaine and Vreijek. In addition they only wrote down characters for consonants, representing everything else with dots, bars and chevrons. In his view it was all done for no other reason than sheer perversity and to annoy him.

At least the merchant guilds had more sense. A swift glance along the waterfront revealed what he had come to check and why he wanted to be alone when he did it. A painted wooden sign above a doorway bore the same crest as on his credit scrip and many bars of Talvalin gold. The glance was very quick indeed, for Aldric could feel the escorting spy close up behind him, no doubt watching for anything worth reporting back. Well, he would have little to tell apart from the fact that looking at the Imperial military unsettled Albans. Since that held true for most Imperial citizens, it wasn’t information with a great deal of use.

Aldric decided it would be prudent to get off the street and await developments somewhere more secluded, at least until he knew more about what had brought the warships here at such an inopportune time. Kathur’s house was one such place. As far as Tuenafen was concerned it was the only place.

There was a splash and a clatter of anchor-chain from the harbour as he retraced his steps. Sailors yelled instructions at each other as they secured the new battleram at her moorings and warped her alongside the others, and Aldric glanced back at them, then at the ship itself. Father of Fires, she was huge! The salt-stained carapace of armour was open in many places, and two crewmen emerged from a hatch to unclip the vessel’s nameplate and carry it below. As they lifted it, he could finally see the three characters spelling out the warship’s name and got a brief glimpse the geometric-patterned vowel values. They meant more as abstract art than as a written word, and he could only hazard a guess at how to pronounce it aloud.

Probably something like Te’Na’R.

*

In the early evening a bank of fog drifted in from the sea, and as it overlaid Tuenafen with a damp grey blanket the deep boom of a warning gong throbbed up from the harbour. Sitting cross-legged amid the rumpled quilts of Kathur’s bed, Aldric listened to its sonorous single note and sipped wine he didn’t want or need. He was trying, far too late, to ignore the warm silky skin pressed against his own and was just as acutely aware of a sensation which might have been shame.

Kathur rolled lazily onto her back, sated at long last. She scored the nail of one finger up and down his naked thigh, watching him through the tangled fringe of her copper-gold hair as she inhaled the sweet smoke curling up from burners near the bed. Something about his expression produced a drowsy giggle.

“What’s troubling you?”

“Nothing!” The denial came out far too hard, far too fast. “Nothing at all.” He was lying, and they both knew it. Aldric didn’t look down. Her bronze and milk-white body was a definite, indeed an all-consuming distraction to a mind which already had enough to think about and was working harder than usual to do so. Kathur had embraced not just her guest but the latest entertaining vice from the Warlord’s court in Drakkesborg and mixed a lavish sprinkle of ymeth dream-dust with her bedroom incense. The effect was wearing off at last, but his senses still weren’t entirely back in focus and Aldric didn’t like it.

Bedding Kathur hadn’t been his intention when he left her house, and even less so when he returned from the harbour. The sight of four Imperial battlerams with uncertain provenance would have squelched any such thoughts as effectively as navel-deep immersion in a bath of ice-melt.

It hadn’t been his intention when she stepped out of her bedroom just as he walked past in the corridor outside. To be fair he had toyed with the idea of paying her a visit, in case the invitation he had sensed was more than his own wishful thinking. She could tell him to get out of course, but then again she might ask him to stay. That, too, had been before the harbour and the battlerams.

It still wasn’t his intention even when he saw what she was wearing: a clinging, side-split, low-cut robe that flaunted her full-breasted, leggy beauty. The near-transparent satin clung like a crimson second skin and made it enticingly obvious there was nothing underneath but Kathur and a touch of costly perfume. Aldric had always tried, even if it sometimes took a lot of effort, to admire a pleasant view without needing to lay hands on it. He tried then, too.

But when she reached out without a word, cradled his face in palms and fingers and bent forward to kiss him full on the mouth – even barefoot she stood a handspan taller than he did – all that became a thing of wind and straw. For all its chaste brevity the kiss had brought a probing pressure of her tongue between his lips, then the swiftest promissory nip of teeth hinting at pleasures to come. After such a kiss even the sternest Imperial politark would have torn up his holy books, smashed his holy ikons and gone running after her.

Up to that point, when resistance became more than fevered flesh and pounding blood could bear, Aldric could have put hand to tsepan-hilt and sworn to the honour of all his intentions. But it seemed that bedding him was what Kathur intended all along, and she had done so most efficiently.

Efficiently? Yes, that was the only word for it. All the others – pleasurably, inventively, exhaustingly – were true enough, but faded into insignificance beside the practised skills she displayed in bed.

Is it the practice that galls you? he wondered. Because without it you wouldn’t have enjoyed yourself half as much. Kathur had known just when and how hard to use her tongue and teeth and nails and closely clutching thighs. Riding aids. Like putting a show-horse through its paces.

It was the detached skill with which she aroused him that wouldn’t leave his mind; as if his reluctance was a challenge to overcome and nothing more. Just once, almost by accident amid the sweaty athletic squirming, he had been in a position to stare for three full seconds straight up into her eyes. That memory remained with him and would do for a long time, because there was nothing in the dilated pupils of those eyes except enjoyment of physical pleasure. Kathur had no emotional connection with what she was doing. Even Gueynor, once of Valden and now Lady of Seghar, had felt more for him than the Drusalan woman did, and she had been paying for her own much-loved uncle’s quick and painless death.

Efficiently. That was definitely what rankled, what had created the tiny flutter of uncertainty beneath his breastbone. It might have begun as embarrassment over the real and figurative ways he had been handled, but now it was much, much more. Suspicion was growing to certainty that there was another purpose behind what had happened, one beyond lust or curiosity or – and he would have accepted the reason gratefully – boredom on a foggy afternoon.

With Kyrin, even with Gueynor, he might have been lying cuddled together with a quiet affection he would never feel for this bedmate or she for him. Kyrin had been right when once she had called him a romantic, because Kathur made love, and the word ‘love’ was itself a lie, like a professional. All was sensation, nothing was emotion, because emotion took time and to a whore time was money. That was a heartless judgement, but Aldric’s mind flashed to his first sight of her, the night she stalked into the tavern common-room in her furs with her guards to either side. Then he had wondered if she was noble or a top-rank courtesan. Now he knew.

“Care killed a cat, my Kourgath.” Her spiked fingernails raked all the way down his spine. “What’s wrong?” Aldric shivered, for only a marble statue wouldn’t have responded to that contact, and set his glass aside before unsteady hands spilled its contents all across his lap. Not, he thought with another luxurious shudder, that such an accident would inconvenience Kathur in the slightest.

“I told you already. Nothing’s the matter.” He eased himself free of her embrace. “I was thinking, that’s all.”

“Then think about me.” She made the suggestion in a voice like cinnamon and hot honey as she relaxed into an inviting sprawl of naked limbs. Aldric looked and swallowed hard, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath he regretted at once as the lungful of dreamsmoke daubed rainbow patterns across the insides of his eyelids and through the echoing caverns of his mind.

“Doamne diu!” he snarled. It needed no translation, one blasphemous expletive sounded much like another, and Kathur laughed at him then sprinkled more ymeth on the nearest censer. “Lady, stop that…!” Aldric protested, then turned it into a half-hearted shrug. “I’m less accustomed to this stuff than you are.”

“It should take your mind off the battlerams in the harbour.”

“Battlerams?” His face was a masterpiece of innocent inquiry, wasted effort because her spy had been with him at the time and had somehow made a report before the afternoon turned busy.

“Battlerams,” Kathur repeated.

“The Imperial military doesn’t like Albans much,” Aldric said, as if that explained everything.

“To the Black Pit with the military! I like at least one Alban very much.”

“Thank you, lady. But whose ships are they?” Kathur’s lips compressed for maybe half a second and her heavy-lidded eyes flicked wide open, but Aldric, staring pensively at the crawling glow of sparks in one of the incense burners, missed it all.

“Curiosity killed a cat, hlens’l,”

“Care, now curiosity.” Aldric smiled a smile as bright and false as paste jewels. “What have the Empire’s proverb-makers got against cats?” She didn’t seem particularly amused.

“Why the sudden interest in battlerams? You’ve been fretting over something ever since you came back from the harbour. Tell me about it. A sympathetic ear might make you feel better.”

“What about sympathetic lips?” It sounded evasive even to him, and Kathur didn’t reply. She just stared and waited for an answer. Aldric met that stare for maybe a minute then gave up, lay down with his head cradled on crossed arms and told her. Not what she wanted to know but what he wanted her to know, which wasn’t the same thing at all. Nearly, but not quite. He knew from experience that edited truth sounded more convincing than the best-thought-out lie, and right now he had no honour-bound compunctions about misleading her. None at all.

“In spring of this year,” he began, “I took passage aboard an Elherran merchant ship. Unarmed, of course. But a battleram sailing under the Grand Warlord’s crest and colours attacked us anyway. Its hautmarin commander claimed the Elherrans was running contraband, and by then we were somewhat shot up and in no mood to argue. The battleram’s marine cadre boarded us and searched from keel to masthead, but didn’t find a thing. So did the hautmarin apologise and offer recompense for all the damage? Did he, hell! The arrogant bastard didn’t give a damn!”

“Calm down, Kourgath. It doesn’t matter now.”

“No. Not now. Of course not. You’re right. But can you wonder that I wasn’t happy to see that pack of bloody commerce raiders in the harbour?”

“I don’t wonder at all. I don’t wonder about many things. It’s better not to wonder about what They do, not in public anyway. They have many ears, and contacts in the most unlikely places.” Kathur didn’t elaborate enough to tell him which They she meant. Instead her lips curved in a small, cold smile and she studied his face for a while as she toyed with the silver crest-collar at his throat. “You worry too much,” she concluded. “And about other people’s problems. That’s a bad thing. Bad for your health, at least while you’re within the Empire’s borders. So we’ll find something to occupy that over-busy mind. Something to help you relax.”

“Something besides this?” Real or feigned, that incredulity and the expression it put on his face was enough to make Kathur laugh.

“This, as you coyly call it, is mere diversion. A pleasant way to…” Her words faltered for the merest intake of breath as a phrase or just a word was almost but not quite spoken. “To pass the time. And to convey a little gratitude in a way you seemed to enjoy.”

Aldric had heard such reasoning before and didn’t like hearing it again, but he kept quiet.

Kathur rolled over in bed and reached for a slender silken cord running up out of sight through a hole in the ceiling. She tugged it twice, then twice again, and lay back as if exhausted by the effort. Aldric watched her, because despite his other reservations the way her sleek body moved was a pleasure, and as she flopped against the pillows he gave her a broad smile.

“By the look of you,” he said virtuously, “it might be time to cap those incense burners.”

*

For a moment Kathur glared at him, ready to be angry if his teasing turned out to be more than a joke. She had taken enough criticism of her private affairs and conduct from her own brother – who didn’t know the half of it – without more of the same from this hlensyarl who was just part of her work. He was a better-looking and a more enjoyable part than many who had preceded him, but in the long run looks and pleasure changed nothing.

Her instructions had been concise, direct and not open to interpretation. Find. Identify. Hold. They had arrived twofold, as was the custom, the first a cursory cipher borne on a pigeon’s leg, and the second… Ah yes, the second. Its pigeon was a Falcon, a weary, dirty horseman in the yellow crest-coat of the Imperial couriers with a message lead-sealed in a leather pouch. Using a Falcon had told her of this mission’s importance even before she read what he had brought her.

The whole thing had Voord’s touch about it.

There was his arrogance, using a rider forbidden to all but the Imperial Household. There was his sense for the dramatic, which had prompted the risky gesture. And there was his foul mind, in the clinical precision of the prose which set out in graphic detail what he wanted her to do.

But that was Voord’s way. He was always fastidious and excessively neat in everything he did, no matter how perverse. Kathur hadn’t forgotten and would never forget the whimpering, agonized, ecstatic night the Vlechan tested her fitness for recruitment, and she shuddered with revulsion as a conscious effort crushed the memory back into the dark and dirty part of her subconscious where it stayed confined. Then he had been kortagor; now he was hautheisart, promoted again at the end of summer for something unspecified. What it might have been she didn’t know and wouldn’t dare to guess, because if the rumours spoke the truth, Voord was stranger than ever.

And if so, what did that make her?

The thoughts tumbled through her mind like images glimpsed on the flicking pages of a thumbed book, and during those few seconds the Alban’s gaze remained locked with hers until she looked away. It was a stare up from under his brows that Kathur hadn’t seen before and would as soon not see again, for it made her feel wary of him for the first time in their brief acquaintance.

No. It made her feel afraid.

There was another side to the coin, another reason for fright which had nothing to do with any threat Kourgath-eijo might pose. Rather the reverse. There was a warmth within her that was more than the familiar aftermath of loving. She knew that sensation well enough to recognise this one as somehow different. It went beyond the physical into something which she knew was impossible in so short a time; not love, or the convenient form of it used so often by the song- and storymakers, but far more than merely business.

She was becoming involved.

It was something Kathur hadn’t felt for any man since… Since a very long time ago. A sense of responsibility, a feeling that might in time become concern. It was something she neither understood nor wanted and, for the first time ever, the thought of disobeying her instructions crossed her mind. These instructions, from that source. In its wake came a nauseating spasm of terror, because disobedience would mean a reckoning later with Lord-Commander Voord. But if she obeyed as she had always done, if she followed her orders as she had always done…

Then she would have to meet her own eyes in the mirror forever afterwards, and admit to the guilt and the betrayal and the dishonour she would see reflected there.

She was thinking the unthinkable. And she didn’t know why.

*

Had she thought to search amid the tangle of Aldric’s discarded clothing, Kathur might have found a reason for the thoughts troubling her so much. Concealed from sight in the lining of a tunic pocket, yet close enough for her to touch had she known of its presence, was the spellstone of Echainon.

Had she known, and had she touched, she would have felt the crystal’s surface warm against her skin. Not hot, not painful, but as comforting as the sun on a summer day or the body of a lover in the night. And had she thought to listen she might have heard a melodious humming on the outer edges of awareness, a sound never caught by concentration, only by chance.

Had she known, or heard, or touched, or even looked close enough, she would have found the crystal suffused with a misty blue radiance from the hair-fine spiralling of sapphire flame deep down at its core. That above all might have answered her unspoken question as to the source of those strange thoughts, for the spellstone’s light pulsed with a rhythm Kathur would have recognised at once.

It was the beat of her own heart.

*

Two men walked through the twilight along a fogbound road.

They walked slowly, for one was no longer as strong as his burly appearance suggested, and his face wore the grey, haggard look of a man recovering from a grave illness. They walked slowly, because the other was white-bearded, old, and moved as if every one of his many years was a lead weight in the pack strapped to his drooping shoulders.

He leaned heavily on the black walking-stave in his right hand, yet also seemed to cringe away from all but the most necessary contact. It was as if the thing was hot, had burned him before and was waiting for another chance to do so. There were beads of moisture on his forehead which hadn’t condensed from the fog. Suddenly he cried out, with a note of resigned familiarity, and let the staff clatter to the ground. Both sounds were flat and dead, muted by the fog-thick air. He stared at the fallen staff with something close to loathing, but made no move to pick it up.

“Again?” There was sympathy in ar Korentin’s voice.

“Again.” Gemmel pressed his hands together and flexed their fingers, trying to soothe away the pain. “It keeps on drawing power. Never enough at once as to do me lasting harm, always with enough rest between times for me to recover. And then it happens again…!” One booted foot shifted as though he considered kicking the fallen Dragonwand, then settled again as he thought better of the idea.

“Why? What does it want with so much power?”

“Your guess, Dewan, is as good as mine. And I don’t know why or what. It no longer obeys me. You saw that on the beach in Alba.”

“Then give it what it wants. Give it more than it can handle. Let it gorge itself to death!”

“No!” Gemmel was appalled by the suggestion. “I’ve no idea what Ykraith’s capacity might be, and I’m reluctant to find out. I might not survive the experience.”

“Then…” Dewan hesitated, brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of sorcery’s alien concepts with a mind not trained to its rules of logic. “Then give the little you say it always takes, that it’s always taken despite all you do to prevent it. But this time give freely. Don’t resist.”

“An interesting proposition.”

“Try it. What have you got to lose?”

“My life, perhaps.” With an open hand Gemmel forestalled Dewan’s protest, if protest it was and not another untutored attempt to verbalise the workings of magic. “But I’ll try. Anything’s better than this. I can’t use the Dragonwand and I’m growing afraid to carry it, but I daren’t just walk away and leave it.” He stooped to recover the spell-stave, but in stooping caught an odd look of puzzlement on Dewan’s face and hesitated. “What’s the matter now?”

“A thought, no more. Shouldn’t you find an answer to what I asked? Before you offer the power it wants, learn why it wants the power.” Gemmel jerked his hand away from the Dragonwand as if it had changed to a venomous snake, and the glare he directed at ar Korentin was just as venomous.

“You contradict yourself as easily as my son!” he snapped. “Do, then don’t do. Make up your mind!” Gemmel’s reluctance wasn’t just about how much power the talisman might take, but how that power would be used. His mind’s eye could still see the summoning on Dunacre Beach as clearly as if its colossal bulk was hanging overhead right now, one whose form was not what he intended, but which fitted Ykraith’s name all too well.

It was a dragon, summoned by the Dragonwand.

Gemmel lifted the spellstave and stared at the design which ran from end to end as if seeing the serpentine inlay for the first time. Or as if gaining a new insight from its shape. Not knowing whether hope or fear was the stronger, he supported the talisman’s dark length on the palms of both his outstretched hands and shaped a spell-pattern in his mind. His power, the knowledge and skill that made him a sorcerer rather than a harper or a scholar or so many other things, was focussed by that pattern and flowed through it into the dragon-shaped coil that wrapped around Ykraith.

This time there was no pain, only warmth on his open hands like rubbing them together on a winter’s day, and a tremor in all his muscles as if he had set down a heavy weight after holding it too long. That was all. Gemmel raised his eyebrows and turned to ar Korentin with the beginnings of a smile on his face. It was a wary smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“Was I right?” Dewan asked.

“Well done, the untrained mind! Sometimes I’m too subtle for my own good. Yes. You were right. It didn’t hurt me, and it didn’t drain more than I offered even though the channelling was wide open.”

“So what use can it make of the power? Have you answered that yet?”

“I think so. Dewan, you know the name of this talisman. You know where it came from. And you know what else was there.” Ar Korentin’s gaze jerked south and west, towards the distant sea lost in the mist and the yet more distant island lost over the unseen horizon.

“Is it wakening? I remember what happened last time!”

“It’s already awake. Indeed, it’s slept only lightly since the day Aldric took this from the Cavern of Firedrakes. That young man gained a deal more than he could imagine when Ymareth—”

The spellstave began to make a droning like bees in clover, though it was a vibration more felt in the air than heard aloud, and he fell silent. Both men stared at the talisman, Dewan with awe and wonder, Gemmel with nervous anticipation. There was a soft, explosive sound like that of a great breath held in too long, and white light burst from the crystalline flame of its carven dragonhead. It hung between them like a captive star, bleaching the fog to silver and etching their shadows across it with the clarity of charcoal on new paper.

An instant later there was only afterglow. The bolt of energy had ripped through the fog with stunning speed, and fled out of sight to leave the dull day duller yet. But both had seen the direction of its flight, south and west towards the sea and that which lay beyond.

“Lord God,” breathed Dewan ar Korentin, respect and disbelief mingled with the oath.

“No,” Gemmel corrected him. “Not Lord God. Lord Dragon.”

*

The island had never been an inviting place, not even when it was lush and green with growing things. That time was long past. Now it was black and grey and desolate. What few trees remained more than a memory were charcoal stumps. All else was ash and blasted naked rock.

A thin plume of smoke drifted lazily from the island’s solitary mountain, vented in gusts like exhaled breath from the yawning crater where once its tapered peak had been. But there was no other sign of a convulsion in the bowels of the earth, no black rivers of once-molten rock, none of the great bubble-pitted cinders flung out by such activity. There was only the aftermath of heat.

And an air of expectation.

As the short evening of late autumn drew night’s cloak around it, a star brightened in the northern sky where no star should have been. As it brightened it moved, until this star that was no star swept across the heavens in a glare of light that threw hard-edged black shadows behind wave-crests and fire-scoured rocks alike. If any mariners had been insane enough to anchor in the island’s bay, they would have seen the not-star descend in a great parabola, dragging a tail of silver flame in its wake for all the world like a blazing missile shot from an impossibly huge catapult. They would have seen it plunge with unerring accuracy into the crater. And they would have heard…

Nothing.

The silence was absolute, so solid it could almost be touched, as if made of heavy fabric. In the course of that long silence the true stars began to glitter in the void, a scattering of splintered diamonds strewn broadcast on a mantle of black velvet.

Ymareth the firedrake reared from the throat of the hollow mountain with a whisper of iron scales and the single hard, bright clank of a talon striking stone. Wings blacker than the night unfurled in the trembling air, a huge, leisurely stretching which could never be indulged in the confines of the cavern far below. The firedrake’s head curved up and back on its great sinuous neck, between the canopy of the wings, and was still.

Ymareth waited for the dawn.

*

The shudder came from nowhere and from everywhere, a single jolt violent enough to bring Aldric’s teeth together with a click.

His eyes opened very wide, and had he been able to glimpse their pupils in a mirror he would have seen the drug-shrunken pinpricks dilate to huge black discs set fair to swallow all the flint-grey colour of the surrounding irises. But he didn’t need to see, for he could feel, and it was a feeling he knew already. Then it had been caused by his own nightmares, dreams strong enough to shock him from his own determined drunkenness. But this sudden surge of heat in the marrow of his bones was stronger still.

And he didn’t even know the reason why.

But one thing he did know was that despite the sweet fumes of ymeth in his lungs, despite the alcohol coursing through his blood, despite what should have been a heavy lassitude in all his muscles and was instead a tingling urgency, he was in control of his own mind again.

With that knowledge came the shameful awareness of something he had chosen to ignore, or to blame on other things. It was his own monumental stupidity. He had been duped, he had been dazzled, he had been trapped, and there had never been any excuse for it though he had always found one. His own failings were vices any man – his mind refined it – any honourable man should have ignored, like the pain of wounds or fear in battle. Ignored for the nothing more than pride and private dignity.

Aldric felt the queasiness of self-reproach bite the back of his throat like dregs of bitter wine as he looked up at the silken cord Kathur had pulled. It was a signal without doubt, but how long ago? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? No, a minute at most, for he could still remember that strange, reluctant softness stealing into the Drusalan woman’s green eyes just as she turned her face away from his. A minute? He flung himself out of the bed and scrabbled for his clothes.

Kathur rolled over to watch him. At first he thought she had been crying, but those emerald eyes were too hard to weep. Instead her face, that beautiful, imperious, wanton face, wore an expression of regret such as he had seen only once before, when he said, You should leave now, Kyrin-ain. For good or ill, I have places to go where you can’t follow.

“So you know,” she said, watching Aldric stamp into a boot and fight with its lacings.

“Yes. I do!” His last word came out on a grunt of effort. “And I should have known it long ago!” The way he moved was close to panic, only barely held in check. When part of his shirt caught on something he took no time to work it free but simply jerked with all his strength, then swore at the quick rending noise that followed. As he tucked the ripped linen into his leather riding-breeches, he turned to look at Kathur.

“When will they come for me?” It was an idle question and he hadn’t expected an answer, but he got one all the same.

“At the Hour of the Fox.”

“How fitting. Your own idea?”

“No.”

“That’s…” He converted the clumsy Drusalan timekeeping in his head. “Ten at night. Two hours from now. So how was I to be kept here? By you?” His eyes flicked once again towards the slender signal-cord, and his voice hardened. “Who did you call?”

“One of my servants.” Kathur paused, but once she had begun the weight of guilty confession drove her into saying more. “Stromin, my bodyguard. You’ve already met him...”

“Ah.” It was just an exhalation, but it came out past an icy smile which widened by a fraction as Aldric lifted Widowmaker and looped her shoulder-strap over his head. There was a minute click as he twisted the taiken’s safety-collar clear of her scabbard mouth. “Then keep him out of my way. Because I’m leaving, lady. Now.” A final glance about the room confirmed nothing was left behind except the self-respect he would take a long time to fully regain. Aldric turned to go, then glanced back. “Anyway, he’s late. When did you expect him to appear?” The bedroom door opened behind him, and above the sudden frantic alarm inside his head he heard Kathur’s response.

“Now,” she said.

Aldric didn’t marvel at that perfect cue. He convulsed sideways at right-angles to the line from his back to the doorway, and he did it with the thickness of his wolfskin vest to spare. Something plucked a puff of black fur from its right shoulder as he wrenched away from the blow, and he heard the swish of parting air as that same something swept down to smash against the floor.

It was a mace, a fist-sized array of metal flanges on a haft almost as long as his own arm, and Stromin wielded it as easily as a riding-quirt. This bludgeon would crush the steel carapace of an armoured man, and if it struck square against Aldric’s unprotected body it would crack him like an egg. At first that made no sense. Kathur had taken a deal of trouble to hold him for collection, healthy, intact and not even drugged unconscious, though that might only have been for her own entertainment. So why was this hulking servant so set on smearing him across the floor? Jealousy? Or finding his target upright with sword in hand? Never mind wondering why, he was trying to do it and that was enough.

Aldric dodged another ponderous swing which ploughed through a dressing-table, stinging him with splintered wood and the perfumed shards of cosmetic jars. Long years of training took over and his fingers closed on Widowmaker’s hilt, tugged – then faltered with just a handspan of blade clear of the scabbard.

Completing that draw would have extended into the Boar’s Strike, a movement so ingrained by constant practice it had become a reflex. Razor-edged steel would have sheared across the servant’s body anywhere from chin to waist. It would have opened him spine-deep and split him asunder in a single splattering instant before he could have dodged, or blocked, or even realised what was happening. It would have solved many problems. Aldric shook his head as if dislodging a cobweb and looked again at Kathur.

“Call him off, lady!” There was no fear in his voice, nothing prompted by cowardice, but a faint, elusive undertone might have been compassion. “Call him off or he’s dead. Do it! Ikhmur kash-ta!”

Kathur seemed not to notice his sudden command of Drusalan as she surveyed the tableau of her shattered bedroom. It was all bleak light and shadow now, the bright corridor beyond the open door a harsh contrast to the dim intimacy of the interior. One of the gilded lamps was upset, and the sweetness of its scented oil was another element of this waking nightmare. Still unseen, the Echainon stone went dull. Perhaps it was the distraction of her own damaged possessions, perhaps it was Aldric’s concern with survival rather than honour that changed how she thought of him, perhaps the stone was affected by the actions of a firedrake and a sorcerer in places far away. Once the stone’s light died it was what happened next that mattered, not why.

“Commander Voord be damned,” she said. “Kill him.”

A heartbeat’s worth of utter shock at her order slowed Aldric’s reaction, or maybe the man with the mace had been deliberately, deceptively clumsy in his earlier attacks. When the great iron cudgel lashed out this time, it was far faster than it had ever been before, and Aldric dropped on the spot.

If he had moved in any direction other than straight down the weapon would have caught and pulped him somewhere along its horizontal arc. Even then he felt a tug at his hair which wasn’t the wind of its passing but the metal haft itself. The mace-head left a long, deep gouge in the wall where he had been standing, and it would have done the same to his chest.

He came up again with Isileth Widowmaker drawn at last and lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl of almost animal intensity. That wild scramble across the floor had lifted the pelt of the black wolfskin coyac, and for just an instant its fur bristled across his shoulders as if it was part of him.

“I don’t know what you did, hlensyarl.” Kathur’s husky voice had gone shrill, and she was glaring at him with something close to hate. “I don’t know what trick you tried to play on me. But it didn’t work. Kill him, Stromin. Kill him now.”

As he poised to meet another swing of that mace Widowmaker shifted against his hands, and the movement sent a vicious idea flicking through his mind like a dead leaf driven by a gale. It would need just a snap-step right and a quick backhand cut for Kathur’s face to carry a memento of their meeting to the day she died. Aldric stamped the prospect to oblivion. It was unworthy of a kailin-eir, unworthy of a clan-lord, unworthy of a Talvalin. Unworthy of him.

And you don’t have time or room to chance it, or you would, sneered an unpleasant voice inside his head. It’s as well for her that the moon is just past new. What would you have done if it was full?

Aldric shivered. Isileth Widowmaker was almost certainly a gortaiken, a hungry sword, one that contrived to be drawn and used in situations better solved by quiet words and common sense. But this new suggestion with its hints about the moon had come from somewhere else. He could guess the source. Evthan the Hunter’s werewolf curse was laid on him for evil amusement, with his wolfskin jacket a mere hunting trophy. But he had worn it at his death, Aldric wore it even now, and sorcery could be both a spreading stain and an infection. All that flicked through his mind in a time measured by his racing pulse, so fast that the big servant Stromin hadn’t moved.

Aldric moved instead, and in a way nobody expected. From being poised for a killing cut, Widowmaker stabbed down into the wooden floor hard enough that the long blade bent like a bow and sprang back. In the same instant he jerked his taipan shortsword from its scabbard. It wasn’t aimed at Stromin’s neck or even his face but at one thick leg, just above his knee, a precise drawing cut made only by the edge without strength of arm to drive it deep. The keen blade still sliced through muscle like a carving-knife, but at the first jolt against bone Aldric whipped it clear. Isileth would have taken off the leg.

The big man’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened in a shocked, agonised yell as he fell and his mace fell clattering out of sight. It was a fierce wound, one he would remember for a long time when it ached in damp weather. But it was far away from the great artery of the inner thigh, so he would be alive to remember it and feel it ache.

Aldric watched until Stromin’s eyes rolled back in his head as consciousness left him, then flicked blood from the taipan and wiped it on a blindly seized garment. He sheathed it, wrenched Isileth Widowmaker free of the floorboards and returned the longsword to its own scabbard. There was no unexpected resistance, even though that ancient and sometimes wilful blade would make no widows tonight.

He passed one hand across the ruffled fur covering his shoulder, a gesture more like less stroking something alive than settling a disarrayed garment, and thought of how he had wanted to mark Kathur. To hurt her. It was like the memory of actions in a dream, without weight in waking life. There was a place and a time for such behaviour, but it was neither here nor now. The Deepwood of the Jevaiden and Seghar citadel under the Geruath overlords might be long ago and far away. They were neither long nor far enough. With a squirm that was almost a shudder he shrugged free of the coyac and threw it onto the bed.

“Wolf-fur for the Vixen,” he said and walked from her room without a backward glance.

Somewhere in the too-quiet house a clock chimed the triple note which marked the turning of another hour. Imperial Drusalan timepieces didn’t ring out numbers, they just drew attention to the named-hour image indicated by their single ornate pointer and Aldric didn’t bother looking. He already knew as much as any Alban ever needed about the clumsy, inexact system. But because he didn’t look, he didn’t see what hour it was. He didn’t find out how much time he had for making his escape.

Or how little.

Two hours from now, he had told Kathur. But he had slept a dreamsmoke doze with the sweet smell of ymeth in his lungs and her hands and mouth on his body, and at the instant he spoke the words it had not been two hours but much less than one. From the striking of the clock he had no time at all. Those chimes had signalled the end of the Hour of the Cat.

And the start of the Hour of the Fox.

*

Kathur had a telek spring-gun in her hands, stolen from the Alban’s gear and snatched up from a hiding-place by the bed.

She uttered no threat or warning as she levelled it at Kourgath’s back, just clenched her teeth and squeezed the trigger-bar. Nothing happened, and by the time she noticed the safety-slide and released it, he had gone. Her head drooped over the useless weapon as two tears fell onto the lustrous wood of its stock like costly jewels, and she stared at their translucence as if she had never seen such things. They weren’t shed for Kourgath and what might have been, or for Stromin bleeding on the floor. Kathur wept from rage, from frustration, and most of all from fear. The distant sound of the harbour gong echoed mournfully in her ears, a one-note song of warning, and she knew she had good cause to be afraid.

Hautheisart Voord wasn’t known for his tolerance of failure.

As if her thoughts had power to summon demons, she heard soft feet moving along the corridor. Kathur looked up, saw the flitting of shadows beyond the door and grabbed with one hand for the robe of crimson satin, wishing it was a coat of mail. It had covered her as best she could manage when the first taulath drifted like smoke into her room. In the space of a single breath another joined him, both clad from head to heel in close-fitting charcoal grey that blended with the shadows near the wall.

A hooded mask covered each man’s head, leaving only their eyes visible, cold eyes like those of night-stalking reptiles, and though they stared at her, they had no interest in the single garment that enhanced far more than it concealed. Their attention was on her right hand, gripping an Alban telek with every appearance of knowing how to use it. The tulathin exchanged significant glances and came no closer. Nor did they say anything though it was plain, despite the masks, that they hadn’t expected to find her alone. The wounded and unconscious man sprawled on the floor didn’t count.

There were more footfalls, the firm, decisive steps of one who by reason of power and authority didn’t need to move quietly. No-one spoke aloud, but each taulath shifted with disciplined precision to flank the doorway. They paused for a single beat then snapped to attention and executed the rhythmic movements of a full parade salute. The hard smack of fist on chest and thigh sounded like a premonition of Kathur’s future, and only if that future was kind.

A back-lit silhouette paused in the doorway for dramatic effect before crossing the threshold, and lamplight danced sparkling across the silvered rank-marks of a scarlet helmet as he surveyed the room. The helmet’s deep cheek-guards, nasal and lowering peak masked his features, but Kathur didn’t need to see his face to know who he was.

“Well, my dear lady,” Hautheisart Voord spoke with a deceptive softness, “where is he?” Several seconds crawled past before Kathur could swallow enough terror for her acid-soured mouth to form a reply.

“Gone,” she said. What else was there to say? “He realised he was being kept here.” Then in mitigation, “But it was only minutes ago. I held him until then.” Voord stared at her, eyes unreadable through the jagged shadows filling his helmet, and glanced at the black fur of the coyac jacket at the foot of the bed.

“ ‘The wolf in the trap is not there as a plaything’,” he quoted. “But you thought you would be clever. Or were you thinking something else?” Another dreadful silence. Then he turned, ignoring her. “Tagen, Garet, is the perimeter secured?”

“Yes, sir!” The response was simultaneous, like automata.

“Then go. Both of you. Trawl the nets and bring any catch to Teynaur. Sail at dawn whether I’m there or not. Understood?”

“Sir!” Kathur watched their departure with sick despair. The troopers were Voord’s honour guard and accompanied him everywhere. They were executors of his will and their dismissal was an insult like a slap in the face. She was no threat. Nobody.

Nothing.

*

The street was dark and silent, swaddled by layers of soft fog as grey as a dove’s wing. A figure emerged from the shadows at the far side and walked with quiet purpose towards the shuttered portico of Kathur’s house, culmination and goal of a long, weary quest. The figure, was cloaked and hooded, nameless, faceless and sexless. But there was the suggestion of a sword’s outline beneath the folds of that heavy cloak, and a faint scrape of metal that was the sound of armour.

The silent stillness shattered like glass as hooves beat quick and hard on stone, and a man on horseback erupted from the stable entry near the house. Before the hooded figure could do anything except flatten for safety against the nearest wall, the black horse’s rider had slewed his mount around with a metallic slither as its shoes all but lost their grip on the fog-slick cobblestones. Then man and horse were past and away in a swirl of sound and speed.

The figure by the wall straightened rumpled garments and still more rumpled dignity, stared for a few seconds in the horseman’s wake, then studied the blank house-front as if considering whether to become embroiled in whatever was going on there. When a fold of the cloak flicked aside, sword and armour became more than mere suggestion.

Two grey-clad men flitted down from neighbouring rooftops and paused for an instant before entering through a front door left unlocked for just that purpose. Unseen in the fog-dense shadows, the cloaked intruder watched with fascination but didn’t interfere.

Especially when a third man, helmeted and clad in full splint-mail, stalked with all the arrogance of rank and privilege towards and inside the house.

*

“Give me that.” Voord’s right hand, gloved with sable leather and red-enamelled steel, came out with fingers open and palm uppermost. He acted as if the possibility she might refuse didn’t even deserve consideration.

A consideration of her own crossed Kathur’s mind with the speed and brilliance of a lightning-flash. Not refuse but use, now, without warning. Voord wouldn’t expect it, and even as the dart struck him down he wouldn’t believe it. The telek was loaded and cocked, its safety mechanism disengaged, it would shoot on one pressure and there was no need to aim. Yet the thought of exerting that pressure turned her sick. Kathur could no more kill a human being, even one as inhuman as Voord, than she could turn the weapon on herself for all that it might be preferable to his company.

Between one breath and the next her chance of success passed out of reach, and only compliance remained. Kathur’s thumb secured the safety-slide, then she reversed the telek and laid it into the hautheisart’s waiting grasp. His fingers closed, and with the weapon now pointing at her Kathur half-expected to feel a dart hit home even before she let it go. But there was no dart. Instead Voord hefted the telek’s weight, and its carved stock settled into his hand like a falcon onto a familiar wrist. It fitted well, shaped for a right-handed grip, and he looked at it with something as close to admiration as any Imperial officer would grant to a thing of Alban origin.

“Very fine.” He spoke mostly to himself. “Yes. Very fine indeed. But then the Albans are always good at things to kill each other.” His eyes met Kathur’s and locked with them, like a snake with a sparrow or a weasel with a mouse, and though there was a smile on his lips it didn’t warm those eyes at all. “Tell me – does it work?”

Now the dart… Kathur’s body tensed, anticipating the impact, and her eyes snapped shut in a useless reflex that was no defence against the death she faced. When nothing happened their painted lids fluttered open again. She was terrified in case any movement at all would invite the response she dreaded, but more terrified to stay in the dark.

“I said, does it work?”

“I…”

“Does it work?” Her gaze dared to tear away from the weapon’s shrouded muzzle, but Voord was implacable. Whatever answer she gave would be the wrong one. “Does it work?”

“Light of Heaven save me, I don’t know. I don’t know!” Voord’s teeth showed in a shark’s smile.

“Then let’s find—” A soft sound broke his words off short and he snapped around with the telek raised and ready. Then he relaxed. “Ah. You.”

Kathur’s servant tried to lean his weight on one elbow, unable to take his other hand from the cut Aldric’s taipan had made in his thigh. No matter how tightly those fingers clamped onto his own flesh, blood still seeped through them. He stared at the two by the bed, seeing them through a haze of pain, unaware of what was happening, conscious only of defeat.

“I f-failed you, my lady,” he managed to say. “F-forgive me…”

“Failed you?” Commander Voord’s head came round with the slow deliberation of a weapon-turret on a battleram. “What was he meant to do?”

Kathur made no response by word or gesture. She already knew too well how Voord’s mind worked. And because she knew, a burst of crazy courage sent her leaning forward to clutch the levelled telek and drag it down. The hautheisart stared at her hand as if it was some sort of noxious vermin.

“No!” Her voice was soft, vehement, pleading. “Don’t. Even he saw no need—”

“He? The Alban? He saw no need to what?”

“To kill. Not even in the heat of a fight. Because it wasn’t necessary. And it still isn’t.”

Voord’s thin lips moved, stretching to a brief smile as he blinked, lazily, like a cat, and something in that feline blink reminded Kathur for just an instant of Kourgath who had shared her bed.

“No need? No need for a man who can hide behind his code of honour. Not when the proper words can gift-wrap any excuse. Oh yes. It’s easy then, with a dainty black knife to escape from failure and no-one thinking worse of you for using it. Well, I earned my honour, I wasn’t born to it, and I must carry my failures as I carry success. As I carry these.”

His left hand reached up to touch the rank-marks on his helmet and on the high-collared black robe over his red armour, and Kathur stared. Not at the hautheisart’s double bar-and-diamond worked in silver on black velvet collar tabs and scarlet steel, nor at the insignia beside it. The thunderbolt of the Secret Police frightened the ignorant, yet it was still just the way in which Voord served the Empire. As did she.

No, this time she stared at his hand.

When she had last seen it, when it had last touched her, that hand had been slender and graceful like the hand of a musician, its contact soft as a butterfly’s caress. Now it was twisted and hooked like part of a military machine, a claw of distorted bone and sinew hidden by a leather glove. It was a mutilation of the kind that made people wince and thank whatever powers they worshipped that it had happened to someone else.

“Yes, dear Vixen. I wear my honour for all to see, whether I wish to or not.” The frightful talon lowered from her line of sight, but its presence beneath the concealing glove remained in her mind and made her skin crawl. Voord watched it crawl. “I suffered this, my dear, and so earned my present rank. Now I am Hautheisart Kagh’Ernvakh, responsible for security, spying, rebellion, and the enforcement of—” a jerk of his wrist wrenched the telek from Kathur’s grip, “—discipline.”

She flinched at the flat, vicious whack of the weapon’s discharge and shut her eyes again, but she couldn’t shut her ears to a sound like a melon hit by a mallet, or a hollow thump as her servant Stromin’s head slammed against the floor as if kicked there. Nor could she shut her mind’s eye to the image seared into it as if by red-hot irons, an image she could still see now. An image she would always see. The instant of a man’s death.

He lay on his back, one hand thrown wide and the other still trying to staunch the wound in his leg, but there would be no staunching of this new wound. Blood and slime spattered his cheek and forehead, his left eye-socket was a pit of oozing mush and a triangular chunk of his skull lay feet from where the telek dart had punched it from the back of his head.

“So it does work.” Voord looked back at Kathur as if analysing her reaction, then at the telek, and it was as if some idea was conceived and concealed in the same blink of an eye. “It works very well indeed. And so do you, Kathur. Most of the time. Like another woman I once knew. But Sedna failed me. As you failed, by disobeying my direct command. You must remember in future. Punishment will aid your memory.” He made the weapon safe and laid it aside, then removed his helmet and dropped it to the floor. Sweat darkened his fair hair and plastered it flat against his skull.

“The usual sentence is impalement. Yet it could be said in your favour that you tried. You were ordered to keep him drugged and bound, and you didn’t obey those orders. But you still succeeded until… What was your claim? ‘I had him until minutes ago’? And how many times did you have him before that, eh? If you plead for clemency, I might commute the sentence. Should I consider such a plea?” Kathur made no sound other than a shuddering intake of breath, but Voord nodded. “Very well. The plea is considered, and accepted.” His hand stroked along her face and down the rigid muscles of her neck.

The left hand…

Kathur cringed but didn’t dare let her revulsion show, even when that dreadful claw settled on her shoulder like a gross spider and tugged the heavy satin of her robe aside. The garment fell free of its own weight and whispered down to puddle in crimson folds about her ankles. Even then she didn’t cover her nakedness but stood, a condemned prisoner facing the block, with arms hanging at her sides and eyes lowered in a shame she had never felt with Kourgath. She heard the slow creak of leather as that hand’s remaining muscles forced Voord’s fingers open, and waited for the degradation of its touch.

There was no such touch. Instead the crooked fingers clutched the back of her head, tangling in the locks of auburn hair, tilting her face up so he could lean forward to kiss her on the lips. A faint scent of perfume such as courtiers used hung about him, and a recent chewing of lancemint leaves sweetened his breath. Other than that, he smelt fresh, like wind-dried laundry, and that was worst of all.

