Godblind

by Anna Stephens

  ‘You poisoned one of my recruits for eleven minutes?’

  ‘Durdil, you’re missing the point. The human body is resilient: there’s so much it can absorb, endure, before it starts to break down.’

  ‘Well, we know I wouldn’t need to sprint the hundred yards if I could walk it without dying.’

  ‘Yes, but these were simply two experiments conducted under similar conditions. It’s not meant to be taken as a training manual.’

  ‘Truly, your research astonishes,’ Durdil said, deciding not to point out that any man who’d ever burnt his dinner could tell you surviving a smoke-filled room for two minutes was easy, though surviving your wife’s withering scorn afterwards took a little more grit.

  ‘Oh, this is minor stuff, really. I’m taking a man’s appendix out tomorrow. It’s causing him terrible pain. Would you care to assist?’

  Durdil smiled. ‘I think I’ll leave that to you. I would rather how it’s done remained a mystery. Though I feel that there are too many mysteries for me of late. This is a young man’s game, and I don’t think anyone would mistake me for one of those any more.’ Durdil rotated his glass, staring at the firelight winking through the red of the wine. Like the colours inside your eyelids when you turned your face up to the sun.

  ‘Speaking of young men, how is Mace faring? Wolves and Mireces keeping him busy?’

  Durdil’s expression was grave. ‘More mystery. I had word only today that the Wolf village was attacked by Mireces hunting an escaped slave. Turns out the slave killed King Liris before fleeing. But they can’t find out who’s taken the throne.’

  Hallos whistled. ‘Have you told Rastoth?’

  Durdil wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Yes. He’s still sending the princes west. Both of them. Despite the danger. And then he forgot I’d told him.’ He rubbed his face, weary beyond words.

  ‘The princes can look after themselves, and Mace will ensure they’re kept safe. I spoke to them, you know, about Rastoth.’

  ‘And?’

  Hallos shrugged. ‘They’re still grieving for the queen. They want their father back. The kingdom needs a king, Durdil. Perhaps it’s time for Janis to be crowned. I know it’s been suggested already.’

  Durdil stiffened. ‘Rastoth still lives.’

  ‘Barely. And you’ve made no progress on Marisa’s death. I can’t imagine he will begin to recover until that chapter is closed.’

  ‘So it’s my fault?’ Durdil demanded, and then apologised. ‘Forgive me, Hallos. I am tired. But Rastoth is my king. I cannot countenance deposing him, not even in favour of Janis.’

  ‘The killers know the court; they knew the queen. Even the guards knew them. Galtas said they were dead facing the door, so they were killed when the assassins came back out. So they must have known them or they’d never have let them into the queen’s presence in the first place.’

  Durdil sat forward. ‘Galtas said that? Those details are confidential. Not even the princes know that.’ He drained his glass and thumped it on the table, and then raked his fingers across his scalp. Galtas? How did he know? Unless …

  He stared into the fire. He could still taste the blood in the air from that night, the thick stench of it and the sight of it daubed in bright swathes on the walls. Stepping over the dead guards with his sword drawn into that red room and seeing a slender arm sticking out from under a pile of torn tapestry. An arm that, when he crouched beside it, he saw wasn’t attached to a body. He felt an echo of the nausea that had risen in him then and swallowed hard. She’d been in pieces. Not just killed, but dismembered. His throat was tight; he took the glass Hallos refilled for him and drank.

  ‘As you say, they must have known us intimately. Which is why I’ve started investigating the court. The nobles, the nobles’ wives, the clothiers, the queen’s jeweller, her bathing attendants, her dressers, even her chambermaid. There’s nothing.’ He met Hallos’s eyes. ‘I even investigated you, my friend. I’m sorry, I had to. It was my duty.’

  ‘I hope I passed,’ Hallos said, a little unsteadily.

  ‘You did, of course, Hallos. Of course.’ Durdil paused. ‘I even looked into the whereabouts of the princes, you know,’ and he heard Hallos gasp. He spread his hands. ‘What else could I do? Someone she knew, Hallos, a friend, acquaintance or servant. Why not a son?’

  ‘And what did you find?’ Hallos hissed, leaning forward.

