“Sergeant?”
Rees craned his neck to examine the rest of the cart, then shook his head.
“Where is my rifle, Citizen Garn?”
“What rifle?” No need for Truthsense. Gwyion almost choked. But it was messy, edgeless, a desperate untruth stacked atop other older lies. Rees made it back to his horse, as fast as he could without breaking into a run. The foreman had evidently finished thinking, as he now moved his hand back up his pick. Nathaniel slid his sword to sit loose in its sheath, but Elianor held up her hand to stop him drawing.
“What are you hiding, Garn?”
“I…I don’t know how to answer that question.”
“Let me make myself clear. I am not local law enforcement. Unless it pertains to my investigations into the missing women, the location of my rifle, or the location of your son, I have no interest in whatever you are keeping in your steam pump or the wagon you just hid in your mine. I am not here to make arrests or pass judgement. Unless you force my hand.”
She could see the frantic pulse of the blood vessels in Gwyion’s temples.
“Give me my rifle,” Elianor said. “Now.”
He swallowed.
“We can’t find it,” he said.
Elianor narrowed her eyes. He was telling the truth. “Where is Derec Garn?”
“This is crazy,” Gwyion said. “Derec told me what happened. He tried to warn you about the Black Dog, and you threatened to kill him.”
“When did he tell you this?”
“I won’t give him up.”
She stepped closer. He was taller than her, would have been much taller if he stood up straight.
“Where is he?”
Gwyion’s mouth opened and closed like a fish on the riverbank, his whole world proved to be something easily taken away.
“Don’t let her leave, Gwyion.” The sandy-haired foreman and the rest of the miners leaned in.
Elianor turned her head and stared the foreman in the eye.
“Do you know the penalty for disobeying a Magistrate?”
Without looking at him, she struck Gwyion Garn across his face.
“What is the penalty, Citizen Garn?”
“Death,” he said, spitting out blood.
She lowered her hand.
“The penalty is whatever I want it to be. The law gives me absolute discretion to act as I see fit.”
She reached into her satchel and raised her book of law over her head.
“At the moment, only Derec Garn has committed a crime.” Now she looked at the foreman. “But the next of you who steps forward will die.”
Nobody moved. Nobody dared. Gwyion didn’t even raise a hand to wipe the blood from his mouth. Elianor put the book back in her satchel and folded her hands in front of her.
“Where is Derec Garn?”
“He’s my son,” Gwyion said.
“Yes. Where is he?”
When Gwyion next spoke, his voice was very small, like a child.
“He’s at the hostel.”
She looked across at Nathaniel, who nodded back at her. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were sparkling blue. Sergeant Rees heaved himself and the chest up onto his horse. Elianor addressed the miners.
“We are going to the hostel to arrest Derec Garn. We will travel slowly. You will have plenty of time to change the artillery signal on your flagpole. Let them know we are coming.”
Her horse did not seem as large as before, the sunlight was warm on her face, and her side barely hurt as she mounted.
“His best hope is that my rifle is waiting for me when I arrive,” Elianor said.
Chapter 26
Anton and Persephone rode from Hodri’s farm without speaking. Their competing, private angers vibrated through the air between them and disturbed the horses. It made the quiet as loud as an avalanche.
The direct route from Shadowgate Castle to Demon’s Pass Monastery could be taken in a day. The watchtower was closer. If you left early and rode hard you could get there and back before sunset. But after the diversion to Hodri’s farm, and with the short spring days, it would be dark by the time Anton and Persephone got to the tower. Mabyn’s missing patrol might not even be there. The thought of spending the night in the watchtower made Anton shiver and clap his hands on his arms. It was still the best choice. Travelling at night in the lower reaches was dangerous enough: this high it would be fatal.
There was a natural shelter where the road cut against a sharp rise. They gave their horses a moment to rest and stretch their legs. There was little space out of the wind. Persephone stood as far from Anton as possible.