If his body stank or he had foul breath, Kathur could have prepared herself better. She had seduced enough men for Kagh’ Ernvakh to learn that simple grubby officers usually had simple straightforward vices, while it was the well-scrubbed politicians and the holy men who liked their perversions filthy and obscene. The contrast always shocked her, just as Voord shocked her. He was always clean, and his mind was vile.

The kiss grew more intense, more passionate, and almost by reflex she responded with a pressure of her tongue against his lips. Then his teeth closed. She felt the stab of pain, and tasted blood, and realised that even though he had acknowledged her plea she would suffer punishment after all.

Kathur wrenched away, but Voord’s taloned hand remained locked in her hair and she jolted to a halt at the length of his arm. He grinned at her with streaks of dark red on the white of his so-clean teeth, and the glitter in his eyes was like nothing she had seen on any man’s face in all her wide experience.

“Surely you expected this, dear Vixen? Surely you looked forward to it as much as last time?” He unfastened his clothing as he spoke, not all, just enough. “And impalement is a fitting penalty.” Voord flung her onto the bed and pinned her with one hand then a weight of warm flesh and icy armour. “You might even enjoy it. And even if you don’t,” Voord plunged like a man riding an unruly horse, “I will!”

*

The noises they made reached the street outside, where a figure wrapped in a hood and cloak shivered in sympathy. Three men had gone into the house. Only two had come out of it. Nothing could happen until the third was also gone, even if awaiting his departure took this whole foggy night. From the sound of things, it might.

*

Why only one and not both? Aldric glanced at the stock of his remaining telek then the saddle-holster where the other had been. There was no sensible answer to his unvoiced question, and he set the matter aside once again. Reining Lyard to a standstill, he stood in his stirrups to glance back the way he had come, but could see nothing except the fog that darkened into blackness and night.

Yet he was certain someone was watching him.

It was gloomier here than he had expected. An unlit city could be as dark as any place not buried beneath the earth, but in normal circumstances Imperial cities weren’t unlit. However at a recent stage in Tuenafen’s past, some group had decided it would help their cause to smash nearly all the doorway lanterns in the seaport’s Old Quarter. Nearly all? thought Aldric. More likely they had destroyed the lot, and what few he saw now were the replacements. There wouldn’t have been many to begin with, since most houses in this part of the city were eighty years behind such modern affectations. Above his head the upper stories of both sides of the street leaned together like conspirators, enough that in places one householder could lean out and rap his opposite neighbour’s window. Even at midday they would block out most of the light, and after this foggy nightfall the effect was stifling and claustrophobic.

Lyard shifted beneath him. The big horse was unsettled too, because of the slick pavement with its treacherous film of condensation, or because of his rider’s mood, or simply because he too disliked the fog and dark and oppressive stillness. The courser’s hooves clanked loudly, too loudly, as Aldric moved into the false comfort of lamplight muted by the watery yellow halo which surrounded it. He wondered if he could have spared the extra few minutes needed to load the pack-horse with his gear. But the arguments then and now lacked the weight of conviction. Bits of equipment and pieces of armour, even such armour as Gemmel had given him, were all things he could replace. Time lost was time gone forever, time which might well make the difference between…

Between what and what? There was more than enough wasted time in the way he had spent part of today, enjoyable though it had been. His wary gaze flicked from side to side, taking in what meagre detail he could see through night and fog. Potential ambush points, escape routes… Escape routes! He smiled crookedly at the idea, none too sure of even how to get back to Kathur’s house, and freed Widowmaker from where she rode across his back. Once the taiken’s scabbard was hooked to his weapon-belt, he gathered up the reins again and kneed Lyard forward.

A nearby clock ground into life and began striking the hour. It was many, many minutes late, though Aldric was in position to notice, not after the sudden noise shocked his already nervous mount and sent the big horse skittering sideways towards the ragged granite facing of a wall. He saw the stonework loom out of the mist and kicked his nearside foot out of its stirrup-iron, getting it up across his saddlebow before foot and leg were crushed, then twitched on snaffled reins to get the warhorse back under control before his flank ground into the abrasive surface. The brief pressure of even that light bit on his velvet mouth stopped Lyard at once. Aldric had no need for the vicious metal used to dominate their steeds by self-styled horsemen who preferred brute force to schooling.

As he leaned forward to gentle the Andarran, coaxing calm back into himself as much as the horse, he knew it would take just one more fright like that to send him off on any other route but this. Yet retracing his steps, necessary if he was to find the last junction again, would bring him back to a high-walled courtyard. And that seemed, as it had never seemed before, an ideal place to set a trap.

But it wasn’t the only ideal place in Tuenafen.

As if summoned by the striking clock and the clattering of Lyard’s hooves, boots slapped the wet paving-stones behind him. Many boots, worn by men closing on him fast. A voice shouted in Low Drusalan, its words an all-embracing order to stop, dismount, drop weapons and surrender. They were enough to send Aldric’s heel jabbing at Lyard’s flank, even with the other still hooked around the pommel so he rode side-saddle with a seat ill-suited for it. The horse responded like a clap of hands, snapping from immobility to surging acceleration towards the shelter of the nearby alley. And that, not the courtyard, was where a rope had been stretched taut across the entrance. It was at a height calculated with enough precision that it barely tickled Lyard’s laid-back ears as they went underneath.

But it caught Aldric square in the chest and pitched him to the wet ground, with shrill stars flaring through the inside of his skull and not a breath left in his lungs. A weighted net whirled down towards him, opening black against the grey of the foggy night like a predatory spiderweb before its mesh enveloped him in clinging folds.

The rough weave of the net’s cords was harsh against his face, but it was nothing like as harsh as the rage burning through him. Rage at whoever had set this up, rage at the delay for which he alone was to blame, rage at being brought to this, floundering like a landed fish in a Tuenafen street. It was a fury whose heat wanted quenching in shed blood. With Isileth drawn he might have cut the net, might have butchered the men who emerged from the shadowed fog, might even have escaped…

But the scabbarded sword was an ache against his side where he had landed on the unyielding steel of her hilt, and though the pain told him where it was, he couldn’t get a hand to it. When the net’s drawline was hauled in and its mesh tightened around him, he couldn’t even move enough to ease the discomfort.

He fought uselessly against the heavy hands laid on his arms and legs, then stopped fighting as they wrapped him in what felt like an excessive quantity of rope. To Aldric’s dazed mind, coherent thought struggling for precedence over the swirling sparks of mild concussion, all this care and consideration seemed too elaborate. An arrow from the darkness would have been far more efficient. Then as his wits trickled back and things fell into place, fear took over from confusion. He should have been held in Kathur’s embrace until collected, and though Stromin’s attempt to kill him wasn’t part of the pattern, he was still captured almost unhurt.

Who wanted him? And why did they want him undamaged? That was the most unnerving question, because it supplied its own answer. The surrounding men wore grey hoods and masks like taulath mercenary assassins, and Aldric knew enough people – or their friends and surviving relatives – who would pay what tulathin cost just to have him taken alive so they could make his death a long-protracted pleasure.

Despite the chill of the night a drop of sweat trickled down his face. They had taken all his weapons by now, including three hidden daggers not hidden well enough or known about in advance. They had even found the Echainon spellstone, which no more resembled a weapon than his crest-collar, and everything from the ring on his finger to the scar on his cheek was compared against a written list examined by the thin light of a shuttered lantern. It all happened without a surplus word or gesture, although one man cuffed him across the face when he tried to bite. They were petty gestures on both sides, and even the backhand slap was no reassurance. It was far too gentle.

“He’ll do. Take him.”

One of them pulled out a hood for him to wear, but this was no mere blindfold. It stank of soporific drugs. Aldric had grown wearily accustomed to the way such herbs and chemicals were so casually employed in the Drusalan Empire, as if those who might have been enchanters had instead become apothecaries and chemists, juggling not power but poisons. As the aromatic reek flooded his nostrils, his mind went back to the last time he had smelt such a smell.

It was five years ago, and he was armoured to the neck. Heaven and the Light of Heaven knew where his helmet was. He lay flat on his back as he lay now. Instead of stone pavement beneath him there was grass. Instead of tulathin gazing down at him he saw his brother Joren, shocked and concerned. The wreckage of an assault-course jump was scattered a little distance beyond. Aldric’s horse was grazing near the pieces.

And there was pain, just like now, a grinding, gnawing pain which worsened when he moved. Aldric tried to lift his head, but it seemed as if a great weight strapped to his brow was pulling him back and down. Someone – was it Joren? – leaned over him and pressed darkness against his eyes.

“I fell off, Joren. Not the horse. Not thrown. My fault. I fell. And I think. I broke my arm.” The words were clear enough in his memory, but they came out in a drowsy mumble as the drug took effect.

After that, he said and saw and knew no more.

CHAPTER FIVE

Kathur lay where Voord had flung her when he finished after slimy pain-wracked hours. She sprawled across her bed, a bed she would hack apart with her own hands rather than leave it and its memories under her roof for one more day. And she wept.

Kathur’s tears weren’t those of shame, even though she was experiencing it for the first time in five years as a first-rank courtesan. Born of the harsh sobs which racked her, they held more frustrated rage than anything else. Though she had been terrorised, agonised and subjected to a cynical and systematic degradation, there was no way in the world she could gain requital for it. The Drusalan woman dabbed a wincing hand at her mouth for perhaps the hundredth time since Voord’s departure. It had been full-lipped and the colour of ripe cherries. Now it was puffed and split and bruised plum-purple.

There was a pallid light of oncoming dawn beyond the shuttered windows. Soon the house-servants would appear, with their mask-like faces showing nothing of thoughts or disapprovals within, and their quick, capable hands which would tidy the aftermath of the night with no reaction to what they might touch. Just as they had done so many times before.

Except that now wasn’t like all those other times.

None of those other times had ever left her feeling as she felt now. None of them had left a dead man stiff and cold on the floor at the foot of her bed. None of them had left the contents of a shattered skull soaking into the rugs. None of them had left the taint of death hanging on the air. Kathur tried to close her nostrils to the stink and her mind to its source, rolling onto her side to stare at the blankness of the wall beside the bed. She would willingly have stared at anything so long as it wasn’t the corpse with its smashed half-expression of surprise, or the door which still gaped wide like the corpse’s slack-jawed mouth, or even at the room where her snug and sybaritic world had been torn asunder.

As she lay there trembling, skin slick with the icy sweat of nausea, her hearing seemed to grow uncannily acute and she could hear minute noises with utmost clarity. Noises distant, like the tick of a bird’s claws and the rustle of its feathers as it perched to preen on the sill beyond the window. Noises close, like her heartbeat and breathing, and the whispering of silk disturbed by the rise and fall of her own ribcage.

And noises impossibly near, like the soft movement behind her back.

Kathur’s heavy eyelids snapped open, her eyes going wide in sockets that no longer seemed deep enough to contain them, like emeralds poorly set into a mask of carven ivory. It was no sound made by a servant for they were quiet, but this was stealthy. Hope and horror fought for precedence in the half-dozen slams of her racing heart. Because it might be Kourgath. Or it might be Voord again.

Her head jerked up and around to look over her shoulder, but flinched backwards in the self-same movement with a shrill small mew of terror. The glittering point of a sword hung unmoving on the air less than a handspan from the fragile bubble of her left eye, and it was many beats of her racing heart before her fearful gaze shifted from the weapon’s point to the person holding it.

They were neither Voord nor Kourgath after all.

This intruder wore a long riding-cloak whose hood was so deep and pulled so far forward that it resembled the cowl of a holy man. All that showed of the face within the hood was an inch or two of smooth chin, and it was impossible for even someone as experienced as Kathur’s to read anything from that. But the thrusting-sword drew back a considerate distance and swung to one side. A dry metallic scraping accompanied the small movement, and that told her something more. Whoever and whatever this person was, they wore armour.

“No noise.”

The figure’s free hand moved across the hood’s opening in a gesture Kathur understood at once, a quick, neat blending of the sign for silence and the threat of throat-cutting. She swallowed and nodded hasty agreement while trying to fit a nervous smile onto a face which didn’t want to carry it. Her own throat, though sore from screaming and other things, was still intact. She wanted to keep it that way.

“And no movement.”

Kathur felt like a mouse beneath the flight path of a kestrel, with movement the last thing in her mind. As she lay still her anonymous visitor stalked about the room, moving with all the lethal grace of a hunting cat despite the voluminous folds of the oversized cloak. It would take little provocation for this individual to react with a burst of killing violence, for whatever else the cloak concealed it made a poor job of hiding tension, apprehension and rising irritation. The dead man on the floor got just a cursory glance, but the spent telek dart buried for half its length in a wooden panel attracted far more attention.

“So.” The blank blackness of the hood studied distance and trajectory, drawing conclusions from them all. “So, and so, and so… Did the Alban do this?” The question snapped out harsh and clear after the muted introspective muttering of voiced thought, and again Kathur jumped. At first she didn’t answer, and earned a volley of angry words in an unknown language.

“Talk to me, damn you!” The voice returned to Jouvaine again, more heavily accented than before and using the simplest form to make each word’s meaning clear. “Did the Alban do this? And if he did, why?”

Whatever patience had once been in that voice was eroding fast, and as the cloaked figure took two long steps forward it led with the levelled sword. Now not only accent but tone and even pitch were impossible to ignore. There was something wrong about all three, something very wrong indeed, but still Kathur couldn’t place what instinct said was obvious.

“Why, and when, and where is he? What’s been going on here?” The hood was pushed back then shaken clear of its wearer’s head, and Kathur realised at last why this man’s voice sounded wrong.

From another woman, it sounded right.

*

“I can’t help but think,” muttered Gemmel half to himself, “that I may have caused last night’s fog.”

“You?” Dewan ar Korentin flexed the big muscles of his shoulders and back in a huge yawn-and-stretch. Gemmel had been reluctant to enter a tavern and Dewan had given way to the old man’s doubts, instead spending the chilly night in a farmer’s hay-barn. Now there were kinks in the Vreijek’s spine which might be there forever. He was getting too old for this, too old and too soft. Like it or not, wizard’s objections or not, tonight they would sleep in beds like human beings, not rats in a rick. “Why say so? And why worry? It’s gone.”

“I say so because I believe so,” said Gemmel, “and I worry for the same reason. You saw what happened last time I used this thing.” Dewan looked at him, then at the Dragonwand, and grunted expressively. He remembered only a part of the incident on the beach, and Gemmel had been slow about telling him the rest. Once heard Dewan understood why, and had no wish to hear it again. He could sleep better without more details of his own brief death.

“I wonder what else you might believe, old man. And what else might happen because of it.”

“That, friend Dewan, is something we may find out before much longer.”

The morning bloomed around them like a flower. Dewan had been right: the fog was gone, leaving in its wake a cloudless, chilly blue sky which toned through pastel shades of rose and saffron towards where the sun rose on their landward side beyond a screen of tree-clad hills. They were still very close to the sea, moving northeast towards Tuenafen Port on the Inner Coast-Road. The Outer Coast-Road, though less busy, ran a hazardous course along the limestone cliffs which marked the Empire’s western boundary, and in rough weather was prone to lose stretches of itself into the hungry sea.

“Look there!” Ar Korentin pointed with the full length of his right arm towards the ocean and the black speck scudding across its beaten-metal surface. “Warship,” he pronounced with such authority that Gemmel didn’t argue, though he drew a long-glass from his satchel and studied the distant speck before agreement.

“As you say, a warship. And a big one. Bigger than I’ve ever seen.” He passed over the long-glass. “What is it?”

Dewan squinted, then held his breath. The wizard’s glass was more powerful than any he had used before, and just the beat of his own pulse was enough to send the magnified image dancing wildly. He took a couple of seconds to fix the vessel in its field of view, and a few more to get the delicate focus right. Then he said something malevolent in his own language which provoked a raised eyebrow from Gemmel and suggested a certain familiarity with Vreijek obscenities.

“Something best not done in public, please,” he said. “Apart from that, what is it?”

“A battleram.” Dewan’s ‘of course’ was unspoken but there all the same. “I should have guessed. Anything else would be too small to notice at… A mile and a half?”

“Nearer two. Out of Tuenafen?”

“Yes. There isn’t another port on this stretch of coast that can take battlerams, unless they’ve built one in the past few years and kept it secret. Which,” he slid the long-glass shut and handed it back, “I very much doubt.” Then he stared at Gemmel, guessing they shared the same thought.

“Aldric.” Gemmel said it first.

“We’re too late.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether he’s aboard that ship and if he is, on who put him there. And on its destination.”

“You know more about this business than you’ve let slip before, don’t you?” Dewan made the accusation deliberately and watching the sorcerer’s reaction.

“More, but not enough. King Rynert is good at keeping secrets.” Gemmel said nothing more for a while as he watched the distant battleram dwindle beyond sight, thinking unguessable thoughts about kings, and conspiracies, and other matters that were of importance only to himself. Then he glanced at the sky. The sun was well up now, though still concealed by the wooded high ground, and its glow was already giving a hint of warmth to the late autumn morning.

“It’s going to be a good day,” he said at last, unslinging his satchel and taking a pack of biscuit and dried meat from it. “Breakfast?”

“Thanks.” Dewan took a helping of smoked beef that might have been the leather offcuts from a saddler’s workbench, and twice-baked slices of wheaten bread which looked like slabs of treetrunk. The food required as much effort to eat as if they had really been what they merely resembled, and breakfast was an exercise in chewing rather than a meal. “By the way,” the Vreijek said, disposing of his first mouthful and washing it down with a swallow of black, bitter beer, “I’d sooner you said nothing more about the weather.”

“Because it might be unlucky?” Gemmel squashed the beginnings of a smile. “I hadn’t thought superstition would be one of your vices.”

“Call it caution. Since I met you I’ve grown very… Very wary of who says what, until I’m certain of it. The Valhollans have a proverb about that. ‘Don’t praise the dawn until sunset, don’t praise the ale till you’ve drunk it, don’t praise a maid till you wed her, don’t praise a wife till you bed her—’ ”

“I feel like praising the ale, so pass it over.” Gemmel drank and made a face. “Not much praise here. This Hertan brew doesn’t travel well. Yes, I know the proverb you mean, and it goes on and on rather. Why that in particular? You’re not one for quoting things.” He glanced at the Vreijek. “Especially words from Valhol. What made you think of it?”

“Just a thought. An idle notion.”

Gemmel looked at him, and drank more beer, and said nothing at all.

*

When they stopped again the day hung on the cusp of noon, and Dewan surveyed a scene he hadn’t expected. For the past hour he had been talking up the tavern where they planned to rent horses and stop for a midday meal. It was no longer there. Parts of its structure remained, but most of those were blackened charcoal and the rest were shanty constructions of raw timber and thatch. Everything else was gone.

“So much for lunch,” said Gemmel. “I still have some beef and biscuit if you want it.” He didn’t even feign enthusiasm at the prospect. Dewan looked at the mess with a mixture of annoyance and regret, then stalked across the charred ground to ask someone what had happened. He found out more than he had been expecting, and knew enough to make educated guesses when blank spaces in the second-hand story gaped too wide.

“Their description was close enough. Aldric was here; he was injured a little when he rescued horses from the fire, and went off with a woman who was caring for him. It all sounds staged, and I think this place was torched to move its residents out. Look at the damage: bedrooms gone, stables gone, taproom and kitchen almost intact, but no-one seriously hurt. They wanted whoever stayed here to go elsewhere, and the closest alternative is Tuenafen. So we’re going there after all.”

Gemmel had just taken a mouthful of pork stew spiced with cinnamon, cloves and garlic – the tavern was making a determined effort to get back on its feet and its regular patrons were loyally undeterred by the state of the place as long as the kitchen was working again – but Dewan’s comment leached all the flavour from it.

“Who are ‘They’?” he said.

“Kagh’Ernvakh.” Dewan broke bread into his own portion, Vreijek-style, and sank a chunk or two with his spoon then tapped for emphasis on the edge of the bowl. “I can’t think who else would have authority for arson.”

“Kagh’ Ernvakh?” Gemmel repeated the Drusalan words. “The Honourable Guard. The Guardians of Honour. Names like that make me uneasy, Dewan, because the contents seldom match the label. What are they?”

“The Imperial secret police. Prokrator Bruda may be their commander, but my informants tell me his subordinates have been showing unhealthy interest in his Alban connections. I warned Rynert about it – he paid no heed – and they may have learned something about Aldric as well. Alba has spies in the Empire, and the Drusalans return the favour. If someone in Tuenafen can be persuaded to tell me about…” His voice trailed off as Gemmel looked down at his food then pushed it away. “Don’t lose your appetite, old man. Persuasion covers more than you think: bribery, coercion, blackmail, even the calling in of old favours. I don’t want to hurt anyone, any more than you do.” Dewan lifted another chunk of bread, stared at it thoughtfully, then ripped it across and across. “But if I have to, then—”

“You will.”

“This is a rough game, without rules. Yes. I will.”

Gemmel wondered how sincere the threat might be. Dewan wasn’t an Alban and paid no heed to their code of honour, but recent events suggested King Rynert of Alba didn’t either. The wizard’s mind was more and more concerned with how his own honour might be weighed in the balance and found wanting. If only it was possible to turn back time and undo past events… For the briefest instant he thought about the great hold beneath Meneth Taran, and the things stored there, then dismissed the idea. That way was even more disreputable than trying by his own unaided efforts to recover what had been lost.

“So what’s going on, eldheisart?” he asked, and his use of Dewan’s old military rank was no accident. The Vreijek was – or seemed – unruffled by it.

“Someone wants Aldric Talvalin and will pay a large amount of money for the privilege. Witness the battleram we both suspect has him aboard. Or they have authority to use a Fleet warship, the same authority that let them burn this place. I don’t know which worries me the most.” He drank more wine to flavour his mouth and wash away the sour dryness of failure. “And why would they want him? I should have asked Rynert that much at least.”

“What a waste of breath that would have been!” snapped Gemmel. “He tried to have us both killed, and being nosy might have made him do it sooner.”

“Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. At least Aldric’s still alive.”

“How many days ago did all this happen?”

“Two, no, it would be three now.” Dewan spent a few silent moments finishing his stew, and a quizzical expression crossed his face as he swallowed the last mouthful. “Would Marek Endain know anything about it?”

“Marek has his own troubles.” It had been Gemmel’s idea to send the Cernuan demon-queller after Aldric and Dewan had reluctantly agreed, even though it seemed more risky than useful. Marek’s last report had been a garbled thing, full of wild surmise, ending with information that he was now councillor to the new Overlord of Seghar. Gemmel had found it amusing. The demon queller was only a professional acquaintance, a sharer of scholarly interests, and the thought of his rotund figure as the power behind any throne, no matter how small, still provoked a thin smile.

Dewan shrugged and drained his winecup, throwing back his head to let the last fragrant drops flow into his mouth. Then he choked and dropped the cup. Its thousand-sharded smash on the table right in front of him snapped Gemmel from his introspection and he glanced at the Vreijek with sudden concern. The big man’s head was still tilted back, mouth hanging open, stained to the chin with a dribble of red wine which had missed its proper destination. Yet there were none of the signs Gemmel had feared, no shock of pain, no clutching at the arm or chest. The wizard stared skyward in his turn – and froze while he remembered reading how…

…Long, long ago the firedrakes flew,

And flaming flickered in the sunlit sky.

But firedrakes fly no more within the sight of men…

Until now. The sky was a pale late-autumn blue, unblemished by any cloud whether black or white or grey. But a single wisp of white ran across it, fine as a hair and so straight that it could have been a seam across the vault of Heaven. At its uttermost tip, like the perfect barb of a perfect spear, was a minute black filament of darkness that changed from cruciform to a mere dark scratch and back again with the rhythmic beating of great wings. No one else had seen it. No one else could have known what it was, except for Gemmel and Dewan. And both of them could name it.

Ymareth had left the Cavern of Firedrakes.

“Splendour of God,” breathed Dewan ar Korentin, and there was much more than just an oath in his reverent voice. He was as awestruck as Gemmel had been the first time, years ago, lives ago. As anyone would be, if they possessed an ounce of imagination or an ounce of romance in their soul. Any man, any woman, any child would want to see this wonder above all wonders of the world, a creature from the legendry of many peoples, alive and magnificent in clear cold air, glinting dark and glorious against a sky scored by the vapour-trail of heat from its own mouth.

Twenty thousand vertical feet separated it from its stunned audience of two, details lost in a haze of distance and the glare of the noonday sun, but Gemmel didn’t subject it to the indignity of close examination through his long-glass. It was enough to know the firedrake was scything northward on the track of the battleram they had seen that morning, sliding out from Tuenafen on the wings of urgency across a sea of hammered steel. Now darker wings were driving in its wake.

“Kamis!” bellowed Dewan, “Innkeeper! Bring us the best wine you’ve got left, and drinking vessels worthy of it!” The man had, and brought them out: tall, slender goblets made of crystal and burnished silver, stemmed to stand a foot above the table’s surface. The wine was golden Hauverne, matherneil, bottled in green glass with a wax-sealed stopper that might take lengthy seconds to remove, but Dewan struck the bottle against the table’s edge with a wrist-snap that cracked seal, stopper and bottleneck clean off. He countered his soldierly impatience with a flourish worthy of a courtier as he filled first Gemmel’s glass and then his own with the rich rare vintage. As he lifted the goblet his grin, all white teeth and curling moustache, held such pure, happy mischief that it stripped ten years from his weathered face.

“Drink, purcanyath sorcerer. To Aldric. And to aid unsuspected by all!”

*

Aldric’s eyes opened sluggishly, then squeezed shut again. There was a throbbing in and behind them, and he knew from bitter experience that if too much light startled that throbbing he would be very, very sick. His mouth and nostrils were tainted by an acrid, vinegary sensation, the taste and smell of whatever had put him to sleep. He had, he concluded with a spasm of exasperation, spent the greater part of the past few days either drunk or drugged or knocked unconscious.

And that was undignified.

Aldric Talvalin wasn’t a religious man, even less so than most Albans, who preferred not to bother their gods overmuch in case those gods took notice. He had stopped believing in the so-called benevolence of Heaven on the day his father died, and since that day he had refused to cross the threshold of any holy house. But there were times, and this was one of them, when he had the distinct feeling that some Power beyond his understanding was trying to make a point.

Just now the world seemed to be moving in a dozen directions at once. Then things fell more or less into focus, and sounds which had meant nothing just seconds ago made sense at last. The world – his part of it at least – was moving. Reflected light slid to and fro across a ceiling far closer than it had any right to be, and could hear a constant liquid rushing, blended with the multiple notes of half-a-hundred different creaks from wood and cordage. As the narcotic clouds cleared from his addled brain he realised he was at sea in more ways than one.

Someone at the back of his mind broke into ironic applause, but it was true enough. He was aboard a ship, one not only under way but moving fast, and the only vessel he knew capable of such speed was one of the Imperial battlerams from Tuenafen harbour. The exhalation of breath which hissed out between his teeth was also a sigh of resigned defeat. So they had him after all, whoever they were. Kathur had won. Were the energetic pleasures of her company worth this, and what would follow? Aldric doubted it.

There was no need to move or even look around to know he was unarmed. That memory was clear enough despite the soporific fog. Careful, over-knowledgeable hands had stripped off every blade he carried, and even removed the belts and laces from his clothing in case he might turn them into nooses or garrottes. It wasn’t clear how they feared he would use such makeshift weapons. If a lengthy and unpleasant road to death awaited him then departure on his own terms, by tsepanak’ulleth or less formal means, was best sought without delay, so they would have good reason to worry that a kailin-eir of traditional views might cheat them.

But he was not, and he would not.

Aldric stared at the ceiling and admitted a fact he had known this long, long time: he would sooner live than die. No matter that it might be true of most men, it wasn’t true of high-clan Albans, the cseirin-born like himself. And yet unlike himself. ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope,’ Gemmel Errekren had told him once, and Aldric had snorted in derision, a mask covering how he really felt. He was all too aware that following the Honour Code as he claimed to do would have given him no choice but death by his own hand… How many times now?

Too many.

He was still alive through his own choice, and that wasn’t cowardice no matter what might be said, or what had been said, even though no one was fool enough to say it in his hearing. Cowardice was running away. Not tactical withdrawal, but turning tail in flight whether that flight led to the woods, or the hills, or the dark land beyond the stab of a tsepan’s blade. Courage was standing fast, setting to rights, taking the hard path. Courage gained trust from friends, from companions and from self.

Aldric stared at the ceiling and grinned a brief sour grin. Trust, indeed. I must remember not to trust you near complaisant, pretty women. A most lamentable failing, except where one woman is concerned. Was concerned…

But – he came back to reality with a jolt – who commands all this? None of his possible enemies had the power and wealth and resource displayed so arrogantly here, and there weren’t so many enemies, either. Those who crossed Aldric Talvalin with malicious intent seldom survived. But what about using a first-rank courtesan for bait, burning down an expensive tavern to close the trap, and sending a squad of tulathin and a full-crewed battleram to collect the prey? It spoke of astounding wealth, or authority involving rank, status and a unit of the Imperial military. Authority that suggested the Emperor…

Or the Grand Warlord.

Woydach Etzel was one of the few who fulfilled all those requirements. He had access to an Empire’s riches, and the rank both to discourage idle questioners and manoeuvre warships like pieces on a gaming board. So this was what happened to a Sword when a Spear or Mace or Arrow tapped it out of play and back into the box until next time, except carved bone and stone felt no pain when the end came. Aldric wondered if he would be so lucky.

The cabin door rattled as it was unlocked, like so many other doors this past while. It slid open and a young man entered, wearing the single rank-bar of a tau-kortagor officer cadet on his armour. Improbably, he was smiling, more improbably still, he spoke good Alban and most improbably of all, he seemed concerned.

“Ah, you’re awake. No ill-effects, I trust?”

Solicitude and his own language from such a source were so unexpected that Aldric thought his ears were playing him tricks, and he stared at the tau-kortagor until the officer repeated his question. Then, and only then, he blinked and shook himself back to sense.

“Ill-effects?” It was a relief to speak Alban after so long contending with Jouvaine and Drusalan. “None. None at all. I’m fine, I suppose.”

“Excellent. My name is Garet, on Hautheisart Voord’s personal staff.” He hesitated as if expecting a reaction, but though the names tickled at Aldric’s memory they were only two among many and had no significance. “I’m assigned to your care, so will you have food?”

Aldric shrugged. He wasn’t seasick but he was having trouble adjusting to the situation, especially since he’d just discovered he was secured to the bunk by wide soft bands of woven silk around one wrist and ankle. He had spent so much time staring at the ceiling and exploring his thoughts, rather than the narrow confines of the cabin, that he hadn’t noticed them until now. They were as solid in their way as braided hemp or wrought-iron manacles, and he didn’t need to test them to realise they were far beyond his strength to break. But they weren’t meant to hurt him either, and that prompted an uneasy image of eggs carefully packed so they wouldn’t get broken by accident. The breaking happened later, with more deliberation...

“What about these things?” He raised his bound wrist and stared at Garet, who had the good grace to look abashed.

“I, ah, I haven’t been given permission to release the prisoner.” Aldric made a small noise suggesting the prisoner wasn’t surprised by that response at all, and it seemed to embarrass Garet still more. “But, but I could ask the kortagor-tulathin on your behalf. He brought you aboard, so he might just…”

Even offering to make the request was a small kindness Aldric hadn’t expected. Where there’s life, he thought, and lay back on his bunk to watch the play of light across that too-close claustrophobic ceiling.

But he didn’t dare to hope. Not yet.

*

The order to release him wasn’t long in returning from whoever commanded such things aboard this battleram, though as might have been expected from Drusalans it was wrapped in so many conditions as to cancel any usefulness.

They removed the silk straps confining him to the bunk, but he still wasn’t allowed on deck and now there was a steel and leather harness on his left leg. It was like the complex splint worn after an injury, but for restriction not support with the hinge of its knee-joint locked so tight that each stride was a rolling, stiff-legged hobble. He could walk, more or less, but the notion of him pouncing on someone was a wry joke. Aldric hadn’t given any indication that he wanted to, but evidently someone thought he might and the leg-brace was a back-handed compliment to his presumed talent for mayhem.

The food brought from the warship’s galley went a long way to compensate for dented pride. They weren’t prison rations but various excellent dishes that were another proof of concern for his well-being: thin soup garnished with herbs, grilled fish he guessed wasn’t long out of the sea, meat and vegetables in a spice-fragrant sauce and even some wine to wash it all down. However his reputation had reached the galley as well, and lost nothing in the telling. In case he tried to conquer the battleram with his dinner service every piece of food was cut up in advance, and the only utensil was a wooden spoon with blunt fork-tines sawn into it. It looked like something given to young children so they couldn’t hurt themselves.

Or to Alban kailinin, so they couldn’t hurt anybody at all.

As he ate, Aldric reflected ruefully that if he was less well known or his fame less impressive, he could have got away. Off a ship in open ocean? Be reasonable! At least it would have gained him a little more freedom. Notoriety might flatter several of the people he had met but he could do without it, and he wondered if the officer cadre of the Drusalan Empire knew the concept of a gentleman’s parole.

He had been hungry and the meal had been good, a combination that made for empty dishes and a stifled belch as he lay back for a digestive nap. It wasn’t something he bothered with in normal circumstances, but the heavy framework round his rigid, awkward leg was a reminder that his circumstances were very far from normal. And it was unlikely someone would release him for a stroll…

Up on the command deck a bell marked the changing hour. It was a sound he remembered from his voyage aboard En Sohra down to Techaur Island. Just after noon, thought Aldric drowsily, just after lunch. That made it the Hour of the Hawk becoming, becoming…

The pointless effort of pointless thought was such that he gave up, snuggled into the rolling, swaying embrace of the bunk and drifted into the only escape he could find.

Becoming, he might have finished, the Hour of the Dragon.

*

It felt as if he had barely closed his eyes before they snapped open again, jerked from sleep by another sound he had heard before: the clangour of an Imperial warship’s alarm gongs sounding battle-stations. For the first few seconds his strange, troubled dream carried over to the waking world, then reality intruded as footsteps clattered outside and overhead. With another clattering, harsher and more metallic, armoured screens dropped over the cabin’s small, thick-glassed ports and he found himself in twilight, his only illumination the wan trickle of daylight round the edges of each screen.

It was no longer a dream, it was a nightmare, that same recurring nightmare of helplessness. Once more he was aboard En Sohra; once more the battleram Aalkhorst was shearing down on him with white water boiling from her prow; once more he could only hope she would turn aside.

And she did. The bunk beneath him heeled abruptly, its angle so steep that he all but tumbled off. A hiss of rushing water filled his ears, and the feeble light beyond the screened ports turned green then black as the battleram executed an evasive turn. Aldric knew what was happening. He had watched Aalkhorst make a manoeuvre like that, dipping part of her hull beneath the waves as her helm went hard over at speed. But Father of Fires, he hadn’t known such a turn was so bloody steep!

Twice more the vessel rolled, and twice more Aldric dug his fingernails into the planking and tried to avoid being flung to the deck. Already there was blood on his face and a ragged gash at his hairline, mementos of violent contact with one of the bulkhead uprights. Then between one turn and the next the world outside flared bright. It lasted just an instant, slower than the brilliant flicker of a lightning-flash but much faster than the glow of sunlight breaking though cloud, and the warship stopped her violent twists and turns. She wasn’t dead in the water, there was too much momentum in her great bulk for that, but she ceased to be a vessel cutting through the ocean and became instead a mere decelerating hulk. And he could smell burning.

There was a dreadful stillness as if everyone aboard – officers, crewmen, marines, even the ship herself – drew in a great breath and held it in anticipation of something monstrous about to happen.

Aldric’s fingers tightened as the battleram heeled once again, then clamped even harder when the angle changed and he realised she hadn’t heeled at all. She had tipped forward with her stern rearing out of the water as her beaked prow plunged. He had never watched a ship sink, but he had heard it described and could guess well enough what it was like.

Like this!

The cabin door slammed open and outlined by its frame, no, clinging to its frame as Aldric clung to his bunk, was the officer-cadet Garet. He didn’t look concerned for anyone except himself, and no longer even looked young. In the shadows of his close-fitting helmet his face was blanched white as bone with shock, or fear, or disbelief, as white as the knuckles of the hands which gripped the edge of the cabin door.

“You!” He gasped the word, Drusalan now and as harsh as that language could achieve. “Hautmarin Aralten wants you on deck! Move it! Now!”

Aldric stared at him and as if the officer’s mood played counterpoint to his own, the unknowing fear of the past minutes froze over and became an icy armour of dignity and pride and honour-born courage. It wasn’t the same as true courage, he knew that even if no one else did, but it seemed the same and would have to do. He slapped the brace on his leg like a man swatting at an insect he couldn’t quite reach.

“Not with this. Remove it! Now!”

He spoke in the highest mode of Drusalan he knew, aware it was an insult but needing to reassert himself as more than just a passive prisoner. Garet glared at him then ripped a long dagger from its sheath, and for an instant Aldric thought he had miscalculated, pushed a little too far, overstepped the mark. The dagger poised, glittering in the cabin’s subdued light, silvery striations of honing on its edges sparkling at him as the weapon trembled in an unsteady grip.

“I should gut you for that, hlensyarl,” Garet whispered. “But not just yet. I have my orders. Later.” He sucked in a deep breath, trying to regain a degree of self-control. “You’re going nowhere unless I get your Word of Honour. Your gentleman’s parole. You do understand ‘parole’, Alban? And ‘gentleman’? And ‘honour’?”

Garet also knew how to use language for insult.

Aldric hesitated. Though he had already considered such a possibility and would have welcomed it half an hour ago, things had changed. The warship seemed under attack – seemed, he reminded himself – and he might well have a chance of escape during the confusion. But not when bound by an intangible thing harder to break than the brace on his leg. Without his given Word it wouldn’t be removed; without its removal there would be no chance to escape; with it removed and his Word given he couldn’t escape anyway. But locked in this cabin with iron locked round his leg, the only other certainty would be of drowning if the battleram sank.

“All right. All right…! I swear.” He could remember the proper Alban phrases and hastily assembled enough Drusalan to match them. “I take oath on my Honour and my Word that I will not escape or take flight from my captivity without permission granted by those who hold me here.” The cadet watched him, expression easy to read in its frame of the rank-barred helmet. Tau-kortagor Garet was wondering, and not troubling to hide his doubts, if the Alban’s oath was worth any more than the breath which carried it.

“There. My parole. Given by a gentleman. Satisfied?” The edge on Aldric’s voice was as sharp as that on the knife still aimed at his throat, and Garet nodded.

“For now.”

“Then take this bloody thing off!”

The restraint fell to the oak-planked deck with a clatter that was loud in the silence which had settled on the warship. When the bands of steel and bullhide released their grip Aldric gasped at the agonising burn of blood pumping back into muscles constricted for far too long. Despite Garet’s ill-concealed impatience he stretched the limb and flexed it again and again,  and only moved out of the cabin when he could walk with ease. It wasn’t just because of his dignity; he’d given up his right to get away but there might be other things to evade, and getting killed because of a cramping leg would be an undistinguished end to life.

The Imperial warship was a huge vessel, doubtless not as monstrous as she seemed to him right now, but before the Light of Heaven she had no right to be so big and so powerful and so armoured and still defy the sea by floating on it. The interior was much as Aldric imagined a rabbit-warren might look to a rabbit, a maze of low passages, low-ceilinged and constricted, each leading somewhere unknown to a stranger. He followed the tau-kortagor’s disapproving back along walkways, through heavy doors edged with greased leather meant to keep water at bay and always, always upward.

Daylight lancing through an open hatch hit him like a blow in the face and he flinched from it, shielding outraged eyes with one arm. It was only the impact of the light from outside that brought home just how dim it was on the lower decks where he was confined. There were no lanterns below, all were stowed in case of fire, so why, why, why was there such a reek of smoke and burning?

Aldric stopped in his tracks, suddenly wary of the summons, and with equal suddenness there were two marines at his back. Without a threat, an order or even a word they hustled him through the hatch and out onto the open deck. The sun shone from a sky of cool, cloudless blue, and Aldric shivered in air whose freshness felt chilly after the closeness of below-decks. Under the unfeeling scrutiny of that bright, pale light, and despite the taint of smoke which stung his nostrils, he realised two things and was ashamed of them both.

The first was his appearance, and the second was his smell.

He wore the same clothes as when he rushed from Kathur’s house, clothes which had come into violent contact with a wet Tuenafen street and Heaven alone knew what else. Unchanged after the sweaty exertions of fight and fright and flight, then the capture which had brought him here, they went beyond grime into foulness and the heavy stink of stale perspiration.

Any Alban would have found that state of affairs intolerable; to one as fastidious as Aldric it was disgusting. His skin crawled as if shrinking from contact with his grubby shirt, the lank oiliness of his hair, and the crescents of dirt under his fingernails. Father of Fires, to have eaten a meal with such hands! He gagged back a spasm that would have spewed his late lunch all across the deck, and tried to think of other things. There were plenty to think about.

Even though the air was fresh enough, a strange medley of odours underlay its crispness. Leaving aside the stench of unwashed Alban, the most powerful was a reek of scorched cloth and wood, but threading through it was a metallic tang like the atmosphere of a blacksmith’s forge. Aldric had smelt it before, and not in any forge.

The man who stalked across the quarterdeck to face him was close to raving, whether with fear or fury Aldric didn’t know. Most of the raving was in a Drusalan dialect which meant nothing to him and from its few recognisable words that was just as well. Volume and tone conveyed enough even before Hautmarin Aralten’s language changed to something more intelligible. This was indeed the captain, even though wild eyes and a fear-pallid complexion detracted from the rank-marks on his green and scarlet Fleet armour.

“Look at my ship! Look what’s been done to it! You! Alban! Damn you! What do you know about it? Devil burn you black! What do you know about that?”

Aldric’s escort seized him by the shoulders and wrenched him around as indicated by the captain’s outraged, outflung arm. The warship’s deck was a shambles. Broken masts, shattered yards, torn rigging and the charred shreds of what had been its sails littered the vessel’s planking and drooped over the plates of its armoured hull. An acrid film of thin grey smoke hung over everything – including what crouched on and coiled massively around the half-submerged turrets at the battleram’s bow.

For just an instant Aldric stood as shocked as anyone else aboard. Of all the situations he expected to face, this was the least likely. Of all the emotions he might have experienced, this was the most impossible.

It was recognition…

*

“Ymareth,” he said, very, very softly.

Perhaps his voice wasn’t as quiet as he thought, or the firedrake’s hearing was far more acute than he believed, or the huge glow of delight that rose within him was strong enough to carry to its cause. The reason didn’t matter, because the firedrake recognised him in its turn.

There was a languid grace in the way its neck curved back between the raised and folded wings as elegantly as an iron swan, an arrogant flaunting of power and pride that Aldric could appreciate. He listened with waking ears to the sounds from dreams, sounds as familiar as if heard only yesterday, a steely slithering of scaled coils like a thousand swords all drawn at once, and the slow bass surge of a vast respiration.

