Ansen had fled Cascin for more than one reason. When he had entered his mother’s chambers to play his game, he had not dreamed it would kill her—he’d known she was ill, but not the extent of her weakness. Her death had hit him hard; the murder-guilt of what felt uncomfortably like matricide weighed on Ansen’s shoulders. But that in itself was not enough to make him regret the actions leading to it. If guilt burned his soul, so did resentment, his need for revenge, the darkness that claimed half his sight, his devotion to a king called Sif. In his letter to the court of Miranei he had introduced himself as Ansen of Cascin, nephew by marriage to King Dynan and cousin to Anghara Kir Hama…who had spent several years in hiding in Cascin and was now safely in Castle Bresse. But there was a possibility the letter might never reach Sif’s hands, some royal secretary might simply toss away a missive purporting to be a sighting of one known to have been buried in the family vault years ago. When Ansen saddled his bay and pointed him toward Miranei, his feelings may have been muddied and confused by his mother’s death, but there was, nonetheless, a single burning imperative easily discernible through the chaos of his thoughts. I must go to him and tell him…I must go to him myself.
His horse cast a shoe in the middle of nowhere, when he was still more than two days’ ride from Miranei. Ansen lost valuable time hunting for a smith, then chanced upon one who looked as though he had spent the last week carousing and was only now hitting the full stride of his hangover. The man’s eyes were narrow and bloodshot, and he worked very slowly, as though he was infinitely fragile and an inadvertently hard tap of his hammer might shatter his broad, calloused fingers. Ansen could only stand and watch him, fretting uselessly over the hours slipping by.
With good reason, as it turned out. When he rode into Miranei, days later, sweaty and tired and his horse lathered with effort, he discovered Sif had already left the city to ride to an unspecified destination. It was a matter of considerable conjecture on the outskirts of Miranei that the direction he took had not been south, as might be expected, given the news of Tath and near-constant border skirmishes, but east.
The news greeted Ansen as he came wearily into the common room of a Miranei han. All he had wanted was to pass through on the way to his room, to try and find supper, a bath and a bed—whichever presented itself first—but he was brought up short by a stray tendril of conversation.
“Shaymir? What would the king want with Shaymir? It’s Tath that’s the troublemakers, anyone could tell you.” The voice was scathing in its contempt.
“Perhaps he’s gone to try and get them to help against Tath,” someone else hazarded.
The first voice returned, preceded with a snort. “Shaymir? As allies? That’s a nation of copper miners and pampered princelings, with nothing in between except a couple of crazies who live out in the desert and pretend to be Khelsie abominations. What would Roisinan want with the likes of them? What would the king want with them? One Sif is worth an army of Shaymir.”
Ansen agreed with the principle, where Sif was concerned. He had misgivings, however, about the other’s terse dismissal of Shaymir as a source of fighting men—he had sparred for years with Kieran, and there was nothing soft about him. An army of Kierans might well prove a formidable proposition. But Ansen knew Sif had not gone to Shaymir. There was more to the east of Miranei than the Brandar Pass. There was the river Rada; and beyond it, Castle Bresse.
For a moment he considered interjecting and telling the assembled company where Sif really was, and who had sent him there. But the knot of people on whom he’d been eavesdropping sat close together in a tight bunch and looked as if they would not welcome insolent intrusions from a stranger. Especially one claiming intimate knowledge of Sif Kir Hama’s itinerary less than an hour after he’d ridden in from the nether regions of Roisinan. Instead, Ansen turned away in pursuit of his original goals. These had now assumed urgency; he would stay in Miranei only as long as it took him to give his exhausted horse a few hours’ rest and to organize provisions for another journey. Then he would be out again, following Sif. It had been Ansen who had started this ball rolling; and Ansen meant to be at Sif’s side when they brought Anghara to him. Only that, in his mind, would wash the guilt from him—it was not Ansen who had killed Chella of Cascin, it was Anghara! Only that would pay for his ruined sight. He paused to glance once more at the crowded common room. The stories he could tell! He’d have them all hanging on his every word…but there was no time. The han-keeper was at his elbow, and Ansen turned to pin him with a smouldering gaze from his one good eye.
