by Leo Carew
“And Uvoren doesn’t?”
“And Uvoren doesn’t,” Gray confirmed. “He’s a bastard, but a straight warrior-bastard. Vigtyr is something else.”
“He is my cousin, lord,” volunteered Helmec. “I knew him well growing up. We were at the haskoli together.”
“And what was he like as a boy?”
“Frightened, my lord,” said Helmec. “His father, Forraeder, was … a monster.”
“A monster how?”
Helmec shrugged. “Violent. And a drinker. I hear he used to be a good man, but he had his spirit broken on the battlefield. Then Vigtyr’s mother died giving birth to him, and Forraeder blamed Vigtyr for that. I remember when he first arrived at the haskoli,” Helmec’s voice held nothing but pity, “he was the quietest boy there. I don’t even think he was shy: he just hadn’t developed a personality beyond fear and obsession. He had nothing to say. I think that is why he worked so hard at the sword; it was a way of gaining control and protecting himself from his father’s shadow.”
“So why does he want the Guard so much?” asked Roper.
Helmec shrugged. “I don’t know. All I saw was that, as he grew up, his need for recognition became more and more overwhelming. Perhaps, for him, it fills the gap that ought to have been taken by affection.”
“And he had no siblings?” asked Roper.
“None, lord,” said Helmec. “But he’s certainly had enough wives and none of them ever lasted long. Divorced,” he added with a small smile at Roper’s sidelong glance. “Not vanished.”
“He sounds damaged,” said Roper.
“Oh, lord; beyond repair,” said Helmec. “But I would never want to be his enemy.”
Roper felt a trickle of guilt, that he might be abusing Vigtyr’s need for recognition to his own political ends, but those few drops disappeared into the dark pool that was the plague he had caused. “I will deal with him when I must,” said Roper. “I will reward him, but if you say he is not a Sacred Guardsman, Gray, then he is not a Sacred Guardsman.”
Gray was not mollified. “There is nothing you can give that man that will equal the prestige of a guardsman. If you do not deliver that to him, I can promise you that you will make an infinitely devious enemy.”
“Well, he’s our devious servant for now. Vinjar Kristvinson is next to fall.”
Gray, evidently uncomfortable, was silent a little longer. “Are these men guilty as charged, lord?”
Roper shared his discomfort. At first the speed with which Vigtyr had hauled down these mighty men had made him gleeful. He had laughed out loud at the malice of targeting Uvoren’s sons first and when he had seen the fear that had been sown in his enemy. That glee had soon turned into a strange sort of horror. Men were falling everywhere and Roper had no idea whether or not they deserved the punishments they received. Hartvig had seemed to be a genuinely good man and when he had been disgraced, and taken it so graciously, Roper became aware of a growing sense of unease. He remembered the fear in Baldwin’s eyes as he stood in the honeypot: the look of a man who knew things were out of his control. In retrospect, Roper recognised it. “I don’t know, Gray,” he said honestly. “Baldwin was. And he was guilty of more than the charge which killed him. The others … That is what the Ephors are there to determine, is it not?”
“Our vengeance system was not created to deal with conspiracy,” said Gray. “There’s nothing the Ephors can do about enough paid witnesses. We must defeat Uvoren, but is that at any price?”
“We’ve come a long way down this road, brother,” said Roper. “I’m not sure there’s any turning back. One way or another, this country must have a clear leader. And it cannot be Uvoren.”
They walked along the battlements in silence for a time, Helmec distracted by the view of the Hindrunn below and Roper loosening his cloak a little so he could feel the cold. “The pair of you should come and dine at my house tonight,” said Gray, at last. “Uvoren still holds court in the mess and Sigrid would like to see you both. Bring Keturah and Gullbra?” The latter was Helmec’s diminutive wife. Both Roper and Helmec said they would be very pleased, and that evening attended Gray’s house for a supper of goose with lingon berries, prepared by Gray’s wife Sigrid. She was warmer with Roper than she had been last time, giving him her odd half-smile and a decorous kiss. “Welcome, lord, welcome.” She steered Roper into a chair, thrust a goblet of mead into his hands and began to interview him. “The plague looks to be relenting, lord, have there been any new outbreaks?”