As the ornate, elongated wedge of Ymareth’s head swung towards him, Aldric lowered his eyes. It wasn’t just from respect, though this huge being deserved such courtesy when many men of rank did not. The firedrake’s glowing gaze raked over those who lined the railing of the quarterdeck, and he was the only one among them who knew the risk of being trapped by that stare as easily as any little bird confronted by a snake. No man born of woman could meet it and hope to walk away unscathed – or if things went wrong, walk away at all…

The dragon exhaled, and Aldric smelt a harsh, clean furnace wind. The hot gust carried words in a voice that few had ever heard, a voice which held the sounds of steam and stone-stroked metal, of storm-waves on a rocky shore, of blasted ashes sifting onto charred stone. It was inhuman speech from an inhuman mouth and none but Aldric understood it, as he had done at their first meeting months ago and miles from here. That was just as well, for the first thing the firedrake said was just what he had hidden for so long.

“I give thee greeting, kailin-eir Talvalin. Well met.”

So much for the secrecy of names… Aldric shook free from the hands which held him and they fell away slack-fingered, the marines flanking him struck dumb and witless. He knelt in Second Obeisance as he had done when he first met Ymareth in the Cavern of Firedrakes on Techaur Island. That courtesy was due to a lord under the roof of their own hall and nowhere else, but formal manners always outweighed simplicity if sincerely meant, and Aldric was as sincere as he had ever been in his life.

“Well met, Ymareth-anak.” Then, greatly daring, “Why are you here? And how?”

Flame licked between the firedrake’s parted jaws and Aldric flinched despite himself. He was like a man walking a tightrope, balanced precariously between the perils of ignorance and the insolence of importunate curiosity.

“Which first, man? The ‘why’ or the ‘how’? Speak thy choice.” If a thing so unhuman could have human responses, then Ymareth was amused and gently teasing. It was enough to make Aldric a little bolder.

“Try ‘how’, Ymareth-anak, for I know Techaur and your abiding-place lie many leagues from here.” That caused another quick spout of flame, the harmless swirl Aldric had already come to recognise as laughter.

“I searched for thee and found thee.” The firedrake turned leisurely towards the sea, staring south along the now-vanished track of its passage through the upper air. “Any search is easy when a true guide travels with that searched-for. As the Eye of the Dragon travelled with thee, kailin-eir Talvalin.”

“The Eye of…?” Aldric’s voice trailed off with its question incomplete, for in his own mind’s eye there was an image of Gemmel Errekren with the Dragonwand in one hand and the stone of Echainon in the other. The spellstave’s carven dragonhead had an eye already, only one, and that an ordinary sapphire gemstone. Its other socket was empty. Then the wizard’s hands came together and when they parted the Dragonwand looked on the world with two eyes, one of them alive with the glow of its own internal energies.

The Eye of the Dragon indeed, and a talisman Aldric had carried all these months past. There were many things he could have said about that, and an equal number he should have said. But what came from his mouth was a barely audible exhalation of, “Oh, Father of Fires…”

Which served no real purpose, and in the presence of a firedrake was almost a bad joke.

Ymareth watched him and its thin-lipped mouth stretched back and back in a grin like the biggest fox ever whelped. Aldric had seen that before, in the Cavern of Firedrakes. He had thought at first it showed no more real humour than any other so-called human expression on an animal’s face. He was no longer quite so sure. There was a precision about the way the firedrake’s facial muscles moved, a suggestion that Ymareth was copying something observed and noted by its icy draconian brain which might reassure the nervousness of humankind. If that was the reason, it failed. There was no reassurance at all in the shocking armoury of fangs that grin put on display.

“And now the ‘why’, kailin-eir Talvalin? Or does ‘why’ not cause curiosity?”

It did, so much that for just an instant, just the merest breath of inattention, Aldric’s gaze flickered upwards as the many possibilities of that why crossed his mind. And in that momentary glance he met the smoking amber mirrors that were the eyes of Ymareth, the real Eyes of the Dragon. Aldric’s own eyes met them, and locked with them, and were caught.

Time stops as it stands still. The voice was within his head, as Ymareth’s had been, but this was no longer the firedrake speaking. It was, or seemed to be…

“Gemmel-altrou?”

Aldric’s mind shaped the words, for his mouth and tongue could not. There was no reply from a voice that had no place here, no reason to be here, and no reason to say what it had said, for all that the words were right and proper in the here and now. If here and now there was, for time ceased to have meaning and reality ceased to exist. There was only himself and the two great glowing orbs that stared and stared and never, ever blinked.

He was bare before their gaze, not naked unclothed but naked without concealment, stripped of the screens and shields people use to disguise the truth from one another. He was stretched out before the scrutiny of the firedrake’s gaze, and what was there was all he was. Without rank, without privilege, without title. With nothing to hide the ugliness within him, vices to sample if he dared and others he had tried already, things that all but the very purest carried deep inside, buried under manners and courtesies and outward show like the slimy life under a slab of polished marble. Things always there but never revealed, even to the closest of friends.

Until now.

The questions weren’t asked in any way that ears might hear or mind might grasp. They took shape from the grey mist surrounding him, and those shapes struck and flayed like whips. Questions he couldn’t answer, simple questions which in their simplicity probed with pitiless directness into his soul. Aldric said nothing in his own defence, and could say nothing for guilt sickened him, rose choking in his throat and raised scars that would never heal. Then something snapped. He heard it snap, felt it snap.

It was like a handhold giving way, and he dropped with a jolt back into the world.

*

Nothing had changed. He was still kneeling on the deck, straight-backed as ever, but his face was wet and chilled by the breeze. One hand came up to touch the wetness. He had been crying, for no reason and for every reason, soiled by having secret things drawn into the light of day, yet cleansed as if that drawing-out had lanced an unknown abscess, had purged him and made him whole. Blinking the blur of unshed tears out of his eyes and dashing them away with his knuckles, Aldric Talvalin focused on the world again.

On the ship, and on the dragon.

Ymareth’s huge head was right over him, an arm’s length above his own, as ponderous as the raw stone roof of the burial mound in the Jevaiden Deepwood, and as laden with great age. He could feel the arid scouring of hot breath on his skin, and could smell the heated-metal scent of it. The flaming death it carried was so close, yet he wasn’t afraid any more.

The fear had always been real, whether he admitted its existence – tempering such admissions with mockery to prove he wasn’t really scared – or kept it locked away. As the saying went, anyone who claimed they were never afraid were mad or fools or liars. Aldric had always imagined his fear of Ymareth as heavy and cold, a lump of ice-sheathed lead tucked underneath his heart. Now dragonfire had washed the lead and ice until they melted. Barely a trace remained behind, just enough to dilute fear into a common sense and caution warranted by the presence of great power.

“Know now why I came, kailin-eir Talvalin. Honour awakened me. Honour summoned me. Honour bound me as it binds you.”

“Honour? What honour have I left? I threw it all away long ago!”

“So say ye. I say not!” Fire flashed out above his head, no longer the flutter of humour but an irritable blast that slapped heat down at him like a physical impact. There was an edge in the great voice, a steeliness like crossed blades. Ymareth the Firedrake wasn’t accustomed to dispute. “Hear me, man. I have such wings as will bear thee to freedom, if such is thy wish. Speak and say, will ye escape thus? Speak!”

Aldric closed his eyes, feeling his heartbeat quicken and the breath catch in his throat. Escape? An hour ago, yes, and gladly. But now? Now he couldn’t do it. The firedrake blinked, a metallic click of eyelids in the silence.

“Speak,” it repeated in a softer voice.

“I can not. I must not. I…” He looked up, seeking the dragon’s eyes again, this time on purpose. “I gave my Word.”

“The Word of one who by his own admission is without honour?”

“The right to keep that Word is all I’ve got left.”

“So, and so, and so. Thou art more worthy than the Maker, kailin-eir Talvalin.” To my eternal shame… Again Gemmel’s voice murmured inside Aldric’s head. “To his shame,” said Ymareth, an echo of words it couldn’t have known. Aldric listened to the echo, and at last a flower of understanding blossomed in his mind. But it was a flower with sombre petals, for its meaning was an ugly one.

Ymareth’s wings unfurled, dwarfing the Imperial warship. Aldric had only seen the firedrake in its Cavern on Techaur Island, a place of shadows and dazzle that blurred the senses. Now, against a background of the real world, he was aware of what he had unconsciously noticed from the start: it was far bigger than he remembered. That memory spoke of sixty feet in length, and wings the width of the Cavern. The reality multiplied both, to sixty yards of wingspan and more than a hundred feet from nose to tail, with weight enough to submerge the bow of an armoured battleram and more than enough to make flight impossible.

But then, everything to do with this firedrake seemed impossible: speech, intelligence, flaming breath and even unnatural extra limbs, for it would be more right and proper if those wings extended from the forelegs like a bat’s. Most impossible of all was that this legend-bound creature was alive in front of him. No matter how much storymakers might desire dragons, logic and the natural scheme of things said they couldn’t exist. Aldric’s own reasoning sheared away surmise, reducing possibilities one by one until only the last remained. If a firedrake couldn’t exist in a natural world yet this one did, then…

Who was the Maker?

The answer was so obvious that he didn’t dare believe it.

“I go.” Ymareth crouched low, wings rising up and up above the lean, scaled body until their tips met and crossed, then poised for the barest moment as their membranes shifted to embrace the air.

“Go? Go where?”

“From here. They will scarce forgive my flaming of their sails, for all I bade them stop ere harm befell. But the Eye will watch thee as it has watched aforetime. As I will watch thee, kailin-eir Talvalin, Dragon-lord. And I will know all I need to know. Until again, farewell!”

Ymareth’s hind-limbs straightened like the throwing-arms of a catapult, flinging its armoured bulk into a great bound towards the sky. An instant later the wings swept down, their blast of displaced air ripping away what shreds of sail remained as they transformed that prodigious bound into true flight.

It almost blew Aldric onto his back, and the battleram’s deck kicked against his knees as it plunged under the firedrake’s leap then reared up again far past the horizontal once Ymareth’s weight left it. Great concentric ripples rolled away from the ram bow as it smashed back into the sea amid a cloud of spray, mingling with rings of disturbed water where the pressure of the dragon’s wings had slapped against the surface.

And then all was still.

There was only a dwindling shape in the sky and the feather touch of that cold breeze from the north. The stillness was all too brief. Aldric had barely risen to his feet, weak with reaction and sore from impact with the oak-planked deck, before the two marines behind him shrugged off their daze and laid hard hands on his shoulders again. He glanced from side to side, looking at the troopers without really seeing them, then relaxed in their grip without so much as a token twitch of either arm.

Hautmarin Aralten glowered at him, all his frantic anger quite gone now and replaced by icy control. He reached out with one armoured steel-and-leather hand, twisted up the front of Aldric’s shirt and used it to lift him onto tip-toe, almost eye-to-eye with someone who stood a full head taller.

“It is as well for you, hlensyarl,” said Aralten, “that I must obey my orders. Otherwise I would take pleasure in supervising a worthy punishment for this. Oh, I would…” He explained at length, in elaborate detail while Aldric hung in the man’s grasp as limp and unconcerned as a kitten in its mother’s mouth, gazing at him and through him as if he wasn’t there. He had listened to such recitations before, whether proof of an original and nasty mind or mere unimaginative brutality. But thanks to Aralten’s so-important orders, these were just onion-scented bluster and a random fleck of spit.

Only two words counted in Aldric’s mind right now, words which had nothing to do with Drusalan naval officers and their futile threats. They were words he understood in the literal sense, but didn’t dare to recognise as a title. Not yet. These were words which with a second more to ask he would have echoed in a question. Dragon Lord? What do you mean? Once the hautmarin ran out of breath and invention, he smiled full in the officer’s face.

“Despite all you say, shipmaster,” Aldric used the civilian title for a deliberate insult, “all you can do is write about this incident in your report. Yes?”

“No. Not quite.” Aralten smirked nastily. “I can do much more than that, hlensyarl. Bring him below.”

CHAPTER SIX

“That’s the house,” said Dewan. He didn’t stop, didn’t slacken his pace, didn’t point, but his certainty was reassuring. He had gained his information without threats or bribery, from people unaware they were answering questions, and that, he said, meant it was as true as honest error could be.

Gemmel glanced at the building and was impressed. He was also embarrassed, for after hearing the woman they sought was a courtesan, his mind had replaced the word with all its uglier alternatives. That response was unusual for a tolerant man, yet once formed it led to further misconceptions and errors that shattered now like so much glass. None of the sluts or harlots or whores of his imaginings would live in such a graceful dwelling. Gemmel altered the angle of his stride a fraction, meaning to walk straight in since gentlemen callers would be a familiar, unremarked sight here, but Dewan was suddenly in the way.

“Not so hasty!” The Vreijek’s low voice was as crisp and commanding as it had been since they first passed through the Landwall Gate. Dewan could have put on the uniform and half-armour from his laden pack and not drawn a second glance by sound, gesture or conduct. “We need to do this carefully. Remember the battleram. If we’re guessing right, someone was here before us. I want to make sure they’re gone before we go barging in.” They walked on, with the air of men bored by their surroundings, until Dewan let out a small warning grunt. “Yes. There. In the alley by the stable. Don’t look! One man. Minding his own business. Perhaps too much.”

The Vreijek’s stride and balance shifted as his hand went to his sword-hilt, two small movements which readied violence and sudden death from the prompting of a single glance. Then he took a second glance, the tension vanished and he even chuckled. The sound was so incongruous that Gemmel chanced an over-shoulder look at the source of such conflicting reactions and understood at once.

“Ah,” he said, and stifled a laugh of his own. There was a paragraph of meaning in the single word. “Minding his own business indeed.”

The man Dewan ar Korentin had seen in the alley, and might have killed had he not taken that swift second glance, staggered past them with a slurred mutter that in his present state passed for a greeting. He was fastening his breeches and smelt strongly, perhaps too strongly, of beer. That hint of deceptive excess was why Gemmel watched until the man was out of sight around a corner, and when he turned to Dewan it was as if his brief amusement had never existed.

“Do we stay here, or do we get this matter done with and out of the way?”

“Gemmel, I told you once so I’ll tell you again, don’t worry about it. You still talk as if I’ll put someone’s feet in the fire. I won’t.”

“Unless you must. And then you will.”

“Not if we can learn what we need in any other way. Remember, I served with the Bodyguard Cavalry, not with the Secret Police.” He grinned, pleasant for an instant, and with a minute shift of muscle stripped away the humour until only bared teeth remained. “But I can still talk a good threat.”

*

Kathur was packing clothes into a travel-trunk when she sensed a change in the light and saw the outlines of more intruders framed in her bedroom doorway.

Two days ago she would have smiled at them, chided them for arriving without an appointment, then welcomed them with food, drinks, music and in due course herself, after generous payment for each stage of the entertainment.

A day ago she would have stared at them in terror and even wept as she cringed into the corner of the room, hoping they weren’t sent to hurt her again in the cruel afterthought that gave Voord such vicious delight.

Today she dropped the armful of silks and satins, ignoring how they burst from their careful folds across the trunk and bed and floor like so many colourful banners. Though she still backed away with fear bright in her eyes, now dead Stromin’s makher shortsword gleamed just as bright in her hand, wrenched from its scabbard at the small of her back.

The foreign woman had helped her learn that, along with so much else. Unjudging, sympathetic and most of all in that vile aftermath, not a man, she had given Kathur what comfort and companionship she could spare. Part of it had been some brief, brutal lessons in how to use the makher so what Voord had done would never happen again without a fight. They wouldn’t defeat a skilled swordsman, she had warned, but any of the unexpected stabs and slashes could drop an unwary assailant in his tracks. ‘Then run,’ the woman had said, before giving Kathur a bleak smile. ‘But if you can spare the time, finish the bastard. And then run.’

Kathur stared at the two men and almost hoped they were Voord’s creatures, so she could send him back a message inked in blood. Only the big broad-shouldered one with the moustache looked dangerous. The other was old; his hair and beard were white and he leaned on a walking-stave. If she moved suddenly enough she could…

She could do nothing of the sort. If they attacked her, she would defend herself. Otherwise leaving Tuenafen alive and without further hurt would be enough to hope for. More than enough.

Then the big one entered the room and Kathur realised she might not get even that.

*

“Dewan, stop!” said Gemmel, sharp as parade-ground drill, and ar Korentin halted in his tracks with a quizzical, eyebrow-lifted glance. “Can’t you see she’s frightened? Better if I talk to her. You’ve got too much of an Imperial air about you.”

That got him an affronted grimace, and it wasn’t the only problem the wizard could see.

Ar Korentin had coaxed Kathur the Vixen’s home and appearance from a local man, expecting mere fragments of information and a heavy overlay of disapproval. Maybe Gemmel’s own reaction had been more obvious than he thought. Instead the enthusiastic reply had no trace of disapproval in it. Any first-rank courtesan was a cultured if unattainable ornament to the neighbourhood, and her various gentlemen callers made lavish purchases of wines and flowers and sweetmeats from the local shops without ever, or hardly ever, questioning their prices. It wasn’t surprising, the man said, because she was so graceful, and so beautiful…

But not today. Only her lustrous fox-red hair was unchanged. Cuts and bruises marred the face described with such wholehearted admiration, and the flinching, careful way she moved implied that her clothes hid much worse. To Gemmel’s private shame, the first words out of his mouth were an unjust suspicion based on hard-learned awareness that with the right wrong reasons, anyone could be cruel. Anyone at all.

“Lady, did…” He hesitated for a second, unwilling to say any more, but he had seen his foster-son channel hatred into destruction with so much ease that the question needed asked and answered.

“Did Aldric Talvalin do this to you?”

*

The battleram limped towards harbour as she had limped since her fiery encounter with Ymareth. Aldric, on deck and under guard, was limping too. Important prisoner or not, gentleman or not – both insisted on, both to no avail – he had helped the warship’s crew speed their voyage to port and those exertions hurt.

He hadn’t known the wish-wind enchantment was woven directly into the fabric of the sails. He hadn’t known each battleram had only one suit of those augmented sails, and their destruction took away the battleram’s ability to move wherever her captain desired, regardless of the vagaries of wind and weather. And he hadn’t known, though he had suspected, that without those enchanted sails an Imperial capital ship became lumbering and ungainly. He knew it now, with the information docketed at the back of his mind for possible future use.

And he also knew how such a vessel move through the water without even ordinary sails, though that education was one he had no wish to repeat. It thrummed through every fibre of his body from toes to scalp in an overture of aches like the strings of a mistuned coruth in the hands of a clumsy player.

Hautmarin Aralten had explained everything with malicious satisfaction and an engineer’s relish while he and his escort marched Aldric down to the drive-chamber which ran half the length of the warship’s hull. The propulsion didn’t come from pulling oars. Teynaur, like the battlerams in Tuenafen Port, carried only half a dozen sweeps for close manoeuvring, too few and too short for protracted use on the high seas. Instead there was an arrangement of huge gears down near her keel, a mechanism of the sort a wind or water mill might power.

But without wind or water below decks, the warship’s source of power was human effort.

*

“You should strip.”

Aralten’s suggestion, with its hint of humiliation or worse, drew a glare from Aldric in the second before a final door opened in front of him. In the second afterwards he realised the advice was sound and even well-meant. Teynaur’s drive-chamber was low-ceilinged and dim-lit, it stank of greased machinery and human sweat, and it was as hot as a steam-bath. There were alcoves or cubicles along each side of the central walkway, and the man in each grasped a head-high rail as he trod up the cylindrical stairway beneath his feet. Each cylinder linked to the rumbling drive-shaft beneath the walkway, and that led in due course to the seven-bladed wheel which churned the water at the warship’s stern.

“You’ll work in this one,” said the hautmarin. “Here’s your new relief, Nathran.” Aralten was evidently a commander who took pride in knowing all his crew by name. “Disengage and step clear.” The sailor on the treadmill shifted one hand from his support rail to a lever and pulled it sideways, then back. With the first pull there was a clank of disengaging gears like a bolt being thrown, and with the second his cylinder of stairs stopped moving.

“For how long, captain?”

“You’re free for two full shifts. Our guest will take the first; Radeg is on the second one as usual.”

Resigned to the inevitable, Aldric had already slipped out of his clothes, right down to the short linen breeches under the arming-trews Kathur the Vixen had found so amusing. Despite being as near naked as any Alban cared to be without good reason, he was already sweating. As Nathran stepped clear of his cubicle Aldric got his first hint of how hard this work would be. A kailin’s training with sword and bow and horse meant he was already somewhat muscular, enough at least for compliments from Kyrin and Gueynor and Kathur, but alongside Nathran he was a sapling to an oak tree.

The treadsman was about his height and age but was half again as wide, with broad shoulders, a massive chest and legs like treetrunks. He wasn’t a slave, there were none in the Empire’s ships, and a makher, a battleaxe and a shield was hanging alongside his cubicle. They didn’t stay there for long. After a quick glance at his captain Nathran grinned and, a little too ostentatiously, moved the weapons out of Aldric’s reach. Then with a derisive bow he invited the Alban to take his place on the locked treadmill.

Aldric placed his feet on the treads, gripped the rail with one hand and pulled the clutch lever as he had watched Nathran do. The first pull let the treadmill turn and he began to climb its endless stair, but when the second pull re-engaged its gears he realised within two strides what had built the treadsman’s massive legs. He was no longer walking up but treading down against considerable resistance, and after only a dozen paces at this unaccustomed angle his thigh muscles began sending him unhappy messages that would only get more insistent.

“A full shift is four hours, two turns of the glass, but you’re an Alban,” the real word was probably ‘weakling’ or worse, “so you’ll get a break halfway.” Aralten smiled maliciously. “That should give you time to think about what your dragon did to my ship’s sails.”

“It’s not my dragon,” Aldric said, but the hautmarin was already walking away and he didn’t repeat himself. He suspected he would need all the breath he could spare.

He was right.

*

That confusion of sweat and oil and nauseating motion would remain one of Aldric’s choicest nightmares for a long time. Working at the treadmill was like climbing up a fortress tower whose top got further away with every step. The constant clatter of machinery was irksome to ears familiar only with the noises of a sailing-ship, and always in the background was the ship’s own breath and heartbeat, the muffled hiss of water past the hull and that rhythmic whap-whap-whap of great rotating blades.

When a sharp clang of bells announced his promised half-shift break, he wasn’t allowed off the cylinder. The only relief was to have its gears disengaged for a quarter-hour, but during that time it kept turning and he kept walking. As far as his brain could form coherent thought, Aldric supposed that was so his muscles didn’t cool. He had one advantage, a pair of rider’s legs accustomed to bracing round his horse’s barrel body for hours at a time. They didn’t cramp like those of someone who did nothing except walk on a level surface. Instead they cramped differently, pounding with pain from tendons and ligaments stretched in unfamiliar ways.

But if Hautmarin Aralten had hoped to make him a limping laughing-stock the Drusalan officer was disappointed. He was even more disappointed next day when Aldric, driven by a surge of pride, obstinacy or sheer Talvalin bloody-minded stubbornness, worked both morning and afternoon shifts without the halfway break meant to coddle his hlensyarl weakness. Humiliation and punishment had no effect when they neither humiliated nor punished, and Aldric even started getting nods of approval from the regular treadsmen.

On the third and final day before landfall, Aralten tried to regain a little prestige when he excused his guest from the drive-chamber, but he was disappointed once again.

Aldric had already gone there by himself.

*

He stood now on Teynaur’s foredeck in the shadow of one of her weapon-turrets, as clean as several buckets of seawater could make him and back in his own clothes, watching while the battleram eased with a delicacy that approached art into a stone-walled holding bay little wider than the ship herself. Evening was approaching, so this vessel, and the five others in fortified docks or riding at anchor out in the estuary, were all showing lights. That scarcely described the level of illumination on the hulking armoured vessels, for in the twilight each floating fortress sparkled like a great house tricked out for a party.

“Alban?” It was tau-kortagor Garet again, one of the several men aboard who had treated him with more friendliness since his unstinting efforts to help drive the ship. “You disembark here. Teynaur has to go into dry-dock for repair after—”

“The visitor?”

“That’s one word. I’ve heard others.” Garet’s helmet might have contained a grin. “You’re being talked about.”

“What do they say?”

“The polite version or the truth?”

“If that’s the way of it,” this time it was Aldric’s turn to grin, stretched and false though it was, “forget I asked.” He hesitated, knowing he was presuming a tenuous bond somewhere between acquaintance and vague friendship which most likely didn’t exist at all. “Where are we? And who had me brought here?” The questions seemed to make Garet uncomfortable. He turned his head away as if fascinated by non-events at the far end of the harbour, and Aldric could no longer see his face.

“The first I’m not allowed to answer,” the young man said without looking back, “and as for the second,” he touched a finger to the solitary silver bar at his collar, “with this low rank I’m not allowed to know.”

Aldric shrugged. It was the response he should have expected, and more courteously phrased than it might have been. With a nod and muttered word of thanks to the officer-cadet he squared his shoulders and walked to a boarding-ladder where the crew of the ship’s cutter were waiting to take him ashore. Beyond the quays and loading-cranes common on any waterfront lay a sprawling structure that had nothing to do with wharves or warehouses. It was a fortification, walled and turreted, gated and grim, and its courtyards were alive with well-drilled troops of horse and foot moving back to their barracks. Even to someone accustomed to such things it was an unnerving sight.

Her ruined sails had meant Teynaur reached harbour almost four days later than expected. This was the first day of the tenth month and the first day of the start of winter, the evening sky was as grey as woodsmoke and despite the many lanterns shining like jewels along its massive walls, the crouched shape of the stronghold was ugly and ominous beneath that sombre canopy of cloud. Spired turrets reared a jagged array against the lowering heavens while the banners they bore, indecipherable in the dusk, flapped listlessly from their poles. There was no elegance in the place, not even the harsh grace born of pure functional design. This looked like what it was: a fortress, and a prison.

Aldric stared out over the bows of the cutter, trying to imagine yet again who could send a battleram to bring him here. He fancied he would soon find out.

“Hlens’l?”

One of the marines tapped him on the shoulder and offered a leather bottle, the kind all Imperial troopers carried as part of their equipment. If there was one thing Aldric would never refuse at a moment like this it was a drink, even the infamous rough, sour ration red. At least it was cool in his dry mouth and warm in his stomach, and that was enough reason to gulp it down. He drank a little more, stifled a nasty acid belch – there was nothing but the wine inside him and his insides were commenting about both matters – then handed the bottle back and tried to believe he felt better. For a second he missed the snug embrace of the black wolfskin coyac, but only for a second, with an inward shiver that had nothing to do with the weather. He would never be cold enough to want that thing back.

When the cutter bumped against a wooden jetty he all but fell off the upturned barrel doing duty as his seat and the marines laughed, making unkind observations about Albans and army-issue wine. Aldric gave a bleak little smile and ignored them. In his time he had downed enough varied forms of alcohol to float Teynaur, and never until now tasted stuff so obviously rented for re-cycling. Two more soldiers, not Fleet marines this time but Army regulars in crimson armour and full-visored helmets, came clattering down the steps of the jetty and lifted him under the armpits as if he was a sack of meal. Aldric wasn’t pleased and as his feet touched the lowermost step, weed-covered slimy wood but dry land for all that, he shrugged himself free.

“Thank you both, gentlemen. I can walk well enough without you.”

He achieved the right tone of injured dignity rather than dangerous rudeness, but that wasn’t why the soldiers laughed, a hollow, metallic sound inside their closed helmets. It was because a man whose legs were tired beyond belief, and accustomed to either a swaying deck or the unending treads of a drive-mill, found solid ground uncertain footing. The first two soldiers flanked him in case he fell, but several more atop the jetty formed up behind and in front before setting off at an unsettling rapid march-pace. Teynaur was late, therefore he was late, and therefore whoever had sent the battleram wanted him at once.

An Imperial at once left no room for further delay.

Their destination was one of the largest buildings within the fortress complex, and as they approached its door up a flight of broad stone steps the sentries to either side of the door flung it open so the little group could pass through without breaking stride. The sullen boom as it slammed shut behind them had an unpleasant, final sound, but Aldric had no time for reflection and little enough in which to look around.

This place might have started life as a palace or a mansion, and it remained a building where the high-born of the Empire wouldn’t look out of place. But there were no aristocrats in the tiled and panelled corridors this evening, just soldiers, a few wearing half-armour but most in tunics with their arms full of paperwork. Even when the passages were free of hurrying figures there was an air of furious activity and a tension which made the atmosphere tingle.

The boots of Aldric’s escort woke echoes in a vaulted hall as he was quick-marched through, not pushed nor forced, just hemmed about in until he either matched their pace or had his heels stamped on by the rearguard. They rounded another corner, entered a short, well-lit corridor which had only one doorway at its end and then stopped dead, for soldiers lined this passage from one end to the other.

These were big men in full battle harness, featureless behind the closed visors of their helmets. Six more of them blocked access to the double doors, razor-edged gisarms carried at the port. When two of Aldric’s guards continued to advance all the sentries levelled their spears, three at each chest, and took a single forward step like the automata on a complex clock. The movements were so precise and simultaneous that Aldric half-expected to hear the whirr of machinery. Duergar’s sending Etzel had moved like that, and the memory was a raw one which still troubled his dreams.

Their manner suggested these guards had orders to keep the place secure at all costs, and if that meant killing men who shared their uniform they shouldn’t hesitate. It looked as though they wouldn’t hesitate, for the unwavering spearpoints only drew back when the senior-ranked soldier of the escort spoke a password. As if the word set off a new series of actions, four guards stepped aside while the remaining two opened the ponderous bronze-sheathed doors.

The room beyond their threshold was long, and low, and wide. Lamps burned in elaborate sconces along its walls, striking reflections from a polished table which dominated the centre of the floor, from the crystal goblets which rested on it, and from the gold-worked crimson armour of the twenty Imperial officers who turned as one man to stare at the intruder in their doorway.

Escort or no escort, Aldric froze in his tracks. At his back there was a rippling clatter of salutes, and only after their completion did someone give him an ungentle shove between the shoulder-blades to send him stumbling into what had to be a conference room in mid-conference. As he straightened up he eyed the officers dubiously, but he also felt relieved. Aldric recognised the yellow metal bars and diamonds of general-rank insignia when he saw them, and there were several right here. But he also knew the Emperor’s crest of the eight-pointed star, worked in precious metal on the temples of each man’s helmet where they rested on the table among the wine-cups. Emperor Ioen’s supporters had no grudge against Rynert or Alba; the king had assured him of that often enough. Aldric released a gusty sigh of held-in breath, not caring who could overhear him or what they might think of his reaction. Whatever these granite-faced gentry might say would never be as bad as his imaginings.

There was one officer in particular who drew his eyes, seated at the head of the table, gazing at him, saying nothing, his only movement the slow tap-tap-tap of one index finger. His insignia of twin bars surmounted by a pyramid of three diamonds were a pattern Aldric had only heard described and seen in pictures. This was the most senior of all Drusalan military ranks before political significance took over: en-coerhanalth, Lord General. But which one?

A perfunctory gesture of his hand dismissed most of Aldric’s escort before he rose and strode down the hall for an examination at close quarters, but two closed in to grip the Alban by wrists and biceps, proving that his dangerous reputation had got here before him. He was stocky, this general, little more than Aldric’s own height but with an already-broad build made massive by the armour which encased him. His grizzled beard and balding iron-grey hair were those of a middle-aged man, but age hadn’t dulled the eyes glinting below his heavy brows. They drilled through Aldric as if, like Ymareth’s, they probed the innermost recesses of his mind.

Even without the guards, the other officers, the armour and the marks of rank, this man had a forbidding presence of his own. One blunt-fingered hand reached out, closed on Aldric’s chin and lifted it up from where nervous instinct had tucked it low over his throat. A finger of the other hand tapped as it had done to the table, this time against the heavy silver of the crest-collar restored to Aldric’s neck just before he left Teynaur. The Drusalan grunted to himself as if satisfied, but when that same finger touched the scar on the younger man’s cheek, another grunt sounded more like displeasure at the wound’s newness. A moment more and the general turned away.

“Release him,” he said over his shoulder, and Aldric felt a muscle twitch in his face because the order was in Alban. Massaging his arms – the sentries’ grip had been tight enough to stop the flow of blood, and it tingled in his fingers as it returned to them – he watched all the officers covertly from under drooping eyelids, and the general most of all.

“My lord,” he said, uncomfortable at the loudness of his own voice in the silence, “I thank you.” He bowed as was only polite, then looked straight at the general, not polite at all, and tried not to care that a direct stare might be insolent and dealt with accordingly. “But I would thank you rather more if I knew what the hell was going on.” Nineteen high-ranked officers growled their displeasure, suggesting every one of them was familiar with colloquial Alban, but the general just nodded.

“Your file suggested you might react like this.” Aldric didn’t miss the inference, delivered with all the subtlety of a war-hammer: We know about you. All about you. “Would it help if I told you that I am Lord General Goth?”

At last. At long last.

Aldric did the most sensible thing he could in the circumstances. He dropped to one knee and offered the elaborate courtesy of Second Obeisance, since Goth as senior officer present was lord of this place. It also gave him a chance to get his betraying facial muscles under control, and when he straightened up again he was hiding behind a cool, half-smiling mask. Goth matched it with a half-smile of his own.

“There is a proverb among my people that refers to your people: ‘Beware the Alban when he bows to hide his face.’ Should I beware of you?”

Aldric doubted if there was much this man had to beware of here or anywhere else. Lord General Goth was third man in the Drusalan Imperial hierarchy and its paramount military commander. The office of Grand Warlord, despite its martial title, was more political than anything else as recent events had made all too clear. More important still, Goth was virtual father to young Emperor Ioen much as Gemmel was to Aldric, but for years longer. He was an honourable enough man, although it was a Drusalan form of honour and more flexible than most Alban kailinin would tolerate. Goth, doing what he considered necessary for the good of the Empire, had twisted it almost beyond acceptance even by Drusalans.

“You will sit down,” the general said. It wasn’t an invitation, and Aldric did as he was told. “Also,” continued Goth, “you will pardon me for the means which brought you here.” That slightly clumsy use of Alban wasn’t clumsy at all. The demand for pardon was in imperative mode and another order, no more a linguistic slip than his offer of a seat. Aldric nodded, smiled, and made all the courteous little gestures of one dismissing a paltry inconvenience rather than an experience terrifying then and far from reassuring now.

“As to the reason for it all.” The general leaned back in his chair and made ready to talk at length, familiar body language since both Gemmel and Dewan ar Korentin were great preachers when the mood was on them. “Tuenafen is in debatable territory, and most seaports perforce must be…” Aldric locked polite interest onto his face and let five minutes of pointless elaboration wash over him. Either he had heard it all before, or he hadn’t been interested the first time around. Then Goth said something which jarred him back to full awareness. “More than my men knew of your presence there.”

Something of what he felt must have shown on Aldric’s face despite his efforts at guarded neutrality, for Goth leaned forward and wagged a disapproving finger at him in a tutorial gesture much in keeping with his tone of voice.

“Come now, you didn’t think the goings-on at Seghar went unnoticed, did you?” Goth stared harder. “Or did you?” Aldric said nothing. “Well…!” There was a good deal of private opinion in the way the Drusalan exhaled the word, but he elaborated no further and instead lifted one armoured shoulder in the beginnings of a shrug. “No matter now. But given your frame of mind, you wouldn’t have stopped for conversation with armoured regulars like those who brought you here. And their presence would have made my hand too plain. As I say, there were more eyes than mine in Tuenafen. So despite opposition I had to use other means.”

As if on cue one of the other officers got to his feet, snapped a perfunctory salute and berated his superior in what Aldric could only think of as a polite shout, very different to the muted voices at King Rynert’s war council before the Dunrath campaign. Another man rose, nodded to his equals, saluted his superiors and joined the discussion, if ‘discussion’ was the right word and Aldric wasn’t sure about that at all. This man’s oration had more shouting and less politeness, enough to start Goth’s finger tapping again. Both speakers used dialect, as Geruath of Seghar had done all those months ago and for the same reason, so the foreigner present wouldn’t understand.

“Gentlemen,” Goth said at last, an edge in his voice marking the end of further debate, “we voted on this matter when the plan was first proposed.” He spoke High Drusalan now, with the drawling accent that seemed a trademark of the military, but despite that affectation what he said was clear enough to Aldric. All too clear.

Plan? yelled an outraged voice in his mind. Nobody mentioned any plan to me! The first officer jumped up again, scowling, and barked out a few words before making an indignant gesture in Aldric’s direction.

“We were not forced to anything,” replied Goth. “The whole council made this decision. And yes, Hasolt, I remember your views. Do you wish to make formal objection as a matter of record?”

“Yes, Coerhanalth Goth, I do!” The officer glanced around the table, shot another unfriendly glare at Aldric and counted points on his fingers. This time he used ordinary Drusalan, whether because of his passion or because he no longer cared who understood him. Even without it Aldric could have guessed his complaint from the waving arms and the Alban words scattered through his diatribe like raisins in dough.

The man had been expecting a notable emissary selected personally by King Rynert of Alba, an arluth or noble lord, at least a high clan kailin-eir retainer, and Light of Heaven knew what else. Now he was being asked to accept, on the same terms, a scruffy landless eijo with neither name nor fame who could as easily be a spy or an assassin. Real eijin were oathbound self-exiles from family and past life. What Drusalans knew of them were crude caricatures from cheap melodrama, never honourable, seldom heroic, often villainous, always lethal. The perfect anti-hero. Little of that was fact, but not enough of it was fiction.

“Stop.” Goth’s voice was sharper now, and the officer fell silent. “If you want to continue in this vein, our guest may wish to challenge you over it. And I won’t stand in his way if he does. You still don’t realise Rynert has sent us the man who restored peace between Alba and the Empire. This is kailin-eir Aldric, ilauem-arluth Talvalin of Dunrath-hold, who killed Duergar and cu Ruruc.”

Hasolt’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to say something, but only licked his lips. The curt bow before he sat down again was a balance between trying to maintain his position and rank yet not give any more offence than he had already. One thing was clear, he recognised Aldric’s name well enough to want no challenge. After so much petty obstruction, that reputation was finally proving useful.

Aldric suspected Goth knew far more than he had confided to his colleagues. He wanted, needed, to learn how much more, and even find out where the general got his information. And there was one other question which, discourteous or not, he had to ask.

“Coerhanalth Goth-eir?” The Drusalan glanced in his direction, eyebrows lifting in query. “Sir, what plan is this?”

“So Rynert didn’t tell you after all? That was most remiss of him.” The reply sent an apprehensive shudder scurrying down Aldric’s spine, and he felt his mouth go dry as the fear he had suppressed so well came flooding back.

“Tell me? Tell me what? I was to deliver messages of… Of a certain delicacy, to Lord General Goth in a place of his own choosing. Nothing more than that.”

“Indeed.” Goth steepled his fingers and stared at them in a very Rynert-like gesture. “Ah well.” He came to a decision and looked past Aldric at the escort who had brought him from the harbour. “Return his black knife,” he told the escort leader, “then dismiss.”

Aldric heard the clatter as the armoured troopers took their leave and looked at what one of them had laid on the table in front of him – and laid gently, for someone had warned the man to show respect for that small blade. His tsepan. The Guardian of his Honour. A blade whose scars crossed his left hand, scars he would carry to the final fire. He lifted the weapon and felt the comforting coolness of grip and scabbard against sweaty skin, then returned it to its proper place on his belt.

“General,” he spoke Drusalan himself now, for sincerity’s sake, “I thank you for returning my self-respect. But I ask again: what plan?”

“Surely King Rynert told you?”

“I don’t remember him saying…” Aldric closed his teeth on an incomplete excuse, because though the king’s words were months in the past, there was a sudden uneasy recollection of words that had seemed vague and unimportant. ‘If you have any other opportunity to prove my friendship, I expect it to be done.’ At the time it seemed only an ambiguous footnote tacked onto clearer instructions. Now he wasn’t so sure. “Suppose you hear the messages?” he said at last. Those messages were locked by sorcery within his brain, only their recipients knew how to release them and – despite the officer Hasolt’s opinion of the way he looked – he really was the Alban clan-lord this conference was expecting. That made the messages important even if they were nothing more than polite hopes for health, success and long life.

“Hear them, Goth. Then perhaps we can get on.”

The hollow, metallic voice came from right behind Aldric’s head, where nobody had any right to be without his awareness of it, and he came up from the embrace of the upholstered chair faster than he would have believed possible. The man who stood there, far too close for comfort, was almost six feet tall. Despite a lean build there was altogether too much of him to enter any room without notice, yet he had done so. Elegant in crimson and silver beneath the dragonsblood cloak of the Imperial military, he wore its hood drawn part-way over his head. But it was what that hood left exposed that set Aldric’s pulse-rate jumping.

It was a mask of mirror-polished steel.

There were far too many deeply ingrained images from his memories of cu Ruruc and the demon-sending Esel in that tall, silent figure, more than enough for him to jerk his tsepan from its scabbard. The Honour-dirk was no fighting weapon, but it had killed before: Overlord Geruath of Seghar had died on its point, driven by the hand of his own son. And it was the only weapon Aldric had to hand. His warped reflection stared back at him from the surface of the mask, but there was nothing else to read from that polished, expressionless face: no threat, no anger, no amusement. Nothing at all.

“Aldric!” Goth’s voice was sharp and urgent, well aware of what might happen next. “Aldric, it’s all right. This is a friend.” Tense seconds passed before the younger man relaxed enough to move from his attack-ready posture, and even then it was only to retreat on stiff, poised legs beyond the reach of this potential opponent.

“If he’s a friend, make him show his face.”

The masked head shook from side to side, just once, unspeaking but clear. No.

“He won’t do that at your request, Aldric-an,” the general said. “Or mine. This is Bruda. Prokrator Bruda, the other man your king commanded you to meet. En Hauthanalth Kagh’ Ernvakh. Call him Commander of the Guardians of Honour.” Everyone noticed Aldric’s gaze as it flicked from Bruda’s gleaming mask to the gleaming blade of his own tsepan. “Or call him Lord of the Honourable Guard. He’s Chief of our Secret Police.”

“Secret Police.” There was a world of unvoiced insult in the way Aldric sneered the words. He returned the tsepan a finger’s length to its scabbard and hesitated, glancing again from the black dirk to Bruda’s cold steel face, then shrugged and slid the weapon home. “Now I understand.”

“Perhaps you do.” Bruda seemed unruffled by the open hostility. “And perhaps you only think so.” Snapping his fingers, he pointed in a single sweeping gesture to the officers who sat at each side of the table, and ended it with an over-shoulder jerk of his palm towards the door. “By my command,” he said, “out.”

To Aldric’s surprise they did so at once, without question or a word of protest at the Prokrator’s high-handed manner. That told him a thing or two more than he expected about the Secret Police. As he turned his head to watch them go, he caught his first glimpse of three men standing in the lee of the doorway, who by their appearance had nothing to do with the military conference and everything to do with Bruda. He recognised Garet, the officer-cadet who had been his gaoler aboard Teynaur, but had never seen the others until now. He would have remembered them both.

