An Unexpected Betrothal

The Falcon's Children, Chapter 12

This is Chapter 12 of The Falcon’s Children, a fantasy novel being published serially on this Substack. For an explanation of the project, click here. For the table of contents, click here. For an archive of world building, click here.

“The King of Hills and Trees and Water,” Aengiss mac Cullolen said in a dry, lecturing tone, “is also known as the Black God, the huntsman with a thousand hounds, the Dark Face of the Sun, the Darker Brother, and a long list of titles too frankly tedious to remember. He lurks in Brethon heathenism, as Bronh’s shadowy counterpart, a kind of devil for their myths. Though in some stories he is less a devil than a patron. There are tales that what they call his … court, which seems to be a brace of demi-gods or fairies, protected Brethony from Mandoran invasion, that the host of Vigalion was somehow swallowed up by their uncanny realm.”

He faced Edmund in the council chamber in Valemark, across an oaken table carved with a map of the empire (or rather, the empire before the wars in Brethony), surrounded by a larger gathering of lords.

Arellwen was there, and most of the council with him; so was Benfred; so was Erveront Egred, the fortress’s commander; so was white-bearded Wulf Alcaster, commander of the Moorguard, come from Erona at a gallop. Padrec was there, and with him Cadfael and Caetryn — an unusual addition, but given that the Brethons had saved the lives of two Montairs, not one that anyone was prepared to gainsay.

And then there was the other party from Brethony. Aengiss had come, but not alone: With him was Alaben Montair, Benfred’s half-brother and Edmund’s cousin, who had the perpetually-surprised eyes of a balding owl, and also two of the Brethon lords who had been named dukes because they joined early to the empire’s cause — Cymrin Dolwyden, now the Duke of Angheryd, and Aemen Aerghein the Duke of Naesen’yr.

The emperor himself sat propped and padded, his arm in a sling, a bandage on his neck where a blade had just missed severing an artery, another hidden beneath his coat where a dagger had raked a long red scar across his flank. He had been a tenday abed in Cranholt under the care of the red sisters, followed by a slow boat ride upriver to the fortress where it was agreed — though his agreement took the form of a nod and a whisper when Benfred made the suggestion — that they would convene a council to decide how to answer the attack. That was seven days ago; now he felt a little better, well enough at least for this.

Most of the perpetators had died that night — a dozen bodies dragged onto the riverbank, some stabbed and some drowned, eight men and four women, most young, all Brethon. Three more were prisoners, awaiting the emperor’s justice in cells beneath Valemark and enduring the attentions of the emperor’s interrogators in the meantime. Four legionnaires and two Duncaster men-at-arms were dead as well; so was Padrec’s Brethon friend Lord Aerelyn who together with the Rhedryon twins had steered their barge into the assassins’ crafts; so were two luckless boatmen pulled along into the melee, a local girl who had ended up on the assassins’ barge somehow, and no doubt a few more unaccounted for, drowned in the confusion. Many more were bloodied, including Modred Cathelstan, who had shown special bravery while cutting down one of the largest of the cultists.

“Our enemy,” Aengiss said, “appears to consist of innumerable small groups, like beads on a necklace, each connected only to another bead. They are often easy to catch, even when they are not deliberately courting death or capture, but our executions have not had any salutary effect. At first it was assumed that the problem was confined to regions in the wild north, but even before the incident in Tessaer al’Yrgha this summer it was clear that this … faith has many adherents in the towns and cities as well. At first it was also assumed that it was the dregs …”

“… they are the dregs,” interjected Duke Aemen, his Narsil slurred but clear. He was a red-faced man, not quite fat but bigger than most Brethons, the high cheekbones of his people holding up heavy stubbled jowls. “Murderers, traitors, lordless men …”

“As you say, your grace,” Alaben said, in his half-apologetic tone. “But nonetheless a great many of them seem to come from decent families — the sons of landowners, tradesmen, merchants. And daughters as well. And more than a few, including one of the men in the cells below, belong to the nobility.”

“Which is the heart of the problem,” Aengiss said, retaking the reins of the discussion. “They have capacities beyond what we imagined. Money, as well, it appears. The count of attacks has risen steeply almost everywhere in our western lands. The scale and ambition has grown as well. And now we have an attack here, hundreds of leagues to the east, in a place where no one save a few merchants and adventurers speak Brethon, in a festival of friends and neighbors. It is all well and good for the lords of Cranholt and Felcester to sack their captains for allowing this disgrace, but those of us charged with keeping the emperor’s peace in Brethon lands must accept our share of responsibility. We never imagined that this cult could reach so far, so fast. For that, majesty, I am deeply sorry. We will not fail you so again.”

Why wasn’t I told how bad things had grown already? That was what Edmund wanted to ask, through the haze of pain in which his mind still floated, but he feared the true answer too much — that he had been told, in a meeting he did not remember, or that he hadn’t been told because Arellwen and the rest of the council had simply given up.

Instead he said, “I accept your apology, my lord. The archangels, with assistance” — a nod to Padrec’s friends, strange and poised — “saw fit to preserve my life and my daughter’s, perhaps to give us the chance to defeat this cult ourselves. I assume that this is what you are coming around to, Lord Aengiss? I assume there is such a plan?”

It was a rhetorical question; Aengiss always had a plan. The Lord General’s shaved head caught the firelight — the chill of fall was settling on the Heart — and his teeth gleamed in a mirthless smile.

