by Matthew Ward
“In a manner of speaking.” Josiri pulled free and turned his attention to the cage’s iron lock. Too sturdy to force, and he lacked the skills for anything subtler. It would have to wait for Darrow. “What’s your name?”
“Altiris. Altiris Czaron.”
Josiri cast about the cages. Fewer than a dozen captives, and all save the lad reluctant to meet his gaze. A drop in the ocean to the hundreds still missing. That cellar alone could have held two or three score. “Where are the others? There were others?”
He nodded, hesitant.
“How many?”
Altiris stared past him to a slatted iron door behind the stairs. “I don’t know. Couple of dozen, perhaps? They took them in there. One at a time. They don’t come out, not ever, but we all heard the screams. It was my turn next. The woman with the feather-cloak told me so. Said it was necessary. She smiled. That was the worst of it.”
“Feathers?” asked Josiri. “Black feathers?”
Altiris bit his lip and pinched his eyes shut. “Black as nightmare.”
A chill brushed the back of Josiri’s neck. He’d no memory of seeing a feathered cloak among Darrow’s prisoners. Which meant the woman was still here. And if she was what Josiri suspected…? He stared at the iron door, his fingers closing again on the grips of his sword.
“Captain?” he murmured.
“Might be a good time to fetch Captain Darrow, if you take my meaning?” Kurkas sounded no happier than Josiri felt.
Josiri glanced from Altiris to the iron door. “Feel free. I’ll wait.”
Kurkas shook his head. “Oh no. I’m not falling for that. Not again. But if you get me killed, I’m never speaking to you again.”
“Noted.”
Josiri’s doubts resurfaced as he approached the door. Kurkas was right about fetching Darrow and her constables. But what would that do, except drive others onto the kernclaw’s talons in his place?
The door whispered open on the oiled hinges.
The smell hit Josiri first. Death. Not the old death of the rooms above, but the iron tang of blood recently spilt. The rough stone floor was dark with it, and never more so than where glistening grooves led towards a large, open grate at the room’s far end. In the chamber’s centre sat a low stone altar, its worn flanks etched with effigies of carrion birds with glittering gems for eyes.
The strangest feature was the lone, empty archway between altar and grate. Like the altar, it was made of older, rougher stone than the room in which it sat. Like the altar, it was covered in bloody smears – the print of many different hands visible against pale grey stone.
But of the kernclaw – or indeed, any other living soul save Kurkas, Josiri caught no sign.
They don’t come out, not ever.
A couple of dozen, Altiris had said. Depending on how long he’d been here, the true tally was likely higher.
“Blessed Lumestra,” breathed Kurkas.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?”
“On my old mother’s soul, I have not. Never even heard of anything like this.”
Josiri set the lantern down on the altar and put a hand to his mouth in a vain attempt to blot out the smell. No bodies, but that didn’t mean anything. Not with the sound of water rushing somewhere beneath the grate. A sewer, or one of the Estrina’s tributaries.
They don’t come out, not ever.
Indenturement was bad enough. This was worse. Whatever “this” was.
“I think it’s time you fetched Captain Darrow,” said Josiri.
Two
Josiri’s mother had once insisted that the Privy Council chamber was the Tressian Republic distilled to its purest form. For years untold, weighty decisions and momentous events had played out in that austere chamber, shepherded to fruition by representatives from families of the highest rank.
He’d been only a boy, easily impressed by Katya Trelan’s descriptions of the great stained-glass windows and stone visages of councillors long dead. Where history clung to every breath, filling the lungs as readily as the dust. Such an impression had her stories left that they’d survived Josiri’s turbulent passage into adulthood. For all the woes that had flowed south from that room – for all that the deaths of his parents and the oppression of his people had been plotted at that gilded table – it retained a status almost divine.
Or perhaps the deaths were part of it. Perhaps the Privy Council reflected not the citizenry below, but the divinities above. Of all the gods and goddesses, only Lumestra showed compassion for her ephemeral children.