“Supper in my room,” he said crisply, “and a bath. Have someone tend my horse; I’ll be leaving at sunrise tomorrow.”
“But my lord said…” the han-keeper began, seeing his chance of profit slipping away.
“I changed my mind,” said Ansen, turning away.
This particular han-keeper had not had many occasions for entertaining visiting nobility, his particular establishment being too far from the gentry’s beaten path. That did not mean he could not recognize aristocratic arrogance when it was thrown in his face, and Ansen had more than his fair share. The han-keeper did not argue. He simply sketched the obeisance which seemed to be called for and departed to fulfill his orders.
Ansen was true to his word; the cook, who was the hankeeper’s wife, had to be woken to prepare his breakfast in the morning, as Ansen was astir even before the hardworking han proprietors. It was still dark when he rode out, although the sky was beginning to brighten in the east. Ansen caught himself grinning like an idiot at one point, watching the slow birth of the sun, pinning down a stray thought like a talisman: It’s a good omen. I’m riding into the dawn. The horse was fresh after a substantial feed and a night’s rest, and Ansen made good time; but Sif still had a considerable head start. But soon they would meet, the acolyte and his hero, the knight and his king. Not that Ansen was a full knight, not yet, but others had been knighted for valorous deeds while they were still a few months’ shy of their final coming of age. Ansen allowed himself to slip into a daydream, in which he knelt bareheaded before Sif and the king leaned forward, grasping Ansen’s arm and bidding him rise…Rise, my ally and my friend…Sir Ansen of Cascin…If Ansen still had two good eyes in this dream, he closed his mind to that. Anghara and Bresse were to be his price. After that…who knew but that miracles might still happen.
Sif and Ansen weren’t the only ones heading to Bresse. Feor, driven by a sudden premonition of disaster, had packed a few meagre belongings, accepted Lyme’s blessing and one of his horses, and was himself hurrying to the Sisters’ castle. Cascin was considerably closer to Bresse than was Miranei; Feor had the shorter way to go, and should have been at Bresse long before any of the hunters. But his journey seemed to have been conceived under an unlucky star, and he met with delay after delay. All the while he tried to reach the white tower with a mind call, a warning of danger; but either he was getting old and his gift was fading fast or there was a cocoon of silence around Bresse he didn’t know how to break. By the time he got to the village where March had made his home, he was drawn and exhausted—and March, from what he could gather when he inquired after him, was gone.
The village was far too small to rate a proper han, but Feor came to an agreement as to lodgings with the village miller. The miller provided his unexpected guest with a modest supper and a clean pallet before the fire. Feor wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to sleep, but a vision burned in his brain and would not leave him alone. There was a cloud before him, a black cloud, and many of his friends were either trapped inside or rushing toward it. Beyond that dark cloud Feor’s Sight could not go, except in flashes that seemed to presage death and disaster, and perhaps a proud young king, drunk on power or victory, stabbing a shining sword into the black billows which hid the sky. Anghara was in this. March had gone rushing in. Sif was coming.
By morning, as merely the last in a long series of troubles, misfortunes and plain bad luck, Feor had developed a high fever and
lay shivering on his pallet, almost incoherent. His host summoned the village healer, who prescribed a regimen of hot herb tea and complete bed rest. Feor was far too ill to protest; by the time he had come sufficiently to his senses, it was already too late.
