The Heir To The North

by Steven Poore

“Are you well?”

  She jumped, shocked from her reverie by Meredith’s voice. He was looking up at her, a frown of concern on his face. He laid his sword aside with care and rose from the stool, towering over her even though she stood on the doorstep.

  “Oh, I . . . that is . . . yes,” she stammered, her blush deepening as she tried to get the words out. “I . . . I was just watching you.”

  Well, even a blind man would have seen that. Bloody daft girl.

  Meredith did not seem to have noticed her discomfort. If he had, then he clearly was unconcerned by it. “I have been waiting for you.”

  The rest of her thoughts fled. “You have?”

  “We did not practice this morning. Your staff is over there.”

  Cassia wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved or not. She slipped the stone plate from her sleeve and laid it safely beside the step, wrapping it in her storyteller’s cap before collecting her staff. She tried to slow her breathing and concentrate on the forms Meredith had taught her as a warming-up exercise, but she felt so self-conscious she kept mistiming her steps. Once she came close to dropping the staff, and that only made her worse.

  “You are not concentrating,” Meredith noted, stepping into place opposite her. He had not bothered to reclaim his shirt, and the sight, which she should be used to by now, was more than just intimidating, it was distracting. Cassia bit down on her lip and launched into her first attack.

  Meredith side-stepped easily, and Cassia had to alter her swing to avoid leaving herself open. Just a few weeks ago she would have been hard pressed to make it, but this time Meredith’s counter-move rebounded off her staff. It quivered in her hands and she almost dropped it again, but she felt a surge of pride at having successfully defended herself. Now do it again.

  When she turned he had already moved. She ducked into a crouch and Meredith’s staff whistled over her head. She jabbed out at his knees, forcing him to step back.

  And with that she managed to forget, however temporarily, that the Heir to the North had made such an impression on her dreams. Bare-chested he might be, but she was focused on the staff that spun in his hands and the way he balanced his weight on the balls of his feet. That meant he would push to her right flank. She was beginning to recognise more of his moves now, having watched him practice almost every morning.

  Can it be? Is he really so predictable?

  She feinted to her right and as Meredith’s staff swept toward her legs she nipped left and brought the end of her own staff hard against his calf. He stumbled onto one knee, forced to put a hand to the ground to steady himself. Cassia skipped back, her heart fit to burst in triumph and disbelief.

  Meredith drew himself up and looked at the dirt on the palm of his hand. It seemed to bother him more than the bruise that must inevitably appear on his leg. “That was well done, girl,” he said.

  Was that a smile? Cassia blinked. Surely not, it had to be her imagination.

  But Meredith’s lips twitched as he settled back into a guard position. “Once more.”

  She reined in her thoughts, making certain she was still beyond his reach. He would have to come to her and if she could see how he intended to move, she could try to counter his attack again. She could prove her last blow was no fluke.

  “Best of three, then.” She challenged him without thinking.

  The staff spun in his hands for a moment, and he leaned to the left. Cassia shifted her feet in readiness, but she was completely unprepared for the sheer speed with which he launched at her. She had barely enough time to duck aside, her own staff held across her body to ward off the blow, and by then he had turned to continue the attack, snapping both ends of his staff at her in multiple feints until she had no idea where she should defend next.

  In desperation she fell back. It was a trip more than a deliberate move, but she was pressed too close to correct herself. One end of her staff caught on the ground and it tore from her grasp. She landed hard on the ground, skinning her elbows and the back of her head, the breath forced from her body. Meredith – gloriously invincible, his hair flowing loose around his shoulders – descended upon her like a god, crouching over her with his staff poised over her throat.

  All coherent thought fled from her mind. She could only stare up into his hard brown eyes, not daring to let them move further downward to take in the broad curves of his chest. He remained there for what felt like an eternity, and she was frozen in place by that impassive stare. She was all too aware that her chest rose and fell with every shuddering breath she took.

  “That evens the score,” he said. He had not even broken a sweat.

