by Matthew Ward
“I will not compound failure, captain.” Her gaze drifted to the two-score haggard prisoners at the church’s rear. “We’ve traitors enough to serve as example. Besides, young Viktor’s pride won’t let him stand apart. You may atone by making preparations for his arrival. This first failure I will generously discount. Further lapses? Well, those I’ll have no choice but to interpret as wilfulness. And the wilful do not prosper in my Tressia.”
Apara judged it no accident that Lady Kiradin’s iron stare took in Mannor and Rother, masters of the Prydonis and Sartorov chapter-houses. Lord Karev, commander of the 7th, had earlier been despatched to take charge of the city’s gates.
The citizenry might follow Lady Kiradin out of patriotic fervour, but the soldiery required guidance. And the soldiers’ commanders required . . . motivation. Motivation Apara’s cousins had provided through the seizing of loved ones. She wondered at the future Lady Kiradin sought to build on such foundations. Rother’s venomous glances suggested his leash had already stretched almost to breaking point. He was surely not alone.
“Are you struck by wilfulness, Captain Horden?”
“No.”
“Good. Do your duty.”
Straightening, Horden marched stiffly past the hushed choir of serenes and out into the grove.
Soft, bitter laughter echoed around the nave. Apara’s heart sank.
Ebigail turned slowly about, her expression cold as it fell upon her youngest daughter. Of all the church’s unwilling congregation, only Sevaka seemed without fear. Her hands bound and her face haggard, she hung from the arms of her hearthguard captors as one without the strength to stand. But still she burned with defiance.
“You find something amusing?” snapped Ebigail.
The laughter faded. “Don’t you see? The firmer you grip, the faster everything falls apart.”
Apara wordlessly pleaded her sister to silence. That Sevaka had survived was the only shaft of sunlight in troubled skies. She’d hoped the younger woman would have the wit to hold her tongue – that Lady Kiradin might stir herself to forgiveness. Those foolish hopes faded as Sevaka warmed to her theme.
“So certain in your strength,” she sneered. “The proud Kiradin matriarch. The rocky shore upon whom the waves of history break. But you’re blind. Too blind to see the lesson.”
“And what lesson is that?” Lady Kiradin advanced a pace with every crisply enunciated word.
“That the weak only need one another to be strong. I hope they tear you apart.”
Lady Kiradin trembled, her composure scattered to the winds. “My daughter is dead!” she screamed. “Set this prizrak on the pyre. I want to see it burn!”
Josiri emerged from the armoury, already cursing the sweltering afternoon sun. Only lingering memories of near-misses at Davenwood prevented him from having the layered steel plates and padded jerkin peeled back off. And so he remained, a crab roasting in a shell not his own.
He counted seventy knights, and perhaps fifty hearthguard in a mix of Reveque, Krain and Akadra livery. Scarcely more than a hundred blades, and Ebigail Kiradin had a city.
Viktor remained unyielding as ever, Malachi distracted. An older man stood close by, his fingers tapping idly on a control amulet. He reminded Josiri of Gavamor, now dead at Makrov’s order.
“Now that’s a sight,” said Izack. “A southwealder in full armour. Shouldn’t you be in the shadows, readying a knife?”
Josiri spoke before Viktor could offer rebuke. “Maybe later. It’ll give you time to whip up some support. I’ve never known north fight south without at least ten to one advantage.”
Malachi looked at the flagstones. Viktor’s lip curled in amusement. Izack stared. Josiri grew uncomfortably aware that Izack had his ten to one odds close by, and then more if he chose.
Izack threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Oh, I like him. You’re not hiding any more hereabouts?”
“We’ll have to make do.” Viktor nodded at the old man with the amulet. “Josiri, this is High Proctor Elzar Ilnarov. He’ll assist us with the kraikons.”
Josiri’s ears pricked up at the guarded reverence. “As easy as that?”
Elzar shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’ve already fallen foul of a krai-kon with a corrupted enchantment. There are bound to be more. Lady Kiradin’s been stealing them for months.”
“Hang about,” said Izack. “Stealing kraikons? Are you telling me she had a bunch sitting around in a warehouse, just waiting for this?”
