The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  “Ma!” said Benedikt, stumbling to her.

  Someone had settled Molly on a folded blanket by the cold hearth. Grey-faced, her apron dagger-ripped and drying in stiff, dark red folds, she heaved in a shuddering breath and opened her eyes.

  “Benedikt,” she murmured. “M’little chick.”

  “Ma, what—”

  “Benedikt.” Liam touched his brother’s shoulder. “Sit with her. I’ll look to see we’re safe.”

  Molly coughed. “Iddo.”

  Iddo lay on a blanket in the corner by the bar, badly beaten, sluggishly bleeding. A gleam of lamplight caught his eyes, half-opened in his bruised, swollen face.

  Staring down at him, Liam shrugged. “He’ll keep.”

  “Willem—” Benedikt twisted to look at him. “Ma needs Izusa. Can ye run, can ye—”

  It seemed to him Molly was beyond healing, but he couldn’t tell his brother that. “Iss. I’ll go.”

  But first things first. He snatched a lantern off the bar and picked his way to the attic stairs. Climbed them. Felt his heart give a sickening thump as he saw the bedroom door kicked open. Inside, everything was upended. His bed and Benedikt’s had been daggered so their straw-and-wool stuffing spewed out like guts. The pillows were gutted too. Spare shirts and smocks and hose slashed to ribbons. Even their good leather shoes were butchered useless. Heart thumping even harder, Liam fell to his knees under the open window and prised up the second floorboard from the wall, so hasty and careless he made his fingertips bleed.

  And there it was. Berold’s ring, his future, wrapped in its scrap of sacking. Lamplight brought its mellow gold and precious tiger eye to life. He strung it on a bootlace and hung it round his neck, under his linen smock, where no one would see it.

  Every other room in the Pig Whistle was ransacked the same. Finding no one in hiding, only mess and ruined belongings, he went out to the stables. One horse. It looked like a man-at-arms’s mount. But no traders’ mules or regular horses, not even lame Brown Betty. No Gwatkin or his lads. No one lurking in the ale cellar, neither, or crouching in the henhouse. When he and Benedikt had left that morning, the inn was home to six traders. Now they were all gone. Faery-taken, like in the old tales.

  But then he found a man-at-arms slumped in the Whistle’s forecourt. Dead, with not a drop of blood on him. He wore a falcon badge stitched to his leather jack.

  Liam felt a cold sweat spring. Felt disbelief and rage rise. The man’s sword was in its scabbard, his dagger still on his hip. He’d not been fighting. He’d been standing guard. Waiting. For him and Benedikt? To take them away, like the others?

  A falcon badge. That meant treacherous Humbert had done this. Ransacked the inn, hurt Molly. Humbert, following orders from his bastard duke Roric. And sooner or later the traitor would be back.

  Feggit. We can’t stay here.

  “Willem!” Benedikt glared. “Where the fuck have ye been? Where be Izusa? I thought—”

  “Benedikt,” Molly chided, feeble, “mind yer tongue.”

  Benedikt chafed Molly’s limp hand. “Hush, Ma. Save yer strength. Willem—”

  “No, chick. Sit with Iddo. I don’t want him lonesome and I need a word with Willem.”

  Anguished, Benedikt shook his head. “No, Ma, ye—”

  “Do as yer told. Or I’ll slap m’wooden spoon across yer arse.”

  On a choked sob, Benedikt obeyed her.

  “Willem.” Her crooked finger barely moving, Molly beckoned him close. “I’d have ye heed me.”

  Wary, he set the lamp on the floor beside her and dropped to one knee. Seeing the fresh blood on her apron, wet and shining, he bit his lip. She wasn’t Ellyn. She’d never been Ellyn. But she wasn’t Iddo neither. And when she could’ve betrayed him to Waymon to keep Benedikt safe, she didn’t.

  “Willem.” Molly coughed, a skin-crawling rattle. “This be Humbert’s doing. He found out I were telling lies for Lord Waymon.”

  Of course. What else would put Humbert in such a fury? “How’d he—”

  “I dunt know. It don’t matter. Willem—” Her eyes were clouding, but still something fierce burned. “I know yer secret.”

  “Oh!” He dropped his mouth open, so she’d not know it weren’t a surprise. “Did Alys tell ye?”

  “Iss.” Her fading gaze shifted. “I learned it of Alys. But I never told a soul… Liam. And now I never will.”