  ‘Nothing, of course. The heir was in his chambers, accounted for by a dozen separate, reliable witnesses, and Rivil was with Galtas in that posh inn in the cloth district. Innkeeper himself told me.’

  ‘Isn’t he dead now, that innkeeper?’ Hallos asked and Durdil was glad for the change in subject.

  ‘Aye, stabbed by his wife of all things. She found out he was sleeping with his daughter by marriage. Suppose you can’t blame the poor woman.’

  ‘People, eh?’ Hallos said. ‘The more you learn about them, the less you understand.’

  Durdil huffed and reached for his drink; then he paused, hand extended. So the innkeeper who vouched for Galtas is mysteriously dead. And Galtas knew the placement of the bodies. But no, because Rivil was there with him. But then, they often drink in the Gilded Cup: the innkeeper could have got his days mixed up. And now I can’t ask him. But I can ask Galtas where he was the night the queen died.

  Brooding, he drank. He didn’t notice Hallos leave.

  DOM

  Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth

  Wolf Lands, Rilporian border

  The air had the silent weight of snow when Dom half woke and rolled over. He snuggled into the warmth of a neck and back and drifted back to sleep, dreams flitting behind his eyelids like swallows. The images became clearer, and then stranger, darker, tugging at him until he gasped and jerked awake. He flailed and broke contact with the girl, and the images vanished. She moved too, rolling over and pressing her back against the freezing canvas, her breathing harsh.

  The knowing swelled and burnt its way through his skin where he’d touched her, worming its way towards his skull. He stretched out a foot and kicked at the tent flap, allowing a spear of daylight and a blast of freezing air into the gloom. They stared at each other by its light, Dom turning over the images he’d seen, probing at them like a tongue at a rotten tooth.

  The tent was so small they were still practically touching, even when they were both straining away from each other. He caught a whiff of old sweat and rain from the ragged plait of her hair that lay across the space between them, but he didn’t move it. Right now he didn’t know if even that much would bring on another knowing and he wasn’t risking that here, with only her for help and company.

  Normally I can’t tell when a knowing will happen. Why is it with her I know one’s coming? Why is everything twisted around her? She’s like an oak and the world is ivy, climbing her, revolving around her. He scrubbed at his face. So what happens to the ivy if she falls?

  He forced the images to the cage at the back of his mind. ‘I’ll kindle the fire. Pack up,’ he growled and wriggled out into the snow. He reached back in for his jerkin and coat and brushed her arm. She yelped and he huffed in irritation, at her and at the tingle that shot through his fingertips. ‘Hurry up,’ he snapped, anxiety and grief and anger making him sharp, ‘we should reach the plain by noon if we don’t dawdle.’

  Dom squatted by the embers of the fire and laid more wood on it until it blazed and he could melt snow for tea. He threw some dried rosehips into the bowls and went to piss while it heated.

  I’m afraid of her, that’s what the problem is. She’s going to change everything. ‘No,’ he said aloud, ‘she’s going to set in motion old plans I thought I’d escaped.’ He stared unseeing at the melting yellow snow, then shook himself like a dog and returned to the camp.

  Rillirin had collapsed the tent and screwed it into a bundle three times its proper size and was struggling to tie the leather thongs around its bulk. Her face was red with the effort and he watched her in s
ilence, the echo of the glimpse he’d seen through her throbbing behind his right eye.

  ‘You’re making a mess of that, aren’t you?’ he said when he couldn’t bear to watch any longer. Sharp again, when he shouldn’t be. Couldn’t help it. She squeaked in alarm and spun to face him, the bundle dropping from her arms and unfurling again.

  ‘Forgive me, honoured,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll do better, I promise.’

  ‘This is the third time I’ve shown you how to do it, isn’t it?’ he said. He didn’t wait for an answer, but spread out the tent and showed her how to roll it. ‘Got it this time?’ he asked. She bobbed her head. ‘Good. Check the tea.’

  She’d made the bowls from pine bark and resin their first day out from the village, when Dom had been too numb to do anything but stumble through the woods. Crude but effective and lightweight, they slipped easily into the tent folds for carrying and had come in handy every day since.