One had a face that might have been crudely whittled from an oak stump with a hatchet, all harsh planes and angles. He was in armour, flashed with tau-kortagor’s rank bars like Garet’s and, alongside them, silver thunderbolts matching those which Bruda wore across the shoulders of his robe. The other stranger was strangest of all for he was a replica of the Prokrator himself, face hidden by a red-enamelled mask etched with patterns that seemed to mean more than simple decoration, and a scarlet overrobe stiffened by silver-worked embroidery. Aldric’s first impression was of some reptilian creature which only incidentally resembled a man, and it was an impression which refused to go away.

“My chief lieutenant, Hautheisart Voord,” said Bruda in that resonant metallic voice of his, and Voord bowed with a courtier’s grace. “I think you know part of his action squad already. Tau-kortagor’n Tagen and Garet.”

“We’ve met, yes, but not socially. And without formal introduction.” Aldric studied the officer-cadets, guessing their ostensible low rank was far from low at all, and a wintery smile crossed Goth’s hard features.

“We’ll be talking a while yet, so refreshments would be in order. See about it, and bring Lord Aldric’s gear and equipment.”

“All of it?” Despite the hollow echoes of the mask Voord’s voice was youthful. It was also petulant, the sound of any young man given instructions he didn’t care for.

“All. Do it. Now.”

Aldric suppressed a smile. Even with that unreadable metal face he had sensed from the start that Voord didn’t like him much. Whatever the reason, it wouldn’t cause any sleepless nights. As Goth’s guest he enjoyed a privileged position, and it was one he was fully prepared to use. Then his hearing plucked a familiar name from the background mutter of conversation, and without thinking he echoed it aloud.

“Kathur?” Heads turned, and though he could see only one face of the three that mattered, all were probably alike in their quizzical expression. “Then I was right.”

“Right about what?” Voord was the first to voice everyone’s question.

“About the woman Kathur, in Tuenafen. So it wasn’t a coincidence when she and I…” He stopped, embarrassed, with his meaning clear enough.

“Kagh’ Ernvakh regard coincidence as useful,” said Bruda, “but only when we create and control it. At all other times I dislike it intensely. Though it seems the woman in question—”

“Went beyond her instructions,” finished Voord. “Well beyond. She was ordered to make contact with the Alban and keep him confined.” If his face had been visible it would have worn an unpleasant grin. “That she liked him enough to do a great deal more is amusing. At least it made me laugh.”

“Kathur wouldn’t talk about any of what—” Aldric burst out, and was silenced by a wave of Voord’s hand. There was something wrong with that hand, something horribly wrong.

“Kathur would,” the hautheisart said. “And did, in detail.”

“Voord!” Goth had no need for the added emphasis of a flat-handed slap against the table; an Imperial Lord General raising his voice was emphatic enough. “I’ve had cause to warn Eldheisart Hasolt about insulting talk. Stop it.”

“Yes, sir. At once, sir.” Voord came to languid attention, secure in his own power and what he represented, and paused long enough for insolence before he made his salute. “But these are facts related by one of my own agents. Sir.”

“Whether they’re an agent’s facts or your own opinions, I advise you to suppress them. Three gold diamonds outrank one in silver, Hautheisart, so I can break you, and I will if you annoy me.” Goth stared in silence for a few seconds that seemed much longer. “Do we understand each other?”

“Sir, yes sir!” There was nothing languid about the way Voord stood now, and he was likely sweating inside his mask. “But I must point out, sir, that this agent, this woman, thought enough of the prisoner—”

“Guest, Voord, not prisoner. Guest.”

“Thought enough of him to threaten me with a weapon later proved to be loaded and lethal.”

“And were you disturbed by this threat, Voord? Did it frighten you?” Goth’s voice was silky.

“Frighten? Not for a moment, sir!”

“Then you were a fool. If you spoke to her as you’ve spoken to me, I’m surprised she didn’t mark you. Just to teach you manners.”

“Lucky for her that she didn’t.”

“But luckier for you.” Goth stroked his beard a moment and stared at Voord again without troubling to hide his dislike. It was perhaps as well that the chamber doors opened to admit several retainers. Most carried trays of food and drink, but others bore items Aldric thought he would never see again. They were his armour, left behind in Tuenafen, and his saddlebags and saddle with their suggestion that Lyard at least had been brought here as well. Best of all were Isileth Widowmaker and his taipan shortsword – his right hand flexed at sight of them – with his weapon-belt wrapped around their scabbards.

Then he saw what was tucked like an afterthought through his helmet’s chinstraps: a cylinder of papers bound with tape and sealed with the crest, visible even at this distance, of the Imperial Fleet. Those papers had the look of a report, the sort a warship commander might make about irregular occurrences during his voyage.

Voord – Voord, Voord, where else had he heard that name? – plucked the message-roll from its resting-place and snapped the seal away with his left hand. Aldric got his first good look at its crooked, maimed fingers and shivered. Something unpleasant had happened to the hautheisart, a mutilation that made his own scars insignificant. After only a moment scanning the sheets as they uncoiled from their tight roll Voord nodded as if they contained what he expected, glanced with his expressionless masked face towards Aldric, then laid them with a flourish on the table.

“Will you take wine?” Aldric jumped a little; Bruda was at his shoulder again, moving with uncanny silence for such a large man. The sight and sound of this sinister figure playing the role of courteous host, and playing it well, chilled him with a recollection of where he was.

“I… I’d, I would prefer something with more strength, I thank you,” he replied, cursing his jumpiness, cursing his shock-born stammer and taking refuge in formality. When he was offered smoke-scented Elthanek grainfire he didn’t pause for a second to wonder how it had passed through the various blockades between its source and his hand. Instead he put the glass to his mouth, feeling its rim clink against his teeth, and let the scorching liquid run down his throat to light a small, comforting furnace in the pit of his stomach.

He took another swallow, and a third. With that a small metallic click matched the clink of the glass as Bruda removed his mask before helping himself to food. Voord did likewise, and there was a third and more final click from the door as Garet and his companion Tagen locked it to keep unauthorised eyes from the faces of the Empire’s Secret Police.

Aldric’s eyes were just as unauthorised, but special dispensation had left him on this side of the door so he stared his fill. First at Voord, being closest and also most likely to resent the scrutiny. The hautheisart’s face was young enough to be remarkable above the insignia of his high rank, no more than a few years older than Aldric but thin, stretched and gaunt in a way that didn’t match his frame. It was hard to be certain, for the armour beneath his overrobe gave his body a bulk it might lack in the flesh.

Voord’s hair was a washed-out blond so light as to be almost colourless, brushed straight back from a high, intelligent forehead. Hooded light-blue eyes returned Aldric’s gaze with a disdainful, well-played lack of interest. His whole attitude was one of studied indifference, and only his mouth was wrong. It should have been decadently full-lipped, but instead it was a thin, compressed slash between nose and chin that looked more like a flaw in an alabaster carving.

Bruda, for all his seniority in rank, seemed more approachable, more likely to bridge the gap between acquaintance and friendship. The Prokrator was a man in his early forties though he moved like one fifteen years younger, and Aldric was disappointed at first. He had expected another angular jaw, high blades of cheekbones, icy grey eyes, something, anything, to make this man look like what he was.

And then he realised Bruda was perfect for what he was.

His height and build were average, and there was nothing else about him for a memory to hook on. His features were regular and symmetrical, no scar or blemish or any other distinguishing mark marred his skin, and even his sweeping moustache meant nothing; clean-shaven faces could wear false beards and real facial hair could be shaved. Eyes, nose and mouth were neither large nor small nor irregular. Bruda had no face of his own.

Aldric took another mouthful of spirit, aware as he raised the glass that this and the ration red he had downed earlier were the only things in his stomach. There was nothing now that would better his situation, and only an armed assault on the three Drusalan officers could make it worse. All this courtesy and hospitality didn’t fool him for a moment. He could recognise the honeyed bait of a potential trap before he tasted it, so he might as well enjoy its flavour.

The food smelled wonderful, but there wasn’t a single spoon or fork, never mind a knife, anywhere on the several trays, and not a single dish whose presentation needed them. Everything was for eating with the fingers. It was like his meals on Teynaur all over again, and despite the brief satisfaction when it put Eldheisart Hasolt in his place, Aldric’s notoriety was back to being a mere nuisance.

There were pies, pasties and tarts full of meat, cheese, fish, onion and various imaginative combinations, all small enough to consume in one or two mouthfuls. There were neat pieces of lamb and beef, pork and chicken, mushrooms and onions, all with the browned edges and central hole that came of being grilled or roasted on a skewer, but never a length of sharp metal in sight. Instead, garnished with dried spiced fruit, sauces and fresh green herbs, they were arranged in neat heaps or artistic designs alongside stacks of delicate quills, ideal for transferring bite-sized morsels but no use as weapons.

Aldric smiled as he considered how the Drusalans constantly overrated him, though the smile grew cold as he turned a quill over in his fingers. Whittled in a different way it could become a pen. Pointed as it was now and in the right hands – hands like his – this dainty, supposed-harmless utensil could pierce through an eye to the brain behind, or punch a neck artery open enough to drain a man dry so fast it was shocking. Perhaps he wasn’t being overrated after all, but he decided against mentioning that to Goth or Bruda. They had already returned his tsepan and, if he behaved well enough, the rest of his Three Blades might soon keep it company. But not if he spoiled their appetite or temper with needless information…

He studied the discarded masks, metal screens that were the public visage of Kagh’ Ernvakh, then lifted the nearest – Bruda’s – for closer inspection and looked up from his own reflected face to meet the Prokrator’s curious gaze.

“Why?” Aldric asked.

“The masks? Status and a mark of rank. Secrecy and somewhere to hide.” Even Bruda’s voice, and he was speaking Alban now, had no accent. Not the underlying throatiness and sibilance of one whose first tongue was Drusalan, not the nasal purr of the Jouvaine, not even any of the Albans’ own regional colourations. The words emerged with perfect clarity but their source remained untraceable. Aldric set down the mask and saw how even the lamplight seemed to shudder from its polished curves and angles. Or maybe that was just the slight movement created by his touch.

“Yes. I see. All too well.”

“Bruda?” General Goth spoke from the head of the table, where he held a sheet of paper at arm’s length as if wishing he could hold it further still. “Bruda, read this if you would. The rest of you – Voord, Tagen, Garet – be seated. We should begin the business which brought us here.”

“Myself included, Goth-eir?” asked Aldric after another thoughtful stare at the steel mirror of the mask.

“Especially yourself. This concerns you, both as a man and as an agent of your king.”

“Of course.” If there was a faint edge to his voice, it wasn’t directed at the general. “Have I a choice of whether to accept or refuse?” Even as he asked, Aldric heard Bruda’s soft, inhaled oath as the Prokrator read what a certain Imperial ship-commander had to say about a certain passenger aboard his vessel, and that inhalation told him what the answer would be. Had to be. And he was right. Out of the three who might have given a reply, it was Goth who voiced it.

“I regret not, Aldric-an.” There seemed to be little regret in the man’s tone.

“Then I’d as soon not hear your plan.”

“You misunderstand, hlensyarl,” said Voord unpleasantly. “What the Lord General means is that you have no choice in anything.”

“We’ll see. Afterwards. But for now,” he turned his back on the hautheisart to give the senior officers a courteous little bow, “sirs, whenever you’re ready to begin, I’m ready to listen.”

“Our Emperor,” said Goth, “had a sister, Princess Marhala, who has spent the past six weeks under lock and key in the Red Tower.”

“A princess,” echoed Aldric in an odd, small voice, “imprisoned in a tower. You did say ‘tower’?”

“I did. The Red Tower at Egisburg.” Goth was watching Aldric, so missed Bruda tilting back in his chair with his mouth shaded by one hand. Aldric guessed their thoughts were running in parallel. His response tickled Bruda hugely, but was something the sober, serious general might not like.

“It was her misfortune,” Prokrator Bruda explained, once his twitching mouth was under control, “to be on the wrong side of what’s really a truce line – though nobody calls it that –

when yet another damned interminable debate broke down. They’re peace talks, but nobody calls them that either. Anyway. Another of those wrangles fell apart, the borders closed, Marhala and her people were taken into custody on their way to the frontier, and they’ve been in the Red Tower ever since.” Bruda pushed papers to and fro on the table, then flicked a glance at Aldric from under his lowered brows. “I don’t know how Etzel’s cavalry patrol came to be where they were at so opportune a moment. But I do know the breakdown of the conference was engineered. I was there, I saw it happen. Someone, somewhere, is playing a double game and when I learn who…”

“That does little to help the princess just now,” Goth said. “Her continued wellbeing is the Emperor’s responsibility. And ours.”

“What was the threat?” Aldric asked. There had to be a threat, there was always a threat.

“This.” Goth set a small box on the table, fine-meshed gold filigree lined with crimson satin where a lady might store her choicest gems. “It contained the letter informing us of Princess Marhala’s abduction.”

“And how many other boxes has Grand Warlord Etzel reserved for the princess if his letter goes unheeded?”

“Enough,” said Bruda, all his humour quite evaporated. “And he isn’t bluffing. In all the years of the Sherban dynasty, no Grand Warlord has made an idle threat.”

“I can imagine,” said Aldric. There was no point in making ferocious noises if the violence they promised wasn’t carried out.

“For the sake of political balance a rescue is vital,” Goth was ticking points off on his fingers, “and equally vital that Imperial forces should have no connection with anything so irregular.”

Aldric looked at the general and muted a humourless chuckle. Neither side wanted armed conflict, but if it came each hoped the other would oblige by starting it. It was odd that outright war was preferable to subterfuge, but then subterfuge had brought him here to represent Alban support in a way no words ever could, and he hadn’t enjoyed that very much. There was less ambiguity about weapons.

“So then, my lord Aldric-arluth Talvalin,” Goth gave him his title for the first time, in the same way that flattery precedes wheedling, “what do you think of our predicament?” There was silence up and down the table as heads turned to stare at Aldric, waiting expectantly for his reply. He did as Prokrator Bruda had expected he might, and laughed.

“You dragged me halfway across the Empire for a children’s bedtime story? Princesses and towers and wicked lords? Father of Fires, what next?” He kicked back from the table and stood up, a jolting violent movement which brought Voord’s guards out of their seats with swords half-drawn. “Sit down, you two. I won’t bite!” Neither man moved, and he shrugged. “Then please yourselves.”

“Hear us out, man. At least hear me.” Bruda hadn’t risen to his feet, indeed hadn’t changed his posture in the chair at all. He radiated calm as a fire radiates heat, and when Aldric glared he matched it stare for stare. “Sit, please. Be still. Listen to what we have to say, then be angry if you must.”

Aldric held Bruda’s gaze for several more seconds to prove he wasn’t looking away because he had to, then slowly, carefully resumed his seat.

*

Aldric Talvalin had been told many things already, Bruda knew, but not the unpalatable truth behind his being brought here. No one had yet decided how and when he should learn that, but Bruda had expressed a wish to be there when it happened. Now he wasn’t so sure. He knew a great deal more than he had any right to about this Alban clan-lord, but it was the way he and Goth and Voord acquired such information that lay at the bottom of all. It had been a distasteful process of spies and threats and thievery and blackmail, despite its benefit to the Empire he served – and loved, though he only admitted that on rare occasions, in private and the maudlin stage of drink. If there had been another way…

But there had not.

Bruda wasn’t Hauthanalth Kagh’ Ernvakh for nothing. He commanded the Guardians of the Emperor’s Honour, as old and respected a position as any in this young Empire, and to do so he was himself a man of honour. That made him unlike Goth with his plots and stratagems and, especially, unlike Voord whose personal advancement coloured everything he did. But Bruda believed himself very like the young Alban who sat bolt-upright and stared and dared them all to make sense of his disrupted life. Aldric too was an honourable man, not only as the Albans defined the word, but also as the Prokrator himself regarded it. That made him deadly dangerous, a whetted blade poised and ready to fall. But where? On his captors?

Or on the king who had betrayed him?

“Aldric-an,” Bruda said quietly, “Princess Marhala was taken twelve leagues from the frontier. More than thirty miles inside hostile territory. So why do you think she’s held in Egisburg, a city only three leagues from the line?”

“Well within range of a mounted assault-force,” added Goth, and Aldric whistled thinly through his teeth.

“ ‘Here’s your prize. Come take it.’ And if the army sends in a force—?”

“Then the Empire goes up in flames from end to end. War, to justify having a Warlord.” Bruda leaned forward, his face taut. “Will you help us, Aldric-an? As your king desires?” He watched as the Alban settled back into the padded embrace of his chair and looked from face to face with hooded, unreadable eyes, feeling sure the young man had already made up his mind.

*

“This whole affair,” said Aldric, “is so twisted that trying to work through the basic permutations gives me a headache. And it stinks of intrigue. That’s not a perfume I like. So, just for your so-comprehensive records, king or not, duty or not… No, I won’t.” He allowed the small sounds of astonishment, anger or downright disbelief to fade away, then glanced bleakly towards Hautheisart Voord. “I’m sure you’re eager to change my mind. Get on with it. Convince me.”

He wanted to know what his allies-to-be were really like, what lay beneath the dutiful, heroic expressions they hid with masks of metal. This was a way of finding out, and he expected threats of violence like those uttered by Hautmarin Aralten aboard Teynaur. What he didn’t expect was the exultant smile that stretched Voord’s razor-cut mouth. It sent a tiny shiver of apprehension up his back as he guessed, far too late, that being convinced by the Drusalan Secret Police might involve threats that weren’t so commonplace. What could they promise? What could they do?

He learned.

“This report from Teynaur is enough to place its subject in the hands of the secular authorities on a charge of sorcery,” said Voord. “It would be time-consuming, a waste of our investment, and in any case mere death is no threat to a kailin of Alba.” Aldric could have differed with that opinion, but good sense kept his mouth shut. “So,” continued Voord, “I examined our dossier, and found ways of turning his much-vaunted pride and honour to our advantage.” He tapped one finger on the table and Garet slid a folder towards him across the polished surface. Voord opened it, flicked through the contents with the bone and leather talon of his left hand, then extracted two sheets.

“One: the steading of Tervasdal in Valhol.” Aldric’s head jerked up. “Two: the citadel at Seghar.” There was a self-satisfied undertone to Voord’s voice as he arranged both sheets on the table with finicky neatness, spinning the moment out. “And three: a fine Andarran stallion in the stables of this very stronghold. Kyrin and Gueynor and Lyard.” He smiled at Aldric and pressed his right hand flat against the documents. “Do you want to hear the details?”

Aldric gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles went ivory-pale. He got to his feet again, very slowly this time like a man oppressed by vast weight, and only Bruda was close enough and quick enough to catch the hatred glittering in his eyes like a drawn blade. Yet there was no trace of it when he turned towards Goth, shoulders sagging like those of a man broken in body and spirit, all defiance gone as he stumbled over his speech.

“The… My… Sir, I-I’m convinced. When do we go?”

“Tomorrow will be soon enough,” said Goth. “First you need clothing and armour.”

“I already have armour, sir.”

“But not for Egisburg. Ride through that city’s gates in Alban harness and you would never leave again. You’ll need our cavalry equipment.”

“I want my own weapons.” There was a sudden hardness in his voice that left no room for argument, like an actor forgetting the role he played, but it was gone an instant later. “If there’s need, I should carry what I know how to use.”

Goth looked past him towards Bruda, and Aldric’s peripheral vision caught the Prokrator’s nod of consent accompanied by a hand-sign which meant nothing at first. It was a gesture he might have used himself in a noisy tavern, signalling for an increased measure, but here it seemed completely out of context.

Until Goth spoke again.

*

“To carry personal blades,” he said, “Prokrator Bruda directs that an officer must also carry high rank. A brevet of hanalth should be enough.” This time it was Voord who shot out of his chair, knocking it over in his haste. The babbled words of outraged protest fell silent when Goth raised his hand with a look that dared him to argue further. Voord did.

“You can’t do this!” he blared, all affronted dignity. “You can’t give such promotion—”

“Hautheisart Voord!” Bruda’s voice was sharp. “The Lord General has just done so.”

“But-but that means…” Disbelief struggled with the reality of the situation and reality won. “That means he’s senior to me!” Voord stared at Bruda then at Goth, hoping this was a black joke played on him for his earlier foul manners, hoping to see a smile or a twinkling eye, but the only amusement he saw was on Aldric’s face. And that made things much worse.

“You’re correct, hautheisart,” said Goth. “He is superior.” Aldric’s smile got slightly wider but Voord was past noticing subtle nuances of tone. This affair was more important to him than even caution, and his next words bypassed the general in favour of his own commander.

“Prokrator Hauthanalth,” he said, using Bruda’s full title for the same reason Aldric’s had been used by Goth, as preface and emphasis for an appeal. “Sir, tell me I don’t have to heed his commands.” An abject ‘please’ was unspoken but obvious and if Voord hadn’t been so ill-mannered earlier, Bruda might have said what his lieutenant wanted to hear. Instead…

“This is only for protective colouration, Voord, so nothing of the sort should happen.” He shot a warning glance at Aldric. “But if, if an officer of…of apparently superior rank…gives you an order before witnesses, then as his subordinate you will obey it.”

Voord was pallid at the best of times, but now what little colour was in his face drained away to leave it as white as chalk. His hand slammed against the table-top, his maimed left hand, as if his fury needed to cause pain but the only person he could hurt with impunity was himself.

“I will not!” Voord’s voice was shrill and tremulous. “I’ll take no orders from that fatherless son of a whore, that—”

*

Lord-Commander Voord Ebanesh abused Drusalan prisoners and subordinates without a second thought but had no experience of Albans. Otherwise he might have been more guarded in his choice of words, or at least realised how close he was when he said them.

Both mistakes at once meant Aldric didn’t even have to move, except for one fist backed by all the focused power of a swordsman’s trained muscles, before slamming Voord’s further opinions back into his mouth. That punch didn’t quite lift the man off his feet, but it snapped his head back on his neck and staggered him enough that those feet shot from under him. The hautheisart crashed to the floor in a clatter of harness and weapons, blood bright on his face from lips burst by the hammer-and-anvil impact against his own teeth. His mouth sagged open, revealing a ragged splinter of incisor gleaming white against the red.

“Sharp fangs,” said Aldric to no one in particular. “Not as poisonous as everything else in that mouth.” He sucked the oozing, ragged skin across his knuckles to ease its sting, stared at the wound for a moment, then worked his jaws and spat a jet of mingled blood and saliva across the floor just short of Voord’s right hand. “But you can never be sure with snakes.”

“Kakyu shu’aj!” Voord yelled the obscenity as he scrambled to his feet and slapped hand to makher hilt. Then he jolted to a standstill with the blade still sheathed, speed and distance misjudged yet again, for Aldric had already reached for something among his bundled gear on the bench.

That something was Isileth.

Now her edge hovered so close to Voord’s windpipe that a mere flick of the wrist would shear it. The longsword was far steadier than anything held by the hand of a broken man should be, and the flint-hard eyes staring at him down its length no longer showed any sign of defeat. Voord looked at the blade, at the hand, at the eyes, and realised the sum of those three things equalled his own death.

“Halt!” Goth’s voice, parade-ground harsh, slashed through the room. It broke whatever connection ran from a gortaiken hungry sword to its wielder’s mind and muscles, or perhaps only caused an instant’s pause between intent and action. Either way it saved Voord’s life, because though neither Aldric nor the hautheisart had moved, something savage vanished from the air.

“You heard what he said.” Aldric didn’t shift his gaze from Voord’s face or Isileth Widowmaker from the man’s throat, but at least he spoke instead of driving the taiken home. “All of you.”

“No. He’s too valuable.”

“Valuable?” Aldric coughed a single humourless laugh. “You mean he’s an investment like me? Then he should have invested a few seconds of thought in what he said before he said it.”

“Look at his face, man! Look at what you did! Isn’t that enough for one ill-chosen word?”

“No.” Aldric sounded vindictive. “Not yet.”

“Let them fight.” Bruda’s words flew full in the face of a superior’s direct command and drew everyone’s attention. “With taidyo staff-swords. There’s a sheaf of them among the weapon-gear. Or since Voord’s worth more undamaged – as are they both, Lord General – let the Alban fight with somebody else.” That was as much challenge as suggestion, but no one reacted by so much as the flicker of an eyelid. “You say to him, ‘look at Voord’. I say to you, ‘look at him’. He’s like a crossbow, wound up and dangerous. And besides…” Bruda shifted slightly, sitting bolt-upright in his chair, and he no longer looked approachable. Instead that formal posture transformed him into everything an Imperial hauthanalth and a Chief of Secret Police should be: arrogant, sinister and menacing. “Besides,” he tapped the folder on the table, “I want to see if he’s as good as this claims.”

“If you think I’ll entertain you by—” Aldric began, then bit the words off short as tau-kortagor Garet stood up.

“You talk of insults, Alban. The things that feed your honour. Do you remember how you insulted me aboard Teynaur? I do, even if you don’t, and if you want a fight,” he spread mailed arms wide, “here I am.”

Aldric stared. This was the same baby-faced cadet who had seemed almost friendly as the warship came into dock. And yet he wasn’t the same at all. Once again he looked older, meaner, and far more capable of violence. If this was Drusalan friendship, it was as transient as snow in springtime. No matter. He had no need of such friends.

Bruda had spoken truth about him. The cold killing rage shuttered behind his eyes was still for Voord alone but, no matter how he tried to hide it, he was angry enough to fight with anyone. It was the cumulative effect of insults, of being used and abused by so-called allies, of being treated like an inanimate object bought and paid for, like…

Like an investment. Light of Heaven, that word burned like vitriol.

When he slid Widowmaker back into her scabbard Aldric spoke no needless hands-off warning. In Goth and Bruda’s presence nobody would be fool enough to touch the sword, and they had too much sense to do it themselves.

Garet had already selected a taidyo and was whipping the four-foot length of oak from side to side. It was unusual for anyone other than an Alban to be familiar with longsword play – Gemmel was a notable exception, as in much else – and as he watched Garet’s posturing Aldric wondered if this was yet another test set up in advance. He didn’t care. If Voord had arranged it, then the hautheisart’s smashed mouth would remind him to be more cautious next time.

“I can’t damage you the way you deserve,” said Garet as he stalked across the floor, “but I’ll teach you how to treat Imperial officers.”

Aldric seemed oblivious to the threats. He tugged one staff-sword after another from their canvas sleeves, chose one whose chequer-carved grip best fitted his hands, and hefted it to test its weight and balance. Garet was still talking, threatening, boasting, casting doubts on Aldric’s ability and on the worthiness of fighting with sticks. But Aldric knew stick-fighting of old, and the damage it could do; a solid blow from a stave like these had snapped his ribs.

That was why he laid his own taidyo aside and buckled on the sleeves of his battle armour, provoking more derisive comment from the already-mailed Garet and a certain amount of muttered observation from the other. The steel plates of the vambraces were a better defence against percussive impact than the strongest mail-mesh ever made, and if Garet didn’t know it already, he would find out soon enough.

Aldric swung the taidyo from low to high then down again, swept it across at the level of his eyes and finished with a diagonal to right and left. They were simple moves to check the fit of the armoured sleeves, but as Garet watched him Aldric could see confusion cross the Drusalan’s face. It was enlightening. He didn’t know as much about Alban longswords as he claimed, and if so, then…

“Ow!” Aldric winced as cramp stabbed like a silver bolt through one shoulder-joint and made him gasp. It might have been a legacy of being unhorsed in Tuenafen, or helping to propel Teynaur to port. The reason was of no account and even Aldric wasn’t sure if he had meant it to be so obvious. What mattered was that Garet had heard the gasp, seen the wince and drawn his own conclusions.

“I’m better than you, Alban,” the tau-kortagor said. “I’m better because I’m faster, and I’m faster because I’m younger. That’s why I’ll hurt you, Alban, and why there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

Garet shifted into a stance Aldric recognised. It was one of the ready positions for the makher, a weapon as different from the taiken as night from day. Now he was sure who would win and lose. Who would be hurt, and who would do the hurting. He subjected the stance to a slow, unimpressed head-to-toe examination, then looked his opponent in the eye and went “Tsk-tsk.”

An instant later Garet’s taidyo was lashing at his face.

Aldric didn’t block the cut, no true cut at all but a slash more suited to a man with a club. Instead he gave ground with an evasion as neat as a dance-step and didn’t even bring his own sword up into ward. It broke the first and last rule of weapon-play; toying with an unknown opponent invited disaster, and it was a rule he usually obeyed. Yet with the opening for a counter right there, he withheld the return blow and gave only a mocking grin.

Garet snarled and made a makher-style jab straight at Aldric’s eyes.

It would have been more effective if the staff-sword was makher length, but it had more than a foot of reach that the Drusalan didn’t know how to handle properly and again Aldric did something he would never risk with live blades. He deflected the incoming point aside, turned inside the weapon’s arc and caught it between forearm and elbow of his left arm. A tug on the hilt and a sidewise twist wrenched the taidyo so easily from Garet’s hand that it seemed he had given it up of his own free will. The disarm was a cheap, showy trick, but it demonstrated overwhelming skill and that was what counted.

“You’re better than me?” Aldric said, grinning. “I don’t see it.” There was no purpose in continuing this farce any longer, so he sketched a salute and turned away to return both taidyin to his gear.

“Garet,” said a voice behind him. Aldric scarcely recognised Voord’s urbane tones but apart from a single shrill expletive, he hadn’t heard the hautheisart speak since feeding him his own teeth. He looked back and saw the other escort – Tagen, was it? – on his feet with one hand on the pommel of his sword. Aldric tensed until he realised none of that malign attention was directed at him. Instead Voord stared at Garet over a bloodied kerchief that concealed most of his face, and though that muffled, mangled mouth spoke no further words aloud, the cadet read enough meaning in his commander’s eyes.

Aldric could guess what the little tableau was about. Garet had volunteered – if he had volunteered – to punish this Alban upstart, and couldn’t stop while he fought on Hautheisart Voord’s behalf. Especially after a disarming move that made him, and thus the man he represented, look like fools. Commander Voord wasn’t someone with a forgiving nature.

Aldric gave a curt, cautious bow as he returned the captured taidyo, aware there was more attention along the conference table as if they knew the next exchange would go beyond a mere display of skill. There was something else, a sensation as if Isileth was out of her scabbard again. Aldric didn’t understand why, only that it was enough to raise the hackles on his neck.

“I won’t draw blood just to prove a point,” he said. It was something that needed said, regardless of who it annoyed. He wouldn’t draw Garet’s blood, though Voord was another matter. If the cadet had intended to kill him rather than just show him up he would have had fewer scruples, but Aldric had already been King Rynert’s executioner. A duty-bound, honour-bound, reluctant slayer. Never again, not for any man besides himself. He tried to think of a tactic which would end this business before someone was seriously hurt. Before he was seriously hurt, because mere welts and bruises wouldn’t satisfy Voord, not with his broken face as a reminder.

They took guard again with a deal more care than the nonchalance of their first exchange. The taidyin touched with a clack and oak ran against oak, dented surfaces ticking together as the pressure of wrists increased. There was the shuffling sound of someone’s feet and a moment’s stillness when nothing moved but mind and eyes. Then Garet launched his attack, a proper cut this time, downward and diagonal at neck or shoulder, hard, fast and direct, yet still not taking advantage of the weapon’s extra length.

Aldric intercepted the cut with one of his own, right hand as pivot and left on the pommel to blur the topmost foot of the hardwood blade forward. It struck within an inch of his aiming-point, not against Garet’s sword to block it but full on his exposed forearm to break it.

The sleeve of light silvered mail was no protection. There was a padded garment underneath, but it was only thin uniform-red silk stitched with a quilted pattern more for appearance than effect. The mail-rings flexed under the blow as mail-rings will, and Aldric heard a muted crack as bone gave way. He followed with an Eagle’s Strike in low line, another diagonal snap-cut that all but tore the kneecap off and smashed the joint beneath.

Garet crashed onto the floor and lay there trying not to scream.

As Aldric backed away the other tau-kortagor, Tagen, barged past him and knelt at the injured man’s side. Aldric could hear his muttered curse, for it had gone very quiet in Lord General Goth’s great conference hall. Quiet, and expectant.

“Well?” Voord asked, his bruise-blurred voice free now of all passion, anger or even interest. The blood on his face was drying black.

“The broken arm should heal clean, sir. But…” Tagen hesitated. “But he’ll never walk again without a stick.”

“Small use to me, then,” said Voord. “Auneyar ka svoyestu. Slijei?”

“Silij-hah, hautach!” Tagen didn’t hesitate or question. He slid his makher from its scabbard, poised it for an instant’s aim and jabbed the point into the base of Garet’s skull. The injured man’s eyes opened wide, whites visible all around the staring pupils while his legs went kick-kick-kick, kick, kick…

Kick.

And he was dead.

Aldric forced his face to stay expressionless. In his heart he had anticipated something like this, then dismissed it as beyond even Voord. That was what had been in the air and disturbed him before the serious fight began. He should have been on his guard, responded in another way, not given Voord a reason to… To do what had been done. Then Garet’s life wouldn’t be spilling without purpose across the polished floor.

But to someone like Commander Voord there was no better way to impress someone unconcerned by killing than to show still less concern. Aldric’s restraint proved his weakness. Garet’s death proved Voord’s strength. It was a vile way to behave, but that was Voord, that was the Secret Police…

And that was Goth and Bruda too, for they must have guessed what might happen, no, what would happen, and said not a word to stop it.

Aldric looked at them, and looked at the blood, and kept his thoughts to himself.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I often wondered why you had such an interest in ymeth,” said Dewan staring at Gemmel’s back as they rode along on hired horses. He was trying to strike up a conversation for what felt like the hundredth time. Even an argument would be better than the gloomy silence which had settled over the sorcerer since talking to Kathur the Vixen. A hard woman in a hard profession, he thought. As hard as any man, and maybe harder.

Perhaps it was the sympathy from Gemmel, or the protection offered by Dewan’s ready sword, but no matter how she felt inside, Kathur closed it away like the hot coals in a dampered stove and rose magnificently above what had been done to her. She was long gone now, by ship to south or west, funded by enough gold from a secret cache that Gemmel’s offer of silver had only made her laugh. It was a genuine laugh at that, the first in far too long, but if laughter came hard talk came easily and it had all come spilling out, as unselective as an up-ended bucket.

Dewan and Gemmel had heard about the governor of Tuenafen, about the garrison commander’s son and the stableboys, how several of the seaport’s magistrates liked to relax after a hard day administering the Empire’s justice, and how two of their wives got their own back. Although Gemmel seemed scandalised it had been fascinating, and would have been most useful had they planned to stay in Tuenafen and set up as professional blackmailers.

But they also heard about Aldric, and what Kagh’ Ernvakh planned for him.

At first Dewan had laughed, as he felt certain Aldric would have done, at the ballad-singer’s notion of rescuing a captive princess from a lofty tower. But the laughter had been brief and Gemmel hadn’t joined in. This matter stopped being a child’s tale and a source of amusement when it involved a friend and the risk of that friend’s death. Dewan was also well aware that for Gemmel, Aldric Talvalin was much more than a friend. He had heard the title altrou – foster-father – used more than once by the younger man, and knew Albans didn’t grant such titles lightly.

The risk centred on someone Kathur had named with venom several times: an Imperial officer called Hautheisart Voord Ebanesh. She had been Voord’s lover, then his mistress, five years ago and even then his tastes had inclined more towards exotic than erotic. Voord, Dewan decided, was peculiar. But promotion to hautheisart at twenty-seven suggested an aptitude beyond the ordinary in more than just bedroom acrobatics.

They knew now where that warped genius lay. Voord was a gamester, a gambler, a player of one side against another and both sides for himself. His games extended back beyond the death of old Emperor Droek and the division of the Empire. They continued through that division and right up to the present day, complex, self-serving and often murderous. He still played both sides, although of late there seemed a marked preference for one over the other, but Voord still worked hardest for Voord.

Amongst all Kathur’s other talk she had mentioned his plot to gain control of an isolated province on the Jevaiden plateau. The intent was to transform it into an independent, neutral city-state, supporting and supported by the Emperor and the Grand Warlord both. Voord’s scheme had come to nothing for various reasons, and one of them was a certain Alban clan-lord sent there on his king’s business yet still unaware what he had upset.

Not that this was the first time Aldric and Voord had crossed paths in ignorance. Oh no. Voord himself had talked too much in bed in his younger days, when he was less cautious but just as cynical. He had bragged about his first great stratagem, the plan which had gained his promotion from kortagor to eldheisart and the long leap so few men made from army tactician to secret police strategist.

That plan, which broke half-a-dozen of the Empire’s strictest laws against sorcery, was pushed through by Grand Warlord Etzel’s personal intervention. It had a special attraction, for with the Imperial dominions stable and the borders peaceful, several councillors had declared that the mere post of Warlord gave needless offence to neutrals and allies alike. What Etzel needed was enough havoc in a neighbouring country for the only practical response to be Drusalan military intervention, and he didn’t care where it happened.

The country chosen for intervention was Alba, and four years ago that plan had sent the necromancer Duergar Vathach to Dunrath.

Kathur should never have known about that undertaking. It had failed, and put an extra twist in Voord’s already-twisted mind, making failure his worst sin and the one most drastically punished. But she had heard all about it anyway, from a mind and mouth loosened by Voord’s over-use of ymeth in his wine. Despite the lack of success it had done no harm to his career, and in those days there had been no such thing as sides within the Drusalan Empire. That explained Voord’s candour as nothing else could. Emperor and Warlord were twin figureheads on one ship of state, but the so-called equal partnership was that of a puppeteer and his doll. And it was the Emperor who danced while the Warlord pulled the strings.

Gemmel rode on, sagging in the saddle and looking far from comfortable. The wizard was a good horseman, better than many Dewan had seen though as an ex-eldheisart in the Bodyguard cavalry at Drakkesborg he was often over-critical. Right now Gemmel’s mind seemed occupied by more than even the instinctive knee-grip and balance which kept him on his rented pony’s back. He had been prone to broody periods like this ever since they landed in Imperial territory, and more so since they saw the white scratch of the dragon’s passage against the cold blue vault of Heaven.

Dewan couldn’t understand why, because even he, unimaginative military hard-head that he was, had been thrilled to the core by the sight. It didn’t matter that he had seen Ymareth before, in the Cavern of Firedrakes. There and then it had been right and proper, just – just? – one more strange and marvellous thing among so many other marvels. But the sight of a dragon in flight across the open sky was another matter. Nothing had diminished its distant grandeur, though at almost four miles up it was distant indeed, no bigger than a swallow, with only the stately leisure of its wingbeats and the condensing trail of heat from its mouth to show it what it was. His toast to the great being’s mere existence had been sincere.

So what was wrong with Gemmel? Dewan looked at him again and wondered if it was worth wasting more breath trying to cajole the old man into speech. Deciding not, he hunched himself deeper into the furred hood of his cavalry riding-coat.

There had been no dragon in the sky today, or any blue sky for one to fly across, only an overcast as grey and featureless as new-split slate. By the Alban calendar it was Hethra-tre, deh Gwenyer. The Drusalan reckoning put it in more simple terms: the third day of the tenth month, and three days into winter. The year was winding down, and the weather was working hard to prove it. Today had started bad and grown worse, from a non-existent dawn lost in slanting rain through chill sleet to a brief fall of snow. That at least was over, but it had already transformed the countryside into an ink-wash study. Everything was black or white, with no subtlety of shading beneath a leaden sky heavy with the promise of more snow. Dewan glared at it, getting the answer he expected as a quick flurry of fat, soft flakes. And it was cold. The breath of men and horses alike went smoking from their nostrils to drift away as if it was fog, or the breath of dragons.

Dewan ar Korentin wiped hoar-frost from his moustache and exhaled a soft oath on his next billow of breath. Cold, he thought, watching the skeins of vapour twist away from his face. So cold. His eyes shifted focus as something drew their attention to the middle distance, a movement caught at the edge of sight like a cloud of midges dancing on warm summer air. Except that this wasn’t summer, the air wasn’t warm, and whatever he had seen weren’t midges.

There, look!

No, it was gone again, if it had ever been there at all. Dewan blinked in case the thing was a speck of moisture on his eyelashes, or a bird – though he had seen no birds today, unlike men they had too much sense to travel in such foul weather. Maybe it was just a trick of imagination. He turned his head away, dismissing it, then snapped back as the thing he thought he hadn’t seen came scything out of the low cloud like a monstrous bat, ribbons of smoke scrawling behind as if a charcoal pencil marked its line of flight.

Firedrake! thought Dewan. Ymareth…?

Or not Ymareth at all, for it was so big!

His doubt came not just from the thing’s size but the steepness and the speed of its approach. With wings half-closed like a hawk stooping on fieldmice the dragon reached them in the space of a single racing heartbeat, too fast for evasion, almost too fast for prayer. It slashed past in a great rush of hot wind, faster than any creature had the right to move, even one born in legend, passing just twenty feet above the ground and because they were both mounted, it was less than twelve feet above their heads. For an instant the world was dominated by huge dark wings and a crested wedge of head, an armoured serpentine body and a fang-crowded mouth trailing smoke which brought the bitter reek of burning.

The thump of displaced air tore at their clothing, whipping up spirals of snow that melted even as they left the ground, and swirled off in the dragon’s wake as it climbed up again, driven like the swinging of a pendulum by the awesome dive-created speed which had flicked it past them like a beast from dreams or nightmares.

The ponies went mad. Kicking and squealing, bucking and plunging, the animals tried to throw their riders, to throw their saddlebags, to flee in abject terror somewhere, anywhere, as far from this airborne horror as their legs could carry them. The beasts’ eyes were rolling white, like the foam which creamed on bits and bridles.

Gemmel too seemed to have gone a little mad, for Dewan could think of no other reason why he should laugh as he slid from saddle to ground. A quick, casual gesture of the Dragonwand had frozen both of the fear-crazed ponies in their tracks and only their eyes could move now. From ears to tails, the rest were as still as any equestrian statue in cold bronze. Dewan looked at the Dragonwand, then at the wizard, then at the distant firedrake, and thought how very appropriate to himself. He was too sensible to voice the thought aloud, but the dragon seemed to hear him anyway.

A quarter-mile away and three thousand feet up, the great wings beat once, twice, three times, until the dragon’s climb was as steep and fast as a pheasant rocketing from cover. Then with the acrobatic nonchalance of a raven it rolled over, twisting snakewise in the air as no bird ever hatched from egg could do, and came back towards them in the same instant.

Now the approach was a leisurely wide-winged glide rather than the earlier dive, but no less ominous. Dewan could see the smoke wind-dragged from its mouth was thicker now, denser, as if the fires of the creature’s belly were fully alive. As if to prove it, the dragon’s head swung to one side with a deliberation that reminded him of a battleram’s weapon-turret. Then with a whistling roar that reminded him of nothing on or above or under the whole wide world, its mouth unleashed a gout of yellow-white flame.

Dewan flinched at its brightness, glaring and brilliant against the dullness of the day, and at the heat which slapped at him as if a furnace door had been flung open. At the same time he drew an unsteady breath of awe and wonder. If he had to die, there were more squalid ways than this brief, bright glory. Another instant and he was wondering at his own morbid turn of mind. The hundred-yard-long plume of fury choked in a swirl of dark smoke, and the dragon was upon them.

