Elegy (The Magpie Ballads Book 1)

by Vale Aida

  “Yes,” said Emaris.

  “No,” said Savonn. He rose in his stirrups, the wind stirring his hair. “Gentlemen! We make for the gate. Do you see this man with the bow? Fall out of line, and he’ll shoot you.”

  Then he resumed his seat and spurred his horse, and they were moving.

  The grey bulk of the city wall loomed ahead, the two halves of the gate standing open in its midst. Willon’s rider had preceded them, and already the men at the winches were working the levers. Even as Emaris surged headlong down the road with the others in a cacophony of hoofbeats, the footsoldiers jogging behind them, the gate began to creak shut.

  Savonn lifted his fist in the air. It was a signal they all knew, and had been watching for. Taking his hands off the reins, Emaris nocked and drew his bow, guiding his horse with his knees. He found a mark. He took aim. As usual, he considered missing on purpose.

  “Stand down!” Savonn called.

  The gatekeepers hesitated. In full stage voice, Savonn shouted, “Stand down!”

  It worked like an enchantment. Faced with two hundred bows trained on them, they backed away from the winches and put their hands in the air. The gate stood open, with freedom beyond. “Brothers,” Savonn called. “A salute for the Second Captain, if you please.”

  The bowstring twanged sweetly under Emaris’s fingers as he loosed. A flock of arrows rose shining with the sound of a great many birds taking off at once, and rattled against the steel struts of the gate. Someone whooped. A wordless cheer went up. Then they were clear of the walls, and on the road that would take them into the highlands.

  They had come away without bloodshed. They had chosen to follow their Captain, this malicious, prancing popinjay who could spit in the Council’s face and come away laughing, and henceforth were at no one’s mercy but his. There were no banners, no heralds, no trumpets. Only their own cheers accompanied them as they streamed away from the city in a tidy column of horse and foot: the eight hundred who had chosen to follow Savonn Silvertongue, come what may, into the Farfallens.

  ACT TWO

  THE MAGPIE

  AND THE NIGHTINGALE

  INTERLUDE

  They say the Farfallens are a good place for falling in love.

  I wouldn’t know. I have had just the one love, after all—the statistics are hardly convincing. Still, I am tempted to agree. Do you remember that blustery autumn morning we ran into each other in the marketplace in Astorre? It had been months since last we’d met. I missed you, though I would not have admitted it even to myself. But I was with my brothers-in-arms, and you with yours—I recognised that tall fellow, blond as a crocus, who always seemed so vexed by you. (Most of your companions did. It was one of my favourite things about you.) We passed ten feet apart on opposite sides of a stall, and I could all but feel your heart beating, like the flutter of a hummingbird trapped in my hand. After so long apart, I could not bear to pass you by without speaking. I stopped to browse the wares, and so did you. It was wigs, or hats, or something like that. I held one up at random and said to my manservant, It is so beautiful, but look at the cost!

  And you said to your blond friend, in your own tongue, which you knew I understood, This is worth any cost.

  You believe yourself unreadable and unfathomable, but you see, my dear, I have perfect pitch for all the inflections of your voice. I knew, or thought I did, that you meant what you said. It salved the pain of separation, at any rate. And later that week you slipped in through my window, and we spent a joyous evening together, with neither your friends nor mine any the wiser.

  I did not know, then, to whom you owed your loyalty. It was plain enough to me that you were not on your own side, so I thought you were on mine. It was an easy mistake to make.

  7

  Unlike its recent predecessor, the funeral of Rendell of Betronett was small, tasteful, and decorous to a fault.

  The only anomaly was the presence of Lady Josit, who arrived with her handmaids at the last minute. It was a matter of some chagrin for Shandei, who had not expected anyone besides Linn and her own handful of disreputable friends to turn up. The Lady was very kind, though, and made no comment on the humble proceedings. “Why this place?” she asked, when the burial was over and the mourners had begun to draw off in twos and threes. “Was it dear to him?”