“There is,” he said. “I had — or properly, we had been at work on one already, but now this disaster has made its urgency much more apparent.” His “we” gesture encompassed Alaben, the two Brethon dukes — and conspicuously, Padrec as well. “I would ask your majesty to please peruse this map of our western lands, where I have asked his grace Duke Alaben to adequately mark the incidents and attacks and burnings in which this cult is implicated …”

The emperor’s cousin fumbled for a moment with a scrolled map, and finally succeeded in laying it out across the table, at the end closest to Edmund.

Still he could not really read it. It depicted the Brethon lands, that was obvious, and it was marked in blue and red ink dozens of time, tiny scrawls running from north to south and east to west — the Westland Sea to the Yrgheim, the wild north to the Deventian Peaks. He leaned forward, winced, leaned back.

“You will have to describe it to me.”

“With some assistance from the Lord of the Secretariat ,” Alaben said, “We have compiled a list, incomplete to be sure, of all attacks over the last six seasons in our lands to the west. Certain patterns become, ah, immediately apparent.” He looked at Aengiss, as if for reassurance, and then spread his hand over the southern portion of the map. “In particular, a pattern that shows the attacks, far from clustering around the dwindling rebellion in the north, are more common in lands to the south, particularly the portions of Allasyr and Capaelya — what were those kingdoms, that is, forgive me — that fall close to the border with their western neighbor.”

“This confirms our information,” Orfenn Rell said, fingering his doublet, “which from the beginning has pointed to a strong Bryghalan influence on this cult.”

“It is not surprising, my lords.” This was Duke Cymrin, whose house had been the most important Allasyri family to declare for Padrec. He was gaunt, his Narsil a little slower than the other Brethon duke, but his affect more commanding. “Our cousins in Bryghala are being superstitious in their own ways, always. They do not have the deep woods, but something about their mists and standing stones and crags makes them see magic and aefae in every trick of light.”

“To be the most superstitious race of Brethons is saying something indeed,” Wulf Alcaster said with a caustic laugh.

There were a few chuckles, then an uncomfortable silence.

“You would speak to me so?” said Cymrin coldly. “Who are you, then? I have bent knee to this young prince, yes, but not for taking insults from some common soldier whose ancestor probably prayed to pigs when the towers rose in Tyr-in-Aelor.”

The old general looked ready to snarl in return, so Edmund said, as sharply as he could: “Lord Alcaster is not a common soldier, but neither should he insult a duke of our realm. I ask you to apologize, Wulf.”

The old soldier looked around the table, shrugged, and bowed his head. “A bad joke, your grace. Forgive me.”

“Also a waste of time,” Aengiss said. “It doesn’t matter a whit if the Bryghalans have some inborn superstition or if this is all political maneuver. In either case, it is the source of the infection. It was always destined to be a symbol of resistance, but now it’s something more — not just a place of sanctuary for rebels, but a place of organization for this cult. We are informed that much of the nobility is sympathetic to this, this King of All The Fairy Things, and Queen Crenhuinn permits ‘priests’ of the cult at her court. They even say her son Prince Maibhygon has participated in their rites.”

“May I ask who is this ‘they’?” Arellwen spoke mildly. “I have not seen such reports …”

Aengiss shrugged. “Of course these are rumors. Bryghala as we all know has sent us no emissaries since the war, and our networks there are weaker than elsewhere in the west. But the exact details are unimportant. It is enough that Bryghala supports the murderers that plague our lands, whose crimes have left good men dead and you, sire, our emperor, wounded and our princess endangered in the very heart of our realm.”

“It is enough to … ?”

“To invade, Majesty. To issue demands, and follow them with steel. To finish what was begun with Allasyr. To unite all Brethony under your son and house and crown.”

You killed my wife. The thought brushed against Edmund’s mind like the wings of a moth in a darkened room. What we ‘began with Allasyr’ ended with her death.

But what he said was: “A bold suggestion, Lord General. May I ask for others’ views?”

The others were less zealous, but it was clear most at least agreed there should be preparations, threats, ultimatums. Padrec took the wisdom of Aengiss’s proposal for granted. Benfred had been a great skeptic of the Brethon campaigns at their inception, but here he only raised questions about what public steps might clear the way for war. The generals were a little skeptical about the legions’ readiness — too many soldiers settled on lands, said Alcaster, and too many recruits a little green — and of Edmund’s council, the lord of the Exchequer, Merdu bar Clava, was the most doubtful — taxes from the Brethon lands have not been what was hoped, so we would rely more than usual on the mines. But the Brethon dukes were surprisingly enthusiastic — or maybe not surprisingly, since Edmund remembered how both Allasyri and Capaelyan lords had often spoken of Bryghala as a place more foreign than fraternal, and also how eagerly some had mentioned their claims along the Bryghalan borderlands.

When it comest to dividing and conquering, Aengiss once said to him, with his usual cold satisfaction, dividing is always the easiest part.

After some time the only people who hadn’t spoken much were the two younger Brethons — his strange saviors, his son’s friends, maybe the girl was his son’s lover, but now wasn’t the time to contemplate that possible problem. Still, they were here, and there was no reason not to ask …

“I wonder,” he said, “what you think of our counsels, my lord and lady Rhedryon. Do you think us wise or foolish to consider a new war in your lands?”