Its wings flared and shifted to control the air which flowed around them, then scooped down in a great braking arc as Ymareth – if this was Ymareth, and Dewan was still far from convinced – rounded out its final descent and settled onto the ground with all the neatness of a hawk returning to a familiar wrist. The grace of that landing was eerie in something so huge, its reluctance to set foot to the snowy ground seeming like a cat in wet grass. This cat was well over a hundred feet long, radiated warmth he could feel from where he sat, and as the armour of its belly touched patches of snow, those patches became clouds of steam and fast-forming pools of water.

The dragon looked from side to side, considering them both: older man and younger, mounted and afoot, shocked-silent and still chuckling. Its eyes were pools of yellow phosphorescence which drew Dewan’s gaze and held it…

That would have held it, had he not torn away with an effort like lifting a great weight. His face darkened, flushed with blood not summoned by dragon-heat or winter-cold but pumped there by a heart provoked into a spasm of furious beats, a muffled drumroll which filled his ears and made his senses spin. It felt as if his whole chest was about to split wide open before the hammering died away and the world stopped swaying, and Dewan drew a normal breath again.

By then the dragon’s attention had turned to Gemmel and the wizard was no longer laughing. Instead he raised the Dragonwand as if to fend off the advancing jaws or deflect the spell which burned in those great, glowing eyes. They regarded him, Dewan thought, with more than a touch of scorn and what on a more human face might have been contempt. Then it spoke.

And Dewan understood what it was saying.

For all his years of service in the Imperial military, he remained loyal to his birthplace. Dewan ar Korentin was Vreijek, not Drusalan. That meant hearing himself dismissed more than once as a mere provincial, and was why he had never reached a higher rank than eldheisart-of-cavalry. It meant that despite his veneer of Imperial dignity and Alban courtesy he was descended from a passionate, imaginative people with an acceptance for the Art Magic no longer tolerated in any Imperial heartland. And it meant that the Drusalans or Tergovans or Vlechans who arrogantly styled themselves Imperial might have retreated from their comprehension of dragon-speech into the incomprehension of madness. It was the mere provincial who, despite an instant’s nerve-shock like jumping into an icy pool supposed to be warm, accepted what his brain told him without question.

“I give thee greeting, Maker-that-was.”

The speech took shape in Dewan’s mind but nowhere else, because the voice that uttered them made no sound recognisable as words. It was an intermittent rustling hiss like metal on metal, backed by the rumble of a huge fire, and above that rumble he heard a click, click as the dragon’s eyelids shut and opened in a leisurely, insolent blink.

“And this thing in thy hands? Is it a whip to give control over me? I dare thee to use it so.” Gemmel looked from the dragon to the Dragonwand and back again, then lowered the spellstave with a small, jerky, embarrassed movement.

“I… I wouldn’t use it like that. You should know.”

To Dewan’s ears he sounded ashamed, just as he had done after believing even for an instant that Aldric might have raped and beaten the Drusalan courtesan Kathur. Sense, experience or even just a moment’s thought before he spoke would have spared him that error. He wasn’t ashamed of being wrong, but of being wrong before witnesses. What had the old man so preoccupied, wondered Dewan, that he made such mistakes? The dragon? Maybe, because there was a tension between them that Dewan sensed was something new.

“Why should I know, Maker? Upon thy word? Not so. Only the Word of an honourable man holds weight with me. Thee made me so. Thee knows well what I am. None should know it better.” Dewan watched and listened to the exchange sitting stock-still in the saddle of his stock-still horse, aware of how obvious he looked and equally aware that trying to become less obvious would only make him more so. So he stayed where he was.

“Or perhaps,” the dragon continued, “I should not have tried thee with denial and with doubt. We are of a kind, thee and I. There should be trust between us.” Ymareth’s head dropped lower. “Why, therefore, is Aldric Talvalin held prisoner by those who are his enemies? Know this, Maker: he is a man of honour. I could have brought him escape, yet he kept his given Word and would not accept. Think on that.”

“Prisoner? Where?” For all his hope to avoid attention Dewan blurted out the question without thinking, and an instant later was staring almost down the dragon’s throat.

“Aboard a ship of this Empire’s war-fleet,” Ymareth replied. “There I found him.”

“Then I was right! Gemmel, I was right! It was that battleram. It must have been—”

“Dewan, control yourself!” The wizard’s voice was sharp with reproof. “How many battlerams are there in the fleet – in each fleet, for the love of Heaven – and how many possible destinations might each vessel have?”

Ar Korentin matched stares with the older man for long seconds, then looked away, subsided into his saddle and closed his mouth while Ymareth the dragon watched their byplay with what might well have been dry amusement.

“Maker, if ye be so uncertain of this ship’s abiding-place, why ride ye inland from the sea where such ships pass?” There was knowledgeable derision in the words. “Know this: the Eye of the Dragon sees much that is hidden, and mine own eyes see from such heights that the sight of men cannot know my presence. Even,” the dragon pre-empted Dewan’s unspoken thought, “with a long-glass.”

That suggested an altitude ar Korentin chose not to dwell on. His Vreijek upbringing still had too much superstition about it to hear such things with anything like peace of mind, and he had always disliked heights.

“This I saw,” Ymareth continued. “Kailin Talvalin came to a strong place filled with soldiers of the Empire. Time passed, and I saw speech among men who by their garb were of rank and power. There was a killing, to no purpose. He rides now with them, red-clad even as they.”

“To the Red Tower,” breathed Dewan.

“To thy destination. Yea or nay?” Either Ymareth knew without being told, or was guessing, or was giving a command veiled as a suggestion.

“Yes, Ymareth dragon, Maker to made. To the Red Tower.” Gemmel’s voice became just the merest trace pompous. “And we travel there now.”

“On these?” The dragon-voice was wholly sarcastic now, no longer veiled by irony or allusion. “Then of a surety thy need for haste is small.”

“They were all we could find at short notice,” snapped the wizard, and to Dewan it seemed he was speaking with the ease of long familiarity. Nothing else could explain such a casual approach to a creature which could roast him, or flatten him, or snap him in half as a man bites a biscuit. The implications were enough to lift the short hairs on the nape of ar Korentin’s neck.

“There is a swifter way, if ye dare it.” Ymareth didn’t elaborate further; there was no need. The dragon’s wings spread out to either side of the bridle-path, enormous fingered sails more vast than those of an Imperial warship. Their silent invitation was plain, and chilling.

“What about…” Dewan’s voice faltered. Sitting on one of them the problem of the ponies was plain enough, until he looked at Ymareth and at Ymareth’s fanged, smoke-fuming mouth and knew exactly what about the ponies. He was no Alban horse-lord, with excessive fondness for that animal, but even so the prospect of feeding them to a dragon was enough to send a clench of distaste through his war-hardened stomach.

“Take off the harness and all the other gear,” Gemmel said dispassionately. “Like it or not, this has to be done.”

“Would you be as quick with your orders if I was Aldric and one of these was his black Andarran?” Dewan’s temper flared up for an instant. It was an uncalled-for remark, regretted the instant the words were spoken and past recall.

“You’re like him enough, Dewan ar Korentin. More than enough. You know how to hurt with words. Now let’s get this thing over.”

Ymareth watched and waited with dreadful patience, saying nothing, perhaps aware of how these men felt about the beasts they had ridden, aware too that there was no place for words here and now. There was nothing to gain from lengthy speech on either side. Looked at with an honesty little short of brutal, it was kindness. To abandon the ponies in this wilderness of scrub and snow and desolation would condemn them to a lingering death by freezing, starvation or wolves. Better the – Dewan recalled his own thought – the brief, bright glory of a dragon’s fire.

He loosened the cinch on the last saddle, lifted it away and lowered it to the ground just a little way off. With all the gear strapped around it, that saddle was heavy. When Gemmel’s hand came down on his shoulder, it felt just as heavy.

“Stay here,” the wizard said. “We won’t want to see this.” Dewan looked at the old man while pity fought with contempt for room on his face.

“You’re like a king.” Which king, he didn’t need to say. “You can command death by war, by assassination, by execution, but you’d as soon not watch it happen.” Aldric had told him once about how Gemmel, though skilled enough in academic swordplay, was shocked by seeing what it did in combat to living flesh. This was the same. Dewan straightened up and shrugged the wizard’s hand away, then turned around.

“If you watched, if they all watched once in a while, you and they would be less free with such orders.” The ponies were still immobile, still frozen by whatever spell was laid on them, as incapable of escape as prisoners trussed for the block or soldiers drawn up in line of battle. You’ve lived among the Albans for too long, Dewan told himself, to show such concern for a pair of nags. But he gripped Gemmel’s shoulder as the wizard had gripped his. “You gave the command, old man. It’s only right you should look at the result. So look. I said, look!”

He swung Gemmel around by main force just as Ymareth’s jaws snapped twice. Neither pony could have known what happened, for each head came off like someone swatting the blossoms off dandelions. One instant they were alive and whole, the next… Not. Even the blood on the snow was no worse than the mess which followed a successful hunt, nor the noise of rending meat any more dreadful than the sound of feeding dogs. No, not dogs. Ymareth ate with all the fastidious delicacy of a cat, or a certain young Alban kailin of Dewan’s acquaintance.

Ymareth swallowed down the last fragments and a lance of yellow-white fire billowed from its mouth, scouring the dragon’s teeth. Dewan understood now why it didn’t have the foul breath of a carnivore; that cleansing gush of flame seared away any stink of old meat.

“Now gather that which thee might need,” said Ymareth. Dewan could detect well-fed satisfaction in the dragon’s voice. “And mount to my neck.”

As he bent again to lift the pack of gear and armour to its accustomed place across his shoulders, Dewan hesitated and braced his weight against his knees until the pounding heartbeat in his ears ebbed to a normal murmuring of blood. Cold sweat had broken out across his forehead, and a hot throb of pain ran down the core of his left arm. For just a moment his world spun around him and then grew still again. He ground his teeth until his jaws ached and drew himself upright again with a shudder caused, so the Albans claimed, by someone walking across a grave. That was no longer funny. Not now.

Since the beach below Dunacre, Dewan ar Korentin had realised what dying felt like.

*

For the tenth or the twentieth or the hundredth time, Aldric swivelled half-around in Lyard’s saddle to glance back at the men who kept him company. This glance, like all those others, made him feel no easier. It wasn’t the company an Alban gentleman preferred, more the sort he would have made considerable efforts to avoid if he had the choice. Which he hadn’t.

It wasn’t Bruda who unsettled him, not even glowering Voord with his killer Tagen at his elbow, but the half-score of heavy cavalry who made up the honour guard for this group of staff officers and adjutants and thus gave credence to their supposed rank. They wore the lizardmail of katafrakten, and Aldric had ugly memories of katafrakt armour. The demon-sending Esel had filled such armour when Duergar Vathach sent him – it? – to the Erdhaven Festival. Those memories were only six months old, nothing like enough to be at ease with them. Not yet. If ever.

It wasn’t just the escort which made Aldric uncomfortable. Despite carrying the most senior rank except for Bruda, he knew the insignia were just borrowed ornaments he had no right to wear. If put to the test they would be no protection at all.

At least the armour under those rank-badges was comfortable. Senior officers, Goth had told him, didn’t wear issue equipment like an enlisted trooper but armour tailored for them with more care than fine clothing. Unlike cloth, metal and leather didn’t forgive careless measurement. There was such self-satisfaction about the way he said it that Aldric almost told him how every Alban armour but the lowest quality was made like that, but saved his breath. There was no tailoring in what he wore, it had been assembled from available parts, yet it fitted better than his own black tsalaer would do now. What with one thing and another he had lost almost twenty pounds in weight, fast and badly, and Alban harness tended to hang loose when it didn’t fit. Aldric’s would have hung very loose indeed.

The Imperial armour was red rather than black, plates and splints linked by strips of mail rather than the lacing of lamellar, yet for all the differences it was familiar enough except for the high-crowned helmet. That had a peak, neck-guard and cheek-pieces like the war-mask of its Alban counterpart, but so close around his face that the effect was almost claustrophobic. It also had a nasal-guard which made Aldric squint until he was playing host to the chieftain of all splitting headaches.

If he came out of this venture with his head split by nothing more permanent, he would be a happy man.

The roads were busier than expected. Either the Empire was in less internal trouble than Goth and Bruda claimed, or its citizens were making convincing efforts to maintain a normal life. Only one thing disturbed him a little, and that was how ordinary folk reacted to the uniforms and colours of their own army. He had seen something similar in Alba, when he had ridden as an eijo. But there, people had shown no more than cautious, courteous, mannerly respect. This time it was fear.

At first he had been half-inclined to ask if there was any special meaning to all the insignia in gold metal and coloured enamel on helmet, overrobe and armour. Then the inclination died. The pattern of bars and triangles meant he was en-hanalth, a rank high enough to offend Hautheisart Voord, and that was all he needed to know. The other badges might mean he held pretended rank in an elite, heroic regiment of cavalry. They might also mean he was in the political police whose action squads could execute a man for insulting the Emperor – or more likely the Grand Warlord – by doing his privy business with a ring bearing their likeness on his finger.

But there was one matter which continued to interest him, and he had no wish to raise it with his companions. Once or twice he had sensed and then seen a mounted figure far off on the horizon. He was wrong, or was just guessing, but he had no need for a scholar’s spectacles just yet and was ready to swear it was the same person every time. A long-glass might have confirmed that notion, but he had none in his gear and though Voord carried a good one, Navy issue, he was the last person Aldric would ask. And perhaps he was wrong after all, for he could think of no reason why a solitary rider would want to shadow a column of heavy horse.

Ever since the Imperial military took an interest in him, he had watched for hidden significance in everything and everybody without a clear motive for what they were doing. But why shouldn’t someone else be riding this road? Egisburg was a large city, there were many more reasons to go there than his own, and reluctance to get too close to Imperial soldiers was scarcely grounds for distrust. It was more deserving of applause for caution and good sense.

For himself, he would as soon have the breadth of a province between himself and Voord. But he had given his word to help in this enterprise, not just to Goth and Bruda, mere foreigners, but to Rynert of Alba. A given word was a given Word, and a Word given was a word honoured, no matter how it complicated his life. He would hold to his Word to the best of that life’s ability.

But he would have loved to have a friend nearby – Gemmel, Dewan, someone, anyone – to confide in now and then.

*

Lord General Goth had been right about how close Egisburg was to the Emperor’s domain, a distinction he made clear with a smile that to Aldric looked more at home on the jaws of a wolf. He knew exactly what the thought meant, because he had seen a wolf grin just like that.

It was three days’ ride on the straight Army roads from Goth’s fortified headquarters. The journey would have been still quicker had they used the Falcon courier routes, but those were prohibited even to senior officers, and more to those only pretending their rank.

Throughout that last long afternoon, four cold hours that shifted between crystalline clarity and the blur of falling snow, Egisburg changed from a mere smudge on the horizon to the hunched, jagged reality of a city. Even then it was only as evening folded grey wings about them that they had their first clear view of the place they hoped to enter and leave unscathed. Aldric sat up straight in his saddle, aware the sporadic conversation at his back had died away. It wasn’t surprising, but it suggested even the Secret Police weren’t immune to the Red Tower’s reputation.

There were larger fortresses in the world and he had seen several. Datherga, Segelin, Cerdor, even his own hold of Dunrath was bigger than this, and in their turn they would be dwarfed by Imperial fortresses like the Grand Warlord’s citadel at the heart of Drakkesborg. But for all their size none could have looked more forbidding to intruders. Aldric had expected a slim spike of masonry like that in the old story of the Storm Bird and the Horse of Thunder he had loved so much as a child, or the strongholds built by Hertan holy men for pious seclusion and shelter from raiders. The Red Tower of Egisburg was neither. Somebody had decided long ago to build a fortress at the junction of the two rivers, then spent so lavishly on the great keep at its heart that no money remained for more. There were no curtain walls, no river-fed moat, no outer defences at all.

But there was the Tower.

*

From base to rampart it was two hundred sheer feet of worked granite sheathed in the thick pigmented glaze which gave the place its name, a deep crimson unpleasantly like the colour of fresh blood. It reared against the iron clouds, distorted by an errant swirl of snow, until an amber ray from the setting sun stabbed over Aldric’s shoulder and illuminated the stonework. For that moment, until the rent in the overcast closed again, the tower glistened with a sheen that was almost sticky. It wouldn’t have surprised him if it had smelled the way it looked and he shivered just a little within his borrowed armour. The Red Tower’s history was such that its name beyond the Empire was a threat to frighten naughty children.

Beyond, but never within. Within the Empire such threats frightened more than children, for there the Tower was real.

Aldric’s guess was right. It should have been the most splendid, most imposing and most impregnable fortress in Drusul, but only historians and scholars remembered its builder’s name. Disowned by his infuriated family for squandering all their inherited wealth, they wanted nothing more to do with him and he had died an unmarried, childless and forgotten old man.

Eighty years later the tower became a fortified residence for the hereditary Overlords of the rapidly growing new city-state of Egisburg, a place growing rich on the traffic passing along its twin rivers, and by ironworks already passing into proverb. ‘As sound as Egisburg steel’ had become a mark of approval more than a century ago. In those days the Sherban emperors were more open-minded of independent city-states than now. During the early decades of the Sherbanul dynasty, before the coming of the Warlords, they needed a secure place for important prisoners, political hostages and unwilling guests, pending ultimate decision on their fate. That decision could be a reprieve, a favourable treaty, legal execution or once in a simple disappearance.

The Red Tower was just such a secure place. It had gained its name and colour when the city first declared for the Emperor, during that delicate few months when the second autocrat of the dynasty listed his allies, his enemies and what to do to each. The tower, created as a fortress but finished as a home, was a friendship-gift from Egisburg to make sure the city went in the proper column of that list. Since red was already the Imperial colour, it was accepted at once. Since then a goodly number of people had passed through the tower’s lowering portals and though most had been accounted for one way or another, a score or so were never seen again.

As if the sombre crimson building had swallowed them.

*

Because of their façade as safe, comfortable accommodation for individuals of consequence, and since a few regained full rank and privilege along with apologies of varying sincerity, the Tower apartments were luxurious and their guards downright polite.

Dewan ar Korentin had told Aldric about it over a drink; one of the many Imperial subjects they had discussed in the short time for him to learn about them. Soldiers and their officers saw a posting to duty there as a good-conduct award, so the attitude of the entire garrison from its commander down was distinctly relaxed. After all, the construction and appearance of the Red Tower was such that it deterred all but the most determined escape attempts, not that any had ever succeeded.

For those same reasons, nobody would ever want to get in.

Except, reflected Aldric, that certain people did and somebody, somewhere, seemed to suspect it. Why else were there checkpoints in all the streets leading to Tower Square, manned by soldiers with Warlord Etzel’s crest and colours? Aldric was growing weary of seeing that jagged four-pointed star disfiguring what he still regarded as his own clean black and silver. They were turning away all without the proper written authority, even those who by the sound of their protests lived in the sealed-off streets.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “They can’t expect us. Can they?”

“No.” Prokrator Bruda sounded confident and unconcerned. “This is standard practice. A precautionary drill.”

“Precaution against what?”

Bruda had no answer.

There was a travelling fair in town and from what he knew of the Imperial Secret Police, Aldric guessed that several of the jugglers and acrobats were tulathin. Nobody had told him or even hinted at it, but they probably hadn’t told Lord General Goth either. The fair also kept company with more respectable entertainments such as professional storymakers, and a theatrical troupe putting on an impressive show for their last performances before winter. It was a festival which had drawn more people than Egisburg could hold, so more strange faces wouldn’t attract attention. Bruda or whoever had planned this venture must have known about it, which explained his tight timekeeping.

Despite the crowds it proved easy to find lodgings. Their cavalry escort had billets with the city’s garrison; despite tensions among the politicals, army regiments were still as amiable as old rivalries allowed. That was how they had travelled with such arrogant ease from Goth’s headquarters, and why the Lord General made Aldric wear Imperial armour. It made him part of one big happy military family, with such rank that he needn’t fear casual questioning. No checkpoint serjeant would dream of questioning a hanalth without a triple-thick, lead-lined, copper-bottomed damn good reason to hide behind.

And if he had one, it was already far too late.

Officers didn’t live in barracks when there was better, and in Egisburg there was much, much better. For all the teeming host of visitors there were still rooms vacant in the inns beneath the brooding shadow of the Tower. Forbidding rumours of just who might be in the citadel, which varied from unlikely to downright impossible, were enough to convince all but the bravest and the richest to find rooms elsewhere. Those who remained were men and women armoured by wealth, with courage in proportion to their cash. Several were very rich and very bold indeed.

The explanation came from Bruda, prompted by Aldric’s concerns about staying in a barracks where unfamiliarity with army protocol would show up like a candle in a cellar. They were riding through the crowded streets, letting the throng part in their own time before the horses rather than forcing a passage. This casual drifting was much more natural in Egisburg’s holiday atmosphere, as natural as the reluctant smile it created on Aldric’s face as he appreciated the citizens’ cheery mood. It was the first such mood, and the first unforced smile, he had experienced in far too long. More interesting still, the leisurely pace gave him time to overhear the storymakers who were close enough not to drown in the background babble.

Aldric had long known these professionals were different to their Alban counterparts like the man who had harped and sung at his Eskorrethen feast almost four years ago. Four years ago this month! he realised with a slight start. That harper had memorised scores of old legends, old stories, old folktales and the old, approved way to tell each one. But all, like their teller, were old, while Imperial storymakers spent as much time creating new material as they did in learning classics. It was no accident that, though Jouvaine by birth and Vreijek by inclination, the playwright Oren Osmar had produced his most enduring and popular works under Imperial patronage. Tiluan the Prince was still original, daring and controversial eighty years after its first performance.

Not that daring or controversy touched on anything to do with the Empire’s policies. Generations of strict theatrical censorship had seen to that, and Aldric wasn’t so naïve as to forget it. Yet it was intriguing to hear familiar stories told in a foreign language and an unfamiliar style that changed them more than somewhat. There were also tantalising lines from tales entirely new, though noisy approval from their audiences showed they were familiar favourites here.

“…As far past as yesterday, as far distant as the moon…”

“…When every sea was dry, and every land was sea…”

“…Be sure you return before the bells sound midnight, for otherwise…”

“…The petals turned to gold and the stems to silver, and each raindrop was a diamond, but the droplet on the thorn stayed ruby red…”

“…It was a blade such as he had never seen before, gleaming bright and dark by turns, and it had an edge to shave the cold off a winter wind…”

“…The falcon spoke with a human voice, like all creatures of that time, and it said…”

“…If you doubt my tale, she told him, go there yourself, and then come back to name me false if you have the breath of life to do it…”

A slap between the shoulder-blades jolted Aldric back to awareness of his purpose in this city. It was a far harder blow than any hautheisart should strike a hanalth, no matter how close their friendship, and there was no friendship in Voord’s expression when Aldric swung round with a stifled oath to glare at him. The Vlechan’s bruised lips stretched back from his cracked teeth in a grin more ugly than amiable, and both men knew the other saw it that way.

“There’ll be a time for sightseeing later, sir,” he said. “But later. Not now.”

*

Two Imperial officers sat in the otherwise-empty taproom of a fine tavern, drinking white wine from a flagon chilled by compacted snow. They were alone.

Hautheisart Voord had gone out for a walk, and if there was any ulterior motive behind that loudly-announced decision on the heels of his comment about sightseeing, non-one thought it worth a comment. Aldric had gone looking for the tavern’s bath-house, and that too passed without remark. Bruda had expressed no surprise; he knew the Alban people and their customs, and though it was possible this Alban was implying that the company he kept made him feel dirty, any insult subtle enough to pass unnoticed was no insult at all. So Bruda and Tagen drank their chilled wine and chatted about inconsequential matters as if they were in Egisburg for no more important reason than the festival.

Aldric came in before the flagon was more than halfway empty, damp-haired, clean-shaven and the merest touch scented, like any Drusalan officer on an off-duty evening. He was back into his own clothing as far as pretence allowed, with only brassards on his tunic to show what he was supposed to be. The rank-robe with his other insignia was doubled, not folded, over his sheathed longsword, and as he took an unoccupied chair he flung the robe across its back. The sword, however, he leaned respectfully against its arm.

“You should wear that,” said Bruda after a disapproving glance at the contrasting treatment.

“The sword, or this?” Aldric reached behind him, pulled the rank-robe further down to make a better cushion, then without asking or invitation poured a cup of wine. “You aren’t wearing yours.” Bruda’s eyebrows twitched together in a frown, warning Aldric not to push impertinence too far.

“I concede the point,” he said. “But I’m entitled to my rank. I earned it. Yours is borrowed. So you’ll wear the robe whenever you go out of this tavern. Is that understood?” The order was acknowledged, if only just, with a salute from Aldric’s winecup that earned a long stare before Bruda turned back to his interrupted conversation. “All right, Tagen. You’ve seen the Tower, what do you think? Any ideas about getting in?”

“What?” Aldric sat up from his slouch, then flinched and shook cold wine out of his sleeve. “This isn’t the time or place to play things by ear!” Bruda’s gaze flicked from the spilled wine to Aldric’s face and back again in any eyeblink.

“Mop that up,” he said, taking a drink of his own. “And I wasn’t talking to you. Tagen, you’re from the hill country. Opinions?”

“I think, Prokrator,” said Tagen, “that hill-climbing and the Tower don’t go together. No natural toe or finger-holds thanks to the glaze, and if you tried to hammer in a spike you’d have the whole garrison out to answer your knocking.”

“Conclusion?”

“As well try to climb a mirror, sir, as go up by any normal means.”

“I see.” Bruda shifted in his chair. “Well, hanalth Talvalin? No comments yet?”

“No. Not yet.” There was more on Aldric’s mind right now than sarcasm.

“Sir?” said Tagen in the voice of one struck by a sudden thought. “I could get a grapnel onto a parapet.”

Aldric opened his mouth to say something like, ‘What, ten-score feet straight up, and in the dark?’ then closed it with a snap as Tagen reached for more wine and heavy muscles shifted beneath his tunic. Possibly he could throw a grapnel that far; more to the point, if Voord contrived another fight then Tagen would be a more dangerous opponent than Garet ever was.

“Not even your strength could manage that,” said Bruda.

“Oh, not throwing it, sir.” Tagen laughed, flattered by the compliment. “I was thinking of a crossbow.”

“You’d have to pad the hook,” said Aldric. “Metal’s noisy when it hits stone. And you’d have to place it first time. Could you?”

“Not first time, nor second, most likely. But I could promise third or fourth.”

“By which time the whole garrison would be out to answer your knocking.” Aldric echoed Tagen’s own doubt, but Bruda wasn’t amused. He set down his goblet with a sharp click that drew all eyes and turned it around and around as silence fell.

“Well done,” he said. “You’re skilled at picking holes, Aldric-erhan.” Using the Alban term for ‘scholar’ the way he used it now was a deliberate affront. “Let’s hear something positive.” Aldric stared at the two Imperial faces, hard faces, foreign faces, and knew he was taking a risk even to voice his thoughts aloud. But he did at last.

“Try sorcery,” he said, and that was when the door opened and Voord came in as if on cue – or as if he had been listening outside, which was as likely.

“Alban, you deserve credit for sheer gall, though little enough for wit.” The hautheisart spoke in a disbelieving rasp. “Recommending the Art Magic to a Chief of Secret Police must rank among—”

“Look at the warships of your gallant fleet, Commander Voord,” snapped Aldric, “then tell me more about how the Empire outlaws magic.”

“So you know about our Imperial proscriptions?”

“I know.” Who didn’t, for Heaven’s sweet sake? They were the harshest edicts ever to appear in a legal statute-book, enforced with unwavering rigor in the fifty years since they were drawn up. Except, it seemed, where raw power could order them set aside.

“If you know,” said Bruda, deceptively amiable, “then perhaps you could suggest where I might find a sorcerer. Vreijaur, perhaps? Or even Alba?” It struck Aldric that the man might not be as sober as he had first appeared, or had played things that way for reasons of his own.

“Your lieutenant has already pointed out that you’re Chief of the Secret Police,” he replied. “Why don’t you tell me?” There was a chilly pause, then Bruda threw back his head and laughed with a harsh bark of mirth which startled Aldric considerably.

“All right,” he said, still grinning, “I will. There.” One hand pointed to where Voord was leaning against the door-post. “That’s your wizard.”

“Him?”

“And why not?” Voord smirked like a fox finding an unlocked henhouse. “Where better to practise secret arts than in the Secret Police? We all have our little vices. I already know some of yours. This is one of mine. One day, hlensyarl, you might find out what the others are.” His smirk went thin and nasty. “Or they might find you.”

“My personal retainers are men of many talents, Aldric,” said Bruda. It was impossible to tell if the fact pleased him, but somehow Aldric fancied not. “Many and various.”

“So it would seem.” Aldric poured more wine and rinsed the sourness from the inside of his mouth with a careful sip. He met Bruda’s eyes and held them with his own. “I’ll remember that.”

“Best you do.”

“Prokrator,” Voord cut in, “I was a little late. What are we discussing?” All we Imperial officers, was what Aldric heard, not the play-acting foreigner.

“The Tower, and getting out of it without walking through the gate,” said Bruda. “Well, would magic be of use?”

“Perhaps…” Voord’s voice tailed off as he studied his over-filled winecup. He brought it to his mouth without spilling a drop, winced as its acid contents stung his split lips, and then took a long draught. With the steadiness of his hand confirmed despite discussing something that should make it shake, he nodded in agreement. “Yes, perhaps.”

“Prokrator, what have all these speculations to do with the careful planning you bragged about?” Aldric wasn’t so much surprised as angry that a scheme whose earlier stages seemed geared to the fine tolerances of an expensive clock had degenerated into speculations over wine.

“ ‘Careful planning’?” echoed Voord before Bruda could say anything. “But it is, Talvalin. It is. All of these ‘speculations’ as you call them, have been discussed before, by men who know what they involve.”

“Yet you all talk as if you’d never seen the Red Tower.”

“This is the first time for most of us, but it’s been surveyed. For the sake of secrecy my agent preserved the information in his memory rather than on paper.”

“So much secrecy that I see no evidence of what he learned. Where’s this careful…?” Aldric’s voice trailed off as he stared at Voord and the answer became obvious. “Ah.”

“Yes,” said Voord. “Garet.”

Aldric could think of no sensible response, but his mind was in a whirl. It was ridiculous that such a delicate enterprise hinged on one man’s knowledge, a man thrown away to prove a point. It was so ridiculous that Aldric felt suspicion plucking at his sleeve yet again. Learning that Voord of all people had a fondness for sorcery was nudging other suppressed and half-forgotten memories into place. Memories from Seghar.

“What plan for us, then?” he wondered aloud, almost too nonchalant. “Do we climb ropes like spiders or tulathin or such vermin, or do we—”

“Walk in through the Tower’s front door?” Bruda finished Aldric’s question for him. “Yes. That’s what we’ll we do. The bold approach. I’ve got all the proper written authorities and,” he smiled, “most of them are genuine.”

“Walk in,” repeated Aldric softly. “Just like that.”

“What could be more realistic? Anything else would be abnormal.” Aldric’s brows quirked in a sceptical look he didn’t try to hide. “Oh yes. You’re forgetting, ilauem-arluth Talvalin, that we’re senior officers of the finest Army in the world. Important people, man! We’ll pay our respects to the garrison commander later this evening, and to any high-ranked guests. He knows we rode in today, and if we didn’t visit him the breach of protocol would cause too much comment.”

“I hope you’re right, Bruda. Indeed I do. For all our sakes.”

Aldric stood up and settled Isileth Widowmaker’s cross-strap on his shoulder, then hooked her scabbard to his weapon-belt. It wasn’t peace position, and he didn’t care. The longsword hadn’t been more than an arm’s length away since her return, even though it was impolite to carry a battle-furnished and thus threatening taiken when it wasn’t necessary. But those were manners for Alba, among Albans. Here the sword’s presence would be necessary for as long as Lord-Commander Voord lurked in the background. He glanced at Bruda and lifted the black and silver rank-robe from his chair.

“Satisfied, sir?”

“No, hanalth. That robe isn’t fit to be seen in public. Have it pressed and made good before you put it on again – and as I said before, don’t leave here without it.”

“Yes, sir!” Aldric snapped a neat half-salute for Bruda’s benefit, turned to leave the room and found Voord blocking his path.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” the Vlechan snapped. Aldric considered various responses for an instant, then brushed past him.

“Sightseeing,” he said. “And to have a look at the moon, if the sky’s clear enough.” He sank the last barb with unsubtle malice, sure of the Seghar connection now and almost regretting he didn’t have the wolfskin coyac any more. “I’m tired. But you know what they say: a change is as good as a rest.”

“Be back by the Hour of the Cat,” said Bruda. Aldric turned so the Prokrator could see his face and gave the man an enigmatic smile.

“You mean by eight of the clock, of course. Midnight could be more suitable.”

“The Hour of the Wolf? Far too late! Why do you—?”

“Voord might tell you. But I doubt it.” Aldric smiled again, the smile of one who knows a secret, and left.

*

Because of clouds and darkness there was little sensation of flight, but there was every sensation of great speed and Dewan’s face and hands were numbed by hours of icy wind scything past them. Only his legs were warm, where they forked the dragon’s armoured neck. But for all the discomfort, and all the – he wouldn’t give the word more than an instant’s consideration, though he knew it was correct – all the terror, Dewan ar Korentin wouldn’t have missed this experience for half the gold in Warlord Etzel’s coffers.

No, not for all the gold, because once in a while the silver-grey blanket around them parted and he could see the fires of countless stars mirrored by the lanterns of humanity far, far below. It was impossible to guess the speed of Ymareth’s flight, but the thinness of the cold air and the difficulty he had in breathing it told him he was at least as high off the ground as a mountain-peak he had climbed for a wager long ago. Why the air should grow weak, Dewan didn’t know, but if the only similarities between how he felt then and now were altitude and cold, then one or other was the cause. He had been just as cold sitting on a horse, so perhaps the good air stayed near the ground where there were more living things to breathe it.

“Egisburg,” said Ymareth, and with that word the dragon tilted onto one wing and began a lazy, spiralling descent.

Dewan’s ears popped as the thick lower air flooded into them and he swallowed to relieve the pressure, but he was no longer thinking vague scholarly thoughts about the strength of air at different heights. Instead he gaped like the simplest backwoods peasant at the sight which came drifting up as he sank through the clouds towards it, knowing he was gaping and not caring any more.

Egisburg, Ymareth had said. The single word, the name, didn’t do justice to the bright specks strewn below like jewels scattered across a sable cloak. Dewan knew what they were, and the reason for each colour. Yellow meant the lanterns of the city, bright and steady for oil-fed lanterns, dull and flickering for live-flame torches. Others were house-lamps glazed in coloured glass: sapphires, emeralds, rubies. Further away, slipping beyond sight as they glided down, he glimpsed Egisburg’s source of wealth, the amber glow of furnaces near the silver ribbons that were the city’s two rivers. Now and again there was a harsh glare as an ironmaster worked late into the night, and the cold wind brought a faint reek of smoke edged with the acrid bite of hot metal.

It smelt of dragons.

The dragon beneath him banked away from the myriad glitters of the city, and Egisburg slipped smoothly out of sight under Ymareth’s wing and body as it turned toward the darkness beyond the city boundaries in a search for somewhere safe to land. How can even a dragon see in this? The unvoiced question got its answer an instant later, when a flame as hot and white and brilliant as a lightning-flash transformed the ground speeding past below them into a sharp-edged relief map of shadows and reflected light. Arrogant, Dewan thought, but not careless. Who would be out on a night like this? Who would believe what they saw if they saw this? And who would believe them? Not that they’d be stupid enough to mention anything so linked to sorcery within the borders of the Empire…

He felt the shift of muscles as they adjusted the set of the dragon’s wings, then felt those same muscles flex to drive the wings forward in the final landing sweep he had watched earlier this same extraordinary day. The dragon’s spine kicked up at Dewan’s, a sensation like clearing a fence on an unsaddled horse, then settled beneath him. Movement ceased.

And they were down.

Dewan climbed from Ymareth’s neck – ‘dismount’ was no adequate description for such a height from the ground – and walked away as stiffly as an old man, legs locking at the knees with every stride. By rights he should still be frightened, or shocked, or at the least startled, but if asked, the only thing he felt, apart from aches and pains, was wonder.

*

Crouched huge and impossible in the broken moonlight, Ymareth watched him even though the man was unaware of such a scrutiny.

“I have shown him the Light of Heaven,” said the dragon for Gemmel’s ears alone as yellow-white fire danced lazily in its fanged jaws, bright enough to throw long shadows.

“I didn’t teach you blasphemy,” Gemmel replied sourly.

“I did not speak such. That was thy choice. But now thee makes mention of it…”

“Don’t!” It was only after his twitchy, nervous response that Gemmel realised how he was being teased. Almost affectionately, if the word applied to dragons.

“Thee taught me humour and appreciation of it, Maker. So enjoy the jest.”

“I taught thee – you – to better understand humankind. Not to make jokes. Stop it.”

“Not at thy command. Not now.” Ymareth’s mind-heard voice hardened to disapproval. “Thee is no longer worthy of obedience. In the future, perhaps. The Dragon-lord I recognise is one who rejected safety for his honour’s sake.” Gemmel ignored all the implications in the dragon’s speech, but he looked into the dragon’s eyes as few might have done, and after several moments he even smiled.

“Then I commend myself to the future,” he said simply. “What was done has been done. And what I must do, I will do. Ymareth Firedrake, I’m lonely. You know my mind as none other, yet not even you can dream of such loneliness. Always, always alone. And my son the Dragon-lord, with the face of the son of my blood? That’s a bitter jest of the Darkness.”

“So now a jest of the Darkness. Of Fate. Of whatever name thy choice desires. But a jest regardless, as I am forbidden. Is that justice?”

Do as I say, thought Gemmel, dredging up a phrase from years past, not do as I do. “Your pardon,” he said, as he had never thought he would. “For my lost honour’s sake, I commend thee to the Dragon-lord Aldric Talvalin. My fosterling. My son. Guard him. Aid him. Keep him safe.”

“All those and more.” Ymareth stretched out its great dark wings and yawned with an enormous gape, so for just one instant Gemmel was looking right down the dragon’s throat and the fire that slumbered uneasily within it. The yawn ended with a snap like a fortress door slammed shut. “But it is an ill night for watching. The heat in yonder city makes confusion in the cold air.”

“What if—?” Gemmel began, but the dragon looked at him and the wizard fell silent.

“There is the Eye of the Dragon,” said Ymareth. “The Echainon stone. With it he is within my gaze again, and thine also if it is thy intent to restore what power the Eye has lost in these past days.”

Gemmel looked from the empty eyesocket of the Dragonwand to the glowing eyes of the dragon and drew breath to make excuses, or utter protests, or say something unforgiveable. It was just as well that Dewan, unaware, interrupted the words before they left his mouth.

“Ymareth-anak, what of the Dragonwand?” the Vreijek asked, using court Alban rather than any other language. “I recall, as if in a dream, that Aldric-eir Talvalin pledged his Word to return that talisman of power to its rightful place on Techaur Island. Yet I see it here. So then, what of the Dragonwand?”

*

Ymareth turned, as if surprised to hear such words from such an unlikely source. As far as scales like burnished metal could hold expression there was pleasure on the dragon’s face.

“It is fine thee cares for such a matter here and now. But be assured, Dewan ar Korentin—” hearing his name from such a source made Dewan shiver, as it had made Aldric shiver before him, “—that I am in no haste or eagerness. Such is not required. Be at thy ease. Kailin-eir Talvalin gave his Word. He pledged its return when all is accomplished, and that time is not yet. He knows what he does, for all he knows not whose will he does. Ykraith Dragonwand is a part of that.”

In his time Dewan had been eldheisart of the Bodyguard, king’s confidant, warrior’s friend, wizard’s acquaintance and most impossible of all, dragon’s rider. Now he dropped his formal speech and addressed that dragon as an equal.

“Ymareth,” he said, “this is the heart of the Drusalan Empire, with Aldric, Gemmel and myself just three against a mighty realm. What can you do?”

“Ar Korentin, if thou art within a mile of what I do, ask again. If asking is required.” A gush of fire threw sharp-edged shadows beyond the trees of the small hollow where they had landed, the billow of pale, cool flame that was Ymareth’s laughter. Even the words within his head had an aura of humour about them, fluttering like an alcohol flame. Then the flickering amusement faded like morning mist in sunshine. “Enough. Best I not remain. Be aware I watch by Dragonwand and Dragon’s Eye, and expect aid uncalled-for. Farewell!”

The downward slap of air all but threw Dewan off his feet despite expecting something of the sort, and by the time he wiped powdered snow from his eyes the dragon’s lean black shape was only a flicker of darkness across the jewelled twinkle of the winter sky. He stood in silence, staring until it was lost to view, and didn’t move until Gemmel reached out to touch him on the arm.

“How much do you know of me now, Dewan?”

“That you’re not Dragon-lord or Maker any more. Only Maker-that-was. You need to explain those titles, Gemmel.”

“Soon. You’ve said what I’m not. So what am I?”

“A wizard. And a scholar. A man wise in many arts. And the foster-father of my friend.”

“So Aldric still is your friend?”

“Of sorts. Because he speaks the truth as only a friend can do. We talk as equals and we insult each other without involving blades.” He laughed as he said it, but Dewan could tell Gemmel was aware of what he meant. In Alba, and especially among the high clan cseirin-born, men who could swap insults had to be friends. Otherwise one of them would be dead.

“Then what has he told you of en-altrou Errekren, old Snowbeard his sorcerous foster-father? He must have told you something.”

“He told me enough,” said Dewan, with a long stare at Gemmel that wondered, without asking, how little ‘enough’ had been. “He told me you lived under one of the Blue Mountains, and I laughed at him. But he insisted. So… Is it true? Under the mountain?” Gemmel nodded, and it was his lack of quibbling that made Dewan clear his throat before he dared say more. But when he did, the words tumbled out with the excited eagerness of a boy a quarter his real age, the boy Dewan might once have been, and a man he might yet have been, without the Drusalan Empire and its military service.

“Under the mountain! Lord God! Beneath Thunderpeak! Then it was just as true when he said you travelled great distances to many countries before you came to Alba—?”

“Came back to Alba, Dewan,” the wizard interrupted. “I was done with travel.” It put a hesitation in the flood of words.

“You had a son. He… He died.”

“Long ago.”

“You told Rynert the King about it, that day in Cerdor when you found out about how Aldric had been… Given to the Empire.”

“I told him my son died. Not how he died, nor who killed him, nor the consequences afterwards. I told him only what you heard yourself. That I lost a son, and more than a son.” Gemmel shivered. He looked around him and fixed his attention on a tree-stump left from earlier in the year. “I’m cold, Dewan,” he said. “I’m cold, and I’m beginning to hate the dark. We’d be better off with heat and light.”

Without waiting for agreement or disagreement or even warning, he raised one hand and pronounced the Invocation of Fire. A pulse of force sprang from his fingertips, pale as a dying candle, so weak that daylight would have reduced it to a half-seen haze in the air. The snow beneath its track flashed from white solid to white steam with no intervening stage as liquid. Then it hit the stump, a core of unseasoned wood trapped in spongy, sodden rot and topped off with more snow, useless fuel that might choke an ordinary fire. There was a sound like the crack of the world’s biggest whip, and the stump as burned hot and clean as holly dried for kindling.