  Shandei had chosen a wooded grove two miles downriver from Cassarah. It stood on an escarpment where the Morivant had shifted its course westward sometime in its long, war-fraught history, leaving a low cliff and a sandy bay that sloped gently towards the lazy waters. “He used to take us here when we were small,” she said. “We’d pick figs and catch fish with our spears, and he taught Emaris and me to swim. He used to say our mother was a mermaid from Bayarre.”

  Josit looked out over the water. It was almost dusk. The blood-red sun was plunging its rosy skirts over the river, gilding with fire the roofs and ridgepoles of the villages on the Saraian side. From here they looked small as toys. “You should know this,” she said. “I moved to open an investigation into his death, and the attack on Savonn, but Lord Willon shut it down. I gather he thinks the whole affair an embarrassment to him.”

  Shandei decided, for once, to err on the side of caution, and did not comment. “And the Betronett company?” she asked, thinking of her brother. “What does his lordship mean to do about it?”

  “Nothing,” said Josit. “The Council toyed with the idea of sending out the city guard after them, but Lucien and I put a stop to that. Having our armies murder each other on the eve of war is exactly what Marguerit would like us to do. Now Willon is acting as if it was his idea to send Savonn to the mountains all along.”

  Shandei held her tongue. None of this was surprising. Besides, she had plans of her own. “I suppose he would,” she said. “Ladyship, I’d better go. I have errands to run. Thank you for your kindness.”

  “Justice is not kindness,” said Josit. “You are going back without an escort?”

  Shandei smiled in spite of herself. “I should be all right.”

  On her hired pony, she was through the Fire Gate and back in the city in almost no time. She changed out of her mourning garb, put on a billowy dress that amply concealed the ivory dagger in her garter, and set out on foot again.

  She had not spent the last few days idle. From a friend who had a friend who knew a cook at the Efrens’, and from covert surveillance of her own, she had learnt that Lord Willon was unassailable. His household guard numbered some two hundred, commanded by a man called Cahal, and his residence—a veritable palace among the other mansions on the Street of Silver—was impregnable. The man himself was unlikely to tolerate an interrogation on his doings and whereabouts on the night her father died, and his wife and two older sons were far away running the country estate. So her investigation had but one hope: the youngest son, Vesmer, whom she had seen at the assembly.

  From her various conquests in the city guard, she had no difficulty learning his patrol route. It was a long one, crossing a number of secluded areas that seemed like promising ambush spots. The one she picked was the Rose Bridge, which extended from the roof of the clockmaker’s shop to the printing press two streets away, so decent folk did not have to traverse the unsavoury neighbourhood in between. Even to herself, her objectives were unclear. It was unthinkable that Vesmer Efren would be cooperative. But one had to try.

  It was almost midnight when she got there. Swaying lanterns lit the bridge, illuminating the quiet walkway and the rose hedges that flanked it on either side. A narrow alley wriggled below, its slovenly buildings quiet and secretive in their shadows. She had explored the district once, without permission: a hodgepodge of pleasure houses and usurers and underground taverns that served illicit concoctions more potent than any ale. She swung over the low rail to sit on the baluster, her crumpled skirts catching in the thorns and brambles below, and waited.

  A couple of pedestrians passed her perch. The first gave her a wide berth; the second tried to proposition her.
Then, when both her patience and her nerve were wearing thin, she heard the chink of mail, and knew her quarry had arrived.

  She did not turn around. Every sense was informative, hearing more than most. His tread was leisurely and even, each step punctuated by a metallic clink. He wore a scabbard at his side—his left hip, which meant he must be right-handed. A tinny, rhythmic tapping made itself known, ding-ding-ding-da-ding, as he came closer and his footsteps slowed. He was drumming his fingers on something sonorous. A helm. “What are you doing, woman?”

  The voice was bluff and bearish, like Lord Willon’s. She stayed where she was, her hands folded in her lap. “Sitting.”

  “Here?”

  “Is it unlawful, sir?”

  Her tone offended him, as she had intended. “You state your business when an officer of the city guard asks for it. Why are you sitting here?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said truthfully. “Am I disrupting the peace? I would hate that. It’s been disrupted so often lately.”

