As he stormed from the shrine, the sun was rising over the manor wall. Blinded, Corrain very nearly walked straight into Captain Arigo.
‘Well now.’ The old man shook himself like a fat hen in a dust bath. ‘Good day to you.’
Corrain contemplated Arigo’s broad shoulders and the flesh rolling generously over the top of the wide belt buckled tight around his hips. As long as he could remember, Arigo had been counting off the days till he could lay down his sword to sit in the sun and fish in the brook above the village.
Arigo looked Corrain pointedly up and down, his gaze lingering significantly on his mane of unkempt hair. ‘Do you want to rejoin the Halferan guard? Will you toe the line this time?’
If that was supposed to be a challenge, it sounded more like an appeal. Corrain could see some of the younger men, Reven in particular, watching from the gatehouse archway.
Corrain was sorely tempted to make the old man look a fool by shrugging off any such notion. But he couldn’t contemplate doing that even for a joke. Where else could he possibly go?
‘Yes Captain, I do and I will.’ He nodded dutifully.
Arigo’s relief was tempered by some consternation, before the old man got his expression in hand. ‘Then you must come up to scratch, groomed as befits the barony’s dignity,’ he said sternly ‘Get your hair cut and get rid of that slave chain.’
Corrain looked down at the manacle. ‘No, captain.’
‘What did you say?’ Arigo wasn’t feigning the question. He was taken aback. A moment more and he coloured, enraged. ‘If you expect to claim the privileges of food, fuel and shelter—’
‘I’ve sworn an oath to Talagrin.’ Corrain looked up at him. ‘I’ll lay this chain and my hair on his altar when the corsairs are defeated.’
He knew the old bladder of lard couldn’t argue with that. A vow was sacred, though Corrain did not propose to detail his angry impiety. A gust of wind drew a knotted lock of hair across his eyes and he regretted that impulse to claim his hair as well as the manacle, as he threw the fat old man’s orders back in his face.
No, he was glad he’d done it. Who did Arigo think he was to scold Corrain like some soil-stained ploughboy?
The old man narrowed his eyes, before glancing over towards the guard hall. A worm of doubt gnawed at Corrain’s certainty. He had been away for so long; did he have any allies left in the barracks? What about those men who’d been quietly satisfied to see him brought low after the utter folly of slipping between Starrid’s bed sheets?
Because fat old man or not, Captain Arigo didn’t seem ready to back down. Well, Corrain wasn’t going to. If he did, he might as well leave here and keep walking.
‘Captain!’
Both men turned their heads at the shout from the gatehouse. Fitrel was hurrying in, dragging a pimpled youth with tousled brown hair and on the verge of weeping.
‘Corsairs!’ Fitrel called out. ‘No,’ he added scornfully as two maidservants fluttered their white aprons like ducks catching a fox’s rank scent. ‘They won’t come this far inland. But the lad brings news from the shore.’ His glance swung from Arigo to Corrain and back again.
‘Inside, boy.’ Arigo flung his hand towards the guard hall door, convincingly commanding.
Corrain let the old man go ahead and followed after with a handful of other guards hurrying from all over the compound. He wondered privately if Arigo was as relieved as he was. They could have ended up stood there, like duelling swordsmen with their hilts in a bind, until the sun went down again. Corrain wouldn’t have thought old Arigo had that in him. He decided he could show the fat old man some respect, at least.
‘Fetch me the map!’ Arigo was calling out to one of the guardsman over by the shelves where such things were stowed, along with whetstones, oil for weapons and leather, waxed thread and anything else a trooper might need.
Corrain went to search the shelves. The lad Reven came to what he sought. ‘What do you want?’
‘An almanac.’ As Corrain searched the next shelf, he caught sight of Kusint. Freshly shaved and with his hair cropped back to coppery fuzz, the Forest youth was eating a hearty breakfast of fresh bread, cheese and bacon. One of the kitchen maids was idling beside him.
