“I know about you and Rees,” he said, quietly.
She listened for the rain. It should have been falling, washing through the gutters and over the stones of the castle walls, sweeping round chimneys and washing the snow grime away.
“I wasn’t hiding it,” she said. “Or are you the only one allowed to take lovers?”
“You said you were too old for that sort of thing.”
“Are we going to bicker about our relationships now?”
“That picture they put up of me in the chapel. Of the battle at Demon’s Pass. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all. We just threw our bodies at it until it was buried under the weight. They call my sword ‘Demonslayer.’ But that’s not what I remember. I remember losing.”
“Sometime surviving is winning.”
“Dalard was my friend.”
“Dalard was a weakling and a drunk.”
Arbalest knocked his knuckles on a section of table not covered by dead son.
“Gods, I’m so sick of funerals,” he said. “I’m so sick of fighting, while it just sits in that cage, not even sorry for what it did.”
“Wat, you won!” Lena snapped. “Anton is your living, breathing son. An heir who can fight for Trist.”
“Wat isn’t my name.”
Typical that this was the only thing he had listened to. She cursed herself for saying it and him for caring.
“You are Wat, son of Wat, and probably a dozen more Wats before him. Your mother lied to you. You have no more aristocratic blood than I do. The difference is that you are a coward.”
He hit her. She had expected it, been ready for it, even goaded him into it. But it had been years since they’d fought like this and it hurt more than she remembered. Her lip caught on her tooth. She covered her face with her hand and turned away. He must not see the blood. She must not let him see her bleed.
And yet she felt it. The old exhilaration of riding the tiger.
She hit him back. He had hit her with the back of his hand, a long swipe. She punched again and again, in the head, on the back of his neck and on his shoulders. She opened the palm of her right hand and pushed him, careful to keep her left hand across her mouth. When he stood there and took it, she pushed again.
“Noble blood?” Lena shouted, “Noble names? Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I am the house of Vile,” he roared, leaning over the arm that pushed against his chest and shouting so loud that spit flashed across her face. “That man was not my father!”
His eyebrow bruised where she’d punched him.
“You left him behind fifty years ago! Why does it still matter who your father was?”
She pulled her hand off his chest and put it to his cheek.
“You are what we built. And that’s better than any blood.”
His breath staggered through the long sigh that rose from his chest and drove him back to sit on the bunkbed at the far side of the table.
“Did I hurt you?” he said, while she drew a handkerchief and turned to clean herself.
“No.”
“I’m sorry I shouted.”
“Are you ready to listen?”
But he was staring at Frysil’s body again.
“Do you remember the old house?” Arbalest said.
How long would Anton wait? Would he stand outside the gate and call his father’s name until someone answered? Or would he open fire before he crossed the span? Was now the time to think how she’d failed to connect with Anton since he’d returned from the war?
“Yes, of course I remember.”
That first summer after the battle of Demon’s Pass was won. The castle was uninhabitable. Arbalest and Lena had needed somewhere to stay while they waited for the politics to wend its inevitable course. They’d needed time to plan. He’d built most of the house with his own hands. Arbalest had done things like that, when he was young. Did either he or Anton realise how alike they would be if not divided by time?
“Do you ever think about what it would have been like. If we’d stayed there, had our own children?”
“You were betrothed to Lady Vile, and I never fell pregnant.”
“What happened to it?”
“The house? It’s still there. You gave it to Hodri, remember?”
“To Hodri and his wife,” he said, and smiled, though not for long. “And his daughters.”
Arbalest put his head in his hands. His fingernails were dirty, and when he ran them up towards his scalp, sweat gathered around the cuticles.
“What we did. What I did. It was necessary, you understand?”
Then why did you only take the pretty ones?
“Of course,” she said. “But the situation has changed.”
“It’s not enough that Anton can fight,” he said. “He has to fight the Kindred.”
Why was he looking at her like that?
“Give me the bottle,” he said.