The arrival of Sif and his entourage had reduced the han-keeper of Radas Han first to incoherence and then to stark silence. Sif had in effect taken the han over almost completely. Guests who were staying in parts he had not occupied quickly found that urgent business called them elsewhere. Sif was not pleasant company. Some of his men, grim-faced and well armed, had parted from the main body and commandeered two flat-boats, upon which they had drifted downstream on the Rada River. It was worth a man’s life to ask where they were going, although there were rumors that one of the boatmen had overheard the name of Halas Han and, from thence, a place called Cascin. Sif selected patrols from those who remained; they came and went in shifts, departing mysteriously up the Rada toward the foothills and coming back when another had taken their place. There was nothing up there except Castle Bresse. That was hardly an object of siege to draw a king from a southern border beset with brewing war. People watched and wondered.
The rumor of Cascin had gone out, though, and it was this that greeted Ansen a day’s ride from the han where Sif waited. Given the choice, Ansen would have ridden the entire distance right then, but he had already driven his horse hard that day, and his only reward for such an effort might have been a cold camp midway between two hans. He was close enough now, he could afford to take a brief rest. His faithful bay had foam around its muzzle and stood with its head drooping with exhaustion. Ansen had tossed the reins to a willing stable boy and strode into the common room of the village han, only to look around sharply as a familiar name caught his attention.
“Cascin, is it? Are ye sure?” The voice sounded uneasy. “I’ve got kin there; my sister married a good man, he was a wizard with horses, Lord Lyme took him on at Cascin a few years hence.”
“Cascin they said, I’m positive,” said another voice, more gravelly. Ansen focused on the speaker—a big man, broad shouldered, his face all but smothered in an explosion of red beard. He had brawny arms where corded muscles rippled like ropes; a river-man, gnarled and pickled by his trade. Ansen sidled closer. “I’ve been doing that run for years. That’s where they were headed, and they didn’t look like they were goin’ for pleasure, either.”
“How many?”
The river-man glanced down at his hands, his short fingers jerking resignedly once or twice. He was no scholar; Ansen had grown up on the river and had been in and out of Halas Han often enough to know his type.
“Dunno, for sure,” the river-man said at length, after some deliberation. “More than ten.”
Ansen, quite pale, moved away and gestured for wine. It occurred to him for the first time that his actions may have brought ruin on his house and family. Sif may not have taken kindly the news that Anghara had been sheltered in secret at Cascin. It was warm in the room, but Ansen shivered violently beneath his cloak. He was suddenly torn: home to Cascin, to see if there was something evil happening, or on, to Sif, to the fulfillment of his dream? There was no chance that going to Sif might also stop any planned act of retaliation on his behalf—orders had already been given, the soldiers, if this river-man’s story was to be believed, already on the river. Riding cross-country at breakneck speed, Ansen might be able to forestall them…and then what? Would they stop if he stood before them and told them nay? The twins…his father…his little sister…the house that was his inheritance…had he gambled them all, and lost?
The night that Feor shook in his fever and Ansen agonized over his dwindling options also saw March take what was to be at once his first and final step into the black cloud Feor had foreseen for him. He had been to Bresse before—not so frequently as to cause comment, but often enough to satisfy himself of Anghara’s continued well-being. He’d been there far too often for either comfort or safety during the last few weeks, as word of Sif and his foray started to filter through the village grapevines. His passionate pleas to both Lady Morgan and to Anghara herself seemed to be ineffectual.
Anghara, at least, had the sensitivity to fear Sif’s anger, and suggested that the community relocate, at least temporarily, into the mountains. As far as Anghara knew, only Morgan and perhaps her second in command knew Brynna Kelen’s true identity; it was hardly fair to throw every Sister in Bresse to the wolf who was coming for the changeling in their midst, of whom they had known nothing. But Morgan, with a strange, almost supernatural calm, had insisted the project in hand had to be completed. The two were working on an important and entirely esoteric purpose March was incapable of understanding, which seemed to render them, or at the very least Lady Morgan, completely unable to comprehend the danger looming for them all. What neither March nor Anghara realized was that Morgan had told the community of the real reason behind Sif’s coming in good time, leaving the Sisters free to choose whether they wished to go or stay. Some of the younger novices, still ignorant of the truth, had been spirited away before Sif’s arrival, but most of the Sisters turned down the chance to leave, aware of danger but refusing to confront it by fleeing their tower. For the ones who were ambivalent, it soon became obvious they had waited too long. By the time some thought to try and play it safe, to flee or retreat into the mountains, it was too late. Sif’s patrols were already in position.
