by Stephen Hunt
Willow walked into the restaurant entrance hall, removing her coat as the warmth rose. One of the staff took the coat and cloak from her. She could see into the three dining rooms ahead, two with hillside views, a cheaper chamber looking out on a street – and even its menu expensive – a high desk with a reservation clerk behind it standing sentry for all three rooms. Willow could see many diners seated in the establishment wore similarly silly uniforms to the clothes her father had ordered made. Mill overseers one day, majors and captains the next, swept up in the patriotic fervour fanned by the king’s allies and the press. Like children playing at killing, except the murder is real. If that wasn’t bad enough, half the remaining tables were filled by Vandians, even the empire’s common soldiers living like lords in the capital. Unlike the other locals here, Willow knew the true cost of the coins those troops threw around with such abandon. Blood money. Paid for by the lives of their slaves in the mines.
As Willow entered she almost collided with a group of laughing women withdrawing, obviously the worse for wear from drink. They wore green Vandian fleet uniforms, ill-fitting to match their ill-discipline and raucous laughter, like girls playing dress-up in their fathers’ clothes. The only way they could have looked more ridiculous was if they’d come into the capital wearing the armoured breastplates of the imperium’s legionaries. Steel-backs, as the newspapers had nicknamed the imperium’s common soldiers. The legionaries might look oddly archaic, but Willow knew from bitter experience how well the light artificial material the armour was formed from could slow and halt a bullet. These women’s dress and their flawless beauty marked them out as a party of Vandian camp followers, one of many currently carousing across the capital while their officers plotted and planned their coming victory. Welcomed by the locals for their money if not for their manners. A wild voice among the group soared in Willow’s direction and she was shocked to realize that she actually knew the woman braying at her. Adella Cheyenne!
‘Willow Landor. Little Willow!’
‘Adella, I never thought I’d see you again,’ said Willow. ‘Certainly not here … in Weyland.’
‘I know,’ Adella giggled. ‘It’s so dull and provincial. But I’m to be a wife to Baron Machus, and he’s second-in-command of the fleet. Machus is here and where he travels so must I.’
‘A wife? But the baron grabbed you from the sky mines? You’re home now. You could slip away, travel back to Northhaven?’
‘And why in the world would I wish to set foot in Northhaven?’ she slurred. ‘To have your marvellous father tell me I’m not good enough to marry his precious son again? To have the great Benner Landor stare down his fat nose at me? I have moved on so much from those sad old days. My star’s risen far into the firmament, my fortune as good as the baron’s gold.’
‘To see your family, Adella. Don’t you know how they suffered after you were taken by the slavers? More than any family in Northhaven, especially when so many of us came home and you weren’t among those rescued.’
‘I don’t require rescuing,’ spat Adella. ‘Not then, not now.’
‘They need to hear from you again.’
‘You dare to lecture me?’ Adella’s words escaped in a shriek. ‘You look to your own family first. It’s no wonder that Duncan decided to stay in Vandia; caught between your constant carping and your father’s smug humbug. But then, Duncan receives other rewards, I believe … He’s a sleek little pet for Princess Helrena to cuddle when she’s bored.’
‘How can you be so cruel? You loved my brother once.’
‘Did I? Perhaps. Even I can make a mistake, I suppose.’
‘Go home, Adella. Your parents are old and heartbroken. They deserve to know you’re alive and safe before they pass.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Adella tittered as her companions grew bored of the distraction and started to tug her outside with them. She called back, ‘They’ll bend their knee to the baron quickly enough when the fleet flies north to smash the rebels. It’ll be fun to have all the commoners in Northhaven bowing and scraping before me.’
Nocks came into the hall from a serving corridor, alongside a waiter who surreptitiously slipped the manservant a coin. A little scratch for booking the reservation here, no doubt. The wretch stared appreciatively at the bevy of beautiful women swaying uncertainly outside. ‘Those Vandian lords know how to live. Of course, a man has to be richer than chicken gravy to take on more’n a single wife. And it’s a fool who keeps a stable, when he can rent his ride by the hour.’