“Never foolish, your majesty,” the girl said lightly. “My family lost the only battle we fought against your legions, so we claim no great expertise in war. But we are here, we serve your son, because we know that a great destiny unites your house and our ancient people. We know Montair and Brethony will rise together; we know that your house is the means by which our long-divided land will be knit together once again.”

That all sounded flattering, but was it quite? They had saved him, at great risk. But “your house” was not quite the same as “your empire.” This was the problem that his council kept wrangling over, this idea the Brethons had that his son might be their unifying king. And this talk of Brethony as a place — he thought of his shouting match with Padrec and the haze of pain seemed to thicken …

Meanwhile her brother was talking. “… were many of us in Allasyr, so there would be many in Bryghala. This cult is the fruit of despair among the young, despair at what Brethony became before ever a legionnaire crossed the Yrgheim — a divided, sickly land. There are those who see things like us, though — who see that with your son there is another way, and that bringing Bryghala under his rule would be better than the darkness of the old ways. We would find allies, and more the more they knew the prince. Our standard, the banner of the prince’s men, would be a rallying point, especially with the promise of a king in Tessaer al’Yrgha someday soon …”

Now Arellwen spoke. “The problem of a second throne, the insult it gives to our great dukes on this side of the Yrgheim, may not be resolved by enlarging it.”

“Might it not, my lord?” the girl answered quickly. “Suppose that Brethony were united and at peace — the cults dead and buried, the old ways gone, a new way clearly blazed. With all those new subjects for the House of Montair, all the power of our ancient land behind your banner, how should a mere duke or duchess” – she placed a special emphasis and smiled in a way that seemed to somehow emphasize her own sex — “dare to gainsay whatever arrangement is wisest for the unity of so many different realms? What has Montair to fear from your Argosa if Hy Brethony is truly yours?”

Hy Brethony … She had a true charisma, and not just because she was the only woman in the room, but listening to her made Edmund crave a drink.

“The lady’s ambitions for her land are admirable,” Arellwen said softly, “but the political problems are not so easy to dismiss.”

“No,” Aengiss said, “but they are the problems of a rising empire, good difficulties to have. Do you remember, majesty, what I said to you before our victories in Allasyr? When you asked me about the irony of invading a land we fought to save?”

He wondered if this was a test of his memory. “You said that we advance or fall back, we don’t stand still.”

“Indeed! And this is what that means. The Mandorans spent a thousand years advancing, all the way to this very citadel — and then as soon they ceased conquering, the decline began. Now they are gone from this place, gone from many realms they once ruled. We are the Mandorans now — our legions are the new Unvanquished, our victories proof that heaven has elected us to take their place. Until we cease to seek them. Until we decide the price is too high. And then some other throne will be chosen in our place, and we will fall soon enough. So this is your part in it — to choose against decline, to choose the opportunities that our enemies have given us. To go forward, always forward. To pay the price, and reap the reward.”

Edmund listened to him, remembering the council chamber three years earlier, remembering what followed. He saw the look of admiration on Padrec’s face, the respectful but slightly weary looks elsewhere — Aengiss’s theories were hardly novel around this table — and the inscrutable looks of the Rhedryon twins. Then he thanked his general, thanked the council, and without any answer sent them all away.

After they were gone he sat alone for a long time at the table, until the sun set and the sky turned dark and the autumn chill filled the room, a cold that made his body ache even where it wasn’t wounded — but still he stayed, drifting through his thoughts.

The fire burned down, and a page tiptoed in to light the candles, sending shadows flickering across the table, across the paper map and the carved map underneath. They flickered and danced across all Narsil, across the eastern borderlands, Sheppholm, the Fens and the Guardians and Rendale . . . the Heart and its cities . . . Argosa . . . the cold moors and highlands of Ysan and Lake Erona and finally the Yrgheim, where the carved map ended and Alaben’s paper map picked up.

Eventually he pulled it toward him and studied it as well — there the Mar Tyogg, keeping its secrets, there Tessaer al’ Yrgha, there the Glass Lake and Tyr-in-Aelor and Braoghein, the lakelands below and the wild north above. And there Bryghala, jutting westward, with a black dot for Aelsendar where Queen Crenhuinn kept her court.

He tried to see it as Aengiss did: Bryghala, the source of the fairy-cult infection; Bryghala, the last remnant of Brethony before the empire, the last resistance to a Narsil age.

Before the empire. He blinked, and tried to imagine the table’s map without his own dominions sprawled across woods and mountains and rivers. There would be small kingdoms in the Heart — but those had joined the empire of their own will, at least to a point, and perhaps they would have banded together one day anyway. But then there was Ysan, conquered across generations of often-brutal war, where even now sometimes a highland clan had to be put down, a head displayed on the gates of Mabon or Ysan City. The Fens and eastern marches — more killing, more war, against Skalbarders as well as local lords. Sheppholm, stolen from the Skalbarders. Erona and Argosa, overconfident and defeated. Now Brethony — a new map, a new war. So much conquest, so much to hold together. And the masks around him, on the river’s dark …

“What am I to do?” he said aloud to the candles and the autumn darkness.

Then, to the ghost that walked in the corridors of his mind: “What should I do, Bryghaida? What would you do, my love?”

The candles glimmered; through a window, the stars winked in return. And there in the chill of evening, with aching wounds and a mind that felt old before its time, Edmund suddenly felt he knew.

He rang a bell for the page and summoned his chancellor.

