The Dagger's Path

by Glenda Larke

  “And Shenat shrine keepers are long-lived.”

  “Yes. Better to hint at Shenat longevity than to have others hint at sorcerous reasons for your ability to live a long time in good health.”

  “You think all the Fox patriarchs were sorcerers.”

  “Yes. At least, I think they have a great deal in common with the old stories about sorcerers.”

  She stared at him. A hollow feeling burrowed beneath her breast-bone, aggravating her nausea. Sorcerer. The tar-pit who contaminated.

  He reached up and knocked on a hatch in the roof. It was opened and they were showered with water drops before a face appeared in the gap.

  “Take us back,” Deremer ordered. The hatch closed and the carriage rumbled on.

  There was a long silence after that. She wanted to ask a hundred more questions, but this was not the time. Deremer had brought her to this moment for a purpose, and he wasn’t going to tell her anything more. Not yet.

  Finally she took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and said, “All right. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to pack up, take that lad of yours, and return to Vavala. I want you to go straight to the Pontifect and set up a meeting between me and her.”

  “That’s all?”

  He gave a wry smile. “That’s not going to be easy, you know. Do you think I haven’t tried by more normal means? I am hampered, of course, by my reluctance to put anything in writing that might implicate me in a crime. There is nothing that Fritillary would like more than to see the Dire Sweepers and my entire family dead and forgotten. You have to convince her that her real enemy is Fox and we have to combine to bring him down.”

  “An unholy alliance,” she murmured.

  “Exactly. She must understand that she is going to lose unless we combine forces. Tell her that in the past ten years, Valerian Fox has learned how to use his sorcery for something other than extending his life and he is prepared to bring the world to the edge of perdition to further his ambitions. Do you understand? I am prepared to meet her with all the proof I have gathered. Not much, I will admit. You, the lawyer, will say most of it is circumstantial. I’m seeking another piece of the puzzle now, which I hope to have in my hands by the time I speak with her.”

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  “That’s another difficulty. Until I am convinced she will not have me arrested, tried and executed for my crimes, we have to meet where I am safe. Here, in Lowmeer. Borage perhaps, seeing it’s a border town. I realise that won’t be easy for her, but it is one of my conditions.”

  “And what do you bring to the table, Lord Herelt?”

  “An alliance, use of my armed Deremer retainers, access to all my knowledge and my solemn promise to disband the Dire Sweepers once we’ve rid the world of Valerian Fox. Tell her… tell her I’m tired of killing babies.”

  Was he telling the truth? She couldn’t be sure. “How do we contact you if I set up the meeting?”

  “Send a letter to Deremer Manor here in Grundorp and a copy to Deremer House in Ustgrind. I’ll get the message.”

  “All right. I’ll leave for Vavala tomorrow. But hear this: unless you can explain the connection between twins, the Horned Death, Fox and Bengorth’s so-called Law to her satisfaction, I think she’ll kick you straight down the stairs. You haven’t really explained anything.”

  They sat in silence while the coach returned to their starting point. It took a surprisingly short time, confirming her thought that they’d travelled in a circle, crossing the river twice.

  One of the servants dismounted and opened the door for her. She left without saying anything more, and neither did Deremer, although he raised a black gloved hand in salute.

  Perie was waiting for her on the doorstep.

  “I saw the carriage take you away. I ran after you, but I couldn’t get a whiff of smutch, so I let it go. Figured you could look after yourself.”

  “Good lad. None of that lot are pitch-men then?”

  He shook his head. “They’re clean. So what did they want?”

  Clean? Sweet Va, he killed babies. “Someone wanted to talk to me. We leave for Vavala in the morning.”

  As she turned towards the lodging house, a strong smell of cooking drifted from its kitchen into the street. Such an ordinary smell, as if everything was normal and the world was just as it always had been. Boiled beef and cabbage and the smell of rain, university students hurrying by with their caps jammed on their heads, and the wind battling even to flutter their heavy felted cloaks…

  But nothing was normal. Not any more.