“We have not had to close off a new street for weeks now. The quarantine seems to be doing the trick.”
“It is lucky you acted so fast,” said Sigrid steadily.
Roper’s mouth twisted and he was close to saying that had he not been such a fool in the first place, none of this would have been necessary. But the moment passed and he smiled instead. “I am grateful for everyone’s discipline in this matter.” Her expression showed she had seen and understood the momentary warping of his mouth. “Your efforts were well beyond the call of duty. I am amazed that you did not contract it yourself.”
That half-smile. “Something has been taking care of me. And of this one,” she added, putting an arm around Keturah who had finished saying hello to Gray and had come to join them. “Your hair is regrowing fast.”
“Not before time,” said Keturah tartly. “This is not a winter to be walking around with a bald head.”
“Is there ever a time to be walking around with a bald head?” asked Roper. “You look like an earthworm.”
Keturah laughed, giving an accidental snort as she inhaled.
Sigrid looked flatly at the pair of them. “An easy audience,” she observed. “You’ve married the right woman, lord.”
“Sigrid here is just jealous, Husband,” said Keturah. “Unfortunately, she has no sense of humour.”
“I hear Pryce has also lost his sense of humour,” said Sigrid, as Gray came to join them.
“He is in a fearsome temper,” confirmed Keturah. “I’ve just been to see him.”
“Poor Pryce,” said Sigrid. “He is a lictor to his marrow.”
“I am surprised he didn’t break Uvoren’s jaw for demoting him,” said Roper.
Gray laughed sourly. “He knows Uvoren was looking for an excuse to get rid of him entirely. But he won’t forget. He will have his revenge, one way or another.”
Roper had his revenge first.
Legionaries called on the house of Vinjar Kristvinson, the Councillor for Agriculture, the next morning. He had not been seen in public since Baldwin had been eviscerated by sticky-fire and answered the door pale but straight-backed.
“Councillor Vinjar Kristvinson?”
“I am Vinjar.”
“You’re under arrest for adultery. You will come with us now to the dungeons beneath the Central Keep to await trial.”
Vinjar threw a helpless look behind him to where his wife Sigurasta stood, white-faced and with her hand covering her mouth, as his wrists were bound in leather. The evidence was compelling and the trial, three days later, did not take long. Uvoren had stopped coming to defend his accused allies and Roper, the words of the Ephor ringing in his ears, did not want him or any of his men associated with the trial. It was just Vinjar’s family and that of his wife who watched on.
Guilty. Three left at the table.
20
The Kryptea Do Not Knock
“What happened to Vinjar?” asked Keturah. They sat in Roper’s quarters together, the door held shut by bolts of iron in an effort to keep out the sense of unease that pervaded the rest of the fortress. It was late, snowing again, and charcoal burned white-hot in the ventilated hearth.
“Nothing too serious,” said Roper. “He’s avoided the prison-ships at any rate, but he’s lost his status as a subject. He’s a nemandi again.”
“I know his wife,” said Keturah.
“Sigurasta?”
“She’s devastated. Did he do it?”
“No idea,
” snapped Roper. The bolts were evidently not working.
“Very early in our marriage to be getting tetchy, Husband,” she reproved him.
“Don’t make me think about it. The Ephors released Tore and Randolph without charge today.”
“Why?”
“They voted unanimously to suspend the courts. They’re certain I’m behind the purge but they can’t work out how much of the evidence is fabricated. No doubt they’re looking for something to pin on me. If they find it … sticky-fire.” He remembered Baldwin’s begging in the honeypot. He remembered his eyes, almost comically wide. He remembered his supplicatory hands quivering as he held them up to the Ephor.
And then that stump.
That was all that had been left, after the waves had swamped him. It was still moving, but surely it could not possibly have been alive. When his time came, maybe Roper would beg as well.
