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‘No reason can excuse a rank breach of manners,’ the seneschal fumed. ‘Let me remind you, the official your desert-bred cur has insulted is an accredited royal ambassador! The wrist-slap penalty you’re proposing is child’s play! In Devall, by law, for the same offence, the wretch would lose his right hand.’
Taskin contained the quick flash of his temper. ‘I’ll remember, some time, to show you a man whose back bears healed scars from the whip. No pretty sight, I assure you, Lord Shaillon, with the sensible benefit that afterwards, the soldier can still bear arms in the kingdom’s defence!’
‘We speak of an outlander,’ the seneschal bristled. ‘Not one of our own, but a mongrel of low background, and questionable habits. Since when do we look to a desert-bred’s brawling to conduct our affairs of state? How dare you suggest such a creature should taint a decision concerning a prince who stands to become our pledged ally, joined to our kingdom by the kin ties of wedlock!’
Yet even for royal protocol, Taskin refused to back down. ‘Captain Mysh kael is a red-blooded man, invested by oath, and in service as one of Sessalie’s crown officers.’
‘A mistake we should rectify. Should have done so, and long since. Shame on us all, that a penniless adventurer should be allowed to take rank advantage of the opportunity presented by our summer tourney. We cannot afford to risk a misjudgement. Not when the man might be the paid agent for some unknown enemy’s plotting.’ As Taskin took umbrage, the seneschal raised a stabbing finger and ranted straight on. ‘We are faced with a crisis! At the least, such a foreigner ought to be set aside under lock and key. He must be removed from his post at the garrison, and a trusted man set in his place.’
‘Fury and rhetoric will not grant Devall your endorsement, Lord Shaillon.’ Taskin’s gaze flicked past the seneschal’s shoulder, towards the sovereign slumped in the state chair. ‘The command to discharge Mysh kael must arise from the hand of King Isendon himself.’
‘A mumbling dodderer who drools in his sleep,’ huffed the seneschal. ‘When his Majesty wakens, confused, be sure I shall get the permission I need to set Sessalie’s seal on these edicts. I’ll have others drawn up in sensible language that will take steps to protect our security.’
Taskin gave back a wolfish smile, his posture held at smart attention.
‘But I’m not asleep,’ interjected King Isendon. ‘Nor am I drifting, just at the moment.’ He straightened his trembling shoulders, imperious, and snapped his fingers sharp as a whip crack. ‘Give over those documents held in dispute. Yes. Set them in Taskin’s hands. I leave the matter of Devall’s complaints in his charge to address as he sees fit.’ The damp, weary eyes tracked the seneschal’s sullen capitulation until the requisite papers changed hands.
‘That will do, Shaillon,’ said the king, dismissing all argument.
‘Commander,’ he continued, ‘you have mentioned a forthcoming inquiry over the conduct of Captain Mysh kael? That is well. Treat with him fairly. If he brings any news of my daughter from the garrison, I expect an immediate audience.’
Taskin bowed. ‘Your Majesty.’ He tucked the state documents under his arm. By the time he turned in smart strides towards the doorway, the king’s gaze had already lost focus.
The seneschal surged at the commander’s heels in a bothered flutter of velvets. Ever determined to snatch the last word, he found his officious presence impeded by four immaculate crown guardsmen.
‘Bertarra is right,’ he snapped under his breath. ‘All these sentries are a nuisance in the royal chamber.’
‘Necessary every man of them,’ Taskin retorted as he breezed on his way down the corridor. ‘King Isendon’s safety is my bailiwick, Seneschal, and no subject for you or Sessalie’s chancellors to lay open to mauling debate.’
The crossroads market outside the town wall was a noisy, sprawling event that bloomed on a patch of packed earth with each dawn, and melted away every sundown. The throng of itinerant pedlars, freebooting hucksters and farmwives who traded the odd head of livestock held no crown licence to sell. Too shiftless to maintain a stall in the town, they simply gathered and spread out their wares, or pounded in stakes for their picket lines. The result clogged the verge where the trade road met the cart track which snaked down from the alpine vales.
