‘How long has this been going on?’ Gilda demanded at the same time.
Dom raised his hands, palm up. ‘They’ve discovered the … the pathway in my head – the godspace – that the Dancer uses to send me Her knowings, and They’ve realised They can use it, too. As for how long, since before Yule.’ He patted the air. ‘I could handle it; it wasn’t bad before. You didn’t need to know.’
‘Is this the secret you’ve been keeping?’ Lim asked and Dom nodded quickly. Gilda’s eyes narrowed. A little too keen there, my lad, a little too happy to agree. I’d say this is one of the many secrets you keep from us.
The drip of melting snow pattered outside and sun bright enough to hurt came through the cracks in the walls and cast an oblong of pale gold through the doorway.
‘Is this my fault?’ Rillirin whispered, chewing her thumbnail. ‘This is because of me, isn’t it?’
Dom beckoned and she went to him reluctantly. ‘Not at all,’ he said, pulling her to his side and wrapping his arm around her waist. ‘It is not,’ he added. ‘Worry about everything else that’s happening, not about this. This is just entertainment.’
‘Entertainment? What do you mean?’ Gilda asked. He was so calm about it, accepting of it, as if it was normal. Or as if he thinks he deserves it.
Dom stared into the pool at his side, his face bitter. Maybe not so accepting after all. ‘They do it because They can. Because it amuses Them while They wait for Rivil and the Mireces to tear the veil and release Them back into Gilgoras.’
Gilda eyed him closely, her skin crawling at the thought that They would torture him just for fun. ‘What else?’ she asked, because she knew him and because she couldn’t see the catharsis of confession in his face.
Dom squeezed Rillirin tighter and pressed a quick kiss to her hair; then he let go and sat on the edge of the pool. He looked tired as he rubbed his eyes. ‘The Dark Lady knows me, knows who I am, the … things I’ve done.’ His left hand covered his right forearm and the scars it bore. ‘She says I’ll go to Her willingly in the end, that I belong to Her. She wants my soul and She’s convinced She’ll get it. Perhaps She might. But She’s a little too keen, if that makes sense. It worries me that if I ever break, if They break me, that it’ll do more than just add a soul to Her collection. It’s like there’s more to it than that, but I don’t know what.’
There was suspicion and fear in Rachelle’s face, and Gilda forced her own expression not to reflect the same emotions.
‘That stupid bastard blood oath,’ Sarilla growled, ‘why did you—’
‘Enough,’ Gilda snapped. ‘That conversation has been had many times over the years. What’s done is done. Dom, tell us how we can help you.’
His laugh was bitter and Rillirin sat beside him and took his hand in hers. He stared at the ceiling. ‘You can’t. This is my task, my burden. Don’t,’ he said when Lim looked ready to protest, ‘believe me, if anyone could help, could stop it happening, I’d bite their hand off. But you can’t. It’s not too bad. It’ll probably get worse but, for now, I can handle it. So how about we stop focusing on me and start focusing on winning the war, eh?’
His defences were back up and they’d get nothing more from him now. As one, they formed a circle and Gilda led them in prayer – for victory, for those they’d lost, and for all those they were going to lose. Gilda watched Dom as she chanted, wondering whether he would be one of the ones they’d lose. Or whether it would just be his soul that was taken. She wasn’t sure which of those would be worse.
CRYS
First moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
The Gilded Cup, silk and spice quarter, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘Fuck the gods! What happened to you?’ Ash demanded when he opened the door to Crys’s persistent hammering. He slung Crys’s unhurt arm over his shoulder and half carried him in, lowering him on to the bed.
‘Tara, get Durdil now,’ Crys gasped, ‘don’t care how you do it.’
Tara snapped her fingers. ‘Easy, I saw him heading into Second Circle this morning.’
Crys groaned as Ash tugged his coat over his slashed arm. ‘He’s probably in North Barracks then. If they won’t let you see him, get them to tell him sorry for the mess in his quarters and if he wants answers, to visit the courier from his son. That should be enough to get him here.’
‘Got it,’ Tara said. She paused at the door. ‘Are you going to die? Because if you are, do you want to tell me what’s happened?’