Arellwen, so loyal and stolid-seeming, rarely questioned his emperor’s commands; indeed of late he had plainly wished for more of them. But as he listened to the mission that Edmund was charging him with, his face grew more and more uneasy, and finally he drew in his breath and began to protest.

His sovereign cut him off. “I will brook no argument in this, Arell.”

“But — Majesty, should you not at least consult the council before taking such a step?”

“My council does not rule in Rendale, no matter what it has seemed these last few years. And where I am sending you, the purpose of the mission — if it fails, no one must ever know. We never spoke, you were never sent. Do you understand?”

Arellwen swallowed. “Indeed, Majesty, I do. But surely I cannot simply disappear.”

“No, but surely there is some story we can tell. Some months we need. You can go with Padrec as far as Tessaer — to see our Brethon lands yourself, which I would have you do anyway, to shepherd my son so that it is not simply Aengiss and these Brethon younglings with his ear … and then, soon after your arrival, some family matter calls you home, you slip away, and everyone assumes you have gone east. You will have letters if they are needed, and we must choose a few trustworthy men to make the journey with you. This may be the most important thing I ever ask of you, old friend.”

“And if I find things that make this mission seem a fool’s errand …”

“Then I trust you to decide to abandon it. If I could go myself I would. You must act as I would act — but do so knowing that the mission must not be lightly abandoned, that I send you with full seriousness of purpose. Do you understand?”

“I do. I understand.”

“Good.” The emperor paused. “Then, Arell, old friend — you’re dismissed.”

The chancellor was at the door when Edmund spoke again. “One other thing. I need to dull the pain a bit. Have one of the pages outside fetch me a glass and a bottle.”

The other man bowed, his face unreadable. “Do you wish me to send for the physician, sire?”

“The physician has done what she can. I just need something to send me off to sleep.”

Another bow. “Any vintage in particular?”

“No, it doesn’t matter. Just bring me something to drink.”

When they returned to Rendale it was as though nothing had changed, and nothing felt stranger to Alsbet than that feeling. The Castle had the same routine, the same cast of ambassadors and courtiers and servants, the same social requirements, the same round of prayers and meals and letter-writing. Her brother was gone and his retinue with him. Her father retreated back into his chambers; the council resumed its meetings that he attended only sparingly; Aeden and Gavian resumed their roles as her advisers. The last autumn feasts passed, the mountainsides blazed orange and Orison burned with the reflection, and then winter crept up, the ground freezing and the trees going bare as snow spread downward from the tops of distant peaks. Winter’s Eve was coming, and with it more ducal visits, more chances to meet young men who aspired to wed a princess. Everything was as it had been before.

Little had changed outside Rendale, too. On the journey north everyone, highborn and low, expected something dramatic — more legions sent westward, at the least, and there was talk of war with Bryghala, of finishing the bastards as a soldier said without realizing she heard. But instead only Arellwen went west, with no clear purpose save investigation. It was announced, eventually, that another legion would be raised, the first new one created since the wars in Brethony began — but there was no urgency, no sense that a military response to the almost-assassination was imminent.

In due time the three surviving assassins were sent back across the Yrgheim, one each to Tessaer al’Yrgha and Naesen’yr and Tyr-in-Aelor, and given suitably grisly public executions, with heads nailed to city gates and limbs tossed outside the walls as carrion. Maybe they had a deterrent effect, because the pace of attacks seemed to drop off — though that might have simply reflected the turning of the seasons, the general retreat indoors. Meanwhile the Rhedryons and the other Brethons who had saved Alsbet and her father on the river were given new titles and new lands, and Padrec wrote dutiful dispatches back to Rendale on the governance of the country where he was not-exactly-king. From Bryghala came fewer rumors; from Benfred fewer letters than before. Then the snows came, the long nights, the fires: Another Rendale winter.

It was all so familiar — and all impossibly strange. It was as if the whole trip south with its extremities — the city, Cresseda, the festival with its exhilaration, the madness in the dark — had been a dream with no relation to reality. Except that really it felt almost the reverse, as though she had been asleep in Rendale since her mother died and then suddenly woken to a vivid and fascinating and frightening truth, and now a potion was slipping into her body and she was being lulled back into slumber.

She wanted to hold onto the wakefulness, even the nightmare moments on the river, even the masks and hands and blood, but she didn’t know quite how. Her daily duties seemed so distant from those tendays in the Heart, the tidings that reached them so banal, and then winter settled like a heavy comforter — but in her mind she flailed against the torpor, and sought relief from the unbearable familiarity.

Aeden offered a little: He had not acted directly as her tutor for some time, but now at her request he piled her desk with scrolls and volumes — the history of Argosa’s kings and queens between Mandor’s retreat and when the empire took it, the patchy history of Brethony before it divided, books on myth and legend in the westlands.

They talked more of present politics as well, though there her steward confessed his limitations: With my books I can have more learning than a schoolman, princess, but there are no books to tell me what the iron duchess really wants from you.

He wanted her to write Cresseda a letter — courtly, careful, an opening to further communication. But every time she turned the idea over, it seemed an absurd and insufficient thing. Everything that happened in the Heart had happened because she acted as though she had real power, which perhaps showed what power really was — a thing to be claimed rather than something that simply inhered in rank or title. And a powerful princess would not write a tentative letter to a powerful duchess; if she wanted to consider the duchess’s proposal, she would go and see about it for herself.