“You’ve had too much. Can’t you feel it? It’s the reason your hands are shaking.”
“Of course I can feel it! Give me the bottle!”
The bleeding had stopped. She put away the handkerchief and crouched before him.
“I was there, at Demon’s Pass, remember?” Lena said. “You saw that it was death to ride on, and you rode anyway. You saw your best friend dying, and you knew it was too late, but you went because you didn’t want him to die alone. It was the bravest, most stupid thing I’d ever seen. I’ll always love you, Wat. Why do you think I’ve spent so much time keeping you alive?”
He took his hands from hers.
“Then maybe it’s time for you to stop.”
She felt the hole in her chest, the one that said it was over.
“I know what you are,” he said. “I know about you and Rees, and I know what you are.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Give me the bottle or I’ll kill you.”
She stood up and stepped back, folding her hands beneath her waist. Maybe he could do it. If he wanted it enough.
“Give me the bottle, then get out,” he said. “I’m done with you.”
She took the bottle of black Kindred blood and put it on the floor between them.
“No,” she said. “I’m done with you.”
He spat.
“Not just yet. Bring me Demonslayer and meet me on the wall. Let’s find out if Anton deserves the name.”
Lena closed her eyes and let her thoughts move through her. Time and space are parts of the same thing, she told herself. Everything we are persists. The young man with smiling, blue eyes would laugh as he carried the wood to the home they would make together. She would help him mount the frame and they would make love beneath the arches of an unfinished roof. He would bring her flowers and she would kiss his nose and fall asleep with her head resting on his chest. Everything persists, even after it dies.
“Very well, old man,” she said. “One last time.”
Chapter 73
Anton Vile marched them across the span to Shadowgate Castle. Lieutenant Massen stayed at his shoulder. Dale Brek, covered in enough black filth from the fire to hide most of his bruises, kept Anton between him and Massen. A half-dozen mercenaries marched with them, and twice as many miners. Enough to look serious, but not enough to have serious hope of breaching the gate. Fighters, ready and waiting with the horses, were out of sight on the far side of the span, and Massen’s team was in place on the high rise with the cannon. Anton marvelled at the stillness of the air. The humidity had dropped now the snow had fallen. If he were the sort of man to believe in omens, he might think the Gods had favoured him.
It had taken Anton a year in the workshop at the mines to put the cannon together. He had scouted the rise long before. It was an overlook on the town side of the chasm, a place high in the mountain from which one could see over the castle wall to the rooftops, the towers, and even the Manor house, the prison, and the smithy. Most artillerymen would have considered the range too long
for an accurate shot. But he had had plenty of time to think it through.
“I should have brought a shield,” Massen muttered, close enough to Anton that the other men couldn’t hear what he had to say. “The sun will set soon. If we’re sneaking across, better after dark. If we’re fighting, better to wait for morning. Or until I can get word to the Captain for more men.”
“We want it to look like a parlay, not an attack, or they’ll just shoot us on the span. And we must succeed before the Magistrate can interfere. Don’t lose your nerve now.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not scared of heights.”
It’s worse up here when the wind blows, Anton thought, when it feels it might lift you up and carry you away. He didn’t say this to Massen. The mercenaries were nervous enough, and they were only halfway across. The gates were closed and offset from the bridge: the end of the span met only a blank wall and you had to walk farther around a narrow road to reach the entrance. This gave the impression that the castle was a turning screw, forever rotating its shoulder away from them. The torches had not been lit and there were no lights in the high tower windows
“I have your promise,” Dale said. “My father doesn’t live to see tomorrow night.”
Massen snorted and took his hand away from his sword.
“Tannyr’s all yours,” Anton said. “If you want him. Either way. I promise.”
“Anton, look,” Massen said. “On the wall.”
A breath of wind rose from the canyon to caress Anton’s cheek.