The regulars hunkered under rickety awnings, an ill-fashioned jumble of pegged burlap and canvas that fluttered and snapped in the breeze. Packs of raggedy children screamed and ran wild, through the singsong patter of the hawkers. On fair days, the blind beggar who told stories spread his blanket under the shade of the ancient oak that also, infrequently, served as the royal gallows. The dented tin bowl he set out for coppers always sat on the plank where the hangman’s stair mounted the scaffold.
The hour, by then, approached mid-afternoon. Slanting sun fell like ruled brass through the branches. The odd scattered dollop licked the head and shoulders of the man in the hooded penitent’s robe. He sat, one leg crossed and the other extended, in the dust at the storyteller’s feet. The pair of them shared companionable talk, and a meal of bread crusts and boiled beef.
‘Ah, then it’s horses, now?’ the beggar said, his rich voice slipped into the broad Trakish dialect learned from his mother in childhood. ‘You’re wanting to bet? That was the hot topic, rightly enough, until this sad tale of the princess overshadowed all else.’ Paused for a sigh, he rubbed grease from his fingers, then recovered his dauntless, sly smile. ‘Do you fancy the races, or maybe the outstanding team for the match of steed wickets next month?’
‘Perhaps both, maybe neither,’ said Mykkael in the same tongue. He folded the last slice of meat in a bread chunk, and laid the offering into the storyteller’s outstretched palm. ‘If I wanted to locate an animal of a certain description, perhaps to inquire if it was for sale, who would be likely to know where to look?’
‘A rascal.’ Moved to bursting laughter, the storyteller turned his face, sightless eyes bound with a scarlet rag to keep his affliction from upsetting the children. ‘Vangyar, the horse thief, could answer your question. Knows every creature with hooves in this valley, and speaks like a breeder’s textbook. Won’t be so easy for you to approach him.’ The beggar rapped the scaffold post at his back. ‘Crown law sends his sort to dance with the rope.’
Mykkael shrugged. ‘I don’t know of any man or woman in Sessalie who is forced to steal out of hunger.’ Hands clasped over his tucked-up knee, he waited until the beggar stopped chewing before he finished his thought. ‘I’m seeking a horse with particular markings, not pursuing a writ for arrest.’
‘Fair enough.’ The storyteller dusted crumbs from his lap. ‘Vangyar often drinks at the Bull Trough, by Falls Gate. One of the girls there’s his favourite. If you can corner him, he’ll know your horse. But I’ll lay your king’s silver against one of my tales, you don’t catch him to pitch the first question.’
‘Oh, you’re on.’ The garrison captain grinned under his hood. ‘But I’ll need a forthright description to have a fair shot at the take.’
‘From a blind man? That’s a joke.’ But the storyteller delivered from the stock of detail he was wont to pick up from overhearing stray talk.
Mykkael listened, his sharpened gaze caught by the sudden moil of activity that swirled through the gaggle of potters, the stacks of grass basketry and the hunched cluster of women who laced oat straw into cheap pallets.
When a shout punctuated that burst of disturbed movement, the captain uncoiled to his feet. ‘My friend, we have a sealed wager between us. For now, I regret, I must leave you.’
The beggar returned a companionable nod, content to resume spinning tales from his dusty blanket.
Mykkael strode downhill. With brisk hands, he peeled off the penitent’s robe and flagged down the man from the garrison, just reined in from a gallop, and towing a second mount on a lead rein.
‘Captain! Thank the powers that be, the gate watch said you might be here.’ Sergeant Cade spun his snorting, bald-faced gelding, and tossed Mykkael the bridle of the riderless grey.
‘What’s amiss?’ Mykkael settled the reins and vaulted astride without touching the stirrup. Wheeled back towards the town, he heard out his sergeant’s breathless report.
‘Physician from Fane Street’s showed up at the keep. They’ve got him in your private quarters, you asked that?’