He bristled. “Not exactly. I had a chance to examine some remains. The alterations are subtle and remain hidden until triggered. I expect Lady Kiradin had a tame proctor set them loose in the city until they were needed. Who’d notice? Who complains about too many kraikons?”
Josiri cast his mind back to Eskavord, the silhouettes of the bronze giants dark against sunshine. “I could have managed with fewer, these past years.”
“So might we all today,” said Viktor. “We’ve no way to know how many are Ebigail’s, and how many aren’t.”
Izack scratched the back of his head. “I just hope you’re right about folk coming to their senses, otherwise it’s going to get very lonely up there.” He threw a salute at the assembled soldiers. “All right, lads and lasses. Time to be heroes.”
The captain at their head, the soldiery filed into the street.
“Go,” said Malachi. “Try not to do anything foolish.”
Josiri snorted. “Too late. You’re not coming?”
“I’ll only get in the way. My weapons are words, not swords. Remember?”
He nodded. In many ways it was the correct decision – the practical decision. So why then did Josiri have the sense that something else lay hidden behind Malachi’s eyes?
Viktor beckoned. “Come. Time grows short. Be well, Malachi.”
The other nodded mutely and waved them to the gate. “Go. Carry my greeting to Ebigail.”
A heavy tramp of feet. A swirl of dust in the parched courtyard. Then they were gone. Malachi’s grimace, so long held back, stole across his face.
Lily arrived at his shoulder. Her face was pale save for her livid, crusted wounds. His heart went out to her, as it had from their first reunion. The Essamere physician had done her best to stitch them closed, but Lily would bear those marks as long as she lived.
“Are they gone?” she asked.
“They are.” He braced himself for an argument renewed. It wasn’t that Lily didn’t understand. Goddess, but she understood better than he did. But understanding was only ever half the battle. “I should go too.”
Her face fell. “I wish you didn’t have to do this.”
“So do I. But what else is there? Who else is there? Krain?”
“Then I’ll go.”
“We both know that won’t work.” He took her head in his hands. “How many times have you told me to do better?”
Her eyes glistened. “Just once.”
“And how often have you wished that of me?”
Her shoulders trembled with reluctant laughter. “On more occasions than I can count.”
A tear trickled down her cheek. In that moment, he wavered. It would be so easy to remain at the chapterhouse, in the company of his wife and children. To let others fight battles that were his.
“If I’d listened before, maybe none of this would be necessary.” He smoothed a thumb across Lily’s cheek, brushed the tear away. So many years wasted on coldness and quarrel, and now it was too late. “The fault is mine . . . but my heart belongs to you.”
Sorrow hardening to determination, Malachi let his hands fall and strode purposefully to the gate. He halted at Lily’s call.
“I’m proud of you, Malachi Reveque. Come home to me.”
Lily stood framed in the archway, burdened but unbowed. Without a word, he pressed on into the streets.
Fifty-Nine
Josiri heard the low, close-harmony dirge of hymns soon after leaving the chapterhouse. Though distance made the words im
possible to sift, the melodies were plain enough. Ridiculous at first, they made disturbing sense on further contemplation. Ebigail intended great change. The hymns offered ties to the past and a promise that the future would not stray.
“Halt!”
The cry rang out from a line of toppled wagons. King’s blue uniforms and worried faces lined the timber crest. Banners fluttered limply overhead, the numerals and spread-winged badge of the 7th Regiment barely visible. Two kraikons stood silently behind, swords held at guard.
Viktor quickened his pace.
“Stay back!” The challenger’s voice rose in pitch. “Stay back!”
Crossbows appeared along the barricade and on the rooftops behind. Enough to rip the heart from any advance.
“Drakonback!” bellowed Izack. “Form drakonback!”
The Essamere ranks closed tight about Josiri, his shield locked tight between Izack’s to his left and another knight’s to his right. The sun turned dark as the second rank hoisted their shields high. And all of it without a missed step.
Only Viktor advanced alone. He hadn’t even drawn his sword.
“I know that voice!” His words echoed along the cramped street. “Moldrov! Is that you?”