“Better,” said Gemmel, and scooped up a little snow to ease the blisters rising on his hand. He dropped his small pack on the ground in the lee of a clump of bushes and sat down, stretching chilled feet gratefully towards the blaze. Dewan looked at him and drew breath as if to say something, then thought better of it and sat down in his turn.

“Now. Tell me first, who killed your son?”

“Ernol. My son’s name was Ernol. The man who murdered him was Warlord Etzel’s uncle.” Dewan stared into the fire, not understanding at first, then understanding all too well.

“Oh God. That one! The one who was—”

“Burned. Roasted alive while he sat on his horse and smiled at what he had done. Killed by magic, Dewan. Killed by me. Killed…” Gemmel nodded towards the burning stump. “Like that.”

“Then you’re behind the Empire’s edict against sorcery?”

“It’s the Grand Warlord’s edict but yes, I am.”

“Fifty years ago,” Dewan muttered, thinking aloud; then he considered his own words and shifted enough to stare full at Gemmel’s face. It was white-bearded and careworn, but Dewan was giving it more than the casual glance coloured by assumptions about wizards. It was an old face only until Dewan tried to see the years on it. By all appearances this was a man in his fit and healthy middle sixties, and that wasn’t old enough at all. Aldric had said how much like himself Gemmel’s son must have looked. Yet when they first met the Alban was already twenty, and looking older from the strain of grief and loss and fear. Gemmel as he looked now could never have lost a son of twenty only fifty years ago. Something wasn’t what it seemed.

“Gemmel?” There was a tremor in his voice when he spoke, but the wizard gave no sign of having heard it. “Gemmel, what… What age are you?”

“A day older than I was yesterday. A day younger than I’ll be tomorrow.” There was no smile with the words, and that chilled Dewan more than the snow-melt soaking into his clothes. “It’s all a matter of time. And I’ve always had plenty of time. Except now. Now I’ve got far too much.”

Dewan felt his skin crawl beneath his furs, his armour and his damp clothing. He was about to hear things he didn’t want to, yet didn’t want to miss. He wished Aldric were here with his healthy streak of cynical humour, because Dewan, ex-eldheisart, ex-bodyguard, ex-all the rest, knew with absolute certainty that he was scared, just not scared enough to get up and walk away. Gemmel was gazing at the star-shot sky as though searching for something, the return of Ymareth perhaps, or perhaps not. It was more as if he searched for something beyond the sky which neither of them could see, something only he might hope for.

“I should have spared him,” the wizard said at last, “because by then his death was needless. Too late to save Ernol, too late to bring him back. But I killed him anyway, in rage and grief and vengeance. Because I had the power to do it, there and then, at once. And because I wanted to.”

“There’s nothing wrong with vengeance, Gemmel. Look at Aldric. Look at what he did with your help.”

“Oh yes, with my help. And with what motive? Why did I do all this?” There was bitterness in Gemmel’s voice, a shame and self-loathing which to Dewan had no business there. “I had my reasons. I always have my reasons, long planted and long in growing. But now they’re coming to full flower and the price of harvest might be too high. I’m afraid I’ll lose my son again.” Gemmel took a deep breath, held it as if considering the words it might carry, then released it through teeth bared by an expression halfway between grin and grimace.

“There’s everything wrong with vengeance, Dewan. At least for me. It can be forgiven if it’s right, if it’s expected, if it’s the proper thing to do. The Alban High Speech has seven different words for ‘revenge’, did you know that? Seven words, each with its own proper circumstance for use. Vengeance for wrongs suffered is an Alban’s heritage, but it isn’t mine and never has been. I was wrong to do it. It cost me my honour. Ymareth knows that.”

“Ymareth? Was that why—?”

“Why it treats me with amused contempt? Yes. For being less than what I was and should have been. You heard it. I’m no longer Dragon-lord. Ymareth respects only honour, a fragile, intangible thing which can’t be bought or forced, but earned and held no matter the cost of its holding. I lost mine fifty years ago. I haven’t regained it yet.”

“What about ‘Maker’?”

“Another title. Concise, descriptive and true.”

“True?” said Dewan in a small voice and stared at him. Suspecting something, no, being almost certain of it, still wasn’t the same as having it confirmed by a flat, emotionless statement. “Then you made…?”

“I did.”

“Father, Mother, Maiden, be between myself and harm, now and always. Avert.” The steadiness of his voice surprised even himself. Dewan had made a private promise to do nothing foolish that would compromise the dignity which gave him a screen to hide behind, so he didn’t spring to his feet or shout or swear. But slowly, in keeping with that dignity, his right hand moved in the old Teshirin blessing of two fingertips touched to eyes then mouth then heart. “But why…” He cleared his throat again. “Why make a dragon?”

“It was appropriate.”

“Appropriate?” Dewan spoke as a man might walk when the solid ground beneath his feet had turned to blown glass and wishful thinking.

“There are worlds… There are places where the way to protect a treasure is with armed guards, and places where that protection is high walls. There are places for fences of steel wire with thorns like roses, and for wires with lightning running through them. And there are places for threads of light hotter than the sun in summer, which can cut and kill. But here, in this place… Here I wanted a dragon. Not just to guard gold. You’ve seen the Cavern of Firedrakes?”

Dewan nodded. There had been far more than gold in it, but he doubted that Gemmel meant silks or costly perfumes or any of the other things he, Dewan ar Korentin, would have thought worth guarding.

“Then you’ll know that anyone not sent there with instructions would steal whatever took their fancy.”

He got another nod. Dewan could remember his own hands, and those of Tehal Kyrin, reaching out to touch, to hold, to lift, perhaps to take. Only Aldric’s warning cry had stopped them, and what happened later to the pirate Skawmour and his crew showed the consequences of attempted theft. He didn’t ask how or why Ymareth the dragon was made; he would neither understand nor want to. Dewan had heard enough already.

“What can a person do,” Gemmel said, half to himself, “about a thing where the mere thought of it in the wrong hands is a nightmare?”

“Keep it secret?”

“Few things stay secret for long. And throughout history, the greatest secrets have been weapons. Ways to kill, not ways to cure.” Gemmel gazed for a long time into the dance of flames, as if reading that history in the shift of embers and the crawl of sparks. Then he looked up again. “The Albans place great store by honour. You’re not Alban, not even by marriage, so what I say to you I could never say to Aldric. Having a strong sense of honour is gives power to keep something secure, whether it’s of great value like an oath, a promise, or just a piece of gossip confided in trust. That power can be turned outwards, and can become a potential for skill in the Art Magic. Yet to the Albans, magic is no part of an honourable character…”

“So that’s why he could use your magic against Duergar,” muttered Dewan. “And why he was sent to play this dirty game with the Empire. His status can get no lower, while Rynert stands off to one side and keeps his own hands clean.”

“Yes. Aldric’s ability is because of what Rynert calls honour, not because he has a lack of it.”

“And Ymareth recognises that.” Dewan said, then regretted it.

“Yes,” the wizard said. All the old bitterness was back. “The intelligence I placed in Ymareth is one that values honour more than authority. Not me as Maker, but what I was then. Not now.”

“At least you can still laugh.” Dewan left the rest of the proverb incomplete. No one should laugh until they know how to cry. And he had caught how Gemmel’s eyes glittered in the firelight.

“Yes,” said Gemmel, “I know how to laugh. But far too often it’s at the foolishness of humankind.” Dewan felt a little shiver inside him at that odd choice of words. “Or at my own cleverness. I was so very clever, so cunning, to use the king’s desires for my own ends. Remember those messages I locked into Aldric’s head before he left Cerdor for the Empire? Support, and aid, and all the other things. Well, they weren’t alone. I put something there for myself.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be telling me this,” Dewan said nervously.

“Maybe I should. Call it practice for when I summon up the courage to tell Aldric. You saw the Grand Warlord when you served with the Bodyguard in Drakkesborg, yes?”

“Yes, many times.”

“Close enough to see him well?”

“Yes, but what has that to do with—?”

“Patience. Listen. Learn. He wears different uniforms for different purposes, but one thing never changes – a single piece of regalia he keeps closer than an Alban keeps his tsepan.”

“En-Veyaltan Woydachul…” The Drusalan words came out on an exhalation of breath, seen as much as heard.

“The Warlord’s Jewel. Where does Etzel wear it?”

“At his throat, as centrepiece for whatever collar of office he wears. But why ask? You’ve seen it yourself.” Dewan stared harder. “Haven’t you?”

“Not for a long time, and never as a piece of jewellery. But I’ll describe it, you can tell me if I’m right, and then I’ll tell you what it really is.”

“What it really is?” Dewan’s voice was oddly calm. After what Gemmel had said about Ymareth, learning that the Warlord’s Jewel had a secret came as no surprise.

“Oh yes. Because it’s not a gemstone, and never was. It’s a million times more valuable than that. At least to me.” Gemmel’s hands sketched a quick outline on the air. “Oblong, a palm’s length and width and a finger’s thickness. Crystal clear, tinted by the green block at its core and the golden webs surrounding it. Three edges encrusted with gold studs like sunken beads. And cold enough to take the skin off an unwary hand.”

“Gemmel, you must have seen it. That’s exactly what the Jewel looks like. But you forgot the frame.”

“Frame?”

“Gold filigree with embedded emeralds. The Jewel’s mounted in it.”

“Of course. It would have to be, because of the cold.”

“But you say it’s not a gemstone at all. Then what is it?”

“It’s…” Gemmel hesitated, reluctant to take the final step. “It’s what Ernol was carrying. What I lost when he died. And what Aldric will try to steal for me.”

“Steal the Jewel?”

“That was the last message I locked into his mind, because I thought he would be in no real danger. Then everything went wrong at Seghar, and the killing started. Even after that I thought he would have been all right, because he would come back to Alba rather than take further risks with a venture gone sour.”

“Until Rynert handed him over.”

“To prove support for the Emperor against the Warlord. What better way than giving up an important vassal? They weren’t to know Rynert placed no value on Clan-Lord Talvalin, but because we knew it he sent a troop of cavalry to silence us. And now if my message comes out with the others, my son will be killed all over again!”

“Not if we can reach him first. That’s why we came here, Gemmel. But you said you would tell me the Jewel’s real function, and you haven’t yet. What does it do?”

“It’s a control mechanism. A key to a gateway which will let me… It’s my road home.”

“Home?”

“You know, or at least you guess. Aldric does, and you’ve spoken to him. Because when I confirmed my hold under the mountains, you said ‘beneath Thunderpeak.’ I hadn’t mentioned that name, Dewan, not even once. Meneth Taran has had something of a reputation for years now, and Aldric must have told you what he saw there. Didn’t he?”

“He said the mountain was hollow, yet filled with lights. And he could sense so much power that the air sang with it. But there was something else.” Dewan’s voice faded into silence, and he stared at the fire as though hoping for inspiration before raising his eyes to Gemmel’s face. The old man’s expression hadn’t altered by even the flicker of a muscle. It remained as neutral as an unwritten page, not prompting, not pressing for a reply, just waiting.

“Aldric said he believed the thing beneath the mountain was a fortress tower at first. Now he’s not so sure. He said… He thinks it’s a ship.”

“He’s right. It is a ship, one which long ago could sail the cold dark seas between the stars. You heard what I told the dragon, Dewan. When Ernol died I was left alone. I’m still alone. And very far from home.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Aldric stopped smiling as the taproom door closed behind him. He didn’t feel like smiling at all and when he raised his right hand and held it in front of his nose, he could see a tremor in the fingertips. It was stupid to provoke a man like Voord, but just as stupid to let him believe everyone was ignorant of his private dealings. Sinking that pin had been satisfying, but it had brought on a reaction as bad as any in these past few tense days. What days they had been, with a burning building, an abduction halfway between seduction and rape, a killing, a kidnapping and a meeting with a firedrake. Yet he could sense a corruption about Voord that made him worst of all…

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the door; not to eavesdrop, though the conversation he had primed and left behind him would be well worth hearing, but to let the hammer of his heart drop to something like its normal rate. There would be no eavesdropping through that door anyway. It was oak planking three fingers thick, and hadn’t even shifted in its frame under his full weight.

He glanced at the long black and silver rank-robe draped across his arm. Bruda was right; it was too creased for wear by anyone of presumed high rank and self-esteem. Not that Aldric cared about the self-esteem of the Imperial military, but if looking slovenly gave the lie to his pretence, it was better to follow orders. He stopped off at the doorway to the servants’ hall and handed the garment over with a few terse words of instruction, then went to his own room for something far more useful.

Ymareth had called it the Eye of the Dragon, he knew it as the Stone of Echainon, but wrapped in its covering of fine white buckskin it was a blindfolded eye. Aldric bounced the spellstone once or twice on his palm. Voord would have searched his gear or seen a detailed inventory of its contents, so he wondered why the crook-handed bastard hadn’t made a comment about it or just stolen it outright.

Then he pulled the buckskin away and realised that the stone wouldn’t have drawn notice from Voord any more than it had from Kathur the Vixen. Without the flaring luminescence at its heart it was no more than polished glass, rock-crystal if the viewer was generous, set in loops of polished steel as a luck-piece for the back of its owner’s hand. Elegant perhaps, inexpensive definitely, but sorcerous…? Never.

The smile returned to his mouth. He wanted to do more, to grin, to chuckle aloud, to shout with relieved laughter. But he did nothing of the sort, knowing it would provoke all the questions the stone’s innocent appearance had left unasked. As he fitted it to his left wrist and pulled up the cuff of a glove to cover it, Aldric glimpsed a single twisting thread of azure fire at the crystal’s core. It was as minute as a human hair, yet bright enough for that one instant to throw his shadow harsh and black behind him on the wall and ceiling.

Then everything was dark again, a darkness held at bay only by the shuttered oil-lamp hanging from its chains above his bed. But now it was a comfortable darkness, more comfortable than it had been this long, long time.

*

The snow was no longer falling when he stepped outside, and the sky had cleared enough for a faint scattering of stars to show, but the air had grown icy. Aldric wasn’t concerned. He wore boots, gloves and jerkin, and even the Drusalan overrobe was winter-weight with a hood and quilted lining. Dressed that way he could appreciate and almost enjoy the bite of crisp, clean cold. Even had it been damp and dismal he would barely have noticed at first, and after the first five minutes not at all, for that short time was enough for his brisk stride to take him from the tavern to Tower Square, and to the festival.

He had no interest in the eaters of fire or the eaters of swords, or the singers of songs and players of instruments; not even the jugglers and acrobats, though he gave them a thoughtful stare as he wondered once again which of them might be tulathin in disguise. It was the storymakers who drew him like a moth to a candle-flame. Aldric eased through the crowds towards them, and eased was right, for it involved no effort. The slightest pressure of his hand on arm or shoulder drew an immediate backward glance, and his rank-marked clothing did the rest.

He listened, fascinated, regretting he could spend so little time with each but hearing intriguing snippets as he moved to and fro, munching on a wheaten bannock stuffed with chopped grilled meat, raw onions, a mouth-puckering layer of pickled vegetables and a brick-red relish pungent enough to make his nose tingle. It tasted good and cost only a few coppers, yet the vendor’s ill-concealed surprise at getting any payment from a man in uniform had spoiled Aldric’s appetite until the first bite. After the second he realised he had better remove his gloves before relish, grease and gravy got all over them, and he kept a wary eye on the Echainon spellstone as he did so. But it remained clear crystal with a blemish inside it that caught the light when turned the right way, a male adornment that let its wearer claim his only flaw was there for all to see.

Each storymaker had a raised seat fronted with a semicircle of benches for their audience, and every bench was full. Beyond them stood the fringe of casual listeners, who had to concentrate if they wanted to hear every nuance of the story through competing phrases from half-a-dozen others. Only paying audiences sat near enough to avoid distraction.

“…though Dragons love gold they respect honour, because it can’t be alloyed or debased. It can be only true or false, so if your honour’s true then you’ll be safe…”

Aldric’s head jerked around, his smile vanishing. That seemed more than accident, more than a tale, because it was far too close to what Ymareth the firedrake had told him.

The speaker was easy to spot. She was a striking woman with a high-cheekboned face too severe for beauty, and she stood taller than Aldric. Since he lacked the typical Talvalin height that wasn’t such an achievement. Silver-white hair hung over her shoulder in a single braid wrapped about at intervals with ribbon and, though she wore everyday clothes, over them was a high-collared gown in wine-red velvet with elaborated patterns embroidered in copper wire. She was as dark as an Elherran and what with height, dress and demeanour, there was enough authority about her to command any of their merchant-ships.

Such as En Sohra in Master Barrankal’s absence, thought Aldric. A hint of smile returned. Or even in his presence, if he knows what’s good for him.

She had the voice for it too, ranging from loud and fierce to soft and tender, low and dramatic to high and humorous. Once in a while she consulted the book on her lap, but she told her tale instead of reading it and her audience heeded every word and even every pause from that remarkable voice.

“…‘But take warning from me, Farmer Kolvin. If this is a tale to make us all think well of you, beware, for the Dragon won’t be fooled. Are you a good husband to your wife, and a good master to your servants and your beasts, or do you beat and curse them?’

‘I would never do a thing like that!’ declared Kolvin, ‘and I defy anyone to say I would!’

‘When you go to market, do you give and take fair price for goods, or do you cheat and lie for your advantage?’

‘No one could trade like that for long in these parts,’ said Kolvin, ‘and if you keep talking this way, my friend, then wizard or not we’ll soon have an exchange of words you might not like.’

‘What would you take out of a burning house? Answer quickly!’

‘My family,’ said Kolvin at once, ‘for they’re the only wealth I can’t recover by hard work. But if I could, I’d take the fire out first.’

‘Well done, Farmer Kolvin,’ said the wizard. ‘You’ve got more true honour than our noble Prince, and more good sense than his whole council.’

‘If I had any good sense at all, I wouldn’t go talking to Dragons!’ said Kolvin and he laughed, though it was the laugh men laugh at the foot of the scaffold steps. ‘But if a thing needs done, be it harvesting or milking or something worse, then better do it soon than late. I’ll go to Dragon Castle right away.’ And off he went at a great pace, like a man trying to outrun his second thoughts, while all the others watched and wondered if they would ever see him alive again.

Kolvin was only halfway up the hill to Dragon Castle when three men in the Prince’s colours rode up to his farm. Their swords were drawn, and their eyes were fierce, and they said…”

The woman smiled and closed her book.

“Be here tomorrow at the hour of noon, and I’ll tell you what they said, and what happened once Farmer Kolvin met the Dragon, and all the things that followed after. Until then, my friends, good night.”

When the story ended like that, with new peril and drama unresolved, Aldric expected cries of outraged impatience. Instead there was a collective sigh of many held breaths released together, and applause as loud as any in feast-hall or theatre.

What he had first heard was a chance conjunction of her words and his mood, but as Aldric sent another thoughtful glance towards the storymaker he met her staring straight back. The black and silver rank-robe, like her own festival gown, wasn’t a garment to go unnoticed. With that he was committed to a conversation, however brief. Simply walking away after showing such interest would make her wonder why. He paid a nearby drink merchant for two redware mugs of the pale, frothy local beer and took them to the woman who spoke with such authority of dragons.

“Your mouth must be dry, lady,” he said in careful Drusalan, holding out one mug of beer. He got a moment’s scrutiny that examined him, his rank-robe and his gift, then with the merest ghost of a shrug she accepted the drink and took a healthy swallow. After a second or two she smiled.

“You’re right. Drier than usual.” The woman didn’t need to say that his uniform was the most likely cause. She bowed politely and Aldric almost echoed it before remembering his supposed character and snapping a half-salute instead. “Thank you, Commander…?”

“Dirac. En-Hanalth Dirac.” The Drusalan form of his name was common enough, but Aldric wasn’t about to give the Alban original to one whose business was remembering names, events and the stories that accompanied them.

“Ayan ker Trahan.” She raised the mug to him. “Thanks once again.”

They made an unlikely pair, a storymaker and an Imperial officer drinking beer together in a busy city square which might have been deserted for all the notice either gave the crowds. Aldric did most of the talking, edging his way between one topic and another like a cat on eggshells, keeping each question as vague as he could manage and still expect a useful answer. About dragons, about honour and, with rather more caution, about the forbidden Art Magic.

Ayan watched him every time he spoke, and the dusk-dilated stare from beneath her brows was far too shrewd for his peace of mind. Those steady eyes reminded him of Gemmel, and like Gemmel she seemed able to read beyond the outward meaning of his words and to study the unvoiced truths within.

“So,” she said at last. “I see.” Aldric had a brief uneasy feeling that she did indeed, far more so than he wanted, and regretted the rashness of talking to strangers. “Commander,” her voice was much softer now, much more confidential, “your interests aren’t for discussion in the public square. Especially while wearing those.” She flicked a quick, disdainful gesture at the insignia which glinted in so many places on his dark clothing. “Undress uniform doesn’t fade unnoticed into many backgrounds, does it?” She grinned, a flash of teeth that took the sting from her words and lit up her entire face.

“But I make my living from, ahem, such subjects as we’ve discussed, and I’d like to hear more. Lots more. Safer by far if we talk later over another drink. In private.” She nodded sideways to where a painted tavern sign caught the lamplight, hesitated, then seemed to reach a different decision. “Commander, I’ve got a small library at home, about the subjects which interest you so much.” There was another grin. “The winged, fire-breathing ones in particular. You’d be a welcome guest on your next furlough, for I find your interest most refreshing.”

“Lady, thanks for offered hospitality at such brief acquaintance, but…” He was trying, and failing, to keep a back-note of apprehension from his voice. “But this is urgent!”

*

Ayan glanced at him, examining the words and the man who spoke them, and realised that behind all the badges and the marks of lofty rank, this Cavalry hanalth was no older than her own youngest son. There was an air about him, not only the expression in his eyes and face but the whole set of his body, which spoke of… She corrected her own thoughts even as they formed. No, not fright, but definite unease. He looked like a scholar who had found sense in something senseless. As if he could prove that twice two equals five.

“If so, Commander Dirac, then sooner we have that private talk the better.” Ayan might have said more, but realised his attention was elsewhere. He was staring off over her shoulder with an intensity that was disturbing. Ayan looked for herself, and turned back with new wariness in her own face. She had thought this young man’s interest in legends was merely something his fellow officers mocked as childish peasants’ fare, hence his nervous secrecy, but she hadn’t imagined for a moment there might be something deeper to it. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Already the young hanalth was backing away with his mind on his own affairs again. His gaze flicked towards her for an instant, and in that instant he saluted, grinning as she might have done herself on a witty exit line. Except that his grin lacked all trace of humour.

“Lady, forget what I said. Other matters are more urgent still!” And he was gone.

“Ker Trahan steading, commander!” she shouted after him with all the power of a voice trained for song and public speaking. “Go two leagues beyond Twin Crags on the Great North Road and turn off left at…”

Ayan ker Trahan closed her mouth around the unfinished sentence and felt a flush of embarrassment warm her cheeks as she met the bewildered stares of people taking their seats around her. She pushed the strange young officer and his curiosities to the back of her mind, though not out of it. There had been a half-formed notion of following the hanalth to see what happened next but that had to be set aside because, right now, what happened next was underneath a bookmark.

“Where did I leave off last time?” she asked.

“ ‘There were eyes in the darkness!’ ” prompted an eager voice from the audience. Ayan nodded, raised her hand and waited for silence before opening the book for a single glance to refresh her memory.

“There were eyes in the darkness. Seela looked up and up, thirty feet above her head, and saw them blink. They might have been eager, they might have been content, they might have been curious. She couldn’t tell, for they were such eyes and such an expression as she had never seen before.

But she was a blacksmith’s daughter, and blacksmiths know the power in cold iron that Evil can’t abide. After her mother was stolen away, Seela’s father made her a special amulet to carry always. It was a nail, only a simple thing, but even the simplest thing has virtue if made well and true. Seela’s father put all his strength of hand and skill of eye into that nail, and all the love of a father for his only child.

It was as long as Seela’s hand from wrist to fingertips, and its four sides tapered to a point as sharp as a sword, as sharp as a needle, as sharp as the grief of loss. The nail was pure iron, smelted and refined ten times, and though it had been dull grey when it left the fire and hammer, Seela had ground it with a stone and polished it with clean fine river-sand until it gleamed like a dagger forged from the finest twisted steel for some great lord to wear.

She took it out, and held it up, and said, “By the power of this cold iron, I bid you gone!”

For a moment nothing happened, but then it was as if a fog or smoke had blown away until Seela could see clearly. And what she saw was this: the eyes had never been just hidden in the darkness. They were a part of it…”

*

What Aldric had seen was a man on a horse, but no ordinary man and no ordinary horse. That was the problem. He was small and lean, sagging in the saddle of a lathered horse, and he had ridden through Egisburg’s North Gate less than five minutes ago. His long yellow overmantle, splattered now with the multi-coloured mud of two provinces and an independent holding, bore embroidered crests at chest and cuffs and in the centre of the back: stylised blue falcons with gold-feathered wings. They were the crests of an Imperial courier, who might ride more than a hundred miles between dawn and dusk along the roads of graded dirt prohibited to all but those who wore the Falcon badge.

It was a task that needed many changes of horse but often allowed no change of messenger, and this exhausted man had such a look. His appearance and the crossbelt hung with warning bells attracted curious glances from those who should mind their own business, but also from Aldric, grateful that chance had let him spot this new arrival in the city.

The Falcon courier was a source of murmured speculation, and several of those who murmured cast knowing looks towards where the Red Tower reared into the night sky. There could be, they ventured, only one reason for a Falcon to arrive in Egisburg in such a state and at such an hour. And that reason was the Princess in the Tower: Droenya Marhala an-Sherban.

That same reason had flicked across Aldric’s mind when he first saw the rider walk his stiff-legged mount around the swarming mass of people in the square. But a second possibility took shape. If someone, somewhere, had got wind of the rescue, that would justify sending an alert to Egisburg by the fastest method possible. There was no chance of getting through the crowds fast enough to intercept the man, so instead Aldric worked through them in the opposite direction, back to the inn where Bruda, Voord and Tagen awaited his return.

A clock chimed at the perimeter of the square and Aldric twisted about to read what hour showed on its face. He relaxed a little. It was the half-mark of the Hour of the Dog, seven o’clock as Albans reckoned time, but he didn’t relax because it still left an hour for the courier to set everything wrong before a certain deputation of officers arrived at the Red Tower’s gate. When a convenient space presented itself Aldric shouldered himself clear of the people in Tower Square, threw the assumed dignity of his assumed rank to the wind and ran.

That hasty departure meant he missed the courier’s contented glance at the same still-striking clock, and the leisurely way in which he shook his tired horse to a walk.

*

Another clock was striking the same half-hour as Aldric approached the inn and he slackened his pace, wondering why the Empire didn’t regulate its public timepieces better. His breath fumed white in front of him as he gasped it in and out, he was hot and sticky despite the freezing night, and he tugged with both hands at his rumpled clothing. Bruda’s sarcasm was something he didn’t want to face at the same time as there was something unpleasant brewing in the Tower.

A door snapped open ahead of him, released a glow of yellow lamplight crossed by a fast-moving shadow, then as hastily jerked shut again. For no reason but wary instinct Aldric stepped sideways into the darkness between two buildings. It wasn’t quite suspicion, and it wasn’t quite precaution, but it was enough to put him out of sight with a feeling that going unnoticed would be wise.

Heavy footsteps approached and Lord-Commander Voord’s distinctive profile passed by, back-lit by the tavern’s courtyard lantern. No matter that he was already near-enough invisible, Aldric flattened himself against the wall at his back and closed one hand on Widowmaker’s hilt. Nothing came of it and Voord strode on, but to Aldric’s mind despite the sound of boots on pavement he moved with too much caution for so early in the evening. Later at night it might have been an innocent wish not to disturb, if anything Voord ever did was innocent, but now each step seemed furtive, stealthy, and worth further investigation.

With the rank-robe closed right up to his throat and its deep hood over his head, Aldric waited for a count of ten before venturing back onto the street. By then Voord was a good thirty yards further away and hard to see unless he was outlined against a paler background. Aldric was careful not to make the same mistake himself. Voord’s progress made him wonder at the hautheisart’s arrogance. The man took not the slightest precaution against detection or pursuit, but stalked through the streets of Egisburg as if he owned them while Aldric slipped from shadow to shadow without a sound. He was wearing his own boots rather than the heavy military issue which made tracking by ear a simple undertaking. Without those clumping footfalls he would have lost Voord before the end of the first narrow street.

When the Vlechan halted at last and took a glance up and down the street Aldric was still out of sight, holding his breath and listening. There was a soft, staccato tap of gloved knuckles on wood and the rasp of a heavy door sliding in well-waxed channels. Aldric was quick-witted enough to memorise the pattern of the tapping, and cautious enough to wait for the solid thump as the door closed again before he risked a glance around the corner.

There was nobody to see. Voord had gone through whichever door had opened and shut. But which one? Aldric debated whether to move closer or not, then had the choice made for him as Voord emerged again and walked off down the street and out of sight. The Vlechan had been inside for less than three minutes, and what sort of time was that to spend on a secret which involved the Falcon couriers? Besides asking Voord himself, there was one way to learn the answer.

No, there were two. He could go back to the tavern, confront Voord and hope that Bruda would get more than well-turned lies from his subordinate; or he could learn it in the same way Voord had done. Whether the hautheisart’s source would repeat himself was something Aldric would find out soon enough. By the time he reached the door he had his course of action planned. It wasn’t sorcery, and in a way he wished it was since there were fewer variables. This was just a display of daring and impudent nerve. After a deep breath to calm himself he reached out and rapped the proper pattern on the door.

“Kei’ach da?” Thick timber muffled the voice but its mistrustful tone was plain enough. Voord had come, Voord had gone, and no other visitors were expected.

Aldric counted ten and rapped again more loudly, more irritably, more in the way of a man kept waiting for five seconds when one second was enough for an insult. He rummaged in his mind for what he intended to say, which was obvious enough, and the form in which to say it, which was proving more elusive. Whoever was on the far side of that unopened door needed to believe he was real within two sentences and without credentials, or he would never believe it at all.

Aldric had used Drusalan as a first language for almost a month, except for the rare occasions when he could speak Jouvaine or even Alban. During that almost-month, apart from one or two anger-fuelled lapses, he had avoided using the phrases and construction he now pulled from memory. He had heard them often enough, directed at his country, at his people and at himself. High Drusalan in its most formal mode was an extreme insult when spoken by inferior to superior, and in all the Empire there was nothing more inferior than an Alban.

“Do you intend that I stand here until dawn?” he snarled at last, pitching his voice low and heaping it with an arrogance learned from experts, not that High Drusalan required much to make it arrogant. He breathed deeply once more, with a studied, calming count between inhalation and speech, then spoke again. “By Hautheisart Voord’s authority, open up! I grow impatient! This is your final warning!”

He hadn’t known quite what would follow, whether the door would inch back or jerk open all at once. It did neither, just slid aside without haste while whoever opened it inspected him. Playing this game by instinct and ignorance of its rules, Aldric didn’t risk losing the initiative. Instead of entering at once he stayed where he was and let the lamplight show what he was.

It worked. He heard a soft oath from inside and put a humourless smile on his lips. Shrouded in black from head to heel, he would be little more than a silhouette in the lantern-glow, and any points of reflected light would come from the polished metal of insignia so impressive that to consider it false would be a crime. He had done no more than claim to act with Voord’s authority, but if his rank suggested he really was that officer of evil repute, and a mistake had taken place tonight, he was ready to take advantage of it.

“Finally,” he said as he crossed the threshold at last, glowering at the man who had opened the door. It was the courier. Even without the distinctive yellow robe Aldric recognised his heavy moustache. He maintained his glare until he got a salute and a low frightened bow. “Better. But your obedience is slow and your manners need mending. Take care I don’t mend them for you. My way leaves scars.”

That was in keeping with what Aldric had seen of Voord’s style, enough that when the courier flinched from the threat it made him feel uncomfortable. He was here to gather information, not to terrorise, but the threat of it must have been here before him. There was a spanned and loaded crossbow propped against the wall in one corner of the room, and he speculated about what meeting might need such a preparation. Probably one involving Lord-Commander Voord.

“All right, what’s your message?” He retained his air of arrogance by the simple expedient of keeping his back turned.

“Message, sir?”

“Message, idiot!” Aldric let it come out like a whipcrack, knowing how any officer of rank, let alone Voord, would treat a subordinate who echoed his questions instead of answering them. “Are you deaf? Or insolent?” He half-turned and slapped one leather-gloved hand – he had no time to be subtle – against the gleaming menace of Widowmaker’s hilt. “Because if insolence is your problem, I have a cure for that as well.” The courier drew in a noisy breath to deny the allegation and lost his chance as the man he knew as Voord swung round on him at the first sound of inhalation. “Yes?” Aldric demanded nastily, and now he had a handspan of blade clear of its scabbard. Then, nastier still and becoming far too perceptive, “Who else was here tonight?”

The courier’s face was the weatherbeaten colour of old brick, but that question made it blanch many shades paler. Aldric could see the man considering his choices, and realising how few of them he had. Repeating the question would aggravate this already all-too-angry officer, saying nothing would be even worse, and telling lies to a man who might be able to spot them could be fatal. At last, for safety’s sake, he told the unvarnished truth.

“C-Commander Voord,” the courier faltered.

“Yes? What?”

“N-no, lord. N-not you. Another—”

“Another what?” Aldric let his tension vent itself in feigned impatience. “Father of Fires, I’ll gut the man who gave a fool this mission!” He stopped his pretence of rage, deciding it was time to understand. “Do you mean there was someone else?” Now to recognise the problem. “Someone claiming to be me?” The courier nodded wretchedly and got the back of one black-gloved hand across the face. “And you believed him.”

Aldric let the words come out in the same flat way he had heard from Voord himself, but inside he felt sick. That backhanded slap was well in keeping with who he pretended to be, but not with how he had grown up or the Code which still governed his life. How well could one play a part before role and character became real?

“You believed him,” he repeated, not a statement but an accusation. “And you told him what was for my ears alone. And you let him go. But you kept me standing in the street!” Aldric let the feigned outrage drain from his voice, replacing it with a distrust that edged each word like a razor. “Yet you didn’t mention this previous visitor. Did you hope I wouldn’t know about him? Or was it something else?”

The courier fell to his knees, terrified by the intangible reputation of the Imperial Secret Police and the all too tangible presence of Hautheisart Voord, so recently promoted to hanalth that it hadn’t even been on his message. He began a tremulous babble of apologies, abject pleading that made Aldric’s stomach clench in a nauseated knot. He had killed men before, but never caused fear like this. It told him what Voord was like, and proved the accuracy of his imitation. That was no compliment, and for one disgusted second he was within a muscle’s twitch of walking out. Then the preliminary excuses came to an end and the true message began. It shocked him with its concept, construction and ruthless simplicity.

It stank of Lord-Commander Voord.

He understood a great many things more clearly now, because the courier’s words explained why so much time and money was expended to get him to Egisburg, and why Voord had let himself be overruled with so little protest. It also explained a small annoyance which had troubled him even as he left Kathur’s house in Tuenafen as far behind him as he could, before the Empire’s net closed in again. That annoyance was her theft of one of his telekin.

Most people knew something about Albans: their adherence to an outdated Code in a cynical modern world, their tsepan Honour daggers, and the telek spring-gun which had become as typical an Alban weapon as any taiken longsword. If Princess Marhala was murdered with the twin of one still holstered on the saddle of the Alban King’s envoy, no Imperial court of justice would search for any other evidence. They would take steps to punish not only him but the place from which he came. There would be war.

And the post of Grand Warlord would be secure.

Aldric wondered when and why and how the plan had been created, and at whose suggestion, and realised that though the message was for Voord alone, he could no longer trust anyone. Now he didn’t dare fling what he had discovered in Bruda’s face, for as Voord’s superior the man was probably a part of it.

The scheme was also far too convincing. Aldric was sure King Rynert had arranged Emperor Droek’s convenient death, and that he was behind the accident which killed Droek’s elder son and caused such chaos with the succession. Now Marhala’s presence in the Red Tower had forced a pause to the long-drawn strife it had created. While the Imperial armies were at odds Alba was safe from their threat, but with the princess held by one faction as surety for the behaviour of the other, cooler heads might prevail. They could make a case that instead of fighting one another, their combined military forces could be put to better use in bringing the benefits of the Empire to those not yet a part of it. Annoyingly, aggressively independent Alba, for one. But Marhala laid with her ancestors at Kalitzim would be no bargaining counter for either side to use, and the renewed hostility might even grow to full-scale civil war which the Albans could watch from a safe distance.

Unless the manner of her passing put the blame on them.

Grand Warlord Etzel stood to gain most, so even if he wasn’t behind this plot he was certainly poised to make best use of its opportunity. A simple appeal to simple emotion would be all he needed. Aldric could already hear the speeches in his head, not the mannered poetry of Osmar’s plays but fiery words to whip up grief and create a common cause. That cause would be revenge, something he knew all about. A thirst for justified vengeance was a thing of frightening intensity, with none better qualified to admit it than himself. He had felt it, seen its blue-white power surge through Ykraith the Dragonwand to incinerate Duergar Vathach, and watched it burn as hot in the eyes of Gueynor Evenou, Overlord of Seghar. Such emotion loosed on a military-minded empire wasn’t a thought to dwell on.

But another thought drifted, settled and took on solid form. Seghar, said the thought. This has happened already. Made a scapegoat, betrayed by a weapon so obviously yours it could belong to no-one else. The citadel of Seghar was where Crisen Geruath had murdered his own father with Aldric’s tsepan to do the deed. Almost forgotten voices linked Voord’s name with Seghar, and with Crisen; details were long lost in the confusion of later events, but the connection was still there. That was enough, and more than enough.

Then the farther door slid open, another man came in, and everything went wrong.

“Serej, has the Lord-Commander—” the man was saying, but he and his voice stopped in the same instant. Aldric didn’t know him, had never seen him before, and it was plain from this newcomer’s expression that he shared the lack of recognition. More words made it plainer yet. “Who in the Fires are you? And what are you doing here?”

Aldric didn’t have to be watching to know the courier Serej was staring from one to the other with shock-widened eyes, and he needed sharp ears to catch the soft obscenity born of sudden realisation. But what came after the oath was clear enough.

“Etek, he says he’s Voord!”

“That’s not Voor—”

There would be no more talking. Without threat or challenge or even an indrawn breath, Aldric flicked hand to hilt. A protracted fight would attract unwelcome attention, so instead of Isileth he drew his taipan, left-handed for maximum surprise, and it almost worked.

But only almost. Etek had expected trouble as soon as he saw an unfamiliar face, and avoided the blade by a finger’s thickness. In the same instant Serej the courier began a dash with both hands outstretched for that loaded crossbow. All he had to do was seize it, point it and pull the trigger. But he also had to get beyond Aldric’s reach, and he wasn’t fast enough.

Before Etek could regain his balance or grab for his own makher, Aldric half-turned and lashed out with the taipan. Its blade rang as it sheared bone, and Serej stumbled. His legs collapsed under him and he slammed against the floor without a word. Momentum skidded him close enough for his outstretched right hand to reach the waiting bow, but he no longer had any use for it. Or any back to his head.

Etek lunged forward, makher outstretched for a ripping upward thrust, but he was a second and a lifetime too later. Aldric’s right hand had already closed on Isileth’s long grip, and the taiken leaped from its scabbard with eager speed. Instead of block or parry there was a sidestep as swift as the beat of a falcon’s wing, and a single cut from a blade with a foot more reach. The fight was over before it had begun.

Aldric felt the jolt of impact up his arm as Widowmaker made another, and saw a gout of blood burst from the Drusalan’s chest like wine from a new-tapped cask. It was the same deep crimson as a rose he had once seen, and it spattered against the floor with a sound like rain, a colour like rubies, and a smell like a slaughteryard.

Etek tried to say something, whether witty or angry, a curse or a protest, that might be remembered for a little while. It came out only as a bubbling exhalation of breath. Then his knees buckled, and he dropped.

Aldric held that last accusing stare long after it lost focus, telling himself that he had only done what he had to, that these men were enemies, that the responsibility for their death wasn’t his, and that he didn’t care. But he did. Otherwise he would have as little conscience as the weapon he held, for in someone else’s hand Widowmaker would end his life as readily as any other. There was an obligation to killing, and that obligation was remembrance. He stood with the coppery stench of warm blood in his nostrils, looking down at the dead men, fixing them in his mind.

Not yet twenty-four, and how many corpses now?

He knew the number, and several names as well. It was a list to remind him of the long-trained skill that meant he lived while others died. It also reminded him that other swordsmen could have equal skill or greater, enough that one of them might some day stand looking down at him. But until that day there was self-defence, and there was expedience, and there was necessity. Three words that were all a killer needed.

They left a taste like vinegar and ashes on his tongue.

*

Ayan the storymaker finished, smiled acknowledgement of her applause, nodded to her audience as they left and sipped a little more cold beer to soothe her throat. The story had been one of her own and no effort to tell, linking like a chain – or a mesh of mail, for it might lead off in several directions at once – with other tales she told with characters as well-known as her family and friends.

Ayan’s smile broadened at that, for often enough those characters were her family and friends, their quirks observed and embellished. It was a fault of hers. No, not a fault, a privilege which those who wove tales from the joint webs of imagination and experience could exercise. She had met several such potentials in the past few days: a scholarly man with a collector’s enthusiasm for every new topic he discovered; a woman with a string of riding-horses for sale – Ayan had bought one already, with an option on two more – and a string of anecdotes to go with them.

Then there was the twitchy young hanalth with the firedrake fixation…

Something, some thing made her look up towards a winter sky half-dark and flecked with stars, half-grey with another band of snow-laden cloud. At any other time she would have seen nothing, for Tower Square was a dark place after sunset. But now, tonight, on this holiday, it was lit as brightly as anywhere in the Drusalan Empire, and the glow reflected from those lowering clouds so they formed a pale backdrop to anything below them.

Two things were visible tonight. One was the Tower, a stark outline that drew a shudder from Ayan’s imaginative mind. There was a brooding look to that fortress, enough to make her glad that tomorrow, when the festival was over, she and her new horse or horses would leave this city and return home before winter closed in.

But the other thing was higher than the Tower, and darker than the Tower, lean as hunger and as black as a rent in the clouds, with wide wings that drove it across the night sky as fast as a bat hunting moths.

Ayan stared until small glowing motes swam before her eyes, and then she stared some more. She was sure she knew what she was seeing, yet didn’t dare to speak the word aloud. ‘Say the name, summon the named’ might be an old line in older stories, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. The winged creature passed beyond the grey clouds and across the starlit heavens, but she could still follow it when the cold distant specks of starfire flickered as it sliced between them and the world.

One of those sparks became a long bright streak that flared and died away again, and Ayan released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Anyone else might have dismissed the quick bright scratch as the track of a falling star, but not after what she had already seen.