  ‘You ready?’ he asked when he’d finished his tea, and she drank the rest of hers and stowed the bowls. She hefted the tent on to her shoulders and Dom adjusted it, teasing one corner out of the ties to hang down to her calves and keep off the worst of the wind. They hadn’t even had time to find her a coat before they’d left. Before they’d been banished. He killed the fire, buckled on his sword and headed east. Rillirin limped along behind him, bent slightly beneath the tent but unprotesting, dogging his heels like a whipped cur.

  They walked all day, reaching the edge of the Western Plain by late afternoon. The sun was already fading when they made camp. Rillirin was pinched with cold and Dom built up the fire, then put out a hand to stay her. ‘Get warm, lass, I’ll do the rest.’

  He could see her instinct to obey warring with her fear that he would punish her for laziness, so he threw her the pigeons he’d brought down with his sling. ‘Pluck these, will you?’

  She hunched by the fire, working quickly and piling the feathers in her lap. When she was done and the tent was up, she held up the handfuls of down. Dom raised an eyebrow. ‘No thanks.’ He put his head on one side, curious. ‘You keep them,’ he said.

  Her eyes flickered to his face and away; then she carefully separated the feathers in half, took off her boots and stuffed her socks with them. He could see the tiniest smile graze her lips as her toes warmed up.

  ‘Clever,’ he said approvingly. The silence stretched between them as the pigeons roasted in the top flames and chestnuts cooked in the coals. Dom turned his back to the fire and looked up at the sky, tracing the constellations sprayed across the velvet of the night. His fingers tapped against his vambrace and he hummed softly. ‘Would you like to talk?’ he asked.

  There was no response so he turned back and she looked away hurriedly. ‘Of course, honoured. What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘No,’ he said as he poked his knife into a pigeon, ‘do you want to talk? You have the choice.’

  ‘Of course, honoured,’ she said again.

  ‘All right. What do you want to talk about?’ he pressed.

  ‘Whatever you desire, honoured.’

  ‘Please stop calling me that, lass. It’s a Mireces term and neither of us is Mireces.’ He pulled the pigeons off the spit and put one in her bowl, juggled chestnuts from the fire and split them evenly. ‘Here you are. All right, can you tell me your name?’

  She was quiet, staring at the food, and for a second he thought she was praying. Who to? Had she fooled them all? Was she praying to the Red Gods? Then she looked up and there was a wet sheen to her eyes. ‘Rillirin Fisher,’ she whispered and he knew it had been a long time since anyone had asked or cared.

  ‘Rillirin Fisher,’ he repeated. ‘That’s a beautiful name. Rillirin. Rill.’

  ‘Not Rill,’ she snapped; then she cringed. ‘Forgive me, honoured, I spoke wrong.’

  The vehemence, the sudden sick expression, told him that Rill was associated with some bad memories. ‘I apologise,’ he said formally, ‘Rillirin. And I’m Dom Templeson. I know I’ve told you that before, but now we’re properly introduced. We’ll be at Watchtown tomorrow. Stay close to me, all right? It’s our town, a Watcher and Wolf town. People might be a little … hostile.’

  She paused with the pigeon’s leg in one hand, her eyes wide, fingers suddenly white.

  ‘But you’re under my protection and I’ll keep you safe,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to visit my mother – my adopted mother. She’s high priestess at the temple of the Dancer and Fox God. She can cleanse you, if you want it.’

  He concentrated on eating, pretending he couldn’t hear the muffled hitches in her breathing, the sniffs as she fought tears. How desperate for cleansing would I be after nine years in the hands of Mireces? His eyes drifted to the vambrace on his right arm and what it concealed, and then he turned his thoughts carefully in another direction, like a parent steering a recalcitrant toddler away from danger.

  ‘And Liris? Can you tell me why you killed him?’ he asked as he sucked the meat from the last of the bones.

  The silence stretched even longer this time and she dropped the chestnut she was holding back into her bowl. ‘He was’ – Rillirin’s hand rose to her throat, fell back into her lap – ‘he was going to rape me. He still had his dagger in his belt, so I, you know …’ She made vague stabbing gestures and then stuck her hands in her armpits and hunched over, nostrils flaring.

