The Quickening

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘Well, she’s not pregnant, I can vouch for that. It’s why she left the table so suddenly — her monthly flux had arrived.’

  It was probably nervousness at this precarious conversation but Crys could no longer stifle a laugh at the thought of Wyl dealing with women’s ailments.

  ‘I can’t imagine what’s so amusing, Crys,’ Valentyna said in a vaguely injured tone.

  ‘There is nothing funny, your highness. I think I must be losing my own wits,’ he said, clearly uncomfortable.

  Valentyna was sure he knew more than he was telling her but could not fathom what it was that he might be hiding. ‘Is there anything else you know which could help me, Crys? Please, I feel like I’m navigating through a quagmire.’

  He gave her a look of tender sympathy. ‘Your highness, Ylena is true to you. After all that Celimus has perpetrated on her own family and the family she married into, her loyalties have changed. We all love Morgravia but we would rather fight on the side of Briavel as long as King Celimus sits on Morgravia’s throne.’ He surprised her by going down on one knee. ‘You can trust me and you can trust Ylena. She is fearlessly casting herself into the lion’s den you could say. Whether Celimus has her killed or not, it doesn’t matter — we will never see Ylena again, that much I can assure you.’ The last was said bitterly.

  Valentyna reached to touch his bowed head, moved by what he had said. ‘Oh, Crys, I don’t want her death on my hands.’

  ‘She has nothing else to give but her life. Your highness, Ylena doesn’t want to live any more — can’t you see that? That is why she can give it up so recklessly and for someone she loves.’

  He felt he had gone too far by mentioning the word love, and Valentyna’s anguished response confirmed it.

  ‘I don’t want her love, Crys!’ The Queen was shocked by the pain that moved across the duke’s open expression at her words.

  ‘Then accept her sacrifice graciously and use it for your own ends, as she asks.’

  ‘I don’t even understand her intentions by going to Felrawthy,’ Valentyna replied bitterly.

  Crys stood. ‘I imagine she means to disrupt those talks in the north,’ he said. ‘And somehow bargain for the deployment of the Legion back to Pearlis so your people can breathe easily again and get on with celebrating a royal wedding.’ He took her hand. ‘I don’t think you can escape that, your majesty, but you can demand equality. You can influence how this new era for Morgravia and Briavel will be felt by people. Believe me, if we can find a way to overthrow Celimus we will, but you must proceed with this marriage and do whatever you can if we fail.’

  She had heard it before from others and given herself the same sound advice. It was time she got on with living it now. ‘You’re right. No doubt we shall see one another in Pearlis.’

  ‘I might not go straight to the Morgravian capital, your highness,’ Crys said, as if the decision had only just arrived in his mind.

  ‘Not Felrawthy?’ she asked, fear in her tone.

  ‘No, that will have to wait, your highness. The time to seize back my family estate is not yet ripe. I’ve actually been thinking about Elspyth.’

  Relief softened Valentyna’s expression. ‘You’re going after her?’

  ‘I think I should. She’s a resilient woman and knows her mind, but she’s still only a girl alone in a strange realm with no weapons or protection —’

  ‘Heading off into the Razor Kingdom to rescue a prisoner of its King,’ the Queen finished, shaking her head. ‘I’m glad, Crys. Thank you.’

  The duke shrugged. ‘Elspyth was good to me when I needed to be reminded who I was and what needed to be done. If not for her insistence I would have gone tearing back to Tenterdyn and doubtless achieved nothing.’

  ‘And lost your own life, and Felrawthy would have lost its duke.’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘She saved me from my own stupidity and anger.’

  ‘Well, you still have every right to be angry, to want vengeance, Crys, and because of Elspyth’s advice you might yet get it.’

  He sensed the sorrow behind her encouraging words. ‘I’m sorry that you don’t have the same opportunity, your highness.’

  She forced a small smile. ‘Oh, I’ll find my own way.’

  Crys knew as well as she did that her comment was bravado, but he returned her smile with a squeeze of her hand.

  ‘How will you follow her?’ Valentyna asked, changing the subject.