‘Get out. I’ll tell Ash if it looks like I won’t survive the hour,’ Crys said with as much sarcasm as he had left. He listened to her clattering down the stairs. ‘Lovely bedside manner,’ he managed.
Ash worked in silence, sliding Crys’s shirt off and muttering at the state of his arm.
‘That good?’ Crys hissed as Ash swore.
‘How?’ asked Ash instead of answering him.
‘Turns out Major Wheeler, one of Durdil’s most trusted officers, is in it up to his arsehole with Rivil. Or was, until I stuck my sword through him.’
‘You do like to make a mess wherever you go, don’t you? All right, hold still, I need to stitch.’ He disappeared to the dresser and came back with a bowl with thread floating on the water. ‘You’re losing a lot of blood and I don’t have time to sterilise this needle and thread properly.’ He fished the needle out of the water. ‘So this is salt water.’
‘Oh, you are shitting me,’ Crys mumbled. ‘Feel … dizzy,’ he added as the room spun gently around him.
‘That’s a good thing,’ Ash said as he threaded the needle. ‘Feel free to pass out, because this is really going to hurt.’
It was, of all things, the thirst that woke him, but it turned out to be the most pleasant of his body’s ailments. Crys groaned and, unsticking one eyelid, blinked slowly at the fuzzy outlines above him until they resolved into faces. Tara, Durdil, Ash.
Tara lifted his head and shoulders and pressed a cup to his lips. It was ale and it tasted like nectar. He swallowed most of the cupful before settling back against the pillow.
‘Not too much of that,’ Tara said, putting the back of her hand against his forehead. ‘You’re running a temperature.’
‘I know, I’ve been in a fight. I remember nearly all of it,’ Crys mumbled. ‘Commander, Major Wheeler—’
‘Is dead in my quarters, apparently. A message reached me shortly after Captain Carter.’ He reached down and checked the bandage around Crys’s arm and shoulder and grunted approval. ‘Nicely done. Wheeler’s death is most fortuitous, however,’ he continued.
Crys wondered whether he’d hit his head during the fight. ‘It is?’ he managed.
‘Very. Lord Galtas Morellis has disappeared. Prince Rivil says he believes Galtas had business to attend to, but doesn’t know where he was going or how long he’ll be. With an officer murdered in the palace itself, and Galtas mysteriously vanished, I can legitimately order a Hundred to track him down and arrest him.’ Durdil assumed an innocent expression. ‘After all, who else would have cause to murder Major Wheeler? Obviously the man discovered something Galtas preferred to keep hidden.’
‘And Rivil can’t do a damn thing about it,’ Tara said, her admiration plain, ‘because then he’d have to admit he’d sent Wheeler to kill Crys.’
Crys drank more ale, managing to hold the cup himself this time, hissing as the cut on his hip tugged against stitches. ‘So Wheeler told Rivil I was still alive and everything we discussed in front of him. He knows we know, and he knows his assassin failed. So he’s still after me.’
‘Oh, he’s after you all right,’ Durdil said and to Crys’s dismay he sounded almost cheerful. ‘Which is why I’m sending you back west. With a death in the palace and Galtas under suspicion, neither Rivil nor the king can argue with me shutting down the city and keeping them both under extremely close surveillance. Any messengers Galtas tries to send back we’ll intercept. We’ve cut the prince off from his allies, Captain. Rivil can’t get to you an
d he can’t leave the palace. He can’t reinforce the Mireces.’
‘You mean we’ve won?’ Crys asked, his head swimming with ale and blood loss and a tidal wave of relief.
Durdil rocked his hand from side to side. ‘Let’s not count our chickens before they hatch, Captain,’ he said and grinned, looking much younger and more alive than Crys had ever seen him, ‘but as long as we can get our hands on Galtas and keep Rivil under lock and key, it certainly looks that way. The Mireces might still force a fight, but that’s one battle my son can win.’
Crys managed a thumbs up before he slept again, and when he woke Durdil was gone and the bed was swaying with a sickening motion that wouldn’t stop. Eventually he rolled to the edge of the cot and threw up, aiming vaguely for the bowl on the floor. Some of it went in.
‘Disgusting,’ Ash said from his seat at the other end of the narrow room and Crys yelped in surprise, and then yelped again as his shoulder protested his sudden movement.