‘I sent him.’ Mykkael pressed the horse from a walk to a canter, then dug in his heels for more speed. ‘Only one man? The apothecary’s not with him?’
Sergeant Cade spurred his lathered mount to keep pace. ‘The apothecary’s dead, and your physician’s not coherent. No one’s been able to get him calmed down to explain how the tragedy happened.’
Mykkael swore. His face drained to a queer, greyish pallor, a precedent no man from the garrison had seen through any prior disaster. ‘No help for the setback, I’m going to be late for my promised appointment with Taskin.’ He hammered his dappled horse to a gallop, still shouting his fast-paced instructions. ‘Go through the Falls Gate, pick up a task squad of eight men. I want the apothecary’s house sealed off. No one goes in, do you hear me? No matter what seems to have happened inside, I want nothing disturbed by the ignorant.’
‘Too late for that,’ the sergeant yelled back, his words breathlessly pitched over the rolling thunder of hooves. ‘There’s been a small fire. Burned like merry hell. No brigade dumping water could douse it. Went out by itself, finally, and left an unnatural, smoking crater that destroyed the back wall of the house.’
‘Get the bucket brigade out.’ Mykkael leaned over his mount’s wind-whipped mane, still urgently snapping directions. ‘Take a list of their names. Round up each one. Force them to step through the smoke of a cedar bonfire, then bathe head to foot in salt water.’
Sergeant Cade stared. ‘Have you gone mad?’ The cost of pure salt, this far inland, was extortionate.
‘No, soldier. Forget about questions. Just follow my plainspoken order!’ Mykkael balanced his horse, then changed its lead to sweep right at the moat and take the main road through the Lowergate. ‘I’m off to the keep to settle the physician and secure his immediate safety. If you can, dispatch a rider to Highgate. Tell Taskin I’ll be delayed.’
‘Done, Captain.’ Cade veered his mount and set off.
Mykkael urged the grey underneath him still faster, railing at fate in snatched curses. Beyjall’s sudden death carried damnable timing. The chance was slim to non-existent that a message passed through the watch at the Falls Gate could be relayed uptown in time to defer Taskin’s rendezvous. Mykkael resigned himself. The reprimand he would earn for the lapse seemed hellbound to become an ordeal of savage unpleasantness.
IX. Late Day (#ulink_30be2ea0-63da-53c5-90c3-2397d3809d6c)
HOT, SOAKED IN SWEAT, MYKKAEL FORCED HIS GAME KNEE AT A RUN UP THE KEEP STAIR, THEN BURST THROUGH THE DOOR TO HIS QUARTERS. He swept the chamber with one raking glance and fixed on the forlorn figure perched on the edge of his pallet.
Sadly rumpled, the physician slumped in his shirtsleeves. He looked like a fluffed robin blown in by a storm, elbows set on his knees, and hands pressed to his brow.
The scuff of the captain’s lame step aroused him. He bounded upright with a cry, palms raised in startlement. Behind the skewed glass of his spectacles, his china-blue eyes were dilated to black from the adrenaline jolt of his terror.
Mykkael stepped back. Checked to thoughtful calm, he tipped his head past the lintel and directed a shout down the stairwell. ‘Vensic! Send one of the armourer’s boys up here at once with a torch!’
Relief suffused the physician’s blanched face. ‘Light of deliverance!’ he gasped, all but sobbing. ‘On my soul, now I know you’re not one of them.’ His wobbling knees gave way all at once. Dropped back to his seat on the captain’s coarse blankets, he rushed on in breathless hysteria. ‘At least, the word goes that most sorcerers’ minions will avoid the sight of a natural fire.’
‘Some will flinch from an unshielded flame,’ Mykkael agreed. He watched with the fixated stare of a lynx, his wary hands poised at his sides. ‘Except for the oldest, and most powerful. But even ones bound to the dark arts for centuries can’t abide the smoke from green cedar.’ Cued by the tap of the boy’s running footstep crossing the landing downstairs, the captain spun and moved back past the threshold. He returned in an eye blink, a lit torch in hand, which he touched to the frond of cut evergreen, stashed out of sight on his hurried way in.