“Did you know about that, Commander Dirac?” muttered Ayan ker Trahan. “Now I understand what you were about…” A dragon was something she had always wanted to see, ever since the first tale she made about them. But having seen this one, she didn’t want to stay for more. Dragons in tales behaved as their role in those tales required: they were frightening and fierce or gentle and funny, wicked and cruel or wise and helpful. This wasn’t one of those dragons. It was real, and a real one would be what it was, not what a storymaker wanted it to be. The conclusion of ‘Farmer Kolvin and the Dragon’ could wait for another festival which didn’t have a dragon in the air above it.

Another long and more straightforward talk with Hanalth Dirac could prove enlightening, even educational, but Ayan had no wish to wait in Egisburg either for him or the answers he had hoped to learn. It wasn’t fear; as a mother and daughter of soldiers Ayan was less prone to that than most. But it was caution, for now she recalled little oddities about him and the most important was his accent. It wasn’t from Drusul, Tergoves or even Vlech, and if he wasn’t from the Imperial heartlands he was a provincial. If he was a provincial, he couldn’t wear a hanalth’s bars and diamonds. Her own sons had been in the Empire’s army, the younger just released from service, and that rigid capping of promotion was something she had heard about at endless length.

So why and how was he wearing that insignia? Ayan didn’t want to know. She had been speaking to him, and enough people in this busy place had seen her speaking to him. Now, more than ever, she wanted away from Egisburg before whatever he was cooking boiled up and over. The doings of the great, the not-so-great and the downright infamous had a way of hurting all around them, and innocent bystanders most of all.

*

Aldric walked along the street, and along his own shadow as the leaping flames behind him flung it forward. He cleared his throat and spat the taste of soot and lamp-oil into the gutter. Off in the distance someone was beating an alarm gong, but that didn’t matter. The fire he had set would never be under control before it cleared all trace of what had happened, and though there might be questions, there would be no answers.

Serej the courier had known what instructions were contained in his message and accepted all of them, including whatever protracted execution was inflicted on murderers of Imperial royalty. He had gone for a weapon, and anyone who did that when Widowmaker was in play had only themselves to blame. Etek was Voord’s henchman, so he deserved everything as well. Aldric grimaced; if he worked at it long enough he might convince himself. But it hadn’t happened yet.

What to do? Stay or run? His mind darted from one side of the problem to the other like a mouse choosing between primed trap or poisoned bait, even though what he was – and what he tried to be – meant there was only one thing he could do. There was no point in running anyway, because somewhere in this city, in Voord’s or Tagen’s or even Bruda’s hands, was a telek to match the one holstered at his saddle. It was an unusual weapon for an Imperial hanalth, noticed and remembered by far too many people. Princess Marhala would die whether he was there to take the blame or not and, if he fled, that would only confirm his guilt. Running couldn’t save him, and it wouldn’t save her.

There was nobody he could turn to but himself. In this Imperial city everyone had become a potential enemy, a potential informer willing to betray him for no reason other than what he was: inyen-hlensyarl. To a Drusalan ‘foreigner’, ‘spy’ and ‘assassin’ were interchangeable, and this foreigner wore a stolen uniform and rank. That was what Voord and Bruda would claim, as they had probably intended from the start.

It brought Aldric back to the conclusion he had reached at the beginning, when Serej first outlined this dirty little plot. He still had to rescue the Princess. It remained a storymaker’s cliché, if no longer one to smile at, but this rescue would be of his own devising. At least he had a slight advantage, forewarned of treachery and expecting it, while those behind the treachery remained unaware he knew. At least he hoped so.

One day, Talvalin, all this will get you killed. It was like something Dewan ar Korentin would say. He might think Aldric wanted to avoid the sneers and sidelong looks which mocked a duty done so well it cost an innocent woman her life. But that had never been the reason. It was a simpler one, without influences from anyone else.

Aldric’s reason was his Honour. Princess Marhala an-Sherban was Drusalan, from a country which might soon make war on his own, yet after his Word to the king he was honour-bound to help her. Honour-bound… Now that was a term used too often and too lightly. His tsepan, though it hung on slings in the Drusalan military manner rather than correctly in the loops of his weaponbelt, was a constant reminder of an oath taken at his Eskorrethen ceremony when he was twenty years old and his family were still alive. He might appear to lay it aside, as he laid aside the black dirk, but he could never forget either oath or blade while the white scars remained on his left hand’s palm.

Aldric looked down at that hand and its fingers clenched into a fist at what he saw on the wrist above its cuff. The thread of blue within the spellstone had expanded like the pupil of a watchful cat’s eye.

Or the Eye of the Dragon.

Aldric’s head tilted on his shoulders to stare up at the night sky, just as Ayan the storymaker was doing in Tower Square. He saw what she saw without hesitation or disbelief, and drew himself up straight to offer the shadow in the sky a quick salute. Ymareth the firedrake had granted him far more aid than Rynert of Alba had ever done, and shown him far more courtesy and kindness. Perhaps it saw his courteous gesture, for the distant outline unleashed a lance of white fire, brief and brilliant as a sunspark struck from Heaven’s Forge. Response or not, it was a reminder that in this city full of enemies he wasn’t completely alone.

And after all was done, when the princess was free – oh, such confidence! – and he had discharged his obligation to the man he had called ‘King’ and ‘Lord’, what would he do then?

Aldric didn’t know.

*

“There, up in the sky! Did you see that, Gemmel? Did you see it?”

“So you’re talking again.”

Soldier and sorcerer stood together on a low ridge near the road which crossed the river-plain to Egisburg’s great gated walls. Ymareth had set them down about two miles from the city, a negligible distance in fine weather and daylight if they could use the roads. But it was not, and they could not, and slogging in darkness through snowdrifts like frozen ocean waves had taken more than an hour. Except for the occasional heartfelt oath Dewan had said nothing after his mouth closed at Gemmel’s final revelation. He hadn’t spoken to the old man since, no longer sure that ‘man’ was a proper term of reference.

“I… All right, yes I am,” he said at last. “I must. I’ve known you long enough before, before—”

“Before I gave you honest answers and you didn’t like the sound of truth?”

“I… I found it hard to digest.”

“Said the man who ate the cart-horse,” Gemmel said, and grinned. It was the old grin and the old Gemmel, and Dewan felt a deal more easy in his mind to see it. “You mean the flare in the sky? A falling star.”

“That was no star, falling or otherwise.”

“Good. We can agree on something. Would you also agree that we abandon this excessive caution and use the damned road?”

Dewan looked to either side in both directions as far as he could see, not far at night but enough to be sure there was no one else in the area. Using the road so close to the city didn’t concern him now, but emerging from concealment after not using it might prompt the question why?

“All right,” he said. “All clear. Come on.” He floundered through another drift, noting irritably how once again Gemmel let him go first before following over the broken ground. “I must remember, Gemmel, wizard, friend, to let you take your turn in front now and again.”

“As you wish,” said Gemmel as he reached the road. This close to Egisburg it was paved and kept free of all but the most recent snow. “Then I’ll lead from here, shall I?”

Dewan watched him walk away for a few seconds. With plenty of loose snow in easy reach he fought a noble struggle that balanced his dignity, the risk of what he was considering and the satisfaction a well-hurled snowball would bring.

It took several seconds, but at last Dewan dropped his handful of snow and set off after Gemmel without another word.

*

Aldric returned to the inn without detours. He avoided Tower Square with its risk of watchful eyes, so didn’t see how one of the storymakers was gathering her gear before hurried departure from a city which had lost all its attraction. He was in a hurry too, wanting to get behind a locked door before someone saw the drying blood which spattered him. The swordplay had left its traces as it always did, even on the victor.

The entrance hall of the inn was empty and he was glad of it, for though he was calm enough at present, that would change if he came face to face with Lord-Commander Voord. The man was probably back already, returned in the same stealthy manner as his departure. Those recent events had all happened so fast: according to a big case-clock in its alcove by the stairs it was only half an Alban hour since Aldric faded into the shadows while Voord stalked by.

The door of the taproom was open as he passed it, but a glance inside showed Tagen and Bruda’s wine-flagon lying in a bowl of snow-melt, their cups upside-down on a tray and the drinkers nowhere in sight. Aldric reached his own room without incident. It was darker than it had been when he left; either a servant or a lack of oil had reduced the lamplight to a mere glow. He pushed the door shut, ran its heavy deadbolt into place… And hesitated, for something beside the dimness wasn’t right. His gear was untouched, the furniture and shuttered windows were as he remembered, and other than the reduced lamp, nothing had changed.

Then he saw the thing which hadn’t been there when he left.

A sheathed sword lay down the centre of the bed, dividing its mattress in two precise halves. It was a Jouvaine estoc, not carried by anyone in the rescue party yet somehow familiar. There was a presence in the room, a living person hidden and waiting. His muscles tensed, his spread fingers moved quick and quiet to close on Widowmaker’s hilt—

And it whipped out from under his grasp even as he touched it.

An expert hand had gripped the taiken’s scabbard with just the proper lift-and-twist to unhook it from his belt, while another released its cross-strap and sent it slithering free of his shoulder with the sound of a viper on parchment. Between one heartbeat and the next the sword was out of reach, taken by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. Moving with the speed of panic he grabbed for the taipan instead, but in the same instant a voice spoke in his ear, so close behind him that he could feel the warm, lancemint-scented breath carrying each word.

“ ‘What is life except excuse for death, or death except escape from life?’ I still recall your name with kindness, Aldric Talvalin. How do you recall mine?”

Aldric stared for a long moment at nothing at all, swallowing once or twice against the hot constriction that was surely his own heart, halfway between his mouth and its proper place. He didn’t hear it pounding, or the sound of his own breath in a gasp like coming to the surface out of deep water. All he heard was that voice. The words were his own, but the voice was…

“Kyrin?”

He turned, expecting to be wrong, expecting his imagination to cheat him again as it had cheated him so many times. But he wasn’t cheated now.

*

There were no glad cries or long-parted lovers running together with open arms. Their farewells had been too strained and strange for any such display. Instead Aldric stared at her without even a smile, his expression shuttered and unreadable expression.

“You remembered,” he said at last.

“I couldn’t forget it. Or the reason for it. And it was the only thing that would stop you from…” Kyrin didn’t need to finish. Instead she looked at the taipan’s blade, still menacingly half-drawn, and kept watching it until Aldric slid the hilt home with a snap and gave her the ghost of a bow. Then he walked across the room and adjusted the dimmed lamp until it flooded them with light.

“Your eyes are as blue as I remember them. Your hair is as fair.” He didn’t move to touch her. “And you’ve troubled my dreams this six months and more, Tehal Kyrin, Harek’s youngest daughter. I understand you throwing my bad verse back at me, but why not take both swords?”

“Because I trusted you. I took just this one because I wanted to hear you speak without your sharp-tongued mistress shaping the words.”

“A mistress who didn’t leave me for someone else,” he said softly. “That choice was yours. You made it. You alone.”

There was a brief flicker in Kyrin’s eyes and he recognised it as one he had caused before and in the same way, so many painful months ago, by speaking truth when a lie would hurt far less.

“I travelled far to find you, Aldric-an,” she said, using respect not affection in a way her Valhollan accent made all too plain. “Alba first, then Drusul. With an uncertain reception waiting at the end of it, that was foolish. Or not. Now I know how things are, I can leave again and this time be at peace. Here.”

She held Widowmaker out to him and as his right hand closed on the scabbard, reaffirming possession, she rotated the longsword so the loops and forks of its guard made a metal fence between them. Yet when his left hand came up to close on hers, she didn’t pull away. Instead it was as if the contact gave her enough reassurance to meet him stare for stare past the black steel of the taiken’s hilt.

“Did you think you were the only one with troubled dreams and sleepless nights? There were many times I lay awake in the darkness and wondered if my choice was right or wrong. Seorth had already married my sister Eyrin to assure the alliance and keep the peace, but no word of that was spoken until I was aboard ship and the ship was under sail. Have you ever found yourself an excess number, Aldric-an? That you were one too many under your own family roof?”

“But you went willingly! Eagerly!” Aldric burst out, then bit off anything else. In a small voice halfway between accusation and uncertainty, he said, “There was a letter…”

“Yes, there was. Written by Seorth, to another’s dictation. Something else I learned about on his ship. We were both deceived, Aldric. You had to believe it, and I helped make it convincing because… Because I wanted to believe it too. That Seorth had come all that way for me. And I was afraid. Afraid of them, and afraid for you. Even you and—” she forced a smile, “—and your cold mistress here, couldn’t turn their no into yes. You’d have come to harm if you tried. Because you would have tried, Kailin-eir Aldric ilauem-arluth Talvalin. And the trying would have killed you.”

“Kyrin.” The taiken was no longer a fence between them; it hung from Aldric’s grasp, as near to being flung aside as it would ever be. “Who are they?” He was already sure he knew the answer.

“Dewan,” she replied without hesitation, “Dewan and the king.” She saw a muscle start to tic along the renewed scar beneath his eye and realised what it meant. “But – but they promised they would explain. They promised to tell you everything after I was gone. All their reasons, all their needs… Aldric, they promised.”

“They spoke words. That’s what promises can be. Just words. Made with honour they’re worth having, but otherwise they’re just breath with a little noise in it. Like someone telling a story. So what did you say that they wanted to hear so much?”

“That there was no love between us, nor ever had been. Dewan asked me and he wanted to hear No, so I said No. But…”

“But?”

“But I should have had spoken truth and said Yes.”

“The truth is Yes?” Aldric didn’t move for a moment, then reached out towards her face and his fingers stroked along the line of her cheekbone in the old caress.

“Yes then, yes now, yes always. Not that it matters.”

“If it didn’t matter, Kyrin, why did you come back?”

“To prove I had the right to do it. To prove I was my mother’s daughter.”

“And to prove you’re done with other obligations?” He smiled. “Now there’s a feeling I’m familiar with. So we’re free to marry—”

“No, Aldric, we’re not. You’re cseirin-born and a high-clan lord in your own right.” Aldric’s smile went tight. From what King Rynert had told him, that was open to question, but explaining would take too long.

“Then you’ll just be my warm mistress, alongside this cold one?” He gave Isileth Widowmaker a little shake and the blade rustled in its scabbard like something alive. “I can do better.”

“You can’t fight tradition with a sword!”

“And you already said that once.”

“It still holds true!”

“Not now. Not for me. Duty and Obligation are two edges on the same sword. It’s our proverb, it cuts both ways, and it’s the proper sword for fighting a tradition.” He glanced at Widowmaker and smiled again. “More effective even than this. After what I’ve done for Rynert, he owes me honesty at least. No more deception, no more broken promises, and afterwards we’ll see what a sword can do about tradition.” He laid Widowmaker down on the bed alongside the estoc. It was Kyrin’s own, he had seen her wear it a score of times, yet hadn’t recognised it until now. As he hadn’t recognised so many things. “It was you on the road to Egisburg,” he said, wondering how he could have missed her. “I thought I saw someone once or twice, and I thought I felt a presence, a watcher, many times. How?”

“Dewan ar Korentin,” she said, confusing him even more. “And a Drusalan woman he told me to meet in Tuenafen.”

“Kathur the Vixen?”

“Yes. She told me enough to get here.” Kyrin studied him for a second as if unwilling to ask what was on her mind. “Did she give you any reason to… To hit her?” The look on his face was answer enough. “Because someone did, and much more besides. Hush now, I’ll explain later. When I came to Alba looking for you, you were off on a task for your king. But Dewan sought me out in secret and told me: ‘Look for Aldric here and here, find him if you’re able, help him if you can, stay with him if you both still want each other.’ ”

“Dewan said that, and you believed him?”

“At first I did, enough to bring me to the Empire. But the more I thought about it, the more he was like an actor in those plays you told me about, the ones with speeches ready for all occasions. He was saying what I wanted to hear.”

“Will you listen to another speech like that?” She nodded. “Then Kyrin-ain, I too say Yes. Now and always.” When he put his arms around her and held her close, it was like a dream. There was the scent of her hair, the cool smoothness of her skin, the warmth of her lips and the simple nearness of her being there, but unlike so many other dreams there was no bitter waking. “I missed you far more than I ever knew till now. I prayed you would come back, somehow, some day. And death strike down the first one who comes between us again…”

He kissed her again, gently and then fiercely, hungrily, and she was as gentle, fierce and hungry, and they were both trembling in each other’s arms, for it had been too long, too long, six months and a lifetime apart, and the bed was just two steps away…

A fist hammered on the door.

“Get yourself armoured-up and neat, dear hanalth, sir,” came Voord’s voice, edged with a sneer barely blunted by the heavy timber. “We leave in ten minutes for the Tower!”

“Who was that?” asked Kyrin, but when she glanced at Aldric’s face she needed neither name nor answer, because for an instant there had been a glitter of pure hate in his eyes.

“Death strike the first man who comes between us,” he repeated. “If Hell or Heaven heed prayers and curses, I hope they heed that one.” He took a reluctant step away from Kyrin and shrugged out of the military rank-robe, flinging it across the bed in a no-nonsense manner very different to stripping for more pleasant purposes. “Did you understand him?”

“I don’t speak Drusalan.”

“What he said was hurry up. None too politely, either. And I can’t use your name to make excuses.” It wasn’t the right time to tell Kyrin that her name and home were already in Voord’s dossier and had been used to threaten him, so instead he jerked with his chin at the racked armour near the wall. “Could you help me with that, please?”

She hesitated for a second, about to ask what was wrong, then shrugged and pulled the officer’s-pattern harness from its frame beside the window where she had come in. There was no sign even now that the shutters had been disturbed; Tehal Kyrin’s talent for subtle burglary had never left her. Coupled with a lithe, slim build and a natural gymnastic ability, hunger made an excellent trainer of thieves.

“What are you doing tonight that’s so important?” she asked, kneeling beside him to tighten the buckles of armoured leggings with long fingers which had a distracting tendency to wander. Those fingers told her that despite his outward air of calm, Aldric was trembling a little. Part of it had to do with her, but the rest wasn’t fear, not even the flash of fury she had seen. It was the tension of a full-drawn bow, and with Isileth Widowmaker within arm’s reach it was unsettling.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” he said, “so most likely you won’t either. The Emperor’s sister, Princess Marhala, is in the Red Tower. And tonight I learned that…”

Between grunts and oaths and struggles with intractable armour that didn’t fit as well as it looked, he got out a shortened version of the story even when the scarlet arming-tunic muffled his voice as it was pulled over his head in mid-sentence. The quilted cloth had heavy leather padding at the shoulders where the hauberk’s weight would lie, it was made for a larger man and, when his face emerged from its neck-opening, he was almost the tunic’s own colour with exertion. He held out both arms so she could buckle the plated-mail vambraces on his forearms, flexing elbows, wrists and fingers to make sure they all moved freely.

“Light of Heaven, that’s more comfortable!” Aldric said at last. Then he looked at Kyrin in a way that made her arch one eyebrow. “I’ve realised something that hasn’t been mentioned yet.” Kyrin’s other brow went up. “A quick escape. And you’re just the one to help with it.”

CHAPTER NINE

It was snowing again as Bruda’s squad of soldiers left the inn, dense white flakes falling from a dense grey sky past the dark tower brooding over the city. Though he was muffled as tightly as the rest against the weather, Aldric still halted for a moment and pulled back his hood to look at the fortress again. It didn’t matter that he had seen it before in clearer air and better light; he hadn’t been walking towards its gate to go inside.

The Red Tower looked as threatening as a hungry animal. With its coloured glaze lost in snow and darkness, it was a great dark block of stone set down square in the middle of the city, eyed with lamps and fanged with the iron spikes of its drop-gates. It was an evil building by repute and by appearance, and as he got closer he saw nothing to change that.

They were four armoured men flanked and followed by eight more as an honour guard, drawn from the squad of cavalry who had ridden with them. Black and scarlet, silver and gold, the soft swaddling of fabrics and the hard glint of metal were all an intense contrast with the snow. There were few on the streets to remark on that dramatic appearance for the festival was running down, its momentum gone on this last night of holiday. The foul weather had forced the revellers indoors, talking, reminiscing, drinking and getting drunk against the sober thought of oncoming winter. That was convenient. It meant fewer eyes to see and speculate about what this armed and armoured group was doing.

Aldric was guarded about what he knew and apprehensive about what remained undiscovered. His nerves were tingling almost to the snapping point, sensitive as never before to sounds, reactions and emotions hidden well or badly. He could sense something about Bruda, Voord and Tagen, and not merely because he knew such sensations should be there. They might feel the same about him, for under his rank-robe, pushed through his weapon-belt and out of sight but within quick reach, was the telek from his saddle holster with eight lead-shod steel darts in its spanning-sleeve. A missile weapon of any sort could prove a vital advantage tonight, since he was sure that someone else’s cloak concealed the other one.

Hoofs thudded for a moment behind them as a string of horses passed in the measured cadence of a slow walk, the sound dull and muted in the snowfall silence. No one turned for no one was very interested, but Aldric had expected such a sound and smiled to himself within the shadows of his helmet. Then he composed his face again and walked on towards the Tower.

*

Bruda hadn’t exaggerated the influence of his passes and certificates; forged or genuine, they all worked. When he presented them at the Red Tower’s outer ward, there was only the briefest inspection before he got a stamping full salute from the sentries on guard. When he and the others made their response, Aldric’s acknowledgement lagged half a watchful second behind the others so he could imitate how it was done. There wasn’t much to mimic; the returned salute was an open hand raised to helmet-rim, casual to the point of carelessness as if emphasising the gulf between senior and subordinate.

The soldiers at the gate, and those met with increasing frequency as they crossed the Red Tower’s grounds, gave further salutes but showed no other interest. Passing the outer guard-posts had confirmed their right to be here, and from what Aldric had overheard, visiting officers were common enough around the Tower. Whatever the reason, one more gaggle of rank-robes wasn’t worth noticing.

At last they reached the Red Tower’s own gate, yawning to receive them, jagged above and below with the interlocking teeth of iron shutters that gave it a snarl of unappeased hunger. Aldric stepped into the shelter of its lowering outer works and threw back his hood, stamped a time or two to rid himself of loose snow and looked about him. He had decided that trying to hide his curiosity about this place would seem more false than indulging it, so he indulged.

Even though the Tower was a comfortable residence for noble guests, the fanged maw of its gate declared its true function as a prison too clearly for denial. The famous red glaze didn’t extend beyond the outer cladding, except for big six-sided tiles which paved the floor of the gatehouse and gave Aldric the unpleasant notion he was standing on a tongue. Its inner walls were massive blocks of dressed grey stone, several tons apiece, and it wasn’t the winter cold but an errant memory which raised his skin to gooseflesh.

That memory was of an ancient tomb, lost and all but forgotten in the Jevaiden Deepwood, made of monstrous stones like these. This place had the same feel to it, of things long dead and better left to sleep out the rest of eternity undisturbed. Breath drifted from his mouth and nose and he realised he had been holding it this past few seconds for no reason other than his own imaginings. He could hear Bruda’s voice in the background, saying little of interest but the conventional courtesies of rank to absent rank by way of a junior serjeant. ‘I convey by you respectful greeting to the noble commander of the Tower, desiring his permission to…’ And so on.

It wasn’t enough to account for the warnings sounding at the back of Aldric’s mind. And it wasn’t enough to make them stop.

His left hand was warmed by more than the leather of his glove. If he rolled back the cuff the blue-white glare of the Echainon stone would flood this entire place. The waves of energy ebbed and surged in time with his pulse, throbbing from fingertips to elbow as if the muscles were responding to exercise. It seemed almost to have a sound like the drone of bees in clover, yet there was no sign that the others noticed anything amiss. Aldric could think of no reason why the stone should come to life just now, but he was sure he would find out soon enough.

When at last he appeared, the eldheisart commanding the Red Tower’s garrison was an unimposing figure for all the neatness of his indoor-duty uniform. He looked more like an innkeeper than a soldier, with the well-padded waist and fleshy jowls of a man who enjoyed good food and drink. That might be thanks to the special guests housed here, for there had been nothing soft about the other troopers and officers Aldric had seen. Despite the relaxed way they carried out their guard duties, they struck him as a capable and dangerous group of men, more dangerous because they were here rather than despite it.

‘A reward for good conduct’ was how Bruda had described a posting to this garrison. It suggested that the hard-eyed men inside and outside the Red Tower were better than their comrades. Better at the most basic soldier’s trade of killing; their appearance wasn’t that of men with expertise in gentler arts.

Bruda and the plump garrison commander made polite small talk over glasses of local grainfire spirit, and within minutes more of it was being served. The stuff was colourless as water and heavy as oil, it reeked of herbal extracts, and Aldric found it vile. Mixed with something else, anything else, it might be acceptable; not these brimming small measures put down in a single gulp as if the stuff might escape. Those repeated gulps were happening with enough frequency and enjoyment that his own reluctance made him seem out of place, and prompted a comment from the stout eldheisart.

“He seems young for a hanalth, Lord-Commander.” Though the observation might have confidential, it came out at a volume suggesting these hospitality-cups were far from the first of the night. Aldric hid a brief smile, but not before it went sour at Voord’s reply.

“That little bastard – your pardon, sir – doesn’t have a military rank at all. His written authority has him with the Secret Police. And he’s here about Princess Marhala, as if you and the Army weren’t good enough.” It was a spur-of-the-moment improvisation almost worthy of applause. That remark, with its ill-concealed detestation and the eventual, inevitable discovery that Aldric’s papers were as false as his rank, would point yet another finger at the man who had murdered the princess.

For now, mention of the Secret Police diverted the garrison eldheisart’s curiosity from a guest who might as well have turned into a venomous snake. It would make remembering him again much more dramatic, but Aldric didn’t care. Far too many people had noticed him already.

*

The stairs inside the Red Tower were wrong. They were wider than they should have been, and they didn’t spiral to cramp an attacker’s arm. Though its grim exterior remained the same, the building’s purpose had changed in the years since it was first built. Stonemasons’ hammers and a great deal of money had transformed it from a fortress to a residence for the Overlords and friends of a wealthy city-state. Such lords preferred to flaunt that wealth with wood-panelled halls, lofty windows glazed with clear and coloured glass, and broad stairways better suited to a palace. At least there was no need to go right to the top of the Tower, as Aldric first feared they might. But they still climbed up for five levels, and the ascent in heavy, poorly-fitting armour reminded Aldric of his exertions in the battleram Teynaur.

“How – how many levels – are there?” he gasped. The trooper sent along to guide them was in a tunic rather than armour and feeling no discomfort as he waved toward yet more stairs.

“Fourteen more and then the rooftop, sir. If you’re interested, then in daylight and better weather—”

“And no armour. No, thank you. I’ll forego the pleasure.” The words all came out in a rush as Aldric waved a hand to dismiss the offer. That hand was skimming along the edge between discomfort and real pain, for if the spellstone grew much hotter it would raise blisters. Oh for a moment to himself, a moment’s privacy to tug away the glove and look, to see even if not to understand what the talisman was doing. There was more power in the Echainon stone than at any other time he could remember. It thrummed with it, vibrating the bones of his arms until he felt as if the whole limb trembled. Yet there was nothing to see; arm and hand and fingertips were steady. For now.

Then the guide trooper hesitated between one step and the next, tilting his head back and sideways as if listening to something. After a moment he shrugged, dismissing it as unheard or at least unimportant, and nobody else seemed to have noticed.

Except for Aldric. Just at that moment his hand was flat against the wall, and what the man thought he heard was more vibration than sound. It might have been snow-slip from a ledge or the slamming of a distant door, but it would need more snow than had fallen on the entire city, or a bigger door than even the main gate, to send such a shiver through these ponderous blocks of stone.

A thing settling on the roof which had enough mass to tilt the fore-deck of a battleram was another matter.

“Fourteen levels to the roof-top, soldier?” said Voord in a voice that was brisk and all too businesslike. “Princess Marhala’s apartments must be more convenient than that. Where?” It was a genuine enough question for a man fed up with stairs, so the trooper pointed along the corridor.

“On this level, sirs, and fifth door on the left. Will I make your introductions?” he added helpfully, and Voord’s smile inside his helmet was more pleasant than the thought which prompted it.

“No need. I know the lady. We’ll surprise her. Dismissed.”

The young soldier knew when he wasn’t wanted and with a sketchy salute made himself scarce. Aldric watched him go. You should be on the stage, he thought with a fleeting look at Voord. He didn’t like what he saw. Bruda and Tagen were brushing real or imagined dirt and snow-melt from their rank-robes, but Voord was checking the straps of his armour like a man preparing for combat. That was of a piece with getting rid of their guide and having their honour guard hold position at the foot of the stairs.

“See to the princess,” Voord told him. It was ordinary rudeness but, if the trooper had still been present, he would have wondered at a hautheisart using that tone to a senior officer. “We’ll be right behind you.”

With a loaded telek in your fist. Aldric said nothing aloud as he walked down the corridor to the fifth door on the left. Behind him he could hear Tagen being instructed to go downstairs and have the honour guard stand ready. That leaves you and Bruda… And me. Our performance is about to begin.

He tried the handle, opened the door and went inside.

*

“Light of Heaven!” gasped Dewan. They had both seen it this time, as clearly as the swirling snow allowed, beyond denial even by the driest of dry humour. It was a monstrous shape of vast wings, lean body and a brief bright lick of flame, made more monstrous still by the surrounding darkness, and it was landing with audacious ease atop the Red Tower. By now Gemmel and Dewan were close enough to see a length of parapet break away under the dragon’s weight and go tumbling out of sight. Neither of them saw or heard it striking ground.

“How many men in the garrison?” Gemmel had the Dragonwand braced in both hands, and now it was a weapon not a walking-staff, for the energies it contained were brightening the snowshot darkness with a glare like summer lightning behind clouds.

Dewan could hear the sound which emanated from the spellstave as Ykraith sang with a warbling sound like bees in a meadow. The ebb and flow of that high, sweet wail matched the swirls of force dancing along her dragon-patterned length, and both matched the beating of a heart. Not Dewan’s, for his heart was racing again, pounding the blood through his veins in a percussive counterpoint to the spellstave’s music, and not Gemmel’s either.

“I said, ‘How many men?’ ” Gemmel’s voice had an urgent edge which spoke of more important things than calculating odds.

“Forty, most likely. There might be more, given the circumstances. But that still makes the odds twenty-to-one at the least!”

“Count again,” Gemmel reproved. “You’re forgetting Aldric, and you’re forgetting…” He gestured towards the top of the tower, where Ymareth crouched unseen behind a curtain of snow. “I’d say that evens things a little.”

“What are you planning?”

“A diversion. Remember what Kathur the Vixen told us? When the alarms go off, the guards should only think of running in the right direction. We’ll confuse them about which direction is the right one. Let’s get closer. I want to know when the panic starts.”

They edged forward, eyes narrowed and squinting against a snowfall already close to a blizzard, until Gemmel muttered under his breath and strode along the middle of the street as if he had every right to do so. Dewan watched the wizard’s outline fade from view and realised what had made him bold. There was no need to hide in this.

“I’ve never seen snow fall so heavily this early in the season,” he said as he drew level again, then glanced sidelong at Gemmel. “It’s you again?”

“Fog’s difficult, but snow already primed to fall is easy.”

Neither of them saw the cloaked and muffled figure standing with a little group of horses in the wind-lee of the buildings nearest to the Tower. If they had there might have been a stirring of recognition, in Dewan’s memory at least. But with an impenetrable curtain of snow dancing and whirling between them, not even Gemmel knew anyone was there.

*

The room beyond the door was snug and warm, illuminated by scented lamps and the flickering of a large log fire. Applewood, by the smell. There was a sense of ease and comfort rather than real luxury, but nothing except the two bars across the outside of the door suggested this might be a prison cell.

It would have taken far less than that to make Aldric’s suspicions gather momentum again. Already there had been too much trickery, too much deception, too many things which had not been as they first appeared. What if the princess wasn’t a prisoner at all but a willing guest, and he was a gaming piece in some internal power-play? What if the assassination itself was another trick? What if there was no one here at all?

There were two large chairs facing the fire and a book lay on a table between them, its pages ticking over one by one by one. A tray of honeyed fruit was near it, their sweet glaze glistening in the firelight, and beside the tray were two goblets.

Two? Nobody said anything about two people…

A woman rose from concealment in one of the deep, high-backed chairs and rounded on him, dropping a needlework tambour as she did so. She looked sleepy, as if she had been dozing until awakened by the clatter of his arrival. That sleepiness didn’t conceal the irritable expression on her face and the way she looked and dressed was unlike royalty, at least to Alban eyes. As tall as Aldric and almost as broad in the shoulders, her clothing and appearance fell somewhat short of Imperial but her manner made up for it, as imperious as any noblewoman of the court at Kalitzim.

“Where did you leave your manners, soldier?” she snapped, evidently an obstructive, over-protective servant. “This is a great lady’s private apartment, not a barrack! You knock first and wait for invitation; you don’t barge through the door like a bull into a cowshed! Make your apologies and get out!”

“Expedience first, manners second, apologies later,” said Aldric. He took a swift look over one shoulder, saw nobody behind him and stepped further into the room. “Where’s Princess Marhala?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m here for the princess. Where is she?”

“Show me written authority!”

“There isn’t any authority, written or otherwise! This is a rescue, if you’ve the wit to let it happen!” He back-heeled the door shut and looked in vain for bars and catches. The only locks were on the outside, so he leaned his weight against it for want of anything better and glared at the tall woman. “Otherwise it’ll become murder!”

A dagger appeared from somewhere in the pleats of her clothing. It wasn’t the usual dainty needle primped out with gold and jewels, but a proper military weapon held in the proper fashion with its foot-long blade thumb-braced above her fist. There was no question about her knowing how to use it, or her willingness to do so. Aldric coughed a mirthless laugh.

“Not done by me. Do you think I’d have announced my intentions? There’s one outside who… Never mind, I’ll explain when I apologise. Get boots, gloves and cloaks, and—”

“What’s all this excitement?”

Aldric’s head jerked sideways as this new arrival emerged from another room of the apartment. Small and slight, dressed in a white robe decorated with silvery patterns like costly cobwebs, this woman definitely looked like a princess; the ornamental embroidery of her clothing outvalued almost everything he and the knife-wielding servant wore. But beyond that he had to revise his mental image of Princess Marhala an-Sherban, because she wasn’t as he had imagined her. This woman, with elaborately braided dark hair and thoughtful brown eyes, was in her middle forties, not ancient by any means but far from the girl he had expected to see.

Then he realised the source of his error and despite the tense situation it prompted a quick smile of honest humour. Marhala was always called ‘the Emperor’s sister’, yet he had never thought to ask ‘which Emperor?’ Not twenty-year-old Ioen, that was certain. She was his father’s sister, and that answered why she was the intended victim of this plot. An aunt could give her nephew all kinds of family advice, the sort political schemers wouldn’t like. It would be the sound, sensible advice kept from his elder brother Taroen while those same schemers schooled him into a complaisant ruler they could control.

Princess Marhala was an inconvenience, and Aldric already knew how the Empire dealt with people who were inconvenient. It had happened to his family. One of the Grand Warlord’s councillors at Drakkesborg must have suspected an Alban involvement in earlier Imperial deaths and responded in kind. It was fair, for a warped value of fairness, though not for the woman held in the Red Tower or the man who would take the blame for her death.

“Who is this person, Chirel?” asked the princess. “And why is he here?”

“Despite her reluctance to listen, lady, I was about to tell her. So I’ll tell you instead while she goes for foul-weather travelling gear, and goes now!” Marhala looked him up and down, then gave her servant a small nod that provoked faster action than any shouts from Aldric could have done.

“Well?” she said as Chirel bustled from the room. “Tell me.”

“General Goth – and I presume your nephew the Emperor – sent me to escort you from the Tower before assassins get here.”

“Why does the Lord General use an Alban instead of our own soldiers?” So she recognised his accent. Whether that would make things easier or more difficult depended on how convincing he could be.

“Because some of those soldiers are the men coming to kill you,” he said. There was no way to prettify such a statement so it came out blunt and brutal, yet the corners of her mouth twitched in something between a grimace and a smile. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“Men have been coming to kill me since my brother died, and surprise wears thin. I even stopped wondering who sent them, though I could guess. It’s because I say the wrong things to the wrong people, Alban. I talk sense, and because of who I am my words are heeded. It doesn’t make me popular, but it does make me a target.”

“Then stop saying them!” The suggestion got him a dirty look from Chirel, back again with armfuls of winter clothing. She glowered at him for daring to tell her mistress what to do, then helped the Princess into a layer of thick furs.

“It was too late to stop after the first time,” said Marhala. “And I know what will happen if I do. The Emperor needs advice from someone without a constant eye on profit or advancement and,” she shrugged, a small gesture enlarged by her heavy winter garments, “If I can keep the land I love from tearing itself apart in war, then even if it costs my life to do it I consider that life well spent.”

Aldric said nothing, because there was little he could say that wouldn’t ring false. He didn’t like Imperials, he didn’t trust them, and it would take more than a pretty speech to offset what had been happening to him this past while. No, he didn’t like Imperials at all, there were several he hated, and the most hated of them all was outside this room.

Right outside.

The door gave a little creak and a stealthy pressure against his back as someone tested it. The handle rattled, reminding him that there was neither bar nor lock nor key on this side, and only his armoured weight kept it closed. He braced his feet against the floor and leaned backwards as hard as he was able. Then he sensed a familiar thrumming in the air, felt a tremor run through the heavy oak, tasted an acrid flavour in his mouth and in his mind, and knew even the heaviest bolt wouldn’t be enough.

“Get down!” he yelled, and threw himself aside.

Aldric was barely clear of the door when its timbers and iron braces and steel fittings wrenched out of their framework. The ponderous slab of wood and metal scythed across the room as if flung from a catapult, leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake. Something massive plucked at his shoulder and tore away a handspan’s width of everything – winter coat, rank-robe, armour and tunic – right down to the skin. The jolt of it sent a tingling shock right to his fingertips as if he had slammed the nerve-spot of his elbow against something solid, but there was no blood and even the fabric of his shirt remained undamaged.

Bruda told me Voord used magic! He told me to my face… That face was gnat-stung by a cloud of sparks flung up from the fireplace when the door’s wreckage struck it, but the princess was unharmed. Her feet weren’t even on the ground. Chirel, the big woman with the knife, had plucked up her small and slender charge in the crook of one arm where she dangled like a doll, all dignity gone. Now voices outside were coming closer, and there were more fragmented shouts off in the noisy distance.

“Voord,” that was Bruda’s unmistakable parade-ground bellow, “what in hell happened?”

“I don’t know! I can’t see! Did someone try to kill the princess?”

Oh, clever Lord-Commander, to sow that seed so fast!

So many lanterns were snuffed out by the blast that the figure in the dust-fogged doorway was a vague silhouette, but Aldric recognised its crooked claw. There was a shimmer of sorcerous power around those hooked talons, and the other hand gripped Aldric’s missing telek.

“Lady, are you safe?” Voord’s voice was full of concern for other ears to hear. The telek spoke the silent truth of his intentions. “Where are you? Show yourself…”

“Don’t move! Chirel, keep her out of sight!” Aldric’s warning choked on dust and smoke from smouldering fabrics and the charred, still-glowing logs.

Voord jerked away from the back-light at the door and the telek came up to a ready position. He said and did nothing, waiting for a target to show itself, any target, Alban or Drusalan, male or female. Whatever he could see he could kill, with long-prepared excuses to explain why. Another outline filled the space where the door had been, clearer now the dust was settling and someone outside was relighting the lamps. It was too tall for Tagen, not broad enough, and anyway Tagen had been dismissed.

“Voord?” Bruda had a drawn shortsword in his hand. “Voord, what’s going on here?” He seemed shaken by events, enough to confirm he knew nothing of what was really happening in the Red Tower.

“Be careful!” Voord’s voice had all the right notes of horror in it. “The Alban’s an assassin!”

“Impossible! Where are you, Talvalin?”

“Get out of sight, sir! He’s got a telek!” In the instant he named the weapon, loudly enough for anyone else in the corridor to hear him, Voord used the one he held to shoot his own commander. Aldric saw Bruda stagger back three steps, then fall to the floor. Even point-blank no telek dart could punch through armour, so that left the vulnerable places of face and throat. Both of them were fatal. It was a warning that accusations as fast and deadly as the dart would soon be flying.

If a soldier of the Drusalan Empire could use a telek and sorcery, then so could an Alban kailin-eir who was a wizard’s fosterling. Aldric crouched low and freed his own telek from beneath the layer of garments which had concealed its presence. Then he pulled the glove from his left hand, and the spellstone of Echainon, the Eye of the Dragon, seemed to look at him. There was no flare of azure energy, just the cat’s-eye pupil at its centre twisting and turning to the rhythm of his heart, which right now meant very fast indeed. Aldric slid its steel wristband around until he cradled the stone in the hollow of his palm, then closed his fist.

“Abath arhan,” he said. A glow as brilliant blue as a summer sky streamed between his clenched fingers, rods and fans of light that seemed almost solid as they pierced the smoky air and threw dapples across the walls and floor and ceiling. The stone was ready now.

The Red Tower shook to its foundations and the floor beneath him lurched like a battleram’s deck in heavy weather. Glass shattered beyond the window-shutters, and he saw a fresco-decorated wall crack from side to side and top to bottom. Great chunks of painted plaster fell away, clogging the air with dust once more and the shutters blew in at last, spraying the room with broken wood and a whirl of snow turned luminous amber by the glare of fiery light behind it. But most awesome of all was the sound from outside and above, a piercing screech mingled with a bellow so deep it was more felt than heard. With the Eye of the Dragon pounding like a drumbeat against his hand, it could have only one source.

Ymareth…

A female voice screamed, and Voord sent another dart towards the source. It struck broken stone and threw up a shower of sparks, but its ricochet into the shadows caused a shrill yelp of pain.

“Bastard coward!” Aldric sent four spaced shots through the most likely target arc in as many seconds. Three missed, rattling from wood or brick, and one made a shrill metallic chime as it bounced off twisted metalwork. But the last rewarded him with a thump of steel in flesh and Voord’s voice raised in agony. How hard was he hit? There were no thrashing limbs, not even the slack, felled-tree thud of a body knocked dead off its feet. Only that single cry. Aldric thought ‘ruse’, he thought ‘decoy’, and he stayed close to the rubble-strewn floor until he was sure.

It happened sooner than he thought. The hazy, translucent globe of contained force he had seen perched like a hawk on Voord’s ruined hand came surging from the shadows, crossing the room in a vision-warping flicker where verticals and horizontals kicked dizzily out of line. It hit the wall over the fireplace as square and hard as a siege-ram and sent a flash of rainbow fire back through the room. The wall slumped downwards, shearing near the ceiling as it folded into the emptiness where thirty square feet of granite had become a sparkling cloud of disrupted matter.

Where in hell did he learn that? Even as the thought flashed through his mind, Aldric knew Voord hadn’t learned that spell or any of the others. They were a gift. Not like the ability to play music or shoot straight, but a sardonic present like shoes to a legless man or a beautiful view to one struck blind. Voord was a channel, a pipeline to this world from somewhere else. He was being used, and he didn’t know it.

“Why lie in the dirt, Dragon-lord? Match this petty casting! Rise up and smite!”