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”
Persephone pulled back her hood. The wind brushed her cheeks and flushed them pink. With the great white expanse behind her, she looked like a barbarian princess, an ice giant.
“What difference does sorry make if you always do the same thing?” She pointed her gloved finger back down the mountain. “You say you want me to talk to Hodri, but then you don’t shut up when we get there. You tell everyone I’m Captain of the Guard, but as soon as trouble starts, you try to take over.”
Anton’s breath clouded the moment he pulled his scarf from his face.
“Is this about what happened last night? When we were looking for the Black Dog?”
“It’s about you deliberately antagonising a grieving man. But yes, while we’re at it, last night, this morning with Father, it’s how you always act. They’re my soldiers, Anton. You don’t even know their names.”
Anton did a quick mental count.
“I know most of their names.” Persephone didn’t smile, so he changed tack. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She folded her arms across her chest.
“I know you’re brave,” Anton said. “I know you want to fight. But being the bravest soldier or the best fighter isn’t always enough.” He raised what remained of his injured hand. “It isn’t even often enough. I won’t let him send you to die.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re being protective? Of me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m four inches taller than you.”
“And also, not a cripple. So?”
“It’s…cute.”
“This conversation is spinning out of control.”
She stepped forward and put her hand on his cheek. It took every ounce of his strength not to pull away.
“You’re the most arrogant man I’ve ever met. You think these clever games with the Breks, and the Garns, mean being in control. But you’re already in control. You will be Lord of Shadowgate, and I will be Castellan.”
“You’re already Castellan. I told him. I’ve told everybody.”
“Nobody will listen if you keep on acting like an arse. But I don’t want to be his Castellan, I want to be yours. I want to be a true knight of Shadowgate, worthy to defend the realm of Trist and lead her armies into battle, worthy to re-establish the Vile name. But I can’t do that if you keep trying to take over whenever you think I’m in danger. I’m not still the little girl you can buy off with a music box.”
He remembered other men and women, standing in shining armour, making speeches about destiny and birthright and charging right into the fire; he wanted to tell her, but her glove was ice cold on his face and the melting snow made his whiskers stand on end.
“The music box was for Nathaniel.”
“I won’t let our father kill either of us,” she said.
Her fingers move inside her gloves, on his scars, and he wondered why he could never stay faithful to just one woman. Was this what had broken him, more than the obvious fall?
“That’s odd.”
She pointed past his shoulder. A horse stood on the rise. It paused, then turned and ran, as if startled by a predator.
“That was Mabyn’s horse,” Persephone said.
The horse was long gone by the time they reached the crest of the rise. There were multiple tracks, but the snow w
as broken on the rocks and it was hard to tell which marks were fresh. Anton took the reins of Persephone’s horse and she jumped down, staring at the ground like a miser who had lost a coin. He leaned back and looked across the falling vista. The shadows lengthened. The sun had given up on the east and set off to hide in the unknown west.
“You recognised Mabyn’s horse?” Anton said. “From all the way up here?”
“Quiet, Anton. I’m trying to concentrate.”
Looking back down the mountain, he could make out the ugly curve of Shadowgate Castle cut into the rock. Further away, the town, a dark stain below the snowline.
“Persephone.”
“Anton, I told you to—”
“Persephone, over here.”
◆◆◆
The bodies were scattered in a hollow a hundred yards from the path, submerged by yesterday’s snowfall but still recognisable in their Shadowgate uniforms. Persephone ran ahead of Anton and the horses, but her run turned into a slog as her legs sank into the snow. Anton, still in the saddle, tried to put together what he was seeing. There had been a fight. Their swords were drawn, some fallen nearby, one still clutched in a dead hand. The snow disguised the full extent of their injuries and there was no sign of whom they had been fighting. How had they come to be here? Why had Mabyn and his men stopped to see Hodri on their patrol to the watchtower? Had the battle happened on the way up or on the way back?