  All she could think about were the things Deremer had not explained.

  30

  Devil-kin

  “Your Grace.”

  Mathilda sat bolt upright in bed. For a moment she could not have said why; then the horror hit her. A man had spoken to her, and the voice was one she did not recognise. No stranger should have been able to enter her bedroom in the middle of the night, least of all a man.

  Aghast, she groped for understanding. How was this possible? He stood by her bedside, inside the enveloping curtains. All she could see of him was a dark form, an outline. Battling terror, she opened her mouth to shriek for help, but the urge was suddenly stifled. She felt as if she was shrouded in something that would not allow her to utter a sound, or make any move. The air around her felt as thick as molasses.

  He said, “You will not scream. Not that anyone would hear anyway.”

  She sat, speechless, choked by dread.

  “You knew I was coming,” he said. “Regal Vilmar told you to expect me. You may speak now, if you wish.”

  Lowmian accent. Highborn, at a guess. Her voice, barely audible, trembled past her lips. “Who-who are you?”

  “A devil-kin, obedient to my master, A’va. I’ve come to hear your oath on behalf of your son. Tomorrow is his coronation day, but he is too young to understand what is required of him. So you must make the vow and see that he fulfils it as he grows up. If you don’t, the Vollendorn line will end with his death in childhood. Do you understand?”

  She could see him now. He looked to be no older than she was, neatly dressed. His lower face was shrouded in a scarf. There was a strange eldritch light glowing around him, greenish and horrible. It smelled with a faint tinge of rotting fish.

  “D-d-devil-kin,” she stuttered. No, this can’t be true. Keep calm. If he was really a minion of A’Va, he’d know that Karel is not a Vollendorn. But, oh, that foul smell, that strange light.

  “Take me to your son,” he said.

  She wanted to refuse–yet she rose, reached for her wrap, picked up the night lamp. His voice compelled her forward. She preceded him out of the bedroom and crossed the reception room to the nursery at the far end of her solar.

  Karel. Sweet Va, protect him…

  “Go on,” he said. For some reason she expected him to sound amused at her inability to resist his words, but he wasn’t. He sounded weary and ill. Even so, his voice insinuated itself into her head, and she complied with his commands, giving him the obedience of a mar ionette dancing for a puppetmaster.

  “I want to see him. Now,” he said.

  Please, Va, don’t let him be a carrier of the Horned Death. Anything but that…

  She opened the door to the nursery expecting the nursemaid to awaken, but the woman asleep in the bed did not stir; nor did Karel in his cradle. “If you harm him,” she said, “there is no place in this land you will be safe. None.”

  “You can threaten,” he said, indifferent, “but you can’t hurt me, can you?” He regarded her with a chilling lack of feeling. “Why don’t you try? You hold a lamp; set fire to my clothing, if you can. Or perhaps you can try waking your nursemaid.”

  She tried. She strove to shout, to throw the lamp at him. Her mouth worked soundlessly, her hands fluttered weakly. The nursemaid slept on.

  “Strange, isn’t it,” he said, glancing in the woman’s direction. “I suspect she rouses at
the first whimper of a babe, yet you could scream her name right now and she would not hear.”

  “What are you going to do?” She shook with terror, but it wasn’t for herself. Not any more. It was for Karel.

  “I am going to show you my power and then you are going to recite the oath that is Bengorth’s Law. Look at your son, Your Grace. Hold the lamp so you can see his face.”

  She did as he told her, and the flame flickered and danced as her hand trembled.

  “Watch his cheek,” he ordered. His tone was as frigid as an Ustgrind winter’s day.

  He was a lovely child, Karel: plump and handsome, able now to gurgle and laugh and reach for things; old enough to sit and play peek-a-boo… I love him, she thought. I love him as I have never loved anyone before. Nothing must happen to him. Nothing. “What are you going to do? Touch him and—”

  Before she could finish her threat, a sore began to spread across the child’s cheek. His eyes popped open in shock, and he wailed, a wail of heartbreaking surprise and agony. The sore bubbled and reddened in a patch the size of a thumbprint.