‘Fools all over,’ said Willow, watching Adella depart. And she was willing to bet that every whore who’d ever lain with a pig like Nocks had a special price just for him. Double or treble?
Nocks grabbed her arm and squeezed her flesh. ‘Just you bring a little of their attention to your brother when he sits down. Duncan hasn’t arrived yet, but your old man’s waiting inside for you. Now, move.’
Willow shook his grip off and followed the head waiter inside. Benner Landor had a fine view of the city below and the Lancean Ocean beyond. He was seated at a round white linen-covered table large enough to host a party of ten.
‘Have you seen the prices?’ grumbled her father, tapping the oblong of card. ‘Even I won’t be able to afford to eat here soon.’
‘I’m sure you’ll cope,’ was all that Willow managed as she sat down. Prices had risen rapidly as the civil war’s flames fanned higher; from horses to flour, clothing to milk. Those that should be working in factories had been conscripted into fighting regiments and marched north. Hands that should be tilling soil, turning bullets on lathes instead. And that had been before the Vandians arrived … even the lowliest legionary was flush with enough silver and gold to make the king’s already heavily adulterated currency look as devalued as a barbarian’s wooden trading coins. Willow knew things would grow far worse if the fighting wasn’t over by spring, when Weylanders fighting the war would be needed in the fields and farms.
Nocks picked his way through the restaurant and took up position behind the table. ‘I asked the coachman to return to the hotel, Colonel, and come back when there’s news about the mistress.’
Colonel. How strange her father’s fresh title sounded to Willow. At least the ‘my lord’ Nocks once parroted was the same for a squire or a newly minted Marquess of the Borderlands. Well, that’s the least of this bloody war’s changes.
Benner Landor waved his hand perfunctorily ‘Leyla’s in the hands of the midwives, Nocks. Let them earn their fees. I asked William to look in on my wife, too.’
A duty that Willow’s unwanted husband was no doubt all too happy to perform. Willow suspected that the twin evils of her life, Leyla and Wallingbeck, had been far more than just political allies in the past. But it would be pointless to present such suspicions to her father. Willow had little proof, and any complaints she voiced would be taken as further evidence of malice towards her stepmother. In the hands of the midwives. Was that a slight coolness she detected in her father’s words regarding his young wife? Willow felt a surge of hope. Was Duncan’s return undermining that foul woman’s position in the house already? Saints, let it be so. Willow glanced at Nocks hoping to find some hint of disapproval, but the face of Holten’s creature, ugly as it was, gurned back at her, unreadable. He’d make a fine card-sharp around the gambling table.
‘You were present when I was born, Father,’ observed Willow, trying to sound neutral. No doubt every word she said would find its way back to Holten.
‘In those days we lived too far from town for a doctor to reach us,’ said Benner. ‘And we could hardly have afforded their services, besides. Things have changed for the family now.’
Willow remembered her mother and could hardly contain her tears. Her father’s large hands enclosing hers during the funeral; Duncan by their side, no amount of wealth or land held able to induce Lorenn Landor’s return from heaven. Things have changed. Everything from that moment had been a slow slide into decline. And now the country had joined Willow i
n her misery, as fractured and cracked as what passed for her family these days. I’m glad you’re not here to see this, Mother.
Married off to a foul instrument of Holten’s malice. The product of a rape swelling her womb. Willow as good as disinherited. And those I do love? Carter and Father Carnehan at the mercy of the king and his brutes. And now the prodigal son had finally returned from his self-imposed exile. Well, Willow would have to see if she could turn her brother’s reappearance to her advantage. With Holten in her rented townhouse, grunting and screaming as a new beneficiary to the Landor fortune found himself squeezed into the world … well, the birthing stool was no place to play games against the House of Landor’s true heir.