  ‘I’ll start with Liryk, I suppose. I suspect your commander is rather gratified that Elspyth is out of your life, your highness’ — he grinned as she nodded conspiratorially — ‘but he might help by asking his guards if they saw her leave.’

  ‘What good will that do?’

  ‘Well, I imagine Elspyth was in a hurry to leave Werryl and be long gone by the time we returned. That being the case, I believe she might have hitched a ride with someone.’ He shrugged. ‘It might help me follow her, that’s all.’

  The Queen nodded. ‘Be safe, Crys. We shall meet again soon, I hope.’

  He kissed her hand with feeling, and then the last of her allies left the Briavellian monarch to her loneliness and bleak thoughts.

  THIRTEEN

  AFTER LEAVING WERRYL, Wyl made straight for a hide of Faryl’s in Crowyll and dug up a pouch of money. He was pleased he could still remember some of the locations of her stashed coin, and although he did not care for using blood money, in this instance he was in dire need of it to save more blood being spilled.

  He galloped his horse as far and hard as the beast would permit, then travelled on through the night more slowly and spent most of the coin on a new horse the following morning. Although he had not slept he was determined to press on and the replacement animal was fresh and happy to be given its head. His plan was to follow the border as closely as he could, entering Morgravia only when he believed he was far enough north to cross directly into Felrawthy. He could not risk stumbling upon any Legionnaires and being recognised.

  At around midday the next day it was his good fortune to ride into the village of Derryn at a time when he not only had to rest his horse but needed food and sleep himself, and, most importantly, a chance to bathe. The pain had gone and he felt as well as could be expected considering his fatigue but it seemed that the bleeding would continue for a few days yet. How inconvenient and messy it all was.

  Given the choice, Wyl decided he never wanted to be a woman again. The grooming, the curtseying, the requirement to be elegant and gracious at all times — these were merely a few of its annoying aspects. He pitied Valentyna, and yet he admired her too. Somehow she managed to balance the demands of being a woman with a strength of her own. She wasn’t ‘frilly’, for want of a better word. Ylena had been frilly, but then that was all that had been expected of her since the day of her birth. A daughter born into a wealthy noble family, particularly one as distinguished as the Thirsks, had one main task: to marry well. To achieve this she was educated in every possible pastime which could enhance her opportunities, from how to run an effective household to the art of embroidery. King Magnus had employed a small army of women to teach Ylena such niceties from her arrival at Pearlis at a tender age. And his sister had proved herself to be an adept student.

  Fresh sorrow overcame Wyl as he pondered yet again how little Ylena had deserved what had befallen her. She had no enemies, was always ready with a kind word for everyone and her smile could banish even the gloomiest of moods. She really was a beauty in every sense of the word. That her mind had been empty of the thoughts and ambitions which drove Valentyna was not Ylena’s fault. She was merely following form, whereas Valentyna was one of a kind. Yet Ylena’s life had unravelled over a matter of weeks and what should have been the happiest time of her life had plunged her into tragedy. Wyl felt a familiar nausea grip him and knew he must stop grieving like this over his sister. Ylena was dead and no amount of soul-searching or tears would restore her.

  Wyl knew his exhaustion and the monthly flux was con
tributing to his morbid feelings and was convinced that a decent meal and some rest would help to lift his spirits. As he walked the horse through the main street he found there was no inn but discovered by asking a young woman passing by that a widow by the name of Mona Dey ran a guest house in the village. After stabling the horse, paying for its care and making sure he could retrieve it with ease whenever he wanted, Wyl headed for the widow’s place.

  He paid Mona in advance, much to her delight, and was shown to a small, neat room at the back of her large dwelling. He learned from the chatty widow that her husband had been a wealthy trader who was miserly to say the least and had had a wandering eye for other women, especially whores. She had mouthed the final word silently. According to Mona, her husband had died between the legs of a buxom twenty-year-old, a blade driven into his back up to the hilt. She told the chilling tale with a sly relish and it brought back hideous memories for Wyl.

