Raven's Edge

by Alan Ratcliffe

  The duke snapped his fingers. The elderly steward, Craddock, hurried over and pressed a slip of paper into his hand. “Ah yes. This would be the same cousin who only this morning disavowed you and condemned your actions.” He brandished the slip of paper. “I’d not expected to receive a reply so soon, but it seems Lord Hyland is as convinced of your guilt as I am.” He leaned forward. “Now you will speak or lose your tongue first before the rest of your head follows.”

  “And what would you have me tell you, my lord? That as a child I stood atop the battlements and watched my brothers and cousins to ride to war and never return? That when I came of age I was betrothed to the brute that had cut them down, while his blade was still streaked with their blood? Should I recount all the shudders I suppressed when he laid his hands on me, all the smiles I forced though the sight of him repulsed me? Or the hours I lay awake at night, praying to the Divine to save me from being wed to that boor? Is it any wonder that when the means of my deliverance fell into my lap I went to my family’s shrine and wept tears of gratitude. Aye, my lord, I marked your son for death, but I ask is it just that I shall end this day bound in chains for an attack on one of your kin, while the one who slaughtered so many of mine is hailed a hero?”

  The duke stayed silent and still throughout this speech, his icy gaze fixed upon the speaker. The heat of his anger had faded, becoming dark and sullen. “Your family rebelled against the crown,” he said as she finished. “It was they and the others like them who started the war, not I. My sons fought for our emperor, an example those of your house would have been wiser to follow. They fought with honour.”

  “Damn right we did!” exclaimed Fearghus hotly, before subsiding at a placatory gesture from his father.

  “What honour is there in remaining the lapdog of a southron emperor who cares nothing for the north?” Niamh replied. “Aye, some of us dreamed of uniting our people, of a return to the old ways and governing ourselves. And had we been able to count on the support of Strathearn, our kin, that dream might even now be realised. But instead at a word from your master you turned upon your northern brothers, and all was lost.”

  By now the duke’s face was ashen. He raised a shaking hand and pressed it to his temple. “You make it sound so simple,” he said, his voice pained. “But you will never know the depths of anguish I felt when deciding our course. Yet there was no other way. We would have been destroyed.”

  “The city, perhaps. And Caer Lys and the Rock as well. But we were prepared to make that sacrifice, to start a new life free of Imperial shackles. And even had we been hounded to the ice floes and cut down, better to die in freedom than live in servitude to one who tolerates us only as long as he can bleed us dry.”

  “Enough.” The duke silenced her with a wave of his hand. “I’ve heard enough. You have confessed your guilt and your reasons, and I have no wish to hear any more justification for this act of treason. Your marriage to Kester was to be the salve that finally healed the wounds still causing rifts between our people. Instead, your vile actions mean even greater work must now be done to prevent another war in the north that would bring ruin to us all. If that is even possible.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Take her away,” he said at last, addressing the guardsmen. “Let her think on her crimes in a dungeon cell while I decide her fate.”

  The blonde woman was led from the hall, her head bowed. She didn’t struggle against her captors. Raven felt a strange sense of dissatisfaction watching her go. It was over, and yet it did not feel like a triumph.

  She was evidently not the only one to feel this way. When the sound of marching feet had faded, the duke rose from his throne and approached her, a sad smile on his face. “If I recall correctly, I forbade you from going out alone to track down the one responsible for my son’s illness. It is not seemly for a young girl like yourself to do such a thing... or so I believed. Another act of a foolish old man. You have saved my son, and for that you have my eternal gratitude.”

  Not sure what else to do, Raven bowed. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “The truth is a strange thing, is it not?” he said. “We desire it, pursue it, and then when we find it we learn that it is not what we wanted after all. It tastes bittersweet, does it not?” He sighed. “When I asked Craddock to write those notices and post them across the duchy, it was because I wanted to find the one that had cursed my son. And now I wonder if perhaps it was I all along. The sins of the father...”