It was with that thought in mind that she decided to speak to her father, more than a month after their return — again by issuing an invitation to her chambers, this time for a meal, the stew and bread that carried the Castle through the deeper winter, which she asked the kitchens to serve with a pitcher of extremely-well-watered wine.

He came at her command and they had almost finished eating, mixing small talk and uncomfortable silences, when she said with affected casualness that she thought that they should repeat their journey southward again in the spring.

“Again?” he said. “Why?”

“For the same purpose, father. To let the people see you, see us. To let them see that what happened on the river didn’t send us rushing back to Rendale to hide. To show our strength in places that haven’t seen their emperor since the wars in Brethony began.”

“You aren’t afraid of offering ourselves as targets, daughter?”

“I’m not afraid,” she said. “And I think we can avoid putting ourselves on chairs in the middle of a crowd this time.”

He laughed, not quite convincingly. “And where do you imagine we ought to go?”

She shrugged, studiously careless. “We could go down the Mering to the havens and Sheppholm. We could go west to Erona. But I had the idea that we might coax Elfred out of his schoolman’s nook. He’s had four years in Antiala, without a journey back —”

“By his choice, not ours,” Edmund said. “He went away at war with me and has never sought for peace.”

“Well, the schoolman’s hat, if he wants it, is six years,” Alsbet said. “But the time to make peace with him is sooner than that, surely.”

“I did not send him for a schoolman’s hat. Arellwen has good men with him, and we send funds to keep him and receive detailed reports back. But I thought a few years in Antiala, a great tour further south, and then a seat on my council …” He trailed off, and Alsbet opened her mouth to ask if he had actually pursued this plan or let his youngest son idle, half-abandoned — but fearing the answer, she pushed on instead:

“Well, I can write to him, and I think he might come up to meet us, so that it wasn’t quite as final as a summons home —”

“What would be wrong with a summons home?”

“If we have neglected him, perhaps a meeting is better than a summons,” she said, aiming for gentleness.

He looked away, touched his face, said: “Meet him where, then?”

“Well — taking the river from Antiala to Argosa is easy enough. We could make a circle ourselves — go down southeast through the havens, go southwest overland across the lower Heart to Argosa, meet Elfred there, making the iron duchess give us a great feast, and then home upriver. Two months of travel, all in all. You could invite Elfred to join your council personally …”

She trailed off. He was smiling at her, in a discomfitingly knowing way.

“Did you like Cresseda, then, Alsbet? She has always been charming.”

“I did not … I didn’t speak to her long enough to form a strong opinion, father …”

“You can be honest, daughter. Did she dangle her grandnephew to be your husband, as she did with me? I’m sure she did, and Argosa with it. A chance to marry a tractable child, to follow her as the real power in the south …”

Alsbet reached for her own wineglass. “She said something like that to me, father, but many people have said things like that these last few years. I told her to speak with you, as I’ve done with other suitors. I’m not proposing a visit to Argosa for some ulterior motive, but for the good of our house …”

“Daughter, it’s no sin to want your own good as well as mine. Nor is the idea of marrying Ambarian a mad one. I understand what you might be thinking, especially after an encounter with the iron duchess. It’s something I’ve thought of as well.”

There was a “but” implied, so she held her peace and waited.

“That was my grandfather’s plan, you know that. Not the part with a boy duke and a Montair daughter in the saddle, though of course Cresseda imagines you as hers to ride. But the idea that we must join more fully with Argosa — it was why his second marriage was to a Verna, with the thought that then I would have half-brothers with that blood. But the archangels were against it, there was no issue from their marriage … so then he tried again with my sister and Asclepian bar Verna, and meant to try with Benfred and a Verna girl, to bind things still tighter … and all that won for us was Benfred’s elopement and your aunt’s … her death.”

She didn’t want him to fade back into another night of drunken self-pity, so now she interrupted the words that she had heard before: “Maybe the time just wasn’t ripe.”

“Maybe it wasn’t!” he said, the tone agreeable. “I don’t mean to be a prisoner of the past’s miseries, Alsbet. I promise you, I mean to do what’s best. And the idea of going south — you were right to have us do it once, you might be right again.”

He leaned across the table toward her, pressed her hand. “But — but. I would ask you to be patient, daughter, until the spring. Be patient with me. There is another possibility here, one that might be what your — what heaven might want. I am not sure. But before we turn again to the Vernas I have to see it through.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“No,” he said. “I would not burden you.”

“I’m here to share your burdens, father. And if it concerns my future …”

“Not this burden. Not this one. It’s an idea that might just die, and better that it die in secret. If it lives, you’ll know soon enough. And if it dies, we’ll go to Argosa, summon Elfred, and meet the boy duke. That much I promise you.”

They talked longer, she pressed him further, but that was as far as he went. After he left her chambers, she sat with scroll and a pen and wrote out drafts of letters — to Elfred, to Cresseda. Then she put them in a drawer, drank another glass of wine, and watched the fire burn down to embers before she slept.

The fire was high at the House of Birds, leaping from its bed, and a group of trappers, pink with wine where skin showed through between their beards and furs, were picking over the remnants of a roast pig. One of them looked up as Gavian passed, belched, and shouted: “Ask for the red-headed with the diamond in her nose, soldier! The one painted like a cardinal — she’ll make you stand straighter than a parade ground serjeant. Tell her old Renjen sent you, she’ll remember me …”

There were three new girls serving tables in the common room, while girls he’d seen working there months or years before now flounced or glided about in costume as women of the house. Though not the dark-haired girl he’d been unwise enough to ask Reffio about the last time the House of Birds had been doing him this kind of favor; he’d seen nothing of her since the prior winter.