‘Uh, this may sound strange,’ Crys said slowly as he took in his surroundings, ‘but I don’t remember your room at the inn looking like this.’
Ash laughed and came to collect the bowl. He wrinkled his nose and laid a cloth over it, putting it to one side. ‘We’re on board,’ he said. ‘You slept through the whole thing. Durdil sent us in a wool wagon to the south harbour and bundled us on to a boat of supplies for the West Rank. We’re heading home.’
‘Thank the gods,’ Crys said and patted the amulets on his chest. His bare chest. His free hand slid beneath the blanket and Ash laughed again.
‘Yes, you’re naked,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get to the cut on your hip after you passed out and I didn’t know how bad it was. Your arse was in the breeze the whole way to the docks, it was truly disgusting. Besides, I didn’t think you’d want to be wearing that uniform much longer. We’ve got some fresh clothes for when you’re up and about.’
Crys’s face was so hot his hair nearly caught fire. ‘You undressed me?’
‘You would have preferred Tara?’
‘What? No!’
Ash winked and threw him a pair of linens. ‘I can say this with perfect honesty, Captain. You are not the first naked man I have seen in my life.’ He chuckled. ‘Nor the most well endowed.’
‘Hey,’ Crys protested, but for some reason he was laughing.
RILLIRIN
Second moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Watch Ford, the River Gil, Cattle Lands
It was wrong to be happy in such circumstances, but Rillirin hadn’t been happy for as long as she could remember, so she wasn’t going to let anything stop her now. She rode a piebald mare with a sweet temperament and a pink muzzle, her spear in her right hand, reins in her left. Her thighs were burning from hours in the saddle, her hands blistered and shoulders aching from working the new, heavier spear with its leaf-blade at one end and its counterweight ball of iron at the other. None of it mattered.
Dom rode on one side of her and Dalli on the other, and all around hundreds of Wolves rode with them. They were going to base themselves in their main summer village in the foothills between the River Gil and the Blood Pass Valley, and from there they’d sweep for movement and be ready to aid the West Rank in battle.
Rillirin’s palm threatened to slip on her spear and she tightened her grip. Dom said I probably wouldn’t have to fight. Not enough training. Her stomach fluttered with relief even as her head rebelled at being left behind.
Dalli’s cousin, Seth Lightfoot, ran easily at the head of the column, checking the trail and looking for ambush, even out here on the plain. They had archers to the fore, led by Sarilla, and more at the rear. Wherever they went, Wolves took no chances.
Dalli was relating a ridiculous story about a Ranker she’d slept with a few winters before, the telling of it graphic enough to make Rillirin blush and squirm in the saddle. Dalli kept laughing at her expression.
‘Gods, girl, the man who finally tumbles you is going to have a task and a half. Sex is supposed to be fun, remember?’
Rillirin’s face was hot and her laughter was forced, but she liked that Dalli was talking to her as though she was normal. ‘Yeah, I can’t see that happening,’ Rillirin said. ‘I sort of made a promise that no man would ever touch me.’
She could sense Dom’s sudden interest and squeezed her knees together in reflex, but then pulled back on the reins when the mare lengthened stride. The horse snorted and dropped back to a walk.
‘Pfft.’ Dalli waved her hand airily. ‘I make oaths like that all the time. Swearing off sex is the same as swearing off drinking,’ she said and looked over to Dom.
‘Never lasts,’ they said together and laughed.
‘If you say so,’ Rillirin said, trying for nonchalance and falling short. She wanted to join in but had nothing she could share; stories of Liris didn’t exactly make people laugh. She fumbled for another topic, an amusing story of her life, and came up blank. Gods, I’m pathetic.
Still, she was riding with the Wolves, almost as if she was one of them, and second moon was being kind so far. There’d been a brief thaw and the fug raised by the horses surrounded their riders in a pungent cloud of warmth.
‘Heels down,’ Dom reminded her and she grimaced and adjusted her position.
‘Ow. How many times are you going to say that?’ she complained as her calves protested.
‘Until you don’t need reminding,’ he said, and leant over to punch her lightly in the thigh. ‘Next step is to tie lead weights to your boot heels.’