Smoke billowed as twigs and needles ignited. ‘Forgive me,’ Mykkael snapped, as the resinous fumes caught the draught. The scented blue smoke billowed up in a cloud and wafted over the rattled physician. ‘I had to make certain you carried no taint.’
‘No bother at all,’ croaked the neat little man, lightly coughing. ‘Precautions are nothing but rock-hard good sense. Dear me. Until now, I thought Sessalie lay too far north to be threatened by demonic plotting and craftwork. That’s why I chose to retire here. Very peaceful.’ But horror had shattered his idyllic complacency. He trembled to realize that his days of tranquil practice might be for ever undone.
While the cedar smoke thinned in the breeze through the arrow slit, the physician removed his fogged spectacles. He buffed the glass with a limp handkerchief pulled from his waistcoat pocket. Shaky fingers restored the wire frames. Behind thick lenses, his bright, blinking gaze tracked the desert-bred captain, each move. Mykkael doused the torch. Then he crouched by his pallet to drag out a strongbox tucked underneath. The lock had no key, but worked through a puzzle array of brass levers fashioned by artisans from the far east.
‘You seem to possess an impressive experience,’ the physician observed at due length. ‘That’s most reassuring. I suppose, in your past, you were probably hired to fight in a sorcerers’ war?’
Mykkael nodded, terse, head bent and hands busy sorting the contents of his opened coffer. ‘Against the Sushagos, yes, and after them, Quidjen and Rathtet.’
‘You fought against Rathtet?’ The physician dropped his crushed linen, startled. ‘I didn’t know any defenders had survived that unspeakable bloodbath.’
‘Very few,’ Mykkael said, his voice cranked and tight. ‘A miserable, unfortunate few.’
‘Oh dear. Not a subject you like to dwell on, I see.’ The tactful pause lingered, while the physician recovered his dropped handkerchief. He was a worldly man, informed well enough to know that mercenaries steered clear of countries invaded by sorcerers. Lavish pay lured only the brashest young fools. The ones who signed on were quick to regret. Spellcraft could inflict worse than ruinous losses. Scarred veterans, returning, were wont to avoid a repeat of their wretched mistake.
Mostly, such conflicts levied trained troops from the far south, where skilled viziers could grant them defences. Aware his repeat record of paid service was unusual enough to seem suspect, Mykkael gave a short explanation. ‘My contracts were arranged by a barqui’ino master, who considered high risk and extreme danger to be part of an aspirant’s training. The eastern despots always hired. Paid swords were preferred, even prized for their use in covert reconnaissance. The ones who fell into enemy hands couldn’t be tortured to spill secrets they didn’t know to begin with.’
‘Yes, I see that.’ The physician huddled into his sweat-dampened shirt. ‘You would have been valued for that sort of work, dark-skinned as you are, and facile with your gift of languages.’
Mykkael straightened up, bearing a worn leather sack with a drawstring. He fished inside, and withdrew a grimy copper disc strung on a scraped length of rawhide. The thong had been cut more than once, and rejoined. Three mismatched knots interrupted its contiguous length. ‘Here,’ said the captain. ‘Wear this for protection.’
The physician gave the token his dubious inspection. Under verdigris tarnish, the wafer of metal had been finely scored with overlaid circles, interlocked through a series of triangles. The leather looped through it was darkened with stains, faintly rancid with a dried rime of sweat. ‘What is it? These are bloodstains?’
‘Talisman,’ Mykkael answered, ‘a potent charm, fashioned to guard against the assault of cold-struck sorcery’ He had his fingers thrust deep in the sack, apparently counting the contents. ‘These were made for the foot troops who fought Rathtet.’ Confronted by the physician’s masked shudder, he said in offhand reassurance, ‘Yes, they’re still potent, dried blood notwithstanding. The men who wore these died of arrows.’