He wouldn’t ask. He didn’t want to know.

Reffio was talking to one of the new recruits, his vastness eased up to rest against the oaken bar, and when he saw the captain he gave the girl a gentle pat on the cheek — he liked his crude jokes but Gavian had never seen him express an overt sexual appetite of any sort — and let her circle back to the others. Then he glided across the room at a slight angle to Gavian, so that they met just before the doorway to the private rooms, which Reffio opened with a flourish, as if welcoming a client to an evening of exotic pleasure.

It wasn’t the same labyrinthine route this time. They took a small door on the right-hand side of the choosing room, and then another door tucked away that opened into a steep descent into the earthy smell of a cellar, flavored by vegetables and damp.

Reffio had picked up a candle somewhere and its pool of light revealed a room filled with crates — some stacked empty, some piled with potatoes, rutabagas, onions. Gavian followed the big man between the stacks, under a crude archway, and into a space that was just dark earth and crumbling stone.

There were three men bound and blindfolded against the wall.

“They were all crew on the same riverboat,” Reffio told him, lifting the candle high. “Came up from Cranholt a few days ago. Already had our little conversation with the captain — it was his first trip upriver since the summer, he claimed not to have heard about the rules up here.” A little giggle. “Well, he knows now.”

“Do they speak our tongue?” Gavian asked, seeing one jerk his head as if in answer.

“One of them well enough, two a little. The one who speaks well says they worked boats way down south of Trans-Mersana this summer, down to Naceza, so they didn’t have reason to know about events making them, you know, unwelcome hereabouts.”

“Do you believe them?”

“Do I? Well, here’s the tricky bit, captain. I do believe them, but I also believe that we’ve been just and fair in how we’ve done things here, been right gentle even, given everyone who works the river fair warning that this harbor’s closed to anyone from the far side of the mountains. Been several months, hasn’t it, since the imperial family came back all wounded and frightened from the Heart? That’s time enough for word of the new way to spread. So once you’ve given such fair warning, well, then you have to rate the chances a little higher that any given Brethon who shows up hereabouts has heard the news, does know he isn’t wanted here, and might be coming with nefarious ideas in mind. And at a certain point, you have to weigh being a fair man against doing what this policy of yours was meant to do — besides raise a little extra revenue for the House of Birds, I mean. You have to say, well, I believe this man, but I might also believe that man, and then the next man, and odds are one of them is just a good liar, and all it takes is one to slip through with murder on his mind …”

“You’re saying you want to kill them,” Gavian interrupted. “I expected that. But you would have killed them from the start, if I’d given you license.”

“What I said,” Reffio responded with a serene aggrievement, “was not that we should kill them, but that we should kill one, to set up as an example, and only then show mercy for a while. That’s what I said, on my honor. And we’re up to dozens now that we’ve just shipped back down the river, never making good on any threats … it just seems a bit unwise, captain. That’s my thought, that’s my lady’s thought too, and you know she doesn’t have any great taste for violence.”

Gavian had the urge to remark that for someone who had once served the Coterie, no great taste for violence probably meant something a bit different than for the ordinary run of folk. Instead he deliberately pushed his mind back to what Reffio had told him about the captive Brethons.

“Can they speak Mandoran?”

“Can they? Mandoran? However should I know, captain?”

“Well,” Gavian said, “if they really work boats south of Trans-Mersana they’ve surely picked up some Mandoran. But if they’ve come here from Brethony bearing a false tale about their origins, then chances are they don’t speak it, beyond maybe a phrase or two. Do you want to try them?”

“Me speak Mandoran, you mean?” There was something unusual in Reffio’s voice. “Why, I know a bit of it, but I’ll allow I’m not at my best in the High King’s tongue. If you think it’s a good idea, I’ll let you try it out.”

“But don’t you …” The huge man came from one of the cities south of Trans-Mersana, Gavian was almost sure — and which one didn’t matter, Naceza or Basanial, Jasipar or Seraphport, all the aristocrats spoke Mandoran there, a man of Reffio’s talents would have learned it easily. As even Gavian had learned it, in pieces at least, just growing up and speaking the Mersanan tongue that descended from Mandoran —

Which was why it was easy enough for him to shrug off Reffio’s hesitation, step closer to the prisoners, and say loudly:

Doric anta lusis resirisa? Doric anta lusis si vana? Rendala es far isirin? Merita, math, siris!

Their heads moved with what seemed like attention. One of them, the nearest, rawboned and unshaven, lifted his chin and grunted something through the gag. Gavian stepped closer and pulled it down, and the grunt became words:

Fas anta lusa resirisa! Veris omnig, veris serag, verifa Narsila. Brethon na nemeri. Fas iridigis!

Gavian yanked the gag back up, flicked a glance back at Reffio.

“Usefully asked. I think I got the sense of it, captain.”

“And do you agree that a man who can proclaim his innocence in Mandoran is more likely to have really been working boats south of Antiala a few months ago?”

“More likely, sure enough. That’s a good piece of evidence. But I already told you I thought they were innocent, and thinking that a bit more strongly doesn’t change the fact that you need to put a bit of real fear behind the rules for them to do real good.”