  Raven said nothing. The duke shook his head as if to clear such thoughts. “Conall has told me of your adventures, or at least as many as you’ve shared with him. You have shown exceptional bravery and resourcefulness for one so young and...” He stopped before he could finish the sentence. “Yes,” he said, flashing a brief smile. “I believe you are indeed suited to this line of work. And a job well done deserves suitable recompense. Craddock will see to that. I thank you again for getting to the bottom of this ghastly affair. I am informed that my son is already showing signs of recovery. You will always be welcome in my city.” He gave a small, stiff bow of his own. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have much to think on.”

  He swept from the hall without a backward glance, and soon after the servants and other courtiers filed out, the show over. Raven waited as Craddock shuffled over to her and dropped a heavy pouch into her palm. Though the disapproving look on his face told her it was against protocol, nevertheless she loosed the string around the neck of the pouch and peered inside. Inside plenty of gold interspersed the silver. She nodded and tied the pouch to her belt. A tidy sum, it would sustain her on the road for a long time to come.

  When the elderly chamberlain had left to carry out whatever tasks one of his station is required to perform, Raven looked for Conall, but the duke’s youngest son was nowhere to be found. No-one seemed to be paying her any attention, so with a shrug she left the hall. Her feet seemed to have a destination in mind even if her brain did not, so she decided to let them take her where they would.

  * * *

  Given how much time she’d spent there the previous day, and how familiar she’d become with every flagstone of its length, it was with no great surprise that Raven found herself in the passage leading to the doctor’s chamber a while later.

  If the hallway was exactly the same as she’d left it a dozen or so hours earlier, the same could not be said of the doctor’s door. For one thing it now hung open – had been bashed near clear of its hinges, in fact. The duke’s men had spared no force when gaining entry.

  Raven paused before the opening, hesitant to pass through. It seemed to her a gaping maw, dead and toothless. A place where dark schemes had been hatched. At last, however, her curiosity got the better of her and she crossed over the threshold.

  Though Raven had not known what to expect from the lair of the elusive doctor, the reality was nevertheless anticlimactic. There was little sign of his part in the plot against Kester’s life. There were no maps or charts with telltale markings, no bloodstained weapons, no desktop overflowing with hastily written incriminating notes. None that hadn’t already been removed by the duke’s guards, anyway. As with the door, they’d not been gentle in their search, with dressers drawers hanging open, their contents still bunched messily where they’d been rummaged through by unkind hands. Chairs had been overturned. On the bed the mattress lay askew after having no doubt been raised and pawed at underneath.

  The remnants of their search aside, the chamber was ordered; it wasn’t hard to picture how it had looked before the guards’ arrival; with everything set neatly in its place, the room largely free of clutter. She wondered how it was possible for someone as orderly as the doctor to leave papers incriminating Niamh lying around to be discovered.

  But before she could think on it any further, movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. A figure was standing by the window, their back to her. They’d been so still she hadn’t noticed them before. “I thought you might end up here,” said Conall.

  “Yo
u did?” She went to the window to stand alongside the duke’s youngest son. Below them the streets of the city were laid out in miniature. “You aren’t surprised I didn’t take your father’s coin and flee before he could change his mind?”

  He smiled a little at that. “Some perhaps, but not you. You feel it too, don’t you?”

  “Feel what?”

  “That something isn’t right. That it’s not over.”

  She glanced at the young man. He looked as tired as she felt. It had been a long night, first rousing him from his bed and then going to the duke together to report what she’d discovered. After that everything was a blur. But it was more than mere fatigue, an aura of melancholy surrounded him. “I’m sorry, Conall,” she said. “I know you liked her.”

  “We all did. But I see her kindness now for what it was; a ploy to ingratiate herself so we would be blind to her scheming. I perhaps most of all.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, at a loss what else to say when he was clearly hurting from the events of the past day. “What will happen to her, do you think?”