Only one man knew the truth of whether or not these men were guilty: Vigtyr. Roper feared very much that he was about to disappoint him. If he had brought down the others, it would be no harder to get to Roper. Not when the Ephors were looking for any excuse.
“Don’t worry, Husband,” said Keturah with surprising tenderness. She put an arm behind his neck and a hand on his knee. “This storm will pass. And whether or not the courts have been suspended, most of Uvoren’s supporters are now too scared to show their faces in public.”
“I wish Vigtyr had gone for Tore and Randolph first,” said Roper. “The legions are loyal to their legates, and while Uvoren still has legionaries, he has power.”
“His influence is a shadow of what it was.”
“I worry …” Roper stopped himself. Self-doubt was not Anakim.
“You worry about what?”
He shook his head and Keturah tutted.
“You worry that you are not the man you thought you would be.”
He looked at her. “Yes,” he said, his voice a dim reflection of its usual self. “I regret this. I truly, truly regret this. If I am to fall short of holding the Stone Throne unopposed, I wish I had done it on my terms. I wish I had never spoken to Vigtyr. If my body is to be destroyed by sticky-fire, I wish that I’d fought this war against Uvoren with more honour than he. I want to be able to die without regret.”
“We must all do things we would rather not for the sake of the country.”
Roper was too preoccupied to give proper attention to that line. He dismissed it. “I have told myself that so often I don’t believe it any more. I can’t believe Uvoren would have been any more terrible a lord than I have been. This fortress is like the underworld; plague still stalks the streets and nobody speaks their mind for fear of hard legionaries hammering on their door the following dawn. People are terrified.”
“Roper the Ruthless,” mocked Keturah. “Roper the Tyrant?”
“I prefer the first.”
She laughed.
In Roper’s tangled mind, the alleviation of the plague had enmeshed with his own salvation. If he could return the fortress to something approaching normality, it would be a balm for the raw guilt on his mind, first at causing it, and second at the way he was tearing down Uvoren’s allies. Perhaps, too, it would show the Ephors and the Kryptea that he was fit to rule.
“Well, you’ve frightened Uvoren,” said Keturah after a while. Roper made a sceptical noise. “You have,” she said confidently. “He sleeps with Marrow-Hunter by his bed now. He has nightmares about the Ephors.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you think? We are a partnership now, Husband. If there’s ever a time when a warrior doesn’t stand behind you, you’ll find me there instead. For instance,” she tucked her legs beneath her and leaned into him. “It was I who passed Vigtyr the information that condemned the Councillor for Agriculture.” Roper stared at her, disbelieving. “He was guilty. It’s been going on for years.”
“You should have told me before.”
“I’d meant to keep it a secret, but I have been very clever. I had to tell someone.”
Roper laughed in spite of himself and put an arm around her. “Strange wife.”
“You are not a bad lord. You must believe me, Uvoren would be worse. Hafdis has not a single good word to say about him. But I think beneath all the hatred she loves him still.”
“She does?”
Keturah nodded. “Or at least, the idea of him. She is still waiting for him to reform: that’s why she delayed telling me about the poisoning. She was hoping Uvoren wouldn’t go through with it. But he is rotted through by love for himself. There is so little man left at his core that I am amazed the wrestling did not break him in half.” She was silent for a moment. “And don’t worry about sticky-fire. If you have gone too far, the Kryptea will let you know before the Ephors do.”
“I don’t know how far the Kryptea can be pushed,” said Roper. “Or what they consider acceptable. How can I rule when it is not even clear what I am permitted to do?”
“I could go to the Academy,” suggested Keturah. “Find out more about them. They’ll know what has caused the Kryptea to intervene before.”
There came a knock at the door and Roper flinched. A matt-black blade cut across his memory and left in its wake the flash of a cuckoo with outstretched wings.
“The Kryptea do not knock,” said Keturah impatiently. Roper stood and unbolted the door, pulling it back to reveal Helmec leaning idly against a wall and, next to him, Thorri, the Councillor for Trade.