Meantime, the messenger was telling Arigo of a raid on a village to the south and west of the manor where the farmland met the saltings. Seven or eight leagues away. Corrain could see the map where the old man scratched a careful mark with his charcoal. Raided the day before. Corrain tallied up the charcoal marks. Already far too many and increasingly too close for comfort.
Over the next few days, more frightened boys like this one, from villages further afield, would straggle in. By the time the final reports of remotest theft, rape and murder arrived, ten and fifteen days later, the next high-springing tides would almost be upon them, promising fresh waves of raiders.
This was the endless litany of misery which had driven Lord Halferan to the desperate act that had been the death of him. With every man he trusted to tell of it encouraging him, Corrain included.
He needed an almanac, curse it. Corrain shoved rags and other detritus along a shelf. He’d lost track of the days and, besides, the parliament decreed the turn of the seasons from year to year, in between the fixed points of Solstice and Equinox. Every so often the barons added a day or so here and there when the calendar had to be rebalanced.
‘Here.’ The lad Reven offered him a little book printed on familiar coarse paper and bound with imperfectly shaped boards.
‘What day is it today?’ Corrain leafed swiftly through it, looking for the pages charting the phases of the moons. With the Greater circling the sky eight days faster than the Lesser, keeping track of both waxing and waning in relation to the other was a complex business. Easiest by far to look it up. ‘When’s the turn of the season?’
‘Forty first and For-Summer’s four mornings from now.’ Reven peered at the crudely printed pages. ‘What’s to do, captain?’ He sounded as frightened as the lad now weeping into Arigo’s ample embrace. ‘It’s been a bad year so far. Is it going to get worse?’
Corrain studied the course of the moons laid out on the smudged page, from full round to curved paring and back again. Never mind Archipelagan superstitions about coloured jewels in the sky. If the blind corsair had his fingers on the beat of this heavenly dance, no wonder he was promising a summer of plunder for his galleys.
From the start of For-Summer and right through the Solstice into the aft-season, the highest tides would surge time and time again. This summer the moons would favour the corsairs like no other year until their five year pattern had run its full course again, the end and new beginning marked by that rarest of nights, one with no trace of either moon.
So much for that. What use was him knowing that such tribulation lay ahead? Caladhrians had no way to know where the corsairs would land.
‘Captain? I mean, Corrain?’
He looked up at Reven. The lad’s resemblance to his dead uncle was more striking than ever and, worse, he was of an age with Hosh. It was too much to bear.
‘I need some air.’ He shoved his way out of the crowded barrack hall into the courtyard. But there was no escape for him there.
‘Corrain, is it?’ A woman had entered through the wicket cut into the double gate beneath the archway. ‘I’m Abiath—’
‘I know.’ Corrain wished he could walk away but his cursed boots felt nailed to the ground.
‘What of my boy?’ The woman looked at him. Not with any hope or even a hint of appeal. Her resignation was ten times worse.
‘I—’ What could Corrain tell her?
Then Kusint was at his side. ‘He was alive, the last time we saw him,’ he told Abiath. ‘More than that?’ He shook his head with honest regret. ‘We cannot say.’
‘The thirty first of Aft-Spring,’ Corrain managed to tell her. ‘He was alive then.’
‘Ten days?’ Abiath pressed the back of one shaking hand to her mouth. ‘Ten days since and
my boy was alive? Saedrin save him—’
She hurried away, first walking then running for the manor shrine, skirts and shawl flapping frantically.
Corrain couldn’t watch. Turning away, he saw Kusint’s gaze following her, his green eyes hooded with sympathy.
‘How did you know she was Hosh’s mother?’
Kusint shrugged. ‘She has the look of him. Or rather, he has the look of her.’
Corrain realised the Forest youth was right, at least around Abiath’s eyes. Personally he’d always thought that Hosh favoured his father more; a demesne labourer who’d died, struck by a falling tree when the lad was barely out of leading strings.
‘Bread?’ Kusint offered him the heel of a loaf fresh from the oven, lavishly smeared with butter. ‘And you should get your burns cleaned and salved.’ He showed Corrain his own hands swathed in gauze sticky with ointment.