  He thought she was waiting for him to thank her. But why should he? Nothing had been the same since the night Ellyn died. Molly had looked at him different after. And even though Iddo never knew the truth, he knew Molly. So Iddo got harder and she never stopped him. Not giving him to Waymon didn’t make up for that.

  “I did right by ye, Willem,” she said, as though he’d complained out loud. “I took ye in when I had no need. Kept ye on after Alys died. Loved ye, in m’own way. Ye do owe me for that.” Her bloodstained fingers clutched at him. “Whatever ye think about who ye be and where ye belong, whatever giddy thoughts be whirling, ye’ll leave my Benedikt out of it. If ye don’t, ye’ll get him killed.”

  Liam pulled his arm free. “Benedikt does as he pleases.”

  “Willem—” Tears mingled with her sweat. “I beg ye. Don’t put my chick in harm’s way, don’t—” Another cough, harsh and hacking. Then blood gushed from her belly.

  “Benedikt!”

  Tangled, Liam retreated as Benedikt hurtled to Molly. Stood for a moment, watching his brother’s frantic sorrow, remembering the attic stairs and Ellyn dying. He never knew sleeping pain could wake so fierce. He wanted to say something, for Benedikt, but he didn’t know what. So he went back to Iddo.

  The lamp on the floor beside him washed the miserable bastard in weak light. Blood glinted. Split flesh gaped. One arm hugged his ribs, as though they were cracked. He looked to be suffering.

  Good.

  A nudge to Iddo’s knee with the toe of his boot. The barkeep stirred. Blood-crusted eyelashes fluttered as he looked up. “Willem.”

  Liam crouched. “One of Humbert’s men lies dead in the forecourt. Did ye kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Then who?”

  Iddo closed his eyes. “I dunt know.”

  “Molly says Humbert did this.”

  Painfully, Iddo squinted. “Him and Waymon.”

  “Waymon? Why?”

  “Ha.” Iddo tried to smile. “I asked him for help.”

  He bit at his lip, thinking. So… Waymon fought Humbert over the Pig Whistle because Humbert found out Molly was telling lies for Harcia and Waymon didn’t want the secret to spill wider. Only now the Pig Whistle was ruined, Molly was dying, and Humbert had left a man behind to take the innkeeper’s sons.

  Fuck.

  “Where be Gwatkin and the stable lads? Tam, and little Coop?”

  “Humbert took ’em,” Iddo mumbled. “And the traders. Said he had questions. Wicked doings here, he said. There was a Clemen lord as died. Izusa couldn’t save him.”

  That was all right. One less for him to kill when it came time to take the Falcon Throne. “Izusa was here?”

  “After. Humbert wouldn’t let her help me and Moll. So she went off with Waymon.” Iddo tried to laugh. “The bastard were daggered good and proper.”

  And with luck he’d die too. ’Twas a pity treacherous Humbert still breathed. Every lord and man who knew anything about this muckery, who might want to stir shite about the Pig Whistle and Clemen? He wished they were dead. Molly’s lies touched too close to him, made him unsafe.

  Feeling Iddo’s stare, he looked down. The barkeep’s face was twisted with more than pain.

  “Ye did bring this on us, didn’t ye, Willem? I dunt know how, but this be yer fault. Ye been naught but a troublesome shite yer whole life. When ye did turn up on our curs’t doorstep with that slut Alys, Molly should’ve drowned ye in a bucket. Like a rat.”

  Liam smiled. Remembered, like it were yesterday, that afternoon in the ale cellar when Iddo had done his best to whip him half to
death and how he’d gloated on the pain he’d caused. He remembered every cuff, every snarl, every glare the barkeep gave him. Remembered how this wasn’t the first time Iddo had wished him dead.

  He leaned close. “Molly’s dying.”

  “What?” Iddo seemed to shrink. “No.”

  “Iss.”

  Blood and tears ran down Iddo’s pulped face. “Ye be a lying shite, Willem. Molly. I want Moll—”

  Iddo died quickly, like the man-at-arms in Bell Wood. One hand to smother his nose and mouth, the other to crush his windpipe. As life fled from the bastard’s eyes, Benedikt let out a harsh cry.

  “Ma!”

  Curse it. Liam wiped Iddo’s blood from his hands onto the man’s ripped hose, and stood. They didn’t have time for any more grieving. If they didn’t move quickly they’d have no time at all. He hauled weeping Benedikt to his feet and shook him.