  “She’ll be banished.”

  Raven frowned. “Are you certain? After what she did-”

  “Oh, it’s all decided.” Conall laughed bitterly. “She’ll be tried in a few days, enough time for the other northern houses to send representatives to court. Father will press for execution, but then Kester is to make his grand entrance and plead for clemency. Father will make a show of it, of course, but eventually he will relent and order that she be sent somewhere far away to live out the rest of her days.”

  “The other nobles will see just how close Kester came to death,” Raven mused.

  “And father will be seen as both strong and merciful,” Conall finished.

  “Will that be enough?”

  Conall shrugged. “I doubt even father knows. Niamh was right about one thing, he wouldn’t dare execute her for fear of how the other houses might react. The war is still too raw in their minds. Even this way the future is uncertain.”

  They stood in silence a while. Outside the sun emerged from behind the clouds and bathed the rooftops below in golden light. The cheeriness of the scene below was grotesquely at odds with the sombre mood above.

  “I think you’re right, by the way,” she said, breaking the silence. “This doesn’t feel over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Niamh ordered your brother poisoned, but Kester fell ill before Doctor Burbage even arrived at the castle. It’s why he was summoned in the first place.”

  Conall looked thoughtful. “Perhaps she gave him the first dose himself.”

  “It’s possible. But what of the feast? It may not have been Black Aggy but someone was there. Too many people saw a hag for it not to have been real.”

  Conall shook his head ruefully. “Her magic was real enough, that’s for sure. I’ve never seen anyone wield such power.”

  An idea began to form in Raven’s mind. It was like a locked puzzle box, and inside were all the answers she sought. All she lacked was the key to open it, the one piece of knowledge that would unravel the entire mystery. It was close now, she could feel it. “What if,” she said slowly, “it wasn’t real?”

  He looked up sharply. “How can that be? If you’re suggesting I’m lying-”

  “No, I think you saw what you said you saw.” She was thinking aloud, but the words felt right. “But what if you didn’t see what it is you thought you saw?”

  He gaped at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What? You’re not making any sense!”

  But Raven knew she held the key in her hand now. Her brain was awhirl, turning over everything she’d learned in the past few days. The words of the apothecary flitted past the forefront of her mind. She pushed the key into the lock. “The poison they gave Kester, the Dreamer’s Kiss, it doesn’t just kill someone. In fact that isn’t even what it’s mainly used for.”

  Conall frowned. “I don’t-”

  “It causes hallucinations – visions that seem utterly real, but have no more substance than a... a dream!”

  He opened his mouth as if to object, then closed it again. “Or a nightmare,” he mused. “When I think back to that night, it’s as if I’m seeing my memories through a haze. Like there was a fog clouding my mind.” He rubbed at his head, as if to clear it. “So is it possible Niamh poisoned me with this... this Dreamer’s Kiss? Poisoned us all? But how would she get hold of such a thing, or even know of its existence?”

  “What if she didn’t?”

  “So what are you saying, that someone gave it to her? It couldn’t have been the doctor, then. As you said, he didn’t arrive until after Kester had fallen ill.”

  “It isn’t so far fetched,” Raven said. “The doctor came from Caer Lys, did he not? And the Dunmars are bannermen to Lord Hyland and live within the barony. They could easily have met and plotted before Niamh set so much as a foot inside Strathearn.” She chewed her lip, thinking. “Tell me, who sent for the doctor?”

  “Father did, naturally.”

  “But your family only knew him by reputation. Think back, Conall... did anyone suggest Doctor Burbage to him?”

  The young noble stared at the floor, thinking. “Now that you mention it,” he said a few moments later, “That first day after the feast, as we were gathered around Kester’s bedside, Niamh spoke of a physician held in very high regard in the baron’s court. I don’t recall the name... Kester was in such pain... I wasn’t paying attention...”