His inventory complete, Mykkael closed the drawstrings, then tied the sack on to his belt. ‘Don’t change the knots. They were ritually done to protect against theft and mishap.’
As the physician’s unease progressed to reluctance, the captain stepped close, lifted the artefact from the man’s shaken grasp and slipped the thong over his head. ‘There. Relax, now. You’re safe. Wear that talisman next to your skin, and don’t take it off when you wash.’
Mykkael stepped back. The physician watched with mollified eyes as the captain eased his game leg on the stool beside the plank trestle. The keep officer had left a pitcher of cold water on a tray. Mykkael poured, not troubled by the lesser scars on his arms as he offered the terracotta mug. ‘Drink?’
The physician refused, still afflicted by over-strung nerves.
Mykkael sucked down a deep draught for himself. ‘Now,’ he said calmly. ‘Tell me what happened to Beyjall.’
The little physician’s poise crumbled utterly. ‘I didn’t see much,’ he confessed. Shaking hands clasped, he cleared his throat, and manfully started explaining. ‘When I finished the last of my morning appointments, I went round to ask for a candle. Not that I needed one. I hadn’t sensed trouble. But better, I thought, to apply for the remedy before the onset of first symptoms.’ He trailed off, his dough face flushed to crimson.
‘Go on,’ Mykkael urged. ‘What’s done is over.’
The physician braced up, his eyes glassy with recall. ‘When I arrived at the apothecary’s shop, the door was ajar. That was not usual. He liked to have customers let themselves in. But when I mounted the steps, the front room was empty. The iron-strapped door to the stillroom was closed, a surprise, since the place appeared open for business. That’s when I first realized something was wrong. I called Beyjall’s name. When he failed to appear, I looked closer. Scribed on the plaster beside the door’s lintel, I encountered what looked like a sorcerer’s mark.’
The narrative ground to a painful halt. Mykkael waited, stone-patient.
‘Glory preserve us,’ the physician gasped. ‘You know how it feels to encounter pure evil?’
‘I know,’ Mykkael answered. Just that; nothing more.
The physician shook his head, shivering. ‘Powers forgive me, I ran in blind panic’
‘Well you should have,’ Mykkael said with bracing force. ‘Such craft-marks are volatile and unspeakably dangerous!’
The physician huddled, forlorn on the pallet, unable to shake off his misery. ‘Dear me, to my sorrow, so I have seen. Those voracious, unnatural flames, and the smell—one doesn’t forget.’ He swallowed, then mustered frayed nerves and faced the garrison captain straight on. ‘The apothecary was alive, and most likely locked in. He must have realized someone had entered. I heard his cries, and his pounding as he begged for help to escape.’
Mykkael showed the wretched survivor nothing but sympathy. ‘You came straight here?’
‘Directly’ The physician dabbed moisture from behind his fogged lenses. ‘Captain, I hoped you might know what to do.’
Mykkael paused through a dreadful, brief silence, run through by awareness that his men from the garrison had responded; the squad that had rushed to the apothecary’s rescue had shouldered that lost cause in disastrous ignorance. By the narrowest margin, they had missed being swept to their deaths in the explosive first conflagration.
Only the choking press in the streets and the gift of blind luck had preserved them.
At uneasy length, the captain said gently, ‘Beyjall died, very horribly. You couldn’t have helped him. Nor could I, had I been present. That mark you saw was pre-set to ignite within a matter of seconds. You are more lucky than you know to be here at the keep, safe and breathing. Caught out of his depth, let me tell you, Doctor, the wisest man first saves himself.’
The physician braced up. Sound sense notwithstanding, his torn heart would take more convincing. ‘Poor Beyjall. You believe he was murdered because of the drowned seeress we examined?’
Mykkael shook his head. ‘Not entirely, no. I think he was killed for his knowledge. Just as she was. They were the two people in this placid realm who were first to notice the works of a sorcerer afoot.’