  “Benedikt, we got to go.”

  Benedikt hiccuped. “Go where? And what about Iddo?”

  “Iddo’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Benedikt’s face crumpled again. Iddo had always treated him like a proper son. “But—”

  “It happens,” he said roughly. “Most like he was hurt inside. Nothing to be done. Benedikt—”

  Dazed, his brother stared around the wrecked public room. “Willem, we can’t go. There be the Pig Whistle, and—”

  “Fuck the Pig Whistle! Humbert thinks we’ve broke Marcher law. He do already have Gwatkin and the lads and he left a man-at-arms behind to take us. Only he be dead, so—”

  “Ye killed him? Willem—”

  “I b’aint that big a fool! He’s just dead. I dunt know how. Come on, Benedikt. We have to run.”

  Stepping back, his brother dragged a sleeve across his grief-stained face. “And Ma? Iddo? Willem, I got to bury ’em. I can’t leave ’em to rot!”

  Shite. There wasn’t time. “What about a funeral pyre? Y’know, how they do it in Sassanine, like that trader told us one time.”

  “Y’mean… burn the Pig Whistle?” Benedikt said, uncertain. “With Ma and Iddo inside it?”

  “They won’t feel anything.”

  “Willem!”

  It was hard not to slap him, or shake him till his teeth fell out. “What does it matter if the Pig Whistle burns? Ye weren’t never going to be an innkeep, Benedikt! When I’m the proper duke of Clemen ye’ll be my greatest lord. Ye’ll be a count, like Balfre. Ye’ll be a second-best duke. We’ll be living in Eaglerock, not in the Marches.”

  “I know,” Benedikt muttered. “Only the Pig Whistle be my home.”

  “It be four walls and a roof,” he said, roughly wheedling. “And even say we don’t burn it, if ye think Humbert’ll let ye come back here then ye b’aint got the noddle of a lackywit hen.”

  The truth of that struck his brother almost as hard as Molly’s death. “All right.” His breathing hitched. “We’ll burn it.”

  “I’ll burn it,” he said, scalded with relief. “You see what food be in the pantry we can take, then go and unharness Spurfield’s nag. It’ll find its way home agin. Make sure the hens got food and water too, in case they get forgot a day or so. And there’s a horse in the stables. Belongs to Humbert’s man, I think. Tether it somewhere safe in case the stables catch. When I’m done, I’ll meet ye outside.”

  “We should fetch down our spare clothes.”

  “Can’t. Humbert’s men cut ’em to pieces. Iddo’s, too.”

  Benedikt scowled. “Bastards.”

  “Don’t fret on it. I’ll see they pay, when I’m duke.”

  He stood well back and stared at the floor, so Benedikt could kiss dead Molly goodbye without feeling squirmy. Touch Iddo’s shoulder in farewell. Then his brother moped out of the public room and he got busy with the lamp oil. Doused Molly with it, and Iddo, and everything wooden that would burn. Struck by a thought, he dragged the dead man-at-arms into the public room and doused him with lamp oil too. Took out the man’s sword and dropped it beside him, since he couldn’t bend the stiffening fingers round the hilt. Next he dragged Iddo closer, to make it look as though there’d been a fight. Fetched the barkeep’s cudgel from behind the bar and put it in his hand. Then he ran upstairs, splashed lamp oil in every room, and one by one set fire to them with a lit candle. The flames took hold greedily. He scrambled back downstairs to the stink and sound of burning.

  Last of all he set fire to Molly, Iddo, the man-at-arms and the Pig Whistle’s public room. For a moment he stood in the doorway, watching. Then Benedikt came back and he had to hustle his brother, into the forecourt. Hold him hard while Benedikt hid his face and wept.

  The Pig Whistle burned like a winter bonfire. Side by side they watched the embers fly, their childhood going up in smoke.

  “So what d’we do now, Willem?” Benedikt whispered. “Even with Berold’s ring on yer finger, t’aint like ye can just march into Clemen and tell Roric to hand back the Falcon Throne.”

  He’d asked himself the same question while he was splashing lamp oil around. And as far as he could see, there was only one answer.

  “We go to Balfre.”

  “Balfre?”

  “Iss. And ask him to take us as men-at-arms.”

  “He never will! We b’aint Harcian.”