Arbalest Vile stood at the highest point where the wall overlooked the meeting between span and mountain. His white hair fell loose over his mail shirt, and, over his shoulder, unsheathed and cocked at an angle, he wore his greatsword Demonslayer. Anton remembered how Persephone used to spend hours staring at the sword as it gathered dust on the Manor wall. She had dreamed of a heroic father, stood facing the monsters on the mountain. Dreams were easier to live up to than the real thing.
“Talk to him,” Dale said. “Negotiate.”
Anton scowled at him. “Do you think he will sit for a nice chat?”
But he couldn’t help but be a little impressed. They all knew that the only way this could finish was with Arbalest Vile’s death. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t lie to him first. Maybe Olwen had been right, and there was more to Dale than met the eye.
“Give the signal now,” Massen said. “Before he opens fire.”
“It’s easier to get into a castle if they open the gate,” Dale said. “Lie to him. Tell him we want to talk.”
“Okay, okay, fine.”
He took a few steps ahead of the others.
“Hello the castle,” Anton called up to the wall. “Why don’t you come down and let us in?”
“Why don’t you run back to your brothel?” Lord Vile called back.
Anton walked to the end of the span. Still no sign of archers. He counted the steps. Under fire, they would have to run another twenty yards around the outside of the wall and then find some way through the portcullis. It looked like it had been built this way to stop a battering ram bringing down the gate. But who knew what the ancient constructors of the castle had in mind?
“You healed fast for a man who got shot,” Anton said. “Or do you just fall down easy?”
It was like shouting across a ballroom at a stranger. Anton’s fighters gathered up around him. His father leaned across the battlement and laughed.
“Is this all the army you could find?” Arbalest shouted. “I can take this many myself.”
If I kill you, will I stop being scared of you? Or will you be another dead thing that gives me nightmares? “Very well,” Anton said. He raised his hand high in the air. It looked like he might reach up to his father. He dropped his hand. A short gust of wind stirred the hairs on the back of his neck. Arbalest Vile spat over the wall. The sputum was lost in the sky.
“Do your worst, boy.”
The cannon sounded. The shot passed fast, high in the air, apparently too high, sailing in an arc far above their heads, above Arbalest, descending, surely too late, still over the castle wall, then down within the walls. As the ball hit the smithy, the gunpowder hidden inside exploded with the force of a thousand thunderbolts.
Chapter 74
Elianor rode Daniel down the mountainside. She had to curl her shins back past her knees to keep her feet from hitting the floor and hunch across him like a sack on the shoulders of a sailor. But he was fast. His clawed feet were jointed like hands yet tough as hooves. He could run sheer rock faces, leap from crack to crevice, follow routes unavailable to horse or man. The Black Dog roamed beyond Demon’s Pass, and Elianor clung to his back.
He ran like this all day. Frost formed on Elianor’s eyebrows and eyelashes. She felt only pain in her hands and feet. There was white snow and there was blue sky, there was the wind blasting against her, there was the warmth of Daniel beneath her. He smelled of old sweat and dirt and farmyard animal. Her cheek pressed hard against the rolling space between his shoulder blades, and she counted the names on her list in place of the passage of hours.
One Nathaniel was gone. Seren, Begw, Sara, all the women taken to the Kindred Prince would witness nothing more. But the first Nathaniel had seen too much. He must be controlled or silenced. Then the conspirators. Lena and Rees were only servants, but she would not spare them. Arbalest Vile. Monster, rapist, murderer, liar. They would pay for what they had forced her to do, for what she still had to do.
When they stopped, Elianor simply fell from Daniel’s shoulders. The snow cushioned her, fresh as the ice on her lips, until she pulled herself up to her feet and wiped her face. They had arrived at a cave, a crevice really, another crack into the holes and hollows that infested Shadowgate mountain. Heavy tracks led from the snow into the cave, a man’s boots and the hooves of a horse. She picked up her satchel from where it had fallen, checked the book of evidence, her pistol, her sword. Her pack she had abandoned at the abbey. Her breath clouded white and the water particles danced on their way back to the snow.