Gavian shook his head. There was a careful line to walk here, treating Reffio like a confidant without saying everything he was thinking. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but think on it this way: We don’t yet have proof that the cult has sent anyone to Rendale after her highness or the emperor. The Secretariat hasn’t heard a thing …”

“And if you trusted the Secretariat we wouldn’t have our own friendship, now would we, captain?”

Careful. There was a certain ambiguity about whom, exactly, Gavian spoke for — the crown and the Castle or just the interests of his princess. He assumed the Ladyhawk and her man understood that dealing with him was not exactly the same as dealing with the Council; indeed for all he knew they had their own relationships with the spymaster, the Lord of the City, all the rest. But best not to come right out and say it.

“Not a matter of trust,” he said curtly. “Just a matter of wanting more proof of danger before we start cutting throats. So your advice is heard and understood, but this time let’s still put them on a boat south, with the usual discouragements.”

He thought he saw a relaxation in the man who’d spoken to him in Mandoran. Reffio must have seen it to, because he moved smoothly to the prisoners and delivered a hard kick that left the man doubled over, groaning Brethon curses through the gag.

The huge man’s voice was unruffled. “So it’s still half-measures, then, captain? I don’t mind — keeps our purse full if they keep showing up. But sometimes I worry that you’re a man who might stint at full measures until it’s a bit too late.”

“Half measures still,” Gavian said. “And I’ll let myself back out.”

At the crates he turned, on impulse, and added:

Lis tua irdunis, rogisti.

Reffio’s face was yellow in the candlelight and studiously blank. Then one barely-there eyebrow lifted toward the dome, and he answered in a slow, enunciated style:

Liva tua, cavafa.

They looked at each other for a stretched-out moment, and then the big man said:

“I didn’t tell you I couldn’t speak the High King’s tongue. And captain —”

“Reffio?”

“Do take some onions, if you like. We taxed them from a carter headed for the Castle kitchens, they should be some of the best.”

Spring came early to Rendale that year, with heavy rains that turned the ice to slush, and Arellwen arrived with the season. He was thick-bearded and looked worn, and he went at once into a long consultation with his emperor. The day after the chancellor’s coming, Edmund left his purple-draped chamber and went to find his daughter.

“He wants to stage a court dinner?” Aeden said that evening. “Your father? Is there anyone here to attend?”

Alsbet sighed, scratching involuntarily at her white-clad wrist. “It’s something to do with Arellwen’s coming. And we have — well, I said we should wait a few days, since with the thaw I expect a few arrivals from the Heart, some of our winter escapees returning. For now — it would be Lord Mavramir, the emissary from the Salman League; the council, of course; and my ladies-in-waiting. Some Falconguard leftenants; the Lord Captain is away south. And Ethred could be added, and I suppose he’ll bring those priest-inquisitors who just came in from Ysan. Then the usual motley rest — that exiled Skalbarder lord, the traders from Trans-Mersana. Not the most impressive group.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do?” She laughed. “I’m going to plan the dinner. We’ll see who appears for it.”

In the end, the most unexpected guest arrived on the morning of the feast, driving a weary charger and looking even worse for wear than Arellwen. It was Aengiss, come in haste across the four hundred leagues from Tessaer al’Yrgha, come without an escort befitting his rank, come with a face like a stormcloud and a purpose strong enough to bring him all the way to doors of the emperor’s apartments — where he was rebuffed. Edmund would not see him; they would speak tomorrow; when he could explain to his sovereign why he had left his post and come so far without sending letters to explain himself. Meanwhile he was welcome to join the rest of the Castle’s court for a feast to celebrate the early thaw.

The feast had been a puzzle; with the empire’s greatest general in Rendale it became a mystery. By mid-afternoon Alsbet was even being quizzed by her ladies in waiting, whose idea, probably encouraged by leftenants they knew in the Falconguard, was that some secret mission had been carried out in Brethony, in which both Aengiss and Arellwen were involved, and the feast was to announce some unexpected coup – the capture of rebel leaders in the wild north, some blow struck against the cultists. They plainly did not believe her professions of ignorance.

“Believe or don’t,” Alsbet said as they dressed her for dinner. “All I’ve done is plan the feast, as my father requested. The rest is up to him.”

Up to him. Edmund understood that quite well, actually, in his great hall that evening with plates pushed away and all eyes on him as he rose to address the notables. It had always been up to him, because he was the only one with the power to understand, and to decide. His comprehension had begun on the bloody fields of Brethony, but then it had been half-formed, realized only as a kind of disgust with the waste of war. His wife’s death had been necessary to clarify hard truths about the empire he ruled. And then those masks, the masks in the dark — showing him the price that he and all his heirs would pay, the fear that they might live with, if his house stayed on this path.

High above him, above the flagstones and the firepits, hung the banners, suspended from the Mandoran-raised beams. The legion battle flags were there, and so was the falcon on a field of blue and the Montair stag. But behind them, row on row, like lords doing homage, stretched the captured banners — Ysani tartans, Skalbarder flags, Argosa’s roses, now the sunburst of Allasyr and Capaelya’s heron — that had gone down beneath the boots of the legions in the centuries that had seen the empire rise.