  The flames were roaring, leaping through holes in the Pig Whistle’s thatched roof. Too hot and too dangerous for them to stand so close. Tugging his brother into the road, Liam gave him a little shake.

  “Balfre won’t care for that. He’ll care we hate Clemen. And he’ll train us proper to use a sword. We’ll fight Clemen here in the Marches. We’ll serve Harcia and bide our time. And one day…” His fingers found the hard, round shape of Berold’s ring, safely hidden beneath his smock. “I’ll get my chance to kill Roric. And then the Falcon Throne will be mine.”

  Benedikt tore his gaze from the burning inn and stared at him, wondering. “Y’do never doubt that, Willem, do ye?”

  He smiled, grimly. “No, Benedikt. I never do.”

  Vidar was walking along the corridor from his manor bedchamber to the stairs, on his way to the tilt yard, when he was startled by a shout as he passed Waymon’s room.

  “You stupid fuck, Waymon! What were you thinking?”

  Balfre. Visiting his surly friend for the first time since the Pig Whistle skirmish, and clearly unamused.

  “I was thinking you’d not want Humbert getting proof we’ve been stirring shite!”

  Waymon, attempting to defend himself. For three days he’d been kept in bed, full of stitches and syrup of poppy. What was the wager he wished now that he’d died?

  A muffled thump, as though a fist had struck the wall. “You should’ve come to me first, Waymon. I’d have sweetened Humbert, fuddled him with a story to suffocate suspicion!”

  “I don’t think so. The innkeeper—”

  “Would’ve kept her mouth shut to save her son! Now she’s dead, her man’s dead, the Pig Whistle’s a pile of charcoal, somebody killed that fuck Ercole and Humbert’s out for blood!”

  “But Balfre—”

  Grinning, Vidar moved on. No regrets that Waymon was in disgrace. No regrets that Ercole was dead. Clemen would be better served with that cockshite in the ground. Roric had ever been a fool to keep him. As for Humbert, perhaps now he’d realise just how dangerous Harcia was.

  Down at the tilt yard, Grule was bullying a handful of sweating new recruits through a series of sword drills. Leaning on the yard’s railing, Vidar considered the would-be men-at-arms… then frowned, and gestured at the serjeant to join him.

  “Lord Boice,” Grule said, with a friendly, respectful nod.

  “Grule.” He pointed. “Those two. They show some promise.”

  “Ah.” Grule nodded again, pleased. “They be Willem and Benedikt. Molly’s boys, as weren’t killed at the Pig Whistle.”

  And that was why they looked familiar. He’d seen them before, at the inn. “Which one’s which?”

  “Benedikt’s got the dark hair.
Willem’s the one with the scarred face.”

  Vidar watched the innkeep’s brats methodically count their way through the drill. “Yes, indeed. They show promise.”

  “Taken to swordplay like ducks to water, they have. Ye’ll see, my lord. I’ll soon have ’em teaching Humbert’s shiting men a lesson.”

  He smiled, slowy. “They’re out for revenge?”

  “Iss, my lord. And who can blame them?”

  “Not I, serjeant,” he said, watching their swinging swords catch the sunlight. “For some of us, revenge is what keeps us breathing, even more than meat and drink.”

  “I hear ye, my lord,” Grule said, approving. “D’ye care to come train a while with me? I could use yer canny eye.”

  “Thank you, Grule. I do care.” Vidar gestured. “After you.”

  Izusa. Izusa. Come to me.

  Salimbene’s whisper tugged in her mind as she was plucking feathers from the chicken she’d killed for supper. Leaving the half-naked bird on the butchery tree stump, she dabbled her fingertips in the fresh blood then hurried indoors. The baby’s head in its box sat uncovered near the cottage hearth. Kneeling before it, she drew in a deep, calming breath.

  “I’m here, Salimbene.”

  The head’s tiny, shrivelled nostrils flared. Its dead lips moved, like a whisperer in the wind. Flakes of grey skin sloughed from its withered cheeks.

  I smell blood.

  She dabbled her scarlet fingertips on the head’s bald skull, and its lips. Its shrivelled tongue darted in and out, tasting, swift as a striking snake.

  This head ages, Izusa. Soon it will fail.

  “I seek a new head, Salimbene. But there are fewer babies born.”

  The head chuckled. More skin sloughed free, to drift and float like featherdown in the breeze wafting through the open door.

  Give it blood, Izusa. It will last long enough.

  Her pulse leapt. “Is it time?”