Willow sat alone with her worries, struggling to make small talk for half an hour with a father she scarcely knew anymore, until Duncan walked into the restaurant. How different he was from their last angry meeting inside the empire. Her brother wore a dark green velvet Vandian fleet jacket with a high collar, an ugly-looking pistol hanging from a copper-coloured belt with a gold metal hook buckle, his stride stiff and proud in black cloth trousers.
She thought she could cope with seeing Duncan again. Wearing the uniform of the empire. But the bile that rose inside Willow as a reaction to her brother surprised even her. ‘Why have you come to Weyland, Duncan? As you can see, the country’s got enough problems of its own to deal with.’
‘Your brother’s come home,’ said Benner Landor, his face colouring with irritation at her greeting.
Nocks bent down to refill Willow’s wine glass and whispered, ‘Careful, girly,’ in her ear. Willow did her best to ignore the blue-uniformed beast.
‘Weyland doesn’t feel like my home anymore,’ said Duncan. She noted a distance in his tone, as though he was hardly present. ‘I have made a new life for myself in the imperium.’
‘You’re not coming back to Northhaven?’ said Benner, unable to conceal his disappointment. ‘You are my firstborn … boy, you are the heir to Hawkland Park and the house’s holdings.’
Duncan shook his head. ‘No. I was. I’m not that Weylander anymore. Now I’m Duncan Landor, a citizen of the Vandian imperium, in the service of Princess Helrena – a daughter of the emperor and empire both. You should see Vandia, Father, it’s like a dream. You could hide Weyland inside a single imperial province. Buildings there are as high as mountains and cities are as large as prefectures, food and entertainment free for the Vandian populace. They have machines and skills that the average Weylander would think magic.’
‘A dream for some,’ said Willow. Every idleness and whim serviced by foreign slaves and serfs. ‘You didn’t have to fly here with the Vandian fleet.’
‘Your brother needs no invitation to visit us,’ interrupted Benner.
‘I came to help rescue Lady Cassandra Skar,’ said Duncan. ‘Jacob Carnehan should never have taken her.’
Maybe he shouldn’t have, at that. ‘What is the girl to you?’ asked Willow, curious at the change in the Duncan she remembered.
‘She is my duty and far more than that. She was under my protection when Father Carnehan took her hostage. I have to bring her back. I owe it to Cassandra and I owe it to her mother.’
‘The pastor,’ growled Benner. ‘All those years living among us, and not even his name was true. The hypocrisy of that devil, preaching compassion to our people while his words were tainted by the blood of hundreds of innocent victims. Jake Silver, brother to Black Barnaby. A murderer, a Burn sell-sword and a bandit. To think that his thuggish son believed he could marry you, Willow … it makes me shudder.’
‘His son?’ said Duncan, confused. ‘You mean Carter? He asked to marry Willow?’
‘He never asked,’ snarled Willow’s father, his voice swelling louder on anger and thick red wine. ‘The boy broke into the park and tried to carry her away, as bold as any highwayman or scavenger plaguing Northhaven. We sent him on his way after a good flogging.’
‘The apple never falls too far from the tree, Colonel,’ noted Nocks, his sly eyes almost daring Willow to gainsay him.
‘Never was a truer word spoken, Nocks,’ grunted Benner. ‘The Carnehans attempted to corrupt Willow’s soul, but their wicked schemes were foiled by my vigilance and the kindness of my dear wife. But that’s the past. Now Willow’s been blessed with a husband worthy of the Landor line. Her firstborn is to be the next Viscount of Belinus Hall.’
‘Then you all have what you want,’ said Duncan. Willow suspected her father missed the trace of sarcasm she’d heard there. ‘I require your help.’
While the only thing I want is to be far from here with Carter.