  ‘A pocketful of silver — that’s all the slut got for her trouble,’ Mona said smugly. ‘I got the rest.’ And she beamed. From then on her life had looked up and she had lived it to the full, deliberately spending her dead husband’s money with abandon in revenge for his meanness, until there was virtually nothing left. ‘I held back just enough to keep me off the streets,’ she told Wyl, with no trace of bitterness, ‘and now I take paying guests and live a quiet life.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it gets much quieter than Derryn,’ Wyl commented, surprised at the widow’s candidness.

  ‘You’re right there, my lady,’ Mona cried, and laughed as if he had cracked some great jest.

  As open as Mona Dey was about her own background, Wyl appreciated that she showed not the slightest interest in his. Either she was entirely self-centred or she was very canny, knowing that most strangers preferred not to discuss their business. It was strange, he thought, that innkeepers and their ilk had a reputation for being an inquisitive group of people. Wyl thanked the widow and paid her some extra coin for her discretion, for she had not even enquired why Ylena was travelling alone.

  The evening meal, Mona told her guest, was served at sunset and no later. Wyl grimaced and politely asked whether there was any possibility of a tray in his room now. He explained how tired he was and that his flux had fair drained him of all energy. A look of deep sympathy had come his way — definitely a special sorrow only women could share, he realised — and no doubt the generous coin rattling in her skirt pocket had encouraged Mona Dey to look kindly on the young noblewoman.

  ‘I’ll see what I can rustle up for you, dear,’ she said. ‘Oh my, I used to suffer it something awful at your age. And my Garth, he had no sympathy at all, still claiming his marital rights.’ Wyl really did not want to hear all of this, but apparently Mona Dey was starved of fresh listeners in Derryn so he adopted the right expression and paid attention. ‘And pain! Shar save me, I thought I was fit to die,’ she continued. ‘My mother had no sympathy. She said I should get used to it for it would be the curse for most of my life — my mother was a bitter woman, you see. My father died on her young and left her with a brood of children and no money. Her bleed was bad too and left her in poor shape one week of each moon and it meant she couldn’t work during some of those days and we went hungry.’

  The widow looked set to carry on discussing her mother’s moon cycles but Wyl feigned a swoon which stopped the monologue and had Mona rushing for cold flannels and smelling salts. When he seemed recovered, the widow suggested the young lady take a soak. There was a room in the house already set up for bathing. ‘I have some herbs which will ease that pain, dear,’ she offered kindly.

  Wyl was grateful to her and said as much, winning a wide smile from the widow. ‘And I’ll fetch you some raspberry leaf,’ she added. ‘Chew straight on it, my lady. Tastes like hell but far more effective for your condition than a weak brew.’

  Wyl stammered his thanks and allowed her to guide him to the bathing room which had a drain in one corner and a huge old tub which would more than swallow up Ylena’s exhausted body. He would have been happy to wash in cold water but Mona wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Heat is what you need, dear, for the ache.’

  Wyl did not want to start explaining that the ache was done; he just wanted peace and privacy now. So he let her fuss and organise for steaming jugs to be brought up by a small army of lads she paid to run to the smithy’s where a huge cauldron of water was kept on the fire permanently. The joy of finally closing the door on Mona’s chatter and climbing into the tub was second only to kissing Valentyna for the first time, when Wyl had been Romen and adored by her.

  Afterwards, he ate a meal of cold roast meat, potatoes simmered with cream and some cheese, before slipping between the well-worn but fresh sheets on Mona’s guest bed and drifting almost instantly into sleep.

  When he awoke he was disoriented. It was black outside and as quiet as a tomb. Mona had kindly left a candle in his room and it had burned down to a sputtering nub. He had been asleep for at least twelve hours he estimated. Careful to make no sound which would disturb the household he relieved himself into the chamber pot and hurriedly dressed in his dusty but comfortable riding clothes. Wyl did not like to sneak away without thanking Mona, but with no means to scrawl a note, the only way he could show his appreciation for her care was money, which he left on the re-made bed. He thought it unlikely she would think further on the young woman who had passed through her house, but if she did, she would remember Ylena kindly for her generosity.