  He seized her arm and pulled her from the baluster. In a flurry of silk and cotton, she untangled her skirts and unfolded her legs and swung down beside him. The picture she had formed was accurate to the point of hilarity. He stood over her, a tall, sallow man with gingery hair, bushy caterpillar eyebrows and a boat-bottomed jaw. A mail shirt covered him to the knee, over which he wore a studded leather vest emblazoned with the silver badge of his rank. His sword was at his left hip; his helm was in his hand, which was still drumming away. Ding-ding-ding-da-ding. There was no sign that he recognised her from the assembly. He said, “I could fine you for back-talking.”

  He had yet to release her arm. As she gazed up at him, the restlessness that had plagued her since that bleak morning in Linn’s house solidified and, like lead in an alchemist’s furnace, transmuted into a boundless, throbbing rage. Now she saw why she had come. Such a sickness had to be exorcised in confrontation, leeched off like bad blood. “What about murder?” she asked. “What is the penalty for that? Or haven’t you caught the fellow who killed my father and set the hitmen on the Captain?”

  She thought the shock might make him recoil. Instead he came closer, his beady eyes roving her face with fresh interest. She could smell his breath, sour with garlic from his supper. “I’ve seen you before. Your father was the Captain’s man.” A faint line bisected the space between his brows, and his clam-like grip tightened on her elbow. “He sent you to harass me? The Silvertongue?”

  The arrogance of it rendered her mute for a moment. It meant nothing to him that a man had died. All these rich people were the same, blind to everything but each other’s machinations. “I came of my own accord,” she said. “Imagine that. Are you alarmed? Perhaps you and the good Lord Efren know something we don’t?”

  His jaw slackened with the same bewildered offense she had seen on Willon’s face. Any moment now he would try to hit her. She was not afraid. She could see the end of him, clear as a divine revelation. It was as if a film had dissolved from over her eyes, leaving the night bathed in a lucent, enchanted clarity. Never before had she seen the world like this, the delicate arch of the bridge, the blooming roses, the gentle glow of the lanterns all sparkling with new beauty. The low railing of the bridge was just a foot away. There would be no witnesses. Only a thirty-foot drop; maybe a scream, a crunch of bone. And tomorrow Lord Willon would be in mourning, like she was, the windows of the mansion on the Street of Silver curtained in black.

  And her father would still be dead, her house cold and empty.

  “Your insinuations,” Vesmer was saying, “are slander, and you will answer for them. My father will be apprised of this. If I were you I would stop talking and start running.”

  He was not, after all, going to arrest her tonight. He would probably find it awkward if she slandered him some more in the hearing of his colleagues. Tomorrow, more likely than not, she would just wake to a rap on her door and a ring of Efren retainers around her house. It was too late to take anything back. “Where should I run, milord? This is my city.”

  He gave an expansive shrug. “Out of my sight.”

  He released her arm and flung her away, so hard she nearly hit herself in the face with the back of her own hand. She looked once more at the bridge railing. Aebria, Casteia, avenge me, she thought. But the moment had come and gone. She had lost the element of surprise. Already someone else was coming up on the bridge, a distant, approaching figure behind Vesmer. The night had lost its crystalline purity, and the cleansing fire of the gods had gone.

  “Well?” said Vesmer. “What are you waiting for?”

  She turned her back and walked away, her arms folded tight across her chest. His fingers were drumming again, ding-ding-ding-dong. She made her way to the clockmaker’s at the end of the bridge and descended the stairs to the snarl of thready lanes and dingy shops below, her head pounding with the swift percussion of her heartbeat. She had accomplished nothing. Perhaps she ought to run, like he said. Perhaps she ought to pack her bags and flee to Terinea, to the Bitten Hill, to her brother in the mountains. But her father always said that once one started running, one never stopped.

  She went home, bolted all the doors, dragged a bedroll into the cellar, and fell into a dead sleep clutching her knife.