‘Naturally you will have our every assistance,’ said Benner. ‘The land’s gone to hell in your absence, Duncan. Rebellion and banditry and traitors at every turn; our own Gaiaist Party and assemblymen supporting the claims of some far-called pretender, seeking to turf the lawful king off his throne. But the saints are on the side of the righteous, or why else would they have sent the Vandians from their distant shores to make common cause with King Marcus? Between our armies and your foreign friends, we’ll set matters right here. Restore peace and order and punish every rebel who has dared to raise arms against the king.’
Willow wanted to scream at her father. Call him for the fool he was. Tell everyone in the room that the South’s precious monarch was a regicide who had murdered every member of the royal family blocking his way to the throne, and then sold off his own people like cattle so he could swell his coffers. Instead, Willow met Nocks’ malevolent stare and bit her tongue.
‘Not the house’s help. Your help, Willow,’ said Duncan. ‘Where is Lady Cassandra being held prisoner now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Willow, sadly. ‘She was in Northhaven, being moved around to stop the king’s agents from finding her. Maybe she’s still there. Nobody ever hurt the poor girl. She was very well provided for. A lot better than any slave was ever treated.’
‘You were aware of this?’ said Benner Landor, outraged. ‘Of the wickedness of that pirate of a priest … of this abduction and hostage taking?’
‘I didn’t know anything about Jacob Carnehan’s past,’ said Willow, realizing how weak she sounded even as she said it; the testimony of the imprisoned guild courier Thomas Purdell returning to unsettle her. I heard the pirate leader himself call Jacob Carnehan ‘brother’. The pastor fights like no priest of my acquaintance – I think he must have been a mercenary across the water. ‘I still don’t know if I believe what they said about the father,’ Willow added.
‘Damned if it’s not the truth,’ said Duncan. ‘I was there when the pastor abducted Lady Cassandra. I tried to stop him seizing the girl, as did your friend Hesia. He put a bullet in both our hearts for our trouble. If it wasn’t for a medallion slowing the slug and the wonders of Vandian medicine, I’d be filling a grave. I came as close to dying as a man can before the empire’s doctors brought me back.’
‘Father Carnehan shot Hesia?’ said Willow, hardly believing what she was hearing. ‘But she helped us escape!’
‘When it came to it, Hesia knew what was right and what was wrong,’ said Duncan. ‘And what seizing an innocent like Cassandra for a hostage counted as. I’ve read the local news. The papers say the pastor was known as Quicksilver when he led his army of hired killers in the Burn. It’s as good a nickname as any. I’d never seen a man move so fast with a pistol. Carnehan gunned us both down as cold as a hound’s nose. I survived, but Hesia wasn’t so lucky. I’ve stood over her grave with my friend Paetro and watched him weep for hours for his dead daughter. I came back to Weyland to save Cassandra, but Paetro’s here to slay Jacob Carnehan. I wouldn’t stand in the way of his revenge.’
Benner Landor banged the table fiercely, the others in the restaurant turning around at the noise. ‘By the saints, he shot my son, did he? Tried to murder my boy! I’ll leave Carnehan’s bones swinging in a gibbet at Northhaven until my great-grandchildren can stare at them; have everyone understand that no
man wrongs a Landor with impunity.’
‘Are you sure of this?’ said Willow, searching her brother’s face for any hint of a lie. But she knew Duncan too well. She had grown up with him, and for all of his many faults, he rarely lied. Willow recalled the fleeting glimpses of the pastor’s memories she had experienced in the sky mine as a by-product of Sariel’s strange sorcery. So much darkness, so much blood. More than she could bear to examine at the time. Jacob Carnehan had told Willow that her brother had been left unharmed in Vandia, and that Hesia had chosen to hide in Vandia rather than becoming an exile in Weyland. All lies. And if so much was false, what else were lies?
Duncan undid a button on his shirt and pulled the fabric aside, revealing a terrible scar across his chest. ‘That’s where the Vandian doctors cut his bullet out of me. Put there by Jacob Carnehan or Jake Silver or whatever his real name is.’