Nine chairs beneath the golden map of a Tressian Kingdom now shrunken to a beleaguered Republic. Four counties remaining of a continent-spanning realm. Royal Tressia, spiritual heart of the nation. The rebellious Southshires – once Josiri’s home, and his family’s domain. The embattled Eastshires. The Marcher Lands that bound them all together.
Five men. Three women. One chair empty. And the latter often the most productive of the lot. The Privy Council was home to much talk, and little action. Still, better to be there than among the irrelevant multitudes of the Grand Council in the chamber below.
“Why ever did you take it upon yourself to get involved, Josiri?” Elbows braced against the table, Lord Lamirov leaned forward in his chair. Combined with hairless pate and leathery, wrinkled skin, he resembled a turtle striving to escape its shell. “It’s not becoming to embroil yourself in… squabbles.”
Josiri counted silently to five, partly to instil the false impression that he’d given the words weighty consideration – which he hadn’t – but mostly to quell a temper worn thin. He hated the austere, tailored suit seemliness required he wear to council; the silk cravat and the high-necked waistcoat. They constricted and confined, made him feel something other than himself… which he suspected was the point.
“Squabbles, Leonast?” Using the personal name was a conceit of council – the pretension of familiarity and shared purpose where too often none existed. “Dozens of my people tortured and killed at vranakin hands?”
“You didn’t know that at the time.” Lord Lamirov’s eyes gleamed. “Intent matters in all things, and it troubles me that a representative of this council indulges his ardour by seeking cheap thrills. Especially a councillor of your… reputation.”
He leaned back, content to have landed a telling blow – though to what end that blow had fallen wasn’t immediately obvious. Such was often the way when Lord Lamirov spoke in council.
It had bothered Josiri at first, for the woman who’d previously occupied that very chair had revelled in verbal fencing to further wicked ambition. But as the months had passed, and no such ambitions had flourished, Josiri had realised that Leonast Lamirov had few aims beyond cleverness for its own sake, and of burnishing his own ego to the detriment of others. If the Privy Councillors were indeed to be likened to gods, then Lamirov was Jack o’ Fellhallow, ensconced in his thorny fastness; offering torment and bargain to those within his orbit for no other reason than because it amused.
It didn’t take much imagination to conjure the spectre of Ebigail Kiradin laughing at her successor with disdain. No one could ever have accused her of being without grand design – however cruel and misjudged her attempt to seize control of the Republic had been. The memory of the horrors Ebigail had unleashed usually gave Josiri the strength to tolerate the withered old man’s fussiness. But not today, with the horrors of the portreeve’s manor still uppermost in memory. Patience – never Josiri’s most abundant asset – began to slip.
“My reputation…?”
A hooded glance from the head of the table warned Josiri that his voice held entirely too much growl. But Malachi Reveque simply turned his filigreed paper knife over and over in his hands and made no move to intervene. By nature a conciliator, he wore the rank of First Councillor lightly. Gracious Lumestra, holding court over her quarrelling siblings… no matter how little he looked the part.
In a city where fine cloth and golden thread so often heralded st
atus, the drab greys of Malachi’s waistcoat and tailored jacket marked him out more as a merchant of the middling sort, rather than the holder of authority unprecedented since the Age of Kings. Authority that had taken its toll. Dark hair fought a losing retreat against the grey of still-distant middle-years.
Josiri took a deep breath. “You can speak plainly, Leonast. We’re all friends here.” The lie came easily, born of practice. “What has my reputation to do with any of this?”
Lord Lamirov glanced away. A terror to those who laboured on his estates, he soon tired of confrontation with those who snarled back.
“Your reputation has everything do with this, your grace.”
Erashel Beral had seen barely half Lord Lamirov’s sixty years. She seldom spoke without purpose, or without care. There’d be no accident in her use of the ducal honorific.