  He stood, abruptly, and the sight of him rising was dizzying. His proportions were firmly imprinted upon her mind now, and Cassia knew she would see them every time she closed her eyes. She rolled onto her side and reached for her staff, stabbing it into the dirt to haul herself up. Unlike Meredith, her body was damp with perspiration – not all of it the result of her exertions – and the dirt of the yard clung to her arms as much as her robe stuck to her skin. She took a moment to brush away the worst, forcing her breathing back into a deep, slow rhythm, and only then did she turn to face him again.

  Her heart sank and despite herself she felt her shoulders drop when she saw him standing on the opposite side of the yard, his staff held ready once more. It had taken all of her strength to make that single hit count, and she had no reserves left to draw upon. At least this would be over quickly.

  She brought her staff up, rolled her shoulders, and loosened her knees. “I’m ready,” she said, wincing at the tremor in her voice.

  Meredith’s staff spun, just as it had before, and he began to lean to the left.

  Just as he had before.

  Cassia had a single heartbeat to recognise the pattern of his movement – and it was barely enough. Acting upon instinct more than rational thought, she spun in place, her hands shifting along the length of the staff until she held it at one end. Meredith rushed past her, already twisting and reacting to her, but she thrust her staff down at his legs and he tripped over it. The only thing she had forgotten to do, she realised far too late, was let go of the staff. Rather than it being pulled from her hands, she was jerked off-balance and pulled down on top of him.

  His chest moved evenly beneath her for a moment, just long enough for her to marvel at the firm smoothness of his skin, and then she realised where she was and she scrambled to her feet, the heat rising faster on her face than a mountain storm.

  Meredith remained on the ground, propping himself up on his elbows to stare at her. There was clear and frank admiration on his face, and that only caused her flush to deepen. “I am not accustomed to being beaten,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.” Cassia wrapped her arms around herself to hide from his gaze. “It was – I mean, I was lucky.”

  “No, girl. You were persistent.” He reached down to rub at his shins. “Persistence and desire, when refined and channelled through your training, will overcome more enemies than ability alone. Hold on to your desires.”

  From him, that was akin to a hero’s monologue in one of the epic tales, but if there was one thing Cassia did not need it was a reminder that her own desires were bubbling perilously close to the surface. She retreated to her room as quickly as she could, remembering almost too late to pick up the stone plate and stumbling over the threshold as a result. Her clumsiness was appalling and embarrassing. The potboy stared at her as she hurried to the stairs, his lips twisted into a smirk, but she ignored him.

  It took all of her will to slow her heartbeat. She could still feel his touch, his breath upon her skin. The air inside the room was too thick and, unaccountably, held reminders of his smell. To divert her thoughts, Cassia unwrapped the stone plate and examined it more closely. Now it seemed the figure in the centre of the plate was rising from the mountains. Even that reminded her of Meredith.

  Perhaps I should give it to him, she thought. It was an attractive idea, but in the back of he
r mind she knew she was being swayed by her emotions. She traced the shape of the figure with her fingers, resting her palm gently upon its chest, and imagined she could feel the chill winds of the North.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hellea was a city without a soul, Cassia thought.

  The days had followed the same pattern since they arrived. Each morning Baum and Meredith disappeared like morning mist into the mazed streets and left her to fend for herself. And each morning she wondered anew how she might be able to conduct her own search for Malessar, every plan collapsing half-built as she considered how little she knew about the warlock and the city. Most of the time she would drift down to the temple markets, careful to avoid the dingy taverns where the guilded storytellers would undoubtedly be looking out for her. Sometimes she would end up along the bustling docks, marvelling at the bright-coloured foreign ships and their outlandish crews.

  Either way, she always wound up hungry and miserable, returning to the Old Soak for a bowl of the unlikeable stew that always simmered over the cookfire because she could not afford to buy her own food. Once or twice she considered stealing from one of the market stalls, but she had quickly discovered the city-dwellers were just as vigilant as those in the North, if not more so. She had not been caught yet, but the stallholders had clearly marked her out as trouble. The last one had glared menacingly at her, weighing a stone in his hand, and when she turned to keep out of his reach she heard him call out: “What, you think it grows on trees, boy?”