An older man in a major’s uniform appeared on the barricade. He raised his hand, fingers skyward – the precursor to the signal to loose. “Don’t make me give the order, my lord!”
“A long time since we held the Ravonn together.”
“I remember it well.”
Viktor halted. “Then you know the only way to stop me is to shoot. You know what’s about to happen. Is that what we fought for on the border?”
Finally catching up to Viktor, the drakonback slowed to a stop. Josiri’s arm ached from holding the shield level. His shoulders were raw from the press of ill-fitting armour. Every breath tasted of metal-tinged sweat, and the sour exhalations of his fellows.
“They’re traitors!” shouted Moldrov. “And I hear you’re a witch.”
“Then where is the trial? Where is the proof?” The claymore scraped clear from its slings. “Shoot if you must. Otherwise, get out of my way.”
Josiri caught his breath. The overlaid shields of the drakonback would stop most quarrels. But Viktor . . . ?
Moldrov’s hand dropped. “Let them through.”
Josiri sighed his relief. Izack gave a grim chuckle.
“Bring him down!” A new voice rang out from the barricades. A Freemont hearthguard appeared on the crest. She pointed a quavering finger down at Viktor. “Bring them all down!”
Crossbows levelled anew in uncertain hands. Moldrov’s expression, suffused with reluctance a heartbeat before, grew hard. “I’ve made my decision.”
“Akadra’s a witch! Those with him are traitors!”
“Then they belong in the grove, with the other witches and traitors, don’t they?” He turned away, no longer addressing the furious hearth-guard, but his soldiers. “They go through.”
Izack tutted. “Shields down! It’s gone awful boring out here!”
The drakonback unfolded. Sunlight flooded in, bringing a welcome breeze to Josiri’s skin. Viktor started towards the barricade.
“No!”
The hearthguard rounded on the nearest kraikon. Her hand went to her control amulet. The bronze giant crackled to life. Soldiers scattering before it, the kraikon mounted the barricade.
Izack’s sword came up. “Until Death!”
“Until Death!” The knights surged forward, Josiri with them.
Behind the barricade, the second kraikon awoke. Letting its sword fall, it vaulted the barricade. Without slowing, it closed one hand about the first kraikon’s neck and planted the other in the small of its back.
Glass, brick and timber gave way with a splintering crash as the first kraikon struck the nearest house. With a mournful rumble, the roof collapsed, burying both constructs. Golden light crackled across exposed brick and leapt skyward.
“Oh dear,” muttered Elzar, hand falling from his own amulet. “Two more to repair.”
Josiri grinned with relief and stared up at the barricade. The hearth-guard was on her knees, a sword at her back. Moldrov slipped the amulet from her neck and tossed it into the street.
“How can we help?” he asked.
“Hold this street,” said Viktor. “If this goes badly, we’ll need a line of retreat. Can you do that?”
Moldrov nodded. He raised his voice, staring up and down the barricade. “Lady Kiradin’ll call that treason, so if anyone wants to leave, now’s the time.”
No one moved. Moldrov nodded in satisfaction. “Lumestra be with you.”
Malachi edged down the stairway. Even with the sun blazing bright, this portion of the dockside lay heavily in shadow. Ramshackle buildings leaned in like forest eaves. Crooked chimneys clawed skyward like bare branches. Here, as in the old town, the streets were deserted, but they were deserted in a different way. The eyes dogging Malachi’s footsteps weren’t fearful, but predatory. Curiosity held them at bay, but curiosity wouldn’t last.
Heart hammering harder with every step, he descended deeper into the knot of alleyways. The stench made his throat gag and his eyes water. There were no sewers down here below water-level, no rush to carry away the gutter-mulch.
Handkerchief held to nose and mouth, he pressed on, heading always downhill. Sun-motifs on lintels and cornerstones gave way to serpentine swirls, themselves half-hidden beneath crude daubings of spread wings. Not the wings of a serathi, but a crow, or a raven.
Not for the first time, he wished he’d listened to Lily. Most didn’t leave Dregmeet the same as they entered. Some didn’t leave at all. The hopes he’d entertained faded. Behind, they left only the prospect of a slit throat and a grave among the grime.