  “Stop it!” she screamed at the devil-kin.

  With one hand he plucked the lamp from her hand, afraid perhaps that she would drop it. His other hand, he waved over the child’s face. Abruptly the sore stopped spreading and the wailing diminished into hiccupping sobs. The nursemaid did not waken. Mathilda grabbed Karel up out of his cot and put him against her shoulder, uttering soothing words, jogging him up and down.

  “He feels nothing now,” the man said. “I have taken away the pain. The blemish, however, will be his for life. A reminder to you, and to him one day, that he must adhere to Bengorth’s Law. Do you understand?”

  The look she gave him was pure hate, but he was unperturbed.

  “Do you understand?”

  She nodded. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she patted Karel’s back and his sobs gradually ceased. The nursemaid had still not woken.

  “Put the child back in the cradle, and kneel on the floor at my feet,” he said. “Note, I do not force you to do this. This you must choose to do, in order to save your son from far, far worse.”

  Shaking, still silently weeping, she did as he asked and slipped down on to her knees.

  “Repeat after me: ‘I take this oath in my son’s name. I swear that he will uphold Bengorth’s Law. Prince-regal Karel, about to be crowned as Regal of Lowmeer, will grant one in each pair of twins born in Lowmeer to A’Va as his devil-kin. In return, A’Va grants that Lowmeer’s prosperity will continue, and that the Vollendorn line will sit on the Basalt Throne and prosper likewise.’ ”

  She repeated the words. Her voice quavered a little, but the words did not falter.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  She did so, but then thought better of it and opened them again, only to find she was alone apart from her son and the nursemaid. The lamp burned on the floor beside her. She scrambled to her feet.

  Pox on the toad-spotted churl! Her rage surged, white-hot and all-consuming. You will regret this, whoever you are and whoever sent you here. As Va is my witness, I swear it.

  She picked up Karel again, crooning to him and cuddling him tight. The nursemaid woke then, sitting up in alarm and then in horror. “Your Grace! Did I not hear him cry?”

  “Someone broke into the solar,” she snapped at the woman. “Quick, go fetch the guards! I found an intruder leaning over the cradle! He scratched Karel.”

  They would find no one, she felt sure. Alone with her son, she whispered her promise to him.

  “You will never hear of Bengorth’s Law from me.”

  31

  Privateers in Serinaga

  Even though Saker had hated the plan from the beginning, he found it hard to believe it had gone so horribly wrong so fast.

  He’d agreed to it because Sorrel had said she’d go without him if she had to, and the thought of her endangering her life had tied his insides in knots. Besides, after all the planning was in place, he’d thought it was just possible that they might succeed. There was Ardhi’s climbing witchery to get them on board the Regal’s galleon, Sentinel; Saker’s own witchery with birds to supply a diversion; the dagger to find the plumes; and Sorrel’s glamour to hide her while she stole them.

  Yet now here he was fighting for his life on Sentinel’s gun deck with gouts of roaring flames bursting through the planks and licking up the masts, while Ardhi was hanging upside down in the rigging, and Sorrel…?

  Sorrel was nowhere to be seen.

  If only he could go back to where this insane scheme had been hatched, and put an end to it then, back to that moment four days earlier, on the deck of Golden Petrel, when Juster had begun to formulate his idea…

  They’d all been there at the time: Juster, Ardhi, Saker, First Mate Finch, Third Mate Grig Cranach and Sorrel, grouped near the helmsman, Forrest.

  “That is Pulau Serinaga ahead,” Ardhi said, pointing. “Serinaga Island. With high mountain.” He waved at all the land off to starboard. “Many smaller islands. All same pulauan.” He looked at Saker. “Archipelago: is that correct word?”

  He nodded.

  “Kotabanta town, that’s the capital of the whole archipelago?” Juster asked.

  “Yes. On Serinaga Island. Archipelago all under one ruler, Raja. He live in Kotabanta.” The wind tugged at his long black hair, and he reached up to tighten the twist of cloth he wore to keep it tidy. “This Iska’s land, not mine. Want to know more, you ask him.”