  Dom wiped grease from his mouth and studied her. ‘That took real courage, Rillirin,’ he said, ‘to resist him like that. To keep yourself safe.’ Her mouth twisted and he knew that it was probably the only time she’d managed to fend him off. Still, it was the last time he’d ever try, she’d made sure of that.

  Yes, and her actions led to dozens of Wolf deaths.

  She wasn’t to know that.

  But I could’ve. I could’ve known that, if I’d pushed, if I hadn’t wasted those two days in the village on feeding her, making her feel safe, I could have saved us all.

  Dom stared into the flames, almost daring the knowing to come. Do I want to be that man? he asked himself. Someone who’d frighten a woman for his own gain? Wouldn’t that make me another Liris to her?

  Dom grunted, blinked, looked away. He finished the pigeon.

  CRYS

  Twelfth moon, the seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth

  The road to the West Rank Forts, Cattle Lands

  Godsdamn fucking winter wind, Crys thought as he unloaded the princes’ tent from the wagon. Will it ever stop?

  As if in answer, a finger of cold slid beneath his scarf and tickled his neck. He shuddered, pulling it tighter. Even the north had been warmer than this.

  Tacking up the River Gil for days on end against the current and wind had been a misery despite the plushness of the royal barge, the weather worsening every day until they were all at each other’s throats. Crys’d been relieved when they made it to the Rank harbour and could get back on land. He knew what he was doing on land.

  But then they’d commandeered horses and a wagon and struck out into the Cattle Lands where the wind seemed to come straight off Mount Gil itself, carving into any exposed flesh in an unrelenting attack.

  Crys shivered again and the grey mule stretched its neck towards him. Crys skipped sideways out of range of its yellow teeth. ‘Bastard animal,’ he grunted, ‘you think pulling a wagon for a couple of days is tough, try riding alongside your stinky hide the whole way and still having a night watch to stand. I swear, you bite me one more time and I’ll knock your teeth out.’

  ‘He doesn’t understand you, you know.’

  Crys whipped his head around to see Galtas leaning against the back of the wagon. ‘Lord Morellis, I beg your pardon, but that bloody animal understands every word I say. He’s a devil sent by the Red Gods.’

  ‘All because he tried to bite your cock off. Some men pay for that sort of thing.’

  You probably would. ‘From a wench, aye, not from something with teeth as long as my finger,’ Crys said instead.

 
‘Shame you weren’t able to put it to good use at that whorehouse in Yew Cove,’ Galtas said, a sly smirk in his eye. ‘Your cock, I mean, not your finger. Though if your finger’s bigger …’ He trailed off, smiling again. ‘But you weren’t interested, were you?’

  Crys reckoned Galtas had been the author of that particular piece of gossip. Crys’s lack of needs; Crys preferring to spend the evening with Prince Janis. Were Prince Janis and Crys …

  He’d put three men on a warning for repeating that one. Janis’s reputation had to be beyond reproach, and Crys wasn’t particularly impressed that his name was being dragged into it either. An evening of chess with Janis hadn’t been high on his list of ways to pass the time, but as he’d explained to Commander Koridam back in Rilporin, you don’t refuse a prince.

  ‘I’ve got my hand if all else fails,’ he said, aware Galtas was awaiting a response.

  Galtas smiled, the effect much like the mule’s baring of teeth. ‘Just not on watch, eh, Captain?’

  Crys hauled the tent on to his shoulder. ‘You take the fun out of everything, milord.’

  ‘One of the privileges of rank, soldier. On you go.’

  Crys flicked a salute and marched past Galtas; he dumped the tent in a dip in the landscape that did fuck all to cut out the wind. Privileges of rank? Gods, he was an arse. At this pace, they had two more days to reach the forts, though if the weather carried on like this they’d all freeze to death well in advance. Didn’t all have ermine and wolfskin cloaks like the princes. Maybe I could win one of Rivil’s next time we play cards.

  The thought cheered him and he set about laying out the tent frame as he imagined swaggering through the honour guard dressed like a prince. But no. Word of that would definitely find its way back to Durdil.