At last, the alleyway opened up onto a narrow square. A marble fountain sat at the very heart, its waters limp and clogged – the cheeks of its statue stained by black tears. Woman from the waist up and snake below, her face was curiously bereft of malice. Wings spread behind, the mass of uneven wooden spars and rotting feathers bound to the stone by fraying rope. What other art the fountain had once borne was long since lost beneath generations of scrawl.
Beyond, a church sat sullen and dark. Its squared-off bell towers were of a design that had passed out of use long before Malachi’s birth – before even the Republic had risen from the ashes of Malatriant’s rule. Broken windows leered like narrowed eyes. Bowed walls strained between the weight of black ivy. Mist trickled between the worn headstones and headless serathi of the tiny churchyard.
Struck by sudden dizziness, Malachi stared up past jettied timbers. He caught no sight of the sun, only distant cracks of blue sky. He was truly down in the dregs. That he’d come willingly was no consolation.
“Malachi Reveque.” A patch of gloom about the fountain shifted form. Green eyes gleamed beneath a grey hood. “You are a long way from home. This is a place for those that have no place.”
“I . . .” He clenched his fist to quell its tremors. “I come to petition the Parliament of Crows.”
“Is that so?” The figure drifted closer. “And what do you offer?”
Hairs prickled on the back of Malachi’s neck. He glanced over his shoulder. There were grey shapes in the alleyway, and feather-cloaked kernclaws amid the chimneys. Watching. Waiting.
He turned his attention back to the fountain – to the elder cousin who waited silently for an answer.
“That’s for the Parliament’s ears.”
For a long time, the elder cousin said nothing. A bell tolled, low and mournful. The church gate yawned back into mist-wreathed darkness.
“They will hear you.” The elder cousin drifted away. “Come.”
After only the briefest hesitation, Malachi followed him into the mists.
Rosa jerked awake, roused by the clamour of battle. Bleary eyes strove to make sense of what she beheld. The panicked crowd fleeing from the hilltop. The buckling cordon of king’s blue uniforms on
the grove’s edge. Kraikon trading blows to shake the sky. And in the thick of it, a wedge of green uniforms, glittering in the sun. Had the Hadari come? Was Tressia invaded?
“Rosa?” The voice scraped like sand on skin, but savage glee shone beneath. “Hold on, Rosa!”
Sevaka?
Rosa twisted her head. Ravaged flesh tore anew on mooring spikes. It was Sevaka, bound and tied – not nailed – to a second gibbet set within the pyre. Like Rosa, her feet sat mere inches above the stacked timber. Dozens more gibbets stood in the outer ring of trees. Empty nooses spoke to purpose unfulfilled. A knot of bound prisoners within a ring of swords made that purpose plain.
A little further distant, Ebigail Kiradin stood in a knot of hearth-guard, staring out across the chaos with a rigid expression.
Rosa stared again at the carnage. The green was not that of the Hadari, but of Essamere. Her Essamere. Her comrades. And there at their head. Viktor. The friend she’d betrayed. He’d come for her. And now he’d die for it.
All her fault.
“You mustn’t think badly of yourself.” The Raven sat cross-legged beneath her feet, fingers drumming idly on logs. “Everybody dies, sooner or later.”
Was she really so transparent? No wonder Ebigail had twisted her so easily. “Why?” she croaked. “Why . . . are you . . . here?”
The Raven cracked a smile. “Why not? It promises to be an interesting afternoon.”
The line of king’s blue broke. Viktor didn’t blame them. Most were constables, trained for keeping peace and for containing crowds of the sort that tore and clawed at one another as they sought to escape the grove. Holding firm against the Essamere onslaught was another matter entirely.
“Hold!” he bellowed. “Stay together!”
The Essamere wedge shook itself back into shape, hearthguard moving to fill gaps emptied by ill-luck.
“Run back to her ladyship!” Izack shouted at the retreating line. “She might have spines you can borrow!”
“A little decorum, captain,” said Viktor. “These are our people.”