But there were some who wanted to go, and March snatched at the idea. “Would they take the princess with them?” he had asked of Morgan at their last meeting. His loyalties were still pledged first and foremost to Anghara and the true Kir Hama line; he was ready to do his utmost to help Bresse in any way he could, but only after he saw Anghara safe. March would have been willing to take any Sister who cared to go into the mountains and lead them through the back ways down into Shaymir. Perhaps the prince would offer them shelter there. But only if Anghara was with them, if Anghara was safely out of Bresse.
Morgan gazed at him steadily. “Nothing could get from here into the hills unobserved,” she said. “Sif has learned from his captain’s failure. The area between the tower and the mountains is the most heavily patrolled.” She hesitated for a moment, then gave March a secret kept for many years. “There is a secret way. But it comes out close to the han, and that would be crawling with Sif’s men. There also the patrols would be thick. And if they discovered a secret entrance into the tower…”
“I could take care of one patrol,” March said. “Until the next one came, the path would be open. If any want to leave, I will help them. But I must try to get the princess out of here somehow. Kerun and Avanna! If Sif comes upon her penned in this place, you must know she would not live to see another day! And you…you would do well to consider going with them, lady. All of you. Sif will never forget what you have done.”
“If there are those who would go, and if there is a chance for them to make it, I would be happy to see them succeed,” said Morgan. “I will even make sure Anghara is with them. I know she can expect nothing but doom at Sif’s hands; for him, she is already dead—did he not watch her laid in the family vault in Miranei years ago? If he were to kill her here it would be no more than putting the seal of truth onto something long accepted as fact. If you can get her safely away, you have my blessing. But as for myself…I stay.”
This was why March was out alone on this moonless night, waiting for the patrol that had drawn the midnight shift. It was a last chance—let one patrol go missing, and Sif would react swiftly and violently. But if they could ensure Sif did not know of the patrolless shift until it was time for a changing of the guard, it might still be possible to evacuate into the mountains. March had been studying the pattern of the patrols since their inception; the guards were due to meet and change directly in front of the copse in which he crouched. March planned to eliminate the three who took over the new shift, quickly and as soundlessly as possible. Bresse would be waiting for his signal; it would be their last
chance.
Except that Sif had made an unexpected change of plans.
When March saw the relief shift arrive with only two men, he had little time to think of anything other than that his task had been made easier. Perhaps it was this premature relief and the urgency to complete the unpalatable job—March had always been a soldier, a knight, never an assassin in the dark—which combined to make him careless. The arrival of a further two men, just as he was pulling his knife from between the ribs of his second victim, caught him completely unaware. He had no time to do anything but give a grunt of surprise—the hand which already held his bloodied knife made an instinctive motion of defense, but the small blade could not parry the downward swing of the bright sword already in the soldier’s hand. It was over quickly. One of the men loped back the way he had come, to make a report and bring reinforcements; the one who had wielded the sword knelt in the grass and peered dispassionately into his victim’s face, where life was fading quickly. The soldier bent forward when he thought the dying man whispered something, very softly, but he was too late; March was already gone. The words he had spoken hung in the air, unheard. Rima…my queen…I could not save her…
There was no signal to Bresse that night. Morgan, who had known there would not be, gathered the Sisters of Bresse into a last council. Anghara, who was not a part of this but who had known of March’s plan, watched on the walls, alone, until dawn began to paint the mountains to the east pink and gold. When Morgan summoned her at last, she went slowly, almost in a daze, beginning to comprehend the only thing March’s silence could mean. Her eyelids were swollen, her eyes bloodshot; she had never looked less like a princess, more like a child driven past the edge of endurance.
The Hidden Queen Page 17