Corrain looked at his forearms, realising for the first time how sore the cracked and oozing scabs were. Salt water, wind and sun had saved his raw flesh from festering but that was all that could be said for it.
‘You’re making yourself at home here.’ Despite his grudging words, Corrain took the bread. It was marvellous beyond words. He’d never thought to taste butter again and this was its finest season, with the cows grazing on the richest grass.
‘They’re making me welcome.’ Kusint was watching Abiath, now the centre of a cluster of women by the manor shrine door. ‘Since there’s nothing they can do for their loved ones lost to slavers or worse. Doing what they can for me is better than doing nothing.’
Corrain realised the red-headed youth was right. That lass from the kitchen, she was Orlon’s sister’s girl. Theirs was a large and loving family.
‘Don’t you have kin to welcome you home?’ Kusint picked a shred of bacon from his teeth.
‘No.’ Corrain shrugged. ‘My mother died in childbirth, along with a sister, in the year of my ninth summer. Yellow ague killed my father a few years after that.’ He looked around the compound. ‘That’s when Fitrel took me in. I signed on the Halferan muster as soon as I was tall enough.’
His gaze strayed to the measuring post secured to the wall of the shrine. The crowd around Abiath was growing.
‘What use is such news to her?’ he demanded angrily. ‘She’ll never see her son again. You heard what the Archmage said.’
‘I did,’ Kusint said thoughtfully, ‘and there’s something we should discuss.’
Corrain looked at him, nonplussed.
‘I want to help you and these good people,’ Kusint said with growing passion. ‘You freed me from those slave chains when I thought that I would die in those accursed islands. Everyone here has welcomed me, a stranger, a wanderer, as though I were one of their own. I cannot bear the thought of more lives or livelihoods being lost to those foul raiders.’
‘Then what do you suggest?’ Corrain felt the first stirrings of hope and fresh purpose in his heart.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Halferan, Caladhria
41st of Aft-Spring
ZURENNE STARED UP at the pale linen canopy above her lonely bed. This was a puzzle to set before Arrimelin. Minelas was dead. The Archmage himself had sworn it. Her fears should be relieved. So why would the goddess of dreams deny her sleep?
She had spent the whole night slipping into a fitful drowse only to stiffen, wakeful, as recollection of the previous day pummelled her. Whenever her eyelids grew leaden with the hope of rest a fresh thought would startle her anew.
She shouldn’t have wished to be rid of the Archmage. How heartless of him to take her at her word, she thought resentfully. He owed her more than that inadequate apology.
Someone should pay; for the empty expanse of linen beside her, for the loving father her children had lost. Though what recompense could possibly match such grievous losses? Her husband’s life couldn’t be reckoned in coin.
She sat up and reached for her bedroom gown. The curtains were closed, the room dim despite the morning bustle outside. Zurenne picked her way carefully to the window and drew back one edge of the blue brocade. Sunlight warmed her as she looked down into the courtyard and saw the servants about their duties.
The two men stood in the shadow of the guard hall caught her eye; the newcomer unmistakable with his coppery head and Corrain, ragged-haired and unshaven. Their lives had been measured out in coin.
Zurenne caught her breath with sudden curiosity. How much coin had Master Minelas been paid for the enslaved Halferan guards? Where was that gold and silver now? What of the barony’s revenues which he’d misappropriated?
She looked around her bedchamber. Halferan had always made good on his wedding vow to see her kept in comfort. Their private furnishings were renewed at the first sign of shabbiness while each festival brought her fresh linen and new gowns, her cast-offs a welcome windfall for her maids. It was only Starrid who’d begrudged her rightful due.
What of the future? Would Lord Licanin be as generous? Or would he decree that her widowhood only warranted new gowns half-yearly? Once a year? When would he decide that Ilysh was of marriageable age and so entitled to adornment? Would Zurenne have to beg for every copper penny she wished to spend on treats for her daughters?
What of the demesne folk and the tenants in the barony beyond? Halferan had always been generous with solstice and equinox gifts, especially to those celebrating their birth festival, embarking on married life or bidding their farewells at a loved one’s pyre.