Erashel’s father had fought and died for Katya Trelan’s rebellion. The following Exodus – the Council’s punishment for the failed insurrection – had scattered her family, just as it had done so many other southwealders. The Settlement Decree had unshackled Erashel from a Selanni farm, and restored to her a portion of the estates and property stolen after her father’s death, but calloused hands and weatherworn skin would for ever set her apart from sheltered peers. As did her chestnut hair, worn short and without the plaits and ribbons customary for noblewomen. She bore her past as proudly as Josiri sometimes wished to forget his own.
“May I be blunt?” she asked.
“By all means,” said Josiri.
“That I am free, let alone that I sit at this table, comes as a direct result of your actions last year. Others present were spared from the gallows by those same deeds.”
With an effort, Josiri kept a motionless expression. Tressian history was a fluid thing, sculpted by those in power. Josiri hadn’t fought for the Republic, but for friends. For Malachi, and for… A name surfaced. One he strove to forget just as diligently as the Council’s historians strove to erase Ebigail Kiradin from history, lest another find inspiration in her treason.
Josiri scarcely recognised the official record of that day. It placed him in the forefront of the battle that had wrested supreme power from Ebigail Kiradin’s grasp. His own memory recalled a more modest contribution. But Malachi had insisted. Easier to sell the idea of ending the Southshires’ occupation if its most notorious son was known to have redeemed himself.
And it had worked. At Josiri’s inauguration, the Grand Council had cheered him as one of their own. Him. The son of Katya the Traitor. He’d have laughed, but for a heart heavy with grief for a sister slain and a home burnt to ashes. He’d saved his enemies, but failed those who’d trusted him. Erashel’s use of the ducal honorific was a deliberate barb to remind him of that, even if she didn’t know the whole truth. The fate of Eskavord and its dukedom was one painstakingly concealed. Or at least the cause. The fate was known by all. A vibrant town become a haunted and forbidden place.
“Too much is made of that,” he said. “Others fought far harder than I.”
“The herald who greeted me at the docks didn’t believe so. There was I, fresh off the ship in a borrowed dress – because I could hardly be presented to the Grand Council in a farmer’s rags, could I? Do you know what he asked me? Was it true that my father had fought beside the great Josiri Trelan?” She laughed without humour. “I said that your mother had gotten him killed at Zanya. He didn’t know how to reply. Lessons in etiquette have their limits.”
“I am not my mother,” Josiri bit out.
“Are you not? You attend council only when it suits you. You otherwise embroil yourself in matters better left to others. Settling guild disputes. Interfering in constabulary business. And now this morning, you provoke the Crowmarket? That sounds very like Katya Trelan.”
“If I hadn’t, more of our people would be dead.”
A little of the fire slipped from Erashel’s eyes. “I know. But this isn’t about individuals. We can’t afford it to be. The Crowmarket’s actions are reprehensible…”
Lord Lamirov nodded sagely. “Indeed.”
“… but this council must be seen to act as one. United. The Grand Council worries at what you might do next. Yesterday, they loved you. Today they tolerate you. What comes tomorrow? How long before they see only an upstart southwealder to be put in his place? Your mother’s recklessness nearly destroyed our people. Don’t repeat her mistakes.”
Josiri opened his mouth but found no voice with which to offer reply. Erashel’s onslaught, precise and considered where Lord Lamirov had offered only hollow cleverness, strayed close to uncomfortable truths. If Lamirov was Jack, all directionless, self-satisfied malice, then Erashel was the Raven. Remorseless, methodical… and above all resentful for a life spent in shadow, toiling to another’s purpose.
Strange to think of Jack and the Raven embracing shared purpose – as embodiments of life and death, no two could be more different – but no stranger than finding accord between the landed and wealthy Lamirov family and the near-destitute daughter of Beral. A shared enemy made common cause faster than friendship.
Again, Josiri heard Ebigail Kiradin’s disdainful laughter, this time directed at him.
Still an outsider, even now.
“What would you have had me do?” he asked softly.