The voice which burst into Aldric’s skull was Ymareth’s, its background no longer the metallic rustling hiss he had almost grown accustomed to but an angry shout with all the force of a full-great chord on a pipe organ. What little remained of the window-shutters fell apart with the sheer volume of sound, and the fresco wall crazed with a network of fine cracks then went to powder.

Aldric rose unsteadily. The floor still quivered beneath the soles of his boots, and Ymareth’s blare of irritation had stunned his inner ears so his balance was none of the best. But he stood, crimson and black in the Grand Warlord’s livery he had come to loathe, with the blue-white fire of the Echainon stone crawling along his arm like eerie etched patterns set into the red-enamelled metal. Yet it was the human weapon, the telek, that he aimed at where his enemy must be. It still held four steel darts shod with lead for penetration’s sake, but at the back of his mind Aldric wished he had loaded it with pure silver.

“Come out, traitor. Show yourself.” It was an improbable invitation, yet to his surprise Voord emerged from the shadows. There was no sign of any wound, and both hands hung by his sides, the other telek still gripped in one of them. Pointed at the floor it was harmless; Aldric’s levelled weapon would shoot in the instant of a threatening move. “I expected more resistance,” he said. “Drop it.” There was no argument, no trickery, just a heavy clatter as Voord let the telek fall. “You failed. Your own worst crime. So why Bruda?”

“How little you understand, Alban.”

“I understand you killed him. Why?”

“The dart from an Alban telek killed him. Thanks to that, I’m promoted.”

Aldric stared at him, lit by the fires of burning wood and leashed-in power. There was so much he wanted to say, but the Drusalan words wouldn’t take shape in his mouth, wouldn’t take their place on his tongue.

“Not for long,” he said in Alban, and squeezed the telek’s trigger. Its dart passed under Voord’s helmet- peak by a finger’s breadth, slamming through his right eyebrow and into his skull with a noise like a chisel splitting close-grained timber. At that range, less than fifteen feet, the Vlechan’s head snapped back until it looked as if it would strike between his own shoulder-blades. Even without the dart, such a jolt should have broken his neck. His helmet grated against the wall behind him as he slumped backwards…

Then grated again as he drew himself straight once more and with a heave needing both hands on its stubby shaft, wrenched the dart out of his head. The skull-bone might not have knitted straight away, but Aldric saw the blood-flow stop and the torn flesh run together like wax smoothed with a hot iron. With no more need for secrecy his battered mouth and broken teeth also repaired themselves, and once-split lips stretched in a vicious grin.

“You see?” There was a phlegmy rasp in Voord’s voice, as if it belonged to someone else. “No need for resistance. You can’t hurt me, hlensyarl. You many have the upper hand now, but I’ll come for you another time. Sleep lightly!” He twisted out of the doorway and away, and still the power of the spellstone swirled round Aldric’s arm, unused and useless.

“Does use of sorcery touch so much on thy honour?” Ymareth’s voice was cold, sarcastic, disapproving. “Then hear me. Thy honour is mine to judge, and not yet wanting. That honour requires thee keep these ladies safe. How may they be guarded if thee scorn to slay thy foe by any means whatever?”

“Get out of my head!” Aldric wrenched at the straps of the Imperial helmet and pulled it free. He stared at the insignia, none of it his, all of it a lie, then flung the helmet far away. It bounced from half-a-dozen things, broken furniture and smouldering logs and heaps of crumbled masonry, then rolled and came to rest with a sound like a pot dropped from the stove. Afterwards was very quiet in the room. As quiet as the grave.

Was all this useless? thought Aldric, fearing the worst. “Lady? Lady, answer if you can.”

“I can,” said Marhala an-Sherban and coughed. She lifted her head and upper body on braced hands while fragments of what had once been a pretty room tumbled from her back. “We both can. Neither of us is much hurt, thanks to you.”

Chirel’s sleeve was bloody and there was a hole through her upper arm, staunched and bandaged now with strips of costly stuff. A shallow wound the triangular shape of a telek-dart’s point on Marhala’s face told the rest of the story. Had Chirel been one of the usual willowy court ladies rather than the muscular, capable person she was, Voord’s shot would have met with less resistance, and then…

For the rest there were scratches, bruises, and blisters from the embers flung out of the fire, but nothing worse. Aldric took a deep breath, heedless of plaster-dust and smoke, and felt reborn even as he bent double in an eye-streaming coughing fit. He had tried to ignore the possibility that something might go wrong, though it stayed a constant concern at the back of his mind even now. If Marhala came to harm from a falling slab of stone, all the fear, all the pain, all the lies and the death would be for nothing.

“Then let’s do as I suggested before all this, and leave.”

He didn’t need to say any more. The past few minutes had done more to convince Chirel than an hour of his most plausible speech, and neither woman took long about wrapping themselves in yet more furs and collecting a few personal possessions. Aldric bowed them courteously past the threshold of the room, no longer much of a threshold or even a boundary between outside and in, and then looked down at Bruda.

The Prokrator was dying, yet not dead. His fingers were bleeding, their cracked and broken nails digging into his palms as if that little pain could distract his life from its departure through the rip beneath his ear. It was a killing wound, but not enough for quick release even though a pulse-beat jet of blood against the floor marked every minute, every second, every breath.

“Talvalin!” he gasped, and in his voice was a fear that the hlensyarl with no love for the Drusalan Empire or its Secret Police would walk away and leave him to die alone.

“Lie easy. Here I am.” Things might have been different if this had been Voord, but Bruda had given no real cause for hatred except by being Drusalan. He was first and last just a dying man. If there was a way of recognising rank or accent in a wordless moan of agony, Aldric didn’t want to learn it.

“Should have trusted you,” Bruda mumbled. “First. Foremost. Last. Honour. Both betrayed. Me. You. Trust ice in summer. What Voord wanted. What Voord has. My place. My rank. My power…”

Bruda was rambling, passing into delirium as the shadows closed around him, talking only because the sound of speech was the sound of being still alive. But there were coherent details behind the slurring, broken sentences. “You were given. To us. In case they. Got you first. And I sent Voord!” He laughed, a bubbling sound which brought scarlet froth to the corners of his mouth. “Wasn’t right. Wasn’t decent. Your king. To treat a lord. Like a slave. Not right to betray…”

The Prokrator’s head and shoulders lifted from the planks which pillowed them, an effort that sent more blood across the floor to soak into the dust like a wave receding down a beach. “She’s safe. Free. Living.” Bruda’s eyes opened wide, blue and ingenuous as the eyes of a child, deceptive to the last. “Go to Durforen. To the monastery. They expect us. Bid Ioen the Emperor. Live for ever. I can’t live. A moment mor—”

Bruda’s head thudded back against the floor and Aldric watched those staring eyes lose their focus. Whatever the man had planned, murdering Princess Marhala wasn’t part of it. He didn’t know what faith Bruda followed so didn’t know what words were proper, but he could do one thing at least, as he had done for another dead man in Seghar not long enough ago, to make dissolution quick and clean.

“Alh’noen ecchaur i aiyya,” he said, and let the writhing blue fire of the Echainon spellstone surge from the crystal across all that remained of Bruda, Prokrator, hauthanalth, man.

Then he turned from the low mound of dry grey ash and walked away.

*

“Diversion, you said!” Dewan was all but clapping his hands. “If that’s a diversion, I wouldn’t want to be in the same city as an attack!”

Ymareth was skyborne once more and circling the Red Tower, black and gigantic against the falling snow and the firelit crimson of the Tower. Flame plumed from its jaws in great hot billows that blasted the snow to steam. Around the Red Tower, it fell as rain.

All of Egisburg must be awake now, thought Dewan. No matter how sozzled they might be, nobody could sleep through this!

That first roar was fit to wake the dead, never mind the drunk. He had heard windows break all across Tower Square as Ymareth launched from the ramparts with sinuous grace, a dive which had become full flight within a hundred feet. The dragon flew and flamed, yet despite everything Dewan couldn’t put aside the notion that Ymareth was laughing.

There were no soldiers in sight. Oh, there had been plenty and to spare a few minutes past, when they had poured from the Red Tower’s doorway like ants from a kicked nest. And they had kept on running, through the slush and the deluge of dragon-melted sleet, out of the perimeter gates, out of sight in the white whirl of the blizzard and out of Dewan’s concern. He had seen soldiers run like that twice before, and they wouldn’t be back before daylight restored some of their shredded courage. Except for Aldric and Marhala, the Tower was surely empty now.

Then hoofbeats came up behind them, several horses at the trot. Dewan drew blade and swung around, halfway to a defensive guard before he relaxed again, his moment spoiled by an involuntary splutter of surprise. Tehal Kyrin was leading Aldric’s black Lyard and his pack-pony, a leggy grey like the one she had ridden in Alba, and three more riding-horses with empty saddles.

“So my directions were effective, Kyrin my dear?” said Dewan, covering his shock with sarcasm.

“I told you once before,” she said, and the stare she gave him wasn’t a friendly one, “I’m not your dear. I didn’t like you then, ar Korentin, and I don’t like you now, so don’t try my patience. There’s none to spare.” Her attention was more on what was happening around the Red Tower, but Dewan still felt he had dodged an arrow with mere inches to spare.

“Kyrin?” Gemmel stared at her. “Tehal Kyrin? Lady, are you a part of this?” Now it was his turn to receive that cool scrutiny.

“Gemmel-altrou, yes? From the way you look, who else could you be?” She seemed uncertain of how one spoke to sorcerers, and offered him a little bow which lost most of its effect when one horse threw back its head and yanked her upright again. “No, I’m not concerned about politics, whether Alba’s, the Empire’s or yours. Only Aldric and,” Dewan got another barbed glance, “whatever he was forced to do.”

Gemmel glanced at the sky, but Ymareth had swept away from the Tower and vanished in the falling snow. If the firedrake intended to land in Tower Square, this filthy weather needed a long, cautious approach. That gave time for other matters.

“Aldric was unhappy about being parted from this young lady,” he said, almost as if talking to himself. “He said little about it and I didn’t press for explanation. It didn’t seem right. I didn’t ask you anything either, Dewan, but I’m asking now. What happened?”

Dewan had been expecting such a question for a long time, and had rehearsed many ways to answer it. None seemed of use now, with Kyrin here to correct self-serving errors or omissions. With Gemmel’s eyes fixed on him he told the truth, and if those eyes blinked once during the telling of the tale, Dewan didn’t see it.

*

“I have no further questions,” the wizard said at last. He looked from Dewan to Kyrin then back again, and still there was no change in his expression. “At the moment.”

He brushed snow from his beard and brows, a pointless exercise, and hefted the Dragonwand as he took a step towards the Tower. Then he stopped as a light flared in the distance behind him. It was yellowish, as wan and pallid as a midwinter sunrise, yet bright enough to cast everyone’s shadow long and black up the side of the Red Tower. When he turned he knew what to expect, and so did Dewan, but Kyrin didn’t. Though she had seen Ymareth in the Cavern of Firedrakes, watching a dragon land close by was another matter. Even Gemmel had never seen it quite like this.

Long before Ymareth glided into view, more bright gouts of fire were announcing its approach through the flurries of snow. The last one, right overhead, sent a gust of heat down at them, and the sky filled with an armoured belly that looked like the hull of an Imperial battleram but moved faster than any bolt shot from its catapults.

Kyrin said something sharp and shrill in her own language and then to her credit she paid more attention to the horses, where only the influence of Lyard as herd-leader was keeping them from panic. The black Andarran, a breed consigned to history a century before, was as much a wizard’s creation as any dragon, yet he reassured the other beasts despite the presence of a creature they had never met before in all their lives.

Huge wings cupped the air as they brought headlong flight first to near-standstill then to a landing amid the smell of steam and hot metal. The impact of that armoured length against the ground was ponderous enough for all to feel it through the soles of their feet. The wings beat again, clogging the air with melting snow, and arched back as Ymareth took several raking steps forward across the square. Its head swung around as the firedrake studied them all, and Gemmel could sense unhuman amusement at their various responses. Then it grinned that long foxy grin, all fangs and lolling tongue, but this time fringed with fire and a drift of smoke.

“Others also watch,” said Ymareth’s voice in all their minds. “It is easy to dissuade them.” Another swirl of fire licked out across the square and a rattle of closing doors was audible above the rushing sound of flames. There was even the sound of more broken glass as violently slammed windows burst free of their leading. The firedrake released a shuddering hiss of laughter and settled to the ground, wings folded and head posed at the end of its arched neck like a gigantic swan armoured in blued steel scales.

“Is there any sign of Aldric yet?” asked Kyrin, and her voice was steady enough that Gemmel paid her courage another silent compliment.

“Nothing yet.” Despite his own misgivings he was still more at ease with Ymareth than his companions and had moved a good deal nearer to the Tower. Now he returned with a motley collection of things bundled in his arms or draped across the Dragonwand. “Just these: a helmet, a cloak and an overrobe with rank-tabs on it. The rest of the armour’s back there in the courtyard. Someone wasn’t wearing much when they left.”

“Or threw them off to run faster,” said Dewan. “I can’t say I’m surprised.” He reached out for the helmet and examined its markings, a diamond over twin bars, all in silver. “Hautheisart. I didn’t reach such an exalted rank.” There was a touch of bitterness in his voice. “They had plenty of reasons why not, though the real one was because Vreijeks weren’t Imperial enough—”

There was a sudden patter of approaching footsteps and an Elthanek-accented voice explaining matters in two directions at once. Dewan dropped the helmet into the snow and it rolled aside, forgotten. There were more important things to think about, like making his excuses all over again to the man they had harmed most.

A man with a hungry sword…

*

“Another thing I should warn you about,” Aldric said as he led the Princess and her serving-woman towards the Square, “is that one of my companions is… Well, different. Don’t worry; you won’t be harmed.”

“But how different can he be?”

“I, er, I didn’t say ‘he’, so be ready for a surpr—”

“Holy Father of Fires!”

It was big strong Chirel who was most upset by her first sight of Ymareth reclining in the melting snow and gazing at her through those phosphorescent eyes. She screamed and would have fainted on the spot had not someone – Aldric suspected Kyrin – been ready with a generous handful of snow.

Marhala remained Marhala, as controlled and serene as he had seen her at their first meeting. It was only when he watched that he saw how fast the puffs of exhaled breath came from between her smiling lips. The calmness, the control, even the smile were all part of the mask she hid behind, as solid as Prokrator Bruda’s mask of metal. It was something with which to fend off reality, but the reality of the dragon was the same wild blend of terror and delight as he had experienced in the Cavern of Firedrakes.

By then Aldric had survived the bronze monstrosity calling itself Esel, and the winged horror sent after his ship to bring him back to Dunrath for an unknown, unpleasant fate. A creature as… As ordinary as a dragon, a firedrake from the old stories, was somehow reassuring. Until it became a living dragon, and the marvels of those old stories were edged with the realisation of what their marvellous creatures could do. It had overwhelmed him then, as it overwhelmed Princess Marhala now.

Chirel, though she had stopped squealing, was so far beyond overwhelmed that he ignored her.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” Aldric pitched his voice loud enough to include Ymareth-anak and whatever gender the firedrake cared to use, “we’ve already outstayed any welcome Egisburg might offer. Mount up and let’s go.” He caught Kyrin in an embrace that in the circumstances had to be too brief and restrained. “I already knew you were beautiful, loved, but this goes beyond mere cleverness.” He waved a hand towards the horses. “How did you know to bring the right number?” Kyrin laughed and laid her head sideways on his shoulder, the bared one that Marhala’s chamber door had clipped.

“Easy enough: I took your horse, my horse, the pack-pony, and everything else in the stable.” Those would have belonged to Bruda, Voord and Tagen. “Although someone will be riding a pack-saddle. I suggest the princess.”

“I didn’t expect jealousy so soon…”

“Light of Heaven, nothing of the sort! She’s lightest, that’s all, and I don’t want the horse overloaded,” Kyrin walked a little distance beyond Dewan, then thought a moment and turned back with a mischievous smile. “But if you want jealousy, remember I saw your friend Kathur in Tuenafen. Even though she wasn’t at her best, she was still very—”

“All stop!” snapped Lord-Commander Voord. “Stay right where you are!”

He had been out of sight and out of reach at the corner of the Red Tower’s main gatehouse, and now he moved forward just enough for the threat of the telek in his hand to become obvious. Voord’s face was blue with cold and his teeth chattered as he spoke, but the weapon remained all too steady.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “I could hear you congratulate each other, listen to you feel so pleased with yourselves. Not so pleased now, eh?”

Not even Ymareth’s eyes could have seen him. Besides being sheltered by the massive gatehouse wall, he no longer had a helmet, or armour, or a rank-robe. Instead he wore what had been underneath: tunic and trews of off-white fabric that blended with the snowy air and made him almost invisible. Dewan glanced with the sharpness of hindsight at the rank-marked gear he had examined and thrown aside, and swore under his breath, but it was too late for regret. Voord laughed harshly.

“I hadn’t time to hide them, so when your friend brought them out I thought it was all over. But you people only look. You don’t see…”

Aldric was looking now, and seeing all too well. Voord wore only one other garment, and that too was almost white, caked with snow which had fallen while he crouched in the shadows and waited for a chance to finish what he had begun. It was more usually black as night, for it was the wolfskin coyac jacket that Aldric had abandoned with such relief in Tuenafen. Now here it was again, worn by a man who used magic without compunction and – the recollection hardened to certainty with the painful shock of a hot coal under ashes – had been in Seghar when Crisen Geruath cursed Evthan the hunter with that damned changeling-charm. Was it Voord who put the suggestion into Crisen’s twisted mind, to see what happened before he tried it for himself?

Something must have shown in Aldric’s widening eyes, because before he could open his mouth for a warning, the telek was pointing at his face. A quick cold-birthed shiver made it tremble, but not enough that the shot might miss.

“Make one sound out of place,” said Voord, “and see how far it gets.” Nobody spoke aloud, but inside his head Aldric heard Ymareth’s voice borne on a whisper of metallic sound that Voord would never recognise as speech.

“Dragon-lord, once thee and thy companions move aside, he is cinders in an instant.”

Gemmel and Dewan heard it as well and their knowing eyes met in swift agreement before the sorcerer took a step to one side and Dewan to the other. Voord smiled like a shark.

“Stay in your places,” he snarled, “or…” The telek levelled at Princess Marhala and held steady until they moved back to where they had been. “Don’t think I’m here and you’re there and that thing—” he jerked his chin at the firedrake, “—is where it is by accident. I know about protective cover. Credit me with that much sense at least.”

“What do you want?” Marhala an-Sherban was no longer quite as calm as she appeared, unless it was the chilly night that ran a tremor through her voice, but there was still all the dignity of the Imperial family in the way she faced Voord.

“Want? I want you, alive. And because of that they’ll let me take you, because then you’ll have a chance. And because they know what I’ll do right now if anybody tries to play the hero!”

“Then do it right now.” Marhala’s voice was flat, quiet and somehow more insulting that way. “Spare me the delights of your company.”

Voord almost did. The telek jerked as a muscle-spasm ran down his arm almost to the fingers crooked around its trigger-bar. His lean face twisted with rage and if he had been a little closer he would have knocked her to the ground. But good sense returned just in time, along with the realisation that any movement without a hostage in hand would open him to devastating reprisal.

“No, lady,” he said, and now it was fury rather than cold making him shiver, “not until you ask again. Beg. With none of your Firecursed pride. And then I’ll make a gift of you…” He left the sentence hanging incomplete in the cold air, but his smile remained and that was more than enough.

Kyrin, Dewan and Gemmel had all seen what Voord had done to Kathur the Vixen. Aldric hadn’t, but could guess at the unspoken details from time spent in the man’s company, listening to him and despising him. As slowly as the pouring of chilled honey his hand began an imperceptible climb to his weaponbelt and the other telek pushed through it. But not slowly enough.

“Never mind that, hlensyarl. You’d never reach it.” Voord leered at him and then, as if prompted by an unheard voice, discarded elaborate ideas in favour of something more intimate. “You’ve been a thorn in my flesh for long enough.” The telek held steady for a heartbeat, then it twitched away from Aldric just as he squeezed the trigger.

In the fraction of a second between Voord’s threat and the metallic snap that made it a reality, Dewan ar Korentin flung himself sideways. It was a convulsion of muscles, nothing as dignified or structured as a leap, but it got his fur-bulked body between the telek and its target. That target wasn’t Aldric, or even the princess. A mind like Voord’s would want to cause a longer, deeper hurt than the mere physical pain of a wound.

He had aimed at Kyrin.

Aldric saw everything and could do nothing. He saw Voord’s fingers flex, saw the telek jolt as a dart sped from it, saw the missile’s metal glint as it flew. And he saw Dewan flinch in mid-air the way a running rabbit tumbles when the arrow hits it square, saw him flop loose-limbed against Kyrin, and saw them both fall into snow already marked with a vivid spatter of blood.

For the first time his line of attack was clear, without risk to others, and he used it. His hand finished its slow crawl in a blur, not to his own telek but Isileth Widowmaker’s hilt. The longsword seemed to leap into his grip in the instant he touched it, clearing the scabbard in a glinting grey arc. Even so he wasn’t quick enough.

Evthan’s moon-driven transformation in the Jevaiden woods had taken mere seconds from man to Beast, yet it had been a perceptible change. Voord’s shape shifted between one eye-blink and the next.

He went from upright man to wolf on all fours so fast that the cut meant to take his head flashed over it instead. Sparks flew from the wall of the Red Tower’s gatehouse as starsteel sheared an inch-deep gash in its red-glazed granite, and the blade made a high, shrill chiming that in any other sword might have signalled breakage. With this taiken it sounded like frustrated rage.

The Beast that crouched in Voord’s place was pure white except for the black saddle-mark across its shoulders as if it wore a jacket. It was lame, with a twisted, crippled left front paw, but that didn’t hinder the unnatural speed with which it turned and ran.

A wash of energy as blue as alcohol flame seared the ground where it had been as Gemmel unleashed the power of the Dragonwand, but the white wolf was already out of sight. Ymareth bellowed and went airborne with a single bound and a thunderous clap of wings, passing low above their heads with fanged mouth already agape and flaring. The firedrake lashed the pavements of Tower Square from one side to the other with a lance of white fire, exploding snow into superheated steam as the ornamental grass and hedgerows beneath its white shroud went to ash. Even the topsoil baked to sterile dust.

It took long seconds before the violet-pink afterglow of dazzle faded from everyone’s eyes, yet when at last they could see again, there was nothing to see except crawling trails of sparks.

All that open space was empty, without a trace of any wolf alive or dead.

*

When Aldric returned from a fruitless examination of the charred square Marhala and Chirel had moved away into the shelter of the Red Tower’s gate, as if aware the next little while was none of their affair. They huddled close together for comfort more than warmth, and Chirel didn’t stir even when Ymareth landed and stalked forward with that grave, graceful stride to spread the vast canopy of its wings above them all.

Dewan was still lying where he had fallen. Kyrin was on her knees by his side, holding one of his hands between both of hers as if that might somehow help, but Gemmel’s expression showed that the time for help was past.

Kyrin’s face was harder to read, yet Aldric managed well enough because of how it matched the way he felt. Any companion suffering a fatal wound was tragic, even if that companion wasn’t a close friend, but what Dewan had done without question at King Rynert’s bidding blunted the sharpest edge of sorrow. Taking the shot meant for Kyrin won him redemption of a sort, but if he had shown as much courage six months ago, none of this might have happened.

The end of the steel telek-dart protruded from his chest like a small bright brooch, and the few remaining gatehouse lights twinkled from its polished surface in time with the beat of his pulse. If it had gone deeper, he would have died in seconds. If anyone pulled it out, he would die in seconds. Leaving it in place meant he would die in minutes. Whatever was done or not done, Dewan ar Korentin would die.

“I thought my heart…would let me down,” he said to Kyrin. His voice was clearer and more steady than it had any right to be, but he measured out speech and breath as if aware he had a limited store of each. “It did once…on a beach in Alba. The wizard will tell you…more about it…than he ever told me. Can you do now…what you did then?” Gemmel said nothing; the single shake of his head was enough.

“Ah. So much. For optimis—” The bravado faltered in a hiss and a click of teeth, and for a few seconds there was only hoarse, irregular breathing. Dewan’s eyes closed briefly, a little fluttering movement like a blind drawn down, and couldn’t open so wide next time. Then he looked at Aldric. “Tell Lyseun. Tell her…what happened.”

He got a bleak stare in return. That entreaty was one Aldric had anticipated since meeting Dewan’s wife during the Spring Festival at Erdhaven. She had detested him at once for this very reason: that one day he, or another of Dewan’s armoured associates, would come back alone from a duty like this one to tell her she was a widow. It had made him uneasy then. It made him angry now. Let King Rynert do it. Let him make the excuses, let him explain what had gone wrong with his intrigues and manipulations, let him list the names and lives it had affected or cut short. Yet Aldric couldn’t tell that to a dying man.

“First I need to survive this poisoned stew you and your king have cooked and flung me in,” he said.

“Your king too.” There was no denial of the poison.

“Not any more. Not after this. I defy him, and renounce my faith and fealty, freely given and freely taken. Take that to the darkness with you.”

Aldric had killed often enough in his eventful life, but most had died from the sudden reflex action of self-defence. A few had received longer consideration: Duergar Vathach, the necromancer who had engineered the deaths of his entire family; Lord Geruath of Seghar and his son Crisen; and now Lord-Commander Voord Ebanesh, the only one not yet dead. But Aldric had never thought of killing a king. He was thinking of it now.

“I won’t ask. Forgiveness. So you don’t. Have to refuse.” Dewan fought past his pain and tried to smile. It didn’t work. “But I ask this. It hurts. Make an end. And after—” He shuddered, and Aldric heard his teeth grinding together. “No more Empire. Not even a hole. In its ground. Do what you did. For Lord Santon. Fire is clean. And I’m tired…of being…so…cold…”

The words came out on a long grey plume of breath, and after them there were no more words or breath.

“An-diu k’noeth-ei, Dewan ar Korentin.” Aldric spoke the farewell and signed the blessing faster than was proper, but at least he said and made it, when minutes earlier he might not have done even that. He didn’t ask for help to move Dewan’s body indoors, a big body like a bear in all its furs and leather, a bear whose hunting days were done. Yet when Kyrin came forward he didn’t refuse. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, though perhaps only because of the chill wind. Any display of grief would have been out of place. Instead she simply helped to lift and carry, with her thoughts kept to herself. Staggering a little until they found balance, they brought Dewan into the Red Tower, and when they emerged a few minutes later Aldric’s empty hands were hanging by his sides. He was still weighed down with something harder to see.

“Whatever he did, he was once my friend. And there isn’t enough wood for what he wanted.” He stared up and up at the glazed red stones which were the colour of the blood on his gloved hands. “I wish I could burn it all.”

“All things burn,” said Ymareth, “if the fire be hot enough.” Aldric looked at Gemmel, who nodded, then at the dragon.

“True?”

“True. Only give the word.”

“He was my friend,” Aldric said again. “He deserves a worthy monument. One the Grand Warlord will remember.” He did as he had done once before, and looked straight into the dragon’s glowing eyes. “The word is given. Let us get clear, then do it.”

There was no one on the streets as they rode out, and none of those who stared from behind closed shutters made any move to stop them. Two drawn swords might not have discouraged the city militia, but the swirling corona of force which surrounded Gemmel’s spellstave was a worse threat. It trailed tendrils of blue fire in their wake and even though the flames burned nothing, they would have made even Dewan’s old regiment the Bodyguard Cavalry pause for second thoughts. And then there was the dragon, high overhead and out of sight, but very much in mind…

Egisburg watched them leave, but even after they had gone the city held its breath.

*

“I don’t care about your clothes,” Aldric said as he dismounted, “we’re all lying flat. All means all.” He was speaking to the Imperial women, for Chirel was again objecting to his high-handed treatment of Princess Marhala. With every minute away from Ymareth her complaints had grown sharper, and he was getting tired of them.

“Make your horses lie down too. Like this!” He twisted Lyard’s bridle in the proper fashion until the big Andarran stallion obediently sank down and rolled onto his side, black against the snow. “Do it. I’ll help.”

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” said Gemmel.

“If I did, Dewan might still be alive.” Aldric dredged up a bitter little smile. “But I know how to be careful, even if I’m sometimes not fast enough about it.” He lay full-length in the snow, upper body across Lyard’s neck and one hand over the animal’s exposed eye. The other hand reached out, met Kyrin’s and gripped it tight.

“Aldric, do you think even Ymareth—” She saw his face in the dimness and stopped.

“I don’t think,” he said. “I believe.”

Snow drifted down from the iron-grey clouds, and the world was full of cold and darkness.

Then light scored the sky, a column of fire so brilliant that the shadows it threw had edges sharp as knives. Despite a cloud of glowing flecks that blurred his vision Aldric could see the Red Tower as clear as day. It was more than a mile distant, a tiny spike of stone as red as blood, as red as murder, and it was shimmering. The crimson of its true colour shaded up through scarlet and incandescent orange to a flaring yellow and at the last a violet-tinged white which made him look away.

The air temperature also soared until the snow became rain, and warm rain at that. Then it stopped altogether as the clouds which gave it birth were seared out of existence by the plume of heat rising from the heart of Egisburg. In the sky above the city, stars appeared again.

Two feet and more of fallen snow began to melt, rivulets of water pouring out of it with the chuckling sound of a brimming stream in springtime. Aldric raised his head a fraction, squinting against the glare. Through a dancing haze he saw the Tower, two hundred feet of stone and iron and timber, squirming from base to ramparts like a tallow candle in a furnace. Even that brief glimpse felt like staring at the noon sun on midsummer’s day, and it was blazing brighter yet.

The earth bucked beneath his prone body in a sudden convulsion beside which Lyard’s terrified thrashing was like a lover’s caress, and Chirel screamed, but it was never completed. Just as she reached her highest pitch a noise from Egisburg rolled over them, breaking like a great dark wave of thunder peaked and crested with chain lightning. The air howled in their ears with the appalling echoes of that long rumble of destruction, and in its tingling aftermath they heard, high overhead, Ymareth the dragon’s awesome roar of triumph as its wings scythed across the starlit sky.

“Oh sweet and loving—!” Aldric didn’t know whose voice it was, his ears were ringing too much. “Look there! Dear Light of Heaven, look!”

A dome-topped unstable pillar of smoke and dust rose into the sky above Egisburg, criss-crossed with filaments where yet-burning debris was still falling from the main mass of the cloud. It looked monstrous, like a gigantic fungus rearing up to spread its rotting cap over the ruins of the Red Tower.

Except there were no ruins. The Red Tower was gone. There were a scatter of fires around Tower Square, but the rest of Egisburg seemed more or less intact. Ymareth’s destruction had been as precise as a surgeon’s cautery.

“You believed,” said Kyrin, still holding Aldric’s hand in a grip so tight it hurt.

“I’ve started believing in things we’ve never heard of, and I’m not sure I want to hear any more about them.” He looked towards Gemmel and shivered a little, then turned to help as the horses scrambled upright, snorting and stamping. “Princess, I’m taking you to Durforen. That was the arrangement. We’re expected at the monastery.”

Marhala an-Sherban gazed at him with those eyes whose expression he could never read. There was that stillness about her again, that calm with all the weight of a ruling dynasty behind it.

“Then best we go there at once, my lord Talvalin,” she said in clipped, accented Alban. “The way you honour fallen friends is too costly even for an Empire. War is coming. It won’t be the one Woydach Etzel is expecting, and we can spare no other… Monuments.”

CHAPTER TEN

They reached Durforen at noon on the fourth day from Egisburg. Hethra-hamath, deh Marhar. The eighth day of the tenth month. The eighth day of winter and the Hour of the Hawk. All was quiet beneath the silvery sunlight, without even a trace of wind to move air edged like a razor. There was only that chill, glittering stillness and, high up in the icy sky, what might have been a thread of smoke unravelling white across the pallid blue.

Aldric reined Lyard to a standstill and pushed back the hood of his riding-coat. His illicit rank-robe was over the top of it for warmth rather than anything else, black on black on black, for after work with brush and curry-comb the Andarran courser had a coat like polished jet, and beneath the long, loose coat Aldric was once more clad in his own sable battle armour. How it had survived intact he wasn’t entirely sure, but could probably thank the Drusalan fondness for over-punctilious regulations.

Three days from Egisburg, and halfway through a fourth. Such a short time since… Since everything. Yet perhaps it was only right and proper for the journey to be short. The quicker he could give Princess Marhala over to the safe-keeping of whoever, in dead Bruda’s words, was expecting her, the quicker he could make an end of this last exercise in duty to Rynert the King.

It had fouled what passed for his Honour, despite those – and one in particular, a thought that made him glance upward – who still said otherwise. There was no question about what it had cost: a tentative companionship, an already uncertain loyalty, and far too many lives. Aldric swallowed past a sudden constriction in his throat. It was easy to maintain his indifference while others watched; within the privacy of his mind was another matter. Despite using the word – it evaded pointless explanation – Dewan ar Korentin had never been much of a friend, more a close stranger, and ceased being even that after what Kyrin had said about his scheming. But he had been a familiar face, and Light of Heaven witness there were few enough of those. Now there was one less.

Aldric would as soon have left the Drusalan Empire far behind him; formally shaken its dirt from his boot-soles, as the old tale said. But he had not, and he would not, for a while yet. There were other affairs, nothing to do with Alba’s king, which required his personal attention. As personal as anything confided by a father to a son in the past few evenings.

They found lodgings at farms and steadings so isolated that gossip about their presence would travel slowly in this foul weather, and Gemmel had confided secrets that, though often halfway guessed already, shook Aldric to the soul. Sometimes only the gentle anchorage of Tehal Kyrin – he had refused to send her out of earshot – kept him anchored to sense and sanity. And there had been times when her nails sank deep into his arm while she too tried to come to terms with what was said.

What Gemmel told them had changed the way Aldric looked at the world. No, at his world, for there were others. Gemmel had said so. One of those others was Gemmel’s own. Those secrets had fathered, mothered and given birth to thoughts of time and distance beyond understanding. They made him shiver as he stared at the vastness of the sky. It wasn’t a shiver of fear, not quite. Part was the awareness that comes to eyes newly opened, appreciating for the first time the complexity of light and shape and colour.

Eyes that saw a world far smaller than it had been, but a Heaven far larger than a man could ever dream of…

*

Durforen monastery lay at the foot of the ridge. It was just a ruin, and not even an especially picturesque one though the coat of snow on its old grey stones gave a certain charm to tumbled walls. The rest was far less charming, for the old buildings were gaudy with the scarlet pennons and red armour of the soldiers encamped there. They were Imperial Household troops. Even at this distance, and squinting through a glare of sun on snow that made his eyes smart, Aldric could see the gold-embroidered patterns on banners never seen outside Kalitzim.

Except when the Emperor was in attendance.

“Quite a reception committee,” he said softly to Lyard, watching a sudden flurry of agitation spread through the camp after he was spotted on the skyline. Other figures joined his own, first Kyrin, then Marhala and Chirel close together, and finally Gemmel as rearguard with the Dragonwand held slantwise like a spear. The agitation increased, trumpets sounded, and within seconds a light cavalry patrol was galloping towards them amid a haze of churned fine snow.

The riders came over the crest of the ridge in open skirmish order that swung through a crescent to a closed circle with the intruders at its centre. And then everything stopped, for their prisoners merely watched the cavalry manoeuvre as if it was being performed for their amusement. That unconcern wasn’t the only thing out of place, and made the horsemen of the patrol turn to their officer in confusion. Whatever else they had been expecting, it was more than a bearded elder, three women – even if one was armed – and a young man with the insignia and all the arrogance of a cavalry hanalth, but entirely the wrong style of armour.

It was Aldric who broke the muttering, indecisive stalemate. Nudging Lyard forward, he snapped an Imperial salute towards the patrol kortagor that was creditable enough for the man to return it.

“I have news for whoever commands here,” he said. “Who is it?”

*

It was Goth.

Of course it was Goth. At the back of his mind Aldric had expected that, and betrayed not a flicker of emotion at sight of the Lord General and his beard. Instead he had given another salute, equally precise, and a bow of respect that wasn’t precise at all or even very respectful. Even now, after almost an hour of talking, there was no sign of whether Goth was glad to see him alive, or even if he was troubled by the news of Bruda’s murder. It was, as always, impossible to tell what might please or annoy a Drusalan general, just as it was notable that the three strangers were kept on horseback well away from the encampment and from anything sensitive they might see.

Ioen the Emperor, a fresh-faced youngster with flaming red hair, was somewhat easier to read. The presence of this armoured column so close to the borders of Woydach Etzel’s territory indicated he felt strongly about… What? Was it the Princess, or the policies affected by her capture? Either way he seemed pleased to see her free and unhurt, and it made him generous.

“My lords, my lady,” he said in stilted Alban, “for this gift, liberty to my much-loved aunt and dear father’s sister, gifts I offer you in turn of gold, land, riches.” Aldric watched as Goth leaned over to whisper something which was probably an appeal against excessive generosity. He grinned slightly and made sure Goth saw him do it.

“I’m not a poor man, General, nor particularly greedy. So don’t fear for the Imperial Treasury this time.” Goth straightened with a jerk, pretending he hadn’t said a word, and even coloured slightly though it was more likely a response to unfamiliar impudence than the embarrassment he probably didn’t know how to feel. “However, Majesty,” Aldric continued, “there are two things I would like settled. One concerns the Jevaiden holding of Seghar.”

The name provoked a deal of muttering between Ioen and Goth, enough that Aldric wondered what he might have started, and he was relieved to see the beginnings of a smile on the Emperor’s freckled face. An absolute monarch with a schoolboy’s face, he thought. What next?

“Concerns for Gueynor-Overlord, not the holding, yes?” There was an arch, complacent quality to the light, youthful voice that could easily become tiresome, but in the circumstances Aldric thought best to let it go.

“As your Majesty says.”

“Concerns for her safety, yes?”

Certain this was a speech prepared in advance and learned by rote, Aldric nodded silently. He had left Gueynor with only a middle-aged demon-queller as protector, and the keys to hidden money-chests which gave power over the long-unpaid garrison. But second thoughts had been suggesting that it might not have been enough. He had to know.

“Be at ease. She was confirmed Overlord this three months past, with all rights of rank and privilege. It pleases that your wish is quickly granted, yes?”

“Yes.” Aldric bit the word off short. It pleased Goth as well, if the width of his grin in that thicket of grey beard was anything to go by. So quickly granted indeed, and so cheaply. “But I did say two things,” he reminded them, and saw Goth’s grin snuffed out. “The second involves safe passage to any part of the Empire. Any, regardless of current political allegiance. I’m sure you can think of ways to ensure that, Lord General. Yes?”

“No!” Goth was shocked. “Never! Of course not…!”

Aldric wasn’t amused to see how, after his first vehement refusal, the general had to pause and think of reasons why not. To cover the workings of that tricky brain he began to bluster about foreigners, about their lack of rights and, more dangerously than he knew, about an Alban kailin’s duty to his king. Aldric didn’t hide a grimace of distaste at that.

Then his attention shifted beyond both General and Emperor, to where Princess Marhala sat side-saddle on a palfrey, red-roan like all the Imperial mounts. She had been gone a while, and now her simple white clothing was the rich crimson and gold more suited to one of her high lineage. Except for that quarter-hour away she had heard everything, watching, listening but saying and doing nothing.

Until now, when she leaned down to where Chirel stood by her horse’s head, tapped the woman on the arm with a slim, scarlet-enamelled scroll cylinder, and directed that it be taken straight to Aldric. He had been ignoring Goth and his excuses to follow the ladies’ little by-play, and now there was already a laugh simmering within his ribcage as Chirel reached up to hand him the scroll.

“That should meet your requirements.” Marhala’s voice wasn’t particularly loud yet it cut across all the other sounds, of Goth, of the horses, of the military camp two hundred yards away. The General and the Emperor jerked round in their saddles, not expecting to hear her speak at all. Then they exchanged glances and turned slowly back to Aldric.

He sat, cylinder in one hand, tapping it lazily on the gloved palm of the other as he met Goth’s stare with a bland, cool smile. Then, holding the General’s eyes with his own, he held out the little container to Gemmel.

“I only speak Drusalan, altrou-ain. I can’t read it yet. Could you do the honours?”

Gemmel opened it and shook out not one but several scrolls, written in ornate characters with red-and-gold seal impressions at top and bottom. He scanned the topmost, and though he didn’t read the message aloud his indrawn whistle of amazement – a reaction which made Aldric look round with raised eyebrows – said more than enough. The sorcerer looked at his fosterling, and at that fosterling’s lady, and tapped the scrolls with one long finger.

“Citizenship,” he said, “within the Empire’s borders. Passes confirming we’re without political bias. And all authorised with Imperial family seals.” He let the scrolls snap shut and returned them to their cylinder with a care Aldric had only ever seen him give rare documents in his own library. “In summary, we can go anywhere and do anything that the law permits. Lady…” he bowed very low towards Marhala, “you have my – our – gratitude.”

“What point,” she said, “in having high-placed friends who aren’t of use?”

“You eavesdropped on what we needed.” Aldric was faintly accusing.

“I did not.” Marhala watched his eyebrows go up and smiled at him. “A Princess of the Drusalan Empire does not eavesdrop. Chirel eavesdropped for me, and I acted on it.”

“Uh.” Aldric heard Kyrin stifle a laugh. “Of course you did. Thank you for that, lady. And my thanks also to you, Majesty.” He paused, deliberately, for a count of three. “Oh yes, and Goth as well. Thanks to you all. For a great many things. Especially an education. And now… Now we must be going.”

They went.

*

Aldric stood up in his stirrups again, scanning a non-existent horizon for non-existent signs of life, then settled back into Lyard’s saddle and exhaled a smoky sigh of relief. It was now four in the afternoon and they had ridden constantly since half-past one, pushing their horses as much as they dared. There were seven horses now; three extra pack-ponies loaded with provisions were a token of Imperial generosity and also, Aldric suspected at first, a means to slow them up. He distrusted Lord General Goth, a man who might overhaul them and take away their Imperial travel passes not for any malevolent reason, but simply to reassert his reach and influence with the power to withhold or return the vital documents.

But perhaps he was wronging the General, because even Ymareth the firedrake high above had seen no sign of pursuit and now the day was darkening to twilight. Or maybe, he thought with a quick grin, someone else knew how Goth’s mind might work and had forbidden any attempt to follow them. All that truly mattered was that there was nothing to fear, and nothing to see.

Nothing except Kyrin and Gemmel, sitting a little way off with the horses, in a thin fog of exhaled breath which clung about them all like skeins of spider-silk glimmering on a meadow in the first light of dawn.

Nothing except Ymareth, far, far overhead where the first cold jewelled stars began to show.

Nothing except snow, and more snow, its once-blinding whiteness shading down now to silver and smoke-blue in the shadowed dusk.

Aldric touched heels to Lyard’s flanks and rode forward to be with his companions, the lady lost and regained, and the father more than any parent. Behind him the pale blue of Heaven became tinged with rose and saffron as the sun set into the distant fringe of haze where a horizon might have been. Ahead was that same haze, velvety, darkening to a star-fired night where the world reached up to touch the very sky itself.

A sky that, if what Gemmel said was true, might go on for ever...

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