Persephone stood right in the centre of the carnage, her mouth a thin line. She pointed to each body, working from the closest to the farthest.
“Aled. Tomos. Sel. Bron.” She paused. “Mabyn. All five of them.”
“Who’s that?” Anton said.
Another body, face down, half covered in snow. A helmet cupped a smashed head. Long brown hair poked up through fractured metal.
“Is that a dragon helm?” Persephone said. “Like the one we found last night?”
“I can’t tell from here,” Anton said, but he didn’t dismount.
Persephone trudged towards the fallen soldier, careful not to step on the bodies or a discarded weapon. A queer feeling came over Anton. He felt he was in the audience at an amphitheatre, watching Persephone approach the brown-haired corpse. He tried to remember if Seren had brown hair. Without really thinking about it, he took his hammer from his belt.
“Persephone. Stop.”
She stopped. Anton had the strongest memory: Persephone as a little girl, covered in mud from falling in the frog pond. She was looking around, steady, calm, trying to identify the threat. He remembered wading out into the pond to pick her up. Had that been his first mistake? When he had ruined everything between them? He swung his leg over the saddle and jumped into the snow. Persephone had her hand on the hilt of her greatsword. She turned back towards Anton and shook her head, a curt, nervous gesture.
Behind her, the corpse moved.
“Seph!” Anton shouted.
The horses screamed. With jerking, unnatural motions the broken brown-haired soldier got to her feet. Anton ran towards Persephone. The air swam around the broken soldier. Her chainmail looked painted on with tar, her bloodied face a mask pulled over something that pulsated beneath. She opened her mouth and a long, pointed tongue lolled, liquorish black. Not a she, an it, a monster that swam out of the snow like a salmon leaping from water. Persephone turned to find it was upon her.
“Kindred!” Persephone shrieked, drawing her sword.
The Kindred swung its clawed hand. Persephone fell onto one knee, startled and off-balance in the snow. A claw passed over Persephone’s head. She turned her greatsword and caught its other fist coming down. The clanging sound was metal on metal. The monster pummelled Persephone like a boxer. Anton still hadn’t reached her. His crippled leg made it hard to build momentum. Persephone came up on her feet and heaved her huge blade in an arc. The Kindred stepped inside the blow and caught her wrist. With impossible, inhuman strength it dragged her upwards.
Anton lowered his head and charged. His twisted leg forced him to lower his shoulder, the snow parted way like the sea before a ship, and he careered into the Kindred at waist height. The three of them were hurled into the snow. The Kindred laughed. It was a strange, surreal sound, an over-excited toddler that was too tired to sleep. Anton hit the snow face first. The whump of the impact blocked the sound of laughter. Ice went up his nose. He flailed, tried to get his face clear, and his hand closed on the head of his hammer.
He clawed snow from his face. One of the horses ran past him, its eyes wide with fright. His left hip gave way as he tried to get to his feet. The crash of Persephone and the Kindred fighting, her greatsword singing, the weird cackling of the monster. He couldn’t get up. Back over his shoulder he saw the Kindred, now larger than Persephone, its arms stretched; long dark claws replaced its fingers, and its limbs distended into nightmare. Anton lowered his head, gritted his teeth, put a hand on his weak knee and pushed. Persephone cried out in pain. He couldn’t see her. He was facing the wrong way, looking up towards the ridge.
An awful, piercing howl shrieked down the mountainside.
“You are fucking kidding me,” Anton said.
“Run!” Persephone shouted.
Chapter 27
The sign read Nana Haf’s in big red letters. Like its sister, The Last Chance, it was a tall, grandiose construction, built as if the architect had heard a drunken colleague describe the capital’s maisons closes and attempted to improve through embellishment. A brothel by any other name. It was easy to imagine it lit up and bawdy, music coming from within, pretty girls and boys in revealing clothes calling to the workers on their road back home. But beneath the sign it said “Hostel,” and Elianor had brought them around to the back entrance. The rest of the building stretched out in stacks of plain structures. The lights were out, the shutters down and the doors closed.