That was to say, Zurenne corrected herself, Halferan had rightly been generous to those whose character and deeds had earned his favour. How could Lord Licanin know who was worthy of his goodwill? Wouldn’t he be more likely to keep the coin in Halferan’s coffers, to be spent by Ilysh’s as-yet-unknown husband?
Zurenne shivered despite the warmth of the sun through the window. There was no point in thinking so far ahead when much more immediate dangers threatened. Whatever else Minelas had done, however the renegade mage had done it, he’d kept those cursed corsair ships at bay. No longer.
Was it her duty to send Lysha and Neeny away to safety? As long as she stayed here herself, that would safeguard Ilysh’s inheritance. Her other sisters lived far beyond the reach of corsair raids. Of course, the thieves had never ventured this far from water.
‘My lady!’ Her new maid, Raselle, halted in the doorway, startled to see her mistress by the window.
‘You may enter.’ Zurenne went back to bed, pretending to doze. That allowed Raselle to draw the curtains fully open, to pour hot water into the ewer on her washstand and lay out a clean shift and stockings. Finally the girl went to fetch a pan of glowing charcoal from the kitchen, for the little water-stove set in the withdrawing room hearth now that daily fires were no longer needed.
Zurenne tossed aside the shift she had slept in, washed and donned fresh linen before wrapping herself in her bedroom gown once more. She was sitting in the withdrawing room, unplaiting her hair from its night braid when Raselle returned with a tray; fruit bread and a dish of new butter together with Zurenne’s crystal glass in its silver holder and the makings of a morning tisane.
If the girl had been raised to quench her thirst with small beer in her family’s farmhouse, she had soon learned to appreciate the niceties of tisanes. Zurenne nodded approval as Raselle spooned judicious measures of dried hawthorn leaves, sweet briar and cowslip blossoms into the pierced silver ball and snapped it shut. Now the water in the reservoir surrounding the stove’s central chimney was boiling. Raselle filled the polished kettle from the spigot and brought it over.
‘Thank you.’ Zurenne poured hot water into the glass and swirled the ball around with the spoon. Smoky tendrils seeped from the steeping herbs. ‘I will wear my almond green gown with the short ruffled sleeves.’
Lord Licanin had allowed her to summon her dressmaker when he’d seen how shamefully worn her clothes had become. Though Zurenne still faced the problem of finding something suitable to give to Doratine th
e cook by way of reward for finding Raselle among her numerous nieces. She could not give away a new gown but her old ones were too worn or stained to be fitting thanks.
‘My lady.’ The girl bobbed a curtsey. Once she had laid the dress ready she hesitated by the clavichord.
‘Yes?’ Zurenne’s smile invited her to continue. While she’d made it clear to Raselle that she didn’t wish to be bothered with idle gossip, the girl had readily understood that she should keep her eyes and ears open, to alert her mistress to things of significance and to be able to answer whatever questions Zurenne might have about the demesne’s affairs.
‘Your pardon, my lady, but Corrain of the guard says he wishes to see you.’ Raselle smoothed her spotless apron.
‘He can wait.’ Zurenne had no wish to be reminded of the previous evening. She stirred her tisane one last time and fished the silver ball out of the glass.
She contemplated her writing box on the far side of the polished table. It had been a gift from her sister Celle on her wedding day. Cunningly hinged, it opened into a slope with paper, pens, ink and blotting sand safely stowed in its two halves.
She had to tell Lord Licanin about the Archmage’s visit and of the revelation of Minelas’s death. Zurenne had no doubt that Master Rauffe had loosed a Licanin courier dove at first light. But a dove could carry precious few words on the onionskin paper in the silver cylinder screwed safely to its leg band.
Even without the parliament’s seal of approval, everyone would consider a widow without father or brother answerable to an older sister’s husband. So Zurenne could not lie or dissemble in her dealings with Licanin if she wished him to trust her with her daughters’ education, let alone any of the barony’s business in his absence.
‘Mama?’ Ilysh peered around the half-open door from the hallway.
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