  He could not risk making his way through the house so, thanking his lucky stars that he was on the first level, he climbed out of the window and dropped silently to the ground, rolling as he had been taught when he was a lad. He must have startled a badger or some other night creature on the fringe of the small wood that skirted the town for he heard the animal blundering disgruntedly back into the trees. He remained still, listening for any other sounds, but it seemed there was no one about. Nevertheless, he took the precaution of making his way to the stable via the backs of dwellings. As he had anticipated there was a sleeping stableboy in one corner who could barely rouse himself from his slumber at the young woman’s oddly timed arrival. When he did, he recognised the noblewoman, pointed towards a stall and mumbled something incoherent. Wyl was just glad to find his horse, saddle her and be off as quickly and quietly as he could.

  He ignored the fresh hunger pangs that gnawed at his belly and was out onto the open road again, Derryn behind him, within moments of leaving the stable. One more day’s riding, he guessed, and he would be able to cut into Morgravia and enter Felrawthy — back into the lair of Celimus and, perhaps, a chance to get himself killed and enter a new, more suitable body.

  Cailech sat in a secret cave on Haldor’s Tooth, pondering the situation that was about to unfold. The Grenadyne’s suggestion to forge an alliance with Morgravia had touched the very core of everything the Mountain King believed in. He was privately miffed such an obvious idea had not occurred to him in the past, for treating with Magnus and his General, Thirsk, would surely have been an easier process. He wondered why it was that he could see it all so clearly now and yet his own instincts had not offered the idea. Perhaps it was the fact that ever since Rashlyn’s arrival in the Razors he had derided any suggestion of forging links with Morgravia, but Cailech was not usually a man to be influenced by others. He tried to recall why he had put aside those early notions of living as neighbours alongside the bordering realm, but could find no sensible reason. He smirked at the notion that Rashlyn had somehow washed them from his mind. A ridiculous thought, considering the barshi’s loyalty to him.

  Nevertheless, when Aremys returned to the cave and reported on how the meeting with Celimus had gone, Cailech felt a surge of anxiety. Was he walking into his own death? Why did it feel as though he was seeing life so much clearer out here on the mountainside?

  ‘You are sure there is no trap?’ he asked Aremys.

  ‘No, sire. But I have made our way as safe as I can under the circumstances. C
elimus is organising for the hostages to be delivered as required, and I have taken out some additional insurance.’

  The mercenary explained that his bargaining tool was Ylena Thirsk, daughter and brother of Morgravia’s two previous generals. The name carried weight with Cailech, and he had no qualms about using a Morgravian noblewoman to barter for their safety. There was just one question. ‘Well, where is she?’

  Aremys startled the King by laughing and shrugging. ‘I have no idea, sire. But that is a worry for another day. You will be back on your own soil before I have to consider what to do.’

  Cailech smiled to himself. He liked the way the large Grenadyne thought. Farrow had impressed him from their first meeting and, even though the mercenary clearly knew more than he was telling and had an uncanny interest in Galapek, Cailech privately considered the man a friend. He had never said as much but they both knew it; there was mutual respect and admiration there. Perhaps it was simply that, with his clear thinking and dry humour, Aremys reminded him of Lothryn. He missed Lothryn so deeply it actually pained him to dwell upon it.

  It had been the most agonising of discoveries that his closest friend and confidant had betrayed him. How could Loth have chosen the Morgravians over his own people, over his own King? Cailech had ranted as much to Myrt, who had kept a dull silence throughout but whose lack of words said much. Cailech quietly admired the man for his loyalty to his friend. Loth could have learned much from Myrt about brotherhood, honour and trust. Cailech’s pride would not permit him to show any mercy to his childhood friend, no matter how in love with the woman of Yentro he might have been or the fact that he had aided the Morgravians’ escape without harming any of the Razors’ warriors. It made no difference why Lothryn had made his choice, it mattered only that he had made it, and it was the wrong one.

  When news came that they were bringing Lothryn back alive, Cailech had wanted to slay him on the frosted stones of the fortress’s threshold. He could not bear to see his lifelong companion — now a traitor — step even one foot across it. But then Rashlyn had arrived to interfere with the King’s thoughts and persuade him to exact a higher penance.