  * * *

  She woke the next morning to a pounding on the back door. It was accompanied not by Vesmer’s gruff voice, as she might have expected, but Linn’s brisk, cheery one. “Shandei! Are you alive? I baked bread. Got news, too. Don’t make me bang down your door.”

  A glance out the window confirmed that Linn was alone, carrying an enormous bread-basket and a sack of herbs. “What news?” asked Shandei as she let her in, drowsy and dazed. She had a headache, and the back of her mouth tasted like something dead.

  “Oh,” said Linn, bustling in and setting the basket on the kitchen table. “Lord Efren’s son is dead. The youngest. Vesmer, I think he was called.”

  It was a few moments before Shandei was aware of speaking. “What?”

  If she sounded strained, Linn was too busy poking around the larder to notice. “They’re saying he never came off his guard shift last night. His men went looking for him. Found him under the Rose Bridge, head bashed in and everything. Must have been pushed. I hear there were rose petals everywhere, like there’d been a hell of a fight. Where on earth do you keep your butter?”

  Moving like a sleepwalker, Shandei retrieved the butter-plate and handed it over. It was exactly as she had envisioned it the night before, praying to the gods with her arm caught in Vesmer’s grip. A sharp push, a quick fall, a long silence. “Who did it?”

  “No one knows,” said Linn. “A pity, I suppose. So close to Midsummer, too.”

  She set about buttering a chunk of bread. Shandei watched, unseeing. She had glimpsed someone behind Vesmer the night before, just as she turned to go—the indistinct figure at the far end of the bridge. Had he been the killer? Who was that man, if indeed he was a man at all, and not something crawled out of the recesses of her own mind? If anyone got word that she had been on the Rose Bridge last night—

  They could not prove she had pushed him, but as Josit had said, that would hardly matter. It would be good enough for his father, who would condemn her for a murderer. And who was to say she was not? She had prayed Vesmer dead. For all she knew, the Ceriyes had heard her.

  She went out to the garden, and tried not to be sick.

  8

  Marching at a blistering pace, the army of Savonn Silvertongue arrived at the fort called Onaressi on Midsummer’s Eve.

  This seemed like unfortunate timing to Emaris, but Savonn was preoccupied with other matters. The mountains that bordered Falwyn, Sarei and the Northlands were peppered with ancient fastnesses, built by settlers from one side or another and abandoned to ruin when the inhabitants found the lowland air more salubrious. In Merrott’s day, the Betronett patrols had used them as waystations on their trips to and from Astorre. Now they should have been deserted. But the
scouts of Medrai told them otherwise: Onaressi, and several other forts, had been overrun by squatters.

  “Bandits, or so they claim,” said Savonn to the gaggle of young recruits that had taken to dogging his steps wherever he went. “As far as the good people of Medrai are concerned, any stone they trip over on the road is a bandit. They may be right. That, however, doesn’t rule out the possibility that these particular brigands are in Marguerit’s hire.”

  Unasked, but drawn by a pungent mix of irritation and jealousy, Emaris came closer to listen. Their numbers had grown since Cassarah. Savonn had called at most of the settlements they passed on their way, and the townsfolk streamed after him in droves to swell their host. Unfortunately, most of these happened to be peasant boys who barely knew how to hold a sword. “We should storm it,” said one of these, now: the tallest of the lot, with deep umber skin, close-cropped hair, and—as Emaris had already noted in many others—a deplorable tendency to gaze at Savonn as if he were the moon. “I could lead your van, Captain.”

  They all looked up at Onaressi. The fort was built on a towering spur of rock at the point where the road split in half and became Forech’s and Ilsa’s Passes, the two main routes across the mountains. They were encamped at the foot of the cliff, where the overhang offered some shelter from watchful eyes and the nose-watering wind. “You may,” said Savonn, spinning his sunhat on one tapered finger. “If you tell me how you propose to storm it.”

  “Through a postern,” said another boy. He had positioned himself at the Captain’s side, in the place where a squire might stand. Emaris frowned at him with unconcealed hauteur. “That’s what they do in books.”