Rillirin opened her mouth to reply when Dom stiffened in the saddle and then tumbled out, making no effort to catch himself. His gelding reared and whinnied, hooves flashing as Dom’s weight dragged it in a circle.
‘Dom? Dom!’
Horses were pulling up all around them and Rillirin dropped her spear and threw herself from the saddle, Dalli a step behind. He was thrashing in the grass like a dog with a rabbit, sounds juddering from his mouth, eyes rolled up in his head.
‘Lim,’ Dalli screamed and then, ‘get the horses back.’ Wolves guided their skittsh mounts away, leaving Dom in the mud and slush. Dalli and Rillirin knelt either side of him, trying to still his limbs.
‘Leave him,’ Lim ordered, arriving at a run. ‘You’ll do more damage if you try and control it.’ They let him go, sliding out of range of his arms, waiting for him to quiet.
‘Little brother,’ Lim said, his hand on Dom’s chest, ‘easy now, little brother. There you go. Ssh, now, ssh.’
‘Beware the east,’ Dom stuttered, his eyes opening on to a landscape only he could see, one blasted and desolate and reflected in his face. ‘Beware the east and the poison of love. Poison,’ he repeated. ‘Enough to kill us all. Just one drop and the fire rages. Everything burns.’
Rillirin took Dom’s mud-splattered hand and pressed it to her cheek. ‘I’m here,’ she whispered, ‘I’m here, just breathe.’ The man lying before her, mud smeared across his mouth and the tip of his nose, had nothing in him of the Dom she knew. His brown eyes were shards of pottery sunk in his head, broken and crazed and couldn’t be put back together. But he clung to her hand as though it was a raft on a raging river, nostrils flaring as he sucked in air.
‘Breathe, love,’ she whispered, and bent down to press a kiss to his cheek, his lips. He tasted of metal and winter and rich earth, and he smelt of horses and fear and death. ‘You’re all right, I’m right here. I’m here.’ She barely listened to the conversation going on above them.
‘East, he said. Rivil’s plans were to find allies in the east, remember?’
‘Poison,’ Sarilla said. ‘Assassination, maybe?’
Rillirin looked up at that, met Lim’s eyes for a second, and then Lim swore. ‘Fucking hell. Rivil’s going to kill the king.’
MACE
Second moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
West Rank headquarters, Cattle Lands, Rilporian border
‘Come on, you ba
stards. What are you up to?’ Mace stood on the topmost level of the watchtower and raised his fist to the mountains looming over him as though he could shake the Mireces out of them. And yet nothing. Not a whisper, not a flicker of blue beneath the trees. Instead, the winter mocked him from its home in the rocks, blowing the scent of snow and cold stone into his face despite the dawning green of the plains behind him. He shivered.
‘Sir? Captain Carter’s back.’
‘Excellent, excellent. Send her straight up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Mace had reached his office and tidied some papers before there was a knock on the door and Tara came in, leading Crys and Ash. Crys had a limp, a sling and an almost healed split lip. Mace gestured them to a seat and Crys sank into his gratefully, his free hand pressed to his hip.
‘Report,’ Mace said and braced himself. A variety of emotions chased across his face as Tara spoke, with occasional interjections from Crys and Ash.
When they were done, he relaxed into his chair with a whoosh of expelled breath. ‘I like it, I like it a lot,’ he said. ‘All except the part about Galtas being missing. No one’s heard anything?’
‘Not by the time we’d left. With luck the slimy little shit has been found and hanged.’ Mace raised an eyebrow and Tara’s lip curled. ‘His behaviour was improper when he was here.’
Mace banged his fist on the table. ‘I have told you to let me know if that happens, Captain,’ he growled.
‘I handled it. You had enough to worry about with the princes.’
Mace fought the urge to tear out his hair. Will the woman ever bloody listen to a single godsdamn bloody order in her life?
‘Sir? I find myself without a Rank or formal instructions,’ Crys said. ‘I was sent here to keep out of Rivil’s way, but I’d still like to do whatever I can to help. The Mireces are probably stupid enough to attack even when they know Rivil isn’t coming. Do you think you’d be able to find a place for me?’
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