  Cassia had left her robe at the Old Soak, but elected to maintain the rest of her disguise. She had bound her chest to flatten it, and her hair was tucked up under the storyteller’s cap, but without the robe she looked like any of Hellea’s scavenging urchins. She thought she might at least gain sympathy from that quarter, but a lack of trust must have been passed down from one generation to the next, and when she hung around the fringes of the gangs they cold-shouldered her, sneering with suspicion. It was worse than anywhere in the North had ever been.

  The only people who had any time for her were Meredith and the drunkard, Arca. Her feelings for the Heir to the North unsettled her to the point of distraction, and she was sure Meredith could see that for himself – all hells, even a lump of rock would be able to see the effect he had upon her! Outside of their training bouts, she tried to avoid him as much as possible. That left only Arca who, she was certain, had latched onto her simply because she helped him stagger back to the Old Soak that one night.

  But the old man was harmless enough, and over the course of a few days she grew used to his company, and then actually began to seek him out. Usually he would be on the temple steps where she first met him, content to watch the city’s routines play out before him. What manner of company he provided depended on how successful he had been during the early morning. If he had begged a few copper coins then he would already have spent those on wine, and by the time Cassia found him he would be half into his cups. If he was still sober, he might have managed to beg a helping of soup, stew or even the off-cuts of dried old fowl that a butcher had abandoned as unsaleable. And, best of all, he was willing to share.

  q

  Arca squinted at her and wiped one sleeve against his nose, drawing a trail of snot onto the fouled cloth. “He’s hunting that warlock, I heard.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. If the old man already knew then it couldn’t hurt to do that, at least.

  “Myths and legends,” Arca muttered. “Like catching the wind.”

  “You don’t believe he exists?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Arca poked at the contents of his bowl. The surface of the cold stew was covered in a layer of congealed fat.

  The way he refused to meet her gaze inspired her to a leap of intuition. “You’ve seen him, haven’t you? You know what he looks like. Arca – sir – you have to tell me! Please!”

  Arca shook his head and warded off her pleas, twisting his bony frame away and shielding the wooden bowl close to his chest. “I saw him,” he admitted at last. “I saw him once. And that was all, just once. But that was long ago, and so far away from here . . .”

  Cassia realised how closely she was crowding him and forced herself to sit back. Arca uncurled and sat a little straighter. He scooped a handful of the stew into his mouth, although much of it ended up smeared through his beard. He chewed quietly, his face dropping into a frown that was lost in the past. Cassia had no choice but to wait for him to continue. Even if she could force the whole tale from him, she was afraid she might hurt him, for Arca looked as frail as a new-born lamb.

  “I was a soldier, once,” Arca mused at last. “I took the Emperor’s bit. It was a life, you see.”

  “Were you in Berdella?” she asked.

  Arca sniffed. “They gave me to the Glorious Fourth, and they sent me South. I went over the sea, to Kebria.”

  Kebria was an old country. It was said, in some of the tales Norrow knew, that dragons still dwelled in her inhospitable wilds, dreaming beneath the shifting sands of the promised return of the Age of Talons. The Kebrians were an insular people, suited to such legends. In the stories they were as mystical and obtuse as dragons themselves. They rarely ventured into the Northern seas, but Cassia had seen a Kebrian ship once, on the Bay of Varro. Angular and needle-sharp, with bright sails, it cut through the sea effortlessly, making the boats around it look drab and heavy by comparison. For such a close-guarded people they certainly went to great lengths to stand out.

  She might not be allowed to tell her stories in the city, but there was no reason she could not continue learning them. “What was Kebria like?”

  “Strange,” Arca said eventually. He stuck one finger through the congealing stew. “A man could lose himself there, sink into the sands and vanish without trace, as easily as that. You could look around at the temples, or step into a bar . . . or a brothel . . . and when you turned around again you would be lost.”