“You left a message that I was to come as soon as I returned, lord,” said Thorri, who was fresh off a ship from Hanover, where he had been acting as a trade envoy. “I trust I have not disturbed you?”
“Of course not, Councillor, thank you for coming.” Roper stood back and showed Thorri in. Keturah, still sitting on their bed, gave Thorri a little smile.
“Good evening, Councillor. How are your daughters?” Thorri’s wife had given birth to twins just four months before.
“Teething, thank you, Miss Keturah,” said Thorri, taking the yew chair that Roper steered him towards. “A trip to Hanover was a welcome distraction. What has happened, lord?” Thorri asked, turning to Roper.
“What do you mean?” Roper furnished Thorri and Keturah with birch wine and took some for himself.
“Thank you. The atmosphere, it’s … it feels like there’s been a tragedy. Begging your lordship’s pardon, I’ve never seen this fortress so quiet.”
“Who knows?” said Roper, knowing perfectly well. “What of your mission?”
“Successful, lord,” said Thorri, cautiously. “The agreement is a tenuous one and limited for now to wool and copper in return for grain and iron, but I am hopeful it will provide a limited source of revenue. In time, as relations improve, it may expand into more as well. But it was a wise move, lord, because it sends out the message that the Black Kingdom is once again prepared to do business with the outside world.”
“Well done, Councillor, it’s a good start. I take it the agreement takes effect after winter?”
“Quite, lord; the seas are too rough to start now but in the spring we can begin.”
The Councillor stayed for a time and told them about Hanover. It was one Anakim in ten thousand who wanted to travel outside their own country, so the picture he composed of alien ways and lands was of special fascination, however disturbing it might be. He told them about the strange Hanoverian dialect; how it was barely comprehensible to ears tuned in the Black Kingdom. How the Hanoverian princes had adopted the confusing Suthern love for gold (though they seemed to have little answer when asked exactly why it was valuable), and lived in mighty palaces that towered above the steep-roofed hovels of their subjects. How they had no regular legions; just a warband, bonded to the princes and a citizen militia that was roused when the Sutherners were restless. Their food was strange: though they had bread, it tasted rough and the stones they used to grind it deposited dust in the flour, making it gritty. Their customs were strange. The land even smelt strange: d
ust and mortar pervaded the air from the ever-expanding palaces, raw effluent flowed through open gutters beside the streets and, as their brewers were not restricted to a single district, a ripe miasma of barley, honey and yeast hung over the streets. Even the smoke smelt different: it was not the rich, smooth scent of blazing charcoal that was dominant in the Hindrunn. It was a harsher, thinner trace of ash- and oak-smoke. Roper shuddered and Keturah declared she felt sick.
To an Anakim, a home was something that grew with time. They sank their roots into the earth slowly, as memories and loved ones became associated with the place. They became familiar with the orientation of the surrounding hills, mountains, forests and rivers. They knew so exactly where the stars would be at which point in the night that they had no need of timekeeping devices. They knew from which peak the sun would emerge on the winter solstice, how the earth would smell when the spring rains arrived, and all the oldest trees of the forest. The world around them was inhabited by spirits, formed from the powerful memories they had of the area and the people who had moved through it. To be uprooted from all this was bitter indeed and initiated the feeling of fraskala; being cocooned, as you were not connected to the land around you.
Of course, the Anakim had to travel abroad sometimes. They had invaded Suthdal regularly over the centuries, and when it had no longer seemed wise to use that training ground, they had sent the legionaries to help in conflicts over the sea, to renew the perishable skills of war. But this was all accomplished with a wretched heartsickness, which most thought to be the explanation for why Anakim armies seemed to be a more fearsome prospect at home than they were abroad.
When Thorri had departed, Roper bolted the door behind him and sealed the shutters, for the clouds had lifted and the moon was shining off the snow. His last thought before sleep took him was to wonder whether Keturah knew that Cold-Edge lay beneath their bed. Perhaps that was why Uvoren had armed himself: each night the two famous weapons clashed in Roper’s captive mind. He allowed himself to descend into dark combat.