Elianor, Nathaniel, and Rees stopped their horses in the gardens. Tightly drawn curtains blocked the long windows along the veranda. Elianor waited as Nathaniel and Rees dismounted. Shadowgate Town was not far away to the north, a fat child hidden behind the skirts of its mother. It had suffered several growth spurts. Most of the town was traditional old buildings, pre-revolution farming cottages. But a swath of modern brick housing swaddled the side of the town closest to the mines, and scaffolding marked places where new buildings sprouted, pox marks between more traditional rural abodes.
“Trap?” Nathaniel said, as he checked the windows of Nana Haf’s, one at a time.
“If you mean they’re inside and they know we’re coming, then yes, it’s a trap,” Rees said.
“Could Gwyion’s miners have got here before us?” Elianor said.
“If they went cross country, or followed the high road then cut down the defile,” Nathaniel said. “We might not have seen them pass.”
“Even if Gwyion mobilised the miners too late to get here first, they won’t be far behind.” Rees tied his horse to the hitching rail at the far side of the yard and adjusted his sword belt as he strode towards the veranda. “After the way you talked to him, it won’t take Fyrsil long to rediscover his courage.”
Fyrsil must be the sandy-haired Foreman, Elianor thought.
“Citizen Vile, please knock on the door.”
Nathaniel knocked three times. Elianor dismounted. Nathaniel knocked again.
“Sergeant.”
Rees measured the door with the eye of a professional. Nathaniel obligingly stepped aside. Both men drew their swords. Elianor checked her pistol was primed and clear. The trigger mechanism still wobbled. She put it back in the holster and crossed her arms.
“Now.”
Sergeant Rees stamped on the door, just below the doorknob. It splintered and smashed inwards. He marched in after it, Nathaniel at his shoulder. A sparrow fled its home in the guttering towards the evening sky. Elianor heard furniture thrown to the floor. There was a crash and a man cursed loudly. She unbuttoned her jacket and walked inside.
The back door opened direct
ly to a flight of stairs. These led to a balcony and a series of first-floor rooms. Past the stairs was the front door out to the main street. To the left the ground floor was a wide-open cantina, tables, and chairs arranged in clusters on the way to the bar. The closest had been turned over. Three men in chain armour confronted Nathaniel and Rees. The cards fallen about their feet curled in a pool of spilled wine.
“Thank you, Gentlemen,” Elianor said. “Good evening, Citizeness Garn.”
Haf Garn stood halfway up the stairs. Since Elianor had seen her this morning, Haf had pinned a rose artfully above her right ear.
“Magistrate,” she said. “I am afraid we are closed this evening.”
“Not to me.” Elianor looked at men by the overturned table. “I suggest you three keep your hands well away from your swords.”
“Dragon helms,” Nathaniel said.
“I noticed. Sergeant, check that Citizen Garn isn’t making a break for it out back.”
Sergeant Rees cast a quick, questioning glance towards the mercenaries, then turned and did as he was told. Nathaniel stepped into Rees’ place. He looked calm, even relaxed.
“Haf, where are your staff?” Nathaniel said.
“I sent them away,” Haf said. “There’s nobody here but the four of us.”
Elianor kept her tone even and calm.
“Citizeness Garn, do you understand I can tell when you lie?”
“Please,” Haf Garn said. “Nobody has to get hurt.”
“Where is my rifle?”
“I don’t have it.”
“Where is Derec?”
“He isn’t here.”
Elianor shook her head. Haf immediately saw her mistake.
“Very well.” Haf now spoke to the mercenaries. “I’ll pay you double if you kill the Magistrate.”
They hesitated. The youngest, a long scar on his handsome face, shifted his hand to an ornate war horn on his belt but otherwise did not move.
“Triple,” Haf said.
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