  He looked distraught, and Raven touched his arm reassuringly. “It’s all right, Conall. Given what we now know, I think it’s safe to assume Doctor Burbage was the physician she mentioned.”

  The wheels of the plot were already in motion then before Niamh even arrived at the castle, she thought, but who set them turning? Try as she might, Raven just couldn’t picture the young noblewoman, even bearing such a grudge against the duke, approaching a respected figure like the doctor to propose such a scheme. There was too much risk involved. What if he’d refused and brought her plan to the duke’s attention? It was doubtful, too, that she possessed the necessary alchemical knowledge to suggest using the Dreamer’s Kiss. That left only one alternative, that it was Doctor Burbage who first approached Niamh, perhaps sensing that she would be amenable to playing her part in his plot. But why?

  She left the window and went over to the doctor’s desk, looking for something, anything that might give an insight into the man. There was disappointingly little to go on; a few scattered papers, most of which were blank, and beside the desk, fixed to the side of a wooden bookcase with a dagger, a playbill of some sort. At random, Raven picked up a sheet which had been written on and scanned the lines for clues. It was covered in strange symbols she didn’t recognise. Was it a code of some kind?

  Conall watched her. “I doubt you’ll find much,” he said. “Everything of interest was taken to father.”

  Raven sighed and tossed the sheet back onto the desk. “He must have known he was being followed,” she said. “Damn! I was so careful.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Villains such as the doctor are like animals, they’ve a sixth sense that helps them evade capture. He was probably startled by Niamh’s incaution and bolted before the net could close around him.”

  “Either way, he’s gone.” Raven poked listlessly at the papers, as if they might suddenly divulge his location. “I doubt he’ll return to the barony. The entire north will be hunting him by now.”

  “Not to Caer Lys, at least,” Conall said. “But truthfully he could be anywhere now. He could have been any stranger on the street the moment he left the castle.”

  Raven glanced up. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think any of us ever saw his face.” He shrugged. “One man in a mask is much like another. All he would have needed to do is take it off and he could stroll straight through the city gates unrecognised. What’s wrong?”

  That last was in response to Raven’s wide-eyed star
e. For a few moments she couldn’t speak. Inside her mind the key was turning slowly in the lock, the tumblers falling into place one by one.

  They didn’t know him.

  (click)

  They never saw his face.

  (click)

  A man in a mask.

  (click)

  On the surface, it was a reasonable assumption. A doctor is summoned, one with a reputation for brilliance but also a renowned eccentric, so who would suspect that the one presenting themselves at the castle while dressed the part a short time later would be anyone other than the person they purported to be?

  But what if the duke’s summons never reached the real Doctor Burbage, or it had but he was waylaid en route to Strathearn? What if the one who had called on Niamh and recruited her to his despicable scheme was not the good doctor, but someone altogether more cunning and dangerous – one with a clearer motive for assassinating a duke’s heir?

  As if pulled by an irresistible force, Raven’s eyes rose to the playbill. It was the same one she’d seen posted up in the inn at Firbank. Only this time she recognised the grinning faces of the players, having since spent the night in their company. They were all there; Rook, the bearded player who she’d last seen running into the night howling like a wolf, Leana, the blonde dancer with kind eyes, the bald, pot-bellied fire-eater, the shy giant whose timidity was at odds with his huge frame. And atop them all, wearing a smile that seemed to her now a smirk, was the harlequin, Zhao. Just as it was while on the stage, the top half of his face was obscured.

  A man in a mask.

  She noticed other details she’d not seen before. Beneath the pictures of the players was a list of names. Towns and villages they were to visit, Firbank among them. Underneath the names was another picture, and at the sight of it her blood ran cold. The artist was only of moderate skill and was likely further hampered by never seeing his subject in the flesh. The drawing of the hulking beast snarling through the bars of its cage wasn’t perfect – the frame was too light, the face too dog-like – but nonetheless she recognised the beast that had attacked her in Blackrot Mire. The bärgeist.