“No one doubts your intentions, Josiri,” Erashel replied. “But if our people are to have any chance at all of regaining their place in the Republic, they need you and I to set an example. To respect how things are done, and in so doing prove we are not our parents.”
Josiri didn’t miss the subtle shift in language that bound them back to common purpose. They need us. We are not our parents. Erashel was far better at this, and Josiri wondered how she’d honed the knack while tilling crops on Selann. Rhetoric and wheat fields made for an unlikely combination. Or perhaps it was simply that the father she so plainly disdained had done a better job of preparing her for the future than she’d likely admit.
Maybe it would be better to back down. Mend bridges. “What if I can’t do that?”
A chair’s creak marked Lord Lamirov rejoining the fray. “If the last year has proven nothing else, it is that a place on this council is no longer a birthright, but a privilege.” He gestured to the empty chair. “We have two worthy candidates for the one seat that remains. If you were to step down, it would save us all a difficult choice.”
“Would it indeed?” asked Josiri.
The twitch of Erashel’s left eyelid might have suggested she’d not intended matters to escalate as they had, but could equally have been a tell-tale of satisfaction. Malachi looked pensive. Were the matter set to a vote, he could of course overrule the result – the position and power of First Councillor had been created specifically to serve as a brake on infighting – but doing so would undercut the neutrality he strove to present. As for the others, conspicuously silent as they’d been throughout the exchange…?
Lady Messela Akadra sat apart as she always did, eyes downcast and shoulders drawn in – the epitome of one seeking to draw no attention. A vain hope, for she’d have been beautiful if only she didn’t always look so worried. As it was, the silver ribbons plaited into her black hair did little to shake the impression of a woman mourning a lost husband – if one rather too young to be so beset, as indeed she was not. At seventeen years old, she’d barely come of age when the family seat had fallen vacant following her uncle’s disappearance and her cousin’s self-imposed exile. No one – least of all Messela herself – had expected the responsibility to fall as it had. And so she attended every meeting, hearing everything but saying nothing. The goddess Endala, too cowed by her peers to wield her influence, save in secret ways?
Lord Evarn Marest and Lady Rika Tarev were scarcely better prospects for support.
The Tarev family owned dozens of farms across the Marcher Lands. Farms whose workforce – and therefore whose profits – had received a dolorous blow since the Settlement Decree. By nature distant and
calculating, Rika was a force for good or ill as the mood took her, and ill more often than not. Much like Ashana, Goddess of Evermoon and patron of the Hadari Empire.
As for Lord Marest, though an heir by adoption rather than blood, he’d famously inherited his great aunt’s piety along with her estate and council seat – though rumour suggested that piety arose more to meet the terms of said inheritance than out of any great love for Lumestra. So like cruel Tzal of myth, who never did anything for anyone save himself.
That left one other.
“Bugger that.”
The speaker wasn’t so much sat in his chair as draped across it, a wiry, blond man taking his ease and very much bored to be doing so. In his way, he was as much an outsider as Josiri, first for his tan skin, which belonged more to the eastern borderlands than to the paler flesh common in the city, and second for his dress. Council was a place for respectable attire, not chamfered plate, steel circlet and a knight’s surcoat of hunter’s green. To Josiri’s knowledge, no one had broached the topic with Stantin Izack, Master of the Knights Essamere. He suspected no one ever would. No godly mantle suited Izack better than that of Astor, the bellicose and plainspoken Forge-God.
“You’ve something to add, Izack?” asked Lord Lamirov. Even in council, no one addressed Izack by his first name. No one felt they knew him well enough. “You might observe the niceties of—”
“You keep talking like Josiri sneaked off and did something unmentionable behind the Council’s back, but I knew. We discussed the matter, and concurred that we needn’t bother the Council’s valuable time with…” Izack turned his grey gaze on Erashel “… matters better left to others. I wanted to go in with a brotherhood of Essamere’s finest and crack a few skulls. His lordship talked me out of it. Still think he was wrong on that, mind, but I’m just a simple soldier.”