  A few names rose to the surface of Cassia’s mind. “Oscorier Bay?”

  He shook his head. “Never went there. We landed outside Jetuhen and joined up with the Stromondorians, and we laid siege to the city. They opened their gates within the space of three days, and we believed the whole land would fall to us so easily. More fool us.” He fell silent again and Cassia shifted position on the stone step.

  “Vaile’s standards flew over the Glorious Fourth back then. We were renowned for pushing forward and never giving ground. Half-captain Guhl led our company. He looked for land and gold, as he always did. He pushed us even harder than Vaile drove the rest of the legion, and we came to the gates of Kebria four days before everybody else.” Arca paused for breath. Cassia reminded herself that he was not the same man he must once have been. He was frail and battered, his breath rattling with the exertion of so much talking. When was the last time he said this much?

  “Such life in that city. Such colour. We disguised ourselves as natives – darkened our faces and blackened our hair. Buried our armour, wrapped in cloth, in the shade of a stand of palms off the road.” He barked a quiet laugh. “They let us in! Even as they dug their trenches and built their palisades!”

  He was overtaken by a fit of coughing and Cassia scrambled for her flask. Arca drank gratefully, water spilling from the corners of his mouth. Then he returned to the dubious pleasures of the bowl of stew. “Kill myself laughing one day,” he said, through his next mouthful. “If I’m lucky. Kebria. Guhl ran us through the streets like a hound on a trail of blood. Swear he could smell it. Damned if I could. He was touched by the gods, that one. Touched and cursed. Drove us through the markets so quick we never saw anything of them. And there it was.”

  “What?”

  “The palace. There was no gold in Jetuhen, see. We weren’t in the vanguard for that action and the city was plundered long before we got through the gates. Guhl was enraged. That was why he pushed us to Kebria so far ahead of Vaile’s army. It was said the Queen of Kebria had sheets woven of gold. Great statues with eyes of
diamond. Sandals made of dragonscales that would let a man fly. They’d make us rich, and bugger the Emperor’s coins. Guhl handpicked a dozen of us to climb the walls, in the dead of night, and sack the palace for ourselves.”

  As he spoke Cassia looked around to see if anybody else was listening, but the pilgrims and passers-by paid no attention to an old beggar and an urchin sat close together on the steps. Does this count as storytelling? I am his audience, after all. I wonder what the guild would make of this. She could picture Marko’s sneering face, apoplectic with indignation.

  Arca might have been reading her thoughts, as his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You’re thinking to make a tale of this? I doubt anyone would listen.”

  “Not to me, not here,” Cassia agreed sourly.

  He grunted. “I wish I could have seen more of Kebria. More of the palace. All I can remember about the gardens is how dark they were. How smooth the stone paving was against our bare feet. The sweet smell of the night. We only looked for the Queen’s treasures. Guhl led, and every so often I heard the slink of metal and muffled grunts up ahead. Once, I stood on a man’s arm, a shape in the dark. Guhl didn’t care how many corpses he left in his wake.”

  Cassia imagined the small company of men skulking through the palace gardens, the weak light of distant lanterns glinting from their unsheathed blades. She thought of them as similar to Verros the Younger and his cousins, when they set out to capture the crown of the Old King of Galliarca. Such a scene would be easy to set up and tell. The rhythm of the dialogue and the rest of the narrative would only need a few small alterations. Maybe Guhl had even been inspired by that story; it was a common tale, after all.

  “I remember climbing up to a balcony overlooking the gardens. I was the lightest, and the youngest. The walls were crumbling, and it was easy to dig out the footholds. With the light that came through the window I saw a grand bed against the far wall. For a moment I thought it was occupied, but that was just my nerves. I took the sheets – they weren’t gold – and twisted them together. Tied them to the balcony, let the others up. They went through the room like locusts. I got sent to the door, to listen for the guards.”