  “Send someone to get Iska,” Juster told Grig.

  Their first sighting of land, an amorphous blue band in the distance, had now revealed itself as a series of hills behind a coastline pockmarked by beaches and inlets. To Saker, it all looked conjoined, but once Iska was there, he laughed at that idea and said it was an illusion. The coves and bays they saw were often the entrances to the straits and channels between the islands and rocky outcrops.

  “Wind is good,” Iska said, addressing Juster. “Can reach Kotabanta tomorrow.”

  Juster grunted, his frown more grim than pleased. “Could the Lowmians have bypassed Kotabanta altogether and gone straight to the Spicerie? Or on to Chenderawasi?”

  “Lowmians always come Kotabanta first,” Iska said. “They not want upset Raja. Everyone must pay Raja money for sailing through his islands. Not pay, and Raja find out? He make things difficult for trading.”

  “Raja of Serinaga has very many war canoes,” Ardhi remarked. Iska shot him a glance and nodded in agreement.

  “Maybe the Lowmians have already paid up and gone?” Juster suggested.

  He is being deliberately contrary again, Saker thought. The captain hadn’t forgiven Ardhi for making a fool of him in Javenka, and it rankled that he had to rely on the lascar’s navigating skills to sail the Summer Seas. He’d been forced to place the safety of his men and his ship in the hands of a man he no longer trusted.

  “Not easy,” Iska said. “Ships come, must pay fee, must visit Raja. Usually wait many days. Much… what the word? Properness?”

  “Protocol,” Ardhi said.

  “So, Lowmians still there, in port,” Iska finished.

  Juster gave another grunt and sent Banstel, now his cabin boy, to fetch the map of the coast. In Javenka, he’d bought charts of all the archipelagos of the Summer Seas. Both Iska and Ardhi had vouched for their accuracy, which was comforting as they had to wend their way through islands and reefs scattered across the sea like a random throw of knucklebones in a children’s game.

  I never knew the world was so large, so complex.

  Sorrel came to stand beside him while the others looked at the chart. “It’s another world,” she said. “Not just a different land, but another way of living. Look at the shape of the boats drawn up on the beaches. I’ve never seen anything like them. I like the expressive eyes they have drawn on the prow too! See all those thatched houses on stilts, built over the water. Why, I wonder? And the sand–how is it possible for sand to be so dazzlingly whi
te?”

  He glanced at her. She was carrying Piper on her hip in a cloth sling that Ardhi had made for her. The child peeped out of it, and his heart turned over when she smiled and waved her hand. Against all odds, she’d thrived on this voyage, enslaving them all with her charm.

  She can’t be a devil-kin. Not Piper.

  But then, if she wasn’t, Prince-regal Karel Vollendorn was… Or maybe it was all a lie.

  Banstel returned with the chart, placing it on the binnacle and weighting it down so it wouldn’t blow away.

  “Which is your island, Iska?” Juster asked.

  But maps meant nothing to the old lascar and he ignored the chart to point ahead of them. “That one.” It was left to Ardhi to identify the island on the chart.

  “I’ve promised to return Iska to his village,” Juster said to Saker. “In return, he is going to help us find a way to sink Sentinel in Kotabanta harbour.”

  Iska grinned and nodded.

  “You can’t cause trouble in Kotabanta!” Saker protested, horrified, as Juster attempted to match up the coastline with the chart. “What about Princess Mathilda’s marriage treaty? The Raja here granted Ardrone a concession area in Kotabanta at Lowmeer’s insistence. If we upset the Raja, we might lose those rights. Neither King Edwayn nor Prince Ryce would be happy with you then, and irate merchants will make firewood of your ship when you return to Throssel.” Not to mention that Mathilda’s sacrifice would all be for nothing.

  Juster sighed heavily. “None of my crew is going to tell anyone back home, believe me. If they did, they know what I’d do to them. And they’d certainly never sail with me again.”