They found the horse just a short way inside the cave. It was hitched to a rough wooden cart. The cart was empty, but for a large blanket thrown across scattered goods at the back. The horse pulled at its rope as Daniel passed it by. Elianor pulled back the blanket. A selection of Nathaniel’s books was tied with cord and gathered in a canvas bag. The bottles were not there.
“He’s running.” Elianor felt as annoyed by her surprise as surprised by his cowardice. “Is he close?”
Daniel was on his way deeper into the tunnels. She scrambled from the cart after him. The cave walls became stone corridor. The daylight did not last past the first turn of the corridor. Elianor staggered, blindly, until her hand found Daniel’s shoulder. He led her like a guide dog through the labyrinth. They walked together; time elongated in the black. She tripped at a flight of stairs. The stone was wet. Daniel waited, fast animal pants sounding in the darkness, until she recovered. Then he took her upwards.
Light. Elianor could see the dark line of her arm against the gloom of the wall. At the top of the stairs, a door opened into a long corridor. They stepped out together, her hand still on his shoulder, and went left. A ladder led to an open trapdoor. They were right below the castle prison. They had come up through the cells where Seren and Begw had been tortured by the monks. Daniel stayed on all-fours, and balefully watched the light through the trapdoor. It was an echo of daylight, not the glare of torches. Someone had recently been through here.
“Is Nathaniel up there?” she whispered.
Daniel watched her speak, eyes attentive, but there was no sense in them, no message she could discern. He rubbed his forearm across his forehead then ran his tongue from elbow to wrist. Droplets of ice and sweat gathered on his upper lip. Elianor braced her hand on the ladder.
“Can you get through the trapdoor? Do you have another way around?”
He barked. The sound was grotesque from a human mouth.
&nb
sp; “Find me in the castle,” she said, then sighed. “I have no idea if you understand anything I’m saying.”
He turned and lumbered into the darkness. She stood still for some time, catching her breath, willing the cold from her limbs, trying to think what to do next. She had to catch Nathaniel before he did something foolish. There was still time to control the situation if she could only cauterise the wound. She climbed the ladder to the trapdoor. She swung one leg over the edge.
Something grabbed the ankle of her other foot.
Chapter 75
Elianor struggled to get purchase on the rim of the trapdoor. Whatever held her by the ankle was implacable, impossible, and she slid centimetre by painful centimetre as its grip grew tighter. At the edge she rotated, her head turned, and she glimpsed her captor.
The Shadowgate Warden. It had one metal gauntlet wrapped around her boot and had stepped onto the ladder to grasp her. The lowest rung of the ladder bent under the Warden’s bulk. Gears shifted and hissed beneath the intersecting steel plates of its armour as it raised the baton in its free hand. Thick twisted wires that ran from the Warden’s blue helmet charged, and a high-pitched whine vibrated through the weapon. The harder she pulled, the more it dragged her down. The black screen over its face illuminated blue around the outside, and a thin line of light passed across it.
“Mmmmhhh Mmmm,” the Warden said.
Elianor jumped. The moment her weight pivoted, she stamped on the Warden’s face. The bottom rung of the ladder snapped. They smashed down together. The Warden’s face screen shattered. Her foot came free and she leapt before she hit the ground. She rolled away into the darkness. There was a great crash of splintering metal.
Elianor was on her feet before she stopped moving. The Warden twitched on its back like an overturned turtle. Somehow, by some fluke, she had crippled it – it had fallen in such a way that it could no longer move. The old fantasy came rushing back. The woman who killed a Warden. A hero of the third revolution. Some part of its armour had snapped, and blood pooled out from underneath. She had seen Wardens fight, artificially enhanced, unnaturally strong. She stood over it. It tried to raise its baton. Elianor stamped on its wrist.
Vile Page 37