‘Dear me.’ The physician blinked, his prim, worried glance on the captain. ‘The unnatural creature might strike at you next.’
‘I expect that he will.’ Mykkael drank the last of his water and stood. ‘You’ll be all right? One of my men will escort you home, and stay to keep watch at your doorway’
The physician rose also, and hooked up his crushed jacket. His bobbing stride trailed the captain’s lamed move to depart. ‘Will he carry a talisman like the one you gave me?’
Mykkael stopped. He turned his head, the tigerish glint in his almond-dark eyes crushed out by the force of his pity. ‘I don’t have enough of them to go around.’
The physician sucked a breath, raised to chilled understanding. ‘Thank you for that honesty. I can manage well enough on my own. Heaven preserve us! What a sorrowful thing, that such evil should invade these quiet mountains and stake out a foothold in Sessalie.’
‘My task,’ snapped Mykkael, ‘is to see such power thwarted. You’ll go home with my man-at-arms as your escort, and sleep with him guarding your doorstep. On your way, would you stop on an errand for me? You knew the apothecary better than most. Someone must pay a call and inform Beyjall’s widow the crown will pay for his funeral.’
Eight centuries past, one of Sessalie’s queens had desired a rooftop garden. She had grown sunflowers to feed gleaning birds, and shared their winged company through hours of contemplation. The king who was her great-grandson added topiary, and an array of formal flowerbeds, which, years later, the kitchen staff claimed to grow herbs under glass for winter seasoning. No one recalled which subsequent sovereign had added the turrets, and planted the first of the trees.
By Isendon’s reign, the oaks had grown ancient, their gnarled trunks halfway fused with the stonework that vaulted the entry. A confection of wicker tables and chairs scattered under the shaded branches now became the afternoon refuge for Sessalie’s ranking courtiers. Just now the primary occupants were royal, Crown Prince Kailen and the heir apparent of Devall, attended as usual by the deferent circle of his liveried retinue. Only the saturnine advocate was absent, dispatched on an unspecified errand.
On the table, banked in a bowl of shaved ice, a serving of strawberries sweetened their conversation. The Prince of Devall had asked for red wine. The gold tray held a bottle of the famed cloud grape, just emptied. Another one had been opened to breathe, when the seneschal arrived, puffing from his three-storey ascent from the council hall.
‘My Lord Shaillon, you look as tried by the day’s frustrations as any man on two feet,’ greeted Devall’s heir apparent, his dauntless good cheer a brave effort to lift the elderly statesman’s flagged spirits.
Prince Kailen sighed and pushed back the blond hair tumbled over his forehead. ‘Still no word on my sister.’
The seneschal nodded, exhausted beyond platitudes.
Too polished to show disappointment, Devall’s heir apparent lifted the bottle, selected a clean goblet from the tray, then poured in a dollop, and swirled it. ‘Sit, my good man. You’re just in time. We needed someone with a fresh palate to taste this superlative vintage.’
The seneschal drew out a chair and perched like a mournful sparrow. Polite to the bone, he accepted the wine, then cast a frowning glance on the emptied glass next to Prince Kailen. ‘His Highness ought not to be drinking after last night’s indulgence.’
Devall’s heir apparent smiled with sheepish charm. ‘The lapse is my fault. I can’t be truly sorry. Your kingdom produces exceptional wines. Bereft of my bride, who can blame me for seeking such exquisitely seductive consolation?’
Sessalie’s seneschal tasted the sample, then nodded his reserved approval. While the Prince of Devall filled his goblet in earnest, he asserted, ‘A wine haze won’t help Princess Anja’s recovery.’
‘No,’ Kailen murmured. ‘But it does dull the ache.’ He bunched up his napkin, wiped the dregs from his glass, then slid it forward, inviting a refill.
The foreign prince complied, then set down the bottle. His tapered fingers still nursing the goblet that stood all but untouched before him, he broached softly, ‘What news of my current petitions to King Isendon?’