It might end here, Edmund realized. After today, and after he found a suitable bride to bind Padrec, he could go to join Bryghaida with the knowledge that the path of conquest carved for centuries was, if not ended, at least blocked. He could die knowing that he had rejected the false logic of his counselors, that only war and more war could make the empire great. He was no longer the man he had been, but he was man enough to accomplish this final, most important thing, and die a man of peace.

The Emperor of Narsil looked out across the tables, searching out Aengiss, the death’s head face, the Ysani god of war. The general’s eyes were on him; he knows, Edmund thought. Somehow, the general had discovered what Arellwen was about, and ridden all this way to stop it. He really believed what he said in council, did Aengiss; he didn’t truckle or deceive, and he would gallop pell-mell from one end of the empire to another to steer his sovereign away from the abyss. Impressive, in a way …

Except that Edmund had seen the real abyss already — seen it on the battlefield, seen it in his wife’s dying eyes, and then again in the masked faces in the torchlit riverdark. But it was not fear for himself that came over him when their hands pulled him down; no, what he had feared for were the lives of his children. And not the old fear that had driven him once, the fear of some rebellion, some plot by Cathelstan or Gerdwell or Verna that might pull his offspring down. It was instead a more primal terror — the fear of what the cultists represented, something underground and yet capable of leaping up anywhere, in any shape, until your every cup of wine was suspect, your every servant dangerous, your every public journey perilous. A fear that neither conquering your foes nor imprisoning them could possibly resolve.

If we were back in Valemark at that table, Aengiss, there’s one more question I would have asked you, Edmund thought as he looked across the feasting toward his general. I’d have asked: What if it doesn’t work? What if we conquer Bryghala and it’s the same damn thing as Capaelya and Allasyr, a country filled with enemies plotting my demise, plotting my daughter’s death, plotting to cut my son’s imperial throat? What if we conquer and it’s all for nothing, and what I saw on the river is what my children live with all their lives? What then?

He half-smiled, then, tipsy enough to be pleased to have finally given himself the last word in an argument with Aengiss. Then he rose to his feet, letting the murmuring voices die away into whispers.

“Friends,” he began. “Friends, subjects, and honored guests, it is our great pleasure and honor to welcome you here tonight on this momentous occasion.”

Momentous occasion? Alsbet looked up from her seat beside him and wondered. So did the lords and ladies, Narsils and foreigners, who listened as the emperor wound his way through the appropriate greetings and pleasantries toward the marrow of the matter. All of them wondered, and were silent.

“So . . .” Edmund had been speaking for a few minutes now, and he paused to sip from his glass, feeling the liquid in his veins and shivering slightly. Better. “Lord Arellwen?”

His chancellor rose from his seat, three chairs to the left of the emperor. “My liege?”

“Many of you are aware that Lord Arellwen has spent the last four months away from our city. It has been commonly believed that he passed that time in a tour of the Brethon lands. That, however, is not the case. Our chancellor was sent on a diplomatic mission to Aelsendar in the kingdom of Bryghala.”

There were hisses of indrawn breath throughout the hall, and Edmund’s genial smile grew broader. “The subterfuge was necessary because success was uncertain. It was also necessary to forestall inevitable protests from elements within our realm who consider aggression more important than cooperation among monarchs.”

There were no gasps now, only silence. The only smile wider than the Emperor’s lit the face of Aengiss mac Cullolen.

“In any case, the time for secrecy is done. Lord Arellwen, if you please . . .”

The chancellor nodded, his face pale and tight beneath a newly-cropped beard. “At the behest of his imperial majesty, Edmund Montair, first of that name, I undertook a diplomatic mission to the court of Queen Crenhuinn in Bryghala, with the object — with my object being the conclusion of a treaty of perpetual peace between our empire and that kingdom. I am pleased to say that I . . . that I succeeded at my task.”

There was applause then, but the faces in the great banquet hall were stunned.

“Yes, succeeded. The treaty — the treaty, ah, provides for the exchange of emissaries for the first time since the end of the last war, guarantees the current borders in perpetuity — specifically, the land west of the River Aeraida . . .”

He droned on, seeming to gain confidence from the minutiae. A draft rustled at the fading banners, and Edmund remained standing, his expression distant and abstracted, while his daughter listened intently beside him.

Finally, the crucial portions arrived. “As a gesture of good faith and cooperation, the Queen of Bryghala shall do all in her royal power to suppress the wicked and murderous cult of the so-called King of Hills and Trees and Water, forbidding worship of this devilish power on penalty of death, and permitting priest-inquisitors of the most holy revelation the chance to investigate all reports of this cult’s activity …”

There was subdued clapping at this, somewhat louder from Ethred the Archpriest and the visiting inquisitors, but Arellwen did not pause.

“ … and finally, as a symbol of the union of purpose and will of these two great lands, the Empire of Narsil and the Kingdom of Bryghala, it is agreed that Her Imperial Highness, Princess Alsbet of Montair, shall be given in marriage to His Royal Highness, First Prince Maibhygon mar’ab Daenab’yr, and shall rule as Queen in Bryghala at such time as His Royal Highness ascends to the throne.”

Done, my Queen!, Edmund crowed to himself as amazed applause swept the hall. I have made an end — for you!

Aengiss was still smiling, a gash in his weathered face, but his gaze was black and distant like a hawk. Alsbet had risen to stand erect beside her father as a princess should, her chin lifted, her gaze proud.

The applause washed over her, and high above, the banners looked silently down.